Observe the crowds that compass him around;
All gaze, and all admire, and raise a shouting sound:
But hov'ring mists around his brows are spread,
And night, with sable shades, involves his head.
"Seek not to know," the ghost replied with tears,
"The sorrows of thy sons in future years."
- Virgil, the Aeneid
All gaze, and all admire, and raise a shouting sound:
But hov'ring mists around his brows are spread,
And night, with sable shades, involves his head.
"Seek not to know," the ghost replied with tears,
"The sorrows of thy sons in future years."
- Virgil, the Aeneid
Chapter One
Captain Jaya Mill crouched in the woods near their target, the loamy earth soft against her gloved palms as she steadied herself. It was quiet, the leaves above barely moving with the languid flow of the air. The sound of fidgeting colonists joined the soft, melodic hum of the forest in Jaya’s ears. Beside her, Lieutenant Commander Sal Azima turned his head, shooting a silencing look at their team.
Their greatest limitation was supplies, not enthusiasm. After fleeing Argos, the remaining company of the First Light had searched the poorest, most remote Union colonies and had found widespread support. Suffering by the lower classes of the Union hadn’t been alleviated since Emory took power, and an alternative to the traditional passing of the leadership torch from wealthy elite to wealthy elite was appealing.
Jaya and her crew had eventually set up a permanent base on an abandoned mining colony, but they still spent much of their time hopping from planet to moon to manufacturing station, recruiting and training. Recruitment wasn’t the hard part—it was supporting the new growth. Fighting a war on multiple fronts with a mostly volunteer force of previously untrained civilians took resources, and the Union controlled those carefully.
Sal had intercepted some naval communications and identified this outpost as the delivery site for a shipment of new weapons and ammunition—supplies the resistance desperately needed.
“I’m seeing movement,” Shea said, their voice hushed. They were perched a dozen meters farther along the forest’s edge to Jaya’s left, balancing in a squat and watching the horizon for signs of the convoy. “A small security team. I’m counting six heads.”
Jaya nodded. “Lupo, any sign of Union activity in town?”
It was a moment before Lupo replied. She was waiting in a settlement not far from their site. The First Light didn’t dare approach the Union-controlled space around this colony, so they had traveled from a friendly port in a borrowed civilian ship.
“Nothing on my scans. But I don’t trust this ship’s range like the First Light’s.”
“Just six?” Jaya mused to herself.
“We have been hitting them on all fronts,” Sal said. “And they took out half of their own potential leadership a year ago with the purge. Maybe we’re finally stretching them thin enough to see it.”
Jaya squinted at the horizon. The naval outpost was just visible far to her right. Even with her heightened vision, it was little more than a faint shadow obscured by the thick trees that bordered the area. She scanned back to the left, where the convoy would be coming from.
Sal’s hypothesis was sound. It had been a year since there had even been a Sons of Priam video, but Jaya wondered if that was a strategic choice rather than evidence their opponent was stretched thin. Emory was now in charge of the Union at the highest level, and Jaya and her supporters were enemy enough to keep the wealthy and powerful of the Union firmly aligned behind him. There was no longer any need for stories about the Sons of Priam to terrorize the citizens of the Union—that role was filled all too conveniently now by Jaya. The newest public enemy number one.
But what of the outer colonies? The earliest attacks and videos had so pointedly targeted the poorest colonists, and Kier had been so adamant that his work was for the impoverished and oppressed. Jaya knew that the colonies suffered no less under Emory’s reign than they had before, so why had he suddenly gone silent? Had he realized his goals weren’t aligned with their father’s? Or worse, had he fallen completely in line, utterly loyal to Emory’s twisted philosophy?
She had seen the shift in him—had watched it play out as he held Armstrong hostage on the bridge of the First Light, in its final days as the Avalon. She had seen the part of him that loved her and believed in her sputter and vanish in the same moment he ended Armstrong’s life.
She didn’t understand how he had come to this. She didn’t understand a lot of things—there were enough gaps in her comprehension to make her uncomfortable. But in the past year, they had made incremental progress by just focusing on one thing at a time. One mission, one goal to accomplish. Then move on to the next.
Tread water. Survive. It was all they could afford to do for now.
Anger ate away at her, its bite acidic. They had fled Argos with nothing after Jaya had led them right into Emory’s trap, and now they were clawing their way back up far too slowly. While Emory had the resources to recover, the resistance’s growth at the bottom pushed the limits of those at the top. Command was little more than a skeleton crew, half a dozen naval officers, a handful of tired marines, and many enthusiastic but inexperienced colonists trying to learn the ropes.
A cluster of those colonists waited with them in the woods, trying their best not to fidget and bring Sal’s wrathful glare upon them. Vargas and Rhodes had been training them over the past month and they were the most promising bunch. Today was their opportunity to gain some experience taking down a simple convoy. It was a straightforward exercise, as low risk as anything they dared to take on could be.
Motion on the horizon to Jaya’s left snapped her attention back. The vehicle approaching was a standard design, aerodynamic and energy-efficient for long hauls in the unpredictable climates of recently terraformed colonies. It would be outfitted with protection as well, multiple layers of physical and digital walls to keep them out. Likely, in getting the weapons out, the vehicle itself would be damaged, gouged deeply enough to be useless to them—its final protection.
Shame. They could use every piece of equipment available to them. But Jaya found it hard to believe that they would be able to convince any of the six hard-faced guards to give up the codes that opened the doors.
The convoy—paltry as it was—was giving the woods a wide berth. Jaya sighed. All this would be much easier if their enemies were idiots, but Jaya knew the people who would have trained these soldiers.
The figures grew larger in her vision as their path carried them closer to Jaya and the other rebels waiting in the trees. Closer, but not close enough. Four guards hugged the transport in their ATVs, another lagged behind to ensure their backs were protected, and the sixth swept the path ahead of them on foot for traps.
Which they would find.
“What’s the range on your device, Nguyen?” Jaya asked.
“Around 300 meters,” the colonist replied. He was slight, leaning against a tree near the edge of their protective range. The rigorous training of the past few months had hardened the lines of his shoulders, but it had emptied the contours of his face. There was never quite enough food in the colonies, especially these days.
Jaya eyed the distance between the man at the front and the rest of the convoy. He was bound to see the explosive—it was his entire purpose—but he was far enough ahead that they might not be able to do any more damage. They would have to hope that he didn’t spot it early.
She swore, and Sal shot her a sidelong look. He had been doing that a lot lately, looking at her like she was someone different. Like this war hadn’t changed them all, only her. It annoyed her, and she glared back at him.
He raised both eyebrows, frustratingly calm, and turned away.
She took a deep breath, regret churning in her already. Sal wasn’t the problem. The Union was the problem. Her father was the problem.
I’m the problem.
She swallowed that thought, as bitter as the rest, and confirmed that each member of her team was in position.
With only six people to take down, they could live with an imperfect plan. Sometimes it evened out, she reminded herself. Sometimes, they got a break.
“Snipers, call your targets,” she said. “Get ready to shoot the moment we detonate. The rest of you, follow my lead.”
Sal raised his rifle, calling out the guard at the back of the convoy. Two other rifles shifted in the colonist group, their owners checking their stance and posture methodically. Jaya remembered those early days, when she was never quite sure if her body was modeling what she had been taught in training.
Those days had been before she realized her body understood what to do better than she did.
There was a hitch in the step of the escort in front. A slight change in cadence—not quite a hesitation.
“They see it,” she said. “Now.”
The explosion sent small shockwaves back to them through the earth, the vibrations absorbed by Jaya’s flexed muscles as she prepared. She rolled her shoulders, the motion easing some of the tension in her body. Then she fixed her attention on the pulse of blood through her veins, the electrical impulses of nerves stimulating muscle activity, the hum of everything happening beneath her skin. She breathed in. The crackle of three rifles ripped through the air and then quieted, and she leapt forward.
Smoke from the explosion drifted back, settling over the convoy as Jaya approached. Shea and the rest of the squadron of colonists followed her as they had practiced. In the confusion of the explosion, they should be able to easily overpower the remaining few guards. If everything had gone perfectly, there would only be two left. If everything had gone wrong, there would still be six.
Six was okay.
It had better be. Because amid the smoke and the debris still hanging in the atmosphere, six bodies closed in on them with speed and intention. Her senses took over, the movements around her reaching her slowly, deliberately. Her awareness clocked the seconds like the beat of her heart as the wave of her team traveled inexorably toward the oncoming wave of Union security.
“None down,” she announced. “They’re coming at us—Pereira, you’ve got the closest at two o’clock.”
Pereira angled his body, leading with his rifle. He couldn’t see through the still-clouded air, but Jaya followed it all in great detail as the world slowed around her, swirling smoke flickering away in her enhanced vision while her team walked blindly through it.
“Fire!” Jaya said. “Now, Pereira!”
Pereira started at the force in her voice but let loose a beam into the dust. The guard stepped aside, and the beam scorched the transport behind him. The dust was settling now, dissipating, but still thick.
How could he have seen it coming, unless--
Shit.
The guards were on them, unimpaired by the cloud. Pereira took a bolt to the head, his body kicking up more dust as he hit the ground. Blood came as almost an afterthought to the life already gone from him.
“They’re enhanced.” She sent her words back to the snipers in the woods over the team’s open channel.
“Fuck,” came Sal’s reply, and then the report of his rifle. It was risky to shoot toward this tussle, to chance hitting one of their own. But the situation had changed. Six enhanced Union guards would rip them apart without covering fire.
What could the colonists do? They stood no chance against these soldiers, and running would only make their backs easy targets. She had led them not into a training mission, but a bloodbath.
“Alpha team,” Jaya commanded, “everyone target the guard at my three. Bravo One, take your team and go for the one at the back of the convoy.”
Shea acknowledged the command and led five of their colonist trainees at a run toward the man bringing up the rear.
The other three escorts were farther away, two of them blocked by the transport itself. This was the best chance they had.
While her team focused their fire on the guard to Jaya’s right, Jaya threw herself at the one to the left, who received her attack like an embrace and redirected her motion toward the ground. She pulled him with her, tangling with him in the dirt. His strength matched her own, his grip solid on her arm as she scrambled for her gun.
Injuring them would do next to nothing. They would still press on. They would kill her companions, and they would heal. She had to ensure that each shot was a kill. Perhaps her only remaining advantage was that they would not realize the same was true of her.
The one who had been at the front of the caravan was running toward them now, shooting into the press of her team as they surrounded his companion. He dropped before he reached them, a victim of Sal’s incredible aim. Five left.
The one beneath her writhed, his strength pitching her about. She couldn’t get a good hold on her gun with his constant motion and his hand firmly grasping her right arm. She twisted, grabbing at his hand with her left and using the torsion of her upper body to shift his grip.
It worked—his hand loosened. She wriggled free and pulled her gun. One shot, then two more for good measure, just to the left of his sternum.
He stilled, and she leapt up. Four left.
The guard to her right was on the ground now, the four remaining members of Alpha team finally prevailing. But he threw them off and jumped up. Another colonist fell victim to his gun.
The two behind the transport were keeping their distance. Shea and the rest of Bravo team struggled to close the gap to the man in the back—his reflexes and speed kept him out of their grasp. His aim never faltered, and Jaya watched Shea judder forward, dropping to their knees.
“Fall back,” Jaya ordered. “Azima, give us cover fire. All you’ve got.”
The trees lit up with beams from Sal and his colonists, aimed above their heads, but thick enough to make pursuit difficult. Shea staggered behind, and Jaya circled back, warning the rest to keep running as hard as they could.
As the remains of both teams limped back to the woods, Jaya called Lupo.
“We need emergency exfil. On our way to the RP.”
“Already revved up,” Lupo replied, and sure enough, Jaya heard the distant rumble of the transport like a snare drum as it shuddered through the lower atmosphere, screaming toward them.
Jaya reached Shea and scooped up the junior team leader, heaving them over her shoulder as she turned back toward the woods. She began closing the distance, her legs burning from the strain of the extra weight.
Their emergency pickup site was a small clearing just through the woods. If they could get into the trees, they might have a chance. Their pursuers might decide it wasn’t worth it and stay with their transport. Or they might hunt every last one of them down and kill them.
At least in the trees, Jaya would have the opportunity to separate them. To fight them one at a time, perhaps. The potential burned in her veins, heady and powerful.
She handed Shea off to two other members of Bravo team and looked back. Two of the remaining guards had decided to follow and were closing in fast. The final two hung back to protect the weapons.
“Go,” Jaya ordered Sal and the other snipers. “I’ll catch up.”
Sal was already storing his rifle, his hands moving smoothly through the motions he had practiced to perfection. “What?”
Her body hummed with adrenaline. With rage. She was not going to let those two pursuers reach them.
“I’ll handle these two,” she clarified. “Meet Lupo at the RP.”
“Like hell.” Sal’s eyes burned dark in the sharp lines of his face.
“I gave you an order, Azima,” Jaya snapped. “Get to the RP. I’ll catch up.”
Sal latched his rifle case shut emphatically, but he turned on his heel and left.
Jaya pushed into the trees, moving orthogonal to her retreating crew until she had a good angle on the approaching guards. A man and a woman, it seemed, and moving swiftly. They were approaching the tree line, and Jaya steadied her pistol in front of her. She shot.
The man stumbled with the impact, clutching at his shoulder. Jaya shot again, taking out the woman’s left knee. They changed the arc of their path, bending it closer to her. Another shot slammed into the woman’s hip. She was falling behind, but her companion pushed harder, head lowered like a charging bull.
Jaya holstered her pistol and sprinted back the way she had come. Up ahead, a low branch waited where Sal had spent the first hours of their stakeout perched like a bird. Jaya jumped as she approached it, grabbing it with both hands and pulling herself up and over. She straddled the branch, shimmied closer to the trunk, and found another grip above her, climbing until she disappeared into the leaves. She groped for her weapon.
Below, the man broke through the trees. Jaya shot, and he dove to the side. Jaya dropped down on top of him, the shock of contact knocking the air from her chest. No matter. It had done the same to her target, who sprawled in the root-knotted earth.
Jaya heaved for breath as she aimed. The man dodged her shot and clawed for his own weapon. Jaya fired another round, this one landing in the man’s stomach even as he writhed away and reached his gun. He spun, and Jaya rolled to the side as his beam threw chips of bark from the tree where it impacted.
Up again quickly—her breath finally returning and filling her lungs with fire—Jaya shot once more. The man was already standing, weapon steady. He fired.
The beam tore through Jaya’s shoulder even as she ducked to the side. She found safety behind a thick trunk, her breath coming in ragged gasps. His steps squelched in the muddy forest floor. He may have had all the same physical advantages as Jaya, but he hadn’t learned subtlety. Jaya was ready as he approached, listening carefully to each tread drawing closer.
She ignored the fire in her shoulder, twisted away from the tree, and pulled the trigger. The man’s eyes widened just before his body thudded to the ground.
Jaya followed, her knees sinking into the soft moss that carpeted the forest floor. She allowed herself a moment as pain fueled her growing nausea. Her heartbeat shook her ribs, the fury that had driven her still burning in her chest. She took one deep breath. Then another.
It was silent in the woods. The man’s companion had made the wise calculation that engaging would lead to certain death and had not continued. The caravan was likely moving on already, taking those weapons the resistance so desperately needed.
Jaya’s eyes stung, and she stifled her scream of agony as she clutched her shoulder. It was not the gunshot that hurt. It was everything else.
Then she pulled herself up and made her way to the rendezvous point.
Their greatest limitation was supplies, not enthusiasm. After fleeing Argos, the remaining company of the First Light had searched the poorest, most remote Union colonies and had found widespread support. Suffering by the lower classes of the Union hadn’t been alleviated since Emory took power, and an alternative to the traditional passing of the leadership torch from wealthy elite to wealthy elite was appealing.
Jaya and her crew had eventually set up a permanent base on an abandoned mining colony, but they still spent much of their time hopping from planet to moon to manufacturing station, recruiting and training. Recruitment wasn’t the hard part—it was supporting the new growth. Fighting a war on multiple fronts with a mostly volunteer force of previously untrained civilians took resources, and the Union controlled those carefully.
Sal had intercepted some naval communications and identified this outpost as the delivery site for a shipment of new weapons and ammunition—supplies the resistance desperately needed.
“I’m seeing movement,” Shea said, their voice hushed. They were perched a dozen meters farther along the forest’s edge to Jaya’s left, balancing in a squat and watching the horizon for signs of the convoy. “A small security team. I’m counting six heads.”
Jaya nodded. “Lupo, any sign of Union activity in town?”
It was a moment before Lupo replied. She was waiting in a settlement not far from their site. The First Light didn’t dare approach the Union-controlled space around this colony, so they had traveled from a friendly port in a borrowed civilian ship.
“Nothing on my scans. But I don’t trust this ship’s range like the First Light’s.”
“Just six?” Jaya mused to herself.
“We have been hitting them on all fronts,” Sal said. “And they took out half of their own potential leadership a year ago with the purge. Maybe we’re finally stretching them thin enough to see it.”
Jaya squinted at the horizon. The naval outpost was just visible far to her right. Even with her heightened vision, it was little more than a faint shadow obscured by the thick trees that bordered the area. She scanned back to the left, where the convoy would be coming from.
Sal’s hypothesis was sound. It had been a year since there had even been a Sons of Priam video, but Jaya wondered if that was a strategic choice rather than evidence their opponent was stretched thin. Emory was now in charge of the Union at the highest level, and Jaya and her supporters were enemy enough to keep the wealthy and powerful of the Union firmly aligned behind him. There was no longer any need for stories about the Sons of Priam to terrorize the citizens of the Union—that role was filled all too conveniently now by Jaya. The newest public enemy number one.
But what of the outer colonies? The earliest attacks and videos had so pointedly targeted the poorest colonists, and Kier had been so adamant that his work was for the impoverished and oppressed. Jaya knew that the colonies suffered no less under Emory’s reign than they had before, so why had he suddenly gone silent? Had he realized his goals weren’t aligned with their father’s? Or worse, had he fallen completely in line, utterly loyal to Emory’s twisted philosophy?
She had seen the shift in him—had watched it play out as he held Armstrong hostage on the bridge of the First Light, in its final days as the Avalon. She had seen the part of him that loved her and believed in her sputter and vanish in the same moment he ended Armstrong’s life.
She didn’t understand how he had come to this. She didn’t understand a lot of things—there were enough gaps in her comprehension to make her uncomfortable. But in the past year, they had made incremental progress by just focusing on one thing at a time. One mission, one goal to accomplish. Then move on to the next.
Tread water. Survive. It was all they could afford to do for now.
Anger ate away at her, its bite acidic. They had fled Argos with nothing after Jaya had led them right into Emory’s trap, and now they were clawing their way back up far too slowly. While Emory had the resources to recover, the resistance’s growth at the bottom pushed the limits of those at the top. Command was little more than a skeleton crew, half a dozen naval officers, a handful of tired marines, and many enthusiastic but inexperienced colonists trying to learn the ropes.
A cluster of those colonists waited with them in the woods, trying their best not to fidget and bring Sal’s wrathful glare upon them. Vargas and Rhodes had been training them over the past month and they were the most promising bunch. Today was their opportunity to gain some experience taking down a simple convoy. It was a straightforward exercise, as low risk as anything they dared to take on could be.
Motion on the horizon to Jaya’s left snapped her attention back. The vehicle approaching was a standard design, aerodynamic and energy-efficient for long hauls in the unpredictable climates of recently terraformed colonies. It would be outfitted with protection as well, multiple layers of physical and digital walls to keep them out. Likely, in getting the weapons out, the vehicle itself would be damaged, gouged deeply enough to be useless to them—its final protection.
Shame. They could use every piece of equipment available to them. But Jaya found it hard to believe that they would be able to convince any of the six hard-faced guards to give up the codes that opened the doors.
The convoy—paltry as it was—was giving the woods a wide berth. Jaya sighed. All this would be much easier if their enemies were idiots, but Jaya knew the people who would have trained these soldiers.
The figures grew larger in her vision as their path carried them closer to Jaya and the other rebels waiting in the trees. Closer, but not close enough. Four guards hugged the transport in their ATVs, another lagged behind to ensure their backs were protected, and the sixth swept the path ahead of them on foot for traps.
Which they would find.
“What’s the range on your device, Nguyen?” Jaya asked.
“Around 300 meters,” the colonist replied. He was slight, leaning against a tree near the edge of their protective range. The rigorous training of the past few months had hardened the lines of his shoulders, but it had emptied the contours of his face. There was never quite enough food in the colonies, especially these days.
Jaya eyed the distance between the man at the front and the rest of the convoy. He was bound to see the explosive—it was his entire purpose—but he was far enough ahead that they might not be able to do any more damage. They would have to hope that he didn’t spot it early.
She swore, and Sal shot her a sidelong look. He had been doing that a lot lately, looking at her like she was someone different. Like this war hadn’t changed them all, only her. It annoyed her, and she glared back at him.
He raised both eyebrows, frustratingly calm, and turned away.
She took a deep breath, regret churning in her already. Sal wasn’t the problem. The Union was the problem. Her father was the problem.
I’m the problem.
She swallowed that thought, as bitter as the rest, and confirmed that each member of her team was in position.
With only six people to take down, they could live with an imperfect plan. Sometimes it evened out, she reminded herself. Sometimes, they got a break.
“Snipers, call your targets,” she said. “Get ready to shoot the moment we detonate. The rest of you, follow my lead.”
Sal raised his rifle, calling out the guard at the back of the convoy. Two other rifles shifted in the colonist group, their owners checking their stance and posture methodically. Jaya remembered those early days, when she was never quite sure if her body was modeling what she had been taught in training.
Those days had been before she realized her body understood what to do better than she did.
There was a hitch in the step of the escort in front. A slight change in cadence—not quite a hesitation.
“They see it,” she said. “Now.”
The explosion sent small shockwaves back to them through the earth, the vibrations absorbed by Jaya’s flexed muscles as she prepared. She rolled her shoulders, the motion easing some of the tension in her body. Then she fixed her attention on the pulse of blood through her veins, the electrical impulses of nerves stimulating muscle activity, the hum of everything happening beneath her skin. She breathed in. The crackle of three rifles ripped through the air and then quieted, and she leapt forward.
Smoke from the explosion drifted back, settling over the convoy as Jaya approached. Shea and the rest of the squadron of colonists followed her as they had practiced. In the confusion of the explosion, they should be able to easily overpower the remaining few guards. If everything had gone perfectly, there would only be two left. If everything had gone wrong, there would still be six.
Six was okay.
It had better be. Because amid the smoke and the debris still hanging in the atmosphere, six bodies closed in on them with speed and intention. Her senses took over, the movements around her reaching her slowly, deliberately. Her awareness clocked the seconds like the beat of her heart as the wave of her team traveled inexorably toward the oncoming wave of Union security.
“None down,” she announced. “They’re coming at us—Pereira, you’ve got the closest at two o’clock.”
Pereira angled his body, leading with his rifle. He couldn’t see through the still-clouded air, but Jaya followed it all in great detail as the world slowed around her, swirling smoke flickering away in her enhanced vision while her team walked blindly through it.
“Fire!” Jaya said. “Now, Pereira!”
Pereira started at the force in her voice but let loose a beam into the dust. The guard stepped aside, and the beam scorched the transport behind him. The dust was settling now, dissipating, but still thick.
How could he have seen it coming, unless--
Shit.
The guards were on them, unimpaired by the cloud. Pereira took a bolt to the head, his body kicking up more dust as he hit the ground. Blood came as almost an afterthought to the life already gone from him.
“They’re enhanced.” She sent her words back to the snipers in the woods over the team’s open channel.
“Fuck,” came Sal’s reply, and then the report of his rifle. It was risky to shoot toward this tussle, to chance hitting one of their own. But the situation had changed. Six enhanced Union guards would rip them apart without covering fire.
What could the colonists do? They stood no chance against these soldiers, and running would only make their backs easy targets. She had led them not into a training mission, but a bloodbath.
“Alpha team,” Jaya commanded, “everyone target the guard at my three. Bravo One, take your team and go for the one at the back of the convoy.”
Shea acknowledged the command and led five of their colonist trainees at a run toward the man bringing up the rear.
The other three escorts were farther away, two of them blocked by the transport itself. This was the best chance they had.
While her team focused their fire on the guard to Jaya’s right, Jaya threw herself at the one to the left, who received her attack like an embrace and redirected her motion toward the ground. She pulled him with her, tangling with him in the dirt. His strength matched her own, his grip solid on her arm as she scrambled for her gun.
Injuring them would do next to nothing. They would still press on. They would kill her companions, and they would heal. She had to ensure that each shot was a kill. Perhaps her only remaining advantage was that they would not realize the same was true of her.
The one who had been at the front of the caravan was running toward them now, shooting into the press of her team as they surrounded his companion. He dropped before he reached them, a victim of Sal’s incredible aim. Five left.
The one beneath her writhed, his strength pitching her about. She couldn’t get a good hold on her gun with his constant motion and his hand firmly grasping her right arm. She twisted, grabbing at his hand with her left and using the torsion of her upper body to shift his grip.
It worked—his hand loosened. She wriggled free and pulled her gun. One shot, then two more for good measure, just to the left of his sternum.
He stilled, and she leapt up. Four left.
The guard to her right was on the ground now, the four remaining members of Alpha team finally prevailing. But he threw them off and jumped up. Another colonist fell victim to his gun.
The two behind the transport were keeping their distance. Shea and the rest of Bravo team struggled to close the gap to the man in the back—his reflexes and speed kept him out of their grasp. His aim never faltered, and Jaya watched Shea judder forward, dropping to their knees.
“Fall back,” Jaya ordered. “Azima, give us cover fire. All you’ve got.”
The trees lit up with beams from Sal and his colonists, aimed above their heads, but thick enough to make pursuit difficult. Shea staggered behind, and Jaya circled back, warning the rest to keep running as hard as they could.
As the remains of both teams limped back to the woods, Jaya called Lupo.
“We need emergency exfil. On our way to the RP.”
“Already revved up,” Lupo replied, and sure enough, Jaya heard the distant rumble of the transport like a snare drum as it shuddered through the lower atmosphere, screaming toward them.
Jaya reached Shea and scooped up the junior team leader, heaving them over her shoulder as she turned back toward the woods. She began closing the distance, her legs burning from the strain of the extra weight.
Their emergency pickup site was a small clearing just through the woods. If they could get into the trees, they might have a chance. Their pursuers might decide it wasn’t worth it and stay with their transport. Or they might hunt every last one of them down and kill them.
At least in the trees, Jaya would have the opportunity to separate them. To fight them one at a time, perhaps. The potential burned in her veins, heady and powerful.
She handed Shea off to two other members of Bravo team and looked back. Two of the remaining guards had decided to follow and were closing in fast. The final two hung back to protect the weapons.
“Go,” Jaya ordered Sal and the other snipers. “I’ll catch up.”
Sal was already storing his rifle, his hands moving smoothly through the motions he had practiced to perfection. “What?”
Her body hummed with adrenaline. With rage. She was not going to let those two pursuers reach them.
“I’ll handle these two,” she clarified. “Meet Lupo at the RP.”
“Like hell.” Sal’s eyes burned dark in the sharp lines of his face.
“I gave you an order, Azima,” Jaya snapped. “Get to the RP. I’ll catch up.”
Sal latched his rifle case shut emphatically, but he turned on his heel and left.
Jaya pushed into the trees, moving orthogonal to her retreating crew until she had a good angle on the approaching guards. A man and a woman, it seemed, and moving swiftly. They were approaching the tree line, and Jaya steadied her pistol in front of her. She shot.
The man stumbled with the impact, clutching at his shoulder. Jaya shot again, taking out the woman’s left knee. They changed the arc of their path, bending it closer to her. Another shot slammed into the woman’s hip. She was falling behind, but her companion pushed harder, head lowered like a charging bull.
Jaya holstered her pistol and sprinted back the way she had come. Up ahead, a low branch waited where Sal had spent the first hours of their stakeout perched like a bird. Jaya jumped as she approached it, grabbing it with both hands and pulling herself up and over. She straddled the branch, shimmied closer to the trunk, and found another grip above her, climbing until she disappeared into the leaves. She groped for her weapon.
Below, the man broke through the trees. Jaya shot, and he dove to the side. Jaya dropped down on top of him, the shock of contact knocking the air from her chest. No matter. It had done the same to her target, who sprawled in the root-knotted earth.
Jaya heaved for breath as she aimed. The man dodged her shot and clawed for his own weapon. Jaya fired another round, this one landing in the man’s stomach even as he writhed away and reached his gun. He spun, and Jaya rolled to the side as his beam threw chips of bark from the tree where it impacted.
Up again quickly—her breath finally returning and filling her lungs with fire—Jaya shot once more. The man was already standing, weapon steady. He fired.
The beam tore through Jaya’s shoulder even as she ducked to the side. She found safety behind a thick trunk, her breath coming in ragged gasps. His steps squelched in the muddy forest floor. He may have had all the same physical advantages as Jaya, but he hadn’t learned subtlety. Jaya was ready as he approached, listening carefully to each tread drawing closer.
She ignored the fire in her shoulder, twisted away from the tree, and pulled the trigger. The man’s eyes widened just before his body thudded to the ground.
Jaya followed, her knees sinking into the soft moss that carpeted the forest floor. She allowed herself a moment as pain fueled her growing nausea. Her heartbeat shook her ribs, the fury that had driven her still burning in her chest. She took one deep breath. Then another.
It was silent in the woods. The man’s companion had made the wise calculation that engaging would lead to certain death and had not continued. The caravan was likely moving on already, taking those weapons the resistance so desperately needed.
Jaya’s eyes stung, and she stifled her scream of agony as she clutched her shoulder. It was not the gunshot that hurt. It was everything else.
Then she pulled herself up and made her way to the rendezvous point.
“What the hell, Jaya?”
She hissed, half in reply to Sal’s question and half because whatever Sunny was putting on her shoulder seared her skin almost as much as the particle beam. Except this time, she had no surge of adrenaline to refocus her brain.
“You could have been seriously hurt,” he continued. His curls were still in disarray, and he moved his hands erratically, like he couldn’t decide what to do with them. As always with Sal, his hands followed the motions of his thoughts, and they were as jumbled as she had ever seen them.
“I stopped them, didn’t I?”
Her reply was colder than it needed to be, and Sal’s hands dropped to his side. She looked away from his accusing stare, then tried again.
“We didn’t have many options. We’d already lost Pereira and Sato. And Shea was down.” She glanced over to the bed to her left, where Shea slept deeply, drugged into painless oblivion. It would be a long time before that gut wound healed, before they were ready to be back in the field again. And Jaya didn’t have many people ready to take their place. She had a skeleton crew and a posse of enthusiastic greenhorns, underfed and overworked.
And ordinary. No strength enhancements, sharpened reflexes, superhuman senses. She was the only one. And now they knew that Emory was going down his chain of command, providing these advantages more broadly, not just to those in strategic posts.
Exhaustion swept her as she considered the scale of it.
Sharp pain in her shoulder came again and she swore, rounding her glare toward Sunny, whose mouth set in a grim line and whose eyes blazed a challenge. Dr. Sun-mi Choi could be as intimidating as she was sweet, and Jaya took the warning to heart.
Jaya apologized. “Wasn’t expecting that.”
Sunny finished her tight wrapping of Jaya’s shoulder and sealed the bandage with a firm hand. She helped Jaya pull her shirt back over the injury and button it back up.
“Give it twenty-four hours,” Sunny said, in a voice as steady as the First Light’s course, while checking some numbers on her palm drive. “Based on previous experience, that’s my best estimate for healing. But check back in twelve hours and I’ll see how you’re progressing.”
Sal scoffed. “Please don’t tell me you’re running headlong into danger to give the doctors their data points.”
The ferocity of Sunny’s look backed him down immediately, though he deliberately ignored Jaya’s.
“I’m not criticizing you, doc,” he said. “Or Tynan. I know you’re just trying to keep everyone healthy. It’s her judgment I’m worried about.”
Jaya slid off the table and stood tall, feeling the pleasant stretch in her spine and not-so-pleasant pull in her shoulder. “Sal, you know we have to take risks out there or we’ll never get anywhere. We were vulnerable, and I presented our best chance at escaping.”
He shifted, crossing his arms across his narrow chest. “We have to take calculated risks,” he protested. “This felt more like a revenge fantasy.”
The words were intentional, meant to twist at the guilt already seething in her.
“It wasn’t revenge,” she said. Then she sighed and ran her hand through her hair. It came away gritty and slick at the same time, the mess of the day still thickly spread over her. She needed a shower.
He followed her out of the med bay, but it wasn’t until they turned the corner into an empty corridor that she confessed.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Sal.”
His hand grasped her uninjured shoulder, and she stopped walking to face him.
“Don’t shut us out,” he said. “Me and Rhodes and Tynan. None of us has any fucking clue how to win a revolution, but I thought we were in this together.”
She relented, letting him pull her into a hug, his familiarity soothing. But she was still roiled inside.
“I need to shower,” she said, and he released her. She felt his gaze on her back as she left him standing in the hallway and returned to the captain’s quarters.
She scrubbed herself raw, the water carrying her sweat and blood and the silt of the planet away into the recyclers. Droplets beaded on the waterproof bandage of her shoulder and ran in rivulets over her collarbone. When she was done scrubbing, she remained there, watching the swirls of diamond-clear water dance around the drain. Her breath felt ragged again, like she had only just leapt from that tree and tackled the guard.
His eyes, the whites visible in his surprise at Jaya’s strength, were painted on the inside of her eyelids when she closed them and tipped her head up to the flow of water.
She didn’t know how many people Emory had enhanced by now, but the numbers were growing. It was only a matter of time before they stood no chance of coming out of any encounter alive. Not without some way to tilt the balance.
And Jaya was not ready for this. She might have been ready to be Armstrong’s first officer, if he had lived to promote her. She had expected to have more time to learn about what it took to have her own command. Strength and speed and agility were good skills for the battlefield, but meant nothing when it came to big-picture strategy. And even her power as a weapon was diminishing more every day. She was just one of many, now.
The tightness swelled in her chest, pressing her lungs out, wringing her empty. She steadied herself on the shower wall and turned off the water, reaching for a towel.
She sat wrapped in the towel on the edge of her bed, her shoulders bowed. Her hair was wet and cold on her neck, an icy droplet tracing a shudder down her spine.
Sato. Pereira. She recited their names in her mind, every person they had lost in the past year. Every person whose death fell at her feet. From today, back to Thompson. And further. Armstrong.
She threw all her strength into willing Shea to not join the list. As if Jaya could do anything besides rip holes in the galactic political equilibrium and add to the blood on her own hands.
When she stopped shaking, when she could again draw a full breath, she opened her eyes, dressed in silence, and combed her wet hair into a tight braid.
Then she returned to the bridge.
She hissed, half in reply to Sal’s question and half because whatever Sunny was putting on her shoulder seared her skin almost as much as the particle beam. Except this time, she had no surge of adrenaline to refocus her brain.
“You could have been seriously hurt,” he continued. His curls were still in disarray, and he moved his hands erratically, like he couldn’t decide what to do with them. As always with Sal, his hands followed the motions of his thoughts, and they were as jumbled as she had ever seen them.
“I stopped them, didn’t I?”
Her reply was colder than it needed to be, and Sal’s hands dropped to his side. She looked away from his accusing stare, then tried again.
“We didn’t have many options. We’d already lost Pereira and Sato. And Shea was down.” She glanced over to the bed to her left, where Shea slept deeply, drugged into painless oblivion. It would be a long time before that gut wound healed, before they were ready to be back in the field again. And Jaya didn’t have many people ready to take their place. She had a skeleton crew and a posse of enthusiastic greenhorns, underfed and overworked.
And ordinary. No strength enhancements, sharpened reflexes, superhuman senses. She was the only one. And now they knew that Emory was going down his chain of command, providing these advantages more broadly, not just to those in strategic posts.
Exhaustion swept her as she considered the scale of it.
Sharp pain in her shoulder came again and she swore, rounding her glare toward Sunny, whose mouth set in a grim line and whose eyes blazed a challenge. Dr. Sun-mi Choi could be as intimidating as she was sweet, and Jaya took the warning to heart.
Jaya apologized. “Wasn’t expecting that.”
Sunny finished her tight wrapping of Jaya’s shoulder and sealed the bandage with a firm hand. She helped Jaya pull her shirt back over the injury and button it back up.
“Give it twenty-four hours,” Sunny said, in a voice as steady as the First Light’s course, while checking some numbers on her palm drive. “Based on previous experience, that’s my best estimate for healing. But check back in twelve hours and I’ll see how you’re progressing.”
Sal scoffed. “Please don’t tell me you’re running headlong into danger to give the doctors their data points.”
The ferocity of Sunny’s look backed him down immediately, though he deliberately ignored Jaya’s.
“I’m not criticizing you, doc,” he said. “Or Tynan. I know you’re just trying to keep everyone healthy. It’s her judgment I’m worried about.”
Jaya slid off the table and stood tall, feeling the pleasant stretch in her spine and not-so-pleasant pull in her shoulder. “Sal, you know we have to take risks out there or we’ll never get anywhere. We were vulnerable, and I presented our best chance at escaping.”
He shifted, crossing his arms across his narrow chest. “We have to take calculated risks,” he protested. “This felt more like a revenge fantasy.”
The words were intentional, meant to twist at the guilt already seething in her.
“It wasn’t revenge,” she said. Then she sighed and ran her hand through her hair. It came away gritty and slick at the same time, the mess of the day still thickly spread over her. She needed a shower.
He followed her out of the med bay, but it wasn’t until they turned the corner into an empty corridor that she confessed.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Sal.”
His hand grasped her uninjured shoulder, and she stopped walking to face him.
“Don’t shut us out,” he said. “Me and Rhodes and Tynan. None of us has any fucking clue how to win a revolution, but I thought we were in this together.”
She relented, letting him pull her into a hug, his familiarity soothing. But she was still roiled inside.
“I need to shower,” she said, and he released her. She felt his gaze on her back as she left him standing in the hallway and returned to the captain’s quarters.
She scrubbed herself raw, the water carrying her sweat and blood and the silt of the planet away into the recyclers. Droplets beaded on the waterproof bandage of her shoulder and ran in rivulets over her collarbone. When she was done scrubbing, she remained there, watching the swirls of diamond-clear water dance around the drain. Her breath felt ragged again, like she had only just leapt from that tree and tackled the guard.
His eyes, the whites visible in his surprise at Jaya’s strength, were painted on the inside of her eyelids when she closed them and tipped her head up to the flow of water.
She didn’t know how many people Emory had enhanced by now, but the numbers were growing. It was only a matter of time before they stood no chance of coming out of any encounter alive. Not without some way to tilt the balance.
And Jaya was not ready for this. She might have been ready to be Armstrong’s first officer, if he had lived to promote her. She had expected to have more time to learn about what it took to have her own command. Strength and speed and agility were good skills for the battlefield, but meant nothing when it came to big-picture strategy. And even her power as a weapon was diminishing more every day. She was just one of many, now.
The tightness swelled in her chest, pressing her lungs out, wringing her empty. She steadied herself on the shower wall and turned off the water, reaching for a towel.
She sat wrapped in the towel on the edge of her bed, her shoulders bowed. Her hair was wet and cold on her neck, an icy droplet tracing a shudder down her spine.
Sato. Pereira. She recited their names in her mind, every person they had lost in the past year. Every person whose death fell at her feet. From today, back to Thompson. And further. Armstrong.
She threw all her strength into willing Shea to not join the list. As if Jaya could do anything besides rip holes in the galactic political equilibrium and add to the blood on her own hands.
When she stopped shaking, when she could again draw a full breath, she opened her eyes, dressed in silence, and combed her wet hair into a tight braid.
Then she returned to the bridge.
