By the Umber playbook, it’s always better to just take the hit. Sure, you’ll lose people, but they’ll die with honor, and there’s a chance you’ll still be flying enough of a ship to do some good in the battle. But Archon’s fleet is cobbled together from hijacked dreadnoughts and Corinthian salvage. They have to save whatever ships they can.
“I need ’vettes in range for an attack run,” Esperza announces suddenly, with a beckoning gesture toward Wen’s workstation. Wen fumbles to grab the data and toss it over to her, and I nearly speak out again when I notice she’s left one of the ships in range out of her packet.
Nearly, but don’t, because Esperza’s looking right at us. Or because I want to see what happens to that one ship. I feel the snarl of the tangled emotions inside me like a fishhook in my gut. That corvette is part of a system that’s keeping me alive. At the moment, its goals align with my own.
But it’s an enemy ship, my mother’s voice croons. It may be a little blow I can strike against Archon, but little blows are better than the months of nothing I’ve sustained so far.
And yet. My life is important. It’s a fact my entire existence has been sculpted around. From the moment I was born, I’ve been surrounded by people prepared to risk their own lives for the sake of mine. To die for me, even.
Ettian was one of those people—but I shove that thought aside before it can derail where I was going with this.
I was supposed to do some goddamn good in the galaxy when I took my throne. Billions of lives depend on the Umber Empire, which means that billions of lives depend on me securing my rule. Next to that, the Umber soldiers who might be taken out by that corvette are all but inconsequential.
In this moment, I’m finally starting to understand how my mother thinks.
So I point to Wen’s screen urgently and announce, “Don’t miss C-57.”
I feel the disaster strike the instant the words leave my mouth. It’s in the way Wen tenses suddenly, both because her mistake’s been called out and because I forgot to moderate my volume. It’s in the sudden prickle at the back of my neck as I feel the weight of Esperza’s gaze bore into me like boltfire.
And it’s in the sudden silence from the captain’s chair as Silon freezes mid-litany, drawing a breath that seems to suck all of the air out of the bridge at once. The far-off battle drops from mind, and all that rises to take its place is a blazing intensity I don’t even want to name. “What,” the captain asks, her tone deceptively even, “is he doing on my bridge?”
Across the room, Engineering shouts, “Awaiting confirmation to fire engines for the about-face. Do we have—”
“Yes, fire,” Silon says with a flippant hand gesture. I realize with a sinking dismay that the captain’s gaze isn’t on Esperza. Of course it isn’t—Esperza doesn’t answer to her, and if it were Esperza’s decision to bring me onto the bridge, she wouldn’t be able to counter it. And it’s not locked on me, either, even though I’m the one she has an issue with.
No, she’s staring straight at Wen and waiting for an answer.
“The commodore summoned me to the bridge,” Wen says, with a surprising degree of iron in her voice. I’m almost impressed—where was this nerve a minute ago?
“The commodore summoned you to the bridge. Not the prisoner,” Silon says. Her voice is still even, but I’ve decided it’s more terrifying that way. “Get him out of here.”
Wen throws a panicked glance to Esperza. “Ma’am, I—”
If it were any other circumstance, I’m almost certain the commodore would overrule the captain. Esperza hasn’t done anything to keep me from coaching Wen yet, and she’d be delighted to keep that splinter under Silon’s skin, to remind her that her command’s not the final say on this ship. Over our past weeks training under her, I’ve watched the commodore do it over and over again in a thousand small ways designed to grate on the captain’s nerves without ever affecting the successful function of the Torrent.
But this is war, and Esperza’s not stupid. This is boltfire and impulse decisions. This is fear and a dreadnought on our tail. The Torrent’s survival is dependent on Silon’s focus. Already the bridge is full of panicked mutters at the interruption in the captain’s orders, everyone unsure of whether to keep on the vector they’ve set or try to demand her attention for their issues.
Wen’s not stupid either. The moment she realizes Esperza’s going to prioritize the captain’s calm over her obligation to guard me, she shoves abruptly up from the workstation. “C’mon,” she mutters. “Let’s—”
Her voice catches as her eyes snag on the frantic flash of C-57’s message alert. The corvette captain’s been trying to hail us, unsure why the other ships in their formation have suddenly begun a maneuver they weren’t included in. And before Wen can reach down and shove the ship over into Esperza’s comms bank, a neon loss of signal message wipes over it.
For a brief moment, I hope it’s because they’ve done the damn-fool superluminal maneuver. But I hear the words “confirmed discharge” drift over from Telemetry. I see the blood drain from the unburnt half of Wen’s face. I remember that the captain was too busy trying to hail the Torrent and confirm that they were being left out of the maneuver. I realize Esperza was too embroiled in the sudden issue of my presence on the bridge to address that a ship had been dropped from the ranks she was commanding. And now where once there was a corvette, there can only be twisted bits of metal cooling and blood flashing to vapor in the blink of an eye.
Esperza’s seasoned. She takes the loss without so much as a blink, already diving into the next set of maneuvers for the ships she has in hand, making ready to retaliate against the Umber dreadnought. And Silon might not even register the loss—she’s back deep in the workings of her own ship, reciting her commands so smoothly it might as well be poetry.
Only Wen is left to process what just happened.
To understand that it falls completely on her shoulders.
CHAPTER 13
We end up in the Torrent’s engines. It’s almost too easy. With the rest of the ship caught up in the fury of battle, no one cares that Wen grabs one of the shuttles and fords the vast emptiness between the command core and the rear of the dreadnought. She uses some security clearance of Esperza’s to get a confirmed tiedown, and muscles past the receiving crew that greets us with a curt nod and a few mutters about the commodore’s orders.
I keep quiet the whole way, certain I’ll lose my head if I dare say anything. I don’t know if there’s anything to say. We’ve both been in battles before, but neither of us have ever been responsible for something like this. A corvette’s crew numbers in the hundreds. All of the people aboard C-57 are dead because of us.
I keep squirming away from the blame as if there’s some perfect angle I can capture it from that will rid me of it. It’s the corvette captain’s fault, I argue. The captain got distracted and wasn’t able to pull the ship out of the Umber dreadnought’s sights in time. But who caused the captain’s distraction? It’s Esperza’s fault for not noticing that she was short a ship. But who forgot the ship in the first place? It’s Silon’s fault for letting my presence usurp her duty and her attention.
That last one’s almost too easy to counter.
My mistake got people killed. Our mistake got people killed. I don’t know how that sits on Wen’s shoulders, but for me it’s a first. Hundreds of lives, gone, all because I was on the bridge and pointed out Wen’s slipup. Hundreds of lives gone because she slipped up in the first place.
Hundreds of lives—Archon lives—that I tried to save. I’m still too raw and shaken to unpack the way that hits me.
It occurs to me as we plunge down the engineering levels toward the Torrent’s main reactor that this little escapade is putting us squarely in what has to be the most dangerous possible place on the ship. If our defensive array fails, the engines will be the first thing the Umber d
readnought targets. The closer we get to the reactor, the more I worry that’s exactly what Wen intends. She wears a taut expression I can’t quite parse—all I really know is that the look on her face scares me.
Finally, after a few more badge swipes and brush-offs, we emerge into a vast, cavernous vault. In the center of it hovers the reactor, suspended by wires that look spiderweb-thin from a distance—and only from a distance. Pipes drip from its spheroid body, each funneling its power away to a separate thruster. The heat hits us the moment we step into the room, and I have to squint against the force of it. We’re still in the midst of the turning maneuver, desperately trying to swing our rear to a more defensible position, and the engines are blasting as hot as they’ll go.
Wen stares up at the furious power of the reactor unblinkingly, and after a long moment, that scary intensity on her face melts into a soft smile. “Well, if they throw me off this ship, at least I’ll have seen that,” she says, leaning forward against the guardrail as if she’s trying to get even closer to it.
“They’re not gonna throw you off this ship,” I mutter, reluctantly joining her. Even with the padded sleeves of my jacket, the rail feels like it’s about to scorch right through me, and I’m not sure how she can rest so comfortably against it. “It was your first time running comms in a battle. Mistakes were bound to happen.”
Wen’s eyes stay locked on the reactor. Her expression shifts to a familiar focused squint. No doubt she’s studying the machinery before her, picking it apart to figure out how it works. Hell if I know anything about that—I leave that shit to the engineers. “I’m glad I’m seeing it now anyway,” Wen says. “In action, firing like this. Every piece of it serving its function.”
“Yeah,” I reply flatly, pulling on my collar. I’m pretty sure most people who work down here wear coolant suits to do it. “Neat. But seriously—they’re not going to throw you out for losing a ship, and you can’t get too hung up on it. That’s the real failure, and that’s the one they’re going to notice.”
“Pretty sure they also noticed when that ’vette got vaporized,” Wen grumbles, her eyes tracing the length of one of the pipes that drops from the reactor down to the lowermost engine on the Torrent. “Even if they don’t kick me out entirely, I don’t think Esperza’s going to keep me training with her. Losing a corvette isn’t as big of an issue as the fact that I’m stuck with your delightful company, and Silon will never tolerate you on the bridge. Even if Ettian or Esperza made it an order, it would probably impact her performance so much that…well, neither of us can outweigh that kind of priority, y’know?”
I nod, unsure what more I can do beyond agreeing with her. I always knew our arrangement was going to backfire on her ambitions, but it’s another thing to see it play out on a battlefield. To see it cost lives. Today’s incident made it utterly clear that Wen can’t serve in her full capacity if she always has me tailing around after her.
And despite the fact that she dragged me into a sweatbox just for the sake of her own curiosity, I feel an alarming urge to comfort her. Wen and I are far from allies, but—and I can’t believe I’m thinking this—we’ve built a strange little friendship in our proximity. “You used to lock me in my rooms back on Rana,” I offer. “I could always stay in our quarters when you’re called to duty like that.”
Wen’s expression twists. “Yeah, but you were the one who noticed C-57. If it weren’t for you, well. You almost saved them. You…tried to save them,” she realizes aloud, casting a suspicious glance over to me. “Why?”
“Sure is hot in here, isn’t it?” I say with another tug on my collar.
“Gal, come on.”
“You’re asking me to make sense of a mid-battle decision. I can spool back and tell you what I was thinking when I decided to open my mouth, but—”
“No, yeah, that’s exactly what I want you to do. Your turn for a little grilling.”
I shrug. “I don’t want to die. That’s what all heat-of-the-moment choices come down to, isn’t it? I looked at that field and I decided the thing that would most likely kill me was that Umber dreadnought. And from there I got to the fact that I needed to make sure our defense against it was effective.”
Now the reactor’s lost her attention completely. I take the weight of her gaze with a deliberate shift against the uncomfortable railing, hoping it’ll scald away whatever reaction she seems to be searching for in my face. At last she lets out a faint, judgmental hum, barely audible over the ship’s workings.
“What?”
“Well, for a second there, I thought you might have done it because you wanted to help me. But no, that’d be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?”
“Ridiculous, yeah,” I reply stiffly, pointedly ignoring the wry smile tugging on the burnt corner of her mouth. “Shouldn’t we be somewhere else? Anywhere but this ruttin’ oven?”
“I’ve studied the schematics. The shielding on this reactor is built so strong that it’d take multiple rounds from a dreadnought battery to penetrate it. The only way to get to it is through the engines themselves, and a direct shot straight through those vents is…well, let’s just say unlikely until the day someone figures out how to curve boltfire. We’re in the safest place on this ship.” She glances sidelong at me, her half-smile out in full force. “Look, if I’m gonna fail at one job, I’m gonna succeed spectacularly at my other one. Nothing’s gonna happen to you unless they shred the ship around us.”
“And nothing’s going to happen to you until they find you down here,” I note with a significant glance back at the way we came. I expect her to snap at me, and I’m surprised when she doesn’t.
“Yeah,” she says, her eyes shifting back to the core. “I have no illusions about the fact that there’s gonna be consequences. But this is the best rustin’ place on the Torrent to wait for them to roll around.”
So we let the battle outside drop away and quietly watch the machinery that fuels it.
* * *
—
In the end, it takes hours for the fight to wind down. We only realize it’s over when the core finally starts to cool, the Torrent locking into a stable position once more. The sweet feeling of the heat in the chamber ebbing away melts like relief down my spine—and I don’t allow that relief to get any more complicated by the fact that this means the Umber assault has failed. For now, I’m just happy to be alive and glad I’m finally going to be free of this sweatbox.
I’m less glad when Wen pulls out her datapad and starts sharing the report. The dreadnought and its forces managed to deal a significant blow to the Archon fleet, destroying more than two dozen carriers and hundreds of fighters. On top of that, it spooked off fifty-three ships, which are now waiting for their drives to cool enough to make a safe leap back to the fleet’s position, leaving Archon even weaker. There’s already chatter about delaying the assault on Ellit and retreating to Rana to lick our wounds.
But before that happens, a guest is approaching the Torrent. And we’re on our way to receive him right now.
I spend the entire shuttle ride to the dreadnought’s outer decks with my fists clenched tight at my sides, rehearsing my most inscrutable stone faces. Wen’s my opposite, fidgety in her seat, her anxiety no doubt fueled by the way I’ve clammed up. She can usually count on me to pull faces behind the officers’ backs, and the fact that I’ve shut up completely must read as foreboding.
Good. It’s justified.
Because General Iral is coming aboard.
Unlike the emperor’s arrival, this is no secret affair. The general’s making his approach in his flagship cruiser, a war machine that’s pushing the limits of its athleticism with its sheer size. Summons went out across the Torrent for the upper ranks to report to his entry deck—including Wen, for her connection to the commodore, which means I’m along for the ride as well.
I should be thrilled about this. The emperor had to be se
creted aboard the Torrent, but Iral gets to board with a show of force. It’ll chum the waters between their competing authorities, further weakening the prospects of Archon’s supposed bloodright.
Unfortunately I can’t seem to shake the sensation of Iral’s hand on my shoulder, forcing me to my knees before the galaxy. It’s been months, but every time I brush up against the shame of that moment, I feel the nausea roiling in my gut all over again. Iral had me completely at his mercy. I’ve torn through active fields in two Vipers strapped together, escaped converging missiles in a Beamer, and flown combat with Wen at the helm, but nothing’s ever terrified me more than that moment. I can feel the echoes of it rattling my bones—or maybe that’s just the drums greeting the general as we step off the shuttle and onto the deck.
The flagship has already docked, the seal so enormous that it takes up the entry deck’s wall. Several transports have been shunted out of the way, surrounded by the shouts of the deck crews towing them. The drums momentarily succumb to the whine of pistons as airlock doors as long as six Beamers end to end winch open to admit the flagship’s descending ramp.
Esperza and Silon have beat us here. They stand side by side at attention just behind the markings where the ramp touches down. Silon’s pose is prim and perfect; Esperza’s is slightly canted, like she can’t resist adding a bit of piratical flair, even in front of the general himself. Their staffs fan out beside them on each side. Wen hesitates as if she’s unsure where to position herself.
Oaths of Legacy Page 13