The word prince made it clear that he was not. Not forgiven, not one of us.
“Nev doesn’t have to be the key,” Basra said crisply from below. “You know I can help you. Bionic replacements are—”
“Astronomically expensive,” Arjan shot right back. “I don’t feel like being indebted to any more rich people, unlike some of us.”
Both Basra and I sat back in unison. I wondered if he felt as stung as I did. Basra wasn’t just a rich person. He was also deeply in love with Arjan.
I felt stung for a different reason. Yes, I’d used some of Nev’s remaining funds to rebuild the Kaitan. Not only had I repaired all the damage we’d taken and installed a new mag-field net, but I’d upgraded the ship’s electronics, weapon systems, and containment hold.
The latter was now strong enough to contain a large amount of Shadow until it could be pumped off. This way, we didn’t need a loader—someone who had to risk their life near-constantly by filling smaller canisters with a substance that could drive them mad or burn them to ash in a heartbeat. Nev was probably happy to pay for that, since I’d first hired him on as our loader, back before we knew he was a prince. Before everything had fallen apart.
But it wasn’t like I’d just accepted his charity. He was the reason the ship was in shambles in the first place, and part of the reason Arjan was missing an eye. He owed us, not the other way around.
And yet Arjan refused to accept anything from him or anyone else.
“Just get the damned bionic eye, Arjan, so you can stop nearly killing us.”
Great Collapse. Leave it to Telu to speak the truth nobody else wanted to. Our hacker, my childhood friend, sat at a station near Basra’s, her eyes focused on her feeds, alert for any drones she would have to reroute. The spike of black hair slashing her face and the stark lines of the tattoo around one eye made her look as sharp as she was.
“How about you stop being a bitch—” Arjan began.
“How about,” Eton snarled through the comm, “I shut you all up with a few plasma missiles?” We had those now, thanks to Nev. Even Eton, my huge surly weapons tech, grudgingly appreciated those upgrades. Still, he couldn’t keep from adding, “Or maybe we can all agree to just launch Nev out of the airlock, and I shoot him instead.”
“All right, pack her up,” I said. “Get back to the ship, Arjan.”
“What?” Arjan demanded. “No, we need to finish this run. We still need to make our own money, remember?”
“If you guys are going to bicker like children, we’re going home. Children can’t make Shadow runs. You act like this, we’ll actually die, not just nearly die.”
“But—”
“Now,” I snarled.
Only the roar of his engines answered me. The skiff shot forward, and I had to lay on the throttle myself to keep up.
“Arjan!”
“I can’t hear you!” he called. “Comm is cutting out.”
That was a steaming pile of scat, and he knew it. It would serve him right if I didn’t keep up and let him reach the end of his tether to come to a neck-whipping halt, but I didn’t want to hurt our equipment. There was no way I’d be willing to ask Nev to buy us a second net.
Maybe its destruction would be unavoidable, because Arjan was heading right for an even denser cluster of asteroids, interwoven with thick bands of Shadow that flowed in a glittering purple-black river against the brightness of the molecular clouds in the background. Both Basra and Telu swore beneath me. A run like that would have been tough in the old days. Now, as much as I hated to admit it, it would be nigh impossible.
“Yeah, I know,” I said in response.
“Qole,” Nev said, his tone calm but edged with concern. “That won’t only be difficult for Arjan. Remember to let me help you. You’re not alone.”
The problem was, even back when Nev hadn’t been up here, I hadn’t felt alone. I’d had help; it just wasn’t of the human variety.
I sensed it, as Arjan careened toward the rivers of Shadow in his skiff: the ripple, as if he’d reached out to touch it. My brother had been avoiding any blatant use of Shadow longer than I had, but now his need to prove himself seemed to be overcoming his fear of the substance and what it could do to us. His very rational fear.
Despite that, it called to me—or at least to the Shadow already inside me, lining my bones and veins like soot after generations of my people’s exposure. I wanted to answer. But that was why Nev was here. With his support, I wasn’t supposed to purposefully draw on large amounts of it or ignore it, because either extreme seemed to trigger hallucinations and bone-deep weariness or violent mood swings. But it was a fine line to walk, especially if that line traversed an asteroid field.
My hands tightened on the controls, my focus sharpening.
“Qole…,” Nev repeated.
“You’re a decent pilot, Nev, but you’re not this good,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I don’t have to be. I just have to help you be good enough.”
“I’m going to use it if I have to, Nev. I can’t let him kill himself.”
“You won’t have to,” Telu said. “I can hack his controls, force him to return.” She spoke over the comm, not caring that Arjan could hear.
I shook my head, even though she wasn’t looking up at me. “That could get him killed, we’re already too deep in the asteroid field. He needs full control. Eton, be ready to blast the net apart if it catches and he’s in trouble.”
“Roger,” Eton responded, “though I might not be able to get it in time.”
“Idiot,” Basra murmured. “If he doesn’t die, I believe I may kill him.”
“Get in line,” I said.
But Arjan didn’t die. The skiff rolled and dipped, pivoted and rose. He wasn’t just threading a needle; he was threading a dozen at the same time. He must be using so much Shadow, his eye would be fully black with it by now.
What he was doing was amazing, and yet keeping up with him in the Kaitan was even harder. The skiff was far smaller and more maneuverable. I heard the roar of photon blasts as Eton shot debris out of my way, while I did my best to dodge the bigger asteroids. Nev was my backup, his hands sure and swift on the controls, adding thrust where I needed it and giving me an extra pair of eyes. He watched readouts I couldn’t pay attention to and made minor adjustments to avoid collisions that wouldn’t have been fatal but would have caused damage.
“Large one, fast approaching, bearing one-three-seven—blasted hell!” Nev shouted, as I barely reacted in time. The surface of the asteroid came so close to the viewport I could have counted the craters in its surface before it went whizzing by.
I ground my teeth. I could still do this without…
Then I saw the drone, breaking away from the other side of the asteroid where it had been clinging. It must have been powered down so Telu couldn’t detect its signal, but I’d gotten too close to its defense field.
Drones didn’t like that. Without a hacker, there wasn’t much to do but run as fast as you could. Attacking a drone would lead more than just that one to retaliate, since they responded to destructive threats by beaming alert signals to their companions. Not even their masters could reprogram that function, not since the know-how to do so was lost in the Great Collapse. Hundreds of thousands of drones interlaced the systems, and they could theoretically overwhelm any fleet. But we had a hacker.
Telu cursed. “Sneaky bastard!” And then to me, she said, “On it.”
But not even Telu could hack its programming fast enough and send it on another course of action. The drone, three times the size of the Kaitan, launched straight for us.
Everyone cursed then. Tentacles waving, plasma-rimmed maw gaping, the drone lashed out at our ship. Without thinking, I threw the Kaitan into a maneuver that kept us from being rent in half, and heard Arjan shout over the comms.
>
Right. He was attached to us, and I’d sent him whipping. We usually only encountered dangerous drones with advanced warning and full maneuverability—as in, without the skiff deployed. I couldn’t move without taking Arjan into account during Shadow runs either, but unlike asteroids, this drone wouldn’t stick to a simple trajectory that we could both predict.
“Sorry, Cap, this is weird,” Telu said through gritted teeth. “Its programming isn’t responding like normal. It’s almost like…Just gimme one more second.”
Nev wasn’t enough. Even together, we would never be good enough. Blackness flickered at the edges of my vision. It wasn’t the darkness of space outside, but the darkness within me.
Everything was suddenly sharper, clearer, moving more slowly. I dodged the next five asteroids and the drone, and kept in line with Arjan with ease, dancing and skimming around everything like light over the ocean’s surface, all without tangling our net. If Arjan had threaded a dozen needles with the skiff, I was weaving an entire tapestry with the Kaitan. Eton didn’t even have to fire.
In the seconds that could have just as easily spelled our deaths, Telu had time to hack and reprogram the drone, and it went shooting off into the blackness. For a moment, all of us, even Arjan, just breathed.
“Qole…,” Nev began.
“Don’t. Just don’t. Not now.”
“Okay,” he said, and I could feel him turning back to his feeds. “But after.”
At least now we all knew there would be an after.
* * *
By the time Arjan strode onto the bridge with a triumphant grin on his face, our new containment hold was filled to bursting with Shadow. Not that it improved my mood. All of us were waiting for him on the bridge, in fact, in a line like a firing squad.
He was much healthier than he had been even a couple of weeks ago, standing tall and looking more filled out, only fading pink scars lacing his tawny skin where there had once been angry red wounds. But his eye…that would never heal without help. His black hair, once shoulder length, was chopped short and spiky to keep it out of the eye patch.
His grin fell when he saw the looks on all our faces. “Oh, come on.”
He especially avoided Basra’s gaze, but with a stubborn set to his mouth. He’d known Basra would be furious but had acted anyway. Maybe even because it would infuriate Basra. Arjan wasn’t only resentful because Basra was rich, but because Arjan hadn’t known he was, not while they shared the same ship as crew, or even after they started sharing the same bunk.
Basra glanced at me, as if saying, After you.
I tried to keep my voice level without much success. “You disobeyed a direct order and put the rest of us in jeopardy—”
Arjan’s eye narrowed a fraction. “I couldn’t hear you clearly.”
“Like hell you couldn’t!” I snarled at him, unable to resist stamping my foot while I was at it. “We just had those systems replaced. Don’t you dare lie to me.”
“Never mind that you’re lying to yourself.”
Before I could ask him what that was supposed to mean, Telu said, “The comm channels were as clear as deep space, Arjan. I would know, since that’s part of my job to monitor them.”
He shot her a look reminiscent of the obscenity he’d spat at her earlier, then said, “What’s the big deal anyway? I pulled off the run, and outmaneuvered a drone.”
I broke our formation to march right up to him, jabbing a finger in his chest. “No, you didn’t. Shadow did.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, so what? It’s our blasted curse, so why not use it to our advantage while we can, at least?”
Curse was one thing he had right. My father and mother had gone mad and died in their early forties. My oldest brother, Onai, had followed them at twenty-five. Arjan was twenty-one and I was seventeen. At the rate we’d been going…who knew?
“Why not? Are you serious, Arjan?”
“Maybe you can pretend you don’t need it anymore, but tell me how else I could have done that, how else I could keep doing what I’ve always done.” With only one eye, he didn’t add, but we all heard it. His anger took on a desperate note, and he tossed his head at Nev. “Just because you’re using him as a crutch, he’s not going to be mine.”
My breath hissed in between my teeth. “Oh, so instead you want to use the thing that will kill you?”
“I’d rather be dead than a Dracorte pawn for another second. What is he doing here, anyway?” He gestured violently at Nev this time. “He’s a royal! These are his family’s drones, in case you’ve forgotten. He doesn’t belong on this ship with us. He grew up in a blasted palace with everything he could have ever wanted, with servants feeding him off gold platters and armies shielding him from any real danger.”
Nev would never defend himself, but Telu snorted. “He doesn’t have any of that anymore. Remember, he helped the rest of us rip his palace half apart to get you out of there.”
“I was there because of him,” Arjan spat back. And, unfortunately, my brother had been too out of it to see what Nev had done, what he had sacrificed, to help rescue him. Being told something and experiencing it were two very different things.
But Telu knew. “Still, he gave it all up. For us.”
“No, he gave it all up because his father, the king, exiled him on pain of death,” Eton said, casting his disapproving scowl in Nev’s direction, this time…but not before glancing at me.
Not that again. I was so sick of Eton’s attempts to tear down Nev in front of me to make himself look…what? Stronger? More loyal? The better protector of the crew?
Telu turned on Eton with her own ferocious glare. “Nev chose us before that, and you know it! That’s why he was exiled—”
“He’s just playing at being a Shadow fisherman!” Arjan said, his voice rising over everyone’s. “This is a game to him, not life. This is my life. And I’m in control of it.”
“You’re out of control,” I said quietly into the silence that followed.
“Speak for yourself,” he snapped. “How are your eyes?”
“I don’t—”
Arjan got right in my face, towering over me and staring me down with his one eye. “How black did they turn? And don’t you dare lie to me,” he mocked.
I flinched away. He had never spoken like this to me before. It was usually me cowing him. Basra watched him warily, while Telu and Eton seemed just as surprised as I was, freezing in place.
“You forced me to do it,” I said, my voice coming out faster, higher-pitched. For a second, I sounded like his little sister instead of his captain.
“Hey,” Nev said sharply, stepping up beside Arjan.
Arjan’s own brown eye flashed black, as dark as his eye patch, and he spoke to Nev without even turning his head. “Do not touch me.”
After a glance at me, Nev took a step back.
“We’re both dead, Qole, one way or another,” my brother murmured, his voice softer now. “It’s just how we die that matters.”
He turned and walked off the bridge before I could answer. Not that I had an answer for him.
“I’ll try to talk to him, though I wouldn’t rate my chances at success very high,” Basra said, stalking after him. “Good thing I have a gambling problem.”
I stared after them both in silence. We were all gambling with something or another: Shadow, these ships, our lives, the people we loved. In this situation, I myself had gambled on Arjan and lost. Control of my crew had slipped away, at least briefly. We’d already been through so much that something like this could fracture us. I could spot the signs of it happening, but I was too stunned by Arjan to stop it in its tracks.
I glanced at Nev, then away again. He wanted to talk, but my hands were shaking. All I could think about was how Arjan had looked at me, what he’d said.
We’re both dead…one way or an
other.
Eton and Telu started to slip away without speaking to each other, and I deliberately turned away from Eton so he couldn’t catch my gaze. The lines were drawn: Telu on Nev’s side, Eton with Arjan, and me trying to stay as neutral as Basra, somehow in the middle.
But just as Basra couldn’t truly be neutral when it came to Arjan, I couldn’t be, either, when it came to my brother, or…
“Nev.” I hadn’t spoken. It was Telu from her station, her voice raised to a pitch of worry, a comm at her ear.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m picking up a signal. Ships—a lot of them—have arrived in Alaxak’s airspace.”
“Whose?” Nev demanded, his voice rising with my sudden surge of adrenaline. The lines of the Kaitan grew hard and sharp around me.
“Your family’s—the Dracortes. It’s a delegation from Luvos. The king and queen—your sister too—they’re asking for you.” Nev’s eyes flew wide as he looked at me. “They want you to meet them. Immediately.”
The view of Alaxak out the airlock was impossibly bright in the light of its sun, an answering call to the endless stars around us. The beauty was heart-stopping; it put all the jewels of the royal houses to shame. I was briefly reminded of the equally heart-stopping walk I had taken with Qole earlier, but the happiness of that moment felt bitter now. I looked at the remains of the portal floating between me and the planet: steel girders, black stone, and inky alloy shards in the rough shape of two monoliths—the broken intergalactic portals of a past civilization. That matched my mood more aptly: something wondrous now cold, ruined, and empty.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Qole’s voice was measured, but I knew she was worried.
“The portal ruins are a lovely and historic place to wait, and I’ll be fine in this suit.” I tried to keep my tone light, but I wasn’t fooling her any more than she was me. Any rational human being would be worried. I tightened the straps of my Disruption Blades over my outfit, whose lightweight material could handle the vacuum of space and wouldn’t impede my motions if it came to a fight, though it wasn’t intended for extensive stays off-ship.
Shadow Call Page 3