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
* * *
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 almos
t 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.
&
nbsp; “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
* * *
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.
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