came to kill us all, we’d trust you. Right, Crux? Just nod our heads like good little brothers and let you do it.”
“What?” Jimmy asks.
I shrug. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Jimmy says, walking forward towards the lines of plasma that denote the edge of the cell they’re in. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means that everything I saw was right. You can tell yourself that I’m someone else all you want, Crux. But I’m just me. No. I take that back. I am different. I’m another version of Luck all right. The version who knows the truth. When I walked into that spin node the last time, I wasn’t looking for you. But I found you anyway. I saw your plan. I saw the plan ALCOR gave you. And I saw you do it, Crux.”
“That wasn’t real, Luck. It was…”
He rushes forward towards me, hands out. And for a moment I think he’ll actually grab a hold of the plasma lines and burn his palms trying to get to me. Trying to kill me. Again.
But he stops. Takes a deep breath. Then he looks at Valor. “You want to know what the plan is now, Valor? You want to know what he does to your princess?”
“Sure, Luck. Tell me.”
“He blows her up.” Luck looks at Serpint next. “He blows up Lyra too. Nyleena. Corla.” He looks to the side, not exactly at Jimmy, because he doesn’t seem to want to turn his head from me. “He kills Delphi too. And Tycho. He blows them all up. Just so ALCOR can win his little war.” Then Luck turns to me. “Tell them, Crux. Tell them what your plan is.”
“That was the plan,” I say.
“What?” Serpint says, backing up. “What the fuck—”
“Was the plan,” I say. “But it’s not any more. I won’t do it, Luck. You have to know I won’t do it.”
Luck taps the side of his head. “I saw it.”
“You saw something, I’m sure. But it hasn’t happened yet. Not in this time loop, anyway. We’re not there yet. And if you’d just listen to me, I’m pretty sure we could figure this out and come up with something that will save them.”
“You’re pretty sure?” Luck says. “No. Not good enough. This is the only plan. I heard ALCOR tell it to you. I heard all your objections. I’ll give you points for that. But in the end the only thing that matters is that he agreed. And he took it one step further. He bargained with ALCOR, you guys. He bargained with him for one last chance to see Corla.” Luck looks back at me. “Isn’t that right?”
I nod. Because it’s true. It’s just not… the whole truth. And right now, I don’t have the will to fight with him. I step backwards until I hit the wall and then slide down it and rub my hands down my face.
When I look back up at them, they are all staring at me. Waiting. Waiting for me to fix this. To make it better.
And I want to. So badly. But I just don’t know how.
“Look,” I say, shrugging with my hands, palms up, feeling defeated. “Earth isn’t your answer, Luck. It’s not going to work.”
“What are you talking about?”
I really don’t want to have this conversation with him. But I need him to move past this… present and consider that there is no easy way out. That we don’t get saved from Akeelian warships, that we don’t get pulled into the ALCOR gate, and we don’t come out the other side and find a shiny new second chance called Harem Station.
Earth is not our answer.
Getting there is not going to fix things and his babies—just like mine—were never meant to be.
But I can’t tell him that. And anyway, I’m not giving up that easy. There has to be another way.
So this is what I tell Luck. “I know there’s another answer. I do. I feel it, you guys. I can’t explain that. I have no proof. But I just know that there’s another way. If we could just… I don’t know, figure out our… superpowers, or whatever.”
“Superpowers?” Jimmy laughs.
“You know what I mean. Look at us, OK? We’re fucking badass. We’re a bunch of badass motherfuckers who run the baddest of badass stations. You”—I point to Serpint—“you and Draden are like these… I don’t know.”
“Thieves,” Valor says.
“Thanks a lot,” Serpint says. “That’s not all we are, you know. Draden and I helped build the fucking mythos of this place, right? We’re