Courage.
The first of the Aelonian warships reached the wormhole, this shimmering portal in space. The silvery ships flew through, stretched out, and vanished. Ship after ship entered, flashing across spacetime toward the battle.
Honor.
Emet took a deep breath, grabbed the controls, and piloted the Jerusalem toward Aura Wormhole. The portal rose before him. From a distance, the wormhole looked circular, but it was actually a sphere, a glowing ball of light. Inside, Emet could make out the tiny forms of the Aelonian ships.
The other Inheritor ships came to fly behind him.
Earth.
Emet flew forward, and the Jerusalem plunged into the glowing sphere.
The ship blasted forward through a tunnel of swirling, coiling lights. Ahead flew the Aelonian ships. Behind him, the other Inheritor warships were entering the wormhole too. They charged down the luminous tunnel.
Every starship worth its salt had an azoth engine, able to bend spacetime. With a good azoth engine, a starship could fly between nearby star systems within weeks, could cross the entire galaxy within a few years. But a wormhole was different. A regular engine was a pair of worn sneakers. An azoth engine was a bicycle and energy drink. A wormhole was an expressway across the galaxy.
Nobody knew who had built the wormholes. They had existed back when humanity was still swinging from trees. Their ancient builders were long gone; some said they had risen to a higher plane of awareness, abandoning their physical bodies. For a million years, spacefarers had used this network, traveling the wormhole roads between the stars, crossing entire light-years within moments.
At this moment, Emet wished the ancients had built slower wormholes.
Ahead, he saw the end—a circle of darkness. Terminus Wormhole. There the war awaited.
The Aelonian ships ahead flew out from the tunnel.
Emet braced himself.
For Earth. For humanity. For my family.
Humanity's ships burst out from the wormhole into cold space, hot fire, and furious war.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
"I love to sail forbidden seas," Leona whispered, piloting the Nantucket through the wormhole.
With one hand, she gripped the starship's yoke, her knuckles white. With her other hand, she touched the seashell that hung around her neck. A shell from old Earth.
The end of the wormhole gaped ahead, leading to battle.
"For you, Jake," Leona whispered.
The Nantucket burst out from the wormhole into a sea of scorpion ships.
Leona screamed and fired her cannons.
The Nantucket jolted as the cannons shelled the enemy.
Leona didn't even have to aim.
The strikers were everywhere. Leona had never seen so many starships in one place. She had thought her last battle mighty, but here was an inferno. This battle was so massive her mind could not comprehend it. Countless starships flew and whizzed and fired around her.
There must be tens of thousands of ships, she thought, and awe filled her at the beauty and terror of it. The galaxy is burning.
Leona had never seen such a sight. Not since becoming a soldier at seventeen, a grieving widow, her wedding dress stained with blood. Not in all the past decade of war, fighting for Earth across the galaxy. The strikers flew in battalions and brigades, organized into units and subunits, machines of terror and fury. They formed a wall in space, blocking the exit from Terminus Wormhole, pounding the emerging Concord fleet with plasma.
Blasts slammed into the Nantucket, knocking the ship back toward the wormhole. The marine squad in her hold jostled and cried out, rifles clattering. Leona screamed, floored the throttle, and roared into the fire. The enemy plasma tore at her shields, cracking them, nearly breaching the hull. An Aelonian ship ahead took heavy fire, jolted backward, and nearly hit the Nantucket. Leona tried to rise higher, but more plasma hit her. She diverted power to the engines, but the barrage intensified, and her front shields blazed with fire.
An Aelonian ship ahead tried to break through, but plasma washed over it, a blaze that lit space, and the silver vessel tumbled backward. Leona tried to dodge, but could not.
She braced herself.
The Aelonian warship slammed into the Nantucket.
Leona screamed as her corvette lurched backward and fell back into Terminus Wormhole.
At once, she was falling through the luminous tunnel, slamming into other starships, plunging away at a light-year per second.
"Hang on!" she shouted to the warriors who stood in the hold behind her, strapped into harnesses.
She roared, shoved the throttle again, and raced back toward Terminus. She glanced off the roof of another warship, skidded forward, and burst back into the battle.
This time Leona charged forth at full speed, not pausing to glance around. She shouted wordlessly as she fired her cannons. She hit several blasts of plasma in mid-space, swooped, and swerved under the belly of an Aelonian warship. She stormed toward the strikers, all guns blazing.
"Break through!" Leona cried into her comm. "Corvettes, break through!"
Her father had placed her in command of the Corvettes Company. The corvettes were the Heirs of Earth's smaller class of warships. Eleven served in their fleet, each the size of a yacht from old Earth. Each was named after a small city or town from Earth. They were faster than the bulky city-class frigates like the Jerusalem, more destructive than the small Firebird starfighters. In this battle, the corvettes formed the Inheritor vanguard.
At her left, the Aelonian ships were pounding the strikers, struggling to break through. At her right flew the Jerusalem, her father at the helm; the bulky frigate was unleashing hell upon the enemy. Yet the strikers pushed back, tearing down ship after ship.
An Inheritor corvette—the ISS Leeuwarden—shattered, spilling fire and corpses.
An Aelonian warship, thrice the size of the Jerusalem, tore open nearby. The blazing frigate tilted, then slammed into several other ships. As its hull ripped open, Leona saw the glowing aliens inside, heating up, bloating, then shattering like glass.
Above her, a Firebird exploded. The pilot screamed into her comm before falling silent. And the enemy kept attacking.
A wall of fire rose before the Concord fleet. Behind them, more ships were trying to exit the Wormhole, but they were trapped inside. There was no room to emerge. Another Inheritor ship, one of her corvettes, lost its shields and ripped open. Corpses flew and thudded against the Nantucket's hull.
Death, Leona thought. Death everywhere. We cannot defeat them. We should have run.
"Leona!" her husband cried in her memory. "I love you. I—"
She wept, her bridal gown splashed with his blood.
She lifted a rifle.
She fought.
She rose from the ashes of her wedding, a warrior, broken but stronger. Instead of white, she wore brown and blue.
She was an Inheritor.
And I will always fight for Earth.
"Corvettes Company!" she said into her comm. "Fear no death! Fear no evil! We are the Heirs of Earth, and Earth is eternal. Fight with me—with courage, with light. Do not fall back! Do not give them an inch! Onward, with me! Onward to victory! For Earth!"
"For Earth!" the corvette captains cried.
They were lower ranking than her—captains while she was a commodore. Corvettes were smaller warships, not as large or heavy as frigates like the Jerusalem. Within their holds, they carried privates and corporals, young fighters, many mere youths, some only fifteen or sixteen. In Leona's own corvette served Coral Amber the weaver, a young private new to war. But each Inheritor, from green private to grizzled admiral, was a hero of humanity.