“Get the Vagabond prepped, H.M. We’re leaving.”
TRAGEDY IN THE SHIPS’ GRAVEYARD
A hail of gunfire and confusion in the asteroid belt leaves crownchaser Owyn Mega dead
GRIEF, SHOCK, AND ANGER: THE MEGA FAMILY REELS FROM THEIR SUDDEN LOSS
How the loss of their prime heir will affect the family’s future in the empire
WYTHE CALLS FOR CALM IN THE WAKE OF CALAMITY
The steward of the throne vows to convene a committee and review all available evidence to determine the cause of Mega’s death
WHEN COMPETITION TURNS DEADLY
What it means for the empire if it turns out that one of the crownchasers snapped and made a horrific, bloody decision
WORLDCRUISER S576-034, HYPERLIGHT
“WE FIND THE DRIVE TO MOURN TO BE THE MOST fascinating quirk of biological life,” NL7 says as it scans the media feeds. “One thousand and one planets across two hundred systems and hundreds of cultures, and nearly all of you feel the need to mark death of your organic forms in some way. Its ubiquity is quite interesting.”
Edgar doesn’t stand with the android. He isn’t interested in watching the performative mourning by all the prominent political and social leaders and the endless hours of analysis by the Daily Worlds as they capitalize on Owyn Mega’s death to the tune of trillions of viewers.
He knows the routine. He saw it when he was a boy and his mother—the Great Inventor, the Tech Angel of Voles Enterprises—passed suddenly. So much pontificating. So many empty thoughts and empty prayers.
He’d been overwhelmed by the grief filling his body as a child, but he’d also quickly discovered how much it irritated his father to see him express it. Any glint of tears, any tremble of the shoulders put William Voles on edge, so Edgar had had to isolate it. Put it on separate circuits. He very rarely accesses that part of him, but it is slightly difficult to keep it contained as he watches the other crownchasers react to losing Owyn.
Three of them—Coyenne, Orso, and Roy—appear to still be working on the chase, but even then, they pause in the moments where they think they are clear of the cameras. They visibly grieve.
Faroshti does not seem to be making a move in either direction. She sits in her med bay, alone.
Edgar pauses and enlarges the feed from the Godsblade, Owyn Mega’s ship. It’s already been retrieved from the asteroid belt and is being escorted to Apex, but Owyn’s second, Gear Aluma, is still on board. He watches her sit in the bed in Owyn’s quarters, wrapped in his sheets, her wings drooping down her back. Artacians don’t cry like some species; when they grieve, they shed pinprick-sized spores of light from the ends of their fur.
Owyn’s quarters are filled with them.
The back of his throat aches, and he swallows to relax it. To smooth the pain away. But all he does is move it deep inside his chest, where it sits, heavy and sour like guilt. If he’d said something when he’d seen that ship approaching the asteroid belt, if he’d reached out . . .
“What are you watching, Edgar Voles?”
Edgar blinks his eyes clear and swipes the screen away as NL7 approaches. “Just assessing my competitors.”
“Do you still wish to proceed with the augmentations to the ship that we recommended?”
He reaches toward the display and flicks a finger at each crownchaser’s feed, darkening them one by one. “Of course I do. Our objective is far from complete.”
SEVEN YEARS AGO . . .
THE IMPERIAL SCHOOLROOM, THE KINGSHIP, APEX
THE ONLY LIGHT COMES FROM THE HOLOGRAPHIC projection in the middle of the room. I cleared a big space and had the kingship AI fill it with the three-dimensional recording I’d dug out of the archives. It’s the fifth time this month I’ve snuck in after school hours to do this. I can’t help it, though. Getting to see her, as tall as she was in life, looking so regal and elegant, her eyes bright with passion as she speaks to a packed crowd on the planet Umbar.
“. . . a new shape for our great empire! One that hears and recognizes every voice, every person, without regard for family name! One that doesn’t stay mired in what it is, but what it could be!”
My mother. Saya Faroshti.
I watch her hologram finish her speech as the crowd goes wild and surges toward her. She steps right down to meet them, and just before she disappears in all the bodies, I say, “Kingship, pause playback.”
The image freezes, and I move into the middle of it, imagining if I had actually been there that day, if I had stood here—right here—and I could’ve touched her . . .
I hold my hand just above where hers is. I know if I try, my fingers will go right through her, but just for a second I pretend like they won’t. Just for a second, I pretend like I can reach out and pull her to me across time and space. Because I know what happens after this moment.
Saya Faroshti goes to tour an abandoned Umbarian town devastated in the early years of the war. But her security team missed an old land mine hidden in the ruins, still active.
And when the dust settles, my mother is dead.
Something moves in my peripheral vision, and I look up to see Uncle Charlie standing against the wall. His face is soft in the way I’ve only seen it get when it’s just him and me and Uncle Atar.
“She was really something,” he says. “She had the gravity of a sun. She pulled everyone to her.”
I drop my hand and step out of the projection. My chest feels like it has a weighted ball in it. “If that’s true, why did so many people fight to keep her from getting the throne?”
Charlie sighs and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Politics are complicated, Alyssa. There were those who felt the throne should’ve been theirs. There were those who simply wanted to seize what they saw as a power vacuum. And . . . there were quite a few who were scared of your mother’s ideas.”
I turn back to the projection, staring at her frozen in the middle, a column of bright sapphire. “She wanted to change the empire.”
“She had big ideas. And big ideas often generate big pushback.”
Seriously big pushback. As in, twenty-five years of war and she never even made it to her coronation. Seems like overkill to me. “Uncle Atar always tells me how amazing she was, how smart she was. Why didn’t he try to do all the things she talked about? He’s the one who ended up on the throne—he could’ve done something.”
Charlie’s hand tightens on my shoulder, and there’s a heavy pause. Then he pulls me around to face him. The strange light of the hologram makes the lines on his face deeper, and his gaze is intense.
“You’re too young to understand, Alyssa. Twenty-five years of war. Thousands of cities burned. Millions of lives lost or destroyed. Atar did what he had to do to bring about peace. And that meant he had to make some promises.” Charlie’s face falls a little. “He and I both had to make promises.”
I frown. I can’t quite put together all the stuff he’s not saying. “What kinds of promises?”
Charlie straightens, the intensity falling away. “Nothing for you to worry about right now.” His mouth twitches with a half smile and he touches my cheek for the briefest second. “It’s worked out all right in the end. At least, I think so. Come on now. It’s just you and me for dinner tonight. Should we get extra dessert and not tell Atar?”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Who are you and what have you done with my uncle Charlie?”
He chuckles a little as he leads me out of the room, but my gaze drifts back to my mother one last time before the door closes tight.
Twenty-Nine
Stardate: 0.05.22 in the Year 4031
Location: Putting the Ships’ Graveyard in our engine backdraft
I SIT IN THE VAGABOND’S LITTLE MED BAY, dangling my legs over the side of the bed. I’ve been doing this for half an hour straight. Just sitting here. Staring down at the ruined survival suit crumpled on the floor, stained with three different types of blood.
My shoulder is all patched up. As soon as my feet hit the ramp,
Hell Monkey swept me in to take a look at my wounds and get everything properly fixed so it can heal. He hadn’t pressed too many questions on me—must’ve known I wasn’t gonna answer them—and he left a little over an hour ago to hit the bridge and get us the hell out of the asteroid belt.
Good riddance. Need to tell the Society that this place is on my no-go list.
There’s the tick-ticking of metal feet outside the med bay doors. JR, pacing, waiting for me to come out so it can interview me. Just the idea of staring into those glowing camera lenses and trying to talk about what happened down there is . . .
I shudder and pull my legs up, press my knees against my chest. I’ll just stay here, thanks.
Ta-da. The great and fearless Alyssa Farshot, record-breaking explorer and cruiser jockey. Hiding like a little kid.
Un-fucking-believable.
I tell myself to get it together, give myself the usual tough-love pep talk. But it’s still a long stretch before I finally uncurl my body and put boots on the ground.
My legs feel wobbly underneath me. I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. Not feeling strong. Not feeling confident in my own body. Not wanting to leave this stupid little room.
Come on, Farshot. This is the Vagabond Quick. There isn’t a centimeter of this ship you don’t know.
I close my eyes, zip my jumpsuit all the way up, and step outside.
JR is right there, all lenses pointed at me. “Captain Farshot, can you comment on the events that transpired down on the Defiant?”
I swallow and try to pull words from somewhere, but my tongue is just too heavy in my mouth. I stare at all of those lens-eyes, and all I can do is shake my head. I leave the mediabot there and amble toward the bridge. My boots drag along the floor. My eyes are open, but they’re not really seeing anything. JR tick-ticks after me.
I find Hell Monkey on the bridge, arms crossed over his chest, staring at the media feeds streaming on the wall. When he sees me come through the door, his eyes widen just barely and he reaches out like he’s going to turn them all off.
“Don’t touch it,” I tell him. My voice scrapes against the sides of my throat. “I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
The furrow between his eyebrows says he doesn’t believe me. I ignore him. I don’t want to be shielded like some fragile shell. I’ve stared worse things in the eye than this.
Every single news and media feed is filled with Owyn. His face, his life, his family, but especially his death—all the sensational details and exclusive breaking discoveries and a thousand different digital re-creations of what they think may have happened based on their position that hour. From what I can tell, none of the other crownchasers has made a statement yet. Wythe has declared they’re still looking over the evidence at the scene as part of the ongoing investigation, and Cheery Coyenne and the Daily Worlds has led the call for everything to be made public immediately because the people have a Right to Know. If I didn’t know Cheery any better, I’d think she really had the public and the truth top of her mind. But it’s more likely she’s just mad she hasn’t had a chance to jump out in front of the story and edit it how she wants the narrative to go.
The screen in the bottom left corner catches my eye—buried down there like Hell Monkey thought I wouldn’t see it. I wave to pull it up and expand it, spreading it out across the display.
Not a feed from the Daily Worlds. From a different media outlet. They’ve got some pundit on there with the chyron declaring: “CROWNCHASER TURNED MURDERER?”
I swipe the screen to turn up the volume.
“. . . truth is crownchaser murdering crownchaser is the only viable explanation,” the guy says. “And once you accept that, the question then becomes: Which one pulled the trigger on Owyn Mega? I think there’s only one answer to that, and that’s Alyssa Farshot. She already threw her cards in with the Coyennes, and who knows how far she’s willing to go for that? Her motives and goals are extremely questionable. She hasn’t at all demonstrated that she’s a worthy successor to our beloved Emperor Atar, may he rest in the light of the—”
I flick a wrist, sending the screen zooming back off to its corner. These jerks can go on all they want, but I don’t need to sit here and watch it.
“JR,” I say, and the mediabot is right there, ready to record. I pull the memory drives of the camera drones out of my pocket and hold them out. “Take these. Pull everything you can off them. You’ve got direct access to the news outlets, right? You can transmit to them and not the crownchase officials?”
“That is correct, Captain Farshot.”
“Then I’ve got a comment for you to send them.” I turn, squaring my shoulders, and look right down the lenses. “This is Captain Alyssa Farshot with a public message. Mediabot JR426 has the camera drone footage from the Defiant. Untouched. Unedited by anyone—not me, not the crownchase officials, not the media. It will be transmitting immediately for everyone to see. I have nothing to hide.” I step back. “That’s all, JR. The sooner that gets out, the better.”
It tilts its head and then clicks its way off the bridge.
My chest felt so empty before, but there’s something in there now. Something small and hard and cold. One by one, I turn off every display screen. Everything on my bridge—my bridge—that’s hooked into the crownchase, I shut it all down. Methodically. Nothing on my face.
Hell Monkey just watches me for a minute before he says, “Coy sent over a message before she left. About the clue for the next beacon. We left the asteroid without getting it.”
“We don’t need it.” I drop into my jump seat, sinking into the well-worn curves of it. This is the only place I belong. The only place that feels like it fits. What the hell have I been doing out here? I don’t even know who I am right now.
Hell Monkey hovers near my shoulder. “You got a look on your face, Alyssa. What’s going on?” I can feel the wariness coming off him. Like he’s approaching a wild animal.
Alyssa Farshot, wild animal. Alyssa Farshot, erratic and questionable.
Alyssa Farshot, unworthy of her uncle.
“We’re not playing their game anymore, H.M.” Leaning forward, I tap coordinates into the navcomm dashboard. Coordinates so familiar I could enter them in my sleep. “Time to go home.”
Thirty
Stardate: 0.05.24 in the Year 4031
Location: The only place left for me to go right now
IT’S QUIET ON THE VAGABOND QUICK.
It has been for the past two days. As soon as I told JR where we were going and what my plan was, the mediabot established itself in a corner of the bridge and went dormant. All of its lenses dark. No tick-tick of its feet on the floor. Back to being just me and Hell Monkey, which is how I like it.
I mean, I like it better when we’re joking around. And screwing around. But nothing about the atmosphere inside the ship right now sets the mood for either of those things. I’m not really talking very much, which—that’s weird. And Hell Monkey seems to be reacting to this weirdness by just . . . watching me. Waiting for me to break and spill my guts, I guess.
But I don’t have anything to spill. I’m just done.
Rose’s steady voice sings out, “Approaching Station Shisso, Captain Farshot.”
Something uncoils in my chest hearing those words, and I stare eagerly at the viewscreen as we glide toward a patchy brown-and-green planet called Eillume. It’s a little-known place in a little-known system, and few people give any notice to the rough-looking, cobbled-together space station orbiting above it. Not an official spaceport or big hub or anything like that. Just a collection of old transport ships and citizen stations that have been fused together over the decades into something that looks kind of like a monster on the outside but inside is just a whole bunch of people making a life for themselves without a lot of fuss.
I stumbled upon Station Shisso accidentally on one of my first missions for the Explorers’ Society. I was green as hell and running the Vagabond Quick by myself after my second engine
er told me I had a “death wish” and walked off the job. My ship had gotten hit by rogue debris, and I limped her into one of their ports for repairs. I’d spent a few days there, getting her spaceworthy again, and they hadn’t much cared who I was—not my old name or my new name, not who I worked for or where I was born. They’d just fed me, given me a hand with repairs, and sent me on my way.
I came back a few months later when I was in the area. And again after that. And again. Until I became a regular fixture. I started renting quarters in one of the residential spaces. They started reserving a seat for me at the main watering hole.
And two years ago, I’d met a young engineer there with no fear and omni-goggles on his head, and Station Shisso had been cemented in my heart forever.
I’m packed and ready to go as soon as we’ve stopped, standing by the starboard-side docking seal with my bag over my shoulder and Hell Monkey next to me. I jiggle my legs as I wait for the tunnel to decompress.
Hell Monkey cups my elbow with one of his big hands. “Not that I don’t love coming back to Shisso, but you wanna talk to me about what’s going on? This is way off course.”
I shake my head. “Nope. It’s a course correction. We’re back right where we need to be.”
“Hey. Alyssa. Look at me.”
This jerk. He knows exactly how dangerous his eyes are and he’s got no qualms about using them. But it feels kind of childish to say no, so I drag my gaze over to his.
“You gotta tell me what page you’re on or I won’t be able to keep up.”
There’s a hiss as the decompression is completed and the airlock door slides open. I want to just bolt away down the tunnel, but I owe Hell Monkey something more than that. I turn to him and put a hand on his chest, feeling the pound of his single, human heart underneath the skin and muscle.
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