Chapter Twenty-Eight
All the air evaporated from his lungs. The lights began to flicker and the floor shook, but Roar couldn’t think past what Eren had said. Then another direct hit wrenched his thoughts free.
“We’ll talk about that later.” Roar looked her square in the eye. “Can you keep it together long enough to help me out here?”
Eren swallowed. “I think so.”
He turned to the bridge’s tactical screen and examined their position. Half a dozen destroyers and a battle cruiser carried thousands of boarding pods and a couple hundred Woede soldiers.
Inger came next to Roar. “All we need to do is buy Leda some time.”
“Time to do what?” Roar slapped his hands on the panel when he realized what she meant. “If you think she’s going to be able to rescue us out here, I’m pretty sure you’re mistaken. ‘The weapon works for Aurelis.’ That’s what the Elders said.”
“For Aurelis,” Inger pointed out. “Not on Aurelis.”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “Semantics.”
“I think she’s right,” said Eren. “My father’s stronghold is centered around Aurelis now. He believes the planet has untold power and he’s intent on discovering it. If he’s brought this many ships out here, it stands to reason that he’s scared of what she can do, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her away. He didn’t know Leda went missing—”
“She didn’t go missing,” Roar spat. “She was taken.”
Eren conceded. “He doesn’t know she was taken, so it stands to reason that he’d send a fleet out to head you off away from the planet, just in case Leda slipped the net.”
“So we need to keep Leda off Equinox then.” Inger’s silvery eyes narrowed in thought. “Do the Woede know there’s another ship in the vicinity?”
Roar sighed. “Without communications, it’s impossible to tell.”
Eren said, “What if we don’t need communications?”
An uneasy feeling settled over Roar. “What do you mean?”
“I could tap into the collective.”
Bad idea, his thoughts screamed. To Inger, Roar said, “What are the chances Leda will figure out what to do without assistance?”
Petrus stumbled onto the bridge as Equinox faced another blow. Roar shot him a questioning look, but Petrus waved him off, his right hand in a fist over the spot Roar had pulled the knife from.
“She should get it on her own,” said Inger. “Her father’s been preparing her for this her whole life.”
Roar didn’t ask how. “Well, the best thing we can do in the meantime then is stick to my plan. At least it’ll distract the Woede from the other ship and buy her some time.”
Leda’s grandmother nodded. “And it never hurts to obliterate a few Woede. No offense,” she said to Eren, a wry smile on her lips.
Eren grinned. “None taken. Let’s cause some chaos.”
A few minutes later, Arne made his presence in tactical known by setting off an alarm then shutting it down. The blast on communications must have knocked out internal comms as well. Roar brought up the onboard messaging system, a back-up program nobody used that sure came in handy now. In as few words as possible, Roar informed Arne of the plan.
You want to do what?!?! Arne sent.
The closer we are to the main ship, Roar typed, the better our chances of causing some serious damage. And we need to keep Leda’s ship hidden. They won’t see it if we’re on their tails.
Petrus took Roar’s place and typed: As long as Leda can work out what she has to do, Roar’s plan will work.
A pause, then Arne’s reply came in. And if she can’t?
Roar bumped his friend out of the way. Then we’re screwed.
The shields were down to 50 percent when Roar, Arne, Petrus, and Inger finished the preparations. He wasn’t trusting Eren near any vital systems when the stakes were this high and he didn’t want her out of his sight, either. So he let her stay on the bridge. Eren agreed to let him cuff her to the rail running behind the pilot’s seat, out of the way, and far from reach of any systems.
He looked around the bridge. “Everybody ready?”
Tension drifted off the others and he felt it tugging him like an invisible thread connected them all. This move was risky, and every one of them knew it. If Leda couldn’t make the weapon work, then they were going to die anyway. Might as well go out with a bang and take a couple of Woede with me.
Roar waited for those on the bridge to ready themselves, then he nodded to Petrus, who shot a message to Arne. A second later, Petrus confirmed that Arne had done what Roar asked.
Show time. At the helm, Roar put his hands in the controls and focused all his energy on steering Equinox toward the Woede armada. The ship banked right and shuddered under the sudden forced change in direction. Keep it moving, he thought, eyes on the chart. The little dot representing Equinox neared the battle cruiser.
When they were almost in position, Roar called to Petrus. “Tell Arne to count to five, then give the main ship everything we’ve got.”
Petrus nodded and turned to the screen.
Roar kept pushing Equinox closer to the Woede battle cruiser, their speed increasing. When they were about a mile from the cruiser, Roar felt the deck beneath him shudder with the force of weapons fire. It was like a relentless earthquake, and onscreen, starburst explosions surrounded the Woede ship. Arne fired again and again. Roar picked up the pace in increments, ignoring proximity warning alarms, overriding emergency protocols as they popped up.
A message popped into the corner of Roar’s mind—from the Woede battle cruiser. Not a hail, but a demand. He pulled it up on the ship’s main screen. No video, just sound. A terrible, high-pitched screeching sound. Roar cringed and shut the message down.
“They know what you’re doing,” Eren said.
That was kind of the point. Roar forced more dark energy from the surrounding space into the drives. Time to speed things up here.
“That wasn’t just a message,” Eren continued. “It was a warning.”
Roar smirked. Sweat pearled down his brow from exertion. “Yeah? What are they warning us about?”
“‘Change your heading or be destroyed,’” Eren said, shaking her head. “That’s what I got from the short burst, anyway.”
“They’re going to kill us either way, so I’m going to go with no.” Roar turned to Inger. “Tell Arne to fire up Leda’s program.” He’d managed to save the hack she’d used when she fired on her mom, and that was the ace up his sleeve. The perfect way to go: guns blazing at 200 percent, on a collision course with an evil scourge.
The floor under Roar’s feet vibrated. His pulse tripled. Time to see if there really is a god.
“Brace for impact,” Roar said, his voice shaking as much as the floor. His teeth rattled and he clamped them together, keeping his muscles tight.
Leda filled his mind with her smile and quick wit and sass; the way she melted against him when they kissed; the taste of her lips; the sound of her laugh; her hair swishing when she walked.
Any second now.
A bright light flashed onscreen, stinging his eyes. Roar covered his face with his arm and shut his eyes, confused by the light and waiting for the moment where the ships would collide. Bye-bye, Woede. Bye-bye, Equinox. The end.
“Uh, Roar?”
He replied through his sleeve, “Not a good time, Eren.”
“I think you need to see this.”
“See what? There’s nothing to…” His arm dropped away, and Roar saw the light had dimmed but not vanished. There in the vast blackness of space surrounding the battleships was a sparkling, starlit memory of the first time Roar had kissed Leda.
“Jäger and Erlosser? How can that be?” Eren stumbled back. “You haven’t…made love, have you?” She seemed as horrified as Roar felt by the question.
“No!” He avoided Leda’s grandmother’s interrogating stare. “No, I swear. Arne explained to me why that can’t happen. You know. Poison.”
And thank God we didn’t get to that point.
If being together turned their blood to poison, he didn’t want to think what would actually happen to them. Sickness? Death? That would be ironic. He finds the weapon only for both of them to unwittingly kill themselves because they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
“Arne is an Elder,” Eren said. “He was told only a piece of the puzzle.”
Roar raised an eyebrow. “Well he seems to have been told a very important piece. One I wish the rest of you had told me all along—”
Petrus ran onto the bridge, his hands signing in frantic bursts Roar didn’t comprehend. Eren watched him with increasing interest.
“Yes! Yes, that’s exactly right!” She encouraged Petrus to sign again to Roar.
“I can’t. I’ve tried. No matter what, it doesn’t work. I can never tell him, or anyone else, what I know.”
“This is intriguing,” Inger said, “but something tells me Leda needs help, and Roar’s the one to give it to her.”
Roar looked back at the screen and caught the tail end of their first kiss before the memory rewound and began from the top. Inger was right. Whatever this image in the sky meant, he’d figure that out later. Leda might be in trouble. And if she needed his help, she’d get it. At top speed, he rushed to the closest razor bay.
It was only as he entered and looked through the bay door that he saw the worst.
A missile. Its bright blue flame sending it toward its target.
Leda.
Don’t give up, honey.
Leda was four-years-old.
Daddy bought the unicorn sneakers from the mall. The ones with sparkly laces and rainbow lights that blinked when you walked.
She tried and tried and tried but the dumb laces didn’t work.
“Don’t give up, honey. We’ll figure it out together. I promise.”
Leda pouted. “It’s too hard.”
Daddy held her chin with his big hands. He looked at her the way Mommy never did. He looked at her with all his happy. He smiled with his whole face. “Nothing in this whole, wide universe is too hard. All you need is determination and some fresh air. What do I always tell you?”
Leda pretended to think. She pretended for a whole minute. Maybe two minutes. She couldn’t see the clock. Daddy made his eyes open real wide, and that made Leda laugh.
“You always tell me to go outside.”
“That’s right!” He kissed her nose, and called her søteste—sweetest. “If you can’t figure something out, step outside.”
“But Daddy.” She looked down at her sneakers. “I can’t walk like this.”
“That’s why I invented piggy back rides!”
He hoisted her up before she could say he so did not invent them.
“Always remember,” he said, pushing the fire escape door open with one hand. “Everyone is strong in their own way. What matters is that you love yourself for who you are. Your own power. What matters is that you let yourself love.” He pointed at her. “And that you let others love you, too.” He smiled. “Now let’s go outside.”
Toorn’s laughter filled up every light place in her memory. His cruel words were a thick, ceaseless fog. She felt cold, so cold. All over. All the warmth, all the happy, it was gone. All the hope, everything good. Gone, gone, gone.
Then Dad’s voice pushed through the haze in her head. “Your own power.”
She turned to Toorn’s image. “I will find a way to stop you.”
Toorn shook his head. “Foolish child. Even in your final moments, you still have hope. You are alone. You have always been alone. And now, you will die alone.”
“You’re wrong. I—”
The explosion knocked her off her feet and into the ship’s wall. Pain so thick it consumed her vision. And then, an icy blackness. She tried to breathe, but there was no oxygen. She tried to see, but only now did she realize why she saw unending darkness.
There was darkness. There were stars. And growing farther away from her was the ship and the hole blown into its side.
I am not going to die today.
She had to see Roar again. He was so close, and yet, so far away. She could almost feel his arms around her, the warmth of his breath in her hair. Hear her name on his lips. His lips—oh, man, she missed the way he kissed her, like he couldn’t breathe without her.
Roar’s hands in her hair as his mouth brushed hers. Yes, she wanted that—needed it.
Needed him.
Roar. Alone with him. Nothing between them but a whisper.
“Shit.”
Roar didn’t have time to think. Only to act.
Faster than ever, he suited up, not taking time to check that everything was functional before attaching a cable to the RomTek suit. He slammed his hand against the decompression switch.
When it reached its maximum extension, the cable would automatically retract. He just hoped it was long enough for him to reach Leda before they both died in the dead cold of space.
Leda’s eyes flashed open. Someone’s arms were around her. It was Roar.
She should feel cold. Dying. Dead.
Instead, she knew what she had to do.
Without the suit, her legs were about as useful as a couple of wet noodles. She looked up into Roar’s eyes.
Let yourself love, her father had said. Let others love you, too.
Stars exploded in the black space all around them, an unfathomable infinity of lights shining down as if they were the last two people in the universe.
She could feel everything. Even Roar, as though he wasn’t wearing a RomTek suit. The firm press of his chest flush with hers, the slope of his hips. She felt his thoughts in the slow, steady beat of his heart, knew his feelings were burned into the universe like the constellations.
If ever a moment were the most important of all moments, this would be the one. Leda wished she could capture the essence of this moment in a jar and keep it safe, forever peeking inside just to experience a fraction of the bliss she felt now. Because a miniscule glimpse of this moment would nourish even the most cynical, brokenhearted soul for decades.
Very slowly, Roar pulled away, his hands sliding across her shoulders and down her arms. Goose bumps jumped up on her skin. He touched the hollow of her collar bone at the base of her throat with a tip of one finger.
In a distance growing shorter by the moment, but one that couldn’t be crossed in time, she saw Roar’s ship. If they were going to die out here, hopeless, then to hell with Rika’s warning. To hell with anyone who would tell her who she was and what she could be and who she could want. Her father had given her one final piece of advice before he died: to let herself love and be loved. So even though she couldn’t kiss Roar, even though she couldn’t be with him in the way she wanted, she would do what mattered. She would open her heart to him and hope he saw in her eyes the way she felt about him. Not because she wasn’t afraid, but because she saw now that being brave meant facing her fear. They couldn’t exist without the other.
Jäger and Erlosser. Courage and fear. Two halves of the same whole.
When her eyes met Roar’s, she was gone. Carried up into the deep black by a rogue solar wind and spun around through the stars. Her whole body shook from the intensity. A warmth filled her that defied the frozen vacuum.
She felt the swell of power within her, what she’d been told was a trap that had to be resisted at all costs. Her blood and his could never mix. But that power wasn’t a trap. That power was the weapon.
She opened herself to him with all of the intensity she’d forbidden herself.
Then the world unraveled.
In her mind’s eye, Leda witnessed electric blue nerves and silver veins and tiny pulsing cells evolve into something unknown, something powerful. Something dangerous. The earlier heat erupted, a volcano inside her chest, spreading out to her fingertips. Curling, seeking, surrounding her.
Somehow Leda could see everything. She knew where the Woede ships were in relation to Equinox and Patience. She knew where to find Toorn, and where the boarding pods were, saw them drifting around Equinox like flies. Leda drifted through the dark, flashes of laser light erupted from her hands punctuating the battle. She heard no sound when Stein hit his mark time after time, but she felt the power ripple through space.
You know what you have to do.
They were almost back at the ship. She couldn’t wait to tell Roar what she’d discovered. The most she could give him was a smile. That and a brief display of the power within her.
Glancing down at her hands, Leda turned them palms-up. They glowed bright, so bright they almost blinded her, so hot her skin prickled from the heat. Hot, searing pain went through her arms to the palms. But she didn’t burn. Something like an electrical charge buzzed in her veins, and at the same moment, a hundred memories flowed in her mind like an unstoppable river.
Faces.
Voices.
Flashes.
Same.
Same.
Same.
Activating the weapon doesn’t simply destroy the Woede…
Aurelites and Woede…connected…
We’re not so different, you and I.
No, Toorn, they weren’t. And now Leda knew why.
A smile tugged at her mouth and she raised her arms above her head, letting the heat build up. Time to send a warning.