Dahlen’s ring burned a hole in her pocket; it gave her an uneasy feeling, as if its ability to capture energy meant it would capture the attention of others too. The world went mute as she looked around the room, really looked, for the first time. The press conference claimed itself haphazard and slapdash, but it had obviously been set up well in advance. Nero had never intended to sway the Kalusian allies. He’d shown up in a military-looking uniform, with every intention to position himself as a leader. One who could rule an entire planet.
The kindness he’d shown, the rousing speeches he’d given . . . it was all an act, made more convincing by his good looks and those intense blue eyes she’d once thought of as soulful. Suddenly Rhee understood. It had been all for the cameras. Truly, it was Nero all along, not Seotra, who’d arranged to have her family killed—who’d tried to kill her. He’d plotted in the shadows and pressed for her early coronation so he could have her assassinated.
Rhee remembered what Nero had said after her family died, his words of consolation that had stayed with her for so many years.
The ancestors saw it was an honorable death, and through them we ensure a new, worthy leader will rise. He’d been speaking of himself.
It was Nero: the man who stood at the podium not ten feet away, the most powerful man in Kalu, who wanted to take their planet to war, who wanted her dead.
As if the realization were a literal bolt of lightning that struck at Rhee’s feet, Nero turned and looked directly at her.
SIXTEEN
ALYOSHA
THE name of the game was to not get caught. Aly’s only plan was to lie low, be inconspicuous, and maybe get to Rhesto in one piece. Kara—that was the girl’s name—had moved them through four cars with a security badge she’d swiped from who knows where. She acted like she’d grown up on a zeppelin, which, she told him after yanking him into a bathroom to avoid a patrolling Tasinn, she basically had.
When he caught her eye in the mirror she quickly looked away. Her hair fell across her face, and when she blinked it got tangled in her eyelashes. How did that not drive her crazy?
“I spent a lot of time on zeppelin freighters like these,” she said. She made a face in the mirror and tried to finger comb her tangled hair. It was no use trying to make it do anything else—it was too far gone—but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Under the door he saw Pavel discreetly send a narrow attachment with a tiny camera at the end, and Aly nudged it back with the toe of his boot. “Kalu labs rent out space on zeppelins like this all the time, for experiments they can’t get the government to approve. Since it travels between quadrants, then it isn’t in violation of any one territory’s laws. My mom’s a scientist, remember? She used to work the Kalu–Navrum line that did four-day loops. She did neurobiology stuff and even helped develop cube-to-cube interaction.”
Aly was impressed. “So you’re some kind of genius like your mom, then?”
“I wish,” she said to the mirror. She had this faraway look in her eyes, like she was actually seeing someone who’d disappeared from her reflection forever ago. “But I guess it got her in trouble, in the end. She was being watched by a bunch of different governments, all kinds of different planets . . .”
“Is she . . . ?”
Kara shook her head, so her bangs shook too. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I hope not.” Their eyes met in the mirror again. He got a sense of weird déjà vu when he looked at her. Maybe it was just the fluorescent lighting threatening to give him a seizure. “A dozen scientists she worked with at the summit had been disappearing over the last six months, one by one. She knew it wasn’t coincidence. Someone was going after them.”
“Who?”
Kara shrugged. “I don’t know. But she left before they could take her. At least, I hope she did.”
“Zuilie,” he exhaled.
“That’s what I’m saying. I heard it’s always happened on the sly, ever since the Great War. People all over the galaxy rounded up, questioned about their involvement and their loyalties, all under the guise of preserving peace. But this is different . . .” Her face tightened. “It’s targeted. Every one of them was at the last G-1K summit. Taken one day, maybe stopped for a routine traffic violation or called in to renew a federal license, and then just . . . gone.”
Immediately, he remembered the little boy on Derkatz. Snatch-yah uptu?
Alyosha felt sick. This was what war was. It wasn’t even the bombs or the cruisers loaded with bombs. It was girls like Kara in a zeppelin bathroom, suddenly, maybe, orphaned. It was boys like him, twelve-year-olds, running after a truck, choking on the smell of dust. People always measured war in terms of the numbers dead. Maybe they should measure it in terms of the people left behind.