The Legend of the Starbreaker (The Zorathi Pirate Chronicles #2)

Chapter 1

The medical bay was fuller than I'd ever seen it, but not in a bad way. Since we'd sent Voss running back to corporate space, the Starbreaker had expanded our humanitarian mission. It took some convincing, but Torvyn had agreed: the time was right to help as many people as we could.

The soft hum of diagnostic equipment filled the air, punctuated by the quiet beeps of vitals monitors.

Someone had dimmed the overhead lights to something gentler, a small kindness I'd suggested weeks ago.

The faint antiseptic smell couldn't quite mask the recycled ship air, but I'd stopped noticing that months ago.

I picked up a chart from the bed closest to me and scanned it. A young woman who had been trapped on a corporate colony. Corporate jargon for a planet where kidnapped women were trafficked, then rented to the highest bidder. I shuddered.

The Knights had done incredible work helping people long before they picked me up, but I'd wanted to do something with a little more intention. A little more care. So this was our new focus.

"How are you feeling, Alicia?" I asked.

The young woman glanced up at me. She couldn't have been more than nineteen, with close-cropped hair that was just starting to grow back, probably shaved for "hygiene compliance" at whatever facility had held her.

Her eyes darted around the bay as if she were waiting for something to leap from the shadows and drag her back. I leaned down and gently took her hand.

"Hey. Look at me," I said, locking eyes with her. "You're safe here. Nobody is going to take you. All you need to focus on is healing, okay?"

Her gaze flicked around once more before her shoulders finally sagged. She gave a slight nod.

I squeezed her hand. "Good. Your vitals look better than they did a few days ago." I raised my hand to her chin and gently angled it to the right. "That eye is healing nicely. The bruising is almost gone."

Alicia offered me a tentative smile. "You should see the other guy," she said softly.

I laughed and cupped her face. "You've got a lion in you. If you need anything, just let one of the nurses know, okay?"

I remembered what it felt like to be where she was. Not the same circumstances, but the same fear, the bone-deep certainty that safety was temporary, that someone would come to collect what they owned. The difference was that I'd found four men willing to burn the galaxy to prove that fear wrong.

She nodded.

A communications alert pinged in my ear.

"Kira, we need you on the bridge," Torvyn said. His tone was clipped.

That wasn't a good sign.

Torvyn was always wound tight, but calm under pressure.

A lifetime of fighting enemies ten times your size would do that.

He didn't give in to anxiety, the kind that would have crippled me in a previous life.

So the fact that I could feel urgency in his voice, and through the Tether, set my nerves on edge.

I stood, rehung Alicia's chart at the foot of her bed, and exited the medical bay.

The bridge doors whooshed open, and I stepped inside.

Torvyn stood rigid at the central console, jaw tight, knuckles white against the edge of the display.

Lyrin ran probability algorithms, his usual commentary notably absent.

Kaedren checked weapons systems even though we weren't under immediate attack; his movements were efficient but tense.

Vaelix muttered about code structures and tracking protocols, his analytical mind already dissecting whatever they were looking at.

Two months of rescues, disrupted convoys, and small victories had almost made me believe we could keep winning.

I'd gone from having no one to having four dangerous, brilliant men who treated me like I mattered. I'd sent the corporate bastard who owned my life running for cover and made him pay me what I was worth in the process.

Life was good.

I should have known better.

Their voices were low and sharp, clipped exchanges cutting through the bridge's usual ambient hum.

I felt it before I fully understood it, the edges of their emotions through the Tether. Dread. Anger. Something that felt like guilt. But the full weight of it was muted, carefully contained.

They were shielding themselves from me.

A prickle of unease crawled down my spine.

"Hey, boys," I said lightly. "What's going on?"

They all turned at once.

"And before you tell me what this is," I added, crossing my arms, "maybe you can explain why you're trying to hide your emotions from the Tether."

Four very guilty-looking males immediately found separate points of interest around the bridge.

I clapped once. "Is this going to be our first fight? Because I was honestly curious how the Tether would handle something like that." I tilted my head. "Bad news for all of you, it tells you exactly how I'm feeling, even if you're trying to hide yours."

Torvyn cleared his throat and transferred the feed to my console.

I looked up and was greeted by a familiar pair of weaselly eyes set above a perfect, blinding smile.

My stomach dropped. My hands went cold. I'd sent this man running, humiliated him, made him pay me what he owed, and I'd been stupid enough to think that meant I'd won. The smile on his face told me everything I needed to know. He'd been waiting for this. And he'd had months to plan it.

Voss.

"Watch the video," Kaedren said quietly.

I hit play.

"This is Director Voss with a critical alert." His voice was calm and measured, the tone of a concerned official delivering unfortunate but necessary news. "Over the past sixty standard cycles, fourteen frontier colonies have reported destabilizing interference from an unregistered Zorathi vessel."

Images flickered across the screen:ruined facilities, confused workers milling about, empty warehouses.

"Colonial supply chains have been disrupted. Workers have been removed from contracted positions without proper discharge protocols. Infrastructure damage has created dangerous gaps in essential services."

My jaw clenched. He was making liberation sound like kidnapping and making freedom look like chaos.

"After careful deliberation, the Conglomerate Council has authorized recovery incentives for the vessel known as the Starbreaker and its operators: Torvyn, Kaedren, Lyrin, Vaelix, and Kira Vale."

Five faces appeared on screen, four Zorathi warriors and me. My employee ID photo from my contract days. I looked half-dead in it.

"Ten million credits per individual. Fifty million for vessel recovery. Alive preferred for proper judicial processing and contract resolution."

My breath caught. Alive preferred meant interrogation. Public trial. Spectacle. Theater designed to prove the system worked, that resistance always failed in the end.

"Tiered participation rewards are available for information leading to location, assistance with apprehension, and secure delivery. All colonial authorities are authorized to detain on sight under Emergency Commerce Provision Seven."

Voss leaned forward, his smile never wavering. "To be clear, this is not a military operation. This is administrative compliance enforcement. Help us restore order to the frontier. Thank you for your attention to this matter."

The transmission cut to black.

Then the screen flickered. Split. Cascaded.

Mirrored feeds lit up across the network; civilian channels, labor boards, mercenary exchanges. The replication counter in the corner climbed: thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of nodes all carrying Voss's message.

Every port. Every station. Every colony under corporate control.

The entire galaxy was watching.

My chest tightened.

Voss had done this to me before; dressed violence up as policy, made compliance look like choice. He'd framed my servitude as a voluntary contract, my silence as consent. Now he was doing it to the entire galaxy.

The bounties weren't the weapon. The broadcast was.

He wasn't hunting us. He was recruiting billions of people to do it for him and calling it civic duty.

I turned toward the Knights. "This isn't about us."

"What else could it be about?" Kaedren asked.

"It's about control," I said. "It's about making everyone complicit in their own oppression. He's turned the galaxy into his enforcement arm."

Torvyn shook his head. "Maybe. But now we're the hunted. We need to make ourselves less of a target. More course changes, fewer stops, tighter jumps, reduced communications."

Kaedren shifted his weight, jaw tight. "Torvyn's right. We can't help anyone if we're dead." He didn't sound convinced.

"Our top priority is survival," Torvyn continued. "If we're captured and publicly executed, that doesn't just end us. It ends everyone who believed in the Knights and our mission. Voss doesn't just want us dead. He wants us broken. Visibly."

"This broadcast is galaxy-wide," Vaelix said, fingers flying across the console.

"Even ports that were friendly to us received it.

I don't think there is anywhere we can go that is truly safe.

" He paused. "I also detected embedded tracking protocols.

Anyone who downloads the bounty information is flagged. "

"Can you reverse-engineer it?" Lyrin asked. "Access his database? That would tell us how many enemies we're actually facing."

"Possibly," Vaelix said. "But it will take time."

Torvyn straightened. "This isn't the first time targets have been painted on our backs. We know how to operate. We follow protocol and go silent."

"Why?" I asked. "Shouldn't our priority still be helping people? If we pull back now, we prove his point. All it takes is a bounty to make us disappear. Every colony we don't help becomes evidence that his story is true."

Lyrin looked up. "She's not wrong. The models support her conclusion. If we go silent, belief in Voss's narrative increases. If we remain visible, we retain control of the story."

Vaelix frowned at his console. "There's a middle path. We could operate through proxies. Coordinate with allied ships, feed them intel, let them execute while we stay mobile. Less risk, maintained impact."

"And let someone else take the bullets meant for us?" I said before I could stop myself.

The silence that followed was uncomfortable. Vaelix's suggestion wasn't wrong. It was practical. It might even save more lives in the long run. But it felt like hiding behind a shield made of other people's bodies.

"The logical solution is to do both," Vaelix said carefully, "operate more carefully while maintaining mission visibility. The question is whether that's feasible at this scale."

"If we don't prioritize safety, the mission ends regardless," Torvyn said, his voice hardening. "We need a plan we can execute."

"We already have a plan," I said. "We save people who need saving. We put our lives on the line to do it. Nothing has changed."

Kaedren flinched. The Tether carried my anger to all of them. I closed my eyes.

Then Torvyn's fury hit me like a wave. Hot. Controlled. Deliberate. He could use the Tether, too, and he was reminding me of that.

I wasn't selling this the way I needed to.

"I'm part of the team, right?" I asked.

"Of course," he said.

"So why don't I get a say?"

"Because I'm the captain," he replied. "I'm responsible for this crew and this ship."

"Here I was thinking we were equals," I said quietly. "I guess we're only equal when it's convenient."

Torvyn's face flushed purple, his eyes glowing yellow. The other three suddenly found the floor, the consoles, anywhere but us.

"The decision has been made," Torvyn said, turning back toward his chair.

My hands trembled at my sides. He was making a unilateral decision about my safety without my input. I'd had enough of that for one lifetime.

Something cold and clear settled in my chest.

He was wrong. Hiding wouldn't save us; it would let Voss write our story. And I'd spent too long letting powerful men decide who I was allowed to be.

"The hell it has," I snapped.

Torvyn froze. Then turned slowly.

"Kira," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "My ready room. Now."

Every instinct screamed at me to refuse. To stand my ground in front of everyone and force him to listen.

But I felt it through the Tether, the way his anger coiled tighter, the way Kaedren's discomfort bled into guilt, the way Lyrin and Vaelix projected careful neutrality.

This wasn't the fight I needed to have. Not here. Not like this.

I followed Torvyn toward his ready room, acutely aware of three pairs of eyes watching us go.