Eclipse the Skies

by Maura Milan

  “Then Knives is right.” He had detailed his plan to her, and Ia had hoped there’d be another way. Because Knives’s plan was reckless. But hell, she was more than familiar with the word.

  “Does this structure have a piloting system?” Ia asked Brinn as she ran to the control board.

  Brinn kept up with her. “Stabilizers but not full thrusters.”

  “That won’t be enough.”

  They needed to send Penance into Aokonic. Quickly. But with no piloting system, that was going to be difficult. If only they could get a push in the right direction. Her focus locked on Nirvana, which was almost completely destroyed by the black mass leaching through. Once it was done with the battle colony, it’d reach for whatever it could get next. A stray asteroid. A nearby planet. A whole galaxy. Her thoughts raced trying to figure out a way, her eyes trailing out the observation windows. She squinted.

  There was something peppered in the distance, getting larger by the second. She knew that silhouette. It was Orca, and behind it was a long line of starjets coming their way.

  Ia had told Goner to find her supporters, and he had. He’d brought legions of them.

  She could see him, his obnoxious skull a shock of white through Orca’s cockpit windows. A beep came through her holo, and she accepted the stream.

  Goner’s voice was crisp and tinged with mischief. “Are we late to the party?”

  CHAPTER 67

  KNIVES

  KNIVES GUIDED the new starjets to line up against one half of the archways. There had to be hundreds of thousands of them, one of the largest fleets he had ever seen.

  Goner pulled up next to him in Ia’s Orca. His voice came through the Kaiken’s comms system.

  “What have you been up to?” Goner asked casually. “Relaxing?”

  “I never thought I’d be happy to see your face again.” Without Goner, without that fleet of jets, they wouldn’t have nearly enough power to push a structure that large.

  “Are the force fields and stabilizers down?” Goner asked.

  “As far as I know.” It seemed like Bastian had rerouted all of Penance’s existing power to opening the bridge, which was good, because they needed the force fields down for any damage to be done. And the stabilizers had to be deactivated for them to even move this gigantic thing. He hoped that this wouldn’t be all for naught.

  Goner’s voice rasped through his speakers. “You know, on my list of things I’ve always wanted to do, this was high up there.”

  “Sending a wormhole to another universe into a black hole?” Knives said.

  “Yep,” Goner said. “You never thought of it?”

  “Trust me. This is on top of my to do list right now,” he said, then turned all the streams on so everyone would hear him. “On three, all jets forward. Full power.”

  “1…”

  Down the line, everyone’s thrusters flared, ready to go.

  “2…”

  Knives’s hands gripped tightly on his steering wheel as he said a quick prayer to Deus.

  I hope this works.

  “3…”

  CHAPTER 68

  BRINN

  THE GROUND LURCHED underneath Brinn’s feet, and outside, the view shifted. “We’re moving,” she said.

  “Then we’ll be there in moments.” Behind her, Ia had changed into one of the flight suits that were lying in a pile on a worktable. It was sleek and fitted with thin sheets of armor, shaded in a deep maroon against the black webbing of the suit. A utility belt and black hole grenades were around her waist.

  “Did you make these?” Ia asked.

  The question was innocuous enough, but Brinn looked away, a feeling of shame staining her dark. The weapons she’d invented had killed a lot of people. It was something she had known all along, but this was the first time the words had sunk in, hard like concrete.

  How do you stay afloat when everything is so heavy inside you? She asked herself this question a lot. But there was something that Ia had said to her back at Aphelion so many months ago, and they were words that stayed with her, even with all the things she had done.

  “Remember what you told me about right or wrong? Can you say it again?”

  Ia looked at her, her black eyes sharp as they always were. “But you already know it, Brinn.”

  She did, but she needed to be reminded. To have that permission to open her eyes to the rising sun, to get up and breathe, and live.

  “After Faren, I became familiar with the night. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t rest. And after what happened with Lind, my hands began to shake,” Brinn said. “There’s a part of me that wants it all to end.”

  She had expected Ia to scoff, to lecture her like she always did. Instead, Ia sighed.

  “I stood in your exact spot,” Ia said. “Where I thought I’d gone too far. Where I wanted to die because of all the things I’ve done. But if I did give up, then I wouldn’t be here now. With you.”

  She took a step next to Brinn and looked out into the All Black.

  “There are so many sad moments in our lives,” Ia said. “But also glimmers of good ones. They may be far and few between, but they’ll be there.”

  Ia took her hand, and Brinn felt a warmth that had been gone for so long.

  Tears blurred her eyes, and she let them fall. Silent. A release she hadn’t allowed herself for quite some time. She had been reaching out, waiting for someone to find her. The anger she had carried inside herself these past months was so great that she hadn’t realized she was drowning.

  Ia squeezed her hand, and Brinn wiped her tears briskly with her knuckles.

  “We’re almost there now,” Ia said, nodding to the view outside. Aokonic was before them. A swirl of dark and light along its outer edge, flecks of matter and energy caught in a tide pool. And they were dangerously close to being pulled in.

  “There is a possibility that this plan won’t work,” Brinn said.

  “Don’t worry,” Ia said. “I’ll make sure it does.” And she stepped back from the observation deck. “It’s time to go.”

  Brinn pointed to the belt wrapped around Ia’s suit. “That’s the last device, but it should be enough to get us somewhere safe. We just have to point ourselves in the right direction.”

  They walked to the other end of laboratory, to the windows that faced the endless line of jets that were pushing them toward Aokonic.

  “All of these people came for you?” Brinn asked.

  “Not for me.” Ia shook her head. “They came because they had something worth fighting for.”

  Brinn looked at the faces in each jet. They were refugees from different planets, criminals who had journeyed all the way from their Dead Spacer undergrounds. There were civilian jets mixed throughout the crowd—transport vehicles, freighters, and other vessels that weren’t even meant for combat. Some were even jets she recognized from Einn’s own fleet.

  Ia stopped in front of a specific starjet. The metal paneling was ragged with black burnout all along its undersides, but even through the grime, Brinn could detect an outline of a red feather burning through. It was Ia’s jet.

  When she looked through the cockpit windows, Brinn was surprised to see that Goner was piloting it. “I can’t stand that guy,” Brinn said.

  Ia smirked. “He grows on you.”

  She pressed the button on the belt, and a spatial tear formed in front of them, a rip in space connecting one point with the next.

  Through its center, Brinn saw the inside of Ia’s jet and Goner looking back at them from the pilot seat. “Are you getting in or not?”

  But there was only one extra seat.

  No.

  She swiveled to Ia, who immediately folded her into her arms. It was a deep hug, one that was meant to last. “Remember what I said about the good moments.”

  Ia’s words brought to mind a memory from their first months at Aphelion, when Brinn was standing in the headmaster’s office watching the simulation of the teamwork test. That was when she’d real
ized that this girl was not what Brinn thought she was. That there was light inside all the darkness.

  The tears rolled down her face, and Brinn nodded into her shoulder. Because she knew what this meant.

  She let go of Ia’s hand and stepped out of Penance alone.

  CHAPTER 69

  IA

  AS THE BELT around her waist lost charge and the wormhole connecting Penance and Orca began to close, Goner held up her helmet.

  “This is yours,” Goner said. “Are you ready for it?”

  Ia opened her arms, and he tossed it to her. She rotated it in her hands, the feather burning into her eyes. It was a mark that everyone feared. In the end, she was frightened of what the Blood Wolf had become, too.

  But it wasn’t always like that.

  She had to remember what it used to represent. When her father gave her the crimson feather all those years ago, it had only one meaning. To rise. Clawing through the clouds, tearing across the skies like a Blood Wolf. That was its nature. She hadn’t felt that ferocity, that determination for quite some time.

  She’d hidden from it.

  Maybe because she knew the end would be exactly this.

  There were only so many times you could look Death in the face before it started to recognize you.

  Ia walked back toward her brother. He was sitting up against a lab table, staring out into the depths of Aokonic—a never-ending well of unknown possibilities or absolute destruction. It was impossible to tell. No one had ever gone into a black hole before and returned.

  Outside, between the archways, the bridge was still open and growing. To a point where she could feel it in her bones. The call of the other universe. It was a part of her, as it was a part of Einn.

  “Once we pass the event horizon, the bridge will collapse,” she told him. “Aokonic is too strong.”

  Einn’s gaze turned down to the raw flesh at his wrists. “Then why are you still here? To finish me off?”

  She had come here to take down her brother. To kill him before he killed the universe. But instead, her fists uncurled. She stood before him with no weapons, no rage.

  She had to see things through to the end.

  “I wanted to see you lose,” Einn said under his breath. “A crimson child. Beloved.” He laughed lightly. “And who am I?”

  “My brother,” she whispered. “You are my brother.”

  “Now I see your weakness,” he said.

  She shook her head. “It’s not a weakness.”

  “You believe that in the face of Death, my feelings will change?” Einn’s voice was still sharp, a weapon meant to hurt her. He had used all his anger to put up walls between them, but standing this close, Ia saw how tired he was.

  “I would hope that, in the face of Death, you’d feel solace that we’re together,” she said. “No one wants to die alone, Einn. Believe me. I know.”

  His gray eyes finally turned to her, no longer cast in impenetrable steel. She saw a glimpse of the brother she once knew.

  Eyes open, a path now clear.

  Her body ached from a life of fighting, but she ignored the wounds. She sat down, leaning back beside him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Einn studied her posture, her body carefully curled to one side, and his eyes narrowed. “You’re bleeding.”

  She touched her side. The blood had already seeped through the fabric of the new suit. His dagger had pierced deep during their fight. Too deep, she had already known. But she bit down the pain—all the pain that her brother had brought, not just that day but so many days before.

  With him by her side, she stared out into the unknown, just as they had when they discovered the planetoid they’d claimed and called Nirvana, as they had so many other times in the past. Those moments were a part of her memories. And even after everything that happened, they were still sacred.

  Because it was Einn, after all.

  “Do you think Dad’s out there?” Ia asked.

  There was a measured silence as her brother stared into the infinite, his memories a weight on his shoulders. “Yes,” he said finally. “I do.”

  Her eyes softened as she looked at him. So there was a part of Einn who still wondered about their father after all.

  They crossed into the event horizon, and she felt all her atoms. Rattling, torn, then pulled apart. Soon, all sense of her being would be gone.

  Beyond the structure, the dark tendrils from the other side were getting crushed from the force of the black hole, until one by one they were no longer. As the bridge started to collapse, she could see flashes of the other universe. It had a dark sky just like theirs, filled with infinite stars, with dreams and disasters, with brothers and sisters. And the fathers who would never leave them.

  She saw a life she had never led.

  Even though the universes were infinite—

  Though the possibilities were infinite—

  She…well, she had come to a point where her road would end. So she stopped to look back at the scenery. The way was long and hard, with twists and dead ends. There had been people who’d joined her on this road, and those who’d left. And in the end, that path was carved by her alone.

  She looked down at the feather on her helmet. Even as the seconds fell away like sand, even as she faced the end, she heard the song that her father had sung to her, and she remembered what it was like to not be afraid.

  CHAPTER 70

  BRINN

  THEY TRAVELED for weeks, stopping only for fuel. As they flew, everyone in the caravan was quiet. Even Goner, who loved to prod and poke, only spoke when he had to.

  Brinn hadn’t realized that their jet had pulled away from the main convoy until she saw a blue planet below them.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Ia told me to bring you here,” Goner said.

  Brinn had to close her eyes at the sound of Ia’s name.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “So you can start over.” Goner smiled. “You’ve never seen it before, have you?”

  Brinn peered down, taking a closer look. Her breath stilled in her lungs. Green valleys. Cerulean oceans as blue as her own hair. She knew in her heart where she was.

  Tawnus.

  He landed Orca in a nearby port, a bay surrounded by a curve of land. The starjet bobbed in the water as she jumped from its wing, her feet landing on the wooden pier.

  It led to a rocky beach, empty except for a house with a blue door.

  She walked up to it cautiously, unraveling the bandages on her injured hand. The layers fell to the ground, exposing the skin on her palm, then each of her fingers. A hand fully healed.

  Her body was now whole, yet she wandered like a ghost up the path. Her footsteps still heavy with the things that had happened to her, and the things she had done to rage against them. She tried to remember, to open her hard heart and see the Brinn she used to be before the war. But she was too far gone to even recall.

  When she arrived at the blue door, she didn’t even have to knock. The door opened, and out flowed the warm, orange light of a fire. It jolted her back to the living, and she looked up and saw those eyes. The same deep-gray as Faren’s. The same color as her own.

  And instantly, it felt as though a lost piece of herself had returned. A vision of the Brinn that she used to be.

  She felt her knees shake, her shoulders, her lungs. She could finally say it. After all this time, she could finally say it.

  “Mom…”

  CHAPTER 71

  KNIVES

  KNIVES TOUCHED DOWN on Aphelion a few weeks later than everyone else. When he popped open the hatch to his cockpit, Vetty was there waiting for him.

  “You’re back, chien,” Vetty said.

  Knives forced a smile. He could tell by the strained lines in Vetty’s expression that his was forced as well. They had won the battle, but they both knew what they had lost.

  “You should rest,” Vetty suggested.

  Knives shook his head and started to walk aw
ay. “I just need some air.”

  When he made his way down the tarmac, he saw familiar faces. Juo dictating a message to Angie and what was left of the comms team. Meneva and Eve clearing up debris that was left over from battle.

  The flight deck was filled with activity and more people than he’d ever seen at Aphelion. In a way, it made him happy.

  Knives walked to the end of the tarmac and looked up into the cloudy sky. A common sight. It was as if nothing in the past few months had ever happened.

  He sat down.

  A woman’s voice floated toward him, the sound of it laced with its own set of woes and history. “After the journey you’ve had, you need to eat.”

  He looked back to see the owner of the ramen shop standing behind him, so tall even when she hunched.

  “What are you doing here, Kami?” he asked.

  “I answered a call for help,” she said. “Plus no one wants to eat that slop that’s served in your academy kitchens.”

  Kami sat next to him, crossing her legs, and joined him to look up at the sky. “You know how people always say that black holes are gods of Death? They’re wrong.”

  Knives pressed his lips together. “How do you know that?”

  “Because I survived one. A long time ago.” What she said made him stare. He hadn’t noticed before, in the dark corners of her ramen shack. But out in the open light, he recognized her. The slender jaw, strong cheekbones, eyes sharp as blood diamonds. Only this wasn’t chiseled in marble, but in flesh.

  “You’re—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, she poured ramen from her thermos into a bowl and placed it beside him.

  “There’s nothing wrong with keeping hope alive, kid.”

  When Kami left, he closed his eyes, recalling the moments after Penance had collapsed. He was the last to leave.

  He’d looked up to his communications screen to see a new message blinking in his box. The subject was a single phrase: Just in case.