The two schooners came down at them fast.

Someone screamed as he tilted the Dossier just enough to squeeze between the two ships, rocketing upward. Something clattered far back in the ship, plates and cups upended in the galley, a cacophony of noise rushing up from the back of the ship. He didn’t want to even think about his poor skysailer.

Orange heat licked at the sides of the starshield as they climbed against gravity, breaking through the thunderclouds again, up into clear, wide sky.

Twenty kilometers, thirty, forty—

The schooners behind them couldn’t reverse-flip and had to swing around the old way. It cost them seconds the Dossier gained as it sped up through the atmosphere. The distance from the surface of Eros increased as the seconds passed.

Ninety kilometers, the holo-screen read.

Clouds dissipated, and the skies darkened to a bluish black. The thrusters shuddered, the power reserves dwindling. Just a few more kilos and he could deploy the sails. Just a few more—

One hundred.

Gravity released the Dossier like a sigh, and the ship went swirling up into space.

“You’re a lifesaver, Xu.”

“I have been told that many times,” the Metal replied. “Rerouting power back to other functions now.”

“Thank you,” he replied, relieved, and a moment later the lights blinked back on across the ship. He threw his hands in the air. “Yes! Who’s good? I’m g—”

Siege put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t celebrate quite yet, darling.”

His words lodged in his throat, and he quickly grappled for the controls, reversing the thrusters. The Dossier slammed to a halt.

Ana leaned forward, her eyes wide. “Is that . . .”

It was.

In front of them, a ship as large as it was wide seemed to take up the entire starshield. A dreadnought. The same one he had died on, it seemed, from the shoddily patched bridge window, and the scrapes along its wings from where the Dossier had knocked off a few of its short-range cannons.

Ana whispered, “Oh.”

The dreadnought aimed its two large cannons in their direction, and the Dossier was so close he could see the detonations pulsating inside the barrels. It was both a beautiful and terrible sight.

And there was no escaping it.

Emperor

He was in a Plague hospital on Eros. And then on a rusted old Cercian-7 ship. Then in the Iron Palace. A derelict space cruiser. A Cercian diamond mine. Nevaeh. The Academy. Then an ancient shrine. Friends writing his name with charcoal on the side of the wall. “Is this considered desecrating a holy place, Mari?” he had asked a brown-skinned girl who never smiled. Then he was in a study, his father pinning a badge to his uniform. Dark eyes and a kind smile.

Then the same man again, snarling down at him tied in a chair. In a small, suffocating room. A girl with soulless eyes bending toward him, taking him by the hair, invading his thoughts.

Thoughts that bled red—like human blood—there one moment and then plucked away. People. Memories. Words. Nouns. Names.