by Audrey Grey
The beginnings of a frown twitching her lips, Ailat squeezed Talia’s fingers. “I had a dream last night. A dream you drowned in a sea of stars.”
Dream? Dreams were impossible for Ailat. Her programming didn’t include sleep phases. There must have been a glitch or something in her system. A specialist would need to look her over in the morning. “Everything’s about to change, Ailat. But us? We’ll be the same as ever.”
“What if Cassius says I can’t come? He wouldn’t be the first husband to insist his wife’s junior mock take retirement early.”
Talia shook her head, careful not to knock any of the opals loose. Talk of Ailat’s retirement always made her edgy. How could Ailat want to go from the royal palace to a fishing boat captain on one of Krenth’s many oceans? Wouldn’t she miss all this? Wouldn’t she miss Talia? “That rarely happens, Ailat. Besides, I’ll tell him how important you are to me. If he demands I leave my home and family, then I can make a few stipulations of my own.”
Ailat laughed, but the sound was stilted and forced. Another emotion that was out of character for Talia’s friend. “I’ve always wanted to visit Thoros, Tal.”
“Liar,” Talia teased as she slipped off the bed and onto her feet. “Thoros is a cesspool of sand and ore dust. There’s no water there. Not even a crappy pond. You’ll be begging me to leave after five minutes.”
“Not if we’re together,” Ailat amended, unfolding from the deep mattress and stretching her arms over her head. “You’ll see. It will be an adventure. Maybe your new Prince will let us fly together.”
Talia nodded, overriding her skepticism with a smile. Mocks weren’t allowed to fly anything above an S-Class shuttle, and already there was talk of those being outlawed too with the rebellion at hand.
Once she married Cassius, Ailat would probably never fly again.
Explosions broadcast on the far wall drew the girls’ attention away as the news played footage of the war. The image of a Starfighter bursting into flames danced across the moonstone, followed by unmanned mock jets looking for more Starfighters to destroy, and then the video switched to a spokesman from the Intergalactic Coalition of Seven. “I believe I speak for most of us in the Seven when I say we never imagined the virus that started out in labor models would spread to over fifty different kinds and eventually lead to full-blown war. Let’s hope the Starchaser government has—”
“Off, news,” Talia commanded a bit too quickly, shutting down the broadcast.
Ailat had frozen beside her, one hand at her neck. Unless people looked closely, they missed the flap of skin that hid her port. Thank the gods Ailat had been spared the virus. If she had tested positive . . . but she hadn’t. That was the important thing.
Although her results were curious. The test was performed by ordering a mock to harm themselves by cutting their finger. The ones who’d been exposed to the virus would refuse, despite being ordered by their human master. If the humans persisted, the mocks attacked. A survival instinct developed only after the virus struck.
But when Ailat was given the same order, she hesitated for a breath. A heartbeat. Not a positive, exactly, yet the interviewer found it curious. Talia had to use her station and a few billion credits to keep the man from testing Ailat further.
All that mattered was that Ailat did eventually slice her finger, and mocks whose programs had been corrupted refused. Meaning Ailat was fine. The war would be over soon, and this deal with corrupted mocks would all be forgotten.
“Do you think they’ll be angry at me?” Ailat asked.
Talia frowned. “Who?”
“The humans. There’s been another concerted attack by my kind. Thousands of your kind slaughtered by mocks in their homes. It could—”
“Stop.” Talia shook her head. “Humans aren’t that cruel to blame you for the decision of others. You’ll see.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
But as they strolled hand-in-hand down the hall to the coronation, Talia realized that for the first time ever, Ailat said the words, your kind, in reference to humans. Not us, like she was programmed to say.
Chapter 3
3731 AD
Will
It took two whole days to get the Odysseus’ shields functioning and fix the hull breaches from the mines. Two whole days of the crew sulking. Will tried everything. Jokes. Helping Leo clean the dishes after meals—Leo was the unofficial cook, his dishes only slightly more tolerable than Jane’s. Will even broke out his treasured movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, from the time of humans and projected it across the mess wall.
But only Dorian watched the movie with him, or at least half of it. The kid left after Holly Golightly lit that old woman’s hat on fire. Mocks these days had no appreciation for the classics. Or Audrey Hepburn in a little black dress.
Now she was a flesher.
And even with all the brooding going on, no one could figure out the mystery of the collected item, which only made everyone glare harder at Will. They couldn’t penetrate the solid surface, stars knew they tried. Or Leo did. Watching the big guy’s face grow red with frustration as he pounded away at the thing almost made the entire incident worth it. There were no buttons to push, no sounds emanating from the dense material. Steel couldn’t scratch it. Metal couldn’t dent it. Fire couldn’t even scorch it—they tried that too.
In fact, after a few days, they all lost interest in deciphering the coffin-shaped device. It was just another of Will’s screw ups. To be ignored, traded, or space-tossed. No one had decided yet which option was the best.
“Next stop is Andromeda,” Leo announced, as if such a thing needed announcing. He was stretched out in Jane’s chair, dark-green leather boots kicked up on the console. The damned things were made from some exotic animal Will could only guess at. Ugly as sin, non-regulation, and Leo had probably paid an entire cargo’s worth of credit for them. “Let’s trade the thing for a few crates of whisky and be done with it.”
They’d dubbed it the thing, though Will cringed every time he heard it. How could he have made such a huge mistake? He nearly got everyone killed for a stupid hunk of metal.
“How do you propose we move it?” Will asked. “A loader big enough to support its weight would cost us the whisky and a week’s pay.”
“I say we space-toss it,” Lux said. She and Jane had brought in a round scrap of metal and set it on the floor to use as a gambling table. They were both hunched over it, enthralled in an illegal game of liar’s dice they knew Will wouldn’t stop because of his guilt. The curses that slipped from the corner of Lux’s lips, though, gave Will a tiny bit of satisfaction. She was already in deep. “The thing is creepier than one of Jane’s fallouts. No offense, Jane.”
Jane peeked at her dice concealed under a tin cup. “None taken, dear. Now, what’s that? Twenty billion?”
“Shit.” Lux threw the rest of dice across the floor and stood. “We should vote. Everyone who wants to space-toss the thing, raise your hand.”
Leo and Lux were the first traitors to lift their arms. Jane frowned down at her cup and raised her hand a fraction above her head, like she really didn’t want to go against her captain but couldn’t help herself. Lux turned to Dorian near the back. “Dor?”
Dorian glanced up from his soldering iron and the chip he was repairing to frown at his sister. At fourteen, he was caught between the stages of wanting her approval and wanting to rebel. “I think it’s cool.”
“Cool? It’s creepy.”
“Okay.” He rolled his eyes but gave in and lifted his hand, avoiding Will’s gaze.
A ship full of insubordinate traitors.
“Great.” Lux strolled over to Will and leaned against the captain’s chair. “It’s settled. We open the cargo hatch and send the thing back into oblivion.”
Will kept his lips in a tight, unreadable line. “No.”
“Will, be reasonable, if that’s even possible.”
“I am reasonable. That thing has value. And I don’t k
now why you believe this ship operates like a democracy. Your votes mean nothing.”
“You just don’t want to admit you made a mistake.” Three lines etched across her forehead, and she pushed a twist of lavender hair off her forehead. “Okay. We get to Andromeda, you have a few cold beers, then we ask around about the thing. See if anyone’s stupid enough to take her off our hands.”
Leo snorted and raised an eyebrow. “Her?”
“It’s a she.”
“Fine,” Will said, the mention of cold beers making his mind whir, “the thing is a she, and we’ll see if we can find some answers on Andromeda. And here”—he flipped a small coin at her—“use this to square away with Jane.”
Lux caught the coin and examined it, twirling it between her fingers with a frown etched on her face. “Isn’t this your lucky coin?”
He shooed her off with a wave, knowing the coin would make its way back to him. It always did. The small piece of zinc was one of the last pennies in existence, an earthen token and a reminder of the day he was reborn from human to mock. “We make our own luck.”
“Thanks,” she breathed. “I’ll repay you as soon as my luck changes.”
Against Jane, that would be never. Lux had been indebted to her since before he came aboard. The straight-laced ex-captain’s gambling compulsion came from her glitch, but fortunately for her, she was damned good at it.
As Will watched Lux walk away, he couldn’t help but grin. Lux was a pain in the ass, sure. But she’d find a way to pay him back; she always did.
Perhaps his sudden shift in mood came because he knew eventually he’d get his old crew back. None of this illegal gambling or whoring. No one taking votes when he gave orders or mocking him with salutes. No more scavenging for items like the thing and risking his life only to discover the frozen hunk of metal was worthless . . .
He swallowed, the last sentence lodged in his mind as he replayed it over and over, trying to decipher what made him stop.
And then something occurred to him, and he exhaled slowly. Last he checked, the thing was room temperature.
She was warming up.
Chapter 4
3631 AD
Talia
Each step Talia took leading up to the entrance of the royal hall ratcheted her heartbeat faster, faster, until she felt as if a rubber ball was bouncing off her sternum. The building was a breathtaking mixture of ivory stones and gilded spires, dotted with hundreds of stained glass windows colored to resemble starry skies. It stood alone next to the actual palace, a sacred place Talia had only heard about.
She glanced at the parched sky, hoping to center herself, to find calm outside this internal panic, and discovered the fiery sun had already melted into Palesia’s cityscape horizon. The ceremony would start as soon as the last rays of pink light disappeared. Sweat laced her skin, pasting her hair to her neck and shoulders; a hot, sluggish breeze tickled her cheeks.
Talia’s mother strolled on the right, pointing a motorized fan of gold at the sweat glistening her tawny skin. She radiated warmth and regality inside a champagne dress of taffeta, hardly the image of a woman about to sell her firstborn daughter. On occasion, her dark eyes drifted toward Talia, as if expecting her to bolt. The hint of a smile was all the woman afforded her daughter, but each gesture steadied Talia’s feet and spurred her forward, closer to the sea of Palesians swelling the courtyard and spilling outside the gates.
Tradition held that citizens had to remain silent during the procession, but a soft murmur vibrated the air anyway. Helmeted guards in crisp white uniforms stood rigid at the gates. Just in case things got out of hand.
How many Starchasers had walked these steps before Talia? How many suffered from the same nervous pains that clutched her belly? Every royal had to endure this spectacle at some point, smiling and waving for the hidden cameras. While on the other side of the ancient marble ballroom stood a stranger the royal was about to pledge their life to.
But Talia was the only Starchaser ever who had to leave Palesia, a stipulation her soon-to-be husband had insisted on. The thought twisted her gut. And as soon as they said their vows, she would travel across the Seven Planets on a promotional tour to support the battalions, her husband and his family right beside her.
Couldn’t Talia’s parents see she was nothing more than a prop? That she’d serve the cause better by lending her skills to fighting rather than prancing around and looking pretty?
Her age protected her from the public eye—up until today. From this point onward, her entire life would be open to the billions and billions of people that inhabited the Seven Planets and the off-world planets under their control. She would be expected to give speeches and attend galactic meetings. To say all the right things and have all the answers. And she’d never been good with crowds or words. Making five-ton fighter ships look graceful mid-air, or sparring against Ailat? Sure, those things came easy to her.
But public meetings? Public speaking?
Most days she was lucky if she could say her full name: Talia Marie Starchaser XXIV, daughter of Magnus, granddaughter of Maris, future Sovereign. Blah. Blah.
Wiping a damp lock of hair from her forehead, she fought the urge to search out the veiled cameras lurking around the columns and broadcasting her image to the entire world.
“They’re whispering about you,” Tamsin teased. Her little brother, positioned on her left, was at the know-it-all age of twelve, where everything she did was silly and gross and required a million insults.
“Of course they are,” she fired back, glancing back with a raised eyebrow to share an annoyed look with Ailat. “I’m their future Sovereign. They’re curious.”
“No, it’s because you look like a Palesian escort with all that makeup,” he said, trying desperately to repress a smile, but he couldn’t fool anyone. Even his eyes lit up.
Talia pinched his arm. “Shut up, imp.”
Their mother graced them both with a practiced, tight grin that promised trouble if they didn’t stop.
Tamsin gritted his peach-fuzz jaw. “But—”
Before he could finish whatever stupid insult was on his lips, his companion mock, Nismat, a gangly boy around the same age, nudged him in the ribs. “Ignore her, Tamsin.”
Talia rolled her eyes as she ducked beneath the marble arches wreathed in lavender and white irises and hurried inside, her brother all but forgotten as she took in the crowd of people all now turned to stare at her. Was Lord Cassius already here? Could that be him in the cream-and-gold suit near the front? Or what about the man to her right? Talia hardly knew what he looked like, other than the few glimpses broadcast of him since his own coming out ceremony a few months ago on Thoros.
He was handsome, sure. And slovenly drunk. Part of her hoped he would be pissed tonight, too. That way he wouldn’t notice when she stepped on his toes during the first dance, or failed to show the proper enthusiasm for being sold to an ore-prince below her station.
The royal hall was a round building filled with circular tables surrounding a podium with a massive skylight above that allowed the stars to shine down. Soon, the first moon would fill the space with delicate light, but for now, holographic torches glowed inside the arched alcoves etched into the marble walls. Columns lined up like pale soldiers at attention, casting shadows across the room. Vases with bouquets of lavender dressed the tables, filling the stuffy air with a sticky-sweet perfume. Statesmen from the Intergalactic Coalition of Seven milled about with glasses full of amber liquid in hand, and Talia fought against the urge to flinch under their curious gazes.
A sigh spilled from her chest as she found her father surrounded by a group of senators dressed in lavish black suits, several of them talking at once, their movements quick and flighty. Trained to read body gestures, Talia immediately recognized the men were agitated.
A feeling of incompetence nestled deep inside her chest as she watched her father handle the senators with his usual calm grace. One hand was clasped behind his back, his ha
ndsome face forced into a mask of calm indifference.
As if he could hear her thoughts, his green eyes cut toward her and then he was coming to her rescue.
He offered her a rare grin and clasped her wet, clammy hands with his warm and dry ones. “Daughter, the stars above pale in comparison to your beauty.”
A blush crept up her chest, thawing her nervousness from the inside out. “Thank you, Sovereign.”
Sovereign, not Father. Now that she was eighteen, everything was different. He held her hands for a moment longer, and she wanted to wrap her arms around him and never let go, to be held and comforted by him. She so rarely got to see her father. And now, with the war in the Outer Fringes, he was home even less. But she was too old for such childish whims.
He lifted a sandy eyebrow. “I wish I could have better prepared you for today.”
“And I wish the rebellion was over.” Her gaze collapsed to her too-tight ivory heels; she’d said a stupid thing. Wishes were for fools who didn’t understand the way of the worlds. Or at least that was what her father once told her after overhearing her and Ailat discussing their silly seven-year-old plans.
Even as a child, her father made her destiny clear. It would have been cruel to let her think otherwise.
Two lines formed across his forehead, and he sighed. “Now that you’re of age, you will be expected to sit in on the war council. But not today. Today, you will dance and show Cassius how lucky he is to marry you.”
Talia rocked on her heels, grimacing at the blisters already forming on the back of her ankles. “Oh, I don’t—”
“He is.” Her father’s eyes went tight and steely, and he gave her hands a quick squeeze that seemed to last minutes instead of seconds. “Never forget that, Talia. You are a Starchaser, descendant of the first explorers. Even now, you burn brighter than the Palesian sun.”