Empress of a Thousand Skies(7)
“The Crown Princess has always been so obstinate,” Veyron said now.
Crown Princess. She scowled at her trainer. “You know I don’t go by that title.” It was Joss’s claim. She’d been next in line to inherit the throne, and only because of her death would Rhee be empress.
“I do.” He nodded again as he gazed back at the door behind them. The lights of the flares made red slashes across the side of his face. “But as we grow older, we must also accept the people we’ve become.”
“What do you mean?” Something in his tone made prickles of anxiety spiderwalk up her back.
Veyron turned, and she saw for the first time the look on his face. He had dark skin from his Wraetan side and blue eyes common in second-wave Kalusians—an unusual pairing, and evidence of his mixed heritage. It was strange to see him upset; he was always so good at concealing his true feelings. At that moment, his resemblance to Julian was striking. “I’m sorry, Rhee. I hope the gods forgive me.”
“Sorry for—?”
Before she could say what, Veyron grabbed her throat and pushed her hard against the window. Her headdress fell from the force of the impact, and Veyron stepped on it, crushing the feathers under the tread of his boot. From his thumb to his index finger, the length of his hand fit cleanly around Rhee’s neck. He lifted her off the ground and squeezed. She felt her windpipe closing. She gasped for air as she tried to claw his fingers off one by one.
It was impossible. His familiar face—the face of her best friend’s father, of the trainer she’d known for years—seemed to warp before her eyes. Everything was slowing. Her tongue felt thick and dry, and she fought for breath. White bursts of light softened the corners of her vision. The ancestors peered at her from their portraits, holos frozen in time, waiting to see how it ended. Would she would join them?
“I’m sorry, Rhee,” he repeated. Even as Veyron brought his other hand up to her throat, tears were welling in his eyes. “They gave me no choice. I had no choice.”
TWO
ALYOSHA
THE ship cut a hard left. Alyosha slammed against the boiler. The metal hull groaned and flexed. Tools flew off his belt and floated away; they landed just out of reach. His cube buzzed faintly on his neck. He tapped to answer.
“What’s your status?” Vincent asked.
“I lost my favorite wrench,” Aly said, squatting down to see where it had fallen.
“And the grav beam?”
“I’m ten minutes out from fixing it.” If he could find his socket wrench.
“Work your magic and shave off some time, yeah? Just tried hailing this crazy-looking ship in a routine stop, but now the pilot is acting feisty.” Vincent sent a view of his dash, which played on the back of Aly’s eyelids, so that it briefly doubled his vision. The ship in question was shaped like a beetle, too small to be a cargo ship, too big to be a standard civilian pod, and about thirty klicks northeast. It wasn’t slowing down, even as they pursued it. The UniForce had a term for ships like this: noncompliant. They’d need the grav beam up and running to lock on to the target and reel it in.
Annoying for Aly. Fantastic for ratings.
“Seven minutes out,” Vincent said.
“I’d work faster if I wasn’t trying to hang on for my life,” Aly told him, blinking out the image. “Where’d you learn to fly?”
“Your mom’s bedroom—she taught me this move.” The Revolutionary barrel-rolled, and Aly scrambled for a handhold while the world somersaulted around him. What a showboat.
“If I throw up in the reactor, it’ll be your fault.”
“But we’ll all be dead, so who’ll blame me?”
A freaking philosopher, this one.
For the past sixteen months, they’d been aboard the Revolutionary together: a two-man sweeper staffed with a droid named Pavel that Aly had programmed himself. Pavel was a fan favorite—more famous than either Aly or Vin, which was saying something, because they were pretty popular. After all, they were the two stars of The Revolutionary Boys.
Neither Aly nor Vin had set out to be famous. Far from it. As members of the UniForce, Kalu’s military, their assignment had originally been seen as a punishment for two slackers who’d barely survived basic. They’d been banished to the perimeter of the Outer Belt, policing renegade poachers and investigating claims of stolen or illegally modified ships when someone put a bulletin out, that sort of thing. When the producers had decided to bring the cameras on board for a short, feel-good pro-UniForce documentary, no one had expected the show to blow up.
Well, almost no one. Jethezar, the Chram kid they’d come up with in basic, had called it from about a million miles away. Whenever Aly pulled up the memory of Jeth on his cube, Jeth would shake his head and exhale a plume of smoke through the gills on either side of his neck. “Y’all don’t forget me when you’re famous and stuff,” he’d said in that Chram twang, in a way that was so solemn Aly hadn’t known if he’d been serious or just had a really solid deadpan going on.
Now The Revolutionary Boys was the most popular show on DroneVision. The cameras had stayed, and the whole thing became a production. They were on their second season, and Aly couldn’t scratch his butt without a camera beaming it to the worlds at all hours of the day. The single glorious exception was the hour in the morning when the two Kalusian moons, Nau Fruma and Rhesto, crossed orbits. Then, the DroneVision network was completely disabled—and there was no way any satellite signals could come in or out.