Present day
Eris led Clo down the hallway, their footsteps quiet on the rubber floors. She knew what they were risking, staying aboard like this, but Eris was never one to give up easily. Kyla trusted her with ITI missions for one reason: because if she ever got caught, Eris had been trained never to give up her secrets. She’d die first—she’d kill first. Without hesitation.
Yet Clo wouldn’t be able to withstand the torturers. Did she know what she might face?
“We should leave,” Clo said. “You don’t even know who murdered those guards out there, and the backup generator is going to turn on soon. We need to be on our ship.”
“I know that.” Eris’s impatience sharpened her voice to a knife.
“Didn’t you take images of the cargo?”
“There was no chance.”
They passed another guard slumped on the floor. Three shots to the torso, one to the head. Military style.
Eris used to kill like that—back when her father forced her to play executioner. Clean, simple, no fuss. The Mors left barely any blood. It was so easy to forget the dead when they didn’t bleed. When she switched to her old RX blaster or her little wicked blade, it forced her to acknowledge them, take responsibility for her sacrifices.
Eris stepped over the next body. Clo flinched at the pool of blood on the floor. Eris took in the way a small blade had ripped through the gap in his uniform just above his neck. How he lay on his stomach, head to one side, with his fingers curled up as if in supplication. But he had been granted no mercy; his face was a mass of blood, torn flesh, and flecks of broken bone.
“One of yours, I take it,” Clo said, tightly.
“One of mine,” Eris confirmed, gripping her necklace.
“Doesn’t it ever affect you?” Clo made a sound in her throat.
Eris couldn’t let it. She couldn’t. When the God of Death chose his favorites, he expected them to deliver. Even though she had fled her life, her destiny, she could only deny him so long. Sher and Kyla never understood. Clo definitely did not. Killing had been bred into Eris. She’d murdered her first few siblings on the planet they’d just fled, and she’d only grown better at granting death since.
“I pray over them,” Eris replied. “I always give them last rites. That’s all I can do.”
Eris hadn’t had time to pray or hide the body before she’d heard the sizzle of Morsfire. She slid her fingertips across the scythe around her neck and thought the quiet prayer she’d whispered over him, over all of her victims.
Sleep, and may the God of Death take you in His embrace, and guide you to the seven levels of Avern . . .
Clo’s mouth formed the words of the prayer silently, even though they both know she believed in nothing but the blackness of the abyss.
The echoing trill of another Morshot interrupted last rites. Another, closer. Firing on a ship was dangerous. Usually, the blasts weren’t strong enough to pierce the hold, and the shields would seal any punctures, but the ship was powered down. No shields.
“That’s near the bridge,” Clo said.
“Shh.” Eris paused, listening. “Surveillance is offline, and without it, they can’t figure out who hit them with a pulse. We’re fine for now.”
“Fine?” Clo let out a low, short laugh and gestured to the dead soldier. “You’re sluiced. I should have left you here and told Kyla you died from your own stubbornness.”
“Stop whining and walk. I’ll protect your delicate ass from danger.”
Once, before Sennett, this would have been teasing banter between them, but anger and resentment bubbled beneath. She shouldn’t miss being able to tease someone. It’d been a year; the delicate friendship they’d had had ended with a lie, a knife, and blood.
Eris strode down the hall, and Clo’s limping, uneven footsteps followed.
“I don’t want to die because of you,” Clo muttered.
“Clo. If anyone is going to kill you”—she jerked the door open—“it’s going to be me. Now get inside.”
Eris shut the door behind them. Though just another storage hull, the Empire never spared details or expense in its design. How many times had she seen that depiction of the third Archon fearlessly conquering the planet Palatine? Palatine had been populated by aliens with long, sinuous rills that propelled their slight bodies through the air. The Empire had taken the planet, terraformed it for humans, and decorated the exterior of its buildings from the delicate bones of their victims. Like so many planets before, like so many planets after.
Tholos always claimed the conquered aliens were not sentient. Eris had been so young when she’d learned that was another lie of the Empire—that most of the ones she’d killed had pleaded for their lives in the only languages they knew.
Eris was responsible for so much pain; she knew that even as her father had told her it was all for Tholosian victory.
Every room on a Tholosian ship was intended to evoke her father’s sense of patriotism and Imperial glory—at least on the surface. Its second purpose was to make sure every spacecraft, room, and building in the Empire had images to constantly re-trigger the Oracle’s programming in its citizens. These were the images uploaded into their brain implants every night, depicted on walls so they were inescapable for those with enough natural resistance to have their implants illegally removed.
Eris turned away, tamping down the traitorous remnants of pride from those images of her ancestors’ conquests. As royalty, she’d escaped the Oracle’s programming, but that didn’t mean Tholosian propaganda didn’t leave its own marks. It means nothing, she told herself. Don’t forget Xander. Never forget Xander. Don’t—
“Holy silt,” Clo breathed beside her. “Is that the Legate?”
Eris forced herself to look at the body. The fine clothing of gold, black, and silver. Those gleaming boots. That flawless, shining hair missing its pounded-gold circlet. It was a few feet away, crushed. The gaping red-black of his cut throat, the cooling blood already congealing on the metal floor.
“Whoever took the ship was willing to risk murdering a diplomat,” Eris said, keeping her voice cool, detached.
“Evoli?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. They may not be at peace with Tholosians, but relations have been relatively stable since the Battle of the Garnet.”
“Yeah? Didn’t your da just lose most of his agriculture when a giant fluming asteroid crashed into one of his planets? Tholosians are always fighting war over more resources.”
Eris let out a dry laugh. “Fair enough. But losing Charon doesn’t explain why his Legate is dead. The Evoli are fierce fighters, but it’s always been in self-defense. The Oversouls don’t start war.”
“Then we have to leave,” Clo said. “The last thing we need is to be caught in the middle of whatever this is.” Clo’s gaze flicked upward. “Where are the killers?”
“Hopefully, distracted enough not to notice the two unexpected stowaways checking out whatever was worth murdering Legate Atkis.” Eris gestured to the storage containers.
“Kyla said they’re probably weapons. I’ve decided I like that answer, so let’s go. The mission is sunk.”
Eris gave Clo an irritated look. “The Legate refused to let me in here. He wouldn’t do that if they were just standard weapons, not during a routine inspection. He must have come down to protect whatever is in these containers and then—” She drew a line across her throat with a finger.
Clo let out a breath and shoved the heavy lid off one of the containers with a small grunt. Alarms blared, high and piercing. Clo clapped her hands over her ears until Eris shot the speaker. Her ears still rang in the heavy silence.
Eris grimaced. “That was—”
Clo’s mech cuff vibrated. She twisted it, eyes going blank as the ocular display synced to her Pathos. “Reseal it,” Clo told Eris sharply. “Whatever’s in there is setting off the hazard detector.”
“Does it say why?”
Clo scowled at the cuff and tapped it. “No.”
“Then so what? Your suit has protection.” Eris plucked a pair of gloves out of her pocket and put them on. “I’m just getting a closer look, then we can go.”
Eris reached in and pulled out what looked, at first glance, like a chunk of silverite, a gray-colored mineral they used back at Nova in refractory material at headquarters. Only this was prettier, more iridescent. A meteorite of some sort? Eris twisted it back and forth, letting it catch the light.
“What is that?”
“Not sure,” Eris murmured. “I was expecting something more exciting.”
Lips pressed together, she peered around the storage hull before taking her small tablet out of her pocket. The screen fuzzed and then flickered off. Eris hit the power button a few more times, but it stayed dark.
“I’d wondered why there were no camera drones in here,” she said. “Whatever this stuff is, it makes surveillance glitch. We’ll have to take a sample with us.” Eris wrapped the glove around the rock, delicately, and shoved the lid closed over the rest. She held out the swaddled object to Clo. “Put that in your pocket and let’s go.”
“That thing set off my cuff, and your plan is to take the highly dangerous, probably hazardous, unidentified rock with us? Really?”
“The Novantae need to know why it’s so important.”
Clo let out a long sigh and took the rock from Eris. “Fine.”
They slipped back into the hallway and hurried toward the docking bay and Asteria. Eris almost told Clo to break for it—and risk being heard—but they needed a smooth getaway. They needed—
The hum of the backup generator echoed through the halls, and the lights flickered on.
“Silt,” Clo said.
Eris grabbed her arm. “Run!”
They didn’t even make it a few steps before a girl’s voice boomed over the comm system: “Stop right there!”
They kept sprinting.
“I mean, you can waste the energy if you want, but I’ve just put your ship on lockdown, so.”
Clo and Eris stopped. Eris had her gun out of its holster. “Why does that sound like a child?”
“I’m not a child,” the voice said, affronted. “There’s a camera station a few steps from you. Walk to it.” When Clo and Eris hesitated, the girl added, “Your ship is trapped in the loading bay, so whatever you’re thinking is pointless. Now go to the cam and turn it on.”
Eris flicked the switch for the camera. It went over a few different views of the ship, then finally settled on the command center. At first, she could only see more Tholosian bodies, slumped in their seats or sprawled on the floor in pools of blood.
The first woman who came into view was dressed as a courtesan—all sapphire-toned silk, elaborate onyx hair, pale skin, and carefully applied cosmetics. The dress was blood-splattered. She turned and whispered to another woman with brown skin, dressed in a similar shade of blue. The cut of her clothing was less elaborate than the courtesan’s, a strange imitation of Empire army threads, her hair tied back in a sleek bun.
The third—almost certainly the one over the comm—was a mere girl. Emphasis on girl. She was tiny, with black skin and black hair in an afro of corkscrew curls, her uniform styled similarly to the second woman’s, though less martial in appearance. She looked about fourteen; it must have been her on the comms.
<Novantae?> Clo asked Eris.
<If they are, they were deep undercover. They’re dressed like dona. Offerings to be presented to a planet’s governor as a gift for some service to the Archon.> Her face twisted. <Dona are almost always women of the opifex class. Once given, they continue their duties for the Empire, but unofficially, the governor is free to use them however he wishes.>
<That’s fluming disgusting,> Clo said.
Eris gave a fraction of a nod. A lot of things her father and brother approved of were barbaric. If she’d stayed, she could have changed it.
But she hadn’t stayed.
Regret coiled painfully in her belly, but Eris shoved it down.
The small girl wiggled her fingers at the camera. “Hello. I’m Ariadne. Neither of you were on the manifest. Are you here on official business, or to try and commandeer our commandeered ship?”
Eris ignored the question. “Did you kill those guards? And the Legate?”
“Of course I didn’t,” Ariadne said. “I don’t like killing. That was Nyx.” She indicated the tall, military woman next to her. Then she gestured to the beautiful woman. “And this is Rhea.”
Eris’s mind whirred, trying to figure out how to play this. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t three women, one of whom was chatting at them like it was a garden party. They should be completely taken over by the Oracle. They should be yelling their love for Tholos, then plunging knives into their bellies.
“Enough with the introductions,” Nyx interrupted. “You should have let me kill them when I had the chance, kid. The Publican probably sounded the alarms already for backup.”
Ariadne tilted her head. “She doesn’t look like a Publican. Doesn’t sound like a Publican, either.” She gasped. “Are you Novantae? Resistance?”
“No,” Eris said, though her heart rate ratcheted up. That little girl sounded very excited. What the fuck was going on here?
“Are you pirates, then?”
“Yes,” Eris lied, then made a ploy. “But if you want the Novantae, I might know how to get you in touch.”
Ariadne clapped her hands. “I’ve always wanted to meet a pirate. You’re not here to kill us, are you? Because I’ve just decided I like you, but I take exception to someone trying to murder me.”
Eris held up her empty hands at the camera. Never mind the blaster tucked into the small of her back. “I’ve no issue with you and yours. We have what we came for. We can just be on our way.”
Too late, Eris noted the military woman wasn’t on the screen. Gods, she’d moved like a ghost. Where—
The door slid open behind them.
<Silt.> Clo’s soft swear sounded over the Pathos.
Nyx pointed a Mors at their heads. Her arms were marked with tattoos—Eris knew exactly what those meant. Tallymarks of her kills. This woman had seen battle—a lot of it—and those badges marked her as a royal guard.
Meaning Nyx might have once guarded Discordia or Damocles.
Eris still felt uneasy when encountering those from her other life. There had been too many royal guards for her to memorize them individually, but Nyx would have gone into training with Discordia’s face giving commands on the vid-screens. Discordia’s icon would have been projected at every military camp across the Empire.
Eris’s new face felt like nothing more than a veneer. A sham.
<Eris?> Perhaps Clo had noticed how unsettled Eris was. <Any bright ideas?>
<Yeah. Don’t get shot.>
“Come inside,” Nyx said. “Let’s talk.”