One year ago
“I’ve got another mission for us.” The breathless voice made Clo glance up with a grin. Eris was in the doorway of Clo’s quarters at Nova, her hair messy from the run clear across headquarters to find Clo.
“You’re back,” Clo said. “I thought you’d be off for a few moons, stealing ships and kicking ass.”
“I prefer to steal ships and kick ass with you, though.”
Clo’s grin widened. It’d taken her ages to convince Kyla to let her go on a proper mission after Sher had dragged her back from Fortuna, traumatized and broken but alive. Sher had stayed with Clo as she healed from her wounds, comforted her when she woke up in the middle of the night with nightmares of fleeing Prince Damocles. It was Sher who lured her back to training, sweating out all her fear and anger and heartache.
When the worst of the grief had passed, Kyla had eased Clo back into work gently—surveillance, reconnaissance, the occasional tampering with a ship’s engine while planetside.
Six months before, Kyla had paired her with Eris for the first time. The other woman had been quiet and intense when she first came to Nova—a deprogrammed soldier from the front lines, Kyla said. She kept her head down, did her job, but didn’t offer up much in the way of herself or her past. That’d suited Clo well enough. She could get plenty sparkish herself when people pried too much into her background.
They’d found a good balance, the two of them. Clo could count on Eris not to do anything stupid that would get them killed. Quick with a blade, but didn’t like Mors guns. Kept to her silly anachronistic weapon, but Eris was sharp enough with it.
The others at Nova found Eris odd—the way she took everything in without blinking, how she kept to herself. How she spoke in curt orders. She wasn’t making friends, or at least not with anyone else.
The first few times, Clo had knocked on Eris’s door, holding up a bottle of moonshine from the mechanic’s quarters. They’d drunk in silence, mostly, watching the sunset over the golden sands of Nova. Each visit, each bottle, loosened a few more secrets. When the bottle was nearly empty, Eris once mentioned that the Empire had taken her siblings. Her whole family was nothing but a sacrifice. Clo had given the barest sketch of what happened to her in the slums. They’d clinked their glasses and killed the rest of the bottle. Let loose a few more details of the lives they’d left behind.
Clo would wake up with a sore head but the strange pride that Eris had chosen her. Before Clo quite realized it, Eris was her closest friend on that desert rock.
“Show me,” Clo said, gesturing to Eris’s tablet.
Eris settled beside Clo at her bare desk and tapped a few icons until she pulled up the mission particulars. “Challenging,” Eris murmured.
“My favorite,” they said at the same time, smiling at each other.
Kyla was going to drop them straight into enemy territory.
Their task was clear. Land on Sennett. Blow up the factory that processed parts for a large percentage of starships in this quarter of the galaxy. That would slow down the Empire’s ability to send out ship after ship of soldiers throughout the Empire. It was an advantage the Novantae needed.
Clo had never been to Sennett, but that wasn’t saying much. She’d barely been anywhere that wasn’t a complete silthole backwater planet. Yet there on Sennett, everything was clean, despite the crowds. The streets were tidy and swept.
Still too fluming hot.
Clo waded through people, the air so thick and stifling that she fought the urge to pant with every breath. Her baggy shirt and tall boots—both worn to cover the Mors tucked into the small of her back and a few knives and lockpicks at her ankles—only made the humidity worse.
More than half of Sennett was covered in dense rainforests. The amount of foliage meant lots of cover, yet also plenty of opportunities for others to creep up on them. At least the Tholosians, in their thirst for draining the bogging galaxy dry, had killed most of the large predators on the planet. Most. Clo loved how the air smelled, though. Loamy, dark, and dangerous.
Their target city was Alina. A large swathe of jungle had been flattened, the city built from black metal, studded with the bones of the large, catlike aliens that had been there before the Tholosian conquest. Tall buildings of black and white, with curling green vines like clasping fingers twined along the sides. The streets were narrow and high, blocking out the sunlight, almost purplish with the haze of the atmosphere. The city projected countless moving advertisements onto the sides of the buildings, the images dancing in the gloom. They praised Sennett’s famed fruits and vegetables as jewels taken from the black earth.
Peppered through those swirling colors were the reminders that the planet was loyal to the Tholosian Empire. The double scythes, the dark circle between them. The icons of the Emperor, his face smooth and serene, and of General Damocles, the new Heir Apparent. The memorials to the former Heir Apparent, Princess Discordia of Tholos. Sleek blond hair that fell to her ribs, pale skin, the same royal golden eyes she’d shared with her father and brother, narrowed in the certainty that the entire galaxy would someday be hers.
But Princess Discordia was dead and gone, and Prince Damocles would take the throne and her galaxy instead.
Good riddance.
One less member of the royal family. Though her brother was, if anything, worse. Heir Apparent Damocles was a slimy, useless muskeg lag, to use one of her favorite insults from her childhood. Unlike his sister, he hadn’t earned his place, the galaxy whispered. Damocles was not loved by the people, and he knew it.
They passed an eight-foot icon of him, gazing down his aquiline nose at his subjects as they scurried through the dusk. His eyes shone like coins. He was even paler than his sister, his skin cream against his platinum hair. If these icons had bothered with accuracy, his hands would be covered in blood rather than so white and clean.
He’d once tried and failed to murder Clo. The memories of Jurran swirled up like a murky whirlpool. Her throat closed. Dinnae think of Briggs. Dinnae think ’bout warm blood freezing on the hangar floor. Dinnae think of those months on Fortuna. No.
A few gerulae emerged from the buildings to scrub the already-spotless icon. Clo had only seen them from afar; they weren’t common on backwater planets. Gerulae were convicted criminals who had been reprogrammed so extensively by the Oracle that they no longer had thoughts of their own. They existed as drudges, performing menial work throughout the Tholosian empire.
There were other classes of cohorts; the aedifex were the architects and makers of the Empire. Opifex were the artisans and craftsmen, including courtesans. Militus were soldiers, commanders, killers. Servitors for servants. Clo had found it deeply unsettling when she’d first realized just how deeply the Empire engineered people down through their bones.
Tholosian propaganda claimed the gerulae class was a second chance for those convicted of the petty crime of acting against their initial birth programming. Sometimes, it was for something as little as refusing a superior, or stealing food when hungry. Clo was one of the few born without an implant. If she’d been caught thieving as a child, they’d likely have just killed her. Maybe that would have been a kinder fate.
“Clo.” Eris’s voice startled her. “Come on.”
Eris ignored the gerulae, as if they were no more interesting than the stone behind them. She wore a long hooded coat to cover her concealed weapons. It must have been boiling. Her hair stuck to her temples with sweat, but otherwise, she seemed unfazed by the planet and the Tholosian propaganda swirling around them in the haze.
Clo resisted the urge to take another second and spit at Damocles’s feet. She passed Eris, letting nothing show on her face.
“You all right?” Eris asked.
“Fine. Just some memories best left forgotten.”
“I have plenty of those.” Eris reached out, softly grasping Clo’s shoulder. “The sooner we’re done, the sooner we’re gone. I have a bottle of brandy back at base with our name on it.”
Clo nodded, one hand straying to the small of her back.
The factory wasn’t far from the city center. Plumes of blue smoke rose above the streets of Alina. They passed the market, and the air filled with the scent of ginger and other spices. Clo’s mouth watered. After a childhood of stolen scraps or bog berries foraged in the marshlands, she was always hungry.
Eris walked so smoothly that she disappeared into the crowd. Clo found herself craning her head before Eris startled her.
The other woman lifted her chin. “Stop staring at the food.” Her voice was quiet but commanding. “I need you to focus.”
Clo ground her teeth together. They worked well on missions, but Eris could throw barbs at Clo as easily as the others at Nova, unaware how they could sting. Eris might try to hide her past, but her amount of confidence—that unafraid way of walking through streets—spoke of a childhood with money.
They circled the factory. Shift was over, the workers streaming from the doors. Machines would be left to do some of the simpler tasks, and the Oracle was always there, the ever-watchful eye of the Empire. A program threaded through the fabric of the Empire, reporting back to the Archon. Ensuring order, compliance.
The Oracle was considered to be so powerful that they referred to the program as One. The Oracle was more than a thing, an artificial intelligence. One was an entity.
The Oracle’s programming was downloaded into the brain of every citizen engineered and bred by the Empire—and if that person’s will proved stronger than most, the Oracle controlled motor functions through a tiny implant embedded in the base of the skull, close to the brainstem. The Novantae had their work cut out for them trying to undo One’s influence. Deprogramming was messy at best, fatal at worst.
The Oracle originated in the palace on Tholos but was everywhere. One was the AI on all ships. One was on every Tholosian planet. One was in every soldier’s mind, keeping them loyal. One of the many, people would whisper of the Oracle, in corners where the cameras could not see or hear.
And here were two members of the resistance, hoping to trick the Oracle into not noticing them.
Eris reached under her coat and took out the explosive. It was such a small thing. Clo didn’t think it looked dangerous enough to kill one of the rats in the Snarl, but appearances could be deceiving. If they miscalled this, they could kill people. That didn’t seem to bother Eris. Shouldn’t it?
<How close do we have to get?> Clo asked on their closed Pathos loop.
<A bit farther and we’ll throw it from there,> Eris replied. <Then we’ll get the seven devils out and watch the fireworks.>
<We’re going to . . . throw a bomb?>
Eris gave something resembling a smile in the growing darkness. She looked feral, her white canines pointed. She was pretty, but something about her face was too symmetrical. Her green eyes were dark pools in this light. <Do you have a better idea?>
<Not throwing it?>
<Fine, I’ll place it down like it’s a newgrown right out of the vat,> Eris said. <Then I’ll set off the pulse to kill the factory’s power. We’ll have about five minutes to get this as close as we can and bail. You can hang back, if you want. It’s a risk. I’ve got this.>
<No chance,> Clo said, flashing her own wild grin. Eris returned it, and Clo felt a flush of camaraderie.
They picked their way through the foliage. Clo took the explosive from Eris. She set it down gently in a small hollow in the ground, nestled among the twining roots of a tree with a yellow cast to its bark.
Crack. A footstep breaking a twig near them.
“Shit,” Eris breathed.
Both women stumbled into the underbrush near the un-activated bomb. Clo tripped in the dark, smacking into Eris. The other woman hissed.
Two Tholosian guards made their rounds. Clo fought down a surge of panic. They’d plotted the guards’ routes—they should have had ten minutes at least without having to worry, and Eris’s initial electromag pulse had taken out any nearby cameras.
A horrible thought pulled at her like quicksand: is this a trap?
Clo could make out Eris crawling through the underbrush. She was low to the ground, inching toward the explosive as the guards headed away. If Eris activated it now, those two men would die.
Clo wished she could turn off the ability to care, like Eris seemed to. They couldn’t save every guard programmed with loyalty to the Empire. They would still kill Clo and Eris without blinking.
All’s fair in war.
Eris reached out and pressed the small button on the side of the sphere.
<Go!> she yelled in Clo’s mind, crawling back. <Four minutes and thirty six seconds.>
But in the darkness, Eris’s face had changed.
Clo stopped, fascinated and horrified, as the features she knew so well amended subtly. It took her a second to realize what had happened: shifter technology glitched during electromag pulses.
Eris wore a false face.
And Clo had caught a glimpse of her true one.
The other woman’s hair was still dark, but blond showed at the roots. The shifter had altered the bones of her features, the effect melting away to reveal their true shape: wider nose, blunter chin, high cheeks and brow. The most startling difference was her eyes—they glowed yellow-gold, luminous in the darkness. Gold as royalty. The spit of the icons that dotted on every street corner on Sennett.
That face was blasted across the galaxy.
Princess Discordia had infiltrated the resistance. The ultimate spy in their midst. Everything Clo and Sher and Kyla and all the other rebels who risked death to break free of the Empire—they would all be dead.
And Clo had defended her. Drunk with her.
Become friends with her.
The Empire took my siblings, Eris had said, the neck of the bottle clinking against the glass as she refilled it.
She’d neglected to mention that she had done most of the killing.
Eris read the change in Clo, but she wasn’t quick enough. Clo had the Mors from the small of her back pressed against the princess’s head before she could blink. Gods, there was four minutes before the bomb went off. What was she supposed to do now?
One shot. Discordia was supposed to be dead anyway. One shot, then Clo could run and disappear. Worst case, she blew herself up and died a godsdamned hero.
But she didn’t want to be a hero. She just wanted to live.
“Let me go,” Eris—Discordia—hissed. “We have to get out of here. There’s no time.”
Clo hesitated.
Discordia jabbed her elbow into Clo’s stomach. Clo wheezed, her grip on the Mors loosening. Discordia ducked and sprinted away from the bomb. Clo followed. She gained speed as she moved through the tangled underbrush as easily as she’d darted through the slums of her homeland.
She caught Discordia, tackling her to the ground. She shoved the Mors into the small of Discordia’s back. Were they far enough? How much time?
“Shoot me, then,” Discordia’s voice was low, almost a growl. She still sounded so much like Eris. “Kill the person who’s best placed to help take down Tholos.”
“No royal would turn their back on the Empire. Especially the Heir.”
Discordia’s expression went hard. “Well, I did.”
“You’re lying,” Clo said, her finger tightening on the trigger. “Kyla—”
“Kyla knows,” Discordia said. “So does Sher. Both of them helped me stage my death.”
A rushing in Clo’s ears. They knew, they knew. And Kyla had kept it from her. Sher had kept it from her.
“You lied to me.”
“Clo, there’s no—”
A warning beep blared in the dark. Discordia turned toward Clo, eyes wide. Clo had thought they were far enough away. But if they heard—
A boom, so loud it reverberated in her chest.
The world burned bright as the flames of the Avern.
Clo went flying and slammed into the trunk of a tree. Leaves, debris, and heavy branches rained down. She couldn’t think. Her ears rang, the world roaring like spaceship engines. She saw only the brightness of fire, then the warm, almost-red blackness. She let out a moan. Everything hurt.
Movement above her. Clo couldn’t turn her head.
“Come t’kill me proper?” Clo managed to mumble through swollen, bloody lips, Imperial accent forgotten in pain.
Princess Discordia crept closer, her face illuminated by the dying fires. She was lacerated with small cuts that were already healing over. Nanites like that were only for royalty.
The shifter had half-kicked back into place, her features a blend of the Eris she knew and the Discordia she feared. One iris was still green as forest moss, the other luminous as a sun. They were steady, no ocular dilations to indicate activated programming. Royalty, like Clo, were not influenced by the Oracle.
Which meant that every life taken by Discordia had been a choice.
“Tempting, after what you just did.” A pause, her mismatched eyes flickering down. “Your left leg is trapped by debris. You wouldn’t want to see it. By all rights, I should leave you here. You let emotion overwhelm you, and you jeopardized this mission.”
“D’it, then,” Clo said through a mouthful of blood. She’d lost a tooth or three. “Leave me or kill me.”
Discordia gave a frustrated huff. “You’re not going to thank me for this.” She rummaged beneath her oversized coat, bringing out a large, very sharp knife.
That was how Clo would end, then. Cut open, her blood feeding the twining vines beneath her. No marshland burial for her.
Discordia made an incision along Clo’s upper thigh, and Clo hissed in a breath. One more stab of pain on top of so much more.
Discordia sliced her own wrist and pressed their wounds together.
“Whit’re ye doin’?” Clo asked, consciousness beginning to blur around the edges. She felt weak, floating. She’d lost a lot of blood.
“The nanites will stay localized for a few minutes.” Discordia took off her belt, tying it tightly above the shallow gash. “They’ll help.”
“Oh, no,” Clo said as her mind worked through Discordia’s plan. “No, no.” A futile wriggle. She was stuck.
Discordia leaned close again. “Do you want to die here, in the dirt, your bones left for the bugs? Do you want this to be your last day in the universe?” She didn’t blink. Clo didn’t see Discordia in that gaze.
“No,” Clo whispered again, the word catching on a sob.
“All right. Bite down on this.” Eris shoved her scarf into Clo’s mouth. “For what it’s worth, I befriended you for real. And I have chosen this side. I’m not a spy. I don’t care whether or not you believe me.”
Eris brought the knife down, her strength enough to break through the bone.
Clo screamed through the gag, the pain taking over every cell in her body. She spit out the gag, panting. She wanted to tear off her own skin to make the pain stop.
“If I ever see ye ’gain, I’ll drain ye t’ the dregs,” Clo managed with the last of her breath before all went dark as the void.