PROLOGUE
SIX YEARS EARLIER…
The smell hits first. Old death and fresh fear, recycled through failing life support until the distinction between corpse-stink and terror-sweat stops mattering.
Sergeant Holt is three meters ahead, clearing corners with the methodical precision of someone who's done this a hundred times. Corporal Vasquez covers our six, her breathing steady in my earpiece. Standard formation. Standard extraction. Except my gut's been screaming danger since we docked.
I should have listened.
"Asset is two levels down." Dexter's voice cuts through comms, that Empri resonance making the words feel like they're vibrating inside my skull. "Holding position at extraction point alpha. Advise haste."
Haste. Right. Because everything about this mission has been textbook easy.
The corridor opens into a junction, five paths radiating like spokes from a hub. Emergency lighting casts everything in blood-colors. I'm scanning sectors, rifle up, when Holt's hand goes up. Hold.
Silence, except for the station's dying systems and my heartbeat hammering against my ribs.
Dexter's marks are probably glowing right now. He can feel my spike of adrenaline from two levels away, taste the copper-bright fear flooding my bloodstream. Three months working together, and I still hate that he knows before I do when something's wrong.
Three months of missions. Three months of him reading every emotion I can't hide.
Three months of late-night debriefs that turn into something else, conversations that aren't quite professional, silences that aren't quite empty, the almost-moment last week when his hand touched mine over a tactical display and neither of us pulled away.
Not defined. But real.
"Movement," Vasquez whispers. "Sector four."
The plasma fire comes from sector two.
Holt goes down first. I watch his chest explode in a spray of red that looks black in the emergency lighting. No scream. No last words. Just there, then not, then meat cooling on deck plating.
"Ambush!" My voice, hoarse, already moving. Return fire. Vasquez is beside me, firing controlled bursts while I drag us toward cover that doesn't exist. "Multiple hostiles, all sectors. We're boxed."
More fire. Vasquez takes a hit in the shoulder, not fatal, but her weapon drops and she's cursing in Portuguese, the string of profanity almost beautiful in its venom.
I'm returning fire. Counting rounds. Calculating. We have maybe thirty seconds before they flank us completely.
"Torrence, we're compromised." I'm pulling Vasquez behind a support strut that'll hold for maybe ten seconds. "Ambush at junction seven. Multiple KIA. Need immediate—"
"Copy that. Falling back to extraction point. Advise you do the same."
"Negative. Vasquez is hit. Holt is—" Dead. The word sticks in my throat. "We need covering fire on our position."
Static. Then: "Unable to provide fire support from this position. Fall back to secondary extraction."
Secondary is three corridors away. We won't make it.
I look at Vasquez. She's holding her shoulder, blood seeping between her fingers, human red, not Empri blue. Her eyes meet mine.
She knows.
"Go," she says.
"Fuck that."
"Venn. Listen to me." Her hand grips my vest, surprisingly strong for someone losing blood this fast. "You can make secondary. I can't. But you can."
The plasma fire is getting closer. Controlled bursts. Professional. They're advancing with the confidence of people who know their targets are trapped.
I should leave her. The math is simple. Two dead or one dead. Survival or sacrifice.
I start pulling her up instead.
We make it maybe five meters before the shot catches me.
The impact spins me. I'm on the deck, taste copper flooding my mouth where I bit my tongue. The pain comes second—white-hot fire spreading from my left side. Plasma scoring. Not a direct hit or I'd be dead. Close enough.
My rifle's gone. Skittered across the deck into shadows I can't reach.
Vasquez is screaming my name. Hands on me. Trying to pull me up, trying to—
Another burst of fire. She jerks once. Goes still.
The corridor fills with enemy combatants. Professional. Efficient. They check Vasquez first, confirm the kill with two fingers to her throat. Then they're on me.
Rough hands. Weapons pressed to my skull. Someone's shouting in a dialect I don't speak, but the meaning's clear enough.
I'm down. I'm taken.
Through the pain, through the chaos, I turn my head. Look down the corridor toward extraction point alpha.
Thirty meters away. Might as well be thirty light-years.
Dexter is there. I can see him through the smoke and emergency lighting—seven feet of blue-skinned alien warrior, his marks blazing bright enough to light the corridor. His eyes find mine across the distance.
Ice-pale blue. Electric. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Our eyes lock.
I watch him calculate.
I know him well enough by now—three months of missions, of learning how he thinks, how he moves, how his tactical mind processes faster than anyone I've ever served with. I can see it happen. The same way I've watched him assess a hundred battlefield decisions.
His marks flare brighter. He's feeling me. My terror. My pain. The desperate, animal hope that he'll come back.
Thirty meters.
I see his head turn. Looking at the extraction point. Looking at the clock. Looking at—
"Torrence." My voice is rough. Blood in my mouth. "Don't—"
He turns away.
Not fast. Not running. Just... turning.
Completing the extraction.
The asset is there—I can see them now, the high-value target we came for. Dexter's hands on their arm, pulling them toward the transport dock.
"Dexter—"
His voice cuts through comms. Professional. Distant. Like he's reporting weather conditions instead of abandoning me to whatever comes next.
"Venn is down. Unable to retrieve. Mission complete."
Unable to retrieve.
Three words.
The enemy hauls me to my feet. My side is screaming. Vasquez's body is three meters away, her eyes still open, staring at nothing.
The transport engines fire. I can hear them through the station's hull—the specific whine of military-grade thrusters cycling up.
He's leaving.
Someone hits me. I taste more blood. My vision's going grey at the edges, shock or blood loss or the specific kind of breaking that happens when the person you—
No.
I won't think it. Won't name it.
He's leaving, and I'm here, and whatever happens next happens without him.
The last thing I see before they drag me into the dark: the transport pulling away from the dock. Blue light from Dexter's marks visible through the viewport, getting smaller, getting distant, getting gone.
SIX YEARS LATER
The docking bay looks the same as it always does. Blue-tinted overhead lighting. The smell of fuel and recycled air. The constant hum of Veridian-7's systems—a sound I've learned to sleep through, to work through, to live inside like a second skin.
I check my weapon for the third time. Loaded. Safety off. Holstered where I can reach it in under a second.
I shouldn't be here. Should have sent someone else. Let a junior officer handle the dock protocols, the security sweep, the professional welcome for the boss's brother returning from outer-rim service.
I'm here anyway.
Professional. That's what I tell myself. Head of Security reviews all high-value arrivals. Dexter Torrence qualifies. Doesn't matter that we served together. Doesn't matter that he left me to die six years ago on a station that smelled like this one, old death and fresh fear.
Doesn't matter that I spent the first year after Sigma-9 looking for him. Not to find him. To hurt him.
I killed three men who reminded me of him. Same height. Same walk. Wrong face.
The guilt comes in waves sometimes. Tonight it's barely a ripple. I'm watching the transport dock through the viewport, and all I can taste is the copper-bright memory of my own blood in my mouth while his engines fired.
Unable to retrieve.
My hand's on my knife before I make the conscious decision. Old habit. Six years of making sure I'm always armed, always ready, always capable of retrieving my own damn self.
The docking clamps engage with a magnetic thud I feel through the deck plating. The airlock cycles. Green light.
The bay doors open.
He walks down the ramp.
Same face. Older now. Harder. New scars I don't recognize cutting through his medium-blue skin.
His eyes are that same electric blue that used to light up dark corridors—, months since he came back to Veridian-7.
Three months of carefully avoiding the same spaces.
Three months of Zane looking at me with that expression that says he knows something happened but won't ask.
Three months of knowing this moment was coming and not being ready for it anyway.
Our eyes meet across the dock.
His bioluminescent marks flare, those angular patterns along his temples and down his spine, visible through his tactical gear. Bright enough that people near him glance over, wondering what emotion could make an Empri glow like that.
He's reading me. Can't help it—Empri sense constantly, the emotional atmosphere of everyone nearby pressing against their awareness. He's feeling my hatred right now. Tasting it like poison on his tongue.
Good.
I'm walking before I decide to. Crossing the deck. His guards tense, they can see the knife in my hand, can read my body language even if they can't sense emotions the way he can.
I reach him. He doesn't move. Doesn't defend himself. Just stands there, seven feet of alien predator, and lets me put the blade against his throat.
The edge bites. Blue blood wells against the metal—darker than human red, catching the dock lights.
"Hello, Astra."
His voice hasn't changed. That same resonance. The sound that used to make me feel safe.
"Miss me?"
I press harder. More blue blood. His marks are pulsing now—bright, erratic. He's feeling everything I'm throwing at him. Rage. Grief. The specific flavor of hatred that's been aging in my chest for six years, getting sharper with time instead of duller.
His eyes don't leave mine. Ice-pale blue. Beautiful and terrible.
I could do it. Right here. Cut deep enough and he'd bleed out in under a minute. No one would stop me, half the station knows what happened on Sigma-9. Knows he left me. Knows what that cost.
My hand's shaking.
He sees it. Of course he sees it. He's probably feeling it through his sensing—the tremor in my resolve, the sick want underneath the rage.
I step back. Force myself. Professional.
Sheathe the knife.
His blood is on my hand. I don't wipe it off.
"Welcome home," I say. My voice is steady. Dead. The tone I use when I've given up on something.
Or when I'm pretending to.
Behind him, Zane appears. Takes in the scene—the blood on Dexter's throat, the blood on my hand, the space between us that feels like vacuum.
He doesn't comment. Just: "Dexter. You're taking over military operations. Astra runs security. You'll need to coordinate."
Coordinate.
The word hits like a fist.
Dexter's mouth quirks. Not quite a smile. "Of course."
I feel the words like a blade between my ribs.
Later. My office. The blood on my fingers has dried to a blue-black crust.
I should wash it off. Should sterilize the knife. Should write the incident report about threatening a commanding officer in front of witnesses.
I'm staring at my hands instead.
Six years. I've had six years to prepare for this moment. Six years of training, of becoming someone who doesn't need rescue, doesn't need anyone.
Six years of hating him.
My console chimes. Message from Zane: The Vex have a new operative in-system. Intelligence suggests connections to the Sigma-9 incident. You and Dexter will investigate. Together.
Sigma-9.
The mission. The betrayal. The ninety seconds he spent calculating whether I was worth saving.
Someone sold us out that day. Someone gave our position, our timing, our extraction coordinates. Half the team died. I was taken.
And now that someone might be coming back.
I look at the blood on my hands. Blue. Empri blue.
I should have cut deeper.
But there's time yet.