“Welcome, Commanders. If you are hearing this message, the Battle of Terra has concluded, I have departed your timeline for the year 2177, and Whiplash Protocol has been enacted. Please engage all short-range scanners on Aurora Station, screen for fighter gradients, maximum intensity. Tell your scanner crews they are looking for a shuttle, Terran in origin, Osprey series, Model 7I-C. Scramble medical crews to assist the occupants, have facilities online to deal with one Betraskan male, nineteen years of age, suffering anaphylaxis, and possible pharyngeal, laryngeal, and tracheal trauma.”
My stomach twists at that, breath coming quicker.
“I have spent the last thirty years of my life perfecting these algorithms,” Zila continues. “I dreamed as a cadet of resources on this scale. I regret that I am not there to see the final result.” For just a moment, I see a glimpse of the girl who liked her Stun setting way, way too much.
“I am as certain of success as I can possibly be,” she continues. “But I am not perfect. And I am not the religious sort.” Her eyes sweep the room. “I hope you are there, Tyler. And if you are, perhaps a prayer would not be out of order. You always were the believer among us.”
Adams repeats the commands into his comm badge, engaging the scanner teams, scrambling the med crews. Zila’s image just hovers there, silent. As I watch, she begins to chew a lock of hair.
After a minute or two, the lights around us start to pulse harder. The overheads in the corridor outside grow dim and then flicker out entirely.
With no more warning, the station net drops entirely, the artificial grav cuts off, and Adams curses beneath his breath as the Eshvaren probe burns with an intensity that’s almost blinding. The hair all over my body is standing tall. A subsonic hum is building in the back of my head.
“She’s sucking power out of the entire station grid,” de Stoy hisses.
Zila’s holographic lips curl into a mischievous smile, and I reach out toward her, terrified, crying, but somehow smiling with her.
And then I do as she asks, closing my eye, picturing Finian and Scar, my friend and my twin, praying to the Maker with everything I have.
Bring them back.
Bring them back to me, please.
The hum rises to a slow scream. The Eshvaren probe burns so bright I can see it through the closed lid of my eye, turning my head as the sound rises in pitch. The station shudders, the power builds, every drop of juice from the core ripped from the grid and projected into the probe’s blazing heart.
The screaming begins to hurt, I hear Adams roaring, but through it all, I keep praying. Holding on as tight as I can to the thought Adams instilled in me when we first left for Sagan Station, before we ever discovered Aurora, got dragged into this puzzle, this war, this family hundreds of … no, a million years in the making.
You must believe, Tyler.
You must believe.
The scream goes past the edge of hearing.
The light goes through the other side of blinding.
And with one final discordant shriek, it’s over.
The glow in the Eshvaren probe fades, then dies entirely. The overheads outside flicker back to life, and I wince as gravity returns, pain shooting through my mangled body as I thump back down into my grav-chair.
Comms are coming through to Adams and de Stoy, warnings and alerts and alarms, silenced by de Stoy’s terse command, Adams’s rumbling bellow.
“All nonessentials, cut the chaff! Scan crew, report!”
I look him in the eyes, heart galloping, not daring to hope.
“… Negative, sir,” comes the reply. “No contact.”
“Narrow the field, Lieutenant,” de Stoy orders. “The vessel may be without power. Search on thermals, kinetics, full-spectrum radiation.”
“Yes, ma’am, we’re on it,” comes the reply.
The minutes tick by like eons. I stare at the place Zila’s hologram had been, but it’s gone, just the afterimage of the probe burned into my eye.
“Anything?” Adams asks.
“Negative, sir,” comes the reply. “Clean scope.”
“This is Raptor external. Confirm, Aurora; zero contact.”
I sit there, staring at the place the hologram of my friend stood, knowing I’ll never see her again.
And that might not be so bad—she said she was happy—if not for the thought of the rest of them. Auri and Kal disappeared who knows where. Zila dead for over a hundred years. Cat gone. And now Fin and Scarlett …
I listen to the reports coming in, the scanner crews and pilots confirming what they’ve already said. What I already know.