by K. B. Wagers
I wanted to tell her I didn’t trust my gut, that it was a seething mass of snakes all tangled in fury.
“Are we safe here?” I asked, pointing at the planet rotating above the console and then gesturing at the red-marked Farian forces.
“Safe enough,” Mia replied, returning her gaze to the console. “The Farians have been seeking our planets for years with little success. We fight when we want to, not the other way around.”
“Have you sent out feelers to Fasé’s people? There have to be some Farians who don’t want war with you.”
“We have. They are in chaos because of what happened on Earth and we haven’t gotten a response.”
“As the Star of Indrana you’d think I’d have some pull with them? I knew Fasé. Her people may be open to an alliance.”
“No, it’s not safe.” There was a curious hesitation in her voice.
“What’s safe?” I laughed. “You trust me to help you plan troop movements but not this? Why?”
“Hail, this is not about a lack of trust, it’s—”
“Mia, do you have a moment?”
She looked away from me to where Vais stood in the doorway; whatever she’d been about to say to me had been swallowed by the interruption, and she exhaled a frustrated sigh before leaving me alone.
“Majesty, where are you?” As if I’d summoned her, Fasé’s voice echoed in my head, distracting me with her volume. I looked away from the door reflexively.
Of all the ghosts she had become the most persistent, and at least once a day I would hear her voice. I couldn’t, or didn’t, answer her questions depending on my mood, and it seemed to frustrate her to no end.
“More damn walls. That does me no good.”
“Fine,” I murmured. “You want something. Here’s something.”
I looked down at the console and hoped that Mia would assume my absent hand-waving through the hologram of Sparkos was just me lost in thought.
My back hit the wall and before I could get a hand up to defend myself, Aiz locked his hand around my throat and squeezed. I heard Johar gasp from where she watched us and hoped to Shiva she wouldn’t try to help me. Aiz would kill her. He’d already warned her as much the first time she’d watched us fight, and I knew it wasn’t an empty threat.
I had been doing better, but the constant harassment from Fasé and the ghosts in my head were starting to wear me down. I could endure all manner of attacks from Aiz but couldn’t seem to bring myself to make that last killing blow, and I knew that was frustrating him to no end.
I kicked at him. He blocked it easily, stepping in closer with a sigh and a shake of his head. The proximity kept my punches to his head from their full force, and I felt my larynx start to give under the pressure.
The movement in the corner of my vision called to me, and I spotted Mia in the doorway.
She tapped a finger to her eye, but my pain-soaked brain refused to cooperate, and my throat collapsed under Aiz’s hand. Mia shook her head, tapped her eye again, and then suddenly the spark of comprehension flared through my brain, and I used what oxygen I had left to drive my thumb into his left eye.
Aiz staggered away, vicious curses and blood flying through the air as I slid to the floor in a dying heap.
I flopped around, my lungs desperately trying and failing to drag air in through my ruined trachea. It was automatic, instinctive, and useless.
“Oh, Hail.” Mia laid her hand on my throat with a pained noise, and her energy flowed into me. I kept my eyes on hers as my throat was rebuilt and my lungs filled with air again. “Stay down,” she whispered as she stood.
I doubted I could disobey her even if I’d wanted to. Mia had healed my throat, but the other injuries from the fight were all still present and reminded me of it with such force that I blacked out for a second.
When I came to, Johar was sitting with my head in her lap and her hands in my hair. I could hear Mia and Aiz’s fierce discussion, but they were talking so fast it was hard to keep up, the bits of Shen I could understand making for a conversation as broken and disjointed as my body.
“Aiz, you push her para skilira—”
“Para skilira?”
“Beyond her skills,” Johar whispered.
“I push because I have no choice. We are running out of time.” Aiz shook his head. “She must be prépei capaz na eínai de luchar or die.”
“Prepared to fight or die.” Jo continued to translate at my murmured confusion.
“That’s cheery,” I muttered. “Not really a surprise, though.”
“Don’t move,” Johar ordered when I tried to sit up. “You’re fucked up. I’m not even going to try to help, I think I’d kill us both. Just turn your head.”
Mia reached up, touching her fingers to Aiz’s face, spitting a curse at him and grabbing the other side of his head when he tried to pull away.
“Hold still,” she ordered, putting her hand over his ruined eye.
“You let your sympathies get over you,” he said, leaning in and pressing his forehead to hers.
“Of course I’m worried. We walk on the edge of a knife’s blade.” Mia closed her eyes, smiled. “And I’m not the only soft heart in this place.”
He pulled back, wincing. “Did you need something?”
“We got hit.”
“Where?”
“Luasathia. I don’t know how the Farians found us. Heckor got la stóla out, but not the civilians.” Mia closed her eyes and swallowed. “We have to do something, Aiz. Before the Farians make more of those ships.”
“I don’t know la stóla,” Johar said. “But I’d guess ‘fleet’ or something similar just from context.”
Aiz dragged a hand through his hair and muttered something too low for me to hear before he scooped Mia into a brief hug. “Let me finish here and I will come see you after.”
“She is getting better.”
“She didn’t die only because you helped.”
“He’s not wrong about that,” Johar muttered.
“Hush.” I glared up at Johar and she smiled, but there was worry in her ice-blue eyes.
Mia’s laugh was a wash of warmth over my chilled bones. “We are stronger together, brother.”
“She’s not wrong about that.” That comment earned me a raised eyebrow from Jo.
Before I could say anything else, Mia stopped and looked down at us with a smile. “Johar, if you’ll come with me. I’ll see you later, Hail. Watch out for him, he is angry. Also, he drops his left guard when he moves in.”
“I’ll remember that,” I replied, rolling to my side and away from Johar with a groan. Aiz grabbed me under both arms before I could get to my feet and hauled me into the air.
Power surged where his bare skin touched mine, wiping away the pain, filling me with that delightful buzz I couldn’t stop wanting. “We’re not done.”
“I gathered.” Because I was expecting it, I was able to translate his shove into a forward roll and bounced to my feet, knocking aside his kick and ducking in to land a punch to his spine. “Farians giving you problems?”
“Your Shen is improving.” He gave me a flat look.
“Your people talk a lot, and there’s not much else for us to do,” I lied with a shrug, shifting on the balls of my feet as I waited for him to move in again.
Instead he dropped his hands, shoulders slumping with the movement. I could have moved in. Part of me wanted to finally win a fight. I’d come close so many times in the last few days. But the look on his face stopped me.
“There were upwards of twenty thousand Shen on Luasathia, Hail. Men, women, children. My people. They are all dead. They are slaughtering us with that weapon of theirs and I am helpless to stop it.”
My breath ghosted out, but Aiz didn’t notice as he turned away, rubbing both hands over his face.
“How can I help?”
“You have no idea how much I appreciate the offer, but I don’t know that you can.” Aiz hooked his hands behind his head and stared
up at the ceiling. “The Farians have these ships, Hail. We stole one, Mia and I, back before Father was killed. She was able to pull apart their technology, rebuild it into the ships that make up our fleet, but we never could get the weapon to work.”
“I know. Mia sent me the files to look at.”
“Did she?” Aiz gave me a thoughtful look. “Interesting.”
“I understand the concept but can’t make much sense of where things went wrong. Gun schematics are pretty universal, but the notes are all in Farian.”
“I’ll have someone translate them for you.”
“You were telling me the truth about their colonies,” I whispered, the memory of that awful beam of light cutting through the black and down to the planet. “They really killed their own people.”
Your people, Hail. Zin’s ghost whispered the reminder.
“They will kill us all to have their way.” He turned, dark eyes haunted with grief. “We have taken down a handful of these ships. It’s not enough. It costs too much to destroy them.”
“It costs more to let them keep killing your people.”
“We have been able to hide until now. I don’t know how they discovered the planet’s location.” Aiz lifted a shoulder, let it fall, and offered up a genuine smile. “Now you see why I push the way I do. If we win, this will all be over.”
I spotted Hao sitting against the far wall, shaking his head with sorrow etched on his face. “If I fail?”
“You won’t.” Aiz crossed to me, putting his hand against my chest. My heart thumped as though it were trying to break free of my rib cage to meet his fingers. “You are a warrior, Hail. You are the Star of Indrana. You won’t quit. You won’t lose.”
I woke to the sound of Gita and Johar whispering in the dark, my nightmare fading into the background of my brain. The moons painted the wall by my feet with silvery light.
“I think we should do it.”
“You know she won’t come willingly.” Gita’s voice was heavy with frustration.
“Then I knock her out and we carry her ass.” I could practically hear the nonchalant shrug Johar offered up. “What little I believe about the Farian abilities to see the future, you and I both know that the fucking emphasis was on Hail not fighting. That’s what she’s doing in there with Aiz and it’s changing her, we can all see it. Shit, even the Shen are worried about it.”
“Alba’s located a shuttle depot about a hundred and fifteen klicks from here. We’ll start making plans for it. I tried to hold out hope that the others were alive, Jo, but—”
“I know, it’s been five and a half months here, which translates into who knows what as far as standard time goes. Either way it’s been too fucking long for no sign of anyone.”
“I’m never going to get to forgive that asshole. I know he’s smirking at me from the afterlife,” Gita whispered. There was a choked sob and the rustling of an embrace, then silence.
I rolled onto my side, coming face to face with Kisah. If she’d been alive my Guard wouldn’t have fit on the bunk with me, but being a ghost meant you could break all the rules you wanted.
You know you can’t let them take you out of here, ma’am, right?
I nodded.
Kisah smiled and pressed her forehead to mine. I squeezed my eyes shut, tears leaking into the pillowcase until sleep claimed me again.
14
Hail.”
I blinked, my dry eyes telling me I’d been staring at my outstretched hand for far too long even before I looked at Mia.
She was watching me with a raised eyebrow and the beginning of a smile tugging on one corner of her mouth. “Are you all right? You’ve been extremely distracted today.”
“I—” I closed my hand, extinguishing the sparks jumping across my palm. We were sitting side by side against the wall, my knees pulled up to my chest and my arm resting on top.
Tell her about Gita’s plans, Muna said, but the words lodged themselves in my throat.
I shook my head. “I didn’t sleep well.”
Not so far gone you’d betray your own people yet. Hao was leaning against the far wall, legs crossed at the ankles. I’m honestly kind of surprised.
I made a face and gestured rudely at him when Mia’s back was turned. Hao’s ghost shook his head and vanished.
“We can pick this up again tomorrow?”
“No, I’m fine. Tell me again.”
“You can’t pull energy from yourself like you did with your broken hand. You have to focus outside yourself. It’s the only way to keep from burning through your personal energy stores.” Mia stuck a hand out and the air around her fingers rippled until it formed a ball of arcing blue light. She closed her hand into a fist and the ball vanished.
“Now you try.”
I blew out a breath and extended my hand again.
“This isn’t magic, Hail.” Mia’s voice was low against my ear. “There’s energy in the air, atoms bouncing against each other.”
“Like lightning.”
“Exactly like lightning. All you have to do is take it. Think of how it feels when you’re out in a storm just before the lightning hits.”
I knew how it felt. The raw power of it singing through the air. When I’d lost Wilson’s trail out in the black, I’d snuck out of the ship in the middle of the night on Falzour and screamed into the oncoming storm. The very air had been alive around me, and if Hao had caught me there would have been an epic ass kicking. As it was the storm had answered my rage with a lightning show that stole my breath and rained fire down around me as I’d stood stubbornly in the night, daring the gods to strike me down for my failures.
It rained here on Sparkos, but the lightning was blunted by the forest around us and I suspected I’d have a much harder time going outside to stand in the rain around here than I had on Hao’s ship.
I dragged in a breath and exhaled again. I could feel what she was talking about, but it was trapped behind glass.
Or I was.
“Bugger me.” I dropped my hand with a muttered curse. “What am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing specifically,” Mia replied. “You are an extremely controlled person, Hail. This requires that you surrender. You can’t control the energy until you’ve opened yourself up to it, and to do that you have to let go.”
I turned to look at her, my speech about my control being the only thing keeping me from killing myself and everyone around me dying in my throat.
I’d forgotten how close her head was to mine. Mia’s breath caught, and I watched her gray eyes darken with emotion.
I leaned forward to close the centimeters of space between her lips and mine. Then my heart gave a single, painful lurch as Mia leaned away.
“I can’t,” she said, pressing her fingers to my mouth. “It’s not that I don’t want to—” The blush appearing on her cheeks made my heart lurch again. “It wouldn’t be fair to you, Hail. You are not here entirely of your own free will and I don’t want you looking back on this thinking I coerced you into that choice.”
“You’re happy enough to have my help with this, coerced or not.”
Mia smiled. “My brother would be furious to hear me say so, but the fight is less important than me getting this moment between us right.” She dropped her hand and I felt the heat still tingling in my lips. Her exhalation was quiet. “It is selfish, I know, when weighed against the survival of my people and the galaxy, but I won’t—” She fumbled and muttered a curse in Shen. “You matter for no other reason than the fact that you are you.”
“I’m nothing special.”
“You are everything that is special in this universe.”
I wanted to push, to lean forward and kiss her anyway, but part of me knew she was right. I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t—all appearances to the contrary—in control of anything, let alone myself.
“Mia.”
We jerked apart at the sound of Hamah’s voice. Mia got to her feet and crossed to the doorway. I returned my focus to my hand. The
rapid-fire conversation in Shen was beyond my abilities except for a few scattered words I recognized.
I didn’t need to know what they were saying to understand the sudden snap in Mia’s voice, and I lifted my gaze to the pair in the doorway.
Hamah’s mouth was set in a thin line. Mia was shaking her head. He reached a hand out, but she danced backward.
I got to my feet. I could practically taste the fight brewing in the air. “Is there a problem?”
“Esai la muerte osa!”
“Hamah!”
I settled into my stance between one breath and the next, smiling as I lifted a hand. “If you have a problem, Hamah, I’m happy to oblige you.”
“No.” Mia held up a hand and gave Hamah a push toward the door with her other. “He’s leaving.”
Hamah left, but not without one last look over his shoulder at me, dark eyes filled with surprising hatred.
“What was that about?”
“Nothing.” Mia lied so easily I almost missed the tightness around her mouth.
“You stole a fight from me; least you can do is be honest about why.”
She raised a dark eyebrow. “I would have let you kill him, but I’m mad enough to consider not bringing him back.”
The misery in her voice cut through my anger and had me spreading my arms wide. Mia crossed the distance, burying her face in my shoulder and holding on tight. There was no heat in the embrace, even though it had been sparking between us like a live wire only moments before. This was just comfort. I felt her choke down a sob and pressed my cheek to her hair. “What is it?”
“Old wounds. New arguments.” Her voice was muffled. Then she pulled away and looked up at me with a smile. “You would understand. I have not been their leader for very long. Things shift, even when you try to keep them the same. You have to make choices and they are rarely the ones that make everyone happy.”
“I do.” I laughed, rubbed a hand over my face, and then dropped it to my side. “Those who are your companions are now your subordinates.”