She thought that by now she’d know that nothing was permanent. And of course, she’d wanted to leave. But the suddenness of it, the panicked pick-up-and-go . . . it left no room for goodbyes.
A toddler started shrieking somewhere in the throng, apparently sharing her feelings. Soraya closed her eyes and exhaled deeply. A sobering thought hit her: She had no idea how long it would take them to get from the wormhole to . . . to wherever it was they were going.
The ship jerked to the left, and now it wasn’t just the toddler screaming. Her fellow passengers couldn’t hear what was going on out there, and they couldn’t see, either, but oh, they knew. People stumbled and fell into each other as the ship’s pilot (whoever it was) did their best to dodge gunfire (whoever that was too). The refugees began to panic. There was swearing, yelling, desperate prayers, wordless sobs.
I’m gonna die here, she thought. That had always been a possibility, and yet Soraya was chilled by it all the same.
She summoned up the last crumb of stamina she had left. “Everybody, listen!” she called out, pushing the words from the base of her lungs. “This won’t help. We can make it. We have a chance. Hang on to each other. Help people who can’t stand. We can do this.”
The commotion quieted, but did not vanish. Above it, though, an old man’s voice rang out. “Oh winter, winter, please turn around . . .” Soraya recognized him—Ade, from the laundry. Always singing, despite the crushing reek of the chemical dip. He was singing now, too, a fluffy, old-fashioned folksong, one of those that everybody knew every word to without remembering where they’d learned it. “I miss the sunshine, and the green grass ground—”
A few more voices joined in. They weren’t pretty, and they weren’t on key. That wasn’t the point. “Please take your snowfall and fade away . . .”
Some people still sobbed. Some people still prayed. But one by one, the song grew in strength. Someone reached out and held Soraya’s hand. She squeezed back, and sang loud. “Let in the springtime, so we can—”
They were all still singing when a barrage hit and the lights went out.
• • •
Asala was comfortable being a killer. She knew that was a horrible thing, but she’d long come to live with it. There had been deaths that disturbed her, or kept her awake in the days after. That was normal.
It had been a long time, though, since it had brought sorrow.
She stared out at the bedlam beyond her cockpit shield. The Thorn was rampaging through the sky, a wild mobuck charging through Hafiz’s flock. Asala’s Defense Force was gone, no more left to count. The Khayyami fleet as a whole was scattered now, brawling with drones and chasing Red Squad stragglers.
A tightness in her chest let go—the last scrap of pretense that any of this was hers to clean up. She’d done her job. She’d done it. She was done.
She locked onto Dayo’s signal. Still intact. Another knot loosened. She wasn’t too late. Her racing dart leapt toward its new heading, fast as it could fly.
She had caught chatter over the comms—intercepted messages from the Gandesians. It was all scrap and garble, but she caught details of a panic that made sense, one of altered gravity and errant orbits. She nearly called Niko to confirm . . . but no. No, she would ask nothing of Niko now.
Gan-De had been given a death sentence, if the chatter was true. She could see the planet now out her window, a brilliant clouded marble like all the rest. It didn’t look as if it were dying, from out here. But then, Hypatia hadn’t either, and she doubted Eratos appeared anything but beautiful and whole from above. People spoke about the death of planets as if the rock itself would shatter, but the truth was never so dramatic. The entire sphere wasn’t in danger of ceasing to exist. All that mattered was the inner goings-on of that tiny strip of gauze, that onion skin of atmosphere clinging to the rocky surface like morning dew. The narrowest of margins on which everything depended.
Starving the sun hadn’t been enough for these warring worlds. Now they were playing billiards with planets, too. She remembered the people on Gan-De who had helped her and Niko cross the mountains, the farmers and their workshop attic full of boxes saved for another day. They didn’t deserve this.
Did she deserve this, Asala wondered? Did Ekrem? Did Cynwrig? Did Hafiz? The engineers who had first proposed the solar harvest? The politicians who favored whichever cause lined their pockets most? Did the flag-wavers, the finger-pointers, the us-versus-thems—did any of them, for all their greed and hate and folly, deserve punishment on this scale? Punishment in general, they deserved, herself included. A slap in the face, a knife to the throat. But not a whole world. Not every world. Their crimes, even in aggregate, did not warrant extinction. Even if it was their own fault.
Dayo’s pod waited outside. A matte metal oval of government make, utterly unremarkable, but it felt to Asala as if it contained the whole universe. Her hands shook as she angled her ship’s tiny hold toward it. This, she likewise did not deserve. Asala had killed a friend, and for this, she was rewarded with the thing she’d thought she’d lost forever.
But then, this was not about her. This was about Dayo. Dayo, who had loved her. Changed her for the better. Asala didn’t know what Dayo had done in the years between, but she was sure, from what little she’d seen that day, that her sister’s hands were as bloody as her own. Perhaps Dayo didn’t deserve saving either. And perhaps that was why the question of who deserved what was broken to begin with. That was what they’d all been focused on—Niko, Cynwrig, Ekrem, Hafiz, even Soraya, in a more merciful way. Who deserved saving, and why? As if that were a question any of them could answer. As if any of them were gods.
Asala would save Dayo now, not because she herself deserved that joy, and not because of whether or not Dayo had earned it. She would do it because it was what love demanded.
An image flickered through her mind: Niko walking into Ekrem’s office all those months back. The proud father, introducing them. The grown child, blossoming at the attention. There had been love there, too.
She buried the thought as quickly as she could.
The racing dart had only the smallest of holds, intended for light cargo and supplies. Asala almost laughed. Light cargo, she thought, remembering her grandmother, always grabbing Dayo’s trim cheeks fretfully and shoving another cup of sweet cream into her hands. The little joy of remembrance made something within her keen. She’d told herself she would never have that again—the comforting daily nothings of family. And yet here she was, hoping like a fool.
She checked to make sure her suit and helmet were sealed, then began to open the hatch. She heard the steady hiss of controlled depressurization, and she knew she’d be losing a precious amount of air. That didn’t concern her. If Dayo wasn’t breathing at the end of this, she didn’t want to be either.
The few medical supplies and odd tools that had been in the hold floated away. Asala looked around the cockpit panel, and found the controls for the cargo tether. She extended it, and activated the electromagnet on the end. She felt a backward pull, then a thunk. The tether brought the pod in, sliding it into the grated-over space behind her seat. It fit the hold, barely.
Asala hurriedly closed the hatch and began repressurizing. The oxygen tanks groaned as they labored. Finally, the indicator light on her monitor hit green. As it did so, the pod responded, automatically sliding back its outer cover upon detecting breathable surroundings. Asala pulled off her own helmet and turned up her implants as far as they would go. The whine of the engines was almost unbearable, as was the hiss of the air and the previously unheard hum of the control panel. The cacophony made her wince, but she only needed to bear it for a moment, just until she could unearth one small sound buried under all the rest.
And there it was: Dayo, pulling in an even breath.
• • •
The sky was now littered with what was left of the rebel ships and the refuse they’d carried. The Thorn flew triumphant through the flotsam, but there was no gladness in th
is victory. Save the sound of comms chatter and the distant vibrations of the railguns cooling down, Cynwrig’s bridge was as silent as a funeral.
On the viewscreen, the edges of the wormhole writhed. “Is it collapsing?” she asked of the engineer.
The engineer’s face was empty. “I would assume so, General.”
“But it will make no difference, will it?”
“For the planet? No.” Tears streaked down the woman’s face. “You can’t move a planet back to where it was.”
Cynwrig looked at the woman. “I do not know your name.”
“Nur avett Dana, kima,” the engineer said.
“Do you have family, Nur?”
“No, kima.”
“Friends?”
“Not really, kima.”
“Who do you shed tears for, then?”
Nur turned her head to Cynwrig slowly, confused by the question. “For Gan-De,” she said, her voice choked, her tone implying the answer was plain.
Cynwrig let her weight sink into her chair. She did not shed tears of her own. Nur’s tears were her tears. The frozen tears of every brave Gandesian pilot who floated now in the vacuous wreckage, they were hers as well. The storm rains that would come, the seas flowing under doors and down once-shining streets, those, too, would be Cynwrig’s anguish, washing over her beloved world.
Twenty minutes the wormhole had been open. Six months she had held the line at the Siege of Halien. Fifty-two years she had been a soldier. Her entire life, she had bled and sweat and suffered for Gan-De. And yet, twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was all it took to undo all she had done.
There were always two levels of strategy to consider in war: the immediate needs of the battle, and the long game. The battle here was over. Down on the surface, another was beginning. Her advisers would be compiling their numbers and reports, coming to cleaner conclusions than Nur had. They would get over their shock, then begin planning, evacuating, strategizing. They would find ways to weather the days ahead.
But what of the years? What of the decades? Would Gan-De even stay habitable that long? If their world were gone, who were they, then?
No. She would not accept this. She would not see her proud people made to beg for charity, to leech as the clannies had, to bow before some other planet and lose all remembrance of their heritage. Defeat in battle, that was a bitterness she could weather. But this was annihilation. Utter ruin.
She’d put her own eyes out before she’d let that happen.
“Take us through,” she said to the navigator.
The navigator looked baffled. “General?”
The entire bridge had their eyes on her. She laced her gloved fingers together and nodded. The long game. “We have two futures before us. In one, we secure the technology that has been taken through that door, and we master it for ourselves. We use it to come back, and to take our brethren to a safer home. Or, two, our home is lost. Gan-De is lost, and there is no technology that can save it, no door that can be reopened.” Her children, her grandchildren. The memory of their faces tore at her. “In that future, we are what remains of our culture. We are the standard-bearers. We are the ones who will rebuild.” She met the eyes of her crew. They were bewildered and furious, just as she was within. “And in either future, this I swear to you . . .” She pointed hard at the viewscreen. “We will wipe out the animals that did this. We will have justice for our world.”
A young officer stood and gave her a formal salute. “To my death, General,” he said, echoing the oath he’d taken when he’d been given his uniform.
One by one, the other officers did the same.
“To my death.”
“To my death.”
“To my death.”
The Thorn heaved itself forward, a ship of might and rage, and sailed through the shrinking maw into the unknown.
• • •
Why weren’t they dead?
An unarmed derelict ship wasn’t a high-priority target, to be sure, but Niko should’ve been dead. They’d been hoping for it, hoping for the drones to revert back to their owners, or a trigger-happy Gandesian or Khayyami—at this point, did it matter who?—wiping the playing field clean. They’d been lying on the floor, waiting for it. Begging for it. Explosions were fast, and spacing was quick. Either way would be fine. Or even—even if the ship got boarded, if whoever was winning out there wanted to keep some salvage for themselves, Niko was sure they’d just get shot, no questions. That was fine too, so long as it happened soon.
The comms crackled. “Station Control?”
Niko opened their eyes. They shut them again. That wasn’t meant for them. They could leave it be.
“Station Control? Hello?”
Niko sat up, staring dumbly at their cobbled-together workstation as if they’d never seen it before. Everything felt like they were in a dream, like their body belonged to someone else.
“Hello? Anybody alive out there?”
Slowly, Niko reached for the controls. “Yes, hello, I read you. Who is this?”
“Oh, thank fuck,” the voice on the other end said. “This is Captain Banik, of the Arrow. Uh, formerly Block G.”
Niko had no idea who that was. “Okay?”
“Is this Station Control?”
“This is . . .” Niko looked around the room, currently populated by themself and a corpse. “What’s left of it.”
“Okay, good.” The voice had the sound of someone trying desperately hard to hold it together. “I—I’ve got fifty people on my ship. Our main engines failed, we’re not going to get to the wormhole in time. I don’t—what do we do?”
Niko stared for a moment.
“Hello?”
“Yes—yes, I’m here, hello.” Niko tried to push through the sludge filling their brain. Why couldn’t they be dead?
Those fifty people will be, part of them replied, if you don’t do something.
“Are—are you under fire?” Niko asked.
“No. No, all the shit’s concentrated by the wormhole. We barely got past our moorings.”
“Okay. Okay.” Think. They opened up a shared channel. “This is . . . Station Control to any Ghalan ships remaining. Please ping back if you’re still in the vicinity of the camp.”
Their monitor lit up with a dozen or so lights.
“Okay, great. Um, okay, ping back if you’ve got thrusters, at least. Enough to scoot around your immediate environment.”
Three lights pinged back.
Three ships. All right. Niko ran their hand through their hair and exhaled. Those three ships weren’t properly spaceworthy, but they could get around. They could pick people up, and ferry them to . . . to . . . to their location. Niko’s ship was dead in the water, but it had air and it was big. It was something. It would help.
“All right, every ship that can move, listen up,” Niko said. “We’re going to find everybody who got left behind, and we’ll . . . we’ll take it from there.” They looked at the little lights on their monitor, still looking for the one that wasn’t there. Niko should’ve died. But they hadn’t, and there was work to do.
• • •
“Dayo?” Asala said, kicking the ship back into flight. Burned out though the battle was, she wasn’t stupid enough to sit still. “Dayo, can you hear me?”
Dayo was breathing, but did not respond. Unconscious, Asala reasoned. A lack of oxygen. An injury while ejecting. She was alive, that was the important part. Asala could see to her once they’d . . . once they . . .
Where were they going now?
Asala laughed at her own lack of foresight. She had no plan for this. She’d expected to die. Where would she go? Who would take them in? Where would they be safe?
A family, Cynwrig had said of her pawned soldier. A wife on Gan-De.
Gan-De was in trouble, the comms said.
Dayo would want to go back regardless of trouble, Asala was sure. That was what she herself would want, if family was involved. The pod in her hold was proof enough of that.<
br />
But could she even get to Gan-De? Hacked platforms or no, Asala saw no chance of getting to the surface after this. Even if it were possible to land safely, there was no way the both of them wouldn’t get shot the moment they stepped out of their craft.
Her fuel gauge slunk a little lower by the moment. Her oxygen did the same.
There was no one left on this side who would help her. What remained of Camp Ghala was dead or dying. She didn’t know if Soraya had survived. She could ask nothing of Niko, if they lived. And the Thorn hadn’t been defeated, though where it had gone? She’d have to pocket that question.
The wormhole flickered. Stars began to shine normally through where its edges had blacked them out a short time ago.
“Please forgive me, Dayo,” she said. “When you wake up—please understand.”
She shot the racing dart toward the wormhole, gritting teeth and burning fuel. Faster, faster her ship went, until suddenly, something stronger took over. She could feel an inescapable pull grab hold of her craft as she crossed a final, invisible border. On an impulse, she slammed the engines off, unsure how they would operate within this uncanny space. She’d been right; she didn’t need them. The ship coasted smoothly through a constructed path. She could not say how fast. There was motion, but that was all she could say. Everything about this was beyond her grasp. There was no color, no shape, merely darkness in its purest form. The universe beyond the soft glow of her cockpit had disappeared, and it terrified her. She wanted to leave, but there was no possibility of that now. She could not go back. Only through.
On the other end, there was light.
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Keep reading for an excerpt of The Vela: Salvation:
The Vela: The Complete Season 1 Page 34