Empress of a Thousand Skies(41)

Vin hesitated. “Princess Josselyn,” he said, after a pause. Aly nearly laughed—would have laughed, if Vin didn’t look so serious. Sure, there were always rumors that she’d survived the crash—conspiracy theories, that kind of thing. You could find anything if you went deep enough on the holos. “I’ve been tracking her. When I was back in Sibu—”

Aly could barely process what he was saying. “When were you in Sibu?”

“During leave a few months back . . .”

The last time they were all on leave, Alyosha went to Jethezar’s house. Vincent had said he was going to the coast to meet up with a fan. Aly figured he was off doing who knows what, with one of the thousands of girls who proposed to him on the holos or cried when he came on screen. For some reason this lie hit him harder than the others.

“Can I believe anything you tell me?” Aly hated how he sounded, like a desperate younger brother shut out of a game.

“You can believe this,” Vin said softly. “I think she’s alive. The United Planets thinks she’s alive. It’s even more important now that we find her.” Aly could see him chewing the inside of his mouth, like he did sometimes when he was thinking. “Listen, we have to risk taking the direct route to Portiis, even if there are patrols. We need to get there as fast as—”

Just then a loud pop made the whole hull shudder. The craft tilted noticeably, and the metal shell around them groaned.

“What the—?” But Aly knew right away what it was. Someone had locked on to the craft.

“A grav beam?” Vin swam back down into his seat, kicking off the walls and strapping in. Aly did the same and unlocked the nav system from his screen.

“It’s not a grav beam,” Aly said. The velocity was too slight. “It feels almost . . . magnetic.” As he said the last word he swung to the window. He had a visual on a body thirty astro units in the distance. What quadrant were they in again? Bazorl. Bazorl Quadrant. He scanned the nav stats and his blood went cold.

“Choirtoi,” he swore. “We’re being pulled into Naidoz.”

“Naidoz,” Vin repeated. He said it like a death sentence. He frantically began pressing buttons and pulling at the console. But Aly knew it was too late.

Naidoz was another dwarf planet, with an enormous valley of magnetic lava that had cooled and hardened centuries ago. Equipment failed constantly and crashes were common because everyone was pulled into its magnetic field. Every pilot knew to avoid it. But they’d drifted—they’d stopped paying attention all because of a stupid fight that Aly had started.

The pull got stronger, and they picked up speed as they were drawn helplessly toward the planet. It felt like the pod was made of glass, like it might shatter.

“P!” Aly had to shout. “What are our chances of pulling out?”

The droid’s lights went red and blinked blue again. “Our mass is too small and our thrust insufficient, even with recent upgrades.”

Translation: No chance. We’re all screwed.

A sudden jolt pushed them against the hull of the ship, and he could feel the g-force building. Everything was vibrating. He could hear them cutting through space—as loud as a bolt of thunder that never stopped. The shaking became intense and rattled its way into his brain. Metal seams shifted and flexed like tectonic plates.

Lights flickered on and off, the console a staticky red until it was total darkness apart from the red glow from Pavel’s eyelights. Outside, pieces of the Tin Soldier detached and burned through the atmosphere alongside the main pod, a trail of red-orange fire behind them.

“We have to make it to Portiis. We have to get to the United Planets!” Vin shouted. “But if one of us doesn’t make it . . .”

“We’re going to make it!” Aly yelled. “We’ll get there!”

A wing detached and darted away into the void. They barrel-rolled, end over end, so many times he lost count. He felt sick—an ocean in his stomach ready to come up and drown them all. It was just like how Vin used to turn the Revolutionary over for fun to mess with him, except this wasn’t for fun, and Vin wasn’t going to pull them out. They were going to die.

“Look, Aly. I’m sorry for what I said. I meant to tell you—”

But his voice was drowned out by an urgent mechanical beeping. The Tin Soldier, his old friend, was coming apart.

Down they plunged, burning through atmosphere, hurtling toward the surface of the planet’s ocean.

Faster. More pressure. He could barely breathe.

Then, a thunderous boom. A violent jolt. Metal groaning. He grabbed for Vin. His best friend. The two of them going down, after all they’d been through.

“You can have my hammer,” Aly told him.

Or maybe he thought it?

A wave of water slammed them backward. Then a current of white water poured in from the metal cracks and tore them apart.





Part Three:


    THE DEPARTED




“In the last G-1K summit, Kalusian neurobiologist Diac Zofim surprised the scientific world when she introduced what she called a reader. It could override security measures and read the contents of a person’s cube. Impressive enough, but think about this: For what purpose would you use it? What gave anyone the right to access someone’s cube without their express consent? It would be useful for interplanetary security, the supporters argued, but it sounded like a slippery slope to me. There were a lot of living rights activists who agreed, and it sparked a series of protests that would’ve been front and center, but they were overshadowed by the twin bombings of Rhesto and Wraeta. Eventually the tech was quietly deemed illegal, but they’d announced it at a time when the public had other things on their mind . . .”