“I expect absolute dedication and hard work. There will be no handouts here, no special treatment for anyone on board.”
I reach for my armband—only to remember Aunt Marshae has already taken it away. No special treatment, Captain Saito says. Not like Arturo and his playful eyes and wandering hands. At least I knew what he wanted. I could protect myself with that knowledge.
“Now all of you get to your stations,” she says over the intercom, and I think of my little chapel and its accompanying bed.
“Earth endures,” Captain Saito begins, and I hear other voices lift to join her in response, “Mars conquers.”
I drop my face into my hands and let the silent sobs break me apart at last.
CHAPTER 2
Like Icarus, our forefathers flew close to the sun. But unlike our mythological predecessor, the scientists aboard the Icarus who seeded Mercury and, eventually, Venus, were aware of their mortality and the necessity of a future protected by those who understood peace. It was peace that split us from Earth and Mars, and it is peace that will guide us on our path through the stars.
First Icarii president Pablo val Cárcel, address to the Venus Parliament
In the split second that Talon’s arm twists, his mercurial blade lengthens, and I hunch so that even with his extra distance, he cannot stab me in the stomach. He curses as his feet hit the ground. My movement has changed the diameter of battle, and he’ll have to recalculate the angle if he wants to pin me.
Students hate mathematics, but it’s integral to everything, even battle. Especially battle.
“You’re swinging wildly,” I tell him. “Your anger will get the better of you unless you do away with it.”
I hold my arm at a ninety-degree angle from my core, my blade’s point thrust at Talon’s face. This is the math of it: My arm is longer than his. My blade has more reach. There is a line between us, and the circle that eclipses that line is the diameter of battle. If he can shift that diameter in his favor, getting inside my long reach, he can win. Or so he thinks.
Then again, I have a decade more of experience than him.
I see him calm, his face blanking as his neural implant washes away his feelings. When I was a student like him, our old professor would hold my wrist in this very stance and provoke my opponents with taunts. Sol Lucius is the top of the class, which makes you, what? Space trash! I used my implant to erase any bitterness at his throwing my inferior name around, while my opponent would seethe. Math, like war, should be performed with a cool head.
I’ll give Talon this: he’s the best in his year. Throughout the week I’ve been training with his class as a mentor, he’s the only one who has come close to hitting me. But so far, the only things that have cut me are Talon’s geneassisted yellow eyes with irises that narrow like a cat’s.
“Again,” Talon says, a demand more than a question, and his mercurial blade ripples into silvery liquid, shortens, and hardens into his preferred form, a short sword that suits his growing limbs. In time, his blade will become standard length, but the benefit of a mercurial blade is that it can change with the flow of battle. Sometimes short’ll do it.
“You don’t have to ask, Talon, you can just attack.” Even after months of alternating classes, I’m still not used to being someone’s teacher and receiving an instructor’s respect, but I’ve been out of Icarii military rotation for so long that I’m itching to do something—anything—and that includes dueling with kids.
“Yes, sir. I mean… Lito.” My name is so soft, like he fears to say it aloud. I don’t know why. I’m no hero that kids look up to.
Not anymore. Not since Ceres.
He jumpjets forward, shortening the diameter. He wants, like so many others, to get inside my arm’s reach, and he hopes to do that by being quicker than me. It’s a solid plan, but in the same way that my arm length allows me to strike more easily, my leg length allows me to step and shift the geometry back in my favor.
I see what he’s doing and do the same—only successfully. My mercurial blade never changes form as I slide sideways on the balls of my feet and press the thick of my blade near the hilt against the tip of his. Even without my superior strength, leverage says I win.
Talon curses again, face going red with frustration; if I actually were a professor, I’d write him up for the loss of temper, especially after I already commanded him to watch it. But I’m not a professor, and I’m far more concerned with his foolishness than his bucking command. He grabs the base of his blade with his hand and twists it more like a wrench than a sword.
“Talon!” I snap.
His blade pivots around mine and liquefies as it prepares to lengthen—right toward me.
The scar between my shoulder and chest wakes and burns like a wildfire.
His blade is already forming, crawling toward my skin, and my instincts kick in like a primal scream in my gut—
Shift shoulder. Swing blade beneath his arm. Gut him.
For a moment, he is an Ironskin soldier on Ceres, and my arm is dripping blood—
But as my muscles twitch in response with the impulse to kill, I realize—he’s a damn kid, not an enemy. Through the haze of adrenaline pumping in my veins, I kick the jumpjets in the heels of my boots to life and bound away.
Mierda.
He’s breathing hard when he lands. I realize I am too.
Thousand gods. Did I almost kill a kid?
Worse: Why is the memory of Ceres haunting me now?
I force my implant to erase my anxiety, to slow the racing of my heart. I refuse to let Talon take even a peek at the shadow that war has left on me, at the machine it has made of me. I want to curse at him for being such an idiot, or praise him for coming so close to hitting me. Instead, I settle for instructing. “Talon, what’s the first rule of engagement?”
I send a thought command to my mercurial blade from my neural implant; the metal turns liquid and seeps back into the hilt. When the metal disappears, the blade’s gentle glow does too. I place the hilt on my belt as I meet Talon back in the middle of the sparring courtyard. It’s only now, as I take in the world around us, that I realize every uniformed kid in Talon’s class—and some in the classes above at the oblong windows—is staring wide-eyed and pale.
“Don’t lose control,” Talon recites, looking at his gloved hand that touched the blade. The fabric is burned through, the skin beneath a bright pink and bubbled with blisters.
“And what did you do?” I ask, straightening my spine.
His face is burning with humiliation when he responds, “Lost control.”
“It was a good strategy if this was a life-or-death situation,” I admit. “But this was not that. Now go see the medic.”
Talon tosses his wounded hand aside without care for his injury. “I don’t want to miss practice because of a damn doctor’s visit.”
I snort. I was like him at this age, begging for another fight even if I got my ass handed to me. It was the only way to get better.
No, a little part of me whispers. At his age, you were already kicking ass with Hiro at your side. And because of the strength that Hiro and I possessed as a pair, I was pulled into the grinding gears of military life, assigned to the dangerous planetoid Ceres, and battling Geans before I even turned nineteen, making me a legend at the Academy and causing boys like Talon to look up to me.