“I…uh. I need to go check on the autopilot,” I say, standing before anyone can protest. Across the hold, Gal’s dark eyes find mine. Now? he seems to ask, an ember of fury in his watery stare. For ten soon-to-be-dead strangers? That’s when I get to know you?
But I think it’s more than simple jealousy that I withheld my history from him when everyone else on this ship brings it out effortlessly. By throwing my story in with the rest, I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m just as much a victim of Gal’s rise as everyone else on this ship—and that, more than anything else, cuts him deep.
I break his gaze and head up the ladder before he has a chance to say anything that might stop me.
The autopilot is fine. On course. One more day of travel. The twisting sensation in my gut misses Delos’s longer cycle. On the galactic standard, it feels like we’re hurtling even faster toward Tosa System.
And once we’re there, it all goes into motion. The dreadnoughts will drop onto our tail, and we’ll see if Colonel Esperza can pull off the miracle it will take to commandeer them. If we manage it, we’ll lead the fleet into the jaws of Tosa System’s defenses. And then we betray every person in our hold and every quiet hope they’ve shared.
I drop into the pilot’s seat, trying to ground myself and stop the tremor that’s leaching into my hands. It’s been so long since I’ve brushed up against that part of my past, and I’m helpless against even the quickest glance into the memories I’ve kept buried. I let my eyes unfocus as I stare out into the gray. A silent moment passes.
“What do you want, Wen?” I sigh.
“It was a good story,” she says from the shadows of the hall, low enough that her voice won’t carry back into the hold. “But someday you’re gonna have to tell me why half of it isn’t true.”
CHAPTER 24
WE’VE BARELY SCRAPED the outer fringes of Tosa System when a dreadnought locks onto the Ruttin’ Hell’s tail. Assurances of certain annihilation flare on the instruments as the cityship adjusts its vector and burns onto our rear. Gal’s face reflects the ashen gray outside our cockpit windows. He bends over the navigation, his fingers tracing long, unsteady arcs between us and the rest of the assault fleet, between us and Rana, between us and the distant promise of the Umber interior.
I fly, trying to ignore the fact that I’ve already sweated through my shirt. My brain struggles to process the pieces at play—even the concept of the dreadnought on our rear is difficult to comprehend. It’s two thousand times our size, and yet, if all goes right, we walk away from this confrontation as victors. Nothing about that math adds up.
Behind us, Wen sits in eager silence. When this is over, she takes the helm. She wants this over fast.
“Drop superluminal at my mark,” Gal mutters next to me, holding up one hand as his other swipes through communications channels that will put us in contact with the rest of the assault fleet. “Three. Two. One. Mark.”
I flip the booster. The gray snaps back to black as stars sprinkle across the cosmic night. A long, ragged breath bursts from my lungs, and somehow my next one feels fresher. After four days cooped up inside this tiny ship, I don’t understand how that’s possible.
“We’re sure this is going to work?” Wen asks, not for the first time.
“Dreadnought’s popped out, matching speed,” Gal mutters, eyes unblinking, ears unhearing. “They’re hailing.” With a careless flick of his fingers, he dismisses the call.
“They could fire on us. I know you said they want to take deserters alive, but one burst from those guns and we’re ash in the void.”
I suck in my lips. Gal’s brows lower.
“Someone start talking,” Wen hisses, kicking the back of my chair.
“The ’nottie won’t fire on us,” I tell her, trying to sound confident.
“You’re sure?” she says, and I glance back to find her straining for a glimpse of Gal’s readouts.
“Of course we’re not sure, but where’s the fun in that?” Gal says, smug and princely. With the Ruttin’ Hell flying brazenly into Tosa System, we’re begging to be caught, and the only threat we pose is if Gal tries to run again. The dreadnought won’t fire. Not when they’ve identified this Beamer as the one that hauled ass out of the system a month ago. Not when there’s a chance the Umber heir’s on board.
It doesn’t do much to combat the sweat trickling down the column of my neck.
Gal pulls up the intercom line, and the distant speaker in the hold crackles with his voice as he reminds the soldiers to strap in good and tight. No matter what happens next, things are about to get shaky. I double-check my own harness, and behind me there’s a slight jingle as Wen does the same.
“Another hail,” Gal says, dismissing it in the same breath. “Dreadnought’s closing the gap. Time to about-face.” He gives me a nod.
I burn the rotary thrusters. The stars swerve outside our cockpit, and briefly my eyes lock on the distant glimmer of the star Tosa. Somewhere in its orbit, Rana waits. Sometime today, we’ll be back on my homeworld’s soil.
But not yet.
I bring us all the way around, lining up our nose along our former vector’s inverse, and find a distant shard of light bearing down on us. According to our instruments, they’ve started their deceleration, easing out of the burn that ensured they’d catch up to us. And with our rear pointed squarely away from them, they know we’re not running.
The question is how quickly they’ll figure out why we’re letting them come to us.
The next hail flickers across the dash, but Gal doesn’t dismiss it immediately. Instead he pulls up the ship’s information embedded in the signal, peering intently at the data. “Not Umber imperial. This fellow is the Torrent, under the command of Governor Berr sys-Tosa.” He gives me a savage smile. “Not by presence. By proxy.”
So Tosa’s not on board. We’ve hooked a member of his fleet, eager to prove their worth by reeling in the governor’s secret prize. Part of me is a little disappointed. It would have been so clean to humiliate Berr sys-Tosa in the course of engineering Gal’s return to the interior. But no governor means the ship isn’t traveling under delusions of power. It might make it easier to capture.
Or it might make it more openly desperate to bring us in.
The Torrent noses closer, its form becoming distinct. The ship is bulbous, sickening in shape. It has no need for aerodynamics when it’s far too large to survive an encounter with an atmosphere. Most of it is built for brute acceleration. The parts left over are crafted for war. My eyes are drawn unwillingly to the main batteries, the cannons that could vaporize us at a whim. They lie inert, but a single order could change that in an instant.