“That ship crashed there,” Mick said, pointing to the sensor display for the benefit of the scientists that had crowded into her cockpit.

With boulders and ruins in the way, they couldn’t see the other vessel on the view screen, but the sensors showed everything around them for miles and miles, almost as accurately as if there had been a satellite in orbit taking pictures. It also showed two weak life signs among the wreckage. At least two people were alive over there. For now.

“Just under a mile away and on the other side of the ruins,” Mick said.

“Where’s the ship that did it?” the engineer Dr. Cecil Woodruff asked, his short red hair ruffled from his hand pushing through it frequently. “You said something huge shot them down, right?”

Dr. Lee grumbled something under his breath. It sounded like a complaint that he and the others had been locked out of the cockpit earlier and hadn’t seen the battle.

If Mick had her druthers, they’d still be locked out, but she wasn’t in command. She owned the ship—at least, her name was on the loan for the ship—so she was in charge of it, but Dr. Lee was the lead scientist in charge of the mission.

“About forty thousand feet over our heads.” Mick spread her fingers through the holographic display to zoom out and show the hulking salvage ship flying in slow circles far above. “I doubt they can land that behemoth anywhere nearby. The sensors showed two people—or two somethings—alive on the crashed ship. The ship that was shot down. We know nothing about them, but they probably need help. I have combat experience as well as armor and weapons, so I’m the logical one to check on them. If they attack, I can deal with it. If they need help, I can carry them back. That said, it might be a better idea to stay out of it completely and hope that big ship doesn’t notice us down here.”

“You have combat experience?” Dev whispered from the co-pilot’s seat, her eyes round. “I thought you fixed airplanes in the military.”

“I was deployed twice when I was in, and there were incidents.” Mick grimaced, not letting her mind drift back to the particular incident that had prompted her to get out instead of staying in for the career she’d always believed she was perfect for. “Even mechanics learn how to fight in the Marines.”

“If there are survivors, we have to help them,” Dr. Valentin Garcia said, the only scientist on the team that Mick didn’t mind calling Doctor, since he legitimately was one, a medical one.

He was a neurologist who’d studied the effects of space on the human brain, and who also had NASA training that included experience, however hypothetical, with treating people in zero gravity and strange conditions. Not that such was necessary on the Viper. From what Mick had seen, most Confederation spaceships had inertial dampeners and artificial gravity.

“What we have to do is stay out of these people’s war,” Lee said. “As soon as it’s safe to do so, we’ll go out, set up our camp, and mind our own business.”

His words drew frowns from Garcia and the other scientists. The barista/meteorologist, Sven Safin, and the geological survey guy, James Weiss, hadn’t fit into the cockpit, but they leaned in from the corridor. Mick felt extremely claustrophobic.

“We can’t leave people out there to die,” Garcia said.

“Is there any way to camouflage this ship?” Lee asked Mick, ignoring the doctor.

Mick shook her head. “I’m sure that other ship knows we’re here.”

She pointed skyward to make sure they knew she was talking about the big one. The threat.

“I agree with the doctor,” Woodruff said. “We need to check on the survivors and help them if possible. Maybe we can get them out of there before their enemies come down to investigate the wreck.”

“Didn’t you say the salvage ship was too big to land?” Dev asked.

“Yeah, but it’s also big enough to have shuttles or the equivalent of fighter jets inside the bays.”

“So, they could potentially send a limited number of people down,” Dr. Weiss said from the doorway. “But they haven’t launched a shuttle yet?”

“Not yet.” Mick doubted they would be lucky enough that the salvage ship would simply go away.

“I vote we check on the survivors,” Weiss said. “A couple of us, while the others make preparations to hide in the ruins if necessary. I’m sure that ship could obliterate ours easily from their position. There’s nothing hiding us down here.”

A lot of expressions turned grim at his words.

Mick felt indignant. If someone started firing at her ship, she would raise shields and take off at top speed. But she had to admit the Viper’s shields wouldn’t be a match for the salvage ship’s massive firepower, and she might not be able to escape.

“If the enemy ship launches shuttles, then we’ll get back here and hunker down,” Weiss said. “Prepare to defend ourselves.”

“You’re not in charge of the mission, Weiss,” Lee said.

“I’m sharing my opinions on what we should do. And casting a vote.”

“This isn’t a democracy.”

“Nor is it a dictatorship or even a military mission.”

“The CEO put me in charge.”

The only member of the party who hadn’t chimed in yet met Mick’s eyes, his expression sympathetic. Sven Safin studied atmospheric conditions on other planets and had been sent along to survey the weather patterns here. He had a master’s degree but not a Ph.D., which made him the only person on the ship that Mick wasn’t supposed to address as “Doctor.”

“Let’s take a vote,” Garcia said. “Who wants to try to help the survivors?” He raised his hand.

Weiss raised his hand.

Lee folded his arms over his chest.

The others waffled, looking at the display and looking at each other. Mick wouldn’t be surprised if the poor people over there died while her committee of scientists tried to come to agreement.

Dev raised her hand, and Woodruff finally did too. Only Safin and Lee voted no.

“We’re checking on them then.” Garcia nodded firmly, his dark eyes challenging as he met Lee’s.

“Fine,” Lee said, “but send Saunders in her suit of armor. The rest of us will don our hazmat suits and prepare to go out if and when it’s needed.”

“Is our plucky captain supposed to carry two people back on her own?” Garcia asked dryly.

Mick probably could in the armor. It was an old suit that her sister had helped her acquire—somewhat illegally, since only law enforcement officers and space fleet soldiers were supposed to own the stuff. Katie’s boyfriend, a Star Guardian pilot named Zakota, had glanced at the suit when they’d brought it into her apartment on Dethocoles, then jerked his head away, firmly declaring that if he hadn’t gotten a good look at it, he couldn’t report to anyone that he knew about the acquisition. While trying it on and learning how to use the features, Mick must have walked past him ten times, but he’d always studied the ceiling so he could continue not getting a solid look at it. A good man.

“I’ll handle it,” Mick said. “I can carry one, and I’ve got a lifter I can take. You guys just prepare to do your science things. Dev, stay here by the comm and monitor the sensor display. Let me know if anything changes with that ship up there, such as if they decide to send anyone down.”

“I will go with you, Ms. Saunders,” Dr. Garcia said.

Ms. Saunders? Who the hell was that? Nobody called her that.

“Suit yourself, but stay out of the way. Am I right that none of you brought weapons?”

“I have a sturdy and pointy soil-sampling probe,” Dev offered.

“That’ll scare people in combat armor, I’m sure,” Mick said.

“Actually, I have a Glock G29,” Woodruff said. “Thought about bringing my hunting rifle, too, since I heard the planet had something like lizards, and I wasn’t sure how big or aggressive they were, but it wouldn’t fit in my pack.”

Though he looked to be straight out of Ireland with his red hair and freckles, Woodruff had a Texas drawl and was originally from some hick town a hundred miles from nowhere. Mick wasn’t surprised that he had a handgun.

“You brought firearms?” Lee demanded. “On a spaceship? Do you know what could happen if a gun went off while we were in space?”

“As the engineer on board, I have a few ideas about how physics work,” Woodruff said. “I assure you, it’s unloaded right now, and the ammo is in a separate box.”

“You weren’t authorized.”

“We weren’t going to the moon. From what the reports say, there are aliens that eat humans out in the galaxy, and you can’t necessarily even trust other humans.”

“Enough,” Mick said, raising her hands to silence them. “Get out of my cockpit so I can dress.” She nudged the armor case under a console with her toe. “I’m sure time is of the essence for those people over there.” She jerked her thumb toward the weak life signs in the wreck, and the two scientists had the grace to look ashamed.

“I’m putting on my suit,” Garcia said, striding out of the cockpit.

The others trailed after him, Dev and Woodruff at the end. Dev walked close behind him. Their engineer was wearing a tank top at the moment, showing off lean, lanky arms. He wasn’t hulking, but he had a nice swimmer’s build and musculature. Mick wasn’t sure that he had noticed Dev giving him those puppy-dog eyes. Maybe she should have brought something sexier than baggy sweatshirts.

Not that hookups were important in outer space.

“Woodruff,” Mick said, making him pause and look back.

“Get your gun out. You’ll be in charge of protecting the ship while I’m gone.”

“From varmints?”

“Varmints of all kinds, yes.” Mick looked skyward again, though of course she couldn’t see the salvage ship through the ceiling.

“You got it, Captain,” he said.

Mick decided she liked that label better than “miss.” She’d been a sergeant in the Marines, but she was technically a ship’s captain now, wasn’t she? Even if she usually only had a one-person crew—herself. And even if a bank on Dethocoles owned most of the ship. If she hadn’t learned of a game similar to poker that was popular throughout the galaxy, she wouldn’t have even had the money for the down payment. But this mission, she reminded herself, could change all that. She would earn enough to pay off that loan and own the ship outright, and then she could be independent and free. It wasn’t quite the same as being a part of a military unit and fighting for other people’s safety and human rights, but it was something.

“Just have to survive this,” she muttered to herself.

“Don’t forget about the ghosts,” Dev added, smiling at Woodruff.

“Ghosts?”

“The planet’s haunted, remember?”

“Oh, right. I saw that in the report. I’m not sure bullets work well on ghosts, but I’ll be ready for them.” He winked at her and continued down the corridor.

Dev smiled after him with stars in her eyes.

Mick glanced at the sensors. The salvage ship had descended about ten thousand feet. In preparation of launching shuttles?

If so, ghosts would be the least of her worries.

Smoke wafted above the ruins, rising into a hazy orange sky that matched the system’s orange sun. Wind scraped across the tan earth, stirring dust. The outside temperature, reprogrammed from Dethocolean degrees to Fahrenheit, registered at fifty-three according to her suit’s instruments. Mick felt neither the cold nor wind nor the sun’s rays through her combat armor, which enclosed her body from helmet to boots.

Self-contained and suitable for space and other questionable environments, the armor was surprisingly comfortable, especially considering it was bulkier than the suits the bomb squad guys wore back home. The boots had a spring to them that could have propelled her well into the air if she wished. They could also increase her speed if she needed to run.

Mick forced herself to walk slowly as she navigated boulders, heading in the direction of the smoke. Dr. Garcia toddled behind her in a flaming yellow hazmat suit that could probably be seen from orbit. Five planets away. There was no way they would sneak up on anyone, so Mick hoped it wouldn’t be required.

She kept looking skyward, though the hulking salvage ship had still been circling the area at thirty thousand feet when they left the Viper. She had no idea what its crew was waiting for, but she imagined nukes descending to finish off the crashed ship—and any other ships within a hundred square miles.

“The lighting here is odd,” Dr. Garcia said over the comm.

Mick shrugged. “Not all suns are the same. My suit’s sensors say the air is fine though.”

In addition to temperature, other environmental stats flowed down the sides of the liquid-glass display of her faceplate, not interfering with her view but delivering an amazing amount of information, including her suit’s integrity. If she started getting shot at, that would be good to know.

“Air isn’t the only thing to consider when choosing a planet to colonize. It’s interesting that there’s so little flora. Fungal colonies here and there, but no trees, no bushes, no flowers. Nothing similar that occupies those ecological niches.”

“Must be something edible around for those lizards,” Mick said.

“It’s likely they thrive off the fungi.”

Something skittered through the ruins to her left, and she jerked her weapon, a Dethocolean bolt bow, in that direction before she stopped herself. Her sensors reported some of those lizards in the ruins, cold-blooded, rat-sized creatures that scurried among the broken walls and rocks. That must have been what she’d seen.

No need to fire at a little lizard.

The ruins themselves were in fairly good shape, stacked-rock walls rising up one or two stories. Some structures still had roofs, also made of rock, flat slabs that must have been creatively placed since there wasn’t timber or anything like it to use for beams or supports. Wide roads and narrow alleys were laid with something akin to cobblestones.

Mick chose to walk through the old settlement instead of skirting it, both because it was a more direct route and because the buildings offered cover. Just in case someone showed up and started shooting.

More movement to the side prompted her to swing her weapon down an alley. She halted herself again, certain it was another lizard. Between the orange sky and the wind and the ruins, the place had an eerie, desolate feel, and it had her more on edge than she wanted to admit. Or maybe it was that she’d witnessed one ship shooting down another not twenty minutes ago.

Her sensors didn’t show the lizard she thought she’d seen.

Frowning, Mick stopped for a longer look down the alley. Sand lay piled against walls, and crumbled rock scattered the old walkway, but nothing stirred.

“What is it?” Dr. Garcia asked.

Mick hadn’t taken a close look at the hazmat suits, other than helping the scientists hook into the same comm system that the Viper used, but she doubted it had any sensors for detecting life forms.

“Nothing.” Mick turned back to her path.

She lengthened her stride, hoping Garcia could keep up. She wanted to reach the ship quickly.

“There are animals of some kind in here, right?” Garcia asked a minute later, his hood swiveling from side to side as he peered into the ruins.

“Yeah, I’ve only caught glimpses of movement so far, but my sensors show them to be the lizard-like creatures we were told about. Nothing unexpected.” Mick didn’t mention the movement she’d caught that hadn’t matched up to anything on the sensor display. She figured the suit wasn’t perfect with its detection. Or maybe the creature moved extremely quickly. “There.”

They had reached the far side of the ruins, and she pointed over a crumbling half wall that surrounded the settlement in fits and starts. Beyond it, heavy gray smoke rose from the remains of a ship about the size of hers. Someone had tried valiantly to keep the nose up as it came down, but it was clear the craft would never fly again. The front half had skidded a mile or more, leaving the back half in pieces sprawled across the tan earth. A boulder the size of a house had ended its skid, or the ship might have continued into the ruins themselves.

“It’s hard to believe anyone is alive in that,” Garcia said, stepping up to her side. He took another step, heading toward the wreckage, but their comm came on first.

“Mick?” came Dev’s voice. “Two small ships just launched from the big ship.”

Garcia cursed.

“Come on,” Mick said, jogging for the wreck. “It’ll take them a few minutes to land.”

She was halfway to the crash when she realized, thanks to the rear camera in her helmet, Garcia wasn’t following her. He’d turned toward the pyramid towering over the settlement on the north side, a large portion of it visible now that they were out from among the ruins. Its walls stair-stepped up toward a stone hut at the top, and Garcia was staring at it.

“Doctor? This is your mission. What are you doing?”

“I saw someone.” His yellow hood did not turn away from the pyramid.

“Someone? Doc, the only someones are in the wreck and need your help.” Mick couldn’t see the shuttles yet, since the hazy sky limited visibility, but she could hear the roar of engines far above. They didn’t have time for dawdling.

“No, I saw a person in the shadows at the top. They—someone—must already be out here.”

Mick double-checked her sensor display. The suit’s scanners weren’t as powerful as the Viper’s, but she had a range of a good mile, maybe two. The pyramid lay well within that range. She detected more of the lizard-like life forms, but nothing larger.

“Nothing there, Doc.” Mick jogged toward the shuttle.

“Maybe the stone is blocking your scans. If that’s similar to a Mayan ziggurat, it could have a hollowed out inside.”

“It does, and my scans are working just fine. I see a nice lizard colony living in there.”

An eerie moan reached Mick’s ears as she closed on the wreckage, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. It reminded her of background sounds played at a haunted house, but she realized it had to be someone moaning with pain.

The door on the side of the fuselage was warped and half buried in sand, so she walked to the rear, the part torn wide open. Inside, equipment, bent metal, and seats were torn up and scattered everywhere. Holes in the ceiling let rays of orange light inside.

“Hello?” Mick called, looking for movement among the wreckage.

Whoever’s ship this was, they wouldn’t speak English, but translation chips seemed ubiquitous in the galaxy, at least among humans. She had one embedded in her ear canal. Some other species didn’t care if they understood anyone else or not, but she’d already identified this ship as from a human planet. Thanks to the women who’d been kidnapped from Earth two years earlier, English had already been entered into the Confederation languages database.

Another moan drifted back from the cockpit.

“Garcia, someone needs you.” Mick called before crawling into the destroyed fuselage.

“Coming.”

She peeked out a porthole and spotted the doctor striding her way, though he kept glancing toward the pyramid.

“Take your time,” Mick muttered, climbing over a row of seats.

She checked her sensors again, close range this time, and halted with a start. They weren’t registering signs of life from within the wreck anymore. Was she too late?

Another moan drifted back from the cockpit.

“What the hell?” she whispered, her hand tightening on the frame of her bolt bow.

The weapon was slung across her torso on a strap so she didn’t have to hold it, but she decided to keep it in hand as she advanced.

“Dev?” she said. “Give me an update on those shuttles.”

“They’re getting close. Are you on your way back?”

“No.” Mick hurried to climb over another set of destroyed seats, her neck hair up again. She imagined those shuttles taking aim right now, about to fire.

But what was the point of shooting at a ship that was already wrecked? Unless they wanted to utterly destroy all signs of life within it…

Mick came down on the tilted deck and almost stepped on a man.

“Shit,” she whispered, jerking her foot back.

The man’s legs had been torn off. He was extremely dead.

With her own leg still dangling in the air, Mick looked around. Three women also lay dead in the area. They looked like they had been trying to get to the hatch—a couple of them wore what might have been parachutes. The hatch must not have opened for them.

Another moan came from farther up, from the cockpit.

An intense feeling of déjà vu washed over her: a hot desert, tan sand, the scorching sun yellow instead of orange. Bodies and wreckage everywhere. A baby crying in the distance.

Mick gripped a beam, struggling to push away the memory. Whoever was left alive in here needed her.

Swallowing, she maneuvered past the dead bodies, careful not to step on anyone. Her sensors still did not show life in here, making her question whether they were fully calibrated. Was it possible Garcia had seen someone at the pyramid? Where was Garcia, anyway?

She glanced toward the opening behind her, but didn’t see his yellow suit. Her sensors showed him standing outside. Was he waiting for her to declare it safe?

“I hear someone moaning, Doctor,” she said, squeezing into a short corridor lined by smoking computer equipment. Pieces had fallen free, littering the deck.

A dented door marked the cockpit. She tried buttons on a panel, but with no power left in the ship, the door did not open. She bent her knees, leaned her shoulder against it, and shoved.

Normally, her shoulders weren’t burly enough to force open doors, but the armor enhanced her movements, and she heard the servos working in her leg pieces as she pushed. Metal groaned, then warped. The door gave way, though it did not open fully. It caught against something.

Mick peered around it. One pilot was belted into a seat, a beam thrust all the way through his chest and into the seat back. He must have died instantly, or damn near. A second person lay on the deck by the door, his leg twisted awkwardly and blood plastering his face. His eyes were open—frozen open in death.

She looked around, but there was nobody else in there, nobody else alive on the ship, according to her sensors.

“Then who was groaning?” she whispered.

Had the man on the deck just died? And one of the people out in the main cabin too? Maybe two people had been alive when she’d started over here, but they’d died before she and Garcia reached the ship.

“The shuttles are landing,” Dev blurted, her voice squeaky with alarm. “One’s almost on top of us.”

Cursing, Mick backed away. This had been a fool’s errand to start with, and now she was stuck out in the open a mile from her ship. She could sprint back quickly in her armor, but Garcia wouldn’t be fast. He was lucky to do more than waddle in that hazmat suit.

“Stay there and hold tight,” Mick ordered as she jumped back over the seats and rubble. “Keep the shields up. Garcia and I will hide in the ruins and make it back to you as soon as we can.”

Mick reached the opening but stopped to peer out before leaving cover. A good thing. One of the shuttles roared past overhead and landed thirty meters away.

She spotted Garcia as she backed into the shadows and pointed her bolt bow toward the shuttle, a blue craft with a wedge-shaped nose. Garcia had chosen to run back toward the ruins instead of into the wreck with her. Probably not a bad idea. She had to run a couple hundred meters to reach that half wall. Was there time?

A hatch opened on the side of the shuttle the instant the landing skis touched down onto the dust. Six men leaped out, some wearing mismatched combat armor and others wearing clothing. They all carried weapons, bolt bows and other energy weapons Mick couldn’t name.

They spotted Garcia in his yellow suit. He’d almost reached the ruins, and Mick thought he might make it, but the men didn’t hesitate. Two of them lifted their weapons, aiming for his back.

Mick might have remained unnoticed in the wreck, but she reacted instantly, aiming at the two men. She fired rapidly, trying to hit both of them before they shot Garcia.

At the least, she hoped to distract them. Ideally, she would draw their fire. In her armor, she could take a few hits, but that hazmat suit would be worthless against weapons.

Unfortunately, she was too slow. The orange en-bolts from her bow slammed into the men, but not before their weapons hit Garcia, taking him fully in the back. He sprawled forward, his hood flying off as he tumbled through the dust, a giant hole charred in his suit.

Mick fired again, crouching behind the torn fuselage for cover. She’d need a hell of a lot more than that and her armor to survive a battle with six men. The two she’d shot at had been two of the ones in armor, and they weren’t injured in the least. They spun toward her and unleashed a barrage of en-bolts.

She sprayed her fire, hoping to get lucky. She caught one of the unarmed men in the shoulder, and he flew to his back.

But the other men unloaded on her, forcing her to back up. Red, green, and white energy bolts from different styles of weapons slammed into the fuselage, blowing holes in it. Some of the bolts slipped through and struck her armor. They might look like harmless beams from a laser light show, but they struck her like cannonballs. Even with the armor, the thuds knocked her back, and she almost lost her footing.

How had she let herself get into this situation?

As the men ran toward her, firing all the way, Mick knew she was doomed. She sprang backward over some of the seats and debris, hoping to buy herself time.

An idea flashed into her mind as she crouched behind cover, firing over the top of a bank of crumpled seats. Maybe if she got them inside, she could force that side hatch open, run out, and blow up the fuselage behind her. Except that she didn’t have any explosives, and she hadn’t passed anything that appeared flammable. The engine and fuel tanks were strewn across the desert.

She glimpsed one more man in armor jumping out of the shuttle.

“Great, reinforcements,” she muttered, firing madly, trying to keep her foes from getting inside.

One of them pulled something off a hook on a utility belt. A grenade?

Mick fired at it, hoping to blow it up before he threw it. But someone else’s fire hit his hand first.

She blinked as the man yelped and dropped the grenade. Had one of them accidentally hit one of their own men? Several of them glanced back toward the newcomer. Like the others, this one also wore patchy mismatched armor. He fired again. At his colleagues.

That couldn’t be a mistake.

Mick, hardly able to believe her luck, kept laying down fire, hoping to find a breach in someone’s armor. The unarmored men had hung back, but that made them easy targets for the crazy bastard shooting at his own people.

The men who had been approaching the fuselage darted to the side so they wouldn’t be in her sights as they returned the new person’s fire. He dodged some of their attacks with impressive speed, the armor—or maybe his own talents—making him almost acrobatic as he jumped, spun, and even somersaulted in the air to avoid bolts streaking toward him. All the while, he returned fire.

The unarmored men dropped, leaving only three others in armor.

For a moment, the men simply stood in the desert and shot at each other, en-bolts bouncing off chest and shoulder plating. From Mick’s position, she could only have targeted the newcomer, but she wasn’t about to shoot at him, not when he was doing a lovely job of messing with her enemies.

Maybe this was her chance to get out of there.

She sprang back again, toward the hatch this time. The dead people’s eyes seemed to watch her as she passed over them. Accusing eyes condemning her for being too late to help.

It still chilled her that she’d heard those moans only seconds before finding them all dead.

As weapons continued to fire outside, Mick rammed her shoulder against the hatch. It took three tries, but she knocked it open, metal squealing and sand falling inside as it gave.

She winced, certain all those men had heard the noise, and also certain they would come to their senses any second and join forces to get her.

She jumped out the hatch, saddened that the people inside hadn’t had someone with an armored shoulder to force it open so they could escape. She only took two steps before an explosion ripped through the air.

Even her armor couldn’t protect her fully as the shockwave hit her. She flew away from the wreck, helpless to do anything but flail.

Her first thought was that someone had managed to throw a grenade at her after all. But as she tumbled back to the hard earth, she spotted flames off to the side. The enemy shuttle. The entire back end had blown off, and fire roared from the interior, flames shooting out the open hatch.

Mick jumped to her feet. Though she wasn’t sure if the men were still fighting each other, she risked racing across the open ground toward the ruins. She wouldn’t get a better chance.

As she moved away from the wreck, they came into view on her rear helmet cam. The newcomer—his patchwork of gray and white armor was a little different from the other men’s sets, so she could identify him—had closed to melee distance with them.

He punched a man in the faceplate, gauntleted knuckles striking like a battering ram. His foe reeled back as two other men grabbed at him, trying to take him down. But he jumped, kicking to either side as he kept his grip on the one he’d struck. Each boot caught an enemy in the helmet. It looked like something out of a Bruce Lee movie.

As the lone man landed, he caught his first foe by the crotch and an arm and hurled him twenty meters to land in the burning shuttle, crashing through the remains of the roof. Even Bruce Lee would have struggled to do that.

The two kicked men jumped to their feet and renewed their attack, just as Mick reached Garcia.

He lay facedown in the dirt and hadn’t moved since he’d been shot. Her sensors told her he was dead, but she bent down to roll him over and check. In part because she didn’t trust her equipment anymore—maybe something on the planet was disrupting it—and in part because she didn’t want to believe it was true.

Garcia’s brown eyes, frozen open in death, still held the fear he’d felt in those last seconds. Mick swallowed, blinking away tears that she couldn’t afford to shed now. Even though she’d only been hired to ferry the scientists to this planet, as the pilot of the ship and the one person with experience in the galaxy, she felt responsible for them. Also, of all the people they could lose, to lose the doctor had to be the worst. It certainly seemed cosmically unfair. He wasn’t a fighter. He had come out here wanting to help people.

Another boom sounded behind her, reminding Mick that this wasn’t the time for mourning. She raced into the ruins, putting several buildings behind her before slowing down. Her heart slammed against her ribcage as if she’d run a marathon instead of a two-hundred-meter race. She pressed a hand against a stone wall to catch her breath.

Should she run straight back to the Viper? Or hide out here in the ruins?

Her suit would register as little more than a cold hunk of rock to most ships’ sensors, so she might be better in here. But she couldn’t abandon the Viper to a second shuttle of those thugs. Who were they, anyway? What kind of assholes jumped out and started killing people without a word of warning? Or explanation.

“Dev?” Mick asked quietly, activating her comm.

She spotted movement out of the corner of her eye and whirled, bolt bow aiming in that direction. She expected to see some of those men racing toward her. But the cobblestone road was empty and still. Her sensors showed nothing around, but they would also struggle to detect someone in combat armor. The stuff was built to deflect scans.

“Better keep moving,” she whispered, then added, “Dev?”

The other woman hadn’t responded. Nobody had. The channel was open.

Mick picked up her pace, doing her best to find a path through the ruins that didn’t take her down any wide alleys or streets. If that second shuttle flew overhead, she didn’t want the pilot spotting her, not easily.

“Dev or anyone there,” Mick whispered. “I’d really like an update.”

What if the second shuttle had already dealt with the Viper? Destroyed it and everybody on board?

The thought jarred her so badly that she tripped, nearly planting her faceplate on an ancient cobblestone.

Belatedly, she realized she could check. She whispered an order to the suit’s sensors, telling it to extend its range and check for ships, not just life.

The Viper was still there, thank God. But the enemy shuttle hovered over it. Damn it. What if people from the shuttle had already deployed, forced the Viper’s shields down, and captured all the scientists? Or worse?

Mick increased her pace again. The only way to end all these disturbing thoughts would be to confirm that they hadn’t happened.

A clatter came from her left, like rocks knocked from a pile. Once again, she whirled with her weapon in hand. Once again, she saw nothing.

Mick had never believed in ghosts or hauntings, but she was beginning to think her team had been naive to brush off the legends about this place.

She kept running. Another quarter mile, and she would be out of the ruins on the far side. The Viper would be in sight, and she would figure out what was going on.

She glimpsed movement to her right.

“Damn it,” she snarled, spinning in that direction and almost firing even though she knew she wouldn’t see anything.

Except she did see something. Someone.

The man in gray-and-white patchwork armor. And he was pointing a bolt bow at her chest.