Moyra and I hold our positions. The yellow monsters flit their bulbous gaze toward us and slurp their commands.

The pink bartender backs away. "You have put your hand on the weapon you carry. No one may touch a weapon they own. No one may touch a weapon that another owns. No one may touch weapons in this port."

Moyra raises her hands in the air. "No touching weapons. Got it. We're sorry. Tell them we are very sorry." She glares at me. With a curt nod of her head and lips drawn to a grim line, she demands I do the same.

I snap. "So you're going to boss me around in here too? Just like the night of the HEL-SR?" My words fly from my mouth, misfiring from my brain that has shut itself off.

Moyra's eyes go wide. "Get your hands in the air, Janika."

"No."

Moyra's hands reach higher. "As you can see, sir, my sister and I are here peacefully. We don't mean any harm." She turns to me one more time. "Your hands, Reaper."

"Who are you—" I scream, turning to her fully, "to tell me what to do, soldier?" I enunciate the word with gravel.

How dare she try and command me? Me? Her superior on this mission. In age, in rank, in not being a total shithead for everything that has happened in the last five years. How dare she. The rage bubbles. I'm a simmering stew on high heat. There's no other room for any emotion—it's all red. The walls bleed from the pressure.

The bartender taps a small tubal device attached to his jaw. It illuminates in magenta and returns to blue.

With a guttural belch, he grabs the attention of my hostile compatriots. They don't drop their own guns, but they at least turn their beady eyes to him instead of me.

I look from Moyra to the bartender who is in full conversation. With rapt attention, the yellow, three-eyed lizards listen. Only one of the yellow gang remains fixated on me, its weapon sticking to the flat of its wide, webbed hand.

It inches closer, maintaining sharp eye contact with me. We stare each other down. It steps closer, weapon drawn, closing the distance between us.

"Janika," Moyra whispers, "stop antagonizing it."

"Don't tell me what to fucking do."

"What is wrong with you?"

The creature leers.

"You're acting insane." Her lips part and her eyes bulge in fear.

The thing's yellow hands readjust. Its friends are spectators, gleaming at us with menacing black eyes.

My hand hovers over my holster.

"I'm calling this in." Moyra disappears from my channel as I know she's moved to a new frequency to squeal on me to whoever will listen.

My fingers itch. Blinded by every fucking irritating word that was said, adrenaline punches through my fingers. Do it, the thundering hormones say to my hands, just fucking do it because you are in control. Not Moyra. Moyra has been gone. She may not even be real.

I pull the HEL pistol from my hip and swivel it around my palm before taking a knee to point the barrel between the eyes of the shit that thinks it can intimidate me.

I duck just as a jet of red liquid streams past my ear. The rock bar top sizzles as the blast eats the material.

The crowd scrambles to exit as Moyra shouts over the chaos. "Janika!"

I roll away, avoiding another red streak whizzing past my helmet.

The pistol is hot in my gloves. I don't shoot. Instead, I kick the weapon out of my aggressor's webbed hand and tackle the creature. I straddle it, squeezing its arms to its sides with my thighs.

For the first time since launch, I feel like myself – controlled, explosive, fueled, unstoppable. Burning from the fire crackling under the surface since launch, I hit the instigator with a right hook hard enough to feel the crack of its skeleton under my knuckle.

I swing again. My left fist connects with its long jaw and its little black teeth pepper the air.

Instead of dissipating, the rage builds. It builds every time I pull my arm back. It rises and just when I think it's going to peak and crash, it plows upward. Up and up and up. My mind dissolves. I see the thing like nacho cheese beyond the sting of my tears.

One more time, maybe this swing will be the one that makes the hate go away. I don't want to hit it anymore. I just want the agony to live somewhere else besides inside me.

One more time.

Before I can land my fist in his face, I'm knocked backward by a shock of fire to my shoulder.

New pain. This is a bright, flashy, new searing.

Startled, I stare up at my assailants.

Six pink creatures identical to the bartender have 'D' shaped sticks pointed at me. They hum as if pumping an electric charge.

The hate transforms to terror. I curl inward to protect my son from the menacing black weapon that smolders. My mind clears. The storm dissolves and I see the truth of my situation:

Upturned stools and abandoned tables are littered with broken plates and half-eaten food from a hasty evacuation. Just beyond, kneeling among the ruins of the night, Moyra stretches her arms out in front of her, her elbows bent and fingers pointed to the sky as if in prayer. Three of the pink soldiers loom behind her, aiming their weapons at her neck. One binds her wrists.

The guards approach me.

"Surrender! I surrender!"

One jabs the rod at my shoulder again. Spearing heat slices my BDU, hitting me like I've been stabbed with a tongue of fire.

My son summersaults inside me.

"Stop!" I screech again. "Stop it!" I try to raise my arms before the same one on the side strikes again, branding the inside of my forearm. "You're hurting him!" My voice is hoarse from the intermittent screaming between pleas as I writhe, one arm around my abdomen, the other in the air.

I turn on my side. Moyra is fixated on my middle. When I gaze down, I notice I had wrapped both arms around my belly, emphasizing the bulge.

"Stay calm, Sister. Please. Just stay calm."

My PAHLM vibrates, but I barely feel it over the heat that rips through me.

The searing stops.

My eyes shut tight. Another noise rattles as an undercurrent in the chaos – the tick of metal legs against stone floors.

No.

Heavy breathing and tears fog my mask. I can't see anything but a tangerine world.

Tik tik tik tik tik

It's killing me. It's killing us. We must already be dead.

My PAHLM vibrates again.

Tik tik tik tik tik

And again.

And again.

And again.

The mechanical titters surround me as the orange lowers, lowers until my vision clears and I can make out the distinct shape of the abdomen of a gelatinous, orange man.

The Xani's head is obscured from my sight. It's rearing legs and churning blades spin in the faces of the pink enforcers.

They back away.

The pink creatures drop their rods and hold their hands out. They speak in the clicks of my nightmares. Moyra's mouth gapes in dread. She falls sideways, her hands still bound as she struggles to back away from the Xani.

I choke on my inhale as I wait for death.

"It's okay, Sister." Moyra's soft words caresses the innards of my helmet. I forget why her voice filled me with so much rage before. "It's okay. We're going back. We're going back. Don't worry." She shushes my sobbing.

I didn't mean for any of this to happen. The Xani's blades spin. I don't want to let this be the last thing I do, to lie here, crying, while the Xani rips our lives away. I hoped I'd get to see Dean and Simon one more time. This is why hope is useless. Happy endings don't exist.

The Xani scuttles and turns. It shuffles to the side where it lowers into a calm, resting state I've only seen a few times before. The six pink guards have dropped their weapons. Subdued, they approach again.

"You are apprehended, Commander Janika Lorn of Earth." One guard stoops to pick me up by my arm.

A guard pulls me until I'm standing. With my hands out and up in prayer position, my palms glued together by a band they strap around my wrists, they lead me outside. I peer over my shoulder to see the Xani nestled in the shadows and Moyra's still in the dirt, tears streaming down her cheeks, smeared around the glass of her helmet.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispers. 

My escort taps the icon on my PAHLM and shuts my communicator off.