Skeff Tannigut looks at my sister with astonishment, ears twitching atop her head.
“You let your male speak in public?”
“He’s … spirited,” Scarlett smiles, giving me a side-eye full of Shut uuup.
“I could sell you a pain collar?” the gangster offers. “Break him in?”
I raise my eyebrow. “Thanks, but—hrk!”
I clutch my bruised shin under the table and glare as Scarlett leans forward to look the syndicate leader in the eye. “If you’re feeling so generous, let’s skip the foreplay, shall we?” She waves at the holo image of our Longbow. “A hundred thousand and she’s yours. Weapon passcodes included.”
Tannigut confers briefly with her colleagues. Not fancying another boot to the shins, I keep my mouth on the right side of shut and study the club around us.
The bar is lined with bottles full of rainbows, and the walls are lit with holographic displays—jetball games and the latest economy reports from Central and news feeds of Unbroken ships on the move in the Neutral Zones. This station is a long way from the Core, but I’m still surprised at the number of different species here. Since we docked two hours ago, I must’ve counted at least twenty—pale Betraskans, furry gremps, hulking blue Chellerians. This place is like a dirty slice of the whole Milky Way, dropped into one dodgy, suborbital melting pot.
The planet we’re floating above is a gas giant, a little smaller than Jupiter back home. This station hovers in the stratosphere, suspended above a storm that’s four centuries old and twenty thousand klicks wide. The air is filtered, the whole floating city sealed inside a transparent dome of ionized particles crackling faintly in the skies above our heads. But I can still taste the tang of chlorine gas that gives the storm its color and this station its name.
I take a sip of my water. Glance at the coaster beneath it.
WELCOME TO EMERALD CITY! it says. DON’T LOOK DOWN!
The gremps have stopped conversing, and Tannigut’s glittering eyes are back on Scar. The gangster smooths her whiskers with one paw as she speaks.
“I’ll give you thirty thousand,” she says. “First and final offer.”
Scar raises one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Since when do gremps do stand-up comedy?”
“Since when do Aurora legionnaires sell their ships?” the gremp asks.
“We could have stolen this baby. What makes you think we’re Legion?”
Tannigut points to me. “His haircut.”
“What’s wron—hrk!”
“All due respect, but the whys aren’t your concern,” Scarlett says smoothly. “There’s no tech anywhere in the galaxy like the tech that comes out of Aurora labs. One hundred thousand is a bargain, and you know it.” Scar tosses her flame-red bob out of her eyes and manages to look nowhere as desperate as we actually are. “And therefore, madam, I bid you good day.”
Scar is rising to leave and Tannigut is reaching out to stop her when the commotion starts at the bar. I look toward the noise to see what the fuss is, notice that the various jetball games and stock reports on the displays have been interrupted by a special news feed.
My stomach flips as I read the message at the bottom of the screens.
AURORA LEGION TERROR ATTACK
A big Terran asks the barkeeper to turn it up. A bigger Chellerian bellows to put the game back on. As a small fistfight breaks out, the barkeep drops the volume on the deepdub, cranks the news feed through the pub’s speakers.
“… over seven thousand Syldrathi refugees were killed in the attack, with the Terran and Betraskan governments both expressing outrage at the massacre …”
My heart drops and thumps in my chest as I watch the accompanying footage. It shows the gunmetal-gray blisters of an ore-processing rig nestled on the flank of a massive asteroid, floating in a sea of stars.
I recognize the structure immediately. It’s Sagan Station—the mining rig our squad was sent to on its first mission away from Aurora Academy. We were captured by a Terran destroyer there, held captive by the GIA. They obliterated Sagan to silence any witnesses who might have seen them taking Auri into custody. There’s nothing left of that place but debris now.
Hard to believe that was just a few days ago …
As I watch, a ship swoops in and fires a barrage of missiles, immolating the station. But as the footage freezes on the attacking vessel, I realize it’s not the lumbering, snub-nosed hulk of a Terran destroyer firing the kill shot. The attacking ship is arrowhead-shaped, gleaming titanium and carbite, the Aurora Legion sigil and its squad designation emblazoned