I don’t know if I believe that.
I don’t know if this was all worth it.
The signal is given. Thousands of lights flashing in salute to the station. As the fleet begins departing through the FoldGate, I place my hand up on the transparent plasteel, my heart heavy in my chest.
For all the firepower, all the strength, I warned Adams and de Stoy, things might not be so easy. Even if we had the Weapon, which we don’t, we’ve been planning this battle for a little over two centuries.
The Ra’haam has been preparing its return for a million years.
Auri, where are you?
I watch the ships dropping through the gate one by one, all our hopes, all our lives, hanging by their single thread.
And then, out in the dark, I see it.
A tiny pulse of energy, just off the station’s skin.
Butterflies take wing in my stomach, and I surge up against the viewport.
And then I’m running—stumbling, really, wounds be damned—wincing as I slam through a group of wide-eyed cadets and barrel into the turbolift.
I call Adams but I get his damn service again, slinging my uni into the elevator wall in frustration.
The elevator hits the docks and I spill out the doors, roaring at a trauma team slouched on break beside a medvac shuttle. They look at me like I’m insane, like I’ve lost it. One of them tells me I should be back in the med bay. I’m not gonna repeat what I yell next, but it’s enough to convince them to get their asses into gear and get me out into the black.
My heart is hammering as we launch, gravity dropping away, hope rising with my insides as they free-float. Thrust pushes me back into my acceleration couch as I point—“There, THERE!”—to a tiny speck of gray floating out in the middle of all that nothing.
Unlike my sister, I’m a ship geek. I can tell you the name of every vessel the Terran Defense Force has used since its inception back in 2118. I can spot the makes. I can call the models. I can tell you the year they were commissioned and the year they were taken offline.
Hey, I like ships, okay?
“Osprey series,” I whisper. “Model 7I-C. 2168 to 2179.”
Over the med team’s objections, I’m suited up before they are. It’s hard to navigate with only one eye—they haven’t had a chance to install my cybernetic yet, and my depth perception is shot to pieces.
A nice young Betraskan corporal tells me I need to sit down.
I politely inform him he needs to shut up.
The medvac locks on to the Osprey with a grav-cable, bringing us into close orbit, seconds ticking by like years.
I’m looking at the Osprey as we close to boarding range, teeth gritted so tight they are creaking. The hull is burned black in places, the metal carved into strange ripples, like it was liquefied in intense heat, then flash-frozen before it could come apart. The windows are scorched, dark with burned carbon; I can’t see inside. I can’t see them.
I can’t see her.
Our airlock hisses, opens wide, and secured by safety cables, me and the med team spill out into the void. I know enough to stay out of their way as the tech specialist tries to hack the electronics, resorting at last to cutting through the metal with a heavy-duty thermal lance.
They force the loading bay door open with hydraulics, carbon particles breaking free from the melted metal, my stomach full of sloshing ice. I follow the med team inside, the floodlights on our helmets cutting through the dark as we reach the inner airlock. As the team goes to work on the seals, I press my hands against the narrow glass viewport in the airlock door, peering into the shuttle’s belly beyond.
And there in the dark, I see them, I see them and I shout, pounding my fist against the port.
“Finian!” I roar. “Scarlett!”
They’re floating in the zero grav, Scar’s flame-red hair and Fin’s milk-white skin picked out in the cabin’s pitch-black.
Fin is wrapped in a thermal blanket and spacesuit that belongs in a museum, and I note with horror there’s pale pink blood spattered inside the visor.
Scar is in another ancient suit beside him, her body floating limp and motionless in the dark. Around her neck, I can see the medallion she got in the Dominion vault on Emerald City. The crystal is glowing like a candle, its light slowly fading.
“HURRY UP!” I roar. “GET IT OPEN!”
The airlock shudders, the med team once again bringing in the hydraulics to force it. I’m on my belly, squeezing underneath as it rises, heedless of the awakening pain in my body, the blood I can feel pooling under my dermal wraps.
I scrabble across the deck, clutching at the ceiling to slow myself, hooking an arm around the pilot’s chair as I drag my sister in with my other hand. Her eyes are closed, hair billowing in a halo around her face. There’s no oxygen in here, no atmo, nothing to carry sound, and so instead, I scream into her head, across the blood between us, the blood that binds us, praying, Please, Maker, please.
Scar, can you hear me?
The team bustles in behind me, securing Fin. Readings are taken, vitals checked. “We gotta get these two back to station, STAT.”
Scar! It’s Tyler!
They push me aside, wrap my sister in electrothermals, secure her in a grav-gurney. I’m holding her hand as we boot it back to our own shuttle, refusing to let go, refusing to give up. Not after all this.
Not her too.
SCARLETT, WAKE UP!
She’s motionless on the gurney, strapped inside our shuttle now, warming up from the freezing chill of space.
But she’s still not moving, barely breathing, and I can’t feel her in my mind, that strange more-than-twins bond we’ve always shared, the gift from the mother we never knew, the dad we lost, the family we were, all of it more important to me now than it’s ever been, please Scar, please I can’t lose you too, I can’t lose you too.
“Ty …”
I open my eye, heart bursting as I see her looking at me through heavy lashes, her voice thick, eyelids bruised. I can sense the size of the story she’s just lived, the weight she’s just lifted, the place she’s just been. But after all she’s been through, she still finds it in herself to smile.
“H-hey, Bee-bro …”
I laugh, I sob, hanging my head. “I hate it when you call me that.”
Her lips part, fear gleaming in her stare. “F-Finian?”
“He’s okay,” I whisper. “He’s okay, Scar.”
I want to hug her so bad I can taste it. I want to drag her into my arms and never let her go. But I can tell what her body’s been through, and I don’t want to risk hurting her. So I just squeeze her hand, lean in to kiss her brow, tears breaking loose from my lashes and floating free in the low grav as I pour everything I’m feeling into her head. The sorrow and the fear, the regret and the pain, but more and most, the pure, blinding joy I feel at seeing her again.
We’ve known each other all our lives. Even before we were born. And everything I’ve done, everything I’ve lived and fought through, even when she wasn’t there beside me, she was with me. A part of me.
Forever.
Scarlett opens her arms, and I hold her gently as I can, and she strokes my hair as I press my face into hers.
“I love you, too,” she whispers.
36
TYLER
It’s a long Fold for those on the way to the Octavia system. Long enough for my wounds to begin healing as we wait for news that the coalition fleet has reached its destination. I find the rehab hard work, and the cybernetic they gave me still feels strange, but good news is, I can read the news feeds right off the network now.