But the battle is burning all around us, and I’m caught up in that fire, plunging the ship past the doors and into the tunnel, kilometers wide, the Ra’haam and the Free fleets pouring after us. The dark is lit with quick explosions, and all I can hear down comms are screamed commands, cutting over the top of each other, a hopeless mess of orders and pleas.
I let my mind sweep outward, and I find Kal, nearly at the place where the Ra’haam swarm is pouring into our wounded ship, one violet-and-gold beacon against the writhing, starving mass of green and blue.
I anchor a piece of myself to him, and reach out farther to find the Vindicator, pushing myself into Tyler’s mind, into Lae’s, past the exhaustion and the fear and the single-minded focus on the battle.
Kal needs you!
But there is someone else out there too—I can hear his voice, sense the pieces of him that can never be separated now from the whole.
“… Jie-Lin …”
“… Jie-Lin, come to me… .”
“It only calls to you because it fears it cannot win,” Caersan hisses, gripping the arms of his throne, knuckles white. “Do not participate in your own defeat, girl. Tears are for the conquered.”
We burst into the crystal cavern at the planet’s core, and I reach out mentally to stop Kal from falling as the Neridaa slows suddenly to a crawl, turning her toward the scaffolding, toward her old cradle.
The chamber is vast—hundreds of kilometers wide—massive cliffs of crystal reflecting the light of the ships spilling behind us, arcs of fire streaming across the rainbow gables above, explosions echoing on ancient crystal.
The scale of this place is breathtaking, the dusty emptiness of eons now filled with the battle to save the future. The power it must have taken to build something like this, the Weapon we ride in—last time I was here, I felt like an insect beside it. But now I feel that same power rushing through me, setting me alight. And as the Neridaa settles into place, a feeling of relief washes over me—it’s like taking off too-tight shoes, like breathing out.
She’s home.
I turn my head and catch a glimpse of blue flowers, and then they’re gone, wiped out as a ship flies into a thousand glittering pieces, debris striking its pursuer so it blooms into a second explosion.
Tyler’s ship lands beside us, he and his crew spilling out, but the Ra’haam vessels are soaring into the chamber like a swarm of locusts now, mingled with too few of our own ships, swirling around us in a thick, choking mass.
There’s a snatch of music, I swear, just a few intoxicating notes—and then a grunt of effort from Caersan shatters the moment.
We need time—time to repair our broken ship, to heal the fractures running through her skin. And looking to the domed crystal sky above, I know there are too few of our allies left to buy it for us.
And I don’t even know where to begin. …
But as if in answer, the coppery taste of blood in my mouth turns sweet, and the scene before me begins to fade. I feel a heavy numbness, a gravity pulling me down, and though I cling for a moment, I can feel myself sliding away to somewhere familiar, somewhere I’ve been before.
But I can’t leave him—they’re coming!
Kal!
29
KAL
We meet in a broad corridor inside the Neridaa. I am bathed in the color of rainbows, surrounded by the roar of the battle raging overhead.
The invaders are a multitude, spilling from their boarding pods into the Weapon’s halls. A dozen races, a dozen shapes, all the same mind. Their skin is mottled with mold, flowers in their eyes, and behind those stares, I sense the creature they encompass. A being that was old when my homeworld was a new pebble, slowly cooling around a now-dead sun.
A will that has waited a million years for this triumph.
The rainbow light around me is strobing, the great vaulted ceiling overhead echoes with the death screams of our dwindling fleet. My blades are feathers in my hands, and I make a slaughter of the Ra’haam puppets, dancing the dance of blood as easily as breathing. But I feel another strike against the Neridaa’s hull. Another. More boarding pods, I realize. Their numbers endless. And I know against this foe, there can be no victory.
All I can win is time.
On they come through the glimmering halls—another wave. I fall back to narrower ground, where their numbers count for less. A thing comes at me through the flickering rainbow glow, curling leaves where its eyes should be, its horns entwined with a crown of thorns. I slice off its grasping hand, but its other sends me into the wall. Something strikes my back as I stumble to cover—a pulse cannon blast, perhaps. I am not sure, there are so many… .
“… Stop fighting, Kaliis… .”
Too many.
“… Give yourselves to us… .”
A part of me always knew I would fall in battle. I am not afraid to die fighting for something I believe in. But I am afraid of leaving her. My Aurora. My beloved. I was a pale shadow before I met her. An unlit fire, waiting for the spark that would let me burn.
Twisted hands reach for me.
Eyes like flowers, glowing blue.
I did not want it to end like this.
The things charging at me burst apart, showering me with blood and gore. I hear more weapon fire, grenades, the hissing whisper of a null blade slicing flesh, and then, above the carnage, a voice that makes my heart soar.
“Toshh, report status!” Tyler shouts.
“Clear, Commander!” the big woman replies, reloading her weapon and checking a scanner. “But we got more inbound! Seventy meters!”
I wipe the mess from my eyes and see Lae standing above me, illuminated by the crackling purple null blade in her fist. As I grasp the bloody hand she offers, I am struck again by the notion that I know this woman. It is a foolish thought, I know—she was not even born when Aurora and I walked through time. And yet …
“You fought well,” Lae says softly, eyeing the abattoir around me.
I look down the gleaming crystal corridor, back toward the throne room.
“I was taught well.”
Her stare hardens. Hate in her eyes.
“He is every bit the monster you think him,” I tell her, wiping my blades clean. “But family is … complicated.”
“You all right, Kal?”
I turn as Tyler strides out of the smoke toward me, his hulking suit of power armor just as war-worn and battered as the man inside it. But I manage a smile despite the pain in me, the death raining all around us.
“You are always a welcome sight, Tyler Jones.”
“Keep it in your pants, kid,” he grins. “I didn’t brush my teeth today.” Turning to his people, he begins barking orders. “Dacca, cover that breach! Toshh, get a fire screen on this hallway now! We got more hostiles inbound, and they cannot get past us. Twenty seconds to contact, move, move!”
I watch his people scramble, preparing for the next onslaught. The battle overhead is growing quieter now, the last of our defenders falling. Each of the remainder knows this battle is unwinnable. But still, they obey without question, buoyed by the fire in Tyler’s eye, the steel in his voice.
They bear the same love for him that we all did.
Some things never change.
Tyler tosses me a spare rifle. Taking up position behind a rainbow spire of crystal, in the calm before the storm, he glances to Lae.