Present day
“Dinnae do this tae me, ye temperamental piece of silt,” Clo cursed.
Last night was a late one. Chrysaor had given up yesterday, and Clo had been dragged out of bed closer to midnight than dawn. The weather had been humid and hot, and the water system was completely bogged. She’d spent an hour cursing the mechanic who had let it go dry.
But that was the resistance—never enough of anything to go around, equipment held together with little more than tape, strategic welding, and a prayer. Clo had managed to fix the damn thing and the ship had taken off for its mission. Less than five hours of sleep and she was back at it again.
Every pore was drenched in sweat, sand, and engine oil. If she got hungry, she could probably cook an egg on the flagstones. Clo had been working on this engine all morning beneath the Novan sun. The sand dunes rising around the compound were a gradient of orange, yellow, and red ablaze in the light.
It was another world to the damp, marshy swamplands where Clo had grown up. She never thought she’d miss the smell of sulfur, peat, and stagnant water. Sometimes, the resistance itself seemed as dried out as this empty planet they’d claimed as their own—a movement that could crumble into dust.
Clo wiped the sweat from her forehead. The Valkyrie X-501 in front of her should be flying like a dream, but the damn ignition wasn’t lighting up the engine.
Ugh. “Useless,” she muttered.
Maybe if she changed tactics, cajoled instead of insulted, the thing would listen to her.
“We need yer wings, my snell one.” With only the metal of the spaceship to hear, Clo always slipped back into the Snarl dialect of her youth. “Wouldn’t ye rather be out among the stars than mired on this blarin’ rock?”
A frustrated curse drew Clo’s attention.
On the next landing pad, Elva battled her own engine. Like Clo, she worked alone—but unlike Clo, it wasn’t by choice. Elva’s skin was stippled with swirls that branded her as different from Clo or the other Tholosians at Nova. The markings fell down Elva’s neck like stripes and curled around her collarbones. She had told Clo that the pattern followed the lines of cell development in the skin.
Clo had become very familiar with those dappled marks one night in her bunk. Their intimacy hadn’t repeated itself, instead giving way to an easy friendship. One mechanic to another.
Elva was one of the few Evoli in the resistance. Her people had been at war with the Tholosians for over five hundred years, the two empires competing for resources across their separate galaxies as their populations expanded. With the Tholosian resource-rich planet Charon experiencing a mass die-off as a result of an asteroid strike, the Empire’s food stores were strained to support all their citizens. They were desperate to conquer the farming planets owned by the Evoli.
Elva’s knowledge was vital to the resistance; the Evoli tech she wove into the machines made them sing. Though the Tholosians at Nova had been deprogrammed of the Oracle’s influence, superstition ran deep, and some still whispered that the Evoli were majoi, especially their leaders, the Oversouls. Sorcerers that knew your every thought and emotion. They claimed no secret was safe. That they’d eat children, sucking the marrow from their bones.
Elva didn’t even eat meat.
“Elva!” Clo called. “Can I borrow your welder? Mine’s sunk!”
The woman nodded, crossing over to pass it to Clo. The sun highlighted the darker dapples in her red-gold hair, throwing her features into sharp relief. They were a pretty people, the Evoli. Taller, almost ethereal, even when covered in engine grease. Unfair.
“You need a hand?” Elva asked, her Evoli accent soft.
“Nah, I got it. Just need to threaten her a bit more.”
Elva flashed a grin and loped back to her work.
Clo reconnected the wires, even though she’d already done it three times this morning. Maybe if she tied them up extra tight. Her fingertips were callused and nicked with scars from endless hours in machines. Clo climbed out of the engine and swung herself into the cockpit, grunting as too much weight hit her bad leg. She had a hole in the left knee of her trousers—Kyla would be right brackish when she saw it—and the dull silver of her prosthetic caught the artificial lights. She rubbed the part where skin met metal. She could never tell how much pain was physical and how much mental.
Clo started the flight sequence, whispering a halfhearted prayer to whatever gods were listening—if any—then tapped her left shoulder, an old good-luck movement from her childhood. She’d tried to translate it to her commander once. Closest she got was: Never let the water level of the swamp go above yer shoulder, or ye’ll be head-deep in shite.
The engine fired to life. And then it purred.
“Yes, my beaut!” Clo called, slapping the walls.
While the spacecraft quivered, she tapped her mech cuff and ran diagnostics, watching the readings with bated breath. Green lights. Atmosphere fully regulated. The temperature cooled from the inside of an oven to perfectly pleasant. Clo could smell herself, like old cooked onions. At that moment, she didn’t care. Her ship worked.
She tapped out a message to the guard at headquarters that she was giving the Valkyrie a test run and got the all clear. She fired up the launch sequence and the Valkyrie gathered speed, skimming along the fire-gold sand before swerving up, up, rising above the ocher and brilliant orange mountains of Nova and into the purple of the sky.
Clo let out a whoop, hands dancing across the controls, and the ship moved like an extension of herself. She sluiced through the atmosphere and up into the stars. Nova grew smaller in the distance.
It was only up there, in the darkness of space, that she felt truly at home. More than the old Snarled swamp of her childhood, more than the sweltering Novantae desert. One circuit of the planet, and then she’d touch back down and make sure everything was still functioning. Or maybe she could chance two orbits. A little more fun.
Clo probably should have shrugged into a pressure suit in case the ship’s atmosphere gave up, but she’d been too impatient. Kyla had basically grounded her since she lost her leg. No more reconnaissance, no more stealing ships from Tholosians. Much as she loved fixing engines, she was bogging bored.
She was a quarter around Nova when she got the call. “Cloelia,” Kyla said, voice crackling over the ship comms. “I’m switching over to Pathos. Answer it this time.”
Clo had a habit of ignoring her Pathos when she was working on engines, even though Kyla yelled at her not to. <Hey, Kyla,> Clo said, cautiously, all traces of Snarl gone from her voice. She sounded just like any other vial-grown Imperial. She shouldn’t be in trouble. She’d gotten the all clear.
<Touch back down. We need you at headquarters.>
<Right now?> Clo asked, fighting down annoyance. No second orbit for her.
<I have a mission for you.>
Clo’s pulse sped up. <About time. I’ll just finish my circuit.>
Kyla let out a short laugh. <We’ll see how happy you are when you find out what it is. Have fun.>
Clo’s hands tightened on the controls. From above, the planet looked even more like fire. The oranges and rust of the mountains, the yellow sand. All of it interspersed with the dusky blue of small, rare pockets of water dotted along the planet’s surface.
Most of Nova was practically uninhabitable due to the massive storms that covered almost the entire planet’s surface in dust. Novan headquarters were nestled in a valley surrounded by high desert mountains, protected from the brunt of the winds. Even then, the occasional storm rocked the facility. The resistance was forced to pump most of their water from deep underground.
A tiny, overheated planet in a forgotten corner of the galaxy. The stronghold of the resistance, hidden in the outermost quadrant of the Iona Galaxy—still Tholosian territory, but barely acknowledged. Full of stubborn, fierce fighters, determined to be a thorn in the Empire’s side.
There were no illusions on Nova. It would take time and effort to topple the Imperial family. But maybe, if the resistance grew and flourished, they could make a difference. Skirmish by skirmish, ship by ship, soldier by soldier freed of the Oracle’s programming.
One. At. A. Time.
And maybe, she thought wryly, long after my aged corpse is launched intae space, those shitegoblins will be off the throne.
Clo landed right where she’d started. The Valkyrie X-501 set down like a dream. As she swung out of the cockpit, she uselessly patted at the shirt of her oil-splattered uniform. There was sand in the creases of the fabric, and her buttons were tarnished despite a polish from the harsh wind. She looked a damn mess.
<Do I have time to wash and change clothes?> Clo asked Kyla as she motioned for Felix, one of the other mechanics, to bring the Valkyrie back into the hangar.
<No,> Kyla said.
<Seriously? I stink. Like sweat and oil.>
Clo could practically hear Kyla’s annoyed sigh. <Now, Cloelia.>
She broke into a reluctant run, grumbling at the use of her full name. Only her mother had called her Cloelia, and only when she had been well salted with her daughter.
Clo opened the barracks door and stamped in, shaking sand from her boots. Sher and Kyla stood together; this must be one Avern of a mission for both Novan co-commanders to be there. They were often apart—training recruits, checking ongoing missions, or surveying their growing spy network.
Clo’s face softened at seeing Sher. He’d been away too long. Sher was technically her commanding officer; he’d been the one who plucked her out of the swamp water and given her something to believe in. Though she’d never tell him, she thought of him as a sort of older brother or uncle. The closest thing she had to family.
Sher was tall and lean, muscled from his past training as a soldier for the Empire. His dark brown hair was in desperate need of a cut and his stubble was longer than usual, meaning he’d probably been at some silthole of a forgotten outpost for the past month. His face was still unlined, his skin a light, golden brown, but he was older than he appeared—one of the first cohorts of soldiers completely genetically engineered and programmed for fighting. He’d been among the only survivors of that particular crop of infants, along with Kyla.
Kyla stood taller than her co-commander, even in flat-heeled boots. They were genetic siblings—born from vials within minutes of each other. After being forced to present as male during her time in the military, Kyla transitioned after escaping Tholosian rule fifteen years ago with Sher. Her skin was a warm brown, and her hair fell in long, black curls that no pin or hair tie could tame. What always struck Clo first was Kyla’s eyes: black as ink and so piercing, they made even the toughest soldier squirm.
“Okay,” Clo said. “I’m here. Hey, Kyla. Welcome back, Sher. And—wait a minute—” She reached for his face—an insubordinate move for anyone but her. “Look at that fuzz! You trying to grow a full beard?”
Sher dodged her hand. “Shut up, Alesca.”
“You are! Look, how patchy.”
“I was going for distinguished.”
“Of course you were.” She leaned in to him. “Distinguished. I’ll bet you’re trying to look all serious and broody for the troops, too.”
Kyla hid a smile.
Sher rolled his eyes and gave Clo a side-on hug—then immediately wrinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?”
Clo glared at Kyla. “See? What did I tell you? She wouldn’t even let me wash, Sher. I’ve been at the engines since dawn.”
“This is more important,” Kyla said, serious again. “Before I brief you, I’m going to need you to remember your training: keep a clear head; stay calm; don’t act without thinking; don’t—”
A throat cleared behind her. Clo twisted, taking in the small woman in fragmented pieces before her mind put them together. Delicate features, deceptively doll-like, skin too pale for the harsh desert, hair night-black. But those eyes weren’t really green.
The last time Clo had seen that face up close, those eyes had blared a luminous gold. The cold, brutish expression was just the same.
If I ever see ye ’gain, I’ll drain ye t’ the dregs, Clo had vowed the last time they met.
She felt Kyla’s hand clamp hard on her wrist before Clo’s hand could stray to the blaster at her belt.
Clo hated Eris. She hated everything the other woman stood for. Clo hated that she’d been drawn into Eris’s lies, that she’d let herself care for a murderer. No matter what good Eris did for the resistance, it would never erase that stain of what she’d done before.
And Clo hated Eris, most of all, for saving her life.