Bay navigated through the battle, dodging plasma blasts from enemy strikers, bringing them close to the Jerusalem. Emet's beloved ship was badly damaged, covered with burnt boarding vessels like leeches. She was barely staying afloat.
Emet leaped out from the airlock, back into the Jerusalem's bloody hold, and ran onto the bridge. As Emet took his seat at the helm, he saw the Brooklyn swerve outside, then fly down toward the marshy planet. Toward Leona.
That planet was tugging on the Jerusalem too. Emet tugged the yoke, increased thrust to the engines, and pulled the damaged warship away from the gravity well.
He surveyed the battle. His heart sank.
We're losing, Emet thought. We've lost already.
All the might of the Concord assault had done little to push back the enemy. The strikers still swarmed around the planet and wormhole. The husks of many strikers floated, burnt and shattered, but thousands still flew, both mighty warships and storming starfighters. Every moment, light flared as another Concord warship exploded.
Barely any Inheritor ships still flew.
Emet only saw seven other human warships and a handful of Firebirds. That was all that remained of the Heirs of Earth. Of his life's work.
"Inheritor starships, rally around the Jerusalem!" he said, transmitting his voice to the fleet. "This is your admiral, Emet Ben-Ari. Rally around me!"
Scarred and dented, his surviving starships sputtered toward the Jerusalem. They banded together, facing the storm. Soon Brooklyn was flying back up and rejoined the fleet, Leona and Coral safely aboard.
As Emet stared at the battle, space seemed to crack open.
A new starship emerged from warped space.
Emet inhaled sharply. Through his comm, he heard the other commanders gasp.
This new starship dwarfed even the mightiest warships in the battle. It was a dark triangle the size of a city, trimmed with gold. Glyphs of fire blazed across it, spelling its name.
The Imperator.
"The Hierarchy's imperial dreadnought," Emet whispered. "Emperor Sin Kra came here himself to oversee his victory."
A hush fell across the battle. Starships from both sides held their fire and turned to face the Imperator. By the mighty imperial ship, they seemed like toys. The Imperator loomed above them, blocking the starlight, casting a shadow over the devastation.
Emet's control panel flashed.
A communication request.
The signal was a direct beam between the imperial dreadnought and the ISS Jerusalem.
The Imperator was contacting Emet—and Emet alone.
He accepted the call.
The Jerusalem's monitor displayed an image of the Imperator's bridge. A scorpion stood there. A towering Skra-Shen, three times the size of the smaller aliens who knelt around him. A scorpion with a crimson shell. A crown of human bones topped the beast's head.
Emet recognized him.
Here stood Sin Kra, emperor of the Skra-Shen and all the Hierarchy.
The creature who murdered my wife, Emet thought.
The massive scorpion stared into Emet's eyes, mouth shut, face blank. Emet stared back.
The emperor said nothing. His eyes narrowed the slightest. Emet refused to look away.
The two leaders—lord of scorpions and shepherd of humans—stared at each other across the battle.
The call ended.
The vision vanished.
With flashes of searing red light, the scorpion fleet opened fire, charging back into battle.
Emet pulled the Jerusalem aside, dodging plasma blasts. He took cover behind the husk of an Aelonian warship, only for the enemy to tear the derelict apart. Across space, the Concord fleet was crumbling. The Imperator's firepower was terrifying. It blasted forth fusion bombs like small suns. Each blast was enough to destroy an entire warship. The Concord shattered before the emperor's might.
"All Concord vessels, fall back!" came a transmission from Admiral Melitar, commander of the Concord armada. "Back into the wormhole! Fall back, all ships—fall back!"
Emet spoke into his comm. "All Inheritor ships, back into the wormhole!"
The retreat began.
The wormhole could only let in one ship at a time. Hundreds gathered around the opening, desperate to flee. With every heartbeat, the scorpion ships took out another Concord vessel. Some warships still tried to fight, to attack the emperor, but the Imperator's mighty cannons shattered them. Nuclear blasts bloomed across space, bathing the fleet with radiation. The emperor was concentrating his firepower on the wormhole, tearing through the Concord ships trying to escape.
Emet gritted his teeth.
We ain't escaping through no damn wormhole tonight.
"Inheritors, away from the wormhole!" Emet cried. "Use your warp drives! After me!"
One by one, the last Inheritor starships activated their warp drives. The Cagayan de Oro. The Bridgetown. The Jaipur. All the others who had survived. They bent spacetime even so close together, denting their hulls, some cracking open. With flashes of light, they blasted into the distance, moving at millions of kilometers per second. It was slower than a wormhole, but it would get them to safety.
Finally only the Brooklyn and Jerusalem remained behind. Aboard the shuttle—Bay, Leona, Rowan, and Coral. Aboard the Jerusalem—Emet alone.
So many lost, Emet thought. Duncan is gone. So many heroes fallen.
He looked at the battle, at the hundreds of starships retreating madly, many still falling to the enemy fire. An Aelonian frigate crumbled before his eyes and blazed down toward the marshy planet. The Hierarchy was completing its conquest of the system, its first foothold in Concord space.
A new Galactic War began, Emet thought. And we lost our first battle.
"Dad?" Bay spoke through the comm.
"Let's go," Emet said.
The Brooklyn and Jerusalem activated their azoth drives. They blasted away from the battle.
The stars streamed at their sides. They flew deeper into the Concord, leaving fallen heroes behind.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
For a long time, the Heirs of Earth flew, beaten, bruised, nearly broken.
The remnants of their fleet limped across the galaxy, leaving behind the fire, the devastation of their hope.
Rowan sat inside the Brooklyn, wrapped in a thermal blanket. According to Fillister, she had spent only nineteen seconds in the vacuum of space before Bay had rescued her. Strange. It had felt much longer. Another second or two, and it would have killed her. Her eyes were still bloodshot, her face bruised, her skin raw. Medics had injected her with life-saving fluids, treated her for ebullism and hypoxia, and prevented the worst of the space sickness. Even so, Rowan felt like she had been turned inside out, run through a blender, dunked into a frozen ocean, burned in an oven, and finally run over by a steamroller.
And it felt amazing.
She was alive.
She tightened her blanket around her, then gazed through Brooklyn's porthole at the remains of humanity's fleet.