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  “Holston, we need to think of something else. Some other thing to make us stay. Rowe will have an answer. She always does.”

  He gripped her so tightly he felt as though his hands would sink into her unreal flesh. “Maybe it just needs time. The ship shifted before it jumped, it shifted. It did. Maybe there’s still hope, maybe the jump will—”

  Holston fell forward. She flickered out completely. Something hard slammed into him, knocking the air from his lungs, shoving him backward into the dirt. Liao reappeared where he had been standing.

  She had appeared inside him.

  “Holston!Are you okay?!”

  Years of living in the dead, barren wasteland had hardened him against pain. Despite the scratches, despite the bruising, Holston clambered immediately to his feet. “I’m fine.”

  Liao snatched for her radio but her hand went right through it. “Tell them to stop the jump! Power down the drive! Power down everything!”

  Holston grabbed the radio, depressing the talk key. “Rowe, stop the jump! She says stop! Turn everything off!”

  “I can’t! The jump drive’s out of control, it’s self-sustaining! The jump’s going ahead any second—”

  He let the radio fall to the ground. They were done.

  “Well…” He smiled whimsically, shrugging, tugging at the tattered remains of his overalls. “That’s that.”

  When all you have is a day, tomorrow seems like a lifetime away. When all you have is minutes or seconds, every word was precious. Why couldn’t he think of what to say? Why couldn’t he say what he felt, what he wanted to say, what he needed to say?

  “It’s funny, you know,” was all his brain could find, “I’m older than you now.”

  She dug her nails into his skin as though she were trying to physically anchor herself to the world. “Don’t leave.”

  “I don’t want to. Listen,” he had to tell her. “If you come back, and I’m not here, just… move on. It’s possible you won’t even remember, but I want you to—”

  Liao lifted her hands and grabbed him by his shoulders, giving him a firm shake.

  “No! I could never forget you, Holston. I’ll remember this, I’ll remember being here, and I’ll remember Allison, and I’ll remember the silos, and most especially I will remember you. I. Will. Remember. You.”

  Holston knew the truth, even if she couldn’t possibly understand. He caressed her cheek, brushing away the tears running down her translucent face. The muscles shuddered below her skin as her jaw trembled. “Just because you want something to be true doesn’t mean it is. We’re not just ships in the night, Melissa, this is something else. You can’t remember coming here because you were never really here in the first place.”

  “I want to stay. I’ll do anything to stay. Don’t leave me,” she gripping him so hard her fingers dug into his shoulder.

  “I know.”

  “Please,” she said, too quietly to change the results.

  “There’s nowhere I’d rather be then right here,” Holston said, holding her to him as she buried his face to his chest. “I’ve waited this long to hold you again; I’m not going to let you go. Not until the end.”

  The ship’s white glow reached a crescendo, a loud hum filling the air as the whole area was bathed in stark white light.

  “Don’t leave me. Stay with me until it happens.”

  “I will. I’m right here.”

  “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t.”

  But he was talking to air. The only sign that remained was the backpack full of supplies, the boxes of fluid nearly stacked only a few metres away, and the green blossom of Allison’s grave.

  Holston looked for it, but the shining metal ball was nowhere to be seen.

  Epilogue - Holston

  Holston

  He checked the supplies from the cave again and again. Rations, water, compass, handheld computer, radio, tent, bedroll, cooking utensils.

  They were items. Things that would be necessary to sustain his body and keep him alive, his life support system.

  Bandages, if he was injured. There wasn’t anything in there for what really hurt.

  Anything he didn’t need was left in the cave. Holston shouldered his backpack and pulled one of the boxes under his arm. The compass needle swung north.

  North. The nearest unexplored Silo.

  Liao had told him there were other Silos, unexplored, each with varying levels of technology. The salvation of mankind lay not in one individual Silo, but in the combination of them all, like pieces of a puzzle.

  The fluid would allow him to link the Silos as they were intended, sharing their supplies and knowledge and genetic pools. The empty Silos, the fallen cradles of humanity, could be reoccupied. They would ignore him. They would erase him. They might even fight him.

  You could erase a man, but you could never erase his dreams.

  The AIDI fluid was the key. Humanity could recover, could recolonise the corrupted, ruined planet and restore it to the way things were. His legacy would be life, life restored to a ruined world.

  The pieces fit. Alison had taken him out of the Silo to die. Liao had shown him that there was still hope.

  Holston took the first step of his long journey, following his compass, the needle pointing off into the distance.

  Epilogue - Liao

  Liao

  Operations

  TFR Beijing

  Deep Space

  During the events of ‘The Spectre of Oblivion’

  Liao felt gravity return, using the console to steady herself as she floated back down. “Report! Jump drive status?” Her tone conveyed her displeasure, her gaze locked on Rowe, the grip on her console as tight as iron.

  “Cooling, Captain. It got a little heated, but it should be ready to jump again shortly. Eight hundred degrees Kelvin... seven hundred, dropping.” Summer pushed back her seat, giving a loud, relieved sigh. “Whatever happened, it looks like it was just a temporary glitch. It was probably the alien thingy, or maybe the damn thing just wanted to go somewhere, then changed its mind. The Sydney had a similar issue during their shakedown cruise… It could be a glitch in the system that we’re only just now starting to see. Maybe it’s the new jump drive or some manufacturing flaw.”

  Closing her eyes a moment, Liao reached up and dragged her hand down her face. “Find out what the hell happened,” she ordered, straightening her back and folding her arms in front of her chest. “If my ship is going to spontaneously start to jump without my express authorisation, then just as spontaneously stop, I want to know exactly what’s going on. Disassemble the whole jump assembly and examine it piece by piece. Audit the system code line-by-line if you have to. I want answers, and I want them as soon as you can get them to me.”

  Rowe gave a nod. “Aye aye, Captain. We’ll start looking into it immediately.”

  Liao stepped over to Rowe’s engineering workstation, leaning over the woman’s shoulder. The two read the scrolling text on the computer monitor which Liao only understood a fraction of but which Summer seemed to comprehend, nodding occasionally in thought.

  The incident nagged at her. It felt wrong, and she knew—somehow knew—that this was no ordinary system glitch. Jump drives didn’t just spin up, then just as suddenly power down. A million possibilities swirled through her mind. Was it Ben’s influence, or the Iilan, or their strange device, or interference from Majev-tor? Or was it just, as Summer said, some kind of glitch?

  But perhaps that wasn’t it. Yes, the events were suspicious, but that wasn’t it. There was something else that was eating at her, gnawing at the back of her mind, drawing her attention away from the scrolling diagnostic text and forcing her mind to other things. It was like having the name of a song on the tip of her tongue, hearing its melody in her head and reproducing its tune, but being unable to articulate its name.

  Then the question
and the answer jumped into her head, fully formed.

  “Allison,” she murmured.

  Summer twisted in her seat, raising a curious eyebrow. “Hmm?”

  Liao smiled down to her chief engineer. “Sorry, just thinking aloud.” She paused. “Do you like that name? Allison?”

  The redhead stared at her as though she were crazy. “Sure, it’s nice I, uhh, I guess... Why?”

  Liao’s smile grew, and she slid one hand to Rowe’s shoulder, the other gently resting by her side, the tips of her fingers playing with the fabric of her uniform. “For my girl,” she answered, “I think I’ve picked out her name. I’ll have to check with James first, of course, but…”

  Rowe shrugged and went back to work while Liao felt her eyes drawn to the external monitoring viewer which displayed an image of the stars outside. She had seen such a view countless times, of course, but for some reason at this particular moment, she felt drawn to it.

  She stared at the view, her warm smile remaining, as though some missing piece of the puzzle that was her life had just slotted into place. The nagging feeling immediately faded away to nothing, leaving her with a sense of completeness and serenity that outstripped any comparable feeling she’d had in her lifetime.

  Allison. She would name her child Allison.

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