Zenith

by Sasha Alsberg

  Lira’s brother’s voice slipped into her mind again. Anger is never your friend, little bug.

  Damn the ache in her chest that came with it. Why was it always Lon’s words that accompanied her in her darkest moments? Reminding her of home. Reminding her of another past failure.

  She focused back on the issue at hand.

  “We need that Soleran ice mare who tried to eat Andi’s throat with her teeth a few months ago,” Gilly said. “These cuffs would be nothing to her.”

  “The ice mares eat people, Gilly,” Breck said. “Not metal.”

  Lira sighed. If only the cuffs on their wrists were made of rope. Then she could burn her way out of them and tear through the barrier of Patrolmen below with her bare hands.

  She winced as her scales heated to a boiling point.

  “Lir,” Gilly said, the light from Lira’s scales illuminating her worried face. “It’s okay. We’ll figure this out.”

  “She’s right,” Breck added. “Just...calm down, before you exhaust yourself. The last thing we need right now is to lose you, too.” She plastered on a smile. Her teeth glowed a ghostly purple from Lira’s light. “Andi will be fine. She’s smart. And Dex is...”

  “An ass,” Gilly said with a wicked little grin.

  Despite everything, Lira laughed.

  Lon would love this child. If they ever got out of this, maybe someday Lira would introduce the two of them.

  “So what now?” Breck asked, drawing Lira’s attention back to her. The gunner’s nose dripped blood from both nostrils. One of the Patrolmen had gotten brave and slammed her face with a rifle butt. He was now unconscious, thanks to Lira’s rapidly bruising fist.

  “We wait,” Lira said again, as her skin cooled, as she locked the anger back into herself and buried it deep. “There is no plan other than patience. Because if we move, Dextro’s men will put a bullet in Androma’s brain. And then we will be the cause of our own captain’s death.”

  It had taken everything in Lira not to dive down the stairwell and stick a blade in Dex’s back as he led Andi away through the halls of their ship. Even his posture had been smug. Lira couldn’t fathom—save for the possibility that he might have a stick up his backside—how or why anyone would walk that way.

  “We wait,” Breck said.

  “We wait,” Gilly echoed.

  And so the girls waited.

  And waited.

  For hours, it seemed, until Gilly, sufficiently bored, fell asleep, her snores echoing through the hallway. Until Breck’s stomach began to growl and Lira stopped counting the minutes since Andi had been gone. A thousand scenarios ran through her mind.

  A thousand solutions, too, soon followed by reasons why they wouldn’t work. They bit and tore at her as her scales lit up, dimmed, then ignited again.

  Useless. So incredibly useless, this ability.

  Lira nearly succumbed to the exhaustion of wasted energy. Her eyes were just beginning to close, sleep tugging at her like a poison, when a voice pierced the darkness.

  “Ladies?”

  All three of them snapped to attention.

  The ladder below them clanged as someone began to climb up.

  “Protect Gilly first,” Breck whispered to Lira.

  “At all costs,” Lira agreed.

  Then a creature appeared, stopping about halfway up the ladder. It held a lantern in its fist, the light casting a strange, otherworldly glow on its face.

  Its body was made up of metal and gears and blinking lights behind a clear casing, like a skeleton clock. Its face was stark white, with strange, unblinking eyes.

  An AI.

  “Who the hell are you?” Gilly yelped.

  “My name is Alfie,” the creature responded, his voice clear and clipped. Diplomatic. “I am the personal assistant to General Cyprian Cortas, an Artificial Lifeform Intelligence Emissary, Version 7.3.” As he pulled himself the rest of the way up the ladder and into the hallway, Lira noticed a shining silver key clutched in his other fist.

  She could make her move now. She could set the girls free with the help of this strange new arrival, this fateful turn of events. The creature’s white face turned to Lira. “Captain Androma Racella has agreed to a deal with the great General Cortas.”

  “A deal?” Lira asked, not taking her eyes from the key. Her body tensed, ready to spring. Andi hated General Cortas. He was the only person she feared in all of Mirabel. “What are the terms?”

  “Soon to be discussed, Lira Mette.” The AI tilted his head, as if staring at something he could not quite understand. “But first,” he said, lifting the key, the movement strangely smooth, “my orders are to set you all free.”

  “Well...hell,” Breck said. “That’s unexpected.”

  Lira could only stare as the strange AI stopped before her, dropped to a metal knee and slipped the key into her cuffs.

  Chapter Eleven

  * * *

  NOR

  XEN PTERA WAS DYING.

  Queen Nor Solis had known it for years, had witnessed her planet’s pain with her own eyes—but knowing the truth didn’t make facing it any easier.

  For years, she’d known it was coming.

  She felt it in the tainted air she breathed, the sting of pollution scraping its claws against her lungs as she stood on the balcony of the Nyota Room, overlooking the once-beautiful remains of her kingdom.

  She and her advisers had tried to restore beauty to Xen Ptera since the end of The Cataclysm, but radiation had left the ground barren. Crops withered the moment they tried to sprout from seed. Streams dried up. Creatures became extinct, while others mutated, their blood becoming acidic, impossible to eat.

  Xen Ptera was once a prosperous planet, rich with varillium mines that brought trade and wealth to the Olen System. But as more mines were exhausted and sealed up, the future of Xen Ptera began to look bleak.

  Businesses collapsed. Trade between Olen and the other systems ceased as the varillium ran out. Xen Pterran homes fell to starvation, which gave way to weakness, which allowed filth and disease to spread more with each passing year.

  Nor’s father had turned to the other systems for help, but the Unified Systems refused to offer enough.

  And so The Cataclysm began.

  Now, fifteen years later, the fighting had long since ceased, but despite everything she had done, Nor was out of options.

  Until recently, Xen Ptera had been relying on food and water sourced from Iv21, a small neighboring planet. But Iv21’s resources were far from sufficient to sustain the population of Xen Ptera for an extended period, and the limited food stores harvested from that planet had run out months ago.

  Death filled the void left behind.

  Mechanical noises hummed across the bustling city. From her vantage point miles above the ground, Nor had an unobstructed view of the land. Black plumes of smoke billowed over the gray landscape. Buildings, ranging from a few stories tall to some towering miles high, suffocated each other in the claustrophobic capital of Nivia.

  Flowers ceased to bloom, and real water was now a dream as artificial water tablets took its place. The burnt orange sky rained acid, the kind that burned both flesh and metallic skin.

  Nor grasped the railing as the ground beneath her gave a great shuddering breath. The quakes were near constant, cracking open the ground and devouring anything in their path. Her people used to mourn the lives lost to the molten crust, but over the past few years, the quakes had become too regular for anyone to care.

  The Xen Pterrans were growing numb to the destruction around them.

  Nor heard the chorus of death in the cries of her starving people, saw it in the green fog that burned their skin as it swept its way through the crumbling city streets with each bitter gust of wind.

  For years the suffering of her people, her planet, had torn her
apart.

  But she knew, deep in her soul, that soon she would have the power to stop it all.

  “Your Highness?”

  Nor stiffened at the sound of a girl’s voice behind her. She turned from her spot on the balcony, abandoning the view of her capital city and the pain it struck in her chest.

  Like a poison.

  A cyborg girl stood in the doorway, patches of metal spiraling across her burned skin, a whirring gear where her heart should be. She was one of the few who had been saved from radiation exposure even after it had done its damage.

  “You dare approach me in my private quarters?” Nor said. The wind howled in from the open balcony doors, whipping at her midnight waves of hair. “What is the meaning of this?”

  She smiled to herself as the girl took a step back and bowed her head, silver hair falling into her face.

  Nor had always loved the sound of her own voice—powerful, yet pure. A voice that brought even the strongest, bravest men to their knees. A voice that could make heads roll, should anyone speak a word against her.

  “Apologies, Your Highness,” the girl whispered. She cast her gaze down to her bare toes. “Darai has called upon you, and...”

  Nor lifted a hand. The girl’s words stopped at once.

  “Take me to him,” Nor commanded.

  “He is in his office, Your Highness. I will escort you there, if you should wish it.”

  Nor nodded once, and the girl turned, the gears in her metallic chest whining. Human, but barely so.

  She briskly followed the servant girl down the tapestry-lined hallways and into the elevator. They stood in silence during the ten-story descent before coming to a halt at the floor that housed her adviser’s office.

  Nor brushed past the trembling girl and swept into Darai’s room, not bothering to knock.

  Stars winked at her from the inside. Hundreds of thousands painted on the walls, a replica of the sky that Xen Ptera had not been able to see for years. And in the center of the room, seated at his white desk, was Nor’s most trusted adviser.

  “You think so highly of yourself, Darai, that you dare summon me to your quarters?” Nor hissed. She approached the pristine white desk.

  “Apologies, Your Highness,” he said, standing and giving her a deep bow, gray hair falling across his weathered face. Half of it was mutilated, skin shriveled and burned from a childhood accident, bits of metal poking through where permanent stitches helped hold the skin in place. He rarely spoke of the accident and never gave much detail in response to Nor’s questions about it.

  “What is the meaning of this?” she asked.

  “I have news regarding the weapon. I just received word from Aclisia that it is in the final stages of development.”

  Nor smiled, her mood lifting immediately. For years, she’d been waiting, imagining the glory of her greatest creation. And now it was nearly complete. “Then we should prepare ourselves at once.”

  Darai stood from his desk, his long robes sweeping behind him like a curtain. “Nor, if I may suggest...”

  “Speak your thoughts now, Uncle, before I grow tired of you.”

  His lips pressed together in a thin smile. He was a proud man, but he himself had taught her to wield her rule like a mighty sword. He’d been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. The only surviving member of her family—not by blood, but through his years of loyalty to Nor and her mother before her.

  Darai bowed his head and approached her slowly. “The timing, of course, is of the utmost importance. We must remain patient to ensure all of the pieces fall into place before making our move.”

  “The final piece is already in place,” Nor said with a wave of her gold prosthetic hand.

  Seeing it reminded her of the past. The explosions. The loss. The need for revenge that empowered her.

  The past was what fueled her present.

  Nor turned away, her spiked collar grazing her jaw. Across the room, the painted stars glared back at her like devil’s eyes.

  “When we bring the galaxy to its knees,” Nor said, a smile slowly appearing on her rouged lips, “I’d like to repaint this room. With the blood of every man, woman and child who has ever lifted a finger against my planet.”

  Darai swept across the tiled floor to stand at her side.

  “My dear.” His voice was slippery, as if drenched in oil. “When we bring the galaxy to its knees, you can paint the entire palace in blood, if you wish it.”

  Nor closed her eyes and smiled.

  She could see it, taste it.

  And it pleased her.

  Chapter Twelve

  * * *

  ANDROMA

  ANDI CROSSED HER arms over her chest, fingers digging into her biceps as she tried to keep her anger in check. She sat in the captain’s seat on the bridge, staring out the viewport of the newly repaired Marauder and into the Tracker ship’s massive cargo bay. The internal damage had been a relatively quick fix, but it was the exterior of the ship that showed the most damage from their fight with the Patrolmen. She’d make sure General Cortas paid for that, too.

  Her ship wasn’t a junker. She refused to let it look like one.

  Andi spun in her chair to face her crew, giving them each a once-over. No serious injuries, though there was a nasty cut on Gilly’s collarbone and dried blood beneath Breck’s nose. Lira, graceful as ever, perched on her pilot’s seat like a bird.

  Andi’s heart unclenched slightly knowing they were all in one piece.

  “Are we really going to go quietly into this job?” Breck asked, leaning against the entry door behind her.

  “This team is never quiet,” Lira said. “We slaughtered them. I’m still surprised they allowed us to keep our heads after that.”

  Breck made a sound in the back of her throat. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the general goes back on his word to pardon us after we deliver his son, safe and sound, back to Daddy. How do you even know he’s going to keep his promise, Andi?”

  Andi grimaced as she watched the Patrolmen outside, in their perfectly polished boots, their pristine blue uniforms. “He made the Vow.” All the Patrolmen out there had made vows, too, when they joined the Arcardian ranks. Several of them had followed Dex to their deaths because of those vows. The Arcardian Vow was as binding as two souls becoming one. “He’ll keep his word, as long as I keep mine.”

  “Making deals with the devil,” Lira said with a sigh. “Whatever will we do next?”

  “Let me shoot the old man, Cap. We can swing over to Arcardius now, and I’ll make it quick,” Gilly whined from beside Breck. Her red braids had come undone, and curls tumbled over her shoulders, making her blue eyes pop. “Then this will all be over. You don’t want to go back to Arcardius, anyways.” She seemed to shrink back into herself for a second as she thought that over. “Right?”

  “No one,” Andi said, glaring at Gilly over Breck’s massive form, “is shooting anyone else. Not yet, at least.”

  She didn’t answer Gilly’s second question.

  She’d already thought about it, imagined all the ways a life back on Arcardius could play out.

  Even with a pardon, it would never be the same. When Kalee died, people had looked at Andi as if she were the scum of the planet. As if, by choice, she’d taken a knife to Kalee’s throat and slit it herself. As if she’d wanted to become a traitor.

  Pardon on the line or not, Andi knew she wouldn’t be able to get herself and her crew out of this. Right now, they were boxed in like the blue cattle she’d once seen on a farming satellite.

  “I don’t like it any more than any of you,” Andi said, “but we don’t have much of a choice. Our ship is in his hands, and he has an entire Tracker full of armed guards surrounding this cargo bay right now.” She tapped her red-painted nails on the armrest. “I don’t doubt he’ll keep the Vow...but that’s
not our biggest concern right now. We’re headed to the Olen System.”

  “And this is Xen Ptera we’re talking about,” Gilly said. “We’ve never stolen anything from there. We’ve never even been to the Olen System, Cap!”

  Traveling to Olen had become a fool’s journey ever since The Cataclysm ended. There was still the peace treaty in place, preventing the massive Olen System, with its capital planet of Xen Ptera, from attacking the other Unified Systems of Mirabel. But those living in the Olen System weren’t exactly friendly with the Unified Systems.

  Andi didn’t blame them. It was a miracle anyone had survived the explosive final battle that took place on Xen Ptera in the final days of the war.

  “We can’t think of it like that. If we do, we’ll end up overthinking every move we make. It’s just another job. A grab and go.” But Andi had a hard time believing that herself. She’d been to plenty of dingy, destroyed places in Mirabel. Pirating had a way of drawing her and her crew to the darkest sides of the various planets and moons they’d visited. But if half the rumors she’d heard about Xen Ptera were true, then she had to be strong. If not for herself, then for her crew.

  Her past actions had gotten them into this mess. She had to keep them alive to the end.

  “Whatever you say, Androma,” Breck said. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take little Gilly here down to check out the new weapons. With the supplies the general gave us, we can make Sparks large enough to destroy an entire moon.”

  “Go ahead,” Andi said. “But I want you both back here before we take off.”

  A selfish part of Andi wished General Cortas hadn’t been the one to give the gunners their new weapons. For the past several months, they’d been low on their most beloved supplies. She wanted to be able to provide for her girls, but so far, all she’d done was put them in danger.