Aurora's End (The Aurora Cycle #3)(111)

Scar and I follow his gaze to the holo, drinking in the sight. Battle Leader de Stoy stayed behind aboard Aurora Station to oversee the assault. But Adams is sending us a feed direct from the bridge of his flagship, the Relentless. He said we’d earned ourselves front-row seats to history.

And sure enough, history is playing out before our eyes.

After almost two weeks of Folding, the assembled ships of the coalition fleet have finally reached the Octavia gate and are now poised to commence their attack, wiping out the first seed world of the Ra’haam.

They gather like spears in the Fold’s black and white, silhouetted against the gate. Like all the systems where the Ra’haam hid its nurseries, the Octavia gate is a naturally occurring weak spot in the fabric between dimensions. Instead of the hexagonal gates we Terrans use, or the teardrop portals of the Syldrathi, this one looks like a shimmering rip right across the face of the Fold. It’s tens of thousands of kilometers across, edges rippling with bursts of black quantum lightning. Over its horizon, the view sheers and shifts like heat haze, and beyond, I can see a faint glimpse of the Octavia star, burning bloodred in the rainbow hues of realspace.

Last time we saw this, it was just the seven of us. Squad 312. We all know what we lost on the planet. What was taken from us. For a moment, the anger and hurt are so bad it’s all I can do to breathe.

“Strange to celebrate the death of the Ra’haam?” Scarlett scoffs, leaning back and taking a big bite of quad-choc. “Are you kidding? Should’ve brought some damn beers.”

The crackhisssss of a pressured seal echoes in the room, and I hand Scarlett an ice-cold bottle of Ishtarrian ale.

“Oooooh, you are a gooooood man, Tyler Jones.”

“Thought … you didn’t drink,” Fin whispers.

“I’m making an exception,” I reply, taking a slow mouthful. “Want one?”

Fin shakes his head, looking back at the screens. I can feel his trepidation, his fear, and a part of me shares it, honestly. If the Eshvaren went to all that trouble to get us the Weapon, to plot their assault on their ancient enemy over the course of millennia, it seems a touch overconfident to expect we can just brute-force our way through this.

But thinking about it rationally, for all their power, the Eshvaren lived a million years ago. We don’t know if there were any other inhabited planets during their time—maybe they were all alone. They probably had no concept of the firepower a coalition of a few hundred star-spanning species could generate if they got motivated enough. This fleet, this force … it’s like nothing the galaxy has ever seen.

And besides, it’s our only hope.

Adams and his fellow commanders aren’t fools either, and they aren’t charging in blind—they’ve already launched a wave of recon probes through the gate to scope the system. From the reports coming in, Octavia III looks almost exactly as it did when the seven of us were last there—a run-of-the-mill M-class rock. Seventy-four percent ocean, four major continents. Dull as a Saturday night in my dorm room—unless you’re into chess, I guess.

But I know those bluegreen land masses and stretches of bluegreen ocean aren’t really earth or water anymore. They’re the skin of the Ra’haam. Beautiful fronds and rolling vines and curling leaves, basking in the heat of the planet’s core. It’s a mask, hiding the face of the monster growing beneath.

But from all the data, all the readings …

“It’s still asleep,” Scar murmurs.

“Looks like,” I nod.

“You really think this is gonna work?” she asks.

I clench my jaw, watching as the order is given and the fleet begins flooding through the gate. I try not to think about all we need but don’t have, all we gave up to get this far. Cat and Zila and Kal and Auri.

“It has to,” I breathe.

The approach is textbook perfect, the armada descending out of the gate like the hand of the Maker. Wave after wave of Rigellian endsingers and Chellerian scythes and Betraskan saht-ka, cutting through the dark like arrows skimming the skies of some ancient battlefield, the crows already singing for the slaughter.

Behind them come the capital ships—the massive silhouettes of orbital bombardment platforms from Ishtarr, Aalani warstars, gremp battlehulks, Nu-laat warp-throwers, Aurora Legion carriers, surrounded by endless flights of Longbow escorts. I realize I’m breathing faster just at the sight of it all, the rush of it crawling in goose bumps on my skin. A part of me wishes so desperately I was there to land this punch, I can taste it.

Instead, I’m stuck in a hospital room halfway across the galaxy.

Helpless except to watch.

“This is for all of us, Ty,” Scar says, meeting my eyes.

“Yeah.” I nod, swallowing hard. “This is for Cat.”

The order comes across comms. The bombardment begins. Ten thousand ships, ten thousand shots, ten thousand fists holding aloft our light in the dark.

As the first bombs fall, the atmosphere of Octavia begins to burn: fusion flashes burning white, orbital barrages splitting the clouds, mass-drivers shaking the foundations of the earth. It seems small at first. The planet is so big, the scope of it so immense. But even an elephant can be killed by enough ants. And most ants aren’t armed with nuclear ordnance.

The blue green burns black. The crystal-clear skies of Octavia III are growing dark, billions of tons of earth and dust thrown into the atmo as the surface is engulfed in flames and the planet shakes to its bones. The barrage is relentless, endless, the might of the combined races of the galaxy bent to a single purpose—to slay this dragon in its lair, to drown this beast while it sleeps.