Chapter One
Year: 4258
Cara
This fucking thing was a deathtrap.
The ship I’d booked passage on rattled so loudly that it was making me incredibly uneasy. It must have been centuries old. Odd clanking noises shook the rusted metal wall as I leaned against it and I absentmindedly wondered if today was the day that it would break apart and I’d die in the vacuum of space, out here in the furthest reaches of the galaxy.
I wasn’t on this ship by choice anyway. Not really. It was more like this was the only possible way to get to Dryac unless I wanted to sell myself to get passage on one of the more dangerous smuggler ships that patrolled these outer edges of the Milky Way. Fuck that.
I’d done better than that.
The man who piloted this ship was like eighty years old. He’d probably owned this hunk of junk for almost that long. Maybe it was a family heirloom or something. I rolled my eyes. Convincing him to take me on only took a little cash and the strategic way I showed off my cleavage when we’d met.
Water dripped from the rusted ceiling, straight on top of the bare skin of my knee. Dammit, that was cold. I shivered and wiped it away. At least it hadn’t fallen on my shorts. Probably would have stained them with whatever gunk was growing up above my head.
Gross.
It shouldn’t be much longer now. Pretty soon, we’d be docking at Dryac and that was where I would get off and figure out what to do with the rest of my life.
I sighed.
I missed being a part of Ronin’s crew already. We’d spent years together, but when the Intergalactic Coalition had impounded our ship before we’d gotten the chance to escape, we’d been forced to part ways. We’d last been on the planet of Uthea X98 where we’d been selling our goods, some smuggled and some legitimate.
Some fucker must have tipped off the law and they’d taken everything. All before we could even get back to the ship, leaving me with nothing but the clothes on my back and the little money I had in my pocket at the time.
The ship rattled much harder this time and I stiffened. I’d never get used to that. It shook consistently for the next several minutes. I heard the landing gear deploy a few feet beneath where I sat, making the floor shudder and vibrate with such violence that it seemed about to be torn clean apart.
Yeah. This ship was definitely a fucking death trap. I really couldn’t wait to get off of it.
Not far away, the engine roared and convulsed, almost as though it was having a seizure. Anxiously, I stood and moved away from it. Finally, after another few minutes, the ship came to a complete stop and then the sound of sweet silence filled the air.
At least, as quiet as Dryac would ever be.
The back door of the cargo hold cranked open and I waited until the ramp had touched the ground before I sprinted off the flying menace onto the dirt below. For a moment, I squatted down and ran my fingers through the soil, thankful that I was once again on solid land.
I mean, I love flying through space usually. But not on that hazard to humanity.
On the bright side though, I was still alive, and I’d made it to Dryac. I knew I could find work somewhere here. Then I could get in contact with my handler in the Association and find out where they wanted me stationed next. If I didn’t and they found out that I hadn’t, I’d be good as dead. The Association didn’t allow runners. Once you were in, you were in for life.
Dryac was a shady place that wasn’t patrolled by the Intergalactic Coalition, which meant all sorts of questionable things took place here. I’d been to Dryac before with my former crew a few times. Gritty and dirty, long forgotten by the rich who used to live there and use the place as a tax haven. That was hundreds of years ago.
Now derelict and crumbling mansions lined the streets not far from where I stood. The roads used to be paved, but it had been so long since anyone put any money into this place that they had long ago disintegrated into overgrown, broken, rocky paths.
The ship I had arrived on had landed just outside the edges of town, about a mile or so from the large market square close to the city center. I adjusted the backpack on my shoulders, shrugging it higher on my back, and set off in that direction.
Toward whatever was next for me. I had one thing going for me, even though I was just a woman in what was mostly a man’s world. I knew how to fix ships and every smuggling crew needed a mechanic. And I was a damn good one and that always was a good cover story for the other things I was ordered to do.
Plus it usually paid well. And I needed some money because I’d used the last of it to get to this godforsaken place.
I didn’t really run into anyone on the outskirts of town, but the closer I got to the square, the busier it became. All manner of life wandered here, from the Centaurans to the Zosnoi to the Garans, all various species of aliens that wanted to use the planet of Dryac to disappear from the rest of the galaxy. I walked beside them, trying not to gawk at their green skin or their singular eyes or all manner of strange traits that made them definitely not human.
Some of them were big. Others were small and loud. One thing was for certain though; most of them weren’t good people. They were criminals, smugglers, murderers, thieves. All of them were here to conduct business. Ninety-nine percent of it was completely illegal.
But I wasn’t here to judge. I’d been part of far more than my fair share of questionable activities throughout my life.
The buildings were bigger here, but closer together. Most of them were attached to each other, like condominiums, but a few of them were single structures, separated by dark, dirty alleyways people moved in and out of constantly. I knew better than to go down those though. That was where the shadiest of business occurred and as a woman on my own, that was just asking for trouble.