3 Zinnar

Rorlin frowns as he bandages my arm. He’s a grizzled old soldier, my father’s age, but one of the highest ranking members of the Jaiban military. “The Abr committee won’t be happy you’re arriving damaged. But I’d be more worried about your father. You need to be ready to command when he becomes one with the stars.”

I jerk my arm out of his grasp and stand. He’s taken me from the battlefield and led me into one of our royal transports for this. “You are making a big deal out of nothing. I will not sit behind a barricade while our people suffer. I am capable. I will fight the Nebulous Empire among my kind, not from behind them. They are not my shield. I am theirs.”

He wilts inside his strappy black and gold armor. “And it is an honorable notion, but you cannot think yourself a god when you are mortal. Now sit down.” Rorlin plants a hand on my shoulder and wrestles me onto the medical bed.

“I need to get back to the front lines. Tell me what it is you needed the privacy of an isolation bubble to tell me about.” Inside I am burning up with anger that our soldiers are fighting without royal support.

“If you die, there will be no one to inherit the throne. Our land will fall under rule of another.” Rorlin has basically raised me. He is the one who should be king after my father. He is the ideal combination of humility and gall to do what is necessary to protect our citizens.

“Did you pull me away to lecture me?”

“You’re going to be late for the race check-in.”

“How much time do I have to keep you and my father happy while serving my people?” I demand.

“Fifteen minutes before we have to depart. I just need to get you cleane—”

I slip free and charge through the bubble, down the ramp, and toward the front lines. Fifteen minutes is a lot. Many can die. Many can survive.

My mother wanted me to lead by example not hide behind the gold taken from those who hold our society together. I will not dishonor her last request.

Ahead of me, the horizon is still a blaze of fractal fireworks as explosions clash on the ground and mid air. Nebulous Empire ships, three battle cruisers, have spread across my family’s kingdom while their raiders pillage our electronics, armor, and metal stores for our tech. They take crates of resistors, transistors, thyristors, and more.

As our weapons and my people are cut down and enemy ships begin to rise into the sky with their goods, our critical assets in this war, fury and desperation thrust heat into my veins.

Black ink bleeds through the gold in my dermal cells and I feel the pull of all ferrous things. My family, like the other royals of this planet, go through a special, torturous process that enhances our species’ natural magnetism. The elite soldiers get it, too, like Rorlin. But he is too old to fight like I do.

I find a dropped shield and reach for it. It is a hot feeling for a positive charge, a cold one for negative. All I have to do is think of what I need and my body adapts.

The shield is designed to be responsive. I focus on a positive, hot feeling, and the shield lifts into the air and snaps to my forearm. I pick up pieces of armor in the same manner as I run over the pavement of our industrial zone, plating myself while I eye the nearest ship. It hovers close enough to the ground that I can catch the ramp if I don’t stop running.

Someone shouts from a pile of burning debris, where they tend the wounded, and tosses me a sword. I lost mine in the earlier battle. The shadow soldiers had set off a bomb that threw many of us back.

When we are outnumbered and outgunned, there are a few of us who can still do something. It has been tradition for millennia. We are the last line.

“Fall back!” I call to the ranks. No more need to die as the enemy ships load up and depart. But I’ll be damned if I let them leave without a solid warning not to come back for a long time.

Bai’rin breaks through the crowd, sprinting closer to me. He’s a hair shorter than I with leaner muscle. His Ink has bled through, too. Only the frames of his dermal cells and the rings of his eyes are still gold. “We’re down to just a handful of weapons, mostly ground mounted or pea shooters among the civilians. What’s the plan, Prince?”

I cringe at the title. “Don’t call me that.”

“It’s what you are!” Bai’rin leaps over a downed soldier and shakes his head. “Greedy fucks need to pay!”

As their rear ramp closes up, that opportunity lost, I target on an engine of the middle ship, the last to try to escape.

“Climb the lab’s roof.” I point off to our right. “Take their starboard turret. Then cut down their power core.”

“To the engine?”

“A-firm.” I mean to disrupt the thermal cycling and the transformer enough that it blows. But only trying it will say for sure.

Bai’rin cants backward as we run. “You get that?”

Joltas is at my side in three strides. He’s covered himself in heavy armor. His larger body, inked up like us, is built for bashing into the enemy. And by the streaks of gray and black on his armor and skin, I’m certain he’s been busy.

He collects two broken links from the tangle of tow chain we use for hoisting engines up for repairs in the maintenance hangars and grins. “Disrupters, the old fashioned kind. Ran out of ammo.”

I climb up the refuse containment chamber and leap onto the roof. Bai’rin and Joltas follow. We sprint up the metal panels as the ship hovers by, slowly rising into the air. They won’t blast off from the planet. That much backpressure from the ground would tear apart their rear thrusters. So they’re forced to go slow.

We leap off the roof’s edge, drift through the air for a weightless breath, then land on the main starboard aileron.

Bai’rin plants his hands on the turret’s chamber. The bands around his hands crackle gold as the shadow soldier inside spins toward him. The turret crumples and smokes. As Bai’rin tears metal open, Joltas charges the male inside.

With the situation under control, I climb up the smooth side of the ship to the engine’s mounts. The drone grows with the light and heat from the thruster. They’re going to launch in the next minute or two. I can feel it in my bones, the vibration, like a song of pain and misery sung too many times here on Ferrim and other planets struggling to survive in the outer colonies of Sol Federation territory.

I walk myself out on the curved wing by my hands until I near the power core. The thruster heats to red hot. If it blows, I may not survive.

Wind rakes over my body, tugging at the armor I’ve pulled against me. I need to act fast. Bai’rin and Joltas shout at me.

“Go!” I reply. “I’ll see you soon.”

They protest, but I am always trying to find a way to die a meaningful death. I fear dying of old age and without purpose.

Worst of all, I fear dying alone as king of a land I already struggle to protect.

I hang by one hand, place the tip of the sword near the transformer of the power core—where I think it should be based on what the king from a neighboring planet of Anlatom has said. He walked me through what he knew of their ships as we tried to figure out what the Nebs wanted with Jaiban parts and metals. I hope this one is designed the same as the one we took apart in his shop.

The thruster kicks hard and loosens my grip. If I let go, I will be incinerated as I slip by the engine. I can’t wait to find the right spot, so I guess and plunge the sword up and into the engine. Sparks spiral out. I plant my feet on the underside and switch every skin surface facing the aileron to reverse polarity and am shoved away from the metal wing. Crackling bursts fragment the engine. Iridescent white light blooms behind me.

The impromptu mission is a success.

I fall, and for a moment I am free of everything: no war, no bride race, no obligation of any kind. It is just me and the wind far higher above the ground than I expected. I release the armor I have collected so I can feel the air against my skin. The plates drift away like petals of a dying black poppy. I do not care if I survive.

It is impossible to please my father, and he controls my life—unless I am among the soldiers. This is the only time I am free.

Rorlin’s concern with the race comes back to me as the transport where we last talked rotates through my vision. If I let go, I will disappoint many.

The race would help me find a woman to love and focus on, and maybe even someone to care in return.

I wonder if she could be anything like my mother, if she would understand that I hate being a prince, and I want only the comfort of home around me and the safety of my people for the sake of our world.

The ground nears and instinct takes over. I rotate and slam into the dirt, feet first. The sheer force of falling from such height takes me to my hands and knees. Stirred up dust makes me cough.

Distant cheering barely makes it through the pulsing drone in my ears, a consequence of overexertion when Walking The Field .

Bai’rin is first to me. I don’t hear what he says as I sit back to catch my breath and watch the Neb’s battle cruiser plummet into the distant Plains of Mazaga, where the magnetic fields are stronger. Hovercarts race past us alongside the few starfighters we have left.

Hanging my head back, I see the other enemy vessels leave and hope they don’t return.

My cells wash with gold again, paired with a cooling wave that calms my body and eases the pain of the landing.

The royal cruiser thunders as it races up in front of me and reverses thrust to hover. A ramp lowers, but Rorlin doesn’t wait. He bounds out and skids to a stop in front of me, fear in his eyes. “You crazy suicidal idiot!”

“Good to see you too,” I snort.

He helps me up, and through his actions I know he cares more than he’s upset with me. As we walk to the ship so he can give me advanced medical care the soldiers don’t get, I hear the distant shouts and chants of the Jaiban, of my people.

Rorlin turns to Bai’rin and Joltas. “As for you two, for going along with such a stunt—”

“They deserve the same treatment I get,” I interrupt.

Rorlin fumes quietly with a glare at me. Then he steps aside and motions them onto the ship.

“They landed almost as hard as I did.”

“You know better than to risk the future King’s life,” Rorlin hisses at them.

Bai’rin glances at me as I flop back on a medical bed, every bone screaming from the impact. We are built to endure high forces on our bodies, but I have pushed it. I meet his worried gaze with an eye roll and a head shake.

“Stop that.” Rorlin guides my feet inside the frame and closes a glass chamber around me that muffles his voice. “You rest so you have energy to find a mate. Your father expects you to return with one at the end of the week.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then he will match you to someone from another kingdom. Likely Gorvia of Hasilith.”

“She is greedy. She takes from her people,” I retort. “I will refuse.”

“She’s available.”

The chamber starts to slide me into the resting cell. Arms move over my body filled with needles that will inject the replenishment and stitch in the repairs I need.

“Your father can make anything law,” Rorlin adds. “Do you wish to go to prison for the rest of your life or be exiled from the land and people you love?”

“This is idiotic.”

“Then find a woman. You’ll have plenty to choose from. Honor your family. Pick a good one.”

A good one in under an hour? I don’t know how to do that. I have not dated or cared much for the whims of emotional connections even if I secretly want a mate to call my own more than anything. I have the safety and the future of my people to worry about.

The idea of being stuck with Gorvia for eternity is not appealing. Neither is a cell or never seeing home again. I guess I’m going to have to study up on the race my father signed me up for so I can have a half-decent shot at someone I want. But it all feels too rushed.

I always wanted to meet someone the natural way, not the forced way. But that’s all my father knows how to do—shove things at me and make the people pay for it.

“He’s only trying to do what’s best for you and the people,” Rorlin remarks.

“I may opt for jail,” I say as irritation consumes me.

“Why?”

I turn my head to look up at my mentor. How he doesn’t see it, I don’t understand. “He took my freedom after my mother died. And our people always pay.”

“Your mother had a good soul. Your father loved her and sent you two away to protect you,” Rorlin says bitterly. His eyes are a darker gold than most and they’re locked on me. “You don’t know the half of what he’s done for you.”

“I’m sure. I just don’t want to command. I am comfortable standing with those I grew up with.”

Rorlin sighs and leans against the healing chamber as my skin and bones are mended by needles that prickle my body. “It is good to be humble. But it is important to take charge when the situation calls for it. Your time will come, whether you like it or not.”