"Thank you," she said, but the girls only tittered, cheeks flushing, and ran off.
Night fell. In the darkness, glowing insects shone in hanging cages, casting light across the plateau. Under their glow, her belly full, Kemi raised her cup.
"To Addy!" she said. "We all wish she were here."
Ben-Ari stood up and raised her cup. "To Addy! May she be with us again soon."
"To Addy!" said Lailani. "The toughest damn soldier in the galaxy."
They all looked at Marco.
"To Addy," he said softly. "I miss her every moment." He raised his cup higher. "And to Kemi's parents, whom we hope every day we will see again."
Kemi smiled, tears in her eyes. Thank you, Marco.
They drank.
Several Nandaki stepped forth, demure, clad in flowing white garments embroidered with silver leaves, and necklaces of beads hung around their necks. They carried musical instruments of bone, wood, and string, and they began to play and sing. It was a song so beautiful that the humans—even Ben-Ari—shed tears. Kemi did not understand the words, but she didn't need to. Here was a song of leaves in the wind, of sunrise over mountains, of fine fare and good cheer. It was a song of innocence lost, of a longing for peace, of beauty fading under the shadow. It was a song of light. It was a song of home. And Kemi wept, because she missed her own home and her own songs, and she didn't know if the song of Earth would ever more sound in the night.
"Kemi?"
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up, blinking the tears away. Marco stood there, gazing at her softly.
"Sorry." She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "I'm sentimental."
He reached down a hand. "Will you dance with me?"
She couldn't help but laugh. She raised an eyebrow. "Since when do you dance?"
He tapped his chin, considering. "Since finding myself on an alien world far from home, with beautiful music playing, and with a beautiful woman to dance with."
"I think you've had too much of that Nandaki juice," Kemi said, pointing at his empty cup.
"I probably have," he confessed. "But you didn't answer my question."
Kemi laughed again. She took his hand and rose. "Don't step on my toes."
She rested her hands on his shoulders, and he held the small of her back. The Nandaki musicians played on, filling the air with the soft, beautiful song of their home.
For a moment, Kemi and Marco stood still, staring into each other's eyes.
This is wrong, Kemi thought, unable to tear her eyes away. This is wrong, Marco. This hurts too much. This is too sweet. We cannot rekindle this. It's too late.
But they began to dance slowly, the music flowing around them. Night fell again, and the alien fireflies glided around them, joining their dance. Kemi placed her head against Marco's shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around her. They swayed, spun, a dance through darkness and dawn.
"I missed you, Marco," she whispered. "For a long time." She looked up into his eyes, blinking away tears. "Don't hurt me."
He seemed taken aback, but then he nodded. He held her close. "I'm sorry, Kemi."
She touched his cheek. "For what?"
"For everything. For how I was. You came to me on the Miyari. You came to find me, and I just . . . I tossed you away. I'm sorry."
She smiled shakily, and she cursed her damn tears. "That was a long time ago. In another life."
"I know," Marco said. "But I wanted you to know that. I'm sorry. I'm not who I was then. I hurt you, and I'm sorry, and I'll always love you."
Kemi laughed through her tears. "Definitely too much of that juice."
A firefly glided between them, casting its light into their eyes, and Kemi smiled and watched it fly away.
"It's beautiful," she said. "It's so beautiful."
She leaned her head back on his shoulder, letting him hold her, swaying slowly. No, they were no longer who they had been. They had both changed too much. They both hurt too much inside, both had suffered too much pain. Kemi did not know if they would find Addy again, if they could save the world, if they could ever heal themselves. But she knew that here, for this brief night, she was happy.
May the dawn never rise, she prayed silently. May we forever be lost in this moment.
Yet the nights here were so short. The sun rose again, and the music died. Kemi and Marco stepped apart, laughing awkwardly, the magic gone but not forgotten. She looked down at her toes, then back up at him, and she smiled and held his hand.
"There are so many bad memories," she said. "Let this be a good one. When we remember the bad times, let us remember this goodness too." And now her tears were falling again. "All the nightmares in the world cannot erase a single memory of joy."
After their feast, the Nandaki led them to hammocks that hung between leaves, large enough for human sleepers.
"We built these for you while you ate," said a young Nandaki girl, blushing and gazing down at her toes. "Keewaji told us that you can fight for many days and nights without rest, but that when you sleep, you sleep for a full month. We will guard you during your cycle of rest."
Kemi blinked at the girl. "You speak English too?"
The young Nandaki blushed a deeper crimson. "I have been studying for days now. My accent is still thick. Forgive me."
The four humans climbed into the hammocks. Kemi found herself lying between Captain Ben-Ari and Marco. In many ways, they had become the two most important people in her life. The woman she had followed through fire and darkness. The man she had loved, the man whose heart she had broken, the man whom perhaps she was starting to love again.
Kemi closed her eyes, and she thought of Noodles dying outside of Haven, and she saw a vision of her companions here dying too, of Marco and Lailani and Ben-Ari lying dead in the dirt. She winced. She knew that, like the horrors of the scum laboratory on Corpus, the images of this war would forever haunt her.
Kemi reached under her shirt, and she clasped her pendant. She did not wear a cross like Lailani nor a Star of David like Ben-Ari. Secretly, always hidden from him, Kemi still wore the pendant Marco had given her in high school: a golden pi, symbolizing her love of science. And their own love.
In this vast galaxy, I don't know if any gods are up there, Kemi thought. But if the cosmos itself can hear my prayer, let no more of us die. Let us buy that house by the water, like Marco wants. Let us spend those evenings on the beach around the campfire. Let us solve puzzles, warmed with the joy of friendship and love as the rain falls outside. Let us return to the good, green Earth and see the evil cleansed from her seas and shores. Let only the light of stars fill the darkness.
The sun set on Nandaka, and Kemi slept.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Brigadier-General James Petty stood on the bridge of his ship, hands clasped behind his back, reviewing the charred remnants of humanity's fleet.
It was not an encouraging sight.
Petty narrowed his eyes, struggling to calm that demon inside him, the demon called horror.
"How did it come to this?" he said in a low voice.
He remembered fighting in the First Galactic War, the great struggle against the scolopendra titaniae, the aliens most people called the scum. Petty had flown then with a hundred thousand starships, crossing hundreds of light-years to destroy the scum on their homeworld. The light of humanity had shone its brightest.
Now it was barely a spark.
The Scum War took everything from us, General Petty thought, staring out into space. It took thousands of our ships. Took millions of our sons and daughters. Took my own daughter from me. My sweet Coleen. He lowered his head and clenched his fists. And now the marauders come to scavenge what remains.
That old pain still hurt so much. General Petty reached into his pocket, and he felt them there. Cold. Comforting. Two metal identification tags, "dog tags" as the troops called them. His daughter's tags.
It was seven years ago that Einav Ben-Ari, then just a lieutenant, had met him in a cold, sterile ch
amber in the heart of a distant space station. She had given him his daughter's dog tags. Captain Coleen Petty had died in the mines of Corpus with most of her company.
"I gave everything to the military," he whispered, looking back out the viewport. "My soldiers. My daughter. Everything but the blood that still pumps through me. Do I now see humanity fall?"
From that once-proud fleet, here was all that remained. The last few starships of humanity. Here in the darkness beyond Pluto, at the very edge of the solar system, they gathered. Five warships hovered outside the viewport: The Sphinx, the Cyclops, the Chimera, the Medusa, the Nymph. Each carried a battalion of a thousand warriors; together these five battalions formed the revered Hydra Brigade, a force that had fought many famous battles. Among the warships flew Firebird starfighters, five squadrons belonging to each mothership, single-pilot craft able to fight in space and sky. Ten cargo ships hovered between the warships. They were massive vessels, stocked full of tanks, guns, bombs, missiles, and enough food to last a year.
The last remains of humanity's might in space. A shadow of what they had once been.
And here, General James Petty stood aboard the largest vessel in the fleet. The HDFS Minotaur was a starfighter carrier, the oldest and greatest of her kind. In her hangars, she carried two hundred Firebirds. In her hold served five thousand marines—the legendary Erebus Brigade, the most prestigious infantry force in the HDF. The brigade Coleen had served in, commanding the two hundred soldiers of the Latona Company.
The Minotaur was smaller, older, and simpler than legendary carriers like Terra or Sagan, famous flagships full of the latest technology. The Minotaur was a floating relic, a ship from an older era. Most of those other ships, marvels of human ingenuity, had been decommissioned after the Scum War, sold for scrap metal. The Minotaur had been destined to join her comrades, to be scrapped, torn apart, her pieces used to rebuild the world.
The marauders had put a stop to that.
The marauders had changed everything.
The marauders had destroyed ten thousand human starships, leaving only this. The charred, dented remains. The survivors. Here in the darkness of space. Here, hiding like cowards in the shadows.
"We must fight." Finally General Petty turned away from the view, and his fists tightened. "Madam President, I insist. The time for cowering has ended. We must fly back to battle."
Maria Katson, president of the Alliance of Nations, gave him a steely stare. Like him, she was in her sixties. Like him, she was a leader of many. Like him, she had spent her life in positions of power. But there the resemblance ended. He was fire; she was ice. He was heart; she was mind. He was a soldier, a general, wearing a navy blue uniform heavy with insignias, badges, and service ribbons. She was a civilian, the de facto leader of Earth, wearing a black suit. His hair was buzzed short under his cap, gray at the temples, salt-and-pepper at the top. Hers was silvery-platinum, cut to the length of her chin.
Fire and ice? he thought, gazing into her steely blue eyes. Maybe more like water and oil. We'll never blend.
"General Petty," the president said, "these ships, these ten thousand people aboard—we may be all that remains of humanity. And you will have us fly the last of our species into the marauder inferno?"
Petty narrowed his eyes. "With all due respect, Madam President, we are hardly the last of humanity. There are thousands of humans still alive in the colonies. There are still billions of humans alive on Earth—being fed into the meat grinders as we speak. This fleet is small. But it's all that remains of the proud Space Territorial Command, the mightiest soldiers of our species. We are humanity's last sword. And you would have us flee from battle? You would have us abandon the billions who cry out in pain?"
He had thought it impossible for her eyes to grow harder. He had been wrong.
"We cannot save them by dying ourselves, General," Katson said. "We flew to battle. We lost ten thousand ships. These few—this carrier, the five warships, the ten cargo ships, the handful of Firebirds—if we fly them to battle, we will lose them too."
"Then we will lose them!" Petty said. "Then we will die fighting. I would rather die a warrior than live a coward."
"And you would see all of humanity perish too?" Katson said. "You would see our species reduced to mere cattle, domesticated to feed the marauders? No." She shook her head. "I will not allow that. We have ships. We have enough food for a year. We'll leave the solar system." She gazed out into space. "We'll find a new home. Somewhere thousands of light-years away. Somewhere hidden. Somewhere the marauders cannot reach. And we start over."
"Start over!" Petty had always prided himself on being calm under pressure, but the words shot out from him, too loud. He took a deep breath, forced himself to regain control. "Ma'am, our planet—our homeworld—is out there. Earth is out there. Bleeding. Calling out to us. You suggest seeking a new world while our ancestral home needs us. We are soldiers. We are sworn to fight. We—"
"I am not a soldier, General Petty," Katson said. "The civilian government still commands the military, and a good thing too. Soldiers think of war. Of glorious death. Of sacrifice and honor. All noble concepts on the battlefield, perhaps. But as a civilian, my concern is more than simply victory or defeat on the field. My concern is the future of my species. Right now, there are billions of humans beyond our reach. Humans we cannot save. Humans that, yes, we must abandon—to sacrifice the many to save the few. Aboard this fleet, we have over ten thousand people. Nearly all of them are soldiers. Young. Healthy. Intelligent and emotionally stable enough to serve on elite ships. The average age is twenty years, and half are female. It's the perfect population to begin anew with. To find another world, to raise another generation. Earth is lost, Petty. That grieves me. You cannot imagine how much that hurts me to say. But I deal with facts. Earth is lost, but we're still here. And we must survive—for the future of humanity itself."
You grieve? Petty thought. What do you know of grief? You never lost a child.
It still hurt. Even after seven years, it still hurt so much every day. James Petty had taken a scum claw to the belly as a young man, and he had suffered a heart attack as an old man, but nothing had hurt him so much as losing Coleen.
You bring a child into the world, he thought. You love her, raise her. You watch her struggle, try to guide her. You know she is imperfect. That she is too angry, too blunt, too hurt deep inside her. You try to heal her. You see her become an officer, a captain, a leader. You are so proud of her. Of this beautiful woman she becomes after so much struggle. His eyes stung. Only to lose her. Only to have a twenty-year-old lieutenant come into your office, uniform ragged, blood still under her fingernails, and tell you that your precious daughter is gone. So what do you know of loss, Maria Katson? Only a parent who has lost a child knows true loss.
He turned away from the president, away from the fleet. He walked across the bridge toward another viewport. He stared into the void, into the space beyond Pluto, into the interstellar emptiness.
"There is hope for Earth," he said softly. "Captain Ben-Ari is out there. We must give her more time."
Katson snorted. In the viewport, Petty could see her reflection rolling its eyes.
"Private Ben-Ari is nothing but an escaped prisoner," she said. "A traitor, General. I would not put much stock in the little message she sent you."
Yes. A message. Twice Einav Ben-Ari had come to him with shattering words. Once, seven years ago, to deliver news of Coleen's death. Once, only days ago, to write of seeking hope in the darkness. Of seeking a legend.
It's true, her letter to him had read. The legend. The Ghost Fleet. I fly to find it. Fight on, sir. I will return with hope.
"Captain Ben-Ari defeated a scum king in Corpus," he said, gazing out into space. "She slew the scum emperor on Abaddon. She recognized the marauder threat even when you would not. She fought onward even after you placed her in a prison cell. I trust her more than any man or woman in my fleet." He turned back toward Katson. "And that inc
ludes you, Madam President."
Katson's eyes never lost their steel. "Your feelings toward me do not concern me, General. Perhaps I intimidate you. Perhaps you disagree with my commands. I don't care. You are a soldier, Petty. Just a goddamn soldier. And you will obey."
And there it was.
His rage.
That rage James Petty had fought for so many years to control, that rage he had passed down to his daughter. That rage that had gotten him in so much trouble as a young pilot. The rage that had already given him one heart attack and might kill him with the next one.
"Earth has fallen, as you said." He had to force the words past stiff lips. "Your government is fallen. Perhaps you hold no more authority here. Perhaps I will declare martial law. If we are the new society, then perhaps the military—"
"If you speak of a military coup, General, I cannot stop you," said President Katson. "Yes, you may confine me to the brig. You may have me blasted out of the airlock if you please. I have no weapons. You command ten thousand soldiers. If that is truly what you believe is best, if that is how you want the history books to remember you, go ahead." She raised her chin. "I'm ready."
They stared at each other in silence.
Do it, whispered the rage, the demon of fire. Seize control from her. This is time for soldiers to lead.
He looked across the bridge. His officers were busy pretending not to be listening. Fourteen men and women served here on the bridge—communications officers, engineers, pilots, a security officer. All wore pistols on their hips. Would they fight for him? If he commanded it, would they turn against Katson?
Yes, he thought. Yes, they would. They would serve me. They would follow me into Hell and back. If I want this throne, it is mine.
But another voice spoke deep inside him. Calmer. Softer. The voice that had always soothed the raging fire.
You are a soldier, James. Not a dictator. Not a tyrant. You serve Earth, not your own vainglory. Do not let a military uprising be your legacy.
He took a deep breath.
"Mars," he said.
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