Hunt the Stars

Book 1: Starlight's Shadow

by Jessie Mihalik

Genres: Space Opera; Space Exploration

Synopsis

The critically acclaimed author of Polaris Rising takes readers on an exciting journey with the start of her brand-new series about a female bounty hunter and the man who is her sworn enemy.

 

“Jessie Mihalik is an author to watch.” — Ilona Andrews, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Octavia Zarola would do anything to keep her tiny, close-knit bounty hunting crew together—even if it means accepting a job from Torran Fletcher, a ruthless former general and her sworn enemy. When Torran offers her enough credits to not only keep her crew afloat but also hire someone to fix her ship, Tavi knows that she can’t refuse—no matter how much she’d like to.

With so much money on the line, Torran and his crew insist on joining the hunt. Tavi reluctantly agrees because while the handsome, stoic leader pushes all of her buttons—for both anger and desire—she’s endured worse, and the massive bonus payment he’s promised for a completed job is reason enough to shut up and deal.

But when they uncover a deeper plot that threatens the delicate peace between humans and Valoffs, Tavi suspects that Torran has been using her as the impetus for a new war. With the fate of her crew balanced on a knife’s edge, Tavi must decide where her loyalties lie—with the quiet Valoff who’s been lying to her, or with the human leaders who left her squad to die on the battlefield. And this time, she’s put her heart on the line.

 

Release date: February 1, 2022

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter One

I leaned against my ship’s cargo ramp and watched with narrowed eyes as four soldiers in Valovian armor stalked through the landing bay. This was a human station in human space—Valoffs shouldn’t be here. Yes, we were at peace—for now—but both sides had made it clear that they preferred it when everyone stayed in their own sectors.

The soldiers advanced from ship to ship. At each, the group leader spoke to the ship’s captain for a few minutes before continuing on. They moved like Valoffs rather than like humans wearing stolen armor, so I raised my mental shields as they approached. It wasn’t easy for a human to learn to shield against Valovian abilities because we had no natural defenses, but I’d learned the hard way during the war. Certain death provided excellent motivation.

The leader was male: tall and muscular, with thick black hair, dark eyes, and skin a shade or two lighter than my own golden tan. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t immediately place him. He was encased in layers of synthetic black armor from neck to feet, and I knew from experience that it would deflect all but the strongest plas pistols and blades. It had exactly two weaknesses, and you had to be within reach to exploit either of them.

The group stopped several paces away, but even at this distance, their leader looked almost human. In general, Valoffs had a wider variety of hair and skin color and were a little taller than humans, with a slightly finer bone structure. However, their eyes were the biggest giveaway. Their irises were often threaded with multiple vibrant colors, and they had better-than-human night vision. They spent a lot of time in the dark—days on Valovia were only ten hours long.

There were a few other minor differences between us, but at a glance, most Valoffs could be mistaken for human easily enough. Scientists had confirmed that they were nearly human, a branch that had diverged several millennia ago. The constant debate was whether they’d settled Earth and created the human branch or if some long-forgotten humans had hitched a ride to Valovia.

Or maybe an unknown third party had created us both. The speculation and conspiracy theories were both varied and unending.

I felt the slightest brush of a mind against mine. It felt cold, as always, even though I didn’t think it really had a temperature. When he encountered my mental shield, the leader raised an eyebrow. He was all hard angles and harsh beauty. Sharp cheekbones, strong jaw, straight nose.

And a mind that could kill with a thought.

Three soldiers in full armor—including the battle helmets that covered their faces—waited behind him. I couldn’t tell if they expected trouble to find them or if they were prepared to be the trouble.

“Are you the captain of this ship?” the Valovian leader asked in lightly accented Common.

I straightened away from the ramp. I wasn’t particularly tall, and I had to look up to meet his eyes, which added an annoyed bite to my tone. “Yes.”

“I am Torran Fletcher. I want to hire you.”

Now I understood why all of his previous conversations were so short. This one would be, too. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a bounty hunter. I hunt criminals and murderers; I don’t work for them.” And I especially didn’t work for one of the top Valovian generals who’d led the war against the Federated Human Planets, commonly shortened to FHP or Fed. No wonder he’d looked familiar. He’d been one of our priority targets, but as far as we knew, he’d never been anywhere near the front lines. Disgust pulled at my lips. Coward.

His piercing gaze seared me. “I know you. Lieutenant Octavia Zarola, hero of Rodeni,” he said with mocking reverence before his expression hardened. “Slaughterer. You are worth a lot in Valovian space.”

Memories of blood and death and war and betrayal caused my mental shields to falter. Torran’s expression went carefully blank—the look of a Valoff using their ability—and once again I felt his mind touch mine. I slammed up my shields and locked away the pain.

I hoped that whatever memories he’d glimpsed gave him the same nightmares they gave me.

My palms itched with the desire to grip a weapon. The enemy stood at my door and there wasn’t a damn thing Icould do about it unless I wanted to cause an interstellar incident—which I did, very much. But the thought of my crew stayed my hand. I couldn’t go and get myself killed for a vengeance that was three years too late, not when two people still depended on me.

I returned to the conversation, pretending the lapse hadn’t happened and that I hadn’t imagined sinking a plas blade into his armor’s weakest point. My smile was not kind. “Then it’s good that we’re not in Valovian space. And I know who you are, too, General Fletcher. You’re not worth anything at all, but station security might make an exception on principle alone.”

Torran tilted his head as he considered me. “I could tear through your flimsy shields in half a second. You can barely maintain them as is.”

“Try me,” I taunted with a careless shrug. “You will be dead before they fall. As you mentioned, I’ve fought your kind before.” And they’d always, always underestimated me. It was why I was alive and they were not.

He stared for a few moments longer before apparently coming to a decision. “I will pay you two hundred thousand Federated credits to retrieve a missing item for me. Half up front, yours to keep as long as you make an honest effort, and half on successful delivery.”

I blinked at the number, certain I’d misheard. Just the up-front half was ten times more than the largest bounty we’d ever landed. It would keep us in food for over a year, allow me to hire an actual mechanical engineer or two, andprovide for the ship upgrades that Kee, my systems engineer, desperately wanted. There had to be a huge catch or every other captain in the landing bay would’ve snapped up the offer, Valoff or no.

When I didn’t say anything, Torran frowned. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you just fine. I’m waiting for the catch.”

“My team and I will accompany you for the duration of the search.”

Uncomfortable, but not so much that the other captains would turn down a fortune, especially if they were smart enough to limit the search to a set amount of time. There had to be something else.

“And the search will begin on Valovia.”

Ah, there it was. Valovia was the heart of the Valovian Empire, and humans who ventured into Valovian space tended to disappear. That, plus the bounty on my head, meant that I wouldn’t fly there even for the fortune on offer. I mentally blew a farewell kiss to the most money I’d ever almost earned. “I decline. I suggest you find a Valovian crew to help you.”

“I can offer you and your crew safe passage for the duration of our contract. You will not be bothered and once the contract is complete, I will accompany you to whichever human station or planetary system you prefer.”

“I would have to trust your word and the fact that you are even able to offer safe passage. I don’t, for either. So my answer remains the same.”

One of the soldiers behind Torran stepped forward, their body language furious, but Torran held up a hand and the soldier fell back. Ah, right. It was an insult to question a Valoff’s honor. They were all about to be very, very insulted, then.

“A human stole a family heirloom,” Torran said. “I want it back. And I want the thief caught.”

Whatever had been taken must be beyond priceless if he was willing to pay so much for its retrieval. But the thief had probably long since fenced it, meaning it could be anywhere in the universe. It was an impossible task, and one I didn’t relish tackling while a Valovian general breathed down my neck.

This mission was a hard pass from me. Dead women couldn’t spend credits.

Still, I couldn’t stifle my curiosity. “Why not have your own people look into it?”

“We need a human crew to track a human thief.” I could hear the subtle sneer beneath the words. It took all of my strength not to point out that a human had gotten the better of him and that now he was asking humans for help. The irony was not lost on me, but apparently it was on him.

“Why did they all turn you down?” I asked with a wave toward the other ships. I knew some of those captains. At least two or three were stupid enough to take this job.

“They didn’t turn me down. I didn’t ask them. They were clearly incompetent. You are . . . less so.”

My comm implant crackled to life before I could tell him exactly where he could shove his faint praise. I held up a finger, so Torran would know that I wasn’t just ignoring him, even though I’d like to. The implant piped Kee’s voice directly into my inner ear. “Tavi, don’t say no. We have to help. They must be desperate if they’re coming to us.”

It didn’t surprise me that Kee was eavesdropping. She was plugged into every system on the ship and could easily hack her way into the whole station if she felt like it. Hell, she was probably linked in to my personal comm and listening through my microphone, never mind that that was supposed to be impossible.

Kee’s heart was like the finest china—proudly displayed, incredibly delicate, and easily broken. She’d never met a creature she didn’t want to help. I’d known her for years, and she was one of my closest friends, but I still didn’t understand how the universe hadn’t shattered her yet. Somehow, no matter what happened, she just kept putting herself back together and believing the best of people.

If everyone were like Kee, the universe would be a far better place. Unfortunately, it was filled with vicious bastards like me and General Fletcher.

“No,” I responded subvocally.

My subvocal microphone was a tiny, flexible sensor patch stuck to my throat with clear adhesive. It was barely visible, and if anyone noticed it at all, it looked like a small, silvery tattoo.

Thinking about words was enough to move the throat muscles by minuscule amounts. Together with my comm implant, the patch picked up these subvocal movements and translated them into words using my personal voice sounds. The transmitted result was close to my speaking voice, and no one standing next to me could tell that I was communicating.

Not even a Valovian general.

Using a subvocal microphone well took quite a bit of practice and calibration. The trick was to think loudly about the words you wanted to send and very quietly about everything else, unless you wanted your whole squad to get a running monologue of your internal thoughts.

When we’d first started there had been a lot of embarrassing incidents, but now we tended to leave them on all day without issue. Subvocal comms were a crude form of synthetic telepathy, but they would never match the natural telepathy the Valoffs enjoyed.

“Come on,” Kee wheedled. “We need that money, and it’ll give me a chance to study Valovian tech up close. And everything I’m seeing says that Fletcher does have the authority to offer safe passage. He’s kind of a big deal in Valovia now; a war hero turned rich noble or some shit. And his ship is broadcasting a diplomatic registration.”

Kee might be all emotion and sunshine, but she knew me well enough to use more pragmatic levers to move me. She had wanted equipment upgrades for years, but I kept putting her off because I didn’t have the money. We barely earned enough to keep us in food and supplies.

But if I accepted this job, I could afford the upgrades and more, even if I didn’t find the stupid heirloom or the thief who’d stolen it.

I’d risked my life for far less, and if Kee’s research said his offer was good, it was good. I sighed in silent defeat, and she let out a delighted whoop. “Don’t get your hopes up,” I warned quietly. “We’ll see how negotiations go. And I’m not committing to an indefinite wild-goose chase. They get eight weeks, max.”

“Give ’em hell,” she agreed cheerfully. “If you can raise the price enough, I can get two new processing units and drag this scrap heap into the current century.”

I patted my ship lovingly. Starlight’s Shadow wasn’t the newest or fastest or prettiest, but she got the job done—kind of like me.

Torran stood silently waiting for my answer with the kind of coiled strength that could flash into deadly action at a moment’s notice. His gaze never wavered from me. Behind him, his soldiers kept careful, discreet watch on everything in the landing bay. They moved like a team who had been together for a long time. If Torran wasn’t a general anymore, who were they?

Had he, like me, tried to keep his squad together after the war? I laughed under my breath. Of course not. He’d been a general. He didn’t have a squad—he had underlings.

I centered myself and focused. The three soldiers behind Torran were not suppressing their power and their auras sparkled and danced around them in beautiful jewel tones: ruby, sapphire, and topaz. Torran was another matter entirely. His aura limned him in brilliant platinum that sparkled with hints of color, like light hitting a prism.

I’d never seen an aura like it. Of course, humans weren’t supposed to be able to see auras at all, but in the last, desperate years of war, the FHP had come up with an experimental augmentation, and I’d volunteered in a reckless attempt to save my squad.

Most of the test subjects had lost their minds from the strain. I had not, but it had been touch and go. Chunks of my memory were still hazy.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Aura colors didn’t seem to be directly related to power levels or abilities, at least not in any way we’d been able to determine with our admittedly limited study. Maybe the FHP knew more now, but I’d cut ties and ensured they stayed cut by making myself scarce. I’d served my time. I wasn’t giving them any more to be a test subject.

I stopped focusing and my head throbbed. It’d been a while since I’d used that particular ability and my body wasn’t used to the strain anymore. Or maybe time had softened my memory of the constant pain of war.

The soldier with the ruby aura turned their head toward me but didn’t attempt to enter my mind. Had they felt me looking at their auras?

I mentally shook off the past and met Torran’s dark eyes. I wasn’t close enough to see all of the colors, but a clearly visible line of silver traced a vibrant lightning bolt pattern across both of his irises. I forced myself not to look away. “What was stolen?”

“A family heirloom. I will explain further once we’ve reached an agreement.”

His tone said he wouldn’t elaborate, but I pressed anyway. “It’s hard for me to agree when I don’t know what I’m hunting. If the thief stole a unique, easily identifiable piece of art then finding it is far easier than if they stole a generic piece of jewelry.”

Torran said nothing. His team’s subtle movements highlighted his incredible stillness. He could’ve been carved from stone. And, indeed, I’d met rocks that were more forthcoming.

I tried again. “How long ago was your mystery item stolen?”

“Approximately eight standard days.” The tiniest curl of his lip told me exactly what he thought of referring to human time units as the standard.

I wrinkled my nose, both at him and at eight days. More than a week was a long time for a trail to go cold. We’d gotten lucky picking up older bounties in the past because of Kee’s ability to find information, but that might not help us on Valovia. “Kee, you finding anything?” I asked under my breath.

“I’m looking, but I’m not seeing anything. Either they haven’t reported it, or the Valovian police force is better atkeeping secrets than the FHP. And based on what I’ve seen before, they’re not.”

“Did you get the authorities involved?” I asked Torran.

There was the tiniest crack in his calm facade, and his glare became even fiercer. “No. This is a family matter.”

“Who assessed the crime scene?” I asked, my limited patience running dangerously thin.

“I did,” he replied.

“And? Did you find any leads?”

“Yes.”

When he didn’t say anything else, my patience snapped. “So you expect me to agree to help you find an unknown item stolen by an unknown thief over a week ago with nothing more than your word that this isn’t just an elaborate plot to lure me and my crew to our deaths in Valovian space?”

He stiffened and his glare turned icy. “I already offered you safe passage and agreed to explain after the contract is signed.”

“So you said.” I blew out a frustrated breath. I didn’t like going into a contract blind, but with half of the money up front, I would make a tidy profit even if the task was as impossible as I feared.

I knew what I had to do, but I still didn’t like it. Working with the enemy felt like betrayal, and bitterness filled me. I tried to think of it as relieving a Valovian general of as much of his money as possible.

It didn’t help.

Before I could change my mind, I spoke. “Double the price and deliver a signed guarantee of safe passage, and I’ll give you four standard weeks of my crew’s best effort. If we haven’t recovered the item or the thief by then, I keep the first half of the payment and we go our separate ways—after you’ve escorted us to safe territory. You and your team will be allowed on my ship, but you must respect my crew and follow my orders. Rifle through anyone’s head without permission and I’ll dump you into space. Do we have a deal?”

Torran’s expression remained frustratingly blank. I would have better luck reading a painting. My patience was shot, but I had stubbornness in spades. I stared him down.

Finally, after an age, he said, “Give me twelve weeks and I’ll give you two-fifty.”

I laughed in his face. A Valovian squad on my ship for three months? No thanks. “Eight weeks, three hundred thousand credits. That’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.”

When he didn’t respond, relief chased disappointment. Kee still wouldn’t be getting her upgrades, but at least I wouldn’t have to deal with Torran and his squad for two months. I tossed him a mocking farewell salute and turned to my ship. I’d been waiting for Eli, my first officer, to return from a supply run, but I could just as easily wait inside.

I was halfway up the ramp when Torran stirred. “Wait.”

The extra height from the ramp meant he had to look up at me. It was petty, but I enjoyed it anyway. “Yes?”

Torran raised his chin. “I accept.”

Fucking hell.

Chapter Two

Eli showed up while Torran and I were in the middle of heated contract negotiations. Torran had refused my standard bounty hunting boilerplate and now he was trying to give me an aneurysm from sheer rage and frustration.

My first officer parked his levcart at the bottom of Starlight’s ramp and circled around toward me, his face set in granite lines. He was tall and heavily muscled, with deep brown skin and warm brown eyes. He wore the dark pants and black shirt that had become his working uniform. When he wasn’t scowling, Eli was incredibly handsome, so much so that Kee and I gave him shit for it. People took one look at his face and underestimated him, even with his build.

“Problem?” he asked quietly.

Eli, Kee, and I had served together during the war, and while I didn’t need the support, having him at my side loosened some of the tension I’d been carrying. Eli and Kee were the siblings I’d never had, and the bonds we’d forged in blood and death were diamond hard.

If I needed help burying a body, Eli would silently grab a shovel and start digging while Kee erased all evidence of the crime.

I would do the same for them.

“This is General Torran Fletcher,” I said with a wave at the Valoff in question. “He’s trying to hire us, but my standard contract isn’t good enough for him, so we’re negotiating. Rather, he’s dictating, and I’m ignoring him.”

At the name, Eli’s eyes darted to Torran. I knew that look, so I tensed to intercept an attack, but Eli merely growled something nasty under his breath. He looked at me, and his voice came through my comm, picked up by his subvocal mike. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Blame Kee.”

Eli shot me an exasperated look and heaved a long-suffering sigh.

“Yes, blame me for forcing Tavi to accept more money for eight weeks of work than we’d normally make in two years,” Kee said over the comm, her voice tart. “Woe is us.”

I covered my laugh with a cough. Torran had to know we were communicating with each other, even if he couldn’t hear us, but his expression remained unreadable. “General Fletcher, meet my first officer, Elias Bruck. When I’m not around, you’ll follow his commands while aboard Starlight’s Shadow.”

A curt nod was Torran’s only response.

“You may want to move this somewhere more private,” Eli said. “You’re starting to draw interest.”

I’d noticed the increasing frequency of people walking by, but for all of our furious disagreement, Torran and I had kept our voices down.

“They’re not setting a single foot on my ship without an ironclad contract,” I growled with an impatient wave toward the Valoffs. “It’s not my fault the general refused a perfectly good one.”

“My ship is—” Torran started, only to stop when I made a disbelieving noise. I certainly wasn’t setting foot on a Valovian ship, contract or no.

For the first time, frustration showed in Torran’s expression. Welcome to the party.

Without warning, one of the Valovian soldiers broke from the group and headed toward the landing bay’s exit into the station. Eli stepped protectively closer to me. We were both a little jumpy with so many enemies nearby.

“Chira is going to secure us a neutral location,” Torran explained.

This was a Fed station, so as long as we remained in the station itself, it was unlikely to be a trap. And if it was a trap, well, then more fun for me.

“Message Starlight when you have the location. My team and I will meet you. And I suggest you think about accepting my boilerplate, or at least compromising on some of your ridiculous requirements, or this discussion will go nowhere, and you’ll just waste our time.”

Torran’s mouth tightened, but he inclined his head a fraction of a centimeter. Without another word he and his remaining team turned as one and headed for the door.

Well, that wasn’t creepy as all hell or anything.

Eli waited until they had cleared the airlock into the station before he spoke. “Do you really think this is a good idea?”

“No. But Kee’s right—it’s more money than we’ll make in two years and that’s if we fail to retrieve the item. If we get lucky and find it, we’ll be set for a while.”

“Damn straight,” Kee chimed in over the comm.

“Or we could all die,” Eli said drily.

Kee huffed out a breath but held her tongue. She and Eli were the opposite sides of the same coin. Kee was optimistic and idealistic while Eli was more pessimistic and pragmatic. They balanced each other, and they’d learned long ago that neither would change the other’s mind.

“Kee, keep digging for info while General Fletcher finds us a meeting room,” I said. “Eli, grab the levcart and I’ll help you unload the supplies. I want us to be ready to fly as soon as the meeting is over, whether or not we get the job.”

 

The supplies did not take long to put away. The levcart had been less than half full and most of it had been food, cheap staples that went a long way for not a lot of money. This month was especially lean. If we didn’t nab a bounty in the next few weeks, I wouldn’t even be able to buy us rice and generic protein next month.

I docked the levcart in its place in the cargo bay and then entered the main part of the ship. As soon as I cleared the hatch, I was attacked by a leaping ball of white fur. I caught Luna before her claws could find purchase in my tender flesh. She chittered at me as longing and a vague picture of a small rabbit-looking creature—Luna’s idea of food—flooded my mind.

Luna was a burbu, a mildly telepathic animal native to the Valovian sector. She communicated with simple emotions and images. The combo she was giving me right now meant she was hungry. When I didn’t move toward the galley, she sent me another image, this time of her empty food bowl. That one was relatively new, proving that she could learn and adapt her images.

“I’m going, I’m going,” I grumbled. Nearly a quarter of our food budget went to an animal that weighed less than five kilograms. “I just fed you this morning. Where do you put it all?”

Luna whined at me and rested her head against my chest. I snuggled her closer and buried my nose in her fur. She looked like a cross between an arctic fox, a small house cat, and a ferret, with a long slender body, a pointed snout, four slim legs, and a fluffy tail. Her fur was dense, soft, and as white as freshly driven snow.

Big violet eyes and adorable rounded ears that swiveled made her look harmless, but she had sharp, retractable claws and even sharper teeth. We’d all been gently nipped when we’d displeased our imperious mascot—usually by not feeding her fast enough.

I’d found her injured and alone while we were on a mission deep in enemy territory. I would have left her behind because I’d been having enough trouble keeping my squad safe, but then her pitiful plea had breached my mental barriers and it was all over. I’d had our medic patch her up, and I’d carried her kilometers in my pack, sure that she was going to die before we were safe.

She hadn’t.

She had also resisted all of my efforts to release her back into the wild once she was healthy. And she’d taken an instant dislike to being left behind, which meant many of our missions were accompanied by a white shadow. My commanding officer had looked the other way only because Luna turned out to be an excellent tracker and early warning system.

Kee popped her head out of the large utility closet she’d converted into her personal engineering control room and systems hub. Her pale skin and rainbow-colored hair glowed in the overhead lights. “Don’t believe her. I just fed her thirty minutes ago.”

I pulled back and looked in Luna’s eyes. “You sneaky little devil. No more food for you until dinner.”

Luna chirruped at me, a lilting trill that sounded like no animal I’d ever heard, and sent me another wave of longing. I shook my head at her. “Not going to work. Dinner.”

Luna squirmed in my arms and I put her down. She sent me a baleful look and leapt two and a half meters straight up to the narrow walkway I’d installed along the top edge of the hallways for her. She liked to be tucked up against the ceiling—the better to ambush her prey.

After Luna stalked out of sight with a final twitch of her tail, I turned to Kee. “Find anything interesting?”

She grimaced. “Not much. Whatever is going on, Torran’s people are keeping it close.”

Eli came in behind me. “Or nothing is going on and it’s an elaborate trap.”

I held up a hand before they could devolve into arguing again. “Assuming it’s not a trap, who do we need to hunt a thief?”

“Lexi,” they both said at once.

“I agree. Kee, track her down, see if she’s available, what her current rate is, and where she is.”

“You know she’d do it for free, if only to see the look on the Valoffs’ faces when a human does what they couldn’t,” Eli said.

Lexi had been in our squad during the war, and she had no love lost for Valoffs. When it became clear that bounty hunting wasn’t going to make us rich, she’d struck out on her own with my blessing. We still helped each other out occasionally, but Lexi was doing far better than we were. If many of her jobs were questionably legal, we all pretended not to notice.

“I’m on it,” Kee said. “You want me to go to the meeting with you or stay here and keep an eye on things?”

An extra gun would be handy if things went sideways, but Kee was even more powerful when she was plugged into her systems. “Stay here. If things go wrong, be ready to launch in a hurry.”

She nodded and disappeared back into her room.

“How long do you think we have until they secure a location?” Eli asked.

“Not long. My guess would be in the next fifteen to twenty minutes.”

“I’ll get ready.”

I did the same. I always wore a few weapons when we were on-station, but a few more wouldn’t hurt, especially with our counterparts in full Valovian armor. I secured a plas blade to my right leg. The twenty-five-centimeter energy blade wouldn’t activate unless I held the grip and pressed the switch, which meant it didn’t need a sheath.

The energy blade defaulted to a lethal cutting edge, but it could also be set to deliver a nonlethal stun. I could draw it and switch modes in a heartbeat, a move drilled into us by countless military instructors because the line between life and death could flip in a fraction of a second.

A plas pistol went on my other hip. I wasn’t as strong shooting with my left hand, but my left-handed knife skills were shit, so this was my strongest configuration for close fighting. I peeled off my short-sleeved shirt and strapped on a lightweight, flexible armored vest. It wouldn’t stop much, but it was the most inconspicuous armor I owned. When I put my shirt back on, it was difficult to tell that I was protected.

I pulled my long hair up into a tight bun. The dark, curly strands fought containment, but I ruthlessly pinned them in place. Long hair was a liability in a close fight, but I refused to cut it off—my hair was easily my best feature. It set off my golden tan skin and pale blue eyes and gave me a hint of softness that my face lacked.

As the last pin slid into place, a soft ping rang through my cabin. The ship had received a new message. A glance revealed it was from Torran and that he’d secured a private room at a nearby restaurant.

I hit the ship’s intercom. “Kee, the meeting details are in the ship’s log. Eli, be ready in two.”

They both confirmed and I released the intercom. Time to see if this was a trap or a legitimate offer.

 

The restaurant Torran had chosen was one of the nicest in the area. It was the kind of place two CEOs would meet to discuss mergers and acquisitions. The few patrons I saw from the entrance were well-heeled and well-dressed.

The maître d’ flicked a glance from my head to my feet—including my visible weapons—and then did the same to Eli, who sported even more weapons. Her gaze stopped on his face, and she just stared for a second before she remembered to smooth her expression. “May I help you?”

I suppressed my smile, well aware of how Eli affected some people. “I’m meeting someone in the private dining room.”

“Your name?”

“Tavi Zarola.”

She made a subtle gesture and a young man in a black-and-white uniform appeared beside her. “Please follow him.”

I inclined my head in thanks. Eli and I followed the server deeper into the restaurant. We skirted the main dining room, which was broken into small, intimate spaces with nooks and alcoves, the best of which had a view of the floor-to-ceiling window.

Distant stars sparkled against the velvety darkness of space, and a faint nebula smudged color across the wide expanse. I knew the window was at least as strong as the metal and composite of the rest of the station, but it looked delicate and fragile. And standing next to it, ...