Seven Devils

by Laura Lam

  Hard left. Another right. Past the tenements of families she once knew.

  Focus.

  She gasped with relief when she spotted the guard once more. He wasn’t moving fast, having to push against the masses. Maybe he’d come through there a few times—passed into no-man’s-land on the sly to buy his lunch from one of the many joints that served cheap food you ate at your own risk.

  But this was not his world. It was hers.

  The Snarl was a law unto itself. Tholosian guards were always nearby, if needed, but they didn’t patrol the perimeter. Why bother? Outside the precious buildings was only dead swamp as far as the eye could see. Farms were guarded, as were transport centers, but otherwise, the Snarl was left to fend for itself. Residents formed a loose police force, run on bribes, and they had their own harsh sense of justice. It wasn’t as riddled with crime as someone might expect. Only nearly so.

  Someone screamed at her for treading on their toe. Clo threw a halfhearted apology over her shoulder. She could feel the language of the Snarl returning to her, twanging her vowels and dropping consonants. It’d taken so long to train herself out of it so she wouldn’t betray where she came from every time she opened her mouth.

  “Empire scum!” someone was bold enough to yell at Clo, noticing the patch on her jumpsuit.

  People would remember seeing her, if authorities bothered to interview residents here after all of this. Not good.

  You can’t worry about that. Keep running.

  One of the laundries emitted a plume of near-scalding steam. She fought her way through it, coughing. When it cleared, the guard had disappeared.

  “Silt.” Where would he have gone?

  She was already nearing the distant side of the slums, not too far from the hidden craft that could take them back to the stars.

  She paused for a precious second, imagining the various routes through the cramped buildings. The ground level there was tight, but a few floors up, it was usually lighter foot traffic. The guard must be making for the northeast exit—it was near the driest road, not far from another transport station.

  The stairwell was fifty feet away and just as packed at the ground level. She didn’t have room for a running jump, so she grabbed the nearest drainpipe and scrambled up. It meant attracting more attention than she’d like, but this was also far from the first time she’d done this. She’d climbed these condemned buildings every day in her youth. She’d just done it with two working legs.

  Clo shimmied up to the second level and grabbed one of the rope bridges, waiting for one person to pass before jumping over. Her breath came hard. Despite regular training, her shoulder muscles screamed. She ignored the pain in her leg and started across the rope bridge. Some of the threading was badly frayed, wood partially rotted. The whole structure creaked.

  “Please hold,” she said aloud. If it broke, she’d fracture bones. If she was lucky.

  On the other side, she jumped onto cracked concrete, grunting. A man peeling potatoes glanced up briefly, then went back to his work. A rat skittered across the damp floor. She jumped over it, jogging through the quieter corridor. She checked the ground out of every window, and out of the fourth she spotted their guard.

  “Gods of Avern, thank you,” she breathed. She’d guessed right; he was definitely making for the northeast exit.

  She met him there.

  As he passed the gate, Clo grabbed him, clamping her hand over his mouth and dragging him out into the swamp mud. A few people saw her but turned away. A tussle between two people in Empire threads—who’d want to be involved in that mire?

  Clo jabbed her fingertips into his kidneys. Wham! She clocked him on the temple. He stumbled back, dazed. Wham! She slammed her fist into his face again. He went down.

  Yes, she thought as she took some cables out of her tool belt. She tied his hands and feet, ripped the collar off of her mechanic’s uniform and stuffed it in his mouth.

  “Yer lucky I’m the one what caught you. My partner would have shot ye in the head,” Clo said to him.

  She left him in the mud. He’d be found eventually, just like the other guard.

  Clo headed back through the Snarl toward the hangar. she thought at Eris.

  Still no response.

  Clo limped through her old home. It was both the same and entirely different. Here was the market where Nan Mel would look the other way when Clo filched some dried lentils. A few streets along was the mech market. Clo slowed, tempted to duck down and see what treasure was hidden among the dross.

  Eris said. Finally.

 

 

  Clo sprinted in the direction of where they’d landed. She was already tired from running through the Snarl—her leg ached something fierce—but she kept going. She might hate the princess, but she had a job to finish.

  A mental sigh.

  Her mind whirred through the options. Eris could be held hostage. Arrested.

  A pause.

  10.

  CLO

  Present day

  Clo strapped herself into the bullet craft and loaded the launch sequences. She had about fifteen minutes to get back to the ship—if she was lucky—then another eight to dock and sprint her ass to the command center. Zelus would be long gone by then, gunning it into hyperdrive and slipping through space thousands of miles away. She’d have to track it with the tracer Eris took with her.

  I should just leave her there.

  Clo winced at the thought. Sometimes, she’d had to work with marshbrains. But one thing they believed in was loyalty, and when she was on a mission, Clo had never abandoned someone who needed her, even if that person went against everything she believed in. And she’d promised Sher and Kyla not to kill Eris. Letting her die was basically the same thing.

  “Damn,” she muttered as the bullet ship blasted up from the swampy ground. Clo took one last glance over her shoulder at the slums that had forged her, then kept her eyes on the stars. “I cannae believe I’m doing this.”

  She was actually going to have to save that spoiled princess.

  she said to Eris through her Pathos as the bullet ship docked on Asteria. It should still be within range, but if the ship jumped, they’d be cut off.

  The princess sounded skeptical.

  Clo’s stomach roiled with guilt, not wanting to admit how close she’d come to doing just that.

  As soon as the airlock closed, Clo jumped out of the craft. Her skin broke out in a sheen of sweat, but she swallowed down the nausea and raced to the bridge.

  She switched on the cloaking tech and hit the launch sequence. The tracer on Zelus indicated it was at least three jumps away—doable, but she was going to have to push this baby to its limits. Asteria shot off, then slipped into hyperdrive with beautiful ease. When she finished the third jump, Zelus was back within range.

  Eris’s thought sounded almost like a sigh, as if she had been calling Clo’s name and had come close to giving up.

 

  One jump down. Two to go.

 

 

  Two jumps. The ship shuddered around her, the metal groaning. Clo’s hands tightened around the throttle.

 

  No response. She followed the chaser,
blipping through hyperdrive again. Too many jumps left Clo nauseated. Only so many times you can dissolve and put your molecules back together before it took a toll.

 

 

  If Eris was killed, Clo would fail her mission. But if Eris was captured, the resistance was sunk. Eris might be hard as coffin nails, but everyone cracked under Tholosian torture. Everyone.

  Clo couldn’t lose concentration. Already, the ship shook all around her, losing its momentum.

  Zelus blinked out. Why was the ship doing so many little jumps? It was almost like it was trying to cover its tracks. Who the flark was flying that thing?

  The hyperdrive blinked a red warning light.

  Come on, sweet, she coaxed the ship as it prepared to jump again. Come on. Remember how you saved me all those years ago? Just one more time. One more time.

  The ship jumped.

  It came through with a shuddering, deafening groan, but it coasted into space right in clear view of Zelus.

  “Yes!” Clo pumped her fist in the air. “That’s my sweet,” she patted the ship’s dash. “That’s my girl.”

  she told Eris.

  Eris was curt, but Clo could sense the princess’s relief.

  Zelus was in range. Clo blasted it with an electromagnetic surge. The ship slowed but didn’t stop. She strengthened the shield, waiting for a return blast. Nothing. That was unusual. The pilot should have put Zelus’s shields up, hit her back with all it had. Zelus coasted like no one was at the helm anymore.

  A thought jarred her. Eris said she’d heard Morsfire; maybe the pilot was dead.

  came Eris’s voice.

  Clo thought back.

 

  Clo blasted the ship again. In the black, peaceful quiet of space, Zelus went dark, and the engines stopped running. It moved through the stars on inertia alone.

  If Zelus had a backup generator, it would switch on after a long-enough period of inactivity. She had to get Eris off the ship before it did.

  A dark hole appeared on the side of the ship as the hatch opened. Smoothly, Clo guided Asteria to the loading bay. Her own ship had ceased its shuddering, but it wasn’t in great shape and the electromagnetic blasts only worked for so long. Once the backups went live, the pilot could put the ship into hyperdrive—if they weren’t dead—and they’d be dragged along with them. Asteria was in no condition for a dashing escape. Clo didn’t even think it would make it back to Nova. They’d be stuck.

  One problem at a time, Clo thought.

  The ship connected, and the oxygen stabilized. Clo grabbed a few weapons—a Mors, a few blades, and Eris’s ridiculous antique—and hurried down Asteria’s ramp.

  The loading bay was quiet. On any ship this size, there would normally be officers performing the excruciatingly dull task of making sure that any area of the ship that could be docked was under constant watch. Piracy was rare since the Oracle’s search mechanisms were perfected, but Clo had expected someone to be there.

  No one. Not even Eris.

  Clo held up her Mors and edged through the metal containers. She didn’t relish the thought of killing, and hadn’t pulled a weapon on anyone since that disastrous mission with Eris. Being planetside after losing her leg, she’d started to wonder if she’d gone soft. The idea of shooting someone had never sat well with her. She wasn’t like Eris. Clo had heard the stories, seen the shrouded bodies carried out of the ships Eris commandeered and brought back. Someone else cleaned up the blood before Clo got her hands on the engines.

  Eris must have used the last of the power supply in this sector to open the loading bay and close it after her. The interior door remained firmly shut. Clo was forced to return to the ship, grab a powered wedge, and pry it open until she could wiggle through.

  The corridors looked so familiar, just like all the other stolen ships she’d seen at Nova. The workers at headquarters spent long hours removing the ornate frescoes of Tholosian conquests and replacing them with scenes of freedom. Clo’s gaze caught on a mosaic of a soldier holding aloft the head of a conquered alien, its decapitated body sprawled beneath. She didn’t recognize the species—gray and fearsome, with tentacles sprouting from their heads and the backs of their arms. A gorgon like the ancient myths, now permanently destroyed by greed for a fertile planet. Clo turned from the scene of death to pass so many others.

  She rounded another corner and froze. Oh.

  Five guards dead on the ground, each with a single shot to the head. A laser-burned bullet hole of a third eye. Whoever had done this had been quick, skilled. These soldiers hadn’t even reached for their own weapons. Eris? Or someone else?

  “Clo.” A whispered breath of a voice made her look up. Eris. The princess barely glanced at the guards. “You all right?”

  Clo gave a jerky nod and passed Eris her gun and holster. “Did you find anything?”

  “You mean aside from the dozens of corpses littering the hallways?” At Clo’s hesitation, Eris’s gaze hardened. “These aren’t my deaths.”

  Clo’s pulse sped. “Then whose are they?”

  “I don’t know yet. I think someone is commandeering the ship.”

  “Commandeering the—are you fluming kidding me?”

  “Wish I were.” Eris buckled the holster around her waist and gestured with her fingers. “Come with me. You need to see this.”

  11.

  ERIS

  Present day

  Eris led Clo down the hallway, their footsteps quiet on the rubber floors. She knew what they were risking, staying aboard like this, but Eris was never one to give up easily. Kyla trusted her with ITI missions for one reason: because if she ever got caught, Eris had been trained never to give up her secrets. She’d die first—she’d kill first. Without hesitation.

  Yet Clo wouldn’t be able to withstand the torturers. Did she know what she might face?

  “We should leave,” Clo said. “You don’t even know who murdered those guards out there, and the backup generator is going to turn on soon. We need to be on our ship.”

  “I know that.” Eris’s impatience sharpened her voice to a knife.

  “Didn’t you take images of the cargo?”

  “There was no chance.”

  They passed another guard slumped on the floor. Three shots to the torso, one to the head. Military style.

  Eris used to kill like that—back when her father forced her to play executioner. Clean, simple, no fuss. The Mors left barely any blood. It was so easy to forget the dead when they didn’t bleed. When she switched to her old RX blaster or her little wicked blade, it forced her to acknowledge them, take responsibility for her sacrifices.

  Eris stepped over the next body. Clo flinched at the pool of blood on the floor. Eris took in the way a small blade had ripped through the gap in his uniform just above his neck. How he lay on his stomach, head to one side, with his fingers curled up as if in supplication. But he had been granted no mercy; his face was a mass of blood, torn flesh, and flecks of broken bone.

  “One of yours, I take it,” Clo said, tightly.

  “One of mine,” Eris confirmed, gripping her necklace.

  “Doesn’t it ever affect you?” Clo made a sound in her throat.

  Eris couldn’t let it. She couldn’t. When the God of Death chose his favorites, he expected them to deliver. Even though she had fled her life, her destiny, she could only deny him so long. Sher and Kyla never understood. Clo definitely did not. Killing had been bred into Eris. She’d murdered her f
irst few siblings on the planet they’d just fled, and she’d only grown better at granting death since.

  “I pray over them,” Eris replied. “I always give them last rites. That’s all I can do.”

  Eris hadn’t had time to pray or hide the body before she’d heard the sizzle of Morsfire. She slid her fingertips across the scythe around her neck and thought the quiet prayer she’d whispered over him, over all of her victims.

  Sleep, and may the God of Death take you in His embrace, and guide you to the seven levels of Avern . . .

  Clo’s mouth formed the words of the prayer silently, even though they both know she believed in nothing but the blackness of the abyss.

  The echoing trill of another Morshot interrupted last rites. Another, closer. Firing on a ship was dangerous. Usually, the blasts weren’t strong enough to pierce the hold, and the shields would seal any punctures, but the ship was powered down. No shields.

  “That’s near the bridge,” Clo said.

  “Shh.” Eris paused, listening. “Surveillance is offline, and without it, they can’t figure out who hit them with a pulse. We’re fine for now.”

  “Fine?” Clo let out a low, short laugh and gestured to the dead soldier. “You’re sluiced. I should have left you here and told Kyla you died from your own stubbornness.”

  “Stop whining and walk. I’ll protect your delicate ass from danger.”

  Once, before Sennett, this would have been teasing banter between them, but anger and resentment bubbled beneath. She shouldn’t miss being able to tease someone. It’d been a year; the delicate friendship they’d had had ended with a lie, a knife, and blood.

  Eris strode down the hall, and Clo’s limping, uneven footsteps followed.

  “I don’t want to die because of you,” Clo muttered.

  “Clo. If anyone is going to kill you”—she jerked the door open—“it’s going to be me. Now get inside.”

  Eris shut the door behind them. Though just another storage hull, the Empire never spared details or expense in its design. How many times had she seen that depiction of the third Archon fearlessly conquering the planet Palatine? Palatine had been populated by aliens with long, sinuous rills that propelled their slight bodies through the air. The Empire had taken the planet, terraformed it for humans, and decorated the exterior of its buildings from the delicate bones of their victims. Like so many planets before, like so many planets after.