Present day
Clo scanned the planet Ismara again, hoping the details Zelus’s mainframe gave her would come up differently.
The screen beeped, and Clo scrolled through the details.
Nothing out of the ordinary. No extra military craft.
Two and a half weeks until the Tholosian-Evoli truce, and they still had no idea what the Empire had hidden on Ismara, why they had gone through such complicated measures to make sure no one knew ichor existed or how the rock would be weaponized.
“Fucking bog-all,” Clo told the others as she flicked her finger across the screen.
The other women were seated behind her in the command center, watching the slow approach to Ismara. Rhea and Ariadne seemed entranced by the sight, and Clo was once again reminded that neither had left their respective cages on Tholos. The entire galaxy was so new to them, that it made Clo reevaluate everything she saw.
Ismara wasn’t far off the path Clo took to run supplies to Nova. From space, the abandoned planet was a smear of blue and purple, much smaller than the Sisters, Myndalia, or Sennett. They passed through the two moons, readying to enter the atmosphere.
Ismara was still a beautiful planet, in parts, but Zelus’s scan claimed much of it had been destroyed by mining. It had been abandoned for nearly a century, and pockets of growth were only now returning. One day, Tholosians would drain this planet to the dregs again. That was the way of the Empire: find planets that were resource-rich, eliminate all intelligent life that might be a threat, use up everything the planet had to offer for the Empire’s vast citizenry, and then abandon it until it was ready to plunder anew.
Rinse, repeat.
“We don’t know that yet,” Ariadne replied, peering over Clo’s shoulder as she slowly navigated the ship. “The ichor is down there; I’m sure of it.” She gestured to the computers. “The scan is detecting the same endospores that we found on Josephine, so we’ll take some suits and helmets.”
Zelus glided birdlike through the air as they made their way to the main barracks. “Should someone stay behind with the pilot?”
Eris looked annoyed at the reminder of his existence. “He’s locked up in the medical center, cuffed to a bed, and unlikely to do anything strenuous for a few days.”
Nyx’s laugh was dry. The soldier looked like she hadn’t done much sleeping herself. “Understatement. He looks like shit; definitely feels like shit. Deprogramming is rough.”
Clo suppressed a shudder. The sleeping quarters were on the same level as the med center. Even three rooms away, Clo had heard Cato’s screams as the machine detangled programming from natural brain synapse. Rhea had told her that putting a soldier under general anaesthesia during deprogramming was impossible; they had to remain conscious during the whole procedure.
Eris read the planet report. “With the soldiers they had guarding Zelus’s cargo, I’m surprised there’s no increase in security,” she murmured.
Clo tapped the screen for a better look. “Maybe they don’t want to risk tipping off the Evoli?”
Eris didn’t look convinced. “Maybe. It doesn’t look like there’s anywhere near the coordinates Ariadne found to land a craft this size. We’ll have to use the shuttle.”
“And contact Sher once we land,” Clo reminded her. “We really need him to send an unmanned craft with supplies.”
“Cato needs more blockers,” Ariadne added brightly. “Keeps him calmer during deprogramming.”
Eris scowled. “You’d think this ship made for one hundred people would have more of the damn things.”
“The Tholosians aren’t in the practice of deprogramming or having regular accidents and surgery,” Ariadne pointed out.
Eris made an irritated noise. “Clo, get the shuttle ready. Everyone, change into your suits.”
The shuttle was a tight squeeze and Ariadne ended up perching on Nyx’s knee. Clo brought the craft down near the Ismara warehouse on the southwest hemisphere. They fell toward the ground, the atmosphere whooshing over the craft.
The shuttle burst through the clouds. Clo’s stomach roiled again. Not as bad as Myndalia but she still swallowed the sharp taste of bile.
Most habitable planets in the Tholosian empire were like Myndalia. Dry or swampy, with habitable sections few and far between, and thus overcrowded. Temperate planets like the Three Sisters, with large continents, were rare and valuable.
On Ismara, the ground was nothing but hard rock covered in shallow water and topped with a thick, unforgiving mist. Large lily pads provided some nutrition and compost for fuel, but nothing larger could take root down below. Ismara was unique in that natural islands floated several hundred feet above ground level. Some flat, some with rolling hills or even small mountains. Clo had no idea how it all worked. Magnetic fields? Magic? All the same to her. The universe kept its mysteries.
“It’s so beautiful,” Rhea said, voice filled with wonder as Clo maneuvered the craft around a small floating forest, even if half of the trees had been burned away to clear space for miners. A few saplings sprouted from the singed soil. The other woman had her hands pressed to the glass as she stared at the sight below.
Clo let her smile show this time. “Told you I’d show you the universe, didn’t I?”
Rhea blushed.
Nyx rolled her eyes. “I hate to interrupt your romantic moment here, but how do we find the warehouse if it’s literally floating over the surface?”
“The coordinates Ariadne got when she hacked the Oracle are pretty precise,” Clo said, glancing at the screen. “These islands don’t seem to move quickly enough to make a difference.”
Ariadne fiddled with some of the controls, much to Clo’s annoyance. She was the bogging pilot here. “There’s no other use for this planet than hiding something. Here, go this way.”
She showed Clo a map on the screen and locked on to the location.
Clo followed the signal. They were all silent as they passed over floating islands. Some had buildings already falling to ruin, crumbling in the moist atmosphere. The paths and roads were overgrown, foliage reclaiming the dark ribbons.
The abandoned buildings were unsettling, a ghost town. Even Rhea seemed more subdued. This place already felt haunted and they hadn’t even set foot on land yet.
“Why did everyone leave?” Clo asked Ariadne.
“The records are unclear. When I ran the search through the Oracle’s files, they said mining was unsustainable.” Ariadne tapped a few buttons on her tablet, frowning. “It looks like the biggest mine was going to be at the ground level. The rock is hard, but they were developing machinery to do the job. Lots of raw material was completely untapped, but they just . . . stopped. They left everything.”
A shiver ran through Clo. Something felt off. People didn’t just abandon valuable materials like that, not without good reason. They were programmed to do the job, no questions asked. And no one had come to finish the job.
“How many people are we talking about?”
“At its height? Not many. Maybe thirty thousand.”
They set down and the ship landed with a soft whoosh. Clo’s breathing grew ragged, and yet again, she lost the contents of her stomach—this time in a vomit bag Ariadne had helpfully provided for landing. From the sounds of the retching in the bullet craft, she wasn’t the only one.
“Should have aimed for your boots again,” Clo told an unaffected Eris, who smirked. “Got any breath neutralizers?”
Eris passed them to Clo and the others, who all swallowed gratefully. Leaning back in her captain’s chair, Clo took the tablet from Ariadne and pinged Sher. After a muted beep, his face appeared. Clo wished she could reach through the screen and give Sher a hug. He would smell like sand and metal and home.
She missed Nova—she even missed the blasted heat. She missed tinkering with engines and swapping jokes with Elva. She missed sending the craft off on their missions. She was ready to go home and leave the adventuring to others for a while.
“Hey, Alesca,” Sher said. “I’ve missed that angry mug.”
It was night on Nova. His dark green eyes looked black in the low light of his office. He had a room in the barracks, but he spent most nights working until he fell asleep on a cot set up in the corner. Even half a galaxy away, his eyes could see into the very core of a person.
“Shut up, marsh-hole,” she said.
“Ah, there’s that beautiful Snarl poetry.” He grinned. “You made good time. I wasn’t expecting your call this early. Where are the others?”
Tilting the tablet, Clo showed him Eris, Rhea, Nyx, and Ariadne—who gave Sher an enthusiastic wave. Eris nodded once in greeting.
“Well done on Macella, all of you,” Sher said. “Any problems, Eris?”
Clo wasn’t sure if Eris had mentioned the pilot to Sher. Clo didn’t know how to broach the subject. By the way, we’re conducting an unauthorized experiment and trying to break through a potential new strain of deprogramming. The subject nearly throttled one of us to death, but otherwise, it’s pure gleyed, promise.
“Not yet, but something feels off.” Eris gestured to the trees in view of their ship’s window. “If they’re hiding a bunch of precious ichor cargo, there should be security like what we saw on Zelus before we commandeered it. Anyone here would have approached the ship by now.”
Ariadne nodded. “The Oracle’s files mentioned security around the building but nothing else. On all official documents, Ismara is declared completely uninhabitable, so that seems to be keeping people away. We should be fine, but we still ought to wear the same basic protection I wore when I looked at Josephine.”
Sher looked confused. “Josephine?”
“Josephine is ichor, that endospore-studded rock that’s probably a high-density blaster in a weapon of mass destruction,” Ariadne said with a serene smile.
“Right.” Sher rubbed his hand against the back of his neck. Dust painted his collar ochre and the bags under his eyes were larger.
“How are things back at base?” Clo asked. “Dust storms letting up?”
A twist of his mouth. “Most of the food and water is contaminated. Our communication is shit, tech at headquarters is glitching, and everyone is exhausted trying to keep things in order. Our engineers are looking at setting up biodomes for the long term, but we can’t begin recovery efforts until the weather lets up.”
“I guess now is a bad time to ask you to approve an unmanned craft to send us supplies? We need medical stuff. Still fine on food.” The ship had only been outfitted with enough food to get to Myndalia, but meal packets for one hundred people for two weeks would keep the five of them—ugh, the six of them—pretty for months to come.
“Anyone hurt?”
Ariadne opened her mouth, but Clo shot her a look and she snapped it closed. Telling the co-commander of the resistance that they had an injured Tholosian pilot aboard while on a mission of this importance would only complicate things. The last thing they needed was to be reassigned. “Not yet.”
Sher nodded. “Send me a list.”
They said their goodbyes to Sher. Ariadne double-checked everyone’s suits and helmets, then they all departed the bullet craft.
“This way,” Ariadne said. The girl’s tablet had a blinking dot to indicate the coordinates she’d found back on Macella.
Clo’s skin prickled in alarm as they progressed. Not even wind in the trees, she thought. No animals rustling through the thickets. The coordinates led the group to a warehouse. The warehouse—the entire island, really—was completely still. Flat shelves of red mushrooms lined the bottoms of the trunks of trees and rocks of what might have been rough ichor in its natural habitat.
Clo rubbed her arms. Rhea reached out to take her hand, squeezing gently. Despite the thick material of their gloves, the gesture brought Clo comfort. A warm sense of home and belonging. She flashed Rhea a grateful smile and the other woman returned it.
Soon, the only sound between them was Ariadne’s rapid tapping as she used the tablet to hack the building’s security. It was no match for Ariadne. Within a few minutes, she whooped in delight. “I’m in!”
The warehouse door gaped open with a metallic creak. There were no heat signatures on Ariadne’s scanner, but Tholosian soldiers had ways to cloak themselves if they wished to avoid detection. Clo, Eris, and Nyx pulled out their Mors, keeping the weapons raised as they crept into the dimly lit warehouse. The skylights along the ceiling let in just enough light to see inside.
But there was nothing there. It was completely empty except for the dust motes dancing in the dim light that filtered through the shatterproof, barred windows and crops of mold in the damp corners.
Nyx lowered her Mors and ran a hand through her hair. “Great. Nothing. A false trail.”
“No,” Ariadne said, annoyed. “The intel on the Oracle’s database was good. The ichor had been here as recently as last week. They must have just moved it. I don’t like this.”
Nyx glowered harder. “Maybe they knew we were coming.”
“No, they didn’t,” Ariadne shot back. “I was careful. Even if they moved the ichor, there should still be records somewhere. Manifests.”
Silence descended on the dusty warehouse, shafts of weak sunlight filtering through the gloom. Next to Clo, Rhea shivered. She looked uneasy, her face pale.
“You okay?” Clo asked her.
“I feel nauseated. I—” Rhea paused and tilted her head, as if listening. “Check for false walls. I don’t think this place is empty.” At Clo’s confused expression, Rhea folded her arms over her stomach. “I heard . . . I felt . . . I just . . .” She trailed off, pausing by the far wall. “Nyx. This wall. There’s something here.”
The soldier strode over and rapped on the wall. Hollow. Nyx ran her hands along the seams of cool concrete until she found the hidden latch.
A doorway, stairs descending underground.
A slight glimmer on the ground caught Clo’s eye. Before she could bend down, Nyx investigated it. She picked up a tiny morsel of ichor in her gloved hand, its iridescence as brilliant as it’d been on the ship. She held it close to the glass of her helmet before setting the shard of ichor down.
Wordlessly, they went down into the black.