#eurekaproject

She looked at the painting, and then at her pigments. She eyed the chocolate cosmos. Dark, rich, deep red—it would be the perfect opposite of bright, vibrant American rose, especially in a painting where she was trying to create so much contrast. But was chocolate cosmos really faithful to the cliffs of the Mare Acidalium at sunset?

Cressida frowned and walked over to her window. It wasn’t that she wanted photorealism, exactly, but she wanted something that really matched the soul of the place, the heart of the landscape. Colors were important for that. She pulled open the drapes, revealing the real rice plants, and all of the people who worked in them. The cliffs rose up in the background. Chocolate cosmos did kind of match their character, but it wasn’t really super accurate-

“What the hell?”

Something flashed in the sky, momentarily flickering before vanishing into thin air. Cressida squinted. There it was again—a sleek chrome triangle, pulsing in and out of existence. That was advanced cloaking technology, the likes of which she’d never seen outside of crappy sci-fi B-movies they played at the theater on Fridays. Martian ships didn’t look like that.

“Dad?” she called downstairs. “Dad, there’s something weird in the stratosphere.”

“I know,” he shouted back. “They’re with me-“

“The ones in the ship?” she asked, watching all the workers in the field stop their labor to gaze at the cyan sky. “Because there’s a white thing-“

“What?”

“Come take a look at it.”

She heard him murmur an apology to his visitors—Eleutherian ambassadors, probably, but she had long since given up on trying to keep his various guests straight—and run upstairs, his footsteps pounding on the hardwood floor. He joined her at the window still, shielding his eyes with one hand.

“Look, Dad,” she said. “It’s flickering, see? That’s not one of ours.”

“That’s strange,” he said slowly. “That’s a nice ship. A really nice ship.” Even from this far away, Cressida could tell it was expensive; the way the mid-morning light glinted off the metal was unique to fancy Eleutherian cruisers. But why would the space equivalent of a yacht have cloaking technology unless whoever was flying it really, really didn’t want to be seen?

“It doesn’t look dangerous,” Cressida said, “but civilian ships aren’t even allowed to have that type of tech. That goes against so many regulations it’s not even funny.”

“You’re right. And it isn’t just cloaking, either.” Her father tilted his head up, shielding his eyes with one scarred hand. “See how shiny it is? That’s not for aesthetic purposes—or, well, it is, but those are shields, like on a military ship.” Cressida’s voice caught in her throat. “Military?” The Eleutherian military was no joke; their fleet outstripped anything Mars had by far, to the point where fending them off was laughable. The last war they’d fought had resulted in patches of nuclear devastation all over Daedalia Planum, and the soil was still irradiated and poisonous even centuries later. And, to Eleutheria, that had been nothing—at the time, their Imperatrix had called it a “skirmish.” Millions of people dead and entire cities leveled, a civilization reduced to radioactive ash, and it barely even registered on Eleutheria’s radar. They could nuke the entirety of Mars and barely bat an eyelash. Cressida was sure that her father’s status would protect her in some way—he prided himself on being annoyingly overprotective, and he was rich and powerful in some sectors—but, at the end of the day, he was just a farmer who had gotten lucky. He was high-ranking, but was he high-ranking enough to save his daughter and his planet from the most volatile empire known to mankind?

“What did you do?” Cressida demanded. “Why is the Eleutherian army coming after us?”

“I didn’t do anything, not really,” he said quickly. “And they wouldn’t send the army after us. They’d send the space force.” “That is literally the opposite of reassuring.” The only thing more terrifying than the sight of centuria of mutant super-soldiers was the sight of centuria of mutant super-soldiers riding indestructible starships.

“Don’t panic just yet. That might not even be a military craft,” he said, though Cressida could hear the waver in his voice. “Military ships are’t sleek and white—more cubic and black and intentionally intimidating.” Cressida squinted, trying to get a closer look. Everyone in the fields had long since stopped working; now, they just stared up at the sky, enraptured. The vessel drew closer, close enough to cause tornadoes of rusty-red dust to swirl up from the ground in jets of spent soil, and then closer still. It was big—admittedly, not as big as a yacht, but big—and Cressida felt a surge of anxiety as she realized just how near it was to the farmhouse. Either it would flatten all the crops and destroy the year’s harvest, which would be a massive inconvenience requiring ten tons of paperwork, or it would completely crush the homestead. Neither were good options, and both were bound to piss off the almighty Algorithm.

But, to her surprise, the ship simply coasted over them with a surprising amount of grace for something so large and unwieldy-looking. It cast a long, dark shadow over the fields as the Martian sun vanished behind glimmering Eleutherian plastic, sending chills down Cressida’s spine.

“Hey, Ace,” her father called to one of his guests. “Can you come up here for a minute?” “Ace?” Cressida asked. That name sounded like it belonged to a frat boy, not a visiting dignitary. “Who the hell is—“ “What?” A teenage boy with wild, curly black hair came barreling into the room in a cacophony of noise. His clothes suggested that he was a soldier, but his demeanor seemed less “military precision” and more “confused.” Maybe Eleutheria’s massive population meant that they were less discerning when it came to their soldiers, since they had so much cannon fodder, or maybe he was smarter than he looked.

“Is that who I think it is?” Cressida’s father asked, gesturing to the ship. Ace considered it for a minute.

“Yeah,” he said. “Oh my god, yeah. That’s Acidalia. We’re so fu—uh, screwed.”

“Wait,” Cressida interjected, “Acidalia? You’re not talking about-“

“You know exactly who I’m talking about,” he replied. “Either that or her psycho mother, because there are only two people I can think of who have rides like that.”

Cressida looked nervously at her father, and his eyes widened slightly.

“You don’t think it could be Alestra, do you?” he asked.

“Alestra Cipher is after you?!” Cressida exclaimed. “What the hell, Dad?” Alestra was the most dangerous woman in the solar system—hell, probably even the whole galaxy. She killed her own citizens on a regular basis, and she did not like Martians, particularly martians from the Mare Acidalium quadrangle. If she saw the opportunity to strike, she’d probably mow down the whole Seren family where they stood.

“I don’t think it’d be her,” Ace said dismissively. “It must be Acidalia. If it was Alestra, she’d have burnt this whole place to the ground already. We’d all be piles of radioactive ash by now. But that’s not the point—it doesn’t matter if she’s on that ship or not, because she’s the hunting dog to Acidalia’s fox. We are so, so, so screwed—and the fact that Acidalia thought it was necessary to come all the way here doesn’t bode well, either.”

“What do you mean, ‘that doesn’t bode well?’” Cressida asked again. “Dad, what’s happening?” Moving away from the window, she knocked over the all-but-forgotten jar of mixed chocolate cosmos, which left a reddish brown stain where it spilled.

She went utterly ignored.

“Yeah, it must be Acidalia’s,” Ace decided. “Alestra wouldn’t have let us live this long—she’s too efficient for that. And Cassiopeia’s an impulsive idiot, but Alestra keeps a leash on her, right?”

“I suppose there’s only one way to find out,” Cressida’s father shrugged.

***

Approximately thirty seconds later, Cressida and her father, trailed by Ace and a strange Eleutherian girl with fluorescent pink hair, stood outside the homestead in a rare patch of grass. Each and every one of them was sweating and tired-looking—something about the heat made standing under the sun exhausting, even when one had barely done anything requiring any sort of labor. Together, they stared at the ship, watching, waiting.

Suddenly, with an odd lack of fanfare, the shields vanished, and in place of their iridescent glow was a set of marble steps that somehow looked as natural on the landscape as the rice plants and the trees. At their very center stood a woman in a white dress and a veil—she could have been a bride, but Cressida knew better. She was flanked by two other women wearing identical gray uniforms, but somehow they gave off the same energy as an entire court full of people, and Cressida felt like she ought to respect this person, whoever she was.

The girl with pink hair, the one who apparently didn’t speak a word of Anglian, dropped to her knees in an awkward sort of worship. Cressida briefly contemplated doing the same thing, but neither Ace nor her father followed the girl, so she did a slight curtsy and remained standing, feeling very small compared to this foreign princess of a person. Even here, surrounded by the spoils of her family’s wealth—a mansion of a farmhouse, fields upon fields of employees, the best technology any Martian could ever hope to buy—Cressida felt like a tasteless hick.

“You know how to make an entrance,” her father said to the stranger, smiling slightly.

She sighed. “Old habits die hard.” Something in her expression was completely humorless, but not in an I-mean-business way, more of a someone-just-died way. Something churned in Cressida’s stomach, and she suddenly got a horrible gut feeling that something had gone very, very wrong.

“Are all the Imperials this dramatic?” her father asked, apparently not picking up on the David-this-is-serious vibes the woman was clearly trying to send his way. It took a moment, but a wave of embarrassment surged through Cressida. Imperials? This woman was an Imperial? Not just an Imperial—if she was standing here, and she wasn’t Alestra, she had to be—

Oh my God, Cressida thought. I’m speaking to Acidaila Cipher. It should have been obvious in retrospect; Ace had identified this craft as her ship, after all, and it made sense that the Imperatrix Ceasarina would be the one person outside the military who would own a ship this nice. But Cressida had been expecting some type of aid or minister to come out first—why would the ruler of the most powerful empire humanity had ever known want to speak face-to-face with the Secretary of Agriculture on Mars, of all people?

“David, I don’t have time for this,” Acidalia said, looking harried, and the tone in her voice made Cressida want to hear whatever she had to say sooner rather than later. She gave off a sort of frantic, panicked aura, even though her stone-cold face was completely calm. It was like chaos and disarray just surrounded her—she wasn’t its source, but it seemed to like her, and Cressida wanted to figure out what the problem was before it turned into a catastrophe.

“Sorry,” her father said. “Generally, when important political figures show up at my house with no explanation or forewarning, I get a little curious.” She glared at him. “There are a lot of things we could be talking about right now that don’t involve dramatic entrances. I’m afraid that I come bearing bad news.”

“Bad news?” Cressida asked, terrified by the vagueness of the statement. “Bad news” coming from a political figure could mean anything from an unfavorable poll to a famine that killed eight thousand people, and that was just on Mars. She didn’t even want to imagine what had happened in order to make Eleutheria acknowledge that it had a problem.

“We should discuss this inside,” Acidalia said, gesturing quickly towards the ship, which vanished into thin air at the movement of her wrist. Every worker in the fields stared, open-mouthed, but the Eleutherians didn’t look surprised in the slightest. As Acidalia walked to the farmhouse, Martian dirt soiled her elaborate white gown, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. She exuded the same type of confidence as Arlen Tycho—the persona of a leader who knew damn well how powerful and famous they were, and didn’t care what the unwashed masses thought of them.

With surprisingly little fanfare, Acidalia and her companions sat at the low wooden table in the kitchen by the foyer, and Cressida almost laughed at the sheer absurdity of the sight. Even she didn’t sit in the kitchen—they had dining rooms for that. The kitchen was the domain of the help and other people whose social points weren’t high enough to let them sit with the big guns. But Acidalia was the biggest gun in the room, and if she wanted to sit in the kitchen, the Algorithm probably wouldn’t penalize either of the Serens for that.

Acidalia said something low to Cressida’s father before turning to her. She gulped, half-expecting to be struck down or laughed at, but the Imperatrix had an expression of almost friendly neutrality, though she still gave off an underlying feeling of dread and anxiety.

“Um… bonus vesper, celsituda tua,” Cressida said, feeling nervous for a reason she couldn’t place.

“Loquerisne Latine?” Acidalia asked, surprised.

“Scio exigua.” I know a little bit. She’d studied Latin at school, too, but not the complicated, intricate dialect that Eleutheria used, if one could even call it that. Eleutherian “Latin” was really more of a creole of Latin, English, random Romance languages, Greek, and a bunch of drunk people adding -um and -us and -trix to words where they didn’t belong. It was created by a slew of college students armed with online translators and some Church documents two thousand years ago, and it showed. But she could hardly insult Acidalia’s mess of a first language in front of her, so she smiled blandly and tried her best not to cringe at the incorrect declensions and pronunciations.

“Ego Acidalia,” Acidalia said, as if Cressida wouldn’t know who she was. She pronounced her name the Catholic way, like the word acid. “Tu es filia David?”

“Sic. David pater meus,” Cressida replied. “Meum nomen Cressida est.” Yes, I am David’s daughter. My name is Cressida.

“Suave te cognoscere est,” Acidalia. “Pater mecum operatur. Qui dixit mihi multus est de te. Quotos annos habes?”

“Sedecim annos habeo.” I am sixteen years old—well, more like I have sixteen years. She was pretty sure that’s how they said it in Latin. That’s how they said it in Spanish, right? Tengo dieciseis años, not soy dieciseis años. And Latin was like Spanish’s ancestor, sort of. So that had to be it. Cressida was suddenly reminded of the Horus she’d spent in Trinity Court’s Academy for Young Women, staring longingly at the languid summer days just outside the window and trying to remember complex webs of verb tense rules for the sake of grammar quizzes. Was Acidalia trying to test her?

“Libens sum. Possumus, eamus intus?” Acidalia asked.

Before she could reply, Ace interrupted them. “Et arripuerit,” he said. “T Ubi est?”

Acidalia sighed deeply and didn’t meet his eyes. With a sweeping gesture, she announced more than said, “Veni. Nos eamus.”

No one moved.

She did not say anything, but gave them a look that wordlessly said, “this is a command, not a suggestion.”

***

“Et mortuus est?!”

Acidalia’s expression barely changed. “Cassiopeia.”

Looking incredulous, Ace sank down on the table. “Quomodo?”

“Et percusserunt eum. Significatum est enim mihi est…. mea culpa, se nunquam mori. Et ego paenitet.”

“Non utique creditur moriturus!” Ace exclaimed. “Erat tantum septendecim annorum… Ego ei ne ire. Cur non ibimus?” He buried his head in his hands and sunk down to the table, muttering frantically to himself in a whispered Shakespearean soliloquy.

Cressida didn’t know enough Latin to pick up on most of the conversation, but she knew enough to judge that someone had died. Mortuus, mori, moriturus… dead, dying, dying? It was difficult to tell; half their words didn’t make sense in Classical, non-Eleutherian Latin, because they had the wrong declensions or wrong grammar or were in the wrong order. But “mort” she understood enough. And “mea culpa…” that meant “my fault.” Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa was part of the Confíteor. Imperatrix Acidalia was claiming responsibility for someone’s death.

Apparently Ace had asked a rhetorical question, because Acidalia didn’t answer him. Instead, she merely looked down at the wooden table, elegantly mournful. Her eyes were watery, but there was no other sign that she was even remotely upset.

Ace, meanwhile, remained with his head in his arms for a few seconds, and the girl with pink hair looked over at him, concerned. She went to lay a hand on him, then redacted it, swallowing hard and looking at Acidalia.

Suddenly, Ace jolted up, his eyes red. “Et scissis vestibus pergens ad te.”

“Fecit,” Acidalia said softly.

“Et occidit se ipsum pro te,” Ace snapped. “Et occidit se ipsum pro te et tu ne quidem curant!”

Cressida caught the word occido—killed. Et occidit se ipsum pro te—“he killed himself for you.” She was taken aback; who would just say that to the Imperatrix? This random soldier had to have been of extraordinarily high rank to get away with this type of open defiance.

“Hey,” she whispered to the girl in gray, the one with long hair tipped with streaks of red (which the Algorithim would have killed her for if she wasn’t Eleutherian.) “Hey, do you speak English?”

“Um, some?” she whispered back. “I’m Athena.”

“Thank god,” Cressida said. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“The brother of the Imperatrix—uh, the empress?” she asked herself. “No… she who commands? I don’t know if there’s an English word with the same exact meaning-“

“Doesn’t matter,” Cressida said quickly.

“Yeah, I guess it doesn’t. But, um, the brother of the Imperatrix is dead.” She didn’t use the English possessive Acidalia’s brother, which made her voice sound stilted and awkward in a way she probably didn’t intend.

“I didn’t even know she had a brother,” Cressida said. She saw Acidalia and Aleskynn’s faces everywhere, but there was never any boy with them. If Acidalia did have a brother, his image would be on every propaganda poster ever produced.

“I didn’t know either, until about yesterday,” Athena said. “He’s gone now, though.”

“What happened?”

“Acidalia said Cassiopeia shot him—you probably don’t know who that is. She’s, um… insanus. What’s the word for-“

“Insane. It’s the same, pretty much,” Cressida interrupted. “How did she-“

“I don’t know,” Athena said. “I found out about this five minutes ago, too.”

“Oh.” Cressida felt like she shouldn’t be sitting here watching this—Acidalia had just lost a brother, and Ace was clearly upset about it. At the same time, though, she wasn’t sure how she could get away. Surely if the Imperatrix wanted her gone, she’d have told her to leave, but why would she want her here?

She turned to Athena, who looked like she felt just as bemused as Cressida did.

“Non est vestrum erit flagitium!” Ace shouted, suddenly, standing. The Imperatrix looked momentarily surprised before reverting to the same expression she’d worn before—sad, but strong, determined. She looked like a movie character, not someone whose brother had just been brutally murdered by a madwoman.

“Non ea culpa fuit,” Cressida’s father said gently.

“Sic factum est,” Acidalia replied, looking down at the ground. “Et mortuus est in me. Me paenitet, Ace-“

"Ignosce, non satis!” Ace spat. “Quod illi non erit! Et profecta!”

Cressida cringed internally. This man was going to wind up dead if Acidalia was anything like her mother—which, judging by the white and the theatrics, she was. Insulting the Imperatrix was not a good way to become popular in Eleutheria.

But, to her surprise, Acidalia hardly reacted. She closed her eyes and put her hands on her face for a moment, before sighing deeply. “Scio.” I know.

“Acidalia,” Cressida’s father said. “Prohibere. Quid enim sunt ne putasti?”

The Imperatrix didn’t say anything, but she wiped her eye with the back of her hand so subtly Cressida might not have noticed it if she weren’t so close. Ace just sunk back into the table again, and the girl with pink hair was clearly crying. The whole room filled with a stilted silence for a few minutes. Athena, her friend, and Cressida stood against the wall, bemused. Athena’s friend looked scared and embarrassed, chewing on her lip until blood trickled down her chin.

With a sudden realization, Acidalia abruptly straightened her shoulders, switching from one emotion to another far too quickly for Cressida’s comfort. She couldn’t tell whether the Imperatrix was upset and very good at hiding it or crying crocodile tears for the benefit of Ace, but either way, the transition was too sharp to seem normal. Acidalia looked—and acted—almost like a robot. A creation that had been told what humans liked when it came to looks and personality, and then replicated it, but replicated it wrong. Her oddly symmetrical features, her strange bright brown eyes, her impossible hourglass figure, the way she went from a weepy sister to a strong leader in a nanosecond—it wasn’t right, and it made Cressida slightly anxious. Acidalia was far too deep in the uncanny valley for her liking.

“Aegre fero,” Acidalia said, while Ace continued to look blankly at the wall. Then, addressing Cressida’s father, “David, si necesse est dicere.” We need to talk.

“About what?” Cressida asked, recognizing too late that she maybe shouldn’t have.

Her father’s eyes turned shifty. “Non hic.” Not here.

Acidalia nodded. “Sunt telecameras.”

“Cameras?!” All the times she’d danced around her room singing Vocaloid songs into a brush at top volume flew through Cressida’s head, before she remembered that there were clearly bigger issues at hand. Who would want to bug the Seren farmhouse? Just what types of games were her father playing?

“In Revelatio,” Acidalia said, standing. “Non debeo hic.”

Cressida really wished they would stop speaking Latin—or at least speak normal Latin—but knew better than to say it. She joined her father, glaring at him. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Come with me.”

The stitch in her side returned as her father dragged her back to the ship, which materialized again in order to allow the passengers on. She winced, clambering up the marble steps. They were a lot less beautiful when she was roughly forced up them, and they were steep. Acidalia followed quickly, almost jogging in her seven-inch heels. It was a miracle she didn’t fall. Robotic, Cressida thought again.

The Revelation had entirely too many chairs and too much decor—all blue stones mixed with Greek and Roman art, not like Eleutherians even had any concept of what Greece and Rome were outside of those cool ancient people who made pretty statues. The neon lights immediately gave her a headache, and the architecture was sleek and organic but cold—but not literally, it was about eighty degrees. Everything Cressida disliked was in the Revelation’s sterile insides.

She collapsed on a rounded bench with white LEDs on the edges, blinking at the brightness. None of the other Eleutherians seemed too bothered by the harsh, unnatural lighting, though they’ll all been squinting in the Martian sun. Cressida’s resentment towards them grew suddenly, especially when every last one of them started speaking in rapid Latin, much too fast for her to understand. Who the hell were these people? They could land a ship on her farm, invade her house, make battle plans without her? Who did they think they were?

“Excuse me,” she said.

She was promptly ignored as her father delved deep into a conversation with Athena, the one who spoke a bit of English.

“Excuse me,” she said, louder this time.

They continued their discussion.

“Veniam in me!” she snapped. Six heads turned to look at her. “What the hell is going on?”

They stared at her blankly.

“Quid agatur in infernum?”

Her father sighed, looking worried. “We’re going to Eleutheria.”

“What?”

“Acidalia had a conversation with the Proregina of the Lunar Colonies-“ he began.

“What on Earth is a ‘proregina?’"

“Like a vicereine-“

“A what? None of this makes any sense! You can’t just-“ “Like a female viceroy,” Acidalia added, very unhelpfully. Cressida looked to Athena for help, but she just whispered, “Don’t know either.”

“An important person on the Moon,” her father said slowly, looking like he had a headache. “She said there’s been an uprising in Appalachia—that’s Eleutheria’s capital city. They think Acidalia’s dead-“

“Well, she’s clearly not, unless this chick really is an alien robot,” Cressida snapped, “so I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“I’m a leader of the Revolution,” Acidalia explained, like this was something completely normal to say. “We’re in a difficult spot here. The Novagenetica-“

“The eugenicist crazies,” Athena explained helpfully.

“-have declared a full-out war on us and claimed to have killed me. Obviously, since I’m not on-planet and it’s difficult to contact me out here, many have made their assumptions about my untimely death. The entire reason I’m here is because an assassination attempt that killed my brother forced me to flee, so that likely was a contributing factor in why so many believed the Nova when they declared that I had been murdered. Either way, most people on both sides think I’m deceased, and it’s vital that we correct that in order to preserve the safety of the planet.” “What does that have to do with me?” Cressida demanded.

“Well,” Acidalia said, “meet our Martian contact, David Seren.” She gestured to Cressida’s father. “Ally of the Revolution and close friend to President Tycho.”

Astonished, Cressida stared at her father. “What the hell, Dad? You’ve been in cahoots with a bunch of Eleutherian insurgents and you didn’t tell me?” “Seeing as we’re spearheaded by several members of the federal government, we aren’t exactly insurgents,” Acidalia replied calmly, her tone never shifting. “More like one faction of a civil war. But we need to stop discussing this. Clearly, I’m needed on-planet, and so is your father. For your safety, so are you. Besides, you’re an expert on Martian climate and agriculture and you’ve attended finishing school; the daughter of a Martian aristocrat is valuable.” She smiled in a way that was probably supposed to be as welcoming, but the corners of her eyes didn’t crinkle up like they were supposed to, and she looked too strange for anything she said to come across as genuine.

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere with me,” Cressida said. “I can’t leave Mars. I have a life. I have school, exams are coming up—it’s November, remember? Finals start next month.”

Acidalia looked entirely nonplussed about this. “I can tutor you on anything involving biology,” she said, “and I’m sure you’ll find that there are plenty of educational opportunities on Eleutheria.” “You’re missing the point,” Cressida said, wondering if she was really that thick. “I can’t just not take exams. I need a diploma-" “A what?” Athena asked.

“I’ll write you a recommendation letter,” Acidalia said dismissively. “No school in its right mind would deny you an admission. And, keep in mind, this is only temporary, and for your own safety. Now that I am here and my brother is dead—“ Her voice broke for a second, then she regained her composure so quickly Cressida wondered if anything had even changed to begin with. “Now that my brother is dead,” she continued, “this place is no longer safe for any of us. My mother will find out the truth soon enough, and then we will all be in danger.”

“But I haven’t done anything,” Cressida said indignantly. “I have no part in any of this.” She found it hard to believe that any Eleutherian dignitary could get away with murdering the daughter of an important politician. People would notice that, and then they’d be angry, even if there was nobody left to really mourn the Seren family. Acidalia sighed and looked up at Cressida. “Your innocence doesn’t matter,” she said. “Your father spoke to me once, and that’s enough. She’d murder you in a heartbeat if she thought you were related to a revolutionary, even if you posed no threat to her. I’ve seen her mutilate people for less. And even if the people of Mars rioted in response, there’s nothing they could do to counter Alestra’s immense power. She’d sooner bomb your whole city to ashes than show an ounce of mercy.”

“Acidalia is right,” Cressida’s father said. “That woman is a psychopath, and she doesn’t like Mars—or Martians—very much.”

“But she’s half-Martian!” Cresida exclaimed.

“Yes,” Acidalia finished, “I am. And so is—was—my dead little brother, who my mother’s henchman shot in the head. Nobody is safe from her, I guarantee it.”

A shiver went down Cressida’s spine. “What do you think she’ll do if she finds out—?” “I don’t know,” Acidalia replied. “I can’t say. But if you would like to remain alive—which I suggest you do; it is a dreadful waste to lose somebody so young—I suggest packing and leaving. Once the sirens start blaring, it will already be too late. I’m sure you know what happened to Daedalia.”

“Okay, but…” Cressida’s voice trailed off. She’d be missing school, she realized suddenly, and she’d lose half of her social points if she was absent any more. After that bout of flu in October, the Algorithm was already angry with her, and it would not be merciful if she abandoned her planet without a trace a month before exam season. And then the rumors would start and her reputation would sink even lower—she’d be called a deadbeat and a dropout and all manner of other things, and she’d never be able to go to a good college if she had no status left. The Martian meritocracy didn’t allow for mistakes or variations from the norm, even during a civil war.

But losing merit was still better than being dead.

A surge of fury coursed through Cressida’s veins. There was no way for her to get out of this—if she stayed she’d surely die, and if she left she’d be abandoning the life her father struggled so much to build for her. And none of it was her fault. She wasn’t the one who joined a revolution for the sake of a planet she didn’t even live on, she wasn’t the one who made friends with a woman whose family was insane enough to murder anyone its black sheep of a daughter set her eyes upon, and she wasn’t the one who dragged her friends into a war so violent teenage girls could be shot to death over nothing, absolutely nothing. This was all her father’s fault, and even beyond that, Acidalia’s—Acidalia Cipher, who had the nerve to show up at the Seren home, completely ignorant of the trail of destruction she’d leave in her wake. How dare she? None of this was Cressida’s problem.

But the nuclear war hadn’t been the Daedalians’ problem, either, and they were still the ones who had to pay for it. Such was politics. It was all one big game of chess—you sacrifice the pawns for the sake of the king. And the Algorithm would rather see a game won than save a useless piece.

It was maddening, really, the thousands of credits that had gone into designing this thing. It had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out into a starry nothingness, bisected occasionally by the laser-light glow of another distant starship. It had glitteringly clean floors polished by a staff of needlessly adorable white robots that skittered around the place like dinner plate-sized mice. It had art, mood lighting, chandeliers, centerpieces at every table, gourmet food, feather-stuffed pillows, stocks of makeup and inordinately fancy dresses, and a collection of shoes that probably could have made Athena a multi-millionaire if she had the courage to steal and pawn them. Honestly, she could probably make a killing easily by selling all of the Imperatrix’s junk on the black market—Acidalia was rich enough not to notice. “How much do you think this costs?” she asked Carina absentmindedly, balancing a silver-colored decorative hair comb between her fingers. It had about two dozen little pearls, but she had no idea if they were genuine or not. But would someone as important as Acidalia even own fake pearls?

“Stop it,” Carina said. “She lost her brother less than an hour ago. Now is not the appropriate time to steal her things.” “She’s a multiquadrillionaire, it’s always an appropriate time to steal her stuff. Eat the rich, right?”

“That’s mean.”

“You don’t understand my desire to be edgily controversial at absolutely all times,” Athena replied, pocketing the comb anyway. Even if Acidalia eventually emerged from the massive, overly elaborate museum-with-a-bed she called a bedroom to come collect her belongings, she wouldn’t care that Athena had taken one small thing. Not if she was at all unlike her mother, at least. From the corner of the room, Carina shot Athena a death glare.

“This is my ship, sorta,” Athena said defensively. “It all comes from taypayer credits, you know that?” “That isn’t how taxpayer supported things work,” Carina retorted.

“Why not?” “I don’t know. I just know that stealing is impolite.” “The Imperial family stole my money.” “Taxes aren’t stealing.” “They are when they benefit rich individuals instead of society as a whole.” Carina groaned. “Where did you even learn about politics? I asked you who the Proregina of the Lunar Colonies was last week and you couldn’t even give me an answer, but now all of the sudden you know about taxes?” “I’ve always known about taxes. Or, more specifically, how to commit tax fraud.” “That is astoundingly illegal and stupid.” Athena gasped in mock offense. “Don’t speak to me like that in front of my 27 dependents!”

Carina didn’t even bother to dignify that with a response. She turned away, rolling her eyes, while Athena giggled just out of her view. She didn’t feel that bad about stealing from Acidalia—the staggering income inequality on Eleutheria was enough to displace any feelings of guilt she may have ever held. Dead brother or living brother, money was money, and Athena going on an impromptu vacation to wherever this resort-with-an-engine starship was heading would almost definitely cost her a job. She didn’t particularly feel like being strapped for cash again—especially not while surrounded by some of the most excessive luxury she’d ever seen in her life.

Actually, no, scratch that. The most excessive luxury anyone could ever see in their lives, period. Acidalia was rich beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations. The amount of money she had was too large for human minds to even comprehend. Quadrillions of credits. Quadrillions. She had more credits to her name than there were stars in the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy combined. This was fuck-you money of the highest order, and most of it came from citizens like Athena—citizens who stressed about rent and affording necessities and paying off bribes and medical debt. Why should Acidalia get to have fancy pearl-encrusted hair combs while ordinary Eleutherians grasped at straws to afford basic cybernetic implants? That was bullshit, Athena thought. So it really didn’t matter if she stole stuff from Imperial cruisers or committed tax fraud every single Aperire; her crimes were all victimless.

*** Two hours later, Athena was dressed in an incredibly fancy dressing gown that looked like exactly the type of thing the Imperatrix would wear to bed. It itched—a lot—and she never would have thought to put it on if there wasn’t such an abundance of hidden pockets beneath the fluff and diamonds. (Who sleeps in diamonds?! she thought.) Her plan was to pretend she was cold, and hopefully Acidalia would let her borrow the stupid bathrobe and never question the fact that all of the beauty products and jewels were missing from her vanity. Honestly, judging by the thin layer of dust that sat over everything not clearly accessible to the cleaning robots, Athena assumed Acidalia hadn’t used this ship in a while, and would thus be unfamiliar with where things were stored. And, even if by some misfortune she took notice of all the mysteriously vanished valuables, Athena could just blame it on ‘staff.’ The Imperatrix had to have staff, right? “Do you think this place has maids?” Athena asked absentmindledly. “Or butlers?” Briefly, she pictured rows upon rows of frozen maids packed into storage like Han Solo in carbonite, just waiting to be woken up. The royal family seemed like the type of institution that only gave people human rights when it was convenient for them.

Carina looked up from the magazine she was reading—some sort of science-y looking journal on biology. “No,” she said. “Acidalia doesn’t like them.” “She doesn’t like… servants?” “She likes robot servants because they’re more private. I kind of understand—having actual humans hovering everywhere and watching you constantly could get kind of annoying after a while, I guess. But Aleskynn used to make fun of her for it all the time—normally they don’t really view the help as ‘people,’ so to speak, so she doesn’t understand why anyone would be disconcerted by the constant presence of Ministratoras.”

“That’s kinda messed up,” Athena said.

“A lot of things in Aleskynn’s life were kind of messed up.” Carina thumbed through another page, looking bored. The magazine was marked 4045, so all of the articles were probably outdated already. Part of Athena wondered why someone as wealthy as Acidalia Cipher would still use print media, but the other part of her already knew the answer: aesthetic and pretentiousness.

Another few minutes ticked by, punctuated only by the sound of Carina lazily turning pages. The rest of the ship was suspiciously, worryingly silent, and if Athena didn’t know better, she would have assumed that she and Carina were the only two people aboard. Maybe it was because the Revelation had some kind of fancy noise-cancelling technology, or maybe Acidalia’s injuries were worse than they seemed and she was either incapable of moving, or worse. Athena didn’t know how she felt about that possibility.

She opened another drawer of a dresser that stood in the hallway. There was a crown in it, an elaborate headpiece too large to fit in a dressing gown pocket. Athena picked it up and appraised it in the light, wondering if she could pry any gemstones or shiny platinum pieces off and hold onto those instead. Then, with disappointment, she noticed that the jewels were brown instead of blisteringly white. They held diamond fire, but they were so discolored it was hard to believe they had any sort of value beyond industrial applications. Athena wondered why Acidalia would have a tiara like that, then she noticed the handwritten note attached to the brim with a curled-up white ribbon—I thought this would match your eyes. <3 Aleskynn. The metaphor was clear.

Bitch, Athena thought, and slammed the drawer shut. She had half a mind to send the spoiled princess a vial of cyanotoxins with the caption “I thought this would match your eyes.” It wasn’t even the fact that she’d insulted Acidalia that bothered Athena—it was the gossipy, too-cowardly-to-say-it-to-her-face passive-aggressiveness. Though, to be fair, she didn’t know why she expected anything more from Alestra’s daughter.

There was nothing much left in any of the other drawers—there were books, but none that looked valuable or even interesting to read. They were mostly indecipherable ancient texts and classics that nobody but Acidalia would even want, and though they had gilded edges and artfully decorated covers, Athena didn’t dare risk stealing them—they were all embossed with A.P.C. on the first blank page, and that made them traceable. Kalyn had taught her years ago that you couldn’t take anything if the police could trace it back to someone, and these books certainly weren’t worth that risk. Then there were piles upon piles of notebooks, all made of leather and filled to the brim with what looked like the ramblings of a madwoman—the same sentences and song lyrics, repeated over and over again—until Athena noticed that the penmanship improved between the first and last pages and realized they’d probably been used to practice Acidalia’s immaculate, looping calligraphy. Under those were datadrives, which Athena very clearly didn’t have the genome to open—they all had tiny iris scanners at the end, so only the Imperatrix would be able to view them. And, just when Athena was beginning to think this entire thing was worthless, her hand brushed against food packaging—which turned out to be concealing a small collection of healthy snacks that no person in their right mind would willingly consume.

“Look at this,” she said to Carina, holding up a shrink-wrapped package of very crumbly, grainy-looking pastries. “They took cookies, and made them healthy. Who does that?”

“People who want to cater to rich women who constantly think they need to lose weight.”

“Lose weight? Acidalia has the tiniest waist I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s the corsetry,” Carina said.

“Still, Jesus. Out of every person I’ve ever met in my life, Acidalia is the one who should be concerned about her body image the least. All of the uppercrusts are genetically-modified mutants with abnormal metabolisms; why would they of all people be concerned about dieting?”

“Aleskynn was eighty kilogrammos when I met her,” Carina shrugged. “Being raised by Alestra gives people weird views of themselves. Besides, how do you know they even taste bad?”

Athena tore open the package and took a tiny bite from one cookie. She wrinkled her nose. It tasted exactly like—no, worse than—straw. “Just take my word for it,” she said.

As she looked around for a garbage can, the sound of tiny, delicate footsteps echoed down the corridor, and she realized with irritation that they must belong to Acidalia. Carina instantly stiffened, standing up like a statue and brushing her hair behind her back so it looked neater than it was. As if Acidalia—Acidalia the high queen, Acidalia the almighty—would pause for a second to notice how tidy and organized Carina Stellara, random scientist with no clout, looked. She was so far above such things that even trying to make an effort felt worthless.

Still, for reasons she didn’t entirely know how to explain, Athena stood up at attention anyway. She stared at the door with strange fascination, wondering why her heart was pounding so quickly, waiting for something, anything to happen. And then, with an extremely anticlimactic swoosh, the door moved sideways, and the Imperatrix Ceasarina entered in all her glory.

If Athena was told that this was the same woman who’d barreled past her into this ship a few hours ago, bearing news of a dead brother and a murder attempt, she wouldn’t have believed it. This Acidalia looked astoundingly different from post-assassination-attempt Acidalia, yet so inexplicably like her at the same time, and it put a bad taste in Athena’s mouth. She bore such a strong resemblance to her late brother that their relationship should have been obvious in hindsight, but her face was utterly, completely neutral—almost relaxed—and she did not seem at all like someone who had just lost the closest family member they’d ever known. Judging by T’s impassioned reaction to his sister’s imminent demise, Athena had assumed they were very close; apparently, that assumption was wrong, because Acidalia clearly hadn’t shed a single tear. She looked every bit the put-together dictator the media liked to portray her mother as—the only thing missing was the scary blue eyes.

“We’re about two away from the Mare Acidalium Quadrangle,” Acidalia said softly, yet briskly. “The cloaking seems to have held up for this long, but I know that there are probably dozens of ships lagging just a few hours behind us. I will let you decide what you want to do when we land, but I want you to know that I cannot stay, and you will be targets if anyone ever finds out that you spoke to me.” Her posh, lilted accent and calm tone didn’t match her words at all,  which was almost more frightening than if they had.

“What do you mean, targets?” Athena asked. “Nobody saw us, we made sure of that.” She actually hadn’t made sure of that, but she’d taken the liberty to assume that nobody would question two young women dressed in gray wandering around a hangar at night. They were both wearing standard grays, common enough for them to be mistaken for practically any caste, and neither had any key distinctive features for anyone to remember them by—she hadn’t worried about their identities being revealed at all.

“Alestra sees everything,” Acidalia said, “and there is a very real possibility that you will be hunted down and imprisoned, killed, or imprisoned, then killed.” “What, no torture first?” Athena joked. Carina shot her a death glare, and she muttered a sheepish “sorry.” “If that’s a genuine question, then yes, they absolutely will torture you first,” Acidalia replied, utterly nonplussed. “I know you both came here to warn me, and that is an honorable thing to do, but it is incredibly risky, and now that you are here, you have my mother’s attention—or, at the very least, you will very soon. My plan is to rendezvous with David Seren—you wouldn’t know of him; he’s a reasonably high-ranking authority on Mars—and return to Eleutheria, hopefully with the Martians backing me and David and his family on their way to safety. I don’t know where you would like to proceed from there, but you need to understand that after what you’ve done today, there can be no return to normalcy for either of you.” “Yeah,” Athena said, ignoring Carina’s petrified look, “I kind of assumed that when I snuck out in the middle of the night to tell my best friend’s mom about my other best friend’s friend’s mother trying to commit—is it filicide or regicide? Sorry, I’m not too up to date on my murder terms.” “Stop trying to be funny, this is serious,” Carina hissed. Acidalia gave a humorless smile.

“So what you’re saying is we’re totally screwed,” Athena continued.

“No, not at all,” Acidalia replied, equally as casually. “Many people have committed acts of treason and lived.” “That’s not how the media makes it look,” Carina said shakily,

Acidalia sighed. “Always question the media. I don’t want you to think you don’t have options. You do—many of them. I just want you to know the gravity of your situation, and how impossible a return to what you might call ‘normal’ society will now be for you. I can give you a list of paths to choose right now if you’d like, but being regular caste Scientias again is not on it.”

“What if we don’t want to be regular Scientias anymore?” Athena asked.

A spark flared suddenly in Acidalia’s brown eyes. “Then you’re in a better situation than I predicted.”

Athena could already see where this conversation was headed. “This is going to end with an elevator speech recruitment pitch type thing, isn’t it?” “Do you want it to?”

Athena hesitated. Was this it? she asked herself. Was she really joining an anti-Alestra revolution? Two days ago, she’d been laughing at the excessive glamour of the Ciphers, who were nothing but glittering silhouettes in a far-away place on a television screen, and now she was standing right in front of one and speaking to her like this was all normal. A week ago, she was laughing in the break room about how much it must suck to be forced into the ridiculous life of ceremony and politics the ruling class set up for themselves, and now she was genuinely considering entangling herself in the complicated games they were playing. This was, in every sense of the word, completely insane.

But Eleutheria being torn in half was insane. Ciphers killing Ciphers was insane. Acidalia’s very existence as an Imperial dauphine and a traitorous bastard and a rebel leader was insane. Everything else in the world had lost its mind and any sense of sanity it might have, at one point, held, so maybe Athena could afford to go a little nuts, too.

But that was the future. War was imminent, but not immediate, and Acidalia couldn’t afford to think of things as distant as tomorrow when she was cornered in a hangar awaiting her own doom. Above her, the laser fire grew ever stronger, and she knew she had to find some way to escape this place before one of those wayward shots came too close to her head. It would only take a single shot and she’d be dead or lobotomized, and that simply couldn’t happen. She had to live with her mind intact—martyrdom was not an option. She needed an exit.

Breathlessly, she glanced around the room, but she couldn’t turn her head too far; movement attracted the eye, and if she ventured too much from her hiding place, the warmth of the engine protecting her would no longer cover her heat signature. She’d be a sitting duck once more, and even the best crack shot in Eleutheria couldn’t take down a dozen enemies at once with just one gun. I should have brought bombs, she realized stupidly, knowing that thinking such thoughts now was utterly useless. As it was, she was very nearly unarmed, and completely incapable of fighting any of these soldiers hand-to-hand—they were Eleutherian brutes, and she was a half-Martian woman with bones so fragile they may as well have been made of paper. Fighting was not an option just as death was not an option. She had to get out of here quickly, or she had to get into a place where she could shoot from far enough away that being physically manhandled was impossible.

Acidalia surveyed her surroundings. She was reasonably close to a broken window, and if she was willing to deal with being stabbed by glass shards, she could probably make it outside. But they were thousands of stories above the ground, battling in an impossibly high skyscraper that reached above Eleutheria’s artificial clouds. Humans could hardly even breathe without assistance at this altitude, even if she miraculously didn’t fall. And, to make matters worse, she was already wounded–between the laceration Ace had left behind and the burns she sustained when Cassiopeia tried to shoot her the second time, she doubted she could even move without cringing in pain.

This pain is nothing compared to what they’ll do to you when they catch you, she told herself, but that thought was not very comforting, and she could feel her pulse quicken in response. Alestra had always told her that she needed to learn how to control herself—Ciphers could master their bodies’ innate responses, override their subconscious mind and their human DNA. Acidalia had never managed to learn that skill, and in the fire of battle, she had to admit to herself that her mother was right. She couldn’t keep up like this, with her traitorous panicking brain and her inability to curtail her animalistic instincts to flee. If she couldn’t calm down, reduce her body temperature and her light speed pulse, they would find her, and it would all be over. She couldn’t fight and she couldn’t run, so she had one option left: weasel her way out of here with logic.

Acidalia bit her lip and concentrated on the few advantages she had, envisioning herself as a player of chess and seeing the hangar as the board. She was the white king, backed into a corner, and Cassiopeia was the black player, incredibly close to a checkmate. But Cassiopeia was no grandmaster, and it didn’t take a genius or a Cipher to see that. Despite being a Generalis by birth, she had never led a military campaign before, and she was firing with all the accuracy of a child playing laser tag. Acidalia was outnumbered, but she was smarter than her adversities. That was both helpful and problematic—helpful because it made manipulation easier, problematic because Cassiopeia was not insightful enough to see the value in keeping her prey alive. If they wanted her imprisoned or interrogated, Acidalia would willingly surrender and escape later, but she had a sneaking suspicion Cassiopeia would put a bullet through her skull the minute she could just for the glory of saying she was the one to kill the bastard Imperatrix.

But Cassiopeia might not shoot if she couldn’t see her target.

Acidalia pondered briefly just shooting Cassiopeia in the face. It wouldn’t be difficult from where she stood—she could probably kill any man in this room without even trying. That part was simple. The danger came from being caught—if someone saw a shot come from this direction, they’d shoot back, and even thick metal engines couldn’t block laser ammunition. The metal would bursting a thousand little bullets under the heat and the pressure, and Acidalia would fall back, her body riddled with tiny holes, blood leeching out of her skin. That would not do.

So she would wait. Wait for an opportunity, wait for backup, wait for something, and pray that they didn’t kill her in the meantime. Artemis had called her and she hadn’t answered, so if anyone in the Revolution had any sense at all, they’d be sending in the cavalry any minute now. It would only be a few minutes before—

“Inveni eam!” somebody screamed. “Inveni eam—

Never mind, Acidalia thought. She’d been hidden well, but she’d forgotten that her feet were bleeding—she’d been running in heels across a floor covered in shards of glass, but the adrenaline coursing through her body had been so strong she’d hardly even noticed the sharp edges cutting into her skin. That didn’t stop the blood, though, and there it was, moving across the floor at the pace of a snail and leaving red streaks on the quartz. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to be noticeable, especially here in this platinum-coated, white-gold luxury.

As the soldier rounded the corner, Acidalia’s laser bolt hit him in his chest, ending his brief victory, but there were more soldiers hot on his tail, and she couldn’t relax for very long. Acidalia shot intermittently into the crowd of men and watched two or three of them drop, but there were far too many for her to ever fight off. She ducked to avoid being hit and dived sideways, her wrist throbbing with every jagged heartbeat, her ankle screaming in pain. There was nowhere to go. The outside was a dead end and her only exit was blocked.

I cannot die, she thought for the thousandth time. I will pry the reaper’s scythe from his hands if that’s what it takes. Death will just have to wait.

She aimed at a reflective piece of glass and fired. Her shot was well placed; it ricocheted off her improvised mirror and flew into a soldier’s head. As he toppled, Acidalia took down his comrade, who tripped haphazardly on his dead friend’s body before succumbing to her laser fire. In retaliation, someone else started shooting; a bolt whizzed past Acidalia’s arm, leaving blistering burns across her skin. She elected to ignore this, and focused instead on killing as many of them as she could. Normally, she wasn’t this vicious, but normally she wasn’t outnumbered and alone.

Christ, how many of them are there? she thought. Whipping her head around, she turned to look in the other direction. Men were jumping down onto the balcony she’d just escaped onto. Before she even registered what had happened, someone’s hands were in her hair. Pure revulsion surged through her as she wrenched herself away from the man on instinct alone, but he was far stronger than she was.

His eyes were pure pride. He had to be her own age or younger, just a kid, had no idea what he was doing other than that he captured the Imperatrix. His curly hair showed through his helmet. He was terrifying because he was so goddamn human. He held her fast, pulling the gun away from her side and pushing her against a wall. She kicked him hard in the shins, but he didn’t react, and her own foot started to bleed again.

“Vae,” she cursed. “Get off of me!”

His expression didn’t change. She raised a leg to strike him again, but was momentarily distracted by a flash of green eyes. Generalis eyes.

“I apologize for what I’m about to do,” Cassiopeia said cordially, without an ounce of regret apparent in her expression.

“My mother sent you to kill me, then?” Acidalia replied. “It’s just like Alestra to make someone else do all the dirty work for her. If you kill me, her hands are clean.” She snickered. “I won’t be killing you. You don’t deserve the waste of a bolt. You’ll die at the hands of a nobody and be laid to rest in a pauper’s grave, like every other bastard Martian who thinks they can contaminate our gene pool.”

“Like your life is any more valuable than mine?” Cassiopeia sneered. “I’ll be more prolific than an Imperatrix with a two-day reign.”

“You’ll go down in history as a traitor,” Acidalia countered. “I’ll be a martyr for my cause; what will you ever be but Alestra Cipher’s dragon?”

“Trust me,” she said, “I have a whole list of what I want to do. And I’ll start fulfilling that list right now.” She reached a slender, bony hand out and grabbed the crown. With a swift movement, she pulled it off of Acidalia, taking strands of her black hair with it. She did not wince. Her deep brown eyes bored holes into Cassiopeia’s, intense and vivid.

“You can call yourself an empress if you wish,” Acidalia said lowly. “Your power does not rest in the title you bestow upon yourself, but in the people who choose to follow you.”

“That philosophical bullshit will be your final words,” Cassiopeia warned.

“So be it.” Her heart pounded and every instinct in her body screamed at her to run as fast as she could, but rather than follow it, she simply leaned back and closed her eyes serenely. I’ll die with dignity, at least.

The man next to her cocked his blaster.

I’m a martyr, she reminded herself. It’s not all in vain. My people will avenge me. My death will send shockwaves through Eleutheria. We can win this war.

The gun was against her temple. It was cold.

Are those good enough last words? What if people quote me? How would anyone ever quote me? No one is here right now. I’m going to die surrounded by my worst enemies.

His fingers were on the trigger.

My brother will be devastated. Artemis will cry. Andromeda will punch something, or—or kill someone, or—oh, Jesus Christ, my death will be a catalyst for her committing a war crime. What if there’s a God? What if there’s a Heaven I’ll never reach because I just killed two dozen people?

“Get the fuck off my sister!”

The gunman’s shot went up into the air as T tackled Acidalia to the ground. He jumped in front of her and began firing shots at everyone in his reach, his eyes pure fury.

“Get away!” he yelled hoarsely.

“Like hell I’d abandon you,” she said, reaching for her gun. “Why on Earth did you come here?”

“I didn’t want my sister to die,” he replied, sounding oddly childish. “What was I supposed to do?” As he grinned at Acidalia, he took down three soldiers at once without even glancing at them. He’d always been an incredible shot, even if he liked to deny it.”

“T, you’re the most aggravating brother in the galaxy, but by stellae do I love you.” Acidalia pulled herself upwards and killed another man, letting the blood from his crushed head leak through her fingers and bury itself under her nails. Cassiopeia, bewildered, sat in the middle of the room, stumbling around the corpses of her own fighters. She drew her own laser pistol and fired quickly at Acidalia, but both shots missed; she was never a sharpshooter at close range. Without the support of the rest of her comrades, she was useless. Acidalia aimed without thinking, concentrating only on making this shot. One millimetron to the right, and the fire in Cassiopeia’s eyes would die-

Something smelled like ash, and someone next to her collapsed.

Cassiopeia shot at her again, but Acidalia fell to her knees so quickly the bolt didn’t have enough time to hit her. “T,” she whispered. “T, no, you’re-“

She whirled up, searching for anyone with a gun, anyone who could have just—no, not killed him, he couldn’t be dead, he wasn’t dead-

The realization hit her like a hovercar. Cassiopeia’s shots were never meant for her.

The sadistic grin on her face was enough to replace every ounce of panic in Acidalia’s body with seething, hot rage. She launched herself at the woman, grabbing her brother’s gun, no longer thinking about her own death, and wrenched the crown off of Cassiopeia’s head. It hit the wall with the force of a thousand stars, carefully arranged crystals of a thousand-year-old artifact shattering against the marble, platinum cracking under stress. Acidalia fired the gun two, three, six times. Some dim, dark part of her mind knew how suicidal this was, how much of a kamikaze stance she was taking, but the larger part of her brain simply didn’t care.

Mortuus frater meus. The thought echoed in her ears, louder than Cassiopeia’s incoherent yelling, louder than the laser blasts all around her. Mortuus frater meus. My brother is dead, he’s dead, et mea culpa, It’s all my fault, that shot was meant for me-

Emotions she couldn’t describe with words swelled in her chest—hatred, pure hatred, rage, like darkness bubbling in her heart, longing, sadness, and damp tears were sliding down her face and landing on the ground and the gun was out of power because T had been shooting it so much, shooting it for her, for Acidalia, for a woman who would be dead in five minutes, and Cassiopeia was laughing-

She took the blaster, T’s big, powerful gun bigger than her own arm, and smashed it on Cassiopeia’s skull as hard as she could.

Blood splattered the walls with red and Acidalia jumped backwards to where her brother’s corpse lay pushed to the side, still warm, so warm under her hands. His eyes were glazed over, the same brown eyes she’d first seen at thirteen, not blinking, just there, open. He had the same cocky smile and his last words played again in her ears: “I didn’t want my sister to die. What else was I supposed to do?”

Anything but this.

Everything came flooding back to her in a torrent of memories and thoughts and feelings. Cassiopeia was on the ground, her head invisible under tangled onyx hair. Corpses lay scattered against the wall, T’s just another body among them. Everything smelled like blood and smoke. The pain of the glass in her foot, the burns where the lasers had not quite come close enough to hit her, the death of her brother who only ever wanted to help, ached so badly she could hardly stand. T’s sacrifice was physically painful, burning like no visible injury ever could. Acidalia collapsed against the wall, grappling for control over her subconscious desire to flee. She clung to a piece of her broken crown with one hand and her brother’s empty gun with the other, shutting her eyes tight against the cold air. T’s body convulsed in agonal rasps, like a post-mortem death rattle, a parody of breath. She pressed her fingers against his neck, hoping without really hoping that he was alive.

There was no pulse beneath her fingers.

He gave another strangled gasp as the final reflexes of his dying brain gave a last-resort effort to get oxygen back in his body, but Acidalia knew how fruitless it was. His heart had already stilled. His consciousness was gone, his body empty. There was something equally sad and endearing about just how hard his lungs were trying, and how little it actually mattered. He was already gone, his brain already dead, everything that made T T already lost to the stars above. Acidalia had fought off Death and won, but she left casualties in her wake, and that made her question if her survival was even worth the cost.

She blinked back more tears and breathed in deeply. This was a bad time to have a meltdown. She knew she’d bought time, but it couldn’t be all that much; if she remained where she was, T’s sacrifice wouldn’t matter. Reinforcements were arriving, and there was no way she could stay here unless she wanted to be caught in more crossfire.

Shakily, Acidalia stood and grabbed her own gun. She left T’s on his corpse, folded his arms together like it was a proper burial, and kissed his forehead, like she’d done when he was eleven and scared and she was trying to be a good big sister. “Requiesce in pace,” she whispered.

Shards of glass dug into her foot with every step she took, her wrist throbbed and swelled even more than it had before, and the rest of her body felt weak, sore. She focused the pain intently, trying to concentrate on the sting of burnt flesh, the disgusting ooze of popping blisters. It was easier to deal with that than everything else. She shoved any other thoughts out of her mind as pure adrenaline propelled her towards the Revelation. There was no time to think or grieve or do anything.

As she clambered up the steps with all the dignity she could muster, Acidalia made out the silhouettes of two more women. She didn’t recognize either of them, but that meant she had no way of knowing if they were friend or foe, and she wasn’t stupid. She raised her gun instinctively, hoping it would be just enough of a threat to keep them from trying anything.

“Woah!” one of them half-shrieked. “We don’t want to hurt you, put that thing down!”

"Who are you?" Acidalia asked through ragged breaths.

"Um, Athena." She blinked again. “And this is Carina—we were sent up here to warn you about Cassiopeia—your brother said—“ “You knew T?” Acidalia could feel panic rise in her throat again. She had a duty to tell these people about the death of their friend, but she had no idea how she could manage such a thing without having a complete mental breakdown. Perhaps it would be easier now, she mused, before she really reconciled T’s passing with the image of the calm, healthy teenage boy she still had in her mind. The corpse on the ground and the smiling brother whose dog tags were in her bag still felt like entirely different people, and that combined with the adrenaline made the burden infinitely easier to bear.

Athena looked at Acidalia’s blooded dress and back up at her bruised visage. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked.

Acidalia nodded wordlessly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.” Acidalia was suddenly acutely aware of the black ash on her shirtsleeve—the debris from T’s laser wound, and the only remnant she’d ever have of her dead little brother. Dead little brother, her mind echoed back. Your brother died for you. He’s gone.

A terrifyingly warm, inexplicably yellow sensation flooded her consciousness. Everything in the world ceased to exist for a moment, and the sensations of drying blood and clinging fabric and sharp, painful breaths dissolved into background nothingness. The only thing left in the universe was the image of T’s cooling corpse in a room of other bodies strewn about in Eleutherian heat, the faint trace of a smile fading from his face. He was gone. He was gone and—

And Acidalia couldn’t do this right now.

“Get in the ship,” she said hurriedly to the girls. They were teenagers, clearly—Athena couldn’t have been older than eighteen, give or take. How dare Cassandra do this? Acidalia asked herself, seething internally. What person in their right mind would send two teenage girls to a war zone to accomplish a mission that could just have easily been done with enlisted soldiers? As if the death of one seventeen-year-old wasn’t enough, as if Acidalia needed more blood on her hands, as if any of these peoples’ lives were any more valuable than that of a woman who had just smashed someone’s skull in with a gun twice her size.

“Wait, what?” Athena asked. “What—" “There are people following us. If my mother’s men see you, they will kill you—and me—on sight. Go. Shields up, cloaking on—“ The Revelation hummed in response to her commands, sensing her featherlight touch on its hull and matching her fingerprints to its security system. “We’ll fly to Mars. It’s safer there, and I’ll blend in.”

“But—“ “They’ll kill you! Move!” In the distance, people were moving, and soon enough, they’d see the remnants of the battlefield, the sea of black-clad corpses. Then there would be hell to pay, and Acidalia was in no state to fight, let alone defend two people. She couldn’t die, not now, not after T sacrificed his whole future for her survival. Too many people were depending on her too much for her to ever let herself give up.

“I’m sorry, T,” she whispered to nobody and everybody all at once. The planet seemed to echo her sorrow back to her, the stars above singing a chorus of paenitemur, paenitemur. The world mourned the loss of one of its brightest young subjects in a way Acidalia could never afford to—not now, not ever. T was dead, but Acidalia was alive, and the Revolution would live to see another victory. There was no time for grief.

Wrist throbbing and heart pounding, Acidalia straightened herself and marched into the Revelation, determinedly ignoring the pain that seared through every fibre of her being.

"Her hair is pretty,” Ace said.

"You say that about every girl you meet.”

"Says the guy who like the green chick from the new Ultores movie," Ace countered.

"Because she's a badass," TB-2215 said. "Besides, she's not even from Ultores, she's from Custodes de Galaxia-"

"And the princess from Stella Bella-"

"She's a badass, too. And talk about pretty hair-"

"Talk about out of your league. And you tell me Acidalia is too classy for me."

"See," T said, "the main difference between crushing on fictional characters and crushing on the Imperatrix is that the fictional characters don't exist."

"'Fictional characters don't exist' isn't what you said when you were crying at Infinitum Bellum," Ace said.

"I did not cry." (Admittedly, he had cried. But everyone in the spaceport did not need to be made aware of this, and besides, it didn't really matter.)

"I was there. You can't hide from me," he replied. "I think you're the only person who could shoot down six people, and then start hysterically sobbing because they killed off-"

"Hey, what's Lyra doing?" he asked loudly, interrupting Ace. "Go talk to her if you think she's so cute. Go on, leave me alone."

"I would, but..." he said slowly, "I mean, they're already looking at her enough. Aren't we supposed to be being inconspicuous?"

"Just go." T lightly nudged him. "Don't be obnoxious. She's supposed to be your pregnant girlfriend, isn't she? Go."

"You're all business lately," he said. "What's up with you?"

T eyed him. "You know exactly what's up. I'm not talking about this further. Not here."

"Right, right," Ace sighed. In a quieter tone, he added, "She'll be okay, you know."

"No, I don't," T retorted. "It's not a guarantee."

"I've seen that woman with a blaster. She shot down twelve people in about five seconds while wearing a tiara of flowers. If there's one person on the planet who can stay alive, it's-"

"Keep your voice down. And not even the most skilled marksman could survive a twenty-person ambush with no backup."

"Andromeda will send backup," Ace said.

T sighed. "But how long will it take? Cassandra’s useless.”

"I don't know. I wouldn't stress about it," he replied. "Things like this have happened before. Remember last week?"

"Yeah," T said, "but Cassiopeia is different. She's an idiot. I think her IQ is the same as the kitten we snuck onto the ship when we were, what, 10? Her plans aren't so much 'incoherent' as 'nonexistent.' You saw what she did— just grabbed-"

He bit his tongue suddenly. Talking about this here was a bad idea. He didn't mention his sisters' names. Cassiopeia on its own was common enough that he could have been referring to any girl, but if he brought up the Imperials, they'd all know exactly who he was talking about—and it was never a good idea to clue in everyone else to private matters.

¨My point is,"he said softly, "my mother is a lot smarter, and a lot more powerful, than Cassiopeia ever was."

At that moment, he heard his sister's name, broadcast in a cool, feminine voice, and he jumped six inches.

"Relax," Ace said. "They're talking about Mars."

He was right: they were just announcing the 1815 flights to Acidalia, Utopia, and Arcadia Planitia—the place she was named after, not the Imperatrix. He checked their tickets—1830. They were scheduled to board in fifteen minutes.

"We better get going," he said. He wondered, briefly, what David Seren himself had thought when he left the planet sixteen years ago—except he actually had a baby with him. Had he expected that he wouldn't return to his home for the next decade and a half? Had he been nervous?

T decided not to think about it too much. He had been reluctant about this whole ridiculous thing in the first place, and anxious about what it would mean to leave Eleutheria unsure of when he was coming back. How long would it take for his squadron to notice he was missing? What if they went searching for him? What if they thought something bad had happened to them both?

He had grown up with these men. They were more brothers than anything else. They'd spent their whole childhood play-fighting, having movie nights, and talking about girls in between school and battle. They were the lucky ones—the sons of the elite, the TB strategists and the AX tech specialists, both immunes, neither concerned whatsoever about death. Maybe they should have been.

He remembered staying up late and listening to stories about distant worlds with the older boys who seemed like they knew the whole galaxy; they'd tell tales of planets with temperatures so low liquid tetraoxygen sloshed around in the seas and burned all the living things it touched, places so rich in carbon and so high in pressure it snowed solid diamonds, the gas giant that moved so fast it rained molten glass sideways. His favorite was the tidally locked planet, with one side trapped in eternal night, and the other so blisteringly hot it was an ocean of lava where the clouds were made of rubies and sapphires. He was always so jealous of the men who actually got to see these strange, alien worlds, and the creatures—or the people, even—who lived on them.

More than once, one of the lower ranking men, someone who actually got to experience the rest of the galaxy, would go missing. They might return a few days later, wide-eyed and skittish; other times they'd simply vanish. Those stories were more fables to be told around the faux-campfires of lights the blasters made when they were charging—tales of ancient alien ruins, of beautiful women with green skin, of life beyond the two known sentient species in the galaxy. Life beyond the Mira.

T didn't think he'd ever really laid eyes on the people who called themselves the Mira, but the tales told about them ranged from hideous monsters to almost fae-like creatures. They were sparkly purple people, and then they were hideous, psychotic animals with no humanity left in their strange, gelatinous minds.

It was probably a little of both.

The propaganda portrayed them as savages, but propaganda always did that. The older men recalled tales of nights with beautiful alien women, but TB-2115 couldn't help but doubt that, too (especially since every eyewitness had described them as "cold," "wet," and "icy to the touch" regardless of their perspective.) The Mira were an enigma.

He always thought they were interesting. The researchers—the xenolinguists, the biological weapons research squad, the historians—were always more appealing to him than the fighters he was supposed to idolize. His specialty—his purpose—was always strategy, military logic. If we put those soldiers there, how many people could die? If we launched the pox now, how many would it infect? He played games of war like they played games of chess—the TB units were the grandmasters, the rest of the army the pawns, Eleutheria the king they protected. But T always found chess boring.

One could only talk so often about endless death and destruction before it got to their head. He may have been a lucky one when it came to his chances of death and dismemberment—virtually nonexistent—but the subject matter of his education was depressing. Playing with people's lives, deciding whether it was worth it to save the people you loved, weighing probabilities, taking the other path because one less soldier might die, putting other people through hell for a benefit so small it was hardy noticed—it wasn't worth the reduced chance of a terrible fate. Especially not when the hypothetical king was an unstable, broken mess of a country who couldn't move one square because every shift required intense thought and argument and the tension was building so thick that the piece would shatter into shards of broken porcelain regardless of what the rest of the board did.

Even here, at the spaceport, people were whispering. It was Lyra—a Cantator in the middle of a nice spaceport?—but something else, too. It was odd, venturing out into regular, civilian life—this talk would not have been tolerated in the barracks. Yet here everyone was, muttering. This planet was as tense as it could get. They were on a dangerous precipice, hovering over the edge of the void, about to fall.

"Hey, T," someone said, breaking him out of his reverie. "Time to go."

"Right," he said thickly. "Yeah."

"This is amazing," Lyra sighed. "I mean, stars, look at this!" She pulled a piece of her bubblegum-pink hair out of the neat braid she'd been trying to wrestle it into, seemingly forgetting about tidiness entirely. "Eleutheria's so big. And it's pretty. I guess that sounds stupid—that sounds stupid, doesn't it?—but when you only ever see the very bottom of the heap you don't have the full picture. The only parts I've ever seen of this world are the little tiny alleys in downtown Appalachia, and I never thought once about leaving, but..." Her voice trailed off. She continued to excitedly fidget, ignoring the stares she was receiving.

"At least she's excited," T muttered.

"Maybe it'll be a learning experience?" Ace suggested tentatively.

T glared at him and handed him a ticket. Lyra took her own, holding it so tight it crinkled and cracked slightly. A voice announced the presence of the 1830 Acidalian flight and she practically jumped.

They boarded slowly, cramming into the cheap seats while the foreign dignitaries in creamy off-while stepped delicately to the windowed deck. T already hated this. It smelled like spent fuel and stale sweat, and the outside seemed infinitely better. Mars, the little red dot in the distant sky, was very far away.

His meta vibrated in his pocket. Annoyed, he picked it up and glared at the little glowing name: Diana. His codename for Artemis. He scrambled to answer it, dropping his own visor on the way; two Suffragium giggled at him. Momentarily, he thought, If you knew who I was....

"Hello?" he asked, his voice breaking awkwardly.

"T?" she asked. “What’s up with Acidalia?”

He choked on his own saliva. "What?"

“She’s not picking up her meta.”

A chill ran down T’s spine. Acidalia always answered her metadit.

"I'm in the KC Interplanetary spaceport," he said. "That's close to the palace."

"Have you taken off yet?"

"I think we're about to. I'm getting off."

Ace and Lyra looked at each other, confused. "What?" Lyra asked. "Are you okay? Spacesick already? I mean, I heard that could happen-"

He shook his head. "Ace, get her off-planet. I have to go."

"What's she saying?" Ace asked. Now everyone in the section was staring at them—as if two soldiers and a Cantator weren't suspicious enough already.

"Not here," T muttered. "Talk to you later." He stood abruptly, putting his visor back on and pushing past the people in front of him. A Scientia glared at him for a second before he whipped out his stunner pistol and waved it in front of his face.

"TB sector soldier here. I'm on military business. Get out of the way."

She jumped aside, and suddenly the aisle was clear. The girls who had been laughing at him before looked at each other and shrunk back, smoothing their hair and settling down where he couldn't see them. He jumped over someone's turned-over backpack and raced past the upper decks.

"I know you!" said a girl in silver-white. She was young, maybe twelve or thirteen.

"Really?" he asked, not listening much. He scouted around a corner, drawing his gun. If someone caught on to where he was going—someone with the Nova—it would be less than ideal.

"I saw you at the coronation," she said, like it was obvious. "You were the one who talked with the Imperatrix." Then, in a deep whisper, she added, "do you like her? Aleskynn says you like her."

"Aleskynn doesn't know what she's on about," he replied. "That's not true." He pulled his mask down. One person had already recognized him; there were sure to be more.

"I think it would have been romantic," she sighed. "Forbidden love, and all..."

T cringed, wanting more than anything to mention their genetic relationship. "No thanks. Hey, kid, where's your mother?"

"Don't call me kid," she demanded, standing up to a height of a full 140 centimetrons. "I'm the daughter of a Negotia. You're just a standard soldier."

"You're going to get yourself killed," he snapped. "Get back up on deck and hide, you hear me? Now."

"What?" Her bright pink eyes turned a deep, dark purple. It was the latest trend—color-changing eyes. It looked just as fake and stupid on this girl as it did on Aleskynn when she went through her rebellious phase; TB-2115 had a picture of her with bright orange hair and sea-foam green eyes in his wallet.

"You heard me."

She backed away slightly before scampering up the pretty marble steps—so far apart from the standard gray steel the rest of the planet had to use—and glanced back at him.

"Go," he called. "Get out."

She vanished behind a featureless pillar of stone.

He darted around the corner, sticking close to the wall before bursting out of the ship's doors. Three Raedae in identical uniforms jumped backwards at the sight of him.

"Which one of you is in charge?" he demanded. Two of them glanced at their comrade nervously.

"Me," she said softly. "Hi."

"Hi," he replied, far louder. "Get this ship off the ground immediately. Don't ask questions, just go." He flashed his visor at her, identifying himself as a high-ranking soldier. The Raeda didn't respond, signaling something to her comrades. All together, their steps strangely in line with one another, they surrounded the ship and signaled it for takeoff. He knew better than to stick around.

At least Ace and the Cantator would be safe for now. They couldn't exactly track them down once they were thousands of miles away on Mars, could they? Well, they probably could—it just wouldn't be worth the effort.

T sprinted off the runway and out of the spaceport, to the astonished looks of everyone around him. People fell out of his path once they realized who he was. They'd surely be talking about it later, but that didn't matter now.

The planet outside was a glowing array of dazzling blue-on-black lights. It was a pretty urban area, covered in countless art projects he could all recognize by name; the capitol city of Eleutheria was all beautiful neoclassicism mixed with neon. It seemed like it would never work, but it was stunning—everything from the ultraviolet lights to the bioluminescent flowers. Acidalia's touch was everywhere.

Pictures of his sister ran through his mind at the speed of sound, tripping over one another so quickly they came in flashes and vanished into thin air again. Braiding her dark hair on her balcony at night when they weren't supposed to be there, gossiping about the upper-class idiots she paraded around with, telling extravagant and exaggerated stories of places neither of them had any business being.