“Nova, you’ve got to stop it. Do whatever you can. Find a way.” Crophaven’s voice came from nowhere, and I searched the red, glowing orbs for his face.
This wasn’t the New Dawn. I couldn’t work these controls worth chicken shit.
“What are you talking about? Stop what?” I tore my hair out of my ponytail with both hands. One of the glow orbs flickered, and I ran over, pressing my face against the glass.
Solar sat at the kitchen table doing her homework, completely oblivious to the impending threat, whatever it was. All of her geometry proofs were wrong.
Damn the stars! I leave for two days and she turns into a delinquent. I wanted to reach into the glass and correct the errors before she turned her assignment in.
The vision changed to my parents’ room down the hall. Mom sat on the edge of their sleep pod holding her face with knobby hands. Tears trickled through her fingers. Dad sat on the floor in front of the screen. He wasn’t playing Galaxy Battlefield. He stared at a picture of the alien craft racing toward the New Dawn.
I jerked away from the orb. What was going on? How could I stop it?
A massive blur of white squiggles flashed in the other orb. Tendrils tugged at my thoughts, prying them open. The mother brain. She wanted me. All I had to do was give myself up, and everyone on the New Dawn would be safe.
Such an easy decision.
I crossed the room to the orb reflecting the giant red eye of the mother brain.
Maybe I could trick her into thinking she had me, then escape.
The orb in the center, between the orb with my family and the orb with the brain, caught my attention, and I turned before I reached the red eye.
Sirius. He stood by his corsair with Andromeda. Behind him were the numbers on the hull: 747. Our doomed corsair that had crashed into the field.
I knew this day. I’d relived it over and over in the dark recesses of my mind. I’d reported to the mission early, expecting to have time to talk with Sirius before we took off. I’d planned to use the mission as a way to get to know him, but all it did was tear us further apart.
Just like on that day, Sirius leaned down and kissed Andromeda in a passionate, uncontrolled outburst. My logical mind told me to look away, but my gaze remained glued in grotesque fascination. If I’d stayed in my family cell five minutes longer, I wouldn’t have seen it. Before that day I’d only suspected Sirius’ feelings for Andromeda. I knew they were friends, but this sent every red flag in my head flying high. I didn’t know what was worse: knowing the truth or living a lie.
How did the brain know? Why was she showing me? To wear me down? To break my composure?
How utterly diabolical.
I reminded myself this was the past. We were over that now. Sirius had feelings for me. I had to believe what he’d told me on the ship. Steeling my nerves, I confronted the brain head on.
“If you don’t get your ship off our planet, I’ll exterminate every single one of you.” I focused, sending the message as clearly as I could so there could be no misunderstanding between us.
I didn’t think a brain could laugh, but that’s what I heard in my head. Mocking clicking sounds followed by a hard silence that bored into my mind. A dawn with a radiant sun, a hatchling egg, cracked open, a human baby being born.
Words formed, tickling my thoughts. “This is only the beginning.”
The brain threatened the entire colony. Somehow, while trying to protect them, I’d managed to start an interstellar war.
Dad played Galaxy Battlefield on a harmless screen. I played it for real.
The world hummed around me. I pictured a row of men in the congregation, humming a long, low note as they waited for the commander to take his place and tell everyone the news. “Nova has caused an interstellar war. Now, we all must fight.” Then I pictured monks with shaved heads from Old Earth wearing long, brown robes. They surrounded a pedestal where I laid like Sleeping Venus and the Seven Planets.
My eyes flickered open to bright lights. The humming increased until I vibrated with it, my teeth rattling.
Not men humming. Not monks. Engines.
I was on a corsair lying on a stretcher. Medics rushed around me, tending to other patients. Snippets of their conversations drifted to me.
“Two hearts. I can’t believe it.”
“This one’s body temperature just dropped twenty degrees.”
“I can’t find a vein.”
The golden man from the cocoon lay beside me on an identical stretcher, a thin white sheet covering his torso. His face was relaxed, almost angelic, as if saving him had brought him peace. Lyra sat beside him, her hand stretching across the floor holding his. I wanted to warn her not to touch him, then remembered this wasn’t my mission any longer. I was no longer in charge.
Those buggers had hit me.
My hands traveled to my stomach where a regenerator patch was stuck to my skin beneath my uniform. Wincing, I started to pry the edge off to see how bad the wound was.
Large hands closed on mine. “Hold on. Wait for the patch to heal.”
I glanced in the direction of the voice and was instantly disappointed. Corvus stood over me, his uniform ripped at the shoulder and darkened with sweat. A bandage was wrapped around his neck. What had happened to his team?
“Where’s Sirius?”
Corvus took a seat beside me and patted the back of my hand. “He’s fine. He’s working on the corsair, trying to get it to fly.”
First came relief; Sirius was safe. We’d both made it out of that dark vessel alive. Again. Then betrayal sliced my heart. Working on his corsair while Corvus sat beside me? You’d think if your lifemate was wounded you’d want to be by her side.
Corvus must have seen anger in my face. “I know what you’re thinking. Crophaven gave him orders. He had no choice but to stay. We need all the corsairs working to transport the survivors.”
“What about the rest of the team?”
“We emptied the cavern and completed the mission. The alien craft is clear.” He smiled fondly. “We’re on our way back to the New Dawn.”
I shook my head, feeling like such a loser. Here I was, in one of the most important moments of this colony’s history, asleep on the job. How could I have let the arachnids sneak up on me after staying alive all those hours on that awful ship? “I can’t believe I missed it all.”
Corvus squeezed my hand. “You’re a hero, Nova. The medics told me you saved Lyra’s life. She still had traces of the toxin running through her, and an extra dose would have knocked her dead.”
I glanced over at Lyra as she whispered into the indigo man’s ear. She didn’t look overly appreciative, but, then again, that was Lyra. “Really?”
“Really. Crophaven was very pleased with your service.”
I breathed deeply, allowing my head to rest on the stretcher. Crophaven was pleased. I’d accomplished everything I wanted to on the mission and proved my worth to the colony. So, why did disappointment weigh me down?
Sirius isn’t here.
I’d won his affections, too, hadn’t I? So why was he such a big question mark?
Corvus leaned back in his seat. He could have stayed behind along with Sirius, overseeing the last of the refugees, as he called them, but he chose to take this corsair back.
I tugged on the sleeve of his uniform. “Why are you here?”
His face darkened and he shifted uneasily. “This is classified information. Crophaven doesn’t want a panic on his hands. I know I can trust you.” He leaned over so I could hear the bare whisper of his voice. “The commander’s fallen ill. People are saying he’s breathing his last breaths, so I asked Crophaven if I could go back to be with Andromeda.”
Of course. He was the perfect lifemate. Always by her side. I sighed, wishing I had the same relationship with Sirius. “You love each other, don’t you?”
Corvus’ eyes grew dreamy, and a slight blush colored his cheeks. “We do.” His voice fell to a whisper. “It didn’t happen overnight. She didn’t like me at all at first. We had to spend a lot of time together before we figured out how alike we are. There’s a difference between lust and true love. One is based on first impressions, and the other on who we are inside.”
I nodded, thankful he shared such personal information with me. I’d found a lot in common with Sirius in the alien ship. Was it enough for us to gel together? I hoped so.
Corvus gave me an appraising look, like he could see through me and read my soul. “Sirius is a mercurial guy. I know he loved Annie before I met her, but by the time he finally came around to telling her his true feelings, she’d already moved on. To me. You have to give him time.” Corvus winked as he rose to check on the other patient. “That’s if you want to wait for him. He’ll come around. Wait and see.”
The easy way in which Corvus spoke made it seem like I was waiting for cookies to bake, or for the sun to rise. Of course, it had worked out between him and Andromeda, so why wouldn’t he think it couldn’t work out with Sirius and me? I wished I had his certainty.
The engines dropped to a lower hum, and my stomach flipped as we glided down. I caught a glimpse of the beach and the New Dawn as we headed to the paved airstrip to land. What I didn’t expect was the crowd, a massive sea of white and navy uniforms, interspersed with muted colors of civilian clothes.
Anxiety gripped my body as one of the medics, an older woman my mother’s age, handed me a new blazer for my uniform. “They’re waiting to see you, Nova Williams. Lieutenant Crophaven has asked you to give a speech.”