by Kelly Gay
Ace of Spades was more than a ship. It was her workhorse, her home, her sanctuary. Above all, it was her escape, her means to leave whenever she wanted to leave, to fly, to hunt, to explore. . . . The universe was hers to navigate because of that ship, and she’d be damned if she’d ever let anything change that.
So she sat. And she waited.
FOUR
* * *
* * *
Eiro, Ectanus 45 system
As the Ace of Spades descended to Rion’s location, she pushed to her feet with ten minutes of oxygen to spare. Watching her ship always made her pause. While Mariner-class vessels were designed to operate with a small crew and carry a large payload, they were also things of beauty—fierce, fast, menacing, and sleek. And with the black ablative coating on the hull, her ship had taken on an even darker edge.
The coating was an expensive splurge and required regular maintenance, though it was rare that Ace, unlike military vessels, was fired upon or scratched enough to require consistent refinishing. The small number of private firms now producing civilian-grade stealth technology charged an arm and a leg. But if there was money in the bank, Rion usually sprang for any tech that would give them an edge. And in this case, the price was worth every credit because it allowed Ace to engage in more . . . delicate salvage ops. . . .
Ace’s thrusters should have stirred up a small blizzard around her, but everything was frozen solid from the plasma melt and refreeze. She’d already spoken briefly over comms, but other than a quick update with the crew, she’d remained silent, not ready to chat or delve into details. As irritating as her suit and itchy skin had become, she had needed the time on Eiro to gather her thoughts and let events sink in.
One small chip, and everything was about to change.
As the ramp descended, there was no mistaking the man waiting to disembark, despite the cold suit and helmet he wore. While Rion could only see her reflection in Cade’s visor as she approached, she knew that behind the tempered glass composite there was probably a very pissed off ex-marine, one who was hardwired to never leave a crewmember behind.
Cade paused in front of her, taking in her charred suit and damaged helmet. His deep voice broke through the low hum of audio static. “Suit looks like shit, Forge.” Then he turned and headed back up the ramp.
Yep. He was pissed.
On more than one occasion, the two had nearly come to blows about her tactics. But ultimately, in the end, it was her ship. And when it came to making sure Ace was safe, there was no one she’d ever ask to stay behind but herself.
“We’re in,” Rion said, removing the straps to her gloves with quick, jerky movements as the ramp came up. The airlock engaged. She ripped the gloves off and let them drop to the floor. “Get us out of here.” Her helmet joined the discarded gloves.
As Cade continued to the locker room to de-suit, Rion ran her hands and nails all over her itchy face. Instant gratification shot beneath her skin, the relief utterly satisfying. Once that little ritual was over, she picked up the gloves and damaged helmet, then headed after Cade.
After tossing the helmet into her locker, she unzipped the cold suit, exposing her damp, sweaty torso to the cool air. She was bruised too, her muscles already growing stiff. Sitting down, she went for her boots, but the damn strap on the left one had completely melted.
“We headed back to Venezia?” Lessa asked over the ship-wide intercom.
“No.” Rion struggled with the strap. “Niko, I want you to find the nearest comm sat. We’re going to patch in, boost our search capabilities, and do some digging. Are we clear on radar?”
“Not a ship in sight,” he answered.
“Good. Plot a course then.”
Cold suit hanging off him, Cade pulled his knife from his belt, leaned over, and slipped the blade beneath the strap of her boot, slicing it clean. He remained eye level with her for a beat, and she was met with questioning brown eyes. “You good?” he asked.
“Fine.”
He straightened, slid his knife back in his belt, and turned back to his locker, shrugging the rest of the way out of the suit.
Her boot finally came free and she had to bite down the urge to wing it across the room. Once she was down to her flight suit, she shoved her things into her locker. “I’m gonna hit the shower. I want everyone in the lounge in thirty minutes.”
* * *
Under the spray of a lukewarm shower, Rion let her thoughts drift to earlier aboard the Roman Blue. Crawling into the captain’s quarters, finding the chip, feeling that great surge of shock and renewed hope when the captain mentioned the Spirit of Fire . . . it had been electrifying.
But it was only a moment, a short blip in a lifetime of wondering and questioning and searching. There were more than two decades of time since that log entry. And now that reality had set in, it seemed impossible that answers might still be out there. The chip might simply be another painful reminder, a tiny crumb on a phantom trail that spanned the entire galaxy.
They’re out there, Lucy, her grandfather had often said. It was a phrase repeated in her household a hundred times over.
She remembered the day those words had been spoken for the last time. From a hospice bed, her grandfather’s thin hand tightly wound in hers, the skin cracked and dry like paper, but surprisingly still strong. I know he’s out there. My boy is out there. You find him and bring him home. Do what the rest of us couldn’t.
It was a terrible burden to put on a teenager’s shoulders. But even then she’d understood his need. He hadn’t meant to lay that task on her; he’d simply wanted assurance, some kind of closure, something to allow him to close his tired eyes, rest easy, and fade away.
And when he was gone, Rion was well and truly alone.
She’d never been close to her mother, and her aunt Jillian had left Chicago a few years prior, taking a dream job at some corporate law firm in Sydney. And eventually, that city had become Jillian’s tomb. . . .
After her grandfather’s funeral, Rion had packed her bags and left.
Run was more like it. Right to the recruitment center to enlist.
She’d walked by the center’s front door three times in the span of half an hour, uncertain and never really getting the sense of rightness that she expected. She was a Forge, for God’s sake. It should have felt right. Instead, she felt like a fraud. Hell, her father had enlisted when he was sixteen. No hesitation. Probably burst right through the front door and demanded to be signed up.
Yet Rion couldn’t muster the nerve or the passion.
So she headed to the bar down the street, parked herself on a stool near the door, expecting to be kicked out once the bartender got a good look at her, and fought an inner battle with herself. Her reasons were all wrong. She wasn’t enlisting because she wanted to do good or save the world or be a hero. So why was she? Why had she gone there?
To be close to her father and grandfather, no doubt. By doing what they had done, perhaps she wouldn’t feel so utterly alone.
“You got ID on you?” the bartender asked.
Rion had glanced up at the hard face and sighed. “Yeah, but it’ll only get me booted out the door.” She slid off the stool and grabbed her pack.
“Ah, give the kid a break, Hal!” A group of four men and one woman occupied a booth in the corner by the door. They were a coarse-looking bunch, travel-weary and rough around the edges. “She looks like she could use a drink!”
Hal shrugged indifferently. “Rules are rules, Birger.” He nodded to the door. “Beat it, kid.”
“Never mind Hal. Come join us,” the man named Birger called as she hiked her pack over her shoulder. To this day, Rion wasn’t sure what made her stop. Maybe it was the look of them. Different. Out of place. Not only rough, but capable; their manner and their eyes held weight and worldliness, like they’d seen and done it all and had the scars inside and out to prove i
t.
Her feet had moved before her brain had caught up, and she found herself in front of their table.
“You look lost, girl,” the woman said with a smile and a deep accent Rion couldn’t place. She was older, forties, maybe, with gray hair in two fat braids, sharp ice-blue eyes, and a strong, striking face. “You running away, then?”
Rion gestured in the recruitment center’s direction. “Enlisting.”
Birger laughed. He too was graying—a big, burly giant of a man, his presence equal to his size. “Eh. Why enlist when you can sail the starry skies without all the killin’ and dyin’? How old are you, child?” he asked, eyes narrowing.
“Eighteen,” she lied.
“I was your age.” He turned to the woman seated next to him. “Unn here was sixteen.”
“When you enlisted?” Rion asked.
Birger smiled. “When we”—he pointed to the ceiling—“left Mother Earth. There’s gold in the stars, if you know where to look.”
“You’re pirates,” Rion blurted before she could stop herself. They certainly had the look about them.
Birger threw his head back and howled with laughter, the sound echoing throughout the bar and probably out into the street. The others chuckled, though Unn simply smiled and said: “Salvagers, girl. That’s where the gold’s at.”
“We’re talkin’ credits just floatin’ out there for the takin’.” Birger spoke with his hands and his entire body, proceeding to weave a fantastic tale that captured Rion’s attention and her heart. Here was the passion she’d been looking for. Adventure . . . stars . . . planet after exotic planet . . . a life spent wandering and trading and bartering.
Thoughts of the recruitment center were immediately abandoned, and Rion never looked back.
Those first few years on Bjorn Birger’s cargo ship, Hakon, were everything he claimed they would be. Of course, he’d left out the harsh, horrific things: dodging in and out of war zones posed the potential not only for riches, but for threats unlike anything Rion had imagined. When a situation developed in the middle of nowhere, you couldn’t exactly run away. You had to push through, deal with whatever problem loomed. She learned firsthand, and many times, that when things went wrong, they went very, very wrong. Starvation, death, betrayal, torture, you name it. They might have called themselves salvagers, but they sure as hell had acted like pirates.
And as time passed, the older the Birgers became, the less control they had over the crew.
Their loss meant Rion’s safety teetered on the edge. They stopped protecting her, whether they realized it or not, too old to care, too distracted to see, too disinterested—or, by Unn’s way of thinking, necessary for Rion’s development as a future leader.
In the end, Rion had taken matters into her own hands.
On her twenty-fourth birthday, she killed a man. In the cargo hold, blood on her face and hands as the entire crew looked on, placing bets and eager to shove the loser out the airlock. Her fight with Sorely had been brewing since the day he joined the Hakon. . . .
She’d earned a measure of respect that day, and a measure of distance. She’d slept better that night than she had in years.
None of it came easy.
She’d fought for every scrap, every ounce of respect. And when Birger began to decline, Unn had taken Rion into her confidence and together they began laying the groundwork to maintain control of the Hakon.
Keen-minded, sharp-tongued, and quick with knives, Unn Birger could have captained the Hakon for years after Bjorn Birger’s death, but once he was gone, so was her ambition. And so she bequeathed her knowledge and lifelong advice to Rion.
Unn had died a year after Birger. Natural causes, ironically.
By that time, Rion held complete control of the ship. She could barter and manipulate just like Bjorn, and pilot and wield a knife better than Unn. She surrounded herself with those she could trust, and if she had the slightest doubt, they’d be off at the next station. Or, if the offense was great enough, the airlock sufficed—and she’d only had to do that once for the rest of the crew to fall in line. . . .
Rion shrugged the old memories away as she stepped out of the shower, dried off, dressed, and then made for the lounge.
* * *
The Ace of Spades was a decent-size ship, but she wasn’t huge on crew space. Most of her volume was reserved for cargo. There were five crew quarters, the captain’s quarters, a mess/lounge combo with observation deck, a med bay with cryo for eight, and a small attached gym with showers. Everything else beneath them was storage space, support systems, and engineering.
Rion went right for the food dispenser to retrieve an energy bar and a vitamin-and-electrolyte-infused water. Lessa was lounging in one of the swivel chairs at the table, smiling at something Kip had said, while Niko stared at Kip with a frown, his brotherly suspicions finally kicking in. For as smart as he was, it had taken Niko a while to pick up on the vibes his older sister was throwing Kip’s way.
Cade was standing at the observation deck, hands clasped behind his back as he stared out into the black void of space.
Rion approached the long table anchored in the middle of the room. “Where are we on the comm sat?” she asked Niko.
Reluctantly, he withdrew his gaze from Kip. “There’s one in this system, around Chi Rho.”
“You get any readings of that ship before going dark?”
“You mean before you had us abandon you?” he asked.
Okay, so make that two people pissed. Possibly four.
Rion arched an eyebrow, one that asked Niko if he really wanted to start this fight. He glared at her for three petulant seconds before backing down.
“Before we took off,” he finally said, “we logged a few readings as our mystery ship broke stealth to fire. More like nonreadings. No real signature, energy levels read like a small tug. I mean, we could have picked up more, but you said to go dark, so . . .”
Rion released a tired breath. “How many times have we had to go dark to avoid military or rebels or fringe?” She waited for someone to answer, but no one did, her point made. Honestly, she was a little irritated by the general mood in the lounge. “I make the call. And if I can’t, Cade does.” She glanced at him as he walked to the table. “He’d do the same to protect you and the ship. Without Ace, we have no way home, no way off whatever planet we’re on. This ship was meters from the Roman Blue. If you hadn’t left when you did, she’d be gone right now, and we’d be freezing our asses off on Eiro permanently. Don’t any of you ever think I won’t make the hard calls. And if that means leaving me behind until it’s safe, then that’s what’ll happen.”
Every eye in the room went downcast. Except, of course, for Cade’s. He shrugged. “Hard to go dark when your captain is in the middle of a plasma beam.”
“I wasn’t in the middle.” But she did understand the point. Had it been one of the crew down there, she probably would have gone and done something monumentally reckless. But then again, it was her call to make.
“So now what?” Kip asked. “There’s no way to track that ship.”
“We’re not going to track it.”
Their confusion bordered on comical. Even Cade’s usually stoic face contorted into a puzzled frown. Rion leaned her hip on the edge of the table and swallowed a bite of her energy bar. “Whoever commanded that ship had a job to do. And they did it. The Roman Blue is completely unsalvageable.”
Lessa frowned. “And . . . aren’t we mad about that?”
“Yeah, we’re pissed,” Rion admitted. “But think about it. With the kind of stealth Niko is talking about and the firepower they had . . . this wasn’t about us. Who benefits by destroying the Roman Blue? Not salvagers, not smugglers . . . not any faction I know of.”
“Military,” Cade answered.
“But why would they do that?” Kip sat back in his chair, his expres
sion skeptical. “The amount of heavy ordnance and small arms left on the ship . . . It doesn’t make sense they’d just sacrifice it all.”
“They would if they wanted the Roman Blue to stay lost,” Rion said.
“You think they came upon us by chance?”
“No. I think we were tagged at some point. To keep an eye on what we’d find. They already keep tabs on Nor and some of the other surplus houses along the trade route. Makes sense they’d tag salvagers too.” And worse yet, rumor had it that military wasn’t the only operation guilty of tagging. Fringe groups, marauders, and fragments of whatever was left of the Covenant wanted in on salvager scores as well, letting the pros do all the work and then swooping in to take the payload.
Three crews had gone missing in the last year.
And Rion, along with the rest of the salvagers along the Via Casilina, was beginning to suspect there was a lot of truth to the rumors.
Niko grew pale. “There’s no way we were tagged.” But his look said he wasn’t so sure. “Ah, shit.” He pulled up one of the displays integrated into the table and starting running scans.
“Wait a minute,” Lessa said, still baffled. “If we don’t care about that ship, then why are we heading to a comm sat? What exactly are we looking for?”
And damn if that question didn’t make Rion’s nerves shoot right to the surface. She downed the last of her water in an effort to gain a few seconds of composure. Talking about her past was a rare occurrence, but as of now, it was about to be the driving force for everything to come.
“I’ll make this as brief as I can. . . .” She drew in a steady breath and set the water down. “You were right before, Kip. For a very short time, I was a military brat. I come from a very long line of soldiers. My father was a sergeant in the Marines. When I was five, he was commissioned to a refitted Phoenix-class colony ship called the Spirit of Fire.”
As she paused, Kip glanced up sharply. “I’ve heard of that ship. . . . I’m sorry.”