She clenched her teeth. “Why can’t anything be simple?”
His laughter echoed from the speakers. “The only simple thing in life is death. Which, you know, we’re kind of trying to avoid here.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Leda slumped in her seat, defeated. She had to come up with something, but what?
She aimed her gaze at the battle on screen. So far the Woede ship seemed to be focusing all of its energy on Equinox. Patience didn’t have a cloak, but their shields were strong, and the generator virtually indestructible.
“I need you to stay on Equinox’s tail,” said Stein. “The longer we can avoid detection by the Woede battleship, the better.”
Sure. I just have to hide a spaceship and figure out how I’m supposed to work as this weapon thing, all at the same time.
Squaring her shoulders, Leda took the controls again and followed the dips and sways of Equinox’s evasive maneuvers. Ideas flicked in her head and she dismissed them all, except one. A brief search of Patience’s systems revealed a short anchor system. She hoped Roar and everyone else on Equinox would know she was behind the tether. It was worth a shot. Leda hit the switch and the anchor shot out, a direct hit on Equinox’s hull. The tether locked on and secured itself.
Perfect.
Now to figure out how the weapon worked.
Eerie stillness hung in the ship’s air, dulled by the constant hum from the engines and Stein’s cheers when he hit a target. Patience’s shield absorbed each blast with efficiency, stealing power from the enemy’s weapons to regenerate itself. A perfect design. Kind of like a genetic weapon—passed down from generation to generation naturally, without ever needing to mention a secret location or risk the weapon falling into the wrong hands and being used for selfish purposes. All great ideas, but that didn’t help her now. If only she came with instructions.
Leda closed her eyes and zeroed her focus in search of any possible hints that might exist in her chaotic, tumbled mess of a brain. As she concentrated, her fingers closed around the pendant from Dad, warm to the touch like always.
I miss you, she thought, tears spilling down her cheeks. I need you right now, more than ever. How does it work, Dad? What do I do?
“How very touching.”
Every cell in Leda’s body turned to ice. Tears froze midway to her chin. Only the locket burned its constant, comforting heat. Slowly, so slowly, she lifted her lashes, already knowing what she’d see. Who she’d see.
Standing in the middle of Patience’s bridge, flickering like a holographic projection, was a tall figure covered in black from head to toe. A large cloak draped low over his face, shrouding his features. She could have picked him out of any video game line-up of evil overlords. Toorn. Nils’s grandfather. He didn’t seem all that terrifying to her. Then again, she probably hit her head and was suffering from heroic delusions.
“Have I come at a bad time?” A black arm indicated the battle on screen. “How very impolite of me.”
His “Captain Picard” voice grated on her last nerve. “You can cut the act. We both know your manners are non-existent.”
“Ah, so she does speak.”
Leda mimicked him, even as a voice inside her head warned her not to poke the bear with the bigger army. “She speaks, she walks, she even wipes her own ass.”
Toorn scowled, at least, it sounded like he scowled. “Vulgar.”
“I thought you liked vulgar. Didn’t you create those greasy, disgusting slime balls in the boarding pods? Do you give them names, too? Like, Fluffy and Lucky and Steve?”
“I’m hearing a lot of talk,” Toorn said, boredom a sharp edge in his voice, “and seeing very little action on your part. Isn’t there something you’re supposed to do?” He motioned to the screen again. “Look at all your little friends, each waiting for you to perform the one task you were born to accomplish.”
The weapon. He knows it’s me.
“I wonder if you’ve been made aware of the circumstances surrounding your purpose and my existence.” He waited for her response. Leda had none, and it seemed he expected this. “No, I didn’t think the Elders were brave enough to tell the truth.”
Truth about what?
“After everything you’ve been through, leaving your home and flying across the universe, they didn’t tell you…?” Toorn clicked his tongue. “Dear me, now that just isn’t fair.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why, the price of using the weapon, of course! Activating the weapon doesn’t simply destroy the Woede, you know. Or perhaps no one mentioned that? Aurelites and Woede, we are connected in ways you might never imagine. Are you prepared to make that kind of sacrifice?”
He let that sink in. Leda’s head spun in a hundred directions, wondering exactly what he meant. Connected how? Something in their physiology?
Toorn continued. “We’re not so different, you and I. Speaking of connections, I wonder if you even know how to access the weapon. But, ah! You can’t walk without support. What if you can’t complete your mission? What if you’re too…” He paused, tapping at his cloaked chin with a long, black finger. “What’s the word I’m thinking of? Ah yes, that’s right: broken.”
Leda felt the word pierce her heart. Broken. Broken. Broken.
“You’re hardly worth fighting at all. Why expend my forces on this weak, pathetic excuse of a girl? You’re useless, Leda. Just a useless, broken, cripple.”
The words echoed inside her, twisting and scratching and tearing her confidence down until there was nothing left. Toorn’s vicious laugh replaced the echo. She’d failed everybody. Failed Dad, failed Grams and Arne, failed Roar. She’d failed all of Aurelis. Just like Mom had said she would. Leda held on to the pendant, needing its warmth in her final moments. She thought of all the times she’d felt loved: always with Dad; when she’d moved in with Grams and Uncle Arne; when Roar had held her hand; when Roar had said her name; when Roar had kissed her.
Oline wasn’t dead. Roar felt for her pulse—weak, but there—and lifted her frail body up from the controls. He turned to Nils’s mother and felt so much hate inside him, like a plague, making him sick. Then he paused at her expression. Eren Kvellich was staring at Oline with wide, frightened eyes, unaware of her surroundings.
Arne broke the silence first. “Eren says she doesn’t know how she got to the bridge, and she doesn’t remember what she did.”
“Yeah?” Roar snapped. “What does she remember?”
Eren swiped a few tears with a skeletal hand. “I remember dreaming,” she murmured. “It was cold and dark, and I was alone. Then…I woke up. And I was here, and she”—Eren sniffled as she motioned to Oline—“was like that.” Eren turned and spotted Nils, unconscious and propped up in a chair near auxiliary systems. Her mouth fell open in slow motion, as if she were seeing him for the first time.
“What happened to him?” Eren said.
“Nils will be fine,” Rika said from Roar’s side. She tore a strip from her shirt and tied it tight around Oline’s wrist and tucked the ends over the wound. “He just has a bump on his head and a mild concussion. But we need to get Oline to sick bay.”
Roar opened his mouth to respond when another proximity alarm sounded. Another Woede vessel—maybe Toorn himself had shown up. They just couldn’t get a break.
Defeat bore an icy hole through his chest. Even if Rika managed to keep Oline stable until she healed, they weren’t going to make it out of here alive. It’s time to give up.
“I don’t recognize this ship,” Arne said. “It doesn’t look like a Woede vessel, does it, Roar?”
He spun around and examined the screen. The ship wasn’t Woede at all. It looked almost…
“Equinox, this is Patience. Friendly vessel in the area. Do you read?”
Arne ran to communications. “Patience, this is Equinox. We read you.”
“It’s Leda! Guys, we’re here to help.”
Roar’s heart thundered as he stepped up next to Arne. “Leda?”
<
br /> “Yeah, it’s me. And Stein.”
“How…?” He stared at the ship on screen, hardly believing Leda was inside it.
“There’ll be plenty of time to explain when these guys are gone. For now, just don’t shoot at us, okay?”
Inger pushed Arne away and grabbed the mic. “Leda, you know what you have to do.”
When Leda spoke, her voice sounded so fragile. “Can’t you tell me?”
A charge hit the ship, knocking Roar back. Equinox’s stabilizers kept him from falling onto his butt. Inger shouted into the comm system, but he knew the system was obliterated in the last blast. A brief glance at the panel covered in Oline’s blood told him they still had many systems, including weapons, but the communications array had been sheared clean off.
Thinking on his feet, Roar set Oline in what Leda had called the captain’s chair. “Rika,” he said, “you and Arne take her to sick bay and get her patched up. Arne.” Roar fixed a grave look on Leda’s uncle. “When you’re finished, get to the main tactical center and let me know you’re there via the internal messaging system. I have an idea, but it’s going to take a few steps to get it done.” When Arne and Rika had left the bridge, taking Oline with them, Roar turned to Inger. “I need you to watch over Eren.”
A sound like ripping metal filled Roar’s brain. The ship jerked then settled. Another alarm sounded, this time, to let the crew know shields were down to 70 percent. The shields were holding, but for how long?
Eren shook her head. “Posting sentries on me won’t do any good. Neither will the pod I woke up in. You need to kill me.”
He did a double take. “But I thought—Nils said you guys can’t die.”
“A common misconception spread by my father. We can die,” Eren said. “We just need the right circumstances.”
Another blast rent the ship. Roar grabbed the nearest surface for support. “I still don’t understand why this is so important.”
“Because I think what happened to Oline was partly my fault.”
Roar stilled. “What do you mean?”
Eren faced the screen. “He can control me here. On Earth I was far enough away that he couldn’t reach me. But out here”—she waved an arm—“we’re close enough to the Woede collective that he can get inside my head and control my body. Who knows what I might do next?”
“But how? How does it work?”
Eren shook her head. “I’m not sure. Every Woede alive today was created from him. The vat-grown, the natural-born. Maybe it’s something in his physiology that allows him to control us. But Roar, I swear to you, those soldiers out there in the ships? Half of them don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Did you ever wonder why they don’t answer hails or try to initiate any contact?”
He had, back on Aurelis when the Woede ships came and the Elders sent him and three others to Earth, but pushed it aside in favor of staying alive. “So you’re saying they’re being used, just like you were?”
“Yes.” She turned to Nils. “I don’t think he can control my son, though.”
Roar noticed how articulate Eren sounded, unlike the time he met with her before. “When you were on Earth, you seemed almost out of it.”
“Yes. I was on quite the tranquilizer cocktail, thinking that, if my father ever showed up on Earth, it might give me some time to figure a way off the planet before he broke through the fog and controlled me.”
“Why?”
Eren looked to Inger, who nodded, her eyes clouded with sadness. Eren turned back to Roar. “That’s the only way to kill us,” she said. “It will be slow and painful, but compared to the alternative, the choice is clear. You must push me out of an airlock and leave me to die.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
All the air evaporated from his lungs. The lights began to flicker and the floor shook, but Roar couldn’t think past what Eren had said. Then another direct hit wrenched his thoughts free.
“We’ll talk about that later.” Roar looked her square in the eye. “Can you keep it together long enough to help me out here?”
Eren swallowed. “I think so.”
He turned to the bridge’s tactical screen and examined their position. Half a dozen destroyers and a battle cruiser carried thousands of boarding pods and a couple hundred Woede soldiers.
Inger came next to Roar. “All we need to do is buy Leda some time.”
“Time to do what?” Roar slapped his hands on the panel when he realized what she meant. “If you think she’s going to be able to rescue us out here, I’m pretty sure you’re mistaken. ‘The weapon works for Aurelis.’ That’s what the Elders said.”
“For Aurelis,” Inger pointed out. “Not on Aurelis.”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “Semantics.”
“I think she’s right,” said Eren. “My father’s stronghold is centered around Aurelis now. He believes the planet has untold power and he’s intent on discovering it. If he’s brought this many ships out here, it stands to reason that he’s scared of what she can do, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her away. He didn’t know Leda went missing—”
“She didn’t go missing,” Roar spat. “She was taken.”
Eren conceded. “He doesn’t know she was taken, so it stands to reason that he’d send a fleet out to head you off away from the planet, just in case Leda slipped the net.”
“So we need to keep Leda off Equinox then.” Inger’s silvery eyes narrowed in thought. “Do the Woede know there’s another ship in the vicinity?”
Roar sighed. “Without communications, it’s impossible to tell.”
Eren said, “What if we don’t need communications?”
An uneasy feeling settled over Roar. “What do you mean?”
“I could tap into the collective.”
Bad idea, his thoughts screamed. To Inger, Roar said, “What are the chances Leda will figure out what to do without assistance?”
Petrus stumbled onto the bridge as Equinox faced another blow. Roar shot him a questioning look, but Petrus waved him off, his right hand in a fist over the spot Roar had pulled the knife from.
“She should get it on her own,” said Inger. “Her father’s been preparing her for this her whole life.”
Roar didn’t ask how. “Well, the best thing we can do in the meantime then is stick to my plan. At least it’ll distract the Woede from the other ship and buy her some time.”
Leda’s grandmother nodded. “And it never hurts to obliterate a few Woede. No offense,” she said to Eren, a wry smile on her lips.
Eren grinned. “None taken. Let’s cause some chaos.”
A few minutes later, Arne made his presence in tactical known by setting off an alarm then shutting it down. The blast on communications must have knocked out internal comms as well. Roar brought up the onboard messaging system, a back-up program nobody used that sure came in handy now. In as few words as possible, Roar informed Arne of the plan.
You want to do what?!?! Arne sent.
The closer we are to the main ship, Roar typed, the better our chances of causing some serious damage. And we need to keep Leda’s ship hidden. They won’t see it if we’re on their tails.
Petrus took Roar’s place and typed: As long as Leda can work out what she has to do, Roar’s plan will work.
A pause, then Arne’s reply came in. And if she can’t?
Roar bumped his friend out of the way. Then we’re screwed.
The shields were down to 50 percent when Roar, Arne, Petrus, and Inger finished the preparations. He wasn’t trusting Eren near any vital systems when the stakes were this high and he didn’t want her out of his sight, either. So he let her stay on the bridge. Eren agreed to let him cuff her to the rail running behind the pilot’s seat, out of the way, and far from reach of any systems.
He looked around the bridge. “Everybody ready?”
Tension drifted off the others and he felt it tugging him like an invisible thread connected them all. This move was risky, and every one of them knew it.
If Leda couldn’t make the weapon work, then they were going to die anyway. Might as well go out with a bang and take a couple of Woede with me.
Roar waited for those on the bridge to ready themselves, then he nodded to Petrus, who shot a message to Arne. A second later, Petrus confirmed that Arne had done what Roar asked.
Show time. At the helm, Roar put his hands in the controls and focused all his energy on steering Equinox toward the Woede armada. The ship banked right and shuddered under the sudden forced change in direction. Keep it moving, he thought, eyes on the chart. The little dot representing Equinox neared the battle cruiser.
When they were almost in position, Roar called to Petrus. “Tell Arne to count to five, then give the main ship everything we’ve got.”
Petrus nodded and turned to the screen.
Roar kept pushing Equinox closer to the Woede battle cruiser, their speed increasing. When they were about a mile from the cruiser, Roar felt the deck beneath him shudder with the force of weapons fire. It was like a relentless earthquake, and onscreen, starburst explosions surrounded the Woede ship. Arne fired again and again. Roar picked up the pace in increments, ignoring proximity warning alarms, overriding emergency protocols as they popped up.
A message popped into the corner of Roar’s mind—from the Woede battle cruiser. Not a hail, but a demand. He pulled it up on the ship’s main screen. No video, just sound. A terrible, high-pitched screeching sound. Roar cringed and shut the message down.
“They know what you’re doing,” Eren said.
That was kind of the point. Roar forced more dark energy from the surrounding space into the drives. Time to speed things up here.
“That wasn’t just a message,” Eren continued. “It was a warning.”
Roar smirked. Sweat pearled down his brow from exertion. “Yeah? What are they warning us about?”
“‘Change your heading or be destroyed,’” Eren said, shaking her head. “That’s what I got from the short burst, anyway.”
“They’re going to kill us either way, so I’m going to go with no.” Roar turned to Inger. “Tell Arne to fire up Leda’s program.” He’d managed to save the hack she’d used when she fired on her mom, and that was the ace up his sleeve. The perfect way to go: guns blazing at 200 percent, on a collision course with an evil scourge.
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