Heart of Iron

by Ashley Poston

  “Do we have a deal?” repeated the captain.

  Ana chewed on the inside of her cheek. If she said yes, she wouldn’t have any power if the captain decided to go—but at least they’d be going, right?

  If it was to save Di, she’d do anything.

  “Fine,” she agreed.

  “Good.” The captain inserted the chip into the holo-pad sitting on her desk. The glass screen flickered to life, swirling into a map of the solar system. It zeroed in on a small pinpoint at the edge of the kingdom. Near Cerces.

  Ana’s chest tightened. Oh no.

  Palavar.

  Desperately, she said, “Please. Reprimand me, ground me, take my wages—I don’t care. We have to go. I can’t lose Di. I—”

  The small intercom box lit up, and Jax’s voice punched through the receiver. “Captain,” he said, and there was something strange in his voice. It put Ana on edge. “We’re being followed.”

  Jax

  Careless. He’d gotten too careless.

  Eros took up most of the starshield, a blue-and-green planet wrapped in layers and layers of bone-white clouds. In the corner of the starshield was a small video feed he kept his eye on, relaying the space behind them. Nevaeh floated against the backdrop of infinite space like a bulb about to bloom, and from it pursued an Artem-1S schooner. Bright silver, solar rocket propulsion. One of the first ships not to rely on solar sails. It was fast, and it was trouble.

  He was good at losing Messiers. They had a one-track mind, and all he had to do was be unpredictable—but he’d never had the privilege of losing the Royal Guard before.

  The captain burst into the cockpit like a firestorm.

  “Report,” she said, resting a hand on the back of his chair. “Flying any colors?”

  “Purple and silver, the Royal Guard,” he replied tightly as Ana eased through the doorway to the cockpit, staring wide-eyed at the pursuing ship on the screen.

  “What did you do on Nevaeh, darling?” the captain asked Ana.

  “We . . .” Ana, for the first time, was at a loss for words. “I . . .”

  Jax tapped his thumbs on the controls, watching the rear screen. Something was wrong. The Artem-1S schooner was still a good distance away, and he knew it could be a lot closer by now. Why was it waiting?

  “We might’ve caught the attention of the Royal Captain,” Jax filled in when Ana didn’t answer. “The Carnelian one.”

  “Viera Carnelian. Good,” the captain said, clearly believing the opposite. “This is good. Perhaps she just wants to be invited aboard for cup of tea.”

  “We have tea?”

  “Not for troublemakers.” She glared at him. “Any sign of hostility?”

  “Not yet—”

  A spark ignited from the pinprick of a ship. The whorl of white light drew closer. Warnings flashed across the starshield.

  INCOMING PROJECTILE.

  “Ak’va,” he cursed, and flicked off the autopilot, pulling up the helm from below the console. He swiped away the warnings, opening up the intercom to the ship. “All hands, brace!”

  The white-hot missile spiraled closer. He spilled the sails and drew them back into the sides of the ship, banking the ship left as hard as he could. The missile screamed past them like a streak of white and exploded. The blowback knocked the ship toward Eros, rattling the old girl like a tin can full of nails. He quickly steered it out of the gravitational pull of the planet.

  Captain Siege leaned over his chair and pressed the intercom button again. “Stations!” she snapped. “Riggs, give me a damage report when you get down to the hull.”

  “Aye,” came the staticky voice of Riggs a few seconds later.

  “Jax, get us out of here.”

  “Where?” His fingers skimmed along the controls as he tried to check for internal damage, but the blast had just knocked the dust off the rafters. “We can’t outrun that thing. We’re a rowboat compared to an Artem-1S—”

  “Aren’t you the best pilot in the kingdom?”

  His mouth went dry. “I . . . of course I am.”

  But there was no way to outrun a solar schooner. Those ships were faster, with better maneuverability than any other ship in kingdom space. But they were also heavy.

  And the Dossier, one of the oldest ships still using solar sails, was very lightweight. Well, he had an idea, at least.

  INCOMING PROJECTILE, the starshield read again.

  Ana anchored herself in the doorway. “Jax,” she warbled, “Jax, it’s about to—”

  At the last possible moment, he slammed down on the controls. The ship dove toward the blue-green expanse of Eros. A few thousand yards behind, the missile exploded, knocking the Dossier lower into the atmosphere. Its wings glowed a brilliant orange, friction against the sky.

  If he rode too close to the mesosphere, gravity would drag them in, burning their sails, and all they could ask for then was a soft landing in the Biteryi Sea.

  But I know this ship.

  He could use Eros’s gravitational pull to slingshot around the planet and launch them out into space. The Royal Guard couldn’t keep up once gravity took them, and they’d lose the Dossier’s signal in the magnetic field of the planet. He just had to stay in the thermosphere and not hit any satellites. Easy.

  So easy he could do it blindfolded.

  . . . Not that he would want to try at the moment.

  The taste of excitement—like the moment before you plummet off a cliff—was sharp on his tongue.

  A series of small holo-screens lining the console, reading off altitude and speed, deepened to a frantic red. He kept an eye on them as the lights flickered. Space and atmosphere swirled around them, so loud it roared.

  Just keep her steady, he coaxed himself, as the ship began to shake violently.

  The cockpit was silent as the ship crested against the dark side of the planet, taken by the pull of gravity. Behind them, viewed from a small video feed in the corner of the starshield, was the glint of the Artem-1S following in close proximity. He could almost see the pilot in the cockpit, the solar thrusters on its wingtips flaring as bright as stars.

  Come on, he thought frantically, give up already.

  The Dossier’s altitude dropped lower, and lower, and lower until—

  The Artem-1S veered up, deflecting into space again so it wouldn’t be dragged into Eros. Good, just as he thought it would.

  The Dossier went lower.

  The power flickered and sent them into darkness. The starshield melted into oranges and golds, flames tingeing the corners of the ship’s shield like a sunrise. No readings, no data, no warnings.

  Nothing.

  He tightened his sweaty grip around the controls, reminded of how this was like the skysailer. How he almost hadn’t gotten that under control, either.

  But he had.

  He concentrated on the feeling of the ship moving through space—the stars spiraling around them, turning, turning. He was never lost in the stars—he always knew where he was. And it made him a damn good pilot.

  Concentrate. He waited for the sun to rise across the horizon. Waited for that spark of light. Only his breath kept him company. Inhale, exhale.

  The Captain gripped the back of his chair harder.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  All this trouble because of some coordinates and a stupid Ironblood? Great Dark take him, he would’ve spaced the idiot by now.

  Inhale—

  Light broke across the horizon.

  The ship moaned, roared, cried. The planets aligned in the distance—the Holy Conjunction—looking barely more than bright stars to the naked eye. And ahead in the distance glinted Nevaeh, a silver bud about to bloom.

  Now.

  With a thunderous pop, the Dossier’s sails snapped to full mast, catching the solar winds.

  The ship groaned, cables straining against the sails, lighting the solar core belowdecks. Powering it. The starshield came back to life with a burst of blue light.

  T
he Dossier shot out of the gravitational pull of Eros and into the stars. The crew cheered from their stations across the ship, but he didn’t celebrate yet.

  He checked the radar to see if that solar schooner was still pinging them, but the communications were silent.

  It worked.

  Finally, he pried his shaking hands from the controls. Waited for a moment, making sure he was still breathing and functional, and then thrust his fists into the air. “And who is the best pilot in the kingdom?” He turned his thumbs toward himself. “This sexy pilot right here!”

  The captain patted the back of his chair, as close to a congratulations as he’d get. “Nice flying, Jax.”

  “Go on, tell me more.” He grinned. “So, where to? Iliad? Patoor Mav Station?”

  For a moment, the captain didn’t respond, and the fiber-optic wires in her hair flickered, dimming to a burnt orange. “Set a course for Palavar,” she said at last, and in the doorway he heard Ana’s breath catch.

  He turned to look the captain in the face to make sure she wasn’t joking. But then he remembered the captain never joked. “That’s . . . Captain—Palavar?”

  Cerces’s dark moon. It orbited around the third planet from the sun in such a way that it always fell into the planet’s shadow. No light reached it—and that meant no energy. Ships couldn’t function for long, tech would power down.

  Not to mention Cerces had at least three separate bounties out for the Dossier. If a patrol caught them in Cercian space . . .

  “Captain,” Jax said, “Palavar’s suicide—” And then it dawned on him. “It’s where those coordinates point, isn’t it? The ship’s on the dark moon.”

  “Aye,” she said, and leaned over Jax to the intercom. “Congratulations, crew. I hope we’re all in one piece. As most of you have probably already guessed, Ana took it upon herself to steal a few things—an Ironblood included.”

  Jax wanted to point out that none of them would steal an Ironblood willingly—not even the gorgeous one currently in the infirmary.

  “She also stole coordinates to Rasovant’s missing fleetship, the Tsarina. She thinks there might be something on it that can fix Di’s memory core, but there’s a good chance someone’ll follow us. I don’t like the odds”—she paused, pursing her lips—“so speak your grievances now, or you’re coming with us. To Palavar.”

  The captain leaned back and waited. The speed from the maneuver propelled the Dossier along so quickly, the ship vibrated, and if Jax’s anxiety wasn’t already peaking, it might have felt nice—like a massage.

  Finally, the intercom crackled and Talle’s sweet voice came in from the galley. “Sounds like trouble—I’m in, Sunshine.”

  “Aye,” came the voice of Riggs. Then Lenda, Barger, and Wick. Finally, Jax nodded, too. Even though it was a given he’d come along.

  Who else would fly the ship?

  “Then we’re on our way to Palavar,” said Siege, and ended the transmission. Jax heard her sigh. “Remember our deal, Ana.”

  “Thank you!” Ana cried, and tore away from the doorway, her footsteps pounding against the floor as she fled down to the infirmary to talk to Di.

  Jax cued up the autopilot. “Looks like we’ll be there in seven hours and some change. Are you sure about this? It’s Palavar.”

  “That it is.”

  “So you think Ana might be onto something, then.”

  The captain clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “I think love is a powerful thing, Jaxander, and it sometimes makes us blind. We’ll need someone monitoring the frequencies all night, at least until we reach those coordinates. You should take a break. I’ll look over the cockpit for a while.”

  He pushed the controls down under the console. “Goddess, thank you. I think I’m going to take a nice cold shower because Goddess forbid the heater’s working—”

  But the captain caught him by the jacket as he went to leave. “—I have a favor, first.”

  He tried not to wilt. He’d expected as much.

  D09

  As D09 finished the last suture, the Ironblood awoke with a gasp. D09 anchored a hand on the boy’s shoulder and shoved him back down onto the gurney.

  “Let me go!” the Ironblood wheezed. “Let me—”

  Reaching into the medical kit, D09 drew out a sedative and pressed it into the boy’s neck.

  “Let me . . .” The Ironblood’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he went limp.

  E0S, tending to diagnostics on the medical computer, gave a beep of disapproval.

  “He struggled,” D09 told it as he disinfected the boy’s wound again before wrapping it over with gauze. People were easier to treat when unconscious, he reasoned. He had not sedated the boy because he was more than a little annoyed at their current predicament. He did not become annoyed.

  He was Metal.

  The sedative would wear off in approximately twenty minutes and thirty-two seconds. Di would be gone from the infirmary by then.

  As he pulled off his bloodstained gloves, the door to the infirmary opened, and he turned just as Ana flung herself at him, arms wrapping around his neck in a hug.

  “We’re going!” she cried with a laugh. “We’re going to the ship!”

  “So I have heard.”

  “We survived and we’re going to the ship. We’re going to fix you! We’re going.” Smiling, she pressed her forehead against his and closed her eyes. “We’re going.”

  She was so close he could count every dark eyelash.

  “Yes, we are,” he replied.

  He knew how to sew a wound. How to mend bone. He knew the deepest intricacies of flesh and blood, and yet he did not know how to repair himself. That made him insufficient. If his memory core had not been damaged, Ana would not have to endanger herself for him. If he was not there, she would not have to cheat death.

  It was logical.

  But the way she pressed her forehead against his, and opened her golden-brown eyes, and looked into his as though he was the sun her life orbited around, stopped him from ever saying as much. So he simply stood, his forehead pressed against hers, looking into the face he knew better than his own circuitry—and that he had blueprints for.

  She took a deep breath, and finally drew away from him.

  “It’s nice to just listen to you for a moment,” she said.

  “I did not think I sounded like anything.”

  “You sound like a symphony of electrical currents,” she explained, and began to hum, as if in tune with it, and grabbed his hand to dance. She had not stopped smiling yet, and if he told her that there was a 17.3 percent possibility that they were still being followed, he was sure the smile would drop from her lips.

  And he did not want that. Not yet.

  “Am I interrupting something?” asked Jax. He leaned against the doorway, a single silver eyebrow raised.

  “Why’re you here?” Ana asked. “Who’s piloting the ship?”

  Jerking straight, he gave a gasp. “I’m the pilot?”

  Ana rolled her eyes. “Very funny.”

  Jax grinned. “Siege’s got the helm for a while. I’m apparently stuck babysitting this troublemaker.” He jerked his chin toward the Ironblood.

  “Lucky you.”

  “Mmm. Talle wants you in the galley, by the way, to help set the table. Beef stew tonight, your favorite.” Jax poked her in the stomach, and she made a face.

  “Come on, Di,” she said. “You can help me chop onions.”

  “You mean do it for you,” D09 retorted, letting her pull him out of the infirmary—until Jax put a hand to his shoulder, stopping him. Ana glanced back, confused, but Jax waved his hand for her to go ahead.

  “He’ll be up in a sec,” he told her. She shrugged and went on ahead without him. When she had climbed the stairs, Jax bent in to D09. “I know you love Ana—”

  “I cannot love—”

  “Well I can, and I do, and I don’t want to see her hurt. We both know that ship probably won’t have anything�
�if it’s even out there. You need to prepare her for that. Trust me, you’ll want to say good-bye.”

  Di could not quite compose a response.

  “Metalhead, hurry up!” Ana called from the top of the stairs.

  “Think about it.” Then Jax let go of his shoulder, and Di left the infirmary.

  Ana smiled down from the top of the staircase, her braid pulled over her shoulder, a thorn scratch on her cheek.

  He did not need to compose a good-bye yet. He had time.

  Robb

  Robb’s head was pounding.

  What did he drink at his brother’s celebration? Nothing that he could remember. There was the champagne, but then there was that waiter with the voxcollar, and the outlaw masquerading as a waiter and—Goddess’s spark.

  He snapped his eyes open and looked around. He was in an . . . infirmary? It smelled like disinfectant and gunpowder. The sharp halogen lights made everything bright and blurry. His head swam.

  “Get up, Ironblood,” singsonged a voice, and poked him in the side.

  He sat up with a hiss, holding his ribs. How had he—

  Nevaeh. Blood staining his favorite evening coat. Falling out of the skysailer.

  The outlaws.

  Robb scrambled off the gurney, away from a young man with violet eyes. A Solani. The one from the skysailer. He must’ve been close to Robb’s age, but his silver hair made him look old—ancient—and his skin shimmered as if starlight hid just beneath. He wore a ruffly purple evening coat, golden filigree decorating the collar to match the lining, and buttons so polished they gleamed. Underneath that insufferably garish jacket was a silk shirt, stained with what Robb figured was his blood. A pair of goggles sat around his neck.

  The Solani was impossibly tall—they all were—with a square face and sharp jawline. His eyes were narrow, eyebrows slivers of silver to match his thick and messy ponytail, his lips pressed into a thin, impatient line.

  Robb grabbed the first thing he could find—a suture pen—and held it to attack. The pain in his side was a dull roar, but it was quickly sharpening. “Where am I?” he wheezed.

  “The Dossier,” the Solani replied, “and put that down before you embarrass yourself.”