And from above, more ships emerged from warp space.
A mere handful, no more than twenty, their hulls emblazoned with symbols of winged blue planets.
Human ships.
The Heirs of Earth had arrived.
"Leona!" Emet whispered.
She came charging forth in the ISS Jerusalem, all her cannons blasting. Her warships flew around her, pounding the strikers with a barrage of torpedoes and shells. The enemy ships shattered. A hole broke open in their formation.
"You've got a path out, Dad!" Leona cried over the comm. "Let's get the hell out of here!"
Emet stormed forth, barreling between the burning strikers. The rest of the Inheritor fleet flew with him, all their guns firing, blasting their way through.
They broke out into open space.
"Into the wormhole!" Emet shouted. "Everyone, into Terminus Wormhole!"
He raced toward the shimmering portal.
The other starships joined him.
They dived into the sphere of light, this passageway built by an ancient, lost civilization.
Luminescence flowed around them, and they streamed forward down a tunnel of starlight.
Within moments, they had traveled many light-years, a journey that would normally take weeks, even with their warp drives.
The Jerusalem fell through another portal back into open space. The other starships followed. They floated in silence, deep in Concord space. A place where the enemy dared not follow.
The border. The invasion. The countless Hierarchy warships. They were all left far behind.
Emet allowed himself a brief moment of silence—just to sit, to breathe. He had come close to death countless times since founding the Heirs of Earth thirty years ago. He had seen hundreds of his people die.
But this was new.
This was genocide, and this was galactic war.
And Emet had never been more terrified.
"Dad?" Leona's voice came over the comm, calling from the Jerusalem that flew nearby. "I have a thousand gulock survivors with me. It's bad." Her voice was haunted. "It's really bad."
For the first time, Emet noticed that deathcars, once used to transport human prisoners to gulocks, now flew as part of the Inheritor fleet, their hulls crudely painted with Earth's symbol. They would be filled with survivors. Hungry. Sick. Needing Emet to be strong, to lead them, to bring them home. Yet home had never seemed so far away.
Emet turned toward Rowan. The girl sat beside him, still clutching her pistol, her knuckles white around the hilt. Her brown eyes stared ahead, filled with ghosts.
Yes, I faced death countless times, Emet thought. She has not. His heart gave a twist. She stared death in the face today. And not for the last time.
"Rowan," he said.
She turned toward him. "Sir."
He placed a hand on her slender shoulder. "You said that you knew her. The woman in the scorpion ship."
Rowan nodded, and a tear streamed down her cheek. Her voice was barely even a whisper. "She's my sister."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The giant skeleton lay in the desert, the size of a dreadnought, bleached and smoothed by eras of sand and sunlight. Bay flew Brooklyn down toward it, seeking forgetfulness within its bones.
"Bay, you promised me," Brooklyn said. "A nice planet with grass and sunlight. Not another sin hive."
"There's sunlight here," he said.
"Because it's a mucking desert!" the starship said. "Bay! Is this why we left the Heirs of Earth? To land in another Paradise Lost, and—"
"Brooklyn, enough," Bay said. "We just need to recoup our costs. Your wing wasn't cheap to fix, you know. I'll play some Five Card Bluff, win some scryls, and then find a better place. All right?
The starship sighed. Her camera drooped. She said nothing more.
Bay glided her down toward the skeleton. He landed on a sandy field by the skull. The eye sockets peered down, large enough for a starship to fly through. The jaws gaped open, as large as a temple, teeth like columns.
A few dozen starships parked around Brooklyn, hulls sandy. Most were the spiky, graffiti-covered ships of smugglers, thieves, and mercenaries. A handful of reptilian bounty hunters leaned against a boulder, smoking living serpents like cigars. Aliens in black robes and hoods, this world's natives, rode giant millipedes.
"Bay, don't leave me here," Brooklyn said. "I—"
"Brook!" he said. "Damn it! I told you, I need to do this, all right?"
"No you don't, Bay!" She rocked in the sand. "You can go back to your dad. To your sister. To Rowan. You can—"
"I won't go back!" Bay said. "I won't fight in a war. I won't see Rowan die like Seohyun, like—"
He bit down on his words.
"Oh, Bay," Brooklyn whispered.
"Just . . . go into sleep mode or something." Bay exited the starship without another word.
He stepped through the jaws of the giant skeleton. Many aliens moved around him, riding, hovering, slithering, clattering. As always, Bay slouched, his hood pulled low over his head, his long sleeves hiding his hands, trying to vanish into the crowd.
The skeleton was half buried in the sand. The ribs rose like columns alongside a central promenade, supporting the spine high above. Stalls filled the spaces between the ribs, shaded by awnings and curtains and strings of jingling beads. There were scaly soothsayers with long white mustaches, vowing to tell Bay's fortune for a handful of scryls; drug dens where aliens lay on tasseled rugs, smoking from hookahs; fighting pits where crowds cheered, watching naked felines hiss and scratch and claw each other apart; shops selling rusty guns, spiky grenades, and swords with horn hilts; apothecaries where hooded aliens sold vials of medicine and poison; gambling tents where aliens hunched over stone boards, moving pieces of brass and glass and bone; and a thousand other nooks for every sin imaginable.
Bay wanted to stop and gamble. But he was too shaky. His bad hand ached. He wandered through the crowd until he found what he sought. Every sin hive had one. The stall was at the back, draped with curtains. A sign formed of blue and gold tiles displayed the words Electric Dreams.
Bay stepped inside. An embroidered rug covered the floor, and tasseled cushions lay strewn across the room. There was a hookah filled with bubbling green hintan, a bowl of water with some towels, and a virtual reality helmet. No body suit—just a few sensors to strap onto his body. But beggars couldn't be choosers.
The helmet was made for aliens with larger heads. But again, it would have to do. When Bay placed it on, it wobbled.
A robotic voice spoke through speakers embedded inside the helmet. "Insert payment to embark upon your romantic adventure."
Bay felt around the side of the helmet, found a slot, and dropped in a few scryls. The interface came to life.
A voice spoke again, this time feminine and seductive. "Please choose a species, then begin to customize your erotic companion."
A menu allowed him to scroll through a library of several thousand species. He scrolled down until he found human, then began to customize his creation. He made the human female, then began building her body, choosing height, weight, hair, eyes, and every other feature from a menu. Bay normally preferred tall, curvy blondes or redheads. Today he created a slender, short woman—only five feet tall. He gave his companion short brown hair and dark eyes.
"Companion completed," intoned the voice.
The virtual reality girl nestled against him. "Hello, darling. May I keep you company tonight?"
He wrapped his arms around her. "Just let me hold you."
She nuzzled him. "Of course, sir. Shall I pleasure you?"
He shook his head. "No. Do you have any movies?"
The hologram stroked his chin. "Does not compute, sir. Movies?"