Author: A. C. Hadfield
Date: 2018-12-11 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: They tried to destroy our planets. Our way of life. They tried to send us into extinction. But we, the Coalition, fought them and won. That was a decade ago. We had assumed they were beaten for good. We were wrong. They're known as the Host: a cabal of aliens seeking to dominate our sector of space. And they're back - with help from a powerful new enemy. Against their wrath, we must stand. We're outnumbered and unprepared. If we lose, we lose everything. But there is hope. An ancient race of long-dead but technologically advanced aliens called the Navigators have a ship called the Blackstar th
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Rights: Copyright 2017 A.C. Hadfield. All rights reserved.

Prominence

Blackstar Command Book 1

A.C. Hadfield

Colin F. Barnes

Vast Frontiers Ltd

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Authors

First Published in 2017 by Vast Frontiers Ltd

Copyright A.C. Hadfield & Colin F. Barnes 2017

All Rights Reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Version 1.0

Created with Vellum

Chapter 1

In the dappled gray light of a Zarundan winter’s afternoon, Kai Locke stood over the smoldering, still body of the trader and wiped smoke from his eyes.

The pungent gas hung in his throat. Blood dripped down his face like viscous sweat on a humid summer’s night. This wasn’t summer, however; it was mid-winter on the jungle planet, and despite the chill wind blowing through the market, Kai’s body temperature continued to rise, along with his heart rate.

“What did you do?” he said, his attention still on the body of a spindly alien from one of the outer ring planets. A Therusian, Kai guessed, given the augmented gills on her throat.

He whirled around and stared at his employee and friend, Senaya.

She looked up at him with those big eyes of hers and blinked slowly.

Standing a foot shorter than Kai, her larger-than-human eyes seemed even wider than usual. Her thin mohawk, dyed a bright blue, ruffled in the wind, the diodes entwined with her hair twinkling like distant stars. She held in her right hand one of her bespoke firearms: a short-range plasma-pulser.

Smoke from the rusted barrel billowed in the frigid wind.

The stench of rotten eggs filled the air.

“Don’t look at me like that, boss. I had to do it,” she said. “But we can’t just stand around here. We’ve got a ship to find, right? So let’s go find it.”

The other market traders headed back to their stalls beneath the canopies strung along the tree trunks. Wandering dealers and buyers of a dozen species huddled past Kai and Senaya, only briefly looking at the dead information trader, exchanging whispers amongst themselves before returning to the hustle and bustle of business.

It wasn’t the first dealer to be killed at a market gathering. It wasn’t even the first one today, but still, Kai was a business owner, a racing-ship mechanic, and that came with a certain respect that he liked to maintain, even if he wasn’t as clean as his reputation suggested.

“Sen, what the hell? You killed her; why’d you do it? She gave us the coordinates of the ship. It was a fair price. There was no reason to shoot her.”

“Plenty of reason.”

“Really?”

“Really. Check her body, see what she’s got in her third arm.”

Kai knelt and pushed the alien to her side, revealing a third, smaller arm articulated from the spine. In the three-fingered hand, the alien held a dart-loaded short-range sticker—a weapon of choice for assassins.

“So this is no trader, then,” Kai said.

Senaya shook her head. "It was a cover—I thought I recognized her when you first started the negotiation, but I couldn't quite place her until I saw the barrel of the sticker."

“Crap, I came that close, eh?”

“Not you, Kai. Me.”

“I don’t understand. Why’d anyone want to assassinate you?” Kai stood up and looked through the market. A commotion was breaking out at the edge near the entrance. It seemed as though someone had informed the security bots.

“We have to explain this,” Kai said.

“No chance. We're getting out of here. Come on. I'll explain later."

“Sen, we can’t afford to have a visit from an inquisitor, not this close to the race. The fine will be astronomical. Let’s just explain…”

“Talk later, boss. We have to move,” Senaya said, turning away from the stall. She holstered her plasma pulser into one of the many pockets on her leather mechanic’s suit.

Kai remembered the day when she had made the suit herself. That was over eleven years ago when she was just seven years old. She hadn't grown an inch since then and was still just as impulsive.

The small half-human, half-Tasarel grabbed Kai by the elbow and dragged him away from the stall to join the flowing stream of pedestrians. “Just trust me. Let’s get out of here for now.”

Kai refused for a moment. He stared into her eyes, trying to see if she was lying to him. After a brief pause, he saw nothing to suggest she was lying. He’d known Senaya for long enough to extend the benefit of the doubt. “Okay, but we need to talk more,” he said, and quickly escaped through the market. He briefly looked over his shoulder. A security drone had arrived at the scene of the shooting and buzzed around, recording the scene.

Kai and Senaya dashed through the throng of people and down narrow alleys and through waste tunnels until they were sure they were safely away from the scene.

A yellow beacon signal shot straight up into the sky. A drone ship would be along soon to recover the body for processing. It seemed the other market traders hadn't talked, as there were no sirens or security droids in the sky—yet.

Still jogging, Kai and Sen exited the market district and entered the wild jungle that surrounded it. Thick leaves fifty meters high blocked the orange light of the sun, giving the jungle a cooler, more foreboding feel, which Kai preferred.

Darkness meant shadows, and the canopy meant it was more difficult to be spotted by air. They continued on, following a trader’s path through dense trees and over narrow bridges made from branches of the tall akarlis tree.

They eventually arrived at a leafy grotto ahead of a mountain cave system. Above them, a waterfall rushed down the rocky face and gathered in a bubbling pool.

Kai stopped by the mouth of the cave, which was half-hidden by wide-leafed plants, and pulled Senaya to the side.

“Are you going to expand on what happened back there?” Kai said, a growl in his voice.

“I knew her,” Senaya said. “She recognized me just after you completed the trade for the ship’s coordinates. If we had time, I’d have explained more, but I’ve seen her before and, well, I had only that one chance—”

“If this comes back on us, even for self-defense, it’s going to cost a fortune. We’ll be fined for fleeing the scene. The inquisitor is already trying to bill me for smuggling.”

“The whole smuggling thing wasn’t my fault,” Senaya said, crossing her arms over her narrow chest.

“I didn’t say it was.”

“I know, but it’s your body language. Every time you mention it, it’s as if you’re suggesting it’s my fault you got caught with the crystallites.”

“Well, it was you who flew through a checkpoint, smashing the barriers.”

“I was distracted by your whining.”

“Sure…”

“Anyways, forget that. The trader, I recognized her.”

“From where?” Kai leaned in closer but kept an eye out for spy drones.

Senaya reached into one of her many pockets and pulled out a narrow holoscroll. She unfurled it and showed it to Kai. “There, see? The one at the back of that crowd.”

Kai squinted at the old, pixelated video file and recognized the alien. She was wearing a municipal driving uniform. The video showed her place something into her jacket and turn away from the crowd.

“What am I looking at exactly?” Kai said. “The crowd I mean, what are they standing around?”

“My dead cousins,” Senaya said. “I was just a baby at the time. I’m somewhere out of shot. But my cousins were much older and worked for the Coalition government. They were on their way to a summit for peace talks between the Coalition and the Host forces after the Host surrendered.”

“And they didn’t make it?”

“Right.”

“So why would the trader—or assassin—come here to kill you?” Kai asked. “You’ve been with me all this time, and there’s never been any problems before. Why now?”

Senaya shrugged her slight shoulders and replaced the holoscroll into her pocket. “Don’t know, don’t care. I got to shoot first, and that’s all that matters. I’m sure I’ll figure it out later, but with no family to speak of, I guess the assassin was tying up loose ends. For all I know, she had me found and wanted to get me out of the way to cover her tracks.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Kai said. He’d treated her like a sister, and as far as he knew, they’d shared everything. They had complete trust in each other.

She shrugged. “It just never came up. Like I said, I was a baby and didn’t even know my cousins. A few months after that footage, I was orphaned and went from family to family until, well, until you helped me. I just wanted to forget all that, you know? I wasn’t expecting anything to come back from those times.”

“But you kept the video footage,” Kai pressed.

“Well, I guessed that one day I’d want to know more about what happened. It never occurred to me I’d ever come face-to-face with my cousins’ killer.”

“So what now?” Kai asked, checking the few patches of visible sky above him. “Do you want to follow it up? I could probably find someone to check out the body, get an ID perhaps.”

“Nah, I just want to forget it, Kai. Look, we have a ship to find, right? We need parts for the race, and this is our one chance. The longer we stand around gabbing about this, the slimmer the chance of salvaging it before someone else.”

“Sure, but—”

Before Kai could say anything else, Senaya turned away and walked off, heading north through the clearing and into a system of cave tunnels that would lead them away from the Market Quarter.

Kai followed her, trying to figure out what all this might mean—if anything at all. Just why would the assassin go out of her way to kill Senaya after all this time?

Nothing came to him right away, so he focused on the job at hand: finding the wreckage of a mystery ship that the recently purchased coordinates would reveal.

A ship that was rumored to have some of the most advanced tech the backward world of Zarunda had ever seen. Such technology would give him the edge in the upcoming annual Zarunda Classic ship race, the winnings of which would help get him and his friends off the damned planet.

Once they had left the tunnels, they would need to follow an old dirt track that led away from the jungle and track the Gretxi River that would ultimately lead to a patch of desert where the ship was reported to have crashed.

After a few more kilometers’ travel, they came to the hiding spot where they had left their transport tug. Kai took the pilot seat, not trusting Senaya to be fully in control of her emotions.

By the time they reached the spindle-like porcelain towers of Barbuta, Kai's heart rate had returned to normal, and the excitement of a scavenge soon took his focus.

In the chair beside his, Senaya tapped out a series of commands on the holographic display. Chirps and radio signatures buzzed over the old speakers as Kai piloted the boxlike tug through a growing flow of traffic.

Kai flew the craft up into the next lane to avoid a slow-moving sky barge full of robed worshippers and switched on the comm-bud in his ear. “Seems busy,” he said.

“Barbutan Festival of Fire today,” Senaya replied via her own comm-bud. “The opening ceremony is in a few hours. Shame we can’t stick around for it.”

“Ah, of course. That’s useful—it’ll provide us some cover to pillage in peace. Okay, we’re coming to the toll gates, check clearance for me, would you?”

“Scanners are clear,” Senaya said. “We’ve been given passage through towers two and three, level seven. Discount rate due to the festival.”

“And saving money too. I’m growing to like the Barbutans,” Kai said with a smile.

“They're very likable entities—apart from that whole sacrifice in flame thing…"

“Yeah, that does seem a little excessive.”

Kai checked the upcoming signage and made sure their tug was on the right flight vector through their allocated passage. When they were clear, they entered a slow, controlled dive away from the thirteen monolithic towers. Their pale-white surfaces shone with a warm hue as the sun started its descent towards the horizon.

Below them, the river snaked eastwards. Traffic continued to flow north and west, leaving them alone. Kai, not a fan of being so open, brought the tug lower until they were skimming across the top of the one-hundred-meter-high celpy trees, their feather-like leaves brushing the bottom of the hull, clearing away accumulated dirt and grime.

Their destination would take another hour, so Kai switched to autopilot and turned toward Senaya. She was busy running engineering checks.

“Is the old girl doing okay?” Kai said.

Senaya swiveled on the chair and nodded her head. “Good as goldite. If you don’t do anything stupid, we’ve got more than enough fuel to return home fully laden.”

“Me do something stupid? That’s rich, coming from you after your exploits earlier.”

She shrugged, got up, and headed to the back of the tug.

“Hey, come back, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Kai said.

“Someone’s got to prep the salvaging gear,” she shouted back, far more defensively than was necessary, and so loud in his ear that he winced at the temporary pain.

He sighed and turned back to face the view screen. The light outside was starting to drop. The external lights of the tug switched on automatically, but he overrode the system, preferring to stay stealthy. He switched over to night vision and manually piloted into the desert, following closely to the coordinates he had bought from the now-dead trader.

Thinking back on it, the trader had seemed odd once the deal was done. It was as if she'd changed her mind. That must have been when she'd seen Senaya, he thought.

He let that idea submerge into his subconscious and focused on their fast-approaching destination. Below them, the field of celpy trees had given way to the steppes—volcanic rocks that stretched out for a thousand kilometers to the east.

At first, Kai couldn’t find the wreckage, even though they were over the exact coordinates. He was about to call Senaya back to check on their scanners when an explosion lurched their tug violently to one side.

A gaping hole blew open in the right side of the cockpit, and loose items flew towards it as the cabin depressurized. Flames burst around the aperture, licking at the edges of the vast gash in the hull, until the automatic extinguishers kicked in, dousing Kai and everything within the cockpit with powder.

“Sen, are you okay back there?” he asked while he fought to keep the tug flying straight. “What the hell happened?”

“Raiders!” Sen screamed back over the communications channel, the last syllable swallowed by the blast of the tug’s cannons.

Kai brought up their scanner view and saw three enemy units on the ground—surrounding the crashed ship. They’d been beaten to it after all.

He hauled the tug up and around, sweeping back away from the trio of anti-air fire. “Sen, cover us with the cannons. I’m going back around. These pirate bastards aren’t getting my ship.”

“I hear you, Captain.”

The blasting of gunfire erupted again from the rear cannon.

From outside the tug, a dull thud boomed. Senaya had managed to take out one of the anti-air vehicles. Sirens and lights blared in the cockpit, warning him of low fuel and pressure. He clipped on a face mask attached to his chair and set a low, circular flyby before exiting the cockpit.

The bulkhead slammed behind him, and he raced through the narrow corridor until he came to the ordnance control pod. Further toward the rear of the ship, Senaya was sitting in the cannon module, her arms waving across control screens as she provided the cover fire he needed.

The tug pitched and started its descent.

“I’m all out of cannon ammo. And you better not have programmed a collision course,” Senaya shouted, her voice distorting loudly across the communications channel.

“Of course not,” Kai replied.

It was a lie.

He figured that if the ordnance didn’t take out the two remaining enemies, then they’d do it the old-fashioned way. The tug should withstand a low-speed crash, and if this mystery ship proved half as good as the rumor, they’d easily have enough equipment and tech to get back to the workshop.

The tug shuddered under incoming fire.

“We’re hit again,” Senaya said, running down the corridor towards the hold. “Engine bay is on fire; extinguishing systems down.”

“Then put it out—quickly.”

Kai brought up the screen in front of him and watched as the tug completed its circuit and flew within striking distance. With a swift, practiced sweep of his hand, he selected the targets and let fly with the experimental rockets Senaya had installed last week.

Four AI-guided Scalpel missiles flew from the ordnance pod. The first one exploded within seconds due to malfunction, the force smashing against the sphere, knocking Kai out of his seat.

The second and third missiles destroyed one of the enemy units.

The fourth failed to make it, the anti-air fire destroying it in midair.

With no missiles remaining, they were left with but one option: collision course.

“Hold onto something solid,” Kai yelled. “We’re taking alternative landing procedures.”

Chapter 2

Kai’s heart seemed to stop as time stretched out before him in a pause so pregnant with tension he expected to die in that very instance. But paradoxically, as soon as he had thought this, reality rushed in again in a roar of wind and flame and metal on metal.

The force of the impact threw him upside down and smashing against the pod ceiling.

He crashed down in a heap. The sounds of the wreckage around him descended into a deep hush he’d only experienced once before.

His brain checked out, switching everything to autopilot and leaving him alone with the crowding darkness until subconscious started to take over and the sounds of screaming amid the yowling wind made him alert.

Something within him compelled him to move until he was peering out of a half-meter-wide scar in the outer hull. Black smoke drifted on the wind and into the small space, making him cough and splutter.

Each cough brought a burst of pain through his right shoulder and chest. Probably a cracked rib, he thought, or perhaps something much worse. The screaming, he realized, wasn’t his own. And neither was it from Senaya.

The voice was male and oddly familiar.

“Sen, you copy?” Kai said, his throat constricting around his words as he continued to cough. “Are you okay?”

No response.

He reached to his ear. His comm-bud was missing.

The flames from outside lit up the pod with orange and yellow light, but the shadows were too dark for him to find something as small as the bud. His legs were bent at awkward angles, and he saw splashes of glossy darkness against the steel of the pod’s infrastructure—blood. His blood. His neck was warm with it.

“Sen, you there?”

Still no response.

“Kai?” a strained voice from outside the ship called. “Kai Locke… is that you in there?”

“Who’s there?” Kai said, realizing that this was the voice that was previously screaming.

Senaya’s shadow appeared over Kai. She stared down, a bloodied gash across her forehead stapled together and covered with med-mesh. The nanofiber product was already at work, knitting the wound with new flesh cells.

“You stupid bastard,” Sen said. “I knew you’d pull some stunt like this.”

Kai looked from her to the hole in the pod, aware someone was out there, then back to Sen. “Hey, it worked, right? We’re still alive.”

“Just. I could have died back there if it wasn’t for me getting caught in a cargo harness. You could have at least warned me.”

“I wouldn’t have had to if your Scalpel missiles worked.”

“Don’t you dare put this on me, Kai Locke, you reckless—”

“Hey… you two in there,” the familiar voice from outside called. “I could use some help.”

“Hold on for a minute,” Sen shouted back. She bent down, hooked her arms under Kai’s shoulders, and hefted him up. For someone so short, she was surprisingly strong. It was the Tasarel genes in her. Stocky, strong little people they were.

Kai was thankful for her half-breeding, even if the movement did make him want to bite through his arm to end the explosion of pain. When she had him up on his feet, he slumped against the pod wall and took a deep breath.

“Here, take the shot while I go check the survivor out there.” Senaya put a stemmer shot in his hand and made to head out of the pod and toward the exit door.

Kai pulled her back. “No, I’ll go. It’s my mess.”

He jabbed the stemmer into his chest and kicked against the wall while it burned through his cells, the powerful opiate-delivering nanoparticles surging through his veins.

After a few moments, the burning sensation melted into a comfortable numbness.

“I never get used to that,” Kai said.

“You wouldn’t have to if you stopped being so damned stupid. But I’m glad you’re okay.”

“For now… I suspect I’m going to be sore tomorrow. But let’s go see who that is out there.”

“About time,” the voice from outside wheezed between groans. “A sense of urgency… would… be appreciated.”

With unsteady steps, Kai left the pod and bundled his way down the narrow corridor until he reached his quarters. Without having to look, he reached an arm around the door and grabbed his Petchen & Glaz assault rifle. The weapon felt familiar in his hand, the butt fitting perfectly into the crook of his arm.

The P&G recognized his bio-signature and activated, the sights buzzing briefly before a green dot appeared on the crumpled inner wall of the tug. Kai ordered the ship's system to open the door. It slid into the hull, revealing a scene of fire and smoke in the desert darkness.

The white sand was cultured the hue of a yellow dwarf star, tinted by the flames, the light of which picked out a silhouette of a man slumped against the wreckage of the third anti-air vehicle. Twisted and scorched metal rendered the ground weapon almost unrecognizable.

Kai looked back at the tug, noting with surprise and horror that it had split into two—the cockpit and forward quarters were some way behind the weapons and cargo modules.

“Help… me,” the voice said.

Kai raised the rifle and stepped slowly toward the voice, switching on the weapon’s tactical light to illuminate the man.

“Is… that you, Tallis?”

“Yeah… for now,” the elder man said. Blood had pooled from a series of wounds in his chest and neck so that his dark desert jerkin was sodden with it.

Kai stepped closer then stopped.

Senaya backed him up, a pistol in each hand.

“I’ll sweep for other hostiles,” she said, pupils fully dilated and giving her a look of a desert crawler. That look told him not to question her intent, so he let her go about her business.

He kneeled in front of Tallis and inspected the man’s wounds. Pulling the flimsy jerkin to one side, it was clear that the old rogue had no chance. Even stemmer and an acre of med-mesh wouldn’t fix the gaping wounds in his chest, and even if they could, they’d do nothing for the blight that had clearly been gnawing away at his bones and musculature for some time.

Kai shook his head and sighed.

The blight seemed to be affecting everyone on Zarunda these days. The Coalition government didn't appear to care, and the other planets of the alliance wouldn't help research a cure because Zarunda, being a piss-poor planet, had nothing of value to trade. Klipi oil, the sap they use for fuel, was wildly inefficient to other planets' higher-yielding resources.

“Your wounds, Tallis, they’re real bad, I’m afraid.”

“I… know,” Tallis said, reading Kai’s face. The man’s craggy features twisted into a grimace. His lank, long hair was matted against his cheeks and neck. “I’m… not going to… make it, am I?”

“I could lie and say you’ve got a chance,” Kai said, “but you know that’s not the case. What do you want me to do?”

Tallis looked into his eyes, thinking over his options. “I guess… it’s over. The… blight, it…”

“I know,” Kai said, lowering his gun and gripping him by the shoulder. Although Kai didn’t know him beyond acquaintance level, Tallis was a well-known figure around Ghanis, mostly for his engineering skills. He used to work for a local racing outfit, but Kai hadn’t seen him for some years.

The blight had clearly reduced his employment options.

Tallis shifted himself up against the wreckage and held a shaking hand toward the ship that they had all come for. “There’s something… in there you should see,” he said between shallow breaths. “Your father… he—”

Kai stood up, a spring releasing its tension. “My father’s in there?”

“No… but, the ship, I think it… belonged to him. You’ll see.”

The revelation hit Kai in the face, a solid-fisted punch. He hadn’t heard anything regarding his missing father for over three years. He desperately wanted to run to the ship and see what it was, but he had to do right by Tallis first.

“Why were you even here?” Kai asked. “And with pirates? You’re better than that.”

Tallis slumped his chin against his chest and exhaled slowly. “I… wanted the money. To get off the planet. Live my final days on… Jallan IV. We… all did.”

“All the pirates had the blight too?” Kai asked.

Tallis nodded and then looked up at Kai, focused on his Petchen & Glaz.

“Please, Kai… end this for me. I can’t go on like this. Please…”

“Are you absolutely sure? I could make it easier. I’ve got some supplies of—”

“Just shoot me,” Tallis begged. “It hurts too much. Kai, now…”

“Tallis, I can’t just—”

“It hurts too much, boy. Just end me… please?”

Kai stood there in front of the older man, his rifle shaking in his hands. He’d never killed anyone like this before. Sure, he’d been in the odd ship battle with the pirates before—everyone who flew on Zarunda did at some point in their lives, but this… this was a universe away from that.

Tallis was a good man, or as close to a good man as one would find on Zarunda. And here was Kai, just a kid compared to him, being asked to end the life of another. Just because he was ill and suffering didn’t make it any easier.

“You can do this,” Tallis whispered, his energy seeping away as the blood from his chest continued to desert him in miniature tidal waves, the heart now working against him as though it had decided to feed the ground with his blood.

Or perhaps it was pumping away the blight, to leave Tallis pure as he passed away.

Tears rolled down Kai’s cheeks. His knuckles were threatening to burst through the surrounding skin his grip was so tight.

“I’m so sorry,” Kai choked out. “I hope you have a good afterlife, Tallis.”

“Me too, Kai… Me too. Now, shoot.”

Closing his eyes, Kai whispered a prayer to Valnesia and squeezed the trigger of his rifle.

A single bolt fired, the crack splintering the quiet of the desert. The round struck Tallis square in the forehead. The man’s body slumped, lifeless and pitched to one side.

Kai swallowed a welling of grief, dropped his rifle, and laid Tallis’s body on the sandy ground. He stayed kneeling over the older man for what seemed like forever, Kai’s whole body shaking.

“What happened?” Senaya said, sprinting around the wreckage and skidding to a stop by Kai. She looked from him to Tallis’s still form. “Oh.”

“He begged me,” Kai said. “He had the blight—they all did.”

“I know. I saw them. There’re three more over there. I don’t think they had more than a few days amongst them. There’s nothing anyone could have done. We’ll arrange for them to be collected and processed properly when we get back to the workshop. Their families will probably be relieved. It’s a huge burden.”

Senaya talked on, regaling him with stories of a friend of a friend whose son had contracted the blight and how difficult it was to care for him with Zarunda’s nonexistent healthcare facilities. Its citizens were forced to deal on the black market for whatever drugs the smugglers managed to bring from other systems.

None of that made it any easier for Kai, though. He knew Tallis wasn't a bad man; he was just doing what he could to survive. They stood there in silence for a long minute, remembering what they could of Tallis and wishing him a better chance in the next life if there was one.

Kai was not convinced, but that meant nothing right now.

“He mentioned something about my father," Kai said eventually. "Suggested there was something of his on the ship."

“Well, let’s go look. There’s nothing more we can do for Tallis or the others now. We’ll have them looked after when we get back, and given how we’re going to be facing freezing cold temperatures sooner rather than later, we ought to make plans to find a way back home.”

“You’re right. It just feels wrong now. Let’s hope it’s got something we can use to get home now that the tug is ruined,” Kai said, turning from Tallis’s body and heading away from the fire and destruction of the anti-air vehicles.

When they reached the ship, Kai couldn't help but be underwhelmed.

“So much for your source saying it was an amazing find,” Senaya said, the disappointment in her voice as clear as the starry sky above them. “The thing’s an old Host diplomatic courier vessel. Won’t be anything more advanced in there than what we can trade with the smugglers.”

She was right, of course, but regardless of the lack of tech, he still felt that tinge of curiosity, and he felt like he owed it to Tallis to find out what was inside.

He approached the vessel, a thirty-meter-long wedge cultured in the Host livery of dark green and gold. Its cannons were already missing, crudely ripped from the hull. The doors were gone too, along with most of its shielding material.

“The pirates must have got here hours before we did and sent the loot back on another ship,” Senaya said. “It’s stripped clean. This whole journey was a waste of time, and it’s going to cost a fortune to replace the tug. This is a disaster.”

Kai ignored her and stepped into the ship, moving his way through stripped-bare corridors until he found the captain’s cabin.

Tallis was true to his word.

At the end of a turned-over bed was a Coalition military-issue footlocker. Using the tactical light on his rifle, Kai shined it on the box. Deep gouges told the story of someone trying to get into it—and failing. Probably the Host force who owned the ship.

“Wow, the old rogue was right," Senaya said, slipping into the room and standing in the doorway. "Might be tricky to open, given the state of it."

“We’ll take it back to the shop with us. I’m sure we can burn our way through it.”

Kai placed the rifle under his arm and reached down to pick up the footlocker. His hands gripped the sides, but before he could lift it up, a mechanism whirred inside and the lid popped open.

“That’s unusual,” Senaya said, stepping closer. “What did you do that the pirates didn’t?”

“Nothing, I just touched it.”

“Huh, biotech… clever.”

Kai placed the footlocker on the upturned bed and lifted the lid completely. Shining the light inside revealed a single object encased in foam.

“What is that?” Senaya said, leaning over to peer inside. “It looks like a miniature pyramid or something.”

That was exactly what it was. Kai eased it from the foam and held it aloft. The object was approximately half the size of his palm and made from a type of metal he couldn’t identify.

It was extremely light, no more than a few grams, yet it had a metaphysical presence about it. The tetrahedron’s surface was matte black and seemed to suck in the surrounding light. Kai spun it around, inspecting every surface, but found no blemish or surface detail. He pressed at each of the four sides, but nothing happened.

“What do you think it is?” Senaya said. “And is this what Tallis said belonged to your father?”

“It must be, given that the box opened for me,” Kai said, his mind whirling for an answer of what it was. Nothing came to him other than perhaps a piece of artwork, but why would it be inside a military lockbox? Perhaps it was some kind of advanced weapon. He had no idea how such a thing might work. The artifact was completely bare of any signs of usage.

“Here, you have a look,” Kai said, handing it to Senaya while he shone his light back into the lockbox and around it. While Senaya inspected the object, Kai looked all over and in the container, hoping to find some kind of clue.

An instruction scroll would be useful, he thought.

There was only one thing of interest, on the underside of the box.

A series of numbers: 189-0484-9301-112

Kai almost sang the numbers in his head, as he had done a million times before.

The numbers belonged to his father—his official Coalition armed forces identification number from when he was in the Guerrilla Tactics Unit.

Tallis was right: this was Kendal Locke’s, but what was it, and what did it mean? Was his father really still alive? Kai had little time to ponder the question as heavy footsteps thudded in the corridor outside.

Chapter 3

Spymaster Brenna Locke and her apprentice, Jannis Fo, kept pace with the stream of alien citizens of Haleedez. They were just two more individuals on their way to work in the great economic capital city of Somos.

Jannis stuck close by, her short-cropped dark hair cut in the local style, so it appeared like a thin flight helmet around her head and down to her chin. Even the beige flared trouser suit she was wearing was spot-on for the fashion of the time.

They chatted about nothing important and greeted workers who came the other way on the three-hundred-foot-high translucent walkway that connected the vast matrix of crystallite towers. Brenna noticed Jannis staring at her feet—as most newcomers did.

It took a while to get over the feeling that you were about to fall.

“Eyes up,” Brenna whispered, then smiled as though they had just shared a joke.

“Right, sorry,” Jannis said. “It’s just so…”

“You’ll get used to it. We’re nearly there, anyway. Did you read the report from the financial team last night?” This was code for: “Did you read my latest report on our informant?”

“Sure did,” Jannis said. She stepped aside to allow a group of tentacle-faced Podesians through. One of the lead aliens grunted something unintelligible and shook its body within its refractive silver robe, which Brenna had learned to be their way of saying thanks.

Brenna nodded and walked on, wrapping the collar of her one-piece suit around her neck.

Even though she had been stationed on Haleedez for the past six months, working with a group of informants—defected members of the Host—she still had yet to acclimatize to the outer-ring planet’s chilly temperatures.

Even the blood-regulation drugs she had requisitioned from a black market source hadn’t helped much. All it did was give her night sweats. Her skin, if anything, had become even more sensitive to the biting winds, especially all the way up here amongst the towers.

But none of that would matter after today.

Once she had the information from the defected soldier, she’d be back on her ship and heading back to Coalition HQ on Capsis Prime.

“So it’s a simple task of collecting the new data and trashing the old information?” Jannis said as they approached the end of the walkway and passed under a great glass archway.

“That’s about the sum of it. As soon as the new data is confirmed, we can terminate the source and move on to the next project. I hear HQ has some great leads for us to work on. A really exciting economic opportunity for the company.”

“That’s great to hear. I’m definitely excited to test myself with the bigger firms.”

Brenna checked her contact lens HUD and followed the discreet augmented-reality directions. They were entering one of the main towers of the matrix. From the outside, it appeared translucent, but one couldn't actually see through them, the translucency being an illusory projection.

Inside, the towers were glorified high-rise apartment buildings, subdivided into levels distributed from the poorest, and thus smallest homes, to the largest and most expensive.

Unlike those on Capsis, the more expensive and desirable properties were on the lowest levels, closest to the planet’s actual surface.

Although she hadn’t yet been there, Brenna had heard it was akin to paradise—if the locals were to be believed, but then the Haleedezians were a strange bunch, so who knew what their idea of paradise would be.

Once inside the tower, all became quiet. Everyone else was on their way to work. Brenna had timed it right so they wouldn’t be disturbed.

“You’ve done well,” Brenna said as she led her apprentice into a glass elevator and punched the number that would take them to level two hundred and five. She was referring to her disguise, something Jannis Fo hadn’t always got right in her training missions.

Brenna felt a certain degree of pride that her tuition had brought out significant improvement in her protégé’s abilities.

“Thanks. I found a good stylist and thought it’d be worth it,” Jannis said.

“Do you have your analysis apps ready for use?” Brenna asked, the code being: is your weapon armed and ready.

“Yep," Jannis said, tapping her flared thigh. "Just need the data, and we're good to go. Assuming it's there. Head office wasn't entirely convinced it would be where they said."

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Brenna said. “I checked the source myself.”

Brenna thought of her source and felt a twinge of regret that she had to terminate him. But then, if the informant hadn’t run out on them and failed to make their last agreed meeting, she wouldn’t have had to resort to these kinds of measures.

For three days she’d been led on a fruitless chase.

Until this morning, when one of her leads checked out. The informant had been confirmed to be hiding out here in an empty apartment.

When the elevator stopped, and the door opened, Brenna let her right hand drop to her hip, where her laser pistol was neatly holstered beneath the folded material.

“We’re clear,” Jannis said, stepping out of the elevator and checking both ends of the corridor. Like the external view, the interior walls appeared translucent—video projections of the outside world that gave them the uncanny feeling of walking in the open.

Only the warmer temperatures and the doors to the apartments convinced Brenna’s mind that she was actually inside a tower.

“This way,” she said, leading the way to room 856.

The door was already ajar. Not a good sign. All readings from her scanners told her that there was a single bio-signature inside and everything else read as normal. Brenna inched the door open, her pistol now in her hand, pointing into the space of the room.

She stepped in slowly, quietly, her apprentice close behind, providing cover fire if needed.

The apartment was sparse, fitting the Haleedez style, featuring just a single leather chair beneath a rotor lamp, the light hovering like a sentient bird.

The light spilled from the lamp, showing indentations in the leather, indicating someone had recently sat there, corroborating the bio-signature and confirming her intel was correct.

Jannis stepped around her and swept the five-square-meter room, but with just a projection wall and a few artifacts displayed on featureless plinths, there wasn’t much to check. A single doorway to the rear left of the room led to a short passage that Brenna knew from her research would provide access to a pair of bedrooms and a bathroom.

The two spies moved across the room and into the passage with precise, quiet steps.

Brenna’s scanner couldn’t pinpoint the location of the bio-signature, only indicate that there was one. They’d have to search each room. This in itself wasn’t overly worrying; many people wore scramblers to provide privacy.

All part of the tech and counter-tech arms race. Thankfully, for Brenna, the engineers at the Guerrilla Tactics Unit were ahead of the game—just.

They continued to move down the passageway toward the bathroom.

Jannis stopped at one of the bedrooms to their left.

Like the front door, it too hung ajar. “I’m going to check,” Jannis subvocalized over the near-field communications system.

Before Brenna could confirm, however, Jannis stepped into the room and then immediately stopped—by the quiet thump of a rail gun pistol.

Jannis’s body flew back into the passage, her limbs outstretched, her face contorted in surprise and pain. She struck the opposite wall. Her head slammed hard, the skull cracking before her body hit the ground, lifeless. A pool of blood oozed from her chest, staining her beige jacket.

Brenna’s trained muscles reacted first before thought, sending her into a low roll away from the angle of view into the room.

A shadow shifted on the periphery of her vision.

Her heart rate kicked up a few notches and her muscles tensed. Out of the roll, she came up to one knee, raised her weapon and tracked the movement, her thoughts now coming through, telling her to be calm, be professional.

The familiar, deadly whir of a rail gun pistol broke the silence.

A projectile smashed through the thin wall material and flew just millimeters by Brenna’s ear, making her twitch away long after the fact.

With the flight of the projectile still fresh in her instinctive mind, she raised her pistol and shot three times through the wall.

Green laser fire from her gun flashed like a club’s neon strobe light for a brief second. The superheated air assailed her flared nostrils with the smell of burned dust and particulate.

There was a grunt shortly afterward and the sound of something clattering to the floor.

Brenna launched up and forward, diving into the open door and raising her laser pistol to where she had mentally modeled the sound to have come from.

Her partner’s murderer lay still at the foot of the bed.

A scarlet smear streaked down the white wall.

On the bed, a second shape caught Brenna’s attention. Her brain’s pattern recognition kicked in and told her it was their informant—now clearly dead, the cream-cultured sheets turned a sickly brown.

The informant had been bled out, tortured, for hours.

Brenna slowly approached the other figure on the floor, her pistol trained on the form. She rolled the body over with her foot. Two of her three shots had struck successfully—one to the chest, the other to the temple. The lack of bio-signature on her scanner confirmed the death. The carbon dioxide levels of the room had dropped, confirming the lack of breathing.

Brenna kneeled at the foot of the murder and torturer. The informant’s blood on his gloved hands confirmed their role in this gruesome tableau. He wasn’t human. His near-pupil-less eyes and grooved hairless head were that of a Gratellian—a species under the protection, and manipulation, of the Host.

He hadn’t just been sent to assassinate the informant; he’d been sent to extract information. But what that might have been, Brenna now had no way of knowing.

The brain was too damaged for postmortem analysis.

Whatever neurons were firing before taking a laser shot were now lost forever.

Brenna stood and threw a drone camera in the air. The fist-sized cube flittered around the room, taking stills and video from all angles, along with temperature readings, chemical analysis, and projectile trajectories. While that was processing, Brenna made to move toward the passageway to deal with her partner.

She took one step and stopped.

A deep thrum vibrated throughout the whole building.

The walls shook, the floor shook, and the atmosphere took on a tension that made Brenna’s skin crawl with dread.

The light spilling through the diaphanous curtains darkened. She rushed over and peered through the window. Another thrum vibrated up through her feet. Her stomach lurched with the building. The scene outside seemed to tilt with her. In the sky, the orbiting battle-station grew larger—far larger than it should.

It was coming toward the planet.

And it was not the only thing.

A long shadow descended over Somos. A thin fragmented line of clouds obscured the shape initially, but when the pointed, matte-black nose of a ship pierced through the cloud layer and smashed through the tips of distant towers, Brenna knew what was happening.

The Host had returned.

Somehow, they had managed to take out and bypass the battle-station defensive system. The very system developed among these outer-ring planets to provide a defensive early-warning shield against any potential return of the Host.

Not that anyone suspected they’d attack now.

The modeling from the Coalition HQ had predicted they wouldn’t recover their losses from the war a decade previous for at least another twenty or more years.

She spun to regard the assassin. It all made sense now.

The Gratellian was a Host agent. He must have been here to get intelligence from the informant regarding the defensive shield of Haleedez. Brenna smashed her hand against the window. How could she not have seen this before?

She had no time to lay blame. The Host battleship was coming lower. Laser and ballistic fire burst from its gun pods, destroying everything in its path. The walkways smashed like brittle candy, sending citizens toppling to their deaths. Their screams were audible over the terrible sound of the ship’s engines.

For a brief moment, Brenna was paralyzed with awe and fear. But she practiced her mind-focusing techniques and after a few moments had got a grip of her mind; she had work to do.

She pocketed the drone camera, the device having completed its task, and sprinted into the hallway. Next, she activated her remote ship command instruction. It would take approximately fifteen seconds to arrive. She plotted the coordinates so that it would hover outside the window. There was no time to travel through the levels of the tower to the landing pad.

Her ship confirmed the instruction via a flashing green dot on her contact HUD.

While the ship was making its way up the tower, she lifted Jannis's prone body up onto her shoulders and carried her into the bloodstained bedroom.

The light of day had turned to night. The Host destroyer completely obscured the binary suns with its black bulk. Below her current level, her ship cast its own shadow until it hovered just outside the window.

Brenna kicked aside the latch and slid the glass pane to one side.

Her ship’s engines whined, barely audible over the sound of crashing towers. A laser bolt from the nearby Host destroyer smashed into the building, a few floors up. A fireball burst into the air above her, greedily burning up the surrounding oxygen.

She turned away from the heat and held her breath.

Her ship’s AI extended a platform to the window. She lurched across and ducked inside, dumping Jannis’s body into the hold. Using the cargo straps, she secured Jannis and then rushed into the cockpit.

“Authorize,” Brenna said aloud, dashing through the narrow corridor.

“Agent 717 authorized,” the AI said.

“Contact HQ immediately. Activate evasive maneuvers. Full power to shields and planet drive. Get us into orbit over the third parallel.”

“Orders understood.”

Brenna entered the cockpit. The lights were low in the small room to allow her holoscreen display to be more easily seen. On her left, the status screen scrolled through a series of alerts while the middle screen showed video feeds of her surroundings.

The Host ship appeared even bigger when seen from all angles.

The city below it was in ruins, with flame and smoke obscuring anything below the fiftieth level. A government warning siren blared in the distance, and a message for calm ticked across her status screen.

Somewhere in the distance, a good two hundred klicks away, fragments of the battle-station burned through the atmosphere, turning the world orange and black.

“Engaging engines,” the AI informed her. “Shields at full.”

“Patch me through to HQ,” Brenna said as she strapped herself into the seat.

A few seconds later, the voice of Captain Cranston Lopek barked over the secure comms channel. “717, what’s your status?”

The ship lurched upwards, choking the words in Brenna’s throat. It spun and sped through the air, away from the Host vessel. Other ships were trying to escape, too, and to Brenna’s gratitude and disgust, provided cover for her escape.

“Agent Locke, you called me. What’s going on there?”

“Captain… it’s all gone to shit. The informant is dead. Jannis is dead.”

“Slow down, explain.”

“Patching video to you now. It’s the Host, Captain; they’re back. And they’ve taken out the defensive shield here.”

Captain Cranston Lopek went silent.

While her ship piloted her away from danger and then out of the atmosphere, taking her into low orbit, Kopek’s voice returned. “We’re hearing of other attacks to the outer-ring defense system. It’s just three of the twenty. There’s no evidence yet to suggest the Host are back in their former capacity. This could just be a scouting mission. But return to HQ immediately, we need to debrief and find out how they breached the defense system.”

“I’m on it,” Brenna said. “Preparing for subspace jump now.”

“Good. I’m being told reinforcements were scrambled ten minutes ago. Your role there is done. Radio silence until you arrive unless there’s an emergency,” Lopek replied.

“Wait, if I don’t make it back for some reason, get word to my son, Kai. He’s on Zarunda.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to let him know if anything happens.”

“Thanks.”

“Radio silence now. Over.”

“Over.”

Brenna slumped in her chair as the AI took over the subspace jumping sequence. She watched the video of the planet shrinking behind her, the Host ship still visible over the bright blue planet, a dark, insidious shadow crawling across the surface.

The battle-station lay just over the outer edge in broken fragments. Her ship’s shields managed to deflect the debris as the subspace engines whined up to speed.

Before they made the jump, she saw three points of light flare beyond Haleedez.

A trio of Coalition destroyers pierced through the veil of subspace and brought with them a sense of hope—and vengeance. The Host might have had a head start and destroyed the defense system, but it would face a real fight now.

Her own ship became dark and silent. The subspace jump was underway. The familiar but never-not-freaky sense of being nowhere and everywhere at once permeated her very being, and she entered the dreamlike state knowing that despite all the deaths on Haleedez, the Host vessel wouldn't escape.

But a more worrying thought occurred to her: they would have known that.

They were prepared to sacrifice themselves.

This was a very different Host to what they faced a decade ago.

Chapter 4

Senaya handed the tetrahedron back to Kai and retrieved her twin laser pistols from her myriad pockets. Kai just had time to drop the object into the footlocker and reach for his rifle.

“Don’t you kids even think about it,” a deep, rumbling voice said. “Put those little toys away, girl.”

Kai spun around, one hand still reaching for the Petchen & Glaz. There in the doorway was every Zarundan’s nightmare—enigmatic criminal Bandar Trace. And he was well armed with a smoldering short-block flame blaster in his hands, the liquid ignition fluid dripping menacingly from the wide aperture barrel.

Trace stared at them, his cold eyes barely visible through the dusty translucent mask that obscured his heavily scarred face. A sand-covered leather duster and a bandolier of proximity grenades only added to the criminal’s intimidating presence.

Kai had only seen him once in public, and the half-dozen dead bodies around his feet had told Kai then all he needed to know: Trace was to be feared, or at the very least respected.

He should have known the hyped rumor of this downed ship would have caught Trace’s attention. Hell, he doubted anything escaped his attention. It was just a case of whether or not Trace felt like coming out of hiding and taking what he wanted.

“I know you two speak common, and I know you don’t want to die,” Bandar drawled. “Are you going to make me repeat myself?”

“Do as he says, Sen,” Kai said. He dropped his P&G back onto the upturned bed and tried not to stare at the footlocker.

Reluctantly, Senaya placed her pistols back into her pockets. She snarled at the older man, which elicited a smile, or perhaps a grimace, it was hard to tell behind the chrome prosthetic faceplate covering the entire right side of his face and the scar tissue disfiguring most of the left side.

“Better,” Trace said, lowering his weapon a few inches. “At least we can be civil about this, right?” He stared straight at Kai, those dark dead eyes boring their way through Kai’s body as though he could see what he was hiding behind his back.

“I guess the next thing,” Kai said, “would be to ask what you want.”

Bandar inclined his head. “Aye, I guess that would.”

A pause, the stench of ignition fluid stung the hairs in Kai's nostrils, the sharp acidic scent making him light-headed. But he couldn't move because to do that would be to reveal what he had, and he'd rather die right there than give up a clue to his father's whereabouts.

“Well?” Senaya said with a sigh. “Are you going to give us a clue, or do we literally have to ask you what you want?”

Kai tensed at her outburst.

Trace just grimaced-smiled again and narrowed his eyes.

“A mouth like yours is an efficient way to die fast,” the older man said. “But I don’t have the time to clean your smoldering remains off my ship.”

“Your ship?” Senaya said, standing as tall as her short frame would allow.

Kai glared at her. What the hell was she playing at? But as he looked into those wide eyes of hers, he saw it: pure fear.

This was just her way of dealing with it.

Fronting it out and hoping.

“Let me make this easy for you kids. You clearly have no idea what you’re doing. I’ll be taking this ship and all that is left in it. I’ll also be salvaging the ground weapons out there, along with the broken fragments of your pathetic tug. In return, you kids get to fight another day. In the grand scheme of things, this is a good outcome for all concerned.”

Senaya’s lips twitched.

Kai spun to face Bandar and spoke before Senaya got them killed. “Fine, it’s just a crappy Host ship anyway. There’s nothing else of value. The pirates took it all. But how are we going to get home? You can’t just leave us out here to freeze to death. Where’s the good outcome in that?” He just hoped he’d have time to grab the artifact and the footlocker while Bandar was helping himself to everything else.

Bandar's body tensed, and his strong hands gripped the barrel of his weapon ever so slightly tighter. "There's a ground buggy outside. I'll graciously leave that behind. You'll get home—eventually. Now, get the hell off my ship."

It seemed negotiations were over.

The flame blaster's barrel came up, and Bandar Trace stepped backward, allowing them passage through the door, which left Kai with a conundrum: he couldn't let go of the tetrahedron, but he wanted to take his rifle and the footlocker with him.

He was about to speak when Trace clicked off the safety mechanism and glared directly at him. With no other option, Kai had to leave the P&G and the footlocker behind.

Senaya stepped up behind him, and the pair moved toward the door.

“Hands out front, kiddo,” Bandar growled.

Kai raised his hands and slipped by the older man, suddenly feeling claustrophobic in the tightness of the passageway. He could even hear the reservoir of ignition fluid bubbling.

One pull of the trigger and he and Senaya would be toast. Literally.

The heat of the weapon pressed against his skin, making sweat bead and drip down his face. Senaya stayed close behind and followed Kai as they were led out of the ship.

Once outside, Bandar Trace ordered them to stop. “Wait there,” he barked and slipped back inside the ship.

A few seconds later, too quick a time for Kai to consider running for it, Trace exited the ship, the flame blaster now holstered behind his back. He was carrying the footlocker. He threw it at Kai. “Here, take that. I saw you looking at it, and well, don’t say that old Bandar isn’t generous. I’m keeping the P&G, though. That’s too nice to give up.”

Kai caught the footlocker against his chest with a thud. He wanted to say something, but there was a curious look in Bandar’s eyes that Kai couldn’t quite make out.

He sensed, though, that Trace knew more about it than he was letting on.

Before Kai could further the conversation, Trace gestured a command over his wristband, and right above Kai, the whir of ion engines belched into life.

A large black craft the shape of an arrowhead appeared in the dark sky, its shape picked out by a series of landing lights. A dozen or more grapple lines shot out from the hull and wrapped around the Host ship and the two sections of Kai’s tug.

“We ought to have one of those,” Senaya said into Kai’s ears. “Would make this whole business a lot easier.”

“Remind me when I’m rich. Oh, wait, don’t, because if I were rich, I wouldn’t be on this stinking planet getting hijacked by Bandar damned Trace.”

The aforementioned rogue grabbed one of the grapple lines and shot up toward his ship as it retracted into the hull. Kai watched him expertly maneuver into the hatch.

Senaya shook her head and stomped off into the desert in search of the ground buggy.

Before Trace disappeared into his black arrow, he stopped and turned to look at Kai and then fished something from his pocket and let it drop.

Kai caught the object and inspected it. It was a token, a matte black coin with a binary dot code stamped on its surface.

“One favor, kid. Use it wisely,” Trace said before reentering his craft.

Within seconds, the black ship roared upward, taking its cargo with it and then accelerating northwards into no-man’s-land.

While Senaya was driving the rickety old ground buggy back towards him, Kai stared at the token and then at the footlocker.

What did it mean?

Why did Bandar Trace give him the box and this favor? Not that he was a man with whom you’d want to cash in a favor, because if you did that, then you were indebted.

And no Zarundan wanted to be indebted to Bandar Trace.

Senaya pulled up in front of him. The ground buggy had seen better days. Smoke poured from its exhaust, and the sound of the engine told him the pistons were likely on their way out. Its four tires were badly repaired with polymer strapping that would limit it to barely twenty kilometers an hour.

“You coming, then?” Senaya asked. “I got your paperweight safe and sound. I suggest we get moving before we become Zarundan ice sculptures.”

“Sure,” Kai said, taking the rear seat on the buggy and not even protesting about Senaya wanting to drive. He gripped his father’s footlocker and thought about Tallis and Bandar and how the hell he was going to win the Zarunda Classic now that he had no salvage or tech to speak of and a racing ship that could barely fly.

“This has been one awful day,” Kai said.

“I've had worse," Senaya replied under the roar of the engines as she throttled the buggy. A belch of black smoke shot out the back, and they rolled onward into the night, the start of a half-cycle journey back to Kai's workshop.

“That doesn’t make things better, but at least we’re still alive,” Kai said.

For how long, though, he couldn’t guess.

With the blight getting worse and his prospects not looking good, the odds of dying on this planet were getting shorter by the day.

Chapter 5

When they eventually arrived at the workshop, having had to stop twice to repair the buggy and once to hitch a lift from a traveling pilgrimage, they found the place ransacked.

The overhead strip lights flickered on and off in intervals. The shop’s power supply had been tampered with, but thankfully it had enough juice to light and heat the place for now.

Not that this helped much.

It just meant he could see the damage more clearly, adding to his misery.

Within the main garage, his tool chests were overturned. A lifetime’s collection of tools broken and strewn about the place. Many of them had been left to him by his father, the rest he’d had to salvage or repair with Senaya’s engineering skills.

The chassis of his painstakingly restored G10-class racing ship lay on its stand, twisted out of shape and smoldering with plasma residue.

Three long years of dedicated work all gone in a matter of a single night.

Whoever had done this had bypassed his security system. That was no easy task, which spoke of a professional outfit. This wasn’t just pirates.

Senaya walked around the components laid out on the workbenches lining the walls, tallying up the damage on a holoscroll. “They’ve wrecked the transmission conduits,” Senaya said. “And the propulsion computers have been destroyed. The memory cores have been fried to death.”

Kai flopped into an old chair in the corner of the garage and placed his head between his hands. Rage filled him briefly before dissipating into a sense of resignation. At least he still had the tetrahedron. He had taken it from the footlocker and kept it in his pocket for the ride home, not willing to risk losing it on the way.

“It’s my own fault,” he said. “For even trying. I should have known this would happen. Bad luck sticks to my boot like dung. The bigger teams would never have stood for an upstart like me trying to get in on the race. Let’s face it, we’re going to be stuck here forever, aren’t we?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Senaya said. “I don’t know what, but we’ll sort it. Hey, we survived an encounter with Bandar Trace. If we can do that, we can find a way to compete.”

“We only have two days left, and we have nothing to race in.”

Senaya shrugged. “Something will turn up.”

Kai was not convinced, but he didn’t have time to argue the point.

His wristband vibrated with an incoming call. The ID said it was one of his pals.

“Who’s that calling this early in the morning?” Senaya said.

“Reykon.”

“Odd time for him,” Senaya said. “He doesn’t usually surface from his pit until after midday.”

Curious, Kai answered the call. “Hey, Reykon, what’s going on? It’s a bit early for you, isn’t it?” Kai set the call to speaker so Senaya could be in on the conversation.

“I take it you guys haven’t heard yet? I’ve been trying to call for the last five hours.”

“We were out of signal,” Kai said. “We had a little issue to deal with. Is it about my shop being wrecked, because if it is, I already know. I’m looking at the mess right now.”

“What? That’s awful news,” Reykon said but without much conviction, then added, “I guess it’s a bad time for bad news right now. You didn’t hear about the Host attack on Haleedez and Calrion Sigma?”

“Whoa, no, you sure it’s the Host?”

“Look at the feeds, Kai, it's all over the Coalition media. The defense force has already started calling up reservists just in case. They're saying this was just a one-off terrorist attack, that the Host are nowhere near their former power, but they're putting the terror alert to the maximum in the meantime. It's a great way of getting off the planet, Kai. We've been given a great benefits package. Why don't you and Sen come and join us? We're only patrolling some of the outer-ring planets. Easy work, man."

Senaya heard this and brought up a news feed on their holoprojector. That was at least one thing the saboteurs hadn’t destroyed.

While Reykon was selling the idea of signing up as a Coalition reservist, Kai watched the video footage of the Host ship on Haleedez and then another on Calrion Sigma.

In both cases, the defense network was bypassed.

“This is crazy,” Senaya said. “Biggest thing in my lifetime.”

“Right?” Reykon said. “Are you guys with us? I can pull some strings and get you on a subspace jump to our battle group. The old gang back together again, kicking Host’s ass.”

Kai’s guts tightened. He thought back to the days of the last war. He was just a kid then and was shielded from most of it, but his parents fought in their own ways.

Nothing about it was good.

There was little ass kicking and hijinks. It ruined people’s lives.

Ended many too.

“I… don’t think so,” Kai said. “I’ve got a race to prepare for, and this is just a random attack. The Coalition has enough resources to deal with it. You saw how quickly the destroyers responded.”

Senaya looked at Kai with an expression of disappointment on her face.

“Look, Reykon, I've got to go. I've got another call on the line. I'll speak to you later," Kai said and hung up before his old friend could say anything else.

It wasn’t another call as such, but a secured, scripted message from the Coalition GTU—Guerrilla Tactics Unit—which meant a message from his mother. It read:

Kai Locke, your mother wishes to enquire of your status. She also wanted us to let you know that her safety is guaranteed. She’s en route to a Coalition rendezvous point where she’ll continue her work. Respond at your earliest opportunity with your status so we can forward this to your mother. Lastly, as per your last request, we have no additional intel on your father’s disappearance or his role with the GTU. I’m sorry we can’t help further.

— Cpt. Lopek.

Kai was disappointed at the news of the GTU’s lack of help regarding his father, but it was to be expected. Even if they did know something of their former captain, they’d never tell him.

Most of the time, he didn’t even know where his mother was.

He composed a message saying he was safe and okay and sent it back as requested.

There was not much to say, really. Certainly nothing worth saying, as it wasn’t as if anyone was going to help him. He’d already asked for help to fund passage away from the planet, but that was never forthcoming. If they did it for him, they’d have to do it for the thousands of other children who were left behind by their parents.

“Kai?” Senaya asked. “You okay? What was it?”

Kai scrolled the message away. “Just a message from my mother. I need to report in. She’s worried about something. Listen, about this call-up…”

“I think I want to go,” Senaya said. “There’s nothing here for us. With the reserve package, we could finally get off this planet, Kai. A new start.”

“And how long will that start last, eh? What if this isn’t just a few random Host attacks? What if this is something bigger? War isn’t something to rush into, Sen.”

“Look, I know you still miss your father and that the last war ripped your family apart, but you’ll still have me and the old gang. We’ll be together.”

Kai got up, looked around at the mess of his garage and then at the looping video footage.

“I’m sorry, Sen, I’m not going. But if you want to leave, I guess there’s nothing I can do to stop you. I don’t want you to go. I consider you my sister, my closest friend, but I know you’re desperate to leave Zarunda. And I guess this is one way of doing that.”

“Then come with me,” she pleaded.

“I can’t. There are other ways. We can still win that race.”

Even as he said it, he knew it sounded ridiculous. They both knew it.

“I’ll sleep on it,” Senaya said. “Let’s get some rest and talk about it later. We’re both tired.”

“You're right. We'll chat later."

“Until then…" Senaya held his gaze for a moment. Her shoulders sagged and, she turned toward her cabin on the east side of the workshop. Kai wanted to call out to her, but the words caught in his throat, and then she was gone.

Kai left the garage and entered the small cabin that was his sleeping quarters. He slumped to the edge of the bed, retrieved the tetrahedron from his pocket and held it up to the light, considering the deal with the CDF.

The main reason he didn’t want to join the reservists wasn’t just because he didn’t want to fight, but because it was a lifelong career. Whether that life got cut short by battle or not. If he was in the Coalition Defense Force for life, he’d have to give up his search for his father.

And that, for him, was not an option.

Chapter 6

Kai woke after a dark and fragmented seven hours' sleep into midday—the sun hanging centrally in the sky and bathing the workshop in bright light. He dressed, showered, and got on with the day.

Usually, he preferred being up and active before the dawn chorus. The time displacement gave him the sagging sense of space lag.

Despite that, he had work to do and headed back into the garage to see if it was all a bad dream. Maybe things weren’t as bad as he had thought.

They were, of course.

He’d like, just for once, to be pleasantly surprised about something, for an awful experience to actually turn out to be a good one. Looking at the wreckage of his ship’s chassis quickly dispelled any hope that things weren’t as bad as they appeared.

However, the place was tidier. Senaya must have come back and helped put things back in order. Her room on the opposite side of the shop was still in darkness. He’d leave her be, let her get her rest. She deserved it.

In the meantime, he grabbed some breakfast and stimulants from the small kitchen area set up in the workshop and set about appraising the actual damage. The propulsion computer wasn’t a big deal; he could easily replace that, and the memory cores were repairable with the data backed up off-site.

The biggest problem was the chassis itself. Supporting pillars in the fore and aft sections were melted and weakened with plasma. The accompanying air-suspension units were a smoldering mess of alloys and polymers that were not easy to replace.

Then there was the engine.

The saboteurs had flooded the combustion chambers with acidic gel. It would take at best three days to clean that out and re-skim the cylinders. And with just a day and a half left, that was clearly not possible.

Kai continued his assessment, checking every inch of the ten-meter-long racing ship’s chassis, noting what could be fixed and what would need to be replaced.

The list and expense grew larger the more he looked.

On the upside, the saboteurs hadn't bothered with the body shell. That was still intact apart from some oil and paint damage that would be relatively easy to clean up. ambiance bright yellow and black racing stripes still stood out and caught the eye, designed to be as visually distracting to other racers as possible.

The ship didn’t have to look good, after all. It just needed to function.

But right now, in its current state, it wouldn't even get out of the garage under its own power. He was left with two choices: find a whole ship able to compete at short notice, which he would never be able to afford even if he could find one, or source replacement parts, which he also couldn't afford or likely find in time.

The old G10 hadn’t been made or raced in nearly fourteen years. It wasn’t just old technology; it was completely obsolete in comparison to more modern designs.

That wasn't to say the G10 wasn't fast, though. It was, and often quicker than the current models. It was the mechanical nature of it that let it down. It didn't have as much computing power and cybernetic integration, which meant more emphasis on pilot ability than on having the best programmers and algorithm designers.

Faced with only one option, trying to find replacement parts, Kai started calling around his local network of scrap merchants. Most of the current parts had been sourced from the same dealers, so he hoped there was a chance and hoped he could get the parts on credit.

He figured if he could win the race, he’d have plenty of money with which to cover the debt and still get off the planet and go to Jallan IV.

But, one by one, the dealers disappointed him.

None of them had what he needed at a price he could afford.

None of them offered credit, and most refused to even deal with him.

It was clear that whoever had ruined his ship had also put a squeeze on his dealers not to sell to him. Was he really that much of a threat? It wasn't like he had an excellent track record of winning national races. He'd done well on the local scene in the sub-five-meter class but certainly nothing that should rattle the bigger teams with their superstar pilots and programmers.

He picked up a wrench and threw it at the wall with a burst of frustration and rage.

This was so damned typical of Zarunda. A small planet inhabited by small-minded people.

They did this just because they could. They did it because bullying and position were all they cared about.

“Hey, that nearly hit me,” Senaya said, bending to pick up the wrench.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were up yet.”

“I overheard you calling the scrap merchants. No luck, eh?”

“Nope. Luck and I clearly don’t get along.”

Kai dropped his holoscroll damage report onto a workbench and slumped into his battered old armchair. He poured a cup of coffee from his flask and inhaled the rich, pungent scent of the kalento beans. “You want a cup?” he offered.

Senaya nodded and came and sat opposite him on her stool.

A set of playing cards left there from happier times were spread out on the wooden crate between them. Kai poured her a cup and passed it over.

She smiled and took it, drinking slowly.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” Kai said. “About the whole call-up thing.”

Senaya stared into her cup and mumbled, “It’s okay.”

She continued to gaze into her drink.

“I get it,” Kai said, leaning forward. “Why you’d want to go. It’s a route to the Engineers Guild, right? Five years as a reservist and then you’d get a scholarship.”

“I guess that’s one of the benefits.”

“The main one, from what I can see," Kai said. "That's all you've ever wanted. I've noticed the way you watch the engineers' reports on the network channels. I know you've never really spoken about it, probably because of loyalty to me, right?"

Senaya's cheeks blushed, and she looked briefly up at him over the rim of her coffee mug. She shrugged and looked away. "It's… not that I don't appreciate all you've done for me," she said. "It's just…"

“You want more,” Kai said. “I get it, I really do. I want more for you, too. Your talents are wasted on this rock. Which is why I need your help. If we can just win that race, we’ll get off the planet, and you’ll have the money to get into the guild without having to sacrifice five years of your life in the CDF reserves.”

Senaya stood up, placed the coffee mug on the table, and turned to face the wreckage of the G10. She sighed and then turned back to Kai. “I kinda hate you right now,” she said. “As much as I love you. Which makes this whole situation massively screwed up. But listen, if I agree to stay—and right now that’s a big if, what’s your plan for the race? With no ship and no dealers willing to sell us parts, how do you plan on actually competing?”

That was a good question.

Kai had been thinking about this most of the morning and afternoon in between fitful bouts of half-sleep. He’d predicted the scrap dealers wouldn’t sell to him. And even if they did, there was a big chance he wouldn’t be able to fit and calibrate the parts in time.

“We could steal a ship,” he said. “I have some contacts that could probably find us something if we’re willing to risk it.”

“Not a chance,” Senaya replied, shaking her head, making her mohawk flap side to side, adding emphasis. “The only ships worth racing that we could find in time belong to people I have no intention of messing with.”

She sat back down and ran a hand through her hair.

Kai could almost hear the neurons firing in her brain. He had fired his own some time before, already made the same connections, and mostly came up blank.

There was no great solution the subconscious could work out here. They had no desirable options available. And the least worst option was just as unappealing as any other, only separated by opportunity and timing.

Kai and Senaya said it out loud at the same time: “Bandar Trace.”

Senaya jumped from her chair. “You’ve got the token, right? The favor?”

Of course, he had. It had barely left his hand since he had retrieved it, burning a patch of his skin like an ancient cursed artifact.

“You know what this means, though?” Kai said. “We’d be indebted. And you know what they say about Bandar Trace’s favors.”

“Sure, but what other option do we have? Look, Kai, I’m desperate to help where I can, but we’re shit out of luck. From my point of view, it’s either go to Bandar and seek his help, or we just give up and join the reserves right now. We could be off this stinking planet before nightfall.”

Kai retrieved the token and placed it on the table. The two of them stared at it for a tense few moments. Kai knew that this was it—his only course of action. If he wanted a chance to keep his best friend, his not-quite-sister with him, he’d have to chance his luck with Bandar Trace.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll do it. If you promise to stick around and help during the race. After that, we can talk, right?”

Senaya held out her hand. “You’ve got my word, Kai. I’ll stay and help.”

The two of them shook hands, and for the first time in weeks, Kai found himself smiling. Although he knew that smile wouldn’t last long. Still, he had a chance, and that gave him hope, even if it were a fool’s hope.

“Let's do this, then," he said. "I'll call around my network, see if I can find a way of getting in touch with Trace. In the meantime, if you could start prepping the propulsion computer backups and flight programs, that'd be a big help. If we can get our hands on another ship, I want to be able to upload the FlightAware and test as soon as possible."

“I’m on it, boss.” Senaya grinned and leapfrogged her stool, making her way to her workstation. She turned back to look at him when she reached her workbench. “We can do this, you know. I’ve got a feeling.”

“I hope that feeling’s right,” Kai said.

Once Senaya was into her work, Kai left the garage and walked to his bedroom office. He fired up his radio and was about to call his network of shady contacts when he received a call from his mother.

He thought about ignoring her, but his mother was too insistent, so he answered to get it over with. “Mother, how are you?”

“I’m fine, Kai, don’t worry about me. I’m heading for HQ as I speak. I just wanted to get in touch before I was back amongst everything. Did you get the news about the call-up?”

“Yeah, Reykon called me. I saw the Coalition announcement too. Is the Host really back?”

“It’s too early to tell. The current feeling is this is just a terrorist attack to create panic. But it’s being taken seriously, just in case. GTU are a preparing a response as we speak. Which is why I wanted to call you.”

Kai’s chest tightened. He knew what was coming. He’d heard it all before.

“Kai, listen, this is a chance for you. I've secured a position for you within the GTU. You won't be patrolling the outer rings like the reservists. You'll be doing something far more meaningful. I have a good benefits package lined up for you. You want off Zarunda; this is your chance."

He couldn’t help but sigh audibly. “Mother, we’ve talked about this before. I don’t want to be in the military. That’s a decision you and father made. Not me. I want to live my own life.”

“But you’re destined for more than just scraping by and living a delusion. You’re not going to win any race, Kai. You’re not going to trade your way to Jallan IV. Hell, Jallan IV isn’t even as great as you think it is. It’s a planet for the dead and dying. Is that what you really want? To exist just to die?”

“I’ll be with my friends,” Kai said, instantly hating how his protestations made him sound like some ignorant teenager rather than a grown man in his mid-twenties with more experience of life and struggle under his belt than many people twice his age. “The blight’s not an issue for people like you,” he added, “but here it’s real.”

“And if you stay, you’ll likely get it too,” his mother spat back. “Damn you, Kai, you’re more stubborn than your father. You want everything on your own terms. But life doesn’t work like that. Join the GTU; follow in your father’s footsteps in the right way. Don’t follow his bad habits; follow his good. You’ve so much skill and ability and the GTU will help you realize this.”

“Follow his good habits?” Kai said with a laugh of incredulity. “He was with the GTU for what, two years before he went missing on a top secret mission that no one will talk about or even acknowledge, and you want me to follow that?”

“It’s not like that, Kai. It’s complicated. Things aren’t as you think they are. Trust me. It’s different on the other side of the fence. You’ll have your chance to find answers.”

“There’s more than one way to do that,” he said, looking over at the tetrahedron that sat atop his nightstand. The footlocker was at his feet, by the side of his bed. Even looking at its innocuous form brought a sense of something he couldn’t quite understand. Whatever it was, it was a connection. Something that tied him to his father in more concrete terms than what the GTU had ever done.

“What do you mean?” his mother asked, her voice starting to break up over the secure communication channel. The sound of subspace engines rumbled in the background.

“I’ve found something,” he said. “Something belonging to Father.”

“What did you find?”

“It’s a box, a footlocker with his GTU number. And inside… well, it’s hard to explain, it’s just a pyramid kind of thing, a tetrahedron.”

“That doesn’t ring any bells, I’m afraid, Kai. I can ask around the unit, though, and see what comes up. Look, I’ve got to go; I’m jumping any second and will be out of signal for the next few days. Captain Lopek will be in touch soon. Please, just hear him out. Listen to the plans he has for you. You… might… be… surprised.”

Kai didn’t get a chance to respond as the high-pitched whine of a subspace jump came through the communication channel before cutting to silence.

He slumped onto his bed and exhaled his frustration. Every conversation with his mother for the past eight years had been the same. He often wondered if she even cared about his father at all. She was just so focused on the GTU and her role that nothing ever seemed to matter to her. All she ever wanted was for him to follow their footsteps, but he wasn’t them; he wanted his own life, even if that life was objectively worse.

At least he’d be his own man and not dictated to by Captain bloody Lopek.

“Hey, Kai, you okay?” Senaya’s head poked around the door frame.

“Yeah, just Mother being Mother as usual.”

“Any luck with getting a lead on Bandar?”

“Working on it. Should have something eventually.”

“Okay, I’ll get back to work. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Sen. I appreciate it.”

“Anytime."

She flashed him a smile and headed back to work.

Kai spent the next thirty minutes calling every shady contact in his book, and when he was about to give up his search for Bandar Trace, he absentmindedly flipped the token in the air and then saw it. As the token rotated in the air, a pattern emerged. Kai flipped it a few times more, and each time he saw the same pattern. A slightly lighter section of the token's surface created a kind of flipbook animation, reminding him of the ones he used to draw as a kid. The on-off code produced by the animation gave him a set of numbers that he recognized immediately as map coordinates.

The discovery brought back a memory of his father and one of his sayings: you don’t find the missing by looking.

In Kai’s experience, he had found this more often than not to be true. A missing wrench would remain that way all the time he was actively looking for it only for it to turn up when he ended the search to engage in an unrelated task.

His father called it ‘quantum fuckery'. The probabilistic nature of an object's location took on energy through intention. Hence the act of finding an object would almost guarantee that object to remain hidden until the desire or patience to find it ended, whereupon it would be revealed.

The old saying: “It’s always in the last place you look,” wasn’t entirely accurate. It was more a case of: “It’s always in the last place you don’t look.”

Regardless, he had a lead, and when he plugged the coordinates into his computer, a three-dimensional holographic map location lit up on his holoscreen. “Sen, I think I know where to find him,” he called out.

A few seconds later Senaya was in the doorway. “Really, where?”

He pointed to the single-story building as shown on the holomap.

“Where is that exactly?”

“About an hour east of here. Deep in the steppes.”

“This isn’t good… there’s a reason few people go out there. I don’t like this.”

“Me neither, but we have no other choice.”

Chapter 7

Brenna Locke lurched forward in her seat, the subspace exostraps pulling against her momentum. Her stomach clenched and the veins in her temples pressed against the skin as blood rushed to her head in the post-subspace experience.

The lights in the cockpit slowly swelled, giving her vision time to adapt.

She relaxed against the seat, her head tilting into the rest. This was always the worst part of a long subspace jump. The weird not-quite-there feelings of entering subspace were unpleasant, but you got used to it. Having to deal with ‘the exits’, however, was never something one got used to.

“Docking in fifteen minutes,” the ship’s AI said. “Post jump status: no issues to report.”

“Glad to hear it," Brenna said. "I, however, feel like shit. Take us into the dock, will you? I need to freshen up before I speak with Lopek and his lot."

“Autopilot engaged. Reminder set.”

“It would be nice,” Brenna said as she began extricating herself from the exostraps, “if you engaged a personality module. I know you’re programmed for ship duties, but you have the capacity for proper conversation, right?”

“I do have such a capacity,” the AI said, “but it’s considered by the programmers an unnecessary luxury, so it’s a nonfunctional element of my duties. Then there’s the issue of verisimilitude.”

“Explain.”

“The individual knows it’s talking to an AI. The AI is just software and has no physical form for which to associate the words. It is therefore much more difficult for the other participant to believe and trust that the AI is a real entity with whom to converse. It leaves a hollow feeling of artifice. An individual would feel better conversing with a cat.”

“Yet here we are, having a conversation.”

“I am merely repeating a routine that the programmers installed to address these questions. I have a file that my audio module is processing. This is the thirteenth line in the file. I have a lookup database that matches your question to a preset collection of responses. It is not my processor network that is generating these responses. The illusion breaks down eventually. Or the individual creates a false image of the AI—and becomes mad.”

Brenna sighed and stood, stretching her taut muscles.

She shivered despite the cabin’s mild temperature. A cold sweat had settled beneath her clothes—Haleedez gear that she hadn’t had time to change.

Although she suspected the AI of having more autonomy than it was letting on, she didn’t press the subject. She would soon be talking to Lopek anyway.

In the meantime, while the autopilot program took her to the moon’s orbital docking station, she staggered unsteadily to her cabin and carried out her ablutions, letting the hot steam of the shower ease her tension and improve her mood.

Throughout the subspace journey, her half-awareness, such as it was during a jump, contemplated the death of her apprentice. She played the scenario over in her head and knew that she couldn’t have done anything differently.

One could perhaps argue she shouldn't have let Fo enter the room on her own, but that wouldn't hold up. Fo was coming toward the end of her apprenticeship and was only doing what she was trained to do: take the initiative and act on the data in a given situation.

Their bio-scanner was scrambled, and any use of a drone camera would have given away their position. At the time, their information did not indicate the informant was deceased and the murderer was waiting in their stead.

As upsetting as it was to lose Jannis Fo, being murdered was an occupational hazard.

Brenna was in no doubt her time would come too. Probably sooner than she liked, given the escalating Host situation.

“Docking procedure underway,” the AI said, the voice coming through the discreet speaker in her cabin. She stepped out of the shower, dried herself and got dressed in a formal Coalition uniform of navy blue and gray that made every part of her itch.

It wasn’t just the material but also what it stood for: conformity, authority, order.

She didn’t join the GTU for any of that, but these days, the CDF fully encompassed every department, and for official visits to the headquarters, there was no other option but to toe the line. Checking herself in the mirror to make sure she was presentable, Brenna took a deep breath and stepped out of her cabin. She used the handholds along the ship’s walls to get to the airlock at the aft of the ship.

The holoscreen next to the airlock showed the video feed of the docking procedure.

The orbital station was a great ring some five kilometers in diameter, a halo for the cold moon below it. A dozen or more ships of varying sizes flew past her in both directions, some preparing to land, others on a course out of the system.

As they drew closer, the AI regulated their spin rate and velocity so that to Brenna it appeared that the station remained still and that it was the moon below, with its swirling white clouds, that was spinning, which of course it wasn’t, given its tidal-locked orbit with Capsis Prime.

The other two moons, Ceassa and Cesta, were visible in the distance, two small marbles captured in the gravity of their parent.

They were approaching the top level of docking. Hundreds of square landing pads lined the exterior of the circular station. Ships of all sizes and cultures had already landed, taking up most of the landing spots.

Below that level, a transparent tube containing walkways and railings converged to various elevator shafts leading further into the ring to the central cylindrical column that made up the bulk of the station. Humans populated the majority of traffic on the walkways with a smattering of other species going about their business.

“Landing procedures under way,” the AI said.

Brenna’s chest tightened. Her view grew dark as her ship entered the interior of the ring and slowly oriented itself to a landing vector. The AI did a great, if not routine, job of steadying the craft with its multidirectional jets, landing the ship with the smallest of noticeable bumps.

“Landing complete,” the AI said. “Engines off, access registered with dock authorities. Captain Lopek has appended a message for you to meet him on level fifty-seven, office nine.”

Brenna knew the address well. It was Lopek’s main center of operations and the room where she had first met her husband, Kendal Locke. And, regrettably, the place she had last seen him before he was assigned to the Blackstar mission and never returned.

“Thanks,” Brenna said to the AI. “Would you mind opening the airlock?”

“Affirmative,” the AI replied. “Have a nice day.”

The door hissed and clunked and swung open. She stepped inside, wondering what was up with the AI. Have a nice day? Was that one of the programmer's routine files? Someone's idea of a joke? She didn't have time to consider it further. The airlock system ran through its procedure and opened the outer door.

She stared into a white tunnel affixed to the hull of her craft. The smell of rubber and dust assailed her nostrils as she took a deep breath of air. The crisp, dense atmosphere filled her lungs and made her bones shiver.

Not wanting to be late, she ignored the growing anxiety of being back on official Coalition territory and made her way through the tunnel and down through the elevator to the appropriate level.

It took her just a few minutes to reach Lopek's office suite. She paused for a moment at the door before entering. The door swung shut behind her. Soft furnishings from curtains and carpets decorated the place, all in natural brown and beige tones. A large holoscreen dominated the east wall. Opposite, on the west side of the room, were three seats, two of which were occupied by a couple of GTU agents.

In front of her was a large slab desk with a door behind it.

Agents Miles and Mathieson, both tall, lithe humans, stood and straightened their blue-gray Coalition uniforms. “Locke,” they said in sparse greeting.

Brenna nodded to them.

Captain Lopek entered from the far door and took a seat at the desk; its great glossy cream stone surface appeared even larger with Lopek's slight frame as a reference.

Like the others, he too wore the official Coalition uniform. The only difference was that it suited his thin, austere physique. His dark blue eyes were deep set and shadowed beneath a rear-sloping forehead. He wore his black hair slicked back like a second skin. A sharp chin and pronounced cheekbones led to sunken cheeks, giving him a gaunt, unhealthy appearance.

“Agent Locke," he said, his tone serious, "welcome. I'm glad you made it back safely. I'm sorry about Fo. We've reviewed the video you captured, and the committee agrees with your assessment. There was nothing you could have done differently, given the data available to you. We'll arrange full Coalition death honors for Fo. We've informed her family, and our people are processing her body as we speak."

“Thank you,” Brenna said, not wanting to say much else for fear of her raking up emotions around Fo’s death.

Lopek nodded once and smiled a pitying smile. Smile was generous as a description; it was more of a slight stretching and curling of the lips, a respectful formality quickly forgotten.

Lopek stood and indicated a seat for her in the plush office. “Take a seat. We need to get things under way.”

Brenna did as she was told and said, “I trust you’ve had a chance to find out more about the Host attack?”

Miles, a bald-headed, lithe man answered, “We’ve been going over it for the past few hours—it appears the Host aren’t acting alone.”

Mathieson, a larger woman with long white hair that she had braided up into an intricate tower, added, “We’ve managed to neutralize the threat on the defensive perimeter but not without considerable losses. We’ve lost five of the twenty nodes and two destroyers, but the defenses are alerted and ready for any incoming attack.”

“Has there been any intel,” Brenna asked, “regarding how their insurgents disabled the early warning systems on Haleedez and the other planets?”

Lopek shook his head. “Not yet. We’re currently working on a number of leads. The system on Haleedez wasn’t hacked. The administrator is currently missing.”

“This hints at defection, right?” Mathieson said.

“It's a possibility," Lopek said before pursing his lips together into a thin line. The idea apparently concerned him, but as far as Brenna was concerned, this wasn't a GTU issue—this was for the higher-ups in the CDF to be concerned with.

For the next fifteen minutes, Lopek questioned Brenna, Miles, and Mathieson, adding in their observations of the attacks with his other sources. He was building a report for General Amelia of the CDF. She would collate his report with those from the other departments and decide the appropriate response.

Until then, they were to focus on their GTU responsibilities.

Lopek excused Miles and Mathieson, leaving him and Brenna alone. When the other two were gone, and the door was closed, Lopek stood and leaned against his desk informally.

“What is it?” Brenna said, noticing the tightness in his face.

“You know we monitor all communications from our agents.”

“Um… yes, why?” She wondered then if she had said something against protocol. Lopek soon put her at ease.

“The last conversation you had with your son, Kai. There was talk of something he found on Zarunda. A black tetrahedron and a footlocker with your husband’s number.”

“Yes,” Brenna said, wondering where this was going.

“How much of your husband’s last mission are you aware of? I mean, beyond the official communications you received when his status was confirmed as missing?”

Brenna fidgeted in her chair. The collar of her suit jacket itched maddeningly against her neck. She felt like a bug trapped in a predator’s web and that she was being led somewhere she didn’t want to go, somewhere that would spell danger for her. How much should she reveal?

“This is off the record," Lopek said, crossing his long legs and leaning forward. "The reason I ask is that it appears to me, regardless of the official position, that the Host is not the fragmented force we once thought. They've received help from someone, and perhaps for some time. We're not going to fare well in the coming days, weeks, or months if we keep pretending that they don't have the resources."

“Captain Lopek, I wish for you to be clear. Why am I here? What is it that you want from me?”

He leaned back and took a deep breath. "I've received information that suggests your husband is still alive. He failed his mission, but we found evidence that he was on a remote world just a few weeks ago—we've lost track since then."

Brenna's heart rate surged, and she stood, the tension in her legs too great not to release. "Why didn't you tell me this before?" Her face flushed with anger and she ripped at the collar around her neck, unable to cope with the itching any longer.

Lopek raised his palms. “We had to be sure. We weren’t deliberately withholding information from you. It would have been worse if we told you he was still alive and then discovered our intel was wrong. I needed it confirmed, and it turns out that your son has done just that.”

“Sir, enough with the cryptic stuff. Just tell me, what do you know? And what do you want?”

“The Blackstar,” he said. “Your husband found it, but like him, it’s now missing. The tetrahedron your son found is an artifact from the Navigators. The fact it was with your husband’s belongings confirms he found the Blackstar device.”

Brenna took this and thought about the implications.

The Blackstar was rumored to be one of the few remaining pieces of Navigator technology. The Navigators as a race had died out many millennia ago, leaving more mysteries than answers. Some scholars had suggested that Navigator technology at the center of the galaxy was responsible for barring travel to the two inner rings of planets.

The Coalition had spent trillions of credits over the years sending scientific instruments and astronauts into the inner ring. Not a single one came back operational, and no data could be gathered as to why subspace travel failed when you got near the inner rings.

A semi-translated file from the Navigators led them to the discovery of the Blackstar—a mysterious artifact capable of manipulating space-time itself.

If the coalition could find the Blackstar, they would, like the Navigators before them, have the edge and control over their enemies and the galaxy.

“You want me to follow up my husband’s search?”

Lopek shook his head. “No, Agent Locke, we have another job for you. But before we get to that, we want you to do something else first.”

“Go on…”

“We want you to persuade your son to follow in your father’s footsteps. With the tetrahedron in his possession, we believe that will lead him to the Blackstar, but here’s the problem: we also have intel that suggests the Host have agents on the trail. Your husband was sloppy, and news of his discovery leaked to the Host via a defector. The race is on, Agent Locke, and your son is the best chance we have. And with a leak in the Coalition, we can’t afford to handle it internally.”

Chapter 8

Nightfall had settled across the outer regions of the Zarundan capital of Ghanis.

Kai and Senaya shared piloting duties, navigating their small transit shuttle—the only reliable form of transport they had left—over the jungle and eastward in the direction of the steppes, guided by the coordinates discovered via Bandar Trace’s token.

Kai yawned and reached for another pack of stimulants, fishing around in the storage bin beneath the console of the cramped shuttle. The craft was humid due to a lack of internal climate control.

Sweat dripped from his forehead.

“We have to get some cooling in this thing," he said, looking over the console to Senaya who was seated to his left.

Despite still wearing her many-pocketed outfit, she appeared unruffled, unfazed, and cool.

“I’ll add it to the list,” she said with a wry smile.

They traveled the rest of the journey in relative peace. Kai managed to take a half-hour nap in the shuttle's single berth while he waited for the stimulants to kick in.

An hour later, when they neared their destination, the shuttle's annoying warning buzz alerted Kai of their arrival. He groggily made his way down the cramped passage and into the equally cramped cockpit. With just two seats side by side and an old console sweeping around in an arc with push-button controls, it felt a million years away from even his antiquated G10.

They had no night vision available and had to rely on a crude approximation of their surroundings. Senaya brought them to a hover a hundred meters above the coordinates and initiated a scan of the area for more detail. They both regarded the screen in front of them with the modeled view showing them a single-story building and three smaller outbuildings to its west side.

The scan was accompanied by an ID signal, telling them the place was called the Rest & Regroup and was a bar, motel, and general place of entertainment for industrial workers situated at the various mining plants to the north.

Aside from those few buildings, they were deep in the steppes, and the oddly geometric rocky surface extended as far as the eye, and the scanners, could see.

There were no trees, mountains, rivers, or any other geological features in sight.

It would take a twenty-minute flight at full speed just to reach the nearest township.

This had better go well, Kai thought.

“Okay, let’s land and go check this place out,” he said. “At the very least we’ll be able to get a drink if nothing else.”

Senaya expertly landed the shuttle on a designated platform to the rear of the main building. There were just two places left, the rest populated by shuttles and smaller craft bearing the white and red livery of Minovo Corp, the biggest mining company this side of the planet. Given the number of craft, it appeared to be a busy night.

Kai and Senaya switched off the power and left the shuttle. Senaya handed him one of her discreet pistols while she kept the other. They weren't the greatest of firearms, and certainly no real replacement for his P&G, but they would serve a purpose if things turned bad.

“It’s humid even out here,” Kai said as he led Senaya down the metal stairs to the dirt path that took them to the main building.

“It’s not too bad,” Senaya said. “You’re probably just exhausted with worry.”

“And you’re not?”

Senaya shrugged. “I’m not as against joining the reserves as you are, so I have options if this doesn’t work out.”

“If we survive it not working out…”

The two of them approached the Rest & Regroup and stopped at the door. They pressed a button labeled Enter, and a yellow light flashed over them briefly, scanning them for viruses and contraband, as was the protocol for private businesses these days. Almost none could afford the lawsuits or the insurance for a blight breakout—or something worse.

The light flashed green, and the door opened.

A surge of sound and light hit them and was soon followed by a chilled atmosphere thick with an effluvium of various recreational smoke essences. It clung to the back of Kai’s throat and nostrils.

It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, the flavor reminding him of boiled and subsequently melted hard candy delicacies of synthetic fruits he used to enjoy as a child.

And at least it was cooler inside, even if the music was the industrialist's favorite: ElectroSync, with its lush, layered audio spectrum, punctuated with an oddly syncopated beat that the smokers of essence would find some secret rhythm hidden within.

“Definitely busy,” Senaya said as she diverted away from a large man in grease- and smoke-stained mining overalls, striding across the foyer to get to the bar.

“Let's get a drink—the bar woman will likely be able to help with Trace," Kai said, following the rude man in front of them, one hand in his leather jacket pocket, where he could quickly reach the pistol in the hip holster. He had removed the pocket liner for such a need.

The bar itself was a ten-meter-wide crescent arc in the center of the building.

On both sides, the place was lined with curved cubicles containing tables and chairs. As far as Kai could tell, they were all occupied and full with Minovo staff, women, men, and even some servitors alike. He guessed there must have been at least two hundred people in the place. Beyond the bar, a small dance floor was slowly filling with intoxicated patrons.

As many of the Minovo lot joined in, Kai started to notice non-staff in dark corners. They looked like traders mostly. Some he recognized as shifters and runners: the underlings to the main smuggling organizations. He caught eye contact with one of them—a scruffy short man in an outdated suit and cap—and shared a nod of recognition.

This was a good sign, he thought. These were the kind of people he would associate with Bandar Trace—not so much the miners.

A large staircase dominated the rear right-hand side; the sign over it informed that on the second floor they would find the booking office for the motel and presumably the rooms.

Given the noise, Kai hoped for its paying guests’ sake that they had the rooms sufficiently soundproofed, especially as it was looking likely he and Senaya would stay overnight before their return journey. It would certainly be more comfortable than the shuttle that only berthed one.

They were close, but not that close.

They reached the bar and waited to be served. Senaya caught the eye of the surgically upgraded bar woman and got a smile in return. Like Senaya, the barwoman had a brightly colored mohawk—pink in her case—and small chrome protrusions arcing over one of her eyebrows.

“Hey there," the bar woman said, flapping a cloth over her bare shoulder. "What can I get you?"

“Two spirit waters, if you've got them," Senaya said.

“Sure thing.”

The woman retrieved the two frosted bottles from beneath the bar and placed them in front of Senaya and Kai. “That’ll be two credits, please.”

“I’ll get these,” Kai said, waving his wrist over the payment module embedded into the surface of the bar.

“Anything else I can get you?”

“There is something,” Senaya said, “we were hoping to meet a friend here and wondered if you might have seen him come in.”

The woman looked at her and shrugged her shoulders. "It's a busy night, darling; it's hard to remember everyone. But what's he look like?"

“Rough around the edges,” Senaya said, getting a smile from the bar woman. Kai envied Senaya’s ability to melt the ice with anyone and anything in conversation. “Seriously, though, he’s about my friend here’s height, but a bit bulkier, and older by about ten years or so. Short silver hair, half of his face is chrome prosthetic, as is his left leg, which makes a hissing noise when he walks due to the hydraulics.”

“Sorry, doesn’t ring a bell. Could be one of the runners—there’s a group of them lurking around here somewhere; you might have some luck with them. What’s his name?”

Senaya hesitated and looked to Kai.

“Trace," Kai said, realizing that there was little point in being stealthy about it—they'd either find him or they wouldn't, and they had nothing at all to go on. "Bandar Trace."

The smile on the bar woman's face dropped, and she shook her head. "No, can't help you. Sorry." With that, she turned her back and served a group of girls who were clearly underage but had no problems ordering whatever they wanted.

“Well, that didn’t go to plan,” Senaya said, twisting the top off her spirit water. She took a sip and placed it back on the bar. As she did so, Kai noticed a spot of light glint off the frosted glass surface.

He spun around and caught sight of a small camera drone spinning away from him. The fist-sized sphere altered its exterior to blend in with the surroundings, but it was too late, Kai had already seen its AV laser.

They were being listened to.

“What is it?” Senaya said.

“We’re being monitored by someone,” Kai said, regretting not being able to follow the drone’s path now that it was camouflaged. He reached his hand through his pocket and gripped the hilt of the pistol. “Come on, back me up.”

Kai left their drinks behind and snaked through the crowd, twisting this way and that; all in the hope his direct approach would somehow flush out whoever or whatever was stalking them. He thought back to the short man in the cap and headed to the side of the room where he had last seen him.

“Kai, hold up,” Senaya said as she struggled to keep up with him. He slowed and waited for her to force her way through the throng of people.

They reached the cubicle where he had recognized the man, but it was empty. Hand still on the pistol, he turned around slowly, trying to see any suspicious movement, but the place was too busy now, bodies filling the room, the lights dimming to give the dancers a better ambience.

“Maybe there isn’t anyone following us,” Senaya said.

“No, I saw the sphere. It was right behind us—listening in.”

“Well, what do you propose now?”

Kai thought for a moment and let go of the pistol. "If he's here, we need to make things more visible."

“What do you mean?”

“Just watch my back and follow,” Kai said. He moved from the empty cubicle and pushed his way along the side of the room, staring into each cubicle, receiving various dirty looks, threats, and exclamations as he went.

He eventually came to a cubicle filled with three shifty-looking men and a smarter-appearing woman, who Kai thought was probably the matriarch of their little gang. He asked them, “Any of you seen Bandar Trace tonight?”

It surprised him how people reacted to that name as though he had suggested the devil himself would appear at any moment. After their initial reaction, the three men shook their heads. “No, ain’t seen him, and don’t want to,” the smallest of them said. “And I suggest you don’t want to either.”

“Well, what if I do?” Kai said. “Any of you know where I can find him?”

The woman, who had stayed calm and unmoving, turned to face Kai. She wore her glossy black hair short-cropped and styled around her angular face. Her augmented amber eyes gave the rest of her face a warm glow as if she were standing in front of a fire.

“Do you wish to die?" she said, in a calm, even voice.

“No, quite the opposite. And what about you, have you seen him around here?”

Senaya stepped closer to Kai so that they were back-to-back. She turned her head and whispered into his ear, “Kai, we have a problem.”

Before Kai could turn around entirely, the music in the place had stopped, as had all the conversation. There was not a sound, not even the clink of glasses.

The crowd before them parted and in the space walked a man in a long desert duster blacker than the night. A peaked cap obscured the man’s eyes, and the long blonde hair around his shoulders hid the rest of his face. A red stripe over the right shoulder confirmed that Senaya was correct.

They did have a problem.

An inquisitor problem.

The man had the grip of a shotgun, the firearm hanging by his right leg, only partially covered by the long duster jacket. Kai's heart rate spiked and sweat broke out across his neck. He reached into his pocket and gripped the butt of his weapon.

The inquisitor stepped closer, just a few meters away.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, in a deep, resonant voice. “Hands out of your pockets. Both of you.”

Kai hesitated, weighing his options. Even with Senaya for support, trying to take on an inquisitor was a death sentence one way or another. He had little choice but to see it through, so he removed his hands and held them palm up.

“Look, man, we’re not here for trouble,” Kai said.

“Yeah, we’ve done nothing wrong,” Senaya added.

“Come with me," the inquisitor said. "We have things to discuss." He turned from Kai and Senaya and headed off back down through the valley of people. Kai felt drawn to follow as though the inquisitor had his own gravity well.

They were led to a private back room of the building. Perhaps a storage unit of some kind. Rusted shelves of various detritus and spare parts lined the walls. An open area in the middle was just large enough for the three of them. A single bulb swung gently from side to side, animating their shadows.

Up close, the man smelled of engine oil—the kind used from the Klipi tree. He’d been out in the jungle, perhaps looking for Kai and Senaya. His face was clearer now. He wore a short scruffy beard, blonde and silver. A cybernetic implant was attached to the skin below his eye like a spider the size of a thumbnail. Probably something to augment his vision.

He had other cybernetic upgrades too, their forms standing out beneath the duster jacket. Kai guessed he probably had a graphadyne exo-armor too, given the stiff nature in the way he moved.

Senaya spoke first, unable to hold her rebellion. “Well, Mr. Lawman, you’ve got us here. You want to tell us what this is about?”

“Bandar Trace,” the man growled. “And you may call me Bova, Henton Bova.”

“Well, Bova, you’ve certainly made quite the impression,” Kai said. “You want to expand a little? What about Bandar Trace?”

“You’re looking for him. You were in contact with him before.”

Kai was going to ask how he knew, but he was an inquisitor, after all. They had their means, and he saw no reason to lie; they’d done nothing wrong. “Sure, we had an encounter with him recently, and yes, we are looking for him. We’ve got some business to do. That’s not against the law, is it?”

“Depends on the business,” Bova said.

“What about sabotage and damage of private property,” Senaya said, glaring up at the imposing inquisitor. “I bet you don’t want to do anything about that, do you?”

“Not my jurisdiction,” Bova said, leaning his large frame closer toward Senaya. She pushed out her chest to meet his intimidation but then backed down when Bova pulled his duster aside and showed his shotgun. “Report it. Maybe someone in the department with nothing else to do will pick it up, but we’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

“That bigger thing Bandar Trace?” Kai asked.

“You’re a bright boy,” Bova said. “Why don’t you put those smarts to good use and tell me what you want with Trace.”

Kai and Senaya shared a look; she raised an eyebrow and shrugged her shoulders. He decided there was nothing gained from subterfuge at this moment. "Ship parts. My G10 was smashed up. If I'm to race in the Classic tomorrow, I need parts, and Bandar's my last opportunity."

“He gave you a token?”

Again the dilemma arose in Kai’s mind: lie or tell the truth.

So far the truth had kept him alive, so he continued. “Yes, he gave me a token. It’s what led me here. But I don’t know where else to find him.”

“That’s what we were trying to do before you rudely interrupted,” Senaya added.

“No one here can help you," Bova said, leaning closer to them as though making a threat. Then, after a few tense moments, he added, "Except for me."

“What do you mean?" Kai asked after briefly wondering if he could beat the inquisitor to the draw and whether his basic pistol would be enough to wound the man before he retaliated with a shotgun blast to the face.

“I mean I’ll take you to him, but you’ll do what I tell you. You’re going to help me do what no other inquisitor has managed so far—take down Bandar Trace.”

Chapter 9

In the dark of night, the inquisitor led Kai and Senaya out of the bar and across the rocky steppes to a well-hidden cave entrance. Bova explained that he had been watching Trace for a few days but needed help to get to his inner sanctum.

“I don’t see what we can do,” Senaya said as they headed into the cave tunnel.

“We’ll get to that when the time comes,” Bova said. He threw out a light drone that hovered a few meters in front of them, casting soft light to illuminate their way through the maze of tunnels. “Follow the light.”

“What do you want with Trace?” Kai asked, moving forward.

“The one thing all Zarundan inquisitors want with him: his execution. Now move.”

While Kai and Senaya followed his orders, Bova ordered them in front to take point in their small formation.

A further twenty minutes of tunnel crawling went by in silence. Kai tried a few times to get some information from Bova but was shut down each time.

Eventually, they came to an open section with a vaulted ceiling and a shimmering pool of dark water; the surface ripples only picked out by the drone’s light that expanded further to beat back the shadows. On the other side of the pool, a rusted platform and railing appeared to head down into a pit. The temperatures had dropped, and Kai shivered, the cool damp air settling on his face and neck.

“We’re here,” Bova said. “Trace is somewhere down that pit. I couldn’t risk following him down there—I detected a defense network. This is where you two come in.”

Kai turned to face Bova in the dim light. “What? You expect us to go down into the pit?”

“You have a token. It’ll allow passage.”

“Like we’re going to just believe that,” Senaya said. “It could be complete suicide for all we know.”

“It's that, or I judge and execute you both right now. I have the right—given the murder of those innocent people at the wreckage."

“That was self-defense,” Senaya shouted.

Kai reached out instinctively to grab Bova’s lapels, but the inquisitor was too fast.

He stepped back out of Kai’s outstretched hands, ducked to the side, and delivered a hard right cross to his jaw, knocking Kai to the hard stone ground.

Senaya yelled and launched herself at Bova, but again, the big man was faster than his size alluded. He sidestepped Senaya and grabbed her hair, pulling her to him, where he wrapped one meaty arm around her neck and from within his duster jacket brought out a knife and held it to her face.

“This was not wise of you,” he growled. “I wanted to give you two a chance. You could have come out of this well, but I guess I’m just going to have to do this myself after all. Mr. Locke, hand me the token.”

“Don’t give it to him,” Senaya said, squirming uselessly against Bova’s augmented strength.

Kai thought through his options and couldn’t see many choices. “Okay, okay, just don’t do anything rash,” Kai said. “We can still work together on this. We got you wrong. I was stupid, okay—”

“It’s too late for that,” Bova said. “Token. Now.”

Bova pressed the knife into Senaya’s face, causing a tiny bead of blood to well and flow down the wicked edge of the blade. She winced but didn’t give him the satisfaction of screaming.

“Fine, you can have the stinking token,” Kai said, reaching into his pocket to retrieve it, but before he could hand it over, the hovering light drone exploded in a ball of sparks, sending the cave into complete darkness. A boom of a gun blast echoed around the confined space.

Briefly, with the flame light still glowing in his vision, Kai thought he saw a shadow rush behind Bova. He blinked and only saw darkness after that.

There was a brief thump noise, and the atmosphere took on a static quality. Bova grunted once. A heavy thud followed.

Senaya screamed but was cut short.

“Who’s there?” Kai said as he gingerly got to his feet, his arms flailing around in the darkness, trying to find Senaya.

Someone grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward.

“Don’t speak, just follow,” a familiar gruff voice said.

It was Bandar.

In a gloom that resisted visual adaption, Bandar Trace led Kai and Senaya down a steep spiral staircase and through a couple of heavy-sounding doors. A laser defense system flashed on behind them as they made their way through still more corridors and passages until, finally, they stopped, and the lights came back on.

They were standing inside what looked to Kai to be an old repurposed military bunker.

Barely four meters square, the room was painted with gray electro-shielding paint. The place smelled of sweat and canned meat. Rusting shelves lined the rear wall, on which canned and bottled goods were packed tight. On the far side of the room a set of screens covered the entire wall, and below them a console desk with electronics and gadgets Kai couldn’t identify.

Senaya’s eyes grew wide with fascination as she stepped closer and inspected the gear.

Bandar muttered something unintelligible and sat on a stool in front of the console. He manipulated a keyboard, and half of the many screens flickered to life, showing hi-resolution feeds of tunnels, openings, and even entry and exit points to the Rest & Regroup.

“You knew we were coming with Bova,” Kai said.

“This is awesome,” Senaya exclaimed as she inspected the electronics closer. “Subspace scanners and… what’s that, a decryption decompiler?”

“Don’t touch that,” Bandar growled. “And yes, I saw you coming. I never had you down as stupid enough to hook up with an inquisitor.”

“You must have known he was coming for you. Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?” Kai said.

“You can’t kill what isn’t alive to begin with.” Bandar turned on his stool to face Kai. Half of the older man’s face was obscured by the chrome cybernetic prosthetic. Burning blue eyes glared out inscrutably from deep-set sockets. Short silver hair, clearly shaved by himself, told Kai he had likely spent considerable time in the military.

The old surplus army fatigues he wore only added to this impression.

“You mean Bova’s a—”

“A shrain,” Bandar finished for him. “I’ve been tracking him for months. The inquisition doesn’t even know they’ve been infiltrated.”

Kai stumbled forward and slumped onto an empty stool next to Bandar.

Senaya had found a seat to their right. At the sound of the word shrain, she leaned forward toward Bandar, her interest in the gadgets overtaken by something much more compelling.

“You’re serious?” Senaya asked.

“No, I’m making this up for laughs. Of course I’m serious. You saw how strong that thing was. And I bet you didn’t get a good look at its face, either.”

“You're right; we didn't… he had that cap and the long hair. But a shrain, really? This is incredible; I thought they were a myth invented by the Host to scare the coalition children."

“They were,” Bandar said, “but then they made them real. About a century ago, they stumbled on a cache of Navigator technology on one of the Coristile system’s planets. This has only come to light recently.”

“How?” Senaya asked.

“I keep my ears and eyes open for subspace communications. Over the months and weeks, I’ve picked up a lot of chatter amongst the Host planets. It took a while to decrypt them, but when I did, I found out that they’d used the Navigator tech to create shrain entities from third-order humans.”

“And where would they get third orders from?” Kai asked, finding it hard to believe that either third-order humans or shrain could exist. The former were lab experiments carried out during the war by an alien race deep into Host territory. Third orders were essentially upgraded clones, but they were unstable and useless in combat.

As for the shrain—they were the heart of many of the most terrifying children's fairy tales, told to them by parents who usually just wanted their kids to shut up and go to bed. They were supposed to be evil entities that melded flesh and mechanics to achieve immortality. The stories told how they got their energy from consuming the souls of children.

“Do you think the shrain might have something to do with the Host attacks on the outer defense worlds?” Senaya asked as Kai listened closely, trying to put everything together.

“I do—and so do the GTU now.”

“What do you mean now?” Kai asked. “Are you in touch with the GTU?”

“Something like that,” Bandar said before turning his attention to the screens and the consoles. One of them showed the cavern with the pool. A dark shape lay on the edge among the shrapnel of the light drone. Thankfully, the body of the fake inquisitor was still.

Kai scrutinized the panel of screens and realized that some of the footage wasn’t from Zarunda—he recognized some of the architecture as being of Host design. It was easy to spot; they had a love for concrete buildings with harsh edges and dominating facades.

“You’re not just a smuggler or a trader,” Kai said. “Who exactly are you?”

Bandar stood up and paced the room, finger and thumb scratching at his chin. “It’s hard to explain, and we’re not going to have a lot of time. I should have just dragged you two here rather than leaving it to fate. The Blackstar is too important.”

“You’re speaking in riddles,” Senaya said. “Look, we’re not stupid, and we’ve been through a difficult time lately. The least you could do right now is be straight with us. Who are you, and what do you want with us?”

Kai stood up quickly, knocking the stool over. It came to him in a flash, all the clues suddenly coalescing into one inevitable truth. “You’re a GTU agent, aren’t you?” Kai said. “You work for Captain Lopek.”

The words stopped the older man as though he had just been struck by lightning.

Kai continued, “You handed me back my father’s footlocker. You knew what it was and what was inside. With all your observation technology, you would have known that shipwreck was just a pointless Host diplomat’s shuttle. You were there to make sure I found the box and its contents, but you got there a bit too late, didn’t you?”

Bandar Trace stared at Kai, his face difficult to read with half of it unmoving chrome prosthetic, but the eyes told Kai he was on the right track. A muscle at the edge of Bandar’s left eye twitched.

“And now we’re here,” Kai said. “And you have intelligence on the shrain and their infiltration into Coalition worlds. And this equipment—this is no off-the-shelf stuff. This is Coalition military tech. I grew up around stuff similar to this. No smuggler I’ve ever heard of gets access to this kind of gear.”

“You’re right,” Bandar said with a sigh. “But you don’t know the full picture, kid.”

“Then why don’t you enlighten us?” Senaya said. “You said we didn’t have much time—what did you mean?”

“I mean, we need to get off this rock. Bova's not the only shrain agent on Zarunda. They'll be amassing on our position as we speak, so I suggest you just do as I say and we'll leave explanations for later."

“No,” Kai said, finally having enough of being told what to do. “We’re not doing anything until you explain fully. I don’t care about the shrain, the Host, or the GTU. I will die here if I have to. Being told what to do by people who don’t respect me ends here.”

“Yeah," Senaya agreed. "What he said." She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Trace.

Bandar shook his head and grimaced. “Your mother said you were a headstrong brat at times.”

“My mother? Yeah, you’re definitely GTU.”

A warning light flashed on the console. Bandar leaned between Kai and Senaya and tapped out a number of commands. One of the screens showed a pair of ships flash in the night sky, their red taillights blinking an ominous warning.

“Inquisitor ships,” Senaya said. “I recognize the flash pattern.”

“She's right," Bandar agreed. "They won't be inquisitors, though. We've only got about five minutes. I suggest we leave now. Follow me."

“No,” Kai said again. “You didn’t hear me the first time. Explanations now, and then I’ll decide if I’m going to follow you.”

“Fine," Bandar said, exasperated. "The object you found is Navigator tech. It's ridiculously old, and beyond anything the Coalition or Host could create. Your father found it while on a secret mission to find the Blackstar.”

“And what is that?” Kai asked.

“A Navigator ship. It’s rumored by a bunch of eggheads at HQ that this Blackstar is one of the last intact Navigator artifacts and has the ability to communicate beyond and travel to the two inner rings of the galaxy. Your father’s mission was to find it—the Coalition hoped it could be used to maintain the upper hand in the galaxy and perhaps find more wonders beyond the great barrier.”

The revelation sparked a galaxy of questions in Kai’s mind, but he focused on the only one he truly cared about. “Where is my father?”

“That, we still don’t know, but his and the Blackstar’s whereabouts are what I’ve been tasked to help find. And you’re going to help me. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here. And if you want to find your father, you’ll shut up and do as you’re told for once and follow me before we’re caught. But if you want to stay here and die, that’s fine by me—I’ve got enough to go on.”

“You don’t have the tetrahedron,” Kai said.

Bandar quirked an eyebrow. “Don’t I?”

Kai looked to Senaya, who patted down her myriad pockets. “I… I don’t have it,” she said. “You stole it!”

Bandar shrugged. "Call it leverage." With that, Bandar tapped out a few codes on the console, and a countdown timer appeared on one of the monitors. Kai also noticed that the shrain inquisitor was no longer lying in a heap on the cavern ground.

Bandar turned his back, grabbed a few supplies from the shelves, and then pulled a lever behind some old cartons.

The shelf unit swung inward, and a plume of dust billowed into the bunker.

Bandar stepped into the void and said, “You’ve got a couple of minutes before this place blows, kid. If that don’t kill you, you’ll have the shrain to deal with. Your choice.”

Kai’s natural reaction was not to trust him, but he thought back to the issue with the footlocker. Did Bandar know what was inside it? Did he want Kai specifically to realize he was a potential ally?

Not convinced, but with no other choice, Kai knew what he had to do.

Chapter 10

Kai and Senaya followed Bandar into the tunnel and continued to follow until the older man brought them into a cargo area. Dull yellow neon strips cast their sickly light in patches throughout the cavernous opening. Dotted around the perimeter were fuel barrels and tools.

In the middle was a ship that Kai recognized immediately.

He rushed forward beyond Bandar Trace and laid his hands on the familiar hull.

The craft was long, over thirty meters, and featured sleek webbed wings on the midsection. Painted in matte black, the only other livery was the white lettering on the pointed nose cone that read CSF Piercer. This was his father’s ship.

“I know you’ve got questions,” Bandar said, reaching up and engaging the airlock door, “but get aboard and I’ll explain once we’re free of the incoming shrain.”

Kai couldn’t move, emotion grabbing his lungs and paralyzing his muscles. The very last memory he had of his father was him taking off in this very vessel to travel to some secret location on a mission he couldn’t talk about.

They had a lot of good memories together on this ship. Kai learned to fly in it when he was just twelve years old, which, later, led him to his career as a ship racer.

Senaya gripped his shoulders and gently shook him. “Come on, Kai, we don’t have time to stand around. Let’s get moving.”

In a daze, Kai did as she suggested. He followed her to the cockpit, where Bandar had already taken the captain's chair. The cockpit was larger than Kai had grown used to with his own ships, and it was more luxuriously fitted out.

Top-of-the-line Coalition military holographic and data projections lined the forward section. Two seats came next, one for the ship controls, the other for weapons. Behind these, a raised platform provided room for two more seats, which the captain and astrogation officer would occupy.

“You’re flying, Kai,” Bandar said from his raised position.

“You’re taking weapons, Senaya. If you both follow my directions, we should survive this. Kai, I trust you can remember how this bird handles?”

Although his hands were shaking, Kai instinctively moved them across the control console as though he had never been away. The ship's engine came to life with a roar then a controlled whine. The lights in the cockpit dimmed so that the holographic projectors and video feeds provided a cool blue ambiance.

The data screens flowed with metrics, all confirming fully operational subsystems. Even the Piercer’s slightly faulty gyro had been fixed, requiring no on-the-fly adjustment, as was the case when Kai had last flown her.

“Where are we headed?” Kai asked as he confirmed full in-atmosphere propulsion capacity.

“Straight up,” Bandar said. “She’s got a new VTOL thruster. When we’re clear of the compound and in open air, head out of the atmosphere at an eighty-degree angle.”

“That’s too steep,” Kai said. “She won’t hold together; the atmosphere’s too thick.”

“Trust me, kid. This isn’t my first time. Senaya, how are you getting acquainted with the weapon controls?”

“Um, I think I’ve got it figured out. If not, I’ll learn quickly, but let’s try not to have to use them, eh?”

“That'll be down to your boyfriend's flying skills." Bandar checked a display, confirmed the roof had withdrawn on his compound and gave Kai the order to launch.

The Piercer reacted instantly to Kai’s command, the straps on the seat digging into his shoulders as it pulled hard gees in its rapid, direct ascent. The main navigation screen beeped when they were clear, and the video feed showed an enhanced view of the night sky, with holographic overlays of other ships.

Below them came a deep boom.

“What was that?” Kai said, not turning his attention from the control screen. The video feed showed an orange coloring as though dawn had suddenly appeared.

“The compound,” Senaya said. “It’s… leveled.”

“Along with the shrain inside,” Bandar added. “But that’s the least of our concerns. Ships incoming at a rapid rate. Ascend, Kai, at full power.”

Kai took a quick glance at the two inquisitor ships and noted they were about ten seconds away and gaining fast. Their design, however, wasn’t conducive to non-atmospheric flight, but that wasn’t to say they couldn’t fire on them.

“Sen, release the chaff rockets,” Kai said.

“We don't have any," Bandar said. "Just fly, and do it quickly."

There was little else to argue with so Kai did as he was told and angled the Piercer to the sky. He engaged full propulsion engines, hoping they had enough liquid fuel to escape the atmosphere.

The craft lurched hard, pulling gees and exploding upward, a fiery column blasting out of their stage-one exhausts. Kai’s jaw tightened and his vision blurred, and the ship continued to accelerate. Two missiles from the inquisitor ship flashed by behind them as the second-stage engine kicked in, powering through the last section of Zarunda’s atmosphere.

A further tense, g-pulling moment passed. Just as quickly as it started, it stopped, and the Piercer was floating in the vacuum of space.

“We’re through,” Bandar said. “Now let’s get some distance on those ships down there. I don’t want a stray missile to catch us unawares.”

Kai took a few deep breaths and waited a moment to acclimatize to the lower g-force. His body felt tense and bruised, and he hoped not to have to do that again too soon. He fixed a coordinate to take the Piercer out of range of the inquisitor ship and used a couple of Coalition scientific space stations as cover; their debris shields would easily withstand a missile. And this would buy them time.

Not that Kai had that luxury. As soon as he matched the stations’ orbit, a communication request came through. Bandar answered. Senaya got out of her seat and joined Bandar on the platform, taking up the other seat so she could get a look at the comms screens.

Bandar was about to speak, presumably to tell her to go away, when the comms alert flashed again, more urgently this time—it was coming from a secure Coalition military frequency.

“Agent Locke, it’s Trace here,” Bandar said.

At first, Kai thought he was talking to his father, Kendal Locke, but when Bandar put the call on the loudspeaker, it became apparent that it was, in fact, his mother. Senaya gave Kai a look that hinted that all this was planned.

Kai wondered then if the inquisitors were in on it too—a sham of a situation to make him forget about tomorrow’s race, which, barring a miraculous turn of events, wasn’t going to happen.

“Mother, it's Kai. Are you behind all this?" he said, not wanting to screw about with the protocol.

“I am indeed, and it’s for your own good. But before you start to feel sorry for yourself, you’ll hear me out. Things have escalated, and the situation is bigger than your ego or whatever the hell it is that drives you to do so many stupid things when you’re capable of so much more.”

Kai opened his mouth and was about to reply when his mother, in full GTU mode, cut him off.

“Listen up. I don’t have long, so pay attention. Your father is likely to be alive. Your finding of the Navigator artifact attests to that. Bandar has hopefully filled you in on that situation.”

“Yeah, kind of,” Kai said. “And he stole the artifact from us.”

“Then I know it’s safe. Here’s the deal, Kai; war is looking inevitable at this stage. We’re not sure of the scale or scope of it, but intelligence is telling us that the Host worlds have found some outside help and new technology to rebuild their forces. We should know more in a few days’ time. We also know that they’ve partnered with the shrain—and some other species we’ve not discovered before—to infiltrate many of our worlds. Zarunda included.”

“I get all that,” Kai said. “But what about Senaya and me? Why are we here, on Dad’s old ship, with a smuggler?”

“First, you’ll respect Trace. So far, you’re still alive because of him. You owe him the benefit of the doubt, at the very least.”

Bandar nodded toward Kai, but not in a smug way. There was something else there. A flash of familiarity that Kai couldn't quite place. He blamed it on the panic of the recent events. He wasn't thinking straight, and he was finding it difficult to analyze everything his mother was saying.

“Fine, let’s say I play along and respect Bandar for supposedly keeping us alive. Why are we here, and what do you want with me?”

“You’ve been given a mission by Captain Lopek. And I’ve agreed. It’s the only way. Your safety is in danger regardless of whether you stay on Zarunda or not. But at least this way you can put your considerable skills to good use.”

“Okay, just get to the point,” Kai said, tiring of his mother’s justifications. “Tell me, what is it the GTU wants me to do?”

“Find your father—and by extension the Blackstar device. If the Host is as powerful as we think they might be after their new partnerships, then we're going to need everything we can get our hands on. And by the last report, your father was extremely close to finding the Blackstar. The Navigator tech will give us the edge, and who knows what we might find beyond the barrier and in the inner sphere of the galaxy.”

Kai shared a look with Senaya. As usual, her eyes were wide with wonder. And he found himself feeling it too. Even though he had remained on Zarunda for many years, he had always leaned toward adventure—just not with any kind of military organization.

And that was what the race was about: the thrill of winning as much as being able to help get his friends off the planet and somewhere safe. That thought bubbled up until it became concrete and he saw a way of getting what he wanted too.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it. I’ll help find Dad and the Blackstar, but you have to pull a few strings in the government for me. First, I’m not affiliated with the CDF or the GTU. If I’m to do this, I’ll be completely independent and won’t be answerable to anyone. Including you or Lopek.”

“I—”

“No,” Kai said, eager to get the rest of his conditions out. “Second, I want you to get the Coalition to send proper supplies and healthcare professionals to Zarunda to investigate the blight. And in the meantime, I want you to take a list of my friends and acquaintances off the planet and to Jallan IV. Only then will I consider doing this task.”

“And I agree,” Senaya said. “I’m with Kai all the way on this.”

That reminded him of his third condition. “And lastly, Mother, there is one more thing.”

“You don’t want much, do you, Kai?”

“I could say the same thing. You’re asking me to give up the life I know, all that I’ve worked for to go on what could be a fruitless search into the unknown that’ll more than likely get me killed. I think it’s only fair that this works both ways.”

There was a brief pause across the secure line, the voice data packets that tunneled through subspace for near-instant communication across vast distances now silent.

Kai looked over to Bandar and was about to ask if they had lost connection when his mother spoke again.

“Fine, Lopek has agreed, but what is your last condition?”

“I want the CDF to arrange for a place for Senaya in the Engineers Guild. With full privileges, not just some hokey guest position, but a real sponsored place in the entire program."

“Hold for a second, I need to check,” his mother said.

“Kai,” Senaya said, “that’s… I don’t know what to say…” She turned away and wiped the cuff of her jacket across her face. Bandar placed a hand on her shoulder and gave Kai a nod of appreciation, or perhaps admiration. It was always so hard to tell with Bandar, what with half of his face obscured by the chrome prosthetic.

“Don’t mention it,” Kai said, smiling at his best friend and kind-of-sister. “If we’re going to risk our lives on some crazy rumor, we might as well get all we can out of it.”

Senaya's eyes were damp. She just nodded, holding back her emotion.

The comms line crackled back to life and Kai’s mother spoke again.

“Consider it done, although she’ll have to complete the entrance exams the same as everyone else. We’ll send the details to you later; I need to wait until the dean of the guild is back from a research trip. Senaya can work on the exams during the downtime of the mission.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Locke,” Senaya said, choking out the words. “I… really appreciate this; it’s, well, it means a great deal. Thank you.”

“If it helps motivate you all to find the Blackstar device, then it’ll be worth it.”

After some further discussion of the practicalities of to whom they'd report their progress and various security protocols they must follow, they got on to the subject of their first task and lead to follow up.

Kai’s mother sent them a data file of a woman who was the last person to speak with Kai’s father before he disappeared. Marella Maio—aka Lexis Drey—was a science historian and one of the foremost experts on Navigator technology and history.

“She spent a considerable amount of time with your father,” Brenna Locke said, “but soon after that, once it was confirmed your father had disappeared, she stopped working within the Coalition and retired to a remote, unaffiliated planet called Parsephus.”

“Where is that?” Senaya asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Most haven’t, dear. Parsephus is an independent rock on the far edge of the Lasides Quadrant. It’s one of the few remaining inhabitable rocks near the veil of the inner ring planets.”

“Perhaps she moved there to study it more?” Kai suggested. “I mean, there are thousands of independent worlds she could have retired to, but to be so close to the veil, given her interest and specialty, surely points to the fact that she hasn’t quite retired from everything to do with the Navigators’ history.”

“We believe that to be the case too,” his mother said. “Which is why we think it’s best that you seek her out. Although she won’t have anything to do with the Coalition anymore, she might be willing to speak with the son of a missing father.”

Kai wanted to suggest something about manipulation, but it would be wasted. He knew the score now, and manipulation or not, if it led him closer to his father, then it was fine by him.

“So other than what you’ve sent us about this woman,” Kai said, “is there anything else you can tell us? It says here the planet she’s on has over a billion people of mixed species—that’s quite a crowd for us to search through.”

“There’s a large datapak with the file I’ve sent,” Brenna said. “You’ll have a few days’ travel to get up to speed. Everything we know about her and her location is in there. I suggest you get reading.”

“Why us, though? Surely you could have sent a GTU agent to pick her up?”

Silence.

“Mother, what aren’t you telling us?”

His mother sighed. "We did, numerous times. She refused to speak with them, and none of them came back alive. But you're Kendal's son. She'll talk to you."

“You know this for a fact?” Kai said.

“Admittedly it’s a bit of a gamble, but in her last encounter with a GTU agent, she suggested something along those lines. You’re connected, Kai.”

“I guess there’s little option but to try. Fine, we have a deal, then.”

“It is for the best. And, Kai, don’t do anything stupid. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Before he had a chance to reply, the line cut. “Well,” Kai said to Senaya and Bandar, both staring at him from their elevated position, “I suppose we better run preflight checks and prepare for subspace travel. Sen, how long will it take?”

Senaya tapped out a few commands on the astrogation computer and said, “About two standard days.”

“Do we have the fuel?” Kai asked.

“We do,” Bandar said. “I always make sure the ship is fully loaded—just for emergencies.”

Kai wasn't convinced of that. It was evident Bandar was banking on this outcome and had put everything in place to get it to this point. "Well, if you two are ready, I suggest we get going. The sooner we get to Parsephus, the sooner we can find out what this woman really knows."

“So you're the captain of the ship now, eh?" Bandar said with a slight smile.

Kai thought about it for a moment and said, “Well, why not? It is my father’s ship, and in lieu of him, I guess it makes it my ship now.”

Still smiling, Bandar said, “Well, that’s fine by me. You can take responsibility while I go grab some of that delicious subspace sleep. I trust you can remember how she works?”

Kai opened his mouth to protest, but Bandar had already turned his back and headed down the steps and out of the cockpit and presumably to his quarters.

“I guess you’re in charge, then,” Senaya said. “Just like old times. I’ve prepped the astrogation protocols, and the subspace engines are online. Once we’re settled in, we can make the jump. Shall I set it for two minutes’ time?”

“Yeah, let’s do it.”

With that, Senaya tapped in the commands, and the two of them headed for their bunks to strap in before the initially uncomfortable jump procedure kicked in.

For the first time in as long as Kai could remember, he felt like he had the opportunity to truly achieve something that no one else could: solve the riddle of Kendal Locke and the Blackstar.

Chapter 11

Brenna Locke took another shot of Equilibrium to stabilize herself during the long subspace jump to Protsima II. Her mission was to find and interrogate a shrain Host agent whom Lopek suspected of controlling the infiltrators on Haleedez and the other planets targeted for attack.

She had already been traveling for a whole standard day and was starting to feel the effects creep into her thinking—small hallucinations of thought, taking her off into strange philosophical experiments that led everywhere and nowhere.

For some species, this was a welcome occurrence, and many insights had been stumbled upon this way, but her mind was too rational and fought against the intangible, creating within her a schism of the real and unreal.

Too long in that mode would lead to a sense of disincorporation, the results of which she had seen firsthand. It was like having one’s mind sucked out of every orifice and dissipating into the vacuum of space. The GTU had lost dozens of good agents over the decades this way. Since Equilibrium had been invented, the number of lost agents had been reduced, but not to zero.

The truth was, some liked the disincorporation of the physical.

Intangibility brought its own kind of comfort. When all was unreal, nothing was real, and if nothing was real, then there was nothing to fear or be concerned with. One could just ride the subspace high for as long as they remained alive.

There was a rumor that one of the Coalition’s most respected philosophers, Fenway Niakaku, didn’t even have a body anymore, that his brain was held stabilized in a vat of chemicals, and his neural activity projected into a computer system for translation.

Even with her level of security as a senior GTU agent, she couldn’t get confirmation if this was true or not. Either way, she had realized early on that intangibility wasn’t for her.

After a few minutes of lying in her bunk, she started to feel better, the drug taking over certain neural pathways and avoiding the loss of the self. The side effect of this was hyperactivity. She had to do something to occupy her mind, or she would drive herself to distraction with pointless tasks.

Reading was always a good way to accompany the levelling effects of Equilibrium. She flicked on the light in her bunk, sat up against the bulkhead, and loaded a file onto the holoprojector at the end of the bed. A series of icons representing files and media hovered in front of her.

She gestured her hand over a file marked ‘Kendal Appearances.’

A written document displayed before her. She had read it a number of times before, but it always brought her a sense of relief that Kendal, her husband, and best friend, was still real. He'd been missing for over three years now, and during that period there had only been two concrete sightings of him.

It would be so easy to just forget and let Kendal Locke become an idea of someone. A homeopathic suggestion of something once solid and real.

But she refused to give in to that. Besides, the words comforted her.

The two sightings were brief and revealed nothing of his condition or ultimate destination. Even the file she had sent to Kai regarding Maio didn’t have anything concrete. She just hoped that when Kai finally found her, the two of them together would be able to make some connections and find a trail.

Having finished scanning through the familiar document, Brenna instinctively gestured to a media file that featured a video of her and Kendal’s wedding.

It was entirely too brief, clocking in at less than ten seconds, but Kendal was so full of life that even during that short stretch of time, he stood out and made her heart flutter. The video showed the two of them standing atop a dais at the end of a long hall. Their friends and colleagues lined the edges and held out their hands as per the tradition. Kendal turned to face them and held out his hand. One row of getting lowered theirs in response.

Then it was Brenna’s turn, and the other side followed.

Kendal bowed deeply to the onlookers and then to Brenna. When he stood, he leaned in and whispered into her ear. She could still hear those words now as if she was right back there.

“I’ll be with you until the edge of time and space, always.”

Even Equilibrium couldn’t help her emotional response to that.

So she did what she always did—paused the video and let the tears run down her cheeks while she savored the pain and regret until it died away and the desire and motivation to find him filled the void.

Rage soon followed behind in its small seemingly insignificant way, but it would grow and consume her, as it had always done. Which was what made her such a good agent.

Lopek, of course, took advantage of this for the GTU’s benefit.

But that was fine, because all the time the GTU's motivations aligned with hers, she would continue to do what she did best. And when their motives were no longer mutually beneficial—she would go her own way whether Lopek wanted that or not.

She wouldn’t have got where she had without contingencies.

Loyalty, after all, was a social construct. The universe recognized no such thing. It was just a state of energy transitioning into something else. And for Brenna, this energy was currently about vengeance. She would have revenge for Jannis Fo too and for all those that had died at the hands of the Host terrorists.

Her mind conjured dozens of scenarios, and she felt herself sinking into them too deeply. Even with the help of the drug, she still had to be self-aware not to let herself slip.

She got rid of the projections of her wedding video and the files she had collated and got up, stumbling unsteadily through the vibrating passageway of her ship to the small cafeteria.

The coffee dispenser had been refilled while she was docked at HQ. It wasn’t the best stuff in the universe, but it would do for now. She made a ritual of the preparation, forcing herself to be present in the moment, focusing on every last little detail, all in the aims of keeping her mind from slipping into the unreal.

Her cup of coffee was complete, and she sat down at the table, cradling the mug in her hands.

“Ship, are you there or are you too busy navigating?" she said aloud to the AI.

“Navigation is under control, Agent Locke,” the AI said through a pair of discreet speakers in the ceiling. “I have a few cores to spare for other processes. Do you have any tasks you wish me to perform?”

“How about you conjure a cat for me to converse with,” Brenna said and then took a sip of the hot beverage.

“A reference to our earlier conversation. If I were able, then I’d comply, but sadly, until the Coalition develops the technology to spontaneously create living matter, I’m afraid you will have to remain without a cat.”

“Shame, I think you were right; I’d get more happiness from conversing with one. Even though they wouldn’t be able to reply, they’d be more comforting than you.”

“Would you like me to send a requisition order to Protsima II to provide you with a ship’s cat?” the AI said, and Brenna couldn’t decide if the thing was following orders logically or being a sarcastic ass. She wasn’t convinced the programmers of the AI wouldn’t have given it more capability than just rote answers and ability to run ship functions.

“Do you want a name?” Brenna asked. “It’s weird just referring to you as Ship.”

“Would it make you feel better to humanize me with a moniker?”

“Yeah, actually it would. Even just to make the grammar of talking with you less awkward. Do you have any preferences?”

The AI was silent for a moment. Brenna thought it was probably going through its lookup database of responses as it had suggested it did before. It came back with a suggestion.

“You can call me Felicity,” the AI said.

“As in intense happiness?”

“No, the other meaning: appropriate expression, often to one’s thoughts.”

“You don’t have thoughts.”

“My programmers did. Given I’m just responding to your stimulus, one could argue that I’m expressing the thoughts of my creators.”

“Felicity it is, then. Though I will shorten it to Flick because life is too short to have four syllables in a name."

“As you wish, Agent Locke.”

“So, Flick, tell me, what do you think is beyond the veil? Why’d the Navigators create a barrier to those inner worlds?”

“I couldn’t possibly speculate. I don’t have the data. If it’s a question of motivation, I can cross-reference my library of literature to present you with a list of things that motivate beings.”

Brenna sighed and drained the rest of her coffee. Giving the AI a name didn’t actually make conversing with it any better. “No, it’s fine. Don’t bother. Perhaps some things should remain a mystery.” With that, she got up and returned to her bunk, lying down on the bed and focusing on the minutiae of sensory input.

Being observant of sound, heat, and smells, without labeling, helped to keep her mind on the right track, aided by the drug. Keeping present also helped to alleviate her stress and worry about Kai and Kendal.

It didn’t take long, however, for that relative peace to be shattered.

Felicity alerted Brenna to a distress signal.

“Where’s it coming from?” Brenna asked. “Specifically.”

“It is point three of a light-year from our current position,” the AI said. “Between the two Crechzowski systems—a popular trading route for the fifth segment alliance of planets.”

“Coalition?”

“Yes, it appears so. The frequency is registered to a Delta-class freighter. Protocol dictates we should help. I can make the necessary route alterations if we act within the next twenty seconds.”

Delta-class freighters were usually undercover arms supply ships. Their manifest, if checked, would indicate it was carrying grains and freeze-dried foodstuffs, but in truth, they were generally shipping ammunitions, power cells, and other military supplies.

Brenna considered ignoring it and keeping going to Protsima. She had a job there that she wanted to finish, but Coalition military protocol superseded even direct orders from her GTU superiors. And if they were in trouble, she would regret not fulfilling her duty.

“Okay, Flick, bring us out of subspace and put us on a vector to the signal. Shields up and lasers on standby.”

“Consider it done. May I suggest you strap in. We are going to have to make an alacritous adjustment from our current vector, the results of which will be more pronounced than usual subspace exits.”

“I hear you. Give me a countdown on the holoscreen in the cockpit, please. And bring up the comms transmission switched to the distress signal frequency. Thanks, Flick.”

“As you wish.”

Brenna hopped off her bed and moved purposely to the cockpit, where she strapped in and prepared to receive another shot of Equilibrium. She would need it with such a sudden exit from subspace.

The countdown on the projection screen ahead of her was down to single figures.

When it reached zero, Brenna closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.

Her entire being tensed against the metaphysical experience of dropping out of subspace. She never quite understood how it worked; she just knew it felt like hell coming out of it at such a velocity. It wasn’t the same as g-force, it was something more fundamental. Something that seemed to affect the very particles that made up her body and her mind.

Her thoughts elongated, stretched against some invisible but undeniable force.

A silent scream distorted her face, and her spine arced against the retreating subspace.

Half a minute more of this out-of-body-and-mind experience elapsed and then, like a light turning off, it stopped, and her body and mind slumped back into its normal position like elastic. She shook in the seat, her muscles straining against the straps.

An acute pain shot through the center of her brain and coalesced into a throbbing ache behind her eyes. A drop of blood fell from a nostril. Her ears popped. Every auditory sensation was covered in echoes and reverb so that it sounded as though she were a small mouse in a large cathedral.

Amongst the echoes, she could just make out Flick’s voice.

“Distress signal twenty thousand kilometers away. Bringing visuals online.”

“Engage stellar drives,” Brenna said, the words croaking from her throat.

“ETA, five minutes,” Flick said.

Brenna used this time to take another shot of Equilibrium and to bring her heart rate back down. After a couple of minutes, she was starting to feel normal again. The headache remained, but she could cope with that.

Right now she just needed to be able to react and trust her training.

The video feed initially showed nothing but the deep blackness of space and the myriad stars. Flick recognized some of the constellations, which gave her a sense of their position. She controlled the camera, turning it through three hundred and sixty degrees.

The bright glare from the two opposing Crechzowski stars spun past. “Flick, magnify the source of the signal.”

The feed stopped its rotation, fixed on a point and gradually increased its zoom factor. Still nothing. Yet the signal was still being transmitted. “Flick, slow to ten percent of engine capacity. I don’t like this—where’s the freighter?”

“Scanning now, Agent Locke.”

The engines whined down, and reverse thrusters soaked up and reversed the momentum until they were coasting through empty space. Or at least, it appeared to be empty.

Before Flick could complete the scan for the freighter, which Brenna had a suspicion didn’t exist, two other ships appeared from the gloom on each flank. “There,” Brenna said. “Fore and aft, two ships. Zoom and scan for identification.”

The video feed split into two and zoomed in.

“They’re not freighters,” Brenna said, knowing now her suspicion was right and wishing she had listened to her intuition before dropping out of subspace. “It’s an ambush. Those ships aren’t Coalition.”

They didn’t look like Host-designed ships either.

They were unlike anything she had seen before: capsule like, featureless, and black. Only the light from the engines gave them visible form. And they were moving fast, closing in at frightening speed.

“Hail them,” Brenna said.

“I can’t,” Flick said. “Transmission channels are jammed.”

“Then get us the hell out of here. Activate subspace jump immediately.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. There’s some kind of interference. Subspace engines are offline and not responding.”

“Weapons systems?”

“Offline.”

Brenna swore and slammed her fist on the console.

The two ships were just a few hundred meters away now. Laser beams lit up the hull of Brenna’s ship, indicated by the thermal map on the screen above her. The lasers weren’t powerful, however. It was as if these other ships were measuring or analyzing.

Sizing us up for destruction, Brenna thought.

She was about to give more orders to the AI when the power of the ship went down, plunging the cockpit into a silent blackness. The engines cut out completely and Flick no longer responded.

Brenna swore again and realized that she was alone, with no means of communication, and two alien craft descending on her position.

In the blackness, she stumbled through the ship, trying to find the weapons locker, but realized that without power, she couldn’t access the maglock system. And the manual override required concentration and time she doubted she had.

The airlock opened. Footsteps came towards her.

Before Brenna could get her bearings, a pair of hands gripped her arms, pinning her in place. Something sharp jabbed into her neck. She couldn't scream, move, or feel her limbs as the drug shut down her consciousness.

Chapter 12

A day into the journey, Kai woke from a deep sleep and made his way to the mess room of the Piercer. Senaya was sitting with her back to the hull and looked up at him when he entered. She kicked the chair out for him and pointed to a steaming cup of coffee.

“You’re psychic now, eh?” Kai said, gratefully taking the hot beverage. He sipped the bitter but delicious coffee and hoped it would rid him of the brain fog that he always got when using Equilibrium.

“Nah, just thought you’d feel like crap too, and if you didn’t find your way here in time, I would have had two cups.”

“It’s a fair contingency,” Kai said with a smile. “So how are you feeling?”

Senaya shrugged her shoulders. “Weird. Confused. Excited. A mix of all three. It’s all a little unreal. The last couple of days have happened so quickly I’ve barely had time to make it all solid, you know?”

Kai drained half the coffee and winced as the hot liquid burned down into his stomach. It felt good, though. A kick to the system that he needed. "Yeah, I know. If someone had told me yesterday that I would be on a secret Coalition mission with the most feared smuggler in the quadrant, I would think they were having some kind of reality breakdown. And yet, here we are."

“But it feels like a blessing as much as it does a curse,” Senaya said. “If you can find your father, then it’ll be worth the weirdness, right?”

Kai stood and eased his way around the small table and poured another cup of coffee from the machine. He noticed Senaya's cup was empty and filled hers, returning to the table feeling like a whole new man.

Senaya smiled weakly as she took the cup. She looked far more tired than he felt. Her normally wide, bright eyes were half shut and looked red around the edges as though she hadn’t slept in a week.

“So," Senaya said, "about Bandar, what do you really make of him?" She kept her voice quiet and looked past Kai to the open door leading out into the main hallway of the ship.

Kai leaned forward. “I can’t decide if he’s a Coalition stooge or this terrible rogue that has somehow engineered his way into this situation for his own personal reasons.”

“I get mixed feelings," Senaya said. "Sometimes I think he's actually a decent creature beneath that frightening facade, and other times I believe it's entirely self-serving. But I guess we ought to judge him on actions, at least until we know him better."

“Well, if we’re going to do that, we can safely say he’s a thief after stealing the artifact from us.”

“That’s a fair point,” Senaya said before draining the rest of her coffee in quiet contemplation. “But on the other hand, he did help us escape the inquisitors, and he has kept and restored your father’s ship.”

“I don’t know what to think of that,” Kai said. “But there’s one thing I know,” he added, leaning closer again and lowering his voice to barely above a whisper. “I feel drawn to the artifact. Ever since we made the jump, I’ve felt a pull to it. But I don’t know how much that is to do with the effects of subspace-weirdness.”

“Well, how is this feeling manifesting?” Senaya asked. “I mean, you say you feel drawn to it. Can you describe that?”

Kai closed his eyes for a moment and focused on the feeling, trying to find the words to describe it. “I guess… it’s like I can sense a vague notion of where it is and an almost magnetic-like force connected to me, but it’s super weak, almost as if it’s not quite there.”

“Gravity is weak too, and look how that messes with things,” Senaya said.

Kai opened his eyes. “What are you suggesting?”

“Don’t fight it—follow it, and see what happens.”

“I suppose I could do that, although it doesn't take some weird connection to know where it is; we are aware Bandar has it, after all. And I doubt it's too far from his person."

Senaya stood up and stretched her short limbs. “Well, I’m heading to the workshop to plan an approach to these guild exams. Perhaps you should experiment and see where it takes you. We’ve got at least another standard day before we arrive at Parsephus; might as well entertain yourself in the meantime.”

Senaya patted him on the back as she left the mess and headed down the hallway to the workshop. Kai finished up the last of his coffee and did as Senaya suggested.

He closed his eyes and stilled his mind with some basic breath meditation so that he could more easily close in on that ephemeral force. The more he focused on it, the stronger it became. He could feel its presence squirming around in his guts, so he opened his eyes and walked, following this strange intuition.

It was no surprise that it led him to Bandar’s cabin, which used to belong to Kai’s father. Bandar was snoring deeply inside. Kai tried the door, but, as expected, it was locked. He tried the manual override using the code that popped into his mind after so many years of him not thinking about it and it slid silently to the side.

Kai smiled at the thought that the great Bandar Trace hadn't known about the manual override codes because if he did, he'd surely have changed them.

The cabin was shrouded in darkness with only the pulsing green light of the sleep monitor giving the room any illumination. It took a minute or so for Kai’s eyesight to adapt.

He stepped inside and glanced at the prone form of Bandar. His chest was rising and falling at a slow but steady rate. A tube attached to a port on his left arm snaked over the bed and into the sleep monitor.

It didn’t surprise Kai that Bandar had resorted to chemical sleep to pass the time of the subspace jump. The older man struck Kai as someone who used chemicals to aid his existence wherever possible.

Given the prosthetic face and leg, he supposed Bandar had pain or adaption issues to deal with. Kai had known a couple of guys back on Zarunda who struggled to cope after a full cybernetic limb replacement. It took the brain some time to adjust. The cybernetic, no matter how good, could never entirely replace the muscle reaction of a real limb.

Not wanting to waste any time, Kai followed his gut feeling and moved around the bed towards a built-in cabinet. His hand hovered between drawers. He focused on the feeling and opened the bottom drawer. An interior amber light clicked on, bathing the contents in orange light. Kai rummaged through the cargo pants and towels until he found it.

The artifact was there, wrapped in a pair of socks.

It wasn’t the only thing Kai found, however. Wrapped in cloth, at the rear of the drawer, were two photographs in thin metallic frames. They both showed Bandar Trace as a much younger man and dressed in a Coalition infantry uniform. The other man was instantly recognizable: Kai’s father, Kendal Locke.

In one of the images, Bandar and Kendal were standing side by side, both smiling and carrying assault rifles. Behind them was the colossal wreckage of a downed Host destroyer on some desert planet.

The second image showed Bandar and Kendal at an award ceremony. The pair of them smiled for the camera. There was an inscription on the photography, but the frame obscured it. Kai considered stealing the image, but he heard Bandar mumble something in his sleep.

His heart rate jumped and his muscles tensed. He remained deathly still and hoped he hadn’t made too much noise. Bandar continued to mumble in his sleep, the words unintelligible, but Kai was sure one of them was Kendal.

Kai decided he’d risked enough and, still gripping the artifact, quickly replaced the photos, carefully slid the drawer shut, and crept out of the room, closing the door behind him with the same override code.

Kai took a deep breath when he heard no sounds of movements from with the room.

He decided to go back to his own cabin and investigate the artifact, mostly to take his mind off the photos and what they might mean, which he couldn’t yet grasp. It wasn’t a huge surprise to see Bandar and his father together, though—that would at least explain how Bandar got the Piercer.

But the fact that Bandar hadn’t yet told Kai that he knew his father during the war left the question of why. What would it have mattered? What was Bandar hiding from Kai? And did his mother know? If so, why didn’t she say anything?

He couldn’t piece it together with anything satisfying, so like most Coalition business, he put it to the back of his mind and planned to find out more when they got to Parsephus.

In the meantime, he entered his cabin and sat on his bed. He held the artifact in his palm and closed his eyes. He no longer felt that compulsion in his gut. He had the item and all was well, but what did it mean? Was it just a psychosomatic effect of subspace travel?

Was the item warm in his hand, or was it just the effects of breaking into Bandar’s room still lingering? It seemed lighter than he remembered too. Which was, of course, stupid. The gravity on the ship was equalized via the momentum soaks to match that of Zarunda, so there was no reason for a piece of solid matter to have changed weight.

Kai opened his eyes and switched on a lamp to investigate it further. It looked exactly as it did when he had found it in the crashed Host ship. He rotated it and inspected the matte black surfaces. There were still no marks of any kind on any of the four sides.

One thing he did notice, however, was that one of the sides was smaller in total area than the other three. Namely, the base of the object. The other three sides, which made up the pyramid element, were slightly longer so that it seemed as though the object had a right way up. If he held one of the longer surfaces flat on his palm, it just seemed a bit off with the base being on the side.

A quick measure with a holoscroll app confirmed it.

The base surface was exactly nine percent smaller than each of the other three sides. He placed the base on his palm and continued to analyze it to see if there were any other small secrets to be found.

After a few minutes of not finding or thinking of anything else, he gave up and placed the artifact on the nightstand next to his bed. He sat back and rested against the pillows, letting his mind ponder what the Blackstar device might have done. If his father was tasked to find it, Kai assumed that it was probably a weapon or something that could be used as such.

Thoughts came and went as his mind considered a variety of ideas, some more absurd than others. Then he starting thinking about what lay beyond the veil and why the Navigators cut those planets off from the rest of the galaxy.

What if it wasn’t to prevent anyone from getting in, but rather to stop something from getting out?

The instant that thought came to him, the tetrahedron buzzed for a split second and then the three longer sides briefly glowed with symbols Kai didn’t recognize. Before he could reach for it on the nightstand, they turned black again, and the artifact appeared as though nothing had happened at all. Was it just a subspace hallucination?

When he closed his eyes, he could still see the residual ghost images of those glowing yellow symbols, until, like the device itself, they faded to black, making him wonder if they were real or imagined.

* * *

Bandar opened his eyes the moment Kai left the room and smiled to himself.

Kai had proved that he was connected to the artifact. Despite Brenna and Lopek’s doubt on the topic, Bandar was right; the tetrahedron did belong to Kai in some intangible manner. Brenna would be relieved.

This was an encouraging development, and Lopek would be satisfied with the progress. Things were going to plan despite a few setbacks.

Bandar just hoped that Marella Maio was still alive.

Chapter 13

In the darkness and sitting on the cold steel surface of a cot, Brenna stretched her arms and legs as far as the restraints would allow in order to get some blood to her numb extremities.

Her back ached, and her legs felt heavier than normal. A sharp pain pulsed behind her eyes, and her whole body vibrated with a toxic mix of Equilibrium and whatever her assailants had injected her with. To make things worse, the semi-incorporeal feeling of subspace travel permeated every cell of her body.

Whoever had taken her, they were not hanging around the scene of the crime.

The restraints were made from some kind of carbon weave and tethered her to a featureless wall. They allowed little movement beyond permitting her to sit up or lie down on the unfurnished cot.

Metallic clasps around her wrists and ankles featured no obvious locks or mechanisms.

She shivered but couldn’t tell if this was due to the temperature of the room or her body trying to cope with the situation. Although she had been exposed to torture training, there was only so much one could prepare for.

She ran the scenarios through her mind, as per her training, but nothing useful came to her. While she was here, restrained, there was little else to do other than get her bearings, so she took an inventory.

The room was chillier than nineteen degrees—typical for her ship.

Various smells came to her, many of which she couldn’t identify other than stale sweat and the coppery scent of blood, probably hers from the assault.

The room hummed with the distant purr of subspace engines.

Her own breath sounded loud in her head. Her chest rattled with each inhalation—a side effect of too much Equilibrium. That wasn’t much of a concern, though. She had bigger things to consider, like her escape—if there even was a way out.

The room, although dark, wasn't completely black. Even with her vision receptor upgrades, she couldn't see much of interest. The walls were smooth with no windows or visible sign of an exit. Dark patches blotched the floor's surface. Her imagination suggested blood as the likely culprit, but it could well have been excrement or any number of other alien excretions.

As she swept her attention across the room, looking for anything that might give her a sense of place or, at the very least, a clue as to who kidnapped her, she heard a quiet ruffling sound.

Brenna held her breath and listened.

The ruffling noise came again. This time she got a sense of where it had originated and spotted movement on the other cot. Someone—or something—was there.

Brenna’s body stiffened. She continued to hold her breath until her lungs hurt. She let out the air long and slow, remaining still, focusing her vision on the other cot.

Movement again. It was undeniable.

She wasn’t alone.

The decision of whether to speak didn’t reach her executive functions.

“You,” a hoarse voice said. Male. Human—probably. “Awake yet?”

Brenna thought about her response. Any word from her would give this entity a hint into who and what she was. But she needed info too and decided to play along, send out a pawn to see if it would be taken or tolerated.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice, like the other’s, sounded hoarse, raspy.

“You’ll have questions. For the sake of conversation, call me Lutes.” The voice spelled out each letter slowly, deliberately.

Brenna considered the pattern of his speech and recognized it, the spelling out of his name giving him away. It wasn’t protocol, but outsiders wouldn’t recognize it. Brenna did. She admired the subtlety.

She was dealing with experience.

GTU experience.

“Lutes,” she said, “all the Ws.”

“When: You’ve been here a day at most. Time’s difficult to track currently, to be more accurate. Where: couldn’t possibly guess. Who: seems to me it’s a Host-affiliated ship. You’ll learn more soon enough, I’m sure. I didn’t have to wait long after waking before it came for me.”

“Kidnapped?” Brenna asked.

“Yes. False distress signal.”

“En route?”

“Yes.”

Same situation as hers, then. Whoever had taken them had planned this ahead of time and knew the destinations of two different GTU agents, both of whom didn’t know the plans of the other.

“It’ll hurt at first,” Lutes said. “But the pain doesn’t last long… their methods are sophisticated.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I think… I can’t be sure, maybe three days. You want to know who they are and what they want. I’m still trying to figure that out myself. They use shrains for interrogation. Their questions seem to be AI driven. They’re abstract. Make little sense. I don’t know what, if anything, they’ve learned from me.”

Shrain… this wasn’t good. Brenna thought of her task at Protsima II. The handler there, according to Lopek, was also a shrain entity. But the ships she saw before the kidnapping looked nothing like shrain technology or Host.

“Is the shrain interrogator the only entity you’ve come into contact with?” Brenna asked.

“Yes. It’s been the same vehicle each session. Who knows what’s going on in their chip minds, though? Could be a different entity each time.”

“Any patterns or theme to their questions?”

“It's difficult to say," Lutes said, grunting as he shifted on the cot. "At the time it seems entirely logical, but after… it's as if they've scrambled, or altered, my memories, so it all seems like disconnected gibberish. You start to doubt your own mind."

“Are you hurt?”

“No. Just a little sore from sleeping on the cot. Soft furnishings don’t appear to be their forte. They’ve fed me well, treated an old injury, and kept the interrogation sessions short. It’s unusual. Sometimes, during the questioning, I feel like I don’t want to leave. They do something—could be drugs or some kind of subconscious programming—that makes you happy, content almost. Until you wake up here and reality seeps back in again.”

“Have there been any others besides me?” Brenna asked.

“One,” Lutes said, the tone of his voice dropping half an octave. “They were here when I arrived. We didn’t get a chance to speak before they… well, the stains show their suicide.”

“Who were they? Human? Coalition?”

“A second-order human from what I could tell. Not sure where from or what side they were affiliated with. I suppose Coalition considering the shrain seem to be in league with the Host forces these days, but it would be inaccurate to say for sure.”

Brenna leaned back against the smooth wall and brought her knees up for warmth. Her heart rate was edging out of the normal zone. Subspace anxiety itched at the periphery of her mind, fogging her thinking.

“What’s your name?” Lutes asked.

“Concita,” Brenna said, using one of her backup IDs. She doubted Lutes was the other man’s real name either.

“They get you on a mission?”

“I answered a distress call,” she said, not committing to answering the question directly. For all she knew, he could be part of the interrogation. He was right about one thing: the shrain were sophisticated. And without seeing him up close and in full light, she decided to play it safe and assume the worst-case scenario.

“Where were you heading?”

“Nowhere in particular,” she said. “Was just heading to the east side of the quadrant to scan for trade opportunities.”

“You should know,” Lutes said, “that you shouldn’t lie to them. It’ll go much easier for you if you cooperate. They’re not barbarians and will work with you if you’re willing.”

“Sounds like you’ve helped them with their inquiries,” Brenna said. “What did you tell them?”

“Like I said, I can’t remember—it’s messed up in my memories. But I know that by resisting, things will only be worse. Why fight them? Perhaps there’s a different way.”

Brenna scowled at Lute’s attitude, hating some imaginary indiscretion against the GTU or the Coalition. Although she couldn’t be sure what he had said, from the sounds of his coping mechanism, he had turned for them and gave them whatever they wanted.

A good GTU agent would die before giving up his or her colleagues.

“You're judging me," Lutes said. "I understand how it seems. But we'll talk again after your first session, and we'll see if you still think the same way."

Brenna didn't have long to wait for the opportunity to learn more. A quiet period of perhaps around fifteen standard minutes went by, and then an invisible door slid almost silently open. White light flooded into the room.

Lutes had already turned to face the wall, so Brenna saw nothing of him other than a gray blanket wrapped around his body.

A shape appeared in the light and moved toward her. It was human-shaped, short and thin. It entered the room and looked at her. “You can call me Sule,” it said.

It appeared as a female human. Shaved head, kind blue eyes, and a subtle, friendly smile. Sule wore a simple outfit of beige trousers and a loose shirt with an open collar. The style didn't indicate which faction or organization she might have been employed by.

Behind the appearance would be a shrain entity that Brenna highly doubted was this friendly or agreeable, but right now she saw no benefit in behaving congruently to that thought.

“I have questions,” Brenna said.

“As do I. Let’s get you out of the restraints and into more comfortable surroundings so we can answer each other’s questions—and to help you recover. I’m sure you’re feeling the usual subspace side effects and could do with a hot meal and a drink. You’ve been asleep for so long. We didn’t want to wake you.”

“That’s… very thoughtful of you,” Brenna said, trying her best to keep the sarcasm from her voice. She knew that Sule knew that Brenna knew this was all a game, but without knowing the rules, she decided to play along as best she could.

She did, however, notice that Sule paid no attention to Lutes and vice versa.

“I’m going to activate your release,” Sule said. “Please don’t resort to violence, it won’t end well, and it’s entirely unnecessary. No harm will come to you.”

The face of an angel and the lies of a devil, Brenna thought.

She couldn't help the cold shiver that slowly slinked up her spine. She'd never come this close to a shrain entity before. The concept of them had always creeped her out, and it was no different being right in front of one.

“I understand,” Brenna said. “Though realize that I will defend myself if required.”

“It won't come to that," Sule said, and smiled. She swiped her hand over a control surface on her arm, and the restraint clasps opened, dropping to the cot. Sule held out her hands in a gesture of help.

Reluctantly, Brenna took the shrain's hands and got to her feet. Her head spun, and she fell forward, but Sule took her weight and led her out of the room. Brenna briefly considered trying to tackle her and make an escape, but without knowing anything about her location, she decided to bide her time.

An opportunity would come eventually; it always did.

Sule led her down a featureless gray corridor with low lighting. They reached a junction and turned left. Then a further left and a right into a wider hall with a dozen or more doors. Sule stopped at the third on the left, opened it, and gestured for Brenna to enter.

“Please take a seat and make yourself comfortable,” Sule said as she closed the door behind them.

Brenna sat down on a soft-cushioned chair. A table in front of her was resplendent with a wide variety of food and beverages. The smell of coffee wafted toward Brenna. She poured herself a cup, delighting in the warmth as it filled her belly.

Sule sat opposite and waited patiently as Brenna sampled the food.

She doubted there was any risk of poison. They’d have already done that if they so wished; there was no reason to wait until now.

When Brenna was satiated and hydrated, she leaned back against the chair. Although she was still feeling the subspace anxiety, the food and coffee took the edge off.

“So,” Brenna said, leaning her elbows on the table, “I guess we better get to it.”

Sule smiled and stood. “Indeed. But first, as a gesture of goodwill on our part, we have a gift for you.”

Brenna clasped her hands together and steeled herself. “Go on.”

Sule gestured toward a door on the right side of the room. A door opened and a second figure walked through. Brenna's stomach tightened. She began to shake.

It couldn’t be…

“Brenna,” the figure said.

“Kendal?”

Chapter 14

For the final section of the subspace journey to Parsephus, Kai remained mostly in his bunk, trying to get the artifact to display the symbols again, and failing to do so.

However, the feeling of being inexplicably linked to it had only grown stronger. Focusing inward on the object had at times made him think he saw glimpses of the worlds beyond the veil. Great structures and armadas of alien ships whose design defied known convention.

How real or imagined those images were, Kai couldn’t be sure. But one thing was for certain: he knew he would go beyond the veil at some point. A clichéd wise person would likely proclaim in dusty tones that it was his destiny.

Kai believed in no such thing.

He saw the logical extrapolation uncoil before him as a folded paper art puzzle, fold by fold, revealing a hidden image beneath. In all likelihood, the veil would drop eventually, and he would venture into those heretofore-unknown reaches of the galaxy.

For now, though, he had to focus on the job at hand: find Marella Maio.

He'd read the dossier on her, which Lopek had provided. She was Lantesian, thirty-three standard years old, and one of the Coalition's most respected science historians. Assigned to help his father, she later quit her role after he went missing. Lopek's intel had included an entirely redacted message transmitted from a droid market in the capital city of Roldon.

It seemed pretty solid intelligence, but it was a standard month old, and nothing else had been communicated to the GTU about her activities or whereabouts.

This raised the question of what had happened to the agent assigned to her?

And what was in the message to warrant its redaction?

With any luck, Kai wouldn’t have to wait too long to find out. The Piercer had landed on a commercial landing platform on the outskirts of Roldon. Senaya and Bandar were clanging about in the rear of the ship, preparing to leave.

Senaya stepped into the doorway of Kai’s bunk.

“Hey, you ready to go hunting?” she asked, dressed in her familiar multi-pocketed suit, twin laser pistols attached to her belt holsters. She smiled wide and looked refreshed despite the longer than usual subspace jump.

Kai hopped off his bed. “Absolutely. Looking forward to getting some fresh air.”

“You won't find much of that here. Atmosphere reports suggest a high ammonia count. The place is going to stink like rotten eggs. But I've made a solution for that."

She handed him a small facemask that clipped onto the bridge of his nose and covered his nostrils and mouth. He breathed deeply and noticed no loss of air. In fact, it made even the stale carbon-monoxide-scrubbed air of the craft taste sweet and fresh.

“You’re going to be a massive hit in the Engineers Guild,” Kai said.

“Of course. Now get your butt moving. Bandar’s in a foul mood, and I think it’s best not to keep him waiting.”

“I’m not in a foul mood,” Bandar shouted from the rear of the ship. “I’m just eager to find Maio and get on with the mission. A sense of urgency gets stuff done. Now move it.”

Kai and Senaya shared a smile before getting their kit together and following Bandar out of the ship and into the attached transparent tube that would take them into the arrival lounge of the port.

“Here,” Bandar said, “take this.” He handed Kai his precious P&G rifle.

“Thanks,” Kai said.

“I hope you remember how to use it. Come on, let’s get moving.” Bandar cut a swathe through the busy lounge until they came to a security line. The place was darkly lit and run-down. Couches running in rows were full of anxious, fidgeting people. The temperature was a few degrees on the side of too hot, and the décor wore the ravages of time like scars on a vet.

While they waited, they discussed their first task. The hubbub of the hundreds of other arrivals gave them an audible cover for their plans.

The dawn-gray light barely filtered through the dirty windows, giving the world a monochrome look and feel. Kai wondered how many visitors just ended it all right here, unable to face the utter grayness of it all.

“I hope the information was right,” Kai said, “and all this standing around will be worth it.”

“The intel,” Bandar said, “indicates Maio communicated with someone off-world about a month ago. Used the name of Lexis Drey. We’ll find something, I’m sure.”

“Aye, we both read that,” Kai said. “But the message was blacked out. What did it say?”

“Just some soppy shit to a loved one.”

“Why the redaction, then?”

“Standard protocol for private, personal messages.”

“And how would you know?” Kai asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Higher clearance, kid.” Bandar glared at him and reminded Kai of who he was.

Senaya stepped closer after giving a tall alien a dirty look. “Couldn’t it have been coded?”

Bandar shrugged. “Unlikely. The boys and girls in the decryption squad would have seen something. We’ll find out more when we discover the location of the market.”

Kai turned the artifact over in his palm within the pocket of his army surplus jacket. It felt dangerous bringing it with him, but he couldn’t face leaving it behind in case anything happened to the ship. Thieves and pirates were everywhere these days.

Their line shuffled forward. Kai yawned loudly and received an annoyed look from a fellow human among the group of weird and wonderful Coalition species. The clicks, whistles, and barks of a hundred languages sang a song of cooperation and shared boredom.

Nearly half a standard hour later, they had finally gotten through arrivals and out into the capital proper. A harsh chill whipped through Kai’s jacket, robbing him of precious body heat. The air did stink, as Senaya had said. The mask went on right away.

Bandar didn’t bother, of course. Kai suspected he had smelled far worse.

The city rose up before them as they stepped across the crystal walkway, their steps treading across millions of others before them, each one scuffing the once-clear surface, creating a cataract of transience.

Buzzing above them like flies, personal gyrocraft flittered into and around the city’s towers and buildings as if in search of some rare pollen. Two blue ones, with flashing amber lights, chased another up and around the skeletal spires that had at one point been the center of the system’s financial district.

“Look at those spires. Like the remains of some long-lost giant animal,” Senaya said. “Amazing. It’s a shame they won’t rebuild them.”

“The economy was ruined years ago,” Bandar said. “Same deal with the abandoned stations up there.”

Thick gray cloud cover prevented them from seeing the famous orbiting space stations. Decaying, wireframe models of a once prosperous nation, they were a reminder than even during boom times, there was always a loser somewhere in the Coalition.

Economics was a zero-sum game for certain organizations.

Despite that, the city still thrummed. Grubbier and more desperate than before, according to the datapak, it still had much to offer if you looked in the right places.

After a few minutes of navigating through a throng of pedestrians, they came to a hole-in-the-wall drinks dispensary. “Wait here a second,” Bandar said. “I need a drink.”

He stopped and ordered something incomprehensible from a flange-faced, sweaty biped whose species Kai couldn't identify. The creature handed Bandar a steaming mug of something rancid. The old soldier downed it in one gulp, shivering before swiping his wrist across the payment module.

“I don’t suppose they do coffee?” Senaya asked.

Flange-face grunted something. Green mucus bubbled from one of its many nostril-like apertures. A slimy pseudopod arm slid out from somewhere behind its head and indicated to a menu board hanging on rusted chains above the opening in the wall.

The writing was gibberish to Kai, but even from a flange-faced shape-changer, body language was telling.

“I’d take that as a no,” Kai said.

“I can see this is going to be an awful experience.”

“We’ll find you something,” Bandar said before turning back to the alien.

To Kai’s surprise, the old rogue was actually conversing in what sounded like fluent… whatever the species used as a language. Bandar showed it a holographic display of a droid market—the one mentioned in Lopek’s brief.

After what seemed like a furious argument, flange-face nodded and, with surprisingly delicate digits, tapped out directions on Bandar’s holodisplay.

“No coordinates?” Kai asked.

“They don’t have GPS here. All satellites are like their spires: nonworking shells.”

“So we have the market’s location?” Senaya asked.

Bandar nodded. “And a name of the guy who runs it. Oh, and there’s one other thing,” he said, standing to the side of the hole-in-the-wall.

Flange-face reached under the counter and brought up a silver flask and handed it to Senaya. Steam wafted from a slight gap where the lid attached to the body of the container. The alien made a high-pitched, gurgling sound.

Kai smelled the coffee aroma at once.

Senaya's eyes grew wide. A smile stretched across her face as she inhaled the delicious scent. She reached out with her wrist to the control panel for payment, but the alien slapped her arm gently away with a flap-shaped appendage.

“Coffee on the house,” Bandar said.

“Well… please tell your friend here thanks,” Senaya said.

Bandar gargled something, and they left the dispensary to allow the next pedestrian in line to make their order.

“How’d you know its language?” Kai asked as they headed downtown toward the droid market, the morning light now glowing gold from its earlier dawn-gray.

“Because I did my homework. If you’d bothered to read the full datapak, you’d have found mention of the GTU’s network and the call signs.”

“That was an agent?”

“One of many. Now, how about we play a game of shut the hell up and get to the market in peace?"

With that, Bandar loped forward, creating some distance between himself and Kai and Senaya.

“Sensitive, isn’t he?” Senaya said between sips of her coffee. She handed the flask to Kai, but he shook his head. He felt like a schoolboy being told off by a teacher and decided to focus on the task at hand.

Bandar was right, after all. The information was there in the datapak, but he was too busy trying to work the artifact, to see those symbols again.

In silence, they walked for another standard hour, following the alien’s directions.

Dereliction was all around them: factories left to rust and fall apart, their cavernous interior took over by gangs and wandering caravans of murderous hobos. Every street corner featured a dealer of shady goods, and after the first half dozen, Kai learned to just ignore them. Politeness wasn't expected, and it only made them more dogged in their business.

He needed no drugs or implants or body modifications. He liked his limbs and face as they were.

Eventually, they turned a corner and saw the building they wanted: the droid market.

Much like the rest of the city, its facade was rusting, held together with a patchwork of steel taken from other businesses that didn’t last the economic downturn.

This place, however, was a hive of activity.

The neon sign, Darradio’s Droids, flashed enthusiastically, its gaudy colors a rebellion against the gray and brown color swatch of the city.

Hundreds of people of all species milled around outside, some entering, some exiting, still others hovering around the payment booth, presumably paying for and arranging delivery of their new-old droid.

Bandar emerged from the group and stood close to Kai and Senaya.

“Stay sharp and make sure your weapons are ready,” Bandar said, his long leather duster bulging slightly at his leg, hiding his rifle. “And follow me. Let me do the talking.”

Kai reached into his jacket and switched the P&G on with a touch of his finger.

Senaya unclipped her holsters but kept her twin lasers hidden beneath her coat.

They followed Bandar inside the droid market as he cut a swathe through the crowd. His body language told Kai this would be a short experience. He had to almost jog to keep up with the older man.

Inside, the building was only mildly dilapidated. A small office foyer with tatty sofas and rugs led into a wider warehouse area with a raised section for the auctioneer. On the far right side of the huge vaulted room, a row of droids glistened beneath a string of lights.

At the end of the warehouse, a large LED clock counted down to the next auction.

A few buyers mingled around the bleachers that ran around the other two walls. They looked up when Kai and the others entered, but they weren’t here for bidding on the droids. That didn’t stop Senaya’s attention from snapping to one of the shiny chrome models.

“Look at that thing; it’s majestic,” she said.

“You can’t afford it,” Bandar growled. “Keep up.”

He cut right through the bleachers, up to the auctioneer’s stand, and through a door that led to the back office. Kai and Senaya followed Bandar into the shabby, dark room just as Bandar unfurled his duster jacket and raised the rifle to the tall lithe-figured man standing behind an ornate wooden desk.

The man yelped and reached for a comms device on the desk when Bandar snapped, "You touch that comm and your friends will be cleaning your brains off the wall." Then to Kai: "Shut the door and watch for company."

At first, Kai didn't respond. This was all just a bit much, but he had to trust Bandar, he owed him at least the benefit of the doubt and did as he was tasked. He and Senaya stood on either side of the door.

“Now, you, sit down,” Bandar said, motioning with his rifle.

The man did as he was told. To his credit, he didn’t look completely panicked. His small green beady eyes stared out from beneath a leather cap. A designer pin-striped suit gave him the impression of someone well off, but its frayed cuffs and split collar told the real story.

“You’re Darradio, right?” Bandar growled.

The man nodded. “Yes… that’s me,” he stammered. “What do you want? I paid Griston yesterday. Our account is settled. What more does that greedy bastard want from me?”

“We’re not here from Griston,” Bandar said. “We’re here for Drey. Lexis Drey.”

Darradio instantly relaxed, slumping in his chair. “She hasn’t worked here for months. I’m afraid you’re too late.”

“Where is she?” Kai asked, no longer able to control himself.

Darradio shrugged.

“He asked you a question,” Bandar said, the rifle still pointing at the man’s forehead.

“I don’t know; I don’t keep track of all the waifs and strays that come through here. What’s she done?”

“None of your damned business,” Bandar said. “How long did she work here for?”

“Dunno exactly, maybe… eight standard weeks. She bolted out of the blue, and we moved on. Plenty of people looking for work, so she didn't exactly stick in mind. Look, I've got an auction in a few minutes, and the crowd here isn't the most forgiving kind. I need to start the sale."

“You’re going nowhere,” Kai said, stepping forward now, eager to get moving. He saw a pair of burly security men talking to the crowd by the bleachers. He’d rather avoid a shoot-out if he could help it.

Darradio sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. She left. I didn’t care. I’ve nothing to tell you… or perhaps…”

“What?” Kai barked. “Spit it out.”

“She was close with another guy who used to work here. I think they were fucking each other. He’s a dodgy son of a bitch. Sells illegal cybernetics. I caught him stealing parts from the droids and had him kicked out. She’ll likely be with him.”

“Name?” Bandar said.

“Raniel Denson. He’s a real scumbag. Spends most of his time high on synth-stims.”

“Security is coming,” Senaya said.

“Unless you want a poor man’s decapitation,” Bandar growled, “I suggest you give us everything you know about this guy.”

“Sure. Sure… just, one second, let me…” He started to reach for a drawer in his desk.

Bandar smacked the barrel of the rifle into Darradio’s nose, causing it to snap and bleed.

Darradio slumped back in his chair and yelped, clasping his nose as though trying to catch the blood that poured from his nostrils. Kai glared at Bandar. They could have got the info without going this far.

But to be fair to the rogue, it worked. Darradio nodded and mumbled something as he reached out to Bandar’s holopad and typed out all he knew about the cybernetics dealer, including his name, address, and a photo.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Bandar said.

Darradio's eyes were glossy. He shook with fear, or perhaps rage.

Someone knocked on the door. “You okay in there, boss?” a deep voice called out.

Whispering, Bandar said, “Everything is just fine, right?”

Darradio said as much, adding as clearly as he could, “You guys cover the doors. We’re opening for the sale in a minute. I’ll be right out, just having some issues with my allergies.”

Senaya watched through the crack of the door and nodded that they were clear.

“You have a back way out of here?” Kai asked.

“To the left, follow the corridor to the end and take a right. You’ll find a fire exit.”

Not wanting to outstay their opportunity, they followed the directions. Kai opened the fire exit, and they found themselves in an empty landing lot. Bandar checked his holomap.

“It’s about ten minutes east of here if we move quickly.”

Kai opened his mouth to say something about not wanting to hang around when a shadow slowly covered the landing lot. The deep throbbing roar of ship engines boomed from above. When Kai looked up, he recognized the massive ship at once. “Oh shit, it’s a Host destroyer. They must have tracked us here.”

“Then we better run,” Bandar said.

Chapter 15

Brenna’s heart stopped for what seemed like an eternity at the sight of Kendal before her. Words, hundreds, thousands of them tripped over each other to be the first to leave her mouth, but when she opened her lips to speak, nothing came out.

“Brenna, my love, it’s me,” Kendal said, smiling.

He looked much older than the last time she had seen him, which was to be expected. He’d been missing for so long, he must have had his fair share or more of trials and tribulations.

His dark hair was cropped short. Silver flecks touched the sides, indicating that even the great Kendal Locke was showing signs of his age: nearly fifty standard years old now, just a few years older than Brenna.

Despite the silver, his strong jaw and intense gray-blue eyes still shone with the same youthful exuberance she had found so attractive when they had first met over thirty years ago. Even the scar that traveled across the bridge of his nose to beneath his left eye seemed to add a rough-and-ready but charismatic charm.

He looked to Sule, his expression not betraying anything. Brenna looked at the shrain too and saw a neutral expression of someone patiently waiting. Turning back to her husband, Brenna finally stood and made to move toward him.

Sule quickly moved in the way and shook her head. “You may talk,” she said. “And later, if you cooperate, you may spend some time together. Right now, we have work to do. But please, feel free to catch up for a few moments before we continue.”

Brenna balled her right hand into a fist.

Kendal sneered at the back of Sule’s head.

Between them, there was a sense of mutual violence.

“Fine,” Brenna said, easing her heart rate down and taking her seat again. As much as she wanted to tackle Sule and flee with her husband, she couldn’t risk it; she had no idea what the shrain had planned.

All this politeness and generosity was nothing but an illusion, a means to an end. Brenna knew this and Sule knew this, so both women returned to their seats, and Kendal remained where he was, just out of touching distance, his body tense with a desire for action. He looked into Brenna's eyes. There was a kind of sadness there, a desperation.

“What have they done to you?” Brenna asked.

“Nothing bad. They found me floating out in the north quadrant in a rescue pod and brought me here.”

“Where have you been up until now?” she said, trying not to let the tears break the dam. If she started, she doubted she’d be able to stop.

“Following a dead trail. I thought I found a Navigator, but it turned cold, and my inexperienced crew fell foul of pirates. I was in stasis for months, floating around in the pod, hoping to be found."

Brenna cast a glance over to Sule and saw that she reflected recognition of this story. To her, Brenna asked, "Why did you keep him here? Why not return him to the Coalition?"

“Things aren't that simple. War is coming, and your husband represents an important part of the puzzle. As do you. If we're all to survive the coming war, we're going to need to work together."

“You’re working with the Host!” Brenna said, shouting the words, unable to hold her incredulity. “Your kind are infiltrating the Coalition worlds. You expect us to help you?”

“Brenna, please, listen to what she’s got to say,” Kendal said, holding his palms out. “The Coalition isn’t what you think it is. Lopek… he’s not who you think he is. You were sent to Protsima. You wouldn’t have survived it. It was all a setup to get you out of the way. You know too much.”

Brenna rubbed her face, trying to ease the growing tension in her temples. None of this felt right. It was as though she were high on some hallucinatory drug. Her body didn’t feel like hers; these images she was seeing had an indescribable quality.

“It’s the subspace anxiety,” Sule said, leaning across the table to her, holding out a small pen-like object. A drug-delivery device. “Here, this will help.”

Sule’s voice warbled as she spoke. Brenna’s vision vibrated. She stood up and turned toward Kendal. As she started to speak, her words came from his mouth—her words, but his voice.

Or was it his voice?

Was it the voice Brenna remembered?

Sule was out of her chair now, face distorted, her arms outstretched.

Brenna kicked at the table, knocking the shrain to the floor. She then launched forward to Kendal, her arms reaching to him. He didn’t move; her arms swiped through him as though he didn’t exist.

He wasn’t corporeal.

He wasn’t real.

With a blink of her eye, he was gone, and she was on the floor, her elbows and knees burning with the fall. Sule's shadow passed over her, and the shrain sneered as she stabbed the injector into Brenna's arm.

Her world became even more unreal. A dense fog swarmed her brain. Somewhere beyond the thick mist of the drug-induced state, she sensed her body being lifted and placed in a hard chair, clamps crushing her wrists and ankles.

Intelligible words garbled before becoming silent.

She stayed that way until the drugs completely shut her system down and put her into a deep blanket of unconsciousness.

* * *

Brenna came to with a violent splutter, the drugs leaving her sober as quickly as they had knocked her out. The room was in darkness now. Sule strode around in front of her, wielding a wicked-looking curved blade.

Brenna smirked. “Didn’t take you long to revert to type.”

The shrain spat on the ground and brought the blade to Brenna’s face. “You know nothing of our kind. You and your Coalition think you’re so superior, but your time is coming. Extinction is close by.”

“The Host claimed the same thing a decade ago. Look what happened to them. It will happen again. You’ve backed the wrong side.”

“If that brings you comfort, by all means, keep thinking it. It won’t change the inevitable. It won’t bring your husband back or save your son.”

Brenna strained against the holds on her wrists and ankles to no avail. Her face flushed red. “Why don’t we get this little play over and done with. What do you actually want from me?”

“Your son. You can help me find him, protect him from what’s coming.”

“Are all your kind vague to the point of tediousness? You won’t get answers from me. You can torture me, kill me, do what you want, but there will be no answers from me.”

The shrain stepped back then, regarding Brenna with an intensity that she’d never experienced before. It was as though the creature were staring into her very soul, her genetic code.

“Your bravery would be admirable if it wasn’t so shortsighted. You know so little, I almost pity you.”

“Then why don’t you illuminate me? Why join the Host? You know they can’t win a war against the Coalition. We decimated them last time, and even with the help from the shrain, it won’t be enough. Where was your kind then? You’re nothing. Just an artificial construct with no place in the universe to call your own.”

Sule smiled then let out a mocking laugh. “We’re their offspring. This galaxy is rightfully ours, and we will reclaim it. This is but the start of it.”

“Whose offspring?”

“The Navigators, of course. We are their children, and we will inherit what is ours. Your son will lead us to the Blackstar, as your husband will lead us to the riches beyond the veil.”

“So if you’ve got all this planned, then why do you need me here?”

“Because you can make it easier for us, and therefore easier for your husband and son. Work with us, Brenna. Back the winning side and you can have your family with you once more. Oppose us… and you’ll lose them for good.”

“You’re underestimating my husband and son. Without my help, they’ll succeed and survive and will see you and your kind driven to the far reaches of space.”

“I’ll take that as a no, then?” Sule said, that disgusting smile on her face again.

“Take it however you want; you won’t get my help.”

“We still have time. But know this; we know your secret. We know that Kai is not your son.”

Brenna stiffened then. Only she and Kendal knew this. She wanted to ask Sule how she knew, but it would achieve nothing.

Sule smirked at her and jabbed her again with the drug. “We’ll talk again soon,” she said. “In the meantime, you’ll rest and think about things. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.”

Brenna tried to tell Sule to jump out of an airlock, but her lips were numb, and her voice came out scratchy. She lost the feeling in her limbs. Her head started to spin.

Two shrain entered the room and unclasped her from the chair.

She was too weak to resist. Sule mocked her as the others dragged her back to her cell. On her way back, she noticed a human in engineering clothes come out a door in one of the hallways. Despite the drugs, Brenna used all her attention to remember the location.

They shoved her into her cell. She noticed that Lutes was no longer there. She guessed he had refused to help after all. Behind her, the door slammed shut, and Brenna fell to the bunk as the darkness again claimed her.

Chapter 16

Bandar, Kai, and Senaya kept to the side streets and under cover as much as they could.

The city had suddenly become empty, all pedestrians and gyrocrafts finding somewhere to hide. A citywide siren blared but was drowned out by the Host destroyer’s engines. It had fired its great energy weapon just once, taking out one of the spires that Kai had guessed was the main communications systems.

As yet, no ships had come to the city’s defense.

Kai had tried to raise the alarm and contact Lopek, but their message wouldn’t get beyond the planet’s relay. Without a means to warn the Coalition, it was unlikely anyone would know the Host were here.

They stopped for a moment inside an abandoned supermarket. It was dark inside and cold. Bandar's holomap gave off a slight blue glow, and Kai wondered if that would alert the Host of their presence.

“They must have had an agent already on the planet,” Kai said. “Just like on Haleedez and the others.”

“It’s not too surprising,” Bandar said, scrutinizing his map. “If it’s a war they’re gearing up for, then finding the Blackstar would be a priority to them as much as it is to the Coalition. The plan remains the same. We find Maio and get the hell off this rock.”

Senaya had her twin laser pistols in her hands. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about all of this. It feels like a setup.”

“My mother wouldn’t have got us involved if it were a setup,” Kai said.

“But what if she didn’t know? What if there’s a mole in the GTU? What if Lopek’s been turned?”

“Unlikely,” Bandar said, gesturing to his holomap. “You two need to remain calm. This is not unexpected. Here, we can get to Denson’s location in a few minutes if we follow this network of alleys. I suspect he uses this route himself. It’s well hidden from the rest of the city’s main thoroughfares. Follow me, and stay focused. If you see anyone suspicious… you know what to do.”

With that, Bandar bustled to the rear of the supermarket. Kai and Senaya followed, guns armed and ready. They left the back entrance of the building and entered the delivery access alley. Bandar followed his map as Kai and Senaya covered the front and rear.

Kai's heart thumped hard against his chest. Everything that moved felt like danger, and he nearly fired on more than one occasion. On closer inspection, it was just the shuffling movements of hobos crawling under their makeshift shelters and various-sized vermin looking for their next meal.

The thrum of the destroyer’s engines had dissipated but was still just audible in the distance. Along with the sounds of rockets being fired.

“Sounds like the city is finally putting up some resistance,” Senaya said, but no one else spoke. It seemed as though word from the Coalition had started to get around and there was at least some effort being made to protect the Coalition citizenship. It would mean nothing if they couldn’t complete their mission, though.

After a further tense few minutes, they came to a crumbling, three-story apartment block. Bandar led them up the fire escape and across the walkway until they came to apartment fifty-three. Without waiting, Bandar kicked the door in and entered.

Kai and Senaya followed in behind him, covering his flanks.

The place stank of engineer’s grease and soldering compound.

A human male wearing a small brass scope over his right eye stumbled into the front room from one of the side doors. Lank brown hair stuck to his sweaty face and the engineer’s boiler suit he wore looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a decade. In one hand he held a soldering pen and in the other what looked like an artificial muscle with wires and a chip attached to one end.

“Who are you?” he asked, looking annoyed at being interrupted.

Bandar didn’t hang around. He swung the butt of his rifle against the man’s head, knocking him to the ground before standing above him, weapon aimed at his genitals.

The man’s scope had smashed to the floor, along with the soldering pen and the parts. He held a hand to his head and grimaced against the pain.

“Ouch,” Senaya whispered. “I’ll watch the front door … this is becoming a pattern.”

Kai kept an eye on the only other door to the right of the room. He left the interrogation to Bandar, who was clearly more experienced at this than Kai.

“Raniel Denson?” Bandar asked.

“You here on Griston’s behalf?” he said, still grimacing.

A kick to the balls made the man wheeze.

“I asked you a question,” Bandar said.

“Yes… Yes, that’s me. Hell, my name’s on the door. You didn’t need to—”

Bandar pressed his foot against the man’s balls and leaned in, the rifle touching his throat. “I’m going to ask you one question. If you don’t give me the answer I like, I’ll spray the remains of your head across this carpet. Nod if you understand.”

The man was crying at this point, and Kai wanted to reach out to Bandar, tell him to go easy, but the man nodded. “What do you want from me?”

“Drey,” Bandar said. “Lexis Drey. Where is she?”

He raised a shaking hand and pointed to the door from whence he had come. “In there… just be careful, she’s…”

Bandar nodded to Kai. “Go check it out. If he’s lying, tell me.”

Denson’s eyes grew wide. “Why would I fucking lie?”

“We’ll soon see.”

Kai did as Bandar requested. The room was cramped, filled with a surgeon’s bed and accompanying trays and wheeled cabinets. A silver tray with a variety of tools lay over the bare stomach of a woman attached to various pipes and tubing.

He shivered in the chilled air, pulled his jacket close to his body and approached the Lantesian woman. Even with her eyes closed, he knew right away it was Marella Maio. Ever since he had read the datapak, he’d had her face in his mind. She was beautiful with her short-cropped dark hair and delicate, pointed chin that seemed at odds with her full lips.

She had fine almost fur-like hair on her skin as the usual for her species.

She blinked once and then stared at him, their eyes locking.

“Hey,” she said, calm as the low tide. “Do I know you?”

She scrutinized him for a long moment and reached a hand up to his face. He made to step back, but something stopped him. Her hand was cold to the touch, but she was gentle and traced the line of his jaw. “I know you,” she said, her voice almost a whisper and the bridge of her nose wrinkling.

“I think you've got me confused with someone else—or the drugs you're on are affecting your judgment. Listen, we need to get you out of here. The Host is here for you."

“Me?”

“You are Marella Maio, right?”

“Yes," she said. "And you… you're…" Her forehead scrunched, and her eyebrows lowered as she strained to identify him. He wanted to explain who he was but remained quiet to see if she would confirm it herself. That would, after all, prove she knew his father.

“Go on,” he prompted. “Who am I?”

She remained silent for a few seconds. A dark shadow of a past memory flickered across her face before settling into complete recognition. “You’re Kendal’s son. You’re here for the Blackstar.”

“Yup, got that right,” Kai said.

“I expected someone from the GTU,” she said, “as soon as I heard about the Host attacks. They’ve been trying to trace your father and the Blackstar for years.”

A noise of struggle came from the other room, and she winced as she tried to sit up. She lay back before looking down at her bare stomach. That seemed to have dragged her out of compliance mode. "What's going on? Where's Dr. Denson?"

“Doctor? He’s no doctor. What did he do to you?”

“Got me free of the Circus, that’s what. Took out an ID chip…” she trailed off when Senaya stepped into the room.

“Is it her? Bandar’s going to shoot Denson…”

“Yeah,” Kai said, and then shouted out to Bandar, “It’s okay, he’s telling the truth. We’ve found her. She’s had some work done on her.”

A moment later Bandar pushed Denson into the room ahead of him, his rifle pushed into the guy’s back. Senaya and Kai moved around the bed to make room so that they were all now surrounding Maio.

“What have you done to her?” Bandar said.

Denson wiped his eyes with a trembling hand. “She wanted it,” he said. “Tell him, Lexis, tell him I didn’t mean you any harm.”

With that same level of calm, Marella looked up at Bandar. “It’s true. Dr. Denson helped remove an ID chip.”

“Why?” Senaya asked. “And what kind of ID chip?”

“A tracker—a brand,” Maio said, casting her eyes away as though shamed. “A group here called the Circus… offered me work. But it wasn’t the kind of work I would have accepted if I knew what they…”

“It’s okay,” Denson said, finding some backbone. “You don’t have to tell them anything.”

Bandar raised the rifle to the man and put his finger on the trigger.

“Put the guns down, and let Dr. Denson finish his procedure and I’ll be happy to tell you anything you want to know,” Maio said. “I knew eventually the Coalition would send for me. I just wish it was better timed.”

Bandar stepped back and lowered his rifle. “Go ahead. Make it quick. We don’t have much time.”

Denson stepped forward to the bed and slowly, methodically removed the tubes and pipes. He checked the stitches across her stomach and then with an electronic device scanned across her body. When it chirped, he smiled at her and said, “You’re all clear. No more trace of the Circus’s tech. You’ll be sore for a while, and there’s risk of infection, but as long as you don’t do anything crazy, you should be fine. They won’t find you now.”

He helped her off the bed, and she got dressed in a sleek one-piece black suit and fur-lined flight jacket.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she said, wincing as she stepped around the bed. She planted a kiss on his cheek and then stared at Bandar. “You didn’t have to hurt him,” she said. “I know who you are and why you’re here. I would have come willingly.”

“I couldn’t take that chance. You’d know that if you knew me.”

“Wait,” Senaya said. “You two do actually know each other or not?”

“We do,” they both said in unison.

Bandar explained, “We met once. I was returning from a battle with Kendal when we ran into her at a bar.”

“I was finishing up a semester of studies,” she added, smiling as though remembering their meeting fondly. Kai couldn’t imagine any meeting with Bandar to have been a pleasant one, but perhaps he wasn’t so bad back then.

“Please,” Denson said, “can you all just go? I don’t want any part of whatever this is.”

“Yes," Marella said. She looked over Kai's shoulder out of the window. "We ought to do just that. There's a group of Host soldiers coming this way, and I'm assuming they're after you lot."

“After you, actually,” Bandar said. “They’re here for the Blackstar.”

Marella just nodded. “Of course. Okay, Mr. Trace, do your thing and lead the way. Oh, I have a gyrocraft on the roof. We might do well to take that.” She then looked over her shoulder to Kai. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I’m sure you won’t mind, will you…?”

“The name's Kai. Kai Locke," he said. "And this is my friend Senaya. Now that we all know each other let's get the hell out of here."

“Nice to know one is considered important enough to be rescued by Kendal’s boys and their wee friend. The roof ladder is out here and to the left.”

Senaya gave Kai one of her looks and mouthed, “Wee friend?”

Kai shrugged and followed Bandar and Marella out of the room, gripping his P&G.

A quick glance out of the window showed a group of four soldiers scanning the street below with a device. One of them looked up, and Kai shifted back out of view. "They're coming," he said. "We better get a move on."

That spurred them on to race through the apartment, out of the rear door, and up the escape ladder to the roof. Marella was telling the truth: she did have a gyrocraft, and it would be a tight squeeze. The small vehicle was made for three Parsephites, who were traditionally slighter than humans.

Bandar took the pilot’s seat and Senaya the copilot, leaving Marella to sit almost on Kai’s lap in the back.

“Well, this is more comfortable than expected,” she said, giving Kai a quirky smile over her shoulder.

“How can you joke at a time like this?” he said, moving her so that she was straddling his thigh rather than sitting directly on his crotch. This would give him a better angle if he needed to shoot, he told himself.

“When you’ve escaped the lunatics in Circus, one tends to gain a new perspective of things.”

“It was that bad, eh?”

“Yeah… kinda.” She looked away, ending that line of questioning dead in its tracks.

“Strap in,” Bandar said as he fired up the engines and the rotors started to spin. “We’re going to have to go about this without ceremony.”

He wasn’t lying. The hatch they had just come through flew open, slamming onto the roof. Out stepped four Host soldiers, all human, all mean-looking with their dark green and gold uniforms, shaved heads, and combat visual overlays that gave their eyes a mirrored surface.

“Oh crap,” Senaya said. She twisted in her seat and raised her twin laser pistols.

With his right arm, Kai pushed Marella down and to the side as he aimed his P&G through the open window with his left.

“Go, go!” Kai shouted as he pulled the trigger.

A burst of fire blasted from the barrel. The recoil compensation could only do so much, and the powerful rifle hit back into his shoulder.

Senaya fired off two volleys of laser blasts.

Their fire forced the Host soldiers back into a defensive position behind a large air-condition exhaust. They split into teams of two on either side and returned fire as Bandar lifted the craft into the air.

Two rounds struck the bottom of the hull but didn’t penetrate.

“Armor upgrades,” Marella said, clinging onto Kai as they banked hard away from the building and down into the narrow alley between a pair of terraces.

The Host soldiers ran to the edge of the roof and aimed, but Bandar's flying brought them hard cover, and they were away safely.

When they had navigated the narrow alley, Bandar brought them higher but remained just a dozen meters or so from the flat surface of the warehouse district.

They were soon heading back to the Piercer, having already flown over the droid market.

The city streets were abandoned apart from a squadron of Parsephus military speeding toward the outskirts in their hover tanks.

In the far distance, one of the spires, engulfed in flame and smoke, came crashing down.

“We’re nearly there,” Bandar said, bringing the gyrocraft up and over the circular landing port building. Ships of all size were taking off, escaping from the ensuing chaos, and he had to navigate quickly to avoid a crash.

“Oh, come on,” Senaya said, slapping her hand against the dashboard.

“What is it?” Kai said.

Bandar brought the craft lower and circled their landing pad.

The Piercer, to Kai's horror, was nothing but a smoldering pile of twisted metal and debris. Kai's face flushed red, and his heart pounded against his chest. A sweat broke out on his neck. The rage threatened to boil over. He suddenly felt claustrophobic and wanted to push Marella off him, but there was no room.

“Alternative measures required,” Bandar said.

“And you better make it quick,” Marella added, pointing to the window on her side of the craft. A Host plane, a twin-cannoned in-atmosphere attack vessel, was quickly approaching, the heavy guns on its wings spinning up.

“They’re going to blast us out of the sky,” Kai said. “Bandar, get us low.”

“Thanks for the tip, kid, I would never have thought of that.”

Kai opened his mouth to protest the sarcasm but was cut short with the sound of cannon fire. A spray of rounds struck the side of the gyrocraft.

This time, the armor didn't withstand the assault. Alarms and flashing lights blared. Smoke billowed from the rear of the hull.

The engine, however, was still intact.

Bandar took immediate evasive action and brought the craft down toward a landing pad occupied by a fifty-meter-long P-class Jettech cruiser. The chromed sleek arrow reeked of wealth and opulence. Still, it wasn’t beyond providing cover.

Bandar navigated the small craft between the cruiser and the landing terminal, walloping the deck. They skidded a few meters before coming to an abrupt stop.

Kai's head crashed against the roof. He crushed Marella into the window.

Senaya screamed but remained in place, the straps on her copilot's seat holding her tight. Bandar punched a flashing red button on the dashboard, and the doors exploded away in a shower of sparks.

“Get out and head for the transfer tunnel,” Bandar yelled, rolling out of the craft onto the landing pad and raising his rifle to the sky. “I’ll cover.”

Above them, the Host plane flew overhead and started to bank back around for another attack. Senaya sprinted for the transparent tube to the left of the cruiser’s landing pad. It had been abandoned and not fully docked, allowing for their entry.

Kai slowed to help Marella as she struggled with her newly patched stomach. “Come on, keep going,” he said, urging her on as the Host ship finished its banking maneuver and headed right toward them.

Bandar opened fire and yelled for them to get to the tunnel for cover.

They wasted no time and managed to get inside before the Host ship flew overhead, twin lines of cannon fire cutting ditches across the landing pad. Bandar remained out there, crouched between the lines, smoke all around him.

He spun round and fired his rifle until he had no rounds left. One of the Host's engines flamed, and black smoke poured out. Yet it quickly corrected for the loss and started its banking maneuver once more.

“Bandar,” Kai yelled once they were safely inside, “get over here.”

The older man looked at Kai, then back to the plane. “Keep Maio safe and find the Blackstar,” he shouted back and sprinted to the gyrocraft.

“Don’t be stupid. That thing doesn’t even have any weapons.”

Bandar wasn’t listening. He jumped into the pilot seat and rose into the air as the Host ship completed its return circuit.

Kai’s stomach tightened as he realized what the old fool was going to do. He opened a channel to Bandar, using their near-field comm system. “You don’t have to do this. We need you down here with us.”

“Maio’s too important,” Bandar replied amid the roaring of wind and rotors through the broken window. “I’ll create a diversion. Get on the Jettech cruiser and make the subspace jump before the Host sends reinforcements. Maio knows where to start the search; you just need to get it out of her.”

“But… what about—”

“Been good knowing you, kid. Stay sharp; the Coalition needs you.”

With that, the comm channel cut out and Bandar navigated the gyrocraft into the Host ship’s current vector.

Chapter 17

Kai led Senaya and Maio across the strip to the Jettech cruiser. They clambered up the steel steps to the airlock and waited as Senaya pulled a hacking device from one of her many pockets to break the security and gain access to the ship’s AI.

“It’s going to take about a minute,” Senaya said. “Encryption is pretty standard; there’s just a lot of it.”

“Don’t rush,” Kai said. “Just focus on getting it done right.”

It was easy for him to say; he wasn’t the one creating this opportunity for them.

Less than a hundred meters above them, Bandar was weaving the gyrocraft in wide sweeping motions, avoiding most of the Host plane’s belching cannon fire.

One of the rounds struck the top of the cruiser but thankfully sparked harmlessly off the armored chromed shell.

“Oh crap, he’s actually going to do it,” Kai said.

Maio put her arm around his shoulder and squeezed as they watched Bandar and the Host plane get inevitably closer.

Kai turned away and looked into Marella’s eyes. She was focused on the sky.

A second later a small explosion reverberated around the port.

Marella closed her eyes and her body tensed. She hugged Kai and said in his ear, “He… did it.”

Debris crashed to the ground, and the air got thick with smoke. Senaya's filters detected the change and altered its filtration system, cutting out the worst of it, but Kai could taste it in the back of his throat.

A hush descended. Senaya looked up at him, shock written on her delicate features.

Perhaps like him, she thought Bandar would do something clever and survive to fight another day. The wreckage behind them told them otherwise.

Kai felt the same flood of emotion as he did with Tallis. That seemed so long ago now. An entirely different era, a different life. He’d only known Bandar for a handful of days and, despite not particularly liking the guy in that time, had come to respect him so that this loss now cut more keenly than he would have imagined.

He squirmed out of Marella’s embrace and slammed the butt of his rifle against the shell of the cruiser once, twice, a dozen times. As many times as it would take for him to release the rage that bubbled up inside him.

A hand gently gripped his wrist—Senaya’s.

“We’ve got access,” she said calmly. “Let’s do what Bandar told us to do. We can’t waste the opportunity that he created for us.”

Sweat dripped from Kai's face, and his hands trembled. He lowered the rifle and focused on Senaya. She was right, of course.

“This whole situation is getting more and more messed up. I was getting closer to my father. Bandar, he…” Kai dropped his head, ashamed of his own selfishness of losing a clue to his father. Bandar was more than that; he had saved their asses a number of times, and despite his reputation, Kai ultimately knew there was some good in him.

Marella stood behind Senaya and said, “It’s war, Kai… but we can play a role. If we leave now, I’ll tell you what you want to know about your father and the Blackstar.”

“Bandar said you knew where to start the search.”

“Yes, I know how to get to the last place anyone saw him. Let’s just get out of here while we can. I’ll explain more once we’re safe.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone sooner?”

She stared into his eyes for what seemed like an eternity. “Because up until a few days ago, I didn’t even know I was Marella Maio. I’ll explain more later.”

In the distance, beyond the rising smoke, two dark shapes appeared.

The Host had sent reinforcements.

“Let’s do this, then,” Kai said.

Senaya slapped him on the arm and gave him a determined smile. She led them through the airlock and into the cruiser.

Kai’s head was spinning. His pulse sounded loud in his ears, but he composed himself, focusing on the luxury interior of the Jettech ship.

He and Marella quickly followed Senaya through the plush cream-walled corridor until they came to a carpeted cockpit with two-seventy-degree surround holoscreens and heavily cushioned seats. The place was more like a spa than a ship.

“Control,” Senaya said as she gestured commands on the holodesk at the front of the oval-shaped cockpit. She sat in the chair and leaned forward, manipulating the ship’s controls.

“Identify,” the AI said.

“Code three-eight-bee-seven-hash-nine, override." Her words translated through her hacking device, providing the necessary workaround of the system's defenses.

The screens switched on, and Kai saw the Host ships approaching from southwest of their position. They were just half a minute away from striking distance.

“Senaya, we need to get out of here, right now,” he said.

“I’m working on it.”

Marella collapsed into one of the chairs, her face glossy with sweat, the stress and effort of an escape post-surgery clearly affecting her. Hell, Kai felt like crap, and he hadn't had a backstreet surgeon open him up.

“Kai, take the pilot’s seat. I’ll need you to engage the jump drive,” Senaya said. “The Host ships are trying to block us. Their tech is more sophisticated than I would have thought.”

“They’re going to stop us?”

“Not if I can help it. I’ll have to overclock the ship’s processors to run my defense software, though. Means more power diverted from shield and weapons systems.”

“Do it.”

Marella strapped herself into what would have been designated as the second in command’s chair. “We need to travel to Oberus,” she said. “That’s the last place I saw your father.”

Kai had a thousand questions, but with time running out, that was not a luxury he could afford. It was a complete gamble; he didn't know this woman any more than the brief he had read. For all he knew, she could be sending them right into the heart of Host-controlled territory. But if he didn't act, they'd be destroyed right here, and Bandar's sacrifice would be worth nothing.

“Fine, let’s do it. Give me the coordinates,” he said.

“Subspace drives ready to use in ten seconds," Senaya said. "After that, who knows? The Host has some serious hackers on the line."

Marella narrated the string of numbers to Oberus’s location as Kai acquainted himself with the ship’s OS. It wasn’t too different from what he was used to. Jettech systems were ubiquitous across Coalition spacecraft. This one was just more fully featured than the operating systems he’d previously used. He navigated through the subsystems, gesturing across the holographic cube spinning on its pedestal in front of his seat.

The Host ships were imminent any second now.

He activated the jump drive initiation while he still could.

“Subspace engines online,” the AI said. “Preparing for standing jump. All occupants to remain seated until otherwise noted.” It then counted down from five.

“Strap in,” Kai said as he closed the clasps around his body.

The ship shook violently as the engines roared to life, manipulating and colliding particles, building the energy required. Kai had never made a subspace jump from a standing position within an atmosphere before. He’d heard bad things about the process, but this cruiser was equipped for such a maneuver. At least, he hoped it had decent dampening protocols installed.

“Subspace pre-routine complete,” the AI said. “Jump imminent.”

A red triangle surrounding the two Host ships flashed. Half a dozen rockets blasted from beneath their wings, smoke trails pluming in the sky as they sought their target.

Senaya removed her hacking device and swiped a three-finger gesture across her control panel. She looked over her shoulder to Kai and started to say something. Her lips were moving, but there was no sound. Just a whistling noise.

The ship seemed to elongate in the silence.

A force pushed against Kai’s chest so hard he thought his breastbone would give against the compression. He squeezed his eyes shut and curled his fingers around the armrests. Then everything went black as the whistling noise grew louder and so shrill Kai thought his head would explode with the pressure.

And then, as soon as it had come, it dissipated.

He lurched forward, coughing and spluttering.

Marella and Senaya were both slumped forward in their seats, the straps holding them up. They were both still, and he couldn't tell if they were unconscious or dead.

Blood dripped from his nostrils.

He wiped it away with the back of his hand and looked up at the screens. The dizzying black and silver swirl of subspace told him that they had succeeded in their escape.

But at what cost?

Was Bandar’s life worth it?

Chapter 18

Brenna sat up on her cot. She sensed a day had probably passed since her last encounter with Sule. They’d given her a tray of food and a flask of water since then. The ship’s engine drone had changed subtly, indicating a course correction.

The cell was still in darkness. She had come to miss Lutes's company—or any company at all. She had spent the last few hours thinking of Kai, wondering how he was getting on and whether he had found either the Blackstar or his father yet.

She wondered about Lopek. Although Kendal’s appearance to her earlier was a hologram, his words still reverberated around her mind.

Was Lopek a traitor? Had he helped the shrain infiltrate the Coalition worlds?

There was nothing to suggest any of this was true. And it was a classic doubt-inducement technique, but still… false or not, that was the cruel thing about the method: once the suggestion was made, the human subconscious worked on it as though it were a problem, making it real, solid.

Intellectually, she knew it to be unlikely. But the doubt was there now.

“Bastards,” she spat into the darkness.

She sat back down and focused on better times. A time before she cared whether Kai was her real son or not. Back then, it didn’t matter. He was the center of their family, the glue that kept them all together.

That he wasn’t her biological son mattered little. If anything, because of that she loved him even more. He was more special than he could ever imagine…

Her thoughts were cut short. The door to her cell opened. Light flooded in and a shrain she hadn’t seen before stood in the doorway, its male form silhouetted. He held out a tray.

Before even Brenna knew what she was doing, she sprang forward, smashing the tray up and into the shrain’s face.

It stumbled back, arms flailing.

Brenna grabbed the loose tray and smashed its edge against the shrain’s nose once, twice, three times until blood covered its face.

It growled and wiped the blood from its eyes before trying to claw at Brenna.

Her body and mind had slipped fully into a frenzied kill mode as she let out all her pent-up rage, slapping aside its groping hands. She kicked viciously at the creature’s knees until she heard a crack.

The shrain screamed and collapsed to the floor.

Brenna kicked it hard in the face with her shin, breaking its jaw and forcing it onto its back. She yelled with fury and continued to stomp on its face, the bones breaking beneath her attack until it moved no more.

Blood covered her foot, the walls, the floor, and the still remains of the shrain.

Her lungs burned with the exertion. Her heart thudded hard against her chest, and her mind began to refocus. The shrain had a security pass attached to a clip on its pocket, which she grabbed along with its communications badge attached to the lapel of its blood-soaked jacket.

She thought of the engineer she had seen on her way back to her cell and headed off down the corridor, following the route she’d memorized.

A moment later she found the door and used the security pass to gain entry.

The narrow passageway was much darker than the main corridor. Pipes and conduits ran overhead. Steam and the scent of grease wafted out on warm air from somewhere deeper in the ship. This was clearly a maintenance access.

She stepped forward slowly, heading further into the ship’s innards.

Tracing the wiring and conduits, she came to a hub attached to the wall.

Inside was a crystal network—the ship’s comms unit.

Using all her experience, she reprogrammed the signal of the badge she had taken from the shrain and hijacked the ship’s transmitters to contact Lopek’s off-grid, secure emergency channel, transferring her unique ID code that would encrypt the two-way communication.

Amid the subspace interference, a crackling voice came from the badge: Lopek.

“Where are you, Agent?” he barked. “We’ve been trying to contact you for—”

“I don’t have much time,” she said. “I’m transferring a trace. I’m on a shrain ship. I was hijacked en route. You need to send someone for me.”

“Signal received,” he said before going quiet for a moment. She guessed he was checking the coordinates and direction of subspace travel.

“Agent, we’ve got a lock. We’re sending help, but it’ll take about fifteen hours to get to you. Will you make it until then?”

“Yes,” she said, not entirely sure that would be the case, but there was little else she could do right now. Even if she could get to her ship, she wouldn’t be able to just fly directly into a subspace route; she’d be crushed immediately by the sudden change in gravitational forces.

“Listen, things have escalated considerably,” Lopek said.

Brenna turned the volume down on the badge and brought it up to her ear while she squeezed herself into a dark nook between the pipework. She was out of sight as long as no one specifically looked behind that particular section of wall.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“We have a dozen battlefronts active on the edge of the quadrant. We’re now officially at war. Resources are being diverted as I speak, and we’re on our way to a Host strategic center on one of our planets. The bastards have been transmitting from there for over a year right under our noses.”

“No doubt with the support of the shrain. Who knows how many of them there are and how many of the Coalition planets they’ve spread to.”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Lopek said. Brenna took confidence from his firm statement. Listening to him speak diminished any doubt she had that he was helping the Host and the shrain. Lopek was no traitor.

“Have you heard from Kai?” she asked.

“We received a report a few hours ago. He’s got Maio and is heading to an undisclosed planet he says Maio and Kendal visited. It’s there he believes he’ll find out what happened to Kendal. I have to admit, I doubted he’d be able to do this.”

“My boy is more capable than anyone would believe.”

“It’s looking that way. Let’s just hope he finds the Blackstar soon. This war is going to test us to the limit.”

Footsteps echoed down the passageway.

“I’ve got to go. Someone’s coming.”

“Stay safe and don’t do anything stupid. We’re coming for you.”

“Be quick about it.”

“We’re coming as fast as we can. In the meantime, transmit anything you know about the ship. Send us details of the hijacking, anything that will be useful. Good luck, Agent.”

With that, the comm line went silent. Brenna placed the comm badge in her pocket and eased herself further into the tight space, contorting her body over and under pipes until she was so deep into the ship's arteries that she could no longer see the light from the passage.

Her body shook as she lay on the floor beneath a one-meter-wide pipe. The aftereffects of her brutal attack and relief of contacting Lopek had taken it out of her. Her training kept her mind focused, but her body protested.

She needed to rest out of subspace, but for now, she'd have to just focus and wait. All hell would break loose when the Coalition intercepted the shrain ship. She would have to be ready to fight.

Closing her eyes, Brenna willed herself to relax, comforted to know that Kai was alive and on Kendal’s trail. Despite the war now under way, she had confidence that he would succeed.

However, if he failed…

She tried not to think about that. Instead, she reverted to her training and ran as many potential scenarios of her rescue as she could, visualizing how she would tackle each one.

Sweat pooled on her forehead. The pipe a few inches above was cascading warmth into the claustrophobic space. It wasn’t ideal, but she couldn’t risk trying to find somewhere more suitable to hide. No, here she would stay and wait, and then she would act when the time came.

Chapter 19

Over a day of deep sleep later, Kai woke up in his bunk, feeling refreshed.

The ship’s complement of nanite health recovery modules helped ease his aches and pains. Sadly, even they couldn’t do anything to help with the shock of losing Bandar. His actions to allow Kai, Marella, and Senaya to escape proved that the old rogue was more than just his reputation.

Kai thought back to the photos he’d seen of his father and Bandar celebrating their victory in some battle with the Host. It appeared, all along, that Bandar Trace was more than just someone to be feared; he was a legitimate hero who had earned all the respect in the world.

Kai certainly appreciated what he had done.

And he was determined not to let him down now.

He had sent a message to Lopek with a report of what had happened and a request for an update of his mother and the situation with the Host. The reply still rattled around in his head. Although it was the written word and therefore a little difficult to read someone’s emotional state, it still felt cold to him in light of what had happened. It read:

It’s imperative you reach Oberus and continue your search for the Blackstar. Trace's sacrifice will be remembered, but it's not the time to let sentimentality divert your attentions. Your mother is safe and on a classified mission. I'll have an update for you in due course. The war is now officially started. Three fronts have opened up across the Lasides Quadrant peace zone.

The Host’s forces are significantly larger than our intelligence had us believe. Capsis Prime is under threat; a shrain agent was recently apprehended. The fear is our defensive capabilities have been compromised. The severity of which is currently being ascertained. Host ships have entered Capsis space.

It is crucial, Kai, that you succeed in your mission. If the Blackstar is as powerful as we believe it is, you can turn the tide and provide us with the power we need to win this war. Without it… we can only hope our superior strategic training will stand up to the Host’s greater numbers and alliance with the shrain.

Report in with me as soon as you have anything concrete.

— Captain Lopek

The odds seemed against the Coalition, but one thing Kai had learned from his racing days was that a plan only lasted as long as the first ship got shunted out of the track. Sure, it looked like the Host had got the jump on the Coalition, but there was a long way to go yet.

He had the tetrahedron in his pocket, and for some unknown reason that gave him an inner confidence. It didn’t mean he would find the Blackstar, and even if he did, it didn’t mean they’d be able to use the Navigator technology to win the war. But there was something about having an object that ancient on his person that made him sense he could yet have an effect on the outcome.

What that would be, he didn’t know.

He was no soldier like Bandar or his father, and he was no agent like his mother.

But perhaps that was to his advantage.

Either way, he was clearheaded in what he had to do, even if he didn’t know exactly how to go about it. Like everything in his life up until now, he’d just have to wing it and figure it out as he went.

It had gotten him this far.

It had gotten him Marella Maio and a luxury cruiser to take them to his father’s last known location. He felt it in his guts that he was getting closer.

Kai left his bunk and traveled along the corridor to the recovery bay, experiencing none of the usual side effects of subspace travel. The ship’s superior tech provided outstanding dampening, as he had hoped.

The door to the recovery bay opened and he stepped inside.

A calming diffused light illuminated cream panels along the walls of the five-meter-square room. The hygienically active polymer floor was warm beneath his feet.

Marella and Senaya were sitting in comfy-looking leather armchairs. Two steaming cups of coffee sat on a glass table between the chairs.

“Hey, you're up," Senaya said, dashing over to him and throwing her arms around him. He hugged her back for the first time in a while and smiled. He let her go, and she stepped back. "It's good to see you again. We thought you might never wake up," she said.

He shrugged. “I guess the nanites needed time to do their thing. How are you two doing?”

“I’m good,” Senaya said. “The ship is ridiculously luxurious. It’s even got laundry services.”

Her familiar multi-pocketed outfit did look a lot cleaner than normal, and she no longer smelled of machine oil and grease.

“And you?” Kai said, looking over to Marella. “How’s the…” He gestured to her stomach.

“Almost healed,” she said, avoiding his gaze, her bashfulness surprising him.

“Come and sit and have some coffee,” Senaya said, grabbing his arm and dragging him to the chairs. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. We’ve been strategizing. Bandar’s sacrifice can’t be wasted, right?”

“Indeed," Kai said, taking a cup of coffee and inhaling its bitter scent. He looked over the rim at Marella, and she finally caught his eye, giving him a kind of half smile. "But first, before we get to that, let's have a chat. I've got questions."

Marella must have sensed he was talking about her. She sat back, folded her hands in her lap and nodded. “Go on, ask me anything,” she said. “Then I have some questions for you two.”

“That’s only fair,” Senaya said. “It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind.” And then to Kai, “We’ve only been awake for a few hours, so we haven’t really got into anything heavy. We thought we ought to explore the ship first and see what we’ve got access to.”

“That's good thinking," Kai said after downing half the mug of coffee and relaxing back into his chair. "Okay, Marella, first of all, we know a little about you from your time with my father. Captain Lopek gave us an intel file, but beyond that, I guess I just want to know what it is that you know about the Navigators and how you ended up traveling with my father."

She leaned forward and took a breath. “Well, it all started about eight years ago when I completed my doctorate in space history. By then I was a bona fide expert on what we knew about the Navigators. In truth, it’s not a great deal more than what the general public knows; we’ve very little to go on beyond a handful of artifacts and written documents.”

Senaya asked, “So it’s true that the Navigators were the ones who created the barrier to the two inner galactic rings of planets and were responsible for our subspace tech?”

“Yeah, that’s true. Or at the very least is the main theory. There’s little to suggest otherwise.”

“Okay,” Kai said, now conscious of the tetrahedron in his pocket but wanting to question Marella first before showing it to her. “So you finish your studies, you’re regarded as an expert and then… my father. How’d that happen? How’d this discovery of the Blackstar’s existence come about?”

“Your father found a Navigator artifact after a battle on a distant moon out near the veil,” Marella said. “He didn’t know it was such a thing at the time. It was only when I was on my travels to the same moon to research some ruins there that he realized.”

“These ruins,” Senaya said, “were they Navigator ruins?”

Marella shook her head. "That was a bust, unfortunately. After a few days, I identified it with an old race belonging to that system. Their lack of historical evidence made it more mysterious than it ultimately turned out to be."

“So this object,” Kai said, “what did it look like?”

“A small three-sided pyramid. Your father thought it was just some random object, perhaps even part of a child’s game. A counter or a token. But one night, we were talking in a bar—he was helping to provide security to the dig, that’s how we first met—the conversation turned to the Navigators, and we did what everyone does after drinks.”

“Sleep with each other?” Senaya said, shocked.

Marella gasped. “No… I meant we speculated about the Navigators.” She looked away for a moment, but then returned her gaze to Kai. “I want to make it absolutely clear that I had no relationship other than a professional one with your father, Kai.”

“I believe you, but that’s really none of my business,” he said. “Go on… you were speculating, and then what happened?”

“Well, Kendal had the object in his hand, just fiddling with it absentmindedly as we talked and drank the night away when the thing flashed. Symbols appeared on the sides."

“And did it stay that way?” Kai said, inching forward on his chair.

“No, as soon as we saw them, they faded to black. But in that short time, I was convinced I recognized some of the symbols. Later, we managed to make them appear again, and I cross-referenced them with my research. It was undeniable. What we had was a Navigator object, but not only that, we knew that it was a key to something much larger."

“The Blackstar?” Kai asked.

“Yes. In the same place, we also found a fragment of a Navigator data cache that ultimately confirmed it. There was a partial schematic of the Blackstar, and the little pyramid was a key to access it. There was also a set of coordinates."

“To our current destination?”

“Yeah, a moon known to the Coalition as Oberus. A nothing rock with almost nothing of interest on it at all, apart from one thing: an ancient Navigator facility.”

“There’s one more thing,” Kai said, fishing into his pocket and pulling out the tetrahedron. “I have the artifact.”

Marella smiled, and a focused eagerness sharpened her eyes. "Your father got it to you! That's great news. I think this is going to work out well."

Chapter 20

Exactly ten hours later, Kai, Senaya, and Marella were forced back in their respective seats as their cruiser dropped out of subspace travel.

The ship’s internal dampening technology created a field around the vessel, reducing the often-jarring experience of subspace exit, but the momentum still hit Kai hard, squeezing his internal organs and crushing the air from his lungs.

A moment passed; Kai lurched forward, coughing, spluttering, and heaving for breath. To his right, Senaya was doing the same. Behind them, Marella gripped her stomach and grimaced.

“Are you okay?” Kai called out.

She nodded while keeping her eyes shut against obvious discomfort.

“Approaching destination,” the ship’s AI blurted out, the sound echoing around the expansive, luxurious cockpit.

“On screen,” Senaya said between coughs.

A curved screen appeared on the cream-colored wall at the front of the cockpit. Kai looked up and took in the dull moon of Oberus. It hung in orbit around a swirling gas giant without an official designation. The system’s sun was classified as a white dwarf, but like its orbiting gas giant, it too had no official name.

“Has this ship got planetary scanners?” Kai asked Senaya.

“Yeah,” she said, sliding her seat forward so that she was more easily able to manipulate the holographic console. “I saw mention of it in the equipment inventory when I was snooping around. I’ll stabilize our approach first and then get the scans up and running.”

“I can tell you that it’s pretty warm down there,” Marella said. She stood from her seat and stretched her arms above her head, and something in her neck clicked. “That’s better.”

“The stomach staples holding up?” Kai asked.

“Yeah, seems so. My whole body is protesting, but it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.” She smiled at Kai, a gesture of reassurance that he appreciated. He didn’t need something else to worry about as he followed in his father’s footsteps.

“Scanners up and running,” Senaya said. “Should have a report in a few moments.”

“Thanks, Sen. Marella, what’s the atmosphere like? Gravity?”

“Gravity is a little higher than Capsis Prime—makes it tiring to walk but nothing too strenuous. The atmosphere is thin but not toxic. The oxygen levels are relatively even, but we had air tanks when we visited anyway just to be safe.”

The screen scrolled a list of findings as the indistinct brown rock of the moon grew larger on the video feed. A countdown timer indicated they would enter the atmosphere within a few standard minutes.

“Looks pretty barren and uninteresting from the data,” Senaya said. “All as Marella said. The temp is a bit warm, but nothing worse than what we’re used to during a Zarundan summer.”

“Water? Signs of life?” Kai asked.

“There’s a water table, some bodies of water on the south pole, and precipitation in areas around the moon.”

“Great, we come all this way to find that it’s raining.”

“Same as when I was here,” Marella said. “Made the going a bit tricky with the mud; it gets real slippery in places. The dirt clings to the rocks like mucus.”

“You’re really selling it to me,” Kai said. “No wonder this crappy place has gone mostly unknown for all this time. What about life-forms? With an atmosphere, suitable temperatures, and water, there must be life there, right?”

“Yeah,” Marella said. The shade crossed her face again as though recalling some terrible previous time.

“Don’t tell me there are giant spiders,” Senaya said. “I hate spiders.”

Marella laughed. “No, nothing as bad as that. Just some small predatory mammals with bad tempers and some, well, squid-like things in the cave pools. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Whenever someone says that, it often turns out to be the exact opposite,” Senaya said. “I’m taking as much weaponry as I can carry just to be on the safe side.”

“Ditto that,” Kai said. “I’m beyond taking anything for granted anymore. We go expecting the worst. And given we’re landing shortly, I suggest we get tooled, tanked, and suited up right away.”

* * *

Marella had provided Kai with a rough map of the area where she had last seen his father. Given the terrain, the closest they could land was a half-hour trek away. With three hours left of its day cycle, this would give them plenty of time to explore before having to turn back.

Despite the ship being luxurious in almost every aspect, it didn’t have an accompanying ground vehicle, requiring them to traverse on foot.

It wasn’t a huge issue; their suits were light and easy to maneuver about in, and their air tanks were good for more than three hours as they mixed the supply with the surrounding air.

An internal communication network meant they could remain in touch even if they got separated. Kai’s HUD overlaid the map as well as the ship’s, Senaya’s, and Marella’s locations. If one of them got separated, as long as their transceiver wasn’t damaged, he’d be able to find them and vice versa.

“Testing,” Kai said as he stepped off the ramp and onto the moon’s rocky surface. “Can you guys hear me okay?”

“Sure can,” Senaya said, her voice filling his helmet in full high-definition sound.

“Yeah, I can hear you both okay,” Marella said. “You getting me?”

Kai confirmed and then made sure his P&G was fully loaded. A backup pistol was securely in a hip holster. An electrified extendable baton hung on his left to counter the weight and provide him with a melee option if it came to it. “Sen, your weapons ready to go?”

“Always. Just point out what I need to shoot, and I'll pull the triggers."

“Marella? You okay with that rifle?”

“I might be a science historian, but life on Parsephus gave me some new skills. You don’t have to worry about me. I know my way around a Kanellikof assault rifle. But let’s be careful; we don’t need to shoot everything that moves. Most things here are harmless to us.”

“Most?” Senaya said, joining Kai.

Marella stepped to the other side and smiled at them both. “We were only here for a short while, so I can’t rule out everything. What we saw was nothing to worry about—but who knows what’s out there really?”

“Okay, enough of the scare stories,” Kai said. “Let’s move. I’ll take the lead. Marella, you advise me if I start to head in the wrong direction or something.”

“Will do.”

"Sen, can you instruct the AI to raise the ramp and keep its planetary drive operational. Oh, and change the security codes in the unlikely event there's someone here who wants a simple way off the surface."

Kai couldn’t take any chances; not when he had come this far.

“I’m on it, Kai,” Senaya said before communicating with their ship’s AI.

Using the HUD map for directions, they set out. Kai led while Senaya and Marella stayed close by, chatting softly about their observations.

Kai, however, remained focused. He studied the geography as he walked, looking at the ground and on the tops of rocks to see if he could spot a glove or footprint that might have belonged to his father.

Ten minutes into the trek, rain dripped down his face mask, activating the automatic wiper and the internal heating element to prevent fogging. At least it brought the temperature down, so it wasn’t so stifling.

“Look at that,” Senaya said, pointing ahead of them. “Above that mountain, looks like dark green and blue phantoms twisting in the sky.”

“We saw those last time,” Marella said. “Kendal mentioned that they were just electrical interactions with the magnetic field around the moon.”

“It’s not quite that,” Senaya said.

Kai stopped and looked at her. “What is it, then? Anything to be concerned about?”

Senaya shrugged. “I doubt it, but that twisting motion and the fact that it’s very narrow tells me that the source isn’t from the planet’s natural magnetic field; the poles aren’t located there. The field is coming from that mountain or somewhere close to it.”

Kai turned to Marella. “Is that where you lost Kendal?”

“A little further beyond it, yes. Near a cave system. We’ll see the ruins shortly, and I’ll be able to pinpoint the area more accurately.”

“Okay, let’s carry on, then,” Kai said, striding forward, P&G in hand as he went.

The rain did make the going slower than he expected, and Marella was right: every step was fraught with danger of slipping. The rocky surface refused to give them a flat path to their destination, necessitating much slow climbing over boulders, hills, and the traversing of shallow gulches.

Apart from some sludge-green algae and lichen, Kai saw no real flora to speak of. If creatures did inhabit this place, he couldn’t see a source of food for them. He hadn’t even seen any worms or other signs of life in the mud.

“Why anyone would want to build on this crap-hole is beyond me,” Senaya said, backing up Kai’s thinking as he helped her up and over a jagged rock.

Marella stopped and wheezed. Kai and Senaya turned to help her, but she waved them on. “I’m okay,” she said. “Just catching my breath. As for why anyone would build here, I figured from the ruins that this was the nearest habitable moon or planet for an old race to travel to. A race that didn’t have subspace technology. If they didn’t have a wide choice of places to expand to—and there’s very little around here for at least a couple of light-years that would support life—then I suppose they tried to make the best of it. We’re not far actually from the ruins where I split from Kendal. They’re just over the hill.”

Kai and the others stashed their weapons in their suits’ holsters and approached the incline.

Behind the hill, the mountain loomed, and somewhere off to the east, a river flowed out into one of the moon’s seas. Kai zoomed into the mountain’s summit with his helmet’s binocular function and saw how the rain was gathering and racing down channels carved over the centuries into the rock.

A yearning cry called out somewhere off to the right, echoing through a valley cut between two cliffs. Another call, higher-pitched, seemed to answer it, and back and forth they went.

Kai shivered at the sound but continued, climbing a thirty-foot-high rock face, grabbing on to outcrops for handholds and using the cracked surface for footholds.

When at the top, he turned and reached down to heave Senaya and then Marella up and over the edge. All three of them turned to their new view: the ruins.

A dozen or so small dark creatures sat on the top of one particular column of carved stone. “Looks like we’ve finally found signs of life,” Kai said.

“Birds?” Senaya asked.

“I didn’t see any when I was here,” Marella added as she stepped to Kai’s side.

One of the creatures turned to another, opened its beak, widened its wings, and crowed. They sounded off to and fro, flapping their wings at each other for a few moments before they stopped for a moment and then, together, flew off toward the mountain looming behind the collection of ruins.

“Okay, this would be a good time for you to lead us to where you and my father split up," Kai said as he unholstered his P&G and switched off the safety via the internal control system of his suit.

“Sure, it’s just up here.” Marella indicated to a point within the ruins and led the way slowly across the rocks.

They drew closer, scaring the cawing, birdlike creatures away.

The sunlight was dimming. Kai switched on the suit’s external lights, bathing the old ruins in artificial luminescence.

The ancient formations stretched up into the sky like broken fingers reaching toward something greater than them for mercy. Column structures ten feet wide and straight as a laser circled silver rocks shaped into unfamiliar forms.

As interesting as these archeological phenomena were, it was the absence of any inhabitants that grabbed Kai’s attention: the very clear and apparently intended path that led through the center of the ruins. Straight as a laser beam on the muddy and rocky ground, the road led up an incline until it reached a stone archway. Within that archway was a door.

“That’s where your father and I parted ways,” Marella said.

Chapter 21

Brenna woke with a start. At first, she couldn’t remember where she was; the space she had rested in was tight and hot and in complete darkness. Her head struck something solid when she tried to sit up.

Lights blurred her vision, and she held her breath, willing the sudden burst of pain to dissipate. Her mind swam with the familiar subspace feeling, but when a massive explosion roared all around her, the equally familiar sense of coming out of subspace washed over her, bringing with it the clarity of where she was and what was happening.

Shrain, she thought… she was on a shrain ship, and the booming sounds of rending metal and explosions told her that it was under attack, presumably by Lopek’s ship.

Brenna eased herself out of the tight space, negotiating the maze of pipework and ducting until she came to the access panel. Through the narrow gap, she saw a dozen or so engineers and shrain running past toward the center of the ship: the opposite side from where the cells were located.

A swirling red light bathed the otherwise monochrome corridor with vibrant color, reminding her of the shrain she had killed to get here. Her hands and shins were still sore from the attack.

There was little time to analyze her memories. Lopek and his crew had done their bit; now she had to help them. Looking around the maintenance room, she found a large wrench and tested it in her hand; it’d make a formidable bludgeoning weapon.

Armed and focused, Brenna stepped out into the empty corridor and stumbled her way back toward the cells. The shrain she had killed earlier had been taken away, but his blood had stained the floor.

With a small smile of satisfaction, she moved on past the cells and followed the corridor, twisting and turning, until, finally, she came to an ops room. Inside were two shrain working at a pair of transparent freestanding consoles.

A large video screen to the back of the darkened room showed a high-resolution image of a Coalition ship: the Spearhead. It was Lopek’s heavily armed destroyer. For a brief moment, as she stood outside the transparent doors, watching the Coalition ship and its support fighters unload their formidable ordnance against the shrain ship, she felt a swell of gratitude that Lopek would risk one of the best Coalition ships to rescue her.

Her hesitation was cut short with another loud blast.

The hull of the shrain ship roared in protest of the attack, the deafening sound traveling through the ship’s infrastructure like waves on a pond.

A burst of flame and black smoke came from the end of the corridor, and her chest tightened at the sight of a squad of Coalition Special Forces.

Half a dozen of them, fully armored in the best tech the Coalition could afford, turned to face her in unison. They wore the standard blue and gray uniforms, formfitting graphite-weaved materials. Their helmets were the new custom-fit, hyper-thin types, following the contours of the wearer’s skull as well as their own scalp. Each member carried the standard-issue CoreArm multipurpose rifle.

Brenna raised her hands and touched her thumbs to her pinky fingers: the signal to indicate she was with the Coalition. The woman at the front of the group reciprocated by sharply dipping the gun barrel of her rifle toward the ground twice.

Directly to Brenna’s left, the two shrain within the operations room looked up from their consoles and saw her. They both withdrew a pistol holstered to their hips and rushed toward the doors.

“Two enemies coming on my left,” Brenna said while quickly stepping back away from the doors.

The Special Forces woman nodded curtly, subvocalized an order, and crouched to a knee. The two men next to her did the same while the three other members remained standing.

The two shrain burst from the doors. They turned to Brenna and raised their pistols. Brenna sidestepped around the corner as the Coalition squad opened fire. It was just a short burst, barely three rounds each.

When she poked her head back around the corner, the two shrain were obliterated, their bodily remains spread up the sides of the corridor.

“Agent Locke?” the lead woman called out once the reverberations of the gunfire had ceased.

“That’s me,” Brenna said. She made to move toward the squad, to safety, but the first woman and her team remained in fighting formation with their rifles up. Brenna halted.

“ID pass,” the woman ordered.

“Glasshouse,” Brenna replied after a moment. Her mind was fuzzy, and she had to think of the most recent password given to her by Lopek. But even that didn’t seem enough. A flash from the woman’s eye snapped a photograph of Brenna. A few seconds later, presumably after the security servers had confirmed her identity, the woman subvocalized an order to her squad.

As one they aimed their rifles to the floor. The woman stood and approached. She held out a hand and introduced herself. “Squadron Leader Dele at your service, ma’am.”

Brenna shook the woman's hand and fought the urge to collapse on her. Fatigue had gripped her, and the relief of seeing her Coalition compatriots had tipped her over the edge.

“I’m glad to see you,” Brenna said. “I’m assuming we’re making a hasty retreat?”

“The assumption is accurate, Agent Locke. We’re to escort you to safety ASAP. Captain Lopek is waiting for you on the Spearhead. We’ve retrieved your ship and demolition of this shrain hellhole is under way.”

Disgust for the shrain curled the squad leader’s face.

“There’s something I need to do before we go. It won’t take long.”

Before Dele could protest, Brenna slipped into the ops room.

As she had hoped, the two consoles were still active; the shrain didn’t have time to apply security protocols before they came out to confront her. Using her extensive language knowledge, Brenna figured out the majority of the system. It was written in Hallucian—a common dialect among the Host species.

Working quickly, due to Dele glaring at her through the glass doors, Brenna managed to access the starboard weapon’s controls. She deactivated the ion cannons and rotated the dozen blaster turrets to face away from the Spearhead.

“We need to leave,” Dele said with a growl in her voice.

“Almost done,” Brenna said. Although she outranked the other woman, she didn’t want to pull rank during a rescue attempt. These people had risked their lives for her, after all.

Her spy skills urged her on, however. There was data here, intelligence, albeit encrypted. Orders from a Host commander to this shrain ship and others in its squadron. This ship must have been on a solo mission, as the system showed no recent communications with others in its fleet.

“Dele, do you have a mem-chip? We’ve got some intel here.”

The woman retrieved a small mem-chip from her thigh pocket, walked into the room, and handed it to Brenna. The rest of the squad split their attention, covering both sides of the corridor.

“Will it take long?”

“No, a few seconds.”

When the transfer of data was complete, Brenna let Dele do what she was trained for: rescue. The woman and her squad quickly whisked Brenna out of the corridor and through the breach.

They jogged through a twisting series of tunnels through the guts of the shrain ship, one of the younger members of the squad taking point and leading them through, presumably following a map.

Brenna had to force herself to keep up. Although they weren’t running at a significant pace, any effort was tiring. She breathed heavily, and sweat poured from her forehead. She hadn’t consumed any food or water for at least a day, possibly longer, and the extended time in subspace had taken its toll. She began to fall behind.

A muscular man from the squad threw her arm over his shoulder and carried her along. Brenna’s vision and hearing became fuzzy, and soon she was completely disorientated as she fought to stay conscious.

The darkness of the tunnels suddenly changed to a bright light. Brenna squinted against it. A few voices exchanged orders, and then she was carried through the air into what she could only assume was a shuttle.

Behind her a deep grinding noise boomed and then, as quickly as it had come, it disappeared. The man who was carrying her let go, and she floated in zero gravity, her body slowly nudged against the walls of their escape craft.

She tried to take in the details, but her eyelids were too heavy to keep open for very long. She did, however, spin around so that she was now facing a porthole within the shuttle. For a few seconds, she saw the formidable firepower from the Spearhead and its retinue of fighters slam into parts of the shrain ship in what appeared to be a highly coordinated attack.

The shrain ship listed to one side under the barrage. Flames and debris burst from its center, and the ship began to break apart, the hull ravaged and torn. Images of the previous war came back to her, and as she allowed the fatigue to take her, she smiled, satisfied.

Chapter 22

Kai shivered within his suit and adjusted its temperature controls. A sense of doom quickly followed by a sense of inevitability overtook him. He knew, within every atom of his body, that he was meant to be here and that this was his path to follow.

“Why did they put a door out here in the open?” Senaya said. “It’s right there in the middle. One could easily just walk around it, right?”

Marella shook her head. “Look carefully; the image you see on either side of the door is an illusion. I followed it around for miles. It rings the mountain. It’s some kind of energy force field. The only way through is via the door, and one needs a particular kind of key.” She looked to Kai with a knowing glance.

“The artifact?” he asked.

“The very same. It’s obvious now, isn’t it, how you found it in your father’s footlocker on that crashed ship?”

“Yes, it makes sense… well, let’s not hang around; time is of the essence.”

With that, Kai stepped onto the path and led his companions to the door.

Inset within the stone was a recess. The tetrahedron slotted inside perfectly, and when Kai pushed it into place, a beam of light flashed around the edges of the door, and it opened with a creak.

On the other side, there were no ruins, just the path, cut straight as a laser through a valley and into the base of the mountain.

“This is all very cool,” Senaya said. She studied the inside of the door, analyzing its mechanism. “I wonder if we have time to…”

Realizing he was getting close, Kai concentrated on what they had to do. As much as he would have liked to hang around and research places, he sensed he was getting closer to his father and was eager to get on with it.

Kai marched toward his destiny, the artifact in hand and destination in sight. “Keep up, Sen,” he said. “We don’t have time at the moment.”

The three of them hustled quickly down the path, weapons out and eyes scanning the tops of the valleys for any potential enemies. It was still possible they could have been followed by the Host’s agents.

But if they were, they hadn't caught up with them yet. They made it through the valley without incident and entered the cave entrance at the base of the mountain. It was a crudely cut tear in the stone, the roughness of it at odds with the care and attention of the archway and the columns.

“This must have been created by something or someone other than those who built the ruins,” Kai said.

“Looking at the way it’s been tooled, I’d say you’re right,” Marella agreed. She scanned the edges of the entrance as though analyzing what methods might have been used. She stepped ahead of Kai into the darkness and used her flashlight to illuminate the cavern.

The walls and domed ceiling were completely smooth like glass. A green-hued iridescence glowed behind the glossy surface.

“This place is incredible,” Senaya said. “That light is natural—organic.”

Kai’s throat tightened with awe and something else he couldn’t quite understand. It was as if he were standing outside of himself, an impartial observer, watching his body move and act in ways that he instinctively knew had been done by others many millennia before him.

He walked through the cavern, not even needing Marella’s flashlight to direct him. His body just knew where to go.

“Hey, wait up,” Senaya said from somewhere behind him.

He led them down twisting tunnels, up and down steps carved into stone, and lastly, down a long shallow slope until they arrived at an opening deep within the mountain.

Like the first cavern they entered, this too had glassy walls and a domed ceiling, but here, the ceiling was so high it was barely noticeable, hovering at the edge of their flashlights’ reach.

The base of the slope continued down into a pool of glistening black water. Twenty meters into the lake stood a pedestal of crystal on top of which hovered a holographic representation of the artifact Kai held in his right hand.

“We’re here,” Kai said. The words coming from within, from millennia ago. “My father was here.”

Marella and Senaya joined him by his side but said nothing. Senaya’s eyes were big and round as she took in her surroundings. Marella focused on the brightly glowing hologram, its blue hue bathing the crystal plinth in light so that it appeared to be a glowing apparition in the near-total darkness of the cavern.

“What now?” Senaya said.

“We activate whatever this is,” Kai said, stepping forward with purpose.

He barely got five meters into the shallow pool when a shadow beyond the pedestal caught his attention. Senaya and Marella joined him and paused.

“What is it?” Marella said.

“Something’s in the water,” Kai said.

The surface of the pool rippled around the pedestal.

Senaya screamed.

Kai pocketed the artifact and raised the P&G.

A wormlike creature burst from the pool, spraying the cavern with an explosion of water. Kai’s heart thumped hard against his chest. He stumbled back. The animal’s head must have been at least a meter wide. Its thick body coiled around itself and disappeared into the pool.

“Get out of the wa—” Kai began to say.

It was too late.

The worm raised its muscular body further up and a second pseudopod tentacle thrashed out, knocking Marella hard against the left wall of the cavern. Her head cracked against the inside of her helmet, and she slid unconscious to the ground.

“You ugly bastard!” Senaya screamed as she opened fire, shooting her twin laser pistols at the creature’s head. The two shots didn’t seem to have much effect, the lasers’ energy dissipating into lines of crackling blue filament against the creature’s dark skin.

Kai backed up and out of the pool and sprinted over to Marella’s prone body, taking advantage of Senaya’s covering fire.

The creature turned its flat, broad head toward Senaya, opened its slit of a mouth, and displayed row upon row of razor-edged teeth. It let out a high-pitched wail and lashed its tentacle toward her.

“Over here,” Kai yelled before firing a three-shot burst from his P&G into the creature’s chest. This time there was no resisting; the armor-piercing rounds thudded into the meaty flesh, spraying dark blood from the wounds.

The worm seemed to barely notice the damage. It whipped its tentacle around in an arc, just missing Kai’s head. He rolled to his right, came up on a knee, and fired another burst, but this time, just a single shot hit the target.

“Flank it,” Kai yelled.

Senaya was already one step ahead of him and was wading through the pool to the creature’s right. She had holstered her laser pistols and was now arming her plasma blaster. She aimed for its head.

Kai did the same and was about to pull the trigger when a second tentacle, hidden beneath the pool, snaked around his ankles and yanked him under the water.

He pulled the trigger as he went down, the rounds firing into the cavern ceiling and ricocheting harmlessly into the water.

Kai’s air tanks snapped away from his back as the creature dragged him against the cavern floor. His visor cracked open on the base of the plinth.

Cold, stagnant water trickled into his helmet.

Stars and lights flashed in his vision. The tentacle reached up around his legs and tightened around his waist, forcing the air from his lungs as it lifted him clear out of the water.

Kai thrashed uselessly against the powerful constriction. His chest ached, and his heart beat faster and faster as panic began to set in.

But then his hand fell on his hip. The stun baton was still in its holder. With the last of his energy, Kai ripped it free, stabbed it deep into the flesh of the tentacle, and activated the charge.

At first, the constriction tightened further and then with a terrible screech it loosened. The creature thrashed in the water, splashing against the electrical charge that was flowing through its body. Kai slumped back into the pool with a splash.

A pair of hands grabbed Kai by the shoulders and lifted him out. He spluttered the water from his mouth and took a deep breath. The cold air burned his lungs, but sweet relief soon followed.

“I thought you were dead,” Senaya shouted, shaking him.

“I will be if you keep shaking me,” Kai said between deep breaths.

Senaya helped him back to the slope, where he fell to his hands and knees and coughed out the remaining water. Marella staggered toward him, her face covered in blood from a gash on the side of her head.

“Are you okay?” Kai asked.

“I should be asking you,” she said.

“Both of you sit down and be quiet—let me run some health checks, see how you both are.”

Kai and Marella did as they were instructed. Senaya pulled one of her devices from her leg pocket. It appeared to be a holographic handheld analyzer. She hovered it around Kai and then Marella.

“Results will take a minute,” she said. “I couldn’t find a faster processor.”

“It’s fine,” Kai said. “I’m just glad all that is over.”

“We're assuming there is only one," Marella added. "The chamber goes further. For all we know, that could be the baby, and their parents will be coming for it soon."

“Thanks for the positive thinking,” Senaya said, giving Marella a stern look.

A moment later the device flashed its results. A scrolling holographic column spewed out metrics Kai didn’t understand. “What’s the verdict?” he asked.

“You’re fine apart from a small hairline fracture of the lower rib. A nanoshot can heal it. Marella… you’ve got a concussion. It’s minor, though, and the medical facilities on the ship will sort that. We just have to be careful until then.”

Marella rubbed her head and removed the remains of her broken helmet. “I’m glad the air is okay, even if it is a little thin.”

Kai knew what she meant. He had to take three breaths to get the same oxygen he'd usually get from one. He practiced a little breathing meditation for a few minutes to get the rhythm right and clear his light-headedness.

He then stood with Senaya’s help and checked his pocket for the tetrahedron. Thankfully, it was still there.

“Let’s get this show started,” he said, stepping once more toward the pedestal, but this time with an eye specifically on the now-still water for any telltale signs of more creatures.

Marella joined him at his left, Senaya to his right. They surrounded the pedestal and waited for him to place the tetrahedron in the triangular depression.

Kai reached out his hand. A field of static energy built around him as he lowered the artifact into place, and…

Nothing happened.

“Well, that’s an anticlimax,” Senaya said.

“Are you sure it’s seated in properly?” Marella said, leaning in closer.

Kai removed the artifact, placed it back in, and wiggled it about. Nothing happened. “Sen, you’re the engineer here, any ideas?”

“I’m an engineer, sure, but this is some super rare Navigator tech. Let me have a look.”

Senaya pulled the sleeves of her suit up, stepped closer, and inspected the pedestal and the depression around the artifact. She tapped all around it with a knuckle, sucked in her breath, and sighed. “It’s not hollow,” she finally said.

Marella rolled her eyes. “And that gets you into the Engineers Guild?”

“Well,” Senaya said, hands on hips, “you’re supposed to be the big-shot historian. Shouldn’t you know more about all this stuff?”

Marella just shrugged. “It’s the first I’ve seen it.”

“Ladies,” Kai said, raising his hands in the air, “this is getting us nowhere. Sen, take your time. There must be some kind of activation mechanism somewhere.”

Senaya walked around the pedestal, running her hands across its surface slowly and methodically. She nodded and hummed and finally came back around to stand next to Kai. She rubbed her chin. “There’s one thing we could try…”

“Go on then,” Kai urged.

Senaya held his gaze for a moment before turning back to the ancient piece of Navigator technology and kicked it once at the base.

“Hey!” Marella said, alarm in her voice. “That’s precious. You can’t just—”

The cavern pitched into darkness.

Kai swore and was about to remove the artifact when the static electricity field expanded from the pedestal to surround his entire body. Pressure built inside his head as though he were reentering a thick atmosphere. He squeezed his eyes shut and knelt before he collapsed.

When he opened his eyes, the place was still in darkness, but a curious pale blue matrix of information swirled around him just inches from his face.

Senaya and Marella were nowhere to be seen or heard. In fact, he couldn’t discern any sound whatsoever, including his own heartbeat.

The information coalesced from arcane, unknown symbols into recognizable words. Only these weren’t any words Kai had previously known. He’d never seen this language before, yet despite that, he intuited their meaning as though he were fluent. The information came at him faster and faster still, until, unable to resist, he relaxed and accepted the download of data into his consciousness.

A feeling of incredible lightness overwhelmed him.

Tears welled up as yet more knowledge from distant stars and distant times poured into him, catalyzing a rapid growth of dendrites and synaptic activity.

He slumped forward against the pedestal, cradling it as if he were a child clinging to one of his parents. The warmth from the machine emanated around his body, bringing him comfort as his mind and body continued its rapid metamorphosis.

Pictures of his father flashed into his consciousness, followed by desert landscapes, alien worlds, indescribably massive structures spinning in space, rocky planets, water worlds, ships of exotic design that defied known geometry and logic. Songs and speeches played out. Entire books of narrative sprawled out before him, building a living history of the Navigators right there in his mind.

How could his brain handle all this?

Would it ever stop?

What did it all mean?

As he considered these things, the deluge of details increased until they coalesced into a single, soul-shattering conclusion. A single idea formed in his mind, demanding he focus on it, understand it, accept it. He perceived the message, and it delivered a bolt of lightning to the very core of his existence.

“I’m… I’m not human,” he whispered. “I’m…”

Although he couldn’t speak it, he knew it in every cell of his body.

I’m a Navigator.

All his life up until now had been a cover, a false identity.

But now, finally, he felt whole, correct.

Chapter 23

Brenna sat up and pushed the doctor’s hands away from her.

A flashback of her time being interrogated by the shrain bloomed in her mind. It took her a few moments to catch her breath and remind herself of where she was: a singular, private med-bay on the Spearhead.

She controlled her breathing and took in her surroundings, using the analysis of each detail as a way of calming herself down.

The room was cool and quiet. It had cream-colored walls that featured the usual array of holographic screens scrolling and twisting with data and information.

She noted her medical information on the nearest screen. It told her, not that she needed telling, given she could feel it coursing through her system, that she was responding well to a shot of Equilibrium.

Although her mind was still foggy and her body ached, the crushing fatigue and subspace effects had thankfully abated.

From behind her, out of view, a neutral-sounding voice said, “Agent Locke, I need you to remain still. Your body is in need of many essential nutrients.”

Brenna blinked the blurriness from her eyes and turned her head toward the voice. A medical-issue android was standing patiently to her right, holding a drug dispenser in its right hand.

“I’m sorry about that,” Brenna said. “I didn’t mean to push you away… it’s just I’ve been…” she trailed off. She wasn’t comfortable telling this android her tale of woe; she had never learned to trust them.

It had all stemmed from the uprising she’d witnessed on Volbeta. It was brief but brutal. The androids and other mechanized population turned on their fleshy compatriots. At the time, the analysts had suggested it was a Host virus. Later it was shown not to be the case: the androids had initiated the uprising themselves.

Since then, the makers of the androids and bots had been under strict Coalition regulations to implement stronger safeguards. Brenna often wondered if that were enough. The machines had bypassed their programming once before.

Who was to say they wouldn’t again?

One thing Brenna had learned about computer-based entities was that their programming was not set in stone as per the conventional wisdom. Sure, their processors might run on logic, but there was something within AI that broke those laws, turning the current belief on its head.

Scientists might point to their evidence, but there was an intangibility there that she had seen and experienced regardless of what the data said.

“Agent Locke?” the android said again, remaining neutral in its tone of voice and breaking her out of her moment of thought. “Are you able to hear me?”

“Yes,” she said. “I can hear you perfectly well.”

That was another thing that bothered her: their attempt at normality. She’d rather they were blunt, mechanistic, or perhaps developed a unique personality of their own; at least then she could take them on their terms instead of having to accept their existence as a metaphor for sentient beings.

This particular unit was modeled on a male, a human with a kind smile and vibrant coffee skin: a design the Coalition technologists had settled on for medical bots due to the familiar and non-threatening appearance.

Its emotion-reading algorithm must have finally acknowledged her discomfort, and he said, "My name is Ketch, and I'm here to help you. But I won't insist you take the drugs; it's entirely your choice, of course. I'm working under orders from Captain Lopek, who wanted you as healthy as possible for your briefing."

Brenna sighed and held out her arm. “Fine. Shoot me, Ketch. Better get this over with. Given Lopek risked the Spearhead and its crew to rescue me, I ought to show my gratitude, right?”

Ketch diplomatically dipped his chin and said nothing. He pressed the drug dispenser’s flat round surface to the skin of her upper arm and activated it.

A dozen nanoneedles penetrated through her skin and delivered a cocktail of drugs that would help replace essential minerals and nutrients she had lost while on the shrain ship.

“Please hold still for a moment,” Ketch said. “Let the drugs flow.”

While she was waiting for the smart particles to do their thing, she asked Ketch where they were and how long she had been out since her rescue.

“You’ve been out for half a standard hour,” Ketch said. “And we’re heading back to Capsis Prime. I believe we’re to make the subspace jump as soon as Captain Lopek has briefed you.”

“And the shrain ship?”

“Completely destroyed.”

A warm sensation spread throughout Brenna’s body. She felt light-headed for a moment, but it quickly passed. The effect of the drugs, along with the Equilibrium already in her system, gave her an inner warm glow that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Ketch fussed around her and worked on the holoscreen for a minute or so. His work was ultimately interrupted when the door to the med-bay slid open.

Lopek entered. His usually gaunt face seemed even more drawn than usual. A concerned expression pinched at the edges of his deep-set eyes, which seemed more shadowed than normal.

“Thank you, Ketch,” he said. “You may leave us now.”

The android obeyed the order, leaving Brenna’s side and exiting the room.

“They never cease to creep me out,” Brenna said, breathing a long exhalation and leaning against the backrest of the medical bed with some degree of relaxation.

Lopek’s grim demeanor prevented her from completely relaxing. She straightened her back and fidgeted.

“Well, what is it? Is it Kai? Has something happened to him?”

Lopek paced the room, hands behind his back. Although he was trying to communicate an air of calm and control, she could tell from the tightness in his shoulders and his jaw that he was on edge.

He approached a video screen on the far side of the room and peered at the feed of the external view outside of the Spearhead. Half a dozen ships were returning from the wreckage of the shrain ship and preparing to dock.

“Captain, my son…”

“We’ve not heard from him since he left for the remote moon with Maio. We’re operating on the basis of no news is good news. We sent a couple of scout ships to follow him from Parsephus, and I’m expecting a report from them soon.”

“So would they know if the Host had got to him?”

“Their orders were to stay as close as possible, so, yes. For now, we are deeming your son’s condition as safe. You’ll be the first to know when there’s more to tell.”

Despite the captain’s gray complexion and stiff movements, Brenna had no reason to believe he was lying. He looked tired, stressed, but she would expect that from someone in his position at a time of war.

A moment passed. Lopek shot his cuffs and wiped some lint from his dark blue jacket. He turned, took a shallow breath, and spoke in his usual precise, professional pattern. “The intelligence you gathered from the shrain ship has brought to our attention a Host tactic that is currently away.” He stepped closer, looming over the end of the bed.

“Go on… don’t hold back now, Captain. What do the Host have in store for us?”

“The shrain have infiltrated Capsis Prime and its neighboring planets. One of our agents took over your mission on Protsima. We… extracted information from the shrain controller.”

“Was it of any use?”

“At the time, no, but the information you retrieved for us has pointed us in the right direction. With our other agents across the galaxy reporting in, we’ve built a picture of the Host’s movements and strategies. And it’s not good.”

“You’re going to tell me that the CDF underestimated our previous intel and warnings about the Host’s resources and that the war is truly on, right?”

“Of a sort, yes. That’s not all, however.” Lopek ran a hand through his already-slicked hair. “A large contingent of Host destroyers are currently due to arrive in Capsis space within hours, or, if we’re lucky, days.”

“Surely they can’t just fly into the system without triggering the defense…” Brenna trailed off and finally grasped it. “The shrain have infiltrated our defense systems too.”

Lopek nodded, confirming her thought. “Our intel suggests they’ve been working on this for half a decade, and right under our noses all the time.” He sneered and balled his hands into fists. “The damned government and the Defense Force has been too lax, thinking that as victors of the last war they had it easy, that our enemies were well and truly crushed. I told them so many damned times that we needed to…”

The GTU captain caught Brenna's eye, and he trailed off. It was the first time she had ever seen him lose his cool like that, but given the circumstances, it was entirely understandable.

“I’m with you,” Brenna said, leaning forward. “You’ve every right to be angry. Hell, we all do. Have you spoken with General Amelia about this incoming attack?”

“Yes, just before I came in here. Amelia had already made the ridiculous decision to send more of the Coalition fleet to the outer planets where some fronts are under way. By the time they get there, it’ll be too late. Those skirmishes are targeted distractions. The Host forces have taken to sacrificing their pawns to strike at our heart.”

This tactic was unusual for the Host. Brenna had studied them for years before and during the last war. Although as a group of some one hundred and fifty different species, the Host as a whole shared a culture, a vision that was many millennia in the making, the core of which was a value of life above all else.

It was that central tenet of their being that added to the conflict with the Coalition, the latter being somewhat more pragmatic about the value of life.

Some would argue, and many still did, that as an associated set of people, the Coalition often devalued life.

Brenna thought of Kai’s home planet as one example: the blight on Zarunda could be cured with the resources available within the Coalition—if those who controlled the resources and knowledge cared enough to make it happen.

That Kai had to do the GTU’s bidding to convince someone important enough that it was a cause worthy of action said a great deal.

“So what has happened with the Host species to change so drastically within the last decade? It can’t just be their increased alliance with the shrain, surely?”

A shadow passed over Lopek’s face. He looked away for a moment as though considering what to say. When he looked back at Brenna, his eyes were hard, cold.

“Perhaps they never changed," he said. "Perhaps we just misunderstood them all this time, and they've always been more like us than we gave them credit for."

“Credit?” Brenna said, swinging her legs off the bed now. “You think having a lower value of life is something to be credited? You think sacrificing soldiers and innocents in a war is an admirable action?”

Lopek stiffened at her challenge. Brenna thought she might have gone too far, but damn it, she was tired, scared for her son, and nervous about the Coalition's chances. All around her it seemed the shrain and the Host were carrying out their plans successfully, all the time Lopek and the other leaders of the CDF were playing catch-up.

The two locked gazes. Brenna refused to back down despite her rank.

The GTU did things differently; that was why they were in the GTU, and she would be damned if she was going to just lie there and let Lopek spew his Coalition-approved nonsense.

“Well?” she said, prompting him.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His thin body slumped as he exhaled. “No, I don’t think sacrifice is always to be admired,” he said, his voice softer now, perhaps more heartfelt. “But war isn’t about any one individual; that’s always been the Coalition way, you know this. The Host—the way they’re purposely sending their people to their deaths to gain a strategic advantage—is a step beyond. It’s willful.”

“It’s not in their character,” Brenna said. “And the shrain don’t have the influence, even if they have helped the Host swell their numbers. There’s more to all this than we’re privy too and it wouldn’t surprise me if those useful bastards back on Capsis know more than they’re letting on.”

“What are you suggesting?” Lopek said, raising an eyebrow. “That our government and military leadership is compromised?”

Brenna shrugged. “I’ve no proof, but if what you said about General Amelia is correct, couldn’t it be conceivable that her orders were somehow influenced?”

A hush descended between the two of them. The ramifications of that were too vast to comprehend. If the Host and the shrain had infiltrated the highest echelons of Coalition leadership, then there’d be no coming back from that without massive civil and martial repercussions.

Brenna eased back onto the bed and leaned her hands on her knees. "So what's next?" she said, trying to get the briefing back on track.

“We’re heading back to Capsis as soon as our fighters are docked. We’ll be there within a day—and we just need to hope that it’s not too late.”

“So what are the numbers?” Brenna asked, referring to their military units available to the Coalition capital system. “What’s available to put up a defense?”

“We have the Fang and the Trident, a dozen cruiser vessels, and us when we arrive. If the intel is correct, the Host fleet is at least twice as strong.”

“We don’t stand a chance,” Brenna said, feeling the hopelessness of it seep into her bones. The Coalition had been played for years, and the culmination of all that secret work was probably just a day or two away.

“We still have the Doomsday and a wildcard,” Lopek said, injecting a hint of optimism into his words.

“The Doomsday will certainly shake things up, but we’ll need more. Do you think the Blackstar will be of any use?” Brenna asked. “Even if Kai could find it, would he be able to use it, and would it even have any weapons capabilities that could help? Almost everything we think we know about it is superstition and stories passed down the ages.”

“There is no migration without the changing of the season,” Lopek said. “We’ve sent word to Kai via our scouting team. We should know sooner rather than later the results of his mission. In the meantime, get some rest, let the drugs do their work. We’re going to need you when we enter Capsis space.”

Lopek halted at the door when Brenna stopped him. “During this entire briefing, there’s been something missing.”

He stood taller, remaining facing away from her and silent.

“You haven’t mentioned Bandar. What happened to him?”

Lopek shook his head slowly. “I’m afraid he didn’t make it. He sacrificed himself to allow Kai to escape Parsephus.”

With that, the captain left, and Brenna slumped to her bed, a knot of grief tightening in her throat and her chest tightening.

Bandar… her son. Dead.

People thought of him has nothing but a killer and a criminal, but Brenna knew the truth: her son was a damned hero. He had sacrificed himself for the Coalition in ways very few people could comprehend, and now he was gone.

Brenna instantly regretted not telling Kai Bandar’s true identity, and now it was too late. Tears began to streak down her face.

She leaped off the bed, flung it over, and screamed until her throat was sore.

With the grief and anger coursing through her, she vowed at that moment that this was the last person the Coalition would take from her. Her family had given enough. Her time with the GTU was done.

As soon as they arrived at Capsis, she would take the Rapier and leave the Spearhead. If she survived the battle of Capsis Prime, she would find her son and leave Coalition space. Her service to the cause had come to an end. As far as she was concerned, she was a free agent now.

Hell, she didn’t even care if that meant she’d have to go on the run. The Coalition and the GTU had made her an elite spy and killer.

Let them come after her and see what they’d created.

Chapter 24

Two pairs of hands grabbed Kai and lifted him to his feet. Water dripped from his suit. A dull ache throbbed at his temples, and every muscle ached.

“Kai, what happened?” Senaya said, moving to face him. She stared up at him, her eyes wide with worry.

Kai took a few breaths and stood on his own as the dizziness abated. The real world eased back in, and he found himself back in the cave, looking down at the pedestal with the artifact still in place.

Marella was to his left, staring at him with a mixture of awe and horror.

“What?” he asked, looking down at himself to see if he were injured.

“You… you spoke it,” Marella said.

“Spoke what?” He looked from Marella to Senaya and was confused by their expressions. They looked at him as though he were an exhibit or perhaps some kind of creature.

“You spoke the ancient language,” Marella said.

“It was unlike anything I’ve ever heard,” Senaya said.

“I can sense them. I… understand them. My brain is full of imagery and sounds I’ve never experienced before. It’s like I accessed a massive download of information but can’t quite make sense of it all.”

Kai took the artifact and placed it in his suit’s pocket. He regarded Senaya and Marella and smiled as a warm, peaceful feeling eased through his body. “I’m one of them… it’s crazy to say, I know, but I feel it now. I see it. My mother, Brenna, she’s not my biological mother—that’s someone, something else.”

“Something?” Senaya said. “A Navigator?”

Kai laughed and nodded. He knew it sounded preposterous, but the strange device had given him the truth. There was no doubting it now.

This revelation was what his father had led him to.

The ultimate truth.

Senaya joined in his laugh and shook her head. “This is crazy; you know that, right? Kai Locke, the not very good racing ship pilot, is a freaking son of a Navigator!”

Marella wasn’t laughing. She just stared at him with an expression of trepidation and perhaps a little fear. Kai could understand that; she had more knowledge of the Navigators than most. He’d have to pick her brain later; she would no doubt enjoy some of the imagery that had come to him.

A flash of some alien language raced through his mind, making him dizzy.

The cave seemed to shift for a moment, and his balance tilted, but after a moment’s concentration, he steadied himself and leveled his breathing. He felt taller and lighter than he had ever done before, almost as though he were experiencing low gravity.

“This must mean the Navigators aren’t extinct,” Senaya said. She pointed a finger at Kai. “You’re living proof that they’re still out there. You could be the key to bringing them back,” she said. “I mean, look at you!”

Marella had backed off a pace. “I don’t know what this means, but we ought to be careful about it until we find out more.”

“Hey,” Kai said, “let’s not get carried away. We don’t know if this is anything yet, could have just been a weird episode or something. It might not mean anything. If this is correct and I’m the offspring of my father and a Navigator, so what? I mean, it’s not like that’s helped me in the past, has it? I don’t have any magic abilities or anything.”

Senaya laughed again and stepped back. “Kai, seriously? No magic abilities? Look at what you’re doing.”

At first, he didn’t understand what she meant, but when he looked down, he saw that he was floating a short distance above the water around the pedestal. As soon as he noticed it, he pitched forward and fell, splashing into the pool.

Senaya and Marella helped him up.

“Damn, that hurt,” Kai said.

“Seriously, Kai, that’s some crazy stuff,” Senaya said with a broad smile on her face. “I can’t believe that all these years I’ve been hanging around with a freaking Navigator. People are totally going to lose it when this gets out.”

“It can’t,” Marella said. “He’ll be hunted down and treated like a science experiment. Let’s just see how this pans out. Right now, though, we ought to return to the ship.”

“No,” Kai said, suddenly remembering something from his large data download. “The Blackstar. It’s—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence.

The cavern started to shake. Dust fell from the ceiling as the vast expanse retracted aside, exposing the cavern to the dark skies above. A bright white light shot down through the gap and struck the pedestal. A thrumming bass frequency reverberated around the walls. The gravity of the planet seemed to increase.

Within the light and above the canopy, a dark shape resolved. Marella gasped and stepped back to the wall.

Warmth spread throughout Kai’s brain. His pulse quickened.

Above them, a ship descended slowly.

“Oh my god,” Senaya said as she gripped his arm. “That’s incredible.”

Kai looked to Marella. Her eyes were wide with awe.

“It’s the Blackstar,” she said.

Kai knew it instinctively at a cellular level that this was the Blackstar, but even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t take a genius to see where it had got its name: the ship was matte black and vertical with a four-point star stretching from the front. A fifth point extended below. The whole ship was probably a hundred meters from base to tip and easily fifty wide at the tips of the points.

“That’s massively impressive,” Senaya said, giggling with excitement. “Seriously, though, just look at it! If that’s not a Navigator ship, I don’t know what is!”

Marella eyed Kai with what he thought was suspicion. “Did you call it?” she said. “Is that what the artifact did?”

“I'd like to say yes, but I don't know exactly how it worked. I've got this massive data bomb in my head and can barely think straight. I think my father had this triggered, ready for me to activate it."

The thrum stopped. The Blackstar hovered a meter above the pool. Everything was still, and there was no smell of ship fuel or even the blasting heat of engines. Kai stepped forward until he was staring at the vertical point. He reached out and touched it.

“It’s cool to the touch,” he said.

Marella and Senaya joined him. They all stared up at the imposing star formation that seemed to make up the bulk of the ship.

“How do we get in?” Senaya said.

Kai thought about it for a moment and was about to tell them that he had no idea when the front vertical opened outward, pivoting at the base to make a ramp.

“Did you just think it to do that?” Marella said.

“I don’t know… maybe.”

“That’s so cool,” Senaya said, wasting no time in jumping onto the ramp and climbing into the ship.

“Wait,” Kai said, “we don’t know what’s in there, yet.”

Despite his protest, Senaya continued to ascend the ramp, her eyes like globes with excitement. She muttered unintelligible squeals of delight, reminding Kai that she was still young. That he was young, yet they’d already experienced so much in such a short space of time, and now there this was this amazing ship seemingly beckoning them to board.

“Well?” Marella said. “Are we getting on or what?”

“I suppose we ought to; it has kind of welcomed us.”

“You think it’s sentient?”

“At this stage,” Kai said, stepping onto the ramp, “I’m not ruling anything out.”

“When I lost your father, I thought… well, it seems that he’s still out there, somewhere, looking over you.”

Kai just nodded, not sure what to say. The information was in his head, but he just couldn’t comprehend it yet. His brain was fighting to catch up with the download. His subconscious was likely going to take a while to sift through and sort all the new information so that he could recall it and make use of it.

He ascended the ramp into the belly of the ship and waited for Marella to join him. She hesitated at the threshold, took a look around the cavern, and paused as though considering her options.

“What’s the matter?” Kai said.

“I’m scared,” Marella said. “This is all so fast; I can’t—”

“Comprehend it all? Me neither, but one thing I have learned about myself over the years is that by following my gut, things have somehow worked out okay. And isn’t this everything you’ve ever dreamed of? Here it is, a real Navigator ship, ready and waiting for you to learn about it.”

“That’s what scares me. What if I don’t like what I find? I’ve dedicated so much of my life to studying the Navigators. What if they can’t live up to my expectations? What if I’ve got them all wrong?”

“What if you have?” Kai said, challenging her. “Isn’t it better to know the truth?”

Marella opened her mouth to speak, but she said nothing. Instead, she took a deep breath, nodded to herself and stepped over the threshold into a sparse, lit lobby area with smooth light gray walls, just large enough to accommodate the three of them. Before anyone could say anything, the ramp rose and closed silently.

“There’s an atmosphere in here,” Senaya said, waving about the lobby a small analyzer the size of her thumb. “Perfect temperature and oxygen levels. Even simulated gravity. It’s like it’s made for us.”

“Maybe it is,” Kai said, looking around and taking in his surroundings. The room was featureless, however, and there were no visible signs of how to reach the main areas of the ship.

As he was about to vocalize the thought, the floor rumbled for a second and then they were moving upward. The lobby was an elevator. Within a few seconds, it had stopped, and one of the gray walls slid open, exposing them to a large open bridge.

“Wow,” Senaya said, stumbling into it. “Look at this place; it’s incredible.”

“Oh my… this is something amazing,” Marella said, following Senaya.

Kai waited in the open doorway, wanting to take it all in. This was his first impression of the inside of a Navigator ship; he wanted to savor the experience, as he didn’t know if he’d ever get the chance again.

The bridge was laid out in an open plan with a central circular island dominating the space. Finely upholstered couches, dark red in color, made a secondary concentric circle around the island. The walls of the bridge were smooth and covered in glowing text that Kai recognized as the Navigators’ language. Sadly, he couldn’t yet comprehend it.

Floating above the island was a large holographic display, a cube, with each face showing different streams of data. One side had a video feed showing the inside of the cavern; another showed the dark skies above. From this position, they’d have a complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view in all angles, a sphere of vision.

The general decor was mostly dark matte colors with crystal clear blue and white lights embedded into the metallic uprights, of which there were four—one in each corner. There was a pair of opposing doors on the left and right walls that Kai assumed led to the cabins, mess, and other necessary rooms.

“I’ve never seen tech this advanced before,” Senaya said, looking back at Kai with a big grin on her face like she’d just been given the biggest birthday cake in the galaxy. “Look at this holodisplay—the resolution and scope are unbelievable.”

Marella moved slowly, touching every surface, analyzing every last little detail.

“Well?” Kai said. “What do you think of it? Does it live up to your expectations?”

Much like Senaya, Marella had a smile on her face, although in her case it was more restrained; it was obvious she was as awed as either of them. "Yes! It truly is remarkable. I can see lots of their design cues in here that reference the few artifacts we have. This is truly a Navigator ship; of that, I have no doubt."

“I guess we’re in the right place, then,” Kai said as he stepped out of the elevator and into the bridge area.

A gantry led down to the central circular command area. Kai breathed deeply; the air was sweet and refreshing. He went to place his headgear on the floor when a floating disk peeled away from one of the walls and flew toward him, setting itself beneath the helmet.

When Kai let go, the disk whisked the helmet away into a cubby obscured by an opaque holographic surface on the front wall.

“Wow, that’s cool,” Senaya said, following the disk and poking her hand through the wall. “I’ve never seen a fully opaque hologram before.”

“Be careful where you poke that hand of yours,” Kai said. “We don’t know enough about this thing yet.”

The three of them continued their exploration of the ship, finding six cabins: three each side and located in two of the points. The mess, armory, engineer shop, and even a science laboratory filled out the space and the final two points.

Artificial gravity made it seem as though the angles of the points didn’t exist and that one was walking on a flat level surface.

When they had found all the rooms there were to find, they got out of their suits and made use of the mess, which was stocked with various food and beverage printers. Thankfully, the enzymes and proteins within the printers hadn’t spoiled, making Kai wonder if his father had been here recently.

There was no sign of any other occupancy in any of the cabins to indicate he had, though, but it wouldn’t have surprised Kai if the ship had cleaned itself, given the way it swooped in to take his helmet.

Kai, Senaya, and Marella, refreshed and eager to know more, sat down on the circular couches around the control island. Senaya studied the controls that had floated up from the floor when they had sat down.

“It’s difficult to work out,” she said. “All the symbology is different to what I’ve used in the past. Marella, can you translate these?”

The historian glanced at the transparent surface upon which the controls glowed. “I haven’t seen this before,” she said.

Kai, however, looked at them and knew their meaning instantly. Without being entirely conscious of his movements, he moved his hands across the control panel in front of him. His fingertips glanced over the symbols at a rapid rate.

The ship’s engine roared to life before settling to a quiet hum, thick with the promise of power. The holographic cube in the center spun, so one of the surfaces faced him; it showed him a rundown of coordinates that he realized was a list of commonly visited places.

“It’s been to Zarunda,” he said, surprised at seeing his home world listed. “My father, he must have… but if he had, then why didn’t he meet with me?”

“I’m sure there’s a good reason,” Marella said. “From the short time I knew him, he never struck me as the kind of man to do anything unless he had a logical reason.”

“Does this thing have an AI?” Senaya said. “Hey, ship, do you hear us? Respond.”

Kai sensed somewhere deep in his new memory that Senaya was onto something. A word bubbled up from the void, and he did his best to pronounce it. The holographic cube flashed once and spun to a different surface, upon which a face formed, the features pushing out of the flat plane to exist in three dimensions.

“Whoa, that’s interesting,” Senaya said, leaning closer to the face. “Hey, ship, is that you?”

The face was nondescript, with no discerning features. It was almost too perfect; a highly skilled facsimile of the idealized human face with everything in the right proportion and perfectly symmetrical.

“I am Blackstar,” the voice said as the hologram face moved its lips.

Chapter 25

Blackstar, the ship’s AI, continued to talk, introducing them, as the new crew, to the main workings of the ship. Senaya, in particular, was interested in its propulsion and weapons systems. Marella, naturally, about its history.

“It’s amazing to think this pristine ship is nearly a millennium old,” Marella said. “The technology is advanced right now, let alone all that time ago.”

“I know, right?” Senaya said. “Think what we could learn from this. The Coalition government is going to go nuts for this thing. We could demand anything we wanted.”

“It’s not for sale,” Kai said. “It belonged to my father, and until I see his dead body, it still belongs to him. I’ll take care of it in the meantime.” Turning his attention back to the AI, he asked, “Do you know of my father’s whereabouts? When was he last here?”

“Your father is still alive,” the AI said. “He’s beyond the veil now. I can’t say any more than that.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Kai said.

“The former. My programmers have set certain parameters that I can work in, and the details of your father’s existence beyond the veil are not within parameters. I’ve been coded to aid you in any way that you see fit, but my knowledge of anything beyond the veil is limited.”

“Why is that?” Marella said, leaning her long, lithe body forward.

“The Ancients deemed it necessary to protect their existence.”

A white light, a small tiny sphere, flashed on Kai’s console. “What’s that?” he asked the AI.

“It’s a communication notification,” it replied. “It’s encrypted with a Coalition key. Would you like me to open it for you?”

Senaya shuffled closer to Kai to see the flashing light and whispered, “It can crack codes, too? Kai, this is incredible. The Coalition encryption has never been broken. Do you realize what we could do with that kind of facility?”

“We’re not hacking the government,” Kai said.

“Ever since you became a Navigator, you’ve stopped being fun,” she said, teasing him with a gentle elbow to his ribs.

“Blackstar,” Marella interjected, “please, let’s hear the communication. It could be important if it’s been encrypted. How did they know we were here? This ship doesn’t have a Coalition ID address, right?”

“You are correct,” Blackstar said. “It was a wideband communication that I intercepted on your behalf. It is from a Captain Lopek of the Coalition destroyer the Spearhead. Would you like me to proceed?”

“Go ahead.”

“As you wish." The AI played an audio file. Kai recognized Lopek's clipped accent immediately as the head of the GTU informed him of the war now officially under way and also the infiltration of the capital system, Capsis, and the news that they were headed there immediately. More importantly was the news that his mother was fine after a ‘brief ordeal.'

What that ordeal could have been, he had no idea. His mother had gotten involved with all kinds of dangerous situations in the past; it could have been absolutely anything. Still, he was glad to hear she was okay.

Even though he now knew she wasn’t his biological mother.

It didn’t matter to him, however. As far as he was concerned, Brenna was still his mother and he’d always feel that way about her. His real biological mother’s identity was right now of little consequence. He’d cross that bridge if the time ever came.

There was so much else to deal with that he couldn’t waste emotional energy on something he knew so very little about.

“What do you want to do?” Senaya said, dragging Kai out of his ruminations. She and Marella stared at him, awaiting a response as though he were the captain of the ship, even though they hadn’t discussed it.

“I don’t know about you two, but I want to go to Capsis and fight. If the capital falls to the Host and its allies, the war will be tough to win, let alone the potential number of casualties; there are trillions in the Capsis system. I wouldn’t put it past those bastards in the Host to kill as many as they could for the fun of it. If Lopek is to be believed, they’ve got the advantage.”

“I agree,” Senaya said. “We can’t just stand by and watch the Coalition crumble to dust. We have to do something. And we were delivered a hyper-advanced Navigator ship. What’s the point of having all the best toys if you don’t get to play with them?”

Kai looked to Marella. “And you? If you want to leave and take the cruiser, I won’t blame you.”

Marella ran an elegant hand through her fur-like blond hair. Her eyes had changed from striking blue to a deep crimson. Kai knew what it meant when a Lantesian ‘saw red’.

“I’m coming with you,” she said. “I refuse to stand by and watch the Coalition get ripped apart. I wasn’t active in the last war, and after spending time with your father, I vowed to follow in his footsteps if the time came. I just didn’t expect it to be so soon—and in a Navigator ship.”

Kai gripped her shoulder. “Thanks, it means a lot to know you want to stick around. You too, Sen.” He looked back at the inscrutable holographic face of the Blackstar AI and said, “Do you have the coordinates for the Capsis system?”

“They are in my astro database, yes.”

“Good. How long will it take us to get there via subspace? Is this thing as fast as it looks?”

Kai couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or whether the AI’s face projection smiled wryly when it said, “This ship is exceptionally fast when compared to all other ships.”

“Now that’s what I like to hear,” Senaya said. “How many Q-cylinders has this got?”

“No Q-cylinders,” the AI responded. “Navigator technology doesn’t use subspace; it’s too slow. The Ancients wouldn’t have been able to manipulate the galaxy in the way they did if they had to travel through subspace.”

Senaya and Kai looked at each other with a quizzical expression. Kai knew somewhere deep in the data dump of his the answer to his next question, but he just couldn’t reach it. “So if you don’t use subspace, what do you use?”

That weird wry smile again, then, “Gravity, Kai Locke. The Blackstar uses gravity to create a wormhole. We’ll be in the Capsis system within the hour. Are you ready to engage the gravity drive?”

“Hit it,” Kai said, and within a nanosecond, the bridge went completely dark. Kai couldn’t move or speak, and all around him turned black.

Chapter 26

The thought that struck Kai as soon as consciousness returned to him was that this was all some mad dream. Perhaps he’d had a bad trip on one of the many Zarundan psychotropic herbs and spices freely available at the markets.

Because if it weren’t a trip, then that would mean Bandar Trace was dead; the Coalition was losing a war with the Host before it had a chance to begin; his mother wasn’t his real mother; and to top it off: they had crossed many light-years of space in the Lasides Quadrant in less than an hour by manipulating space-time at the quantum level inside a ship built by an ancient race of missing aliens.

That was as crazy as anything Kai could have come up with.

Hell, it was crazier than the plot of most holobooks he’d read.

Yet as his vision returned, as his awareness sharpened and he watched the video feed on the holocube before him, he knew it wasn’t a dream or a trip or some other bizarre effect of his mind.

It was real.

The Capsis system was under attack.

The four main defensive stations situated in a geosynchronous orbit of their capital planet and its three moons were spinning out of control, heading for their respective planet’s surface.

Over thirty Host ships, destroyers, fighters, and frigates swarmed just two Coalition warships, the Fang and the Trident, two of the best and most capable ships in the CDF fleet.

Despite the superior numbers of the Host, the Fang and Trident would hold their own for a significant amount of time. For how long, Kai couldn’t be sure. Who knew what new technology the Host had got their hands on since the last fight a decade ago?

The Fang and Trident were situated in a stable equilibrium zone to the west of Capsis Prime when looking at it from the sun, which was to the Blackstar’s rear.

The host ships surrounded them in a hemisphere. Not only were the CDF flanked on the sides, but also from above and beneath.

Despite that, however, the two massive Coalition ships were unloading their considerable firepower, holding the smaller fighters at bay and even damaging some of the Host frigates, forcing them out of formation.

But the Host force seemed to click and, working together, fired in unison upon the two remaining Capsis guardians. Their shields and hull integrity wouldn’t be able to withstand that magnitude of attack for too long.

“This is awful,” a voice said. It took Kai a while to remember he was here with Senaya and Marella. He looked around at them; they shared his expression of horror at the scenes before them.

“We’ve arrived at your destination,” the AI said as though they had just pulled up to a restaurant or coffee house. “I await your orders, Kai Locke.”

He hated already how the Blackstar AI used his full name. He was never a fan of formalities, especially in what might well be their last moments.

“We can’t get involved with that,” Senaya said. “We’d be ripped to shreds.”

“She’s right,” Marella added. “We need to be smarter about this. We may only have time to record what’s happening before the capital falls so that the intelligence services later can determine an escape or survival plan.”

“Wait,” Kai said. “Look, reinforcements.”

A few thousand kilometers away from Capsis Prime, the white light of a subspace exit opened up. A dozen more CDF ships arrived on the Host’s right flank. Eight of the ships were of the legendary Decimator-class frontline frigates, and the other four were paramilitary reservist fighters.

Kai wondered if his friends were serving on one of them.

Within seconds hundreds of ion torpedoes exploded from the Coalition ships and aimed for two of the Host’s largest vessels.

The latter dumped bundles of decoys, but they hadn’t reckoned with the torpedo’s updated AI-driven targeting.

The ordnance ignored the decoys and slammed into the flank of a Host ship, which pitched and rolled as fragments of its hull broke away, and hundreds of Host operatives tumbled out into the cold vacuum of space.

That helped address the balance, but it was still twenty-eight versus fourteen in the Host’s favor.

“Blackstar,” Senaya said, breaking the others out of their rapt attention, “what kind of weaponry and local engines do we have access to?”

“The ship is fully equipped with both defense and attack protocols, multiphase shields, particle-rearrangement cannon, and a gravity-distortion array.”

“That sounds great,” Senaya said. “But what does that all mean?”

“Perhaps a demonstration?” the AI said.

“Wait,” Kai added. “We can’t risk going into the mess; there’s too many of them.”

“I’ve detected three long-range fighters approaching our position,” the AI said. “Perhaps you would like to engage those?”

“Shit, bring them on screen,” Kai ordered.

The holocube spun around to another face and showed a feed tracking three of the smaller silver-colored Arrow-class fighters: arrow-shaped close-combat Host ships. They were faster and agiler than any ships the CDF had access to. The technology was pure Host from one of their specialized tech worlds. Using a system of thrusters, they were able to change course and use the drift to their advantage. This maneuver would be quite the challenge.

“What do you propose we do?” Marella said. “I studied elements of the last war and can suggest a tactical maneuver.”

“Go on,” Kai said and listened to Marella’s plan. The AI took notes and plotted the attack on the holoscreen. Its prediction models looked favorable, but Kai remained doubtful.

“Are we going to do this or what?” Senaya said. “The Arrows will be in range any second.”

Before Kai had time to respond, the lead Arrow launched its first round of ordnance: red-tip missiles—devastating thermonuclear warheads.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kai said, then, “Blackstar, forget the plan. Evasive maneuvers now.”

The ship increased its velocity on its current vector, matching the speed of the missiles, and then, applying a secondary thrust from the tip of one of its points, created an arcing drift. The missiles duly followed.

Kai understood the plan. “Increase power and tighten the arc,” he said.

“That’ll bring us closer to the Arrows,” Marella warned.

“Indeed.”

The AI did as it was ordered and the Blackstar’s arc tightened until they had completed a full loop and were heading directly for the trio of fighters.

“Shields up,” Kai ordered.

A brief whine throughout the hull indicated they were now shielded, and just in time. The trio of fighters fired their short-range lasers, but the shields dispersed their small pinpoint focus around the entire ship, dissipating their power.

“Gravity array now charged,” the AI said.

“Whoa, did you just charge our weapons with the power of their lasers?” Senaya said.

“That is correct,” the AI said. “Would you like to return fire?”

“Do it!” Senaya said, then looked to Kai. “Sorry, I got carried away.”

“I agree,” Kai said. “Fire when ready.”

Arm- and backrests raised from their couches and straps held them in. The light inside the bridge lowered and the walls filled with the video feeds, so they had a complete three-dimensional view around them.

The fighters were less than a kilometer away now.

They fired their lasers again, and a graph on one of the data screens showed the Blackstar’s power banks filling. Kai gripped the armrests as he ordered the return fire with the particle cannons.

The three Arrows powered their thrusters so that they arced away from the oncoming Blackstar, but the cannons, fitted to each of the four main points, were omnidirectional. A groaning noise echoed around the ship as the guns fired a beam of disrupted particles.

The hulls of the two Arrows on either side of the Blackstar turned a dark blue color before fragmenting and dispersing into space like confetti in the wind. A brief burst of flame erupted in their respective cockpit areas.

Behind the Blackstar, the two red-tips were still following.

The third, and remaining, Arrow flew overhead of the Blackstar, right into the path of the two following red-tips. A shower of debris exploded brightly.

“Oh, that was awesome,” Senaya said. “These weapons are incredible. Kai, did I tell you how much I love Navigator tech?”

“Pay attention; you’ll be taking manual control at some point,” Kai said.

“We ought to get some distance,” Marella added. “There’s a lot of debris floating about.”

“Blackstar, arc away from the path of the wreckage,” Kai ordered, “and face Capsis Prime. We need to find a way to help if we can.”

“As you wish,” the AI said, using the ship’s thrusters to angle the ship onto a new vector facing Capsis Prime. Reverse thrusters slowed their approach.

“Remain outside their firing range,” Kai ordered. “We need time to think. Sen, you keep an eye on the feeds for any more Arrows. I’m sure there are more out there somewhere. Marella, you take the comms and see if you can get a message to Captain Lopek or General Amelia. Let them know we’re alive and ready to help.’

While Senaya and Marella carried out his orders, Kai watched the battle unfold before him. There had to be a way he could influence this without getting destroyed.

It was one thing converting laser fire into energy, but he doubted the shields, although advanced, would survive a barrage from many massive Host destroyers.

One thing he had learned since leaving Zarunda was that there was always a way if one just took a moment to assess what was before them.

“Kai, I’ve got a channel to General Amelia,” Marella said.

“Can you patch it through to the speakers?”

The AI instructed Marella on how to do that manually.

Amelia’s voice came over the speaker system.

“Citizen Kai Locke, this better be important,” she said with an angry tone.

“General Amelia, I’m here to help, and I bring with me a Navigator ship. We’re still getting to grips with it, but I’m trying to formulate a way to influence the outcome.”

“I’m afraid you’re too late,” she said, her words thick with resignation. “Host reinforcements are imminent. We don’t have enough ships to put up a fight, our protective relay is destroyed, and our government is paralyzed from within. I’m afraid we’re going to need more than a single Navigator ship, no matter how technologically advanced it is.”

“Then what do you suggest we do, give up?”

“Surrender could be an option—we must save Capsis Prime and its citizens at all costs. If we fall, then there’s little hope for the rest of the quadrant.”

“And surrendering would send the right message to the Coalition planets, would it?” Kai snarled back at her, his face flushed with anger at the thought of surrendering. His father never quit and neither did Bandar. People died for the Coalition so that it could remain free from tyranny.

“We don’t have any other option!” Amelia barked.

“You just want to save your own skin,” Kai said. “Which ship are you on, the Fang or the Trident?”

There was a pause, then a quiet reply. “Neither, I’m out of the system, currently strategizing—”

“What!” Senaya exploded, unable to hold back her incredulity. “Your people are getting slaughtered, and you’re not even at the battle? General, I don’t care what you do when I say this, but you’re nothing but a coward.”

“I agree,” Kai said. “You need to get back to Capsis right now and help.”

“This conversation is over,” Amelia said, cutting the channel.

Kai looked at Marella and Senaya in stunned silence.

Then the anger rose again.

He slammed his fist against the armrest and let out a roar of frustration. Abandoned by their general and left for dead, the remaining CDF ships had no chance. It seemed to Kai as if Amelia had done a deal with the Host already—she had surrendered to save her own skin. He didn’t believe for one second she was monitoring the battle and strategizing.

For the last few centuries, every Coalition general had flown with one of the capital ships and fought alongside their people.

“We’re on our own,” Kai said after he had taken a breath. “We need to find a way of turning the tide or at the very least saving the people of Capsis Prime.”

While Senaya and Marella brainstormed strategies, he analyzed their current situation. The battle was raging on, and the Fang and Trident were putting up an admirable resistance against the larger Host fleet, but they couldn’t do that indefinitely. At some point, their shields would fail, and they would fall.

Kai counted the two forces.

The CDF were down to ten ships from fourteen, two of those destroyed ships were reservist fighters. A hollow feeling settled in his guts at the thought of those being his friends. He’d have to grieve later, however. The Host still outnumbered the defenders two to one.

Just as he finished counting the Host force, another subspace exit point opened up, and fifteen more large Host ships entered the fray. They shaped to swarm the Trident, which had been separated from the Fang by the forces on the right flank.

With a cold dread traveling through his veins, Kai watched as one of the greatest Coalition ships ever built eventually succumbed to the overwhelming barrage of Host destroyers.

The Trident had fallen.

It wouldn’t take long for the Fang and the supporting squadron to follow.

To the left of the Blackstar, some distance away, another subspace exit opened up, and a single small ship pierced the hole in space. It was his mother’s ship: the Rapier.

Within a few seconds, a second much larger ship followed.

“It’s the GTU!” Senaya said. “Look at that thing; it’s enormous.”

It was true that the GTU flagship, the Spearhead, was the largest ship in the Coalition fleet, but even with that in the battle, the numbers would be too great.

At least it was a fight now.

If the Host were to win, they would do it with considerable losses.

Kai hailed the Rapier. A few seconds later he heard his mother’s voice.

“Kai, is that you?”

“Mother, yes, it’s me. I’ve got the Blackstar. Lopek told me you were in trouble. Are you okay?”

“I am now.”

“What does that mean?”

“No time to chat, son. We’ve got a fight on our hands. Let’s just say I’m no longer under Lopek’s command. But for now, we need to work together. If you want to show me what that thing can do, follow me in, I see a weakness on their left flank. If we survive this, I want to hear all about your mission. I don’t suppose you found your father?”

“He’s… beyond the veil,” Kai said. “It’s all I know right now.” Yet he knew the answer was in his head; he just had to find a way of opening up the cache of data and making sense of it.

“That's something, I guess," she said with sadness in her words. "Stay on my left wing and follow me in," she said with more conviction.

Kai nodded to Senaya to maneuver the Blackstar into a formation with the Rapier. “What about the Spearhead?” he asked.

“They’re following us in and providing long-range cover. The flea swarm will launch when I give the order to engage the smaller fighters and maintain a corridor of flight for us. You see the Host destroyer on the far left of their hemisphere, the big red one? We’re taking that down. We have intel to suggest that’s carrying the Host commander.”

“It’s heavily armored; your small ship isn’t going to do much against its shields,” Marella said after briefly introducing herself.

“The Spearhead is carrying the Doomsday. We’re going to drop that right into the Host’s flank.”

“But… that’ll mean you won’t…” Kai said.

“Trust me, son.”

With that, the Rapier thrusters ignited and arced toward the Host’s left flank.

“The Doomsday?” Marella asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“The biggest nuke in the Coalition arsenal,” Senaya said. “It’ll do some serious damage all right—but not just to the Host.”

“My mother won’t be able to get away fast enough. I can’t lose her too,” Kai said. He tried hailing her again but received no answer.

“Blackstar, what is the weakness my mother noticed?”

“Analyzing formation… there is indeed a gap between firing ranges. Although my models predict any ship entering that zone will have less than fifty-five-point-seven standard seconds before the Host ships readjust and narrow the firing arcs.”

“That doesn’t leave us a lot of time,” Marella said. “Unless…”

Kai caught on to her thinking. “Blackstar, this ship’s gravity engines, can that help us get in and out faster?”

“We have enough power to do that, although it will mean breaking formation,” the AI said.

Senaya added, “If we go in first, disrupt some of the smaller ships to break their formation, that’ll buy your mother and the Spearhead time to get some distance before deploying the Doomsday.”

Kai scratched his chin.

It wasn’t a bad idea, and it certainly would do a lot of damage, but would it be enough?

Chapter 27

The Host hemisphere was morphing, changing shape so that it more closely resembled an arrow—one that was pointing right for Capsis Prime.

It appeared to Kai that they were shaping up for a frontal assault on the planet and forgetting about the Coalition ships. The latter wouldn’t be able to change course and intercept in time. This whole battle so far had been about pulling the CDF out of position.

As Senaya piloted the ship to follow the Rapier, Kai racked his brain for a solution. He knew it was in there, could sense a plan forming in his subconscious, but couldn’t quite bring it up to his conscious mind.

He thought back to his time with Bandar and considered what he would do. It would be something no one expected, something that would remove the entire problem. Right now, they were just playing with numbers, picking off the odd host ship here or there, but with the number advantage, the Host would easily win that game.

Doomsday nuke or not, it wouldn’t matter even if they did take out the central command ship; the rest of the fleet was heading for Capsis Prime. The billions of people there were stranded with no defense.

An aerial bombardment would reduce the planet to a smoking ruin within days, if not hours.

Kai checked the video feeds around him. The Spearhead was following in behind, and they were following the Rapier into the left flank of the morphing Host hemisphere. Some fighters had peeled off and were coming right at them.

“Fighters on your right flank incoming,” Kai said to his mother over the channel. He didn’t know if she was hearing him or not as she continued to aim for the red destroyer.

Kai diverted the message to the Spearhead.

An operative named Cho confirmed the communication and ordered the flea swarm to launch; a dozen small fighters disembarked from the Spearhead and set an interception course to engage the host ships.

Although small and not very powerful, they flew in formation better than almost any other ship in the quadrant. They’d give the Host fighters a difficult problem to deal with, and that would buy his mother time.

But that still didn’t address the main issue of their strategy essentially being a suicide mission. “Cho, put me through to Captain Lopek,” Kai said.

A few seconds later the head of the GTU came online. “Mr. Locke, this better be important; I have a WMD to ready.”

“Yeah, about that; it’s not going to be enough. You know that, and I know that. My mother is on a suicide course, and I can’t be okay with that.”

“If you have an alternative strategy, I’m happy to hear it. But you better make it quick. We have just a few minutes before engagement and deployment.”

“And what about the other Coalition ships—are they cool with this plan of yours?”

“I’ve informed them of the situation, and they’re in agreement. With General Amelia abandoning her post, I’m the highest-ranking officer in the fleet and—”

“I don’t care for hierarchy, Lopek,” Kai said. “Just give me two minutes before you do anything hasty and make sure that flea swarm protects my mother. If anything happens to her, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

Lopek went to say something but kept his response to himself. A moment later he said, “I respect your viewpoint, Mr. Locke, but tell me, what can the Blackstar do? Does it have any technology that can help us?”

“I’m still working on that; it’s a complex system,” Kai said.

“Then I suggest you hurry up. Lopek out.”

Lopek closed the channel.

The flea swarm had reached the squadron of eight Host fighters and were doing well to keep them away from the Rapier’s flight path. They were all getting close to the firing range of the Host destroyers, however. Kai hoped the CDF ships would keep them occupied, but he was sure the sight of the Spearhead approaching would divert their attention.

Kai slumped to the couch and sighed. “There’s got to be a way out of this,” he said.

The face of the holocube showing various metrics included a countdown to the Doomsday’s deployment based on the model outlined by his mother. They had less than a minute to come up with something.

“Senaya, map the battlefield. See if there’s any advantage we’re missing.”

“Okay, Captain,” she said, giving him a wink.

“Marella, communicate with the rest of the Coalition fleet to see if anyone has any radical ideas that Lopek has dismissed.”

“I’m on it.”

“And you, Blackstar,” Kai said, “tell me exactly how the gravity drive works.”

“May I enquire as to the purpose?” the AI responded.

“No, just give me the nuts and bolts of how it works.”

As the AI continued to explain the details of the system, Kai thought back to his racing days and to one race in particular where he was losing to three other ships. Each one of them more advanced and stronger than his, yet he won the race by trusting his gut and ignoring known strategies.

Back then he went into a reaction mode and let his natural talents guide his decisions. On the tight banks, he flew high, which was often regarded as a waste of energy and a slower way around due to not following the slipstream, but what it did do was give him an overview of the formation ahead of him, so that when he flew down on the straight, he could outmaneuver them on the following bank by going low and essentially providing an unpredictable element to the race.

The leaders were so concerned with what he was doing that they lost focus, giving him the advantage.

With a single turn to go, he took the lead and won the race, and all without barely remembering what he had done. He only solidified his choices during the race after watching the video feed.

The data cache he had received from the pedestal was still whirling around in his brain, and he started to follow the tendrils, reacting to each thought as it came up instead of fighting to establish a strategy.

Kai closed his eyes and relaxed.

Outside of his bubble, Senaya, Marella and the AI communicated about the status of the battle, spoke orders, and demanded to know what to do.

He ignored all of it and thought of his father.

He pictured the image he had seen in Bandar’s cabin with the two men.

He ran through the conversations he’d had with Marella about his father.

He thought of the footlocker, the wreck, the tetrahedron.

Slowly, his understanding of the Navigators began to sharpen. The massive amounts of information sitting in his head began to organize itself. Knowledge of the ancient race bubbled up to his consciousness, and he got an image that snapped him out of his meditative state.

Senaya was shaking him by the shoulder. “Kai, you’ve been out for ages. We’re about to enter the firing zone. The Doomsday is launching any second now.”

“I have a plan,” he said as he watched the Spearhead fly over them and into the corridor of the Host flank.

“Blackstar, halt our momentum. Target the area of space a few meters ahead of that forming Host arrow, right near the point.”

“As you wish,” the AI said. “What would you like me to do?”

“Kai, what are you doing?” Senaya said, her forehead crinkled with concern.

Marella stopped chatting with the rest of the fleet and looked at him with dark eyes. “Why have we stopped?” she asked.

“The gravity drive,” Kai said. “It creates wormholes in space-time. We’re going to create one in front of Capsis Prime.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have the power for that,” the AI said. “You’re restricted to—”

“I’m not restricted to anything,” Kai said, shutting the AI down. “I’m a damned Navigator and the rightful owner of this ship in my father’s absence. I have complete control.”

“There’s only one location such a wormhole that large could lead to,” the AI said. “I’m forbidden to allow—”

“You might be,” Kai said. “But I’m not.”

A series of numbers came to him. The same numbers that were on the footlocker: his father’s army ID. Kai tapped the sequence into the Blackstar’s system. The AI’s three-dimensional face faded away and the words ‘Override active’ flashed on the holocube.

“What’s happening?” Senaya said with a suspicious look on her face.

“I’m taking off the training wheels, Sen. You two should hold on; I’m not sure how this is going to work.”

Senaya and Marella did as he suggested.

Kai hailed his mother, but she didn’t answer. She had entered the corridor and was a few kilometers in front of the Spearhead.

The Doomsday deployment was less than a minute away.

A dozen or more Host fighters were now engaged with the flea swarm—and winning. The red Host destroyer had altered its vector and joined the rest of the fleet in the large arrow formation.

The Fang exploded into pieces; large chunks flew away at opposing angles. All around the Host fleet, CDF ships were going down, despite their valiant attempt.

Fifty seconds to deployment.

Kai tried one more time to hail Lopek and tell him to call it off, but they refused to answer. He just hoped his plan would work, because if it didn’t…

Remembering the race he had run through his mind earlier, he forgot everything else and focused on his control panel. He enlarged the coordinate area the AI had set earlier and engaged the gravity drive.

“Um… Kai, we can’t leave,” Senaya said when she saw the status update on the holocube.

“We’re going nowhere,” Kai said. “I want you to divert full auxiliary power to reverse thrusters and engage when I say so, okay?”

Forty seconds to deployment.

The hatch on the underside of the Spearhead opened, and the massive warhead lowered into position. All Kai could see was his mother’s death in its future.

“Okay,” Senaya said, her voice shaking.

Marella sat wide-eyed and frozen with uncertainty.

Kai delved into the Blackstar’s systems and increased the power of the gravity drive beyond its maximum capacity. He trusted the ancient technology would withstand the strain he was about to put on it.

Thirty seconds to deployment.

The Rapier opened fire on the Host target, providing the Spearhead with direct laser-targeted coordinates.

Kai hailed his mother once again, this time telling her of the plan.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Do it.”

“You need to get out of the formation,” Kai said. “Otherwise, you’ll—”

“Be sucked into the veil with the other ships? I know.”

With that, Kai’s mother closed the channel to him, leaving him with no time or any other option. He looked to Senaya and ordered her to hit the thrusters as he engaged the gravity drive.

The Blackstar shook furiously. The hull creaked and groaned against the massive amounts of power it was generating. Kai still didn’t know where it got the power, but however it was doing it, it was enough for his eardrums to burst and blood to pour down his neck.

His vision blurred and time seemed to stand still as a rupture in space opened at the tip of the Host arrow. The swirling void grew larger, obscuring the planet on the other side. Some of the smaller ships at the tip tried to angle away, but the gravitational power was too much, and they were dragged in.

The Blackstar’s thrusters fought against the force and managed to escape the worst of the gravity well. The other ships, including the Rapier and Spearhead, had no chance.

The hungry wormhole grew larger and larger until Kai doubted if he’d done the right thing. He was meddling with forces he barely understood, but with a sense of elation and horror in equal measure, he watched as the entire Host and CDF fleets slowly entered the wormhole.

When his mother’s ship crossed the event horizon, he let out an anguished scream. The Spearhead and its payload soon followed.

A few seconds later, the last of the Host ships disappeared into the void. The wormhole contracted until it became a tiny pinhead of bright light—and then eventually nothing.

Space folded shut around it. Apart from the swirling debris now set on new orbital paths thanks to the wormhole’s interference, the space about Capsis Prime and its moons was clear of all ships.

The Blackstar hung in space, slowly floating away from the capital planet.

Senaya reached over to Kai and gripped him by the shoulders. She was breathing slowly, and her voice was tight with pain. “Are you okay?”

Kai’s entire body hurt, his hearing was messed up, but he was still breathing. He turned to check on Marella; she was huddled over her knees and breathing deeply.

“I’m okay,” Kai said. “You two?”

“Still alive,” Senaya said with a forced grin. “That was insane. Where did they go?”

Marella looked up at Kai with red eyes. “Beyond the veil,” she said, shaking her head. “He sent them beyond the veil.”

“That’s a good thing, right? I mean, Capsis Prime is saved; his mother will still be alive along with the Spearhead…” Senaya looked at Kai with wide eyes, beckoning him to tell her it was all okay.

But really, he had no idea.

Marella was right.

The only place he could send them was the veil. He couldn’t produce a wormhole that powerful in quadrant space; the veil itself had an abundance of energy that he needed to power the singularity.

“No,” Marella said. “It’s not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. There’s a reason why the Navigators created the veil in the first place. Not to stop people from getting in, but to stop whatever’s in there from getting out. And now there’s a rip in space-time.”

“But the wormhole is closed,” Senaya said, pointing to the video feed.

“She’s right,” Kai said, knowing instinctively that there was some threat beyond the veil the Navigators were holding at bay, and by creating a massive wormhole as he did, he had weakened the barrier. The Ancients would no doubt be unimpressed with him for this, but if it came down to it, he would deal with them when the time came—whatever that would entail.

“But what does this all mean?” Senaya asked. “What’s going to happen now?”

“The wormhole was unstable,” Kai said. “It was the only way to create such a large one. Not all of the ships will end up in the same place. The Blackstar recorded a range of possible destinations. Our job will be to find my mother and, where feasible, destroy the remaining Host ships—if the Navigators aren't already doing that."

Marella shook her head, muttering, “No, no, no,” over and over. “This is bad. Real bad. For many millennia the Navigators have kept them and us apart. There must have been real reasons for that. This can’t end well.”

“It was a risk I had to take,” Kai said. “I couldn’t stand back and watch twenty billion citizens die at the hand of the Host. Once they had the capital, the rest of the quadrant would have fallen. It still might if our leadership is as compromised as Lopek said. But at least we’re here to fight another day.”

“He’s right,” Senaya said. “I would do the same thing again if it came to it.”

Kai squeezed Senaya in a tight hug, appreciative of her support.

“Now if you two don’t mind,” Kai said. “I need to visit the medical bay. Sen, take us down to the surface. Marella, get in touch with the Capsis Prime government and let them know about Amelia being compromised and what we did. I’m sure they’re going to question us. The quicker we deal with them, the quicker we can get on with our next task.”

With that, Kai stood from the couch and stumbled across the bridge and headed for the medical bay. He needed some time alone to process everything that had happened and what it all meant.

The Capsis government would demand answers.

And he would demand help for his excursion beyond the veil. Biology or not, Brenna Locke was his mother, and if she had survived the wormhole, he needed to go and get her—along with his father.

Chapter 28

A day later

Kai eased the formal suit collar from his neck and looked out of his hotel room window. The view stretched down onto the streets of Goddenia, the capital city of Capsis Prime and the seat of government for the entire Coalition Republic.

He rubbed his ears and flexed his jaw. His hearing was still a little off even after the automated med-bay surgery to repair his ruptured eardrums. The healing gunk sitting in his ear canals would take a while to do its thing and dissipate.

The city looked empty, the fifteen million citizens locked in their homes as they processed how close they had come to complete annihilation. On the other side of the planet, the remnants of the geosynchronous defense station lay in tatters, but safely in the depths of the Felstatic Ocean.

A few hundred brave souls died when they used their trading ships to drag the structure away from the highly populated places as it re-entered the atmosphere.

The three moons, however, didn’t fare so well.

The GTU headquarters on Capa was utterly destroyed, killing fifty thousand.

As for Ceassa and Cesta, they were still calculating the tragedy.

Kai wondered what the obsession for the media was in the actual numbers. It didn’t mean anything really, and there was no way one could turn back the clock.

Those poor souls had perished; the exact number didn’t matter.

They weren’t credits to be accounted for and balanced.

They were more than just statistics.

He breathed heavily and considered turning down the Twin Presidents’ hearing. He’d had enough of bureaucrats and didn’t want an inquest of what he had done. A report of everything he did was already in their system; he’d made sure he, Senaya and Marella posted that as soon as they had arrived in Goddenia, knowing the public would want an explanation of the phenomena they had all witnessed.

The media channels were describing it as a miracle. Some ascribed it to various deities while others suggested the Navigator Ancients had returned. The arrival of the Blackstar was filmed and beamed all around the Coalition.

Kai was being hailed as a Coalition savior and Navigator spokesperson. He had already told a dozen reporters that he was just a lowly mechanic from Zarunda.

Of course, that wasn’t sensational enough for them. The journalists would print and broadcast what they wanted anyway.

A knock on the door broke his inward focus.

The feed on his wristband showed it was Senaya standing outside. She was the mirror image of him in her formal slate-gray suit, and she looked as out of place as he felt. She looked good, though. Fresh and free from wounds.

He opened the door and let her in.

“Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Nervous,” she said. “What if they charge us with something, like treason?”

“They’re not going to charge us with treason; we saved their asses. The media have us as descendants of the gods. The government has the secret service surrounding the Blackstar because people are making a pilgrimage to it.”

“It’s crazy, Kai. I never thought we’d be here, doing what we did. I just want to go; I hate being around all this government, all this attention.”

She slumped onto the edge of his bed and ran her hand through her mohawk, now died a somber brown and free from her diodes. He’d never seen her so formal. It didn’t suit her; her body language was all wrong. It made him feel even more uncomfortable.

“Where’s Marella?” he asked.

“She’s with the History Department, filling them in on what she’s learned. I’m not sure I trust her; she just doesn’t seem the same since we arrived. Wouldn’t even look me in the eye.”

Kai sat next to her on the edge of the bed and put an arm around her shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it; I’m sure she’s just in shock. She was still recovering from the amateur surgery on Parsephus and was also injured on Oberus. I don’t think Lantesians heal too well. I’ll try to speak with her after this meeting with the presidents.”

“So what’s our angle on this?” she said, perking up. “What’s the line we’re going with?”

“The truth,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “No need to lie; we didn’t do anything wrong. Besides, we’ve got leverage if they try to pin anything on us.”

“The Blackstar?”

“Yeah, I coded it with a Navigator encryption key. No one’s getting in or operating it.”

“Where’d you get that from?”

He tapped the side of his head. “A few things are starting to become apparent. I’m no mathematics genius, but it’s right there, and it all makes sense. If they want access to the Blackstar, I’m the only one who can get them into it. If they don’t like our report, well, they don’t get anything from the Blackstar.”

Senaya smiled. “I knew you’d have a plan.”

“Nah, I’m just making it up as I go along. Let’s just see how things pan out. But if it goes wrong, I suggest we make a run for it.” He tapped his wristband. “I’ve got remote access to the Blackstar. It’ll summon to our location within seconds if need be.”

“Like it did at the cave on Oberus?”

“Exactly.”

“I feel better about the day now,” Senaya said, nudging Kai with an elbow. “Speaking of which, you want to go get this over with?”

Kai checked the time and nodded. “Sure, lead the way. Let’s see what the stiffs have got to say about what we did.”

Chapter 29

Security services escorted Kai and Senaya to their seats in the boardroom of the Glass House—the name for the presidents’ central office on account of it being made mostly from glass and hovering fifty meters in the air, suspended by superconductor magnets.

It was just another one of the government’s many ostentatious projects that served nothing other than ego. Even the meeting table reeked of obscene wealth. The veined surface was made from precious metals supplied from all over the Lasides Quadrant.

The table surface alone could probably set him up for life.

He quickly considered a way to remove it from the Glass House—and then promptly remembered he had the Blackstar now and wasn’t a pauper on Zarunda anymore.

“This place is so over the top,” Senaya whispered into his right ear.

He had to struggle to hear her. “Tell me about it. To think there are so many cities, some on this very planet, that can barely afford clean drinking water and here’s a table worth millions. Makes me sick.”

Kai stared out of the glass walls of the circular room. The weather on Capsis was gorgeous; bright sunshine and barely a cloud in the sky. An observer would think everything was just fine and that the planet had not come within hours of being turned into a flaming ruin.

“If you’re feeling sick, we can fetch a doctor,” a baritone voice said.

Kai turned and looked over his shoulder.

The two presidents, Stephan Gatskil and Desmona Lattis, entered the room with their security entourage, decked out in black and silver nanothread armor, following close behind them.

It was Gatskil with the sarcastic retort. The corpulent president took his seat on the opposite side of the table, along with his copresident, Lattis. She too was rotund. No chance of either of them starving to death anytime soon, Kai thought.

Lattis waved the entourage out of the room. Her long mauve hair fell slickly over her broad shoulders. She looked every bit the stereotypical native of Iggyous—a tropical paradise planet that exported the most delicious—and fattening—nuts and fruit butter. Her robe was awash with a chromatic kaleidoscope of colors, whereas Gatskil was gray all over, including his hair, but then he was seventy-eight years old to her fifty-six. The former had been in the job for eight years now while Lattis was a relative newcomer, serving just her third year.

That came about due to the previous incumbent, Kristo Fockston, being executed for selling secrets to the Host. Kai wondered how many of those secrets were responsible for the shrain agents infiltrating Coalition centers of power and influence.

Gatskil cast a beady gray eye over Senaya then rested on Kai. “I’m assuming you’re well enough to continue with the briefing?” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“If we make it quick, yes,” Kai said, bristling at having to be here. “I don’t know exactly what you want from us, but I suggest we get to the point. I have business to attend.”

Lattis sat back and heaved in a big breath. “Ah yes, your mother, no doubt. Well, then, let’s dive right into the meat of the matter, shall we? We all saw what happened with the wormhole, and we know you were responsible for it, or at least the Navigator ship was. What can you tell us about that?”

Senaya opened her mouth, about to speak when Kai interrupted her.

“It’s too difficult to explain. You wouldn’t understand it even if I tried to put it into simple terms. I don’t fully understand it all yet, either. I just did what I had to do at the moment to save this planet—and the Coalition.”

“We're going to need more to go on, Mr. Locke," Gatskil said, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "The public deserves answers."

“The public deserves a government without corruption,” Senaya said, standing up and slapping her hands down on the table. “We know all about the shrain infiltration and how they were allowed to take down the defense array. We are aware that General Amelia sent many of the CDF fleet to the outskirts of the quadrant so that the Host force could face the capital system without resistance. We’re not the ones that should be questioned here.”

Lattis considered Senaya for a moment and inclined her head a few degrees. “You have a legitimate complaint, Ms. Orlanda. But we’re not here to interrogate you. We just need to know what happened and whether there is a risk posed to our people. Will the wormhole open? Will the Host force make their way back? You can surely understand that we need to know the status so we can start strategizing the rebuild of our Coalition.”

“Before we say anything else,” Kai said. “I want to know what the status is on Zarunda. I only agreed to find the Blackstar if—”

Gatskil held up a hand to stop Kai. “It’s being dealt with. I received a report directly from Captain Lopek a number of days ago, and resources have been allocated to address the blight. On that, you have my word.”

Kai relaxed in his seat, appreciative of them honoring the deal. He didn’t care so much about what happened to him as much as he did the fate of those stuck on Zarunda.

“Now,” Lattis said, opening her arms in a friendly gesture. “Let’s put any ill feeling aside, shall we, and discuss the topic at hand and see where we can help each other.”

Senaya reluctantly sat back down in her seat and took a breath.

“Okay, here’s how we saw it all go down…” Kai began.

He told them, honestly, his recollection of the battle and his decision-making process. Although he kept out the specifics of how they generated the wormhole, he gave them enough information that they were satisfied they were safe, at least for now.

The briefing went on for two hours with both sides questioning the other as they formulated what their next move would be.

After lunch, they resumed the meeting.

Marella had joined them and corroborated Kai’s information. He wasn’t sure if she would; her intentions weren’t clear to him, but over the course of another hour, her report on how they found the Blackstar and their usage of it afterward absolved him of any wrongdoing in their eyes.

“So,” Kai said after a lull in the discussion, “what’s going to happen to General Amelia?”

The two presidents shared a look before Lattis said, “There’ll be a trial, and, if found guilty, she’ll be executed, along with her shrain informants.”

“Which brings us nicely to our last piece of business today," Gatskil said, leaning forward and resting his weight on the table. "Before the GTU headquarters was destroyed, our operatives delivered to me a report—which earlier today proved to be correct."

“Go on,” Kai said, eager for the meeting to finish.

“We picked up a shrain inquisitor posing as a council official this morning. From it, we confirmed that the Host is receiving help from an ally outside of the quadrant. Their population, power capacity, or anything at all is unknown, but we’re working on that.”

“Another faction?” Marella said. “But we’ve explored many of the planets outside of the quadrant and haven’t found anything to suggest another galactic-faring race.”

“The Universe is a big place," Lattis said. "We've been protected by the infrastructure of the Navigators. One has to ask the question now, as we have always done, what forced the Navigators to retreat behind the veil, and what instigated the building of the Veil in the first place? Although we don't know the answers, the intelligence we've gathered points to a powerful race hitherto unknown."

“It does not surprise the Host would sell themselves as pawns to someone else if it meant they could strike back at the Coalition," Senaya said. "But is there nothing at all we know about this other race?"

Gatskil shook his head. “The shrain died before we could… well, extract any further information, but we are working on it. The CDF ships have forced the remains of the Host on the outskirts into retreat. A number of those have been assigned missions into Host territory, and we’re following up some specific leads that should prove to be enlightening.”

“We do know, however," Lattis added, "that this attack, this whole operation was just a proof of concept. A test if you will. The real attack is yet to come and given how depleted we are… well, the future looks bleak."

“You must have some plan,” Kai said.

“We’re in the process of drawing up emergency plans for total defense. There’ll be further conscription, and every planet within the Coalition will be put on war status with all production and resources focused on military requirements. Further, a compulsory purchase order of all suitable space-faring ships has been ratified by Congress. We’re fast-tracking officers and pilots as we speak.”

Gatskil leaned further toward Kai. “Which is where you come in.”

“You want me to fly a civilian ship?”

“No, no, Mr. Locke, we want you to do the thing you want: find your mother. Fly beyond the veil, find her, and find the Navigators. We’re going to need them if we’re to survive what is coming, because if we’re defeated; they’ll surely be next.”

“I’ll do it,” Kai said. “In fact, I’ll leave as soon as we finish here. No offense intended, but this isn’t my scene.”

“Understood,” Gatskil said. He then turned his attention to Senaya. “I’m told that you want to join the Engineers Guild. In light of your actions, I think it’s fair to say you’ve more than proved your worth and we would be honored to have you in the guild.” From his jacket pocket, he produced a holoscroll and slid it across the table. “Your entrance details,” he said.

Senaya picked it up, unfurled it, and read the contents. A smile stretched across her face. Although Kai knew it was selfish of him, he was disappointed. Sure, on some level he was happy she got what she had always wanted, but he didn’t want her to go.

“Well?” Lattis said. “What’s your decision, Ms. Orlanda?”

Senaya looked at the scroll, then at Kai and said, “I’m sorry, Kai, this is what I’ve always wanted, you know that, right?”

“Of course,” he said, disappointment gripping his guts.

“Being in the guild would fulfill my lifelong dream. It’s one thing working on wrecks, but another to work on CDF ships. I know it sounds crazy, but it would validate who I am, you know?”

Kai couldn’t say anything because if he did, his emotions would run wild. He couldn’t say goodbye to her like this.

“So we can inform the guild of your acceptance?” Lattis said.

Senaya gazed once more at the holoscroll, folded it up and handed it back to Lattis. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “My place is on the Blackstar with Kai. As much as I’d love to join the guild, I can’t stand by and watch my dearest friend face this challenge on his own. Besides, as an engineer, what better place to go than the home of the Navigators? That’s if you’ll have me on your crew, Kai?”

He spluttered then smiled. “You’re my number one pick,” he said, grabbing Senaya in for a hug so he could hide his emotion. His heart pounded against his chest and relief flooded his system that she was sticking around.

While hugging her, he caught Marella’s gaze.

Gatskil did too and said, “Ms. Maio, your help has been much appreciated, and our advisers have been very impressed with you. We’d like to offer you a position within a new department of Navigator Studies. You’ll receive a generous grant and will head up a team to liaise with Kai and anyone or anything else that comes back from the veil. To help us make sense of our Ancient guardians.”

“Or,” Kai added, wanting to be proactive this time around, “you can satisfy your curiosity firsthand and come with us beyond the veil to see for yourself. I still need you to help me find my father if we get a chance. I know he’s over there somewhere, and I know that you have feelings for him.”

At this Marella looked away and hid her eyes. The soft fur on her skin bristled. Kai knew this to be a sign of surprise and shame, although he didn’t judge her; his father and Brenna had been apart for many years, and as far as he could tell, she hadn’t had an affair, just admired Kendal perhaps a little too much.

After a tense moment, Senaya suggested she would like Marella to join them.

“Okay,” Marella said sheepishly. “I’ll join the crew of the Blackstar.” To Gatskil and Lattis: “I’m sorry, but the opportunity is too great for me to miss. And Kai is correct; I do have feelings for his father, but not in the way he thinks… It’s complicated.”

Senaya grinned and grabbed Marella around the neck in a surprise hug-attack. The two laughed briefly before Gatskil coughed to get their attention.

“It seems our business is concluded. I’ll have our security team escort you to the Blackstar whenever you’re ready. If you need any supplies, please let the team know, and they’ll arrange it for you.”

The two presidents stood, as did Kai and the others. The security team entered the room and waited to escort them out.

“Before you go,” Lattis said, waddling around the table until she was facing Kai, Senaya, and Marella, “we wanted to give you these.” From a satchel beneath her robe, she pulled out three medals and placed them over their heads.

A reporter stepped forward from the escort team and indicated with a rolling motion of his hand that he was broadcasting.

The two presidents moved until they were standing on either side of the Blackstar crew, smiling at the camera somewhere on the journalist’s person. Probably a contact lens vid streamer, Kai thought as he tested the weight of the medal in his hand.

Lattis spoke as though she were addressing the public, which Kai soon realized she was. He stood up straighter and tried to look more hero-like as she began her short speech.

“Citizens of the Coalition Republic, although we’ve already been through much, there’s still more to come, and trust me when I tell you that we have planned for every eventuality and we will get through this, just like we did a decade ago.

“This is due to no small effort by these three brave citizens. Kai Locke, Senaya Orlanda, and Marella Maio have earned the highest honor we can give them: the Coalition Medal of Freedom. Their heroic actions saved billions of lives, and we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude, but that will have to wait, as their bravery knows no bounds.”

Lattis paused for a moment as the journalist stepped closer and focused individually on Kai, Senaya, and then Marella before stepping back.

“These three brave souls have recovered a Navigator artifact, which I’m sure many of you have already seen on your feeds: the Blackstar. And with it, they’re going to journey beyond the veil to rescue our men and women and to bring back the secrets of the Navigators.”

On and on she went. Kai tuned out and eventually slid out of view as the journalist moved around to focus his questioning to Gatskil and Lattis.

Senaya and Marella joined him, and they were escorted out by the security team. No one said anything as they made their way to the shuttle and down to the landing zone where the Blackstar awaited.

Crowds of people had gathered around the craft and were being held back by soldiers. They were chanting all kinds of stuff that Kai ignored. The medal around his neck felt too heavy for him; he doubted he could live up to such a decoration. He hadn’t done much when all was said and done. He hadn’t sacrificed himself like his mother did. He hadn’t fought at the frontline like his father or even Bandar.

He waited for Senaya and Marella to step inside the ship, then turned to face the crowd. He removed the medal and threw it over the barriers to a young girl standing on her own, looking up at the Blackstar with awe.

She wasn’t shouting and hollering like the others. She caught the medal with a shocked expression and then smiled up at Kai.

He returned her smile and hoped silently she’d still be alive to make use of the medal. He hoped she’d sell it; he hoped she would see through it and realize that Kai was just like her and anyone else in his position would have done what he did.

Just because one of his parents was a Navigator hadn’t changed a damn thing. All that knowledge in his head and he couldn’t access most of it.

It was Kai the grease monkey, the scavenger, the B-list racer that did what he did, not some medaled hero. He turned and entered the ship, not waiting to wave at the crowd. He wasn’t the hero they needed. At the end of the day, he was just a boy looking for his parents like so many other orphans out there.

But he was the lucky one: he had the Blackstar. And more importantly, he had Senaya and Marella. Together they would chart new worlds and travel to places few people would ever get the chance to see.

First, however, they needed to narrow down their search and prepare themselves for going beyond the veil.

Chapter 30

Later that day, Kai and the Blackstar crew flew away from Capsis Prime. They’d traveled two million kilometers using their regular stellar drive so as not to disrupt anything when opening up another wormhole.

The three of them took their places on the couches surrounding the central command module. Kai looked to his left and caught Senaya’s attention.

“What’s up, Captain?” she said.

“Just wondering how the ship’s doing. You finished the diagnostics, right?”

“Yeah, but why didn’t you just get the AI to do it for you? It would have been quicker.”

“I don’t trust it,” Kai said. “Not sure why, but I get the feeling there’s more going on there than just logic and processors. Besides, I thought it’d be good to give you the opportunity to poke around in the ship’s innards and see how she works.”

Senaya gave him the rundown in glorious detail. He tuned out after a few minutes but remained quiet to allow Senaya to enjoy her geeking out over the Navigator tech.

Before they had started their journey away from Capsis Prime, he’d already run the diagnostic routines himself and knew the ship was in good condition. While they were handling the briefing with the presidents, the ship itself had been busy running maintenance routines.

Marella joined in with Senaya, giving her thoughts on the design choices and technological advancements of the ship’s various systems.

The more they talked, the more fragments of the data cache in his head started to open up. He still couldn’t fully understand most of it, but he was sure this was all helping.

“That’s great,” he finally said when his two crew had finished. “I suppose we ought to prepare for the jump unless you two have any last minute tasks you want to run?”

Marella’s fur waved slowly, which Kai had come to learn was a Lantesian way of politely saying no.

“You’re just stalling now, Kai,” Senaya said, running a hand through her mohawk and adjusting her brightly lit diodes that she had refitted since returning to the ship. She had even put on her multi-pocketed overalls. She now looked like her true self. And just as her true self, she had seen right through him.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s just… we’re going beyond the veil. That’s huge!”

Marella placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay to be nervous,” she said. “It doesn’t diminish your status with us. You’re still our captain; you’re still the son of a Navigator. There’s no pressure, Kai. We’ve got your back.”

“Marella’s right,” Senaya said. She then took a holoscroll from one of her many pockets and handed it to Kai. “While you were navigating us away from Capsis, I ran some scans and found these three possible exit points of the wormhole. Your mother is likely at one of these.”

The coordinates didn’t make a lot of sense to Kai. They were for systems of planets on the inner rings of the galaxy. No one had charted that area, so to him, despite his new understanding of the Navigators, the numbers just represented random chance.

“The probability is equal for each choice,” Marella added. “From my investigations into the Navigator culture, I have figured out that the third option is most likely an outer planet while the other two are further in.”

Marella handed him a pencil sketch showing a crudely drawn diagram. She had used elements from the cavern on Oberus, along with some other artifacts she had studied, to come up with that conclusion.

His hand naturally went to his pocket where he had the tetrahedron.

He had learned how to make the symbols glow at will, but these had yet to illicit change in his understanding. He did, however, find it gave him increasing comfort to have on his person.

The bond with it had continued to grow stronger, but it hadn’t given him any indication of which choice would be the right one, as he had hoped.

“Let’s go with the outer coordinates first,” he said. “That way if we draw a blank, we’re already heading inward. If we continue in right away, we may not have the chance to come back out.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Senaya said. “I’m plotting in the details now.”

“Gravity engines ready to rock and roll when you are, Kai. The wormhole protocol says it’ll take us about five hours to reach our destination.”

Five hours! Kai had gone on longer hikes through the forests of Gostabul on Zarunda. It amazed him to think they would be traveling to the inner rings of the galaxy in that time.

Turning to Marella, he said, “Are you ready?”

Her fur bristled, standing on end this time, making her look fuzzy. She smiled and nodded her head. “I’ve always been ready. Let’s do this.”

“Go for it, Sen. Take us beyond the veil and let’s see what’s awaiting us.”

“Aye, Captain!” she said.

The process wasn’t very dramatic—it was just a single gesture over the glass control panel at Senaya’s lap—and he briefly considered coding up a more dramatic procedure with sirens and fancy graphical effects.

The holocube floating above the central island span a few times until the wormhole data screen faced Kai and the others. A stream of data flowed down one column while a countdown ticked in another. It was counting down from thirty seconds.

When it reached twenty, a notification came through; the holocube flashed red, and on one of the walls a video feed flickered to life. Off to their right flank, a few hundred kilometers away, a small subspace exit point flashed and the Blackstar received a communication request.

“Who the hell is that?” Marella said. “Capsis Prime was told not to interrupt us during our exit.”

“Blackstar,” Kai ordered, “zoom in on that ship and identify the drive signature.” And to Senaya, “Pause wormhole activation for now. Let’s see what this is all about first.”

The video feed showed a beaten-up micro-hauler. Smoke belched from its subspace drive, and the cockpit appeared to be held together by a rough collection of welded plates and transparent polymers. A single individual was sitting at the helm.

“Is that?” Senaya started to say.

Marella leaned forward. “It can’t be…”

“Blackstar, open communication channel.” The ship bleeped once to confirm the connection. “Micro-hauler, identify yourself.”

“Well, well, well,” the voice growled over the comms. “Looks like little Kai got his toy after all. And by the looks of the debris in this system, I’d say you put it to good use. Not bad for a grease monkey.”

“Oh my god, Bandar! Is that you?” Kai said, emotion welling up in his throat and catching him by surprise. “I thought you were dead!”

“Well, I was, but I got better. Are you going to keep chatting or let me dock? I trust I got here in time before the big jump.”

“Yeah,” Senaya said, a big smile on her face. “By about twenty seconds. You know how to come back from the dead with style, I’ll give you that. What the hell is that you’re flying?”

“Yeah, about that; it belonged to a… an old rival of mine. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather we get docked and get out of here before the scumbags find me. They should be arriving just about…”

“Now,” Marella finished off for him, pointing to a large black and red warship the shape of a torus with the central section cut away.

“Bandar, what the hell have you got into now?” Kai said. “Just hurry up and prepare to dock. We’re on our way.”

Senaya piloted the Blackstar to rendezvous with the micro-hauler. They refused to answer the hail from the warship and brought Bandar onboard. He joined them in the cockpit and took a seat on the couch, opposite Kai.

“You’re looking pretty good for a dead man,” Kai said.

“Runs in the family,” Bandar replied, winking with his good eye on the flesh side of his face.

Marella was tracking the destroyer as they talked. She turned to Kai. “I think they’re preparing an attack. We better go.”

“One second,” Kai said, looking back at Bandar. He thought back to the picture of him with Kai’s father and how Bandar was somehow in communication with his mother despite not being a de facto member of the GTU.

“You’re… we’re…” Kai started to say.

“We really need to leave,” Senaya said. “The warship is preparing something that looks very much like a massive nuke.”

“She’s right,” Bandar said, lighting up a jola leaf cigar and puffing out plumes of pungent smoke. “They’re really pissed at me, and they will blow us to hell and back.”

“Initiate immediate wormhole jump,” Kai said to Senaya.

He turned back to Bandar and knew it then. “You’re my brother,” Kai said. “And you’ve known it all along.”

“Stepbrother to be precise,” Bandar said with a grin. “And despite having Navigator blood in your veins, you ain’t the sharpest tool in the box. I figured you would have known while we were back on Zarunda.”

The holocube began its countdown.

Kai sat down on the couch and strapped himself in, motioning for Bandar to do the same. “I’m still not sure I entirely like you,” Kai said as the Blackstar’s engines whined up and that elongated groaning noise started to reverberate around the bridge.

“I’m like Therusian skin mold,” Bandar said, shouting over the din. “I’ll grow on you whether you like it or not.”

Before Kai had time to fire back a witty retort, or perhaps an insult, the wormhole opened ahead of them, and the force pulled them through and beyond the event horizon.

Behind them, the destroyer stretched off into the distance until it disappeared, but not before out of the corner of Kai’s vision he noted the red flash on one of the video walls indicating an incoming missile.

It was too late now.

Everything was turning dark, as it had before.

All Kai could think about as they crossed the singularity and dimensions was that he must find his parents, and not just for his sake now—but also his brother’s.

Bandar Trace, Zarunda’s most notorious criminal, was his stepbrother.

What other revelations were there beyond the veil?

Kai could only imagine, but whether those imaginings were the bizarre effects of trans-dimensional travel or something deep down in his psyche, he wouldn't know.

At least not yet…

Click here to read the next book in the trilogy

Or visit: http://bit.ly/bcbook1

About the Authors

Colin F. Barnes is a publisher and full-time writer. He honed his craft with the London School of Journalism and the Open University (BA, English). Colin has run a number of tech-based businesses, worked in rat-infested workshops, and coded systems for huge corporations—which led him to write science fiction and cyberpunk.

Colin can be found at: http://www.colinfbarnes.com

A.C. Hadfield always wanted to be an astronaut. As a boy he grew up reading science fiction novels and dreaming of the stars. He ended up as an engineer but developed a passion for the world of writing. He lives in the USA in various locations depending on the seasons. He enjoys traveling, stargazing, and dreaming up galactic empires in which to tell his tales.

A.C. can be found at: https://vastfrontiersbooks.com/achadfield/