Empress of a Thousand Skies(47)

“Kill the light, P,” he said quickly, and Pavel did. They’d plunged from bright light to total darkness. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her. “Don’t be scared.”

“Who says I’m scared?” She didn’t sound too confident, but she wasn’t screaming her head off either. “Maybe you should be scared.”

“I am,” he said honestly. For a lot of reasons. That it would all end here. That Vincent had died for nothing. That the Ta’an had been wiped out and the planets would go to war.

“It really is you,” she said. “I can’t believe it. You’re Alyosha, from The Revolutionary Boys.” Then: “Where’s the other one? Where’s Vincent?”

“Dead,” Aly said shortly. Maybe Aly was a murderer. Anyone who rolled with him ended up dead. “I buried him.” Aly could feel the back of his throat closing off, his eyes watering, a deep blue filling up his chest.

She was quiet for a bit. “They said you kidnapped him.”

“Is that what you think?” he asked bitterly. “That I’m a murderer? Some sort of terrorist?”

“Is that what you are?” she replied evenly.

Aly couldn’t read her tone. “It’s what everyone believes, isn’t it?” Even if she couldn’t see him, he could still feel her eyes searching his face. It reminded him of the first time they’d brought a camera on board the Revolutionary, and how he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“If all we are is what people think we are, then we’re all screwed.” There was a knife’s edge to her voice. She sounded pissed. Or scared. Or both.

“Well, we’re all screwed anyway,” Aly said, but her words bothered him. He knew as well as anyone that it was other people’s rules that mattered. In the real world they told you who to be, not the other way around. It’s why he pretended to be Kalusian when he first joined the UniForce—it just made life easier. “You’re crazy, you know that?” Aly told her. “I could be dangerous.”

“Let’s say I am crazy and you are dangerous, and we call it a draw? Besides,” she added, “you haven’t hurt me yet, and you could’ve. That’s a gold star in my book.”

“That’s a pretty low bar . . .” Aly said.

Just then there was a faint hiss as the doors opened at the northern end of the hold. Aly snapped back to the present just as the beam of a flashlight shifted across the floor. The girl grabbed his wrist and pulled him down to crouch behind what looked like an old MRI machine nearby. Pavel had enough sense to go still and keep his lights dark. No one had come in here for a full twenty-four hours.

“Entering carriage 95,” a man said, speaking into his cube.

Aly poked his head up and saw he was wearing the uniform of a Tasinn. He couldn’t believe it. The Tasinn were showing up more and more now, in places they weren’t meant to be—like on Derkatz, and now here on the zeppelin. He’d been worried a droid would find them, but this was way worse.

As the girl yanked him back down, he accidentally nudged a piece of equipment. It made a sound as it scratched across the floor.

“Who’s there?” the man called out.

Aly’s body tensed, and for whatever reason he and the girl reached for each other at the same time. Could he trust her? She’d grabbed him to hide, hadn’t she? They were so close, her tangled hair had somehow made it into his mouth. Thank god she didn’t smell like fake flowers or extinct fruits or else he’d be sneezing his face off. Her head just smelled like a head.

Could she hear his heart beating? Her breath was hot on his neck. The guard’s bootsteps came closer.

Aly had slung one arm protectively around her and wished to god he still had his hammer. He scanned the floor for anything he could use. What were they going to do? Crouch here spooning each other until the guard found them? Because at this rate he would find them.

Crunch. Aly heard the Tasinn curse softly as something crackled underfoot. Aly’s blood froze. He’d left his supplies out, just scattered across the blanket for anyone to see, hoping to tempt the thief—the girl—into revealing herself. He heard the rustle of fabric as the Tasinn moved into a crouch, saw the beam of a light sweep across a sad collection of spare parts he’d stripped from the machines. The guard was less than five feet away, separated from them by only a thin arrangement of extra sheet metal.

They would have to fight. There was no other choice. Slowly, as quietly as he could, he crept forward . . .

Then, suddenly, the guard touched his cube. “Hold on, 401, let me transfer you to a holo.” He pulled a small handheld holo from his pocket. “Go ahead, 401.”

The device projected a hologram of another guard wearing the same army outfit with the red sash. “They’ve found the freight jumper. Male, six foot, medium build, a Vodhead—crazy tattoos and all. Traveling with a Marked girl.”

“I’m in cargo,” he said, poking through Aly’s stuff with the tip of his baton. “Looks like they’ve been living down here too.”

“Leave it. We’re landing in fifteen, and we’ll need all hands on deck. Just heard Nero’s skipping town early and he’s got a whole party with him.”

“Yeah, there were about nine million staff requests to be put on his security detail . . . everyone is trying to meet him.”