Omi's mouth dropped and he stepped forward. "My Lord, I—"
"Are you questioning me?" Toro said.
Omi's face went white. "No, of course not, My Lord."
"Good. You will find these houses most comfortable. I will come for you when I need you."
Nova glanced at Meeka, her face was frozen into a serene half-smile but Nova could see the disappointment in her eyes. Nova's stomach rolled with guilt and she considered arguing with Toro, otherwise what was the point of Toro dragging Meeka across the planet?
"Come, Stranger," Toro said.
He turned on his heel and marched to the wooden gate.
Nova bit her lip and cast a sympathetic glance to Meeka before following after him. The guards at the gate stepped to the side and pushed it open as Toro approached.
Nova glanced at the guards and stumbled. They had no eyes.
Where they should have been puckered masses of scars and burnt skin, blistered and flaking.
Nova swallowed, hurrying to catch up with Toro.
As soon as they passed through, the gates slammed shut behind them.
Nova stumbled to a stop, gaping. She'd expected a simple village like Omi's, but this was something else entirely. On this side of the wall the guards wore holsters with plasma pistols on each hip. Instead of cloaks they wore bullet proof armour that glinted into the sun.
The buildings weren't wooden or made of sliding screens. These were made of metal and looked like grounded spaceships. The round windows were made of solid glass and speeding vehicles covered in solar panels filled smooth streets.
"What—" Nova said.
"Welcome to the real Chindo," Toro replied.
Nova glanced back at him. His usual guards had been replaced by men with guns who formed a tight box around him. A sleek black car waited just inside the gates.
Nova spun in a tight circle. Solar panels, computers, ships.
"How is this—"
"Please come with me," Toro said.
He turned for the car and one of the guards opened the door for him. He slid inside and beckoned for Nova to follow. She couldn't see any other options so she slid in beside him. Glasses of sparkling water glistened in a holder in front of them.
A woman with red hair and black glasses, wearing a sleek suit, sat on the chair opposite them holding a clipboard.
"Welcome back, Toro," she said, raising one eyebrow at Nova.
"Updates," Toro said.
"There was some muttering of a rebellion amongst some fisherman in Sector Eight. We took care of it like you asked."
"Good. You were subtle?"
"A tragic boating accident," the woman said, shaking her head.
"Good. Next?"
"Sector Two continues to try to adapt. We've sent in spontaneous explosions, unexplained fires, and plague, but they seem intent on pushing forward."
"Move on to HAV. Annihilate a village and spread a rumour that it was a result of one of their inventions. That should set them straight."
The woman made a note on her clipboard.
Nova looked from Toro to the woman with her mouth wide open. She could only make out half of what they were saying without context but none of it sounded good. Her head was still circling what Toro had said about the virus. The name sounded so familiar. Then it struck; HAV, Halucin Acute Virus had almost wiped out all of humanity… then there were the Reapers. She shivered. It was more virulent and more deadly than anything else the human race had ever invented. So what the hell was Toro doing with it?
While Nova's thoughts circled Toro and the woman kept talking.
"The drought in Sector Five is going well. They're begging for our help and when we send water they'll do anything you ask."
"Good. We'll need them. Do you have anything on Buta?"
The woman's lips pursed even tighter and she looked down at her notes. "Nothing since the attack on Omi's village."
"How can we lose him like that!" bellowed Toro. "We have cameras all over the planet!"
"Our analysts think that he's got a way of blocking them. It's the only explanation for how he keeps disappearing."
Toro took a deep breath and smoothed the sleave of his shirt. "I want him found and executed. No more waiting and no more excuses."
"Of course," said the woman.
"Good. Let's go," Toro said.
The woman tapped once on the glass screen that separated their compartment from the driver and the car lurched forward. Nova's hands twisted around her shirt as she stared fixedly out of the window. The streets rushed past and it was like being on another world, separate from Chindo. She saw no children as they raced through the city; only military men and women marching about their duties.
Nova guessed it had been ten minutes when they stopped in front of a sparkling white building with guards on every corner. Nova's door was opened for her and she stepped out into the afternoon light. Toro got out on the other side and marched up the steps. Nova followed a few paces behind. At the top of the stairs a white door opened for them and beyond that spread a wide entranceway lined with desks.
Men and women sat at each desk monitoring computer screens. Each of them displayed a separate video feed; some of them looked out into forests and fields while others looked out at villagers. Nova's stomach dropped as she recognised one particular room; it had been hers back in Omi's house.
"What the hell is this?" she hissed as she caught up to Toro.
"This," he said. "Is Chindo."
"You're spying on the whole planet?"
"I prefer to think of it as keeping them safe."
"They're living in poverty while you watch!"
"It's for the good of Chindo."
"How is keeping them in the Dark Ages for their own good? How is encouraging rampant sexism in their best interest?"
"That's easy," Toro said. "If the women are silenced, the people are far less likely to move forward, to advance technologically. You see, it's all about control. As long as they see me as untouchable, god-like, they will follow me."
"So this is just a power trip?" Nova said. "You're doing everything you can to keep these people as slaves!"
"All for the greater good," Toro said. "It keeps order. Now I want to show you something."
Toro turned and led the way down a dim corridor. A guard followed behind them. The corridor led down to a set of steps which wound around a central pole. They went deeper until Nova was sure they were well underground. The bottom of the staircase deposited them into a cavern made of metal, like a giant hanger, and sitting in its very centre was a ship as big as any Nova had seen. The only vessel that came close was the crashed colonisation ship she'd raided on Taive.
"These colonisation ships have a habit of crashing," she said. "And somehow the people always end up as savages."
Toro glared at her. "We are far from savages."
"I guess that depends on your definition."
"This way," Toro said, sweeping forward.
He led her to the front of the ship where the command pod door lay open. Inside, a yellow warp crystal just like the one Cal had salvaged from Taive lay on top of the control panel.
Nova's heart fluttered, after everything she'd gone through to get that crystal… this one lay abandoned, but then, this ship was already past the border.
A star chart took up most of the wall behind the command chairs, mapping the galaxies that were known when it had been made.
Nova took it in with one glance. The large pieces of empty space were missing entire galaxies, many of which were now inhabited. Some of the planets marked on the map were gone now, ruined by mining or explosions. The map itself was a relic, probably worth a fortune.
"Where did you come from?" Toro said, waving at the map.
Nova glared at him and took her time to observe the rest of the cockpit. Wires hung out of broken holes in the walls and a cup balanced inside of the chip reader. Most of it looked like it would never work again.
"Where?" Toro said,
more forcefully.
Nova glanced at the map and pointed vaguely to the central galaxy.
"Where are we?" Toro asked.
Nova frowned at the map. She imagined overlaying it with the modern maps that she was more familiar with. The Jagged Maw had sat near the edge of the known galaxies and they'd flown past that to the border. In her mind's eye the border was a red line that circled the Confederacy controlled zone. She traced a line with her finger past the border to the next galaxy.
"Here," she said.
"That's not far at all!" Toro said. On the map the two galaxies were barely thirty centimetres apart.
Nova rolled her eyes. "This is a compressed chart."
"What does that mean?"
"It means they've removed all the space between galaxies so that they can fit them all in."
Toro frowned. "So how far away is it?"
"It would have taken this ship seventy years at least to get from there to here," Nova said.
"Seventy years?" Toro whispered.
Nova nodded. "At least, and that's if they didn't run into any trouble."
Toro stared up at the star chart and then looked at Nova with narrowed eyes. "Yours can do it faster."
Nova hesitated.
"How?"
"Newer technology."
"You will talk to my scientists and you will tell them about this technology."
Nova bit her bottom lip. "Why?"
"Because once I've learned everything I can from you, you and your friends will be free to go."
Toro gazed at her, expressionless.
"If you'd let your people invent they'd come up with it on their own," she said.
Toro shook his head. "You still don't get it. If I let them create it, then they will have too much power."
"But what's the point?" Nova said. "What's the point of learning my technology if you're going to keep your people in the dark?"
"Because I want to travel the stars."
"What makes you so special? What do you get from the stars which you don't have here?"
Nova waved vaguely above their heads where the opulent building spread out around them.
"Why be a king," Toro said. "When you can be a God?"
Nova's mouth snapped shut. Toro had spoken the words with absolute sincerity and not a hint of irony. He did mean to become God to his people.
"I can't help you," she said. "No one should have that much power."
Toro stepped closer so that his face was inches from hers. "Wouldn't it be better for them to praise me as a God, rather than some savage made-up being? At least I have realistic expectations, at least I have my humanity."
"You're going to release HAV on a village of people," Nova said quietly. "Whatever humanity you used to have, it's long gone."
The corner of Toro's mouth twitched, the first sign of emotion Nova had seen since they entered the colonisation ship.
"I will get what I need out of you. One way or another," he said. "Guards!"
Two men with guns appeared at the door to the ship.
"Take her to the prisons. I'll deal with her later."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Each guard grabbed one of her arms and dragged her out of the ship. Nova fought and kicked at them but together they pinned her arms to her sides and dragged her out of the hanger into a dark maze of passages. The musty air became filled with the scent of wasted years as the tunnel opened wider and revealed a cell block.
Unlike the prison near Omi's village, which had only six cells, this one had at least twenty stacked on top of one another. As they entered, gaunt faces peered at them through the bars. The guards tossed Nova into a ground-level cell and slammed the gate shut behind her.
She whirled around and grabbed the bars but the guards were already walking away. There wasn't even a lock on the door that she could try to pick. Whatever was holding the door shut, she couldn't reach it.
She turned to face her new cell. A thin sheet lay scrunched in one corner and a bucket lay on its side in the other, that was all.
"Welcome," said a scratchy voice to Nova's left.
She glanced over. A woman sat hunched in the far corner of the next cell. Her grey hair hung in loose tendrils around her face and hid most of her features. Her gnarled hands were wrinkled and covered in brown spots.
"Hello," Nova said, distracted, still looking for a way out.
"I'm not crazy," the woman said, as if replying to Nova's thoughts. "You can call me Gin."
Nova stepped closer and wrapped her hands around the bars that separated their cells.
"Nova," she said.
The woman nodded. "Off-worlder."
"Yes."
"So's that one," Gin said, pointing to the cell on Nova's other side.
Nova whirled around, expecting to see one of her companions. Instead she was faced with deep shadows and a pair of eyes.
"Doesn't talk much," Gin said. "Not that there's much to talk about."
Nova nodded, her eyes scanning the rest of the jail and taking note of the prisoners she could see.
"No point looking for a way out," Gin said. "I've been here twenty years and haven't found a way yet."
"Twenty years?" Nova said.
Gin nodded. She lifted her head and some of her hair fell away to reveal a scarred mess of flesh that curled across her features, twisting them.
"Tried to get her back home," Gin said, jutting her chin towards the shadows on Nova's other side. "Toro senior was in charge then. He didn't take kindly to me giving away his prizes."
"Prizes?"
Gin nodded. "Off-worlders. You're all a fountain of knowledge you know. Most of the Capital's technology comes from you lot."
"Toro said I could go home if I told him how to build a ship."
Gin let out a bark of laughter. "You're an idiot if you believed him."
Nova sighed. She hadn't believed him, not really, but a part of her had wanted to believe it would be that easy. "He's got my companions imprisoned and he took our ship."
Gin nodded. "That's the way he does it. Cannibals."
"You used to work here?" Nova said.
Gin nodded. "My family has worked in the Capital for generations, since the ship first landed."
"What the hell happened? How'd that bastard Toro and his dad get to be in charge over this technological backwater you've got going on?"
Gin sighed. "My family tried to fight the technology act but they were just a few people against the entire Capital. Toro's family have ruled since the ship landed. He's descended from the pilot."
"The… what?"
"The pilot of the colonisation ship. My family has passed the story on for generations so that we don't forget where we come from. When the ship first landed it made sense for the pilot to be in charge, but over generations the position became something else. Now it's a dictatorship wrapped in a monarchy."
Nova's hands slid away from the bars and she leant her face against them instead. The cold metal felt good against her face and helped her to focus. She could barely imagine how something so simple as a pilot taking control of a crashed ship could turn into this. Chindo was the result of generations of bad decisions.
"So now Toro's got his eyes on other planets," Nova said.
Gin nodded. "His father had the same ideas."
"They're mad."
"Probably. I had hoped that off-worlders would come and set this place straight, but I suppose you're not in a position to do that."
Nova shook her head. "Not without my friends and my ship."
"I don't know how much has changed but if things are still the same as they were when I was free, then your ship is probably in the lab, getting analysed."
"The lab?"
"Same building as this one, few floors up."
Nova nodded. If she could get to Crusader then maybe she had a chance of getting out of here.
"I see that hope in your eyes," Gin said. "I'd put it out now if I were you. They won't let you get free."
Nova sighed and slumped down on her crumpled sheet but it wreaked of urine and blood so she tossed it into the corner with the bucket and settled with resting her head against the stone wall. She gazed into the next cell where the shadows hid whoever was there. Nova could feel eyes staring back at her but she couldn't make out more than that.
She tried to put Gin's words out of her head; she'd escaped Ankar, the inescapable; what was some small backwater prison?
That night felt like the longest of Nova's life. She was thoroughly sick of being in prisons and she resolved that she would never be locked in such a depressing place ever again, even if it meant staying on the right side of the law.
She managed to get a few quick naps but the sounds from the other prisoners kept waking her. She had to assume it was morning when guards appeared with food. She was given a spoonful of grey gruel and that was all.
"Toro will see you," the guard said when Nova had licked every trace of the disgusting food off of her fingers.
"How wonderful," she muttered.
The guard slid her door open and led her out of the prison and up a nearby set of stairs. As they went higher, the lights got brighter and the passages got cleaner until they were walking through a gleaming metal passage.
At the end stood a glass door that slid open as they approached. The room beyond was lined with gleaming white desks covered with glass tubes, and beakers, and machines that read off numbers. People in white coats hurried between the benches, notebooks in hand. Nova's eyes slid past all of that and locked onto the most beautiful sight she'd seen in months. Crusader, still attached to the other ships, sat squarely in the centre of the room. People in white coats were tapping the outside and taking scrapings from the hull.
"Crusader," Nova whispered.
"You're here!" Cal's voice replied inside her head.
Nova bit her lip to keep the absolute joy and relief from her face at hearing Cal's voice.
"You're here," Toro said, coming up behind her. There was no sign of apology at having her locked in prison overnight. "Open your ship."
Nova glared at him. "No."
Toro nodded to the guard on Nova's right. The man pulled back his fist and slammed it into Nova's stomach. Her organs clenched and she bent double with sudden pain. The air rushed out of her lungs and left her gasping for breath as tears stung the corners of her eyes.
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