Present day
Nyx hated the silence.
She was beginning to realize how much she appreciated the camaraderie of the women around her. They hadn’t been a team for very long, but she had grown used to a ship full of chatter and bantering, of Ariadne’s music and Rhea’s dancing, and Clo and Eris’s verbal sparring. This, she realized, was what it was like to be around people free of the Oracle: their bond wasn’t something programmed or forced. It was chosen.
But choice made it tenuous and fragile.
Clo and Eris were avoiding each other. Whatever history was between them went deeper than Nyx had suspected—something that made them both grieve. Rhea had kept to her rooms and hid from the others and their emotions.
Partly your fault, Nyx thought to herself as she and Eris unpacked the supply cache Sher had sent in silence.
Ariadne and Rhea had picked apart Nyx’s programming, but like Cato, Nyx still heard a litany of the Oracle’s voice in her mind, reflections of old commands hardwired into her brain since birth. Undoing a lifetime of Evoli prejudice wasn’t easy. She couldn’t hide those emotions. And Rhea had heard and felt all of them.
Nyx scratched absently at the shallow cut along her shoulder where she’d stumbled in the Ismaran cave. It was like some small, universal rebuke for the pain she’d caused Rhea. A reminder of what her friend had gone through.
Eris looked up from unloading the food, weapons, spare disguises, and uniforms. She seemed exhausted. None of them had slept since leaving Ismara. “You should get Cato to look at that. Put some healing ointment on it.”
“I’m not going to waste our medical supplies on a scratch.” Nyx shook her head as she stacked the bags of food. “I’m concerned about Rhea, Eris. She felt my emotions toward the Evoli back on Ismara.”
The other woman let out a breath. “You can’t help the echoes of your programming, Nyx.”
“Maybe not. But it’s Rhea.”
“Listen to me,” Eris said. “If you still had the Oracle in your mind, you would have held a Mors to her head. Being deprogrammed doesn’t mean you erase what the Oracle said and did to you; it means you can make the choice not to pull out the gun. Rhea knows that.”
The echo of a sharp cry down the hall made them pause. Cato. Another deprogramming session.
Nyx’s deprogramming had taken place in Rhea’s room in the Pleasure Garden, where anyone might have heard such agonized cries. Rhea would turn music on. She’d touch Nyx’s skin—which Nyx now recognized as the other woman using her abilities—and even that couldn’t dull the pain entirely. Lasering the thorns from her flesh had been nothing in comparison.
Ariadne had broken Nyx down into little pieces and built her back up into something different. Eris was right: once the Oracle had left her thoughts, answers weren’t easy anymore. They weren’t commands that repeated through your thoughts until you were certain—absolutely certain—that every action was for the glory of Tholos. Those old orders were just memories to be ignored.
Her mind, now her own, was sometimes too quiet.
“I wouldn’t have even questioned what we saw back on Ismara, would I?” she asked Eris, afraid of the answer. Needing the answer.
“No.” Eris’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “You wouldn’t have.”
Nyx couldn’t stop thinking of those skeletal faces, the withered, flaking skin and twisted fingers, reaching out for help none of them could give. An entire planet thrown away. Not a large planet, or populous, but its purpose was clear: it was an experiment. The beginning of something larger. The soldiers who left them there weren’t just following orders—they were programmed to think their actions served the glory of the Empire.
Another of Cato’s screams echoed down the hall.
Eris wordlessly hefted a bag of food onto her shoulder. “I’m going to take these to the canteen. Tell the others we’re having a meeting in an hour.”
“Eris?” The other woman paused at the door. “How was Rhea able to control everyone but you back on Ismara?”
Eris didn’t look at her, but Nyx saw the tension in her shoulders. In the end, the other woman only released a soft breath. “Get some rest, Nyx. You’ll need it.”
They all gathered in the command center.
Eris stood in the middle of the room, with the others congregated in a rough semicircle around her. Clo stood the farthest away, her scowl fixed firmly on Eris. Eris’s expression was carefully composed as she gazed back, but Nyx noticed her fingernails dig into her palms.
What are you both hiding? Nyx thought.
The secret floated over those two like a specter, and Nyx sensed her unspoken question wouldn’t be answered. That chafed. Their lives were in each other’s godsdamn hands, and the tension made these walls unbearably claustrophobic. What if the group ran into danger again? Secrets like this could be fatal.
And Clo clearly didn’t trust Eris—not entirely.
“After what we saw on Ismara, I’ve come to a difficult decision,” Eris said, her voice ringing clearly across the command center. “We’re going to continue this mission without the resources at Nova. That shipment we just received from Sher will be our last. Starting now, we go dark.”
“That’s salted.” Clo took a step forward. “We only have eleven days until the truce ceremony on Laguna, Eris. The Tholosians are going to slaughter thousands of people, and we still have no way in. We don’t even know how Damocles is planning to smuggle ichor into the ceremony.” She shook her head sharply. “No, we need to get Nova on this. We need backup. We need help.”
Eris grimaced. “I think Nova might be compromised.”
Clo froze. “What?”
“Think about it.” Eris spread her arms wide. “All our undercover operatives have been exposed, a lot of them caught and executed before they managed to escape. The last spy ceased communication just after she sent information that Zelus had left Tholos with the shipment of the ichor. So, either the Oracle has somehow gotten into our systems or someone at Nova is feeding the Tholosians our intelligence. But I’d bet my life on it not being safe.” She let out a long breath. “Right now, Sher and Kyla are the only ones who know about our mission and that we’re getting close to a plan involving a coup. It has to stay that way. The second we involve the rest of Nova, we risk losing the element of surprise. We need to keep this to ourselves. The co-commanders agree with me.”
Clo glanced around, her teeth worrying her lip. “Unless we’ve accidentally indicated we know already. We accessed the Oracle’s files on Ismara.”
Ariadne’s eyes went wide and her hands flapped. “You think I messed up?”
“You didn’t mess up,” Nyx interjected. “For gods’ sake, Clo, don’t just throw around accusations like that. Ariadne isn’t an amateur.”
“I know that. I’m not throwing around—”
“Stop.” Rhea’s command echoed across the command center. “I sensed Ariadne’s emotions on Ismara. She was confident, and I trust her.”
Everyone went quiet at the reminder. Nyx looked away, hoping Rhea didn’t see the flash of shame in her features, and hoping that she couldn’t feel it now that she wasn’t surrounded by the ichor. Rhea endured Nyx’s lingering programming, all that prejudice commanded from birth. How could she even stand to be in this room with her?
I’m sorry, Nyx wanted to say. I’m so sorry.
“Okay,” Clo said, drifting closer to Rhea and taking her hand. “I’m sure you’re right.”
Rhea went still at Clo’s touch. Rhea’s face shifted to a frown and she gave Eris a hard look. You have so much blood on your hands, Rhea had told Eris back at the barracks.
Nyx’s hands curled into fists. And so do you, Nyx. Don’t be a hypocrite.
The reminder made Nyx scowl. “You two.” Nyx gestured between Clo and Eris. “Can you get over whatever the fuck you’re fighting about, please?”
“Not that simple,” Clo said. She shot Eris a look that burned. “I need to know one thing: will you kill him? If it comes to that? I’m not trusting you with a mission that has no oversight from Kyla or Sher until I have your answer.”
Who? Nyx frowned, catching equally baffled looks from Ariadne, Rhea, and Cato. Something to do with Eris’s past in the Tholosian military?
“Yes.” Eris didn’t hesitate. A soldier’s ruthless response.
“Fine, then,” Clo said, sounding not remotely fucking fine. “We do this without Nova.”
Eris nodded once. She turned to Cato. “Update me on the body. Anything we should know?”
Cato had gone back into the mine’s medical center and retrieved Commander Talley’s body in an airtight body bag. It had been brought on board, quarantined in one of the unused crew quarters that Ariadne had turned into a makeshift lab. With the air vents sealed off, Cato examined the body in a full suit after resting from his deprogramming session. Nyx had heard Eris snapping orders at him through the comms.
After a few tense hours, he joined the others waiting in the command center for news. The scent of disinfectant still clung to him.
Cato let out a slow breath and scratched his cheek. “A few observations,” he said. “The endospore found in the ichor is pretty impressive from a biological-warfare standpoint. When I opened Commander Talley up, deterioration had spread to his lungs—a result of breathing in the spores. Frankly, I’m shocked he lived long enough to speak to you.”
“And they experimented on how to transmit this illness more quickly on those other planets,” Ariadne added. “I showed Cato the files, and we came up with a theory.” She nodded at him, encouraging.
“If the ichor were ground up and pressurized into a gas, the endospores would cover large areas very quickly. It’d kill a lot of people very fast.” Though Cato’s voice remained steady, Nyx caught the flicker of anger in his features. He was at the part of his deprogramming where he found it difficult to hide his emotions. The Oracle wasn’t there to numb them, wasn’t there to run the code that told him this was all for the glory of Tholos. The haze of coded loyalty was gone.
Get used to it, soldier, Nyx thought. Having choices wasn’t easy.
“Great,” Clo muttered.
“Oh, it gets worse,” Cato said. “Ariadne and I think—think—that the version of ichor the Tholosians experimented with in the labs can be spread by close contact rather than a one-off illness caught through the lungs. They’re engineering a godsdamn plague.”
Eris made some soft noise. “So, if Damocles wanted to conquer an Evoli planet . . .”
“They’d be fucked. He’d have it within hours.”
Nyx swore softly. There were a million Evoli on Laguna, and more would be arriving for that truce ceremony—thousands of Tholosian citizens among them. All they had to do was release a gas and watch the chaos.
And if it got back to the Karis Galaxy—and the Evoli home planet, Eve—Damocles would end up killing them within weeks. Every Evoli eradicated. Their planets empty and ripe for the taking. The Tholosians’ food problems solved and a new galaxy to claim for their own.
Just another Tholosian conquest.
Clo looked ill. She squeezed Rhea’s hand. “But there will be Tholosians there, too, won’t there? Would it spread to them just the same? Even Damocles?”
Rhea lowered her lashes. “The first thing Damocles would have done is to develop an antidote for himself and the most important people there. Avern, maybe he even invited some higher ups to Laguna as a tidy way to assassinate them. As for the others?” She sighed. “He would have weighed his options, called them sacrifices to build a better Empire. The God of Death takes before He gives.”
Nyx recalled her games of zatrikion with Damocles. Nothing mattered to him more than power and winning. The lives of any Tholosian citizens caught in the balance would be worth the price. After all, the God of Death did not discriminate. Evoli or Tholosian, souls were souls. They all weighed the same.
“Damocles is already expecting Zoe to return with improved specs for Clo’s weapon,” Eris said. She shook her head and gave a soft swear. “I’ll try and charm more information out of him and come up with an excuse to take the weapon back for testing. Then we’ll see if there’s a way to neutralize the ichor.”
“If you’re right about a leak within the Novantae,” Rhea said, “then Damocles will be more careful. He may not give up information about the ichor if he suspects someone is onto his plan.”
“Another Impossible to Infiltrate job.” Eris locked eyes with Clo. “My favorite. Cato, can you isolate the compound? Find out how it’s different to the original spores?”
Cato hesitated. “Not exactly my expertise, but I can try. No promises.”
Ariadne grinned. “Cato, look at you! You’re like a pilot medical expert badass!”
The pilot’s expression went vague. “Yeah. Except that I don’t know where one of those things came from.”
“The Oracle tampers with memories sometimes. Or maybe you have a glitch in programming that gives you medical knowledge! I could open your skull up to—”
“No.” Cato put his hands up. “Absolutely not.”
Nyx’s lip lifted. “What? You afraid she’d cut open that big head and find a rodent in a spinning wheel instead of a brain?”
Cato glared.
Ariadne, ignoring this, considered Cato. “Since you’ve chosen our side you can be on our team now. We still need a team name.” She tapped her lower lip with a finger. “It’ll come to me.”
The pilot ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m still fighting against this voice in my head that says I ought to turn you all in. But I can’t pretend I didn’t see that shit back on Ismara.” He gestured to the door. “By all accounts, that Tholosian commander I just dissected was loyal. They still left him there to die.”
I get it, Nyx wanted to say. She wanted to tell him about the times she pulled the trigger and she wasn’t sure the Tholosian on the other end deserved it. But she never questioned. She followed orders. Played the good soldier. The Oracle’s voice in her head made it so simple to block out the questions and the doubts.
Then she’d met Rhea, and she saw the other woman’s bruises, and she couldn’t pretend anymore.
Rhea approached the pilot and held out her hands. Though her skin had lost the Evoli-like fractals revealed on Ismara, Cato still flinched away. “May I?”
Cato let out a dry laugh. “Don’t trust me?”
“You just admitted you were still tempted to turn us in, and your hands are no longer tied,” Rhea pointed out. “This is a precaution. It’s not personal.”
After a hesitation, Cato gave a small nod. Rhea placed her hands on his stubbled cheeks and closed her eyes.
Cato flinched.
Rhea’s fingers pressed firmly to his skin. “I know. I know this freaks you out,” she said. “You don’t have to be ashamed, Cato. You’re making a choice to help now. That matters.” Rhea released him and stepped back. “We all have pasts in the Empire we’re atoning for.”
Nyx still couldn’t help but feel shame too. All of them had to admit the ways in which they were complicit. Programming or not, they participated. They helped. They were small but important parts of the Empire. There was no forgetting. No forgiving.
“I don’t want to atone,” Nyx said, surprising herself. “I want to destroy the Empire.”
Clo’s hands closed into fists. “Yes.”
The others nodded.
“Then we do it together,” Eris said, gazing at each of them in turn. “Planet by planet. We burn the Empire down.”