by Maura Milan
Knives grabbed the other orange, placing it right next to the candle. There was a reason he’d brought two. One for him, and one for her. A birthday gift. A memory.
He looked back at Ia, who was sitting reverently, watching his ritual.
“She’d be twenty-one today,” he told her.
Ia got up and sat down on the floor across from him. She handed him the bottle of archnol. “To Marnie then.”
“To Marnie.” Smiling, he took the bottle and took a swig, remembering the first time Marnie had brought him here. She’d laughed at him while he coughed at the first sip. But now, he was two years older. And the burn no longer took him by surprise. Not much could.
Except for maybe her.
He turned to look at Ia. Her eyes were dark and large, pulling in the light around her. He felt it, like a force of gravity. He didn’t want to look away. He didn’t want to blink. It was strange how she made him feel. Like his atoms were being rearranged into some new shape, a new composition of himself. The light from the flames gave her golden skin an even warmer glow. She lived in eternal sunset.
She saw him staring at her, and her cheeks reddened. From the archnol. But perhaps from something else. She dragged her finger against the etchings on the ground, and then immediately her body tensed, along with everything around her. From the rust on the walls to the infinite atoms splitting between them.
Her eyes came up to him, fierce like the first time he’d met her. What had happened? What had changed?
He glanced down at the markings at their feet. Marnie always wanted everyone to remember she was here, so she carved her existence right into the rock.
Marnie Adams, 8919—her final year at Aphelion.
Oh mif.
Ia was already up. “Are you General Adams’s son?”
Time was running at a heightened speed. He couldn’t even form the words.
“Answer the question.”
He took in a deep breath. The only thing he could do was answer. “Yes.”
She pushed away from him, but he grabbed her by the wrist, stopping her. “Ia, let me—”
“Don’t.” Her voice burned through him. “Just take me back.”
With those words, the space between them crystallized. It grew pointy and sharp, so that all he could do was let go of her. As he walked her back to her room, he thought back to when her hand had been on his shoulder, and he had felt it for that one second.
Invincible.
But now he was back to square one.
CHAPTER 33
IA
THEY WALKED BACK to her room in silence, with Ia keeping two steps ahead and Knives remaining two strides back. Yet, it felt like more. Like they were light-years apart.
And when they were at her room, she turned to go inside without even a goodbye. By then, the buzz she had from the archnol had worn off, leaving all but the sting of truth and a blinding headache.
Knives’s father was the person who had hunted her down for years like she was an animal, who had caught her and finally caged her. If she’d known Knives was his son, then she would have been more careful. She wouldn’t have gotten too close. She was angry at herself for being such a fool. But thank Deus it had happened. It reminded her that she didn’t belong here, and this was just another reason why she had to get out of this place.
Ia stepped inside her room and stood there, seething. Even as the door slid closed behind her, she remained planted in place. The bathroom door was closed, where she could hear the pipes creak from the swell of the water. Tarver was in the shower.
She scratched at the fabric around her arms, her eyes searing into the Commonwealth quartered shield embroidered onto her sleeve. Her flight suit suddenly felt tight and itchy. She couldn’t breathe. She punched her fingers on the buttons on her shoulders, which loosened the elasticity of the material. The suit shrugged loose, and she flailed until it was off her. She keeled forward in her undergarments, tight black compression shorts and a black band around her chest. Using the center table to stable her balance, she glanced at the feathers tattooed on her forearms, a reminder that it was not in her nature to be caged. In here, she had grown weak and unsure.
Her eyes focused on Tarver’s holopad, unguarded on the tabletop and ready for the taking. She thought back to when she had first stepped into the Nest. She had looked around, stopping in front of an old sign hanging near the entrance. It was coated with what may have been hundreds of years of dirt and dust. The text underneath was faint yet visible.
AG-9
Knives had said the place was an Origin Site, so that must be where they were. Too bad Ia knew nothing of a planet named AG-9. The Commonwealth must have stricken any mention of it from the Planetary Records, for extra security measures. And the name of planet meant nothing to her without the exact location.
But then she’d seen the line of numbers on the corner of the sign, hidden by a layer of rust. She was picking at it when Knives called out to her, and she had to stop.
Thankfully, she had scraped off enough to see what it was. They weren’t just numbers.
They were coordinates.
Ia might not have gotten that heart tracker, but she’d discover something better. Aphelion’s exact location. One of the Commonwealth’s most guarded secrets. The information was something that even her professors had been tight-lipped about.
Einn was right. Sometimes information was more dangerous than weapons.
And now Einn would be able to find her, and she knew the perfect little tunnel to break his way in.
CHAPTER 34
KNIVES
KNIVES TOSSED AND TURNED in his bed, and by the middle of the night, his sheets had gathered in a tangle around his feet. Everytime he closed his eyes, Ia’s face seared in the darkness, the look of betrayal replacing the smirk that he had grown so familiar with.
A knock came at his door. Groaning, he tumbled out of bed. Who could it be? Immediately, his chest swelled, hoping it was Ia. He ran his fingers through his messy blond hair and prepped himself on what he would say if it was her. How he would apologize. And apologize. And apologize.
But when the door slid open, the headmaster stood in the hallway, which was stark and empty at that hour of the night.
Knives squinted at him. “Bastian, what is it?”
“Flight master, your assistance is required.” The headmaster’s voice was hurried as he glanced at the time on his holowatch.
“I know you’re a workaholic, Bastian, but I’m off right now,” Knives said, rolling his eyes. “Can we talk about this in the morning?”
“It can’t wait. I have to attend to some business offworld. We have to leave Aphelion immediately.” Bastian pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s for the Star Force.”
“Then I don’t care. I told you. No Star Force work.”
Bastian narrowed his eyes, his voice stern. “It doesn’t matter. You’re still an officer, and officers obey their orders. You have to go, whether you like it or not.”
Their rendezvous with General Adams’s cruiser, a state-ofthe-art 64 Tachi, was scheduled for 1500 Planetary Time. Knives glanced at the clock on his console as he stepped out. It was 1535.
“You’re late.” His father’s voice was even, but Knives could tell by how red his ears were that his father was trying to hold back his anger.
Knives stood at attention, glaring at his father as he laid his fist upon his heart. After nearly sixty hours of nonstop travel, he was ready to pass out, but as an officer, he had to wait for the general to return the salute.
Bastian looked over at him. “Knives, at ease, my boy.”
With a huff, Knives slouched out of the stiff salute. General Adams grunted for them to follow. Knives fell into step behind them, but then turned back to his jet in confusion. He expected engineers to rush in and service it, but the cruiser’s flight deck was quieter than usual. Not an engineer in sight.
Where was everyone?
He drifted through the empty hallways, not
ing the vacant rooms they passed. There were no engineers, no comms, no flyers. He thought he would at least see a service borg somewhere, but there were none.
They stepped through an arched doorway and onto the captain’s deck, as empty as the rest of the ship. General Adams made his way to the adjacent control room in order to look over all the maintenance systems.
When they were alone, Knives glanced over at Bastian, who had started pacing while poring over his thick leather-bound notebook. “Are we the only ones here? Where are the other officers?”
“This mission is above their security clearance,” the general answered through the paned glass that separated the control room from the rest of the captain’s deck.
Knives lowered his voice and looked to Bastian. “When you told me we’d be offsite, I didn’t realize it was for some top-secret mission.”
The headmaster continued reading. “If I told you specifics, you wouldn’t have come.”
“Bastian, you know I don’t want to be here,” he hissed.
Bastian raised his bushy white eyebrows. “But you’re one of the most talented young men I know.”
“Well, you don’t know that many then,” Knives grumbled.
“I’m the headmaster of a prestigious Star Force Academy, Knives, so yes, I do. And none of them have half the skill or know-how that you do.” Bastian closed his journal and offered it to Knives. “So for now, use your eidetic memory and study this.”
“Fine.” Knives relented and started flipping through the pages. Display controls, layouts, system programs. Words like Mirage, Dark Star, and Threshold popped out at him. He scanned through each section, quickly memorizing everything. As he went on, there were pages that had been ripped out entirely. Which was fine. Less work was always welcomed in his book.
Most of it was gibberish, until he stopped at a set of blueprints. Why did they look so familiar? His brow furrowed as everything locked into place. It was a gate. But not an ordinary gate. Most gates were stationary structures, but this one had been fitted with ionic thrusters along its outer rim, which theoretically meant it could be moved. None of the gates he knew of did that. He wasn’t sure it was possible.
“Have you familiarized yourself with everything?” Bastian asked. “These notes are highly guarded. Only two records of these are in existence.”
Knives was about to ask why, when General Adams stepped back into the captain’s deck. Without a crew, his father was busy doing all the duties that were normally beneath him.
“Lynk, how far off are we?” General Adams asked.
A series of interlocking lights floated together, forming the shape of a woman’s head, an elegant torso, arms, and legs. Lynk was a Monitor, an advanced AI hologram programmed to assist this ship.
“The Wuvryr Gate is within activation distance,” Lynk announced as she floated toward the navigation console in the center of the room.
Knives stared at his father, his mind still processing the words Lynk had said. The Wuvryr Gate? He rushed to the navigational orb, tracing his finger over the automated simulation of the ship’s path. He scratched the back of his neck as the strangeness of their journey settled upon him. “Are these navigation paths right?”
“Why wouldn’t they be?” General Adams snapped.
Knives ignored the look on his father’s face. “Because it says we’re heading toward Fugue.”
It couldn’t be. Fugue was a made-up place from a made-up story passed around late nights in the common room to keep cadets in line.
But as he peered out the observational windows, the Wuvryr Gate towered above them. It was old, and it was rusty, and it was real. Its circular frame stared back at him like a gargantuan eye, its metal arches rotating clockwise while white lines spun in the opposite direction inside it, a visual refraction of light and space. It was a wrinkle in the universe.
Usually, before a jump, one would catch glimpses of the other side, freckles of stars or belts of faraway white gases staining the dark blank canvas that linked the universe together. But standing there now…
He saw nothing.
The universe was full of stars, but their destination was devoid of them.
They crossed the threshold into the mouth of darkness. The dim glow of the holoscreens rescued them from the pitch-black. Lynk offered some further illumination, her blue holographic form trailing streaks of luminescence wherever she tread.
Knives placed a hand against the front window. Dark as far as his eyes could see. He didn’t want to know what kind of monsters lurked outside.
Bastian stood next to him, peering out into the infinite abyss. A somber expression weighed heavy on his face.
“The stories don’t get it quite right,” he said, his voice breaking the eerie silence. “The Fugue system was a Commonwealth testing ground for new technology. But there was a meltdown, and afterward they shut down the site. For years, it was a ghost system. No one came in or out. But now, someone has taken interest.”
“Is it true about the monster?” Knives asked. “Was there really something locked up here?”
Bastian looked over at him. “Depends on your definition of ‘monster.’”
General Adams swiped up a document from his holopad. It was an activity log. “The motion sensor in the lower quadrant was first triggered sixteen rotations ago.”
Bastian wore a grave look on his face. “We must make sure nothing’s been taken.”
“Taken? There’s nothing out there but ghosts, Bastian.”
“Yes, there is.” Bastian gestured at the large gate circling the ship. “On this side of the universe, this gate is no longer called Wuvryr. Here, we call it GodsEye.”
This was the gate from the blueprints. It was unlike any interstellar gate Knives had every seen. It was a monolith, big enough to fit a whole megaplanet in its center, which meant the gate could open the jump to something very big. Instead of floating vertically, it hovered horizontally above them. From the blueprints of GodsEye, he knew it had living quarters and a laboratory unlike ordinary gates found throughout Commonwealth territory. This gate was meant to house people as well as transport them. Another reason why it was so massive.
“Suit up,” the general’s voice grated against the stillness. “If someone broke in, find out how. See if anything has been stolen.”
They were in Fugue, a place Knives had only heard stories about. Scary stories. “You want me to go out there?” he asked.
General Adams clasped his hands behind his back. “You’re the only one here who’s expendable, officer.”
CHAPTER 35
IA
IA HAD NO IDEA where Knives was. He had been absent from his lectures for a few days. Good, she thought. She didn’t want to see him anyway. She wished the day would come when she’d never have to see him and his cold blue eyes again. It would happen any moment now, she knew.
Yet, it had been three days since she gave Einn the coordinates. She had to believe he was on his way, but there had been no word from him. Not even a simple reply to her message. But she’d be ready when he arrived. She still hadn’t secured the tracker, but she and Einn could find some way to disable that, once they were finally together again.
Ia grumbled, adjusting herself in her stiff lecture hall chair.
She tipped her head back to take in the fully immersive holoscene around her. A large, white Commonwealth starjet carrier careened peacefully through space. It was quadruple the size of any ship she had ever commandeered.
She furrowed her brow at the ship’s familiar silhouette, feeling strange déjà vu.
“March 19, 8920. 1412 Planetary Time.” Professor Jolinsky was setting the stage. His voice was wretchedly annoying. “The Fringe Alliance ambushed a Commonwealth Starjet Carrier, the Ardor, stationed in K-5 Neptune’s orbit.”
Ia grinned in the darkness. No wonder that ship looked familiar. She knew exactly where this was, and best of all, she knew what was going to happen next.
From behind her head, a fleet
of “enemy” starjets, painted in black and navy camouflage, spiraled toward the Commonwealth carrier. Olympus gunheads took aim. Fast as lightning, the camouflaged ships zigzagged through the flurry of gunfire. They struck everywhere and all at once. Soon, the Commonwealth carrier was ripped apart from a fierce explosion, a sphere of blue light wilting in curls like a rose in the bitter cold.
Jolinsky’s voice droned in. “Commonwealth historians have compared the battle of K-5 Neptune to Ancient Earth’s historical Attack on Pearl Harbor.”
No kidding, Ia thought. That battle was a bloodbath.
“The ambush was led by LiteSpars General Malcomme Storm and his Juno Battalion, who hid for eighteen hours behind the Chekhov moon—”
“Stop!” Ia shouted.
The holographic scene recoiled, as if burned by her voice, and the classroom reappeared. Ia met Professor Jolinsky’s gaze as he stared bullets at her.
“That’s all wrong,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
With her legs propped up on her desk, Ia reclined backward, tilting her head toward the now-blank ceiling.
Using her hands, she set up the geography. “The Juno Battalion hid behind the Solaris moon, not Chekhov.”
Professor Jolisnky crossed his arms. “Ms. Cōcha, must I remind you this is my classroom.”
“Then get your facts straight,” she said, her eyes digging into him.
He stepped away from the podium, his shoulders tensed like they were about to fight. “There is documented footage of a fleet behind the Chekhov moon.”
She flicked her hands, waving his statement away like a fly. “That was a decoy.”
“And how would you know all this?”
She leaned in away from the shadows, her face catching the light coming from the front of the auditorium. “Because that was the battle that gave me the nickname Blood Wolf.”
The professor’s face grew pale. “Are you saying you were the mastermind behind the slaughter of K-5 Neptune?”