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may be inevitable. Things are likely to get heated during the raid.”
    “All I’m asking is that you try, Lucas. It would be the best way you could honor my daughter. Hopefully Mars will understand that as well. Cora wanted peace above all else. Peace with Rhylos, peace with Xala. She would not want to be ‘avenged’ in such a fashion.”
    Noah squirmed in her arms.
    “I know what you’ve done to get here. You’ve told us astonishing, harrowing tales of your will to survive. But you don’t have to be that man anymore. You’re a father now, whether you call yourself that or not. Be a man your children can admire, not fear.”
    That hit Lucas like a shot through the chest. He thought of his lost son, Nathan, on Earth, one he rarely saw even before the war, as he shirked his parental duties as often as he could. It was getting harder to picture his face.
    “Take care of him for me,” he said, motioning to Noah. Talis nodded with a strained smile and the feed went black.
    Despite being told to remain in crew quarters for the duration of the flight, Lucas had little desire to return and play twenty questions with Kiati and Silo at his assigned station. Instead, he made his way to the bridge and, after a fairly long trek, the large central doors opened and he saw before him the place where his journey almost came to an end six months past.
    The CIC had mostly been repaired, but a few of the consoles that Omicron had ripped out of the floor hadn’t yet been replaced. Angular craters pocked the ground where they once stood. Lucas saw Maston and the admiral drawing up battle plans on the large central holotable. The last time he’d seen it activated was when Alpha’s deceased father delivered his fateful message to them.
    Maston saw him immediately and predictably began to protest.
    “What’s he doing here?” he said to no one in particular. “I thought I told you to remain in quarters.”
    “And I don’t take orders from you,” Lucas said coldly. “I’m not a Guardian.”
    “You wouldn’t have even lived through training,” Maston spat back at him.
    Yet again, they were in each other’s faces with someone about to be hit. Tannon walked up to them coolly, putting a hand on each of their shoulders.
    “We’re eight minutes from arrival, we don’t have time for this shit,” he said in an exasperated tone. “Lucas, on the ground you will obey Commander Maston for your own safety and the safety of the other Guardians. We don’t do lone guns here. And you,” he said, turning to Maston. “The man lived through his local apocalypse and killed a Shadow right where you’re standing. Give him the benefit of the doubt.”
    Maston simply turned away and went back to the holotable. Lucas had no desire to provoke him further by relaying Talis’s message, so he walked toward the figure sitting in the pilot’s chair.
    “Alpha.”
    The gray creature turned to him, cables connected to his temples. He nodded.
    “Lucas.”
    The view out of the newly replaced central screen showed the curved edge of the blue planet rotating rather quickly ahead of them. They were in the outer atmosphere, the fastest way to get to their destination without being detected. They were cloaked, but flying too low at too-high speeds could damage any structures or aircraft nearby and give them away. The ship wasn’t meant to run errands from one end of a planet to the other. Its usual destinations were trillions of miles away.
    “How does this thing fly?” he asked.
    “It is … pleasurable. The difference between this ship’s capacity and the Ark’s is like that between a [garbled] and a [garbled].”
    Alpha’s translator broke up when it couldn’t find the necessary words to substitute into the analogy.
    “I’ll take your word for it,” Lucas said.
    “Perhaps when Asha has been safely returned, you can pilot the craft. You were quite skilled in combat with the Ark, and that was merely a transport vessel. This is a far more