“I remember the bruises. I won the fight, right?”
“If you call being left facedown in a garbage can ‘winning,’ I’ll eject now.”
My flying’s working. With twenty of them and one of us, it’s child’s play to tease their formation into chaos—especially with our chatter covering up the orders Seely’s screaming into the comm. “At least I actually fight my battles,” I snap. It’s harsh, given our current situation, but Gal knows what’s in my head better than anyone, and he gives me exactly what I expect.
“And I talk my way out of them like a rational human being.”
“Couldn’t talk your way out of this?”
“That’s what I have you for.”
I appreciate the confidence, but I don’t know how long I can keep this up. Feinting around boltfire and messing with their formations is only going to keep us alive for so long. Getting to safety is another matter entirely. Vipers can’t trip past superluminal speeds, and our fastest isn’t going to be enough to outrun them with this many on our tail. I don’t see any way out.
And then I realize our escape has been looming over us the entire time. My eyes shift up to Rana—to my big, glorious, green homeworld. Nine specks of flame mark where the remainder of the squad is hitting the atmosphere, and those nine little flares set off one big one in my head.
Seely sees what I’m about to do the second before I do it. “Wraith One, close the net,” he shrieks, and the formation shifts around us as I twist our Vipers through the mess. No time for feinting, no time for dodging the bolts—my vector is direct, and speed is my only concern. We plunge for the planet, my engine whining as I urge it past its limits. The metal of the Viper’s hull creaks around me.
“Ettian, you maniac,” Gal mutters.
“Keep talking,” I tell him. Not because I need to make sure he’s conscious—our acceleration isn’t heavy enough for that to be a concern—but because I need his voice to keep me steady.
“What about?”
“You can start by explaining why there are twenty Vipers on our ass.” At the edge of my wing, I catch the first wisps of the planet’s outer atmosphere starting to drag at us. I kill the engines. No need for acceleration when Rana’s mass is beginning to yank us in.
“I—I can’t explain.”
A vicious edge slips into my voice as the last of my patience dissolves. “No, that’s a lie. Why the rut is this happening?”
On the instrumentation, I see the defectors locking onto our tail, some of them already oriented for reentry.
“Ettian—”
“Tell me, Gal, or so help me I’ll keep you latched and burn us both.”
As is, we’re cutting it close. The Viper’s heat shields are on the underbelly. If we hit the hard part of the atmosphere with our ships strapped together, we both go down in flames.
There’s a sharp inhale on Gal’s end of the line. A decision being made in the span of a breath. “I never wanted you to find out—not like this,” Gal says.
We’ve got seconds. “Spit it out!” I yell.
“I’m the Umber heir.”
I jam the button, releasing the electromagnets, and fire my attitude thrusters to break away from Gal’s underbelly. He can’t have said what I think he said. I have to put my ship right. I won’t let my brain get stuck on what Gal’s confessed and what it means. Another twist of my controls reorients my Viper, my heat shield braced to hit the atmosphere the second it hits back.
I didn’t hear it right—that must be it. I glance out the windshield to my left, where Gal’s wrestling his own ship into reentry position. Through the plastics separating us, I spot the tense line of his jaw. His eyes are shaded by his helmet and goggles, but somehow I know they’re closed. I know Gal. I know him inside and out.
Or I thought I did.
Heat flares around me, my flight suit’s coolant struggling to combat it as we plunge into the atmosphere. I extend every drag fin on my ship, gritting my teeth as the deceleration yanks at the flesh on my face, pressing me so deep into my seat’s gel that I feel the bracing board beneath it.
Gal is the Umber heir. The thought consumes me more than any worry I might have about the reentry, about the twenty Vipers plunging after us, about what might await us back at the academy base.
The Umber Empire has stood for thousands of years. It was seeded from the first settlements made on stable worlds as wandering generation ships roved down the galactic arm, founded on planets that took to crops with so little effort that the people who made a home there managed to twist it into some sort of divine right. Mankind delved deeper into the galaxy, discovering the metal-rich Archon worlds and the fringe planets of Corinth, but none took root and expanded so boldly and decisively as Umber. Nowadays, the empire spans at least a hundred systems. Their imperial bloodline has conquest in its veins, and Empress Iva and Emperor Yltrast are its pinnacle. Seven years ago, they shredded the Archon Empire and took it for their own. They’re the most fearsome force the galaxy has ever seen.
And Gal—
No, it’s impossible. There has to be some kind of mistake. It’s another of Gal’s jokes, like the time he pretended to be the youngest general ever promoted to impress a girl in a bar. A laugh builds in the back of my throat. He had me going there for a moment. Thinking he was the son of—
The cold shock of truth catches up to me. None of Gal’s jokes have put twenty Vipers on our rear. None of Gal’s jokes have left him turning tail and running like the gates of every hell have opened.
And he’s never left me out of one.
“Rut me sideways, you’re not kidding,” I groan.
Suddenly my suspicions about Seely’s teeth seem downright petty. I’d always figured there would be shadow heirs installed at the academy. The Archon territories are notorious hotbeds of opportunity for up-and-coming bloodlines. Governors on every tier of power—continental, planetary, and even system—would jump at the chance to place their kids in the heart of the former empire to train them for command. But this is another thing entirely. Gal’s a rutting prince. The Umber heir is destined by blood to own these systems someday. And twenty of our classmates, including Seely, still hear the Archon drums in their hearts. No wonder they’re raining boltfire on his rear.
“Someone must have found out,” Gal chokes over the rumble of reentry. “Sleepers didn’t stop them.”
Of course he has sleeper agents. Of course he wouldn’t be here without protection in a seven-year-old territory. And whoever organized this hit knew it—they waited until he was isolated. Surrounded him with more enemies than he could evade on his own. If it hadn’t been for me—