Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

  I called to her through the crack in the wall, the one we always use to whisper to each other late into the night. But she didn’t answer. Nor did she come to dinner with the other maids.

  I fear it is the worst news. I fear she has gotten herself in too deep. She has waded into the water with sharks, and she can’t swim.

  I worry about her. Lisole has become my one true friend here in the Palais. I remember how she used to be such a happy girl. Before she got herself embroiled in this mess. She used to sing while she scrubbed the floors. She smiled at the flowers in the garden. And her big, dark eyes drank in the stars in the vast TéléSky.

  But tonight, I fall asleep to the sound of her cries.

  “Lisole,” Marcellus echoed once Alouette had reached the end of the report. He turned to her, the shock on his face matching her own. “Your mother?”

  Alouette’s breaths were coming fast and furious now. She could barely move her head enough to nod. “I think … maybe?”

  “Keep reading!” Marcellus urged.

  She turned the page.

  Date: Month 6, Day 2, 488

  Operative: Mabelle Dubois

  Location: Grand Palais

  This morning, I awoke to the sound of a commotion outside my door. I rushed into the hallway to find Lisole fighting with a handsome auburn-haired Palais guard. Her eyes were puffy and red. Her hair was a mess, and across her cheek, I saw an angry red mark. I knew, immediately, that she’d been struck.

  I asked the guard what was happening.

  “Mademoiselle Villette has been relieved of her duties at the Palais,” he said in a cold, detached tone. He wouldn’t even look at her as he spoke.

  “Is there a reason?” I asked, even though I was certain I already knew. Lisole’s tears last night had told me everything.

  “For theft,” the guard announced.

  Lisole bowed her head in shame, and my worst fears were confirmed.

  “She was caught stealing directly from the Patriarche himself,” the guard went on. “She is fortunate Patriarche Claude is only dismissing her, and not sending her straight to Bastille.”

  I nodded but said nothing. For there was nothing I could say.

  As the guard escorted her away, Lisole caught my eye, and in a single desperate glance, we both knew that this was the beginning of the end for her.

  Alouette’s heart pounded faster as she turned eagerly to the next report.

  Date: Month 6, Day 3, 488

  Operative: Mabelle Dubois

  Location: Grand Palais

  The Patriarche and the general have been locking themselves in the general’s private study for hours on end. This change of protocol is clearly indicative of …

  Alouette glanced up from the book and stared incredulously at Marcellus. “That’s it?” She hastily flipped to the next page and scanned the lines of handwritten words for another mention of her mother’s name. But there was nothing. The next page contained a reconnaissance report from the delegation meetings, followed by five separate reports on a new TéléSkin update that the Ministère was working on. Alouette kept flipping, desperation filling her with every turn of the page, until she was quite certain she would rip the paper clean out of the spine.

  “Hey.” Marcellus’s gentle tone broke into her thoughts, and his warm fingers stopped her hand. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay!” she cried, feeling the crushing blow of disappointment. “I’m so tired of all these dead ends! All of this, just to discover that my mother was a Palais servant and a criminal? Just like Hugo?”

  “Maybe there’s more to it than that?” Marcellus suggested.

  “What more would there be? She wasn’t special. She wasn’t this long-lost secret that I’ve been destined to find. She was just a common thief.”

  Suddenly, Alouette remembered the words Madame Blanchard had said to her back at the bordel.

  Your maman was a croc. Obviously, she conned us both.… She’s a good liar, that Lisole.

  Furiously, Alouette closed the book with a snap and tossed it onto the bed. A deep and guttural scream was building up inside of her, threatening to shake the walls of the couchette and echo out into the deepest depths of space.

  But it never released. Because someone else beat her to it. “Nooooooo!” A piercing wail echoed from the upper deck. Alouette and Marcellus shared a panicked look before barreling out of the couchette and back up the stairs to the viewing lounge.

  The Regiments game had been abandoned. Cerise was standing in the middle of the room, gripping her TéléCom, a look of sheer dread on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” Marcellus asked, slightly winded.

  “Our cloaking code,” Cerise replied in a shaky voice without lifting her eyes from the TéléCom. “It’s been … overridden.”

  “Overridden?” Marcellus echoed. “What does that mean?”

  But before Cerise could respond, the ship began to rumble, the floors beneath their feet juddering so forcefully, Alouette had to grab on to a nearby chaise to steady herself.

  Gabriel yelped. “Oh Sols! What’s happening? Are we dying? Is the ship exploding?”

  “No,” said Marcellus, sounding confused. “It’s just the stabilizeurs. We’re decelerating.”

  “Why?” Alouette asked, glancing at the hologram map. “We still have over seventeen hours of flight time left.”

  “I know,” said Marcellus. His tone did little to comfort Alouette.

  Then, suddenly, Cerise was on the move, crossing the viewing lounge and marching into the flight bridge with quick, purposeful strides. Alouette darted after her with Marcellus and Gabriel close behind.

  “Why is it slowing down now?” Gabriel asked breathlessly.

  They all looked to Cerise, but her eyes were trained out the window of the bridge, her face gaunt. “Because of that.”

  Alouette turned, and all the blood in her veins drained instantly to her feet. Outside the window loomed something so vast, so colossal, it blocked out every star and every centimètre of space, overshadowing their tiny voyageur like a behemoth to a gnat. Wider than the Terrain Perdu, sleeker and steelier than the exoskeleton of a droid, it moved like a great block of ice in a waveless ocean.

  Silent and slow and deadly.

  “What is that?” Gabriel asked, his voice strained.

  It took Alouette a moment to match the gargantuan ship to the sketches she’d studied in the Chronicles, but once the connection was made, she knew their journey was over. “It’s a Trafalgar 4000,” she whispered.

  “A what?” Gabriel asked.

  But it was Marcellus who answered, his voice as brittle as aged paper. “Albion’s most powerful warship.”

  - CHAPTER 37 - MARCELLUS

  MARCELLUS COULDN’T BREATHE. THE TRAFALGAR 4000 hung above the voyageur, vast and menacing and hungry, looking like it might swallow them whole. In one gulping second, they would be gone. Consumed, chewed, and digested inside the gigantic warship. Marcellus had learned about these types of Albion spacecraft during his training at the Ministère. He knew of their might and their power. And now, as he stared up at the beast of a warship, it felt as though every molecule of oxygen in the flight bridge was being sucked out into space.

  “Oh my Sols! We’re going to die!” someone screamed behind him. He was fairly certain it was Gabriel. But it sounded like it was coming from galaxies away, drowned out by the sound of the warship’s colossal engines humming just outside the window.

  Whomp.

  Whomp.

  Whomp.

  But Marcellus knew he had to be imagining it. There was no sound in space. No engines whirring. No weapons firing.

  No screams.

  “We’re not going to die!” Cerise shouted back at Gabriel. “Stop panicking.”

  “Stop panicking?! Have you looked outside the window?”

  “How did they even find us?” Alouette asked. Marcellus could feel her presence behind him. Serene and composed, even in the face of this catastro
phe.

  Meanwhile, Marcellus felt as though his entire body was shutting down. One essential organ at a time. He still hadn’t brought himself to move, speak, breathe. He stood motionless at the window, trying desperately to come up with a plan. A strategy. Something! But his mind was as empty as the endless void of space outside.

  “I don’t know!” Cerise cried. “But now they’ve taken control of the navigation system.”

  Just then, the voyageur lurched beneath their feet, knocking them all off balance. Marcellus reached out to steady himself before whipping his gaze back to the window. His chest squeezed.

  The Trafalgar.

  It was getting closer.

  “They’re pulling us in.” Cerise voiced his fear.

  Gabriel let out another yelp. “They’re what?”

  “Will you stop whining!” Cerise shouted. “You are the most unsmooth criminal I’ve ever met. How have you ever managed to steal anything?!”

  “What do we do?” Alouette asked.

  Marcellus was still too numb to speak, but he knew the answer.

  Nothing.

  There was nothing to do now. They were flying in Albion airspace on a Laterrian ship. They were being reeled in by a Trafalgar 4000, like a tiny fish on a line, and soon they would be captured. They would stand trial. They would be convicted as spies, and they would spend the rest of their lives in “The Tower,” Albion’s infamous prison, rotting in one of its dank and pitch-black cells.

  And his grandfather would win.

  Just as he always did.

  Cerise prodded frantically at the controls on the console. Alouette stood beside her, her steady gaze trying to follow Cerise’s rapidly moving hands. Marcellus turned toward the hologram map in the center of the bridge, which now showed their ship, caught between the Asteroid Channel and the planet of Albion.

  “I can’t do anything,” Cerise said. “They’ve completely locked us out. Even the backup nav systems have been overridden.”

  “This is it!” Gabriel cried, frantically pacing the length of the bridge like a mad man. “It’s all over. We’re all going to die. I knew this was a mistake. I knew I should never have stepped foot on this death trap. It wasn’t even that nice of a ship. Sure, it has seven bathrooms, but what good are seven bathrooms when you’re dead? And the kitchen didn’t even have paté. Or gateaux! And now I will never know what either of them taste like. I’m going to die without ever tasting gateaux and—”

  POW!

  Cerise’s fist slammed into Gabriel’s face with such force, he stumbled back, crashing into the holographic map, causing the planets to fritz and fuzz.

  “Hey!” Gabriel shouted, holding his nose with both hands. “You punched me! You punched me in the face! You don’t punch people in the face.”

  “I had to shut you up,” Cerise said, pivoting back to the flight console.

  Gabriel turned to Marcellus. “Did you see that? She punched me. In the face.”

  But Marcellus was barely listening. Because the voyageur had started to rumble again, this time with far more intensity. Everyone’s gazes jumped back to the window. They were heading toward a large latticed grid on the side of the Trafalgar, dotted with thousands of blinking lights. Beneath the grid, a vast fleet of tiny crafts clung to the surface of the ship like bats on the branches of a tree. Their sleek black shells shimmered ominously.

  Albion Micro-fighters.

  Marcellus had heard about their deadly capabilities. One small swarm could take out entire cities, entire fleets.

  Alouette turned to him. “What’s happening?”

  Marcellus squeezed his fists at his sides. “They’re docking us.”

  The docking port grew larger in front of them, and soon its lights dazzled so brightly in the voyageur’s window that Marcellus was momentarily blinded.

  But he could still feel the vibrations underfoot.

  The whirring of vast machinery.

  And the deafening clanking sound, which Marcellus knew meant only one thing.

  “We’re docked,” said Cerise.

  A squealing noise echoed from the voyageur’s speaker system, followed by an unfamiliar, chilling voice. “This is Admiral Wellington of the Albion Royal Space Fleet. We are commandeering this ship.”

  The long vowels and clipped consonants of the admiral’s accent made Marcellus’s whole spine shudder.

  “Do not try to run or escape, or you will be shot.”

  With these words, the speakers clicked off. But on the screens of the flight console, Marcellus could see them. The primary hatch of the voyageur had been opened, and a squad of Albion guards were already trooping onboard.

  Terrified, Marcellus searched for something reassuring to grasp on to, his fingers finally entangling with Alouette’s. He grabbed on to her hand, vowing not to let go, no matter what happened in the next few minutes. She looked over at him, and he saw something in those large, dark eyes of hers. Something he hoped to never see again.

  Fear.

  He squeezed her hand, hoping it would comfort her, although he had no idea why it would. What was his feeble hand compared to the Albion Royal Guard? They were known across the System Divine for being monsters. Murderers. Killing machines. And the scariest part was, they were 100 percent human. These men and women were no droids. They weren’t even cyborgs. They were flesh and bone, rumored to be recruited from birth, raised in captivity, brainwashed from infancy, trained to hunt and invade and leave no survivors.

  And an entire fleet of them had just boarded this ship.

  Marcellus’s hands had never felt more useless.

  “They’re coming,” Cerise squeaked, her voice strangled and panicked.

  Gabriel looked like he might be sick.

  Then all they could hear were footsteps. Heavy, clomping footsteps, which were getting louder and louder …

  Until finally, the door to the bridge whooshed open.

  Marcellus sucked in a breath at the sight of them. At least twelve guards stood in the doorway dressed in pristine red uniforms and fur-trimmed black helmets that almost covered their eyes. From the way the fabric stretched across their bodies, Marcellus could see these soldiers were built to fight. Solid muscles. Supple tendons. A power and force barely kept in check by their stiff wool uniforms. And strapped to their sides were gleaming assault lancers. Marcellus had heard about these Albion weapons with their lethal cluster bullets that could unleash a spray of tiny shrapnel inside a victim’s body. They made Laterrian paralyzeurs seem almost kind.

  From amid the group of guards, a man in a metallic-gray, floor-length coat pushed his way to the front. He wore no hat, and over one of his hard, dark eyes was a round disk that winked and glowed in the bluish lights of the flight bridge.

  A monoglass, Marcellus realized. Albion tech that could scan the world like a cyborg eye. It tracked across the flight bridge, monitoring and analyzing each of them in turn.

  “I expected something rather more …” The man trailed off and sniffed the air with his hawkish nose, clearly searching for the right word. “… daunting. But all we seem to have found here is a little gaggle of peculiarly dressed children. How very disappointing.”

  Marcellus flinched at the man’s haughty Albion accent and scornful eyes. It was the same voice he’d heard over the ship’s speakers only moments ago. Admiral Wellington.

  “Nevertheless, you are still flying a Laterrian ship and trespassing in Albion airspace, which, according to royal decree, warrants immediate arrest and imprisonment.”

  He took one last chilling look at each of them before flicking his fingers dismissively and turning back toward the door. “Seize them.”

  The guards stalked menacingly forward, their weapons raised and ready to fire at a moment’s provocation.

  Searing heat charged through Marcellus. His muscles coiled, preparing to fight. But then he felt Alouette squeeze his hand in a gentle warning. Calmly reminding him that taking on this troop of Albion guards by force would not only be rash
and foolish; it would be deadly.

  But what else were they supposed to do? They had to fight. The general had to be stopped. Marcellus dropped Alouette’s hand and formed his fingers into a tight fist.

  “We are accompanying Officer Marcellus Bonnefaçon, grandson of César Bonnefaçon, the General of the Laterrian Ministère.”

  Marcellus blinked, uncertain who had just spoken. Then Alouette stepped forward, addressing the admiral with a smooth, diplomatic voice. “Her majesty, Queen Matilda Bellingham, is expecting us. We are here to check on the progress of a top-secret project that General Bonnefaçon is developing with your planet.”

  Admiral Wellington paused and slowly turned back around, something between a grimace and a sneer playing out on his otherwise austere face. “I have no knowledge of this so-called project. Nor do I have any reason to believe that Her Majesty would be expecting an officer of the Laterrian Regime.” He pronounced the word Laterrian as though it were diseased.

  “What are you doing?” Marcellus hissed to Alouette, blood pumping wildly through his veins.

  But she ignored him, taking another step forward. One of the guards advanced and pushed the barrel of his assault lancer into Alouette’s chest. Marcellus felt the fire inside him flare, but Alouette looked perfectly composed. As though she wasn’t one finger twitch away from dying a gruesome, painful death.

  “I’m not surprised you have no knowledge of it,” she said, standing rigid and unyielding in front of Admiral Wellington. Her expression was as unreadable as his. “As I said before, and as Officer Bonnefaçon will confirm, the project is a top-secret development. An extremely confidential venture between Albion and Laterre.”

  Alouette and the admiral both turned toward Marcellus. His heart was pounding so loudly in his chest, he was certain everyone in the flight bridge could hear it. Alouette met his gaze, communicating two simple words with those expressive brown eyes of hers.

  Stay calm.

  Marcellus shook out his still clenched fists and attempted to swallow. “Yes,” he said in a raspy voice. “That’s right. We were given strict orders not to mention it to anyone.” He forced himself to look the admiral in the eye. “That’s why the general issued us a special cloaking code, under which we were directed to land. But since you somehow managed to override that code, I am left with no choice but to divulge the purpose of our mission to you”—he gave a small, tight bow of his head—“Admiral Wellington.”