Her voice was soft, and she had a slight drawling accent that indicated she was from one of the Temperate planets, instead of the sharp, crisp tone of Corios or one of the other posh planets where the Regals and other wealthy citizens played, partied, and schemed against each other.
She cleared her throat again, as if trying to reassure herself that the husher was gone and she could, in fact, talk freely. “My name is Vesper.”
I didn’t care about her name. Now that I knew she wasn’t a danger to anyone, I had no further interest in her. I stabbed my finger to the left, pointing at the bench she had been sitting on before. Distaste filled her face, although I thought that had more to do with the man sprawled across the bench than with my order.
I turned to go, but she latched on to my wrist. I slowly pivoted back toward her. The woman—Vesper—grimaced, as if realizing just how far she had overstepped, but instead of releasing me, she tightened her grip and held out her other hand.
“The dagger,” she said. “Please.”
My eyebrows shot up, causing my forehead to scrape against the inside of my helmet. Her rage had made her quite audacious. Did she really think the dagger was going to help her survive the coming battle? Fewer than one percent of conscripts made it through their first live action. She might not know those odds, but she was railing against them anyway. A small part of me admired her for trying to do everything in her power to survive.
I flipped the dagger over and held it out to her, hilt first. Vesper snatched it away as though she thought I was going to change my mind and stab her with it after all. I probably should have done that. Conscripts like her were always more trouble than they were worth.
“Thank you,” she repeated, her voice firmer, stronger, and louder than before.
She released my arm and started to return to the bench, but this time, I grabbed her uninjured wrist.
I wasn’t sure what had prompted me to reach for her again, but I yanked her toward me just as I had done a few minutes ago. She tensed, but she didn’t duck her head or shrink down.
Whoever she was, wherever she had come from, Vesper had quite a lot of spine, and I was willing to bet that spine was the reason she’d made a powerful enemy who had dumped her here. Fool. Spines were only good until someone stronger came along and snapped them into pieces, something I knew all too well.
We stood there, staring at each other, and I found myself studying her eyes. They were blue but with a surprising depth of color, like a cold, dark moon sprinkled with luminescent silver flecks. Perhaps her vision had been enhanced, hence the odd, striking color.
I drew her even closer. Blood had soaked through her makeshift bandage, which was in danger of falling off completely, so I unwrapped and then rewrapped it. She hissed again, the sound audible this time, as I tightened the bandage around her wrist and tied the ends together, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she just kept watching me, as though I was a Frozon snow wolf and she didn’t know whether I was going to leave her alone or rip her to pieces.
I didn’t quite know myself.
I finished with the bandage and released her wrist. Wetness coated my skin, and a few drops of her blood stained my fingertips a dark ruby red. Annoyed, I wiped my hand off on the front of my shirt, right over my heart.
She frowned. “You just ruined your shirt.”
I shrugged. “It would have been ruined soon enough anyway.”
Then I whirled around and strode away to prepare for the coming battle.
CHAPTER SIX
VESPER
Despite my shaking legs, I shoved the dagger into my pocket, then walked over and dropped down onto the bench. I’d just survived an encounter with Kyrion Caldaren. Not only that, but he’d let me keep the dagger, and he’d even bandaged my wrist. Odd—and more than a little disturbing.
He stalked back over to the other two Arrows. The dark-haired woman and the blond man donned their helmets, and they all morphed into the killers they truly were.
“Conscripts! Listen up!” the female guard yelled. “It’s your lucky day! You get the honor of serving the Imperium!”
She marched down the line of us, talking about how we could all prove ourselves in battle and potentially earn our freedom, but she obviously didn’t believe what she was saying. Being a conscript was nothing but a death sentence, and everyone here knew it.
A couple of other guards followed along behind her, passing out blasters. One of them dumped a weapon into my lap. Disgust filled me. Another shoddy Kent Corp design. I’d be lucky if it even fired, so I did what I always did.
I figured out how to make the blaster better.
To my surprise, the solar magazine was fully charged. Ideally, with a full charge, a Kent Corp blaster was supposed to fire nonstop for twenty-four hours. But like with all their products, the Kents designed the blasters to last only half as long as they advertised, so customers would have to buy replacement magazines and weapons sooner than anticipated and thus make House Kent even more money.
I shoved the magazine back into place, then examined the buttons on the side of the grip. Most blasters were equipped with three settings: stun, kill, and shield. But this blaster only had two buttons: stun and shield. More disgust filled me. Of course, Imperium soldiers wouldn’t give conscripts weapons that could be used against them.
Since I couldn’t kill anyone with the blaster, I turned off the stun setting and cranked the shielding up to maximum capacity. A soft hum sounded, and a faint electrical field emanated from the weapon, making my skin itch. The blaster’s shielding wouldn’t stop more than a few energy bolts, but it might buy me some time to figure out how to escape this madness.
The female guard reached the end of the conscripts and finished her spiel. The other guards handed out the last of the blasters, and then we were all ordered to stand up. The guards herded us into a square formation, more or less, in the center of the docking bay.
I was near the middle of the pack, so I didn’t see Kyrion Caldaren or the other two Arrows, just hundreds of conscripts flanked by Imperium soldiers clad in dark red armor and clutching blasters and larger hand cannons.
The cruiser picked up speed and then abruptly dropped, and the sudden motion made my stomach swim up into my throat. The landing gear slammed down, rocking the entire ship, and dry heat rushed in through the docking bay opening.
“Go! Go! Go!” the female guard screamed.
More Imperium soldiers came up behind us, and I, along with all the other conscripts, had no choice but to clutch my blaster, run down the metal ramp, and plunge into the battlefield.
Chaos—sheer, utter chaos.
For several seconds, everything was a blur of sound, sensation, and motion, of noise and heat and bodies pressing together all around me. I ran over the rocky, uneven ground, trying to maintain pace with the other conscripts so I wouldn’t get pushed down and trampled by the ones coming up behind me.
A red energy bolt shot through the air, straight into the chest of the man in front of me. He screamed and tumbled to the ground. At least, I thought he screamed. Hard to tell over the roar of my heart in my ears. I gritted my teeth, leaped over him, and kept running.
More and more bolts shot out, filling the air with hot, deadly streaks of color—red, blue, green, yellow, purple. The acrid stench of electricity flooded my nose, along with the popping, snapping, and sizzling of burning flesh. Some of the conscripts screamed, while others gasped for breath, frightened or winded or both.