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Zenith
Lindsay Cummings
Sasha Alsberg
�A whirlwind out-of-this-galaxy adventure!’ Sarah J. Maas, bestselling author of A Court of Thorns and Roses and Throne of Glass.There is darkness sweeping across the stars.Most know Androma Racella as the Bloody Baroness: a powerful mercenary whose reign of terror stretches across the Mirabel Galaxy. To those aboard her fearsome glass starship the Marauder, she’s just Andi, their captain and protector.When a routine mission goes awry, the all-girl crew’s resilience is tested as they find themselves in a most unfamiliar place: at the mercy of a powerful bounty hunter connected to Andi’s past and a harrowing betrayal.Perfect for fans of Marie Lu, Victoria Aveyard and Sarah J. Maas.Praise for Zenith:�This book is epic beyond measure. I need the next one like I need air.’ Rachael A, Amazon Reviewer�I was torn between wanting to read as fast as my eyes could manage and wanting to savour spending time with the characters I grew to love.’ Amazon Reviewer�I thought this book was absolutely fantastic and had a great cast of characters.’ Holly Moore, Amazon Reviewer�Zenith is an outstanding read and one of my new favourites. Read it. You will not be disappointed.’ Charlotte Burns, Amazon Reviewer
From #1 New York Times bestselling author duo Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings comes the first book in The Androma Saga, full of action, fantastical intrigue and steamy star-crossed romance
Most know Androma Racella as the Bloody Baroness, a powerful mercenary whose reign of terror stretches across the Mirabel Galaxy. To those aboard her glass starship, Marauder, however, she’s just Andi, their friend and fearless leader.
But when a routine mission goes awry, the Marauder’s all-girl crew is tested as they find themselves in a treacherous situation—and at the mercy of a sadistic bounty hunter from Andi’s past.
Meanwhile, across the galaxy, a ruthless ruler waits in the shadows of the planet Xen Ptera, biding her time to exact revenge for the destruction of her people. The pieces of her deadly plan are about to fall into place, unleashing a plot that will tear Mirabel in two.
Andi and her crew embark on a dangerous, soul-testing journey that could restore order to their ship—or just as easily start a war that will devour worlds. As the Marauder hurtles toward the unknown, and Mirabel hangs in the balance, the only certainty is that in a galaxy run on lies and illusion, no one can be trusted.
Copyright (#u2c495123-a205-5bed-8b1b-b7611314f030)
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright В© Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings 2016
Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition В© January 2018 ISBN: 9780008228323
Version: 2018-05-24
From Sasha:
To my amazing father, Peter Alsberg,
for always telling me to shoot for the stars.
From Lindsay:
To my dad, Don Cummings,
who gave me a love of sci-fi!
Here’s to #7!
Contents
Cover (#u6d7e14fd-8c16-5f7a-bd8a-0476e1595bd8)
Back Cover Text (#u3adfbea1-98cf-5940-b77e-eb700ee77916)
Title Page (#u452c739f-efee-5871-bd95-124c27e05df1)
Copyright (#u425dd601-7554-5371-81d8-67c8b518da73)
Dedication (#u389a19e3-c630-5e1d-a8c8-627f2cd04e97)
Mirabel Galaxy Map (#u25758741-4753-526a-9aa4-e2be5b7f40aa)
Cell 306 (#u1aa02dc6-6c31-55f4-b155-dce964db9b99)
Chapter One (#u175173a7-3703-5650-94d9-625450451f3e)
Chapter Two (#u82abc75d-0f21-5a1c-a58c-4e414ef2d6fc)
Chapter Three (#uf88b7ccb-c796-5c62-bc71-42bfbd8875c9)
Chapter Four (#uf0426b43-216d-5a54-96ac-41a715adf2b6)
Chapter Five (#ucc29d609-454e-5ee8-960d-aad54b42a6bc)
Chapter Six (#u2714b408-0217-5cd3-bdf9-d67ec0ff8f5b)
Chapter Seven (#uaf4592b9-1ab3-56dc-9f0f-47e23541d5eb)
Chapter Eight (#u6b9cfb0a-4dbe-5e16-be10-cf18f5c0c963)
Chapter Nine (#ube923bc0-53ba-5e93-a0c6-c86d60e97d87)
Chapter Ten (#ue0a21856-0bd2-537f-aefd-a931efef47d2)
Chapter Eleven (#u7dbeb8f6-a4b4-5f70-a6b5-4ff2b4e65b8b)
Chapter Twelve (#u08c54f16-2414-5352-9d07-22d60d8ef33d)
Chapter Thirteen (#u2b371594-72b3-5ee0-93ae-eaa71e284e21)
Chapter Fourteen (#u32206950-b733-58bf-8316-83bab1210a85)
Chapter Fifteen (#u15c50469-357d-5dc4-8ba5-dd1b656ac0e5)
Chapter Sixteen (#u54818dbe-6173-5078-94ea-f8caf6494fcf)
Chapter Seventeen (#ubb90e2e5-87fb-5e1d-9107-c89857946d81)
Chapter Eighteen (#u4f79c5e1-ab36-5ed4-b44b-c14405f3ee1a)
Chapter Nineteen (#uc6fbca60-b505-5f1b-bd41-98ba80452a10)
Chapter Twenty (#u38f227aa-5cc3-51f2-a41a-203dbf4b5832)
Chapter Twenty-One (#u21537ad1-28ab-54f6-9e1b-9776e8c277e4)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#u87474485-3d1d-524f-9125-a303b8dacecf)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#u7af1eeb1-fd05-54a0-b37a-7158491c8de3)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#u49491109-dace-5aca-8e4d-288156a833ac)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#ue819fe3b-fcdc-57fc-b59f-49cf8c7dafc6)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#u7db6ff7b-a3f7-528a-b95b-e87b880b81ed)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#uf0689b2c-dc1d-51ad-ae48-3934fde67b49)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#u602c8ad6-cced-57ee-9392-e3914f728dbd)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#ud311ab3d-9018-5eee-abe9-cf65d0ada7e8)
Chapter Thirty (#u91901db9-60c0-5b75-899f-99b94727c84d)
Chapter Thirty-One (#u6c498e7c-767e-5f12-942f-5752a7d8bf98)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#u35fd323b-c6b1-50b8-950a-1a2820399e30)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#ub9048675-714e-51bf-8ee0-955b3423ba44)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#ub3b6d7d4-fb50-5f74-993f-16ba5fbf22cc)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#uc81cb943-cab6-559b-b6dd-1b15597a73c0)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#u01636245-5442-5b08-a2fa-9df4ff255638)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#u17dd6a14-f41e-5930-9f76-b3b758c6eb86)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#u0e5eb919-6d88-5b07-9543-c96cc18ce506)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#uf9fecc8c-79dc-503c-acb4-8e7c93e48492)
Chapter Forty (#ucd120400-8e12-5773-8ddf-30c23d2b0452)
Chapter Forty-One (#u36761064-1ec5-5a48-8693-b0ef0b32789a)
Chapter Forty-Two (#u24a548f8-622e-53fd-a33b-7e452204ad38)
Chapter Forty-Three (#ud5ae0574-1cea-56de-bce3-8456e23493f4)
Chapter Forty-Four (#u67a45621-4bf2-5904-9548-9388955604ec)
Chapter Forty-Five (#u3971374a-a0bb-571c-9898-7919c55c88c3)
Chapter Forty-Six (#ud3e23af7-1c11-5507-8576-005b76913f39)
Chapter Forty-Seven (#u5ce0c46e-4e8c-5bbf-bd7e-09a826c00de0)
Chapter Forty-Eight (#u4eeeac7f-bd19-5495-a803-077c19217167)
Chapter Forty-Nine (#u7f992acb-dd82-59f8-b193-d247fb90a009)
Chapter Fifty (#ucfec02e7-acf3-5f26-b423-3babb2b06939)
Chapter Fifty-One (#u2534185a-13ac-5324-9d59-e4203cf88c0b)
Chapter Fifty-Two (#u2934f95f-8c80-593e-9b62-dbd198842a56)
Chapter Fifty-Three (#u64c3d103-ddc5-51df-803e-e5c8c99881b9)
Chapter Fifty-Four (#u3a4ae43c-ac78-59c2-9a62-2f2d5b19ff1e)
Chapter Fifty-Five (#u613b5f83-299b-56cc-8ee3-73bebfa94efa)
Chapter Fifty-Six (#u783ada2d-b9a4-59a1-99d0-3445ade36e37)
Chapter Fifty-Seven (#u5916281c-bd2f-5e38-95b5-78a9ce852327)
Chapter Fifty-Eight (#u8f8e972b-3825-59e7-bc43-8ef51b1f22b8)
Chapter Fifty-Nine (#ua9d706ff-495d-5bb0-b3b0-8f8708f241d2)
Chapter Sixty (#u6275ba7f-5997-5dca-b734-fa0af46df0e5)
Chapter Sixty-One (#u92285e21-70b2-5bc7-8f46-a88e7161c21c)
Chapter Sixty-Two (#u7829c427-c20b-501b-b766-46d3a0d5f288)
Chapter Sixty-Three (#u62a8bdda-5a48-558a-a7b2-73ebec42fcda)
Chapter Sixty-Four (#ud95d50a1-cca6-5cdd-bf90-c37e707123a0)
Chapter Sixty-Five (#u1c28342a-c8f9-534b-9e97-84e1c597fa46)
Chapter Sixty-Six (#u96b139fe-2857-5d4b-bb7b-8558fafc3cd5)
Chapter Sixty-Seven (#u20b46edf-fb68-56d4-aa1b-c8d2157a99c6)
Chapter Sixty-Eight (#u71a1adfb-7fb6-5652-afac-ca64ed83dfa3)
Chapter Sixty-Nine (#u2f2737e9-956f-596f-850a-ed82d3375d34)
Chapter Seventy (#u4c379af9-60f1-5fd6-ab10-aad7292f1aa6)
Chapter Seventy-One (#ua1a3263e-a00c-59a4-9d83-c032be1f96f7)
Chapter Seventy-Two (#u5bdf2632-3e5c-516a-9fe9-30fbc8fb4f13)
Chapter Seventy-Three (#u914af8bd-98dc-5ca0-8ee9-061492f02040)
Chapter Seventy-Four (#u46acb820-2831-5185-afed-340ab29b472e)
Chapter Seventy-Five (#u4871b5af-b1fb-5833-9e34-3f949ba95f2f)
Chapter Seventy-Six (#u141ec1a0-f9c7-562e-ab9e-303710032618)
Chapter Seventy-Seven (#u9f0ab567-e6ee-5ee3-acc7-e933d6e20c42)
Chapter Seventy-Eight (#u0c9c55b2-b2ba-5d3f-adf4-fbf18644af40)
Chapter Seventy-Nine (#u1f391c6f-5df7-5645-955d-8c4e31e77ce1)
Chapter Eighty (#u6e755950-5776-54f6-bde5-8a12cc363610)
Chapter Eighty-One (#ud0d7737d-36bb-53c6-99ea-e49e0a9df280)
Chapter Eighty-Two (#u74a885b2-782a-5cf6-b617-2710521bb3c4)
Chapter Eighty-Three (#ue9564b9f-de2d-5b17-b28f-56290b7aa17f)
Chapter Eighty-Four (#ucd7e7379-ebb3-5680-9765-6d7f9532b34e)
Chapter Eighty-Five (#ud3c21c75-a487-5137-abcb-f829ec2e094c)
Chapter Eighty-Six (#u556894f1-55d7-59b4-ae32-0da0d817dd34)
Chapter Eighty-Seven (#ubb72f7b0-16b1-5b47-b027-060db48fcf76)
Chapter Eighty-Eight (#u6b45618a-fc5a-5957-9a08-225caa9f669d)
Chapter Eighty-Nine (#u7144ff53-6305-5073-b33f-3bbc0a89f447)
Chapter Ninety (#u1ed2b8f1-7889-5e7a-86d1-f214375d4e83)
Chapter Ninety-One (#u0035cc92-fdc7-5801-8cd1-313a02cb99b1)
Chapter Ninety-Two (#uf4e96a95-f515-5b49-aff3-c9450a62eacb)
Chapter Ninety-Three (#u6886c168-97ee-5d13-a12e-30e522c6c463)
Chapter Ninety-Four (#ue78278b5-4093-5964-904f-656df554542d)
Chapter Ninety-Five (#u3d11e787-1f49-5d2d-b61f-7810f141d200)
Chapter Ninety-Six (#ue5e61097-6d51-5961-9e6d-a819842505e5)
Chapter Ninety-Seven (#uc3bd97f5-8320-5214-b94e-63f34686ac00)
Chapter Ninety-Eight (#u47d678c1-9667-54dc-b19e-50d51617d89f)
Acknowledgments—Sasha Alsberg (#ub564cf49-0ca2-5548-be0a-267d418fd0b5)
Acknowledgments—Lindsay Cummings (#u6d7455f3-bb07-553e-927c-2093f5b79ba8)
Cell 306 (#u2c495123-a205-5bed-8b1b-b7611314f030)
The Past
ENDLESS DARKNESS.
It surrounded him in Cell 306, twisting and turning itself into his bones until he and the darkness became one.
His thoughts had long since stopped running wild with every groan and creak of the prison walls. A thinning blanket, his only companion, was wrapped tightly around his shoulders, but it failed to block out the cold kiss of air that snuck through the threads.
I am Valen Cortas, he thought, rolling the words over and over in his mind. It was the only thing that kept him going, leashing a sharp coil of courage around his veins. Vengeance will be mine.
What he would do, what he would give, to have a single moment of time in the light. To feel the touch of a warm midday breeze on his skin, to hear the rustle of leaves on the trees of his home planet, Arcardius.
He had lived on Arcardius all his life, and yet in Cell 306 the memories of his home had begun to grow dim. Valen had always looked at the world and seen it in a thousand colors, his fingers itching to paint each turn of the light, each curl of the wind sweeping through the silver streets.
Every shade was unique in his eyes.
And yet...he was losing the colors.
Try as he might, Valen couldn’t remember the precise shade of purple that spiraled across the Revina Mountains. He couldn’t recall the exact hue of the blue and red moons that mingled together in the sky. The sparkle of starlight when true night fell, a constant, glowing guide through the sky. As each moment in this abyss passed, the colors all melted into a single shade of black.
He shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around his emaciated frame.
The pain of remembering things loved and lost had sunk its claws into him, threatening to crush his bones.
Somewhere in the dank prison, a scream rang out, razor-sharp, like the tip of a blade scratching its way down Valen’s spine.
He rolled over, pressing his hands to his ears.
“I am Valen Cortas,” he whispered through cracked lips. “Vengeance will be mine.”
Another scream. The sizzle and pop of an electric whip, a flash of blue light that ghosted across the bars. Valen gasped, his eyes aching, head throbbing, memories churning. Color. A blue like the powerful sea, a blue like the open, cloudless sky. And then...darkness again, and silence.
The new prisoners always screamed for days, until their throats went ragged. They cried out the names of loved ones and tried to hang on to who they were.
But on Lunamere, everyone became a number in the end.
Valen was 306. Deep in the belly of hell incarnate.
The cold was endless. The food was enough to keep skin hanging on bones, but muscles atrophied and hearts slowed. The stink of bodies rose up like a wave, a scent that had long since sunk into the obsidinite walls and bars.
Those walls of obsidinite were the only thing separating Valen and the other prisoners from the void of space and their untimely deaths. He’d thought of escape, as every other prisoner had. He imagined leaping through the wall, diving out into the airless abyss.
Death had once scared Valen, but with each day that passed, it grew closer and closer to becoming his greatest wish.
Still, deep within his tormented soul, he knew he had to survive.
He had to bide his time and hope that the Godstars had not forgotten him.
And so he sat, dreaming of darkness, wrapped up in its cold arms.
I am Valen Cortas.
Vengeance will be mine.
Chapter One (#u2c495123-a205-5bed-8b1b-b7611314f030)
ANDROMA
HER NIGHTMARES WERE like bloodstains.
They were impossible to get rid of, no matter how hard Androma Racella tried to scrub them from her mind. On the darkest nights they clung to her like a second skin. In them, she could hear the whispers of the dead threatening to drag her down to hell, where she belonged.
But Andi had decided, long ago, that the nightmares were her punishment.
She was the Bloody Baroness, after all. And if surviving meant giving up sleep, then she would bear the exhaustion.
Tonight the nightmares had come as they always did, and now Andi sat on the bridge of her ship, the Marauder, scratching a fresh set of tallies into her twin swords.
The glowing compression cuffs on her wrists, which protected skin burned in an accident years before, were the only light in the otherwise dark space. The press of a button was all it took to power them up.
Her fingertips were white beneath red-painted nails as she gouged a piece of steel against the flat of one blade, creating a thin tally the length of her smallest finger. Without its spirals of electricity, the sword looked like any other weapon; the tallies, any other soldier’s lucky mark. But Andi knew better. Each line she etched into the metal was another life cut off, another heart stopped with a slice of her blades.
A hundred lives to cover up the pain of the very first. A hundred more, to shovel away the hurt into a place that was dark and deep.
Andi glanced up as an object in the sky caught her eye.
A piece of space trash, hurtling away among thousands of stars.
Andi yawned. She had always loved the stars. Even as a child, she’d dreamed of dancing among them. But tonight she felt as if they were watching her, waiting for her to fail. Mocking little bastards. Well, they’d be sorely disappointed.
The Marauder, a glimmering starship made from the rare impenetrable glass varillium, was known for its devilish speed and agility. And Andi’s crew, a group of girls hailing from every hellish corner of the galaxy, were as sharp as Andi’s blades. They were the heart of the ship, and the three reasons why Andi had survived this long so far from home.
Five days ago, the girls had taken on a job to steal a starload of sealed BioDrugs from Solera, the capital planet of the Tavina System, and deliver them to a satellite station just outside the planet Tenebris in the neighboring system.
It wasn’t an abnormal request. BioDrugs were one of Andi’s most requested transports since these particular drugs could burn someone’s brain to bits or—if used correctly—carry one into a blissful oblivion.
Which, Andi thought, as she resumed her death-mark scratching, I wouldn’t mind experiencing right now.
She could still feel the hot blood on her hands from the man she’d slayed on the Tenebris station. The way his eyes had locked on to hers before she’d run him through with her blades, silent as a whisper. The sorry fool never should have tried to double-cross Andi and her crew.
When his partner had seen Andi’s handiwork, he eagerly handed over the Krevs her team was owed for the job. Still, she’d stolen another life, something she never relished doing. Even killers like her still had souls, and she knew that everyone deserved to be mourned by someone, no matter their crimes.
Andi worked quietly with only the hum of the ship’s engines far beneath her for company, the occasional hiss of the cooling system kicking on overhead. Outer space was quiet, soothing, and Andi had to keep herself from falling asleep, where the nightmares would be lurking.
The sound of footsteps brought Andi’s gaze up once more.
The rhythmic tapping made its way down the small hallway that led to the bridge. Andi continued her scratching, glancing up again when a figure stopped in the doorway, her blue, scaled arms poised on narrow hips.
“As your Second-in-Command,” the girl said, with a voice as smooth as the spiced Rigna they’d shared earlier, “I demand that you return to your quarters and get some sleep.”
“Good morning to you, too, Lira,” Andi said with a sigh. Her Second always seemed to know where she was—and what she was doing—at all times. Her sharp eyes caught every detail, no matter how small. This quality made Lira the best damned pilot in the Mirabel Galaxy, and it was the reason they’d managed to succeed with so many jobs thus far.
It was one of many peculiar qualities Lira had, along with the patches of scales scattered across her skin. When she experienced strong emotions, the scales began to glow, giving off enough heat to burn through the flesh of her enemies. All of Lira’s clothing was sleeveless for this reason. But this defensive mechanism also took a lot of energy from her, occasionally rendering Lira unconscious when activated.
Her scales were a trait many from her home planet desired, but few had. Lira’s bloodline traced back to the first Adhirans who colonized the terraformed world. Soon after the colonization, the planet experienced a radioactive event that transformed its earliest settlers in a number of strange ways, including the scales Lira had inherited.
Andi’s Second stepped into the starlit bridge and lifted a hairless brow. “Sooner or later, you’re going to run out of space on those swords.”
“And then I’ll turn my tallies on to you,” Andi said with a wicked grin.
“You should take up dancing again. Perhaps it would ease some of that deadly tension you’re carrying around.”
“Careful, Lir,” Andi warned.
Lira grinned, swiping two fingers across her right temple to activate her internal communication channel. “Rise and shine, ladies. If the captain can’t sleep, we shouldn’t, either.”
Andi couldn’t hear the response Lira chuckled at, but soon enough, two more pairs of footsteps sounded from the deck above, and she knew the rest of her crew was on their way.
Gilly arrived first, her fire-red braids bouncing on her shoulders as she approached. She was small for her age, a girl no older than thirteen, but Andi wasn’t fooled by her wide, innocent blue eyes. Gilly was a bloodthirsty little beast, a gunner with plenty of death on her hands. She had one hell of a trigger finger.
“Why do you insist on ruining my beauty sleep?” she exclaimed in her fluid little voice.
A tall, broad-shouldered girl appeared behind her, bending so as not to hit her head on the doorway when she entered. Breck, Andi’s head gunner, rolled her eyes as she placed a large hand on Gilly’s small shoulder.
“Kid, when are you going to learn not to question Lira? You know she won’t give you a reasonable answer.”
Andi laughed at Lira’s sharp glare. “If you would only look up from your gun sights long enough to listen to me, you’d know that my answers are, in fact, quite reasonable.” Lira winked at the girls before settling into the pilot’s seat next to Andi’s captain’s chair.
“Adhirans,” Breck said with a sigh, crossing her thick arms over her chest. At seven feet tall with choppy black hair that just brushed her muscled shoulders, Breck was the most intimidating member of the crew. They all assumed she was a giantess from the planet New Veda, where Mirabel’s greatest warriors were born.
The only problem with that assumption?
Breck had no memories of her past. She had no idea who she was, or even where she’d come from. She’d been on the run when Andi picked her up, a bruised and beaten ten-year-old Gilly at her side.
Gilly, plucked from the market streets of her home planet Umbin, was struggling to escape from a couple of Xen Pterran slavers when Breck found her. The older girl had saved Gilly from a fate worse than death, and now the two girls were as close as kin. To them, it no longer mattered what life Breck couldn’t remember or what past Gilly tried to forget. All that mattered was that they had each other.
Breck tugged on one of Gilly’s red braids, then lifted her chin and sniffed the air. “I don’t smell breakfast. We need a cook, Andi.”
“And we’ll get one as soon as we have the funds to buy a culinary droid,” Andi said with a curt nod. The girls usually traded off on kitchen duty, but Breck was the only decent cook among them. “We’re down to less than three hundred Krevs. Someone spent a little too much on hair products on TZ-5.”
Breck’s cheeks reddened as she touched the new crimson streaks in her black hair.
“Speaking of Krevs,” Gilly added, her tiny hand grazing the golden double-triggered gun at her hip, “when’s our next job, Cap?”
Andi leaned back, arms crossed behind her head, and surveyed the girls.
They were a good crew, all three of them. Small, but mighty in the best of ways, and better than what Andi deserved. She stared at her blades once more before putting them back in their harness. If only she could put her memories away just as easily.
“I’ve got a tip for a possible job on Vacilis,” Andi said finally. It was a desert world where the wind blew as hot as the devil’s backside and the air was choked with the stench of sulfur, just a few planets over from ice-locked Solera. “But I’m not sure how many Krevs it’ll haul. And it’ll be messy, dealing with the desert nomads.”
Breck shrugged her broad shoulders. “Any money is good money if it brings us more food stores.”
“And ammo,” Gilly said, cracking her knuckles like the little warrior she was.
Andi inclined her head at Lira. “Thoughts?”
“We will see where the stars lead us,” Lira answered.
Andi nodded. “I’ll get in touch with my informant. Take us away, Lir.”
“As you wish.” Lira punched the destination into the control panel’s holoscreen. A diagram of Mirabel illuminated the room with blue light, stars floating around their heads and the little planets that made up each major system orbiting their suns. A bright line traced from their current location near an unnamed moon, too barren for habitation, to Vacilis, almost half a galaxy away.
Lira scrutinized the route, then minimized the map and readied the ship for hyperspace travel.
Andi turned in her seat. “Breck, Gilly, go to the vault and do a weapons check. Then make sure the Big Bang is fully loaded. I want you two ready in case we run into any trouble once we arrive in the Tavina System.”
“We’re always ready,” Breck said.
Gilly giggled, and the two gunners nodded at Andi in salute before exiting the bridge. Gilly skipped along behind Breck, her golden gun bobbing against her tiny frame.
“Engines are hot,” Lira said. “Time to fly.”
The Marauder rumbled beneath Andi as she slumped down in her chair, exhaustion worming its way in.
The expanse of space stretched out before them, and Andi’s eyelids began to droop against her will. With Lira by her side, she sank into the warm folds of sleep.
* * *
Smoke pooled into the ruined ship, unrelenting as Andi gasped for air. She glanced sideways, where Kalee’s bloody hand twitched once, then hung motionless over the armrest.
“Wake up,” Andi rasped. “You have to wake up!”
Andi awoke to a rough shake of her shoulder from Lira. Her heart hammered in her chest as her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the bridge. Starlight ahead, the glowing holoscreen on the dash.
She was here. She was safe.
But something was off. A light on the holo blinked red, a silent prox alarm beside the markers that showed not only the Marauder’s location, but three ships behind them, catching up fast. An unwelcome sight to any space pirate.
“We have a tail.” Lira curled her lip in annoyance. She tapped a blue fingertip on the holoscreen, changing it to the rear-cam, showing Andi a faraway look at the ships soaring behind them. “Two Explorers and one Tracker.”
“The stars be damned,” Andi said. “When did they show up?”
“Seconds before I woke you. We came out of light speed just outside the Tavina System, as planned, and the alarm activated not long after.”
Andi’s mind raced, calculating all the possible scenarios. Lira never let anyone get the drop on the Marauder. They had to have been cloaked with technology the likes of which Andi’s crew could only dream of getting their hands on. She told herself this was just like any other night, any other chase, but she couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that this time might be different.
“Do we know who they are? Black market, Mirabel Patrol?” Andi asked, staring at the radar as it blinked, the three hellish red dots slowly gaining on them.
Lira glowered. “With this tech, it has to be Patrol. They didn’t show up on our radar until they were practically on top of us.”
Andi chewed on her bottom lip. “Which branch?”
You know which branch, her mind whispered. She shoved the voice away.
“We won’t know until they’re in our close-range sights, and by then, it’ll be too late for us to escape,” Lira said.
“Then don’t let them get that close.”
The Patrolmen, those bastards. The government lackeys had been after Andi’s ship for years, but they’d never once come close enough to appear on the Marauder’s radar.
Their last job shouldn’t have been enough to capture the attention of the Patrolmen. It was a black-market operation, a simple grab and go. All they’d done was haul a few crates’ worth of meds for a drug lord, nothing significant enough to bring the Patrolmen down on them.
The girls had taken on more high-profile jobs than that—like the time they kidnapped a rich Soleran’s mistress and left her on a meteor, the job requested by the man’s furious wife. She paid a pretty penny for their services. It wasn’t until days later that they found out the woman was not only a mistress, but a prominent politician’s daughter from Tenebris. The politician tore the galaxy apart looking for his daughter. When he eventually found her withered corpse on that barren rock, word got back about who put her there.
Andi screened their jobs much more carefully now. Her crew was still on the run from that politician to this day.
It could be he’d finally caught their scent. She closed her eyes. Black holes ablaze, she was screwed. The ship rumbled beneath her, almost as if in agreement.
“Cloaking is useless at this point,” Lira said as she readied the gears, slamming buttons, tapping in codes. “Engines are still too hot to go back into hyperspace. Damn their tech.”
In the distance, Andi could just barely make out the ghostly forms of their pursuers. They were still far out, but heading closer with each passing breath. “Get us out of this, and I’ll see to it that we get devices of the same caliber.”
“And bigger guns?” Lira asked, her blue eyes wide. “We’ll barely scrape by if we have to turn and fire on them. We only have one Big Bang left.”
Andi nodded. “Much bigger guns.”
“Well, then,” Lira said, a dangerous grin spreading across her face. “I think the stars may align for us, Captain. Any last words?”
Someone else had said that to her once, long ago. Before she escaped Arcardius, never to see her home planet again.
Andi chewed on her lip, and the memory fizzled away. She could have given her Second a thousand words, but instead she simply strapped herself in, turned in her seat and said, “Fly true, Lir.”
Lira nodded and took the ship’s wheel, her grip steady and practiced. “Fly true.”
A humming vibration filled the bay before the ship shot forward, like the tip of a crystal spear hurtling through the black expanse.
Chapter Two (#u2c495123-a205-5bed-8b1b-b7611314f030)
ANDROMA
ON A GOOD DAY, the Marauder and her crew could lose a tail as fast as an Adhiran darowak could fly, but when Andi glanced at the radar, three little dots continued to blink back at her.
She suppressed a groan and tapped on the viewport in front of her. The glass melded, colors morphing to show a live image from their rear-cam.
Her stomach dropped to her toes.
The approaching ships were still behind them. Two black Explorers, angular and sharp, and in between, a giant Tracker ship. A monster in the sky that tore a memory from Andi’s mind.
A hundred pairs of polished Academy boots clacked on the ground of a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility in the sky. A rigid man in a royal blue suit stood before the crowd, announcing the specs of the new Tracker ship. Andi raised her hand, wincing as she disturbed a bruised rib from a fight, but she was hungry for knowledge, already in love with flying.
“I still can’t see a sigil on them,” Lira said, drawing Andi back to the present. The memory faded like mist. “We don’t know which planet they’ve hailed from yet.”
Andi leaned forward, sliding two fingers against her temple and linking with her crew’s channels. “We’ve got a tail, ladies.” She swallowed and cast a sideways glance at Lira, who sat calmly steering the ship. “Three of them, coming in from the rear. Get to your stations and prepare for immediate engagement. We’re going dark.” She switched the channel off and looked at Lira. “Ready?”
Lira nodded as Andi typed in the codes that would activate the Marauder’s outer shields.
The stars winked goodbye as the metal shields slid out from the belly of the glass ship, like hands wrapping them in darkness. Over and around, until only three viewports remained. One large for the pilot, and two small for the gunners, decks below.
“I warned you before the last job about leaving bodies behind,” Lira said suddenly, banking them left to avoid a cluster of space trash cartwheeling endlessly through the black. Her voice wasn’t harsh. And yet Andi still felt the painful truth of Lira’s words.
Blood trails were far easier to follow than any other. And after all these years of running, it was possible that the Patrolmen had finally caught up to them because of Andi.
“I had to kill him,” Andi said. “He almost shot Gilly. You know that, Lira.”
“The only thing I know for sure is that the ships behind us are closing in,” Lira said, glancing at the radar.
The patrol ships could have come from anywhere in the galaxy, but a nagging in Andi’s gut told her they hailed from Arcardius, the headquarters of the Unified Systems. A planet with cities made of glass and buildings towering on floating fragments of land in the sky, where military life reigned supreme and a pale-haired general ruled with an iron fist.
Home. Or at least it used to be.
After years of work, the Arcardian fleet had finally been rebuilt after the war against Xen Ptera, the capital planet of the Olen System.
These new ships were faster, better equipped.
Lira laughed. “It’s too bad we’ll have to miss their party.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re here,” Andi said. “To hand deliver our invitations.”
“They won’t catch us.” Lira dug her fingers into a metal cup soldered to the ship’s dash, the words I Visited Arcardius and All I Got Was This Stupid Cup inscribed on the side. Andi grimaced as Lira pulled out a hunk of Moon Chew and popped it into her mouth.
“That stuff can kill you, you know,” Andi said as the ship groaned and lurched. She was thrust sideways against her bindings as Lira quickly steered the ship to the right.
“I enjoy flirting with death.” Her Second smirked.
They fell silent as the Marauder soared on, Lira navigating the ship left and right, up and down, the tails trailing them as if this were a mere game of chase.
But this game they were playing rarely ended with laughter and fun. It would end with bodies burning in the sky, the air sucked from their lungs as they succumbed to the void of space.
Andi rapped her fingertips on the armrests. Her rouged nails looked tipped in blood, a playful nod to those who had given Andi her pirating name.
She was frustrated and hungry and, thanks to the nightmares, reaching a level of exhaustion that shouldn’t have been humanly possible to survive. Usually she would’ve been up for the challenge because, in Lira’s terms, she lived for the thrill of a life dangling on the edge of death.
But as she looked at Lira’s hands guiding the ship, a very different image took their place.
In her mind’s eye, Andi saw her old home’s moons, those beautiful orbs of red and blue beside Arcardius, the ice rings circling them like frozen guardians. She saw her younger, gloved hands, the Spectre sigil on them winking in the light as she clutched a traveler ship’s throttle. She felt the rush of adrenaline coursing through her veins. Then that fateful crash of fire and light, the screech of machinery and a girl’s piercing scream. And blood, rivers of it, drying on hot metal...
A voice buzzed into the pilot’s com system, and Andi flinched back into the present.
“What is it?” she barked.
Beside her, Lira punched the engine, the Marauder screaming as it rocketed forward.
“I got ’em comin’ in hot!” Breck shouted. Andi could imagine her gunner several decks below, lying flat before her massive hull gun. “Almost in my sights now. Can’t outrun ’em?”
“If we could, don’t you think we would have done so already?” Andi growled.
“Godstars, Andi.” Breck’s voice was deep and throaty. “I can see the sigil now. They’re Arcardian Patrol. We’re gonna be space bits.”
Andi tapped the rear-cam, zooming in as the ships gained speed. The exploding star of Arcardius stared back at her. Her insides turned to ice. There was only one reason they would have traveled so far from their domain.
So this was it, then. The enemy she’d run from all these years had finally found her.
Though dread threatened to freeze her insides, Andi straightened her spine and steeled herself. She wouldn’t go down without a fight.
Andi reached up and pressed her responder, ignoring Breck’s final words. “You girls in position?”
“Gilly’s on Harbinger, I’m on Calamity. Permission to engage?”
Andi smiled through her fear. “Granted.”
The channel fell silent, and then it was just the captain and her pilot, hearts racing in their throats, stars streaking past them like rips in the fabric of the universe.
And then Andi felt it.
The lurch.
The bump.
A knife of rage sliced through her. “Those bastards just shot at my ship.”
“Test fire?” Lira asked, but then she cursed, and suddenly they were spiraling to dodge blasts as the sensors screamed warnings. “On second thought...”
Andi gritted her teeth. Too many shots.
“Cap, they’re turning up the heat.”
This time the voice was Gilly’s. In the background, Andi could hear the familiar tick, tick, tick of Gilly’s gun firing from down below, the BOOM of Breck’s right after, one shot after another at the oncoming ships. “They’re closing in, starboard side.”
“Faster, Lira,” Andi growled.
She pulled up the radar and zoomed in on the other two blinking red dots, ignoring the shaking in her hands. They were growing ever closer, and now the Marauder’s prox alarms were blaring. What in the blazes were they using to run their ships?
Tick, tick, tick.
BOOM.
Shots blasted, piercing whines that shook Andi down to her bones.
It was all she could hear, all she could feel, louder and louder with each blast that sent the Marauder careening off course. She switched to the ship’s rear-cam again.
The three ships were directly behind them now. Two sleek black triangles with massive guns on their hulls, the other crisp and purple with smoke stains from Breck’s magnetic ammo, birdlike in its wingspan, with enough space to swallow Andi’s ship twice over.
The Tracker.
Her brain screamed stats about it—designed for speed rather than agility. She’d spent months studying the ship at the Academy, desperate to explore every inch of its well-designed insides. Even the best tech had its flaws, and if they weren’t also being chased by the two Explorers, they might’ve stood a chance against the Tracker. But truth be told, smaller ammunition wouldn’t be able to affect the reinforced siding. And with its dodging tech, they’d have one hell of a time hitting the beast with the Big Bang.
“Take them down!” Andi commanded. “Go faster, Lira.” She clenched the armrests, leaning forward as if her body could help her ship pick up speed.
“I’m trying,” Lira said. “We haven’t refueled in weeks, Andi. At this rate, we’ll burn out. We’ll have to lose them instead of outrun them.”
“But without the cloaking system, we’re flying loose as a...”
Lira stopped her with a sly grin. “I wasn’t talking about cloaking.”
She straightened the ship and gave the engines a final push. The ships behind them fell back as the darkness around them heightened, like something monstrous was blotting out the stars.
It was then that Memory, the Marauder’s mapping system, came on, a cool female voice that usually guided their path, a comfort in the void of space. But today, Memory’s words filled Andi with a cold, trembling dread.
Now approaching Gollanta.
“Starshine, Lir,” Andi said, the darkness approaching more quickly now. She remembered the last time they’d come through Gollanta—they almost became space junk that day. They’d tried to avoid the area ever since. “You can’t be serious.”
Lir raised a bare brow. “Have you no faith, Captain?”
It was death behind bars or death by the sweet black sky.
Andi loosed a breath and ran her fingers through the ends of her purple-and-white braid. It had been months since they’d made a good purse, and their stores were depleted. If they were going to escape, things would have to get a little dirty before the Marauders got away clean.
“Not at present,” Andi said.
“You always did know how to make a girl blush.” Lira grinned, her sharp canines flashing in the red lights of the prox alarm. “You should see the last ship I piloted.”
“Just do it...before I change my mind.” Andi tightened her harness, silenced the prox alarms and settled back as Lira navigated the Marauder toward the Gollanta Asteroid Belt. It was a massive expanse full of thousands of giant space rocks, tumbling endlessly, just waiting for a target to obliterate.
The Graveyard of the Galaxy.
The place where ships went to die.
The Marauder hurtled past an asteroid double its size, an ugly thing full of deep impact holes. Beside it, spinning slowly on its side, was a hunk of burned and blackened metal that looked like the hull of an old Rambler.
“Lir?” Andi asked. “What was it that happened to your last ship?”
Lira grimaced and popped another wad of Moon Chew. “We may have just passed it.”
“Godstars guide us,” Andi prayed. She glanced up. “Memory? Some accompaniment, please, as Lira tries not to fly us to our deaths.”
A moment later, music flooded the bridge. Strings and keys and the swelling feeling of peace, control and calm.
“I will never understand how you can listen to this stuff,” Lira muttered.
Andi closed her eyes as Lira gunned the engine and they slipped into the tumbling black abyss.
Chapter Three (#u2c495123-a205-5bed-8b1b-b7611314f030)
KLAREN
Year Twelve
THE GIRL WAS BORN TO DIE.
In darkness she stood with her palms pressed to the cold glass of her tower. She was alone, protected as all of the Yielded were, staring out at the Conduit below. Swirls of black and silver and blue. An endless, starlit sea.
Each morning, she found herself here before the sun rose, imagining what it would feel like to touch the abyss. To feel the freedom of a single day where she could make her own choices, choose her own steps, one delicate moment at a time.
Her palms slid from the glass.
It was a gift, this body. A way to change her world, and the others beyond.
As the girl stood there, she thought of her dreams. Nameless faces, uncertain futures, deaths she couldn’t stop, births she had predicted before the dawning of their times.
The Yielded were special.
The Yielded were loved.
Outside, the darkness shifted. The girl gasped and pressed her hands back to the glass, heart racing as she waited.
It began slowly. A flicker on the dark horizon, far beyond the swirling Conduit. A flame, fighting for life. Then it sprung forth, veins of crimson light stretching into the sky, spreading to yellow, orange, pink the color of laughing cheeks.
The girl smiled.
It was a new act. Something she’d only just begun to discover how to do.
She loved the way it made people listen to her. Loved the way it made their minds seem to bow in her midst.
If her dreams were true, then someday she would use this smile for greatness. For glory. For the hope of her people.
Today she stood watching, far above the Conduit, as the red sun rose.
Chapter Four (#u2c495123-a205-5bed-8b1b-b7611314f030)
DEX
THEY FLEW LIKE demons sprung from a pit of fire.
Whoever the pilot was, she had one hell of a handle on the Marauder. Leave it to the Bloody Baroness to get the best of the best. Memories of their history together tried to spring their way forward, but he quickly suppressed them, knowing such thoughts and feelings would only stand in the way of his big payday. This was a job, not a social call.
“Androma Racella.” Dex tested her name on his tongue. “I’ve been searching for you for quite some time.”
Two months, to be exact. The longest Dex had ever spent trying to capture someone on the run. He’d been to countless planets in search of her and gotten lost for two weeks inside the Dyllutos Nebula before eventually picking up a blood trail that stretched from one end of Mirabel to the next.
Now he sat on the bridge of an Arcardian Tracker ship, the flashes of fired shots illuminating his face.
Also leave it to the Bloody Baroness to force me to work with the Arcardian Patrolmen, Dex thought as he stared at her image on the holo before him.
In his hands sat a document that included all the information about the Marauder’s captain, including a snapshot of her face. The photograph had been taken by Dex himself when he’d almost caught up to Androma on TZ-5 last week. Unfortunately, she’d disappeared before he could reach her.
She was standing in the shadows of a pleasure palace, a cyborg dancing in the window behind her. Androma’s pale, ghostlike hair was now streaked with purple and peeked out from beneath a black hood pulled low over her face. He could just barely make out her gray eyes and the smooth metallic plates on her cheekbones, a defensive body mod she’d had done years before. But he could certainly see the rest of her: perfect curves beneath a sleek, skintight leather bodysuit, the hilt of a knife sticking out from her black boots. And, of course, outside the hooded cape, her trademark glowing swords were strapped across her back like an X of death.
The ship rumbled from a weapon blast, and the screen flew from Dex’s fingertips, the holo winking out.
“Blazing hell!” he cursed as the ground seemed to fall out from underneath him, then shifted sideways until he was practically dangling from his harness. “Settle her!” he shouted to the pilot.
His borrowed crew scrambled to control the ship as Dex clutched the armrests, gritting his teeth. A little mechanic droid wrapped its hooked arms around Dex’s ankle, squealing as it tried in vain to stay in one place.
Dex growled and shook it away. What good was being the captain when you couldn’t get your crew to do anything worthwhile? And he didn’t even want to think about the Tracker they were flying. Dex swallowed his revulsion.
Here I am, the ship seemed to say. Large and in charge and as undercover as a Xen Pterran carriage slug.
They’d never catch the Marauder. Not like this.
The Tracker was fast, but the “seasoned pilot” General Cortas had provided for this mission had no style. A starship was meant to fly weightless, limitless and free.
Just like the one they were pursuing now, its belly full of lying, cheating lady thieves.
He stared out the viewport, past the laughable pilot and copilot, their heads pressed together as they tried in vain to discover a way to outsmart their prey.
The Marauder.
Dex could see her tail up ahead. Each blast of gunfire illuminated her outline.
A sleek, beautiful beast that looked to be made of the stars in which it swam. Deadly and delicious, all varillium glass in the shape of an arrowhead, now concealed by metal shields to protect it during the chase. The Aero Class ship was one of a kind.
He’d catch that damned ship and finally reclaim it for his own. And when he captured Androma, he’d bring her to her knees, get her to agree to his employer’s terms...
“Sir.” A trembling voice pulled Dex from his thoughts. He looked up at the youngest Patrolman on the ship, a boy no older than fifteen with slitted reptilian nostrils. A boy who’d never seen battle. Who didn’t know the feeling of blood on scarred hands. His glowing yellow eyes were wide as he spoke. “They’re making an interesting move.”
“What move?” Dex sighed. “Use your words.”
“It seems they’re charting a course for the asteroid belt.”
“As I said they would,” Dex snapped.
“What should we do?” the boy asked timidly as he took a step back, sensing Dex’s imminent explosion of outrage.
The ship rumbled.
The pilot cursed.
Dex pressed a palm to the bridge of his nose. “You,” he said, glaring at the youngling between his fingers, “will do yourself a favor and go to the passenger bay so you can crap your pants in private. I can smell your fear from here.”
The boy tripped over his own webbed feet as he raced from Dex’s view.
“The rest of you,” Dex said, unbuckling his harness and standing up from his seat, voice rising to a roar, “will catch me that damned ship!”
The glory of his rage was lost in another explosion.
This time, it was so bright and so loud that it lit up the skies. A lurch resonated all around him as the ship went sideways. The little mech droid tumbled past.
“Engine one has been hit!” the pilot yelped.
A lucky shot.
Dex’s temper rose as he unclasped his harness and toppled against the metal siding. This job was the answer. It was everything. It could make or break his career.
And if Dex lost this opportunity now, when his prey was so close, General Cortas would have someone pulverize him when they docked back at Averia—and then Dex would be sipping from a straw for the rest of his life.
Enough was enough.
Dex raced forward, boots clacking on the grated floor.
The pilot looked up as Dex hovered over him, leather gloves squealing with each shift of the wheel.
“Move,” he commanded.
“Sir, I am under direct orders from General Cortas to...”
Dex squeezed his fists. The pilot flinched back as four crimson triangular blades sprung out of each of Dex’s gloves, just over his knuckles. “Move over.”
The pilot stumbled as he leaped from his chair.
Dex took the throttle, his bladed knuckles shining as another streak of gunfire shot past. He could hear a commotion in the background, the sound of the pilot’s whining voice as he commed the general. Pathetic tattletale. Dex blocked it all out as he tapped on the screen, losing himself in the motions he’d grown so used to.
This was where he belonged, in the pilot’s chair. Behind the throttle of his own ship.
The copilot, a man covered in purple spikes, stared at Dex openmouthed. “You were right,” he said, his massive canines visible. “They’re heading for Gollanta.”
Of course I’m right, Dex wanted to say. Androma always runs until she finds a place to hide.
Through the viewport, Dex caught a perfect, shining glimpse of the Marauder, its jagged, dagger-like shape heading right into the mouth of hell.
“Alert the fleet near Solera,” Dex said as he angled the Tracker to follow them. Solera was the closest planet, just on the outskirts of the asteroid belt. They could make it in time to intercept the Marauder if they sent their fastest ships.
“Alert them of what, sir?” the copilot asked.
Dex sighed. “They need to meet us in the center of the belt. Cloaked.” If he was wrong, well, he was already under the general’s control. He may as well use it to his advantage. “Tell them the Marauder is heading their way.”
Dex closed his eyes and allowed himself to hope. Then he begged the Godstars that his last-minute plan would fall into place.
Androma was good at what she did. But so was Dex.
And a protГ©gГ©e could only outrun her master for so long.
Chapter Five (#u2c495123-a205-5bed-8b1b-b7611314f030)
ANDROMA
GOLLANTA.
A world of space rocks dancing around them with death knocking at every viewport.
Andi stared out at them, her eyes wide and bright against the dimness of space. Darkness surrounded them, lit only by the faint shine of Tavina’s distant stars. And, of course, the telltale flashes of the three ships still trailing them.
She’d make them regret coming after the Bloody Baroness. It was time to end this.
Andi turned on her com. “Breck, Gilly.” The permanent lens in her eye, activated by a light tap to her temple, allowed her to patch into another crew member’s visual feed.
They’d installed them months ago, and the blessed coms had saved their skins several times over. They were well worth the expensive visit to the shady doctor on the satellite city near Solera.
She patched into Breck’s com first, revealing the gunner’s targeting screen, the glowing crosshairs focused on the nearest ship’s wing. Andi clenched her teeth as an asteroid resembling a skull came hurtling toward Breck’s viewport. Breck took a shot, and it exploded into space dust.
Andi blinked, shutting off the eye connection and returning to her own view of the asteroids. Lira sat beside her, the scales on her arms flashing as she tried to keep her nerves under control. Music still filled the space, calming Andi, allowing her to concentrate.
This is just another day, she told herself. Just another chase.
“We’re low on fuel, low on ammo,” Gilly yelped into the com.
“Shoot the small stuff and wait for my command,” Andi said. “Then we’ll use the Big Bang and turn their bones to dust.” The weapon sent out a pulse, crippling an enemy ship’s defensive systems, followed by an explosive that could obliterate an entire ship with one shot.
It wouldn’t be able to hurt the Tracker, but the other ships would be perfect prey, if Gilly and Breck played their cards right. They only had one Big Bang left on board, so they’d have to make it count.
Gilly answered with a giggle sharp as a knife. “Done.”
Tick, tick, tick.
BOOM.
An old spacesuit floated past the window to her right. Andi wondered if a corpse was still inside and shivered slightly.
Death was Andi’s closest friend, a little demon that whispered in her ear on dark nights. And here in this wasteland, a graveyard where many had met their demise, death felt closer than ever.
“We need to single out the Explorers,” Andi said. She’d never flown one herself, but she’d seen plenty of demonstrations at the Academy. They were designed for agility and speed, which meant they were somewhat lacking in armor.
“I’m on it,” Lira answered.
The Tracker was a beast as it followed. The smaller asteroids bounced off its sides, barely scraping the reinforced material. The Explorer ships followed behind, protected from the brunt of the asteroid attacks.
The girls had to separate them, get the Explorers alone in the sky.
A massive, hulking rock appeared ahead of them, easily the biggest asteroid they had seen so far.
“Lira,” Andi said, a plan brewing in her mind as she pointed at the asteroid, “circle us around that thing.”
“Circling will slow us down.” Lira cocked her head, orange light dancing across her face as Solera’s distant sun came into view.
Andi gritted her teeth. “Do it, Lira.”
Lira nodded, clenched the throttle and sent the Marauder careening right around the massive asteroid.
The Marauder swung in a great arc, the music rising in volume as cymbals crashed. In the rear-cam, the ships pursued, flashes of silver and black, shadows that just wouldn’t quit. But as they angled farther and farther around the outer edge of the asteroid, the Tracker ship slowed too much and pulled out of the race.
Now it was just the Explorers and the Marauder, odds Andi knew her crew and her ship could handle.
“Wait for it...” she whispered, her breath hitching in her throat. In the rear-cam, the Explorers followed like streaks of light, their guns firing as they tried in vain to catch up to the Marauder. What was their plan? Even if the two Explorers caught them and tried to dock, ships that small wouldn’t be able to haul the Marauder across the skies.
A flash darted behind them, a short distance away.
“They’re getting closer!” Breck shouted in the com. “Ready for the command!”
Andi bit her tongue, the metallic tang of blood strong enough to keep her fear at bay.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw another flash, closer now.
Prox alarms blared in her ear. The music was too loud, the whine of the strings too piercing.
“Incoming!” Breck shouted. “They’re almost on us!”
“Anytime, Cap!” Gilly yelped.
Close.
Closer.
“One more second,” Andi whispered.
“Andi, we should shoot.” Lira’s blue eyes looked black in the shadows.
Andi hissed in a breath.
“Now?” Gilly asked.
Andi could imagine her, tiny and fire-headed, seated in her gunner’s chair several decks below, the whole crew’s fate at her fingertips.
“Now,” Andi commanded.
A breath of a second. Andi stared at the Explorer ships on the rear-cam, thinking of the men and women inside. Knowing that here and now, they were facing their final moments. She felt a flash of pity for them, the pang of regret Andi always felt before she took a life.
Then came the hiss of Gilly’s Big Bang sliding loose from its chamber, a death rocket that Andi knew would fly true.
She watched as it struck the Explorer on the left first, the blast taking out both ships. The explosion was a work of art. Two ships in one shot, bits of metal and blood and bodies. Carnage stained the skies.
The Marauder whined as the blast knocked it off course, as if the dying ships had laid bleeding hands on them and shoved.
Then there was a strange, still silence. Even the song had stopped playing.
“Explorers are down,” Breck said. “Nice one, Gil.”
Andi loosed a breath, her fingertips releasing their hold on the armrests. But it wasn’t over yet. She glanced sideways at Lira. “Take us to the center of the belt. Bigger asteroids.”
Lira caught on. “We can lose them there and fly out the backside, hide somewhere on Solera.”
“Fuel?”
Lira spat a wad of Chew into her mug. “Low. But we can make it. We just lost a lot of weight from that ammo.”
Andi felt the swell of victory like a star exploding in her chest. But beside it, eating away at the feeling of triumph, was the knowledge of what she’d just done. How many lives had she stolen? How many families back on Arcardius would don shades of gray in mourning for weeks to come?
She loosened her harness, allowing herself to breathe a little deeper, and was just leaning back against the headrest when Lira cursed.
Breck’s and Gilly’s voices shouted into the com, and somewhere, down in the pit of Andi’s dark soul, she knew she’d missed something.
“There are more of them,” Lira said breathlessly. “Andi, they’re everywhere. It’s not possible. Where did they come from?”
Andi’s heart rocketed into her throat as the bleating prox alarms went off again.
Seven ships waited for them, uncloaking themselves, materializing before her eyes.
“Turn around, Lira! Get us the hell out of here!”
“I can’t!” Lira shouted. “The Tracker is still behind us.”
She furiously typed in codes, her fingers flying across the screen. Then Lira yelped as the holo sparked, and a strange hiss fizzled out of the dash. The ship itself seemed to release a deep, rumbling sigh.
And then...darkness.
The only light came from Lira’s scales, glowing a bluish-purple in the dark.
Oh, Godstars.
No.
They’d been hit by an EMP. Andi watched as Lira tried to repower the ship with the backup system but to no avail.
Everything went still and silent, as if the Marauder itself had lost all life.
“They shut us down,” Lira whispered, her features turning to stone. Smoke streamed from her scales, but even they had gone dark now. As if shock had paralyzed her emotions. Her voice cracked as she tried to bring the dash back to life, tried to restart the emergency engines. “Oh, Andi. They shut everything down.”
Andi shook her head. “That’s not possible. We have shields against that, nothing could... No one knows how to get past them and stop this ship!” Andi had the special defensive shields installed shortly after taking possession of the Marauder. They were meant to prevent EMPs and other such attacks from affecting the ship’s internal systems.
Lira’s blue eyes were haunted, her fingers still as stone on the throttle. “He could, Andi.”
Andi’s heart turned to ice.
It wasn’t possible.
He was supposed to be dead, cast away into some deep, dark hell where he’d never be able to claw his way back out.
This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. She leaped to her feet, tuning into the crew’s audio channels. “Escape pods. Now. Move.”
Andi grabbed her swords from the back of her captain’s chair, where she stowed them during flight, and strapped the harness around her back, clicking it into place.
Lira sat frozen in her chair.
“Lira! I said move!”
Lira’s voice was as dead as the Marauder. “We can’t leave, Andi. When the ship goes dark, the pods go dark, too.”
Footsteps rang out, boots clacking on metal. Breck and Gilly appeared in the doorway.
“What do we do?” Breck asked. “They’ll kill us all.”
“Not if we kill them first,” Andi hissed.
“We could hide,” Breck suggested.
“We don’t hide,” Lira said hotly.
Andi felt torn in two. This was her crew, broken and battered though it was, criminals from all sides of the galaxy waiting for her to save them. But with a dead ship, what could she do?
“I don’t want to be taken again,” Gilly whispered. Gone was the bloodthirsty little fairy. In its place was a frightened young girl. She burst into tears, fat droplets splashing on the dead metal at their feet. Breck dropped to her knees and pulled Gilly forward into a crushing hug.
She whispered soothing words, but Andi didn’t hear them. She wasn’t listening.
She turned and looked out the viewport at the waiting ships. So many of them—Solerans, by their sigil. And then, all around her, a rumble. It seemed to shake the very bones of the ship, rattling the walls. A deep, dark sound that made Lira drop her hands from the throttle and rush to Andi’s side.
“They’re pulling us in,” Lira whispered. “If you have a plan, Andi, you’d better tell us now.”
But there was no plan.
For the first time in her pirating life, someone had bested her.
It’s not him, Andi’s mind whispered. It can’t be him.
And yet the Marauder was a corpse. It was already growing cold on the bridge, Andi’s breath appearing before her in tiny white clouds.
Do something, her mind screamed. Get us out of this. You can’t be captured, Andi, you can never go back.
Fear spiked through her, in and around, threatening to freeze her, just like the ship.
But she was the Bloody Baroness. She was the captain of the Marauder, the greatest starship in Mirabel, and she had a crew waiting on her word.
So Andi settled her nerves, shoved them down deep. She turned, unsheathed her swords and held them at her sides.
“Stand up,” Andi said to Breck and Gilly.
They stood, Gilly wiping tears from her small face, Breck keeping a hand squeezed on the younger gunner’s shoulder.
“Weapons,” Andi said.
The girls lined up side by side, Andi with her swords, Gilly with her gun. Breck unveiled a black short-whip that crackled with light. Lira stood with her fists clenched, appearing weaponless to those who did not know the ways her body could move, lithe as a predator on the hunt. Her scales flashed as she glared at the bridge’s exit.
They waited, determination the only thing keeping them on their feet. On the deck below, the main door of the Marauder opened.
Andi heard the echo of heavy footsteps moving through the narrow halls, climbing up the stairwells. A faint male voice mingled with the footsteps, whispering a command as they drew closer.
Andi saw the first man’s head as he came around the corner. Others followed close behind, soldiers filling the hallway that led to the bridge, all clad in blue Arcardian bodysuits, the white three-triangle badge of the Mirabel Patrolmen on their chests. They held silver rifles against their stomachs and satisfied grins on their faces.
Andi was all too familiar with those rifles and the small electric orbs they released. One shot would paralyze its victim, rendering them helpless against capture by the Patrolmen.
“Hello, boys,” Andi said.
Arcardian or not, she’d see the badges of those who wouldn’t back down stained with blood. It was her crew or her past and—her soul be damned—she would always choose her crew.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” the soldier in front said, his voice calm and cool, as if he were making pleasant conversation.
“Ah,” Andi laughed. “But see, you just interfered with my ship. I don’t take too kindly to that.”
Her attention was pulled away from the man in front of her by the sound of boots tapping against metal. The Patrolmen turned sharply to attention as their commander approached.
This was the man who’d bested her.
This was the man she’d have to kill today.
As he approached, Andi’s chest tightened at the sight of him, tall and muscular and perfectly honed for fighting.
It’s him, said a small, frightened voice in her mind.
Then, as if confirming her suspicions, he stepped out of the darkness, like a demon emerging from hell.
The purest shock spiked in Andi’s veins. Then it melted into fury.
“You,” she growled.
“Me,” Dex said with a shrug.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Andi whispered. “I left you...”
“Left me to die?” Dex lifted a brow.
She remembered every inch of the angular white constellation tattoos twisting their way across his brown skin, the feel of his strong hands on her body. The memory of him, the pain of her shattered heart. It all twisted into boiling rage as she stared at him, alive and free, on her ship.
Andi’s swords crackled, purple light arcing around the fierce blades. Beside her, the rest of the Marauders tensed and readied themselves for a fight.
“I’m going to kill you,” Andi whispered.
“You can try,” Dex said, shrugging, his once-captivating brown eyes sparkling with laughter. “But we both know how that will turn out.”
She screamed and charged straight at him, not giving a damn if there were twenty or even a hundred heavily armed Arcardian soldiers blocking her path.
She was going to drown Dex Arez in his own blood.
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