Page 15 of Last of Her Name

“AndIcan’t let them kill you!”

2.

“POL!”

1.

He throws back the lever. TheLaikahums, blue holo lights tracing the interior from nose to tail. The core temp gauge shoots up. I feel an odd, weightless sensation, as if the ship’s gravity generator has quit working. But I know from my mechanic training that it’s the Takhdrive throwing up its invisible shield, preparing to warp the space-time around us.

We both look up to Amethyne. My home. Where my family and my best friend and all my people are suffering stars know what horrors. Without me.Becauseof me.

The violet planet blurs, then shrinks to the size of a pinpoint.

Then is gone.

Fifty-eight, fifty-nine,sixty.

Panting, I collapse onto the floor of the caravel’s bridge, sticky with sweat and my arms aching from the one-legged push-ups. Even though I didn’t use my bad leg, it still hurts. But the pain is a welcome distraction.

It’s been four days since we blipped out of Amethyne’s system; four days I’ve been trapped in theLaika’s warp bubble. Pol and I have barely spoken since then, settling into a staggered sleeping schedule so we’re not often conscious at the same time. He knows I’m furious with him and doesn’t seem eager to press me. Or maybe he’s avoiding me because I stink like I’ve been working out for hours on end. Which is exactly what I have been doing, desperate to fill my time and release the anxiety coiled in my muscles. It’s an awkward undertaking with one bad leg, but the pain patches have helped. By now, the rest of me aches enough that the wound has become just another repeating note in my symphony of pains.

Rolling over, I tuck my hands under my head in preparation for crunches, but then I relax, taking a minute to catch my breath.

I stare up through the diamantglass ceiling as infinity stretches on. Pol has disappeared into the back of the ship, behind a thin partition where there are two narrow bunks, a galley, lavatory, and little else. TheLaikais small, meant for fast, solo trips. It can fit two passengers, but just barely.

Through the window stretched over the front of the cabin and beyond the unseen bubble of negative energy the Takhdrive is producing, a pale glow spreads over space, a fuzzy film of cosmic radiation. The tinted diamantglass dims the brightness of the light, protecting against the massive radioactivity of the cosmos.

No stars, no planets, no galaxies.

We’re moving too fast to see them, and the effect is that we’re standing still, trapped in a globe of pale, sourceless light. If it wasn’t for the navigation system indicating our rough location, I’d think we were not moving at all.

With the sense of motionlessness comes oppressive boredom. When my tired body cries out for a break from exercise, I’ve been taking apart every nonessential piece in the bridge. I’ve broken down and reassembled the controls for the ship’s exterior robotic arm, the heat exchangers, the spare oxygenator, and even burrowed beneath the control panel to tinker in the nose of the craft with my multicuff in hand. By now, I’m pretty sure I could build a caravel from scratch. There isn’t a nut or circuit board on this ship I haven’t touched, with the exception of the crucial Takhdrive and a few life-support functions.

And the Prism, of course.

My eyes drift down to a small glass dome on the controls. Inside it spins a crystal shaped like a diamond. The Prism powers the Takhimir drive, generating the massive amount of energy it takes to warp. Without Prisms, faster-than-light travel wouldn’t even be possible. A crystal like that costs as much as Dad’s vineyard makes in a lifetime. They’re an almost infinite power source, the foundation upon which our entire society is built.

There’s no opening that case, and if I did, it would interrupt the specialized gravity field inside it that keeps the Prism spinning.

No spin, no power.

No power, we die.

When I was younger, we once took a trip to the energy plant outside Afka, where three Prisms in diamantglass boxes spun, generating enough power to fuel the whole town and all the surrounding homesteads. I remember feeling awed by their gentle, steady light, and the knowledge that they were more precious than any other element in the galaxy. Rare, expensive, immensely powerful and strange, Prisms are the greatest mystery and most valued resource in existence. Every interstellar ship has to have one in order to warp. And all this time, this little specimen has been hidden in Mayor Kepht’s basement, the heart of a secret network of Empire Loyalists living in Afka.

Empire Loyalists including myfamily.

I glance back, making sure Pol is still busy sleeping or whatever he’s doing back there. Then I lean forward and access the ship’s computer. Pulling up a historical index, I run a search and then sit back to watch the results pop up in holo. My nerves twist into knots; this is something I’ve been avoiding over the past four days. But there are no more panels to pry open or generators to tinker with, and my arms are trembling from the push-ups. I finally give in to my morbid curiosity.

I’m staring at a famous bit of looping footage, the last known recording of the Leonov family before the execution video would emerge months later. They’re in some kind of sitting room, a sleekly appointed space with a window that looks out to the stars. There’s Emperor Pyotr, reclining in a chair and speaking to the eldest child, Princess Kira. The two younger ones, Prince Yuri and Princess Lena, play a game on the floor, while the Empress Katarina cradles her round, pregnant belly.

I lean closer, studying Katarina’s face, trying not to note how similar our upturned noses are or how the shade of her hair is only a little redder than mine. Instead, I focus on the differences—she has freckles, she’s paler, she’s taller and rounder.

But when I look at Pyotr and I see his dark, wavy hair and thick eyebrows and large eyes, something tingles at the bottom of my stomach.

Drawing a shaky breath, I look at the children, but not too closely, because I can’t forget the other famous footage of them taken soon after this. When they were shot, point-blank, by Alexei Volkov and his Unionist forces. I’ve never managed to watch that film directly; it always turned my stomach.

They feel like strangers, like they’re not even real people, just actors in a film. I don’t remember much about them from my history lessons, but I do know the revolution started after the emperor blew up a moon and everyone on it because the rebel Unionists had a headquarters there. We were taught that the Imperials were strict, extravagant, and unpredictable. The Committee made sure we all knew just how tyrannical the Empire was, so that we would always remember how they saved us in that brief but bloody revolution.