If it is Terran, the station’s design specs are positively archaic.
But that does not explain what it is doing here in the first place.
Or how we got here.
None of this makes sense.
“Zila?” It’s Scarlett. “What’s happening out there? Can you see the Eshvaren Weapon? What’s the status on the enemy fleet? Are we in danger?”
“We …” I am not sure how to answer her question.
“Zila?”
There is a thick cable of gleaming metal stretching from the station. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers long, it twists and ripples but holds firm to the battered structure at one end. At the other, out on the edge of that seething tempest of dark matter, a great quicksilver sail is stretched across a rectangular frame, its surface swirling like an oil slick. It appears tiny on my visuals, but for me to even be able to see it at all from here, the sail must be immense.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was—
“Unknown vessel, you have entered restricted Terran space. Identify yourself and provide clearance codes, or you will be fired upon. You have thirty seconds to comply.”
The voice crackles through the cockpit, harsh and discordant. My pulse kicks up a notch, which is unhelpful.
I cannot see another vessel. Where is the voice coming from?
Leaving aside the fact that I have no clearance codes, I do not know whether the hail comes from friend or foe.
Not that my squad has a long list of friends just now.
I depress the switch for intrasquad comms and speak urgently. “Scarlett, please hurry to the bridge. Diplomacies are required.”
“Unknown vessel, identify yourself and provide clearance codes. Failure to comply will be interpreted as hostile intent. You have twenty seconds remaining.”
I scan the shuttle’s controls and stretch—every Syldrathi over the age of twelve is taller than me—to press the button that will switch our channel from audio to visual. I must find out who is addressing me.
The face that fills my commscreen is covered by a black breathing apparatus, a thick hose snaking out of sight. The mask conceals everything beneath the pilot’s eyes, and a helmet hides everything above.
I am looking at a Terran, though, most likely East Asian in origin, age and gender unclear. Strange as my situation is, perhaps a Terran can be reasoned with—we are the same species, after all.
“Please hold,” I say. “I am summoning my team’s Face.”
“Ident codes!” the pilot demands, eyes narrowing. “Now!”
“Understood,” I tell them. “I cannot provide codes, but—”
“You are in violation of restricted Terran space! You have
ten seconds to provide proper clearance, or I will fire on you!”
All around me, alarms flare into life, lights flashing and Syldrathi symbols illuminating as a loudspeaker barks at me. I don’t understand the words, but I know what it’s saying.
“WARNING, WARNING: MISSILE LOCK DETECTED.”
“Five seconds!”
“Please,” I say. “Please, wait—”
“Firing!”
I watch a tiny line of light appear on our scanners.
We have no engines. No navigation. No defenses.
We should be dead already. Incinerated with Aurora and the Weapon. But it seems somehow unfair to have to die again.
The light draws closer.
“Please—”
The missile strikes.
Fire tears through the bridge.
BOOM.
2.1
SCARLETT
Black light burns white across my skin. I can taste the sound around me, metallic on the back of my tongue, hearing touch and feeling scent as everything I am and was and will ever be rips itself apart and together and together and togeth—
“Scar?”
I open my eyes, see another pair of eyes before mine.
Big.
Black.
Pretty.
Finian.
“Did you … ?” I ask.
“Was that … ?” Fin says.
“Weird,” we murmur.
I look around us, a strange black-cat, creepy-crawly feeling of déjà vu spidering its way up my spine.
We’re standing in the corridor outside the engine room, just where we were a minute ago when the Eshvaren Weapon fired a whole beamful of planet-destroying badness into our favorite faces and then blew itself to tiny shinies. But, joy of joys, we are not, in fact, dead.
This comes as good news for a couple of reasons.
First, of course, and speaking frankly, it would be a bad move on the universe’s part to waste an ass like mine by incinerating it in a fiery explosion in the depths of space. Honestly, they come along, like, once a millennium.