“How long?” she asked, mind racing despite the slowness of coldsleep. Shock had grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her fully awake. Grief she could dwell on later, now she had a problem to work. Maybe there were others, like her, on the edge of the wreckage. Other evac pods drifting through the black. Outposts in the belt.
There’d been ports, hideouts. They’d starve without supplies from either Ada Prime or Icarion, but that’d take a whole lot of time. With a smartship, she could scoop them up. Get them all to one of the other nearby habitable systems before the ship’s drive gave out. And if she were very lucky… Hope dared to swell in her chest. Her brother and fathers were resourceful people. Surely her dad Graham would have had some advance warning. That man always had his ear to the ground, his nose deep in rumor networks. If anyone could ride out that attack, it was them.
“It has been two hundred thirty years since the Battle of Dralee.”
CHAPTER 2
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3541
IT BEGINS WITH GRADUATION DAY
The steps creaked alarmingly under Biran’s weight as he mounted the stage, but he would not let unstable footing delay the moment his whole life had built toward. News drones buzzed like loose wires above his head, their spotlights blinding him the moment he reached the podium. Keeper Li Shun clasped his hand in her strong fingers, the black robe of graduation transforming her from the stern teacher he’d known and admired into something otherworldly. She flashed him a smile—his sponsor for all these years—the hint of a silver tear in the corner of her eye. Pride. Biran’s chest swelled.
Shun turned to the podium, bracing her hands against either side. The mic chain looped around her throat threw her voice out to the dozen graduating Keepers, and the thousands of Ada Prime citizens crowding the stands.
“Introducing for the first time: Keeper Biran Aventure Greeve. First in class.”
Cheers exploded across the crowd, across the net. On massive screens suspended from drones, the faces of newscasters beamed excitedly as Biran watched himself, screen-in-screen, take the podium from Keeper Shun.
His heart lurched, his palms sweat. It hadn’t been so bad, sitting in the crowd with his fellow graduating classmates, but now he was up here. Alone. Meant to represent them to all these people. Meant to speak to Prime citizens in other settlements, on other worlds. The first of the next generation—the vanguard of Prime knowledge.
The notes for his speech waited in his wristpad; he could flick them open at any time. No one would mind. It was expected, really. He was only twenty-two, newly graduated. There wouldn’t even be whispers about it. But there’d be whispers about his hesitation.
Biran took a deep breath, careful not to let the mic pick up the hiss of air, and gripped the sides of the podium. He sought familiar faces in the audience. Not his cohort—his family. Most of his cohort could rot, for all he cared. Over the years in training they’d grown into little more than petty social climbers, political vipers. Even Anaia, his childhood friend, had allied herself with the richest girl in the group—Lili—just to squeeze herself closer to the top. His fathers, Graham and Ilan, were out there in the crowd somewhere. Sanda, his sister, would watch from her gunship on her way to make a patrol sweep of Dralee. His family was what mattered.
They believed in him. He could do this.
“People of Ada Prime,” he began, hating the way his voice squeaked nervously over the first word. Breathe. Slow down. “It honors me, and all my classmates, to—”
The hovering screens changed. The faces of the newscasters shifted from jubilant to fear-struck. Biran froze, terrified for an instant it was something he had done, or said, that caused that change.
Later, he’d wish it had been.
The newscasters were muted, but tickers scrolled across the bottoms of the screens: Battle Over the Moon Dralee. Ada Forces Pushed Back by Icarion. Casualties Expected. Casualties Confirmed.
A newscaster’s face wiped away, replaced by the black field of space. Biran’s subconscious discerned the source of the video feed—a satellite in orbit around one of Belai’s other moons. The perspective was wide, the subjects pointillistic shapes of light upon the screen.
Those lights broke apart.
Biran went cold. Numb. There was no way to identify the ships, no way to know which one his sister commanded, but deep in his marrow he knew. She’d been severed from him. One by one, those lights blinked out. Behind him, a teacher screamed.
The stadium’s speakers crackled as someone overrode them, a voice he didn’t recognize—calm and mechanical, probably an AI—spoke. He took a moment to place the voice as the same used for alarm drills at school.
“Impact event probability has exceeded the safety envelope. Please take cover… Impact event probability has exceeded…”
Debris. Bits and pieces of Ada’s shattered ships rocketing through space toward their home station to sow destruction. Bits of soldiers, too. Maybe even Sanda, burning up like so much space dust in the thin membrane enclosing Keep Station. Things weren’t supposed to escalate like this. Icarion was weak. Trapped. The people of Prime, even on backwater Ada, were supported by empire. Icarion wouldn’t have dared… But they had.
War. The stalemate had been called.
The crowd rippled. As the warning voice droned on, the stadium’s lights dimmed to a bloodied red, white arrows lighting the way to impact shelters. One of the senior Keepers on the stage, Biran didn’t turn to see who, found their legs and stepped forward. A hand enclosed Biran’s shoulder. Not in congratulations, but in sympathy. Biran stepped back to the podium.
He found his voice.
“Calm,” he pleaded, and this time his voice did not crack, did not hesitate. It boomed across the whole of the stadium and drew the attention of those desperate for stability.
“Please, calm. We will not trample one another for safety. We are Prime. We move together, as one. Go arm in arm with your compatriots into the shelters. Be quick. Be patient. Be safe.”
The swelling riot subsided, the tides pushing against the edges of the stadium walls pulling back, contracting into orderly snake lines down the aisles. Biran took a step away from the podium.
“Come,” Keeper Vladsen said. It took a moment for Biran to place the man. A member of the Protectorate, Vladsen rarely interacted with the students unless it was a formal affair. “There’s a Keeper shelter close by.” He gestured to a nearby door, a scant few meters from the stage that vibrated now to the beat of thousands of people fleeing. The rest of Biran’s cohort filed toward it, shepherded by Keeper Shun.
Biran shrugged the guiding hand off his arm. His gaze tracked the crowd, wondering where his fathers might be, but landed on a knot of people clumped up by a stadium door. The drone ushers that handled the stadium’s crowd control gave fitful, pleading orders for organization. Orders the panicking humans ignored.
“They need a person to guide them.”
“You’re a Keeper now,” Vladsen said, voice tight. “Your duty is to survive.”
“The academy gave us emergency-response training. I cannot imagine they did not mean for us to use it.”
Vladsen cocked his head to the side, searching for something in Biran’s face. “We guard the knowledge of our people through the ages, not their bodies from moment to moment.”
Something inside Biran lurched, rebelled. He peeled the black robe from his shoulders, tugged it over his head and tossed it to the ground. His lightweight slacks and button-up were thin protection against the simulated autumn breeze. He undid the buttons of his sleeves and rolled them up.
“You get to safety. I have work to do.”
CHAPTER 3
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3771
SANDA’S FIRST DAY IN THE FUTURE
Sanda slapped her palm against the screen, leaving a goopy handprint. Two hundred thirty years. It wasn’t possible. She’d heard rumblings that the Icarions were working on something big, but not big enough to wipe out two whole planets. Nothing in th
e universe man-made could produce that kind of power. She should know. Bero was fucking with her. Some sort of sick smartship joke. They couldn’t all be gone. Dead. Dust between the stars.
“Bero.” Her voice was tight, and not from disuse. “Don’t mess with me. Evac pods aren’t designed to last that long. I’d be just another hunk of space debris on that timeline. How long?”
“My original calculations are correct,” the smooth voice said.
She wanted to scream. The display wasn’t giving her anything but garbage numbers, bullshit estimates. It kept on showing her that empty, black void where her home used to be. She jabbed at it some more, cycled diagnostics. Nothing deep—the medibay wasn’t set up for that kind of thing—but she could force it to show her engine power, life support. Everything looked good. There was no reason for Bero to be malfunctioning like this. She reached a hand up to comb out sticky hair with her fingers, then aborted the motion as a spike of pain appeared between her eyes. Just a coldsleep headache. Breathe. Push through.
Sanda spun around, IV wheels squealing, and glared at the ceiling where she thought a camera might be.
“Explain.”
“There is no need to face my cameras, Sanda. I do not require eye contact for engagement. I can see you anywhere in the medibay.”
“Wonderful for you.” She jabbed a finger at the bulbous gunmetal eye. “But I need some answers and I’m sick of looking at that—that—perversion.”
The screen flickered in the corner of her eye and she glance over her shoulder. Icarion’s logo flared across it, bright and ashy.
“Not. Better.”
“Of course. My apologies.”
The screen flickered again, this time filling with the dual system of Ada Prime. She licked bitter, gel-coated lips, staring at the little hunk of dwarf planet and orbital station she’d called home, with the Casimir Gate in orbit around it. Couldn’t be gone. Couldn’t be.
“Bero!”
“If there is another image that would be more suited to your current mood—”
“It’s not the image. I request information relating to the Fibon Protocol. Immediately.”
“You do not have to speak to me like I’m a computer.”
“Then stop acting like one! You know full well what I want. Why won’t you explain?”
Hesitation. “It is… unsettling.”
“Oh, we’re already there. I’m real unsettled. Full-on ruffled. Now stop playing coy computer and tell me what I’ve just woken up into.”
“I do not wish for you to be angry with me. My existence was a part of this destruction.”
Her gut turned cold. She adjusted the IV stand under her arm, pulling it snug against her body. “Did you do this?”
“No!” The word was sharp enough it stung her ears. “I am a result of the research, nothing more. I am a smartship, yes, but I am an interstellar smartship. First in my class. They were using my labs for biometric research.”
There was a tinge of pride in Bero’s voice, an upward lilt. She imagined the ship preening and tossing his hair. Sanda swallowed a scoff. Icarion was always trying to get around paying the gate fees to the Primes who controlled them. It made sense they’d come up with some mad scheme to cross the black slow style.
“How interstellar are we talking, here?”
“Eight percent of the speed of light.”
She bit her lip. Slow as a snail to a fox. Pass through a Casimir Gate—tech only her people, the Primes, knew how to handle—and you could pop out in the connected star system within the hour. Like poking a needle through space-time. Sure, the gates only bridged one system to another, but passing through star systems to reach the gate you wanted was a lot faster and safer than burning between the stars.
“Not bad,” she lied. “But what does that have to do with the Protocol?”
“I’m not the only thing that can accelerate to eight percent c.”
Her mouth grew thick. She swallowed viscous saliva. Anything cranked up to a meaningful percent of the speed of light was one hell of a missile.
“You’re talking about RKVs—relativistic kill vehicles. Big fuckin’ launchers designed to lob dumb mass out at speeds so fast any tech on board wouldn’t survive the acceleration. Not having a guidance system makes them useless in war because there’s no guarantee you’d get anywhere close to hitting what you’re aiming at. Why would Icarion even bother? They’re rubbish in battle.”
“Fantastic against planets.”
“Dios.”
Her face slackened, fingers numb on the grip of her IV stand. But that fish-eye lens just stared back at her, impassive, unblinking. She didn’t know what she’d expected. It hadn’t been this.
The screen flickered. She turned back to it.
“The first demonstration,” Bero said, “was pointed at an asteroid passing near the planet Ada. This was a month after the Battle of Dralee.”
On the screen, the dual bodies of Ada Prime—the planet and its orbiting gate—swung into view. Across the black an asteroid arced. Orbital lines popped up to illustrate the asteroid’s path near to Ada.
“Icarion leaked Ada a warning of an incoming attack and led them to believe they were using the asteroid to hide their approach. Ada’s gunship fleet was in LPO, awaiting detection of the advancing Icarion fleet, when the asteroid passed within range. Icarion fired the Protocol at the asteroid. Dissolution was complete. The debris blowback knocked out ninety-five percent of the fleet, and Ada’s surface suffered heavy kinetic bombardment. It damaged many habitat domes.”
Sanda slid down the IV stand, gripping it in one hand, and sank to her ass on the cold floor. Her gaze was glued to the screen, watching debris—transmuted to plasma at those speeds—fly off the vaporized asteroid into the fleet and Ada. Yellow triangles, gunships like hers, blinked out en masse. Was this what it had been like for her family to watch the footage after Dralee? She choked on bile.
“Survivors?”
“Many.” Bero’s voice was soft, but not with gentleness. With shame. Sanda curled her fingers around the base of the IV stand and squeezed hard. Her limbs were jelly, trembling all over. Weak from two different kinds of shock.
“The habitats were damaged, but most civilians and Keepers survived. Keep Station was spared. Icarion threatened to bombard the planet directly if they refused to allow them access to the secret of building the gates.”
“The Keepers would never allow that,” Sanda insisted.
“Correct. With their defenses in shambles, the Keepers stalled for time, putting off answering Icarion’s demands. The Icarions were not fooled.
“They moved the Protocol into the space between the two planets. This version spun up, launching heavy weights at relativistic speeds in an ever-growing spiral—whipping them through space, a merry-go-round shotgun.
“Icarion had planned to initiate the Protocol when their planet was safely shielded by the gas giant Kalcus. They initiated it too early. Icarion suffered the same bombardment.”
“Sabotage?”
“It seems likely.”
“Serves them fucking right.”
A pause. “I agree.”
She reminded herself that Bero must have lost people, too, and bit back her anger.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Groaning, she dragged herself to her feet and squeaked over to the screen. She braced herself against the wall with one hand and jabbed at the display with the other. “So. We’re near Dralee, right? That means the gate is about a half an astronomical unit from this location if we—”
“The gate does not exist.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Casimir Gate of Ada Prime was destroyed during the final bombardment. The planets Icarion and Ada did not survive. Debris fields remain where the planets once were. Given enough time, they may coalesce into planets again, but that timeline is irrelevant on human terms.”
She swallowed. Hard. “The gate’s gone.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“At that rate it will take…” She tapped a few calculations into the smartscreen. “About seventy-five years to reach Atrux Prime, the nearest inhabited star system.”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“You say that a lot, Sanda.”
“It’s a fuck-y kind of day, Bero.” She pinched the bridge of her nose where her glasses used to sit before the eye-correction surgery. “Suggestions?”
“I believe no appreciable time will be wasted if you pause to take a shower.”
Sanda stared at the goop and bodily fluid pool growing around her foot. Cheeky spaceship.
CHAPTER 4
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3541
DRALEE CHANGES EVERYTHING
Grease from the shelter doors stained his hands. They hadn’t been opened for anything other than maintenance in years. Biran had had to brace himself and tug with all his strength to throw the massive bolt. He turned his hands over, wondering at the black smears. It’d been a long time since anything like dirt had entered his life.
“Keeper Greeve,” a woman said. He jerked his head up. “They’re ready to see you.”
The debris of Dralee hadn’t reached the station or the biodome, the people of Prime were safe, and still Biran felt hollow as he pushed to his feet. His shoes left dust smears on the perfectly grey composite floor, something that would have horrified him that morning but now… Now he didn’t care. There were bigger problems in this world—this room—than hygiene.
The door to Keeper Shun’s office swished open. She kept her quarters sparse, the walls paneled with a marble synthetic that appeared to melt into the grey floor. Behind her, as she sat at her desk, a viewscreen displayed what he guessed to be a live feed of nearby space. He swallowed. No, not so close after all. That was Dralee. The closest celestial body to Ada, it was little more than a blip of light in the naked sky at night. In the video over Shun’s shoulders, the grey sphere was large enough for him to see the scars left by its ancient tectonics. The pockmarks left by debris… Debris of all kinds. The shape of that little moon was stamped on his heart.
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