“P!” Aly had to shout. “What are our chances of pulling out?”
The droid’s lights went red and blinked blue again. “Our mass is too small and our thrust insufficient, even with recent upgrades.”
Translation: No chance. We’re all screwed.
A sudden jolt pushed them against the hull of the ship, and he could feel the g-force building. Everything was vibrating. He could hear them cutting through space—as loud as a bolt of thunder that never stopped. The shaking became intense and rattled its way into his brain. Metal seams shifted and flexed like tectonic plates.
Lights flickered on and off, the console a staticky red until it was total darkness apart from the red glow from Pavel’s eyelights. Outside, pieces of the Tin Soldier detached and burned through the atmosphere alongside the main pod, a trail of red-orange fire behind them.
“We have to make it to Portiis. We have to get to the United Planets!” Vin shouted. “But if one of us doesn’t make it . . .”
“We’re going to make it!” Aly yelled. “We’ll get there!”
A wing detached and darted away into the void. They barrel-rolled, end over end, so many times he lost count. He felt sick—an ocean in his stomach ready to come up and drown them all. It was just like how Vin used to turn the Revolutionary over for fun to mess with him, except this wasn’t for fun, and Vin wasn’t going to pull them out. They were going to die.
“Look, Aly. I’m sorry for what I said. I meant to tell you—”
But his voice was drowned out by an urgent mechanical beeping. The Tin Soldier, his old friend, was coming apart.
Down they plunged, burning through atmosphere, hurtling toward the surface of the planet’s ocean.
Faster. More pressure. He could barely breathe.
Then, a thunderous boom. A violent jolt. Metal groaning. He grabbed for Vin. His best friend. The two of them going down, after all they’d been through.
“You can have my hammer,” Aly told him.
Or maybe he thought it?
A wave of water slammed them backward. Then a current of white water poured in from the metal cracks and tore them apart.
Part Three:
THE DEPARTED
“In the last G-1K summit, Kalusian neurobiologist Diac Zofim surprised the scientific world when she introduced what she called a reader. It could override security measures and read the contents of a person’s cube. Impressive enough, but think about this: For what purpose would you use it? What gave anyone the right to access someone’s cube without their express consent? It would be useful for interplanetary security, the supporters argued, but it sounded like a slippery slope to me. There were a lot of living rights activists who agreed, and it sparked a series of protests that would’ve been front and center, but they were overshadowed by the twin bombings of Rhesto and Wraeta. Eventually the tech was quietly deemed illegal, but they’d announced it at a time when the public had other things on their mind . . .”
—Living rights activist and reporter, identity unknown Archives provided by the United Planets
THIRTEEN
RHIANNON
RHEE and Josselyn had always fought for the window seat. They’d traveled often as a family, her father urging diplomacy, to take turns and to share. That didn’t always work. Josselyn and Rhee would pinch each other’s thighs and whisper insults, until finally—boiling with rage, screeching and hissing like vultures—the two would be separated, neither of them with the window seat to show for it.
She hadn’t thought of that in ages. Not when there’d been so many good memories to replay, moments where it felt like they were a team. Rhee had willfully forgotten how lonely it was sometimes to have a sister. How sometimes, you could be sitting alone even if she was right next to you.
After five days offline, the sense of liberation had rapidly worn off. Rhee had thought that without her cube, her mind would remain clear and focused—and that the temptation of revisiting memories would be removed. But all it did was open up a path for the more painful ones to surface—her last fight with Joss, the goodbye with Julian as comets burned overhead, Veyron’s tears as he tried to end her life . . .
“You’re not still upset?” Dahlen asked her. It had been two days since parting ways with Tai Reyanna and traversing the dark tunnel that had allowed them to escape from Tinoppa, and these were the first words he had spoken to her.