“Oh no,” Scar whispers. “Oh Maker …”
“It’s awake … ,” I breathe.
I see the light of engines engaging, ships beginning to turn—a few crews with the presence of mind to try to flee their fate. But most of them just hang there, listless and lifeless as Octavia III dies burning, screaming, giving birth to the thing she’s warmed in her womb for the last million years.
I watch those spores tumbling, spilling, like globes of gleaming blue glass, engulfing the coalition fleet and rolling onward. I see the feeds from the armada begin to die, as one by one those ships are consumed, corrupted. I want to turn away, to close my eyes, to tell myself the monster under the bed isn’t real, isn’t real.
But I force myself to watch as the Ra’haam reaches the FoldGate—that glimmering tear across the stars, the endless pathways to the rest of the galaxy beyond. Scarlett has never attended chapel a day in her life, and she’s praying as those gleaming orbs begin to flood through. Fin slips his hand into mine and squeezes so hard my knuckles creak.
“I saw this,” he whispers. “… In a dream.”
I say the only thing I can think of.
I say its name.
“Ra’haam.”
An entity that once threatened to swallow every sentient life in the galaxy. A hunger so vast, an intellect so terrifying, an enemy so dangerous that an entire race sacrificed itself to prevent its rising again.
But they failed.
The Eshvaren failed.
And Maker help us, so have we.
Ra’haam.
37
TYLER
Ten days later, and the entire galaxy is drenched in panic.
I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like an infection, traveling ahead of the Ra’haam: that wave of glittering blue spores spilling out into the Fold, the corrupted coalition armada moving along with it.
We’ve had only snatches of vision as the enemy advances, but there’s enough footage to know the fleet and everyone in it is gone. All those warstars and reapers and carriers now encrusted with spores and mold and leaves of blue green, trailing long, twisting tendrils behind them through the Fold. They look like shipwrecks on the bottom of Terran oceans, overrun with barnacles and weeds, and I shudder to think about what became of all those brave soldiers inside.
Admiral Adams. His fellow commanders.
The Aurora Legion and every military in the galaxy have been virtually decapitated.
Where a few weeks ago it slumbered hidden and silent, now the whole galaxy knows its name, whispered in the dark and spoken fearfully behind closed doors and shouted across the feeds.
Ra’haam.
An enemy set to swallow the races of the galaxy one by one.
Until there’s nothing left but it.
As far as we can tell, only the Octavia nursery has hatched so far. Maybe it has something to do with the assault, or the Terran colony that settled there, some other variable. All we know for certain is that as bad as things are now, they’re gonna get twenty-one times worse once those other nursery worlds hatch.
This war is over almost before it’s begun.
The fear of it is like a wildfire, sweeping the Milky Way just as the enemy sweeps out into the Fold. The other races begin panicking, some going so far as to destroy the FoldGates into their systems—cutting themselves off into a new, pre-Fold Dark Age rather than allow the Ra’haam to colonize their worlds. And all the while, those spores billow outward, glowing ghostly blue even in the muted colorscape of the Fold.
Endless.
Relentless.
The corrupted fleet rides the spore wave, cruising like dark shadows among a glowing, glittering storm billions of kilometers across. And as I watch the snatches of footage on the feeds, awash in the terror of it all, I can’t help but sink into hopelessness.
I did just what my vision told me. I stopped the destruction of Aurora Academy, averted whatever calamity might have followed the destruction of the Galactic Caucus. I did as I was asked.
And in doing so, I’ve helped hand the Ra’haam a massive battle fleet it might otherwise never have had.
Scar and Fin carved a pathway across time, Zila gave her life to form the Aurora Legion in the past to fight against this thing, Auri and Kal gave up their lives to try to secure the Weapon, and yet, here the Ra’haam is, spewing out into the Fold just like it always wanted, just like it always planned.
Maybe after all we’ve done, Squad 312 only made things worse.
And even after all I did to save Aurora Station, it will count for nothing. Because Aurora Station is where that Ra’haam fleet is headed next.
Our logistics teams have confirmed it. Course plotted. Data correlated.