Blood of a Thousand Stars Read online

  “Recirculate new orders,” he said. “All droids within a five-hundred-meter radius to stand down.”

  He felt it instantly as his command was communicated to the other droids. He felt it in the pulse of a thousand answering affirmatives. He felt it in the sudden sense of collapse, as so many connected minds went dark and still. Their thoughts, if you could call them that, fell away, and there was nothing to replace them—only a void of memory and feeling and information.

  Exhausted by this simple effort, drained by the sudden silence where only a second earlier had been a surge of system data, he staggered back out through the hospital.

  “Where you going?” Hesi called from behind.

  Aly ignored him, shuffling past baffled, terrified patients—while soldiers crossed his path in a brisk run toward the tower entrance at the center of the medical facility. He wouldn’t join them. All the robodroids had followed his command and shut themselves down.

  The satellite was theirs now. He’d done it. His first mission as part of the WFC, and he’d succeeded.

  Outside, the rain was still pelting down. He clawed for his memories like an addict and saw Kara a thousand different ways all at once, like patchwork—the way she walked, the part in her hair, the line of her neck when she tilted her head back to look at the sun. A thrill moved through him, even if a part of him was desperate to lose them all. He would always give in to this weakness, would always look for Kara in shadows and nostalgia, in what could have been.

  At least there she was alive.

  He burst into the tower and raced to the control room, where several other WFC soldiers were already dismantling the communication servers. Screw you, Nero, he thought as he yanked at cords and smashed screens. He barely felt his elbow now. Nero’s lies were like a toxin polluting the entire galaxy, and Aly was the antibody, fighting it off.

  “Stop,” a voice said. A Fontisian had entered the room, one Aly dimly recognized, but he wasn’t sure from where. Aly was pretty tall—at least twenty hands high—but this guy was even taller. He wasn’t wearing a WFC uniform, but he had tattoos all across his neck—tattoos of the Order of the Light. He moved less like a flesh-and-blood being than like a weapon. Was this one of their commanders? He knew the order was behind the WFC, but he hadn’t been prepared for this. Around him, the other WFC soldiers stopped what they were doing reflexively and waited for word from the Fontisian. So Aly stopped and did the same, his muscles tense and bulging all the while—he wasn’t done fighting yet. He wasn’t ready to be still.

  “We can’t destroy it,” the Fontisian leader said.

  “That’s exactly what we’re here to do,” Hesi protested. The Chrams were loyal folks.

  “We only came here to secure it.” The Fontisian held up a large hand. “Don’t you think it’s strange for a broadcasting tower to have almost no broadcasting equipment? These are all monitors.”

  “So?”

  The Fontisian looked around at the room. “Do you not understand? The information is flowing in. Not out. Dismantle, but pack up as much as you can for evidence. Nero’s got access to personal cubes across the galaxy.”

  Aly had always considered himself a decent reader of people, but the Fontisian had a serious poker face: neutral, if not a little bit uppity, like he was either judging you or didn’t give enough of a taejis to judge you.

  His gray eyes, when they turned to Aly, were similarly inscrutable. Finally, the Fontisian sheathed his sword. “Not unimpressive, how you’ve managed to disable the droids,” he said.

  Aly wasn’t sure how the guy knew he was the one responsible. He only shrugged.

  The Fontisian surveyed the shards of equipment strewn across the floor. “You’ve proven yourself quite . . . destructive. It appears your absolution has made you no less desirous of revenge.”

  “Some absolution,” Aly said bitterly. He wondered if the Fontisian had seen the show Revolutionary Boys—or just the Most Wanted Holo-Alerts that had trailed Aly after he was framed for Empress Rhiannon’s murder. “I’m just here to get what’s mine.”

  “Which is?”

  My land. My innocence. My body. “Justice,” Aly said. Wasn’t that the whole point of the WFC? To undermine Nero, to bring justice to those who deserve it. It was just an added perk that he got to tear taejis up along the way. “I’m here to put this war to bed.”

  “It won’t be taken in a single attack,” the Fontisian replied. Aly had forgotten that was their deal, the Fontisians—the glass always half-empty. “I’m Dahlen. And I’m recruiting for a special mission. You should join me.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “It’s an invitation.” Dahlen smiled. Aly did not especially like his smile.

  “An invitation to continue fighting,” Aly said drily. “I’m flattered. And can I ask what you’re doing on this special mission of yours?”

  Dahlen didn’t blink. He didn’t stop smiling, either. “We’re going to assassinate Nero.”

  And Aly could see right away that he was serious. He wasn’t even sure Fontisians could lie.

  Aly thought of the way Kara’s eyes shifted colors in the light. The way she messed with her hair when she was thinking, and chewed her lip when she was nervous, and smiled huge when she smiled at all.

  Kara: the girl he’d never said sorry to.

  The girl who’d died because of the war Nero had started.

  “Then I accept,” he said. “So long as I get to plant the knife myself.”

  ELEVEN

  KARA

  RALIRE would’ve been beautiful if the wildflowers weren’t covered in blood. Had skirmishes not broken out everywhere. Despite the danger, the actual capital of Ralire was bustling, going on about its business like war wasn’t at its doorstep.

  Pulling a duhatj over her head, Kara raised her hand to hail an approaching pod on the dirt road that would lead her to the city. She was more self-conscious than she’d ever been. She had never really liked her face, but who did? Now it was changing, and just this morning she saw her cheekbones had widened and lowered, and nothing felt like hers anymore. Everything was wild and new, and she was propelled forward by the coordinates that would lead her to the overwriter.

  Once she found it, she could use it to erase the memory of Josselyn Ta’an for good. Not that she knew how to use the overwriter, or even what the tech looked like, but she could figure that out later—she always did. It was probably a small device not too different from a cube. She didn’t want to think of what would happen if she was wrong, or the info didn’t pan out, or the lead was cold.

  The overwriter had to be here—she would accept no other option.

  Lydia had meant for her to find it. The Lancer too. Otherwise, why would the message open only at her touch? It had read her DNA. If Lydia had wanted Kara to destroy the overwriter, she had made sure that Kara could find it.

  And she would destroy it. Right after she used it to destroy her past.

  The icy wind stung her face, its snow an odd comfort on her lips. This, Kara thought as she boarded the pod, was the first choice she had ever made for herself. Behind her, the Frontline Physicians craft became a small white blip on the sprawl of green.

  The pod lifted into the sky, and the ocean emerged on Kara’s left. Along with a few other passengers whose names she would never know, she hurtled toward the center of the city. In the horizon a spire appeared; it looked like some giant had stuck a serrated knife in the ground. From the distance she could see the dark vein of fuel that ran up the middle, and around it, docking stations jutting out at varying heights gleamed in the sun.

  Ralire’s position in the orbit, and the capital’s position on the water, had shaped an entire economy at the fueling station’s base, creating a compact city where you could purchase anything from rare plant species to stolen engine parts. Some of the other medics had casually floated the idea of checkin
g it out—supplies were low, and as the war spread through the galaxy, the emergency beacons went off constantly. The demand for help outpaced what they could provide. There weren’t enough resources to answer every call, which left the volunteers itching for a break—some sort of distraction from all the death and destruction.

  Nicola had warned them all against it, though—last thing any of them needed was some drifter to rake their pockets clean for a sugar pill, or worse, feed them drugs that’d devour them from the inside out. They’ll sell anything on Ralire, she’d said, and she wasn’t going to rescue anyone who got themself into trouble.

  But Kara had no choice. She knew the others wouldn’t notice that she was gone, especially given the latest surprise: Rhiannon had allied with Nero. The headline was on every holo channel you could find, and people were worked up about it.

  Kara wouldn’t try to understand what that meant. She definitely didn’t want to know what it would mean for Rhiannon. Half the holo feeds were doing nothing but urging Josselyn to come forward, to salvage what they were already calling her sister’s failure as an empress.

  Even more reason Kara had to succeed in her mission, and quickly. The sooner she destroyed Josselyn’s memory, the sooner her sister could rule in peace.

  The pod dropped her at the base of the fueling tower. The coordinates led her deeper into the city, into the warehouse district, where all the manufacturing for the Outer Belt had once occurred.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she’d prepared better for the atmosphere. The crisp air had almost cleared her head, but the noise cluttered it again; ships and pods roared overhead while people from all over the system talked in incessant streams around her. The constant stimulation wasn’t helping. Another headache was coming on. The pain behind her eyes was sharp and steady, pulsing like a drill deeper into her gray matter.

  She had lifted a portable positioning system from the medbay, and it clicked softly in her hand, warming her fingers with its electric heat. Skyscrapers gave way to low, squat buildings made of brick. Here, in the warehouse district, narrow sidewalks were lined with vendor stalls, and huddles of people hawking plants, pills, and spare engine parts wrenched her left and right and left again. Pods flew by on the street.

  For a second, Kara wished Aly was with her. When Aly found her on the zeppelin, she’d felt so much less alone, like someone was looking out for her—and like she had someone to look after too. But that was just her being silly and stupid, as if something good could happen, as if something good could last.

  She moved away from the main thoroughfares, pushed her way toward the coordinates into a claustrophobic alley that without warning emptied into a small plaza, buzzing with merchants selling the kind of black-market wares that would get a person arrested on any other planet. Vendors hawked the high of a lifetime and shouted about miracle tech that could only be fake. In the distance, Kara could hear live music, hollering, pharmaceutically enhanced chatter. The crumbling stone buildings that ringed the square, once grand factories, now seemed to ooze desperation—broken windows, subtle indications of skin for sale inside, black mold webbed in the stone.

  She had goose bumps from the cold, but unease settled into her skin. This was where the overwriter was?

  Kara stopped short as a man with a hose stuck between his teeth nearly clipped her. A gas guzzler—he’d siphon fuel from a docked ship and sell it to someone looking to save a few dollars.

  “Watch it!” she called to his back.

  A child, a little Miseu with yellow skin and a narrow upper body, pushed past her at a wobbly sprint. There was a bundle of bags with brightly colored powders tucked under her arm.

  “Excuse you,” Kara said, even if the girl was long gone and couldn’t hear her. She moved to brush off the residual powder that had gotten on her arm, but someone grabbed her wrist and tugged her back. Hard.

  She barely had time to register the WFC uniform before Issa pressed her against the wall.

  “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Issa said.

  “I could ask you the same thing.” Kara nodded to the stitches across Issa’s neck as she pushed Issa’s hands away. The soldier eased up on her grip. “Nice to see you up and about,” Kara said not at all sweetly, even if she was glad to see her. People milled around them, but no one seemed to pay attention—or care. “Did you follow me here?”

  “Maybe I was on the same pod as you.” A vulnerable look flitted across Issa’s face, then was gone. “I mean, yeah.” Kara made a rolling gesture with her hands, urging Issa to go on. “What happened last night? After the surgery. Did we . . . talk?”

  Kara understood then: Issa was just worried about what she had revealed. “Not really,” she said. No need to make Issa relive her confession all over again. Kara wasn’t one to judge anyway.

  Issa seemed relieved. She looked away, squinting in the direction of the dying sun. Kara’s stomach roiled at the sight of the wound on her neck, still raw-looking where Issa had tried to gouge out her cube. “You said something about seizures. Or something about how I should say I have them?”

  “Did someone ask?” Kara said, a streak of panic zipping up her spine.

  “No. I slipped out before anyone saw I was awake.” Issa looked at her. “What did you tell them?”

  “That if they resuscitated your cube, it would trigger a fatal seizure.”

  “So they disabled it because of you?” Issa asked. Kara shrugged. “How’d you even know that would work?”

  “My mom’s a—” Kara cut herself off and swallowed hard. “My mom was a neuroscientist.”

  “So you just picked up some expertise along the way, then?” Issa said. She looked around, and they were silent for a beat. “Well, for what it’s worth, thank you. For telling the medics what’s what. And for being there.” She turned to Kara again, gesturing to her bright white Frontline Physicians smock. “No one should travel alone around here, especially a Kalusian girl.”

  “Do I look like I need a babysitter?” For some reason Kara felt defensive, even if just a day ago Issa had been a patient in her care, weak, nearly dead.

  “Whoa. I’m just saying people aren’t thrilled with Kalu starting a war and dropping soldiers on every piece of land they can reach,” Issa said. “And anyway, don’t think of it as a babysitter. Think of it as me watching your back. It’s the least I can do, since you saved my life and everything.”

  “Actually, I almost killed you,” Kara admitted.

  “But you didn’t.” Issa’s eyes burned into hers, and there was something curious, intense about it. Kara wondered what it would be like to dedicate yourself to vigilante justice—to be constantly on the lookout for ways to help those in need, to be willing to sacrifice your life for the safety of others. It was a kind of bravery that seemed beyond her imagination, and it made her feel ashamed.

  Issa’s gaze shifted into a smile, a full-on grin. “Besides, I was heading this way myself. Now that my cube’s dead, I need something a little more old-fashioned to communicate with the rest of the crew. Something Uni can’t track. I’m thinking a third eye.”

  Kara knew them; they were called I-3s, and Lydia had had one. For sentimental reasons, she’d always said. The clunky piece fit around the neck and collected dust on their shelf, and Kara always tried to hide it when people came over. It hadn’t looked cool and vintage, just outdated and embarrassing. But now she wondered if Lydia had used it, if there were secrets communicated with the other G-1K scientists . . .

  Kara was startled by the sudden, overwhelming desire to take whatever it was Issa was willing to give: help, a smile, kindness. She wanted to confess everything. What she was looking for, what it meant, what she had lost along the way. But she didn’t know whether or not to trust Issa. And anyway, she’d leave just like everyone else did.

  “I’m good on my own,” Kara said.

  Issa shrugged.
“Whatever you say,” she replied, as if she doubted every word Kara had said. “See you back at the ship, then?”

  Kara nodded. She couldn’t speak—she was worried that she might instead ask Issa to stay, just so she wouldn’t be so alone. But she watched Issa slip off into the crowd, swallowing the impulse to call her back. She had to be alone. The message was intended only for her.

  Kara reached into her pocket for the cipher, and a jolt of panic shot through her. It was gone.

  She swallowed her nerves and swept her eyes across the small plaza. How could she have been so careless? Had she dropped it? Had someone taken it? When Lydia combed through plant specimens—her research—she looked for anomalies. As she relaxed, the crowd of individual people, the clutter of stalls, began to dissolve into mere shapes. Then these shapes too began to dissolve into patterns.

  And finally, she latched on to a soul who seemed tense. Who seemed to be watching her. It was the little Miseu. Their eyes locked for a split second before the girl turned and ran.

  Heart racing, Kara shoved her way through the stalls and the people milling between them—catching sight of the little girl just to lose her again. She crossed the street, and Kara let out a scream as the Miseu dodged a pod that sped past. Kara tried to follow but a quick sucession of pods flew by, a zipping sound in their wake as they cut through the air. She split her attention between the oncoming traffic and the girl, who disappeared into a building across the way. When the coast was clear, Kara ran after her.

  The building she’d entered gave no signs of its purpose; it didn’t even look inhabited. Kara followed through what was once a grand brick archway and shoved open a heavy door.

  It was colder inside than it was out. A whole other world opened up inside the still-functioning factory, with low light and people hunched over, organized in more rows than she could count. There were conveyor belts, and the sound of compressed air at a regular interval, and hundreds of workers who barely looked up at her before returning to whatever minute detail they were in charge of. It looked this way all across the immense ground floor.