Ignite the Stars Read online

  CHAPTER 3

  IA

  THE ROOM WAS a large metal box. Totally bare except for a tubelike holding cell in the middle.

  That was where they kept her. Like an animal in the zoo.

  Ia sat inside, waiting, observing. She didn’t dare touch the walls of her prison. Even a slight zelimeter of contact would knock her out for a whole week. The Star Force used contact shields on all their cells. She’d found this out two years ago when she broke Einn out of a high-level prison. She could still remember the smell of electrified flesh. She’d had to blow up the conductors deep underneath the prison itself so he could break free.

  And now, how was she going to get herself out of this one? Surveillance cameras were mounted in each corner of the room. All Eyes were on her.

  She tilted her head, getting a view of the ceiling and lowered her left eyelid enough to activate the artificial eye mod grafted onto the back of her retina. She had gotten the implant a year ago at a starship colony deep in Dead Space. Deus, was it expensive! She had to sell off her favorite energy gauntlets, but having an eye mod in her arsenal was worth it. It allowed her to make proper measurements and switch to thermal imaging, along with a lot of other fun perks.

  A light vibration fluttered over the surface of her eye as numbers swelled in her vision. She focused on a single point above her, letting the measurements readjust. 10m.

  Too high.

  Even if she was able to climb up there, she would still have to get out of the handcuffs trapping both of her hands. When they’d cuffed her, the first thing she spotted was an escape sensor hidden along the rim of each brace. If she attempted to pull her wrists away from each other, the sensor would trigger a line of metal spurs to shoot down from the palm of each unit, shredding the flesh on her hands. She really didn’t want to get fitted with robotic limbs when this was all over.

  The Commonwealth was taking ridiculous precautions to keep her contained.

  But she would figure it out. Eventually.

  With nothing else to do, she thought about her life before her capture and the people who were important to her. There was Einn, of course. He meant everything to her; she didn’t know how her life would be without him. But she also had a crew of Drifters and deviants who helped her do all the impossible things she set out to do. Like her comms expert, Trace, who was unmatched in decrypting stolen messages and in a totally different league when it came to delivering terrible jokes. And then there was Vetty, her engineer and her second-in-command. It was hard to forget that roguish face, with his strong jaw and dimpled chin, his bright-green eyes and tangle of curly hair. He always made her blush when he looked at her, even months after they had broken up.

  Before she and her crew had parted ways last year, she had ordered them to dock in the Midas Belt just to stay off grid. It was a good decision. After the Uranium War ended in an armistice, the Commonwealth had put all of its war resources into tracking down her and the other Most Wanteds. The risk was too great, and she didn’t want to put her crew in too much danger.

  She’d rip the eye mod out of her socket if it meant she could be with them again.

  A soft whirr echoed throughout the metal room, and a door in the far wall slid open. General Adams stepped inside. Even with the low light, she spotted the brand-new medal—a bloodstained star—pinned on the pocket of his chest.

  General Adams’s voice boomed, echoing against the metal walls. “Who knew that the great I. A. Cōcha would turn out to be a seventeen-year-old girl?”

  Ia sighed. “I did. I knew.” She ignored the scathing look he threw at her and asked, “Who tipped you off to my location?”

  “Why are you so sure we had help?”

  Ia cocked her head in his direction. “Because Bugs aren’t that smart.”

  “The day of your capture, we received a message. Completely untraceable. You must have a lot of enemies, Ms. Cōcha.”

  Her mind flicked through her memories, trying to identify anyone who would betray her. She knew there were people who wanted to hand her in, but they never did. Because if they indeed stabbed her in the back, she would more than likely survive. And when she returned, the first thing she would do was kill them. And it wouldn’t be a clean death. Oh no, it would be dirty, until all she could see was red.

  General Adams turned to a thin wisp of a man standing behind him, dressed in a large, black robe like the Grim Reaper himself. His cloak blended so thoroughly into the shadows of the room that Ia almost hadn’t noticed him.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Adams said.

  The man stepped up, adjusting the laurels around his head. Ia’s eyes widened in recognition.

  Not the Grim Reaper, she realized, but a judge.

  They were going to sentence her. She had been certain they’d televise everything to the masses, from her sentencing all the way up to her execution. But surprisingly, the media and its floating Eyes were nowhere in sight.

  The judge focused on her. “Ms. Ia Cōcha, you are charged with high-level criminal actions against the Commonwealth of Olympus, including theft, smuggling, assault, and first-degree mass murder.”

  She frowned. The Commonwealth always loved listing her “crimes.” Every time they did a news story on her, it was all the same. They vilified her. Sure, she killed people, but those people had killed hundreds before she got her hands on them. It was a bloody, bone-breaking kind of justice, but it was still justice.

  General Adams clasped his hands behind his back. “If it were up to me, you’d get the death penalty. But since you’re a minor, there is now a question of ethics. So Ms. Cōcha, you have a choice.”

  “How charitable,” she muttered.

  The judge continued. “You are being sentenced to 120 years in prison on Moon 42.”

  “You can’t be serious” she blurted out. Moon 42 was a penal colony filled with rapists and sexual deviants. They would tear her apart. She did what she could to stop the shiver of fear inside her.

  “Or”—whatever it was, it had to be better than Moon 42—“you can choose a twenty-year interim with the Royal Star Force of the Olympus Commonwealth, to begin immediately with two years of training.”

  She had been wrong. This option was a hundred times worse.

  “You want me to be a Bug?” Her voice echoed through the metal room. “You destroyed my planet. I lost my home and my mother. Why would I join you?” The RSF had led a war that destroyed civilizations; their greed created chaos. They were everything that was wrong with the universe.

  General Adams leaned in so his eyes reflected the blue of the contact shield between them. “So what is it, Cōcha? Which do you choose?”

  The answer was obvious. “Neither.”

  “I figured you might say that.” The general stepped back, his arms crossed, the index finger of one hand tapping lightly on the Commonwealth quartered shield embroidered onto his sleeve. “I’ll give you more time to think about it.”

  Ia watched as he trotted out of the room, the light jingle of his medals souring her silence.

  The next morning, Ia woke up groggy, her head in a fog like she’d been drugged. But instead of rubbing circles at her temples, she grabbed at her chest. Because the pain there was…Well, the best word for it was memorable.

  It felt like a handful of needles had stabbed her in her heart, a cold chill radiating outward from her left side. And then she felt the squeeze, like someone had made a fist around that tiny muscle in her rib cage. She punched above her breast where her heart would be, lightly at first. And then harder, because the pain was getting worse.

  She fell to her side, her back arching to relieve the pain, but it was still there.

  A full thirty seconds later, she felt her heart pulsate inside her, like a rusty old engine finally sputtering on after several tries.

  “Thank Deus,” she murmured, her body shaking even as she hugged her arms across her chest. After a few breaths, she was back to normal, and her heart felt like her heart again.

&
nbsp; But then, five minutes later, it happened again.

  And again.

  And again.

  It had been a week of torture. There were hours when it didn’t happen at all. Other times, the heart trauma was a tiny blip, brief as fluttering eyelids. But that day, the pain came at her swinging. For one whole minute, her heart stopped, and exactly at the sixty-second mark, it pumped again. Like clockwork. Very unnatural clockwork. She had ten minutes to rest before the cycle restarted. Whatever they had put inside her knew her body’s limits exactly, ebbing Ia to and from death’s grip. It kept her stuck inside a painful, vicious loop, pushing her not only to the brink of death, but also to the brink of insanity.

  Above her, the cameras hummed. They were her only companions. Watching. Always watching as she grew tired, weaker.

  Her heart paused yet again. She coiled into a ball, holding her breath to try to quell her shaking body. No more, she wanted to cry, but when she spoke, the words came out a jumbled mess.

  At the far wall, past her cell, the door opened. Footsteps pinged in staccato toward her, and it was only when he was at the edge of her cell that she saw the general’s face, awash with blue light from the contact shield surrounding her enclosure.

  “What did you do to me?” Her voice was so weak it bled into the hum of the lights above. “An implant?”

  He smiled. “The first of its kind. It can track your location, and as you already know, it can do other things.”

  Her heart’s pause was at forty seconds when she found the energy to roll up on her knees as if in prayer, staring up at the man towering before her. His harsh features, his stitched brow.

  “Kill me,” she pleaded.

  General Adams plucked something out of his inner pocket. A silver oblong orb. He swiped at the orb, and she gasped as her heart twitched back to life again.

  “We’re not going to kill you,” the general said. “That would be too humane.”

  Her voice trembled inside her throat. “What do you want?”

  “The offer still stands, Cōcha. Train at our academy. We can ship you out to Aphelion in a week.”

  He stood, eyes burning into her as he waited for her response. And she hated every second of it. Because she knew she was a trophy to him. Something he had captured to display for all the universe to see. Her body was so weak she could barely hold herself up, but her eyes didn’t waver, still holding on to her defiance. She wouldn’t live as the Commonwealth’s pawn, a weapon to wield at their disposal.

  “I see you need more time to consider,” he said when she had failed to produce an answer. The general tapped on the silver egg-shaped remote in his hand, and the pain began all over again. Ia fell to her side and watched him walk back toward the door, each footstep spanning a lifetime.

  She had no other choice.

  “Wait,” she said so he could hear her. “Wait…”

  CHAPTER 4

  KNIVES

  APHELION’S FLIGHT DECK was busy with activity as everyone readied the grounds for the new cadets, but Knives ignored it all and hurried down the tarmac toward his jet. If he wanted to get a flight in, he needed to do it within the next five minutes—a geomagnetic storm was scheduled to hit later that night.

  A lock of sandy-blond hair fell over his eyes, but he paid it no mind, barely looking up as engineers in orange suits scurried around him, fixing up the refurb training jets. No one wanted the new batch of cadets to die while training on their first day.

  “Flight master,” Headmaster Bastian Weathers called out. “A word, please.”

  At nineteen, Knives was the youngest flight master in RSF history. It wasn’t a position he’d wanted straight out of the academy, but after suddenly turning down a high-ranking spot on his first colonization campaign days before its launch, he was grateful to have a job at all.

  Knives turned to face the headmaster, once his teacher, now his boss. He was probably there to lecture Knives about how to encourage the new cadets. Let them grow, Bastian had already told him. A thousand times over and over, like a sputtering radio unit.

  “We need to talk about tomorrow.”

  “I know you’re worried since it’ll be my first day on the job, but seriously, Bastian, it’ll be fine,” Knives murmured as he continued toward the prep track. Above him, his 504 Kaiken hung in the rafters. With its long, sleek frame, the jet was a milestone in aerodynamic engineering. Fifteen years ago, they were used as racers. Now, they were obsolete. But even so, the metal beast was fast. He knew his father could have bought him a new model, fresh off the assembly line, but the Kaiken was the first thing he’d purchased himself. Who cared that he still had two years worth of payments left?

  Knives pressed a few buttons on the console next to him, triggering the holding track to lower his jet for prep.

  Bastian was still behind him. “I must warn you. This class will be unique. Since the broadcast, the number of applicants has soared.”

  Everyone knew what “the broadcast” meant. It was a historic event, a day the entire universe stood still just to watch I. A. Cōcha unmasked and captured. It made everyone want to be a hero.

  “There are more of them this year. So what? Not all of them are going to last.” Knives wasn’t going to go easy on them. He was going to work the new cadets until they ran home, crying to their parents. Until they had nightmares of him. Because he knew what they all wanted to eventually become. A general. Like his father. He felt pity for them, that their dreams weren’t their own.

  If Knives applied himself, perhaps he could be as good as his father, but what was the point? His sister had tried, and as much as he wanted to, he’d never forget what happened to her.

  “It’s more than that,” Bastian said. “I’ve received word of a late registrant. A celebrity of sorts.”

  “Please tell me it’s Kinna Downton.” It was a joke, but who was he kidding…Of course, he wished Kinna Downton, the famous and beautiful stream star, was a prospective cadet.

  Bastian rolled his eyes. “No, it’s not.”

  “Then I don’t care.” Knives tapped at his holowatch, initiating a program to warm up the engine of his jet. He’d be spacebound in two minutes, if Bastian would ever stop talking.

  “She’s a high-security registrant. Goes by many names. The Rogue of the Fringe. The Sovereign of Dead Space. The Hunter throughout the Wasteland. The Blood Wolf of the Skies…”

  Knives rolled a ladder up to his jet, ready to get into the cockpit. “Who?”

  “The one and only Ia Cōcha.” Bastian pronounced every syllable. Loud and clear.

  Knives stopped in his place. “Oh.”

  Bastian raised his hands. “I know. I know. You’re wondering what on Ancient Earth a high-level criminal is doing at the academy.”

  Knives shrugged. “Even if she’s a criminal, Ia Cōcha is one of the best pilots of our generation. What’s left to teach?”

  “You’re not going to teach her. You’re going to try your best to keep her on a leash. General Adams specifically made this request.”

  Knives clenched his fist. Of course this was his father’s idea. He was always trying to test him, make him rise to the miffing occasion.

  “Tell the general that I politely decline. This is a Star Force issue.” He had told his father that while he was at Aphelion, he had absolutely no interest in getting involved with anything outside the academy. But his father never listened.

  “No, Knives. She will be at the academy, so this is our issue. Do you understand?”

  Knives stiffened at Bastian’s tense tone. “Yes. I do.”

  Bastian nodded in approval and handed him a silver remote, shaped like a tiny egg. Knives looked it over, feeling the weight in his palm and the chill of the metal against his skin.

  “What’s this?”

  “The leash,” Bastian answered, and he turned to walk away.

  Knives looked back down at his holowatch and checked the time.

  “Mif.” He sighed.

  He needed
to be in the sky fifty-six seconds ago. He glanced out the opening of the flight deck and stared at the purpling night. A trail of shimmering green light snaked across the sky. The geomagnetic storm. If he flew through that, his jet would be fried.

  Now stranded, he looked back down at the silver remote in his hand and made a fist. It felt like a bomb, ready to go off and ruin his entire year.

  CHAPTER 5

  IA

  IA WAS ON A SHIP TO APHELION. Even among the Dead Spacers and criminals, Aphelion was famous. Everyone knew that it was Olympus’s first Star Force Academy, responsible for training some of the RSF’s most celebrated captains and generals.

  Its location was one of their most guarded secrets. Ia had discovered that not even the Commonwealth’s own Citizens knew, right after she had tortured one of them for information and got nothing. She couldn’t even find a name of a star system to point her in the right direction.

  With her hands still bound, Ia was harnessed inside a storage cage, now a makeshift prison cell for the duration of the trip. There were no windows within her viewpoint. All she saw was the general glaring at her from across the bars of her door, the sound of his breathing whistling against the thrum of the ship.

  “We’re here.” The general’s sudden announcement broke the silence, which gave her a start. She was still on edge from being pushed to the brink of death every fifteen minutes while she was imprisoned. Her head wasn’t running on all thrusters. And her face was another problem, she realized when she finally found herself in front of a mirror before their journey. The pain from the forced heart tremors was so immense the blood vessels had ruptured in both her eyes. Even now, they were still red where the whites should be. She was miffing scary to look at, but not in a way she was proud of.

  She felt her feet pitch underneath her and noticed they were descending.

  Two days of travel. And finally, they had landed. Somewhere.

  The fact that they traveled for so long meant that Aphelion was far from the Commonwealth’s most populated centers. That was the only clue she had, and it told her nothing. They could be anywhere.