Kayana leaned against the command console and let her head hang. She needed sleep. They’d been in jump space after the cutter for fourteen hours. It should be the easiest thing to catch a few hours’ rest, but she knew it wouldn’t come in her cabin. The large bed still smelled like Ax. Still smelled like the two of them; like sex and pleasure and a host of memories she didn’t want surrounding her. The shampoo smell of his hair would permeate the pillow, and in the quiet dark she’d play over what had happened until sleep was impossible.

Likewise, she couldn’t very well sleep in Ax’s cabin. There wouldn’t be much chance that the bedclothes had been changed since the last time she and Ax had been in there. The left Berniss’s cabin, and throwing the reporter out just so she could get some shuteye seemed like the height of capriciousness.

She leaned back in the chair and vigorously rubbed her hands over her face, trying to wake up her brain. When her skin tingled from the friction, she sat back up and tapped the communication button on the bridge console.

A moment later the AI responded. “Yes?”

“Do you have the data I requested?” She let the headrest cushion her neck. Maybe she could sleep right here. At least the chair didn’t smell like him. And thanks to the cameras, they hadn’t had sex on the bridge, so there were no memories to chase away.

“I’m still not certain this is an acceptable course of action.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “You can’t tell me that you haven’t thought about using that big beautiful neural network of yours for something more...entertaining.” Kayana stretched and looked for the most comfortable position in the chair.

“You and I clearly have different definitions of the word entertainment.” The computer actually sounded indignant at the suggestion. Kayana smiled.

“It’s not like I’m asking you to kill anyone. Though I will point out you have been more than happy to threaten me with that in the past few weeks.” Or, you know, the last twenty-four hours, but who was counting?

After a heartbeat, data began scrolling up the console display. As each ship’s information moved past, an image of the vessel was displayed above Ax’s console.

“These ships are the known vessels registered to the Bellerophon Corporation,” the AI intoned. “The factory ship that serves as the headquarters maintains an orbit in the Proxima Secundus system.”

She reached into the holographic display and zoomed in on the details about the other vessel. Most of the data didn’t seem important, but if she read between the lines, patterns revealed themselves. A cargo bay with no interior access could be converted into a hardpoint for missiles or drones. Multiple shuttle bays could just as easily hold short-range fighters.

And all hiding behind the façade of a pharmaceutical factory, which gave it the excuse it needed to go where it wanted.

Kayana had to admit a certain respect for the ingenuity. It made her wish for other circumstances—she and Gobnait might have made a fairly devastating team.

It was almost a shame that robbing her was going to sour that relationship before it could start.

The door to the bridge hissed open, and Berniss walked in. “How long until showtime?”

Kayana looked toward the front of the bridge. “Algol? How long?”

“Three hours to reach the system.”

Three hours. She had a rudimentary plan, but it relied on surprise. Then again, she doubted anyone would have the audacity to attack a corporate factory ship by themselves. So, surprise shouldn’t be an issue.

It was what would happen when the surprise wore off that worried her.

#

AX FELT MARJON’S CUTTER shudder as it dropped out of hyperspace. Seventeen hours shouldn’t have gone by so fast. He stood up with a groan and stretched his back. The hard shelf that served as a bed barely counted as a place to sleep. Still, at least he’d had a chance to think up a plan. In the eight-by-eight cell he had little room to do much else.

None of them were good plans, mind you, but he’d thought up a couple.

Mostly he was just thankful that Marjon had taken him to Gobby, instead of Gobby coming to get him. It meant that Kayana wouldn’t get caught up in his shit any further. Pain lanced behind his ribs at the thought of her.

In another life, maybe, he’d have been the person who deserved her trust. Instead he had to settle for being the guy who didn’t get her killed. It wasn’t glamorous, especially given that he was likely to die for his efforts, but knowing she’d be safe made it better.

Kayana had been forced to live with him. She didn’t deserve to die because of him.

The door at the end of the hall opened, and Marjon walked in, flanked by a security guard with a military-grade rifle. She stopped outside his cell and leaned against the wall opposite. “Damn. You’re awake.”

“You would be too. Have you tried sleeping on one of these?” Ax jerked his thumb at the bed. “I’ve been on more comfortable rocks.”

Marjon didn’t smile. “If he moves, shoot him. But don’t kill him. Gobnait wants to talk to him first.” The guard aimed his weapon at Ax, while Marjon tapped a code into the pad on her belt.

The field at the front of the cell dropped, creating an absence of white noise. Ax was amazed at how quickly he’d learned to tune out the sound. The sudden silence was surprising. “You know, it’s not too late to change your mind, right, Marjon? I mean, you could tell them I overpowered you and stole a shuttle.”

This time she smirked. “Sure, I could tell them that, but who would believe it?”

#

THE Benevolent Repose had barely changed, which gave Ax a strange sense of déjà vu as Marjon led him down the corridor from the shuttle bay where they’d docked. Wear and tear continued, but overall the ship appeared to have been maintained with the same businesslike rigor that Gobnait brought to everything—whether it was maintenance, charity work, or destroying people’s lives.

“Love what you haven’t done with the place,” he shot to Marjon. “The more things stay the same, am I right?”

She poked him in the ribs with the butt of her blade, only turning it at the last second to remind him that she could have used the sharp end. “We even kept your pillow fluffed for you. Walk.”

A cohort of soldiers followed behind her, as though emphasizing that escape was impossible. Not that he had anywhere to run. Despite the size of the vessel, most of the space was taken up by the factories that produced the medical supplies that made Bellerophon legitimate, as well as the narcotics that made it profitable. There weren’t many places he could lose his escort between the hangar and Gobby’s throne room.

Not that she called it that. In fact, she’d taken rather a great deal of offense when Ax had suggested it. It was, as she had said repeatedly, an office and a conference chamber. He’d thought about pointing out that an office where you sat on a dais and passed judgment on the people looking up at you was pretty much the textbook definition of a throne room, but she’d just had a person condemned to hard labor on the factory floor for insubordination at the time, so he decided it was safer to keep his mouth shut.

The enormous hardwood doors that led to the conference room dominated the end of the hall, and each step toward them made the panic that iced Ax’s stomach double.

“You have no idea how much I’ve been looking forward to this.” Marjon chuckled and patted Ax on the cheek as they reached the doors. “It’s literally been years.”

“Well, two of them,” Ax said. “I haven’t been gone that long after all. Besides, I thought your job was finding new people to exploit with addiction. Ruining strangers’ lives get too dull for you? When did you start doing resource retrieval?”

“When it meant being the one to capture you. The bonus on my paycheck for turning you over? Enough to retire on.” Marjon shoved open the double doors, grabbed Ax, and shoved him through. Any déjà vu he thought he’d felt before paled in comparison to how familiar this scene was. He’d seen it a dozen times at least. Gobnait lounged in her oversized office chair reading a data tablet with disinterest, legs over one armrest as she leaned against the other. Her red hair had been collected into a messy braid that curled over her shoulder and into the seat beside her hip. A pair of burly guards stood just in front of the dais to keep hoi polloi from getting too close. The same shitty neo-funk played softly out of the speakers. Hells, even the air smelled the same.

Marjon grabbed him by the collar and dragged him toward the front of the room. “Anaxagoras Turin-Welles, ma’am. As requested.”

Gobnait tapped something on her tablet as she turned to sit forward in the chair—he really had to stop thinking of it as her throne, but every gesture only reinforced the image—and a holographic display filled the space around the dais. Proxima Secundus’s mineral-rich surface formed the floor, with mines and centers of business picked out in bright green text.

“The prodigal returns,” she said as she tucked her data tablet into a protective sleeve that hung from the arm of the chair. “I’ve missed you.”

“You didn’t appreciate me when I was here. I wasn’t anything more than a fancy patch you could use to give you an air of respectability. You missed the people I could connect you with. You didn’t miss me.”

She shrugged and waved a hand indifferently. “You knew people in the high families. You knew how to get into better parties. Having you as part of Bellerophon meant more than respectability. It also meant an entry into a lot better markets.” She stood up and walked down the dais to stop in front of him. “The problem with selling to laborers is that they can’t afford to spend too much. But with the galactic rich...well, there’s practically no limit to what they would pay for a new experience. You cost me billions.”

She hadn’t raised her voice, which was a bad sign. Gobnait typically let her emotions run freely, embracing anger or happiness as she felt them. Her quiet tone indicated she had moved into controlled fury.

Ax swallowed. “You can’t know that.”

“Actually, I can. I’ve got a half-dozen actuaries whose sole job is to figure out how much I might make on a venture. Why do you think I proposed to you in the first place?”

Love was certainly out of the question. “That actually makes me feel less bad about skipping out on you, you realize.”

“I don’t give a synthesized damn about your feelings.” Gobby turned back to the dais. “What I want is my money. I trusted you with a dowry of two and a half million credits. You were supposed to be setting up our entry into high society. Making the arrangements for us to be treated like nobility.”

Instead, the money had paid for his escape into low society—covering the complex process of building a brand-new history for Ax Turner and making the connections he’d needed to keep out of her sight. “I’m willing to pay you back.”

She stopped, tilted her head. “Fine, have it deposited in my account by morning.”

“Yeah... I don’t have it on me. But I’ve just about finished this Great Space Race thing. If I win that, I’ll have the money.”

She sniffed. “The holovid reality series? You’ve gotten desperate as well as stupid.”

“It was a smarter move than you think. I mean, it gave me an excuse to keep moving, not get noticed by people. You’d be amazed how similar it is to how I was already living. And I’m apparently good for ratings.”

“I find it hard to believe you’d be good for anything. I mean I picked you because you were feckless. Utterly without feck. And you agreed because I was way better than anyone you were likely to find on your own. You’d probably end up with some backwater, fringe-born trash.”

Anger tightened Ax’s nerves, and he opened his mouth to let her know exactly who he’d found for himself, but tipping Gobnait off to Kayana’s existence was the quickest way to put her in danger. A low rumble rolled through the ship and the deck lurched under his feet. He caught himself against one of the side walls and only barely prevented cracking his skull against one of the elaborate sconces Gobby used for lighting. Before he could recover, the double doors flew open, and one of the guards ran in, eyes wide in terror. “We’re under attack!”