Excerpt
The synthetic wind inside of my Aresian prison cell smelled of stardust and blood. Metallic and thick, it stuck to my hoarse throat and burned my bruised skin. Minutes that felt like hours passed before I realized the screaming ringing in my ears was my own. Death came to Phobos draped in an imperial robe.
I have to escape! I can't die like this! Not here, not now!
Those three thoughts collided into one another and drove me to my feet. I raced towards the only exit, a crater-sized hole that used to be a door blown open by invading Royalist troopers.
"Obed minga!" A Royalist snarled, raising his phaser mid-air.
He grazed the trigger, and a deadly stream of white light flashed through the crowd.
I stopped and stared in horror as my neighbor's son collapsed, a huge hole through his chest, his organs vaporized in the process. It took everything in me not to throw up everything in my stomach and faint.
Instead, I turned around and I kept running. I ran, and ran, and ran without a destination in mind, my mindless quest for salvation guiding my frenzied movements.
"Minga!" The guard shouted the slur with ease, turning his weapon towards me.
Without hesitation, I hurled myself through the exit and down a corridor leading to the landing bay. I felt the presence of the intruders gaining on me. All around me, chaos reigned. Spacecrafts exploded silently in the vacuum of deep space.
Bodies suspended in mid-air surrounded the glass walkway, their bodies crystallized by the extreme cold of the void, their faces a mask of perpetual fear. Fires had broken out across the mining strips, threatening to consume the lunar colony and my allies with it.
"Ah!" I screamed in agony as a laser grazed my back, ripping open my suit.
I fell forward, tripping over dead bodies, clawing my way to freedom at the end of the tunnel. I was so close, yet so far.
The shackles around my hands made it impossible for me to drag my body forward properly. But I couldn't give up, not when I had a mission to carry out! Despite my will to live, my body failed me.
Blood oozed from my back, joining my kin beneath me. As I faded out, there was only one thing on my mind, the man I should've never left behind, the one who warned me this day would come and that he wouldn't be there to save me.
In my last moments, I longed to see his vengeful gaze upon me, to feel the force of his rage as he dragged me towards him. I should have never left him behind, the only reason I still fought to breathe then, to live, all so I could see him again.
His russet-brown skin and eyes filled with venom were the last things I saw before everything went pitch black.
Saabir, I'm sorry...
