Ten days later, and the entire galaxy is drenched in panic.
I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like an infection, traveling ahead of the Ra’haam: that wave of glittering blue spores spilling out into the Fold, the corrupted coalition armada moving along with it.
We’ve had only snatches of vision as the enemy advances, but there’s enough footage to know the fleet and everyone in it is gone. All those warstars and reapers and carriers now encrusted with spores and mold and leaves of blue green, trailing long, twisting tendrils behind them through the Fold. They look like shipwrecks on the bottom of Terran oceans, overrun with barnacles and weeds, and I shudder to think about what became of all those brave soldiers inside.
Admiral Adams. His fellow commanders.
The Aurora Legion and every military in the galaxy have been virtually decapitated.
Where a few weeks ago it slumbered hidden and silent, now the whole galaxy knows its name, whispered in the dark and spoken fearfully behind closed doors and shouted across the feeds.
Ra’haam.
An enemy set to swallow the races of the galaxy one by one.
Until there’s nothing left but it.
As far as we can tell, only the Octavia nursery has hatched so far. Maybe it has something to do with the assault, or the Terran colony that settled there, some other variable. All we know for certain is that as bad as things are now, they’re gonna get twenty-one times worse once those other nursery worlds hatch.
This war is over almost before it’s begun.
The fear of it is like a wildfire, sweeping the Milky Way just as the enemy sweeps out into the Fold. The other races begin panicking, some going so far as to destroy the FoldGates into their systems—cutting themselves off into a new, pre-Fold Dark Age rather than allow the Ra’haam to colonize their worlds. And all the while, those spores billow outward, glowing ghostly blue even in the muted colorscape of the Fold.
Endless.
Relentless.
The corrupted fleet rides the spore wave, cruising like dark shadows among a glowing, glittering storm billions of kilometers across. And as I watch the snatches of footage on the feeds, awash in the terror of it all, I can’t help but sink into hopelessness.
I did just what my vision told me. I stopped the destruction of Aurora Academy, averted whatever calamity might have followed the destruction of the Galactic Caucus. I did as I was asked.
And in doing so, I’ve helped hand the Ra’haam a massive battle fleet it might otherwise never have had.
Scar and Fin carved a pathway across time, Zila gave her life to form the Aurora Legion in the past to fight against this thing, Auri and Kal gave up their lives to try to secure the Weapon, and yet, here the Ra’haam is, spewing out into the Fold just like it always wanted, just like it always planned.
Maybe after all we’ve done, Squad 312 only made things worse.
And even after all I did to save Aurora Station, it will count for nothing. Because Aurora Station is where that Ra’haam fleet is headed next.
Our logistics teams have confirmed it. Course plotted. Data correlated.
The Ra’haam is coming here.
And it’ll arrive in less than twenty hours.
No help is coming. No miracle on its way. We’re outnumbered and outgunned—though we still have reserve ships and a defense grid, the simple fact is, a fleet that size will make short work of any resistance we can muster.
“Scar, you’ve gotta get out of here.”
We’re standing on the promenade, the chaos of the crowd milling around us. What’s left of station command has confirmed the Ra’haam is inbound to Aurora Station, and all nonessential personnel have been ordered to evacuate. Vendors and their families are hastily packing up their stores and possessions, the dark outside lit up by the flare of hundreds of engines—shuttles and carriers and freighters streaming through the FoldGate, headed toward whatever safety they can find.
“Brother mine,” Scarlett says, “you’re out of your mind.”
“I mean it,” I say, waving to the station around us. “The time for diplomacy is long gone, Scar. There’s no sense you staying here.”
“There’s no sense in anyone staying here, far as I can tell,” Fin says.
“Thank you!” Scar cries, giving Fin a dramatic bow. “At last, someone here is talking sense!”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be talking at all,” I mutter.
My Gearhead flashes me a grin, his new exosuit hissing softly as he shrugs. “We all knew it was too good to last.”
“Seriously, Tyler, we should evac with th—”
“I can’t do that, Scar. I swore an oath to the Legion when I joined it.”
“The Legion?” she scoffs. “Tyler, we lost most of our commanders and nearly all our ships when Octavia bloomed! The Legion is absolutely fuc—”
“I know!” I say, my temper flaring. “I know better than anyone! Trust me, I’ve run this math with de Stoy a thousand times! But if I’m gonna die, then I’m gonna die fighting! And the best place to fight from is here!”
She meets my stare and simply shrugs. “Then I’m staying with you.”
“Scar, no, there’s no—”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Scar shouts. “I didn’t join the Legion because I wanted to make the galaxy a better place! I didn’t join it to be a hero! I joined it because you’re my baby brother and I look after you! And I didn’t drag my fabulous ass across time and space and collapsing paradox loops just to turn and run at the first sign of a little galaxy-shattering cataclysm, you hear me?”
I look my sister in the eye.
I’ve known Scarlett Isobel Jones my entire life. I know her better than anyone in the ’Way. I know she coasted her way through the academy, that she never really took this as seriously as she could, that maybe she was never the best recruit in the Legion.
But I can see now how the trials she’s faced and the battles she’s fought have changed my sister. She’s harder than she used to be. Braver. I can see that over the past few months she’s found a well of strength inside herself even she never knew existed. But there’s one thing about Scarlett Isobel Jones that’s remained the same. One thing all this loss and struggle haven’t managed to change.
She still loves more fiercely than anyone I’ve ever met.
“Scarlett,” I say. “If you stay here, you’re going to die.”
“I lost you once, Ty,” she replies, chin raised. “I’m not doing it again.”
Fin steps up beside her, taking her hand. “Looks like you’re stuck with both of us, boss.”
I sigh, looking out the massive viewport to the stars outside. The fleeing ships. The fall of a galaxy.
I know there’s no way out of this. I know we’re looking down the barrel of our own execution. And I remember what it felt like fighting Cat in the reactor. Looking into those glowing eyes. Bleeding out on the floor. That awful moment when I wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just lose myself in the Ra’haam rather than die alone.
I know how stupid that fear was now. Because even in my darkest hours, I’ve never been alone. And so I put my arms around Scar, hold her tight, grabbing Fin and pulling him in, too.
This is what family is, I realize.
To never be alone.
The lighting around us shifts to red. An alarm pitches across the PA, a metallic voice echoing across the promenade.
“Aurora Station, this is Battle Leader de Stoy. Red alert: Unauthorized vessels inbound. All stations Ready one.”
“Oh shit … ,” Scarlett whispers.
“Repeat, this is Battle Leader de Stoy. Multiple unauthorized vessels breaching Aurora FoldGate. All stations Ready one status.”
“It’s here,” Fin breathes.
“No,” I frown, easing them both out of my arms and looking through the viewport at the gate beyond. “The Ra’haam is still nineteen hours fr—”
“Legionnaire Jones, this is de Stoy, do you copy?”
I tap the comm badge at my chest.
“I read you, Commander.”
“You’d best get your tail up to C&C on the double, soldier.”
I look to the FoldGate again, my belly twisting as dark shapes begin pouring through the rift.
I put my hand to the plasteel viewport, heart breaking loose in my chest, not quite believing what I’m seeing.
“I know those ships … ,” I whisper.
“Ty?” Scar asks. “What are—”
But I’m already running, barreling down the promenade through the milling crowd, roaring at the top of my lungs. “Scar, Fin, come on!”
“Where the hells are you g—”
“JUST COME ON!”
Scar and Finian follow me through the fleeing crowd and into the turbolift. We ride up to the bridge of the C&C tower in silence, Fin and Scar looking at me like I’m half-crazy, me wondering if I’m all the way gone.
I didn’t dare hope, didn’t dare even let myself think about it, but as the three of us pile out into the crowded decks of Aurora Command and Control, my suspicion is confirmed, a storm of butterflies breaking loose in my stomach just as a goofy-as-hells smile breaks out all over my face.
“What is that?” Fin asks, looking at the monitor screens.
“She did it,” I grin. “She made it.”
The shapes are clearer now, spilling through the blinding flare of the FoldGate and into the Aurora system. A fleet of battleships, sleek and sharp, black hulls daubed with beautiful glyfs of gleaming white. A people born with the taste of blood in their mouths.
A people born for war.
Battle Leader de Stoy stands among her staff, looking about as certain as a commander running on zero sleep in the middle of a galactic cataclysm can. Her thin, pale face is set in a scowl, black eyes fixed on me.
“They’ve been hailing us for the past five minutes,” she informs us. “They want to speak to you, Jones.”
I nod, standing a little taller. “Roger that, ma’am.”
The image of the incoming fleet on the holoscreen in front of us dissolves, that massive armada replaced by a single face. Her hair is dark as the empty spaces between the stars, her eyes shining like dark jewels, black lips curled into a tiny smile as she lays eyes on me.
She’s beautiful. Fierce. Brilliant. Ruthless.
Like no one I’ve ever known.
“Saedii … ,” Fin whispers.
“Tyler Jones,” Saedii says.
“About time,” I smile, scarred eyebrow rising slightly. “I wondered if you planned to sleep through the entire war.”
Scar and Fin both look at me, gobsmacked. Saedii only scoffs. “Time enough to sleep in the grave, Terran.”
“Did you do what you needed?” I ask. “Get what you wanted?”
Saedii spreads her arms, as if to encompass the Unbroken armada at her command. Her smile is triumphant, and I notice there’s a new chain hanging around her neck, silver, strung with half a dozen severed Syldrathi ears. “I am a Templar of the Unbroken, Tyler Jones. I do what I wish, I go where I please, and I take what I want.”
“You know what’s coming for us.”
She nods, fierce and grim. “We have seen.”
“Then you know there’s no way out of this,” I warn. “Our only real plan here is to take out as much of it as we can before the big goodbye.”
“We will dance the dance of blood with you. We will paint the sun red this day.” She shakes her head. “And Unbroken do not say goodbye.”
My heart is burning in my chest at the sight of her. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed her until this moment. I hold out my hand toward her, and she raises her own, as if to press her palm against mine.
I wish we had more time, I wish I’d gotten to know her better, I wish …
“I’m glad you’re here, Saedii Gilwraeth.”
Black lips curl in the smallest of smiles. “I am also pleased to fight once more at your side, Tyler Jones. And …”
“And?”
“… And to see you again.”
Saedii stares for an endless heartbeat longer, and then her transmission drops away. Lowering my hand, I realize the entire bridge crew is looking at me incredulously.
“Not that I’m ungrateful for the assist,” de Stoy says. “But I almost wish I had time to read your report on that one, Legionnaire Jones.”
My Gearhead is wearing an expression somewhere between admiration and shock, but my sister is going straight for utter disbelief, looking between me and the screen.
“You … and her?”
I shrug. “It’s the dimples.”
“How are you still walking?” Fin whispers.
I grin. “Yeah, I was limping for a while there.”
Fin covers his open mouth with one hand, offers me a cheeky fist bump behind Scar’s back with the other. Scar catches him, looks back and forth between us. “What are you, twelve?”
“Out of ten?” I shrug. “Yeah, sounds about right.”
“Oh Maker … ,” she groans.
The smiles are short-lived, the warmth in my chest quickly fading, until the thought of the thing coming for us is all that remains.
Glad as I am for Saedii and her armada to be here, I know they’re not going to make the difference between victory and defeat. The corrupted coalition fleet is too big, the Ra’haam is too much—like I said, our only move here is to do as much damage to it as possible before we go down.
But if that’s the play, then we’re going to make it as best we can.
And if this really is the end, at least I’m not alone.
• • • • •
Seventeen hours later, I’m standing on the bridge of a familiar Longbow, staring out at our lines of defense. Behind us, Aurora Station glitters like the sun at dawning, bristling with pulse cannons and missile arrays. Around us, the Legion fleet is forming up into our lines.
Adams and de Stoy threw almost every ship they had at the Octavia assault, and there’s only forty or so Legion Longbows left, flanking one heavy cruiser, the Invincible, commanded by Battle Leader de Stoy herself.
But supporting us is Saedii’s Unbroken armada: the dark silhouettes of Wraiths and Specters, the sleek bulk of Banshee carriers and Shadows, hundreds upon hundreds of them. We’re arrayed in a phalanx, aimed toward the FoldGate, ready to unleash hell on the first vessel that blows through.
“Hostiles still inbound,” comes the warning over comms. “Enemy fleet will breach Aurora system in T minus six minutes.” “Thanks for the ride,” I murmur, eyes on the gate. “I’d have hated to sit this one out on the sidelines, Em.”
Beside me, Emma Cohen shrugs, eyes roaming the fleet. “Figured I owed you one after you stopped the station from getting blown to pieces and all.”
“No hard feelings about me locking you in your own brig?”
“That depends,” she says, looking at me sidelong. “Any hard feelings about me shooting you in the face?”
“We both did what we had to do,” I smile. “We the Legion.”
She nods, smiling back. “We the Light.”
“And I really am sorry about Damon,” Scar pipes up beside me. “I mean, I didn’t even know you two were dating at the time.”
Emma shrugs, eyes back on the gate. “He was an asshole.”
“Right?”
“Enemy fleet will breach Aurora system in T minus four minutes.”
“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.
A shape smashes its way through the walls of time and space. Torn across the breadth of eternity, dragging itself through past and future and infinite possibility, screaming as it comes. The light burns so bright it’s blinding, splintering and fracturing now into all the colors of the spectrum, red to yellow to blue to indigo, no, not a spectrum but a rainbow
A RAINBOW
etched in the spear of broken crystal as big as a city, now floating there in the dark before my wondering eyes.
Unbelievable.
Impossible.
“Maker’s breath,” Finian gasps.
“The Weapon!” Scarlett cries.
It’s not too late, I realize.
She’s here.
“Aurora,” I whisper.