Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(5)

“You can eat my left arm. I don’t use it much.”

“Ari.”

“Can’t we stop somewhere else? How about that lively moon up there?”

“Which will be overrun with Mercer patrols in less than a day. Patrols looking for us after you flagged our moms and we evaded arrest.”

“Don’t forget about the parking ticket,” she added. He gave her a hard I’m serious look. “So we’ll be discreet.” Ari unstrapped her chest harness and unlocked her magboots. “Do you think Mercer will be able to locate us down here?”

“They won’t catch our flight signature. We’re too insignificant in this mess. Hopefully.” He squeezed the command chair—Captain Mom’s old chair—and Ari wondered if he was thinking about how she used to say, Hope is the food of the foolish. Eat up, kiddos.

Ari walked through the main cabin, toward the back of the ship, passing a half-smooshed cake in its box. Kay and Ari stopped, staring down at it. “I’m still eating it,” her brother said. “Happy ten-year anniversary of being my pain in the ass. I mean, sister.”

“Thanks.” She tried not to laugh… or grimace. They crossed the cargo bay, and Ari hit the door release. Rotting dense undergrowth instantly wafted into the ship. “Gross. What the hell is going on with this planet? It didn’t look this torn up from Heritage.”

“No. It didn’t.” Kay stared at the foul, dead forest, skeletal skyscrapers lining the distance like broken teeth in a monster’s mouth. His face turned dark before he pushed his feelings away. “Whatever is going on here is none of our business. Check the ship, especially the heat shields. I’m going to get the hard drive back online. If we have to run for that cheap excuse for a moon, we better do it before Mercer has taken over every square inch looking for us.”

Ari stepped out onto surprisingly spongy ground, and Kay slapped the door closed behind her. She didn’t blame him for being mad; her timing was historically the worst, her impulses a series of epic mistakes. Ari being adopted by Kay’s family had only seemed to tear Kay’s life apart, and yet he still wanted her around. He still loved her like family. She had to work harder to make it up to him.

She walked around Error, which wasn’t in terrible shape for having dived through a hundred half-dead trees. For once, Error’s first life as a galaxy-class cruise ship lifeboat served her well; she was designed to crash.

Ari searched the skies for the off-white, boxy Mercer vessels that would arrest them on the spot, but the clouds were a solid dark gray. There was no Mercer. Her gamble had paid off. She needed to rub that in Kay’s face—once they were safe, of course.

Ari stepped deeper into the forest, her curiosity piqued. The gravity on this planet was heavy, and her whole body felt dense and stiff. The undergrowth thinned as she neared a clear-cut section, peering out at the madness of screeching, smoke-belching machines. No humans in sight.

Old Earth was supposed to be preserved. Who was leveling these trees? There wasn’t even soil left, just strips of gray bedrock, which was also being laser-cut into cubes and hauled away by unmarked factory tanks with too many robotic arms. Someone was deforesting Old Earth, skinning it to its bones and then sucking out the planet’s marrow.

Oh, who was she kidding? It was Mercer. It was always Mercer.

So they had crash-landed in the middle of a secret exploitation of the ancient home of all humanity. Great. Like she needed another reason for Mercer to come after her.

Ari took a few pictures with her watch and was about to double back to Error when she spotted a gorgeous stone wall. The machines were close. They would overtake it soon. She walked along the edge, brushing her fingers down the smooth, fitted rocks. So much had fallen—entire cities, mountains, countries—but not this. People had created it with their hands, bearing stones in their arms, leaving a mark on their world that lasted hundreds of years longer than any corporation or words or courage.

And the machines were about to eat it.

“Don’t do it, Ari,” she said in the same moment that she reached for the top of the stone wall, hauling herself up and over. She dropped down in a graveyard. Marble and granite headstones lay helter-skelter, mostly fallen, some crookedly half-sunk. And at the center of the darkly magical sight? A gigantic, ancient oak. Its gnarled arms were held up against the sky like a tribute to death. Ari jogged closer, her curiosity rewarded by an even stranger sight.

Buried in the trunk of the thousand-year-old oak was a sword.

“What the…”

Her eyes trailed along the silver pommel and the intricate crossbar. Unlike the sword on Heritage, this one looked real. She walked all the way around it. The shining point glinted on the other side like a question.

There were things in this universe that Ari didn’t understand. Space travel for one, the segregation of Ketch for another, herself for the grand finale. But this sword—it needed to be set free. She’d never felt anything so strongly in her whole life, almost like someone was nudging her toward it. Almost as if that someone had been nudging for a lot longer than the last few minutes, and only now were they willing to tip their hand. She got her hands around the hilt and gave it a good tug.

The sword budged.

She tossed her long black hair behind her shoulder and set her stance wider. And pulled the sword. The blade came free with a ringing sound that didn’t seem possible, and even though it had been lodged in that tree for however long, it was sharp and clean.