ANDROMA
IT WAS STARING at her again.
“Are you incapable of blinking?” Andi asked.
The AI sat across from her in the meeting room of the Marauder, where it had been since the beginning of their meeting.
“Since I am not a living being, I do not require eyelids to block damaging particles from entering my ocular lens. This means that I am incapable of blinking, Androma Racella.”
If the infernal AI hadn’t belonged to General Cortas, Andi would have unscrewed its head and pulled its wiring out through its neck. Instead, she turned to the second most kill-worthy member of her new crew.
“Silence him, Dextro, before I do it myself.”
Dex tsked, shaking his finger. “Now, now, Androma.” He drawled out her name. “You of all people should know how the general likes his little pets to be.”
Andi’s fingertips flinched toward her sheathed blades.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He held up his gloved hands. “Relax, Andi. I’m just trying to have a conversation. That’s what people do.”
“I don’t want to have a conversation,” Andi said. “Not with you.”
It had only been a day since Dex took up residence on her ship, but it seemed much longer. Not for a single second had Andi been able to escape Dex’s presence. The ship may have been small, but it wasn’t that small. Yet no matter where she went, Dex managed to find her. In her room, where she pored over her photographs of planets, all the places she’d explored, he’d found her. He’d flipped through her classical music collection, then chuckled at the calendar screen flickering on the glass wall. The handsome models from all corners of Mirabel rippled as he flicked through the images, whistling at each one.
“So this is what you like, Androma?” he’d asked, waggling his dark brows suggestively. “I guess I understand why you left me.”
“What do you want, Dextro?” she’d asked.
“We need to talk.” Standing in the doorway of her room, a half smile tugging at his lips, he had looked for a moment exactly as he had long ago, when they’d shared this very space. She’d slammed the door in his face before her memories, and her heart, could unravel her.
How he could make light of their situation, how he could simply come here and want to just talk, after all that they’d been through and all that they had done, she couldn’t fathom.
But she knew that the moment they delivered Valen Cortas back to his father, she’d be rid of Dex forever.
“Your heart rate is increasing dramatically,” Alfie’s soothing voice sounded from across the table. “Do you require a moment to rest?”
She required a lot more than that, but Andi simply shook her head and turned back to the task at hand.
A map of the Olen System filled the air of the room, three glowing orbs rotating slowly around a single sun. To the left of Xen Ptera, the capital planet of Olen, was a mass of gray: the Junkyard, where old ships were cast out into the skies, left for traders to pick over—but more notably, where the last real battle of The Cataclysm was fought, the Battle of Black Sky. It was rumored that Queen Nor’s father, the previous king, had sent hundreds of ships to fight, only to watch them fall from the sky as thousands of Olen soldiers died at the hands of the Unified Systems.
The Junkyard was the perfect place for the Marauder to disappear.
Andi glanced up as the newly repaired door of the meeting room slid open and the rest of her crew walked in. The holographic map flickered as the girls walked through it, then bounced back into place.
Gilly was preoccupied with eating a chunk of bread from dinner. If she had the chance, Andi thought, Gilly would eat all our food stores. Andi often wondered if her stomach was a bottomless pit. The thirteen-year-old was growing fast and had an appetite to match her growth spurt.
The ship’s system, Memory, beeped overhead.
“Incoming message,” the cool female voice said.
Alfie looked up, tilting his head sideways. “An Artificial Intelligence on the mainframe of a pirating ship,” he said. “I have never observed such a thing.”
“We stole her on a job last month,” Gilly explained. “Breck installed her.”
“Incoming message,” Memory said again, “for Dextro Arez.”
Dex stood, the legs of his chair scraping like a wailing ghost against the cool metal floor. “My informant awaits.”
They’d been going back and forth with different plans for hours, finally settling on one that pleased everyone—and most importantly, General Cortas. The general had his claws sunk deep into Andi’s back, even from halfway across the galaxy. He’d already rejected several plans, which seemed to defeat the purpose of hiring Andi and her crew to do a job that he lacked the experience to carry out himself. Their short, often heated calls made Andi long for her days as a Spectre. Back then, he’d respected her, even praised her during rare moments when he’d let his general’s mask come loose. She’d seen him through a soldier’s eyes, trained to gain his approval. He’d given her the freedom to do her job, even allowing Andi to take up residence in Averia so she could stay by Kalee’s side at all hours.
How far she had fallen since then.
Like it or not, General Cortas had to bow to her will on this mission, to respect her methods. She’d told him as much on their most recent call.
“Bring him back to me, Androma,” the general had said, “and perhaps I will.”
Now Andi and Dex had finally settled on a plan. Her crew surrounded the table as Dex left the room, Alfie trailing after him, saying something about conversing with his fellow AI.
The girls waited until they were gone to speak. Lira stood across from Andi, blue eyes searching her face. “You’re looking a bit troubled.”
“I’m fine, Lir,” Andi said with a growl as she examined her chipped red polish. She’d have to ask Gilly to repaint her nails soon. “I thought you said you were going to keep Dex busy. He won’t leave me alone.”
The pilot shrugged. “Dextro is a man with many talents, the most obnoxious of which is that he knows this ship inside and out.”
“That,” Breck added, her massive hands curling into fists as she slumped back into a chair too small for her muscular frame, “and his little leech, Alfie, seems to always be ten steps ahead of us.”
Gilly giggled and wiped bread crumbs from her face. “I’m going to lock the AI in the waste bay.”
Andi smiled at the thought. “The sooner the better. You could lock Dex in there, too.”
This was how it should be, just her and the girls making plans to strike it big. Without a self-righteous, Krev-worshipping man on board.
“We’ll make our first move soon,” Andi said, filling the girls in on the latest part of the plan. She glanced at her Second. “Lira?”
Lira nodded and reached out to swipe a hand across the map over their heads, which was programmed to respond to her and Andi alone. Much to Dex’s dismay, Andi thought with a smug smile. He’d asked her to give him access at least a dozen times already, and she’d shut him down each time. With pleasure.
At Lira’s touch, the planets on the map began to swirl, their muted colors deepening, the sun blazing bright as it spun around the room. Lira tapped a black spot on the map, enlarging the space before using her fingertip to trace a glowing red circle around it.
“That,” she said, pointing to the circle, “is where we are now, in the Junkyard.” The Marauder was currently hidden within the large husk of a fallen warship. If anyone happened to come through this area, their ship would easily be mistaken as a piece of the larger one. That had been Lira’s bright idea, and the exterior damage the Marauder had recently sustained was helpful camouflage.
She drew a line from their current location to Lunamere, where Valen was being held captive.
“This is where we need to be,” Lira said, right before Andi took over.
“The plan is that in two days’ time, we will be meeting Dex’s informant, Soyina Rumbardh, at the Dark Matter Pub, located just outside the security border of Xen Ptera.” Andi tapped a spot on the map just to the left of Lunamere, where a small silver orb hung in the darkness. The satellite pub. “There, we’ll finalize the escape plan with Soyina and initiate the rescue. Dex and I will enter Lunamere while the rest of you head to the rendezvous point.” Andi looked at Lira, catching her in the middle of an eye roll.
Her Second wasn’t happy that Dex and Andi were going in to Lunamere without her, especially with the plan they’d come up with. High risk, possible reward. But it was the best option they had, and they needed Lira to pilot the ship. Plus, as much as Andi hated to admit it, she and Dex did know how to work a job together.
It was what first brought them together, and later tore them apart. They simply had to get through this without killing each other first.
Andi swallowed hard and continued. “At this point, all we need is a map of the prison. Without that map, we’ll be screwed. But luckily for us, our informant should be sending it to Dex as we speak.”
Soyina could be described as a shadow hiding in darkness with few records to be found about her on the galactic feeds. She was a tricky woman who had refused to let anyone but Dex see her face, which meant Andi had to go in blind when she met the woman in person. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but she’d faced worse before.
“I know I’m not the most experienced at this stuff,” Gilly said from across the table as she polished her golden gun, “but it all seems a little too easy. How do you know we can even trust this so-called informant Dex has?”
Breck barked out a laugh. “How can we even trust Dex?”
“We can’t,” Andi said. In her mind, she saw Dex’s face years ago on Uulveca, the very first time she’d met him. That sideways smile, his hand wrapped around her throat. His pouch of Krevs coiled in her fist. She should have known that day what he was. What he’d push her to become.
“Dex’s trademark is double-crossing people,” Andi continued. An old dent in the wall of this room was proof of that. Andi still remembered the brain-bashing she’d saved Dex from in the days they’d shared this ship. “That’s why I have a plan B.”
“And that is?” Breck asked, raising a brow.
“Well, ladies,” Andi said as she leaned forward, face glowing in the light of the map. The stars rippled out and away from her touch, as if made of water. “I think Dextro needs to be taught a little lesson in the element of surprise.”