The room is against the outer hull, but I don’t know if it’s on the port side of the ship or starboard. I’m thinking of it as port for the time being to help keep my bearings. I turn left at the door and hurry down the corridor to the nearest corner. It’s the only direction I can go.

  Once around the corner, I break into a run down another corridor that seems to cross the width of the freighter—about thirty meters—trying to guess what Rozik will guess I’m going to do. There’s another cross-corridor in the center of the craft that seems to cut most of the ship’s length. That means I’m high enough to be over the cargo hold that likely fills most of the lower decks. But there’s no sign of a bridge, so I’m probably on the first deck with nothing but hull and space above me.

  Fair enough.

  I stop to listen for the soft swooshing of an elevator or the closing door to a stairwell. This freighter is tiny compared to many of the legal traders that navigate the Sphere—small enough to move fast and avoid detection—making it possible that Rozik and me might just crash into one another.

  I hear the tell-tale sign of the elevator a moment later, and I move up against the wall, leaning around the corner so I can see Rozik walk right past the central corridor. He’s headed for my room. I notice he doesn’t have the carbine on him, but he could possibly have the pistols tucked somewhere I can’t see them.

  There are a few roads I can take here. One, try to sneak up behind him and catch him off-guard. Two, find another room to hide in and try to catch him when he enters to search it. Three, make a break for the elevator to get down to the bridge and lock myself in. If I can manage three, I can figure out where we are and make a jump back to Alliance territory.

  It’s risky because of the distance. Trying to take Rozik by surprise is riskier. He’s well-trained, making it unlikely I can sneak up on him. The safest option is to hide in another room, but will he hear the door opening and closing? I don’t have time to think too much about it.

  I break for the elevator, picking up speed and rushing all-out down the hallway while at the same time trying to keep my feet landing as softly as possible.

  I’m not silent. I just hope I’m quiet enough. I slow as I near the corner, turning toward the elevator without looking. It’s only a couple of meters away, and I have to come to a quick stop to prevent myself from overshooting.

  “Alliance!” Rozik shouts.

  I hit the controls before I turn to look at him. He’s in different clothes too, a suit not unlike the one I’m wearing, though it’s more of a maroon than a navy. He has no shot of fitting into the same size I’m wearing; he’s much too broad and muscled. His new clothes probably belonged to one of the owner’s bodyguards or his chauffeur. Some part of me is slightly amused by the thought.

  The elevator door slides open.

  He has his hands up, showing me he isn’t armed. “Grayson, wait.”

  “Wait for what? So you can cold-cock me again, you son of a bitch?”

  He’s walking toward me, going slow because he knows he can’t get to me before I’m gone. “I didn’t have a choice,” he says. “If you’ll just wait a minute I can explain.”

  I don’t wait for him to explain anything. There’s no misunderstanding in locking someone in a room, however nice that room is. I hop on the elevator and tap the control screen. The freighter has ten decks. Experience tells me the bridge is on three, so that’s where I want to go.

  Rozik turns and breaks into a run. I assume he’s going for the emergency stairs to follow me down to deck three, so I don’t linger.

  When the elevator doors open, I cut back to the central corridor, pleased to see what has to be the door to the bridge ahead of me. The ship is more familiar here, bare metal and sparse compared to the carpeted halls above. I sprint across the metal deck to the door, coming to a hard stop when it doesn’t move aside at my approach.

  Damn it. The security panel is on my left, and I tap on it. A green light scans my face. The panel flashes red.

  ACCESS DENIED.

  Son of a bitch.

  I sigh heavily and lay my forehead against the door in defeat. Behind me, I hear the stairwell door open and spin around, sprinting back toward the elevator. Before I can reach it, Rozik comes around the corner right in front of me, and I skid to a stop, managing to get one good shot at him before he can react. My fist hits him in the jaw with a crack, and for half a second I think I’ve gotten the better of him.

  But he doesn’t stumble back or even lose focus. My punch throws me forward and I can’t regain my balance before he has hold of my arm. He slams me backwards into the bulkhead, and I have to lean forward to keep the needle from jamming itself further into my head. Rozik doesn’t waste a step, jerking me around to wrap his arm around my neck and pull me into a choke-hold.

  “Damn it, Alliance,” he growls in my ear. “If you’ll calm down for a second, I’ll explain everything.”

  “Explain what?” I grit back through my clamped teeth as I struggle to free myself. He’s making it hard to breathe. “What the hell is there to explain? You left them to die. You knocked me out and locked me up. You brought us to gods knows where. Commune space, I’m sure. I get it, you’re doing your duty. But I have a duty too.”

  “I know that. Which is exactly why I knocked you out and locked you up before you could do irreparable harm to either one of us.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Give me a chance without fighting me to explain. War is coming to humankind, Grayson. Right now we’re the only ones who know it. I told you on Warrick, and I’ll tell you again now. There is no room for Alliance against Commune. No room for old scars to breed new mistrust. Every move we make is of vital importance not only to prepare our people for what’s coming but to show them we can face it together.”

  He’s got his arms locked around me so I can’t see his face. But his voice is calm, and the truth is he didn’t bring a gun down to my cage, so maybe he’s telling the truth. Then again, I’m no match for him hand-to-hand. He’s already proven that...twice now.

  “The Commune would give you every medal they have to bring Odin Longknife in,” I say.

  He laughs. “Yes, they would. And I won’t tell you the thought hasn’t tempted me.” His arms loosen, and when I try to wiggle out of them he lets me. I turn around to look him in the eye. “That in itself should tell you how important what I just told you is to me. And how much I believe in it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m an old dog like you, Odin. I’ve seen things, done things you wouldn’t believe in the name of the Commune. I believed our mission beyond the Disturbance would bear fruit that would end the war.” He shakes his head. “Instead, we’ve started a new one. Yes, many in the Commune will delight at the work of the banshees and the deaths of thousands, with potential for billions more to come. But I was there in that lifeless space, where all the stars were cold and dead. And I know it’s up to you and me to find a way to stop it.”

  The pain of loss is still raw inside me. I push it back down, regaining a grip on my anger. I can hear the sincerity in his voice, and I want so much to believe it. But old scars never heal entirely. A part of me can’t let go of the mistrust. It whispers in my head, telling me this is just another trick. After all, it’s easier to catch flies with honey.

  But there are times along the road of life when you have to make decisions without knowing where they’re going to lead you. Where you have to take a leap of faith and follow your instincts, even if sometimes those instincts are wrong. I did it with Shae the first time I saw her when in my soul I knew she was the one.

  I decide to make that kind of choice again now.

  We aren’t friends, Rozik and me. We’ve never been friends and never will be. But the fates brought us together for something bigger. And maybe, just maybe, we can survive one another long enough to change the universe.

  It’s a grand thought, and I’m chalking it up to the trauma. Better to start small.

  “I don’t want Joie to die,” I say.

  “I don’t know if we can stop that now,” he replies. “But we’ll try.”

  I nod and put out my hand. He takes it, grasping it tightly. “Peace to you, Grayson,” he says.

  “Peace to you, Verge,” I reply.

  We seal the truce with a firm shake.

  A shrill tone sounds around us, causing us both to flinch.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Proximity alert,” Rozik replies. “Damn it. I was hoping the area was clear.”

  “Where are we?” I can’t imagine where in the Sphere Rozik brought us that someone is approaching this closely within minutes after our arrival.

  “Nevermind that now,” he says, rushing to the security panel and letting it scan his face.

  The door to the bridge opens. I follow him inside, getting behind him as he brings up a projected display of the freighter and the space around it. Three small ships are approaching from three different vectors. Rozik growls softly and looks back at me.

  “We’re about to be attacked.”

  Chapter 4

  “Who are they, pirates?” I ask, staring at the display and the three ships.

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Open a hailing channel. Maybe we can talk them out of attacking us.”

  He looks skeptical, but Rozik does as I ask. The ships continue to close, rendered in the projection as wedges that could easily be Skirmishers.

  “No response,” he replies. Neither one of us is surprised. The only question is whether they intend to disable the freighter and then board or try to take it relatively intact.

  “Do we have any guns on this thing?” I ask.

  “Confirmed. Standard freighter defense. Plasma cannons and scattershot launchers.”

  I wince at the mention of scattershot. The weapon throws shrapnel across a wide path and lets the physics of space do all the work. It’s cheap to operate and extremely effective against certain types of ships at close range, but it’s generally a desperation tactic. Once your opponent knows you have scattershot, all they need to do is fall back and hit you from a distance. Disable the power supply, disable the guns, kill the crew and you can capture the target vessel along with its cargo.

  If these guys are smart, they’ll send in one craft to test the waters before the entire group closes.

  “We should let them come,” Rozik says, looking at me.

  “They’ll blast us to hell if we hit them with the scattershot.”

  “Who said anything about shooting at them? If they intend to board, we should let them board.”

  And that seems to be their intention or they would have started shooting already. They’re probably taking our reluctance to shoot back as a sign we aren’t going to be any trouble. Truth is, freighters get robbed all the time, especially on the Sphere’s outer rim. For some operators the best defense is no defense. It’s more economically viable to lose an occasional cargo than to lose your ship or have to hire on a crew to defend it. Of course, that plan can backfire too. When you’re dealing with pirates you can never know for sure how things will play out.

  “Do we have cargo on board?” I ask.

  “Yes. Quite a lucrative one.”

  “We should let them have it, if that’s what they want.”

  “I think we should kill them all and be done with them,” he replies. Then he stands up again. “I’ll be right back.”

  I don’t question him. I sit down, keeping an eye on the projection. I cancel the proximity alerts after a few seconds and watch as the three ships alter their vectors, approaching more slowly. They’re expecting an attack. Maybe they see the egress ports for the scattershot.

  I use the controls to activate the camera feeds and bring the live view up on the primary display. Two of the ships are hard to discern in the darkness of space. The other one is coming up framed in the background by a brown planet a good three or four AU distant. The head-on profile makes it tough to identify but it looks to me like a run of the mill Yellowjacket reclaim.

  A Yellowjacket is like the transport version of a Skirmisher. Similar in size and shape, but instead of all the cool stuff, they have open space to carry a squad of soldiers and a tractor beam to help them latch onto ships for boarding. They’ve also got big-ass thrusters that help them outrun most ships larger than themselves and some that are smaller. Shields, and only a pair of fixed plasma blasters for guns. I’ve heard stories about how AOP carrier fleets used to run missions with them against Commune fleets near the front. The job of the Skirmisher squadrons was to escort the Yellowjackets to the capital ships so our boarding teams of elite Marines could seize them, which made sense because it sure as hell beat taking months to build our own warships.

  The problem was never with the Yellowjackets. They made successful boards seventy percent of the time, a record rate for that kind of incursion. But the Commune got smart to the idea and eventually developed surface defenses against them, rendering the entire strategy ineffective. Since the Alliance couldn’t use the Yellowjackets for their intended purpose anymore they auctioned them off to various interests who needed ships for more innocent jobs like smaller cargo hauls between ships or surface to orbit, that sort of thing. The aging Yellowjackets were auctioned off a second time, intended for scrap, but the criminal element started scooping them up and putting them back into service as they were originally intended. While military ships began installing countermeasures, only a handful of shipping companies could afford to do the same for their cargo haulers and freighters.

  Which is why there are three of them heading for us right now. That they’re alone is a good sign because it puts the likelihood they’ll try to disable the freighter close to nil. It’s also a bad sign, because it means they intend to seize the ship, not just its contents.

  I flip a switch to activate Valhalla’s internal comms. “Rozik, I’ve got visual ID. Three Yellowjackets incoming.”

  I’m not sure if he’ll answer. He either needs to find a nearby station or he needs to have an individual comm he picked up somewhere.

  “Copy that, Odin,” he replies. I guess he did pick one up. “This is going to complicate matters a little, isn’t it?”

  “Eighteen boarders if they’re fully loaded,” I reply.

  “Pirates aren’t normally fully loaded, but either way two people can’t be in three places at the same time. They’re going to board, one way or another.”

  “Seems like it’s unavoidable. They must’ve picked us up on their scanners the moment we came in-system. Where the hell are we, anyway?”

  “Nowhere on any Alliance or Commune map,” Rozik says cryptically. I look back because his voice isn’t coming through the comm anymore. He’s entering the bridge, a pair of carbines and bandoliers over his shoulder and a pair of holstered pistols in his hands. “I couldn’t bring us to the Commune and keep you safe.”

  “And this is better?”

  He shrugs. “We have a choice to make. Surrender and hope they’re reasonable or fight back and take our chances.”

  “You know more about this sector than I do. What’s your opinion?”

  “I’ve got Odin Longknife,” he replies. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Chapter 5

  Who I am isn’t the best reason to fight back. Odin Longknife is infamous as a pilot and to a lesser degree a tactician. Not that my tactics are particularly good. I’ve had the honor of working with people whose skills made them work regardless. Besides, the stories have gotten exaggerated over time and turned into something the reality never was.

  Even so, if Rozik thinks we have a better chance by defending the ship, then I’m not going to argue. I take the offered carbine, bandolier and pistols, and put them on over my suit. I can only imagine how I look. The suit I’m wearing probably costs more than a year of Astro wages, I’ve got a bandolier slung over one shoulder, a carbine over the other, a pistol holstered to my hip, and an energy rifle in my hands. It reminds me of those action movies Bryce and I used to watch together in the VORN theater. The thought reminds me we haven’t done that in a while. I hope when all of this is over we’ll have a chance to do it again.

  I also accept the personal comm he offers me—a small wad of gel that I shove into my ear.

  “Kill the power,” he says. “Emergency systems only.”

  I activate the requisite controls on my terminal. The lack of thrust from the ship is more noticeable once the reactor reduces output and the ion pushers stop pushing. A different kind of stillness settles over Valhalla as the main lights are replaced by dimmer, red emergency lighting and the gravity coils reduce their power draw.

  “Done,” I say, glancing at the tactical. The Yellowjackets are only a hundred kilometers out, approaching more cautiously now that they’re close. “Now what?”

  Rozik smirks. “Now we get ready to go hunting. They’re going to take the power reduction as a sign that we plan to fight back. They’ll come out of their boarding tubes weapons hot and ready for a firestorm. Only they won’t get one. They’ll wander the ship looking for crew, not expecting only two of us. When they leave their ships, we’ll double-back and take out the pilots first.”

  “You want to trap them here?” I ask.

  “The pilots will be keeping tabs on the squads and forming the relays for their comm network. First order of business is to cut them off. Isolate and neutralize.”

  “You’ve done this before,” I say.

  “Not exactly like this,” Rozik replies. “Follow my lead and we’ll be fine.”

  In this case, I believe him. “You want to stick together or split up?”

  “Split up,” he replies. “One of the ships will breach the hold. That’s standard procedure for an operation like this.”

  “So what are we hauling?”

  “The usual.”