Fortuna, p.27
Fortuna, page 27
part #1 of Nova Vita Protocol Series
Once I strap myself into a launch chair in the med bay, I give Scorpia the go-ahead. As the ship rumbles and shudders away from the carnage of Titan, battered by the planet’s ever-present storms, I shut my eyes and will myself to hold it together until we find a way to make this right.
Scorpia finds me in a metal chair beside the cryosleep chamber, my head in my hands. I sit up as I notice her come in, trying to regain some sense of dignity. I can’t let my family see me like this. They’ll need someone to be strong—and I’ve always been the strong one. If they see that this has broken me, the rest of them will crumple, too.
She’s still dressed in her contamination suit. When she sees that I’ve already shed mine—after scrubbing the cargo bay and medical room as thoroughly as I could manage—she takes off her helmet and takes a deep breath of sanitized air. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and the moment she’s free of her suit, she pulls a flask from her pocket and takes a long swig. As she lowers it, she finally seems to notice the cryosleep chamber—really notice it.
“Oh, shit,” she says, and rubs a hand across her face as if trying to wipe something off. “I forgot we had that thing. Is he… did you…?”
“Yes.”
Scorpia takes a deep breath and drops her hands to her side.
“Stars, Corvus,” she says, the relief evident on her face. “You…”
“Don’t.” I can’t handle gratitude right now, not when we both know how much of a long shot it is that he’ll ever come back.
She lets out a shaky breath and takes another swig from her flask.
“Okay,” she says. “Guess we need to talk about what comes next. I punched in the coordinates for Gaia, but I wasn’t sure where we’re headed.”
I can’t handle that right now, either. I’m not sure I can handle anything at all after how much I’ve lost. I’m numb for the moment, but I can feel the grief hovering over me, waiting to crash down in a wave that’s certain to drown me. It’s impossible to think about how to move forward when I’m still struggling with the weight of everything left behind.
“We need to do whatever we can for Pol,” I say, because that much is obvious even through my haze of grief. “That comes first. The longer he’s under, the harder it will be to wake him up.”
“Right. Yeah.” Scorpia livens up at that and begins to pace the small room. “Well… that thing came from Gaia. Maybe it’s not a bad idea to start there.”
Gaia. During all of this, I had almost forgotten that the weapon Momma was selling came from there. Directly from the president, as I recall. This wasn’t just some weapons deal; it was an interplanetary agreement.
As the realization hits me, I sink back in my chair, raking fingers through my sweat-sticky hair. I almost let myself believe that what happened back on Titan was a mistake—a case of alien technology gone horribly wrong. I thought it was Momma’s greed that caused that catastrophe.
But President Leonis would never make a mistake like that. She wouldn’t let something loose on another planet without knowing exactly what it was going to do—and she would never do anything so risky without a reason.
“Shit,” I say hoarsely. “Do you understand what we just did, Scorpia?” She stares at me, her feet coming to a stop. “We started a war.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Legacy
Scorpia
I renew my pacing, taking a swig from my flask. Now that Corvus points it out, it seems so obvious. This was never just some job. Leonis used us to fire off the first shot of a war.
“But why?” I think aloud. “Why would she want to go to war?” My mind wanders back to the barren crop fields I saw on Gaia, the sanitation checks. Something strange was happening there. I should have paid more attention to it, especially given that we made a deal with Leonis afterward, but I never got the feeling they were preparing for interplanetary conflict.
“Does it matter? It’s already done.” Just when I thought we were starting to get somewhere productive, Corvus is slumping back into the stance I found him in: head down, face in his hands. Like the weight of everything is physically pressing down on him. I can empathize—he’s lost even more than the rest of us—but I can’t let him collapse under it. He’s the one who survived a war, the one who’s supposed to lead us. Titan proved I’m not cut out for it, so we need him.
“Leonis is linked to all of this. We need to figure out what she’s planning next,” I say. “So… why would she use us to launch the attack? And why Titan?”
Corvus grimaces at the mention of his home-planet, like it hurts just to hear the name. Thinking too hard about Titan drags my own thoughts down a painful path, too—to Momma. If she was here, she would know what to do. She’d know how to save Pol. I take a deep breath and subdue my emotions with another long drink of whiskey.
“Well, let’s go back to the issue with Pol,” I say, and wipe my hand across my mouth. Maybe thinking about him will help both Corvus and me focus. “Like I said, the Gaians made this thing, or at least discovered it. And they know the most about alien tech to begin with. But without Momma, we have no access to Gaia. We won’t be able to leave the landing zone.”
“We won’t even make it there,” Corvus says dully. “Leonis clearly intended for us to die. We’ll be shot out of the sky.”
“Okay. So Gaia is a no-go. Where else? Maybe a doctor on Deva? Or Pax?” Deva is a more developed world, but Paxians are nothing if not innovative, with all their built-in tech and playing with genetics.
“No one’s going to go near a Primus disease,” Corvus says.
“They might if we throw enough credits at them,” I say, and pause as dread hits me. “You have access to M—um, to the business account, right?”
“No.” He raises his head to look at me, his eyes mirroring my horrible realization. “You don’t?”
“Not a chance,” I say, and huff out a hopeless laugh. “Oh, stars. So we’re totally broke, too?” I take another long swig. If only I had sold that damn vial, we’d be in a much better position right now. Five hundred thousand credits could’ve been enough to give us another option, and instead we have nothing. Damn my conscience. Changing my mind didn’t save Titan, it only screwed us over now. If I hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t be in such a dire situation. “Okay… so a war’s starting, Leonis wants us dead, and we’re broke. What else have we got?”
While Corvus stares at me in mute hopelessness, I realize the answer to my own question. Unease turns my legs to jelly at the thought, but I force myself to push back my fear, and reach into my pocket. I shiver as my fingers close around the alien vial. I nearly chucked the thing out the air lock the moment we were in open space, but I stopped at the last second. It’s too valuable to throw away. Maybe the only thing of value we have, now.
“Well… I do have something to bargain with,” I say, and pull the vial out. When I hold it up, light illuminates the swirling colors within. I shudder as it reminds me of the similar shimmer spreading up Pol’s arm, his look of shock, the sound his body made when it hit the floor—
“Why the hell did you bring that on board?” Corvus snaps, rage bringing him to life. He’s on his feet in an instant, grabbing for it, but I step back and pull it out of his reach. “Give it to me.”
“Whoa, hey, wait.” I block him with the hand holding my flask. Whiskey splashes across his shirt, and he glowers at me. “This is the only leverage we have right now. We could use it as a threat against Leonis, or even sell it—”
“No. We’re flushing it out the air lock,” Corvus snarls. “That weapon just killed my home-planet. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you, but it does to me.”
“Of course it means something,” I say. “But there’s nothing we can do about that now. Our brother is still alive, and we can still help him. We need to look at the bigger picture—”
“The bigger picture? Is that what you told yourself when you helped Momma kill Titan?”
He grabs for the vial again. When I block with the flask, he knocks it out of my grasp, sending it clattering to the metal floor. We both freeze as whiskey pools around our feet, realizing how easily that could have been the vial in my other hand. I take a step back.
“I had no idea what we were transporting,” I say, trying not to erupt and provoke him even further. Neither of us are thinking clearly right now, and there’s a dangerous look in his eyes. I’m talking to my brother—but I’m also talking to a Titan soldier. I need to remember that. “I doubt Momma did, either, or she would never have been on the surface when it went off.”
Corvus stares at me. His eyes are hollow, hard. “If not for you, she wouldn’t have been.”
“What?” I stare at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You stole that vial,” he says, nodding toward the weapon I’m still holding behind my back. “It made Momma change the terms of the deal. Made Altair suspicious.” He pauses, as if trying to hold himself back, but the words come out anyway. “That’s why he insisted she go with them to test the weapon. That’s why she didn’t escape with us.” He takes a breath. “She chose to let me stay. To go with him alone.”
Guilt hits me so intensely it nearly knocks my legs out from under me. Tears spring to my eyes despite my best attempt to keep them down. Stars, I really know how to fuck things up. All of this is my fault. And yet—
“You… You knew that this whole time?” I ask. My voice starts as a whisper, but soon climbs louder. “You knew back on Titan and didn’t say anything?”
“You wouldn’t have listened. You would’ve panicked.”
“So instead of trying, you decided to hurt Apollo? To let us wait long enough for him to get infected by that thing?” I’m shouting now, tears running down my face, but I can’t stop myself.
“None of you listened to a word I said until I hit him,” Corvus shouts back. His fists clench at his sides, though the rest of him stays still. “None of you listen—”
“And why should we?” I shove him with my free hand. It barely moves him, which only makes me more furious. “Why should any of us ever trust you again with how you’ve been acting? After you left us to fight in that stupid fucking war?” I’m tired of dancing around this issue, especially if he has the nerve to argue morality with me. “I’m sure you’ve managed to convince yourself that was some noble thing to do. You must be so pleased with yourself. You made Momma proud, and who gives a shit how much it hurt anyone else, right?”
I expect Corvus to be angry at my words, maybe even wounded, but instead his expression wrinkles in pure confusion.
“What?” he asks. “What did you just say?”
“You left.” My voice rises, as if that will drive the point home. My chest aches. I want to see him angry, to see him hurt. But he just stares, silent, his brow creased. It makes the bitterness swell until my eyes burn and my voice shakes. The words tumble out before I can finish thinking them. “We… we were supposed to take care of each other. You knew I needed you. And you left. You left me, Corvus. And you didn’t even leave a fucking note!”
A wave of tears comes along with the words, and I force myself to stop, raising a hand to my eyes as if I can hide it. I suck in a breath that trembles in my throat on the way out.
“You…” He starts, and pauses. He takes a deep breath. “You think I left because I wanted to?” There’s a tinge of uncertainty, almost of hurt, but a moment later his face clears. “Momma said I left because I wanted to fight in the war,” he says, as if explaining something to himself.
“… What? You wanted to… to fight for your planet. To keep your citizenship.” My eyebrows knit together. “You wanted to do the right thing, the honorable thing. Try to be a hero on your home-world. You wanted…” I trail off, my mouth going dry.
Corvus raises a hand and rakes his hair back from his face. His mouth opens and closes twice before he speaks.
“All this time I wondered how you could’ve left me there,” he says, his voice very quiet. “How not a single one of you would’ve rebelled against her decision. How you would have accepted it.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, though I do, the horror of it turning my insides cold. I don’t want to believe it. But I can see the pieces falling into place now, see the story that makes a whole lot more sense than Corvus choosing to abandon us to fight. Corvus, a soldier? He could never even manage pickpocketing without guilt driving him to tears. The words catch in my throat, but I push them out. “Momma forced you to stay on Titan.”
Part of me still desperately hopes that he’ll say no. Because the lie, as much as I hated it, was so much less horrible than the truth.
Instead of speaking, he merely nods.
I let out a shaky breath, unable to muster up words. Maybe I should be happy to learn that my brother didn’t abandon me. Not of his own accord, at least. That should make me feel better. It should fix things between us. Part of me aches to reach out to him, pull him against me, but I can’t bring myself to. The gap between us is still there, only more painful now. The lie might have been what pushed us apart, but the truth isn’t enough to pull us back together. Not after years of hurt. Not when we’ve both become such different people.
Another realization creeps up on me as the silence between us lengthens. I’ve been telling myself that Corvus is strong enough to be the leader we need right now. But instead, he might be broken worse than I am.
“Where do we go from here?” I whisper, raising my eyes to his face again. He’s staring down at the floor, his expression shadowed. “What the hell are we supposed to do?”
He doesn’t answer.
Days pass in a haze of alcohol. I stay as drunk as possible to keep myself from drowning, and spend nearly the whole time in the cockpit to keep us on course. We’re still headed for Gaia, since Corvus hasn’t suggested any better ideas. Matter of fact, he hasn’t spoken to us at all. After our conversation, he became practically catatonic—leaving the rest of us stuck in limbo, waiting for him to get his shit together.
Shortly after Titan, we pass another spacecraft, an unmistakable blip on our radar, and my pulse races. There are only so many ships that could be out here with the borders closed, and we know the Red Baron is around. I hover with my hand over the emergency alarm. But after a tense few minutes, it passes by, and I let out a breath of relief. Thank the stars whoever it is didn’t intend to mess with us, though they’re in for a nasty surprise if they’re headed for Titan.
I wonder how long that alien weapon stays active. Will people ever be able to live there again, or has the planet been permanently ruined? But that trail of thought leads to Momma, and the truth about Corvus’s enlistment, and Pol’s frozen body in the cryosleep chamber, and a whole lot of other things I can’t deal with. Even the sad blue eyes of that soldier I spent the night with still haunt me, and I’ve already forgotten his name.
So I turn back to my bottle.
When the door opens, my head whips up so fast that the cockpit spins around me. There’s a bitter taste in the back of my mouth, and my eyes are filled with grit I can’t blink away. Shit, I must’ve fallen asleep at the wheel. I sit up straight and clear my throat, trying to look as sober as possible as I turn to see which of my siblings has interrupted me.
Lyre stands in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest. My vision is too blurry to make out much of her face in the dim light, but given the stance, I can imagine her familiar frown of disapproval. Just like Momma’s. I grimace, reaching for my bottle, and curse as I find it empty.
“What do you want?” I try to snap, but the words blur together in a mess of drunken syllables, which only makes me angrier. I shouldn’t be angry—this is the first time I’ve spoken to my sister since we left Titan, I realize with a jolt—but I can’t help it. I thought we were all in mutual agreement to be alone. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Early morning, actually,” she says, annoyingly calm in response to my sharp tone. She glances at the fallen bottle and back up at me. “You should have woken me up if you weren’t in a state to fly. I can take the wheel for a shift.”
“I’m in a fucking fine state, thanks.” Despite my words, exhaustion pulls at my eyes and limbs, reminding me that I am due for a rest. I sigh and push myself to my feet.
Once I’m upright I instantly stagger, the room lurching around me. Lyre scoots out of my way without a word. I lean against the dashboard for support and place one shaky foot in front of the other, reminding myself that she’s watching me. But as I move toward the main deck, my boot catches on the slight step, and I stumble and fall hard on one knee.
“Shit,” I mutter, and cover my mouth as bile rises in the back of my throat. I breathe hard through my nose, eyes shut, willing myself not to vomit. Not now, not here. Not in front of Lyre. I must look pathetic.
“Damn it, Scorpia,” Lyre says from behind me. A moment later, her small hand grips my free one. When I open my eyes and look up, she pulls me to my feet with a loud sigh and slips an arm around me. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“Why not?” I ask. “Who’s gonna give a shit?”
She wordlessly nudges me ahead. I step slowly, focusing on my footing, while she stays by my side and takes as much of my weight as she can handle. I frown down at her.
“You’re helping me,” I say, that fact only now reaching me through my drunken stupor. I study her face, but nearly lose my footing as a result, and have to look down at my own boots instead. “Why?”
Again, Lyre doesn’t answer. She pauses in the kitchen—leaving me leaning against the dining table—to fill a metal canteen of water.
“Drink,” she says, pressing it into my hands.
I drink the canteen in three big gulps, and she fills it again before resuming her post under my armpit. Together we make the unsteady trek to my room. The moment she releases me I crumple onto my bunk, stretching out on my back with a long sigh. Lyre sets the water on the shelf beside my bed, and hesitates there, looking down at me.
