by Laura Lam
They landed, the craft skipping the swamp mud until it slowed to a stop on mostly dry land.
Clo powered down the engine and took off the safety belt, stumbling from the ship. The smell of the planet hit Clo first, and her stomach heaved. Too many memories. The dampness of the mud, the rotting stench of decomposing greenery and algae on stagnant water. The sulfur. The far-off scent of too many people living together in such a small space.
Her boots squelched in the puddles as Clo staggered to the edge of the path. There, she bent over and threw up the scant remnants of her breakfast.
Godsdamn transport sickness.
Clo was fine with larger beasts of ships, but these little bullet craft sometimes made her violently ill. It’d take a few minutes for her stomach to catch up with the rest of her body. She hated feeling weak. She was a bogging pilot.
After she finished, Clo wiped her streaming eyes and straightened to look over at Eris. The other woman was standing, hands on her hips. She looked perfect, no trace of sickness. Of course.
Eris caught Clo’s message through her Pathos, and she lifted her lips in a hint of a smile. “Do you need the med kit or something?”
“I’m fine,” Clo said, shortly, steadying her ragged breath. Myndalian air was so heavy; it tasted like lead at the back of her throat.
“I’ll bring it anyway. You almost puked on my boots.”
I wish I had, Clo thought to herself as she rubbed at her false knee. The temperature shift affected the metal and squeezed her skin.
Eris’s eyes flickered to Clo’s hand, and her expression briefly faltered. Aha. It seemed the princess felt a little guilty. That was something, at least.
As if hearing Clo’s thoughts, Eris looked away. “Grab your shit and let’s go.”
Clo clenched her jaw and reached into the ship’s side compartment for her tool belt—mostly filled with unscannable weapons, of course—and her Tholosian mechanic’s jacket.
“Oh, and Clo?” Eris reached into her pocket and tossed something at the other woman. Clo caught it. “Take one of those.”
Clo’s eyes narrowed in suspicion at the small blue case. “What is it?”
“Neutralizers,” Eris said sweetly. “Your breath stinks.”
6.
PRINCESS DISCORDIA
Ten years ago
The training academy on Myndalia was a prison made of gold and glass.
“Up!”
A slap across the face jolted Discordia awake. She shook her head to clear it. “Sorry, Mistress Heraia.”
The papers blurred in front of her eyes. She had been awake for four days in this room, with its single desk surrounded by the glass walls of the training academy.
It overlooked the clouds, tinged pink and orange with the rise of the twin suns. Sometimes, Discordia wished she could open these windows, spread a pair of wings, and fly.
Mistress Heraia snatched the book off the desk. “Recite chapter five for me. Precisely.”
Tholosian history—the reign of the fifth Archon. He had expanded his Empire well beyond the Tholosian solar system, ruthlessly conquering planet after planet. It was his idea to engineer a cohort of royal children, each with the potential of becoming his successor. Natural-born male Heirs were too risky. All it took was one spoiled lackwit with more bluster than sense to lose control over the Empire he’d built.
No, the fifth Archon decided his royal cohort should be engineered to his exact specifications, trained up to his brutal standards, and forced to compete for the throne until only two were left standing. One to be Heir of the galaxy. To lead the charge against the Evoli threat and defeat their enemy once and for all. The other the trusted right hand, still royalty, but no Archon. The Spare.
That had been the tradition for hundreds of years, down to Discordia’s own father. The tenth Archon.
After more than one hundred years as ruler, Discordia’s father began growing his potential successor. The first three batches of one hundred were failures. The first two never made it out of the vats. The third survived and grew to age sixteen. They began dueling as they should, for the title. An Heir and Spare were named, but they killed each other less than a year later. That was not supposed to happen—they were meant to respect the final decision, to set aside their bloodlust and work together.
Discordia was part of the fourth cohort. One hundred children had been grown in vats—fifty assigned male at birth and fifty female, just like all the others. Only fifty-one had survived through childhood.
Discordia was the only female left.
Mistress Heraia, as cruel as she was, had placed her bet on Discordia precisely because she was the only female to make it past age six. She instructed Discordia in all areas—intellectual, physical, and emotional—that would lead to her becoming the best candidate. The strongest. The fastest.
The one who lived.
Discordia shut her eyes and recited the chapter verbatim.
Her prefect didn’t smile. She didn’t congratulate her. Mistress Heraia gathered her bag and digital tablet before saying, “Come with me.”
“Where?” Discordia just wanted to sleep.
“Where else?” Mistress Heraia raised an eyebrow. “To the gymnasium.”
Discordia pressed her teeth together against the urge to beg for sleep. “Practice?”
“To start.” The prefect’s gaze sharpened. “Combat training this morning. History and philosophy this afternoon. And this evening, you run.”
“When can I—” Discordia pressed her lips together. She hadn’t meant to ask aloud, to betray how vulnerable she was.
“Sleep?” Mistress Heraia finished. Her eyes narrowed and she pressed her fingers to the desk. “There will be no rest in war, Discordia. Every soldier will depend on you to keep your mind sharp when you’re most exhausted. So, you will run until I tell you to stop. And when your breath threatens to choke you, you will recite chapter five for me again. Then, once I’m satisfied, I’ll consider letting you sleep.”
Discordia ran until the suns reached their zenith in the Myndalian sky. They shone through the windows of the gymnasium and the trees planted to create the illusion of an outside.
Not once did Discordia fall. Not once did she pause and give Mistress Heraia the opportunity to thrash her for her failure. Not like her siblings; all of them had, at some point during their training, allowed their prefects to beat them into unconsciousness. Just for sleep.
Every sibling except for Damocles.
After Discordia recited the chapter through her hard, heavy breathing, she looked up at the raised observation deck. She knew Damocles would be there. Every child of the Archon was encouraged to watch each other train in the small amount of free time they were given. First, to find each other’s weaknesses. Then, eventually, to exploit them. Though they were not permitted to kill each other at the academy, it was where the royal cohort began viewing one another as competition.
And as potential victims.
Their eyes met. Damocles nodded once and held up one finger, then another. A message passed down from the Archon to all of his potentials.
Damocles wanted to form an alliance.
He came to Discordia’s room later, after another grueling day of training. Mistress Heraia had finally allowed her to eat and then sleep.
Discordia opened the door shortly after dinner. She froze when she saw him. Though still a fourteen-year-old growing into his gangly limbs, he towered over her. His gaze was penetrating, a beam sharper than any Mors laser. He constantly measured the people around him. Whether they were a danger, or—more likely—how quickly he could kill them.
She scanned the hallway and ushered him inside. “Hurry.”
“You were awake for five days,” he said as she closed the door. He sounded almost accusatory. “How di
d you do that?”
Discordia kept her voice cool. “Sheer force of will.”
Damocles scanned her room—clean, white, and sterile as a prison cell. The only personal object she kept in her room was the round zatrikion board on the desk, still in the same positions that she and Mistress Heraia had left them. The prefect always played the King, and Discordia the Queen. It was a game of strategy, of careful calculation meant to reproduce the moves one might make in war. She had another twelve hours to make her decision. If she won, she ate again. If she didn’t, she starved. This was how they played, and Mistress Heraia was a master at it.
“Do you play?” Discordia asked, noting how he studied each piece.
“Not often.” Accusatory again. “It seems my prefect is useless.”
Every prefect was a former member of the royal guard, all trained to be the best soldiers in the Empire. Each one had picked their trainee among the royal cohort—and those who had first pick always went with the male children. A woman had never been Archon. A woman had never made it through training without dying.
But soldiers all had vulnerabilities and strengths. Some prefects emphasized battle. Some emphasized strategy. Mistress Heraia was determined to teach Discordia everything—and if she ended up dying, then she wasn’t strong enough to begin with.
“You indicated you wanted to form an alliance,” Discordia said, impatient. “Did you mean it?”
“Would I be here if I didn’t?”
“Then who would be the Heir?” Her unasked question was just as important: Who would be the Spare? The other was lucky enough to live, but they would never be as valued, never as vital, never as recognized.
Damocles shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. Didn’t fool her. “Whoever was better.”
He kept staring at the zatrikion board, never at her. Finally, she grew impatient. “Do you want to play?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
They sat there afternoon after afternoon between their own training—often exhausted—strategizing and figuring out each other’s weaknesses.
She learned that Damocles didn’t like losing. She learned that he considered it a weakness. She learned that he grew impatient easily, and that when he sensed he wouldn’t win, he made stupid mistakes.
And she learned that he hated hearing her say the same words when she won every game.
Regina regem necat. Queen kills King.
7.
CLO
Present Day
As Clo and Eris trudged to their destination, they kept to the muddy path, their boots splashing in the shallow water. The trail grew so narrow in some places, they had to go single file. One wrong step might cause a stumble into the swamp, where bogs could be three times as deep as a person. The hidden currents dragged people down in the undertow, to tangle in weeds and never be seen again. Monsters or the thick sludge of water would kill anyone just the same.
The hangar was on the outskirts of the slums. Technically, the city was called Kersh, but everyone in that cesspit called it the Snarl. The outskirts were solely for the transport centers where commercial and private spacecraft came, to either refuel or drop off the rich to go up to the silver and gold floating palaces. High above the clouds, they never heard the constant roar of engines as the ships landed or took off.
The poor had no such luxury. Clo’s childhood had been punctuated in three-minute intervals. The ships landed and took off with perfect precision. Eventually, the roars had faded into the background like the stench of lead, garbage, sulfur, and fuel. When she’d first left Myndalia, she’d found the relative silence and the huge open spaces on Nova terrifying. She’d downloaded engine rumbles to her newly fitted Pathos to help lull her to sleep.
Eris must have looked down on the Snarl, through breaks in the clouds, and thanked her stars she’d never had to live among the scum like Clo. Clo had told Eris where she’d grown up, late on those booze-soaked nights. It wasn’t until much later that Clo realized Eris had barely shared anything in return. That she’d said just enough about training and military to fool Clo into thinking she’d been a soldier.
A spacecraft flew low over their heads, the sound drowning out all thought. From above, they wouldn’t be seen. They would time their entrance with a big Tholosian carrier crawling with hundreds, thousands of soldiers and passengers.
Clo’s Pathos read the details of the spaceship—an Empusa V-900, nice—and fed it into their forged paperwork. The resistance had updated the Pathos since her last mission. Whoever designed their tech was brilliant. A Publican and a mechanic could now pretend to be on the passenger list.
“Hurry,” Eris said. “Let’s make this one.”
“Another one will come in less than ten minutes,” Clo grumbled, but Eris had already taken off, her steps quick and sure despite the slick sludge.
Clo forced herself into a run. Every step hurt. Some was the prosthetic, but mostly it was that ghostly feeling of a crushed leg, long gone, burned and scattered along the soil of Sennett. She placed her feet as carefully as she could. One wrong slip and her prosthetic could disappear down a bog, then Eris would have to carry her back to the craft, mission failed before it even began. And it’d be her own damn fault for lying to Kyla and Sher and downplaying the pain.
At hangar IV, they stomped the worst of the mud from their boots and crept around the back. They timed it perfectly. Floods of people from the Empusa streamed out, waiting for smaller craft to take them either to other planets or up to the floating palaces or resorts.
Clo had worked freelance jobs in these hangars when she was young. She’d hated being employed by the Empire—even briefly—but morality never entered into the choice between eating or starving. Her meals as a child had been meager as it was. No one would recognize her after being well fed for years. Her formerly thin arms were thick with muscle.
No one could call her scrawny. No one could call her weak.
Eris adjusted her uniform, tightened her ponytail of long, dark curls. Clo felt drab in comparison but comforted by that. All eyes would be on Eris.
They approached hangar IV as if they had every right to be there. Eris strode with her chin up, shoulders back, her movements stiff and officious.
The guards watched their approach. Eris sent their false paperwork ahead, and the guards checked their tablets.
“An inspection?” the guard on the left asked.
“Yes, to ensure all is in working order for the might of Tholos,” Eris said.
The accent Eris put on was completely different. It was clipped and flat, abrasive.
The guards’ lips thinned. They both wore black jumpsuits similar to Eris’s, but their buttons and threads of blue ranked them as military guards. Their dark hair was cropped close to their heads, their beards short and tidy. Bred for service since before their birth. Loyalty further unshaken by the threads of the Oracle commands woven into their minds. The Oracle tamped down their fear—as well as most other emotions—and made their patriotism unwavering. Guards always gave Clo the creeps.
Eris’s chin stayed raised, her gaze imperious. The guards’ stances didn’t change, and their fingers strayed close to their Mors, their hands steady.
“An inspection for certain ships or the entire hangar, Publican?” one of them asked, his tone respectful.
“Every craft landed in the past three days. It’s just a routine look at the engines and cargo.”
Clo had forgotten just how good Eris was at deception. Her accent, her expression, the way she held herself, all transformed with the role she was playing. Everything about her—from her boots to the top of her head—demanded deference.
The guard glanced back int
o the hangar. “We’ve got fifteen new craft. Where would you like to start?”
Eris slid her finger down the surface of the tablet to draw up the list. “Zelus just arrived for refueling half an hour ago, no? We’ll start there and work our way through.” She let out a breath that shuddered with exhaustion. “We have to check six hangars before nightfall, then we’re off to three other planets to do the same thing by next week.”
Damn, she was good.
The guards softened, just slightly. They knew grueling schedules, long shifts. “All seems to be in order,” the one on the right said. They moved aside, and the doors embossed with the Tholosian scythes opened for Clo and Eris.
Not for the first time, Clo was struck by just how vital that intel was to the Novantae. Clo had yet to be on a mission where she’d interacted with many high-up officials. She’d only met another member of the royal family once, by accident, and it hadn’t ended well. Eris had detailed, insider knowledge about so many aspects of the Empire. No wonder Sher and Kyla had insisted on keeping the Archon’s only Heir alive when she defected.
They made their way through the empty space toward the hulking craft at the far side of the hangar. Their footsteps echoed against the metal floor.
They reached the ships. These were smaller than the vast transport crafts that usually passed through. Clo’s attention was drawn to the stark, unmarked craft. It was all sharp angles, the front built like the point of a knife.
So, this was an S model? She hadn’t seen anything like it. By gods, it was beautiful. If they weren’t on a mission where she was meant to be a stiff, upright Tholosian, she might have whistled in admiration. Their target could slice through the atmosphere like a blade through skin. Clo itched to get her fingers around the controls of Zelus, to have a look at how it all worked.