They’d all piled onto the ship in a mad dash. Commander Garrin said the mission was extremely urgent. Raine and Inelius were off having dinner or something when they’d got the call, Aurania had just hollered at Brolgar and Elias to let them know what was going on and rushed everyone else out of the common room. Brana had been in the middle of maintenance inside The Ghost of Mandachor.

  Aurania just told her, “Guess you’re coming with us then, get us flying.”

  They’d hauled ass out of the hangar, immediately engaged Jump Drive, and burned hard for four hours, not even reaching the full acceleration of FTL before Tamiyo started bringing them back out of it.

  Aurania stood up, her head almost touching the ceiling, and looked around at the team. Riza, Amalia, Violet. Soren felt her gaze linger just a sliver longer on him. Then she looked at Veolo. “Command is hardest when the stakes are high.”

  Veolo stared back, nervous but firm.

  Aurania’s gaze took another sweep over them all. “No hype talk—who here thinks Veolo is ready to lead a mission?”

  The rest of them exchanged assessing glances. Violet raised her hand. Then Amalia. Soren next. Veolo looked at all of them, then looked at Riza with a silent question.

  Riza shook her head calmly. “Abstaining. Not yay, not nay.”

  Veolo looked unsure how to take that, but nodded nonetheless and looked back at their leader.

  “I am here to supervise, then,” Aurania said firmly. “You have command—me, Riza, all of us. Give us the mission briefing again.”

  Aurania sat down and Veolo stood, taking her place. Soren noted she was sweating a little, but when she spoke, her voice didn’t shake.

  “A pirate ship is attempting to get a ransom out of the Liberty Union. They are threatening to launch long-range nuclear missiles propelled by fission rockets at several colonies within the Hypsila system. One of the indicated targets is a residential city on the planet of Nemenas with a population of over three million. The other target is the planet Taejin. It does not support life, but it has a large outpost that is highly valued to the LU. Raw fuel is mined there that keeps a terraforming station in orbit around another planet that is being slowly nursed back to life after a catastrophic meteor impact years ago. Without the fuel, that project will be abandoned.”

  She looked around the room, her gaze locking with each of them in turn as she let them digest the info.

  “How are we boarding?” Soren asked.

  “False flag,” Veolo answered. “We pose as if delivering the payment of physical, untraceable currency.”

  “Big gambit,” Amalia noted.

  “Any play we make against them will be,” Veolo said confidently.

  Aurania nodded. “So what's the move when we're inside?”

  “Well,” Veolo breathed, “we work with the team we have on hand.” She turned and looked at the figure lying on her back under a console. “Brana, up for some thrilling heroics?”

  The d'moria woman scooted out to look Veolo in the eyes. “I am a mechanic.”

  “Exactly,” Veolo said. “We go in, then you sneak on after us and start disabling the ship.”

  Brana's eyes darted around. “All by my lonesome.”

  “No,” Veolo shook her head. “You'll have the strongest lacravida alive watching over you.” She cocked an eyebrow in Aurania's direction. “Supervising.”

  Aurania grinned back. “Cute.”

  Brana pushed herself up to sitting. “Yeah, why not. Plan seems crazy but,” she pushed up to standing and moved toward the gear lockers, “I've been sane a while, and change is good.”

  “Alright,” Veolo said confidently. “Let's go be heroes.”

  Brana suited up in vacuum-sealed armor, just like the rest of them, and strapped a handgun into a thigh holster.

  From the cockpit, Tamiyo made contact. "Pirate vessel Bloody Burninator, this is independent freighter The Ghost of Mandachor. We are responding to your request for ransom.”

  Soren shot an amused, skeptical look at Amalia and Violet. With a grin, he muttered, “What's the name of their ship?”

  The pirate's voice crackled back, laced with suspicion. "An independent freighter? The LU's got this whole system locked down. How'd you get through?"

  "We're not LU," Tamiyo replied, her tone sharp, almost offended. "We've got family on Nemenas. The Union is dragging its feet, and we're not waiting for them to get their bureaucratic bullshit in gear while a clock is ticking. We've pooled our resources. We have your payment."

  There was a long pause.

  “We have your funds,” Tamiyo pressed, her voice turning aggressive. "Completely untraceable. Do you really care who pays it, so long as you get your money?"

  Another pause.

  Then, a new voice cut through, deeper and more authoritative. "Power down your engines. Prepare for docking. Any funny business, and we'll turn your little freighter into a cloud of scrap."

  "Copy that," Tamiyo replied, cutting the channel.

  The team scrambled, Brana crawling into a large, reinforced cargo crate. Over her, they placed a thin but sturdy tray. They layered it with every physical credchip they could scrounge up. At a quick glance, it looked like the crate was stacked full.

  When they docked and the outer airlocks of both ships opened up, Soren saw five heavily armed pirates through the inner door's small window. A cluster of borderline shouts were hurled back and forth from both sides, but finally, a tense agreement was reached: everyone kept their weapons in hand as long as the barrels stayed low.

  The outer hatches groaned open, and Soren and Aurania each took one side of the crate. They strained and struggled theatrically as they hauled it aboard the pirate's larger vessel, acting like it weighed a hell of a lot more than a 4’9” d'moria woman in space armor.

  Once they set it down in the entry hallway, a tense standoff followed. The pirate leader stepped forward, a big lazarco with one cybernetic eye and a missing lower-left arm.

  "Let's see it," he demanded.

  Veolo, perfectly composed, nodded to Aurania. She slowly lifted the lid, revealing the glittering layer of credchips.

  One of the pirates started to move closer and Aurania slammed the lid shut.

  "Ah-ah," Veolo placed a hand flat on the man's chest, stopping him cold. "You've seen ours. Now show us yours. The payment stays here, guarded by two of mine and one of yours, until we get confirmation that those missiles are disarmed."

  The leader's cybernetic eye whirred, analyzing her. Then a low chuckle rumbled in his chest. “You’re in my ship, surrounded by my crew. I don’t think you’re in a position to make demands.”

  The white, full-face helmet that Veolo wore had red glowing eyes, the shape of it angled similarly to her own canine-like ears. She stared back unwavering, her visage like a cold, demonic wolf. Then she turned to them and calmly said, “Pick up the crate, they obviously don't want their payday.”

  Soren did as instructed, lifting the crate alongside Aurania with a feigned grunt.

  “And you’re obviously willing to let those people burn,” the pirate challenged angrily.

  Veolo rounded on him and spat, “You know the issue with hostage negotiation? You only get to pull the trigger once. And it gets harder and harder the closer you are to getting what you want. If we leave, you send off those nukes—maybe the LU can stop them, maybe not. But either way, you will die. Quick, fast, and in a hurry. Or,” she gestured to the crate, “you can disarm the missiles and take the damn money.”

  The pirate huffed, baring his teeth with a snarl. Then he growled, “Fine. Let's go.” He ordered one of his men to stay and turned to walk away.

  “Aura, Riza,” Veolo’s voice boomed. “Stay here. The rest of you, with me.”

  Soren set the crate back down and fell into step behind Amalia and Violet, a smirk hidden behind his full-face helmet. The moment they cleared the hallway, he knew Riza would kill that guard without so much as a whisper.

  The pirates led them down a long corridor, their heavy boots clanging on the grated deck plates. Approaching a T-junction, they turned right, but Soren noted what was to the left as he rounded the corner: a galley with four more pirates gathered around a table.

  He didn't say anything, but he held the image of the room and the men in it firmly in his mind, intentionally letting it slip through the mental link and back to Aurania.

  They entered a massive, cavernous chamber, the air thick with the smell of oil, fuel, and hot metal. A raised platform dominated the center of the room, and at least eight more pirates were scattered about. Several had tools in hand, but all of them wore sidearms. Most held heavy rifles in hand.

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  And above them, nestled in their launch cradles, sat the missiles.

  The word alone didn’t do them justice. They were colossal, each one larger than a city bus, their dark hulls bristling with fins and conduits. Soren didn’t need to be an expert to know that they were packed with enough fissile material to turn a city into a glass-cratered tomb. Any nuclear explosions Soren was familiar with from human history would look like firecrackers compared to the blast these things would make.

  From the door they entered, they moved left, heading down a short flight of stairs to the ship’s bridge. Two more pirates glanced up from the controls, their expressions a mixture of boredom and impatience.

  The leader gestured to one of them and ordered, "Power down the missiles."

  The pirate tapped a few commands, and several loud clicks rang out in the large room behind them. An ambient hum that had been present slowly faded as well. The leader turned to Veolo, a self-satisfied look on his face. "There. Happy?"

  "Are you joking?" Veolo’s head physically recoiled. "What’s to stop you from simply re-arming them the minute we leave the ship? No—eject the missiles into space. Disarmed. The LU can recover them after you leave the system."

  The leader growled and glowered, but after a moment, he gave a reluctant nod and spat, "Fine. But to manually override and eject without firing, we have to go back to the missile bay."

  He walked past them, and as they ascended the stairs the leader keyed his comm. "Jax, we’re almost done here. Status report."

  Soren’s anxiety immediately spiked.

  All that answered was static.

  The leader slowed, looking back at them with extreme suspicion. He raised a hand to key the comms again—

  And the ship's power sputtered out. The main lights died, plunging them into the red glow of the emergency strobes.

  Good shit, Brana.

  “Kill them!” the pirate leader roared. “Launch the miss—!”

  Veolo shot him in the throat.

  His body slumped to the floor.

  Soren was already moving, taking up a position beside Veolo. They laid down a barrage of suppressive fire at the eight pirates in the chamber, who were scrambling for cover. He could hear chaotic gunshots behind him, but he trusted Violet and Amalia to handle the two pirates on the bridge.

  Between Soren and Veolo, three pirates met their end, their bodies crashing in heaps behind the crates they used for cover. But then Veolo took a hard hit to the shoulder, the impact of the round staggering her. Her armor held and she dropped to one knee, still firing.

  Amalia immediately moved up to cover her, spitting rifle fire as she joined the main firefight. They popped in and out of cover, trading shots, and another pirate went down. But the last four were dug in, and neither side could seem to gain ground.

  “Violet!” Veolo yelled. “Bridge status!”

  “These two both pulled full-autos out of their ass!” Violet screamed back. “I’m pinned down! Can’t get in there!”

  To Soren’s right, a massive shape wielding a greataxe flew into the room, cleaving one of the pirates in half. She was followed by a lightning-quick shadow. Riza had NMW stowed on her back and an egregiously oversized combat dagger in hand that looked perfectly normal in her grip.

  The last three pirates dropped like flies.

  Soren turned his attention back to the bridge just as Violet tried to push in again. She was met with a hail of bullets, three rounds slamming into her armor and forcing her back behind cover as she returned fire. More rounds slammed off the door frame from inside. And then an aggressive, blaring klaxon cut through the chaos. The thrusters on both missiles began to charge, and their engines started to glow.

  “Shit!” Veolo yelled. “Soren! Rush the bridge! We have to stop the launch!”

  He sprinted straight through the doorway, battering through the hailstorm of machinegun fire. Bullets hammered against his armor plating, some ricocheting with angry whines, others punching through with a searing, white-hot pain. It hurt like hell, but he ignored it. He knew it wouldn't stop him.

  Both pirates were crouched behind their pilot's chairs, full-auto rifles in hand. Stacks of spare magazines lay beside them, ready for a protracted fight. The one shooting at him ducked down and his partner immediately popped up, taking over the barrage. But the first pirate didn't go for a reload. His hands scrambled for the launch console.

  Soren lunged at him, grabbing the man’s head. He slammed it down onto the controls, again and again, until the man’s face was a bloody mess and his arms drooped limply at his sides.

  The other pirate had kept shooting Soren, despite the obvious futility. But with his attention drawn away from the doorway, he never stood a chance against the rest of the team gunning him down.

  Everything went quiet.

  For a moment, the only sound in the universe was the deafening, insistent blare of the launch klaxon. Back in the missile bay, heavy blast shields slid shut, sealing the bay and providing an airtight barrier as the nukes were exposed to the void of space.

  “Stop it, Soren!” Veolo yelled.

  The rockets lit.

  The entire ship shuddered violently as two of the largest missiles Soren had ever seen ignited and launched from their berths. They tore away from the ship, twin spears of fire and doom arcing into the black. They immediately angled in different directions, one streaking toward the populated city of Nemenas, the other banking hard toward the Taejin Fuel Mine.

  “Soren!” Veolo roared without hesitation. “Grab Riza! Everyone, shoot out that viewport! Now!”

  He leapt across the room and clasped forearms with the black-clad legend as the rest of the team unleashed a furious barrage on the bridge's large, main window. The reinforced glass spiderwebbed, then shattered, and the entire room immediately depressurized. Air, glass, debris, shell casings and dead bodies—all of it was sucked into the silent void. They all grabbed hold of something to keep from being sucked out—all but one.

  “Amalia!” Violet screamed, her hand outstretched.

  Their spark in the dark flailed uselessly, hands shooting out toward anything she could try to grab. Her body twisted the wrong way to help and her leg clipped the edge of the viewport as she sailed through it.

  Spinning, she drifted out into the dark.

  “I’m fine!” Amalia’s voice came back over comms, chipper as ever as she tumbled end over end. “Just grab me after!”

  Soren felt the vacuum sucking at the air in his suit, the system instantly locking its seals to keep the oxygen inside his helmet.

  Veolo’s voice cut through the chaos again. “Soren! I need you and Riza outside on the hull!”

  She was in charge and Soren wasn’t questioning orders. Neither did Riza. They moved together, forearms clasped, pulling themselves through the shattered viewport. They grabbed the jagged edge of the hull, whipping their bodies up onto the top of the ship and bracing against the exterior plating.

  “We’re out here!” Soren yelled into his comm.

  “The one that went left!” Veolo screamed back. “It’s headed for Nemenas! Throw Riza as hard as you can! She needs to get close enough to shoot it!”

  He looked at Riza and braced himself against the hull. She kept hold of him as she positioned the bottom of her armored hooves firmly on his palm and forearm. She was perched like a gargoyle, ready to jump.

  He heard a cold hiss growl through his comms.

  “Do. Not. Miss.”

  With a roar of effort, he hurled her through space. She jumped at the apex of his throw, adding the strength of her legs to his own superhuman might.

  She disappeared almost immediately, her black armor obscuring her silhouette as she grew smaller and smaller, disappearing into the void.

  For several long seconds, nothing happened.

  Soren’s pulse hammered in his ears, and he became keenly aware of his own breathing against the deafening quiet of space.

  Then, there was a silent, brilliant flash.

  The nuke detonated in a massive, white-blue ball of plasma, a miniature sun born and dying in an instant. There was no air for sound, no shockwave to blast through them. Just the terrifying beauty of absolute destruction, contained and neutralized in the cold, empty dark.

  They never even saw her shoot, never heard the report of her cannon. One moment, there was a missile. The next, there was a flash.

  And then, there was nothing.

  Soren was smiling inside his helmet. At least the greater of two evils had been averted.

  “Back to the ship!” Veolo yelled over the comms. “Double-time!”

  He pulled himself along the hull, back down into the bridge where everything now floated, airless and weightless. He pulled himself to the door, where everyone else had already made it through, following them back through the disabled ship.

  He caught up as they were rounding the last corner into the long hallway. He slid along the wall until he could brace his feet against the bulkhead, then launched himself straight toward the airlock. Aurania was braced at the threshold. As soon as he passed by, she pulled herself in, cramming them all into the airlock like sardines. She slammed a hand against the cycle button.

  “We’re in!” Aurania yelled over comms. “Go, Tamiyo! Detach! Get Riza, she’s moving faster!”

  “Negative,” Riza’s calm voice called back. “I’m fine. Get Amalia first.”

  “Second that notion,” Amalia radioed in, her voice a little strained. “If I keep spinning I’m gonna throw up.”

  The ship shuddered as it detached and the engines roared to life, chasing after the tumbling, bubbly lacravida.

  “Did we contact the LU?!” Soren asked. “Let them know about the other missile?”

  “Yeah,” Aurania breathed, her shoulders sagging against the wall. “I don’t know if they’ll be able to stop it in time. Hopefully they can evac enough people.”

  The airlock finished cycling and full gravity returned with a lurch. The inner door slid open, and they all fell out in a tangled, ungraceful pile, scrambling further into the ship to give each other room.

  After a minute, Tamiyo’s voice called back from the cockpit. “I need someone in the airlock! Coming up on Amalia!”

  “Got it!” Soren hopped up and ran back in, hitting the cycle button to depressurize the chamber again.

  “There’s a tether line in one of the lockers!” Tamiyo said. “Attach it to your suit and the padeye on the wall!”

  He did as instructed, finishing just as the cycle completed. He opened the outer door just as Amalia came rolling into view. She made a noise over comms that sounded nauseous and not like any word Soren recognized.

  He jumped out, trusting the line to hold him, and didn't even attempt to grab any of her flailing limbs. He just reached both arms forward and collided with her, wrapping his arms around her waist and absorbing her momentum. She stopped spinning.

  She made another noise, slightly more coherent this time. He reached back for the line, pulling them both back toward the safety of the ship.

  Once they were both safely in the airlock, the ship twisted, and Tamiyo started burning hard, the engines roaring as they headed toward Riza. The recoil from her cannon had sent her careening off on a completely different trajectory from Soren’s throw, but she’d activated the tracking signal in her suit. They found her easily enough, a lone, dark figure sailing quite unbothered through the void.

  But there was nothing to be done about the other missile. The LU tried to stop it, their ships scrambling to intercept, but powered by the fission rocket, it was simply moving too damn fast.

  Veolo’s eyes were glued to the satellite feed from Taejin, her helmet off, her jaw set with frustration. Soren pulled his own helmet off, watching the screen and waiting for the missile to close the distance. Then he turned to Veolo, attempting to break through the heavy silence in the ship. “You did good today. Better than good.”

  She looked at him, her silver eyes blazing with rage and grief. He could see her holding back tears.

  “You thought fast, made a tough call,” he continued. “Millions of people are alive because of that call.”

  “He’s right,” Aurania said from the other side of the room. “You should be proud.”

  Veolo looked between them, a tired, near-defeated look on her face.

  Through their mental link, Soren felt a strange, sharp twinge from Aurania. She was proud of Veolo, he could feel that. But his words of comfort to the younger warrior had hit her in the chest in a way that made her uncomfortable. And immediately following the uncomfortability was a wave of shame focused on the initial reaction.

  He looked over at her, and she immediately averted her eyes. She had been watching him, but now she refused to meet his gaze. Soren took a deep breath and sighed. He had no desire to get close to anyone but Aurania, but that wasn’t stopping her from having her own conflicted feelings about it.

  He looked back at the satellite footage. They all watched, powerless, as the missile sailed in. There was a flash of light on the screen, and Taejin Fuel Mine ceased to exist.

  Veolo didn't fall apart. She didn't cry. She just looked… hollow. She turned away from the screen and spoke in a hoarse, empty voice.

  “Good work, everyone.”