I dropped, shaking, onto the bed and stared at my hands as I fought to contain my grief and anger. The ship probably had surveillance and I didn’t doubt my hosts were going to keep a close eye on me. Don’t show them anything, Hail. Don’t give them anything to use against you.
Portis—dead. Cire—dead. Pace—dead.
I couldn’t stop the pain from running rampant through me. Or the gleeful little voice in the back of my head reminding me the worst thing of all.
You have to go home.
The mere thought of it made my throat close up. I’d stood up to pirate ships and police, walked unarmed into Zhou-owned houses and back out again without a scratch on me. I was feared on more planets than I could easily name.
I had been beaten up, bashed around, nearly killed more times than I could count; but the thought of seeing my gods-damned mother had me almost in tears.
You’ve got to get your shit together, Hail.
Opening my eyes, I stared down at the scarred surface of my left arm. A pale line marred the dark skin. I’d gotten a wire wrapped around my forearm during a bank job on Marrakesh, the last one we’d done for Po-Sin before he let us go our own way. The wire had almost snapped the bone before Portis cut me loose.
There’d been panic in his green eyes, the emotion lacing his voice as he’d gathered me against his chest and gotten us both out of the mess before the authorities showed. We’d managed to get to a body shop and most of the damage had been repaired, just leaving that single winding scar.
Shaking the memory loose and cursing Portis, I linked my fingers together and stretched my arms above my head.
Once upon a time my skin had been several shades lighter—more like the teakwood trees that grew on Pashati. It was darker now, but still not as dark as Pace’s, whose rare golden hair had stood out against skin almost as black as Emmory’s.
My baby sister. A second shard of heated metal sliced my heart. I’d grieved for her and Cire once when I left, but it had felt more like me dying than them. Now I grappled with the idea that my sisters were dead and it was impossible to wrap my head around.
And Portis—not a banished, thieving misfit. The thought was equally unbelievable. Except—
I swore viciously. Except for his unwillingness to talk about his past, for the sneaking suspicion I’d always had that there was something important he wasn’t telling me when I’d catch him looking at me strangely.
You mean like the fact that he was Imperial Tactical Squad? The voice in my head was sharp with derision, and I flinched away from it straight into a shattered memory.
“Baby, stay down. Just stay down, okay?” Portis’s voice was breathy with pain.
Gunfire cut off my reply, shredding our shelter. Portis dove to the side and I rolled after him into the questionable cover of a stack of priceless weavings we were supposed to be taking to the Solarian Conglomerate.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“There’s no time to explain. Just keep your head down.”
“You’re not getting off this ship alive, Tresk. Neither of you.”
Memz’s voice echoed out of the darkness, and the sudden cold look on Portis’s face froze my blood.
I rubbed my hands over my face. I couldn’t figure out why my memory was in such tatters. Had I been drugged? These bits and pieces floating back were less than useful. There was little about it I could trust. Why would Portis try to kill me? To steal the ship? None of it made sense.
It had been our ship. He’d had half a stake in it, was entitled to as large a share of the profits as I was. He hadn’t even cared half the time if he got paid—claimed he was doing it for the fun.
Now I knew why he didn’t need the money. He’d been on the empire’s payroll all along.
We’d fought. What pieces I could pull from my brain, glimmering like little glass splinters, told me that my scattered memory of gunfire and punches was real. His death rattle apology wasn’t enough to make me think for a second that Emmory was right and Portis was trying to bring me home.
Home. There was no fucking way I was going home and I was wasting precious time weeping over the past instead of planning for the future. I had to be off this ship before we floated into warp or I was done for.
Pushing to my feet, I stalked to the far wall and slapped my hand against the faintly glowing panel. A door slid open in the wall, and I groaned.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
The wardrobe was filled to bursting with the worst clothes imaginable. Never mind my intense hatred for the traditional royal colors of white and gold, but everything in the meter square opening looked like the toppings on a fairy cake. It was all pretty and otherwise useless.
If I was sneaking around on a starship, I didn’t want to look like something worth eating. Which meant I was stuck with the military-issue pajamas they’d put me in.
Digging through the yards of fabric with muttered curses falling from my lips, I found little to nothing I could use as a weapon. There was a box of hair ornaments that might work in a pinch to put someone’s eye out, but otherwise all I could hope was that someone would die of fright—or laughter.
I tossed a pair of white silken pants to the floor. They were embroidered around the cuffs with gold thread and little gold beads along the edge.
Useless.
I snorted in disgust, flicking my heavy green braid off my shoulder, and headed to the door, trying to make it look like I was pacing.
The panel by the door was palm activated, and as I suspected, my new friends had locked me out of the system.
It wasn’t a problem.
I leaned against the wall and queued up my smati. I sighed in relief when it linked up easily with the shipboard computer. Whatever trouble I’d been having with Sophie had been with her computer, not my head.
It appeared I only had limited access. My Tracker friends didn’t trust me at all, and really I couldn’t blame them.
I was aboard the Para Sahi. The Royal Wing. What else would they send to retrieve a wayward princess? Rolling my eyes at the smooth white ceiling, I let loose another snort of disgust. I hated royal starships. They were so fucking sterile. I wanted back on Sophie with her brightly colored walls and random doodles that Pip had scribbled in unexpected places.
The thought of the little space orphan we’d rescued on Xi 5 jarred loose another flash of memory. He’d taken a shot at me and I’d returned fire, nailing him between the eyes. I felt a flush of shame and covered my face with my hands. He’d been sixteen.
I shook the feeling loose and focused again on my problem. Hacking the system wasn’t an option. Emmory was probably watching for it. Giving me access to the Para Sahi’s computer made it easier to track me, but I knew enough to be able to mask my signal from him when I needed it. I spun on my heel and headed back to the wardrobe, queuing up the room’s layout and the location of the digital cameras.
Initially I’d been pissed about the body mod screwup that had left me with this permanently green curly hair. The color had grown on me and the rest of it—from my darker skin and my tall, rangy build to my narrow face with a pointed chin—was more than suitable. Now the thought of the hysterics my hair would cause at home made it worthwhile. Maybe I’d go home, hang around just long enough to see the look on Mother’s face.
You are crazy, Hail. I tightened a fist around the chain of my wild thoughts and jerked them short. I wasn’t going home. I didn’t want to go home.
I had to get out of here.
I dove into the wardrobe, flinging clothes out in the best imitation of a temper tantrum I could muster. Emmory believed I was a spoiled princess; I’d give him a performance worthy enough to distract him.
In the midst of it I grabbed a bottle of makeup out of the drawer and hurled it at the far corner. Blue powder splattered across the lens of the hidden camera, hopefully obscuring the surface. Two more bottles and matching spots of black and red covered my escape.
I grabbed the box of hair doodads and pulled out a long golden spike with a cascade of pink pearls attached to the end. Stripping the pearls free, I flung them away and they scattered across the floor looking like bunshinberries.
Sliding the thin piece of metal between the panel and the wall, I levered it off.
Several twisted wires later the door slid silently open. The two ITS troops turned in surprise. My well-placed strike put the first woman on her knees, choking and gasping for breath. It wouldn’t kill her, but she wasn’t getting up anytime soon.
The other woman had time for a startled squeak that ended when I slammed her head against the wall and she slid bonelessly to the floor.
I sprinted on bare feet down the deserted hallway, moving as quickly and quietly as possible, waiting for the sirens. They never came, and I felt a frisson of disappointment. “I figured you for better than that, Tresk,” I muttered and continued toward the shuttle bay.
The rounded tunnel was as sterile and white as my quarters, with a strange humming silence only found on battleships. I was familiar enough with the layout to know I was probably deep within the ship—safe from any battle damage, and a long damn way from the shuttle bays.
Lucky for me, royal starships were all designed the same way. If I could get to a shuttle before the FTL bubble formed, I’d be long gone by the time they noticed.
If. I barely suppressed the sigh as Portis’s dry voice filled my ears. You know what that stands for, don’t you?
I’m fucked.
I hissed a curse when voices echoed down the rounded tunnel of the hallway, and I jumped over a railing onto the walkway below. I bent my knees as I landed, tucking into a roll. I scurried across the walkway and ducked into an arched doorway, with only the whisper of air. A pair of blue-uniformed Imperial Navy officers passed above me as I held my breath and pressed as close to the wall as possible.
“Why do you suppose they sent us all the way out here? We’re not normally a shuttle service for Trackers.”
“Who knows? Everything about the empire is in chaos right now. All the empress’s children and grandchildren of note either dead or vanished. They needed a lift, so we gave them one,” the stouter of the pair said.
“You’d think they have better things to do right now than hunting up some random gunrunner. Even one as dangerous as her. I caught a peek at her file on the captain’s computer; she’s one of Po-Sin’s.”
“Maybe they think she had something to do with the princesses’ deaths?”
“May their road to temple be filled with light,” the first officer replied automatically. “If she did, I almost feel sorry for her. Sick or not, the empress will take her apart.”
The pair moved out of earshot as I stood frozen. How sick was Mother and with what? My amusement over the gossip trickled away, and for an insane moment I contemplated following them to find out just what the news about my mother was.
The grating was cold under my bare feet; the rough edges that were meant to give running boots traction bit into my unprotected soles and shook me back to reality. I needed to get out of here, then I could worry about the rest of it.
I made it down three more levels with only one close call and slid through the doors of the shuttle bay. Staying low, I skirted around the shuttles near the door and made for the one closest to the force shield. The space beyond was a severe block of black against the white walls of the bay. Only the slight shimmering of the shield betrayed its presence.
The door of the shuttle was open, and I crept into the dark interior, feeling my way along the wall toward the pilot’s seat. I was two steps into the shuttle when I froze.
Someone was already inside.
“It’s good to know my instincts are right on track with you. Zin overestimated your sense of honor. You gave your word.”
“I said I’d go home to see Mother. I didn’t say I’d go with you.”
“I’ll remember that next time. He thought you’d come home like a good little princess and the show in your room was just you having a tantrum.”
The lights came up. Emmory sat in the pilot’s seat, one foot braced on the middle console and a smug smile playing at the corners of his generous mouth.
“Highness,” he said and tilted his head to the side.
“Tracker,” I replied. “So you thought different, huh? Even though you’re the one who called me a spoiled princess?”
“I was angry.”
“You still are angry.” Because I may have killed your brother.
He shrugged. “You’re not the type to pitch a fit like that. You didn’t kill your guards.”
I blinked at him. “What reason would I have to do that?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Just an observation.”
My options were racing through my head at the speed of light. Did I run? I could possibly get to another shuttle and get the door closed before he tagged me.
Unless he had people outside. In which case I was screwed because I still didn’t have a damn weapon.
Which left me with fight, or bribery.
If he had people in the bay, they wouldn’t come storming in here. Not only would it hamper Emmory’s attempts to subdue me, but any shot fired in this cramped space had as much chance of hitting him as it did me. I tapped the door control as a precaution. It slid shut behind me and locked with a cheerful little chime.
I gave Emmory a smile and spread my arms as I crossed the space between us. “So where does this leave us, Tracker?” Without waiting for an answer, I kicked him in the face, seeing the flicker of surprise just before my bare foot connected and snapped his head back.
I moved in, intent on knocking him out while he was still reeling from my kick. But the Tracker was better than I’d given him credit for, and his booted foot landed in my solar plexus like a sledgehammer. I staggered back, gasping for air.
“Highness, this is unwise.” Emmory wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and stood. He moved like a panther, all muscular grace and deadly intensity.
“I love how you kick me and then call me Highness like it matters. You don’t follow the rules very well, do you?”
“I follow them when they’re needed. Right now bringing you home is more important than treating you like a princess.”
“I’m not going home. I left for a reason.” I hated myself for saying it, hated that it sounded like I was betraying my sisters by running. There was nothing I could do for them locked up in the palace. “I’ll have better luck finding answers here than at home. I don’t want that life.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Emmory’s voice was quiet, but it lashed through the air like a whip. “This is your life, Highness. This is what you were born to do.”
“Don’t give me that destiny bullshit.”
“Fine.” He snarled the word at me, advancing with his hands spread. “My brother gave his life to bring you home. I’m not letting his sacrifice be for nothing.”
My laughter was brittle, shattering on the metal at my feet. “News flash, Tracker. That’s what the empire does: uses you up and spits you out. My father gave his life for the empire, too. Do you know what he got out of it after some crazy woman shot him down? Ridiculed and forgotten. Blamed as the reason my mother gave in to the Saxons. You’re a fool if you think the empire gives a fuck about your brother. He was just a man, useful as cannon fodder or for making daughters, that’s it.”
Emmory stared at me—through me—for so long I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. “You don’t believe that, Highness,” he said finally.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. That’s what Indrana does, Emmory. Chews us up and spits us out. I left for a reason. I’m not going back to give my life for an empire that couldn’t care less about me.” I decided to try my luck at bribery. “Look, the empire doesn’t want me back any more than I want to go back. Trust me. I’ve got money stashed. Just let me go. I’ll drop you and the shuttle off. You can tell them I overpowered you.”
“You know I can’t do that, Highness,” he said, and flicked his left hand at me. But this time, when the sapne powder unfurled from the tips of his fingers, I was ready for it.
Swinging my leg up, I kicked his arm to the side and the lavender powder was sucked away into the air filter. I let the momentum spin me, planted my left foot, and brought my other foot out in a vicious side thrust that caught him in the ribs. For once my luck held and my Tracker had made the unfortunate mistake of turning his shields off while on the ship.
He staggered back with a whoosh of expelled air.
Neither of us was suited to fighting in close quarters; our height and reach actually worked against us in the confines of the shuttle. It didn’t take me more than a few seconds to figure out that I’d misjudged Emmory. He was at least as skilled at hand-to-hand as I was and more than willing to fight dirty. Plus I was tired, and that first kick of his had really hurt.
It was going to cost me the fight.
I missed a block, my head slamming back into the bulkhead when he drove his palm into my cheekbone. Stars of pain exploded behind my right eye.
He caught my next punch, thrown half-blind, and locked up my right arm as he stepped into me. It was luck more than skill that allowed me to get a grip on his throat, but I stilled when I felt the edge of a blade under my chin.
“I think Sergeant Terass is just outside the shuttle, Highness, but I’d rather not test the theory. If you move, I can’t guarantee your safety.”
“The gods-damned irony of this is overwhelming,” I muttered, staring into his dark eyes. “It’s obvious you don’t like me. Someone out there wants me dead, and Mother sure as the fires of Naraka didn’t send you to bring me home. Not after all this time. Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?”
He blinked at me, clearly shocked by the suggestion, and I had to choke back the urge to laugh.
“Highness, we are here to retrieve you. You are not safe. Surely what happened on your ship proved that to you.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “The empire needs you.”
“The empire got along fine for twenty years without me,” I replied, flicking my eyes downward. “Mother’s probably got Ganda all ready to go. Trust me, no one will be happy about me coming home.”
“Highness, the situation is delicate. There are things you need to know. I can’t explain them to you here.”
I frowned, confused by the earnest pleading in his eyes that crowded out his anger, and the urgency in his lowered voice. This was at odds with the cold man I’d seen earlier. “What things?”
“Watch this.” He pressed a miniature file into my palm, and raised his voice for his next words. “Will you swear to me you will not try to escape again, Highness?”
I closed my eyes with a second curse. It didn’t help me pretend I wasn’t pinned to the chill wall of a shuttle bulkhead with Emmory’s knee digging into my inner thigh and his thumb poised just above my racing pulse. It didn’t do a thing to erase Portis’s blood-filled plea for forgiveness, or my terror at returning home.
“Fine.”
“Highness?”
I opened my eyes and gritted my teeth, choosing my words carefully. “I swear, Tracker. I swear I will not try to escape this ship.”
The muscle in his jaw twitched at my words. “You swear no further harm to me or the crew? Do you swear to return home with me without further incident and do your duty?”
He was damn good. I had to give him that even though I wanted to spit on him for trapping me. I couldn’t go back on my word; it was all I had left and he knew it.
“What if I don’t swear?”
“I knock you out and drag you home like the criminal you are.”
Returning home trussed up was an unappealing option. I’d only known Emmory for an hour, but I was pretty sure he’d drag my ass across the floor of the throne room. If I had to go home, it’d be on my own two feet. My duty, though, was to my sisters and my sisters only, and I didn’t see a need to clarify that to him as I nodded my head. “All right, Tracker, I swear.”
“Done,” he said and released me. As he stepped away, the tiny blade disappeared back into the thumb of his glove. He turned to the wall and tapped the controls, gesturing at the now-open door with a bow. “Highness, if you would?”
I jerked my chin into the air, and didn’t look at Zin or the seven remaining ITS troops clustered around the shuttle. They were busy not looking at me, either, dropping into formal bows when I passed.
Zin fell into step in front of me without a word. Emmory was a silent shadow hovering just out of the corner of my right eye as I stalked back to my room. I dropped onto the bed, my hands in my lap, and my eyes locked on the floor. I didn’t want to give Emmory any reason to suspect he hadn’t just won that round.
“There will be new guards outside, Highness. I wouldn’t try that again,” Emmory said, and the door slid shut, leaving me alone with the stinging taunt that I couldn’t be trusted to keep my word.
The warning tone for warp echoed through the room and I braced myself. The Para Sahi’s Alcubierre/White Drive revved, and the familiar queasiness rolled through my stomach as the wall of the bubble expanded to encompass the whole ship. It dragged us out of normal space-time into a place where FTL was possible.
The Alcubierre/White Drive was as old as man’s flight into the stars. In all the years that had passed, no human had found a better solution, and if the nonhuman races had a better one, they’d chosen not to share it with us.
An AWD created a bubble in space-time that belled out behind a ship and contracted in front, carrying the ship along outside of conventional space at a speed much faster than light traveled. Once inside the bubble, the ship was carried along in the wave, so the only power expenditures were getting into and out of the wave itself.
We passed through the wall and the warp engines cut out, leaving me in an abrupt silence. As soon as the nausea passed, I uncurled my fingers, staring down at the flat black square in my palm. I flopped backward onto the bed, pillowing my head in my hands, and slipped the card into the slot hidden under my green curls.
My smati recognized Cire’s royal code stamped onto the files and responded in kind. It was a message from her and with that code I knew it hadn’t been tampered with or delivered under duress. No one else even knew those codes existed; our father had given them to us when we’d been kids so we could pass messages in secret.
I shook away the encroaching memories as my computer uploaded the file. Something about Emmory’s warning made it obvious that it wasn’t safe for anyone else to see this. I played the video internally, closing my eyes to shut out distractions.
Cire appeared. The pretty sister I remembered had grown into a stunningly royal princess. Her blue-black curls were pinned up and away from her doll-like face. A face that was exhausted, the gunrunner part of me noted critically.
“Hail,” she said, smiling sadly. Her perfect, soft voice washed over me. “Unfortunately, if you’re watching this, it means I won’t get to say anything to you in person. Emmory has orders to deliver this to you in the event of my death.” A tear slid down her round cheek, and Cire brushed it away with impatient fingers.
“Damn it. I’m sorry for that. Sorry you’ll get that news on top of everything else I’m about to tell you, and sorry I’ll never get to see you again. I’d always hoped I would someday. I’ve missed you so much, you have no idea. Pace is dead—”
Cire straightened her shoulders, the grief sliding off her face like water off glass. She looked every bit the empress she would never be, and my heart writhed in pain.
“Someone killed her, Haili, and it wasn’t the Upja rebels no matter what Mother might claim. Knowing you, you don’t trust anyone. I need you to come home for Ami. If I’m gone, there’s no one to protect her and Mother is sick.
“There are dark, dangerous things at work, Haili. People are trying to destroy the empire from within. I’ve attached what information I can, and you can get the rest of it from Emmory.
“I know you don’t think it, but the empire needs you. I needed you, but I’m afraid I waited too long to admit it, and since you’re listening to this, it’s too late for me.” Cire stopped, muttering a curse that had me raising my eyebrows. Then she fixed her eyes back on the camera with a forced smile. “It’s damned hard to see into the future, Haili. I don’t know what things will be like here by the time you get this message. I only know you need to trust in Portis—he’s been watching after you since you left.”
Those words sliced through me and stole my breath. Emmory’s announcement I could dismiss as lies, but my sister would never have lied to me. The doubt coalesced around my heart, threatening to crush it to dust. Had I mistaken Portis’s intentions? Had I killed him when he was really just trying to protect me? Why couldn’t I remember what had happened?
Cire continued, “Also trust Zin and Emmory, Haili.” She laughed softly. “Emmory is unconventional and extremely improper at times. You will probably butt heads quite a bit, but he has your best interests at heart. Keep him close to you even after you get into the palace. They’ll be able to help you find out who is responsible for all this.”
Cire glanced off-camera, frowning at whatever noise she heard. “I’m sorry to drag you home, but I know you can help. You always sold yourself short where these things were concerned. Ami will need your wisdom and your strength, and hey, it’s not like you’ll have to be empress.”
She looked directly at me, her dark eyes filled with ten thousand things left unsaid between us. “You are the only one left who can help my daughter save the empire. I love you, Hail. Please come home.”
The message ended, and I lay on the bed with tears leaking from behind my closed lids. They tracked down the sides of my head to hide in my hair.
“Gods damn it,” I muttered at the ceiling. “You deserved better.” I wasn’t entirely sure if I meant the words for Cire or for myself.
Ami had been alive when Cire made the message. Hell, Cire had been alive when she recorded the message. She’d been alive when she sent Emmory after me. Now they were all gone.
Trust Emmory, Haili.
I hadn’t trusted anyone except for Portis for a long time. Even if he hadn’t tried to kill me, he’d lied to me, and his betrayal had shattered that trust. I didn’t know if I could recover enough from it to trust a total stranger, no matter what my sister said. But Cire had always had a knack for the truth, for knowing who to trust. If I couldn’t take her word for it, where did that leave me?
Walking into the snake pit without so much as a sharp stick. I snorted on bitter laughter.
The fact that Emmory hadn’t tried to kill me straight off was a step in the right direction, though. Only I wasn’t sure if it was onto solid ground, or onto a burning transport ship.
My face hurt.
Getting up from the bed, I leaned against the sink and poked experimentally at the shiner swelling my right eye. Gone was the eighteen-year-old princess, erased by twenty years and a haywire body mod. The sharp-faced woman in the mirror flinched.
These injuries were child’s play in comparison to the ones I’d gotten in the fight on Sophie. My shoulder had been—I paused and frowned at my reflection. I’d hit Sophie’s deck hard—first my shoulder and then my head snapping back against the metal floor. It had only added to my fucking addled brain.
Why was my memory in pieces?
Thanks to my BodyGuards, I’d had some training before I met Portis, but Portis had been the one to really teach me how to fight, and I couldn’t see him falling for the kick I’d lashed out with after I fell, but I remembered the grunt of pain in the darkness. My shot had struck home.
I fisted my hands around the lip of the sink and rolled my shoulders. Things that seemed just coincidence at the time were starting to fall into place with alarming speed.
All the self-defense lessons Portis had forced on me. Teaching me how to shoot, teaching me how to fly. What had been the purpose of it all? I’d thought it was because that was the only way to survive as a gunrunner, and maybe that was true. But an ITS-trained guard standing in as my BodyGuard would have seen it as one more tool in a survival kit.
I’d run into Portis just weeks after I left home. I was an inexperienced eighteen-year-old hiding on the streets of Delhi, only four planets away from home and in way over my head as I tried to track the man I was certain was responsible for my father’s death.
He’d saved my ass from a gang of street punks, and even after I’d nearly taken his head off with a two-by-four, he had still been calm enough to get me out of that alley and back to the boardinghouse before the cops showed up.
“We’ll stick together. Watch each other’s backs,” he’d said after I’d fed him a story about being an orphan trying to get off-planet to see the stars.
I’d taken him up on it, and somewhere along the way, I’d fallen in love with the bastard. Now I was faced with one of two choices—either he’d betrayed me from the very beginning, or at the very end.
He was dead, and I’d never know for sure. Hell and fire, I might have been the one to kill him.
Check your smati, stupid. The voice in my head now sounded a lot like Hao, my former mentor and the man who’d sponsored my way into Po-Sin’s gang. He had the habit of taunting me with that when we argued—even though more often than not, my recording of our conversation proved him wrong.
Smatis had a recording feature. They only looped on a seventy-two-hour cycle to save data space. Mine was a little longer, by dint of my royal hardware, but even the standard was enough to show me what had happened on the ship.
Provided that whatever was keeping me from remembering in the first place hadn’t also impacted my system. I tightened my hands on the lip of the sink again as I queued up the footage. Heart pounding and my breath clogging my throat, the image of all of us at dinner overlaid itself on my vision. We’d just done a hell of a deal. I’d hijacked a new shipment of handguns and a few heavier pieces destined for the Solarian Conglomerate’s police force. Turned around and sold them to the Cheng for a profit that meant we could take a few years off if we wanted to. Not that I’d particularly wanted to do that.
We’d been headed to the outer territories to drop off some cargo that had been taking up space in the bay for a while, but Portis kept trying to get me to take a job in Hortsmith. I’d been so pissed at him for pushing it when he knew I wanted those damn rugs off my ship.
I sped through the recording until it went black as I passed out and for what seemed like an eternity nothing happened.
“Baby, wake up.” Portis’s voice filtered through the black, but my eyes didn’t open immediately. “Fuck,” he muttered and rolled me over. “Breathe in for me, baby, and wake up.”
“What’s going on?” My voice was slurred and I reached a hand out but missed his face by several inches.
“Someone drugged you, we need to go.”
It was a surreal experience to watch through my drugged-up eyes as Portis got me dressed, armed, and out the door in a matter of moments. Now I could see the things I’d missed in my haze. The fear tightening his mouth and making his hands shake. We stumbled down the hallway to the cargo bay.
“Help’s coming. If we can just get to the shuttle.” We were on the stairs. Portis swore and shoved me. I fell down the stairs into the cargo bay, crashed to the floor, jamming my leg on the way down. It was dark in the bay, but it lit up when someone fired in my direction. I fired back and heard a body fall.
“Get down!” Portis tackled me and we slid across the cargo bay floor.
“Captain, get away from him! He’s trying to kill you!” Memz’s sharp voice echoed through the darkness.
“Haili, baby, please stay down.”
Awful terror lanced through me, as sharp as a tempered blade. “What did you call me?” I blinked at Portis as the emergency lighting flicked on, coating the cargo hold in a wash of red.
Guilt flooded his face and Portis held a hand out to me. “Baby, don’t do this now. Please. You have to trust me. I’m trying to get you out of here.”
“Hailimi Mercedes Jaya Bristol,” Portis whispered. “I know who you are. I’ve always known. You let me handle this, get to the shuttle.” Portis’s voice was breathy with pain.
I caught him as he fell to his knees, blood smearing across the front of my white shirt and staining my arms where he grabbed me.
“Baby, I’m sorry. You’ve got to get out of here.”
“I don’t understand. How did you know?” I dragged him backward until we were reasonably safe from the gunfire peppering our position.
“I’ve always known. It doesn’t matter.” He pressed his gun into my hand. “You get to the shuttle and get the hell off this ship. Emmory’s coming for you, I sent coordinates. Trust him. He’ll keep you safe.”
“Who’s Emmory?”
Portis coughed, splattering me with blood. “Just trust him, Haili. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for lying to you. I’m sorry it turned out like this and you have to go the rest of the way alone. But all that matters is you staying alive. You have to go. Now.”
He shoved me away from him, pulling another gun free as he staggered to his feet and rushed out into the center of the cargo bay.
I gasped, wanting to look away, but instead I watched the rest of the scene play itself out with painful clarity. Memz shot Portis again as he rushed her, but she missed me, barreling right after him, and I tackled her with the precision of an Austro footballer. Our fight was brutal and I finally tore myself away from the replay when the crack of her neck shot through my brain.
“Your Highness, are you all right?”
Blinking dry eyes back to the present, I realized I was on my knees a meter away from the sink. Both Trackers were in the room, but at a cautious distance. Zin was holding my boots. Emmory had his arms crossed. I’d thought his eyes were black, but in this light I could see the earthy brown layered over the silver of his augmentations. Portis’s green eyes—bright sunlight through leaves—flashed into my vision and I felt another tear slip down my wet cheeks.
Rocking back on my heels, I rose in a smooth motion and held my hand out. “My smati remembered what I couldn’t, Tracker. Would you like to see?”
“Highness, you swore an oath.”
“I keep my oaths. This isn’t an elaborate ruse to try and escape again. My recording shows what happened on Sophie.” I wiggled my fingers. “Zin’s welcome to take his gun out if it will make you feel better.”
Emmory gave me a look and took my hand. Our smatis synced and I queued up the file once more. Emmory didn’t get that glazed look people sometimes had when they viewed things on their smatis; instead he looked right at me the whole time. Like water washing away a sand castle, his anger melted. It was replaced with grief and I pulled my hand away, turning my head in respect.
“Why didn’t you make it to the shuttle?” There wasn’t any accusation in the question, but I flinched anyway. Now that I’d seen it, the memories rushed back in like a wave, shredding my composure in its path.
“I couldn’t leave him.” My confession echoed loudly in the silence. “I couldn’t leave him to die alone like I’d left my father. After everything we’d been through, I didn’t want—” I choked the words back down, not wanting to admit that to anyone.
I could remember it now, as clearly as the surface of a quiet pond. When the realization that I was going to lose Portis hit me, I hadn’t wanted to survive either.
“Have been since we came in. They’ll probably get suspicious, but I can keep the surveillance scrambled for as long as we want. Someone might come knocking, though.”
“You don’t trust these people?”
Emmory gave a short shake of his head. “There wasn’t time to vet the whole ship. Gill’s people are crewing the surveillance for your room, but others could be listening in…” He raised a hand and wiggled it. “At this point, it’s best not to tip anyone off.”
“That’s why no one knows who I am.” I tapped one hand against the boots before I tossed them on the bed. “My sister said to trust you. I was right. She’s the one who sent you, not my mother.”
“We are not the enemy here, Highness. I swear.” Emmory held my gaze, his eyes filled with concern and frustration. There was no trace of his previous anger; I wondered if he was just hiding it or if it was gone for good.
Wiping my face with the heels of my hands, I exhaled, letting the ice settle around my heart and across my face. There wasn’t time to grieve for everything I’d lost. I was headed into a situation more dangerous than anything I’d faced outside the empire. No friends, no weapons, and far too little intel. If I didn’t keep it together, I was going to end up dead. “Who is?”
Emmory looked away, his jaw flexing, and I was pretty sure he was trying to think up a nonoffensive reply. Cire was probably right about us butting heads. Trackers were a different breed. With so much exposure to the outside worlds, they had trouble acting like proper Indranan men: no biting of their tongues as was expected in conventional society.
Of course, I wasn’t much good at that either. There was a good chance Emmory and I would get along just fine.