Eclipse the Skies

by Maura Milan

  She sat beside him on the edge of his cot and rubbed the weariness from her face. “It doesn’t matter if I’m ready or not.” She looked at Knives. “My brother wants to turn that gate on. That’s why he stole Bastian’s journals, and that’s why he was after Brinn. That gate is his endgame. You saw what happened on Fugue when Olympus opened it in the past.”

  Memories flooded toward him of his journey to Fugue. Torn metal. Destroyed planets. An entire star system—dead. All remnants of the GodsEye experiment that went wrong over a decade ago. The new gate that Einn was building was dangerous.

  “Why now?” Knives asked. “You’ve been running from this fight for so long. Why do you all of a sudden want to go after him?

  “Because,” she said as she picked the frayed thread at the seams of her pants, “I can’t stay here and do nothing anymore. Besides, I’m not the only one who’s been running.” Her eyes peered back at him, ripping through the invisible shield he had been constructing and fortifying every second of every day. “You never talk about the Star Force, and you never talk about the day that wormhole ripped open the skies of Calvinal.”

  For the past few years, his father had wanted him to take a high officer’s position in the Star Force. He wanted Knives to follow in his footsteps, to become a general, to be a leader of Olympus—but Knives refused it all.

  Because in a way, he was scared. He didn’t want to die in battle. He didn’t want to asphyxiate to death like his sister. He didn’t want to look death right in the miffing face. Wasn’t everyone scared to die? Wasn’t his father frightened those last moments of his life?

  Instead of answering her, Knives looked away, his fear so thick that it couldn’t be turned into words. Words could lessen its power. Words could make him understand, but maybe he didn’t quite want to. Not yet.

  Ia stood up and made her way to the door. He looked up at her figure silhouetted in the low light. And he felt it again. That same admiration he’d felt for his father before his dying moments. He felt it from looking at her. All because she was making a choice.

  Before she left, she looked over her shoulder.

  “General Adams…I hated that miffing bastard,” Ia said. “Except for today. This was the first day that I truly thought we were fighting on the same side.”

  A complicated pain rippled through Knives’s body, a wave of sadness, weakness, and denial. His muscles tensed to keep it all away.

  Ia’s voice slashed through his sinking thoughts. “But you, you’ve been by my side for more than that. It’s a shame your father won’t be able to see the things you’ll do.” Her eyes found his for just a second before he turned away.

  He should have been grateful for those words. It meant that she saw him, that she had pierced her way through that shield of his.

  When he looked up, she was gone. For a long time after she left, Knives stood in the empty hallway. He turned the same string of thoughts over and over in his head. His father had pushed so many of his own dreams onto his son, because what were your children if not a way to live forever, to continue making a mark in this sorry world?

  But Knives always had to ask himself, was that the mark he wanted to make?

  One day, he’d have to make that brave choice.

  CHAPTER 42

  BRINN

  WHEN SHE RETURNED to Penance, Brinn lived in her lab. Now she could get back to her real work. Even at her workstation, Brinn kept the pistol on her, fully charged and ready to shoot. She knew she wasn’t in any danger here in the laboratory. It served as a reminder of what she’d done.

  No matter what planet they hailed from, people were frail. All it took was one bullet to make them crumple like Lind did that day. Like Faren did the day he lost his life during the protest. It would have been through the head for him. Yes, they were Tawny, but they needed to think—for their brains to process—to actually heal.

  Brinn was the last person in the labs that night. She looked over her calculations, her fingers trembling as they typed, when she saw a shimmer. The world around it curved and concaved.

  She groaned. “When are you going to stop doing that?”

  “It’s kinda my thing,” Goner said, and he appeared sitting at the desk beside her. He nodded at her hands. “I saw that, by the way.”

  She curled her fingers into fists.

  “Still shaking from the kill, aren’t you?” He twirled around in his chair. “And I thought maybe you’d be worthy of being my new rival. The girl who shot the Queen.” He leaned forward to study the look on her face. “You have crossed a line that you may never be able to come back from.” He grinned. “Aren’t you proud?”

  It wasn’t a question she wanted to answer. She didn’t need to feel good or bad about what she did. All that mattered was that she was still here. That she could do what she wanted to do.

  “She spoke about peace like it was that easy…” Brinn said.

  Goner laughed. “But you never wanted peace. Why try to pretend?”

  She glared at him. He wanted her to give him a real answer. The true answer.

  “I would be without purpose if peace happened,” she said, turning back to add more scratchings in Bastian’s journal.

  “You wouldn’t be working on this,” Goner said, sweeping his arm around him. He chuckled. “We are selfish beings, aren’t we? Doing things for our own purpose of existence.”

  She tilted her head at him, latching on to the way he had used the word we as if they were alike. What was his purpose of existence? Being a massive mung?

  He scanned the contents of her table, and a twisted smile snaked across his face. “Is that the same pistol you used?”

  Brinn grabbed the weapon and slid it closer to her. She still had no idea what went on inside that thick skull of his.

  “You couldn’t kill me with that even if you tried,” he said. “My skin is thicker than any armor.”

  “And you couldn’t kill me,” she warned him. “I’m Tawny. I can heal.”

  He shrugged. “But you could decide not to if you wanted. I could slice your throat right now, and you could still decide whether or not to put your energy into healing yourself, into living. After all you’ve gone through, all you’ve suffered, why would you even choose to keep going?”

  She hated him because she knew what he was getting at.

  The blacks around his eyes narrowed as he studied her. “I see it. A sliver of something deep inside you. It’s bright and shiny and filled with hope.”

  “Stop it,” she screamed. She grabbed her pistol, cocked it, and fired.

  The bullet bounced off him, clinking to the floor like a broken toy. Smoke smoldered on Goner’s chest, and he burst out laughing. “I told you, you couldn’t kill me. But you killed a woman without armor. You killed a woman who hoped for peace. Do you know what all this means?”

  “This is a war we’re fighting, and we’re winning,” she said. That was what it meant.

  “No, it means the real ghosts are coming for you.”

  Brinn sneered at him. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” He smiled as he walked away.

  Brinn tried working after Goner left, but her mind kept running away from her, her fingers still shaking as she tightened the screws on a brand-new utility belt.

  She slammed her palms onto the table’s hard surface, and in a fit of anger, she swiped at everything within reach. Her tools, her models—it all went crashing to the floor.

  She couldn’t get her conversation with Goner out of her head, his words needling her about her purpose of existence. And what was his? She knew nothing about him. All he ever did was talk about how Ia was his rival or nemesis, or both? Brinn didn’t even know what the difference was.

  It was like all he ever thought about was—

  Suddenly, her mind cleared.

  She stood up. There was something she needed to know.

  Brinn found him on the flight deck, boarding one of the jets. Goner was dressed f
or a long journey, all of his armor fastened and his black cloak wrapped around his figure, the long hem fluttering around his ankles.

  “Are you finally leaving?” Brinn asked.

  “I’m on a mission,” he said. “Secret.”

  Which annoyed her more.

  He hauled his pack over his shoulder. “What do you want? To ask if we could be pen pals?”

  “She was your reason for existence,” she said.

  He stared at her, angling his head as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

  There was always something Brinn couldn’t decipher, a small patch of Goner kept dark. His riddles, the way he deflected her questions. They were all meant to confuse her. But she had finally caught on to him.

  Her gaze locked on his. “You didn’t kill Ia, did you?”

  Instead of making one of his witty cracks, Goner’s mouth set into a grim line as he walked up the ramp. When he was at the top, he turned to her.

  “Remember what I told you about ghosts…”

  And he backed into the shadows, his face a shock of white against the dark.

  CHAPTER 43

  IA

  THEY’D SPENT THE NIGHT before making a list of places to investigate. There were a few hubs in Dead Space where information brokers dwelled. Surely one of them would know where anyone who fit the description of the Half-Man was hiding. Ia packed food rations and a pair of pistols, the best weapons from Vetty’s arsenal.

  She smoothed out the fabric of her assist suit, testing each joint for any snags or broken circuits before she left. A malfunction would be a pain on a mission like this.

  After she was satisfied with the quality check, she looked up to see Eve standing beside her.

  “I think you’re missing something,” Eve said.

  She held up Ia’s helmet, the Blood Wolf’s feather etched across the front.

  “I already have one packed,” Ia said. It was a regular red helmet with no decals or symbols. Nothing flashy, but it would keep her alive if the environmental controls broke down while she traveled.

  After all the nightmares, all the visions that haunted her, she wasn’t eager to don her old helmet.

  Eve pushed it onto her anyway. “For when you need a spare then.”

  Ia took her first steps onto the flight deck in months. She had been avoiding this day, but every waking moment, she had been asking herself the same question. Would she still be able to fly?

  She stopped in front of Orca. After many months of being stashed away, a layer of dark space dust had accumulated on top of the original burnoff that had piled up from years of use. The color was different, but the silhouette was the same. Knives had offered to polish her, but Ia had refused, preferring her jet in its current state. It covered the red feather stamped on its belly and sides, and she’d be able to travel incognito. It would be safer that way, she told herself.

  Ia had never had a ladder installed on Orca. She used to be able to jump up the wing in one go and hop over to the cockpit opening. But today she pulled up a ladder to climb into her jet.

  She took it one rung at a time instead of two, not because she wasn’t strong enough, but because part of her was scared of sitting in that pilot seat. She needed the coordination to fly. She needed her precision to maneuver and quickness to evade.

  And she cursed herself for being too stubborn and proud to install a fancy onboard system that could help her do all the things she used to do with ease.

  Knives and Vetty were already onboard, finishing maintenance on the engine and thrusters.

  Once Ia was up, Vetty approached her. “She’s ready to fly.” He held up the keys. Ia clutched his hands in gratitude. The last time they were both here, she had cried. She had never done that in front of him before. Not the Blood Wolf. The Blood Wolf never cracked.

  It was when you were most vulnerable that you grew the most. She knew that now.

  He placed a hand on her shoulder as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “You’re always going to be the best pilot I know,” he said with a wink, in true Vetty fashion.

  “You know I hate it when you wink like that,” she said.

  He laughed. “I know.”

  And then he jumped off the wing.

  She made her way to the cockpit and eased her way inside where Knives was calibrating the navigation and onboard systems.

  The space was small. Two chairs at the front, one for the pilot and another for a passenger or crewmate if necessary.

  Knives glanced up from the screens. “I don’t know how you can fly in this thing.”

  “Hey, don’t insult my child,” she said with a smirk.

  When he saw her expression, his face lit up, and she knew why. It felt like old times…those precious moments when they first met.

  She had encountered many people in her few years as the Blood Wolf, as a cadet, as the most wanted criminal of the Olympus Commonwealth. First impressions were powerful, like threads whipping at the seeds of your memory, but she realized now that real friendships were made of a stronger type of cord. One that lasted. One that would never break.

  All these people were her friends. And this boy with the cold blue eyes, perhaps he was something else. But she couldn’t find out now. Time always bled away from her. There was never enough when you needed it.

  He stepped toward her. “Make sure you comm us if you run into any trouble.”

  “Me? Run into trouble? When has that ever happened?” she joked.

  “I’m serious,” he said.

  And then she looked up at him with a faint smile. “Thank you, Knives,” she said. “For everything.”

  He reached for his jacket that was slung across one of the chairs and handed it to her. “Take it.”

  She slipped her arms into the sleeves of the jacket. It smelled like him, of musk and oranges. It hit her then, an ache in her heart. It was time to say goodbye.

  “Knives, if I don’t make it…”

  She reached for him, so that the space between them was no longer empty. The back of her fingers grazed gently against the light stubble on his cheek. And she didn’t know what he would do, after all this time. Perhaps he would turn away.

  But then his eyes rested on hers, and she realized how much they’d changed. They were no longer full of ice, not when he looked at her now. No, in those eyes, she saw bright-blue skies, fields of cornflowers, and something else—a word she couldn’t quite place.

  He leaned in, and their lips met, a connection that was warm and safe. It was different from their first kiss. Desperate and passionate. This one had another feeling to it. Instantly, she knew what it was. That word. That mysterious and beautiful word…

  Knives rested his cheek on hers, his lips whispering into her ear. “We’ll see each other again.” And she nodded, holding him even closer.

  As they pulled away from each other and he lowered himself down to the deck, she studied his face, memorizing every detail from the scar on his chin to his unkempt blond hair and the careful blue of his eyes. Just in case.

  Settling into her pilot seat, she felt the cracks of the plastileather conform to her body. The engines were already on and warm, primed for flight. The console had only a few displays: a navigator unit to help her find her way, a sophisticated comms unit to latch on to oncoming signals and to scramble her own, a few engine modulators to help keep track of any irregularities in the engine environment, and gauges to monitor fuel and oxygen in reserve.

  Ia gripped a hand on her mid thrusters, and one on the curve of the steering wheel. Her stabilizers had long been disabled, so she felt the motion and strength of her jet a bit more. In the past, it was a good thing because her movements were more in tune, but with the condition her body was now in, her muscles began to tremble.

  With all her strength, she pulled upward, trying to maintain control of the motion and direction of her jet. She took a deep breath. Keep calm, she told herself. Keep steady.

  She glanced down and sighed in relief.


  At least she was up in the air. That was the hardest bit. Once she was past the atmos field, it’d be easier. There’d be no air resistance. If she didn’t run into any trouble, she’d be fine. No high-velocity chases, no sudden evasive maneuvers around asteroids that hurled her way.

  It was all going to be just fine.

  Deus, watch over me, she prayed. And she took off into the unknown.

  CHAPTER 44

  KNIVES

  KNIVES WOKE UP in the middle of the night and walked to the chapel. The temperature controls were once again on the fritz, so he pulled his RSF flight suit over his compression shorts and sleeveless tee to keep warm. He sat in the back pew. The statue of Deus stared back at him. It was the same look that Ia had had on her face when she left Myth. Poised. Determined.

  There were certain individuals who were of a totally different category. That was why people prayed to Deus. And that was why people rallied around Ia. As for Knives—well, he just wanted to exist as he was for as long as he could. At least that was what he thought he wanted.

  But now he was alone. His father was gone. So were Bastian and Marnie. And now, Ia. All the most amazing people he had ever met. And he paled in comparison to them. Hell, he even paled in comparison to Vetty. Runaway son of the wealthiest, most powerful corporation of Olympus and a far better flyer than Knives was.

  When he was gone, what would people think? Just a deserter with no goal, no mission. No friends, even.

  He sighed, his breath fogging before him. It was freezing. Knives rubbed his hands together, trying to generate heat, but when that didn’t work, he dug his hands into the side pockets of his flight suit. His eyebrows wrinkled as he felt something wedged at the bottom of one of them. Smooth and cool to the touch.

  He pulled it out.

  It was Bastian’s pen.

  He flipped the thin metal around in his hands. To Bastian, this was probably the most important thing in the world. A tool that represented his life all the way until the end.