Eve led Xaleyp back to his own bedroom, depositing him on the bed and taking the chair for herself. She crossed one leg over the other, briefly gesturing at him before folding her hands on her.

‟Well, go on then. Why have you been ignoring all of my messages the last couple weeks?”

Xaleyp took a deep breath and held it, falling backwards on the soft comforter and staring at the ceiling with his arms spread wide. A feeling of guilt ran through him, and he internally cringed at his own actions. A pressure built up in his chest as he continued to hold his breath, trying his best not to let the emotions burst free. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore and let it out.

“It’s my fucking fault that Lina died, and it’s my fault that Ardus is going to get to do whatever the hell he wants to the galaxy.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop and wanted to say everything that had been gnawing away at him. Perhaps it was best that Eve simply sat there and listened without trying to stop him. “Every time I try to do something that just might help someone else, it comes back to bite me in the ass, and I’m always powerless to stop it. Now, Seth, or Gareten, or whatever the hell his name is, tells me that there is another threat to the galaxy I need to stop before it wreaks havoc, and I’m just tired. I’m going to be turning nineteen in a few months, and there’s just always this massive weight like an elephant sitting on my chest, and I can’t shake it off.

“I’m just tired,” he repeated, bringing his hands up and rubbing his eyes roughly. “Why can’t things be simpler?”

Eve slowly sat upright, placing both of her feet firmly on the ground and leaning over and grab his knee. She squeezed it tightly, sending a wave of calmness through his body.

“Things weren’t going to be simple from the moment the Hyperions kidnapped you.” She shrugged somewhat lazily. “You were doomed to some messed up game of intergalactic chess ever since, and there’s really nothing you can do about it. That is, nothing except tear down the establishment that has worked to sink its claws into you and make sure that they can’t do it agin to someone weaker and more submissive than you are.”

Xaleyp brought his hands away from his eyes and titled his head to stare at her in a kind of disbelief. Had she really just suggested to do what he had been considering for months?

“And don’t forget,” she added, pointing her finger accusatorily at him, “that you’re not alone. You have me, and Mian when she gets better, and Oliver now to help you. No more of this lone wolf, ignoring the people who care about you bullshit, alright?”

Eve said the last words with a sorrowful expression, looking at him like a forgotten puppy waiting for its master to return. Xaleyp sat up and stared into her eyes, trying his best not to blink for fear of her disappearing and leaving him alone. Slowly, he nodded.

“Now, forgive me for asking, but who was Lina?”

Xaleyp’s heart leapt at the question. He had forgotten that Eve hadn’t been at Vertyn with him, that she didn’t know who Lina had been and how much she meant to him.

“She was my best friend at Vertyn, the space station the Hyperions brought me to when they kidnapped me.” He felt a lump forming in his throat as he said the words, and he took several calming breaths to keep from crying. “The Arcadians attacked the station, and I didn’t know what they were going to do if they gained control. Even though I tried to save her, she didn’t make it, and Seth was way too happy to emphasize the point that Oliver did even though he was there too. If I had just left her there, if I had just fucking done things differently …”

His voice trailed off, unable to say the words. Immediately, his mind went to the message she had sent him with her dying breath, and he wanted nothing more than to hear her voice, see her smile, one more time. A hand on his, however, stopped him from opening the file, pulling him back to reality.

He looked up to see Eve looking at him, her lips curved into a small frown. She pulled him close, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tight. He resisted the urge to return the embrace, simply sitting there with his head on her shoulder and eyes closed.

“I know it doesn’t mean much at this point, but I’m sorry for your loss.” She rubbed his back with one hand, sending a feeling of both calmneess and sadness through his body. “Sometimes, it’s the darkest moments that really show who we are, not the brightest.”

As she said the words, the ship shifted slightly as it dropped out of hyperspace, and a short and simple message came through Xaleyp’s CAM from Ardus.

Xaleyp tensed, and Eve must have felt the change in his body because she pulled away, staring at him confused.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, sitting back down in the chair.

“Ardus wants me to go to the hangar to get off the ship,” he said, standing.

“I’ll go with you.” Eve popped up at once as well, straightening out her jumpsuit as she stood. “I need to get off this ship for a little bit, and, besides, you need someone who can keep you under control and not killing Ardus. At least, keep you from killing him too soon.”

She smiled at him, nudging him in the side with her elbow as she led the way towards the door. It hissed open as they approached, closing again when they were a few steps out into the hallway on their way to the lift. The familiar trip down to the hangar felt somewhat different now that Ardus was so blatantly opposed to his own ideals, but Xaleyp tried to shake the events of the last hour from his head, not wanting them to cloud his judgment.

As the door of the lift opened, the entire ship shook as a shockwave of some sort passed through it. Red lights flashed and klaxons blared in the otherwise still air of the hallway. Xaleyp and Eve looked at each other for a moment before taking off down the empty corridor, sprinting as fast as their legs would carry them.

The door of the hangar opened before them, revealing a buzz of activity as technicians and pilots ran around the room to different fighters and transports. Drones and autonomous machinery carried weapons and supplies to opposite ends of the hangar, their paths continuously adjusting to account for the disturbed hive around them.

They quickly spotted Ardus leaning against one of the Helios-Two Dropships, his legs crossed as he pointed and barked out orders to the soldiers passing him. In one hand was the Sword of Razeph, its tip down against the ground. The door next to him was open, revealing the relatively dim interior of the transport and pilot making his preflight checks in the cockpit. He looked over as the door opened, seeing the pair of the briskly walking to him.

“Well, come on then, hurry up,” he said, clapping his hands together as if it made them move any faster.

“What’s going on?” Xaleyp and Eve asked in unison as they neared him.

“The Arcadians apparently sent a strike force of their elite soldiers, the Reapers, almost immediately after we left, and they think that they’re actually going to be able to rescue Tober.” He held his thumb and forefinger to his chin, as if deep in thought, before continuing, “Or maybe they just plan to die trying. Who knows? Anyway, the point is that we are taking this dropship to the surface with Tober and Seth aboard so that we can get things prepared. Strategos Warwick, however much I despise him, is more than capable of throwing off this futile assault, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

As he said the words, as if to contradict them, another shockwave passed through the ship, though much weaker than the first. Ardus waved it away and gestured to the open door next to him.

“Please, find an empty seat and secure your belts,” he said, his voice tinged by the slightest amount of worry. “Even though they don’t pose any real threat to us, especially with our fleet on high alert already, that doesn’t mean the rockets and lasers they use will do any less damage. Ideally, we would wait until they are defeated, but we really have no time to waste sitting around on our hands.”

Eve and Xaleyp said nothing, silently following Ardus’ order and stepping up into the transport as the engines of a starfighter roared to life behind them. Xaleyp looked over his shoulder just in time to see the door of the launch bay closing behind it and desired nothing more than hopping into one of them himself. A stern look from Ardus, however, kept him moving into the Helios-Two.

The interior was as he was familiar with it. A row of seats ran along either wall to his left, and the cockpit rose into the air a few steps on his right. Sitting at the far end of the transport on opposite sides, bound and apparently unconscious, were Tober Delargivic and Seth Drake. The two newcomers took seats as close to the door as they could, the metal bars coming down over their shoulders to lock them in place. Almost immediately after, Ardus climbed into the dropship, closing the door behind him and taking a seat in the cockpit next to the pilot.

The ship shifted as it moved to the opposite end of the hangar and flew out in open space. Xaleyp craned his neck to look out the window in the door across from him. Hundreds of ships ranging from small cruisers to large carriers and dreadnoughts were lumbering from Siatia to where the Starkiller was engaged in a fierce, rather one-sided firefight against a dozen Arcadian frigates. Brief flashes of light lit up in empty areas of space as rockets exploded, detonated by defense systems from the ships. His CAM showed arcing lasers of green and red that were otherwise invisible to the naked eye.

‟Brace!” the pilot yelled out suddenly.

The transport jerked sideways, the force of the maneuver pressing Xaleyp hard against the seat as a rocket exploded near them. He held tight onto the metal bars despite knowing that it accomplished nothing that they weren’t capable of alone. Eve, however, did the same next to him and shut her eyes tightly. Just as he recovered from the first movement, the dropship lurched again, and Xaleyp saw the outside spinning as the ship fell into a steep, spiraling dive—or what would have been a dive if they weren’t in space—before pulling back up and continuing its path to the planet. They continued rolling from side to side, constantly on the lookout for any stray projectiles coming their way.

After several tense seconds, they reached the wall of Siatian ships, passing through the crack between a pair of frigates. Something moved out of the corner of Xaleyp’s eye, and he turned to see Tober’s head snap up to stare directly at him, the same creepy smile as before plastered on his face and his eyes wide.

‟Xaaaleyyyyp, I was beginning to think that we wouldn’t have a chance to meet again,” Tober said, his head slowly tilting side to side as if studying him. His voice was almost singing, as if he were enjoying himself. ‟It’s a shame that we couldn’t have worked together. We would’ve made quite the team. I fear, however, that our time together is going to be coming to an end soon, so I just wanted to leave you a parting gift.”

Xaleyp felt his heart pounding against the metal, and he was sure that it would break through the restraint. He tried to ignore the man but found it increasingly difficult with each passing word.

‟And what exactly is that?” he asked, attempting to keep his voice as neutral and disinterested as possible.

‟This. Goodbye, Xaaaleyyyyp.”

Tober’s head immediately fell as if a string holding it up were suddenly cut. Xaleyp looked around, trying to figure out what the man was going on about, when Ardus yelled out from the cockpit.

‟What the actual fuck just happened?”

As he finished the question, a shockwave passed through the transport, jostling them back and forth. A wave of green flew by the windows in the doors, fading into nothingness as it blew past. Immediately, lights flashed from the cockpit and the sounds of queries and distress calls pierced the air. Xaleyp pushed his restraints away at once. He ran to the cockpit, taking the steps in two bounding leaps, and looked around.

At the corner of the viewport, slowly coming into view as the transport slowed and turned around, was the wreckage of several Siatian frigates and cruisers. Their skeletal bodies hung limply in space, large swaths of their hull torn away. Further, large and small pieces of metal were scattered in vast piles. The Starkiller itself had an immense hole in its side. Half of the Siatian fleet was gone, and the Arcadian assault team was nothing but smithereens gently floating through space.

On the glass of the viewport, Ardus pulled up a video from seconds previous, taken from the bridge of the Starkiller. The Arcadian vessels, their hulls slowly showing signs of damage from the fight, lumbered forward, spreading out and charging towards the Siatians. Peppering of explosions lit up both Arcadian and Siatian ships alike. Xaleyp’s heart pounded in his chest with each passing second that seemed to slow to a crawl, not knowing what to expect.

In an instant, they erupted in blazes of light with green and blue fire, the ships nearest them being ripped apart and disappearing in the eruption while ones further out were torn to their frames. As the cloud of flaming gas disappeared, it left a swath of empty space in its place.