“We fought. Of course we did. But every world it consumed made it stronger. Every soldier or ship it infected shifted the tide of the battle. Until its numbers were too great to fight anymore, and all anyone could do was run. Scattering to the corners of the galaxy, lying low, hoping the hive mind wouldn’t hear them, sense them, find them. But it always does.”
The horror of it washes over us both, and Aurora finds my hand, squeezing tight. “But … you’re still fighting?”
“There’s a few of us left,” he says, motioning to his ragtag crew. “A coalition, looking for survivors, bringing them back to what little sanctuary we can offer. But it’s just a matter of time.”
Tyler shakes his head, meets Aurora’s eyes again.
“Until it has everything.”
“How is it that you stay ahead of the enemy?” I ask. “The FoldGate you opened to bring us here … I have not seen such technology before.”
“We call it a rift drive,” Tyler says. “It’s an amalgam of Betraskan and Terran tech, using Syldrathi psychic energy to manipulate spacetime. I don’t really understand it, but we’ve discovered some of the unusual properties of Eshvaren crystal ourselves.” He nods to the golden-haired Syldrathi woman, still staring at Aurora, those cracks in her skin darkening as she scowls. “Each of our ships has a Waywalker aboard, and a chunk of crystal taken from recovered Eshvaren probes. The Waywalkers use the probes to open the gates, let us cut through the Fold. But it takes a toll every time they do it. And we don’t have many Waywalkers left.”
“What happened to the others?” Aurora asks softly.
Tyler frowns. “The other Waywalkers? They—”
“No, I mean the others,” she insists. “Scarlett. Fin. Zila. Are they … ?”
Tyler’s mood drops further, the scrape of wet gravel in his tone as he answers. “They died at the Battle of Terra, Auri.”
“And … Saedii?” I ask.
Tyler looks at me then. Dragging a hand through his graying hair, he drinks deeply from his flask again.
“We escaped the GIA together. I actually teamed up with her and her old crew to fight the Ra’haam.” He smiles, but behind it, I can see the pain of an old scar. “We fought like cats and dogs, but we did okay for a few years there. She was a hell of a woman, your sister.”
The other Syldrathi woman is staring at me now, eyes like knives.
“Where is she?” I hear myself ask.
“Saedii killed herself, Kal.”
“No,” I whisper. “She would never …”
“She was on a rescue run.” Tyler sighs. “Trying to recover a refugee fleet near Orion. They got hit by the Ra’haam. Her engines were disabled, her ship was dead in the black. She and her crew were surrounded. She detonated her core rather than be consumed into the collective.”
I murmur a prayer to the Void, press my fingers to my eyes, my lips, my aching heart. Aurora squeezes my hand, her eyes misting as she sees my grief. We were not close in the end, my elder sister and I. But Saedii and I once loved each other fiercely, as only siblings forged in the same furnace can.
Tyler guzzles the rest of his flask as the Syldrathi glowers at me.
“She died with honor,” Lae spits. “Unlike the rest of her family.”
Her tone shifts to bitter violence as she turns those cracked violet eyes to the air beside my head.
“You hear me, cho’taa?” she spits. “I feel you! Skulking in the dark like a thief! Show yourself, i’na destii! Ko’vash dei saam te naeli’dai!” She rises to her feet, spitting fury as she raises her null blade. “Aam sai toviir’netesh! Vaes santiir to sai’da baleinai!”
I am on my feet, standing between Aurora and that crackling psychic blade. The air beside me shimmers, shifts, a bloodred sheen slipping over the light in the room. Aurora rises, her eye glowing faintly as the figure of my father materializes in the room. Tall, dark, ten braids draped over the ruin of his face as he lowers his chin and scowls.
Tyler’s weapon is out in a blink, other crew members likewise drawing their arms. They open fire, even as I cry warning, the flash and burst of disruptors and blasters filling the room. But the image of my father only shimmers, like water with stones being thrown into it, and I realize this is merely a projection of consciousness—thrown from the Neridaa to eavesdrop on our conversation.
“Coward!” Lae spits. “De’saiie na vaelto’na!”