by Maura Milan
“Was,” Ia corrected her.
“We should tell the headmaster about this.”
“Don’t.” Ia shook her head. This was getting unnecessarily complicated. That’s why she never liked telling anyone about her plans, and when she had to, her crew had learned never to question her. Because when she talked to them, she gave orders. It wasn’t like what was happening now, now that she had so many friends. Whom she had to explain everything to, in detail, at all times. “I don’t want Knives to find out that I wanted to meet with him.”
“You planned this? You brought the most wanted criminal in the Commonwealth here. Just so you could meet?”
“I guess technically he’s now the most wanted criminal on that list,” Ia started to explain, “but seriously, if I was still on there…”
Brinn didn’t even give Ia a chance to finish her sentence.
“I can’t believe you. Don’t you realize you’re putting all of us in jeopardy?”
“I need allies, Brinn. I can’t fight my brother alone.”
“You’re the one who was blabbering about trust earlier,” Brinn said. “So use us. Trust us.”
Ia said nothing.
“Fine. I’m not going to be there if this blows up in your face.” Brinn stormed off.
This was only one of several of their fights, and Ia was tired. At this point, she had no choice but to watch as Brinn disappeared into the dark.
CHAPTER 10
KNIVES
KNIVES THREW HIS TRAVEL PACK on his bed and unzipped it. They were scheduled to relocate in two days. He had no time to discern what he actually needed from the pile of regulated flight suits that he’d hoarded throughout the years. They all looked exactly the same, but some of them were worn in at the limbs a little worse than others. He decided to pack them all. He’d figure out what to do with them later.
His brown leather jacket was something he’d wear on the flight to HQ. He had other trinkets, too. His desk was cluttered with medals he had won for time-trial events over the years, a busted simulation visor that he had been trying to fix for months, and the photograph he’d taken from Bastian’s office.
He picked up the class photo framed with painted black wood. He looked at the image of Marnie, and realized there was one last place they needed to visit together.
The Nest was cold this time of year. It was a circular space, the walls reaching several meters above him. They tapered at the top where there was a large metal hatch, which had lain open since the Armada attack.
Ropes hung like vines from the top of the shaft, fastened there by the slavers so they could find their way down. The ground was now marked with the scuttle of loose rocks and cracked lines, the telltale signs of their enemy’s footsteps.
Even this sacred place was defiled.
He lit a candle on the cold floor and stared up at what stars peeked through the clouds, gray against the midnight sky.
“This is it, Marn,” Knives murmured. “We’re finally leaving this place for good.”
The Nest was an Adams sanctuary, one for both him and Marnie to retreat to whenever the stress of the academy got to them.
He remembered the time they tried to climb the walls without ropes or hooks. He hadn’t gotten very far and fell when he was only a third of the way. But Marnie had reached the top. She’d hung onto the grating like a Nonoko ape and yelled into the open sky. She had no fear. None at all.
He studied his fingers, the skin cracked and thick from years added to his life since then. Perhaps if he tried today, he’d reach the top.
Even though he was currently Aphelion’s headmaster, the general was still adamant about Knives’s return to the field. Make use of that officer’s title, his father had told him during his last visit.
These walls were not going to protect Knives any longer. This was something he had to face in the coming months. It was time for him to grow up.
He positioned the frame upon a small rock ledge at the back wall of the Nest.
“I’m going to move forward, Marn,” he said.
Marnie would always be with him, no matter what, but where he was going, he didn’t need to bring his cadet days with him. He took one last look at his sister, her brow set and her eyes ready. This was the Marnie he would always remember, the one who would inspire him to keep going, keep going.
As Knives turned back to the entrance, the wind whistled through the open grate and down the cavern. A crash of glass echoed against the walls, and he looked over his shoulder knowing that the picture frame wasn’t where he left it.
It was on the floor, the glass shattered and the frame broken into pieces. Among the debris, something glinted in the moonlight.
It was small and silver.
And it was shaped like a key.
Knives rushed through the hallways passing clusters of cadets, each of them swiveling their heads as they watched him go. The mystery key lay in the safety of his fist until he was back in Bastian’s old office.
He went straight to the locked drawer. He uncurled his fingers, exposing it to the light. It was flat with a square head that extended to a small sliver of metal with grooves and jagged teeth.
He stared at it. Could this be the key he was looking for? And why did Bastian put it in the frame for that particular photo? Could it be that he wanted Knives to find it?
With anxious fingers, Knives inserted the key into the keyhole. It fit in easily like a sword to its scabbard. He took a deep breath and turned it. It rotated smoothly until finally he heard something click within the locking mechanism.
The drawer hitched loose, sliding forward from its rails.
Knives peeked inside, expecting to see stacks of Bastian’s journals waiting to be opened and read.
But there were no books, no loose papers, not even a torn-off corner from a page.
All he saw was a fountain pen. Smooth black with golden trim.
This was it? This was what Bastian wanted him to find?
He had seen this pen before, always either in Bastian’s chest pocket or in his hand, making inky scratches in his journals. It was strange that he hadn’t taken it on his final trip to Fugue.
He had left it there for Knives to find. A memento. Maybe that was all there was to it. He could leave it behind, like Marnie’s photo. But he had a feeling he’d be needing more of Bastian’s guidance in the days ahead.
“All right, Bastian,” he muttered as he picked up the pen and placed it in the chest pocket of his leather jacket. “All right.”
Hanging halfway out of his Kaiken, Knives rearranged his duffel bags on the floor of his cockpit. A RSF battleship was scheduled to land the next morning, so that the engineers could move all of the flight vehicles onto the vehicle bay for transport to headquarters.
They were packing up the labs and shipping over all the armaments in development, as well as every single one of the available Borg models, both assembled and disassembled.
They’d have to leave the uranium core, but Professor Patel had spent the past two weeks with Cadet Tarver securing the space so no one without proper access would be able to find their way in.
“You planning an escape?”
The sound of Ia’s voice made him smile, but he forced his grin away before he turned to face her.
“You want to come with?” he said as he stepped down to the tarmac to meet her.
She smirked at him. “I know you. You would never run away.”
Aaron stood behind her, still programmed to keep a close eye. Knives remembered the days when Ia was always scheming to escape, always trying to figure out different ways she could pinch that heart tracker from his cold, dead body. The heart tracker was long gone, yet somehow she was still there, studying him, smirking.
“You excited to go home?” she asked.
HQ was located in Rigel Kentaurus, the capital star system of the Olympus Commonwealth, specifically on the planet Calvinal, orbiting four planets away from a yellow dwarf star. Aphelion had been his home for t
he past three years, but Calvinal was where he grew up. He’d lived a wonderful life there, but he did not miss it.
To deflect her question, Knives nodded over at Aaron. “You know once we get there, he’s going to have to start doing his job again. In fact, it’ll be worse. My father will be there.”
Ia shrugged. “At least this time, I can outrun him without falling to the ground from a heart attack. Escape isn’t off the table yet, Adams.”
“Yeah, but where would you even go?” he joked.
She glared at him, clearly annoyed by his quip.
Yes, he had given Ia her freedom. It was the right thing to do, but he also knew that the fact that she had come back meant her loyalties with her brother were no longer something she could fall back on. As odd as it sounded, she was better protected allying herself to the Commonwealth, and her decision to stay was obviously a strategic one. Could she go rogue? Of course she could. Maybe she was even plotting something as they spoke.
“Why are you here, Ia?” he asked her.
Suddenly, the troubled lines on her face softened, and she stepped up to him, her black eyes looking up into his. “Wanna grab some food?”
He bit his lip, stopping the grin from growing on his face. “Sure.”
She smiled at him, and somewhere in the universe, the sun was shining.
It was moments like this that he thought there was another reason why she stayed.
CHAPTER 11
BRINN
BRINN TOOK ONE LAST LOOK at Aphelion. Even though the flight deck was busy with activity, it was still so much emptier than it used to be. The parked starjets on the track above were all gone, in a storage bay of another Star Force battleship that would follow them to the new academy. Some that had been in the middle of repair were left splayed across the ground as scrap.
“That’s the Olympus Commonwealth for you,” Liam said as he stepped beside her. “Take what they want, and leave behind what’s broken.”
She raised her eyebrows, noting the displeasure in his voice.
But he was right. That was the way the Commonwealth approached everything. Like when they colonized her own planet, Tawnus.
Was that how they would treat her, too? Throw her away when she wasn’t useful anymore?
“You know they never presented a soldier’s medal to Cammo’s family after he died?” Liam’s voice grew tense. “A son of Olympus so quickly forgotten.”
She stilled at his words. Something had been different about Liam since the attack on Aphelion. That day was full of screams, and blood, and death. His eyes no longer had the spark that she remembered seeing when she first met him, but they were still painfully bright and kind. It was all forced, a counterfeit expression that he wore every day. Because it was expected of him, to be strong as a shield.
Together, they walked toward the shuttle that would take them and the rest of the cadets to Nauticanne, an academy in the heart of the Olympus Commonwealth, where the walls were stronger, more fortified. Where Einn would not be able to get her, and she would be even more closed off from her family, from everything.
And where she would become an officer of the Royal Star Force.
Half a year ago, this was the path that she chose, but now she could clearly see the end of it, an image of her future self waving back at her. It made her pause, wishing for left turns, U-turns, a detour. There was something inside her screaming for her to stop. But she got into the shuttle anyway.
Brinn and Liam wandered through the aisles, spiraling around the center of the cabin until they found empty seats in the corner.
She caught sight of Ia entering the shuttle, her guard Aaron in tow, but when Ia glanced in her direction, Brinn did her best to look away. They hadn’t spoken since their fight by the elevator. Their argument bothered her, but it bothered her more that Ia didn’t care. Maybe that was the type of friend Ia was—if she was even still a friend at all.
A notification popped up on her holowatch. A news alert from back home. Her heart stopped when she read the words.
Protest in Nova Grae Disrupted by Large-Scale Bombing. Hundreds Dead.
Her thoughts narrowed. Faren.
What if he was there?
Oh Deus, no.
NO.
The air in her lungs grew thick. Her body slowly curled into itself, so all she could see were her knees. Because she knew her brother. She knew he was at that protest.
A voice came onto the speakers. “Ready for takeoff. Please turn off all holos for the remainder of the flight.”
“Brinn,” Liam said. “Are you okay?”
Brinn turned off her holowatch, unable to look Liam in the eye. She placed a hand at her heart, feeling it race inside her chest. She remembered the words she recited before she went to sleep. It’s okay. He’s safe. She repeated them again now as she willed her heart to slow and slow until finally it was at a normal pace.
Her heart was easy to control, but the tears blurring her vision—all she could really do was blink them away.
CHAPTER 12
IA
IA WATCHED AS THEY ASCENDED above the clouds. She saw just a glimpse of AG-9’s white, harsh terrain before the windows blacked out entirely for solar protection. Ia had wished for this more times than she could count, to escape Aphelion, her prison for the past few months. Yet there was a part of her that didn’t want to leave. Aphelion was one of the oldest academies of Olympus. Its location was remote and harder to visit, which meant fewer Bugs came to check on her. The relocation to Nauticanne meant all the high officials would be there, keeping a close eye.
She glanced across the aisle and then, reminded of who she was sitting with, quickly turned her eyes away. Nero’s dark glare followed her, his loathsome face symmetrical all the way down to that dimple in the center of his chin. There had been no other seats left, so she had no choice but to endure him for the duration of the flight. Most of his cronies had been ordered home by their parents, but for some reason, Nero Sinoblancas, the heir to the most powerful corporation in all the known galaxies, had chosen to stay.
“Why aren’t you with the mungbringer?” he asked, his tone a little less acidic than usual, as if it was normal to speak through slurs and insults.
She sneered at him for his use of that word, but something within her felt compelled to answer. Maybe because she was so alone in her frustration. “We had a fight,” she said.
Nero shrugged. “That is what you do best.”
Ia could have said something, but she didn’t. Because he was right.
She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs in messy oblong angles so that she would take up more space and feel a little less small. “Why are you still here?” she grumbled to Nero. “I thought you’d already left this place.”
“Because,” he said. “Going back home would mean I’d have to start working for Sino Corp.”
Sino Corp was at the forefront of technological change, sponsoring labs and research that greatly improved the lives of the Citizens of the Olympus Commonwealth. “Are you telling me you chose the Star Force over Sino Corp?”
“Trust me. There are things we do that I wished I never knew.”
And she wanted more than ever to find out exactly what he meant by that. But then she thought about the other Sinoblancas she knew.
“Is that why Vetty left?” Vetty was Nero’s cousin. He had taken his leave from Commonwealth life to be a part of her crew.
Nero nodded. “As much as I hate how he ended up working for you, Vetty was smart for getting out of it while he had the chance.”
She looked him straight in the eye, something she never did because he was hardly worth it. But there was something very odd about what he had said to her. “Why are you telling me this?”
“If you haven’t already noticed, the Commonwealth is falling apart. I thought you should know that there are more players in this game than you realize.”
Ia furrowed her brow at his warning and looked away. She hoped to Deus that he was
n’t right.
Nauticanne Academy wasn’t how it looked in the action streams. There was a Kinna Downton one that came out last year in which she played a tough and go-get-’em flyer. All the training montages were supposedly filmed at Nauticanne. But apparently those were all lies.
Because Nauticanne was bigger than it appeared in the stream story. Way bigger. The campus on the ground was a facade, made to look like an old museum from Ancient Earth. The bulk of the academy was stationed in the clouds. All the classes and training took place on a line of older Commonwealth battlecruisers, the kinds that were meant for colonizing expeditions, equipped to house a whole army if needed.
As Ia stepped off the ramp of the shuttle and down onto Nauticanne’s flight deck, she looked out through the large, square entryway that lay open after their ship had anchored. The sky stretched out before her, and she saw two other battleships in the distance, one at the 200 mark and another at 1100. The three battleships were arranged in a triangle, connected together by a series of vacuum tunnels that ferried people from one vessel to the other.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” a voice said.
She turned around and struggled to hold down a groan.
“Mif,” she muttered to herself.
A statuesque man in his late thirties stood before her. Tall, with broad shoulders, dark, roguish eyes, and umber-brown skin—the renowned Captain Nema. They had a history, one which included the destruction of several of his Star Force ships by her devious machinations. They were enemies once. But now—oh Deus. They were on the same side.
As the other cadets passed, they paused to salute the captain, but he waved them all away before they could even raise their arms.
His full attention on Ia, he nodded at the scene outside. “We have the academy base positioned between our best Star Force battleships, fully equipped with a new batch of Sino Corp weaponry. All of our best flyers are right here on Calvinal. We have everything we need on these three ships to win a war,” he said, waving his arms as if he was the conductor of some ridiculous symphony.
