by Audrey Grey
“The explosions were supposed to be a signal. As of now, we have no idea who in the crowd is with the Alliance, if any.”
Crackling filled Talia’s ear, raking along her frayed nerves as she waited for Lux to say the inevitable.
“I’m sorry, Talia. We’re screwed.”
Chapter 33
Will
Will knew by Talia’s face alone that something in her plan had gone horribly wrong. Unfortunately, instinct told him his crew was somehow involved as well. Anger coursed through his beaten and mangled body. His dominant hand was out of action, but he could still deliver punches with his right. He flexed his fingers in preparation, sneering at the closest hunter as the queen carried the corruption chip to Talia.
He’d witnessed a few executions by corruption, and the appalling images of mocks seizing, pissing themselves, and frothing at the mouth, eyes rolled back in their heads, permeated his mind.
Screw that. He’d rather die fighting. Craning his head, he scoured the hunters and crowd for small weapons he could manage one-handed. All of the hunters carried large military-grade blasters. But lucky for him, his biggest fan, Xander, had insisted on seeing the execution. He watched near the edge of the dais, wearing Will’s uniform, an idiot smile plastered on the idiot’s face, and a nice-sized blaster at his waist.
Will smiled back at his brother, enjoying the look of confusion that dampened his excitement. General Crayburn stood rigid next to him in full military uniform, light from above catching on his medals. He looked straight ahead, ignoring Will. He stiffened as he recognized the rest of the Athena’s crew, his crew, their disappointed expressions lodging in his gut.
But his other crew, his real crew, was busy out there somewhere trying to save him—and possibly fighting for their lives. Stars, if he ever saw them again, he’d kiss each one of them. Even Leo, the beautiful bastard.
Talia’s feet made soft, hollow thuds against the stage as she approached Will. The corruption chip fit neatly inside her palm, her hand trembling, making the rectangular device appear to shiver.
His logical mock side knew they couldn’t escape alive. But his human side insisted he wrangle a weapon and take out the queen first so he could die proud. His glare skipped from Crayburn and Xander to the demented queen Will once pledged his life to. The knowledge that only days ago he strived to be like them filled him with shame.
The queen’s sharp focus remained on the chip as Talia presented it to him. Their eyes met, her message clear. Ready to fight?
The queen drew closer, the drones attached to the tentacles in her crown buzzing with excitement. “Citizens of the Seven, we have two very special executions this morning. First up is mock traitor Will Perrault, former captain in the queen’s regiment.” Drawing in a long, ragged breath, the queen shifted her saddened gaze to him the way she might a loved one who betrayed her. “For your crimes, Captain, you will be corrupted until death.”
While all eyes were on him, Talia snaked loose a corner of her shirt and snuck a hand inside. Fear dilated her pupils, but her lips pressed together with determination. On his signal, she would use the explosives. He glanced at Xander one last time, calculating the steps to him in case the bombs set off too much smoke to see. Will’s heart thudded so loudly he thought the queen would hear and know.
Swallowing, he gave Talia a near-imperceptible nod, and resolve twisted her face into a steely mask as she moved to pull out the bombs—
A huge shadow washed over the room, casting the queen in darkness. Will tracked the shadow to the windows on the north wall, his brain processing the impossible just as a loud roar ripped through the air, followed by a giant explosion near the wall outside. A huge ship appeared, flying low. Fire raged across its hull from the impact against the gates, and mocks scattered out of its path as it headed straight for them.
The Odysseus. Which meant—
Even from this distance, he recognized the familiar face peering down from the bridge.
Talia must have too because she gasped. “Jane!”
His elation turned to confusion. Jane was going too fast: No one could survive the impact.
“Run!” someone screamed, but the cry came too late. The old ship rammed into the side of the building with enough force to knock Will to the ground. Grinding shrieks of metal meeting stone clogged the air, the concussion rattling his bones. The eruption tore through the room, sending bodies flying and shrapnel bursting into the onlookers. Screams rent the air.
Will struggled to his feet, ears ringing, inky smoke pouring out in all directions. Ash caught in his hair and snowed around the stage. The mangled wreckage of the Odysseus had skidded to a stop twenty feet from the raised platform where he was meant to die, the fireball consuming the ship sizzling heat across Will’s skin and forcing everyone back. Without looking, Will knew Jane was gone.
No one could survive those flames, mock or human.
He shook off the shock, and his plan came roaring back into focus, burying the overwhelming pain of Jane’s death for later. Xander was on the other side of the stage, huddled with a group of mocks. Disgust surged through Will’s veins; the coward was hiding behind the injured.
Will leapt to the ground and into a sprint. Xander’s head snapped up, his eyes widening with recognition, but he didn’t have time to grab his blaster before Will barreled into him, scattering the injured mocks.
They slammed into the wall hard enough to crack the stone. A sick satisfaction came over Will as Xander groaned and went limp. The impact stunned him, though not enough to keep him from smashing his fist into Will’s cheek. Red burst inside his skull. He shook off the blow and landed a knee to Xander’s balls, kicking again as eight years of pent up rage released.
“Flesher bastard!” Xander howled, doubling over.
“You never used those anyway,” Will taunted, snatching the blaster and shoving the muzzle of the weapon against Xander’s pale forehead, metal clicking against metal. Xander froze, his lips curled in disgust and chest heaving. Black blood trickled from his lips.
With a grunt of rage, Will brought the blaster down over Xander’s temple. The whites of his eyes flashed as he slumped to the floor unconscious. Then Will shoved his blaster into his waistband, retrieved the penny Crayburn had given him, and flicked the coin onto his brother. “Tell Father he can have that back.”
Xander managed a groan.
“You’re lucky I need the charge,” Will called, darting back into the chaos to find Talia. Oily black smoke hung in sheets all around. His carbon-fiber lungs were much more efficient at filtering the smoke, but Talia’s would already be struggling for oxygen.
Still, for the first time since his capture, hope buoyed his steps and masked his body’s weariness. They had a chance, where five minutes ago they had none.
Their odds doubled when citizens flooded the hall from outside the gates, the glow of their blasters lighting up the darkness as they shot at the queen’s forces.
Will found himself cheering for the Alliance as he hurtled over the remains of a table cracking with fire and checked the stage. He bounded up the steps, blue streams of fire zipping above his head and forcing him to retreat. At the bottom of the stairs, he ducked and pivoted, getting off two rounds at a hunter. The muscled-up droid stumbled two steps before crashing sideways into the burning table, sending fireflies of flame whooshing up.
Will turned and caught sight of something—the quick flash of hair the color of the flames raging inside the hall. The flash came from the top of the fallen wall, a twenty-foot mound of broken stones. Through the smoke, he made out the princess half-climbing half-falling down the ivory debris darkened with bodies and smoke. She flicked her terrified gaze behind her as if someone gave chase, her lips parted and breath coming in ragged spurts.
Two hunters emerged from the pile of broken stones above. They leapt after the princess, sending huge slabs cascading around her. Dust clouds filled the air. Head still turned back to watch the hunters, she managed to make
it to the ground when something made her whip around, her bright hair flashing. Five small drones surrounded her, hovering ten feet out to form a circle. The queen’s drones. Wherever she’d gone, she was undoubtedly watching Talia.
Her gaze slid to him. Before he could call out, the drones began to vibrate. Then a boom reverberated through the destroyed hall as they all fired at once.
Brightness seared his vision, the impact from the blast stunning him.
Each drone had enough force to kill a human male; all five of them together created a massive blast so big it took out the two hunters behind Talia.
Will’s mouth parted, his cry a jagged rasp swallowed by the din of the stone rubble coming down. His mind screamed what his heart refused to hear: Even if Talia survived the concerted blow from the drones, the rubble sealed her fate.
Princess Talia Starchaser, the last of her dynasty, was dead.
Chapter 34
Talia
The moment Talia saw the Odysseus and realized what was happening, she shoved aside her sadness for Jane and darted across the stage. Talia needed the queen and her hunters to follow and give Will enough time to escape. The queen saw Talia run and shrieked, sending the hunters chasing after her. Catch me if you can, metal heads.
The ground smashed into Talia’s feet, knocking her off balance and jarring her teeth, but she braced along the side of the stage for support. A giant shadow swallowed the ambient light from the windows along the wall as the Odysseus closed in.
The bomb strapped to her waist came free in her hands. She hit the detonator, took a breath, and hurled the bomb onto the far side of the stage, away from Will.
Right as her explosive found its mark, landing at the feet of the pursuing hunters, the Odysseus hit. The impact rippled through her body and left her stunned, gasping for air. Darkness followed. Another explosion rocked the ground, and the Odysseus burst into flames that devoured everything within close range.
Oh, Jane.
Talia couldn’t bring herself to look at the bridge window as she slipped through the fleeing crowd. The Odysseus had taken out the entire wall of windows, and a tiny trickle of natural light from above made it through the haze. That, along with the orange light from the scattered fires, suffused the smoke into something almost beautiful—if their depths weren’t mined with screams.
“Jane . . . she’s gone,” Talia whispered as she darted into the chaos, hoping Lux could hear. Thank the stars for the smoke hiding Talia from the hunters. She could hear them behind, scouring the rubble, their heavy metal bodies smashing anything in their way. Each crash sent Talia scurrying faster through the maze of debris. Overturned tables, shattered chairs, broken piles of stone. Bodies.
Blaster fire erupted nearby, and a wave of dark smoke fell over her, the acrid smell of burning metal and fuel from the Odysseus searing her lungs. A fit of coughing wracked her body, and she yanked part of her shirt up to cover her mouth.
“We saw,” Lux finally responded, her voice thickened by grief. “She must have—Oh God, she must have thought it was the only way.”
“They’ll be looking for rebels outside. You and Leo get back to the Athena and wait for us.”
Talia’s earpiece went silent, and she could only assume the silence meant Lux received the order.
Finally, Talia found what she was looking for. The mountain of rubble had once been part of the building’s wall before the Odysseus destroyed it. Now, the stones formed a makeshift hill, supported against the ship, a dangerous, unstable structure with pipes and debris jutting out. Some parts were on fire. Others shifted into mini avalanches as she watched.
Steeling a breath, she clamored up the side, searching for steady handholds. Every time a rock shifted, her heart punched into her throat, but she made it to the top. At least up here near the opening created by the ship the smoke was thinner. As she doubled over to catch her breath, the sound of clattering stones caught her attention.
Talia glanced down to find hunters.
They flung themselves up with sheer force, their long arms giving them unnatural climbing strength as they gobbled the distance to reach her. They would be here in a few seconds.
Run! She leapt four feet down to an outcropping, but the stone gave way and she slid down the side, barely catching herself on a two-by-four. Splinters tore her fingers, the rocks scraping her back raw. Stone fell all around her as the hunters began their descent. She jumped again, falling into a slide that catapulted her to the ground. The smoke engulfed her—and she used that brief second to hit the button on the device at her wrist.
Tandy appeared, grinning with excitement. A surreal bit of happiness inside the horror.
“Ready?” Talia breathed, eyes stinging with smoke and sweat.
Tandy nodded and began to change, the smoke sifting through her as she morphed into Talia’s mirror image, right down to the disheveled shirt and wild, tangled auburn hair. Stars, if that’s what she looked like . . .
“Tell me I look pretty,” Tandy said, twirling with delight.
“Just like a princess.”
Talia slipped behind a huge piece of unbroken wall just as the smoke drifted, revealing her holo-image. She didn’t stay to watch what happened next, though the burst of fire and torrent of falling stones afterward gave her hope. The rebels were streaming through the cracks between the wall and the ship’s hull, and she blended in with them. One even gave her a cloak, and she used it to disguise her hair and face.
After all, she was dead now.
She found Will by the Odysseus’s nose, staring at the spot where she was supposed to have died. If she didn’t know by then the way he felt for her, the anguish twisting his face confirmed it.
“Will,” she whispered. His gaze flicked to her, his eyes glossy and unseeing. “Will, it’s me.”
Recognition dawned on his face the way a wave builds before crashing into the shore: slowly and then all at once. His mouth fell open, and he stumbled back into the charred metal hull of the ship. “You died. I saw you.”
“Apparently,” she said, taking his good arm, “I’m hard to kill. Now let’s go.”
He halted, glancing up at the Odysseus. A giant crater had destroyed most of the front end, fire still raging inside. Cracks and smoke veiled the windshield where Jane was last seen.
“She’s gone, Will,” Talia said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze. On the other side of the room, blasters made a chorus of battle. They needed to escape while the queen’s guards were distracted.
“I know.” Soot smeared across his forehead as he leaned it against the dented metal. “A good captain saves her crew, and that’s what you did, Jane. I’ll never forget.”
Talia touched his shoulder. “Will.”
He nodded and they slipped through the cracks into the light, fighting a tide of rebels running inside to join the battle. Before she could reflect on the sheer number of rebels willing to join the cause, the chaos outside the building greeted them.
The courtyard was pandemonium. Crowds of mocks dressed for the occasion clogged the gravel and cobblestone paths that were once filled with beauty, more pouring in every second from the fifty-foot hole in the north wall made by the Odysseus. The queen’s soldiers, dressed in olive-green uniforms, ran blindly through the confused onlookers, searching for rebels. Bodies littered the landscaped grounds, many trampled and covered in black, goopy blood.
Will took her hand, and they fled through the maze of humans and mocks. The soldiers didn’t even look at them once. The outer gates to the palace had been broken up as well, crushed by the influx of panicked onlookers, and Talia and Will traveled quickly.
When they exited the final gate, she halted, her breath catching. All the bridges were jammed full with people trying to flee. She scanned the perimeter of the translucent wall on the outer rim, searching for the last part of the plan.
A smile erupted on her face as she spotted a Predator-Class Mig-12 Starfighter, the same model she’d flown years ago at the Academy. Sunl
ight swam along its sleek surface, painting the metal a rose-gold tint.
“Dorian came through,” she murmured.
Will’s eyebrows flicked up in appreciation. “Dorian got that for you?”
“I didn’t think he could.” When she’d asked for an escape ship, she mentioned the Predator-Class Mig-12 as a joke, not thinking he could actually get her one.
“The little thief is resourceful like that. C’mon.”
While everyone else crowded toward the bridge exits, Talia and Will cut toward the fighter jet. As promised, it was giftwrapped for them with unlocked doors and the keys inside. Will whistled and automatically slid into the pilot’s seat . . . then he focused on his missing lower arm as if just now remembering, a frown overtaking his crooked grin.
“I can fly it,” she offered, a bit irked he assumed this beautiful piece of machinery was for him.
“Probably best.” Disappointment weighed down his voice, and he gave the controls a last longing look before shifting to the co-pilot’s seat in the back. A part of her hesitated; she hadn’t flown one of these beauties in years, literally, and Will was never meant to be a co-pilot.
Then again, neither was she.
Talia took her place in the front and fell into the routine of getting this baby ready for takeoff. One hundred years hadn’t dampened her memory of what to do, and she switched into auto-pilot as she ticked off the procedures. When the harness clicked tight over her chest, a shudder of excitement whorled beneath her ribs.
Stars, this feels amazing.
Behind her, Will tapped his fingers against the metal lip of the window impatiently, but Talia wouldn’t be rushed. This was her thing.
Once everything was in order, she hit the starter, the powerful engine growling to life. Now that was a gorgeous sound. She released a pent-up breath from her chest and rapped the console for luck. “Ready to get this bug smasher airborne and back to your ship, Captain?”
A pause. “What ship? We left the Odysseus in pieces at the palace.”
