Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

40 · Near Darrin · The Present

On the fringes of the Darrin system, an unlikely fleet formed and found its footing. Manned by Navy personnel long in the tooth and short on combat experience, and Callite refugees with little time as even shuttle passengers, they came together and tested their systems in a rising cloud of confidence. They had already done something previously thought impossible: They had pulled off a raid on the most feared system in the galaxy and had walked away with a fortune in hardware.

And now, what the new fleet lacked in numbers—counting less than fifty craft total—they almost made up for in raw power. The arms and defenses in each of the ships had evolved in a system famous for warfare. A system that had reduced entire planets to rubble.

Inside one of these ships, Edison put the finishing touches on the last of the hyperdrives, giving it one-time powers similar to Parsona’s. He surveyed the changes a final time, screwed the side panel tight using an index claw shaped like a Philips head, and then left the engine room, waving good luck to the ship’s crew as he stepped through the airlock and returned to Lady Liberty.

Once Edison was aboard, Anlyn waited for the hatch indicators to show a good seal and then decoupled from their last ship. As she peeled away, she felt an immense pride in him for modding two more of the drives than any of the other engineers. His extra efforts had helped keep the Darrin fleet on schedule.

Overall, Anlyn was more than satisfied with how well the plan was unfolding. Even counting the loss of two full raid crews, the mission to steal and assemble such an advanced fleet had gone surprisingly well. She spun Lady Liberty around to face the staging area where pilots were putting their new ships through their paces. Several groups were engaging in weapons-lock dogfights with other ships in their wing, getting used to how the craft handled and how many Gs the crews could take in their ill-fitting flightsuits.

Anlyn watched as a few laser bolts were shot off into the distance. She had given them permission to test fire the cannons, but had told them not to waste rockets. Meanwhile, navigators contented themselves with dialing through menu after submenu, memorizing the location of defensive routines and practicing with locking onto neighboring ships on SADAR. This also helped the other crews get used to the sounds of their new warning alarms so they wouldn’t startle as easily in real combat.

Anlyn kept Lady Liberty above the action and watched. She saw a few good things within the maneuvers, but much wrong. The three real Firehawk pilots Molly had rescued from the Carrier stood out immediately as being head and shoulders above the rest. Each had been given command of one of the other three wings, and two of the pilots rode with their natural navigators. Saunders had argued the crews be split up, spreading their experience between two of the other ships, but Molly had insisted they remain together. She had assured them that the strength of an old partnership was more than double the advantage of each person on their own, and the way she had said it prevented any serious debate from taking place.

Now, Anlyn could tell from the mock engagements that Molly had been right. Those two intact and well-trained crews were dominating in their sparring matches, and were already helping the others improve their own abilities. Anlyn watched for a moment, then thumbed her radio. “Wing Three Beta, you’re inverting your dive like you’re in atmosphere. Just spin in place and fire.”

“Copy,” the pilot radioed back, his voice strained from the Gs.

Anlyn watched the maneuvers continue, offering advice where it was needed. Now and then, she glanced at the clock on her dash, which was counting down the moment to the real raid. Soon they would be jumping straight back to Lok and beginning their clash with the Bern fleet.

She could hardly believe what was set to happen next. As Edison settled in the nav seat and began going through the systems checks, she thought about what she was about to do. Anlyn Hooo, young princess, former slave, rogue pilot. She was about to lead a ragtag group of the aged and infirmed against the very fleet that had nearly brought all their demises and had literally downed loved ones among both the Callites and Humans. She was about to go up against the true enemy of her empire, the shadowy figures of her childhood nightmares, the subjects of so much prophecy, hand-wringing, and empty pronouncements, and she was in charge.

The ridiculousness of it all made it seem as if it couldn’t take place, as if something must stand in the way to prevent that moment from arriving. Even as the clock on the dash ticked down to the final hour, Anlyn felt almost sure it would happen to someone else, or in a different lifetime.

Then she thought about that massive Bern ship up in orbit around Lok, the one Molly told her had taken out an entire Human fleet. She knew that if Parsona and her crew didn’t have that gravity machine taken care of before they arrived, then none of her worries, none of her pointers to the other pilots, none of it would matter in the least.

Anlyn wondered if perhaps that ship was the thing keeping all her dreams from feeling real.

Cat prepared herself for the jump into orbit while Scottie and Ryn arranged the hyperdrive platform in Parsona’s cargo bay. She sorted through the four remaining buckblades, looking for the one with the most solid craftsmanship. Ryke, meanwhile, continued to try and talk her out of going.

“It’s suicide,” he told her for the countless time.

Cat smiled to herself. The grizzly old scientist had resorted to repeating an experiment while hoping for a different result. It was a sign of how much he must care for her that his brain had stopped functioning properly. She powered on the buckblade, plucked one of her blond hairs out of her ponytail, then swiped the invisible weapon sideways through the dangling strand. The bottom half of the follicle fell away, and the barest tinge of something burnt drifted up to her Callite nose. She powered off the blade and hung it from her belt.

“Look—” She turned to Ryke and placed both hands on his low, broad shoulders. “It isn’t suicide, so stop thinking of it like that. Hell, if everything goes to shit like I suspect, that fleet up there might be the safest place in the universe. And you know me, I’ll switch sides in a heartbeat if I have to.”

Ryke frowned, his lower lip disappearing into his beard.

“I’m only kidding,” Cat said.

She squeezed his shoulder and looked around the cargo bay for anything she may have forgotten. She had a little food and water, a pair of good boots, a radio, and a buckblade. She couldn’t think of anything else.

“We’re all set up,” Scottie told her.

Cat walked over to Scottie and Ryn. She reached out her hand to shake Scottie’s, but he just used the grip to pull her into an embrace. She reciprocated, foreign emotions swelling in her throat, making it impossible to swallow.

“You be careful, Cat.”

“I will,” she mumbled into his shoulder.

Ryn hugged her next, his powerful Callite hands slapping fondly at her back.

“Don’t hesitate to send up those missiles,” she told the boys. “Don’t you think on me and Molly—you worry about that fleet coming back from Darrin.”

“We won’t let you down,” Scottie said.

Cat pulled out of the hug and waved the boys back. She stepped onto the jump platform and sat down in the ready position, her arms wrapped around her chest, her legs pulled up in front of her. She looked up to Ryke to let him know she was ready and caught him wiping at his eyes. The tears that had snuck by glistened in his beard.

“Let’s do it,” she told him.

He shook his head sadly, but stepped to the relocated control console. Ryke glanced up one final time, his finger poised over the button, and seemed to want to say something. For Cat, it was the first and last time she’d known the chatty frontiersman to be at a loss for words.

The jump happened in a jarring, disorienting flash. The cargo bay and her friends winked out of existence, and Cat popped out of hyperspace one meter above and two meters to the side of Molly’s hyperspace trace. The idea had been to follow her, but not precisely. With the modified hyperdrive they were using, two dangers were to be avoided: one risk was arriving in the middle of something solid; the other was the risk of arriving in the middle of Molly. To minimize both, Cat arrived higher than Molly’s head and in as tight a ball as she could manage.

It wasn’t tight enough, however, and the direction they’d chosen to offset proved unfortunate. Both of Cat’s feet and the entire length of one shin immediately occupied the same space as a solid metal wall. Molecules jiggled as their electrons made room for these incoming strangers, and the two elements fused into a new one—a living alloy of steel, a dying wound of flesh, or something of both.

Cat cried out in shock. It was the shock of pure raw pain. It was the rape of neurons.

Her body fell back, limp, bending at the waist.

She pivoted around the stuck bits of herself, her back slamming against the steel, her skull cracking against it just a moment later. Cat hung there, upside down, gasping for air. The pull of her weight against the invaded flesh heightened the experience. Through the haze of it all, she could see transparent walls surrounding her, like a cell, but with no sign of Molly or Walter. She could’ve jumped right on top of the trace coordinates and been perfectly safe.

But then, she would’ve missed out on experiencing all that glorious pain.

More of it lanced out of her foot, as neurons too shocked at first to respond finally kicked into gear. Cat ground her teeth as she hung upside down. Her lips quivered somewhere between a grim sneer and an ecstatic smile. She flexed her stomach muscles and hoisted herself up, levering off her trapped shinbone back into a semblance of the ball in which she’d arrived. Glancing down by her waist, she saw her radio had fused with the wall as well. Thankfully, the buckblade swung free from her belt. She pulled the weapon loose and powered it on, careful to keep it pointed away from herself. Working slowly, concentrating on not puncturing the steel wall in case the vacuum of space existed beyond, she moved the blade down across the surface of the steel with the invisible thread parallel to it. She slid the molecule-wide cutter through the top of her knee, hacking her shinbone in two. She watched the flesh part under the weight of her body, the blue insides revealing themselves as her flesh magically unzipped. She continued to cut, upset at having to do it, at having the painless blade move through her gloriously injured nerves, parting their connections to her brain. She would have preferred to hang there, enjoying the agonizing sensation a little longer, but Molly needed her.

So Cat cut herself free, slicing down to her ankle where both feet were taken off just before the heels. With over an inch of meat still to go, her weight did the rest and ripped what remained, tearing the flesh in two. She fell and slammed into the steel decking below, sending out a spray of blue Callite blood tinged with purple.

Cat lay perfectly still, groping in her mind for the throbbing ache, the sensation of hurt. She pawed at it with mental fingers even as she felt the roar begin to fade and slip through her numbed grasp. Lying in a pile of her own blood, chunks of her former body hanging above and dripping her vitality down the wall, Cat the Callite groaned with dismay at the end of the experience, the end of the welcomed and foreign pain, and the beginning of the cursed healing.

41 · Lok

Parsona flew herself low and fast, the buffeting wind of her approach flattening the grasses ahead and the flame of her thrusters leaving them smoldering behind. Over the horizon, the glow of dawn signaled an end to their short preparation time and the looming return of the fleet from Darrin.

Doctor Ryke rode alone in the cockpit, watching the instruments arrayed across the dash as the mighty ship piloted itself. In the cargo bay, Scottie and Ryn coiled hyperdrive wires, their climbing harnesses already on, carabineers and ascenders jangling as they worked.

“Are you sure you can duplicate what that Palan boy did with the missiles?” Ryke asked Parsona.

“I have total recall, Sam. I’m looking at Walter’s individual keystrokes right now. It’s a pretty clever hack.”

“That means you can arm them remotely, right?”

“I can, I’m just not sure yet if I’ll be able to, if that makes any sense.”

Ryke mulled that over. He wondered if he would be capable of doing what they were asking of Parsona. Would he be able to send those missiles through hyperspace? Could he kill his only child in order to save a galaxy? What about a universe—did that finally tip the scales? It was so easy to expect it from another when looking at the equation from without, but then… he didn’t know what it meant to have a child, or to be in a position to make that level of sacrifice.

“It is a large ship,” he reminded Parsona. “It’s the size of a moon. We won’t send any of the missiles near Molly’s coordinates.”

“You know that would just be symbolic, Sam. We aim to kill her and Cat both, or all the ships returning from Darrin will go down as sure and fast as Zebra, and all the fleets of all the Milky Way’s worlds will soon follow.”

“You can’t be sure. Let’s not think like that—”

“I wish you hadn’t let Cat talk you into jumping her up there,” Parsona said.

“You coulda stopped her just as well. It’s your drive and all.”

Parsona seemed to hesitate.

“No,” she finally said quietly. “You’re right. And I’m sorry. Besides, there’s no stopping her once she gets like that. I—Life is full of hard choices, I guess. Even when you can crunch all the probable outcomes in a blink.”

“Yeah,” Ryke said, nodding and completely understanding. He looked up through the carboglass as the dark silhouette of the upright StarCarrier came into view. Another few minutes and they’d be there.

“I have to be honest with you, Sam. If it weren’t for Anlyn, I’d refuse to do this. It wouldn’t even be a question to ponder. The Bern could take the whole flanking galaxy for all I care, just for the chance they’d keep Molly alive afterwards.”

“Anlyn? The Drenard? I didn’t know you guys were that close.”

“It’s not so much that. Well, that’s not true, we are close. She made a huge sacrifice to make this all possible. But the reason I have to save her is because it’s what Molly would do if she were here. It’s what she would want me to do. I don’t think she’d forgive me if I chose any other way. Yeah, she might survive if I don’t agree to arm the missiles, but she’d be miserable the rest of her life. She’d hate me and loathe her own existence if saving her meant Anlyn came back to an ambush. I couldn’t force her to live with that kind of guilt, you know?”

Ryke nodded sadly, understanding the last bit, if nothing else.

“I guess that’s it then,” Parsona said. “It’s one thing to calculate it all, another to voice the decision and feel like you’ve really made it.” She paused. “The hyperdrive is completely cycled by the way, and we have nineteen point—”

Parsona’s voice clipped off mid-word, like a mechanical trap snapping down over her thoughts.

“Parsona?” Ryke asked.

Without warning, the ship banked hard to port, the thrusters roaring up into the red curve of the gauge. Ryke grunted as he was thrown to the side. A frightening clatter rang out from the cargo bay as piles of gear slammed into one wall followed by hollered complaints and a bout of startled cursing.

“What in the—?” Ryke began, but the radio cut him off. It came on blaring, with the background hiss of the Drenard Underground’s carrier frequency:

“—mayday, mayday, group two is going down. Repeat: we have Mortimor, but we are under attack and going down. Group two is through the rift and going down—”

The Bern guards drug a furious Walter and a stunned Molly down a long corridor of transparent walls. Molly was dimly aware that a heated conversation was taking place ahead of her, but her mind felt too unraveled to participate. She lost herself in the sight of the endless glass cells, thousands and thousands of them converging in the unseen distance. The cleanliness and orderliness of the passageway filled her with a hollow dread. No, she realized, it wasn’t the neatness—it was the emptiness. It was the horrible sense of what must loom ahead, of what that ship had been designed for.

Molly wondered, if their plan on Lok failed, how long it would take for the corridor and hundreds more like it to be filled to the rim with screaming and crying refugees and prisoners of war. Looking at the empty rooms was like looking at a loaded gun, at chambers of awful potential. It made it somehow easier for Molly to see what things would look like once they failed, once the barrel was smoking and spent, once a thousand worlds had succumbed to that invading fleet, and once all those rooms were full of the people she had let down.

Her imagination tortured her with such thoughts until the guards pulled them inside a lift. Molly was actually thankful to find herself within its confines. The sliding doors pinched shut on all those waiting and empty rooms.

And that’s when Molly realized how tired she was. She tried to remember when last she’d slept. The previous night had been spent planning what now must be falling apart. The night before, she had been dealing with the Callites. The night before that, she had been strapped down and unwillingly giving blood. And now, she could feel her sense of where she was and what she was supposed to be doing slipping away from her. Through her numbed senses, her environment took on a dreamlike quality. One of the only things she was aware of was the Wadi trembling against her thigh.

She also heard Walter, his hissing dulled by the fog in her mind. She heard him vaguely arguing about mountains of gold and promises broken. The flanking Palan hadn’t shut up since their arrival. Then she remembered where she was and why. As she watched Walter beg and plead—his promises and lies mashed together in a pathetic blabber—some inner, resigned, shameful part of her hoped they were both being marched to their deaths.

At least that would make it impossible for her to ever make the mistake of trusting him again.

The Wadi’s scent tongue flicked out of the soft cave, tasting the air. Trails of emotion—bright columns of drifting feelings like chords of raw communication—flashed in the creature’s head.

Something was wrong.

The good person’s scent was as black as she’d known it, and the bad one’s was as guilt-ridden and empathetic as it had ever been. The two constants in her environment, the bright smells that were always there like the twin lights of her home, seemed to be converging. Would they shift, taking each other’s place just like the rays that soaked her canyons often did? It wasn’t time yet for that change, she thought. This must be something different. Something new.

And there were other smells. Some were similar to the good one, the same type of animal or very close. Their emotions were easy to read: Ingrained duty, blind faith, the stubbornness and self-righteousness of male Wadi. If her constant companions had her confused, these others did not. They were the enemy. They were big and strong and doing harm they could justify. They were doing it without flinching. Just as the male Wadi had done to her so many cycles ago.

Cat didn’t wait for her toes to fully form—she didn’t know if she had the time. Standing on her crippled feet, slipping in her own blue blood, she reactivated her buckblade and hobbled toward the glass wall between her and the corridor outside.

Her reflection greeted her in the glare of the clear material. She saw dried blood coating her legs from the knees down, the white of half-formed bone still visible through her stitching flesh. The rest of her was pale with so much blood loss. Her brown, webbed skin looked almost tan and human-like from the drain. Cat felt a surge of dizziness from the sight of it all. She flicked her wrist, and a rough circle of the cell wall fell away, taking the reflection of her with it. The clear slab landed on the metal decking outside with the chime and heft of solid diamond.

Cat sniffed the air, searching for the scent of the Palan or the Wadi, two quite distinguishable odors. She turned left, following a weak trail of fear. Behind her, she left her own sign of passing as the decking of the hallway became marked with smears of blue blood, dotted between them with wavy traces of splattered drippings.

Most of it was residue, the actual bleeding nearly stopped and the front edge of her shins regenerating with the practiced ease of a good brawl. Her pace evened out as she moved. The pads of her feet and then the stumps of her toes began to emerge anew as genetic code, junk DNA, holdovers from swerves in her evolutionary lineage, did their thing. A past adaptation from a distant, tree-dwelling ancestor had been unlocked by too much Lokian water, too many of the little life-loving critters inside that couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Cat healed as she hurried, healed even as she snuck up on the first guard station. It quickly became a mess. Not so much because of the two corpses she left behind, splurting crimson in arterial arcs, but because she’d nearly let one of them reach out and activate an alarm. The blood loss had her fighting sloppy, unable to concentrate. Cat took a deep breath and tried to steady her nerves. She searched both guards and came away with swipe badges and a radio, the latter useless with her rusty Bern. What weapons they had on them paled compared to what she wielded, so she left them behind and danced away from the spreading pools of red blood, running down the corridor, resolved that the next guard station would go smoother. Or less messy, in a way.

The lift shuddered with a sense of great speed, taking them on what felt to be a very long ride. Molly endured it in silence, her thoughts racing as well. After a minute or more, the lights beside the lift doors lit up, and they opened to reveal a long ship-docking port.

Molly immediately recognized the layout as the guards drug her from the lift. She would have known what it was even without the revealing glimpses through the large portholes to either side.

Ahead of her, a long corridor stretched out with airlock hatches staggered in a classic docking bay pattern, allowing each ship’s wings to occupy the void created on the opposite side. Through the wide portholes, Molly could see various hulls locked to each hatch. Judging by the distance between hatches, and the length of their elevator ride, she felt certain they were in the biggest Bern ship, but she still didn’t understand why Walter had brought them there. She sensed that he thought, on some twisted level, that he and Byrne were on the same side, or that there was some sort of reward for bringing her along.

As the group of men drug her forward, Molly caught a glimpse of Lok far below, its bright film of blue atmosphere wrapped around the prairie brown. It looked like a Drenard’s translucent skin encasing bone. The view was just a flash, the sight gone as quickly as it came, blocked by the wing of a hanging ship. Losing the sight made Molly struggle against her captors for the first time; she pushed back against the guard, itching for one more peek of her old home before it and everything else was gone forever.

The guard shoved her forward, denying her a second look. But Molly felt, in that brief struggle, the strength of muscle and tendon in him and not the iron clutch she’d once felt with Byrne. Unless they were being gentle on purpose, these other men were different. More Human. She filed this away as the guards stopped by one of the airlock doors. It was keyed open, and Byrne stepped inside, his armless form at once powerful and confident, yet totally reliant on his helpers.

Molly and Walter were pushed after him, the guards guiding them through the airlock and into the wide bay of a sleek and smaller craft.

Once inside, the inner hatch was closed and sealed. Byrne said something in a foreign language, then bent forward while one of the guards adjusted a red band around his head. They all stood there for a moment while Byrne’s face contorted in a grimace of concentration, as if communicating with someone. After a while, he said something more to the guard, and they continued forward toward the cockpit.

“Where are you taking us?” Molly asked.

Byrne did not respond.

Jump seats were folded out of the cockpit wall by one of the guards, and Walter and Molly were strapped in. Safety webbing was fed through their restraints and the seat’s flight straps, making it impossible for them to reach the release handles on the buckles. One of the guards helped Byrne into a seat just forward of them, then took up position in the pilot’s chair. The other two guards made their way back through the ship, busying themselves noisily with mechanical checks and other signs of departure in the cargo bay.

“Why are we leaving?” Molly asked, not really expecting an answer.

“We’re not,” Byrne said, startling her with a response. “The fleet is leaving soon. We’re staying in orbit where I belong. There’s trouble down by the rift that I’d like to oversee. And of course, there’s an invasion to conduct.” He turned and smiled at her, then nodded to the pilot.

The ship shuddered, and a loud mechanical clank reverberated through the hull. The grav plates kept Molly’s stomach from traveling up into her throat, but she knew with a pilot’s innate sense that they were away, falling from the great metallic orb above them and toward the much larger and earthy one below.

42 · Lok

Ryke glanced at the cargo cam to see how his friends were faring in the cockpit. Parsona was pulling several Gs as she responded to the mayday call from the Underground ship, but neither he, Scottie, nor Ryn had on proper flightsuits to cope with the acceleration.

“Parsona, you can’t do this,” Ryke said, his voice strained as his back sank into the pilot’s seat.

“I’m sorry,” Parsona said.

“We help everyone the most by downing that big ship up there. We need to get to the Carrier.”

“Those equations already had a great deal going against them,” Parsona said. “A few more minutes of thrust like this, and I’ll let up and fall back to one point five Gs. You’ll need to get the console ready, and you might want to lengthen those wires—”

“No,” Ryke said. He tried to shake his head, but the acceleration kept it pinned to his seat. “Closing the rift is not our job. One of the Underground ships will do that. We’re the only ones who can clear the way for that fleet coming back from Darrin—”

“Listen,” Parsona said. The volume on the radio rose, allowing Ryke to listen in to the chatter between the various Underground groups up in the Bern fleet, none of them in agreement on what to do next. As soon as Mortimor’s ship had passed through the rift and crashed into Lok, the leadership of the Underground had fallen apart, everything suddenly in question.

“They’re dithering,” Parsona said, “rather than acting. I’m not being unreasonable, I assure you. I’m heading for the rift, not Mortimor.”

“I don’t believe you,” Ryke said with sadness in his voice. “I don’t blame you, but I don’t believe you.”

“I accept that, but the Underground’s cover was blown the second Mortimor’s ship crashed through. I’ve got targets on SADAR heading down to mop them up and probably garrison the base of the rift. Now that the Bern know it’s threatened from this side, we’ll never get another chance at it. It’s us or it’s nobody. And that paltry fleet above us pales to what will gather if we don’t act now.”

Ryke chewed on that, crunching the odds. He eventually realized she was right. Everything was falling apart all at once, but if they could close the rift, there was at least a chance that future battles could whittle down the Bern ships that had already come through. He wouldn’t be alive to see it, of course, but walling off the galaxy was the top priority, something the Drenards had discovered long ago.

As he thought of them, that old empire he had reached out to so many years ago, Ryke realized how important Admiral Saunders’s mission to Earth had become. Even if the efforts at Darrin and on Lok failed—and it appeared that they would—at least his treaty with Anlyn might provide a long-overdue spark. Maybe Humans and Drenards would stop fighting one another, wasting all those lives and resources, and join forces. And if Ryke and his friends could plug the hole he’d created on Lok, perhaps those future generations, banded together, could eventually win the war.

Ominous black clouds hung low over Washington D.C. They oozed a steady patter of rain, soaking Arlington Cemetery. As Saunders and his two subordinates trudged up the paved walkway, he couldn’t help but be aware of the significance of the national monument around him. He had recently lost enough men and women to account for every tombstone in sight, a truly sobering and depressing thought. But if his mission failed, or if the plan on Lok fell apart, there wouldn’t be enough green grass on Earth to hide the dead. Saunders chewed on that, growing ever more determined to succeed, as they slogged their way up the hill.

When they neared the outer gate, two figures in uniform rushed out of a small guardhouse nestled among the black wrought iron. The soldiers raced down through the rain to meet the trio, nervous hands resting on holstered guns. As they drew closer, Saunders could see the confused expressions on their faces as they struggled to account for the presence of three intruders on the inside of their carefully protected perimeter.

Saunders glanced around and realized for the first time that he and his companions were alone among the sad monuments. Normally there would be one or two family members, even in the rain, their umbrellas domed above their grief. It must’ve been a local Sunday, or perhaps the Drenard invasion had federal properties puckered tight. Whatever the reason, Saunders made sure to reach for his credentials slowly.

“Arms up,” he told Robinson and Sharee, before the guards had a chance to ask them less politely. Sharee reached for her credentials as well, but Saunders assured her his would suffice.

The two guards arrived in a wary trot, their hats encased in clear plastic and popping with large splatters of rain. One of the guards reached for Saunders’s credentials. He waved his scanner over the card, and it beeped cheerily. The soldier’s expression quickly went from perplexed to befuddled as he read the results. He frowned at his machine as if it might be malfunctioning.

Saunders imagined not only his rank showing up, but also his currently assigned quadrant, half a galaxy away. Perhaps the machine was even saying he was presumed killed in action. The guard with the scanner twisted the device to show his companion. Both of their bodies tensed with formality.

“Sirs!” the second guard said. He snapped a salute to all three of them.

“At ease, Soldiers.” Saunders reached forward to accept his credentials back, the rain coursing down from his flattened hair and off his chubby nose. “Now if you would, call for transport and notify the President.” He replaced his ID, pulled out another laminated card, and held it out. “This is my clearance badge. It should patch you straight through.”

“Which President?” the lead guard asked. He fell in beside the trio as they marched toward the guardhouse and the gate. His partner had already sprinted off in that direction to summon a surface ship.

“The GU President,” Saunders said. “Do I look interested in domestic affairs?”

“Of course not, sir. And what should I tell him?”

“Tell him to put down whatever he’s doing. He’s about to have visitors with very good news.”

The marine Rynx set down in front of the GU building, the craft’s rotors thrumming with the whump whump whump of shuddering air. Saunders gazed out at the great structure. It was a sprawling palace done in the triple-post modern style from the twenty third century. Its grand façade, broken up by ornate columns, overlooked the ancient spread of old D.C.—a perfect vista from which it could watch the monuments of yore dilapidate in time along with their ever eroding significance.

A contingent of Galactic Guards met Saunders and his two officers by the Rynx’s deployed loading ramp. They all wore serious faces and fitted armor that clapped against itself as they hurriedly marched to get in place. Between the two lines of guards hung an anti-grav awning erected against the steady rain. Standing at the base of the ramp was an instantly recognizable figure: Susan Karlton, Secretary of Galaxy and a one-time presidential candidate.

Susan smiled when she saw Saunders. “Griffin,” she said, greeting him warmly and informally. “I asked them to run your credentials three times. I didn’t believe it.”

“The hits are gonna keep on coming,” Saunders said. He stepped close and clasped Susan’s hand. He had seen her as recently as his promotion ceremony a month or so ago, but it felt like a lifetime had passed since. “Just wait until you see what I’m bringing along.” He let go of her hand and patted the chest of his borrowed Navy Regs, feeling the Drenard peace treaty folded up within.

Susan glanced at his companions.

“Oh, I apologize, I’m not sure if you know my senior officers.” He turned to the other two figures huddled under the awning and raised his voice as the rotor overhead continued to thwump loudly. “This is Commander Sharee Rickson and my second in command, Lieutenant Major Robinson.”

Susan smiled and nodded at them, then looked Saunders up and down. “You look like shit,” she said.

“I feel worse.”

“I bet. I’d offer you the chance to shower and rest up, but Marine Two said you wanted to debrief at once?”

Saunders nodded. “It’s urgent.”

“Very well,” Susan said. She waved the trio toward the South wing entrance and continued to talk as they walked, lowering her voice to a reasonable level as the Rynx gradually powered down. “The snippets we’ve gotten from Lok were hard to believe. I—We saw pictures of Gloria nose-down in the dirt. Locals are posting them on the net. I’m—I’m very sorry. What exactly happened?”

“I’d rather not discuss that right now,” Saunders said, feeling on the verge of getting choked up. “I’m not here to debrief on any one battle. I need to discuss the larger war.”

They approached the entrance, and a guard stood ready with a scanner. He tagged Susan’s credentials hanging from her chest. Once again, Saunders waved his junior commanders off and used his own ID to validate the three of them. He let the guards fume over the breach of protocol as he and the others stepped inside and out of the humid D.C. air. Susan picked up the conversation again:

“So, you’re not here to debrief on Lok or the loss of Zebra? The President will want to know—hell I want to know what went down out there.”

“Bad choice of words,” Sharee said.

Susan blushed and continued walking sideways, leading them toward the elevators as she spoke. “I apologize. I haven’t slept in two days. I’m pretty much running on coffee and adrenaline right now. But still, the fact that you’re standing here is the best news we’ve had in weeks. We—Well a lot of your friends had given up on you. All of you. How many survived?”

“Not many,” Saunders said, shaking his head. He stepped into the waiting elevator. “And we’re not here to debrief on that.”

“Then what are you here for?” Susan asked. She stepped aside and waved the other two crewmembers into the elevator.

Saunders reached inside his coat pocket, drawing out a folded document. “We’re here for the President’s signature,” he said. “And we wouldn’t mind something warm to sip on while we listen to his broadcast on the cessation of hostilities.”

Susan’s eyes widened with curiosity. Her gaze drifted down to the documents in Saunders’s hand.

“What is that?” she asked.

“This one is a formal registration of ambassadorship between the Galactic Union and the Drenardian Empire.”

He teased apart one of the sheaves, holding it to the side and watching Susan’s stunned expression follow.

“It’s a mere formality, of course, but necessary to assure that this one is official.”

“And it is—?” It came out a squeak, all Susan seemed able to muster.

“This one is the immediate and complete surrender of all Allied armed forces and a call for peace, accepted by a member of their War Council, the new ambassador to the Terran forces, and currently the second in line to the throne of the Drenard Empire, one Anlyn Hooo. It’s also been ratified by their council member specializing in alien relations, and you wouldn’t believe who he was if I told you. Combined, these documents demand an end to a war that’s been raging longer than you and I have been alive.”

The elevator dinged as they arrived at the President’s residential wing, and the doors opened on a sophisticated array of security stations and guard booths. Susan exited and waved the trio forward, her gesture meek and subdued as she seemed to reel from the bizarre claims of her old acquaintance.

Saunders strode out confidentially, relishing having had the opportunity to practice his delivery before seeing the President—not to mention the chance to shock an old friend into stunned silence. What he hadn’t explained was that the cessation of hostilities with one enemy would just be the beginning, a chance to root out the traitors in their midst and align forces for the true threat pouring into the galaxy. Still, the end of a war that had raged for generations was near at hand, a monumental and historical moment. Saunders walked toward the final guard station between himself and that slice of history, his mind spinning with the implications, his mood giddy from being so close to fulfilling his portion of the mission.

Beside him, Commander Sharee strolled with a likewise bounce in her step, her erect posture and loping gate letting him know that she too was taking no small amount of delight in the significance of their actions.

Behind them both, Lieutenant Robinson brought up the procession’s rear, preventing the three Humans from glimpsing his dark expression. The Bern agent felt along his ribs as he walked, comforting himself with the presence of his internal munitions.

He imagined for a moment that he could feel the warmth of the suicide bomb inside his chest as the two powerful fluids flowed from their lung-shaped sacks to mix together. What once could’ve passed for two benign organs in any x-ray were slowly coalescing, forming in their coming together a new and deadly mixture potent enough to level an entire city block.

As much as the Bern agent had loathed to watch his fat boss gloat over the end to a meaningless squabble, he had to remind himself that such celebrations were premature and ridiculous. In reality, the true mission to Earth had only begun. And it would not be a call for the end of violence by their pathetic President. It was very soon to become a bright, gory plume of fire and shrapnel. Another spark in the great conflagration that was destined to consume this damned and pesky spiral galaxy for good.

43 · Crash

Cat followed the Wadi’s scent trail to a bank of elevators as the weak odors thinned out to a vaporous nothing. She pressed all the buttons arranged on the shiny column between the lifts, the symbols as meaningless to her as the jabber she’d squeezed out of the guard at the last station. Doubt crept up inside, making her feel stupid for jumping off to orbit all half-cocked like she always did. Of all the things she’d expected to find when she jumped after Molly and Walter, she hadn’t been prepared to find nothing.

She looked down at her emerging toes while she waited on one of the lifts to arrive. So focused was she on her healing wounds, Cat missed the silent swish of the opening doors. There was just a soft ding, and by the time she looked up, two stunned Bern had already drawn their guns.

One Bern got a shot off before Cat could slice them both in half. The blast went through her chest, right by her shoulder. Cat staggered inside the lift, reeling from the physical impact of the blow, her nostrils tingling with the smell of burnt self.

The doors closed, snapping shut across a new stream of Bern blood. Cat looked for buttons to press, her pursuit having become mad and completely blind. The dizziness from her blood loss worsened with the new wound, filling her with despair but very little pain. She blinked away the cloudy thoughts and realized there were no buttons in the elevator to press, just a badge scanner and four massive knobs beneath it, each of which was ringed with more Bern symbols.

Left or right, Cat thought to herself, peering at the knobs. Either way, she wanted to go to the max. She wanted to be wherever the important shit was. The Callite in her wanted to turn them all the way to the left, knowing that would take her to the top, but these weren’t Callites. They shared more genetic code with Humans, who loved all things right and clockwise. She turned the knobs that way, all four of them, then waved each of her plucked ID cards in front of the scanner, not sure which was the highest-ranked.

To the max, Cat thought, smiling as the lift rumbled into motion.

Cole felt powerless as the wounded Bern craft plummeted toward the surface of Lok. Group two’s suicidal dash for the rift, spurred by a fear for Mortimor’s life, had drawn copious amounts of fire from the Bern fleet still in hyperspace. He knew Arthur was in the cockpit doing his best to manage the crippled ship, but as they passed through the rift and screamed down through Lok’s atmosphere, the pilot in Cole wanted to be up there in the cockpit doing something with the controls, even if that something proved futile.

Around him, the ship’s cargo bay had become a physical manifestation of his internal chaos. A wide mix of aliens screamed and shouted as the ship bucked and shivered. Fear had each of them resorting back to their old, primal tongues. Gear was scattered everywhere and still rumbling about. What remained of a once-noble resistance force was now jumbled, confused, and frightened as it fell out of the rift toward the sucking gravity of the planet below.

Cole stayed wedged between one of the storage lockers and a bulkhead as he held Mortimor, whose body had grown perfectly still. Gone was the fierce and calm bravery he’d seen the man possess during the past days. That vitality had been replaced by the sagging slowness of a man with half his life drained away.

Penny helped Cole hold him in place, the three of them braced together for impact. They were no longer able to do any first aid as the Bern craft rocked from side to side, the screaming of disturbed air audible through the hull. Every now and then, the sight of Penny’s severed arm caught Cole’s attention—the trailing wires and dripping fluids adding to the surreal nature of his environment.

A loud wail emanated from the cockpit, the shrill call of a collision warning perhaps. The yelling and shouting from the passengers grew in noise and pitch, matching the changing Bern alarm. As it grew in frequency and duration, Cole marveled at the psychological similarities Humans and the Bern must share. The clatter of the warning siren eerily mimicked the sound a Human engineer would choose to signal impending doom—

Doctor Ryke made his way to Parsona’s cargo bay as soon as the ship leveled off and the Gs relented to a level the grav panels could compensate for. They were still moving at quite a clip, heading back around Lok to the small ruin of a village where the whole mess had begun. The mess he had created.

“If only I’d gotten married,” he said aloud as he helped Scottie to his feet. His two old friends had remained seated on the deck by the rear bulkhead, pinned by Parsona’s acceleration.

“If only you’d done what?” Scottie asked.

“Nothing.”

“I thought she knew how to fly herself,” Ryn said. “You sure it’s safe to stand?” The large Callite accepted the help up, but with the wary stance of a man distrusting gravity.

“It should be fine.”

“What in the hell just happened?” Scottie asked.

“Mortimor’s ship just came through the rift from hyperspace and went down. It looks like our missile plan is off.”

“But the crews we sent out to get that fleet—” Scottie said.

“Toast,” said Ryke, nodding. He pulled on his beard. “Now help me with that console we were gonna use for the missiles. We’ve got other things that need doing with it.”

“We’re gonna leave them to die?” Ryn asked.

“Afraid so, but now it’s up to us to slam shut my damned door forever. Let’s just hope the end of the many massacres to come will get its start right here.”

44 · Revelations

“You can go crazy reading into prophecies, you know.”

Molly stopped struggling with her restraints and looked up. Byrne had turned in his seat to peer back at her, a wide smile on his face. Beyond him, she could see through the cockpit that the pilot had brought them into formation with a cluster of warships. The surface of Lok hung below, impossibly far away.

“Is this the time of fulfillment?” Byrne asked. He frowned at Molly. “Or did we narrowly miss that just a few weeks ago? Are you the one? Is Cole? Does it matter?”

Molly felt herself flush at the mention of Cole’s name. She bit her lip and looked down at her lap to see the Wadi’s tongue spiraling out of her pocket. She adjusted her elbow to keep the animal covered and felt a wall of resistance building, a shield of silence to keep from giving Byrne whatever satisfaction he was looking for.

“Don’t want to talk, huh?” Byrne wiggled around in his seat even further to gaze at her. In Molly’s peripheral, the armless maneuver made him look like an angry snake poising for a strike.

“How about you, my silvery friend? You’ve gone awfully quiet all of a sudden.”

Walter sniffed. “I don’t trusst you,” he hissed softly.

“And why not?” Byrne asked. “Because I don’t reek of lies? There’s two reasons for that, my pirate friend. My builders left out such glands when they made me, and I never once lied to you.”

The cracks in Molly’s new wall spread out in a spiderweb of curiosity.

“Then where’ss my gold?” Walter asked.

“Many jumps from here, I’m afraid. But we’ll take you to it once this galaxy is secured. A few months, at the most.” Byrne looked past their jump seats to the cargo bay beyond. The other guards could be heard working on the ship, securing items and putting away cargo. They had been at it since the small craft pulled away from the massive orb-shaped ship above. “As soon as your… rooms are ready, I’ll let you make yourself comfortable while the invasion progresses.” Byrne nodded to Molly. “You, however, might want to stay up here and see it for yourself.”

Molly turned away and looked back toward the cargo bay. She thought about what she could do if not for the restraints. Perhaps dash back, jam the door behind her, take her chances with the guards in the bay. Maybe she could find an escape pod and risk that they wouldn’t blast her out of the sky. She wondered if the pilot or any of the other guards were like Byrne, or if they were flesh and blood like her. She twisted her wrists against her restraints while she ran through the slim options, hating them all.

“There’s nothing you’d like to discuss? Strange, because your boyfriend was so chatty in hyperspace.” Byrne nodded to the pilot, who leaned forward and adjusted something on the dash. “Perhaps you’d like to listen to some radio?”

The pilot dialed up the volume, filling the cockpit with a crackling static, and then a voice: “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Group two is going down. We have Mortimor, but we are going down—”

Byrne dipped his head and the pilot flicked the volume off.

“It was a horrible crash,” Byrne said.

The fractures in her wall widened.

“I’d be surprised if anyone survived it.”

The cracks spread all the way around Molly’s shell until they met on the other side.

“Just in case, though, I’ve dispatched a ship to finish them off and another to wipe out your friends attempting to close my rift.”

Molly fought to contain the anger welling up. Shouts and screams were bubbling within, ready to explode through the fissures. She kept her eyes on her lap. She could feel her Wadi vibrating against her thigh, almost as if it were absorbing and containing her rage.

“If only Lucin were here to see how you’d failed him.”

The words stunned Molly. Rather than provide that final spark, sending her anger bursting through her wall of silence, they somehow defused it all, draping her with confusion. She felt her urge to scream deflate, even as the shell that had been holding it back crumbled all around her.

“Lucin was a traitor,” she said, the words lingering as a whisper. She pressed her chin down against her sternum and fought back the urge to cry.

“That he was,” Byrne said. He leaned down to the side, his head looming in Molly’s blurred vision. “He was a traitor to his own people.”

Molly shook her head. “He was one of you,” she hissed.

“Was,” Byrne said. “He was one of us. And if he’d been stronger, this would’ve been his prophecy to fulfill. But they sent flesh and blood to do a machine’s job.”

Molly peered up at Byrne. His mouth was spread out in a rapturous smile. He continued:

“The pathetic irony, of course, is that my superiors never wanted to trust machines like me in command positions. The hubris of meat-filled skulls makes them think the things they make can’t replace them. But the weakness is in the fleshy heart, not the robotic mind.”

The mention of Lucin’s heart brought back horrible memories: Images of Cole’s bullets tearing through Lucin’s back. Rich, dark blood pooling up through the wounds. Earlier memories, like of him in the principal’s office weeks before, preparing to give her the news of Parsona’s discovery—

“A machine never falls in love with the enemy,” Byrne said. “We never lose sight of our objectives, of what needs to be done. Emotion can’t get in the way.”

“Lucin was the enemy,” Molly said. Again, it was almost a whisper to herself. She forgot where she was, forgot about Walter to the other side of her, forgot about the noises from the cargo bay, forgot about the Wadi frozen in the folds of her pocket. All she could think about was Lucin, and Byrne’s confusing talk.

“We’re pretty sure he turned his back on us sometime during the Dire War, maybe even at Eckers. Something happened to make him never file another report with us. He retreated to the Human Academy, hiding from his superiors, shirking his duties—”

Molly shook her head. “He was working for you.”

“Not me. I was sent here to replace him. Lucin failed us all. And if what you said weeks ago is true, you did us a favor by killing him.”

“No.” Molly crushed her teeth together and pinned her chin to her chest. She pulled against her restraints, not because she thought it would snap them, but because her muscles needed something to do, some way to burn.

“He was working for you to the last,” she said through clenched teeth. “He was trying to steal my ship. He said he was going to use it to end all wars. He was trying to wipe us out, just like you are now.”

She repeated the words in her mind, silently, to herself. She had to remind herself that Lucin was a traitor. She needed him to be a traitor. Otherwise, what had she done?

Byrne laughed. “The only war Lucin was working to end was the one between the Humans and Drenards,” he said.

Molly shook her head.

“Oh, yes. We know exactly what he was trying to do. Our agents in your Navy, the ones keeping the flames of war stoked high, had no end of trouble dealing with the waves of tolerant cadets he sent their way, all of them spouting a desire to cease hostilities one day, to find some kind of peace.”

“You’re wrong,” Molly whimpered.

“Am I?” Byrne bent even lower in the corner of her vision. “Or are you just trying to justify what you did?”

He sat back up in his seat. Molly couldn’t help it: she turned to follow his movement.

“Is it better for you to remember him as a traitor, rightly slaughtered, than as a hero to your people wrongly killed?” Byrne smiled, his face blurred in the coating of tears Molly could neither blink away, nor wipe with her bound hands.

“Maybe that was your true role in all of this,” Byrne mused aloud. “How delicious if your great contribution to our victory was to have murdered our biggest threat and your sole ally!”

The tears flowed freely as Molly’s head drooped toward her lap. In the muffled distance, past the thrumming pulse in her ears, she could hear Byrne and the pilot laughing. She could hear Walter hissing in confused annoyance to her side. She licked the salty wetness out of the corners of her mouth and felt more tears course down her cheeks. She could see and feel them splatter on her thighs. Molly tried blinking the blurriness away. She tried to focus on what was real and true, on what was false and a lie.

Why had the discovery of Lucin’s betrayal back at the Academy stunned her in a way Byrne’s words now could not? Why did finding out he was a Bern make her reel, while discovering he may have been a traitor to them seem to resonate?

It was because he had loved her.

She knew that. The hugs and solace, the advice and long talks, the risks he took to help her achieve a life worth living, the sacrifices he had made to win her admission to his school—none of it made sense if he was her enemy, but it all made perfect sense if he was working against them.

It explained why he had no family other than Molly and his wife. She even understood why he would need to keep it a secret, why he couldn’t tell her about the ship, about her mom, about the hyperdrive, about anything. He wasn’t being sinister—Lucin had been afraid.

More tears fell, and Molly ground her teeth in frustration. Byrne and the pilot were talking, but she couldn’t bother to listen. Walter hissed something to her, but his words were a poison to avoid swallowing. She cried to herself, chewing on horrible truths, grinding her teeth together, losing her awareness of all that was going on around her, unaware even of her hungry Wadi, who was crying as well, grinding her own lizard teeth, and chewing her way through Molly’s restraints.

45 · Three Ships

Cole came to in a cloud of smoke and a noisy din, the confusion and fog of a mighty crash swirling around him. He heard people coughing and groaning, heard wails erupting from the gravely injured, heard and smelled electrical fires pop and hiss and the sickening peals of stressed metal as wings and broken fuselage sagged under their own weight.

Looking down at himself to see if he’d been injured, Cole saw Penny looking back up at him, her eyes wide and unblinking against the smoke. He saw that she had punched her remaining hand through the bulkhead of the Bern ship, anchoring them in place. What was left of her other arm was wrapped around Mortimor, all three of them having braced together prior to impact.

Cole let go with his own mechanical hand and saw that his fingers had pierced the hull plating as well, leaving behind five black holes in the dull steel. He met Penny’s eyes again. They both eventually broke the shocked stare to look down at Mortimor, who lay between them, unmoving.

Cole groped for a pulse with his non-mechanical hand. He wanted to shout to the dying to shut up, to end their racket, to give him a chance to feel.

Penny’s hand went to Mortimor’s forehead. She brushed his dark hair back over his head and stroked his cheek with one of her thumbs. Cole looked to Penny as he fumbled for a sign of life. Her wild red hair hung around her face, almost seeming like the source of the smoke fogging in all around them. Beyond, the coughing and hacking from the survivors seemed to morph into the crackle of flame. Soot and dirt had lightly covered her face everywhere except for the thin tracks shoveled aside by falling tears.

In his peripheral, surviving aliens moved dimly through the dust, tending to others and pushing heavy equipment off bodies. Someone worked one of the hatches open, letting in a shaft of light that seemed to multiply the smoke. The entire scene wrapped itself around Cole, holding him there, nothing in his awareness truly real other than Penny and Mortimor—an enigmatic and mostly metallic woman revealing to him the first signs of real life, and a man he’d sworn to protect and rescue slowly giving up the last of his.

Parsona banked herself wide to approach the rift from the edge. The expanded tear between Lok’s atmosphere and hyperspace had the shape of a weather balloon pressed flat: tall and thin, rounded at the top, and tapering to a pinprick at the bottom, right in the foundation of Ryke’s old house. The rift was difficult to look at directly, both with eyes and with sensors. The harsh photons escaping from the cone-shaped land had much of their primal fury intact. They faded, however, as they slammed into the different set of physical laws governing the universe to which Lok belonged. Those hyperspace particles quickly wilted as they arrived, melting in the atmosphere along with the sideways-drifting snow.

The strange combination of light and glistening flakes seemed out of place as they billowed over a notoriously dry and dark frontier planet. They seemed, at least at a distance, anything but awful. The entire rift appeared more like some visiting angel from a race of blob-giants, the creature’s surface boiling with light and throwing off dying sparks like little fairies.

Suddenly, though, a black lozenge protruded from the angel’s rounded head. It looked like a small, deadened tongue by scale, but it was just another Bern ship pulling through the rift high off the ground, continuing the long line of crafts filing out over the planet for weeks.

However, instead of increasing thrust to pull up to orbit, instead of falling into formation with the others, this black shape nosed down, no longer a tongue, but now something deadly spit from the angel’s mouth. This new arrival continued its chase of group two’s ship, arcing toward the downed craft and toward Parsona…

“Contact on SADAR,” Ryke said.

“I see it, but I don’t think it’s coming for us.” Parsona banked a few degrees more to the side, stiffening her angle to swing wider around the rift. The Bern ship stayed on course, heading out over the ruins of the old village and several kilometers beyond.

“They’re heading for Mortimor’s ship,” Ryke whispered.

“You should get back with the others. Make sure everything’s ready.”

“They’re heading for Mortimor’s ship,” he said again. “They’re gonna finish the job.”

“Ryke, see to the console. We don’t have much time.”

Two more contact alarms flashed on SADAR, pressing home the point. Only these two were swooping down from orbit rather than coming through the rift. And their vectors had them heading straight for Ryke’s house: the locus of the great tear in space. It seemed the orbiting fleet had finally become aware of the local threat to their rift.

Parsona quickly calculated that she would beat them there, but only by minutes. And the procedure to seal the rift, according to Ryke, would take half an hour, give or take. Fighting the urge to increase thrust, Parsona swooped low over the prairies, constrained by the forces she could inflict on Ryke and the others. For an AI routine trapped in a life of so many eternal seconds, she suddenly felt a level of impatience and desperate anxiety that recalled a more Human existence, and not in a good way.

Lady Liberty popped out of hyperspace in a high orbit over Lok, Anlyn and Edison taking point in the raid from Darrin. The single jump maneuver had worked perfectly, even if the hyperdrive would never operate again. With the press of a button, their ship had moved from one quadrant of the galaxy to another, with no care for what lie in between or how much gravity was encountered upon arrival. Anlyn felt as amazed and grateful as she had during hers and Edison’s previous experimental jump—the one to the center of that alien star so many sleeps ago, leading them to hyperspace.

Her thankfulness, however, didn’t last. They had a problem. It showed up on SADAR the size of a small moon.

Anlyn didn’t even need her instruments to know it was there. Glancing up through the carboglass, she could spot the massive vessel with her naked eye, its steel hull reflecting Lok’s sun with the brightness of an unnatural albedo. It was shining, not smoking. It was perfectly intact.

The rest of Anlyn’s wing began popping into orbit around her, each a few seconds apart.

There’s no way to warn the others before they arrive, she thought grimly.

Her SADAR flashed with a targeting alarm, and then a gravity alert.

With little other warning, Lady Liberty went dead, just like the Navy pilots had said their StarCarrier had. The ship began falling toward Lok in a flat, lazy spin, the pull of some bizarre artificial gravity dragging it out of orbit and toward a very real death.

Anlyn’s wing of ships followed, spiraling down after her. So too did every other craft jumping in from Darrin, wing after wing materializing in Lok’s orbit, then beginning their long plummet down. They were like a flock of canaries appearing in the vacuum of space only to realize they couldn’t breathe there—and that there was nothing for their mighty wings to flap against.

Parsona’s cargo ramp slammed to the grass in the commons, and Scottie and Ryn shuffled sideways through the door, lugging the heavy control console between them. Resting on top was the makeshift cross Ryke had cobbled together. The anxious engineer followed along behind, playing out coils of wire. He dropped the loops to the grass as the three men shuffled toward the foundation of his old home.

As he went, Ryke tried to concentrate on the simple task before him, worrying over the trivial threat of a snag yanking them to a halt. It was better to focus on such things than to fret over the massive ships roaring down to destroy them. Better to note the squeak from one of Parsona’s struts as the ship’s cooling thrusters lowered the rest of her bulk to the commons than dwell on the massive rift he had too little time to close.

“That strut needs greasing,” Ryke mumbled to himself.

He wondered if he would die worried about such a minor thing.

Ahead of him, Scottie and Ryn weaved through a gap in the crumbling, rocky perimeter of his old home, carrying the console between them. Ryke followed, dropping his coils of wire where his front porch once stood. His mind warped back to promised dreams he’d had while living in hyperspace, dreams of making it back to Lok and rebuilding his old home from scratch. Dreams of getting his workshop back together and tinkering with hybrid combustion electric engines, or something equally boring.

His foot caught on a bit of rubble. He nearly tripped and fell, but managed to catch himself. As he regained his footing and remembered the task at hand, the wire trailing behind him pulled taut. Ryke dropped the few loops that remained and saw they had just a few more meters of wire than they needed.

Scottie and Ryn left the console in a bare patch, right beside an old worklight someone had left lying on its side. Ryke pointed them to the exact spot in a now nonexistent wall, right over a gap in the foundation where the frame of the cellar door once stood. The boys paid no attention to him, knowing as well as anyone where the old rift lay. They approached the paper-thin opening to hyperspace edge-on to stay out of the harsh glare leaking out to either side. All around them swirled melting flurries of the strange and twinkling snowfall.

Ryke powered on the console and fanned his hands over the top of it, as if the drifting flakes would shoo away like bugs. As the other two arranged the cross at the rift’s base, he resisted the urge to look up at the massive hole in the sky above him, at the widening body of that great tear soaring thousands of meters overhead, taking a scale and shape he had known to be theoretically possible but had never imagined coming to life. He concentrated instead on the thin crack right in front of him, on the sliver of light and drifting ice no thicker than foil at that angle and yet the source of so much consternation.

Even though the rift was narrow near the planet’s surface, the escaping photons—energized and angry—were difficult to look at. As Ryke concentrated on his console, fiddling with its knobs, he could see a vertical green bar in his vision where his retinas had been seared from just the briefest of glances at the relatively tame leakage. Working as fast as he dared, he began repairing the rift, closing up the old opening for the second time in his life. But now, so many years later and with a ton more experience, it would be different.

“This time,” he said to himself, “you’ll stay closed.”

A rumble in the atmosphere disturbed the determined promise. Ryke looked up; he shielded his eyes from the rift, and saw the source of the sound. Three enemy ships were screaming through the atmosphere directly toward them. One seemed to be coming from the rift; the other two arced down as if from orbit.

“I guess there won’t be any this time,” Ryke said to himself, sadly.

Arthur Dakura staggered from the cockpit and into the smoke-filled cargo bay, shouting Mortimor’s name. Cole looked up and saw him, saw the older man’s face smeared with blood and grime.

“Over here!” Cole shouted.

Arthur turned, his body stiff and unsure of itself, reinforcing the likeness he shared with his robots. He stumbled stiffly over and sank to his knees by Mortimor’s side, groping his neck for a pulse.

Cole shook his head softly, unable to speak.

“Get him flat,” Arthur demanded, grabbing Mortimor by the armpits.

Cole and Penny helped, untangling themselves from their crash positions and doing most of the heavy lifting while Arthur cupped the back of Mortimor’s head with one hand, lowering it to the deck.

Penny crouched over the scene, her face intent, her eyes wet and wide. Cole settled back against the bulkhead, his ears ringing, both his body and mind weary and sore. He watched with a sort of wounded detachment as Arthur—a quadrillionaire famous for both his obsession with immortality and his lack of real human bonds—dealt horribly with the death of his closest friend.

Arthur locked his arms and began performing stiff thrusts to Mortimor’s chest. He stooped now and then to force air into the man’s lungs. But the textbook resuscitation methods soon slurred into textbook depression. Perfect form degenerated into pounding fists as denial slipped into rage.

It all took place in slow motion but seemed to happen so fast. Time toyed with them, as if its governing particles could reach through hyperspace with the melting snow and the perishing photons. It seemed to usher along the most wicked of events, then force them to linger at their worst.

A muffled haze filled all of Cole’s senses, like cotton balls forced in his ears, his mouth, even a wispy gauze of it over his vision. The coughs in the smoky hull came slow and quiet, the wails muffled to a background hum. Someone’s shouts became whispers. He heard it, over and over, someone saying his name, mere whispers—

“Cole!”

He finally heard the shouts when Penny shook him by the collar. She forced his chin up with her one hand, caught his eyes with hers, then pointed to the side.

“Cole!”

Larkin, the translator from his raid group, stood by the rear of the cockpit hallway. Cole realized the young man had been yelling his name for a long while.

“Larkin,” he croaked. He waved an arm to help him locate them in the haze. He felt himself rising from the floor, his back scooting up the bulkhead.

Larkin turned and peered through the smoke. His eyes widened; he ran over, glanced down for a moment at Arthur, who had taken to silently cradling Mortimor’s head.

“There are ships incoming,” Larken said. He pointed toward the cockpit. “The rest of our squad is gone.”

Why tell me? Cole thought to himself. He started to complain, then saw Larkin’s countenance: the wild, unblinking look in his eyes. He realized Larkin was in shock and looking for a chain of command to padlock his sanity to.

Cole felt like explaining the futility of it all. He wanted to say that he was no more in charge than anyone, but Larkin pulled him upright before he could complain and tugged him toward the cockpit.

“We’ve got to get these people out of here,” Larkin said. He shoved Cole forward, through an aisle of shattered and sparkling carboglass. At the end of that glittering path he saw Arthur’s seat, now vacated, but covered in smears of someone’s blood. In the other was the pilot from Cole’s group, slumped over the dash and obviously dead.

Larkin leaned over the empty seat and pointed up through the hole in the carboglass. Cole squeezed against the dead pilot and numbly obeyed the gesture.

Sure enough: Bern ships. Three of them, roaring down through the atmosphere. Cole nodded, confirming Larkin’s assessment of the situation and resigned to have it play out to its end.

“We need to get these people out of here!” Larkin yelled, shaking him.

Cole knew he was right. He knew the translator was trying to coax some sense into him, trying to stir Cole’s spirit to action. And from the hollow pit of the cave into which Cole had crawled, he wished his crewmate the very best of luck.

46 · Lights Out

A light by the elevator doors lit up just before the lift slid open. There was even a quiet ding, as if to announce Cat’s arrival. Wherever her knob-turning and card-swiping had taken her, she was glad to be there.

She emerged from the long ride whole—almost fully healed—but still pale and covered in her own blood. With the new flesh of her legs and the sticky mess all over, she felt like a fresh babe delivered into the world. A babe made new and not broken as she’d been the first time she was born.

The birth analogy was made perfect by the room that awaited her: Scattered with men in clean uniforms and chock-full of machines freckled with purposeful lights, it looked like the sort of place wealthy people gave birth.

The machines were everywhere and expensive-looking, Cat noted. Very expensive-looking. And they all seemed to be manned by equally important-looking people.

There was no sign or scent of Molly, however, which filled Cat with a powerful sadness. The ship they were in was far too big for some chance encounter. She had taken a wrong turn and would likely never see the girl again. For all Cat knew, Molly could be at the opposite end of the structure. She frowned at her failure and stepped out of the elevator—a bloody, alien samurai strolling into the scene of some science fiction vid.

None of the uniformed Bern tending to their machines seemed to notice her arrival. Their attentions were fixed on their screens and the constellation of indicators before them, their bored everyday minds not able to register the exciting in their peripheral.

Cat looked out over the assemblage, both of man and machine, and realized that she had gone about her search for Molly in the wrong manner. Completely, horribly, ass-backwards wrong. She had approached the mission as someone else might: trying to be sneaky, and to not get caught. There was, of course, no way she could’ve ever found Molly on that massive ship, but she hadn’t ever needed to. What she should have done was cause some trouble—as much of it as she could—and then wait for them to subdue her, maybe even beat her senseless, and take her to wherever they’d taken Molly.

The old Callite smiled at the plan, one that gave her logical license to flank some shit up. It also held the promise of a severe beating at the end. She wanted to kick herself for not thinking of it sooner.

But then, looking around, she realized it wasn’t too late to try, and there was probably no better room on the massive ship in which to start. She had taken the lift to its limits, and that’s where she’d wreak some damage. She flicked her buckblade on, wrapped her hand tight around its hilt, and then the grizzled and wounded Callite ran out into the room of blinking lights and swiftly widening eyes. She darted straight into them, cutting man and machine in half with the effortless and unfeeling lack of resistance only a good buckblade could provide. And Cat did it all in a manner and style only possible by someone who could not only feel no pain—but had struggled most of their life to overcome that deficiency.

The control console hummed beneath Ryke’s fingertips like a drum of agitated bees. He adjusted the hyperdrive’s gain and watched a needle quiver beneath its window of glass. He released the knob as it settled in at just the right mark, the tip tickling a preset indicator drawn on the clear shield in magic marker. Ryke brought both hands away gently, leaving the machine in perfect balance. It wouldn’t matter, what with the ships roaring down toward them, but Ryke didn’t know how to do anything any other way. He was a tinkerer and a perfectionist to the last.

And besides, dying anywhere near a poorly calibrated device seemed to him the worst sort of death possible. He watched the needle quiver in synchronicity and felt a sort of peace within himself. Stepping back, he joined Scottie and Ryn, who were squinting up at the sky with their hands shielding their eyes. Ryke reached into a vest pocket and drew out a dark monocle. He screwed it into one eye, kept the other tight, and looked up.

He saw the three Bern ships from before, roaring their way. Two were speeding from orbit, one from the rift. The latter seemed to have a different vector, though.

Ryke twisted the monocle’s rim, and green lines projected the foremost craft’s destination like an overlaid SADAR image. It seemed the craft from the rift was going to pass overhead, heading out to finish Mortimor’s downed ship. The other two, he didn’t need to bother tracking. They were both barreling straight for him and Parsona, preparing to make a crater where his old home used to lie.

“It’s been a good run with you fellers,” Scottie said.

Ryke felt one of his friends pat him on the back. The three of them knew what was about to happen, and they remained motionless, waiting for it. They had all been on the other side of their current predicament, and so they knew the running made no difference. The cone of destruction about to be unleashed by the ship’s lasers would be wider than the old village, swallowing even Parsona in the blast.

Ryke opened his unshielded eye and checked the rift. The narrow crack of light ahead of them had disappeared, the rip in space zipping up from the bottom. It was good to know the device was working, even if it didn’t have time to finish the job—

“Watch out!” Scottie said, squeezing his arm.

Ryke flinched and looked up, shutting his naked eye just a tad late. Through the monocle, he could see laser fire lance out from one of the ships coming their way. They were firing from an extreme range, probably picking up the closing of the rift on SADAR and wanting to put a stop to it.

For that reason, maybe, the over-eager shots made some sense. But what didn’t compute, what Ryke couldn’t figure, was why the trailing ship seemed to be firing first.

Cat’s balletic dance through the engineering space took a brief intermission when a direct hit from a blaster took her arm off at the shoulder. Her limb spun to the deck, the buckblade still in its grasp. Cat bent over—a brief bow for her audience—and tugged the sword from one set of her fingers with her other hand. She rose, and the performance resumed, an arc of her thinning blood spinning around her as she twirled to dispatch the shooter. The artery closed itself quickly, pinching tight, but she could feel the giddy dizziness from having lost even more of her dwindling supply. She tiptoed through puddles of it, the fresh balls of her bare feet gripping the deck better than her old boots would have. Two more defenseless workers were split open, then another guard, then one of the several Bern whose body sprayed sparks when it was cut in half, rather than blood.

Cat kept at the equipment as well, enjoying the fountain of lights that erupted from some of them—pyrotechnics for her show. She felt pinpricks of joyous sensation as burning embers settled on her skin. Warning domes mounted to the ceiling choreographed her movement, all their lenses the same shade of danger red Humans were fond of. Each of them throbbed with an impatient pulse, throwing their cones around and around, sliding over the far walls and rows of hurt Bern and machinery.

Another device as big as a refrigerator was split in half. It was an important looking one, and Cat’s lightheadedness intensified.

Then she realized the machine must’ve had something to do with the grav panels, as she saw several dead workers drift up from the deck, their body parts propelled like stuttering rockets with a red, arterial plume of exhaust.

Cat’s ballet of dismemberment seemed to move underwater as the gravity in the ship lessened, then disappeared altogether. She kicked off a tall server cabinet, propelling herself through the zero-G toward a Bern firing wildly with a plasma gun. She sliced through him and the large machine behind him, and the lights and sirens stopped their blaring and throbbing. She hit another piece of equipment—the one that must’ve controlled the air moving through the vast ship—and another—one for the overhead lights—and the whirring vents fell quiet and the room descended into near darkness.

Cat’s eyes adjusted as she cut through more of the Bern and their machines. She looked around for anyone left to murder, but her raucous audience had become wide-eyed and politely still in the darkened room. She swiped another machine, giddy with the pain coursing through her brain. A blaster wound in her thigh hurt so badly, her leg almost felt numb with agony. It was a sort of numbness she hadn’t known in almost forever. She didn’t have much time left, she knew. Her head was so light it could hardly corral a clear thought. She had pushed herself far past her body’s ability to heal. She had, as always, gone much too far.

Cat slashed through a few more machines and the remaining indicators and twinkling lights on their panels went dark, signifying the end of her show, her final performance. What small amount of blood remaining within her thumped with a rapid, shallow pulse that she could hear in her temples. It beat with the patter of tiny, galloping feet. It was—sadly—the only sound approximating applause that Cat the Cripple would ever know.

But then, Cat had never performed for the simple pleasure of her audience. As her eyelids grew heavy, and a final curtain of darkness descended before her, Cat knew that this last hurrah of hers had been, as with all her prior shows, mainly for herself.

Lady Liberty grew warm as the ship hit the outskirts of Lok’s atmosphere. Anlyn and Edison had stopped fiddling with the controls and struggling with the flightstick long ago. Nothing they did so much as altered their ship’s fall through the field of artificial gravity that surrounded them.

Instead, they chose to hold hands.

Around them, other crews were likewise finding ways to cope with their inevitable demise. The entire Darrin fleet had arrived in Lok’s orbit intact, and all were meeting the same fate Zebra fleet had: They were plunging toward a fiery reentry and crushing impact below.

It wasn’t long before a pale glow filled the cockpit with the first sign of atmospheric reentry. A nasty, tumbling, disintegrating death loomed. Anlyn reminded Edison, once more, of how much she loved him. Her ears popped, the sign of a hull breach somewhere. Another pop, followed by a beep—

And Anlyn realized those weren’t pops at all! They were power relays kicking back to life. And the glow she thought had come from the heat of reentry was actually emanating from the dash! When the grav panels came back online, Anlyn felt her body sag in her seat, even as her spirits soared in the opposite direction.

Edison roared with excitement. His hands danced across the dash, giddy and alive. The radio crackled with whooping wing leaders cheering and barking instructions. Anlyn took the controls and Lady Liberty pulled up, her thrusters warming as she rose, a battalion of tear-streaked faces and wide smiles forming up around her.

She aimed for the Bern fleet, and the first thing she saw was that the largest ship had gone perfectly black. All the lit portholes, the observation windows, the red flashing lights atop their spindly towers, all of them were dead and dark. There were no signs of explosions from the missiles, but she assumed they were embroiling within the belly of that beast.

Whatever the reason, she and her wingmen from Darrin were a fleet once more—a grinning fleet full of the sharpest of teeth. The other craft took up their positions around Anlyn, forming up on their wing leaders, and they accelerated toward a formation of Bern ships now in chaos.

The fleet from Darrin moved to wage war.

47 · Lok

Cole peered out the maw of the Bern craft’s broken windshield, past the jagged carboglass teeth lined up top and bottom, and watched the diving ships head their way. One of the enemy craft had fired on another one, sending it into a smoky spiral. Those two seemed to have been heading toward the ruined village just ahead. The third ship—the one that had been heading straight for them moments ago—began to bank around, racing back to help its wounded comrade.

“That’s one of ours,” Cole said to himself.

“That one?” Larkin asked, pointing toward the closest ship, which was swooping away.

“No, the one firing. It must be one of the Underground groups that came through before us. Has to be.” Cole looked down at the dash, which was sprinkled with small broken triangles of nearly-indestructible carboglass. Indicator lights winked with power, but only some of them. The screen in front of the dead pilot was still on, the SADAR showing in blinking dots what Cole and Larken could just as clearly see with their naked eyes.

“Help me move him,” Cole said, tugging on the pilot. Together, they were able to slide the man’s body, once a member of their raid squad, out of the seat and into the hallway. Cole ran back and plopped down in the vacated seat. He closed his eyes and bent forward, then blew a puff of air over the controls to get rid of the sharp dust.

“What does this say?”

Larken leaned over Cole and followed his fingers. “It’s a systems menu. That says life support, and that one’s for the grav panels, but it looks like they’re not selectable.”

“What is?” Cole asked.

“Choose that one,” Larken said. “It’s defenses.”

Cole scrolled down to it and pressed the control dial in with a click. Everything seemed to work just as he’d expect, even if he couldn’t read any of the gibberish on the screen.

“Anything?” he asked Larken.

“The chaff looks like it works.”

Cole laughed. Chaff was useless on the ground. He jogged the control dial to the left, and the previous menu came up. Again, he marveled at the familiar design aesthetics.

“What about weapons?” he asked.

“Scroll down,” Larken said.

Cole did.

“There!”

One of the menus was lit up. Cole had already begun moving to select it when Larken pointed excitedly.

“What is it?” Cole asked as he drilled down into the menu.

“Oh shit,” Larken said. He slapped Cole on the back.

“What the hell am I selecting?” Cole asked.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Larken said.

“Get those flankers!” Scottie yelled. He and Ryn pumped their fists in the air as the lead ship spiraled out of control, a plume of dark smoke trailing from its rear. Their allies in the Bern craft, one of the squads Ryke had formed up with in hyperspace, had nailed it with a series of laser blasts. As the wounded ship went down, it spat out desperate bursts from its own canons, but the shots flew wide over the old village. Where the bolts of plasma struck the earth, they sent up geysers of dust and soil in fantastic kinetic explosions.

“Aw, shit!” Ryn said. He grabbed Ryke by the shoulder and pointed behind them. The third ship, the one from the rift, had doubled back and taken a perfect bead on their comrades in the ship above. Plasma cannons erupted, furious bolts of pure energy lashed through the sky, and one of the shots clipped the wing of the allied Bern craft.

The hostile ship closed, adjusting its angle of attack. Another round of plasma flared across the gap, catching the ship square, and their friends blossomed into a lumpy ball of orange with a black, smoky fringe.

Gone, just like that.

The attacking ship banked hard, pulling away from the fireball it had wrought, and angled down toward the base of the rift. It had dispatched the only ally Ryke and his friends had nearby, and now it was turning around to do the job of its wounded comrade, which finally reached the ground a kilometer away in a mad, screaming, explosion.

The two blasts from the destroyed craft reached them at almost the same time, the roars of destruction deafening and coming from all directions at once. The three friends flinched in unison, ducking from the onslaught of compressed air that followed the explosions. Recovering quickly, they stepped back from the console, watching the remaining ship line up on them, bringing its cannons to bear—

And then another ball of flames appeared, another explosion, right where the enemy ship had been. The orange cloud blinked into existence like an eyelid peeling back on an impossibly large and brightly colored orb. The fire blossomed out, its edge fusing with the billowing smoke from the other ball of airborne destruction, three large ships meeting their sudden end in bizarre and rapid succession.

Ryke scanned the sky, dumbfounded, looking for a clue as to why they were still alive and the Bern ship destroyed. He finally saw, and followed, a thin plume of gray smoke, an ephemeral and dirty rope of exhaust, as it threaded its way through the bright, blue, Lokian sky back to Mortimor’s downed ship. It was the spiraling vapor trail of a lone missile that hung in the sky, slowly dissipating but still tracing the flight of its maker to the sad, crashed craft on the horizon.

Group two’s ship sat there, listing to one side, a wing drooping, its body broken, and yet—still very much deadly.

48 · Byrne’s Ship

As soon as Molly noticed the Wadi chewing through the webbing holding her in place, the creature stopped and looked up at her, its scent tongue flicking out like a whip. Molly blinked away her tears and noticed the sheen of wetness on the Wadi’s eyes. The animal blinked at her. Its tongue spiraled out, then disappeared back in its mouth.

Molly looked to her restraints, which were partially eaten through. She tested them, wrenching her hands apart, but they wouldn’t budge. She glanced to her side to see Byrne and the pilot conferring. To her other side, she saw Walter watching her and the Wadi with interest. Molly turned her attention back to her lap. She focused on the chewed portion of the harness, imagining herself eating through it. She ground her teeth as she had been doing moments earlier.

Her Wadi resumed its efforts.

Her Wadi could read her emotions!

So much dawned on Molly all at once: The tongue-flicks and the head-bobs, the hiding in her pocket when Molly was frightened, the pawing at the air when she was enraged. All the nuances and small behaviors Molly had superstitiously been reading into for weeks were confirmed! Her desire to avoid anthropomorphizing the animal had blinded her, and now she knew how the sheriff had used her Wadi to attack his deputy!

The webbing holding her into the seat parted, leaving her hands shackled, but her arms free. She thought about having the Wadi test the metal bands around her wrists with its teeth, but worried they would be too much for her jaws. Molly kept her hands in place so she wouldn’t alert Byrne and turned and saw Walter eyeing her freedom. He glanced down at his own buckled harness.

Molly looked to the Wadi, who stuck out her tongue and waved it in the air.

Yeah, Molly agreed, but half an ally is better than none.

She forced the words to the surface, just as if she were wearing a Drenardian headband, then realized the Wadi probably didn’t use language that way. Why would it know English? She closed her eyes instead and tried to form pictures in her mind that the animal might understand.

It was harder than she thought, so reliant was she on using words to convey instructions and meaning. And then there were the distractions spinning around her and within her that made it hard to think: Her father’s crashed ship, the returning Darrin fleet and how she’d failed them, Byrne and the news of Lucin, Walter’s latest betrayal. The more she tried not to think of them, the faster these distractions bubbled to the surface.

Molly pictured a god-like arm sweeping them all away, leaving just the blackness behind her eyelids. She pictured herself there, along with the Wadi. She imagined the two of them high up in the air and glowing white. She then placed the Bern crewmen below them, shrouded in black. She added Walter last, up with her and the Wadi, as painful as the picture was to create.

Molly opened her eyes and looked down at her lap.

Her Wadi stuck out her tongue. The creature’s head cocked to the side, almost as if in confusion, or deep thought.

Rather than ignore the temptation to read into the animal’s body language as she would have before, Molly took it all in and interpreted the Wadi’s look as she would from a Human. Something about her mental image must not be right—it must not make sense to the Wadi. She closed her eyes and reexamined the image she had formed as if she were an alien—and she saw everything wrong with it all at once.

There was no telling if white was good and black was bad to the Wadi. Of course! The animal lived in dark caves, avoiding the twin suns of Drenard. And it lived down in the canyons, not up in the harsh air. Molly wiped the image out of her mind, realizing at once that her prejudices were opposite the Wadi’s. She tried to start over, concentrating on the very basics, the primitive building blocks of communication. She could feel a sheen of sweat tickling her scalp, could hear Byrne and the pilot talking in the background. She swept her imaginary god-arm across all the wrong images looming behind her closed lids. She tried, for the very first time, talking to her pet Wadi piece by mental piece:

She started with an image of her own neck, big enough to fill her imagination. Just her neck and shoulders. She pictured the Wadi on it, tail curled tight, rough cheek brushing just behind her ear. Molly tried to feel it. She took a deep breath and tried to exude the calm, good feelings that came from security and safety.

She panned back. She brought Walter into the image. Molly imagined her arms around his back, her head leaning on his shoulder. A tremor of disgust threatened to invade, but she stifled it. She pictured the Wadi moving to Walter’s shoulder, feeling safe and content there.

Zooming out even more, she brought in the Bern. She gave them snapping jaws and filled them with aggression. Rather than feel fear of them, though, the kind of fear that made her want to retreat into a cave, Molly swelled herself with bravery. She made a show of striking at them, of the Wadi pawing the air at them, but not launching an attack just yet. First, she showed Walter’s hands breaking free, the Wadi chewing through his harness. Her final thought was of the Wadi striking out at the pilot while she and Walter went for the armless Byrne. She filled the attack with such confidence, even Molly began to feel it. She opened her eyes to see the Wadi already moving, already biting through the webbing holding Walter to his seat.

It was happening.

Molly had thought it, and now it was happening.

She was about to fight the Bern, in that cockpit, with her bare hands.

Walter’s arms came free. He undid the strap across his legs while Molly fumbled to do the same with hers. The Wadi burst off Walter’s lap and launched for the back of the pilot, just as she had imagined. Molly jumped up to wrap her bound wrists around Byrne’s neck. She yelled for Walter to help, but saw, in the corner of her vision, that he was running the other way, out to the cargo bay.

Molly cursed him. She threw her hands over the top of Byrne’s head and brought her shackled wrists down to his throat. She leaned back, trying to crush whatever he was made of.

A shriek erupted from the pilot. Molly kept her eyes tight, her jaws clenched. She didn’t need to see what the Wadi was doing to know. She’d seen the animal tunnel its way through flesh before.

Whatever Byrne’s neck was made of, though, it wasn’t flesh. Even with Molly leaning all her weight back and her feet braced on the base of Byrne’s seat, she couldn’t feel the surface of him budge. It was like trying to strangle a lamppost.

Byrne roared something and began to sit forward, bringing Molly with him. She hadn’t worried about him doing harm to her, not without his arms, but she quickly realized she’d been mistaken. Byrne bent at the waist, pulling her into the back of his seat, then kept bending forward even more, his mechanical spine showing no limit to the forces it could impart.

Molly was crushed and smothered against the back of his seat. She could feel the strain on her shoulders, the bite of the shackles on her wrists, and wondered which joint would give way first and if it would happen before she suffocated. She felt the urge to gasp in pain, but her cheek and neck were twisted against the back of the padded headrest, her jaw forced to the side. With a sickening pop, Molly felt one of her shoulders leave its joint, the tendons and ligaments crying out in pain. Tears formed in her eyes and were trapped there. Molly couldn’t breathe. She pictured her death, her failure, her stupidity.

The other shoulder felt as if it could go at any moment, and Molly realized the danger of picturing such things, the sort of pain and confusion she was leaking to her Wadi. With only half a breath in her lungs, she pictured instead her Wadi attacking Byrne. She pictured raw hate and destruction, all aimed at the armless man. She concentrated her fear into fury, her pain into punishment.

Her shoulder was blasted with another wave of torture, but it was the pain of coming back together. The pressure came off Molly’s jaw, then her cheek. She felt Byrne writhe beneath her aching wrists. She pulled back, brought her hands up over his head, and nearly fainted at the jolt of agony as her shoulder popped back into place. Her arm went numb past her elbow, down to her wrist. She stood, despite the fear she might pass out if she did, and saw the Wadi tunneling through the side of Byrne’s head. Its little tail spun madly, its hind legs clawing at the air, its head fully inside Byrne’s.

The powerful, armless, robot went berserk. He straightened his legs, attempting to jump out of his seat, but caught his knees on the dash and ripped a panel clean off. He tried throwing his head to the side to bash the Wadi against something, but his shoulder hit the dead pilot, who was slick with blood.

Molly tried to steady Byrne in order to protect the Wadi. She found herself transfixed by the sight of the animal, clawing through steel and twisted rods. She held Byrne’s shoulders, her own arm screaming with shining pain, when something popped. There was a loud, cracking sound followed by a brief flash of light, and then a sizzle from Byrne’s head just before his body went limp, slumping down into his seat.

The Wadi’s hind legs emerged, its tail wiggling. It pushed against the side of the ruined head, trying to extract itself from the hole it had dug. Molly reached up to help, then recoiled at the zap of electricity and heat. The rear half of her Wadi shivered, then fell still.

Molly ignored the pain and grabbed the animal quickly. She wrapped her hands around its waist and pulled it out. She heard herself cry out when its front limbs, then neck, came out limp. Molly pulled the animal against her chest. She adjusted her grip, using the sides of her arm to distribute the searing heat and keep it from ruining her hands.

Before her lay two lifeless Bern. Her every joint was in agony. Her Wadi was deathly still. It had all happened in an instant. Not even a minute.

Walter.

Molly turned around, searching for him, wondering where he had run off to, and saw that he had closed the cockpit door behind him.

She rushed to the door and slapped the controls to its side.

Nothing happened.

She peered through the door’s round observation port. In the cargo bay beyond, she could see Walter standing off to one side, just on the other side of the door. Molly pounded the glass and yelled for him.

Walter glanced back, just for a moment, then returned his attention to the open control panel by his side. He had a colorful tangle of wires out, the door’s controls dangling from the wall. Past him, Molly could see movement—one of the Bern guards emerging from a room aft of the cargo bay. As soon as the guard saw Walter, he called out, his lips moving but his alarm muffled by the cockpit door.

“Get inside!” Molly yelled to Walter.

She cradled the Wadi in the crook of her elbows and slapped the glass with both hands, the metal rope between them restricting her movement. “Walter!”

He didn’t turn. She could see the back of his head glowing as he fumbled through the wiring, looking for a particular one. He finally yanked one free, bit through it, then clamped his teeth down over the insulation and drew the wire out slowly, leaving a coppery bit exposed.

“Walter! Get inside!” Molly banged her wrist restraints against the glass, wondering if she could somehow use them to break through.

Walter turned at the sound of that. He had just cleaned another wire with his teeth. Two Bern guards were now running for him across the cargo bay.

Walter shook his head. His lips were curled down, tears streaking across his cheeks. He mouthed something to Molly, then brought the two wires up.

I’m ssorry.

He mouthed the words again as he pressed the coppery bits together, twisting them tight.

In an instant, the cargo bay filled with a white haze of condensed air. Wisps of it stirred, like speeding clouds racing for some unseen horizon.

The Bern guard further away from the cockpit turned to his side, his eyes wide and white in horror. He slipped and fell, then was pulled after the swirling, escaping air—sliding out of view.

The other guard dove across the last meters of the cargo bay and crashed into Walter. His face was twisted up in fury and fear. He pawed at Walter’s hands, trying to wrestle the wires away from him, but then the sucking of what must’ve been an open cargo bay and the vacuum of space beyond tugged at his feet, lifting him and Walter into the air.

Walter held the edge of the opened control panel, his fingers wrapped around the square hole in the hull. He dangled there, stretched out sideways, the Bern guard hanging from his feet.

Molly’s nose touched the glass in front of her, the Wadi pinned to her chest. She cupped her hands on either side of her face and peered through the porthole. Walter’s eyes locked on to hers. She watched, horrified, as the vacuum of space tore the tears from his cheeks, sending them like twinkling bullets back through the bay.

The Bern guard lost his grip on Walter and went tumbling out of sight, bouncing off a bulkhead as he went. Walter went to mouth one last thing, but then the shine on him faded away, dulling into some state of calm. A wan smile broke across the Palan’s face. His eyes twinkled as if some beautiful thing had appeared in his vision, and then he let go.

His arms waved in the air once.

His eyes locked on Molly’s.

And then Walter was gone forever.

49 · Earth

As Lieutenant Robinson approached the offices of the GU President, the old Bern agent couldn’t believe his good fortune. The invasion of the Milky Way Galaxy had played out in a strange mixture of stops and starts for him, almost like a perfect microcosm of his entire career. For two decades, he had toiled as a member of the Human Navy, trying his damnedest to push the war through the pesky Drenard front in order to secure the rift from their side. At the very least, he had meant his efforts to weaken their defenses while more Bern agents slipped through the rift, dodging the blockade. And just when he was starting to see some successes along those lines, the High Command got involved in some prophecy nonsense.

Robinson was one of the many older agents who frowned on Byrne’s exploits, the crazy simulacrum obviously having gotten a wire crossed during his construction. But then, reversing a reversal, the daft bot had come through. A new rift had been opened, and the Bern fleet had begun pouring into the pesky galaxy in a manner unheard of, undreamt of, when considering the older, Drenardian rift.

That high elation had been followed by the awesome destruction of his Zebra fleet, which had gone well enough, if not ending up the absolute success Robinson had hoped.

That brought a high, which was followed by another low as Saunders survived the attack, a failure that would reflect poorly on Robinson in future reports. Then the lows became even lower as Robinson was forced to watch a desperate herd of Humans huddle together in that wooded clearing, plotting audacious miracles, aligning themselves with even more grotesque aliens.

But lows could be highs in disguise, he had learned. The arrival of the Drenardian girl had seemed to spell trouble, bringing the threat of peace between their race and the Humans, but just when things seemed to be dipping, they soared again. Here he was, walking alongside that cursed piece of paper, that peace treaty, and escorting his fat Admiral through the antechamber of the GU president himself. He was strolling with them on the eve of a successful invasion of their galaxy, and all mere moments away from their personal destruction.

What better way, Robinson thought to himself, to sow discord through this mutant empire than by lopping off its head right as the fight begins? What better way to usher the rest of the body toward its violent demise?

Robinson watched Saunders go through the security gauntlet first, once again waving his pass and vouching for the rest. That gesture was coming for the third time, and the nicety was pissing off Robinson. He wanted to be scanned. He wanted his credentials registered. He wanted his people and higher-ups to know he had been there, that it was he who did this. Let Byrne, that blasted agent, take credit for opening some trifling door, he would be the agent to go down in Bern lore, passed from one universe to the next, remembered forever as the man who began the war, the one who assassinated the President of a race grown notorious for their insolence, for their inability to just go away.

Saunders waved Sharee through the scanner next, her flanking gender somehow more important to protocol than Robinson’s rank.

Robinson smiled. Soon, it wouldn’t matter. Nothing on the entire residential wing of that building would survive the blast he was about to unleash. Not that piece of paper, that treaty promising peace. It would burn no less righteously than all else.

The Secretary of Galaxy waved him through the security screen next, and Robinson stepped forward between the scanning walls, smiling at the officials on the other side of the viewing ports. The barred gates ahead of him remained closed as he stood still, letting their futile scanners have their fun. His augmented innards were designed to pass the most detailed of scans. Security agents would see cybernetic lungs, rather than bombs and chemical agents mixing together.

“Credentials, please,” a voice said through the security corridor’s speakers.

Robinson smiled. Finally, he thought.

He reached for his pass, using the movement to hide the complex motions necessary to arm himself. His fingers became a blur, twitching in just the right pattern and at just the precise timing to activate the once-inert gels, now hardened into furious potential. His hand came away from his damp, mud-speckled flightsuit bearing his badge, his body now little more than a potent bomb.

Robinson held the badge up in front of the viewing port, turned to the side, and smiled at the Secretary of Galaxy, who nodded back.

“Pass it in front of the scanner, please.”

“Gladly,” Robinson said. He looked the other way toward Saunders, that fat fool, only to see Saunders flashing a smile. The Admiral was grinning like something delicious had just passed through his flabby gullet. Joy on that man’s face brought a frown to Robinson’s. He could see the GU President beyond the Admiral and Sharee, coming out of his suite with his arm extended. Robinson thought about doing it right then, scanning his pass and blowing the serpent’s head clear off, taking that nest of vipers with him—

But then the scanner beeped as his badge was registered. And it beeped again, the beep echoing louder. And louder. The initial acknowledgment seemed to morph into an alarm.

Robinson froze, but every other mechanical thing around him whirred into action. Ports slammed shut. Blast walls thundered down from the ceiling. The acoustics of his surrounding space altered as the dull press of thick steel shrouded him on all sides, swallowing even the now-distant sirens.

Looking down, Robinson saw the scanner’s laser array hashed across his credentials, reading the black squiggles of information. He looked at his badge, the apparent trigger for the sudden lock-down.

He saw his face. His name.

But not his ID number.

Not, he could even tell at a glance, his barcode.

Something in Robinson’s internal database, his perfect memory of Navy secrets, signaled a match. Relays sent that information from one module of his computer-like being to another. It registered in his consciousness, accompanied by red blips and the alarm of his Navy persona. It was the warning flashes of a C-15 Object of Interest.

According to his badge, Robinson was the most wanted man in the galaxy. But how could that—?

No, he realized, as the rest of the file came just nanoseconds later: He was the most wanted female in the galaxy.

The name belonging to the barcode flashed through his mind, remaining there as his fury and confusion tripped the hair-triggered bomb he’d just concocted. Robinson looked up, searching for Saunders and that infernal smile on his flabby face. But everything around him was gone, sealed off by thick blast walls that had long waited for just such a contingency. The barriers left Robinson alone with that name, the one that went with the barcode. It existed for a brief eternity, a fleeting thought amid a contained cloud of explosive and expanding debris, much like a star in the center of a fiery nebula:

Molly Fyde.

50 · Reunions

Byrne’s sleek command ship touched down on Lok, its cargo door already hanging open. With a matching atmosphere outside, Molly was finally able to open the cockpit door manually, the safety overrides having become disengaged. With her wrists still bound and her lifeless Wadi nestled in the crook of her arms, she stumbled out of the death-filled cockpit, past the tangle of wires hanging from the bulkhead, through the cargo bay, and out into the bright day and dry grasses. She had landed a stone’s throw from the downed ship from hyperspace, but only a handful of faces turned her way—everyone was too busy or in too much shock to care about her arrival.

“Cole?” Molly stumbled toward the horrific scene.

The large Bern ship lay in a bent heap. Survivors staggered around it, walking among and carrying the bodies of those less fortunate. Still mounds were laid out in a neat line across the trampled prairie. Some were being tended to; a hand with life still in it clutched to someone’s shirt. Scant covering hid another’s face, knelt over by someone sobbing. Molly passed through the outer edge of the dead and wounded, so many alien races present, as she looked for recognizable features, dreading finding them in case those she loved were amongst the still.

“Cole?”

A girl with hair like fire caught Molly’s attention, her bright green eyes tracking her. Molly didn’t see Cole at first, not until the girl grabbed someone’s arm, directing a man’s attention—

Cole.

Molly ran to him. She clutched her Wadi and weaved her way through the crowd. Cole moved to stand, winced as if in pain, then sank back down. Molly threw herself into his arms.

“Cole!”

He didn’t respond.

His arms went limply across her back and felt heavy with fatigue. Molly kissed his shoulder, his neck, his skin scented like smoke and grease. She sat back, placed the Wadi on the grass like so many other dead, and went to throw her manacled hands over his neck.

Cole grabbed her wrists and stopped her. He still hadn’t smiled or said a word. He shook his head, and Molly noticed the tear-tracks cutting through the soot on his cheeks.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

She wanted to ask what he could mean, then Cole’s gaze drifted to the girl with the fiery hair. Molly turned to her. She noticed for the first time that the girl cradled a man’s head in her lap.

A cold vacuum filled Molly’s lungs.

She tried to breathe, to call out, but could do neither.

Her father was lying in the bent grass, his head turned to the side. Molly could see his lips, barely parted, amid the tangle of his beard. A beard much grayer than she remembered.

“Dad?”

Molly placed her bound hands on Cole’s shoulder and shuffled closer on her knees. Her vision blurred as she groped for her father’s hand. A distant part of her registered the wide stain of blood seeping through his white flightsuit.

“Dad?”

She looked to Cole, and then the girl. This couldn’t be happening. She dropped her father’s limp hand and felt his neck. There was nothing there, but his body was still warm. Molly arranged herself beside him. She placed her palms on top of his chest.

“Molly—”

Cole started to say something, to pull her back, but seemed unable.

Molly performed a series of thrusts.

The girl cradling her father’s head held out a hand. “We’ve tried—”

“So try again!” Molly yelled. She bent forward and blew into her father’s mouth, his lips not cold and lifeless yet. It was those around her that seemed frozen, the dead and the alive alike. They all grounded to a halt as Molly began another round of thrusts.

She pushed down and counted, looking at her father’s face as she did so, which rocked eerily with her compressions. He looked like he was merely asleep. He looked so much like Molly remembered him. She wanted him to wake up, to say something, to make sense of the hurricane her life had become. Molly moved to give him more air, but the other girl stopped her. She slid out from under his head, rested it gingerly on the grass, then bent to do the breaths herself.

As Molly waited, she spotted more crimson by her father’s collar. She undid his flightsuit’s zipper and found, rather than a wound and more blood, a Drenardian headband tucked down by his neck.

Molly ignored it, went to perform another series of thrusts, then felt her mind spin with wild notions.

She grabbed the band and reached for her father’s forehead. The girl seemed to understand; she moved out of the way while Molly arranged the band, working as well as she could with the short length of steel rope between her shackled wrists.

Molly patted her own chest, feeling for the band she’d taken off Byrne’s body. She pulled it out as the girl bent for another round of breaths. Molly checked the fabric for any damage from the Wadi’s burrowing. She felt Cole’s hand on her back as she slipped the band on and spun the seam to the back. The icy hollow in her lungs was matched by a stab through her chest. To have Cole so near after so long—the thought of losing her father—not knowing if the galaxy was doomed or saved—she forced it all out of her mind and concentrated on a single thought, bringing it to the surface, bright and loud:

“Dad? Dad!”

The universe was a dull thumping. Her own pulse filled her ears, the same pounding felt in her chest, muffled wails and shouts a background around her, dim awareness of the bright flashes high above as ships bloomed into fire and then faded to nothingness, the last of the melting snow as the great rift closed up in the hazy Lokian sky, even the flutter of the parched grasses, their beady tips waving in a breeze, brushing against one another—

“Mollie?”

She turned to Cole, but her love’s cheeks were pulsing as he clenched and unclenched his jaw.

He hadn’t spoken.

“Dad?”

“Mollie, is that you?”

She fought the urge to throw herself across his chest.

“Dad, I need you to breathe.”

Arms straight, Molly leaned her shoulders over her hands and gave his chest five more sharp thrusts.

“Dad, I need you to wake up!”

“Where are you? Your voice—It’s my voice—Is it the bands?”

“Dad, I need you to try and wake up. I need you to breathe, damnit.”

Molly fought to keep her words calm. Intelligible. She had to remind herself to breathe as well.

“Oh my sweetest girl, I don’t think that’s possible. I’m—I’m dying. I can feel it—”

“No you’re not!” Molly gave his sternum five more thrusts. The girl with the red hair bent low and gave him more air, her father’s cheeks puffing out in a mimicry of life.

“You’re not gonna die,” Molly thought. She tried to will it true, just like forming loud words out of mere thoughts.

“I already am dead, I think.”

“Don’t say that—” More thrusts. More air, cheeks billowing lifeless.

“Squeeze my hand, baby girl.”

Molly shook her head, and tears leapt off her nose.

She kept her palms on his great chest and heaved down. She watched herself move as if a spectator from some great height. She saw her hands splayed wide, knuckles white from exertion and shock. She saw that the red stain across her father’s chest had spread. She felt a wall of rapt eyes arranged around her. The other girl forced his cheeks wide with more air pushed down into his lungs.

“Squeeze my hand.”

“Dad—”

“Please. Before it’s too late.”

Molly stopped her thrusts and checked for a pulse. She ran her fingers along the edge of her father’s graying beard, probing his neck for any feeble hint of life. The girl with the fiery hair bent over and turned to the side, hovering her cheek above Mortimor’s lips, waiting for a puff of breath. She looked up and met Molly’s questioning gaze out of the corner of her eyes.

Set lips said enough.

“My hand—”

Her father’s words leaked into Molly’s mind, pleading her in her own voice. Reluctantly, she allowed her bound hands to fall from his sternum and her hopeful fingers to retreat from his neck. She clasped her father’s hand with both of her own and held it tight. Some distant sense, some numb awareness, told her that Cole was holding her shoulders and crying, whispering her name, his body shaking with sobs.

“There,” her father thought. “I can feel it. I can feel you. Oh, how I’ve longed for this.”

Molly squeezed his hand harder. “Come back to me,” she pleaded.

“Oh, my sweetheart, I’m so sorry I ever left you—”

Molly shuddered with trapped sobs. Her tears were welling up so thick and fast, the world around her had become a shiny, bulging blur. The only things clear were the words in her head, her father’s and her own.

“How long do we have?” she thought.

“I don’t—Are you still holding my hand?”

Molly looked down where her cream-white hands were wrapped around her father’s. She squeezed as hard as she could, holding him as if she could trap what remained of his life and keep it forever.

“I’m holding it, Dad.”

“Then I suspect our time is short. I—I can’t feel anything.”

Molly shook her head. She dropped his hand and went back to his sternum. This time, she didn’t bother counting her thrusts. She just pressed and pleaded, shaking her head, tears falling down on him.

“Please don’t—” she begged.

“Mollie—”

“Dad, please don’t—”

“I love you—”

“Oh, gods, Dad!”

“…”

“Dad!”

“…”

“Say something!”

“…”

“Please—”

“…”

Molly stopped pushing on his chest and clapped her hands over her face. She searched the pounding silence in her head for some lingering thought, for some connection, for a single word from her father.

But he was gone. All that remained were the numb echoes of his quiet thoughts, the fading sense of a connection to another mind, and then the narrow rift between the two of them closed up and sealed itself with silence.

Molly cried out. She screamed. She sobbed into her hands and fumbled in vain for that retreating connection. She clawed after it in the harsh and lonely darkness of her own mind. She filled the vacuum of her loneliness with a rage for all that had been taken. And then she shuddered, her hands balled up in front of her, her fists empty of all else, as Cole wrapped her up in gentle and loving restraint. She felt his tears fall on her neck, heard his sobs of anguish and whispered, muted sorrow, all of it mixing with her own.

51 · Hyperspace

The Bern Seer watched events unfold from her saddle, her eyes pressed tightly against the seeing cups, her lashes flicking across its glass lenses. An annoying rivulet of water snaked through her flightsuit, having wormed its way in through her visor. The thin stream wrapped down the edge of a rib and slid out the holes cut in the feet of her suit. Normally, such a stream would tickle like mad, forcing her to squirm in place as she itched herself against the insides of her uniform, but she was too captivated by the sights ahead of her to bother.

Layer upon layer of happenings loomed in her vision, and the bumps in time came fast and furious, swaying her shack, making it difficult to stay on her saddle. She rode the flurries out, then concentrated on seeing, on allowing her focus to drift near and wide, settling now and then on events in-between and watching those play out as well.

Each thread of happenings was like a layer of cellophane with a small vid displayed on it. She had but to shift her focus mentally to tease out one from the other. She could blur a near happening and hone in on a deeper one, or ignore those and look at something more recent. So much to see. The days of long boredom, of unblinking ennui, had been shattered. Now she had so much before her all at once and not enough eyes or time to take it in.

Not enough time, she thought. In hyperspace.

A thin smile formed, but then her focus switched to the ships fighting over Lok, to the ferocious charge by the small but powerful fighters from Darrin. They tore through the larger Bern craft, their shields and exotic weapons more than making up for their diminutive size. They buzzed like hornets, but with a controlled and well-timed grace, as one large shape after another exploded into mist.

The small fleet from Darrin suffered their own casualties, though. Every now and then, one of them disappeared in a much smaller pop of debris. The Seer watched as two of the Bern craft turned on their own kind, and she knew these to be the ones with her friends from hyperspace. The shock from this treachery threw the Bern fleet into chaos. Formations splintered. Doubts coursed. More and more craft joined those that had perished down in the prairie, but now the lands of Lok were littered with far more foe than friend.

Looking deeper, the Seer saw the President of the Galactic Union back on Earth. She saw him confused and sleepy-eyed. She could see Saunders waving his arms in explanation, producing sheaves of paper, as smoke leaked from a crack in thick blast doors and GU guards moved in to investigate a contained explosion.

Nearer, now, she saw three friends hugging in the ruin of an old building. A crack of light, emitting photons that had streamed past her just moments ago, drifted around them. But high above, the Lokian sky kept moving up like a great zipper to swallow the whiteness. The closing of the rift sliced a Bern ship in half, just as it was coming out from hyperspace. The severed end of the craft leaked small figures, their arms waving in the snow-filled atmosphere as they and their craft fell toward the prairie.

And then there was Cole, emerging from the ruin of a downed ship. Cole the brave. Cole, her father. He was carrying a figure the Seer knew would be there, but didn’t want to know. It was Mortimor, her grandfather. Cole was crying, and the Seer felt the need to look away. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. Some things, some sights, she had avoided for too long. Avoided because such things shouldn’t be seen until they had already happened. So she forced herself to watch, taking solace in the opportunity she’d had to tell them both goodbye.

And Molly, flying. Her brave mother, not yet half the woman the Seer would know her to be. Tears were streaming down her mother’s young face, even though she did not yet know the full tally of her losses.

Her mother flew with bound hands, with a lifeless pet curled in her lap, with eyes sad and determined. She soared down toward the surface of Lok and all the horror and heartbreak that awaited her there.

And sitting silent at the locus of it all was Parsona. Her old ship. Her mom’s old ship and her grandfather’s old ship. It housed the one person—or thing—the Bern Seer had never gotten to pay her dues to. And now she never would.

The Seer suddenly realized she had seen enough. With a glance at the planet of Palan, that blue orb shimmering on its own film of cellophane-like vision, she saw that the time had come. The time had come to put a beginning to all things. She pulled her eyes away from the seeing lenses and returned to her world of utter blindness. Pushing up from the saddle, she slid back along its wet length to the small porch behind, the pounding of the rain on a tin roof loud and near.

With a shudder, the cabin heralded the passing of another event. Old hands gripped the rails, keeping the rest of her steady. With a weariness that can only come from seeing so much, the Bern Seer shuffled her way toward the back of her cabin, the patter of rain on her helmet urging her along.

She stopped by the two trunks on the back porch and sat on the one she never opened. She lifted the lid of the other one and set her helmet inside. As she nestled it in place, she rubbed her hands over the bumps and scrapes, feeling each indention.

Some of the marks were hers, and she remembered them well, her mind and recollection made keen from all the day’s activity. Other dents and dings belonged to her mother, and she only had stories to go with some of them. A scratch here from her crash into Glemot. A dent there where she said she’d once gone through a carboglass canopy after some cadet named Jakobs. One deep gash her mom would never talk about, always looking away with tears in her eyes.

In her normal, daily routine, the Seer would next take off the flightsuit. She would go to the galloping Theyrls, thank them for their hard work, then dry off inside and crawl between her sheets. But in a land where there were no days… this day was different.

She closed the lid before her and rotated around to sit on it. Leaning forward, she opened the trunk she never opened, grasping the lid tightly as the cabin shimmied yet again. Once the tremor passed, she lifted the lid all the way and locked it into place, having to grope for the unfamiliar clasp.

Inside the trunk lay the last hyperdrive Doctor Ryke would ever build. His “masterpiece,” he would one day call it. He had rigged it for the Seer’s blind eyes: Three simple buttons that could only be pressed in one particular order. She ran her hands along all three, familiarizing herself with them, recalling instructions given so long ago.

First, she said a silent word to her Theryl friends, who had held her and her cabin in place for so many endless hours. Nothing fancy—gods knew she wasn’t a poet—just a final thanks and a message of love. She then pressed the first button, setting loose half a liter of special fusion fuel.

There were a series of pops beyond the porch as the animals disappeared, whisked back to Phenos, hopefully for a long and lazy life of idle grazing on warm, dry fields.

As soon as they departed, the incessant creaking of the shack stopped. The vibrations halted. Like a ship turning out of the wind and moving to a broad reach, the Seer’s world fell silent while her tiny shack ceased its long fight against a slide into the past. Now it drifted along, moving with events rather than be bucked by them, coasting along on the surface of hyperspace.

The Seer pressed the second button, freeing most of the remaining fusion fuel. At first, nothing seemed to happen. There was a delay as the low, flat rift began to open above Palan’s solitary continent. Ryke had programmed the rift to iris out for seven hours, gobbling the rains before snapping shut forever. If the hyperdrive was his masterpiece, then this was Ryke’s crowning achievement, a breakthrough he wouldn’t have for many more years. The Seer tried to recall his explanation of how it would work, how hyperspace, by its very nature, multiplied the two keys of life: light and water. She never could appreciate how all the persistent rain and snow of her home came from mere molecules of water and a handful of photons, but she had seen enough strangeness there to take some things for granted. If Ryke said a single Palan rain, falling through a rift opened over its lone continent and multiplied a trillion trillion times would be enough to destroy hyperspace, the Seer was inclined to believe him.

Now that the second button was pressed—that button she had long agonized over—the Seer could allow herself to feel sorry for the billions of innocents she had just doomed. They would become stranded as hyperspace closed to them forever. There were ships between work and home, fleets along lines of battle, families separated from one another by work or happenstance, people injured in need of a hospital. Soon, hyperspace would be unavailable to them. Jolts of electricity might shock fusion critters in their fuel tanks, but they would no longer respond. The days of cheap, instantaneous travel for most people were over, including for the spreading Empire of the Bern.

The Seer could no longer see their massive invasion fleet arranged throughout hyperspace, but she could feel their violating presence. She took solace in knowing that the billions of lives of blood on her hands would also be the undoing of the Bern, the rulers of tens of thousands of universes. She pictured her land, a giant cone, as it filled to bursting with Palan’s water. She thought about all the slits, the little tears each of those invading Bern warships had left behind from their jumps into hyperspace. Each one would soon burst open, freeing a shower of frozen water, all of it laced with the Bern’s microscopic undoing, the creatures known as fusion fuel. Soon, they would conquer all attempts by the Bern to hem in life and control it. They would free countless other galaxies, just as they had ensured the Milky Way and its local cluster would remain too wild to tame.

A sharp pain in the Seer’s knuckle disturbed her lapse into dreaming. She was still holding down the second button, her finger trembling under the furious strain. She let go. She reminded herself to breathe.

She wasn’t sure how much more time she had. It was a novel sensation after years of not being able to be late, of never having time run out on anything, but now she had so little of it left.

The floods were going to come and take her away.

So the Bern Seer pressed the third button, the one she had begged Ryke to include, the one they had argued over, as neither of them understood its consequences. Not even Ryke and his powerful mind, not the Seer with her all-seeing vision, could tell what might become of it. Still, they saw no other way to protect the past and warn the future, so the remaining fusion fuel disappeared, moving through time and space, taking along what they chose to, or were told to.

In this case, they grabbed a simple silver canister, beat up and dented, but containing a strange and dangerous letter. It was a letter addressed to the very person who had written it, kept safe in a cylinder once used to send messages of peace through hyperspace to the planet Drenard.

The Seer knew Doctor Ryke would find the letter and use his own imparted knowledge to best purposes. He would learn about the end of hyperspace and the need for a handful of rifts stationed throughout the Milky Way, rifts to link major planets like Earth, Drenard, and now Lok. He would also learn not to build too many, about the danger in weakening the fabric of space. He would even learn hints of a new type of hyperdrive that would aid travel in strange ways. He would receive the barest tease of formulas his older brain glimpsed brilliance in, that perhaps his youthful mind could fully sort out.

Three buttons pressed, three satisfying clicks, and the Seer’s work was done. She was done and tired and ready to go. She stood, legs creaking audibly now that her home had fallen silent, and she considered crawling back into bed to wait for the floods.

But no, she decided, she would go to the front of the cabin instead, back to her wall of tin and her skinny porch. And she wouldn’t get in the saddle or take her helmet with her. She would go and stand there, stand in the rain with no protection at all. She would raise her arms and wait for the floods to wash away the wicked.

And she would go gladly.