Empress of a Thousand Skies(24)

The scrambler. She dropped to her knees again, threading her fingers through the grate, fumbling for the pill.

“Rhee,” Dahlen managed to gasp. “Look out.”

She turned. The sergeant had freed the knife from his foot. Now he didn’t look so ordinary; she could believe he’d fought in the Great War. His eyes were cloudy with rage. He looked like a monster. How would she escape?

You never think before you move, Veyron had said.

Her fingertips grazed the pill. One more inch . . . At last she managed to get it into her palm.

And before the sergeant could attack, she whipped around and kicked at his shins, cutting his legs out from under him. He slammed backward. Before he could recover, she was on top of him, disgusted by the spongy feel of his skin.

When he opened his mouth to call for the droid, Rhee shoved the scrambler down his throat. She clamped his jaw shut so he couldn’t spit it out.

His rounded eyes went wide and he began to choke. Rhee realized in horror that the scrambler was designed for human DNA, and she didn’t know what would happen. She watched as his chubby face began to lengthen, so that the tip of his chin and the top of his forehead stretched out like a piece of dough. Then it thinned out further, worn through in places, nearly transparent in others: She saw down to the bone and blood.

“Stop! Stop!” he screamed. Even his voice was becoming distorted, as if it, too, was being stretched to the breaking point. “Please stop!”

True to its programming, the droid stopped struggling immediately and darkened to standby mode. The vines began to withdraw. Dahlen, still breathing hard, ripped out the external comm unit mounted onto the droid’s neck. It was a droid’s equivalent to a cube, except the droid couldn’t function without one.

Dahlen limped up to Rhee, cradling his broken hand. He held out the tunic she’d shed. She wrapped it around herself, and together they watched as the Miseu’s eyes went milky and his cries began to change, higher and then lower like he was testing out a frequency. It was as if he were melting before her eyes, and she turned away, feeling as if she might vomit.

“It was a clever move,” Dahlen said.

“I didn’t do it to impress you,” she fired back. “I did to save your life.”

“My life is not your concern.” He reset his fingers, taking in a sharp inhale that was barely audible over the cracking of his bones. He pulled the black ring off and slipped it on the opposite finger of his good hand. “I’m grateful to you, but you’re meant to be empress. To unify the galaxy. Your survival takes precedence over my life. It takes precedence, too, over your need to be honorable.”

“I don’t believe that.” Honor, bravery, loyalty—these made up her ma’tan sarili, the three values.

“You’re not old enough to know what to believe,” Dahlen answered as he kneeled down next to Niture. As if he were that much older. Dahlen began searching the sergeant’s neck with one thin hand. For a confused second, Rhee thought he was checking for a pulse. Then she saw he was holding the knife.

“That’s my knife,” she said. Her surprise morphed into dread.

He ignored her. “Do you know where they implant cubes on the Miseu?” He grabbed the sergeant—now horribly deformed—and jerked him up to a sitting position. “Here, at the top of the spine.”

“What are you—?” she began to ask, but had to look away, as Dahlen plunged the tip of the blade into the sergeant’s neck and gouged out the microchip.

“He might know something of value,” Dahlen said simply.

Dahlen cleaned the cube of a sticky white substance she assumed was Miseu blood. “Can’t you just enable playback?” she asked, knowing full well it was impossible. There were mechanisms and fail-safes that prevented forced playback, and in any event the holder had to be conscious.

“There’s a driver embedded in the dashboard just under the console. See what you can find.”

Rhee was glad for the opportunity to turn away from the mangled body of the sergeant. Whatever memories he’d willed would be lost; his family would be devastated. Rhee knew the feeling all too well, and wouldn’t wish it on anyone. She located the driver and inserted the chip into it, angry, hopeless. Rhee wasn’t sure what Dahlen was trying to do. Sergeant Niture’s death would have triggered an automatic wipe of his memory system. Maybe the cube was outfitted with an identification number, so they could access the sergeant’s files—like his military history, or who he might’ve been reporting to.

The console lit up. The prompts and instructions were in Fontisian characters. She tried her best to navigate through the foreign characters using the touchscreen, not sure what she was looking for. She pressed a word that made the whole ship go dark, with hundreds of holograms creating a circle before her. Most of them looked like photographs, moments frozen in time, and she found herself drawn to an image of a smiling Miseu. Rhee lifted her hand up as if to touch her face, and her hand activated something on the hologram—because the woman threw her head back and her laughter filled the ship. Then she reached her arms out toward Rhee as if to hug her before the file cut out. The sergeant’s mother, Rhee realized, feeling sick. There were hundreds of memories in hologram form, piled on top of one another. It was like being in the man’s mind. It was being in his mind.

Which was impossible. Unless . . .