“Nono,” Fin says, sitting beside de Renn. “Your third mother is my first aunt, on second granddad’s side.”
Cohen’s tank pauses in his calculations, fingers hovering over his fire controls. “But my second first uncle is your third cousin too, right?”
“… Dariel is your first uncle?”
“Yeah, once removed on my—”
“How are those calcs coming, de Renn?” Cohen asks.
“Good to go,” the Tank replies, straightening up. “We’re ready, Alpha.”
“Enemy fleet will breach Aurora system in T minus three minutes.”
The holo projections in front of us flicker with the Legion sigil, and the face of Battle Leader de Stoy appears above the consoles. The last surviving commander of the Aurora Legion looks grim, determined. Her voice rings across the bridge and the fleet under her command.
“Aurora legionnaires.
“To be a Betraskan is to know you are never alone.
“Every one of us is part of a sprawling network, a clan and a greater clan, siblings, parents, grandparents, cousins, and hundreds of others who share our blood.
“Wherever we go, we know this one truth: we are family.
“This is the legacy we are born to. But every one of us here is a part of something more powerful still, whether we are Betraskan, Terran, or Syldrathi.
“We are part of a clan we have chosen. A clan we have built not with bonds of blood, but with promises we have chosen to make. We have pledged our hearts to our cause, and to each other.
“Even now, the Aurora Legion burns bright when the night is at its darkest. Even now, we stand in the way of what is wrong, and we stand for peace. This is the vow we have made, and the promise we have made to the Legion and to each other.
“Know this: It is the honor of my life to stand shoulder to shoulder with each of you, my chosen clan—the family of my heart—today. There is no place in this galaxy, or any other, I would choose to be, but here.”
Her voice cuts out, and is replaced almost immediately with a robotic comms announcement.
“Enemy fleet will breach Aurora system in T minus one minute.”
A voice rings over comms, familiar, cold as ice and yet still able to light a fire in my chest.
“De’na vosh, aam’nai,” it says. “De’na siir.”
I look toward Saedii’s flagship, hanging in the dark off to our port, then glance at Scar in silent question.
“Know no fear, my friends,” my sister translates. “Know no regret.”
“Dun belis tal’dun. Nu belis tal’satha.”
“The end is no ending. And death is no defeat.”
“An’la téli saii.”
“I will—”
“Yeah, I know that one already.”
“… You do?”
I nod, voice soft. “I will see you in the stars.”
“Warning: Enemy fleet inbound. All ships: Enemy fleet inb—”
The FoldGate flares, a lightning strike across black skies, and through that burning window, the first Ra’haam vessel arrives.
It’s here… .
The ship is a Terran carrier, sleek and heavy, bristling with guns. Its hull crawls with growths, like fungus on the hulk of a fallen tree, blue and green and ghostly pale, long tendrils trailing behind as it comes. My heart sinks as I see the name daubed on its prow, barely visible beneath the stains of the Ra’haam’s infection.
Relentless.
“Admiral Adams,” Finian whispers.
“Not anymore,” I murmur.
But I close my eyes, just for a moment. I know we’re about to fire on him. Try to kill him as completely as I killed Cat.
But before she died, Cat defended me. The Ra’haam defended me.
It loved me because she did.
That’s not Admiral Adams anymore … but a part of it …
“ALL STATIONS, FIRE!”
The barrage begins, blinding, burning, pulse beams cutting bright and missiles rolling outward, vapor trails strung behind them like streamers on Federation Day. Explosions bloom soundlessly, fusion fires flaring as bright as the Aurora star at our backs, melting bulkheads and splitting metal apart.
The Relentless plows through the firestorm, flames and coolant spewing from her ruptured skin along with slicks of what could almost be blood, coiling and bubbling in the void. Our fleet keeps hammering, pouring on the firepower until, inevitably, the flagship buckles under the strain and splits apart in a halo of rippling flame.
Admiral Adams and I went to chapel together every Sunday.
I’d never have made it this far without him.
“You must believe, Tyler.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
But he’s not there to hear me.
And there’s no time to mourn. No songs of grief or twenty-one-gun salutes. Because behind the flaming wreckage of our former commander’s flagship, the rest of the Ra’haam fleet is now pouring through the FoldGate.
Endsingers and scythes and saht-ka, warstars and battlehulks and warp-throwers, riding a rolling, churning wave of a million glittering spores. They pour into the Aurora system, thousands upon thousands of ships, too many to match, let alone defeat.
Cohen shouts orders, and it’s on, our Longbow weaving through the streams of fire, those glittering globes, cutting the dark around us with as much fire as we can throw.
The Unbroken armada burns massive swaths through the oncoming horde, the black void of space runs thick with Ra’haam blood, viscous and slick. But their numbers are endless, their strength relentless, and as the Ra’haam returns fire and the ships around us begin to die, we all know there’s only one way this is going to end.
“How we doing, Battle Leader?” I shout.
“Reactor coolant systems offline,” de Stoy replies. “Safeties overridden.”
“How long till we hit critical?”
“Three minutes. Let’s hope this plan of yours works.”
“If you gotta die, die with your boots on.”
A faint radiation spike flares behind us, through Aurora Station’s skin, the reactor tripping ever closer to overload. I remember the feeling of that rising heat in the core, the flickering light, Cat’s blood on my hands. And I see it again in my mind’s eye, that vision, that dream awake—Aurora Station blowing itself apart over and over.
The Ra’haam senses something is wrong, its rearguard vessels halting their maneuvers, the vanguard slowing its assault.
But the FoldGate is in our sights now, just a few more moments till it’s in range, till we fire, blowing it apart and trapping the enemy in here with us.
“Two minutes to critical.”
The voice in my head told me I could stop it. I could fix it. But maybe I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe the station dying, the dream of the Legion along with it, bursting apart in the middle of the enemy and burning it to cinders, is the best we can hope for.
I reach for Scarlett’s hand, squeezing tight.
Beside her, Fin slips his arm around her waist.
This end is no ending.
“One minute to critical.”
We’ll see each other again.
In the st—
The galaxy around us inverts.
The thunder of a billion storms rings inside my head.
I stagger with the force of it, the people around me gasping, stumbling, the battle outside falling still. I see the medallion around Scar’s throat, glowing now with kaleidoscopic fire, cascading through the bridge, an echo, a roar, a birth cry ripped across the darkness and burning all into blinding white.