Empress of a Thousand Skies

by Rhoda Belleza

  Still, with no money, no plan, and no other options, Aly was headed to Portiis, to find Vin’s contact. Aly had no idea how he was supposed to find Lancer, or where he would even start, but he’d have to figure it out on the fly.

  It had been almost a week since the Elieido exploded, though he’d been hoping that Princess Rhiannon might resurface at any point, miraculously alive. He’d had daydreams of official pardons, of receiving an apology from the Regent himself and the DroneVision producers of that damned awful show.

  But if Rhiannon Ta’an were alive, she would’ve showed up at the party by now, if only to fend off the war that with every day looked more inevitable.

  Now they’d been holed up in cargo for a whole day. It was always pitch-black, so much darkness it was like a physical force, a mouth ready to swallow him. But he knew his way around well enough; there were a lot of broken machines that looked like old medical equipment that would probably sell for scrap on the Outer Belt. He’d taken some apart to distract himself, without tools, unscrewing bolts for hours until his fingers bled.

  He’d managed to sneak some food off the service cart between shift changes once, when it was parked for five minutes, unmanned, just outside of the cargo hold. A small window of time, but enough to stuff his pockets with meal pills, fancy dehydrated nuts and fruit, and a bottle of water. It wasn’t much—barely enough to survive on, in fact—which was exactly why he’d figured out someone else was stealing too.

  Stealing from Aly this time.

  He’d thought he was alone with Pavel and the lady who made the annoying announcements about approaching solar wind and cubes going offline, and she wasn’t even a lady so much as a digitized voice that sounded vaguely feminine. No. There was someone else in the cargo hold with him. Last night when he’d left his stash out, they’d lifted a portion of it.

  He wasn’t risking everything just to feed some stranger. He still had another ten days before the loop hit the Heryl Quadrant, where Portiis was.

  As big as he was, Aly was decent at staying quiet. Geared up in camo, a slow advance crawling across terrain on his belly—that had been his idea of a good time when he was in boot camp.

  He didn’t have to wait long before he saw a figure, a silhouette, moving toward his camp, weaving around the crates and the old pieces of equipment. He hoped to god the guy didn’t have a weapon on him. He held his breath. Just a little closer. A little closer . . .

  When he was in striking distance, Aly launched to his feet, grabbed a handful of the guy’s jacket, and threw him up against the wall. “You little taejis,” he said, covering the kid’s mouth. “Don’t even think about yelling. If some poor conductor comes running, it’ll be the end of both of us.”

  The kid struggled, swatting at Aly’s hands. Whatever excuse the little punk was trying to make came out in a muffled plea. Finally, he calmed down.

  “I’m going to take my hand away, and if you—GAHHH!” Aly yelled out in pain, pulling his hand back.

  The kid had sunk his teeth into the pinky edge of Aly’s hand.

  “Don’t threaten me,” the voice said. A little soft, and a little high. A girl. He stumbled back, releasing her. He almost felt bad. Almost. His hand stung where she’d bit him.

  “Or what?” he asked, his anger still sparking. He heard Pavel approaching. “Light, Pavel.” Pavel flipped his beam on just as Aly yanked the scarf off the girl’s head.

  She flinched and put her hand up to block her face. “You got another setting on that thing?” she asked Pavel.

  “Apologies! Dimming by forty percent,” Pavel said as the light softened. “Is this acceptable?”

  She dropped her hand. “Yes, thank you.”

  “Turn it up, P.” Aly didn’t want her to see his face. His head scarf was tangled up somewhere with his belongings. And if she knew she was talking to the most wanted criminal in the universe, he doubted he could keep her from screaming. “And don’t apologize either. She’s fine.”

  Pavel let out what sounded suspiciously like a sigh—damn learning technology—but the light intensified again.

  She had long black hair and bangs that covered her eyes.

  The girl pawed her hair away from her face like she’d read his mind. She was kind of a mess, in the way that pretty girls looked messy, like she’d just washed up from the ocean, raw—open up a clamshell and there she’d be. She had dark gray eyes and sharp features, but her skin was tan and her cheeks were broad. It gave her a mixed look, maybe a blend of native and second-wave Kalusian blood. She was swimming in an expensive-looking jacket, two rows of buttons down the front, like the kind he’d seen diplomats wearing on the holos. It obviously wasn’t hers.

  “If you’re willing to live with the guilt of burning my retinas off, then that’s on you.” She had a full mouth pulled into a straight line—like she was born to argue.

  “A thief trying to lecture me on manners?”

  “Says the guy who was stealing to begin with.” She jerked a thumb toward the service cart.

  This piece of work. Ballsy as hell. Turns out when she wasn’t biting people, she was running her mouth. “You owe me,” he said.

  “I’ve got nothing to give.” But Aly saw her bring a hand to one pocket and skim it, as if for reassurance. A tell. It was the same way folks gave themselves away in the Wray, absentmindedly tapping the pockets where all their important stuff was.

  “Then what’s in your pocket?”

  “I said I have nothing to give,” she repeated. “And anyway, what would you want with a rusty old coin?” She held it out in the palm of her hand, and when he reached for it she grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the light.

  Aly froze. But it was too late. He’d been recognized.

  “You,” she whispered. She dropped his wrist and pushed him away, but she didn’t run or scream out like he thought she would. Instead she pressed herself against the wall, so he backed up to give her some room. Her expression—the way her mouth parted, her eyes squinting like her brain was locking into that aha moment this very second—it reminded him of someone he knew. He just couldn’t think who.

  “Kill the light, P,” he said quickly, and Pavel did. They’d plunged from bright light to total darkness. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her. “Don’t be scared.”

  “Who says I’m scared?” She didn’t sound too confident, but she wasn’t screaming her head off either. “Maybe you should be scared.”

  “I am,” he said honestly. For a lot of reasons. That it would all end here. That Vincent had died for nothing. That the Ta’an had been wiped out and the planets would go to war.

  “It really is you,” she said. “I can’t believe it. You’re Alyosha, from The Revolutionary Boys.” Then: “Where’s the other one? Where’s Vincent?”

  “Dead,” Aly said shortly. Maybe Aly was a murderer. Anyone who rolled with him ended up dead. “I buried him.” Aly could feel the back of his throat closing off, his eyes watering, a deep blue filling up his chest.

  She was quiet for a bit. “They said you kidnapped him.”

  “Is that what you think?” he asked bitterly. “That I’m a murderer? Some sort of terrorist?”

  “Is that what you are?” she replied evenly.

  Aly couldn’t read her tone. “It’s what everyone believes, isn’t it?” Even if she couldn’t see him, he could still feel her eyes searching his face. It reminded him of the first time they’d brought a camera on board the Revolutionary, and how he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

  “If all we are is what people think we are, then we’re all screwed.” There was a knife’s edge to her voice. She sounded pissed. Or scared. Or both.

  “Well, we’re all screwed anyway,” Aly said, but her words bothered him. He knew as well as anyone that it was other people’s rules that mattered. In the real world they told you who to be, not the other way
around. It’s why he pretended to be Kalusian when he first joined the UniForce—it just made life easier. “You’re crazy, you know that?” Aly told her. “I could be dangerous.”

  “Let’s say I am crazy and you are dangerous, and we call it a draw? Besides,” she added, “you haven’t hurt me yet, and you could’ve. That’s a gold star in my book.”

  “That’s a pretty low bar . . .” Aly said.

  Just then there was a faint hiss as the doors opened at the northern end of the hold. Aly snapped back to the present just as the beam of a flashlight shifted across the floor. The girl grabbed his wrist and pulled him down to crouch behind what looked like an old MRI machine nearby. Pavel had enough sense to go still and keep his lights dark. No one had come in here for a full twenty-four hours.

  “Entering carriage 95,” a man said, speaking into his cube.

  Aly poked his head up and saw he was wearing the uniform of a Tasinn. He couldn’t believe it. The Tasinn were showing up more and more now, in places they weren’t meant to be—like on Derkatz, and now here on the zeppelin. He’d been worried a droid would find them, but this was way worse.

  As the girl yanked him back down, he accidentally nudged a piece of equipment. It made a sound as it scratched across the floor.

  “Who’s there?” the man called out.

  Aly’s body tensed, and for whatever reason he and the girl reached for each other at the same time. Could he trust her? She’d grabbed him to hide, hadn’t she? They were so close, her tangled hair had somehow made it into his mouth. Thank god she didn’t smell like fake flowers or extinct fruits or else he’d be sneezing his face off. Her head just smelled like a head.

  Could she hear his heart beating? Her breath was hot on his neck. The guard’s bootsteps came closer.

  Aly had slung one arm protectively around her and wished to god he still had his hammer. He scanned the floor for anything he could use. What were they going to do? Crouch here spooning each other until the guard found them? Because at this rate he would find them.

  Crunch. Aly heard the Tasinn curse softly as something crackled underfoot. Aly’s blood froze. He’d left his supplies out, just scattered across the blanket for anyone to see, hoping to tempt the thief—the girl—into revealing herself. He heard the rustle of fabric as the Tasinn moved into a crouch, saw the beam of a light sweep across a sad collection of spare parts he’d stripped from the machines. The guard was less than five feet away, separated from them by only a thin arrangement of extra sheet metal.

  They would have to fight. There was no other choice. Slowly, as quietly as he could, he crept forward . . .

  Then, suddenly, the guard touched his cube. “Hold on, 401, let me transfer you to a holo.” He pulled a small handheld holo from his pocket. “Go ahead, 401.”

  The device projected a hologram of another guard wearing the same army outfit with the red sash. “They’ve found the freight jumper. Male, six foot, medium build, a Vodhead—crazy tattoos and all. Traveling with a Marked girl.”

  “I’m in cargo,” he said, poking through Aly’s stuff with the tip of his baton. “Looks like they’ve been living down here too.”

  “Leave it. We’re landing in fifteen, and we’ll need all hands on deck. Just heard Nero’s skipping town early and he’s got a whole party with him.”

  “Yeah, there were about nine million staff requests to be put on his security detail . . . everyone is trying to meet him.”

  The Tasinn stood up and retreated, moving back through cargo the way he’d come. Aly didn’t realize he’d stopped breathing until the hiss of the mechanized doors told him he was safe—didn’t realize, either, how tightly he’d been holding the girl until she moved away from him.

  “Whoa,” the girl muttered. She stood up, and Aly did too. Pavel lit up tentatively, as if afraid to fully power on, so she was cast in low blue light.

  “They’ll be back,” he said. He’d have to disembark earlier than he wanted and find some other way to Portiis. He asked himself for the thousandth time what Vin had expected him to do with his crappy half-information, about a maybe-lost princess and some random contact in the United Planets.

  Then again, he couldn’t stay on the zeppelin, especially if Nero was sharing his airspace. Since his cube was off, Aly’d been missing most of the news—he wasn’t all that interested in seeing a MURDERER or WANTED label slapped over a bad picture of his face—but he’d picked up that Regent Seotra had up and disappeared. “Vanished,” the holos said. More like assassinated, Aly figured.

  Now Nero was practically in charge, making a big show about how Kalusians—the good guys they were—had tried diplomacy. Now it was time to take action.

  Take back what’s ours had become the rallying cry of Nero’s rabid supporters.

  It was a veiled call for blood. Aly’s blood, specifically, as well as the blood of anyone who supported Fontisian or Wraetian calls for peace. Aly guessed people were fed up and didn’t need a whole lot of convincing. All Nero had to do was just remind them how horrible their lives were and point a finger on the sly. See who they blamed then. It helped Nero’s case that he looked the way he did. A jaw that cut glass, a slick-looking haircut, a permanent smile on his face that made people go weak in the knees.

  Aly had felt off that time Nero invited him and Vin to the gala. He was easygoing and seemed to take a liking to Vin; they were both second-wave Kalusians and Nero could’ve been his cool, younger uncle. Nero was nice enough to Aly, too, and introduced him with the minimum level of pleasantries—but there was something about the way his eyes flickered over him, like Aly was a roach in a tux. When Aly brought it up to Vin, he said what he always did: “It’s in your head.” Apparently not.

  “I gotta keep moving,” the girl said. She stared at him for a long time. Her gray-blue eyes were intense, like the choppy parts of the ocean where you weren’t supposed to swim, but he willed himself not to look away. He realized she was half asking for permission and half trying to say goodbye. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone about you.”

  Aly nodded. What else could he do? He wasn’t going to hold her against her will. He wasn’t going to become the monster that Nero and his council were trying to claim he was.

  As the girl passed Pavel, she touched the top of his dome. His blue eyelights blinked softly. Maybe he was surprised by the gesture too. When she got far enough away she turned, breaking into a sprint as she wove her way toward the same door the Tasinn had used. She stopped suddenly before she reached it.

  “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “To find help.”

  She spun around to face him then, and for a split second Aly thought she might charge him. But instead she blurted out: “Do you want to come with me?”

  Yes.

  “Why?” he asked instead. “Why trust me?”

  “I don’t.” She shrugged. “But if you’re still alive when half the universe wants you dead, you can’t be an idiot. And there’s safety in numbers.”

  “Not when one of us is plastered all over the holos,” Aly said. Besides, he wouldn’t be anyone’s charity case.

  “I’m going to a safe house,” she said finally. “There’s one on Rhesto.”

  “A safe house? On Rhesto?” Was everyone in the galaxy some kind of spy? “But that whole place is poisonous.”

  Rhesto was a small moon and the site of a nuclear plant before the Great War, but it had a meltdown when Fontis bombed it. Anyone who hadn’t died had abandoned it: Supposedly, the radiation would last in the soil for something like twenty thousand years.

  “Nothing radiation pills can’t fix.” She spoke matter-of-factly, and he wondered if she was being serious or if she had a sense of humor to rival Jeth’s. Why the hell would she help him? “It’s still not as toxic as staying in Kalu.” She frowned, and he waited her out, banking on the fact she’d say more eventually. Thankfully it w
orked. “It’s my mom, okay? She’s a scientist and was part of the G-1K summits. A bunch of them have been targeted, hunted down. But they’re smart, obviously, and they organized themselves. This safe house is theirs. And they set up a massive universe-wide broadcast to beam a DO NOT ENTER signal across all the holos. They have to manually disable it every day. If there was trouble, we would know.”

  By then Aly’s heart had started beating very fast. An idea flashed in his brain like a starburst. “You said they can broadcast . . . out?”

  She nodded.

  Rhesto was one of the Kalusian moons, the other one being Nau Fruma. For an hour a day, the two crossed orbits; it blocked any DroneVision broadcasts.

  For the first time in days, some of the bleak grip of hopelessness eased. He’d had no idea Rhesto had its own tower, or capabilities to broadcast out. If the planet could send that kind of distress call, then it could send out his cube playback, easy, for the whole universe to see. He’d broadcast his own version of events. He’d show them, once and for all, that he didn’t kill the Princess. And maybe then they’d stop chasing him. Aly could finally stop running. Vin had told him to go to Portiis, which was all the way in the Heryl Quadrant and nearly a week’s ride away, and ask for the United Planets’ help—but this was the immediate solution, and exactly what he needed to prove his innocence. He’d still see his promise through to Vin, but he’d do it afterward.

  There was a dinging service announcement. The girl did that thing where she looked up, like the voice had come out of the sky—but Aly somehow got fixated on the tan skin on her neck, the way her shirt fell just so, and had to look away. He couldn’t let himself be distracted. “Arriving in Navrum. This zeppelin will be making stops in the Bazorl and Desuco Quadrants,” the captain announced, then repeated the message again in Fontisian, Wraetan, and Derkatzian. That meant, Aly knew, that the freighter must cut a path directly through Rhesto’s orbit.