There were more good-byes, more hugs, more tears. Anya embraced and kissed Immonen while Renn did the same with Mona, and then they were alone in the elevator going up to the bridge. Neither of them spoke as they took their seats behind the control panels. Gary’s face appeared on the main display in front of them, in the center of the triangular windows. Samaira, Mona, Immonen, Kan, Tori, Pan, MacDougal, and President Bisset were behind him.

“The first wave of missiles has already launched,” Gary said, “but you’ll catch up. There’s about fifty waves total, and I’ve set up the Saber to keep track of all of them, and every missile and digger rocket. If less than 10% of the missiles or rockets in the first forty waves have impacted, turn around and come back. You won’t have enough cover to even begin to protect a digger rocket if that’s the case. It’d just be pure suicide.”

“Got it,” Anya said. “Prepping for launch.”

Gary had made the essential functions of the ship childishly easy, including a giant “LAUNCH” display on the control panel, which Anya pressed. Gaia’s Saber hummed to life and the rumble of her engines was enough to make Anya’s teeth rattle before they settled into a steady, powerful thrumming. The ceiling of the hangar opened to reveal a crisp, blue, arctic sky above. The moon was pale but visible, and the Lunar base looked like it was almost done since last Anya had seen it.

“The most powerful wave will be the first, and I’ve put as much stealth and defensive tech into those as I can. Hopefully it’ll act as a powerful enough Alpha Strike to confuse the aliens, and give you and Renn the window you need to land next to a digger rocket and keep it safe long enough. It needs to get to a depth of about half a mile to be effective,” Gary continued as the Saber angled itself up towards the sky. Amber warning lights flashed around the hangar, and blast shields rose up around the Saber’s engines.

“Will do,” Anya said as her stomach tightened.

“Do what you can, and come back,” Gary said.

“See you soon,” Anya said and smiled at him. He returned it, and then his display window shrank to the corner of the main screen. The Saber’s computer system spoke up over the ship’s comm system and in Gary’s control room.

“Fifteen seconds to launch. Final system checks confirmed: optimal functionality,” it said.

Anya glanced at Renn. He had his helmet down, and he turned to look at her.

“Don’t make me regret this,” Anya whispered to him.

“Not if I can help it,” he replied.

“Ten seconds to launch. Hangar is cleared,” the computer droned.

Anya gripped the sides of her chair and took a deep breath. The rumble of the engines increased until the bridge was shaking as if it were in a hurricane.

“Five seconds, to launch. Surface is cleared,” the computer said, and then, “Launching.”

Anya felt as though a giant invisible hand had smacked her back into her chair as Gaia’s Saber flew out of the hangar with an almost deafening humming roar of its engines. The pale blue sky went from a shape of chalky azure to indigo to black in seconds, and Anya only had a glimpse of the moon less than a minute later as they shot past it. They sped past something else, what looked like metal scaffolding on a massive scale and blinking red lights.

“What was that?” Anya asked.

“Part of the inner ring of defenses. Attack satellites, Exterminator bays, that sort of thing. Dunno if you saw it, but Galtero is up there and his mech waved at you,” Gary replied. “The kid put a lot of his points into engineering skills to upgrade his mech and he’s been a real asset to me and Huang in accelerating our automated defenses. Once he's done here he'll be moving to the outer line of defenses, past the moon.”

Anya hadn’t seen much of the Brazilian mecha pilot since she and Amahle—the martial artist from South Africa—had found all those victims of Omega’s attacks in the Philippines.

“Tell him I waved back,” Anya said.

“Will do. All right, you and Renn are about thirty hours from contact with Willis and the aliens. You’ll get a notification on the first five waves of missiles about fifteen minutes prior, the next twenty-fives waves five minutes prior, and then you’ll arrive with final waves, hopefully after the asteroid has been cleared out at least a little bit.”

“And anything over 10% hit-rate is good,” Anya said.

“You got it. Higher is better, of course, but yes, that’s the absolute minimum,” Gary said. “I’ve got some other things I need to check on so I’m gonna go, but somebody will be here if you need anything. Also you should be passing the outer defensive line, that’s the point-of-no-return, in a little under an hour.”

“Thank you Gary,” Anya said.

“We appreciate everything Monsieur Hendricks,” Renn added, and then the communication window closed.

They were alone.

“So,” Renn said into the silence, “How many psychic defenses did you put up in expectation of my ‘sudden but inevitable,’ betrayal?”

“Uh,” Anya said.

“I’m guessing that hair clip you started wearing this morning is one. Mona has told me some things about charms and wards. She doesn’t really use the aether, but I know Ms. Upadhyay does.”

Anya grimaced at Renn. “Fine, I’m worried about a powerful psychic doing something shifty. What of it?”

“We’ve talked about trust before,” Renn said.

“Yeah, I trust you enough to get on this ship, don’t I? Doesn’t mean I’m gonna leave myself totally open.”

“That’s fair. Though I’ll point out I have no fire resistance gear. You could fry me on the spot.”

“Maybe,” Anya shrugged.

“Well then, since we have a long flight ahead of ourselves, how about we chat? I’ll tell you a secret,” Renn said. Anya arched an eyebrow at him.

“Do tell,” she said.

“All right. Do you want to know why I called all the hosts to Beijing back in February?” Renn asked.

“Well, on the surface it was to help hosts join together, increase their survival rate. But I figured that couldn’t be the only reason.”

“And you were right. I had three reasons for doing so. The first was as you say: we were being picked off en masse and would have died out if we didn’t team-up. The second was because I wanted an idea of who would be willing to help with my post-invasion goal of unifying the world.”

Something Chell had told her about psychics being unable to read thoughts word-for-word, but being more than capable of getting a strong feeling about people from their emotions or general thought process. Especially with physical contact.

“You—you were feeling us out. It was like a huge interview,” Anya said.

“Sort of. I couldn’t, and still can’t, get exact details from people’s heads, but it was enough to take away a basic list of who would be more-or-less amenable to change. Among your friends, Gary was the most eager to see a shift, while Samaira was the least.”

“But you never asked anybody if they want to change the world,” Anya said. “How would you even get a feeling?”

“Just a little hunch I got from the brief psychic contact. As I said, nothing conclusive or exact, but enough to give me a strong sense of where I should invest my efforts. You were in the middle, at the time. You wanted safety for your friends and yourself more than you cared about the arc of mankind’s path. Which is fair. You tipped a little toward my way of thinking after Huang sent his robots, though. A lot of people did.”

“And that's the third reason,” Anya said and sighed. “You could have set the meeting anywhere, but you chose Beijing because you knew a major world power like the Chinese would react poorly to a bunch of super humans hanging out on their turf, and make us at least suspicious of a government.”

“Well, not necessarily. After all, you and most of the other people at that meeting did decide to cooperate with their governments in the end. No, I did that to show you that on their own, even with advanced tech, no government posed any real threat. Those robots were a light workout, nothing more,” Renn said and laughed. “The idea that we must follow our leaders has been ingrained in people over generations. I wanted to show that it no longer applies. Huang was kind enough to give me an example of why that is true.”

“So it does come back to beating governments,” Anya said but Renn shook his head.

“No, it’s not about realizing we are capable of violence, only that these aged power systems are no longer capable of instilling fear. We have grown beyond them. We are not beholden to them or their archaic ways or endless wars. They will advance with us or they will remain behind. I am not a hypocrite. This is not a ‘join us or die,’ ultimatum. It is a ‘join us or be left alone. Advance to the future or stay in the past,’ offer. They may choose to reject it, but if they do, there will be no reprisals. There will merely be an absence of reward.

“It’s why Kan was one of the first people I asked to join me after Mona. He wanted change desperately. So much so that he went on a killing spree across Europe, butchering the rich and anybody near them.”

“Wait, that was Kan? The psycho slicing people up and nailing them to walls and shit? That guy? That guy is on your team?” Anya demanded.

“That is the kind of thinking that must be done away with. ‘My team.’ We are all people, we are the same team. The advancement of one is the advancement of all, or should be. And when one of us is held back, all of us remain stuck. Kan lost everything. His family, his job, his home, his savings, all because of apathetic, wealthy business owners. I don’t blame him for being furious, but his way of enacting change was a dead-end. My people tried it during our revolution. The heads of the aristocracy rolled like apples falling off a tree. And what did it get us? Just different people at the top. No, I told Kan to stop, to try a different way. He could always kill them later. And if he was intent on continuing his spree, then he could, but he should be honest with himself: he didn’t want change, he wanted revenge. And the only thing to be had after revenge is emptiness. Another dead-end.”

“You sound like you know personally,” Anya said.

“I do,” Renn replied and his voice took on a husky quality as though he were holding something back.

“It’s…nice. What you want. Assuming you’re being honest with me,” Anya said. “Change without violence. Everybody having a better tomorrow.”

“But?” Renn asked.

“I just…wonder if it’s possible, or even feasible.”

“At the start of this year, the same could have been said for superpowers, magic, and aliens. I think mankind learning how to resolve its differences without massive war is very feasible by comparison,” Renn said. Anya laughed.

“Yeah. Maybe,” she said.

“All we need is a maybe,” Renn said, his voice softening. “So many efforts and ideas have died on the vine because people said ‘No,’ before ever really trying. ‘Yes,’ is better, but I’ll settle for ‘Maybe.’”

“Well, maybe if we survive this, and maybe if we get back, and maybe if Earth isn’t destroyed when we do, then maybe we can talk about it some more,” Anya said.

“Maybe,” Renn agreed with a chuckle. “I’m going to find the food replicator and make myself some tea. Do you want any?”

“Sure,” Anya said. Renn left her alone on the bridge, and she looked out at the black expanse before her, and the distant twinkling of stars. Gaia’s Saber sped through the void, away from everything she had ever known, and into the uncertain emptiness ahead.