Empress of a Thousand Skies(13)
The princess with her two different-colored eyes was gone. Lately she’d been plastered all over the holos nonstop in the coronation coverage that Nero Cimna hosted. He was ambassador to the Crown Regent Seotra, which didn’t actually mean he was an ambassador—just the public face of the office, and more like a glorified press secretary. Charming as hell, the guy was next-level dreamboat status as far as the boys and girls were concerned. Everyone called him Nero, just Nero, like he was so cool he didn’t even need a last name. But Aly had heard somewhere his real name was Nerol anyway. He’d invited Vin and Aly to a gala once, with a mix of rich politicians and their DroneVision star friends. It was the first time he’d ever felt famous.
Lately, Nero had been doing feature pieces on the Countdown to the Coronation show, and even though it was girlie as hell, Aly had still watched. It was funny how every time they showed footage of the Princess, she’d been scowling at the camera. He thought he had it rough, but what were a couple of million viewers on some obscure DroneVision channel versus however many billion viewers across the galaxy watching your every move?
Some people were bothered by the idea of a sixteen-year-old running the whole operation. But there were loyalists who were adamant that a Ta’an—any Ta’an—needed to be on the throne, and that with the right advisers she’d manage just fine. Either way, no one thought she was ready, not really.
Still. Didn’t mean she deserved to die.
He suddenly remembered one of the kids who’d died on the road during the evacuation almost ten years ago. He’d been a little boy, just a couple of years younger than Aly, six or seven, and he must’ve been sick. His ma had cried up a flood and dragged him along like a rag doll, thinking he’d still wake up. And that’s when Aly’s dad had let go of his hand to carry the dead boy for miles . . .
Aly shook his head as though to clear it. He hated when memories crept up on him. Organic memory was what they called it. The organic ones hit harder, too, when you weren’t expecting them. He’d gotten his cube after his family had left Wraeta and moved to their first Wray Town; the Fontisian missionaries sponsored their installments. Any memories of his life before then weren’t stored—they just came exactly when Aly didn’t want them to, and they never left soon enough.
On the console, he saw that the autopilot had set a course for the closest base: Dembos Station. It was rare to dock at the enormous station—its own city in space—one of the largest, and most infamous, of its kind. Kalusian contractors had been hired to mine the nearby asteroid, and they ported at this station, too—which meant plenty of mining money and tons of stupid taejis to spend it on.
“We’re going to Dembos,” Aly said, dropping the Kalusian accent. He’d never seen Vin this pissed off and was careful not to meet his eyes. It was like when he was a kid, and a friend’s mom was yelling at the friend, and he didn’t know where to look while it happened.
“I’m beat. I’m staying on board.” Vin was staring out the window, his back to the bridge. “You should go down to base without me.”
“I was planning on it,” Aly said, maybe a little too quickly. He could get down with some alone time. That memory had him rattled, but there was something else, too—a feeling he couldn’t quite loosen, like a bolt he’d screwed on way too tight.
Vin raised his eyebrows. “You mind leaving Pavel here?” he asked.
Aly shrugged and looked to the droid.
“Cool with me,” Pavel said. It never got old, hearing him talk slang in his robovoice. He was mirroring language. It was how his vocabulary evolved. He blinked his two blue eyelights. “I’m scheduled for an update, and I’d also be interested in calculating the velocity with which—”
“Right, P. Sounds like a party.” Aly stood up, eager to get off the ship, away from Vin. “Ma’tan,” he said with a wave as he headed out.
Vin didn’t bother responding. He’d never seemed to care about politics, and Aly was suddenly annoyed that Vin was taking the news about the Princess so hard. The cameras were off. Vin didn’t need to keep up the act. He stopped at the doors off the bridge, working up the nerve to say what he wanted to say. Then finally: “What the hell was that back there?”
“What?” Vin turned around then, all those pretty-boy features hazed over with confusion—that playing-dumb expression Aly hated.
“What do you think? The stunt you pulled back there with the stealth ship,” Aly said, pointing out the dash. “You know how serious it could’ve been if we broke Fontisian atmosphere?”
“You’re pissed about that?” Vin asked. “That was . . .” He trailed off as Aly waited. “That was nothing,” he said finally.
“It’s not nothing to me,” Aly said. “I could get deported.” Not even the producers could protect him from that taejis storm. There were people foaming at the mouth to get the Wraetan refugees off Kalu.
“Sorry, man,” Vin said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
That was the problem: Vin never thought. He never had to. He was protected. Immune. All he had to do was visualize a problem, and it went away with a great big smile and a can-do attitude. Yeah, right. Kalusians didn’t know how the rest of the galaxy worked.
Meanwhile, Aly was constantly stressed about what to say or how to stand, always trying to look polite and friendly and not even a little bit angry—so that maybe for one second people could forget about the uprisings. It was easier than trying to educate them, to explain how the Wraetans were just trying to defend their own land. It was like everyone on Kalu had amnesia. And sure, he knew Vin hadn’t meant it. But that didn’t change the fact that Vin didn’t get it. He never would.