Saedii stares for an endless heartbeat longer, and then her transmission drops away. Lowering my hand, I realize the entire bridge crew is looking at me incredulously.
“Not that I’m ungrateful for the assist,” de Stoy says. “But I almost wish I had time to read your report on that one, Legionnaire Jones.”
My Gearhead is wearing an expression somewhere between admiration and shock, but my sister is going straight for utter disbelief, looking between me and the screen.
“You … and her?”
I shrug. “It’s the dimples.”
“How are you still walking?” Fin whispers.
I grin. “Yeah, I was limping for a while there.”
Fin covers his open mouth with one hand, offers me a cheeky fist bump behind Scar’s back with the other. Scar catches him, looks back and forth between us. “What are you, twelve?”
“Out of ten?” I shrug. “Yeah, sounds about right.”
“Oh Maker … ,” she groans.
The smiles are short-lived, the warmth in my chest quickly fading, until the thought of the thing coming for us is all that remains.
Glad as I am for Saedii and her armada to be here, I know they’re not going to make the difference between victory and defeat. The corrupted coalition fleet is too big, the Ra’haam is too much—like I said, our only move here is to do as much damage to it as possible before we go down.
But if that’s the play, then we’re going to make it as best we can.
And if this really is the end, at least I’m not alone.
? ? ? ? ?
Seventeen hours later, I’m standing on the bridge of a familiar Longbow, staring out at our lines of defense. Behind us, Aurora Station glitters like the sun at dawning, bristling with pulse cannons and missile arrays. Around us, the Legion fleet is forming up into our lines.
Adams and de Stoy threw almost every ship they had at the Octavia assault, and there’s only forty or so Legion Longbows left, flanking one heavy cruiser, the Invincible, commanded by Battle Leader de Stoy herself.
But supporting us is Saedii’s Unbroken armada: the dark silhouettes of Wraiths and Specters, the sleek bulk of Banshee carriers and Shadows, hundreds upon hundreds of them. We’re arrayed in a phalanx, aimed toward the FoldGate, ready to unleash hell on the first vessel that blows through.
“Hostiles still inbound,” comes the warning over comms. “Enemy fleet will breach Aurora system in T minus six minutes.” “Thanks for the ride,” I murmur, eyes on the gate. “I’d have hated to sit this one out on the sidelines, Em.”
Beside me, Emma Cohen shrugs, eyes roaming the fleet. “Figured I owed you one after you stopped the station from getting blown to pieces and all.”
“No hard feelings about me locking you in your own brig?”
“That depends,” she says, looking at me sidelong. “Any hard feelings about me shooting you in the face?”
“We both did what we had to do,” I smile. “We the Legion.”
She nods, smiling back. “We the Light.”
“And I really am sorry about Damon,” Scar pipes up beside me. “I mean, I didn’t even know you two were dating at the time.”
Emma shrugs, eyes back on the gate. “He was an asshole.”
“Right?”
“Enemy fleet will breach Aurora system in T minus four minutes.”
“Nono,” Fin says, sitting beside de Renn. “Your third mother is my first aunt, on second granddad’s side.”
Cohen’s tank pauses in his calculations, fingers hovering over his fire controls. “But my second first uncle is your third cousin too, right?”
“… Dariel is your first uncle?”
“Yeah, once removed on my—”
“How are those calcs coming, de Renn?” Cohen asks.
“Good to go,” the Tank replies, straightening up. “We’re ready, Alpha.”
“Enemy fleet will breach Aurora system in T minus three minutes.”
The holo projections in front of us flicker with the Legion sigil, and the face of Battle Leader de Stoy appears above the consoles. The last surviving commander of the Aurora Legion looks grim, determined. Her voice rings across the bridge and the fleet under her command.
“Aurora legionnaires.
“To be a Betraskan is to know you are never alone.
“Every one of us is part of a sprawling network, a clan and a greater clan, siblings, parents, grandparents, cousins, and hundreds of others who share our blood.
“Wherever we go, we know this one truth: we are family.