I hope it is soon.
We wouldn’t be out here if CSP hadn’t betrayed us. If we hadn’t been at war. I don’t care that Solcrue are our descendants. They’ve become twisted, bloodthirsty, space-crazy assholes.
Evo comes closer. “Poppy is getting us ready to jump to the nebula. It would be wise to secure your family member and yourselves. It will be a bumpy ride with many jumps.”
Steele, hunkered forward and holding his stomach, walks up to us and leans his shoulder against the wall. “Edensen is having us place those who have left us in the cargo hold near ourcrematorium, since we do not have the power to operate it right now.”
Evo bends over and picks Isa up with a tenderness that touches my heart. “I know where it is.”
Steele gives him an odd look. “How? This ship was built long before Titans existed.”
“I scanned the ship,” Evo replies. “Now, you three should find seats in the cockpit with Poppy. I will join you as soon as I have laid her to rest with the others.”
Brodin gets up and stops Evo. He braces Isa’s head in his hands and kisses her forehead. “Goodbye, my love. I will find you again one day, wherever you’ve ended up after this, even if it is only adrift in peaceful silence.”
I get myself upright, tears in my eyes, and hug Brodin as Evo carries Isa out among the slowly emptying crowd. Steele shuffles up beside me. Brodin hands him what remains of his gel and water, to which Steele thanks him. After a moment, Steele seems to find a bit of strength and straightens.
“Come on. Let’s help those left into the main cabin.” I give each of them a side hug that I hope is comforting, wipe the water from my eyes, and help an older woman up from a pile of blankets not far from us.
It takes another thirty minutes to get the central room cleared out, the dead secured in the cargo bay, and the very injured and sick into medical care and on Torizi’s ships. Those who can endure a longer journey fill the seats of the forward cabin, behind pilots Poppy and Eon. Commander Tarrant and Captain Edensen sit close, ready to answer questions, but too weak to keep their eyes open for long periods of time.
Steele takes the seat to my right while Brodin stays to my left. Evo braces himself on an overhead truss in the starboard aisle, keeping his eyes moving through the crowd.
A hand reaches over my seat and settles onto my shoulder. Colt peers down at me with a tired smile on his face. “Charlee is going to make it. You got here just in time.”
I grab his hand, give it a comforting pat, and let him go. He sits in the row behind with Daken and Racer and belts in. Daken and I may not have been together for years, but he’s always close, always watching out for me.
“What is his deal?” Steele asks me.
“Huh?” When I look back at Steele, I notice Evo has pinpointed Colt behind me and is scrutinizing him like he doesn’t trust him. “Oh. Him?”
Brodin sighs. “Titans are protective of humans by design, but especially of Creators, engineers, CyberTechs, and their descendants. Evo is the one who found you, yes?”
“Pulled me from my ship.”
“Then he will protect you until you reject him.” Brodin braces his head in a hand. “But if you do, he may decommission himself.”
“What? Why?”
Poppy announces our first jump with a countdown.
Brodin inhales deeply and forces it out, then closes his eyes as blue light swallows the ship, and we jolt out into new space.
“Eight more jumps.” Poppy switches a setting above her head and tilts her head toward Eon like they’re having a silent conversation. He nods and taps a nearby screen, sliding his fingers over configuration bars.
“It was built into them so they could not betray us en masse. CSP was enough of a threat. Your parents spoke often of design flaws, things they would fix if they could. Sometimes, they did, mostly with CyberGuard models because they had learned what worked and didn’t since the Relic era. But when the plant on Titan was destroyed, and the limited staff escaped, they also only had so many supplies to work with until more were resourced.
“I mean, if you think about it, if a bunch of super-powerful Titans in a star base adrift in the Deep Black with a handful of humans on board turned on the humans, there’s no telling what kind of damage they would do.”
“But they’re human inside,” I retort.
He arches a brow. “So are CSP. But it’s also why the Creators only took soldiers who chose to fight for humanity, because they were already loyal. So the programming was a redundancy because no Creator would ever reject their children unless they were corrupt beyond hope. Your mother, like Besha, never gave up on her Titans. Qurin was corrupt. And they and other Creators knew it. So they built in the back-up programming to free Titans from such regulations. But he had his own little secret workshop where he hid many and tortured them. The truth about what he was actually doing didn’t get uncovered for years.”
Poppy counts down to another jump.
Brodin breathes out as blue light flashes over us again. We rock in our seats as we drop out into space, and the generators spool up again.
Beside me, Steele grunts in pain. “I thought they all had unit batches: medics, power generation, explosives, infiltration... But this one is...different.”
