“Again!”
“You cannot do this!” Kal roars. “She’s hurting herself!”
“Mercy is the province of cowards, Kaliis.”
I fire again, another pulse, blossoming outward and annihilating the enemy ships beyond. I feel like a giant, smashing children’s toys. I feel ten thousand feet tall. But I can already sense more at the edges of my range, homing in on us, like we’re a beacon in the dark.
Kal stands beside me. Squeezing my hand, looking into my eyes. I can feel his strength adding to mine, but the Ra’haam ships are still swarming in, another blast rocking us now, crystal splinters raining from the roof and shattering on the ground around us—
“Help her!” Kal roars. “The two of you together could annihilate—”
“No, wait,” I gasp.
Squeezing Kal’s hand, I nod to the dark outside.
“One of those isn’t a Ra’haam ship… .”
I feel it, out there amid the rot and the mold—a blur of rusting metal, cutting like a knife through the Fold. Missiles curl and bloom, blinding white spheres of nuclear fusion, immolating the remaining Ra’haam ships in sudden bursts of light and heat. I can hear a scream of frustration in the back of my mind: the rage of the enemy denied. But it knows now, it knows we’re here, and I can feel it, even now, gathering its strength to strike again.
Again.
Again.
Until it has everything. Is everything.
Caersan rises from his throne, brow creased, one bloodstained hand outstretched toward the newcomer.
“Strange design,” he murmurs.
“Who are they?” Kaliis demands.
“I do not know.” His eyes narrow. “But they are hailing us.”
I wipe the smear of blood from my tingling lips, sit back on my haunches, and try to catch my breath as Caersan throws the transmission up onto the projected screen in the heart of the room.
His face twists into a scowl at what he sees.
A group of people appears on the monitor, sitting at stations on the bridge of this new ship. I see two women, a Betraskan and a Syldrathi with a Waywalker glyf tattooed on her forehead and deep cracks scored in the skin around her eyes. Behind them is a gremp that must be standing on a box and a Rikerite with long horns sweeping back from her forehead. Farther back, bodies are crammed in together—Chellerians with blue skin turned gray by the Fold, more Betraskans, half a dozen types of aliens I’ve never seen before.
And in front of them all, in the commander’s chair, is someone my hammering heart twists at the sight of.
A man.
“I can’t believe it,” he hisses, staring at Caersan. “It is you.”
He’s out in the Fold, and without the effect of the Weapon, his pale skin is washed paler still, his fair hair turned gray. His uniform is threadbare and battle-scarred, he has a black patch covering one eye, and he’s older than he was the last time I saw him—maybe in his forties. But even after more than twenty years, even under the scars and the stubble and the grief that marks the skin at the corners of his eyes, I’d know him anywhere.
But Kal’s the one who speaks. Who sucks all the air out of my lungs with just two words. Who names the man before us, this man who’s been to hell and back and is somehow still holding on, looking at us with a mix of confusion and accusation and bitter rage.
“Tyler Jones.”
13
KAL
“Kal.”
My name is heavy as iron, spat from Tyler’s lips as though it were poison. He stares at me from the projection my father has thrown into the air before us, and from across an ocean of time.
Tyler Jones is a man now, where once—mere days ago—I knew just a boy. He sits in the commander’s chair of his warship, and I can see the years have not been kind to my old friend. His face is battle-scarred, worn, lined with pain and grief, but more and most, with rage.
“What the hells are you doing here?” he demands. “What are—”
“Tyler!” Aurora cries at my side. “Holy cake, it is you!”
A scowl creases his scarred brow, confusion in his stare. “… Auri?”
“Yes, it’s me!” she shouts, wiping blood from her nose. She seems weakened after the battle, but she looks exhilarated, almost drunk perhaps. “It’s us! Ty, I thought I’d never see you again!”
He shifts his gaze from Aurora to me, bewildered. “See me again? Last time I saw you was twenty-seven years ago… .”
Aurora shakes her head. “Last we saw you, you got captured by the GIA! We were so worried, Scar was going out of her mind!” She grins even as she cries, her eyes shining with tears. “I know it sounds crazy, Ty, but holy cake, it’s so good to see you! I’m so glad you’re okay!”
“Aurora … do I look okay to you?”
His gaze shifts to my father, his eyes hardening.
“The ship you’re in disappeared at the Battle of Terra with you all inside it. We needed that Weapon, Auri. We needed you!”
“I know,” she whispers, her smile falling. “I’m sorry, Ty. We didn’t mean to come here. We didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“This may be difficult for you to fathom, Brother,” I tell him. “Twenty-seven years may have passed for you, but for us, the battle between the Unbroken and Terran forces was only hours ago. We have traveled in time.”
“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—”