“But it makes no sense for the governor to relinquish it that easily,” I counter. “Why’d he leave two dreadnoughts behind if he meant to abandon it entirely?”
“Because he wants our noses to be pointed at them when the rest of his fleet comes swooping back in,” Ettian offers. Guess he wasn’t sleeping through as many lectures as me—the thought is a little more rankling than I’d like to admit.
“If that’s it,” I start, heavy on the if, “then the trap is obvious. And is this the kind of army that barrels headfirst into an obvious trap?”
“Or the kind of army that barrels headfirst into the less obvious trap?” he replies, fingers fidgeting anxiously over the information spilling across his workstation. “Because now that they know we’ve clocked them at Dasun, they must have a contingency in place for the off chance our entire rear guard drops out of superluminal there, guns blazing.”
I’m doing some nervous calculations of my own, pulling up the system map and sketching hypothetical vectors between Ellit and Dasun, Ellit and Imre, and the possible ways we could arrive there. If we start accelerating for Dasun, it’ll be hell to retarget our vector to Imre no matter the speed, and days to reach the outer gas giant. If we hop to Dasun, we guarantee we can’t come to the advance team’s aid at Imre in a timely manner. And if we go superluminal pointed at Imre, that springs the aforementioned trap.
There’s an additional factor making all of this light-years more complicated: the chain of command. If Esperza issues an order, it’s eight minutes away. Iral is on the advance team, even farther from us. The only way we can act outside their command is if Ettian himself makes the call.
So Ettian has to make the right call.
Or, more accurately, I have to talk him into the right call, because otherwise what the rut am I here for?
Dasun or Imre? Use our speed now, or save it for when it’s needed. Wait on the commodore’s word? The general’s? The poor, doomed advance shuttle? And above all, whose side am I on when I make that decision? The nauseating head spin of my earlier crisis is doubling down with a vengeance.
Cut through it, Umber, I tell myself. I’m an imperial, born to rule and raised to lead. I can’t doubt my judgment. It’s gotten me this far.
“We hold,” I tell Ettian firmly, fixing him with a stare he can’t evade. “But when we hear from Dasun, we move like hell. Tell them to have the reactors hot and ready to get this thing on its vector and the superluminal drives ready to fire.”
He nods, steady and sure in what I’ve said. Under other circumstances, I might immediately tear into him for taking his most critical mission’s strategy from a captured enemy, but we’re well past that. Even with his bridge staff throwing us anxious looks—even with Silon looking like she’s about to hop off her saddle and come physically throw me off the bridge herself—Ettian knows better than to ignore my advice.
So with shallow breaths and the war drums softened to a low patter that matches our racing hearts, we wait for that shuttle to die.
When the transmission comes through, even the drums go quiet. Silon throws all the data we get onto the bridge screens, and my stomach sinks from here clear to Ellit as I watch the scouting shuttle’s final moments play out. They make a valiant effort, and I applaud the comms techs especially for doing their damnedest, in their final moments, to give us the clearest possible picture of what we’re up against. But less than two minutes after they drop from superluminal and start broadcasting back to us, the combined might of four dreadnoughts reduces them to nothing but atoms and the echoes of their final messages racing across the void.
Four dreadnoughts at Dasun. Two at Imre. I meet Ettian’s eyes.
“Dasun,” he says.
“Dasun,” I agree.
We can take them. According to the data from the scouts, they haven’t even deployed the ships on board. Their launch tubes are sealed. If we hit them from a superluminal arrival, they’ll be scrambling to roll out their more maneuverable forces as we come screaming in to raze their batteries hard and fast. They’ve put their backs to the gas giant, flirting with the edges of its gravitational pull as if they mean to cut off one of our approaches, but it’s as good as lining themselves up for a firing squad.
Ettian straightens, leaning forward over his station as his eyes lock on Silon. “Set a course for Dasun. All superluminal-capable reserves form up on the Torrent.”
Silon rears back in her saddle, eyes wide with alarm. “Your Majesty, we’re still waiting on the commodore’s assessment. We’ll have her broadcast within the minute.”
He grits his teeth. “You saw that field. Their doors are down. We have an opening.”
The captain looks like she’s doing her damnedest to maintain her prim calm. “I just feel we ought to consider the commodore’s opinion—”
“I feel that you ought to consider where this order is coming from,” Ettian replies levelly, his crown glimmering obviously in the bridge’s bright lights. “Get us on that vector. Inform the remainder of the rear. Iral will handle the front at Imre. We hunt at Dasun.”
Silon purses her lips, but the next thing that comes out of them is a clipped, “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
An almost pilot-like glee floods my system alongside a heady rush of adrenaline as the bridge collapses into preparation for the superluminal jump. Engineering fires the Torrent’s massive boosters, heaving our nose around to settle onto our vector. Even with the ship’s internal dampeners working their hardest to cancel out the force, I can feel its gentle weight bearing down on me.
Or maybe that’s just the pressure of what we’re about to commit to. We’re hurling ourselves at a waiting armada, hoping desperately that we’re about to catch them unawares. We’re about to confront Berr sys-Tosa himself head-on. The man who threw me into this mess when he told General Iral exactly who I was.
Despite the larger implications, I think I might enjoy watching the Archon rebellion shred him.
“All ships are aligned with their vectors,” Communications announces, flitting between addressing Silon and Ettian with ricocheting nervous glances.
“Ready for the jump to superluminal at your mark,” Engineering confirms.
Ettian draws a deep breath, but before he can call it, Silon throws a new communication up on the bridge screens.
A distress call.
From the communications pivot.
“Looks like they traced the scout shuttle’s signal,” Silon says grimly. “But Esperza’s pivot ship had an evac shuttle with superluminal capacity. They should have…”
They should have run. They should have rutted right back off to us, abandoning the scouting intel and saving their own skins. Esperza is commodore of Archon’s dreadnought fleet and the woman single-handedly—horrible moment to make that joke—responsible for commandeering so many dreadnoughts in the first place. Her command should supersede any mission prerogative.
But when’s the last time that piratical asshole did anything she was supposed to do?
Esperza held. She made sure the signal came through clearly for both us and the advance team about to engage at Imre. And now…
“She’s not dead,” Silon says. For a moment, I think it’s denial. Of course Esperza’s dead. Everyone on that ship is dead—the data’s clear that they were boarded and their drives were cut, leaving them nowhere to go. But then I realize the captain is telling the truth. Part of the pivot ship’s final signal is a stream from their bridge’s security cameras.
We watch as Umber marines storm the bridge. The sight of the brass striping their tac armor makes something ache inside me. They plow through her subordinates, cutting them down in a swath around their commanding officer. Adela Esperza greets them with a hand and a stump in the air, her prosthetic limp and nonthreatening on the station in front of her.
They wrench her arms behind her back and cuff he
r above the elbows. But her peaceful surrender has bought her enough time for one last message. As they muscle her off the bridge, her eyes fix on the camera, her mouth shaping itself around one final, silent order.
It’s Silon who voices it, the sound choked with a degree of emotion that makes me realize I might not have been paying enough attention to the relationship between the captain and the commodore. One final directive, ringing against the mournful quiet of the Torrent’s bridge.
“Give them hell at Dasun.”
CHAPTER 25
The silence holds for three thunderous beats of a heart.
Then Ettian stands, his eyes moving steadily from Communications to Engineering to Silon herself. “On my mark.”
The whole bridge sits up straighter, an orchestra waiting for the conductor’s baton to drop.
“Three. Two. One. Mark.”
We catapult across the Tosa System with our breaths frozen in our lungs. The moment we drop to sublight, a harsh drumroll starts up, bolstered by a new voice at every four-count. Silon drops down in her saddle, swallowed by the dreadnought’s operations. Ettian bends low over his station, fingers flying. Everyone’s moving with utmost purpose, like their entire lives have been leading to this moment.
My focus falls to my own screens. To the task I’ve been assigned. A task Commodore Esperza just had to go and make ten times more complicated.
“Wen,” I murmur, trusting my mic to pick up the sound over the bridge’s commotion. “You still with me?”
“What’s going on up there?” Her voice is hard with suspicion. “We just jumped. Have we been called in at Imre?”
“About that.” Gods, how to explain this succinctly?
“Gal?” she asks, her voice a vibrosword snarl.
“Change of plans. Tosa’s withdrawn to Dasun with most of his fleet. We’ve taken the rear to them.”
“Dasun? That’s clear on the other side of the system. How’s Esperza’s pivot going to coordinate both fronts from her position?”
“Wen, Esperza…”
Shit. I shouldn’t be saying anything. In all the tumult, I forgot my original plan. I pull up the airlock controls and cameras from Wen’s loading zone—another mistake, because she’s staring right at the lens, her expression stony and her hand resting on the hilt of her sword. In the monstrous metal of the powersuit, she looks like she could lunge right through the screen and rip the answers she wants from my mouth.
Just the sight of her like that jars them loose anyway. “We got a communication from Esperza, just before the jump. An Umber strike team traced her signal. They took her alive.”
The words hit heavy enough to sway her, even in the armor. There’s a horrible truth inherent in what we just witnessed: it would have been better if Esperza died fighting. Wen’s still new to the history of the conflict between Umber and Archon, but she knows exactly what we do to our high-caliber prisoners. Maxo Iral’s twin brother was hung on an electrified crucifix. My mother beheaded Ettian’s parents at the Imperial Seat. And now she’s gotten her hands on the Archon rebellion’s wily pirate commodore. Whatever happens next, it will be public, it will be spectacular, and the empress will make sure it hurts like hell to watch.
Wen’s grip on her vibrosword tightens. She whirls to face the airlock doors, her shoulders squared like she’s about to charge right through them. “Let me at ’em,” she says, low and level.
“Wen, Esperza’s gone. They got her at the pivot point—you can’t do anything for her. And there’s a battle going hot on the other side of those doors.”
“Like I said,” she snarls. “Let me at ’em.”
This is exactly what I was afraid of. Exactly why I took my seat on this bridge. In the original strategy, the Torrent was supposed to sweep in and pick up the pieces when the general had finished mopping up at Imre—once it was safe. And in that pocket of safety, Wen was supposed to emerge, a suited knight triumphant, cementing the resurrection of the Archon Empire as Ettian locked his grasp on the Tosa System. Any Archon soldier would unleash her on the field now, letting her harness that simmering wrath and smash herself against the Umber army waiting in the void beyond.
I open the first airlock door. The second the light flashes on, Wen wrenches it open and steps in, slamming it forcefully behind her. The powersuit’s helmet snaps down over her head. “Confirmed seal,” she says, her voice muffled in the enclosed barrel of her armor’s chest piece. “Open the outer door.”
I do nothing.
“Gal, I said open the outer door.”
I don’t. Won’t. In fact, I keep my finger jammed firmly down on the button keeping the inner door unlocked. Wen’s not the only one who’s spent some time poring over the intricacies of dreadnought systems. One of the most essential failsafes built into a ship of this scale is the fact that there must always be at least one locked door between you and the void.
As long as the inner door is unlocked, Wen can’t open the outer one, and there’s no way in any system’s hell I’m unlocking it for her.
“Gal, you rustin’ asshole,” Wen growls between gritted teeth.
“Do you know what’s on the other side of that door?” I hiss, pulling the battle maps up onto my station. The Torrent’s bays are hemorrhaging every craft in our holds, sending them streaking for the four dreadnoughts holding the line against the murderous red bulk of Dasun’s stormy clouds. We’ve got them pinned down, flirting with the edge of the planet’s gravitational pull. Already, Telemetry is reporting their guns are starting to target.
But they aren’t moving, even as more and more of our ships drop from superluminal to fill out the field. Ettian sees it too—he spares me a worried glance amid his frantic processing of clearances and orders and responsibilities. “They’re pinned if they stay there. Why…” he mutters.
I almost wish he hadn’t asked. Because mere seconds after the words leave his mouth, Telemetry shouts, “I’ve got movement in the clouds!”
Gods of all systems. I immediately pull up the feeds from that sector, trying to pick out what we’re seeing. Something is stirring deep within the gas giant’s mass, cloaked by the denser gases that wash the world in a bloody pallor.
Many somethings.
“Shit,” I hiss. “They’re fully deployed.”
In the time since the scouts lost their lives, Berr sys-Tosa has been busy. The full might of the governor’s fleet emerges from Dasun’s cover, shedding red gas like the parting of a gossamer curtain. No more dreadnoughts, no sign of the Imperial Fleet I feared might be lying in wait, but the sheer scale of the deployment barely comforts that mercy. Every ship that can hold its own against Dasun’s gravity has been lying in wait for us.
They enter the field with their guns already hot, their engines burning hard, and their vectors woven like a net.
The Archon strategy shifts in an instant, and not in a good way. The vicious pace of our deployment stumbles into a frantic rush to meet the Umber forces on the field. The war drums have shifted too, but my Umber-raised brain can’t translate the message they’re sending any more beyond not good not good not good.
And Wen is still in my ear, spitting mad that I won’t let her out to die in that mess.
“Wen, it’s a disaster out there,” I tell her, the words thick in my throat. “It’s…The odds aren’t good for us. They baited a trap and we walked right into it.”
“Then let me get out there and change the odds,” she pleads, turning to the camera to implore me directly. “All I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve been trying to do, is make myself useful to this empire. I want to be whatever it needs me to be.”
“Wen.” I sigh. “You chose this. You had a position on the bridge, a direct line to start calling your own shots, and what did you do? You let Iral stuff you in that ruttin’ tin can and decide where and when he’d point you.”
“You ha
ve the emperor sitting next to you,” Wen seethes. “He can probably hear me through the comm. Ask him what my marching orders are, if you’re so determined to tie me down with the chain of command.”
I glance at Ettian to confirm that he can, in fact, hear Wen shouting. I mute my mic and say, “She wants to go out there. What do you say?”
I can feel him sizing me up, settling himself in the knowledge that it was my plan all along to pin Wen in an airlock and keep her out of the fight. Realizing, perhaps, that I’m just as invested in keeping her alive as he is. Ettian’s dark, gorgeous eyes speak the truth before he does, the truth I knew before he even understood it.
He can’t let her go. He’s lost too much already.
I pull out my mic and hand it over to him.
“Wen,” Ettian emp-Archon says, damning himself with just that word and its tone. “You’re to stay put.”
I click off the comm before she has a chance to argue, but I see the betrayal hit her like boltfire on the airlock camera. She even reaches up and presses her chest as she bends low, the gesture so similar to the way Ettian bent on Ellit that it knocks a similar amount of wind out of me. But this isn’t the moment to spare her feelings. Not when every system’s hell has unleashed itself outside the Torrent’s hull.
The battle exists on a scale I can barely comprehend. This was the shit I was supposed to be training for at the academy—to manage an engagement of this scale with the same cool head Silon uses to conduct the Torrent. But I was supposed to have years before I was ever expected to. For now, I focus on tracing a single ship, trying to decipher its place in the greater strategy.
At least until a direct hit from a dreadnought’s main battery reduces it to ash.
“We need to start thinking about evac,” I mutter to Ettian. There are superluminal-capable shuttles in reserve for that exact purpose. It’s part of a dreadnought’s design, ensuring that the most essential people can escape even if the ship itself goes down.
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