~*~*~*~
“Are you sure it’s okay for us to be here?” her older sister whispered for the fifth time.
“What are the odds we’re going to get attacked now?” Mercury asked, returning her whisper. “And if we did get attacked, what are the odds we’d survive no matter where we were?”
Cressida rubbed her arms. “I know. But…”
They had been hiding already for hours, and Cressida was actually the first one to say she was going nuts, even though Mercury had felt it for much longer.
Mercury trained the portable flare, modified from the captain’s fancy pen stylus, on the reprocessor controls to finish her program. “It will take a few more seconds.”
Her sister stood at the kitchen doorway. “Bad guys could be boarding as we speak.”
“We’d hear it.” She brought up the internal emergency power and keyed in the necessary ingredients. “Yves asked for this. It’s part of his plan. I’d hate to not be ready when he needs me.”
At least she could do that much. Plus, it took her mind off the creepy creaking and clanking of a lifeless ship.
“Yves is never wrong?” Cressida gazed down the blackened hall to the airlock.
“He’s kept me alive this long. What about Xan?”
“Xan is more an in-the-moment kind of guy and doesn’t pretend to know everything.”
Mercury paused. “You don’t like Yves.”
“He’s so confident. Because of what I’ve been through—what we’ve both been through—it takes me a long time to trust.”
That, Mercury could understand. Cressida hadn’t seen Yves rescue her from two whole stations’ worth of enforcers. “If he says we’ll be okay, we’ll be okay.”
The reprocessor, decorated in an archaic style with gold filigree swirls and vines, made a classic ding. She opened the antique chute door and pulled out the gold inlaid tray.
“Can we go?” Cressida whispered.
Honestly, Mercury wasn’t convinced they were much safer in the panic room located beneath the captain’s chair. A bonus stash of oxygen and rations prepped them more for cold sleeping through extended trips than hiding from a determined searcher.
But she respected her sister’s ship and her sister’s life. “Just a sec.”
“What now?”
“You didn’t get to taste Aris’ macaroons.”
“Mercury…” Her sister craned into the hallway while Mercury entered the commands. “Isn’t there a better time?”
“You tell me. Honestly, though, if the bad guys bust down the hall, I’d rather go out after eating a cookie than spend my last moments curled up in a closet, crying and begging for my life.”
Cressida gave up on staring into the blackness and tiptoed to the bench. She watched Mercury construct the colorful macaroons. A scent of spun sugar and nutty spice warmed the room as the multicolor pinwheels emerged and then disappeared into their plain, lumpy shell.
The reprocessor dinged again, and Mercury arranged them in a controlled-gravity tin. “Okay. We can—”
“Why don’t you make some tea?” Cressida suggested, not moving from the bench.
Mercury shifted her weight. “Shouldn’t we get back to the hiding place?”
“It’s not a very good hiding place.” Her sister’s features turned rueful in the low light. She fiddled with the stylus. “You were right. I didn’t get to try these earlier, and there might not be another time.”
Mercury made the tea using Cressida’s basic program. A more delicious variation could be personalized and finessed later.
Assuming they both made it out of this alive.
Cressida chewed the cake. Her eyes closed and her smile grew distant. Dreamy. “I do remember this. The Secret Summertime Brunch Bunch.” Her eyes opened; liquid shone. She sniffed and fingered the crumbly cake and laughed. The sound edged with fragility. “Were they always this plain-looking?”
“Yep.” Mercury dunked hers in the tea. The creamy coconut absorbed the black liquid like a sponge. “I made the inside more artistic, but the outside is definitely the original. So far as I can tell.”
“It’s so impressive what you can do now. Although you were always so careful and exact. And mechanical, and good with your hands.”
Mercury’s throat tightened. Cressida thought such good things about her? But she was the artist and diplomat, heir to her mother’s legacy before Mercury had screwed it up. Sometimes she could hardly believe they were from the same family.
“You were two years younger, but sometimes, like when you were programming with the alarm pets, it seemed like you were smarter than Aris.” Cressida laughed. “I was so dumb about technology it’s hard to believe we were from the same family.”
The emotions started to melt. “Cressida…”
“I’m sorry I screwed it up.” Her smile turned sad. “So many times I would have given anything to be able to go back in time and be there, with you two.”
Mercury set aside her teacup with a clink. “Cressida.”
Her sister looked up.
She took a deep breath. “It was my fault we ended up like this.”
Cressida touched her own chest. “I’m the one who ended up on the Kill List. I’m the one who put you in a coma.”
“If my operation had been successful, we never would have had to separate.”
“But if I hadn’t ended up on the list, our parents wouldn’t have attempted the operation.”
Mercury clasped her sister’s hands. “But Cressida—”
“But Mercury—”
“—it’s my fault,” they both said in unison.
Cressida opened her mouth to continue arguing. Anguish lived in the shadows beneath her eyes.
But Mercury started laughing.
Cressida stopped, surprised.
You and your sister are a lot alike .
Mercury finally understood Yves.
Cressida was wrong. The Kill List wasn’t her fault. But if Mercury wanted her older sister to move on, she needed to forgive herself first. Past was past. And the longer she spent agonizing over her imperfections, the longer it took her to embrace the beauty that Yves saw within her. The spontaneity, the determination, and the easy empathy. She extended her generosity, her kindness, and her forgiveness to everyone but herself.
Just like Cressida.
“It’s not your fault,” Mercury said again.
Her older sister started to argue.
Mercury squeezed her sister’s hands. “But anyway, I forgive you.”
The argument seemed to die in Cressida’s throat. For a moment, her sister was as scared and quiet as a little girl. She had always been the controlled, obedient child. Unlike Mercury, she had tried so hard, from the very beginning, to be good.
Her throat worked. “Th-thank you, Mercury. I don’t know how, but thank you.”
The burden lifted from Mercury’s shoulders. Her sister loved her. Her sister forgave her. Her sister thought she was awesome. And now Mercury had given some of that back.
“We’re together now,” Mercury said. “We find Aris and we can conquer anything.”
Cressida disentangled her fingers. The guilt returned to her face. “I’m not sure Aris will be as forgiving if he ends up on the list like you did.”
“The list isn’t your fault,” Mercury said.
“How do you know?”
“Yves said.” Of course, he’d also said he needed more data to calculate why they found themselves on the list. “The Faction is after the rogue. We’re bait.”
Cressida bit her lip. “The rogue helped us. It’s hard to imagine she’s actually trying to kill us instead.”
“Maybe there’s more to her story.” Mercury twisted her fingers. “About Aris…”
“If any of us are safe from the Faction, it’s him. Aris has taken his father’s place as regional governor of Seven Stars in the Hyeon home system.”
The Hyeon subfamily space located in the dead center of the Antiata Empire. Mercur
y clapped her hands. “That will make him easy to find.”
“Yes, well, I don’t know as we should visit. He’s already an assassination target, and I’m sure the last thing he wants to be is bait.” Cressida rubbed her worried brow. “He won’t forgive me.”
“Yes, he will.”
Cressida looked up.
Mercury understood what she needed. Not logic. Not reason. Like Yves, also trapped by those things, Cressida needed faith. Mercury needed more confidence in the truth of her heart than she felt in herself.
“Aris gave me something for you. A necklace.”
Cressida put her hand to her throat.
Mercury matched the gesture. A thud-thud-thudding sounded in her bones. Blaming herself was so easy. Forgiveness was so hard. “I lost it.”
Cressida looked ill. “Oh, no.”
“I mean, it was ripped off my throat at Luck Station. But the important point is, Aris gave me two MAC necklaces. Mine was red and yours was blue.”
“Just like the alarm pet skins he got us when he left for secondary school?”
“Exactly. And a year after you left, he gave those to me, because he had faith I would someday have the chance to share this with you.”
Tears glimmered in Cressida’s eyes. She sniffed and touched her nose. “I never wanted to hurt anyone.”
“He loves you,” Mercury said. “He let you go to protect you. Those necklaces symbolized that, someday, we’ll all be together again.”
Cressida’s smile wavered. “If we get out of this, I want to see him.”
“Of course we’ll get out of this,” Mercury said. “We’re together now. We’ve got two gorgeous men.”
Cressida laughed through her tears. “Who would’ve guessed?”
“Nothing can stop us,” Mercury promised. And once the men returned, they would become an indomitable foursome. “No one will ever separate us again.”
~*~*~*~
Xan strode down the hall, silent and commanding. Others didn’t question his presence.
Or they wouldn’t, if he actually ran into anyone.
The eerie emptiness of the corridors battled his natural comfort with the military ship. Military hierarchies prevented random violence, and although this ship was too small for him to pretend to be in the wrong area, he possessed a uniform and clearance. They couldn’t shoot first. They would have to resolve the discrepancies or fill out a shit-ton of paperwork and possibly face a demotion.
Undovans loved their paperwork.
Paperwork and demotions.
Noise echoed down a hall. He slid into a supplies doorway.
Distant doors clanged.
Strange. Once again, the shivers on his arms told him this assignment was going just a little too well.
Fuck. He whipped out of the doorway and jogged down the hall, ears and eyes and mouth open. He swore the air tasted coppery and iron-rich, like human blood.
He needed to get the fuck out of here.
But so far, he had only encountered the patriotic cerulean blue of the Undovan Second Government. The Second Government occasionally traded places with the First. The color of the uniforms and the drapes indicated which currently held power. The first government’s was a sort of optimistic orange.
The hall to the brig opened with his fingerprint scan.
He eased into the prison.
The table for logging visitors had been flung upside down, and the warden chair was missing.
His bad feeling grew.
He counted doors. He was too close now to turn away from his goal. No way he could tell Cressida he’d come to the door of the brig and left without opening it.
There, cell door. Uncle Sirus ought to be right behind it.
He glanced up and down the hall. Silence. Eerie silence.
Fine.
He keyed in the order for the cell door to open. It slid back.
Instead of an old man, a half-unit of Robotics Faction bx-90 soldier-class enforcers trained neural disruptors on him.
A trap.
He tensed on the trigger of the bolt gun. Too many targets and too few bolts—
Directly behind him, another barrel caressed the back of his neck.
He froze.
The zero class murmured in his ear, “Surprise.”
“Ah, fuck,” he said.
“Language,” the zero class said.
He tensed to attack. “I’ll give you—”
The click of the trigger depressing was the last sound he heard.
~*~*~*~
“Hand me the gravity-box.”
Mercury took the box from Cressida and slid in the cookies. The ones that cracked a little glimmered like little firecrackers, safely cushioned from the outside world.
“We should get back to the safe room,” Mercury said. “It’s the most shielded.”
“Almost done.” Cressida dumped their dishes into the reprocessor. “I wonder how the men are faring.”
A loud clank echoed down the hall.
They both froze.
Silence met their held breaths.
“Do you think it’s them?” Mercury whispered.
Her sister held up her hand. She tiptoed to the hall and peered into the blackness.
Mercury looked behind her. “Can we make it to the captain’s chamber?”
An explosion blasted the kitchen.
Her sister, bathed in nuclear light, reached helplessly for Mercury as they were coldly ripped apart.
~*~*~*~
Yves placed his finger in the Undovan Faction identification scanner. The terminal powered up. Clarity and power flowed into his mind as he navigated familiar pathways, lit like marble arches, deeper into the architecture of the Faction.
“Welcome, Robotics Faction agent y-class Yves|Santiago,” the Central Mainframe itself intoned deep in his fully connected neural pathways. “Congratulations on bringing in the criminals Mercury and Cressida Sarit Antiata, and the x-class formerly known as Xan|Arch. We’ve been waiting for you to check in.”
Connection flowed from his toes to the human hairs on the crown of his head. All his analyses downloaded to the mainframe, and he saw how every single one had led to the false conclusion he needed to be here, sitting in this seat, while everyone else was captured.
But that was just fine.
It felt perfect.
The Faction was right.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Let me explain to you how this is going to work.” The zero class affixed Xan’s chains to the repair hangar floor. “You’re going to give us the information Yves needs to capture the rogue, and then he’s going to kill you.”
Xan spit at the zero class.
She broke his bolt gun across his jaw.
Yves sat at the worktable. The plasma gun rested in his hands. He watched the interaction with a pleasant sense of relaxation.
A distant part of his brain asked why he wasn’t helping Xan.
But he was overwhelmingly certain that sitting here quietly, transmitting his analysis of Xan’s answers to Zenya’s questions back to the Faction, was the most logical way to proceed.
“Let’s do this again,” the zero class said. “How, as a puny little x-class, did you free yourself of the Faction controls on Liberations VI?”
Xan’s muscles flexed. His dislocated jaw popped back into his socket. “Why should I tell you?”
“Because you have no other option.”
He glared at the zero class with almost human malevolence. “As soon as I get out of these bonds, I’ve got hundreds of options for killing you.”
Zenya’s mouth smiled. “Oh, I almost hope you do get free, little x-class.”
“You might as well answer her questions,” Yves noted.
“Please shut up,” Xan said.
“You’ll suffer less damage. I’m only being reasonable.”
“And I’m only trying not to hate you.”
How odd. A vague dissonance buzzed in Yves’ skull. Quiet, but noticeable over his re
laxation. “Why should you hate me?”
Xan flickered at Yves. “Seriously? You walked us into a trap.”
“Sorry.” He said the word, but he didn’t feel anything. All his feelings seemed to be locked into the black box behind his chest cavity. The one that had operated perfectly before he’d met Mercury. “Separately surrendering everyone reduced casualties. It was the most logical choice.”
The x-class’s eyes narrowed. “How long have you been on their side? Since the beginning?”
“Okay, we’re done answering your questions.” Zenya earned Xan’s scalding wrath. “Although I do have to tell you, you wouldn’t be in this position if you and your little girlfriend hadn’t downloaded and watched those fake messages. Thanks so much for helping.”
Xan growled.
“Now that we’ve answered your questions, time to answer mine. Why can’t we reconnect you to the Central Mainframe?”
“Fuck you,” Xan said.
She tapped her nails on the metal table. “How did you meet up with the rogue? How did you avoid capture? How are you currently able to resist all attempts to reprogram you?”
“Fuck you, fuck you, and oh, yeah, fuck you.”
The zero licked her lips. “Your time away obviously hasn’t improved the x-class vocabulary.” She looked up at Yves. “Thoughts?”
The analysis occurred instantly.
“He is not the same x-class as any of our models. His identity has changed in the form of his name.”
“Yes.” She tapped her gun against him. “How did you change your name?”
He gritted his teeth. “Like I would ever tell you.”
“He only cares about Cressida,” Yves said. “Without her, he has no reason to tell you anything.”
Xan gritted his teeth. “Shut up!”
But Zenya held Yves’ gaze a little too long. Cold, like a snake. “He has no reason to tell me?”
She meant rather than “us.”
His brain analyzed that linguistic choice. Yes, he had put himself on the side of the humans and the x-class. He had done it automatically. Somewhere, deep inside, he wanted to be on their side.
On Mercury’s side.
But, of course, he was on her side.
Assisting the Faction was simply the most logical method to assist Mercury.
Xan’s gaze burned into him. “Break free.”
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