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“We could run,” he says.
My jaw tenses. I don’t like him being on the cortex in this frame of mind, though I know that Jaya would not obey him over Zandro—unless she, too, becomes convinced that our cause is hopeless. If Ravik were to interface with Jaya and show her our folly, she could decide that she should move us to a new,safelocation.
Although we have started describing Jaya as a warship, I know that in her heart, she is a pacifist.
I do not know if Ravik is a pacifist or a coward.
“The Second House fears us,” I say. “Otherwise, they would not have tried for so long to keep us under their thumb.”
“They have no reason to fear us,” Ravik says. “We are allied with another broken House and two primitive, weak species. We will—”
“Don’t talk like that,” I interrupt. “You sound like Dalphox.”
“I speak reason,” he says. “Do you wish to die, Taraven? Or do you wish to survive, to escape, and to see a new order thrive in some distant galaxy?”
My brow furrows and my shoulders tense as I stare through Jaya’s eyes. I came here to seek guidance, not to argue…but Ravik seems to do nothing else lately. And when he asks me his question, I know exactly where I stand.
Even if it were not for Frankie, for this strange sensation I feel for Malix…my family is on Jaya.
I would not abandon them, even if it means my death.
“If this is how you feel, you should leave,” I mutter.
Ravik inhales sharply, his tail slapping against my calf. I don’t get the impression he meant to; I think that it was impulse. Yet he does it again, harder this time, and it makes me step away.
“Don’t you understand?” he says. “I’m trying tosave you.”
“We will never win this battle without courage, Ravik,” I say. “And you should know that if we do not stop him, Dalphox will take his armies ofzephtanto consume garden worlds until there are none left. Surely you understand the risk.”
“But we would live!”
“Only for our children to die.”
Ravik scoffs. “You don’t even have children.”
“I don’t have to have children to have compassion,” I say. “You shouldn’t either.”
Jaya groans around us, and a few of the youngerzephtanin our fleet answer her. Some have a high, keening cry—like they’re weeping for the loss of all who’ve died. I know that they feel more than we do, that they can sense the echoes of loss across transdimensional space.
Ravik is no engineer, but he is a pilot.
I wonder if he interprets their calls differently than I do. If he hears them yearn for escape, as he does.
“I am not a coward,” he says.
“I’ll believe it when you prove it,” I reply.
And I leave him behind, not knowing how long my oldest friend will remain with our crew.
CHAPTER SEVEN
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MALIX
Roughly five Lyran months ago, a planet was invaded several lightyears away…then, like magic, a whole fleet appeared nearby the Lyran-human hub of Azoth. This was after a massive, spacefaring creature somehow teleported into orbit around Earth, shaking the very existence of human and Lyra alike.
A few of our people had known about the Skoropi before then, but I was not among them. The Lyran Directorate was not shocked—at least, given the circumstances, they seemed composed—but it destroyed my concept of reality. In training as a warrior, and illicit dabblings in physics, I had studied the way that Lyran ships move through grey space, faster than human ships but not so fast as to suddenly appear on the opposite side of the galaxy.
