“But David…” Tears welled in her eyes.

  “He’s right, Sher. At least one of us has to go home. That goes for all of you. I’m giving you a chance to go home.”

  “Captain Ben,” Grizz said. “I’m an old man, and I got nothing left. I don’t just want this fight. I need it. For my family’s sake.”

  Looking at him, I could see the furious hunger in his eyes. I nodded. “Okay, Grizz. I owe you that much.” I turned to the others. “The rest of you, if you have things to pack, go pack them. I want you all off my ship in the next thirty minutes. It’s not a request.” I looked directly at Sheri. She still hadn’t let go of David’s hand, but her eyes were still pleading with me. “It’s an order.”

  None of them moved. They glowered and pouted, angry with me for dismissing them. Maybe there was a decent chance our plan would work and I was overcompensating. I didn’t care. I’d rather be wrong and have them hate me, as long as I could ensure they stayed alive.

  “Please don’t make me ask Commander Volker to send some MPs to escort you off Head Case,” I said.

  “He doesn’t have any,” Quasar replied. “They all died on Gloin.”

  “Then don’t make me push you out the door,” I threatened. “Please. This isn’t easy for me, either.”

  “I’ll go,” Dryka said, getting to her feet. “You’re right, Ben. If all of us die, who’s going to carry on the fight? We have more experience with sigiltech than anyone else in the galaxy, and that’s important.”

  “I’m with you, Dutch,” Justus said, standing up.

  “Fine,” Sheri groused, finally letting go of David’s hand. “Only because I can’t stand the thought of Mom losing both of us.” She swiped angrily at her tears and turned to George. “You too. You have a family to think about.”

  He reluctantly stood. “I believe in this cause, but yeah. You’re right.”

  Ixy touched my cheek again and scuttled to the other side of the room. “For yousss,” she said.

  “Yeah, for you, and only for you,” Quasar agreed.

  Emerald growled before standing up. “Damn it, Boo!” She hurried around the end of the sofa and threw herself into my arms. Hugging me tight, she whispered in my ear. “Don’t you die on me.”

  I hugged her back. “Thank you for not putting up too much of a fight. Take care of yourself.”

  “I will,”,” she answered, letting go and retreating to where Ixy waited, her tears finally tracking down her cheeks.

  A beep from the slab in my pocket informed me that Prestige was coming out of hyperspace. We didn’t have a lot of time to finish parting ways.

  “It’s time to go, Shaq,” I said, reaching up to scratch him under his chin. He nuzzled my neck, leaving moisture from his eyes behind.

  “Love you,” he said.

  “Yeah, I love you, too, bud.”

  He jumped from my shoulder to the arm of the sofa, turning back to look at me. Of course, the entire scene had me in tears, too. But I was certain I was doing the right thing.

  Just as he leaped onto Zar’s shoulder, the area around Dryka suddenly rippled into a view of the Imperium CIC. Keep stood over Dryka’s head, while the rest of the command center appeared to be in a panic.

  “Bennie!” Keep focused on me from his end of the collator’s ghostly visage. I heard a rumble in the background before dust and small bits of displaced rock spilled out around him and the lights flashed. “We’ve been bamboozled. Dominator’s here, with most, if not all of the sigiltech fleet. We’re under heavy attack. We won’t last—” A second, louder rumble shook the room and Keep ducked down out of view as bigger rocks crashed down around him.

  “Keep!” I shouted.

  The collator image overlaying the lounge abruptly disappeared.

  CHAPTER 39

  My stomach clenched tighter than a weightlifter’s handshake, my blood running cold as ice through my veins.

  Like me, my crew had frozen still as stone while the collator had remained active, their faces all registering the same shock and awe. Had we just seen Keep die? No, I couldn’t go there. Not yet. All I knew was that we had to get to him. Get to Atlas. Now!

  “All right, everybody, let’s move! Matt, Justus, to the bridge. Dutch, the sigibellum. David, go up to Six and get the helmet. Meg, Leo, prepare to work your magic.”

  “You mean you don’t want us to leave?” Emerald asked, the first to regain her voice.

  “You heard Keep. Blorb didn’t just decide to double-cross us. He’s using our absence to crush Atlas.” I started for the elevator.

  “What can we do?” Matt asked. “We’re literally on the other side of the universe.”

  “Since when is that a problem?” I threw back over my shoulder.

  “Captain Murdock,” Volker said, his voice coming out of my slab. “We’re receiving emergency alerts from Atlas. The planet is under assault.

  I pulled it from my pocket. “I know, Commander. I just had Keep…the Regent on the collator. He’s…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “We have to get to Atlas.”

  “We’re almost two weeks away.”

  ”Stand by, Commander.”

  “Ben, Matt added. “We can’t beat that, reverse sigil or otherwise. We’re screwed, and he knows it. We played right into his hands.”

  “He used the challenge as cover to move his sigilships to Atlas,” Dryka said. “No doubt Vaslon thought they were repositioning to ambush us when the time came, not planning to attack the seat of the Hegemony.”

  “We gave Blorb the perfect opportunity to cut us off at the knees,” I said. “I just handed him Atlas on a silver platter.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Quasar said. “None of us saw this coming.”

  “”I should have seen it!” My angry gaze slid over David, who was still standing there, looking like a dazed deer in the headlights. I slammed my hand against my guitar. “David, the helmet!”

  “It’s not fully tested,” he said, snapping out of it. “I don’t think—”

  “Get it. Now!” The forcefulness in my voice was enough to send him running for the elevator. “The rest of you, man your stations or find somewhere to secure yourselves. We are not letting Blorb win.” I opened my slab again. “Commander, I’m going to try something crazy. If it works, I might be able to get you back to Atlas in a blink. If it doesn’t, we might all die.”

  “Do whatever you can,” Volker replied. “We need to get there.”

  “Ben, what are you planning?” Matt asked.

  “No time to explain, let’s move.”

  We all hurried to the elevator. Matt and Justus got off on Deck Four. Dryka, Shaq, and I rode up to the sigibellum.

  “Ben, I know what you’re thinking, and you can’t do it,” Dryka said. “It’s impossible.”

  “Don’t tell me what’s possible,” I snapped back at her. “Maybe I can do it. Maybe I can’t. But I’m sure as hell going to try.” I tapped my comm badge. “Matt, get us off Prestige and into space as soon as you can.”

  “Aye, Captain,” he replied.

  “David, where are you?”

  “On my way. Just making one last adjustment.”

  “There’s no time for that! I need the helmet now.”

  “One minute, Ben.”

  “Atlas doesn’t have a minute!” He disconnected his badge, leaving me fuming. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Dryka, storming toward the elevator.

  David was in the cab when the doors opened. He smiled sheepishly and held out what looked like a simple crown made of protostem. It was still connected to his laptop via a pair of thin wires running out of the back.

  “What is that?” I asked. “Where’s the helmet?”

  “This is the helmet,” he replied. “The important bits anyway.” He stepped out of the cab, which left the deck as soon as the doors closed. “Dutch let me chip off a piece of the protostem for testing when I first came back onboard. Did you know this stuff amplifies mote frequencies?”

  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “Probably. The firmware is still updating. It’s at ninety percent.”

  We fast-walked back to the sigibellum together. “Why didn’t you say anything about that before?”

  “It took me some time to work out the properties and the math. I didn’t want to overpromise and underdeliver. But this should give you at least a fifty percent boost compared to the original helmet.” He paused. “If it works.”

  “What do you mean, if it works?”

  “We haven’t had time to test the new design. I didn’t think you were going to use the helmet in the fight. It’s still experimental.”

  “It’ll work,” I said confidently. “I believe in you.”

  His face reddened and he grinned from ear-to-ear. “Thanks, Ben. I appreciate that.” He glanced down at his laptop. “It’s ready.” He pulled the wires out of the crown and handed me the helmet. “Different headgear, same principal. Good luck.”

  I slid it onto my head. The sides automatically adjusted to my temples, creating a snug fit.

  “Hold on, Captain,” Matt says. “We’re launching.”

  “Just in time,” I replied, quickly maglocking my boots. David was a little slow to do the same and would have fallen on his butt if I hadn’t grabbed him. I looked at the displays surrounding the sigibellum, watching Head Case rocket out of the main hangar and into space.

  We were in the middle of nowhere, three hours from where we were supposed to meet Dominator. All this time, I had expected Blorb and Lyke to double-cross us. But I never expected they would do so by avoiding the fight altogether.

  They both wanted me dead.

  They wanted Hiro dead and Altas conquered even more.

  “Bring us around in front and over Prestige,” I told Matt while I positioned my hands on my guitar. Head Case eased over the top of the Royal Sentry and into the lead by a few kilometers.

  I had already started playing, pumping up the volume until Break on Through echoed throughout the deck.

  “Good choice,” David commented, using one hand to hold his laptop, the other to tap on the keyboard. A graph of the colored lines appeared on his screen.

  “How is that registering on your laptop?” I asked. “We’re unplugged.”

  “Wi-fi,” he replied.

  “Ben,” Dryka said, getting my attention. “One more Royal Sentry isn’t going to stop a fleet of sigilships. We need a bigger fleet.”

  “What do you suggest?” I asked.

  “Didn’t Avi say that Count Brito had some luck against the enemy?”

  “He did,” I replied. “Can you get my slab out of my pants pocket?”

  “This isn’t the time to be flirting with me, Captain,” Dryka answered wryly, while reaching into my pocket to recover the device. She held it up in front of me to unlock it, and then quickly activated the comms.

  “Commander Volker,” I said. “Do you have coordinates for Count Brito and his fleet?”

  “Brito?” He was obviously curious as to what I had up my sleeve. “Standby.” He was silent for long, agonizing seconds before they appeared on my slab, along with an image of space surrounding his location.

  “Hold the slab steady,” I said to Dryka, reaching out for the chaos energy I could feel within the sound of the Doors’ most famous song. This time, I couldn’t afford to split it between my construct and the crown. Not if I wanted to transit Prestige to the other side of the galaxy. I had practiced it before to mixed results. There was no room for error now.

  I did my best not to think about the sigils I would need to transit. Rather, I focused on the colors I had observed while practicing with the combination of actions. The way the blue and green wavelengths rose and fell, joined by yellow, red, and orange. The colors together reminded me of the guitar strings vibrating as I manipulated them, creating resonances of their own which were turned into beautiful music. Standing beside the sigibellum, I looked into the forward display, my mind reaching out into space ahead of us as I attempted to execute the actions.

  Nothing happened.

  “You flatlined,” David announced.

  “I know,” I hissed back. Rather than get frustrated, I knew I needed to relax and focus, keeping my attention on space, my inner mindfulness on the crown riding my head. I needed to let the energy flow into it. To trust David’s software and optimize the flow. I breathed deeply, still playing, visualizing space ripping open in front of us in a portal large enough for a massive starship to pass through.

  The blue line jumped, followed by the green. Space stretched in the feed, the stars bending against the adjustment.

  “That’s it,” David said excitedly. “You’re doing it.”

  I ignored him. I could see I was doing it. Feel it, too. My forehead tingled as if the energy flowing through the crown was freezing my scalp. The yellow wavelength on David’s screen bounced, joining the other two as they increased in oscillations. A black line appeared in space, slowly spreading apart as I held the actions. I could feel my temperature rising from the effort and knew instinctively I wouldn’t be able to keep such a large portal open for long.

  But could I hold it long enough, not only to get Prestige and Head Case through but to allow Brito’s fleet through after us? And if I could, would I still have anything left to fight Dominator?

  Luckily, I wasn’t the only sigiltech user on the ship. Dryka stood on the sigibellum, ready to use Head Case’s sigils. And David wore his reverse ring. When it came to archons, I had an embarrassment of riches.

  I maintained my effort, continuing to stretch out space until the black gash was all I could see in the forward feed. Until it was large enough to swallow Prestige. The actions had surprisingly reached a steady rate of drain, the colors on David’s monitor bending and flattening out until they vibrated like a cat purring.

  I could do it. I was doing it!

  “Commander Volker, full ahead,” I said.

  “Aye, Captain,” he replied. Prestige accelerated beneath us, heading for the portal.

  “Matt, stick tight to the bow.”

  “Aye aye,” he answered.

  Head Case picked up speed as well, the two ships rushing toward the portal. I watched our approach in the feed, becoming practically giddy from the amount of chaos energy I was using. For as good as the rush of power felt, it was tempered by fear. Succaath had access to the same power without a guitar, without a crown, without any outside help at all. If he ever decided to attack us, what chance would we have against him?

  Fortunately, that was a problem for another day. Right now, we were about to break on through to the other side.

  We entered the void, our velocity carrying us almost too quickly for me to feel the pull of chaos as we crossed the empty gap between space and time. It was more of a whisper than a siren song, a momentary temptation that established itself in a flash of color and a split-second visage of something my brain didn’t have time to fully process.

  And then we were through, exploding back into the universe on the other end of the portal, the view through the feeds nearly identical to the image on my slab, which Dryka continued to hold. I turned around to watch the rear feeds so I would know when Prestige had fully cleared the rift. I dropped the action as soon as her stern had come through, winding down my playing while I spun around again, my eyes shifting to the sensor grid.

  “Come on, Brito,” I whispered, waiting impatiently for the grid to populate with Nobukkian friendlies. “You’d better be here.”

  “Captain, we’re being hailed,” Matt said a moment later.

  “Open the channel,” I replied. “Link it with my slab.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Murdock, did you just teleport a Sentry halfway across the galaxy, or am I hallucinating again?” Count Brito asked.

  “What do you mean hallucinating again?” I asked.

  He laughed. “So it is you. I have a feeling I know what this is about.”

  “Good. That’ll save us some time. How quickly can you get your fleet ready to teleport halfway across the galaxy?”

  CHAPTER 40

  Brito requested ten minutes to prep his fleet. It was less time than I could have hoped for and spoke volumes about the Count’s ability to command his military. He was already off Head Case’s comms and likely barking orders to his captains by the time his fleet showed up on the sensor grid, a good ten seconds behind the curve.

  I might have regretted not pushing harder to have the ship’s computer updated to something less than fifty years old, but Ghost Gia’s presence was partially responsible for the crown draped around my skull. The newest sigiltech upgrade was the only reason I had been able to guide Prestige through the rift in time and space, and would be the only reason I even had a chance of dragging another forty-three warships through a second portal.

  In total contrast to the effect of drawing too much energy through my construct, the first transit had left me cold as ice. The outcome equally intrigued David. He hypothesized the heating occurred because of friction between the motes as they siphoned into the sigils. The unneeded bits of energy burned unused, and that output had to go somewhere. It acted like a furnace inside my body, whereas the crown was so efficient it was drawing additional energy out of me like a parasite. In effect, it claimed whatever extra juice it could to make the magic happen.

  The good news in the counterbalance of the two systems was that by alternating each, I could more readily maintain a stable temperature and actually keep going longer before I burned out or froze to death. Of course, that was true as long as I could use the chaos energy I drew in. That still didn’t make me infinitely powerful. Not even close. The human body wasn’t made to channel so much energy. I was heating myself back up by enhancing my legs and jogging in place when I hit the wall. A sudden wave of fatigue smashed me so hard I wound up on my knees, the world spinning around me.

  “Maybe you should rest for a few minutes?” Dryka suggested as I struggled back to my feet.