I guess this change was permanent. I could see through the ship’s sensors with total clarity, feel the engine’s harmonics and track our position in space down to the meter. The data that usually came in dribs and drabs was now a coherent stream. “I think the amplifier did something to me.”

  “Enhanced your neural conductivity maybe,” Alina said. “Or it could have optimized your Polarion genetic markers. Either way, can you fly even easier than before?”

  “Yup,” I said, already plotting our course. The calculations that once took minutes now resolved in seconds. I could see the optimal foldspace entry vector and the gravitational currents we’d need to navigate.

  “I’m setting course for system RX-7734,” I said. “Prepare for foldspace entry.”

  The others sat or tightened their stances.

  I felt the Manifold Drive spinning up. Then the space in front of us began to ripple, as we prepared to punch through into that strange realm where light-year distances became negotiable.

  The ripple became a tear, showing the gray non-space beyond.

  The Theron slipped through like a knife through silk. The normal universe fell away, replaced by the endless gray realm of foldspace.

  “The transition was successful,” Bill said. “All systems are nominal. The estimated time to destination is seventy-one hours.”

  We had three days to prepare for our final mission. Three days to figure out how to infiltrate a prison ship the size of a city, find a being who could unmake reality, and hit him with a weapon and amplifier we didn’t fully understand.

  I settled into the pilot’s chair and let the Theron carry us through the gray nothing of foldspace toward our destiny. The ship hummed around me. The ring was warm on my finger, the amplifier secure in the medical bay, and the Negator waiting in our arsenal.

  In three days, we’d find out if a half-Polarion biker from Nevada could stop a proto-god from ending existence.

  I could hardly wait.

  -67-

  Day one in foldspace turned out to be maintenance and preparation time. I spent most of it in the pilot’s chair, getting used to my enhanced connection with the Theron. The data streams that used to overwhelm me now felt natural, like the ship was an extension of my nervous system. Through Malik’s memories, I understood tactical displays far better: recognizing approach vectors and recognizing defensive formations just from ship placement.

  Alina worked at her station, pulling up everything we knew about the Dreadstar. The schematics appeared in the display, showing the massive triangular prison ship in cross-section. She highlighted the places we knew—which turned out to be less than ten percent of the ship.

  “The problem is we don’t know exactly where the Burnt Polarion is being kept,” she said. “We know it’s in the middle somewhere. But high-security stasis could be anywhere in that part.” She indicated a massive area that would take hours to search on foot.

  Plus, from the last time I was there, I knew the interior areas were filled with heightened auto-security. It was the reason the T-suit had seemed perfect for this. It was burnt out now, most of its circuits fried.

  “The Ick will surely have increased security,” Gorrax said.

  Bill entered the bridge carrying a diagnostic tablet. “I’ve completed the systems check. We have a problem with the port shield generator. It’s only functioning at fifty-seven percent efficiency.”

  “Can you fix it?” I said.

  “Not without the parts we don’t have,” Bill said. “The generator took damage during our escape from the quarantine fleet. It will hold against standard weapons fire, but sustained assault will break through.”

  “We’ll have to make sure nobody shoots at that side,” I said.

  “Easier said than accomplished,” Bill said.

  That night—if you could call it night in the eternal gray of foldspace—I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about what was coming. The Burnt Polarion had been asleep for centuries, but he was waking up. His daughter had somehow transformed from digital consciousness to flesh. The Ick wanted to control him. And we were racing toward all of them with a weapon and amplifier that might work.

  I found myself in the cargo bay, staring at the T-suit. It hung on a rack like a corpse, still showing the damage from our temporal journey. The black globe on its back was dark, seemingly dead.

  “You really screwed us with that time travel stunt,” I said. “One trip to get the amplifier and you burn out?”

  There was no response. Chak-Tal had been silent since our return.

  I reached out to touch the suit, checking if anything had changed. The fabric felt smoother where it had been rough, solid where it had been brittle. That was odd. It was as if it was healing. Did that make sense? I shrugged.

  Nothing made sense at this point. Maybe I never should have stopped to take that piss in Nevada.

  I yawned, turned around and headed for my cabin. Maybe I could get a few hours of sleep after all.

  Day two in foldspace was when things got interesting.

  I was back in the cargo bay, unable to stop checking on the T-suit. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but the suit definitely looked better. The scorched sections had smoothed out while cracks in the chest plate had sealed.

  Then I saw it.

  From inside the black globe, something moved. It was thin, mechanical, like a cable made of liquid metal. It extended from the globe, reaching toward a damaged section of the suit’s left arm. The tendril touched the damage and the material began to reshape itself, cracks sealing, burns fading.

  I stepped closer, fascinated, like watching a predator perform surgery.

  The instant I was within three feet, the tendril snapped back into the globe, which seemed to darken.

  “Chak-Tal?” I said.

  There was silence.

  On impulse, I checked the suit’s diagnostic panel. Everything showed green, full functionality.

  Then his voice scraped through my mind, sounding exhausted: I have one teleport left, maybe two if you’re lucky. That’s all I can manage without a proper power source. The self-repair took everything I had left.

  “What was that thing I saw, that tendril?”

  Mind your own business, meat sack. Just be grateful I fixed your ride.

  “Are you—?”

  I’m sleeping now. Go away and leave me alone.

  The black globe went inert like a stone. But the T-suit was functional again. That meant I might actually be able to do this. I had one shot at a direct teleport to avoid grinding through the Dreadstar’s corridors.

  Chak-Tal, baby, you’re the greatest.

  That evening, we all gathered for dinner in the galley. It was a strange meal, possibly our last together. Gorrax had prepared something from his homeworld, a stew that looked questionable but tasted surprisingly good. We ate in relative quiet, each lost in thought. I know I was.

  “I’ve been analyzing the Collector’s coordinates more carefully,” Alina said, breaking the silence. “The system he’s sending us to, there’s something odd about it.”

  “How odd are we talking about?” I asked.

  “It appears to be a rogue system. The planets are just drifting through space without a star.”

  “Seems like a perfect place to hide,” Bill said.

  “Or a perfect place for an ambush,” Gorrax said.

  “We know this might be a trap,” I said. “But trap or not, we need to reach the Burnt Polarion before he fully wakes.”

  That ended the conversation. The weight of what we were attempting settled heavily upon us—especially me. Why us, huh? We had to be the most unlikely crew to save the universe I knew.

  How had we ever stumbled onto the Dreadstar anyway?

  I shrugged.

  What’s it matter why? We had the means and knew about the problem. That meant we needed to step up and just get her done. It was really as simple as that.

  -68-

  That night, I dreamed of tunnels. I suppose that isn’t surprising, given Malik’s memories, but these weren’t the Chirr tunnels. These were corridors of the Dreadstar, and I was running through them, chasing something—or maybe being chased. In the dream, the Burnt Polarion’s voice echoed off the walls: “I remember you now. Twenty-one hundred years I’ve been thinking about you, Kane Hunter. I’ve cooked up a little surprise for you. I think you’re going to love it.”

  I woke up sweating, beginning to seriously hate the dude.

  Day three would be our last in foldspace, maybe our last ever. We began the final preparations.

  Alina had been working on something. She called us over to her station.

  “I’ve been studying the sensor data from when the High Polarion daughter visited us,” she said. “Remember how the Negator didn’t affect her when I shot at her?”

  “You lacked enough gravitas to negate her.”

  “Watch this.” Alina pulled up the sensor recording, showing it in slow motion. There was no visible beam, so that didn’t help. “Look at these readings.”

  The display showed incomprehensible data that the ship’s AI translated into visual patterns. The daughter flickered like bad reception from a TV.

  “What just happened?” I said.

  “I believe she phase shifted,” Alina said. “It was just like you do with your ring, but more controlled. She shifted—I’m going to call it—out of our reality. She did it for a fraction of a second, no doubt letting the invisible negation beam pass through. Then she shifted back to where she’d been.”

  Alina looked at me.

  I stood there thinking, letting what I’d seen sink in. It hit me after several seconds. I turned sharply to Alina.

  “The Burnt Polarion might be able to do that,” I said.

  “Yes,” Alina said.

  I frowned as I watched the rest of the cargo-bay battle against the High Polarion woman take place.

  “I’d say the phase shifting takes concentration and probably some kind of power,” I said.

  “I agree with that,” Alina said.

  I rubbed my jaw. “We need to surprise him, catch him before he can phase shift out of the Negator’s field of effect—or reality, I guess you’d call it.”

  “That might be our only shot,” Alina said.

  “We must assume that the Burnt Polarion can phase shift easily,” Bill said.

  I glared at the android, knowing he was probably right. The more I learned, the more impossible this seemed.

  It turned out that Gorrax had been working on something at the weapons station. He called us over to see his contribution.

  “Plasma charges,” he said, showing us a dozen small devices. He’d attached them to torpedoes. “They are shaped to breach the Dreadstar’s hull. We might need our own entrance at some point.”

  “Or exit,” I said.

  The Tokari warfighter nodded.

  The final hours in foldspace were tense as we waited to find out if we were going to survive another day. Alina worked faster at her station. Gorrax paced with his huge hands behind his back. Bill was Bill. My stomach was in knots, and there was nothing I could do to soothe that.

  Finally, “One minute to normal space,” I said.

  Everyone made the final checks. Weapons were ready, shields up, sensors at maximum. The amplifier case sat at my feet while the Negator sat in a holster at my side, heavy with purpose.

  Through the neural interface, I could feel foldspace beginning to release us. The gray void started to ripple, reality reasserting itself.

  I thought about everything that had brought us here: finding the Theron in Nevada, my meeting of Alina and Gorrax. I thought about the prison break from the Dreadstar and the temple on the water world, the dying moon and then the tunnels of the past. All of it had been leading to this moment.

  Then normal space snapped back into focus, stars cold and distant. A rogue planet hung before us, a dark sphere with no star to warm it. And there, in orbit above the frozen world, was the Dreadstar.

  The massive triangular prison ship hung in space like a waiting predator, its dark hull lit only by running lights that gave it the appearance of a city-sized nightmare. But sections of the hull showed damage, massive tears like something had punched through from the inside. Debris floated around it in a slowly expanding cloud.

  “I’m detecting the Collector’s ship,” Alina said. “It’s docked at—no, it’s fused with the Dreadstar.”

  “Are there life signs?” I asked.

  “Thousands, but they’re scattered, and many of the life signs are fading. There’s been a battle, maybe several. And…” She paused, adjusting her sensors. “I’m detecting a massive energy signature in the central stasis section. Something is drawing power from the ship’s core.”

  “It must be the Burnt Polarion,” I said. “Could we be too late?”

  Through the viewport, I could see lights flickering inside the Dreadstar.

  “We’re being scanned,” Alina said. “The Dreadstar knows we’re here.”

  A moment later, the comm system crackled. The voice that came through was cultured, amused, and terrifyingly familiar.

  “Kane Hunter,” the Burnt Polarion said. “I’ve been expecting you. After all, we have twenty-one hundred years of catching up to do.”

  My blood went cold. He remembered the encounter when I was wearing Malik’s skin.

  “By all means, come aboard,” Zorion said. “Bring your little Negator and the amplifier you stole from my past. Let’s conclude this properly. Unless you’d prefer I simply implement the Null Equation from here. I’m quite capable of it now, you know. The only reason I haven’t yet is curiosity. I want to see the man who thinks he can kill me.”

  The comm went silent.

  We all looked at each other. This was it, and he knew we were coming. That meant we had no element of surprise to help us.

  -69-

  The Theron held position fifty thousand kilometers from the Dreadstar, far enough to avoid immediate weapon range but close enough to see the massive prison ship hanging above the dark planet. Through the neural interface, I could feel every system in our scout ship humming with readiness. The ring on my finger was warm, almost eager, as if it knew we were close to the end.

  “The Dreadstar’s Manifold Drive is offline,” Alina said. “I’m reading massive damage to their engineering section, antimatter detonation signatures.”

  “Someone made sure they can’t run,” I said.

  The rogue planet was a ball of ice and death, no star to warm it, just drifting through the void. Something about it nagged at me through Malik’s memories, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  “There is an incoming transmission,” Bill said. “It’s badly degraded and coming from the Dreadstar.”

  “Put it through,” I said.

  The comm system crackled with static, then a wet, labored voice came through. The Collector, but he sounded like he was drowning in his own blood.

  “Kane Hunter…”

  His breathing apparatus gurgled with each word.

  “She… she found out I gave you the coordinates. She was quite upset with me.”

  Through the static, we could hear him cough up what sounded like blood.

  “I don’t have long,” the Collector wheezed. “You must realize that the Burnt Polarion can’t use the Null Equation yet. Not without…” There was another wet cough. “He needs the ring on your finger for reasons I don’t fully comprehend.”

  My hand closed around the ring. The Burnt Polarion needed this. Maybe I should run to make sure he never got it.

  “The Dreadstar can’t enter foldspace,” the Collector wheezed. “I made sure of that. The Burnt Polarion is trapped here.”

  “Good work,” I said, feeling I needed to say something.

  The Collector made a long wheezing breath before adding, “The Ick think they control destiny… but they were always just parasites. We Collectors preserved what matters… knowledge, history… things that shouldn’t be lost to the terrible experiments taking place here.”

  There was a crash through the comm, the sound of metal tearing. Then a woman, her voice cold with fury, said, “Who are you talking to?”

  A scream cut through the comm. The sound went on and on until the Collector’s breathing apparatus made one final, horrible gurgle.

  A new voice came on and said, “Greetings, Kane. Father is so looking forward to your visit.”

  Then the comm went dead.

  I stood up from the pilot’s chair, angry. What had the little alien Collector ever done to them? “I need to suit up,” I said.

  “Wait,” Alina said. “If the Burnt Polarion needs the ring, maybe we should run with it.”

  “And if that’s a lie?” Gorrax said.

  I stared at the massive Tokari warfighter, nodding. Right, they might be lying to me so I would run. That could be just the ticket that ended the universe for certain.

  “Why would the Collector lie?” Alina said.

  “I have to go,” I said. “I can’t risk it being a lie.”

  “And if you give the Burnt Polarion exactly what he needs?” Alina said.

  “If I negate Zorion, none of that matters,” I said. “It’s the sword to the Gordian knot.”

  “What?” Alina said.

  I didn’t have time to explain to her. But in retrospect, I can tell you:

  The Gordian knot was this complex knot in B.C. times tying a wagon to a hitch. It was in Asia Minor somewhere, and for a long time, people tried to untie it, and no one could. Legend held that whoever could untie it would rule Asia. Then Alexander the Great came along, looked at it for a time, and finally drew his sword and cut through the knot. The rest is history and cutting the Gordian knot became a saying.

  In the cargo bay, the T-suit hung on its rack, the black globe on its back dark but somehow watchful. I could feel Chak-Tal’s presence, dormant but aware.

  Gorrax helped me into the suit, his massive hands surprisingly gentle with the ancient fabric.

  I sealed the helmet, feeling the T-suit’s systems coming online. The circular antenna above hummed with energy.