CHAPTER FIVE
"Ilyan Corven. Radian, launching." The words left my mouth before they felt like mine, the magnetic locks beneath Radian released, and Black Star threw us through the containment field into open space.
The launch acceleration hit before I had time to admire anything. My shoulders slammed into the seat, the harness cinched across my already-bruised ribs, and every bit of air in my lungs seemed to flatten against my spine while Bay Three dropped away behind me. Black Star filled almost the entire rear sensor field, six hundred meters of unfinished armor, radiator vanes, exposed construction sections, engine housings, navigation lights, and wounds from Federation fire. Beyond it hung Earth, blue and white and impossibly calm. Caelum was farther off, reduced to lights and geometry against the dark. Then Radian's tactical system populated the rest of the world with moving markers, range figures, projected vectors, heat signatures, and warning brackets, and whatever beauty had been waiting outside the hangar disappeared beneath the fact that some of those lights were trying to shoot me.
"Breathe, Corven." Niko's voice snapped into my headset while pressure continued crushing my chest. "Don't hold it. Short inhale, force it out, brace your abdomen and keep your head against the rest. Your machine can tolerate more acceleration than your body can, and Radian does not care which one of you passes out first."
"I am breathing." I forced air through clenched teeth and immediately tasted blood from where I had bitten the inside of my cheek during the last impact aboard Black Star. My vision had already started narrowing at the edges, and the biometric display beside the tactical sphere was apparently concerned enough to turn amber. "I just don't particularly enjoy it."
"You don't need to enjoy it. You need to remain conscious." Something clattered loudly on Niko's end before he continued. "Ease off the launch thrust in three, two—now."
I released pressure on the controls and Radian's main thrusters cut. The crushing force vanished so abruptly that my stomach seemed to rise into my chest, but the Frame didn't stop. Black Star continued sliding backward across the cameras while Radian coasted along the vector the launch cradle had given us. Of course it did. I understood momentum. I had spent enough time correcting Rafi about spaceflight to be embarrassed that some part of me had expected the machine to behave like stopping my feet on a floor.
A white Federation Frame crossed the upper edge of my visual field. Radian's sensors found it before I consciously looked, expanding a small window showing a broad-shouldered combat machine with dark blue identification markings, a physical shield along its left forearm and a long particle rifle braced in its right hand. The tactical system surrounded it in red and displayed HOSTILE — 3.1 KM, which annoyed me immediately because hostile sounded much more certain than I felt about the person inside it.
"Contact high right," Kaia said over another channel, her voice rough and breathless enough that I remembered Vesper was flying with half a leg missing. Her battered Frame appeared near Black Star's stern, thin and charcoal-dark against the construction lights, one articulated thruster spar gone and the left arm hanging with intermittent control. She was still moving faster than anyone else around the carrier. "Corven, stop staring at it like you're waiting for an introduction. It's lining up a shot."
The Federation Frame fired.
I saw the weapon brighten, saw the energy discharge, and moved before I consciously decided how. My right hand shifted, my foot pressed into the control, and Radian dumped output through its hip, shoulder, and calf thrusters all at once. The machine snapped sideways and rolled beneath the particle shot with such violent obedience that for half a second I felt brilliant. Then blood rushed out of my head, the harness drove into my ribs, and darkness squeezed inward around my vision until the only thing I could see clearly was the red target marker rotating through the center of the cockpit.
"Cut thrust!" Niko shouted while alarms began complaining about acceleration load. "Corven, cut it now."
I released everything. Radian continued drifting and rotating because space remained stubbornly committed to physics. I blinked hard until the blackness receded, and something warm ran from my nose to my upper lip. When I wiped it with the back of my hand, blood streaked across my skin.
Kaia gave a breathless laugh over comms. "You just spent four percent reserve dodging one shot."
I looked at Radian's status and felt personally insulted by the number. PARTICLE RESERVE: 90%. "I moved."
"You panicked with style." Vesper rolled beneath a Federation attack near Black Star, using one short pulse from its surviving upper thruster and another from the right hip to let the shot pass without wasting momentum. Even damaged, her movements were cleaner than mine. "Stop holding thrust every time something scares you. Pulse it, keep the vector, correct only what you need."
"I know how momentum works."
"You just demonstrated that you know how to spend particle energy."
The Federation pilot fired again before I could answer. This time I waited long enough to understand where the shot was actually going, gave Radian a short lateral burst, and watched the particle bolt pass less than fifty meters from the left shoulder. No blackout. No crushing pressure. The reserve readout barely changed. Satisfaction lasted until the pilot fired a second shot into the position my dodge was carrying me toward.
I raised Radian's left arm on instinct, expecting a shield that wasn't there.
The particle bolt clipped the shoulder.
White light erased the left side of my vision and the cockpit slammed sideways hard enough that my teeth hit together. The harness caught me across the ribs, pain flashed through my chest, and Radian spun while half a dozen warnings opened across the displays. The shot hadn't penetrated deeply, but a section of unfinished shoulder armor was gone, one external camera had died, and thermal readings were climbing around the damaged plate.
"Ilyan, report." Niko sounded closer now, the irritation gone beneath something sharper.
"I got hit."
"I possess sensors. Tell me what broke."
I forced myself to stop watching the Federation Frame and actually read the status. "Outer left shoulder plate, one secondary camera, minor heat rise. Arm still moves."
"Good. And you?"
I swallowed blood from my nose. "Also still moving."
"That wasn't the question."
The Federation Frame accelerated toward me before I could answer. It didn't fly like I did. That was obvious almost immediately. I moved beautifully whenever my body and Radian happened to agree on the same idea, but every correction I made existed by itself. The Federation pilot was building one movement into the next. A shot forced me left, their thrust carried them right, and by the time I realized I had dodged, they had already taken the space I had abandoned and pushed me farther from Black Star.
"They're herding you," Kaia said while Vesper flashed across my rear sensors, firing her coil carbine into a different Frame's shield. The impact broke fragments of ablative plating away, but she didn't stay to watch them. "Stop reacting to the weapon. Watch the machine."
"I generally react when someone fires a particle rifle at my head."
"That's why you're exactly where they want you." Kaia's damaged Frame disappeared beneath Black Star's after structure, then reappeared on the other side with a Federation machine chasing her. "Make the pilot react to you."
That sounded useful while explaining almost nothing. I raised Radian's right arm and reached for a particle rifle that wasn't there, remembered the weapon rack outside Bay Three, then nearly swore aloud. Niko put a guidance marker across the sensor field before I asked.
"Equipment rack on your seven. Prototype rifle is still on the exterior arm. Rotate forty degrees, small correction, and please try not to black yourself out retrieving it."
"I wasn't going to."
"I've known you for less than ten minutes and that sentence has already lost value."
I rotated Radian more carefully and found the rack attached outside the launch bay. The prototype rifle was longer than Radian was tall from the waist up, pale armor casing interrupted by exposed calibration housings and temporary black markings. I brought the Frame close, reached out, and closed the hand almost a meter short.
Niko was silent for exactly long enough to make it worse. "Excellent. Terrifyingly gifted at controlling a machine, defeated by picking something up."
"I misjudged the distance." I corrected more slowly and wrapped Radian's fingers around the weapon. The rifle linked automatically, filling one side of the display with output limits, heat data, and a particularly offensive CALIBRATION: 82% warning.
"Before you complain, remember you're flying an unfinished prototype stolen during a firefight," Niko said while the rack retracted toward Black Star. "We're all making compromises tonight."
The Federation Frame came around for another pass. I had a weapon now, which created an immediate and unpleasant realization: I had no idea how to use it against a moving person. The target system solved range, relative velocity, likely maneuver choices, and firing windows, but it couldn't tell me what the person inside would decide after I pulled the trigger.
I aimed at the rifle in their hand.
The reticle tried to migrate toward the torso.
I moved it back.
"Corven, don't fixate on the weapon," Kaia warned. "If they commit, shoot center mass."
"I'm not shooting the cockpit."
"Then don't miss whatever you choose instead."
The Federation pilot fired first. I gave Radian one short burst, let the bolt pass, and fired back. My particle shot crossed the distance in a bright streak and missed the Frame by enough that I immediately understood why Niko had told me to lead the target.
"Moving targets continue moving," he said dryly.
"I know that."
"Your shot disagreed."
The Federation pilot fired again. I rolled through the attack, felt the harness bite my shoulder, then stopped accelerating and let Radian's momentum carry us through the rotation. The enemy expected another correction. I saw it in the angle of their rifle and suddenly understood where they intended to fire before they did.
I didn't dodge.
Not yet.
The weapon brightened.
I waited another fraction of a second, pulsed one hip thruster, and let the shot cross ahead of me. The Federation pilot was still committed to the firing posture when I brought Radian's rifle around.
I didn't aim where their weapon was.
I aimed where the arm had to move.
I pulled the trigger.
The shot struck the Federation rifle near its forward emitter. Light burst across the weapon, the casing split open, and pieces of the barrel spun away glowing white at their edges. The pilot released the ruined rifle immediately before its overloaded particle feed could damage the hand, and the broken weapon tumbled between us in a cloud of metal fragments and cooling vapor.
"I got it." I couldn't stop the grin that came with the words.
Kaia's response was almost gentle by comparison. "Good. Now make distance."
I didn't because I thought the fight was over.
The Federation Frame drifted without a rifle. Its shield remained raised, but it had no ranged weapon pointed at me and no reason to continue. I opened local comms while keeping Radian between it and Black Star. "Federation Frame, your primary weapon is destroyed. Break away from the carrier and I won't pursue you."
Static filled the channel.
The Frame turned slightly.
Relief began somewhere beneath my ribs.
Then a compartment along its hip opened.
A dark orange particle blade unfolded into its remaining hand.
"You have got to be kidding me." I stared at the weapon.
Kaia laughed despite sounding like every breath hurt. "They brought weapons to a battle. It's inconsiderate."
"I destroyed the rifle."
"They noticed."
The Federation pilot accelerated directly toward me.
I fired. Their shield came up at an angle rather than flat, and the particle bolt struck the ablative surface, burning a crater through the upper layer while the slope threw the worst of the energy away. The Frame kept coming. I fired again and missed when the pilot rolled behind the damaged shield.
Then they were inside a hundred meters.
The blade came across.
I twisted Radian's torso.
Metal screamed through the entire machine as the edge scraped across our left forearm instead of the chest. The vibration reached me through the seat and controls, not painful in the same way as acceleration but violent enough that I felt it in my jaw. The enemy passed close, fired hip thrusters to rotate, and came back before I had finished turning.
This time I caught the weapon wrist.
Radian's right hand locked around the Federation Frame's forearm while my left grabbed its rifleless arm. The two machines collided chest to shoulder, armor striking armor hard enough that both of us began rotating around the new shared center of mass.
The Federation pilot understood that immediately.
I didn't.
They fired one rear thruster and twisted their hips, using our connected mass to swing Radian around instead of trying to overpower me directly. The cockpit hammered sideways, my left shoulder hit the restraint, and a tearing pain ran down the upper arm.
"Don't fight the spin," Niko shouted while my vision grayed. "You're multiplying it."
"I noticed!"
I knew where both Frames were.
That was the strange part.
No disorientation. No confusion about which way Radian faced or where the Federation machine's limbs were around us. The information arrived in my head with the certainty of knowing my own knees were bent.
I fired Radian's opposite hip thruster.
The shared rotation slowed.
Then reversed.
The Federation pilot hesitated.
That was enough.
I drove Radian's knee into the underside of their torso.
There was no floor to push against, so the hit threw both machines apart instead of leaving one standing triumphantly over the other. Radian spun backward while the Federation Frame tumbled in the opposite direction, its shield tearing free and rotating away between us.
The impact crushed me into the harness.
I felt something pull sharply along my ribs and screamed before I could stop myself.
Niko swore. "You don't have the body for this."
"I have the Frame."
"Those are not interchangeable things, Corven."
The Federation machine stabilized first because its pilot knew what they were doing. I recovered half a second later because Radian seemed to understand what I wanted before I fully gave the command. I aimed at the exposed shoulder thruster.
The enemy moved.
I followed.
Pulled the trigger.
The shot struck the maneuvering pack.
Armor burst away. One thruster housing vanished inside a white flash, fragments spinning outward while a thin plume of coolant escaped from the torn shoulder. The Federation Frame began rotating uncontrollably before the pilot caught the spin using the opposite hip and calf systems.
They stopped advancing.
I stared at them, chest heaving.
This was the answer.
Weapon gone.
Shield gone.
One thruster gone.
Still alive.
"Go." I opened the local channel again, lowering Radian's rifle slightly. "I'm not following you. Just leave."
The pilot hesitated.
Then turned.
Their surviving thrusters fired carefully and carried the damaged Frame back toward the Federation line.
Relief hit harder than the launch acceleration.
I had done it.
I had actually done it.
"There." I watched the range increase. "That's all I have to do."
Kaia didn't answer immediately. Vesper moved across my tactical display with its missing lower leg tucked close to the body, using tiny bursts to compensate for the ruined mass balance. "Don't build a philosophy out of one pilot choosing to live."
"I didn't kill them."
"I noticed."
"And they left."
"They decided the objective wasn't worth dying for." Her voice hardened. "Those aren't the same thing."
Ballistic rounds struck Radian's back before I could answer.
The first two flattened against armor and transmitted brutal metallic shocks through the Frame. The third hit near the right hip hard enough to twist us.
I reacted too strongly.
Thrusters fired.
My vision tunneled.
"Breathe!" Niko shouted while another red marker appeared less than a kilometer behind me. "Second contact. Closer, faster, and unlike your last friend this one has already been fighting."
I forced a breath out and rotated.
The new Federation Frame carried scorch marks across its torso and had lost part of the armor over one lower leg. Ballistic ports were built into the left forearm. A particle rifle occupied the right hand, and a compact physical blade sat folded beneath the opposite wrist.
The pilot fired before Radian completed the turn.
I moved.
The next minute stopped existing in a clean order.
A particle shot passed above Radian's head. Ballistic rounds hammered our thigh. I fired and missed. The enemy rolled beneath my next shot, used the turn to accelerate toward Black Star, then fired backward at me without changing its main vector. I chased and held thrust too long, dropped reserve, corrected, nearly blacked out, released, coasted, fired again.
Somewhere beneath all the noise, I realized the pilot wasn't trying to destroy Radian.
They were trying to get around me.
Every attack pushed me away from Black Star. Every retreat angled back toward its stern.
"They want radiator three." The conclusion appeared before the tactical system marked the projected route. Black Star's damaged radiator vane glowed along one side of the carrier, already partially folded after the earlier strike.
Niko brought up a structural diagram. "If they destroy the control root, Black Star loses another major heat-rejection path."
"How bad is that?"
"At current drive load? Bad enough that Mara begins choosing which systems we're willing to cook."
The Federation Frame accelerated.
I crossed its path.
The pilot fired.
I fired first.
My particle bolt hit their rifle near the center housing.
The weapon ruptured in their hand.
The Frame immediately discarded it.
For half a second I felt the same relief as before.
Then the forearm blade unfolded.
Of course it did.
The pilot came straight at me.
I raised Radian's rifle to block and immediately learned why rifles weren't shields. The physical blade struck near the barrel housing and tore the weapon out of Radian's hand. It spun away while the Federation pilot used the opening to drive their shoulder into our chest.
The cockpit became violence.
My ribs compressed beneath the harness. My head snapped backward. The taste of blood flooded my mouth again. Radian and the enemy machine tumbled together while their blade dragged down our unfinished chest armor, carving through primer-white plating and throwing molten fragments into space.
I caught the weapon wrist with Radian's left hand.
The enemy hit me with the opposite forearm.
My head struck the rest again.
Stars flashed behind my eyes that had nothing to do with the ones outside.
I grabbed their upper arm with Radian's right hand.
The pilot tried to twist away.
I knew where the joint would go.
I changed direction before they did.
Pulled.
The elbow bent past its designed range.
Armor split first, opening along the joint seam. Actuator assemblies stretched, resisted, then tore free in a violent burst of cables, fluid, and twisted metal. The entire lower arm ripped away except for several bundled lines that held for another second before snapping.
The detached hand drifted away still gripping the blade.
The Federation Frame recoiled.
I stared at the ruined elbow.
"There. They're disarmed." My breathing was too fast again, and blood from my nose had started dripping onto the front of my uniform.
The enemy Frame turned toward Black Star.
Its surviving thrusters ignited.
It kept going.
My relief vanished.
"Why won't they stop?" I accelerated after it while Radian's reserve dropped through seventy percent.
Kaia's answer came quietly this time. "Because you haven't stopped them."
"I took their weapons."
"They still have eighteen meters of machine."
The Federation Frame accelerated toward the radiator vane.
I opened local comms. "Federation Frame, stop advancing. Your weapons are gone and your right arm is destroyed. Break away and I won't kill you."
Only static answered.
"I know you can hear me." I pushed Radian ahead of the damaged machine and matched its vector. "I'm not trying to kill you. Just turn around."
The pilot finally answered.
"Identify yourself."
The voice changed everything.
Male.
Not old.
Breathing heavily.
An alarm pulsed somewhere in the background of his cockpit.
Until that moment I had been fighting a white machine with a red marker around it.
Now there were lungs inside the armor.
"It doesn't matter." I kept Radian between him and Black Star.
"You're operating stolen Federation military property. Identify yourself."
"No."
His damaged Frame drifted in front of mine, right arm ending at the elbow while fluid escaped from the ruined joint in tiny glittering droplets. The voice returned after several breaths. "Clear my approach."
"I can't."
"You can."
"I won't."
For several seconds neither Frame moved relative to the other. We were both still traveling absurdly fast through space, but because our vectors nearly matched, it felt like standing across a room from someone. Earth occupied the far side of the sensor field. Black Star loomed much closer behind me, matte-dark armor interrupted by construction lights, scorched hull sections and the damaged radiator glowing hotter than it should have.
"That carrier has been seized by an armed organization," the pilot said. His voice had become steadier, either because he was calming himself or because training had taken over. "There are Federation civilians aboard and five missing minors."
My fingers went still.
Of course he didn't know.
"I know about the minors."
"Then move aside."
"I can't."
"If you're Nexus, surrender Radian and power down."
"I'm not Nexus." I regretted the words as soon as they escaped.
Silence filled the local channel.
"What did you say?"
I should have stopped.
Instead I looked at the Federation Frame hanging in front of me and said, "I'm one of the students."
The alarm continued pulsing inside his cockpit. Then he asked, much more carefully, "How old are you?"
Niko said my name over the private channel. I ignored him.
"Fourteen."
The Federation pilot swore.
Not angrily.
The sound came out like somebody had hit him in the stomach.
His thrusters dimmed.
For a few seconds, the Frame simply drifted.
Relief started again despite everything Kaia had said.
"Ilyan Corven?" The pilot must have pulled the student manifest. Hearing my full name from inside the enemy machine made my stomach twist. "Listen to me. Shut Radian down. If the prototype has an escape capsule, use it. If it doesn't, hold position. We will recover you."
"I can't do that."
"You can." His voice sharpened. "You're fourteen years old. You're a civilian. You are not responsible for that carrier."
I looked behind me.
Black Star's damage information filled one corner of the display. Radiator three unstable. External heat rising. Two compartments under pressure isolation. Main drive still accelerating.
People were inside that ship.
Rafi.
Naomi.
Anya.
Jun.
Dr. Marr.
Topper sitting alone in my room because I had been smart enough not to bring him while being stupid enough to climb into a frame prototype.
"If I move, you'll attack Black Star."
"My orders are to disable the carrier."
"There are civilians aboard."
"I know."
"You could kill them."
"Yes." He didn't soften the answer.
That somehow made him harder to hate.
"If Nexus leaves with Black Star and Radian, people may die later," he continued. "You're not responsible for deciding whether that risk is acceptable. I am. Power down and let us recover you."
Different voice.
Different uniform.
Same shape of argument.
People will die if you don't do what I need.
Lucien had said it aboard Black Star.
Now this man was saying it from a Federation cockpit.
Both of them probably believed themselves.
"I'm not moving."
The Frame's remaining thrusters brightened.
My stomach tightened. "Don't."
He accelerated.
"Stop, don't make me do this." I backed Radian toward Black Star, keeping myself directly between the machine and the radiator structure.
The pilot continued forward.
"Please." I didn't care that my voice broke. "Your Frame is damaged. You don't have a weapon. Just go."
The comm stayed open.
I heard him breathing.
And for the first time, I recognized fear in it.
Not panic. He wasn't crying or screaming. It was smaller than that. The brief pause before each breath, the way he forced air out under acceleration, the same noises I had been making whenever Radian crushed me into the harness.
He was afraid of me.
My hands went cold around the controls.
"I can't," he said.
Two words.
Quiet.
That was all.
The Federation Frame changed vectors.
Not toward me.
Around me.
Toward radiator three.
I understood the plan immediately. He didn't need his rifle. He didn't need a blade. An eighteen-meter combat machine carrying enough velocity could destroy the radiator root simply by hitting it.
I accelerated.
Radian caught him by the shoulder less than two hundred meters from Black Star.
Our machines collided hard enough that both spun. The Federation pilot fired every surviving maneuvering thruster at once, trying to pull free. Radian's arm strained against the damaged shoulder assembly. Outer armor tore beneath my fingers, peeling away from the Federation Frame and exposing dark structural members underneath.
I could squeeze.
Break the shoulder.
Maybe remove the remaining arm.
That wouldn't stop the mass.
I shifted my hand toward the torso.
The cockpit was there.
I moved away from it.
The Federation pilot took advantage immediately and tore free.
"Damn it, Corven!" Kaia shouted as the white Frame accelerated again. Vesper's damaged marker was closing from my right. "Stop treating him like he's going to respect the boundary you've invented in your head."
"I don't want to kill him."
"Neither does he!" Kaia's answer hit harder than the collision had. I heard her breathing raggedly through the open channel before she continued. "He doesn't want to kill you. He probably doesn't want anybody on Black Star dead. He still has an objective. So do you. That's why you're both here."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"No." Her voice became bitter. "It usually doesn't."
The Federation Frame crossed one hundred fifty meters from Black Star.
Radian's targeting system populated the display with possible solutions even though my rifle was gone.
Head sensors. Blinding the machine might work, except secondary cameras would remain and the pilot already had Black Star's location.
Remaining shoulder thruster. Destroying it could send the Frame into uncontrolled rotation and still carry it into the radiator.
Hip cluster. Same problem.
Leg. Insufficient change in momentum.
Torso.
Cockpit.
Every answer that actually stopped him ended in the same place.
"I need another option." I searched through Radian's systems as though particle architecture could somehow produce one. "Niko, give me another option."
Niko didn't answer immediately.
"Niko."
"If you had another kilometer, maybe." His voice had lost every trace of humor. "At this distance, with that vector, I don't have one."
"There has to be something."
"There isn't always something."
I hated him for saying it.
The Federation Frame crossed one hundred meters.
I searched anyway.
Particle distribution. Thruster geometry. Relative velocity. Remaining reserve. Structural condition. There should have been a solution. There had always been another solution in the simulator. Sacrifice efficiency. Change allocation. Accept heat. Lose the objective. Machines gave you choices if you understood the system well enough.
Then I understood the part I had been avoiding.
A Frame wasn't designed to give me harmless choices.
It was designed to make another machine stop.
Every system I damaged kept the person inside alive by making the machinery around them worse at keeping them alive. Destroy the thrusters and they couldn't maneuver. Destroy the sensors and they couldn't see. Destroy enough limbs and they couldn't stabilize. Rupture particle distribution and cooling failed. Disable life-support redundancy and space did the killing instead of me.
There was no clean way to tear apart the machine wrapped around a human being.
"I don't want to kill you." I opened the local channel again and heard how badly my voice shook.
The pilot's breathing came back through the headset. "I know."
His remaining thrusters flared.
Black Star filled the space behind me.
"I don't want to do this." My fingers tightened around Radian's controls until pain started somewhere in my palms. "Please stop."
"Move, Ilyan."
"I can't."
There was a pause.
Then he said, "Neither can I."
The Frame accelerated.
I reached for Radian's rifle.
Nothing.
It was tumbling somewhere behind us.
"Niko!"
"Right forearm." A weapon schematic opened instantly. "Prototype particle projector. Short range. Low calibration. One combat-output discharge before thermal lock."
A slim emitter beneath Radian's right forearm came online.
The targeting reticle settled across the Federation Frame.
Chest.
I dragged it toward the shoulder.
The computer returned it toward the torso because the system understood stopping probability better than I did.
Seventy meters.
The Federation machine fired its remaining thrusters.
I could see details now. Scratches across white armor. Blue unit markings along the thigh. A maintenance stencil beside one torso panel. The torn elbow with cables trailing from it. A tiny white symbol painted near the base of the head that wasn't part of standard Federation markings.
Somebody had painted that.
Maybe the pilot.
Maybe a mechanic.
Maybe someone who expected him to come back and complain if it wasn't straight.
Fifty meters.
The machine adjusted around me.
I matched it.
Forty-seven.
I shifted again.
So did he.
There was no harmless piece left.
The local channel remained open.
I heard him inhale.
I thought about Rafi.
I pulled the trigger.
Radian's forearm flashed white.
At less than forty meters there was no time for the Federation pilot to evade. The particle discharge struck high through the torso, and for the first fraction of a second the armor simply glowed. Then the outer chest plate turned incandescent around the impact point and burst outward in molten fragments while the energy punched through the internal frame behind it.
The local channel exploded with a scream.
My hands opened around the controls.
The sound was too close.
Not something happening to a machine several meters away.
A human voice inside my ears, raw and sudden and terrified.
The particle discharge had gone through the cockpit compartment.
What didn't vaporize became shrapnel.
Sections of console, structural brackets, fragments of armor and transparent display material ripped across the cramped space around the pilot. The rear of the cockpit ruptured outward, and pressure found the hole.
The atmosphere burst into space in a widening white plume.
Insulation came with it.
Fragments of electronics.
Pieces of restraint.
Blood.
More blood than I expected.
Some stupid part of me had apparently believed the vacuum would make death cleaner.
It didn't.
A red mist spread through the escaping atmosphere while larger droplets separated into spheres and scattered among glowing pieces of metal. Some struck the superheated edges of the breach and vanished into dark vapor. Others remained intact, perfect beads of blood tumbling through sunlight.
The scream broke.
Wet coughing replaced it.
I couldn't move.
Radian's cameras automatically magnified the damaged cockpit because the machine still classified the Frame as a threat.
I tried to close the image.
My fingers didn't obey.
The cockpit was open to space along one side.
The pilot remained strapped into the seat.
A jagged length of internal support structure had punched through his flight suit beneath the ribs and pinned part of his torso against the damaged seat. Blood soaked the fabric around it and escaped through the pressure tear in slow dark spheres. One shoulder restraint had snapped, leaving his upper body twisted at an angle while the remaining harness held his hips in place. A piece of shattered console had torn into his thigh. Another fragment had opened the side of his neck beneath the helmet ring.
His visor was cracked.
Blood streaked the inside.
One hand floated away from the controls.
Two fingers were missing.
I saw them a second later spinning separately through the debris, small enough that my brain refused to understand what they were until I saw the torn glove around them.
My stomach seized.
Nothing came up.
The pilot coughed again.
Blood splashed against the inside of his visor in thick droplets.
"Oh God." My voice came out tiny inside Radian's cockpit. "No, no, no. Hey. Hey, can you hear me?"
Niko said something over the private channel, but I couldn't understand him through the sound of the dying man's breathing.
The Federation pilot moved.
Barely.
His remaining hand lifted from his lap and reached toward a control beside the damaged console. His fingers missed it. He tried again. The hand shook badly enough that he couldn't close it around anything.
For one insane second I thought he was trying to continue fighting.
Then I realized I didn't know what that control did.
Emergency seal.
Ejection.
Medical system.
Anything.
"Tell me what to do." I looked at the cockpit damage as if Radian could somehow repair what I had done. "Niko, tell me what to do."
Niko's voice finally reached me. "There is nothing you can do from there."
"No. He's alive."
"Ilyan—"
"He's breathing."
"I know."
The pilot's remaining thruster kept firing.
That was what broke something deeper than the blood.
The man was dying.
The machine didn't know.
It continued executing the last command he had given before I shot him.
One hip thruster pulsed automatically. The Frame rotated slowly. His broken body shifted against the restraints with every change in momentum while blood kept escaping through the torn suit.
Radian's tactical system changed the marker.
HOSTILE — DISABLED
I stared at the word.
Disabled.
The pilot made another sound.
I leaned toward the display. "What?"
Static filled most of the local channel.
A wet breath came through.
Then a syllable.
Maybe a word.
I increased the audio gain.
The pilot's head moved against the seat.
"Mom."
I wasn't sure.
Maybe he hadn't said that.
Maybe my brain turned a meaningless sound into the worst word it could find.
Then his chest moved once beneath the damaged flight suit.
Stopped.
Moved again, smaller.
The next breath never finished.
His hand drifted away from the console.
The local channel became static.
The Federation Frame continued rotating.
Radian still called it disabled.
"No." I heard myself say it. "He's dead."
The machine drifted toward Black Star.
I reacted automatically.
Radian crossed the short distance and caught the Frame by its remaining forearm.
The dead machine swung around our grip until the destroyed torso faced me.
Up close, I couldn't pretend anymore.
The particle shot hadn't only burned through the front armor. It had turned the cockpit itself into the weapon. Pieces of the machine had cut its pilot apart. A shattered display bracket was lodged near his shoulder. Blood coated half the seat and floated freely through the breached compartment in spheres of different sizes, some bright red where the light caught them, some almost black in shadow. The pilot's head had fallen sideways. Through the cracked and blood-smeared visor I could just make out part of his face, pale beneath the emergency light, mouth slightly open, one eye obscured by blood.
A torn strip of restraint floated outside the breach.
Something pale was caught against it.
I stared too long before understanding it was part of an ear.
My stomach tightened so violently that spit filled my mouth.
"Corven." Kaia's voice came quietly through the comm. "Let him go."
I couldn't stop looking.
His helmet faced Radian.
I knew he wasn't looking back.
My mind kept inventing the possibility anyway.
Someone's son.
Someone's brother.
Someone who had woken up this morning and probably complained about his assignment.
Someone who had known five students were aboard Black Star and believed he was trying to save us.
I had heard him afraid.
I had heard him die.
My fingers tightened without meaning to.
Radian's enormous hand responded.
The dead Frame's forearm crumpled inside the grip with a grinding metallic collapse.
The pilot's body jerked from the transferred force.
I recoiled so violently that Radian opened its hand with me.
The Federation Frame drifted away.
No ground caught it.
No dramatic explosion erased it.
There wasn't even a direction for it to fall.
It simply continued along the vector I gave it, rotating slowly through sunlight and darkness while blood, coolant, frozen condensation, insulation, metal fragments, and pieces of the cockpit spread around it like a second field of stars.
One spherical drop of blood struck Radian's chest camera.
Red smeared across the image.
A vibration shook it loose.
It floated away.
I had done that.
A particle bolt crossed the space beside Radian and almost hit me.
Vesper slammed shoulder-first into Radian, forcing us away from the firing line as the shot passed through the place I had been floating. Kaia's damaged Frame spun off from the contact, using a weak hip burst to stabilize.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Her voice cracked through the headset while Vesper limped across my sensors. "You can stare at him after everyone else stops trying to make you join him."
"I killed him." My hands were shaking so badly that Radian's fingers were trembling with them.
"I know."
"I heard him die."
"I know, Corven."
"There was blood." The sentence sounded stupid as soon as I said it, as though Kaia might somehow have missed what combat weapons did to people.
She didn't answer immediately. A Federation marker closed on Black Star's stern behind her, and Vesper slowly rotated toward it despite the ruined leg and hanging arm. "Move."
I moved because another shot came toward the ship.
Not because I wanted to.
Radian slipped across the trajectory, rolled beneath the attack, and corrected with one hip burst. The harness punished my ribs. My shoulder hurt. Blood from my nose reached my mouth again.
I barely noticed.
A new Federation Frame approached.
My eyes found the cockpit before I looked at the weapon.
That had never happened before.
The targeting system agreed and placed a red solution over the upper torso.
I shoved it toward the rifle.
The enemy fired.
I dodged.
Reserve dropped to fifty-nine.
Kaia appeared beside me on the tactical sphere. "You're still bleeding particles. Stop holding every correction."
"I just killed someone."
"And you're about to die next to him if you decide physics should wait for you to finish feeling bad."
I turned toward Vesper's marker. "How can you say that?"
"Because I've done this before." Her answer came without hesitation.
That shut me up.
The Federation Frame tried to cut around my left side toward Black Star.
I followed.
They went lower relative to the carrier.
I rotated Radian and crossed the path.
They accelerated.
So did I.
Something changed.
I wasn't trying to fight them anymore.
I stopped thinking about weapons.
Movement returned.
Vectors.
Relative velocity.
Black Star behind me.
Federation Frame ahead.
Keep one away from the other.
That made sense.
The enemy tried above the carrier's plane.
I was already there.
They reversed.
I let momentum carry Radian across the angle and met them again.
The pilot fired.
I shifted just enough.
Their next shot came before I finished the first correction, but I had already seen the line their rifle had to take and changed the vector before they pulled the trigger.
The shot missed.
They went wide.
I matched.
The pilot stopped.
For several seconds we drifted less than four hundred meters apart.
I could almost feel their confusion.
They had watched me fight like an idiot for most of the engagement. Now they couldn't get past me because I had stopped pretending I knew how to fight and gone back to the one thing I did understand.
Movement.
The Federation pilot raised the rifle.
I accelerated toward them.
Kaia swore over comms.
The enemy fired.
I cut thrust before the shot arrived and let Radian's existing momentum carry us inside the line. The pilot tried to back away.
Too late.
I caught the rifle with Radian's right hand.
Both machines continued along their original vectors while I twisted Radian's torso, using the motion rather than fighting it.
The rifle tore out of the Federation Frame's grip.
I threw it away.
Their left hand reached for a blade.
I caught the wrist before the weapon cleared its housing.
My other hand landed against their chest.
Right over the cockpit.
The pilot stopped moving.
So did I.
Radian's fingers rested against white armor.
I knew what was behind it now.
Not systems.
Not particle lines.
A seat.
A harness.
Hands.
A face.
Blood if I pushed hard enough.
The local channel opened automatically at close range.
A woman was breathing inside the enemy cockpit.
Another person.
Another voice.
I almost screamed when I heard it.
"Leave." My own voice shook. "Please. Just leave. Your rifle's gone. I have your weapon arm. Black Star is moving away. I don't want to do it again."
The woman remained silent for several seconds. Her blade housing retracted beneath Radian's grip, and the hand opened slowly instead of fighting me. "I understand." Her voice sounded exhausted.
I released her.
The Federation Frame pushed away carefully.
I didn't follow.
No relief came.
Not like before.
I understood what had happened this time.
She had chosen to leave.
That was all.
If she hadn't, eventually I would have reached the same decision again.
The same cockpit.
The same trigger.
Kaia drifted into position near me while the Federation Frame retreated. Vesper looked worse every time I saw it: one leg ended in a blackened structural stump below the knee, armor had been burned completely away from part of the left shoulder, exposed actuators trembled beneath the damaged arm, and one of the three remaining thruster clusters flickered instead of burning steadily.
"That's two you let go," she said.
"I killed one."
"Yes."
There was no judgment in her voice.
That bothered me almost as much as the death.
"Does it stop feeling like this?" I watched the dead pilot's marker disappear from Radian's tactical range behind us.
Vesper rotated slowly toward Black Star. For several seconds Kaia said nothing, and when she finally answered, her voice sounded much older than sixteen. "No. You just learn how to keep moving before it finishes hurting."
A Federation withdrawal signal appeared on the tactical display before I could decide what I thought of that.
The Frames nearest Black Star widened first. Patrol craft shifted away from the carrier's direct acceleration path. Weapon locks dropped one by one as relative distance increased.
A Federation transmission entered the shared channel. "Black Star, Federation forces are disengaging from close action due unacceptable civilian-risk escalation. Cut drive and surrender remains your lawful option. Continued flight will result in pursuit and recovery operations."
Lucien's voice answered from somewhere aboard the ship. "Understood."
I closed my eyes for half a second.
Of course he said that.
Black Star's main drive intensified.
The carrier accelerated away from Caelum.
Nobody cheered over the tactical channel.
Nobody declared victory.
The Federation simply decided that continuing to shoot at a stolen carrier containing hundreds of civilians and five minors was no longer worth what might happen if somebody hit the wrong place.
That apparently counted as winning.
"Radian, return to Bay Three." Niko sounded exhausted now. "Reserve forty-six percent. Right forearm projector in thermal lock. Left-shoulder response degraded. Pilot pulse too high. Blood pressure unstable. Probable left-shoulder strain, probable rib contusions, repeated acceleration stress. I would personally like you inside the ship before you discover another way to injure yourself."
I looked at the reserve display.
Forty-six percent.
I had burned more than half in one battle.
Vesper still had twenty-seven.
Kaia noticed my silence. "You fly like particle energy insulted your mother."
"I didn't know what I was doing."
"I noticed."
Normally I would have answered.
Nothing came.
I turned Radian toward Black Star.
The carrier looked different now.
Burns scarred the aft hull. One radiator vane remained partially folded. A thin white plume leaked from a damaged exterior compartment, atmosphere freezing and dispersing into space before Black Star's acceleration slowly left it behind. Pieces of armor and machinery drifted along our escape vector until distance separated them.
People inside were alive.
Rafi was alive.
Naomi.
Anya.
Jun.
Topper.
Kaia.
Lucien, unfortunately.
I had helped save them.
That mattered.
The horrible thing was that it actually mattered.
The dead pilot did not become less dead because the people behind me survived.
Both things existed together.
Radian approached Bay Three.
My hands started shaking harder.
Tiny tremors appeared across the Frame's wrists until I realized the machine wasn't malfunctioning.
It was copying me.
I loosened my grip.
Pain flooded both palms.
Blood covered the control surfaces.
Four crescent-shaped wounds ran across my left palm where my fingernails had broken the skin. The base of my right thumb had split open against the grip, and blood had tracked down my wrist beneath the uniform cuff. I hadn't felt any of it during the fight.
My nose was still bleeding.
The front of my research uniform was speckled red.
Niko's voice softened. "Medical is waiting in the bay."
"I don't need medical."
"You've spent most of this sortie demonstrating that you don't know what you need."
The containment field expanded ahead of me.
Figures waited beyond it.
Maintenance crew.
Nexus personnel.
Some construction workers.
I could already see people pointing toward Radian.
I had never really understood war.
I had heard people talk about killing before. History classes reduced wars to maps, casualty figures and names. News reports said units were destroyed, pilots were lost, positions were taken. Talia talked about combat training in cleaner words because training didn't put a dying man's breathing inside your headset. There were stories about people who could kill again and again until another life became another name crossed from a list, another marker removed from a screen, another objective completed before dinner.
I had thought the burden came after.
I understood now that it started before the shot.
It was knowing there was someone inside the machine.
Knowing he was scared.
Knowing he probably had people waiting for him.
Knowing he believed he was protecting something too.
Then deciding that none of it could matter enough to let him pass.
Taking another life should break something in a person.
If it didn't, I wasn't sure what that made them.
I had heard his voice.
I had heard him breathe.
I had heard the fear enter his voice after he learned I was fourteen.
I had begged him to stop.
He had asked me to move.
Neither of us had.
Then I had watched pieces of his body drift out of a cockpit surrounded by blood.
If that was victory—if pain, blood and somebody's final terrified sound were the price of winning—there was nothing beautiful about it. If humanity could turn killing into duty, teach people how to do it efficiently, build eighteen-meter machines around the assumption that eventually somebody would refuse to move, then humanity was disgusting.
And I was human too.
That made me disgusting.
Lucien had put me there.
The Federation pilot had refused to turn back.
Black Star had been behind me.
People could have died.
Every explanation was true.
None of them changed the one thing I couldn't give to somebody else, mercy.
I pulled the trigger.
Radian crossed the containment field.
Sound returned through the external microphones as the Frame entered Bay Three. Magnetic guidance caught our feet, slowed the approach, and lowered Radian into the maintenance cradle while people ran along the platforms beneath us.
Someone shouted Radian's name.
Another person raised both arms.
Then the cheering started.
It spread faster than I expected. People who had spent the last half hour believing Black Star might be destroyed were laughing, yelling, grabbing one another, pointing toward the unfinished white Frame settling into the cradle. Somebody hit the side of a railing hard enough that the clang reached my cockpit. A maintenance worker had tears running down her face while she shouted something I couldn't hear clearly.
They were cheering because they were alive.
I knew that.
It still sounded wrong.
The cockpit hatch unlocked.
My harness released.
Pain arrived everywhere at once.
My left shoulder barely wanted to lift. Dark bruises had already begun forming beneath the restraints across my ribs and thighs. My legs felt weak when I stood, and the first attempt almost dropped me back into the seat because they had spent too long braced against forces my body had never been trained to withstand.
I grabbed the cockpit frame.
Blood smeared across it from my palm.
For a second I saw the dead pilot's cockpit instead.
Blood floating where mine fell.
"Easy." Someone had reached the access bridge outside. Garrick stood there with one arm still bound tightly around the ribs I had nearly crushed earlier. Of all the people I expected to see first, he was not high on the list. "Tomas is waiting below."
"I can walk." My knees nearly folded as I stepped onto the bridge.
Garrick caught my upper arm.
Pain tore through my shoulder.
I jerked away hard enough that he released me immediately.
"Don't touch me." I hated how frightened the words sounded.
Garrick raised his hand. "All right."
The cheering continued below.
Rafi pushed through the crowd before I reached the lift.
For half a second his face lit up.
He was alive.
I was alive.
That should have been enough.
Then he saw me.
His smile disappeared.
Blood had dried beneath my nose and across my mouth. My uniform was dark where the harness had rubbed sweat and blood into it. Both hands were cut. I could feel one eye twitching from exhaustion.
"You came back." Rafi stopped in front of me as though he wasn't sure whether touching me was allowed.
"I said I would."
His eyes dropped to my hands. "Is that yours?"
I looked down.
Most of it was.
"Yes."
Rafi swallowed.
Someone below shouted, "That's the kid in Radian!" and another cheer went through the bay.
I flinched.
Rafi noticed.
"Ilyan?"
"I need to wash my hands."
Tomas tried to intercept me at the bottom of the platform. He was broad, gray beginning at his temples, medical vest half-fastened over a shirt already stained with somebody else's blood. His eyes went immediately to my pupils, shoulder posture and hands.
"You're coming with me." He reached for my wrist.
"I need to wash my hands."
"You need imaging on your ribs and shoulder."
"I know." I walked past him.
"Ilyan." Rafi followed a step behind while Tomas exchanged a look with Garrick.
"I need to wash my hands first."
Nobody stopped me.
Maybe it was my face.
Maybe they were too exhausted.
Maybe nobody knew what to say to a fourteen-year-old who had just come back from his first battle covered in blood while half the hangar cheered for him.
Topper was waiting in my room.
He turned before the door finished opening.
"Ilyan. Elevated heart rate detected. Gait instability detected. Blood detected." He stepped off the desk and landed unevenly on his repaired rear leg. "Medical evaluation recommended."
"I know." I walked past him into the washroom and turned the water on.
My hands shook beneath the stream.
Blood spiraled into the basin.
Pink first.
Then lighter.
I rubbed my palms together.
Pain sharpened.
The water became pink again.
Topper entered behind me. "Dermal damage detected on both hands. Continued abrasion may increase bleeding."
I scrubbed harder.
The pilot's voice came back.
Move, Ilyan.
Water ran between my fingers.
Blood disappeared.
I scrubbed again.
The scream came back.
Not the whole sound.
Just the moment it broke.
I pressed my palms together under the water until the cuts burned.
Topper took one uneven step closer. "Continued abrasion is increasing dermal damage. Please discontinue."
"Shut up." I scrubbed harder.
Blood appeared again.
A perfect red thread spiraled around the drain.
Then I remembered the spheres drifting through sunlight.
My stomach clenched.
"Ilyan, your heart rate is—"
"Shut up." My voice cracked so badly that I stopped pretending I was angry at him. I closed my eyes, braced both hands against the sink and lowered my head while water continued running over my fingers. The static was still inside my ears. The scream was still there. The word I might have imagined was still there too.
Topper stayed beside the sink.
His damaged speaker crackled softly.
I couldn't make myself look at him.
"Please," I whispered.
He stopped talking.
The room became quiet except for running water and the distant vibration of Black Star carrying all of us farther from home.
I kept my hands beneath the faucet long after the blood was gone.
It didn't make them clean.