Golden Son

“Slag that.” Then I feel the silence as much as hear it, and I know one of them has pulled a gun on me. I turn, slowly. The stocky old Gray is not a fool. He’s backed out of my reach. I’ve no armor, only my razor. I might be able to kill him. The others ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing.

“I’m a free man, dominus. I should get to go,” the Gray says, voice trembling. “I have a family. It is my right to go.” He looks to his fellows, bathed in the nasty red of the emergency lights. “She’s just a whore. A jumped-up whore.”

“Marcel, put the gun down,” says the dark-skinned corporal. His eyes are heavy for his friend. “Remember your vows. We’ll draw lots.”

“It’s not fair! She can’t even have children!”

“And what would your children think of you now?” I ask.

Marcel’s eyes fill with tears. The scorcher quivers in his thick hand. Then a gunshot. His body stiffens and crumples lifelessly to the deck as the bullet from the sergeant’s scorcher carries through his head to slam into the metal bulkhead.

“We do it by rank,” the sergeant says, holstering her weapon.

Were I still the man Eo knew, I would have stood frozen in horror. But that man is gone. I mourn his passing every day. Forgetting more and more of who I was, what dreams I held, what things I loved. The sadness now is numb. And I carry on despite the shadow it casts over me.

The escape pod opens, magnetic lock thudding back. The door hisses upward. I pick Theodora from the couch and strap her into one of the seats. The straps are nearly too big, made for Golds. Then something deep and horrible roars in the belly of my ship. Half a kilometer away, our torpedo stores detonate.

Gone is the artificial gravity. Gone are the stable walls. It’s an insidious sensation. Everything spins. I slam into the escape pod’s floor. Ceiling? I don’t know. Pressure vents out of the ship. Someone vomits. I smell it rather than hear it. I shout at the Grays to get in the pod. Only one stays behind now, face drawn and quiet, as the sergeant and a corporal pull themselves into the escape pod. They strap in across from me. I activate the launch function and salute the Gray who stays behind. He salutes back, proud and loyal despite the quiet in him as he faces his last moment of life, eyes distant and thinking of some young love, some path not taken, perhaps wondering why he was not born Gold.

Then the door closes and he is gone from my world.

I’m slammed into my seat as the escape pod shoots away from the dying ship. Ripping through debris. Then we’re weightless again and drifting away from trouble as inertial dampeners kick in. Out our viewport I see my flagship burping plumes of blue and red flame. Processed helium-3, which powers both ships, ignites near my man-of-war’s engines, causing a chain-effect explosion that rips the ship apart. Suddenly I realize it wasn’t debris I felt against my escape pod as I left the ship. It was people. My crew. Hundreds of lowColors spilled into space.

The Grays sit opposite me.

“He had three girls,” the dark-skinned corporal says, shuddering as the adrenaline fades away. “Two years and he was out with a pension. And you popped him in the head.”

“After my report, coward won’t even scrape a death pension,” the sergeant sneers.

The corporal blinks at her. “You cold bitch.”

Their words fade, overcome by the beating of blood in my ears. This is my fault. I broke the rules at the Institute. I changed the paradigm and thought they wouldn’t adapt. That they wouldn’t change their strategy for me.

And now I have lost so many lives, I may never know the tally.

More people just died in a blink than during a whole year of the Institute, their deaths opening a black hole in my stomach.

Roque and Victra hail me over the coms. They will have tracked my datapad and know I am safe. I barely hear them. Anger, thick and evil, swirls inside me, making my hands shake, my heart slam.

Somehow, Karnus’s ship continues through space after bisecting my command, damaged but not broken. I stand in my pod, unbuckling the seat’s restraints. At the far end of the escape pod lies a spitTube with a preloaded starShell—a mechanized suit meant to make a man a human torpedo. It’s designed to launch Golds to asteroids or planets, because the pod wouldn’t survive atmospheric reentry. But I’ll use it for vengeance. I’ll launch myself onto that Bellona bastard’s bloodydamn bridge.

Theodora has not yet woken. I’m glad.

I tell the corporal to help me into the suit. Two minutes later, I’m in the metal carapace. Takes another two to argue with the computer over the calculations required for my trajectory to intersect with Karnus’s so that I can smash through the bridge windows. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this. Never seen it even attempted. It’s madness. But Karnus will pay.

I start my own countdown.