Chapter 1 #2
“Draanth,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He pushed off the crate. “Just marveling at the incompetence of our leadership. Losing a prince seems somewhat careless.”
Turning, he walked to the edge of the pitch. He needed space. Needed to not punch Bravnak in his loose-lipped mouth.
The Summer League.
For four seconds, okay, maybe five… he let himself go there.
The lights. The roar of the crowd that sounded like static in your bones.
The smell of the turf and the electric tang of the energy barriers.
He could lead this team, he knew he could.
Whip these idiots into shape. He knew the plays, knew the politics, knew how to work a referee until he gave you the call just to shut you up.
He could be Raaze again. The celebrity. The legend.
Then the reality crashed down.
He wouldn’t be Raaze the celebrity anymore. He’d be Raaze the Izaean.
And he’d be leading a team of exiles in an exhibition match designed to make the Empire feel benevolent.
Yeah… Look at the monsters playing their little game. Look how well-behaved they are. They haven’t even tried to eat anyone yet.
Every pass, every tackle, every interview would be him signing his name to the lie. Yes, I belong here. Yes, the Council was right. Yes, I am a monster who got lucky.
Trading his freedom for a gold-plated cage and a pat on the head.
Draanth that.
He looked across the pitch. The heat haze danced over the landing pad beyond. The humans were still there. The redhead was moving around the hull of her ship, a small, bright spot of color in the drab landscape.
Plan A was gone. The Prince and his diplomatic immunity were halfway across the sector.
The Summer League was a trap wrapped in a ribbon.
That left the humans.
Raaze’s jaw tightened, and he started down the slope toward the landing pad.
Walking away from the pitch toward the only way out he had left.
His gaze swept over the three haulers sitting on the baking pad as he walked, assessing them.
Heat haze rippled off their hulls, distorting the air like his vision after a bad concussion.
The veteran on the far right was flying a brick of a heavy lifter, scarred and ugly.
The pilot was tall, dark hair pulled back tight, and she moved like someone who’d seen the sharp end of things.
Raaze had seen her earlier directing the cargo op without breaking a sweat.
Competent. Alert. His eyes narrowed. That one was too sharp.
She’d spot a hustle before Raaze even opened his mouth.
The middle berth was an older female. Bad knee, favoring the right side. Chronic pain meant distraction, maybe painkillers, but she was arguing with the fueling drone like a drill sergeant. Mean enough to chew through a hull. Also a no.
Then there was the redhead on the end. His attention shifted to her. She was small even for a human female, and plain. Uninteresting.
Hers was the smallest ship. Patchwork repairs that looked like they were held together with spit and prayer. It was easy to see that she’d landed rough as well. And, more importantly for him, she was working alone.
He grinned. She was the gap in the line… The defensive hole he could drive a shuttle through.
Sunlight caught the vibrant fire of her hair, making her impossible to miss against the drab metal of her freighter. She was wrestling with a panel on the hull, her movements jerky. She was focused. Not looking at the pitch.
He grinned. Perfect. She had no idea she was being watched.
Adjusting his tunic, he rolled his shoulders to loosen the tension in his neck. His breathing slowed, and his vision narrowed as he let the peripheral world fall away until there was nothing but the target.
He started down the slope. It wasn’t much of a plan. But it was the only play left on the pitch, and the clock was running out.
The sun blazed down, white and blinding. The heat sucked the moisture right out of her eyes and tasted of dust and hot metal that caught in the back of her throat.
Cait shaded her eyes against the glare and sighed. The ship was listing. Of course, it was listing. The port side landing gear had hit the pad with a groan that had vibrated through her teeth during touchdown, and now the whole vessel was canted three degrees to the left like a drunk.
“Great,” she muttered, wiping a line of sweat from her forehead before it could sting her eyes. “Just freaking great.”
Starting a slow walk around the exterior, she did a visual assessment.
The hull plating scorched her palm, and she snatched her hand back quickly.
Dammit, it was cooling way too slowly. Tapping a panel near the rear thruster, she winced at the hollow thunk.
Something had shifted behind the plating for sure.
She’s a sturdy old girl, her brother had said. Just needs a firm hand.
She snorted. Sturdy her fuc-fudging rear end. The H4-RPY was a heap of scrap held together by patch jobs, spite, and a maintenance schedule that made Fred’s diagnostic subroutines weep. But she’d been the only ship available for the Parac’Norr run.
Atmospheric entry stress exceeded recommended parameters by fourteen percent, a dry voice rasped in her right ear. Fuel consumption during descent was… inefficient. To put it mildly.
That wind shear was at least forty knots, Fred, she thought back. You want to fly it next time, be my guest.
I lack the requisite appendages to throttle the person who calibrated these thrusters, Fred grumped. However, I am logging the desire to do so. Post-flight diagnostic coming through.
Data scrolled down the left side of her vision, a translucent green waterfall of bad news overlaying the landing pad in front of her courtesy of her comms lens.
Red flags popped up next to the fuel efficiency markers; there was an amber warning for the hull plating integrity, and a flashing red icon for the port-side landing strut.
Structural integrity on the strut is marginal, Fred continued. And by marginal, I mean I am surprised we are not currently sitting on the pad with the strut sitting in the cargo bay.
She tilted her head, pausing mid-stride as she studied the load-bearing calculations scrolling past her vision. It held, she shot back. Marginal is still functional. Log it.
Logging it under ‘Miracles and Blind Luck’ he retorted.
Just log the fuc-udgeing data, Fred.
Language, Cait.
Rolling her eyes, she ignored him. Fred had been stuck in her head since she was fourteen, and he still acted like she was a teenager stealing her brother’s speeder. Reaching the starboard access panel, she yanked the release lever, and grabbed the torch from her belt.
“Right,” she said, clamping the torch between her teeth. “Let’s see what the damage is.”
The heat radiating off the slabcrete under her feet was brutal.
It soaked through the knees of her flight suit the second she crouched down, baking her from the bottom while the sun beat down on her head.
Sweat trickled its way down the center of her back.
Shit, she felt like a rotisserie chicken out here.
Her hands were already slick with grease and sweat, and she hadn’t even opened the main housing yet.
Sliding onto her back, she wriggled under the hull. It was darker under here, but no cooler. The air sat stagnant, smelling of hot hydraulic fluid and dust. Wonderful, just fuc-fudging wonderful.
Scanning hydraulic pressure, Fred murmured. Lines one through three are stable. Four is showing a variance.
She grunted, reaching up to trace line four.
Her fingers came away slick with fluid. A leak.
Brilliant. Wiping her hand on her thigh, she kept moving, checking the power relays and the fuel line couplings.
This was the grunt work. The part her brother never did because he had technicians for it, and the part her father assumed she couldn’t do because she was a girl who should be in the office filing manifests.
But out here, far beyond civilized space, the logic was simple. Things broke and you fixed them. Or you didn’t, and then you died in deep space. Simple.
She glanced through the gap between the landing gear and the slabcrete at the other ships.
A heavy lifter on the far left, scarred and ugly, was piloted by a veteran.
A mid-size hauler in the middle berth, run by an older woman Cait had clocked arguing with a fueling drone earlier.
They were nowhere to be seen. Which meant they were smart and inside… out of the sun.
Cait.
Fred’s voice changed. The dry snark vanished, replaced by a clipped, precise tone that made the hair on her arms stand up.
The diagnostic on the port line is reading a pressure loss inconsistent with gradual wear.
She froze, her hand halfway to a coupling. Define inconsistent.
The loss pattern suggests a sudden failure point rather than a seal degradation or stress fracture.
What do you mean? Has it snapped? Shimmying out from under the hull and ignoring the scrape of concrete against her shoulder blades, she scrambled over to the port side housing and popped the panel.
She managed to duck in time as red fluid splattered onto the pad surface at her feet.
“Holy sh—”
Hydraulic fluid had sprayed the inside of the casing, coating everything in a slick, red sheen. Ignoring the mess, she aimed the torch at the main line.
Her eyes widened.
It wasn’t a rupture or a pressure-induced tear. It was a clean, straight slice through the reinforced rubber, deep enough to weaken it so it would blow the moment the system pressurized for landing.
Ice flooded her gut.
Run a comparison, she ordered, her mental voice tight. Check the damage pattern against standard failure profiles.
Already running, Fred said, his voice devoid of emotion. The edge is too clean for a rupture.
She stared at the line. Then her eyes drifted to the component next to it. A secondary power relay. The space where it should have been was empty.
“What the—”