“All nonessentials, cut the chaff! Scan crew, report!”
I look him in the eyes, heart galloping, not daring to hope.
“… Negative, sir,” comes the reply. “No contact.”
“Narrow the field, Lieutenant,” de Stoy orders. “The vessel may be without power. Search on thermals, kinetics, full-spectrum radiation.”
“Yes, ma’am, we’re on it,” comes the reply.
The minutes tick by like eons. I stare at the place Zila’s hologram had been, but it’s gone, just the afterimage of the probe burned into my eye.
“Anything?” Adams asks.
“Negative, sir,” comes the reply. “Clean scope.”
“This is Raptor external. Confirm, Aurora; zero contact.”
I sit there, staring at the place the hologram of my friend stood, knowing I’ll never see her again.
And that might not be so bad—she said she was happy—if not for the thought of the rest of them. Auri and Kal disappeared who knows where. Zila dead for over a hundred years. Cat gone. And now Fin and Scarlett …
I listen to the reports coming in, the scanner crews and pilots confirming what they’ve already said. What I already know.
“Clean scope.”
“Zero contact.”
They’re gone. All my friends. All my family.
After all we suffered and all we lost …
“I’m the only one left,” I whisper.
Squad 312 forever.
35
TYLER
I never thought it would end like this.
I sit in my grav-chair, staring out the long viewport at the Aurora star. The meds they’ve got me on are heavy-duty, and I don’t feel the ache of my wounds. But somehow, that only makes it worse. Because without the pain, all I feel is the absence. The empty place where my eye should be. The empty space beside me where my family should be.
I never thought it would end like this.
I watch the fleet forming up off the academy’s shoulder, and a part of me still can’t help but be awed by the sight. The largest armada in recorded galactic history is being mustered. A coalition of races, ten thousand ships gathered from across the Milky Way, answering the threat of the Ra’haam.
Chellerian and Betraskan. Ishtarrian and Rigellian. Gremp and Tol’Mari and Rikerite and Free Syldrathi. I never imagined anything like it.
Adams and de Stoy haven’t been idle in the years they’ve commanded the Legion, and in addition to laying the path for Squad 312 to discover the Weapon and begin the formation of the Legion in the past, they’ve also had other agents at work—gathering data on the twenty-two Ra’haam nursery worlds. Legion squads, sent in secret across Interdiction lines, through lost FoldGates, collecting evidence, footage, and data sweeps of those corrupted worlds, the nurseries where our enemy sleeps, stirring even now, waiting to bloom and burst.
That data, the footage I shot of Cat in the reactor, the unmasked GIA agents—it’s been enough to gather this fragile alliance.
We don’t have the Trigger.
We don’t have the Weapon.
But we have fusions bombs. Disruptor clusters. Masscolliders. Bioweapons. Atmo-reapers. Core-busters. The combined military strength of hundreds of worlds, set to burn our enemy to death in its crib. The courses are laid in, the first target set—the place where all of this began.
A planet that might have slept for years more, if not for a group of Terran colonists who disturbed its sleep.
The place where the Ra’haam dragged its first new members in eons into its collective, setting all this in motion. The place where we lost Cat.
The planet Octavia.
And I’m stuck here, watching.
Helpless.
Alone.
I watch the ships weave among each other, gliding into formations, beautiful and graceful, sharp and lethal, a hundred races, a thousand models, a hundred thousand warriors, poised at the Aurora FoldGate. As he boarded the Legion battle carrier Relentless, Admiral Adams told me that I’d already done enough. That I could breathe easy. That I’d earned a rest.
I don’t know if I believe that.
I don’t know if this was all worth it.
The signal is given. Thousands of lights flashing in salute to the station. As the fleet begins departing through the FoldGate, I place my hand up on the transparent plasteel, my heart heavy in my chest.
For all the firepower, all the strength, I warned Adams and de Stoy, things might not be so easy. Even if we had the Weapon, which we don’t, we’ve been planning this battle for a little over two centuries.
The Ra’haam has been preparing its return for a million years.
Auri, where are you?
I watch the ships dropping through the gate one by one, all our hopes, all our lives, hanging by their single thread.
And then, out in the dark, I see it.
A tiny pulse of energy, just off the station’s skin.
Butterflies take wing in my stomach, and I surge up against the viewport.
And then I’m running—stumbling, really, wounds be damned—wincing as I slam through a group of wide-eyed cadets and barrel into the turbolift.
I call Adams but I get his damn service again, slinging my uni into the elevator wall in frustration.
The elevator hits the docks and I spill out the doors, roaring at a trauma team slouched on break beside a medvac shuttle. They look at me like I’m insane, like I’ve lost it. One of them tells me I should be back in the med bay. I’m not gonna repeat what I yell next, but it’s enough to convince them to get their asses into gear and get me out into the black.
My heart is hammering as we launch, gravity dropping away, hope rising with my insides as they free-float. Thrust pushes me back into my acceleration couch as I point—“There, THERE!”—to a tiny speck of gray floating out in the middle of all that nothing.
Unlike my sister, I’m a ship geek. I can tell you the name of every vessel the Terran Defense Force has used since its inception back in 2118. I can spot the makes. I can call the models. I can tell you the year they were commissioned and the year they were taken offline.
Hey, I like ships, okay?
“Osprey series,” I whisper. “Model 7I-C. 2168 to 2179.”
Over the med team’s objections, I’m suited up before they are. It’s hard to navigate with only one eye—they haven’t had a chance to install my cybernetic yet, and my depth perception is shot to pieces.
A nice young Betraskan corporal tells me I need to sit down.
I politely inform him he needs to shut up.
The medvac locks on to the Osprey with a grav-cable, bringing us into close orbit, seconds ticking by like years.
I’m looking at the Osprey as we close to boarding range, teeth gritted so tight they are creaking. The hull is burned black in places, the metal carved into strange ripples, like it was liquefied in intense heat, then flash-frozen before it could come apart. The windows are scorched, dark with burned carbon; I can’t see inside. I can’t see them.
I can’t see her.
Our airlock hisses, opens wide, and secured by safety cables, me and the med team spill out into the void. I know enough to stay out of their way as the tech specialist tries to hack the electronics, resorting at last to cutting through the metal with a heavy-duty thermal lance.
They force the loading bay door open with hydraulics, carbon particles breaking free from the melted metal, my stomach full of sloshing ice. I follow the med team inside, the floodlights on our helmets cutting through the dark as we reach the inner airlock. As the team goes to work on the seals, I press my hands against the narrow glass viewport in the airlock door, peering into the shuttle’s belly beyond.
And there in the dark, I see them, I see them and I shout, pounding my fist against the port.
“Finian!” I roar. “Scarlett!”
They’re floating in the zero grav, Scar’s flame-red hair and Fin’s milk-white skin picked out in the cabin’s pitch-black.