Starfall

by Melissa Landers

  “Let’s give our champion some encouragement,” the MC said. A chant rose from the crowd, low at first, but quickly gaining momentum until their shouts of “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!” rang in Kane’s ears.

  He forced his feet across the planks until he reached Cutter. When he knelt beside the man, Cutter watched him beneath swollen lids. “Go ahead, kid.” His breaths were wet and labored. “Make it quick, okay?”

  Kane licked his lips. He didn’t feel the same bloodlust that had fueled him on the beach earlier that day. Cutter hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t deserve to die.

  “It’s all right,” he added. “I don’t want to do this again.”

  But neither did Kane.

  As he knelt on the platform, surrounded by hundreds of people chanting his name, he realized there was only one way to leave the arena and never come back. In that moment, he knew what he had to do. He gripped the blade protruding from his shoulder and yanked it free.

  The stands went wild because they misinterpreted his intentions. He grinned at them. He looked forward to robbing them of their winnings. Slowly, he tipped back his head to expose his carotid artery. Cheers turned to gasps, but by then it was too late. Kane slid the steel across his throat, and the Wolf forfeited the game.

  The wind blew from the north that day, so Cassia fastened a gas mask over her face before exiting the shuttle. The walk from her landing pad to the research center was short enough that she could hold her breath, but Gage believed the drug, which he’d nicknamed Mist, could enter the body through the eyes as well as the lungs. His theory explained why all but twenty of her soldiers were in withdrawal, despite having worn smaller masks over their noses and mouths during outdoor drills.

  She waited for the second set of interior doors to seal behind her before removing the mask and making her way to the chemistry lab to find Gage. She hoped he’d made a breakthrough last night, otherwise she might as well crash her shuttle into Marius’s palace and save him the trouble of killing her.

  She found Gage bent over a small boxy machine on the counter, one eye pressed against the scope. Though he couldn’t possibly see her through the curtain of shaggy black hair around his face, he muttered, “Morning, Highness.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Your footsteps are daintier than the average chemist’s. By the way, you have a great team here. They could use an atom splitter, though. It’d make the work easier.”

  “Any progress?”

  “Surprisingly, yes,” he told her, still peering through the scope. “Addiction’s a hard disease to treat. It changes brain function—right down to the chemical makeup—and it’s nearly impossible to reverse. The good news is, because Mist is synthetic, I was able to create a nanoparticle to seek out that drug’s particular pathway in the brain’s reward center and deaden it.” He reached out blindly for a vial of milky fluid, then held it up. “Once I inject this into your addicts, it’ll kill the Mist pathway and mute the drug’s effects.”

  “So we’re going to cure them by causing brain damage?”

  He lifted his head, grinning. “It sounds less impressive when you put it that way.”

  “But wait,” she said as something occurred to her. “Why are some people immune? Like the farmer who lives with Kane’s mom, and some of the tent city refugees. They spent a lot of time outside, and they never showed symptoms.”

  “I wouldn’t call it immunity,” Gage explained. “Some people are more resistant than others when it comes to forming chemical dependency.”

  “Okay, so if the good news is we can treat it, what’s the bad?”

  “It takes time to neutralize the pathways.”

  “How much time?”

  “I won’t know until I test it, but I’m guessing two weeks.”

  She couldn’t wait that long. “Can my men fight while the injection is working?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Your soldiers will suffer withdrawals while their pathways are deconstructing. The symptoms won’t be as severe as they are now, but I wouldn’t trust anyone that cranky to wield a pistol.”

  Cassia chewed the inside of her cheek. She’d already stalled Marius for as long as she dared. At this point, her only hope was to raise a civilian militia. She didn’t have money to pay anyone, but she could offer property ownership to those who volunteered to fight. However, that left her with the issue of training civilians for battle, and for that, she needed time and military leadership.

  Which put her back at square one.

  Her com-bracelet buzzed, and all thoughts of battle plans vanished while her heart leaped in anticipation of news from Renny. She tapped her band and found herself hyperfocused on Renny’s hologram, searching his face for hints of grief or happiness. She detected a duo of lines wrinkling his forehead and immediately asked, “What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t draw out the suspense or try to soothe her with small talk. “We found Adel Vice, and we have a lock on Kane’s tracker. It’s in the ocean, twenty miles offshore.”

  She lost her breath.

  “His tracker is in the ocean,” Gage stressed, boring his gaze into hers from across the room. “That doesn’t mean he’s with it.”

  “Exactly,” Renny said. “There seems to be a sewage drain up-current. We’re hoping he lost his tracker in the shower, or it ended up in a waste chute and got flushed out to sea.”

  Cassia nodded, blinking away the black spots dancing in her vision. “What do you mean, there seems to be a sewage drain? Can you get a visual?”

  “That’s the problem,” Renny told her, and for the first time, she noticed the absence of natural light inside the Banshee. He was in space. “The whole planet is shielded. Right now we’re staying out of range and hacking their transmissions to get a feel for where Kane might be. I can use a surge bomb on their shield, but the minute I do, the mafia will—”

  “Shoot you out of the sky,” Cassia finished, remembering the Origin’s firepower. And that was just one ship of many. “What have you learned so far?”

  Renny’s typically gentle gaze sharpened with enough anger to make the hair on Cassia’s neck prickle. “It’s a resort for savages and perverts. For enough money, you can come here and live out your most twisted fantasies. And I do mean twisted. It’s hard to listen to some of what’s going on down there. They even have men fighting to the death.”

  Those persistent black spots reconverged along her periphery. Now she knew what Ari Zhang had tried to legalize on Earth: a no-holds-barred carnival of bloodshed and depravity within the confines of his resort. “We have to get Kane off that planet.”

  “The other workers, too,” Renny said. “After what I’ve heard, I can’t leave any of those settlers behind.”

  Cassia agreed, but the real question was how. It wouldn’t do any good to contact the Solar League. Even if the government wanted to help, Adel Vice existed in the outer realm, well beyond the League’s domain. A private fighting force was an option, but paid soldiers would fight for the highest bidder, meaning Zhang could turn them.

  There was no easy answer.

  “Keep listening to their transmissions,” Cassia said. She remembered the tricks Jordan had used to aid the rebels. “Find out when their security changes shifts and where their weapons are stored. Watch the shuttle schedule, and track where most of the activity happens. I’ll see what kind of help I can put together, and I’ll be in touch.”

  She disconnected.

  Her heart was flying, but her mind was sharp. She knew she couldn’t help Kane until she’d neutralized the problem at home, so her brain fixed on the quickest solution to taking down Marius. In an instant, she understood what she needed to do.

  “Start the injections,” she told Gage while striding out of the lab. “I’m going to the jail to visit my general.”

  With any luck, he would still be willing to fight like a dog by her side.

  The afternoon sun cut through a gap near the barn ceiling, providing the only light for C
assia’s meeting with the rebels. The glow was more than enough. From her position in the loft, she could see the resentment festering on the faces of everyone below. The men and women in attendance represented the two highest tiers of leadership, and there were more of them than she ever imagined. Their cutting looks and closed-off body language reminded her of what Kane had said weeks ago: that no matter how hard she worked or what she accomplished during her reign, the generations of royals who’d come before her had ruined the people’s trust beyond repair.

  She believed it now.

  General Jordan stood by her side in a show of solidarity, but there was plenty of resentment radiating off him, too. His arms were folded and locked in place, forming a breastplate of muscle across his chest. His stomach growled, and he slanted her a glare. In retrospect, maybe she should have brought him more than one sandwich after locking him in a cell for twenty-four hours.

  Jordan raised a hand to silence the group. “We don’t have much time, so let’s get down to business. The commander and I assembled you here because Miss Rose has made us an offer, and we’d like you to listen to what she has to say.”

  He took a half step back, giving her the floor.

  Cassia didn’t smile as she gazed down at the men and women filling the barn. She hadn’t come here to win their hearts. “I know you don’t like me, and I won’t pretend to like what you’ve done, either. But Marius Durango is a threat to all of us, and as the saying goes, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”

  A few low murmurs broke out, and she spoke over them. “I asked General Jordan to gather you here because I knew you wouldn’t fight for me, that you’re tired of risking your lives to defend my colony.” She held up the data tablet she’d taken from Jordan’s desk. “Which is why I’m offering to make it your colony. I had intended to give Eturia to the people—slowly, over time. I still believe a gradual transition is best, but if this is what it takes to save us, I’ll make the change now.”

  The general joined her again. “Miss Rose has drafted an amendment to the charter that will dissolve the monarchy and establish an election to choose new leadership to govern the four previous kingdoms as one republic.”

  “And my name will be on that ballot,” she said with a sharp look at Jordan.

  “As will mine,” he countered with a challenging gaze of his own.

  A faint voice from below called, “Mine too,” and the crowd parted to reveal Kane’s mother sitting with her back against the barn wall, her face gray and streaked with sweat. “If I recover in time.”

  “You will,” Cassia promised, then added, “Commander.”

  She knew she’d guessed correctly when Jordan stiffened by her side. Her main clue had been the activity surrounding the farm: meetings, transmissions, and the ammonium nitrate purchased with Kane’s account. She’d briefly considered the farmer as the leader, but Rena had more inside knowledge of how the palace used to run, not to mention a natural charisma that was easily applied to politics. And given how the royals had left her unemployed and homeless after a lifetime of service to the monarchy, she would be plenty motivated to overturn the old system.

  Cassia returned her attention to the rebels. “As for the rest of you, I’m prepared to sign this amendment into law as my last act as reigning queen, if you’ll agree to join what’s left of my soldiers in an attack on Marius tonight.”

  A man from the group shouted, “You don’t have the authority to amend the charter.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted. “In order to make Eturia a free republic, either Marius has to cosign this amendment…or he has to die.” She set her jaw. “If we work together, we can make one of those things happen by dawn. General Jordan and I have formed a strategy. All I need is your support to set it in motion.”

  “What do you say?” Jordan asked the rebels.

  “How do we know she won’t renege?” shouted the same man.

  Cassia held up her finger, which she could prick and touch to the tablet for a legally binding DNA signature. “Say yes and I’ll sign it right now.”

  But no one said yes.

  Men and women glanced warily at one another while shifting on their feet. Cassia sensed that some of them agreed with her, but nobody seemed to want to be the first to say it. The silence continued until Kane’s mother raised her hand and said, “Aye.” Hers was the only confident face in the crowd. The farmer by her side nodded and echoed the vote. Then Jordan did the same. One group at a time, the others turned to Rena with a look of unmistakable respect, and the ayes carried around the barn in a sweeping vote until the majority’s will became clear.

  They would fight—not for the throne, but for themselves.

  Cassia would take it.

  That night she gave her husband exactly what he’d asked for: all twenty of his confiscated missiles, each disabled and strapped to a long, open barge that offered no hiding places for her troops. In keeping with his demands, she piloted the barge shuttle by herself, not bothering to conceal any weapons under her clothes. Marius wasn’t an idiot. After what she’d pulled on their wedding night, he would have every crevice of her body scanned before coming anywhere near her.

  When she reached the Durango border, she obediently stopped for inspection. The guards conducted a thorough search of the craft—not to mention her body—and discovered no traces of weaponry, so they radioed Marius and reported back with instructions for Cassia to land the barge at the armory, where a private shuttle would deliver her to the palace. She didn’t delay. Within the hour, her barge and all its missiles rested on armory grounds.

  As she climbed down from the pilot’s seat, she scanned her surroundings by the light of the gathering moon. The Durango armory consisted of six metal sheds that led to underground bunkers, where weapons were stored safely out of range of enemy mortar. Several layers of fencing and shields surrounded the area, beyond which stood the soldiers’ barracks and, about a mile beyond that, Marius’s palace. She committed the layout to memory and strode alongside two armed escorts to a shuttle idling nearby.

  “New destination,” one of the guards told the pilot. “Take her to the lab.”

  Cassia’s heart jumped. That wasn’t part of the plan. “I want to see my husband,” she demanded. “Deliver me to the palace first. Then we can go to the—”

  The guard shoved her inside and slammed the door shut.

  “Did you hear me?” she questioned the pilot, who ignored her and lifted the shuttle into the air. Moments later, they flew over the palace, then continued for at least another mile before descending.

  Cassia rubbed the spot on her wrist where her bracelet belonged. The border guards had confiscated it during the inspection, and now she had no way to tell Jordan her new location. In half an hour, his mission would be complete, and he’d sneak inside the palace to retrieve her. How long would it take him to discover she wasn’t there?

  The shuttle landed behind a nondescript boxy building, unmarked and concealed on all sides by dense clusters of trees. Her palms turned cold as she exited the craft and met a new pair of armed escorts. Jordan would never find her here.

  No one would.

  At gunpoint, she walked through several sets of doors into the lab foyer, then followed the guards’ instructions until she wound her way down several hallways to a small room containing two tall chairs, one with arm restraints and one without.

  She didn’t need to ask which chair was hers.

  After a shove from behind, she sat down and rested both arms above the straps. One guard pointed his laser pistol at her face while his partner fastened restraints around her wrists and chest. Her legs were left free, but as short as she was, the tips of her boots barely skimmed the floor. She’d just begun scanning the room for anything she could use to her advantage when the door opened and Marius sauntered inside.

  At the sight of him, she felt her stomach clench—not simply out of fear and loathing, but because the grin on his face confirmed that she’d been outplayed. The
n her gaze wandered to the box of syringes and electrodes in his hand, and she understood how fatally she’d underestimated him.

  “Yes,” he said, noticing the recognition in her eyes. “I know how your devious little mind works. The girl I married would have died before returning those missiles, so you’re going to tell me what you’re really up to.” He handed the box to the guards, who divided its contents and approached her.

  Cassia’s heart slammed against her ribs. Jordan and his squad needed at least another twenty minutes before she betrayed their location. She had to find a way to stall the extraction process. When the first guard moved close enough, she kicked out and landed her boot between his legs. The other guards responded quickly, drawing their pistols.

  “Go ahead and shoot me,” she dared, knowing full well they wouldn’t do it. They needed her alive to steal her thoughts.

  Marius pointed at her shoulder. “Give the queen what she wants.”

  Before she knew what hit her, there was a flash of light, and the area below her left collarbone grew warm. She smelled scorched flesh, then felt a burning sensation that doubled by the second until she had to glance at her shoulder to make sure it wasn’t on fire. The wound was deceptively tidy, just a coin-size red spot, but it burned like a live coal. She clamped her lips to keep from crying out, but her muffled sounds of agony were no more dignified than a scream, so finally she let one go.

  “Laser wounds don’t bleed,” Marius said. “They’re self-cauterizing. I can shoot you in a hundred different places and still keep you alive to tell me your secrets. Remember that the next time you feel the urge to fight.”

  She must’ve lost consciousness, because she blinked and noticed something new in her periphery. Electrodes were affixed to both sides of her temples, and when she glanced at the bend of her arm, she saw blood at the injection site. She whimpered in a mingling of pain and panic. How long before the serum kicked in?