Page 41 of Dark Space
Callan swore. ‘How long have you known?’
‘A while. You’re good, but I’m better.’ Bryn adjusted a missile trajectory and pressed a button. The ship shuddered as it launched. ‘I could tell that there were places the security feed had been cut and looped. You deleted the copies from the servers, but I make my own backups.’ He grinned. ‘It was impressive, the way you both caught that starling. I watched the casts of him swearing for weeks. He taught me a few phrases.’ The screen lit up as our ship absorbed a return shot. ‘If it’s worth anything, I’ve been studying this quadrant over the last couple of days. Your father’s orb has been tailing a ship – a Nataran personal craft. I have no idea why, but it might be worth keeping in mind.’
‘You’re dangerous, Bryn,’ I murmured.
‘Yes, Prince. But if you’re a fair ruler, then I’ll always be on your side.’ He frowned as he prepared a fresh volley of missiles. ‘If I can be so bold as to advise you, think about what your father would do – and do the opposite.’ He flicked me a glance. ‘Males like that are on the way out. Our species is dying. Violence hasn’t worked. We need to try something new.’
‘As the dread gods will,’ Callan murmured.
Bryn snorted. ‘If you like. I prefer to put my faith in the things I can see. Inyou, Prince. Make the most of it.’ He flicked an image of our orb up on his screen and studied the damage to our shields. ‘I saw your grandmother once. It was from a distance, but even still, I knew that she was what a Roth should be. I see her in you.’
I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the old echoes of grief stab at me from the inside. I pushed it aside with a silent promise that I’d let myself feel it another time, then cleared my throat. ‘Want to go hunting?’ I said to Callan.
He grinned, his sharp second set of teeth raking over his bottom lip. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
As it turned out, we didn’t have to; Callan looked slightly disappointed. Aristos and Ellar had hatched a trap, letting the remaining crew loyal to my father steal themselves a scuttler – which they’d rigged with a timed pulse bomb. It detonated the moment the scuttler broached the ship’s shields, taking no fewer than ten Roth soldiers with it.
I didn’t care. We had enough souls to fly the ship. Even so, a worry tugged at me – if it was this hard to take a single orb ship, then how hard was it going to be for us to takeScytha?
I knew that my grandmother had led a resistance network, a secretive collection of Roth who stood quietly against my father’s regime. They were non-violent, so their defiance came in small ways: sabotage of scuttlers and orb ships, missing food deliveries for soldiers, pamphlets left in public areas, graffiti scrawled onwalls. I’d never been in contact with them – I was too young when my grandmother died, and perhaps they thought it too dangerous to reach out later – but I hoped they still existed, hoped they were still opposing my father. I couldn’t count on it, however, and nor could I count on their support.
I’d have to earn that for myself.
I bit my lip. If – by some miracle – we lived through this, and got back to Scytha, I’d have a mammoth task in seizing and holding power. I didn’t particularlywantto kill – especially not civilian Roth – but I wasn’t sure that I could see a way around it, not if there was widespread support for my father. If we were a dying species anyway, we might as well fade from our solar system knowing that we’d tried to end things on a positive note. And if my name was a footnote attached to a description likeThe Last Roth Princein the annals of intergalactic history, then so be it.
Unless I could find another way.
As we made our way back to the bridge, the ship was a continual shiver, the floor beneath our feet unsteady. ‘How much longer will the shields hold for?’
Callan didn’t answer.
‘Cal.’
‘Not long, Prince,’ he said tersely.
‘Ah, Callan?’ Bryn’s voice came from Callan’s wrist screen. ‘You should see this.’
I wrapped my fingers around Callan’s wrist and held it up so we could see. Bryn had focused one of the ship’s external cameras on a patch of space full of small asteroids.
But asteroids weren’t the only thing there.
‘Whatisthat?’ I frowned at the small white speck travelling between the space rock.
‘It’s a Pod,’ Bryn said.
He was right; it was one of the small Tirian crafts. ‘What is itdoing?’
The Pod appeared to pause. I knew that it wouldn’t have – we couldn’t see the reverse engine thrusters, and space didn’t work that way – but it did seem to take a few moments to decide on its course.
It headed for my father’s ship.
‘What –’
‘I have no idea,’ Callan murmured. ‘But either way, surely it’s your father’s problem now.’ He took his wrist back and grasped my shoulder. ‘Cide. Are you ready for what today could mean?’
‘We could all die,’ I whispered.
‘Or you could be King by sunturn.’
