The courtyard smelled like burned asphalt and charged metal.
Elias pressed his shoulder against the supply crates and tried to make himself smaller. Another bolt of blue-white electricity cracked across the depot yard. The sound hit his teeth first, then his ribs, and the fractured places inside him answered with pain.
Ten yards away, the Federation officer stood outside the inner keep with a silver shard burning at his throat. He did not carry a rifle. He used both hands like weapons, sweeping lightning through Roachaline's charging soldiers and forcing them to drop anything metal.
Bodies hit pavement in hard spasms. Cheap armor smoked. Rifles bounced from locked fingers. The soldiers who had been brave in the skiff learned how fast courage changed when lightning used their own guns against them. Some crawled backward. Others kept trying to rise because Roachaline was watching, and being seen retreating might kill them slower than the officer would.
