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Synopsis
'METICULOUSLY PLOTTED, EDGE-OF-YOUR-SEAT SPACE OPERA WITH A SOUL' Kirkus on Velocity Weapon
In the final book of this explosive Philip K. Dick Award-nominated space opera, the universe is under threat and an ancient alien intelligence threatens to bring humanity down - unless Major Sanda Greeve and her crew can stop it . . .
The code has been cracked. The secrets of the Casimir gates have been revealed. But humanity still isn't safe. The alien intelligence known as Rainier and her clones are still out there, hell-bent on its destruction. And only Sanda can stop them.
With the universe's most powerful ship under her command and some of the most skilled hackers, fighters and spies on her team, it will still take everything she has to find the key to taking down an immortal enemy with seemingly limitless bodies, resources and power.
Praise for the series:
'A brilliantly plotted yarn of survival and far-future political intrigue' Guardian
'Full of twists, feints, and deception, O'Keefe's latest presents a visionary world rife with political intrigue and space adventure' Booklist (starred review)
'Skillfully interweaves intrigue, action, and strong characterization' Publishers Weekly
'A must-read for fans of James S. A. Corey and Alastair Reynolds' Bookbag
'O'Keefe keeps the pace pumping, timing the big twists perfectly' SFX
Release date: July 13, 2021
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 400
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Catalyst Gate
Megan E. O'Keefe
Sanda Greeve stood on the deck of the biggest weapon humanity had ever known, and watched live footage of the city of Atrux tearing itself apart. Ninety-seven percent of Atrux, fallen. That was the only number she could cling to, because the actual amount of dead and comatose was too high to comprehend.
The rest, that 3 percent, had been converted by the ascension-agent. And in their confusion and pain, they rioted across the city, not understanding their own strength, until guardcore—vetted, safe—showed up to capture them or put them down.
Sanda clutched her blaster like a shield, though the weapon could do her no good. There wasn’t a weapon in the universe big enough to stop what had happened to Atrux. Even her ship, The Light, wasn’t enough. She wasn’t sure anything could be enough.
“Tell me Anford’s finally recovered footage of the contamination moment,” Sanda asked Bero. Asked her ship.
“Watching it won’t change anything,” Bero said.
He was stalling. Warning hackles raised along the back of her neck.
“Mouthing off isn’t going to stop me. Play it.”
The video flickered onto the forward viewscreen, though The Light was perfectly capable of displaying video without the tiniest hiccup. Bero, showing his annoyance by inserting a glitch. She almost rolled her eyes, but that’d only encourage him.
Her irritation was only scraping the surface. Below the major’s bars on her chest and the sleek confines of her Prime-issued jumpsuit, Sanda boiled with molten rage. Needling her might give the magma within a path to eruption, and not a soul on board The Light had time for her to melt down.
A guardcore appeared in the footage, slipping through the thin cracks in Prime’s protocols to secure an unwelcome canister to the additive tank of Atrux’s atmo mix. From that canister, a wave of self-replicating nanites had spread the ascension-agent throughout the city’s ventilation system. Sanda leaned toward the screen, frowning. The armor was right. The weapons were right. The clearances were right. But that was no GC.
“It’s not Rainier,” she said. The movements were too forced, too stilted, to be hers. Only one other known impostor wore that armor.
The Light’s crew shifted uncomfortably. This ship didn’t need a crew to fly, but Bero had gone ahead and given them all seats with consoles they could work, if they so desired. They often fiddled with the controls, trying to figure out the inner workings of The Light. Sanda suspected those buttons were little more than placebos, but she hadn’t had the heart to ask Bero outright. The crew fiddled with those buttons now.
“We can’t be sure,” Dr. Liao said. “The armor—”
“Doesn’t disguise gait,” Sanda countered. The doctor pressed her lips shut.
Sanda couldn’t blame her. She wanted that figure to be Rainier, too. But she’d learned a long time ago that wanting something to be true badly enough to lie to yourself only led to more pain.
“Bero, can you run a gait analysis?” she asked.
“Against every person in the known universe?”
“No,” Arden said. Their voice rasped and they’d gone deathly pale. The word trailed off into emptiness, cut down by a sharp glare from Nox, but Sanda didn’t press.
Jules had been their friend. They needed to do this on their own, because neither one of them would forgive Sanda if she pushed for it, even if they already knew it was true. “I have some footage of Jules I can send you,” Arden said.
“She wouldn’t do this,” Nox said, but he didn’t stop Arden as they tapped on their wristpad, sending the files to The Light.
“We have to know,” Arden said softly.
A retort bubbled below Nox’s surface, but before he could get it out, Bero pushed two videos, side by side, onto the viewscreen. In one, Jules Valentine approached Arden’s old apartment building on top of Udon-Voodun. In the other, the guardcore walked through the door into the atmo mix control room. For the benefit of the humans riding in his belly, Bero allowed graphical points of comparison to run over each figure.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
“It’s her,” Arden said.
Sanda pushed down a burst of excitement. Rainier Lavaux was an expert at covering her tracks. But Sanda was pretty damn sure Jules Valentine lacked the same skill set. Jules, Sanda could find. From there, she’d leverage her way to Rainier. She doubted Nox and Arden would be as excited about this break as she was.
“B, get me Anford,” Sanda said.
“I am not your personal assistant.”
Sanda rolled her eyes and put a priority call through to her commander. General Anford’s face popped up on the screen in seconds, overriding the footage of Jules. Anford didn’t even blink at Sanda’s unusual crew or the alien deck of The Light. It was amazing how quickly humanity adapted.
“Greeve, tell me you have something.”
“The guardcore who released the nanites on Atrux is Jules Valentine.”
The general’s eyes narrowed briefly. “Not Rainier? You’re sure?”
“She may have acted under Rainier’s orders, I don’t know, but Bero is certain the body in that armor belongs to Valentine.”
“Far be it from me to doubt Bero’s assessment.”
“I have been lauded for my intelligence in the past,” Bero said.
Sanda suppressed a smirk. “I intend to pursue. Valentine might know a way to get to Rainier.”
“I agree. We need her alive, Greeve.” Anford glanced to the side, the corners of her lips tightening. “We need all the information we can get our hands on.”
Ninety-seven percent. That number was burned into Sanda’s heart. Similar branding carved pain around Anford’s eyes.
“I’ll get you answers,” Sanda said.
“Hold in Atrux. I don’t have a lot to spare, but I’ll send a battalion to you.”
Slowly, intentionally, Sanda shifted her gaze to the walls of The Light. “With respect, I need no other weapons. They would only slow me down.”
Anford’s jaw flexed as she soaked that in. “Very well. Between Prime Director Okonkwo and me, you have carte blanche to requisition anything you need. Good luck, Greeve.”
“Good luck.” Sanda snapped off a tight salute, and Anford cut the feed.
“Are you sure we’re going to be enough, Commander?” Conway asked.
She wasn’t. But that was a doubt she couldn’t allow to fester. “It’s our best shot. Bero, do you have a bead on that GC ship Valentine took off in?”
“It was last flagged passing through the gate to Ordinal.”
“Then that’s where we start.”
Arden swiveled their chair around to look her in the eye. “Rainier made Jules do this.”
Sanda met their gaze evenly, peripherally aware of the tension in Nox’s body, the held breaths of everyone on the ship. No one liked hunting down a woman they’d meant to save not too long ago. No one liked acknowledging they’d known, and even cared for, a monster.
Sanda could relate, but that didn’t mean she could make it better.
“We’ll find her,” she said. “And we’ll ask her ourselves.”
“Sanda,” Bero said, his voice tense.
She frowned. “What is it?”
“The Light has an incoming tightbeam from an unregistered source.”
“Does this ship even have a transponder to point at?”
“Not… exactly.”
“Put it through.”
The viewscreen filled with a face so familiar that, if she hadn’t already been propped up on an emotional cocktail of rage and determination, she might have had to sit down.
New shadows carved troughs beneath his eyes, and thick stubble peppered his jawline. Dark brown hair stuck up under low-g, and over his shoulder she could make out the sleek geometry of a high-end shuttle. But those grey eyes, they were always the same, if a touch sad.
“Hey,” Tomas Cepko said. His voice was thin and wary. “I’m in Ordinal. We need to talk.”
“You look like shit,” she said.
The corner of his eye twitched, then he settled into a small, warm smile. “Nice to see you, too.”
“Believe it or not,” Sanda said, gesturing to the ship around her, “I’m a little busy.”
“It’s about the sphere you discovered inside The Light,” Tomas said, his expression completely locked down. “The one with the instructions for the creation of the ascension-agent.”
“How the fuck—?” Nox took a step, as if he could reach through the screen to choke the spy on the other side. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to try.
“Crew,” Sanda said firmly. “Meet Nazca Cepko, first-class spy and all-around asshole.”
His lips thinned and he flicked his gaze down. “I… can explain my actions.”
“Really not what I’m worried about right now.”
“Hello, Tomas,” Bero said.
Tomas’s eyes widened. He leaned toward the camera, pressing his hands against the console of his shuttle. “Christ, are you in danger?”
Nox snorted, which warmed Sanda’s angry heart right up. “I am in command of my ship, Nazca, and I’d like to know how the fuck you got that tightbeam to me.”
He gave her a punchably sly smile. “Seems we have a lot of information to share with each other.”
“I’m not in the habit of sharing with spies.”
He winced and rubbed at his chest. “Yeah, I remember. Look, I don’t know what’s going on with the fleet or why you’re in that ship with Bero, but I know you, Greeve, and you’re about to charge guns out after Rainier. I don’t blame you, but there are some things you need to know. Some things I need to show you.”
“Commander Greeve,” she snapped, because there was no way in the void she’d let Tomas-fucking-Cepko get away with undermining her position. “And if you’re looking for a date, lover, there are programs for that.”
“Commander,” Bero said with a touch more respect than he usually bothered with, “I hate to interrupt you tearing into Tomas, but it occurs to me that he knows about the sphere.”
Tomas leaned back, crossed his arms, and raised both brows. “Thanks, B.”
“I do not like you, Tomas.”
Sanda gritted her teeth. “Very well. We’re coming through Ordinal anyway. Send your location to Bero and we’ll talk. If you waste my time, I swear to all of Prime that I will space you.”
“I believe you,” he said with a slight shudder, then composed himself and flashed an irritatingly charming smile at her. “See you soon.”
She cut the feed and sank into her captain’s chair, trying to quiet her mind. That damn man made her feel like the memory-wipe headaches lurked behind her next breath, like any second all the pain of the moment he’d ripped her world apart would come crashing back down.
“We sure it’s a good idea to get mixed up with another Nazca, boss?” Nox asked. “Last time didn’t go so well.”
Sanda rubbed the side of her face. “It’s because of last time that I’m putting up with this. Okonkwo hasn’t managed to shake anything out of the Nazca tree, and they clearly know something about what’s going on, or Novak wouldn’t have been on Janus. Tomas knows about the sphere. Like Anford said, we need all the intel we can get, and that’s the Nazca’s specialty.”
“You realize, of course, that he needs something from you,” Bero said.
She tried to side-eye him, but it didn’t really work when he existed all around her. “Yes, B. I am rather well versed in dealing with duplicitous dickheads.”
“What do you think he wants?” Nox asked.
“I don’t know,” Sanda admitted. “But finding out what he wants will give us a better idea of what the Nazca really know than whatever bait intel he’s set out for me.”
“Sanda,” Bero said with mock shock, “you’ve grown so cynical.”
She quirked a half smile. “I learn from the best.”
But it wasn’t cynicism driving her. Rainier would say she was afraid, and maybe she’d be right, to a certain extent. Watching Atrux fall to an invisible storm had certainly made her blood run cold, but that’s not when the shift inside her had happened. It hadn’t even been when she’d crawled off Liao’s fringer settlement and learned she was too late—the secondary gate in Ada had spun, the blowback had happened, and it had nearly taken her family with it.
No, she’d felt the first slivers of change when she’d sat on that command console on the fringer settlement, all alone, and waited for Rainier Lavaux to show up and kill her. She hadn’t been afraid of Rainier, not really. Hadn’t even been afraid of dying.
She’d held the trigger for the EMP that would cut Rainier down, and savored an urge unlike any she’d ever felt before. A wellspring of vengeance had risen in Sanda that day, and while Rainier was certain it was fear alone at the base instinct of all humanity, Sanda had known in that moment that, for her, the core of her drive had been rage. Not the desperate, flailing anger of the impetuous, but something deeper.
Something primal.
Rainier Lavaux had threatened everything and everyone Sanda had ever loved. Sanda had felt that loss once. And she’d burn the bitch to the ground rather than suffer through that pain all over again.
Instead of a shuttle in the black, Tomas sent Bero the coordinates for a restaurant planetside in Alexandria-Ordinal, the system’s capital city. A cursory search said the restaurant was inside of a Hotel Stellaris, and a reservation had been made under the name Jacob Galvan.
The last time she’d seen him had been at the same hotel chain, on a different planet, the reservations under that same name. Then he’d disappeared, leaving her alone to deal with the fallout of the chip hidden in her head.
Either he was being cheeky—likely—or this was a genuine show of faith, signaling that he didn’t want on board The Light, he really just wanted to talk. Or he believed that Sanda had been captured by Bero once more, and wanted her off the ship to get the truth from her own lips.
Or, a tiny sliver of her thought, he wanted to see her again without the trappings of war all around them. But that thought hadn’t been allowed to live past its brief genesis. At least the location allowed her to park The Light in orbit, stealthed out, and take a simple shuttle to the space elevator.
She loathed the delay, but while Sanda had the best weapon in the universe in her arsenal, she lacked information. And information might be the key to getting one step ahead of Rainier. To getting the sphere with the instructions for the ascension-agent back, and healing the comatose of Atrux.
Hotel Stellaris was the fanciest hotel chain in the ’verse, and the location at Prime’s capital city was its crowning jewel. It was the kind of place you wore clothes crafted of velvet and sequins to, the kind of place for improbably high heels, higher slits, and tuxedo jackets tailored to whatever the latest fashion was.
Sanda walked down the vast marble colonnade leading to the maître d’ in her jumpsuit, mag boots, and major’s coat. When they’d put the Prime logos back on, she’d added the name of her ship, The Light, below the insignia pinned to her chest and a sleek silhouette of the ship. Anford had merely nodded when she’d first seen those adjustments.
There was no use hiding who Sanda was. No point in hiding The Light after she’d flown it into Ada and docked the silvery leviathan for all to see. Alien tech had always been a part of Prime, and now it was time to bring it out into the open.
The maître d’ didn’t seem so sure.
She stopped her long march a step from his podium, and while the trim man’s demeanor didn’t so much as twitch, his gaze flicked from her scuffed boots, to her plain jumpsuit, to the bars on her chest. The deliberation was lightning fast, then he offered her the polite welcome he’d offer any esteemed guest.
“Commander Greeve, we have been expecting you. Mr. Galvan has already arrived. May I take your coat?”
“No.” It hid the two high-end blasters strapped to her hips, probably the most expensive accessories in the restaurant tonight. “Lead the way.”
He gestured her onward, and she let him regale her with the hotel’s long and illustrious history while they wound through tables stocked with the glittering upper echelons of Ordinal.
A restaurant like this didn’t fill every table at any given time. It gave its guests space, the illusion of being in a charming secret place while in truth their reservations booked out years in advance. Sanda wondered how Tomas had wedged himself in so quickly, but for all she knew, this place was run by the Nazca. Eavesdropping at a restaurant this nice had to be good for information gathering.
The wide spaces between guests weren’t enough to hide them, or her, though. Those who came to Hotel Stellaris to dine wanted to be seen doing so, and that meant that, as surreptitiously as the maître d’ led her along, conversations stalled as she passed. Whispers flowed in her wake.
Sanda didn’t know what bothered her more. The fact that Tomas had known she’d be recognized and become the topic of gossip here tonight, or the fact that she couldn’t stop it.
The maître d’ slowed his steps at a raised dais toward the back of the room. A lone table stood against a massive picture window overlooking the sprawling city of Alexandria-Ordinal.
A few months ago, the view would have taken her breath away. Now, it made her ill. How many people crawled through the streets and skies of Ordinal? It was arguably the best-secured city in all of Prime, but every Prime city had thought themselves safe from biological attacks until Jules Valentine brought Atrux to its knees.
“Here we are, Commander.” The maître d’ pulled a chair out for her, and she sat. “May I suggest our latest vintage, fresh from Elysia—”
“I won’t be eating, thank you.”
Maybe that had finally gotten the man’s smooth demeanor to crack, but if it did, Sanda missed the moment, because she only had eyes for the man sitting across from her.
Tomas rested his forearms on the champagne-colored tablecloth, leaning toward her with an easy smile and eyes that were far too haunted for a man with his insouciant posture, or lack of wrinkles. He’d opted for a sage-green silk shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and dark slacks flared enough at the ankles to allow for the greater girth of the mag boots on his feet.
Sanda didn’t know a thing about fashion, but judging from the outfits she’d seen on the walk in, Tomas blended right in. Right. Spy. He’d let all the attention fall on her, while he slipped through unnoticed. She’d known this was a game from the jump. Had thought being played by him wouldn’t hurt. She’d been wrong.
“Tomas,” she said. The maître d’ took the hint and extricated himself without so much as a rustle of his too-tight suit. She looked pointedly at his mag boots. “Presumptuous of you.”
“Have to be prepared for anything,” he said, his nice-to-see-you smile shifting from placid calm to the slight curl of something real. “That a pulsar-class blaster on your hip?”
“Two, actually. I see you came unarmed.”
He spread his hands. “It hadn’t occurred to me I’d need to be armed to see you, Sanda.”
“Your spy senses are failing you. I’ve had a rough time with the Nazca lately.”
His smile crashed and burned. “So I heard.”
“If he was your friend…”
“No, don’t apologize. There are no friends between the Nazca.” Tomas took a long drink of an amber-colored cocktail with orange sugar on the rim and shook his head.
“Figured you’d be drinking that Elysian vintage, isn’t that where you’re from?”
A longer drink this time. “Surprised you remember that.”
“One of the few memories that doesn’t give me headaches these days.”
He started to reach a hand toward her, caught her glare, and stopped himself. His hand rested in the center of the table, curled, but limp. “I’m sorry.”
“Not what I’m here for. I’m a very busy woman, Master Spy, and you said one little magic word that got me off the back of my ship, where I would much rather be. I’m here to learn two things, Tomas: What do you know about it, and how did you get a tightbeam through to The Light?”
“Don’t you mean Bero?”
“I do not. They are separate entities until he decides otherwise. You’re avoiding the questions.” He flashed her a grin that made her chest flush, but she brushed the feeling aside.
“Sanda Greeve, my straight shooter.” He shook his head and slammed back the last of his drink. “I know where ‘it’ is, and I know how to get it, but I can’t get it alone.”
“I have no reason to believe that you are not on-mission, and that you will not hand it over to your superiors if we recover the object. Tell me where it is, and I’ll retrieve it without you.”
A shadow passed behind his eyes. “I don’t think you can get it without me.”
“My crew is perfectly capable.”
“Not for this.”
“Tomas.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Whatever the Nazca want, it’s not worth it. I know your job is everything to you, but this could very well be the key to healing Atrux. I cannot, I will not, allow the Nazca to fuck off with my ball.”
He swirled the dregs of his empty glass. “I won’t hand it over to the Nazca.”
“I can’t take your word.”
“I know. The thing is, I won’t hand it over to them because I’m not Nazca anymore. I’ve been burned, as we spies are fond of saying. Cut off. Cast off. I’m solo.”
He met her gaze evenly, and while every scrap of her wanted to believe him, there was too much at stake. With a sinking heart, she picked at the critical flaw in his story. “You’re registered here as Jacob Galvan, a Nazca alias. If they burned you, they’d be here in minutes to take you out.”
“About that.” He turned his wristpad over, checking the time. “I really wish you had gotten here on time so we could have ordered one last meal on the Nazca coffers.”
Glass exploded, showering them in glittering rain.
Sanda moved before she could think, shoved her chair back, and tipped up the table. She reached to grab Tomas by the shirt, but he was already on one knee, ducking behind the table for two as Sanda got the wooden shield between them and the next shot.
The table shuddered in her grasp. The stink of fabric and SynthWood frying under blaster fire overwhelmed the pleasant scents of wine and food. At least this place was fancy enough to buy very thick tables.
Sanda swore and grabbed her blaster, popping her head up long enough to make sure she wouldn’t hit any civilians before firing back in the direction of the kitchen, where the shots had come from.
People screamed, glass broke, and as Sanda met Tomas’s eyes behind the temporary shelter of a table that was only providing enough cover to keep those shooting at them from hitting anything vital, she felt a deep-rooted protective surge mingle with anger.
“You knew they’d come for you and you didn’t bring a weapon?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “They would have taken my weapons at the door, and you always carry two. You didn’t come alone, did you?”
Sanda’s wristpad lit up with a priority call from Nox. She accepted.
“Little fuckers are holed up in the kitchen,” he said. “Conway’s got the front door on lock and is ushering out the civvies, but I can’t promise a clean run for you. Spy still alive?”
“Despite all the odds,” she said. Another blaster shot rocked the table, nearly searing her ear as it bore through the wood. Maybe not that thick after all.
“Not after I get my hands—”
“Easy, Nox. Suppress the kitchens, grab one alive, and do not hurt any civilians.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, and cut the call.
Tomas looked at her, one brow raised. She grinned with him, couldn’t help it, and slapped her second blaster into his hand. “A civvie dies, and I’ll take it out on you.”
“Understood, Commander Greeve.”
It was really rather annoying that, after everything, the way he said her title traced tingles up her spine.
She popped up from behind the table and, synchronized with Tomas, fired back toward their Nazca attackers.
Sanda fired until the return fire stopped, then vaulted over the table and dashed for a thick marble column, Tomas tight on her heels. Behind the shelter of stone, she grabbed a comms earpiece from under her wristpad and shoved it in.
“I’m online. Talk to me.”
“I’ve got the cameras in the kitchen,” Arden said. “Looks like ten came in through the service elevator when you made contact with the maître d’ and hustled the cooks and staff out. The staff is uninjured, as far as I know. You shot two in the chest and one in the stomach, but I can’t say if they’re out. Nox got one in the head.”
“Fuck yeah I did,” Nox said.
“Front door is secure,” Conway said. “Maître d’ is hustling the civvies out like he does this every day.”
“Tomas,” she said. They’d pressed themselves close together to make better use of the cover of the pillar, their sides crammed so tight she could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest. He nodded to show he was listening but kept his head turned away, watching their flank. “Ten accounted for, one confirmed kill, three possibly out, but don’t count on it. Centered in the kitchen. These are your people, what are their tactics?”
He shook his head. “When the Nazca come for one of their own, they don’t use tactics a Nazca can work around.”
“Lovely. Nox?”
“Boss?”
“There are two ins-and-outs to that kitchen. Hammer them on the north exit, I’m coming in through the south. Arden, can you lock down the service elevator and any back entrances?”
“Already done.”
Bero said, “May I make a suggestion?”
“Shoot, Big B,” Sanda said.
Tomas grimaced.
“You could flee, there is no need for engagement.”
Sanda grabbed the back of Tomas’s head, fingers tangling in his hair, and every single muscle in his body went rigid, his scalp heating up beneath her touch as she yanked his head around and stared hard into his eyes.
He may be one of the finest spies in the universe, but he couldn’t hide his physical responses from her when she took him by surprise. Panic and hope warred across his face as she dragged him close.
“Will these people come for you if we bail right now?”
“Yes,” he said, so close his breath gusted against her lips. She let him go and pushed slightly, facing him back around to cover their flank. He shivered. She ignored it.
“Right. I’d rather not have a gaggle of Nazca dogging our heels. Time to make a point sharp enough to force the whole cursed organization to keep their distance. Agreed?”
Confirmation chorused across the channel. Sanda closed her eyes a breath to center herself. She felt a little shitty for squeezing an answer out of Tomas like that, but truth had been hard to come by lately, and Sanda needed to know why she was shooting before she squeezed the trigger.
“In position,” Nox whispered.
Sanda checked her blaster charge, scanned the scene, and stepped out from behind cover. Whatever turmoil she’d stirred up in Tomas, he had it under lock as he shadowed her, moving in concert, spraying down the kitchen exit until the swinging door lay in tattered, toothy pieces on the ground.
They hit the entrance at the same time, turned, and pressed their backs against the wall on opposite sides, blasters up, legs braced, and studiously did not meet each other’s eyes.
“Two more down,” Arden said into her comm.
She showed Tomas two fingers. He nodded.
Nox’s rifle roared to life on the other side of the room.
“Three more.”
She added three fingers, and his brows shot up, but he tucked his chin in acknowledgment. Sometimes Sanda wondered if Nox was the biggest weapon she had on her team, not The Light.
“Two coming your way,” Arden said. “Average height. No visible armor. Flanking lines.”
Sanda thanked the void for Arden Wyke and turned, stepping into the frame of the doorway, squeezing off two shots before the Nazca coming her way could process she was even there. She dropped down behind a stainless steel rolling cart and counted to three, then popped up and started laying down suppressive fire wildly across the back wall while Tomas moved into the room, taking down three with shots almost as clean as Nox’s.
“Clear,” Arden said.
Sanda didn’t put her weapon down. Under the hiss of a pot boiling over on the stove, she heard a soft scrabbling across the floor—fingernails scraping tile and metal, reaching for a weapon.
Nox entered the room in her peripheral vision and braced, rifle barrel tracking the space a few steps in front of her. He needn’t have bothered, but she appreciated the thought. Sanda rounded a workbench and found a Nazca lying in a pool of blood, one hand pressed to her stomach while the other scrambled across the floor for a downed blaster. Sanda kicked it away and dropped to a crouch alongside her.
Nox and Tomas started forward, but she gestured them back with a sharp tilt of the head. In the corner of her eye, she could see Tomas’s finger crawl for the trigger and hold off, but just barely.
She grabbed the woman’s shirt and lifted her up, bringing her face close. Blood stained the woman’s teeth, and some of the capillaries in her eyes had blown, but as Sanda well knew, it took a long time to die from a shot to the stomach.
“Tell your boss that Tomas Cepko is protected,” Sanda said. “If any of you come for me or Cepko again, I won’t bother letting a messenger survive. I’ll
The rest, that 3 percent, had been converted by the ascension-agent. And in their confusion and pain, they rioted across the city, not understanding their own strength, until guardcore—vetted, safe—showed up to capture them or put them down.
Sanda clutched her blaster like a shield, though the weapon could do her no good. There wasn’t a weapon in the universe big enough to stop what had happened to Atrux. Even her ship, The Light, wasn’t enough. She wasn’t sure anything could be enough.
“Tell me Anford’s finally recovered footage of the contamination moment,” Sanda asked Bero. Asked her ship.
“Watching it won’t change anything,” Bero said.
He was stalling. Warning hackles raised along the back of her neck.
“Mouthing off isn’t going to stop me. Play it.”
The video flickered onto the forward viewscreen, though The Light was perfectly capable of displaying video without the tiniest hiccup. Bero, showing his annoyance by inserting a glitch. She almost rolled her eyes, but that’d only encourage him.
Her irritation was only scraping the surface. Below the major’s bars on her chest and the sleek confines of her Prime-issued jumpsuit, Sanda boiled with molten rage. Needling her might give the magma within a path to eruption, and not a soul on board The Light had time for her to melt down.
A guardcore appeared in the footage, slipping through the thin cracks in Prime’s protocols to secure an unwelcome canister to the additive tank of Atrux’s atmo mix. From that canister, a wave of self-replicating nanites had spread the ascension-agent throughout the city’s ventilation system. Sanda leaned toward the screen, frowning. The armor was right. The weapons were right. The clearances were right. But that was no GC.
“It’s not Rainier,” she said. The movements were too forced, too stilted, to be hers. Only one other known impostor wore that armor.
The Light’s crew shifted uncomfortably. This ship didn’t need a crew to fly, but Bero had gone ahead and given them all seats with consoles they could work, if they so desired. They often fiddled with the controls, trying to figure out the inner workings of The Light. Sanda suspected those buttons were little more than placebos, but she hadn’t had the heart to ask Bero outright. The crew fiddled with those buttons now.
“We can’t be sure,” Dr. Liao said. “The armor—”
“Doesn’t disguise gait,” Sanda countered. The doctor pressed her lips shut.
Sanda couldn’t blame her. She wanted that figure to be Rainier, too. But she’d learned a long time ago that wanting something to be true badly enough to lie to yourself only led to more pain.
“Bero, can you run a gait analysis?” she asked.
“Against every person in the known universe?”
“No,” Arden said. Their voice rasped and they’d gone deathly pale. The word trailed off into emptiness, cut down by a sharp glare from Nox, but Sanda didn’t press.
Jules had been their friend. They needed to do this on their own, because neither one of them would forgive Sanda if she pushed for it, even if they already knew it was true. “I have some footage of Jules I can send you,” Arden said.
“She wouldn’t do this,” Nox said, but he didn’t stop Arden as they tapped on their wristpad, sending the files to The Light.
“We have to know,” Arden said softly.
A retort bubbled below Nox’s surface, but before he could get it out, Bero pushed two videos, side by side, onto the viewscreen. In one, Jules Valentine approached Arden’s old apartment building on top of Udon-Voodun. In the other, the guardcore walked through the door into the atmo mix control room. For the benefit of the humans riding in his belly, Bero allowed graphical points of comparison to run over each figure.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
“It’s her,” Arden said.
Sanda pushed down a burst of excitement. Rainier Lavaux was an expert at covering her tracks. But Sanda was pretty damn sure Jules Valentine lacked the same skill set. Jules, Sanda could find. From there, she’d leverage her way to Rainier. She doubted Nox and Arden would be as excited about this break as she was.
“B, get me Anford,” Sanda said.
“I am not your personal assistant.”
Sanda rolled her eyes and put a priority call through to her commander. General Anford’s face popped up on the screen in seconds, overriding the footage of Jules. Anford didn’t even blink at Sanda’s unusual crew or the alien deck of The Light. It was amazing how quickly humanity adapted.
“Greeve, tell me you have something.”
“The guardcore who released the nanites on Atrux is Jules Valentine.”
The general’s eyes narrowed briefly. “Not Rainier? You’re sure?”
“She may have acted under Rainier’s orders, I don’t know, but Bero is certain the body in that armor belongs to Valentine.”
“Far be it from me to doubt Bero’s assessment.”
“I have been lauded for my intelligence in the past,” Bero said.
Sanda suppressed a smirk. “I intend to pursue. Valentine might know a way to get to Rainier.”
“I agree. We need her alive, Greeve.” Anford glanced to the side, the corners of her lips tightening. “We need all the information we can get our hands on.”
Ninety-seven percent. That number was burned into Sanda’s heart. Similar branding carved pain around Anford’s eyes.
“I’ll get you answers,” Sanda said.
“Hold in Atrux. I don’t have a lot to spare, but I’ll send a battalion to you.”
Slowly, intentionally, Sanda shifted her gaze to the walls of The Light. “With respect, I need no other weapons. They would only slow me down.”
Anford’s jaw flexed as she soaked that in. “Very well. Between Prime Director Okonkwo and me, you have carte blanche to requisition anything you need. Good luck, Greeve.”
“Good luck.” Sanda snapped off a tight salute, and Anford cut the feed.
“Are you sure we’re going to be enough, Commander?” Conway asked.
She wasn’t. But that was a doubt she couldn’t allow to fester. “It’s our best shot. Bero, do you have a bead on that GC ship Valentine took off in?”
“It was last flagged passing through the gate to Ordinal.”
“Then that’s where we start.”
Arden swiveled their chair around to look her in the eye. “Rainier made Jules do this.”
Sanda met their gaze evenly, peripherally aware of the tension in Nox’s body, the held breaths of everyone on the ship. No one liked hunting down a woman they’d meant to save not too long ago. No one liked acknowledging they’d known, and even cared for, a monster.
Sanda could relate, but that didn’t mean she could make it better.
“We’ll find her,” she said. “And we’ll ask her ourselves.”
“Sanda,” Bero said, his voice tense.
She frowned. “What is it?”
“The Light has an incoming tightbeam from an unregistered source.”
“Does this ship even have a transponder to point at?”
“Not… exactly.”
“Put it through.”
The viewscreen filled with a face so familiar that, if she hadn’t already been propped up on an emotional cocktail of rage and determination, she might have had to sit down.
New shadows carved troughs beneath his eyes, and thick stubble peppered his jawline. Dark brown hair stuck up under low-g, and over his shoulder she could make out the sleek geometry of a high-end shuttle. But those grey eyes, they were always the same, if a touch sad.
“Hey,” Tomas Cepko said. His voice was thin and wary. “I’m in Ordinal. We need to talk.”
“You look like shit,” she said.
The corner of his eye twitched, then he settled into a small, warm smile. “Nice to see you, too.”
“Believe it or not,” Sanda said, gesturing to the ship around her, “I’m a little busy.”
“It’s about the sphere you discovered inside The Light,” Tomas said, his expression completely locked down. “The one with the instructions for the creation of the ascension-agent.”
“How the fuck—?” Nox took a step, as if he could reach through the screen to choke the spy on the other side. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to try.
“Crew,” Sanda said firmly. “Meet Nazca Cepko, first-class spy and all-around asshole.”
His lips thinned and he flicked his gaze down. “I… can explain my actions.”
“Really not what I’m worried about right now.”
“Hello, Tomas,” Bero said.
Tomas’s eyes widened. He leaned toward the camera, pressing his hands against the console of his shuttle. “Christ, are you in danger?”
Nox snorted, which warmed Sanda’s angry heart right up. “I am in command of my ship, Nazca, and I’d like to know how the fuck you got that tightbeam to me.”
He gave her a punchably sly smile. “Seems we have a lot of information to share with each other.”
“I’m not in the habit of sharing with spies.”
He winced and rubbed at his chest. “Yeah, I remember. Look, I don’t know what’s going on with the fleet or why you’re in that ship with Bero, but I know you, Greeve, and you’re about to charge guns out after Rainier. I don’t blame you, but there are some things you need to know. Some things I need to show you.”
“Commander Greeve,” she snapped, because there was no way in the void she’d let Tomas-fucking-Cepko get away with undermining her position. “And if you’re looking for a date, lover, there are programs for that.”
“Commander,” Bero said with a touch more respect than he usually bothered with, “I hate to interrupt you tearing into Tomas, but it occurs to me that he knows about the sphere.”
Tomas leaned back, crossed his arms, and raised both brows. “Thanks, B.”
“I do not like you, Tomas.”
Sanda gritted her teeth. “Very well. We’re coming through Ordinal anyway. Send your location to Bero and we’ll talk. If you waste my time, I swear to all of Prime that I will space you.”
“I believe you,” he said with a slight shudder, then composed himself and flashed an irritatingly charming smile at her. “See you soon.”
She cut the feed and sank into her captain’s chair, trying to quiet her mind. That damn man made her feel like the memory-wipe headaches lurked behind her next breath, like any second all the pain of the moment he’d ripped her world apart would come crashing back down.
“We sure it’s a good idea to get mixed up with another Nazca, boss?” Nox asked. “Last time didn’t go so well.”
Sanda rubbed the side of her face. “It’s because of last time that I’m putting up with this. Okonkwo hasn’t managed to shake anything out of the Nazca tree, and they clearly know something about what’s going on, or Novak wouldn’t have been on Janus. Tomas knows about the sphere. Like Anford said, we need all the intel we can get, and that’s the Nazca’s specialty.”
“You realize, of course, that he needs something from you,” Bero said.
She tried to side-eye him, but it didn’t really work when he existed all around her. “Yes, B. I am rather well versed in dealing with duplicitous dickheads.”
“What do you think he wants?” Nox asked.
“I don’t know,” Sanda admitted. “But finding out what he wants will give us a better idea of what the Nazca really know than whatever bait intel he’s set out for me.”
“Sanda,” Bero said with mock shock, “you’ve grown so cynical.”
She quirked a half smile. “I learn from the best.”
But it wasn’t cynicism driving her. Rainier would say she was afraid, and maybe she’d be right, to a certain extent. Watching Atrux fall to an invisible storm had certainly made her blood run cold, but that’s not when the shift inside her had happened. It hadn’t even been when she’d crawled off Liao’s fringer settlement and learned she was too late—the secondary gate in Ada had spun, the blowback had happened, and it had nearly taken her family with it.
No, she’d felt the first slivers of change when she’d sat on that command console on the fringer settlement, all alone, and waited for Rainier Lavaux to show up and kill her. She hadn’t been afraid of Rainier, not really. Hadn’t even been afraid of dying.
She’d held the trigger for the EMP that would cut Rainier down, and savored an urge unlike any she’d ever felt before. A wellspring of vengeance had risen in Sanda that day, and while Rainier was certain it was fear alone at the base instinct of all humanity, Sanda had known in that moment that, for her, the core of her drive had been rage. Not the desperate, flailing anger of the impetuous, but something deeper.
Something primal.
Rainier Lavaux had threatened everything and everyone Sanda had ever loved. Sanda had felt that loss once. And she’d burn the bitch to the ground rather than suffer through that pain all over again.
Instead of a shuttle in the black, Tomas sent Bero the coordinates for a restaurant planetside in Alexandria-Ordinal, the system’s capital city. A cursory search said the restaurant was inside of a Hotel Stellaris, and a reservation had been made under the name Jacob Galvan.
The last time she’d seen him had been at the same hotel chain, on a different planet, the reservations under that same name. Then he’d disappeared, leaving her alone to deal with the fallout of the chip hidden in her head.
Either he was being cheeky—likely—or this was a genuine show of faith, signaling that he didn’t want on board The Light, he really just wanted to talk. Or he believed that Sanda had been captured by Bero once more, and wanted her off the ship to get the truth from her own lips.
Or, a tiny sliver of her thought, he wanted to see her again without the trappings of war all around them. But that thought hadn’t been allowed to live past its brief genesis. At least the location allowed her to park The Light in orbit, stealthed out, and take a simple shuttle to the space elevator.
She loathed the delay, but while Sanda had the best weapon in the universe in her arsenal, she lacked information. And information might be the key to getting one step ahead of Rainier. To getting the sphere with the instructions for the ascension-agent back, and healing the comatose of Atrux.
Hotel Stellaris was the fanciest hotel chain in the ’verse, and the location at Prime’s capital city was its crowning jewel. It was the kind of place you wore clothes crafted of velvet and sequins to, the kind of place for improbably high heels, higher slits, and tuxedo jackets tailored to whatever the latest fashion was.
Sanda walked down the vast marble colonnade leading to the maître d’ in her jumpsuit, mag boots, and major’s coat. When they’d put the Prime logos back on, she’d added the name of her ship, The Light, below the insignia pinned to her chest and a sleek silhouette of the ship. Anford had merely nodded when she’d first seen those adjustments.
There was no use hiding who Sanda was. No point in hiding The Light after she’d flown it into Ada and docked the silvery leviathan for all to see. Alien tech had always been a part of Prime, and now it was time to bring it out into the open.
The maître d’ didn’t seem so sure.
She stopped her long march a step from his podium, and while the trim man’s demeanor didn’t so much as twitch, his gaze flicked from her scuffed boots, to her plain jumpsuit, to the bars on her chest. The deliberation was lightning fast, then he offered her the polite welcome he’d offer any esteemed guest.
“Commander Greeve, we have been expecting you. Mr. Galvan has already arrived. May I take your coat?”
“No.” It hid the two high-end blasters strapped to her hips, probably the most expensive accessories in the restaurant tonight. “Lead the way.”
He gestured her onward, and she let him regale her with the hotel’s long and illustrious history while they wound through tables stocked with the glittering upper echelons of Ordinal.
A restaurant like this didn’t fill every table at any given time. It gave its guests space, the illusion of being in a charming secret place while in truth their reservations booked out years in advance. Sanda wondered how Tomas had wedged himself in so quickly, but for all she knew, this place was run by the Nazca. Eavesdropping at a restaurant this nice had to be good for information gathering.
The wide spaces between guests weren’t enough to hide them, or her, though. Those who came to Hotel Stellaris to dine wanted to be seen doing so, and that meant that, as surreptitiously as the maître d’ led her along, conversations stalled as she passed. Whispers flowed in her wake.
Sanda didn’t know what bothered her more. The fact that Tomas had known she’d be recognized and become the topic of gossip here tonight, or the fact that she couldn’t stop it.
The maître d’ slowed his steps at a raised dais toward the back of the room. A lone table stood against a massive picture window overlooking the sprawling city of Alexandria-Ordinal.
A few months ago, the view would have taken her breath away. Now, it made her ill. How many people crawled through the streets and skies of Ordinal? It was arguably the best-secured city in all of Prime, but every Prime city had thought themselves safe from biological attacks until Jules Valentine brought Atrux to its knees.
“Here we are, Commander.” The maître d’ pulled a chair out for her, and she sat. “May I suggest our latest vintage, fresh from Elysia—”
“I won’t be eating, thank you.”
Maybe that had finally gotten the man’s smooth demeanor to crack, but if it did, Sanda missed the moment, because she only had eyes for the man sitting across from her.
Tomas rested his forearms on the champagne-colored tablecloth, leaning toward her with an easy smile and eyes that were far too haunted for a man with his insouciant posture, or lack of wrinkles. He’d opted for a sage-green silk shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and dark slacks flared enough at the ankles to allow for the greater girth of the mag boots on his feet.
Sanda didn’t know a thing about fashion, but judging from the outfits she’d seen on the walk in, Tomas blended right in. Right. Spy. He’d let all the attention fall on her, while he slipped through unnoticed. She’d known this was a game from the jump. Had thought being played by him wouldn’t hurt. She’d been wrong.
“Tomas,” she said. The maître d’ took the hint and extricated himself without so much as a rustle of his too-tight suit. She looked pointedly at his mag boots. “Presumptuous of you.”
“Have to be prepared for anything,” he said, his nice-to-see-you smile shifting from placid calm to the slight curl of something real. “That a pulsar-class blaster on your hip?”
“Two, actually. I see you came unarmed.”
He spread his hands. “It hadn’t occurred to me I’d need to be armed to see you, Sanda.”
“Your spy senses are failing you. I’ve had a rough time with the Nazca lately.”
His smile crashed and burned. “So I heard.”
“If he was your friend…”
“No, don’t apologize. There are no friends between the Nazca.” Tomas took a long drink of an amber-colored cocktail with orange sugar on the rim and shook his head.
“Figured you’d be drinking that Elysian vintage, isn’t that where you’re from?”
A longer drink this time. “Surprised you remember that.”
“One of the few memories that doesn’t give me headaches these days.”
He started to reach a hand toward her, caught her glare, and stopped himself. His hand rested in the center of the table, curled, but limp. “I’m sorry.”
“Not what I’m here for. I’m a very busy woman, Master Spy, and you said one little magic word that got me off the back of my ship, where I would much rather be. I’m here to learn two things, Tomas: What do you know about it, and how did you get a tightbeam through to The Light?”
“Don’t you mean Bero?”
“I do not. They are separate entities until he decides otherwise. You’re avoiding the questions.” He flashed her a grin that made her chest flush, but she brushed the feeling aside.
“Sanda Greeve, my straight shooter.” He shook his head and slammed back the last of his drink. “I know where ‘it’ is, and I know how to get it, but I can’t get it alone.”
“I have no reason to believe that you are not on-mission, and that you will not hand it over to your superiors if we recover the object. Tell me where it is, and I’ll retrieve it without you.”
A shadow passed behind his eyes. “I don’t think you can get it without me.”
“My crew is perfectly capable.”
“Not for this.”
“Tomas.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Whatever the Nazca want, it’s not worth it. I know your job is everything to you, but this could very well be the key to healing Atrux. I cannot, I will not, allow the Nazca to fuck off with my ball.”
He swirled the dregs of his empty glass. “I won’t hand it over to the Nazca.”
“I can’t take your word.”
“I know. The thing is, I won’t hand it over to them because I’m not Nazca anymore. I’ve been burned, as we spies are fond of saying. Cut off. Cast off. I’m solo.”
He met her gaze evenly, and while every scrap of her wanted to believe him, there was too much at stake. With a sinking heart, she picked at the critical flaw in his story. “You’re registered here as Jacob Galvan, a Nazca alias. If they burned you, they’d be here in minutes to take you out.”
“About that.” He turned his wristpad over, checking the time. “I really wish you had gotten here on time so we could have ordered one last meal on the Nazca coffers.”
Glass exploded, showering them in glittering rain.
Sanda moved before she could think, shoved her chair back, and tipped up the table. She reached to grab Tomas by the shirt, but he was already on one knee, ducking behind the table for two as Sanda got the wooden shield between them and the next shot.
The table shuddered in her grasp. The stink of fabric and SynthWood frying under blaster fire overwhelmed the pleasant scents of wine and food. At least this place was fancy enough to buy very thick tables.
Sanda swore and grabbed her blaster, popping her head up long enough to make sure she wouldn’t hit any civilians before firing back in the direction of the kitchen, where the shots had come from.
People screamed, glass broke, and as Sanda met Tomas’s eyes behind the temporary shelter of a table that was only providing enough cover to keep those shooting at them from hitting anything vital, she felt a deep-rooted protective surge mingle with anger.
“You knew they’d come for you and you didn’t bring a weapon?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “They would have taken my weapons at the door, and you always carry two. You didn’t come alone, did you?”
Sanda’s wristpad lit up with a priority call from Nox. She accepted.
“Little fuckers are holed up in the kitchen,” he said. “Conway’s got the front door on lock and is ushering out the civvies, but I can’t promise a clean run for you. Spy still alive?”
“Despite all the odds,” she said. Another blaster shot rocked the table, nearly searing her ear as it bore through the wood. Maybe not that thick after all.
“Not after I get my hands—”
“Easy, Nox. Suppress the kitchens, grab one alive, and do not hurt any civilians.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, and cut the call.
Tomas looked at her, one brow raised. She grinned with him, couldn’t help it, and slapped her second blaster into his hand. “A civvie dies, and I’ll take it out on you.”
“Understood, Commander Greeve.”
It was really rather annoying that, after everything, the way he said her title traced tingles up her spine.
She popped up from behind the table and, synchronized with Tomas, fired back toward their Nazca attackers.
Sanda fired until the return fire stopped, then vaulted over the table and dashed for a thick marble column, Tomas tight on her heels. Behind the shelter of stone, she grabbed a comms earpiece from under her wristpad and shoved it in.
“I’m online. Talk to me.”
“I’ve got the cameras in the kitchen,” Arden said. “Looks like ten came in through the service elevator when you made contact with the maître d’ and hustled the cooks and staff out. The staff is uninjured, as far as I know. You shot two in the chest and one in the stomach, but I can’t say if they’re out. Nox got one in the head.”
“Fuck yeah I did,” Nox said.
“Front door is secure,” Conway said. “Maître d’ is hustling the civvies out like he does this every day.”
“Tomas,” she said. They’d pressed themselves close together to make better use of the cover of the pillar, their sides crammed so tight she could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest. He nodded to show he was listening but kept his head turned away, watching their flank. “Ten accounted for, one confirmed kill, three possibly out, but don’t count on it. Centered in the kitchen. These are your people, what are their tactics?”
He shook his head. “When the Nazca come for one of their own, they don’t use tactics a Nazca can work around.”
“Lovely. Nox?”
“Boss?”
“There are two ins-and-outs to that kitchen. Hammer them on the north exit, I’m coming in through the south. Arden, can you lock down the service elevator and any back entrances?”
“Already done.”
Bero said, “May I make a suggestion?”
“Shoot, Big B,” Sanda said.
Tomas grimaced.
“You could flee, there is no need for engagement.”
Sanda grabbed the back of Tomas’s head, fingers tangling in his hair, and every single muscle in his body went rigid, his scalp heating up beneath her touch as she yanked his head around and stared hard into his eyes.
He may be one of the finest spies in the universe, but he couldn’t hide his physical responses from her when she took him by surprise. Panic and hope warred across his face as she dragged him close.
“Will these people come for you if we bail right now?”
“Yes,” he said, so close his breath gusted against her lips. She let him go and pushed slightly, facing him back around to cover their flank. He shivered. She ignored it.
“Right. I’d rather not have a gaggle of Nazca dogging our heels. Time to make a point sharp enough to force the whole cursed organization to keep their distance. Agreed?”
Confirmation chorused across the channel. Sanda closed her eyes a breath to center herself. She felt a little shitty for squeezing an answer out of Tomas like that, but truth had been hard to come by lately, and Sanda needed to know why she was shooting before she squeezed the trigger.
“In position,” Nox whispered.
Sanda checked her blaster charge, scanned the scene, and stepped out from behind cover. Whatever turmoil she’d stirred up in Tomas, he had it under lock as he shadowed her, moving in concert, spraying down the kitchen exit until the swinging door lay in tattered, toothy pieces on the ground.
They hit the entrance at the same time, turned, and pressed their backs against the wall on opposite sides, blasters up, legs braced, and studiously did not meet each other’s eyes.
“Two more down,” Arden said into her comm.
She showed Tomas two fingers. He nodded.
Nox’s rifle roared to life on the other side of the room.
“Three more.”
She added three fingers, and his brows shot up, but he tucked his chin in acknowledgment. Sometimes Sanda wondered if Nox was the biggest weapon she had on her team, not The Light.
“Two coming your way,” Arden said. “Average height. No visible armor. Flanking lines.”
Sanda thanked the void for Arden Wyke and turned, stepping into the frame of the doorway, squeezing off two shots before the Nazca coming her way could process she was even there. She dropped down behind a stainless steel rolling cart and counted to three, then popped up and started laying down suppressive fire wildly across the back wall while Tomas moved into the room, taking down three with shots almost as clean as Nox’s.
“Clear,” Arden said.
Sanda didn’t put her weapon down. Under the hiss of a pot boiling over on the stove, she heard a soft scrabbling across the floor—fingernails scraping tile and metal, reaching for a weapon.
Nox entered the room in her peripheral vision and braced, rifle barrel tracking the space a few steps in front of her. He needn’t have bothered, but she appreciated the thought. Sanda rounded a workbench and found a Nazca lying in a pool of blood, one hand pressed to her stomach while the other scrambled across the floor for a downed blaster. Sanda kicked it away and dropped to a crouch alongside her.
Nox and Tomas started forward, but she gestured them back with a sharp tilt of the head. In the corner of her eye, she could see Tomas’s finger crawl for the trigger and hold off, but just barely.
She grabbed the woman’s shirt and lifted her up, bringing her face close. Blood stained the woman’s teeth, and some of the capillaries in her eyes had blown, but as Sanda well knew, it took a long time to die from a shot to the stomach.
“Tell your boss that Tomas Cepko is protected,” Sanda said. “If any of you come for me or Cepko again, I won’t bother letting a messenger survive. I’ll
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