Atlas Fallen

by Jessica Pierce

  Of course. The pieces began clicking into place like cogs in a converter.

  “Radek isn’t an independent fighter any more, is he?” Tesla breathed. “Yosef owns him now. That’s how he was able to afford those lux mods.”

  “Looks like Minko’s fighting dog does have some brains,” Naamah said, confirming Tesla’s suspicions. “Yosef is tired of pushing skirri to poor people. He’s looking for more lucrative endeavors.” With a flick of her wrist, she produced a shock-stick from her belt and twirled it in her hand. The club hissed and crackled as it swung through the air, tip alight with an electric charge. “It’s time the Red Ashes had some real competition in the fights.”

  Tesla was Minko’s most successful champion. If Yosef wanted to win in the ring, he’d have to eliminate her as competition. Minko wasn’t the only crime boss who was now gambling with her life; there was an even bigger price on her head than before.

  Naamah circled, teeth bared like a crocodile.

  “So you’re going to bludgeon me outside the market? Not exactly much finesse to your work, is there?”

  The woman clicked her tongue. “We weren’t sent to kill you. If you die, there would be no reason to bet on you, and if there aren’t any bets, Yosef won’t make money when you lose again. No, we’re just here to send Minko a very clear message.”

  “And what message would that be?”

  Naamah crackled the shock-stick against the wall, sending sparks into the air. “That the Gulch is under new management.” She turned toward the men. “Start with her pretty little fingers.”

  “If you break my hands, I can’t fight,” said Tesla, her words coming out in a rush. And I won’t be able to weld or pay rent. “Who do you think Yosef will blame then?” The lift finally arrived, but there was no way she could escape using it now. Tesla inched her back along the wall toward the marketplace. If should could just make it out of the foyer, she might be able to lose the trio in the crowd long enough to reach the safety of her apartment.

  And then what? Try to survive on a handful of nutrition tablets as Naamah and her goons took turns waiting outside her door? They wouldn’t even have to attack her. They could simply starve her out.

  Naamah paused for just a moment, chewing on Tesla’s words. “Leave her hands alone,” she instructed the footmen. “But break everything else.”

  Tesla jumped forward, sending her palm into the throat of the man on Naamah’s right. He doubled over, gasping for air. In a blur of motion, the second man was on her, twisting Tesla’s arm behind her back. She screamed in pain as the joint threatened to pop, the bones grinding against one another until her vision began to blur.

  Naamah leaned forward, her snarling teeth inches from Tesla’s face. “It’s a pity Yosef wants to bash your face in. You really are a lovely girl.” With that, Naamah reared the shock-stick above her head and crashed it down against Tesla’s brow. Another blow came in quick succession, splitting her lip. Volts of energy far stronger than the electro-cuffs coursed through her, and a guttural cry escaped Tesla’s lungs.

  She collapsed, her head hitting the floor with a sickening thud. The sharp scent of copper stung the air, and she felt blood tracing rivers across her cheeks toward the scuffed floor. In the distance, the lights of the holovisions blurred; the Gulch became obscured behind a veil of red.

  A voice shouted something, but the sound felt muffled and far away. She couldn’t make out the words through the thud, thud, thud of her heartbeat pounding against her eardrums. Naamah signaled the other men to flee into the lift Tesla had summoned earlier, disappearing upward toward Level Six and Yosef’s den.

  Hands reached toward her through the haze. She tried feebly to swat them away, but the figure gently eased her from the floor, carrying her away from the lifts.

  “Kiyo?” she murmured through her broken lips.

  Her mouth moved to speak again, to tell him she was sorry, but before any sound came, darkness swept across her vision.

  Then she was gone.

  TEN

  THE CLOCK LAY ON THE dining table, its inner workings dissected and arranged neatly bit by bit. Tesla studied each piece intently, examining the metal connectors and the rusted power source. “What do we do now?”

  Nevik Petrov smiled and adjusted the bow in her dark hair. “Now, we eat our dessert before dinner and pray your mother doesn’t catch us!” His mammoth hands reached out, tickling her sides.

  “No,” Tesla managed between giggles. “I mean the radio. Why did you take it apart if it wasn’t broken?”

  Her father formed the answer carefully, his face suddenly more serious than before. “Sometimes we need to see things laid bare to understand them. Just because a thing seems to work doesn’t mean it’s not actually broken. If we look closely, look deeper, we can find the parts that need fixing. And then we are able to put the pieces back together better than before. Or maybe even make something new.” He knelt down before her, his eyes gleaming in the apartment’s dim light. “Do you understand, zvezda moya?”

  Tesla shook her head, disappointed his words didn’t make sense, but her father simply touched a finger to her small chin and smiled. She slid from the couch and eyed the pantry cabinet. “Can we still have dessert?”

  Nevik Petrov twirled his daughter into the air, filling the apartment with the soft rumbles of his gentle laughter. “Of course,” he whispered, “It’ll be our little secret.”

  The dream, which felt more like a memory, faded and was replaced by a humming noise. Not the whirring, electric pulse of the ship’s engines constantly buzzing beneath her feet, but a soft, musical sound. Slowly, ever so slowly, she managed to crack open one eye. The other felt massive, as though someone had injected it with gallons of symotox, the artificial plumper used by models back on Earth. She licked her cracked lips, and the taste of blood made her wince.

  The humming sound continued. A blanket surrounded her as she lay on a soft surface. A couch. Her couch. She recalled a stranger—Kiyo, she remembered—carrying her battered body after Naamah’s attack. He had managed to bring her through the Gulch and back to her apartment. She sat up quickly, pulling the blanket against her bloodied shirt, but the motion exploded her vision into a thousand tiny pinpricks, leaving her gasping for air. Still, the tinkling melody played on.

  “Kiyo?” Tesla croaked once more.

  A sigh of relief sounded from the kitchen. “Thank the stars. You’re alive.”

  Tesla blinked. It wasn’t Kiyo. Daxton, Prime Heir to the First World Union, inheritor of Earth, stood near the fridge, stirring something that smelled incredible. Her stomach rumbled, and Tesla pulled the blanket tighter to her body.

  The draadharts in the medical ward must have double-dosed her with painkillers. Or maybe she was hallucinating, suspended in some sort of induced coma meant to keep her alive while she healed. That was the only explanation as to why the prince would be standing in her tiny living room, looking so out of place.

  “Dinner’s almost ready,” said Daxton. He turned back to the stove and began singing softly, and Tesla realized it was the melody she had heard before. He must have changed from his lux cloak and tunic before heading downstation. Or maybe he had donned the simple green sweater and pants after bringing her to safety. Just how long had she been unconscious? The sweater pulled against his back, outlining several lean muscles as he brought a pair of chopsticks to his lips, tasting a bit of meat from a bowl.

  “Dinner?” Tesla wheezed. What happened to her voice? Her throat felt as though she’d swallowed glass.

  “It’s a meal that humans eat, usually in the evening.”

  “I know what dinner is,” she growled. “What I don’t know is why you lied to me and made me look like an idiot. And why you’re in my home.”

  The stirring ceased. “I’m sorry,” he said. He opened his mouth to continue, but paused, shrugging his shoulders. “I just thought if you knew who I was—”

  “You said your name is Daxton,” she pointed out. She laid
her head back against the couch, relieved when the stars in the corner of her vision seemed to fade. “You were laughing at me the whole time. Are you even a pilot? Or was that all part of your little act, too?”

  Tesla had obviously hit a nerve. The prince set the bowl on the dining table slowly, his eyes narrowing. “My name is Tomasz Daxton LaRose, but only my friends from the Royal Air Force Academy call me Daxton.”

  Tesla scanned the back of his neck and narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have a bioNexus.”

  “Of course not,” Daxton said, a hint of frustration in his tone. “Members of the royal family are forbidden from receiving any technological body modification, to avoid the risk of some hackjob controlling the mods through a cyber attack. It’s a rule my uncle insisted on when he became Defense Minister. I may not be able to link my nervous system to a starcraft, but I am qualified to fly both the G-35 Raptor and the KP-11 Alpha gunship, as well as various advanced landing craft. Technically, I didn’t lie.”

  She snorted. “You just happened to leave out the part about you running the world someday.”

  “I... something like that.” Daxton picked up the bowl and continued stirring, seeming at home in the small space. He turned back to the food and hummed the same melody once more.

  A thought struck Tesla. “How did you know where I lived?”

  “Two little boys in the market nearly ripped me to shreds when they saw you bleeding in my arms. I’m sure they thought I was responsible, but after convincing them I was only trying to help—and after bribing them with a granola bar from my pocket—they helped me get you home.”

  “Ming and Ren,” she said aloud, making a mental note to scold the boys about bringing strangers to her apartment. “It still doesn’t explain why you came down in the lift in the first place. I told you, I’m not going to the ball with you.”

  “You don’t have to, of course, but I’m hoping you’ll reconsider,” Daxton said, his mouth drawing downward into a small frown. “I came to... apologize. I’m sorry I placed you in that position today. I know what it’s like to be gawked at like you’re an attraction at a theme park. My father had no right being so rude.”

  Tesla ignored his remark about reconsidering the invitation. Instead she inhaled, shuddering at the pain in her ribs. “Well, if I hadn’t made that third trip back to the junkyard, the patrol would never have caught me, so I suppose part of this is my fault.”

  “Do you want to talk about why you were rooting through space junk?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to talk about why I found you in a bloody heap at the bottom of an elevator?”

  “Also no.”

  “What?” His tone was one of complete shock. “Tesla! You could have been killed. Do you know how much clotting agent I had to send those little boys to get before your head wounds stopped hemorrhaging? It’s a miracle you lasted until I could get a draadhart down from the medical ward.” He gripped the chopstick a little too tightly, and Tesla realized finding her like that had frightened him. She could only imagine what she’d looked like bleeding out on the floor. Hell, what she must look like still. The small mirror next to her closet proved her right. A dark bruise colored her chin and dried blood caked her hair. What she thought was a swollen eye turned out to be a crude ocular patch filled with something cold.

  Her ribs were also bound, though she still wore her bloody jumpsuit, minus the welding coveralls. Had he unzipped her clothing? Or had it been the draadhart? The thought of the Prime Heir seeing her half-dressed made her blanch. “Listen, Your Highness—”

  “Daxton,” he insisted. “Please.”

  “Whatever. Daxton. You can’t be here.” Tesla panted as she tried to sit up straighter. Naamah had gotten in a few solid swings to her rib cage, maybe even cracked a few bones, judging by the soreness of each breath. Her skin pulled tightly down her eyebrow, and Tesla realized she’d needed stitches.

  It was Daxton’s turn to snort. “I didn’t peg you for the old-fashioned type, not wanting to be alone with a gentleman before marriage. I promise my intentions are honorable.”

  “That’s exactly what a dishonorable rogue would say. But it’s not that.” She slid forward onto the edge of the couch, and it took all her focus not to shout from the effort. “You can’t be seen with me. You have to leave. Immediately.”

  “Before dinner?” he asked, looking longingly at the bowl. “I managed to make a rough sweet and sour pork sauce from your empty fridge. Please apologize to your parents for me when they go to the market next time. I’m afraid I used up a lot of your ingredients.”

  “My family is gone.” She hadn’t meant to say it, but the confusion of the day overwhelmed her. A spark of pity crossed Daxton’s features, and she instantly regretted revealing the information. In the back of her mind, it occurred to her that his assumption about her parents meant he had yet to discover her father’s crimes. Thank the stars for that, at least.

  “I had no idea. Tesla, I’m so sorry—”

  She shook her head. “It’s fine. It’s not something I want to talk about.” The smell of food hit her. “Where’d you—uh—learn to cook?” she asked, pointing to the bowl.

  Her stomach growled again, and Daxton chuckled. “The academy, actually. In the field we were responsible for making our own meals. Part of the training was learning to hunt and forage to survive. On longer training exercises we became very creative with our cuisine.” His eyes held a hint of pride as he gazed at the food. “Nothing this nice, though.”

  He portioned out the meal into separate bowls, handing Tesla the larger of the two. She ate slowly, afraid that any sudden movements might bring about a wave of pain-induced nausea. Daxton sat on the floor, relaxed, his lean legs stretched outward in total comfort.

  Tesla watched, fascinated. Though he appeared at ease, his motions remained poised and proper. Elegant, even. How had she ever thought he was anything other than a prince? It seemed so obvious now.

  “So you became a welder after leaving the academy?” he asked, kind enough to avoid Tesla’s gaze as embarrassment washed over her. “I noticed you were wearing coveralls earlier.”

  “Yes,” Tesla mumbled. She took a bite and nearly melted into the couch. It was good.

  “Is that why you think I shouldn’t be seen with you? Because you’re a station worker?”

  She knew she should tell him about her father. If anyone found out the Prime Heir had eaten dinner with the daughter of Nevik Petrov, the trendmags would blast her face all over the news—again. Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. And why did she need to tell him? It wasn’t like she’d asked him to come down here and save her like some mucking damsel in distress.

  She cleared her throat, the lie ready on her tongue. “Yes, that’s why. And judging by the viral headlines, you’re expected to find a bride here. It isn’t proper for a prince to associate with a girl he doesn’t intend to marry, right before he announces his betrothal. I don’t want people to get the wrong idea.”

  “So you are old-fashioned? I thought those customs had died in the third era.”

  “Stop twisting my words. Are you always this pompous?”

  “It depends. Are you always this stubborn?”

  The pain coursing through her ribs prevented her from stalking away, so she settled for a seething glare. “What are you really doing in my apartment? And don’t tell me it’s to win my heart so you can take me to some stuffy dance, because I’m not buying it.”

  Daxton took a deep breath, pushing the bowl away. “I came downstation because I need your help. I think the Atlas is in grave danger.”

  His words caught her off guard. “In danger how?”

  He punched a button on his wristcomm, and a hologram grew from its small screen. In the image, a gaunt-looking boy appeared, his messy hair tucked haphazardly beneath a slouchy hat. The hologram showed him glancing over his shoulder as he fiddled nervously with a piercing in his eyebrow. Even through the blurry distortion of the r
ecording, Tesla could tell he looked terrified.

  “I don’t have much time before they find me. Crow Strike. Repeat—Crow Strike. Get the crew and meet me on the station.” The boy’s head whipped around at a noise as he moved the camera closer. He ducked behind a low wall, his voice lowering to little more than a whisper as he said, “And Dax—you can’t trust anyone.”

  The telecomm feed warbled before winking to black. Daxton stared at the space where the boy’s face had just been. “I received that two days ago,” he said quietly.

  Tesla shook her head. “None of that made any sense to me. Crow Strike? That sounds like gibberish. Does that mean something to you?”

  “Short answer? It’s a maneuver I came up with at the academy during our simulated war games. A member of my formation ascends vertically to a near-stall altitude, which distorts enemy radar, then loops around to destroy opposing aircraft. Basically, the attack is unexpected. The enemy doesn’t see the threat until it’s too late. I think Freiter, the person in the video feed, was trying to tell me there’s a threat aboard the Atlas and that we have to act fast.”

  “What kind of threat?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, rubbing his neck. “That telecomm is all I have to go on.”

  Life on the Atlas came with risks: fires, disease, system failures, crops dying. Any one of those carried the chance of killing everyone on board—even richies above the deimark, no matter how good their countermeasures were. But an attack? The First World Union was the monarchy responsible for worldwide peace. As long as she could remember, there had never been anything remotely like an anti-terrorism drill on the Atlas. They’d never needed one.