Bonds of Brass (The Bloodright Trilogy #1) - Emily Skrutskie Page 0,35

sys-Tosa has dreadnoughts at his command. To make it to the interior, we’ll have to go through Tosa System again, and if he triangulates our vector, there’s no way we clear it without getting scooped up.”

His fingertips twitch over the datapad’s screen, pulling up a galactic map. The star systems glitter as he scales them, and even from a distance, I recognize the layout of the Umber interior. The origin of the map, where the three major axes defining its space intersect, points squarely at Acua, the shining star at the heart of the empire’s capital system. Lucia orbits it, marked by a brassy sigil that signifies the home of the Imperial Seat.

Gal drops a marker on his homeworld and pulls back, collapsing the system until he’s considering the vast dark between the stars. He zooms out farther to find the shining mark of Tosa nestled at the center of the other former Archon systems down the galactic arm. Then farther still, until he finds us, hauling ass in the opposite direction, toward the distant reaches of Corinth. His expression goes taut.

I clear my throat. “So we ditch the Beamer in Corinth…”

Gal nods. “We need a different ship. Maybe we can cut some sort of deal for this one—but the sale of a stolen military vehicle is going to raise some red flags, so we have to be prepared to book it right away. Tosa’s going to be watching for it. We need…I dunno, a plan. Something more concrete than switching ships and going back the way we came.” He looks up, noticing the way I’ve frozen against the drawers. Wordlessly, he pats the blanket next to him.

“You’ve got two days to worry yourself into something more concrete,” I mutter, collapsing on the bed. At least he’s thinking about plans now and not leaving them up to me. I thought I’d gotten enough rest dozing in the pilot’s seat, but the mattress beneath me is telling me I was so, so wrong. I close my eyes, my brain already racing toward unconsciousness. Distantly, I feel Gal roll back and hear the clatter of him tossing the datapad aside.

“Ettian?” he asks, before I can go completely.

“Mhm?”

“I should have said it already, but…thank you.”

Those two words and the reverent way he whispers them are the last things I grasp before the emptiness of sleep takes over.

CHAPTER 8

THE NEXT TWO days pass far too slowly.

On every other interstellar voyage I’ve made, I was part of a larger crew—usually a pack of cadets on a training mission or a retreat or a brief period of leave. No matter the destination, the journey was never dull.

But aboard the Ruttin’ Hell, our options are limited. There’s always sleeping—I’m grateful for that. At the academy, we rose with the sun and our assignments kept us up late into the night. Over the two days of travel, I’m catching up on two and a half years of sleep, making full use of the galactic standard’s extra hour. When we’re not sleeping, we spend most of our time planning our approach to Delos, a borderworld on the Corinthian fringe, and plotting how we’ll make berth in a foreign empire without incurring suspicion.

When we’re not doing that, we’re bored. I try my best to avoid thinking of some ways we could relieve our boredom, ways that take advantage of the fact that for now we’re two nobodies, the only life forms for a million miles, wrapped in the silence of the void. No leering fellow cadets, no warnings about fraternization, no fear of destroying our friendship and continuing to share a room in the aftermath.

Keep it together, I think over and over. I try my damnedest to distract myself, but entertainment on the ship is limited to the saccharine pop library Gal’s downloaded onto his datapad and a few stuffy war novels I checked out on mine—all recommended to me by officers and all barely more than jingoistic Umber propaganda written by ex-soldiers. It’s not enough to keep my mind away from where it can’t help straying. There are far greater things at stake than my own heart, and letting it into the mess of what’s happening is asking for trouble.