by Maura Milan
Of course, it was shielded.
He pressed on his display, enlarging the image so he could get a better look at the setup. It was very similar to the ones he’d seen on Aphelion and on other Star Force bases. But then his eyes widened as they locked on the logo etched on the body of the charger unit. Sino Corp.
Mif.
Sino Corp contracted most of their military tech exclusively to the Olympus Commonwealth. How on Ancient Earth did the enemy get hold of this?
There was no time to dwell on this revelation. If they were Sino Corp force fields, at least he had an idea how to disarm them.
His gaze flew through the top of the Kaiken’s glass cockpit.
“Track all enemy ships,” he ordered.
Square red lights flew across the heads-up display that ran over the glass, each one centering on each enemy ship within his field of view. Most of them were still following the Wakizashi with the black fists.
He glanced at Captain Nema’s display screen, hovering in his periphery.
“Captain,” he said. “I think I have an idea.”
“Great, because I really would like these jets off my ass,” he replied.
“Lead them to the deck entryway in the upper quadrant. If our weapons can’t affect them, then hopefully theirs will.”
“Risky,” he said. “But I like it.”
Nema’s jet swooped back in his direction, a line of enemy vessels following in his wake.
If those enemy jets were going to keep attacking, this plan would make them fire where the damage would hurt them the most.
Nema flew closer and closer to the entryway, weaving away from any blasts that came his direction. Knives focused on the force field across the entryway. If those force field chargers were programmed anything like the one on Star Forces bases, they would require a data signature from each of their own jets.
“Come on. Come on,” Knives whispered, tracking Nema’s trajectory toward the entryway.
At the last second, Nema pulled up, leaving the enemy jets behind him heading straight to their own battleship. The force field chargers, reading the approaching vessels’ data signatures, powered down, leaving the entrance wide open. With no time to decelerate, the first enemy jet crashed right through to the back end of the flight deck. Followed by another jet, and then another.
Nema’s hoots filled the small space of the Kaiken’s cockpit. “Kid, I can’t believe that worked!” he screamed.
Nema relayed his orders to the rest of the existing squadron, and soon all of them were on their way to attack the weak spot created by the collision.
Knives was flying to join them when he spotted a different ship in his periphery, a unique cross-shaped vessel, departing from a separate exit.
It didn’t look like the attacking battle jets, but there was something dangerous about its presence. The entire RSF fleet was focused in one place, clearing a very convenient path for this jet to pass without detection. But Knives had seen it. And it was heading straight for the wormhole. There was something Ia had said to him earlier. Just a diversion. That explosion at the entryway was a good way to mask this mystery jet’s convenient departure.
“All battle jets to my coordinates,” Nema ordered.
Knives had to make a choice. If he didn’t follow orders, he’d be court-martialed for insubordination. His father had always taught him that only a coward would leave a fight. But there was something about that jet that raised concern. He set a targeting display to lock onto the cross ship. The image magnified. Knives scanned the whole vessel, its panels and construction broad like a shield yet sharp and dangerous. Finally, his eyes found the cockpit windows and the pilot sitting inside. Knives would never forget his face. The same one that stared back at him as he cut Bastian’s throat.
Einn.
Instead of joining the rest of the RSF squadron in formation below, the Kaiken ascended, its engines still off to escape detection.
As Knives followed Einn’s jet through the wormhole, he took a glance at his rear cameras, watching the rest of his squadron fighting for their lives. Perhaps it would turn out like that Kinna Downton stream after all, and victory would soon be theirs.
But then, without warning, the wormhole that joined that side of the All Black with their own shrank smaller and smaller, until there was nothing left behind him but the skies of Rigel Kentaurus.
Knives switched his rear view off and willed himself to focus on the path before him. But even then, it was a struggle.
His squadron was gone.
His throat tightened as his thoughts flew back to the battle, the bravest flyers soaring valiantly through those blackened skies. He was the only one left to remember it.
CHAPTER 17
IA
IA PUNCHED THE BUTTON at the center of her chest, feeling a jolt as the fans of the windpack worked to keep her aloft. She hovered downward, planting her feet steadily on the domed glass roof of Nauticanne’s Astronautical Museum.
In the distance, maybe thirty or so city blocks away, the downed battleship lay burning, its frame so large it had crushed the buildings in its path. Even as she rushed to the edge of the roof, skyscrapers crumbled, and the skyline of the city burned to cinder.
Peering through the glass, she saw that the lobby below was already empty. The glass roof showed signs of cracks from the falling debris, and with each step she took, the fissures only deepened. Making sure to keep steady footing, she scanned the crowd spilling out onto the street below.
She lowered her eyelids just enough to set the modification in her left eye to magnification mode. She studied the mass of people before her, searching for a glimpse of Brinn’s navy-blue hair. But even with her vision enhancement, she couldn’t find her friend.
She banged her fist lightly against her thigh in decision. Activating the windpack around her shoulders, she swooped down into the middle of the chaos, swallowed by the mess of people running this way and that. She zigzagged through the crowds, trying to find someone, anyone that she would know. But there were no academy uniforms, not even a flash of the Star Force quartered shield among the sea of people.
She was about to scream out in frustration when she saw a familiar blond ponytail swishing in panic through the crisscross of bodies.
“Angie,” Ia yelled, sliding her helmet back off her head.
Angie Everett spun on her heel, her ponytail whipping around her. When their eyes met, she stuttered. “Ia…”
Ia pushed toward her. “Are you okay?”
And despite the uncontrollable tremble that had overtaken her lips, Angie managed a nod. Ia checked her face for any injuries. Her forehead was drenched in sweat and smeared with fallen ash from the remaining Nauticanne battleships ablaze in the sky, but she appeared to be in one piece.
“Do you know where Brinn is?” Ia asked.
Angie pointed down a narrow alley, one meant for service trucks. “I saw her head through there. With Liam.”
Ia had gotten the answer she was looking for, but she didn’t run. Any other time, Ia would have left Angie to search for shelter to ride things out. But with the city burning, there was no place safe. Ia looked back at her, considering her options. Angie had cadet training, and Ia could use someone to watch her back. “Do you know the layout of this city?”
“I’ve been living here for a month now.”
“Good. Then you’re coming with me. We’ll find Brinn together,” Ia said, and she took off into the alley. She heard Angie follow her.
Ia’s feet pounded on the smooth pavement, skirting around the large cylindrical trash bins that lined the alleyway.
Then the pavement underneath her feet rumbled as a sleek battle jet passed overhead. The length of its wings, along with its upper and lower aero fins, came together at just the right angles. Like a cross. It was one that she recognized immediately. Shepherd.
She needed to find Brinn. Fast.
Einn was coming.
CHAPTER 18
BRINN
RACING THROUGH the city’s back alleys, Brinn and Liam finally came to a stop, facing a ladder that led up the side of a tall building. With her head tilted back as far as it could, her eyes trailed up the wall to the roof’s ledge, a razor-straight line slashing against the sky.
“We gotta get to some high ground,” Liam said.
But Brinn was already numb. She couldn’t even process the words coming out of his mouth, and the fiery scene frescoed across the sky. It was like she was stuck in a nightmare, and there was no way to pull herself out. So why try. Why even care.
The wormhole had closed a few minutes ago, but it still felt as if the universe had changed, as if it no longer belonged to them. And what was left were questions and disorder and an empty, fearsome shadow that people would need to fill with someone to blame. The Commonwealth would of course blame the refugees. They would blame her.
The air around her was thick with ash and debris from the nearby fallen skyscrapers. It was so hard to breathe that she was gasping. Not just for air, but for something. She was at a dead end. All she could do was look up. And climb. With each rung, she felt as if she was grasping for something, but she didn’t know what.
“We’re almost at the top,” Liam called down to her from a few rungs up. “Our people will be able to find us from there.”
But did she want them to?
She had spent years creating excuses for this Commonwealth. Defending these people. Fighting for them. And they had taken her brother from her. Soon, she was certain, they would take away her home. Brinn shook her head, trying to focus.
Above her, Liam cleared the ledge of the roof. He reached down to help her. She grabbed his hand, his fingers strong and callused, and hauled herself onto the rooftop. Where she expected to see the city’s fractured skyline, she saw something else.
They weren’t alone.
A ship the shape of a cross was lowering itself onto the rooftop, its bottom fin folding in as it landed. She scanned the surface for the Commonwealth quartered shield, but there was none.
“That’s not a Star Force ship,” Brinn said.
Liam raised his hands. “Don’t worry. It’s a friend.”
A friend? She stopped in her place, her eyes frozen on the foreign vessel.
The ramp of the ship hissed, and the entryway lowered from its center. A tall, lean figure dressed in a black flight suit walked out. A pair of recognizable white hearts had been engraved into his chest piece, and he wore a helmet with two sharp points on opposite sides of the crest.
Horns.
A spike of fear brushed against her skin. Brinn found herself inching backward. She shouldn’t be here.
The figure tapped two of his fingers against a button at his temple, and his helmet retracted, revealing dark-gray eyes, golden skin, and gaunt cheekbones. His searing expression was one that she recognized and feared at the same time.
Because she had seen it before. On someone else’s face. “It’s you,” Brinn whispered.
An unsettling calm lay in the depths of Einn’s eyes, like one that lay in the midst of a hurricane. And she knew at any moment the winds would rip her up.
Einn tilted his chin down, his gaze steady on hers. “And so we finally meet.”
She turned to Liam. “We have to get out of here.” She pivoted to the ladder at the ledge, but Liam held her back.
“Just listen to what he has to say,” Liam insisted.
Her eyes searched his. Realization sank like lava to her core. “You’re on his side? How? When?”
“Since the slaver attack—”
But she didn’t give him much time to explain. She already knew who was to blame. She glared over in Einn’s direction. “You brainwashed him, didn’t you?”
Einn shook his head. “He was the one who found me.”
Her jaw fell open. Liam was searching for Einn? Her eyes narrowed back into focus as she twisted her wrist like Ia had taught her and broke free of Liam’s grasp. She stepped away from him.
He laid his hands in front of him, trying to close the gap between them.
“The Commonwealth isn’t what we believed it to be. They fed us lie after lie to get us to do their dirty work. And what do we have to show for it? My brothers. My father. Cammo, whom they’ve failed to honor. Nothing but dead and broken bodies.”
The lines of his face grew sharp with anger, rippling past the calm that he usually wore when he was around her. That facade wasn’t just for her, she realized. It was for the academy.
“Why fight for people who don’t even value us,” Liam continued. “He gets it, Brinn. He gets us.”
“But he’s a killer, Liam.” Her voice strained, trying to get an edge in this entire conversation. Ia had told her about the Tawnies her brother had killed, the same group of people she had been trying to save when the Star Force captured her.
“I am,” Einn interrupted. She turned to him, horrified that he’d admitted it. He angled his head as he continued. “But so is my sister. Yet you trust her with your life.”
Her memories tore into mind. Yes, she’d been scared of Ia when she first met her. Yes, Ia had killed hundreds of thousands of Citizens during the Uranium War. But she had saved Brinn and the entire academy when they had no one else to turn to. Then why do I still have my guard up most of the times we talk? Like we’re actually fighting every time we’re training?
She had been closing herself off from Ia, keeping away her most vulnerable doubts and fears while staying strong in front of her.
Would she have told Ia about Faren’s death? If she had, would Ia even have cared?
Her heart cracked at the question.
Brinn couldn’t push away the flicker of doubt that ran across her face. And she knew that Einn saw it, because he smiled.
He took two even steps toward her.
Immediately, just like Ia had drilled into her, Brinn lowered herself into the warrior’s stance, her knees bent, one arm at an angle in front of her, keeping distance between the two of them.
He leaned on his right leg, observing her. “So, she’s teaching you.”
A second later, his flat palm rushed for her sternum, and Brinn pivoted, pushing his arm off-center. She didn’t see his free hand coming. It struck her in the ribs, sending her stumbling to the side. She circled around, her fists flying toward him, exact and precise as Ia taught her, but no matter what she did, he was always several steps ahead of her. He was too fast, his other hand slicing at her neck. But before his attack could connect, he stopped.
He backed off. Calmly. The way he moved. The way he breathed and spoke. Like water when it was still.
“I’m not here to fight you,” he said. He offered his hand to her. “I’m here to ask you for help.”
This was a trick. Her eyes scanned his face, examining every line and angle for any hint of deception.
“Why would I ever help you?”
He didn’t even have to think of his answer. “Because I see you, Brinn Tarver. I know how important you are. With your intelligence, you can create anything you desire. You can change the world as we know it.” He walked her to the edge of the roof, so that they were looking down upon an open square in the middle of the city, filled with people running in all directions, veering away from falling columns and burning trees. He pointed at them. “All of them down there. They are insects for not understanding how important you are. You deserve more, Brinn. The question is…Is that what you want?”
The air around her stilled. What he said wasn’t about the Commonwealth. Nor was it about getting revenge. It was about her finally taking control. She had been fighting against her past, her own skills and intellect, all so she could belong. But it had been for nothing. Now she could make a different choice.
To fight for herself.
Liam stepped in line, right next to Einn. Dark shadows lay heavy underneath his eyes, but the green in his irises was stoked with fiery new embers, glowing copper waiting to ignite.
“After everything that happ
ened, I realized I was on the wrong side of this whole thing. But I think I always knew that. Somehow, I think you do, too.”
Her eyes gazed at the sun. Its golden surface shone through the smoky haze. She stared right at it, letting the light sear into her vision. It was so bright and blinding that once she looked down again, her entire world was streaked with white. But through the bright haze, she saw something.
A shadow.
“I have more to offer you,” Einn said. “More than the Commonwealth. More than my sister. Don’t forget I was the one who taught Ia everything.”
“Yeah, but you never taught me this,” a voice called out. When Einn turned, Ia was before him, kicking him right in the groin.
CHAPTER 19
IA
EINN WAS ONLY DOWN for a second, his exo-armor absorbing most of the impact.
Ia looked to Brinn. “Tarver, get out of here,” she ordered.
If Brinn got to the ground, Angie would find her and tell her where to go. They had planned a safe meeting point if they ever got separated.
Einn barreled toward Ia, his arms circling her body, squeezing so hard that her feet kicked off the ground.
She forced her elbows back, trying to get enough space between their bodies to twist away from him. But his armor wasn’t helping her gain even a centimeter, while she was dressed in a polyaeriate flight suit, with barely enough padding to absorb any attacks that came her way. The windpack around her chest was giving her some protection, but even the metal frame was starting to crack.
Ia took a deep breath and jerked her head back, the thick of her skull colliding right into the fragile bridge of Einn’s nose.
He dropped her, and she rolled back up, facing him. Glaring at her, he gripped his nose and spit out the blood that had collected in his mouth.
“I know why you’re doing this, Einn,” she said. “You’re trying to find Dad, aren’t you? You want to kill him.”
Einn smiled without answering.
He was wounded, but she had to stay on guard. She kept her gaze trained on him and switched her fighting stance, squaring her shoulders and leaning on her back leg. He was too strong to take on in close quarters.