Walter glanced back, just for a moment, then returned his attention to the open control panel by his side. He had a colorful tangle of wires out, the door’s controls dangling from the wall. Past him, Molly could see movement—one of the Bern guards emerging from a room aft of the cargo bay. As soon as the guard saw Walter, he called out, his lips moving but his alarm muffled by the cockpit door.

“Get inside!” Molly yelled to Walter.

She cradled the Wadi in the crook of her elbows and slapped the glass with both hands, the metal rope between them restricting her movement. “Walter!”

He didn’t turn. She could see the back of his head glowing as he fumbled through the wiring, looking for a particular one. He finally yanked one free, bit through it, then clamped his teeth down over the insulation and drew the wire out slowly, leaving a coppery bit exposed.

“Walter! Get inside!” Molly banged her wrist restraints against the glass, wondering if she could somehow use them to break through.

Walter turned at the sound of that. He had just cleaned another wire with his teeth. Two Bern guards were now running for him across the cargo bay.

Walter shook his head. His lips were curled down, tears streaking across his cheeks. He mouthed something to Molly, then brought the two wires up.

I’m ssorry.

He mouthed the words again as he pressed the coppery bits together, twisting them tight.

In an instant, the cargo bay filled with a white haze of condensed air. Wisps of it stirred, like speeding clouds racing for some unseen horizon.

The Bern guard further away from the cockpit turned to his side, his eyes wide and white in horror. He slipped and fell, then was pulled after the swirling, escaping air—sliding out of view.

The other guard dove across the last meters of the cargo bay and crashed into Walter. His face was twisted up in fury and fear. He pawed at Walter’s hands, trying to wrestle the wires away from him, but then the sucking of what must’ve been an open cargo bay and the vacuum of space beyond tugged at his feet, lifting him and Walter into the air.

Walter held the edge of the opened control panel, his fingers wrapped around the square hole in the hull. He dangled there, stretched out sideways, the Bern guard hanging from his feet.

Molly’s nose touched the glass in front of her, the Wadi pinned to her chest. She cupped her hands on either side of her face and peered through the porthole. Walter’s eyes locked on to hers. She watched, horrified, as the vacuum of space tore the tears from his cheeks, sending them like twinkling bullets back through the bay.

The Bern guard lost his grip on Walter and went tumbling out of sight, bouncing off a bulkhead as he went. Walter went to mouth one last thing, but then the shine on him faded away, dulling into some state of calm. A wan smile broke across the Palan’s face. His eyes twinkled as if some beautiful thing had appeared in his vision, and then he let go.

His arms waved in the air once.

His eyes locked on Molly’s.

And then Walter was gone forever.

49 · Earth

As Lieutenant Robinson approached the offices of the GU President, the old Bern agent couldn’t believe his good fortune. The invasion of the Milky Way Galaxy had played out in a strange mixture of stops and starts for him, almost like a perfect microcosm of his entire career. For two decades, he had toiled as a member of the Human Navy, trying his damnedest to push the war through the pesky Drenard front in order to secure the rift from their side. At the very least, he had meant his efforts to weaken their defenses while more Bern agents slipped through the rift, dodging the blockade. And just when he was starting to see some successes along those lines, the High Command got involved in some prophecy nonsense.

Robinson was one of the many older agents who frowned on Byrne’s exploits, the crazy simulacrum obviously having gotten a wire crossed during his construction. But then, reversing a reversal, the daft bot had come through. A new rift had been opened, and the Bern fleet had begun pouring into the pesky galaxy in a manner unheard of, undreamt of, when considering the older, Drenardian rift.

That high elation had been followed by the awesome destruction of his Zebra fleet, which had gone well enough, if not ending up the absolute success Robinson had hoped.

That brought a high, which was followed by another low as Saunders survived the attack, a failure that would reflect poorly on Robinson in future reports. Then the lows became even lower as Robinson was forced to watch a desperate herd of Humans huddle together in that wooded clearing, plotting audacious miracles, aligning themselves with even more grotesque aliens.

But lows could be highs in disguise, he had learned. The arrival of the Drenardian girl had seemed to spell trouble, bringing the threat of peace between their race and the Humans, but just when things seemed to be dipping, they soared again. Here he was, walking alongside that cursed piece of paper, that peace treaty, and escorting his fat Admiral through the antechamber of the GU president himself. He was strolling with them on the eve of a successful invasion of their galaxy, and all mere moments away from their personal destruction.

What better way, Robinson thought to himself, to sow discord through this mutant empire than by lopping off its head right as the fight begins? What better way to usher the rest of the body toward its violent demise?

Robinson watched Saunders go through the security gauntlet first, once again waving his pass and vouching for the rest. That gesture was coming for the third time, and the nicety was pissing off Robinson. He wanted to be scanned. He wanted his credentials registered. He wanted his people and higher-ups to know he had been there, that it was he who did this. Let Byrne, that blasted agent, take credit for opening some trifling door, he would be the agent to go down in Bern lore, passed from one universe to the next, remembered forever as the man who began the war, the one who assassinated the President of a race grown notorious for their insolence, for their inability to just go away.

Saunders waved Sharee through the scanner next, her flanking gender somehow more important to protocol than Robinson’s rank.

Robinson smiled. Soon, it wouldn’t matter. Nothing on the entire residential wing of that building would survive the blast he was about to unleash. Not that piece of paper, that treaty promising peace. It would burn no less righteously than all else.

The Secretary of Galaxy waved him through the security screen next, and Robinson stepped forward between the scanning walls, smiling at the officials on the other side of the viewing ports. The barred gates ahead of him remained closed as he stood still, letting their futile scanners have their fun. His augmented innards were designed to pass the most detailed of scans. Security agents would see cybernetic lungs, rather than bombs and chemical agents mixing together.

“Credentials, please,” a voice said through the security corridor’s speakers.

Robinson smiled. Finally, he thought.

He reached for his pass, using the movement to hide the complex motions necessary to arm himself. His fingers became a blur, twitching in just the right pattern and at just the precise timing to activate the once-inert gels, now hardened into furious potential. His hand came away from his damp, mud-speckled flightsuit bearing his badge, his body now little more than a potent bomb.

Robinson held the badge up in front of the viewing port, turned to the side, and smiled at the Secretary of Galaxy, who nodded back.

“Pass it in front of the scanner, please.”

“Gladly,” Robinson said. He looked the other way toward Saunders, that fat fool, only to see Saunders flashing a smile. The Admiral was grinning like something delicious had just passed through his flabby gullet. Joy on that man’s face brought a frown to Robinson’s. He could see the GU President beyond the Admiral and Sharee, coming out of his suite with his arm extended. Robinson thought about doing it right then, scanning his pass and blowing the serpent’s head clear off, taking that nest of vipers with him—

But then the scanner beeped as his badge was registered. And it beeped again, the beep echoing louder. And louder. The initial acknowledgment seemed to morph into an alarm.

Robinson froze, but every other mechanical thing around him whirred into action. Ports slammed shut. Blast walls thundered down from the ceiling. The acoustics of his surrounding space altered as the dull press of thick steel shrouded him on all sides, swallowing even the now-distant sirens.

Looking down, Robinson saw the scanner’s laser array hashed across his credentials, reading the black squiggles of information. He looked at his badge, the apparent trigger for the sudden lock-down.

He saw his face. His name.

But not his ID number.

Not, he could even tell at a glance, his barcode.

Something in Robinson’s internal database, his perfect memory of Navy secrets, signaled a match. Relays sent that information from one module of his computer-like being to another. It registered in his consciousness, accompanied by red blips and the alarm of his Navy persona. It was the warning flashes of a C-15 Object of Interest.

According to his badge, Robinson was the most wanted man in the galaxy. But how could that—?

No, he realized, as the rest of the file came just nanoseconds later: He was the most wanted female in the galaxy.

The name belonging to the barcode flashed through his mind, remaining there as his fury and confusion tripped the hair-triggered bomb he’d just concocted. Robinson looked up, searching for Saunders and that infernal smile on his flabby face. But everything around him was gone, sealed off by thick blast walls that had long waited for just such a contingency. The barriers left Robinson alone with that name, the one that went with the barcode. It existed for a brief eternity, a fleeting thought amid a contained cloud of explosive and expanding debris, much like a star in the center of a fiery nebula:

Molly Fyde.

50 · Reunions

Byrne’s sleek command ship touched down on Lok, its cargo door already hanging open. With a matching atmosphere outside, Molly was finally able to open the cockpit door manually, the safety overrides having become disengaged. With her wrists still bound and her lifeless Wadi nestled in the crook of her arms, she stumbled out of the death-filled cockpit, past the tangle of wires hanging from the bulkhead, through the cargo bay, and out into the bright day and dry grasses. She had landed a stone’s throw from the downed ship from hyperspace, but only a handful of faces turned her way—everyone was too busy or in too much shock to care about her arrival.

“Cole?” Molly stumbled toward the horrific scene.

The large Bern ship lay in a bent heap. Survivors staggered around it, walking among and carrying the bodies of those less fortunate. Still mounds were laid out in a neat line across the trampled prairie. Some were being tended to; a hand with life still in it clutched to someone’s shirt. Scant covering hid another’s face, knelt over by someone sobbing. Molly passed through the outer edge of the dead and wounded, so many alien races present, as she looked for recognizable features, dreading finding them in case those she loved were amongst the still.

“Cole?”

A girl with hair like fire caught Molly’s attention, her bright green eyes tracking her. Molly didn’t see Cole at first, not until the girl grabbed someone’s arm, directing a man’s attention—

Cole.

Molly ran to him. She clutched her Wadi and weaved her way through the crowd. Cole moved to stand, winced as if in pain, then sank back down. Molly threw herself into his arms.

“Cole!”

He didn’t respond.

His arms went limply across her back and felt heavy with fatigue. Molly kissed his shoulder, his neck, his skin scented like smoke and grease. She sat back, placed the Wadi on the grass like so many other dead, and went to throw her manacled hands over his neck.

Cole grabbed her wrists and stopped her. He still hadn’t smiled or said a word. He shook his head, and Molly noticed the tear-tracks cutting through the soot on his cheeks.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

She wanted to ask what he could mean, then Cole’s gaze drifted to the girl with the fiery hair. Molly turned to her. She noticed for the first time that the girl cradled a man’s head in her lap.

A cold vacuum filled Molly’s lungs.

She tried to breathe, to call out, but could do neither.

Her father was lying in the bent grass, his head turned to the side. Molly could see his lips, barely parted, amid the tangle of his beard. A beard much grayer than she remembered.

“Dad?”

Molly placed her bound hands on Cole’s shoulder and shuffled closer on her knees. Her vision blurred as she groped for her father’s hand. A distant part of her registered the wide stain of blood seeping through his white flightsuit.

“Dad?”

She looked to Cole, and then the girl. This couldn’t be happening. She dropped her father’s limp hand and felt his neck. There was nothing there, but his body was still warm. Molly arranged herself beside him. She placed her palms on top of his chest.

“Molly—”

Cole started to say something, to pull her back, but seemed unable.

Molly performed a series of thrusts.

The girl cradling her father’s head held out a hand. “We’ve tried—”

“So try again!” Molly yelled. She bent forward and blew into her father’s mouth, his lips not cold and lifeless yet. It was those around her that seemed frozen, the dead and the alive alike. They all grounded to a halt as Molly began another round of thrusts.

She pushed down and counted, looking at her father’s face as she did so, which rocked eerily with her compressions. He looked like he was merely asleep. He looked so much like Molly remembered him. She wanted him to wake up, to say something, to make sense of the hurricane her life had become. Molly moved to give him more air, but the other girl stopped her. She slid out from under his head, rested it gingerly on the grass, then bent to do the breaths herself.