Rogue’s Revenge

Rogue Star: Book Twelve

Ava York

Contents

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Glorie

Kesyk

Epilogue: Kalyn

Letter from Ava

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Glorie

This wasn’t going to be a good meeting. I’d been in enough of them, I could tell.

“Do you want to start?” Commander Kalyn gently asked Captain Dejar.

“What is there to say?” Captain Dejar said in a harsh voice. “We’re getting blitzed in our most vulnerable areas. We’ve only just got our system-wide surveillance tech up and running. Even when we can predict where the Dominion is going to strike next, we can’t properly warn anyone.”

This was a far cry from Captain Dejar’s usual inspiring pep talks.

My gut twisted.

“We’re needed in too many places,” he said. “Spreading our crew across two ships isn’t going to cut it anymore.”

“We need to break down into teams,” Commander Kalyn said. “Some teams will provide relief for the rebellion outposts that have been blitzed by the Dominion. Some will work on smuggling munitions to our allied systems through Dominion Space. Some of you will need to go directly to where the violence is thickest.”

Kalyn’s forehead creased in evident worry. I respected her as a leader, but I also knew she had a soft heart as a person. She cared for all of us as if we were family. The idea of sending any of us to our deaths didn’t sit well with her, which I appreciated. I’d had Commanders who didn’t care if anyone came back so long as we completed the mission. It was nice this Commander treated me like a person, not a pawn.

“We have the teams put together,” Commander Kalyn continued. “Come see me for your new assignments at the end of this meeting.”

“I want you all to know that I hold each and every one of you in the highest regard,” Captain Dejar said suddenly. “Once we break apart, I’m not sure when we’re going to see each other again. There’s a good chance some of us might not come back. Keeping in contact with one another is a priority only when it’s safe to do so. It’s been an honor having both Shein and human crewmembers.”

We collectively bowed our heads in a gesture of respect for the Captain. He nodded back.

Commander Kalyn produced datapads containing our teams. I hurried to find my placement, hoping I was on one of the combat teams. Dishonorable discharge or not, Kalyn must’ve reviewed my credentials and prior combat experience at some point. My capabilities were in black and white.

When I didn’t find my name, I frowned. “Commander?”

“Yes?” Kalyn turned. When she saw it was me, her eyes lit up. “Oh! I was hoping you’d come find me. I have a special assignment for you.”

I wasn’t sure if I should feel dread or hopeful. “What do you need, Commander?”

“I’ve seen your file,” she said.

Oh, crap. That couldn’t be good.

“You have an impressive resume,” she continued.

Perhaps this could be good after all.

“You’ve completed so many extra certifications. You’re like a Swiss Army Knife packed into a single person.”

“I’ve tried to master as many branches of combat as I could so that I could be useful in all situations.” Where was she going with this?

“That’s perfect for what we need. Some of our allies have opened a training camp for all of our volunteers. We never expected to get so many.”

“That’s fantastic.” I smiled warily. What did that have to do with me?

“I want you to report to the training outpost in Hark space and whip those volunteers into shape.”

My face fell. “What?” I blurted.

Kalyn’s face hardened. “Is there some confusion?”

“You said yourself that I have an impressive amount of combat qualifications. Wouldn’t I be more useful in actual combat?”

“More and more volunteers are flooding in by the day. Most of them have a good fighting spirit but have never held a weapon in their lives,” Kalyn explained. “Are you suggesting we slap a gun in their hands and send them off against the Dominion?”

“Of course not,” I protested. “But I have no training experience.”

“Not true,” she countered. “You used to run your units.”

“That’s not training.”

“It takes leadership, communication, and a strong sense of direction. It’s those same qualities that make a good trainer.”

“This is because I was dishonorably discharged, isn’t it?” I demanded, nostrils flaring. I wasn’t about to accept a position in exile because of my past.

“Do you really think your discharge matters now?” Kalyn frowned. “I thought you’d be honored. I’m offering you the chance to be the one who keeps the beating heart of our rebellion alive. However, if you think it’s below you, I have other options for you.”

I perked up. “Like what?”

“I could send you to clean up the wreckage of the rebellion camps blitzed by the Dominion.” Kalyn tapped her comm pad. “There’s probably some good scrap left behind for you to collect. How does that sound?”

I bit the inside of my cheek in an effort to keep from losing my temper.

“I need someone at the training outpost who knows what they’re doing,” Kalyn repeated slowly, sweetly, as if to a small child. “If you don’t want to do it, I’ll find someone else. It’ll be scrapper duty for you until the end of this shitshow of a war.”

“I accept the position at the training outpost,” I said through gritted teeth.

Kalyn’s face lit up once more as if I hadn’t just been toeing the line of insubordination.

“Great! Don’t worry, you won’t be going alone. You’ll have a partner in all this. Get your things together and report back to me within the hour.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I dipped my head, turned on my heel, and stalked out of the meeting room.

Great, just great! Once again, I had to miss out on the real action. At least someone else would be missing out with me.

I wondered who my partner was and what they did to deserve this position.

Kesyk

I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation between Commander Kalyn and one of the Persephone women. I believed her name was Glorie but I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t spoken to her for any great length of time before. She seemed upset.

Commander Kalyn had a great deal of patience. I didn’t think I would’ve been able to stay as calm as she did in the face of an insubordinate soldier. It was easy for me to forget that the human women we picked up so many months ago weren’t outstanding citizens in the Terran System, not that it mattered to me.

All that mattered to me was whether or not they did a good job on the Rogue Star. All of them have been great crewmembers but things were different now. We were at war. Our team was already reaching its limits.

The last thing we needed was some brat throwing a hissy fit because they didn’t get the job they wanted.

I didn’t overhear the entire conversation, but I gathered that Glorie wasn’t pleased with her orders to train new recruits.

I’d yet to receive my assignment. I was waiting for the room to clear out some more before checking the listing.

“Kesyk,” Captain Dejar appeared at my side.

I bowed my head. “Sir.”

“May I have a word?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“I have an unusual, but important, assignment for you,” he said.

For the last three years, I’d been handling Captain Dejar’s finances. Up until we picked up the human women, it had been an easy job. Ever since we were made an enemy of Dominion Space and unable to use legal means of trade, my job had become pleasantly challenging. I’d even begun to eye one or two of the human women for a potential long-term relationship. Time on board could be lonely and brief liaisons when docked on planet didn’t appeal to me.

I assumed Captain Dejar wanted me to handle the financing for the war. Already, I could think of half a dozen ways to secure weapons and ammunition for a fraction of the cost without sacrificing quality. Getting shipments quick was going to be a challenge. Going through Dominion Space would be quicker, but far more dangerous than skirting around the borders.

“I’m sure I can handle it,” I assured the Captain.

“I have no doubts. However, I’m going to need you to exercise skills I know you haven’t used in a while.”

I frowned. He didn’t sound like he was about to give me a finance-based assignment. What could this be about?

“I’m listening, sir.”

“I’d like you to report to our newest training outpost. You’ve been invaluable to me and my treasury, but you’ll be even more valuable shaping up our army.”

“Training?” I said slowly.

“Yes,” the Captain repeated. “I know it’s been some time since you’ve seen combat, but I remember your skills. Skills I need you to pass on to volunteers who’ve never been in so much as a brawl.”

“I’d be honored.”

“Excellent. Get your things together. You and your partner will ship out as soon as you’re ready. You’ll be leaving Gaed space so make sure you grab anything you need.”

He must be referring to that temperamental woman, Glorie. I kept my expression neutral.

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

I left the meeting room and made my way back to my quarters. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this assignment. Though it wasn’t what I would’ve chosen for myself, I believed I could find satisfaction in training volunteers. I wasn’t sure about Glorie. From what I overheard, she wanted nothing to do with training. I should assume that she wouldn’t be useful and plan accordingly. With me present, our volunteer rebels wouldn’t go into battle unprepared because one of their trainers was too busy pouting to properly do their job.

I grabbed my bag from the chest beneath my cot. The possessions I needed to pack were minimal; clothing and only one pair of sturdy boots. Anything else I needed to pack was in the armory, a room I hadn’t entered in some time.

While I believed I could offer more to the war efforts if I was given a job securing financing for the rebellion, I wasn’t about to turn my nose up at the training assignment. If there was one thing I knew about Captain Dejar, it was that he knew what he was doing. If he believed this was my most effective deployment in order to win this war, I’d do it.

What I didn’t want to do is spend precious time and effort getting the human woman, Glorie, on the same page. If she decided to drag her feet, I wasn’t going to push her forward. Lives were at stake. Collaborating with someone who didn’t want to be there would waste my time.

Once I packed everything I needed from my quarters, I went to the armory. I selected a retractable, electrified saber, two small guns, and a multipurpose taser. Only an amateur would assume the training camp would be decently stocked.

As prepared as I was going to be, I went to report in and depart.

Glorie

“If you reach for the radio one more time, I’m going to smack it out of your hands,” Kesyk snapped.

We walked side by side along a stretch of barren waterfront. I wasn’t sure if we were looking out onto a sea or a large lake. I’d never been to this planet before, I didn’t even know its name.

A privately-owned space vessel brought us here the night before. We slept on the vessel and left at first light to make out way to a port city. Once we arrived, Kesyk would find another ship on which to hitch a ride.

“You’ve said that the last three times I’ve grabbed my radio, yet I still haven’t been slapped,” I shot back. “I thought soldiers were men of their word?”

“I’m neither a soldier nor a man so I don’t need to live up to your expectations.”

I looked Kesyk up and down. He wasn’t a man. I couldn’t think of a human male capable of besting Kesyk in any sort of physical competition. He could crush a watermelon with his bare hands if he had the mind too, which was hot—too damn bad he was prissy. As soon as we’d departed, he’d delicately suggested that perhaps I should leave training the newbies to him, since my attitude would result in shoddy instruction and wind up getting them killed.

We hadn’t exactly gotten along since then, especially since my reply may have included references to the size of his biceps making up for the lack of grey matter in his brain.

The nice-looking ones always had issues. Give me a dumb, good-natured ugly man over a sexy one any day.

Besides, after three days of hitching rides on any space vessel that would take us, I believed he was ready to crush my head.

“Fine, you’re not a man,” I allowed, “but don’t try to tell me you aren’t a soldier.”

“I’m not.”

I could tell I’ve hit a nerve from the way he set his jaw. Every muscle engaged as he spoke through gritted teeth. I frowned at him, ambivalent. A large part of me wanted to press him for information. We’d been traveling together for three days, yet I knew almost nothing about him. Other than the fact he was a judgmental ass.

Still, I’d be the first to admit that I hadn’t been the picture of friendliness when we met. I was still angry about my assignment, but that wasn’t Kesyk’s fault. I didn’t want to take my aggression out on him so this was my attempt at friendliness.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You stand like one. You move like one. There’s an expression we have in the Terran System about that.”

“What’s your price?” he asked.

I furrowed my brow. “What?”

“To not tell this delightful antidote.”

My expression brightened. “The expression is if it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. You stand and move like a soldier. You have the attitude of one. You’re a soldier.”

“Your expression deals with ducks, not Shein. And it doesn’t deal in absolutes either.”

“You’re taking the fun out of this,” I muttered.

“Good. I’m not a soldier. End of discussion.”

“You’re a duck.”

Kesyk gave me a long-suffering look. I smiled back at him, wondering if it was worth annoying him to the point where he couldn’t help but complain. Perhaps I’d get transferred.

“You’re a pain in the ass.” Unfortunately, I detected a note of humor in his voice. “What’s so important that you need to radio in every five minutes? I’m surprised you can catch a signal here.”

I looked at the small monitor of my radio. “We can’t,” I huffed. “It’s a force of habit, I guess.”

“But why make the habit? Look, we’re getting close to a city.”

My gaze followed where he pointed. There was a line of buildings rising from the horizon.

“Thank goodness,” I gasped. “I’m not a fan of beaches.”

“That’s not surprising.”

I shot him a look.

“I’m obsessively checking the radio because I want to know what’s going on. You do remember we’re at war, right? Since you’re insisting you aren’t a soldier, I can’t be sure.”

Again, he set his jaw. His very chiseled, firm jaw. I rubbed mine, wondering . . . nah. He was so stiff, he probably wouldn’t know what to do with a female even if she stripped and did the hula.

“If something happened, they’d contact you. You don’t need to be checking in. Don’t you think our Commanders have better things to do than keep you updated on things that aren’t part of your mission parameters?”

I hadn’t thought of that. When I didn’t immediately respond, Kesyk smirked.

“That’s what I thought.”

“I would just feel better if I was kept informed,” I muttered. “I’m a soldier, even if you say you’re not. I should be doing what I’m good at.”

“You don’t think training is what you’re good at?”

“I’ve never held trainer as an official title.” I shuffled backwards a bit.

“But that doesn’t mean you’re incapable of doing a good job. Don’t you trust your Commander?”

Wasn’t this the same guy who’d suggested I’d make a horrible trainer? “Yes.” I sighed and rolled my eyes. “It’s just that—”

“You’re throwing a tantrum because you’re not getting your way?”

“Because I deserve the chance to go against the evil force that threatened my home and my friends,” I snapped.

“I’m sorry you don’t see your assignment as an opportunity to do that.” Kesyk turned away.

I made a rude gesture at his back.

We said nothing more on the matter. When we reached town a few hours later, Kesyk went right into the nearest tavern. I lingered outside for a moment, unsure if I wanted to go in. A drink would be nice, but this was the part where Kesyk rounded up someone to take us from here to somewhere in the general direction of the training post.

Traveling this way was Captain Dejar’s idea. He rationalized that if we took any of the smaller vessels on loan to us from the Terran System or from the Gaed, the Dominion would easily find us and shoot us down. I couldn’t say I disagreed with him. Kesyk and I had a far higher chance of getting to the training outpost alive by traveling this way.

Kesyk was good at talking to people. While he had no issue with showing me his surly side, he morphed into warm and personable in the blink of an eye. Watching him ply his charm on hapless innocents who obviously knew no better sparked a tiny flicker of warmth inside. Which only proved it had been way, way too long since I’d done the horizontal tango. People helped us not because they supported our cause, but because they genuinely wanted to help Kesyk. We’d only told one of our transport hosts the truth about where we were going. It didn’t end well.

We were kicked off the vessel.

I paced outside, then paused as a cold shiver washed over me as if I was being watched. Hunted.

I couldn’t see anyone around, but I couldn’t shake it.

The hell with it.

I ducked into the tavern. Sure enough, Kesyk already found our next mark. Another Shein from the look of it. He was older than Kesyk, his dark hair shot through with grey and his skin not as shiny as Kesyk’s.

Though I spent most of my time since the destruction of the Persephone on the Rogue Star, it struck me as odd that I hadn’t seen more Shein on the planets I was able to explore. Kesyk explained that Shein made up a considerable part of the Dominion Space military. I would’ve expected to see Shein out and about more often.

“Ah! There she is!” Kesyk gestured to me with a huge grin on his face. I stopped short, stomach dropping to my feet before I recalled this was his charmer act. I was immediately suspicious. “Glorie, come here.”

I made my way to the end of the bar. “Hi.” I grinned and tried to look at ease.

“This is my friend, Glorie. She’s travelling with me.”

The older Shein male looked me up and down. “Not one for war, are you?”

What the hell did that mean? I glanced at Kesyk from the corner of my eye. He looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“I just don’t want any trouble.” I forced a smile. I looked up at Kesyk, who towered over me when we stood side by side. “Is this gentleman going to help us?”

“I’m not sure.” Kesyk turned his good-natured smile back on the older Shein. “Will he?”

“I can’t say no to one of my own kind. Who knows? We’re probably kin.”

“Excellent.” Kesyk gave the man’s hand a hearty shake. “When do you leave?”

“As soon as I finish this drink.” The older Shein gestured to something thick and bubbling. It looked foul.

“Excellent timing on our part then.” Kesyk laughed and clapped him on the back. The man staggered. “Where is your final destination?”

“Port Hragaard,” the old Shein replied, slinking away from Kesyk’s reach

I knew that name. I’d studied the maps of the rebellion extensively. Port Hragaard was a floating port, unattached to a planet. It was mostly used for refueling and simple trade, right on the edge of Dominion Space bordering the Hark System.

“I’m going to contact my family so they know where I’m going,” I said and quickly excused myself. I left the tavern and found a quiet alley. Now that I was in a proper city, my radio had a signal. I sent an alert to the training outpost so they would contact me. Within moments, a voice came through the radio.

“Report,” they demanded.

“This is Glorie with Commander Kalyn’s unit. We are en route to Port Hragaard and need to arrange transport.”

“We will contact known rebels in the area and let you know what to look for.”

The radio went silent. It was best to keep things short and to the point nowadays.

I returned to the tavern just as the older Shein chugged his slimy concoction.

“Help me to my ship, will you?” he slurred to Kesyk.

“Certainly.” Kesyk shot me a look of concern as he took the Shein’s arm.

Together, we helped him out of the tavern and through the city. Finding the port was a challenge but it was made even worse when the old bastard couldn’t remember where he put his ship. I almost screamed with frustration when he finally found it. It was a sanctioned supply freight and the largest ship in the port. We’d been circling it for the better part of an hour.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I muttered to Kesyk.

“Port Hragaard will help us make up for the time we lost when we were kicked off the first spacecraft,” he whispered back.

We were admitted onto the ship with ease and allowed to help the old Shein to his room. His first mate gave the impression that she’d dealt with this many times. She knew exactly what to do.

We were shown to our guest quarters. I continued trying to get updates on the Rogue Star and the Star Whale. Kesyk watched the port from the window as if he expected Dominion agents to show up.

I stole glances at him, but his broad back gave nothing away. The charm and sensuous smile were tucked back into whatever black hole he’d dug them out of.

It took hours to get underway. When the freight moved, it moved slowly. It would take over a day to get to Port Hragaard. I wasn’t sure if I could handle waiting that long.

Kesyk

Glorie grew increasingly restless as time went by. She was already jittery when we started our journey.

Time had only made that worse.

She paced the room, obsessively checking her radio as if it would magically give her the information she wanted.

The shipping freight made painfully slow progress across Dominion Space. I wasn’t sure if they were trying to conserve fuel, abiding regulations unknown to me, or simply didn’t know how much speed these gigantic freights could achieve.

“This is ridiculous,” Glorie muttered for the tenth time since we left the port. I knew. I’d been counting. I was tempted to leave tally marks on the wall.

After three days of uncertain traveling, I still didn’t get the sense that I knew Glorie. I knew she was wildly temperamental, her moods changed from one moment to the next, and she had a sense of humor. If it weren’t for her sense of humor, I would’ve called up Captain Dejar and begged him for another assignment. And she kept staring at me. Little oblique looks when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. If it had been any other female, I would have thought . . . but this was Glorie.

I knew she was still angry about the assignment she was given. What I didn’t understand was why. She made a comment a few hours ago about wanting to confront the ones who hurt her planet and her friend. I could understand that. What I couldn’t understand was why she didn’t see training the volunteers, the backbone of our army, as helping.

There was more to her than met the eye, that was for sure.

And what met the eye was . . . not unattractive. She didn’t lack for passion, or courage, no matter how misdirected.

I sighed as she stormed by me again, tempted to grab her wrist and make her stand still. She would probably bite me. “Look. Think of it this way. We’re on our way to the outpost. We’ve managed to get this far undetected. We have a safe place to sleep. All of those things are good things.”

“Not good enough,” she muttered. “We should’ve been there days ago.”

“You know why we couldn’t do that,” I reminded her.

“I know. That doesn’t mean I can’t be annoyed with it.”

“Being annoyed doesn’t do you any good. In fact, it does you harm.”

“Then that’s my problem.”

“It does me harm too,” I pointed out. “All your pacing and moaning is giving me a headache. I can’t help you if you’re not willing to see the good in our current situation.”

“We’re at war,” she snapped. “Excuse me, we aren’t at war. Everyone else is at war while we hitch ride after ride trying to get somewhere away from the war.”

“I realize we’re at war. Where do you think I learned that little nugget of wisdom about positive thinking?”

“Sounds like a soldier’s wisdom to me.” She looked at me as if she’d just caught me in a trap.

“You want to call me a soldier? Fine. Call me a soldier.” I crossed my arms. “Yes, I was in the Shein army. Yes, I made a name for myself in the military. Do you want to know what else?”

She lifted an eyebrow.

“I retired,” I told her. “I wasn’t hired by Captain Dejar to protect his ship or fight his enemies. I was hired to balance his books. I was a soldier, but I gave that life up some time ago.”

“Once a soldier, always a soldier,” she countered.

“Perhaps that’s true in some respects. However, I’d prefer to be addressed as what I chose to be, not what I was forced to become.”

She tipped her head to one side.

“So I should call you bookkeeper instead of soldier?”

I let loose a sigh of relief. I thought I’d just kicked a door wide open for her to ask all sorts of personal questions I didn’t want to answer. “Yes. That would be preferable.”

“Straighten up, bookkeeper.” She waved her hand in a mock salute.

“That’s better.” I returned the gesture.

We fell into an awkward silence. She looked at me, twiddled her hands, and looked like she was ready to start pacing again. The continuous thumping of her boots on the solid ground was going to drive me insane if she kept on any longer.

“Have you given any thought to training techniques?” I asked quickly.

She wrinkled her nose. “No. I’m not sure how to make a training plan for people when I don’t know their skill level.”

“It sounds like we’re getting low skill volunteers.”

“Putting time, effort, and finances into training soldiers from scratch might not be the best plan.”

“I disagree.”

She smirked. “I expected you to.”

“Why don’t you think it’s a worthwhile endeavor?”

“I don’t like the idea of building up a few hundred, or even a thousand, average soldiers only to send them into advanced warfare. To me, it feels like we’re going to be pumping them full of ideas and false hope only to send most of them to their deaths.”

“That’s what being a soldier is to many,” I replied with a shrug. “But that’s a risk that should’ve been accepted when they signed up for this. I’m sure none of our volunteers believe we’re going to turn them into invincible fighting machines. They know that they might not come back.”

“But do they know they’re being set up to be fodder for our cannons?”

“I don’t think that’s what they are. At the end of it all, war is a numbers game.”

“Numbers don’t win a war,” she scoffed. “A handful of people with the power to make decisions do.”

“Maybe where you’re from,” I allowed. “But where I’m from, numbers seriously help. We aren’t trying to work out a treaty with the Dominion. We’re trying to take them down. We don’t need negotiators or something to offer. We need heavy hitters and fighters.”

“I don’t believe any number of volunteers will give us an advantage.”

“At this point, we don’t need an advantage. We need an even playing field.”

I expected her to burst out in rage by now, but she remained cool and level-headed. She listened to what I said, reflected, and then spoke. For a moment, I saw a flash of long nights, deep conversation across a dimly lit table, and Glorie sitting across from me. I shook the idea away.

“I don’t think I can talk about this further with as little information as I have,” she said. “Can we pick it up again when we see what we’ll be working with?”

“Sure.” I shrugged. “I’m going to go figure out where they keep the food. Are you hungry?”

“Not yet. Thanks for asking.”

“You’re no good to me if you starve,” I said as I left the room.

Our guest lodgings were on a lower floor of the shipping freighter. I found my way up three floors before I saw another living soul. It was eerie. Even now, I wasn’t sure how many worked upon this vessel.

“Need help?” A green-skinned male with protruding armor plates on his shoulders asked.

“Where does one go to get some food?” I asked.

“Another three floors up, near the bow.”

“Thanks.” I nodded and started to walk past him when he grabbed my arm, stopping me. On instinct, I reached for the weapon on my belt.

“No need for that,” he assured me quickly, his tone far softer than it was before. “I have a question.”

“What?” I arched my brow.

“Are you one of the Shein that’s with the rebellion?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I pushed past him and started to walk away but he called after me.

“I want to help.”

I noticed he was careful not to shout. When I paused, he quickly closed the distance between us, looking around for any eavesdroppers. He didn’t just check over his shoulder, he checked the ceiling, particularly where the corridor junctioned off. He was looking for cameras, I realized.

“There are a lot of us who know what’s going on, that you and yours are taking a stand against the Dominion,” he whispered, almost too fast for me to catch his words. “There’s at least twenty of us on this ship that want to help. With more time, I could easily get more.”

I pondered for a moment. This could be a trap. Surely the Dominion was interested in any information it could get about us, about the rebellion.

Had they recruited for spies this far afield?

Possibly.

Would they trust someone this young?

Maybe.

However … I recognized the species.

His world had been crushed under the Dominion’s rule.

It would be a risk, but the bookkeeper in me thought the odds were in our favor. The soldier in me trusted my instincts.

“Once I get to where I’m going, I can give you more information.” I purposefully left out details. One couldn’t be too careful during wartime.

“Excellent. I’ll give you access to my private frequency. Your room has a consol. I’ll send it there.”

“Don’t,” I said quickly. “Write it down.”

“On paper?” He blinked in surprise.

“Yes, on paper. It’ll be untraceable that way. If you’re serious about this, you’re joining a dangerous game. If you say you can get others to join our cause, you better be sure they won’t betray us. If they do, I will make you kill them yourself.”

That was probably overkill on my part, but he needed to understand what he was signing himself, and others, up for. Glorie made a good point earlier. I had no intention of using volunteers for cannon fodder. I might not be able to make even one of them invincible, but I wouldn’t send anyone out with less than a fighting chance. The only way that was going to happen was if volunteers didn’t show up with any delusions.

No matter how Glorie and I went about our training, it was going to be difficult. War wasn’t for the faint of heart. It wasn’t for those filled with a need for adventure and a deep love of freedom. It was for those willing to lie on an explosive to save their friends. It was for those who would trade their safety for others.

If the alien before me wanted to be part of that, I’d rather scare him off now than have him show up at the camp with false expectations.

I’d pity him if he decided to betray me. War would look like a picnic if he brought danger to my training operation.

Glorie

I laid in my cot in the guest quarters, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Kesyk snored softly in his cot on the other side of the room. I could just barely make out the shimmer of his skin in the low light. His wide shoulders barely fit on the cot. He had to sleep at a weird angle so that his entire body could fit.

I was surprised by our discussion earlier. He was easy to talk to about serious things. I often avoided serious conversations just for the sake of avoiding conflict. Kesyk and I had different views about the training camp and the importance of our jobs. To be honest, he’d given me a lot to think about.

Surely, the volunteers weren’t coming to us believing we’d keep all of them alive. Right?

I still had mixed feelings about Kesyk himself. With each passing day, I saw more of his humorous side, more of his surly side, and more of his soldier side even though he disliked being called a soldier. There was a story there, that was for sure.

I wanted to know more about his military background and why he retired. It was unusual for me to take such a keen interest in someone I had a work relationship with. I worked best alone. Adding friendships to the mix only complicated things. It was harder for me to do my best work when I had to worry constantly about the people I cared about. That was why I never took any stationed positions near my family in the Terran System.

Persephone was, in a weird way, a welcome relief. I didn’t know any of the women so I could do my job effectively without worrying about them. Sure, it was a lonely life, but it was easier. Every once in a while, something would go wrong on the station and a woman would die. Yes, it was always sad but since I never knew any of them well until now, it didn’t slow me down.

Now, it was more complicated. The Persephone women had become a family. I remained distant, like an aunt that only came to visit once a year bearing gifts and words of wisdom. I’d become so good at keeping myself isolated for the sake of my job that I didn’t know how to forge friendships easily.

Talking to Kesyk was easy, though. I hadn’t expected that. I had yet to decide if that was a good or a bad thing. I didn’t want things to become complicated if we became friends.

As the days wore on I realized one important thing . . . I wasn’t afraid of him dying. He could take care of himself. There was a solid competence to him, a subtle edge he tried to keep hidden that told me he could be dangerous. I trusted him not to get himself killed. It made liking him easier.

The shipping freight gave a great groan. The entire ship tipped to the point where my cot slid a few inches across the floor.

“What the hell?” I sputtered as I made a frantic grab for anything solid.

“I think we’re docking,” Kesyk replied.

“I didn’t realize you were awake.”

“Do you really think I could sleep on a cot made for someone a good six inches smaller than me?”

“Don’t bookkeepers learn to sleep anywhere available?” I teased.

“Very funny,” he grumbled, and clamored out of his shifting bed. I looked away when I realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt. I couldn’t help getting a glimpse of the smooth planes of his chest and the intricate swirls of his tattoos.

Not looking. Not at all.

Maybe a little bit.

He walked to the window and looked out, completely unselfconscious. “We’re approaching Port Hragaard,” he said.

“Finally,” I sighed. “If I had to spend one more hour on this lazy frigate, I’d go insane.”

“You’re telling me you haven’t already gone insane?” He looked over his shoulder and smirked. “What a frightening notion.”

Something about the way the early morning light from the window bounced off his skin made my stomach do a weird flip. I quickly busied myself by putting on my boots and retying them twice.

What the hell was that about?

Sure, Kesyk was objectively handsome but Kesyk wasn’t a man, a quiet voice whispered in the back of my mind. I pushed the thought away with a shudder.

“Are you cold?” he asked, and turned to give me an inscrutable stare.

I shook my head, avoiding his gaze. “No. Just eager to get moving.”

“Let’s get to the top deck and figure out what we’re dealing with.”

“Knowing this crew, it’ll take a full day just to line up with the dock,” I muttered.

“They aren’t all bad,” Kesyk offered. “I think it’s their Captain who is just lazy.”

“That’s unfortunate. However, that doesn’t make them any less of an inconvenience to me.”

“You’re a severe woman, you know that?”

“I’ve been called worse,” I shrugged with a sour laugh.

“I believe that.”

“Hey!” I aimed a punch at his arm, which he dramatically dodged. “Are those your famous book keeper reflexes?”

“Something like that.” He arched an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, was that meant to hurt?”

Jerk.

“Sir!” A voice barked from behind us as we made our way up to the top deck. I looked over my shoulder to find a light green alien male jogging toward us. Kesyk set his jaw in that way he did when displeased.

“It’s not wise for you to approach me in the open,” Kesyk said in a low voice when the alien was close enough.

“I know.” The alien held up his hands in a show of peace. “But it’s important.”

“Are you sure we can’t be overheard from here?” Kesyk asked.

“What’s going on?” I whispered, looking from one alien to the other.

“My name is Xhial,” the green alien said. “I spoke with your companion yesterday.”

“I’m Glorie,” I said warily. “What did you speak about?”

“I want to offer my services and report to your training center.”

I glanced at Kesyk from the corner of my eye. He looked stone-faced at Xhial.

“We talked about what would happen once my partner and I arrived at the facility,” Kesyk said slowly.

“I know,” Xhial said with a nod. “It’s only that I spoke to some of my most trusted friends about this. They want to join up as well. Once this ship leaves, it’s going clear across the galaxy. Leaving with you is our best chance of making it to the training outpost.”

“I see.” Kesyk rubbed his chin. “You mentioned you had at least twenty interested parties. Is that still the case?”

“Yes, but I haven’t spoken to them about this yet. I told only those I trust with my life.”

“Smart,” Kesyk said. “Allow me a moment to discuss this with my partner.”

“Of course,” Xhial said. “I’ll be on the top deck.”

I waited to speak until Xhial walked away. “What was that?”

“He wants to join the rebellion.”

“And?”

“I think it’s a fine idea.” Kesyk leaned against a low wall, his narrowed eyes sweeping the area. “I originally asked him to give me his contact information so I could tell him where to go once we arrived. He seems eager.”

“Do you trust him?” I asked.

“I’m not sure yet. However, I gave him plenty of warnings about betrayal along with a few threats.”

“And he’s still interested?” My brows shot up. “He’s either going to sabotage us or he’s dedicated as hell.”

“Is it a chance you’re willing to take? If not . . . I can decline his offer.” I shivered. For a moment he didn’t look like a bookkeeper. At all.

I hated this. The ongoing, never-ending calculations. Risk vs. reward. Extra strength vs. the increased possibility of betrayal.

Every new person we added to the team increased the odds that at least one of them would be a traitor.

Or at least weak, unfit for battle.

I shook myself.

That was what I was here for, wasn’t it? To take untrained, raw material, and turn them into soldiers.

Or something like that.

I sighed. None of this was a good idea, but we didn’t have a lot of options, not anymore. “You said yourself, war is a numbers game. Let’s boost our numbers.”

“Let’s tell him the good news.” Keysk’s twisted grin told me he’d had the same doubts about the ‘good news’ that I did.

“I wish we had more time here, but we don’t. We’ll have to interview them on the ship.” I grinned, only a little feral. “If they don’t pass muster, there’s always an airlock.”

His eyes glinted. For once, we were in perfect agreement.

Kesyk and I met with Xhial on the top deck and told him to disembark with his friends as quickly and quietly as he could. Kesyk, who had been to Port Hragaard several times, directed Xhial to a café near the dock. We would meet there.

Xhial was overjoyed. I realized by his behavior that he must be quite young. He’d probably never been in a real war. I hope he took Kesyk’s threats to heart. As far as Xhial’s training, it looked like I’d have to start from scratch.

“Do we know where we’re going once we disembark?” Kesyk asked me.

“I let the training outpost know we were heading to Port Hragaard. I told them I’d let them know when we arrived so they could arrange transport. We’re far enough away from Dominion space that we don’t have to bum rides on the fly.”

“I’ll call them now,” Kesyk said.

He spoke to someone at the training outpost as we disembarked. I spied the café Kesyk must’ve been talking about.

My stomach growled as the scent of fried food wafted through the air. My mouth watered.

As soon as we stepped onto the dock, a chill shot up my spine. The second in a short period of time. I looked around for an explanation but saw nothing.

“They’re already here,” Kesyk said. “They’ve been docked for half a day waiting for us.”

“What’s the ship called?”

“It’s a pleasure vessel called The Hellion.”

“Sounds fun,” I chuckled.

Kesyk and I took a seat at the café. We shared a plate of food while we waited for Xhial.

He arrived within the hour with five companions in tow. They each looked inexperienced but eager. I’d certainly have my work cut out for me.

Kesyk and Xhial spoke amiably as Kesyk paid for our food and gathered our things. We looked for all the world like a gang of friends reuniting after a long journey.

As we walked the docks, looking for The Hellion, I felt the chill once more.

I looked over my shoulder. This time, I saw a flash of movement. Between the shifting crowd, I swore I saw Skadi the Assassin ducking out of sight.

“What’s wrong?” Kesyk asked, noticing that I’d stopped in my tracks.

“I thought I saw Skadi,” I said.

Kesyk’s face turned grave.

“Who?” Xhial asked.

“Our crew is being hunted by an assassin,” I explained in a clipped tone. Xhial and his companions paled.

“Are you sure it was her?” Kesyk asked.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “She disappeared before I could get a good look. I just got this horrible feeling in my gut. My skin prickled.”

“Let’s get on the ship,” Kesyk urged me along, sliding an arm around my waist. “The sooner we leave the sooner we can leave her behind.”

“Good idea.” I leaned into his warmth, for just a moment, then let Kesyk lead me through the crowd. With every step, I fought the urge to look over my shoulder. The chill in my bones never faded.

I’d told Kesyk I wasn’t sure. But I knew better.

Kesyk

The journey on The Hellion took only a few hours, which was great for Glorie’s temper and my sanity. She didn’t have enough time to get restless and start pacing. Once we boarded, she got right to work analyzing our six new recruits.

I decided to join her in The Hellion’s small common room to supervise. I didn’t want her scaring the life out of the newest volunteers, not unless we knew they were really on our side or not.

Plus, I was curious about how she worked. I couldn’t start making plans until I knew more about her training style.

I settled into a chair, planning on observing. Glorie arched her brow when she saw me. I simply grinned, but when I turned back to the trainees, fixed a less pleasant expression on my face.

“Why don’t we start with your names,” I said.

The volunteers looked around, then one stepped forward.

“I am Xhial. I am of the Kipton species. We don’t have much contact with Shein like you but I wish to join your rebellion. The Dominion taxed my family’s farm so heavily that we had to sell our land. And all this because there was a mineral deposit beneath our family land that the Dominion was after. My family now lives in a small two-bedroom apartment far away from the land that my family owned for generations.”

“You want to strike out against the Dominion for the sake of your family?” I asked.

He nodded. “This is my sister.”

Like her brother, Liu was the palest green.

“She doesn’t live with me and the rest of our family.”

“No,” Liu said. “Since they lost their land, I’ve been living on different ships depending on where I could find work. That’s how I met T’kal, of the Roen species.”

Liu gestured to her partner. “T’kals species are shapeshifters,” she said.

I had no way of knowing if his current form was his true form. He looked relatively human compared to the others at the table. The only visible difference between him and Glorie was the large, spiraling horns protruding from his forehead.

“The Dominion descended on his home planet and captured as many Roen as they could, T’kal included,” Liu said. “The Dominion wanted the shapeshifting race to be their personal legion of spies. T’kal and many others refused. He and a handful of others were able to escape the Dominion.”

Just from looking at him, I got the sense he didn’t want to go into details. I felt certain it was a challenging and bloody feat.

“My name is Mahorn and this is Pire.” A Trile stepped forward. Their bodies were covered in shimmery, teal scales. They looked like they were better suited for an oceanic planet, but had no problems navigating on dry land and deep space.

Pire was quick to tell us how the Dominion looted one of his father’s ships. Mahorn said little, though it didn’t escape my attention that she was missing an eye. I felt certain the Dominion had something to do with that.

Finally, there was Kora. She was taken from her planet to be genetically tested, like the group of women we rescued so long ago and forced into a breeding program against her will. Day after day she was experimented on until her body gave out.

The Dominion tossed her aside when they believed her to be dead. She woke up in a snowdrift, half-frozen. It took her months to recover.

“I don’t know what species I am anymore,” she said softly. “The Dominion changed so much of me.”

“All that matters to me is that you can hold a weapon,” Glorie said with a smile so gentle it startled me. Where was my snarky, sarcastic partner? “The rest won’t matter when the Dominion begs for mercy.”

Kora’s eyes lit up with dangerous fire. Her petal pink skin and silver scaled shoulders gave her a soft appearance I believed to be deceptive.

“I can do that,” she replied.

“We’re approaching the outpost.” The Captain’s crisp voice came through the overhead speakers.

“Thank goodness,” Glorie groaned. “This entire endeavor has taken way too long.”

“At least we made it here alive,” I reminded her.

We went to the vessel’s observation deck to get our first look at the outpost on the moon. Once the haze of the outer atmosphere cleared, we could see the entire facility. I was impressed at the size and organized layout of the outpost.

We landed on a dedicated airstrip. A Shein waited for us to disembark.

“I was only expecting two individuals,” he said when he saw the size of our party.

“We found some more volunteers on the way,” I replied.

“I’m Commander Brik,” he replied, face carefully blank. “I’ll want to corroborate the information on the new recruits before they join the others.”

“I appreciate the assistance.” Which was true. On the trip, we’d kept comms to a minimum, which limited the amount of background checking we could run. “Care to show us around?”

“Certainly.”

The tour was brief but helpful. The outpost was equipped with training arenas, barracks, and exercise rooms.

“Was this place always a training base?” I asked.

“Yes,” Brik said with a nod. “The Hark used it for a variety of reasons before moving to other outposts closer to the System’s center. They have made it generic enough that other races are able to use it as well.”

“Makes sense,” Glorie murmured as she looked around. The six new volunteers examined everything in polite silence.

I took a moment to study Glorie’s face. She was carefully expressionless, which I’d learned was a true mark of inner frustration. Glorie experiencing bouts of frustration was nothing new to me now. The tricky part was knowing whether to ask her about it or to leave her be. I’d gotten mixed results over the last several days.

The outpost was teeming with volunteers of all species, genders, and ages. It was completely overwhelming. I knew Captain Dejar said there were a lot of volunteers, but I never expected to see this many.

Many of them were in the various training yards working on their form or doing strength training exercises. None of the volunteers appeared to be working with a trainer. If anything, they were working in small clusters or alone. Not a good sign.

I cast another glance at Glorie. Her mouth was pressed into a tight line.

Brik ushered us away from the training yards.

“This is where you will be staying.” Brik showed Glorie and me to our quarters and beckoned the six new volunteers to follow him. “Recruit barracks are down the road.”

“We’ll see you later.” I nodded to Xhial, who looked hesitant.

Glorie and I were given separate but adjacent rooms. We shared a small common area in front of our rooms with a table, some chairs, and a half kitchen. We each took a moment to put our things away before meeting.

“What do you think?” I asked as she threw herself into a chair.

“I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head back as she thought, exposing the long line of a surprisingly graceful neck. “We haven’t seen much yet but what I saw in the yard didn’t look promising.”

“I know what you mean.” I took the seat next to her. “I don’t think anyone has organized proper training classes. Everyone looked as if they were doing whatever they wanted.”

“Most of them had no idea how to execute basic defensive maneuvers,” Glorie pointed out. “I think we’ll be starting from scratch with just about everyone here. How can we possibly pull that off?”

I felt her frustration mounting. “We’re going to do the best we can.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be enough,” she groaned. “Did you seem them out there? How are we ever going to get them into fighting shape? How will any of them ever stand a chance against the soldiers of the Dominion?”

“Slow down,” I urged her. “Don’t get too far ahead. The key to this is small steps. Let’s just talk about the first step.”

“We need to assess them,” she said after a moment of consideration. “We don’t have the time to do one on one trials.”

“No, we don’t,” I agreed. “We can do large groups. We can ask people to sign up for assessments based on their skill level.”

“What if they lie?”

“Then it’ll be obvious and we can reassign them.” I leaned toward her and took the hand busy tapping against the arm of her chair. She jerked, but didn’t pull away, and I began massaging her palm and stiff fingers.

“If they’re stupid enough to lie about their skill level then we don’t need them in our ranks,” she snapped.

“Let’s see what happens first before you become determined to kick people out. One step at a time.”

She gave me a half-hearted scowl. “You’re going to have to say that a lot around me.”

“I got the feeling.”

“What do we do once we get them into groups?” she asked. Her fingers curled around my thumb until we were almost holding hands. She looked straight forward, so she missed the small smile that curled my lips. Let her pretend all she wanted.

“We’ll lead them through the basic form of hand to hand,” I said, not bothering to hide how my voice deepened with satisfaction. “Hopefully, a few superior students will stand out and we can train them for aerial attacks.” My thumb slipped out of her grasp, and I caressed her slim inner wrist.

She inhaled sharply, and yanked her arm away, curling it safely in her lap. “I assumed most of this war would be fought in the skies,” she said.

“That may be but we can teach anyone to fight. Not everyone can be a fighter pilot.”

Glorie put her hands over her face. Her shoulders slumped.

“Are you well?” I asked though I doubted the answer was going to be yes.

“It just feels so hopeless,” she said from behind her hands.

“You can’t let yourself think that.”

“How can I stop thinking that when all of the facts are staring me right in the face?” She lowered her hands. Her eyes looked watery, but not quite teary.

“You don’t have all of the facts. We only have some of them. We won’t get all of the facts until we have a look at our volunteers. Don’t convince yourself it’s hopeless. I thought you had a better head on your shoulders than that.”

Her worried expression faded into a slight smirk. “Don’t try to bait me,” she said.

I chuckled, leaning back in my chair away from her. That was safest. “I’ll bait you if it improves your attitude.”

“Since when do you care about my attitude?”

“Since I’ve been the one who has the deal with your moods.”

She gave me an arch look. “I like to keep things interesting.”

I looked at her.

Really looked at her. Her curves and her strength. The twisted sense of humor that suited me like few others.

She was a fighter.

And something more.

As she met my gaze, I saw behind her wariness that she knew what I did. There was an attraction between us, one we’d been edging around for days now.

I allowed myself one brief, forbidden image of her. Her toned, lithe body beneath me. Her teeth in my shoulder as she shuddered in passion. I let the image fill my eyes and saw her breath catch, her pupils dilate.

We were going to have an interesting journey together.

Glorie

I wasn’t thrilled about having a partner at first. I hadn’t made that a secret. Now, as training got underway, I was grateful to have Kesyk. Maybe a little something else besides gratitude, but whatever. Gratitude was much safer.

I’d never held an official training position. I’d never considered myself the teaching type. Yes, I could lead a unit or a team with great efficiency but that was only if the members of said team knew what they were doing.

I didn’t have the patience to walk someone through something step-by-step. I was bad at identifying what needed to be explained and what was fine to gloss over.

Kesyk was good at that kind of stuff. He started making lesson plans our first night at the outpost. I read over some of what he had. It was all good stuff I was eager to put to the test.

And there was something special to him. Something in his quiet silences that damn near begged me to discover what secrets he held. I watched him watching me, his presence becoming a familiar balm when my frustration began to boil over. I tried not to read too much into his small touches—a brief caress on the back of my hand. A press against the small of my back. Nothing gratuitous or disrespectful.

I felt hunted.

I felt . . .cherished.

Which was really damn weird.

On the first morning, we gathered everyone into the largest space we could find. We ended up having to step outside of the outpost to fit everyone in one place. We explained the rosters and how to sign up for an evaluation class.

By the second morning, everyone had signed up. Most volunteers accurately placed themselves in a no-combat-experience class. Kesyk and I quickly realized we’d have to divide that class into sections. The handful of others who placed themselves in another category would need to be interviewed and tested separately.

Our to-do list was growing longer and longer by the minute.

On the third morning, we lead our first group of novice soldiers through several series of simple combat moves.

“Watch the one there.” Kesyk jerked his head in the direction of his subject. “His movements look natural and fluid. He’s done this before.”

We’d given everyone numbers to stand in front of to make identifying them easier. There was no way we were going to learn everyone’s name.

I plugged number thirty-seven into my chart. He was the third volunteer to catch my attention in this group. Everyone in this grouping classified themselves as having no combat experience, but there were some that must’ve had some kind of training.

Most of the volunteers needed carefully explained, step-by-step instructions to get through the basic exercise. It took us two hours to get through the solitary exercises before we could pair everyone up to spar.

Sparring was another mess altogether.

Thankfully, Kesyk possessed the patience I did not.

“Kesyk,” I groaned quietly. “They have to speed it up. No one in the Dominion will move this slowly unless we hit them with a freeze ray.”

“You have a freeze ray?” Kesyk murmured back.

“No, it’s an expression.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be.”

“You’re the alien. Why are you looking at me for freeze rays?”

“Last time I checked, you humans developed your own tech. Why is it on my species to provide all of the useful gadgets?”

“Because our most advanced form of transport has a one in four chance of killing someone, that’s why.”

“What?” His smug expression quickly turned into one of concern.

“Long-distance interplanetary transport on my planet is uncomfortable at best, deadly at its worst. I thought you knew that.”

“Why would I?”

“Is this part of the training?” someone in the first row whispered to their neighbor.

“Why are you eavesdropping when you should be sparring?” I demanded.

“I’m working on my espionage skills,” the volunteer shot back.

My mouth dropped open. I desperately wanted to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything. Beside me, Kesyk’s shoulders shook with laughter.

“What’s your number?” I asked the volunteer.

“Four.”

I wrote four next to number thirty-seven. I liked her.

“Get back to sparring,” I warned her.

“Yes, ma’am!” She gave an enthusiastic salute then immediately kicked her opponent in the leg. Her opponent went down with a wince.

“That’s what you get for letting your guard down,” I said. “Just because you’re taking a moment to breathe doesn’t mean your opponent will either.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the other volunteer wheezed.

“This is going to be a long day,” I muttered to Kesyk as I strode past him.

“You signed up for this,” he called after me.

I whirled around. “You know I didn’t.”

He was smirking.

“Do you really have nothing better to do than antagonize me?” I demanded, fighting my own reluctant amusement. I may have begun to enjoy his humor. It added color to the day.

“Of course, I do,” he said with a shrug. “Antagonizing you happens to be the option that’s the most fun for me.”

“How did you ever make it as a bookkeeper?” I squinted at him suspiciously.

“Sharp writing utensils.”

“Have you actually managed to weaponize a pen?”

“A stylus, actually.”

Somehow, I didn’t doubt it.

Another hour of sparring exercise passed before the first group of volunteers was dismissed.

“Any promising ones?” Kesyk asked me, peering at my notes.

“What do you think? Unless you weren’t taking notes this whole time.”

“I was.” Kesyk passed me a clipboard. The sheet on it showed nothing but sporadically placed dots.

“What’s this supposed to mean?”

“Each dot represents where one of the promising volunteers was standing.”

I balked. “You didn’t write down the numbers?”

“I don’t need to. The diagram is accurate.”

To test this, I held up the sheet. Sure enough, it lined up perfectly with the numbered grid.

“How are you going to remember this when the grid isn’t there anymore?” I asked.

“Shein have decent photographic memories.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“And I didn’t know about humans and their killer tech. We’re both learning things today.” He smiled lazily, and for some reason, my heart rate jumped.

“You’re going to give me a headache.” I scowled at him, rubbing a hand over my traitorous heart. “I don’t want to go through two more groups with a headache.”

The second group was in their places within half an hour. Kesyk and I repeated our exercises, the process more streamlined this time. Only a handful of volunteers stood out to me.

The sun was setting by the time we brought in the third group. We hadn’t even gotten to the volunteers who indicated that they had some experience. We would likely have to push their assessments to tomorrow.

This was exactly what I was worried about. We were taking too long to supply the rebellion with somewhat skilled soldiers.

The radio signal wasn’t very strong out here on the fringes of the Hark System. I wasn’t sure what was going on with the war efforts elsewhere. I hated not knowing. For all I knew, my friends were getting ripped to shreds in the middle of space somewhere.

“What’s that look on your face for?” Kesyk asked me, tone whisper soft and smooth.

“Just thinking about everyone else,” I replied, avoiding his gaze. I straightened my shoulders, which were trying to hunch against the sensation of being gently hunted.

The last of the volunteers made their way back to the barracks, leaving Kesyk and me alone on the field.

“I know it’s worrisome,” he assured me. “I don’t like being so disconnected either.”

“But you never say anything,” I frowned.

“Because you do enough complaining for the both of us,” he teased. He touched my jaw with his fingertips, a brief, casual gesture.

“I don’t complain.” I rolled my eyes. “I voice my concerns.”

“Loudly and often.”

I shrugged. “Hey, at least I’m entertaining.”

“You do keep things interesting around here,” he agreed, holding my gaze. “Let’s try to get ahold of someone in the tower. It might make us both feel better.”

“Or worse if we don’t learn anything,” I pointed out.

“If I’ve learned anything, it’s that no news is good news.”

I wished he would stop staring. “Did you learn that during your military days or your bookkeeper days?”

“Both,” he crooned, and took a step closer to me.

I casually moved away, then made myself still. Never run from a predator. And at the moment, with the hairs on the back of my neck rising and his bright eyes fixed on me, I felt very much like prey.

Oh, hell no. I bared my teeth at him. “You’re going to have to sit down and tell me your life story one of these days.”

“Ask me again in a week and we’ll see how generous I’m feeling. I might do more than tell you my life story.”

I took a deep breath, accepted I was swimming out of my depth, and stalked off in the direction of the communications tower.

Tower was a slight exaggeration. It was more of a rickety pile of wood and rusted bolts. The entire thing wiggled when Kesyk and I climbed up. Yes, climbed. There were no stairs, just a rusty old ladder.

“Considering how nice the rest of this place is,” Kesyk grunted as he climbed beneath me, “you’d think they would’ve updated this.”

“What I want to know is why you started climbing before I was up at the top.” I shrieked as the tower lurched.

“I don’t think this was ever meant to serve as a communication tower,” Kesyk mused, ignoring my complaints.

“Fascinating.”

I clung to my rung until the building settled.

“I think it might have been grain storage,” he guessed. “I could believe this place was once a farm.”

“What a lovely theory.”

I dragged myself to the top of the tower. An old communication circuit was set up at the top. An antenna and a satellite were crudely attached to the roof, which had more holes than shingles.

“Does your family have a farm?” Kesyk asked.

“No.” I furrowed my brow. “Why do you ask?”

“Humans managed to survive between only two planets for hundreds of years,” he reasoned. “I figured all of you know how to generate your own resources.”

“If we did, we wouldn’t have needed to move to that second planet. Can you get this working?”

“I can try.”

Kesyk set to fiddling with the communication controls. The entire system desperately needed an upgrade. I’d speak to Commander Brik about it when I next saw him. He’d made himself scarce since we arrived, tending to the daily life of the volunteers while Kesyk and I oversaw training.

“I think I’ve got someone,” Kesyk said.

“All I hear is static.” I frowned as the speakers hissed and popped.

“Not over the radio. Here.” He pointed to the small, cracked monitor. It showed a series of symbols I didn’t recognize.

“I thought my language implant translated everything.”

“Only recognized languages. This is a mix of slang and shorthand,” Kesyk explained. “It’s from Captain Dejar.”

“What does it say?” I asked, coming up beside him.

“The crews are spread thin. Passing information around is risky. They don’t need the volunteers yet.”

“Is that all?” I bit my bottom lip.

“For now.” Kesyk switched off the monitor. “There might be more when things calm down. They will certainly let us know when they need our volunteers.”

I was more than able to tell the closeness of his body as he said this.

I could feel my heart rate start to increase.

Without saying anything else, I scooched a little bit closer. If for nothing else, but just to smell his scent.

I could feel his body respond to me.

He knew on a deeper level that I was near.

That he wanted to tear my clothes off of me.

And do something savage to my body.

But...this mission came first. For now.

I pulled away.

“We better get to work,” I sighed. “They’re a long way from ready.”

Kesyk

Within a week, we had a good sense of what needed to be done.

Glorie was more than eager to take on the experienced volunteers. At first, neither of us held high hopes for any of them. Granted, they knew how to hold certain weapons and could move through the training exercises with more ease than most but they weren’t soldiers. Not yet, at least.

I took over the rest of the volunteers. They all needed a fair amount of work before they were ready for anything more rigorous than planned out sparring sessions. They still needed to build up their muscles and to hone their balance. We weren’t even working with real weapons yet. The fabricator on site had been popping out lightweight replicas of all regularly used weapons.

I inspected the fabricator myself. To my surprise, the training weapons were made of nothing more than compressed earth coated with a natural sealant. Rather ingenious, really.

After long training days, Glorie and I developed an evening routine.

We took breakfast and lunch with the volunteers so that they might ask us questions whenever they needed. Dinner was a different matter. We ate our dinners in the common room between our quarters. No one else joined us.

It was during these dinners where we discussed our plans for the volunteers and tested our new training plans on each other.

We’d fixed up the half kitchen in our barracks. When we arrived, it had only a food warmer, a preserving bin, and a cooling cupboard. There was no shortage of scrap around the outpost. Anything that couldn’t be repurposed for the sake of the training facilities was given to me.

Glorie and I made a makeshift stove and oven that had only caused three fires so far. Considering our janky setup, it was a miracle it hadn’t combusted.

“We really should do something about that.” Glorie gestured to the stove with her fork between bites of charred meat.

“Is it still smoking?” I didn’t want to look.

She shrugged. “Not as badly as it was when we were cooking.”

“Should I pour water on it?”

“I think that would make it worse. Just disconnect it.”

“All right.” I wiped my mouth with a napkin and pushed away from the table. “But if I get zapped, I’m blaming you.”

“So long as it doesn’t kill you.” She took another bite of her food. Everything on our plates had been charred.

I couldn’t tell if she’d just eaten another piece of meat or a vegetable.

“If it does, you’ll have to take over the inexperienced volunteers.”

“That’s why I don’t want you to die.”

“Is that the only reason?” I looked over my shoulder at her and smiled.

She lifted a brow laconically, but there was a glint in her eyes. “I suppose I’d miss your company if you were dead.”

“But not my . . . cooking skills?”

As if to prove her point, Glorie picked up a charred bit of something that might’ve once been edible and dropped it on her plate. The clunk it made was so loud, I worried she’d cracked the dishware.

“Like you could do better,” I teased.

“Fix the stove and I might be able to.”

I pulled the stove away from the wall to expose the tangle of wires that connected to the power and gas lines.

“Which one is it again?” I asked.

“How should I know? You’re the one who did all the wiring.”

“Which was a mistake on my part.”

In the end, I decided to grab every wire and give it a yank. Luckily, nothing exploded. There was a faint popping noise that came from the inside of the stove, but I tried not to worry about it.

“Did that work?” Glorie asked.

“I think so.”

I returned to the table and sat across from her. “What should we do tonight?”

“I just remembered,” Glorie said brightly. “I’m teaching a nighttime class tonight.”

“Are you?” I tipped my head to one side. “That sounds exciting.”

“I thought it would be a nice treat for some of the more promising pupils.” She paused. “Want to join?”

Her offer surprised me. I’d thought she’d use it as an excuse to escape. “What do you have planned?”

“I found some night vision goggles when I was digging around in one of the storage rooms. I figured it’s a good introduction to night fighting and maybe even some espionage.”

“That’s getting into advanced territory. Are you sure they’re ready for it?”

“Most of my students aren’t,” Glorie admitted. “But these eight are showing real promise.”

“You’re taking up eight of your students?” My eyes went wide.

“Why is that such a shock?”

“I never expected you to like more than three.”

“I like people,” she insisted. “I’m friendly. I have friends.”

Her pout was almost adorable. “Do you remember what you said to me the first time we both reported in for this mission?”

She scowled at me. “I told you that if you slow me down, I’ll give you a reason to be slow,” she muttered.

“Is that your definition of friendly?”

“Look, I was mad. Okay? You knew that.”

“Believe me, I’m well acquainted with your tempers.”

“And you like them now,” she pointed out. “They keep your day interesting.”

“I did say that, didn’t I?”

“More than once.” She grinned. “And look at us now. We’re friends, right?”

“I’d say so,” I agreed slowly. “Friends. What time are you meeting your star students?”

“In fifteen minutes in one of the classrooms.”

The classrooms she spoke of weren’t really classrooms. They were more like medium-sized rooms that were empty for no good reason. Our training groups were currently too big to bring into a classroom for lectures. I’d been relying on dragging my console out to the training yard and hooking it up to a display monitor that was really just a big sheet.

“Let’s head over if you’re done with your food.”

“You mean charcoal,” she snorted. “Yes, I’m finished.”

“You’re cooking tomorrow night. If you can do better than I did, I’ll boil my boot and eat it.”

“Please don’t,” she laughed.

“Maybe we could think of another forfeit then.”

She stilled, eyes widening, then cleared her throat. “That’s—not necessary.”

We left our common room and walked through the silent grounds. Most of the volunteers were lingering in the main mess hall or already in their barracks.

We had a satellite in orbit that scanned for Dominion ships which was checked continuously, but other than that there wasn’t much.

“Looks like some of the chosen ones are already inside.” Glorie rolled her eyes.

“It’s nice to see you excited about this.”

“Don’t tell anyone I’m having fun. I have a reputation to uphold.”

“And what’s that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m the scary trainer. You’re the nice one.”

“How are you the scary one? I’m twice your size, Glorie.”

“You’re not that much bigger than I am.” She eyed me up and down.

“Oh, I’m much bigger. Much.”

“Are we interrupting something?” Xhial stuck his head out of the classroom door.

“Xhial? I didn’t know you’d be here,” I said.

“I thought it would be a nice surprise,” Glorie said. “Liu’s in there too.”

“Excellent,” I replied. “Shall we get to it? I’m eager to meet the other’s who’ve managed to impress Glorie.”

“Impressing her is no easy feat.” Xhial gave me a knowing look. I chuckled as I followed him into the classroom.

Liu offered me a small smile when she saw me. I only recognized one of the other six volunteers in the room. The female who gave Glorie some attitude during our first day of assessments. Her deep purple skin and shock of orange hair stood out almost as much as her personality.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Geillis,” she replied, chin high.

“Good to meet you. I bet you’re excited for the espionage training?”

She jumped to her feet, bouncing on her soles. “I was born ready.”

Well. It was nice to see someone was optimistic.

“Shall we make with the introductions?” Glorie offered.

I opened my mouth to start, but a shrill noise cut me off. The terrible screeching caused my ears' physical pain. My vision went blurry for a moment before I adjusted.

“What’s that?” Geillis demanded.

“Is that the security alarm?” Glorie asked.

“Either that or someone is slowly torturing an animal to death,” Xhial shouted over the alarm.

“I’ll go check it out.” I moved to the classroom door only to find it locked. I jiggled the handle, but nothing happened. “Does this lock from the outside?”

“It doesn’t have a lock at all. Can’t you open it?” Glorie asked.

I shook my head. She ran to me and grasped the handle, shaking it violently.

“Why won’t it open?” she demanded. “Kesyk, can you break it?”

“I can try.” I grasped the handle again and twisted with all my strength but it wouldn’t give. “It must be reinforced or something.”

“What’s happening to the windows?” Liu asked.

Glorie and I looked to find a sheet of metal lowering over the windows.

“What the hell?” Glorie muttered.

“We must be on some kind of lockdown,” I said.

“What’s happening?” Geillis demanded.

I pulled out my outpost radio and tried to get ahold of someone. The signal in the outpost was strong, yet no one responded. Surely at least one other person on the base had their radio with them.

“Anything?” Glorie asked though she already knew the answer. She stood close to me, and it was nothing to reach out and squeeze her waist briefly.

“Nothing. I’ll keep trying until we know what’s going on. Maybe there was a malfunction of some sort.”

Glorie and the eight volunteers nodded, though I could tell none of them believed my words. I didn’t believe them either. Though I couldn’t hear anything outside the classroom, I knew something terrible must’ve happened.

Glorie

“I don’t like this,” I said in a low voice, not wanting the volunteers to hear my nervousness. The last thing I needed was for them to panic.

“Everything will be fine,” Kesyk whispered. He rubbed a warm circle on the small of my back then withdrew.

“I have my main radio,” I said. “I’ll try to get ahold of someone on the Rogue Star. Maybe one of ours is in the area and can see what’s happening. This breaks all the rules but this is the sort of situation that needs an emergency contact.”

“Good luck. Signal to other planets is crap on a good day.”

“Thank you. That’s helpful.” I barked out a dry laugh

I fiddled with my radio, slipping between channels of pure static until I found one that might possibly work.

“Hello?” I said into the speaker. “Can anyone hear me?”

“I…hear…what...status?” A voice I couldn’t recognize came through the radio.

“This is Glorie of the Rogue Star at the Hark System training outpost.” I spoke slowly and clearly.

“Repeat,” the voice said in a burst of clarity. I recognized Kalyn’s voice.

“Commander!” I shouted. “There is a situation on the Hark System training outpost.”

I moved across the room in the direction of the radio tower. Perhaps, getting just a tiny bit closer would help me hear Kalyn.

“Stand on these,” Geillis suggested. She, Xhial, and Liu dragged a table into the corner of the room and helped me stand on top of it. The static cleared slightly. It wasn’t much but every little bit helped.

“Want to get on my shoulders?” Kesyk offered.

I fiddled with the radio settings some more. Kesyk climbed onto the table next to me and crouched down so I could wrap my legs around his shoulders. When he stood up, my stomach seized in fear. I was a good fourteen feet off the ground now.

“Commander, can you hear me?” I called again.

“I can hear you better,” Kalyn replied. “What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure. An alarm went off and the room I’m in went into some kind of lockdown mode. We have no idea what’s going on outside. Do you have any information?”

“We’re on the other side of Dominion Space,” she replied. “Let me access one of the satellites around your location. I think if I modulate the frequency we shouldn’t have any problems getting a signal this time.”

“We have a security satellite that monitors the outpost,” I offered.

“That should work. What’s the serial number?”

“IH8M3N,” I recited, hoping my memory served me correctly.

“Fantastic. Hang tight for a moment. I’ll figure out what’s going on. I might know what it is.”

Kalyn clicked off the radio.

“Should I let you down now?” Kesyk asked.

“She might only be a moment or two. Holding me up isn’t too rough on your shoulders, is it?”

“You’re a featherweight,” Kesyk said dismissively.

“Glorie, do you copy?” Kalyn said.

“Yes, I’m here,” I replied. “What happened?”

“The satellite data is pretty scrambled but I’ve seen this before. It’s just as I thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think the Dominion launched some kind of attack. Many of our satellites were scrambled in the same way yours is. That’s not the bad part, though.”

“What’s the bad part?” I braced myself.

“Whatever swept through and scrambled the satellites had an effect on sentient lifeforms.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not. The Rogue Star is stationed near the Rebel Headquarters. Less than an hour ago, tons of people started acting strange. Most of them slumped over as if someone dealt them a blow to the head all at the same time. They won’t move, but they’re still breathing. Others are wandering around like they’re in a trance. Nothing has been able to snap them out of it. Sometimes, they fall over and stay down. It’s like they aren’t in their bodies anymore.”

I processed her words grimly. “You think that’s happened here?”

“The data is showing the same scramble pattern,” Kalyn replied.

“We need to check outside,” I told Kesyk.

“There’s a fat metal sheet over the window, in case you missed that,” Geillis replied.

“Look for weak spots. If we can find something to wedge between the sheet and the windowsill, we might be able to pry it open enough to look outside,” I instructed. “Consider this a lesson in resourcefulness and survival training.”

“Investigate and report back to me,” Kalyn ordered. “I have some information for you, but it will take me a moment to gather it all.”

“Yes, Commander.” I tucked the radio into my belt and looked down at Kesyk. “Can you let me down, please?”

I expected Kesyk to let me slide down his back. Instead, he grabbed my leg with one hand and wrapped his other arm around my lower back. With surprising grace, he flipped me around his shoulder so that I was in his arms. From there, he lowered me to the ground.

“Are you okay?” he asked when I didn’t immediately put my feet down.

“Yeah,” I stammered. He didn’t handle my weight like a bookkeeper. A thought slithered in the back of my mind as I wondered how he might handle me in bed. “Just concerned about what’s happening outside.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he assured me. He still hadn’t let me go and my chest pressed against his.

“Are you always this good in a crisis?” I didn’t mean for it to come out flirtatious, and winced internally at the husky tone of my voice.

“It comes from years of practice.” He offered a smile but the light didn’t reach his eyes. He was as worried as I was.

Slowly, as if not to startle me, he pressed a kiss on my forehead, then eased me away with a fleeting, regretful look. As if he wished we had time to do more.

I was starting to feel that way too.

“There’s a weak spot!” Liu called. “What can we use for leverage?”

“Look around for something long, but sturdy,” I instructed.

“There’s nothing in here,” Xhial pointed out. “There aren’t even loose nails on the floor.”

“I have something,” Kesyk offered. He pulled out some sort of tool from his pocket and walked over to the reinforced window.

“Where’s the weak spot?” he asked.

“Right here.” Liu pointed to a spot. “It doesn’t line up perfectly with the edge of the window.

“That’ll do.”

I walked over as Kesyk pushed a button on his tool. A thin metal rod popped out from one of the tool slots. He slipped the rod between the small gap in the metal sheet and the window’s edge.

“Is that going to be strong enough to do anything?” I asked.

Kesyk looked over his shoulder. “Just watch,” he said with a grin.

He applied pressure to the tool. Slowly but surely, the metal gave way to the rod. I watched in amazement as a one-inch gap appeared.

“Want to do the honors?” he asked.

Fear gripped me.

“No.” I shook my head and took a step back. “You’re already there. Just tell me what you see.”

Kesyk’s expression took on a look of concern before he looked through the new gap.

“Oh,” he sighed heavily. “This isn’t good.”

“What do you see?” Putting my fear aside, I closed the distance between us and stood by his shoulder. I still couldn’t see anything outside.

“It’s just what Kalyn described,” he said. “There are volunteers all over the yard lying there as if they were struck down.”

“How do we know they’re not dead?”

“I can see one of the closer ones breathing,” Kesyk said. “I’m assuming the others are in a similar state.”

“What do we do?” one of the volunteers, a deep red alien female called Rikka, asked. During intake she’d tested above average for strategic ability and analysis, once risking demerits for staying up all night, trawling the commwebs for rumors. Hopefully she’d get a chance to use some of those smarts, once we got out of here.

“I’m going to report into my Commander. Hopefully, the information she provides will be helpful.”

“That information better tell us what the fuck is happening,” Xhial snapped.

“Watch it,” I warned him. “Kesyk, will you give me a lift on the table?”

“You got it.”

Kesyk put away his convenient little tool and followed me to the table. I climbed on, he lifted me onto his shoulders again, and I brought out the radio.

“Commander, can you hear me?” I asked.

“Your voice is faint, but I can just make you out,” Kalyn responded. “Were you able to assess the situation?”

“It’s just as you described. Our volunteers are lying all over the yard.”

“I feared as much. Do you have access to a datapad or a console?”

“I’ve got a mini datapad.” I pulled it out of my back pocket.

“I’m sending you a few more maps and schematics to build on what you have,” Kalyn said. “We believe this was some kind of neurological or sonic attack, maybe a combination of both. The Dominion is most certainly behind it. We’ve been picking up on bits and pieces of radio chatter for days, but it’s been too encrypted to get a full picture of what they were planning. Now we know.”

“No kidding,” I muttered.

I opened the first thing Kalyn sent to me, a map covered in little red dots. I recognized the location of our training outpost, the rebel headquarters, and quite a number of rebel strongholds throughout Dominion Space and on the fringes as well. The dot over the training post was the smallest. The dot over the headquarters was double the size of the others. We must’ve taken the least damage.

“All of those dots represent the same kind of attack,” Kalyn said.

“That means the weapon that did this is multipliable and portable, or it has an incredibly long-range,” I said.

“We believe it’s the second one. We’ve picked up on snips of conversation about a top-secret facility.”

“Top secret?” Geillis perked up.

“If you look at the dots, you can see that they almost form a ring.”

I looked closer and saw the pattern Kalyn spoke of.

“The weapon must be at the center of the ring,” I said. “Allows them to send pulses in series, over time.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Kalyn replied. I heard a beep on her end of the line. “I’m going to transfer you.”

“Why?”

“Captain Dejar wants a word. Is Kesyk with you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. He wants to speak to you both.”

“I think I know where this is going,” Kesyk said.

“I’ll transfer you now. Good luck and stay safe.”

Kesyk

We lost the signal when Commander Kalyn transferred us to Captain Dejar. Static crackled through the otherwise silent room.

No one knew what to say, not even Geillis.

Glorie was either furious or terrified. I wagered it was a mix of both. I wished I could offer her council, but I was as clueless in this as she was.

What kind of weapon could do such a thing? I had several theories but they all seemed improbable. What puzzled me most was why we were spared. Was it simply because we were inside? What kind of weapon was so powerful that it could simultaneously affect thousands, if not tens of thousands, but be stopped by simple walls?

“Do you want to get down while we wait for the transfer to go through?” I asked Glorie.

“No, I think I’ve almost got the frequency back,” she said, brow furrowed in concentration as she wiggled the various radio knobs.

“Come in!” Captain Dejar’s voice suddenly barked through the speaker, making Glorie and several of the volunteers jump. Glorie wavered on my shoulders. I put my hands on her thighs to steady her, trying not to caress the smooth muscle under my fingers. She gripped my forearm with her free hand until she regained her balance.

“Captain, can you hear me?” Glorie shouted into the radio.

“There is some interference but I can hear you.”

“That’s the catchphrase of the evening,” she muttered more to herself than to Captain Dejar.

“I have an assignment for you and Kesyk. Is he present?”

“I am, sir,” I called from beneath Glorie.

“I didn’t copy that,” Captain Dejar said.

“He’s here,” Glorie repeated. “Due to extenuating circumstances, the radio is close to me and no one else.”

“I see. I trust you to relay all relevant information.”

“Yes, sir,” Glorie replied. I could hear the eye-roll in her voice. She was as anxious to hear our assignment as I was.

“I want you, Kesyk, and whatever forces you can muster to locate the weapon that caused this,” Captain Dejar said.

Glorie’s thighs bunched with tension. The volunteers around us murmured quietly to each other. I signaled for their silence.

“Once we locate it, what then?” Glorie asked.

“Ideally, I want you to destroy it. That might change depending on what you find but, for now, go forth with the intention of ridding the world of such a creation.”

“Yes, sir.” Glorie glanced down at me. I nodded to indicate my understanding. “Kesyk is on board.”

“Good.” Captain Dejar’s voice sounded heavy and tired, even through layers of static. “Kalyn and I have been able to roughly pinpoint the location of the weapon.”

“I saw the map,” Glorie said. “It’s in the center of the attack ring, right?”

“Yes, though we were able to pull some more specific coordinates. I’m sending them to your datapad now.”

The datapad beeped from Glorie’s back pocket. She must’ve tucked it back there while she was trying to get the radio working again. She tried to reach for it but couldn’t grasp it.

“Kesyk, can you . . . ?” she trailed off.

“Sure.” I held on to her leg tightly with one hand and snaked the other into her back pocket to retrieve the datapad. Once I had it, I passed it up to her. She carefully balanced herself now that she couldn’t hold on to me.

After she examined the new map, she passed it down to me. The most likely area was a highly concentrated part of Dominion Space, though there appeared to be nothing there.

“We all know how the Dominion loves its secret labs,” Captain Dejar said. “We have reason to believe there is one at those coordinates.”

“And that’s where the weapon is housed,” Glorie finished.

“Exactly. Get there. Get the weapon. Get out,” Captain Dejar said. “We’ll be in contact as often as we can.”

“Do you have any soldiers to spare?” Glorie asked. “Training has been going well, but not well enough to take on something like this.”

Captain Dejar sighed. “I wish I could help more. We’re spread too thin as it is. All hands are needed at the rebel bases that took the heaviest hit. I’m sorry for this, but you’re on your own.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Glorie said with a determined nod.

“Let me know when you embark. Good luck.”

The radio went back to static. Glorie passed her radio and her datapad to me before carefully climbing down my back.

“Well,” she said with a sigh. “That could’ve gone better.”

“Are we going into Dominion Space?” Geillis asked, her usual enthusiasm absent from her voice.

“It looks like it.” Glorie ran her hands through her hair. “I know it’s not ideal. I know it’s overwhelming. I also know that you eight are the most promising recruits here. If anyone can handle it, you can.”

“You won’t be alone, either,” I said. “Glorie and I will do most of the footwork. With luck, we can manage this between the two of us.”

“No way.” Xhial shook his head. “We’re in this together now. We’re a team.”

I nodded with approval. “I admire your spirit.”

“Let’s start with what we know.” Glorie wrung her hands together as she started to pace. I reached out to stop her knowing full well that once she started pacing, she wouldn’t stop until she wore a track into the floor.

“We know it’s a single weapon with a huge range,” Geillis said.

“Right.” I drummed my fingers. “We know it’s probable location as well.”

“We’ll need a ship,” Glorie said.

“There’s a shipyard here,” Liu said. “Most of the ships are broken or too small to travel long distance. They aren’t meant to be used for anything other than training.”

“One of them will have to do,” I snapped.

“Maybe we can take more than one,” Glorie offered.

“Or one of your rebel buddies can send over something useful,” Xhial suggested.

“Not likely,” I said. “Rebel bases all over the fringe systems took heavy hits. We actually sustained the least amount of damage.”

“Is that so?” Geillis tilted her head to one side. Her flaming orange hair bounced with the movement.

“If they knew the locations of all the biggest rebel bases, they must’ve known this was a training outpost,” Glorie said with a thoughtful look on her face.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“If they know what this place is, they must know it’s the only one. Why not obliterate it? We’re fueling the armies from this very outpost.”

The fault in the Dominion’s logic puzzled me. If they really wanted to damage the rebel army, why not take away the outpost that would eventually supply the soldiers?

“I have a theory on that,” Rikka said quietly.

“Let’s hear it.” Glorie tilted her head, listening.

“They don’t see this place as something of high value,” Rikka said. “The rebel bases have already proven themselves to be a threat. Your Captain and Commander have already created considerable disruption for the Dominion.”

“Go on,” I urged.

“They could just see this outpost as a collection of farmers, tinkerers, and those who dream of fighting for the cause,” she continued. “They might’ve only given us a small dose of their weapon’s power because they don’t believe we’re a threat.”

“They must not know anything about our training or how the volunteers have progressed,” Glorie said.

“That makes sense,” Liu offered. “Why waste energy on something that’s not worth it?”

“That might be our only advantage,” I said. “They don’t know how well we’ve been progressing. I wouldn’t send any of our novice volunteers out to the battlefield, but I know that they could hold their own for a time.”

“I wonder if the Dominion knows the Rogue Star is here,” Glorie asked.

“If they did, they likely would’ve hit the outpost harder,” I reasoned.

“There’s a cold comfort,” she chuckled. “Our insane travel methods to get here worked.”

I grinned. “I told you they would. You should have more faith in me.”

“I have faith in you as a ladder. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Geillis leaned over to speak to Xhial. “Do they do this a lot?”

“From what I’ve seen, yes,” Xhial replied with a smirk.

“Do what?” Glorie asked.

“Oh, you know. Those verbal sparring matches you two always get into.”

“We don’t verbally spar,” I said. “We discuss things.”

“If that’s what you want to call it, I won’t correct you.”

“Can we focus on the issue at hand?” Glorie said briskly. “There’s ten of us. Eight of you barely know what you’re doing.”

“Hey!” Xhial exclaimed. “What happened to calling us your best and brightest?”

She gave him a withering look. “The bar is set so low that the Dominion doesn’t recognize the outpost as a threat. Do the math.”

Xhial grinned. “You’re just mad I pointed out your adorable spats with Kesyk.”

“Keep talking and I’ll hit you over the head and toss you out with the rest of them.”

Xhial opened his mouth again, but I gave him a look. “She’ll do it,” I warned him.

“Fine, but if you two want to come up with a plan you might want to remember one little detail.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re still trapped in here.”

Glorie

“What’s this?” Geillis’s voice chirped from over by the door.

“Get away from there,” I urged her. “We don’t know if it’s safe yet.”

“It’s locked. Mr. Muscles over there couldn’t get through it. I doubt volunteers walking around like the living dead are going to be able to get through.” She shrugged.

I hated that I couldn’t come up with an argument. I didn’t want her, or any of the others, to know that I was completely freaked out. I was supposed to be a role model of what to do in a situation like this. All I really wanted was to go to bed, wake up, and realize this was all a bad fever dream brought on by the charred things I ate at dinner.

Kesyk seemed to sense this. He squeezed my arm and gave me a look of reassurance. Grudgingly, I admitted to myself that I was glad he was here. If he’d been hit by the shockwave I don’t know how I would have gotten through this.

It wasn’t just the massive responsibility of suddenly being the only adult in the room with a group of newbies in the middle of some sort of unknown attack.

It was knowing he had my back.

No matter what.

It had been a long, long time since I had felt I could trust someone like that.

“I’ll check it out,” he said.

He walked over to Geillis while I rubbed my temples in a weak effort to stave off a budding migraine.

“Interesting,” Kesyk muttered. “I think we found some kind of automatic locking system.”

“Let me see.”

So much for letting Kesyk handle things.

Sure enough, there was a small metal object wedged between the door and the door frame. A small red light on the top indicated that it was powered by something.

“Got anything in that handy little tool stick of yours?” I asked Kesyk.

“I can try to pry it out,” he suggested. “But that won’t do much if it’s hooked into the structure itself.”

“Give it a shot and we’ll find out.”

Kesyk pulled out his tool stick and selected another tool. This time, it was a thin, flat metal stick. He poked around the object wedged in the door, but nothing happened.

“It’s probably wired in.”

“I can take a look at it.”

I turned around to see one of the volunteers, Eirton, a broody looking alien male with deep blue skin and black markings around his eyes.

“By all means.” I stepped aside, allowing him to get a closer look. He laid on his belly to examine the little device. After a few moments of silence from him, I turned to Kesyk.

“Can you find a way for us to see what’s in front of the door?” I asked.

“I’m on it.”

There was a small window in the door. It, too, was covered by a sheet of metal. Kesyk got to work on locating weak spots.

“I think I know what to do,” Eirton said from the floor.

“Don’t put yourself in danger needlessly,” I cautioned him.

“I won’t,” he assured me. “I’ve been tinkering with this kind of stuff since I was a kid. Anyone have a pin on them?”

“I do!” Geillis said excitedly. She pulled a neon pink pin from her orange hair. A lock fell into her face. She blew it away.

“Thanks,” Eirton said slowly, looking at Geillis from the corner of his eye. I couldn’t tell if he was entranced by her or weirded out. Probably a mixture of both.

Eirton took the pin and turned his attention back to the tiny device.

“I’ve got a line of sight,” Kesyk said. “There aren’t any immediate threats. The nearest incapacitated individual is twenty yards away. No one looks active.”

“By active, do you mean alive?” Liu said.

Kesyk gave her a blank stare.

“Just curious.” She looked away.

“There are several wandering around aimlessly,” Kesyk continued. “None of them appear to be heading in this direction. If they’re aware of our presence, they don’t care about us.”

“That’s a relief,” I sighed. “The last thing I want is to be attacked by a bunch of my own students.”

“Technically, these are likely my students,” Kesyk corrected. “Your training groups are much smaller.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I frowned.

“I think I’ve figured out how to deactivate it,” Eirton said. I looked down to see that he’d somehow managed to move the little metal device out of the wedge. It was still attached to the doorframe with thin wires.

“How?” I asked.

“I’m assuming breaking these wires will shut it off.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

I looked at Kesyk. “This is the stove all over again.”

“The stove worked out in our favor. The odds are looking decent for us.”

I looked back at Eirton. “Do whatever you need to do. Do you have something to cut the wires with?”

“No need.” With one yank, he attacked the device. A hollow thunk came from the door. That must’ve been the locking mechanism disengaging.

“I’ll go first,” Kesyk offered.

“Good idea,” I agreed. “Everyone, get ready. We’re running this as a stealth drill. Move quietly and stay low. I’ll take up the rear. If you have weapons, don’t draw them.”

“What if something attacks us?”

“Kesyk’s been doing this for a long time. We can trust him to react appropriately.”

“Thank you.” Kesyk drew himself up, until he was somehow taller than before.

He drew an empty hilt from his belt. With the push of a button, a blade humming with electricity appeared.

Geillis looked at it with wide, hungry eyes. “I want one of those,” she whispered.

I snorted. “Absolutely not. Kesyk, when you’re ready.”

Kesyk stood in the doorway and checked to make sure it was safe to leave. When it was, he gestured to the rest of us. I ushered the group forward in a rough two-by-two cluster and followed behind. I really should’ve brought a weapon with me. I’d become too relaxed here, a foolish thing to do during a war.

Kesyk signaled for us to stop. Most of the volunteers froze on command. One or two wandered a step forward before they realized Kesyk was signaling to them. I tried not to groan. Yes, they were the best and brightest of the volunteers but they were still rookies. They still had stuff to learn.

They’d have to learn fast.

Kesyk approached the unconscious body of a volunteer, or so we thought.

“His eyes are open,” Kesyk announced. “He’s breathing, too.”

Kesyk waved his hand over the volunteer’s face. “No eye reaction. He can’t see me.”

He then snapped near the volunteer’s ear. “No reaction to the sound either. He’s basically in a coma.”

“What the hell could’ve caused this?” I muttered.

“That’s what Captain Dejar wants us to find out,” Kesyk said.

“Watch out,” Xhial whispers.

A volunteer slowly shuffled past us. It was like they weren’t aware of their own body, much less us.

“Hello?” Kesyk called out to them. They didn’t respond or react. Kesyk stepped in front of the volunteer. The volunteer didn’t stop or alter his path. Instead, he ran right into Kesyk’s chest and kept pushing forward as if he could walk through another living being.

Eventually, Kesyk stepped out of the dazed volunteer’s way.

“Did the shockwave hit everyone?” Geillis asked softly.

I hadn’t considered the fact that there could be others who were spared. According to the map Kalyn sent me, our outpost took the weakest hit. If we were able to be spared the effects of the shockwave simply because we were inside at the time, there should be a good many who were spared too.

“Let’s get to the barracks,” I ordered.

We moved through the darkness as a unit. I insisted on continuing the stealth exercises even though the dazed volunteers posed little threat.

“Next time we do this, it might be for real,” I reminded them.

We approached the barracks. I expected to hear voices but only heard silence.

“I’ll check it out,” Kesyk offered.

He disappeared into the first building but shortly reappeared. “They’re like the others.”

“How is that possible? They were inside,” I said.

“I don’t think it’s that simple. The room we were in was part of a proper building. These barracks were hastily constructed from sheet metal and scraps. I don’t think these walls were strong enough to block the effects of the shockwave.”

“Then we have to check the other buildings. Someone, somewhere must’ve escaped. It can’t be just us,” Rikka said. She looked worried. I wondered if she had a special someone who might’ve been caught up in the shockwave.

“Let’s keep looking.” Kesyk motioned the group forward. We checked the sturdiest building first, one of the training centers. Sure enough, we found some volunteers huddling inside.

“Hello?” Kesyk called out.

Someone looked up at us. I was surprised to see Commander Brik.

“We thought we were the only ones,” he said.

“Same here.” I offered a smile, though the gesture felt strange under the circumstances.

“Do you know what happened?” he asked.

“This was the Dominion’s doing,” Kesyk explained. “They have a weapon. We’ve been tasked to retrieve it.”

Commander Brik bowed his head. “I offer my services.”

“Thank you, but we need you here,” I said. “There are a ton of volunteers that were affected by the Dominion’s attack. I need someone who knows the outpost as well as you do to remain here and look after them.”

I glanced at Kesyk, who nodded in agreement.

“I’ll do what I can,” Commander Brik said.

“One other thing,” Kesyk said. “We need a ship that can carry all of us.” He gestured to me and the eight volunteers.

“There is one ship here that could do that. It’ll be cramped, though.”

“We’ll make it work.”

“I’ll send the access codes,” Commander Brik said.

“Send them to me,” I said, pulling out my mini datapad. Within moments, Commander Brik’s codes appeared.

“Is there anything else you need?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “Will you be all right here?”

“I’ll be fine. I have help.” He looked over his shoulder at the cluster of stoic volunteers. “Just figure out how to undo this.”

“We’ll do our best,” Kesyk assured him.

Our group left and made our way to the shipyard. It wasn’t hard to find the vessel Commander Brik offered us. It was the only one that could fit more than two individuals.

“The Solaria,” I read the side of the vessel. “That’s nice.”

“She’s nicely armed too,” Xhial said. “Though it couldn’t hurt to raid the armory.”

“Consider this a test,” I said to the volunteers. “Go to the armory and collect everything we might need for a long-distance, high risk, stealth trip riddled with hostiles.”

“Yes, ma’am.” They gave a quick, unpracticed salute before running off into the night.

“Think they’ll be all right once we depart?” Kesyk asked.

“They’ll have to be. Didn’t you see the map? We’re going into the eye of the storm.”

Kesyk

I’d been trying to be the calm, cool, and collected one. I wanted to be the one who leads and reassures. I had the most experience, so I should be the one to shoulder most of the burdens.

This was not the sort of burden I expected to shoulder.

How could I have expected this?

How could Captain Dejar expect me, Glorie, and this group of ragtag volunteers to break into a Dominion facility and destroy a weapon so powerful it hit over a dozen far-flung targets simultaneously? I knew Glorie had high hopes for the eight volunteers she’d selected, but I hadn’t gotten a chance to assess their abilities.

“How am I supposed to come up with a viable plan with so little resources?” I fumed. “This whole thing is just ridiculous.”

Glorie gave me a sickly sweet smile, a malicious gleam in her gaze. “Don’t you trust your Commander, Kesyk? Don’t you believe you’ll do a good job?”

I looked at her sourly, unamused at having my words flung back in my face, but she only chortled, unfazed.

“Let’s check out the vessel,” she said once she put in the codes sent to her by Commander Brik.

I grunted in response, soliciting a curious look from Glorie.

She activated the entryway from her datapad. A narrow ramp lowered down from the belly of the ship. It wasn’t large. It might be able to sleep six comfortably, but not ten. This wasn’t going to be enjoyable. I wasn’t expecting a pleasure cruise or anything, but I needed a vessel big enough to adequately fit our needs.

The inside of The Solaria was nicer than I anticipated. It was an updated vessel made for war, with a sophisticated sensor system. Nothing would sneak up on us.

“What are we looking at in terms of weapons?” Glorie asked me.

“There are some small, close-range blasters,” I pointed out. “They won’t do much but they might dissuade pirates and the like.”

“Are pirates going to be a problem?” She stared at me.

“Not our biggest problem.”

“Are you all right?” Her gaze was penetrating. “We’ve had to take in a lot in a very short time.”

“I’m fine.” I didn’t feel fine, but it wasn’t her fault. I didn’t want to lash out at her because I was too weak to control my rising temper. I took great pride in my ability to control my emotions, especially my anger.

Everyone in my family had some kind of anger issue. It used to get me into a lot of trouble in my youth.

“All right.” Glorie stepped away. She looked suspicious, but hopefully she wouldn’t push me on this. I believed she knew me well enough to know my moods, just like I knew hers.

“What’s taking them so long?” I asked.

“I told them to treat it as a stealth mission. They’re probably crawling around in the shadows of the barracks as we speak.”

“Do we have team radios?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Do they know to get some?”

“You were there when I gave them their orders.” She threw her hands into the air. “They should know to check out radios as well as weapons and rations.”

“You’re putting an awful lot of faith in them. They’re untested.”

“This is how they are going to be tested. It’s not ideal. It’s not what I want or what I planned but it is what it is. Griping about it won’t help.”

“I’m not griping,” I snapped.

“Whatever you say.” Glorie stepped away from me. “I’m going to check out the sleeping quarters and the galley.”

I sighed as she left the room. Within moments, I heard rustling and clanging coming from the still lowered entry ramp. I grabbed the hilt of my electrified saber and moved toward the opening.

Clumsy shadows moved across the base of the ramp. It could be some of the volunteers walking around in a daze.

I prepped my saber and readied myself. A loud bang reverberated through the hull as if something slammed against it. Could the dazed volunteers understand what we’re doing on this ship? Could they be under some kind of influence or temporary madness?

I hated not having all of the information.

The sound of footsteps on the ramp echoed into the entry way. I readied myself.

“We’ve got the weapons!” I recognized Xhial’s voice and immediately lowered my saber.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I hissed from the top of the ramp. He stared at me, confused, his arms overflowing with weapons and ammunitions. “What’s all this?”

“We weren’t sure what to get so we got some of everything.” He pulled away. The motion made one of the guns fall from his arms and clatter onto the metal ram. It slid down only to be stopped by Eirton’s foot.

He grinned. “Got it!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me?” I groaned.

I grabbed Xhial by the shirt and pulled him inside, no longer caring how many weapons he dropped.

“Pick those up,” I barked to the other volunteers. “Get in line.”

“I heard banging,” Glorie said as she jogged down the tiny corridor to the entryway. “What’s wrong?”

“Take a look at your best and brightest.”

Glorie eyed the volunteers and the weapons they brought with them. “Most of those are useless to us,” she frowned. “We don’t need a rocket launcher. Why is that here?”

“One rocket launcher can do a lot of damage,” Xhial reasoned.

“Right, but we’re not trying to attract that kind of attention.”

“We could launch it at the weapon we’re supposed to destroy.”

“How are we supposed to sneak a rocket launcher into the highly guarded facility where the weapon is kept?” Glorie demanded.

None of the recruits came up with an answer.

“You’ve all failed this test,” I said. “I will make a list. You will fetch the items on that list. Did you get rations, water, or radios?”

“Aren’t all those things on the ship?” Geillis asked.

“How about you search every inch, then come tell me,” I snapped.

Geillis looked at me like she thought I was joking.

“Go!” I shouted.

“Kesyk,” Glorie said softly.

“Don’t try to pacify me.” I rounded on her. “I’m livid. I shouldn’t even be here! I gave up the military life years ago. I came here without a fight believing it was the right thing to do and I was raised to do the right thing. What do I get for that? Huh?”

“Kesyk,” Glorie said again, an edge creeping into her voice. She was trying to calm me down but I wasn’t ready to be calmed.

“After catching ride after ride across the damn universe, I’m put in charge of volunteers that have about as much combat skill as a single infant. My outpost is hit by an attack that I can’t even classify. Somehow, it becomes my problem. How does that work? How is a top-secret Dominion weapon suddenly my problem? Do I get a trained team to help me? No! I have to train my team and they aren’t smart enough to realize we need food and water!”

“That’s enough,” Glorie said in a harsh whisper. She took me by the hand and lead me out of the entryway. The corridor was too narrow for me to walk through normally. I had to twist to the side.

Glorie brought me into a room with one bed, a desk, a chest of drawers and barely enough room to turn around.

“Sit.” She pointed to the bed. I didn’t argue. She sat down beside me. “What the hell was that?”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I should’ve had better self-control.”

“You’re allowed to be upset about what’s happening. You know all too well how vocal I’ve been about my displeasure.”

“That’s different,” I grumbled.

“How?”

“I don’t know. It just is.”

“No, it’s not. You know it. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t talk to me if you were feeling this frustrated.”

“It’s not my strong suit.” I shrugged, shoulders stiff and tight.

“That’s an excuse, not a reason. Look, Kesyk, we’ve made a great team so far. I think we’ve done some great work together. I know we haven’t had enough time to make a big difference in the volunteers, but we have made a difference.”

“They brought a rocket launcher.” I laughed dryly—so I wouldn’t cry.

“Yes, they did. That was stupid. They’re still learning. It sucks but it’s the truth. We can handle it if our time together has taught me anything.”

“You think so?”

“I do.” She smirked. “And I’m not trying to butter you up, either. I really think we can pull this off if we do it correctly.”

“I’m glad one of us does.”

“Don’t tell me you have no faith in us, after everything we’ve worked toward,” she chided me. “I need your help if we’re going to give the Dominion a taste of their own bullshit.”

“You have my help.” I smiled at her.

My temper fizzled out. I felt calmer, more focused, and something else. When I looked at Glorie, I didn’t feel what I usually felt. This time, I felt something more. Something warm and soft.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

She tilted her head and gave me a funny look. “For what?”

“For helping. For making this whole assignment bearable.”

“Oh?” She grinned. “Then I should thank you for doing the same.”

Her gaze settled on mine. Her eyes shone in the low light of the room. Without thinking, I tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. When I pulled my hand back, I traced it along her chin, pausing to stroke her full bottom lip. Her mouth opened just slightly, enough for her to draw a surprised breath.

When I looked into her eyes again, they burned.

I leaned in, closing the distance between us. She slid closer to me and pressed her lips to mine.

Fire streaked through my veins. I wrapped my arms around her waist. She wound her arms around my neck. Her lips tasted sweet as I brushed them with my tongue.

When we finally broke apart, she was smiling.

Glorie

Kesyk and I rejoined the volunteers in the entry room shortly. I hoped the flush on my cheeks wasn’t obvious. It felt obvious to me.

Kissing Kesyk was so strange, even though we’d been dancing around it for days. Not strange in a bad way, but in a ‘why haven’t I done this sooner?’ kind of way. When I first met Kesyk, I saw him as an annoyance, then an ally, and finally a friend. Now, I saw him as something else altogether, but I wasn’t sure what to call it. Human women had limited contact with males until it was time for breeding. I didn’t understand the steps of courtship, let alone with an alien.

I’d have to let Kesyk take the lead on this or else I might end up making a total fool of myself.

When we stood before the volunteers, they looked scared out of their wits. My first thought was to make Kesyk apologize for acting unprofessionally, but when I saw the rest of the weapons the volunteers had wrangled, I decided a good lecture was just what they needed.

“We need to embark soon,” I said. “I’m going to write up a list of exactly what we need. Liu and Rikka will fetch the supplies. The rest of you will ready the vessel. You can do that, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eirton said, echoed by Xhial. The others followed suit.

“Who has the most experience with vessels like these?” Kesyk asked.

A male with a large red crest on his head raised his hand. “I worked on a trade ship for ten years.”

“That’ll do,” Kesyk agreed and sent him to the cockpit to begin inspections.

I wrote out a list of adequate provisions. “If there’s something on this list that isn’t in the armory, let me know. We’ll figure out a way to get it or make do without it.”

“Will do.” Rikka took the list and followed Liu off the ship.

“What should the rest of us do?” Geillis asked.

“We’re going to sort through the weapons you brought. You’re all going to learn what is and isn’t appropriate for this sort of mission. Then you’re going to return everything we don’t need.”

The remaining volunteers didn’t seem excited by this prospect.

By the time the wrong weapons were returned, the correct supplies secured, and the ship checked over, it was nearly sunrise.

Kesyk sat in the cockpit beside the red-crested alien male called Bytt. I took a seat behind Bytt so I could watch what Kesyk did. I was a trained pilot but this was an alien vessel. It went without saying that I wasn’t qualified to fly it, but I wanted to learn. Also, I felt more at ease when I was near him. He had a calming presence, even when he was grumpy.

Thankfully, Bytt knew what he was doing when it came to being a co-pilot. Working with someone competent lifted Kesyk’s mood.

Traversing the Hark system was easy, but we expected it to be. The real challenge was going to be penetrating Dominion Space unnoticed.

“What is this ship registered as?” I asked.

All ships were registered according to their use. The Dominion scanners that lined the border of Dominion Space scanned registration as the ship in question passed through the border. Ordinary ships like delivery ships, pleasure vessels, and the like rarely drew attention. If this ship was registered as a military vessel, we’d be in trouble. Getting through Dominion Space undetected was already going to be a huge challenge without announcing our presence to the whole of the Dominion.

“Let me check.” Kesyk opened up the control console and looked through the ship’s electronic documents. “It appears this one is registered as a disaster relief vessel.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It’s hard to say. It’s not directly labeled as a war vessel, but if the Dominion didn’t want anyone providing relief to said disasters, they might prevent us from getting too far.”

“You have no idea, do you?”

“None at all,” Kesyk said easily. “But I have no idea in the most logical way possible.”

“That’s not going to help us when a war vessel sweeps in out of nowhere and blows us into stardust.”

Bytt shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Pay no attention to her,” Kesyk said. “She gets extra bleak when she’s nervous.”

“I’m not nervous. I just don’t like not being prepared.”

“Welcome to war.”

We approached the border of the Hark System and Dominion Space. The ship passed through without a hitch. If we triggered any alarms, it wasn’t obvious. I found that notion to be more unsettling than comforting.

“Let’s see how good our spectral and sonar systems are,” Kesyk said.

“Just use sensors for now,” I cautioned. “The Dominion is likely listening for sonar scanners.”

“Good point.” Kesyk activated the sensor system. To my surprise, it was remarkably sensitive. It even picked up on all the little creatures swimming through space. It also picked up on far too many ship-like shapes.

“How do we know which ships are a threat?” I asked.

“Let me check.”

Kesyk pressed a few buttons on the console and pulled up the registration codes for every ship, or at least that was the goal. Not a single ship displayed a code.

“Is it broken?” I ask.

“No.” Kesyk frowned. “Dominion vessels don’t have to register.”

I looked back at the sensor monitor with an overwhelming sense of dread. “Those are all Dominion vessels. They seem to be maintaining a sensor net or a blockade.”

“Indeed.”

“This isn’t going to be easy.”

“How can we help?” Geillis chirped from behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of her voice. I hadn’t heard her approach.

“Are you good at navigation?” Kesyk asked.

“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “But I’m good at puzzle-solving.”

“Take a look at the monitor,” I instructed. “We need to get through that literal sea of Dominion ships. Thoughts?”

“Pass through them?” Geillis offered after a moment of consideration. “Look, there’s a gap there.”

“I can see why you’d think that’s a good plan,” I said. “However, ships flying outside of normal flight patterns tend to draw attention. For all we know they’ve left that gap as a trap for people trying to sneak through.”

“Not if their attention is pulled elsewhere,” she replied.

“You mean create a distraction?”

Geillis smiled so wide I was nervous. I turned to Kesyk. “What can we get away with in terms of a distraction?”

Kesyk smirked. “We could always fire that rocket launcher.”

I gave him a hard look.

“The ship has an escape pod, doesn’t it?” Bytt asked.

“I believe so,” I said. “If it can be piloted remotely, that could serve as a decent distraction.”

“I’ll go check it out,” Geillis said cheerily before skipping away.

Kesyk shot me a look of concern.

“Don’t worry, I’ll go supervise,” I assured him.

I gave his shoulder a squeeze as I stood up and followed Geillis.

“I found the pod,” she said as I approached. “How can we tell if it’s piloted remotely?”

“There will be a button or a switch,” I explained.

“What would happen if someone hit it by accident?”

“There are usually several layers to switching the piloting method. Let’s press it and see if Kesyk gets a notice in the cockpit.”

Geillis pressed the button and we returned to Kesyk.

“I accepted the switch for the escape pod. Any idea how to pilot it?” he asked.

“You’re the pilot. I figured you’d know how to do the piloting,” I replied.

“I’m not a pilot, I’ve just been trained on Shein military vessels.”

“We have to do something,” I said. “We can’t just float here. Someone is bound to notice. We don’t have any cloaking options, do we?”

Kesyk shook his head.

“Right,” I sighed. “Let’s proceed slowly and carefully until we can’t go any further. We’ll have to figure out how to work the escape pod in the meantime.”

“I can help with that,” Geillis offered.

“Let’s have another look at the escape pod,” I suggested. “Kesyk, you got this?”

“Go, leave me to work.”

He had it.

An extensive search of the escape pod eventually yielded a small data drive that looked like it could plug into the console.

“This should really be labeled better,” Geillis tutted.

“Indeed,” I agreed. We brought the drive to Kesyk, who plugged it into the command console.

“Good timing,” he said. “There’s a cluster of Dominion ships we can’t possibly circumvent. If we’re going to employ a distraction, now is the time.”

“I can’t think of a better plan.” And that was the problem. I really couldn’t. Not with the time we had, not with the tools at our disposal. “Let’s do it.”

Kesyk launched the pod and carefully directed it away from us and into a position where it could be picked up by Dominion sensors. We kept a careful eye on the cluster, which appeared to move after the escape pod.

“Hope we don’t need that escape pod later on,” Kesyk grumbled.

“There’s another one attached to the bottom of the ship if we need it,” I said.

“How do you know that?”

“It’s right there.” I pointed to a small row of lights on the command console. There were two lights corresponding to escape pods with the location of the pods written next to them.

“Why didn’t you point it out sooner?” Kesyk said.

“I just noticed it. I’ve been busy trying to save us all.”

I didn’t need to see Kesyk’s face to know he was rolling his eyes. That was a sure sign he’d been spending too much time with me. He never rolled his eyes before.

“Look! They’re moving away from us,” Geillis exclaimed. “Let’s make our move.”

“I defer to you, Mr. Pilot,” I said to Kesyk, who moved The Solaria at a brisk pace through space.

We looked like we were in the clear when something collided with the side of our ship.

“What the hell?” I asked, struggling to maintain my balance. “What was that?”

“I don’t know. There’s nothing on the sensor,” Kesyk said.

He flipped through the surveillance cameras mounted along the outside of the ship. One showed a thick length of metal cable attached to our side, holding us in place. Kesyk flipped to the next one.

A huge Dominion ship had snuck up behind us. It must have insanely sophisticated cloaking tech.

“What do we do?” I whispered, too afraid to speak at full volume.

“We prepare to be boarded.”

Kesyk

I had no choice but to open the entryway door for the Dominion ship. They would’ve blasted their way through otherwise.

Once the doors between the two ships opened, I stepped in front of Glorie.

“It’s going to be fine,” I assured her. “We’ve been boarded before.”

“That wasn’t a pleasant experience,” she muttered.

“Just try not to panic,” I said even though she looked calmer than I felt. She didn’t look scared or worried. In fact, she looked furious. I almost pitied the Dominion agents that would have to deal with her.

“Here they come.” Geillis’ voice quivered when she spoke.

“Come over here,” Glorie instructed. “Stay near us. Where are the others?”

“They’re all over the ship,” Geillis said. “Some are organizing the weapons. Others are in the galley.”

“Let’s hope the rest of the ship isn’t searched,” Glorie replied. She didn’t need me to tell her how unlikely that was.

For a moment, I hoped only a single agent would board just to confirm our purpose in Dominion Space. As soon as I heard the crisp, synchronized footfalls of several beings, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I feared the worst. It wouldn’t be out of character for the Dominion to execute us all on sight. In wartime, it would be expected. I reached behind me, looking for Glorie’s hand.

She slipped her small hand into mine. Her skin was cold.

The agents appeared in the entryway. There were six in total. Each wore a black cloak, with a mask concealing their faces. The silver insignia of the Dominion embroidered on their chests.

If they weren’t armed to the teeth, perhaps we could’ve taken them in a fight. Not that it would’ve done us much good with an entire ship full of Dominion agents waiting for us.

“Walk,” one barked.

Glorie squeezed my hand. Neither of us moved. The agent didn’t like that at all. He raised his weapon, a small taser-like device that I recognized. It didn’t just pump its target full of electric currents. It injected them with toxins too. I knew better than to take my chances with something like that.

“We will go peacefully,” I said.

Glorie squeezed my hand harder. I urged Geillis and Bytt forward, walking behind them. I moved Glorie in front of me and shifted around her so that my body was always between her and an armed agent. I wasn’t sure if Glorie would fight back if she saw an opportunity. I couldn’t take that chance. If she did, it would be a death sentence.

Once we passed through the threshold of The Solaria onto the Dominion vessel, we were briskly, but fairly incompetently searched.

I knew they’d missed my sabre and tools.

And Glorie never went anywhere without a comm.

What was going on, that things were so sloppy?

Three of the agents continued on with us. The other three went back into our ship, presumably to find the rest of our crew and loot us for anything they wanted.

I wanted nothing more than to smash their teeth in and bloody their faces but I kept myself under control. Lashing out would only kill me quicker. If I did everything right then with a little luck, maybe I could get Glorie out of here alive.

They pushed the four of us down a dimly lit hallway into a long room containing nothing but chairs lined up in a row. I couldn’t see the whole room, but I could see that there were more than ten chairs prepared.

This gave me hope. The number of chairs could indicate that the Dominion still didn’t know the full extent of our forces.

I was shoved into the first chair, nearest the door. An agent forced my arms to lay flat on the armrest. Metal cuffs appeared, strapping me to the chair. I kept my legs away from the base of the chair in case there were leg restraints waiting to be triggered.

Glorie was placed in the chair next to me and restrained. Geillis took the next chair followed by Bytt. Once we were all secured, the agents stood at attention near the entrance. Within a few moments, the remaining agents joined them with the rest of our crew in tow.

Xhial had a bloody nose. He must’ve tried to resist. Liu looked like she could murder everyone in the room if she wanted to. Rikka looked like she was ready to faint. Eirton and the others looked grim and expressionless.

Xhial was the first to be pushed into a chair. He fought the agent every step of the way.

“Don’t fight them,” I warned, only to receive a backhand across the face for my trouble. The taste of blood filled my mouth. I spat toward the agents. I didn’t care if that meant I’d get another blow. They wanted something from me. I knew an interrogation room when I saw one.

Once every member of the crew was strapped into their chairs, the agents left the room and closed the door behind them. We were left in semi-darkness. I could see Glorie but could only just make out Geillis.

“What do we do?” Glorie whispered.

“Stay still and stay quiet. No doubt they’re monitoring us,” I said.

Glorie fixed her gaze straight ahead, the line of her jaw firming as she tried to maintain a stoic demeanor. I wished there was something I could do to bring her comfort but I didn’t dare speak. I didn’t want her to be reduced to leverage if the agents to realized she held some significance to me.

The Dominion employed a well-known interrogation tactic. They left us unattended with no food, water, or answers for what felt like hours. Of course, I had no way to figure out how much time had actually passed but that was part of the mind game.

My muscles ached from being kept in one position for too long. I felt jumpy and restless. I didn’t care what they wanted to do to me at this point. I just wanted them to do something. How long was I going to be stuck here?

Once I realized their tactics were having the desired effect, I forced myself to calm down. I hoped the others were doing better than I, but I refused to ask. The less information the Dominion could glean from us, the better.

Suddenly, the door slid open. The low lighting of the rest of the ship looked dim when we were first brought aboard but felt blinding now. I had to look away until my eyes adjusted.

A figure stood in the doorway, a human woman from the silhouette. She didn’t wear the Dominion cloak.

“Who are you?” Glorie croaked.

“Why, don’t you recognize me?” a honeyed voice replied.

I swore I’d heard that voice before. I glanced at Glorie, who’d gone stiff in her seat.

Her eyes blazed with fury. “Adastria,” she hissed.

“Yes!”

My eyes finally adjusted to the light. The woman in front of me was small in stature, her blonde hair perfectly coiffed. She looked like an older version of Commander Kalyn. The resemblance was striking.

My eyes were drawn to the Dominion brooch pinned to her floral jacket.

“Remind me of your name again, dear?” Adastria said to Glorie.

“Burn in hell!” Glorie spat.

“Well,” Adastria tutted. “Someone never bothered to teach you manners.”

“Lady, you sold out my planet. I don’t have to be nice to you.”

“You should.” Adastria’s smile was unsettling. “Your life is in my hands now. And I didn’t sell out the planet. Don’t use such vulgar terms.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Glorie rolled her eyes. “You’re responsible for mass death and destruction in the Terran System. Is that better?”

“You must think you’re quite amusing,” Adastria sneered.

“No, I’m pissed off,” Glorie snapped.

“Can you please shut your mouth for one moment while I explain what’s really going on, you stupid child?” Adastria shot back.

“If you think for one second that I’m going to listen to anything you have to say, you disgraceful hag, you’ve got another thing coming.”

On the one hand, I didn’t think Glorie should be pushing her luck by mouthing off to Adastria while strapped to an interrogation chair on a Dominion Ship. On the other hand, I was damn proud of her for chewing Adastria out. The damage done to Earth and Mars was substantial. They’d be recovering from the Dominion attack for generations.

“For goodness sake!” Adastria snapped her fingers. The door slid open and an agent stepped inside. “Can you please silence her?” Adastria pointed to Glorie. If looks could kill, Adastria would be in ribbons.

The agent stepped toward Glorie. I fought against my restraints. There was a good chance silence really meant kill.

Instead, the agent forced Glorie’s head against the back of the chair. A restraint appeared and laced over her mouth.

“Thank you.” Adastria smiled and dismissed the agent. “That’s so much better, isn’t it?”

Glorie muttered something under her restraints. I doubt it was anything nice.

“Now, listen.” Adastria leaned close to Glorie. “Surely, you realize I could have killed you on sight. I refrained. I’m trying to make you understand that I’m trying to help you. Not just you either, the entire human race. Do you know how dedicated I am to that? My own daughter thinks I’m a monster and I’m willing to let her believe that, all for the greater good. Can you imagine what kind of pain I’m in?”

Oh, she had to be kidding.

“I see a way for our way of life to improve. Our breeding problem could be no more. The Dominion has perfected the art of genetic testing. That is why I’ve been trying to force a mutually beneficial alliance. I know I miss-stepped in my handling of the Persephone situation. I have learned from that—truly. Now, all I desire is to bring my daughter, and every human being, to the safety of the Dominion.”

Glorie

All right, I’d just about had enough of this. How delusional could Adastria be? Did she seriously brush off sacrificing the women of the Persephone station as if it was nothing? This woman tried to murder me! She tried to murder her own daughter.

I sucked in air through my nose, since I’d been muzzled.

“Now you know my true motivations.” Adastria spoke as if everything she just said was completely reasonable and not at all insane. “I’m here because I need your help.”

I tried not to react, even though her request was ridiculous. Help her? I’d rather die. Odds were I was going to die either way. Getting off a Dominion ship as a known war criminal wasn’t something that happened every day, or ever.

It was a shame Kesyk got dragged into this. He never should’ve been here. Captain Dejar should’ve put him in charge of weapons financing or something safer than this. I wanted to look at him, but I knew that if I did, I’d start swearing. I didn’t want Adastria to know I had an emotional attachment to him or any of the volunteers. Most of them were pains in my ass, but I still liked them. They were like my children. My weird, fully-grown, war trained children.

What I needed to do was make sure Adastria continued to focus her energy on me. Somehow, I needed to keep her occupied enough for Kesyk to get the others out. I had no idea how he would do that, but I felt confident he’d figure it out somehow.

It would be even better if I could get Adastria out of the room. I didn’t know how I was going to do that or what good it would do. My blood was boiling. I needed to do something other than sitting here like a simpering fool.

“I’m so sorry!” Adastria suddenly gasped. “Here I am waiting for your agreement and I’ve gone and silenced you.”

Was this woman truly insane?

“Let me see if I can’t figure this out,” she said as she approached my chair.

She pulled and tugged at the restraints as if that would work. Seriously? If pulling on them worked I would’ve been out of here three hours ago.

I began to wonder if the Dominion did something to Adastria. When she was a leader on Mars, she always gave the impression of collected intelligence. She was smart, graceful, and composed at all times. Now that she’d spent who knew how long with the Dominion, maybe something inside her mind came unhinged.

“Oh! This should do it.” Adastria pressed a button and the restraint around my mouth disappeared.

She bent down to look directly into my eyes. “Will you help me save the human race?”

I hesitated. Obviously, Adastria had lost her damned mind but . . . .

“Just think about how perfect the Dominion could make you.” Adastria reached out and stroked an icy finger along my cheek.

I’d rather die than let the Dominion perform their twisted genetic experiments on me. Skadi, the assassin, was a product of the Dominion’s genetic experimentation. No way in hell was I going to end up like her. A puppet. A slave. A weapon.

I thrashed against my arm restraints. I’d love nothing more than to strike Adastria down with my own two hands. If the mouth restraint had a switch, surely the arm restraints had one too. If only I could twist the right way.

“Don’t tire yourself out,” Adastria cooed.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” I snapped.

Anger welled up inside me and quickly reached a boiling point. It erupted out of me before I could hold my tongue. I no longer cared. I didn’t want to hold my tongue.

“It repulses me to see you standing before me,” I said. “The fact that you, the worst of humanity, a disgrace to my species, thinks that even for one moment I might agree to help you, is astonishing. You aren’t human. You lost that title the moment you decided that selling your daughter was a fair trade for power.”

“How dare you?” Adastria snapped. “Don’t you see I’m trying to help you?”

“No, I don’t see that at all,” I shot back. “What I see is a small, insignificant murderer who made all of the wrong choices and is now trying to save herself. No one from the Terran System will ever help you. The only reason you’re alive right now is because your daughter possesses more humanity than you do.”

“Kalyn will come back to me,” Adastria sniffed. “She has nothing without me.”

I barked out a laugh.

“That’s where you’re wrong. You’re so painfully wrong that I almost pity you.” I shook my head. “Kalyn has more power than you will ever have. Do you even know what she’s doing right now? Do you think she’s sitting on the ruined steps of your home crying over you? Hell, no! The only tears she shed for you were ones of shame.”

Adastria slapped me across the face. It didn’t hurt too badly. The pain was worth knowing my words struck a nerve.

“How do I make you understand?” Adastria screeched. She brought her hands up to her head, winding them through her hair. Her perfect updo began to unravel.

“I understand perfectly,” I said.

“Get out of my sight!” Adastria bellowed. “Guards!”

The door slid open. The same six agents entered the room.

“Get them out of my sight. Put them in the cells.”

“Yes, ma’am. Any preference?”

“Put the weaklings together so I can break them,” Adastria hissed.

I wasn’t sure who she meant by the weaklings.

An agent approached me and removed my arm restraints. My wrists ached from the pain of being held in such a position for so long. My knees cracked and popped when I was roughly jerked to my feet. My back ached.

Kesyk was removed from his chair in much the same way I was. He looked over his shoulder at me until the agent leading him forced him to look forward.

A hand darted out and wrapped around my arm. Adastria held me in place while she leaned way too close to me. I felt her lip brush against my ear. The sensation made me feel sick and slimy.

“You’ll soon see it my way,” she whispered.

“Don’t count on it, cow,” I snapped.

Adastria’s face turned to stone. “Take them,” she ordered the agents.

The guard roughly jerked me by the arm out of the room. I dug my heels into the ground, though I couldn’t get traction. I jerked, twisted, and dragged myself behind the agent in charge of moving me. I knew I couldn’t break away. His grip was much too strong. However, that didn’t mean I was going to go easily. I derived a sick joy from causing as much trouble as I could.

Forcing our group to move slowly gave me time to assess my surroundings. Like all Dominion structures, this one was utilitarian. One corridor was identical to the next. Hopefully, Kesyk was looking around, too. He had a better chance of noticing something I missed.

“In there,” one agent said to the other. They opened a door to a room with nothing more than a bare bulb and a drain. No cots. No seats. Nothing.

Kesyk and I were unceremoniously shoved to the floor of the cell. The door was swiftly shut. I heard no less than three bolts lock into place. None of our crew was put in the cell with us which made me uneasy.

Kesyk and I had experience with this kind of thing. We knew how to keep our wits about us. The volunteers didn’t. I couldn’t stand the thought of Adastria doing whatever she planned on doing to them.

Before I was fully aware of my body, I was on my feet throwing myself at the door.

“You can’t do this, Adastria!” I shouted, though I doubted my voice carried through the thick metal door. “Someone is going to stop you! When they do, you won’t get lucky a second time. Someone is going to kill you for this!”

I beat my fists against the doors like a caged animal. I kicked, cursed, and scratched at the locks. I knew I couldn’t do anything, but I couldn’t just sit on the ground and accept my fate. It wasn’t in my nature. It was only when my nails started to bleed that Kesyk stepped in.

He wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me away from the door.

“I have to do something,” I cried.

“I know, but breaking your fingers isn’t going to do anything other than make things harder for us when we get out,” he reasoned.

“You have a plan?”

“Not yet. But I’ll be able to think more clearly without you bouncing off the walls.”

“Fine. I just need to know what’s happening to the others.”

“They’re tough,” Kesyk assured me. “They might not be the brightest bunch in the world, but they’re tough. You wouldn’t have picked them otherwise.”

“I know, but—”

“No buts,” he interrupted. “You’re only going to cause yourself further distress.”

He tightened his arms around me. I leaned into him, resting my head against his chest. The sound of his heartbeat was comforting.

“We’ll figure this out.”

Kesyk

“If I let go of you, are you going to fling yourself at the door again?”

“Maybe,” Glorie mumbled against my chest. Every muscle in her body felt tense. I couldn’t allow her to spend valuable energy like this. We might need to fight later. She didn’t stand a chance if she exhausted herself now.

“You really laid into Adastria,” I said.

“Can you blame me?” She looked up at me, her chin resting against my chest. I pushed a few errant strands of hair out of her eyes.

“No, I don’t blame you for being angry but are you sure you made a wise choice?”

“At first, I wanted to manipulate her into taking me somewhere so you could have a chance to get the others to safety,” she explained. I was touched by the notion.

“You realize that if she’d taken you, getting you back would’ve been my only priority,” I said.

“That’s not very smart of you,” she smirked.

“When it comes to you, I’m not smart.” I bent down and gave her a soft kiss. She let out a sigh. Her muscles began to relax.

“That’s equal parts sweet and concerning. I can’t be the only brains of this operation,” she chuckled.

“That’s true. Say your plan worked and Adastria took you to another location, what did you think I was going to be able to do? My wrists were strapped to the chair, same as yours.”

“I realized that, thank you very much. What I didn’t realize is how little faith you have in my planning abilities,” she huffed. This was good. Getting her back to our usual bantering would keep her calm.

“You just tried to claw three industrial locks open with your bare hands,” I said. “That doesn’t indicate planning skills.”

“Call that an act of passion,” she shot back.

“Look at your hands.” I lifted her hand to examine her fingers. She’d scraped off some of the skin on her fingertips. There was a little bit of blood but it wasn’t anything serious. Her body would repair itself in a matter of hours.

“Yeah, I admit that was a bad idea. I was just . . . .”

“Angry,” I finished for her. “I know. I’m angry too.”

“Where did that damn ship even come from?” She groaned. “How was it able to hide from us?”

“The Dominion has access to all kinds of tech we know nothing about,” I replied. “They have extremely advanced cloaking tech. Our sensors on The Solaria were fairly up to date but it wasn’t designed for espionage and war. It was designed to prevent the ship from colliding with a star whale.”

She frowned. “I guess that makes sense.”

I released her hand. Glorie wrapped her arms around herself and immediately started pacing.

“None of that,” I chided. “Don’t go getting yourself worked up.”

“I’m not. I was strapped to a chair for hours. I want to stretch my legs. I’m not always worked up when I pace.”

“Yes, you are,” I chuckled. “You wore a path into the metal floor on the shipping freight.”

“That was different. The damn pilot’s erratic flying made me sick otherwise.”

“That’s a lie!”

“No, it’s not,” she shot back.

“Yes, it is. Otherwise, you would’ve complained about it in the moment.”

She looked like she wanted to argue but ultimately couldn’t think of anything to say.

“It’s not fair that you know me so well,” she chuckled.

“You know me just as well as I know you.” I watched how the faint light seemed to shimmer through her hair.

“I’m not sure that’s true. I know what pisses you off. I know what you like to eat. I know what makes you laugh. But how much do I really know about you?”

“Are you accusing me of keeping a dark and tragic secret from my past locked away?” I asked.

Glorie shook her head and laughed. “No, nothing like that. Unless there are some skeletons in your closet I should be worried about?”

“Nothing I can think of. My mother keeps my Uncles toe in a jar in her closet, though,” I offered.

Glorie looked at me, wide-eyed.

“Skeletons in the closet is an expression, but okay.”

“Look, can we just accept the fact that you humans use the weirdest expressions and I’m never going to learn all of them?”

“Whatever floats your boat.” She sagged back against the wall.

I narrowed my eyes.

“How would you feel if I went around saying things like ‘well doesn’t that just lazooms the quirteks’ or something like that?”

She gave me a suspicious look. “That sounds made up.”

“It is, but I’m trying to make a point.”

“Oh, I see. Don’t worry about it, my dude. It’s all gravy.”

“I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”

“No, wait!” Glorie rushed toward me, unable to contain her grin. “I’m sorry. I also know how to annoy you and it provides me with much entertainment.”

“So I realize,” I said dryly. “Would you like to hear a story?”

“Is this story an attempt to distract me from my anger or my desire to annoy you for fun?”

“Both.”

“Yes, I’d love to hear a story.”

I sat down on the floor with my back against the wall. Glorie sat down across from me.

“You’ve already heard me complain about not wanting to be a soldier,” I started. “But did I ever tell you what I wanted to do before I was pressured into military life?”

She shook her head. “You also didn’t tell me about why you were pressured into the military.”

“Oh, that’s an easy one to explain. I come from a military family, but not just any military family. The military family. My fate was decided the moment I was conceived.”

“That’s not fair,” she said, frowning. “Though, I guess it’s not that different from the males born in the Terran System. They have no choice but to live in breeding facilities unless they possess an extraordinary skill of some sort.”

“Growing up, I never realized that it wasn’t fair of my family to make me believe I only had one option for my future,” I said. “It wasn’t until I started woodcarving as a hobby that I realized I wanted to do something else.”

“Woodcarving?” Glorie tilted her head. “Is that a stable career where you’re from?”

“No. But it was a starting point. I mastered wood and moved onto metal. Metalworking is an extremely profitable career for someone with the right skills. Metalwork is what makes our ships, our weapons, and a good portion of our infrastructure. It’s an incredibly versatile career.”

She smiled a little. “And you fell in love with it.”

“I suppose I did. Though I never thought of it in such terms.”

“Did you ever do anything with it before you joined the military?”

“I built a house once,” I said.

“Oh, is that all?” She laughed. “That’s crazy! A whole house?”

“I did the wood and metal components. I did a bit of carpentry as well, though I didn’t learn as much about that portion as I wanted to before I had to join the forces.”

“Surely those skills came in handy while you were enlisted, right?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I was able to fix damaged weapons in the field and patch ships when they took a hit in deep space.”

“I’m sure your superiors loved that.”

“They did.” I grinned. “One of my Generals commissioned me to make a ceremonial saber for his retirement. Making that saber was the most enjoyable time of my service.”

“Didn’t it matter to your family that you didn’t enjoy being in the military?”

“I don’t think it ever occurred to them that I wouldn’t like it. Both of my parents were highly decorated as were my grandparents on both sides. The entire family tree is dripping with medals, awards, and commendations.”

“Those are some big shoes to fill.”

“Is that another stupid human expression?” I teased.

“Yes. It means you have a lot to live up to,” she chuckled.

“I figured as much.”

“Then why ask?”

“Because it annoys you and annoying you is fun.”

Glorie rolled her eyes.

“I’m only giving you a taste of your own medicine,” I said.

“That’s a human expression,” she pointed out. “You’re not supposed to like using those.”

“I’ve picked up a thing or two listening to you women chat,” I smirked.

She gave me a mock baleful look. “Eavesdropper.”

“It’s not eavesdropping if you’re in the mess hall cackling with laughter.”

“Go back to talking about your metalworking dreams,” she said with a dismissive wave. “When you retired, why didn’t you go back to it?”

“I always did it on the side for income. That’s how I supported my travels as I moved from planet to planet. When I retired, I was used to constantly having new skills to learn and master. That’s why I started exploring finance. I’d never done anything like it before.”

“Interesting.”

“What is?”

I looked at Glorie. She stared back at me with a bemused smile on her face.

“You. You’re full of surprises. And I thought you were just a stick in the mud. I can’t help but be continually amazed.”

Glorie

I couldn’t believe I said such a thing. It was so mushy. I wasn’t the mushy type. That didn’t mean I wasn’t a romantic, just that I was bad at romance.

“I mean, you’re a Shein of many talents,” I said hastily.

He gave me a knowing look. “Thank you. You have a highly decorated military background as well, don’t you? That’s why Kalyn assigned you to the training post.”

I tilted my head to one side. “How did you know that?”

“I may or may not have heard you arguing with her the day we got our assignments.”

My mouth dropped open in surprise. “You are an eavesdropper!” I accused.

“Again, is it really eavesdropping if you’re shouting in a public forum?” he asked.

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“At first, I didn’t want to do anything that would cause you to unleash your fury on me,” he said. “Then, once I realized you’re only somewhat as unreasonable as I thought you were, I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

“How gentlemanly. And I’m not unreasonable.”

He gave me a pointed look.

“What?” I snapped. “Sure, I’m vocal when I’m displeased but I always come around to sound reasoning.”

“Tell that to the volunteers that tremble every time you walk past.”

“They do not!” I gasped.

“Some of the inexperienced once did. They seem to be too fainthearted for this line of work.”

“No kidding.” I frowned. “What were you planning on doing with them if we hadn’t ended up here?”

“I was going to keep them from getting shipped out until they figured out being a soldier wasn’t for them.”

“It’s nice that you’re giving the inexperienced ones the option to walk away.”

He looked away. “Well, it was an option I never had.”

“Thank you for telling me about that, by the way,” I said softly.

“Of course.” His smile was so handsome, it made my heart flutter. “Did you always want to be a soldier?”

“That’s complicated.” I twisted my fingers together uneasily. “Are you up for a story?”

“I think I’m owed one, aren’t I?”

I nodded. “You are. Get comfortable.”

“Already am.”

I’d never told anyone on the Persephone Station much about my past. It was never easy to explain to a stranger why I was dishonorably discharged from the Space Force. Kesyk wasn’t a stranger anymore, but I couldn’t help but worry that he’d judge me for my disgrace. Even if military life wasn’t what he wanted, he was still a highly decorated and respected soldier.

“Okay.” I drew a steadying breath. I didn’t want him to know I was nervous but I feared I did a poor job of hiding it.

“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”

“I wasn’t born into a military family like you were,” I said, pushing past my nerves. “The biggest industries in the Terran System are science and space engineering. Everyone wants to solve the population crisis and everyone wants to push out deeper into space.”

“Right,” he agreed. “The Terran System is unique in that respect.”

“Is it?”

“Well, most other planets had neighbors with intelligent life. For most of the Terran System's short history, Earth was the only planet that was home to an intelligent species. There was no one to collaborate with. The Terran System only seems so primitive because they’ve had to do everything from scratch. It’s remarkable, really.”

“That was so complimentary and condescending,” I said dryly. “Thank you. As you can imagine, my family was dedicated to science. My mother wasn’t trying to fix the population crisis, though. She worked for a lab that was trying to develop eco tablets.”

“Eco tablets?” Kesyk repeated.

“Basically, she wanted to develop a pill that contained an ecosystem. The single capsule could be planted and yield a growth of several hundred acres.”

He blinked. “That’s amazing.”

“The dream was to find a way to easily replenish Earth’s natural environments. We did a number on the planet as we advanced. That’s why we needed to move a considerable amount of our population to Mars,” I explained.

“Was she successful?

“Not yet.” I shook my head. “My oldest sister worked at her lab as well. My two younger sisters are still in school. One wants to work at developing a safer way to travel long distances through space. The other hasn’t made up her mind yet.”

“What about you?”

“I screwed myself,” I laughed. “I didn’t stand out in school. My grades didn’t get me into any of the higher education facilities I would’ve needed in order to follow my mother’s footsteps. That’s a big thing on Earth, following the career path of your mother.”

“So, I’ve heard.”

“Since I had nothing going for me, I had two options. I could become a professional breeder and live my life making babies. The breeder life isn’t the worst, I’ll admit it. The mother gets to raise her own children. However, she has no say in what medical procedures are done to them.”

Kesyk made a face.

“What?”

“A Shein mother will tear the arms off of someone who tries to do anything to her child,” he said.

“Terran mothers aren’t that different. That’s why I didn’t want to be a breeder. I don’t like the system, even though I know there’s no other choice if we want our species to survive.”

“What was your other option?”

I shrugged. “The Space Force. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I thought it would be fun. Besides, no one ever looks down on you for being in the Space Force. I’m a quick study. I mastered everything there was to master. My superiors didn’t necessarily like me, but they realized my potential. I rose through the ranks at a fair pace, which was both a good and a bad thing.”

He tilted his head. “How so?”

“My mother was proud,” I said with a chuckle. “But many of the women in the Space Force didn’t like me. I was a fair leader, I think. I was never cruel. I was tough only when I needed to be. They didn’t like me because friendship wasn’t my priority. My superiors liked me because I got the job done, no matter what.”

“That’s not a bad thing, necessarily,” Kesyk said. “How did you end up on the Persephone Station? I was under the impression that getting assigned there was a punishment.”

“It is,” I said grimly. “One of my missions went wrong. It was one of those things that couldn’t be helped. I only lost one member of my team but we didn’t complete our objective. The women in my unit turned on me. They spun false tales that made it look like I willingly lead them into a known danger, which I would never do. My superiors knew this, but my unit was determined to get me thrown out. They threatened to tell their version of the truth to anyone who would listen. My superiors felt that their hands were tied. I was dishonorably discharged and sent to Persephone. I was supposed to be there for ten years.”

“How long were you there before the station exploded?”

“Two.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Kesyk reached out and touched my shoulder. “I can’t say I’m sorry it happened, though. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t have met you.”

His touch and his words sent a delicious warmth flooding through my body. I leaned in to kiss him again. This time, our kiss felt different—hungry, ravenous even. I needed more of him. Maybe it was the nonstop flow of adrenaline in my veins or the fact that I might be killed at any moment. All I knew was that I wanted him.

No, I needed him.

He seemed to sense my urgency. He kissed me back hard enough to make me dizzy. I took in the feel of his lips, the way his hands roamed over my back, and the scent coming off his skin.

His back was still against the wall, so I crawled forward. I settled myself in his lap with one leg draped on either side of him. One of his large, steady hands pressed against my lower back, bringing me so close there wasn’t any space between us.

It wasn’t enough. I needed to feel more. I played with the hem of his shirt and bit my bottom lip. My gaze flickered to his. His lustful gaze said everything I needed to hear.

I lifted his shirt off of his body and tossed it aside. He did the same for mine, pausing at the clasp of my undergarments.

“Do it,” I urged.

He undid the clasp with one twitch of his fingers. The cold air of the cell hardened my nipples. He bent his head, taking one into his mouth and stroking it with slow, lazy circles of his warm tongue. I let out a shuddering gasp. I had no idea something like this could feel so good.

I was a bottomless pit of need and desire.

“More,” I begged him. “I want more.”

Kesyk

Her words were music to my ears. I’d wanted her for so long but I’d suppressed the feelings so that I could stay focused on the mission. It was hard enough keeping everything in order when I didn’t have to worry about what was going on in my trousers.

There was certainly something in my trousers now. I was harder than a rock.

Glorie was the most stunning creature I’d ever seen. I cupped her perfect breasts in my hands, stroking my thumb over her already hardened nipples.

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” I whispered.

“Then take me,” she urged. “Let’s not waste any more time.”

She ran her hands over my bare chest. Just her touch was enough to drive me mad. She stood up and removed the rest of her clothing. I did the same. I noticed her eyes widen with delight when she beheld my rigid cocks.

She sat down on the floor but immediately sprang back up with a look of alarm on her pretty face.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Metal floor. Freezing.”

I coughed to cover a snicker. “I see. That is a problem. I believe I know how to fix it.”

My skin was thicker and less sensitive than a human’s. I reclaimed my seat on the floor with my back against the wall with minimal discomfort.

We were cold and imprisoned. Probably spied upon.

And it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to waste another moment not knowing what she felt like, not showing her how much she meant to me.

“Come here.” I gestured to my lap. Glorie straddled me, keeping as much of her body away from the cold metal as she could. The tip of my primary cock brushed against her entrance while my secondary squirmed against her swollen clit. I hissed through my teeth as she let out a soft moan.

“I can’t take it anymore.” I gripped her hips and brought her down on top of me. She let out a cry, not caring who heard us. I pounded into her, desperate to claim her, to wring every moan of pleasure from her lips. Never in my life had I felt such a divine sensation, like we were molded for each other.

She braced herself against my shoulders. Her breasts were so near to my mouth I couldn’t resist taking one to lick and tease. That seemed to drive her over the edge. She clenched around me and started bucking her hips faster than I could thrust.

I let her take the lead. I wanted her to take her pleasure from me in whichever way she wanted.

“Kesyk!” she cried, then arched her back and sunk down onto my thick cock, even deeper. I felt her spasm around me, the sensation sending me over the edge. I sank my teeth into her shoulder as I spilled into her.

It took us several minutes to catch our breath.

“That was amazing,” she sighed, followed swiftly by a yawn. She must be exhausted. I was tired as well. I couldn’t remember the last time we slept.

“Here,” I said gently, helping her up. “Let’s get dressed.”

We helped each other dress before settling down to sleep.

Finding a comfortable position in which to lie down wasn’t easy. I did my best to shield Glorie from having to lie at an odd angle. Her head was on my shoulder. Her leg was thrown over mine. I kept pulling her closer, eager to minimize the amount of her skin touching the cold metal floor.

“If you want me to get closer to you, I’m going to have to climb on top of you,” she laughed softly against my neck.

“I’m not opposed to that.”

“You say that now but in the morning every muscle in your body is going to hurt.”

“You underestimate the strength of my muscles.”

Glorie said nothing, instead curling closer to me. I waited until she fell asleep before I allowed myself to doze off. The floor wasn’t comfortable, but I’d slept in worse places. I was certain Glorie’d slept rougher, too.

I’d only gotten a few moments of sleep before a loud bang roused me. Glorie jumped to her feet with a wild look in her eyes. I stood up and placed myself between Glorie and the source of the noise.

An agent stood in the doorway. At first, I thought they held a weapon. I soon saw that it was nothing more than a tray of food. Well, a hunk of grey-ish bread and tins of water.

Suddenly, I had an idea.

“Oh, I’m so thankful you’re here!” I dashed toward the agent and sunk down onto my knees. “My companion! She’s sick. I don’t know what’s wrong!”

Thankfully, Glorie didn’t need me to tell her to play along. She clutched her throat and started making terrible gagging noises.

“It feels like my insides are on fire!” she cried. “Did one of you bastards poison me?” She pointed erratically from the agent to me.

“I didn’t do anything to her,” I pleaded with the agent. “She just started coughing and complaining of a stomach ache. Now she’s like this. I think she’s going to die if she doesn’t get some kind of medical attention.”

“Stand aside,” the agent ordered.

I moved to one side, trying to come up with the next part of the plan. The door was opened and unguarded. I could slip out, but then I’d have to leave Glorie.

Glorie sank down to her knees as the agent approached her. I wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but I knew her well enough to know she probably had a plan.

Probably.

“What’s wrong?” the agent asked gruffly.

“I can’t see!” Glorie cried. “Please, come closer! Who are you? Dad?”

Wow, she was really going all out for this. The agent leaned forward. Once he was close enough to Glorie, she drove the palm of her hand into his nose. He staggered back and she lashed out with her foot. The agent’s knee gave a sickening crunch. He crumbled to the ground. I ran over and gave him a swift punch, knocking him unconscious before he could make any noise.

“Good work,” she huffed.

I extended a hand to help her up. “Thanks for playing along.”

“What do we do now? Eventually, someone’s going to notice he’s missing.”

“He might have a key or something.” I bent down and rifled through the folds of the agent’s cloak. Sure enough, he was carrying a white key card.

“Let’s move!” Glorie urged.

We spilled out into the corridor. There was a door a few paces up the corridor with a slot for scanning cards. I scanned the card I lifted off the guard. A green light flashed and the door opened. Inside was the missing members of our crew.

Glorie burst into the room, reaching for Geillis. “Are you all right?”

“We’re fine. No one has come to see us yet,” Geillis replied. “What’s happening? How did you get out?”

“Long story,” I said.

“We have to get out of here.” Xhial got to his feet, ready to leave.

“Not yet.” I stopped him. “We’ll draw attention too quickly if all ten of use go creeping around the halls.”

“What do you suggest?” Xhial asked.

“Glorie and I will look around. When we find a way out, we’ll come back.”

“What if you don’t come back?” Geillis asked. Liu nudged her and gave her a stern look.

“We’ll come back,” Glorie assured everyone. “Just stay safe and stay smart.”

It was hard for Glorie to seal the volunteers back into their cell. I led her away as quickly as I could. I knew a fair amount about Dominion Ships. There were only a handful of universal models the Dominion used.

“This way,” I said.

My plan was to lead us toward where we came in. From there, I wasn’t sure what we could do but I didn’t know where else to start.

“Wait, what’s that?” Glorie stopped short, tugging me back to her. She stopped in front of a windowed door that looked into a room filled with bright consoles.

I swiped the key card and the door opened. “It’s one of their command centers.”

“One of them?”

“Ships this big usually have more than one, sometimes as many as ten.”

“Is it safe to be here?”

“No, but the answers we need are here. Look at this.” I pointed to a holo-map. “Look at the route that’s planned out.”

“Doesn’t the route end where the weapon is being kept?” Glorie asked.

“The coordinates are in the same range.”

“What do we do?”

“We go back to our cell,” I said. “We’re going to go back and pretend nothing happened. We’re going to let the Dominion give us a ride right to our final destination.”

“It seems too lucky,” Glorie said.

“Well, we’ve earned a bit of luck, haven’t we?”

“You’re right. I’ll take what I can get when I can get it.”

“Was that what was going through your head a few hours ago?” My remark earned me a swat.

“Now isn’t the time,” she chided. “Let’s go.”

We scurried back to our cell.

“What are we going to do about him?” Glorie pointed to the unconscious agent on the floor.

“Well, they can’t find him in here with us. Come on, give me a hand.”

After no small effort on our part, Glorie and I got the agent into the corridor.

“Let’s hope no one saw that,” she said as we sealed ourselves back into our cell. “And let’s hope he doesn’t throw a fit when he wakes up.”

Glorie

The ship reached its destination some hours later. When we were sure the ship was docked and most of the crew preoccupied with their docking tasks, Kesyk swiped the key card and opened our door.

“Should we get the others?” I asked.

“Not yet. There’s no point in grabbing them until we have a solid way off.”

“We never clued them into what’s going on. Surely, they’ll be worried.”

“Let them worry. It’s better than them knowing something and being unable to hide it.”

I frowned. “That seems cruel.”

“You’re supposed to be the scary instructor,” he pointed out. “When did you become such a softy?”

“When their lives were placed in my hands. I was indirectly responsible for their survival before. Now, I’m their only shot of making it out of here alive.”

“You’re not their only shot,” he reminded me. “I’m here, too.”

“Right, but you’re not the one who put them here. I’m the one who selected them.”

Guilt twisted my guts into tight knots.

“Don’t start thinking like that now. We have a lot to do. I can’t have you losing your focus,” Kesyk said.

His stern voice was exactly what I needed to hear. It grounded me and brought me back to the situation at hand.

“Do you think there’s something down this way?” I pointed to a junction in the corridor. “We didn’t go this way last time.”

“It’s worth checking out,” he agreed. “We’re some distance from the main entry point of the ship. That’s where most of the crew will be while we’re docking.”

“Are you certain?”

He fixed me with a steely look. “As certain as I can be under the circumstances.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be. Come on, we can’t stand still for too long. Someone is bound to show up sooner rather than later.”

We took the unexplored corridor and soon stumbled upon a door much like the glass one we found yesterday. This time, the room wasn’t empty. Adastria stood at her desk with her back to us. Kesyk moved to the other side of the doorway so we could both peer through the glass but keep our bodies hidden.

Adastria wasn’t alone. She was with a high ranking Dominion official. I could tell from the richness of his cloak and the many adornments he wore.

“There was another incident in the eastern quadrant,” the official said. I couldn’t see his face, but I got the impression he wore something to conceal his voice. He really must be high up the chain of command if he was taking such precautions to hide his identity.

“I’m not sure what you want me to do about it,” Adastria said. “I presume you aren’t talking about the rebels lead by my daughter.”

So, Adastria did know what her daughter was up to. That bitch must’ve been putting on an act in the interrogation room.

“No, but you promised to aid the Dominion in quelling rebellions.”

“No, I didn’t. I promised to help you work against a specific rebellion. The rebellion my planet has been dragged into. It’s not my fault if you can’t handle the other factions that seem to hate you.”

“Watch your tongue,” the agent snapped.

“Who’s upset with you this time? I thought the eastern quadrant was populated with wealthy merchants and the like.”

“The Dominion has been too lenient with the affluent members of our System,” the agent said. “They’re amassing a considerable amount of power, but the Dominion recently implemented regulations to stop any of them from becoming any stronger.”

“I imagine they don’t have pleasant feelings about that.” Adastria tutted. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve just given them the excuse they need to rise up against the Dominion.”

“We cannot lose the support of our most influential citizens.”

Kalyn was right. The Dominion really was starting to fracture from the inside out.

Their conversation looked it was wrapping up. I signaled to Kesyk before Adastria or the agent looked our way. We hurried through the ship until I found what I assumed was a storage closet.

“Now we can talk,” I sighed with relief. “What did you make of all that?”

“I can’t imagine the elite of the System will want to join up with our ragtag group of rebels,” Kesyk said. “But it’s comforting to know that the Dominion has more than one uprising on their hands. There must be a way to make that work even more in our favor.”

“I was thinking the same thing. Now, I think we should let our team know.”

“I agree. But first, we should make moving around easier for us.”

“How?” I asked, confused.

“Do you not see where we are?”

Kesyk gestured to the room. It was filled with dark cloaks and other Dominion uniform pieces. There was also an array of tables and chairs, even a mini cooling unit for food.

“Did we just walk into . . . a break room?”

Odd. I’d never imagined that a Dominion agent would need a break room. It seemed ridiculous to think so now. Under those intimidating cloaks they were still beings who needed to get dressed, have a snack, and sit down for a spell.

“Look!”

I turned to see Kesyk rifling through cupboards. “Be careful,” I cautioned. “Don’t make it look like someone was here.”

“I found more key cards.”

“Are they working?”

Kesyk tried one card on the scanner near the door. It did nothing. The key cards were not universal. They had differing levels of access.

“Apparently not.”

“How do we activate them?” I looked around the room for anything that could be useful. It seemed odd to keep stacks of dead key cards in a place like this. On the opposite side of the room, there was a black box with a small console.

“I know what that is!” I said brightly. “The Rogue Star has one.”

“It’s a timekeeper,” Kesyk said. “It’s so Captain Dejar can track how many hours his crew works.”

“Why haven’t I used one?”

“You and the other women were put on a salary right away. The regular crew was on salary too but sometimes we took on temporary help when we had big deliveries.”

“I always forget that Captain Dejar ran a Dominion Sanctioned trading business,” I mused.

“The temporary employees would use that to log their hours.”

“With what?”

Kesyk held up a key card. “Something just like this.”

I took one of the cards from him. “Let me try something.” I walked over to the machine and swiped the card. The console lit up. I frowned. “Can it really be this easy?”

“What do you mean?”

“It didn’t ask me for anything. Not a code. Not a print scan. I’ve basically just clocked in as if I work at a supermarket.”

“Security is most intense at the entry points of the ship. Once everyone on board has been verified, there’s little need to pile on the security.”

“I wonder who I’m clocked in as. I hope they don’t get in trouble.”

“They’re Dominion. They should get in trouble,” Kesyk pointed out.

“Right, but I bet most of the lower-level workers here are just trying to pay their bills.”

He rolled his eyes with a long-suffering sigh. “We don’t have time to argue this. I know it’s hard to resist, but we can debate about this later.”

“You’re right. Grab a cloak.”

Once Kesyk and I were properly fitted in Dominion attire, we walked through the halls. We still did our best to keep out of sight, just in case someone noticed that we didn’t belong.

When we reached the cell our team was held in, I tested out the new key card. It worked like a charm. I took off my hood before Xhial or Geillis could attack me.

Geillis gasped. “Why the hell are you dressed like that?”

“So we can walk around with ease,” I explained. “There’s a whole room full of these cloaks. Just go right down this corridor, two lefts, then one more right.”

“Are we getting out of here?” Rikka asked.

“Not yet,” Kesyk said. “However, we brought this.” He nodded for me to give them the second key card. “Should things go south, and I mean really south, use this to get out. You can get cloaks of your own and escape.”

“What are you going to do?” Liu asked.

“We’re docked where the weapon is located,” I explained. “Kesyk and I are going to try to sneak off and figure out what we’re dealing with. It’s important that you stay put unless your lives are in immediate danger. If we’re lucky, no one will ever know something’s up. Can you do that?”

I looked directly at Xhial when I spoke.

“Yes, ma’am,” he saluted.

“Do you understand?” I asked Geillis.

“Why are you singling me out?” she huffed.

“You know why,” I said with a slight smile.

“Fine. I promise I’ll stay put unless I’m literally about to die.”

“Be safe, be smart,” I said to all of them.

“You say that like we’re not smart,” Xhial pointed out.

I sighed. “Don’t make me bring up the rocket launcher.”

“Let’s go,” Kesyk urged. “We might be working with a very small window of time.”

I put my hood back up and followed Kesyk out of the cell. “Do you know where to go?” I whispered.

“I have a general idea. Just follow me.”

I followed him through a maze of identical corridors, wondering if new agents got lost in here.

Kesyk didn’t lead me to the main entry point of the ship, instead directing us to the entrance of a cargo hold.

“There should be a side entrance for shipments to come in and out,” he explained as he led me through the dimly lit room. It took some time, but we found a scanner for our key card. We stepped over the threshold and, just like that, we’d entered a secret Dominion base.

Kesyk

I felt cautiously optimistic. The key card we’d filched got us into the main part of the compound. When we started walking through the main floors, we received strange looks. It wasn’t because we were outsiders. It was because we were the only ones still wearing our hoods up.

“I suppose they feel more comfortable on a secret base in the middle of deep space,” Glorie whispered to me.

“Must be so,” I agreed. “I see a few Shein walking around. I wouldn’t stand out if I took my cloak off. You might.”

“I can always lie and say I came here to support Adastria. I don’t think it would be hard to convince anyone I’ve turned against the rebellion.”

“Only if you’re sure,” I told her. I didn’t want to put her into any more uncomfortable situations.

“You don’t have to treat me like a glass doll, you know?” she said, looking up at me. I couldn’t see her eyes because of the hood but her mouth was curved into a smile. “I’m a big tough girl. I can handle myself.”

“I only worry because I care.”

“It’s sweet that you care. I’d kiss you right now if it weren’t for the hostile environment.”

“It’s not hostile anymore thanks to these.” I fingered the material of my cloak. It was made of simple linen, dyed black. To everyone around me, I looked like a low-level worker. Perfect. The insignificant ones are the ones that were able to creep around unnoticed.

Glorie pulled her hood back. Immediately, several Dominion agents took notice. Judging by their cloaks, they didn’t outrank us by much. Hopefully, they were the equivalent of common space security. From what I could tell, they weren’t carrying weapons.

One of them marched right up to Glorie, who didn’t look the least bit fazed.

“State your purpose,” he barked.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Glorie said, brows furrowed. “Am I in the right place?”

I lowered my hood as well but I didn’t draw the attention she drew.

“I haven’t seen a human here before,” the agent said. “State your purpose.”

“You haven’t seen a human here?” Glorie’s eyes widened with worry. “Oh no, did I get on the wrong ship? My leader, Adastria of the Terran System, is supposed to be here. At least, I thought she was.”

“Adastria?” the agent said, but Glorie pretended not to notice.

“Oh, no!” she wailed. “I’ve made such a mistake. She’s going to be so angry especially after she solicited me specifically. It was such an honor and now I’ve gone and ruined it.”

Tears welled in her eyes. Glorie missed her calling as a professional performer.

“You’re in the right place,” another agent quickly stepped up. “The Lady Adastria has only just arrived. I don’t believe she’s disembarked her ship yet.”

“Oh, thank goodness!” Glorie’s shoulders slumped dramatically. “I used to work as her secretary back in the Terran System. I was supposed to be with her now but there was a great deal of confusion. I’m so glad you’ve told me I’m in the right place. You’ve really saved my ass.”

“Just don’t keep her waiting,” the first agent replied before fixing me with a glare. “And you. Stay out of trouble.”

“Trouble?” I tilted my head to one side. “I’ve only stopped because I noticed this young woman in distress. Now that you’ve helped her, allow me to escort her to where she needs to go. You don’t need to waste any more of your time.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” he snapped.

The two agents walked away. Glorie and I waited several moments before speaking.

“That was close,” she muttered.

“You almost had me fooled. You’re great at coming up with lies on the spot.”

She waved a hand airily. “I technically wasn’t lying about everything. Adastria did ask for my help in the interrogation room.”

“Good point. Now, where do you suppose we should go? If I were a giant superweapon, where would I be?”

“Let’s just walk around like we belong. If anyone questions us, I can always bring on the waterworks again.”

“All right. We’ll walk around while I think of a plan.”

The facility was spacious compared to the tight corridors of the ship. The walls were mostly windows looking out into the starry expanse of space. The floor we were on must’ve been a common floor, of sorts. There was a cantina, a café, and several lounge areas. Everyone looked at ease.

“Most of the scary-looking people are taking the elevator down,” Glorie observed as we made our second lap around the floor.

“If I had a secret weapon, I’d keep it on a lower level, away from the main areas,” I agreed.

“Let’s wait until there aren’t as many workers around. I may be good, but I don’t know how I’d explain why I’d be going down to the basement if we get questioned again.”

“I’m not sure if you can really call it a basement if we’re on a space station,” I teased. “Doesn’t that need to be underground or something?”

“Pedant.” Glorie started to laugh but paused. She looked tense.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just have a strange feeling,” she said, giving her head a slight shake. “Last time I felt it was the day I thought I saw Skadi.”

The sound of her name caused my adrenaline to pick up. I hadn’t forgotten about her. I knew she was still a threat. Sooner or later she’d show up. I scanned the room.

Sure enough, on the opposite side of the facility was the assassin, staring right at us. There was no way she didn’t know who we were. A smile appeared on her dark lips as she ran her tongue over her gleaming teeth like a ravenous animal.

A pair of agents walked by her. I expected her to reach out to them and identify us, but she didn’t.

I knew then that she wasn’t going to sound an alarm. No, we were her prey. She wanted to make the kill. The Rogue Star crew had humiliated her on more than one occasion. Skadi was ready for revenge and success.

“We need to move,” I murmured to Glorie. I didn’t want her to see Skadi, in case it sparked panic.

“She’s here, isn’t she?” Glorie whispered back.

“She is. She’s seen us. We’re going to walk away calmly and quietly.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere where there isn’t a lot of people. If we can get out of her sight, that’s great. If we can’t, we need as few personnel as possible to know there’s a disturbance.”

“Why hasn’t she attacked yet?” Glorie asked as I led her to the elevator.

“She’s hunting,” I explained. “A hunter can’t strike too soon or else they’ll spook their prey.”

“But she’s already spooked us.”

“We might still be able to lose her. This is a large facility.”

We stepped into the elevator which was, thankfully, empty. Skadi would probably assume we were here for the weapon so I pressed a button for a higher floor. As the door closed, I expected her arm to slice forward, trapping us in here with her but she didn’t come.

Once the elevator started moving upward, Glorie let out a trembling breath.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“It was nerve-wracking enough walking around in plain sight the way we were. Add an assassin into the mix and I’m just about ready to freak out.”

“She won’t get to us,” I assured her. “We can avoid her. It’s a large facility.”

“You always sound so sure when you say things like that. I always believe you, even when you turn out to be wrong, which is all the time by the way.”

“What?” I looked at her, brows furrowed. “I’m never wrong.”

“You’ve constantly told me that everything’s going to be okay since we left the outpost.”

“And I haven’t been wrong. Everything’s okay.”

“What part of this is okay?” she exclaimed.

“You’re not bleeding. You have all of your limbs. Your lungs work. You can see. The list goes on.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” she shrugged. “I still wouldn’t call that okay. I’d call it surviving.”

“Hasn’t survival always been the goal?”

“Are you twisting my words to keep me from freaking out?” she asked, raising her brow.

“Depends. Is it working?”

“Kind of.”

“Then yes. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

The elevator opened up onto a quiet floor with few people. I wasn’t sure what the purpose of the floor was. It seemed to be solely for observation.

“Kesyk, look,” Glorie whispered.

Skadi was here, lounging against the wall on the far end of the room. How did she know we were coming to this floor?

“Through that door,” I urged.

Glorie and I stepped through a door that led to some kind of deck. There were a few personal-sized vessels docked there.

There wasn’t a guardrail around the deck.

It simply ended and dropped off into space.

The barely audible crackle of a forcefield and a slight blueish tinge to my vision reassured me, somewhat.

In theory, the forcefield would keep the atmosphere contained, while ships could slowly part through the energy field.

I’d never liked the system, but there was no other reasonable way to work on the hull of a ship while still in space.

Walking out there might’ve been a mistake. Hopefully, Skadi wouldn’t follow. No doubt we weren’t supposed to be out here.

Any minute now we’d attract unwanted attention.

I didn’t hear Skadi’s footfalls come up behind us. She lashed out with fury, striking the back of my head so hard I saw stars. I whirled around, struggling not to get tangled up in the cloak.

“Glorie, get out of here,” I ordered.

“Why bother?” Skadi purred. “I’ll hunt her down either way.”

“Over my dead body,” I hissed.

“Yes, that’s the plan.”

Skadi lunged at me as I pulled out my saber hilt, knocking me to the ground before I could activate it.

I kneed her in the stomach and shoved her off. She matched me in strength but she was still lighter. I could throw her like a ragdoll if I got a good grip.

She prepared to lunge again just as I readied my saber. This would be a fight to the death.

And I was ready.

Glorie

I dashed at Skadi before she could charge Kesyk. I thought I was fast enough to catch her off-guard, but at the last moment, before I slammed into her, she pivoted to face me. She threw a punch aimed for my nose but I shifted just in time, my ear absorbing the brute force of the blow. The ringing was painful but not enough to distract me from driving my elbow into her ribs.

I hit my target but not with the desired impact. I was too close to Skadi to gather the force I needed to do any real damage with just my bare hands.

My actions bought Kesyk enough time to come at Skadi from behind. I thought we had her, but I was wrong. She spun, driving the heel of her boot into Kesyk’s chest while thrusting her elbow into my shoulder. It wasn’t a painful blow but it was enough to knock me off balance. Kesyk staggered back but righted himself before I did.

He swung at her with his electrified saber. It looked like it was going to be a direct hit, but Skadi produced a dagger just in time to block his blow.

I felt sick looking at her. She was the product of the Dominion’s genetic experiments. She was what Adastria wanted all humans to become.

Sure, having Skadi’s enhanced abilities wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world but everything else about her was just wrong. She even looked like she was put together wrong. She was too thin for her height, her arms slightly too long for her frame. Something about her knees didn’t look like they moved exactly how my knees did. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what wasn’t right about her, but it was there.

As I watched Skadi, I realized she had us equally matched in terms of hand-to-hand combat. I knew in my gut that she wouldn’t tire. She’d wear us down until we couldn’t fight anymore. I needed something to level the playing field.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted one of the personal space vessels. I couldn’t help but notice it had some pretty heavy guns for its small size.

I locked eyes with Kesyk and glanced at the vessel. I didn’t want to shout my plan to him. Even with an armed spacecraft at my disposal, I still believed the element of surprise over Skadi was essential. Thankfully, Kesyk caught my meaning. He gave me the smallest of nods.

I dashed toward the vessel. The hatch to climb in was unlocked, but I had no way to power it on.

“It’s been a while, but here goes nothing,” I grunted as I wedged myself between the seat and the steering console. I took off the panel to reveal a cluster of wires. I’d commandeered a number of vehicles in the name of the Space Force. I didn’t see why this would be any different. If I figured it out, I could help Kesyk. If I accidentally blew up the vessel, none of this was my problem anymore.

After a few harrowing moments, the vessel rumbled to life.

At first, I planned on pointing the guns at Skadi but then I noticed the vessel’s rocket booster. I tested it. A stream of flames flickered to life. Open flame seemed more effective than a pointed gun, I thought.

I altered the position of the rocket blaster so that it spurted in front of the ship instead of behind. I slowly moved the ship closer to Skadi and Kesyk in such a way that it locked them into a corner of the landing deck.

Kesyk did an excellent job of keeping Skadi occupied. She only noticed the stream of flames cutting off her exit when it was too late. I powered up the guns for good measure, but Kesyk needed my help in getting the upper hand.

I jumped from the vessel, careful to avoid the blistering heat of the rocket stream.

Skadi realized she was in trouble. Her only escape was either through the flames or over the side of the deck. Kesyk wasn’t going to let up. Once I rejoined the fight, she grew frantic.

I grabbed a piece of scrap metal that must’ve fallen off a damaged vessel and swung at her. I had no intention of hitting her. I left that to Kesyk, who prodded her with his electric saber while she was busy dodging me.

He must’ve turned the voltage up for Skadi. She stumbled. Her limbs went stiff. I grabbed her and held her long enough for Kesyk to force her down and place his knee between her shoulder blades. She flailed beneath him like a wild creature. She didn’t scream or try to talk. Instead, she made these terrible howling wails that put a chill right in my bones.

“What should we do with her?” he asked.

I sighed. “We can’t just kill her.”

“Why not?” Kesyk looked at me as if I’d gone insane.

“She’s only this way because the Dominion forced her to be,” I explained. “What if she’s always wanted to be something else?”

“I find that hard to believe,” Kesyk snapped.

“Do you? Wouldn’t you be a completely different person if your family hadn’t forced you to become a soldier?”

My words struck a chord with him. He let out a deep sigh.

“Look, if you want to try to reason with her, I’ll keep her steady,” he agreed.

“At least let me try.”

He shook his head, but angled slightly away.

I knelt down beside Skadi, careful to stay out of her range. Just because she was pinned didn’t mean she wasn’t still deadly.

“Skadi,” I said. “The Dominion did terrible things to you, things you never wanted or asked for. I know they told you they were helping you, but they weren’t. You’ve always been expendable.”

“No,” she hissed.

I fought for patience. Strangling her wouldn’t convince her to see my side of things. “The Dominion wants to do what they did to you, to everyone. They want a manufactured population that will never rise up, will never speak out, and will never try to defend themselves. They have a weapon that can do more damage than you can imagine. It turns people into shells. It takes the soul right out of them, leaving only a body behind. Does that sound right to you?”

She didn’t answer. She just glared.

“I want to offer you a deal,” I said. “Instead of killing you here and now, I want you to join us. You can fight against all of those who changed you without your consent. You can be who you want to be.”

“I am who I want to be,” she growled.

“You’re who the Dominion told you to be,” I corrected her, even as I made myself face the inevitable. “You were someone else before you became an assassin. Can you remember who that was?”

Skadi said nothing.

“The Dominion will crumble,” I continued, which really seemed to piss her off.

“The Dominion is eternal!” she cried. “Through them, I am eternal!”

“The Dominion is falling apart,” I told her. “It’s not just the rebels. Citizens all throughout Dominion Space are rising up for one reason or another. The Dominion can’t continue like this. Do you want to go down with them? They won’t help you.”

Skadi remained silent.

“I’m trying to help you,” I snapped. “Can’t you see that? Don’t you understand that you’re going to die if you don’t adapt? The Dominion will not take care of you. They will not—”

“Enough!” An altered voice bellowed from behind me. A high-ranking agent flanked by Dominion officers came around the backside of the vessel. They had weapons holstered.

I scrambled to my feet. Kesyk released Skadi in order to stand between me and the agents. Skadi slowly rose to her feet and walked to the agent. She knelt before him, hanging her head.

“I’ve secured two wanted criminals of the rebellion,” she said.

“No, you haven’t. You were defeated by two wanted criminals who nearly succeeded in turning your allegiance.

“No!” Skadi cried. “That’s not true. I would’ve never listened to them.”

“How can I know that for certain?” the agent asked. “It’s taken you such a long time to secure even one of the rebels of the Rogue Star. Why is that? I suspect it’s because you’ve been secretly helping them.”

“No.” Skadi snarled. “Never. I’ve been loyal to the Dominion since I was made. I’d never betray them.”

The agent said nothing for several moments. He seemed to be pondering but it was hard to tell when I couldn’t see his face.

“I can’t simply take you at your word,” he said at last. “If I did, the Dominion would never survive. You’ve been exposed to rebel ideals and are therefore branded a traitor.”

Maybe now Skadi would agree to help us since the Dominion has turned its back on her.

Skadi stood so still she might’ve been made of stone. For the first time since I’d seen her, she looked small.

Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

Slowly, she took small steps backward toward the unprotected edge of the landing deck. I knew what she was going to do.

“Skadi!” I cried, but Kesyk held me back. I struggled against his grip even as her foot dangled over the edge.

She closed her eyes.

The ghost of who she once was swam beneath her features.

She tipped herself backward and fell over the edge, through the forcefield, into the endless abyss of space.

Kesyk

Glorie was frozen in place, staring at the spot where Skadi once stood. I didn’t know why she cared so deeply. I, for one, wouldn’t have trusted Skadi with a position in the rebellion. I knew a lost cause when I saw one. I’d seen it many times. It was sweet, in a sad way, that Glorie still wanted to help Skadi.

The agent and his goons didn’t see it that way. Glorie and I couldn’t waste any more time.

“Come on,” I murmured to her. My voice broke her out of her trance. I grabbed her hand and ran. She stumbled at first but quickly regained her footing as she left Skadi in the past.

“After them!” the agent ordered. I didn’t look over my shoulder, but I could hear the sounds of pursuit.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine. Just stunned. I’m good to go,” she panted.

“Good, because we need to pick up the pace if we’re going to lose them.”

“Where you lead, I will follow.”

“Great. No pressure on me, right?” I said laconically.

I led her back through the barren hallway. I didn’t want to risk taking the elevator again. If Skadi was able to figure out what floor we went to, surely the agents would be able to do the same.

“They’re going that way!” someone shouted.

Great, now the whole facility knew we were here.

“Looks like we’re going to have to speed this mission up,” Glorie said. “This way.”

She pulled me through an unmarked door I would’ve otherwise missed. It was some kind of service corridor, empty of other people. Surely, someone would’ve seen us come in here. We pushed on, squeezed past protruding pipes and other hazards.

“Ow!” Glorie yelped when the bare skin of her arm brushed against a steam valve. “Watch out for that.”

“I’m trying not to get the top of my head shaved off.” I pointed up at a row of fans that might as well have been made of knives.

“What the hell do they need those for?” Glorie fumed. “They could have a perfectly effective cooling system without also making this place a death trap.”

“It’s the Dominion. What do you expect?”

“But the café looked so nice.”

“Maybe they won’t follow us in here,” I said. “With any luck, they’ll rely on hot metal rods, blade fans, and whatever else they have in here to finish us off.”

“Any guesses as to where this leads?”

“No.” I shook my head. “But if we can find a way to get to the lower floors, we still might be able to figure out something about the weapon.”

“I think we might have to call that part of the assignment a wash.”

“The weapon is the only part of the assignment that matters.”

“Maybe so but it’s not worth my life or yours.”

“This is bigger than our lives.”

“What good is any of the information we collect if we die before we can pass it on?” she asked. “Right now, we know Adastria is involved, Skadi is dead, and how to infiltrate the base. Yes, it’s not information on a top-secret weapon, but it’s something!”

Glorie bumped a pipe out of place. A spray of boiling steam poured into the vent.

“Run!” I urged her.

She darted forward, crying out as she passed through the sheet of steam. I ran after her, trying to shield her but the passageway simply wasn’t wide enough.

“There’s a junction up ahead,” she called.

“It’s got to be better than this.”

It was. It was essentially an empty hallway barely big enough for us to fit through.

“Well, now what?” Glorie sighed.

“Let me look at your arms.”

Her skin looked angry and red but it hadn’t started to blister. She’d be all right until I could get her to a first aid kit.

“This place is a fucking maze,” she groaned. “I don’t care about my burns I just want to get out of here.”

“There must be a map around here,” I said.

“Why would there be?”

“I doubt all of the maintenance workers have all of the hallways and hazards memorized.”

“You’re probably right. Sorry for snapping. I’m just frustrated and in pain.”

“I’m frustrated, too.” I pulled her in, careful to avoid touching her sensitive skin, and pressed a kiss into her forehead. “We’re going to get through this. When we do, we’re going to take a vacation.”

“Even with the war going on?”

“Even with the war going on. I’ve about reached my limit with life-threatening missions. I’m a bookkeeper remember?”

“Should I call you woodcarver now?” She laughed. “Or metal worker?”

I brushed her cheek with my thumb. “Actually, I like the sound of that. Come on, let’s find a service map.”

It didn’t take long once we didn’t have to worry about getting blasted with steam or decapitated. There was a map of the service hallways posted near every fuse panel.

“This place has its own elevators for maintenance,” I said. “If we get to one, we can get to the lower floors.”

“I really hope the damn weapon is down there,” Glorie muttered. “How do we know which floor to go to?”

“Let’s go all the way to the bottom,” I suggested.

“What’s your reasoning?”

“No reasoning. I’m just guessing and hoping we get lucky.”

“That’s enough for me. All we’ve been running on since we left the Rogue Star is guesses and luck.”

We found the service elevator and took it down as far as we could. We were dumped into a hallway much like the one we were just in.

“Are those vents?” Glorie pointed to a grid-like apparatus on the wall.

“It might be. It looks like there's light coming through from the other side.”

“I’m not tall enough. Can you look through it?”

“Fine, but if something blinds me, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

I peered through the slats in the vent, expecting to see a ventilation shaft. Instead, I peered into a room, the lights of consoles and monitors glowing inside. I didn’t hear voices or movements.

“It’s a workroom,” I said. “It looks empty.”

“Let’s get in there!” Glorie exclaimed. “These hallways freak me out.”

There was a small door from the hallway leading into the workspace. Based on the amount of equipment in the workspace, I suspected a death maze like the one we’d just passed through was on the other side of one of the walls.

“I want to check something out.” Glorie approached a workstation and powered it on.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“I want to do an energy scan of this place,” she said. “A weapon as intense as the one they’re keeping here will give off huge amounts of energy. I just need to figure out how to run a scan.”

“I can help with that.”

She looked at me with surprise.

“What?” I blinked. “I know how to work a command console.”

“A Shein of many talents,” she grinned, and stepped aside.

I found the correct program and ran the scan. Within minutes, we had an energy map of the facility. Glorie sent the information to her datapad.

“Look at that.” She pointed to a massive energy signature. “That must be the weapon. It can’t be anything else unless they're keeping three turbines down there running at all times.”

“We should send this to Captain Dejar.”

“Wait, I want to get a little more information. Think you can find a map on there?”

“You got it.” Finding a map was somewhat harder than expected. I had to access another network to do so but I pulled it off. I sent the map of the facility to Glorie.

“They forgot to take our comms,” she said. “They’re just not used to dealing with people who don’t bow down to their authority. I’m sending a message to both the Captain and the Commander with the heat signature, the schematics, and an update on our situation. Maybe we can arrange an extraction.”

“Until then, we need to look for the weapon. We still have to try to complete our mission.”

“We need to find weapons. You have your saber but I have nothing. I won’t be able to make it to the weapon if I can’t defend myself.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” I assured her.

“I know you’ll try to,” she agreed. “But I need to keep you safe as well. We’re in this together so let’s find some weapons.”

“I have a theory,” I began.

“Of course, you do. Tell me.”

“This is a secret, high-security facility, right?”

“I feel like we’ve already established that.”

“Right. My point is, there are things here that are worth killing and dying for. If I was a Dominion Leader, I’d make sure any employee could defend the work here at any given time.”

“What’s your point?”

“Weapon caches,” I replied. “It makes no sense for someone on a lower floor like this to have to run to the upper floors to get to the weapon room.”

“Makes sense. Where would they be?”

“Not sure, but I wouldn’t put it past any of the workers here to constantly have easy access to weapons.”

I opened a random drawer. Sure enough, there was a taser and a stun gun.

“Wow.” Glorie blinked in surprise. “These guys don’t fuck around.”

“I bet there’s more in other drawers.”

She was right. I took what I wanted, as did she. When we were ready, we stepped out into the main hallway.

“I think the weapon is on this floor,” she said. “The energy signature was definitely on the lower levels.”

“How are we going to find it?”

Glorie pulled up the schematic and the energy scan results and laid them on top of each other.

“I’ve made us a treasure map.”

We ran down the corridor, following Glorie’s map to the best of our ability. It didn’t take long before the agents caught up to us. Glorie wasn’t shy about firing her stolen weapons. She took down two agents without any help from me.

“That’s the door!” she cried.

I used our key card to gain entry. Once she was inside, I fired into the hallway, stopping any agent from entering before the door closed. Then, I broke the mechanism that controlled when the door opened.

“I hope there’s another way out,” Glorie said.

“We’ll solve that problem when we need to,” I said. There really wasn’t much else to do about it.

I turned my back to the door. The room we’d stepped into was huge. A long, glass tube filled with multicolored currents took up most of the space. That had to be the weapon. It couldn’t have been anything else.

Glorie

“No one move a muscle,” I said, pointing the taser and stun gun at the workers inside the room. If they were armed, they would’ve pulled out their weapons by now. They might not carry weapons in this room because of the dangerous work environment. What if something in my taser or Kesyk’s electrified saber could accidentally affect the weapon in the center of the room?

“If you’re smart, you’ll leave,” Kesyk growled.

I expected a fight, but none of the workers argued. I realized none of them wore black cloaks with the insignia of the Dominion. They must’ve been hired by the Dominion to maintain the weapon, or worse, they were being held captive and forced to work on a weapon of mass destruction against their will.

They all moved toward the door on the opposite side of the room.

“Wait!” I cried. They stopped. I hated to do it, but I pointed my weapon at the worker nearest to me. “You’re going to stay there and help me.”

The others quickly fled, leaving their terrified colleague behind. Once they were out, Kesyk barricaded the door.

“Do you think that will hold?” I asked him.

“Probably not,” he replied. “However, it’ll slow down anyone who wants to come in here. We’ll have plenty of warning.”

“Smart,” I smirked. “Now, let’s have a look at this wretched thing.”

If I didn’t know what it was, I’d say the weapon was beautiful. Inside the glass tube, brilliant strands of neon energy danced.

“You.” I looked to the worker who I still held at my mercy. “How does it work?”

“I won’t tell you anything,” he said with a snarl.

“Do you think the Dominion are going to let you live when you finish your job here?” I asked. “Do you think they’ll ever let anyone with knowledge of this place or this weapon escape their control?”

“The Dominion wants to create a Utopia. It’s my duty to help them for the good of the galaxy.”

“A Utopia is an impossible dream. That sort of society isn’t stable. It’ll collapse.”

“Not if the Dominion have their way.”

“What is their way?” I asked patiently. “Help me understand. If I’m making a mistake, you need to explain it to me.”

“Sentient lifeforms can’t be trusted,” the worker said.

“But you’re a sentient life form.”

“I know. I can’t be trusted. My motives are selfish and greedy by nature. I will do harm to those around me and the world I live in for my own gain. I know this, which is why I’ve agreed to be a part of the solution.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “This weapon hurts people. It allows you to contribute to the problem you want to fix, not solve it.”

“How has it hurt people? Have you seen the affected?”

“I have.” I searched for how to describe it. “They’re nothing. It’s like the soul has been taken out of them. They’re . . . .” I trailed off, unable to find the right word.

“Husks. Shells,” the worker said.

“Exactly.”

“But are they in pain? Are they even aware of what’s happening to them?” he asked.

“I don’t know! That’s not the point.”

“It’s exactly the point,” he said. “When they are shells, stripped of their dark true natures, they can be filled with purity.”

“That doesn’t sound creepy at all,” I muttered.

“The Dominion can ensure that every person lives a life of peace and prosperity if we yield our sense of control.”

“You mean give up our free will?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s fucking insane,” I said. “Can’t you see that the Dominion doesn’t want peace? They want puppets. They want armies of citizens they have direct control over. What do you think they’ll do with people who can’t fight back?”

“Allow society to flourish, unblemished.”

I’d strangle him. “No, you idiot. They’ll build the perfect army. They’ll expand into all corners of the galaxy.”

“In order to spread peace!”

“Can’t I just shoot this guy?” I turned to Kesyk. “He’s insane.”

“I’d advise against it,” Kesyk replied. “Unless you want to play trial and error with his weapon. I’m no expert, but I bet the big red button does something.”

“Nothing good, I expect,” I huffed.

“This is not a weapon,” the worker snapped. “It’s a vessel for goodness, purity, and peace.”

“Can you not use the word purity?” I asked. “I don’t know why, but when you say it, it freaks me out.”

“I say we radio the Captain,” Kesyk said. “He and the Commander might know something we don’t.”

“It’s better than talking to this loon.” I rolled my eyes at the worker.

Kesyk pulled out his radio. For once, signal was crystal clear.

“Kesyk, is that you?” Captain Dejar said.

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your location?”

“We’re with the weapon now. A worker for the Dominion has kindly explained its purpose.”

“And?”

“It strips sentient beings of what makes them sentient. The Dominion plans to make its own mindless drones out of the citizens in the galaxy. I’m assuming they decided to test drive it on the rebels.”

“What can be done about it?” Captain Dejar demanded.

“I’m trying to figure that out but this deluded bastard isn’t being very helpful,” I shouted.

“Glorie.” Commander Kalyn hopped on the radio frequency. “Tell me what you see. Perhaps, I can help.”

I described the weapon. Commander Kalyn went silent for a short while.

“I can’t find any information on it anywhere,” Commander Kalyn confirmed.

“I’m not surprised. What do you want us to do?” I needed some kind of answer

“You can start by releasing our technician,” a chirpy voice came from behind the worker. Adastria had come through the barricade.

“So much for advanced warning,” I said to Kesyk.

“She’s obviously stronger than she looks,” he said.

“I teleported in.” Adastria rolled her eyes. “Not that you simpletons have access to that sort of technology. The Dominion is at the forefront of personal teleportation devices. Surely, you can’t be surprised.”

“Unfortunately, this world keeps finding ways to surprise me,” I muttered.

A thud came from somewhere behind Adastria.

“Oh,” she laughed. “That’ll be my assistants. Shall I let them in?”

I didn’t know what to say. The high pitched, perpetually smiling, unhinged Adastria from the interrogation room was a far cry from the cold, composed Adastria I overheard talking about uprisings on the Dominion Ship.

I despised the fact that I couldn’t get a good read on her. Was she unhinged? Was she acting? Was she under the control of the Dominion? I had no idea and I had no idea how to handle being trapped in a room with her.

“I think I’ll let them force their way in,” she said. “It’s so good to test them every now and again, don’t you agree? So many of them don’t see any real action anymore. They grow fat and flabby sitting in their fancy chairs sampling the riches of the genetic enhancement experiments.”

Her implication made my skin crawl. My mind flitted to Skadi once more. I didn’t know why I had such a hard time accepting her fate. She made her choice. She had options. Teaching the volunteers at the outpost had clearly softened me up if I felt ready to weep over an assassin that frequently tried to hurt me and mine.

The barricade gave away and dozens of armed agents spilled into the room.

“That took far longer than it should have.” Adastria’s lips pursed. “I’m most disappointed.”

None of the agents responded. I wondered what they thought of her. Were they truly loyal to her or did they only listen to her on orders of their Master? I hated not having all of the pieces of the puzzle.

“Glorie.” Kesyk’s voice was soft in my ear. I stepped back just a fraction so that my back pressed against his chest. We both knew what was coming. There was no way we could escape this room. This was the end for us.

I reached behind me and grabbed his hand. He squeezed my hand as tightly as he could without causing pain.

I looked away from Adastria. It didn’t matter if I let my guard down. I couldn’t win this fight. If I was going to die, I wanted to die looking at Kesyk.

He gazed down at me. I could tell he felt the same way.

I heard the click of the weapons activating. It would all be over soon.

“Mother!” A female voice tore my attention away from Kesyk.

Commander Kalyn stood in the doorway, behind the rows of agents.

Kesyk

I didn’t move, holding Glorie still against me. Not even the agents moved. The stunned look on Adastria’s face was enough to make everyone go motionless.

Commander Kalyn’s presence was both reassuring and concerning. If she was here, that meant the Rogue Star or another allied fleet was nearby and, therefore, at risk.

Adastria knew Kalyn survived the Dominion’s attack on the Terran System but I didn’t believe Adastria ever intended on seeing her daughter again. It was hard to tell for sure, but there appeared to be tears glimmering in Adastria’s wide eyes.

“Mother,” Kalyn said again. She had her hands up. She was either unarmed or only carrying a small weapon. She took a tentative step forward. The agents turned their guns on her. Adastria lifted her hand.

“Wait,” she ordered. “I want to know what my daughter has to say. Have you come here to aid your little rebel friends?”

“I came to help you,” Kalyn replied. This wasn’t the answer I expected. I clutched Glorie’s arm, eliciting a hiss from her. I’d accidentally grabbed some of the burned skin on her arm. She glanced up at me, and I saw the same worry in her eyes that I felt in my heart. What if Kalyn was betraying us? What if she came here to team up with her mother? What if she was on Adastria’s side the whole time?

“Help me? My little darling, what makes you think I need your help?”

“Look at yourself,” Kalyn pleaded. “Do you see what you’re in the middle of?”

“Of course,” Adastria laughed. “I worked hard to get here.”

“Mother, this isn’t what you want,” Kalyn said, taking another hesitant step forward. The agents hadn’t lowered their guns but they had taken their black-gloved fingers off the trigger. Adastria let out a high peal of laughter.

“Of course, this is what I want. If you were smarter, this is what you’d want too. I tried to explain that to you when you returned to the Terran System.”

“You mean after you sold me out?”

“That was a terrible mistake,” Adastria said. For once, I believed her to be telling the truth. “Things were meant to go differently but I had to adapt for the sake of our System.”

“This is beyond our System,” Kalyn said. “You’ve hurt our System more than anyone ever has. You can never go back.”

“I don’t need to go back,” Adastria snapped. “If the Terrans want to be left out of the new rising empire, that’s their fault.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Kalyn demanded. “The mother I used to know would never talk like that about her people.”

“Don’t pretend you’ve ever known me, child.” Adastria’s voice took on an icy tone.

“The mother I had in the Terran System was tough. She was like a marble statue I could only admire from afar. Cold and distant. Despite that, I idolized you. I never understood why I couldn’t please you no matter how hard I tried. I know now that was your unusual way of encouraging me to always do better. I didn’t understand it then.”

“You’ve never been enough,” Adastria snapped. “You’ve always been a disappointment.” Even as she spoke such hateful words, her eyes welled with tears. She didn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. Kalyn could see it, too.

“Mother.” Kalyn swallowed back tears. “Mom. It’s not too late. You can stop this right now. You can make your wrongs right again. This doesn’t have to go any farther than it already has.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Adastria sniffed. “Of course, it does. I’ve dedicated everything to this.”

“What do you think the weapon is for, mother?” Kalyn asked.

“To aid the Dominion in building the ultimate empire, one of peace and prosperity.”

Those words caught my attention. They were nearly identical to what the worker Glorie interrogated had said.

“Do you really believe that?” Kalyn said.

“We deserve a universe of purity and wealth.”

Glorie shuddered against me. I looked down at her. I saw the same questions in her eyes that were forming in my mind. It was odd that two people would choose to repeat the same verbiage in such a way. I’d seen something similar before in victims of brainwashing.

“The Terran System deserves to be part of this new world,” Adastria continued. “We deserve that recognition. We deserve to reap the benefits the Dominion can offer. I don’t care if I’m the only Terran who sees it. I will do my part.”

“Even if doing your part requires the murder of innocents? Of mothers and children?” Kalyn demanded. “That’s what you did to the Terran System when you allowed the Dominion to attack. That’s twice you’ve almost deliberately caused my death. You’re willing to pay for this with your own daughter’s blood?”

Adastria got a strange look on her face. Her mouth pinched and her eyes widened. It was unsettling.

The Dominion agents took notice of her pause. I saw one of them reach into his pocket as if to grab something. Instead, he seemed to move his hand within his pocket.

I nudged Glorie and indicated for her to look. She must’ve seen the agent’s hand for she turned back to me with a curious expression. The agent removed his hand from his pocket just as Adastria started to shout.

“I will pay whatever price I have to pay!” she shrieked. “I don’t care if I have to bear a thousand daughters just to pay for this in their blood. You’re nothing. You’re insignificant. The cause is greater than you and always will be!”

“You don’t mean that,” Kalyn insisted. Tears streamed down her cheeks. I wished Captain Dejar was here to make this easier on her. Kalyn had suffered more than any of us throughout this ordeal. I admired her fortitude, as did Glorie and the other women.

“The Dominion is the key to our survival,” Adastria went on. “I can’t help you if you’re too stupid to realize it.”

“You’re blinded by the allure of power!” Kalyn fired back. “You always have been. I never thought you’d turn into a genocidal maniac to satisfy your need for it. You’re a monster.”

“And you’re nothing but a worm destined to be crushed under the Dominion’s boot. Don’t you think this pains me?” Adastria demanded. “It hurts more than you can imagine to see my own daughter become the enemy.”

“I only cause you pain when my blood isn’t yours to spill,” Kalyn spat. “If I decided to help you, you’d slit my throat to get a better office chair!”

Adastria paused again. Her breathing became labored and her eyes darted back and forth as if she wasn’t sure where she was.

Once again, that same agent reached into his pocket. He moved his hand out of sight. I felt certain it was some kind of mind control device.

I slowly grabbed the stun gun from Glorie’s belt. I didn’t want to use a real gun just yet. Once the agent’s realized I’d fired at them, I’d need every real bullet I had.

Glorie understood what I wanted to do. She stepped forward, keeping her body in front of me so no one could see what I was doing.

“There has to be a way to resolve this,” she said with her hands up. “I believe we can find a happy medium.”

Adastria looked at Glorie with that same bewildered expression. Every agent watched Glorie carefully. I saw my chance. I fired the stun gun right at the agents pocket. The stun dart hit its mark. The agent cried out and dropped a small device on the ground as he yanked his hand back.

Putting the pieces together, Kalyn darted forward and smashed the device underfoot.

Adastria shook her head and wobbled as if she’s just spun in circles for a minute straight.

“Mom?” Kalyn cried out.

“The Terran’s been compromised!” the agent I’d shot shouted.

Before anyone could do anything, the agent nearest to Adastria lifted his gun and shot her point blank. She fell backward, striking the wall. Kalyn cried out in horror. Adastria slid down the wall, leaving a smear of blood behind her.

Glorie

“Glorie, look out!” Kesyk shouted to me. I tore my gaze from Adastria. From what I could tell, she was still alive. She needed immediate attention if she was going to make it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t likely to happen with the armed agents surrounding us.

I leapt out of the way as one launched at me, attempting to strike me with his weapon. Kesyk grabbed my arm, clamping down on my burned skin. I tried not to cry out as he yanked me to the opposite side of the weapon. None of the agents would risk striking the weapon by accident.

Actually, I noticed the agent’s weren’t firing at all, not even at Kalyn who was the farthest away from the weapon. I looked at Kesyk, whose raised eyebrows indicated he had noticed the same thing. We’d really taken our silent communication to a whole new level.

“Seize them!” an agent ordered.

I hadn’t realized there was a High-Ranking agent in the room until now. I was so focused on Adastria and Kalyn that I didn’t notice his black cloak was of a nicer fabric. He was the one who carried Adastria’s mind control device. He was also the only one who wasn’t leaping into battle. In fact, he wasn’t moving at all.

He’d cornered himself, away from the conflict. It dawned on me that he likely didn’t have any formal combat training. The High-Ranking agents mostly worked in offices where they plotted their intergalactic domination.

Perhaps I could use that to my advantage.

Kesyk managed to disarm one of the soldiers.

“Glorie!” he cried as he tossed the gun to me. I realized he intended for me to use it as a weapon, but I had a better idea. I pressed the muzzle of the gun right up against the glass tube of the Dominion’s secret weapon.

“I will shoot!” I warned them all.

“No!” the High-Ranking agent cried. “You don’t know what it will do.”

“No, I don’t.” I tapped the glass lightly. “I reckon you don’t either. Maybe I should find out.” I dragged the muzzle along the glass to make a hideous screeching noise.

“Stop!” the High-Ranking agent ordered.

“Call your dogs off,” I countered.

“What are you idiots good for? Take her down!” he ordered.

The soldiers sprang back to life, but their unwillingness to fire their weapons and the limited space to fight didn’t work in their favor. Kalyn joined the fray, lashing out with a small shive that soon revealed itself to be dipped in toxin. She gave the closest Dominion soldier a quick jab. He fell to the ground, unable to move. Must’ve been a paralysis toxin.

Kesyk swung his electrified saber at soldiers, but none of them wanted to get too close in case Kesyk accidentally hit the glass.

One soldier tried to approach me. I took the muzzle of the gun off the glass weapon to fire a single shot into his stomach before replacing it. Everyone except for Kesyk and Kalyn looked at me in horror.

“The glass is extremely delicate! Small disturbances could spell disaster,” the high ranking official said.

“I don’t care,” I hissed. “I’m not afraid to die and I’m not afraid to take you all with me.”

I was bluffing, of course. I had no desire to die today. I wanted to live a long, happy life away from the trials of war with Kesyk by my side. I wanted to help him open up a metalworking shop. I wanted to settle down and start a life I actually wanted.

“Call them off,” I shouted at the high ranking official.

“I will bathe in your blood,” he snarled.

Well, so much for diplomacy.

I moved along the side of the glass weapon, edging closer to the high ranking official. Kesyk and Kalyn worked to keep soldiers off my back, though now that they knew I was willing to fire a gun in this room they weren’t too keen on bothering me.

The only explanation I could think of was that the colorful bands of energy inside the glass must be extremely volatile. Why else would the soldiers value giving it a wide berth over taking down me, the threat?

Being this close to the weapon had an unusual effect. Its energy hummed powerfully through my body. The glass, I realized, was not glass at all but thin, multi-layered sheets of pure diamond. My skin, especially the areas that sustained burns, felt strange near the diamond glass. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but it made my skin feel alive in a way I didn’t care for. I wanted to get away from it, but I wasn’t done using it to my advantage.

I waited until I was close as I can get to the high ranking official before making my move. As quickly as I could, I whirled around and closed the distance between the agent and myself.

Kesyk and Kalyn acted as my shield. At some point, Kesyk disarmed another soldier for one of their weapons. I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot if he needed to.

The agent tried to fight back, but he was slow and sluggish. I shoved the muzzle of the gun under his chin.

“Perhaps now, you’ll listen to me,” I hissed.

The soldiers froze. They didn’t know what to do. It never occurred to them that someone might outwit them. Clearly, they weren’t properly trained. Maybe I should send them to the Hark outpost for a refresher course.

“I just love that your arrogance brought your downfall,” I sneered. “One false move and I’ll be able to use your throat as a spyglass.”

“Mother,” Kalyn said softly.

I shifted my position so that I could see both Kalyn and her mother while keeping an eye on the agent.

“Kalyn.” Adastria’s voice was barely audible. Her breath came in short, raspy gasps. “Come here.”

“I’m right next to you, Mother,” Kalyn replied.

“I can’t see you.”

“We need to get her to a med center,” Kesyk said.

“No, we can’t move her,” Kalyn cried. “She’s too weak. She’ll never make it.”

“Do something,” I said to the agent, pushing the muzzle of my gun harder against his throat.

“No,” Adastria said softly. “No need. I simply need to talk to my daughter.”

“I’m right here,” Kalyn said. Adastria’s blood had already soaked into the knees of Kalyn’s pants. There was so much blood on the floor, too much for anyone to survive.

“I’m sorry,” Adastria said.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Kalyn said quickly. “We saw the mind control device. We know you weren’t acting on your own free will.”

“Not for that.” Adastria weakly shook her head. “For not being the mother you needed. You were always good enough. I should’ve told you that every day. My biggest regret is making you feel like you weren’t loved.”

“Mother,” Kalyn whispered.

I allowed myself to become distracted by the scene in front of me. The agent managed to grab the gun and toss it away. I fired a shot before I lost my grip. The bullet buried itself into the wall an inch from the agent’s head.

Damn it.

“Call in reinforcements,” the agent ordered.

“I wouldn’t do that,” a voice said.

I looked to Kesyk, who looked just as confused as I felt. Kalyn looked shocked, but not perplexed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her radio.

“Dejar?” Kalyn said.

“Hello, darling. Could you please tell whoever is threatening you that calling in reinforcements would be a bad move?”

Kalyn looked at the agent.

“You heard him.” She raised her eyebrows, waited.

“His words mean nothing,” the agent spat.

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

The walls began to shift. I didn’t realize at first, but large sections were actually screens. At first, they showed only static. Then, images began to emerge. Captain Dejar must’ve found a way to hack into the security system. Each screen displayed a view from a surveillance camera facing out into space.

The facility was surrounded by rebel ships, more than I could count. Hark ships, Gaed vessels, and all manner of personal spacecraft littered the sky. The Rogue Star and the Star Whale hovered at the forefront.

“I’m not sure how good you are at this,” Captain Dejar taunted. “But we’ve got enough firepower to turn your secret hideout into a space dust.”

Kesyk

I couldn’t help but laugh at the turn of events. I was prepared to die in this room. So were Kalyn and Glorie. I don’t think any of us could’ve anticipated this.

The sheer size of the rebel fleet was staggering. I felt terrible in thinking so, but I had no idea we’d amassed this many supporters. The Rogue Star and Star Whale crews had done some great work. And I never got the impression that the Dominion was doing itself any favors.

The sound of approaching footfalls made my smile falter.

I thought Captain Dejar successfully dissuaded the agent from calling in reinforcements?

We’d managed to beat down the first round of agent soldiers, but I couldn’t do that a second time. I was exhausted.

Kalyn wasn’t in fighting condition. Glorie was vulnerable from all sides now that she wasn’t pressed up against the glass barrier of the weapon.

“Need some help?” Geillis poked her head through the door. I let out a bark of a laugh. I couldn’t believe it.

“Geillis!” Glorie cried.

“What the hell happened here?” Xhial asked as he entered the room, Liu following close behind him. All of our special team of volunteers poured in.

“Have you reached your target?” Captain Dejar’s voice came through the radio in Xhial’s hand.

“Yes, sir. It’s a mess.”

“We brought first aid.” Rikka appeared holding a met kit. She knelt beside Kalyn and began tending to Adastria, who was flowing in and out of consciousness.

“What happened?” Rikka asked.

“Single gunshot wound,” Kalyn reported in a wobbly voice. “Just one but close range.”

“How did you manage this?” I asked Xhial.

“A few hours after you left, we heard a big commotion on the ship. We figured that had something to do with you so I used the key card to escape and fetch cloaks for everyone,” Xhial explained. “We walked right into the base.”

“I was able to gather intel on your position.” Geillis beamed.

“What were your methods?” Glorie asked. Eirton now had the agent cornered with weapons so Glorie could take a step back. She lowered the heavy Dominion gun and rotated her arm.

“Good old-fashioned gossip.” Geillis winked. “The lower level workers sure love to talk. That’s a sure sign of a disgruntled workforce.”

“No kidding,” I chuckled.

Glorie grinned. “Very impressive work.”

“That’s not all,” Xhial added. “You two caused quite a stir when that assassin went after you. In all of the confusion, it was easy for us to find a radio and call Captain Dejar.”

“That’s how you got here?” I turned to Kalyn.

“Yes.” Kalyn scrubbed a hand through her hair. “I was closest at the time. I was on my way to deliver some relief to one of the rebel bases but I’d been tracking your positions. I didn’t know the whole fleet was on its way.”

“I’d never let you do this alone,” Captain Dejar said through the radio.

Kalyn smiled through her tears. “Is my mother going to be okay?” she asked Rikka.

“She’s weak. She’s lost a lot of blood and needs a transfusion immediately. If we can get that done, she has a good chance of pulling through.”

“Thank you.” Kalyn’s thanks were distracted, her focus on her mother..

“I’m so sorry,” Adastria croaked. “I wanted to believe so much, that the Dominion would provide a better future for us all.”

“Don’t try to talk right now,” Kalyn soothed. “We know you weren’t yourself. It’s okay.”

“I can’t stand it when people make a big fuss over me,” Adastria mumbled. Her eyes were closed but her breathing wasn’t as erratic as it was before.

“We all know that’s not true,” Kalyn chuckled and sniffled.

“Lynna and her team are on their way to you,” Captain Dejar confirmed. “She’ll take care of your mother.”

“Thank you.”

“What about the weapon?” I asked.

“We’re getting everyone who could possibly know what to do with it down to you as well. It’s about to get crowded in that room.”

“Hear that?” I smirked at the guards who were still standing. “Looks like you’re in for more trouble if you act stupid.”

“They’ll never make it down here alive,” the agent snarled.

“I wouldn’t rely on the loyalty of your lower-level workers right now,” Glorie said. “Something tells me that most of them value their lives over your shitty pension plan.”

“What?” the agent snarled in confusion.

“Case in point.” Glorie shook her head sadly.

“You’ll never succeed,” the agent snapped.

“We’ve already beat you,” I replied. “You should take this loss with grace.”

“Perhaps you’ve won today, but you won’t win this war,” the agent said. “The Dominion is too powerful and has too far of a reach. We will hunt you down and destroy you.”

“Maybe,” Glorie said slowly, thinking it over. “But you’re going to do it without that.” She jerked her head in the direction of the weapon.

More of our team entered through the doors. The room was quickly filling up. The soldiers and the agent were restrained and shoved into a corner to keep them out of the way.

“We’ll keep an eye on them,” Xhial said with a mean glint in his eye. He picked up one of the soldier’s weapons and pointed it at the cluster.

“What about the paralyzed ones?” Bytt asked.

“Tie them up and put them on top of the others,” Glorie suggested. “It’ll be fun when the paralysis toxin wears off.”

“It wears off slowly,” Kalyn said. “They’ll likely be down for at least another hour. Do you mind if I return to the Rogue Star? I’ll stay if you need me to, but I’d like to be with my mother.”

“Please, go,” Glorie assured her. “We can take it from here.”

“Thank you.” Kalyn bowed her head.

Lynna entered the room with a small team carrying a stretcher and portable medical supplies. Adastria was quickly hooked up and lifted out with a worried Kalyn trailing behind.

“Can we help with anything?” Liu asked, eyeing the weapon.

“I’d prefer it if you all observed for now,” I said. “You’ve done a fine job. You should be very proud of yourselves. I know I am. Let’s leave this to those who stand the smallest chance of killing us.”

“I can agree with that,” Liu laughed nervously.

“You can leave if you want,” Glorie said. “I’m not sure if there is a minimum safe distance, though.”

“No way!” Xhial exclaimed from his post. “We wouldn’t miss this. Right, sister?”

“Whatever you say,” Liu said nervously.

“You’ve gotten this far,” I said to her. “I think luck is on your side.”

A mix of our crews, Hark, and Gaed rebels circled the weapon.

“We’ve been researching the impact of this thing,” a Gaed rebel explained to me. “It employs multiple strains of different energies. The impact itself is a mix of supersonic waves and various wavelengths known to cause neurological damage. The Dominion cast a broad net, so to speak, and used as many frequencies and energy pulses as they could in order to affect as many species as possible.”

“Is it possible that some are immune completely?” I asked.

“It’s not likely. There are over ten million individual strands of energy at work here. There are essentially endless combinations. When the Dominion deploys is, every combination happens all at once.”

“Yet it was blocked by walls?” Glorie asked.

“The shockwave that hit your outpost was marginally weaker than the others,” the Gaed said. “Your outpost was also the farthest location from the facility. Those facts combined are likely why the effects of the weapon were mild.”

“I’d hardly call it mild,” Glorie said. “It still wiped out most of our volunteers.”

“I didn’t say the effects weren’t still devastating,” the Gaed rebel said.

“Can you recalibrate it?” I asked.

“Possibly. It’s a complicated piece of machinery. We have a better chance of repurposing the energy rather than fully recalibrating the delicate mechanisms.”

“Repurposing? How do you mean?”

“Changing the target,” the Gaed said. “If we could find the right strands of energy to only affect the Dominion, that would be something.”

Glorie had a strange look on her face.

“What are you thinking?” I asked her.

“I’m thinking about Adastria,” she said.

“I’m sure she’ll be okay.” I offered a kind smile.

“No, I meant how she was mind-controlled,” Glorie corrected. “Do you think the Dominion controls other influential people?”

“It’s possible,” I agreed. “Even probable.”

Glorie scooped up the mind control device the agent used on Adastria.

“It might be broke,” Glorie explained as she passed it to the Gaed rebel. “But this is a Dominion mind control device. Could you figure out how it works and set the weapon to cancel it out?”

“Maybe.” The Gaed tapped his fingers thoughtfully. “Give me some time.”

This was the worst part. The pacing, the waiting, and the uncertainty that our last hope might not work. Glorie, myself, and our volunteers wracked our brains for a backup plan in case the mind control device fell through. We couldn’t think of anything that would do less harm than good.

“I think this will work,” the Gaed said after nearly two hours of careful work.

“Excellent!” Captain Dejar said, though this time he wasn’t speaking over the radio. He and Aavat strode into the room with serious expressions. “Perfect timing. We’re about to contact the Master of the Dominion.”

“You found him?” I asked.

“Sort of.” Aavat held up a tiny microchip. “This little thing is going to find him.”

Aavat stuck it to the side of the console, which then activated itself and started searching through all kinds of hidden folders. A call connected by itself and was patched through to a room with three dark hooded figures sitting at a black table.

“I suppose you think you’ve won something,” one of the hooded figures rasped. One of them must’ve been the Master, but it was impossible to tell which one.

“Haven’t we? We’ve hacked your weapon. It’s ours to use,” Captain Dejar said. “We’re prepared to use it unless the Dominion agrees to stand down. Your reign is over. Accept it without further bloodshed.”

“Fool,” one of the figures cackled. “You’re nothing. You’re powerless!”

“So, you refuse my offer?” Captain Dejar said.

“You offered nothing. You have nothing.”

“I have your weapon.”

“You can’t wield it.”

“We can and we will. It’s been recalibrated to target all Dominion strongholds.”

That part wasn’t true, but no one said anything. Captain Dejar was bluffing.

“We will withstand it,” the figure said dismissively. “When we do, we will blitz every planet suspected of harboring rebels until you’re wiped out.”

Captain Dejar looked at us.

“Do it,” I snapped, lacing my fingers through Glorie’s.

Captain Dejar gave the signal. The Gaed activated the weapon.

Glorie

My head felt like it’d been bashed with a tire iron then filled with lead. When I opened my eyes, I didn’t see anything at first, only bright white. Slowly, other things started coming into focus.

With great difficulty, I turned my head to one side. Kesyk was on the floor beside me, his eyes open. There was an expression of worry on his face, but he wasn’t moving. I tried to call out his name, but my mouth wasn’t working properly. Eventually, my gaze focused on the rise and fall of his chest.

None of his limbs looked like they were bent at the wrong angle. I didn’t see any blood or other fluids that shouldn’t be outside his body. I tried to call his name again, but my throat felt like stone. Dry and chalky.

He was up before I was. Kind of.

He rolled onto his side, facing me, and reached out with one arm. He must’ve thought he was farther away from me than he really was. His palm connected with the side of my head. It wasn’t a heavy blow, but my body wasn’t ready for any contact other than continued contact with the floor.

I made a croaking noise that was supposed to be, “ow.”

Kesyk frowned and tried to speak. I assumed he was trying to apologize. With a grunt, he pushed himself up. He swayed, even though his bottom half was still horizontal.

“Glorie,” he rasped.

I made another croaking noise. My mouth was so dry, I couldn’t even create saliva. I needed water.

A soldier laid near us. Kesyk, seeming to understand my need, clawed his way to the soldier’s unconscious form. I couldn’t tell if he was a victim of Kalyn’s paralysis toxin or if he was hit by the weapon like we were. Either way, he wasn’t able to prevent Kesyk from taking his canteen.

Kesyk took a small sip and choked. I worried the water was poisoned or somehow toxic to him.

“Just testing it,” he said, clearing his throat after every word. “Here.”

He passed the canteen to me. I drank its contents in greedy gulps, careful not to drink all of it. I felt the impact of the water pooling in my empty stomach. It was painful but the relief in my throat was worth it.

“Thank you,” I sputtered. “What the hell happened?”

“The shockwave from the weapon.”

“Did it not work properly? It was only supposed to affect those under the Dominion’s influence.”

“I’m not sure,” Kesyk said. “I suspect no one is supposed to be in the room when the weapon is deployed. Or . . . .” he trailed off, looking thoughtfully at the soldier near us.

“Or what?” I prompted. Ordinarily, I might’ve been able to catch his train of thought and finish his sentence, but I was still too out of it.

“What if all of the soldiers were under some kind of mind control influence?” he asked. “Look at them, they’re all out of commission, even the ones who weren’t hit with the paralysis toxin.”

I looked around. Sure enough, everyone in the room was starting to come to, except for the Dominion agent and the soldiers.

“What if the Dominion didn’t even want to be the Dominion?” I wondered. “Those three figures that were on the screen before Captain Dejar ordered the weapon to be deployed, what if they were the only ones not under mind control?”

“It’s possible,” Kesyk said. “However, I’m feeling a bit too ill to contemplate that whole mystery at the moment.”

“Right,” I agreed whole-heartedly. “Let’s get back to the ship and get checked out. That can’t have been good for us.”

“You should be fine,” one of the Gaed rebels said from the floor. His back was propped up against the diamond glass of the weapon. Colorful bands of energy hummed around him. “We only took a hit because of our close proximity. The energy in here,” he tapped the glass, “wasn’t looking for you when it was deployed. It was just far too close to you.”

“We should’ve thought this through.” Kesyk’s laugh ended in a cough.

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” I replied. “We’ll do better next time.”

“I seriously hope there’s not a next time,” a small voice said. Geillis was flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her shock of orange hair looked like she’d just stuck her finger in a socket.

“Are you okay?” I crawled to her side even though I still couldn’t make my legs work the way I wanted them to.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Do I still have my arms? I can’t feel them.”

“Wiggle your fingers.”

She wiggled her purple fingertips. “Did anything happen?”

“Yes,” I smiled. “You’re going to be okay. Lynna’s going to have her hands full with all of us.”

“My people have doctors as well,” the Gaed rebel said. “We’ll be happy to see to you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“What happened?” came another croaking voice. This time, it didn’t come from one of us. It came from one of the agents’ soldiers.

“You were under the influence of Dominion mind control,” Kesyk explained. The soldier went quiet. After a few moments, he burst into tears.

“They’re gone!” He wept. “I can’t hear them anymore, buzzing in my head! They’re gone! How did you do it?”

“Cognitive recalibration to the highest extreme,” I said. “How long did they control you?”

Panic crossed the soldier’s face. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything of the time before the Dominion.”

“Don’t panic,” Kesyk advised. “Your mind is scrambling right now. I’m sure everything will come back to you with time. Are there others like you?”

“All of them are like me. We all have the implants.”

“Implants?” Glorie said.

“I remember a little more,” the soldier said. “I was young and looking for work. The Dominion promises a high salary, great benefits, and protection for my family. I signed my life away. On my first day in the training compound, they put something in my brain. They said it was a language chip, so I could understand everyone around me.”

“But it wasn’t that, was it?” I asked, feeling a twinge of pity in my heart.

The soldier shook his head.

“Did that happen to everyone?” Kesyk asked.

“I think so. I don’t know why they would do it only to me,” the soldier said.

“Are there doctors here?” I asked.

“There is a medical facility, yes.”

“You should get checked out,” I said. “Everyone here should.”

“We need to do a sweep,” Captain Dejar said. He was struggling to stand on his own and leaned on a console to keep himself upright. “I really wished I knew the weapon was going to do this ahead of time. I would’ve put down mats.”

It looked as though his wrist was injured.

Slowly, everyone rose to their feet. Kesyk and I leaned on each other for support as we went around to all of the Dominion workers in the room. Like the first soldier we spoke to, they all recalled an implant being placed in their brains.

Even the High-Ranking agent I’d held at gunpoint before was dazed, though I wasn’t sure I was ready to believe his implant story.

“I want to see where the weapon hit,” Captain Dejar said as he started tapping commands into the console that supported his frame. Most of the screens on the wall were damaged, but they still worked. The map of impact was astounding. Every hit was marked with a red dot. The map was mostly red.

“That looks like good news,” I said. “We’ve fried a lot of circuits.”

“I think the Dominion will be suffering from this blow for a long time,” Kesyk said. “With luck, they’ll never recover.”

“It’s not over just yet,” Captain Dejar said. “Yes, we’ve severely crippled the Dominion, but we know it’s possible to escape the effects of the weapon. No doubt there are some devout members we’ve missed.”

“We’ll hunt them down before they can gain any traction,” Aavat said. “Let’s worry about securing this location first.”

“I don’t think we’re a good fit for the job,” Kesyk laughed. “None of us can stand up on our own.”

“Right,” Captain Dejar said. “That does put a damper on things.”

Captain Dejar called for reinforcements. No one in the rebel fleet had been as badly affected as us. Fresh, able bodies would be far more effective than a group of dazed individuals.

While we waited for help to arrive, Kesyk and I, along with our volunteers, moved to the higher floors. The common room where we were spotted by Skadi was littered with semi-conscious Dominion personnel.

“Want to grab a bite at the café?” Kesyk joked.

“I would, but it doesn’t look like they’re open.” I pointed to a being dressed in a chef’s uniform on the floor in the kitchen doorway. “I can’t believe they chipped everyone, even the chef! That seems excessive.”

“Being excessive is how they kept their iron grip for so long,” Kesyk said.

“I suppose.”

“Come on.” Kesyk gently pulled on my wrist, careful not to make me topple over. My balance was still off. The shockwave messed up my equilibrium.

“Where?”

“We’re going back to the ship. We’ve done more than enough.”

“I won’t argue with you on that. Plus, the sooner I get checked for brain damage, the better I’ll feel.”

“We can help get you guys back to the ship,” Liu offered. “We took the escape pod over.”

“Perfect,” I said fervently. “So long as I don’t have to fly it. I don’t think I can handle that responsibility.”

Kesyk

Rikka remotely piloted the escape pod on our behalf. Good thing she did, because I dozed off the minute I sat down inside. The interior wasn’t even comfortable, I was just that exhausted.

“Hey!” Glorie snapped.

I jolted awake. “What’s the matter?”

“You can’t fall asleep like that,” she said. “You could be concussed. We have to get you checked out first.”

“But I’m so tired.”

“Don’t you think I’m tired too? If you fall asleep, who’s going to stay awake to make sure I don’t fall asleep? What if my brain bleeds out when I’m asleep?”

“Can your brain do that?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Human brains are the worst.”

Rikka brought us up to the Rogue Star. Unfortunately, the escape pod wasn’t compatible with the Rogue Star’s hatch. It took four crewmembers to get us hooked up so we could safely cross from the escape pod to the ship.

“Are you all right?” Xyla asked the moment she saw Glorie. She looked like she wanted to hug her, but thought better of it.

“I genuinely don’t know how to answer that,” Glorie said. “We need medical attention.”

“Of course.” Xyla took Glorie’s arm and guided her to the med bay. I trailed behind, unassisted.

“What happened?” she demanded. “We were all told to wait until we were needed but then there was this huge shockwave. It knocked several ships right out of the sky!”

“Are they all right?” Glorie demanded.

“Yeah, they managed to get themselves airborne again but it was a scary free-fall for a while. What was that shockwave? We thought the whole facility was going to blow up. Kalyn refused to let us move a safe distance away! She was prepared to let us all die.”

“Commander Kalyn wouldn’t have made the fleet stay put if she believed there to be any danger,” I said.

I didn’t know Xyla well, but she had a reputation for stirring up trouble when she was displeased. She hadn’t caused any incidents or small rebellions in some time, but the panic of recent events was clearly getting to her.

“I think she wanted to die with her lover,” Xyla said, dramatically batting her eyelashes.

Glorie rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. The shockwave was nothing to worry about. It wasn’t aimed at us.”

“Then how come you look like you’ve been trampled by a herd of cattle then strung up like a scarecrow?”

Glorie gave Xyla a long look. “That was . . . quite the comparison.”

“I grabbed some of my old books when we were in the Terran System.” Xyla hugged herself, eyes gleaming. “I loved Wild West books. I don’t even know where the Wild West was, but I still love it. Was California a real or fictional place?”

“Real,” Glorie chuckled.

“Are you sure?” Xyla asked.

“It sounds made up to me,” I added.

“Xyla, you’re clearly more freaked out than I am,” Glorie said, pushing past the strange turn the conversation had taken. “Are you sure you’re not the one who needs to see Lynna?”

“Maybe a mild sedative will do you some good,” I said, only half-joking.

“That’s a good idea,” Xyla mused. “I’ll ask for one.”

War did strange things to people.

Lynna was ready and waiting for us when we arrived.

“Good timing,” she said. “You’re my first patients after Adastria.”

Adastria was asleep on one of the cots. A blood bag was hooked up to her arm. There were tubes coming out of her mouth and nose.

“Is she . . . ?” Glorie asked cautiously.

“Recovery is going to be rough, but she’ll make it. That shockwave didn’t do her any favors. She wasn’t unconscious until then. The stress of it completely knocked her out. I put her into a coma.”

Glorie blinked. “A coma?”

“Only temporarily. I can bring her out of it whenever I need to,” Lynna assured us. “Enough about Adastria. I need to get you both checked out.”

The examinations were blessedly quick. Glorie was treated for the burns on her arms and for a slightly sprained ankle.

“With everything going on, I didn’t even notice I hurt it,” she said. “Everything else hurt just as bad.”

“You’re good to go,” Lynna said. “You’re going to be really fucking sore for the next few days.”

“Looking forward to it,” Glorie grumbled.

I’d taken less damage, though I was also warned about the impending soreness. I shook it off. I’d had worse. Hopefully, I’d never have worse again.

“Is it safe for us to sleep?” Glorie asked.

“Yes, there was some concern of brains bleeding out,” I chimed in.

“It’s safe for you both to sleep,” Leena laughed. “Sleep is the best medicine after something like this. I can give you a sleep aid if you like.”

“No need,” we said in unison.

Glorie and I left the med bay just as an influx of injured crewmembers started coming in.

“Do you remember where my room is?” Glorie muttered. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”

I tipped my head back and laughed, even though it was painful to do so. “No, I don’t. But I remember where mine is. Would you like to sleep there?”

She gave a decisive nod. “Very much.”

“Come on, then.” I scooped her up in my arms, even though every muscle in my body hated me for it. She was exhausted. She didn’t need to walk anymore, not if I could help it.

“Put me down,” she mumbled.

“If you can make me, I will.”

She muttered, but lay silent after a couple half-hearted kicks.

I carried her into my cabin. Ordinarily, I shared it with two other crewmembers but they were both on other ships for the time being. I had the place all to myself.

“It’s nice,” Glorie slurred even though her eyes weren’t open.

“Thanks,” I chuckled.

I laid her down on my bed. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow and I wasn’t too far behind. I pulled her to me so her back was pressed against my chest and her head tucked under my chin.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept so deeply. If I dreamed, I wasn’t aware of it.

I didn’t know how many hours had passed when I next awoke. I couldn’t tell if the soreness in my body was from being blasted against a metal floor or if it was from lying in one position for too long. Glorie stirred beside me. She arched her back, driving her ass into my groin.

Very few of my senses were operating at full capacity, but one certainly was. I felt myself grow hard almost instantly. Glorie felt it too, though she didn’t let on. Her sneaky smile was a dead giveaway.

She kept her eyes closed, feigning sleep. She stretched, arching herself against me again. This time, I snaked a hand along her hip and gripped her tightly. I pulled her back against me, driving my hardness against her ass.

She let out a soft moan, still pretending to be asleep.

I leaned in close enough for my lips to graze her ear.

“I know what you’re doing,” I whispered.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said through a fake yawn. “I’m so exhausted. I’m sleeping. Can’t you see?”

She wiggled again, grinding herself against me.

I shifted so that she was beneath me. I hovered over her, my face an inch from hers.

“Well, I’m not sleeping anymore,” I murmured.

I pressed my lips against hers, kissing her softly at first. I didn’t want to ask too much of her physically, after all, we’d just been through, but she was eager. She arched up into me, kissing me with heat and passion.

When we broke apart, I nibbled a trail down her neck while lifting the hem of her shirt. I removed everything until she laid topless beneath me. I kissed over her breasts, stopping to lick and tease each nipple.

When I reached the top of her pants, I hooked my thumbs through the belt loops and yanked them down, undergarments and all. She didn’t flinch. In fact, she kicked off her shoes before I had the chance.

I stood at the foot of the bed and took in the sight of her, naked and panting with desire. She opened her legs for me. I reached out and gently stroked her wet opening. As much as I wanted to plunge into her and claim her as mine, I wanted to do something for her.

I knelt between her legs, kissing and nipping at the soft skin of her thighs. She sighed softly and wound her fingers into my hair. I stroked her with my tongue, eliciting a sharp cry of surprise.

I devoured her, testing and teasing her until I found the perfect spot. She rocked her hips against my mouth, using my tongue for pleasure I was happy to provide her with.

It wasn’t long before her grip on my hair tightened and her thighs clenched together. She’d become so sensitive that even the smallest flick of my tongue caused her body to jolt forward. She flooded my mouth with the result.

I kissed back up her body. As I did, she tore the clothing from me.

“Kesyk,” she sighed when my lips found hers. “Take me. I need you.”

Glorie

Kesyk slid away from me to remove his pants. I missed his touch the instant he was gone. He stood at the foot of the bed once more. When he moved to come back to me, I stopped him.

“Wait,” I said softly. “Let me look at you.”

His deep bronze skin glowed in the low light of the room. The intricate patterns of his tattoos looked more mesmerizing than ever. I could spend hours tracing them with my tongue.

“You’re teasing me,” he grinned.

“No, I’m admiring you.”

I sat up and crawled to the foot of the bed. I rose up on my knees to kiss him, then kissed down his neck just like he had done to me.

He let out a shuddering groan when I took his primary cock into my mouth, the secondary, flexible one tickling under my chin as it writhed. I’d never done this before. I was worried I would do something wrong, but Kesyk was clearly enjoying himself. I worked his shaft in and out of my mouth, enjoying myself as much as Kesyk was.

After a time, he put his hands on my shoulders, stopping me. “I can’t wait anymore,” he said.

He gently guided me back down onto the bed. I laid on my back and allowed my legs to fall open. Kesyk teased my entrance with the broad tip of his primary cock. Just when I thought he’d enter me, he pulled away and started teasing me all over again.

“You bastard!” I laughed.

“This is payback for earlier.”

“Kesyk!” I whimpered when he eased just the head of his cock inside me but refused to go any further.

“Do you really want it?” he asked.

My hands balled into fists around the sheets.

“What do you think?”

I wrapped my legs around his waist and tried to pull him against me but he was much stronger. He didn’t pull away again. Instead, he slowly sank into me, allowing me to feel every inch of him.

“Oh.” I shuddered and closed my eyes, rocking up into him, but he held me still. He was determined to set the pace.

“Relax,” he whispered against my skin. “Allow me to take care of you.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” I sighed.

Slowly, he started thrusting in and out of me. I realized he was going slowly not just to tease me, but to test my body. Soon, I was grateful for his caution. As much as I wanted to be completely and totally ravished by him, my body wasn’t in top form. I couldn’t even wrap my arms around his neck without feeling pain.

“I want more,” I pleaded.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered.

“I can take it,” I assured him. To prove it, I rocked up into him again, urging him to go deeper. He picked up the pace, but I felt the hesitation in his muscles. It appeared I wasn’t the only one feeling sore.

“I have an idea,” I said. I twisted beneath him until I was on my side, urging him to lay behind me. When he did, I raised one leg, allowing him access to my aching core.

Kesyk slid inside of me with ease. A deep moan rumbled through his chest, vibrating against my back. I twisted my upper body so I could watch him and kiss him as he took me.

He gripped my thigh, helping me to keep my leg aloft so he could reach the innermost depths of me. I was still sensitive from his clever tongue work, and his slender secondary cock teased at my ass, prodding, pushing me deeper into pleasure.

Soon, I was clenching around his thick primary cock, ready to tumble over the edge once more. This time, he tumbled with me.

When we came down from our highs, spent and exhausted, he pulled me against his chest.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m more than all right!”

“You’re not hurt?”

“No more hurt than I was when I came in here,” I assured him.

My energy seeped out of me. Soon it was impossible to keep my eyes open. I allowed myself to be lulled by the steady beat of Kesyk’s heart beneath my head. Sleep claimed me swiftly.

When I next awoke, it was because of a persistent banging on Kesyk’s door.

“Stay here,” Kesyk said, pressing a kiss into my temple. He climbed out of bed, pulling on a pair of shorts before opening the door.

“Oh!” a female voice said. In my sleepy daze, I couldn’t make out who it was. Kesyk’s body blocked the doorframe so I couldn’t see her, either. “Sorry to disturb you. Is Glorie here?”

“She’s resting,” Kesyk said. “Is she needed?”

“Commander Kalyn is asking for her.”

I shot up in bed, careful to cover my bare chest.

“I’ll be right there!” I called to the messenger.

“You don’t need to hop to action just yet,” Kesyk assured me when he rejoined me in bed.

“I just want to see what she wants.” I pulled on my shirt and pants. “How do I look?”

“Like you’ve been having sex,” he grinned.

“Shut up!” I giggled. “I need to look presentable in front of my boss.”

“You just came back from a top-secret Dominion facility after getting hit by a shockwave big enough to reach the corners of a galaxy, fighting an assassin, and saving the universe in general. I think she’ll forgive you if you haven’t done your hair,” he said dryly.

“You say that now. I’ll be right back.”

I leaned across the bed to kiss him. He nearly pulled me back into bed with him. I nearly let him.

“Hurry,” he growled.

God, I could’ve let him take me again right then and there. Damn it, Kalyn.

I hurried out of the room before anyone saw me. It’s wasn’t that I was ashamed of being with Kesyk, I just didn’t want anyone to realize how recently I’d been with Kesyk.

Commander Kalyn was in the office she shared with Captain Dejar and Aavat, though she was the only one there. She scrolled through a datapad with a glazed look in her eyes. I could tell she wasn’t really taking in anything she read. I knocked so I wouldn’t startle her, but she jumped anyway.

When she realized it was me, she motioned for me to enter the room.

“Apologies for startling you,” I said.

“Think nothing of it. I should’ve gone to sleep long ago.”

“Why haven’t you?” I asked.

“Would you be able to sleep if Kesyk wasn’t here?”

I furrowed my brow. “Captain Dejar isn’t back yet?”

“No. You know him. He likes to tie up loose ends himself. I’d be there with him but I don’t want to leave my mother just yet.”

“Of course.” I understood in theory. Maybe not in practice. Not with Adastria. “How is she?”

“She’s still in a coma. Lynna wants to keep her under for longer just in case frying the mind control chip in her brain did damage we don’t know about yet.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize how many were chipped. I should’ve thought it through.”

“You made the right call,” Kalyn said. “I don’t believe we had another choice other than targeting the mind control devices. It’s good there were as many as there are. The Dominion won’t have a foothold in this galaxy for a long time. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Captain Dejar said there were likely to be pockets of Dominion supports left. Is that why you called me in?”

“Dejar’s right, but no. That’s not why I called you in. Sit down please.”

Uh oh. In my experience, nothing good ever followed those words. “Is something wrong?” I asked softly.

Kalyn gave me a strange smile. “No! Why would you think that? No, I called you in to share some good news.”

“Oh?”

“Well, as you know, I earned my title of Commander in the Space Force,” she said. “And because of that, I still have access to their networks.”

“That must be nice. You can keep track of how the Terran System is rebuilding itself.”

“Yes, I can,” she nodded. “But that’s not what I’m getting at. I looked into your record.”

Oh, crap.

“Did you?” My throat tightened.

“I looked over the report that caused you to be dishonorably discharged. I’d never read it before. I can tell with one glance that it’s a load of bullshit.”

My brows shot up. “Oh? I mean, I always suspected as much.”

“You took the fall for someone else’s mistake,” Kalyn said. “I petitioned to have your discharge removed.”

“You did?” I could barely wrap my head around her words.

“I did,” she beamed. “No one was in a position to argue with me. You’ve been reinstated into the Space Force with full honors.”

I couldn’t believe what I heard.

“Are you serious?” I stammered. “Thank you! I don’t know what to say. Do I have to report back to the Terran System?”

Dread filled my stomach at the thought. I didn’t want to leave Kesyk, or any of the crew. They were my family now.

“Of course not. I need you here. I’m prepared to offer you the position of Lieutenant. Do you accept?”

“Absolutely!” I exclaimed. “Thank you so much. I’m honored.”

“I can’t think of anyone more deserving. You can be dismissed if you like. You shouldn’t keep Kesyk waiting too long.”

She winked. My cheeks grew hot.

“That obvious, huh?” I laughed uneasily.

“I know what women look like after bedding a Shein,” she said wryly. “Now, go on! Get some rest. You’ve earned some time off. I’ll let you know when I need you again.”

“Thank you, for everything.”

I rushed out of the office bursting with excitement. I couldn’t wait to tell Kesyk.

Kesyk

“Am I good to go?” I asked, trying not to snap. I’d been waiting in Lynna’s med bay for the better part of two hours. Everyone who was caught up in the shockwave was in for their one-week checkup.

“I want to run one more test,” Lynna said. I must’ve made a face or some sort because she gave me a stern look. “Do you want me to make sure you’re not at risk of permanent brain damage? If that’s not a concern you can get off the examination table so someone else who cares about their health can have a turn.”

“Damn,” Glorie whispered, trying to hold in her laughter.

“Forgive me,” I said quickly. “Please, run whatever tests you think are necessary.”

“I just don’t think you, any of you,” Lynna eyed the crewmembers waiting to be checked over, “understand the sheer amount of raw energy you were exposed to. I honestly can’t explain why half of you are still alive.”

“You’re exaggerating, right?” Glorie asked.

“If I tell you I’m not, will you take this seriously?” Lynna replied.

“I do take it seriously,” Glorie assured her. “I couldn’t see when I woke up from the blast. I thought Kesyk was dead when I was finally able to see him. Kesyk’s just cranky because he doesn’t like being poked and prodded.”

“That’s not true,” I cut in. “I just don’t like wasting time.”

“Careful,” Glorie warned. “One wrong word and you’re going to get another tongue lashing from Lynna.”

“Smart girl,” Lynna smirked. “Focusing on your health is not a waste of time. Kesyk, what if you fall ill because of this? You wouldn’t want to be a burden on your fellow crewmen or your girlfriend either?”

My gaze shot to Glorie, who blushed bright pink and tried to hide her smile.

Lynna picked up on the shift in mood. “What?”

“That was the first time someone referred to me as his girlfriend,” Glorie supplied. “Sorry, I didn’t expect it to affect me so much. I like it.”

“Oh, for goodness sake.” Lynna rolled her eyes but smiled warmly.

“Don’t be judge-y.” Glorie laughed. “You were in the same boat not all that long ago.”

“Ha!” Lynna barked out a laugh. “Valtic still hasn’t called me his girlfriend out loud.”

“He hasn’t?”

Lynna shook her head. “No. He has a slew of other lovely pet names for me, mostly in his native tongue. Girlfriend sounds too human for him.”

“But you’re human,” I pointed out.

“I know. Valtic is my big giant weirdo and I love him for it. I’ll let him call me whatever makes him happy. Now sit still and stop distracting me. Do you want to be cleared for work or not?”

“Do you want an honest answer?”

Lynna narrowed her eyes.

Glorie and I had been allowed to take the majority of the last week off to rest and decompress. For the most part, it was extremely enjoyable. We rarely left my bed. After the fourth day of doing nothing but eating, sleeping, and making love, Glorie and I were both feeling restless. We needed to work. We needed to feel useful.

First, we needed clean bills of health.

Lynna grabbed a long white tube with an indigo light on the end.

“What does that do?” I asked.

“It won’t hurt,” she responded.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“You’ll be fine,” Glorie said, patting my head. “It’s just another one of her fancy scanners.”

Lynna passed the tub over my head, the light pointing down so my forehead now glowed blue.

“Why do I feel like every time I come in here you have more fancy scanners?” I muttered.

I closed my eyes to avoid the blinding brightness of the light.

“Don’t you want your resident doctor to stay on top of things?” she asked. “If you all insist on repeatedly getting blown up, shot, stabbed, poisoned, shocked and whatever else soldiers like to do, you can’t expect me not to have the latest technology.”

“No soldier actually likes doing any of those things.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Lynna said. “You all have huge hero complexes.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment and not press further,” I said.

“Wise.” Lynna removed her scanner. “Your brain is fine.”

“I already knew that.”

“Sure, but what you know doesn’t matter. What I know matters. I know you’re safe to go back to work.” Lynna signed a form on her datapad. “I’ve sent my approval to the Captain.”

“My turn?” Glorie asked.

Lynna smiled warmly. “Yes, my dear.”

“She gets pet names and I get sass?” I slid off the examination table and stepped aside for Glorie.

“You called getting a check-up a waste of time,” Lynna said.

“To be fair, I was fine so I didn’t need a checkup.”

“Why do males hate the doctor so much?” Lynna asked.

“I bet it’s part of that hero complex you mentioned,” Glorie giggled.

I rolled my eyes.

Lynna quickly scanned Glorie and gave her a clean bill of health within moments. Glorie sprung down from the examination table.

“See how quickly it goes when you don’t get snarky with the doctor?” she teased.

“Yeah, yeah,” I laughed, and led her out of the med bay.

“Ready to check in on the volunteers?” she asked.

It was a big day for them. Glorie and I devised a surprise for them during our break. During our time off, we’d kept to ourselves for the most part. This was our first time seeing Xhial, Geillis and the others since the day we dismantled the Dominion.

“Yes,” I smiled. “Think they’ll be happy?”

“They’ll be crazy not to be.”

Our eight volunteers were in the mess hall. It was one of the only places they were allowed to go freely since they weren’t full crew members.

“Hey, guys!” Glorie said when she approached the table.

“We thought we weren’t going to see you two for a long time,” Liu said with a knowing smile.

“What can I say? Getting hit by a shockwave doesn’t take as much out of you as we thought,” I joked. “Have you all been cleared?”

Since each of the volunteers was of a different species, none of us knew for sure how being so close to the shockwave would affect them even though they didn’t have any of the targeted mind control devices implanted in their brains.

“We’re fine,” Rikka smiled. “Though I get headaches every now and then.”

“Lynna will look after you if you go to her,” Glorie said.

“Is she allowed to treat me?” Rikka asked. “I’m not an official crew member. Isn’t there a financial conflict?”

“No. You’ll be allowed to access the med bay whenever you need it. All of you will.”

“Want to know why?” Glorie wiggled with excitement.

“You better say what I hope you’re going to say.” Xhial’s face lit up.

“You’re all going to be official Rogue Star crewmembers,” Glorie announced, grinning from ear to ear.

Geillis leaped to her feet and threw her arms around me. Though she was small, she somehow mustered enough force to throw me off balance.

“I’m so excited!” she gushed. She pulled back to look at me. “I really think of you as the father I’ve always wanted.”

Glorie looked like she was about to choke on her tongue from trying not to laugh. I decided to hug Geillis. Even though we’d had perhaps three conversations since she joined the team, I didn’t want to ruin this moment for her.

“Does that make me your mom?” she asked.

Geillis looked at Glorie with a critical eye. “You’re more like a really cool older sister.”

“I’ll take that,” Glorie laughed and accepted Geillis’s hug.

“Yeah, you’re too young to give off motherly energy,” Eirton agreed.

“And I’m not too young to give off fatherly energy?” I questioned.

Eirton turned a shade darker as he tried to come up with an answer.

“Don’t scare them,” Glorie gave me a playful swat on the arm. “I’m the scary one, remember?”

“We have to celebrate!” Xhial said. “You’ll join us, won’t you?”

Glorie and I exchanged a look. I could tell she was tired. I was tired too. Plus, I wanted to enjoy one more evening off before Captain Dejar put us back to work.

“We’ll leave you to your fun,” Glorie answered. “You’ll be able to go over your employment contracts with Captain Dejar and Commander Kalyn tomorrow. Try not to do anything tonight that’ll get you fired.”

“We’ll try,” Geillis grinned.

Glorie and I left the mess hall, hand in hand. When we reached our room, she collapsed on the bed.

“Now I don’t want to go back to work,” she joked. “I want to retire.”

I sat down next to her and ran my fingers through her hair and down her back. “Where would you like to retire?”

“That pirate stronghold was nice,” she said. “Most of their structures were made of wood, too. I’m sure you could find work.”

“True,” I agreed. “But metalworking is far more profitable. I always liked the idea of working in a shipyard.”

“Really?” Glorie sat up and gave me a curious look. “Shipyards are pretty much everywhere.”

“Exactly. We can go anywhere when we retire. We won’t have to stay in one place either.”

“Isn’t the point of retiring to stop working?”

“Yes, but come on,” I laughed. “We both enjoy work too much.”

“That’s true.”

Glorie rolled so that her head was on my chest and her body pressed against my side.

“Maybe we’ll take a series of long vacations where we occasionally work,” she suggested.

“I like that idea so long as I’m with you.”

I placed two fingers gently under her chin and tilted her face up to me. “I love you, Glorie.”

Her face split into the biggest, purest smile I’d ever seen. “I love you, too!”

She stretched up to kiss me. When her lips met mine, the weight of everything fell away leaving only me and her, together.

I could easily spend the rest of my life like this.

Epilogue: Kalyn

Our problems didn’t end when Dejar ordered the detonation of the weapon. For once, we didn’t have to traverse deep space constantly looking over our shoulders. We didn’t have to worry about a ship like The Terror overtaking us and blowing us to pieces. We could freely drift between the Hark and Terran System.

As happy as we all were for a moment of rest, we knew there was still work to do. Without the Dominion, many traders were out of work. Economies toppled without the Dominion to continuously stimulate them.

Anarchists rose up out of nowhere, ready to lay waste to a system with no governing force. There were still small communities where the Dominion had a foothold, but they were all but powerless compared to what they once were. They couldn’t stave off the pirates, the anarchists, and the renegades.

The forces that made up the rebellion did what we could, but even now it felt like we weren’t strong enough. We set ourselves up to bring about the end of the Dominion. We weren’t prepared to take on the shattered system left behind. That sort of thing took time and teamwork.

It seemed that everyone wanted a piece of power now that it was up for grabs. The influential citizens the Dominion were worried about now stood unopposed. However, they couldn’t agree with each other which bought Dejar and I some time to broker negotiations. Most of the elite refused to see us, even with the added influence of our sometimes friend Itair.

Dejar and I were in for a long battle. Neither of us wanted a seat of power. After all we’d done so far, we wanted to be done for good. I was so ready to retire and never set foot on another spacecraft again, but I knew that wasn’t meant to be.

I couldn’t say I was unhappy about it, though. Despite the struggles, the dangers, and the uncertainty, I knew I was where I was meant to be. Dejar knew it, too. I didn’t think there was a person in our fleet that didn’t feel like they belonged here.

“How’s it coming?” I asked Dejar.

We’d taken over the secret Dominion facility once all of the mind-controlled subjects were transported to the appropriate care centers. Many of them were still out of commission. They experienced memory loss for the most part. Some lost the use of their limbs or their ability to speak. Others had yet to wake up, though they were still alive.

“It’s difficult to say,” he said. “In a perfect world, we’d have smaller versions of this weapon.”

“Like for personal use?” I asked.

“Exactly. That way we could calibrate them to help people on an individual level. The mass recalibration we did the other day only helped some. There are many that still need assistance.”

“Is the weapon the only way to cure them?” I asked.

“It’s the quickest.” Dejar shrugged. “Hopefully two or three rounds of this will help everyone out.”

“What if we cure someone and they’re still loyal to the Dominion?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking about that. Choosing not to cure some of the afflicted because we’re afraid they might be loyal to the Dominion is like deciding they’re guilty before they’ve committed a crime.”

“I suppose so,” I agreed. “I just don’t want to add something else to the to-do list. It gets longer every day. I’ve got another report from Itair.”

Dejar stood up. He knew how much I hated Itair’s reports. “How long did it take you to read it?”

“Three hours,” I groaned.

It wasn’t that Itair’s reports were long. They were usually rather brief. However, he’d somehow gotten the notice that everything we talk about must be put into some kind of code. The catch was that we’d never agreed on a code. He used all sorts of odd metaphors and symbols to describe the mindset of the elite citizens.

“Did you learn anything?”

“I’m not sure.” I grimaced and pressed my fingers against my temples. “I’m assuming nothing’s changed. Everyone wants the upper hand for their own sake. No one wants to agree or negotiate. We’re going to have to do all the work and maybe punch a few rich bastards in the face.”

“Let’s not jump straight to punching,” Dejar advised.

He closed the distance between us and wrapped his arms around me. I called it my sanity bubble when he enclosed me in his arms like that. I laid my head on his chest and listened to the steady sound of his heart beating.

“Ready to go back to the ship?” he asked.

“Are you done for the day?”

“I’m not the expert on this thing,” he gestured to the weapon, “aside from offering moral support, there’s not much I can do.”

“In that case, yes. Let’s go back to the Rogue Star. You can give me all of your moral support.”

“That’s the best part of my day.”

We left the facility in a two-person star skimmer. We’d been using those to ferry ourselves back and forth between the facility and the other ships in our fleet. Now that the fleet wasn’t actively rebelling against anything, we wanted to have an official name.

Crewmembers had been tossing ideas around for the last week or so. I had a preference for Star Fleet Alliance. Dejar liked Inter-System Coalition because he didn’t have any sense of flair for these sorts of things.

When we arrived back on the ship, I turned to Dejar. “I’m going to visit mother before we have dinner,” I said.

“Sure,” he nodded. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

I went to visit my mother every day in the med bay. She was making great progress. She could walk the full length of the room by herself now. She remembered her name and mine, though she didn’t remember all of the details about her time with the Dominion.

It was difficult to pinpoint when and how the Dominion chipped my mother with their memory control device. I assumed it was done the first time she met with them, though I wasn’t sure when that was.

I decided I wouldn’t tell her about it unless she asked me outright. This was going to be a fresh start for us. I realized when I knelt in the puddle of her blood as she inched closer to death, that she and I deserved some semblance of a mother-daughter relationship.

It wasn’t going to be easy. Even if she never remembered what she’d done under the influence of the Dominion, I did.

I could admit that most, if not all, of what she did wasn’t her fault. My struggle was that, even though she wasn’t in control of herself, it was still her face and her voice that threatened me, insulted me and disregarded me as if she truly did despise me. As much as I hated it, looking at her was difficult sometimes.

I still had nightmares about her pushing me into an endless abyss of deep space and laughing while I tried to claw my way back to her. I didn’t tell her as much. It wouldn’t help her get better.

“Hello, darling,” she said brightly as I took my usual seat next to her bed. “How are you?”

My mother’s hair was down. I had taken it down for her when she first came to the med bay so she could lie comfortably. She never put it back up. I had a small handful of memories of her with her hair down.

Birthday parties mostly. She never missed a birthday even if the parties she threw celebrated her more than they did me.

“Tired,” I smiled. “We’re making progress. There’s still a lot to do.”

“An organized calendar is your best friend in times like this,” she pronounced wisely even though her grasp on what was happening around her was minimal.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Is Lynna here?”

“She stepped out a moment ago,” my mother said. “She said she has the results from my last round of tests.”

“That’s great!” I beamed. “I’ll go find her so we can check them out. I’ll be right back.”

I gave my mother’s hand a soft squeeze before leaving the med bay.

“Have you seen Lynna?” I asked Qal as we passed each other.

“She looked like she was heading up to the observation deck. That’s where I’m heading now.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

As we made our way to the upper decks, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s just funny the way everything turned out.”

Qal shared a knowing smile before walking over to Manda.

I spotted Lynna on the deck, but she was wrapped up in conversation with Valtic. They had a moony look about them. I didn’t want to disrupt their moment.

“Hey,” Dejar said, touching my shoulder.

“Hey! What are you doing up here?”

“Just relaxing,” he said. “It’s nice to come up here and decompress.”

“I can see why.”

I turned to face the floor to ceiling windows. Before us was nothing but stars and far off planets. Looking off into the endless abyss, it was easy to forget about the horrors we’d been exposed to over the last few months.

“It’s peaceful,” I sighed.

Dejar wrapped an arm around me. I laid my head on his shoulder.

I was aware of others on the observation deck. Shenna and Aavat. Marris and Orrin. Everyone we’ve shared this adventure with was here beside us, taking in the same view we were. No one spoke. Everyone just watched the stars and drank in the peace of the moment.

“Look!” Wedla gasped, pointing out into space. Fear seized my stomach. I expected to see a fleet of Dominion dreadnaughts. Instead, a pod of star whales floated into view. Two calves, pale pink in the starlight, frolicked around their mothers.

I absentmindedly ran my fingers along Dejar’s arm as a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time took hold inside me.

Hope.

Letter from Ava

It’s been a crazy ride - thank you so much for staying with our crew, and watching the fall of the Dominion!

Will there be future stories of the Rogue Star? Maybe…

You know there’s a whole universe out there, filled with adventures just waiting to happen.

First, I’m going to play in another universe for a while.

Keep reading for a sneak peek of Rekker: Warlord Brides book one!

Ava

Rekker Preview

Lila

“Lila, it’s time!”

My sister Nora’s voice echoed through the old wooden barn. The little lamb I was trying to bottle feed squirmed in my arms and I muttered under my breath.

Of course it was time. Every Friday, just about now, it was always time.

“Lila!” Nora called again and I heard the squeak of the barn door opening.

“You’d better shut that tight behind you,” I yelled, even though I wouldn’t mind the distraction of having to round up the rest of the flock.

Especially today.

I scratched behind the little guy’s ears before withdrawing the empty bottle.

“I’ll be back in just a few minutes,” I promised and stood, brushing straw from the knees of my jeans.

Nora leaned over the stall door, rolling her eyes.

“You’re going to be late,” she chided.

“There’s not any way to be late,” I grumbled. “The lottery is going to happen if we’re there to listen to it with bated breath or not.”

The late spring evening wrapped the farmhouse in gentle shadows, still just a touch chilly from the last frost. Alfalfa had already started to come up, and the farm would be in full swing soon.

“What if you don’t know? Are you packed? What would you bring?” She bounced beside me as we left the barn and crossed the yard towards the house. “I’m packed. Just in case.”

Nora was the only person I knew who was excited about the lottery.

She was excited at the idea of going to strange new worlds, meeting aliens, having adventures.

All of that.

I was excited that we weren’t all dead or slaves at the hands of the Suhlik, but a treaty that involved my body, made without my input, that could turn me into a broodmare for some alien Mahdfel warrior I’ve never met?

No thanks.

I had other plans. The farm had other plans for me, even if I didn’t. I did my best not to even think about the lottery, the treaty, the testing.

Any of it.

Nora tugged me into the house, ignoring my grumbling. As usual.

“Come on, girls.” Mom’s voice drifted in from the family room, tight with worry as it always was on Friday.

Six daughters.

If it weren’t for the superstitious taboo that kept anyone from talking about the lottery, her friends probably would have teased her that she was tempting fate.

With six daughters, the likelihood that one of us would be selected, have our birthdate pop up on some random Friday, was higher than normal.

But the odds of being matched were the same for everyone, I reminded myself as I kicked off my filthy workboots in the mudroom and followed Nora in.

Our other sister, Jane, was already on the sofa, arms wrapped tightly around her waist.

As the third oldest, she’d just become eligible. just realized how quickly her life could change.

Posey, Farah, and Kate were too young. At fourteen, eleven, and nine, respectively, they could ignore it. Hell, I wanted them to ignore the whole thing.

Until they didn’t have a choice.

The government comms unit crackled to life and my mother froze, eyes fixed on it.

My father stopped mid-rock in the old rocking chair across the room, watching us all with the same hazel eyes I’d inherited from him.

Normally, we counted on the government communication unit for information about tornadoes, nasty hailstorms, the sort of things that you needed to know about on a rural farm.

But every Friday was lottery day.

“Good Friday, citizens,” the announcer said.

His voice was far too cheerful. Every single week, it grated on my frayed nerves.

Who on Earth had told him that this was even vaguely appropriate for the thousand, probably millions listening, waiting, hoping?

“Those lucky females born on February twenty-first should report to the testing facility nearest you.” My heart froze in my chest, as Nora’s wide eyes swung towards me.

“I repeat, February twenty-first is the date selected for this week’s lottery. Thank you for your attention and adherence to the treaty. Good luck, everyone!”

My luck had run out.

February twenty-first was my birthday.

Nora bounced up and down.

“You’re going!” she squealed. “You’re really going! Are you packed? I’ll bet you’re not even packed.”

I tuned her chatter out, my eyes focused on the bleak expression on my father’s face.

“Maybe you won’t be a match,” Jane whispered, reaching down to take my hand.

“Probably not,” I agreed, squeezing her fingers.

It was true. You had to be at least a 98.5% perfect match to be sent away. It was a crazy high level.

Still, it would mean being sent away to somewhere I’d never been, probably somewhere I’d never even heard of, to be the mate of some alien.

I’d spent my life training to be a veterinarian. It was all I’d ever wanted to be, the most wonderful future I could imagine.

Between that and growing up on my family’s farm, there was very little doubt in my mind what being someone’s mate would entail.

Would I even have a choice in the matter?

I swallowed hard, feeling faint.

“I know this wasn’t in your plans, Lila, but what have I always told you?” my father asked.

There was so much kindness and love in his eyes that I forced myself to look away.

“Never give up on your dreams, no matter what,” I recited.

The words he’d told each of us girls all our lives, that no matter what happened and no matter where we ended up, our dreams should never die. And despite my anger at being selected, I knew he was right.

Earth couldn’t be the only planet in the universe with animals that I could care for. I was sure I could be a vet anywhere, on any world out there in the black, even if it wasn’t on the farm that I’d poured my blood, sweat, tears, and love into my entire life.

I couldn’t imagine a life without this place or my family. I couldn’t imagine going even a single day without my sisters.

But I quickly pushed those thoughts from my mind. If I dwelt on them, I’d never leave, and it was that thought alone that broke my heart.

At that moment, a thought hit me. It was imperative that I report to the facility, but did I have to stay there?

What if I went and just . . . didn’t sign in? I was sure I could find somewhere to hide out for a week and then make my way back home. I’d just tell everyone I wasn’t successfully matched.

Hell, most women weren’t a match.

It seemed plausible enough, right?

“Lila, honey.” My mom’s voice broke, just a bit. “They’re here.”

Wait.

What?

Rekker

Damn, I was tired.

It had been a long mission.

Actually, it’d been long mission after long mission, so many of them that they blurred together.

I stretched, wincing a bit, as I headed down the halls of the Calliope to the med bay.

“What are you doing back here, Rekker?” Javik snapped.

He was a good medic, and a better science officer.

But not really one for the niceties of social interaction.

“Checking to see if you were done tormenting my pilot yet,” I snarled.

Alright, maybe I wasn’t at my social best, either. The day had nearly gone very, very badly.

Javik adhered a patch over Cedroc’s eye, the sterile white disturbing against Cedroc’s hunter green skin.

“Don’t tell me you lost one,” I joked, keeping my voice light in case Cedroc actually had.

The last battle against the Suhlik raiding party had been nasty.

Luckily, Sector Command had sent the Walkandro, a mobile command hub, as well as a dozen ships all our size or larger, to take care of the bastards.

Sure, the Suhlik hadn’t attacked Earth proper since the Mahdfel had driven them away, but that didn’t seem to stop them from sniping at the edges of every system they could find, looking for easy prey for their trafficking cells and breeding centers.

We’d taken superficial injuries, but no casualties, better off than some of the other ships that had been part of the operation.

The Calliope had taken damage, but nothing more than Kyre, my engineer, would be able to handle now that we were docked with the Walkandro, like a sleek spoke radiating out from a giant wheel.

A few other ships were still docked, as well, but the rest had already departed for new missions, or if they were lucky, some downtime.

“His eye will be fine if he quits squirming,” Javik spat.

Cedroc gave a tiny shrug. “Just a laceration around the socket from where that panel came loose. Doc wants me to keep it covered to avoid infection,” he answered, finally giving me the information I needed. “I’ll be ready to go when you give the order, Captain.”

“You’ll be ready to go when I say,” Javik corrected.

I watched as the tattoos on the science officer’s shoulder heated from gold to vermilion, indicating his annoyance.

All Vaznik Mahdfel had the same tattoos, broadcasting our emotions to the rest of our crewmates and families.

Not that one usually needed to guess.

“How long do you estimate it will take to heal?” I asked, not really caring that the vermillion now was a full-blown crimson against Javik’s natural deep blue. “You do realize I’ll need my pilot to get us out of this damn system, right?”

He snorted. “A week would be ideal. If you want your pilot not to lose that eye after all.”

A week, I thought grimly.

“Maybe I can make a deal,” Cedroc said, grinning. “I’ll take it easy for the next two rotations, and then he rigs up something that just covers the wound, and not half my vision?”

I left them arguing the details.

They’d figure it out.

They always did.

In the corridor outside, I came across Kyre, who was holding a thick wad of bandages over a pretty deep gash on his left arm, and Derrix, my weapons specialist, who had quite a nasty lump rising over his right eyebrow just below where his horn began.

“Shouldn’t you be in med bay, not waiting outside?” I asked them both.

“Doc’s in a cranky mood,” Kyre answered.

“He needs to find something new to poke and prod that isn’t us,” Derrix elaborated. “Maybe some nice rock would keep him busy.”

Kyre shook his head. “We’re taking on supplies from the hub, should be able to have most of the damage repaired in a day, maybe two.”

“Biggest hassle is, the teleport is down.” Derrix leaned back against the bulkhead. “We keep having to run and ferry the stuff into the cargo hold the old way.”

“We’ll take as long as we need to,” I decided. “We don’t have anything pressing, and I think Cedroc might be on restricted duty for a bit.”

Sure, we could all pull a shift at the helm, if need be.

But Cedroc was a damn master at it.

“Do you think you’ll be able to complete a systems test sometime before tomorrow morning?” I asked Kyre.

“Absolutely. Once the Doc gets me stitched up, I’m on it,” he reassured me.

“How’re the guns looking?” I asked, turning my attention to Derrix.

His eyes were a little glazed over, but he responded quickly enough that I wasn’t worried.

“One sustained heavy damage, but the other five are still operational. I’ve already put in the request for parts to get the damaged one running,” he said. “Would be faster if the teleport was working, though.”

“Thanks, Derrix. I’ll keep that in mind,” I answered.

Once I’d spoken to every crew member, I returned to the bridge and took a seat in the captain’s chair. A beam had come down near my cabin in the firefight, and while I had temporary quarters assigned on the Walkandro, it wouldn’t be the first night I’d slept sitting up.

I stretched my long legs out in front of me and folded my hands behind my head, creating a cradle against the headrest for my curved horns.

I couldn’t help but curse whoever designed this ship.

It wasn’t a Vaznik, that much I knew. If it had been, more accommodations would have been made for our anatomy, that’s for sure.

Whenever I got enough money to build my own ship, I was going to make damn sure the chairs conformed to the horns of every one of my crew.

My eyes lingered for a moment on the massive viewport before me.

Outside, the Milky Way was burning and alive.

Meteors raced through the dark sky, sprinkling the frozen vacuum with even more shards of ice. I couldn’t help but pause for a moment to take it all in.

In all the time I’d spent out here, I’d never tired of the infinite wonder of space.

Pluto was the only dwarf planet in Earth’s solar system and was also the farthest away from its only sun.

It was the perfect location for stationing the mobile hub, convenient, but not close enough to set off Earth’s alarm bells.

The small amount of light that did reach this far orbit was muted and barely visible, but enough to set the tiny planet sparkling far below our orbit. It was eerily beautiful and even though I wanted to get my ship away from this hunk of ice as fast as possible, I couldn’t help but appreciate the frigid beauty of it all.

The blaring of the comms system interrupted the peaceful moment.

As usual.

“Captain Rekker?” a gravelly voice demanded. “If he’s not there, get him on.”

Thank the void the comms was audio only.

“I’m here, Commander Strygan.” I tore my eyes from the glittering mountains. Strygan might not be able to see me, but I was certain he’d sense any lapse in attention. “Was there a problem with my report?”

“No, not at all. From all signs, looks like the Suhlik are running scared. Maybe we’ll have a break from them for a while.”

“That would be nice, sir.” But not likely.

“You mentioned the damaged cannon and teleport. Anything else structural? Anything major?”

And . . . that was strange. Commander Strygan wasn’t exactly known for checking up on his officers. He assumed we’d get in, get the job done, and get out.

Repairs weren’t really his focus.

“No, sir,” I answered without asking about anything else. I might be curious, but I wasn’t stupid. “My engineer reports that we’ll be able to leave in a day, possibly two, tops.”

“Good, good.”

The old man was working his way around to something. I just didn’t know what.

“I’m planning on sticking around the Walkandro for a day to fix the gun and give the crew some rest before we take off for the homeworld,” I reported.

“Actually, I have another mission in mind for you and your team,” Strygan said.

My face fell. I had been looking forward to returning home—we hadn’t been back in months.

“Is this an offer or an order, sir?” I asked, choosing my words carefully.

“A little bit of both,” he said.

“You’ve got my attention.”

There wasn’t really any choice, but I was starting to get curious.

“It’ll be an order if you refuse, Rekker, but after hearing the details, I think you’ll agree to take it,” he said.

“I’m listening.”

“It’s a retrieval mission. If you and your team complete it successfully, you’ll earn a two week furlough, as well as striking a blow the Suhlik aren’t expecting,” Strygan told me.

My team had just gone through hell and I wanted to decline, but I knew every single one of us could use a break.

“Just yesterday, the main comms team deciphered chatter on the Suhlik channels about an ancient and powerful device. We’re not yet sure what it’s for, just that it’s important. If they want it, we can’t let the Suhlik retrieve it before we do. We have the location, and the comms crew is trying to decipher the rest of the message now.”

“What’s the catch?” I wondered.

“I haven’t finished.”

“Sorry, sir.”

I was pretty good at taking orders, but I was also no stranger to getting ahead of myself.

“The catch is that the device seems to be located in a cluster of planets in a relatively uncharted area. We don’t know what’s out there, other than what appears to be three large gaseous planets with four moons orbiting each, as well as two dwarf, moonless planets. You’d be going in pretty much blind,” he explained.

The crew of the Calliope was one of the best teams the Vaznik people have ever assembled.

Our victory today only proved how capable we were and, even though I would’ve liked to have provided them with more rest, I knew they’d follow me anywhere.

“Permission to make a request, sir?” I asked.

“What is it, Rekker?”

“After this recon, my crew gets a two-week furlough back on Vaznik. They need time to recoup and spend time with their families. It’s been a long six months.”

“Granted, Rekker. So, you accept?”

“Yes, sir. Send through the coordinates—we’ll set course as soon as the cannon is back online.”

“Excellent. I knew I could count on you, Rekker. I look forward to seeing you back at base soon. Over and out,” Strygan said before the comms line went dead.

I sat back in the chair, looking out the viewport to the frozen wasteland below, but not really seeing it.

Here we go again.

Lila

“We’re here, Miss Kanes,” the older soldier said gruffly.

I noticed that he hadn’t met my eyes throughout the entire trip, even though he’d sat in the back of the transport with me rather than up front with the driver.

What did soldiers think about this particular assignment? Escorting women to be tested, possibly sent away from their families, maybe forever?

The allied Terran forces had fought bravely, desperately, in the war against the Suhlik, but they’d been horribly overmatched.

Peace had been hard won.

It must have annoyed some soldiers to realize that women bought that peace with our bodies, not the military’s strategies.

“Thank you,” was all I said though.

It had been a two hour journey from our farm to the testing facility.

The entire ride, my mind had whirled, trying to come up with plans, anything that would get me out of this.

I’d visited the testing facility once, every girl did in high school. I think it was supposed to make it less scary, but that wasn’t exactly the result.

Every girl I knew had nightmares for weeks.

I looked through the thick, reinforced window at the facility as we approached the low building.

It was larger than I remembered, but that made sense if this was the central point for all of the population of this area.

Dozens of other vehicles were lined up in front of it.

“Seems like May was a busy month,” commented the driver.

An unreasonable thrill of hope ran through me.

If there were lots of us, maybe that would make it less likely that I would be the one chosen.

I knew that’s not how it worked, I really did.

But peering out the window at the facility, all I wanted to do was to cling to irrational hope.

“I’m sorry, Miss Kanes, we’ve got to go.”

I met the soldier’s eyes for a moment, and just for a moment, I wondered if he’d let me go, if I could twist away from his hand under my elbow.

I was in good shape from working on the farm.

I could do this.

Not.

Irrational hope was one thing.

Downright delusional was something else.

I grabbed the small bag that I’d hastily packed, to Jane’s disbelief, and followed him down the stairs.

98.5.

Step.

98.5.

I repeated the number to myself over and over with each step.

It was a ludicrously high percentage. I’d never known anyone who was matched.

I wasn’t sure my parents knew of anyone who had.

I had nothing to worry about.

Until the soldiers stationed outside the facility opened the door and I saw the bedlam within.

I was obviously the last to arrive, and the driver had been right.

May must have been very busy. There must have been thirty or forty of us in the small waiting room, and for some reason, there seemed to be a delay.

Nerves already tuned to a breaking point had shattered and hysteria ruled the hour.

“I don’t want to go!” a buxom blonde sobbed. “You can’t make me!”

I agreed with the sentiment, even if not her method of achieving her goal.

I glanced around the room. All eyes were on the blonde as she sagged to the floor.

Next to her, a brunette wailed, “I’ll never see my home again!”

“Oh, brother,” my escort muttered. “It only takes one. Stay here, Miss Kane.” And then he waded into the sea of young women.

Quickly I glanced at the door we had just come through. No salvation there, though, the steely faced guards maintained their post.

“Quiet down, ladies,” my escort shouted, rounding up the other soldiers to try to gently tug their wards back into line.

“No one is sending anyone anywhere until you get through the test.” He tried to dislodge a third woman from his leg, but she refused to let go.

“What are you going to do if you are matched and you don’t have any tears left?” he asked. “Or if you aren’t matched, and you got all worked up for nothing?”

The line in the wall was faint, but surely that was a slightly recessed door to the side of the room.

I slid over to it, and with my hand behind my back, wedged my nails into the crack.

It slid just a bit.

Then a bit more.

Finally, it was wide enough for me to dart inside and I dashed through the narrow hallway.

Obviously, this was an employee-only area of the testing facility, but I didn’t really care. All I wanted to do was find a way out.

Maybe find a storage room, some corner where nobody would find me.

Sure, someone had picked me up, they’d have a record of that, but surely they wouldn’t find me yet.

It could be someone else’s day.

Three more turns, and I found myself in a narrow stairway. It looked like an access staircase, with dim lighting and military olive-green walls.

My heart beat nervously, but I didn’t have time to be scared. I took a deep breath and made it down two flights of stairs before a blaring alarm sounded, nearly deafening me.

Damn it.

I quickened my pace, but heard doors burst open from both above and below me and I knew I’d been caught.

There must have been cameras somewhere for me to have been seen.

Of course there were.

I froze on a landing as footsteps closed in on me from both directions.

I knew I had no choice but to go with them, but my brain had set too hard into fight or flight mode.

And if I couldn’t run, I’d fight.

Four of the younger guards took hold of my arms and legs, while my original guide shook his head.

“I really had hoped you wouldn’t, Miss Kanes,” he said sadly. “But I figure it’s always the quiet ones that make a dash for it.”

I kicked out as hard as I could, but with two of them holding my legs, it was no use—there was nothing I could do to throw them off me.

They brought me to a room I recognized as a testing room. I kept struggling so hard it took all four of them to secure me in one of the chairs. Thankfully, it was a comfortable one, cushioned and made of leather.

“This will be so much easier on all of us if you stop fighting, dear. You really have nothing to fear,” one of the approaching nurses said.

“Swap places with me then,” I snapped.

“All we’re going to do at this stage is take a little blood. It’s the easiest, most non-invasive way to tell if you’re a match,” she said, completely unruffled. “You do have your paperwork on file, correct?”

I wanted to fight her more, but I knew I’d only injure myself when she tried to stick me, so I allowed it.

Of course I did. Every woman eligible for the lottery kept their forms updated. It wasn’t exactly a choice. And it was the one decent thing out of this whole deal.

The dowry. Every matched woman was given a million credits, in exchange for the “disruption” to her entire life.

Or it went to her family, in case she didn’t survive the birth of the child.

98.5%. It was close. But not perfect. Things could happen.

I shuddered. I’d filled out my paperwork the day I turned eighteen. My family would get the money no matter what. It would help make up for missing a set of hands at the farm.

Maybe hire more workers.

But I couldn’t hope for it. That would mean the impossible had happened.

“This will only take a moment,” the nurse said cheerily, as if struggling women were brought to her every day. Maybe they were.

She was right—the blood draw was over quickly, and she swept across the floor to load the vial into a machine attached to a computer.

“This should only take five minutes to come up with a result. If it’s inconclusive, we’ll try something else,” she told me.

She was wrong this time.

It took less than a minute for the machine to emit a high-pitched, positive-sounding chime.

“Well, I’ll be . . . that’s the fastest we’ve ever gotten a match in this facility. And it’s perfect,” the nurse said, beaming.

Perfect wasn’t exactly the word I would have chosen.

It was my worst nightmare.

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Copyright © 2019 by Ava York

All rights reserved. These books or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the Author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.