The cadet jumped back, then landed a punch to the side of Vania’s head. Breathless, Vania landed hard on her back, her hair momentarily obscuring her view. She pushed her bangs from her eyes to find Sargent standing over her, triumphant.
No, she refused to let it end like this. Vania quickly twisted the bracelet she wore and grabbed Sargent by the ankle. The cadet let out a cry of pain as every nerve from hip to toe shut down and she collapsed.
Vania calmly sat up and brushed dust from the sleeves of her jacket. She pushed herself to her feet.
“Cheater!” the cadet gasped between whimpers of pain. “That was a pricker—you didn’t say we could use weapons!”
Vania blinked innocently. “I’m sorry, Cadet. Question: Do you think the royalists I fight are polite enough to refrain from using whatever weapon they have at their disposal?”
The instructor gave a nervous chuckle. “And let that be a lesson to all of you. Citizen Aldred has a very good point.”
Another cadet came to help Sargent up. Her leg was twitching, and Vania averted her eyes. The pricker contained only a little cone snail neurotoxin, but the cadet wouldn’t be in control of her muscles for a good hour. The other cadets looked on, silent and skeptical, despite their instructor’s ruling that her tactics had been fine.
Who cared what they thought? Vania was right—the royalist resistors wouldn’t play fair in fights, so why should the revolutionaries? The point was to win, not to be fair.
VANIA HAD HOPED TO see Justen or Remy before dinner, but it didn’t happen. Apparently, neither of her foster siblings had been in the palace since before last weekend. Remy was on some sort of school trip and Justen was no doubt buried waist-deep in research at the lab. Ever since the revolution started, they’d hardly spent any time together. Remy, especially, bore the brunt of Justen’s and Vania’s dedication to their work. It was good she was more mature than most fourteen-year-olds. And, of course, she understood the importance of the revolution.
Showered and dressed for dinner, Vania took the seat at the foot of the table, the one that had once been reserved for her mother. On her left sat two of her father’s most trusted advisers, and on her right were the two empty chairs belonging to the Helos.
Vania gave a quick shake of her head, her black bangs shivering on her brow. If Remy was out east on her field trip, that was one thing, but what excuse did Justen have to miss dinner yet again? His lab was right here in Halahou, but his absences were par for the course of late. He was glued to his chair at the lab—either that or performing genetic counseling sessions for families of the Darkened in sanitariums. Miserable wretches. Vania didn’t know how Justen could stand even being near them. If she were to find out she would Darken, she’d throw herself off the nearest cliff rather than wait for the end to come naturally. Word on the streets was that the Reduction drug was better . . . but not by much.
There was the sound of a throat being cleared at the other end of the table and Vania raised her eyes. Her father had come at last. Citizen Aldred presided over the head of the table, his back straight, his coat buttoned to the neck and bearing every medal and insignia the old queen had ever awarded him when he was just the head of the reg militia. Vania had asked him once why he still wore them, since the old queen and indeed the entire old system of government were such a disgrace.
“Symbols are important, Vania,” her father had explained. And right now, the populace clung to symbols of the old regime. They trusted Aldred both for his long service to the old country and for his promises about their new one.
Symbols, like those stupid leis and nanotech wild poppies Vania kept finding everywhere. It wasn’t just that the Wild Poppy was snatching the odd aristo out of the work camps. It was that he had to be so ostentatious about it. It appealed to vain aristo hearts and undermined the purity of the revolution.
“Citizen Helo isn’t gracing us with his presence again this evening?” Citizen Aldred asked wryly. “And with you home from your siege, too, Vania. We’re to be a small party tonight, it seems.”
Vania’s brow creased. She’d been too busy with the Ford barricades to contact Justen, but if she thought about it, it had been almost a week since they’d exchanged words at all. Maybe this was what being grown-up was really all about. Justen was busy with his research; she was busy with her father’s revolution. When they were younger, they’d shared everything, but they were no longer children, and they weren’t like Vania’s old schoolmates either, who spent most of their days wandering around Halahou, partying with genetemps and gossiping, as idle as any aristo. The last time she’d made an effort to socialize with them, they’d been more interested in discussing their various romantic entanglements than in the world-changing revolution happening around them.
Vania and Justen were above all that. They had serious matters on their minds.
The company at the table joined hands and bowed their heads as Vania’s father began to speak.
“We gathered here tonight to give thanks to those who came before us: Darwin and Persistence Helo, who witnessed the suffering of the Reduced and devised the cure.”
Vania smiled into her plate. Even without her foster siblings’ presence at the table, the Helos were not to be forgotten. Remy and Justen were both understandably proud of their heritage. Vania’s father encouraged them to be, and he always claimed the Helos were the best regs who ever lived—at least until now. Vania was sure that people would start exalting the Aldred name in the same way soon enough. After all, the Aldreds were the ones to finally free the regs from their aristo enslavement.
“We are also eternally grateful to the creator of New Pacifica, he whose name is lost to history due to the tyranny of the monarchs and the enslavement of the people. Without the work of this unknown genius, humanity would have never survived the wars.”
There was a chorus of nods and murmured agreement around the table. Vania was glad that, since the revolution, the true story was coming out. When she’d been growing up, she’d been forced to learn the monarchy-approved version: that the islands of New Pacifica had been terraformed and settled by the first Queen Gala and King Albie as a refuge after the Wars of the Lost had rendered every other land on Earth uninhabitable.
But it was far more important to emphasize the truth—that the land itself had been created by the last general, the one who’d won the last War of the Lost by cracking open the Earth and killing all his enemies. Had he not done that—whoever that brave man was—there would have been no New Pacifica in the first place.
The aristos who’d ruled the land for so long were nobodies—probably descended from janitors or servants on the Lost General’s ship. The only reason they hadn’t ended up Reduced was that they’d been too poor to get the genetic enhancements that had accidentally caused Reduction. And then they’d taken advantage of the Reduced descendants of the people who’d really won the war.
Like the Lost General. No one knew what had become of him and his family. They were Lost, their children Reduced, and the aristos had never kept records about that sort of thing. It could even be the Aldreds. Probably was, considering that Damos Aldred was such a great military mastermind, too.
And Vania was determined to be just the same.
As the first course was served, Citizen Aldred directed his attention to his daughter. “How is the siege of the Ford plantation progressing, Vania?”
“Very well, sir. I’m told the fortifications will fall in less than a week.”
“Excellent.” Her father smiled. At his right, General Gawnt rolled his bulbous eyes, but Vania did her best to ignore it, as she did all his snide remarks and badly hidden whispers of “nepotism” and “brat.” Vania was young to be captain, and some people had a problem with that. But she didn’t know why anyone should be surprised. She had an aptitude for leadership and politics, like her father. Just because they had the same talents and went into the same line of work did not make them like the aristos, whose hereditary positions and privileges had been the bane of Galatea. It would have been wasteful of her father not to take advantage of her natural talents over some quibble about favoritism, just as it would have been wasteful of him not to utilize Justen’s scientific genius, just because his name was Helo. The revolution would never have been this successful without Justen’s contribution.