“Holy skies,” breathes Mara. “Where are we?”
I stare through the Valentina’s front screen at the space ahead, my stomach still rocking from the drop out of warp. The ship’s Prism lies at the bottom of its case, useless and dark, its energy spent. When I try to connect with the ship’s systems, there’s nothing to connect to except a bit of auxiliary power. There’s not enough to do much besides run the ship’s minimum systems.
“This is the Vault,” I say. I don’t need to check the coordinates to be sure. I can feel this is right, that this was the end of Danica and Zorica’s long journey across the stars, following the trail of Prisms.
We crowd onto the bridge, and even Natalya has roused herself to join us. She stands close to her brother, arms folded. It took us sixteen hours to make the jump, pushing the Prism and the Valentina to their limits. We’ve gambled everything. Unless we find a new source of power, there’s no going back.
“This place isn’t listed on any atlas.” Riyan scans the Valentina’s database, shaking his head. “Its star isn’t even registered.”
The system is empty. It has no planets, no significant features.
Nothing, that is, except the massive, glowing crystal ahead of us.
I smile, raising my fingers to the beam of golden light that shines through the front window. “The Prismata. We’re here.”
It’s more impressive in person than it was in the code’s message. The nearer we get, the sharper it appears. The individual points take shape, spiking in every direction. The light that burns in its heart is white, but it reflects gold and pink and red in the many arms. From far away, it looks like I could reach out and grab it, but the computer measurements betray that it’s the size of a small moon.
“So this is you,” I whisper, drawing a look from Pol. I stare so hard my eyes begin to water, but I can’t blink. I can’t move, for the awe and terror that ripples through me.
For the first time in my life, I’m truly seeing Clio.
Or part of her, anyway. The part I didn’t create—her soul.
All this time, Clio was a mind suspended in crystal, a thousand light-years away. How can this thing, so inhuman, so strange, so beautiful, be my best friend? If I reach out to it, will I recognize anything of her?
We all flinch when something pings off the ship’s window and spins away. Then another object strikes, and I catch a glimpse of it as it deflects aside, a skitter of light.
We’re sailing into a cloud of Prisms. The little crystals spin all around us, thick as flies. There must be millions of them. The more I stare, the more I see. Farther away, they seem thick as dust. They’re most concentrated around the Prismata, in a vast ring encircling the much larger mother crystal.
“Aha.” Riyan taps the scanner. “There’s something that doesn’t belong.”
I peer at the scan, noting the blip that appears in the Prismata’s outer orbit, at the edge of the ring of crystals. “Take us there.”
Two hours later, we reach it: a station orbiting the Prismata. It’s completely dark, and when Riyan tries to hail it, we get no reply.
“It’s the Leonova research station. That’s where it all began.” I turn to Mara. “Can we dock?”
“Only one way to find out,” Mara mutters, concentrating as she activates the thrusters, directing the ship into the docking port. The silence of the engines, the creak and groan of the ship, it all reminds me of when Pol and I were trapped in the dead caravel. The Valentina’s backup systems are more sophisticated, so we’re not as helpless as we were then, but even so, if Volkov’s ships were to drop out of warp this moment, they’d have all the time in the world to shoot us down. We have no guns, no shields, nothing.
Mara makes connection with the station, the Valentina latching onto the docking port like a lamprey fastening to a shark.
“Nice flying,” Natalya comments, her eyes lingering on Mara appraisingly.
“Thanks.” Mara blushes, something I’ve never seen her do before.
We put on space suits, topping off our O2 supply before depressurizing and opening the dock hatch at the back of the clipper. Then we file out, floating into zero g inside the old station.
I lead the way with Pol at my back, a gun in his hand. Riyan has his staff. Mara brings up the rear. Natalya stays on board the clipper at Riyan’s quiet request; he still doesn’t trust her, even though I know the brain-jack chip is dead. And judging by her demeanor, Natalya doesn’t trust herself.
I find a control panel and switch on the artificial gravity and lights, doubting they’ll even work, but then we all drop an inch to the floor as the gravity generator cranks on. The life-support systems are down, though. We can walk, but we can’t breathe. Our helmets stay on.
I recognize the bay we’re in—it’s the same one Danica took me to, where she and Zorica first discovered the Prismata. They must have transformed the ship into a permanent station, and from here, their descendants would monitor the Prismata through the centuries. It’s less cluttered now—no coffee cups or trash, and most of the scientific equipment is gone. While the windows are clean, in one corner I spot a few smudged numbers, proof that the sisters were here centuries ago. I touch my gloved fingers to the equation, and a shiver runs through me.
The station controls require a password, but figuring it’s equipped with a biometric scanner, I remove my glove just long enough to press my bare hand to the screen. My touch bypasses the lock and takes me into the station’s mainframe. A chill runs down my spine at the message that pops up.
DNA match confirmed. Welcome, Empress.
I delete the words before the others can read them.
Thanks to my DNA, I have full security access. More screens light up, grainy images showing close-ups of the Prismata. It looks like the Leonovs used to run drones to monitor the crystal, but they’ve all broken down by now. Their last transmissions are frozen on the screens, displaying data that indicates the Prismata has been steadily growing for centuries, at a rate of about a millimeter per year or so.
“Look at this,” Pol says, tapping a screen.
It’s running looped footage of one of the Prismata’s spikes. As we watch, the tip breaks off and floats away, a perfect diamond, to join the masses like it that cluster in space.
“So that’s how baby Prisms are made,” I murmur.
While the others study the Prismata data, I pull up the station log.
“Last time anyone was here was seventeen years ago. The emperor and the oldest prince, looks like.” I pause, swallowing. “The day Emerault’s moon blew up.”
“They did it from here?” asks Riyan.
I nod, pulling up a record of their visit. “They could reach any Prism in the galaxy from here, through the Prismata. All the crystals are still connected to this core, drawing energy from it. Send a high enough surge of that energy into a Prism, and it and every piece of tech connected to it will explode.”
“It’s all one vast, living organism,” Riyan murmurs, staring at the Prismata through a narrow window. “Pure energy.”
“And we’ve pulled and stretched that energy, woven it through billions of circuits and wires and batteries, across nine star systems.”
“And if Volkov destroys it …”
“All that energy will vanish.”
We stand in silence for a long moment; I know the others are thinking the same terrible thing: How many would die? Would our civilization ever recover from such devastation? Volkov seems to think it an acceptable risk, but I can’t.
Pol breaks the silence with a cough. “Guess we’d better do what we came here to do.”
“Which is what, exactly?” Riyan turns away from the window to raise an eyebrow at me. “We came here to stop Volkov from destroying the Prismata, but how are we going to do that? It’s not like we can move a thing that size. We can’t defend it, either—the five of us against the whole of the Union fleet.”
“Mara’s got the most military training of all of us,” I say. “Mara, w
hat do you think?”
She jumps when I say her name. She’d been staring, not at the Prismata, but down the corridor, fidgeting with her gun.
“You all right?” I ask her.
She swallows. “Yeah, of course. This place is creepy, that’s all.”
Suddenly Pol’s head jerks. “Did you guys hear that?”
“Hear what?” I ask.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Mara says.
“Something hit the station. I heard a thump.”
“There are probably a hundred Prisms bouncing off this thing every hour,” I point out. “They’re like gnats out there.”
“No, this was different. Heavier.” He frowns. “It came from the docking bay.”
Riyan stiffens. “Natalya.”
“Wait,” I say, before they can charge off. I shut my eyes and press my hand to the control, then attune to the flow of Prism energy running through the wires and circuits beneath it. This was something I practiced on the Valentina during the brief journey to the Vault—following Prism currents and learning out to read them, drawing data directly from the ship’s computers. My sense is still hazy, and I have to focus hard in order to read the messages the current is bringing me now.
What I find makes me suck in a breath, eyes shooting open.
“There’s another ship. The dock next to ours has been activated.” I meet Pol’s eyes. “Someone followed us here.”
“Could it be Volkov already?”
“Why would he bother docking? He could just—”
I’m interrupted by the pulse of a gun behind us, and Pol and I whirl to see Riyan slump to the ground, unconscious.
I freeze as my eyes rise slowly to Mara.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, raising the gun to me. Her eyes glisten with tears, but her hand doesn’t waver. “I really am. But I can’t let the Committee get control of this place.”
“Mara,” I say very carefully, “what did you do?”
“What I had to, for all our sakes.”
Footsteps sound down the corridor, the unmistakable heavy plod of space suits, moving quickly in our direction. Pol curses, his hand flinching as if he might try to grab his gun. It’s still holstered; he had no reason to draw it when we landed. We were supposed to be the only people around for a hundred light-years. But I shake my head at him, not doubting that Mara would drop either one of us as easily as she did Riyan.
“You never deserted,” I whisper. “You were spying on us all along.”
She shrugs. “ ‘Go along with the princess’ were my orders. No matter what you did or where you went. Waiting for you to find the Firebird, only to find out you are the Firebird. I was just doing my job.”
“You helped us escape Zhar in the first place!”
With a sigh, she shakes her head. “That was my father’s plan. He didn’t tell me about it until we were already aboard the Valentina. I never intended to let you off the base, but then my father hit me with that sleep patch. You were the ones who signaled the Committee and got my people captured. You’re the reason my dad died back there.”
She has no idea her dad survived the Union’s attack, only to die in the Autumn Palace. I decide now might not be the best moment to inform her of the truth.
My mind races. If I could reach the control panel, I could tap into the Prism energy fueling the station and knock out the lights like I did in the palace. It’s just out of reach, but Mara could drop me or Pol before I made it one step.
Before I can conceive even half a plan, it’s already over.
Loyalists swarm around us, twenty or more of them; it’s hard to keep count. Their faces are blurred behind their helmets, their voices muffled as they shout. But it’s clear what they want—an easy surrender. I can’t even make it to the wall before they’ve hemmed me in, so there’s no hope of shutting off the power. I can’t connect with the Prism network unless I’m physically touching a machine fueled by it.
Pol puts up his hands, his face rigid and eyes blazing.
Riyan is quickly bound, his hands placed in a special cuff to keep him from tessellating when he wakes. They strip Pol of his gun, then bind him. I wonder what happened to Natalya. Stars, if they killed her …
“ZHAR!” I spot her bringing up the rear. Seething, I try to push through the Loyalist soldiers, but they hold me back. “You don’t know what you’re doing! You have no idea—”
“Stacia?” says a soft voice.
I go absolutely still.
My body is numb to the soles of my feet. Everything around me seems to freeze.
With a sob rising in my throat, I whimper, “Mom?”
And there she is, her and Dad both, flanking Zhar. They’re encased in space suits, but that doesn’t stop me from lurching free of the soldiers and running to embrace them. My helmet clacks against Mom’s; behind her visor, she’s crying. Dad hugs me fiercely, and even he’s got moist eyes. My grizzly, stodgy old dad—I’ve never seen him cry before.
They look terrible. Even though all I can see are their faces, I can tell their bones are standing out, their figures gaunt. Mom’s limping, leaning on Dad, both of them carrying guns. They look like strangers, poor imitations of my parents. But they’re undeniably mine.
I’ve had to hold strong for months, keeping myself together like a beat-up dory patched with tape. But now I can finally release, can finally sit back and let them fix everything.
I don’t have to be strong anymore.
“Baby girl,” Dad murmurs. “We’ve missed you so much.”
Mom grips the shoulders of my space suit and studies my face. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
“What are you doing here?” I ask. “How are you here?”
“We slipped through the Union blockade around Amethyne a month ago. By the time we met up with Zhar, you’d already gone. Oh, my dear, why did you do that? You should have known we would never send you to anyone we didn’t trust.”
“Trust! You can’t trust Zhar! She’s—” I realize I’m shouting, and lower my voice, gripping both their hands with my gloves. “She’s totally insane. She’s on some kind of revenge mission. She shot Pol.”
They exchange looks.
“Come with us,” I whisper. “We’ll get out of here together, you and me and Pol and Riyan. Please, Mom, Dad, if we hurry we can—”
Mom shushes me, still smiling and crying as she shakes her head. “My darling, my darling. We are so close. I promise, this will all be over soon.”
“Yes,” says Zhar, interrupting our reunion. “It will all be over soon.”
Even behind her visor, Zhar’s eyes practically glow with anger as she approaches me. I step to meet her.
“You’re a monster,” I hiss. “You’re as bad Volkov.”
“Am I?” Her voice is chilled. “What are you, then, Princess? Half my people died fighting when you called the Union down on us. You chose the wrong side.”
“The only side I chose was Cli—” I pause, gritting my teeth together. “Was the Prismata, and everyone you and Volkov would destroy.”
“Stacia, please,” Mom urges. “Trust us. We’re doing this for you.”
“We’re doing this for the Belt,” Zhar says. She presses a gloved hand to the window. The Prismata reflects on the front of her visor. “Pyotr would have wanted this. We, his most loyal of companions, securing his legacy. Wielding the power of the Prisms against his enemies.” She turns to us, eyes fervid. “This is how we take back the galaxy. This is how we put Anya Leonova on the throne. We will eliminate the usurper and all his kind.”
My father nods. “For Pyotr and Katarina, and the children.”
“Your family,” Mom adds to me. She squeezes me close. “Oh, Anya, I wish you could have known them. How strong they were, how inspiring. You carry that strength in you, and now you can finally claim your birthright. We are so proud of you.”
My joy at seeing my parents is starting to fade, as I realize how squarely in Zhar’s corner they stand. They still see the Leonov
Empire as something good, something worth dying and killing for. My stomach sinks even as my mom holds me close. I was naive to think they would fix everything. I was naive to hope they could ever be just my parents again, as if the Teo and Elena who raised me are totally different people from the Teo and Elena who smuggled me out of the palace when I was a baby. Anya has always been their first priority.
“Mara told us you’d found the Firebird,” Zhar says impatiently. “Do you have it with you?”
I clamp my jaw shut. It’s childish; I might as well stamp my foot too, for all the good it’ll do, but I don’t want to make this easy for her.
Mara speaks up. “Commander, Anya is the Firebird. It’s a code in her DNA, passed down from the other Leonovs. I’ve seen it—she can control the Prisms with her mind or something. Apparently it’s what made them insane.”
My parents stare at me while I shoot Mara a dark look.
“Oh,” Mom breathes. “Oh. Sweetheart, is this true?”
I feel suddenly claustrophobic in my tight space suit. My fingers itch to yank off the helmet. “I’m not insane. None of the Leonovs were. If you’ll just listen, I can explain everything!”
“So we had the Firebird all along,” Dad whispers. “The key to the whole war was running around our vineyard, playing in the mud, and we had no idea.”
I look away, unable to stomach even the sight of him right now. My own parents never saw me as anything more than a means to an end.
I’m forced to stand in silence while Mara tells them everything. She hands over the secrets I’d entrusted to her without a second thought, a soldier reporting to her superior in a flat, mechanical tone. She doesn’t even feel guilty for it. All our conversations she repeats back to Zhar in a clipped voice, wrung dry of emotion. Watching her betray me is like feeling a knife slide into my gut; the final twist comes when she tells Zhar how she pretended to forgive me for her father’s death. Her eyes flicker to me then, her disciplined facade fracturing just enough for me to see the bitter anger in his eyes. She always blamed me. All this time, she’s been hiding her true feelings, playing at being my friend.
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