Lady Bonnix guides us back through the mothership to meet with the Riga Generals. Everywhere I look I see commotion. Stern voices echo from speakers and fill the air all around us.

“Warning: Emergency Lightspeed departure planned in one hour. Prepare for departure. Repeat—”

And on it went. The whole city is alive with the movement of preparation. Loola informs me that Lightspeed travel isn’t such a simple affair on a ship this size. Everyone has to strap down in special harnesses to ensure that no one is hurt. I keep my eyes trained on Bonnix all the while, with Vax and Loola walking at my side. There’s a tension in Vax’s body language and his fists are clenched tight. He keeps his head forward too, not making any effort to catch my attention.

Good.

“Through here,” Bonnix says and we step through a black plated door that is flanked by heavily armed guards on either side. Loola tells me we’ve just entered the building that houses the highest military officers in the Riga army. Our quick jaunt through the building ends at a conference room with a wall of tall windows that look across the city. Two dozen Riga women are already in there waiting for us at the table. They stand at our entrance and a Riga woman at the head of the table walks over to greet us personally.

“You must be Vax and Piper. My name is Prita Lang. I am the high General of the Riga army. I understand we owe you both a great debt.” Prita has short black hair that is pulled back in a tight bun and sharp emerald eyes. She is a little shorter than most of the other Riga women in the room, but she still dwarfs me, and there’s a bold energy projected from her strong eyes that radiates an aura of powerful respect. I like her, and I get the impression her soldiers do too.

“The thanks is Piper’s to have,” Vax says. “She is the one who figured out the weakness in the Horkax fighters.” I find myself a little surprised at Vax’s honesty. We’re definitely not in a good place right now, but he still has the grace to be the bigger man.

Prita settles her sharp green eyes on me. “Is that true, Piper? You were the one to figure it out?” The entire table of officers looks at me in expectation.

“I don’t want to take all the credit. I couldn’t have survived out there with Vax and Loola, but yes—I think I’m able to identify Horkax generals from regular soldiers.”

“It confirms our thinking of Hive theory,” Loola says excitedly. “We’ve never been able to prove it until now, but Piper can somehow detect a difference with her eyes.”

A bubble of interested discussion circles round the table with this admission. It seems strange to me that the ability to see red is so unique. Prita looks impressed but takes the news in her stride. “Very well then. There’s not really a question of what happens next Piper, you must come with us back to the Argonian mothership to help fight off the second wave.”

“Not an option,” Vax growls. “My people gave me an iron-clad directive to take Piper and get as far away from earth as possible. If I go back there, I will be disobeying a direct order from Raka himself.”

“Vax and Piper were scheduled to leave today General Prita,” Loola explains.

Prita raises her brows. “Is that so… well. I don’t suppose the latest development has changed your mind any?”

Everyone’s looking at me again. I briefly cast my gaze at Vax, but I don’t know why. I already know what I want to do. “I want to go back,” I say. “There’s a chance that I can be useful in this fight, and I could never forgive myself if I ran away now.”

Vax looks over at me. “Piper, I really think you—”

My eyes flash back a glare of death at Vax, and he falls silent immediately. It’s not my business if Vax was a criminal in his past life. I still feel betrayed about it all, but I also feel like it’s not my position to out him to a room of Riga aliens. Everything that happened in the past few days leading up to this felt like a dream. I let myself get carried away with the notion that running away was the best thing to do.

All those daydreams of me and Vax flying across the universe to find a planet we could call our own. It seemed perfect, and for a while everything had been perfect, but uncovering the truth about his past had brought that all crashing down, down like a house of cards.

I’ve felt so confused with conflicting wants that I didn’t realize what was the right thing to do up until now. Putting the missing piece of the puzzle together and figuring out the Horkax weakness only left me with one logical choice.

“I had planned to go—” I’m speaking to the room, but in a way, I feel like I’m directly speaking with Vax too. “Realizing that I have this ability to help bring down the Horkax makes me see I have no other choice. I have to go back to earth. I have to help the Argonians. I have to help the Riga.”

Prita nods. “You must understand we would never recommend you go back in normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. You have this rare ability Piper Denzel, and our people need you.” She turns and looks at Vax. “I’m sorry Vax Enzala, but the Riga cannot allow you to take Piper Denzel and leave. Her importance is too great. You are free to leave if you wish, I understand you are under strict orders. Returning could mean death or even exile. I know Argonians take orders seriously.”

I look over at Vax. His expression is hard like granite. There’s no warmth in his blue eyes anymore. Even his skin seems to have turned to a cold shade of grey-blue. His brow furrows, he clenches his jaw. “Very well. Do what you must, but understand I take no responsibility for Argonia’s reception. Raka was balanced, but Beck Orbis is known for being particularly strict. He may choose to punish the Riga too for bringing an earthling to the frontline in a war.”

“That is a risk I’m prepared to take,” Prita says calmly.

“Take it then,” Vax walks from the group to the door and turns around. “I will have no further part in this conversation. I will return to my ship and prepare for the lightspeed departure back to earth.” He turns his eyes on me and nods. “Piper.”

I nod back at Vax and he leaves.

* * *

Vax might have had the right idea leaving the war room, because Prita quickly leads us into a detailed preamble of strategy and attack planning. Everyone is keen to hear my thoughts on Horkax combat strategy, and they’re all dying to learn how to differentiate the leader Horkax from regular soldiers. I make an attempt to try and explain red to them, but I make no progress. How can you explain something to a person who is physically incapable of understanding it?

We sit in the war room for just over half an hour, only breaking when the Riga mothership is finally ready for its lightspeed departure. We’re all escorted to ‘clamping’ rooms that sit underneath the military barracks. Apparently moving at lightspeed in such a giant vessel can be dangerous to anyone on board, so the Riga had come up with clamping to help combat any danger.

I’m led into a long room that is bordered by dozens of small capsule rooms on either side. Riga women flock through tiny doors into the capsule rooms every second and metal doors hiss behind them. Loola leads me over to a door and shows me the inside.

“Capsules are just hollowed out orbs with safety chairs inside them,” she says. We look through the door into the room. It matches her description, but it’s a little more sophisticated than she makes it out to be. The chair is suspended in the air between a field of lasers, which Loola informs me are designed to negate ‘neutrino showers’, whatever the hell that means.

She helps me into the chair and buckles me in tight. A voice blasts over the ships intercoms announcing there are five minutes until take off.

“You’re all set,” Loola says as she pulls the last strap tight across my chest. I’m feeling a little claustrophobic strapped into the futuristic device, but it’s certainly better than getting my brain shredded to pieces by wayward atoms. “The actual blast itself will take about a minute. We’re one-hundred-thousand lightyears from earth.”

“Shouldn’t that take one-hundred-years if we’re travelling at the speed of light?” I ask, feeling kind of stupid. Loola laughs at me.

“You’re so funny Piper. It would take that long if we travel at lightspeed, but lightspeed is slow… like super slow. Our ship can go a lot faster than that.”

“Is it safe?” I ask.

“Perfectly. It can get a bit weird though. Just close your eyes and remember to breathe.”

I want to ask Loola what she means by ‘a bit weird’, but my eyes focus on a countdown in front of me, and I decide I don’t want to keep her waiting. Faster than light travel. The enormity of difference between our cultures makes me feel insignificantly small. How was something like that even possible? Loola gives my chair one last look over and then makes her way out, closing the door behind her.

I’m all alone in the pod now and everything suddenly feels very quiet. I imagine the million citizens of the Riga mothership as they all rush to clamping pods just like this one, all making sure they’re safe and sound for the upcoming trip. I wonder to myself what Vax is doing. Probably sat on his ship on the bridge. I hope for a second that he’s taken the correct safety measures and he’s in a pod like this one, and then I worry he hasn’t. I push the worry away quickly though, remembering that he’s an alien. Vax has probably done this many times before. Space travel is just an everyday thing for an Argonian, just as it is for the Riga and the Horkax.

How was it possible that earth was so far behind these other cultures? There were so many differences that it made my head spin, but there were similarities too of course. Like Vax. And how he’s a criminal. A liar. A murderer.

Ice forms in my stomach as I remember the truth. I don’t want to speak to the bastard, but there’s also a crushing desire just to get some time alone with him and ask him why. Why did he do this to me? How could he betray me like that?

Argonians and earthlings might have a thousand differences, but I still managed to wind up finding the scumbag guy that can’t be honest with me for a straight second.

Klaxons brake me from my reverie, and my attention comes to the countdown on the screen in front of me. “Warning. Departure Imminent. Prepare for lightspeed travel.”

My hands tighten around the supports in my chair. I’m positive a little bit of extra grip will do nothing when travelling one-hundred-thousand light years in less than a minute. It’s funny what the brain does when you’re scared.

“Ignite!”

All the lights in my pod flash off momentarily, only to be replaced by a dim blue light a few moments later. I stare at the white screen in front of me and contemplate the strange alien letters before I remember that the text on the screen was in English. It’s funny, because it doesn’t look like English now. All of the letters have blurred out toward the edge of the screen and are making funny shapes.

That’s when I realize it’s not just the screen. It’s everything. The edge of the monitor, the walls of the pod. The lasers holding my chair in the center of the room. Black holes are forming at the center of my vision and pushing everything outward, like oil in water.

I blink hard to focus on something tangible, but the universe itself feels like it’s coming apart at the seams. Colors take on shape. Shapes become sounds. I feel like I’m cross-eyed, falling and rising all at once. Just when I think I can’t take the ugly sensations anymore a giant bass sound rises up through the air, and everything starts shaking violently.

In that moment a vision breaks in the darkness of my eyes and I see myself looking across the vastness of space. I’m floating in a vacuum. Floating just in front of me there is a solitary Horkax soldier. The locust man stares back at me with those hollow eyes. It’s dressed from head-to-toe in a golden uniform that shines under the starlight. It looks at me and moves its mandibles, clacking that ugly-sounding language.

“Nearly time to die,” a hollow voice says in my head. Mandibles flicker and squirm. I feel sick. It’s laughing at me. “Nearly time to die, Piper Denzel.”

I want to scream back at the locust man and tell it to go kiss a bug zapper, but the vision breaks away just as quickly as it came. The alien forces seep back from my vision and the world returns to its normal form in a heartbeat. Sound returns. There’s a whistling in my ears. My vision is swimming a little. I even feel a little drunk. The clasps on my chair unbuckle themselves and I stand to my feet, relieved that the trip is over. I realize that I’m covered in sweat, and I taste iron in my mouth.

The doors open and Loola is standing there, looking a little greyer than she usually does. “How was it?” she asks.

I double over and vomit onto the floor before straightening up to answer. “I think it’s safe to say I’m not a fan. Sorry about that.”

Loola hands me a bottle of sparkling green liquid from a panel on the pod wall. “Don’t worry about it, it’s normal. Drink that, it’ll help you feel like your old self again.” I knock back the drink and find it pleasantly cool. It grounds me immediately and stops my head from swimming. When I look back at Loola I see her smiling.

“What?”

She grabs my wrist and pulls me out the pod. “Follow me. You might want to see this.”

We sprint down the corridor of pods, jumping around crowds of Riga women who look dazed from the travel. We vault up several flights of stairs and Loola brings us to a stop in front of a broad window that looks out into space. She looks over at me and smiles. “What do you think of that?”

My heart drops in my chest as I approach the glass, setting my palm against the picture in front of me. Earth stands before us against the tide of black, neighbored by the Argonian space station on its right.

I was home.