Chapter One
Orion Molecular Cloud, Barnard’s Loop
Research Vessel H8L7R
IG Standard Calendar 236.44.18
Among the known species within the scope of human exploration, humans came in second place in terms of technological advancement. The Ravanoth had them beat, and had been the ones to initiate contact nearly a century ago.
While the two species had interacted peacefully, the Ravanoth hadn’t been keen to share their own advanced tech with the inferior primate creatures who hadn’t yet managed to venture beyond their own galaxy.
But now there was a new player on the field. Their transport speeds and their cloaking tech were beyond anything Captain Lyra Hallas had ever witnessed. The cloaking itself worked by methods on which Lyra couldn’t even begin to theorize. None of her vessel’s highly sensitive systems had detected even a hint of the incoming ship.
The alien vessel appeared first as a dark speck that Lyra couldn’t be sure she was even seeing. Only a minute later, it was large enough to visually identify as a ship. And a minute later, even larger.
“Fuck.” Her First Officer, Tsende Rybak stood beside her on the bridge, staring out the windows into the yawning black maw of space. “What the hell are they?”
Lyra shook her head. She had no answer. “I’m initiating the Defense Protocol,” she told Tsende grimly. The ship was not equipped for battle of any kind. It was a research vessel. It had all the martial capabilities of a turtle—little more than a thick shell.
Lyra sank into the captain’s chair in front of the ship’s controls. The long panel glowed gently in the dim light of the bridge. She could see her reflection faintly in the windows above, pale-faced and clench-jawed.
“Did you try hailing them?” Tsende asked.
Of course she had. “If they wanted to talk, they wouldn’t have cloaked themselves.”
She finished the command sequence for the Defense Protocol and keyed in her access code.
Sirens blared through the ship. Hatches and airlocks thumped loudly as the internal locks engaged. The entire bridge shuddered as a reinforced security grid linked together behind the bulkheads and locked into place.
Lyra activated the ship’s intercom. Her voice carried calmly over the alarms. “Attention crew: Code White. Unknown vessel approaching. Species unknown. Allegiance unknown. Purpose unknown. Contact in approximately fifteen minutes. Repeat: Code White.”
Code White: Attack from unknown hostiles.
Fear turned her thoughts to her sister. Sofie was her only family. She was eighteen years old now, away at university, but Lyra had been her guardian since the girl was ten.
She’d left the military so that she could raise her little sister. She’d made a home and future for the frightened little girl—a girl she hadn’t even realized existed until word came that her father was dead and Lyra was the inheritor of all his estate, including the new daughter he’d never deigned to tell his old daughter about.
But she’d taken that little girl in. She’d made her safe. She’d shaped a better world for Sofie, better than what Lyra’d had. And with a little time, Sofie had come to trust her. And with a little more time, they’d become true family. The shy, broken little girl slowly blossomed into a confident, acutely intelligent young woman.
Lyra was prouder of Sofie than anything else in her life. None of her military honors, none of her professional accolades held a candle to the love she had for her brilliant, sensitive, big-hearted sister.
“Better say any goodbyes you need to,” Lyra told Tsende, pulling her comm from the pocket of her flight suit and walking away to find a private corner of the bridge. She tucked herself behind a bank of computronic panels.
Looking into her comm’s camera, she let her stoic self-control fall away to reveal the truth of her words. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, Sof, but it looks like I have to say goodbye.” She swallowed back the surge of emotion that threatened to squeeze her throat shut. “You know I love you. I love you so much.” Tears burned her eyes, but didn’t fall. “I’m sorry I won’t be around to watch you make your mark on the world. But I know you will make me proud. I’m always, always, proud of you. And I love you—so, so much. And I…” Lyra’s voice broke. She swallowed hard. “You’re strong Sofie. Keep being strong. I love you.”
Lyra ended the recording and stored it with a conditional trigger—the message would only be sent if the biofeedback link severed. That is, if Lyra were dead.
Straightening up, Lyra tucked her comm into the chest pocket of her flight suit. She took a second to get ahold of herself. When she emerged from behind the computronic panel, Tsende was ending his own transmission.
The alien ship loomed even closer. Against the unmoving backdrop of empty space, the ship appeared not to move at all, but rather, to grow gradually larger. Lyra’s ship still couldn’t get a scan on it, so there was no way of knowing the exact speed of their approach.
Fast. That was all. Faster than anything she’d ever seen before.
When it was within flagging distance, the incoming ship sent out a targeted pulse that Lyra felt in her chest like the thump of a bass line. All of their tech—comms, screens, scanners, instrument panels, lights—blinked out. The ship shuddered, and fell still.
Lyra and Tsende lifted gently from the deck as the magnetorotor whined to a halt, killing the gravitational field it generated.
“The air recycler’s down,” Tsende said, reaching out for Lyra’s arm as they drifted away from each other.
“We’ll have enough to last until they reach us,” she said grimly. The ship was as dark and silent as a tomb.
Within minutes, the other vessel reached them. It was the size of a freighter, but structured with the sleek stealth of a warbird. The ship’s exterior was so deeply black, it seemed to consume the surrounding light, darker than the void of space itself.
It continued to approach at such a high velocity that, for a brief moment, Lyra let herself hope it intended to bypass them entirely. But then, as the foreign vessel passed over them, it halted suddenly and cleanly.
Their own vessel rocked and groaned as the other ship descended onto them.
Lyra had never seen an entire ship land on another one. She’d been aboard vessels boarded by pirates — more than once. But those had always been shuttles that invaded via the docking stations. This was something entirely different.
The deafening sound of screeching metal rent the silence. The entire ship shrieked and groaned, shuddering under the assault. The other vessel was breaching their hull. Lyra and Tsende clenched onto each other in mortal fear—waiting for the instant death delivered by vacuum of space.
But it never came.
Instead, there were footsteps. A heavy, pounding tread, headed straight for the bridge.
“How are they walking?” Lyra whispered. The gravity hadn’t been restored.
There wasn’t time to guess.
Another terrifying shriek of metal, and the doors to the bridge peeled back like crumpled paper. The metal security grid protruded from the damaged panels like shattered bones. In the open space stood three hulking strangers. Lyra stared, horrified and transfixed.
Like the Ravanoth, and several other sentient alien species, the invaders shared the bipedal, anthropoid structure favored by humans. But unlike those other species, these strangers were terrifyingly large. The shortest of the three had to be at least seven feet tall, and they were all broad-bodied, heavily muscled.