“It’s not.”
“What?”
He opens his eyes, sighing heavily. “It’s not a mistake, Stacia.”
My stomach twists. “Of course it is.”
Holo numbers over the control board tick down—11, 10, 9 … I blink at them, finally realizing, with a sickening jolt, what they are.
It’s the Laika’s core temperature gauge, indicating when the engine will be cool enough to engage the Takhimir drive, putting us into warp speed. Once the Takhdrive kicks in, there’ll be no turning back, not in time to save the people I love.
“No!” I lunge across the controls, through the blinking holos, trying to pry Pol’s hand from the lever.
“Stacia!” He peels my fingers away with his other hand. “Stop it!”
“I’m not leaving them!”
3.
“And I can’t let them kill you!”
2.
“POL!”
1.
He throws back the lever. The Laika hums, blue holo lights tracing the interior from nose to tail. The core temp gauge shoots up. I feel an odd, weightless sensation, as if the ship’s gravity generator has quit working. But I know from my mechanic training that it’s the Takhdrive throwing up its invisible shield, preparing to warp the space-time around us.
We both look up to Amethyne. My home. Where my family and my best friend and all my people are suffering stars know what horrors. Without me. Because of me.
The violet planet blurs, then shrinks to the size of a pinpoint.
Then is gone.
Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.
Panting, I collapse onto the floor of the caravel’s bridge, sticky with sweat and my arms aching from the one-legged push-ups. Even though I didn’t use my bad leg, it still hurts. But the pain is a welcome distraction.
It’s been four days since we blipped out of Amethyne’s system; four days I’ve been trapped in the Laika’s warp bubble. Pol and I have barely spoken since then, settling into a staggered sleeping schedule so we’re not often conscious at the same time. He knows I’m furious with him and doesn’t seem eager to press me. Or maybe he’s avoiding me because I stink like I’ve been working out for hours on end. Which is exactly what I have been doing, desperate to fill my time and release the anxiety coiled in my muscles. It’s an awkward undertaking with one bad leg, but the pain patches have helped. By now, the rest of me aches enough that the wound has become just another repeating note in my symphony of pains.
Rolling over, I tuck my hands under my head in preparation for crunches, but then I relax, taking a minute to catch my breath.
I stare up through the diamantglass ceiling as infinity stretches on. Pol has disappeared into the back of the ship, behind a thin partition where there are two narrow bunks, a galley, lavatory, and little else. The Laika is small, meant for fast, solo trips. It can fit two passengers, but just barely.
Through the window stretched over the front of the cabin and beyond the unseen bubble of negative energy the Takhdrive is producing, a pale glow spreads over space, a fuzzy film of cosmic radiation. The tinted diamantglass dims the brightness of the light, protecting against the massive radioactivity of the cosmos.
No stars, no planets, no galaxies.
We’re moving too fast to see them, and the effect is that we’re standing still, trapped in a globe of pale, sourceless light. If it wasn’t for the navigation system indicating our rough location, I’d think we were not moving at all.
With the sense of motionlessness comes oppressive boredom. When my tired body cries out for a break from exercise, I’ve been taking apart every nonessential piece in the bridge. I’ve broken down and reassembled the controls for the ship’s exterior robotic arm, the heat exchangers, the spare oxygenator, and even burrowed beneath the control panel to tinker in the nose of the craft with my multicuff in hand. By now, I’m pretty sure I could build a caravel from scratch. There isn’t a nut or circuit board on this ship I haven’t touched, with the exception of the crucial Takhdrive and a few life-support functions.
And the Prism, of course.
My eyes drift down to a small glass dome on the controls. Inside it spins a crystal shaped like a diamond. The Prism powers the Takhimir drive, generating the massive amount of energy it takes to warp. Without Prisms, faster-than-light travel wouldn’t even be possible. A crystal like that costs as much as Dad’s vineyard makes in a lifetime. They’re an almost infinite power source, the foundation upon which our entire society is built.
There’s no opening that case, and if I did, it would interrupt the specialized gravity field inside it that keeps the Prism spinning.
No spin, no power.
No power, we die.
When I was younger, we once took a trip to the energy plant outside Afka, where three Prisms in diamantglass boxes spun, generating enough power to fuel the whole town and all the surrounding homesteads. I remember feeling awed by their gentle, steady light, and the knowledge that they were more precious than any other element in the galaxy. Rare, expensive, immensely powerful and strange, Prisms are the greatest mystery and most valued resource in existence. Every interstellar ship has to have one in order to warp. And all this time, this little specimen has been hidden in Mayor Kepht’s basement, the heart of a secret network of Empire Loyalists living in Afka.
Empire Loyalists including my family.
I glance back, making sure Pol is still busy sleeping or whatever he’s doing back there. Then I lean forward and access the ship’s computer. Pulling up a historical index, I run a search and then sit back to watch the results pop up in holo. My nerves twist into knots; this is something I’ve been avoiding over the past four days. But there are no more panels to pry open or generators to tinker with, and my arms are trembling from the push-ups. I finally give in to my morbid curiosity.
I’m staring at a famous bit of looping footage, the last known recording of the Leonov family before the execution video would emerge months later. They’re in some kind of sitting room, a sleekly appointed space with a window that looks out to the stars. There’s Emperor Pyotr, reclining in a chair and speaking to the eldest child, Princess Kira. The two younger ones, Prince Yuri and Princess Lena, play a game on the floor, while the Empress Katarina cradles her round, pregnant belly.
I lean closer, studying Katarina’s face, trying not to note how similar our upturned noses are or how the shade of her hair is only a little redder than mine. Instead, I focus on the differences—she has freckles, she’s paler, she’s taller and rounder.
But when I look at Pyotr and I see his dark, wavy hair and thick eyebrows and large eyes, something tingles at the bottom of my stomach.
Drawing a shaky breath, I look at the children, but not too closely, because I can’t forget the other famous footage of them taken soon after this. When they were shot, point-blank, by Alexei Volkov and his Unionist forces. I’ve never managed to watch that film directly; it always turned my stomach.
They feel like strangers, like they’re not even real people, just actors in a film. I don’t remember much about them from my history lessons, but I do know the revolution started after the emperor blew up a moon and everyone on it because the rebel Unionists had a headquarters there. We were taught that the Imperials were strict, extravagant, and unpredictable. The Committee made sure we all knew just how tyrannical the Empire was, so that we would always remember how they saved us in that brief but bloody revolution.
Their favorite point to bring up, over and over again, is the Leonovs’ notorious “curse”: insanity ran in their genes. They couldn’t be trusted, because sooner or later, they all went crazy. The stories about that vary. Some say they suffered from delusions. Others think it was extreme paranoia and fits of senseless violence against those around them. But everyone agrees that the Leonovs were not at all sane. And an unstable mind wielding great power is guaranteed to inflict only suffering and disaster. All the lives lost on Emerault’s moon are a sad testimony to that.
&nbs
p; With a shudder, I close the photos and pull up a game of Triangulum instead, trying to distract myself with complex strategy. The board is a hologram, shining neon lines tracing out a geometrical map, all arcing lines and grids. The pieces flicker; the ship is old and the hologram projector glitches. I have to knock the controls a few times before the game is even playable. Then I direct my pieces with hand gestures, rushing a little, forgoing strategy in favor of a crude frontal assault on the enemy position. As usual, the computer wins. Frustrated, I swipe my hand across the hologram, knocking the pieces aside. They dissolve into shimmering bursts of light, then fade.
“You’re never going to win, playing like that,” Pol comments.
I stiffen, then turn to see him leaning in the doorway to the bunkroom. “How long have you been there?”
“A minute or two. Long enough to see you still keep forgetting the first rule of Triangulum.”
I roll my eyes. “You sound like my dad.”
I can’t count how many rainy evenings Dad trapped Pol and me at the kitchen table, to lecture us about Triangulum strategy, making us play for hours and critiquing our every move. It always frustrated me, when I’d rather have been fooling around in the garage or watching movies with Clio, but now the memory brings a pang of longing to my chest. What I wouldn’t give to be back in our kitchen, listening to Dad drone on about the importance of capturing the outer spheres before worrying about the middle ones.
“Your dad is the best player I’ve ever known.” Pol takes the captain’s chair next to mine. “Remember what he told us? Triangulum isn’t about focusing on your own pieces. It’s about controlling your opponent’s strategy, forcing them to make decisions that benefit you.”
I sigh. “I know, I know. When you can’t beat them—”
“—make them play by your rules,” he finishes.
Pol tilts his head, studying me while I shut down the game and bring up the navigation system. The Laika appears as a blip on the galactic charts, continually vanishing and reappearing farther along, since we’re traveling by warp.
“How are you holding up?” Pol asks.
With a shrug, I click open my multicuff and fiddle with the tools, using the pincers to scrape engine grease from beneath my nails.
“You’re afraid it might be true,” Pol says. “That you’re Anya Leonova.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“I know when you’ve got a problem on your mind, you tinker until you solve it. And you’ve been taking apart this whole ship screw by screw. Though honestly, Stace, when the only thing keeping you alive is a metal can, you don’t go popping open the lid to see how the hinges work.”
“I do.”
“Yes,” he sighs. He stares through the window at the foggy expanse, eyes weary, and his fingers rub the fabric of his father’s scarf.
“When I was twelve, my dad and your dad and a few other Afkans, including the mayor, showed me the secret bunker beneath the Kephts’ house.”
I tense, my eyes hardening on the navigation screen as I flick the multicuff’s tools open and shut, open and shut, with raspy little hisses of steel. So after days of us both avoiding this conversation, it’s Pol who’s going to crack first. I turn to stone in my seat, knees against my chest, my injured leg starting to throb.
He sinks into the other chair and rests his hands on the control panel. “They showed me this ship and how to operate it if we ever had to get offworld in a hurry. Then they … told me about you.”
Now his eyes flicker to me. They seem grayer than they did last week, back when our lives were still normal.
Well, when my life was normal, or seemed that way. I realize now that I know very little about Pol or what his life was really like, but normal is definitely the wrong word.
“You were barely a year old when they smuggled you out of the palace,” he says.
I start shaking my head.
I want to tell him how wrong he is, but my throat is so dry I can barely breathe.
“Your parents and mine, they fought together during the siege of Alexandrine. Your dad—or the man you know as your dad—was the emperor’s bodyguard, and your mother was a court physician.”
Elena? I remember the flash of recognition in Volkov’s eyes when he saw my mother. Her name on his lips.
Pol continues. “My parents were pilots, tasked with flying the ship that took you across the galaxy. They and a dozen other Loyalists were charged with your safety and took vows of fealty to the Leonov heiress. You.”
“Stop.”
“My father asked me that day if I could take that vow too. And I did. Because even at twelve years old, I hated the Committee, Stacia. I hated the Union. Under your family’s rule, the aeyla were safe. We were equal. But now, we’re not allowed into universities or to take high-security jobs. We’re not even allowed off Amethyne. We’ve been stripped of our rights, and that’s only the start of the Union’s tyranny. I knew I had to help. So I trained to protect you, learned the protocols to follow if you were ever exposed.”
“Stop.” I lean over, elbows on knees, face in hands, trying to control the chaos inside me. “It’s a lie!”
“My father didn’t die for a lie, Stacia.”
I drop my hands to look at him.
“What?”
He stares ahead, his hands in fists on the control board. “He set off that explosion as a distraction, so I could get you out of there, but he didn’t get away in time. The bomb was supposed to go off three blocks away, in an empty warehouse. But a vityaze spotted him and shot him just outside the town hall, detonating the blast early.”
“Pol … Oh, Pol.”
I slide my hand across the control board until our fingers meet. For a moment, I think he’ll pull away. But then his hand closes around mine, squeezing so tightly I half worry he’ll break my fingers.
The events of my life seem cast in a wholly new light. All those times Pol stopped me from getting too close to the snapteeth or the top of the waterfall above our house. His obsession with the vineyard security. The way he followed the uprisings in the central systems. I’d always thought him a bit paranoid.
But all along, he was acting out of duty to some vow he made as a child, before he could possibly have understood what he was committing to. But he made that vow because my own parents urged him to, because all along they had a secret past life I never knew about. And Spiros, my friend, Pol’s father, died for that vow.
I lurch to my feet, shaking from head to toe.
“Stacia?”
“Don’t,” I murmur. “Don’t say anything else. Please.”
I push through the cockpit and into the back cabin, where I can be alone. There, I curl up on the lower bunk and pull a pillow over my head. I can hear him pouring water in the tiny galley outside and try to shut out the noise. Really, I’m trying to shut out my own thoughts, but the more I attempt to ignore them the louder they get.
Princess Anya Petrovna Leonova.
It’s a mistake. A colossal mistake. If Pol’s father had waited one minute more, maybe I could have told them that. Maybe none of this would be happening, and everyone in Afka would be okay and I’d be at home right now. Pol would still have his dad.
But a part of me—a very strong part—knows that isn’t true.
Even if I’d managed to convince direktor Volkov that I’m not the girl he thinks I am, he would have found someone else to call Anya, if only to save face. Maybe Clio.
I stroke my bottom lip with the pad of my thumb. If I were a kid, I’d pop it in and suck on it for comfort, the way I used to when I was four.
But I’m not a kid anymore.
I can’t hide from my problems or scream for someone else to fix them. I have to face them head-on.
And that means, as much as it turns my stomach, that I have to at least consider that Pol’s story is true.
That thought lights like a fuse, setting off an explosion of panic. I jolt upright, only to smash my head against the upp
er bunk. Swearing, I roll off the bed and pace the tiny area, punching the wall every time I reach it. My knuckles sing with pain, blocking out everything else. The third punch leaves a streak of blood on the wall.
In moments, Pol is there, standing in the doorway.
“Stacia, stop.”
“Shut up.”
“You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Shut up.”
He slides between me and the wall just before I can punch it again. My fist strikes his chest instead.
Pol’s hand wraps around my wrist. He doesn’t let go until the tension seeps from my shoulders and I sag against the bunk. I stare at my bloodied knuckles.
“Who else knew?” I whisper. “You, my parents, your dad. What about Clio?”
He hesitates, then shakes his head. “No. I don’t think Clio could have known. The Kephts were in on it, though, obviously. The Drugovs, the Vitsins, the Sokolovs, the Ngetes, the Naparas …”
Each name lands like a smack. My neighbors, my friends, the mechanic I apprenticed under, even some of the aeyla clans. What excellent liars they were, never letting on that they were all complicit in treason, conspiring together behind my back. A whole cell of Loyalist rebels, fighting for a dead empire.
Living for an unwitting princess.
“And now where are we going? What’s your plan?” I gesture at the ship around us. “What was all this for? Who cares about Princess Anya? It’s not like I—she—is any threat to the Committee or the direktor Eminent. It’s not like I’m going to lead some revolutionary army into battle.”
He waits until I’m finished, his hands deep in the pockets of his baggy pants. He’s taken off his ripped tunic and is only wearing a sleeveless black undershirt, ragged at the hems, the same one he’s worn since he was twelve or something, only now it’s a good bit tighter than it was back then. He looks like a renegade or some equally ridiculous thing. Not my Pol. Not the boy I used to drag all over the hills, in search of hidden treasure and pirate dens.
“To be honest …” He raises a hand to scrub at his hair, the skin around his eyes crinkling as he winces. “I don’t know where we’re going, or what the plan is after this. All I know is we’re going to a top secret Loyalist base. The coordinates are locked inside here.” He holds up a clear data stick with delicate blue circuitry inside. “Trust me, and you’ll see we’re the good guys here. We’re on your side.”
Last of Her Name Page 5