“What the hells … ?” he whispers.
“We look the same, do we not?” I insist. “Look at Aurora. Almost three decades have passed for you, but she has aged not a day, yes?”
He stares at me, brow creased, jaw clenching as he looks to his crew.
“I am telling you the truth, Brother,” I plead.
“You don’t get to talk to me about truth.” Tyler’s lip curls as he speaks in perfect Syldrathi. “I’na Sai’nuit.”
My heart sinks at that. So, he knows. The lie I told him. Told them all. It shames me to think of it now—that I called him friend and yet lied to his face about who I was. I had my reasons, and yet, I have no excuse.
“Brother, I am sorry. I was wrong to deceive you then. But I beg you to believe me now. I will never lie to you again.”
“Tyler, please … ,” Aurora says.
The Betraskan beside Tyler pipes up, squinting as she adjusts a cybernetic targeting monocle over her eye. “Commander, I hate to break up the touching reunion, but we still have incoming. Weed fleet, bearing seven-one-eight-twelve-niner. Weapons range in sixty seconds.”
“Shit,” Tyler whispers, and more than the sight of him, the years on his bones, the pain in his eyes, that shakes me.
The Tyler Jones I knew never cursed.
But this is not the Tyler Jones I knew.
“What’s your status?” he says. “Your hull looks compromised.”
“The Weapon was damaged during the journey here.” I glower at my father, who is sitting back and watching the exchange with mild disinterest. “And we were attacked again before you arrived. It took some time before we were able to muster the energy to retaliate.”
“We picked up the power spike on long-range scans,” Tyler says. “You’re damned lucky we did, too. We were headed back to …”
He catches himself before saying more, his voice fading. He looks to his readouts, the incoming Ra’haam ships, chewing his lip in thought. I can see his mind: the distrust, the anger, battling with the proof before his eyes. He stares at Aurora, and she gazes back, unfailing hope in her eyes, softly speaking two words: the same message Admiral Adams passed to us what feels like a lifetime ago now.
“Believe, Tyler.”
“Thirty seconds to weapons range, boss,” the Betraskan says.
And finally, Tyler Jones sighs.
“All right. I don’t know what the hells is going on here, but we got incoming Weeds and I just spent most of my fusion bombs. I suggest we continue this conversation a few light years the hells away from here. Are your engines still operational?”
I look to Aurora, the bloodstains on her upper lip. Perhaps it is my imagination, but the small cracks in the skin around her right eye seem … deeper. But she nods anyway, her eyes alight. “I can move us.”
“All right, follow our lead. Lae, spool up the rift drive and—”
“You cannot mean to bring them with us?”
It’s the Syldrathi woman who speaks, sitting at what I presume is the helm. She is only a little older than I, fierce and slender with long, flowing braids of silver. The Waywalker glyf is scored on her brow, but there are deep cracks in the skin around her eyes, similar to those that mark Aurora and my father. And when she speaks, it is with the fury of a thousand suns, staring at Tyler in disbelief.
“That sounds like you questioning my judgment, soldier,” Tyler replies.
“They ride with the Starslayer!” she spits. “The blood of ten billion Syldrathi on his hands! The death of the galaxy at his feet!”
“Quiet your noise, child,” my father sighs, leaning back on his throne. “From your look, you could not even have been alive when Syldra fell.”
“My mother told me of you, cho’taa,” she hisses, violet eyes narrowed to slits. “I know exactly what you—”
“Spool up the rift drive, Lieutenant,” Tyler interrupts. “I want us out of here now.”
The Syldrathi woman glowers at Tyler, but his tone is hard, unforgiving. After a moment of silent struggle, she acquiesces, bows her head.
“If I am bringing them with us, we cannot go far. A rift that large—”
“Where doesn’t matter, Lieutenant. As long as it’s away from here.”
She clenches her jaw. “Yessir.”
“Auri, Kal,” Tyler says. “Follow us through. And just in case that bastard sitting behind you is getting any ideas in his pretty head?” He glares at my father, his good eye ablaze. “We’ve still got a few nukes left, Starslayer.”