Zila shakes her head, and returns to her readouts.
“When our next loop commences, I require you to devote your efforts to Magellan.”
Fin blinks, and I almost laugh as I glance at Finian’s backpack, the fried remains of Aurora’s uniglass inside it.
“You actually want me to repair that piece of chakk?” He gestures to the glass cases around us. “Z, you’d get more use out of one of these antiques!”
“I will also require your uniglass. Yours too, Scarlett.”
“What for?” I ask. “It’s not like there’s a network for them to—”
“We can network them with each other.” Zila almost scowls at the screens in front of her. “This system is simply too primitive, and I need all the computing power I can get to perform this math.” She rubs her eyes, her face underscored by the glow of her screens. “Something is wrong.”
Fin shuffles closer to the console, taking this more seriously now. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”
The loudspeaker cuts Zila’s reply off.
“WARNING: CONTAINMENT CASCADE IN EFFECT. CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT, T MINUS THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING. ALL HANDS PROCEED TO EVACUATION PODS IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IN THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING.”
And there it is.
The end of the loop.
Dying time again.
The station starts to shake around us, and I take Finian’s hand. Comforted by the strength in his grip, the warmth of his body as I lean against him. But Fin pays no attention, instead staring at the time readout on Zila’s wrist. The digital numbers flash on the timer she sets at the start of every loop.
“That can’t be right … ,” Fin says.
Zila meets his stare, lips pursed. “I was wondering when you would notice.”
“Have you checked this?” he demands. “It’s not a glitch?”
“We noticed it a few loops ago,” Nari says quietly. “Well, Zila did. But she wanted to make sure before telling you.”
Zila holds Finian’s eyes a moment longer, then turns her little death glare on me. “Perhaps if you two were not so distracted …”
“Listen, Zila, I know you’re angry,” I say. “And maybe you have a right to be, but can you put the pointing fingers away for a minute and tell me what the hells is going on?”
The station rocks around us. A mauve light flares, illuminating the tempest outside, the colossal clouds coiling and churning out in the black.
Fin looks into my eyes. “The quantum pulse strikes the sail forty-four minutes into the loop.”
“Right.”
“And Zila told us the core overloaded and the station exploded fifty-eight minutes after the pulse hits.”
“Yeah.” I look back and forth between them. “So?”
“We are one minute from detonation, Scarlett,” Zila says, holding up her wrist for me to read.
I frown at the numbers, bright red against the small black screen on Zila’s brown skin, bathed in the monitor’s blue glow.
“One hour, thirty-two minutes,” I say.
“Correct,” Zila nods.
“WARNING: CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT, T MINUS THIRTY SECONDS. ALL HANDS EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IN THIRTY SECONDS.”
The station begins to buck wildly, the metal around us tearing, the air filled with sirens, rising smoke, the hiss of venting atmo. I raise my voice above it all. “But if the core explodes fifty-eight minutes after the strike, and the strike happens at minute forty-four …”
Kim meets my eyes, her face grim. “Yeah.”
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
I look into Fin’s eyes.
“The loops are getting shorter,” I say.
“WARNING: CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT. FIVE SECONDS. WARNING.”
Fin nods and squeezes my hand, his big black eyes wide with fear.
“We’re running out of time,” he says.
“WARNING.”
BOOM.
19
AURI
My head’s pounding by the time we reach the World Ship, and I watch through the Vindicator’s viewscreen as the last sanctuary in the entire Milky Way comes into view.
Kal rests his hands on my shoulders, thumbs pressing in to find the spot at the base of my neck where I always carry my tension. He must have done this hundreds of times in the Echo, patiently talking me down from my fits of despair over Esh’s impossible training tasks. It feels so long ago.
Now we watch together as we draw closer to Sempiternity, a looming shadow floating against the backdrop of a brilliant rainbow nebula. At first, I think not much has changed in twenty-seven years—it’s still a hodgepodge of ships and stations bolted together, towers and satellites jabbing out into the black, docking tunnels twisting away from its body like trailing tentacles.
But it’s speckled all over with lights, except for the upper right-hand quarter. That part’s completely dark, and as we draw in closer and I get a better look, I can see it’s been blasted open to space, twisted and broken. The explosion—or the attack—must have been massive.
“Home,” Toshh murmurs from her seat beside me.
“Good place to keep your heart,” I say.
She looks at me strangely, one brow rising toward her horns.
“It’s an old Earth saying,” I smile. “Home is where the heart is.”
Over at the helm, Lae glances at Kal. “That would explain a great deal. Given what the Starslayer did to his own.”
Kal breathes deep at that, but he doesn’t call her on it. I suppose in an awful way it’s true. As I reach back and squeeze his hand, Lae glances at me, then to the boy beside me.
It’s a little strange when I look at her, to be honest. The other members of Tyler’s crew, even Ty himself … I can feel them in my head so easily now. Their feelings. The currents of their emotions, flowing together into a river all around me. But I can’t quite get a read on Lae. She keeps herself closed off, like she’s used her Waywalker powers to draw a veil over her mind.
She’s strong. Nothing like me or Caersan. But still …
She seemed to appreciate my help getting the rift drive going again, at least—ironically, I provided the “unsophisticated push” Caersan wants from me to transport the Weapon home. I’m not sure of the science of it—Lae was the one guiding us, I was the raw power, diving into that stream again, immolating and exhilarating. Together, we used the fragment of Eshvaren crystal in the Vindicator’s core to open a series of gates over a span of eight hours, jumping the ship half a dozen times across the gulf of space.
It required a fraction of effort from me. Almost inconsequential. But from the cracks around Lae’s eyes, I can tell how much it costs her every time they travel. Despite her hardcase attitude, that alone tells me she’s a good person. Everyone on Tyler’s crew is. Giving so much of themselves to bring survivors here.
The last piece of civilization in the galaxy.
“About damn time,” Tyler mutters.
I rise from my seat, standing at his shoulder as we cruise in closer to the World Ship. He glances at me, and for an instant his eye widens, breath catching, body tensing in the space between heartbeats.