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  “As I’ll ever be.”

  Vega hauls me up from the floor and carries me out of the lab. As we try to leave the office, someone fires a pistol at us. Vega’s protective vest absorbs the shot. I turn to see my mother in the doorway of her lab. Behind her, Laertes lies on the floor, unconscious.

  Something breaks beneath my boot: the data disk. The necklace is in pieces, but the disk is still intact. I pick it up and pocket it as my mother readies herself to fire again. In a flash, I raise my own pistol. The opalite bullets meet in midair and explode, showering the room with powdered minerals.

  “Hold your breath,” I tell Vega. “And get ready to run.”

  I fire again, and my mother’s office explodes.

  10

  Alarms blare as we leave the dust and rubble of my mother’s office. We sprint down the stairs, taking them two at a time. On the first floor, Vega overrides the lockdown code, and we burst through the emergency exit of the Intelligence building. My Monitor switches on by itself, and a holographic image of Claudia’s face floats above my wrist.

  “Shit, you couldn’t get out of there without blowing the place up?” she asks.

  “Mom injected Laertes with the serum,” I reply. “He’s like a souped-up lizard human on crack now. We had to stall them.”

  “What about the rest of the serum?”

  “I destroyed what I could,” I report. “But I’m not sure how much of it survived. Does it matter? Mom can replicate it whenever she wants.”

  “Did you get the data disk?”

  “Yes, but she’s already copied the information.”

  “It’s okay,” Claudia says. “You stalled them. That’s good enough for us. Get to the extraction point. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  As we cross the lawn, several teams of armed officers pour out of the Defense building. Vega halts and draws her pistol. The extraction point is the training bay, right behind the Defense building. We have to get past IA’s army to get off this planet.

  “Two of us, fifty of them,” she says. “What do we do?”

  “Get creative.”

  I take off my shoe.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Vega demands.

  I empty what’s left of the opalite from my mother’s pistol into my sock and tie a knot. Then I put my shoe back on.

  “We’re going to run straight toward them,” I say. “They won’t be expecting that.”

  “Ophelia, you’re crazy.”

  “Got company?” Claudia asks over the Monitor.

  “You could say that.”

  “Activating backup.”

  Vega glances over. “We have backup?”

  The army’s getting closer. I shove Vega forward, and she reluctantly breaks into a sprint. We barrel toward the Defense officers. A line of R-Ones lights up in front of us, ready to fire. Just as their captain gives the order, I throw the opalite-laden sock as far as I can, grab Vega’s pistol, and fire. The sock explodes, and the heated opalite burns through the sky. The indigo powder rains down on the troops, coating their head and necks. Several officers drop their blasters to attend to the chemical burns on their skin. I swipe two R-Ones and hand one to Vega. We fire at will, picking off the officers at a rapid pace. In our IA finery, the officers have a hard time seeing us amongst themselves.

  Claudia’s backup emerges in the form of her students. I recognize Doug, De Silva, and several other trainees that I worked with over the past couple of days. They come from the dormitories, fully equipped for a battle like they’d been waiting for Claudia to give them orders. As the students collide with the fully-trained IA agents, it becomes clear that Claudia’s Holmes-style fighting technique is far superior to whatever was taught in the past. The trainees go through the agents like a chainsaw through whipped cream.

  “Go!” Doug orders as he blasts an agent with his R-one then punches another who’s gotten too close. “We’ll cover you!”

  Vega and I make a run for it. The trainees form a human wall around us, preventing the IA agents from reaching us. I marvel at the students’ abilities. They’re better than I was at that age. In ten years, they’ll be super soldiers, exactly what Veritas needs to defend the galaxy from IA.

  The Academy’s lawn gets completely destroyed as we fight our way across it, but we make it to the training bay mostly unharmed. As far as I can see, we haven’t lost any of the students, but IA’s Defense team is way down.

  “Go, go, go!” Doug ushers everyone into the bay, fires at one last officer, then slides the bay doors shut and locks it. “Let’s move, people! Not much time until the next wave deploys.”

  Every training ship in the bay shudders to life. A pilot sits in each one already, waiting for the rest of us to show up. Closest to us, someone waves from a Wasp. I recognize their leather Veritas gloves.

  “Saved this one for you!” calls the Wasp pilot. “Heard you liked these speeders best.”

  I climb the ladder to the speeder and hop in the cockpit. Vega’s right behind me.

  “I’m Marnie,” the pilot announces, shaking my hand with a broad grin. “I can’t believe I’m finally meeting you.”

  “Ophelia. This is Vega.”

  “Oh, I know who you are,” Marnie says. She climbs into the back seat, allowing Vega to take the navigator’s seat. That leaves the piloting up to me.

  “You sure?” I ask Marnie. “I don’t know where we’re going.”

  “The gloves will tell you,” she says, happily strapping herself into her seat.

  “The gloves?”

  “Orion loaned you gloves, right?” she asks. “Put them on. Better do it quick. Everyone else is already heading out, and we’re on a tight schedule.”

  All around us, the other speeders queue along the flight line. Someone overrides the bay doors, and they slide open. In the distance, IA’s Defense teams rush to subdue us, but they’re too far away to matter. The first speeder takes off, the beautiful sound of the jet engine filling the bay. One by one, the other ships follow as the hidden Veritas agents among IA finally take their leave from the Academy.

  I yank Orion’s gloves out of my vest and put them on my hands. “What’s supposed to happen—whoa!”

  My fingers, with a mind of their own, tap hastily on the Wasp’s Monitor. I watch, amazed, as I punch a set of coordinates into the speeder’s map. The gloves do all the work for me, firing up the Wasp and steering it out onto the flight line. It’s like everything I know how to do, but suddenly I’m better at it. With one last look at the advancing Defense officers, I yank back on the joystick, and the Wasp launches into the sky more smoothly than ever before.

  We’re out of Harmonia’s atmosphere in seconds, following along behind the other ships that left before us. The gloves guide me to jump to hyperspeed. As the stars fly by in bright blurs, I watch our progress on the map.

  “Where exactly are we going?” I ask Marnie, who seems utterly content to lounge in the back seat.

  “Outer planet ring,” she replies. “Can’t really tell you much more until we get there. It’s classified Veritas information, and you haven’t technically been sworn in yet.” She leans over my seat, uncomfortably close to my face. “You are joining Veritas, right?”

  “Yes,” I say. Next to me, Vega shifts in her seat to stare out her side of the cockpit window. I can’t see her expression, but I know she’s contemplating the commitment involved with joining Veritas.

  Marnie sits back again. “Great. Just making sure. Because if you weren’t going to join us, I’d have to kill you. Ya know?” She chuckles to herself, but when neither me nor Vega joins in, she claps me on the shoulder. “I’m kidding! Relax. We’re heading to Adrestia.”

  “The black planet?” I say. “No one goes there. It’s a mud pit.”

  “Actually, it’s not,” Marnie says. “I guess the creepy color dissuaded a lot of people from touching down there, but it’s not mud. It’s sand. Black sand. It’s cool. Pretty beaches. The water’s amazing. Anyway, that’s
where Veritas set up our headquarters. No one’s looking for us there.”

  “They will be now,” Vega says. “You think IA isn’t going to follow us?”

  “They can follow us all they want,” Marnie replies. “But there’s a disorientation shield around the planet.”

  “A what?”

  “A disorientation shield,” Marnie says again. “It’s like a Patch Shield and a fog grenade rolled into one. Basically, it confuses anyone who flies through it. Makes them think they’re lost. That’s how we’ve kept Adrestia safe from invaders.”

  “Do they have hot showers on Adrestia?” I ask. “Indoor plumbing? Moonshine?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Thank heavens.”

  It takes the better part of several hours to reach Adrestia, even with the Wasp in hyperspeed. The black planet is on the opposite side of the galaxy as Harmonia, and the outer planets are more fickle to reach than the others. A glittery silver glow shimmers as we approach.

  “Is that the disorientation shield?” Vega asks, squinting at the strange substance floating around in deep space. “I’d love to see the tech behind that.”

  “Nerd,” I say.

  “You’re sharp,” Marnie says to Vega. “That’s good. We can use that.”

  Vega presses her lips together and shuts up. For whatever reason, she’s got a stick up her butt when it comes to Marnie.

  “Will it screw with us?” I ask Marnie. “The disorientation shield?”

  “Nope. You’ve got the coordinates for a reason.”

  We fly right into the shimmer, and the cockpit window fogs up with a silvery glow. I can’t see anything beyond the nose of the Wasp. If the speeder wasn’t on autopilot, I’d have no idea where to steer myself to get out safely. It’s an effective trap, one that lasts longer than I’m comfortable with. After several minutes, we emerge on the other side of the disorientation shield, and Adrestia sits right in front of us. It’s a small planet, all mottled black and white like an abstract painting. We breach the planet’s atmosphere with ease and continue toward a central spot on the surface.

  “Home sweet home,” Marnie says.

  The planet is bare—all black sand and crystal clear water—except for the small village the coordinates are leading us to. We fly over a series of simple buildings. Some are made of stone or mud. Others are simply fabric pitched over sturdy frames. There’s more people than I thought there would be, several thousand by the looks of it. As our collection of ships fly over, heading for a bare area beyond the village, everyone looks up and cheers. Even from this height, I can see the smiling faces of the Veritas members below.

  We land in the sandy area beyond the village, parking the Wasp in a neat line with the other speeders. Marnie hops out of the cockpit and joins her friends on the ground, leaving Vega and me to disembark on our own. There’s no ladder to get out, so I lower myself over the edge of the Wasp and drop down. Then I help Vega out. A familiar voice greets us.

  “Ladies!”

  Orion strolls over and gives us both a hug, an oddly intimate gesture for a man we’ve only met once. All around us, Veritas agents from the ground greet our partners in crime. There’s a lot of hugging. Maybe the rebel group trains their students in the subtle art of compassion too.

  “I’m glad you made it.” Orion gestures to my hands. “You like the gloves?”

  “They came in handy. You want them back?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  I hand them over. “Sorry if they’re sweaty.”

  “No problem,” Orion says. “You’ll get your own pair soon. How was the trip?”

  “Stressful,” Vega replies as Orion begins to guide us away from the speeders and toward the nearby village.

  “Well, you’re here now,” Orion says. “You have some time to relax while we figure out what to do about IA. We’ll debrief you soon.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask. “Have you had any word from Harmonia? Did my mother survive the explosion? What about my brother?”

  “Your mother is pissed,” Orion reports. “As is the rest of IA. We’ll worry about that later. In the meantime—”

  We climb over a black dune, and the village lays itself out in front of us. Orion spreads his arms.

  “Welcome to Camp Veritas on the black planet,” he says. “The Third Planetary War has begun.”

  Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story!

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  The Impossible Book 2

  1

  Most of the Pavo galaxy is named after Greek or Roman figures in mythology. I never much understood the concept at first. Why christen things after false stories from long before the galaxy was discovered? Gradually, it began to make sense. For instance, Proioxis was the personification of pursuit in battle. She was a goddess of onrush. The planet Proioxis, my home planet, is populated with people who are quick to jump into action. We are constantly on the offense, ready to fight anyone for our purpose. That makes the people of Proioxis good at two things: enforcing the law and breaking the law. Those who decide to enforce it end up recruited by the International Armament. Fifty-two percent of IA’s Defense troops are recruited from Proioxis. I learned those statistics in my very first class as a Defense trainee. Things have drastically changed since then.

  Palioxis was the sister of Proioxis, as the planets are sisters in our solar system. Opposite her sibling, Palioxis was the goddess of flight and retreat in mythology. On the planet named for her, the people are faint-hearted in physical battle but confident in mental agility. Where a citizen of Proioxis would stand and fight, one of Palioxis would retreat and reassess the situation. The International Armament also recruits from Palioxis often, training young minds for their Intelligence sector.

  It’s easy to generalize the two planets—the first as rash, the second as cowardly—and many often do, but when the populations band together, Proioxis’s brutishness and Palioxis’s wit are almost unstoppable. It’s what makes IA the most notorious government in the universe. After Earth became uninhabitable, humans landed in the Pavo galaxy, drove out the aliens species that lived here, and took up the throne as if it was ours to begin with, as humans are often prone to do. Of course, for some reason, we never expect it to come back around and bite us in the ass.

  “What comes around goes around, I guess,” says Orion, our liaison. “Once IA drops the shields protecting the galaxy from outsiders, the Revellae will take what they want from us, including our lives.”

  “It’s only fitting,” I reply. “After all, we were the ones who committed mass genocide on their race. I’m surprised there are enough of them left to mount this kind of attack.”

  Vega remains silent and stony-faced. We’ve only just arrived on Adrestia, otherwise known as the black planet. Here, the rebel group Veritas has been hiding out from IA, gradually building an army to prevent a galaxy-wide breach. Everything’s so new and up in the air that I don’t where to go or what to say or how to act. It used to be that I always knew my place. As a teenager, I was Ophelia Holmes, top-ranked student at IA’s Defense academy with perfect grades and a long career with the government. After I defected at graduation, I became First Mate
aboard the most notorious pirate vessel in all the galaxy, The Impossible, and served the meanest and most cunning captain in history, Saint Rita. All of that is in the past now, and I have to accept a new role: Ophelia Holmes, errant rebel.

  “Do you ladies know the history of Veritas?” Orion asks. “How our little group came to be?”

  “Every government needs an opposition,” Vega replies gruffly. “Veritas is ours.”

  “Careful, Miss Major,” Orion says. “Here, we monitor very closely for anyone who might be feeding information to IA. That sort of language—if you include yourself while speaking about IA—is the sort of thing our council watches out for. We take our mission seriously.”

  Vega looks like she’s about to spit out a hot-headed response, so I jump in for her. “You’ll have to forgive Vega,” I say, tucking my best friend behind my back so I’m between her and Orion. “She’s new to the whole rebel thing. Brainwashed by IA’s Intelligence sector at a young age. You know how it is.”

  “I am not brainwashed—ouch!” Vega winces when I step on her foot. “Look, I’m sick of IA too. They killed my mother, for heaven’s sake.”

  Orion’s expression falls. “How could I forget? Your mother was one of my closest friends. You would do Veritas well to follow in her footsteps.”

  “I’m trying,” Vega replies.

  “Veritas was the Roman goddess of truth,” Orion says, not giving us the option to answer his question this time around. “From our inception, we have always strived to tell the truth. IA has lied to its citizens for as long as it has existed. We aim to right the wrongs IA has inflicted on the galaxy. After our near-collapse during the Second Planetary War, we needed a place to rebuild. Can either of you guess why we chose Adrestia?”

  Adrestia, otherwise known as the black planet, is among the outer ring of Pavo’s solar system. It has its own sun to warm its beaches, where the sand is jet black and the water is crystal clear. The foliage is tropical, providing food and resources. Adrestia is considered one of the most livable planets in Pavo, but there’s a reason as to why it’s nearly deserted.