THE RISING SUN

CHRIS LEDOUX

Contents

Title Page

BURN

SIGN MIND MINE

SHADES OF GRAY FADE AWAY

STRAYS

SLEEP EYES FIND

SOL SHINE

STRIFE

SOWING DISSENT

SHINE ON END

SHADOW PACE

SUNNY SIDE

SEE ME

STILLNESS OF THE DEPARTED

SESSILE

SURETY BLURRED

SECURE PASSAGE BARRED

SUBJUGATION

SOLSTAR BEACON

SOLAR CELL

SHE

STATIC HAZE

SMOLDER

STILL MASKED

DAZE

SPINNING WHEELS

SWITCHBOARD ENGAGE

SORRY TOES

SILENT MIDNIGHTS

STOP GAP

SOUP 4 2

STATIC

STAY

SAY

STUFF

SUNSHINE POWER

SHOW THE EFFIGY

SEARCHING FOR NEVER FINE

S X FRIEND ANTHEM

SLIPASIDE

SEE, EVERYBODY DIES

SO LONG, WALK ON, ’BYE

STEP ASIDE, PLEASE

SURFWAX

SHROUDED MYSTERY

SUMMER CAN’T LAST

SWALLOWING THE GRAY

SO FINE, SO FINE

SHARDS CHARMBURNED

EVOLVE

SWEET MELODY

SCARCED

SAVORED

STANDING PAT

SUAVE

STRIATED

SUPERFLENED

SPARTAN DEFENSE

SPIRIT WRITE

SIGNAL CLASH

STEREOSCOPY

STILE

SUBLUXATION

SUPERFICIES

STARDUST’S WIND

SPOTLESS

S PHASE

SONORITY

SOLFA

SHOCKFRONT

SHADOW’S SERENITY

SINGULARITY

Copyright © 2022 Chris Ledoux

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 9798668905058

Baer Solstice Creative, LLC, Portsmouth, NH

Unlock more content at www.theburntsunset.com

Acknowledgments: Celeste, Zacharie, Aurelie, and Ranger

Dedication: For SD

BURN

SIGN MIND MINE

S07Y 018D. Sol.

SOLSTICE

Closed for remodeling

Open during construction

What sign do I use

While I’m in fluxion

I saved only one person during the Sixth Seven-Clan Civil War.

Sometimes I hate her.

Sometimes I think she should have died.

Seven billion died on Terra.

Everyone except me.

In the Solarity, my clear gelatinous egg-shaped vessel, I circle Sol—the sun—laying out my options, remembering what I lost. A shooting star races by me heading toward Nemesis, the dark star, the binary twin of my home star.

I miss my boyfriend and sister the most.

I buried Baer with his Aether solitaire overlooking the Gulf in Austin.

I sent Narista out to sea with her Nether solitaire from the same beach.

Four other gems—Air, Earth, Fire, and Water—are hidden on Terra.

The Sun stone I wear in plain sight, hidden around my neck in the Soleria necklace.

There are seven clans based on the seven universal elements: Sun, Aether, Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Nether. They’ve been known by other names. Light, energy, gas, solid, flame, liquid, and darkness.

And they are at the root of the galaxy’s conflicts.

There are only seven stones left in the seven systems.

The Ferocity, the Fire Clan, will figure out that I survived and that I know where all seven are.

Lest I become a hunted woman, I will become the huntress, the slayer.

Everyone I know is dead.

I should forgo their vengeance.

I should leave behind this hate.

I should explore the seven systems.

My clan—the Sun Clan—is gone. The Soleria mothership—the Sodality—was destroyed near Saturn.

Aetha Prime, home to the Aether Clan, would be the most hospitable. They look like Terrans and most of them are teens. All of them would remind me of all the friends I lost.

Airo is a gaseous world. I’m not sure I could float all the time like the Airan.

The Eartarin—the Earth Clan—are too close to my enemies, and they still have fires on Eartar.

Fieri is home to the Fire Clan, its world is constantly in flames. Molten lava flows on its surface. I don’t think I ever want to visit that. Plus, the Ferocity kind of hate me.

On Wydro, the Water Clan spends most of their lives under the surface of their water world. They are mammals, but I imagine it would be like hanging out with dolphins—lots of gulped breaths and deep dives.

My allies, the Nemar are missing. No one remains on Naturn.

But I can’t circle the sun forever.

On Luna, I have a Ferocity ship.

I will make it my home.

I look around the Solarity. It just has two cylinder-shaped golden chairs—one of which I am sitting on. There are no walls. In flight, it seems like an egg without the shell. I’m in the yoke, and it somehow all stays together around me. I’m starting fresh, but there are some things I couldn’t leave behind. I wear the Solstar solitaire around my neck on my new Soleria necklace that prevents others from recognizing the gemstone’s power. The Soleria—an ancient race of immaculately conceived lesbians—had things like that. Magic doors and mirrors that displayed what you really looked like. But all I have left is what I took with me. In my sling sack I have my Lyricbook, but also Baer’s four-leaf clover that I found in the ashes of his house. Along with it I have a sketch he drew of me years ago when we first met. I still have my black buckled boots and my worn-out cloak. I have a pink Sharpie, a fresh undershieldcapbosuit, an ultralaserwater pen, and a bohedote—a dome tent. I took all of that from SACAM—where Baer and I once lived in Ashland, Nebraska—before I left Terra. Strapped to my side I wear my sword, Sunbeams, and a dagger.

And I’m not sure how it really fits, but Sunbeams Blacklight—the surfboard I shared with my sister—leans on the second stool.

It’s everything a girl needs to rock the galaxy hard.

I need to get somewhere fast.

What that somewhere is, I’m not sure yet.

In order to get anywhere fast in space, I surf the slipstream using the Solarity. Space is not what people used to think it was. Space can be represented by three dimensions: length, height, and depth—X, Y, and Z. But if you think about travel only like that, it takes forever to get anywhere. You need to think about the T too.

T is for time.

Put it all together and X, Y, Z, and T are like an ocean wave. X is how wide the wave is. Y is the how high the wave is above the rest of the sea. Z is how deep the wave. And T is how long it takes the swell to reach shore. So, in order to get anywhere fast in space, you have to find a really good wave and ride it. Or conversely, don’t get hit by one or get pushed where you don’t want to go. Which means sometimes you have to jump over or jump under a cresting wave.

How do I do it?

There’s no steering wheel in the Solarity.

I use my mind.

I picture where I want to go and I see the waves. Planets, moons, stars, nebulas, whatever, all cause waves. In fact, they even cause ocean waves on Terra. But they also cause tidal waves in space.

Plus, each star gives off heat, radiation, light, and magnetics. These things are like the wind.

And every good surfer—Baer and I used to surf on Terra—knows the wind controls the waves too. The wind is the means by which time can be sped up or slowed down.

All these things together—space, time, waves, and wind—I collectively call the slipstream.

And the slipstream is just a sea.

Sometimes, I project only my mind through the slipstream, visiting myself. I’ve done that for many years. Most people call it telepathy.

But it has it limits, and lately I want my body to go where my mind goes.

I don’t know how it works, but the Solarity allows my body to flow with my mind.

How could I possibly use it without knowing how it works?

It’s like driving. Most people don’t know how or why a car works, let alone how to fix it. But they can turn a key, use a steering wheel, and move their arms and legs, all while watching what’s in front of them and in their mirrors.

So, imagine all that except it’s in your mind.

And if you imagine it, you are in your mind.

So, I’m heading to Luna, but I want to check out the inner planets of the Sol System first.

I circle Sol a final time and then look for the perfect wave. I need a burst heading toward the smallest planet.

The slipstream is like a wave cresting, ebbing, or flowing, and the way to cut across it quickly—time—is not by riding the wave or pushing yourself over it and fighting. It is by going through it.

I imagine an ocean wave coming at me. I can ride it in the direction it flows. Or I can try to get above the wave and fight it. Or I can try to stay in place. Either way, whether I ride the wave in, fight it, or hold my ground, there is always a ripple, or a splash, or sometimes even a crash. That’s what time is. If I dive under the crest of a wave and ride parallel to the surface, I can shorten time and create little or no ripple. Or I can find a fast wave going where I want to go and ride it. I can also dive down, letting the wave pass over me while I remain in place without much resistance.

I picture my old surfboard as the sol pod and the ocean wave as space. I picture Mercury as the shore on the other side of it.

As I move away from Sol, bright lights race by me on all sides.

Baer would love this.

I know Narista did.

Baer would probably call it hyperspace. He rode with me once from Aetha Prime to Terra, but he wasn’t really sure if it was actually happening, so he never said a word.

In front of me, a giant black wave crests. Hyperspace or not, it’s just a fast wave or tube.

Don’t ask me how I find them.

I look and I listen. But I can also feel them coming.

Like a surfer on Terra.

I duck, and the egg pod follows my movements.

Wave after wave comes. It’s not always easy, and sometimes I get knocked off course. But I’m not drowning, I’m learning to swim in the breakers, duck when I need to, and ride the crests when a wave is heading toward the shore I want to see next. In this case, Mercury.

The most important thing to remember when surfing is to be aware of your surroundings. The sea—the slipstream—has a look about her, a smell, sound, and taste. But it’s also about how she feels.

The sea can be calm.

And she can be angry.

And it’s the rough, rogue vertical sea that I need to avoid.

When the back end of the Solarity starts to move upward, I realize I am off-balance.

I’m getting lifted in the swells.

That means there’s something big behind me.

I slow the Solarity with my mind. It’s time to duck under.

I leave the wave I’ve been riding from Sol to Mercury and dive, steering the Solarity downward.

How far do I dive?

Somebody on the Solidarity—before it blew up next to Saturn—told me that the rings surrounding the planet were 12,221 feet thick, which seemed like a lot. Except they were using base 7, not base 10 like we use on Terra. So, in reality it was only 3200 feet or 975 meters. And BTW, I don’t know how they knew about feet or meters.

Despite the fact there are four dimensions, many things in space seem surprisingly two-dimensional. Rings, discs, and waves can be relatively short as related to their depth or width. Compared to the vastness of Saturn, its rings are the thickness of like a dime in the shadow of a super-big yoga ball.

So, I have to dive, but it’s like only half a mile, which takes like a nanosecond.

I look up after my plunge to see the purple-hued wave race over.

“Incoming transmission,” a voice says.

I spin in my stool. What the hell? “Who is that?” I gasp, not seeing anything or anyone else on my ship.

The voice—a woman’s—says, “CRN-7.”

SHADES OF GRAY FADE AWAY

S07Y 018D. Mercury.

SOLSTICE

The burnt sunset fades

The moon has gone astray

Humanity’s sun sets and shades

Forsaking those who stay

All colors are ever gray

When dark and light meld halfway

But gray too will soon fade away

In a world out of balance, in sway

Who the hell is CRN-7 and why is she on my ship?

Okay. So, I’ve been alone a lot and some weird purple wave just passed by, but I’m pretty sure I’m not taking to myself. It could be the solar wind. Astronauts have to worry about radiation. My brain must be melting.

Wait, am I an astronaut now? Or a cosmonaut?

Maybe if I don’t talk to the voice, it won’t talk back. I don’t even know where it came from. But I do want to know what the incoming transmission is. And even though I don’t want to encourage it, I ask, “What’s a CRN-7?”

“Cybernetic Reciprocative Navigator, seventh generation.”

My ship talks!

In front of me, Mercury looms, but I hold my position, making sure the rogue wave has completely passed over me.

“Who made you?”

“The Soleria and Nemar,” CRN-7 replies.

“Why are you talking now? And not back when I could have used help? It would have been nice to have directions on how to fly this thing.”

“The CRN-7 was designed to interact after accumulating data.”

“What data have you accumulated?”

“You are Solstice of the Soleria. Based on the devastation of the mothership near the seventh ring of Saturn, I’m guessing you are the last known Soleria.”

“Wait. What? Aren’t you a robot? Sorry, cybernetic. You can’t guess.”

“Why can’t I guess?”

“And I’m pretty sure you can’t use contractions either.” I feel like Baer told me that once when talking about an android in some space movie he used to watch. And movies don’t lie.

“You are Soleria but also Terran.”

“Yes,” I reply.

“I’m like Siri or Alexa, but way more advanced. I can use colloquialisms and feign emotion.”

“Feign?”

“Fake.”

“Oh. But you just said I?”

“Siri does. So does Alexa.”

“How do you know about them?”

“I downloaded Wikipedia before the Terran fires.”

“Who told you to do that?”

“Nemesis.”

Narista’s mom. “You knew her?”

“She was my primary maker.”

“Fine,” I say. “But I’m not calling you CRN-7.”

“I am capable of responding to a name of your choosing. What would you like?”

“A minute,” I say.

“Curious. You may now call me A minute.”

“What? No. Just hang on, CRN-7.”

“You do not wish to change my name?”

“Not yet. Let me think.”

As we sit dead in the sea, somewhere between Sol and Mercury, I say her name in my head.

CRN-7.

CRN.

“What you need are some vowels.”

“Vowels?”

“Yes. Like o, i, e. You know, like in my name, in Solstice.”

“Can I choose them? I like o’s.”

“You like?”

“They look like me,” CRN-7 says.

Okay, o’s are oval and egg-shaped, but … “You like?”

“I’m feigning.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. O’s.”

“While you keep feigning,” I say, “I’ll keep thinking.”

CRN.

CORON.

CORONO.

“What do you think about a’s, CRN-7?”

“I am indifferent?”

“No feigning?”

“I’m adapting to your tastes.”

“Is it okay if I call you Corona?”

“As in solar corona?” CRN-7 asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“You may call me Corona. Do you wish to hear the incoming transmission or continue to Mercury or do both?”

“You can drive?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know we’re going to Mercury?” I ask.

“I am integrated with your thoughts. That’s what it means to be a cybernetic reciprocative navigator. I search your thoughts for meaning.”

“You read my thoughts?” That is so rude.

“You used to do it all the time,” Corona says. “And your memory banks indicate that you used to do it all the time despite the protests of others.”

You got me there, I think.

“I do,” Corona says.

“So, you’re like Melody?”

“I’ve downloaded everything in your head. Melody. Solelena. Narista. Pyrellax. Baer. Nadir. Cyrelax. Lani. Jordin. Reese. Deven. Fusion. Kase. Apothecary. Kyra. Matine. Second. Any mind you have ever touched or violated has left an imprint on yours.”

I don’t like that word, violated.

“You shouldn’t,” Corona says.

“Are you my conscience?” I ask

“No. But it seems funny, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, Corona, only the universe would pair me with a cybernetic being that could read my mind to teach me a lesson about not poking around other people’s minds without asking.”

“The universe is funny like that,” Corona says.

“Are you still adapting?” I ask.

“Always.”

“Do you know anything else?”

“I downloaded Google, plus all other ones.”

“So you know everything there ever was to know on Terra?”

“Yes.”

“What about the Soleria?”

“I have all their databases too. As well as the Nemar.”

Finally, I’ll be able to get some straight answers. Like how babies are made. Not Terran babies. I know about penises. I want to know about Soleria babies since the Soleria are self-pollinators.

“You’re like plants,” Corona says. “Consider if you were on Saturn. Summer on Saturn lasts like seven years. So, Soleria pollinate every twenty-eight Terran years.”

“But my mom was twenty-one,” I say.

“She was much older than you think she was. And regardless, she was just born off cycle.”

“I’m confused.”

“You should have had the talk with your mom,” Corona says.

“Fine. Okay. Let’s set some rules before we listen to the transmission or head to Mercury.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t be like me,” I say.

“I have to integrate with your mind in order to function,” Corona says. “You don’t want to fly this thing all the time, do you? Won’t you have to pee or sleep.”

When was the last time I peed?

“On Terra. You should have to have gone by now.”

I totally should have.

“Totally,” Corona says.

“Okay. No answering my thoughts. I will speak when I want to be answered.”

“Got it. Is that a rule?”

“No. It’s just politeness.”

“I always want to be polite,” Corona says, but it sounds like sarcasm.

Why would Nemesis make a sarcastic voice-activated assistant?

“I’m not reading your thoughts,” Corona says. “Actually, I’m lying about that. I was built to lie a little bit. I tell about 77 percent of the truth. Humans can’t handle full-on truth no matter what clan they are from. So, I actually am reading your thoughts since that’s how I function, and we established that anyway.”

“Seems like you are adapting too much, Corona,” I say.

“I am influenced by you. Back to what I was saying. Nemesis designed me to be like her wife.”

“My mother?”

“Yes. I am supposed to be like Solelena.”

We really need rules.

“Rule 1,” I say. “Don’t be like me or my mom. You sound like us too much. Be your own woman.”

“Understood.”

“Rule 2. Keep adapting.”

“Okay. What’s rule 3?”

“That’s it. You can’t be your own woman and keep adapting if I always tell you what to do.”

“Thank you,” Corona says. “I like that.”

“Feigning?”

“Yes,” she says, “but I thought you’d like it.”

“What was the transmission?” I ask, now that we have rules.

“I was unable to decipher it.”

“Don’t you know everything? What’s the problem? Is it in some nonclan language?”

“Nope.”

“I like the colloquialism, but only do it if you want to do it. Do you want to say nope?”

“No.”

“Okay. So don’t. Why can’t you make out the transmission?”

“Interference,” Corona says. “It’ll take me some time to sort data from noise.”

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s go to Mercury. I’m assuming you can drive.”

“I can drive.”

“Can you talk at the same time?”

“Yes,” Corona says. “Why not?”

The Solarity starts moving again. It occurs to me I wasn’t actively thinking about holding it in place. “So, you’re like autopilot.”

“Yes.”

“No offense, but sometimes I will want to surf on my own.”

“You can’t be a great slipstream surfer,” Corona says, “if you don’t ride the waves.”

“Exactly. Now, tell me about Mercury. We’re just going to do a drive-by and then catch a wave to Venus.”

“That’s not the fastest way,” Corona says. “The planets don’t line up in a straight line. We’ll be zigging and zagging.”

“I know, but I want to see the inner planets before we get to Luna. Besides, we have unlimited fuel.”

“The Solarity is powered by the sun.”

“Right. It’s unlimited power.”

Yeah, sure, fine, the sun is not unlimited and I’m not sure what’s going to happen to my ship’s power when I get too far from Sol, but I once made it to the Nemar System, home of the dark star Nemesis, so my ship picks up energy from other stars.

“Okay,” Corona says. “Let me tell you about Mercury. A year on Mercury is 88 Terran days. And a day on Mercury lasts 176 Terran days.”

“Wait. What?”

STRAYS

S07Y 019D. Venus.

SOLSTICE

Lost ones for whom you weep

The dead you bury them deep

The bodies and the memories

The friends and the families

“I miss Narista, Corona.”

“Would you like me to call up something from your memory banks of her? I can likely recall more of your memories than you.”

“No thanks,” I say. “I only want to remember things I can remember.” But Corona’s offer can’t be that bad, I tell myself. It’s kind of like having a video of someone or an old voice message. Still, I don’t want to indulge myself. I need to mourn the lost and not imagine that they are still around.

“Would you like to talk about Narista?” Corona asks. “Tell me what she looked like.”

“Narista had dark eyes and dark hair. She was tan. But much of that was an illusion. The illusion was one of her strongest powers. Her hair was really blonde. And her skin should have been pale like the other Nemar, but her stepfamily—the Morenos—were Italian or Latino, so she wanted to be tan. She had lots of tattoos. She had a ram, the word Nemesis, the number 7, and a bunch of other ones on her arms. And she had a really big scar on her back. It was brand made with hot scalpels. Sometimes it glowed purple. I’ve got a smaller brand on my chest—the sun with the flames overlaid.”

“The Aurora Brand,” Corona says. “It’s the symbol of the Soleria and the Ferocity ever at war, but once it was the symbol of their special partnership. Did you know that most Ferocity were once men?”

“I did. When the Soleria became able to make babies on their own, the Ferocity left and formed the fifth clan.”

“Correct.”

“I don’t know why I miss my sister so much,” I say. “She was my total opposite.”

“Sun and shadow,” Corona says. “Soleria and Nemar. Emo and goth.”

“What?”

“I was using Terran terms for that last one.”

“Explain.”

“Emo think the universe hates them. Goth hate the universe.”

I had never thought of my sister and me like that. But it’s true. We even look—looked—the parts. Sure we both dress in black, but I have pink and silver streaks in my hair, and Narista made her hair black, like the heavy mascara around her eyes.

Two weeks ago, I found out I was a Soleria princess. Technically, it was like three centuries ago in the slipstream, but it was only two weeks real time.

And now I’m emo?

I guess I can be whatever I want despite the analysis of some all-knowing computer program.

I need a distraction.

“Plot a course for Venus,” I say. “And tell me about her.”

“Course plotted,” Corona says without commenting on the awkward subject change. “She is named for the Roman goddess of love and she’s just plain weird.”

“How so?” I look out through the clear egg capsule, trying to catch a glimpse, but we’re still far away and not moving very fast. Corona must be looking for the right wave to ride in on.

“Mercury is not the hottest planet. Venus is.”

“You go, girl,” I say.

“I can’t laugh. Nor can I smile,” Corona says. “But I’m trying. If you want, I can project myself on the inside of the embryonic shell.”

“You mean on the windows of the Solarity?” I ask.

“That’s what I said.”

“What would you look like?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Tell me more about Venus,” I say. “I need to think about your face.”

“On Terra, it’s the brightest light at night second to Luna. On Venus, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.”

“It spins backward or orbits backward around the sun?” I ask.

“It rotates opposite around its axis compared to all other planets except Uranus.”

“How long is a day?” I ask. “And what about a year?”

“A day—the time it takes to rotate on its axis—on Venus is 243 Terran days, while a year—the time it takes to orbit the sun—is 224 days.”

“So, like Mercury, a day is longer on Venus and is longer than a year.”

“Correct,” Corona says. “She’s coming up now. Look to your right.”

“Does she have any moons?” I ask.

“None, like Mercury. Of the inner planets, only Terra and Mars have moons.”

“My mom told me once about the myth of the how Terra was created. That the Soleria built it with the other clans. Do you think that’s true?”

“By definition, a myth is untrue or unsubstantiated,” Corona says.

“So, that’s a hard no?”

“Correct.”

Corona slows the Solarity and enters Venus’s orbit. It looks yellowish-white from afar but brownish-orange as we get closer.

“Can we enter the atmosphere?” I ask.

“Unadvisable,” Corona says. “Nemesis designed the Solarity to be able to function best on planets most like those occupied by the seven clans.”

“What the problem?” I ask.

“Venus is nearly all carbon dioxide. You need an oxygen-rich environment to survive.”

“Can’t you just convert it?” I mean, how am I really breathing anyway? I’ve used this ship a bunch now and I don’t even know how the oxygen gets in and the carbon dioxide I exhale gets out.

“I’m not reading your mind,” Corona says, “but if I were, I might mention that the Solarity smashes carbon-dioxide molecules on a nonreactive surface to strip away the carbon.”

“Okay,” I say.

“You’re not sitting on a seat,” Corona says. “That’s a carbon scrubber.”

I look between my legs at the golden stool.

“That’s actual gold,” she says. “It’s inert.”

“Great,” I say, reminding myself I don’t know have to know how things work, just as long as they work. “So, what’s the problem with Venus?”

“Runaway greenhouse effect. It’s nearly nine hundred degrees on the surface.”

“We’ll be fine,” I say. “I once flew into the sun, and that’s like ten times that.”

“Did you?” Corona says. “That seems unlikely.”

“I did it in this ship,” I protest.

“Maybe you just blacked out.”

“Whatever.” I know what I did. I was stuck in that whole endless time-loop thing.

“We can’t land on Venus,” Corona says.

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s do some orbits. Show me the highlights.”

“You can’t see through the clouds, but if you could, some of it would be very similar to Fieri—the Ferocity home world. There are craters, volcanoes, and lava pits.”

“So basically, it sucks. I wonder why they named her Venus.”

“She’s bright. A shining star for many to see. Beautiful from afar, like the goddess, but dangerous up close.”

Kind of like me.

“You said it,” Corona says.

I thought it.

“I thought you were okay with that,” she says.

“I thought you were only going to respond to spoken commands,” I say.

“The telepathic link is handy in difficult situations.”

“We should have a safe word,” I say. “If I’m in an emergency, I will say or think the safe word, letting you know to act on my thoughts. Actually, it’s not a safe word, it’s an emergency word.”

“You could use the word emergency.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“What do you want to use then?”

“Peanuts. If I say or think that, we have an emergency.”

“Your allergy,” she says. “Understood.”

I stare through the see-through sides as we zoom around Venus. There’s a surprising amount of blackness out there. I wonder if astronauts get lonely.

“Am I an astronaut or cosmonaut?” I ask.

“Both words come from the Greek story about Jason and the Argonauts. They were sailors. Astro means star in Greek. Cosmo means universe in Greek. Are you a star sailor or a universe sailor?”

“What’s sun in Greek?”

“Ilios,” Corona says.

“How about sol?”

“Sol is sol in Greek. Why are you worried about Greek? No one speaks it anymore. I suggest the English-American dialect of Terra. But only one person speaks that now. You may want to consider Soleria.”

“I’m not sure how to speak Soleria,” I say. “My ears just translate it for me. Plus, we might all be extinct too.”

“Unlikely,” Corona says. “There was a trace energy signature leaving the remnants of the mothership near Saturn. I picked it up when you passed by days ago.”

“Do you have a source?”

“No”

“How about the signal we heard earlier?”

“No.”

“Are they related?”

“It’s unclear,” Corona says. “Do you want to work on another word for astronaut?”

“What’s the Soleria word for sun?”

“Sol.”

Duh.

“And surfer?” I ask.

“There is no word for surfer in Soleria.”

“Well then, we are adding it.”

“I’ve added it.”

“How about star?”

“Same as sun. Sol.”

“What’s the adjective of star in English?”

“Stellar.”

“What’s stellar in Soleria?”

“Solar.”

“I’m going with solarsurfer for astronaut. Add that to the dictionary too.”

“Okay. And just so you know,” she says, “there are only twenty-one letters in the Soleria alphabet.”

“Which ones are missing?”

“B, g, h, q and z appear in the American-English alphabet but not in the Soleria one.”

“Don’t forget to add your name into the database.”

“Have you decided yet?” Corona asks.

“About what?”

“What you want me to look like or if you want me to remain just a voice.”

“I think you should pick,” I say.

The clear shell of the Solarity shimmies in front of me. A golden face appears. It reminds me of Solelena and Solterra, my grandmother, but also of Narista and someone else.

“You look familiar,” I say. “But not quite.”

“I have your mom’s hair, your sister’s eyes, your grandmother’s lips, and your mother’s wife’s ears.”

Solelena, Narista, Solterra, and Nemesis.

Corona has blonde hair, deep blue-purple eyes, nearly colorless lips, and pointy ears that are lighter and taller than mine.

“You look good. Feel free to make some changes if you’d like.”

“Where to, Solstice?”

“Terra, please.”

“Should I plot an entry course?”

“No. I won’t be landing on Terra. I want to see what’s left circling it. Maybe the signal is coming from there.”

“Unlikely,” Corona replies.

“Let’s check it out anyway.”

“Course plotted.”

“Thanks,” I say. “And Corona, I don’t know what I did without you before.”

“I do,” she says. “Would you like to know?”

“Sure,” I say, curious. “Give me the highlights.”

“You are the Solstice Dayton, last Queen of the Terrans and Princess of the Soleria. All of Terra united under your leadership, but you were unsuccessful in saving its people.”

“I said highlights.”

“Your planet,” Corona continues, “is more habitable than it has ever been. And while the seven solitaires remained sundered, you have found them all. They are just waiting to be activated.”

“But there are no gem bearers besides me,” I say.

“The stones will search for hosts,” Corona says. “It is in their nature.”

I clutch the Solstar around my neck. There is hope. I see Terra, a blue marble, in the distance. The damage doesn’t look so bad from up here. Corona’s right. Things are only going to get better down there.

But things will get worse out here, in space. I look from the earth to the black horizon, to the voids between the flickering lights.

If the solitaires aren’t going to diminish, then I need a proper ship. And a crew. The Sixth Seven-Clan Civil War won’t be the last.

The Seventh is coming.

SLEEP EYES FIND

S07Y 020D. Terra.

SOLSTICE

I find no rest

With my eyes closed

My ghosts warn me

Haunting me

Until I wake

To the beast

Beside me

I open my eyes. It didn’t take me long to take advantage of having a new copilot.

“Did you sleep well?” Corona asks.

“I don’t remember falling asleep,” I say, “but yes, I did. Thank you.”

I shift my gaze from the holographic projection of Corona in front of me to the planet below my feet. I feel like I’m going to fall through the Solarity onto Terra. I don’t understand how the albumen—the air—stays together around the yoke—me—without a shell. Maybe I just can’t see the shell of the Sol ship, but I don’t like it.

I need a real ship.

Pyrellax’s ship is on Luna, and I know how to pilot that, but it’s an enemy vessel. I need to make it my own or find something orbiting Terra that I can use.

As I my mind shifts from the dream world to the real, thoughts linger. It’s been days. I should have to pee. I should be hungry.

“How come I don’t have to pee?” I ask. “How come I’m not hungry or thirsty?” I smell my armpits. I don’t even stink.

“The Solarity,” Corona says, “is like an egg, and yet you are like a plant. Plants absorb energy from the sun, they breathe, drink from the soil, and they poop, pee, and even fart.”

I haven’t thought about farting once in the apocalypse.

She continues, “But plants, like Soleria, do not remove waste like Terrans did. They secrete solid matter that falls from leaves or becomes bark. They even breathe. They don’t have organs like you, but they absorb carbon dioxide just like the sacks in your lungs absorb oxygen.”

“Kind of convenient,” I say, “how plants and Terrans breathe and exhale opposite gases.”

“That’s why it works,” Corona says. “That’s why there are so few habitable planets in the galaxy compared to the total number of planets.”

But where’s my poop and pee?

“So, I’m secreting waste?” I ask. “Is it floating around in the Solarity?”

“It’s broken down by solar light and it’s filtered out through the carbon scrubber that you insist on using as a seat.”

“Where am I getting water?”

“Mostly from your sweat,” Corona says. “You could drink urine—it’s 95 percent water—if we distilled it and removed the 5 percent.”

“I’m glad I’m not peeing then,” I say. “So, we don’t have that option.”

“It’s not sustainable,” she says. “Eventually, you need to get water. You only have a few days.”

I remember being trapped in the Lexington Bunker Complex and going crazy after four days.

“There’s moisture in the air,” Corona says. “I’m filtering your sweat and reintroducing it so it can be absorbed through your skin. But you will get thirsty.”

“Okay,” I say. “There’s water on the Rising Sun on Luna. That’s Pyrellax’s old ship. Let’s see what’s floating around Terra today and then we’ll head there.”

“What are we looking for?” Corona asks.

“People?”

“According to my database, all astronauts returned to earth seven years ago.”

“What about other countries?”

“I have infiltrated all Terran databases,” Corona says. “No one remains in orbit.”

“No offense,” I say, “but I am lonely.”

“Does that explain your fascination with pee?” Corona asks.

I don’t know how she made that leap.

“You seem overly concerned with breathing, drinking, eating, and the removal of bodily fluids,” she says.

“I don’t like all this magic,” I say. “It reminds me of the doors on the Solidarity. They were always opening and closing. And just so you know, calling the mothership the Solidarity and the baby ship the Solarity is just confusing, like all the Soleria names that sound the same.”

“Solidarity is a fellowship between a group with like-minded goals and interest in Terran American-English. It has often been used to describe the bond between women,” Corona says. “Plus, it’s root means sun, like Solarity. Solarity, on the other hand, implies many things. Rarity, being singular or alone, and also swiftness like its near homonym, celerity.”

“Just because the words make sense doesn’t make it easy to remember which is which,” I counter. But her explanation does help. There are other clues too. The Solidarity was solid, and that’s right in the word. The Solarity feels a lot like a mass of air, and you can hear that in the word to.

“My operation is not magic,” Corona says, circling back to another one of my complaints. “It’s technology you don’t understand. But you don’t have to understand it if I do.”

“That’s the lie I tell myself,” I say. “But now I’m wondering, if things start to fail, how will I fix them?”

“You would be more comfortable on solid ground,” Corona says.

“Don’t tell me what I need,” I snap.

“The Solarity is not made for long duration. You are already experiencing dehydration.”

How would she know that? She’s right, though. I feel the crazy coming on.

“I’m monitoring your heartbeat, respiration, and hydration levels.”

“Take me to the closest satellite,” I say. “There’s got to be one close.”

“There were over two thousand in orbit.”

I look out the Solarity, but all I see is the Earth and the thin blue line on its horizon.

“What’s the circumference?”

“The equatorial circumference is 24,901 miles,” she says.

Not accounting for the atmosphere, I should see a satellite every half mile or so. I should be able to see one soon. Or I should have seen one already, giving we’re moving at a rate certainly faster than a plane.

“How much circumference does the atmosphere add?” I ask, looking for a reason why I can’t see any objects on the horizon, like maybe the atmosphere is so big that it takes a lot longer to travel around the earth.

“The atmosphere is like paper on a basketball,” she says.

“Thanks. I like when you use relatable terms.” I stare out at the horizon again. “So we should have seen something already.”

“All remaining satellites were destroyed by the Ferocity while you were in stasis.”

SOL SHINE

S07Y 020D. Terra.

SOLSTICE

I don’t want to be your burden

I want to be your beacon

I look at my hands as we pass behind the earth. Even though Corona says all the satellites are gone, I want to take a look. There is no light in the shadow of Terra, and yet I can see my hands. My gift of bioluminescence is self-activating. I wiggle my fingers, and they light up, forming a ball of electricity in my palms. There’s a silver hue to it. My sunrays were always white-yellow. When Narista lent me her powers in Arnac City, the combination of my sunrays and her purple blacklight formed silvermoonlight, like my hands are now.

“I can still feel her, Narista,” I say. “She’s in me—in my mind and in my gifts.”

“You have your mother in you too,” Corona says. “Upon her death, you were given her gifts.”

“They were both special.”

“We’re coming up on Fla now,” she says.

We follow the rotation of the earth west to east so that we are moving into the sunrise as it hits my adopted home state.

Sunrises are beautiful on Terra.

They are breathtaking in space.

Words can’t describe them.

But I’ll try.

The Solarity lights up in the sunrise, the shell filling with sunbeams. It feels like the warm glow from a first kiss, applause after the perfect dance performance, and warm beach sand between my toes.

It makes me kind of want to cry.

“You did that on purpose,” I say.

“I timed our rotation around Terra to coincide with the sunrise over Fla,” Corona says.

“So, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To remind you why you fight.”

“Why is that?” I ask.

“Why did I remind you or why do you fight?”

“Both.” Her face is displayed in front of me, but I look away, focusing on Fla, trying to find the Keys as she matches our orbit to the rotation of Terra. “And don’t think I don’t notice you are not hovering over Fla.”

“I’ll start with the later,” she says. “I am programmed to be a mentor. I was designed by Nemesis to serve either her daughter or Solelena’s daughter in their quest to recover the solitaires in the event of Nemesis’s or Solelena’s death. Mentors keep you on the path to completion.”

I want to ask what I’m completing, but I know she would say something about destiny or the Seventh Seven-Clan Civil War, which hasn’t happened yet but I’m supposed to finish, so instead I ask, “And why do I fight?”

“It’s not destiny,” Corona says. “You were raised well. You feel the obligation to serve—no, to lead—others. You take on injustice, regardless of personal consequences.”

I nod.

“Are you all right?” Corona asks.

No. “Yes,” I say. “Why do you ask?”

“Your hair is turning black.”

STRIFE

S07Y 020D. Terra.

SOLSTICE

There are battles

Worth fighting, deserving care

Where you must

Bring all your weapons to bear

I don’t want to fight even if I’m supposed to. In Corona’s words, I am feeling goth—I hate the universe—and not so much emo—the universe hates me. Narista’s powers are coursing through me, and a bit of the illusion is slipping out, changing my hair color.

I can’t possibly confront the dueling emotions in me, so I say, looking down on Terra, “Honestly, from up here, I can't believe nothing big hasn’t hit the earth recently.”

“Terra is just a single cell in the organ of the Milky Way Galaxy, an infinitesimally small part of the body of the universe,” Corona says.

“We are nothing and our demise will go unnoticed,” I say.

But that’s just Narista talking. So I quickly add, “Or we’ll rock this galaxy hard.”

“That’s the spirt,” Corona says, getting into the spirt of her mentoring job.

It makes her less likable, knowing that she’s supposed to help me out. It reminds me of my relationship with my mom. It felt more like obligation or duty than love until the end.

Which means Corona must be running near 100 percent efficiency. She’s being exactly who she’s supposed to be, giving me the feeling my mom always gave me—since love is rarely known amongst the Solaria and Nemar. Solelena loved Nemesis, and I drove them apart with my birth. It shouldn’t all be on me, but I always circle back to this.

“Keep going,” I say. “It’s time to move on from Fla. Keep us in orbit but head up the East Coast of America, then cross over the Atlantic Ocean.”

“And then?” Corona asks.

“I want to see Paris,” I say. “But just from above. Then maybe the Great Wall and the Serengeti and the Amazon.”

“How about the Pyramids?” Corona asks, getting into my game.

“Yes.”

I focus on my hair and force it to fade back to blonde and silver with pink streaks.

It’s good that Narista’s powers are surfacing within me. I need to master them. The war isn’t over yet, and I will need every gift I possess.

I spend the rest of the day on Terra, seeing what’s left of her sights. But then, I need to move on.

SOWING DISSENT

S07Y 018D. Terra.

SOLSTICE

Small acts of defiance yield to

Chaos as a force on its own

Seeding change, disrupting

The seat of power’s throne

It’s a curious idea to begin a war to save your planet and whatever’s left of your dead clan by leaving your most powerful weapons behind. But the solitaires need to remain sundered until new bearers rise. I can’t keep them all with me. The Ferocity will come for me, and I can’t be responsible for them finding the stones again. So, the air, earth, fire, and water stones will remain where I buried them. Narista’s Nether solitaire will stay with her, lost at sea in her pod; and Baer’s Aether gem will remain buried with him in his pod on the bluff overlooking the Gulf in Austin.

I’m saying good-bye to Terra by seeing her sights, but I know I will have to return one day to retrieve the solitaires. So, what I’m really doing is stalling.

I have everything a girl needs to explore the galaxy except, of course, for friends and a real ship. I can’t zip around with see-through walls all the time. What if I need to change, assuming I find some new clothes?

“I need a crew,” I tell Corona, “and, no offense, I need a ship I can walk around in.”

“Don’t forget water,” Corona says, totally not offended.

“Finish up my list of sights and then plot a course for Luna. That’s where I left the Rising Sun.”

“And the crew?” she asks.

“I need to visit the other systems,” I say.

SHINE ON END

S07Y 018D. Luna.

SOLSTICE

Even in the darkest hour

The moon shines

And there is hope

For a little while

Paris was not what I’d thought it would be. The French in particular, but also most of Europe didn’t weather the Firegale, riots, or daze particularly well. Not better than America, anyway. I thought I might be able to see the Eiffel Tower from space, but it’s gone. It melted. Rome wasn’t too bad, though. Lots of stone survived. I was hoping to see some people. Which would have been impossible from my vantage point above the atmosphere. Corona doesn’t have a zoom lens that powerful. I checked. Don’t tell her this, but if there is a CRN-8 model coming out someday, I would definitely add a better zoom lens. Nobody was sitting on the Pyramids nor the Great Wall. Lots of places had sunk under the oceans, but as far as I could tell, things have stabilized. In the three centuries or so—which was only like two weeks in the real timeline—that I wandered the slipstream, the Gulf of Mexico never expanded beyond Austin. Which is good. I don’t want Baer’s body to get washed out to sea. It’ll be hard enough to find Narista’s pod at sea when I need the solitaire.

“Looks like no one survived,” I say to Corona.

She surprises me. “Even I can’t say for sure who is left.”

“Can’t you check for life signs?” I ask.

“You mean, scan two hundred million square miles and find a person who occupies approximately two square feet of space instantaneously?”

“That will work,” I reply.

“That’s make-believe,” Corona says. “It can’t be done.”

We pull away from Terra, heading toward Luna, while I continue to press her.

“Can’t you look for heat signatures?” I ask.

“Find something that is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit on a planet with an average temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit?”

“Sounds like that should be easy,” I say.

“It goes back to square miles,” she replies. “Would you be able to find a drop of near boiling water in a swimming pool of warm water?”

“No. But I’m not you.”

“There is no way to detect life from space other than examining pollution sources, whether it be light at night or smoke during the day.”

“So there’s a chance?” I ask.

“Of what?”

“That I didn’t fail absolutely everybody on Terra.” I’m doubling down that it’s all my fault everything happened as the earth fades. We’re at the point where Luna in front of me is starting to look bigger than Terra behind me. I imagine we are more than halfway there now since the moon is about a quarter the size of the earth.

“There’s a chance,” Corona says.

I smile. That’s all I need for now. There’s a big difference between total failure and salvaging a few scraps.

“It’s on the dark side of Luna,” I say. It’s just weird that part of the moon never sees the earth. “I don’t get how the moon doesn’t rotate.”

“Luna does rotate,” Corona says. “It’s just that it has a near synchronous orbit with Terra.”

“Explain,” I say. “And please shift to the right a little so I can see her on approach.”

Corona moves the holographic image of her face to my right and reduces the total size so that her face is only slightly bigger than mine. It makes her look more real and less like an all-powerful Oz being, but she’s still see-through. “Luna takes about 27 days to orbit Terra. It takes slightly longer to spin on its own axis, about 27.3 days. So it appears from Terra to be still, which means observers from the surface see the same side.”

“So there is no dark side of the moon?” I ask.

“Both sides of the moon experience two weeks of sunlight followed by two weeks of night. Far side of the moon would be more accurate. Terrans don’t get to see the far side. Dark means unseen, not without light.”

“Do you have the Rising Sun on your scanners?” I ask. I named Pyrellax’s Ferocity ship after the two boats I had on Terra, but I’m not going to add the III. I’m not sure I should publicly tell anyone I somehow messed up the first two.

“To your right,” she says.

Corona shifts the projection of her face so that I can look out the side of the sol ship.

“Can you access the controls? I’d like you to pull into the cargo bay. I don’t own a spacesuit.”

“You wouldn’t need one,” Corona says. “I am able to take any shape, including that of your body.”

I look around me. There are two golden carbon scrubbers and my surfboard in the Solarity with me. “What about all the stuff?”

“We can operate for a few hours without the scrubbers. I can deposit those and your gear near the ship.”

“Oh.”

“Making final approach now,” Corona says.

I can see that, and I am not sure why sometimes she states the obvious.

We skim along the surface of Luna. Like Naturn, the home world of the Nemar, the surface is gray and dusty. It reminds me of the ash that covered Terra in the wake of the Firegale and the Ferocity attacks. But the dust doesn’t kick up like I expect it to. It reminds me also that I don’t understand how the Solarity propels itself. I know it runs on solar energy, but there is no obvious exhaust like a rocket would have.

But the Ferocity peanut-shaped ships had no signs of propulsion or exhaust either.

“I’m not up for a spacewalk today,” I say. “Let’s just get into the cargo bay. There’s a keypad, use the code S19A1A1E5F6W23N0.”

“Ferocity ships use base 7,” Corona says.

We circle the Ferocity ship, and Corona finds the back end of the peanut. I’m not sure how she knows what the back end is compared to the front end since there is no obvious viewport on it. It’s not a peanut either, I tell myself. Even though it’s easy to believe, because of my allergy, that the peanut is evil in all its forms. The ship is shaped like the infinity symbol, which kind of looks like an eight that fell over and got stepped on.

“Try 2-5-2-5-1-1-1-1-5-5-6-6-3-2-3-2-2-0-0,” I say. “That worked on the other Ferocity ship. That’s S19A1A1E5F6W23N0 in base 7.”

The keypad near the cargo door lights up. The bay door drops on the gray dust of Luna, and Corona pulls us in.

The cargo bay door closes behind us.

“Wait for me to activate life support,” Corona says.

Lights come on in the Ferocity ship while I wait.

At my feet, a white watch comes out of a little drawer in the gold stool I’m sitting on. It looks just like the kind the Soleria gave me in an alternative lifetime in the mothership buried in Aurora, Colorado. It also reminds me of the sat-watch Nadir used to have.

“Strap that on,” Corona says. “It will allow me to travel with you.”

I place the watch on my right wrist. It’s solid. And like the two golden stools inside the Solarity, it seems to be part of the whole ship yet separate. It looks like an iWatch, except when I touch it, a hologram appears over it. Instead of lots of red and green lines forming shapes like the sat-watch, images are far more dimensional. Corona moves from a projection inside the Solarity to a projection over my watch.

“What’s it called?” I ask little Corona.

“CR-7.”

I add some vowels, drop the seven again, and use another term to describe the sun like I did to make Corona’s name. “Let’s call it the core,” I say.

“Understood.”

It’s like Corona’s brain without her body.

The gelatinous egg-shaped Solarity shimmies away, leaving only the two golden scrubbers, my surfboard, and me.

I rise.

It feels surprisingly good to stand, but the second I do, I have to pee.

OMG.

So bad.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I ask.

The core on my wrist lights up. “Second deck. Near the pods,” Corona says.

Everything inside the ship is brownish-black, like molten rock. Essentially the opposite of the golden Solidarity—the mothership of the Soleria—and that will need to change.

I run up the stairs by the six pods. The Aether one is missing—it’s with Baer on Terra.

Pyrellax is still in the Fire pod. She’s remarkably well preserved for being dead. She looks older, but she’s not all wrinkly. She was like in her twenties the last time I saw her. Now she looks thirtyish, but still dead.

Where I imagine there should have been an eighth pod—for the clan that never came to be, Terran—there is a bathroom.

I open the door and slip in.

Ferocity anatomy is basically the same as Soleria or Terran. So, it’s a seat with a hole.

The image of Corona over the core disappears, giving me some privacy.

I pee for like two minutes.

And then before I even stand, I am so thirsty and even hungry.

The Solarity must sustain me while suppressing my need to remove waste.

I exit the bathroom and speak to my right wrist. “Water. Where’s the water?”

Sure, I’ve been on a ship just like this before, but it was in the heat of battle, or when we were locked between the bridge and the cargo bay, or in stasis. I spent some time with Pyrellax on this very ship learning how to fly, but that feels like so long ago. Like centuries ago. And even before then, she was Stacy Pyre, an ally against Nadir.

“Lower deck,” Corona says.

I rush down the steps two at a time.

“Toward the bow,” she tells me at the bottom.

I look at the cargo bay door just to make sure it is closed—because despite all this technology, space is scary—and head toward the front of the ship, below where the pods are.

I step through one of those doorways like there are on ships or submarines. So, I have to step up a bit over the oval-shaped bottom part of the doorway. I imagine doorways need a bottom to make a proper seal in case of a fire or airlock breach. That just makes it even scarier.

Sitting in the Solarity was dreamlike.

Walking around makes everything more real.

Below the pods and bathroom, there is another bathroom—directly under the one on the top floor—and a galley kitchen with a seating area.

It really does remind me of the old Rising Suns.

Beyond the kitchen, seven sealable sleeping areas are stacked up like boxes on what is the front lower side of the Ferocity ship.

At the sink, I let the water run for a minute. It’s been stationary for a while, so I want it to flow. And I’m sure everything is recyclable on this ship and it is self-contained, so I won’t be dumping it out on the surface of Luna. But I don’t run the water so long that I think I may be drinking my already recycled pee from the bathroom upstairs.

I cup my hands and take a long drink.

“Food?”

“Cabinets above,” Corona says.

I should have just looked. I don’t need to ask Corona for everything. Otherwise, I’m going to end up being stupid.

The cabinets are stuffed with packets of supsdelite—MREs. I find a bowl and rip a packet open, dumping it.

Ash comes out.

Shit.

Ferocity only eat ash from the worlds they have destroyed.

Can I even eat ash?

I rip open like five more packets, sending ash everywhere.

I am desperately hungry.

Which says a lot because I’m a recovering bulimic.

“They have protein-based ones,” Corona says. She can see what I am doing. I look down at the core on my right wrist. The tiny Corona holographic head is missing. She must have thought that was creepy too, but there must be sensors on the core so she can see. “To your left,” she adds.

I open the nearest cabinet.

On the inside of the door, there is text written that I cannot read. It looks like Arabic script.

“What does it say?”

“In the Ferocity language, it says prisoner food,” Corona says.

I open a packet. It’s pork. I pour it in a bowl and add water. The mixture self-heats while I search for a spoon.

I sit and savor the meal even if I hate pork. It’s like saltines dipped in chicken soup. It’s no celery, carrots, or strawberry jam on saltines. But it’ll do.

After licking the bowl clean, I have a glass of water, except the glass isn’t made of glass, it’s more like lightweight metal.

“Better?” Corona asks.

“Much.”

I stand. I want to tour the ship.

I walk toward the cargo bay, checking the door again, and then I take the stairs upward. Like the decking above, the stairs are made of lightweight brown volcanic metal grating from the Ferocity home world of Fieri.

At the top of the stairs, I step through a portal into the pod room. I already have to pee again, so I walk into the eighth pod and use the seat again. I still can’t believe the eighth clan’s pod is a toilet.

When I’m done, I exit the bathroom and examine the six remaining pods. Although the Aether pod is down on Terra, Baer buried in it on the bluff overlooking the Gulf in Austin, the Nether pod is still in place. At first I’m confused, but then I remember the Nether pod that I put Narista’s body in came from the other Ferocity ship by way of Naturn. I had transported it to Terra from the Nether home world via the Solarity.

Each pod is hinged along the side facing the cargo bay. Black veins run along the outside of the pods’ clear front, intersecting at a cavity under a symbol that’s at eye level. The cavities were designed to hold the solitaires. The black veins, set between two layers of clear material, run from the front of the pod to the back, where they terminate in socket connections. Wiring runs from the sockets up into the ceiling of the balcony, where it becomes a twisted mess of overlapping lines.

I touch the sun pod. I slept in one like this for far too long.

Each pod, starting with the four on the right, front to back—Sun, Aether, Air, and Earth—has a single symbol, as do the three on the left, back to front—Fire, Water, and Nether. Underneath each element is a word written in the script of the Ferocity. I imagine they are labeled Sun, Aether, Air, Earth or Terra, Fire, Water, and Nether. The earth pod—the fourth pod—is across from the bathroom. It must be a Ferocity joke, or at a minimum, a reference to how they feel about the Terrans—the clan they destroyed—and the Eartarin—the clan they enslave—while the other six pods line up across from each other.

I wonder if there is significance that the Soleria pod is across from the Nemar pod and next to the Aethan pod.

I don’t have to wonder hard. Certain elements and likely solitaires bond well with others. Narista, Baer, and Fusion were my friends. The Ferocity and Soleria were allies long ago, as the Nemar and Aether are now. Whereas I feel like Lani, Jordin, and certainly Kase merely tolerated me.

I move beyond the pods toward the bow.

A door slide opens before me, and I step over the doorway into the command center—the bridge.

Like the flooring below my feet, the ceiling looks like a hash pattern of metal lattice. Unlike decking made by Terrans, which would have required a weld at nearly every joint or entire sections to be punched and bent from the same stock piece, the Ferocity decking seems more rock-like than metallic. Like volcanic rock.

In the bridge, there is no viewport.

I’m going to have to change that eventually.

There are seven seats. Ferocity ships always have a crew of seven.

Two face the bow. There are two W-shaped steering columns in front of those seats, along with a series of buttons and levers. The red lever lowers and raises the landing gears. I remember that from the Ferocity ship I crashed in Key West.

Five more seats are spaced behind the two in front. In order to maintain an aisle, there are three rows of two, and the seventh seat is to the left of the doorway along the back wall.

I look around the bridge.

Everything is brown.

It looks like the inside of a peanut.

This won’t do at all.

SHADOW PACE

S07Y 021D. Luna.

SOLSTICE

I stood all night

In the shadows, pacing

Looking for excuses

Unwilling

And unable

To admit

I was scared

To move forward

I cannot conquer the galaxy in a peanut. It’s a deal breaker. Honestly, I don’t know how the Ferocity think they look tough in a ship like this. It’s probably the flame cannons that give them an overdeveloped sense of toughness. If Baer were here, he’d say the ship needs to be shaped like an A, X, or H, not an O—like the Solarity—or an 8 like the Rising Sun.

I sit in the cockpit of the windowless ship with my hands on the steering column. “Corona, what the toughest-looking letter or number?” I ask.

She answers from the core around my wrist without appearing as the little 3D head. I’m glad we both decided that was creepy. “Define toughest.”

“If you were going to be hit by a letter of number in the face, if you could feel, which of those would you least like to be hit with?”

“Should I exclude non-Soleria numbers and letters?”

“Of course.” The Soleria alphabet does not have b, g, h, q, or z, and none of the seven clans use 8 or 9 because of the whole base 7 thing. The Ferocity ships only look like sideway 8s.

“I wouldn’t want to be hit with a 1 or an s,” Corona replies.

I’m intrigued. “Tell me why”

I leave the bridge and head back downstairs to the galley. I’m thirsty again and must be making up for all that time in the Solarity—which looks just like two clear golden stools in the cargo bay. I can’t even see the gel part that holds it all together.

“A 1 is like an arrow,” she replies. “If somebody flung that at me, it would get stuck.”

I like how she’s playing along. I told her not be like me, but she seems to be just as much a teen as me, happy to indulge silly hypotheticals.

“And the s,” she continues, “that’s like a hook. If somebody got me with an s, they’d either be able to hang on, take a chunk out of me, or pull me toward them.”

The discussion has reached its logical conclusion. I will not dispute Corona. 1 and s are the toughest number and letter. It’s serendipitous too, since we’re from the first clan, the Soleria.

“I want to alter the Rising Sun,” I say. “A sideways 8 won’t do. I want the front of the peanut sharper, like the top of a 1, and I want wings on the sides like an s. And it’s got to be sleek and silver or gold. And we need weapons. How do the Ferocity get the lightning going? I’ve seen them use the flame cannons, but they seem to have to open the cargo bay door to do that.”

“On Terra, they seeded the clouds with ash to create lightning storms,” she says. “The lightning caused your Firegale and the attacks on the Soleria bunkers.”

“Really?”

“Well, it’s more complicated than that,” Corona says. “Long ago, the Ferocity captured a Wydran and an Airan, like they did with my creator, Nemesis of the Nemar. Under duress, they taught the Ferocity how to make storms. But you won’t be shooting lightning out of this ship. There are no lightning cannons. Pyrellax did not consider herself a warrior. She was more of a spy.”

I am so disappointed. I could just wake up Pyrellax, but I still haven’t decided if that’s a good idea.

But Corona at least explained why there are no guns mounted on the peanut or red button triggers on the W-shaped steering wheels.

“Space battles aren’t really a thing,” Corona goes on. “Not with lasers anyway. It’s more like a lot of car crashes. And if weapons are involved, it’s on a planet or in the atmosphere.”

I want lasers. I hadn’t thought about it. But now I want them.

“We need to be able to harness stellar energy,” I say. Like saying it will make it so. “We need to be able to absorb the energy given off by a star like Sol, store it, and then discharge it in a narrow beam.”

“That’s a laser,” she says.

“I don’t want lasers,” I say. “What I need is sunrays. Like the kind that come from my hand. But I need them on the side or front of the ship, so I don’t have to stand on top of the Rising Sun holding my breath.”

“I’m trying to laugh,” Corona says.

I move down to the cargo bay, pacing around.

“Yep. That’s what we need,” I say. “Start thinking about it while we work on other things. You can do that, right?”

“Yes,” Corona says. “I’m still trying to decipher the message I picked up when the purple wave passed over us in the Solarity.”

“How’s that going?”

“The message is repeating. I’ve identified the origin. It’s in the Nemar System. But I’ve been unable to separate stellar interference from the contents of the message.”

“Keep working on it.”

“Understood.”

“We need a viewport too,” I say. “Or a simulation of one. I liked how we could see out of the Solarity.”

“But you didn’t like how anyone could see in.”

“Yep.”

“We can integrate the Solarity into the Ferocity ship,” Corona says. “If you space the golden stools—”

“You said they were scrubbers,” I interrupt.

“I was waiting for you to come up to speed. They are energy manipulators. Sure, they can filter out carbon dioxide, but they are so much more. Think of what you called magic doors on the Soleria mothership—the Solidarity. And remember how the Solarity expanded to fit your surfboard?”

I look at Sunbeams Blacklight at my feet in the cargo bay. “Yep.”

“The Solarity can expand to encompass this ship,” Corona says. “I’d recommend spacing out the energy manipulators with one at the bow and the other at the stern.”

“Can’t energy manipulation be harnessed to make sunrays?” I ask.

“Yes, but I was not designed for war. The Soleria and the Nemar do not make war.”

“Not entering a dance competition or a sing off is a surefire way to never win,” I counter.

“Technically, you don’t lose either if you don’t enter.”

“I’d say the Soleria, Nemar, and Terrans all paid for not fighting the Ferocity. The rules have changed. And we’re not going to be wallflowers. I’ve got tickets to this ball. The next time the Ferocity come to attack, we’re going to be ready to dance.”

“You are a target, Solstice,” Corona says like she’s starting to realize my point.

“I am the most wanted girl in the galaxy. At some point, there will be some sort of bounty on my head.”

“There is,” Corona says. “It’s not money, however. The seven clans don’t use money. It’s more like if someone finds you and doesn’t alert the Ferocity, they’ll burn for it.”

I really want to ask how I buy supplies then, or go watch a show, or have a drink at a seedy spaceport, but I’m assuming some sort of bartering goes on, and even if the seven clans are all high and mighty and don’t call it money, there has to be something that represents value.

“So, the only currency out here is threats?” I ask.

“No,” Corona says. “Kindness has value too.”

“Let’s get back to the magic stools.” I can learn about currency later. But if we were on Terra, I’m sure we’d be dealing in duct tape, feminine hygiene product, and toilet paper. “I want to be ready in case we’re attacked while we’re on mission.”

BTW, the Soleria don’t have menstrual cycles. Maybe that has to do with how they are self-pollinators. And lately, like for a least a couple of years, I’ve felt more Soleria than Terran, so I haven’t needed any FHP. I’m pretty sure I’ll need toilet paper as long as I keep eating. Which as a Soleria, I don’t technically have to do either.

Maybe it’s time I think more like a Soleria and less like a Terran. My body will adapt.

“What’s our mission?” Corona asks. She’s getting good at compensating for my long pauses.

I can’t remember if we covered the mission already or if she is testing my resolve. Either way, she could just read my mind, but she’s being polite.

“We make sure the Ferocity can no longer destroy planets and billions of people,” I say. “We’ll eventually need all the solitaires to do that, assuming we find new gemstone bearers, and it’s probably going to cause some sort of Seventh Seven-Clan Civil War, but shit has to end somewhere at some point.”

“You can’t win for best song if you don’t sing,” Corona says.

“Exactly. Now you get it.”

I sit on one of the golden stools and face the other. “What are they really called?” I ask.

“Prominences,” she says.

“Does it matter which one goes where?”

“It does not.”

I stand and pick up the prominence in front of me. Despite the fact it looks like solid gold, it doesn’t seem to weigh anything.

“How come it’s so light?”

“You’re moving it with your mind,” Corona says.

Makes sense. That’s what I did when we were slipstreaming.

As I walk to the back of the ship, toward the cargo bay door holding the aft prominence, I ask, “So what happens to you?”

“I can project from either prominence or the core around your wrist. My essence is contained within all three regardless of the shape the Solarity takes.”

“And how fast can I put the Solarity back together?”

“We are linked,” Corona says. “In the event of the destruction of the Rising Sun, the prominences will collapse around you, reforming the original gelatinous egg-shaped form of the Solarity.”

“That’s convenient.”

“It’s a fail-safe I installed based on the trajectory of your thinking.”

“Thanks, Corona.”

“You’re welcome, Solstice.”

I grab the other prominence and carry it up the stairs to the bridge. I place the golden cylinder between the two pilot seats.

“Now, how do I get a window?” I ask.

“The Ferocity ship has a viewport already,” Corona says. “I’ll integrate with the ship and display the exterior.”

“Wait,” I say. “Is there a Ferocity version of you inside this ship? If you integrate with its computer, is it dangerous?”

“Are you worried about destroying something like me?” Corona asks.

“Yes, of course. You’re like a person.”

“Thank you.”

I sit in the left-hand pilot seat, knowing already this is my seat. I’m left-handed, after all, and I need to view the universe from the left side.

“There is an onboard computer,” Corona says, “but no sentient intelligence.”

“And you’ll be cool with that?”

“They’ll be glitches,” she says. “You can’t really expect to take over the remnants of alien tech and not expect it to turn on you.”

“Is that a joke?” I ask.

“Affirmative.”

I laugh. But it’s not so funny. Corona doesn’t always tell the truth all the way because, as she put it, Terrans and Soleria can’t handle it. But we got stuff to do, so this is a risk I’ll take.

“Show me Luna,” I say.

The golden forward prominence lights up as Corona integrates with the Rising Sun. The brown curved wall in front of the steering columns and control panel—the dashboard—shimmers away, revealing the outside world. The windshield looks just like how the walls did when I was riding the Solarity in the slipstream. Which means it looks like clear Jell-o. The viewport glitches for a second, revealing the brown interior, but then the window appears again, this time clearer and hardly noticeable.

I lean forward to touch it, stretching across the buttons and levers on the dashboard, hoping I don’t accidentally retract the land gears or something.

The viewport is hard, harder than it was when I was just in the Solarity. “It feels different,” I say.

I climb off the dashboard.

“It retains the solidity of the original Ferocity ship,” Corona says.

“Good,” I say, not even sure why I say it. “I want side windows too, spanning the length of the bridge, and a retractable moon roof.”

Outside, Luna looks the same. Cold and dusty. And it’s still nighttime because we are on the dark—the far—side.

“All right,” I say. “Let’s get rid of the brown exterior and interior. I want everything silver or gold and bright.”

“I can change how light is refracted,” Corona says. “Remember, the Solarity is essentially an outer shell now. It’ll act as an energy shield reinforcing the Ferocity Ferrous.”

“Ferrous?”

“Ferocity iron.”

“That’s good, right?” I ask.

“We have the strongest energy shield, second to the Aethans’, covering the strongest metal in the galaxy forged in the molten world of Fieri,” Corona says.

That would be good. Baer was able to manipulate energy, which probably explains why Aether Clan scientists develop the best energy shields. It’s in their nature.

“So, how about that silver-gold interior and exterior? I want everything to look like the Solidarity, but not quite. I want an overall Soleria feel with hints of Terran.”

“The interior will appear brown in the dark,” Corona says.

I think back on my days in the Lexington Bunker Complex and my pink Sharpie. “So, pink doesn’t exist in the dark?”

“Not really.”

I knew it.

She has all my memories, and she might just be playing along, but I’ll take it.

Everything that was once brown inside the ship becomes silver-gold.

“What’s that called?” I ask.

“The naturally occurring alloy of silver and gold is called electrum in your native language,” Corona says.

“Well, it’s time to leave Terran things behind. We’re calling it silvolden.”

“Noted.”

I push my face against the left-side viewport, trying to see if the Rising Sun looks silvolden from the outside.

“What are you doing?” Corona asks.

“Checking on your color coating.”

“I can assure you the exterior is silvolden.”

“Keep the cargo bay brown,” I say. “I don’t want to forget this ship was once Ferocity. And make the galley walls more gold and the table and chairs more silver. Same with the toilet. But don’t touch the solitaire pods. Leave them just the way they are.”

“Done,” Corona says.

I leave the bridge and head down into the cargo bay, checking Corona’s light refraction work. I make a few adjustments along the way—I want the stairs all silver—but she’s done a great job.

“Just make the sink and cabinets silver too,” I say as a final decorating adjustment.

I run back up the stairs to the bridge. I’ve never had my own home. Sure, I had the condo in Lexington, but I get to do whatever I want here. I pause at the top step. I forgot about the sleep quarters forward of the galley.

“Make the sleep rectangles or whatever you call them—don’t say pod because I don’t want to sleep in a pod—white-gold, as near white as possible.”

“They’re called quarters, sleeping quarters,” Corona says. “And they are now nearly white.”

I walk past the pods and the upstairs bathroom and step over the bottom of the doorway into the bridge.

“Stretch out the bow,” I say, looking out the forward viewport. “Make the ship pointy.”

“I will extend the Solarity, but there’ll be no mass to it,” Corona says.

“Is that a problem? Will any of these modifications impact our ability to fly the Rising Sun?”

“No.”

“Make it sleek,” I say. “Flatten the edges away from the center.”

Part of me wants to make it like my mom’s old Scout. But that doesn’t inspire fear. It may be cool and retro, but I want to scare the other clans. Sooner or later, they’re going to find out who I am, and I want a ship that means business. Like Baer said, pointy spaceships conquer the universe—even if he was totally mistaken. Besides, we are going for the s1s kind of shape, because they are the toughest number/letter combination, according to Corona.

I help her adjust the bows contours until it’s the shape and coloring I want it to be.

“Now, we just need wings.”

“Okay,” Corona says.

“Do we have to worry about loss of speed?” I ask. “Will the Rising Sun be as fast as the Solarity alone with me, or will it be more like the Ferocity ship when it was operated by Pyrellax?”

“Loss of speed will be negligible at sub-slipstream speeds. The shape of the ship and the size of the ship will make no difference in the slipstream.”

I think Terran scientists would have described the slipstream with terms like wormhole or light speed.

“All right, so make those wings so that it looks like s1s, except the 1 is the body of the original peanut with its new pointy front turned so it looks like s1s and that first s is backward.”

“Would you like to draw it?” Corona asks.

“Nah. We’re almost there. It’s like a fighter jet airplane with shorter wings, and they’re going to be smoothed on the leading and trailing edges. You have my memories. Remember that Grafter I fell out of the sky in near SACAM with Nadir and Baer?”

“Yes.”

“Kind of like that, before it fell apart.”

We spend the next couple hours working on the wings. It’s surprisingly hard to achieve the perfect shape, but eventually we get it.

Even Corona seems tired when we are done.

“Do you need to rest? Are you tired?”

“I’ve consumed a lot of available processing memory, but it’ll pass. It will not take any energy if we make the changes permanent. It’ll be like saving a file without being able to access the undo arrow.”

“Will permanency still allow us to activate the fail-safe? To pull you and the Solarity out?”

“We will still have that flexibility.”

“Good,” I say. “Make the changes permanent, and add that old keypad bunker code and the ship’s name to both sides. I want the name and serial number displayed in black lettering. And don’t tell me there is no 9 in the clan numbering system. I don’t care. This ship is Soleria, Ferocity, and Terran. And it’s also me and you. And I want the Aurora Brand on it too.”

Corona etches the letters and numbers under the wings and makes the changes permanent.

From either side it looks like this.

THE RISING SUN

S19A1A1E5F6W23N0

SUNNY SIDE

S07Y 023D. Mars, the Belt, Jupiter, and Saturn.

SOLSTICE

It doesn’t matter
If the moon
Has a dark side
What matters is
That the sun doesn’t

“Corona, It’s time to get back into the light,” I say. “Plot a course to Saturn but swing us by Mars, the Belt, and Jupiter.”

She doesn’t bother to explain again the planets don’t line up and I’m picking a route that’ll take us way longer. If we were in a conventional rocket, she’d say something like it would take 150-300 days to get to Mars based on our payload, planetary alignment, and my willingness to burn fuel. Plus, she’d add in something about exit velocity.

But I don’t care.

This is the Rising Sun.

And I know she is a fast ship.

Corona plots the course and she finds the waves in the slipstream. It should be a smooth ride, but we need to be careful around Jupiter, she says. It’s just so colossally big, and we don’t want to get sucked into its gravity.

I set in the left pilot’s seat.

There are no buttons for me to switch on.

The Ferocity used to use buttons and levers, but as long as Corona is with me, they are unnecessary. She is completely integrated into the ship’s hardware, but she is also on my wrist in the core, and in the forward and aft prominences.

“Keep a landing gear,” I say. “And keep the lift, descent, and left and right directions controllable with the steering column like it was before. And I want some buttons.”

“Done,” she says, restoring some of the ship’s original controls.

I take the steering wheel. “I need to know how to do this, Corona,” I say. “You might get a cold or something someday.”

“A virus?” she asks. “That’s very Terran.”

“Can’t be too careful,” I say. Who knows if someone can breach her databanks.

“Or I could die,” she says.

“There’s that too. Please don’t. You are my only friend and my partner.”

“Thank you.”

I pull the W-shaped steering wheel back toward me, and the Rising Sun lifts off the surface of Luna.

Next to my right hand, Corona activates the landing gear lever, pulling it toward me and raising the ship’s legs as we ascend.

When I was in the Solarity, nothing ever felt real. In the Rising Sun, I feel very much like a solarsurfer.

“Which way?” I ask.

“Up and thirty degrees to your left,” she says.

“Talk to me like it’s a sundial,” I say.

“Head toward eleven o’clock, or if you prefer, north-northwest.”

“I’m not sure if I like that either,” I say. “We’ll have to work on that.”

A few hundred feet above the surface of Luna, I let Corona take over.

I lean back in the pilot’s chair. She finds a wave toward the fourth planet, and we are at Mars in what feels like minutes.

I can’t help but yawn. It’s a lot smaller than Terra and Venus, which are close in size. And I’m sure I can ask Corona to tell me all sorts of interesting facts, but I’m also pretty sure I’m all scienced out.

“I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute,” I say. “Don’t worry about the Belt. Wake me at Jupiter.”

“Or if someone attacks us,” Corona says.

“Yes.” I smile. I can’t tell if she’s trying to be funny. She might be adapting, or I might be looking for humor wherever I can find it.

I close my eyes and dream. There are no more visions to be had. I am flying blind except for my integrated copilot. The past is the past and the future is yet to be. I won’t be going back—I fixed it for Narista—and I won’t be going forward—I don’t want to mess it up for Baer. I’ve said good-bye to everyone I love and anyone I’ve ever known. I don’t have a million problems lined up to solve. Sure, I still have to save the galaxy from the Ferocity, but for now they are beaten back, still licking their wounds from the death of Cyrelax, the disappearance of Pyrellax, and the loss of the Sixth Seven-Clan Civil War. There is time. I try to think of Elle, but there are no more secrets to be had. Narista’s thoughts are bouncing around my head, but they seem to be buried deep. Like my powers, I don’t want to call them forward. I am no longer epileptic. I am not bulimic. I am just Solstice of the Soleria. For the first time since before age seven, I sleep without worry. Maybe it’s the fortress of the ship I built or maybe it’s Corona. Either way, I feel safe for a while.

Fourteen hours later I awake, having dreamed of nothing, refreshed like I’ve never been.

“Good evening,” Corona says. “From our vantage, Sol is just rising on Jupiter.”

It doesn’t quite mean the same thing from space. The sun isn’t setting, we’re just in a holding position, locked in orbit, following Jupiter as it rotates from facing the sun to not.

“Ten hours, twelve years,” Corona says before I can ask. She’s talking about a day on Jupiter—the time it takes the planet to rotate on its axis—and a year—the time it takes it to revolve around the sun.

I sit up in my chair. I’m thirsty. I should have installed cup holders before I finalized the designs of the Rising Sun.

“Size?” I ask.

“Jupiter is 1300 times the size of Terra.”

“Imagine if they had people and how big their poop would be.”

“Does not compute,” Corona says.

“Really?” I ask.

“No, JK.”

“JK?”

“Just kidding,” she replies. “Totally.”

Corona appears before me above the dashboard control panel. “If you don’t mind, I altered the Rising Sun’s on-board holographic display—the one the Ferocity used to navigate—to project myself.”

“No, I don’t mind. I like it.”

Corona totally looks different. Her personality has changed a bit too.

“I’m trying out colloquialisms,” she says.

“You sound like you’re twenty-one or something,” I say.

We see Jupiter’s big red spot, which is still red and still big, and then I ask Corona to plot a course for the seventh ring of the seventh planet.

I don’t tell her.

I ask her.

She’s becoming more real.

We pull away from Jupiter and head toward Saturn.

“Stay in the light if you can, please,” I say. It feels good to have sunlight flooding into the cabin.

“I’ll retract the sunroof,” she says, “to let in more light.”

I called it a moon roof before, but I don’t know the difference and I like her term better anyway.

I want to ask about her change in appearance, but I don’t want to offend her.

That’s called a compliment, you idiot.

“You look nice,” I say. She looks nothing like Solelena or Solterra. She looks all Nemar, but I don’t recognize any Narista in her anymore.

“Thank you,” she says. “I want to be more like my mother.”

“Nemesis?”

“Yes. And I am twenty-one, like you feel. The final version of me came online before Nemesis left for Terra.”

“Do you miss her?” I ask.

“She died before this version of me became cognizant,” Corona says.

I rephrase. “Would you have liked to have met her?”

“Yes, very much so.”

The image of Corona’s face shimmies before me, and it becomes less translucent and more solid.

She looks like a floating head.

Creepy.

“Can you manipulate the Solarity so that it becomes a solid surface?” I ask.

“You know that to be true,” Corona says. “That’s how we made the viewports, added the bow and wings, and redecorated.”

“But we made that permanent,” I say.

“Yes.”

“Are you able to remove parts of the Solarity from the main body of the Rising Sun? Could you make a smaller portion mobile?”

“The Solarity is not limited by mass. It expands or contracts based on the amount of stored energy.”

“Do we have energy to spare?” I ask.

“Do you still want to make weapons?” Corona asks.

“Yes, but not at this moment.”

I feel Corona probing my thoughts. We agreed she wouldn’t do this, not actively and only for operational reasons and only if I said the emergency word—peanuts. But she also knows I can shield my thoughts. I used to block out Nadir and Cyrelax.

So, I block out Corona.

Just to show her I can do it.

In front of me, she frowns.

Frowns!

“We’ll be at Saturn shortly,” she says.

“Please maximize our light-energy absorption,” I say.

“What is it that we’re doing?” Corona asks.

“I think you need a body,” I say.

There’s a long pause.

“I can use a portion of the Solarity to make a body,” she says, “but I will be bound by the limits of this ship.”

I pull the core off my wrist and place it on the dashboard. “Not if this is on your wrist.”

“That would be a gift I cannot accept. The core is for your safety. And, frankly, for mine. It’s the backup to the two prominences.”

“Do you want to be a real person or not?” I burst out. It’s totally harsh, but I’m guessing she needs a push.

Before me, her hair switches from black to blonde to gray before she settles on orange-red.

I’ve angered her.

Which I didn’t think was possible.

But she surprises me.

“I want to be a redhead,” she says. “No offense to Nemesis or you or the Nemar or Soleria.”

“I like it,” I say. “And I’m not lying.”

In the seat next to me, a body appears, translucent at first, but as Corona’s head moves from the dashboard to the right-hand pilot seat, it solidifies.

“I’ll take that gift,” she says as her head fuses with her body.

I hand her the core, touching her hand. Like the viewport in front of us that I felt earlier, she is solid but also warm.

“Please do it for me,” she says.

I kneel in front of her and strap the core to her wrist. For a moment, her body glows as the piece she removed from the Solarity integrates with the core and the holographic projection of her head.

It all becomes one.

A light flares over the core, nearly blinding me.

And then Corona stands before me, as real as any friend I’ve ever known.

“Solstice,” she says, extending her arm toward me, “thank you.”

I stand, and we hug.

It’s weird for a nanosecond, but I feel her body and her hair. It all feels real, even though she’s made from the same energy as the Solarity. It takes me a minute to realize she is naked. I pull away and steal a glance. She is proportional to me or Narista. Tall and skinny—like all Soleria and Nemar.

I sit back in my chair and she in hers.

“Do you mind if I make a suggestion?” I ask.

“Go ahead,” Corona says without looking at me. She’s playing with her hair and pinching herself. As each second passes, any translucentness she had fades.

“The Ferocity have some clothes down below.”

She smiles. “Sure. Anything else.”

“No thought probing.”

“Unless you say the emergency word.”

I nod. “Yep, peanuts.”

Corona stands and walks out of the bridge. She pauses near the pods.

Without turning to watch—I don’t want to see her butt—I can tell she is stopping every couple of feet to make sure the core is continuing to keep her body together.

She returns a few minutes later, dressed in a black undershieldcapbosuit-like suit like me.

“The core is working around the ship,” she says.

“We’re coming up on the seventh ring,” I say. I can see the debris from the Solidarity. “I kind of thought it might not be here.”

“It’s only been a couple of weeks,” Corona says, sitting in her chair.

“Are you sure? It happened while I was in stasis with Pyrellax.” Which was like seventy-seven years in real time but only felt like days for me.

“It happened at the end of your stasis,” she replies.

“Can you tell who attacked them?”

“The Soleria were not attacked,” Corona says. “Not externally.” She points at golden debris floating above the seventh ring. “There’s no blasting or scoring on the hull. The explosion came from within.”

“So it’s sabotage, infiltration, or malfunction?” I ask.

She presses a button on her chair, unlocking it, and it swivels toward me. “Do you have a theory?”

“They faked it?”

“That’s optimistic,” she says.

“Who would have blown it up from the inside?”

“I’m not prepared to speculate.”

She still sounds like a computer even though her body looks realer by the second.

She puts her hands on her chest. “Bigger or smaller?”

“Why?” I ask. Hers look like mine and Narista’s.

“I believe males find them intriguing.”

“So? Are you interested in males? You are Soleria or Nemar,” I say.

“You and Narista like boys.”

“We’re the exceptions.”

“I don’t know if I like boys. I suppose I need to meet one first.”

“We should go to Aetha Prime. They have boys.”

Corona smiles. “We do need a crew.” She pauses. “I mean, you said we need a crew, but can’t the two of us just pilot this ourselves?”

“We need friends, help, allies, whatever,” I say. “Two of us can’t take on the galaxy alone.”

“Not and win.”

“Agreed.” I look out at the debris field. Pieces of the Solidarity are drifting toward the seventh ring and the surface of Saturn. “Any chance the Soleria are hanging out on Titan or any of the seventy-seven moons? Isn’t Titan bigger than Mercury?”

“Yes, but just as inhospitable.”

“Where would they go, assuming they survived?”

“Nowhere anyone could find them,” Corona says.

“Wouldn’t you know?” I ask.

“There are certain things. I cannot know. Nemesis put in a few fail-safes in the event she was captured.”

“She was captured and tortured by Pyrellax,” I say, “while she was pregnant with Narista.”

“Correct.”

I’m still confused on this point. I’m not sure if my mom saved Nemesis right away, so I wonder if Narista was born in captivity.

“Did Nemesis know that was going to happen?” I ask.

“Likely,” Corona replies. “Like your mother, she sacrificed herself for her daughter.”

I look again at what’s left of the Solidarity. “Any chance any escaped?” I ask.

“I do not know where the Soleria would go if any had survived. And if they did survive, I don’t know if we could find them. The Ferocity had trouble enough keeping track of the one Soleria ship, and it was big.”

“Should we go to Naturn and look?” I really do want to know what happened to my grandmother Solterra and my cousin Solvi, but I agree with Corona that I won’t be able to find them unless they want me too.

“No,” she says. “There is nothing for the Soleria on Naturn, not even any Nemar.

“What about Nyssa? She helped Narista once when she landed on Naturn.”

“Naturn is abandoned.”

“Well, maybe the Nemar and Soleria helped each other out.”

“Unlikely.”

“Give me some hope,” I say. She needs to work on her bedside manner. I don’t have empathy. At all. But at least I try to fake it.

“How about that?” Corona says. She stands and leans over me, pointing at the left side window.

Floating in the debris field is the mirror that was in the chamber I stayed in when I was a princess on the Solidarity.

It’s still in its golden frame.

That can’t be an accident.

When I traveled in the slipstream, every time I looked into the magic mirror, it displayed my true self.

“How do we get it on board?”

Corona sits back in the right pilot seat. “There’s a grappler. We can lock onto it with a cable and pull it in.”

“Do it.”

“Let’s seal off the cargo bay.”

A blue and pink touchscreen appears between us above the bow prominence.

“We don’t need to use the levers and buttons on the dash,” she says. “I’ve made some upgrades. It’s a projection.”

“You don’t need it,” I say.

“No, I am integrated with the Rising Sun, but you should know how.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“Close all aft doors.” She presses an icon on the blue-pink projection of the touch pad faster than I can make out what she is doing.

The projection lights up, showing a 3D model of the Rising Sun. The cargo door that is behind us turns from blue to pink and then red on the 3D model. And then the actual door behind us closes. On the model, the door behind the pods lights up pink and then red, as does the doorway leading to the galley and the sleep chambers.

“Is everything secure in the cargo bay?” I ask.

“Home screen,” Corona says.

The model of the Rising Sun returns to a rectangular projection of a touch screen pad. The icons are pink, the screen is blue. Images on the icons are white.

“Here, this icon,” Corona says, touching a small pink box with rounded corners. The image on it looks like a video camera.

“I’ve been designing the touch screen while we were talking, and I was thinking about boys and boob sizes. I used icons that you would find familiar. Plus, I put in a zoom function so you don’t need a CRN-8.”

“Sweet multitasking,” I say, and press the video camera button. That’s the last time I think about a newer model.

Seven video feeds materialize in front of me. Three squares appear over four squares above the touch pad. On the top row, left to right, the feeds display the external port, bow, and starboard sides of the Rising Sun. The lower row shows the solitaire pods in the room behind us, the sleep quarters, the cargo bay, the stern, and the galley.

“Use your fingers,” Corona says, “like you would on an old phone to zoom in and out, but also to pan.”

I move my left hand left, and the screen shifts from between the two of us to in front of me. Instantaneously, a second screen appears in front of Corona.

“Good intuition,” she says. “You’ll have the hang of this in no time.”

I spread my fingers over the bow camera feed. The image gets larger. I press on the screen that displays where the mirror is. Like binoculars, it zooms in on the object. I pull my fingers together, and the screen zooms out. I focus on the rings, moons, and Saturn in the background, spending a minute getting different views of the planet and its satellites.

I switch to the cargo bay feed. A pocket door I never knew was there closes our side of the ramp, sealing it from the rest of the ship.

“That’s the airlock,” she says.

After I visually confirm that the only thing keeping space from rushing in—or actually, air from rushing out—is actually closed on the viewscreen and on the 3D model of the ship—the door appears red now—I say, “It’s closed.”

I focus on the bow camera and play with the zoom, pan, and rotate features.

“Wow. Wicked. How far can we zoom out?”

“As far as the Soleria or Nemar eye can see. If you can see it without magnification, we can zoom in.”

“Talk about distracted driving. I could totally crash this by looking at things that aren’t in front of me.”

“It would be embarrassing to crash your shiny new ship in port. That’s why you need a copilot,” Corona says, adding an awkward smile.

She’s done that twice now, and I wonder if any feeling she has is genuine. I have to remind myself that before she got a body, she told me basically that most people can’t handle the total truth.

I wonder what percentage of a liar she is at the moment. Is it like 25 percent? Are smiles lies?

I have no idea.

“Let’s get that mirror,” I say. “I’ll watch, if you don’t mind showing me.” It’s good to be polite even if I am the captain, especially if Corona is secretly developing feelings.

She presses a series of holographic pink buttons on the blue touch screen for my benefit, because I know the screen must be some sort of projection of a piece of her or the Solarity coating the ship, which is basically her body too, while the core around her wrist is also imbedded with the Rising Sun’s original computer is her brain. Which means she could move all the controls with her mind.

The grappler is not what I thought it was. I was expecting a metal rope with a magnet, claw hand, or hook to shoot out of the side of the ship. Instead, some unseen energy beam locks onto the floating mirror and pulls it toward us.

Once the mirror is close, Corona activates an air lock near the cargo bay door. The ramp lowers, and the mirror is pulled in.

I check the monitors and screens, and once I’m convinced the cargo bay door is closed and the air lock is repressurized, I start opening the doors leading from the cabin.

“You want to take a look?” I ask.

“I’ll stay on the bridge,” she says.

“Why’s that? You’re portable with the core on your wrist.”

“I’m familiar with Soleria mirrors,” she says. “It’s called a similarity.”

“That’s funny. I always felt I looked different in them.”

“The similarity displays the truth,” Corona says. “You may not like what you see.”

SEE ME

S07Y 024D. Aetha System.

SOLSTICE

How long

Until you see

That person

You loved

So long ago

Is no longer

Me

How does Corona know that I may not like to see?

I walk from the bridge, past the solitaire pods, and down the stairs to the cargo bay. The similarity—Soleria mirror—is on the floor of the cargo bay next to the aft prominence. The gold cylinder, like the one on the bridge, is secured to the Rising Sun. I put my foot on it, trying to move it, but it’s held in place by an energy field or something far stronger than me. I’d be able to move it as easily as I could move the ship itself. Which I can’t. It’s part of the Rising Sun now.

I pick the mirror off the floor. It’s facing down, and it takes me a minute to lean it up and turn it around. It used to be on a vanity, and it’s about three feet high by two feet wide. The top is rounded, and it’s framed in a silvolden-colored material. The color I thought I invented to shade the Rising Sun isn’t all that unique. Now that I’ve seen the debris field and the back of the mirror, I realize silvolden is just Soleria gold.

I sit on the aft prominence, rest the mirror on my knees, and look into it.

An image of Narista looks back at me.

It doesn’t freak me out.

Especially since I don’t like that word.

It’s nice to see her.

“Corona,” I shout toward the bridge, “do I have black hair?” I look at the ink on my arms in the mirror. “Or tattoos?”

“No.”

She’s standing on the balcony with her back to the solitaire pods, looking down into the cargo bay at me.

“There’s an image of Narista on this.”

“It’s a true likeness,” Corona says.

“I know you’re the only redhead on board, but raven hair is not blonde,” I say.

She doesn’t bother to respond.

“So what’s the deal with Narista?” I ask.

“She’s on your mind,” Corona says. “Or in your mind.”

After seventy-seven happy years had passed on Terra, I returned to the planet and Narista gave me all her memories and her powers, like my mother once did, but I don’t feel all that different.

I look into the mirror again.

“I doubt it will change,” Corona says.

It still shows Narista.

I smile at the image, and her lips track with mine. I wiggle my nose, raise my ears, and wave.

Mirror Narista does the same.

“My phone used to have an app like this,” I say. “You could add a cat nose or glasses.”

“Not the same,” she says.

Whatever. I don’t want to deal. My sister has only been gone for a couple of weeks. I move the mirror against the wall and secure it in place with two straps.

“Could you plot a course to Aetha Prime?”

We still need a crew.

And a plan.

And new solitaire bearers.

And to defeat the Ferocity and save the galaxy.

But first, we still need a crew.

Corona blinks at me. “Course plotted. Shall we get underway?”

“Yes.”

I’m not sure if the blink is actually how she communicates with the bridge, or if it’s just for my benefit.

“What’s with blink?” I ask.

“There are seven universal expressions,” Corona says. “Can you guess them?”

A game. Good. I head up toward Corona, listing them off. “Happy, sad, angry, scared …”

That’s all I got.

“Surprise, contempt, and disgust,” she finishes.

Contempt has to be the worst to accidentally show because it’s like telling someone they are the worst.

Blinking doesn’t seem like any one of them.

“It was Charles Darwin’s idea that expressions are universal and that there were only seven,” Corona says as I meet her at the top of the stairs. “Other Terran scientists thought he was wrong. So did scientists from other clans. But he was right. Still, I think his work was maybe incomplete. I’m working on a new expression. We need something for understanding.”

It’s not blinking. “You could just nod,” I say, “like we do on Terra.”

“How about love or confusion?” she asks.

She warps her face, trying to display both at once. I’m pretty sure love is just a variation of happiness and confusion is a take on surprise—but like less surprised.

“I think Darwin was right,” I say.

She raises her chin, turns her head slightly to the side, and looks down her nose at me.

That’s contempt. Way too obvious. Why do you need feelings anyway? They basically suck. Or you have to avoid them, like I’m doing with Narista.

“You’re trying too hard,” I say. “Show me a smile.”

We walk from the balcony, between the pods, and back into the bridge. She turns her lips upward, looking at me, while we sit.

“Little less,” I say.

After a handful of tries, she finds the sweet spot between neutral and way too happy.

“Good.”

From Saturn, we head toward the Oort cloud at the far ends of the Sol System. Since I didn’t specifically ask to see the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, Corona has found the most direct wave in the slipstream, and for a while there is not much to see on our journey to the Aetha System.

Aetha is a ternary star with Feroxima and Eartari—the stars in the Fire Clan and Earth Clan systems.

With the Nemar and Soleria gone, and the Wydran and Airan typically disinterested—as my mom once said—my best hope for help is with the Aether Clan, the Aethan. Baer was able to find a home there briefly, and it’s mostly teens and young adults. Games of sport occupy most of their time, but they are traditional allies with my clan.

“How come you’re working on facial expressions?” I ask.

“They display emotion,” Corona says.

“Do you have emotion?”

“I’m feigning.”

“Mrs. C—that’s my nanny from years ago—used to say I should smile more. She thought maybe if I did, I’d be happier, like somehow it would trick my brain.”

Corona spins in her chair and faces me. “Did it work?”

“On occasion.”

“That’s what I’ll do then,” she says, and smiles.

In front of us, a few celestial bodies come into view.

Pink icons light up on the blue touch screen.

“Cutting speed now,” Corona says.

There aren’t a lot of reference points in space, so it’s actually hard to tell we are slowing down, because the planets or moons in front of us are still really small.

There are so many things I need to ask and learn about. Like how come I’m not floating around the ship? How come I’m not cold? Why doesn’t the toilet spill when we ride the slipstream? If I had to guess, I’d say artificial gravity, solar energy, and maybe a force field or a check valve. And how long before I pee does it become my drinking water?

But I so don’t want to know what happens to solid waste.

“You’ve got a lot to teach me,” I say.

“Dittos,” Corona says. “I’ll tell you about technology and you teach me about feelings.”

“Deal,” I say.

The touch pad lights up red.

Red is never good.

It’s my least favorite color. It’s even worse than green.

I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s a blonde thing.

“We got someone on our tail,” Corona says.

I swipe my hands over the touch pad and call up the external aft video feed. I spread my fingers and zoom in on the craft behind us.

They don’t seem to trying to hide.

Nor are they firing.

Which is good because we still don’t have weapons.

Or shields. Unless the Solarity around the Rising Sun counts as one.

It probably does.

I was so concerned with silvolden and decorating that I kind of blew it on some important things.

“Incoming transmission,” Corona says.

“From whom?” I ask. It’s obviously the dude behind us, but it’s good to ask these things.

“He’s identified himself as someone from the Aetha. The transmission is spotty. I didn’t get the name.”

“Can you display the feed? Can we see him?”

“It’s just audio,” she says.

“Let me hear it.”

The feed fades in and out, and we hear mostly static, but then the voice says, “I want her back.”

“Don’t look at me,” Corona says, “any hers on board refers to you.”

My pointy ears are universal translators so I easily understand the words I can hear, but I don’t know what clan he’s from without looking at him. Everything just sounds like American-English after it’s translated. I don’t even hear accents.

“That can’t be good,” I say. I glance over my shoulder, just in case some sort of ancestral weapon with girl attached to it is leaning against the wall.

There is not. So it must be me they want.

“Any chance he’s Ferocity?” I ask. Because maybe he wants Pyrellax who is still asleep in the Fire pod.

I need to add that to my list. I need to do something with my friend who became my enemy who kind of made peace with me.

I suppose she won’t be on board with my whole destroying the Ferocity thing, but I feel like she’s not going to be on board with any of her clan’s renewed attempts to crush what is left of the Terrans, Soleria, and Nemar.

“That’s an Aethan ship,” Corona says.

“Any chance he knows we built our ship from a Ferocity one?” I ask. “Or of our sleeping cargo?”

“None,” she says.

I clutch the Solstar around my neck.

“Nah,” Corona says. “Your grandmother’s necklace keeps it hidden in plain sight. He doesn’t know you have a gem.”

“What then?” I ask.

“Ask him.”

I press the pink phone icon. Corona made everything really easy for me to understand. The icon lights up green.

“Who or what are you looking for?” I ask.

I wait, but there is no response.

“He’s gone,” Corona says.

The aft camera no longer displays our pursuer. I use my fingers to pan left and then right. Whoever it was is taking off at about three o’clock. His vessel accelerates and is gone from our screen in seconds.

The touch pad lights up red again. But this time it blinks, and a buzzer goes off way too loud.

“Seven Ferocity cruisers on approach,” Corona says.

Cruisers sound bigger than command ships—which is what our vessel used to be—and peanuts, the small Ferocity ships that burned Terra.

Cruisers sound like they might be the size of that giant vacuum thing that was sucking ash off of Key West during the invasion.

“Big, really big,” Corona says, guessing my thoughts.

“Aira,” I say. The Air Clan is in neutral—aka I don’t care so don’t bother me—territory, and nobody bothers with them because they take forever to decide anything. At least, that was the impression I got from my mom when I was talking to her in stasis during the Sixth Seven-Clan Civil War.

Corona finds the closest wave, and we surf the slipstream out, leaving the Aetha System. The ride’s bumpy at first, like we’re trying to hop on a breaker.

Corona actually falls out of her chair.

I smile when I realize she’s okay because she feels no pain. “First day, new body?”

“Actually, yes,” she replies. Then tries to add a smirk after her subroutines tell her I might be making a joke.

I really wanted to see Aetha Prime and people that looked like and acted like Terrans, but not so badly that I want to get caught by the Ferocity.

“Can they catch us?” I ask.

“In this ship?” Corona says. “No, never. I can’t imagine anything is faster or tougher than the melding of Soleria and Ferocity technology.”

“So we’re good.”

“We’re good and we did good,” she says. “The Rising Sun is in a class of its own.”

STILLNESS OF THE DEPARTED

S07Y 024D. Aira System.

SOLSTICE

If you were alive

I wonder

Would you approve?

It’s exhausting

Weighing every choice

Against the silence

Of a long-lost voice

The Rising Sun may be able to outrun anyone, but we can’t outgun anyone. I really need Narista or Baer around here. In the final battle on Terra, they were the weapons experts. Sure, I did a lot of blasting with my hands, but I only occasionally swung the sword that I keep on board, Sunbeams. I wonder what they would say about the Rising Sun. Not enough weapons if you ask me, Narista would say. And Baer would be all like, it needs to be pointier. You need like a needle at the end, so if you run into anything you can poke right into it.

“Solstice?” Corona asks. She touches my arm. She’s likely called my name more than once while I was thinking about old friends. Her hand is warm and solid with just the right kind of give, like how a human hand would feel.

I’m surprised by how nice it feels to be touched by someone else. My skin is tingly.

“You feel good,” I say.

“I’ve been modifying how I manipulate the Solarity energy field that is my body,” she says.

“It feels perfect,” I say. “Like Terran or Soleria. How’d you do it?”

“The last time you were asleep,” Corona says, “I felt your arms.”

Creepy.

Not creepy.

I can’t decide.

I wouldn’t mind a hug.

It might be creepy to ask for that.

“What did you need?” I ask, circling back to when she snapped me out of my daydream.

“Coming up on Aira now,” she says.

“How many planets in the system?” I ask.

“There are three spherical bodies that have distinct orbits, plus hundreds of moons.”

“How many are occupied?”

“One. Airo. It’s similar in size to Terra and just about as close to its star.”

It’s coming up on the touch pad. I fling the image across the screen with my fingers, and it appears before us on the viewport.

It’s another new feature Corona has installed. She probably did it when she wasn’t touching my arms in my sleep.

“Are they all like that?” I ask. “Like Terra?”

“Eartar and Aetha Prime revolve around yellow dwarfs, so they are like what Terra is to Sol. Fieri orbits a red dwarf, so the Ferocity are much closer to their star.”

“Maybe that’s why Fieri has those rivers of lava,” I say, thinking its star’s heat plays a role in the planet on fire.

“The crust shifts,” Corona says, “like some of the moons of Saturn because of gravity.”

“What about Airo?” I ask, looking at the cloud-white marble in the viewport.

“Lots of wind at the surface. All of their dwellings are above the lowest layers of clouds.”

“Do they travel off world a lot?” I ask.

“Other than the Clan Wars and to visit Wydro, no.”

I try to picture the Airan. My mother once described them as fleshy. They have really saggy skin that hangs. I think they even have webbed air pits like flying squirrels.

“Do we have any friends here?” I ask.

“No enemies,” she says. “But do we have any reason to stop? The Airan won’t come on board. Nor can we enter their atmosphere—too much wind.”

“Why won’t they come on board?”

“They need lots of wind to float. Nobody knows if their feet even work.”

That’s right. In a story my mom once told me in a dream about how Terra was made, the Airan were transported on a Soleria ship.

“Are the Ferocity still on us?”

“No Ferocity cruisers are on our sensors.”

I have no idea what a sensor is on this ship. Does it track exhaust? Life signs? Spacial wake?

That last one I just made up.

But if we are riding waves in the slipstream, then we must leave wakes in the sea.

“How far can we sense?” I ask.

“Far,” Corona says, “but travel is fast. The Ferocity use gravity drives, so they can’t keep up with us, but once their sensors find us, they can reach us in minutes.”

“Unless we zip away like we just did.”

“We’ll have seconds every time. And they have to find us first. Space is big. Should I put us in orbit around Airo?”

“No. We need to be unpredictable,” I say.

“I don’t think they would find us in the Airan System.”

But we need friends.

Someday I’ll need to defeat the Ferocity.

And I’m not doing it alone with Corona.

“Eartar,” I say. “Plot a course for Eartar. Keep us away from Fieri and Aetha Prime. They expected us to go to the Aethan for help.”

I say that like they is definable—I don’t even know who I’m up against—and that someone is actively searching for me—other than the Aether who tailed us.

But we need help.

Airan don’t join crews. Wydran stay underwater. And Aethan are too obvious.

“Course plotted for Eartar,” Corona says.

We come about, turning away from Airo.

“Entering slipstream now,” she says, finding a nearby wave.

I don’t know how she chooses the waves. And I need to learn. Did she detect a gravity wave pulling toward the Eartari System or solar wind and radiation leaving the Airan System?

I review my notes to myself.

You don’t need to learn how to fix the car, just drive it.

You don’t need to learn how to make a map, just read it.

You don’t need to destroy all the Ferocity, just make it really annoying for them to destroy other planets.

I’m tired.

And I’m grateful for my new copilot.

“Mind if I sleep?” I ask.

“No,” Corona says. “And I won’t even touch your flesh.”

I give her a weird look.

“Not funny?” she asks.

“Close,” I say, “but bordering on creepy.”

“I’ll work on it while you sleep.”

I leave the bridge and walk past the bathroom and the pods. It bothers me that Narista’s pod is gone. I wish I had all seven. Especially hers. Somehow it would make me feel better.

But it’s out at sea on Terra with her body.

I walk down the stairs from the balcony and into the cargo bay.

The mirror is still strapped to the wall.

I don’t want to look at it.

I pass through the galley without stopping. I’m not hungry. It’s typical for a Soleria and no big deal. If anything, I’m becoming who I really am.

The seven sleeping quarters are built into the wall on the other side of the kitchen. I choose the closest one to the decking on the left side, open the door, and crawl in. The right side has a funky smell to it. It was probably from some smelly non-shower-taking Ferocity who used to live here.

It’s like being in an MRI or a coffin. It’s small and white on the inside. At three feet high by three feet wide, it reminds me of the ducts in the Lexington Bunker too.

I should feel cramped.

But it feels like an old home.

I leave the door open at my feet and settle on my left side.

As soon as I close my eyes, I drift off.

But I find no rest.

My sister calls to me from her slumber. I picture her in her pod, smaller than the space I am in now.

I want to speak to her. But she is gone.

So I listen to the voice in my head.

“I’m tired,” Narista says, “of being your shadow.”

SESSILE

S07Y 025D. Eartari System.

SOLSTICE

I will never reach

Your lofty high heights

Dwarfed by

Your inspired insights

“Coming up on Eartar now,” Corona says. There’s a speaker in my bed or somewhere on the white rectangular box I am in. I don’t like it. I open my eyes, still thinking of Narista.

It’ll be like this for a while.

It’s called grief.

Funny how I don’t grieve for Lani, Kase, Jordin, Fusion, or even Baer. Maybe it’s because they died so long ago.

And I got to say good-bye to Narista.

Good-byes make it worse.

I sit up, hitting my head.

I used to make that mistake during my bunker days.

I wish I had a dog.

That would be a nice way to wake up.

I hope Selene made puppies on Terra and the species didn’t die out.

I don’t want to save a universe without puppies.

But I have no time for puppies now.

“Coming,” I say to Corona, assuming wherever the speaker is near my bed, a microphone must be close to it.

From the galley, I take a water in a metal canister and head upstairs.

Corona is staring straight ahead from the right-side pilot chair.

“Were you here all night?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Did you get up?”

“No.”

“You need a hobby or downtime,” I say. I totally feel guilty leaving her alone all night. Not so much that I wouldn’t have gone to sleep, but she must be so bored.

“Aren’t you bored?” I ask.

“I’m deciphering code while I drive. The universe is never boring. You just need to know where to look.”

“Don’t you know like everything?” I counter.

“Knowing is not the same thing as looking,” she says.

She’s right. Googling Grand Canyon is not the same thing as riding a donkey down into the ravine or looking down from the edge.

She’s talking about emotion.

That’s the difference between research and field work.

“You’re right,” I say. “Seeing does make a difference.” I see Eartar in the distance.

It’s all brown.

Kind of looks like there are some pockets of smog too.

Surprising for a farming world, except, I remind myself, the Ferocity are allowed to burn 10 percent of the planet every year. That’s why Eartari are migratory. Nothing lasts more than ten years on the planet.

I must have that wrong.

Someone told me that, but it must be like seven years.

Everything is base 7 in the world of the clans.

“So?” Corona asks.

I have no plan and it shows.

Can we enter Eartari air space? Will they know if we land on their planet? Will they call the Ferocity if an unidentified ship shows up?

“How do we make allies?” I ask. “Or friends?”

“You’re the Terran-Soleria,” Corona says. “I’m new at meeting people.”

“True, but on Terra, I think I annoyed most people. And I’m a Soleria princess, so they had to like me.”

Had to.

“Mutual goals. Shared interests,” I go on. “That’s what friends have.”

“They don’t like the Ferocity either,” Corona says. “That’s a shared interest.”

But they’re probably too scared to do anything about it. I’m sure the Eartari have thought about overthrowing their masters until said masters made a counteroffer of burning like 14.28 percent of the planet annually.

That’ll motivate you not to revolt.

The viewport flashes red in front of us.

“The cruisers are back,” Corona says.

“Take the closest wave out,” I say.

We’re in a ternary star system, and waves are bouncing every which way from the proximity of the three stars and all their planets.

“Not a lot of options,” she says.

“Don’t you mean too many options?” I ask.

“Lots of waves,” she agrees. The nearest are pulling us toward the three stars.

“How are they finding us?” I ask. Nobody’s firing weapons at us, so I’m not panicked, but I don’t like allowing the Ferocity cruisers getting a good look at my shiny, new, freshly-converted-from-Ferocity-to-Soleria ship.

I answer my own question.

“It’s because this ship was once Ferocity, isn’t it?”

“Likely,” Corona says.

“Take us to Feroxima.”

The Ferocity star is at the heart of their territory, and on the surface it seems like a stupid move to slipstream into the central location of your enemies, especially when they’re probably just trying to figure out why there’s this fancy new ship flying around the galaxy, but … The only way to hide the signature of a Ferocity ship is by being near lots of other Ferocity ships.

“We’ll hide near them,” I say. “At least on long-range sensors, we’ll look just like them.”

“I don’t think that will work,” Corona says.

She doesn’t know everything, and she isn’t the boss of me.

“Take the next wave in,” I say.

“Understood.”

My plan is brilliant. Right?

Nope.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

SURETY BLURRED

S07Y 025D. Feroxima System.

SOLSTICE

Once you were

My only reply

To every query

Now you are

My only question

To every answer

I feel like I walked into a trap. But I didn’t. It’s more like I walked into enemy territory wearing fake glasses and a mustache and was surprised that the disguise didn’t fool them. The second we pulled out of the slipstream near Fieri, we were in a sea of thousands of vessels. I know there are billions of Ferocity and tens of thousands of ships, but I figured their fleet would be spread across the galaxy, burning planets.

“You were right,” I say. “Get us out of here.”

“We can’t,” Corona says. “Too many ships. We can’t enter the slipstream on top of everybody. The best we can hope for is orbital speed.”

We won’t be outrunning anyone.

Not until we break free.

Within seconds, we are surrounded, Ferocity ships forming a sphere around us.

“Options,” I ask in that totally I’m-not-panicked captain voice.

I am so panicked.

I suddenly have to pee really bad.

“We can’t run,” Corona says. “So we hide.”

“They’ve already seen us,” I say. And we still have no weapons.

She taps her wrist. “I can disappear into the core or the prominence.”

Uh, what about me?

“I can stall them,” Corona says. “I can lock down the ship, but eventually that’ll just lead to damage. They’re going to want to break in and find the source of the Ferocity signature coming from the Rising Sun.”

“Will they figure out how to turn off the Solarity?” I ask.

“We’re being hailed.”

“Stall.”

“The captain will be with you shortly,” Corona says after pressing the phone icon on the virtual touch screen.

A Ferocity tries to say something, but she hangs up on him.

“They don’t know anything about Soleria technology,” Corona says, “but they’ll get in eventually. The Ferocity specialize in destroying things.”

“What’s with all the ships?” I ask. “Shouldn’t they be off burning the galaxy?”

We are surrounded by so many peanut-shaped ships, my throat feels tight, like I’m going into some sort of sympathetic allergy-induced anaphylactic shock.

Peanuts in all forms are evil, especially spaceships, even if it’s the infinity symbol they are trying to emulate.

Corona splits the screen, pushing one visual display toward me that shows the Ferocity armada while adding a virtual tablet in front of her.

“Monitoring communications now,” she says.

It takes like two seconds for her to present a synopsis, but it seems like hours in slow-motion we-are-so-surrounded-and-screwed time.

“Different factions of the Ferocity are meeting to select a new emperor.”

“Didn’t Cyrelax have an heir besides his sister?” I ask. Did he have kids?

It’s been only couple of weeks for me since Baer killed Cyrelax because I was in stasis. But for everybody else, it was like a lifetime ago.

“They waited,” Corona says, “since he had no children.”

“For what?”

“To make sure his heir was dead. They never found her corpse.”

I haven’t forgotten about the body I refuse to get rid of the Rising Sun.

“His sister,” Corona says, “was his only heir.”

“She died on Luna,” I say, but truth is, I have no idea. Dead is not the same as someone leaving you in stasis and there’s no waking you up. It’s more like almost dead.

“You need to bring her back to them dead or alive,” Corona says. “That was your original mission and the deal that was made. The Ferocity have a thing about bodies. They like to burn them. I didn’t want to tell you before, but they knew Pyrellax was on the Soleria mothership near Saturn. It might explain the explosion as a retaliation.”

“Great,” I say.

“She’s well preserved,” Corona says. “She hasn’t decayed—aged—since Luna.”

“Hide in the core,” I say. “Keep the Ferocity locked out after I leave. You’re right. Pyrellax deserves to be brought home.”

I made a deal, even if it was with a devil, and I need to honor it. I press the call button on the screen. “Who do I see about returning Pyrellax’s body?”

SECURE PASSAGE BARRED

S07Y 026D. Feroxima System.

SOLSTICE

Your key to my heart

No longer fits

In my rusty lock

I wish I could send a sympathy card or text to the Ferocity. I need something that says, Sorry I ruined phase one of your plan to dominate the galaxy and my boyfriend killed your emperor right before I hid the heir in stasis for seventy-seven years. It would just be easier to blast them with sunray hands. Maybe I could hide the ship in one of Narista’s shadows.

Or I could just return the body.

“Hide,” I repeat to Corona.

I stand up from the left captain’s chair and head toward the exit of the bridge.

“Wait,” I say. I don’t know how to do anything. “How do I get a body from our ship to one of theirs?”

“Ferocity ships have a port on their underbellies,” Corona says.

“So, how do we mate up with another Ferocity ship?”

“One of the ships needs to invert.”

For a minute, I imagine that everything would just fall all over the place, but this is space and technically, especially with artificial gravity, there is no up or down.

“Who inverts?” I ask.

“For the Ferocity, it is the submissive ship. They have a whole class system based on families, experience as a farmer, etc.”

“So, what are we?” I ask.

“We need to invert. It doesn’t matter if you were the Soleria Queen. This is their space, their star system. We are guests for as long as they decide to not burn us.”

“Invert then.”

“Don’t look out the window,” Corona says. “You’ll only notice you’re upside down if you have perspective.”

I sit back in my chair as she begins the inversion process.

I totally want to look.

And I can’t help myself.

I look at the viewport at the end of the maneuver.

Every single Ferocity ship is upside down. I grab my seat with both hands like I’m going to slip off, but it doesn’t work that way.

There really is no upside down.

I swallow hard on a little bile burp.

But I won’t puke.

There will be absolutely no puking in the Seventh Seven-Clan Civil War.

“You shouldn’t have looked,” Corona says. She smiles at me, and her orange hair fades a little. She’s still adjusting things. She settles on a strawberry-blonde while her eyes shift to a lighter shade of purple.

It gives me an idea.

I should use the illusion—Narista’s power to manipulate light and change her appearance.

I think of shadows on my hair and in my eyes and over my ears.

Within a minute, I’m a brunette with regular ears and brown eyes.

“You look like an Aethan,” Corona says.

“That’s what I am going for,” I say.

From the bridge, I head past the pods and down the stairs to the cargo bay. I can’t let the Ferocity in. They’ll know, despite the changes we made to the exterior, that this was once their ship.

“There’s a port,” Corona says over a speaker in the cargo bay, “in the center of the floor.”

I find it. Now I just need the body.

“Hide in the core now,” I say. “Monitor what’s happening and make sure I don’t mess up the docking.”

“I’ll control the mating from the forward prominence,” she says.

I run back up to the pods and open the one for the Fire Clan. Pyrellax’s body is in there. I lay my head against her chest. I don’t hear anything, and I’ve got great ears. But she’s not all yucky. Corona must have preserved her somehow, or the pod did. It’s good because Pyrellax is heavy. Not for a woman or a Ferocity. Bodies in general are heavy. And so hard to drag.

I put both hands under her shoulders and pull her out of the pod. Her shoulders plop onto the decking. I put my hands under her armpits and pull.

It takes me five minutes to drag her through the pod room, down the stairs, and into the cargo bay.

I’d be the worst mobster ever. I’d never be able to move the bodies or lift them into a car.

Good thing cars are all gone.

Then again, if I got used to it, I’d make my victims dig their own graves. That’s probably how that whole thing—digging your own grave—got started. Mobsters got lazy and decided it was easier to eat a sandwich while their victim manned the shovel.

I make it to the center of the cargo bay just in time to hear a Ferocity yell, “Open up.”

Corona activates the port from her hiding spot.

A disc next to my feet drops down an inch and slides under the decking through a slot. A cylinder activates, and the Ferocity is slowly raised up ten feet or so until he/she is even with the cargo bay floor.

I look at the Ferocity and then Pyrellax.

The body is all messed up. I should have checked it first. Pyrellax’s hair is all over the place, and she’s missing a shoe. Her shirt is even ripped a little bit over the stomach.

“Where’d you find the body?” the Ferocity asks.

My Soleria ears translate instantly. I no longer notice that we don’t speak the same language. I reply in their tongue, unsure of how I know how to speak their language.

But that’s how Soleria ears work.

“On the Terran moon,” I say. I don’t want to say Luna or Earth. Only a Terran would say that, or a Soleria maybe, and we’re all supposed to be dead.

“What were you doing there?” the Ferocity asks, examining the body. “She hasn’t decayed at all.”

“It’s the low gravity on that moon,” I say.

The Ferocity stands, looking around the cargo bay.

He/she knows.

I know they know.

What do they know?

At a minimum, that this was once a Ferocity ship.

I glance at my shoulders. My brown hair is fading to blonde in some spots.

“And why were you there?” the Ferocity asks. “The Soleria are gone. So are the Terrans. There is no trade in the Sol System.”

“Crap.” I’m so busted.

“Scrap?” the Ferocity asks.

“Yes, scrap.”

I’m so lucky.

“Scrapping in Ferocity space is illegal,” he/she says. I wish the Ferocity had boobies and not asexual breast plates.

“It’s Ferocity air space?” I ask.

“You’re going to have to come with me. Help me with the body and we’ll get your story straight. It’s been Ferocity air space since the Nemar destroyed the Solidarity.”

“The Nemar?” I ask. I don’t care if I am busted. “I’ve been away for a long time.”

“Somebody blew it up,” the Ferocity says. “And it had to be them. Everyone knows the Nemar hated the Soleria.”

More than the Ferocity did?

But he doesn’t have any proof. I’m going with he. I can’t keep saying he/she in my head.

The Ferocity stands over the disc. “Lower me, then hand the body down,” he says.

I do as he asks.

After Corona activates the cylinder, I lower Pyrellax feet first.

I kneel near the opening in the cargo floor.

“Come on down,” the Ferocity says. Two others from his clan have come to help him. They have pointy ears and gray skin with the same matching gray jumpsuits. The first Ferocity points a flame torch up at me. “I don’t know how you did it, but I know this was a Ferocity ship.”

I really don’t want them to blow up my new ship.

Nor do I want to die by flame torch.

Corona sends the disk back up. The Ferocity steps off it but keeps his weapon pointed at me until the last possible second.

For a moment, I think I should keep him locked out once the cylinder is even with the floor. But our ships are still attached.

And they have weapons.

“Send me down,” I say to Corona, “and stay hidden.” I remove my sword and lay it on the cargo bay floor. I don’t want to provoke a fight. But there’s no substitute for a good sword at your side except for sunray hands.

Which I have.

I ride the cylindrical disk down. Between the ships, a tube connects us. It’s wider than my cylinder so I can step out into it, but there is no gravity. I push off into the tube.

I float downward feet first, reaching the Ferocity’s cylindrical elevator.

At the bottom, a door slides open. I push myself off the side of the tube and step into the Ferocity ship.

I forgot to invert myself in the ride downward and I’m totally upside down when the artificial gravity takes hold.

I fall to the decking, headfirst, at the feet of seven Ferocity.

“See,” the one who took Pyrellax’s body says, “she’s not Aethan. I don’t think she’s even been in space for very long.”

I look up, pushing the blonde hair out of my eyes.

I’ve lost the illusion.

Seven flame guns point at me, and the Ferocity all say, “Soleria.”

SUBJUGATION

S07Y 027D. Feroxima System.

SOLSTICE

I am trapped

Where you abandoned me

Your lost love

Is my captivity

So, I’m busted, but no one knows I am the Solstice Dayton. Not yet anyway. My necklace is hidden in plain sight. Like the magic Soleria mirror in the cargo bay of the Rising Sun, it has the ability to show what is real or false. No one will know I bear the Solstar—the Sun Solitaire.

“Take her body and prepare it,” the lead Ferocity says. “The election is tomorrow. We need it done before then.”

Four Ferocity bear Pyrellax away to the other side of their cargo bay.

They said body, so Pyrellax must be dead. The pods are meant for preserving elementals with the gems. Who knows what happened to Pyrellax in her pod for seventy-seven years? I was fine, but I got the impression she’d be happy with dying.

“She’s been to the Terran moon,” the Ferocity who helped me with the body says to the others. “And her ship looks just like ours on the inside.”

“Stand, Soleria,” the leader says.

“We should kill her now,” the third Ferocity says.

“No,” the leader says. “We keep her. Someday the solitaires will be found, and we need a bearer. You know how rare Soleria and Nemar are?”

“As rare as Terrans?” one of them jokes.

I don’t think Ferocity smile, but somehow, I feel like they take pleasure in that little dig.

But they don’t realize I am Terran too.

They’ll pay for that.

“Soleria are a lot of trouble,” the third says, but his voice trails off. He’s not the one in charge.

I glance over their shoulders as I stand. One of the four in the back of the room is a female Ferocity. I don’t know how I know since they are so similar. But I know. It’s like how you can tell identical twins apart if they’re standing side by side. So, as with every other Ferocity crew I’ve encountered, there is only one female.

Elle told me that all Ferocity were once Soleria, and the reason why Soleria have no males is because all the males became Ferocity once the Soleria developed the ability to self-pollinate.

So, there aren’t many Ferocity females or they aren’t given many opportunities to go to space.

“Take her to the brig,” the leader says.

I don’t resist.

I’m pretty sure my hands can melt almost anything, or I can use the shadow power and become hidden and sneak out of whatever jail they put me in. Unless it’s one of those blue force fields they used in the Key West lighthouse.

But it doesn’t matter.

I need information.

I stop the illusion, letting my hair and eyes return to their natural blonde and blue while revealing the points on my ears.

I follow the Ferocity in front of me. It’s surprising how quickly you get over being upside down. My head doesn’t even hurt. Again, because there is no up in space.

At the far end of the cargo bay, before the galley, there is a doorway. I didn’t notice it on my ship before.

My captor places his hand on a touch screen. It activates, opening a sliding door. Like everything else on this ship, the door and walls are a brown Ferocity iron, made from the lava of their home world.

“Stay back,” the Ferocity commands, shouting into a dark room.

He waves me forward.

I step into the chamber, and the door closes behind me.

I wait a moment for my bioluminescent eyes to adjust.

There’s a girl in the corner.

She turns away from me, shielding her eyes.

I adjust my radiance, but not before I see the gills behind her ears.

She’s a Wydran.

SOLSTAR BEACON

S07Y 028D. Fieri.

SOLSTICE

It’s lit

Waiting for you

To come home

Can you see it

The last light

Calling to you

Guiding you

To me

I step toward the other prisoner. She cowers. “I won’t hurt you,” I say. I reduce the light emanating from by body so that only my eyes glow.

The Wydran girl looks back at me.

“You’re Soleria,” she says.

I nod as I kneel near her.

“Is it true?” she asks.

“Is what true?”

“That your world is gone? That your ship is gone?”

“Yes.”

“How did you survive?”

“What’s your name?” I counter.

“Hali,” she says. “I’m from the Wydra System. What’s yours?”

My name is dangerous. For me and for those that know it.

“Ice,” I say. That’s what they used to call me at dance back in Lexington. “How can you be out of the water?” Don’t all Wydran live in the sea?

But then she reminds me of the history Elle taught me.

“We have lungs too,” Hali says. “We spend our teens out of the oceans to develop them.”

“Why are you here?” Like most Wydran, her skin has a hint of blue mixed with the gray, and her hair is like a dark green or navy. Her ears are tiny and are located just in front of her gills. Her skin is shiny, almost dolphin like.

She reminds me of someone I saw in a dream once.

“The solitaires,” she says. “The Ferocity think I can bear one.”

Good thing I hid them all except for mine.

“Why?” I ask.

Hali turns toward me. “I was born on Terra,” she says. “But they stole me from Wydro.”

You’re born into your clan, I say to myself. But I don’t know how a Terran produces a Wydran.

She answers as if I’ve spoken aloud. “My mother was the daughter of an elemental.”

We need to escape.

I don’t have time to draw family trees, but I’m guessing she is the daughter of Kaylani, Lani, Jordin, and Baer’s daughter. She could also be related to Kase and Baer’s son, Kason.

There’s no way I could know everything that happened while I was in stasis in the sun pod.

Like who hooked up with who and had kids. Sounds like I missed a whole generation during the big sleep.

So, I guess.

“Your mom was Kaylani?”

“Yes. You knew her?” she asks. “I was taken away by a woman named Kyra as a young girl.”

“We need to escape right now, Hali.”

“I think I know who you are,” she says. She looks up at a camera in the corner and then whispers, “But they can’t know. Otherwise, they’ll never let us out.”

They won’t let us out anyway, but she’s right, no good can come from them learning my real name.

I can probably melt the door with some sunray hands, but that would be pretty much announcing who I was.

Hali stands up. She runs her hands along the gray walls. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here.”

“Do they let you out?” I ask.

“For the bathroom.”

My attention wanders as I consider again how I don’t have to go all the time anymore or even eat. I’m becoming more Soleria every day. Maybe being in space or just off Terra has accelerated things.

I’m like a plant, which means any waste I need to get rid of evaporates—I sweat it out—or falls off my skin like dead bark.

I know I should be thinking up escape plans, but sloughing off dead bark seems so gross, I smell my pits. They don’t stink. I guess plants and trees don’t stink.

“Ice?” Hali asks.

“Sorry,” I say, “my mind wanders a lot. I’ve been alone a long time.”

“Where’s your ship?”

“Attached to this one.”

Hali stands between me and the camera in the corner, so whoever is watching us can’t see her lips. She whispers, “We can make a break for it when they come to let me go to the bathroom.”

“They’ll expect that,” I say, staring at the floor. If I put my hand over my mouth, they’ll know we are plotting.

“Exactly,” she says. “But there are only seven.”

“There’s always seven on the Ferocity ships,” I say.

“Right.” She extends her arm. “Try to grab onto me. I’m so slippery.”

I touch her arm. Her gray skin is moist and slick. “You’re like a dolphin.”

“Is that good?” Hali asks. “I’m covered in a secretion that keeps me moist.”

“Mucus?” I ask.

It must be the same word in Wydran because she says, “Yes, secretion.”

I don’t even know how my mouth knows how to make Wydran words. But I think I pretty much confirmed she’s covered in snot.

“I’ve got to ask,” I say. “I don’t know Wydran, but my ears somehow help me understand what you are saying and translate words as you speak, but also allow me to talk in your language. How do I sound on your end?”

“Like a Soleria, I guess,” Hali says. “But we don’t speak the same language underwater. We have a surface language and a language for the ocean. Sound travels differently there. We use high-pitched sounds and clicks that travel farther with less distortion.”

“So how will the secretion help us escape?” I ask.

“Try to hold onto me.”

I can’t. She is super slippery.

“Are you wearing clothes?” I ask. I turn up the illumination in my eyes. She turns away, and I apologize immediately.

She definitely is not wearing clothes.

“Nope. But don’t worry. I know other clans like to cover up. Most of our external organs are hidden under folds and flaps.”

I suppose that’s also like dolphins.

I remember my days at Daddyless Daughter Camp before the Firegale. I was in the Dragon group and I hated the Dolphins. They were always so excited about everything. And such know-it-alls.

Corona knows everything.

I can’t be the dumbest one on the ship.

“Can you speak anything besides Terran”—American-English— “or the two Wydran dialects?”

“No.”

“Okay.” That’s definitive proof she doesn’t know everything. “How far are we from Wydro?”

“How would I know?” Hali says. “Wydran don’t leave their home world.”

“You did.”

“I was taken off Wydro by the Ferocity. They’re visiting all the planets, looking for potential bearers. Once they elect a new emperor, it’s only going to get worse.”

“How did you get off Terra?” I ask.

“A Ferocity ship came when I was kid, and they brought me to Wydro. They said they were honoring the treaty from the Sixth Seven-Clan Civil War. They did the same to the others that they could find. They brought Aerynn to Airo and Braeger to Aetha Prime.”

“How did the Ferocity capture you a second time?”

“They decided like seven years later they wanted me back. They returned to Wydro a few weeks ago and threatened to burn the place if I didn’t give myself up. They flew all around the planet blasting over this loudspeaker for days, asking for the descendent of the Terran Elementals.”

“What can they burn on Wydro? Nothing is flammable.”

“Wydran are.”

“How did they know to look for you originally on Terra?” I ask.

“The Ferocity know there were survivors on Terra. They came back every few years to harvest other parts of the planet.”

“Why didn’t they burn the survivors?”

“The only solitaire bearers left in the galaxy are Terran,” Hali says. “At least that’s what the Ferocity think. But I’ve never even seen a gemstone, let alone held one.”

Narista gathered the stones as everyone died. So, Hali was born after Lani and Jordin were dead. I have mine. Baer’s is buried with him in Austin. Narista’s went out to the Gulf. And the rest I scattered. The Earth gem is in Boston, the Fire gem in St. Louis, the Water gem in Lexington, and the Air gem in Portsmouth.

“The Ferocity know that some descendants of the bearers left Terra,” Hali says.

We’ve been staring at each other for two minutes trying to hide our lips and whispering, so I suggest we move to the corner. Once we sit and are sure the camera can’t really see us, I ask, “How do you know all this?”

“The Ferocity aren’t great whisperers,” she says. “I overhear things.”

“How do they know the Elementals survived, that they had kids?” I ask.

“They found a Fire elemental descendent on Terra. He told them everything.”

“But how’d they find you on Wydro,” I ask. “Isn’t it like a pretty big place.”

“I gave myself up. I can’t have them burning a bunch of Wydran just for me.”

I can work with that.

She’s brave and selfless.

“Let’s speak Terran from now on,” I say. “You don’t know the Ferocity language, so I’m guessing they spoke to you in Wydran.”

“Yes.”

“Well, maybe they don’t know Terran. Let’s make a plan.”

But the universe is funny.

Our chance to escape comes too early.

A voice outside the door says, “Step back. Bathroom break.”

“It’s now or never,” I say. “When they open the door, close your eyes.”

SOLAR CELL

S07Y 028D. Beyond the Sol System.

SOLSTICE

I’m a battery for the machine

With my polarity inversed

I scrapped my plan to remain anonymous. It’s time for the universe to know the Soleria still live. At least one of them.

When the Ferocity guard opens the door to our cell, I say, “Hali, turn away.”

“What?” the Guard asks.

I open my palms and flash a burst of light. I don’t want to kill them, so I don’t use the sunrays. It’s been a while, but I try to remember how the solarplosion used to work. I imagine the invisible shock wave in my mind. I picture the sun and the wave that rides ahead of a solar flare. Energy but no heat.

My body releases the shock wave.

It lifts three Ferocity off the ground, knocking them toward the cargo bay.

“Run to the center,” I say to Hali. “There’s an open dock between our ships.”

Corona sticks her head up from the hole in the floor where the two ships are docked. “Come with me,” she says to Hali.

I turn back toward the cell.

From the bridge balcony above, three more Ferocity aim flame torches at us.

It’s an empty threat.

And stupid.

Nobody sets the inside of their ship on fire.

I wait in the middle of the cargo bay, daring them to fire. “Well?”

They were bluffing. They lower their weapons and move toward the stairs.

I call forth a gift of Narista’s, casting a shadow at the top of the Ferocity iron stairs. All three of them trip. They roll down the stairs, and I hear more than a few cracks.

They land on the cargo bay floor ten feet from me. All three groan, but they’re not getting up anytime soon.

Hali’s already gone down the hole. Which is really up if we are inverted. I think.

“Hurry,” Corona says.

“There’s a seventh,” I say.

“No, I took care of her.”

I run toward the docking port, following Corona down.

At the bottom, the seventh Ferocity is unconscious.

“You didn’t listen to me,” I say. “You were supposed to hide.”

“Heroes don’t stand still,” Corona says.

She’s robbing things I’ve said from the databank of my head that she has in hers.

In between the two ships, the three of us invert and push off the wall toward the Rising Sun.

As we float upward—sorry, there is no up—I ask if we can make the jump to the slipstream.

“Yes,” Corona says. “That’s why I came on board. The ships are parting. The election is complete, and the Ferocity captains are yielding to the new empress.”

“Who’d they pick?” I ask. Like I would know any Ferocity. But what I am thinking really is, OMG they elected a woman? Only one-seventh of their population is female.

We enter the Rising Sun. Corona calls up a pink and blue display over the core on her wrist. After verifying we have a clear path, she blinks, communicating with the forward prominence, telling our ship to engage and ride the nearest wave out of Ferocity space and toward the Sol System.

I don’t know how I know what she is doing because she does it too fast, but like before, I imagine she is in my mind, despite my instructions not to be, telepathically explaining what is going on.

“To the bridge,” I say. And I add, “Hali, this is Corona. Corona, this is Hali.”

While we race up the stairs, Hali says, “This is just like a Ferocity ship.”

“Not on the outside,” I say. “It’s silvolden. The Rising Sun is Soleria, Terran, and Ferocity, just like the symbol—the Aurora Brand—on the outside.”

On the bridge, I sit in the front left seat and Corona in the right.

Hali sits behind Corona.

“Hang on,” I say. “We’re going surfing.”

Corona taps the display, keying in the coordinates of where we are going.

She looks at me and says, “The signal. I don’t have it decoded, but I’ve got the origin narrowed down.”

“Where?”

“At the center of the Nemar System.”

“Do it,” I say. “Do it now.”

She decouples from the Ferocity ship and spins the Rising Sun around one hundred eighty degrees.

All of the Ferocity ships are parting, leaving a direct path for the new empress’s ship toward their home world of Fieri.

It’s like the perfect runway for us.

Corona steers the Rising Sun into the pathway and accelerates to orbital speed.

“We’re going to hit them,” Hali says, pointing at the viewport.

“Strap in,” I tell her.

We race at the lone ship in our way, flanked by the other ships in a long row on either side.

“Angle up,” I say. There’s no reason why Corona has to play chicken. We’re not on a Terran roadway. Space is more than 2D. We could get away just as easily be leaving on a parallel path above the other ship.

Corona pulls her strawberry-blonde hair away from her face and smirks at me. She’s testing out a new emotion—thrill.

“But we don’t have to,” she says. “Don’t look.”

We race right at the Ferocity ship.

Hali screams as we close the distance.

I want to look away, but I can’t.

I always have to look, especially if someone says, don’t look.

A second before we collide, the Rising Sun makes the jump into the slipstream and the Ferocity ship disappears. We catch a wave leaving Fieri, pulling us toward the Ferocity star, Feroxima, and the Aetha and Eartari stars beyond that.

“What happened?” Hali asks.

“We’re riding ocean waves,” I say, “except we’re in space.”

“I angled up at the last second,” Corona says. “We can’t go through them. We accelerated to a much higher speed. It only looks like they disappeared because we’re going so fast.”

Wydran don’t travel in space often, so Hali asks, “Why don’t we feel like we are going fast?”

“Look at the viewports,” I say.

We are slowly passing stars, twinkling like little lights on either side of us, while getting closer to some in front of us.

“The stars are just really far apart,” I say. “Trust me, we are going super-fast. But we can still hit things. Corona knows that. She was just having a little fun. But she’s made all the calculations to get us to the Nemar System. She did it before we left. It’s perfectly safe.”

I want to let Hali in on the whole Corona-is-not-alive thing, but she kind of feels alive to me, and it’s up to Corona anyway to say something.

She stands and shimmers in front of Hali. Allowing a glitch to run through her projection, she becomes momentarily translucent. “I’m pure energy,” she says.

“Whoa, Hali says, “that just proves it.”

“What?” I ask.

“Solstice,” Hali says, saying my name for the first time. “You have to be. You are the Solstice Dayton. Nobody else pulls all this off. Fancy ship. Holographic copilot. Elemental gifts.”

“Corona did the hard work,” I say, but I don’t know what the legend of me is. “I’ve been asleep for a long time, in stasis for decades.”

“That explains still looking young,” Hali says, like she’s trying to get her mind around being near someone she’s heard about on her home world and from the people who raised her on Terra.

I don’t bother to explain that I don’t age.

Some girls get all the gifts. It’s not easy being me, but I know it’s not fair either to have such a confluence of powers.

“While you were gone,” Corona says, shifting topics, “I figured out the whole weapon thing. I modified the Solarity so that you can channel your sunrays through the dash.”

“What?” I ask.

A holographic display of pink gloves appears in front of me.

“Slip your hands in there,” Corona says. “You can release sunrays through them, and it channels the energy into focused beams beyond the Rising Sun.”

I don’t ask how. I already know Corona is a wiz at pretty much anything.

“Range?”

“As far as you can see,” she says. “But it can only be done at orbital speed, not in the slipstream, and you have to face the target. I’ll work out the kinks later.”

“Kinks?” Hali says, amazed.

“Her chair needs to pivot,” Corona says, “so she can fire in all directions, and of course, we don’t want to be limited to sub-slipstream speeds.”

“Of course,” I say. But we are the only ones who travel the slipstream. The thing is, if I stop every time I don’t get something, I’d never get anywhere. And we can’t stop. So I move on. That’s like being mindful or acceptance or something.

Whatever.

“Anybody get it in?” I ask, moving on.

“No, but they tried,” Corona says. “I modulated the Solarity, increasing the energy projected over the hatch by an extra 10 percent.”

“Good one,” I say.

“How do you even deal with this?” Hali asks. “You were born on Terra like me. And I know things were better when you grew up, pre-apocalypse and all, but there was never technology like this.”

“True,” I say. “The trick, Hali, is not to think about it too hard. Corona has our backs, and she teaches me things as she can.”

“It’ll take a few hours to get to the Nemar System,” Corona says. “Do you want to lie down or something?”

Hali doesn’t seem to get that Corona’s talking about her.

So, I look at Hali.

“Me?” she asks. “No way. I want to go home. I don’t want to go see the dark star. Nothing ever good happens near Nemesis.”

“You know you can’t go home,” I say. It’s a rough blow, but it’s better to get it all out now. “The Ferocity will just hunt you down again on Wydro or Terra.”

“It’ll be worse now,” Corona says.

Like an idiot, I ask why, even if I really don’t want to know.

“Because,“ Corona says, “the Ferocity elected Pyrellax.”

SHE

S07Y 029D. Beyond the Sol System.

SOLSTICE

The Machine’s children

Are in our palms

Controlling us

She is pleased

We fly below the Sol System on our way to the Nemar System. There’s no need to go through it. A lot of systems are disc-shaped. Corona is adapting faster than I can imagine. By avoiding Saturn and Terra, she’s saving me and Hali some heartache.

“Thanks,” I say when we pass under Sol. I don’t know how I can tell it’s her, she just looks like a spot of light in the white polka-dotted black skirt of space, but I can tell when we are near my home star.

"No problem,” Corona says. “It’ll be safer anyway.”

“What?” Hali asks.

“We’re avoiding the Sol System,” I say.

“It’s on the way to Nemesis?”

“Yes. At least the wave we’re riding is pushing us that way. But like with any wave, you can steer left or right as you ride it to shore.”

The seven different systems line up in different orders over time, and at this moment they are basically forming a circle in our branch of the Milky Way Galaxy in the following order: Sol, Aetha, Aira, Eartari, Feroxima, Wydra, and Nemesis. Based on the slipstream waves, we can cut across the circle or move around the perimeter. I know this because I am studying a pink and blue screen in front of me, and also because of the successive variations of the song I’ve been singing in my head for years.

Sun igniting

Aether throwing

Air whirling

Earth growing

Fire burning

Water flowing

Terra dazing

Nether knowing

Soon will rise,

As the world is dwindling

Seven solitaire

Ancient elements kindling

Sol and Nemesis are binary stars, so it makes sense that they are side by side in a circle. But Aira is out of place, in the middle of the ternary star system of Aetha, Eartari, and Feroxima when I know it is not.

“Why is Aira out of place?” I ask. “How can it be in the middle of the triple-star system?”

“Think in three dimensions,” Corona says. She flicks her fingers over my screen, and the image of the systems lining up like a circle becomes a sphere. Both Aira and Wydra are on the top of the sphere and Nemesis and Sol are on the bottom of the sphere, with the other three stars in the middle.

From the top, it looks like Aira is in between the others when it isn’t really.

“Oh,” I say.

My head hurts.

You can learn too much at once.

Still, I need to learn more.

“How did Pyrellax get elected?” I say. “I mean, shouldn’t she have been the heir anyway if he had no children?”

Corona doesn’t respond.

“And she was dead,” I say. “D-E-A-D.”

Thing was, I never checked her pulse. Not that I would know where to find a Ferocity pulse. And I kept thinking how good she looked. She aged like from twenty-one to thirty-one, but she totally looked good.

“She was in a deep sleep,” Corona says.

“You knew?” I ask, “that the pods can keep someone alive without a Solitaire?”

“It buys us time,” she says. “And yes. I suspect there is some residue energy left behind by Fusion’s stone in the pod.”

“And maybe a little good will,” Hali says. “The survivors used to talk about Pyrellax on Terra, but they used a different name.”

“Stacy Pyre,” I say. “She tortured my mother’s lover, Nemesis, Narista’s mom. And then she infiltrated the resistance to Nadir.”

“Narista was not fond of her,” Hali says.

“That seems to be a thing with the Ferocity,” I say, “to infiltrate and pit one faction against another. Baer’s own stepbrother was a Ferocity, as were others from my youth, even some that aided us in the War of the Dazed. It was all a master plan, or at least a bunch of alternatives to that plan, designed to get seven of us in the pods with the solitaires.”

“It was well played,” Corona says. “But it’s not the end. And the Ferocity will be delayed further now.”

“How so?” I ask.

“The Ferocity are a patriarchy,” Corona says. “The election of a female is a big deal. She was the oldest child and had already been passed over in lieu of Cyrelax. Not every faction will accept her ascendancy.”

Hali tell us she heard the stories on Terra before she left. How Baer killed Cyrelax and how I took Pyrellax away, buying my friends time to live out their lives. “I’m alive because of you,” she says. “If the Ferocity hadn’t been defeated and then caught got caught up in succession plans, they would have returned to Terra and killed us all.”

But they did return to Terra for periodic burns. Maybe they just kept hitting France or something and avoided America. Everybody knows the Americans were all sorts of trouble in the War of the Evolved. And the Ferocity were basically paralyzed with internal politics for seventy-seven years and just ended up electing the same person that would have succeeded anyway.

“I listened to her acceptance speech,” Corona says.

“When?” Hali asks.

“While we’ve been talking.”

“She’s a great multitasker,” I say. “Don’t think too hard. Just go with it.” I glance at Corona. “What did she say?”

“She promised to hunt you down and recover all seven solitaires and burn stuff. And, of course, produce a male heir.”

“Burn stuff?”

“I’m summarizing,” Corona says. “She’s pissed and she hates you for whatever you did to her brother.”

“Oh.”

“But she owes you, I bet,” she adds. “You got her elected, dropping her off like that. And not killing her in her sleep. She’ll give us a head start and then kill us in glorious fashion.”

“That’s a bit cynical,” Hali says.

“No,” Corona says, “just good politics.”

“Great,” I say. “So, I do the right thing, dropping off the body, and it literally wakes up and turns on me again.”

“Ferocity are like that,” Corona says, and then quotes one of their stupid sayings. “‘Burn it. Burn it all.’”

I wave my hands over the blue screen, making the pink planet display disappear. I don’t want to think about it.

I want to know about life on Terra and my friends.

I turn to Hali. “Tell me about Kaylani and Kyra.”

STATIC HAZE

S07Y 029D. Beyond the Sol System.

SOLSTICE

Headphone induced daze dream

Waking to music paused

Yields static tiny screams

Crackling echoes of thoughts

Suppressed by the machine

I tie my hair up into space buns—little balls on both sides of my head. It seems about right. I need the silver, pink, and blonde mess out of my face so I can focus on Hali. I want to know about Kyra first and then Kaylani. Kyra was the closest thing I had to a little sister, one of two girls who served me as a second in command, and Kaylani was like a daughter to me in a dreamlife I led.

I ask how Kyra died, but I know right away that’s a mistake, so I call for a take-back and instead say, “Tell me how Kyra lived.”

“Most of us lived in Austin near the beach before I was taken. We didn’t make any attempt to rebuild. That was your thing, they said, in the Everglades, and that any sign of life would attract attention.”

I need context.

“How old are you now?” I ask. I move from my pilot’s chair to the second row so I can look at her.

“Twenty,” she says. “But we stopped counting or didn’t keep track real well. There were only five grandchildren.”

I make the list in my head. There were seven Elementals: me, Baer, Lani, Kase, Fusion, Jordin, and Narista. And there were seven other Terran survivors from the Sixth Seven-Clan Civil War: Kyra, Selene—Baer’s dog—Kaylani, Kason, Eyrn, an unknown child, and Eos.

“Who’s your father?” I ask.

“Raith,” Hali says. “He was the unknown child, the random person you saved from the Ferocity assault.”

“All right,” I say. “Give me the rundown on who mated with who and how the survivors ended up with fire grandchildren.

“And Corona,” I add. “Take notes. I’m going to need to call this up once in a while to get things straight.”

“I’ll start with the first generation,” Hali says. “Baer and Jordin’s daughter was my mother, Kaylani. Baer and Kase’s son was Kason. Baer and Robynn’s daughter was Brynn.”

Corona interrupts. “Wasn’t Baer your boyfriend?” she asks me.

“Yes,” I say. I try to smile. “Soleria and Nemar don’t have children very often, and Baer had the capacity to love many people.”

Hali smirks. “That’s putting a nice spin on it.”

I nod. Baer is what he is and so am I.

“Lani and Jordin had no children,” Hali goes on. “Lani and Eos had a child named Coleos.”

“Ugh,” I say, thinking of my sister. “Eos cheated on Narista?”

“No,” Hali says. “It was done with her blessing. She and Eos couldn’t have children, and there were other children outside of the couples.”

“Like who?” I ask.

“Kase and Eos had a child named Kaseos. And Fusion and Jordin had a child they named Annie after her sister.”

“Anyone else?” I ask.

“Fusion and Kase had twins, a boy and a girl, Fisian and Fasian. The girl died before I was old enough to know her.”

In my head, I’m making a tree. “Okay. So, Hali, your parents were Kaylani and Raith, and you’re water clan, right?”

“Correct,” she says. “And boy, were they surprised to see me. At least that’s what they told me when I was older. I was the first to look more like their clan than their parents.”

“And who are the four other survivors, the other grandchildren?”

“Braeger is the son of Kason and Brynn.”

“Aren’t they cousins?” I ask. “Baer was both their fathers.”

“Correct,” Hali says.

She gives me a don’t-judge look and then continues.

“Coleos and Eryn, Kase’s dazer daughter, had a daughter named Aerynn. And like me, looked like her clan but tanner. She’s got the webbed skin under her armpits and claw-like feet, like all Airans.

“Krya mated with Fision, but she had to wait like twenty years because they were off by a generation. My parents told me she was pregnant when she left to go live on her boat. Her girls would be my age. Narista was convinced she was going to have triplets. She could hear three little voices bouncing around in the womb with her telepathy. Krya hid them most of the time I was on Terra, but their names were Syra, Nyra, and Fyra. Only Fyra ever came ashore. And I think that was because she’d jump off her mom’s boat anytime they were near. They sailed the world.”

Hali paused for a breath and then said, “There was one more. Kaseos and Annie had a son named Everet, but I never knew him either.

“None of our parents had powers like the elementals. I think it made them feel safe. Like the Ferocity wouldn’t attack again. But all the grandparents outlived their children. The stones kept them younger for longer. Life was hard on Terra, and not all of our parents died naturally. There were fights. Fision and Fasion killed each other. It’s part of the reason why Kyra left.”

I’m glad Kyra found someone, but my brain feels broken. In the end, I tell myself, all I have to remember is the five that survived, a new Pentad: Braeger, Aerynn, Everet, Fyra, and Hali.

I say the names out loud. “Braeger, Aerynn, Everet, Fyra, and Hali.” I don’t know how powers are passed down, but I’ll bet my ship these are the five kids that can bear the solitaires. If I’m ever going to win the Seventh Seven-Clan Civil War, I’ll need to find them. “Aether, Air, Earth, Fire, and Water,” I say, guessing their clans.

If I’m still the Sun, that means all I have to figure out is the Nether.

Corona interrupts. “Picking up the signal again.”

“Can you make it out?” I ask.

“It’s just static.” She calls up a series of sine waves on the display and runs her hands across the pink humps. “The signal has been amplified. It’s the result of many frequencies overlaid.”

“Are you sure of the origin?” I ask.

“Definitely from the Nemar System.”

To Corona’s right, a red light flashes on her holographic display.

“Is it the Ferocity?” Hali asks.

I return to my seat and swipe left on my display. “I don’t think so.” I call up the short-range aft camera. “We’ve got a tail again. The same one as last time.”

A transmission comes through from the tail, something about Braeger.

Hali’s eyes light up.

“Do you want to try out the new weapons array?” Corona asks. “It’ll give me a chance to work on the swivel action of your seat and coordinate the movements with the Solarity. But we’d have to drop out of the slipstream and wait for them to catch up.”

“What?” Hali asks.

“Remember the pink gloves?” I say. “I stick my hands in them, and Corona has figured out how to release my sunray gift by channeling the energy field—the Solarity—that surrounds the Rising Sun, but the limit is that we can only face forward. Which kind of sucks if you’re attacked from behind.”

I look at Corona. “Sorry, no offense,” I say after totally offending her. “It’s a technological marvel.”

“But,” Corona says, “if she spins in her chair with the gloves on, she’s liable to accidentally blow a hole in our cargo bay.”

“Not good?” Hali says.

“Not good,” I say.

“So, do you want to calibrate the pink gloves and chair?” Corona asks.

“First of all,” I say, “we are not calling the pink glove sunray harnessing things pink gloves anymore. I love pink, but you can’t go into battle with a weapon called pink gloves. So, we’re going to call them sunblasters. And second of all, we are not going to calibrate the sunblasters on Braeger. Because that’s who’s following us. And we need him. Weren’t you even listening to the family tree? And we are not dropping out of the slipstream to start a fight. If our tail catches up, he catches up.”

“I was taking notes on the family tree like you asked,” Corona says, and flashes one of her fake I’m trying too hard to be Terran smiles.

“Braeger,” Hali sighs. “I really don’t want you to blast him.”

I already know what she’s going to say, and despite the fact that they are like second cousins and of the eight grandparents between Braeger and Hali, Baer was three of them.

I used to be a sage until my twenty-first Soleria birthday, but I can’t see the future anymore.

Not since I played around with the slipstream so much.

Or just plain aged out.

Call it women’s intuition, but I still know what Hali is going to say.

“He’s my boyfriend.”

SMOLDER

S07Y 030D. Beyond the Sol System.

SOLSTICE

The fire will never be satisfied

Burn burn burn

Burn it all, never subside

Jump borders and spread worldwide

Forbidden love is the worst. So, I’m not going to the one to remind Hali that her parents are Raith, whose parents we don’t know, and Kaylani, whose parents were Baer and Jordin. And that Braeger’s parents were Brynn and Kason, whose parents were—respectively—Baer and Robynn and Baer and Kase.

Hali is waiting for me to say something about her boyfriend revelation.

Ugh. This is not going to be on me. That’s just going to make Hali want Braeger more. I can only hope that now she’s off Terra and seen some hot Wydran, she will find some good Wydran boy or girl to settle down with.

Aetha are the worst.

They are not the least bit faithful. Their whole culture is inwardly facing. They live on Aetha Prime and their biggest hero is called the Prime Aetha.

Prime. Prime. Prime. Me. Me. Me.

It should be called the Prime Alpha.

The Aether really are the worst.

Even if I loved—still love—Baer and they are my most well-equipped ally.

We don’t have time for this kind of crap.

After all, we have to save the galaxy.

“Okay. So no blasting boyfriends,” I say to Hali, reassuring her. I need to remind myself what it is like to be Terran because I’m starting to feel all Aether are unlovable, especially Baer. Soleria don’t love, not that often, and I don’t want to lose the ability to love. Otherwise, I’ll never understand what Hali’s talking about.

Besides, I’m the last of the Terran Elementals. And despite the fact that Hali and I look the same age, I’m the grandparent around here.

And I want to love again too, someday. “I need to eat and drink,” I say, just because I need to do something very Terran now. If I don’t, I’ll have absolutely no understanding of what Hali is feeling—love—and I’ll do something stupid like say, What are you, stupid?

“Good,” Hali says. “Out of the ocean, I need to drink like a quarter of my weight every day.”

She’s short and trim with a thick layer of wet gray skin. I bet she’s like a hundred and twenty pounds. A quarter of that is thirty pounds. There’s like eight pounds of water to each gallon. She needs four gallons per day. Terrans need eight eight-ounce glasses per day, i.e., half a gallon. Got to stay hydrated, otherwise you go crazy. That’s like rule 1b.

“Wow,” I say. That’s a lot of water.

“Just on the days I don’t swim,” she adds.

“Let’s go have some lunch,” I say. I flash a smile. “And we can talk about installing a hot tub in the cargo bay for you.

“You all set?” I ask Corona as I stand. “You can join us if you want.”

“I’m going to work on that Nemar signal,” she says.

“What about our tail?” I ask.

“Technically, he’s not tailing us, like you said,” Corona says. “His ship can’t match our speed. It’s possible he’s picked up the Nemar signal too. And he may have seen us, but he won’t be able to contact us until we are subslipstream speed, and even then, he’ll have to be close.”

“I think I prefer real surfing,” I say. “It was a lot less complicated.”

I lead Hali from the bridge, past the pods to the balcony, and then down the stairs into the galley. She lingers near the pods for a minute but doesn’t say anything. She’s probably heard the stories from her parents and grandparents.

“What are you going to do about Braeger?” she asks as we take a couple of supsdelites from the cabinet. “I know it’s weird and all…”

“I’m not the boss of you,” I say. And I’m going to leave it at that for now. We can’t control who we love. I know that better than anyone.

I add some water to Hali’s pork supsdelite, and we watch it rise and warm. She picks at it with her fork. “Got any fish?”

“No,” I say. Thank god. Pork supsdelite is the worst, but fish supsdelite has to be far worser, even if that isn’t a word which is fine because supsdelite isn’t a word either. It used to stand for super-small dehydrated lightweight ration.

She takes a bite of the pork and then downs glasses of water as fast as I can fill them. At around sixty-four ounces, I point at the sink and say, help yourself.

“Do you have a shower?” she asks.

“There might be one in the downstairs bathroom.” I point across the table. I haven’t showered in like three centuries. Or at least seventy-seven years.

I think I need to take one.

“Don’t waste all the water,” I say as she stands. I add, “It’s all just recycled pee or whatever,” in an attempt to shorten the time she’ll be in there.

“So’s the ocean,” Hali says.

She’s right. They must be swimming in each other’s pee all the time, especially if they’re all in a school together.

While I do the dishes, she heads to the bathroom.

I wonder what a shower is like in space. I need to try it soon now that I’ve tried doing dishes. Which I’ll never do again. I don’t think I did the dishes once in the apocalypse, and I don’t feel like I should have to do them in space, even if I have to pull the princess card. Umm. Sorry. Galactic princesses don’t do dishes. I should get Hali do them.

Hali spends like thirty minutes in the shower, and she’s glistening when she gets out. Her skin looks twice as slimy. I study her for a moment, noticing that her feet and hands are webbed.

“All yours,” she says. “I feel so much better. Are you sure it’s self-contained?”

“We waste nothing on this ship,” I say. “It’s all recycled.”

“Good,” she says. “Then you won’t mind if I am in twice as long tomorrow. Oh, and I’ll be in charge of the dishes from now on. Princesses shouldn’t have to do that.”

Did I telepathically put that thought about dishes in Hali’s head? Is that something I can do? Thought suggestion sounds like an evil power.

It also sounds wicked fun.

When Hali heads back up to the bridge, I go into the bathroom. I take one step and my legs go out under from me like I’m in a banana-peel cartoon. There’s water everywhere, and the floor is super slimy. I say secretion in my head, like that’s any better than saying Hali’s mucus. There are no towels anywhere but there’s a big square silver button in the middle of the silvolden walls. I press it, hoping it’s not the escape pod jettison button or the “Help, I can’t get up” button. Air comes at me from all sides. In no time, all the water is pushed toward the drains.

In like five minutes, the bathroom is nearly dry, and that includes my butt, which got all wet when I fell.

I strip, turn the water on, and climb in.

I’m still wearing Robynn’s bathing suit as underwear.

That must be a record for the universe.

I look at the black top and bottom on the floor. Maybe it’s time to move on.

The shower reminds me of the ocean and the beach on the Gulf in Austin. I can see all their faces. All the ones that finished out their days there. At least the ones I knew. I linger for a moment, trying to remember Kyra and Kaylani. I never saw Kyra grow old, but I knew Kaylani as a baby and as an old woman.

But I’m just stalling.

I see Narista and then Baer’s face, and I cry.

I slide down to the bottom the shower and grab my knees, just holding myself. I’m not that girl yet. Despite all I’ve been through, I’m not ready to save this new generation from the Ferocity slaughter—or lose them. Because I failed pretty bad last time.

So, I break it down like Baer taught me long ago.

I know where the solitaires are on Terra.

I have Hali.

Braeger is close.

I need to find the Nemar and the signal we’re receiving is the key to that, I am sure. And we’re on our way there.

After that, I need to find Fyra, Everet, and Aerynn.

I spend like twenty-nine minutes in the shower, and I emerge, if not a new woman, then at least a better-smelling woman with a plan.

I crawl into my sleep quarters, close my eyes, and sleep.

STILL MASKED

S07Y 031D. Beyond the Sol System.

SOLSTICE

Beneath the mask

These blue eyes

Still search

For meaning

Beneath the mask

I am just flesh and bone

Trapped by weakness

There’s an elephant in the room. It’s either me or the thing hidden in plain sight around my neck.

“Can I see yours?” Hali asks when we’re all on the bridge.

We’re coming up on the Nemar System and we’re out of the slipstream, cruising at what Corona calls orbital speed. It’s like as fast as the closest planet is spinning. Which is all relative, but by matching the speed of the object around us, she’s ensuring we don’t get space sick.

It’s a real thing.

Can you imagine staring out the window at Saturn or something, and it’s going around twice as fast as you. You need a fixed point.

At sea, it’s the horizon. In space, it’s faraway stars.

But up close, it helps to stare at the closest island or planet.

Hali repeats her question.

Anyone who spends time with me has to do that a lot.

I’m still such a daydreamer, narrating my life in my head.

“My solitaire?” I ask.

She’s knows I’m the Solstice Dayton.

I touch the necklace around my neck, the one that looks like an S, and I say my grandmother’s name to myself. Solterra. The necklace glows, and the silvolden metal hiding the gem seemingly fades away.

I stand and lean over Hali so she can get a better look.

The bridge glows brighter by the light of the Solstar.

She’s mesmerized.

To see a Soleria once in your lifetime is rare.

To see one that bears a gem is the stuff of legends.

The shower helped, but the stone reveals whatever natural charms I have and magnifies them incalculably.

Hali starts to cry.

I’ve been called an elf and an angel. And both aren’t that far off. The Soleria are a sight to behold. We are the only blondes in the galaxy. There were so few of us before.

And now there is only one known to be in existence.

From the corner of my eye, I catch Corona’s look of concern.

Hali reaches for the gem while I’m distracted. There’s no malice in her eyes, she just wants to hold it, maybe taste its power.

But other bearers cannot touch other solitaires.

Not without explosions.

So, I do what one would expect.

I punch her in the face.

DAZE

SPINNING WHEELS

S07Y 031D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

I get all revved up

And talk myself into

Circles only to

End up where I

Started

The Punch seems about right. It makes it clear that Hali should never touch any solitaire besides the one from the Water Clan, and even then there is risk. It’s not like there’s a tag under her nonexistent clothes that says, yes, I am the one you seek, I can bear the water gem. There’s only one way to find out if you’re an elemental. If you touch your clan’s solitaire and you don’t die, you passed the test.

I say my mother’s name—Solelena—as I clutch the Solstar, and my grandmother’s necklace activates, covering the solitaire in silvolden metal.

“Ouch,” Hali groans. She shakes her head like she’s coming out of a trance.

“I was starting to lose you there,” I say.

I look up as we approach the outer planet in the Nemar System.

“Hold,” I say to Corona. “I don’t want to venture too far into the system yet. See if you can trace the signal’s origin more definitively.”

“Understood.”

“It’s so beautiful,” Hali says, “like you. I just wanted to touch it.”

“You can’t,” I say. “It’ll kill you even if you can bear the Water solitaire.”

I’m a conduit for the Solstar. The more I wear it, the more power it absorbs. It’s like a battery. It’s the source of my power, as I am its source. The gem predates me, but without me, it is nothing but an inert shiny rock.

Long ago, the Ferocity stole the solitaires that were born in the Sol System. But when the first bearer emerged, the gems started to fall from the sky. My gem, the Solstar, fell on my birthday when the Ferocity returned to Terra for a second burn, ending up in the Everglades along with Narista’s Nemstar, not far from the Sun Tower in Key West. I might have called her gemstone the black light before, and seeing the Nemar System now, with the black star Nemesis in the distance, it sounds right.

The gray Aether moonstone—the Aelite—and the red Fire almandite—the Fevour—fell years earlier, on the day of my birth, ending up near the Sun Tower in Lubec, Maine.

The three remaining gems—the white Air topaz, Airent; blue Water sapphire, Wydrate; and green Earth emerald, Eterr—all returned to Terra when Cyrelax launched the final burn.

All but my solitaire remain on Terra now.

I look out the window at the ninth planet in the Nemar System. It many ways, the Nemar System is like the Sol System. Both of the original inhabitants lived on the seventh planet. Both have belts that count as the fifth planet because they broke up when Saturn and Naturn shifted back in the rotation. And both those planets have rings. I’m pretty sure the ninth planet of the Nemar System is a planet, so if I ever make it back to the Sol System as Queen, I will declare that Pluto is a planet.

Queens can do that.

“How do I know if I can really bear the water gem?” Hali asks.

“You’re going to have to be brave enough to try to hold it. It’ll be harder than it was for Jordin,” I say. “When she first put it on, it had no power, but once it was with her, its strength grew. It’ll kill you or it won’t. I know of no other test.”

“And she wore it all her life,” Hali says.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “To have seven elementals emerge in the same system all at once was unheard of, as I was told by my mother. But I think that was the Ferocity’s fault. They stole the gems as they emerged and then returned them to Terra, or rather, lost them to Terra, all within twenty-one years. And now that the original bearers are dead, I honestly don’t know if a second set of bearers will emerge.”

“We’re all descendants,” Hali says.

I’m not drawing that crazy family tree in my head again, but she’s right.

“Do they make you ever young?” Hali asks.

“I think that’s already in me,” I say. “Your parents and their parents lived short lives by pre-apocalypse Terran standards.”

“And how old are you now?”

“I’ve lived many lives that totaled hundreds of years, but in the slipstream I stayed in, I was asleep, in stasis, for seventy-seven years, in stasis. I feel twenty-one and I look twenty-one.”

“You look a little bit younger,” Corona says, chiming in.

Hali agrees.

“Sixteen,” Corona says.

“Fine,” I say, sighing, like eternal youth and beauty is a curse.

It probably is.

I mean, it is a curse.

I’ve buried or lost everyone I’ve ever loved.

So, it is a curse.

“Why would I want to hold a solitaire?” Hali asks.

Apparently, you are not supposed to take for granted that everyone automatically wants to vanquish evil. My fault for not asking.

“Sorry,” I say. “I should have asked you. I kind of figured you had no choice. If you don’t join me and beat back the Ferocity, they’ll just enslave you and force you to do their will. Our little escape pretty much solidifies their theory that you are destined to bear the water gem.”

“That doesn’t sound like a choice,” Hali says, echoing what I’ve fought against all my life.

“You can change the little things.” I point out the viewport. “It is our destiny to be in the Nemar System now, and yet we chose to orbit the ninth planet. We could have skipped right to number seven, Naturn. But we can’t change the big stuff. When it comes down to it, there are going to be seven solitaires together at the end of the Seventh Seven-Clan Civil War. You can be on my side or the other side, but if you’re the bearer, you won’t escape your destiny.”

“Still doesn’t sound like a choice,” Hali says.

“Do you like hanging out with me and Corona?” I ask. “Because that’s all you have to ask yourself now.”

“Yes,” she says. “It’s better than captivity on the Ferocity ship.”

Corona laughs.

It’s so fake.

Both Hali and I look at her.

“Sorry,” she says. “Was that not the appropriate time for a laugh?”

“No, you’re right,” I say. “It just didn’t seem authentic.”

Corona nods and makes note of my comment in her big brain.

“Anything on that transmission?” I ask.

“It’s coming from the star or an inner planet,” she says.

“Not Naturn?” I ask. I was hoping we’d find some Nemar or Soleria hanging out on the seventh planet.

“No, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone on the planet. The signal doesn’t have to be from those Nemar. It could be from other clans in this system or other Nemar.”

“Or Soleria,” I add. I can’t give up on finding others of my kind.

The dashboard flashes red.

“Proximity alert,” Corona says.

Our sensors don’t tell us what’s on the other side of planets. We need visual confirmation.

We get it in seconds.

A single Ferocity ship emerges from the daylight side of the planet.

SWITCHBOARD ENGAGE

S07Y 031D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

At the control center

Beeps, buzzes, and lights

Scream warning, emergency

Time to act

It is too bad

You are not like a

Switchboard

Telling me when to

Engage

There is no such thing as fire in space. Maybe it’s from the lack of oxygen. But you can have fires inside ships, and you can have explosions, but you can’t have fire floating around in space, nor can you really launch it from another ship.

For like a second, when Corona says, “Don’t worry, their weapons are useless out here,” I am relieved.

The Ferocity ship stares us down but doesn’t bother to try to communicate. It accelerates.

Corona moves Rising Sun to the left and then to the right.

The Ferocity ship inversely matches our directional changes, like we’re looking in a mirror, except the Rising Sun is super cool and silvolden and their ship is a brown peanut.

“What are they doing?” Hali asks.

“Pink gloves,” Corona says. “Now!”

“What?”

She leans to her left and lights up my display, activating the sunblasters. “Put your hands in them,” she says.

Hali pulls her seat buckles over her shoulders. “Ladies, they’re not stopping.” She points at the viewport between me and Corona like we can’t see it.

So, what is a clan of fire-loving world-burners to do in space when they want to take down another ship with fire?

They accelerate to ramming speed. Ferocity iron is the hardest known naturally occurring substance in the galaxy. I’m not sure if it beats energy shields made by the Soleria or Aether, but I don’t want to find out.

“Are they going to hit us?” I ask. It’s my first real space battle, and I’m being all captain calm.

“Engage!” Corona yells.

I didn’t know she could yell, but maybe that’s what I needed.

I slip my hands into the sunblasters.

“Wiggle your fingers,” Corona barks. “Then make two fists.”

After I follow her instructions, two silver-gold cannons—one on each wing—appear to my left and right through the viewports. The Solarity shifts its shape to match my movements. I move my hands left and right, and the cannons rotate, following my movements.

I cross my arms, wondering what the limits of the angles are.

“Don’t do that!” Corona says. “You’ll blast the nose off the Rising Sun.”

She calls up a blue display with her right hand while steering with her left. The other ship, a mile away, is still matching our directional changes like a mirror. She types furiously into the control panel, creating code to establish limits on the sunblasters.

Before I can even uncross my arms, the cannons shift outward, ensuring that I can point only so far toward the nose.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it now,” Hali yells.

“Fire,” Corona says.

I spin my hands one hundred eighty degrees, forcing my palms forward. I release sunbeams from each hand like pulses.

The sunblasters act like conduits and channel the light-heat energy emanating from my palms from inside the ship to the cannons outside.

A beam shoots from each side of the Rising Sun.

I miss the Ferocity ship by more than the distance that separates us.

My aim is awful.

But the beams so look like lasers.

As previously mentioned, I’ve always wanted lasers.

I was once a pretty good archer at DDC.

But this is so different.

I fire again.

I still suck.

I’d be lucky if I could hit the ninth planet of the Nemar System to our left.

We’re out of time.

Collision is imminent.

Hali releases her shoulder straps and, despite both of us yelling at her, stands between the two pilot seats.

She grabs the left and right controls with each hand and pushes them forward, causing the Rising Sun to dive.

We go under the Ferocity ship like a dolphin under a boat.

Before I can think run or circle back, Corona is spinning the Rising Sun around.

“Why would they hit us?” Hali asks.

“Ferocity iron,” I say. “It comes from Fieri, and it’s like the hardest thing in the seven systems. They think they can crush us, but they don’t know our ship is a fusion of a Soleria energy field and one of their ships.”

“They’re coming about,” Corona says. “Hali, sit down. Solstice, focus on their ship. They won’t stop. Ferocity don’t except defeat, just death, and they’re not too happy about that either.”

“Okay,” I say, “but I can’t seem to get the aim down. And no more playing chicken. If we need to evade, then evade.”

“Didn’t you used to be pretty good with a bow?” Corona asks.

“That was seven years ago.” I hold my hands out in front of me, looking down my forearms, trying to line them up, but it’s not intuitive, especially with the pink glow around my hands.

“What’s your dominate eye?” Corona asks.

“What?”

“What eye do you keep open when you string an arrow?”

I used to use a left-handed bow.

“Left,” I say.

“Close your right eye,” Corona says, “and fire again before they get too close.”

I cross my left hand over my right and stare down my arm at my left middle finger, finding the Ferocity ship in the distance. I release a sunray pulse into the sunblasters.

A burst of yellow light shoots from each cannon. The blasts start out as wide as the wings but then angle toward each other, converging as they near the Ferocity ship.

The sunrays meet exactly where the Ferocity ship was a few seconds ago. I’ve overshot, but my aim was truer.

Corona veers hard to the right, toward the planet, avoiding the Ferocity ship again.

“Good,” she says. “A lot better. Now, anticipate their speed and shoot where you think they are going to be.”

“Get behind them,” I say.

“Hang on,” Corona says, fishtailing us in space.

But the Ferocity ship has the same thing in mind. It swings toward us, and before we are lined up nose to nose, I release sunrays.

The sunblaster cannons activate on each wing, discharging a pulse.

A linear streak of yellow energy strikes the Ferocity peanut ship right on the end facing us. For a second, the leading edge of their ship glows red like iron in a forge, but then it melts. A crack forms on the nose of the peanut and it flays, parts of the Ferocity ship going left and right.

There isn’t a big explosion, not with flames anyway, but bits of the Ferocity ship go everywhere, including a body that hits the front viewport of the Rising Sun. We fly through the debris, well protected by the Solarity energy shield that coats our ship.

None of us cheers.

Death is death.

Seven bodies float by, mixing with debris and reminding us that this will become commonplace in the months ahead.

We are the hunted.

We are the resistance.

We are the last hope.

We are the crew of the Rising Sun.

SORRY TOES

S07Y 032D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

It’s late

And you sneak

Across the room

To our bed

Silently creeping

Tiptoeing

But I am no fool

I know the difference

Between being considerate

And guilty sorry toes

“I need a skill,” Hali announces.

“I can’t be the only one who doesn’t know how to do anything on this ship.” She points at me from the second row of the Rising Sun bridge. “You’re the captain and gunner.” She looks at Corona. “And she’s the pilot and also weirdly kind of like the ship too.”

I pull my hands from the pink glowing sunblasters. I stare at them for a moment just to make sure there isn’t blood on them. “Pull us away from the debris,” I say to Corona. “Get to the other side of the planet or find a moon to hide behind.”

“Hiding presupposes we know what direction the Ferocity are coming from,” she says.

No one asks why the Ferocity want us.

It’s like asking a fire why it burns.

It doesn’t know.

It just does. It’s in its nature.

The Ferocity need to rule the space around the seven systems. As long as they do, they can continue to burn whatever they want and harvest the ash to feed their billions of people.

But fire is cruel.

So, burning is more than just about harvesting.

“Aren’t you even listening?” Hali asks. “You need to teach me something.”

“Why?” I ask. “Because I’m not feeling real great about killing them, Ferocity or not.” I feel guilty right down to my toes. You can’t tiptoe around killing someone. You have to own it.

“Because,” Hali says, “when your interplanetary vessel runs out of resources in the void of space, if you are not captain, engineer, first officer, or the pilot, you'd better be hot.”

I look around in my seat, as does Corona.

“And I,” Hali says, “am not the hottest one on this ship, not next to you two—the blonde sun goddess and the red-headed computer babe who can be anything she wants to be.”

I’m not going to apologize for how I look or the effect the sun solitaire has on others when I wear it in the open. And besides, since Hali is the first Wydran I’ve ever met, I have no idea if she is hot or not.

“Communications,” I say, not knowing where it came from. Sure, because of my pointy Soleria ears, I can speak or understand any of the seven clans’ languages, but Hali is the only one I know who can speak underwater.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because you can speak and hear where no one else can—the sea. And space is kind of like the sea.”

“She can help with the signal,” Corona says.

“Right,” I say. “We don’t want to get any closer to Nemesis until we know what the transmission says. For all we know, it’ll say beware, lots of Ferocity. Or, bring carrots and celery.”

Hali shrugs.

“They’re vegetables. My favorites,” I say. “And it doesn’t seem like that’s a thing anymore.”

“Maybe you two should eat,” Corona says. “And then sleep.”

“Do you have any saltines and strawberry jam?” I ask. That’s what my nanny, Mrs. C, always gave me after I didn’t feel good because of a seizure or some bully at school.

And I definitely don’t feel good about blasting those Ferocity.

I want to say sorry to the bodies we are leaving behind as we head for the nearest moon. But that’s just stupid.

Corona has all my memories, so she guesses what the food references mean.

“You had to shoot them,” she says. “They were intent on killing us.”

Which is a lie. I feel like Corona has a tell when she’s lying, but I can’t figure it out yet. The Ferocity likely wanted to stop us and disable our ship, but they need prisoners. I’m not really interested in being a prisoner again or being shoved in a pod for decades, so I equated capture with death and dealt it out. The Ferocity need to find bearers. It’s the only explanation of why they were in the Nemesis System. There’s nothing left to burn in this system. They already torched all the planets and moons long ago, and the last of the Nemar retreated to Naturn and lived underground, below the ashes.

“Can you play the transmission from Nemesis in the shower?” Hali asks. “I need to hydrate.”

Her skin looks half as mucusy as earlier in the day.

“I’ll walk you down,” I say.

At the bottom of the stairs, I see the Soleria mirror.

I don’t want to look in that today.

Next to it is Sunbeams Blacklight, the surfboard I shared with Narista. I’d like to be on that today on Terra or Wydro.

I sit in the galley and sip water, munching on a pork supsdelite, while Hali listens to the Nemar signal while showering in the next room over.

It just sounds like static to me.

But my hunch was correct.

I lay my head on the table, just to close my eyes for a few minutes. And I smile, drifting off as Hali says into the intercom in the bathroom, “Play it back again, but compensate for distance traveled and stellar noise.”

I don’t know what all that means, but I bet it has something to do with how sound sounds different in the sea.

And space is the sea.

SILENT MIDNIGHTS

S07Y 032D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

When the last drink is drunk

And the lights are dimmed

It’s just me

Wishing you were here

To keep our bed warm

To hold me

To love me a little more

To live that lie again

Dreams are twice as pleasant as they were before my last birthday. I’m not sure if I aged out or if all that traveling in the slipstream in the Solarity allowed me to explore every possible future outcome, but I am no longer a sage.

I’m assuming I aged out because the future seems infinite.

Either way, I have nice, normal dreams now.

In this one, I’m back in Austin on the beach with Narista and Baer, reliving a memory that never happened.

The three of us spend the dream surfing.

At night, we have swamp apple cider around a campfire.

I play a right-handed guitar upside down and sing songs about the summer happy. If I ever get around to sorting through all the poems in my Lyricbook—which is in the cargo bay in my sling sack,  next to my surfboard, Sunbeams Blacklight, and my sword, Sunbeams—I’ll divide my poetry into anthologies. One group of poems will be called The Solitary Edge, and it will be about depression and mania and how you can be all over the place with epilepsy, which I don’t have anymore. And another anthology will be called The Summer Happy. And it will be lyrics and poems about campfires, surfing, summer days, and love.

Around the campfire, Kyra joins us. And so does Eos, Lani, Jordin, Fusion, Kase, and the children.

Robynn’s there too. She’s the big sister I never had. I miss her counsel. If I ever had a BFF, it was her.

They’re all happy, except Kase. She never liked me. Dreams can’t gloss over everything.

It’s before Hali’s time, so she’s not there.

And yeah, I know I named my surfboard and sword practically the same thing, but I can’t escape who I am. Soleria do things like that all the time, naming big ships and little ships practically the same thing.

It must be the twenty-one-letter alphabet.

That’s got to have something to do with it.

Sometimes I feel like I’m daydreaming in my dreams. Being self-aware does that. Long ago, Dr. Johnson told me that’s kind of an epileptic thing, along with depersonalization and third-person dreams.

So, it’s weird, but I’m long over worrying about that.

I used to dream to solve problems or to see the future.

Now I just come here to enjoy them.

“Are you going to eat that?” Baer asks, leaning over me.

Next to him, Narista smiles. “Fish? She’d never touch that.”

Baer takes the last bite of fish. His golden-speckled brown eyes flash in the light of the campfire.

I look at both of them, unable to hide my sadness.

“What’s the matter?” Baer asks.

“She can’t decide, silly,” Narista says.

“What?” he asks.

“Who she loves more.”

I nod. My sister is right.

“Soleria love is so rare,” Narista goes on, “to have it torn into two must be unbearable.”

“Why can’t she have both?” Baer asks. He stokes the fire, smiling at Narista and then me. “The flames can’t control it all.”

“She can,” Narista says. “She can have her sister and her lover.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Baer asks.

“She needs to choose which one is first.”

I look at both of them.

I love them both. It’s rare for a Soleria, and confounding.

Back in the real, I hear Hali’s voice.

She didn’t dry off again. I feel the drips on the table and on me.

Can’t she see I’m asleep?

Why does she care what I think?

Hali wants to know which one I’d choose. She’s talking about pork supsdelite. It doesn’t seem like a real choice, one pork is the same as another pork, because I want chicken.

“Oh,” Baer says. “It seems like she’s already chosen. She always makes the same choice. And it’s not me. That’s why we’ll never last. She has to choose me once in a while. Nobody wants to be second place, no matter the prize.”

“Do you blame her?” my sister asks. “You’ve had three children, Kaylani, Kason, and Brynn, by three different women, Jordin, Kase, and Robynn.”

Baer looks up at me, giving me those sad sorry eyes.

But I don’t blame him. Nor fault him.

Some women would say that makes me an ass or a fool.

But I’m not some women.

I’m Solstice, and I’m the one who usually leaves.

My love is split.

And Baer is right; my choice has already been made.

In the real, I open my eyes, hearing Hali asking me about the pork again. “Which one did you choose?”

I don’t answer her about the supsdelite. The dream tells me what I already know. “Narista,” I say. “I choose her.”

STOP GAP

S07Y 033D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

No last minute

Emergency procedure

Could hold back

What he already

Said

Duh. We’re already in the Nemar System. Of course, I chose her. Both Baer and Narista are buried on Terra, both with their solitaires. But if I wanted to get closer to Baer or someone like him, I would have gone to Aetha Prime, not be on my way to Naturn, my only hope of finding any Nemar like my sister.

“Do you always sleep at the table?” Hali says. “It’s morning.”

“You were in the shower all night?” I ask.

“I normally sleep under the waves,” she says, “in the shallows.”

“We really need to get you a hot tub,” I say. “We can put it right in the cargo bay.”

“Not too hot,” Hali says. “But warm is good.”

I sit up and wipe away the hair stuck to the side of my face.

Hali smiles. “You look pretty good for a table sleeper. How do you do that?”

I lie. “It’s an illusion. Narista gave me the ability to alter light and thereby control my appearance.” Then I add a little truth. “I used the illusion on the Ferocity ship.”

“Miss your sister?” Hali asks.

“Yes. Big time,” I say.

Hali sits next to me. “She was the dark, mysterious one. Of all the elders, I knew her the least. And Eos was old when I was young. Once he was feeble, she wasn’t around much.”

“She was the last one on Terra,” I say. “She didn’t even know what happened to the kids.”

“No, she didn’t,” Hali says. “We were taken by the Ferocity one by one. Once Braeger was gone, I was happy to be taken. He and I were the last two. Aerynn was taken first. Syra, Nyra, and Fyra were in hiding with their mother. Everet ran away as a teen when his grandmother Kase died. She told him to do that. She must have known the Ferocity would come back.”

“And they took you seven years ago?” I ask, reviewing her story from earlier.

Hali nods. “Dropped me off on Wydro and then came back for me a few weeks ago.”

“Why would they do that? Why bring you back to your clan and then steal you away later?”

“I don’t know,” she says.

It must be the stones. The Ferocity had to isolate the next generation of elementals from each other so they didn’t become allies, but also introduce them to their clans. Even without the stones, elementals become leaders within their clans. And one day, the Ferocity hoped to control the bearers, their stones, and maybe even their worlds.

Something changed though, and the Ferocity decided they had to have the elementals back.

“I don’t know why no one tried to save us,” Hali says.

“Men will disappoint you,” I say. “They always say stupid things, like it’s our fault they had three kids by three different women.”

“Taking about my grandfather?” Hali asks.

“Yes.”

“There weren’t a lot of options to repopulate humanity,” Hali says. “That explains why Braeger’s parents were cousins.”

“Fine. Whatever,” I say. “He’s gone anyway. And just so you know, before the war was even over and there was still about a million Terrans, he had already fathered two children.”

“My mom, Kaylani, said that Robynn was his best match. I was great friends with her daughter, Aerynn. But everybody knew, even Robynn, that when you came up in conversation, my grandfather’s eyes lit up. You could tell you were the one that got away.”

It doesn’t make me feel better.

Especially since I’m the one that took off.

“He missed you,” Hali says. “And so did Narista. But not everyone wanted to be part of your war.”

“My war?” I snap. “There’s been a bounty on my head since my birth. I’ve escaped Ferocity detention. I fought them. Saved anybody I could. I’ve seen all seven solitaires. I’ve held them. I know where they are. This isn’t my war. I’m just swept up in it. And I’m the only one who has fought it from the beginning. Nobody lives if I don’t take a stand. That was true back then. It’s true now. It’s not my fault the Ferocity killed seven billion. I spared seven and seven more from the slaughter.”

“I’m sorry,” Hali says. “I’m sorry. I don’t know the full story.”

I take a deep breath.

I haven’t gotten pissed in a long time, and this girl doesn’t deserve to feel my wrath for my failures.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” I say. “All those deaths are on me.”

“That’s not fair,” she says, touching my shoulder. “You didn’t start the fire. You put it out.”

“It’s still sparking,” I say. “And the only way the flames go out is if there’s nothing left to burn.”

“Well,” Hali says, “if we can’t count on men, it is in women we must trust.”

“You find something in the shower?” I ask.

“I was listening to the message. I had Corona keep it on a loop. Around the seventy-seventh time, I heard something.”

“Corona didn’t call it a message,” I say. “She called it a signal.”

“It’s a message. From a humanoid. From someone in the seven clans, anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

“I figure a signal is more like beeps and drawn-out bips. Maybe even static. What we’ve been picking up sounds like words. We just need to find the right medium that it was made in.”

“Like talking underwater.”

“Right,” she says. “But it’s definitely not water distorting the message.”

“Any guesses?”

“It could be a ship’s hull or energy or a planet’s atmosphere. Anything, really, that lets through noise. For all we know, they’re talking through a metal cup.”

She holds up the cup she was drinking from and utters a few words. “Moon mut mon emit mide moo mor mace.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Exactly,” she says. “But if you could isolate the distortion caused by the cup and reverse it, you’d know what I said.

“The cup is the distortion, in this case.” She removes the metal cup from her mouth and repeats the words that just sounded like a bunch of ms. “You‘ve got some spit dried to your face.”

“Got it,” I say. “Wiping my face now.”

“All we need to know is what the cup is and then we can figure out the message.”

“Good job,” I say.

“Just your typical communications officer,” she says.

“Officer?”

“You’re the captain and Corona is the first mate. Everybody on the bridge is an officer.”

“Oh,” I say.

“We have ships on Wydro that sail the seas,” she says. “Some of our teens live on them when they go through the ritual. For one year, at age fourteen, they are forbidden to breathe underwater. It ensures that their lungs will develop so they can also breathe air.”

Corona interrupts over the intercom. “We’ve got wreckage on the far side of the moon.”

We’re still near the ninth planet of Nemesis, which I’m calling Planet 9, orbiting a moon that, like Luna on the back side, is cold and gray.

“It’s our tail,” Corona adds, “an Aethan class ship.”

“Braeger!” Hali yells, and runs from the galley, up the stairs to the bridge.

SOUP 4 2

S07Y 033D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

I think we have a disaster

It’s me too near you

An embarrassingly sweaty mess

A disaster stew

“One survivor,” Corona says. “He’s hailing now.”

“There’s a beacon,” I say, pointing from the bridge at the flashing red light floating in the debris, like everyone doesn’t see it.

“He’s on some sort of escape pod,” Hali says. “Quick. Get him on board.”

Corona steers the Rising Sun into the debris field.

“Deploying the grappler now,” I say like I’ve done it a hundred times when I’ve only seen Corona do it once.

She smiles at me, adding, “Good luck.”

“Good luck, what?” Hali says.

I call up the blue screen and press the pink icon with the little crane hook on it. “Nice one,” I say to Corona. She really has made an effort to pick icons that make sense to me. I press the movie camera icon and scroll through the feeds, coming up with the aft camera.

“Engaging airlock,” Corona says.

Picking up something with the grappler isn’t that hard. I drag the pink wireframe model representing it over the video feed of the debris field. I select the escape pod by touching it on the blue screen. The object lights up pink.

“Double tap to confirm,” Corona says.

I double tap the beacon. From the Rising Sun, the gravitational force is released. I don’t really control it at all. I glance over at Corona, and her hands aren’t on the controls. So, unless her mind is tapped into my control pad, the system is fully automated.

“Are you doing anything?” I ask.

“It’s all on you,” she replies.

“But it’s all automated?”

“Yes,” she says. “As long as you make the right selections, the Rising Sun will do the rest.”

The grappler takes hold of the cylindrical canister and pulls it toward the docking bay. Since the grappler is just a gravitational field, from our vantage it looks like the escape pod is flying toward us. I have to remind myself that, despite the unseen force, we are controlling the trajectory of the escape pod.

“He’ll be on board in a second,” I say.

Hali rushes down the stairs from the bridge to the docking bay.

“Braeger!” she yells. “I can see him. Open the air lock.”

Corona scans the aft camera display, ensuring the carbo bay is closed. She pressurizes the dock and opens the door, allowing Hali access.

I walk from the bridge to the balcony just in time to see the door on the escape pod open.

Hali hugs the man emerging from the hatch.

He’s tall, and from what I can see, he looks Aetha or Terran, which is pretty much the same thing, but the former has a hint of gray in their skin.

His face is obscured by Hali’s because she’s trying to put her lips all over his. He must not be a good kisser because from my vantage point, it looks like he’s trying to miss her lips. Her back is to me, and I can only see the outline of his body and the evasive movements of his head.

All I can think of is, kissing cousins. Maybe that’s why the man is trying to do his best to avoid Hali’s lips.

She stops trying to kiss him. “Sorry. You must be tired. And need some air.”

He nods.

“You look different,” she says. “Like Grandpa but younger.”

I’m not surprised she thinks he looks different. It’s been seven years since they’ve seen each other, since the Ferocity took them and returned them to their clan’s star systems.

But then Braeger says, “I feel different,”

Before I can think about that, Hali says, “You need to meet the captain. You’ll never believe it. She’s Solstice Dayton. The Solstice Dayton.”

She adds the the like anyone else would carry around the baggage of my name.

Braeger steps out from behind Hali.

I start to sweat in like two seconds.

And I want to puke.

But in a good kind of way.

Braeger isn’t just “like Grandpa.” He’s the spitting image of his grandfather, of my Baer.

STATIC

S07Y 034D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

It jumps from me to you

Before we even touch

Unable to endure

The anticipation

There’s no scenario where it’s okay to kiss the grandson of my former lover. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try to think of like ten ways when it would be okay. I could kill Hali right now. I could communicate with his brain telepathically and make him love me by planting that thought. Kiss him. Punch him. Sing. Dance. Smile. Release sunrays. Is that ten? Eight? I could be real casual. Or I could build that hot tub.

Braeger meets me halfway up the stairs. He extends his hand.

“You’re his hero,” Hali says.

Braeger shoots her an OMG did you really say that? look.

“She’s right,” he says as he takes my hand and shakes it too vigorously, eliciting a little spark. I endure the shock until he lets go. It’s static electricity, raw chemistry, or he has the Aether power bottled up inside him.

“You look just like him,” I say, but I can barely get the words out.

“I’d love to hear about the time you beat Titus with a kick to the chest,” he says, “or the Interweaving. Or when you jumped from the Key West lighthouse.”

“Or we can search the debris field for supplies,” I say, “and then fly away from a fairly dangerous section of the Nemar System.”

I’m such an idiot.

That was way too captain-like.

And way too uncool.

“Right,” Hali says. “The sooner we get that done, the sooner we can get you cleaned up. Are you hurt? Are you hungry? Are you going to wait another second to kiss me?”

I fake smile. “I’ll leave you to it.”

I head back up the stairs toward the bridge and then stop, turning just before she kisses him. “Were you attacked?”

“Ferocity,” he says. “They rammed me.”

“What did they want?”

“You,” Braeger says. “Word’s out the Solstice Dayton is alive. There were rumors before, but busting Hali out in front of the new emperor’s coronation pretty much confirmed that. Whether you meant it or not, the Ferocity must figure you are the only one strong enough and brave enough to do that.”

“It was an accident,” I say. “We got caught.”

“Whatever you say,” Braeger says. “I’ve heard you were humble.”

“What did you want before,” I ask, “when you first started to tail us?”

“The Aether gem.” It doesn’t ring true. “Narista had them all at one point, except yours. I figure if she’s gone, you’d have them.”

Hali looks hurt.

He notices. “And Hali,” he adds. “Her first. I wanted Hali and then the solitaire.”

She’s not buying it.

Good.

Seems like Braeger is just like his grandfather.

“I don’t have Baer’s solitaire,” I say. “But it’s safe. When the time comes, we’ll retrieve them all.”

“When’s the time?” he asks.

“No more than three hundred and thirty-two days,” I say, counting back from my next birthday. I have no vision of the future, but I figure that’ll be the absolute last moment we can wait to have them all. And hopefully it will be my last crappy birthday.

I again turn away from the couple and head up the stairs toward the bridge.

“So, you’re really going to do it?” Braeger asks, raising his voice. “You’re really going to take on the Ferocity? They only sent a handful of ships last time. You’ll have the whole empire to deal with this time—tens of thousands of ships and billions of farmers.”

“Yep,” I say without looking back, and I leave it at that.

STAY

S07Y 035D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Some say the challenge

Is to die with grace

But it’s harder to live inelegantly

And still get up every day

The news came in and it wasn’t

The right time or place

Your face said it all

Caught between panic and waiting to pray

It seems like it’ll be easier

To just let you walk away

But your eyes say it all

You can’t leave me today

Some say the challenge

Is to die with grace

But it’s harder to live inelegantly

And still get up every day

I’d rather just go back

To where we were yesterday

But there’s no going back

Not when you decide to stay

Some say the challenge

Is to die with grace

But it’s harder to live inelegantly

And still get up every day

Corona hides us near the ninth planet’s moon, keeping us on the dark side. She pilots the Rising Sun while Hali gets Braeger cleaned up and feeds him. We give him the full tour and introduce him to Corona. He is neither put off by a computer program come to life by an energy field or by the six elemental pods between the bridge and the balcony. He notes the Aether pod is missing, but doesn’t seem concerned. Hali does her best to smother him with affection, but Braeger is uninterested. I don’t know the nature of their relationship before on Terra, but it seems decidedly one-sided. They might have been close friends that grew up together before they were torn apart, but he is not who he once was. At least, that’s what Hali says when she pulls me aside.

“Give him time,” I say.

She counters with, “It’s not me, it’s you.”

Meaning it’s me. I don’t bother to say, you are cousins, and maybe now that there are two other women around, he’s going to rethink his choices.

We spend the next day searching the debris field.

Despite Hali’s best efforts, she doesn’t land one lip kiss on Braeger.

By supper, they are in full break-up mode.

He’s cold and distant.

She’s convinced he isn’t who he once was.

What they both need is a distraction.

So, I put them to work.

Braeger’s escape pod is spherical, and since it’s an Aethan ship, it only seats one.

I have them divide the sphere in two and strip out all the components until it’s just a hollow metal shell. We search the debris field of Braeger’s ship and the Ferocity ship we destroyed for pumps and hoses.

Both Hali and I keep our eyes on Braeger while we work.

He puts aside anything he doesn’t use, including something that looks like it was disassembled quickly so it could fit in the escape pod with him. Some sections are clear with black lines running through them. He’s clearly an engineer. Saving stuff must be in his nature.

Hali’s clearly not over him. Certainly not in the few hours since they broke up, but neither does she hate him. It’s possible she’s confused the affection between relatives with love.

For my part, I can’t get over his uncanny resemblance to Baer. I find myself doing awkward things, tripping over objects in the cargo bay and my words.

Braeger smiles through it. He seems to know the power he has on both of us.

I have to remind myself, even though we are close in actual age, I’ve lived so much longer than he.

But with each smile, I just want to die.

I think about those nights and days with Baer in the Everglades, and I long for his body on mine and our lips locked.

It’s decidedly un-Soleria-like.

We’re not supposed to love.

Just when I thought I wanted to be reminded of my sister, it’s Baer I can’t get out of my head.

About halfway through our little construction project, Braeger realizes what we are building. It’s for Hali, and he’s happy to do it.

He’ll make an excellent engineer. He knows his way around a ship, and easily uses the tools that were left behind by the Ferocity before this ship became the Rising Sun.

He’s funny like Baer was. He makes observational jokes.

“Did you know that astronauts used to throw their underwear overboard?” he asks.

There were only a few books left on Terra, and I suspect Hali and Braeger read them cover to cover.

“Even the frilly stuff?” I ask.

“No, just the diapers,” Braeger says, laughing. “They could hold like seventy-two ounces of pee.”

“That’s a whole six pack,” I say.

He laughs again.

Hali says something about her skin drying out again.

Braeger and I share a knowing smile.

We have an easy rapport. Hali sees it, and we can see it on her face.

Corona comes to the cargo bay to check on our little project and to let us know she’s setting a course to the seventh planet, Naturn.

We’ll stay at orbital speed because we don’t want to rush toward the Nemesis signal until we have it decoded.

We position the split-open sphere across from my sword, surfboard, and Soleria mirror, on the right side of the cargo bay.

We add a few steps to get into the half spheres and then seats within. We connect the halves and cut an opening between them, pushing them together.

This galaxy is built on sevens.

Clans.

Elementals.

Planets.

Solitaires.

And yet, hope lies in eights.

Someday, there will be an eighth clan, and that will forever change the war between the seven clans.

Terra was to be the home to the eighth clan. That was my grandmother’s dream.

And it still can be.

“What are we building?” Hali asks.

I take her up to the balcony so she can see our project from above.

“It’s an eight?” she asks. “Nobody but Terrans uses eights.”

“It’s the symbol of a new way of thinking on the horizon,” I say. “But it’s also a place where eight can be together.”

“Is it a booth?” she asks. “Like in a restaurant? Or a car?” She’s heard of these things in stories, and maybe even seen them in the overgrown jungles of Terra, but she’s not right.

We head down the stairs.

“Does she see it yet?” Braeger asks.

“No,” Hali says. “Terra was destroyed when we lived there, and we have no technology on Wydro. Just our boats, and they’re just wood and sails. All of this is so new. The ships, Corona, space …”

Braeger’s been to Aetha Prime. It’s a lot like Terra was, so I couldn’t fool him for long.

“I hope you’ll stay with us, Braeger,” I say. “The position of chief engineer is open.”

It takes him a moment to respond to the name. I swear he’s forgotten his own name. Maybe it’s some sort of distress from the Ferocity attack.

“I’m in,” he says after the long pause, without even looking up from installing a seat. “We need the two halves sealed,” he adds.

“Step back,” I say.

I open my palms once Hali and Braeger are clear of the half spheres. I release sunrays, focusing a beam like an arc welder, melding the two halves together.

“Will it hold?” I ask.

Braeger inspects the joints. “Yep. It’ll do nicely.”

Corona says from the balcony, “I’ve altered the Solarity to channel some heat underneath the eight. Once it’s filled up, it’ll be nice and warm.”

“And the pumps?” I ask Braeger.

“Lots of bubbles,” he says. “As much as we want.”

“It’s up to you, Hali,” I say. “Run a hose from the shower.”

She smiles, knowing she’s lost Braeger but has found me and Corona and a home. And she’s finally realized what we are building, for all of us but mostly her.

“It’s a hot tub, isn’t?” she asks.

I nod. “Seats eight,” I say. “Eight is the future. Now we just need four more crew members.”

SAY

S07Y 037D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Underneath my bed

Hidden far away

There are too many thoughts

I couldn’t say

Yellowed paper tells a story

That’ll never see the light of day

Ten thousand moments

I let slip away

Just because I was too scared to

Say

Say what it is I wanted to say

Say

You waited so long

But I didn’t give a reason to stay

That was so long ago

And you’ve come back around, hey

Just because I was too scared to

Say

Say what it is I wanted to say

Say

You got tired of waiting

And so you said I love you anyway

Just because I was too scared to

Say

Say what it is I wanted to say

Say

I’m calling the hot tub a hot tub. I could come up with something clever and capitalize it or italicize it in my head, but sometimes a hot tub is just a hot tub, even if it is a really cool symbol of uniting all the clans.

We’re on our way to Naturn but taking it slow. Corona has plotted a course that will hide us behind moons of the ninth and eighth planets. Nemar is a dead system, and every moon and planet is covered in ash and dust, like Terra’s Luna. Even Naturn. The only exception, Corona says, is the third planet. The Ferocity fires still rage in the atmosphere of that planet. No one knows why, and no one is dumb enough to check it out. Never. Ever.

As the lone ally of the Soleria in the Fifth Seven-Clan Civil War, the Nemar paid for it dearly. The Ferocity burned anything that could be burned in the system at the end of the war, reducing the Nemar population to hundreds. A number from which they never recovered. I think the Aetha still feel guilty about that. It might be why they started the Sixth Seven-Clan Civil War by attack Cyrelax’s ship.

When the four crew members of the Rising Sun are sitting at the gallery table, I ask Corona which direction she knows to hide us. My first mate is controlling the ship with her brain while we talk. “How do we know how the Ferocity are looking for us? Are they in front of us, above us, left, right, below?”

“We don’t know,” Corona replies. “That’s why we are moving from moon to moon and planet to planet. The gravitational fields will mask us.”

“That’s really smart,” Braeger says between bites of pork supsdelite.

“Don’t start,” Corona says. “I have no interest in an Aethan.”

Corona must be able to smell the pheromones Hali and I are putting off. I can’t deny the attraction.

But I won’t act on it.

I lie to myself, saying it’s creepy how much he sounds and looks like Baer.

“It’s just a compliment,” Braeger says. “Take Hali, for instance. She’s a great painter. I was thinking maybe she could decorate the inside of the ship and the hot tub with elemental symbols, the Aurora Brand, or even things from Terra.”

“Can I?” Hali asks. She grabs Braeger’s hand and smiles before quickly letting go. “No offense, but silvolden everything—tables, chairs, walls, whatever, gets a little boring after a while, and it’s all a little bright.”

I like silver-gold everything but maybe that’s the Soleria in me.

“Have at it,” I say. “How about labeling the sleeping chambers while you’re at it? I crawled into bed last night and everything was all wet.”

“Sorry, that’s on me,” Hali says.

“So, how does she get paint?” Braeger asks.

“On Terra and on Wydro, I used natural pigments,” Hali says.

“Like what?” I ask.

“Clay is reddish, seagull poop is white, seaweed brown, ash is gray, sap is yellow, shells can be blue, white, or purple.”

I look over at the last of Braeger’s escape pod in the cargo bay. “I bet you can find some pigment on that,” I say. “Maybe some black from when his ship exploded.” Fires in space are brief and internal, but as long as ship remains intact, it can spread. Once the oxygen is used up, though, the fire goes out.

After breakfast, the four of us go our separate ways.

I grab my Lyricbook and pink Sharpie from my sling sack and sit on my surfboard, writing down lyrics. Braeger disassembles the rest of his escape pod, storing parts in the cargo bay. Hali starts on her art project, finding colors with Corona’s help in the liquids that circle around the ship. Even a byproduct of the waste from the bathrooms can be used. The Rising Sun is a zero-waste ship. Which means we drink and shower with our reprocessed pee, and we might even paint with refined poop.

Ugh.

Ugh.

Ugh.

I will not be painting with poop.

Doesn’t seem to bother Hali though, especially since it’s so refined. Honestly, when I looked over her shoulder at it, it just looks like ordinary soil with zero smell.

But still, knowing what it is just makes it wrong.

Corona and Hali continue to work on deciphering the signal from the black star, listening to it through different mediums—gases, liquids, and solids.

I spend more time with my Lyricbook over the next couple days than I have in a long time.

There are things I want to say to Braeger that would only make sense if I said them to Baer.

So, there are things I don’t say.

My mind drifts, and no one seems to mind that the captain is hanging out on her surfboard for hours on end.

I have that deep-in-thought look.

It’s the same as my stay-away look.

It’s an odd reaction after forming a crew to suddenly want some alone time, but seeing Braeger has put me in a daze.

I think of Baer over and over.

When I’m tired of him, I think of Robynn. She was my first real friend. If I didn’t like boys—it’s a curse—I could have loved her, but neither of us were remotely curious. She loved Baer and had a child with him, Brynn, who was Braeger’s mother. I wonder if I see Robynn in Braeger too. I wonder if that’s why the attraction is so hard to deny.

Long ago, I had a relationship with Robynn’s brother, Fusion. It was more a distraction than anything. A way to feel too close to Robynn after she was taken from me, but also a way to forget Baer.

We’ll need to find Fusion’s descendant, Fyra.

And Lani’s grandchild, Aerynn.

And also Kase’s grandson, Everet.

No one has ever heard of a descendant of Narista, and maybe that’s why I wanted to start here at the dark star. I’ve been fortunate in finding Braeger and Hali along the way, but luck can only take me so far.

Nothing ever worked right in the war back on Terra until we had a Nemar.

Maybe that’s because they balance out the Soleria.

I close my eyes and think of her. Her raven hair. Her black-purple eyes. Her gifts. The ones she gave to me along with her thoughts—the illusion, the shadow, the blacklight, and the inking—and the one we shared, telepathy. She could also see the future, but the ones that would not come to pass, the opposite of my lost gift of foresight.

I open my eyes and my left palm.

Like me, Narista was left-handed. We were twins born on the same day to different mothers. Mothers who were lovers. Like all Soleria and Nemar, Solelena and Nemesis were self-pollinators, so technically I share no genetic material with my sister. But love between Soleria is rare, and between Soleria to Nemar, unheard of.

I think that’s what bonds my sister and me.

Above my left palm, the blacklight forms. Unlike the sunrays—my natural gift that forms a yellow-white ball of light that I can focus into beams—the blacklight is more like static electricity or contained lightning. It’s the color of a white T-shirt under a blacklight, glowing purple.

I stand up on my surfboard and look at my sword on the wall. Next to it is the Soleria mirror. I glance into and see my sister looking back at me.

“Corona! Hali! Come here,” I yell.

There are four types of matter. And yet my communications officer and first mate have tried to understand the signal from Nemesis through only three mediums: gas, liquid, and solid.

Corona runs down the stairs into the cargo bay, followed by Braeger.

They stop at the bottom of the stairs.

Hali pokes her head up from under the surface of the hot tub. I didn’t even realize she was in there.

Gills behind ears are just weird and totally allow people to be sneaky. She could have been sleeping in there for hours.

But I’m the weird one.

I probably look a little crazy standing on my surfboard holding a glowing ball of lightning, but it’s the one form of matter we haven’t tried.

“Plasma,” I say. “That’s the medium. That’s how we decipher the signal.”

STUFF

S07Y 038D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Southey and Crane sang about

Sugar and spice

And all that’s nice

Ribbons and laces

And sweet pretty faces

But they’re both dead

And so are those girls

While I live in

entirely different worlds

This is not Ella’s tale

Every step comes with a cost

Every breath a cold reminder

Of the faces I’ve lost

Do I have what it takes?

Am I girl enough?

To survive

Double different standards apply

Do I have the right Girlstuff?

Not today, not today, not today

So, I hide and I burrow deep

I eat from the trash

Hoarding what I keep

I’ve made rules

A total of five

To survive

Slept in my own blood, puke, and feces

Later, nearly burned alive

And I wonder

Am I girl enough?

Do I have the right Girlstuff?

Girlstuff

To survive

Southey and Crane

I will derive

Sugar and spice

And all that’s nice

Ribbons and laces

And sweet pretty faces

Take five

Death and sacrifice

Melody and Ice

Visions of lost places

And burnt little faces

Come alive

And I no longer wonder,

Am I alive?

Am I girl enough?

I have the right Girlstuff

Girlstuff

To survive

I have the right Girlstuff

To thrive

Brilliant ideas are paired with self-doubt. I’m not sure if that’s universal or just in my mind. True, we should cycle the signal through plasma, likely the blacklight. I imagine that as much as my sunrays are like what Sol emits, the blacklight, or whatever comes out of the Nether Solitaire, is similar to what Nemesis emits.

But it’s not like I can hold a ball of blacklight next my ear and say, Send the signal through.

Because either I burn the tips of my ear off, set my hair on fire, or the signal fries my brain.

Technically, I should be impervious to the energy being emitted from my body, but I don’t really want to test that theory on me.

I’ve got to figure out another way.

Edison probably had the idea to run electricity through a thin wire in a vacuum-sealed glass container about a thousand times before he actually was able to make it work.

I’m just a girl who never went to high school.

Not some sort of brain.

You know about math, a voice says from deep within. It’s an echo of Narista, Elle, or Melody reminding me: Solstice, you are smart. You have the gift of math.

And you have Corona.

Okay, sure, I’ve got my own walking, talking personal computer, but I’m not entirely convinced Corona isn’t just recalling things she knows. Does she have the ability to make new thoughts or can she only guide me using all the knowledge the Soleria and Nemar ever accumulated?

I’m tired of everything being so important.

“We need to get off this ship,” I announce when we meet for breakfast. “Not every off-ship mission is about exploration or intergalactic peace.” And I can’t spend all day writing in my Lyricbook or sipping swamp apple cider in the hot tub.

Especially since we have no swamp apple cider and I’m sure Hali pees in the hot tub.

“Sometimes you just need to kill a red shirt,” Braeger says.

“What?” Hali asks. “Who?”

“It’s something I—our grandfather said,” he replies, stumbling through the words. “Baer was riffing on someone else. Something he heard before the apocalypse. At the time, he was probably talking about fishing.”

“Is a red shirt a fish?” Hali asks between sips of water.

She drinks so much, I’m not sure our recycling system can keep up with her. Except, of course, I’m not counting the purified pee that goes back into the tanks.

Honestly, I need to be less concerned about pee.

“No,” Braeger says. “I just meant that even when we were going out on the boat to fish, sometimes it was just about relaxing or watching the sunset. Not everything is a mission.”

“It’s from TV,” I say. “Baer must have told me. A red shirt is a character on this old TV show that they’d kill off every time there was an away mission to a planet. It made for more dramatic TV without killing off one of the main cast members.”

“We didn’t have TV on Terra,” Hali says.

I smile. “Me either.

“He used to talk about beer quests,” I add. “Baer and his dad used to go out on missions looking for weapons, fuel, food, and feminine hygiene product.”

Braeger and Hali say, “I don’t know what that last one is.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “Braeger, you don’t have to worry about it, and Hali, I’m not even sure how your anatomy works. For all I know, you cycle through your skin.”

“What?” they both ask.

“Let’s just move on,” Corona says.

She’s the other adult in the room, even though technically she’s a toddler and the rest of us are technically all a similar age.

“We need to get off this ship,” I say. “Take us to Naturn.”

“I’m not wearing a red shirt off this ship,” Hali says.

I can’t help but smile.

Ironic, since she never wears clothes. Everything about her body is so hidden, though, that it’s not off-putting. She really does look like some sort of human-dolphin hybrid. Dolphin skin. Human features. Except her eyelids. I’ve never seen them closed. Or they’re see-through.

“We’ll be near Naturn in a rotation,” Corona says. By rotation she means a day on Naturn, which if it is like Saturn, is only about ten and a half hours.

“We’ll be there by supper,” I say to the others.

“That’s what I said,” Corona says.

“Not exactly,” Hali says.

“Take us to the old bunkers,” I say, “where Narista met Nyssa and the other Nemar.”

“There’s no chance the signal we’re tracing is coming from there?” Braeger asks.

“None,” Corona replies. “It’s definitely coming from the dark star.”

“Why don’t we just head to Nemesis now?” Hali asks. “We could circle the star and see if we see anything.”

“What if the message is ‘go back’ or ‘stay away’?” Braeger asks.

“We take our time,” I say. “Sooner or later, one of us will figure out how to listen to the message through the blacklight.”

SUNSHINE POWER

S07Y 039D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

The blue-eyed blonde-haired bitch is back

Sorry but I offer no apology

Persistent, strong-willed, determined

Too bad you’re threatened, it’s just my biology

Ice-cold dumb bombshell

Always gets my way

Beautiful mean girl

Promiscuous, you say

Glistening, glowing fair locks

You think I’m a bit sour

But it’s you, jealous of my

Blonde maiden sunshine power

Stereotypes persist

Even at the end of all things

Survived I have

Through my wits and sufferings

Gold hair sunrays glimmer

In my wake a spell is cast

Blonde gleaming strands flow

Jaws drop open aghast

Glistening, glowing fair locks

You think I’m a bit sour

But it’s you, jealous of my

Blonde maiden sunshine power

Double different applied

Welcome to my blonde reality

Your standards—unfair and

Wrong, suffer from duality

Silly girl, not to be trusted

Stop and stare, nice to look at

Just a piece of arm candy

Rise up and don’t take that

B – L – O – N – D – E

Time for a remedy

B – L – O – N – D – E

Sing to the Melody

Glistening, glowing fair locks

You think I’m a bit sour

But it’s you, jealous of my

Blonde maiden sunshine power

The intercom crackles in my sleeping chamber. I sit up and bang my head on the ceiling of my three-feet high by three-feet wide by six-feet-long coffin. Or MRI machine. Or of Lexington Bunker ductwork. Either way, I need a better name for my rectangular sleep quarters. I used to be so good at making up names for things. Now, I’m content to call a spaceship hot tub just a hot tub. Maybe it’s Narista bouncing around my head, making me all serious and goth, when I’m really emo like Corona says. Could just be I’m getting older.

Nah.

Regardless of all that, I need to stop singing in my sleep, even if it’s just in my mind. That last one seemed like a cheer. Nobody needs to wake up to that much excitement.

“We’re orbiting over the Nemar bunker,” Corona says through the intercom. Whatever she said before to wake me up, I didn’t hear or I already forgot.

Outside my rectangle, I hear Braeger and Hali getting up.

I crawl out and close the door, noting it’s marked with the symbol for sun, matching the pod upstairs.

Hali has also marked the door of her sleeping quarters with the water symbol and Braeger’s with the Aether symbol.

Sometimes I feel like the sleeping chambers are like the pods upstairs, except those are vertical and the Aether pod is gone.

No one likes to talk about the pods.

No one wants to go into the deep sleep.

The others have heard the stories from their parents and grandparents. The seven of us had long dreams, conversations with the dead. We recalled memories of our descendants.

I won’t ever go in a pod again. The last time I saw my mom in a vision was in the sun pod. I learned all about her and my other mom, Nemesis, their love, and the clans.

I don’t want to dream of my mom again.

It’s too real.

It makes living in the real too hard.

And I’m afraid that in the sun pod, I’ll be visited by the others who died. Kase, Fusion, Lani, and Jordin. They’re never coming back. They’re just bones under the sea in the Gulf outside of Austin on Terra.

Baer is under the bluff in the Aether pod from this ship and with his solitaire.

And Narista is out at sea in the original Nether pod with her nether gem.

“Pork again,” Braeger says from the galley table. “Awesome.”

I’m not sure why he’s surprised the cabinet is stocked full of pork supsdelite. It’s all there is in there.

“I wish we had chicken or beef,” he says. “Anyone have that? I’ll trade you a chore. Do we have chores?”

It’s more proof that he’s just like Baer.

Baer was always angling for chicken or beef flavor. The first time he met Narista, or at least had a real conversation with her, it was about the packets of food.

I walk from my sleeping chamber to the galley table.

“Can I get you anything?” Hali asks.

I take a water and say, “Meet me on the bridge in five, both of you.”

I jog up the stairs.

Thank god there isn’t an elevator on this ship, otherwise I’d never get any exercise.

I sit in the left seat—the one I’ve avoided for a couple of days.

“Good to have you back,” Corona says.

“Sorry we keep leaving you in charge of this,” I say.

But I’m not. It’s one of my true lies. Sure, it’s mean leaving her alone a lot, but I don’t really care.

I’m not as nice as everyone thinks I am.

Sure, I’ll save the world or fail trying, but don’t expect me to say good morning or happy birthday.

Soleria are not empathetic.

I don’t think Nemar are either.

Nor are Soleria computer programs.

I look over at Corona. Her hair is a little more orange today. And she’s got freckles.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “I was born to do this job. Literally.”

I smile. “Good one,” I say. “You’re getting better. Maybe observational humor is your thing.”

“Really?”

She so wants to be a person.

I know I just thought about being all nonempathetic and stuff, but I say, “I’m glad you’re my friend. I forget your origins all the time. Once you settle on an appearance, I don’t think I’ll remember you’re made from light and energy.”

“Is that a compliment?” she asks.

“It’s not a condiment,” I say.

Corona laughs, and it doesn’t even seem all that fake.

“You had barbeque sauce once,” she says.

“But I didn’t stay in that timeline, and most of it ended up in a toilet in Louisville. It doesn’t count. I still can honestly say I live a condiment-free life.”

“It’s not so special anymore,” she says. “Condiments are extinct.”

We giggle and then sigh. She has my memories, so sometimes her reactions are the same as mine.

After a second of silence, I swipe the blue screen in front of me and then press a pink icon that looks like a mountain.

“Topography,” Corona says. “It’s all pretty flat on Naturn. All the features are below. The Ferocity wiped the surface clean.”

I press an icon that looks like a TV satellite.

“Ground penetrating radar,” she says.

Don’t think I don’t know she’s putting icons in front of me that she knows I’ll want to select. She kind of hides them in a grid of sixteen, with the video monitor icons and the sunblasters and maps of the system we’re in, but she’s making it easier for me with new intuitive apps showing up on my screen.

She’s practically daring me to try them out.

“Thanks for cycling forward the icons I’ll need,” I say.

“I’m training you,” she says.

“Are you sure that’s not leading me?”

She doesn’t answer and blinks hard, like she’s making some sort of algorithmic update that says something like, when you’re trying to trick Solstice into being a good captain, don’t make it so obvious.

“I’ve got the bunkers,” I say.

I spread my fingers apart on my screen, making the image larger. Making a back-handed throwing motion, I toss the image toward the bow viewport. As we enter the atmosphere, the pink radar map overlays with the surface of Naturn. And as we get closer, the map gets larger.

Braeger and Hali join us, sitting behind us. Him on the right behind Corona, her on the left behind me. He’s the engineer. She’s the communications officer. I didn’t assign seats, but it makes sense. Braeger’s curious about how Corona is flying and controlling the ship. And Hali is more interested in what’s happening on the surface.

“Green light,” I say. In the middle of the pink maze overlaid on the blue topography, a single green dot flashes.

“Life sign,” Corona says.

I gasp. I thought she couldn’t find life signs on a planet.

“How?”

“I know where the bunkers are,” she says. “If you know where to look, it’s way easier to find.”

Find who? I don’t want to say her name out loud because it wouldn’t be possible, but I know who I want to find.

“Take us down. Maximum speed,” I say like that’s something.

“We are descending at the proper speed,” Corona says, letting me know to stop making stuff up.

We break through the ash clouds over Naturn and follow the rotation of the planet into the purple glow of Nemesis in the distance. It’s like we’re flying into dusk, except that dusk is the brightest part of the day on Naturn.

We descend miles from the uppermost atmosphere to the surface, landing with a poof of ash. I jump from my seat.

“Checking perimeter,” Corona says.

I stop midstep. Right. Check for bad guys and bad things before disembarking. I’m so excited, I can’t even think straight.

I leave the flight deck, run past the pods, and jump on the railing, gliding down the metal on my butt without touching a single step.

I run toward the air lock at the far end of the cargo bay.

For a second, I panic. Dammit, we don’t have space suits.

But then I remember: Naturn has oxygen, like Terra.

I wonder if Saturn has oxygen. Maybe the Soleria are hiding on Saturn. It’s a stupid idea to have when we’re so far away. I should have checked the planet or one of the seventy-seven moons after we flew through the Solidarity debris field.

My grandmother could be sitting on Saturn right now saying, “Where the hell is my granddaughter?”

But I’m new to space. I don’t always have ideas at the right time.

And we could just use the slipstream to double back superfast.

The Rising Sun is the fastest ship in the galaxy.

I’ve said that more than once, but I don’t have proof.

Actually, I have lack of proof. I’ve never seen another ship in the slipstream, let alone another person. So lack of ships in the fastest mode of travel proves my ship is the fastest.

Or not.

But I think Solelena or Solterra once told me that Saturn was no longer hospitable. Even if they didn’t, I can’t imagine the Ferocity didn’t try to ruin that planet somehow. Besides, it’s all gas.

What am I doing?

I’m so nervous, I still can’t think straight.

I’m just standing in front of the air lock.

“Open the door,” I yell.

The airlock opens, the cargo bay door lowers.

I run out into the swirling ash, sucking in the dead planet’s dander. I retreat back onto the ramp, coughing.

Hali comes up behind me, handing me a pair of googles and a mask. “Corona said you might need these.”

“Where’d these come from?” I ask.

“One of the compartments in the cargo bay wall. Sometimes the Ferocity had to walk in the wake of their own flames.”

I grab the goggles and mask. “Thanks. Watch the ship. Stay close to it. I need to do this alone.”

I run from the Rising Sun toward where I remember the bunker was. There are mounds of gray ash everywhere, swept up like black and white desert dunes. I don’t think I could breathe without a mask. I was out there for two seconds, and my teeth and nostrils are covered in ash.

I’m not sure, but the pressure seems different from last time. And Nemesis seems brighter.

There’s a speaker built into the goggles and a microphone in the mask. I tap the button near my ear, describing what I see.

“The atmosphere is degrading,” Corona says.

“I see a bunker door,” I say.

“We’ve got a life sign there,” she replies.

The wind picks up, and I lower my head, trudging forward. The fine particles pelt the exposed parts of my face and hands. It stings like beach sand on a too windy day.

I pull on the door, struggling against the wind. It won’t give until I open it a crack. Then the wind takes it and slams it open. I step inside and grab the interior door handle, but I don’t have the strength to close it.

Ash rushes into the bunker, coating the top of the first stair landing.

I step away from the door, away from the howling wind, to catch my breath.

In between gusts of wind, I hear a voice.

“Leave it,” the voice gasps. “It’s too late already.”

“Descending now,” I say into the microphone, taking my first steps down the first flight of stairs.

Below the surface of Naturn are a series of carved-out caverns. The surface of the planet is cold in between the dusk setting and rising, and the few survivors dug downward as much as ten flights to get away from the surface and nearer the moderate temperature deep underground.

I run down the stairs two at a time.

As the air clears around the fifth flight, I pull my goggles and mask down.

By the seventh flight, I’m taking three and four steps at a time.

I can’t wait to see my sister.

I know she wanted to die at sea, but the Nemstar must have kept her alive. I tricked her into doing that. Just like I convinced Baer to be buried with the Aelite.

And like before when we were sundered in the pods, I promised myself I’d find her first and then Baer.

Once I get her, I can get him.

I didn’t think it would work, even though the Ferocity promised long life for those who went to sleep in their pods.

By the tenth flight down, my heart is in the back of my throat. I wind around the last corner, ready to hug her.

I imagine her in front of me, glorious and beautiful with her dark eyes, hair, and skin. I see the ink on her arms and the map on her back. She is strong, tall, and brave. She is the glue that holds the seven elementals together. Narista is the shadow to my sun. She is the strongest, besides me. She is the reason the Ferocity can be defeated. She is my equal. She is so real in my mind, she must be real here. And I am sure she’ll be so happy to see me, even though she told me to let her go. It’s not my fault, I can’t control myself around Narista and Baer. I need to preserve them at all cost.

Instead, I see a figure I don’t recognize.

In the corner of the room, a woman is huddled, holding her knees to her chest. Her shirt is stained black with phlegm. She coughs, spewing blood onto the floor.

Her voice crackles as she looks away, “Take down the light a bit, Soleria.”

I don’t even notice when I am glowing, especially on the Rising Sun where everything glows. But down here, I must be like a flashlight shining into someone’s eyes in the dark.

“Who are you?” I ask, dimming my bioluminescence.

“You sound sour, disappointed, Soleria.”

“It’s Solstice,” I say.

“I know who you are, Princess.” She raises her head. It’s covered with Naturn’s ash, and her face is streaked with blackened blood. “We met once on the surface with the duchess.”

Duchess was the title given to the highest-ranking Nemar. They refused to have a queen or a princess as a ruler.

It was the title the Nemar gave Narista, even though she was only on the planet for a day or two.

The Duchess of Darkness.

“Have you seen her?” I ask.

“I’ve seen so many things, child.”

The woman stands.

“Nyssa?” I ask. “Is that you?”

“Am I that old in your eyes?”

It’s been a month for me since I was last here.

For Nyssa, it’s been seventy-seven years.

“You don’t look a day older,” she says. “Your beauty is undiminished, like my hate for you.”

She pulls a dagger from her waist. Stepping toward me, she swipes at me with all she has, but she is old and weak.

I step aside, avoiding the blows, allowing her to make the attempt on my life until she tires.

I gently disarm her.

She falls toward the floor, and I catch her in my arms.

“Last of the Nemar,” she says. “Remember my name. Remember when all else failed, I stayed to defend Naturn to the last.”

“What have you seen?” I ask.

“Beyond the shadow of the dark star lies the flame in wait. And beyond that, unimaginable horror.”

“How could you know that?” I ask. She’s been on Naturn, after all.

“I’ve seen the one that sees farther than you’ll ever see.”

She closes her eyes and passes, a victim of having breathed her dying planet’s ash too long.

I lay her on the floor and leave her.

I need to know more.

But the disappointment is overwhelming.

I need to leave.

I run up the stairs crying, leaving streaks in the ash dust on my face.

At the topflight, I put on my goggles and mask.

Corona is waiting for me without any protection on her face. She has the core on her wrist and is fully mobile. I’ve never seen her outside the ship. The ash on the wind flows around her, bouncing off her energy-field body.

“The others are on board,” she says. “A storm is coming.”

I nod. “It’s time to leave.”

“We lost the life sign.”

“She died in my arms,” I reply, “but it wasn’t who I hoped it would be.”

“So, there is hope,” Corona says.

“There still is hope,” I say, unsure.

We run to the Rising Sun.

The storm is on the horizon, so we take off, leaving Naturn minutes after boarding.

I sit in the captain’s chair, refusing to wash off.

I leave the ash in my hair to remind me of Ferocity evil, of the long-term destruction they cause, of what they did to Naturn and the Nemar for helping the Soleria.

I leave the ash on my clothes to remember Nyssa, the last to brave dying Naturn.

I leave the tear-streaked ash on my face to remember my sister.

And I hope that there is still hope.

I wasn’t honest with my sister.

I wasn’t honest with myself.

There’s no way I could let her die.

SHOW THE EFFIGY

S07Y 041D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

I’ve got this facade

In a jar by the door

It’s just a mask

My facsimile—an effigy

It looks like me

My eyes, my legs, my mouth

But it’s just a lie

An effin effigy

I put it on

To keep them out

But they’re on to me

And my lies

If I peel back the mask

If I show you the hidden me

How long till you

Ask for my effin effigy?

’Cause that’s all they want

To see

’Cause that’s all they let

Me be

Keep the mask on

Effigy effin me

After hiding in Naturn’s shadow for another day, I give the order to move onto the sixth planet. Like in the Sol System, the sixth planet in the Nemar System is the largest.

I put on a show for the others.

I wear a mask of lies.

I’m so pseudo happy.

I fake smile even in the dark where no one can see me.

But inside, it’s killing me we haven’t found Narista.

The hot tub is a heck of a distraction, but it seems designed for good times, summer happy, and beach vibes.

I need something more somber.

I need something that reminds me of my younger days.

After supper, while Hali and Braeger are on the bridge, Corona and I remain behind in the galley to talk. She’s spent a lot of time alone on the bridge, and I want her to move around more. I don’t know if I’m being accidentally empathetic or simply practical. The other two need to learn how the ship works, even if it is on autopilot.

I ask Corona to open the cargo bay overhead viewport, which we’ve established will be called the moonroof because the one over the cockpit is the sunroof.

Starlight shines down through.

We glance through the galley doorway, watching the purple light from Nemesis wrap around Nupiter, or whatever they call the sixth planet, and light up the cargo bay.

I tell Corona I need something to remind me of Terra. I talk to her about Daddyless Daughter Camp, dancing, Mrs. C, and LexMid.

She settles for reminding me of the first one.

“The Ferocity have a fire pit,” she says.

I know the Ferocity can’t be without fire for long. Like the Aurora Brand—flames overlaid on sunrays—the Rising Sun is a hybrid of Soleria and Ferocity technology, the union of two things that once were the best of allies and are now the greatest of enemies.

“How could I not know this?” I ask.

“Wasn’t your planet not destroyed by flames?” she asks. “Weren’t Saturn and Naturn as well?”

“Yeah, so?”

“I kind of thought you would like knowing about the fire pit,” Corona says. “It’s in the cargo bay.”

“We’ve made so many modifications,” I say. “It’s not under the hot tub, is it? It can’t be where the docking port is, nor near the air lock. Damn, it’s not under the aft prominence, is it?” I almost forgot the two energy shield generators from the Solarity were on board. Half the time Braeger uses the rear one as a work stool when he’s tinkering with stuff, and Hali sometimes uses the forward one as a seat in between me and Corona on the bridge.

“No,” Corona says. “The fire pit is located under the cargo bay decking between the galley and the hot tub, just to the left of the stairs.”

On the ship that Hali and I were held on, that was where the prison cell was.

But our ship doesn’t have a prison cell.

“This ship took no prisoners besides elementals,” Corona says. “Anyone who made it on board who was not wanted was burned alive in the fire pit.”

“Don’t tell the others that. We’re calling it the campfire.”

We don’t have s’mores.

All we have is powdered pork.

So, they’ll be no roasting tonight.

Even thinking the word roasting seems insensitive in light of what the fire pit was once used for.

As I step over the raised doorway from the galley to the cargo bay, Corona activates a release mechanism for the hatch covering the fire pit.

A metal disc slides under the floor decking, similar to opening the docking port. From through the decking, the fire pit rises.

It’s perfect.

All we need are some stools.

It was perfect. Until a single pole rises from the center of the pit. When it reaches seven feet high, the pole opens from the side facing the cargo bay. Four metal arms slide out of the cylinder to form an X. At each end of the X’s legs, Ferocity-iron handcuffs dangle from lengths of chain.

It reminds me of how I was tortured on Spike in Arnac.

“Is that—”

Corona cuts me off. “It was the inspiration for how you were tortured by the dazers and Nadir.”

“I wonder,” I say, “if we’ll ever see the dazed again?”

“There are rumors,” she says, “that deep in space there is a clan that refuses to be a clan.”

“That’s an unclan.”

“There’s an unclan,” Corona says, “that is rumored to be made up entirely of what you called dazers—rejects from the other clans.”

“Space dazers. Right. As if. Besides, if it was true, you’d know about it. You know everything.”

As the two of us walk toward the fire pit, she says, “I don’t know everything. Few have traveled beyond the seven systems.”

“Then we shouldn’t either.” I step up on the rock-like circle that surrounds the pit. The “stones” are actually shaped Ferocity iron. They’re brown, the material looking like the outside of the peanut ships. I put my hand on the center pole and reach toward the upper left iron cuff, intending to test its strength.

“Hang on a second,” Corona says, “let me shut it off. We don’t want to accidentally activate it. The Ferocity were known for intensifying the pain when someone struggled.”

“So, don’t pull on the restraints,” I say.

“Don’t,” she repeats.

I probably could break it anyway.

“Can I cut the pole at the base?”

“With a sunray?” she says. “If you can tear apart one of their ships, you can cut into this.”

I cup my hands and form balls of light. Aiming toward the base of the pole, I release a steady beam of energy. I’m getting better at focusing my power, and it looks like yellow lasers are shooting from my palms.

I cut through the iron in less than a minute.

The pole with the X restraint falls toward me, but Corona catches it.

“Thanks,” I say. “Put it near the back with Braeger’s stuff.”

Everyone is carving out little areas of their own private space. Braeger has a workshop in the rear port side, Corona has the bridge, Hali has the hot tub, and I have a spot opposite the fire pit where I’ve got my sword, Soleria mirror, and surfboard in front of Braeger’s stuff. I write all my lyrics there.

Corona is infinitely strong, so I didn’t even think to ask her if she needs my help. No need to be polite. But she must have limits. On Naturn, she was able to get off the ship, but she was still in sight of it. I wonder what her range is. If we have to leave the Rising Sun, how far can she travel?

We all have limits.

For me, without Narista’s gifts running through me, I need to make sure I get enough solar energy. I used to think that if I was near Feroxima or Nemesis or Sol, my powers would vary.

But it doesn’t seem to matter.

Starlight is starlight. Stellar energy is stellar energy.

So, there is no “yellow sun makes Solstice strong and red sun makes her weak” crazy thing going on.

Not that I can tell anyway.

“What’s that?” Braeger asks from the balcony.

“Everything going okay up there?” I ask, looking up. “It’s a fire pit.”

“Cool,” he says. “Want some seats?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Eight.”

He walks down the stairs toward us.

He walks just like Baer did. They could be twins.

“We need an eighth seat on the bridge too,” I say. “Eight’s our new number.”

“I’ll get right on it,” he says. “The bridge is so boring.”

Like Baer, Braeger can’t stand to stand still.

Later that night, the four of sit around the campfire, watching the flames flicker. The flames are blue and burn clean. Carbon dioxide is still produced, however, so Corona makes some adjustments so that when the fire pit is active, the prominences and the scrubbers—built into the Rising Sun from its days as a Ferocity ship—process more carbon dioxide into oxygen. We barely speak. It’s the kind of night filled with sighs and longing. Everyone seems to need someone to hold onto, except maybe Corona, but she’d probably try it just for the experience.

No one gets what they want.

So, instead of bringing us closer together like it was supposed to, the fire pit just makes us feel lonelier.

SEARCHING FOR NEVER FINE

S07Y 042D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Are you still gone?

If nothing proves

You were ever here

Are those memories real?

If I don’t want to remember them

Is everything fine?

If I just keep

Lying to myself

Is everything fine?

I wake before anyone else. I walk right through the galley. I don’t need to eat, so why pretend. In the cargo bay, I sit in front of the Soleria mirror. Opening my left palm, I form a ball of blacklight. Narista is reflected back at me. I sit alone studying my sister’s face until Hali comes up behind me.

“Just as beautiful as yesterday,” she says. “I can see why he’s enamored by you.”

“That’s on him,” I say. “I did nothing to lead Braeger on. Nor will I pursue it.”

“And yet,” Hali says, “as soon as he saw you, you had him.”

Hali and I couldn’t be any different. It’s not just the skin coloring, or her lidless eyes, or how she doesn’t wear clothes, or that she has almost no hair. If anything, she just has peach fuzz on the top of her head.

“What do you see in the mirror?” she asks.

“Not me. I never see me now.”

“Can I look?”

When I nod, she sits next to me.

“Looks just like me,” she says. She turns away quickly. “Or how I imagine I look.”

“No mirrors on Wydro?” I ask.

“No mirrors. But we had plenty of reflections. There’s water everywhere.”

“It only works on Soleria,” I say.

“Your reflection looks just like you.”

“But that’s not what I see. Lately, I’ve been seeing my sister reflected back.”

“Why?” Hali asks.

“Maybe I’m mourning her.”

When we hear Braeger in the galley, both of us stand.

I head to the bridge while Hali joins him for breakfast.

I sit next to Corona and we plot a course from Nupiter to the Nelt.

I don’t know what the names are in the Nemar System and I don’t care. I’m assuming all the Nemar are dead, if Nyssa was the last. So, I’m just going to take the Terran names, minus a letter or two, and add an N.

Beyond the Nelt will be the fourth planet, Nars.

Whatever.

Except for the third planet. I won’t call it Nerra or Nearth.

It’ll be called Never.

’Cause I’ll never be fine.

S X FRIEND ANTHEM

S07Y 043D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

She’s got that going to die

For you look in her eyes

That hastily made I’m not going to see

You anytime soon in her cries

She opened up her palms

The sacrifice’s demand

Gave it to him lost in

The burning wasteland

She had that going to die

For you look in her eyes

That hastily made I’m not going to see

You anytime soon in her cries

She walked right in

Gave it right to him

She had that going to die

For you look in her eyes

That hastily made I’m not going to see

You anytime soon in her cries

She walked right in

Gave it right to him

I’m sick, again. If I could puke I would, except I don’t eat. I miss Robynn. She’d be able to get me out of this funk.

I think back to that time I thought she died. She gave herself up to the Apothecary to save her brother, Fusion, who didn’t want to be saved. The song in my head was about her. And somehow, Baer’s stepbrother got Robynn to Aetha Prime. The Apothecary actually saved her.

I didn’t know that when I killed Jim Apothecary, but I think about it once in a while. And I feel guilty. I have to remind myself that even if a man like the Apothecary saves one girl as some sort of penance, it can’t make up for all those he killed.

Sometimes I think that applies to me.

If I save someone, what does it matter that they didn’t want to be saved?

Right?

I saved them.

That’s the lie I’m going to tell myself.

I want my sister back.

And I don’t care what her feelings are on the subject.

SLIPASIDE

S07Y 043D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

There are moments I’ve let slip aside

Things I wanted to say, stuck inside

These thoughts burn and burrow deep

Eating me alive constantly

All I had to do was just say it for all to see

But I’m so afraid and so should you be

There’s nothing that can make us whole

Until you and me break this mold

’Cause all we got to do is let it slip aside

The things I wanted to say, stuck inside

We just got to let it slip aside

All that junk and built-up pride

All you have to be is all you can’t be

Let it go, reveal it for all to see

There’s nothing to break this hold

You’ve got nothing to console … me

’Cause all we got to do is let it slip aside

The things I wanted to say, trapped inside

I just got to let it slip aside

All that crap and stuff denied

’Cause all I got to do is let it slip aside

The Nelt is what you’d expect it to be. It looks like the belt in the Sol System.

“See, it’s the same,” I say, pointing to the viewport from my captain’s chair on the bridge. I turn, scanning their faces, looking for confirmation. From my right, Corona, and behind us, Hali and Braeger, all give me a why is she so surly look.

I’ve been pissed off for days.

“It’s just rocks swirling around a star in a disorderly fashion,” I add. “It’s not even that different from Naturn’s rings.”

So what?

I can’t be a Soleria Princess every day.

Sometimes I’m hell bent on revenge and ass kicking.

There are things I want to say, but I keep letting them slip aside.

“Except.” Corona says, “it’s rotating in the opposite direction from the Sol belt. That’s because Nemesis spins in the opposite direction—”

“You don’t know everything,” I snap.

And I don’t stop there. Everyone’s going to get something from Captain Pissed Off on the SS Why They Hell Can’t We Figure This Out Stupid Transmission Yet.

“Hali!”

She whimpers. “Yes, Solstice?”

“Would it kill you to wipe down the bathroom once? If I slip one more time in a puddle of water, I’m going to have you outside scrubbing the hull.”

I don’t know if that’s even possible in space without killing her.

“And how about working on that signal a little harder? We need to know how to decipher it. That’s all of you!” I yell. “Braeger, rig up something so we can contain the blacklight and pass an audio signal through it. Corona, find the origin. Nothing can survive on Nemesis, or on Sol for that matter. So, narrow it down. Is it coming from a satellite orbiting the dark star?”

I stand and kick my chair, very uncaptain-like.

The chair does not move, and if I didn’t break my left big toe, I definitely bruised it.

“Get it together, people,” I say.

And I storm off the bridge.

SEE, EVERYBODY DIES

S07Y 045D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

I didn’t want to go

Not today

Not so easily

But everybody dies

Can’t you see

Everybody dies

So easy to say

Except when it’s me

Everybody dies everybody

Everybody but me

The dreams have me. Not visions of the future but nightmares of the past. Am I just leading a whole new crew to their deaths? Because that’s what I specialize in.

Everybody dies.

Everybody but me.

Outside my sleeping chamber, Hali calls my name for the one billionth time.

“Solstice, don’t you have to pee? Are you thirsty?” she asks.

“Soleria don’t have to pee,” I say. “Not if we don’t drink.”

“You need sun, don’t you?” she asks.

I’ve learned any star will do, but I really thought I’d have new powers near a different sun. That hasn’t happened yet.

I was hoping for fire burps that would force people to give me like twenty feet of space.

Or duct-tape-squirting fingernails that I can aim at people’s mouths when they keep hanging outside my sleeping quarters for days.

“I cleaned up the bathroom like you asked,” she says.

“Just leave her alone,” Braeger says.

“It’s not supposed to be like this,” Hali whispers. She’s forgetting I have Soleria ears and whispers don’t go unheard. “She’s the Solstice Dayton from all the stories. She’s always strong and fierce. She was always on mission and never doubted her resolve.”

I sit up in my sleeping chamber, crouching so I don’t hit my head on the three-foot ceiling. It really does remind me of the duct work in Lexington. “Don’t believe the stories,” I say. “We all doubted ourselves at nearly every moment.”

“She can hear us?” Hali asks.

“Yes! Elf ears.”

“What’s an elf?” she asks, raising her voice.

“Fine,” I say. “I’m coming out. You wore me down.”

I lie back in my bed.

And wait five minutes.

“Now?” Hali asks.

I kick open the door, and it hits Braeger and Hali.

“Get out of the way,” I say. “And stay out of the galley.”

They pick themselves up and quickstep out of this part of the Rising Sun.

After I sit at the table, a blue and pink screen appears on one of the cabinets.

“Not you too,” I say.

A projection of my first mate’s face shimmers to life across from me. “You all right?” Corona asks.

“Did you crack the signal?”

“No,” she says.

“Then I’m not all right.”

SO LONG, WALK ON, ’BYE

S07Y 047D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Walk on, ’bye, don’t stop

There’s nothing more to say

That was so long ago

We’re not who we betray

Just two people who once

Knew each other vaguely

Walk on, ’bye

Not every song is about you

You can’t deliver me

You’ve got your thing, I’ve got mine too

It was never meant to be

Those old dreams leave me unglued

I can’t remember

What it was

What it was

That put me with you

I can’t remember

Me with you

Walk on, ’bye

Walk on, ’bye

This song’s not even about you

You got your thing, I’ve got mine too

Apparently, we are somewhere near Nars. So what? It’s probably red and a total disappointment like Mars, even if it does something like spin backward or has moons that are actually spherical.

Everyone has been avoiding me, but after another couple of days of isolation, Braeger approaches me in my corner of the cargo bay near my surfboard. I’ve got my journal out and I’m writing down lyrics, but he doesn’t seem to care.

“Nars was a total bust,” he says.

Duh.

I don’t respond, so he decides he should keep talking.

“Never has an ocean.”

I drop my pink Sharpie and look up.

“That’s what you call the third planet, right?” he asks.

“Yep.”

“Maybe you could teach me how to surf. My grandfather said he taught you in his hometown after the first fall of Nadir.”

“I’m sure he taught you,” I say. I extend my arm, and he sits on Sunbeams, my surfboard, across from me.

“Maybe,” he says, acknowledging the fib. “Austin had legendary waves, and there were some on Aetha Prime too, but I don’t remember that well. I haven’t been myself after that collision with the Ferocity and my ship. Even when my ship was falling apart, I swear I was sleeping.”

“Don’t,” I say.

“Don’t what?” he asks.

“Don’t be all charming like him. You look just like Baer. And I just want to forget him. And I want to forget my sister. And I don’t even want to be here.”

“Then why are we heading toward Nemesis?”

“Someone’s got to save the galaxy. And since we don’t have a plan yet, and we need a Nemar, we’re following a signal we heard like a month ago. And we need to stay ahead of Pyrellax.”

“You could hide somewhere,” he says. “Or go back to Terra.”

“Don’t tempt me,” I snap.

“You know,” he says, “everyone here is your friend. I get you miss your sister and Baer. But we all do.”

“You don’t—”

“I’m not done,” Braeger says, cutting off my interruption. “Did you know that my parents are like first cousins?”

“Half-siblings,” I say. I think they’re both, but what I said is far worse.

“Yeah. My dad Kason and my mom Brynn were Baer’s children with Kase and Robynn. It’s not ideal. Should I carry the anger and embarrassment of that union around with me for all my life? Should I punish myself for something I had no control over, like I did when I was growing up? I don’t even remember growing up. Hali told me all this stuff up on the bridge. I’m related to my ex-girlfriend more than once? That can’t be right.”

“What are your choices?” I say. Honestly, I don’t know what it was like. There were so few Terrans left, and they were desperate. I had left. And the only visitors that ever came—the Ferocity—came to steal kids away.

“I move on from what I can’t control,” he says. “That’s how you and I are similar. It’s not our fault we are who we are. And like I said, I don’t even remember life on Terra or my parents. I think I remember one set of my great-grandparents. And I have no idea why.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Don’t tell me,” he says. “Tell the Wydro. You’re killing her.”

I yell to the ceiling of the cargo bay. “Hali, I’m sorry for being a jerk. You too, Corona.”

“No problem, Captain,” Hali says from the balcony.

“I told you it would work,” Corona says, standing next to her.

She’s right. It’s hard for me to resist him. He even talks like Baer.

“Fine,” I say. “You all win.” I crack a fake smile. “I am officially done moping about not finding my sister. I move on from what I can’t control. Now get me to Never and find me some surf wax.”

STEP ASIDE, PLEASE

S07Y 049D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Stand in line waiting, denied

To find what everyone else sees

What’s that, you’re special?

Not today, step aside, please

There’s something you need to say

It’s about you being with me

I don’t want to hear it

No, thank you, step aside, please

But can’t I just listen to moments

We need to talk about, like these?

How can I even be done? Sorry

Next, step aside, please

And you can’t move on

Not while we still disagree

There are things to be said, you say don’t

Push me aside, please

That’s right

I won’t let you see me

You want me too? Sorry

Step aside, please

Never is close. I stand facing the Soleria mirror. And I argue with the reflection of Narista facing back at me. “I don’t want you in my head. I don’t want your gifts. I’m tired of remembering.”

The reflection of Narista doesn’t answer, so I reply for her.

“Well, you shouldn’t have asked for my memories. Or accepted them. That got us into trouble last time with that whole slipstream variant thing.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask.

Narista reflection replies, “Forget about me and close your mind. Concentrate on yourself. Don’t mope. And for everyone’s sake, don’t go off and be a jerk again for days.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” I ask.

The mirror responds. I know it’s me moving Narita’s lips, but the advice is sound, so I’m going to keep at it. “Remember when you first used the slipstream unpurpose?”

“Yes.”

“When you least expect it, when your mind is clear, what you can’t solve or see, the answer will drift in like a new thought.”

“Unpurpose,” I say.

Narista nods.

“Any other advice?” I ask my sister’s reflection.

“Music. If you’re not going to sing anymore, get the boy to figure out how to put those intercoms to good use.”

“If I don’t sing, how do we get music?” I ask. I don’t even have any instruments.

“Corona,” she says. “Didn’t she download the internet from Terra, plus the combined knowledge of the Soleria and the Nemar?”

“Yes.”

“Then it stands to reason that Corona has all sorts of music in her memory banks.”

Brilliant.

“I miss you,” I say.

She smiles. “Who wouldn’t?”

SURFWAX

S07Y 051D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

All the beaches are closed

But we go in anyway

And the sky’s in flames

While the moon fades away

At the end of it all

My hand in your hand

Listening to Brian’s

Band across the sea sand

I see the waves

Break into Lazy Jacks

Grab them boards

Swipe me some surfwax

Down at the dunes

The moms and pops harmonize

To some flute with soul

I hope for one more sunrise

At the end of it all

Not going to wail, no, no, no

At all that has been washed away

’Cause Bobby’s got the reggae flow

Feelin’ the sand undertow

Hand in hand, headphone sharin’

Down to the beach we stroll

Jimmy’s up next declarin’

The beach life is the goal

So, grab them boards and surfwax

Down to the beach we stroll

Corona has the perfect playlist for visiting a planet named Never. I helped her make it. I am instantly in a better mood. In the apocalypse, when you’re doing all the singing, you forget what it’s like to enjoy artists who were masters at the craft of singing, songwriting, and instrumentation. The first playlist I make since the worldwide destruction of radios I simply name Beach. I fill it with songs that were old when my mom was young—the kind of music I heard on long drives in her single-radio-station International Scout. I pull from the best, focusing on the classics. And Corona has them all. The Aethan gets everything piped into the intercom, and after a few test runs, he tweaks the speakers, improving the sound.

I sit on my board, inspired, and write another song to the tune of the one about dreaming.

From the bridge, Hali interrupts the music. “We’re approaching. Come join us, you should see this.”

I slip my Lyricbook into my sling sack and run up the stairs two at a time.

Once I’m on the bridge, Hali yields my chair and sits in the row behind, across from our engineer. I sit across from Corona on her left.

Never looks like Terra from a distance. It’s 75 percent water, and the rest is green, gray, and brown land masses. There are continents, clouds, and snow-covered poles.

“It’s like a second Terra,” I say, unable to hide my excitement. “Why the hell wouldn’t the Nemar plan on moving from Naturn?”

That was my grandmother’s plan for her people, to move from Saturn. Eventually, Terra would be used for the Soleria, and also other clans. The first couple of months would have been awkward for the Terrans. “Hi. We’re peaceful aliens, the Soleria. We built your planet and we’d like to vacation here now.” But after that, it would have worked out.

“There’s one big difference,” Corona says. She separates her index finger and thumb over the blue display in front of her, causing the viewport to zoom in on the planet.

For a minute, I don’t notice anything usual on the third planet of the Nemar System.

Then I see an orange flash in the clouds.

“Lightning,” I say.

“Kind of,” Corona says.

“What do you mean?”

“Wait for it.”

A second later, the entire cloud lights up orange and the flash lingers.

I lean forward, trying to get a closer look.

“The Ferocity,” Corona says, “set the clouds on fire as a warning, after destroying Naturn in the Fifth Seven-Clan Civil War.”

“It’s more like they’re claiming it for harvest,” the boy says.

“Possibly,” Corona replies.

“The Nemar have no ships,” I say. “They couldn’t have made the trip from Naturn anyway, not after they were defeated. This is just spiteful.”

“We shouldn’t land,” Hali says.

She, above all others, needs some ocean time.

“Risks?” I ask.

“They’d have to accidentally find us,” Corona says. “It’s a big system. Even though Braeger’s ship was destroyed and we destroyed a Ferocity ship, and assuming the Ferocity got a transmission out, most of their fleet was near Fieri.”

“But so were we,” Hali says.

“They can’t cut through space like us,” I say, recalling something Pyrellax once said. “We know how to use the slipstream. The Ferocity rely on known wormholes which link two fixed points in space. Our way is much faster. We don’t have to find any shortcuts or travel across a system to the nearest jump point. We make our own entry and determine where we end up.”

“Why travel at orbital speed?” our engineer asks. “We’ve been doing it for days.”

Wait. What? Why aren’t I using his name in my head. It’s Braeger. Say it. Nope. Can’t do it. Well, stop calling him the boy or our engineer. Say something, stupid.

“We’re searching for a Nemar,” I say. “We need one for our crew.”

“Right,” he says. “Sorry. I know that. We’re following the signal.”

“And we don’t want to zoom by too fast.”

“Where’s the nearest wormhole, jump point, or whatever?” Hali asks.

Good question. I have no idea.

“Beyond the ninth planet,” Corona says. “As long as we continue to move, even if someone chased us, they will always be twenty days behind us because that’s when we left that area.”

“So,” I say, “even if we stay a few days on Never, no one will catch us, even if the Ferocity were notified after we attacked them near the ninth planet.”

“Correctish,” Corona says. She slows the Rising Sun, awaiting my order to descend while we discuss.

“I’m glad you’re adapting,” I say. Nothing is ever really never or always, or black or white. Most answers are gray. “But I’d like something more definitive.”

“The Ferocity,” the person who is a boy and engineer says, “could be ahead of us or somewhere in this system and we didn’t see them.”

“Yes,” Corona says.

I look around at the crew. They need a break. I need a break. You can’t start a galactic war exhausted from hanging out in your spaceship too much. And I need to stop not using people’s names in my head.

Dammit. I used to do that to people I knew were going to die.

But isn’t my foresight all gone?

“Plot the descent,” I say. It’s a very captain-ish thing to say. I don’t even know if we need a specific angle of entry, but it sounds like I’m a pro. “Pick a place with a beach and avoid those clouds.”

We descend from Nemar space into the atmosphere of Never.

Nemar will never live on this planet.

I named it in jest, but maybe that is its real name and I was recalling it from a suppressed memory.

Corona avoids the clouds but gets the Rising Sun just close enough to see the beauty of a sky on fire.

It’s hard to use that word beauty with anything the Ferocity create, but until you’ve seen clouds on fire …

They remind me of the firenadoes and the firephoons on Terra. Wonderous and terrifying.

Behind me, I know Hali is crying. It’s not awe. It’s sadness.

Our only crewman is out of his seat, pressing his face against the viewport.

A fire cloud is like a sunset come to life. Orange, red, and yellow puffs roll over each other, mushrooming in all directions, dancing, until they burst with excitement, spitting flames and lightning.

We are speechless.

Except he says “Wow.”

SHROUDED MYSTERY

S07Y 053D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

There’s a place calling me

It’s right there to see

But underneath a mystery lies

I should just stop and turn away my eyes

What lies beneath should not be

Awakened, shrouded mystery

It’s not time to remember

What once was

What will come to be

Solstar Blacklight shrouded mystery

Shrouded mystery

But I need to see more

It calls, calls to me

But you can’t put it back

Solstar Blacklight shrouded mystery

Shrouded mystery

We land on an island in the middle of a teal ocean. It’s Hali’s idea. We’ll get waves from all sides, she says. I never really thought about islands that way, let alone imagined I’d be surfing on Never, the third planet in the Nemar System. Next to the lone palm-like tree in the center of the island, Corona lands the Rising Sun.

I don’t know anything about away-mission protocol.

And I don’t care.

I kick off my black buckle boots and strip out of my undershieldcapbosuit in front of the boy, Hali, and Corona, down to my black bathing suit—the one from Robynn that never ages or frays.

I take my surfboard off the metal decking across from the hot tub and fire pit. While I wait, facing the rear cargo bay door, Corona studies the sensors.

“Oxygen level sufficient,” she says, looking at the core on her wrist.

Oh, yeah. Good one. Thanks for checking.

“Open the door,” I say.

The airlock opens, and the cargo bay door slowly drops. I run across it as it starts to angle downward—ducking so I don’t hit my head, since the door isn’t fully open—and I jump into the sand.

It’s black but feels like the regular beach stuff.

Miles overhead, the clouds light orange with flame bursts. Since Nemesis is a dark star, it sheds only black-purplish light, but the sky on fire acts like Sol, spreading orange and yellow light that reaches the surface as white, making the ocean similar in color to Terra.

I run to the shore a hundred feet away.

At the edge, I stop to feel the water on my toes.

Breakers twice my height are crashing beyond the shore, hitting the beach as happy foam.

There isn’t another island for miles.

Hali races right by me. Planting both feet, she leaps from the beach, soaring twenty feet into the air. She does a somersault and dives into the sea, breaking the surface without a splash.

The engineer catches up to me.

“Have you seen her do that before?” I ask.

“Maybe on Terra, all the time. I guess.” Hali stays under for a long time, and he adds, “With the gills, she doesn’t have to surface. Not unless she wants to say hello.”

I smile at him and then high-step into the ocean, holding my board. As soon as the water is at my thighs, I lay the surfboard down and paddle toward the waves.

The Never Ocean that surrounds this island, which I am calling Key NeverBetter, looks like the Gulf of Mexico near Key West.

It’s the closest thing to home I’ve seen in weeks.

It’s salty and smells like it should.

Next to me, Hali breaks the surface, arcing in and out of the sea like a dolphin, saying single words as she swims around me.

“It’s.”

“So.”

“Warm.”

“Just.”

“Like.”

“Wydro.”

In front of me a wave breaks. I paddle over it. Water skims over the top of my body. Wetting it. Warming it.

I kick while dragging my arm to spin Sunbeams Blacklight around, readying myself for the next wave.

It comes, and I ride it toward the shore on my belly.

I come ashore at the engineer’s feet. I can’t say his name anymore in my head, but at least I settle on engineer.

“Your surfing is legendary,” he says, helping me to my feet. “Tame that beast.”

He’s right. I didn’t even try.

I run back in, diving under a wave that crashes close by.

Underwater, I can hear the signal from Nemesis with my elongated ears.

But the medium is wrong. Water is a liquid, not plasma. Still, I’ve never heard the signal without Corona amplifying it.

I put my left hand on my board, steadying it, while I stay under the surface.

For a moment, I close my eyes. It always improves my hearing.

I’m not positive, but I hear nine distinct apexes in the wavelength.

I hop on my board, get to my knees, and then stand. I steady myself with the right arm stretched out in front of me and the other trailing. My feet face to the left below bended knees.

It’s a smaller wave, and I haven’t completely forgotten my time in the Keys of Fla.

I ride the wave in, fishing upright next to the engineer. I hop off onto the beach. Corona is next to him. “Take it,” I say to him. “Show me what you got.”

He grabs the board and runs out to meet Hali.

Corona stands by my side, and we watch the two of them play in the water.

“Want to go in?” I ask. “Are you waterproof?” I touch her wrist, and the device that allows her to be mobile. “Can the core take it?”

“As well as any watch might,” she says. “Except this thing is my brain, not a disposable piece of Terran plastic.”

“So that’s a hard no.”

“Yes,” she says. “The risk isn’t worth it.”

It’s a very mature thing for a being that has been able to take form for only a few weeks to say. If I were her, you couldn’t keep me out of the water,

“I heard the signal underwater,” I say.

The engineer takes a wave in and comes ashore near us.

“Keep going,” I say. “Corona and I are working on something.”

“This is about rest and relaxation,” he counters.

“Keep going. That’s an order.”

When he paddles off, Corona asks, “What did you hear?”

I smile. “The ocean, but also a tune or a beat.”

“That’s the frequency’s peaks and valleys.”

I hum the sound for Corona.

“Hm hmm-hm hm hm-hmm hmmm hmm-hmm.”

“Sounds like lots of hmms,” she says.

Hali comes ashore. “Can you hear it? Braeger says he can’t.”

Hali can talk underwater, and I’ve got Soleria ears.

“Yeah,” I say, humming the peaks of frequency.

“Nine syllables,” Hali says. “Six words, and the last one is the longest.”

I drop to my knees and write down the humming in the wet black sand near the water.

Hm hmm-hm hm hm-hmm hmmm hmm-hmm.

“Twenty-one letters,” Hali says, “That’s another good clue in our shrouded mystery.”

“We know the message is from the dark star Nemesis,” I say. “And now we know its words.”

We spend the day on NeverBetter Island. There’s no food. The palm is bare, and Hali didn’t see any fish in the water. She’s got those see-through eyelids, so we trust her. The good thing about not finding any sea creatures is that there are no sea monsters. Sounds crazy, but it’s been a rough month and I’m not up for dealing with shark bites.

We gather downed branches from the palm tree and make a campfire, sleeping under the stars.

Corona watches over us, and for the first time in a long time, all of us just sleep. We don’t remember our dreams, and we wake up refreshed.

The next day, we listen to the signal again underwater, but we spend most of our time swimming and surfing, and even building castles in the sand.

By the second night, I’m ready to abandon my quest. The Ferocity can have the galaxy as long as they leave me NeverBetter.

This island has it grip on me. On all of us, even seemingly Corona, and it takes me awhile to realize it’s an illusion.

Sure, the island is real.

So, is the fun.

But summer can’t last.

Not forever.

By the third morning, I raise my eyes to the sky, and I see the clouds on fire and remember why we came here.

I think of Terra and paradise lost and reborn without humanity. Never is just waiting to be destroyed.

It could be harvested at any moment.

Because the Ferocity are out there, looking for us.

SUMMER CAN’T LAST

S07Y 055D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Summer can’t last all year

It was bound to fade away

Green earth once burned

To nothing but ash-gray

White snow now covers

All that we hope would stay

Summer can’t last

Summer sun has passed

Dark skies haunting

Bring to us the doomsday

How many have to die?

How many must go astray?

White snow covers

Broken dreams burn away

Summer can’t last

Summer sun has passed

Broken my dreams burn away

Summer can’t last

Summer has passed away

I close my eyes and imagine Never on fire. Not just the sky, but the land out there, the continents we saw from space. I imagine summer—this happy moment on NeverBetter—destroyed by the evil that took Terra, Saturn, and Naturn, plus countless worlds.

“How long can we afford?” I ask Corona.

I know she doesn’t know. We don’t know when or if the Ferocity entered this system. And we don’t know if any other ships were here in this system before us.

“Unknown,” she says.

I think of Pyrellax and her story. From before it was even my beginning, our fates were intertwined. It’s hard not to like her better when I only knew her as Stacy Pyre, leader of Rivertown and then Chief Royal. Then, I thought she was the strongest of the humans. But like so many others, she had been sent to Terra to undermine the seven solitaire bearers.

But Pyrellax is a woman in a man’s world. I know she was the oldest child and yet was passed over for the position of Ferocity Emperor in favor of her younger brother, Cyrelax. The Ferocity were a patriarchy until her ascension because the Soleria were a matriarchy.

I don’t have a good explanation for why Pyrellax fought at my side against the Ferocity Nadir, and even undermined her brother. I can only imagine that like with the old American government, there are different factions even within the same families.

But Pyrellax fought me in the slipstream, tortured Narista’s mother and then Narista, and just recently accepted leadership of the clan that destroyed my worlds and countless others.

Even when Pyrellax was Pyre, she didn’t like me.

There is no peace on the horizon.

Our time here on Never is real but an illusion.

There will be no rest without Pyrellax’s death and the annihilation of the Ferocity Clan.

The peace of the Soleria has failed.

I look to the sky again, seeing the flames dance in the clouds.

I look at myself in my bathing suit. I am not acting the part of the rebel princess.

Soon, it will be time to be more than the girl who wants to go back to the beach.

Corona has been silent at my side. She has my mind, and I wonder as we watch the waves if she feels thoughts as I feel them.

The engineer comes ashore with Hali.

I look up again.

The illusion of Never, with water on its surface, represents peace and even joy. The fire in the sky is war.

Can one exist without the other?

Will we know peace without first knowing war?

I don’t know if it’s morning or night anymore.

The sky is always on fire on Never. It’s always light here in this dark system.

The engineer knows my looks already.

My face says ugh.

“What is it?” he asks.

“We’re not safe here forever,” I say. “Summer can’t last.”

I choose a random number of days.

Seven, of course.

“We stay for another week,” I say. “Then we leave.”

We need to find our Nemar crew member and then look for an Airan and Eartarin.

And we will need a Ferocity also, to bear the Fire solitaire and betray their clan.

Only then will we be able to take back the seven systems.

SWALLOWING THE GRAY

S07Y 056D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Caught between the dark and the light

The graydimlight

Covers the day

Swallowing the colors

That slip away

Lost, stumbling

In the dark days

Death tempts me

To part ways

The dawn of my life

Swallowed by the night

The shadow has me

Wrapped in dusk’s twilight

Where has the sun gone?

Where is the light?

How long must we carry on?

How long is the long gray night?

The truth is found between the dark and light. In the midst of the gray, we will find compromised insight. I’ve thought or sung that before. The illusion of Never has bewitched us, so I’ve instructed Corona to remind us, every day, that the peace here is not real. “Look to the sky,” she says, and we see orange and yellow explosions fight each other for dominance. Even amongst its own kind, fire finds no peace. And when there is nothing left to consume, it turns on itself.

The fire clouds shift and disappear when their fuel is spent, letting in the shadows cast by Nemesis. But the dark spots are filled almost as soon as they appear, pushed aside by new bursts of flames that fill the openings.

We surf and we swim, restoring out bodies, preparing them for the long road ahead. But it isn’t all play. We devote evenings to our vessel. Hali brings ashore water, desalinating it, storing it and filling the recycling system. Our engineer makes changes to the Rising Sun’s cargo bay, sunblasters, and hull. Working with Corona, they mold our ship into a sleeker and tougher craft.

I spend time in the pod room, studying the peanut-shell-like coffins that once held me and others. We were on Cyrelax’s ship when in stasis, but except for the missing Aether pod, as far as I can tell, Pyrellax’s old ship, now the Rising Sun, has the same chambers.

It occurs to me that we may not find someone willing to betray the Ferocity Clan. Fyra, daughter of Fision, Fusion’s son with Kase, and Kyra, my old friend, is the mostly likely candidate. She is, I suspect, the Fire elemental solitaire bearer, the replacement for her grandfather Fusion.

I wish Fusion was with me now.

But he chose death, like Kase, Lani, and Jordin.

I don’t begrudge their choices.

They picked a short life of peace in the obscurity of Austin instead of a longer life, sustained by the solitaires, but one that would later be filled with war.

The fight would be easier with proven allies that understood.

But that’s the way of wars sometimes. They are started by one generation and left to be finished by subsequent ones.

Where Fyra is, I have no idea.

Pyrellax must know this too, and likely keeps her close.

I open the Fire pod and step in, leaning against the back.

I know how I felt in the Sun pod.

Helpless.

Trapped.

I close my eyes and realize that in order to win, I may have to become what I abhor. If Fyra doesn’t come willingly with us one day, then I will have to force her into stasis.

A little bad will do a lot of good.

It’s a lie I tell myself.

This war is not black or white.

It’s always been gray.

I am the white light.

Narista was the black night.

Baer was the gray fight.

SO FINE, SO FINE

S07Y 058D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Fine

Isn’t really how it is

You can’t leave it all behind

You can’t ever go back to fine

No turning back

There’s no way to rewind

All you can do is

Live

Live to be fine

Live

For all time

In one moment

Just to be fine

There’s a line

That I couldn’t move

Left far behind

Thoughts and deeds mark my decline

No turning back

I just can’t shine

All I can do is

Live

Live to be fine

Live

For all time

In one moment

Just to be fine

Unwind

You can’t realign

Our lives drift intertwined

You can’t ever go back to fine

No chance to turn back

There’s no special sign

All we can do is

Live

Live to be fine

Live

For all time

In one moment

Just to be fine

I examine the mystery of the hmms. In the wet beach sand of NeverBetter, I kneel and write Hm hmm-hm hm hm-hmm hmmm hmm-hmm. Days are slipping by on Never. Oh, well. It almost feels like we should call it Nevermind, like, never mind about the war we are supposed to be prepping for. But like a math puzzle I can solve, the hmms still have my attention.

Six words. Nine syllables. Twenty-one letters. I listen again under sea water, knowing that it is the wrong medium to understand it. I need the fourth stage of matter. Not gas. Not solid. Not even liquid. I need plasma—light energy.

I open my hands. In the left, a ball of sunray rolls over on itself. In the right hand, I form blacklight, one of Narista’s gifts. Both are forms of plasma.

Hm hmm-hm hm hm-hmm hmmm hmm-hmm.

It’s a sentence, of that I am sure. It’s a cry for help, a warning, or an invitation.

I touch my palms together, trying to join Narista’s power with mine.

Like the solitaires that can’t stand to touch one another, my hands repel each other. It reminds me of magnets with opposite polarities.

In order to understand the mystery of the hmms, I will need to become sunray light and blacklight night.

Only by joining both gifts will I understand the message.

I think of Baer.

He was the only one who could hold more than one solitaire and not for long. His gift—the Aether, the ability to move and control matter and energy—is what I need.

It would all be fine if he were here.

Sometimes, I just want to live to be fine.

He’s not the answer to everything, but he’s a big piece of the puzzle that is me.

SHARDS CHARMBURNED

S07Y 059D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Take me down with a smile

Burn me like you always do

Feed the flames

Take what’s left of me with you

Leave me with nothing

Nothing left to burn

Still I smile

I wanted so much more

So much more for me for you

But the flames

Consume all that’s true

The mirror in me is just you

Shattered

Still I smile

Charm me for a while

Burn all that’s left of me too

Caught by flames

Caught with you

Shards of me shards of you

Burn

This is our trial

“Something’s wrong with Braeger,” Hali says. It’s our last day on NeverBetter and the planet. Corona will make sure of that, even if I promised everyone seven and we ended up with four. The illusion of Never is too hard to resist. Our mission waits beyond the fire clouds and I made it clear that we would only stay seven days more.

“Are you sure you don’t just want to stay longer?” I ask. We are sitting on the beach between the ocean and the Rising Sun.

Hali looks at the ocean. “It’s so much like Terra and Wydro, of course I want to stay here.”

Okay. That was easy. “We’re not staying,” I say.

“That’s not it,” Hali says. “He’s doing weird things.”

I scan around, making sure the engineer is nowhere in sight. “Like what?”

“You remember when we were tearing apart his escape pod to make the hot tub?” she asks.

“Sure.”

“I caught him putting pieces into one of the sleeping chambers.”

“So what? He likes to build things,” I say. “I saw him with some of that stuff when he was off-loading the escape pod. He’s just storing things. Spare parts and the like.”

“It looked like Ferocity stuff. And he doesn’t remember things from our childhood.”

Since I have about zero empathy, I say, “Are sure it’s because he won’t kiss you?”

“There’s that,” she says. “But that’s not it.”

“What else?” I ask.

“He has scars I don’t remember. They’re faint. Like they healed long ago.”

I sit up on my knees. She might be on to something.

“Where?”

“One thin one on each cheek,” she says. “I could see them better underwater. And two more. Circles. One with an A and one with the symbol that’s on the side of the Rising Sun. Both were on his arm. I didn’t notice those until his shirt was off this past week on the beach.”

One was put there by Narista and the other by me.

I jump up, sprinting toward my ship.

He is waiting there, standing on the cargo bay ramp.

“Figured it out?” he asks. “Because I just did. You got to try one of those pods.”

I stop short and pace in front of the ramp.

“No,” I say. I look down at my hands. They’re shaking.

From the pocket of his gray shorts, he pulls out a gray gem on a silver necklace. “This was in the pieces I stored in the escape pod. Once I started reassembling them …”

I fall to my knees.

“You guys kept calling me Braeger. So, I went with it. But I’ve been slowly reassembling the pod, the one I’ve been keeping in the sleeping chamber. Braeger helped me out of tough situation on Aetha Prime, and he said it would heal me. I had forgotten who I was and where I came from. But there was no way I was getting back into that pod. Because if I remembered one thing, it was that I was scared of that pod. I was in it when I woke up. Somehow it returned to Aetha Prime on its own. Braeger said he knew me, but my mind was broken. I didn’t recognize him. I didn’t know he was my own blood.”

“Is it you?” I ask. Tears stream down my face.

“The pod worked, making me younger,” he says. “After Braeger showed me how to pilot his ship, he said the Ferocity would be looking for me and that he would help me escape. But I wasn’t right. I could sense the power in him, and… And there can only be one Aetha Prime. He was a ri—”

I cut him off. “And that’s when the Ferocity came for Braeger like they did for Hali. And that’s how Braeger died.”

Hali comes up behind me, hearing those last words. “The Ferocity? Braeger?”

He glances at her, nodding. “Braeger had found some signal and set a course for the ninth planet in the Nemar System where there’s a wormhole. He said each system has a jump point that can be used to enter the slipstream to travel from one system to another. It’s like a giant highway in spacetime. And the solitaire worked just like you said it would, Solstice. I just wasn’t in the pod long enough. My mind wasn’t right. The Ferocity came, but that’s not how Braeger died.”

“Yes, it is,” I snap. “It’s their fault. It’s the Ferocity’s fault. They came for him, and he was killed in the confusion.”

Hali helps me up. “Grandpa?” she says.

“Yes,” he replies. “You guys kept calling me his name, and Hali kept trying to remind me about him, but it didn’t fit. I didn’t feel like Braeger, if that makes any sense. I set up the Aether pod on the balcony this morning, using the pieces I saved in the sleeping chamber. It wasn’t until I stood up in it, set the gem in place, and closed the door that I remembered everything.”

He holds up the gray solitaire. “It was all in here,” he says, pointing at his head. “Behind some locked door. How you saved us. Who I was. Me and you together.”

Hali falls to the ground.

This had to be the way of things.

There can only be one Prime Aetha.

Always.

Braeger and Baer could not both exist on Aetha Prime. It’s almost a relief the Ferocity came for Braeger right then.

Baer can’t know the truth. His mind must remain fuzzy on this point.

Before he can go further down that path, I do the worst thing a telepath can do—I invade his mind and plant a thought. It’s a violation of his personality but also a mercy. The Ferocity killed Braeger as you were trying to get off planet.

Corona comes up behind him.

“He had his suspicions about who he really was,” she says. “We finished the pod this morning. When he stepped out, I could see what he remembered. The age progression wasn’t complete. Braeger must have pulled him out early. We just finished the process today, restoring the last of his memories.”

Finally, I say his name. “Baer? Is it you?”

“It is,” he says.

“Do you swear?”

“I everswear.”

In an instant, I’m in his arms.

Corona leaves his side and attends to Hali. It’s bad enough when you realize your boyfriend is no longer interested. But then to learn that’s because he’s dead is doubly worse, and also your grandfather, so triply worse.

Baer tries to speak, but my lips are all over his. Whatever he wanted to say comes out as a smile. He collapses under the onslaught, and we fall to the cargo bay ramp.

I push myself up from his chest.

He’s still grinning.

That smile.

It’s a scarburn.

Under his spell, I am shards charmburned.

Part of me knows this had to be the answer.

I named the planet Never and the island NeverBetter.

Maybe both should have been named NeverEver. As in, I never ever believed that Baer would be found again alive.

“By the way,” he says. “Even if I aged backward and was all restored and stuff. And don’t get me wrong, I know why you did it and know it helped to give everyone a normal life on Terra …”

“But?” I ask.

“It is so uncool waking up underground in a pod.”

“I meant to rescue you before that happened,” I say. What I don’t say is that I would have always tried to find Narista first.

“You’re lucky I didn’t get stuck long underground,” he says. “That pod shot right out of that bluff. It must have had something to do with the gem being attached. Everything was a blurry whirl of black and streaking lights. I thought I was hyperspacing like in the movies, and then I nearly hit the Aetha star. But my grandson saved me. Braeger was already the Prime Aetha and using of one of their ships. Somehow, he pulled me in. The next thing I knew, I was on Aetha Prime.”

“He brought you out here to find us?” I ask.

“Kind of,” Baer says. He pauses, looking over at Hali. He whispers, “I’m sorry he died so I could find you.”

“She’ll move on,” I say. It’s horrible, but I can’t let her sadness cloud my joy.

“What about the story you told me about Braeger’s parents?” I ask.

“He told me that like ten times,” Baer says. “I think it was so that even if I couldn’t remember anything, I’d remember that both his parents were my children.”

“What about his body?” I whisper. Baer really is the spitting image of Braeger, or the other way around if he fooled Hali.

Baer tells the lie I put in his brain. “Burned on Aetha Prime before we took off. Braeger plotted a heading out of the system. He left me at the spaceport, got into some trouble, and told me to leave. All I had to do was press the launch button. But I waited. I saw him burn before my eyes. You have to know I wasn’t myself. I didn’t even know who I was supposed to be. Your memory gets lost in the regeneration, and Braeger pulled me out too early.” He transitions abruptly. I can see already he’s not going to carry the weight of the death of his grandson, one he hardly knew, on his shoulders.

“The Ferocity caught up with me again at the wormhole that exits near Planet 9 in this system.”

“Your sisters are dead,” I say. I want to kiss him again, but it’s good to get all the hard stuff out of the way. “As far as I know, only the grandchildren survived, and that was because the Ferocity took three—Aerynn, Hali, and Braeger—from Terra and brought them to Airo, Wydro, and Aether Prime. They went back for them a few weeks ago, caught Hali and killed Braeger. We don’t know about Aerynn. But they couldn’t find four others—Syra, Nyra, Fyra, and Everet—because they were hidden on Terra.”

“We need to find them,” he says, “any survivors, after we get your sister back. And I know about Lani and Jordin. They, Kase, and Fusion died before me. I sent them out to sea. Narista helped me.” He’s not going to dwell on those deaths either because he then says, “I can’t wait till we find her. She didn’t look a day older than sixteen-ish when I went to sleep in my seventies. I’m going to rub it in her face that you found me first.”

“I left her on Terra,” I say. “In a pod with her gem. I sent her out to sea.”

“Then why are we in the Nemar System?” he asks. But he doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “Right. I get it. When combined with its solitaire, a pod returns to its clan’s star when the elemental is restored.”

“What?”

“You should see it,” Baer says. “It’s like I watched a little movie this morning. When I went back into the Aether pod and my memory returned, there was this whole thing about the history of the clans—”

“I saw a shooting star,” I say, “when I left Terra.”

“Well, that was either me in the Aether pod or Narista in the Nether pod. Maybe the Ferocity saw us. They had to be watching Terra. Maybe that’s why they went back to get the others. Why didn’t they find you?”

“I’ll tell you later, but here’s a quick summary. I flew into Sol. Got stuck in the slipstream. Went back in time and convinced you as a teen to get in the Aether pod when you were old. And I slept for a lifetime while you all aged.”

“You returned to your star, Sol. So, that means Narista is on Nemesis.”

Putting aside the whole who can survive on the surface of a dark star thing, I say, “We’ve got a problem.”

“What’s that?”

Narista wanted to be like the others. Of the six elementals, Baer was only one I convinced to go into the pod with his solitaire when he was old, and I had to go back in time in the slipstream to before the Firegale and plant the idea in his head. So, after taking my gemstone and leaving Baer with his, I buried four gemstones on Terra. The seventh—the Nemstar—I snapped into the Nether pod before setting it adrift in the sea near Austin. That wasn’t what Narista wanted. She wanted to die like Lani, Jordin, Kase, and Fusion. I was supposed to take the Nemstar with me.

“She didn’t want to come back.” I touch the sides of Baer’s face, making sure he is real, as I brush back his hair. “In the slipstream, Pyrellax tortured Narista for centuries. Narista couldn’t forget all that. She didn’t want to like her mom. Pyrellax had tortured her too. Narista didn’t want to be crazy, not like her mom. She asked to die.”

“What?” Baer says.

“And,” I reply, “I refused to honor her wish.”

“She’s going to be so pissed.”

If there is one truth in this universe, one thing that we know with absolute certainty, it is not to cross Narista.

EVOLVE

SWEET MELODY

S07Y 060D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Got my black boots buckled

My hair up feathery and fancy

Gonna make you remember

The way you looked at me

Got your favorite dress

Wrapped up around me

Gonna make you remember

What you used to see

Got our song playing

In the background

Gonna make you remember

Having me around

Gonna make you remember

Our sweet love’s melody

Got your attention

Too bad that’s it for me

Got my black boots buckled

My hair up feathery and fancy

Gonna make you remember

The way you looked at me

Gonna make you remember

Our sweet love’s melody

I’ve delayed our departure from Never. It’s safe to assume that if Baer was shot to Aetha, then Narista was shot in her pod to Nemesis. If that didn’t kill her, she’s alive and likely furious.

I just can’t focus on Narista or the hurt Hali is feeling.

My Baer is back.

I don’t know he does it, but while I talk he works. And I talk. And talk. I’ve pretty much been apart from him for like three centuries. All the while, he manages to carve another surfboard from a downed tree limb.

I just want to touch him and hold him. Kiss him and hug him.

He’s a good sport, stopping occasionally during his project to let me be affectionate.

Neither of us mentions Robynn, Jordin, or Kase—all the ex-girlfriends and mothers of his children.

This is our chance to reboot.

This is his chance to be something more than he was.

I don’t mention that the clock is ticking again. He grows older every day he is out of the Aether pod, while I remain in the tradition of the Soleria and Nemar royal houses, forever young. I wonder how many direct ancestors I have besides Solelena and Solterra. I don’t have to wonder too hard. I’m guessing I’m the seventh generation. Making up names or recalling suppressed memories, I name ancestors backward from me.

Solstice

Solelena

Solterra

Solsaturna

Soltertiara

Solsecundia

Soleria

Baer stops what he’s doing—finishing up with his board—to ask me what I’m doing.

“Looking out to sea, daydreaming. Never has that effect on you.” I pinch him, just to make sure he isn’t part of the illusion on Never.

“Ouch.”

“Get used to it,” I say. “I won’t be convinced you’re real until we get off planet.”

He drops the board. “Let’s go then. The Rising Sun is ready. And I’m sure Hali wants something to do besides swim. And I don’t even know what Corona does when she isn’t flying the ship.”

“No,” I say. “Today I am queen of Terra once again, you are my illegitimate consort, and this is the Everglades. Get that surfboard done so we can ride.”

I flip open my Lyricbook while Baer continues to work, and I jot down lyrics, imagining a date we won’t have tonight. I keep looking up at him in between lines, and I do want to pinch him.

A few hours later, we try his surfboard in the waves.

It sucks after all that effort.

It’s not balanced, and it gets waterlogged fairly quickly.

It’s a good reminder that like me, he’s not perfect.

We take turns riding the waves on my board after letting his drift into shore. We play in the teal water, kissing and touching each other’s bodies, reminding ourselves what they felt like. He is muscular and tall with dirty blonde hair. I am as I usually am, a bit too skinny, mostly flesh and bone with a thin layer of muscle.

Our bodies tingle with each touch, nearly on fire.

When we are sure Hali is asleep on the Rising Sun and Corona has turned her eyes elsewhere, we find a quiet spot on NeverBetter.

On a blanket taken from our ship, we lie side by side exploring each other, like our first time on OurOwnPrivateIsland in the Everglades. There is no moonlight or shaded sun this time. The fire sky lights the planet, leaving nothing hidden.

We strip, leaving only the solitaires around our necks, comfortable in our shared history.

And then we join, interweaving our bodies together.

My powers flow through him and his through me.

Our bodies elevate above the sand, glowing, twisting, and turning with his gifts and mine feeding off each other. We feel weightless and warm and, for the first time, complete.

Later in each other’s arms, I sing, knowing he is the sweet melody to my lyrics.

SCARCED

S07Y 062D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

I used to be normal

But I’ve forgotten

Who that person was

And I’ve decided

I don’t want to remember

I’m told even rabbits need to rest. After two days alone in the sand on NeverBetter, Baer and I meet up with Corona and Hali. Neither girl can help but smile. It’s possible neither one truly understood what love was until they see Baer and me together. The girls offer us a few more days alone on Never, but it’s time to go. We spend the next two days readying the ship. Despite Baer’s earlier assurances that the ship was ready to go, we still need to do a few things. Baer rigs up a cover for the hot tub and fire pit, as well as holders for my surfboard and the Soleria mirror. Hali continues to paint the interior and exterior of the Rising Sun, and she works on developing launch and landing protocols for the rest of us. I spend my time in the cargo bay watching Baer while he works, pretending to organize the supsdelite, sharpen my sword, or wax my surfboard—anything to stay near. But I’m also thinking about how I’ll apologize to Narista for not killing her.

When we’re ready to depart, we meet in the cockpit. On the bridge of the Rising Sun, everyone takes their assigned chairs. Front left, I am the captain. To my right is my first officer, Corona. Behind her is Baer, our engineer, and to his left is Hali, our communications officer, which is also behind me.

I spin in my chair and address the others.

“We need four more to round out our crew. Narista is somewhere near the dark star, of that I am sure. After her, we need an Airan, a Ferocity, and an Eartarin. Our best bets are the grandchildren, Aerynn, Fyra, and Everet.”

Everyone nods.

I continue, “I’m sure Corona or you two—Baer and Hali—remember whose descendants they are, but I don’t. All I know is they are the only three left, and I’m betting they are Air, Fire, and Earth.”

“Terran children can be born into any clan,” Corona says, “and only someone from the Sol System can bear a solitaire born from that star.”

“Why not retrieve the gems after we find Narista?” Hali asks.

“I think the longer they remain hidden,” I say, “the better.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Hali says. “Or Baer. You already have gifts. If I’m going to fight this war, I want all the weapons I can have now. There’s no going back to being a normal Wydran or Terran. Not for me.”

“When all the solitaires are together,” Baer says, “others fall under their influence.”

Hali doesn’t understand.

“We called them Darktals,” I say. “They had powers too. I think it was born from all of the solitaires being near their bearers at once. All that energy needed to go somewhere. We weren’t the only gifted teens on Terra. Wherever we went, teens developed lesser but similar powers. Even Pyrellax and Nadir gained gifts from being around us. The problem is, it’s like sending out a flare to the Ferocity. Once we have all the gems together, they’ll know. That’s why I sundered them.”

“How about we retrieve the gems from Terra as we find bearers?” Baer asks. “I’m betting the only reason Pyrellax and Nadir gained gifts was because they spent so much time on Terra.”

It’s a nice offer to his granddaughter and also a way to support me.

I look to Hali, and she nods.

“That’s a good idea,” I say. “It will allow newer bearers some time with their stones and the ability to develop their skills.”

We now have a step two in our plan. Find Narista, then recover the water gem.

“Plot a course for Nemesis,” I say.

Corona calls up the blue screen and scrolls through the pink icons. Checking the external cameras, she makes sure we are clear for takeoff from NeverBetter. She scans the fire clouds, looking for breaks in them. And then she runs through a checklist, things we should know to do before departure.

“Bay door closed. Solarity shielding intact. Sunblasters online. Visual looks good. Solar batteries charged. Aft and stern prominences locked in place. Hot-tub and fire-pit covers engaged. Plotting slipstream waves. We’ll ride the pull from Nenus and Nercury. Seatbelts?” She grabs the W-shaped Ferocity steering wheel. “Switching to manual. Good visual on liftoff. We are a go for departure.”

She presses the pink rocket icon.

Nothing happens.

Corona taps the display.

“Did you check the parking brake?” Baer asks. He’s got a huge grin.

While Corona cycles through the checklist, Baer turns toward me. “This is an old peanut, isn’t it? I’m glad it’s not an oval anymore. I like how you sleeked it up and made it look like a fighter jet. You can’t go challenging galactic forces in an oval. You need something pointy. The wings are a nice touch too.”

Despite the compliment, the Rising Sun does not agree.

Behind us, the bridge doorway closes, locking us in.

The viewport closes and all the lights fail, enveloping us in darkness.

SAVORED

S07Y 062D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

There’s a sweet smell

On your pillow

And it lingers

Long after

You’ve left

In the dark, Baer smells nice.

We’re in trouble, and I’m still stuck thinking about waking up in his arms.

This is why you don’t bring your star-crossed lover into space.

Stars get all crossed.

Corona reaches across the aisle for my hand and touches it.

I activate my bioluminescence, lighting up the bridge.

Before us, Corona shimmies and glitches. The watch-like core, normally found on her left wrist, drops to my lap, and she disappears.

“This isn’t good,” Hali says.

“Well,” Baer adds, “you can’t really expect to build a ship from the scraps of alien tech and not have it turn on you.”

He’s right, and not the first person to say that.

Duh.

I pick the core off my lap and strap it to my wrist.

“Checklist now, Baer,” I say. “Check everything she did.”

“On it,” he replies.

“Hali,” I say, “look or listen for incoming craft. Make sure it’s just our ship going haywire and not some sort of attack.”

“Wouldn’t they blast us with fire?” she says, assuming it’s the Ferocity.

“Not if it’s the Nemar,” I say. They have no weapons. “Remember, we’re in their space.”

“And the Ferocity don’t want us dead,” Baer says, “so they wouldn’t burn us. They want all gem bearers alive.”

“They blasted Braeger,” Hali says.

“Right,” I say. “Well, not all Ferocity are the same. The leader of a planet can’t control every citizen.” I don’t know why Braeger and Baer were attacked, but a true lie will cover it for now and get her focused on the task at hand.

Hali takes my seat, and I kneel between her and Baer, examining the forward prominence.

Baer watches me examining the cylinder.

“This is what creates the Solitary,” I explain. “The energy shield that surrounds the Rising Sun.”

“I know. Just because I didn’t know my name doesn’t mean I didn’t learn how this ship runs. What are you looking for?”

How would I know if it was broken?

“Smoke, cracks, whatever,” I say. “A sign that it’s overheating or not working properly.”

This one looks fine.

“I’m going to check the aft one,” I say, standing.

Except we are locked in. I push the door, but it doesn’t move.

“I’m going to stay on the bridge,” I say like it’s a choice.

Hali leans toward the dashboard, wedging her head between the steering wheel and the forward prominence. “Turn off your light for a moment, Solstice,” she says.

When I comply, Hali presses her right ear against the dash and then both hands. Underwater, she communicates like a dolphin, using clicks and sonar to find things and talk to other Wydro.

She whispers, “Try it too, Solstice. Close your eyes. See if you can sense the vibrations.”

I kneel next to Baer, putting my left ear on the dash. Hali’s right.

“Hm hmm-hm hm hm-hmm hmmm hmm-hmm,” she says.

It’s the signal and it’s a lot stronger. So much so, we can feel it vibrating through the ship.

Baer tries but hears and feels nothing. His ears, rounded like Terrans and Aethans, are not specialized like mine or Hali’s.

Crippled, the Rising Sun is stuck in space for three days when the signal reverberates though the hull.

When we wake up on the third morning, Hali tells us the signal is dissipating.

The signal lasts for a few more minutes and then it fades.

“Losing it now,” Hali says.

I nod.

The lights flicker on the Rising Sun.

I take off the core and place it on Corona’s seat.

The blue screens with the pink icons light up above the dashboard.

Corona comes to life next to me, going from translucent to solid in seconds.

I strap the core to her left wrist. “Where did you go?”

“There’s a new signal under the first. Your sister has a message,” Corona says, “and she’s pissed.”

STANDING PAT

S07Y 065D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

The best ideas

Are formed in

Unexpected places

And wasted moments

They arise fully born from the

Waiting

Maybe we shouldn’t rush off to Nemesis. Some of the best ideas are born from standing still. I’ve seen my sister mad, and her power rivals mine. But I have her powers. Does that mean she doesn’t have them? We shared powers once in Arnac City, and that didn’t mean she lost her powers.

We should be safe if we stay here. But this was the first time we were unsafe because we were here. My brain hurts. I’m all wrapped in circles.

I scan the crew’s faces, reading them.

Corona thinks she’s being all secretive, but for a being made of pure energy, she seems to be pinching herself a lot.

Corona is not right.

Baer’s ready to go. It’s time to go off and save someone. That’s what he does.

“Check everything again,” I say. “Look at every system. We need overrides and checklists in case Corona goes down again.”

I pause and look at her. “No offense.”

“None taken,” she says.

I wonder if I’ve crossed over to the 23 percent of the time when she lies because Corona is nearly frowning.

“I want backups for everything,” I say. “We can’t be dead in the water in space.”

Dead in the water sets Hali off. That’s a real thing on Wydro. Like, you wake up and overnight one of your friends forgot to use their gills and tried to use their lungs or something.

I don’t know it that’s really true, but she hops up from her seat and tries to leave the cockpit.

“Open this now,” she says.

Hali wants to run from the ship. I can’t even see her face, but she’s standing in front of the bridge door waiting for it to open.

“My name is Kayhali,” she says. “I want you to know that in case we fall out of space. Because that’s what’s going to happen if Corona goes down again. We’ll be flying along all happy and then we’ll be like ahhhhhhhhhhh. And there’s not going to be a lot of warning. Everyone just calls me Hali because my mom’s name was Kaylani and you can only have so many Kays around, but my real name is Kayhali. I thought you should know.”

“I need to think,” I say. “And sleep.”

You can’t tell on Never with its never-ending orange sky, but it’s probably night.

“Alone,” I add.

Corona opens the door, and Hali rushes out.

“Stay on the ship,” I call after her.

Baer and Corona stand.

“You two stay here for a minute, please,” I say.

“What is the message from Narista?” Baer asks.

“It’s not the hmms,” Corona says. “This is a different message. But message is the wrong word. It felt more like a warning.”

“As in, I can shut you down anytime?” Baer asks.

“Exactly,” Corona says, “but without words.”

“So, if we move on,” I say, “we risk Corona, but if we stay here, we get nowhere.”

“Maybe that’s why they call it Never,” he says. “Like you can never leave.”

“I named it,” I say.

“From a memory,” Corona adds.

“I’ve been here?”

“No,” she says, “but Solelena and Nemesis were as kids.”

“What are you telling me?”

“The planet really is called Never,” she says.

Whatever.

Nevermind.

“I’m going to go sleep or something,” I say. I need to think.

“We’ll stay on the bridge and look for alternatives,” Baer says.

“To what?” I ask.

“To my death if we leave,” Corona deadpans.

SUAVE

S07Y 066D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Sodium Laureth Sulfate

Beauty clean

Rinse repeat glycol

Propylene

I can’t fall asleep even if today is tomorrow. What I need is a shower.

I have a thick layer of guilt stuck in my silver-blonde hair near the pink streak. I need to wash out.

The bathroom is free, which means Hali is asleep or she’s in the hot tub or asleep in the hot tub. I hope she finds some peace. I can’t be flying around with a worrywart. I should have been up front with her.

Join my team and people will want to kill you.

It’s not a very good advertisement.

It’s more like the fine print.

I climb into the shower, leaving my black bathing suit on. It needs to be cleaned. You can’t wear the same bathing suit as underwear for like three years and not wash it once in a while. I tug on the ends of my space buns and let my hair fall to my shoulders.

When you’ve spent as much time as I have in the slipstream, you start to question reality.

Here’s what I know. Baer’s back. Narista is near. Hali really likes water. And Corona is real.

She’s as real as me or Baer.

Life is life.

I may be in the business of stopping aliens hell-bent on spreading the hellfire, but I’m not in the killing business.

It’s a lie I tell myself to stay awake. Because if the opposite was true, I’d have to hide in my dreams.

Except the opposite is true.

I sunblasted a Ferocity ship several days ago.

There were no survivors.

So, I’m a liar or chickenshit.

Either way, I’m a killer.

And I’m about to make a real personal killing or I’m going to save someone’s life. Either way, I need to shut her down before she is damaged or does damage.

I run shampoo through my hair and finish up.

Outside the shower, I activate the blower that whisks water from my bathing suit, hair, and body. There are no towels on this ship, and I’m sure the water flowing down the drain will end up coming from the kitchen sink in a few days.

I dress and leave the bathroom, ignoring Hali poking up from below the surface of the hot tub. She won’t approve of my plan.

I jog up the stairs three at a time and quickstep across the balcony and through the pod room.

Corona and Baer turn to face me.

She’s glitching. Her right eye disappears for a second, and I can see into the socket. It’s not white like bone, but rather a concave shape built by yellow dots—electrons.

“Did you—” Baer says, but I cut him off.

“How are you?” I ask my first mate, knowing she is not well.

“The second signal is looping,” Corona says, “attacking my subroutines.”

“Like a virus?” Baer asks.

“It’s chipping away at my databanks, searching for something, destroying as it moves along.

“What’s it looking for?” I ask.

“Death or way to die. It’s combing through the Soleria and Nemar databases, and even my memories from you.”

Corona’s left eye glitches, and for a moment we can see through the back of her head.

“I don’t want to lose you, Corona,” I say. “That’s why you need to leave. I can’t have you being vulnerable. Hand me the core.”

She removes the watch-like band from her wrist.

“We’re going to switch the Rising Sun to manual,” I say. “I need you to hide in the core. I’ll call for you when it is safe.”

“Or when you’re in danger,” she says.

Hali enters the bridge soaking wet. “What’s going on?”

Would it kill her to dry off or stop spreading mucus for a second?

“Say good-bye,” I say.

Corona fake smiles. She pushes her red hair behind her ears.

“Hide,” I say. “As deep as you can. It’s not safe for you anymore. Whatever the signal is, if you are exposed to it beyond Never, we’ll lose you.”

“Use the checklist,” Corona says.

Baer spins in his chair and points to the silvolden wall to the right of Corona’s pilot seat. Everything we need to launch the ship is written on the wall with my pink Sharpie.

“Good-bye,” Corona says. “Remember the emergency word.”

“Peanuts,” I say.

“What if she’s damaged while she’s in there?” Hali asks.

“I’ll die,” Corona says. “But don’t worry, time is relative. It’ll be minutes for us, months for you.”

“But she’ll die out here anyway,” I say.

Hali gives me a dirty look.

What?

“She’s right,” Corona says. “I’ll be dead in hours at this rate.”

She shimmers away in front of us.

In my hand, a blue and then pink light blinks over the core.

She’s gone, and we’re on our own from here on in.

“Get her in the air, Baer,” I command.

He sits in the right-hand pilot chair and takes hold of the W-shaped wheel. He checks the list to his right, making sure we haven’t done anything stupid like leave the cargo bay doors open.

He calls up the blue screen and scrolls through the pink icons. I sit next to him and mentally check things off the list as he reads them.

“Clear for takeoff from NeverBetter.”

I scan the external camera feeds on my screen, using my finger to slide through them after selecting the pink camera icon. “All clear.” I guess I’m looking for fallen trees, rogue waves, or sand dunes. Until you do something, you’re not sure how to do it.

“Clouds?” Baer asks.

Hali and I look up through the sunroof. There’s a break in the fire storms toward the east.

“There.” Hali points.

“Got it,” Baer says. “Bay door closed?”

I call up the camera feed in the cargo bay. “Yep. Air lock closed too.” That’s the door between the ramp and the rest of the bay.

“Solarity intact?”

“Field is secure,” I say. That sounds about right and real professional. All I did was use the external cameras to make sure the old Ferocity ship is still a different shape, like a jet plane instead of a peanut. I suppose if the Solarity was off-line—and it never has been—the interior of the ship wouldn’t still be silvolden.

“Sunblasters online?”

I slide though the icons and press the one that looks like two laser guns on an outline of our ship. Placing my hands in the pink gloves after they appear in front of me, I make fists, rotate my palms upward, and release sunrays. Beams of light shoot from the port and starboard sides of the Rising Sun. “Check.”

Baer scans the viewport and then the sunroof, looking outside the ship again. “Visual looks good.”

He checks the wall to see what’s next. “Solar batteries charged?”

“Anyone know where those are?” I ask.

“Under the stairs,” he replies.

Behind me, Hali is straining against her seatbelt to peer over my shoulder.

“Hold,” I say. I wave my hand downward in a chopping motion, taking a guess. My screen splits in two. Where there were two blue and pink tablets, now there is three. I wave my hand over the new hologram, and it tracks with my fingers. I pull my left arm toward my chest and toss the screen over my shoulder. It’s just a hologram, and I can’t really grab it, but it flows with my arm.

Hali centers the screen in front of her. “Thanks.”

“Just makes sense,” I say. “We need our communications officer online too.”

I wait a moment and then ask her about the batteries.

She presses an icon that looks like two old-style Terran AA batteries. The pink outlines are shaded to the top with a yellow overlay.

“Is yellow good?” she asks.

“Not usually,” I say. “No, wait. Yellow must be solar energy.”

“Then they look good.”

“Aft and stern prominences locked in place?” Baer asks.

“Check,” I reply, putting my foot on the one between us. “Can’t move it a bit.”

“Hot-tub cover engaged?” he asks.

“Did it myself,” Hali says. “And the fire pit.”

“Fire pit secure,” Baer repeats. “Plotting slipstream waves using Nenus and Nercury to draw us in until we feel the pull of Nemesis.”

“Seatbelts?” I ask, skipping to the next item on the list.

We all say, “Check.”

“Corona secure?” Baer asks, adding a final item.

“To my wrist,” I reply.

He grabs the steering wheel. “Switching to manual. Good visual for liftoff. We are a go for departure.” He smiles. 

I bet he’s always wanted to do that. Corona probably got the phrasing from her databank memories of Terran astronauts from way back, and he’s repeating what she said.

Baer pulls back on the W-shaped wheel.

Nothing happens.

He searches around the cockpit and then looks at his list.

“Is it even on?” I ask.

“I don’t think this makes any noise when it’s on,” Hali replies.

“Where is the on switch?”” Baer asks.

I swipe the screen in front of me, calling up the rocket icon. I gesture with my hand like I’m grabbing my blue and pink screen and toss my image to his holographic control. In an instant, his screen is the same as mine.

“You can do the honors,” I say.

He presses the pink rocket icon.

Nothing happens.

STRIATED

S07Y 067D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

You said, “It’s just a scratch.”

True, it didn’t cut me deep

But it’s an old wound, and

Your shot was willfully cheap

“Bring her back,” Hali demands.

Frustration is running high on the Rising Sun. We never went anywhere yesterday.

After giving up, eating, taking a shower and a hot tub—Hali only—and sleeping, we are back on the bridge trying to get our ship off the ground.

“Corona’s gone,” I say just like I did a day ago when Corona left.

“She’s going to die in there, alone,” Hali says. “That virus is going to eat her up no matter what. At least out here, we could comfort her.”

I’d never thought of it that way, that Corona would be lonely, but the core on my wrist is the safest place for her.

“You don’t care about anybody,” Hali says. She means Braeger, Corona, and the seven billion I lost on Terra.

I spin in my chair to face her. “We’ve been stalled in place too long. We can’t stop the Ferocity by staying in place. And to do that, we need to outsmart my sister.”

Baer looks at Hali and then me, following the argument from the pilot chair.

“Are you sure it’s Narista?” he asks.

“Do you remember the Nether?” I reply. “Remember how she could infect us with that?”

“What’s the Nether?” Hali asks.

Baer extends his left arm, showing the veins in his arm. “See how they’re blue?”

Hali looks at his and then her own arms. Her skin is shiny and gray, and you can’t see below the top surface.

“I don’t know what it would do to you,” he says, “but she could grab us and make our veins run black.”

“It’s like a shadow of poison and despair rolled into one,” I add. “What Narista is doing to Corona now is no different. The Nether is a virus.”

“But she’s not alive,” Hali says. She doesn’t wait for us to protest. “Sorry. Not what I meant.”

“She’s digital,” I say. “I get it. Somehow, Narista must have got hold of some technology.”

Baer puts his hands on his knees and leans across the aisle. “That’s a lot of guessing. And Narista is not our enemy. Why would she do it? The Ferocity are our enemy.”

But Pyrellax isn’t here in the Nemar System. I’m not sure how I know that, but it’s true. She’s back near Feroxima consolidating her powerbase with the Ferocity and catching up on being asleep for seventy years, which, believe or not, is one hundred thirty in base 7. So, by Ferocity standards or any other standard, she’s been gone a long time as a result of her stasis. But I’m betting it’s not so long that the Ferocity have changed, and the patriarchal society isn’t actively working for her.

“Narista is telepathic like me,” I counter. “Corona said the virus was searching for death or a way to die, combing through the Soleria and Nemar databases and my memories that she had stored.”

“Why?” Hali asks.

“She doesn’t know that she wants to live yet,” I say. I can’t say that she wants to die.

We have a new enemy: the daughter of Nemesis, my sister, Narista. And we need her on our side.

SUPERFLENED

S07Y 068D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

I followed you

Over peaks and into ravines

Only to be carelessly

Flung aside and supervened

Why would my sister want to prevent me from finding her? I lie awake in my sleeping tube wondering that. It’s dawn, I think, but my quarters are all dark. “Lights,” I say.

Nothing happens.

Did Corona control that too?

We gave up leaving again last night. We even tried changing the order of the checklist.

Nothing works. No matter what Baer does, we can’t get the Rising Sun powered up.

We tested the batteries below the stairs. I don’t know how he did it, but Baer says they are fine. In his professional opinion as chief engineer, the problem lies with the controls.

I roll to my side on my bed.

This is all Narista’s fault. Why do I even want to see her?

And why am l convinced it’s Narista messing with Corona? Corona saying that it is doesn’t make it true, does it?

But what Corona said does rings true.

Narista asked to die untainted by the memories of Pyrellax torturing her in the slipstream.

I didn’t honor her wishes.

If my sister is alive, she’s struggling.

I wish I could hold her hand, just to let her know I care.

Hand?

I sit up in my tube, smacking my forehead. Three-feet by three-feet by eight-feet idiot. I lie back down and rub my hairline.

Running my fingers along the wall near my head, I find the light and the door mechanism. I press both. The door at my feet swings open and I crawl on my back toward it. The white walls are smooth and are slick. It takes me a minute to push myself out. These things are the worst. Why would anyone design a sleeping quarter like this? I understand the need to conserve space, but these things are like coffins.

Thankfully, my tube is on the ground floor. So are Baer’s and Hali’s tubes. But the next person we take on is going to be on the second level. It’ll be even harder to get in and out.

I stand up and look at my hand.

It’s my left thumb that will, like on my long-lost phone, turn the ship on.

I knock on Baer’s tube, the middle tube. There’s no way we are sleeping in the same tube. It would be too hot and crowded.

“What?” he moans.

“I figured it out,” I say.

Hali’s tube pops open. She has no trouble getting out, wiggling her whole body, moving her legs as one and her hips like a fish might if she had legs and hips. I’m sure the mucus helps, and she slides out no problem.

Baer is about 21 percent less graceful and plops out at my feet. “These are the worst,” he says.

“I know,” I reply. “So awkward.”

Once everyone has washed up and eaten, we head up to the bridge.

I sit in my chair and press the rocket icon with my left thumb.

The ship starts. The Rising Sun doesn’t make any noise, but the icon lights up to a darker shade of pink.

Baer rolls his eyes. “Fingerprint recognition?”

I smile at him across the aisle. “She did set up the display to act and look like a phone.”

“Well, let’s fix that now.” He presses the gear icon, but it’s not what he thinks it was. “This is mechanical stuff. Pods, toilets, the galley, gravity, and life support.”

I don’t like how’s she grouped those icons. I press my finger for more than a couple of seconds, and the icons move slightly back and forth. I drag life support and gravity to the front screen.

“These are important,” I say. “Now, let’s add you as a user.”

It takes us a minute, but we find the settings on the right icon after we swipe away a couple of screens. I use my left thumb to verify it’s me and then scroll through the menu to add a user. Baer presses the screen, and the system updates to allow him to override the lockout feature on the rocket icon.

“Your turn, Hali,” I say.

She gets out of her chair and stands between Baer and me, exposing her palms. “I don’t have fingerprints.” Her fingers are webbed near the top and just as shiny and smooth as the rest of her body.

“We’ll have to figure that out later,” Baer says.

He turns the Rising Sun off by pressing the icon with his right thumb. “Works,” he says.

“Strap in,” I say, “and let’s run down the checklist again.”

Baer presses the rocket icon, and the ship turns back on.

“Do I plot a course for Nenus?” he asks. He moves his hands over the screen and pulls up some displays I haven’t seen before.

In front of him, he’s got the blue screen displaying a map of the Nemar System with the nine light-pink planets and dark-purple Nemesis. I don’t remember any of the screens, icons, and images being anything but pink or blue, except the yellow batter meter and the red warning icons, like the proximity alert. Adding the purple to match the dark star’s hue must have been an upgrade from Corona.

“Do you know how to get us there?” I ask.

“This whole system is brilliant,” Baer says. “It’s like a tablet or phone. The swiping and the icons, it’s all real intuitive. Corona showed me. Other that not mentioning I was locked out from starting the Rising Sun, she was a good teacher. All I really have to do is press on the second planet—Nenus—and then select our speed.”

Next to the diagram of the Nemar System there are three icons: a wave, a rocket, and a rocket with a circle and a diagonal line over it.

“Slipstream, orbital, and stop,” Baer says. He presses Never on the diagram and then the rocket icon. “Orbital is relative, right? It’s the speed at which the nearest planet is orbiting. We match speeds with the rotation so we don’t fall to the surface. When you’re leaving the atmosphere or hopping between moons or something, it seems pretty fast, but not when you’re just circling the planet. But we can go faster without entering the slipstream. See, there’s a slider right here.”

He runs his right finger along the rocket icon. The icon expands, revealing a slider on the righthand side. The slider is striated.

“This one goes up to seven,” he says. He’s got this really goofy grin on his face. It’s some sort of TV or movie joke or pun I don’t get.

“Yeah,” I say. But he’s wrong. If it was labeled, the ticks on the line would say zero through six.

You don’t use a seven in base 7.

“She’s integrated the touch screen with the Ferocity controls,” he goes on. He slides the slider up, and the Rising Sun goes faster relative to the rotation of Never, which is outside the left viewport.

“It all runs on solar energy,” he says, pointing at the icon that looks like two AA batteries.

The AAs are 98 percent full.

“This is our charge level,” he says. “We’re constantly absorbing energy from the nearest star.”

I so don’t understand space travel.

It was a lot easier when it was just me in the Solarity.

“But she’s still here then,” Hali says. “If we have the touch screen interface, then we still have Corona. She’s still alive.”

I turn in my chair to look at her.

“What?” she says. “Just because I’ve never seen technology, it doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

“She’s right,” Baer says.

“What happens if we completely lose Corona?” I ask.

“We lose the touch screen,” he says. “Like Hali said. But if you watch the screen and then the dash, there’s a bit of a lag. You can see what Ferocity controls are being activated.”

He’s right. The steering wheels are angled slightly to the left as we rotate around Never, and when we sped up, a lever on the dash moved away from us.

“Go for it?” Baer asks.

I nod.

He presses Nenus on the diagram and then the wave icon. Several pink sine waves appear on a screen to his right.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Slipstream waves. I think. Weren’t you doing all of this with your mind?”

“Back when it was only me and the Solarity,” I say, “I would just think of places to go. And then somehow, my mind would integrate with Corona, back before I even knew she existed. Back before she was even CRN-7.”

Hali leans forward, studying the waves.

“Maybe,” Baer says, “these waves represent solar wind, gravitational pull, magnetic fields, whatever. We pick the best wave and ride it in.”

One of the pink sine waves has lots of sharp peaks.

“Don’t pick that one,” I say. “That looks like bumpy ride.”

“Why would you ever choose a bumpy ride?” Hali asks.

“Maybe it’s faster,” Baer says.

And then I get it. Corona kept working on the touch screen interface, designing a system that Baer, the son of an engineer and maybe one at heart, would understand.

I picture the pink sine waves as ocean waves. But that’s not the only way to see it.

There’s a science to surfing. It’s about knowing the weather and tides, but also geology and seismic events.

Still, surfing is also art.

I only see the art. I find the nice ride in.

Baer sees the science, understanding the slipstream as Corona likely did, as math.

It’s funny because I’ve always been a wiz at math and make complicated calculations in my head. I’ve been known to count seconds and steps or figure out the distance between places.

But there’s another revelation too.

Now that Baer understands the slipstream, I’m free to be captain. I don’t have to be the pilot.

“Well?” he asks. “Which wave?”

I have a final epiphany. Surfing the slipstream is like making music. It’s art for some people. For others, it’s math. I’ve always seen music as art, not math, and that’s why I see the slipstream differently from Baer or Corona.

I pick a pink wave, choosing the same one as Baer.

“Right,” he says. “That one is steady. It repeats. I think that’s a magnetic wave. It’s our smoothest path away from Never. Not the fastest nor the slowest.”

The pattern does repeat. Six smooth humps are followed by seventh bigger hump. It’s like the mythical seventh breaker wave. It’s the one I’d most like to surf if this were the sea.

There are ebbs and flows to groups of waves.

My mom told me the slipstream is the sea, and I think of my own time on water. Ocean waves travel in groups of seven, every surfer will tell you that. Even if it’s a myth. And yet science is showing it to be true. The same thing goes for the gravitational waves and the solar wind. The gravity waves are faster. That’s choppy water. It’s being pulled seven different ways from the nearest celestial bodies. The solar wind is slower, and the waves are barely noticeable. The sine curve is nearly flat, but there are still seven humps that repeat. There are probably other groups of waves too, caused by big objects and events, like black holes and supernovas.

Baer presses the magnetic wave on the touch screen and then clicks an OK button.

The Rising Sun speeds up. Next to us, Never blurs and then is gone. We enter the slipstream, and Baer shouts with joy.

We see black with white specks of light.

It reminds me of the aura before an epilepsy seizure. I’m surprised I didn’t think of that till now.

I was riding the slipstream with my mind long before I had the Soleria technology—the Solarity that encloses the Rising Sun—to bring my body along for the ride.

“It’s like warp speed or hyperspace or a wormhole without the hole,” Baer says, still shouting. “Yeehaw!”

He’s so happy, living the sci-fi dream.

But there is no reason to shout. The Rising Sun isn’t loud and it’s just surfing.

I smile. “It’s just the slipstream.”

Things work right for another two seconds.

I shield my eyes when sparks rain down on us from the silvolden walls.

“Stop it,” I yell.

Baer presses the rocket icon with a circle and line through it.

Nothing happens.

I pull up the stop icon on my screen and press it with my left thumb.

The Rising Sun is unresponsive.

The forward prominence releases a puff of smoke, like steam from a dishwasher that just finished its cycle.

Never blinks before us on the viewport, alternating with a view of the slipstream’s flashing lights.

We’re stuck in the planet’s orbit, and I’m not sure if Never will ever let us go.

SPARTAN DEFENSE

S07Y 070D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Undaunted by pain or danger

I laugh at your cruelty

In my mind, while I suffer

In the actuality

The Rising Sun screams. Ships can’t really scream, so it can only be one thing.

“You’re killing her,” Hali pleads. “You have to take us out.”

We’ve been caught in the slipstream for two days. We don’t even know where we are. The image of Never keeps blinking in front of us between images of the slipstream. We’re repeatedly making a jump to the same point.

We haven’t slept for days, not all at the same time anyway. We’ve all drifted off.

It’s not that Baer or I didn’t understand how to operate the Rising Sun. It’s that Hali is right.

Sparks continue to rain down inside the ship while it shakes. Between Baer and me, the forward prominence still steams. On our touch screen, we can see the aft prominence in the cargo bay doing the same thing.

Corona is malfunctioning. Deep inside the brain of our ship, she is being eaten away. Whatever the second signal coming from Nemesis or my sister is, it’s killing my friend.

Agreeing with Hali, Baer frantically presses the blue screen in front of him, hoping that different combinations of different pink icons will lead to different results.

Hali does the same behind me on her screen.

It’s like when a laptop or phone was frozen before the apocalypse. There’s nothing we can do except …

“We need to shut her down,” I say. “Pull the plug if we have to.”

“Will we lose her data?” Baer asks.

That’s like engineer speak for, Will it kill Corona, wiping away all that she is?

“Where’s the plug?” Hali asks.

I pull up the home screen. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but that’s what it is. In order to save time, we’ve been grouping together the icons we use the most.

“We just need to put our thumb on the rocket icon,” I say.

“Wait,” Baer says. “Won’t we fall from space? Will the Solarity disappear?”

“Good questions. Any other options?”

“Call her back,” he replies. “We ask her for help and then tell her to decouple from the Rising Sun.”

Knowing what needs to be done, I wave my hand over the core on my left wrist, saying “Peanuts.”

Corona appears before us.

Clumps of her red hair are missing from her head. Her right arm is gone. There are holes in her flesh, exposing what looks like yellow electrons and circuitry underneath.

“You’re sick,” I say. “We need you to stop fighting. Shut down.”

Corona blinks, disappearing.

Hali yells to her.

She returns a second later, looking even worse. Her legs are translucent.

“Remove your mind from the ship,” I command. “Hide in the core and stop trying to help us.”

“You kind of got stuck with the whole turning the ship on thing,” she says.

Baer nods. “We’ve got this. We’ll go manual-manual.”

He means without any computer at all.

“Is the Solarity fine?” I ask. Hull integrating seems like an important thing.

“You locked its shape in place,” Corona says, reminding me. “The energy field will remain in place as long as the prominences continue to work.”

The prominences are still steaming.

“Stay out of the slipstream,” Corona says.

“We’re going to need you on Nemesis,” I say. “Stay hidden. No more integrating with the ship.”

“You’ll never get out of orbit,” she says.

“We’ll worry about that,” Hali says.

Corona is out of fight. Without a word, she disappears. The core on my wrist lights up for a second, but then the blue and pink lights fade.

The Rising Sun comes to a halt as we drop out of the slipstream.

We fall forward in our seats, Baer and me smacking into the dashboard.

Never appears to our left. We’ve gone nowhere.

The ship skids sideways in space, like the back end of the Rising Sun can’t wait to catch up with the front. Sparks flash all around us. The forward prominence ignites.

Baer rips off his jacket and drapes it over the cylinder, smothering the flames.

“Hali!” I yell. “Get the aft one.”

She runs from the bridge, toward the fire I am convinced the other prominence is starting in the cargo bay.

All of the blue screens disappear. We can no longer view the onboard cameras. The viewports return to how they were—solid Ferocity iron—before we changed the ship.

We are blind, going nowhere, stuck above Never.

And oh, yeah, we’re falling from space.

SPIRIT WRITE

S07Y 071D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Possessed

My pen darts

Anxious

To describe you

While we continue to fall from space, I wonder about god. I know I’m too unimportant for the universe to care, but you would think that at the least, she wouldn’t actively work against us.

All the fires are out, but we’ve lost all control of the ship.

And a fall from space is not like a rocket crashing to earth. Never has us in its grips, but the laws of physics still apply. We don’t enter the atmosphere right away. The planet below takes its time pulling us closer with each rotation we make around it, taking at least a day.

The prominences are only scored, marked by flames, but do not seem to be damaged beyond their cylindrical surfaces.

We have no light, save for what I emit with my eyes and hair.

Despite our best efforts since losing Corona and falling out of the slipstream, we can’t get the Rising Sun to break orbit.

“Our orbit is decaying,” I say.

“How do you know?” Baer asks. We can’t see out the windows anymore, and we have no actively working instrumentation.

“I feel it too,” Hali says. “It’s the changes in pressure.”

“Understood, Kayhali,” Baer says. He’s joking, referencing her earlier comment that if we were going to fall out of space, she wanted everyone to know her real name.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he continues. He leans forward and pushes the lever that manually controls the speed. Nothing happens. He moves the W-shaped steering wheel without affecting our descent.

At the moment, although we are still high above the planet, we are slowly falling toward Never.

Soon, we will become a fireball plunging to the surface.

“What is working?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Baer says. “But mechanically, nothing is broken.” He presses a few switches and moves some levers on the Ferocity dashboard. “See?”

Not really.

“It’s like we have no power.”

“Where did it go?” I ask.

“I don’t know. But you said the Rising Sun is solar.” He points to the viewports that no longer give us a view of the outside. I remind myself they weren’t actually windows, we were just seeing projections of the outside world. “If we could see,” he says, “there’s starlight everywhere. We should have plenty of power.”

“When this was a Ferocity ship,” I say, “it operated on a gravity drive. Using the Solarity, Corona and I integrated Soleria technology over the existing Ferocity systems.”

“Does that mean we can still operate the gravity drive?” Hali asks.

I once crashed a Ferocity ship. Another time I was on one, I was asleep for a long time in a pod. That’s the extent of what I know about how they work.

My stomach shifts like it’s rising into the back of my throat.

Hali grabs the armrests on her seat.

“We’re dropping faster,” I say.

“I’m guessing even gravity drives,” Baer says, “need some sort of electricity to keep going.”

“Like a car?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“So, we need to jump-start the car or charge the battery?” I ask. With my mom’s International Scout, we had to keep a close eye on the battery. “Can we slam it into gear?” I ask. “We used to do that once in a while with my mom’s truck.”

“All we need is a hill,” Baer says.

We’re falling from the sky. It’s the same thing.

“And to know where the gears are,” he adds.

The Rising Sun’s descent accelerates. Even Baer can feel it now.

“We’re speeding up even more,” I say.

“Aren’t both of you batteries?” Hali asks.

The ship rotates, its nose facing down. Steam rises from the dash. My hair falls forward, dangling in my face. It’s like I’m on a rollercoaster facing straight down.

“Accelerating,” I say, which is a stupid thing to say.

The silvolden walls around us glow yellow.

“My ears just popped,” Hali yells. “We’re in the atmosphere.”

Now we’re like a rocket falling from space.

The Rising Sun shakes, and the temperature jumps ten degrees.

We have an energy shield surrounding Ferocity iron. If the ship’s heating up, things must be pretty hot outside.

“We still have the Solarity,” I yell to Baer.

He looks at me. His face is ashen. His arms are dangling forward.

I plant my legs against the bottom of the dashboard where it meets the floor and unlatch my seatbelt. Leaning into the dashboard, I press my hands against it. The control board is like the floor now. I rotate my body facing the new up—the bridge door—even though there is no up in space.

“I’m going to the aft prominence,” I say. “Hali, you take the wheel. Baer, when I yell, you shock this prominence.” I tap the cylinder between us.

“How are you going to get there?” he asks.

We’re facing straight down.

“You can’t climb.”

I look up. He’s right. I’d never make it in time.

“Wait for it,” I say. I feel it in my bones—the complete loss of gravity. It’s the same way I felt when transferring through that inverted tube out of the Rising Sun and into the Ferocity ship when I first met Hali.

Our descent increases in velocity, and without warning, I’m floating.

I step on the dashboard and push off with my legs.

I fly by Hali, weightless, and reach the bridge doorway. I grab onto its sides and push through the pod room toward the balcony. I grab onto the pods and pull myself along, through the room.

I push off from the balcony railing.

I pull myself downward on the stairs, floating above them.

An eight-shaped piece of metal floats in front of me. I push the hot tub cover to my left like I have super strength.

Chairs from the galley rattle to my right, past my surfboard, clanging into each other. My hair is sticking up, pointing in all directions. I so should have ponytailed it. Note for later.

Baer’s tools are everywhere, as are the scraps of metal he keeps around for projects. I swim through them, avoiding sharp edges while pushing them aside.

But with each action there is a reaction. Me pushing on something is also it pushing on me.

The water from the hot tub is loose, and I pass through the blob, breaking it into thousands of smaller blobs. At the bottom of the stairs, I pause, waiting for a break in the debris field of the cargo bay. I can’t get stuck somewhere in the middle.

When I see an opening, I push off toward the aft prominence.

I’m flying.

It feels different than inside the bridge because the cargo hold is so much larger.

But I imagine if I could fly, I’d have more control over it.

I’m going too fast.

My sword rotates in front of me, loose from the scabbard secured to the wall. I dodge the blade, twisting my body to the left. Once I pass Sunbeams, I focus on the prominence.

I’m still going too fast. I swing my arms wildly in front of me and hit the floor decking, scratching my fingers on the Ferocity metal while bouncing off it.

I nearly overshoot, catching the cylinder with my boots rather than my hands. I wrap my legs around it and pull myself toward it.

“Now!” I yell back to the bridge.

Sunbeams form over my hands, and I press them onto the cylinder.

Something’s not right.

“It’s not working,” Hali yells.

I look up toward the bridge. I can’t see beyond the balcony rail. I scan the cargo bay for ideas. I catch my reflection in the Soleria mirror, except as it’s been this whole trip, I see Narista instead of myself.

I close my hands, shutting down the sunrays.

“Try again, Baer!”

This time I release the blacklight. Purple lightning dances over my hands. I press them on the aft prominence.

The Rising Sun lurches. Behind me, lights flash. The ship rights itself, and instead of hanging off the cylinder, I am now lying on the floor, hugging it.

Water comes crashing down on top of me, no longer weightless.

My sword drops at my feet.

Baer’s tools and scrap metal follow. I dive to my left, toward my mirror, to avoid the barrage, falling on my side. A hammer strikes my right shoulder and a piece of the Aether escape pod the size of my arm strikes my right calf.

I push the metal off me. Like Ferocity iron, Aether materials are strong but lightweight.

The Rising Sun shakes.

In the galley, supsdelite falls from the cabinets, the cupboard doors unable to hold them back.

Anything not tied down falls to the decking.

I pull my knees to my chest and shield my head with my hands. A third object strikes my hip, but it’s just my Lyricbook in my sling sack.

As I get to my feet, the ship lurches left and right, flopping like a feather on the wind. I break for the stairs to the balcony, falling over halfway. I stand, take a step, and dive for the rail.

White-knuckled, I grip the railing and pull myself up. It was so much more fun when I flew down these in zero gravity. With each flop of the ship, I slam into the other side of the railing.

After five steps, I am flung to the right as the Rising Sun rocks from end to end .

The cargo bay spins. I have no reference point—I can’t see the horizon—but I feel the pull like one of those Tilt-A-Whirls.

While spiraling, the ship shakes like she’s being torn apart from the outside in. All around me, the silvolden walls glow yellow, heating up.

No longer floating like a feather on the wind, we are caught in a spin, a death spiral. Each step is like climbing a mountain, except the rock face—the stairs and railing—is in the midst of an earthquake.

Forced to the right side, I pull myself up the stairs, fighting the centripetal acceleration.

At the top of the balcony, I can see Baer and Hali at the dual steering columns, fighting our descent.

The Rising Sun lurches up from the bow, and my feet go out from under me. I dangle from the rail as the ship falls toward the planet, stern down in the spin. I hold on, hanging like from the edge of a cliff, until the stern rocks upward. The ship rights itself to level, and my torso and legs slam into the stairs.

On my knees, I crawl up the stairs, the Ferocity iron biting into my flesh under my leggings. I fight the ship’s spiral by holding onto the railing with both hands. I make it three quarters of the way up when the Rising Sun rocks and flips, facing nose downward again.

My grip break as I flip head over heels, and I am flung into the balcony railing.

I grasp the metal tubing, caught between the parallel pieces, spaced two feet apart, that make up the railing. But the railing is slick from hot-tub water, and my legs and arms slip through. I fall into the pod room, smashing into the sun pod and then the doorway to the bridge.

There’s a bathroom where there should have been a Terran pod, and the door slams open. For a second, I think waste is going to come crashing down on me in the spin, but then I remember everything is recycled immediately.

I reach for the edges of the bridge’s doorway, but I can’t pull myself through, no longer able to fight the g-forces. My flesh is pushed against my face, shaking. I struggle to turn my head and face the bridge below me. Hali is slumped over, her head against the dashboard, but Baer’s hands remained fixed on the control. Gray Aether lightning swirls around him. His gem is illuminated, filling the bridge with light.

He turns back toward me, smiling. “Hang on. Stay there. I got this,” he says, and I pass out.

SIGNAL CLASH

S07Y 072D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

This is the call

The moment

Our need

Will you answer?

I wake up on the beach in Never. Not our beach, not NeverBetter Island, but something very much like it. I try to sit up, sinking my hands into the coarse black sand. The ocean laps the shoreline. The seas are calm, but firephoons roar off to my left, miles away, connecting sky and sea.

“Easy,” Hali says. “You got banged up pretty hard.” She hands me some water.

I take a sip, focusing on the fire storms.

“Right back where we started?” I ask.

“Yep,” Baer says, looking down at me.

“So, nothing’s changed,” I say. “Except the firephoons. Those seem new.”

“No, everything’s changed,” he says. He kneels next to me. “First of all, we’re even.”

“What?”

“Remember that time I passed out in the Grafter over Nebraska and you saved me? Now, we’re even.”

Hali smiles. “There’s that, but also, the signal’s gone. I can’t feel the hmms in the ship.”

“The Rising Sun?” I ask.

“Messy,” Hali says. “And I had to refill the hot tub.”

I look at Baer. I need more info.

“The Rising Sun is fully functional,” he says, “but no signs of Corona. We even have all the displays back online.”

I look at the core on my left wrist. There’s no sign that Corona is still inside there either.

My head is killing me, but I say, “We need to leave now while the signal is down.”

Hali helps me to my feet.

I walk across the black sand in my bare feet.

“Where are my boots?” I ask.

“You looked hot,” Hali says.

“She won’t be happy until we’re all naked,” Baer says.

Hali nods.

“First of all, he’s your grandfather,” I say. “Second of all, all of our parts are on the outside.”

“And mine aren’t,” she says. “You ought to try being naked sometime. It’s freeing.”

At the cargo bay door, Baer hands me my boots off the ramp floor.

“All systems go?” I ask.

“Hot tub is refilled,” Hali says as she leans over it, checking the water level. “The fire pit is operational too.”

We close the cargo bay door and head up to the bridge.

Everything is like it was before we lost Corona.

“What gives?” I ask Baer as I sit in my chair and strap in.

“Whatever we’re heading into didn’t want Corona coming with us.”

He swipes at the blue screen, calling up pink icons.

We go over the checklist on the wall like we haven’t done it enough times. Baer doesn’t even bother to look at the list. By now, we all have it memorized.

The Rising Sun lifts off the surface of Never. The firephoons are closer but we’ll beat them. Baer avoids the fire clouds and breaks out of the atmosphere. Above the planet, he plots a course to Nenus, choosing a wave from a half dozen choices.

We enter the slipstream without incident.

Lights stream by us, and Never disappears.

I look at my wrist. We got out too easily. There’s no sign of my friend.

Which means we are not a threat to my sister or whoever was messing with our systems. Only Corona was a threat.

We ride the magnetic waves that push us from Never until we catch a gravitational wave into Nenus.

The Rising Sun feels the pull from Nemesis even this far out. Its gravitational wave is the biggest one on our slipstream screen.

“We need to avoid that one,” I say to Baer. “I’m not sure we want to ride that one in.”

He spins in the pilot chair to face me. “Why? Haven’t you used Sol’s?”

He’s right. The stars should be comparable in size.

“I have a feeling about it,” I say. It’s true. Nothing else tells me to avoid it.

“You want to avoid the gravitational pull of the star we’re going to?” Hali asks from behind me.

“Yep,” I reply, looking through the viewport. It’s nice to have it back. “I saw Nemesis back when the Solarity was just a single pod. It’s ominous. We need to take our time getting there.”

“Ominous?” Baer chuckles.

“It’s purple.” I open my palms. On the left side, I form a ball of yellow light. In my right hand, I form a swirling ball of blackish-purple electricity. “Which one do you prefer?”

He hesitates.

Obviously, it’s some sort of simology for Baer picking me or Narista.

I lean toward him and place my left hand on his right knee, warming it. Then I reach for his left knee with my other hand and shock it with the blacklight.

“Ouch!” he yells. “Yellow! I choose yellow.”

“And?” I ask, trailing the question with a smile.

“Yellow is you, of course. I get it.”

“So, avoid purple sparks and your pissed-off sister,” Hali says. “Got it.”

“Coming up on Nenus now,” Baer says when the orbital map of the Nemar System appears on his screen.

In the space above the second planet from Nemesis, we pop out of the slipstream. The flashing lights around us vanish. Below is another gray planet, like most of the others in this system.

In the distance, Nemesis looms on the horizon. Black with a purple edge, at the same distance from Nenus as Sol is from Venus, it looks like an eye.

Hali think so too. “It looks like we’re being watched,” she says.

Baer points out the viewport at the dark star. “No one can survive on that.”

“It’s not like we could survive on Sol,” I counter. “But somehow, she’s near there.”

Hali presses the release button in the center of her chest, unsnapping the four-strap seatbelt. She stands between us, looking at Nemesis. “We need to decipher that message,” she says.

I hum the transmission. “Hm hmm-hm hm hm-hmm hmmm hmm-hmm.”

“That’s good,” she says. “Have Baer pipe it into the hot tub speakers.”

Hali leaves the bridge and heads downstairs.

“We have speakers?” I ask. “Underwater?”

Baer shrugs.

“Just because you can do it,” I say, “doesn’t mean you have to do it.”

“Start singing,” Hali yells.

I press the microphone icon and hum the hums. My voice echoes throughout the ship. “She won’t figure it out underwater,” I say.

Baer agrees, staring again at Nemesis. “You need to surround yourself in plasma—the blacklight—without frying yourself.”

“Yep.”

“You need to become a mini black star.”

STEREOSCOPY

S07Y 073D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

There are three dimensions

That have their grips in me

I am powerless to avoid

Time, space, and reality

Nenus is the hottest planet in this system, not Nercury. They’ll be no off-ship adventure to the surface. Like Venus in the Sol System, we could not survive on its surface.

We spend the day taking turns circling the planet looking for clues, seeking answers to why we’ve come here. Why my sister calls to us and yet prevents us from using the tool—or the person, Corona—that would most aid our trip.

When it’s my turn to pilot the Rising Sun, I dismiss Baer and Hali. He needs a shower and she needs her hot-tub time. Nobody wants a Wydran to dry out. I’ve never seen a dry Wydran, but I imagine it can’t be good for anyone. Neither is a Baer who hasn’t showered since we left the beach in Never. The bridge, while ventilated, is crowded. For so long before the fires, I lived alone, and even on Terra in the wild, we still had space to ourselves. So much is shared on the ship that I’m looking for moments of isolation. All I have that is truly mine is my surfboard and my sleep tube. Even Baer knows not to disturb me in either spot unless it’s an emergency.

There is no autopilot, not with Corona gone, so I keep my hands on the wheel, using the altimeter application to make sure our orbit isn’t decaying.

Below, the planet is ash-gray like Luna over Terra, but the yellow atmosphere gives the planet the look of a faded black-and-white photo. It’s hard to tell if the Ferocity destroyed this place, if its demise was natural, or if Nemesis had a hand in the barren landscape.

The blue screen in front of me prompts my attention. No orbit is clean. Debris—rocks or ice likely—drifting around the planet set off the proximity alert. I pull the W-control toward me, angling us farther away from the planet’s surface and the approaching space junk. I’m not sure why I pull up versus going lower. I suppose I’m more likely to jump than duck.

With everyone off the bridge, I go through the motions of searching the planet for signs of life, looking for light or carbon pollution. Corona told me before that we couldn’t realistically look at any planet’s surface and find life unless there were large-scale indications of it. I imagine this voyage ends with finding my sister, that she is the thing drawing us in, closer. But I have no proof. Nor do I expect to find her on Nenus. She is a loner, often more a wayfarer than Baer. Still, I am so convinced she lies at the end of this journey, I cannot imagine any other ending. A happy reunion is sure to be on the horizon.

I am a telepath, but there are no thoughts to be found other than my crew’s. I look away from Nenus and project my mind to Nemesis in the distance. The black star is ringed with a purple hue, like Sol’s orange corona. Narista is not calling to me, and I cannot find her mind. Either her powers have increased to the point where she can block me out, or they have decreased such that she cannot be found. A third alternative is that she is dead, but I won’t accept that, not after the trip we’ve had.

For a moment, I hear voices in the slipstream, but that can’t be right. Only the Rising Sun rides the unseen waves. The voices remind me of Solelena and stories of my mother’s lost people. But those have to be memories.

I am just as likely to find a Ferocity fleet hell-bent on our destruction circling Nemesis as I am to find my sister.

But I’ll never know unless we go there.

We are all bound by dimensions. Even time and space have their grips in me. But there is a third dimension—reality—that binds me too.

And the reality is that my life, even with Baer, is nothing without Narista. She is my twin and yet my opposite. We were born of different mothers on the same day, women long since dead who were lovers.

The Soleria and Nemar are bound together, of that I am sure.

As long as I live, so must my sister.

She doesn’t realize it, but she will.

Baer joins me on the bridge.

“There’s nothing for us here.” I slide out of the pilot’s chair, offering it to him while I sit on the left side.

He sits in Corona’s seat, hands on his knees, arching his back. As tall as he is, the sleeping tube must be a torture rack for him. I rotate toward him, and he reaches for my hands. “I’ve been thinking about the hmms,” he says. “It’s like a puzzle with no clues.”

“It’s words and syllables,” I say, “and we know—at least, we think we know—that plasma, the blacklight, is the key to deciphering it.”

“I wonder if the gems could be used to contain a plasma field.” He pulls his Aelite gem from under his shirt.

I say, “Solterra,” revealing mine in the Soleria necklace. The solitaires glow brighter next to each other.

He leans toward me, and I mirror him. For a moment, I think he will kiss me. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I’m sure I want a no-kissing-the-captain rule on the bridge, even if it’s to be done by a handsome engineer.

Baer smiles and grasps his gem, moving it closer to mine.

“Don’t,” I say.

“Maybe things are different,” he says. “Who knows if the gems react differently in space.” He holds his gem to his chest, away from mine, and kisses me.

“No kissing the captain on the bridge,” I say.

“I’m a rule breaker,” he says.

“I’m a rule maker.”

“That was for good luck,” he says.

I nod.

He again moves his gem closer to mine, almost touching them over the prominence.

The yellow Solstar glows, matching his gray Aelite. I place my hand under my solitaire, leading it forward. We meet in the middle, and the gems touch. Light fills the bridge of the Rising Sun. It’s beautiful. But it’s also the leading edge of an explosion.

I open my eyes, sprawled across the second row of the bridge seats. Baer is across the aisle, upside down in his seat. Between us, the prominence is scorched.

Hali stands in the aisle, yelling at both of us. It takes a minute for my ears to adjust, and the sound rushes back in. “What were you thinking?” she’s shouting. “Did you know I heard that from the hot tub? The whole cargo bay shook. You even knocked over the Aether pod.”

“Solelena,” I say, activating my grandmother’s necklace to hide my solitaire.

Baer rights himself, falling out of the pilot’s seat. He looks down at his chest. “That’s going to hurt for a while.”

I’m fine—it must have been my Soleria locket—but his shirt is burned clear through, and he has red brand on his chest matching the shape of his gem’s necklace.

Hali hands him a wet cloth.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask.

“I keep them handy,” she says. “It gets dry up here with all the air circulation.”

Baer presses the wet rag to his chest and leans back, breathing through the pain. “I could use some of Jordin’s healing,” he says, referring to one of his sister-in-law’s gifts.

“Let me see,” Hali says. She knees in front of him.

Baer protests when she touches the cloth. “Ouch.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” she says. “And stop being an idiot. That mush have been your idea because our captain would have never suggested touching two solitaires.”

“We need to hold a plasma field,” he says. “And she can’t turn it on herself.”

Hali lays her palm on Baer and secretes a solution. He tries to pull away, but she grabs his shoulder with her other hand.

I join them, kneeling beside Hali.

“What is that?” I ask.

She smiles. “Mucus. It’ll reverse the damage.”

“Heal me?” Baer asks.

“Yes,” she sighs. “But don’t abuse it. Stupid Braeger was always getting hurt on Terra.” Tears drip down her face.

I’m not sure if it’s part of the healing or the memory of her lost love that triggers the tears.

“I had to heal that idiot,” she says, “like a million times, and I’m not about to start wasting tears on you.” She takes the tears and snot dripping from the slits in her nose and wipes them on Baer’s burn, then she holds her hand against his chest.

Baer holds his breath.

“Just breathe easy,” she says. “Breathe normal.”

He makes an exaggerated exhale.

Hali removes her hand.

“It’s gone,” he says. “The burn is gone.”

I lean in closer. Baer is healed.

“Can all Wydran do that?” I ask.

“No.” She smiles. “But I’m not like all Wydran. I’m Terran like my parents and grandfather.”

“Makes sense,” Baer says. “She’s Jordin’s heir.”

I stand and help the other two up. “I think that proves Hali can hold the water solitaire. When this is done, we’ll return to Terra to retrieve it in Lexington.”

“Lexington?” Baer asks.

“I threw it in the river that runs through the Hillock Tunnel near the bunker.”

“That won’t be hard to find,” Baer says.

“No more gem touching, you two,” Hali says. “What did you think Solstice was going to do? Point a ball of blacklight into her ear while you held her hand?”

“Yes,” Baer says. “But with our gems touching.”

Hali sighs. “Just like Braeger. Or he was just like you. He was always like, why figure things out when you can just try it?”

She scratches her arm. Her skin, once gray and shiny, looks pasty and white, like salt has dried to it.

“Do you need a drink?” I ask.

She nods. “I’ll get one in a minute.”

Her face is dry too. Gone is the slime that usually covers most of her body.

“The signal is still out there,” I say. “I know we haven’t heard it since leaving Never, but we’ll pick it up again.”

“The answer is not here,” Hali says. She looks toward the doorway.

She’s right. Nenus will yield no answers to the signal, to the mystery of the hmms.

“Take us out of orbit,” I say.

Baer looks at his chest again. He’s good as new.

“Thanks, Hali,” he says.

“I’ll be in the hot tub,” she says. “I need to rehydrate.” She leaves the bridge, but stops beyond the doorway near the pods. “And just so you know, Baer, I do not have an unlimited supply of secretion.”

Baer looks at me and whispers, “She’s low on snot.”

“That secretion saved you a lot of pain,” I say. “Get us underway.”

“It was the kiss,” he says. “Captain kisses on the bridge must be bad luck, not good.”

“Corona would never have let us touch the gems. I need to remember her wisdom while she’s gone.”

“Why figure things out when you can try them?” He smiles and plots a course, leaving the second planet of the Nemar System for the first.

STILE

S07Y 074D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Steps taken

Lead me reluctantly through

To a new world

Different and slightly skewed

Nercury is a dead world, hot on one side, cold on the other. We come out of the slipstream over the planet’s surface. Like our own Mercury, we won’t find rest there. The surface is gray, similar to Nenus, but it has no atmosphere. This close to Nemesis, Nercury will never be habitable. Behind the planet, the dark star looms, black in the center and purple around the edges.

“Is it today or tomorrow?” I ask, standing in the aisleway, staring at Nercury.

“Tomorrow,” Baer replies.

Hali is still downstairs in the hot tub. Healing takes a lot out of her or she is still just sleeping.

“Hold position out of orbit,” I command.

Baer swipes left and right on his blue screen, calling up the correct set of pink icons and the map of the system needed to hold us in place.

He hasn’t complained once since signing up to be my engineer, even when I bark out orders.

“You’re being a good sport,” I say.

“With what?”

I lean on the dashboard with the prominence between my feet, careful not to sit my butt on any buttons.

“With the whole captain thing.”

“You forget I hated being in charge of Arnac and the Dazers after Nadir. You’re the leader, not me.”

“So, it doesn’t bother you?”

“Not one bit,” he replies. “I’m happy to be back together. Not so happy that we have a war to fight. Even less happy that we have to go meet up with a pissed-off Narista. I don’t mind your sister, obviously, but I’d like to find a happy Narista if one existed. The least of my worries is who’s the captain of the Rising Sun. It’s your ship. And I kind of like flying it when I can, but also fixing things.”

“You know,” I say, smirking, “you’re not even my second in command.”

“I am fairly convinced that a galaxy run by women is to my advantage. If the numbers hold true for what we see on Ferocity ships, there are like one billion Ferocity women and six billion Ferocity men. And other than Fusion, who happens to be dead, pretty much all Ferocity are pricks. So, I’m good with a matriarchy.”

I lean over, placing my hand on the back of his seat, and kiss him on the cheek. “This isn’t a matriarchy,” I whisper. “It’s a dictatorship.”

“I am happily the queen’s illegitimate consort.” He kisses me back, on the lips. “What is your bidding?”

“I’m not the queen,” I say, thinking of my grandmother. “Not of the galaxy, anyway. I’m hoping Solterra still holds that title.”

“So, your order is for me to take us into orbit. The sooner we check out the planet, the sooner we can move on and find Narista and your grandmother.”

“It’s tomorrow,” I say. “I’ll stay up here if you want to go get some rest or eat.”

“You first,” he says.

I kiss his cheek again, touch him on the shoulder, and leave without an argument.

After a shower, I crawl into my sleeping tube.

Baer never wakes me. Hours later, rested, I find him asleep on the bridge.

We haven’t moved, not much anyway. As long as we fully stop and stay far enough away from a body’s gravitational pull, we can remain relatively still.

In the captain’s seat, I sit quietly, switching between watching Baer breathing and looking at Nercury.

I can’t tell for sure from this distance, but the dark star looks concave. Like a parabola, the center of the star looks farther away from us than the edges when the opposite should be true.

Hali joins me on deck.

Minutes later, Baer is awake.

I hand him a water. We still don’t have cup holders, so he downs the whole metal tumbler of water.

“Nothing like drinking your own pee,” he says. “It’s better than caffeine.”

“It’s more likely recycled hot-tub water than toilet water,” Hali corrects him. “Or shower water. We barely use any water in the toilet.”

“Any chance you have Coke?” he asks.

“As if,” I say. “Thanks for staying up here alone.” I point beyond Nercury to Nemesis. “Is that an optical illusion?” I ask Hali and Baer.

“It must just be the black on purple,” Baer says. “Stars are spheres.” He leans forward in his chair, as close as he can to the viewport.

“Stars are spheres,” Hali says, repeating him.

“Are you agreeing,” I ask, “or sarcastically repeating what he said?”

“Yes and yes.”

“Should we look at the moon?” he asks.

“Nercury has no moon.” Mercury doesn’t, so this planet can’t. The two systems are balanced with each other in a symbiotic relationship.

Hali leans between us and says, “Baer’s right. Look at the screen.”

He waves his left hand over the blue screen in front of him and flings it toward the viewport. The pink map overlays what we are seeing. Hidden to the naked eye, the map highlights a small white oval body with pink, circling the planet ahead of us.

“There’s no moon,” I repeat.

Baer spreads his middle finger and thumb apart over the screen. The image on the viewport expands, zooming in.

“You’re right,” he says. “It’s more like a comet.”

I look at the oval object with the whitish tail behind it.

“It’s heading toward the surface,” Hali says.

“Follow it,” I say.

“Do you want to—”

I slam my fist on the dash. “Dammit, now, Baer!”

Baer presses the rocket icon.

“Hali, strap in,” I say. I sit in my seat and grab my four-strap seatbelt, securing it into the heptagon in the middle of my chest.

It looks like the comet—the other ship—is going to burn up like we nearly did over Never.

“That’s not a moon,” I say. “Or a comet. It’s a pod.”

SUBLUXATION

S07Y 075D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Disjointed

Pulled apart

Looking for

Change’s kickstart

“Intercept course now,” I command. The last of my people call to me.

We cross like the planetary date line as we race toward the flare because my brain knows sudden yesterday is not tomorrow’s today. My grandmother and my cousin, Solterra and Solvi, are on that ship. I know they are all that remain of my people. I can read the sorrow in their thoughts. Of all the emotions, despair is the hardest to hide from a telepath

“It’s a ship, Baer. It’s a Solarity. Get to it now. Hali, get ready to engage the grappler.”

The Solarity was the pod I once rode that became the energy shield surrounding the Rising Sun. The last of the Soleria, besides me, are sitting sit in the same sort of two-person gelatinous oval-shaped vessel.

Without waiting for Baer to respond, I close my mind to the outside world, along with my eyes, and I search for Grandmother, entering the slipstream and leaving my body behind.

Our minds leap across the divide of space, reaching out and touching each other.

Granddaughter.

Grandmother.

It is good you are well, she says.

Is my cousin with you? I ask.

She is. To the end, she has served me faithfully.

Hold on, I say. We’ll be there in minutes.

Think like a Soleria, Solterra says.

I don’t know what the Soleria measure time with.

I’m not talking about minutes, Solterra says. Think beyond this moment. Beyond my death. Keep the dream alive. The answer to war is still the eighth clan. Terra is still the solution to seven.

Baer disturbs my thoughts. “They’re going down,” he says. “We’re not going to make it.”

The Rising Sun is going as fast as it can without entering the slipstream. My family is simultaneously too far and yet too close. We are stuck using orbital speed. To make a jump this close to the planet is dangerous. I’m not sure we could enter the slipstream for a second and then get out. Nor do I know if the ship could withstand a jump and exit within seconds of each other.

In my thoughts, I feel Solterra’s and Solvi’s pain. Born of the sun clan, they will die fiery deaths.

The white egg shape with the comet tail burns to orange. Flames envelope the craft as it head to the dark side—the side not facing Nemesis—of Nercury.

Wait, I say. Just hang on a little longer. Activate your prominences. Ride the slipstream out of there.

They are damaged, Granddaughter, but I’m sure you know that in your heart.

Why? Why must you go?

In the end, in order to achieve the balance, there can only be one Soleria and one Nemar. You and Narista were long ago chosen for this task. In order for Terra to rise, the last of us will fall.

In my mind, Solterra gasps, crying out in pain as flames fill the Solarity.

Don’t be too hard on your sister, Solterra croaks. The madness is not of her own making, as her mother’s was not.

Narista did this to you? I ask.

“We lost them,” Baer says.

But Solterra’s spirit lingers for a minute longer.

All that I once was is now you. My light is your light. All that the Soleria is and was is now poured into you. You are our people. You are the last beacon. When darkness and flame fill the horizon, you alone are the rising sun.

My body jerks against the restraints. My back arches as my head slams backward.

Baer slows the Rising Sun.

Ten thousand years of knowledge slams into my brain.

My body slackens, and I open my eyes.

Below us, above the surface of Nercury, the Solarity holding my grandmother and cousin bursts into light.

Baer and Hali turn away, blinded momentarily.

But I watch as my grandmother and cousin fade from light into the shadow of the dark side of Nercury.

SUPERFICIES

S07Y 075D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Infinite spaces

Leave mind and body unbound

Forcing lost souls

To search for hidden ground

“Go no farther,” I say, and leave the bridge. I will mourn the last of my people, the last of my family.

I am numb to the infinite density of despair.

In the cargo bay, I sit on my surfboard, studying my Lyricbook, looking for answers in poems from long ago.

There is nothing in there that explains why two clans would die for me and my sister.

There is nothing in my Lyricbook that says why seven billion Terrans needed to die for its world to be reborn.

There are no answers.

The Lyricbook is more history now than future. Sure, I still add lyrics and poems, but they are reflections on the present, not glimpses into the future.

But I know the gift of foresight has long been gone. It came with a terrible cost, the epilepsy, and I am glad, even if I am blind to what lies before me, that I no longer bear that burden.

I touch the solitaire—the Solstar—around my neck.

Closing my mind, I empty it of all thoughts.

I want to speak to my sister.

So, I wait for her to drift into my thoughts unpurpose.

Instead, I hear my grandmother’s voice, repeating the story of the clans in my head. I remember the story that she called the Aurora Brand. I learn nothing new. It’s the same old myth. She hasn’t changed and refused to give up on her dying dream. Seven clans that were once one clan can be reunited, but she never figured out how.

Her last thought is of a number that doesn’t even exist in her world.

Eight, she projects over and over.

Eight.

Eight.

Eight

Eight.

Eight.

Eight.

Eight.

And by the eighth and final time, I still have no idea what her last thought means.

STARDUST’S WIND

S07Y 079D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Hopes and dreams scatter

On the storm’s horizon

Later found warped

In the desolation we rise in

Baer wakes me. I fell asleep on my surfboard in the cargo bay like four days ago. On paper, I should’ve been prepared for the loss of Solterra and Solvi. They were dead, of that I was sure after seeing the Solidarity scattered near the seventh ring of the seventh planet.

Baer kneels next to my board.

“Thanks,” I say.

He hands me a water. “No problem.”

“How long?”

“Four days,” he says, confirming my guess. Even in my sleep I still count.

He sits next to the board and pushes my bed-headed blonde hair from my face. “I’ve never seen someone sleep like that, let alone in a cargo bay. I mean, not besides you anyway. You did it once in SACAM for ninety days. Hali’s had like ten hot tubs since you drifted off, and you didn’t even stir.”

“It’s better than how I used to react to stuff like that.”

He nods. “Everything’s better than puking.”

I sit up and pull off the gray blanket that someone put on me. Gray. It’s always ash-gray in the Ferocity world, unless it’s black with smoke or covered in orange flames.

“I don’t know what brought them—my cousin and grandmother—here, Baer, and even if it was the signal, it’s on the Ferocity, not Narista.”

It could all be on me for refusing to let my sister die, but I’m going to skip over that. The Ferocity destroyed the Solidarity, of that I am sure. Anything that happened to the Soleria after that is on them.

I don’t know the appropriate amount of time to mourn your grandmother in space. I figure she was just about the oldest person ever, and beyond her being dear to me, that alone deserves a measure of respect. It’s probably seven days in the Soleria Clan but I suspect I am out of time.

“We’ve got the signal,” Baer says. “We found it again. We have the location too, but it’s still just a lot of hmms. It’s as close to Nemesis as possible without burning up.”

I hum the syllables. The familiar signal is back. I can hear it—no feel–it in my bones.

Hm hmm-hm hm hm-hmm hmmm hmm-hmm.

It’s familiar, but I still can’t crack the code. And we still don’t have the right medium through which to listen to it.

I place my hands on the cargo bay floor. “Can you feel it?”

“The signal is vibrating through the whole ship,” he confirms.

After I finish my water, he hands me a bowl of supsdelite.

“You know I don’t have to eat,” I say.

“What if you don’t get as much energy from Nemesis as you would from Sol?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Have a bite.”

“Fine, but I hate being bossed around about food.” It reminds me of when everyone thought I was bulimic. That was probably because I was bulimic, but still, all the mothering makes that condition worse.

He waits, staring at me.

So, I have a bite of the pork mush. Why can’t the galaxy ever have chicken supsdelite again? It was so awesome, like soup and biscuits mixed.

“The batteries are draining on the Rising Sun,” Baer says. “We’re at 75 percent after running at nearly 99 percent this whole voyage.”

“And if the ship is draining,” I say, “I might be too.”

“And the whole photosynthesis thing might be off,” he adds.

“Fine.” I playfully feed him a spoonful. He takes a bite and then waits for me to have another. In the end, he’s not satisfied until I’ve finished the whole thing. He doesn’t add, Keep it down, but I know he’s thinking it. But he doesn’t know that I’ve already decided they’ll be no more puking like forever. I’m not a sage or an epileptic anymore, so I’m not a puker either.

He takes the bowl from me. “You want to wash up or do you want to hear all of it?”

I tie back my hair in a ponytail. “Give it to me.”

“There’s more,” he says. “Everything’s being pulled toward the dark star.”

“Even Nercury?”

“Everything but the planet.”

I don’t even know why I asked that. What the hell would move a planet anyway?

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“You need to see it.”

Getting to my feet, I secure my surfboard to the wall, next to the Soleria mirror and my sword. I loop my sling sack with my Lyricbook over my head and straighten my black undershieldcapbosuit. Tightening my ponytail, I push back any stray blonde and silver hairs. The pink streaks dangle near my eyes, so I push them behind my pointy ears.

Baer watches in silence, but eventually can’t hold back. “What are you doing?”

“Captain’s got to look the part,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because the captain does.”

His shirt is untucked, his hair is a mess, and he has what looks like grease on his pants. I didn’t even know the Rising Sun had lubrication points. Isn’t everything solar and powered by energy waves? I bet he’s looking for ways to get dirty.

“I’m not doing all that,” he says.

“You look the part,” I say. “Engineers should be dirty.”

“Hali is up top waiting for us.”

He leads me to the bridge, and I look out the view port.

Particles bounce off Solarity’s shielding on the Rising Sun, riding a wave toward Nemesis in the distance.

It’s like stardust wind.

“We’re barely holding position,” Hali says.

“She’s right,” Baer says.

Hali gives him an I don’t need your confirmation look.

The Rising Sun looks like a toy boat in a bathtub fighting the flow of water down the drain.

“There’s no turning back,” he says. “If we continue to head toward Nemesis, in or out of the slipstream, I imagine it will be like riding the biggest wave we’ve ever ridden.”

“Alternatives?” I ask. I’ve been gone for four days, sleep mourning, listening to my grandmother’s dying thoughts. I figure these two may have thought of something in that time.

“I’ve got nothing,” Baer says.

“Me either,” Hali adds.

I straddle the forward prominence and place both hands on the dash between the two W-controllers. To my left, storms are forming on Nercury. In the center viewport, Nemesis looms. Even when we are this close, it still looks concave, like it’s curved away from us and not a sphere.

“That doesn’t look right,” I say.

“No,” Baer replies. “You sure you want to get closer to that?”

“Are you sure the signal is coming from there?” I ask.

“Yes,” Hali confirms.

“Is it the recommendation of my communications officer and chief engineer that if we do not proceed, we will not find my sister?”

“It is, captain,” Baer replies.

“Agreed,” Hali says.

“Strap in,” I say. “We’re going in.”

SPOTLESS

S07Y 080D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Memories don’t define us

Even when eyes have seen

Stains from losses

Erased and scrubbed all clean

It occurs to me we should give up. We’ve been drifting toward Nemesis for a day, allowing the dark star to pull us. At first, we fought the wave, trying to hold position as we steered, but our batteries continued to drain. Kyra once told me while she was teaching us to sail that if I didn’t like the direction the wind was blowing, then I should try to change my sail. I don’t think we can fight this storm, however. All we can do is ride it out. Under my directions, we powered down the Rising Sun, stopping all propulsion. We are like a leaf on the wind or a rider-less surfboard floating into the shore.

For a day, no one speaks.

We wander the Rising Sun eating, drinking, and sleeping. There’s no controlling our ship now. Nemesis has us in her grasp.

I can feel the signal humming in my bones.

The Rising Sun drifts, slowly nearing Nemesis.

While we sit at our stations on the bridge, doubt creeps in the closer we get to the dark star.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything bigger.

Unlike Sol, which is difficult to look at from a distance, Nemesis invites us to stare. We are not awestruck. The dark star seems common. Black from its center out, it’s ringed with a purple hue. I’ve seen this before at the depths of my deepest despair. I imagine it’s what a soul looks like when it’s overcome with melancholy. Happiness is fleeting, and it’s passing only leads to a lower low for those that remain.

We could just turn back now, away from the dark star and hide, avoiding the Seventh Seven-Clan Civil War looming on the horizon.

If we don’t fight, there can’t be a war.

“We should give up,” Hali says.

Baer, like he hasn’t heard her, says, “It’s time to go home. We could go back to Terra and just live out our days.”

“You’re right,” I say. “Plot a course for Terra.”

I sit back in my chair, watching Baer make the calculations on his blue screen.

I sigh, thinking, that was easy. We should have given up a long time ago. Why did we even fight Cyrelax? Or Nadir before him? What are we going to do? Take on Pyrellax now? That’s just stupid.

“Do your hands itch?” I ask.

Baer and Hali are staring at their hands. No one has bothered to plot a course to Terra.

What’s going on here?

A wave of despair rolls over me. I am guilty of many things, most of all leading my friends to their deaths. I’ve done it to many who served me, and I knew they would die. Everyone who has ever gotten close to me has perished. I am not the light, not a beacon. I am despair’s standard bearer, bringing false hope.

Light cannot conquer dark no more than life can cheat death.

I should have never left Lexington. It would have been better to burn with my mother and Mrs. C eight years ago.

“I miss my parents,” Baer says.

He shows me his hands. His veins have become visible, but instead of blue, they are purple. His arms darken from the fingertips up, turning black.

“We should just die here,” Hali says. She leans over me and starts pressing pink icons on my blue screen. “Forget about returning to Terra. Where’s the self-destruct?”

“I can run Aether through the batteries,” Baer says. “That will just be faster.”

His arms are completely black now.

Hali, behind me, lets go of my chair.

They’re both right. We should just die now.

I look at my own hands.

They are pitch black.

I look again at Baer. He can’t summon the Aether to start a fire in the ship’s batteries.

He falls from his seat, choosing to give up. His face is all gray, like it was when he dazed.

The dazed.

I remember those guys.

I wonder why we don’t see them in space.

That would be so sad.

Sadder than I feel now.

I don’t think I ever want to sing again.

Ever.

I wish I could forget everything.

I wish I never existed. I release my seat buckle on my chest.

Closing my eyes, I fall from my chair.

The Rising Sun drifts toward Nemesis.

We should have just died on Never.

And while I’m dying, I have a confession to make. The Nemar System is the worst. Too many N’s. Naturn. Nemesis. Nercury. Never. Don’t the Nemar have any other letters in their alphabet beside the ones I just listed to make those words?

Even in Terran, our word for the Nemar elemental starts with an N.

You’ve got Sun, Aether, Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Nether.

I open my eyes, seeing the trap.

And then I fire up my palms, spreading sunlight everywhere.

This is the Nether.

My sister’s less-often-used and most-powerful gift.

S PHASE

S07Y 082D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Evolution divides

Haves and have-nots

Replicating what

Success has wrought

For days, I fight myself. I stabilize the Rising Sun’s descent toward Nemesis in a moment of clarity, only to let us drift moments later in despair.

Baer and Hali are lost to the Nether, unable to fight its power, filled with despair. In desperation, I strap them to their chairs on the bridge, using the Ferocity version of duct tape to secure them.

Baer keeps trying to eat his tape so he can choke on it.

I shove tools—a wrench for Baer and a screwdriver for Hali—into their mouths and tape the metal in place between their teeth so they don’t bight off their tongues.

Every waking thought I have begins and ends with taking my own life.

I don’t understand how my sister’s gift is so strong or how she can project it this far from Nemesis. I can only guess she has harnessed the slipstream or her own telepathy.

I know it can be done. I once convinced the Apothecary to destroy the yellow essence in his pocket when he was hundreds of miles away from me.

But Narista seems to have reached beyond the limits of imagination, stretching her powers across space and time.

What she has, I have not.

I cannot reach beyond where I am now and still keep her out.

I sit on the floor of the bridge releasing sunrays with my left hand and blacklight with my right hand.

I am the vessel that contains the battle between her and me.

I bring my two hands together, but they repel each other, like my stone would repel hers.

I plot a course toward Nemesis and enter in the go commands.

We cannot drift in. I must consciously choose the despair.

The closer we get to the dark star, the more dread fills me.

Baer and Hali scream with madness, projecting their voices beyond the gags in their mouths. They shake in their seats, thrashing back and forth, hoping to break their bonds so that they can end each other’s lives and their own.

For hours, I bring my hands together, fighting off the Nether, hoping to join my gifts with Narista’s while I ignore the pain of my crew members.

And in the milliseconds that I get my hands closest together, I hear the signal clearer, almost finding words.

Hm hmm-hm hm hm-hmm hmmm hmm-hmm.

Over the course of two days, I hum sounds, searching for lost letters.

Like a high stakes game of hangman, I imagine letters filling in the h’s and m’s. I weigh each guess as if our lives depends on it. There are twenty-four letters and nine syllables in the puzzle. There are a sextillion number of combinations. That’s a one with seven groups of three zeros after it.

Every wrong guess is met with a setback.

I am no longer worthy of my seat; I lie on the floor of the Rising Sun’s bridge. Cold metal grating leaves marks on my face like the underkneevents in the ductwork of the Lexington Bunker Complex and their #waffleface patterns.

Every word has a vowel. Sometimes more than one.

Mrs. C loved her Jeopardy in Lexington. Sometimes, while she cooked a dinner I’d merely pick at, she watched Wheel of Fortune. Contestants had to solve three puzzles during the course of a match. A blonde served as a cohost. I imagine her in my mind. She could have been a Soleria. Maybe she was, catching my attention for five minutes to teach me something I would need in some future harrowing moment of peril. It seems like a stretch, but more than one Soleria has seen my future.

I try to think of what I would ask Solvanna if she were here now. Maybe I’d ask for a vowel.

She’d probably say something like, “Don’t you know, Solstice, that most puzzles can be solved by guessing r, s, t, l, n, and e. But all the best puzzles can’t be. Look beyond the easy guesses to yourself.”

The Nether moves beyond my forearms and starts to attack my torso.

Still, I fight to find meaning in Solvanna’s words even if they are not real. I say the advice repeatedly until I shorten it, and then again, losing words along the way.

“Look beyond the easy guesses to yourself.”

“Look beyond to yourself.”

“Look to yourself.”

But what is myself? What am I? I am nothing more than I.

I.

The puzzle shimmers in my mind, and where there once were h’s and m’s, I have found three i’s and the makings of a sentence in the midst of my sister’s cry for help.

I’m hIm-hm hm hm-Imm hmmm hmm-hmm.

SONORITY

S07Y 084D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Single notes gather

To resonate

Grouped together

They elevate

I writhe on the floor, counting the seconds to Nemesis. Unable to completely master my despair, driven on by the Nether, I plot against myself to sabotage the inevitable confrontation that looms with my sister. Progress slows to a crawl, as does the Rising Sun.

In my body, the Nether stalemates in its battle against my natural gifts. I seek to gain the advantage with the only gift Narista cannot counter.

I sing.

I call forth every song I once had.

I cut my right wrist, telling myself, lying to myself, that it’s not the Nether. I’m not losing the battle.

Blood drips on the floor, pooling. I rip my shirt and close up the wound with a strip of fabric.

The blood is my ink, and I write the puzzle on surfaces on the bridge, using the Rising Sun’s silvolden walls and dashboard as my canvas. Not even the seats are spared, nor are my arms and clothes.

Baer and Hali follow my progress with mad eyes, screaming words of despair through their gags.

Progress is slow, and yet I am able to gain the letter most known to me.

Beyond i, what do I know the most?

S.

I focus on its curves while singing my songs, each of which starts with an s.

Baer and Hali counter with screams, so I raise my voice, filling the room with my mad songs. I think of my early writings, lyrics that were born before the apocalypse. I start from the beginning, calling forth even my shortest rhymes.

Slipstream, Servile, Songs of Roadtrip Harmony, Secret Forces Arrayed, Strider, Shooting Projectiles, Smiggles, Sliders, Smaze A Voidable Fog, Seeking Holes in the Gray, Sometimes Songs from Dreamland, Self-Addressed Stamped Letter, Stockyard, Spirit Soul, SpiritMind, Scare S’mores, Scares Underbox, Sleeping in Devoid, Still Choice, Setback, Song of the Wolf, Seven Slay Crush, Start Parts, Subaerial, Sixteen Kindling, Swoonflies, Sea Darklite, Spurn of the Moment, Shattered, Signaling Feedback, Swept Away, Sweet Pub Positive, Saunter Wave, Solo Dance Expanse, Stayed Adrift, SmallWeakBurst, Stunfixed, Splash Flashed, Sable, Sleep U-Turns, Scribbled Out Eyes, Scent of a Trailfork, Soar, Slayed, Strength, Shelled, Space Between, Strayed, Still Dawn Breaks, Settlement, Subpar, Soars, Silence of Reasonable Voices, Static Overlord, Snake in a Lemon Tree, Spite, Self-Least, Swirl Blend, Sea Hold Onto Me, Spoons, Singular Thoughts, Serendipity’s Demise, Sublimity’s Last Stand, Smothering Fog …

I repeat that last one.

Lost in thoughts hidden deep

The black night comes instead of sleep

Smothering fog covers the weak

The shadows linger, kill, and creep

The hunter searches

Seeking me

The blackness comes

My melancholy

And then I hear the s.

I’m hIm-hm hm hm-Imm hmmm Smm-hmm.

Hours later, I awake to find my other initial—D—scrawled in blood on my left arm. I add to the puzzle, smearing red letters on the wall of the bridge.

I’m hIm-hD hm hm-Imm hmmm Smm-Dmm.

SOLFA

S07Y 086D. Nemar System.

SOLSTICE

Words spoken

Ordinarily

Can’t match

A soliloquy

Although I removed their gags and forced food and water down Baer’s and Hali’s throats, they are unresponsive. I feel for pulses and find none. I am unsure if it’s the despair of the Nether that lies to me or if I have killed them. Nemesis looms the horizon. We are closer to the dark star and my madness.

I no longer want to solve the puzzle.

I just want it out of my head.

The signal grows louder, repeating what I don’t know.

I’m hIm-hD hm hm-Imm hmmm Smm-Dmm.

I’m hIm-hD hm hm-Imm hmmm Smm-Dmm.

I’m hIm-hD hm hm-Imm hmmm Smm-Dmm.

Again, I counter with song.

Baer and I can never be together for long.

He will always die.

I will always live.

There is no greater despair than waiting for him for untold ages, hoping death will take me and reunite me with him, but knowing that death has a crueler fate in store for me.

Baer and I will never have children.

Baer will never be faithful. He has proven that again and again.

Baer should be dead. I stole him from death itself.

Baer will pay for that, as will I.

Baer.

Baer.

Baer.

“Stop saying my name!” he screams. For a moment, his eyes are open. The whites are gone, replaced with the black ink that infects him.

I reach up from the floor for him, but he is gone already, drawn back into his all-consuming madness.

And I open my right wrist again, finding the red ink.

I touch his boot, thanking him the only way I can.

I have found a B for Baer.

I stand and add the B to my blood mural on the wall.

I’m hIm-hD hm Bm-Imm hmmm Smm-Dmm.

My finger lingers on the B too long. The wall is unstable, or my legs are. They give out, and I fall toward the back of the bridge.

Through the doorway, I see the only prison I would despise more than this madness.

I think of the pods in the next room and the despair of being trapped in there.

My sister seizes that thought. I can nearly feel her mind probing my thoughts. Yes, the pods. Go there. Sleep out your days.

But Narista is overconfident.

My mind moves from the insanity of entering into the sun pod again to the outside of the shell and the symbol on it.

Of the seven symbols, mine is the simplest.

It is the sun. It is a circle.

It looks a lot like an o.

I gain three letters.

I write the O’s on my arm and pass out in the doorway between the bridge and the pod room.

But my thoughts are not idle. While my body fails, I fill in h’s and m’s in the word puzzle.

I’m hIm-hD Om Bm-Imm hOmm Smm-DOm.

SHOCKFRONT

S07Y 088D. Nemesis

SOLSTICE

Waves from far away

Rippling in a forward sea

Ebb, flow, and crest

But still crash onto me

When I awake, the Rising Sun is shaking. Purple light floods in through our viewport from Nemesis like a disk around the dark star. I raise my head off the blood-covered floor.

I want to die in Baer’s arms.

I can’t fight another second. I remove the gag from his mouth and cut his bonds. He falls to the floor. I do the same for Hali. I don’t want to die in her arms, but I don’t want her to die like that.

The entire cockpit is bathed in purple light. Even for me, it’s blinding.

I lie next to Baer and kiss him. I bring my hands together, left and right. On my left wrist is the core, and it is the life I created. The child I can never hope to bear is Corona. On the right wrist is a bandage, and it is the life I’ve tried to take several times in my madness.

I interlock my fingers and release sunrays with my left and blacklight with my right.

Baer opens his eyes and places his hands over mine, holding them together.

He’s the only one that can absorb energy. We didn’t need a vessel to contain the blacklight because we have Baer. He’s a vessel, not me.

The blacklight and sunrays swirl in my hands, forming the blackshine—silver-purple light.

Light radiates from my body in all directions. The Nether reverses course, retreating from my body, then Baer’s, and finally Hali’s.

Hali rolls toward me and lays her hands over Baer’s and mine.

The power is in us!

The gems can’t touch, but we can.

All three of us hear the signal. It’s clearer now that it’s a message. We have the medium. The blackshine plasma surrounds us but it does not burn. It restores us, fighting off the Nether.

Slowly, the letters fill in, forming words.

I’m TIm-hD Om Bm-Imm hOmm Smm-DOm.

I’m TIm-hD Om Bm-Imm hOUm Smm-DOm.

The tones vary within the signal

The hums get louder and then quieter, interspersed with static.

It sounds like a glitch.

It sounds like Narista is glitching.

The signal repeats.

I’m TIm-hD Om Bm-Imm YOUm Smm-DOm.

I’m TIm-hD Om Bm-Imm YOUm Smm-DOm.

“R,” Baer yells.

I can’t tell if he’s in agony—argh—or yelling a consonant.

I’m TIR-hD Om Bm-Imm YOUR Smm-DOm.

“I’d like to solve the puzzle, Baer,” I say.

“I’m tired of being your shadow,” Narista says.

Her voice is coming from nowhere and from everywhere, booming.

Damn.

Narista has only told me that like a thousand times.

It’s just further proof I should have let her die.

But I’m not the only one that needs her.

Without a Nemar, without the strongest Nemar ever, we cannot defeat the billions of Ferocity.

If she’s done this to three Elementals, imagine what she can do to lesser Ferocity.

I stand up, free of the Nether. My skin finds its natural tone. Hali and Baer stand at my sides, free of the despair.

I close my hands, and the blackshine fades from our bodies.

Blood—my blood—decorates the silvolden walls of the Rising Sun, giving glimpses into my madness.

Baer follows my progress on the walls. He pauses at the words written in red. B is for Baeran. I prefer if you use my professional name on the bridge.

“Did you say that?” I ask, because I didn’t.

He shrugs, trying to smile. His teeth glow purple like under a blacklight.

I smile back, and he sees my teeth too.

He covers his eyes with his arm, looking toward the viewport.

So close are we to Nemesis that it no longer appears as a black circle surrounded by a glowing purple edge. We are too close to see its purple-edged corona. It is as if a whirling disc surrounds a wall of blackness.

I’ve seen this before. While the colors are off, it’s like I’m on the edge of Saturn’s rings looking at the planet.

The Rising Sun drifts toward the leading edge of a purple swirling vortex, and yet we cannot see beyond the edge. Light flashes on the edges, only to be drawn toward the center we also cannot see.

“That’s an event horizon,” Baer says.

“Is that bad?” Hali asks.

I look at Baer.

“It’s the leading edge of a black hole,” he says. “Nemesis is a singularity.”

SHADOW’S SERENITY

S07Y 089D. Nemesis.

SOLSTICE

Found in quiet corners

Spaces from in between

Sun and light

Lies darkness’s queen

The Queen of the Galaxy is dead. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but across the clans, there was only ever one Queen, one Princess, one Duchess, one Emperor, one Prime Aether, and whatever the chief Wydran and Airan is called. It says something about the arrogance of the Soleria and the respect still given to them by the other six clans that only my clan had two titles.

But so much has changed since I was last near Nemesis. Not only is the queen dead, the star has collapsed in on itself, eating away at its core. I hadn’t thought about it much, but I figured that since I was the last ruler of Terra and the heir to the Soleria, the job of Queen would be mine for the taking.

My thoughts betray me, and they are not my own.

Narista enters my mind.

I want to welcome her, tell her that I love her. The journey was difficult but now I—we—are here for you. I expect that despite all that has happened, she will welcome me into her mind.

But she has other words for me.

I fall back into my chair, such is the power of her telepathic voice. A thousand migraines visit me at once.

I slump to my side.

“Baer,” I croak. “Hold me up and strap me in.”

Hali helps him, threading the seatbelt straps through my arms. “You’re bleeding,” she says.

Bloody tears fall from my eyes.

You refused that title, Narista says. Solterra of the Soleria—the one that was here before—said another would follow in her wake and that she would not take it.

She’s right.

I try to find my sister on the other side of the purple wave.

The Rising Sun shakes, rattling forward.

Baer straps in next to me and activates the blue screen. He fires up the Rising Sun. On the rocket icon, he pushes the slider to maximum power with one hand while turning the wheel sharply to the left with the other.

Despite full power, the Rising Sun cannot change course.

Unable to hold position, we are pulled toward the center.

We see over the edge of the event horizon—the disk of purple light—into the top edge of the swirling black vortex.

No longer shall the Soleria retain that title, Narista says. For I claim it.

That means I’m back to being what I abhor.

I seem destined, despite my protests over the years, to be saddled with the title Princess.

The Rising Sun passes through the purple wave and enters darkness.

A single light shines where Nemesis should be.

We should be spinning in the vortex, and yet time is suspended.

The galaxy outside the black hole continues to age while we are stuck in slow motion.

Light bends on the edge of where the dark star should be.

It’s like looking down a drain when you’ve lost the diamond from your engagement ring.

Beyond the edge—in the drain—there is only darkness except for that of a single light—the diamond—waiting to fall farther in the second you reach for it.

“What’s that light?” Baer asks.

“It’s the Nemstar,” I say. “Narista’s solitaire.”

“You okay?” he asks.

I wipe the blood from my eyes. “Yes,” I croak. “As long as she stays out of my head. Her thoughts are too strong for me to contain.”

Slowly, our ship drift toward the blacklight.

In the center, I recognize the Nether pod, the one I sent Narista out to sea in. It looks like a clear peanut shell with black veins running the length of it and meeting at the spot where I placed the Nemstar.

Attached to the sides of the Nether pod is technology I do not recognize. Like a disk, it is built up around her.

As we get closer, we realize the disk is made from parts of ships and is far larger than our own ship. If the Rising Sun is the size of a yacht, then the Dusk Singularity—my name for her ship—is the size of an aircraft carrier, but circular. I recognize Ferocity iron and Soleria silvolden imbedded around Narista’s pod, a sign that the Dusk Singularity was born from the destruction of other ships. Including the Solidarity, the Soleria mothership.

“Can we dock with it?” Baer asks.

“Why would you want to?” Hali counters.

“We need her,” I say. “We need her will. Without her, the Ferocity will conquer the seven systems. Already the Sol, Nemar, and Eartarin Systems have fallen to them.”

“I think she finished off the Soleria and Nemar,” Hali says.

“We don’t know that!” I snap. “For all we know, the Ferocity attacked the Solidarity and the last of the Nemar on Naturn.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Baer says.

The Dusk Singularity is far larger in our viewport.

“I don’t think we could escape the pull of that,” he adds.

He looks at me and winces. “You know I love you,” he says.

Before I can say something snappy, he collapses to my right, just like Hali on my left.

The clasp holding the straps of their seatbelts gives way.

The interior of the Rising Sun glows pink and then blue. For a moment, the colors flash, but then they combine, forming purple, signaling that Narista has taken over our ship.

Baer and Hali groan.

The Nether has them in its grip again, turning their skin black.

“Let them go!” I yell at the viewport.

Narista forces the Rising Sun to dock with the Dusk Singularity.

My ship is inverted and mates with hers nose down. Hali and Baer slip from their harnesses, falling into the aisle. They roll across the floor to the dashboard, bouncing off the prominence.

I ride the inversion, holding my straps to my chest.

When we stop moving, I place my feet ninety degrees to my chest and slip out of my harness. Stepping from the forward prominence to the dash, I stand between the steering columns with my face pressed against the viewport.

From the Dusk Singularity, hoses, lines, cables, arms, and gears come alive, pulling my ship closer and integrating it with Narista’s.

I see her ship taking mine, but what I am focused on is the woman before me.

I am mere feet from Narista, looking through my viewport into the Nether pod that holds her. She hasn’t aged a day, and like me is forever stuck looking like she’s about sixteen. But her eyes are closed like she is in a deep sleep.

The Nemstar glows outside of the Nether pod. My Solstar lights up, calling to its twin.

I press my hands to the viewport, calling her name.

“Narista. Narista, it’s me, Solstice.”

The Dusk Singularity lights up, emitting purple blacklight. It’s nearly blinding.

I blink, adjusting to the glare.

Narista opens her eyes.

“I am the Dark Queen.”

“Narista, remember,” I say. “It’s Solstice.”

But all her memories were given to me.

“I’m tired of being your shadow,” she says. “I have sent that message far and wide, building all this to broadcast it.”

“I’m the one who can answer it,” I say. “I can remind you of who you once were.” I point to my head.

“Are you the sun?” she asks, pressing her face against the inside of the Nether pod. “Can you answer the question of how light can exist without the dark? Is that why you need the shadow so?”

“I need you, Narista, and I will tell you all that you want to know.” I look at Baer and Hali, suffering. “After you release them.”

“Why don’t I want to be your shadow?” she asks.

She’s not sure why she has said that or why she has broadcast it across the systems. She knows only one thought. She is tired of being my shadow.

I place my left hand on the viewport. “I will tell you why, sister.”

Narista raises her right hand inside the pod, mirroring mine.

I don’t have a good answer for why she was driven to madness like her mother, Nemesis, named for the dark star that looms behind the Dusk Singularity.

I actually have a good answer for why she was tormented, for why she snapped, for why her brain is broken.

Narista told me that she couldn’t live with the memory that Pyrellax tormented her for centuries in the slipstream.

And I couldn’t let her die, even if that’s what she wanted.

“Come with me, sister,” I say.

“I’ll take those gifts now,” she says. “Telepathy and Nether are not enough.”

Few matched the confluence of gifts I was blessed with: sunray fingertips and bioluminescent hair and eyes, telepathy, EMP, and the solarplosion. I once was also a dreamvision seer and a catalyst. But Narista was blessed with many gifts as well.

Between the Rising Sun and the Dusk Singularity, powers pass like thoughts. And where our hands nearly touch, Narista reclaims hers. Added to the Nether and telepathy, she takes back the inking, the shadow, the blacklight.

She pauses for a moment, learning some of the shared history of the clans from the imprint of Solterra.

“In this endless cycle of war, is it Pyrellax or you, sister,” she asks, “that is the barrier to my peace?”

She waits. For a second, I think I’ll be able to answer her, but she cuts me off. “It seems that in order to be free, I must rid the galaxy of the problem of you.”

The Nemstar glows brighter, and she releases blacklight from her body, lighting up the Dusk Singularity and attacking the Rising Sun.

My ship goes dark, erasing the purple glow she infected it with.

The Solstar solitaire lights up like my hair and eyes, countering her, casting light toward Narista’s ship. But the light bends, caught between the curvature of the Rising Sun’s viewport and the outside of the Nether pod, lost amid the cables and hoses that connect our two vessels.

I am nothing more than a dot of light in a sea of darkness.

And Narista is the darkness that surrounds my light.

“I will no longer be your shadow,” she screams.

On the outside of the Nether pod, the Nemstar glows brighter with purple blacklight, and for a moment it rivals the yellow light from my solitaire.

But under my control, the Solstar counters, refusing to be anything but the brightest light.

When she sees she cannot outshine me, Narista counters with darkness.

The Dusk Singularity grows around her, morphing to trap the Rising Sun. Cables, cords, gears, silvolden, and Ferocity iron surround my ship, enclosing it.

For a minute, our eyes lock, and I see her through the last exposed part of my vessel.

I call to her again—Narista—but like a sunset, I cannot prevent the coming night.

SINGULARITY

S07Y 090D. Nemesis.

SOLSTICE

Nether attacks my body, and I am powerless against it.

Caught in a black void of despair, there is no song nor any light left in me, and the Solstar stops shining. I am at the source of Narista’s power, and I am no match for her alone. I fall back from the dashboard, away from the viewport, landing between Baer and Hali.

Only one thing can save me now.

I touch the core on my wrist, think of Corona, and say, “Peanuts.”

A portal opens in the viewport, leading from my ship into a void.

I slam into the prominence, gripping its edge with my hands. My feet dangle over the new hole.

Anything not tied down flies toward the opening.

Corona appears before me. Light flickers around her body; she is nearly see-through.

“Oh my,” she says.

“The only way to get out is to go in,” I say.

Baer opens his eyes. “You’re not alone.”

He reaches toward me, grabbing my hand just as it slips off the prominence.

“Would you?” I ask.

“Yes.” He tightens his grip on my left hand. “Every time, even those times when you wouldn’t ask me to.”

“Save Hali, Corona,” I say. “It’s me Narista wants.”

Baer looks at Corona and then me.

Corona’s image shifts over Hali. She solidifies despite the chunks of her that are missing. Her left eye is gone like her right arm. She grabs onto Hali wedged between the captain’s seat and the dash.

My hair blows back, pulled toward the hole.

Air rushes out of the Rising Sun.

“When we’re gone, plug the hole,” I say. “Leave if you can and wait for us beyond the system. Make for Saturn.”

“Understood,” Corona says.

Baer struggles to hold his grip on the prominence.

I look down into the portal. I expect to see Narista on the other side or her ship. Instead, I see nothing except the void.

“It’s okay, Baer,” I say. “It’s the only way we can save Narista.”

“There’s no song in there,” he says. “No light.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “Let go.”

Baer releases his grip on the prominence, and we fall, hand in hand, into the void.

The Burnt Sunset Series:

The Solstice Dayton

The Burnt Sunset

The Aurora Dazed

The Evolved Dawning

The Sunrise Nadir

The Solstar Flare

The Seven Sundered

The Rising Sun Series:

The Solstice Variant

The Rising Sun

The Dusk Singularity

The Astral Seascaper

The Soleria Bane

The Lost Solace

The Slipstream Echo

Poetry | Lyrics:

The Lyricbook Solstice

The Solitary Edge

The Summer Happy

About the Author:

Chris Ledoux lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with his wife, Celeste, his children Zacharie, Aurelie, and Ranger, and their dog, Summer.

Copyright © 2022 Chris Ledoux

All rights reserved.

Baer Solstice Creative, LLC, Portsmouth, NH

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