He wouldn’t miss the scent of rotting algae that drifted between the tears in Mars’s crust. Raf stared down the shadowy chasms of Noctis Labyrinthus, a shiver crept up from the base of his spine until the chill met the back of his scalp. Volcanic heat from the active magma chambers below the algae farms outside the rebel shipyards was enough to warm the air here. Normally. He told himself that leaving his friends behind on Mars had nothing to do with the cold or the hairs of his neck standing on end. Nothing.

  Dust Devils. Maybe two dozen. Twenty-five metre tornados. Even during the worst storms of Mars, cyclonic patterns should be random, but they weren’t. Especially within the six kilometre deep canyons that shrouded the reborn Noctis Shipyards. Never this kind of wind here.

  “Why aren’t you answering me?” Xylia strained for every step as Raf hauled her along the trail that would bring them back to the Galvex-1.

  “Your eyes.” Fragments of ash whipped around them. Raf grabbed her under her arms, shook her. Her eyes—grey swirling again. No white. Only black and grey.

  Each eye moved independently. As if her soul had been lost.

  “The ship… get to the ship.” Xylia’s mouth barely moved but her voice cut through the icy gale around them.

  “Come on, then.” Catharine's words clung to him. What she'd said about the Tractability Laboratory. What she’d threatened. About taking Xylia's mind.

  His stomach twisted. Each dragging footprint concealed by the blowing dust.

  Frost tipped Raf’s bushy eyebrows, as he heaved Xylia over the berm that hid the Galvex-1.

  On his lips, a taste like fire-ash. Ahead the Galvex was alive, as if knowing their arrival. Every hardpoint, every nacelle, porthole light, and each lift engine glowed.

  “We have to leave. Now.” Raf pulled her arm. She didn't move. He pulled harder. Her feet stayed locked to the ground. The Galvex-1 was right there. Meters away. But she wouldn't move.

  “No, I want you to tell me, Rafael.” Xylia’s eyes still clouded. Unseeing. “What is it, what did Catharine say to you?”

  A roar. The winds twisted in opposite directions, coating his eyes with ash and ice. Raf wanted to tell her. About the Tractability Laboratory. About Catharine taking everything. The miners, his dreams, Xylia's mind. But he couldn't. Not while her eyes looked like that.

  Whatever was happening—the dust devils, the ice, the winds—could be Xylia. But how to be sure?

  He turned to face her and his eyelids pulled. Stretched as if someone gripping his eyelashes and yanking. Not physical. Worse.

  Something in his mind. Fingers rummaging through his thoughts. Memories. Words he hadn't spoken. She was inside his head or something was. A drop of blood, black as oil, seeped from her grey eyes.

  Around them the winds ripped at the Martian soils exposing rocks, and skeletal bones. An old warrior. The old Strata Angustus colours. One of Krrel’s ancestors no doubt. A centuries forgotten war for Noctis.

  Blue sparks electrified Xylia's fingers. Deliberate. Or at least focused. But she wasn't in control. Not fully. Lift engines hissed. Clouds of dust stripped from the Galvex-1's landing struts.

  The dust devils unwound. Collapsing all at once.

  Xylia bent at the waist, gasping. She'd been holding them, and now she'd let go.

  From the shipyards a scent like fuel. They’d made precious time an enemy.

  “It’s going to be okay.” Raf lied out loud as a screech made him wince. The unmistakable howl of stratocracy interceptors. Turbines, six maybe more.

  Neither of them had a chance to strap in, when Raf punched the lift motors. The heavy fighter lumbered over the berm, just above the dissipating dust clouds.

  Xylia drank in the ship’s air as the ship vibrated. For a moment lucidity.

  “Strap in.” Raf’s calloused hand caressed her arm. “Stay with me.”

  Flashing images glitched then cleared twice, before murky lines filled the navigation screens. It shouldn’t do that. Raf leaned forwards and peered through the canopy glass.

  “Can’t see anything with this dust.”

  The ship toned: Collision - climb.

  Too late, red target icons flashed. A half dozen or more. Head on. Each screen cleared and flared to life.

  Streaks of silver blazed by the Galvex-1 generating a shockwave that rocked the fighter forty-five degrees on axis. Raf jammed the control yoke all the way back, watching the display screens.

  “We don’t have power and they’re turning.” The half dozen or more Stratocracy interceptors turned in converging arcs thirty kilometers behind the Galvex-1. Catharine’s ships. Soon they would climb: Knife-edged silver hulls. Sleek. Fast. Incendiary guns might not take them down, but missiles would.

  “Controls are sluggish.” The Galvex-1 should have leapt into the stratosphere. It always had before. But now it climbed slow. Sluggish. Like something was dragging it down.

  The ship’s voice warbled: Ascent power 40%... 38%...

  “Blast. Too slow.” Hammering his fist on the comm panel, he shouted. “Phobos… Britt… you got any missiles or anything?”

  In front of Xylia he twisted two dials. Only static. This time her eyes looked fiery. Almost dangerous. Had she damaged the heavy fighter?

  When Raf wrenched the stick to the left, the fighter spun in a painfully slow corkscrew. A scent like burning electrical wire wisped through the cockpit. “Scrap… gettin' hot.”

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  Target acquisition. The ship toned. Anterior Type-II Interceptor M2; zero, Targets closing.

  “Rafael, what did Catharine say?” Xylia asked but stared straight ahead into the spinning stars above.

  “Guns? Do we have guns? Weapons status.”

  Anterior SDGC - Cannon charges, maximum inventory ten thousand, zero available.

  “Rafael. Tell me.”

  This time Raf stared straight ahead. Silent.

  Tracking icons converged into one large blur behind them on the ship’s screens: Multiple target lock detected.

  “It’s not important, we have to get out of here.” There were no more questions to ask the ship, no more ways to avoid answering Xylia.

  Either his hand or the control stick chose to shudder. “She said that she’d take them away.”

  “Who? Rafael.”

  “Dreams.”

  The ship interrupted: Ascent power 36%... 34%...

  “That she’d take my dreams…” The acid-like scent of baking electrical wires grew stronger. The slow twisting climb drew stomach acid into his throat. He told himself it wasn’t fear of Xylia’s reaction.

  It felt like dozens of seconds before he spoke again. “That she’d take you away from me…” His eyes looked past her controlled expression.

  “She’s always tried to do that Raf, even when we were children.” As if a star revealed itself above, Xylia lifted her chin, and smirked. An expression unfamiliar to Raf.

  A plasma trail ripped by, then another. Reactive armour crackled. Missiles from an interceptor. Warning shots that triggered the ship’s stabilizers.

  The ship toned: Multiple weapons locked. Closing. Evasive.

  Slamming the stick to the other side, Raf reversed the corkscrew. Every kilometre higher seemed to slow the climb.

  Another two plasma trails rocked the Galvex-1.

  “They seem mad.” Soon they might decide to not-miss. Raf gritted his teeth.

  “You are not telling me something.” Xylia stroked his arm, still looking at the stars. “Please.”

  Rasping over the comm, Britt’s voice broke through. “I got nothing that will help you.”

  Fading then collapsing another voice filtered through the signal. Clear. Familiar. “I’m just going to damage that little ship of yours, and then when you return, you’ll stand beside me Rafael and I’ll make you watch… watch…” Catharine’s signal squelched then died.

  “Watch what Raf? What’s she talking about?”

  “The tractability Laboratory. She’s going to take your mind again.”

  Raf jammed the control yoke to the other side.

  The ship toned: Ascent power 30%... 28%...

  Everything slowed. Instead of spinning the other way, the heavy fighter stilled. Ice crystals formed on the viewscreens and controls. Mist gathered around his breath fogging the canopy glass. One by one each display screen blurred.

  “Power’s dying. Auxiliary’s not kicking in.” Around them the ship shuddered. Not concussions or vibration. A rhythm.

  Beside him, Xylia's hands gripped the armrests. Her knuckles whitened. Then her skin…

  It wasn't burning. It was separating. Layers peeling apart. Like pages in a book.

  Between each layer, electricity arced. Blue. Crackling. Visible.

  Raf stared. He couldn't look away.

  The skin hung in strips. Raw tissue beneath. Blood should have poured.

  But it didn't. Just electricity. And heat.

  The smell hit him—burnt flesh and the dry air just before lightning.

  Pressure escalated in his mind and his forward vision blurred. Just like the displays.

  Over the ship’s communications Britt was yelling, but he couldn’t find any of the dials. “Some kind of heated radiation… here. Multiple overloads…”

  In his clearer peripheral vision, on either side of the Galvex-1, Catharine’s silver interceptors flanked the heavy fighter. Matching speed. Where there should have been pilots and copilots, just blood dripped from the glass.

  Lazy, as if out of fuel, symmetrically they tipped back and yawed… falling out of the sky. Gradual, until nothing was there.

  The ship’s voice warbled: Hostile targets destroyed.

  “But with what?”

  Britt’s signal cut through. “Fighters are falling.”

  "Raf you seein' this?" Britt's voice cracked. "They're blowin' up. Every one of them. Just hittin' the ground. Like they wanted to die."

  A pause. Static. "What the hell did you do?"

  “How.” Whispering the words, he stared at Xylia’s. Skin scorched. And her eyes, swirling clouds. Tearing.

  “I’m sorry Rafael.” Bitter cold was replaced with the whirring of the ship’s filtration system.

  Unstrapping his harness Raf enveloped her in his arms, trying to ease her pain. What in hell just happened? Screens glowed back to life. No red icons.

  Britt’s voice spiked on the comms “All the interceptors just flew into Mars as if the pilots did it on purpose.”

  "Or there were none." The words hung in the air.

  Raf's arms were still around Xylia. Holding her. Comforting her.

  But his hands had stopped moving.

  She'd killed them. All of them. The pilots in those interceptors. Dozens of people and he'd watched their blood pour from the cockpit glass.

  Yet she'd done it. Xylia. The girl who loved stars. Who used to smile at firefly lights.

  His throat closed. Hollow. He felt hollow inside.

  As if each second, she might do it again. To someone else. To him. He tightened his grip anyway. Because what else could he do?

  In his mind he heard Catharine’s voice: “You’ll have to come back to Mars sometime Raf. I’ll be right here. Waiting for you.”

  “We’re almost there.” He released her and turned back to the controls.

  When he pulled the control column back, the Galvex-1 steadied. Phobos orbit tracking on the navigation screen. Raf trimmed his translunar trajectory and rotated toward Stickney Crater.

  Sobbing audibly, Xylia's mouth and face were wet.

  The comm signal erupted. “Don’t know what kind of radiation that was, but I’m bleeding from the ears here Raf.”

  “We’re landing.” Pivoting the heavy fighter, Raf aligned the docking port and inched the lumbering ship into position. Four metallic thunks signaled that the landing struts had been clamped in place.

  Minutes later, they carried Xylia to the Stickney Emplacement's spartan infirmary. Raf gauzed her hands while tears continued to pour from Xylia’s eyes.

  Grabbing Raf by the shoulders, the gaunt missile tech touched his ears and showed Raf the blood where it still seeped. “What in saints happened?”

  Staring at his drawn pock marked face, Raf confessed. “Britt, I think she just killed them all.”

  “How?” Shaking as it were a fever, Britt’s teeth chattered. “And why are her hands like that? What went wrong?”

  Beside them the Phobos AI pitched. “Data. Validation. Secondary target. Not destroyed. Altered vector. Noctis.”

  “Raf… hate to tell you this but looks like the Alba is moving again, properly.”

  Britt zoomed the missile emplacement screens.

  “Damage was temporary I guess. Seems to be landing. What are they doing?”

  Minutes on Phobos and Catharine had the ship repositioned. “Loading.”

  “Loading what?”

  Pounding began in Raf’s chest. Louder. Faster. “Missiles and miners.”

  “Martyrs.” His head hurt but this time Catharine was the cause.

  “Wow.” Zeroing in on the ship’s missile tubes, Britt massaged the back of his head. “Miners aren’t soldiers. Who’s martyrs would they be?”

  “Mine.”