Page 18 of Last of Her Name
“Who else knew?” I whisper. “You, my parents, your dad. What about Clio?”
He hesitates, then shakes his head. “No. I don’t think Clio could have known. The Kephts were in on it, though, obviously. The Drugovs, the Vitsins, the Sokolovs, the Ngetes, the Naparas …”
Each name lands like a smack. My neighbors, my friends, the mechanic I apprenticed under, even some of the aeyla clans. What excellent liars they were, never letting on that they were all complicit in treason, conspiring together behind my back. A whole cell of Loyalist rebels, fighting for a dead empire.
Living for an unwitting princess.
“And now where are we going? What’s your plan?” I gesture at the ship around us. “What was all thisfor? Who cares about Princess Anya? It’s not like I—she—is any threat to the Committee or the direktor Eminent. It’s not like I’m going to lead some revolutionary army into battle.”
He waits until I’m finished, his hands deep in the pockets of his baggy pants. He’s taken off his ripped tunic and is only wearing a sleeveless black undershirt, ragged at the hems, the same one he’s worn since he was twelve or something, only now it’s a good bit tighter than it was back then. He looks like a renegade or some equally ridiculous thing. Not my Pol. Not the boy I used to drag all over the hills, in search of hidden treasure and pirate dens.
“To be honest …” He raises a hand to scrub at his hair, the skin around his eyes crinkling as he winces. “I don’t knowwherewe’re going, or what the plan is after this. All I know is we’re going to a top secret Loyalist base. The coordinates are locked inside here.” He holds up a clear data stick with delicate blue circuitry inside. “Trust me, and you’ll see we’re the good guys here. We’re onyourside.”
“I did trust you,” I whisper. “Of all the people in the galaxy, I trusted Clio and I trustedyou. But then all this happens and—don’t you get it, Pol? Ican’ttrust you anymore!”
He stares at me, speechless, and I know I’ve stung him. I feel monstrous; his father just died and here I am yelling at him, but I can’t contain the terror and guilt welling up in me. Caged up in this tiny ship, I feel like I’m about to explode.
Pol shakes his head. “Then try to trustyourself. You must feel, somewhere deep down, that it’s true?”
“All Ifeelright now is—”
I’m cut short as the ship lurches around us. I’m thrown into Pol, both of us crashing into the bunks with startled cries. The walls groan and creak and flex. The caravel shudders, then goes still, the engine throbbing beneath our feet.
“What happened?”
“We’ve dropped out of warp. We must have reached Sapphine’s system, but we’ll have a bogey on our tail.” He pushes through to the cockpit. “Now we’ve got to reset the coordinates and warp out of here before they catch up or—”
His reply is drowned out by an earsplitting crash. It sounds like some monster has ripped off the engine and is grinding it in its teeth. My stomach lifts as I go weightless, my boots leaving the ground and my head bumping against the ceiling.
The gravity generator has gone out.
The caravel pitches wildly through space. I grab hold of the bunk rail, feeling sick in the sudden zero g. Pol is shouting, but I can’t hear him over the noise. He pushes off the wall and makes for the doorway into the cockpit, but the ship spins and he slams into the ceiling instead. His eyes roll back and he falls limp in midair.
“POL!”
I lunge for him, managing to grip his shirt, just as everything goes silent.
Toosilent. The engines have cut out entirely.
One by one, the lights in the cabin go out, until I’m floating in total darkness.
For a moment, the only sound I hear is my own breath, amplified by the close space. I feel the rough texture of the scarf around Pol’s neck, and pull him closer with it, but I can’t see him in the darkness. I can’t see anything at all.
Then, with a hum, emergency lighting kicks in and a dim red glow fills the cabin.
Pol drifts past me, eyes shut, body limp. Drops of scarlet blood pop from the cut on his brow and float by my face.
“Pol!” I turn him toward me and press fingers to his neck, breathing in relief when I feel his pulse.
I push him onto a bunk—easy enough in zero gravity—and tie him down with his own belt, to keep him from smashing his face into anything else. Then I push through the flimsy door to the cockpit—and gasp.
A blue planet fills the space ahead.
I recognize it at once as Sapphine, though of course I’ve only ever seen pictures of it. An ocean planet, Sapphine is three times the size of my home world. Off to my left, its yellow sun is just setting over the horizon, and shadows slowly devour the planet.
I pull myself into the captain’s chair, snapping the harness on to keep from floating away. Even so, I hover an inch off the seat, my hair drifting around me like tentacles. I tie it back quickly, assessing the controls. The emergency power should be stored in cells somewhere on board, holding just enough energy to keep the minimum systems running—life support, a bit of light, and the control board. But there’s not much point in controls for a dead engine.
I do a visual check of as much of the caravel as I can see and don’t find any evidence of physical damage. So we’re not under attack. What went wrong, then? Something must have caused the gravity generator to go out, taking most of our power with it.