Zenith

She patched into Breck’s com first, revealing the gunner’s targeting screen, the glowing crosshairs focused on the nearest ship’s wing. Andi clenched her teeth as an asteroid resembling a skull came hurtling toward Breck’s viewport. Breck took a shot, and it exploded into space dust.

Andi blinked, shutting off the eye connection and returning to her own view of the asteroids. Lira sat beside her, the scales on her arms flashing as she tried to keep her nerves under control. Music still filled the space, calming Andi, allowing her to concentrate.

This is just another day, she told herself. Just another chase.

“We’re low on fuel, low on ammo,” Gilly yelped into the com.

“Shoot the small stuff and wait for my command,” Andi said. “Then we’ll use the Big Bang and turn their bones to dust.” The weapon sent out a pulse, crippling an enemy ship’s defensive systems, followed by an explosive that could obliterate an entire ship with one shot.

It wouldn’t be able to hurt the Tracker, but the other ships would be perfect prey, if Gilly and Breck played their cards right. They only had one Big Bang left on board, so they’d have to make it count.

Gilly answered with a giggle sharp as a knife. “Done.”

Tick, tick, tick.

BOOM.

An old spacesuit floated past the window to her right. Andi wondered if a corpse was still inside and shivered slightly.

Death was Andi’s closest friend, a little demon that whispered in her ear on dark nights. And here in this wasteland, a graveyard where many had met their demise, death felt closer than ever.

“We need to single out the Explorers,” Andi said. She’d never flown one herself, but she’d seen plenty of demonstrations at the Academy. They were designed for agility and speed, which meant they were somewhat lacking in armor.

“I’m on it,” Lira answered.

The Tracker was a beast as it followed. The smaller asteroids bounced off its sides, barely scraping the reinforced material. The Explorer ships followed behind, protected from the brunt of the asteroid attacks.

The girls had to separate them, get the Explorers alone in the sky.

A massive, hulking rock appeared ahead of them, easily the biggest asteroid they had seen so far.

“Lira,” Andi said, a plan brewing in her mind as she pointed at the asteroid, “circle us around that thing.”

“Circling will slow us down.” Lira cocked her head, orange light dancing across her face as Solera’s distant sun came into view.

Andi gritted her teeth. “Do it, Lira.”

Lira nodded, clenched the throttle and sent the Marauder careening right around the massive asteroid.

The Marauder swung in a great arc, the music rising in volume as cymbals crashed. In the rear-cam, the ships pursued, flashes of silver and black, shadows that just wouldn’t quit. But as they angled farther and farther around the outer edge of the asteroid, the Tracker ship slowed too much and pulled out of the race.

Now it was just the Explorers and the Marauder, odds Andi knew her crew and her ship could handle.

“Wait for it...” she whispered, her breath hitching in her throat. In the rear-cam, the Explorers followed like streaks of light, their guns firing as they tried in vain to catch up to the Marauder. What was their plan? Even if the two Explorers caught them and tried to dock, ships that small wouldn’t be able to haul the Marauder across the skies.

A flash darted behind them, a short distance away.

“They’re getting closer!” Breck shouted in the com. “Ready for the command!”

Andi bit her tongue, the metallic tang of blood strong enough to keep her fear at bay.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw another flash, closer now.

Prox alarms blared in her ear. The music was too loud, the whine of the strings too piercing.

“Incoming!” Breck shouted. “They’re almost on us!”

“Anytime, Cap!” Gilly yelped.

Close.

Closer.

“One more second,” Andi whispered.

“Andi, we should shoot.” Lira’s blue eyes looked black in the shadows.

Andi hissed in a breath.

“Now?” Gilly asked.

Andi could imagine her, tiny and fire-headed, seated in her gunner’s chair several decks below, the whole crew’s fate at her fingertips.

“Now,” Andi commanded.

A breath of a second. Andi stared at the Explorer ships on the rear-cam, thinking of the men and women inside. Knowing that here and now, they were facing their final moments. She felt a flash of pity for them, the pang of regret Andi always felt before she took a life.

Then came the hiss of Gilly’s Big Bang sliding loose from its chamber, a death rocket that Andi knew would fly true.

She watched as it struck the Explorer on the left first, the blast taking out both ships. The explosion was a work of art. Two ships in one shot, bits of metal and blood and bodies. Carnage stained the skies.

The Marauder whined as the blast knocked it off course, as if the dying ships had laid bleeding hands on them and shoved.

Then there was a strange, still silence. Even the song had stopped playing.

“Explorers are down,” Breck said. “Nice one, Gil.”

Andi loosed a breath, her fingertips releasing their hold on the armrests. But it wasn’t over yet. She glanced sideways at Lira. “Take us to the center of the belt. Bigger asteroids.”

Lira caught on. “We can lose them there and fly out the backside, hide somewhere on Solera.”

“Fuel?”

Lira spat a wad of Chew into her mug. “Low. But we can make it. We just lost a lot of weight from that ammo.”

Andi felt the swell of victory like a star exploding in her chest. But beside it, eating away at the feeling of triumph, was the knowledge of what she’d just done. How many lives had she stolen? How many families back on Arcardius would don shades of gray in mourning for weeks to come?

She loosened her harness, allowing herself to breathe a little deeper, and was just leaning back against the headrest when Lira cursed.

Breck’s and Gilly’s voices shouted into the com, and somewhere, down in the pit of Andi’s dark soul, she knew she’d missed something.

“There are more of them,” Lira said breathlessly. “Andi, they’re everywhere. It’s not possible. Where did they come from?”

Andi’s heart rocketed into her throat as the bleating prox alarms went off again.

Seven ships waited for them, uncloaking themselves, materializing before her eyes.

“Turn around, Lira! Get us the hell out of here!”

“I can’t!” Lira shouted. “The Tracker is still behind us.”

She furiously typed in codes, her fingers flying across the screen. Then Lira yelped as the holo sparked, and a strange hiss fizzled out of the dash. The ship itself seemed to release a deep, rumbling sigh.

And then...darkness.

The only light came from Lira’s scales, glowing a bluish-purple in the dark.

Oh, Godstars.

No.

They’d been hit by an EMP. Andi watched as Lira tried to repower the ship with the backup system but to no avail.

Everything went still and silent, as if the Marauder itself had lost all life.

“They shut us down,” Lira whispered, her features turning to stone. Smoke streamed from her scales, but even they had gone dark now. As if shock had paralyzed her emotions. Her voice cracked as she tried to bring the dash back to life, tried to restart the emergency engines. “Oh, Andi. They shut everything down.”

Andi shook her head. “That’s not possible. We have shields against that, nothing could... No one knows how to get past them and stop this ship!” Andi had the special defensive shields installed shortly after taking possession of the Marauder. They were meant to prevent EMPs and other such attacks from affecting the ship’s internal systems.

Lira’s blue eyes were haunted, her fingers still as stone on the throttle. “He could, Andi.”

Andi’s heart turned to ice.

It wasn’t possible.

He was supposed to be dead, cast away into some deep, dark hell where he’d never be able to claw his way back out.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. She leaped to her feet, tuning into the crew’s audio channels. “Escape pods. Now. Move.”

Andi grabbed her swords from the back of her captain’s chair, where she stowed them during flight, and strapped the harness around her back, clicking it into place.

Lira sat frozen in her chair.

“Lira! I said move!”

Lira’s voice was as dead as the Marauder. “We can’t leave, Andi. When the ship goes dark, the pods go dark, too.”

Footsteps rang out, boots clacking on metal. Breck and Gilly appeared in the doorway.

“What do we do?” Breck asked. “They’ll kill us all.”

“Not if we kill them first,” Andi hissed.

“We could hide,” Breck suggested.

“We don’t hide,” Lira said hotly.

Andi felt torn in two. This was her crew, broken and battered though it was, criminals from all sides of the galaxy waiting for her to save them. But with a dead ship, what could she do?

“I don’t want to be taken again,” Gilly whispered. Gone was the bloodthirsty little fairy. In its place was a frightened young girl. She burst into tears, fat droplets splashing on the dead metal at their feet. Breck dropped to her knees and pulled Gilly forward into a crushing hug.

She whispered soothing words, but Andi didn’t hear them. She wasn’t listening.

She turned and looked out the viewport at the waiting ships. So many of them—Solerans, by their sigil. And then, all around her, a rumble. It seemed to shake the very bones of the ship, rattling the walls. A deep, dark sound that made Lira drop her hands from the throttle and rush to Andi’s side.

“They’re pulling us in,” Lira whispered. “If you have a plan, Andi, you’d better tell us now.”

But there was no plan.

For the first time in her pirating life, someone had bested her.

It’s not him, Andi’s mind whispered. It can’t be him.

And yet the Marauder was a corpse. It was already growing cold on the bridge, Andi’s breath appearing before her in tiny white clouds.

Do something, her mind screamed. Get us out of this. You can’t be captured, Andi, you can never go back.

Fear spiked through her, in and around, threatening to freeze her, just like the ship.

But she was the Bloody Baroness. She was the captain of the Marauder, the greatest starship in Mirabel, and she had a crew waiting on her word.

So Andi settled her nerves, shoved them down deep. She turned, unsheathed her swords and held them at her sides.

“Stand up,” Andi said to Breck and Gilly.

They stood, Gilly wiping tears from her small face, Breck keeping a hand squeezed on the younger gunner’s shoulder.

“Weapons,” Andi said.

The girls lined up side by side, Andi with her swords, Gilly with her gun. Breck unveiled a black short-whip that crackled with light. Lira stood with her fists clenched, appearing weaponless to those who did not know the ways her body could move, lithe as a predator on the hunt. Her scales flashed as she glared at the bridge’s exit.

They waited, determination the only thing keeping them on their feet. On the deck below, the main door of the Marauder opened.

Andi heard the echo of heavy footsteps moving through the narrow halls, climbing up the stairwells. A faint male voice mingled with the footsteps, whispering a command as they drew closer.

Andi saw the first man’s head as he came around the corner. Others followed close behind, soldiers filling the hallway that led to the bridge, all clad in blue Arcardian bodysuits, the white three-triangle badge of the Mirabel Patrolmen on their chests. They held silver rifles against their stomachs and satisfied grins on their faces.

Andi was all too familiar with those rifles and the small electric orbs they released. One shot would paralyze its victim, rendering them helpless against capture by the Patrolmen.

“Hello, boys,” Andi said.

Arcardian or not, she’d see the badges of those who wouldn’t back down stained with blood. It was her crew or her past and—her soul be damned—she would always choose her crew.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” the soldier in front said, his voice calm and cool, as if he were making pleasant conversation.

“Ah,” Andi laughed. “But see, you just interfered with my ship. I don’t take too kindly to that.”

Her attention was pulled away from the man in front of her by the sound of boots tapping against metal. The Patrolmen turned sharply to attention as their commander approached.

This was the man who’d bested her.

This was the man she’d have to kill today.

As he approached, Andi’s chest tightened at the sight of him, tall and muscular and perfectly honed for fighting.

It’s him, said a small, frightened voice in her mind.

Then, as if confirming her suspicions, he stepped out of the darkness, like a demon emerging from hell.

The purest shock spiked in Andi’s veins. Then it melted into fury.

“You,” she growled.

“Me,” Dex said with a shrug.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Andi whispered. “I left you...”

“Left me to die?” Dex lifted a brow.

She remembered every inch of the angular white constellation tattoos twisting their way across his brown skin, the feel of his strong hands on her body. The memory of him, the pain of her shattered heart. It all twisted into boiling rage as she stared at him, alive and free, on her ship.

Andi’s swords crackled, purple light arcing around the fierce blades. Beside her, the rest of the Marauders tensed and readied themselves for a fight.

“I’m going to kill you,” Andi whispered.

“You can try,” Dex said, shrugging, his once-captivating brown eyes sparkling with laughter. “But we both know how that will turn out.”

She screamed and charged straight at him, not giving a damn if there were twenty or even a hundred heavily armed Arcardian soldiers blocking her path.

She was going to drown Dex Arez in his own blood.

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