I’m in the Longbow’s detention cell—a three-by-three-meter room used to transport prisoners or dangerous cargo. The walls are blast-shielded, there’s no controls on this side of the heavy door. The only furniture is a temperfoam mattress and a waste disposal system. The air vents are tiny, there’s no wall sockets, no windows. Far as short-term prisons go, the Legion makes them pretty good.
My head feels like someone kicked me in it.
Like any good Alpha on her first year of duty, Cohen has followed the rules. Mag-restraints bind my wrists and ankles. They’ve stripped me of my coat, my pistol, Saedii’s blade, leaving me with the minimum—gray cargoes, T-shirt. They left me my boots, but they took the laces.
There’s a metal tray on the floor near the door, an unwrapped protein pack and a cardbox of filtered water sitting on it. Making a show of being more hurt than I am, I guzzle the water as I glance up at the corner of the room. I can see the tiny black stud of the sec cam in the ceiling—if Cohen is good, she has her Tank watching me like a hawk through those feeds. And Cohen is good—she was the top-ranked Alpha after me in our year. The squad she picked are half the people I’d have grabbed myself if I hadn’t missed the Draft. So there’s not a lot to do for now except wait.
Engines thrum beneath me as we cruise the Fold. My thoughts turn to my sister, the other members of my squad. I think of us running together back on Sempiternity. The seven of us seemed unstoppable, and my chest aches at the thought of what might have happened to them all.
That I might be the only one left.
Where are you, Scar?
Finally, I hear a shift in tone from the drives, the faint echo of the PA beyond my cell door. The metal is too thick for me to make out the words, but I know exactly what they’re saying: we’ve been Folding for twenty-four hours, which is the maximum recommended exposure without a break.
There’s a reason they don’t recommend Fold travel for anyone over twenty-five for more than a few hours without being frozen first—even young minds have trouble with continuous exposure in here. So, per standard Legion regulations, Cohen is ordering her crew to drop through a nearby Gate for a break.
I feel it begin—that strange vertigo that tells me we’re crossing from the Fold into realspace. My insides feel weightless, I double over, cross-legged, colorscape rippling from black and white to vibrant hues. And as we cross the threshold, my fingers slide toward my feet.
These boots waited ten years for me in the Dominion vault. I still have no idea who put them there. How they knew I’d find myself needing to bust out of captivity, not once, but twice. But honestly, the way my life has been going recently, I’m not gonna question the one lucky break I’ve got.
The false heel twists aside. I feel inside for the gremlin—the device that generated the electromagnetic pulse that busted Saedii and me out of prison. An Aurora Legion Longbow is a lot smaller than a Terran Defense Force cruiser, and I’m not sure of the range on this puppy. But truth be told, I’m too desperate to care—as desperate as I’ve been since I hatched this insane plan.
It’s exactly like Takka said: any idiot knows Aurora Legion has been looking for my dumb ass in this sector for months. So, security being what it is, I really could only figure one way to get onto Aurora Academy to warn Adams about the Ra’haam threat.
On board an Aurora Legion ship.
I make a mental note to send Takka a present for selling me out so quick. And with a small prayer to the Maker, I press the stud.
I feel that same vibration in my boot. That hum on the edge of hearing. And just like they did aboard the Kusanagi, every light in the cell dies.
The camera dies.
And joy, the magnetic locks on my restraints and on the door die too.
I’m on my feet in a flash, jamming my boot against the frame and prying it apart. But my belly rolls as I lose my balance, arms flailing as I keep rising up off the floor. I see the remains of my meal doing the same, the empty water box floating just above the tray.
The door comes open, and peering out into the pitch-black hallway, I realize immediately what’s happened—my EMP hasn’t only knocked out the electronics inside my cell. It’s knocked out the electronics on the whole ship. That means engines. That means life support. And aside from what’s being provided by our thrust, that means gravity.
Whoops.
I can hear voices from the bridge—Cohen, demanding a status update. The auto-repair systems on a ’Bow are top-tier, which means power and engines might be back online any second. But while I might not know how long this is gonna last, what I do know is what this squad’s Alpha is likely to do about it. There’s rules for this kind of thing, and there was a time I was a real stickler for rules.
I’m waiting above the hatchway to the engine room when Cohen’s Brain and Gearhead come floating through. They’ve taken time to don their protective gear—enviro-suits and safety cables, the flashlights on their helmets cutting lines of light through the dark. The EMP has knocked out their comms, but we still have atmo, so they can talk at least.
“No sign of damage,” the Gearhead reports. He’s a quick, wiry-looking Betraskan named Trin de Vriis, top 3 percent of our year. He’d have been my first pick after Cat in the Draft if I’d had the chance.
“Power is down through the entire ship,” the Brain reports, stabbing at his dead uniglass. He’s the Weaver Syldrathi who sassed me on the docks. His name is Anethe, top 10 percent of our year. I considered him for a while, but his spatial dynamics scores weren’t great. And his performance in zero-gee hand-to-hand was borderline average.
That’s why I hit de Vriis first, kicking off the bulkhead and flying at him like a spear. I crash into his back, and he gasps as his faceplate smashes into the engine casing. The gees are low enough I can use his own momentum for thrust and the engine housing as a pivot. And his scream rings out in the dark as I dislocate his shoulder with a sickening crunch.
Anethe is staring at me wide-eyed, face pale. To his credit, he doesn’t run, but like I say, his zero-gee was bad. My kick is hard enough to make him puke, and as he tears his helmet from his head rather than choke on the vomit, I lay him out with a nerve-strike I picked up from Kal during that brawl on Sempiternity. Turning back to a groaning de Vriis, I choke him with a sleeper hold until he blacks out.
2–nil.
De Renn is more trouble. I actually lied to him on the dock: he’d have been my first pick for Tank if I hadn’t gotten lumped with Kal. I genuinely liked the guy. We used to play jetball back in academy days.
But I guess these aren’t academy days anymore.
I ambush him as he floats back from his sweep of my cell—Cohen obeying regs, easy to predict, yet again. De Renn’s disruptor won’t work after the EMP, and he’s broken out some weapons, no doubt from his own personal stash—a pair of hooked Betraskan fighting sticks called satkha.
I wallop him in the back of the head with a fire extinguisher, but even stunned he doesn’t drop, actually gives me a decent shot to the jaw before I take a leaf from the Saedii Gilwraeth playbook and lay him out with a thunderous knee to the groin. He goes belly-up, making a noise I can only describe as a squeam—half-scream, half-squeal.
I wrench off his helmet and put a sleeper hold on him, struggling to control him as he flails and bucks. He finally goes limp, and I choke him for as long as it’s safe, then give him an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, buddy. No hard feels.”