"We will be there!" his warriors cried out.
"The hour draws near," Emet said. "Very soon, we will reach the wormhole, and we will fly to the front line, and we will face the Hierarchy battalions. As we go into battle, we are accompanied by the spirits of our fallen, the millions of our lost heroes—those who fell defending Earth long ago, and those who fell to the scorpion claws in our generation. The blood of our martyrs, of our butchered children, of our brothers and sisters burned and flayed, forever commands courage in our hearts."
Rowan met his eyes. "Courage," she whispered.
"We face a mighty enemy," Emet said. "The scorpions are strong and ruthless and will fight viciously. In this battle, we will know fear and pain. Yet we will face the enemy nonetheless! We will face them with courage and pride! Our weapons are few. Our starships are fewer. Yet today we will fight with a greater weapon: our unflinching endurance. For thousands of years, we have survived in the darkness. We will survive today too. We will emerge victorious. We will live to see Earth!"
"For Earth!" Leona cried, raising her fist.
The others echoed her call. "For Earth! For Earth!"
"For Earth!" Emet said. "We will fight today with the spirits of our ancestors, the mighty warriors who came before us. Blood will spill today. Starships will burn. Warriors will fall. Yet from the fire, we will emerge stronger. We will break the enemy and bring salvation to humanity. Onward—to victory!"
"To victory! To victory!"
Their voices echoed as Emet returned to the bridge.
Duncan and Rowan joined him. As Emet sat at the helm, they took position at the ship's cannons.
"Are you sure you want me here on the bridge, laddie?" Duncan said. "I'm the oldest one in the fleet."
"And I'm the youngest," Rowan said, taking hold of the cannon controls.
"I'm sure," Emet said. "I chose you both because I trust you for this task."
Rowan bit her lip. "I've only trained for a few hours at the cannons."
"You're ready," Emet said. "I believe in you."
Duncan smiled grimly. He turned to Rowan. "I think, lass, that he's saving the other warriors for hand-to-hand combat. For boarding an enemy ship, or for defending the Jerusalem from scorpion invaders. Perhaps it's best that we stick to the bridge."
Rowan paled. She nodded. "Yes, that might be best." She cringed. "Well, I might have trained at these cannons for only a few hours, but I've spent years playing Space Invaders on the Earthstone. That's gotta count for something, right?" She looked faint.
Emet stifled a smile. "My friends, you've fought nasty enemies before. You're as brave as any other warrior. I'm proud to have you on my bridge."
Duncan pointed. He spoke softly. "Look. Aura Wormhole."
Emet looked ahead through the viewport. He saw it too. Aura Wormhole. The portal to Terminus. To the front line.
A chill gripped him, but he tightened his lips. He narrowed his eyes and eased the throttle forward, increasing their speed.
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 g
uns 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.
As the Aelonian ships fell all around them, as the rest of the Concord fleet languished in the wormhole, the Corvettes of Earth stormed forth.
They were nine corvettes. Then eight. Then only seven. Their fallen lit space and crashed down like comets.
The survivors charged onward. To death and glory. To victory and fire. For Earth. For Earth!
Leona zipped from side to side, dodging plasma bolts. The other corvettes flew around her, cannons blasting, engines roaring. They stormed under a listing Aelonian warship, shielded from the plasma barrage, then soared to the vanguard. Their shells flew. Another corvette shattered, and the six survivors flew onward. Their afterburners roared. Their missiles lit space with streaks of fire.
In this great Concord fleet, this armada of ten thousand ships, the corvettes took the charge.
If we survive, Leona thought, may history remember the corvettes of Earth. May history remember this as our finest hour.
She kept flying. Small strikers, no larger than her ship, flew toward her. The corvettes scattered, flanked the enemy, and fired their guns, tearing the strikers down. Scorpion dreadnoughts flew ahead, great machines of war, each the size of a town.
"Fly behind them!" Leona said. "First platoon, go under them. Second platoon, I'll lead you above them. We got to hit their exhaust pipes!"
"We're right with you, commodore!" said the captain of the Cagayan de Oro.
"Let's show those bastards human pride," said the captain of the Bridgetown.
"For Earth," said Ramses, commanding the Rosetta.
The corvettes stormed forward, dodging assaults from every direction. Behind the corvettes, the larger Concord warships were giving them some cover. But most of the fleet remained trapped in the Wormhole.
We have to take down those dreadnoughts, Leona thought. We have to make room, or our friends are stuck in the hole.
Her father's voice emerged from her comm. "Leona, what are you doing? You're flying too deep! I can't follow you."
"You will soon," Leona said, storming forth. "I'm carving us a path."
She shoved her thruster lever, the G-force shoved her against her seat, and she stormed over the enemy dreadnoughts.
Plasma bolts flew her way. One hit her stern, and she screamed. Her hull was breached. Alarms blared. She pulled down her helmet's visor and flew onward. Another blast grazed her side, but she kept charging. The remaining corvettes flew with her. They skimmed over the roof of a warship the size of a small world. More fire blasted their way, and one corvette shattered. Its pilot screamed, and then the vessel fell, hit the enemy warship, and exploded. Fire raged and shrapnel pattered Leona's hull.
More plasma rose everywhere, a citadel of light.
She flew onward.
Remember us, Earth. Remember us.
She rose higher, barrel-rolled through blasts of plasma, and shot over the prow of the enemy dreadnought.
Below her, she saw them. The dreadnought's exhaust pipes.
She stormed forth, yanked the yoke with all her might, and flew a tight U-turn.
She charged toward the dreadnought's stern.
She took a deep breath and released her last two missiles.
The missiles flew and entered the enemy's exhaust pipes.
Four more corvettes made it around the dreadnought, two from below, two from above. They turned and fired their missiles too, sliding them into the exhausts.
The great metal cylinders began to crack.
"Back, back!" Leona cried. "Pull ba—"
Fire roared across space.
A supernova explosion filled her vision with searing white light.
Shrapnel flew everywhere, pounding her ship, pounding hundreds of ships all around.
Her crew screamed.
Leona flew through the inferno, soaring, spinning, trying to flee the roaring devastation beneath her.
The massive scorpion dreadnought, a warship the size of Central Park, burst into millions of pieces that burned and rained across the battle.
The last corvettes hovered, and for a moment, Leona could only sit and breathe. The battle lulled. The thousands of starships, it seemed, paused to behold the terrible aftermath, the gaping hole in the battle where the mighty dreadnought had been.
The path from the wormhole was clear.
And then, with roaring engines and blasting fire, the rest of the Concord fleet spilled forth.
The last few Inheritor starships. Thousands of Aelonian ships. Ships of many other species. They all emerged. They all fired upon the scorpions.
The Concord rises, Leona thought. And I'm alive. Humanity is alive!
"Dad, I'm flying back to join you," she said. The Jerusalem was charging, taking heavy fire now. "I'll give you cover. I—"
Ten strikers emerged from warped space right before her, rippling spacetime, and their plasma slammed into the Nantucket.
The control panel shattered.
Leona screamed.
The yoke rattled in her hand. Smoke blasted out from her engines. Somebody was shouting through her comm, but the voice drowned under static.
She tried to rise higher, to fly toward her father, and—
Another blast hit her, slamming into her hull.
Leona spun.
Blackness spread across her.
; She lost consciousness.
She woke up, spinning madly. The battle whirled around her, and she was falling fast. Plasma bolts and shells flew all around her, and smoke filled the cabin. A green planet rolled ahead, spinning around her.
Akraba, she thought. I'm falling toward Akraba.
She tried to touch the controls, then pulled her hand back in pain. Electricity sparked across the cabin. She rose from her seat and kicked at her yoke, desperate to stop spinning, but one engine was out. The Nantucket kept plunging toward the planet. The view spun. The planet was above her, then beneath her, rolling around the viewport. Its gravity had caught her.
Starships were roaring up around her. Dark, craggy crabships, extending their claws. The ships of the marshcrabs. They were rising fight, to help their scorpion masters. They paid her no heed. To them, she was just wreckage.
"Commander, what's going on?" Coral burst into her cockpit, panting. Several warriors stood behind her.
"We're going down!" Leona shouted. "Strap in!"
"Damn!" Coral cried, and her tattoos began to glow. She raced back into the hold and strapped into her seat.
Leona knew it was too late to avoid the planet. Instead, she kicked the helm with both feet, and the rudder adjusted, moving the Nantucket to face the planet head on.
The cracked starship plunged headfirst into the atmosphere.
Fire raged around the corvette. A cracked shield tore off. An engine broke free and spun madly, spurting flame. The blaze engulfed them, and they were falling, spinning, shrieking, roaring down through the sky. In the hold, Leona's soldiers were screaming. Another shield tore off and soared, caught in the wind.
The Nantucket plunged like a comet, leaving a trail of hellfire.
A carpet of clouds spread below them, and they dived through, emerging into Akraba's damp gray sky. Birds fled. The marshlands spread below, a desolation of mud, grassy tussocks, and trees with tall roots.
Leona tried to straighten the ship, tried to fly, but the yoke rattled madly, ripping free from her hands. Birds splattered against them. Their shields were gone. The windshield shattered, and shards and feathers spread across the cockpit. The Nantucket kept screaming down, spinning, leaving a corkscrew of fire through the sky. The G-forces pounded Leona's skull and twisted her belly like a wet cloth.
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