Nyaltor vanishes and the emitter flickers off, returning the cavernous dome to the dim, ambient light of our headlamps and lanterns, the quiet of my own breathing and my own pulse.
“They gave up,” June says. “I thought—how stupid—I thought maybe you were right, you know? Maybe they found something that could save us from this.”
I look at her. “Were you even listening to him? They fought as long as they could with what they had. They pooled all the resources in their civilization to meet this threat.”
“And then they didn’t.”
I don’t know how to retort, not immediately. They didn’t, she’s right. The Stelhari did everything they could and still couldn’t meet the Endri threat, and in the end they couldn’t resist it. They are all dead. But—
“But they tried,” I say.
“So?”
“They compiled everything they found, all their lives’ worth of research and effort, the last hope of their civilization, for us.”
When you love someone or something, sometimes it doesn’t even matter what happens to you. You just want to see whatever it is you’re rooting for succeed. Or survive.
June throws up her hands so fast and with such frustration that Pumpkin startles from the motion. “You heard him. Nothing can be done. Antimatter, dark matter, nuclear weaponry—nothing can stop it. It’s not an enemy that can be beaten. If it comes for us, we’re dead too.”
“They mentioned another galaxy—a weapon, maybe.”
She laughs. “Maybe,” she says, drawing the word out long and cynically. “What’s the point? What’s the point in resisting against something impossible to overcome?”
There’s a frantic edge to her voice, like she’s fighting with me to understand her point of view. Like she knows with all the certainty of the cosmos that she’s right on this one and is being driven insane by the fact I can’t see it too. It’s so intense, I think: Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is nothing to hope for, to work for, to dream for.
But I think of Mom. I think of Blyreena and Ovlan.
“What’s the alternative?” I say. Kieran looks at me, worried. It’s his don’t poke the lady with the gun look, but I keep going. “We turn our backs on everything they built for us? We don’t try anything? We might all die, so let’s give up now? Is that it? Is death a concession that nothing matters?”
“It’s futile,” June snaps. “You want to bury your head in the sand and pretend this isn’t inevitable.”
“No. I want to make the best of what the Stelhari have given to us.”
“They couldn’t even make the best of what was given to them. All these messages, they look miserable. They look like they knew the world was ending. The pain they must have been in. The pain Gunner...” She closes her eyes. “There’s nothing here the Archivists could use to save us from the Endri.”
“You can’t just go all or nothing,” Kieran starts, but June draws her weapon and he closes his mouth. Pumpkin hides behind him.
I laugh, disappointed but not surprised. “You’re going to shoot us? After all this?”
“Only if you get in my way,” she threatens.
Without any fanfare, I decide to get in her way. I feel my face flush. Outside, it might look like frustration, but that’s not it. I’m not frustrated anymore. I’m not tired or confused or even angry. I’m focused. I’m determined. I march straight to the cache.
June traces me with her gun. “Scout. I will shoot you.”
“Scout,” Kieran says, wary. “June, hang on.”
I lean next to the cylindrical casing and start going through files on its little screen. June’s footsteps clack up behind me, and I see the metal edge of a gun reflecting off the inside of my cracked and battered helmet. The reflection catches the light of her own helmet, and she’s faceless, just a wall of glass.
Pumpkin bounds to me and presses urgently into my calf, but I don’t stop to console him. I don’t hear the details of Kieran’s pleading. I just see: Weapon tests data. Defense systems—remote data. Defense systems—local data. Hello World. Remnant case one collation. Endric collapse manifesto—Panev.
“June,” Kieran says, closer now. “Listen—”
I find what I’m looking for.
There’s a flash. A pop. The gun has turned in that reflection, not toward me, or my brother, or Pumpkin, but toward a new holographic figure who’s appeared. A hundred new figures who’ve appeared.
The emitter atop the cache has sent out holograms all over the dome. June’s fired at one of those. Kieran’s got his hands over his head. Pumpkin’s buried his head in my boot. Words are flowing out of the holographic crowd, the ones closest to us artificially louder over the din.
“—all we could,” one says.
“—my dad, my uncle,” another says.
“—the trees, the wind, but most of all, my love, I—”
June relaxes. My brother relaxes. Pumpkin lifts his head off my boot and goes to sniff at the nearest hologram. He looks up at them and meows, but they keep talking. I wish I could have told you, they’re saying.
June looks at me. “What is this?”
“Their last stand,” I say.
“—I was never brave enough to—”
“—remember when she rode it into Grandma’s tiered cake? Spirits, he was mad.”
“It’s like, their last words,” I go on. “The things they wanted to say, what life meant for them, what they wanted for their loved ones and friends. Their beliefs. What they hoped to give to the world before they went.”
June, still clasping her weapon, cautiously wanders between the figures. I follow. She stops at a pair of Stelhari, studies them. The emitter projects the sounds of their voices toward us, dimming the conversations of the ones we’ve left behind.
“I’m so scared,” one of them says.
“Just try,” says the other. “Be here. This is all we have. This is what we have left.”
“I can’t. It’s too much.”
“Okay. That’s okay, really. I’m here with you. Is that alright?”
The first figure sobs and nods. The two embrace. June turns away. I follow her to another hologram, passing Kieran. He’s wandering too. Pumpkin paws at the figures, tries to get them to play with him. June studies each face we pass, almost like she’s searching for something.
“—the sea where we met, in every dream I have, waking and otherwise. Down to the very detail, every grain of sand—”
“—can’t wait to see you again—”
“—glad we had the opportunity to meet, to be—”
We stop beside a Stelhari outfitted in stark contrast to most. It’s clear he’s combat-able, strapped with exotic weaponry and belts, armored from head to toe in an exoskeleton that makes his already impressive height astounding. He has a long gun in his grip, a true soldier at attention, but like all the rest, he’s speaking.
“—want you to know that I’m happy to do it,” he says. “That this is the life I wanted, that I would have chosen it even if you didn’t push me into it.”
June goes stock-still.
“It wasn’t always perfect, but...” The Stelhari chuckles, then frowns, slowly. “I hope you survived on Galan. They told me it’s gone now, but you were always tougher than most, right? And now it’s my turn. The Endri is here. I’ll fight it with everything I have, the way I know you did. Maybe we’ll run into each other in the void, huh?”
He raises his gun. He points it to where the floor is sunken now, toward the maintenance shaft my brother and June pulled me out of. All the holograms turn in that direction. Their eyes widen. Their mouths open. The sound cuts before we hear them scream. The emitter flickers, and every one of them vanishes.
We’re left again in the relative dark, just the four of us.
June paces. I watch her. Kieran and Pumpkin walk up beside me.
June finally stops to glare at me. “Why?” She says this like I’ve hurt her.
“The Stelhari I’ve gotten to know through the cache copy we made on Panev believed in every moment,” I say slowly. “And I think these ones did too. Because, June, all those moments are worth fighting for, even if things that are gone won’t come back...even if we all die, in the end.” I take a deep breath. “We can make the best of right now. We can serve these people’s memories—the memories of everyone who has lost their life to the Endri and its Remnants. And they wanted us to carry on. Trust me. Even if they died, they wanted us to live. The Stelhari. Gunner.” I look at Kieran. “Mom. We can carry them with us into a better tomorrow. We can fight for a better tomorrow, even if we don’t believe it will come. That’s all we can do. For ourselves. And for them.”
June shakes her head. Laughs, huffy and despondent. She paces a small, helpless circle. She looks around the room. At the cache. At Kieran. At Pumpkin. At me. At where the armored Stelhari stood.
“Shit,” she says. “Take it.”
“You’re not going to shoot us in the back, right?” Kieran—always on the lookout.
She looks around the room again and puts her pistol to her belt at last. “No,” she says sadly. “You three would just haunt me, I think.”