by Maura Milan
In another life, she could take Ia’s hand and they could fly out of this place, leaving all of this behind. But she had already gone too far, waded too deep into the thick. There was no turning back, not from the things she’d done.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Brinn said. “Nothing does.”
The door opened behind them, and a voice drifted through. “My little sister, back from the grave.” It was Einn, his long frame running the length of the doorway.
“How was your birthday?” he asked. “I missed it.”
Ia sneered at him. “I wouldn’t know. I was in a coma.”
Brinn watched their exchange. His words were as smooth as ever, yet there was something different about Einn today. A new set of thoughts and emotions emanated off him. There was rage and anger, maybe even fear that his sister had come for him.
Perhaps the viciousness that Brinn had glimpsed would finally come out, and she didn’t think it wise to be there when it did.
She inched away, but before she could make it to the exit, Einn stopped her.
“Let’s show Ia what we’ve done.”
CHAPTER 57
IA
EINN MADE HER WALK in front of him so that he could keep an eye on her. Ia knew he was watching her, observing each move. She tried as hard as she could to seem “normal.” Like the Ia she was before the accident, whose body held an arsenal of modifications making her a stealthy and lethal weapon, and whose presence alone could invoke so much fear that her opponents chose to run away instead of fight.
“Is that a new suit?” Einn asked.
Ia didn’t say anything. But she knew what the question implied. That he was aware of her weaknesses. That the next time he tried to kill her, he would succeed, because when she dreamed, she saw his horned face coming for her.
“Interesting strategy showing up here like that. You were always so reckless,” he said. “Acting without thinking things through.”
She worried about the blades he surely had hidden and ready, but she kept her back straight and her shoulders squared. Her chin tilted high and proud. “Isn’t that what you taught me? The least obvious choice will create the most disorder.”
And she heard the falter in his footsteps. Perhaps it had been a while since he had encountered someone who knew his strategy, the patterns to his chaos. She wished she could see the look on his face right then, different from the face she met in her dream, that devil waiting to condemn her. In reality, he was just a man. Faulty. Flawed. Flesh.
And he was out of practice.
For so long, she had been the reckless one, as he had said, while he was the one to strategize, to plan. He made sure every move they made wreaked the most havoc possible. While she was the hand of it all. A destroyer. But she had learned from him, bit by bit, growing almost as clever.
Einn wanted the power that came with creating chaos and disorder, but her brother didn’t know its true nature. If he really wanted that, she would show him what it was like.
For now, she would wait. She would listen to him. And wait.
He paraded her through the crowds. Some looked at her curiously. A glimpse of the Blood Wolf was something few would want in their lifetime. It usually meant she was coming for them, and in moments, they’d be dead.
They entered an elevator connecting Nirvana to the massive arched structure. It was just the three of them. Brinn stood behind them, trying to seal herself into the shadows. And Einn stood by Ia’s side, as he had for most of her life.
She stared at the archways as the platform approached.
“Another universe awaits,” he said. “A bridge to the heavens.”
His words made her pause. Even Kami hadn’t referred to it that way. To her, the other universe was simply another realm. Not the heavens, not a place for the—
“You think you’re a god,” Ia whispered.
A smile rippled across his face, sharp and full of teeth. Hungry for chaos and destruction.
Not all gods were honorable. From the texts of Ancient Earth and the different mythologies she had heard from all the worlds she’d been to, she knew that the gods were as pitiful and cruel as everyone else. And they all had egos.
So, let him think he’s a god. Let him think he’s invincible.
That didn’t change why she was there.
She hadn’t come as the Blood Wolf. But as Ia. A girl who had a brother. A girl who would kill her brother.
When the elevator reached the top, its doors slid open to an empty laboratory. From behind, she heard a gasp. Brinn pushed past them and ran up to the observation deck, her eyes wide as she stared at the archways, the rings turning. A beast rising from its sleep.
“Penance.” Brinn’s face paled. “It’s on.”
CHAPTER 58
KNIVES
KNIVES SAT READY in his Kaiken. Behind him was a fleet of two hundred, separated into their own squadrons, the squad leaders lined up in the front alongside him as they waited before the Birra Gate, the interstellar gate that connected this system to the rest of the Commonwealth territories.
“Ça va, chien?” A voice came through his speakers, perfectly pronouncing the language’s nasal tinge, asking Knives how he was doing. He looked to the side where his holoscreens hovered and saw Vetty holding a fist up in solidarity.
“Ça va,” he replied automatically. The direct translation was It goes, a very simple way of saying that all was fine.
Knives rarely used the elite language, but he’d take any words of brotherhood before they crossed over. They would all go in as allies, but when they crossed, that was when they’d be tested. Sifted into fools or cowards. The fools would be the ones who rushed into the fight. And the cowards—they’d be the ones who’d survive.
Which one would he be in this fight?
If he died today, time wouldn’t stop. It would go and go and go. Everything would exist without him.
But if that bridge turned on…
Today, ça va wasn’t good enough. Knives couldn’t be just fine, just okay, just all right. He had to be more than he wanted for himself. He had to rise to the miffing occasion, just as the general had wanted.
But this time it was different.
Today, it was completely his choice.
A hiss crackled through the speakers as a new holoscreen popped up. It was Angie. She was back on Aphelion with Meneva and Eve.
“Sir, it’s Professor Patel for you.”
Meneva came onto the screen, her brows furrowed in complete concentration as she scanned the string of monitors on the side. For a brief second, her eyes whipped toward his. “We found Penance, right where you said it’d be. We just need Bastian to finish the rest,” she said. One of the things Knives had asked Bastian was if they could patch into Penance’s network, but even Knives knew from being on the GodsEye prototype that the whole thing was analog. Fortunately, with Meneva and Angie’s help, they’d figured out that there had been revisions to the new model. They had located Penance in the infinite, ever-expanding All Black, and now they had two doors. Penance, and the Birra Gate. They just needed a way to tie the two together.
“Bastian,” he said. “Can you rewrite the programming?”
Bastian’s voice came in from the speakers. “Affirmative. I’ve recalibrated Birra’s pathway to match the coordinates provided.”
And immediately, Knives could see it with his own eyes. The center of the gate first became awash with swirls of light before finally settling into a new view of a foreign swath of stars. And in the foreground was the same battle colony that had destroyed his own fleet only months ago. Their forces took down nearly every vessel that crossed into their territory.
The plan was to break the White Hearts’ defenses and board, then load Bastian into the Penance servers so that he could infiltrate the system’s code. Bastian would do what only he could do best. Unravel the knots. Undo everything that his work had done.
And then they’d be safe.
“If we fail, it’s over
. I hope you realize that.” Meneva’s voice sliced through to him, and he noticed the edge in it. It was very unlike Meneva to worry. Even she knew they had only one chance to get this right.
Outside, the gate was fully opened.
Fool or coward? It was time for Knives to make a choice.
The universe still needed its heroes. And what were heroes but just fools in disguise? He’d play the part of the heroic fool, but he wasn’t going to die. Not until he got the job done.
This time, instead of turning back, Knives charged forward with a full army behind him.
CHAPTER 59
BRINN
“HOW ARE THEY getting through?” Einn asked, his voice tight and strangled. But Brinn’s mind was elsewhere. Despite how much she tried to cut its cords, she was still tangled in the thought of her parents being alive. Einn had told her a different story entirely. Perhaps he was confused between one ashen corpse and the next, or maybe he hadn’t even bothered to look for them after all, which was worse, because that meant he had lied—
“Brinn!” Einn interrupted her thoughts.
Brinn glanced up from her command keyboard and fixed her sights on the observation windows, which showed a string of RSF starjets flying through the gate.
Penance had other functions beyond opening the bridge. It was how they created wormholes to Rigel K, Nova Grae, and other locations that Einn had targeted. As long as they knew the coordinates, the setup allowed immediate transport to any location within their universe, and it didn’t even require a receiving gate. That was the beauty of Penance. It did things that she thought existed only in the imagination. But she had never fathomed that Penance could act as a receiving gate itself.
Who was doing this? There was no one left in the Star Force who would be able to match her. She had made upgrades to the system to ensure that no one would be able to hack in. Her eyes scanned the code, pinpointing everything she didn’t recognize, digital fingerprints that weren’t her own. She worked on trying to close any holes that had been ripped open. Whoever had hacked in had left shrapnel in their wake, messy code that just gave her obstacles to clear. But one thing was for certain: the person who did this only had access to the in-universe jumps. It couldn’t shut anything down, nor could it reprogram this whole place to turn on itself, to self-destruct. And most of all, it wouldn’t have control of the bridge.
Whoever wanted in had to come for it.
CHAPTER 60
KNIVES
THERE WERE TOO MANY of them. Thousands, maybe. It was more than Knives expected. Their jets were the same ones he’d faced that day. Sleek, fast. Deadly.
It wasn’t long before they took out their weapons. It was like before. Lines of light traced through the enemy jets’ bodies, as if gathering a charge. Quick and relentless as a solar flare, they fired. The attacks were never-ending, raining down on his fleet.
In his periphery, Knives saw a few of their jets go down, clipped by the blasts.
Just moments in, and it seemed as if they had already lost.
Fortunately, he had experience fighting this fleet. He had noticed their movements during the attack on Rigel Kentaurus. He could see it as clearly as yesterday, those jets following Captain Nema to the force field like a swarm. Some of them were piloted—those were the erratic ones, the ones that veered from the path when they were faced with the moment of death. But most of them were automated, programmed as if they were running through a flight simulation.
And he knew all about those.
Maneuvering through a clearing in the enemy’s path, he saw Vetty’s Yari lower in next to him.
Before they set out, they had called a strategy meeting on Aphelion, discussing the best ways to confuse their enemy, going through many options before settling on the plan Knives suggested. They had to knock the first block down to get the other pieces moving, and Vetty was the hammer. Now was as good a time as any.
“You ready to lead them through the maze, Minotaur?” he asked.
“That’s what I live for,” Vetty replied. “You sure you’ll be okay?”
“I have to do my part.”
Vetty lowered his dimpled chin in a nod. “Don’t do anything too heroic.”
Knives let out a haughty laugh. “I’ll survive, and the first thing I’m going to do is head to the Harix Corridor to beat your time.”
Vetty had no words, but the grin plastered across his face was enough.
“All right, Bugs,” Vetty ordered. His holoscreen was being broadcast into every RSF jet on that battlefield. “You know the plan. Follow me.”
Knives raised a fist so it could be seen through the cockpit window. “See you on the other side, chien.”
Vetty pulled away, and the other jets fell in line behind him. Just as they had expected, the enemy jets followed. But Knives was headed in a different direction. Their squadrons were spread out thick like a cloud and provided enough cover for him to slip away without notice.
As he circled around, hovering near the outer archways of Penance, he watched Vetty, his Yari still the fastest starjet among them, lead their forces and the enemy back through the wormhole still open within the gate’s center. Once the last jet disappeared, the gate closed.
The enemy had taken the bait. The skies of AG-9 were well-defended. All of the mines and defense systems had been reactivated, giving his fleet a fighting chance.
But for him, the main battlefield lay ahead.
Knives recalled the day he’d followed Einn back through the wormhole, leaving his squadron behind. This time, it was reversed. He was the one who’d stayed.
He was alone, left with the structures floating before him, a little less guarded than they had been a few moments before.
Now all he had to do was find a way in.
CHAPTER 61
IA
THEY WERE DISTRACTED.
And they had underestimated her. The moment the gate was activated, Brinn hurried to her troubleshooting and Einn prattled off his useless orders. Ia had no idea why anyone would follow her brother, not after seeing him like this.
She was starting to wonder why she had been scared of him in the first place, why her nightmares were haunted with his face, joyous and devious as he watched her fall to her death. She realized it wasn’t him that frightened her. It was Death itself, constantly knocking down her door, forcing it open without even waiting for her to ask who was there.
Because that was Death for you. It just broke into your life like that and watched as you quaked where you stood. Until it was all over. The end.
But she was in control now, at least for a little bit. While Einn and Brinn’s attention was focused on deactivating Penance, Ia had caught glimpses of Knives’s Kaiken and Vetty’s Yari out there along with a sizable Star Force fleet already on the attack.
She let out a breath of relief. Their arrival was good news. It meant Knives’s plan to get Bastian into Penance’s system was well on its way. But even better than that, it served as the perfect diversion while Ia tried to break out of her handcuffs.
Before leaving her side, Einn had fritzed out the motor systems of her suit, so that the resistance levels were five times more than she was used to. It was a clever thing for him to do. It made her slow. It made her tired.
But there was one thing that Einn hadn’t taken into account. The handcuffs were placed over the fabric of her suit, and mining suits were not molded like others. It was bulky, creating extra space to wiggle through. Ia inched to the back of the room, far from everyone’s sights. From the inside of her sleeve, she pulled one wrist as hard as she could through the narrow openings of the binding. She threaded her arm up through the sleeve and pulled at the zipper on her chest. The suit fell open, and one arm was free. She used it to guide the other arm out of the cuffs.
Shedding the suit so it fell quietly to the floor, she stood vulnerable in a pair of gray leggings and a black long-sleeved shirt, meant as a base layer to protect her skin from the friction of the metal frame. When
she was sure that no one had noticed her, she knelt down to the discarded heap, taking a square device from the confines of an inside pocket.
“A gift,” Goner had said before he left.
He wasn’t good at spying, she knew. No, where he really shined was destroying.
There was only one button in the center of the device.
She pressed it, and the ground around her shook. Through the observation windows, she had a good view. A series of explosions tore through the Nirvana colony and the lengthy glass tunnel that connected it to Penance. From the way the floor underneath her quaked, she knew Goner had also planted them within the archways. And for once, she wanted to commend that rival of hers on his work.
Outside, it was complete mayhem. Einn whipped around, the light from the explosions blooming briefly upon his face before his eyes landed on hers.
“You want chaos?” Ia’s voice rose above the noise. “Well, here you go.”
CHAPTER 62
KNIVES
LIGHTS FLASHED in a fury, momentarily blinding his eyes. The explosions tore through the clear tunnel connecting the colony to the archways. This wasn’t just an accident.
Knives silently thanked whoever had done it. This was where he’d find his opening.
Maneuvering to avoid debris and torn metal, he flew in closer to where the tunnel separated from the archways. Anchoring the Kaiken to the side, he readied the controls on his grav suit. He needed all enviro systems on to make that jump. He hadn’t anchored too far from the opening, but he’d be out in the vacuum of the All Black. If his suit tore, all odds would be against him.
Knives set down his visor and raised the hatch on the cockpit. He placed a grappling spear into his pistol and aimed it as close as he could to the jagged opening. He pulled the trigger, and the spear flew across the gap. The sharp end buried into the metal paneling. A line of wire pulled taut behind it. This time, Knives released the trigger and the wire coiled, hauling him closer and closer to the opening. When he reached the end of the line, he detached. Angling himself, Knives pushed his legs off the structure. He floated toward the paneling that had been torn open and grabbed onto an edge. As he pulled himself inside, a large shadow loomed before him.