Blood of a Thousand Stars

by Rhoda Belleza

  They had gone to the market in the afternoon; judging by the sun, it was now midmorning. Twelve hours had passed, maybe more. By now, the medcraft was long gone.

  “You came back for me. Again,” she muttered. Somehow, she had earned Issa’s loyalty—she might never understand it, but she was grateful. Her heart hurt from the gratitude, from the pain of caring again, when she had wanted so badly not to have to care about anyone ever again.

  “Didn’t have anywhere better to be,” Issa replied, but through her sarcasm, Kara saw her bravery, her fierceness. “Whoa, whoa—are you okay?”

  Issa was reacting to Kara’s expression; she was on the verge of crying. Her face—her new face—felt hot and sticky. Her head hurt, and she knew it was because her DNA was changing, twisting. She dug the heels of her palms into her eyes again, rubbing. “I guess I’m just not used to people coming back for me.” The anguish in her voice was obvious, but she could do nothing to hide it.

  Issa touched her forearm. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not now,” Kara said, shaking her head. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to talk about it.

  “Well, when you do I’m all ears, yeah?” She looked around. “We’d better hurry. I’m sure UniForce isn’t thrilled to be called out for wild-goose chases. We want to make sure we don’t give them a target. With any luck, we can hitch a ride on a light craft and catch up to the Frontline Physicians . . .”

  Kara took a deep breath and wobbled on her feet. “I have to go to Wraeta,” she said. She felt unexpectedly clear, focused. She knew where the overwriter was.

  Issa stared at her. “There’s nothing on Wraeta but ashes.”

  Kara shook her head. “There’s a weapon hidden there. We have to find it before the UniForce does.”

  Issa squinted at her. “What kind of weapon are we talking?”

  Kara hesitated—but only for a second. Issa had just saved her life. Kara would have to trust her. “You told me that you worried that UniForce was trying to force an update so it could track your cube, getting data from it. But what if Kalu could go a step further? What if they couldn’t just track your cube but change it?”

  For a second, Issa said nothing. Then, abruptly: “I knew it!” She stomped her foot on the floor of the shipping container. “Some of us did. Most everyone thought we were paranoid. You’re saying this tech is on Wraeta?”

  Kara nodded. “We need to figure out a way through the military cordon.”

  “Not anymore,” Issa said. “Princess Rhiannon announced a cease-fire. I’ve been using the third eye to pick up holo transmissions. Fontis had to release the protections on Wraeta. Which means we’re free to go.”

  “And so is Nero,” Kara said. Issa nodded.

  There were no coincidences. It was as if Rhiannon knew where she was headed, and was clearing the path for her. As if she could feel, deep down, that this is the only way that they both would be free of Josselyn, the lost princess, forever.

  But it was just as likely Rhee was helping Nero . . .

  No. Kara refused to believe it.

  Either way, she needed to get to the overwriter first.

  “If there’s any chance of foiling Nero, the WFC will want to help,” Issa said. “I can broadcast a distress signal as soon as we get back to civilization.” Kara was comforted when Issa wrapped her in a hug and gave her a squeeze. “I hope you’re ready to escape a moving shipping container,” she added drily.

  She had told Issa they needed to destroy the overwriter before Nero got his hands on it, and that was true. But what she couldn’t tell Issa, what she would never tell Issa, is that she planned to use it first.

  Then Josselyn Ta’an would disappear forever. Maybe Kara’s own memories would disappear too, but she could start making her own choices from then on out. She could be free, and no one would tell her who to be.

  SEVENTEEN

  ALYOSHA

  ALY’S veins felt like they’d been pumped full of fire: They were going to take Nero down. There was something about it—poetic justice or irony or whatever it was—returning to the rubble that had once been his home.

  Let Nero come for the overwriter. Aly would be waiting.

  They were speeding toward the remains of Aly’s home planet on one of the smaller and stealthier WFC crafts—but they had to hurry. With Wraeta’s airspace now cleared for travel, it would be a free-for-all soon—and Nero could easily beat them to the punch.

  Pavel stood at attention, with a holoprojection beaming carefully from his chestplate. Dahlen circled the image, analyzing it closely. Blue-green light came off the image, bringing out the hollows of his face and the narrowed expression he wore when he was thinking hard.

  Aly fought the small voice inside him, the one that warned he’d become a pawn all over again, this time for the Fontisians. But the idea spun and sharpened itself on the memory of Kara’s death. This time, the game was his to win.

  “Alyosha, your blood pressure and body temperature are elevated. Would you like to review meditation techniques?”

  Aly leaned forward, his palms flat on the control panel. Vin had programmed Pavel with wellness alerts before he died. Aly felt a piece of his heart splinter off, lost to the void.

  He shook his head. “I’m good, P. How about you just give us the status?”

  The droid blinked his eyelights and zoomed out the hologram to include the flight patterns of five different crafts, all UniForce—meaning all Nero’s. They were mining vessels, which must mean whatever he was looking for was underground.

  The overwriter was underground.

  One piece of good news: The mining vessels were headed to different locations across the fractured planet. Aly was relieved. Apparently Nero didn’t know where the overwriter was, not exactly. But just as quickly, anxiety flared in his chest.

  “So how do you figure we dodge all these treasure hunters?” Aly asked. “If you got some invisibility tech I don’t know about, expedite the shipping on that and maybe we’ll get it tomorrow.”

  “We will not dodge them.” Dahlen ignored his sarcasm. “We will commandeer one of their vessels. We will become one of them.”

  “What?” But even as he reacted, Aly understood. So Dahlen had seen The Revolutionary Boys after all. “You expect me to commandeer one of the UniForce crafts?”

  “That’s the idea,” Dahlen said neutrally.

  “Seems like that idea has more me than you.” But already, Aly was making calculations, using parts of his brain that felt as if they’d rusted into place. He missed Vin’s crazy piloting, his focus and adrenaline. He missed the language they shared of all the shortened military terms and the inside jokes they’d collected along the way. And suddenly Aly was pissed all over again. That it wasn’t Vin sitting next to him, but Dahlen.

  He looked over at the Fontisian, weighing his options. They’d have to do it soon, before they got too close to the electromagnetic field holding Wraeta together and the hijack came on everyone’s radar. He looked closer at the hovering image.

  “Taking into account thrust and nearby gravitational bodies,” Pavel said, “it looks unlikely that any of those crafts will be making a pit stop between here and Wraeta.”

  Aly nodded. “But nothing’s stopping us from going to them,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  They stayed up all night reworking their plan. The Nanac was their target ship—a mining vessel equipped with two huge drills at the bottom so powerful they’d be liable to drill through any rock and fall out the bottom.

  They sent a small strike team to pierce the Nanac’s fuel chamber and run its fuel down. When the crew on board eventually noticed, they did exactly what anyone would: They hailed a service craft.

  Aly and Dahlen were on that particular service craft with a crew of Pavel, Hesi, Darris, and the scrawny Fontisian messenger, Rah
mal. Aly had to admit that the WFC had come through. Their service craft had come from a raid on a Kalusian territory during the first Great War—the ancient refueling rocket would’ve made the Revolutionary look shiny and new, but it was nearly impossible to track—and one of their sources had provided them with a code needed to communicate with the mining vessel.

  Phase two. Once they attached to the Nanac, they’d board like old-school pirates and take the crew hostage.

  Phase three. Land the Nanac and intercept Nero on the ground.

  Phase four. Break his fucking neck.

  It was reckless, but Aly didn’t care. A Kalusian-allied ship would give them weapons, power, and cover, even in plain sight. It would give them the advantage.

  He grabbed on to the armrests and felt the g-force bear down as they rocketed toward the Nanac. He tried to will himself to feel good, cocky, like the old days when it was him and Vin. But as they approached the atmosphere the rocket vibrated; Aly could practically hear the bolts unscrewing. His stomach heaved. He thought back to the day Vin died, how the Tin Soldier had broken apart like an egg and spilled them out all over Naidoz. That had been his fault—he’d been a petty kid who’d slacked on the navigation. Vin had cracked open his head because of Aly.

  Dahlen leaned toward Aly as much as his harness would let him. “I hadn’t expected these soldiers to be your first choice,” he said easily, like his lungs weren’t being pressed down into the pit of his stomach. Show-off. Still, Aly was glad for the distraction. Hating on Dahlen made it easier to push Vin out of his thoughts.

  Aly looked back at Hesi and Darris, the two soldiers he’d asked to join them. They were dressed in matching spacesuits, strapped into mounted chairs arranged in a circle around the craft’s center console. Hesi, who was even wider than Jeth, was gritting his blunt, wide teeth in agony. The g-force probably felt like a sheet of metal pressing down on the Chram’s huge frame. Next to Hesi, though, Darris looked like he was having the time of his life. Pavel had compacted into his dome shape, but he bounced in place; Aly was glad for the hydraulics he had installed.

  Aly turned back to Dahlen and shrugged. “I’ve seen them on the field. More than I can say for your choice,” he said, nodding toward Rahmal, whose nose looked permanently upturned.

  “Discarding him was not an option,” Dahlen said, every delivery dry as a bone. In the past twelve hours, Rahmal had practically built a home up Dahlen’s butt—he seemed to exist solely to run around getting Dahlen things. Apparently the Fontisian Elders had sent him as Dahlen’s backup, which was kind of hilarious seeing as Dahlen could snap this kid’s spine with a single finger. Rahmal was tall but scrawny as hell, and other than a skill in delivering messages in the key of whine, Aly couldn’t see what good he could offer.

  They burst through the atmosphere, and the pace of the craft slowed, the pressure easing up on Aly’s chest and limbs. He exhaled in relief. Darris, the Uustralite, made a loud guttural noise somewhere between a growl and indigestion. Rahmal put his index and middle fingers to each eye—a gesture to Vodhan, thanking him for his mercy. Aly’d seen his own parents do it a thousand times, in another life, back before the Wray.

  Aly couldn’t help but notice that Dahlen only tightened his hands into fists. He had mentioned he was no longer part of the order. Aly wondered why, and whether that had been his choice to break his vows.

  “We got visual,” Hesi said, his milky white pupils locked on to the dash. “Should be appearing to the naked eye in ten, nine, eight . . .”

  When the Nanac came into view, Aly summed it up as the ugliest ship he’d ever seen. But who needed it to be pretty when all it was good for was breaking up rock, digging deep, extracting whole swaths of precious metals? It was clumsy and greedy and pretty hateful work.

  A red light began to blink on the console.

  “Nanac, this is Yavou,” Hesi said in his thickest, twangiest Chram accent. It made Aly miss Jeth. Hesi was the only soul aboard their craft who belonged to a Kalusian-allied territory—Darris might pass for northern Uustralite, or a sympathizer, if he was lucky, but they couldn’t take any chances. According to the plan, Hesi’d greet the crew first, buying them at least a few precious moments to get into position. “We’re ready to attach and refuel whenever you are. Over.”

  “Yavou, this is Nanac. Thank ancestors you showed up,” a guy’s voice answered. “We’re ready to receive you once we get your confirmation code. Over.”

  Aly realized he’d been gripping his armrest; his knuckles had already gone white.

  “The confirmation is ‘razor’s edge,’” Hesi said. “Over.”

  Five seconds passed. Ten. Then fifteen.

  “Choirtoi,” Aly mumbled under his breath. What if they had the code wrong? With one exchange with UniForce, they could be labeled combatants and be blasted out of the sky without a second thought.

  The Chram’s albino eyes went wide. “What do I do?”

  “You don’t do anything,” Dahlen said. “We only wait.”

  “Where exactly did you get this code from?” Aly spoke in a whisper, even though the comm was still off.

  “We received it from a reliable source,” the Chram said. “One of our scouts on the inside.”

  “I don’t like it.” Rahmal addressed the comment specifically to Dahlen, with an expression that was the worst combination of miserable and pained, like he needed to go to the bathroom.

  Dahlen ignored him. Nobody else volunteered a response. But it was a possibility that the scout had double-crossed them, and they all knew it. The seconds stretched out as they sat in silence, giving the console the death stare like they could reach in and strangle the guy until he accepted the code.

  And then: “Sorry, Yavou. Code confirmed. You’re cleared to attach and begin fueling. Over.”

  Aly exhaled. He looked around at their crew, and his eyes landed on Dahlen. “Phase two?”

  “Phase two.” Dahlen nodded. “Time to steer us in,” he said to the Uustralite. Darris took the throttle with one of his tentacles and started to steer, positioning the air lock across from the Nanac’s.

  “I don’t like it,” Rahmal repeated.

  Dahlen glared at him. “You wouldn’t speak against a direct order, would you?”

  “Never,” Rahmal said, looking down sheepishly. “It’s only that you can’t be risked.”

  Dahlen’s cool eyes flickered toward Aly, but he stayed focused on Rahmal. “My life is no longer anyone’s concern but my own. It is no more valuable than any WFC soldier’s.”

  “What a hero,” Aly said.

  “I don’t play hero,” Dahlen said. “That’s your job.”

  Aly bit the inside of his cheek, searching for some smartass comment to make. But he had wanted to be a hero once. He’d wanted to rise above his refugee status, find Rhiannon, help Kara—and maybe make her fall in love with him. But there was no time for shame, regrets. All this thinking and moping when they were at the cusp of capturing the very man who’d started it all. Aly needed this mission to succeed. He needed his revenge.

  He didn’t have an order, or an elder, or anyone who would beg him not to go and get himself killed. He didn’t have anything else.

  The silence in the pod was palpable as they all got into positions. Aly stood on the right of the doorway while Dahlen and his messenger stood on the left, just out of sight from the Nanac crew who’d be standing at the threshold. Hesi and Darris stood front and center to meet them with a toolbox each. The plan was to pick off the crew, take control of their ship, and descend onto Wraeta before anyone knew the difference.

  For something so heavy and rusted, the door of the Nanac opened quickly—and just like that Aly’s boots were off the ground, and he was floating, turning in midair as he grabbed for the wall. Same with everyone else. There were the muffled sounds of shouting. He felt a chill run over his skin.

  Wrong
. All wrong.

  Hesi drew a stunner from his belt as a guard who launched through the threshold brought a massive knife across his stomach. Blood arced through the room in a perfect parabola. In the fluorescent light, it was nearly transparent.

  Just like that, chaos.

  Aly heard the staccato of heavy feet cross the floor. Magnetic boots, to keep them grounded. Aly, Dahlen, and their crew had been played—it was the UniForce’s plan all along to disable the artificial grav on board. Kicking off the wall, Aly launched himself forward and tackled the UniForce guy who’d slashed Hesi. The force of it knocked his magnetic boots off the grated floor, and the two of them sailed clear across the ship, breaking through a floating clot of blood as they wrestled. Aly got him in a chokehold, but the miner was strong and managed to get a boot back on the ground. Now that he was stationary, he used Aly’s momentum and swung his body weight around.

  Aly flailed backward, blind to where he was headed. But Darris shot a tentacle out, lightning-quick, wrapping it around Aly’s waist to slow him down. Then the Uustralite wound a thicker tentacle around the other guy’s rib cage and his neck, and began to squeeze until the life left him. Darris unwound and gave him a shove, the still body floating up next to another miner to whom Darris must’ve done the same.

  Aly untangled himself from Darris’s tentacle and swam toward Hesi, who was in bad shape—globs of dark blood flooding out of his wound and beading up. He went to press down on the wound, but Hesi shook his head. Darris made a low clicking noise as he motioned his head toward Dahlen: Two soldiers were tumbling and swiping at him at once.

  “You must go,” Darris said, forcing his vocal cords to make the Wraetan words. He pressed a tentacle down on Hesi’s wound.

  Aly swung across the craft to help Dahlen, looking over his shoulder to make sure Darris was okay. Then he heard Dahlen moan, and saw that one miner held the Fontisian’s arms behind him. Another threw a punch so hard, Dahlen’s nose cracked audibly.