Oaths of Legacy

by Emily Skrutskie

  She’s supposed to be targeting the Fulcrum. Why is she dragging this out? People are dying.

  And then, it seems, she decides it’s time. She vaults backward off another cruiser’s skin, feints around a fighter trying to dance with her, and streaks straight for the Fulcrum’s surface. A few Vipers try to follow her, and I can’t help but respect their courage. One she tricks into the line of fire. Another makes the wise choice and peels off before the same happens to them.

  The third follows her right to the bitter end, attempting to veer up to match her when she levels out her dive to fly parallel to the dreadnought’s skin. It isn’t so lucky. The Viper dies in a quiet streak of flame, pancaked against the Fulcrum’s hull.

  Wen flies on alone, skimming along the hullmetal. The ship is still tilting underneath her, caught up in the momentum of its attempt to get its guns on her. Now she weaves through fire from the other Umber ships trying to scrape her away from the Fulcrum’s hull, running like hell for the dreadnought’s rear.

  The dreadnought’s rear, which is now pointed squarely away from Dasun.

  I think Ettian realizes her game at the same moment I do. He tears himself away from his other comms, eyes blown wide with panic as he gestures for me to patch him through to her. I do it with no objections. If there’s anyone on this bridge who can talk her out of what she’s about to do, it’s him.

  “Wen,” he rasps, his voice hoarse from the near-constant demands of marshaling Flame Squadron. “Please. Don’t—I said not to make me watch—”

  And if I thought I was being torn in half before, I now know that was nowhere close to my limit. Because just listening to the raw fear in Ettian’s voice as he watches Wen flying toward oblivion, just watching Wen ruttin’ flying toward oblivion, is creating a physical ache in my chest that has me almost pleading for the mercy of dreadnought boltfire.

  I love them.

  I love them both, each in their own way, and I fought like hell to stop them from destroying themselves.

  And now, as always, I can only watch as Wen rounds out around the Fulcrum’s rear, around those powerful reactor-fed thrusters. Right now, they’re inert, the ship relying on other mechanics to execute its turn. Cold, empty, gaping.

  “Wen,” Ettian pleads.

  She throws herself into their abyss, and I flash back to the first attack we weathered in the Torrent’s reactor. The safest place on the ship, she’d called it.

  The only way to get to it is through the engines themselves.

  The comms line crackles with a ragged breath, and Ettian lets out a faint groan. “Hope this is enough,” Wen whispers.

  And on my readouts, the Fulcrum’s engines ignite.

  CHAPTER 27

  I feel worlds end inside me. The kind of devastation that’s only survivable on a planetary scale. Wen Iffan, the Flame Knight, ever the mechanic, has figured out a new way to take down a dreadnought—and sacrificed herself to its necessity.

  I watch the slow inevitability of it. The momentum of the Fulcrum’s engines firing uncontrollably and the way it forces the ship forward, forward, forward into Dasun’s grasp. The dreadnought’s engineers are fighting like hell to counter it with every ancillary thruster aboard, but once twenty miles of starship get moving, they’re all but impossible to stop.

  Next to me, Ettian is gut-shot again, bent in half, the rest of the battle lost to him as his world narrows to the loss of signal error pulsing across my readouts. He hunches over the console like the empty husk of Rafe’s armor, like his bones have been vaporized by the blast from the Fulcrum’s engines.

  She’s not gone. She can’t be. Nothing’s killed her yet, and nothing ever will. But the data is undeniable. Loss of signal.

  The other data should be heartening. The Fulcrum’s valiant attempts to reorient are failing. Escape craft are jettisoning from its hull in droves. The ones with guns dive right back into the thick of the fighting. The ones without—well, they dive right back in too, turning the craft themselves into missiles that they hurl into whatever Archon ship they can lock their vectors onto. No quarter. No surrender.

  With their leadership cut off, the rest of the Umber warships are scattering without any sort of coordination. I have no doubt that the captains of the remaining three dreadnoughts are jockeying for command of the vacuum Berr sys-Tosa’s about to leave in their hierarchy. The Archon fleet carves through the confusion like a sharp blade through flesh, leaving silent explosions bleeding in their wake.

  And in the midst of the triumph, Ettian emp-Archon is falling apart. He hasn’t blinked, his eyes still fixed on the loss of signal message as if staring at it long enough will make it change.

  “Your Majesty,” one of the techs from Telemetry calls. Ettian’s jaw pulses, his impulse to snap at the man building, but before it can break free, the tech says, “I’m getting something. Whatever it is isn’t transmitting, but there’s…debris, maybe. Or—”

  Ettian snaps upright, clutching his side as he shoves himself out of his seat and strides over to the tech’s station. A second later, I’m behind him, peering over his shoulder with my heart in my throat. Like the tech said, there’s…something.

  It only takes half a heartbeat for the bridge to erupt into chaos. The drums cascade into rhythms too fast for my Umber ears to parse, Silon’s shouting something to her staff, and Ettian’s own aides have swarmed to his side, shoving me bodily away from him. Even though the sound is lost in the clamor, I know exactly what he’s saying.

  Damn the danger.

  Damn the protocol.

  Get me to her.

  The signal the techs are picking up is faint, but it’s there, and it’s roughly the size and shape of a single powersuited body, floating motionless in the void, a blip against the spectacle of the Fulcrum’s destruction. Tosa’s flagship is beyond hope now, the atmosphere shearing its skin off in fiery flakes as the last and bravest of those attempting to abandon ship leap desperately from its sides. The Flame Knight drifts above it all, above everything she started—or, more accurately, everything she finished.

  The day is won.

  On one of Silon’s screens at the core of the bridge, Berr sys-Tosa is delivering a solemn speech from the Fulcrum’s command core. It would seem that the governor has, for the first and final time, elected to do the honorable thing and go down with his ship. Or maybe he’s just doing what comes naturally—abandoning his duty and surrendering to the Archon rebellion.

  The Tosa System is Ettian’s. The Archon Core has been reclaimed.

  And the emperor doesn’t give a shit about any of it. His eyes are wild, his brow damp with sweat as he shoves his way through the knot of staffers and aides and bridge techs, past anyone who has a chance of talking him out of this. I trail in his wake, invisible as usual, swept up in the crush of people trying to tag along as he storms the intership deck and commandeers a shuttle to the Torrent’s outer hull, where a recovery mission is already staging.

  The clamor grows louder when the soldiers on deck realize the emperor himself is hijacking their mission. An hour ago, I would have gloated over the amount of pushback Ettian’s facing from his infantry—more evidence that his rule is already doomed. But now—

  Now—

  “Everyone, shut the rut up,” Ettian roars suddenly, and the whole deck plunges into the closest thing to silence it can manage. “Who’s the pilot?”

  “I am, Your Majesty,” a stout older woman in a flight suit announces, folding her arms as she steps in front of the rest of her crew.

  “I’m overriding this mission’s schedule. Get that shuttle prepped for immediate launch.”

  “With respect, Your Majesty, the field is still active. Our crew isn’t cleared to fly combat.”

  Ettian clutches his head, pressing his circlet so deep into his skin that it leaves a bruised-looking impression. “Either you fly that shuttl
e out of here or I fly it out of here. We can’t wait for the field to quiet.”

  No one wants to tell him the obvious. To tell him that powersuited shape we sighted out on the field isn’t showing any signs of life. It likely won’t matter whether we get to her now or later, but we all know he won’t hear it.

  The pilot glances back at her crew, something molten in her gaze. She’s an old-timer—the kind who must have fought alongside suited knights ten years ago. “We can make the run, if your explicit wish is to override our protocols and endanger these fine soldiers.”

  “They knew what they signed up for when they enlisted,” I blurt, and every resentful eye in the knot of people gathered here snaps to me. My eyes are only for Ettian, for the grateful look he passes to me that says he understands.

  I spoke the words they wouldn’t want to hear from him.

  “The Flame Knight needs us,” Ettian says softly, and for a second he’s not an emperor at all—just a boy who’s lost enough already. And I think that’s the thing that finally pushes them over the edge, because the pilot turns to her crew, flashing hand signals that send them scrambling across the deck. Ettian charges after them, and I follow, braced for a hand to come down on my collar and yank me back.

  It never does.

  * * *

  —

  We sit side by side on a bench outside the hold, both of us staring into our hands as the shuttle’s bays open and the void rushes in. The grumble of the door machinery wars with the eerie quiet in a way that makes me miss the Archon drums we left behind on the Torrent.

  There are no windows looking into the hold behind us. The pilot-turned-mission-lead explained to us that she’ll have a live feed from the spacewalking crew that can stream to a datapad, but apparently Ettian’s not in the mood to watch it and I didn’t dare ask for it myself.

  Instead, I stare out one of the windows built into the side of this corridor. From our position, I can’t see the recovery mission, but I can see the flashes of light from the battle’s scattered remnants against the majesty of Dasun’s clouds. Boltfire rains down on the Umber craft making their last stand against the destruction of the Fulcrum. There’s something poetic about the dreadnought’s dramatic end, so close to the shipyards that birthed it. So many Umber war machines were built from the metallic asteroids that once stabilized in the Dasun–Tosa libration points. Now that metal returns to the void we stripped when we overtook this system.

  The thought strikes me—we’re fighting and dying, all of us, for territory that’s already been chewed up and spat out. All this chaos and strife for a few rocky worlds that won’t grow much and the empty husks of shipyards that have long since served their purpose. What point is there to all of this? Why are we holding on so tightly? With every brilliant flash, I lose more of my army. More of my people. More of the ones who stand a chance of rescuing me. My thoughts flicker to the academy students who must be among the Fulcrum’s fleeing crew. Hanji said they’d all been pressed into service.

  Another flash. Could be Ollins.

  Another flash. Could be Rhodes.

  Another flash. Could be Rin.

  Even though Tosa’s surrendered, every commander on the field beneath him fights with no quarter. They know a worse fate awaits them if they escape with their lives only to explain their loss to our empress. I force myself to keep watching, even though the boltfire sears my vision, even though the spirals of the gas giant’s storms are starting to make me feel nauseous. I don’t want to be the kind of leader who looks away from all of this. None of my people are here to witness me doing this, but I can feel the truth of it in the chambers of my heart. I won’t be able to live with myself if I’m capable of blocking this out.

  An intercom overhead crackles to life, the mission lead’s voice coming through. “We have contact. The suit is still unresponsive. Bringing it back to the hold now.”

  I turn around just in time to catch Ettian rocketing to his feet so quickly that his circlet gets knocked askew. He doesn’t bother fixing it—and doesn’t clutch his wound like I expected him to. He turns in a circle, his hands faltering on the hold door when he realizes that it’s sealed tight with nothing but the void beyond it. His wild eyes find mine. He looks like he’s on the verge of saying something, but before the words get past his lips, a thud echoes through the ship as the floor beneath our feet shudders. I clutch for the bulkhead, bracing for another impact, my eyes whirling back to the window to find whoever shot at us, but then the intercom announces, “Suit’s in the hold. Clear to seal the rear doors and repressurize.”

  Ettian’s at the door in two quick strides, one hand braced against the frame, the other on the handle. I’m at his side a half-second later. “Please, gods, anyone, please,” he mutters under his breath.

  Hesitantly, I slip a hand onto his shoulder. He should tense at that, but instead I feel his muscles go slack beneath the pads of his suit. I close my eyes, resisting the urge to shake my head. He really is going to get himself killed one day if these are his instincts.

  Within a minute, the hold is repressurized. When the door flashes its ready signal, Ettian rips it open and charges through. I lurch after him, nearly knocking him over when he draws up short at the scene inside.

  The powersuit lies sprawled on the floor, its limbs locked at rigid angles. The pair of soldiers who recovered it are still in their breach suits and EVA packs, any thought of themselves abandoned as they pry frantically at the casing around the shoulders and helmet. Against the frenzy of their efforts, the suit is horrifically still.

  Then they pop the helmet off, and a soft, choking gasp echoes through the hold.

  Wen Iffan shimmies free from the suit, her breathing coming in unsteady hitches and every limb shaking like a newborn colt.

  She’s barely off the ground before Ettian takes her back down, folding her into a hug so vicious that it knocks both of them off their unsteady legs and sends his crown skittering across the floor. They collapse in a heap, Wen laughing, Ettian sobbing—though it’s really a mix of the two on both counts. She snares her arms around his torso like she’s back in the void and he’s her only tether. He buries his face in her neck like he’d rather be lost in the dark of it forever.

  It takes a while to parse the muffled, tear-choked words Ettian’s muttering. “The suit was…No signs of life…I thought you…I thought you burned.”

  Wen pries him away from her with gentle hands on either side of his head. She wrenches one of his hands up, laying his palm against the rough ruin of her burn scar. “This much,” she tells him fiercely. “No more.”

  The intimacy, the softness between them, the way she lets him touch the part of her she protects the most—it should kindle a jealous ache in me. Instead I’m left with nothing but relief. Relief that she’s alive. Relief that despite the carnage below our feet, there’s room for soft things in this galaxy still, even if one of those soft things is the giddy, slightly-singed girl who sparked the devastating, decisive blow of this battle. Relief that while Umber commanders are throwing away the lives of their troops with abandon, Ettian emp-Archon threw himself into an active field for a chance to rescue a single person.

  And suddenly it hits me like a gut shot—though Ettian would probably try to strangle me for that metaphor—I know what I have to do. What should have been stupidly clear to me from the start, ever since I realized that Ettian’s imperial upbringing was full of gaps that would likely get him killed. There is a point to all of this, and it’s sprawled on the floor in a messy tangle in front of me. My place isn’t at the Umber Seat, taking up my mother’s bloody standard. It’s here at his side, keeping him and everything he loves alive.

  His crown lies on the floor at my feet, completely forgotten. I bend and pick it up, a little surprised by the searing warmth he’s left behind in it. It’s an elegant thing, born of a design sense that’s completely foreign to me. I run a fin
gertip over one of the platinum spirals, pressing it so that it bends slightly.

  Months ago, I would have snapped the thing in half over my knee the second I got my hands on it, or else twisted it into a warped knot, not caring if the metal pinched me or the emeralds ground against my bones. I can feel the ghost of that impulse humming through my hands, the faintest whisper of my mother’s voice in my head ordering me to do it.

  Instead I cradle it carefully and step up beside the Ettian-and-Wen heap still piled on the floor of the hold. I catch a sharp, wary motion from one of the two spacewalking soldiers, but I think she registers my intention just as quickly and stops herself. It’s enough to startle Ettian from the moment of relief he’s locked in. He pulls back a little more from Wen, but keeps one hand rooted on the solidity of her shoulder. I doubt I’ll be able to get an inch between them for at least another hour.

  His eyes find mine, and a sheepish expression tugs at his lips. I know he’s expecting me to start ranting about how emperors are supposed to behave, which is just as well, because I want to surprise him so ruttin’ badly.

  And I do, bending down and carefully setting the platinum crown back on his skull.

  CHAPTER 28

  It doesn’t feel like it’s really over. I keep setting up milestones, then watching as they pass and realizing I’m still braced for the floor to drop out from underneath me or another assassin to come crawling out of the vents or the entire Imperial Fleet to drop from superluminal. We take down the last dreadnoughts. We get word from Imre, where General Iral has secured a hard-won victory with his advance forces—a victory that seems almost inconsequential against the spectacle of the battle at Dasun. We stay aboard the fortress of the Torrent’s safety, supervising the exodus of Umber-loyal people fleeing the system.