Maybe because I don’t deserve it.
I shove that intrusive thought away and follow him to an empty table instead. As we settle on a bench, Gal’s attention goes distant. His eyes are unfocused, his mind awhirl with plots and schemes, waging war against the constant fear he feels when he’s surrounded by Archon soldiers. I wish there were something I could do to free him from it, but a part of me knows it’s better like this. Not better for him, but better for our chances of making it out alive. He needs to be sharp and afraid.
Just as we’re about to dig in—me with enthusiasm and a little too much emotion for the early hour, Gal with trepidation verging on distaste—Sims tosses a tray down next to me. Wen’s guard plops down on the other side of the table. I hesitate, torn between taking my first bite of properly seasoned food in years and acknowledging their presence.
“Don’t mind me,” Sims says, toggling his earpiece. “Audiobooks,” he explains when he catches my brow furrowing. “Ever read anything by Huron Vayner?”
I shake my head, struggling to settle my expression somewhere closer to consternation than pain. “Weren’t a lot of Archon authors on my syllabi.”
“I’ll put a chip together for you if you want,” he offers.
I catch a worried glint in Gal’s eye across the table. “That’s…very nice of you,” I stammer, trying to sound noncommittal. Not sure I’m going to have much reading time around here anyway.
At my right, Wen’s already licking her plate clean. There’s something deeply satisfying about the wonder in her eyes as she stares down at her gut. I remember it well—that unshakable sense of security that came with a full belly, dispelled only by the knowledge that it could all go away tomorrow.
She glances back at the mess line, no doubt wondering if she can get away with a second helping. Instead, I push one of my pieces of toast onto her plate.
Wen smirks. “You know you owe me more than that,” she says.
I think she’s right.
* * *
—
Once Wen’s finished stuffing herself to her heart’s content, our guards lead us to a conference room on the top floor of the base’s administrative building. As Sims beckons us through the door, we’re greeted by the sight of General Iral standing at the head of a long table packed with people. When he said he was putting a room together, he really wasn’t messing around. There are three seats left open for us, which we take. Gal positions himself carefully between me and Wen—whether to separate us or protect himself I’m not entirely sure. I shrink closer against him as I take in the rest of the room. Even though they’re dressed down, I pick out signs of rank here and there, from mission patches on sleeves to platinum stars on collars to rings of emerald-green embroidery on cuffs. The upper crust of this resistance base has turned out to grill us.
We’re collaborators, not prisoners, I remind myself. We’re sitting at a table, not chained to one. But when General Iral’s heavy gaze locks onto my eyes, I feel my secrets teetering on the edge of my lips anyway.
“I realize it’s a daunting task, trying to parse your years of experience down to their most useful bits,” the general starts. “To help, we’ve put together a packet of the information we find it appropriate to declassify.”
At my right, Gal’s fists are already tight. I wonder how long it will take for this resistance gambit to play out, weighing it carefully against how long it will take for him to snap under the stress. The sums aren’t favorable. We have to work fast.
With a flick of his fingers across the conference table’s surface, Iral brings up a projection of Tosa System and its known defenses. I lean back in my seat, my eyes fixed on the tiny holographic version of my homeworld that slowly circles its sun. I’ve never been so far from Rana. Never been so uncertain about my chances of returning to it. Never even realized I could feel something like homesickness for a planet where I lived through hell.
I glance across the table and find General Iral’s eyes fixed on the same spot, shimmering in the light of the projection. My heart swells before I can stop it.
Gods of all systems, I think. I’m in over my head.
Iral gestures to Rana. “Our best hope of restoring the former empire is to hold the center.”
He collapses the projection until we’re looking at the entirety of the former Archon territory. Tosa System is nothing but a pinhead at its core. Long vectors meander in the vast dark between worlds, and it takes me a moment to recognize them for what they are.
“Our scouting so far has isolated these pathways as the routine patrols for dreadnoughts throughout the former empire,” Iral says, tracing his finger along one of the glowing threads. “But these are essentially public record. There are more ’notties in the black than these, and it’s those ones that have the most potential to sink us before we start. If we had a way through that mess, we might stand a chance of reclaiming the capital and then expanding outward. We have the resources to launch that kind of campaign.”
He wipes aside the map and starts pulling up data. First the ships—hundreds of carrier craft stationed in orbit around the planet, thousands of fighters, a veritable armada with platinum trim curling across their hulls. Then the personnel—thousands and thousands of displaced Archon citizens who have answered their general’s call and trained for the single purpose of retaking the empire.
For a dangerous moment, I imagine a life lived among them. A life where I got out on those refugee ships, where I never felt the abandonment that tore out my love of the Archon Empire. A life where my purpose was always clear.
But it would have been a life without Gal, and that makes it incomprehensible.
He sits at my left, his fingers fidgeting as he nods along. When the general falls expectantly silent, Gal tries his best to draw a deep breath without looking like he’s steeling himself. “So you’re saying you could mount an assault right away if you had intel that could get you past Umber dreadnoughts?” he asks, sounding out each word like he’s stringing them along a tightrope.
“ ‘Right away’ is optimistic, but…soon, yes,” Iral confirms.
“I’m not sure if anything I know could help,” Gal says, “but I can give you everything I can think of and let you be the judge of that.”
I take a steeling breath of my own. No matter what, Gal can’t give Iral information on dreadnoughts’ weaknesses. Those ships form the core of Umber’s defense—not just in the Archon territories, but throughout the empire. Handing them over to Maxo Iral might give the general the power to punch a hole clear to the Umber interior.
I may be in over my head, but the Umber heir has it light-years worse.