Chapter 1
Vera
My heart was pounding in fear when they led me into the courtroom in chains.
I didn’t look to the left, where I knew my family sat in the benches, but I could feel their angry glares on me anyway.
There was the glint of a camera drone as it circled in front of me, its lens zooming as it tried to get the best angle of my face.
My steps faltered as I shook my hair back, cursing internally that I had no hands free to wrangle the strands in place.
Or that the guards had refused me the courtesy of freshening up before they dragged me from my jail cell.
Earth justice was always extremely quick these days, nothing like how it had been back in history, more than three hundred years ago.
Now, the police made an arrest and provided their testimonies and evidence to a judge who decided that same day if the accused was guilty or not.
The time between my arrest and my sentencing hearing had been less than three days, and that was fairly long as I was a high-profile case.
I never got to say a word in my defense.
There was no defense of any kind really…
In my opinion, at least, but that was a rather unpopular opinion in this day and age.
How far I had fallen, the media was reporting.
The princess in her ivory tower was finally brought down to the level of the poor plebs.
No longer was I in the media as the pretty debutante from the mega-rich Clayborne family that lived in their fancy domes on the moon.
Now I stood accused of forging documents of ownership to line my family’s pockets, stealing things out from under the noses of our biggest rival.
The Claybornes had washed their hands of me immediately, painting me as the black sheep of the family in the media.
Making sure everyone knew they had no knowledge of this and that I’d acted on my own.
I knew what the outcome of this trial was going to be too; for my family to save face, I had to die.
So even though I was innocent, and even though they knew this, they were the ones making damn sure my trial would end in a guilty verdict.
Either way, the clear winner in this whole thing was going to be our biggest rival, Satara Group.
With me the definite loser. Nobody cared about me, just that it made sense for their bottom line that I take the fall.
So here I was, marched into this courtroom like the criminal they had already convinced themselves I was.
No, not even that. When I couldn’t help myself and turned my head just enough to catch sight of my parents…
I could tell from the tight displeasure on my mom’s face that she hated being here, that she thought every second of this was a waste of time.
She was actually checking the com strapped to her wrist twice in the brief moment I dared look.
I knew her; she knew I hadn’t done this because it was exactly the kind of thing she would applaud, and I was always and forever her biggest disappointment.
Dad didn’t even look up from where he was rapidly scrolling through data on a datapad; working, always working. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him do anything other than work. I wondered if he even knew the meaning of the word relax.
With sweaty palms and a rattling chain, I was led up to the defendant’s stand.
A misnomer because there would be no defense.
I lifted my chin and squared my shoulders, trying to make myself look anything but the terrified, heartbroken girl that I was at that moment.
If this was to be my final media performance, let them at least see a composed person.
So what if my hair was a rat’s nest and my mascara had streaked across my cheeks from my tears?
I thought I managed to put up a good show for a little while, but when the cool-faced, disinterested judge pronounced me guilty and sentenced me to death, I struggled not to break down and cry. I didn’t want to die, damn it. This was so unfair.
There was no chance to think about it, no time to contemplate how fleeting my life was and how little I’d accomplished.
I was led from the room by two stone-faced guards and briefly confronted by a crowd of reporters and their camera drones.
They asked me questions and demanded to hear me speak one last time, but I was so derailed by it all, despite knowing this was coming, that I said nothing.
It wasn’t like any of these vultures deserved to hear the last words I might ever speak.
Brought to a small receiving room, I was chained down to the table by my hands.
The guards left and for the first time that day, I was left alone, alone with my racing thoughts.
Tears did fall then. I was so scared; I was shaking like a leaf.
I really, really didn’t want to die. I yanked on the chains that held my hands but their mag-locks held with a steady hum.
Panic clawed at me as I looked around, desperately searching for a way out, anything to stop this damn farce. I had done nothing wrong; I was framed. My family knew it. The supposedly wronged Satara Group knew it; they had fabricated the fake documents I was accused of making, after all.
The whole justice system on Earth was meant to be fair, quick, and just. But look how corrupted it was, how things had turned out. Just as rotten to the core as every other aspect of Earth’s ruling class and the Alliance of United Races, the UAR.
With the sound of clacking heels preceding her, my mother strode into the small room and gracefully settled into the single chair across from me.
Her cool blue eyes surveyed me, nose wrinkled in deep distaste.
“Paw, you can’t even hold it together enough to properly represent your family one last time,” she sighed.
Her tone made her sound bored, cutting me to the quick.
“Fuck you, Mom,” I shot back angrily. “You’re not the one about to die for something she didn’t do!
You know I’m innocent, and you’re letting me die, you cold-hearted bitch.
” My angry diatribe didn’t do anything to her, didn’t ruffle a single feather on her perfectly cold shell.
Just like it never had in all my years rebelling against her and the whole damn Clayborne family.
I knew exactly why they didn’t lift a finger to stop this.
They thought they were better off without me.
My mother shook her head, tssking as if she were scolding a small child.
“You’re such a disappointment. I knew your dad and I made a mistake when we didn’t have your genes polished before inception as we did with your siblings.
Thought we were being adventurous pioneers.
” She rolled her eyes and tapped at her wrist com, scanning a message that had just come in, like she hadn’t just crushed every last shred of hope that she held some kind of maternal feelings for me.
She rose to her feet, done with this conversation.
“And you were too stupid to even realize that I set you up with those papers, that this fall is your last service to our family.” With a sick smile on her face, she strutted to the exit, “And what a beautiful result it is. You’ve made us so much money with your death.
” She tossed back her thick blonde hair, which was as always perfectly styled with never a hair out of place.
With a practiced, warm laugh, usually reserved for fancy parties, she walked out the door.
In her absence, I crumpled, falling forward with my head on my arms across the cool metal table.
My eyes burned as tears forced their way out and I shook from emotions.
The sense of betrayal was far worse than I should have expected it to be.
The mighty Clayborne family had never cared a single bit about Vera, the rebel, the black sheep.
So why wouldn’t they set me up to die if it benefited them?
Still… I had come onto this planet alone, unaltered, and as it soon became clear, unwanted. I was leaving this planet in just a short moment, in just the same way. Always alone, always unwanted, and never good enough.
The guard who came to escort me to my final destination a moment later didn’t show me even an ounce of sympathy.
I knew there was a second door to exit this room, allowing a convict to avoid the crowd and the reporters.
This guy took me by the arm and pulled me straight back into that mayhem, making sure the last shots the camera drones took of me were those of my red-rimmed eyes and my tear-streaked face.
I curled my lips at them in an angry snarl, enraged by the injustice of it all.
Desperate for a way out that wasn’t coming.
Then he was pulling me through a blessedly quiet corridor, pushing me into a small room no bigger than a broom closet, and shutting the door on me.
I had only a second to look up at the small glass pane in the door and see his satisfied smirk.
Then fog rolled in from the grate beneath my feet and fell down on me from a hole above my head.
Instantly, everything went hazy around me, my head started spinning, and my heart pounded in overtime.
Already? Was this really the end? I wish I had more time. I wish I could have done more. Fall in love, find a moment of happiness somewhere. Be WANTED for once in my life.
Instead, everything went dark.
***
Zathar
I slithered along the tunnel system at a quick pace, hoping to outpace Iave and Corin.
We’d heard the sound of the crash as we were hunting, the sound of something huge falling from the sky right into Bitter Storm Clan territory.
They would be rushing to this spot too, eager to get their claws on whatever it was that the gods had seen fit to gift us with.
I couldn’t let them get there first; they would squander it with their filthy claws and their recklessness.