Page 46 of Last of Her Name
Riyan has gone into a trance, unmoving hour after hour. He’s still sitting with his legs folded, hands on his knees.
“You know he’s going to die without this,” I say to the guard, holding up the vial on its chain.
The guard grunts. “You can’t trust an abomination like him, Princess. The tensors’ magic will be our undoing one day. Pulling at the fabric of space like that … it’s not right.”
After a few minutes of no change in the tensor, I continue on to the hangar. There, the Loyalist fleet is arranged in neat rows, but there’s no hiding that their ships are outdated and in need of repairs. A team of mechanics is working feverishly to retrofit a battle schooner, but I’d guess their efforts aren’t doing much good. The ship looks like it should be scrapped for parts, if not scuttled altogether.
Riyan’s ship has been added to the fleet, I note sourly. Someone has opened up the hull, and a couple pilots are admiring the exposed engine.
At the far end of the hangar rests a scuttled scout ship that’s been refitted into a bar. Drinks are served on a counter made from the old control board. A tabletka on the wall projects a hologram of a geeball match, with some pilots clustered around, placing bets. The miniature players look like bees dodging and spinning through their zero-gravity arena, chasing a glowing ball from one end to the other.
About half the pilots are human—Alexandrians, Rubyati, one white-haired Opallan—and the rest are adapted: paryans, eeda, a woman with radiation-resistant orange skin, who must be a zheran from Tanzanet. She wears a pair of dark glasses to shield her large, sensitive eyes and curses when one of the geeball teams scores a goal. There are no aeyla, I note with disappointment; I haven’t seen a single pale horn since I arrived. If there were, maybe I could have talked them into helping me, for Pol’s sake.
I start toward the bar, hoping to find something to drink, but at that moment a red light begins flashing overhead and an alarm blares through the hangar. I freeze, thinking I’ve been spotted, but no one’s even looking at me.
Instead, pilots are running to line up by an empty pair of landing pads, shouting excitedly. They watch the long tunnel leading out of the rock, like they’re waiting for something.
Curious, I wander over and try to blend in. There isn’t much need; everyone is so focused on whatever’s about to come down that tunnel that they don’t notice me lurking.
A distant roar reaches my ears, and then I see lights deep in the darkness, growing brighter and brighter.
A sleek little battler is speeding toward us, a one-man ship equipped with guns and hyperboosters for high-speed attacks. The sound of its engine floods the hangar, deafening, making the floor vibrate. I can feel it in my teeth. Its thrusters are at full brake, generating a strong wind that has the light-boned paryans bracing themselves, lest they be swept off their feet.
The battler lowers smoothly onto one of the pads, popping landing struts. Everyone converges on the ship as the top hatch pops open and the eeda pilot emerges, grinning and pumping his fist. He powers down the engine, and the others all cheer. Someone hands him a canteen of water, which he pours over his head to hydrate his scaled skin.
Seconds later, another battler comes speeding down the tunnel, engine whining and rattling. I wince at the sound; this one’s clearly experiencing some sort of engine trouble. It sets down next to the first in a cloud of smoke.
The hatch opens and a brown-skinned girl climbs out, scowling and cursing. She pulls off her helmet, shaking loose a pair of braids that start at her hairline and curl over her scalp. After she shuts down the battler, she slides off the nose and to the floor, and is met by the jeers of the other pilots. Throwing them a rude gesture, she storms to the wing of her ship, where the engine underneath it is wheezing.
“That’s the third race you’ve lost this week, Luka!” shouts a pilot.
“Not my fault!” she snaps back. “The engine blew! I nearly smashed into a rock.”
“She’s lying,” the victorious pilot returns. “She lost control of her ship, as usual. How many you gotta destroy, girl, before you realize you should have stayed on the laundry rotation?”
The girl bristles but faces him squarely. “How many times did I have to wash your stinking uniform after you wet yourself in the battle sims?”
The other pilots burst into laughter, and the eeda pilot hurls a curse. The girl, scowling, stalks over to the bar and grabs a bottle of water.
The pilot tending bar grabs it back. “You already used up your ration this week. Thirsty? Open your mouth in the shower, Luka.”
With a few steps, I lunge across the counter and grab the water from the guy’s hand. “Did I use upmyration?”
The bartender rolls his eyes and goes back to watching the geeball match. Twisting off the cap, I grab a tin cup and pour half in, sliding it to the girl.
“Thanks, uh, Your Highness,” she mumbles.
“Stacia’s fine.” I wave a hand. “I guess water’s pretty scarce out here.”
“No kidding, and the eeda use up half of it just bathing three times a day. We chip it off a frozen comet core that passes through every eighteen months. Trust me, you haven’t experienced misery until you get put on water duty and spend a few days tethered to a giant chunk of space ice.” She pauses, then smirks into her cup. “We call it Lilyan Junior. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
I draw a finger over my lips in the universal sign for a secret kept. “So, your name’s Luka? Related to the doctor?”
She winces. “You’ve met my dad, then. Don’t judge a girl by her relations.”
I hook a thumb at the pair of battlers. “What was all that?”
“What, the race? It was a setup, that’s what it was.” She scowls at the crowd of pilots, still congregated around the winner. “They knew that was a bum engine, but they gave it to me anyway. Zhar’s going to kill me when she sees the mess it’s in.” With a groan, she turns around and lets her head fall onto the bar. “I can’t afford to pay for another one.”