Heart of Iron

by Ashley Poston

  Robb blinked. Once. Twice.

  Then the Ironblood bridged the gap between them and pressed their lips together.

  Robb’s mouth was hungry and desperate, tasting like honey and salt and surprise. Jax’s skin buzzed at their nearness, and he wanted to sink into the kiss and rebel, to be closer and a thousand light-years away. He braced himself, waiting for the inevitable—

  For a second, a second more before—

  Solani could read the stars, but it wasn’t through the sky. It never was.

  There was a jolt—like touching a live wire. A burn. A hiss. Then the star-stuff inside Robb swirled, brighter and brighter, sending his fate through Jax with the sharpness of a knife.

  A black collar. A marble palace. Ana touching iron. Moonlilies. The glint of knuckle rings. A bloodied crown—

  With a gasp, Jax tore himself away, the taste of Robb still on his tongue, the visions filling his head like sand. His lips stung. The pull of the stars was so strong it made him dizzy and weak.

  “Goddess,” he said, breathless, shaking. “You—you have—you’re going to . . .”

  “You said a kiss would do, remember?” Robb replied. He must’ve seen something odd on Jax’s face, because he looked away a moment after and fastened her helmet on. “Before we go, I want you to see something.”

  Jax felt numb, trying to box away the images, but they were so fresh and raw. He hadn’t seen someone’s stars—touched someone—in ten years . . . and this was how he broke his streak?

  “Did you hear me?” Robb said, and nudged his head back toward the door at the end of the hallway, where two Metals lay. “I said I’ve found something.”

  “W-what?”

  “Just trust me—you have to see it.” He took Jax by the arm and pulled him into the room at the end.

  The room was pitch-black until Robb drew his lightsword, and it illuminated the small room. Dim holo-screens lined the walls, flickering as the ship used up the last of its energy, monitoring levels of oxygen and hydrogen and other vitals—like a hospital room.

  The thought of Robb’s stars quickly fell to the back of Jax’s mind.

  He fastened on his helmet, suddenly wanting to be anywhere else. He hated dark spaces. “Ak’va, what is this?”

  “It’s in here,” said the Ironblood, motioning to a long white box in the middle of the room. It reminded Jax of the caskets used to jettison deceased crew members into space. Robb planted his feet at the base of the casket, worming his fingers under the lid, and with a heave lifted it open. The steam from dry ice spilled out and quickly swirled in zero gravity, like snaking clouds.

  “It’s creepy, just so you know,” Robb warned.

  “What is it? Some sort of new tech? Frozen animal? A weapon?”

  “Worse.” Robb hovered his lightsword over the opening.

  Jax peered into the box, not wanting to see what was inside. Wanting to leave. To get the taste of Robb’s stars out of his mouth.

  But when he looked closer, his heart began to race.

  Inside the box was a young man.

  He looked slightly older than Jax—maybe eighteen—with a brush of freckles across his shoulders, and deep-red shoulder-length hair. Jax quickly pressed his fingers against the boy’s throat, but his skin was cold even through Jax’s gloves. And there was no heartbeat—

  He quickly took his hand away.

  “It’s a Metal,” said Robb before he could freak out, and turned the android’s head to the side to show him a small circle of grooves at the base of its neck.

  A port.

  “I think it can help Di. Will you tow it over to the Dossier with me?” Robb’s sky-blue eyes met his, and in the shine of the sword light Jax saw something in them that looked like hope.

  And Jax didn’t have the heart to tell him that hope was not in his stars.

  Instead, he pressed the comm-link on his chest and radioed Wick. “I found Robb. Keep the Dossier idling. We’re bringing something over.”

  “Yep. Captain’s returned, too. Standing by,” Wick replied.

  Then Jax reached in and grabbed the android under the left shoulder, and Robb grabbed its right, and they pushed their way out of the hidden room and down the hallway, hoping this Metal—whatever it was made of—didn’t mind floating naked in the harshness of space.

  Ana

  The Tsarina fell into Palavar.

  It sparked—small, like a flare—before the darkness of the moon swallowed it whole. The Dossier was heading to a waystation on the far side of Iliad. There they’d lie low for a while. Figure out what to do next. Ana held her breath, watching from a porthole in the galley, clinging to a reality when Di wasn’t . . . when Di was . . .

  But he was never coming back.

  The crew sat around the table, their heads bent and their faces somber. The loss of Barger and Di left holes in the crew like bullet wounds. The only sound was a soft sniffle from Lenda as she dabbed her eyes.

  Barger’s gun, a polished Lancaster .47, lay in the middle of the table. Ana set down the other, a scrappy one dark with age.

  Di’s.

  It had cooled in the last hour. Now it was nothing more than cold and twisted metal. Like the corpse of her best friend, stowed in the infirmary with Barger’s corpse.

  Ana took a seat on the other side of Jax and Robb. She couldn’t look at the crew or the pistols on the table, or the empty chairs. The sound of Barger and Di playing Wicked Luck filled her ears, Barger accusing him of counting cards. She could still hear the laughter, the moments of reverie, now swallowed by this suffocating, blackening cloud.

  The captain retrieved an old bottle of bourbon, opened only for rare occasions, and set out five shot glasses, filled them, and slid them to the crew. The liquid looked brackish, like rainwater left out too long, and smelled like the richest spices on Iliad.

  “To Barger, the finest mechanic I knew.”

  “Aye,” agreed the crew.

  “And to Di”—the captain’s voice broke—“who was the best damn medic—no, the best person this kingdom had to offer. He was more human than the rest of us combined.” She raised her shot glass. “To those who set sail into the night, may the stars keep them steady . . .”

  “And the iron keep them safe,” the crew replied, drained their shot glasses, and slammed them onto the table.

  Ana did not drink.

  After a moment, Lenda said, “That ship was cursed. That ship was cursed and we should’a never gone.”

  “We didn’t know,” Riggs replied, and Wick nodded quietly.

  Lenda turned a tear-filled glare toward him. “Didn’t know? Everyone knew about the Tsarina! It was lost for a reason! And now Barger’s dead because of those bastards!”

  “And Di,” Jax reminded her softly, and the words felt like a punch to Ana’s stomach, stealing all her breath away. “Di’s dead, too.”

  At the other end of the table, Robb shifted uncomfortably. He looked as though he wanted to leave the galley, too.

  “And what do we got to show for it? ” asked Lenda, fisting her hands on the table. “That weird . . . thing Jax and that Ironblood brought onboard?”

  “It’s a Metal,” Robb corrected her.

  “A Metal?” Riggs balked. “It looks human.”

  Robb nodded. “I think Rasovant was trying to keep it hidden. There were red-eyed Metals guarding the room it was in before Di”—he faltered—“before the ship went down.”

  “But why would Rasovant hide something like this on that ship?” Jax muttered, a finger tapping his bottom lip thoughtfully. “It’s not illegal or anything. There are human-looking robots in all the best dens on Iliad.”

  “And why would he have guards protecting it?” Robb added. “Unless it was different somehow.”

  “So basically it’s just an upgraded version of Rasovant’s killing machines,” Lenda concluded, her voice dripping with bitterness. “Half of us were already shot at by Metals—it’d be a real treat for that thing to wake up and kill the res
t of us!”

  Siege gave the young woman a warning. “Calm down, Lenda.”

  “Calm down? Barger is dead!”

  “So is D09—”

  “He was never alive!”

  “Yes, he was!” Ana pushed back her chair with a loud crack and stood. “And I loved him!” Her voice echoed off the metal walls at every place Di would never be again. She heard her own breath hitch, a sob escape her lips—and tore herself away from the table.

  “Ana, wait,” the captain called, but she was already out of the galley, her eyes blurring with unshed tears.

  But there was nowhere for her to go. Nowhere to escape to. Every corner of the Dossier reminded her of him. Every cranny, every nook. She couldn’t get away from his ghost.

  The ache in her chest was so heavy she couldn’t breathe. Why didn’t the pain stop? When would it stop?

  The door to the infirmary slid open with a quiet blip. On the floor in the corner lay Barger in a black body bag, the smell of blood soaking the air in a dark perfume, and beside him was the strange red-haired thing Robb had brought aboard. She couldn’t even look at it. If Di had survived, maybe it could have been an answer.

  But now there wasn’t even a question.

  On a gurney, not even human enough for a body bag, lay the shell of her best friend.

  She could still hear the clank of his feet as he shuffled around the room, the deft way his hands worked, like a surgeon—precise. Exact. The sound of his core humming, the soft swish of electricity through his wires, the buzz of parts, the crackle of life, sweet and lovely—

  She couldn’t set foot inside the room; she wasn’t strong enough.

  The whoosh of the solar sails sighed through the ship as they caught the solar winds, bringing the ship into motion. She could feel it as sharply as she felt cuts and bruises.

  She didn’t hear the captain until Siege was already behind her. “We’ll have the funerals tomorrow, darling. We have to keep moving now. The malware that took control of the Tsarina could have reported us to whoever created it. We’ll take our time to say good-bye on Iliad. I promise.”

  Ana closed the infirmary door, locking Di inside. “Okay.” She pressed her back against the cold, solid metal, slowly sinking to the floor.

  “Maybe, during the funeral, if you want you could say a few words—”

  “Okay.”

  “I could help if you—”

  “I said okay!” Ana snapped as tears burned at the edges of her eyes.

  Siege knelt beside her. “Darling, I know it hurts—”

  “No you don’t!” She angrily wiped her tears away with the palm of her hand. “I just wanted to save him. I just wanted to save him and I ended up killing him. I kill everyone! I probably killed my parents too, didn’t I? Everything I touch I ruin—”

  The captain took her by the shoulders. “Don’t you ever say that.”

  “Even if it’s true?”

  “Ana—”

  She slapped Siege’s hands away. “Leave me alone!”

  “But Ana—”

  “Please,” she sobbed, curling her legs up to her chest. “Please leave me alone.”

  For a long moment, Ana thought she wouldn’t leave. She pulled herself tighter into a ball, looking anywhere but at the captain, thinking that maybe if she pretended Siege wasn’t there, she’d go away.

  And eventually, the captain did, and left her alone on a too-quiet ship in a too-quiet universe.

  She sat against the infirmary door, waiting, waiting to hear her heart break.

  Like heartbreak was supposed to sound. Like a mirror cracked in half, like a world tearing in two, like a galaxy crumbling, stars falling, crashing around her in the realization that tomorrow would not have Di. Or the next day. Or the day after that. That she could never see him again, never hear his voice, never press her cheek against his cool shoulder and savor the humming cadence of him.

  He was gone. Not lost. Not broken. Because he didn’t have a soul. He wasn’t alive. D09 was simply gone. Gone in a breath, in a blink of an eye.

  Gone.

  And her heart beat on in a universe without him, a sad and useless organ in her chest.

  Robb

  It was an hour after the rest of the crew went to bed before Ana came back into the quarters and crawled into her bunk. Robb wanted to tell her that he knew what it was like to lose the one person who meant the world to you. Because he knew it better than most people. He still felt it, the hole in his heart now taped over with the image of his father’s corpse on the Tsarina.

  But he was a Valerio, and he doubted she’d want condolences from him.

  He waited one minute, two, until her muffled sobs sank into silence and he was sure she was asleep, before he shimmied out of his bunk. Jax was huddled underneath his covers, a pale hand peeking out from beneath the pillow. Robb had never seen him with his gloves off before. Long, thin fingers. No scars, no horrible burns. But all the same, the Solani looked fragile without them. He could still taste their kiss, soft and bitter, and the horrified look on Jax’s face moments after.

  He hadn’t thought a kiss would hurt Jax. He hadn’t thought the wounded look would hurt him. He . . . didn’t know what he thought, actually. That Jax’s words were sweet? That, for a moment, he wanted to taste them. He wanted to trap them, claim them as his.

  No one had said they cared about him before, not with the kind of protective look in those violet-red eyes.

  Another throb of pain pulsed from his side, reminding him why he was up to begin with, and he slipped out of the room and down into the infirmary to find some more painkillers, ignoring the body bag in the corner, the red-haired robot, and the Metal on the gurney.

  Finding some pain medicine in the first aid kit, he tore the cap off with his teeth and slammed the needle into his side and bit in a scream as he pressed the medicine into his skin.

  The ache dulled to a sore throb.

  He wished it would numb the burning in his wrist, too, that was making it hard to move his fingers. But it wasn’t that pain that bothered him. It was the other kind—the betrayal that tightened his chest, made it hard to breathe. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t take the chip out without doing permanent nerve damage to his entire sword arm.

  And it was just a matter of time now before someone found him.

  The sound of metal hitting the floor made him yelp, and he spun around, toward the gurney—

  But it was not D09.

  E0S hovered over the Metal, using small, thin arms to mend the broken wires in the android’s hand. It made the same clattery noise when another piece of Metal hand fell to the floor.

  Guilt ate at Robb’s conscience—if he had just cut the ship’s power when he was supposed to, if he hadn’t been so selfish . . . Ana’s Metal D09 would be alive. And if D09 hadn’t destroyed the program controlling the androids and deactivated them when he had, then those Metals in the hall would have killed him.

  So he owed his life to D09. He was not the same as those other coreless Metals on the ship.

  D09 was good, and the world could have used a little more good a while longer.

  Annoyed, he shoved at E0S. “Hey—hey, it’s useless. He’s dead.”

  E0S didn’t acknowledge him, connecting another severed wire.

  Gritting his teeth, Robb shoved it away. It bleeped angrily. “He’s dead, you stupid can opener! He’s not coming back. Don’t you get that?”

  Like his father. Never coming back—no matter how much Robb wanted him alive.

  E0S whirled back to D09’s ruined hand. Couldn’t it just take a hint?

  He grabbed it out of the air—and froze, noticing a dull light pulsing from the smashed Metal’s chest. D09’s memory core.

  It wasn’t smashed.

  The ship must have only fried D09’s body.

  A plan formed in his head, one that sounded more and more impossible the longer he thought about it. He couldn’t save his father—unless he could reverse time—but maybe he could
try to make one thing right.

  The bot wiggled out of his grip and whirled up noisily, beeping every expletive in its one-tone vocabulary.

  If he transferred the code in D09’s memory core into the other Metal—the human-looking one—would it work? Memory cores were nothing but data, so he should be able to scan a copy into somewhere else. Namely, the humanoid Metal.

  What was there to lose in trying?

  As a Valerio, he should just let his mother find him and be a good son. He was more than likely in enough trouble already.

  He didn’t need to poke around in lives that weren’t his.

  But . . . D09 had saved him—all of them. Could he not at least try to do the same?

  Damn the part of him that was his father. Damn it all.

  Rushing out of the infirmary, he found a toolbox in the back of the skysailer and hurried back to D09, then rifled through it for an omnitool.

  The Academy taught basic programming and science. Boring stuff. He never showed up to class, partly because he couldn’t stand the spit-spewing teacher, and he still received the highest marks.

  As a Valerio should, his mother always said.

  But he didn’t realize until much later how rare that sort of brilliance was. And that his mother would always see him second to his brother.

  He found the tool and forced open the paneling in D09’s chest, revealing a cube. It pulsed, like a fading heartbeat, when usually functioning memory cores lit up white.

  He extracted the core, carefully setting it on the infirmary computer’s scanner.

  The old computer was used more for research and bone scans than anything else, but as long as it didn’t overheat, he was sure he could transfer the Metal’s memories.

  Now was the hard part. He exchanged D09 on the gurney with the humanoid Metal on the floor, feeling a little more awkward than he should that the android was naked. He’d seen naked boys before.

  He’s not a boy, he reminded himself.

  E0S swirled over, inserting a computer cord into the small port at the base of its skull, almost hidden in the hairline. Smart bot.

  In theory, the only way to successfully transfer a Metal’s data was to write over another memory core. It was probably why D09 never wanted to try it—because it would essentially kill another Metal.