“You people aren’t boarded yet?” Arso snaps as she shoulders through her squad. “We’re on a tight schedule, you bricks. The engines should be hot already—let’s go, go, go!”
The soldiers scatter like rats—four to the first ship in the lineup, four to the second. The two escorting me pull me up the ramp of the third, tailed by Ettian and Wen. At first, I feel the impulse to object to traveling with Ettian. It’s better strategy to divide your assets if you have to fly a risky mission, and I can’t think of anything riskier than moving the emperor and his most valuable prisoner together while an enemy attack hits the city.
Then I remember my other role in this administration. Ideally, these ships will make a clean break and get us to…wherever we’re going, but in the event someone locks onto our tail and we can’t shake them, we can reveal that Gal emp-Umber is aboard and all but guarantee our escape. If there weren’t a fear of me strangling him, they would have probably handcuffed me to Ettian already.
“Get him in the cockpit,” one of my escorts tells Wen in a voice I recognize as Tarsi’s. She’s the squad’s sniper, and unsurprisingly she starts climbing to the topside gunner nest as soon as she’s handed me off. My other escort ducks down the ladder to the one beneath us, leaving Wen to drag me to the fore of the ship and set me in a chair positioned behind the pilot’s.
“Buckle him in,” she tells Ettian, bending over the ship’s controls.
A deep rumble starts up somewhere behind us, which is advantageous—it conceals the way the thump of my heart kicks into overdrive as Ettian bends over me. He pulls the straps down over my shoulders, nudging my cuffed hands out of my lap so he can buckle them between my legs. I should do something. Wink. Smirk. Make a sly comment. But all I find myself doing is tilting my head back and tracking him with wide eyes and my lips slightly parted. Maybe that has the same effect, but it doesn’t feel like one I controlled. I don’t get the same sense of satisfaction when it takes Ettian three tries to latch the buckle.
It could have nothing to do with me. Ettian’s whole expression is shuttered, and not in the way I expect. This isn’t the forced stoicism of an academy cadet after a particularly successful night. There’s no hint of smug pride for what he got away with in the corridors’ dark. There’s only fear and stress.
It occurs to me that we may have left the noise of the air-raid sirens behind, but Ettian hasn’t. Umber forces could be in the skies of Trost, and for the young emperor, that dredges up a host of bad memories.
He shoves up off my chair and slides himself into the copilot’s seat, pulling down his own straps and fumbling them into place. “Ready when you are,” he mutters to Wen, straightening his back as if he’s bracing for impact. His dark, serious eyes stare unflinchingly into the tunnel’s maw—until he pulls the helmet over his head, blacking himself out like the rest of the soldiers.
“Green Three, all passengers are secure,” Wen announces into her comm as she secures a headset over her ears. “Preflight checks are good. Ready to roll.”
She tilts her head at some response, then drops her hands to the ship’s controls. Ahead of us, the other two ships launch down the tunnel with an earsplitting roar. I mimic Ettian’s posture a second before Wen throws the engines hot, sending us careening after them.
Any doubts I had about Wen flying after last night’s overindulgence are quickly put to bed as we tail the rest of the squadron. The clearance in these tunnels has me clutching my knees—in the cuffs, I can’t reach my armrests to brace for impact the way I want to—but Wen guides us through them with a steady hand. I have no idea where they lead, but they seem to go on for eons. Just when I’m about to lean forward and ask an annoying question, a shard of daylight appears ahead.
Wen throws our nose skyward the second we’re clear of the tunnel, jamming us hard into our seats as the Kino’s engines scream. I squeeze my eyes shut against the harsh glare of the sun, but I can’t resist cracking them open as soon as it feels like they aren’t about to be scorched out of my head.
In the corner of the cockpit window, I catch the fast-fading shape of Trost’s downtown. No pillars of smoke are rising, and the post-reconstruction skyscrapers still stand tall. The air traffic scatters in a familiar pattern. I remember descending into this city a month and a half ago with Iral’s hand on my shoulder, watching as my people fled in droves. Now, once again, people are running from the assault descending on their planet.
At least, I think it must be an assault. Could an Umber dreadnought have broken through? I switch my gaze skyward. In the early-afternoon sun, it’s difficult to pick out objects in orbit, but the flash of boltfire is unmissable. Something’s going on up there.
Something we’re on a direct vector for.
“I know I’m not really consulted for any of this,” I announce, leaning forward as much as the acceleration allows me to, “but why are we heading toward the battle with Archon’s most valuable asset? And the emperor too?”
Both of them pretend not to hear me. It takes me back to the last time the three of us flew into battle together—me and Ettian at the helm of the Ruttin’ Hell with a plan that relied on a secret Wen wasn’t privy to. When she realized something wasn’t right, she tried to choke answers out of Ettian. As we get closer and closer to the boltfire ahead, I strongly consider repaying her the favor, but I’m cuffed and strapped down and certain Ettian will stop me before I lay a finger on Wen.
And that reminds me of the words I told Wen while trying to wrench her hands out of Ettian’s trachea. We’re in the ship with him, I snapped at her. Ettian would never fly us into deliberate harm.
But that was before he revealed himself as the Archon heir. Before he stepped into a role that demands he rise above his personal ties for the sake of his empire. Before he told me he was going to the front and dragging both of us along with him. If I add all of that up, it tells me the boy I thought I knew back then is not the man in the copilot’s seat.
My gaze slips to him, watching the play of the distant boltfire flickering against the impenetrable glossy black of his helmet. His face is inscrutable, but even with the doubts rattling through me, I still know him well enough to know he’s utterly calm about our vector. Is that enough? My feelings for him have changed since that last frantic flight in the Ruttin’ Hell. But his feelings for me?
If last night’s run-in is any illustration, this little fighter careening into battle is the safest place in the galaxy.
And besides, Wen’s in here too. She flies steadily—surprising, now that she has free rein to sway and loop and play with the ship all she likes. But then I spot the other two Kinos up ahead and realize she’s holding our place in a formation, flying to blend in with the others. Our position at the rear is a gamble, attempting to disguise the importance of this ship, but I notice that the gunner nests ahead have angled themselves as if their center exists squarely on top of this ship. As we streak for the melee, the squadron is making sure the emperor—and his human shield—is as protected as they can manage.
“Are we going to engage?” I mutter under my breath, not expecting an answer from either of them. Now that we’re drawing closer, I lean forward against the straps of my harness to peer at the ship’s console over Wen’s shoulder. There’s no sign of a dreadnought—Umber or Archon—only a fleet of ships stamped with brass sigils and the scrambled Archon fighters weaving between them, trying to beat them back. Far below, larger Archon ships are heaving their way out of the atmosphere, but the Umber attackers have the advantage of Rana’s gravity on their side. The field ahead is a mess, Archon fighters whipping through the oncoming forces in sloppy vectors as they try to beat back the Umber ships long enough for the reinforcements to arrive.
And for all intents and purposes, we look like we’re about to join the fight.
Both Ettian and Wen probably have earpieces in, cluing them in on the strategy behind whatever this maneu
ver is. I’ve got nothing but sweaty palms getting sweatier. Ettian wouldn’t kill the three of us, I try to reassure myself.
But what makes him—and Wen, and every other soldier flying this run—think that it’s all going to turn out fine?
“Got a few bogeys that might nibble at us,” Ettian says, tapping the console in front of him to highlight the ships for the rest of our formation. It’s strange to see him flying shotgun to someone else. Ettian, to me, belongs in a pilot’s chair. For as long as I knew him as Ettian Nassun, that was the only thing he ever wanted. He once told me that the helm of a fighter was the one place in the galaxy where he felt like he was fully in control of his life. I laughed at him then, thinking of the chaos that tended to ensue whenever I had to fly. Now I wonder how he looks so comfortable calling shots from the copilot’s chair without a single hand on the controls. Have a few months of governing changed him so easily?
“Bogeys on their way,” Wen says through what sounds like gritted teeth.
“Steady,” Ettian replies, then tilts his head. “Sorry, Green One. Yes, the con is yours.”
I smirk. So he’s not so comfortable in his place after all. Ettian spent the more recent end of his academy career leading formations. He’s a bit shitty at sitting back and letting one act without his directive.
The reassurance I find in his weakness washes away when I remember what’s about to happen. How the rut did every single one of the soldiers we’re flying with today tolerate this back when we first flew combat together? All ten of them were belted down in the hold of the Ruttin’ Hell, completely helpless as we sent the scrappy little Beamer careening through an active field. My hands itch for something to do, something that’ll make me feel like I have at least a little control over my fate, but I can’t even grip the arms of my seat properly. I fight the panic building inside me, trying to take steadying breaths, but any sense of rhythm I’ve established is yanked away the second Wen wrenches our nose into a spiraling evasive maneuver that crushes the air out of my chest.
Twin howls echo from the gunner nests behind us as the soldiers are flung into the webbing that keeps them strapped upright and agile enough to whip their mounts around. One of them fires, a rapid staccato burst rattling the back of my seat, and the edge of the cockpit window glows from a steady stream of boltfire. The other starts slamming another kind of rhythm into the bulkhead of their nest.
My stomach drops at the familiar rudiment. Ettian once tried to teach me the meanings embedded in different Archon drum patterns, hoping it would help keep me from tensing up every time I heard one. I dig my fingers into my kneecaps, trying to dislodge the sensation of his hands, sitting cross-legged across from him, my palms flat on the floor, as he tapped each beat into my bones until I was able to mimic it too.
This rudiment is one of their calls to arms, meant to encourage a fellow soldier in an act of valor. In the copilot’s seat, Ettian picks up the rhythm with his free hand as the other dances over readouts, clumsily trying to coordinate this ship’s place in our formation as the incoming Umber fighters do their best to dislodge us. “Y’know, I could probably do that better,” I wheeze over another wild twist from Wen.
“Not really the time, Gal.”
“You’re not trained for that position,” I snap. “Only one person in this cockpit has actually flown combat in the copilot’s chair, and neither of the people at the controls are that guy!”
“Okay, ‘flown combat’ is a loose approximation at best—”
“Ettian!” Wen yelps, yanking hard on the controls as the readouts flare with a proximity warning he should have flagged seconds ago. “Rocks and rust, you’re gonna get us all killed.”
“Do you really need much more instruction than ‘fly evasive’?” Ettian asks, tapping frantically at his side of the dashboard.
“Yes!” Wen and I shout simultaneously.
“Bogey’s coming wide around our rear, trying to get on top of us,” I mutter a second later, straining up against my harness to get a better look.
“Noted,” Wen replies. She tilts us forward with a decisive spin of the Kino’s gyros, reorienting so that both gunner nests have clear shots at the incoming fighter. The steady chug of boltfire rattles the ship, and a second later, the bogey peels away. “Locking back in formation now,” Wen announces, throwing us back on course and spurring the engines with a kick that knocks me back in my seat.
Ettian shoots me a look over his shoulder, and even with the glossy helmet covering his face, I can picture the furious, frustrated glare he’s sending my way with perfect clarity. “Eyes on the sky, asshole,” I tell him with a smirk.
“Rut off,” I think I hear him mutter.
“Seriously though,” I add after another minute of skirting the edge of the battlefield. “Where are we going? What’s the plan? What the rut is an emperor doing in an active—”
When an object comes out of superluminal, it feels like there should be some sort of noise. Or some sort of explosion. Something to indicate that where once there was a vacuum and maybe a few Umber war barges hanging back to hold the rear, there is now a rut-all massive dreadnought blotting out the light of this system’s star.
With no warning, it’s impossible to process. Your brain scrambles for a foothold, but when confronted with miles of starship, it feels like the meat in your head shuts down completely. I notice an odd, glittering dust flaring up against the dreadnought’s metal and it takes me what feels like a full minute to comprehend that those plumes are all that remain of the Umber barges. From that shaky foundation, I make the next logical leap.
This dreadnought isn’t one of ours. It started that way most certainly, but with a wily ex-Umber pirate in command, the Archon forces have mastered the art of commandeering the cityships and turning them against us.
I blink, and then blink again, and finally I recognize the ship. It’s not just any Archon-claimed dreadnought.
It’s the first.
“Hail Torrent,” Wen says, smug satisfaction curling through every note in her voice as she wheels our nose toward it. “Green Squadron’s coming home to roost.”
CHAPTER 9
“So the attack was a cover,” I say conversationally, kicking my feet up on the headrest of Wen’s chair. I stopped peering over their shoulders at the console when the Torrent’s guns opened fire. Everything after that point was a foregone conclusion.
A foregone conclusion that feels like a black hole inside me. I can’t help but teeter through the maw of its implication. Those were my people flying those ships.
Those plumes against the Torrent’s hull were my people.
There are too many things I’m trying to conceptualize at once, and it’s shutting me down. And so I’ve slipped back into the safest persona I have, the detached aloofness that’s kept me from pulling my hair out every single day of my captivity.
But my knuckles are still pale in my lap, and there’s a telltale tremor in the glimmer of my cuffs.
There was nothing I could have done, I try to tell myself. Nothing in a single person’s power can stop the vector of a dreadnought. Those fighters died for the glory of the Umber Empire. Their fearless service is my bloodright, part of the unquestionable power I’ll wield when I’m crowned. I try to hear the thoughts in my mother’s voice, but my own keeps intruding, telling me that the most honest emotion I’ve felt in a month is the relief that flushed through me when the dreadnought dropped onto the field.
The squadron of Kinos is back in formation and bound for an access point on the Torrent’s hull. If any Umber ships managed to track our vector and inferred that we started from the tunnels beneath the palace, the Archon forces have long since taken care of them. For all intents and purposes, this looks like an attack on Trost gone wrong, annihilated when a dreadnought took an intrasystem superluminal leap to enter the fray.
But I’m sure if I traced the lo
gs of the Umber fleet, I’d discover a moment when they should have been stopped, long before they ever reached Rana. A moment where the Archon defenses had them in their sights and let them slip by anyway. There was no easy way to get Ettian to the front without a series of unavoidable vulnerabilities—moments that Umber would have exploited the second we saw them coming.
Now Ettian flies for the safety of a dreadnought, human shield in tow and Umber none the wiser.
Credit where credit’s due—it even had me fooled up until the very end.
The process of entering a dreadnought is like being eaten alive. As we nose up to the great ship’s hull, a hatch winches open like a gaping maw, admitting us through the outer layer of armor. I tense in my seat as we slip into the shadow and search the darkness for the pinpoint lights that stripe along the miles of blackness, marking the tram routes and flight decks stacked along the inner wall of the cityship. If not for the uniformity of the lights, it would look like distant stars. Up ahead, there’s only more blackness. Somewhere within it lurks the dreadnought’s command core, cloaked by both the outer hull and the shadows the metal wraps around it. Even dreadnought crews themselves are rarely privy to the exact positioning of the core relative to the outer hull at any given moment.
The disorienting entry is only worsening the panic building inside me. I didn’t know this would be happening today—if I had, I would have been scrabbling at the walls last night, looking for any spare hatch that could turn into an escape route. Boarding the Torrent is, in essence, starting over. Or dooming me completely, because I’m not confident in my prospects of finding a way off this ship once we’re all the way down its gullet.
Wen flies carefully in the wake of the other two ships, her helmet stripped off for better visibility, navigating by the sight of the beacons glowing at their wingtips. She’s never flown a dreadnought entry run before, and even though I know she’s got the skills to stick it, I understand her caution. The distant glimmering lights along the cityship’s inner walls unmoor more than guide when you’re this far away from them, and the core can only ever sneak up on you.
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