TEAL STOOD IN THE EAST Observation Deck and watched the crowd. Stationers packed the place from stem to stern, everyone Teal could find and drag along in the short minutes she had after getting off the SlipStream. The last-minute announcement Rowan made, calling people to the observation decks, had brought the rest. Now they milled around as much as the space allowed, muttering to themselves and each other, wondering just what was going on. Teal could have told them. My friend is about to die, that’s what’s going on.
She could’ve, if she’d been able to speak around the huge lump in her throat.
Teal stared out the viewport at the hub, now a hovering shape in the distance. She wished she was anywhere but here. Knowing what was going to happen was bad enough without having to watch it. She had only come because Lia had asked it of her. She thought back to Lia’s hurried explanation, trying to make sense of it once again.
“Jao—this resistance commander I knew—said something to me once. He said, ‘How do you make someone believe in something you can’t see or hear or touch?’ Don’t you understand, Teal? It’s the reason the alliance fell. The Spectres came—invisible, soundless, incorporeal—and the Tellurians never had a chance. Half the alliance was infected before anyone even knew what was happening. Even once TelPsy knew, their resistance efforts were limited, since they could only spread the word by linking with people one by one. They needed hard proof; they needed people to see. And that’s what we’re going to give them.”
Teal pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. She still didn’t really understand. All she knew was that Lia was going to die. She was going to go Nova right in front of Teal’s eyes, and she thought it was going to be glorious, of all things! Even now, Teal couldn’t think of those words without choking up. Glorious? How could Lia say that, as though her death was nothing more than a spectacle to watch? Teal had this horrible feeling inside, like she wanted to burst into tears, only she didn’t cry. Not ever.
Except this once.
Swiping surreptitiously at her eyes, Teal checked her watch. Less than a minute to go. Something squeezed inside her chest. She couldn’t do this, she had to get out. Pushing away from the viewport, she started to head for the exit, and that’s when she saw it.
A light. Shining like a beacon from the very lowest tip of the hub, white and soft and so faint that at first Teal thought she was imagining it. But no, the light was getting brighter.
Teal put her hand on the viewport, drawn against her will to the light growing steadily in the distance. Others had noticed it too, now, and they pressed around her, murmuring as they tried to figure out what it was. Brighter and brighter the light grew, its rays shining out through space like a majestic lighthouse of old, providing safe passage for those adrift at sea. Hope bloomed in Teal’s chest as she watched the light. Maybe this is what Lia had meant. Maybe she wasn’t really a bomb at all, but something—
The light exploded out in every direction with a boom that could shake the stars. It shot upward into the hub, blowing the lowest floor apart in a maelstrom of debris. Like some avenging angel, beautiful and deadly at once, it continued upward, taking out each level in a succession of fireworks—Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!—one after another, until finally the top level burst apart in a shower of sparks.
Teal shielded her eyes against the light, so brilliant it was almost like looking into the sun. All around her, people were screaming, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the light. And then, there, within the shards of the hub, a dark shape appeared, and then another, and another, and then the entire space where the station used to be was filled with black shapes. They roiled and frothed within the light, thousands upon thousands of them, their black bodies shimmering with color like slicks of oil, like black rainbows, exquisite and unnatural.
They were the most terrifyingly beautiful things Teal had ever seen.
A hush fell over the deck as everyone stared at the brilliance before them. Then a quiet voice breathed, “My God! What are they?”
“Spectres,” Teal whispered. “They’re called Spectres.”
Her voice was barely audible, and yet someone heard her. The word spread across the deck, rippled through the air until there wasn’t a single tongue it didn’t sit upon. Then as they all watched, the dark shapes began dissolving, dissipating into the pool of light surrounding them until the last one was gone. As if absorbing their essences into its own, the light intensified, sparkling with the glow of a million diamonds against the void of space. Then it, too, dimmed and fell away into the dark.
Teal didn’t even try to wipe away the tears running freely down her face. She understood now. She understood what Lia had tried to tell her. People needed to see, to know. The Spectres had won by lurking in the shadows for three years, taking planets down one by one because few even knew they were there. Not anymore. The ring’s instruments would have recorded everything, and just like the people on this observation deck, the rest of the expanse would finally see. They would know what was coming for them, and they could finally fight back. The blaze of light that Lia had become signified more than simply her death. It signified hope.
Teal just wished Lia had been here to see it for herself.
Casting her gaze out through the viewport, Teal searched that vast blanket of space as though, in one of those brilliant stars, she might find Lia, smiling back at her. You were right, Lia, she whispered silently to the blackness. It was glorious.
It was more glorious than you could have possibly imagined.