by Sara King
As soon as he cleared the doorway, Jersey slowed, shocked by the number of people who had congregated outside. Even more unnerving, the space between the bar and the hotel was littered with Nephyr bodies. He had intellectualized it before, knowing she had to have killed the entire squad to still be standing, but to see it in person, their twitching, skinless bodies splayed out in the streets amidst masses of stunned colonists, had his heart pounding.
Even then, colonists were jerking away from him in the streets, glancing between him and Magali as if expecting another fight.
“Come on,” Magali said, rushing forward to grab him by the hand. “Let’s go. Now.”
She pulled, obviously trying to retreat from the carnage and the ever-growing crowd, but Jersey remained still, unable to take his eyes off his dead comrades. “Magali, you just killed twenty Nephyrs in less than a minute.” Saying it out loud for the first time, he got chills all over again.
“She turned a Nephyr!” someone gasped from the crowd. Frowning, Jersey turned to look at the young man.
“It is Magali Landborn!” an older man shouted. “The Killer is here!”
Jersey felt his heart stutter to a stop. All their chances of making a clean getaway had just fizzled out with that one sentence. Admiral Maako would send everything the Coalition had to put her down, and even a deadeye prodigy couldn’t survive a missile blast…
But the colonists were only getting more agitated. “She beat them at the Tear, too!” a kid screamed. “She killed two dozen operators with her rifle, hanging out the door of a cargo ship!”
Jersey knew that Magali hadn’t been part of that fight, since she’d been huddled in his hotel room refusing food, shower, and sleep because she was still in shock and convinced he was going to try and finish what Steele started. Still, as the chants kept coming from the crowd around him, Jersey started to get tingles, realizing what was happening.
“And Deaddrunk, too!” one of them howled. “And Yolk Factory 14!”
More colonists started screaming out Magali’s supposed deeds, and Jersey glanced down at Magali to see if she understood what the frenzy around them really meant.
Instead of the grim confidence he was expecting, Magali was shrinking from the crowd, pale, looking like a fawn about to bolt. All around them, people were screaming her name, chanting it like a war-cry. And, in that moment, Jersey realized Fortune was at a tipping point—all the angst, all the abuse, all the injustice was pouring forth in the form of men and women who finally, in Magali and her apparently divine favor, had found something to fight for.
And yet, Jersey knew Magali was close to abandoning them all and fleeing…so very close. It was obvious her mind had already started to fracture. He had seen it in her full-body trembles at the base of the cliff, he had seen it in the way she’d blanked out over hot chocolate, had seen it in the hotel room when she’d destroyed his stuff and when she’d almost let him die on the bathroom tile.
Jersey knew, in that moment, that he had a choice. Like a move in chess, he had to catalogue his assets, decide which sacrifice to make for the better good. He could keep Magali in front of the masses to accept her crown, force her to harness this tiger and lead it for the good of all, or he could let her drop the leash and run. If he let her run, she would survive…until Maako sent the Nephyrs to hunt her down. If he kept her there, her chances of mental survival basically became nil…but Fortune would finally get its chance at freedom, a chance that hundreds of thousands of people had already died to create.
Make her stay or help her go. The potential outcomes raged through his strategic mind as he heard the masses chanting her name, desperate to accept the broken, terrified woman as their messiah.
Make her stay or help her go. It tumbled like a rogue asteroid in his mind, slamming into the walls of his being, obliterating everything except that simple question. As the crowd screamed around them, Jersey knew, suddenly and without a doubt, that it was the most important decision of his entire life. He knew this was his entire reason for existence, this single, all-consuming choice that would ruin one life or emancipate countless more. He knew everything depended on it. He knew this was why David Landborn had forced him to play those harrowing games with his adopted son. He knew this was what he was meant to do.
Forfeit one for the good of all. A single sacrifice to win a battle. A fallen queen…
…for a checkmate.
I’m so sorry, Mag. As Magali cringed backwards, trying to retreat into the bar to hide from the chanting masses, Jersey snagged her wrist and forcibly kept her where they could see her. “They need this,” he whispered. “Stay.”
“Land-born, Land-born, LAND-BORN, LAND-BORN!” The very walls of the buildings around them began to vibrate with the sound, the air itself pounding with Magali’s name. More colonists were flooding the streets, adding their own voices to the cheer, and before long, it could be heard from other streets, other rooftops.
But Jersey wasn’t listening. His heart was torn, seeing the cringing, broken thing clinging to the arm that held her. Half of him still wanted to let go, to help her find a way to live out the rest of her life in peace, to help her escape the thousands of excited faces…
“Please let go of my hand,” Magali whimpered, looking around them in growing terror. The anguish in her voice, the despair, almost made Jersey let her go. Almost. “Jersey,” she whimpered. “Please.”
A fallen queen…
…for checkmate.
Jersey swallowed hard, but kept his hand locked around her wrist. He looked around them, saw the multitudes of men and women who had reached a tipping point of their own, men and women who needed something to believe in, who were utterly oblivious to the panic of the woman in front of them. Instead of seeing a pale, cowering egger, they were seeing the culmination of an idea, a passion, a hope. It was spreading like fire, surging through them in ever-increasing intensity, raging through the streets, crashing around them as heavy as the churning power of an ocean storm.
“I think you just did it,” Jersey breathed. And, knowing the consequences of what he had done, knowing that Magali would never be able to go home, never be able to have a normal life again, Jersey felt the aching regret for forcing that crown on her head even as his spirit—born on Fortune, raised on Fortune—joined the others in their revelry, their ecstasy at finally taking that first step to freedom.
“Did what?” Magali whispered. The rolling masses of revelers were dragging away the Nephyr bodies, taking their belongings, arming themselves from their corpses. Then a group of them was hoisting a dead Nephyr upside-down by the leg up a flagpole, to the ecstatic cheers of thousands. And, in that moment, seeing one of his former brothers strung up in all his glittering glory, blood dribbling down from his empty eye socket as an entire city cheered, Jersey knew there was no going back.
“Oh my God,” Jersey whispered, as the voices around them crescendoed to a bone-numbing roar. “Mag . . . you just started the Revolution.”
Magali froze, then slowly looked up at him with a mingling of horror and fear. “Please let me go, Jersey,” she whimpered. She obviously realized what was happening, what they would expect her to do. “Please.” She was shaking all over, holding onto him just to stay upright. “I can’t do this.” She was begging him…
…And Jersey continued to hold her there, forcing her to face the growing tide of humanity that was even then proclaiming their swords for her banner, their guns for her army, their ships for her fleet. He watched the hope fade from her face, the tiny glimmer of trust for him flare out, replaced with hopelessness and desolation.
A fallen queen…
…for checkmate.
Magali slumped against him, giving up on her own escape. Jersey tried to squeeze her hand, to reassure her that he would be there for her, but she did not even react. All around them, throngs of people were screaming her name with religious zeal, pushing and shoving to get to the front, so they could chant where she could see them. For several minu
tes, Magali Landborn simply stared at a point on the cobblestones a few yards ahead of her, her eyes unfocused, her body unmoving. She might as well have been a doll for all the reaction the crowd’s chants got from her.
She’s starting to break, Jersey thought, anguished. He knew he needed to get her out of the public eye, back into some semblance of privacy before she simply shut down and refused to respond to anything at all. As Magali continued to deteriorate in his arms, he tried to figure out how to extract them, how to get her somewhere quiet while still keeping up the momentum.
He was about to say screw it and drag her off to some other city to get some sleep when a Silver City camera crew shoved their big lenses in her face. “Magali Landborn!” the newscaster panted, both him and his Ferris cameraman jostled by the crowd. “What are your plans from here? Will you be taking the rest of Fortune? Do you think you’ve finally started your Revolution? Any words of warning to the Coalition occupiers, Killer?”
Magali came alive, then, that terrified woman falling away, revealing something colder, darker, and a thousand times more calculating. She raised her gun and brought it to the cameraman’s forehead—
Jersey stepped between them, and for a moment, he watched it cross her hazel eyes to shoot him, too. Looking up at Jersey, her words barely distinguishable in the chaos around them, she said, “This is not my Revolution.”
Jersey knew. It was his. He squeezed her hand. “Let me take care of this. Then we can get you somewhere to rest.”
“I don’t want dinner, Mom,” Magali said. Tears had begun sliding down her cheeks. “I just wanna go to sleep. Dad’s stupid games tired me out again. I’m seeing Nephyrs when I close my eyes.”
Jersey blinked at her, a little flutter of panic in his chest.
Sacrifice a queen…
…for a checkmate.
He swiveled on the Ferris, who had been slowly turning in a circle to film the chanting, roiling crowd, rather than Jersey’s back. Jersey grabbed the robot and yanked it back around. “Is that thing live?” he demanded.
Despite the frothing chaos around them, the Ferris running the camera politely said, “It’s broadcasting to the Silver City holochan at a rate of sixty terabits a second, Mr. Brackett.”
“Then broadcast this.” Jersey twisted the camera and forced it on himself and Magali. Into its huge black eye, he shouted over the roar around him, “The Revolution is here. Fortune is a sovereign system! It was given—given—to our ancestors Daytona Dae and the original colonists for saving the Core in the Triton Wars. We own this place—the Coalition just ‘forgot’ that when it discovered Yolk. Well, I say it’s time we show them whose families put their lives into building this place! My name is Jersey Brackett, last survivor of the Brackett clan, and that is Magali Landborn, the Killer, and we’re about to wipe every speck of Coalition occupation off the face of this planet. I repeat—the Revolution is here! Join us in Silver City to take back our home!”
All around him, the cheers, which had quieted some so they could hear his speech, increased exponentially, until the very stone under his combat boots was vibrating. Jersey chanced a glance at Magali, saw that she was staring at nothing again.
“Get to the airfield!” Jersey shouted, as loudly as he could over the screaming. “We’re taking back Fortune!”
He hadn’t thought he could be heard over the chanting, but suddenly the crowds were moving, shoving toward the airfield and its awaiting ships. Magali stumbled in the crush, almost fell under the shuffling feet. Jersey easily picked her up and sat her on his shoulder, holding her in place with a hand on her hip and an arm across her legs.
Pinned by all the stares around them, Jersey heard Magali whimper. His heart ached for her, realizing what he was doing, making her even more visible, even more of an object for their adoration.
Sacrifice a queen…
…for a checkmate.
All around him, the city was mobilized, heading for ships, prepared to finally take down the regime that had terrorized them for two generations.
The strategist in Jersey hoped they could hit a Yolk Factory immediately, to show a decisive victory and gain more support and forward momentum to take the Coalition stronghold of Rath and break the opposition’s hold on the planet before it had a chance to recover. The human in Jersey just hoped that, by getting Magali to a ship, he could get her out of sight long enough to lure her back from the brink before he had to bring her out into the public eye again.
Sacrifice a queen…
Perched on his shoulder, Magali started to tremble like someone exposed to severe cold. Feeling it, Jersey remembered the last time she’d trembled under him, and once again heard those words she had whispered to him in the bar as she let him hold her, when he had been struggling, thinking he would never feel the willing touch of another human being again, losing himself to the horror of what he had done, what he had become.
“If you had let them kill you, we wouldn’t have been able to save each other.”
That simple thought had been his salvation. The idea that his life had been worth something, that he had saved such an innocent, beautiful soul, had dragged him out of his overwhelming sorrow and allowed him to face a life as something inhuman. She had wrenched him out of his despair…
Only to have him throw her down into his place.
Sacrifice a queen…
Guns. Nephyrs. A crowd. Falling off a cliff.
Except she hadn’t fallen. She’d climbed down. Hadn’t she? But how did she climb down a cliff? She was afraid of heights… And what about the Nephyrs? Had she just dreamed the Nephyrs? Who could really kill twenty Nephyrs in under a minute? Magali was finding it hard to remember. She was so tired…
Magali listened to the hum of the engines as Jersey flew them—and the throngs of people and ships who had volunteered from Silver City—back to Yolk Factory 14. The Nephyr had told her Nalle had imported two thousand fresh eggers to take the place of the three thousand Joel had ferried away or Steele had killed, most of whom had been stripped from Silver City only days or hours before Magali had triggered the riot.
Jersey had also told her he’d scouted out a good spot for her to snipe the guards on the towers, and Magali had told him she wasn’t killing anyone, ever again. When he’d tried to insist, she’d pointed a gun at his face. She now had the gun in her lap, along with a sniper rifle Jersey had taken from a Nephyr she’d killed in Silver City, as well as two EMP wands from a sealed compartment on their ship. Two more Nephyr pistols were strapped to her waist, two more to her thighs, and an assault rifle was slung across her back. She wasn’t exactly sure when she’d done that. The entire day had been a blur. She didn’t even remember leaving Silver City, aside from the fact Jersey had tried to explain to her that he expected her to kill people again, and, in response, she’d almost shot him in the head.
The engines’ pitch changed and Magali felt Jersey put them on the ground. A minute later, the big Nephyr came into the crew compartment with her, an anxious look on his face. “Okay, look,” he said softly, “you don’t actually have to kill anyone. Just look like you’re helping us out, okay? Today is big. Huge. We’re taking back what’s ours.”
“Then take it back,” Magali said, never lifting her eyes from the wall. “You don’t need me.”
“Technically, no,” Jersey said. “Director Nalle is a third-grade Nephyr, at best—probably just some rube they threw in a skin because her daddy was an admiral—and I could probably take her down with my eyes closed. That leaves, what, seventy-six guards? How many did you kill?”
“Fifteen,” Magali whispered, remembering every single face.
“Okay, so sixty-one guards, plus about a dozen support personnel,” Jersey said. “We’ve got forty-two ships and over a thousand guys with guns. Steele and the other Nephyrs of the Forty-Third are gonna be long gone. They had another Yolk harvest due tomorrow down south near the coast, Factory 11. That means they’ll be over a thousand miles away when we hit Factory 14. We ta
ke the camp fast enough, they won’t have enough time to fly back to 14 before we’re gone again.”
“I’ll stay on the ship,” Magali told him, fully intending to defend her right to do so with violence, if necessary.
Jersey gave her an anguished look, but didn’t come any closer. “They need to see you. They need to know you’re participating, you know?”
“They can eat shit and die,” Magali said. “I told you this is not my Revolution.”
“We need this, Mag,” Jersey insisted. “If we’re gonna earn enough support to take Rath, we need to show everyone sitting on the fence that we can win.”
Everyone knew Rath was the key to Fortune. It was the Coalition’s stronghold, its lifeline to the Orbital, and beyond that, the Core. While Rath maintained vast, state-run farms and water purification facilities, the military section of the Orbital didn’t even have its own hydroponics system or maintain a permanent crew—it had been originally built as a launch-point to the Core that had been haphazardly expanded over the years as the Yolk trade grew. To people like Anna, Milar, and Magali’s father, Rath was the Holy Grail of victories, the chokepoint that would win them the war.
“Nobody cares about Rath,” Magali said.
Jersey glanced at the door to the cockpit. “Okay, well, we landed outside the range of the camp sensors. Gonna hike in and get the place locked down before Nalle can call in reinforcements. There’s a hill just a few dozen yards to the northwest where you can sit and watch the whole thing. You don’t have to kill anyone. Just let people see you’re with us, okay?”
Magali watched his gold-filigreed face for several moments. Jersey’s blue-green eyes were filled with concern…and nervousness.
“You want a figurehead,” she noted.
Jersey winced. “They just need to see someone lead.”
Magali remembered her father’s endless war games, the dozens of times she’d gotten her entire ‘unit’ killed for being stupid. “You lead,” Magali said.
“Mag, I’m…” Jersey hesitated. He glanced down at his hands, which glittered in the neon ship light. “I mean, look at me.” He held up his glassy fingers, the golden circuitry clearly visible underneath the energy barrier. “You think they’d follow a Nephyr? I’m everything they hate.
