Soul of Stars

by Ashley Poston

  “We are as good as dead anyway,” Viera ground out between her teeth. “How many people are going to die before you finally give up on him, Ana?”

  The words were like a slap. How many people? echoed that bitter part of her brain, because so many had already died. Riggs and Wick and Barger and Lady Valerio and the Grand Duchess and—and so many others during her coronation. Jax had almost died, and Robb, and herself, multiple times.

  And Di . . .

  Ana bit the inside of her cheek and looked away, because she didn’t have an answer for Viera.

  Jax

  “Get us out of here!” the captain roared.

  He was trying. He gripped the controls tighter, and he could feel his gloves growing moist from the sweat of his hands. Which was, above all else, the second-worst part of this entire fiasco.

  The first being that they were being chased by the Great Dark itself.

  Three more warnings flared up on his screen, the computer charting the missiles’ trajectories, and he dipped to the left to avoid them—barely missing the explosions. He brought up the windows for the ship’s solar core, the speed of the solar winds, the tautness of the riggings to the sails. Goddess, it would’ve been nice if he’d had a chance to give the Dossier a tune-up before getting into another firefight.

  Think—you have to lose them. You’re the best pilot in the kingdom, aren’t you? But his mind was a mess.

  The light inside him fretted and pulsed, and he could barely control it—never mind ignore it. He used to be able to sense the stars gently orbiting around him, but now everything felt weirdly visceral, and the more he tried not to think about it, the worse it got.

  “Ak’va, think, you stupid star-kisser,” he muttered to himself as two schooners fell in line behind him. Artem-1S, both of them.

  Talle said from the communications console, “Thrusters are maxed!”

  “Tell me something I don’t know!” He took one hand off the controls to check the ship’s inventory. There had to be something he could use. Three solar-flare rockets and about a thousand rounds for the gunnery . . .

  Ana, quickly followed by Viera, stumbled into the cockpit and pulled down two emergency seats in the back, securing themselves in.

  He pulled the ship up through the thunderheads and into clear sky. The clouds flickered behind him, and he wasn’t sure if it was lightning or another missile. “Goddess, love, what did you do to make them this mad?”

  “Well,” replied Ana, “the heart wasn’t in the tomb, and I kinda blew it up, so Mellifare definitely isn’t happy with me right now.”

  “That’s an understatement, darling,” Siege muttered, positioning herself behind Jax’s chair.

  Jax flipped a switch to bring the wings in as they crested past twelve kilometers. “Captain, you should buckle in, too.”

  She didn’t move from her station behind his chair. “What’re you doing?”

  “There are two schooners after us, and they’re so heavy I’m hoping they can’t flip-turn on a dime like our girl, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do, and hopefully they’ll be eating our pretty little exhaust as we jet into the stratosphere.” Then he flicked on the intercom again and said, “Xu, you’re in the engine room, right?”

  “Yes,” they replied immediately.

  “I need you to reroute all the solar power to the thrusters—to nothing else. Can you do that?”

  “I hope there is nothing in the refrigerator that needs saving,” they commented.

  From the comms console, Talle said, “Just some salmon I was hoping to cook . . .”

  “I’ll buy you more, starlight,” the captain promised, and grabbed one of the leather holds in the ceiling of the cockpit. She wound her hand around it twice and planted herself where she stood. “Okay, we’re clear.”

  “Oh!” Ana gasped, jolting up, “but Di’s on the gurney—”

  “Stop worrying about that murderer!” Viera snapped, and Ana scowled at her.

  “He’s not a murderer.”

  Goddess’s spark, he did not have the patience for this. “Xu, on my mark.” With a flick of the propulsion, he eased out of their ascent. The Dossier swirled, passing through the raging gray thunderheads, toward the ground again—

  At an alarming angle.

  The schooners followed.

  Lighting spiraled through the clouds around them, so bright it was blinding.

  “Now, Xu!”

  He waited for the thrusters to read the power flux. One second, two.

  Come on, come on—

  The ship lights went dark, energy rerouted to the solar core. The red emergency lights blinked on. Praying to the Goddess this worked, Jax slammed one control back, the other forward, and the thrusters shuddered. The entire ship vibrated—

  And flipped backward on its head.

  There was ground, and suddenly there were the glorious, angry thunderclouds. The thrusters shuddered as they tried to catch the Dossier out of its descent, propelling it upward again. This had to work.

  The two schooners came down at them fast.

  Someone screamed as he tilted the Dossier just enough to squeeze between the two ships, rocketing upward. Something clattered far back in the ship, plates and cups upended in the galley, a cacophony of noise rushing up from the back of the ship. He didn’t want to even think about his poor skysailer.

  Orange heat licked at the sides of the starshield as they climbed against gravity, breaking through the thunderclouds again, up into clear, wide sky.

  Twenty kilometers, thirty, forty—

  The schooners behind them couldn’t reverse-flip and had to swing around the old way. It cost them seconds the Dossier gained as it sped up through the atmosphere. The distance from the surface of Eros increased as the seconds passed.

  Ninety kilometers, the holo-screen read.

  Clouds dissipated, and the skies darkened to a bluish black. The thrusters shuddered, the power reserves dwindling. Just a few more kilos and he could deploy the sails. Just a few more—

  One hundred.

  Gravity released the Dossier like a sigh, and the ship went swirling up into space.

  “You’re a lifesaver, Xu.”

  “I have been told that many times,” the Metal replied. “Rerouting power back to other functions now.”

  “Thank you,” he replied, relieved, and a moment later the lights blinked back on across the ship. He threw his hands in the air. “Yes! Who’s good? I’m g—”

  Siege put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t celebrate quite yet, darling.”

  His words lodged in his throat, and he quickly grappled for the controls, reversing the thrusters. The Dossier slammed to a halt.

  Ana leaned forward, her eyes wide. “Is that . . .”

  It was.

  In front of them, a ship as large as it was wide seemed to take up the entire starshield. A dreadnought. The same one he had died on, it seemed, from the shoddily patched bridge window, and the scrapes along its wings from where the Dossier had knocked off a few of its short-range cannons.

  Ana whispered, “Oh.”

  The dreadnought aimed its two large cannons in their direction, and the Dossier was so close he could see the detonations pulsating inside the barrels. It was both a beautiful and terrible sight.

  And there was no escaping it.

  Emperor

  He was in a Plague hospital on Eros. And then on a rusted old Cercian-7 ship. Then in the Iron Palace. A derelict space cruiser. A Cercian diamond mine. Nevaeh. The Academy. Then an ancient shrine. Friends writing his name with charcoal on the side of the wall. “Is this considered desecrating a holy place, Mari?” he had asked a brown-skinned girl who never smiled. Then he was in a study, his father pinning a badge to his uniform. Dark eyes and a kind smile.

  Then the same man again, snarling down at him tied in a chair. In a small, suffocating room. A girl with soulless eyes bending toward him, taking him by the hair, invading his thoughts.

  Thoughts that bled re
d—like human blood—there one moment and then plucked away. People. Memories. Words. Nouns. Names.

  Dossier.

  Dossier. Siege—

  He stumbled out of one scene and into another, and then another, and another. In a firefight on Iliad. Then pressing his forehead against that golden-eyed girl’s. Playing Wicked Luck with blurred faces.

  A palace burning.

  —Dossier. Siege. Robb—

  He was on a ship with the crest of a nine-tentacled octopus, outnumbered by Messiers, with a man who looked so familiar—so terribly familiar, with dark hair and a thick beard and sky-blue eyes—shoving a girl into his arms, pushing them into an escape pod. His side was painted with blood.

  “You will take her, won’t you? You’ll take her and take care of her—please,” he gasped. “Di, save her.”

  Who was—?

  A boy on a hospital gurney, his hands blackened. That flaxen-haired girl again, bending down to him, whispering secrets. Promising that he would live if only he—if he—

  A hand grabbed him by the shoulder, and he spun around to another memory.

  —Dossier. Siege. Robb. Jax—

  A silver-haired Solani punching him in the shoulder. A boy with blue eyes falling from a skysailer. That same boy in a palace hallway, startled to look at him, saying a name he didn’t know.

  But did.

  He did know that name. It was . . .

  —Dossier. Siege. Robb. Jax. Tsarina—

  The door to an escape pod opening. A woman with blazing orange fiber-optic hair, so wild it reached toward the sun, peering inside. He had seen her before, when she never smiled. She should have looked fearful, but her snarl quickly turned to concern for the girl in his arms.

  She belonged to a ship of black and chrome. To a crew of kind, misfit faces.

  He reached out for them. To the dark-skinned Cercian, to the older man with a braided gray beard and a mechanical leg, somehow knowing that they were—

  —Dossier. Siege, Robb. Jax. Tsarina. Nevaeh—

  Gone, and he stumbled forward into a garden stairwell. A doorway full of honeysuckle vines. “Di,” the golden-eyed girl whispered. Then a kiss—

  Goddess, a kiss. Deep and passionate, the orange light from the garden fading into a dark bedroom. The Iron Palace. The smell of moonlilies lingering on her skin.

  —Dossier. Siege, Robb. Jax. Tsarina. Nevaeh. Cerces. D-D-D—

  He winced as the redness twisted in his head, pulling like fishhooks in his brain, threading through it like a monster with claws and teeth. Shredding, ripping.

  IF YOU ARE NOT MINE, it roared, louder and louder. IF YOU ARE NOT MINE, YOU ARE NOT AT ALL.

  IF YOU ARE NOT MINE, YOU ARE NOT AT ALL.

  IF YOU ARE NOT MINE.

  IF YOU ARE NOT.

  IF YOU ARE—

  YOU ARE—

  “—My best friend,” said a sweet voice. Hands cupped his face. He opened his eyes to her. The girl with bronze skin and golden eyes and a scar of constellations. They stood in a palace hallway, she in her coronation gown, the HIVE in his head.

  And he remembered that if he’d had a heart, it would have broken.

  It did break.

  It was breaking as he watched the moment, lips pressed against her ear, relishing her smell. Of honeysuckle vines and dusky sunlight falling across her cheeks. His hand shook with the sword pressed to her stomach.

  —DOSSIER. SIEGE. ROBB. JAX. TSARINA. NEVAEH. CERCES. D-DI. A-A-A-AN—

  “I should have let you burn.” His voice. His body. His hand pushing the sword into her. He heard her gasp, felt her wilt, his heart breaking, breaking.

  And she looked at him with molten golden eyes—a color he had seen so often, in so many different shades of light, at dusk and dawn and midday and midnight, stitching him together again.

  And he remembered.

  —ANA.

  IV

  Starcrossed

  Di

  Somewhere in the distance, emergency sirens wailed.

  The floor was cold and hard against his cheek. His head throbbed as he slowly came to, programs flaring back to life one by one. His optics focused, and he blinked and pushed himself to sit up. Deep red lights bathed the room—a medical ward? It looked familiar, but his head was so jumbled he could not think of it. Absently, he dragged his finger along the stitches on his cheek, one, two, the rest broken, and tried to think—at all, really.

  His head was so quiet.

  “Lenda, steady on that dreadnought!” shouted a voice as strong and striking as a bell. “Hold course!”

  He knew that voice.

  And—and he knew this room. The medical ward. Pieces came back to him slowly, like figures through a fog. He pushed himself to his feet, scrambling to the door. This was—this ship was—

  The ship tilted so fast, he lost his balance and slammed face-first into the doorlock. It bleeped and slid open to a hull he knew well. To a skysailer he had driven before. To a rusted and antique Cercian-7 transport vessel.

  This ship was the Dossier.

  Was—was this a nightmare? The HIVE playing a trick on him?

  He took a step out as the ship shook again, and he gripped the doorway tightly.

  Those are explosions, he realized. They were in space—that he could feel—somewhere deep in the kingdom. There was a beacon pinging the Dossier over and over again. It was the call of a Messier ship, as loud as a foghorn.

  COME BACK TO ME. YOU ARE MINE.

  The code was familiar, the song so sweet it curled his teeth.

  The HIVE—no, the Great Dark.

  Mellifare.

  Someone was on the gunnery in the back—Lenda, he guessed? And a Metal was in the engine room—although he did not recognize them. A woman with platinum hair climbed the stairs. The royal captain from the palace, but every time he thought about her his mind went fuzzy—like a radio signal gone out of tune.

  This was the Dossier.

  Somehow.

  He shoved off from the doorway and stumbled up the stairs to the first floor, but the woman was gone. He skimmed his hand across the rusted wall to keep himself steady as he made his way to the cockpit, the pain in his head intensifying until he could barely see straight. There were all of these memories—moments he half remembered and could not possibly. Flashes of playing Wicked Luck in the galley, but then a memory of dying in his father’s lab and the Plague eating up his skin, and then the feeling of the cold Iron Crown as he placed it on his head.

  It—it was too much. He could not think—

  And suddenly he found himself in the doorway to the cockpit. Out of the starshield, looming like a great black shadow, was a dreadnought. One of four in the kingdom. He knew—he remembered—reinstating them to the Messier force some months ago.

  Two bright flares lit from either side of the gargantuan ship. By their speed, trajectory—they were missiles. Solar-grade, high-impact. They would not render this ship prone; they would obliterate it.

  Through the haze of his jumbled, warring memories, he knew he had to do something. Whether this was a dream or a nightmare or the HIVE playing with his head, he could not let . . . he refused to . . .

  His thoughts warped and stretched. What was the Dossier again? What was he doing here? Where was—

  Home, whispered a voice between his memories, scratchy and garbled from a damaged voice box.

  This was—

  Electricity jumped between his fingertips.

  He moved into the cockpit and reached out his hands toward the incoming missiles. One moment he was standing, the next his thoughts were rushing toward the missiles at the speed of standing still, just as he had on the Dossier all those months ago, when he took control of the ship. He had done it a thousand times since then, with the Great Dark singing in his head.

  But this was different. He had control, and he knew this body now—he knew its capabilities and its limits.

  He felt himself snag onto the missiles’ guidance systems, threading apart the
ir code number by number. The left missile wavered and went careening off course, up and up, until it exploded like a silent, distant flash of white. The other was a little harder.

  FIVE SECONDS, the warnings on the starshield read.

  FOUR.

  THREE.

  TWO—

  He pushed his right hand to the side with a noise of protest. The missile wobbled—and went screaming past them, scraping the wing of the Dossier, and exploded in a flash. The Dossier rattled with the quake of it.

  He reached farther toward the dreadnought and felt the commands from the bridge to the gunnery to send off another round of fire, and sank into the colossal ship’s onboard computer. He zipped down the multitude of hallways, past the vacant crew’s quarters and galleys.

  YOU BELONG TO ME, the Great Dark sang, Mellifare’s voice laced with sudden bitterness. He winced as he burrowed into the ship’s mainframe, clawing between the red code as though it was sticky mud. YOU ARE MINE—

  No, he was not.

  He rerouted his own power away from tertiary necessities, prying energy from his skin and his aches and his senses. He had to stop the dreadnought. He had to stop her.

  The engine room was easy enough to find, its console like an open door—

  His vision flickered. He was overheating.

  YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT ME, the Great Dark roared. YOU ARE NOTHING.

  He knew that. He was less than nothing. He was a boy who had died long ago. He was a ghost of himself. He was not even human. He was nothing—but if he overheated, at least he could take the dreadnought with him—

  He felt a hand on his arm. Barely.

  “Di,” someone whispered, and the voice pulled him back.

  His outstretched hands wavered, electricity receding back into his fingertips, pulling his scattered AI back into himself. Out of the bridge, the halls, the locks, the escape pods. Pried it from the core of the dreadnought like plucking splinters out of a flesh wound. As he left, he rewrote a single code. That was all it took to take down the gargantuan ship. Not an elaborate program, but a single set of numbers.