I am the power of the Eshvaren made manifest—that’s what Esh told me a lifetime ago in the Echo. I am everything they wished, and all my enemies will burn.
The light of the dying red dwarf star frames the planet as we rocket toward it, streaking ahead of our pursuers, and all is quiet on its rocky surface.
Silence ahead of us. Chaos behind.
Kal pounds through the hallways of the ship beneath me, and the Neridaa descends toward the huge crater of those massive workshop doors, ten kilometers across. Already they’re soundlessly opening, revealing the perfectly smooth tunnel beyond, carved into the rock itself. The ship moves fast, guided with the lightest touch—it’s almost as if she wants to go home.
“We’re following you in,” Tyler bellows down comms as a Ra’haam ship smashes into the planet’s surface, dying in a blaze of fire and debris. “Tan, get after it, try and— Maker, you do it, de Mayr!”
From his throne, Caersan speaks, blood dripping from his chin, his teeth bared in a carnivorous smile.
“I have few regrets in life, child. But I would give a great deal to have seen your face when you discovered I had beaten you here and taken the Neridaa.”
“I’m going to enjoy seeing your face,” I reply. “When I take her off you.”
It doesn’t sound like me, it doesn’t feel like me, but it is me talking—my bloody lips twisting as Caersan narrows his eyes.
But the battle is burning all around us, and I’m caught up in that fire, plunging the ship past the doors and into the tunnel, kilometers wide, the Ra’haam and the Free fleets pouring after us. The dark is lit with quick explosions, and all I can hear down comms are screamed commands, cutting over the top of each other, a hopeless mess of orders and pleas.
I let my mind sweep outward, and I find Kal, nearly at the place where the Ra’haam swarm is pouring into our wounded ship, one violet-and-gold beacon against the writhing, starving mass of green and blue.
I anchor a piece of myself to him, and reach out farther to find the Vindicator, pushing myself into Tyler’s mind, into Lae’s, past the exhaustion and the fear and the single-minded focus on the battle.
Kal needs you!
But there is someone else out there too—I can hear his voice, sense the pieces of him that can never be separated now from the whole.
“… Jie-Lin …”
“… Jie-Lin, come to me… .”
“It only calls to you because it fears it cannot win,” Caersan hisses, gripping the arms of his throne, knuckles white. “Do not participate in your own defeat, girl. Tears are for the conquered.”
We burst into the crystal cavern at the planet’s core, and I reach out mentally to stop Kal from falling as the Neridaa slows suddenly to a crawl, turning her toward the scaffolding, toward her old cradle.
The chamber is vast—hundreds of kilometers wide—massive cliffs of crystal reflecting the light of the ships spilling behind us, arcs of fire streaming across the rainbow gables above, explosions echoing on ancient crystal.
The scale of this place is breathtaking, the dusty emptiness of eons now filled with the battle to save the future. The power it must have taken to build something like this, the Weapon we ride in—last time I was here, I felt like an insect beside it. But now I feel that same power rushing through me, setting me alight. And as the Neridaa settles into place, a feeling of relief washes over me—it’s like taking off too-tight shoes, like breathing out.
She’s home.
I turn my head and catch a glimpse of blue flowers, and then they’re gone, wiped out as a ship flies into a thousand glittering pieces, debris striking its pursuer so it blooms into a second explosion.
Tyler’s ship lands beside us, he and his crew spilling out, but the Ra’haam vessels are soaring into the chamber like a swarm of locusts now, mingled with too few of our own ships, swirling around us in a thick, choking mass.
There’s a snatch of music, I swear, just a few intoxicating notes—and then a grunt of effort from Caersan shatters the moment.
We need time—time to repair our broken ship, to heal the fractures running through her skin. And looking to the domed crystal sky above, I know there are too few of our allies left to buy it for us.
And I don’t even know where to begin. …
But as if in answer, the coppery taste of blood in my mouth turns sweet, and the scene before me begins to fade. I feel a heavy numbness, a gravity pulling me down, and though I cling for a moment, I can feel myself sliding away to somewhere familiar, somewhere I’ve been before.