by Audrey Grey
Leo jumped from the table and grabbed the handheld com, pressing it close to his face. “Yeah, so?”
“It’s full of hunters. That wasn’t part of the deal. Is there something you forgot to tell me?” Whatever hunters were, they couldn’t be good by the way Leo stiffened and Drake’s voice trembled with fear and maybe a bit of rage. “Buddy of mine says they’re asking about the Odysseus.”
Leo’s voice was heavy and breathless as he asked, “Would this ship be a sleek Darkstar carrier named Athena?”
“The one and only.”
“How . . .” Leo mumbled to himself, palm pressed against the console and head hung low. “There’s no way they could—” He knelt and glanced at the tracker compartment emanating with blue light, and a heavy sigh escaped his mouth. Into the com he replied, “Have your friend stall them as long as possible.”
“You can’t stall Hunters! They have spotter-drones and—”
“I owe you one.” Leo clicked off the com.
Talia had the gun out of her pocket and pointed at his chest by the time he turned around. He didn’t seem surprised and merely jerked his chin at the tracker.
“That was you?”
“I’m sorry.” She grabbed one of the extra snowsuits and one-handedly slipped it on, the gun remaining level as she hopped on one foot like a lunatic. “This isn’t personal.”
“I don’t think you understand,” he said, taking a step away from the gun. “The people tracking us aren’t here to help you. And now Xander’s hired hunters to find you, the idiot.”
“Hunters?” Talia asked.
“Ruthless mercs, best money can buy. Also dangerous and as apt to kill you as take you in, but Xander must be desperate.”
Putting Leo back in the gun’s range, she zipped up her snowsuit—about a million sizes too big—and wrangled a fur-lined white hat over her head. “You’re lying.”
“And you look ridiculous, Princess.”
She froze, breath lodged in her throat. He was guessing. Trying to distract her or confuse her until the others came back. Pocketing a pair of clunky, metal-framed sunglasses, she strode backward toward the door. “Thanks for being kind, Leo.”
Then she whipped around and ran, her boot steps echoing through the ship. When she got to the portside door, she slammed the red button to operate the lift, hardly waiting for it to open before rolling under the door and onto the ramp.
Snow blasted her in the face, stinging her skin and burning her eyes. She took off blindly, not waiting to see if Leo was behind. Arctic air became ice shards inside her lungs the farther she traveled in the sea of white, speckled here and there by a few sleek gray ships. Talia fumbled with the gun with numb fingers as she lumbered through waist-high snowdrifts.
Near the lip of the hanger sat three snow-crawlers, half-hidden beneath a blue tarp slapping in the wind. Thank the cosmos, someone had left the keys inside the middle crawler. As she slid on the back and it rumbled to life, she released a deep sigh of relief.
One step closer to freedom. She knew from the path of their landing earlier that town was just east of here. A mile, maybe. The docking station would be somewhere close, near the hub of the city, she guessed. Already, her hands were red and frozen stiff—a death sentence if she had to stay in this heap of metal without heat very long.
But as soon as she entered town, she’d find the closest human and tell them everything. Then while she warmed by the fire and sipped hot tea, the authorities would arrest the rebels.
A pang of guilt hit her. Leo didn’t deserve incarceration. But . . . he had to know the risks of being a rebel, especially kidnapping a human and then docking on a human settlement.
She guided her snow-crawler over the frozen tundra. White circles rimmed her vision where snow had crusted her eyelashes. Up ahead, through the unrelenting blizzard, she spotted the shimmer of the habitat dome. Sheets of white powder sloughed off the invisible convex wall, collecting at the bottom in thick piles.
Passing through the dome was like breaking through a giant soap bubble. As soon as she was inside, the wall reformed, leaving only a glimmering trace of where she’d entered. Warm air, heated by the solar panels and trapped inside the dome, stung her half-frozen cheeks and brought life back to her aching fingers.
Thick grass covered the ground, so she discarded the snow-crawler and went on foot. As she trekked up the rocky hill, red-roofed houses rose in the distance. The town was set inside a natural basin between mountains and hills, most of the houses blanketing the hillside. Farther down sprawled the main square and a smattering of businesses. Other than a massive stone church situated on an island in the middle of the frozen lake, the town was unremarkable. No signs of sedition or rebel infestation.
What settler town is this? At some point in life, she’d been forced to learn the name—a Sovereign knows every city under her care, no matter how small or unimportant.
Failed that one.
Out of breath, she jogged to the first house and pounded on the wooden door. One hand stayed wrapped around the gun inside her pocket—just in case the rebels found her before she could get help. Then there were the hunters mentioned by Leo on the Odysseus. According to Drake, the guy on the other end of the com, they had spotter-drones of some kind and something else. Unfortunately he hadn’t finished before Leo cut him off, so Talia had no idea what else she was up against.
Hopefully she wouldn’t have to figure it out.
The small, round eyehole in the thick door filled with darkness. Shuffling sounded behind the door before it parted a few inches with a creak. A little girl peeked her blonde head out, and her pale-gray eyes widened as they assessed Talia.
“Mom!” the girl called.
Talia took a step back, looking both ways down the street to make sure no one was watching. Sometimes, people got a bit excited when they met her, and she didn’t want her royal status to overwhelm the occupants of this house, not when she was in so much trouble. They didn’t have time for that.
More shuffling. A woman cautiously poked her head out, her dark-brown hair pulled back into a bright-blue scarf. She had kind eyes and a round face, and she wore a dough-caked apron, as if she’d been in the middle of cooking.
“Yes?” Impatience tinged the woman’s voice.
Not the welcome Talia expected, but the woman probably didn’t recognize the princess in these clothes. Talia cleared her throat and prepared to identify herself. Then the woman brushed a fallen lock of hair back from her neck, revealing a port.
Talia’s hand tightened on the gun. “Is your master here?”
She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, but she blamed it on the high altitude.
“Master?” Something flashed across the woman’s face, and she pushed the little girl back, her eyes narrowing as they dropped to Talia’s wrists. “Where’s your mark, flesher?”
The door flew open, and before Talia could move, the mock captured Talia’s wrist inside. What’s happening? She tried to yank her arm away, but the mock kept her fingers clamped tight.
The gun! Talia fumbled for it with her free hand. As soon as she brought it up, the mock let go and stumbled backward.
“Call the enforcers!” she hissed. “This human has a weapon.”
A flash in Talia’s periphery drew her focus to a stout bald man walking around the porch. He was shiny with sweat, his sleeves were rolled up, and he carried a splitting axe in his large hands. Two red, metallic cuffs shackled his wrists.
Despite his size, something in his face reminded her of a beaten dog. Still, she was more concerned with his neck, smooth and portless.
He was human.
Thank the cosmos. He could help.
“I am Talia Starchaser, Sovereign-in-Waiting, and I’ve been kidnapped by rebels,” she called, trying to keep the relief from her voice. “This woman must be one of them.”
Lines creased his forehead as he looked from her to the mock.
The mock woman scoffed, obviously not impressed wit
h Talia’s announcement. “I command you to apprehend this flesher. Be quick about it and I might even share a few credits from the reward with you.”
Reward? Had the Odysseus’s crew sent out information about Talia already? So other rebels would be on the lookout for her?
She didn’t have time to ponder as the man raised his axe and set off toward her. Traitor! If not for the limited supply of bullets, Talia might have shot him.
Gun in hand, she leapt off the porch and landed in a sprint, eating ground as she half-tumbled half-slid down the side of the hill toward the town. Rocks gouged through her padded suit and into her ribs, but she hardly felt the pain.
Safety waited down there. Safety and freedom.
She was halfway down the mountain when a red streak whizzed by her cheek and exploded near her head. Rock shrapnel burst the air, and red-hot pain lanced the right side of her face. Stunned, she brought two fingers up to her temple. They came away bright red.
The mocks were shooting at her.
Chapter 19
Will
The Hall of Memories was a crumbling building of moss and beige stone, preserved from another century. Even if Will didn’t already know the building was pre-mock era, he could have guessed it by the attention taken to the details. Gothic arches and sharp spires ended in ornamental finials above stained-glass windows and dramatic cloisters. A long-abandoned garden had overgrown the grounds and honeysuckle and trumpet vines wound themselves around the decorative columns.
Only humans labored needlessly on such trivialities—although a part of Will was glad they had.
Inside, an iron chandelier caked with rust hung from high arches. Glass vaults, each containing a floating holo-book, filled the enormous room. Not a speck of dust drifted inside the slants of light, a testament to the cleanliness of the monks who preserved the books stored below.
If he searched his history’s programming through the human-led eras, he’d see this place was once a church, rebuilt by settlers to match an earthen church from their home and one of the few left in the known galaxies. But he didn’t need to look it up; his mother had told him everything about this place. How, after humanity’s defeat, the mocks let this place stay untouched. A token to keep the human slaves from revolting.
As one of the flesher monks strolled by, he pinned Will and his crew with a curious stare, seeming to float inside his coarse brown robes. Probably not many mocks came inside this hallowed shrine of human history.
“Tell me again what we’re looking for?” Lux asked. Her green eyes squinted against the amplified solar-flare light pouring in from one of the arched windows and glinting off the countless vaults.
“The symbol from the pod. I drew you a picture?”
“Right.” She flicked a skeptical gaze around the room. “And we have one hour?”
“Actually a little less, now.”
She crossed her arms. “Tell me again why we can’t just sell her to one of the ice-trawler crews and be done with her?”
“Because,” Will said, speaking slow and deliberate—his crew were like children sometimes who needed orders repeated constantly. “I’m the captain, and I said no. Now, let’s start in the center. If you look closely, you see the vaults make the shape of six octagons fitted inside one another. If we start with the center octagon, we can work outward.”
“Fascinating,” she said as she stalked off, muttering, “Should have went with Jane and Dorian for supplies.”
Will found himself smiling as he watched Lux weave through the vaults. The navigator was stubborn to a fault. If he ever had a sister, he’d want her to be just like Lux, minus the criminal leanings. Maybe the whole crew could buy back their status if all went as planned.
No, they’d probably squander their chances. Not Will, though.
A sense of urgency thrummed his bones as he found a vault in the center. The label read 2742 AD-2842 AD. His programmed histories told him that was nine hundred eighty-nine years ago. The same year a group of earthens left their planet on the Columbus Explorer searching for a new home.
The First Settlers was etched across the front of the holo-book in glowing blue letters. Hidden somewhere deep below the ground in steel, climate-controlled vaults were the original books. He used the simplistic buttons just below the glass to turn the holo-pages, and it took him less than a minute to blow through the book. There was nothing inside about a symbol like the one on the pod, just an overly detailed account on the life of the first settlers on the Columbus, including pictures.
The next vault was 2842 AD-2942 AD. He groaned under his breath as he recounted more of the same. Settlers adjusting to life on the Columbus. Giving birth. Planting gardens that kept dying. Dying themselves. Other than a failed bid for power by one of the earthen families, and a brush with a black hole, nothing of importance happened.
By the next tome, at least, they’d discovered Calisto, the first of the Seven. A picture of the planet and its two moons popped out at him. After that, the histories became more engaging, but not by much. He was flipping through pages fast, his mind in rapid-uptake mode, when something jolted him back into the present.
A crest of some sort. The creature was elegant, its wings spread inside a circle with bright dots connecting it—a constellation. The words below read: the Starchaser Family crest.
This had to be the symbol from the pod. The sharp lines of it were nearly identical, although the one in the book was a painted version with more colors and dimension.
After that first instance, he found the symbol everywhere. On scrolls. On coins. It seemed anything a symbol could be put on, the Starchaser family did. He barely blinked as he plowed through nearly six hundred years of intergalactic politics and intrigue, all of it involving the Starchaser family in one way or another.
How had he never heard of them? Someone obviously scrubbed their history from the broadnet, but why?
Lux shouldered up to him, bouncing on her toes. “I found something.”
“Me too.” He flipped another page, ignoring her as he concentrated. They were nearly out of time, and he had no idea how the symbol accounted for the girl.
“The symbol—”
“Lux, I know all about the Starchaser crest, but I don’t know how we connect it to the flesher girl. And I won’t ever know if you keep interrupting me.”
“Well, I know her name’s not Ailat.”
“We all knew that.” Will tore his eyes from the holo-page. “Did you find anything useful?”
Lux’s face beamed. “C’mon, idiot. I’ll show you.”
Will’s physiological response to excitement was set to only fire during extreme duress or pleasure. Yet his mouth was dry and his palms dripped with sweat as he followed Lux to the vault near the outer rim.
“I researched Ailat, since the girl used her name,” Lux explained, talking fast. “I figured there must be some connection. I mean, obviously we knew the girl we found in the pod isn’t Ailat. Pod girl’s name is Talia.”
His mouth went dry as he squinted at the picture of Talia standing on a stage beside a handsome man, her shoulders back and chin held high. The sight of her was like a shock of electricity storming through him. A crown glittered atop her head, her gown a mesmerizing, low-cut ensemble he imagined only queens wore. But something about her face, the twist of her bottom lip and unfocused stare, was at odds with her haughty, confident pose.
A dark-haired girl dressed similarly sat at the couple’s feet on the stage, terror filling her wide eyes.
“That’s Ailat,” Lux explained, tapping the glass just above the fallen girl. “It says on the previous page she was Talia’s junior mock, can you believe that? They were going to kill her as part of some cruel flesher engagement ceremony, but somehow she escaped.”
“That doesn’t sound like the girl on our ship. Are you sure it’s her?”
“Of course.” Lux’s voice wavered, her gaze lingering on the true Ailat. “I knew about all the horrible things they did to us, but . .
. it’s hard to believe that was only a hundred years ago.”
Will nodded. From the date on the vault, this was near the end of the rebellion, when the virus scare had humans turning against all mocks, even innocent ones. Atrocities committed during that time were enough to affect someone as tough as Lux . . .
Wait. This was from a hundred years ago.
He squinted at the picture again. “But, how?”
“You mean, how do we have a century’s old princess on our ship, who, by the way, is supposed to be dead?”
“Dead?”
“Long story. And I vote we ask her.” She glanced around, then took out one of her blasters and smacked the butt-end into the vault. A spiderweb of cracks spread out over the glass. As it shattered around them, she reached inside and plucked the tiny holo-disc sitting at the bottom. “For evidence.”
A monk came rushing over, his robes flying around his legs. He froze at the sight of the broken glass.
“Sorry,” Will said. The holo-books were only electronic versions of the real thing, but they were expensive to replace, and these people had nothing. “I’ll find a way to repay you.”
Two more monks had gathered to stare, but they wouldn’t be a problem. There was no reason for them to carry weapons. Will took a step toward the door, his boots crunching the glass, when a droning whir outside made him pause. He cocked his head just as a shadow flashed across the window.
Lux paused from dusting glass off her jacket and glanced up. “What the bloody stars is that?”
Before he could respond, an explosion outside rocked the walls and sent loose pebbles raining to the floor.
Chapter 20
Talia
For most of Talia’s life, being exceptional in a crowd of people was expected. Today, it was going to get her killed. She nicked a lavender-and-green shawl from a stall on the fringes of the marketplace and wrapped the fabric tightly around her head. She’d escaped down the mountainside and lost the mocks shooting at her—along with her hat—but finding her again wouldn’t take them long.