An Unbreakable World

by Ren Hutchings

Genres: Alien Contact; Space Exploration; Space Opera; Time Travel

Synopsis

A petty thief is kidnapped to take part in a heist that could alter the course of an alien war in this space opera from the author of Under Fortunate Stars.

Two strangers. One con. More secrets than they bargained for.

Page is a petty thief with fractured memories, scrounging to survive in a backwater outpost, until she’s kidnapped by one of her marks. Maelle is a bounty hunter, serving a murderous boss in her pursuit of revenge, until she starts to fall for their latest bounty.

When the bounty hunters’ plan to pass Page off as a missing heiress goes awry, Page and Maelle decide to pull off a con of their own – if they succeed, they could walk away richer than either of them could imagine.

Until their plans thrust them both into a centuries-long political plot that could alter the course of a whole galaxy…

Release date: September 9, 2025

Publisher: Solaris

Print pages: 480

Sample

So. We’re recording… right. Let’s see, then. [ clears throat ] Where should I start?

I suppose we all like to think of stories as having a beginning and an ending, ’cause that’s the way stories are supposed to work, isn’t it? It’s neat that way. All makes sense. “Once there was a little lost soul with pure intentions, da-dee-da-da … so on and so forth… and then, after all was said and done, they sailed happily into the stars.” I sure used to think that way.

In stories, things end. Our heroes got what they wanted, or else they didn’t. They won, or they lost. They lived, or they died. It’s over, there’s nothing more to say. All neat and tidy, the way real life never damn well is. Maybe that’s why we like to hear ’em told that way. But out here in reality… well. Out here, things tend to get messy.

Now, I’ll tell you this: I’ve never been much for second chances. Most of the time, I’m just not the fresh-start kind. See, I hold a gods-damned grudge. There’s no blank scoreboard in life, you get the dice rolls you get, you did what you did. There’s no starting over.

But I do like to see what gets built from the mess, afterwards. The monsters that rise from the wreckage, you know what I’m sayin’? That’s what interests me. And yeah, all right… maybe there’s a bit of personal experience talking there.

Real stories aren’t clean, and they aren’t straightforward, or fair. Who’s winning and who’s losing… it doesn’t always make sense, no matter how you spin it.

Sometimes, we all get what we don’t deserve. But there’s one way to make real sure that the last bad thing that happened won’t be the ending, not for you.

And that’s to keep living. 

 

If something seems too good to be real, you’ve got to get out of there.

That’s one rule that Page usually abides by. But on a baking-hot day, crouching in the sweat-stink of the upper levels and staring at the most perfect score of the year, it’s easy enough to forget her own rules. This is the very definition of easy money.

She focuses her binoculars and zooms in, studying the mark. There are only two sorts of people on Kuuj Outpost—the locals and the passers-through—and this fool is most definitely the latter. He cuts a tall, angular figure in a dark coat with diamond-shaped patches on the elbows. His polished boots have blocky heels and far too many buckles to be practical, the kind of footwear that doesn’t exactly lend itself to running.

Page pans over to the stranger’s hands. His pale, slender fingers are stacked with shiny rings as high as the bony knuckle will allow. Those rings alone are probably worth a fortune, but they’re not what Page is after. Heart pounding, she moves her binoculars down to the stranger’s belt and checks again to make sure her eyes aren’t deceiving her.

Unbelievably, the thing is still there in plain view: a Q-link comms device, military-grade. The type of box you can seldom swipe off anyone who isn’t a soldier. As if the mark’s clothes didn’t give off enough of a not-from-around-here vibe, the fact that he’s clearly flashing a Q-link device, in public, is a dead giveaway. If she can nab that, she can knock as much off her debt as she’d make in a month of chasing hapless ship workers for yet another scuffed walkie.

Pickings have been worse than slim lately, and the usual hauler crews have long been wising up to the dockyard pickpockets. The workers who regularly stop over here have all been keeping their expensive devices firmly up their sleeves and securing their locker-rooms after hours. An outsider like this is Page’s best chance at a score this week.

Page leans unsteadily on the pillar she crouches behind. It really is unbearably hot up here. Her skull feels too heavy for her neck to hold up, and her chin dips, a sharp ache blooming behind her eyeballs. Her vision blurs, and she grits her teeth.

Gods, how is this shit still happening? Is it getting worse? One of the air recyclers must’ve broken down. Again.

Kuuj’s lower levels are sweltering, the humidity curdling in thick, musty air. Up here in the higher decks, it’s somewhat cooler most of the time, but the mix still isn’t right—there are too many chemicals leaching into the flow systems, the bad air making everyone light-headed and argumentative. Being hungry probably isn’t helping, either. Page hasn’t eaten a proper meal since sometime yesterday, and the stale energy bar she pilfered from a corner kiosk earlier hasn’t done much to restore her.

She gives herself a quick mental shakedown, blinking hard to clear her vision. She’s fine. This is perfectly normal—or whatever passes for normal on Kuuj. There’s absolutely nothing wrong in her head that isn’t also wrong with every single other inhabitant of this wreckhole.

Well… besides the occasional weird visions. And maybe the fact that she’s lost twenty-odd years of memories…

But no, no, no. She’s not going to think about any of that today. Not with the score of the year right down there, just waiting to be robbed. She has to focus.

There’ll be plenty of time to dwell on her meaningless existence later. Maybe when she’s laid out for an hour or two in a temperature-controlled room with a chilled drink, spending a sliver of the profits from this fool’s device. Right before she responsibly chucks the rest of her windfall against her bottomless debt.

The mark. Eyes on the prize. This might look straightforward, but she can’t afford to get distracted now.

Page adjusts her binoculars and pans back up to the stranger’s face. It’s always unsettling, being able to see someone this clearly from such a distance. She can see the movement of his pupils, the way his eyes are tracking from left to right over the docks. He’s probably waiting to meet someone. Someone who might be about to arrive at any minute and screw this whole thing up. Page swears under her breath. An opportunity this good won’t last. If she doesn’t get her ass down there and swipe that box, one of the dockyard kids is going to get it. This guy seriously looks that damn easy.

She stuffs her binoculars in her satchel and hauls herself to her feet, leaning against the pillar for support as her head swims nauseatingly. She’ll be all right. Of course. Perfectly fine. She just needs a minute to get her bearings. Taking a steadying breath, ignoring the taste of the nasty air, she pulls down her Leviahunter AR game headset and snaps the slim visor into place over her eyes.

Go time. It’s now or never. 

gets down there, she can’t see the stranger’s fancy-cut coat anywhere. Her heart pounds. Is he gone? Maybe she’s too late, and the Q-link box has vanished along with her hope of spending the afternoon in a cool-room.

But… no, wait! There he is! Unbelievably, the mark has moved into an even better position. He’s wandered over into the loading space in front of one of the unoccupied docking bays, where he’s now partly hidden by another wide metal pillar. To everyone out on the main concourse, that slight sunken gap will be invisible from view. The Q-link box glints, still swinging against his thigh, suspended on that tantalizingly thin strap.

Page palms her small pocketknife and saunters out into the concourse. She adjusts the gaming headset and mimes switching it on. It’s not even a working one—the left lens is on the fritz and it has a busted graphics chip—but she’s installed a small green light in the top corner of the visor to make it look authentic.

Leviahunter Augmented Reality Adventure is all the rage in this sector, and there are always a few people wandering around the dockyard playing the game, collecting virtual treasure and taking swipes at nonexistent monsters while they walk. There’s not a lot to see on Kuuj Outpost in real life, but she’s heard more than one hauler pilot mention the lucky Leviahunter treasure drops they’ve found on this concourse. The game is the perfect ruse.

Setting her jaw with determination, Page starts moving toward the mark. As she walks, she weaves unsteadily through the concourse exactly the way a Leviahunter gamer would, swinging her left hand in front of her to mimic a monster-sweeper with a virtual sword. She dips and swerves, dodging a couple of disgruntled-looking dock workers before she carries on.

 She pauses dramatically, making a deliberate final swipe with her sword hand—monster vanquished! Then she takes one more long, deep breath, and runs headlong right into the mark.

“Oh! Ah, excuse me!” She feigns shock and contrition as she collides with the stranger, knocking him backwards. “Whoops! Sorry! There’s an ultra-rare star chest behind you, back in there! Mind if I grab it?”

The stranger laughs. “There’s a what where now?”

“An ultra-rare star chest,” Page repeats with an exasperated sigh. “Don’t you play Leviahunter? Excuse me! I need to collect that before it disintegrates!”

She pushes him roughly to one side, reaching out to scoop up the imaginary prize. As she moves past him, she slips the Q-link box from his belt, neatly snicking through the strap with her knife and looping the end around her own wrist in one fluid motion. A bit of sleight of hand, that’s all this situation needs. Page has a talent for distracting people—and making them believe absolute nonsense.

He chuckles again. “Leviahunter, huh? Nope. Never heard of it.”

“I’ve got it! Ultra-rare chest acquired!” Page smacks her hand against the pillar with triumph as she shifts the stolen box into her satchel. “Oooh, wow! It’s a good one! Major score. Thanks.” Her breath levels out as she starts

backing out of the bay.

“No problem,” he says, rolling his eyes.

He adjusts his strange coat, one hand rummaging idly in his pocket, but he doesn’t so much as glance down at the empty space on his belt where his precious device used to be. What an unbelievable fool. Page takes another step back and pushes the Leviahunter visor to one side, peeling the translucent strip away from her eyes.

“It’s a virtual game,” she says. “You’ve seen people with these things on, right?” She taps the visor for emphasis. “Leviahunter Augmented Reality Adventure. You look around, and you collect all these different items that spawn. You have to watch out for the monsters, and pick the right weapon to defend yourself, and then you…” She glances back at the concourse. “Oh, hey, my friends are waiting for me over there! I’ve gotta run—”

Page’s words die in her throat as the stranger suddenly lunges forward. One ringed hand closes tightly around Page’s wrist. He looks pointedly at the nearly empty concourse, smirking as if her lie amuses him more than it bothers him.

And then, before she can wrench her wrist away, his voice changes into something at once strange and familiar. A curling cadence of melodious syllables raises the small hairs on the back of her neck. “Drop the bag now, if you want to live.”

The words are not in Union Basic, and yet their meaning blooms fully formed in her memory. Page can hardly breathe, hardly think. He’s still holding her wrist tightly, but her other hand flies immediately to the strap of her

 satchel. Whether she means to protect it or to unclip it and hand it over to him, she can’t say for sure, because just then, a rippling shock hits her nerves like ice water.

At once, it’s as if her limbs are locked in place, and she’s suddenly lost all ability to move. It feels like she’s grabbed a live wire. She can’t make a sound. What in the five hells is happening?

Fuck. He’s holding a palm stunner—which he must have just pulled out of his pocket, right in front of her. This was sure a great gods-damned time to have let her guard down.

Then a second person darts out of the shadows from the empty docking bay to her left. Page has only a moment to glimpse another black jacket and a flash of blue-black hair before a fabric sack comes down over her head. She’s vaguely aware of her numb arms being yanked behind her, her tingling wrists being cuffed together. There’s a hand pressed into the small of her back—or is that another weapon?—pushing her forward. She stumbles in that direction, her legs like jelly.

Surely they aren’t going to march her back into the middle of the concourse with a bag stuck over her head. Kuuj Outpost is heartless, but it’s not entirely lawless. The patrollers might look the other way for a local dispute, especially if they’ve been paid off, but they wouldn’t stand for outsiders pulling shit like this. No. Page must’ve lost her sense of direction in the scuffle—they must’ve turned her around.

They aren’t taking her through the concourse, they’re going deeper into the docks, down the side way. Through another one of those little alleys where the dockyard kids usually skulk, waiting to nick something from a

passer-by’s satchel. Page will get no help from them, though. If the little shits know what’s good for them, they’ll stay well clear of something like this and lay low. This is real bad.

She thinks about struggling, but her lungs ache with the lack of air. Her knees shake with every shambling step, and she’s losing feeling in her feet. The sack that’s been pulled over her head isn’t airtight, but it certainly isn’t hospitable, and suddenly it reeks of chemicals. Whatever she’s inhaling right now, it’s in the process of putting her under. She coughs weakly, still unable to make her mouth form a word.

There are stairs beneath Page’s feet now, and she’s being led down them, one precarious step at a time. The two strangers are half-carrying her between them. Six steps, Page counts, and they clang like corrugated metal under her dragging boots. Must be a drop-ramp in one of the smaller bays. They’re taking her down into a small ship, or maybe a shuttlecraft.

“Where are you taking me?” she tries to say, her voice a garbled mumble. It comes out more like: “Whuuu-uh-uuh-huh.”

There’s no response from her captors, only a shove between her shoulder blades as they reach the bottom of the staircase and carry on walking over a flatter surface. She hears the faint beep of an ident-chip being scanned, then a rolling door being pulled open. There’s a long, rasping squeak of metal on metal.

Page tries again: “Huu-uuh?”

No answer. 

needs to get her bearings and figure out where she’s being taken. 

Page hates the dark, but thankfully the fabric that covers her eyes admits some light. She notices immediately when the lighting around her changes. The fluorescent-white glow of the Kuuj concourse is gone, replaced by a cool blueish hue. Maybe a bright control panel, or a ship’s bridge with a lot of lit computer screens? She’s marched through the bright room, and onwards into another, dimmer space.

Her kidnappers haven’t searched her, and they haven’t actually touched any of her things. Despite the demand to drop her bag, they have done nothing with it; she can feel the familiar weight of the satchel still hanging there over her shoulder, with the Q-link box inside. No one has made any move to relieve her of it. If what they want is to retrieve the stolen Q-link, why would they kidnap her instead of just snatching her satchel and roughing her up a bit? Doesn’t make any damn sense.

Maybe they think that Page is someone else, someone worth kidnapping. Some twisted part of her laughs internally at the thought of these people demanding a ransom for her. She pictures the kidnappers barging into Tully’s office, announcing that they’ve seized the irreplaceable, indomitable petty thief Page Found, and she imagines the look on her boss’s face. That asshole Tully wouldn’t pay two chits for her. And it isn’t like Page knows anybody wealthy.

Her heart jerks with sudden, soaring hope. Unless—

Before she can finish the thought, the two strangers hoist her under her arms and lug her upwards, settling her into what feels like a flight chair. They click a harness over her shoulders and buckle her in, talking to one another in low, hurried voices. They’re speaking Union Basic again now, and she catches snippets of something that sounds terrifyingly like ‘prepare to take off.’

Take off? Page trembles, sweat pooling at the base of her neck. She can no longer feel any of her limbs, just that heavy numbness that crawls over her skin, spreading to her brain. Are they really taking her off Kuuj Outpost? Where in the hells to?

She strains to listen to their conversation through the fog in her mind, but she’s rapidly losing the ability to process the words. Syllables blur into indistinct sounds, then fade again into a low, distant warble that drones in her ears as her senses leave her.

Page tilts her head back against the flight seat, no longer able to hold her heavy skull upright. Bursts of light flicker at the edges of her vision.

And then everything goes completely black.

When Page comes to again, her mind still feels fuzzy and off-kilter. Each thought feels strained, as if it’s taking some enormous effort just to make sense of words or sensations. She still can’t move her hands and feet, but she can tell there’s an engine hum reverberating in the floor, rattling under the worn soles of her shoes.

The whirr of a small vehicle in flight. These assholes seriously have taken her off Kuuj. 

contemplated the idea in the abstract, she cannot quite wrap her head around the thought that she’s no longer on the outpost. Much less that these people may never return her there.

Or return her anywhere.

As the direst of possibilities sink in, Page thinks about the apartment she left behind—if such a word can even be applied to that shoddy, poorly ventilated container hab that scarcely resembled a proper dwelling. Was there anything she would’ve wanted to grab from among her possessions and take with her, if she’d been given a chance to pack? If she had planned this departure?

Probably not, besides the personal digipad she has in her satchel—the one that contains her diaries and notes from the past eight years. Nothing else Page has ever owned on Kuuj has felt much like it belongs to her anyway. After all, how could anything truly be ‘hers’ when she has no idea who she is?

Page doesn’t own a single sentimental thing. She has no old cartridges of photos, no mementos of trips or lovers or achievements. She doesn’t know what job she used to do or what skills she used to have. She doesn’t know what her favourite books were, or her favourite foods, or her favourite music. And she has spent so much time in pursuit of her missing old life, that she has actively resisted making any new memories.

Every time she discovers something new that interests her on the network, she can’t help but wonder. Did she like this thing in her old life? Has she ever danced a dance that looked like this, or listened to this kind of poetry before? Has she ever read this book?

When she guessed the end of a particularly twisty mystery novel, she studied the pixelated cover page for an hour, trying to force herself to recall if she’d ever seen that title or that author’s name before. But no matter what kinds of memory tricks she has tried, her past has remained stubbornly blank.

Well… not entirely blank. Memories sometimes pop into her head without any context at all, images of places she can’t identify. And of course, there are simple things she knows that she must have learned somewhere—like how to tie up laced boots, or how to type on a standard 3D keyboard. But who taught her these things? Whenever she can access Kuuj’s glitchy network connections, she flips through countless imagined lives she might have led. But none of them quite feel like they fit.

Occasionally, she’s uncovered a thrilling new piece to the puzzle of her identity. But most of the time, each clue raises more questions than it answers. Once, a group of out-system traders sat down in the restobar on Kuuj, discussing their illicit plans for the evening… and Page discovered to her shock that she knows another language.

It took a good few minutes of listening before she even processed what was happening. This unmistakably foreign tongue, sounding nothing like Union Basic, was completely comprehensible to her. The oddly familiar words flowed easily into her mind, complete with

 their nuances and meanings. She wasn’t translating, she was just… understanding.

It was the same feeling she’d experienced in some of her blackout visions, and for a moment as she sat there listening to those traders, Page wondered if maybe she’d actually passed out.

During her blackouts, she’d often heard words and phrases that she was sure were in some other language. But she could never hold on to the recollection for long enough after waking to write any of it down. Mostly, she’d convinced herself that this dream-language was just something her scrambled brain had made up.

But that day in the restobar, it became real. She sat there with her breath half-held, pretending to be engrossed in reading something on her ’pad while she listened intently. The traders were discussing a shipment they planned to transfer through the Kuuj dockyard without proper permits. That info ended up yielding Page a nice bonus when she sold the details to the dockyard guards—who in turn surely charged the traders a hefty fee to keep it quiet instead of calling down the patrollers.

Page’s heart starts pounding again at the memory, and a chill runs through her. Those out-system traders. Shit. Back in the bay, her kidnapper spoke in the same language. Almost as if he were testing Page to check if she understood—seeing if she’d reach for her bag when he demanded she drop it.

Could this whole mess all be something to do with those traders somehow? They couldn’t possibly have marked Page as the source of that information… could they? How? She was just another unremarkable patron sitting in that grotty bar, and she didn’t even look at them, nor give any outward sign that she could understand them! How could they possibly have—

it forward to get her to drink what’s inside.

The liquid in the cup is piping hot, and the steam rising from it further clouds Page’s still-blurred vision. Her captor hasn’t entirely removed the sack over her head, only rolled it up as far as her forehead. Page’s hands and feet are very much still bound, and the broken Leviahunter headset is still hanging around her neck. She can’t feel the strap of her satchel on her shoulder anymore, though. They’ve taken away her bag.

“Whaahhhyou?” Page manages, choking a little on the water. That’s what it seems to be, water, not tea or alga, just very hot water with a strong metallic tang. Who are you?

“Shush. Be quiet, just drink,” an unfamiliar voice whispers in Union Basic. “Zhak will be back soon.”

Zhak. That must be her mark, the stranger in the funny coat. Damn him. She shouldn’t have let her guard down like that. What was she thinking?

A hand wipes away the water that has dribbled onto Page’s chin. The touch is not gentle, but nor is it very rough.

“Sorry about the disgusting water, by the way,” the voice says. “The filtration system’s a bit off, so I always dispense it boiling, just in case.”

Tastes better than most of the water on Kuuj , Page wants to say, but instead she wraps her numb lips around the edge of the cup and lets her mysterious warden—Water Girl, she privately names her—tip more hot water into her mouth. It burns and soothes her throat in equal measure, and she drinks it down gratefully.

Then the cup is suddenly pulled away, and the rough fabric is tugged back down over Page’s face.

“Shhh, shhh! He’s coming,” Water Girl whispers. “Quiet now.”

Page hears the whoosh of the metal door sliding open again, and the sound of heavy boot-heels approaching, echoing over an uneven floor—those blocky, fancy-buckled boots the stranger wore, she remembers with a silent curse.

“Well? She waking up yet?” Page recognizes the voice of her careless mark, the man in the funny coat. Zhak. Officially the biggest mistake she’s ever made—that she can remember.

“Not properly. Not in any state to interrogate yet, anyway,” says Water Girl. “Probably needs another hour or so.”

“I want her talking before we get back, understand?” He sounds anxious.

“Yeah? Well, maybe you should’ve thought about that before you stunned her hard enough to drop a battle squad and used the chem-sedative. Told you it was overkill.”

There’s a weighty silence, and a little shuffle of movement. “Watch yourself, ...