I don’t know what last night means for us. Lament and I weren’t exactly verbalizing our thoughts on the future. Everything was about taste and touch, fingers digging into skin, the arch of his neck and the splay of his hands and supple curves and just… there were words, but they were words likeohandpleaseandyes. Which means I don’t know if Lament has consideredtheotherwords I’m thinking right now. Home. Forever. Love. I want to ask (of course I want to ask), but I also don’t want to shatter this fragile thing between us, not with the clock ticking down the minutes to what may be the last mission we ever run. For now, though, it’s enough just to be able to lean into his warmth, let it feel good. We have this moment. The rest can wait.
After breakfast (hurried along by Vera, who’s beginning to worry about our timing), we suit up. It feels weird to pull on my whites, given we might not even belong to the Legion anymore, but they’re the most functional uniforms we have (fire-resistant, waterproof, flexible). I’m lacing up my boots on the bench by The Bargainer’s exit when Master Ira approaches.
“Ready?” he asks.
“As ready as I can be,” I answer honestly.
The Master nods and lets that reply stand. He glances over to where Lament is talking to Toph near The Bargainer’s controls. “You gave that boy your lifestone.”
I blush. “Yeah.”
“Have you told him why?”
“He knows why.” A beat. “Sort of. Fairy tales aren’t really Lament’s thing.”
“You should tell him.”
“Really?” I frown at the Master. “I didn’t think you believed in the power of lifestones.”
He lifts his brows but says nothing.
Once we’re ready, Vera and Jester head for the Sky Runner parked on the bluff, Lament and I exit down the back ramp toward Moon Dancer, and everyone else stays on The Bargainer. There are no pep talks. Nogood lucks. We’re all trapped in our own thoughts, our worries, our pre-mission focus routines. As I ready to climb up into Moon Dancer’s cockpit, I glance back and spot Master Ira through The Bargainer’s window. His expression is graver than it was before, and I don’t like that he looks that way. I don’t like that he maybe has good reason.
I turn away before he notices me watching.
36
Venthros comes into view,a blue-gray marble against the backdrop of space. The planet expands as we speed closer, larger and larger until it fully encompasses my windscreen. Vera’s Sky Runner appears out Moon Dancer’s window on our left, The Bargainer’s spherical body juddering through turbulence on our right. As a unit, we descend through Venthros’s atmosphere, jet over a choppy green ocean, and close in on the western hemisphere… and with it, Mount Kilmon.
My hands loosen on the controls. I have the strangest impulse to reach out and touch the glass, to offer some sort of silent greeting to that terrible, magnificent structure. The volcano dominates the horizon, its flanks sculpted by eons of hardened molten rock, its peak flattened and jagged like a broken tooth. Though this year’s eruption hasn’t officially started yet, plumes of smoke rise from the volcano’s crater, thin trails of fire shooting from its peak.
We bypass the volcano (I am both relieved and not relieved) and head across a valley toward Soto. As we descend upon the city, I begin to see the processions we’ve been hearing about on the news, thousands of people lining up outside Determinist distribution centers waiting to pledge their loyalty in exchange for Ran Doc Min’s neutralizer. The distribution centersaren’t so muchcentersas they are armored vehicles, each manned by a trio of Determinists who are armed and armored themselves. According to NewsNet, as soon as the neutralizer pods are distributed, Determinist workers will inject each Venthrothian with lie detector serum, accept their oath of loyalty, and hand over a neutralizer inhaler. The citizen will take a puff from the inhaler and earn themselves immunity against the voroxide.
There are a lot of distribution vehicles. There are a lot of people. And this is just one city in one corner of the whole planet. It’s hard to wrap my head around the scale of Ran Doc Min’s operation: millions of people, tricked into subservience by a man who only wants power.
“Target sighted,” Vera says through my headset.
I train my eyes toward the field beyond the city and see what she sees—there, among the dry yellow grass, stands the Determinists’ central deployer, an enormous A-Line freighter painted in streaks of silver and black, its wings curled up over its body like some kind of vulture. Since the smaller distribution vehicles will only contain a limited number of neutralizer inhalers, they’ll need to be periodically restocked, and for that, they’ll return to the A-Line. The cargo ship is made of indestructible aerotitan sheets, narrow in the front and wide in the back, and it’s big. Like, really big. Like, ten-times-the-size-of-most-other-spaceships big.
“Approaching target,” Vera says. “Everyone in position.”
I try to orient myself, noting the angle of the sun hitting the A-Line’s curved sides, the position of the doors, the gun slots—closed for now—that will unlock and open fire if a threat is detected.
“Keller?” Vera asks. “You ready?”
Ha. Wouldn’t I love to give her a solid answer.Of course I’m ready. I’m Keller Hartman, the best gunner this galaxy’s seen in decades, recruited into the Sixth straight out of training because they just couldn’t live without me.Only, I wasn’t actually recruited. I was inserted. And—judging by the bile in my mouth and the fuzziness in my head—I’m nowhere near ready.
“Keller?”
“One second,” I say, then yank off my headset and look at Lament.
His mouth drops open in alarm. “What are you doing?”
“You still have your lifestone?”
“Keller—”
“Do you?”
