Snap.
Bonto opened his eyes. He was in his apartment in the Lower Tiers. The water pumps were humming. The terrarium was intact. And Rento—small, alive, holding a toy spaceship—looked up and smiled.
“Aka,” he gasped. “I’m losing the memory. What was his name?” sine mora nsp
The first wave of Dynasty interceptors came like locusts. Their cannons spat molten tungsten. Bonto’s left engine took a hit—flames, alarms, the sickening lurch of gravity. He closed his eyes.
The NSP core, dying, gave one last pulse. But it didn’t rewind six seconds. It rewound six years . The water pumps were humming
He didn’t answer. He was already diving.
Bonto remembered the sound of the glass breaking. Not the cockpit glass of his Grainer fighter—that had shattered a thousand times in the endless war. No, the glass of his son’s terrarium. The one shaped like a perfect sphere, holding a single, dying violet. “Aka,” he gasped
He pushed deeper. The Strafgericht ’s defenses were a maze of lasers and chaff. Each death—and there were many—was a lesson. A missile up the tailpipe? Rewind. A collision with debris? Rewind. A second too slow on the trigger? Rewind.