Kitos cocks his head. “You’re forgetting something, Daccia. Our eyes. I can still see the diamond in yours.” He turns to the other gunnery station. “Hadrian, yours are as brown as a mare – and I know mine are as green as fucking grass.”
My battle-brother snorts bitterly.
“Dantus might be a novice, but he’s not stupid.”
I nod. “You’re right – but I have a solution for that. Goggles.”
The eyebrows of my battle-brothers lift.
“We tell Dantus and his triad that when Allie disabled our Orb-Drive, she also ruptured the coolant circuits – and we all got hit with poisonous gas. Our eyes are burning up. It makes sense – she did fuck up some of our other systems, like our food replicator.”
Speaking of which…
“Hope you guys are happy with rations, because that’s all we’re going to eat until we steal another ship.”
“Just like old times,” grins Hadrian. It’s hard not to get nostalgic for the simplicity of our hundred years of service. Back when you didn’t expect to survive the rest of the day, you didn’t have time for tough, philosophical questions.
A wave of tortured shame suddenly transmits through the Bond from Kitos. He slams his hand down against the console.
“Fucking hell. How far have we fallen, Daccia? Stealing a ship from our own people?”
“What do you suggest?” I counter. “Where else are we going to get a fully functioning Reaver before we’re found out? We’ve lost our honor, Kitos. It’s hard to hear it, I know, but it’s already gone – and it’s not coming back. We’ve only one thing left…”
“…her.”
Hadrian finishes my sentence with his low rumble.
Kitos looks down, cowed. “Where is Allie now?”
“Sleeping. Restoring her weapons was… painful.”
I take a deep breath.
“There’s more. I’ve found the key to binding her to us – willingly. Allie has a little sister who was taken from her.” I look up. “AI – bring up everything we have on Allie’s family.”
The AI scans the Aurelian Law Enforcement database. It takes time – there are billions of active and cold cases on file.
Finally, the computer projects a single, fuzzy picture – probably extracted by a security camera. It showcases a younger-looking Allie – along with a smaller woman who appears slightly younger still.
The AI labels her as: “Lilac.”
A name. I have a name. That’s a start.
“I took a recent DNA sample today,” I tell my triad. “Our records found an initial sample with some discrepancies. Her sister shares Allie’s DNA – same mother, same father – but whoever they were, they aren’t in the system. It was just luck Allie got scanned once, when she had a medical procedure at the age of three.”
This is hardly abnormal. There are billions of humans within the dominion of Aurelian Empire-protected worlds, and generally only an arrest or some interaction with Empire administrative centers would result in a DNA sample being taken.
In Allie’s case, it was the latter.
“One of Queen Jasmine’s roaming medical centers,” I explain – referencing the free healthcare centers the human Queen had established, to provide badly-needed medical treatment to worlds where it was difficult to get access to. “I guess Queen Jasmine is doing some things right.”
Kitos stands up from his gunnery post, getting a closer look at the picture.
“So, what’s the story?”
I explain in detail what happened to Allie’s sister. Now we all understand the pain she’s been living with for the past three years.
Kitos’ eyes widen.
“I feel for her – but there’s no bloody way we’ll find her sister!”
“That’s not the attitude to have,” I warn him. “She was taken in this sector – we know that much. If anyone knows where she went, they might be on Salcus. It’s outside of direct Aurelian protection, and a haven for the likes of those space-pirates. When we land – before Dantus and his triad rendezvous with us – we’ll have a full day to conduct an investigation.”
My battle-brothers nod.
“Listen,” I tell them. “We have to do as much as we can before that triad arrives with the prisoners. Even if we don’t find Allie’s sister – or even any fucking trace of her – we still need to show Allie we give a shit about what happens to her. Understood?”
I realize I’m yelling. My voice echoes in the closed cockpit. Kitos looks down, cowed. I feel his shame at doubting our purpose.
“If there are no other objections, let’s focus. We have a plan to execute. We’re going to fucking execute it.”
We’ve lost everything.
Our careers. Our honor. Our position in the Empire.
And what we’ve gained is slipping through our fingers like sand. If we don’t make a move, Allie is going to abandon us at the first chance she gets – and make her way out into the universe, where we might never find her again.
She’s being doing very bloody well on her own so far. We need to demonstrate to her that we can make things better.
In less than twenty hours, we’ll be touching down on a hostile planet with just one shot at escaping with a fully functioning Reaver. Before that, we’ll have only a short day to start gathering leads to see where we can go next to find any clues about the fate of Allie’s sister.
16
Hadrian
Salcus. A nothing planet in a nothing sector.
As our Reaver approaches orbit, I look through the viewport with scorn.
Salcus is like a dark boil beneath us. Without the Aurelian Empire in control of it, there are few laws – especially not any environmental regulations. It’s a tale as old as humanity. A small, relatively poor planet leads to a desperate people trying to eke every last drop of wealth out of it As such, the profit of factories and industries takes precedence over the quality of air
