Heart of Iron

  But this one was empty.

  After a few quick keystrokes, the scanner flickered blue, trying to pull data. He waited, folding his arms over his chest, for the computer to read the cube—if it could. The algorithms could be too complicated for this piece of junk console.

  After a moment, he gave a sigh. It was worth a try—

  Data ignited across the wall-size monitor in zeroes and ones, so suddenly Robb jumped back. Memories, made with numbers. Ana’s entire life with D09 in these jumbled sets of digits.

  He glanced at the small cube. A light inside it pulsed gently, like a distant star.

  With shaking fingers he keyed in the command to copy the data to the humanoid Metal.

  “Uploading data,” the computer relayed. “In three, two, o—”

  A thunderous boom ricocheted through the ship, pulling the Dossier out of traveling speed. Robb pitched forward with the sudden stop as the screen crashed to black, red emergency lights blinking on in the corners of the room.

  And he knew without a doubt it was his mother come to find her lost son.

  Ana

  Ana bolted upright in bed.

  An explosion thundered through the ship, the lights flickering, dimming to a terrifying emergency red. The rattle was so fierce, it shook the empty glasses off the community table. Riggs’s leg, propped up next to his bed, fell over. From the highest shelf, D09’s favorite book clattered to the floor. It lay there, open to a bookmarked page about medicine and scar tissue. She quickly jumped out of bed to close it and put it back. The other crew members crawled out of their bunks, rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

  “What’s it?” Riggs muttered, as Wick pulled him out of bed and handed over his mechanical leg.

  “An attack,” replied the Cercian.

  The sails quivered with the extra weight, rattling the ship.

  Still in her crumpled clothes from yesterday, Ana ran for the cockpit, her hand skimming along the wall for balance.

  Lenda stumbled out after her, hopping into her boots. “We’re in protected space!” she cried, short blond hair sticking straight up in a cowlick. “Who’s shooting at us? Is it the Messiers? The Royal Guard? Should we suit up?”

  For a brief, terrifying moment, Ana thought it was the Tsarina come back to finish her off, even though it had crashed into Palavar hours ago. It couldn’t be the malware—Di had destroyed it. The memory was burned into her retinas every time she closed her eyes.

  The ship jolted again, and threw her against the wall. A shuddering rumble followed, and the sound of an air-vac, sharp like an inhale somewhere belowdecks, sucking a breach in the ship secure again.

  She made it to the cockpit, where Jax sat with a map of the cosmos lit up around him. Wick, tucking in the tail of his shirt, slid into his comms station, trying to decode the message blasting across their feed.

  “Jax, report,” ordered the captain as she stormed into the cockpit, sliding into her bloodred frock coat. She put a steady hand on the back of the pilot chair.

  “Two klicks and closing, sir. It’s an Armada, class seven.” An Ironblood ship. “Faster than it looks and heading straight for us.”

  “Can’t we outrun them?”

  “Right sail’s punctured, putting strain on the left, so I can’t steer worth shit—damn it,” he cursed as another missile tore through the same sail. Warning lights glowed red against his determined face. “I didn’t even see the ship before they attacked. No warning, no nothing—”

  Another explosion rattled the Dossier, so close to the cockpit it threw Ana off her feet. Her shoulder slammed into the floor. A shower of sparks spewed from one of the control panels. Wick yelped, shielding his face.

  The cockpit plunged into darkness before flickering back to life with emergency power.

  “Captain!” Jax righted himself in his chair again. “Captain!”

  Dizzy, Ana scrambled over to the captain lying on the floor a few feet away, grabbing a fistful of Siege’s coat to roll her onto her back. A nasty gash bled down her forehead, soaking into her black hair. Talle, bracing herself in the doorway, rushed over to her wife and pressed the back of her hand against Siege’s mouth.

  “Breathing,” Talle said in relief.

  “Good. Ana, get in a seat,” Jax instructed. “We’re in for a bumpy—”

  Another blast hit somewhere starboard. More warning lights. Emergency lights.

  Wick gave a shout. “Message incoming! It’s—” His eyebrows furrowed, and he turned around in his chair to face Ana. “Toriean el agh Lothorne.”

  Even as the ship blared its warning sirens, a silence sank over the cockpit. They had all heard the phrase before. Seen it carved on the hulls of derelict ships and on the foreheads of unfortunately spaced men.

  The Valerio motto.

  “They’re asking permission to board,” Wick added.

  “Let me guess,” Jax growled. “On the condition of our surrender.”

  “Yeah,” replied Wick.

  Riggs slammed his metal foot into the side of the ship with a sharp ping. Another line in the solar sails snapped off, leaving them barely able to coast.

  “Right sail down,” reported Jax. “Left’s at forty percent—we’re sinking. Fast.”

  “What do we do?” Talle asked, kneeling to put Siege’s head on her lap. Her fingers were curled around the captain’s coat collar protectively. “I can’t get her to wake up.”

  Riggs was shaking his head. “We have to escape! We don’t surrender to Valerio ships. In fifty years, I never have!”

  “How?” Wick shifted nervously. “We’re sitting ducks, Riggs.”

  “I knew that Valerio kid was bad luck. Barger did too!” Lenda raged, slamming her fist against the doorway she had braced herself against.

  Ana couldn’t take all the noise. Her chest was tightening, making it hard to breathe—the cockpit narrowing, walls squeezing together—

  “We gotta outrun them.”

  Jax scowled at Riggs. “You wanna drive? I’ll let you—”

  Lenda argued, “We should fire back!”

  “Against that ship? Good luck hitting it—”

  “Stop arguing!” Ana shouted, and the cockpit plunged into silence.

  Di would’ve known what to do. He would’ve calculated the odds and figured out how to—to what? Escape? Keep them alive? But Di was dead, and it was her fault. All this was her fault.

  And now the rest of the crew was going to die.

  “We have to accept the terms,” she heard herself say, voice wavering. “We don’t have a choice.”

  Because there was no way to escape. Because if they tried, they would die. The crew of the Dossier had been through enough chases and firefights to know the endgame. They knew the story of a ship with a punctured sail in the middle of open space. They’d seen it happen to others before.

  Ana had never thought the Dossier would become one of those ships. And it was all her fault.

  “We don’t have a choice,” she repeated, her voice tight. “I don’t want anyone else to die.”

  Wick leaned forward in his chair and radioed in their surrender. Jax eased the Dossier to a stop and sat back, releasing the controls, as the screens in front of him dimmed, showing their coordinates. There were no more explosions, no more noise, except for the Valerio creed that echoed in Ana’s ears like a siren.

  Even though she didn’t know the Old Language, she knew the words.

  Toriean el agh Lothorne.

  Glory in the Pursuit.

  Jax

  Valerio guards swarmed the Dossier in a sea of crimson.

  It would’ve been nice to have seen this in Robb’s stars, Jax thought bitterly, raising his hands to show that he was unarmed.

  A burly woman yanked him out of his seat and stuck a gun against his back anyway. Another took Ana by her braid, pulled Siege up by her coat. Their captors bound the crews’ hands behind their backs with strong wire and led them back to the cargo bay.

  Goddess, when he go
t his hands on that slimy little shit-stain of Valerio spacetrash, he’d—

  The guard forced him to his knees in the cargo bay beside Wick, then Lenda, the sting of his kneecaps hitting the floor sending a hiss through his teeth.

  On the other side, a guard shoved Ana down beside him. Her face was blank, as if she’d already given up. She’d given up the moment Siege brought her back to the Dossier. He had told Di to prepare her—hadn’t he? But now there was a sinking suspicion in his gut, like a bird falling from the sky, that things were about to get a whole world worse.

  The decompression chamber sighed, and the air lock slid open to reveal a woman whose boots struck the floor like swords, making the guards stand straighter at attention.

  Tall and thin, with olive skin and graying brown hair swept into a bun, cheekbones so sharp they could cut ice. She wore a finely detailed coat and trousers, a Valerio crest pinned above her heart. She appraised the small crew with shrewd blue eyes—he knew that color. He knew it achingly well. The color of Erosian skies.

  This nightmare of a woman must be Robb’s mother.

  Jax had never felt such vitriol for anyone before.

  “And where is the captain?” asked Lady Valerio.

  “Here, milady,” replied the commander as two men dragged the captain into view. Siege’s head lolled against her chest, unconscious. The gash on her forehead smeared blood down half her face, lipstick smudged. Jax couldn’t remember a time her unruly hair hadn’t glowed.

  “This is the frightful Captain Siege?” the Valerio woman asked with a sneer. “I would have expected someone a little more . . . frightening. And what a dreary little crew. Smaller than I would have suspected. And young.” Her icy eyes rested on him. “And what do we have here, a star-kisser? What is his charming little name?”

  Jax pressed his lips together. Swallowed. He couldn’t lie—he couldn’t lie.

  “Well?”

  Wick and Lenda leaned forward protectively. Wick snarled, “You don’t deserve to know it, knrachne.”

  Jax wasn’t sure what knrachne meant, but he had a feeling it was one of those names you didn’t want to call anyone—or be called.

  The woman’s stone facade flickered—like a candle—with anger. Jax could see it resting behind her marble eyes, dangerous and explosive. Her deep-red lips had begun to form into words when a thin voice interrupted her from the infirmary.

  “Mother.” Robb pushed through a line of guards, tripping on one of their shoes. Despite himself, Jax tried to rise to his feet to catch the Ironblood—but stopped himself. Foolish. He doesn’t care about you.

  The flicker of anger beneath Lady Valerio’s gaze dissolved as she turned to her son. “Robbert, my dear. It’s wonderful to see you alive.”

  He stood straight, lips pressed into a thin line. “Of course I’m alive.”

  “You were kidnapped, my sweet. I was worried.”

  “I wasn’t kidnapped—”

  “And you can gladly have him back. You have no cause to keep us,” Jax snapped before he could bite his tongue. “We’re in protected space. You have no right to be on this ship.”

  The woman’s eyes flicked to him. “I have every right. Who will tell me no?”

  “I just did” was Jax’s shrewd reply.

  So the woman took Siege’s pistol out of its holster and fired a bullet into one of her own guards’ knees. The guard gave a shriek, collapsing to the floor, before two others dragged him back to the other ship, leaving a smeared trail of blood.

  “It seems, dear Solani,” Lady Valerio said coolly, “that you attacked first. Therefore, I boarded your ship.”

  She cocked Siege’s pistol again and aimed for his head.

  He barely had time to blink before she pulled the trigger, and Wick shoved him to the floor.

  Ana

  Gunshot was louder on the Dossier—or maybe it was the silence after that made it so loud.

  Wick looked at the hole in his chest and gave a gurgle—wet and gasping. Ana could only watch in horror, her hands bound behind her, as the man who’d taught her how to clean a pistol and speak Cercian, and darn her own socks, slumped onto the floor and went still.

  The air stank of gunpowder and iron. It suffocated her.

  “Seems you pirates do have honor after all,” Lady Valerio said, amused, and handed Siege’s gun to one of her henchmen to reload. As if she couldn’t care to load her own bullets, while the captain had taught Ana to count each one.

  Remember where they land.

  “You killed him,” Ana heard herself saying, her voice calmer than she expected. “You killed him!”

  The shock that quivered and quaked inside her began to turn, coiling into bitterness, tightening, until it was hot and angry. She glared up through wet lashes and found herself gazing down the barrel of the woman’s pistol.

  “You’ll be next if you don’t hush up. Do you even know who you’re speaking to?” asked Lady Valerio.

  “A dead woman,” Ana growled in reply.

  The lady’s expression shifted—just slightly—but it was there. The twitch of an eyebrow. Ana knew she’d struck a nerve. “Robbert, who is she? She looks familiar—wait. Isn’t she the assassin? I seem to recall a Metal as well. Where is it?”

  “Smashed, Mother,” Robb replied, his voice tight. “The body is in the infirmary.”

  His mother looked to a guard for confirmation. Lady Valerio didn’t even trust her own son?

  “He’s correct, milady. There’s a Metal on the ground and two body bags—one on the gurney.”

  “What a pity,” said the woman. “Dead crewmates, a smashed Metal . . . did you outlaws run into trouble?”

  When no one answered, her lips twisted with impatience.

  “Robbert, pray tell, what did they come all the way out here to find?”

  He pursed his lips. Ana didn’t think he had it in him to be quiet—the spineless piece of spacetrash he was.

  But he didn’t answer—and neither did anyone else. The woman snapped her fingers. In two steps the Valerio commander had taken Lenda by her hair and forced her head back, pressing a blade to her neck.

  “It was the Tsarina!” Ana said, her voice quivering with thinly veiled rage. Lady Valerio raised a single sharp eyebrow and motioned for her commander to lower her weapon. “We—we were looking for the fleetship. We wanted to loot it. You know us outlaws.”

  “Yes, I’m well aware. And I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  Lady Valerio waved a hand dismissively at Ana, her diamond rings glinting in the halogen lights. “Robbert, take your newfound friend here to one of the holding cells on the ship. We have a reward to collect, and she will do.”

  Talle rose to her feet. “Don’t you dare take her—” The Valerio commander slammed the hilt of her blade into Talle’s gut, and she slumped to the floor again.

  Robbert Valerio came and tok Ana by the arm.

  He was perfectly careful to keep his face impassive—as though he wore a mask. Or maybe his expressions before had been the mask, and this was the real monster underneath.

  All Ironbloods were monsters—she didn’t know why she ever thought one could be different.

  “Don’t make this difficult,” he warned her, pulling her away from her crew.

  Ana looked back at Jax, Talle, Lenda—but all she could see was Di the moment before he died. She had heard the stories of what happened to outlaws, to the forgotten and the unwanted and the broken. They didn’t matter in this kingdom.

  They didn’t exist.

  “Take the star-kisser too. Question him about the Tsarina. The Solani will break if he’s left in the dark long enough. Do what you want with the rest of them,” Lady Valerio ordered her commander.

  “You can’t do that!” Ana cried. “We surrendered!”

  “My girl”—the Ironblood woman shook her head—“we are not pirates. We don’t follow rules.”

  Then she waved Robb away with a flick of her wrist.
br />   Ana bucked against him as he dragged her into the air lock, where an elaborate starwalk, like a long tube, stretched the ten feet from the Dossier to the Valerio ship. The starwalk groaned as they entered. She jerked against him, fighting, and with every movement his fingers dug deeper into her skin. In the air lock on the other side, two Valerio guards waited with drawn Metroids.

  If Robb dragged her onto that ship, she would never escape.

  Gritting her teeth, she grabbed her left thumb, and pulled—she pulled so hard it popped out of joint. She bit her tongue so she wouldn’t cry as she tore her hand out of the wire binding, skin scraping away.

  Robb’s mouth fell open. Never underestimate an outlaw.

  She reared her fist back and took a swing at him. He ducked, caught her bloody wrist, and twisted it painfully behind her.

  “You punch like my brother,” he said against her ear, squeezing her arm so tight she couldn’t move. “Please don’t make this harder than it is. I don’t want to hurt you—”

  She thrashed against him, getting her hand free of his grip, and grabbed at his side where his stitches were. He let out a painful gasp—and that only made her curl her fingers into the wound, squeezing harder, until blood soaked the shirt Jax had lent him.

  “Great Dark take you, you son of a b—”

  Something cool and sharp pricked against her neck, and a lazy honey feeling washed over her, numbing her into darkness.

  III

  Iron Blood

  Robb

  His mother’s ship, the Caterina, sailed as silent as it was swift, thrusters spitting white-hot sparks that left trails of light behind them. The ship sped through the expanse between Cerces and Eros, toward the Iron Palace on Eros’s third moon, Luna. It was a straight shot, thanks to the Holy Conjunction—the alignment of the planets. A journey that, the last time he’d traveled it, had taken the better part of a week; they’d now arrive in less than a day.

  As he left the Caterina’s medical ward, he popped two painkillers into his mouth. They tasted like chalk but gave him a nice, dull buzz so he didn’t have to think much. Not about the Dossier now controlled by Valerio men, or that humanoid Metal he hid in a body bag after he failed to upload Di, or Jax captured by his mother, Ana down in the holding cells, or how it was his fault that—