She sniggered and slapped against his chest as he squeezed her. “I’m glad I’m with you,” she told him. “We’ve all gotta die somehow, sometime. I’m just glad I’m with you.”
“Me too, baby.” He kissed her head and pulled her tight, as if trying to shield her from the inevitable. Or at least shield her from seeing the inevitable when it happened.
“Brace! Brace! Brace!” Crash called to them again as he spotted another missile heading their way.
A moment later the ship was battered again and tilted on its side. The internal gravity dampers took a few moments to kick in, leaving the crew to be thrown to one side of the ship.
There were shouts and screams as they were caught off guard, and then scrambled to help each other up again.
Jack managed to catch hold of Pieter, deftly preventing him from smacking his head against one of the utility units jutting out of the wall. “Thanks!” he called above the noise.
Jack smiled at him. “Any time, friend.”
The two held each other’s gaze for what could have only been a moment in the chaos, but felt like an eternity in their perception of time and expanded awareness. Each was grateful for the comfort of connection as they awaited their fate. Jack threw her arm around his shoulder and they stood together, feeling stronger together and as a part of a team, watching the details on the main screen again.
“Shields at two percent!” Brock announced over the crashing of kinetics and the scream of sirens.
Knowing now that there was nothing else he could do to divert any more power to the shields, he got up out of his console chair and moved over to Crash ’s console. He laid a hand on Crash’s shoulder. Crash turned and looked up at him and nodded, a lifetime of understanding and compassion streamed between the two.
Brock’s eyes teared up.
Crash pushed the final buttons on his console and then stood up out of his pilot’s seat and looked around at the crew. The crew he had served with the last several years. The crew who he could never imagine ever leaving. The crew that he was prepared to go to his death with.
He looked across at Molly and nodded, the chaos, the flashing lights, sirens, the destruction all disappearing into the background.
He wrapped an arm around Brock as another missile hit the shields, throwing them all off balance again.
Pieter’s eye was caught by one of the consoles he fell against. “The bulkhead breach is failing. The fuel core has been hit. This is it,” he announced.
Molly looked around at her team, making eye contact with any of them that could see her. She noticed Jack and Pieter holding onto each other, Karina and Sean doing the same, and then she felt Joel putting his arm around her and pulling her close.
She watched as an explosion rippled out against the remaining part of the shield meters in front of them beyond the window. She watched as if in an altered state of consciousness and awareness as the final segment of the shield failed. The explosion was green and blue and electrical in nature as the missile created a fission reaction in the vacuum of space.
The pupil of her eye dilated as the reflection of the explosion spread out across its glassy surface… the last thing that eye would ever see.
Aboard The Corona, (Estarian Flagship)
“Admiral Boys!” The technician’s voice was sharp with alarm, and her fingers flew across the terminal in front of her. “We have a problem, sir.” The tone of her voice alone made it clear that her statement may well have been the biggest understatement of the millennium.
“Multiple calls incoming,” the communications officer chimed in.
“Keep them on hold,” Boys replied, his eyebrows furrowing together in bewilderment. At last check, the order he had given had not been that complicated.
As the sensor readings continued with the explosion of activity, Boys didn’t need to issue any orders to see what was going on. The technician cleared the sensor data away without prompting, instead bringing up the primary virtual window. Abruptly, it was as if the bridge had a front row seat to the entire ordeal.
It seemed to go in slow motion at first, as Boys tried to process what he was looking at in that horrible moment.
“What in my ancestors’ name is going on?” Boys demanded to no one in particular as he surged out of his seat so quickly he very nearly stumbled over his own feet. “Patch me through to Grouthe,” were the next words out of his mouth.
“O-of course,” his communications officer stammered, already keying in the call.
“Grouthe!” Boys barked into his wrist holo as soon as the call connected, on his feet and watching the scene in front of him with a fixed, sick fascination. “I gave you a direct order to stand down!”
“So you did,” Grouthe agreed, his tone quiet and light. He sounded perfectly reasonable in that moment. Almost pleasant.
Boys recoiled, jerking his communicator out to arm’s length when Grouthe simply hung up on him. He blinked dumbly at the communicator as he rapidly tried to put the pieces together.
“Sir?” his communication’s officer asked, his voice pitched up half an octave higher than usual with nerves. “What do we do?”
“Patch me through to the command team,” Boys demanded, turning away from the digital window. “All of them, this instant.”
His communications officer launched into frenzied activity to connect the call, as if being quick might somehow undo what had happened.
In just a moment, Boys was all but snarling into his holo. “I issued a direct order to stand down. What part of that was unclear? Further failure to comply will result in disciplinary action!”
He got a flurry of panicked responses in return, everyone talking over everyone else. If nothing else, it meant Boys got an explanation—Grouthe had fired first, and considering his influence, other ships in the fleet had simply assumed that a new order was in the process of being issued—but there was no way to un-fire a missile barrage.
There was no way to fix what had been done.
Boys turned to look at the digital window again. He couldn’t help but to be glad of the silence of space in that moment. There were some things he simply didn’t want to force himself to hear.
“Sir?” his pilot asked carefully. “What now?”
For a moment, like a deer bumbling into a set of headlights, Boys simply stood there.
It was a very good question.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Aboard Glock’stor Ship # 597
The pilot kept up a steady stream of chatter with the navigators.
Ruther and Trev’or rambled back and forth to each other just as much as they always did. On top of that, Gultorra had turned up on the bridge to drop off a report, and then lingered to catch up with Clor. He leaned casually against the side of the command chair as they spoke.
It was an almost unusually normal day, all things considered.
At least until it wasn’t.
“The Estarian fleet is firing, sir.” The technician sounded bemused as he reported the update, his head cocked to one side as he stared at his terminal. “Or rather…a portion of it is?”
He didn’t sound alarmed, though, so Admiral Clor was calm as he commanded, “On screen, then. Let’s see what they’re up to.” He was fairly willing to assume that any amount of firing was, at the very least, not good news, especially considering how close the fleet was at that point.
He was not ready for the sight that greeted him as the virtual window lit up. A hush fell over the bridge as the crew watched the fleet bombard Molly’s ship. The shields crackled and sparked at first, until eventually they gave out under the onslaught. Like a cascade of light, the shield retracted, almost seeming to evaporate.
No matter how unpleasant, though, all eyes stayed locked on the sight in front of them. It would have been an insult to look away.
Gultorra stood rigidly beside the command chair. Trev’or was clutching at the edges of his terminal so tightly that Clor could hear his nails digging at the metal. Clor’s fingers t
ightened around the armrests of his chair until his hands hurt.
“Sir, what do we do?” Ruther asked, his hands hovering anxiously over his terminal, as if he could do anything on his own. “What can—can we do anything?”
Clor didn’t answer immediately, mentally going over ideas and just as quickly discarding them, before he finally admitted, “I don’t think there’s anything we can do.” His voice was low as he admitted it, but he may as well have been shouting it.
Once the shields were gone, Molly’s ship didn’t last long. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing would be a constant debate from that point onwards.
With each strike after that, pieces of the hull flew off, breaking apart like chips of confetti and drifting silently away. Until finally a missile struck the engine room. The middle of the ship expanded outwards for a fraction of a second, like a balloon with too much air, just before the ship fractured in half and burst away from each other with a few geysers of plasma and gas that burned out as quickly as they erupted. Countless shards of shrapnel, each as big as a scouting ship, broke off and drifted away. Lights flickered in the ship’s gaping interior, until they went out in clusters.
Finally, the wreckage was dark. The missile barrage halted as if it had never happened in the first place.
The calm afterwards seemed unfair, as if the cosmos was trying to pretend that nothing had happened. As if it had simply been business as usual.
Had someone dropped a stylus on Clor’s bridge in that moment, it would have been louder than a gunshot. No one moved or said a word, as if the entire crew was waiting for it to be declared as a joke. As if breaking the silence was the only thing that would make it real.
Finally, Gultorra put a hand on Clor’s shoulder. “Sir.”
Clor jerked as if he were coming out of a trance, turning sharply to look at Gultorra.
“What now, sir?” Gultorra asked simply, though it was not a simple question by any stretch of the imagination.
Nevertheless, it gave the Admiral something else to focus on. He took a breath and let it out.
He turned his attention to Ruther. “Connect a call to the command team,” he ordered, his voice still low.
If Ruther heard the Admiral’s words, he gave no sign of it, and Trev’or had to reach over and swat his shoulder. It still took a moment for Ruther to jerk his attention back to the present, hands still poised over the front of his terminal. “Sorry, sir?”
“The command team,” Clor repeated slowly. “Connect a call. I need to explain what just happened.”
“Ah—r-right. Of course, sir,” Ruther agreed, before he turned all of his attention to tapping out commands at his terminal with an almost single-minded focus.
Clor used the time it took Ruther to set up the call to figure out what he was supposed to say to explain the entire ordeal.
Paige’s Office, Base, Gaitune-67, Sark System
Paige sat quietly in her office, working through the hundreds of things that had been neglected when she and Maya went to the surface. She tapped curiously on one holoscreen and then another making sure that the most urgent and important things were handled. Having been up for close to thirty-six hours straight at this point, she felt wired and suspected she was going to be unable to sleep.
Just a couple more, she promised herself, and then she would call it a night.
Bourne interrupted her flow of concentration.
“Paige? There’s a holo message come through. It’s from Emma.”
“You mean from The Empress?” Suddenly Paige’s backlog of work paled into insignificance. “What news is there? Do they need anything?”
“No,” he told her solemnly. “No, it’s not that. They don’t need anything. I believe you’ll want to be sitting down.”
There was a long pause.
“Bourne, I am sitting down.” She felt her anxiety rising. “Can you send me the message please?”
Bourne released the message to her holo. Her hand trembling now, she flicked it open and scanned the contents.
Maya appeared in the doorway. “Hey, I thought you were going to bed soon…?” Maya noticed Paige’s gray complexion. “Are you okay?”
Paige shook her head slowly. She looked as though she had been hit in the chest. Gasping for air, she managed to tell her that Emma had messaged.
Maya hurried over and took the holoscreen that was in Paige’s hand. She read it and staggered back a little, catching herself against the desk.
“It can’t be true,” she rejected. “It must be a mistake. Emma must have written this just in case and then programmed it to send in the event of the unthinkable… But she must have had some kind of systems failure. You’ll see, they will be back here in a few hours totally fine.”
Her face and mannerisms told a completely different story though.
She looked at Paige and watched a single tear trickle down the side of her face. It looked like Paige was in too much pain to even cry. She knew that feeling too.
The two girls remained in silence, barely moving, trying to make sense of the communiqué:
Dear Paige and Maya,
If you’re reading this, then we’ve been destroyed. It all happened very fast, and no one suffered physically. Rest assured that I did everything within my capabilities to keep everyone safe. Unfortunately even I have limits, and the barrages of missiles were just too great.
In the coming days and weeks, you will learn more about what happened. As I write this now, we are anticipating that we will take on the fire from at least one Estarian ship. Oz and Molly have implemented an adaptation to the shields to ensure that we take the strikes rather than the Zhyn. It was and is of utmost importance that the Estarians do not strike either the Zhyn or the ARs—for the sake of peace in the Federation. I hope that we have been able to achieve that.
You’re on your own now. A similar message will be sent to the Federation and you will no doubt be hearing from the General in due course.
On a personal note, I have thoroughly enjoyed working with you and the whole team. I’m sorry that it had to end.
Be well, my friends, and live a good life.
Emma
Neechie appeared in the office and jumped up onto the desk, and then onto Paige’s lap. Paige, dazed, allowed the sphinx to nestle up against her without any reaction. Absent-mindedly she allowed her hand to fall to Neechie’s back as she processed the worst news of her life.
Bates’s Office, Undisclosed Location, Spire
Director Bates carefully closed off the holoconnection. Slowly she turned her chair around so that she couldn’t be seen through the floor-to-ceiling windows of her office. Facing the wall, she bowed her head and tried to smother her mouth with a hand as she sobbed silently.
Philip Bates arrived in the office. He slipped quietly in through the office door. “I got a message from Paige Montgomery to meet you here,” he reported with a sense of urgency as he breezed in. “Is everything okay?”
Director Bates swiveled in her chair to look at him. By her expression and the smeared makeup, he knew straightaway that everything was far from okay.
“What? What’s happened?”
A few moments later a wail reverberated from the office through the entire open-plan bullpen beyond. The agents below looked up, bewildered, trying to make sense of the sobbing and wails that followed.
Rhodez strode in from the elevator purposefully. For a moment he looked as if he were planning to go straight up to the director’s office, but then, hearing the commotion, he slowed his pace and then stopped.
Clevedon called out to him in a raised whisper. “What’s going on?”
Rhodez wandered over to his desk, his expression serious and morose. “Intel downstairs has just received confirmation that the ship, Empress, has just been destroyed. Molly, amongst others, was on it.”
“You mean…?”
He nodded. “Yes, Molly is dead.”
Clevedon felt the shock through his entire body. For a moment he
found it hard to breathe. “Are you sure? Is there any chance that…”
Rhodez shook his head. “There is no hope.”
Bailey Residence, Spire, Estaria
Arlene ran towards her apartment door, responding to a knock. “Just a minute, Anne,” she called back over her shoulder. “Just hold onto them for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
She peered through the viewfinder and then stood back, opening the door wide to her friend. “Giles!” she exclaimed brightly. “Just in time. Anne decided that she wanted to paint her room before Ben’or got back, but we could do with someone taller to reach the ceiling.”
Giles’s expression was sober. “Well, quite. I’d be happy to help, but errr, Arlene…”
“Oh come on,” she teased playfully, leading the way back through to the sleeping quarters. “I’ll order up some pizza. We’ll have it done within an hour I’m sure.”
Giles hesitated again. “Arlene, something’s happened. I think you should probably sit down… I have something to tell you.”
Arlene stopped, suddenly realizing that Giles wasn’t his usual stuffy and flippant self. He seemed as if he were actually trying to be sympathetic about something.
“I tried to call,” he explained to her, “but I suspect your holo is still out.”
“Yes it is,” she confirmed. “But I received the public service announcement Paige and Maya sent out...” Her voice trailed off as her concern as to the purpose of Giles’s visit mounted.
“Giles? Have you been… crying?”
“I have,” he confessed without any embarrassment. “I’ve just had a conversation with Uncle Lance. Something terrible has happened. The crew of The Empress… They’re all dead. Arlene, I’m so sorry. Ben’or isn’t coming back.”
Still standing, Arlene started to process the information, her body convulsing silently as she began to sob.
Anne had been standing around the corner behind the kitchen counter. She had heard everything. As Giles moved in to steady Arlene, Anne ran back to her room and slammed the door.
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