Page 62 of Broken Triad

His grin becomes sly. “A beautiful woman like you, all alone in the night. We can work something out.”

I grab a ruby at random, a gem that was bought for me by the triad, and rip it from the golden necklace I never wore. I press the gold into his palm. “A week.”

“I rent it by the day.”

I can’t waste any time. I slam the ruby into his fist. “I’ll buy your fastest ship. Don’t bargain. I’m not in the mood for it. This ruby is worth more than any of the junkers in your yard.”

He whistles, long and low, then walks me into the shipyard. I pick a small ship with scratched paint and dents, a crack running along the front window. It’s a surveyor ship—and my father told me that the new hires get an hour of training before they use them. If they can figure it out, I can. It’s not much bigger than a car, a circular transparent viewing compartment attached to an engine.

“You know how to fly this thing?”

“Does it have AI?”

“No. I can teach you, if you like.”

“Quick,” I snap, and he runs me through the basics with me breathing down his neck, telling him to hurry. I spent sleepless nights running simulations on ships during my year of service to Paulus, and his words are just a repetition of concepts I mastered long ago.

Within five minutes I’ve taken off. The little ship is jerky. It has rudimentary controls, but I cut him off when he was telling me how to plot a course.

I know the route by memory.

I fly at top speed towards the cave, the wind whistling through holes in the plating of the ship that’s barely big enough to fit me.

Instinct drives me there. The triad could have gone anywhere to perform their ritual, to cut their veins and pump them full of venom, but something tells me that they will choose the cave to be their tomb.

That they know they are going to die, and that they want to die in the one place they were truly themselves.

24

BOLDEN

We flew three feet off the ground in the stolen Reaver, skimming against the ground to evade surveillance. We were due back at the shipyard bay, and there will be no excuse this time. We’ve been under too much suspicion, but we don’t care anymore.

One last chance.

We pull up, flying just above the tree line, the trees seeming to reach up to touch us as we fly towards the cave a final time. It’s by instinct we go there. It is the place of our best memories, and we want to be surrounded by them, grasping for the last shreds of comfort.

We hover over the rocky clearing and ascend to the top of the cliff where the cave opens. Krazak stops an inch away from the edge, turning the Reaver sideways, the doors opening. We walk out of the ship and into the stone hollow where we spent the best days of our lives with Lola.

It’s barren. We scoured it. Every hint of our lives is gone. Even the ashes from the fire are scrubbed. There’s no trace of evidence that could be used against us—but now none of that matters. We deserted our duty. We stole a Reaver that was due back immediately. We’ll live the rest of our lives on the run, Scorp-Blooded with Lola by our side…

Or we’ll die here, against the unforgiving, cold rock.

The three of us sit in a circle in the cave. Krazak has his back to the entrance, and I look past him, past the Reaver, to the night sky where the stars glow, fresh, cool air curling into the cave like it wants to run its fingers over my body.

Khra completes the circle and lays the three barbs in between us. They are like daggers. He drained them of their venom. In the ancient texts, it was written that the Scorp-Blood tribes were tattooed with needles made of the barbs.

All mumbo-jumbo. All speculation, old texts and ancient lore. I know that General Asmod survived being stabbed by a Scorp, his veins turned venomous green. This will not be a test of how well we followed an ancient ritual.

It will be a test of our strength. It will be a test of whether we withstand the torture, or end our own lives with our Orb-Blades. It will be our final test.

In the center of the barbs are three small pots of the venomous brew. They look like ink wells from ancient histories, but no one wrote in red-green ink, our own blood diluting the poison. Blood turns dull brown with time—but the mixture is still bright, crimson mixed with poison green, fresh as though I just opened my veins.

The ancient texts spoke of multiple Scorp-Blood tribes on different planets, some living like cavemen, others with high-tech societies. Each had their own ritual.

Some tribes used the Scorp-blooding as a rite of passage, sending a young man out into the wild with nothing but a blade and exiling him until he returned with the barb of one of the monstrous Scorp, only to face the true trial when he returned. Not all boys came back from that—some choosing to flee and live as the dishonored rather than go through the torture that they witness from a young age, the Scorp-blooding taking place in the center of the village.

Other tribes are less brutal. They tattoo their young from an early age with ink made of Scorp venom so weak it would feel like a bee sting, slowly building up resistance until the ritual was performed at around the age that we would have finished Academy.

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