“It will be shortly, sir.”
“So you’re returning to the Core?”
“No, sir.”
Lugen didn’t speak for a long time, then his weary voice crackled back on. “Excubitor—”
“The majority of my crew will be coming through on a Drudger vessel, call sign…” Jackin swept open a file on his nexus and held it out in front of her. “VCF-840115.”
“Fine, if you’re going to make me,” Lugen growled. “Excubitor, I order you to return to the Core.”
“I can’t, sir.”
“Rake…” His serious tone carried a heavy warning that instantly made her second-guess herself.
She swallowed and steeled her nerves. “I have to fix it, sir. Or at least stop it from getting worse.”
“There’s protocol for this kind of thing.”
“For the universe collapsing, sir? I’m not sure there is.”
“You have to trust me on this. We’ll send assistance.”
“That’ll take too long. We can’t keep waiting for the Legion.”
He stayed silent for a few tense seconds. “Do not do this to me again, Adequin,” he breathed, his tone furtive. “I don’t know if I can protect you this time.”
Adequin disconnected the call. She sat in silence and stared at the dead link.
“Rake?” Jackin’s voice broke through, low and full of worry. “What are you doing?”
She stood and turned around. Jackin, Griffith, Mesa, Cavalon, Emery, Warner, and Puck all stood eyeing her in various degrees of shock and discomfort.
“Rake?” Jackin said again.
She shook her head. “We can’t just go back to the Core.”
“But it’ll stop, right? The Divide? Once it settles between the alpha stations that are still working? It’s just … squaring off, sort of? It won’t just keep collapsing and wipe out everything…”
“If those stations don’t fail as well,” Adequin said. “Even if they do stay on, it would still take out every Sentinel ship between the two. And what if it starts wiping out Apollo Gates? Then any Sentinels that manage to flee the Divide will still be stranded out here, with no way home.”
“She’s right,” Griffith said. “If the gates at the Divide are taken out, it’s over. It’d take a lifetime or longer to warp to the next closest gates.”
Adequin nodded. “We have to get that beacon restarted. Stop the collapse.”
“Sorry…” Puck said suddenly, hovering behind Mesa and Cavalon, eyes wide in disbelief. “What does that mean exactly? Stop the collapse?”
Thankfully, Mesa turned to him and made brief work of it. “The data beacons are not data beacons, but dark-energy generators. Their cessation seems to be the cause of the Divide’s collapse.”
Puck gaped at her, mouth open. Warner ran a hand down his face.
Adequin looked to Cavalon. “So, we have to restart the power source. Correct?”
“Right,” Cavalon said, face fixed in shock.
“By that, I mean you have to restart the power source.”
He didn’t move. “I know.”
“Which is … what?” Puck asked warily.
“A star, apparently,” Griffith said.
“A contained fusion reaction,” Cavalon clarified, scratching his stubble with both hands. “It’s not really a star. Just sort of.”