IX. Aftermath
* * * *
Mikhail felt as if he’d been running and fighting non-stop for hours now, though he knew it couldn’t have been that long. But that was what happened in the heat of the battle. You lost track of time.
That feeling had been exacerbated by spending the past who knew how many minutes hooked into the targeting interface of a plasma cannon, firing at his former comrades-in-arms. He’d managed to pick off most of the boarding pods, shooting to disable rather than destroy, to wound rather than to kill. Because even after everything that had happened, he still didn’t want to kill his former comrades, if it could be avoided.
If he’d found himself face to face with Kendrick or Bolton or even Mayhew, he might well have killed them. And indeed, he had aimed the Freedom’s Horizo
