Zenith. Lindsay Cummings
She tapped a blue fingertip on the holoscreen, changing it to the rear-cam, showing Andi a faraway look at the ships soaring behind them. “Two Explorers and one Tracker.”
“The stars be damned,” Andi said. “When did they show up?”
“Seconds before I woke you. We came out of light speed just outside the Tavina System, as planned, and the alarm activated not long after.”
Andi’s mind raced, calculating all the possible scenarios. Lira never let anyone get the drop on the Marauder. They had to have been cloaked with technology the likes of which Andi’s crew could only dream of getting their hands on. She told herself this was just like any other night, any other chase, but she couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that this time might be different.
“Do we know who they are? Black market, Mirabel Patrol?” Andi asked, staring at the radar as it blinked, the three hellish red dots slowly gaining on them.
Lira glowered. “With this tech, it has to be Patrol. They didn’t show up on our radar until they were practically on top of us.”
Andi chewed on her bottom lip. “Which branch?”
You know which branch, her mind whispered. She shoved the voice away.
“We won’t know until they’re in our close-range sights, and by then, it’ll be too late for us to escape,” Lira said.
“Then don’t let them get that close.”
The Patrolmen, those bastards. The government lackeys had been after Andi’s ship for years, but they’d never once come close enough to appear on the Marauder’s radar.
Their last job shouldn’t have been enough to capture the attention of the Patrolmen. It was a black-market operation, a simple grab and go. All they’d done was haul a few crates’ worth of meds for a drug lord, nothing significant enough to bring the Patrolmen down on them.
The girls had taken on more high-profile jobs than that—like the time they kidnapped a rich Soleran’s mistress and left her on a meteor, the job requested by the man’s furious wife. She paid a pretty penny for their services. It wasn’t until days later that they found out the woman was not only a mistress, but a prominent politician’s daughter from Tenebris. The politician tore the galaxy apart looking for his daughter. When he eventually found her withered corpse on that barren rock, word got back about who put her there.
Andi screened their jobs much more carefully now. Her crew was still on the run from that politician to this day.
It could be he’d finally caught their scent. She closed her eyes. Black holes ablaze, she was screwed. The ship rumbled beneath her, almost as if in agreement.
“Cloaking is useless at this point,” Lira said as she readied the gears, slamming buttons, tapping in codes. “Engines are still too hot to go back into hyperspace. Damn their tech.”
In the distance, Andi could just barely make out the ghostly forms of their pursuers. They were still far out, but heading closer with each passing breath. “Get us out of this, and I’ll see to it that we get devices of the same caliber.”
“And bigger guns?” Lira asked, her blue eyes wide. “We’ll barely scrape by if we have to turn and fire on them. We only have one Big Bang left.”
Andi nodded. “Much bigger guns.”
“Well, then,” Lira said, a dangerous grin spreading across her face. “I think the stars may align for us, Captain. Any last words?”
Someone else had said that to her once, long ago. Before she escaped Arcardius, never to see her home planet again.
Andi chewed on her lip, and the memory fizzled away. She could have given her Second a thousand words, but instead she simply strapped herself in, turned in her seat and said, “Fly true, Lir.”
Lira nodded and took the ship’s wheel, her grip steady and practiced. “Fly true.”
A humming vibration filled the bay before the ship shot forward, like the tip of a crystal spear hurtling through the black expanse.
ANDROMA
ON A GOOD DAY, the Marauder and her crew could lose a tail as fast as an Adhiran darowak could fly, but when Andi glanced at the radar, three little dots continued to blink back at her.
She suppressed a groan and tapped on the viewport in front of her. The glass melded, colors morphing to show a live image from their rear-cam.
Her stomach dropped to her toes.
The approaching ships were still behind them. Two black Explorers, angular and sharp, and in between, a giant Tracker ship. A monster in the sky that tore a memory from Andi’s mind.
A hundred pairs of polished Academy boots clacked on the ground of a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility in the sky. A rigid man in a royal blue suit stood before the crowd, announcing the specs of the new Tracker ship. Andi raised her hand, wincing as she disturbed a bruised rib from a fight, but she was hungry for knowledge, already in love with flying.
“I still can’t see a sigil on them,” Lira said, drawing Andi back to the present. The memory faded like mist. “We don’t know which planet they’ve hailed from yet.”
Andi leaned forward, sliding two fingers against her temple and linking with her crew’s channels. “We’ve got a tail, ladies.” She swallowed and cast a sideways glance at Lira, who sat calmly steering the ship. “Three of them, coming in from the rear. Get to your stations and prepare for immediate engagement. We’re going dark.” She switched the channel off and looked at Lira. “Ready?”
Lira nodded as Andi typed in the codes that would activate the Marauder’s outer shields.
The stars winked goodbye as the metal shields slid out from the belly of the glass ship, like hands wrapping them in darkness. Over and around, until only three viewports remained. One large for the pilot, and two small for the gunners, decks below.
“I warned you before the last job about leaving bodies behind,” Lira said suddenly, banking them left to avoid a cluster of space trash cartwheeling endlessly through the black. Her voice wasn’t harsh. And yet Andi still felt the painful truth of Lira’s words.
Blood trails were far easier to follow than any other. And after all these years of running, it was possible that the Patrolmen had finally caught up to them because of Andi.
“I had to kill him,” Andi said. “He almost shot Gilly. You know that, Lira.”
“The only thing I know for sure is that the ships behind us are closing in,” Lira said, glancing at the radar.
The patrol ships could have come from anywhere in the galaxy, but a nagging in Andi’s gut told her they hailed from Arcardius, the headquarters of the Unified Systems. A planet with cities made of glass and buildings towering on floating fragments of land in the sky, where military life reigned supreme and a pale-haired general ruled with an iron fist.
Home. Or at least it used to be.
After years of work, the Arcardian fleet had finally been rebuilt after the war against Xen Ptera, the capital planet of the Olen System.
These new ships were faster, better equipped.
Lira laughed. “It’s too bad we’ll have to miss their party.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re here,” Andi said. “To hand deliver our invitations.”
“They won’t catch us.” Lira dug her fingers into a metal cup soldered to the ship’s dash, the words I Visited Arcardius and All I Got Was This Stupid Cup inscribed on the side. Andi grimaced as Lira pulled out a hunk of Moon Chew and popped it into her mouth.
“That stuff can kill you, you know,”