“You certainly have a flair for the dramatic, legionnaire.”
I open my eye. Gray walls around me. Pale light above me. A figure is silhouetted against it, broad-shouldered, thick-necked. The metal on his chest and cybernetic arms gleams dully, and his voice is a low, rumbling growl.
“Admiral Adams … ,” I whisper.
I’m in the academy med station, I realize. The same bay I was in the day I first met Aurora O’Malley. For a moment, I almost want to turn my head to see if she’s on the other side of the wall, just waking up.
Monitors and machines hiss and hum around me, pulsing with a steady, warm glow. I’m mostly numb from the neck down, wondering why the world looks so strange. Bringing my trembling hand up to my face, I feel a thick derm patch across my cheek, over my right brow.
“You lost it,” Adams says. “The eye. Lost your spleen too. The shot missed your spine by about two centimeters. You’re lucky to be breathing.”
“When it keeps happening over and over,” I whisper, “it’s not luck.”
The admiral scoffs. “Never could quite cure you of that ego, Jones. Just like your old man.” He reaches down, presses one heavy metal hand on my shoulder. “He’d be proud of you, son. Just like I am.”
“Yeah, real proud. Galactic terrorist. Traitor to Aurora Legion. Space pirate.” My fingers run over the place my eye used to be, the ache in my hollow socket. “At least I’ll look the part for my firing squad, I guess.”
“Won’t be a firing squad. What you did is all over the feeds. Your friend Lyrann Balkarri has been crowing about you saving the summit single-handed on GNN-7 for three days now. Promising an exclusive interview.” He grunts appreciatively. “Hidden camera on the jacket lapel. Smart.”
“I just w-wanted a record.” I wince, a sliver of pain breaking through the haze of meds. “Something to speak f-for me if things went b-bad. Clear my name.” I look up at Adams and shrug. “Dad’s name. You know.”
“I know,” he says. “I know, Tyler.”
He straightens up, nods to the bank of monitors arrayed on the wall.
“The footage makes for some dramatic viewing, I’ll give you that. Good headline, too. Terror Plot to Destroy Aurora Station Foiled by Rogue Legionnaire. Your story almost upstaged ours. But not quite.”
I focus on the screens, the butterflies in my stomach fighting to be felt through the pain-blockers they’ve pumped me full of. On the monitors, I can see images of Adams and de Stoy giving their presentation to the Galactic Summit. In the holo behind them, I see the image of Octavia—the colony world engulfed by the Ra’haam, then subsequently locked under Interdiction by order of TerraGov. On other screens, I see different planets, also crawling with the bluegreen corruption of the enemy.
The other nursery worlds, I realize.
Adams and de Stoy told the summit about the Ra’haam.
Another screen shows footage of legionnaires subduing and arresting the GIA agents in Prime Minister Ilyasova’s retinue. I see mirrormasks being ripped from faces sheened with blue-gray moss, eyes like flowers, outrage and fear and shock. Headlines like GIA Infiltrated, TerraGov Suspect, Senatorial Commission.
“You knew,” I whisper.
I meet his eyes, anger boiling in my belly, voice shaking.
“This whole time. You knew.”
“Some of it,” he replies, sighing. “Not enough.”
“You knew enough to put Auri on my Longbow. To plant those packages for us on Emerald City. To leave us the Zero. Which means you knew what was going to happen to Cat when we went to Octavia.” Tears are burning in my eye now, the heart monitor rising in pitch as I try to claw my way upright. “You knew what would happen to her. You knew it’d take her.”
He holds my stare, his jaw clenched. “We did.”
“You sonofabitch,” I hiss.
“You’re owed an apology, Tyler,” he sighs. “And an explanation. But I can only offer the first. The second falls to someone else.”
He reaches into the jacket of his dress uniform, and all those accolades and commendations on his chest that I once coveted just look bought with blood now. I try to imagine if there’s anything he can say, any explanation he can possibly give to make me forget the hurt in Cat’s eyes as that knife sank home, the warmth of her blood on my hands, the horror and sorrow… .
Adams places a small, round holoplayer on the sheet covering my lap, presses a button. The image flickers to life, projected above the player’s lens in glowing light. It’s odd, rendered in lines of duochrome blue and white.
Old tech, I realize. Really old.
It takes me a while to recognize the figure coalescing in the air before me. She’s wearing an archaic Legion uniform, chest decorated with commendations. She’s older, maybe in her mid-seventies. Kindly eyes and short gray hair. But I still recognize her from the academy promenade.
“She’s one of the Founders,” I whisper.
“Hello, Legionnaire Jones,” she says, her voice faintly distorted. “My name is Nari Kim. If you’re watching this, Legion Command has deemed it within operational parameters to provide you with an explanation of the events with which you’ve been recently involved.
“The variables in this equation do not allow for specificity, but with luck, Aurora Legion is now in a position to strike the final blow against the Ra’haam, and complete a mission over two hundred years in the making.”
She smiles at me, like a mother might. “We owe a great deal to you, legionnaire. I have been told you are a brilliant leader. A brave and noble soul. But more, a good and dear friend. I wish I could have met you, Tyler. I almost feel like I have. But please know, we are so proud of you, to have come this far. We know what you’ve given. What you’ve lost. I only pray in the end it will be worth it.”
Her smile widens, and she kisses her fingers, and I watch with wondering eyes as she presses them against the lens. This woman is a hero. One of the Legion Founders. To hear her speaking like this … to me …
“There’s someone who wants to speak to you,” she continues. “So I will wish you farewell, Tyler Jones, and good fortune, and bid you remember the hopes and lives of the entire galaxy are owed to you and your friends.”
She holds out her hand, off camera, beckoning.
“Come here, love.”
There’s a long pause. Nari Kim beckons again, smiling. “It’s all right.”
A figure moves into frame, rendered in the same duotone lines of holographic light. Her hair is long and curling, mostly silver or white, her skin wrinkled with age.
I don’t recognize her at first. Then Nari murmurs encouragement, and the newcomer turns her head toward her, and I catch a glimpse of …
… It can’t be.
Earrings with hawk charms dangling from them.
And as she takes her seat in front of the recorder, I begin to realize …
The woman looks up at the lens, and I see her lashes are shining with tears. And I recognize her then, despite the impossibility of it all, despite the gulf of time and tracks of sorrow etched at the edges of her eyes.
“Zila … ,” I whisper.
“Hello, Tyler.”
She pauses, as if gathering herself. She seems so small. Tinier even than I remember. Beside her, Nari squeezes her hand. And buoyed by that touch, Zila finds some well of strength, breathes deep, and begins to speak.
“If you are watching this, you have survived past the point of my departure, and have entered the realm of absolute uncertainty. I am very happy you survived your captivity among the GIA. Hopefully this means my gift to you was of some use. Forgive me if it was not one hundred percent adequate. I was working with a near-infinite number of variables.”
She frowns, rubbing her brow as if pained.
“During the Battle of Terra, when the Eshvaren Weapon was fired, a collision of psychic energies and temporal distortion hurled me, Finian, and your sister, Scarlett, back in time, to the year 2177.”
My eyes go wide and I look at Adams, but he’s only watching the holo. From his look of intense interest, I’d guess he’s never seen this before.
“Due to events too complex to bore you with,” Zila continues, “I was forced to remain behind in this era. It has fallen to me, along with Battle Leader de Karran and Nari, to pave the way for future events, and for the eventual struggle with the Ra’haam. We have done our very best to ensure that all happens exactly as it did. As it should. As it must, for Aurora to recover the Eshvaren Weapon and use it against the enemy. But …”
Zila’s voice falters. She looks down at her hands, swallowing hard. The Zila Madran I knew was a girl who lived behind walls. Who kept herself shielded from the world by logic, cut off from her emotions, cold and clinical.
But she’s crying now, tears spilling down her cheeks.
I see Nari Kim’s hand reach out again, her arm slip around Zila’s shoulders, pulling her in tight, and she kisses her cheek, her knuckles, her lips. Even through this ancient tech, these thin glowing lines, I can see the love in her eyes, feel tears stinging in mine as I realize what they must have meant to each other. That my friend found someone who mattered so much.
“Just speak from your heart, love,” Nari says.
Zila looks to the camera again, her voice shaking.
“I am so s-sorry, Tyler,” she whispers. “About Cat. I tried for years to think of an alternative. Some way to spare her that fate. I have dreaded the day when I would have to speak these words to you. But the potential for calamity, a paradoxical butterfly effect that would irrevocably alter the timeline …” She sniffs thickly, swallows hard. “We could n-not risk it. Without me here, there would be no one to help Nari to form the Legion, to ensure you met Aurora, to protect you on Emerald City. Nobody to safeguard the future. For us to ensure the Ra’haam’s defeat, everything needed to happen exactly as it did, up to the moment I left your timeline.” She shakes her head, her eyes imploring. “Everything.”
Zila lowers her chin, hair tumbling over her face.
“I have lived my life as best I could.” She squeezes Nari’s hand. “I have found happiness. I have worked hard, seen places and met people who bring me joy. My squad was my second family, after I lost my first, and I have devoted my life to preparing what you will need—but there have been adventures as well. Laughter. I have found a third family here, beyond all expectation. I think you will worry, now you know where I am. I want you to know that I have been happy. But please know as well that there is not a day that passes I do not think of Cat, and what I helped bring about.”
She lifts her head again. Looking at me across the centuries.
“I ask for your forgiveness. I hope you understand I did it all for the best, and know that through this sacrifice, we have safeguarded a future for the galaxy. The path ahead of you is uncertain. I do not know what is to come. But I know I am grateful to have known you, Tyler. Honored to have served under you. And I feel blessed beyond measure to have called you my friend.”
I reach out to the image, tears spilling down my face as my fingers pass through it. I think about what it must have been, to live with that weight. The burden of the galaxy’s future on your shoulders.
“Zee,” I whisper. “Of course I forgive you.”
“Commander,” Nari says, addressing the air. “I trust you are listening. You may now access Omega Protocol, Nodes 6 through 15. Ensure Node 10 is delivered to Aurora O’Malley personally. You may also access the facilities on Epsilon Deck, Section Zero. Passcodes to follow. Please follow all instructions exactly. The lives of two very brave soldiers are at stake.”
“I believe our calculations are correct,” Zila says. “And enough time has now elapsed from our disappearance to ensure no paradox events.” She nods, almost to herself, chewing a lock of her hair just like she used to when lost in thought. “Yes. Yes, it will work. It must work.”
Nari Kim looks back to me, a smile crinkling her eyes.
“Punch that bleach-head in the arm for me, Jones. And tell your sister thanks. Good hunting, legionnaire. Burn bright against the night.”
Zila looks into the projection, reaching out toward me.
My fingers touch hers, back across an ocean of time and tears.
“Farewell, my friend,” she smiles.
And the recording ends.
“Dammit … ,” Adams growls.
I look up at him, my eye blurred with tears, my mind reeling with everything I’ve learned. The impossibility, the enormity—it’s almost too much to wrap my head around. But the look in Adams’s eyes is enough to drag me back to reality, away from conspiracies centuries in the making, suffered heartache and hard-won joy. I sniff hard, wipe my sodden cheeks.
“What is it?”
Adams is staring at the holoplayer, his face a grim mask. The images of Zila and Nari Kim have disappeared, replaced by a scrolling stream of passcodes. “I’ll have to review the new data we’ve just unlocked. But from the way they were talking … I think it’s just as we’ve feared.”
“Look, I don’t know what the hells is happening here, but—”
“It’s like Founder Madran said, Tyler.” Adams speaks Zila’s name with something close to reverence. The way a minister speaks about the Maker.
They think of her as the Third Founder, I realize.
“She only knew for certain what happened up to the Battle of Terra,” Adams continues. “The point where she was stripped from this timeline. For all her genius, Zila Madran couldn’t actually see the future. She only remembered what she’d already seen. So she couldn’t have known.”
“About the plot on Aurora Station?”
He nods. “But not just that. All our contingencies, all the planning we have in place from this point forward to ensure the defeat of the Ra’haam, revolved around the Trigger and the Weapon.”
He drags one metal hand across his stubbled scalp.
“And they’re gone,” I breathe. “Vanished at the Battle of Terra.”
“The Weapon, the Trigger, Aurora O’Malley.” Adams turns to the viewport on the wall, stars splayed across the dark beyond. “Everything we’ve done was to ensure their presence here and now to strike the killing blow against the enemy before it blooms. And after all of that, after hundreds of years, messages and protocols passed down in secret from Founder to Commander to Successor across the centuries …” He looks down at his empty hands. “We have nothing.”
I look at the projector on my lap, my mind racing. “Founder Kim mentioned secure facilities on Epsilon Deck, Section Zero.” I swallow hard, not daring to hope. “She talked about my sister. Maybe …”
Adams slaps his Legion comm badge, speaking quick.
“Adams to de Stoy.”
“I read you, Seph,” comes the reply.
“I have more intel. Meet me in Epsilon. I’m bringing Jones.”
There’s a small pause, a tiny intake of breath. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Battle Leader de Stoy lose her chill once in the six years I’ve known her, but when she answers, she sounds positively jubilant.
“Understood,” she says. “I’ll meet you there.”
Adams nods, drops connection.
“Do you still pray, Tyler?” he asks softly. “I know when it gets dark, it can be hard to keep the f—”
“Every day, sir,” I reply. “Every day.”
“Good,” he nods. “Do it now.”
• • • • •
I’d wondered why the name Epsilon Deck sounded strange. As Adams pushes me on a grav-chair through the halls of the med facilities and into an officers’ elevator, I realize why. Looking at the hundreds of levels, subfloors, and sections of the station outlined in glowing light on the elevator controls, I understand there is no Epsilon Deck on Aurora Station.
At least, not one that exists on the schematics.
Adams reaches inside his tunic for a passkey of bio-coded platinum. He presses his thumb to the sensor, slips the key into a slot in the elevator control. A panel slides aside, a sensor sweeps his face, his irises, his handprint. When the controls buzz green, he leans back and speaks.
“Adams. One-one-seven-four-alpha-kilo-two-one-sevenbeta-indigo.”
Another beep. I feel us pivot, as if the elevator were shifting on its axis.
“Epsilon, Section Zero,” Adams commands. “Passcode: Vigilance.”
My stomach feels full of broken glass, and the right side of my face is aching—maybe I should’ve asked for another pain-blocker before we left. But though I can barely feel it, I know my heart is hammering at the thought I might see my sister again. I had no idea what happened to her after Saedii and I were captured by the GIA. The fear she might be dead was a constant weight, one I couldn’t bring myself to look at for long. The knowledge she was thrown back in time with Zila and Fin is almost incomprehensible.
But she could be alive.
Oh Maker, please let her be alive.
The elevator doors hiss apart, and I see a long, brightly lit corridor leading to a heavy door that looks strong enough to withstand atmospheric bombardment. Battle Leader de Stoy is down here in full Legion kit, ash-pale skin and snow-white hair bleached even whiter by the harsh light. She watches as Adams pushes me forward in my grav-chair, nods once as we approach, big black eyes regarding me somberly.
“Seems like you’ve been in the wars, Legionnaire Jones.”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle, ma’am.”
She smiles, thin and bloodless. Battle Leader de Stoy never smiles.
“A fine job, soldier. A fine job indeed.”
Adams has swiped his bio-key into a pad on the left of the door and nods now to de Stoy. “Ready?”
The battle leader swipes her own key and leans forward, hands splayed on the sensor glass. Scanners again roam Adams’s and de Stoy’s faces, retinas, and palms, a needle takes tissue and blood samples, and, finally, they speak a series of passkeys from Zila and Nari’s recording. The tech is old, but it’s as heavy as it could be, given that this station was built two centuries ago.
Whatever’s behind here, Zila wanted it well protected.
The door clunks, an alarm briefly flares, the lighting turns a cold deep blue. The hatchway lumbers aside, the gloom in the room beyond flickers dark to light as the overheads hum to life. And as Adams pushes me inside, I catch my breath, staring in awe at the structure before me.
Heavy conduits snake outward from banks of ancient computers, connected to a cylindrical tank of transparent plasteel in the room’s heart. And inside it, pulsing with light like a heartbeat, is …
“A probe,” I breathe. “An Eshvaren probe.”
Light begins to pulse through the chamber, coalescing within the teardrop crystal. I see it’s cracked, the point of the tear shattered and sheared away, the glow refracting from a million spiderweb scrawls in the stone.
“Maker’s breath,” Adams whispers.
An image flickers to life above the computer terminals, and my heart soars to see Zila again. She’s younger than she was a moment ago, maybe mid-forties, her back straight, her eyes keen.
“Welcome, Commanders. If you are hearing this message, the Battle of Terra has concluded, I have departed your timeline for the year 2177, and Whiplash Protocol has been enacted. Please engage all short-range scanners on Aurora Station, screen for fighter gradients, maximum intensity. Tell your scanner crews they are looking for a shuttle, Terran in origin, Osprey series, Model 7I-C. Scramble medical crews to assist the occupants, have facilities online to deal with one Betraskan male, nineteen years of age, suffering anaphylaxis, and possible pharyngeal, laryngeal, and tracheal trauma.”
My stomach twists at that, breath coming quicker.
“I have spent the last thirty years of my life perfecting these algorithms,” Zila continues. “I dreamed as a cadet of resources on this scale. I regret that I am not there to see the final result.” For just a moment, I see a glimpse of the girl who liked her Stun setting way, way too much.
“I am as certain of success as I can possibly be,” she continues. “But I am not perfect. And I am not the religious sort.” Her eyes sweep the room. “I hope you are there, Tyler. And if you are, perhaps a prayer would not be out of order. You always were the believer among us.”
Adams repeats the commands into his comm badge, engaging the scanner teams, scrambling the med crews. Zila’s image just hovers there, silent. As I watch, she begins to chew a lock of hair.
After a minute or two, the lights around us start to pulse harder. The overheads in the corridor outside grow dim and then flicker out entirely.
With no more warning, the station net drops entirely, the artificial grav cuts off, and Adams curses beneath his breath as the Eshvaren probe burns with an intensity that’s almost blinding. The hair all over my body is standing tall. A subsonic hum is building in the back of my head.
“She’s sucking power out of the entire station grid,” de Stoy hisses.
Zila’s holographic lips curl into a mischievous smile, and I reach out toward her, terrified, crying, but somehow smiling with her.
And then I do as she asks, closing my eye, picturing Finian and Scar, my friend and my twin, praying to the Maker with everything I have.
Bring them back.
Bring them back to me, please.
The hum rises to a slow scream. The Eshvaren probe burns so bright I can see it through the closed lid of my eye, turning my head as the sound rises in pitch. The station shudders, the power builds, every drop of juice from the core ripped from the grid and projected into the probe’s blazing heart.
The screaming begins to hurt, I hear Adams roaring, but through it all, I keep praying. Holding on as tight as I can to the thought Adams instilled in me when we first left for Sagan Station, before we ever discovered Aurora, got dragged into this puzzle, this war, this family hundreds of … no, a million years in the making.
You must believe, Tyler.
You must believe.
The scream goes past the edge of hearing.
The light goes through the other side of blinding.
And with one final discordant shriek, it’s over.
The glow in the Eshvaren probe fades, then dies entirely. The overheads outside flicker back to life, and I wince as gravity returns, pain shooting through my mangled body as I thump back down into my grav-chair.
Comms are coming through to Adams and de Stoy, warnings and alerts and alarms, silenced by de Stoy’s terse command, Adams’s rumbling bellow.
“All nonessentials, cut the chaff! Scan crew, report!”
I look him in the eyes, heart galloping, not daring to hope.
“… Negative, sir,” comes the reply. “No contact.”
“Narrow the field, Lieutenant,” de Stoy orders. “The vessel may be without power. Search on thermals, kinetics, full-spectrum radiation.”
“Yes, ma’am, we’re on it,” comes the reply.
The minutes tick by like eons. I stare at the place Zila’s hologram had been, but it’s gone, just the afterimage of the probe burned into my eye.
“Anything?” Adams asks.
“Negative, sir,” comes the reply. “Clean scope.”
“This is Raptor external. Confirm, Aurora; zero contact.”
I sit there, staring at the place the hologram of my friend stood, knowing I’ll never see her again.
And that might not be so bad—she said she was happy—if not for the thought of the rest of them. Auri and Kal disappeared who knows where. Zila dead for over a hundred years. Cat gone. And now Fin and Scarlett …
I listen to the reports coming in, the scanner crews and pilots confirming what they’ve already said. What I already know.
“Clean scope.”
“Zero contact.”
They’re gone. All my friends. All my family.
After all we suffered and all we lost …
“I’m the only one left,” I whisper.
Squad 312 forever.