Present day
Clo was glad to have the engines to herself. They didn’t ask her to play a role; she never had to pretend around machines.
Every mechanism and part of Zelus was in harmony and song. She’d never been able to work on something so sleek before. The main engines were on their lowest power setting, the ship hovering in space until Clo directed them. After verifying the jump drive was in order, Clo searched for any hidden surprises. Sometimes, Empire ships installed extra trackers to make sure there were no unscheduled jumps erased from the logs. Ariadne might be confident that she hacked the Oracle, but Clo wasn’t. She found a tracker and ripped it out, grinding it beneath her steel-toed boot.
For as long as she could spare, she sat, listening to the song of the machinery. She let her anger at having to work with Eris fade as much as it could. There, in the engine room, no one was around to hear her as she struggled to control her heaving breaths, her pounding heart, her shaking body.
So many dead men. Three women they were now responsible for. On a stolen ship. Mission sunk.
Eris’s fault. Again.
She shook her head sharply. Stop it. Just get through this.
She stayed until she was calm once more. She carefully constructed her previous facade: working with Eris was fine. She could handle this. All she had to do was deliver the women to Nova, and she’d ask Kyla to give her another mission that involved flying ships out into the stars like she was meant to.
Yes, she’d stick with machines. Machines weren’t capable of betrayal.
Back to the command center, she told herself. Only a little longer.
When Clo left the engine room, a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye shattered her calm. The fear raced back, as if it had never left.
Clo unhooked the Mors from her shoulder and eased her way down the hallway, weapon at the ready.
When she reached the end of the corridor, there was only an Empire flag hung from the ceiling, the same as every hallway throughout the ship, with those familiar black scythes cradling the dark moon. Like the murals, they were another constant reminder of Tholosian patriotism. They’d even been everywhere in the Snarl, but no one had been brave enough to deface them.
The flag flapped in the breeze coming from an air duct. Her mech cuff showed no heat signatures in this quarter of the ship. She was alone.
Clo was losing it.
<Eris. I’m moving Zelus’s bullet craft, then I’ll guide Asteria deeper into the loading bay,> Clo said. <I don’t like it so close to the doors—a rough jump might damage our ship worse than it already is.>
<Good call,> Eris replied, sounding distracted.
Right. She was busy dragging bodies to throw out of the airlock. Clo shuddered, glad she’d managed to dodge that job.
She rounded the corner into the loading bay, pausing when a soft click sounded to her left. It took her a split second to realize someone was climbing into the bullet craft—a man, sandy blond hair, pale skin, wearing a spacesuit dark as the night sky. Light reflected off the sleek helmet he held poised over his head. A spacesuit’s cooling layers would mask a heat signature.
“Hey!” Clo pointed her Mors at him, her heart thudding but her hand steady.
“Fuck,” he muttered, ramming the helmet on this head. He dodged behind a crate.
Clo sprinted after him and fired her Mors just above his head. The shots echoed through the metallic loading bay, sending sparks as the lasers sizzled across the metal. He didn’t even pause.
<Clo?>
Clo ignored Eris.
The man had pried open the door to the bullet craft, but at her second shot, he ducked to the other side for cover. Clo crept closer, footsteps silent. The others would be coming her way for backup, but she hoped she could disable the straggler before they did.
And what then? A silent corner of her mind asked. Would you kill him? Sink him like a stone in a marsh?
She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even think it.
Clo ducked low, her breath loud in her ears. With her Mors raised, she darted to the other side of the bullet craft. Nothing. She swung around, frantic, muscles tense. For all she knew, she was a sitting target, easily in range.
She jumped at the screech of the loading bay doors. Eris and Nyx burst in.
“What are you doing?” Nyx asked.
“There’s someone in here.” Her voice was breathless and wavering. Back in the Snarl, they’d say she sounded lotic. “I saw him try to break into the bullet craft.”
Eris glanced around and hurried to Clo. Under her breath, she asked, “Where?”
Clo shook her head. “Dunno where he went. Didn’t see a hatch.”
“Shit,” Nyx swore. “I was afraid of this. Someone from the manifest was missing when we threw the corpses out of the airlock. Ariadne just gave the ship an infrared scan a few minutes ago, but we didn’t see anything. We’d assumed they’d stayed on Myndalia.”
“Who was missing?” Clo asked.
Nyx looked wary. “The copilot.”
Fluming great.
Eris straightened, in full general mode. “Clo, get to the bridge. Let’s hyperjump out of here. After that, we’ll tear this place apart until we find the bastard. The last thing we need is someone here still under the Oracle’s influence. If he can’t contact the Tholosians, he’ll try to kill us to take back the ship.”
“Someone better come with me,” Clo said. “I’ve heard enough horror stories to know that the loner always dies first.”
“I’ll come,” Nyx said.
Granted, Nyx was plenty fearsome herself. “Good.” Clo glanced at Asteria. “Eris, can you shift our ship away from the doors and anchor it better? Then I can help Ariadne prep for a hyperjump.”
Eris nodded once, sharp. “Right.”
Eris following orders without question gave Clo a little thrum of power. Even if it was only to feign allyship in front of the other women, Clo would take it.
As Clo and Nyx headed for the door, lights flashed throughout the bay. Metal screeched, the overhead lamps flickering as more power went to the shields.
Clo grabbed her Mors from its holster. “Ariadne,” she called, knowing the girl would hear through the comm system. “What is that?”
“Someone’s opening the exterior hatch.” Ariadne’s breathless voice echoed through the loading bay. “Get out of the loading bay. Now!”
The three women raced for the door.
Behind them, the metal gears of the heavy hatchway whined. That damned gate only needed to open a fraction and the oxygen would be sucked from the room. Seconds later, they’d be blasted out into space. Dead. Gone. All because some brainwashed muskeg in an ugly spacesuit wanted to return to his corrupt Empire.
Nyx reached the bay door first and bashed the button. She swore, low and urgent as the sluggish backup generators failed to respond. She hit the button a few more times.
“Move,” Clo said, elbowing her way in.
She grabbed the powered crowbar still clipped to her tool belt and jammed it into the door. With a grunt, Clo heaved. The metal door only moved an inch. Not wasting any time, Eris wrapped her fingers around the crowbar to add leverage. Nyx slammed the button again, and between the force and that godsdamned generator waking up, the door finally, finally opened.
They all dove through. Nyx twisted to close the door and it slammed shut with a heavy, metallic bang.
Too close for comfort, Clo heard the roar of air leaving the loading bay. “My gods,” she murmured, patting herself. “We almost died. I almost died. That fluming berm almost killed us.”
“Get up,” Eris said shortly, pushing to her feet. She leaned against the door to peer into the porthole. “Oh, son of a bitch.”
They crowded around the window of the door. Both Asteria and Zelus’s bullet crafts were gone, the loading bay empty. The engines on smaller ships were so silent, they hadn’t even heard them over the main hum of Zelus.
Clo gaped. “He’s stolen my bogging ship!”
Ariadne’s voice sounded through the speakers. “I can’t tell if he’s in the bullet craft or the other ship from here.”
Clo shoved away from the door and sprinted as fast as her leg would allow down the hall back to the command center, the footsteps of the others echoing behind her. “He’ll be in Asteria, definitely. It has the supplies. The bullet craft is a diversion.”
“Should I fire at him?”
Clo paused. Don’t, she wanted to say. Try something else. Not Asteria. Not my ship.
It wasn’t just some stupid hunk of metal she’d pieced together. It was the only thing she had left of Briggs. She knew every wire, every nick on its nose, every twist of its corridors. She could point out each part that they had painstakingly added, and the purpose they all served. That part for speed. That part for emergencies. That part for luck.
Eris caught up to Clo, and a flicker of shock registered in her features. Clo didn’t want to explain. How could she explain to a princess who was raised never to care for anyone? Who saw everyone and everything as disposable? A tool to be used or destroyed.
Clo swallowed the painful lump in her throat. “Fire,” she said on an exhale, her voice breaking. “Kill the bastard.”
She ran through a corridor that was not hers. Zelus was too big, too sprawling, too Tholosian. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t home.
The ship shuddered as it fired.
She reached the command center. Ariadne was on her tiptoes, hands curled around the controls, tense. Rhea hovered behind her, resting her hands comfortingly on the smaller girl’s shoulders.
“Asteria’s shields are down fifty percent, but they’re holding,” Ariadne said. “We need to hurry before he jumps.”
Of course the shields were holding; Clo and Briggs had added the tech themselves. “He can’t jump; the ship needs to rest from chasing Zelus,” Clo said. “Let me do this.”
Ariadne slid out of the way.
After Asteria, the controls of Zelus felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.
Clo shut her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry, Briggs,” Clo whispered, and fired thrice. The turrets on the bottom of the ship powered up, and the ship shuddered as the projectiles released.
Asteria jumped. The blasts hit nothing; they zoomed out into the dark expanse of the galaxy.
The five women stared at the empty space where the ship had been. If the weapons had been just that much faster, Clo would have seen the hull of her ship glow with damage before that bright blast of kinetic and nuclear energy flared blue, leaving nothing but a dark husk behind.
Clo’s favorite ship had disappeared into a bogging wormhole.
Clo sputtered. “He shouldn’t have been able to— He just—” She made a frustrated noise and blasted the drifting bullet craft in frustration. It gave a tiny flash, and then it darkened.
“He might not have made it to the other side,” Rhea whispered from beside Clo.
The other woman’s voice was soothing. Clo didn’t want it. She was fluming furious, and now they had to run because that bastard had probably alerted the nearest outpost.
With her ship.
Her godsdamned ship.
Clo rubbed the back of a hand against her eyes, blinking back tears. She shifted her hands on the controls, flipping switches. This was going to be rough. “Everyone buckle in and hold on.” She couldn’t keep the roughness from her voice. “We need to get the flame out of here before he can signal our coordinates.”
“And if he left a tracker in the jump drive?” Ariadne said as she strapped herself into one of the chairs.
“I checked for them, found one and destroyed it, but I’ll jump twice more in quick succession, just in case.” She started mapping out the coordinates. Her hands shook, trying to do everything perfectly but quickly. “Get ready.”
Clo turned on the hyperdrive. Zelus quivered. Time itself seemed to pause, and then the pinpoints of stars shifted from white to blue, then violet, then disappeared to ultraviolet. The hazy blue of cosmic rays came into view, then sharpened to white in the center. Clo let out her breath. She loved this feeling, jumping lightyears, bending time and space. It felt like magic, like she took the power of the seven gods for herself.
The ship slowed, stilled. Before them was the quiet of space. Clo let her heart rate calm before she started the whole process again. Up there, without true gravity and atmosphere, she felt no star sickness. There was only the joy of slipping through the void, of doing something that humans were not meant to do. To conquer the stars.
They jumped again, and Clo closed her eyes. She took her hands off the controls, just for a moment, to open her arms wide.