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Aerie was glad when the communication line cut itself off. “What are you going to do?” she asked, as she turned to face her husband.
“You already know,” he told her simply.
And that was the truth. But Aerie was not going to give him the easy way out of it.
“Tell me,” she said. “In your own words. I want to hear out of your own mouth that you’re going to kill us all.”
“Well, actually,” Exton said, standing up, “that’s not what I was thinking at all.”
Aerie took a step back, confused but relieved. “Good.”
“Give me one moment, and then we’ll leave,” he said. He pressed several buttons, making his way around the Command Bridge.
A beep came from the control board next to her. “Exton,” she called, “there are more missiles coming our way.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll put more power to the front shields.”
Aerie watched him move from station to station, still unsure of what he was going to do. Her eyes shifted to her father, who was standing around, shifting on his heels. He seemed bored, she thought.
Exton then reached out a hand to St. Cloud. “Can I borrow your weapon, sir?” he asked.
St. Cloud smiled eerily. “Of course.” He handed Exton the weapon at his side.
“What are you going to do?” Aerie asked, stepping forward. She was growing more concerned by the moment. Her husband and her father were not natural allies. She was afraid she was deliberately being left out of the loop.
“I’d find something to grip onto if I were you,” Exton called back, before he shoved the controls of the ship forward. The ship shot out, fast and hard, rushing forward back down toward Earth.
Rushing as it headed straight for GPI.
Aerie felt her whole body quake, and not from the sudden onset of pressure. “You’re going to ram them?” she called out, watching in shock as Exton shot several rounds through the control panel, firmly planting the controls forward. “But the whole ship will blow up. We’re all going to die.”
“It’s called a Pyrrhic victory, Aerie,” Exton told her. He grabbed her by the arm. “The GPI has to go. Osgood has to go. This is the perfect chance we have of getting to him.”
“What about Brock?”
“We told him to escape,” Exton argued. “If he left when we said, he will likely get out just fine.”
“But what about us?” Aerie asked.
“Right now, we have to go. We have to get to the escape pods.”
Aerie’s eyes lit up. “But Rhodey said there was only one left!” she recalled. “I thought you said you weren’t going to kill us.”
“I know.” Exton turned to St. Cloud. “I’m going to die. You and your father are going to return to Petra.”
“What?!” Aerie gasped, nearly choking. “No, you said I could stay with you. I’m not leaving you, Exton. If for no other reason than to assure myself you suffer, for tricking me with your semantics all over again.”
“When did I do it before?” Exton asked.
“When you told me the Perdition didn’t house any nuclear weapons,” Aerie said, exasperated.
“Aerie, calm down,” the General said, as Exton handed him back the gun. “You’re making yourself look like a fool. You know the realities of war.”
“But ... But ... ” Aerie felt dizzy. She couldn’t say goodbye to Exton!
Before she could put up another fight, he grabbed her hand. “Come on,” he said. “I’m going to make sure you get into that pod. I told you that I’d never lie to you, Aerie, and I told you that I trust you. But this is one thing that I know I can’t trust you with. You’ll have to excuse me.”
“There has to be another way,” Aerie asserted, as she found herself in the elevator, heading down toward the hangar.
Her eyes grew wide as she took in her last view of the Perdition’s halls. She saw the edge of the Biovid, she saw the commissary and the endless hallways, where children once played while the adults gathered in the sanctuary for teaching and singing, the games and the med ward, as all of them flashed through her memory like a dream she never wanted to leave.
“No,” she whispered, recalling the day Emery had tried to go over the emergency protocols with her, when she’d learned the truth of Exton’s family and the reality behind the MENACE warmongers.
Tears flew down her cheeks easily as Exton and her father pushed her to the remaining pod; it was just across the way from the room she’d shared with Exton, where he’d shared everything with her—his world, his books, and his love and his body. His future.
“No,” she repeated, more firmly this time, as Exton gently shoved her into the escape pod and stepped back.
“Yes,” he told her. “I can’t let you die here, even if it means I have to. I need you to go on with the world. And the world, once it’s free of Osgood, will need the General. They’ll look to him to lead the world once it’s fallen apart.”
He glanced back at St. Cloud. “Isn’t that right?” he said.
General St. Cloud nodded. Aerie felt his full betrayal stab into her heart once more. “Exton’s right,” he said. “You need to go. I’m getting tired of listening to your fighting.”
Aerie felt herself fall backward into the escape pod. “Ouch,” she shouted, as she hit her head against the back wall.
As Exton rushed forward to help her up, that’s when it happened.
A shot rang out from directly behind him, and Exton fell to the side. He cried out in agony, and his hand went immediately to the left side of his body, where blood was pouring out freely.
“Exton!” Aerie cried out. She caught him, but then she fell back again; this time, the clunk she heard was not her own head hitting the wall, but Exton’s. She reached up, cradling his head and calling his name, as his body fell further on hers. She briefly felt the bump on his head, from where Brock had hit him before, and hoped it would not grow any bigger.
She glanced past Exton to see her father’s cruel smile. “You can thank me, Aerie, by being a good wife to him,” he said. He sighed and lowered his gun, tossing it onto the ground. “After all I’ve done to him, he deserves someone who will make his life better. Now, don’t wait; get to Petra and have them take care of your husband. He’ll need it, especially if he’s going to nurse a new vendetta against me after this.”
Aerie felt her mouth open in shock as the General reached forward and shut the door to the escape pod, squeezing the two of them inside.
Aerie met her father’s amber eyes with hers. She finally looked away and hugged Exton even more tightly to her chest. “I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you, too, Aerie.”
Aerie could barely see as the escape pod doors closed, and her father disappeared, while she and Exton were shuttled out of the Perdition.
She brushed the tears out of her eyes just in time to watch as the Perdition, looking like a great knight lunging forward with its plank-like bowsprit extended, sliced through its grand enemy. The GPI and its menacing shadow collapsed and shattered in a supernova of fire and light.