Is this my real family? Was this a real moment in my life? Were these toys mine, this crib mine, these people mine?
I step close and peer into the woman’s face, searching for myself in it. And at the moment, her head turns slightly and her eyes seem to connect with mine.
I recoil from the room, and the holo repeats its loop. The imperial couple coos over their baby, and I leave them to it, feeling dirty, like I’ve violated their privacy.
I don’t belong here. I’m not one of them. Maybe I started life here, I don’t know, but this place is not my home and these people are not my family. Shame heats my face, as if by even looking at them, I’ve betrayed my real parents, who are suffering on Amethyne right now, likely prisoners or worse. I should be with them, not buried on an asteroid in a dead system, searching for something that might not even exist, working for the woman who killed one of my dearest friends.
I shut down the holo. The palace vanishes, and with it, my hope of getting off this rock. There was nothing there that I recognized, nothing that might be a clue to the Firebird’s nature or location. I feel like I’ve been exploring a crypt, treading on forbidden ground.
Hurling the tabletka into the corner, I retreat onto the bed and let out a long breath. My hands are shaking. I grab the pillow and squeeze it against my chest, careful not to crush the vial of antidote. I think of Pol, and my chest caves in and the tears come in a rush.
Dinner is brought to my room, but after I push it around my plate a while, I decide to go exploring. If I get the chance to make a run for it, I’ll need knowledge of the base’s layout. Besides, sitting trapped in here with my thoughts and my memories is a torture I’m desperate to escape.
I move quietly through the corridors, fearing I’ll be locked in my room if anyone catches me wandering. The base isn’t as big as it seemed at first. There are three levels, one for mechanical engineering, the cells, the mess hall, and the hangar. The second floor is all barracks for the five hundred or so Loyalist soldiers. The third floor is operations, where they run their comm systems, strategy meetings, and other business.
I stop by Riyan’s cell first. A bored guard stands watch, eyeing me as I approach. I raise my hands and try not to stare. The man is a paryan, the adapted race native to Emerault. I’ve never seen one in person before. He is very thin and tall, with a birdlike skeleton. Emerault’s atmosphere is so dense and moist, and its gravity so low, that 90 percent of its life is found in the sky, in floating kelp forests. The paryans, with their light frames, navigate their airborne world like birds, riding on the backs of great sky whales. I’ve heard they even have wings of delicate skin and bone that they keep folded on their backs, when not using them to glide around their dense, algae-filled skies.
“I just want to see him,” I say. “Please?”
The guard shrugs his thin shoulders but doesn’t take his eyes off me. They’re the color of green Emerault itself.
Riyan has gone into a trance, unmoving hour after hour. He’s still sitting with his legs folded, hands on his knees.
“You know he’s going to die without this,” I say to the guard, holding up the vial on its chain.
The guard grunts. “You can’t trust an abomination like him, Princess. The tensors’ magic will be our undoing one day. Pulling at the fabric of space like that … it’s not right.”
After a few minutes of no change in the tensor, I continue on to the hangar. There, the Loyalist fleet is arranged in neat rows, but there’s no hiding that their ships are outdated and in need of repairs. A team of mechanics is working feverishly to retrofit a battle schooner, but I’d guess their efforts aren’t doing much good. The ship looks like it should be scrapped for parts, if not scuttled altogether.
Riyan’s ship has been added to the fleet, I note sourly. Someone has opened up the hull, and a couple pilots are admiring the exposed engine.
At the far end of the hangar rests a scuttled scout ship that’s been refitted into a bar. Drinks are served on a counter made from the old control board. A tabletka on the wall projects a hologram of a geeball match, with some pilots clustered around, placing bets. The miniature players look like bees dodging and spinning through their zero-gravity arena, chasing a glowing ball from one end to the other.
About half the pilots are human—Alexandrians, Rubyati, one white-haired Opallan—and the rest are adapted: paryans, eeda, a woman with radiation-resistant orange skin, who must be a zheran from Tanzanet. She wears a pair of dark glasses to shield her large, sensitive eyes and curses when one of the geeball teams scores a goal. There are no aeyla, I note with disappointment; I haven’t seen a single pale horn since I arrived. If there were, maybe I could have talked them into helping me, for Pol’s sake.
I start toward the bar, hoping to find something to drink, but at that moment a red light begins flashing overhead and an alarm blares through the hangar. I freeze, thinking I’ve been spotted, but no one’s even looking at me.
Instead, pilots are running to line up by an empty pair of landing pads, shouting excitedly. They watch the long tunnel leading out of the rock, like they’re waiting for something.
Curious, I wander over and try to blend in. There isn’t much need; everyone is so focused on whatever’s about to come down that tunnel that they don’t notice me lurking.
A distant roar reaches my ears, and then I see lights deep in the darkness, growing brighter and brighter.
A sleek little battler is speeding toward us, a one-man ship equipped with guns and hyperboosters for high-speed attacks. The sound of its engine floods the hangar, deafening, making the floor vibrate. I can feel it in my teeth. Its thrusters are at full brake, generating a strong wind that has the light-boned paryans bracing themselves, lest they be swept off their feet.
The battler lowers smoothly onto one of the pads, popping landing struts. Everyone converges on the ship as the top hatch pops open and the eeda pilot emerges, grinning and pumping his fist. He powers down the engine, and the others all cheer. Someone hands him a canteen of water, which he pours over his head to hydrate his scaled skin.
Seconds later, another battler comes speeding down the tunnel, engine whining and rattling. I wince at the sound; this one’s clearly experiencing some sort of engine trouble. It sets down next to the first in a cloud of smoke.
The hatch opens and a brown-skinned girl climbs out, scowling and cursing. She pulls off her helmet, shaking loose a pair of braids that start at her hairline and curl over her scalp. After she shuts down the battler, she slides off the nose and to the floor, and is met by the jeers of the other pilots. Throwing them a rude gesture, she storms to the wing of her ship, where the engine underneath it is wheezing.
“That’s the third race you’ve lost this week, Luka!” shouts a pilot.
“Not my fault!” she snaps back. “The engine blew! I nearly smashed into a rock.”
“She’s lying,” the victorious pilot returns. “She lost control of her ship, as usual. How many you gotta destroy, girl, before you realize you should have stayed on the laundry rotation?”
The girl bristles but faces him squarely. “How many times did I have to wash your stinking uniform after you wet yourself in the battle sims?”
The other pilots burst into laughter, and the eeda pilot hurls a curse. The girl, scowling, stalks over to the bar and grabs a bottle of water.
The pilot tending bar grabs it back. “You already used up your ration this week. Thirsty? Open your mouth in the shower, Luka.”
With a few steps, I lunge across the counter and grab the water from the guy’s hand. “Did I use up my ration?”
The bartender rolls his eyes and goes back to watching the geeball match. Twisting off the cap, I grab a tin cup and pour half in, sliding it to the girl.
“Thanks, uh, Your Highness,” she mumbles.
“Stacia’s fine.” I wave a hand. “I guess water’s pretty scarce out here.”
“No kidding, and the eeda use up half of it just bathing three times a day. We chip it
off a frozen comet core that passes through every eighteen months. Trust me, you haven’t experienced misery until you get put on water duty and spend a few days tethered to a giant chunk of space ice.” She pauses, then smirks into her cup. “We call it Lilyan Junior. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
I draw a finger over my lips in the universal sign for a secret kept. “So, your name’s Luka? Related to the doctor?”
She winces. “You’ve met my dad, then. Don’t judge a girl by her relations.”
I hook a thumb at the pair of battlers. “What was all that?”
“What, the race? It was a setup, that’s what it was.” She scowls at the crowd of pilots, still congregated around the winner. “They knew that was a bum engine, but they gave it to me anyway. Zhar’s going to kill me when she sees the mess it’s in.” With a groan, she turns around and lets her head fall onto the bar. “I can’t afford to pay for another one.”
“I could take a look at it, if you want.”
She tilts her head, one eye peering at me. “Huh?”
“I’m a mechanic. Well, apprentice mechanic.” I tap my multicuff. “Broken engines are sort of my thing.”
She shrugs. “I guess you couldn’t make it any worse. I’m Mara, by the way.”
We walk over to her ship, the others ignoring us as they escort the victor to the bar. Mara watches them with narrow eyes, twisting one of her braids.
I grab a wheeled dolly and lie on it, pushing myself under the wing. The engine is housed beneath it, tucked against the hull. Popping a screwdriver from my cuff, I open the panel concealing it. As I work, I glance at Mara, who’s sitting a few feet away, nursing her water like she wishes it was something stronger.
“So, Mara Luka. Is rebellion a family business?”
She swirls her cup. “It’s not rebellion. It’s restoring the rightful order. My mom died sixteen years ago in the Battle of Alexandrine, defending the palace from the direktor’s invasion force.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes darken. She drains her cup, then slams it on the floor. “I’ll avenge her when we take out those pigs.”
I slide out from under the wing so I can set aside the panel I removed. “So that’s why all these people are out here, hiding in a dead system and fighting for a dead dynasty? They want vengeance?”
“Well, not just that. Most of us are here because we had nowhere else to go after the war. A lot of these pilots flew for the Leonovs. What’s waiting for them, except death sentences?”
“But do you really want to see the Empire restored?”
She shrugs. “I just want to go home to Alexandrine. And until the Committee falls, that can’t happen.” With a grim smile, she adds, “It’s not always about the big picture, is it? Empires and armies and ideals. I don’t know who’s right or wrong in the end, but I know what I want and I know what stands in my way.”
I slide back under the wing and shine my cuff’s flashlight at the engine, spotting the problem right away. One of the energy lines to the left fusion reactor is torn. I go to work on it, splicing and snipping.
“You said Alexandrine’s home,” I say. “What’s it like?”
“Oh, it’s a paradise,” she says wryly. “The whole planet’s covered in cement, and the protected greenspaces are reserved for the wealthy. You have to wait in line for hours just to get your daily meal ration. If you complain about it, you risk getting thrown into a cell for a week. The Committee controls everything—the peacekeepers, the courts, the food distribution, the banks.”
“Things are really that bad there?” I’m neck-deep inside the engine now, my voice muffled by the metal walls around me.
“Think about it like this: We left there in order to live here.”
“Good point.” I back out and study the line I’ve extracted. “You must have really hated it on Alexandrine.”
“I didn’t hate it. It was just like … seeing someone you love get sick, to the point they’re not them anymore, you know? You want to run away, because it hurts to see someone you love become someone else, always in pain and misery.”
“You left Alexandrine because you want to find the magic pill that will heal it.”
“Yeah.” She nods thoughtfully. “That’s it exactly.”
I use my pliers to disconnect a secondary line, redirecting the power flow through the engine. “You think Zhar’s that pill?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. My dad thinks you are, once you come into your own, whatever that means.”
“Guess you all must be pretty disappointed in me, then.”
“I’m withholding judgment for now. Let’s see how you handle that engine first.”
“Fair enough.” Burrowing back into the exposed hull, I reconnect the wires, then replace the panel.
“Okay, you’re set.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “You fixed it? In … five minutes?”
I stand and wipe my greasy hands on my leggings. “Only one way to find out.”
She shrugs and climbs into the cockpit, flipping a switch inside. I step back and hold my breath as I snap my multicuff back on my wrist—and release it when the battler’s engine begins to hum. Mara gives it a few bursts of power and the booster flashes blue, burning up the Prismic energy stored inside the power cells.
She shuts down the engine and leans out of the cockpit, her eyes wide. “What did you do?”
I shrug. “Nothing fancy. Just redirected a few lines, bypassing some stuff and getting energy directly to the reactor. I think you’ll find she’s a little bit faster now too.”
Mara shakes her head, her lips curling into a grin as she jumps back to the ground. “Okay, so you’ve got some tricks up your sleeve. Literally. That’s a neat gadget.”
I twist my cuff. “It was a gift from my dad, after I graduated from my mechanical training.”
“Well, I’m impressed. And I don’t impress easy. Maybe you’ll fix this galaxy after all, Princess.”
I manage a sickly laugh.
Mara circles the battler, inspecting every inch of it the way Pol would study one of his mantibu after a race. The thought leaves me cold, like a hole’s been blown through my chest, and it takes me a moment to find my breath.
Pushing away the clawing grief that surges from my gut, I follow Mara. She’s wholly absorbed in her ship and is now peering into the engine to see how I rearranged the wires.
I study the girl thoughtfully.
She’s my age, she’s tough, and she’s a pilot. And unlike a lot of the other soldiers here, she’s willing to talk to me.
If things go sideways with Zhar, I will need an ally on this rock, and Mara might be the perfect place to start. But I’ll have to be careful how I go about it.
“You know,” I begin, “my best friend is in a Committee gulag. All I want is to save her.” I weigh my words cautiously before continuing. “Do you think Zhar cares about that stuff? About our families and homes? She seems focused on just taking out the Committee, not caring who she has to destroy to do it.”
Mara shrugs and closes the engine. “Zhar is doing what has to be done. The path to victory is paved with sacrifice.”
“Then maybe that’s the wrong path. Did you ever think of striking out on your own? Returning to Alexandrine and maybe seeing if that magic pill’s someplace else?”
She stiffens and faces me, her dark eyes suddenly hard. “Look, I’d love to chat more, but I’ve got work to do.” She starts toward the hangar doors, then pauses to add over her shoulder, “Be careful, Princess. If Zhar knew you were trying to turn us against her, she’d lock you up.”
I sigh as she walks away, her braids swinging. “She already has.”
Three days pass, and when I’m not scouring the holopalace, I check on Riyan to find him still deep in his meditation. How much longer can he possibly last? He looks weaker and weaker, shriveling before my eyes. I notice someone—Dr. Luka, probably—has set up an IV in his arm, so at least he’s getting fluid. But he can’t possibly ho
ld out much longer.
Sometimes I just sit and stare at him, willing him to wake up and declare that he’s somehow cured himself. I clutch the vial of antidote around my neck until I fear I’ll break it. The guards watch me but say nothing, and are deaf to my pleas that they open the door.
The third night, I ignore my room with its soft bed and instead curl up in front of Riyan’s cell. When Zhar orders I be forcibly removed, I fight them, but they just drug me and dump me back in my room, anyway.
Instead of going back to sleep, I stand in the shower and watch the purple dye run from my hair and vanish into the drain.
I can hear Pol as if he were whispering in my ear.
You can’t save me by saving him.
“I can try,” I whisper, pressing my hand to the glass. Is that what this is, my desperation to save Riyan? I could save a hundred of him and never be free of the guilt I feel for Pol’s death. But I won’t give up on the tensor. I’ll save him, and together we’ll rescue Clio and his sister and everyone else we love. I won’t let Pol’s death have been for nothing.
These are the lies I tell myself to keep from shattering.
After five straight hours of combing the holopalace and coming no closer to finding what Zhar wants, I growl in frustration and sling the tabletka across the floor. I huddle for a moment, arms around my knees, my chest like a cage full of angry, thrashing snapteeth.
Finally, I shoot to my feet and storm out of the room. I roam the corridors, itching for a fight, feeling like I’m about to explode. It must show in my face, because everyone I pass scurries out of the way.
On the bottom floor, I find a shooting range. There’s no one there, and Zhar never said I couldn’t use it. So I go in and pick a gun off the wall, noting sourly that it’s tagged; if I tried to steal it, alarms would go off and it might self-destruct or something. I pull off my multicuff and study the tag, then decide it’s not worth it. These things are usually tamperproof, even against my skills.
An open stone room is spread before me, wired with projectors. I power up the control panel on the wall and pick a simulation. The projectors whir and then spit out beams of light that coalesce into faceless human forms.
Last of Her Name Page 13
