Extension C-12 is part of the geodesic pattern of the outer station, and leads to half a dozen modules before stretching out to another section a little further out. The area is relatively clean, composed primarily of living quarters and mainly used as a transit point from one part of the station to the other. I’m certain Amelia could have let me take a transport from the core to the docks, but it seems like she didn’t want me to. Sasha Rocklin’s comments linger in the back of my mind while I consider possible reasons. Is it possible Amelia has malicious intent?

  “Yari, did Miss Rocklin say anything negative about me or Rozik while you were with her?” I ask.

  “Like plotting to have you killed, you mean?” she replies.

  “Yeah, anything like that.”

  “No. She likes you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She told me.” She pauses and changes her voice to something closer to Amelia’s, though her small vocal chords can’t quite get there. “I didn’t like Grayson the first time we met, but now that I know the truth, I think I have a crush on him.”

  “She said that?”

  “Yup. I swear. What does she mean by knowing the truth?”

  “Nevermind that.” I told Amelia about my wife and kids. But she isn’t looking at me for me. She’s looking at me as a false idol. She’s looking at the legends, not the truth. If Yari’s being honest. I can’t guarantee she is. I bet the kid could convince someone she’s actually an undercover agent for the Commune for enough chrome. “Are we almost there?”

  “Almost, Commander.”

  We reach the second interlink, which stretches down toward the lower docks at a different angle than the path we took earlier to the commissary. The elevator is similar though, using zero-g and small thrust to push us along. Yari stays fixed to the floor with me this time, remaining serious.

  And then we’re in the docks, joining the other ship crews headed to and from their vessels. Valhalla’s cradle is cordoned off, a guard posted outside of it. He swipes my badge and lets me past. Yari follows behind me.

  I turn to her and crouch down. “I appreciate your guiding me here. You can go back to Amelia now, I’m sure she’s got more for you to do.”

  Yari shakes her head. “Negative, Commander. Amelia told me to stick with you.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe she wants to make sure you aren’t two-timing her with an alien.” She smiles mischievously, leaving me unsure if Amelia gave those orders or if she just wants to tag along. I consider asking Miss Rocklin, deciding against it. The ride out and return should be a non-event.

  And if it isn’t, being with me might be the safest place for her.

  “Okay, co-pilot,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 35

  “Naraka Control, this is Valhalla. All systems are nominal. We’re prepared for departure.”

  “Copy Valhalla. You’re cleared for departure, heading Alpha Gamma Six. Releasing docking cradle now. Safe journeys, Valhalla.”

  “Wilco, Control. Valhalla out.”

  The only indication of the docking cradle’s soft push back and release is a light touch of inertia and the sudden motion of the freighter sliding away from the docking cradles, visible through the side cameras. I add some reverse thrust, increasing the velocity away from the station. Yari is sitting in the co-pilot’s seat beside me, her eyes wide in wonder at the whole thing. It reminds me of the first time I brought Fiona on a ride in the cockpit of a transport. The memory digs into me, threatening to unlock that cage of emotions. My personal Pandora’s Box.

  Once we’re back far enough, I trigger the vectoring thrusters and the freighter begins to roll. Of course, the perspective from inside is that the station is rotating, not us, and Yari giggles at the sight, struggling to contain her excitement.

  I handle the controls with ease, rolling Valhalla over as part of the change in direction to follow the nav lane designated as Alpha Gamma Six. There are a few other ships out here with me, making similar maneuvers to come and go without any risk of collision. I notice the Rocklin corvette further out behind them. I expected something sleek and modern. Instead, it appears to be an older Commune design, complete with a pair of oddly raised wing structures that end in a pair of heavy electro-lances.

  The sight of them causes me to cringe. The weapon was retired not long before Capricorn, and some of the ships on the front lines were still carrying them when I graduated from the Academy. They’re similar to the energy weapon the banshee ship used on Warrick, wherein they emit massive bolts of electricity into a target. While the banshee version is refined and somewhat controlled, the lance is a brute-force sledgehammer with overall results that are hard to predict.

  The energy from the weapon is attracted to metal surfaces, which in the middle of a battle always means a ship. But it doesn’t always mean an enemy ship. While the testing for the weapons went well and the lance itself can be devastating, what the Commune found was they either had to accept residual damage to everything around the corvettes that carried the weapon, or they had to put so much distance between the weapon and the fleet that it made their tactical use extremely difficult.

  In the end, it was better to retire those ships and start over.

  The corvette moves out of view as I finish the vector adjustments and fire the main thrusters. Valhalla begins moving forward sharply enough to push Yari and me back in our seats.

  “This is so amazing,” Yari says, enjoying the experience. For a moment, I feel a sense of lightness as her joy spills out into me. This all stopped being amazing for me a long time ago, but maybe I haven’t stopped to think about how incredible it really is to be out here. Humankind didn’t start out among the stars, after all.

  “It is amazing,” I agree.

  I continue to accelerate, building velocity as we clear the station, moving out and away. We aren’t headed for the same jump point me and Rozick arrived through, but rather a second point on the far side of Naraka’s sun, about an hour’s ride away.

  “Do you want to take over for a few minutes while I set the coordinates for the Mandelbrot?” I ask.

  Yari looks at me. “Are you serious?”

  “Completely. Just take the yoke and hold her steady.”

  Yari slides forward on her seat and reaches out with tentative hands, gripping the yoke. She smiles as she watches space ahead through the primary display.

  I tap on the control board, opening the Mandelbrot settings and inputting coordinates. After some discussion, me and Rozik decided to send the ship to a specific location—a star at a midway point between the Commune and Alliance that isn’t hosting any human colonies or habitable planets. It’ll take the ship around two weeks to get there.

  I lock the coordinates in and set the Mandelbrot to work. It takes a couple of minutes to run the trillions of calculations, spitting back a waveform of the path it will travel through the aether and the estimated time of arrival, which is closer to sixteen days.

  Then I sit back, letting Yari enjoy feeling like she’s in control of the massive chunk of metal hurtling through the galaxy, soaking in her happiness in an effort sponge up some of my sunken despair.

  The time passes relatively quickly, Naraka’s sun growing larger in the periphery as we get closer. I don’t so much retake the controls from Yari as I do lock them out. Then I cut the throttle and add reversing thrust to slow the ship down. We want its velocity as low as possible when it reaches its destination.

  It takes fifteen minutes for that process to occur, and then I tap on the controls for the Mandelbrot, setting a timer.

  “Time to go,” I say, turning to Yari. She nods and unbuckles herself from the co-pilot’s seat, and we make our way through the ship together.

  Amelia’s repair crew removed the two yellowjackets from the cargo hold and patched the damage there. They also entered the hold and cleared out most of the contents save the APCs, which are useless on a space station. They didn’t touch the third Yellowjacket, however, except to remove the dead pilot and scrub up some of the blood. The boarding craft is still sealed to the side of the freighter—the perfect escape vessel for this maneuver.

  That’s where we go after leaving the bridge, boarding the smaller ship a couple of minutes later through the breach in the hull. The ship’s interior is basic and dirty, the smell of grease and sweat thick inside. A small terminal sits next to the entrance, and I tap the controls there to activate the patching system. A small rod like a roller slides out from the bottom of the breach and slowly begins belching out a thin layer of metal, printing it against the hole in the freighter as it ascends.

  The process takes three minutes, completely closing off the Valhalla before retreating back into its base. I tap the terminal again and the Yellowjacket’s hatch slides closed between the interior and the patch, sealing us inside.

  Yari follows me to the cockpit, which smells more like bleach than anything else. She takes up the same spot in the co-pilot seat here, while I begin tapping on controls, starting the ship’s reactor and bringing its computer online. Then I release the anchors digging into Valhalla’s side, a short burst of thrust shoving us away from the freighter.

  The Yellowjacket is manual steer, a stick like the Arrowhead. I take it and begin to accelerate away from the freighter, clearing nearly a hundred kilometers when the starship begins to shimmer and fade from view. From an outside perspective it looks like a magic trick or an optical illusion. The truth is a lot more dangerous. Getting stuck halfway inside a Mandelbrot field means the part that’s in it goes to the aether. The part that isn’t goes to the gods. In reality, the shimmer and fade is from the way the light is suddenly altered around the rearrangement of spacetime.

  Yari apparently has never seen that before either. She cranes her neck to see it from the corner of the cockpit, watching intently until the craft is completely gone. Then she turns to me.

  “Space is cool.”

  I laugh at the comment. It’s the first time I’ve laughed since I left Joie behind. “Yeah,” I agree. “It is very cool.”

  “Can I fly again?”

  “Once we’re at static velocity and headed in the right direction.”

  “Okay.”

  I alter the Yellowjacket’s vectors to get us back on an intercept course with Naraka Station, driving forward until we have enough speed to cut the thrusters and coast. I’m relieved to get the freighter away from the station and into unoccupied space, thankful we did it before the banshees tracked us down.

  I’m about to turn control of the Yellowjacket over to Yari when she points out toward the nearby sun. “What’s that?”

  I turn my head to look. “I don’t see anything.”

  “There,” she says, thrusting her finger forward as if that makes the location of her point more obvious. “Near the edge. There’s a dark spot.”

  I start from the outside and start working my way in. I pause when I get to the dark spot, squinting my eyes. “What is that?” I say almost absently.

  It’s still pretty far away, just a speck of dirt against the fury of the sun behind it. But I still get the sense it doesn’t belong.

  A moment later, the Yellowjacket’s computer comes alive, flashing a warning and projecting nearby space on its holographic display.

  My heart skips as I immediately recognize the outlined shapes.

  A squadron of banshee starfighters, like the one that shot me and Joie down on Warrick.

  And it’s coming right for us.

  Chapter 36

  “Yari, sit back and tighten your harness,” I say. “And hold on!”

  I give her a couple of seconds to do it, and then I peg the throttle forward and we’re shoved back in our seats as the Yellowjacket takes off. Yari screams with sudden delight as we quickly gain velocity.

  My eyes stay locked to the projection of the incoming banshee fighters, along with the estimates of distance from the ship’s computer. They’re coming toward us from the side, on an intercept course well short of the station.

  “Naraka Control, this is Commander Stone,” I say, opening comms to the station. From this distance, it’s going to take nearly thirty seconds before the message is received and the reply comes back. “Hostile forces are in-system and are targeting my craft. I repeat, hostile forces are in-system and targeting my craft.”

  I speak calmly and wait almost patiently as the seconds tick past. The banshee ships are too far out to attack, and I’m already racing as hard as I can. I can tell I’m not going to make it ahead of them, which means I’ll have to get through them.

  “Are we going to die?” Yari asks. She doesn’t sound afraid. Only curious.

  “Not if I can help it,” I reply. “I have too much left to do before I can die.”

  She laughs at that. “Like what?”

  “Lots,” I say. The other possible answers are all too bombastic. Save the universe. Send the banshees back to the other side of the disturbance. End the war. I’m only one man, and my part is too limited to go that far. I’ll settle for making it back to the station alive.

  “Will you teach me to fly spaceships? I mean really fly one, not just hold it in one direction.”

  I can’t believe she’s asking me about this now. I don’t know if she doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation or if she just isn’t concerned. Does she have that much faith in me?

  “Maybe when I’m finished with the other stuff I have to do,” I reply. “But before I die.”

  She laughs again. “Okay.”

  “Commander Stone, it’s Amelia.” Her voice comes back over the comm. “We have the ships on our long-range sensors. There’s a second attack group on the far side of the station. They just came out of the aether.” She pauses. “I guess we sent the freighter away too late.”

  I close my eyes for a moment, absorbing the sting of the words. We took too long, and now the banshees are here. “Amelia, you need to sound an alarm. Contact the ships docked at the station and see if you can convince them to help evacuate.”

  “Evacuate? I’m not leaving Naraka Station. Not after what I went through to get it. And for everyone else, where the hell are they going to go?”

  She’s angry. I understand why. I’m angry too. At Rozik most of all, for bringing the banshees to another lightly defended population center. At Amelin for making everything on Naraka so much harder than it had to be. But also at myself for not doing more to get the Valhalla out of here sooner.

  But we couldn’t even touch the banshee mothership on Warrick, and there’s no chance they can do any harm to it here.

  Then again, the ships coming from my side aren’t the mothership. The starfighters are much too small. More the equivalent of a destroyer.

  “How large are the enemy ships headed for the station?” I ask. “Are they bigger than the station?”

  “Negative. They’re about the size of a Commune destroyer.”

  I exhale a slightly relieved sigh. Not the mothership. Maybe we have a fighting chance.

  “What kind of defense does the station have?” I ask. There are no visible gun batteries on any of the modules of the outer station, and I don’t recall seeing any on the core either.

  “The main shield generators don’t extend past the core, and we don’t have any fixed weaponry,” Amelia replies. “Some of the modules have their own localized shields. They aren’t strong, but they might hold long enough to get the people moved to the core. We have our core fleet, and I’m going to offer the transient ship captains here a shipload of chrome in exchange for their defensive help. I don’t know how many I can convince.”

  And I don’t know how she’s going to pay for it. I glance over at Yari while remembering what Sasha Rocklin said. Once the synchronizer is fixed, once my message is sent, once the station is safe…will Amelia turn on me?

  I have to accept the possibility and be ready.

  Assuming any of us survive that long.

  The banshee fighters are closing, the Yellowjacket’s computer updating its estimates. I’m surprised when it informs me the enemy ships are slowing, easing off slightly on the attack. Why? To synchronize with the group on the far side?

  I keep my attention on them, monitoring the relative progress. They’re falling behind, about to slip back enough to let me past without a fight. Did they decide I wasn’t a worthwhile target?

  I look past them and see that the fighters are flanked by four smaller targets that are doing their best to catch up to them.

  So that’s why they pulled back. They’re waiting for reinforcements. But that doesn’t make sense. They have the element of surprise and a chance to take the initiative before Amelia can organize any kind of meaningful defense.

  It isn’t the first time the banshees have done something I don’t understand.

  “Naraka Control, this is Stone. I’ve got four new targets incoming.”

  “Roger,” control replies. I recognize Sykes’ voice. “We’re tracking an identical assault group originating on vector six-six-one.”

  I clench my teeth and curse under my breath. The banshee force is growing in a hurry. I’ve seen the ships at the docks and the ships inside the core. There’s some solid firepower present, but I don’t need a degree in logistics to know they aren’t close to enough.

  “Roger. I’m on my way in. ETA twenty-two minutes. Requesting clearance to land in the core. Deck One Sixty.”

  “Permission granted,” Sykes replies.

  “Commander,” Amelia says right after. “Why the lower hangar? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I need to upgrade my ride,” I reply. I look over at Yari again. I’m not eager to get an eleven-year-old girl involved in a battle, but her other option is to sit on the sidelines and wait to die. I know which one I would choose if I were her. “I’ll need a co-pilot. Are you in?”

  Yari smiles and nods. “I’m totally in.”

  My eyes dance from the station to Geramin Rocklin’s corvette, currently the size of an ant in front of it. Those electro-lances aren’t only terrifying, they’re also the most powerful human weapons anywhere near Naraka Station.