At least, not yet. I didn’t know how long that would last.
The bridge was in organized chaos when I arrived. Arjan lay on a makeshift bed of blankets on the bench, Basra bustling efficiently over him, surrounded by infopads. He’d no doubt chosen the bridge to commandeer any help he might need, but I wasn’t sure what we could do that they couldn’t.
I spotted at least three different faces video-comming with Basra at the same time. They looked like a variety of doctors from different systems, and I couldn’t imagine how much these comms had to be costing. Basra was following their instructions to the letter, cleaning, bandaging, jabbing injector tubes into Arjan’s neck, only speaking to ask questions or for clarification. He was deferential, and I had a hard time reconciling this image of him, nursing my brother, with the person he’d been in the lab…and evidently in the hangar, afterward, when he’d faced down Thelarus Dracorte.
Eton had less attention, sitting on the floor next to an open medi-kit, but he was managing. Telu was helping him stitch the glaring, weeping slit in his leg when she wasn’t fetching or holding something for Basra. Instead of taking any of the injector tubes meant for Arjan, Eton clutched an open bottle of white liquor in one hand, which he poured in equally liberal amounts over his wound and down his throat. Nev was both checking the ship’s systems and occasionally calling advice to Telu over his shoulder. He’d clearly been trained to field-dress battle wounds.
No one snapped to attention when I walked in, and I was glad. They were already doing what needed to be done. In spite of how battered we all were, we were still a good team.
I slipped into my chair and checked the feeds. It took only a few pieces of information for me to know for sure that the Kaitan could fly.
“I’m getting us out of here,” I said, and took up the controls.
We had an escort, of course, consisting of the Royal Dracorte Air Guard and several of their destroyers. But like the guards in the hangar, they didn’t touch us. They only watched and waited. They were patient, at least, because we were slow. The Kaitan struggled to gain every bit of altitude, climbing as if crawling up a cliff face, with only one partially working thruster and a solar sail to power her. But she rose.
The city of Dracorva was still grand, if injured, as it fell away beneath us. The only drones in evidence were those that had been blasted into blackened craters of wreckage. Several towers were blackened as well, others broken. Smoke billowed in thick streams from a few places still burning.
Nev didn’t look at it, either down through the viewport or on any of the feeds. Maybe he couldn’t. He focused on my face instead, leaning against the dash and filling me in on what had happened in the hangar. He murmured the details as we made our way up through Luvos’s atmosphere, quietly so as not to disturb Arjan. My brother was no longer groaning. Basra had given him something that had rendered him unconscious but continued working over him. Eton hissed occasionally as Telu finished his stitches and then tightly wrapped his thigh with a thick compress.
Once she finished with him, she moved over to Nev, interrupting him only long enough to command him to take off his jacket. He smiled, bemused…and no doubt loopy from blood loss, I realized, when the thing hit the floor with a wet smack. Telu immediately set to work cleaning and bandaging the cuts lacing his arms like gory latticework, working quickly to stop the bleeding.
He shrugged with red arms at both Telu’s and my alarmed expressions. “These would have been deeper, or would have cost me limbs and life, if my father’s guards hadn’t been holding back.” His tone grew grimmer as he finished the story, explaining what had happened between him and his father, and then Basra.
According to Nev, Basra—or Hersius Kartolus the Thirteenth, apparently—would call off his full-scale financial assault of Dracorte Industries before we engaged the Belarius Drive…but only the second before. Otherwise, if he did it any sooner, I had no doubt our alarm systems would blare once again, alerting us to a weapons lock. Based on the state of Nev’s arms under his new bandages, I suspected they would try to blow us to dust even with the king’s heir on board.
My suspicions were confirmed when a hard voice cut over the inter-ship—and planetwide—comms.
“Attention, lawful citizens under the stewardship of the Dracorte royal family. Your king, Thelarus Axandar Rubion Marsius Dracorte, will now be making an official announcement of grave importance.”
If that voice had been hard, it was nothing to the one that came next. It didn’t sound anything like the man I had met in that ornate sitting room. Thelarus had acted like a king then, but I could still imagine him as Nev’s father. There was nothing to balance the king in his voice, now. Nothing of a father.
“I hereby announce the formal disavowal and disinheritance of Nevarian Dracorte. He is my son, my heir, and your prince no longer, and may make no further claim to the other names of his ancestry. His own actions brought this ruin upon him, first and foremost, but it is by my hand finished.”
We all froze, looking at Nev in shock. He blinked, as if the news hadn’t hit him yet.
Thelarus’s voice fell like another powerful blow. “I hereby banish him from the planet Luvos, and if he ever sets foot upon it again, he will be executed for treason. His life is my gift of my mercy, the final mark of what he once meant to me, but if he should lose it at another’s hands, it will be of no importance to us, the Dracorte family. He may keep the Dracorte name only in remembrance of his shame and dishonor. His fate is now the Great Unifier’s to decide.”
Even though the ship had remained airtight, it still felt like the oxygen had been vacuumed out into the upper atmosphere. Nev looked winded, his hand scraping over his face and mouth, fingers parting to reveal his eyes. His eyes were terrible.
“As a result,” Thelarus continued in a pitiless tone, “it is both my duty and honor to announce Solara Ysandrei Rezanna Verasia Dracorte as my heiress. Upon my death, she will be bequeathed all titles, domains, and assets belonging to me, and with those, the Throne of Luvos and all the responsibilities that sitting it will entail. May she someday rule wisely, honorably, and with unwavering loyalty to her family.”
Nev’s eyes closed on the last words, and the comms fell silent.
We were all quiet for a moment, except for Basra, who’d mostly ignored the whole thing and returned to questioning and listening to the doctors. Even Eton was looking at Nev with some measure of pity, though maybe only because his gaze was glassy and the liquor bottle half empty.