Ignite the Stars

by Maura Milan

  Ia unscrewed the back casing of the holowatch and glanced down at the tiny circuit board built into the frame.

  Brinn’s eyes grew round and wide, like a perfect circle. “I said you could use it, but I didn’t say you could break it.”

  Ia shushed her. She needed to concentrate. What she was about to do was somewhat delicate.

  She disconnected one of the wires from the circuit board, pinching it in her fingers. At the pressure point, the fiber unhinged, curling away like a live worm and extending to five times its initial length. She snaked the fiber wire around the back of her neck. With her other hand, she lifted her hair, her fingers feeling for a tiny, hidden input jack buried in the base of her cranium, providing a direct link to her brain and a secure way for her to contact her brother.

  She had gotten the cerebral implant almost four years ago and had nearly died from the procedure. But it was useful for times like these. Without hesitation, Ia guided the fiber wire straight into the port buried in the base of her neck. A jolt of electricity reeled her backward, and her eyes glazed over, allowing her mind to see.

  Ia stood in the middle of a blinding white expanse. She called it the White Room, which admittedly was an uninventive name, but it had stuck. The White Room was a virtual construct she had created. The concept was simple. One mind was a closed system, but add another mind, and it became a unique network between authorized users. Because of its invasive nature, if someone died while connected in the shared virtual space, the person’s brain functioning in the real world would cease as well. Luckily for her, only two people had access to this particular room.

  Her.

  And Einn.

  The moment Ia connected, she knew Einn would get a notification that the White Room was active. She only had to wait a few seconds until she heard his voice.

  “Ia? Is it really you?”

  She turned, and there he was. He had lost weight, his face more gaunt than usual. But it was still him—her big brother. Ia skipped up to Einn and wrapped her arms around him in a hug. She took a breath, taking this moment in. When she stepped back down to solid ground, her fingers darted to his hair, combing the stray black strands so they tucked behind his ears.

  He wriggled away from her hands, yet his gaze never left hers. “I thought they killed you.”

  As always, he wore their father’s pin—the two white hearts—on his collar, but that was the only thing that was the same about him. The shadows underneath his eyes were deeper and darker than before the Tawny raid, and she knew he had been torn apart by grief. Her brother was loyal to her, loved her. He would kill a million Bugs for her. An eye for a million eyes. That would be their punishment.

  “Which base did they throw you in?” he demanded.

  “They’re keeping me at Aphelion.”

  Einn raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You’re not at a prison base?” But then his eyes darted back and forth as if his mind was racing to put everything together. “If you’re at Aphelion, does that mean you know where it is? I’ve been trying to figure out its location for years now. Everyone in Dead Space has.”

  Ia shook her head. “I didn’t see our route here. I don’t even know what planet we’re on.”

  “Why on Ancient Earth did they drag you over there?”

  “Believe it or not, they’re trying to recruit me.” Her face grew flush with both anger and embarrassment.

  “Then let them,” he said easily.

  She snapped her head up and looked at him. “If that’s a joke, it’s not very funny.”

  Einn’s features were still, as if he was hatching the beginnings of a plan. “We have an amazing opportunity here, Ia. You need to figure out where you are before I can even come break you out. But before then, you can familiarize yourself with their security layouts, their weapons development program.”

  Her face dropped. She knew what he was getting at. “Einn, I should be out there, with you.”

  “This is what we’ve always wanted to do, Ia,” he reminded her. “They destroyed our home, our entire star system. And now you’ll be able to find whatever you can to shut the Bugs down. Permanently. “

  Deus damn him. Why was her brother always right?

  A distant voice called out, one from outside the White Room. A voice from the real world.

  “Ia.” It was Brinn, her annoyed voice faintly reaching Ia’s ears from the physical world. “It’s been fifteen minutes.”

  “Einn, I have to go.” Ia’s hand flew to the raised knob at the base of her neck, but before she could leave, Einn placed a hand on top of her head, a loving gesture, something he did when they were both children.

  “We’ll see each other again. I promise. But in the meantime, play nice. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. With his free hand, Einn reached for the back of his neck to tap out of his connection. His other hand was still on her wrist, his fingers still circling it lightly as his connection started to fade.

  “May your eyes be open…” she said in goodbye.

  But Einn was already gone.

  Ia’s eyes flickered back into focus. Her view of the dorm room skewed sideways, and she realized she had collapsed on her side. She plucked the fiber wire out of the input at the base of her neck. It tickled as it came out.

  Tarver stood over her and pointed at her holowatch. “A deal’s a deal, right? You’ll keep my secret?”

  “You have my word.” Ia dropped the holowatch into Tarver’s hand, leaving it in the disassembled state for her to deal with.

  “A criminal’s word,” Brinn said scornfully. “Does that even mean anything?”

  “Well, you’ll just have to find out,” Ia said. She could expose Tarver tomorrow if she wanted to, but it wouldn’t be the right move. If she did that, she’d lose the only “in” she had in this whole academy, and she knew it would be hard to find another.

  But Tarver didn’t need to know that.

  So for now, Ia would use this secret like a delicious carrot to hang over Tarver’s head. In case she needed another favor down the road.

  Ia slumped into her bed, trying her best to get cozy. She was going to be here longer than she’d expected. She had been a deplorable excuse for a cadet for a little over two weeks now. Because she hated that word. She hated what it meant—loyalty to this horrible Commonwealth. But if she was going to start needling her way in, then she should probably play the game. Doing homework. Listening to lectures. Slowly finding information. Bit by bit memorizing weapon plans.

  She’d go along with being a cadet for now, until they’d all forgotten about the Blood Wolf within their ranks. Once their defenses were down, only then would she flash her teeth.

  CHAPTER 22

  KNIVES

  KNIVES WAS INSIDE Bastian’s office, waiting for the headmaster to return. Bastian had called him to meet for a short check-in on the beginning of the semester. Knives stared at the class photos lining one of the walls of Bastian’s office. In the middle of the set, the photos had shifted from holographs to printed photos, the film grain dappling the faces of people in the image. That had been one of Bastian’s decisions when he became headmaster. He loved the idea of paper, how the ink would fade and the paper would age. So finite, he would explain, just like life.

  Knives stopped at a photo from the class that graduated a year before his and stared at a face that look almost like his own. High nose, thin lips, and dark, strong eyebrows. As he looked at his sister, he felt his breath leave him.

  The office door opened, and Bastian entered. He stepped silently in line beside him. “Ah, Marnie. She was one of our best.”

  Knives tensed at Bastian’s use of the word was. “Still is. I don’t know anyone who can fly like her.”

  “Not even our new charge?”

  Knives paused, thinking of the way Ia had flown during the flight simulation. She’d navigated around those crumbling asteroids without a slight moment of hesitation. There was a ferocity in the way she used that jet. Something he h
adn’t seen, not for a while. “Don’t compare them, Bastian.”

  Bastian angled his head, observing him. “It’s been four months, hasn’t it? Since it happened,” Bastian said.

  Knives stepped away from the wall of lost memories, lost souls. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Then we won’t.” Bastian patted him on the back. “Are you adjusting well to your instructor duties? I imagine the transition might be difficult.”

  Knives wandered over to the plush green sofa at the opposite side of the room and plopped down on it, grabbing the wooden paperweight on the coffee table to distract himself. If he had been asked that question a year ago, he would have laughed. Taking a teaching position wasn’t even close to being on his to-do list.

  “I recite facts that I find off the ArcLite,” Knives answered. “It’s easy.”

  Bastian sat down in the armchair across from him. “Easy, yes. But is it what you want to do?”

  Knives shrugged. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Well, there are still other opportunities for you,” Bastian mentioned casually. “For instance, the Serval Campaign still needs a captain.”

  Knives glanced up at Bastian. Placement on a Star Force campaign was something he would never entertain, and he thought Bastian understood this. But his father was another story.

  Knives narrowed his eyes. “Did he ask you to bring this up?”

  “No.” Bastian’s gaze softened. “Knives, when you turned down the colonization campaign, I didn’t ask questions. After what happened with Marnie, of course you needed time to heal. To grieve.”

  Knives was on the verge of standing up and bolting when Bastian pulled up a file from his holopad and sent it his way. Knives glanced at it. It was his academy records from his past two years of training at Aphelion.

  “High marks on all your exams, advanced cognitive skills due to your eidetic memory. Not to mention all the flying accolades you’ve accrued from your training. As much as I like having you around, it pains me to see you squandering your talent. Marnie was one of our best, and so are you. But you gave up before you could try.”

  Knives grunted and waved his file back to Bastian. “Because there’s no point. Marnie trained like a beast. You can be good at what you do, but skills don’t matter when you’re marooned in your jet with only minutes of oxygen left.” Knives banged the paperweight onto the table’s surface with a loud thud.

  “That’s not going to happen to you.”

  Knives scowled. “You think I won’t take on a campaign because I’m scared? They sent her on a mission with no backup. She died alone, Bastian. They forgot about her up there.”

  Knives was done with this conversation, and he was done believing the false promises the Star Force fed him all throughout his life. Why fight for them, when they would just abandon you? Now when he raised his fist against his heart in salute, he no longer meant it. Knives got up and walked to the door. He passed by her photograph. She stood in the third row, shoulder squared, fist on her chest like a good cadet.

  He thought of what Marnie’s life would have been like if she hadn’t taken the path of an officer. She would have finally perfected her ramen recipe. Gone on to beat Knives’s high score in CometKaze. She would have fallen in love, started a family.

  And she would still be alive.

  Knives took a deep breath, ready to step back out into Aphelion’s halls, where Marnie had bragged about breaking academy time trial records, gave advice to first-year flyers still on their training thrusters, where she smuggled Knives up to the Nest for his first taste of archnol. It paralyzed him, the memory of her. It kept him here, haunting the halls for glimpses of his sister.

  “You have to move forward, Knives,” Bastian said, calling after him. “You know Marnie would want that for you.”

  He didn’t want to explain it to Bastian for fear he wouldn’t understand. There was another reason he had chosen this limbo. Generations of cadets had roamed these halls, and now there was a new flock. When he looked at these kids, he saw his sister, and he saw himself. Blinded by Commonwealth promises.

  By the time he had figured it out, Marnie was gone, and he had no one.

  It was too late for him, but not for them. One day, some of these cadets would open their eyes and see it. And when they finally did come to that crossroad, he would be there.

  And unlike him, they wouldn’t be alone.

  CHAPTER 23

  IA

  EVERY MORNING, Ia woke up early, too early. Like at the crack of dawn early. And it wasn’t by choice. Her guards were at her door at 0600 to escort her to her first class. The classes were back-to-back and ended at 1800—sometimes even at 2100, depending on her engine maintenance duties, which both first-year and second-year engineers were assigned to.

  There really wasn’t much free time except for eating hours. Sometimes she’d catch a glimpse of Knives dashing out of the canteen with an apple in his mouth, but he never stopped to talk. The other cadets avoided her like the plague.

  Her spare time was usually divided into figuring out how to escape and working out. But now that Einn wanted her to scope out Aphelion’s high-security training grounds and since he couldn’t rescue her until she found out Aphelion’s exact location, escape was off her to-do list, at least for now.

  So she threw herself into her exercise routine. She was stuck here, so she could at least hone her body to the point where she could easily crack some skulls. One hundred situps, one hundred push-ups, and one hundred lunges, mixed in with some core isometrics designed to strengthen her balance. Tarver hated it. Ia often caught Brinn glaring in her direction while Ia was in the middle of her routine. But at least then there was eye contact.

  One night, after her exercises, Ia sat on her bed, rubbing the ache out of her limbs. It had been nearly a month since she arrived at the academy, and she was finally starting to feel strong again, building muscles that carved harder, sharper angles onto her arms and legs. And she was gaining some much-needed weight by gorging on bags and bags of delicious chocofluff from the canteen. She was beyond addicted.

  As the days went by, Ia grew more and more curious about her roommate. She had forced Tarver into lending her holowatch one more time by threatening to run out into the hallways and scream Brinn’s secret at the top of her lungs. Tarver had begrudgingly complied, and Ia was able to give Einn a few more updates on Aphelion’s layout. The highlight was that the academy housed a uranium core with enough power to fuel a whole planet for hundreds of years. That was all she could relay to him, since Tarver was as stingy with the time as ever.

  Through their small interactions, Ia had discovered a few things about Tarver. That she had few friends. That despite her IQ, she aimed to be a mediocre student, and that outside this dorm room, Brinn always thought before she acted. Within the room itself, Tarver was moody and uncomplacent.

  Ia rolled to her side and peeked over at Brinn sitting on her own bed. Tarver had stopped camping out in the bathroom and started sleeping in the main room. She was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a white cotton shirt with the quartered shield across the front, a shirt that Ia refused to wear, no matter how comfortable it looked. Tarver stared blankly at her holoscreen. Ia knew it wasn’t homework, but just an excuse for Tarver not to look at her.

  “What are you doing?” Ia asked.

  Brinn didn’t respond.

  Did she not hear her? Ia was sure she said it loud enough; she had a habit of speaking like the world should hear.

  “Are you just looking at a blank screen so you don’t have to talk at me?”

  Again, no response.

  “We are roommates.” Ia propped her head up on her pillow. “We might as well talk to each other.”

  Brinn shot her a look. “So you can blackmail me again?”

  “No,” she answered. “So we can relieve ourselves from this useless boredom.”

  Tarver’s face twisted at the chatter in the room, and she made a point of putting No-
Noise buds in her ears.

  Ia sighed and then tilted her head up to the audio speaker in the center of the room. “Monitor?”

  “Yes, cadet?”

  “Pull up a game of Goma,” Ia requested.

  A screen materialized in front of her, displaying a diamond shaped game board, sectioned off from tip to tip. The goal of the game was to take control of the enemy pieces and territory. Ia clicked on a black piece and placed it in the middle of the board. She swiped the screen across the room so it landed directly in front of Tarver. If they were going to be angry with each other, they might as well have some fun with it.

  Tarver stared at the screen and then shook her head, tapping on the display before sending it back over to her.

  Ia smirked, looking over the Goma board. Brinn Tarver had made her first move, and it was a ballsy one.

  They had already played through three games, all which Ia had easily won.

  It was then that Brinn finally broke her silence. “You’re cheating, aren’t you?”

  “It’s called strategy.”

  Brinn buried her face into her pillow, letting out a muffled groan. “You’re impossible.”

  “Shall we make it more fun?” Ia grinned. “Chocofluff to whoever wins?”

  “Fine,” Brinn said with a wave of her hand. “But my brain has the ability to predict the success probability of every move you will make. And this time, I’m not going to hold back.”

  Ia woke up the next morning, rubbing her eyes as she glanced across the room. Tarver’s bed was already made, and she was nowhere to be seen. Ia’s gaze settled on the middle of the room, and she grinned.

  On top of the center table lay a bag of chocofluff.

  CHAPTER 24

  BRINN

  IT WAS FINALLY FRIDAY, and Brinn’s last class was on the flight deck. Their daily schedule was so packed that she couldn’t wait for the next day, which was a free day. Most cadets used the day to socialize, maybe even go on dates, but Brinn just wanted to catch up on some rest, which could be hard with Ia sharing the same room.