Crux has both palms flat on the cryopod, staring down at Corla’s frozen face through a circle of cleared condensation and ice.
Tray is sitting at another control center, personal screen open in the air to his right and tapping frantically on another screen off to his left.
Jimmy and Xyla are cleaning weapons at a table near the door.
Everyone looks over at us when we enter.
“How is she?” Jimmy asks.
I just shake my head. “Not good.”
“We can talk about that later,” ALCOR’s omnipresent voice says. “First, we need to talk about where Crux, Tray, and I went the other night.”
“Yeah, what the fuck? You left the station, ALCOR?”
“I had to,” he says. “We needed to infiltrate the Cetus Station to see if we could find out anything about Corla.”
“Did you?” I ask.
“Just who was in possession of her pod. That’s all.”
“Who was it?” Lyra asks.
“It was a princess called Veila. Have you heard of her?”
Everyone looks at Lyra. She nods her head and says, “Yes. I know her.”
“Who is she?” Crux asks, once again staring down at Corla’s frozen face.
“She’s a silver. She’s very powerful. A lot more powerful than me, that’s for sure.”
“So she was her transport?” I ask.
“Yes,” Lyra says. “I’m going to assume she was. But like I said, they escaped weeks ago. I don’t know why they were still on Cetus Station. They should have made it to Angel Station already.”
“What is this Angel Station?” Valor asks. “Because I’ve never heard of it and we’ve been all over this fucking galaxy.”
“It’s where we go when we escape,” Lyra says.
“But why?” Valor presses.
“Because…” she says, then stops. “Because that’s just where we go.”
“How do you know it’s safe?” Crux says.
Lyra looks confused for a moment. “Well, people told me it was.” Then she stops and stares at him. “Do you know something I don’t?”
ALCOR is the one who answers. “We don’t know what or where it is. There’s no record of it anywhere, Lyra. How do you get there?”
“I just know it’s somewhere on the other side of Hydra System, that’s all. It’s a series of gates and stations. You get a new coordinate at each stop. We pass through the right gate, in the right order, and on the other side we get a coordinate. Which is a station through yet another gate. It’s a long journey, but Corla should’ve been further than Cetus, that’s for sure. So something happened to them. Was Veila on the station?”
“No,” Tray says, not bothering to turn away from his work to look at us. “ALCOR and I hacked into their systems and even though Princess Veila was listed as Corla’s responsible party, it was very well hidden. And there was no record of Veila ever being there.”
Lyra sighs. Long and heavy. “Something is very wrong.”
“Very wrong,” ALCOR agrees. “But Serpint’s impulsive decision to steal Corla might just have saved millions of people.”
“How so?” I ask.
“Because I just decrypted the program running in Corla’s cryopod,” Tray says, “and she was meant to blow up the Prime Planet of Cassiopeia.” He stops to swivel in his chair now. Looking straight at Lyra. “And she was scheduled to leave the same time Serpint took her. So… someone other than Princess Veila was in charge of her at that moment and was about to put her on a ship headed that way.”
“Holy shit,” Lyra says. “They were gonna start a war.”
“They were going to start a war,” ALCOR agrees.
“And use Corla to do it,” Crux growls.
“We need to get Nyleena back,” ALCOR says. “And we need you to provide us with the encryption to do that once we get to Bull Station.”
“Sure,” Lyra says. “Yes!” She turns to me, smiling. “I was gonna ask you for help. So yes. We need to go get her. I promised her I’d keep her safe. And we need to go now. It’s been three days and there’s no telling what’s happened to her since I left.”
“When I say we, Lyra,” ALCOR says, “I didn’t mean you.”
“What?” she says. “Oh, fuck that. I’m going. You guys can’t keep me here. I know where she is. I know how to move her and keep her safe.”
No one says anything. But everyone, aside from Lyra, understands that we absolutely can leave her here. And we will.
“You are not coming,” ALCOR says in his definitive I’m-in-charge-here voice. “You will provide Tray with the information we need and then Serpint will take you to his quarters and that’s where you’ll stay until we return.”
“But—”
“Lyra,” I say, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Please.” I raise one eyebrow at her, trying to signal that we can talk more about it later. “Can you just give Tray the information so we can prepare?”
She sucks in a deep breath. Angry at being put on the spot. She can’t refuse us, her sister is in danger. So if she chooses this moment to be defiant, she will only hurt Nyleena in the end.