Chapter 23
SOLEIL
Soleil sat curled on the cold alloy floor of her cramped berth aboard The Crimson Shrike, the Red Skulls’ battered command station.
The Shrike, once a salvage rig, nestled in the outer belt of the Cerulean Dimension like rusting carrion hidden within a cosmic fracture orbiting a spent, dark singularity..
Magnetic welds, spite, alloy rope, and patchwork synth steel girders held its structure together.
Coolant leaks, scorched circuitry, and bloodied nostalgia tainted the interior air, a rank cover over pirate bravado.
Outside her bulkhead window, a trio of beaten-up fighters hung in space, glinting under the blue sheen of the nebula.
Two patrol gunships chugged past the depot, their hulls listing, with scars of old dogfights gouging the metal.
The armada, what remained of the Red Skulls’ might, floated like broken teeth, jagged, charred, a far cry from the empire her father once commanded.
And yet, they were celebrating.
Drunken shouts racked the steel corridors; boots stamped; fists pounded; voices roared. Laughter barked through the intercoms, rough utterances slurring songs of victory.
The stench of malted beer, body sweat, engine grease, and unwashed fury drifted through the vents like smoke.
A bottle smashed down the gangway, and the cheering grew.
They honored The Carmine Cardinal.
Varnok Gage’s return was triumphant.
Her father was home.
She didn’t give a fokk.
The moment they docked at their station after their flight from The Sombra, she ran from the hangar, seeking the relative safety of her small quarters.
She sat, back against the wall, arms wrapped tight around her drawn knees.
The thin fabric of her suit held stains of tears and blood.
Her gaze fixed on the porthole, not seeing the ships or the glittering void, but the last look Santi gave her before she disappeared.
His eyes burned, not with rage, but with heartbreak, with hurt.
Recalling his pain scorched through her soul.
She blinked as a ship parked in the dock caught her attention.
The Vermilion Claw, her uncle’s grotesque pride.
It had since lost its stealth skin, which allowed it to cloak itself in anonymity and even get close to The Sombra when Soleil breached the dreadnought’s hull.
Now, it showed off in its full glory.
The vessel was every inch a pirate’s fantasy, a madman’s joke.
Its twin engines flared like glowing skulls, flame-howl exhausts belched fire, twin broadside beam cannons styled like antique cutlasses, and forward artillery resembled monstrous flintlock pistols.
The targeting scope jutted from the bridge, shaped like an old Earth-style eye patch. A long, metallic feather twitched from within its communications hub.
She laughed, a bitter chuckle, for that craft represented the ridiculousness, the ego, and the cruelty of her kin.
Her fokkin’ kin.
Somewhere below, the revelry was in full roar, pirates chanting her name, toasting the return of their blood-soaked king.
The celebration noise was a dull throb in the belly of the gods-forsaken station.
She caught the sound of people stumbling outside her door.
Had Varnok or Vern sent anyone to retrieve her and parade her before their unwitting sycophants?
She sat still till the footsteps passed, until the laughter moved down the hall.
With a sigh of relief, barefoot and silent, she crawled across the cold grating toward her bunk and reached underneath.
Her fingers found the small, slim box tucked against the wall.
The magnetic lock hissed as she tapped her code.
Inside lay her most precious treasures, a holo-frame of images that blinked to life.
A slow rotation of images filled the air in flickering light.
A woman, dark-haired, soft-eyed, with creases of mirth that deepened whenever she smiled, came into view.
Alina. Her mother.
Soleil exhaled and touched the projection.
The skin of the woman’s cheek glowed beneath her fingertips.
Alina’s voice echoed in her head, luminous and musical. ‘Always brush your hair before sleep, my ray of sunshine. Dreams come easier that way.’
She remembered her humming lullabies.
The warm, citrus scent of her perfume, clinging to Soleil’s shirts and pillows.
The way her hands moved when she spoke was animated and graceful.
How she’d murmur songs from dead languages while stirring a spicy cacao drink she swore her life on. ‘When you’re down and out, you need two mugs of it,’ she’d say, laughing with joy in her eyes, her robe trailing behind her. ‘One for the nerves, one for the soul.’
Alina had been an incarnate contradiction, sweet but scatter-brained, elegant but impulsive.
She’d paint her nails pink and wear lace and bows.
Yet curse like a pirate and pull firearms on the neighbors on a whim, then smile like it never happened.
Still, she was the chaos Soleil clung to in her formative years.
The wild softness that made a broken world feel survivable.
And then, she was gone, no blood trail, nor a note or charred trace.
She just vanished. Erased from this universe when Soleil was just fourteen.
Then her aunt Raissa had gone after Alina and never returned.
Worried she’d be disappeared too, she had run.
She’d forged a new identity, paying a school friend a handsome fee to get her fresh documents.
The decade that followed was a blur of encrypted dorms, backdoor identities, and traveling under names that weren’t hers.
She shaved her head once.
Changed her voice. Learned how to make her body disappear even in full daylight.
And every night, she whispered a promise to the empty stars above her cot.
I’ll make them pay, mother, aunt, for your stolen life.
She spent years tracking Vern and Varnok.
Uncovering their smuggling rings, black site deals, and any nefarious whispers of the Red Skulls’ illegal activities.
Worse, the massacre at Vael’Na’ra, a trio of populated moons within the Thren system.
After she found out her father had glassed the three habitats in retaliation, to avenge a rival, killing millions, she sent his location and proof of his crimes to Signet in secret.
Weeks later, she watched a holo news broadcast in satisfaction that stated Signet had found Varnok, ambushed, and caged him away.
Vern, his brother, guessed she was behind the leak and hunted her, and for a few more years she remained hidden.
Until he found her.
She clenched her jaw in remembrance.
At how her Uncle Vern tore her out of her bed, cuffed and blindfolded her.
Her fingers curled into a fist as she lost herself in agonizing reminiscing.
‘Your life belonged to me now,’ he screeched then. ‘Your body, your will, is mine. And you will bring him back to us, like a good daughter.’
Her gaze drifted to the holo again of Alina now with Raissa, two young women laughing and carefree with their lives before them.
Alina’s smile flickered in soft blues and golds.
‘I’m so sorry, Mama, Raissa. I tried my best to avenge you both.’
She sat for a long time, knees pulled to her chest, the screen’s light glowing in her eyes, as the pirates cheered below and her mother and aunt’s images rotated, endless and unreal.
Then her neural node buzzed.
Static crackled, then her uncle’s voice slurred into her mind like oil over gravel.
‘Scarlet, sweetheart. Join us. The prodigal bastard is home, and you brought him, which elevates you from the Red Queen to Scarlet Empress, love. Don’t be shy, come so we can crown you.’
She tensed, every muscle clenching. ‘I’m not feeling well,’ she muttered. ‘I just need -.’
Pain.
A spike of white hot torment erupted through her wrist, shooting to her shoulder, then her stomach, then her spine.
Invisible claws dragged down her nerves.
She gasped and dropped to one side, forehead hitting the floor.
‘Don’t make me ask twice, Scarletta,’ he crooned, voice syrupy and cruel. ‘You’re one of us now. Don’t turn your back on family.’
She bit down, tasting blood. ‘Sawa,’ she whispered. ‘I’m coming.’
The agony faded. She remained prostrate for a moment, breath harsh, cheek pressed to the cool metal.
With care, she pushed herself upright.
Her hands trembled as she scrubbed at her face, smearing away the streaks of tears and sorrow.
Her reflection in the narrow alloy panel caught her eye: smudged, sunken, but not broken.
Not yet.
She rose, straightened her spine, and tugged her collar into place.
She paused, then rushed in, grabbed her holo frame treasure box, and shoved it into her coat.
With an inhale, she walked to the door.
Toward the wolves and the father she betrayed Santi for, and whatever ruin came next.
Soleil stood at the edge of the celebration, her backbone rigid, her fists balled beneath the sleeves of her coat.
The Red Skulls’ feast spilled across the grand galley deck of the Crimson Shrike.
The space was draped in blood-red banners, illuminated by plasma bulbs, and heavy with the stink of malted grog and sweat.
Laughter cracked the air like cannon fire.
Pirate capos with chromed teeth and laser-carved tattoos thumped goblets against one another, their whiskey and stim-ale sloshing to the floor.
A woman in a synth-chiffon bodice danced on a table as men roared and slapped their knives on the surface.
Whores, half-human and part-modded, wrapped their arms around any man with schills or clout.
In the far corner, indentured servers, some scarcely more than teens, moved under the lash of barked orders, their faces carved with fear.
Soleil swallowed bile.
Her father, Varnok, sat with his feet propped on a stool, bellowing a song off-key, an arm looped around a trembling girl he had forgotten he was holding.
Vern slouched alongside him, his face flushed, his eyes shining with the wildness of too much liquor high on his victory.
The sight of them made her stomach roil with a toxic blend of duty and profound disgust.
Soleil forced herself to step closer to the pair.
She kept her head bowed, her hands clasped at her waist, pushing her body into a posture of fragile submission.
Her fury, a hot, metallic poison, was shoved down, buried deep beneath her ribs so the monsters wouldn’t scent it.
‘Father,’ she murmured, barely a thread of sound, yet humble. ‘I apologize for the interruption, but where is Aunt Raissa?’
Her brave aunt, who’d gone after her sister, was the anchor Soleil believed she was fighting for, whose suffering face she’d been shown in a cell, waiting for her deliverance.
Vern locked eyes with his twin, a silent, sickening communication passing between them, and then they both erupted in maniacal, echoing laughter.
‘Raissa was long fed to the hungry maws of space,’ Vern sneered, leaning forward, enjoying the reveal. ‘After recording a few holos to use as your incentive, we spaced her. The bitch tried to kill Varnok for her sister, your mother, Alina. Did you think we’d let her live?’
So all the holos, the voice prints, the desperate messages to save her were all a lie?
Raissa was long gone?
Grief hit her so hard, Soleil had to bite back a sharp gasp.
Soleil paled, stumbling back a step, the shock a physical blow that staggered her balance. ‘So all this time you’ve been using her life as a carrot so I could do your bidding?’ she whispered, the realization fracturing her core.
‘But of course, daughter, you needed the motivation,’ the Mad Wolf King chuckled, his utterance thick and slurring, a repulsive sound.
In that moment, a dark, primal switch flipped within her.
The bastards. The absolute, controlling, fokkin’ bastards.
She didn’t just want to escape them; she wanted to personally pull the trigger on both their worthless heads, to watch the life drain from their eyes, and finally cleanse the universe of their toxic legacy.
She kept her face expressionless, as her eyes flicked around.
Before the pair of men, on a small, velvet-lined plinth, rested a bomb.
A memento of the infamous breach of The Sombra.
The modulated explosive was identical to the one that gutted the Signet dreadnought.
That the Red Skulls were ‘venerating’ it made her sick.
She stared at it, and her heartbeat clenched tight in her chest.
Across the table, her uncle’s laser pistol lay unguarded, beside a broken bottle.
She edged closer under the guise of fetching a beer, her fingers curling around the grip as she passed.
The firearm vanished into the folds of her coat like a secret swallowed whole.
She jolted when one of the capos, Rodeo, her contact on the ship, roared.
‘To the girl who brought our Carmine Cardinal back!’
The room erupted in cheers.
Her father rose, his arms spread out, a drink clutched in one hand. ‘To Scarletta! My blood, my vengeance reborn!’
They toasted her, then pulled her into their sloppy embrace.
Lips grazed her cheeks.
Greasy hands patted her back, and someone kissed her hair.
She stood stiff, her breath frozen in her lungs.
She’d never felt more hollow.
Soleil found a shadowed corner and sat, her knees huddled, observing the shit show before her.
This wasn’t life; this was decay parading as a celebration.
The Sombra had been real.
She remembered her bunk, her humble work, her team, Wren, and Astra.
The steam of early-morning kahawa.
The beauty of a lake she’d never imagined possible.
Santi’s strong arms around her waist.
The way he always kissed her forehead, like she was precious, a gift he never thought he’d deserve.
That life had been a dream.
This madness, on the other hand, was a cage of derangement.
Hours passed, laughter curdled, prone bodies slumped against bulkheads, blacked out in pools of their own filth.
Her father and Vern collapsed in their thrones, snoring and slack-mouthed.
That’s when she moved, silent as a breath.
She slipped to the plinth and reached down.
In moments, the weapon sat in her coat.
The pistol was already nestled against her ribs.
As she crept away from the room, sight unseen, her eyes burned with unshed tears.
Get out now, she told herself, before she lost her last shred of sanity.