He dreamed of her again.
The familiar images were ticked off one by one as he surfaced from sleep. Her brown eyes pierced his soul as she gave him the smile that was only meant for him. “I want you,” she whispered.
Her breath was sweet. She kissed him as she placed something long and soft against his palm. Her braid. “Only the queen may choose who has the honor of unbraiding her hair on her wedding night.”
The edges of the scene blurred. He whispered a curse, realizing he’d wake soon. Determined, he tried to stay in the dream to keep hold of the image.
He sighed dejectedly, desperate to relive that moment again.
There was a jolt to his brain as he realized something was different.
Behind his eyelids a million images flashed per second. Circuits were ablaze with new algorithms. Reams of information and data were categorized and processed. A new prime directive was installed, and a file labeled CANYON was uploaded. Inside, Aidan was smiling because he finally knew all the answers.
And like taking off on a Queen’s Guard glider, Aidan was pulled out of the dimness and into the light. He practiced moving his toes and fingers, and then finally he opened his eyes.
Above him the face from his dream stared down at him. “Aidan?” she said. She studied him with a frantic expression. “Do you remember me?” she asked.
He stared back at her in a dreamy, euphoric state. The last time he saw her …
“Delia!” He bolted upright and put his hands on her shoulders. “Are you all right? Did you escape? What happened? I’m sorry, I’ve never been so sorry for anything in my life.” Then the full impact of the truth hit him like a sandblast to the face. “I’m … I’m not who you think I am.” And in that moment he wished on all the stars in the Four Quadrants that he really was a kitchen boy—a human.
Her expression softened. She reached out and cupped his cheek with her hand. “I know everything,” she said. “You saved my life.”
Aidan couldn’t tell if it was love or unfathomable gratitude that filled her eyes. Someone called out, “He’s alive!” Her hand slipped away.
Griff and Morgan were watching with identical expressions of proud relief. “I have a new prime directive,” he told them. “To save Astor.” He turned to Delia. “The pirates are right, the answer is in the canyon! This last SHEW is like a treasure map. Gail trusted me with her life’s work. She figured it out!”
He now understood the recurring dream was only made up, a backup plan to ensure he had the last SHEW to save Astor.
Delia sadly shook her head. “Prince Felix is turning Astor into a military base. He has an army. I have nothing to fight back with.”
“You are the queen.” Aidan leaned closer to her. “There’s enough codlight to run Astor forever. And when you show up with proof, the kingdom will be yours again.” Then he told her everything Gail had put in his SHEW. She listened to the whole story, wide-eyed and silent.
“It seems the legend was split up,” she finally said. “The royal family claimed the first part, and the miners kept the last part.”
Footsteps clamored down the stairs. Nazem’s smiling face appeared first, followed by Princess Shania.
“’Tis good to see ya alive again,” Nazem said. “Blinking and everything without yer wires and guts hanging out.”
Shania nearly pushed Nazem out of the way. “Welcome back.” She beamed. Then she looked at Aidan’s chest. “The scar makes you look dangerous, much more interesting than an eye patch.”
Nazem cleared his throat and addressed the rest of the room. “Captain has responded to my signal. Gliders be arriving soon to help us escape.”
“Except we’re not escaping,” Delia told him, a regal sureness in her tone. “We’re taking back Astor.”
Moments later they were gathered in Aidan’s small kitchen. He marveled at the group huddled around the table. Delia was full of fire and purpose as she explained to the others what they would be doing. He could stare at her for the rest of his life and never become bored. Since waking, he hadn’t had a chance to be alone with her. And although she’d embraced him and cried, she still hadn’t kissed him, and he had begun to accept that because he wasn’t a real man, her feelings had changed.
Nazem came into the room, cheeks flushed. “Gliders are landing in the back.”
Tookah helped Quinton as the others followed. Delia looked at Griff and Morgan. “And you’re sure you want to stay behind?”
Griff only raised a bony shoulder. “These tunnels go all through the Dark District, Your Majesty. This is a safer place for me than on a pirate ship hovering over those sandworms.”
“Besides,” Morgan said. “Aidan says you’ll save Astor, so I believe all we have to do is wait.”
She nodded, then made her way to back door of the cottage.
“Hey,” Griff said to Aidan, making him stay behind. “You might need this.” He handed Aidan the silver dagger.
Morgan rolled his eyes. “He’s not programmed to kill.”
“Yeah, well he ain’t programmed to love neither, so that’s how much you know.”
Aidan took the dagger and slipped it into his pocket. When he stole it, he remembered Prince Felix arguing with someone in the other room and how quickly the guards had arrived afterward. Colonel Yashin must have been the other voice, already planning the coup. “If I hadn’t taken this, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?” he said.
Griff nodded. “I gave you the fake microchip on purpose. Langdon suspected I was trying to sabotage the rebels’ plan, but I managed to avoid his full wrath. You can’t imagine my surprise when you happened to bring in the one message intended for the resistance. Of all the things to steal that day…”
“The universe works in strange ways, doesn’t it?” Aidan replied.
Griff’s eyes got watery. He cleared his throat and walked back to the kitchen, head bent.
“Aidan,” Morgan said softly, just a hint of a command. He held a small infoscreen. “I’ve been running diagnostics.” He paused, then craned his neck to the side to make sure Delia had left. “The energy components are different from the others. This is your last SHEW, and once your life cells run out we have no others to use. I’m sorry.”
Aidan automatically accessed his internal files, did his own diagnostic scan, and found Morgan was right. This last SHEW was primarily meant for him to find the treasure. At best he had roughly five hours left.
“Remember, your energy cells drain faster the more emotionally or physically taxing your missions.” His expression was pained.
Aidan nodded. Instead of remorse he felt a calm acceptance. He would help Delia do the one thing she wanted most of all, to save Astor. In a nanosecond, he reconciled that a broken heart was enough to bear if he could help her fulfill this one last destiny.
“I’m sorry,” Morgan repeated. “I should have done more sooner.”
“You did as much as you could at the time,” Aidan replied. “Thank you for being there when it counted the most. Perhaps this was how it was supposed to be all along.”
The pirate ship wasn’t as menacing as Aidan remembered, but the captain’s regard for his red coat was laced with a ferocious grimace. Aidan had sheepishly handed over the ruined garment after he and Delia boarded with the others.
Nazem tried to soften the moment. “Aye, ’tis a fine relic now. Imagine, to be the owner of the coat that started Astor’s new era.” He nodded enthusiastically, but the captain only grunted, handing the coat off to another pirate, barking orders to have it sewn immediately.
Delia then took over, explaining the plan to the captain. Although she’d changed into the tunic and pants Morgan had supplied them with, she looked more regal in that moment than if she’d been wearing the biggest crown. She was wearing the necklace he’d given her, but of course the medallion wasn’t there.
She spoke with such authority that everyone listened with rapt attention. Aidan stared at her, watching as she explained how they solved the creation legend and what the treasure in the sand really was.
A squawk made Aidan duck, covering his head. The blackbird had been careening around the ship since they boarded. Tookah whistled and held out his top arm for it to perch upon.
When Delia finished talking, the captain wiped a hand down his weathered face. He squinted back at her. “So you’re telling me the treasure that we’ve been looking for our entire lives is … sandworm crap?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, but I’ll rework the wording for my official speech. Gail Babineau was a genius engineer, but she was also a geologist. The legend of the treasure being in the canyon is true.”
He looked unconvinced.
Aidan stood by Delia, his hand brushed hers, and their fingers linked automatically. A fire of invincibility lit inside his chest. “It’s the codlight,” he said. “The miners thought it was an organic compound naturally occurring within the tunnels, but it was the dried by-product of the sandworms. All this time, they’ve been producing massive amounts of codlight without anyone realizing it.”
“That’s what created all the tunnels!” Delia added. “They weren’t carved by our ancestors, they were old passages created by the sandworms. After the palace was built and the population grew, they were forced out and moved to the driest, quietest place they could exist—the canyon.”
The plasma torches flickered. From the east Aidan saw the first few streaks of dawn. They were running out of time … and so was he.
The captain glanced back and forth between Delia and Aidan. “And what makes you two think you can slip into one of those tunnels below and come back with a hunk of codlight?”
“Because I know how to defeat the sandworms,” Aidan said. “And it’s not with bombs or fire or even water to flood the tunnels.” He allowed himself to sound a bit smug. “I’ll do it with the universal language, of course.”
All the pirates frowned around them. Some scratched their heads. A few looked over the side of the ship at the canyon floor far below, as if the answer was written in the sand.
“The language of music?” Tookah guessed.
Princess Shania stepped to the front of the crowd and stood by him. “The language of love?” she answered.
“All noble pursuits,” Aidan praised. “But alas no, I’m referring to the language of math. Gail studied the worms and came up with an equation for their patterns. It requires recalculating minute nuances in their movements, but there is a constant equivalence. All I have to do is watch them and do the calculations and then I’ll know exactly when it’s safe.”
“That’s impossible,” the captain snarled.
“Not for me,” Aidan simply said.
Delia added, “There is no room for doubt, captain. I have to do this. Only with proof of the codlight supply will I be able to reclaim the throne and drive the soldiers of Trellium off our planet.”
The captain continued to frown. He took a plasma dagger from his belt and began to clean his fingernails.
Aidan felt his impatience grow. “This will work,” he said, motioning to one of the mismatched pirate gliders, now prepped and ready at the side of the ship. It was nearly the same size as his sky dodger and Aidan knew it would be small enough to fit inside the tunnels. “All I have to do is study the sandworms’ movements for a moment, wait until one of them breaches, make a quick calculation, then fly into the hole in the sand, grab some codlight, and zoom back out.”
Delia turned to him, frowning. “You mean we.”
He gave her a careful smile. “I’m a natural pickpocket, remember?” All this time the quick reflexes and inherent instinct to effortlessly steal valuables had been part of his programming, seeing the patterns and knowing when to move. It all made sense to him now. “Besides,” he said as he smiled at Delia, “I know how to fly that kind of machine better than anyone else in Astor. The Queen’s Guard glider you’re used to is too big.”
“Yes, but I’ve flown with you. You’re hopeless.”
“I’ve flown with you. You’re reckless to the extreme.”
“Great combination,” Nazem said. He rolled his eyes. “I see no issue with this plan.”
The captain waved them away with a flick of the dagger. “Off with you, then,” he said. “But don’t expect me to sail down there and rescue you. This is a fool’s mission.”
“The history books will note your heroic efforts,” Delia replied smartly.
Aidan mounted the slim flier and slipped on a pair of goggles. He handed a pair to Delia, hoping she couldn’t see his hands shake.
Princess Shania and Tookah approached them. She hugged her sister, then gave Aidan a kiss on the cheek. “Please bring her back safely,” she asked him. “I can’t lose her again.”
“I promise,” he said.
Delia made an impatient noise at the back of her throat. “I’m right here. You talk of me as if I’m as helpless as a coconut cake.” She straddled the seat behind him and when she wrapped her hands around his waist, Aidan was tempted to fly off into the double sunrise, just to spend his last few hours with her uninterrupted.
Giving the dashboard a loving pat, Aidan said to the glider, “One more time.” Then they lifted off, the pirate ship growing smaller as he ascended sharply.
He felt Delia take in a breath, her chest pressing against his back. And despite the countdown going on inside his circuits, he felt like the luckiest man alive.
Flying was second nature to him, and even if half of his memories of flying were implanted ones, he knew he was meant to do this. The glider weaved in and out of the columns easily. Aidan felt comfortable on the ramshackle machine.
This was my destiny, he thought, fully smiling now. He was meant to jump into that ship Delia had commandeered. Even though he was programmed to seek out the layout of the palace, something bigger had been guiding him this whole time. The universe had been working to bring them together.
The twin suns of Astor were still below the horizon, but the night sky was starting to lighten. He slowed the machine for a moment, allowing Delia to see her beloved mountain far in the distance, the summit still covered in clouds. As they hovered, he turned to her. The moon was reflected in her goggles, but he could still see the tears well up in her eyes.
He’d purposely come up this high to tell her that he loved her, but the words didn’t seem big enough. If he said them now, they would get swallowed up by the wind. So be it, he thought. Even if I can’t be her lover, I can still be her hero.
They hovered for another fraction of a second. Then he dipped the glider downward. When they passed the pirate ship, the entire crew, including the captain, was giving them a salute.
Aidan maneuvered them closer to the surface. It was colder in the shadows. The suns wouldn’t illuminate this area until midday, but they didn’t have that kind of time. He thought of the great tree, imagining its blossoms falling for the last time.
“Behind us!” Delia screamed. Aidan coaxed the glider higher as a worm lunged at them, exposing its long leathery body.
Then another reared its head in front of them. Aidan zigzagged, then rose another ten feet. He turned hard and prepared to do another fly by, his eyes already focusing on the patterns just beneath the surface. All he needed was another minute of observation and he’d have his answer.
Delia shouted another warning. Aidan steered the glider into the clear. One, two, and then three more worms breached and dived. It took six point eight seconds to calculate the safest route. Wrenching the glider hard to the left, he hit the power and targeted the closest opening.
“Hold on,” he yelled to Delia. “This is it!”