“Zila, no. No.”
“What?” Nari protests, looking between us. “What’s happening?”
Scarlett shakes her head. “Zila, there must be another way… .”
“It cannot be done alone,” I say simply.
Finian’s voice joins Scarlett’s in protest. “No, Z, we’ll figure it out. We still have time, we—”
“With the current force arrayed against her, Nari cannot survive to eject the core. She must survive if she is to found the academy, or we will never come here, never plant the seed for Aurora’s victory against the Ra’haam. Eliminate the impossible, and what remains, no matter how improbable …”
I look to Fin
“… or painful …”
then to Scarlett
“… or sad …”
and last to Nari
“… is the truth. Someone must stay behind and help you.”
I let their voices drown each other out.
“—left Cat behind, left my brother behind, and if you think—”
“—just have to think again about the way we’re using the—”
“—this time I can—”
I stand. I stare. And eventually they are silent. They have argued themselves out. They see the simple truth, plain as I have. And they know in their heart of hearts, each of them, that we do not have the minutes to waste.
So I speak again. “Many years ago, I watched from my hiding place as raiders threatened my parents and friends. If I revealed myself, they would be shot, and I would be taken. So I remained hidden, hoping a solution would reveal itself. Eventually, our captors tired of waiting, and killed my family anyway, and left. Never again will I allow those I love to die through my inaction. This time, there is something I can do.” “You were a child, Zila,” Scarlett whispers. “You don’t have to make that right.”
“I cannot,” I reply. “And I know it does not rest on me to do so. But I have lived this story before, Scarlett, and this time I will change the ending.”
“We can’t just leave you here.” Finian’s pain is in every line of his face. In the catch in his voice. “We can’t just leave you alone.”
I look to Nari again. “I will not be alone.”
“But you’ll be two centuries in the past!” he cries.
“Someone must be,” I say. “Someone was always going to be. Both of you must return to our time to fight the Ra’haam. You may be all that remains of Squad 312. You must not fail in our duty.”
“And you?” Scarlett whispers.
“I will set everything in motion,” I say. “We cannot expect Nari to do it all. Someone must leave briefings for the heads of the Aurora Legion. Everything from Bj?rkman’s snoring to the gifts in the vault. There is only one way Magellan can know all that he knows.”
“You’re going to write his program,” Finian says softly. His eyes are wet. “Leave it for Scarlett to find on that shopping node.”
“Her weakness for handbags is easily exploited.”
Scarlett smiles, although she is already beginning to cry.
“This is why we are here,” I tell them, plucking the tiny fragment of crystal from Pinkerton’s trove and holding it up in front of Scarlett. “Why this was left in the vault for us to find. To drag us back here to this place and time so that I could remain. Magellan told us that his knowledge of events extended only to a certain point in the future. The point where I left.”
Finian shakes his head, lip trembling. “Z, we already lost Cat… .”
“And we must do so again. Everything must happen exactly as it has happened. We must lose Cat so she can save us on Octavia. We must allow the Starslayer to take the Weapon before we do, so that he can fire it and throw us back in time. Because I must always return here, to the beginning of everything. I must remain in the past to safeguard our future.”
Scarlett weaves her fingers through mine. Like Finian, she is crying. “We love you too, Zila,” she whispers.
I am glad she understands.
“I’ll keep her safe, I promise,” Nari murmurs, and the shake and the certainty in her voice both warm me. “I’ll get her out in the evac. Grab a lab coat. Hopefully things will be confusing enough for me to cover for her.”
“They will be,” I tell her. “I believe in you.”
“You should take Magellan,” Finian says, voice rough as he shifts in our small space to dig inside his bag. “He’ll be full of useful information if you can repair him. Maybe you can even bet on some sportsball games, build up the bank balance.” He pauses then and slowly draws out Shamrock.
He looks at Scarlett. She nods. He hands our mascot to me.
“Extra company,” says Scarlett, her voice breaking. “Okay, don’t forget our original Longbow will need a crate Auri can hide in, and—shit, we don’t even know what Tyler’s boots from the vault are for, how will you … ?”
“He was in Terran captivity when we left him. I will provide him a means of escape. I have a keen intellect, an excellent memory, and the rest of my life ahead,” I tell her. “Nothing will be left to chance.”
Scarlett is silent a long moment. “Oh, Zila,” she murmurs.
“I know,” I say quietly.
“I wish … ,” says Finian, but he does not finish the sentence.
“We have one more chance,” I say. “After this, the loop will end before the quantum pulse, and you will have no power source to get home before the loop collapses entirely. Everything depends on the next fourteen minutes. Everything that is now, everything that will be. Our last chance to stop the Ra’haam. To protect every planet, every colony, every species, every life that is to come.” I hold out my hand, one last time. “We can do this.”
Scarlett takes hold and squeezes. “We the Legion.”
Finian wraps his silver fingers around ours. “We the Light.”
Nari puts her hand on ours and nods. “Burning bright against the night.”
“Squad 312 forever,” I smile.
TICK.
TICK.
TICK.
28
AURI
The battle roars behind us, and ahead lies the dead planet of the Eshvaren.
Power is surging through me, heady and addictive, and I chase the high, my mind freewheeling fast and wild, and I know I’m drawing on my very self to crush the enemy, but I can’t remember why I shouldn’t.
I am the power of the Eshvaren made manifest—that’s what Esh told me a lifetime ago in the Echo. I am everything they wished, and all my enemies will burn.
The light of the dying red dwarf star frames the planet as we rocket toward it, streaking ahead of our pursuers, and all is quiet on its rocky surface.
Silence ahead of us. Chaos behind.
Kal pounds through the hallways of the ship beneath me, and the Neridaa descends toward the huge crater of those massive workshop doors, ten kilometers across. Already they’re soundlessly opening, revealing the perfectly smooth tunnel beyond, carved into the rock itself. The ship moves fast, guided with the lightest touch—it’s almost as if she wants to go home.
“We’re following you in,” Tyler bellows down comms as a Ra’haam ship smashes into the planet’s surface, dying in a blaze of fire and debris. “Tan, get after it, try and— Maker, you do it, de Mayr!”
From his throne, Caersan speaks, blood dripping from his chin, his teeth bared in a carnivorous smile.
“I have few regrets in life, child. But I would give a great deal to have seen your face when you discovered I had beaten you here and taken the Neridaa.”
“I’m going to enjoy seeing your face,” I reply. “When I take her off you.”
It doesn’t sound like me, it doesn’t feel like me, but it is me talking—my bloody lips twisting as Caersan narrows his eyes.
But the battle is burning all around us, and I’m caught up in that fire, plunging the ship past the doors and into the tunnel, kilometers wide, the Ra’haam and the Free fleets pouring after us. The dark is lit with quick explosions, and all I can hear down comms are screamed commands, cutting over the top of each other, a hopeless mess of orders and pleas.