Corra had never seen the eastern side of Genisi before. Somehow, the streets here felt grittier than the rest. The crumbling apartment buildings with cracked windows looked ready to tumble at any moment. Men and women sat on their stoops with empty eyes and scowling faces, smoking cigarettes or drinking from beer bottles. Around them, barefoot children ran from house to house, playing tag and hopscotch.

Although she had visited Archeti many times (particularly in the early days of the Dionysian, Fiearius was always doing business here), she’d never stepped onto a block quite like this. Bright red cross symbols emblazoned every wall. Gang territory. This area belonged to a gang called the Dockyard Ministry.

With any luck, she and Finn wouldn’t be in their territory long. She hoped this errand would be easy. Continue reading →

Up in the bridge, Fiearius pulled back the ship’s main clutch, watching as the scenery out the window opened up into the deep black of space. They’d managed to depart the port safely, but this hadn’t been the quiet, easy pitstop Fiearius had in mind. Tritius Adler’s voice filled his head.

Leta doesn’t know, he had said coldly. She doesn’t need to.

But he had to tell her. Lying to Leta wasn’t quite like lying to anyone else. His stomach twisted with guilt when his mind flashed, uneasily, to the bottle of Flush tucked under the dashboard. He hadn’t touched the pills in three days, but still, that lie was enough on its own. Continue reading →

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“So what you’re saying is, you’re giving up,” Fiearius snapped as he followed Leta into the sea of people filling the bustling space port. The Dionysian was stopped for the day to refuel, restock and regroup. When they’d landed, the crew had immediately scattered off to explore the array of shops.

Crowded and noisy as the port was, nothing could have prevented their ensuing argument.

“I’m not giving up on anything,” said Leta, throwing him a fierce sideways glare. “There’s simply no way we can safely go after them now.” Continue reading →

“Look, I’m going as fast as I can, there’s nothing more I can do right now,” Cyrus was saying as he typed furiously on his console, his glasses sliding down his nose. “This protocol is airtight. Whoever wrote it knew what they were doing.”

“If they’re so good at it, where the hell are they?” Fiearius growled, hovering over Cyrus’ shoulder. He dug a hand into his hair in frustration. It had been almost twelve hours since Leta and Dez had been locked inside the Mariah. Twelve hours. At first, Fiearius had been ready for an all-out offensive. The ship was clearly a planned trap, a classic pirate technique. The distress call served as the bait and the lockdown, the hook. It should have been no time before whoever set it returned to claim their prize.

But as the hours wore on and the radar still showed only the Mariah itself and the Dionysian, carefully suspended beside her, Fiearius eventually holstered his weapon, stripped off his spacesuit and returned to the bridge to help Cyrus instead. Continue reading →

This was not, exactly, how Fiearius expected to spend his afternoon. He thought he’d finish breakfast, check in with some of the crew and return to lounging around with a pretty girl for company before evening.

Instead, he was preparing for all the dangers that came with boarding an unknown vessel in the dead of space. Against all of his better judgement, the Dionysian was undergoing the docking sequence: through the airlock’s window, he glimpsed the extender reaching out, bridging the gap between the two ships and locking them together. The Dionysian’s walls groaned around him and the pressure gauge began to rise.

Continue reading →

It was nearly four in the morning ship-time when Leta, for a reason she didn’t know, snapped her eyes open.

For a bleary moment of confusion she thought Fiearius roused her awake, but then she lifted her head and her eyes adjusted to the darkness: he was still fast asleep against her shoulder, snoring into her neck, a tangle of heavy limbs. He always slept like a lion: sprawled out carelessly, pinning her to the bed with his weight.

She lifted herself to her elbows and realized what had woken her: the console screen across the room was flashing dully. An incoming call. She was the last person to use that console, her account was still signed in. Which meant someone was trying to reach her. Corra, probably. Continue reading →

The deal with Mica did not, in fact, end in gunfire. Certainly there was some victory to be found in the fact that no one was shooting up the club.

But it did end with a little blood.

Finn could never deny how satisfying those three seconds were — the seconds after his fist drove sideways over Mica’s face in one decisive crack, and the bastard could only slump to the side, still locked by Finn’s grip at his collar. Blood smeared across the man’s face and he was utterly aghast. In that crystal-clear beautiful moment, Finn didn’t feel the splinter of pain in his fist and he definitely did not think about what could come next. Really, he felt rather like he’d achieved enlightenment. Was this how normal people felt about religion? he often wondered. After all, he couldn’t imagine anything as personally fulfilling as this kind of justice.

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“I was outnumbered and the outcome was inevitable. Though it wasn’t a total loss. I was provided valuable insight into the way Soliveré handles himself,” said Ophelia into the console screen’s main speaker. Her voice was even and measured. “He’s tougher than I recall, but I can use what I learned in staging the follow-up.”

Thousands and thousands of miles away, the Satieran Councillor nodded thoughtfully as he sat before his console’s blue glow. The meeting was taking place via COMM device — it was much safer than meeting in person.

“I have the utmost faith in you Ms. Varisian,” he assured the woman on the other end of the call. “Proceed as you see fit.” Continue reading →

Time froze. For seconds, neither of them moved: Fiearius held his gun at Ophelia’s chest and she held hers straight at his head, her expression cold as ice. Even now, he couldn’t help but notice how impossibly steady her arm was: she hardly breathed, she did not blink. Whatever she had been before, now, she truly was the ideal Society machine.

Fiearius glimpsed the motion in her hand. Her finger curved to squeeze the gun’s trigger, but then, a sound erupted across the room:  pounding on the door. It was Dez and Eve, trying to make their way in, and the noise stole Ophelia’s attention for a half-second.

The inch of time was just enough. Continue reading →

Holding her breath in her lungs, Leta pressed herself against the interior wall of the ship to hide and wait. And wait. And wait. It was only as she heard the Society crew yelling urgent orders (“get a gun, get to the ramp! We’ve got an ambush!”) followed by a stampede of footsteps that she exhaled with relief.

Whatever distraction the C team was pulling outside, it seemed to be working.

“Looks like we’re clear,” said Finn beside her, relaxing as he lowered the pistol to his side. “We might actually be able to pull this off after all.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Leta, pressing away from the wall and hurrying deeper past the ship’s main cargo area, weaving past boxes and crates. She put two fingers to the COMM device in her ear. “Cy? We’re in. Miraculously.” Continue reading →