HOME.

Genesis grows larger on the viewscreen, like a flower blooming. The vast green continents take shape—the Eastern Peninsula, the Far Southern Islands, all the places she learned as a little child in school. It seems to shimmer before her eyes, but maybe that’s only because she’s blinking back tears. I never thought I’d see my home again.

All the unhappiness she’s faced here can never change her love for her world.

“We have Genesis ships incoming,” Zayan announces. Then he frowns. “Only about ten or eleven, though.”

That’s probably as much of a patrol as they can muster in their weakened state. Noemi aches for her broken planet’s lost pride as she goes to comms. “Genesis patrol! This is Noemi Vidal, seeking landing clearance.”

Of all people, it’s Deirdre O’Farrell who says, in amazement, “Vidal?”

“Yeah, glad to see you, too.” The patrol breaks off—probably more in confusion than through any trust in her—or maybe because of the sheer scale of the enormous fleet beginning to appear. She memorized the codes for Darius Akide’s offices at the Hall of Elders months ago, so it’s easy to input them now. But the last time she saw Akide, he was in a hospital bed. Could he be comatose now? Even dead? “Noemi Vidal for Darius Akide. Urgent. Top priority.”

Within less than a minute, Akide’s voice comes through. “Vidal. Thank God. We thought they might’ve killed you. It took them this long to accept our surrender?”

“Oh.” She’d almost forgotten that was her original mission. “Okay, here’s what happened. I actually never got a chance to surrender, but I’m coming back with antiviral drugs, tons of doctors, and an entire war fleet to defend Genesis while we rebuild.”

The pause that follows goes on so long she wonders if he’s fainted. Finally Akide says, sounding nothing like an august elder, “Hold on, what?”

As scared and wound up as she is, Noemi can’t resist a smile. “You’re welcome.”

Within the hour, the entire fleet has achieved Genesis orbit, save for a strong patrol that remains on guard near the Gate itself. Noemi brings the Persephone in for landing.

The silvery teardrop of the ship descends through the clouds, emerging above the rounded buildings of marble and stone. Two of the Remedy medical ships follow them in; this planet needs immediate help, but having every ship land at once would only create a panic. The breeze from their wake whips the tall willows by the river until their branches flutter free of the surface of the water. To judge by the rosy paleness of the sky, it’s early morning, but not so early that a few people aren’t walking around. Noemi sees them clutching the hoods of their robes as they look up in both fear and wonder.

As the ships approach the Temple, Noemi feels a quiver inside when she imagines facing the Council again. She’s gone beyond her authority—almost unfathomably far beyond it. But what else could she have done?

Besides, she is kind of saving the world. That’s got to help.

The enormous oaken doors of the Hall of Elders swing open at Noemi’s touch. She strides through without so much as a sideways glance at the people watching her, agog. Beside her march Abel, Ephraim, Virginia, Dagmar Krall, and a half dozen of Remedy’s top medics; behind them walk about ten Genesis guards, although their weapons remain holstered.

Noemi doesn’t slow her steps until they’re almost to the doors of the Council chamber. Two guards there in ceremonial saffron cloaks look from her to each other and back again before they open the doors to let them all in.

Only five of the elders sit there, including three she saw at the hospital before. Good care has seen them through; even on a world as egalitarian as Genesis, elders get attention the average citizens can’t expect. Darius Akide is among those present, his expression almost neutral until he realizes who’s walking beside her.

Abel smiles at him. “Hello, Dr. Akide. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Model One A,” Akide whispers. The resemblance to a younger Burton Mansfield no doubt tipped him off. “Dear God.”

“That’s my designation, but I prefer to go by Abel. Professor Mansfield told me a great deal about your work; I understand you even helped design me. We should make time for a long discussion later on.”

Akide blinks, but returns to the usual serene calm of an elder within minutes. “And these are our doctors? These are our new warriors?”

“That we are,” Dagmar Krall says. “Any enemy of Earth’s is a friend of mine—assuming, of course, you’re not too proud to accept our help.”

The taunt darkens Akide’s gaze. Noemi doesn’t like it either, but she’s not about to turn the Vagabond fleet away for something as petty as that. Surely Akide wouldn’t either—but it takes him a long few moments to answer.

Noemi holds her breath until Akide finally says, “So be it.”

And with that, Genesis gets to live.

Or so Noemi thinks at the time. Within the next hours, as the medical teams roll out planetwide, she realizes how dire the situation is.

Noemi left Genesis in a state of plague and panic. She returns to it in a state of shock and grief. Some cities have even buried hundreds in mass graves. The breakdown of normal record-keeping and communications means the teams have to go town to town to find and treat the sick—in some places, almost house to house. Already it’s clear the new drugs help considerably; Ephraim is optimistic that, with the information the Razers got about the new Cobweb virus, they can design even more effective treatments within days. But the death toll on Genesis remains horrific. Nothing Noemi’s done can change that.

When she returns to the Gatsons, she finds Mr. Gatson weak but recuperating. He doesn’t know where Mrs. Gatson is. Nobody does. There’s no way to be sure whether that’s because of chaos at overburdened hospitals or because Mrs. Gatson died in a huddle of unknown people and is now buried in an unmarked grave. Noemi promises to find out. Mr. Gatson only nods. His gaze is far away, and while he briefly takes her hand, he doesn’t welcome her back home.

She continually checks and rechecks long-range sensor reports. Nothing else has come through the Gate—yet. The Vagabond fleet remains in place, unchallenged, an entire day after their arrival. When Noemi receives a summons to a military hearing, she assumes they’ll want more information about how this strange alliance came together, and about how the discovery of Haven could affect the Liberty War.

But that’s not what her superior officers want to discuss.

“Not even in uniform, Vidal?” says Kaminski, the exact same guy who prosecuted her after her return from journeying around the Loop. His neck is nearly as thick as his head, and his veins stand out as if engorged with anger every second of every day. Of course he’s perfectly healthy; maybe being a total ass makes you immune. “You can’t even show basic respect to your former commander?”

Noemi doesn’t answer him. She speaks only to Yasmeen Baz, who is again here, apparently to defend her. “My uniform was lost on my mission. I’d never intentionally disrespect you, Captain Baz. Please believe that.”

Kaminski can’t endure being ignored. “You override the highest decisions of the Elder Council itself, substituting your judgment for their own, and you call that respect?”

“That’s what this is about?” Noemi’s astonishment makes her gape. It’s all she can do to keep talking. “You’re prosecuting me? I thought this was just to ask me about how I got the fleet together!”

“Which, in my mind, is a very good question.” Baz sounds neither defiant nor angry, only tired. Maybe she was sick, too, but if so, the lines of Cobweb are hidden by her uniform or her head scarf. “Whatever issues the Council has with Vidal should be taken up by the Council directly.”

“Disobedience to our government is a military offense. A court-martial offense,” hisses Kaminski.

“What disobedience?” Noemi protests.

Kaminski smirks; clearly he thinks he’s got her. “You were ordered to present Genesis’s surrender to Earth authorities. You patently failed to do so.”

“Yes, because I patently got kidnapped.” She catches herself. Sarcasm is conduct unbecoming an officer. “It was impossible for me to deliver my surrender while I was in Burton Mansfield’s custody, or while I was stranded on Haven.”

“And after that?” Kaminski says. “Upon your return to Earth’s system, did you contact their government?”

“I—no, I didn’t.” Hanging on to her temper is getting harder by the second. “I’d been able to summon help by then. An entire fleet. That changed things—”

“So you made up your own mind!” Kaminski retorts. “On your own, without any input from the Council or any other Genesis authority, you decided the situation had changed enough to merit ignoring your orders. And in so doing you not only continued a war that was meant to end, but escalated it.”

This is more than Noemi can take. “I escalated it by making it possible for us to actually win! Did you notice the war fleet up in the sky? The lifesaving drugs we have for the sick?”

Baz finally cuts in. “She’s got a damned good point, Kaminski. Once Vidal got back to the Earth system, conditions had radically changed. We allow military officers a certain degree of discretion on missions. She used hers. The result might be the difference between Genesis’s certain defeat and a real chance at victory.”

Silence hangs in the narrow stone chamber where the tribunal’s being held. Genesis’s green flag hangs as a banner on the high wall behind the dais where Kaminski, Baz, and a blank-faced official sit. That person must be the judge for this trial she didn’t know she had to face. Noemi stands before them, at attention, unsure how this all will end.

“I petition the court on Lieutenant Vidal’s behalf,” Captain Baz continues, back in official mode. “A record of the events shows that she conducted her mission with due diligence, despite considerable difficulty and danger to herself and a comrade—”

“A comrade?” Kaminski’s veins throb visibly. Noemi wonders whether his head could explode from fury, and if so, whether it would be more satisfying than gross. “Are you speaking of a mech, Captain?”

The steel in Baz’s glare could pierce granite. “If you’d like to give back all the medicines that mech arrived with, then you can sneer at him, Kaminski. But if you’ve benefited from anything this mech has done, it might behoove you to start thinking of him as Abel. Wasn’t your husband one of the first to get treated in the hospital?” Kaminski’s mouth opens and closes like a fish stranded out of water, and Baz gives him a thin smile meant to muzzle him before turning back to the judge. “Looking at the totality of the circumstances, Lieutenant Vidal’s conduct must be considered not only appropriate, but also heroic. I submit to you that the most just disposition of her case would be to dismiss the charges immediately.”

The blank-faced judge speaks: “Vidal overrode a surrender issued by the governing body of this world. She did so without permission, an act of grave disobedience. This cannot go without punishment.”

Captain Baz obviously expected this. “Then I suggest we simply allow her to resign her commission immediately. She will no longer, and never again, be a part of the Genesis armed forces. If I understand Vidal as well as I think I do, that’s punishment enough. And this way, she’s free.”

No longer, and never again, will Noemi be the only thing she’s ever been.

The first time she flew her starfighter into space—the first time she broke atmosphere and looked out at the stars as her destination—she felt prouder than she ever had before in her life. Maybe prouder than she ever will again. She closes her eyes tightly, willing herself not to tear up. Baz wouldn’t suggest this if she didn’t think another, worse punishment were possible. This is as much mercy as Noemi can expect, and she’s smart enough not to throw it away.

But oh, it burns.

When she can open her eyes again to look at the judge, she knows her fate is sealed.

Afterward, in Baz’s office, as Noemi completes the necessary documentation, she says, “Thank you for defending me, Captain.”

Baz is leaning back in her chair like it’s the closest thing she has to a bed; exhaustion casts shadows beneath her eyes. “You’re a good soldier, Noemi. The thing is—you’re always fighting your own battles. Not necessarily ours.”

“I only ever wanted to protect Genesis.” Does she get to want something else now? Now that she’s free to determine her own fate, what will she choose?

What are you fighting, Noemi Vidal? And what are you fighting for?

“You did the right thing, and I’m not the only one who knows it.” Baz sighs as she sees the dataread screen light up as the last forms are processed. Noemi’s been cut free for good. “Believe me, I’m glad we’re on the same side. May Allah help anyone who gets in your way. What will you do now?”

For the first time in Noemi’s life, she has choices—dozens of them. It ought to feel like liberation. Instead it’s terrifying.

“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “I have no idea.”

The freedom to choose is the freedom to fail.