by Alex White
“Sounds like she makes playdates for you.”
Nilah folded her arms. “It’s a lot like that, I’m afraid. I even have a drink that I’m obligated to order: Marshanda Fosser. Disgusting stuff.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s a hibiscus rosemary liqueur. Hibiscus rosemary, Boots.”
“Why are you obligated?”
Nilah rolled her eyes. “They pay for the ad space on my fire suit, as well as the rear wing of my car, so I choke one down when I can.”
“Sounds like swill.”
“It is,” Nilah sighed. “High-calorie, expensive swill. And when I’m required to drink one, my nutritionist has to dock me a breakfast.”
Boots reached up under her cot and pulled out a bottle; a clear liquid sloshed inside, clinging to the glass with rich legs.
“What’s that?” Nilah eyed the bottle, suspecting she already knew the answer.
“Some kind of rum, maybe. There’s a still in the kitchen. I mean … it smells like booze. Could be paint stripper.”
“You nicked it?”
“Sure. Why not? I was thirsty.”
Nilah took the bottle and unstoppered it before holding it to her nose: fuel and milled steel, notes of rubber. On the one hand, nothing consumable by humans should have such a smell. On the other, it was the scent of a racetrack.
She handed it back. “That’s not safe to drink.”
Boots shrugged. “Suit yourself, but it ain’t Marshanda Fosser, and no publicist paid me to talk to you.”
Of course she was right. Nilah had wanted to spend some time with anyone other than her kidnappers, and Boots was offering her a drink, waggling the bottle like a dog treat. Nilah took it up, examining the liquid again.
She shouldn’t drink. After years of clean living, she had basically no tolerance. She needed every single brain cell for the race to come, as well as all the press junkets, the meetings with lawyers—and the mountain of other work that had to be done when she was reunited with her team and family.
But she was lonely.
Boots chortled as Nilah wiped the mouth of the bottle on her shirt and put it to her lips. The taste was like licking the fluid off a car’s limited slip differential, and she couldn’t decide if she found it pleasant or not. She didn’t splutter or wheeze, and she swallowed without complaint, savoring the burn all the way down.
“Now then,” said Boots. “I’ve provided the refreshments. You have to supply us the next topic of conversation.”
Nilah smiled. “I’ve had rather bad luck talking about the war.”
“And I couldn’t care less about life in a race car. I doubt we have one thing in common.”
Nilah searched her memory to find some intersection. “Have you heard of Sam Mitcham?”
Boots’s eyebrows knit. “Why do I know that name?”
“He was a racer,” said Nilah, taking another swig. “He went insane a decade ago and disappeared into the Erantis System. Sam was a friend of my father’s.”
“Rich, crazy people go missing all the time. Still doesn’t explain why I know the name.”
“Because his ship was a Class A Star Yacht, and because he was carrying a supply of weapons-grade eidolon crystals when he vanished. He was worth close to a billion argents, and most of his assets were with him.”
“Okay. This is ringing a bell,” said Boots.
“But in order to know where he went, you have to know why he lost his mind. And in order to know that …” Nilah pointed the bottle at her. “You have to understand life on the track.”
Boots snatched back the liquor and took a long pull. “So it’s racing and legendary treasures?”
“That’s right.”
“You are full of surprises, aren’t you?”
Chapter Eight
Shifting Gears
Nilah concentrated, sending power down her forearms, across her fingertips, and back into her elbows. She took slow breaths and focused, creating shimmering waves across her dermaluxes. With the mechanist’s art, she could sense the nanomachines implanted in her flesh like some people sensed the breeze tickling their hairs. She used that awareness to keep her fighting tight and locked into lightning-quick movements. In the vast space of the cargo bay, she could run through her combat forms uninterrupted, free to run, jump, and flip as she pleased.
And to think, Kristof trained by jogging. What a fool.
They had no mat for her, but she didn’t mind keeping her bare feet against the diamond deck as she moved. The damaged Midnight Runner dangling overhead was a little distracting, but it made for an interesting chandelier.
She chanted the martial arts forms to herself, just as she did her racing lines: Accretion’s pull to nebula’s birth, then rising rocket. Disrupted orbit, cold star. Singularity to finish. She modeled the target’s responses in her mind: the way he ducked to avoid her kick, only to fall to the elbow. She remembered the snap of the bounty hunter’s jaw on Gantry Station and stumbled.
A door slid open behind her.
“Your captain promised no one would disturb me,” she huffed, sweat streaming down her neck, still going through the forms.
“This is my bay. The captain won’t stop me,” said Orna, her boots thumping the deck as she emerged from the shadows. The quartermaster’s head was partially wrapped in biobandages, dimly lit by cool, blue magics. She walked with a bit of a limp, and didn’t wear the circlet from before, so her battle armor wasn’t likely to be around.
“I’ll be done in short order. You can come back then.”
“Is that Flicker?” Orna asked, cracking her neck and looking over Nilah’s body.
The waves on her forearm blushed pink before she forced them back to white. “It is. You’ve heard of it?”
“Oh, sure. ‘The unbeatable art.’ Banned in the match leagues for brutality and all that.”
“I’m Nilah, by the way. I don’t think we were properly introduced when I held your ship hostage and whatnot.”
“Orna. Quartermaster … and I don’t buy the unbeatable stuff.”
“If someone loses with Flicker, they didn’t train hard enough.”
Orna snorted. “Wouldn’t that be true with any fighting style?”
“No. Flicker is a cut above.”
The quartermaster crossed her arms, her muscles hardening with the gesture. “I want to see it firsthand.”
Nilah took a few steps back and flashed through a powerful combo that should’ve ended with a broken kneecap for her opponent. She executed each move flawlessly before coming to a standstill in front of Orna, who cocked an eyebrow.
“That’s it? That’s the big, bad Flicker? I guess it was pretty.”
“It’s not a matter of what you saw,” said Nilah. “It’s what you didn’t see. Misdirection is key; if I can achieve that, I can strike you twice as hard as a guarded adversary.”
“So it lets you punch chumps?”
Nilah rested her hands on her hips. “People are far more susceptible than you think.”
“You’d never take me out with that, and it’s no good against a slinger, so who cares?”
“I’ve defeated dozens of opponents in training, most of them bigger than you.”
Orna slid her bandages off her head; her oily hair was matted in places. Nilah doubted Orna had cleaned herself in a few days, but there was still something oddly compelling about the scarred woman. Nilah blinked to stop herself from staring.
“‘In training,’” chuckled Orna. “School is out. What do you say we play?”
Nilah had to struggle to hide her exhilaration. “You want to fight? I doubt it’d be entertaining enough.”
“Let’s make a bet then.”
“Excuse me?”
Orna slid a large chronograph from her wrist, walked to the wall, and set it down next to the door. “Deadly serious here. I want to fight you, and Flicker looks like a joke to me.”
“A wager!” Nilah’s laugh went all the way to her belly. “Oh, but you can’t possibl
y bet against me. The casinos where I play don’t take the paltry change people like you earn. I’d have to bet half the value of this ship just to feel it.”
Orna shrugged. “I don’t care. Ask me for anything, and I’ll put it on the action.”
This upstart had just become ten times as entertaining as before. Nilah bit her lip. “I’m not joking around here. Are you sure you want to play in my league?”
“Ask me for anything.”
“If I win,” Nilah began, her breast swelling with pride, “you sign a contract to be my personal security escort for two years, following any order I give you to the letter. Your duties will be unlimited, and you will live at my beck and call. We’ll seal it with the barrister’s mark when we get back to my home planet.”
“Great. If I win, you replace all of my tools and repair the ship and the Runner. That’ll be a few hundred thousand argents, but I’m sure you’re good for it.”
“Hardly seems a fair bet.”
“Half a million in exchange for two years of service? Sounds like a raise.”
Nilah sneered. “You have no idea how much I’m going to humiliate you. My only concern is that you understand that Flicker can destroy you. I won’t be holding back.”
The quartermaster pointed to one of her many scars. “I think I’ll live.” She held out a fist for Nilah to bump.
The moment their skin made contact, Nilah danced away, her upper body in a tight fighting pose. Her dermaluxes shimmered with delight as she evaluated Orna’s stance. How much damage could she do and still keep her new assistant valuable?
The quartermaster barely raised her arms, apparently content to watch Nilah bob and weave across the deck. Orna had a long reach, and getting inside her circle would prove tough for any normal fighter. If Nilah had arms like Orna’s, she would’ve kept them close, not hanging down like some half-dazed rookie. When Nilah circled to her back, Orna turned to face her, so she wasn’t a total fool, but she still failed to show any concern. If the quartermaster wasn’t going to take the match seriously, it wouldn’t be fun.
Nilah flashed her tattoos to the rhythm of her bouncing, establishing a beat to her stance. She rushed into Orna’s range, peppering her with a series of attacks in time with the flashes. Each movement was carefully telegraphed, and Orna blocked them with ease before unleashing a powerful backhand—but Orna had fallen in time with the beat.
Nilah ducked the strike and broke her sync, slamming her knee as hard as she could into the quartermaster’s gut. The blow sunk in better than she could’ve hoped, and Nilah watched her opponent go stumbling backward, gasping for air. It would’ve been unsporting to chase her down and finish the fight right then, so she gave the other woman time to regain her breath.
“What do you think?” asked Nilah. “You can still quit before I beat the devil out of you.”
“I won’t,” she wheezed, “back out of a bet.”
Nilah laughed. “I wasn’t offering that. You’ll still be my servant.”
“Hah. Well, then …”
Orna straightened up, wincing. A normal fighter should’ve tensed up to reduce the impact of Nilah’s knee, but the quartermaster had been caught flat-footed. From the look on Orna’s face, she had begun to understand the power of dermaluxes.
“I forgot to ask,” said Orna, “are we going until pin or knockout? It changes how I make you scream.”
“Let’s go for a knockout, then. The next time you wake up, you’ll have a new job.”
“One more thing—”
Whatever Orna was planning, it was a stall tactic, and it wouldn’t work. Nilah’s arms went violet as she dashed low and inside. Human eyes couldn’t perceive the color very well, a fact often exploited by the polychromatic Flicker wielder. To Orna, Nilah’s arms would appear blurry and borderless. She wove her attacks in between Orna’s guard, snapping off repeated jabs into the woman’s face and stepping deep into her enemy’s stance. Nilah finished her combo with an uppercut and a foot sweep, and Orna hit the deck hard.
She stood over her huffing opponent, a cool wetness on her knuckles. She’d drawn blood; a bit of crimson spilled from Orna’s brow into her right eye. If Orna rose again, she’d be fighting blind.
“You’re beaten,” said Nilah, holding out a hand, but ready to coldcock her opponent. “Now concede, so I don’t mess up your pretty face any more.”
“I’m not sure anyone has ever accused me of being pretty,” chuckled Orna, her shoulders falling. “Now as I was saying, before you interrupted me, I have a question about how I’ll be serving you.”
“Hm?”
Orna’s eyes locked onto hers. “Will it be clothed or nude?”
Nilah’s tattoos went bright pink, and the quartermaster seized her hand, tracing her own glyph. In a split second, Orna’s mechanist magic connected with the dermaluxes’ nanomachines and shut them off. She yanked Nilah down into her fist, plowing across her cheek. Stunned, Nilah tried to jump backward, but caught a glancing blow against her temple. The quartermaster never let go, a crazed smile on her face as she delivered a sharp hook into her ribs, then another into Nilah’s jaw.
Stars flooded Nilah’s vision, and she tasted blood as Orna threw her to the deck and wrenched her head back by her hair.
“Nighty night,” whispered the quartermaster, right before she slammed Nilah’s face into the hard steel.
By the time the world reassembled itself out of blackness, Nilah lay face down in a pool of her own blood, sick with the realization of what had occurred. Orna knelt before her, her own face streaming with crimson.
“Well now,” she began, grinning. “I guess we see how good Flicker is, don’t we?”
Nilah shakily rose to her hands and knees, each joint quivering with adrenaline and concussion.
Orna rose; only her boots remained in Nilah’s ground-level view. “Med bay is on the lower deck. Thanks for paying for my ships, chump.”
Then the quartermaster clomped away, chuckling as she went.
Boots blinked, and shards of broken glass danced through the cockpit, glittering before her dazed eyes. She reached out with a gloved hand and clumsily batted at one, trying to clear it from her view.
“I’m sorr—” His voice crackled across her earpiece, followed by a static screech.
She blinked, trying to refocus on the planetary landscape below. A shake of her throbbing head fixed little. On the distant surface, orange orbs of flame, miles wide, bloomed one after another in a steady march across an ocean.
She managed to catch the canopy in sharp relief, and her eyes adjusted. Her protective screen was shot to pieces, open to the great void of space. Flashes of blue traced the lines of shattered glass, reflections of her fractured engine core and the exposed eidolon crystals. A torn section of her fighter’s hull tumbled in her view, far away from where it was supposed to be. Among the tide of wreckage, she knew that piece was hers, because it had ELSWORTH written on the side above her call sign, BOOTS.
Less than a hundred feet away, an enemy pilot clawed at his visor, floating panicked in space. He must’ve had a crack. His fingertips flared with light as he tried to draw a spell, which sputtered out like a dying flame. He thrashed, then fell still.
“—on’t know if you can hear me, Lizzie, but you were right.” It was a transmission from ground control.
Her face tingled and her teeth ached. She licked her lips, tasting blood. “I’m always right, Kin,” she groaned.
“Are you up there?”
“Yeah.” Her suit had begun to hiss. She was going to die in orbit, but at least she could say goodbye.
Soft static filled a long pause. “Elizabeth?”
“Yeah, Kin.”
“Elizabeth?”
“Oh. You can’t hear me.” She straightened, and her torso lit up with pain. Her harness had gotten damaged and felt as though it would cut her in half. She unbuckled it, and it snapped away, letting her drift freely in the remains of her cockpit in renewed agony.
Th
e explosions planetside had almost reached the coast of Arca. In a moment, she’d see the shield kick on, and the collision of powerful spells would give her something beautiful to watch while she suffocated.
She swallowed. “You’re not supposed to be calling me, Kin. Supposed to leave this line open for ops.”
“You were right wh—you said—s … wouldn’t work—Grid didn’t hold.” The first massive wave of ordnance struck the coast. “If—still alive, I want you to take—ship and go.”
What was he talking about? What happened to the defense grid? “Say again? I need you to repeat that last communication.”
“Lots of things … never got to say to you. I’m g … you can g … t me.”
Then a plume of raw power engulfed the capital city of Elizabeth Elsworth’s beloved home. The Command Center was down there. Kinnard was down there.
“Kin?”
The crackle went dead.
“Kin, come in.” She tapped the side of her helmet. “Kin, answer me.”
The flash dissipated, replaced by a shock wave that pushed aside the clouds like the gentle hand of a giant.
“Answer me,” she commanded. She drove a palm into her helmet, and her radio squawked in protest. “You say something to me, you pile of garbage.”
Nothing came. No one spoke, save for the whispering hiss of death. The wreckage of a former destroyer floated gracefully past, a bucket of corpses. With a surge of adrenaline, she bashed her head into the side of her cockpit, then again as violently as she could. Hot tears bounced around the inside of her visor as she slammed her radio package into the wall over and over again.
“Answer me! You aren’t dead, so talk!” Her broken chest heaved with sorrow as she came to rest. “Damn you.”
Her earpiece chirped, and her heart thudded so hard she thought it would burst.
“Hello? Yes? Hello! Kin, are you there?” she stammered.
“This is the ADF Capricious transmitting on all emergency frequencies. Anyone alive up here needs to start talking, because we’ve got to split.”
She hugged herself, almost like she thought it would stop her lips from quivering. “Captain Lamarr …”
