by Kass Morgan
Arran shuddered at the sensation of Dash’s breath on his skin but managed to take a step back. “No, I can’t. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m not doing this to make some kind of point. I just know that it’s never going to work out between us. We’re too different—you can’t close that kind of gap.”
“Is that why you want to be with Rees? Because he’s a Settler?” Dash asked, his voice cracking.
“It’s one of many reasons. I really like him, and I want to give him a fair shot.”
Dash fell silent, looking at Arran with the expression of a small animal that’d just been kicked in the ribs by a beloved owner and then shoved out into the cold, snowy night. “Okay… if that’s what you want, I’ll leave you alone.” His shoulders slumped, making him look smaller and more fragile than Arran had ever seen him. “Good luck, Arran. Take care of yourself.”
“You too, Dash.”
It took all of Arran’s self-control to let him go, to not call after the first boy he’d ever kissed, the only boy he’d ever loved.
The journey to the peace summit location took two days, though between his various drills and duties, Arran barely slept more than a few hours in total. Not that he would’ve been able to sleep much, anyway. Between his unexpected conversation with Dash, his concerns about who’d caused the explosion, and his anxiety about seeing Orelia for the first time since her arrest, Arran spent those two days with his brain whirring like one of the badly wired, rusty old attendants back on Chetire that was always short-circuiting. The only silver lining was that, with so many things on his mind, it was impossible to fixate on one problem for long enough to truly agonize.
He and Vesper were just coming back from one of the daily mandatory sessions in the battlecraft’s conditioning area when a trio of beeps rang through their monitors and the comm system—the signal that the ship was slowing from light speed to standard travel mode.
“We must be getting close,” Vesper said, her measured voice belying the hint of fear in her eyes.
Before Arran could respond, his monitor blared a message in his ear. “We are approaching the target. You have ten minutes to report to your battle stations.”
Arran and Vesper exchanged startled looks. “They probably should’ve updated the wording of that alert,” Vesper said with a nervous laugh.
“Yeah, I’m not sure battle stations is quite the right term when it comes to attending a peace summit.”
But underneath their forced playfulness, they both well knew why six battlecraft and nearly a hundred officers, cadets, and crew members had been sent to the summit.
As they hurried down the corridor, they saw dozens of people gathered near the large window on one of the observation decks. Sound carried in the cavernous battlecraft, and any populated space echoed with footsteps and chatter. But as Arran approached the window with Vesper, he couldn’t hear anyone speak. He couldn’t hear anyone breathe.
None of the assembled officers and cadets even looked at one another. Everyone seemed lost in their own world, absorbed by their own thoughts as they stared at the shapes in the distance.
The black outlines of a fleet of Specter battlecraft.
Despite his preparations, despite his yearning for peace, Arran couldn’t keep the cold fear from seeping down in his spine. Like every kid in the entire solar system, Arran’s childhood had been consumed by thoughts of the Specters—wondering what they looked like, what they wanted from the Quatrans, and most important of all, when they were going to strike again. When he was eight, he’d had a recurring nightmare about being the sole survivor of an attack on Chetire. Every night, he saw himself wandering through the smoking rubble until he stumbled across an enormous black fightercraft right in the middle of the ruined town square. And every night, the sight of the hatch slowly opening filled him with terror. The dream always ended just before Arran glimpsed the monster inside, when he’d wake up screaming.
And while the logical part of Arran’s mind knew that they weren’t monsters at all, that the Specters had far more right to look at the Quatrans as monsters, it was hard to undo so many years of instinct.
“It’s going to be okay,” Vesper whispered, more to herself than to Arran.
“Definitely,” he said hoarsely. “Come on. Let’s get ready.”
CHAPTER 17
ORELIA
Orelia stood in front of the narrow mirror in the tiny cabin she’d been assigned on the Sylvan battlecraft. Or perhaps it only felt tiny compared to her room back at the Academy, the largest she’d ever had all to herself.
The ship was approaching the site that’d been chosen for the summit, but there wasn’t much she needed to do to prepare. She wasn’t one of the planned speakers, thankfully. Her role was mostly symbolic. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any Sylvan clothes with her and knew it’d likely rub her people the wrong way to see her in Quatran wear. Though perhaps it’d make her an even more powerful symbol—the girl who, to everyone’s surprise and confusion, seemed to belong to two worlds.
There was a knock at the door, which meant it could only be Zafir. Knocking was a distinctly Quatran custom. Privacy was a foreign concept on Sylvan, where few interior doors even closed. Doors were meant to keep out scorching heat, ice storms, and dangerous floodwaters—not other Sylvans.
General Greet had invited Zafir to travel to the peace summit on the Sylvan ship instead of rejoining Captain Avar and Colonel Beaune. She’d phrased it as an invitation, but it’d been clear to both him and Orelia that he wouldn’t have a say in the matter. Until the summit began, he’d remain with the Sylvans, part guest, part hostage.
“Come in,” Orelia called, wondering vaguely if this was the last time she’d ever use that phrase. Even if the peace summit was a success, she couldn’t imagine a scenario in which she’d return to the Quatra System. She’d attended the Academy as a spy; she highly doubted anyone would suggest that she continue her fraudulent studies.
Except they hadn’t been fraudulent. When she hadn’t been worried about being captured and executed, she’d actually liked her classes, and had really enjoyed training and competing in the tournament with her squadron mates. And most of all, she’d loved spending time with the first real friends she’d ever had.
Zafir appeared in the doorway, already attired for the summit in his dress uniform. Her stomach fluttered when she took in the striking contrast between his white jacket and his warm, light brown skin. “The Quatran ships are about to dock. There’s a pretty good view from the viewing deck,” he said. “Would you like to come with me?”
She nodded and followed him down the narrow hall that opened into the deck. “It looks like everyone’s right on time,” Zafir said, staring out the window with an inscrutable expression on his face. Orelia peered out the window and shivered as her gaze fell on three Quatran fightercraft flanked by nearly a dozen Sylvan fightercraft. There was something unsettling about seeing so many Sylvan and Quatran ships so close together, like watching someone waving a lit match over a bundle of dynamite. One false move, one misstep, one misunderstanding, and they’d bear witness to the bloodiest conflict in the history of the war.
To her surprise, her wrist buzzed. Her link had originally been confiscated by the Sylvans, but they’d returned it to her yesterday. She didn’t think it would work this far from the Academy, on a Sylvan ship. When she saw the name, her heart lurched, propelled against her rib cage by both joy and apprehension. She hadn’t heard from any of her friends since she’d left the Academy and didn’t know if they’d even still consider her a friend now that they knew the truth about her. She took a deep breath in an attempt to steady her racing pulse, then opened the message.
Orelia—
I’m not sure if you’re going to get this, but I think there’s a chance now that you’re back in range of the Quatran Fleet. I sent you a bunch of messages last week, but your connection had been disabled. I was so worried about you. At first, I assumed there’d been some terrible misunderstanding. I couldn�
��t imagine that you’d ever pass information to the Sylvans.
Orelia smiled to herself as she imagined Arran typing Specters, then deleting it and writing Sylvans instead. She kept reading.
It took some time for me to process everything. I watched your video message close to twenty times. And I want you to know that I’m not angry. You were doing the job you were sent to do, and I can only imagine how difficult and scary it must’ve felt at times. We have a lot to talk about, obviously, and I hope we get the chance to do it soon. I’m part of the envoy heading to the peace summit, so maybe there’s a way we can meet up before it’s all over. I guess that’s assuming everything goes well, but I’m hopeful that it will.
There’s something I think you should know first, though. Everyone thinks a Sylvan pulse caused the explosion on a patrol ship last week, but it’s not true. I’m ninety-nine percent sure it was a Quatran who planted the malware on the ship—maybe someone in the fleet. Check out the images below to see what I mean.
Good luck. I’m rooting for you. I’m rooting for all of us.
—Arran
“Everything okay?” Zafir asked, looking at her with concern.
“Yes,” she said distractedly, then paused for a moment, considering. “I’m actually not entirely sure.” She showed Zafir Arran’s message, and then they both examined the images he’d sent of the vents that were supposedly damaged by the electromagnetic pulse.
“What do you think?” Orelia asked.
Zafir didn’t respond right away, his gaze fixed on the images, which Arran had annotated. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded tight. “I think we might have a problem.”
Before Orelia could ask another question, General Greet appeared around the corner, flanked by four guards. “It’s time, Lieutenant,” she said. “Let’s go meet your compatriots.”
The summit was to be held on the Quatran battlecraft, since its larger cargo hold could accommodate more people. The Sylvan ship had docked alongside the Quatran ship close enough to form a bridge between their two airlocks. The Quatran delegation would enter the cargo hold from one entrance, and the Sylvans from the other, though Zafir would go ahead first to rejoin his own people.
He and Orelia stepped to the side of the airlock for some semblance of privacy. “I guess I’ll see you soon,” he said in a cheerful voice at odds with the tension in his face.
“Definitely,” she said, doing her best to match his tone.
A heavy silence fell between them, full of all the things they couldn’t say in front of General Greet and the Sylvans, and all the things she couldn’t quite say to herself, let alone to him.
He extended his hand toward her, ostensibly to touch her arm, but then he saw General Greet watching them and thought better of it. He flashed her a warm smile, but by the time he’d turned toward the airlock, his expression had become focused and grave. He nodded at General Greet and the other Sylvans, then disappeared into the tunnel.
A few minutes later, it was time. General Greet stepped through the airlock first, moving with calm, businesslike assurance, as if she were heading to a staff meeting rather than her first face-to-face encounter with the enemy who’d slaughtered millions of her people. She was followed by the magistrates of Sylvan’s six largest provinces and the High Priestess of a self-governing theocratic island in the Southern Sea.
The air buzzed with tension as the two delegations filed in from separate ends of the storage facility. Orelia entered fourth, which gave her just enough time to witness the initial reactions from the Quatrans. Although by this point they knew that the Sylvans were far less alien than they’d imagined, they clearly still found it startling to look at faces so similar to their own.
Orelia did a double take after glimpsing a familiar face and found herself locking eyes with Vesper. Her heart lurched against her chest and, momentarily paralyzed by Vesper’s cold expression, Orelia almost walked on without acknowledging her. But then Vesper nodded slightly, and Orelia nodded back.
For a moment, the only sounds echoing through the cavernous space came from the scrape of chairs as everyone took their seats around the long table, with the Quatrans on one side and the Sylvans on the other. General Greet and Commander Stepney faced each other from opposite ends. “Thank you all for joining us,” Admiral Haze said, her voice strong and steady. “And special thanks to General Greet for helping to organize this historic event in such a short amount of time.”
General Greet inclined her head, a decidedly un-Sylvan gesture she’d no doubt been advised to do.
“It is our feeling, and I believe it’s yours as well,” Admiral Haze continued, “that the fighting between our people has gone on for far too long.”
“The fight you started,” General Greet said. One of her advisors shot her a look of warning, but she continued unabashed. “I think it’d be helpful to understand why you attacked Sylvan in the first place. Otherwise, why should we believe that you won’t do it again?”
The Quatrans exchanged uneasy looks. Orelia wondered if Admiral Haze had told anyone about their conversation. Either way, she doubted they’d been interested or able to accept such a disquieting revelation quite so quickly.
“We’re not here to rehash the past,” Admiral Haze said. “We’re here to ensure a peaceful future, and while we’ll never forget the lives that were lost, the families that were torn apart, and the years of fear and bloodshed, it’s time to move on. We propose an immediate cease-fire and have prepared some terms that we think you’ll find very reasonable.”
“Peace is always our goal,” General Greet said carefully, “but you’ll understand our skepticism, given the history. We’ll need proof of your good intentions before we’ll be able to trust you.”
“Trust us?” Commander Stepney said incredulously, speaking for the first time. “It seems rather suspect that you’d be willing to negotiate a cease-fire just days after attacking one of our patrol ships. A cadet was killed, and the rest of the crew nearly died.”
Arran was right, Orelia thought anxiously as confused murmurs rippled along the Sylvans’ side of the table. One of the magistrates leaned over to whisper something to General Greet, who nodded along with a frown.
“There was no attack,” General Greet said. “We did send a ship a few weeks ago, but it was destroyed before reaching its target.”
“Forgive me, General,” Stepney said, injecting the word with a note of scorn. “But I’m not sure how we’re meant to trust one another if you insist on lying to everyone here.”
Orelia cringed, and gasps rippled along her table as Stepney’s words were translated for those who didn’t understand Quatran. To accuse someone of lying was the gravest possible insult on Sylvan, where honesty was prized above all else. Even the word lie was considered a form of profanity.
Admiral Haze spoke up quickly. “What Commander Stepney means is that we’re still investigating the matter.”
“We’re not investigating anything, Admiral,” Commander Stepney snapped. “They used an electromagnetic pulse to destroy the oxygen converter on our ship, resulting in a fatal explosion.”
General Greet stood up, the sound of her chair scraping against the floor ringing through the cargo hold. “It seems as if this summit was premature,” she said as her guards closed in around her.
No, Orelia thought desperately as the Quatran guards followed suit. They couldn’t let everything fall apart like this. How many thousands more would perish just because of a Quatran intelligence failure? She glanced over at Vesper and saw Arran whispering something to her, his face white with panic.
Someone needs to say something. Someone had to explain what Arran had told her before they missed their one, fleeting opportunity for peace. But the thought of interrupting the proceedings sent a jolt of cold fear through her chest. The breach of protocol—a low-ranking agent interrupting the most crucial diplomatic event in history—would border on mutiny, to say nothing of how the Quatrans would feel about an enemy spy contradicting
the commander of the fleet.
“Can everyone wait just one moment?” Every head turned to look at Zafir, who’d stood up to address the room. “I recently received intelligence that might help put this matter to rest. There’s proof that the explosion was caused by malware planted inside the ship—not from a pulse. If someone would be kind enough to project the applicable images, I’ll show you what I mean.” He shot a quick, meaningful glance at Arran, who froze, his eyes wider than the larger of Sylvan’s two moons, until Vesper nudged him in the ribs. Arran looked down at his link, and a moment later, the images of the undamaged hydrogen vents appeared in the air between the two long tables.
As Zafir pointed out details on the images, Orelia watched Commander Stepney’s face grow slightly red as, next to him, Admiral Haze suppressed a smug smile.
“Just to make sure I understand you correctly, Lieutenant,” General Greet said, “are you suggesting that this incident is an internal matter?”
“Yes,” Admiral Haze said quickly, answering for him. “One that we’ll be investigating seriously, but that should have no bearing on this summit. If you’re happy to proceed, then so are we.” She turned to Commander Stepney, who managed to nod despite the fury in his face.
A couple of hours later, the delegates decided to break for the day. Orelia rose from her seat in a daze and was about to follow General Greet and the other Sylvans back to their own ship when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Vesper and Arran standing next to her. Vesper was beaming and Arran looked nearly as stunned as Orelia felt.
“That was incredible,” Vesper said, her voice just as warm as it’d been back in the simulcraft after a hard-earned victory. “You were brilliant to show Arran’s message to Zafir.”
“It was all Arran. He saved the day.” Orelia turned to him with a smile, but to her confusion, he merely stared at her. “Are you okay?” she asked, worried that perhaps seeing her in person made the sting of her betrayal even worse. “I’m so sorry for everything that happened. I… I never wanted to lie to you.”
