With the scar on my shoulder still aching and memories of Hiro too fresh to ignore, teaching is the last thing I want to do. “We’ll continue training tomorrow,” I tell him. “Now get to the damn medic.”
Talon’s a Rapier like me. A Righthand. His Lefthand, his Dagger, lurks nearby, and as soon as I dismiss Talon, the girl rushes toward him like a well-aimed shot. “Let me see,” Key says in a tone that clearly brooks no room for disagreement, her dark brown hands grasping for Talon’s.
Talon sighs and offers his Lefthand his literal left hand. “I’m all right, Key,” Talon whispers, but when their eyes meet, something passes between them in the silence.
This scene has played out time and again in this cobbled courtyard. How many times have teachers watched in wry amusement, surrounded by a blur of faces, at the connection between a partnered pair?
Even now, do Key and Talon speak without words? I remember the comforting feeling of Hiro on the other side of my neural implant, the two pieces of tech inserted in our brains programmed to link our thoughts and feelings. It wasn’t telepathy, or anything so invasive; it was something soft and soothing. The warm acknowledgment of an inside joke. A communion. A bond.
At last, Talon’s shoulders slump, and Key leads the way to the double doors that open into the school’s hallowed hallways. She’s clearly won whatever invisible battle waged between them—most likely convincing the stubborn Talon that he should listen to his elder and see a medic. It’s only as I watch them walking shoulder to shoulder that I realize how badly I miss my former partner. How long it’s been since I last saw them. How home isn’t home without Hiro.
“Lito val Lucius!”
My name rings over the courtyard, sending a wave of silence after it. The class turns toward me, even Talon and Key, who pause midstride. They watch me like they did during the duels, as if my name is a challenger’s call.
“Lito val Lucius?” A uniformed man strides into the courtyard, the wooden door surrounded by old stone falling closed behind him.
“It’s sol Lucius, actually,” I tell him, fighting the sinking feeling of my old friend inferiority.
To the class, I order loudly, “Get moving!” They shuffle twenty pairs of identical black boots into the looming Icarus Prime Military Academy, some groaning at the order. So much for having a teacher’s respect…
Even if this man is wearing military blacks, he’s not here to duel me. As much as the Academy prioritizes dueling in its curriculum, duels don’t just spontaneously occur. Especially once you’ve been assigned, as I have been.
And when you’ve been assigned a chump job like this, training various groups of kids as the months scrape by… you only have so much pride left.
Better than nothing, I remind myself. I could be rotting in the basement still. I repress a shudder at the thought of that dark and cold place, and my shoulder throbs.
“Lito sol Lucius,” the man says, correcting himself. He hands me a summons paper when he reaches me. His hair is the downy white of feathers, obviously geneassisted. The soldiers of Venus—especially those in Special Forces—trick themselves out as flamboyantly as they can—eyes, skin, hair—all to better stand out when wearing the plain, slim-cut military blacks. He’s a Dagger, I note from the pips on his shoulder.
The last time I saw my Dagger, Hiro’s hair had been rose red, a bright flower above a bloodstained bandage around their forehead, half their face the purple of a sick bruise. I try to imagine what color it is now before I remember that, since Hiro is on assignment, it’s likely a natural shade to help them blend in. Brown or black, something they wouldn’t like at all.
“Thank you.” I salute with two fingers to my temple. The Dagger salutes in return and heads back for the Academy proper, letting his eyes linger on the courtyard in remembrance. He too hears the ghosts of duels long ago, remembers training with his Rapier before he was assigned his place.
Once I’m alone in the courtyard, I open the summons, marked with Command’s blazing phoenix symbol. It’s from my commander, which I expected, but it doesn’t say anything close to what I’d imagine a summons from him to say. Four simple words, and within them a multitude of possible meanings:
Get here. New assignment.
* * *
sI TAKE THE bullet train downtown, watching the Academy’s melted-wax spirals retreat into the distance. Its ancient, bonelike architecture is soon swallowed by the clustered gemstone skyscrapers of the floating city Cytherea. The sky is an autumnal tree, hung in reds and golds as the dome above simulates the sun’s descent to nighttime.
This city and its hermium-powered shell were created after scientists perfected the building technique on Mercury’s Spero. Hung as carefully as a cocoon on a leaf, Cytherea floats in what our scientists call the “sweet spot” of Venus’s atmosphere, a place with the perfect pressure and temperature for human life. Cytherean air filters turn Venus’s carbon dioxide into oxygen for breathing, and the basic genemodding we receive as children helps us with the variations in gravity. The domed cities are a marvel of science and proof that a government led by scientists works for the betterment of all mankind.
Not that there aren’t drawbacks to Cytherea, of course. They just won’t be found here on the uppermost layer.
Because of the evening hour, the train is packed with commuters, those who either can’t afford a podcar or don’t want one. Since the majority of those involved in science, industry, and commerce reside on Mercury, these travelers are probably low-level government employees or manual workers in Cytherea’s vast entertainment industry. There are definitely no factory workers on board. No one whose name bears my inferior title, sol.
I watch fingers dancing in the air as passengers engage with the images on their com-contact lenses, watching the news or reading the latest studies; kids in various school uniforms, absorbed in biobooks or sleek compads in order to finish their homework; and, oddly, a couple of Asters in sand-colored, bandage-like wraps that cover them from head to boot, save for the green goggles they wear over their eyes.
The scar on my shoulder aches—it was an Aster who shot me on Ceres, I recall all too vividly, before pushing those thoughts and the pain away. Why is my past so determined to haunt me today?
The Asters are… other. Humanoid, but not human. They have two arms and two legs, but they are tall and thin, stretched out with odd proportions. Few make Icarii planets their home. The gravity, the light, the pressure on Mercury and Venus—these are all things that Asters grew beyond with the help of those first ancient geneassists on Earth who made them the perfect spacefarers but had no idea of the mutations their modifications would allow to take root. Centuries later, the Asters are their own people, living and working and breeding in the asteroid belt, deformed compared to the humans they used to be.
The Asters have a range of skin colors, but all of them are as translucent as long-dead bodies, like walking bruises in blue and purple and gray. Their hair is white, devoid of color like bleached bones, and beneath their goggles, their eyes are swallowing black and soulless. Their wraps keep sunlight from burning their sensitive skin, while their goggles allow them to see in our bright lights. But as secretive as they are, it’s no wonder the majority of people find them unnerving, even if the rumor that they carry disease is completely false.