“Those starsuits will absorb some of the energy,” I reply.

  He smirks again. “It’s typical that someone like me should know these things. But why does someone like you know them? Haven’t all of your encounters come inside the cockpit of a Skirmisher?”

  “Not all. I was grounded after Capricorn while the Alliance tried to figure out what to do with me. They didn’t want to waste my talents, but I was too much of a target out in the open.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I’ve got stories to tell too. But I’m only trading them for your juicy details.”

  “Fair enough. Turn up the power, it’ll still knock them cold with one shot, kill them with two.”

  I look down at the PEP rifle. There’s a small dial on it, and I turn it until it doesn't turn anymore. It isn’t lost on me that the invaders have the weapons set to stun.

  “They aren’t trying to kill us,” I say.

  “Not now. They need a pilot. You’d be happier dead, I think.”

  “Elevator?” I ask.

  He nods, and we reset the maneuver. I step into the elevator and hit the controls to take it to deck three.

  I’m a little nervous now because I can’t imagine how Rozik could run up the steps fast enough to get here at the same time, exo or not. I level the PEP in front of the closed doors, hesitating a moment before thinking better of things and throwing myself into the corner.

  The elevator reaches deck three and the door slides open. Projectile rounds pour into the center of the cab from multiple pistols. I grimace while they’re peppering the area, the shots keeping me tight against the wall but ready to shoot.

  I’ve already squeezed the trigger on the PEP three times by the time their heads turn to see me. The lead tango drops as if the fates snipped his strings.

  Where the hell is Rozik?

  It only takes a half-second for the other pirates to redirect their aim, leaving me staring down the barrels of three guns. I throw my hands in front of my face, flinching as I feel their bullets smacking into my chest, well-aimed shots that would kill me if I weren’t wearing the suit.

  It isn’t a painless process. The suit absorbs ninety-percent of the energy of the rounds, but that ten percent is like a hard fist to the sternum over and over, and I clench my teeth in pain. But then their guns go empty, and I lower my hands while they pause to grab new magazines and reload.

  Like I’m going to give them that chance.

  They drop like flies as I fire the PEP. One. Two. Three. No sound, just wrinkled, pain-filled faces as they fall unconscious. I jump to my feet and move into the passageway, looking down at their helmeted faces. They’re all so young. Too young to be out here doing this, but I know why. The Alliance mandates military service to anyone who’s over eighteen and doesn’t have another family member in the armed forces. My kids were exempt because of that part of the rule, not that it stopped Bryce from joining regardless. Other kids, they run away from the law instead of enlisting, not realizing they aren’t doing themselves any favors. The front lines are dangerous and too many people are still dying. But the edge of the Sphere is dangerous too.

  And their fate is the same.

  I don’t want to kill them, but what else am I going to do with them? I can’t send them home or drop them off at the nearest recruitment office. Lock them up, I guess. The same way Rozik locked me up.

  I hear the stairwell door open and turn defensively, ready to shoot. Rozik’s standing there with a cut on his lip and a bruise near his cheek.

  “Four of them jumped me on the stairs,” he says before I can speak. He looks at my tangoes. “I figured you could handle yourself.” His eyes narrow. “They’re still alive.”

  “Stunned,” I reply. “They’re just kids.”

  “So what? Are you going to change their diapers for them too?” He reaches over and brushes some of the metal dust from my suit. “They were going to kill you.”

  “I’m supposed to kill them while they’re unconscious?”

  “It’s better than killing them when they wake up. Tell me none of the Commune fighters you shot down had an eighteen-year-old pilot.”

  “I don’t know how old the pilots were.”

  “Exactly. So why does their age make a difference here? They’re adults. They made their choices. It didn’t work out for them.”

  I look at the pirates again. Logically, Rozik’s right. I didn’t hesitate to kill the targets in the cargo hold because I couldn’t see their faces. Even so, I can’t look at them without seeing my kids. “I’m not a cold-blooded murderer.”

  Rozik looks at me, sighs, and then raises his PEP and finishes off the downed pirates. “Good thing for you that I am,” he growls. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 8

  We head from the elevator to the bridge. Splitting up again, each of us take an outer passageway. Rozik says he took out four of the pirates from Beta on the way up the stairs, and four more from Gamma are down behind us. The leaves only two left in Gamma to give us any trouble, assuming they haven’t decided to run back to their Yellowjacket.

  They aren’t outside the bridge when we arrive. The security lockout is still intact, so they didn’t hack the system to get inside. It means we’re still in control of the freighter, and they’re likely running scared.

  “They either headed back to their ride or made their way down to Beta,” Rozik says. “Safety in numbers.”

  “Not for them,” I reply. “How many tangoes do you figure are left?”

  “Six,” Rozik says, confident of his count. “Out of twenty-four. You did a number on them in the cargo hold. That was some quick thinking. And I was starting to think all the things I’ve heard about Odin Longknife are bollocks.”

  “Bollocks?” I ask.

  “Picked it up from Major Yult. It’s fun to say. Bollocks. Bollocks.”

  I have to admit, his accent does make the word sound funnier than it should. “Are you done?”

  “Yes.” He pauses. “Bollocks.”

  “Okay,” I reply. “Let’s find the last six tangoes and get back on mission.”

  He flips to serious like a switch, face hardening as he nods. “We’ll cut back to the Yellowjacket to look for the last two from Gamma, and then to engineering. I’ll bet you a thousand chrome they’re trying to transfer the thrust controls from the bridge to the station down there.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “If they have a halfway decent hacker with them...maybe. Without a pilot they’re more likely to crash into Naraka.”

  “Naraka...the planet?” I ask.

  “The station orbiting the planet.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “That’s because its residents and visitors don’t want the Alliance to shut it down.”

  I’m tempted to keep digging, but I want to get this whole pirate bollocks dealt with once and for all. I start back down the passageway, for the stairs to Deck One. Rozik lets me take point, and he stops to check the rooms we pass for occupants. They’re all vacant.

  We get to the stairwell. The lift is gone, moved to the first deck and proving the tangoes are on their way home. Only that’s bollocks too.

  “It’s a trick,” I say. “They didn’t go up.”

  “What makes you say that?” Rozik asks.

  “Experience and instinct.”

  “I agree. Shall we go to engineering? You can take the elevator.”

  “No thanks. I think it’s your turn.”

  We call for the elevator. Rozik steps inside and directs it down one floor. Then he steps out before the doors can slide closed. “How about we both take the stairs this time?”

  “Think they’ll fall for that?”

  “You saw how old they are. This is almost unfair.”

  “They managed to split your lip,” I point out.

  He puts a finger to the cut. “There were four of them, and they caught me by surprise.”

  “They shouldn’t have surprised you, a bunch of babies like that.”

  “Shut up.”

  I try to pass his arrogant smirk back at him, but he turns away before he sees it. We hurry down the stairs, trying to keep pace with the elevator. I’m impressed with the speed Rozik descends, and he pushes out of the stairwell door a good three paces ahead of me. He’s already fired his PEP four times when I catch up, good enough to take out the two guards posted there, both of them facing the elevator as if we were on board.

  “Unfair,” he says, leading me onward.

  We make our way aft to a wide blast door that I know prefaces engineering. There’s another security panel on the wall like the one for the bridge, but this one’s face is hanging from a wire, the internals exposed. A secondary device is hooked into it, preventing the door from locking.

  “Dead giveaway,” I say.

  “Good choice of words,” he replies.

  We approach the doorway with minimal caution. If the pirates have any intelligence, they’ll have another pair of guards posted on the other side of the blast door, waiting to shoot us the moment it starts to slide open. Only we’re both aware of that, and we scan the passage leading to the entrance.

  Rozik points at me, directing me to the far side of the sealed door. He stays on a straight path, and for a moment I think he’s crazy. There’s no reason for the tangoes not to use their pulse rifles, and the fancy suits we’re wearing won’t do much for that circumstance. He gets to within four meters of the door and then he jumps, getting one arm around a conduit running along the ceiling. He swings his legs until he’s hanging upside down.

  “Do it,” he says.

  We didn’t go over this beforehand, but I understand his train of thought. I sprint forward toward the door, causing it to slide open. I can see the muzzles of the pulse rifles as the door begins to move, along with the blue flashes that indicate they’re being fired. But the defenders’ aim is off, the energy going behind me as I run.

  Not that they have much more time to shoot. Rozik swings down, leading with his feet and kicking one of the guards in the chest. The door finishes opening, giving me an angle on the other guard. I shoot him with the PEP. Once. Twice. My target collapses. A moment later, Rozik’s does too.

  Unfair. He’s right about that.

  The corridors of engineering are less refined than the other parts of the freighter. Conduits and pipes run exposed along the walls and ceiling, leading back and spreading out over the open pit where the ship’s engineers—if there were any on board—would monitor the status of the systems.

  Rozik and me managed to take out the guards quietly, and we sneak to the end of the corridor, dropping to our stomachs and crawling out to the edge of the upper floor. There’s a stairwell on our right and three terminals down below. Pipes leading into and out of the main reactor are visible beneath the grated flooring under our feet. The doorway to the Mandelbrot drive—another heavy blast door designed to keep any problems with the device isolated to its specially designed chamber—is directly under us.

  The last four pirates are there, helmets off as they stand around the hacker who’s trying to seize the thrust controls.

  “How much longer?” one of them asks.

  “What does it matter?” another says. “We aren’t getting out of here alive. Our pilots are dead. I’ve got no response from Gavin or Neko. We’re all fracked.”

  “Shut the hell up, Lorne,” the hacker says. “I’m trying to work, and I don’t need your negativity distracting me.”

  “It isn’t negativity. It’s reality. I told you we shouldn’t hit a target so close to the station.”

  “Who knew they had the fracking ghost of Odin Longknife himself on board?” a third pirate says. Rozik glances over at me when he does. I know what he’s thinking, but the irony doesn’t change what we have to do.

  I motion to the targets, telling him which ones I’m going to shoot. He nods shortly, just about the time the hacker says, “I think I’ve got it.”

  We both stand up, pointing our rifles down at the group. They hear the movement and look up, and I can see the fear on their faces. I almost hesitate, but now instead of seeing my kids I see a group of idiot thieves as a barrier to saving millions of innocents.

  All four tangoes die in rapid succession.

  I look down at them for a few seconds, and then glance at Rozik. “Tell me more about Naraka.”

  Chapter 9

  “Like I was telling you before,” Rozik says as we make our way down to the engineering terminals and the dead pirates. “I decided not to bring you back to Commune space.”

  “Because you like me or because it’s too far away?”

  Rozik smirks again. “Not because I like you. Though I do respect you, Grayson. I suppose that’s why I haven’t killed you yet. I look at you and see a sworn enemy, but I also see a warrior unlike many others. If we’re going to fight the banshees, we need more people like you, not fewer.”

  “Pragmatic.”

  “Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I reply. “You would be dead right now. It doesn’t change the fact that you brought the banshees into the Sphere.”

  “We had no idea they would follow us through the Disturbance. Why would we assume they could? But it’s pointless to start that discussion again. We are where we are.”

  “And Naraka?”

  “A ghost world. It has its own synchronizer and was only a little over a day’s jump from Warrick. The perfect location for us to contact our respective military commanders.”

  “If the pirates don’t get us first.”

  “Apparently.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “No. But I’ve kept a record of ghost worlds and their coordinates. It’s valuable in my usual line of work.”

  “Assassin?”

  There’s the smirk again. “No.”

  It isn’t a good guess. An assassin wouldn’t wind up assigned to a fleet traveling beyond the Disturbance. He’s educated, intelligent, quick-witted and a well-trained fighter. He was the first to explore the dead alien starship. That means he’s accustomed to leading the charge and is smart enough to know what to do with what he finds.

  “You’re enjoying this game, aren’t you?” I ask.

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  We reach the terminals. I step over the dead to check on the hacker’s work. There’s a line of text at the bottom of the screen I don’t understand, but it looks to me like I shot her right before she transferred the thrust control. Good for us, because she probably wouldn’t have made it easy to transfer back to the bridge.

  “We’re good down here,” I say. “Do you want to evacuate the bodies?”

  “Not yet,” Rozik replies. “Let’s return to the bridge.”

  “Keep talking while we walk.”

  We head back up the steps and out of engineering, making our way toward the bridge. For the first time in the last few days I feel a sense of calm. Not because the universe around us is calm, though space always seems that way on the surface. But because I have a moment to take a breather. To walk from one place to another without my life under threat.

  Then I remember Rowdy.

  “Naraka is your standard ghost world,” Rozik says, going into greater detail. “Listed as uninhabited and low value on official star maps. It’s a desert world. Little rain that sinks right through the porous surface. Rocky and difficult to traverse.”

  “Sounds like a great place for a vacation.”

  “It can be if you have the right hobbies. Almost everyone there is either a refugee, a war criminal, a soldier gone AWOL or someone the normal interplanetary governments find undesirable for one reason or another. As you can probably guess, there’s no shortage of vice.”

  “And yet whoever owned this freighter brought it to Warrick instead of Naraka,” I say.

  “He knew the planet was here. But there’s little use for military APCs on a world like Naraka. They’ll sink right into the sand.”

  “Starships can’t land there either then.”

  “No. Naraka is like Warrick, with an orbiting station providing comm services to the rest of the Sphere. We’ll dock at the station and see if we can get use of their synchronizer. It’s transmitting through underground channels, but the Commune has agents monitoring them. I assume the Alliance is the same?”

  “I don’t know. We aren’t as suspicious of our allies as the Commune is of its own people.”

  Rozik laughs. “If you believe that you're falling for too much propaganda. I guarantee the Alliance has their fingers on the pulse of the darknet. In any case, we may be able to find someone who can hack us into the VORN. You can make official contact with your liaison there.”

  “My liaison? Don’t forget where you found me. I don’t have any personal connections to the AOP Navy.” There’s my son, but I’m not going to drag him into this. I have no doubt he’ll want me to use Bryce, and I don’t want to get him involved if I can avoid it. I decide to change the subject instead. We can deal with how to contact the Alliance once we reach the station. “Speaking of Warrick, I was just thinking about what Rowdy said before we left.”

  “Which part?”

  “About the freighter. He suggested the banshees might have put a tracking device on it.”

  “Do you think it’s a possibility?”

  “I think it’s risky not to think it’s a possibility, especially after they followed you from outside the Sphere.”

  “Yes, I’ve considered the same. I want to trade Valhalla for something more mission appropriate when we reach Naraka. I’m not sure how likely that is now that we’ve destroyed half the value of the cargo.”

  “We added a functional Yellowjacket.”

  “Not much value there, especially if the craft belongs to anyone of any repute in the region. But Valhalla does have a working Mandelbrot and those APCs. We may just need to compromise a bit on how much we can get for her in trade.”

  “My point is, If the banshees can track it, they can show up here at any time. A day from now, or an hour.”

  “All the more reason not to delay. But I don’t think they’ll be along too quickly. They’ll finish drawing power from Warrick’s sun first.”