Everything has a price. Everything. I first learned this when I was traded for a mangy dog when I was seven years old.
And now, I know that whatever treasures lie inside that broken ship in front of us will make us richer than we can even imagine.
I stand on the bridge of Banshee, our own SolarShip, while I rest my four-fingered hand on her side. I know we're slowly drifting through the star-speckled blackness of space, approaching our destination, but I'm not watching. I'm listening to the heartbeat of our SolarShip. Feeling the vibrations and thrums and beats flowing through her. She's healthy and steady, but it's tired. So am I. So is my loyal crew of five. My Bloodpack.
We've been hunting for this wreckage for weeks, hunting leads and rumours and whispers for the remains of a microwar that the Sovereign declares never happened. Which means it certainly did happen.
Banshee warbles under my hand: a deep, exhausted sigh. I breathe deep, reshift my focus and reach into the SolarShip's mind. There's that familiar numbness crawling up my spine, that dark flutter around my heart as my veins turn black. Our heartbeats sync in tune, our breathing mimicking. The whine of the engine, the bustle of my Bloodpack and crunch of machinery, it all fades into a dark silence until there's just me and the SolarShip, the two of us alone in this universe. I push firmer, but not harder as I set up music for her to listen to. Tranquillity thrums through its system: electronic beats and pulsing-pounding instruments that cool her systems and unclouds her focus as she guides us towards our destination.
The SolarShip has been soothed; I disconnect and find that dark sweat has broken out on my body and crust growing out of my skin like black pebbles. I've been attached too long. Shorter bursts: got to remember that. Us women are better at this than most men are. We can take the isolation, the feeling of hard vacuum, better than men can.
As I sever the connection, I blink and find myself back in the old decrepit corridor of the wrecked ship. From our headlamps, six narrow beams of yellow light stab forwards into the darkness, illuminating the dusty cold corrridors, with cables dangling like guts overhead.
I'm one of the youngest of our crew. Tall and lithe, my hair dyed silver and pulled back into a ponytail the way I like it.
'The wreck's exactly where you said it'd be, Sola.' Azar bumps his armoured soldier into mine, grins. I'm tall for a woman, but Azar's got at least a head on me. He's black-skinned, broad-shouldered, handsome. 'You were right.'
'I usually am,' I say with a smirk. 'Twenty-two successful wreck breaches in a row and you still doubt me when I tell you it is where I say it is.'
'Nah. I believed this wreck existed. Just not that we'd find it here.' He gestures at the corridor. 'Although I was right about it being creepy as hell.'
'You say that about all wrecks.'
'And I'm right everytime.'
I roll my eyes in a playful gesture, so he can see it through my helmet.
My silver hair, squashed into my helmet, is usually pulled into a high ponytail, the way I like it. I'm pale-skinned where Azar is dark, slender and athletic where he's broad and bulky. And although I'm tall for a woman, Azar's at least thirty centimetres above me. And we make one hell of a team.
He grins at me again, and if it weren't for our EVA helmets I'd pull him into a hard kiss. He's the reason I do this. Why I do everything I do.
I finally gaze on the former WarVessel. It's shattered and broken, its sides raked with traces of railgun fire and fuze-torpedos, its hull gutted open like a belly, metal intensities exposed to vacuum. I look at where it's been sliced right down the middle. Tangled debris that should have been flung away years now is frozen in space. Unmoving. An entire wing of the SolarShip, ripped from the main body by a controlled denotation, has been locked mid-spin in its arc. More than half the SolarShip is like this, locked and frozen in place with the faintest, familiar ripple of a purple haze surrounding it. Fragged space.
And only Voidcutters like me can enter it without getting carved up.
'And you all doubted me,' I tease, pulling him into a hard kiss. And right then, framed by the glare of SolarShip lights and subsurface flooring, he makes the rest of the universe disappear. He's the reason I do this. He squeezes my hand tighter, finger sliding over the stump where my ring finger used to be.
We press on down the corridor, to rejoin the rest of our Bloodpack. Atlas, our resident hacker, casts a glance at us over at us from where he's stationed at a desk, cramped with monitoring equipment. He throws me a wink, goes back to his work, his nimble fingers dancing over the controls as he searches for signals from foreign SolarShips. Completely absorbed in his work. He's reserved and quiet, preferring to watch from the sidelines. He's the complete opposite of me. Which is exactly why he's an invaluable part of the team. Got to cover all the bases, and part of that means knowing your weaknesses. And admitting to them.
Our SolarShip is small and unnoticeable . Which is exactly what we're after. As Outriders, we're interested in remaining hidden and out of the spotlight. The insides are bathed in a misty-green and white light, like some place called forests, although I've never seen one. Beneath our spanning viewport is an array of controls and knobs and gears that both fly the ship and allow us to maintain it. Its interior angles and reassuring halls and its tight corners aren't comfortable. But they're homey. Familiar. The space stinks with our collective stink of sweat and we haven't found storage for half the goods we're hauling around, hoping to sell. But it's home, and it's our home. And to give it a personal edge, we've sprayed digitial ink tags on the bulkheads. They squirm on the metal, looking like a liquid painting. We've marked all our Bloodpack names, the ones we're known for, the ones that have record-high bounties hanging over them. My name is up there, too: the Wolf. It's a little game of sorts, to see who's currently racking up the highest bounty. As usual, I'm leading the charge by a landslide. Wouldn't have it any other bloody way.
'Found anything?' Azar asks.
'Nope. This bastard's picked clean, by the looks of it,' says Quinn. Her hair's shaved off on one side and running like a puddle of oil down the other side of her face, polishing her beloved sniper rifle as if lost in some perverse fantasy. She kicks over a cabinet, scoffs as rusty tools go clattering out. 'Told you this is a stupid idea.'
'Sola knows what she's doing,' Azar tells her.
'Yeah. Sure.' Quinn peaks down the barrel of her rifle. 'Like when we almost ran into those Smokers back at the spaceport. We could have all taken the long-route around, but no! We had to go down the central concourse, sticking out like bloody thumbs, and nearly get our heads cut off for it when we draw the Smoker's attention.'
'I got us out alive, didn't I?' I say. I don't like it when people bring up old grudges.
'Barely. We shouldn't have been there in the first place.'
I want to protest, but Azar shakes his head, guides me away. He's right. It's pointless arguing with Quinn when she's in one of her frequent moods. But she's not wrong, not completely. Which is why I've had Atlas send out sweepers, scanning for any trace of any other smugglers or pirates that might have had the same idea as us, or Celestials forbid, any Sovereign ships.
And I'm not going to lose any of my Bloodpack to them. It's everyone's worst nightmare, being captured and punished by the Sovereign, the overarching regime made up of the High Lord and his many subsequent Lords that oversee and control everything we know. They're determined to keep it that way, so we all know the punishment for Outriders like us who dare to roam space and search former battlegrounds for valuables and objects of war. It proves that it's possible to live outside their world and their structure and their rules. That it is possible to be free.
But I'll take being hunted over my life being dictated by them. We all would.
Azar's hand slides next to my own. He knows me, knows my mind's churning five, ten, twenty steps ahead. Worried about the dangers and missteps at every turn. Whenever I was at a loss, or didn't know where to turn, I'd confess it all to him. And when I was done, he'd give me the advice he thought I needed to hear, whether I liked it or not. Often, I didn't. But I listened because I knew she'd give me nothing less than his down to earth, gut-honest opinion. He's maybe the one person in the whole universe I can completely trust. It's why he's not just the one who flies this SolarShip, but the one who acts as our broker and sells our salvaged equipment to the right buyers. And so far, he's not made a mistake.
The SolarShip rumbles as it approaches the fragged area. Azar takes one last glance at me before strapping into the main flight chair, preparing to go off auto and ease us in. Ignoring the sound of Atlas and Quinn bickering behind me, I watch the warnings to stay away pop up on the viewport. One wrong move, one too-sharp turn, one disturbance of the fragged area could trigger an implosion, or rip our ship apart. But I know Azar won't make a mistake. He's the best SolarShip flyer in five solar systems, and believe me, I've looked. I watch his brow furrowed with focus, hands hovering over the glowing controls like an artist holding a paintbrush.
Outside a viewport, we see the scene of terrible violence we first saw when we came in. Orbiting the ship is a sea of frozen debris, wreckages, shattered frigates, broken escapepods and suits of armor, burst into a million forgotten pieces. Drifting like metal snow in a solar wind. It's beautiful, in its own way. The remnants of a war, one of many. It could have been the result of two great Lords and their Halls – their own personal finances and armies. Or more likely it was a failed rebellion. An attempt at fighting back against the Sovereign that was quickly quelled when the Lords sent their armadas and armies to tear any such notion of resistance out by the roots. But this was before my birth.
I'm not concerned with fighting the Sovereign, I know it's pointless. I care about what they've left behind. I care about feeding my Bloodpack.
The SolarShip fills the viewport, dwarfing us. It's humongous and twisted and fractured, just the memory of a resistance. There's a little twinge in my chest at the sight. There's something so terribly tragic at seeing something so powerful and magnificent killed and left to rot in vacuum like this. It's hard to tell whether it's been like this before or after the Breaking: when the god-like Celestials destroyed themselves and left the universe and space time shattered like this. I can't even see the SolarShip's emblem, probably scrubbed out by the Sovereign. But being fractured, no one else would dare venture into it for treasures. Too dangerous. Being a voidcutter isn't a free pass, but it means we have less chance of being ripped apart on a molecular level by space-time fragments.
The stairs shake under the trample of heavy boots. Zoltan. The big man shoulders his bulk beside me, wide-eyed and grinning like the young child of some wealthy Lord as he drinks in the sights with his single non-blind eye. 'It's real,' he rumbles. He claps me on the back with his metallic arm, hard enough to knock the breath out of my lungs. He often forgets his own weight. Particularly since most of his body has been patched up with mechanical organs and bone-grafts. But when we have trouble with other Outriders, or some punks are thinking of making an attempt at stealing Banshee, one look at him and his mass of tattoos and they're already thinking twice. 'You did it, Sola,' he slurs. He's been drinking again. 'By the Celestials, you bloody did it!'
'We did it,' I correct, collecting myself and straightening my crumpled bodysuit. Got to have some dignity as the leader of the Pack.
'And it all means jack if it's been scooped clean already,' Quinn snorts, twirling her sniper rifle around. 'Or full of fakes.'
I fold my arms. I don't mind her snark usually, but she's been more cynical than usual from the start of this quest. 'Then let's stop jabbering and find out.'
Exploring abandoned stations, old hubs and battlegrounds, we usually stumble across old memorabilia, historical SolarShip logs, sometimes dataNests about ancient Lords and Halls. If they haven't been taken already. But these? They could contain engraved suits of armor and combat gear, still bloodied. Notched swords and hackingShivs made from moonsteel. Rifles. Railguns. Helmets sculptured from iron and silver. Alcoholic spirits and art murals worth the value of a small colony. Songs, logs made during the war: clothes and scarfs worn by the conquers, transcripts thought not to exist.
It could have a treasure cache. Their historical worth, let alone the narratives their existence could change, would be invaluable. I've seen TitanMech scraps sell for millions of Credits because they were owned by one of the first conquerors of our time. And if this cache is truly untouched...
'Take us in,' I tell Azar. The lights ahead dim; cloaking us in bronze shadows as we weave further into this graveyard out in the heart of space. Banshee is nervous; I can feel her uncertainty thrum up my spine. The others don't – to all humans born without the gift of voidcutting, it's just a sentient ship. But I feel Banshee's every heartbeat and sigh. I pat her flank. It's been a while since she's been serviced; we'll have to treat her after this. And all of us. Azar glances my way as he grips the controls. I told you you'd do it. I can imagine him whispering the words in my ear.
'Sola.' Atlas' words carry clear across the deck. He tilts his holoScreen towards me, points towards a series of ripples along his three-dee maps, always auto-updating. 'There's been recent activity here. Way too much for this sector.'
'Around the crashzone?' I ask.
'Could be; I can't pinpoint it. Can't get an identifying signal, either. They've hidden their traces well.' He rakes in a breath; he knows I'm not going to like this. 'Sola, this looks dangerous. I think we should wait it out. Or maybe even turn back.'
Quinn barges past me before I can respond. She twists her thin lips as she inspects the stats. 'Hate to agree with him, but for once he's making sense. Doesn't look good.' She sets her sniper rifle down to crack her knuckles. 'We split, get another plan of attack. I ain't risking a Sovereign prison. Not even for you, Wolfy.'
'But we don't know if it is a Sovereign ship or not,' I say, glancing towards each of them in turn. 'Could be other Outriders. Could be Scanners for all we know.' Various Sovereign Lords like to send their drones shooting out into space, searching for solo colonies in hiding or even unlicensed SolarShips that are attempting to flee persecution, or even escaping the Soveriegn's grasp. They needn't bother; even making off with an unlicensed SolarShip is impossible. 'They could have stumbled across it, realised it was too big a job and went to get help.'
'That's true.' Azar hefts off the seat to slide up to me, hand on my shoulder. 'Or we could be taking a giant risk.' His voice is soft and gentle, but as usual, he doesn't dilute his words. He tells me exactly what he's thinking. 'There's always another crashzone, Sola. There's always another Fragged site.' His lips twitch into a smile. 'The universe is full of the remains of war. We don't have to have them all.'
The others murmur their agreement. But they will not pressure me to make a decision. They will not ask that of me. I am their Bloodpack leader; the one that brought these broken souls together to exist outside the Sovereign's choking grasp, to live for ourselves and not some highborn Lord in his skyscraper or mansion or villa. But we haven't hit a decent cache in months. Our buyers are drying up under Sovereign raids, our private collectors demanding remanets of war that are continuously rarer in value. Rarer means risker. Risker means higher chance of getting caught. And I cannot afford to fall into the many, many traps laid for people like us. But keeping them alive this long has meant taking risks.
Which is why, although I wish I didn't have to, I tell them: 'we might not get another shot at this, not for a long time. Continue our course. We go in.'
They exchange glances. But they all nod and proceed to do as they're told. They'd never disobey me. I read doubt in their faces, but they still trust me with their lives.
But first, the whole Bloodpack gathers together, as we always do before a mission like this. We lock our arms together, bend our heads until we're locked in a circle of six. No one moves or speaks. I close my eyes and listen to my Bloodpack's collective breathing, feel the tautness of their muscles, smell the tension radiating from them. All of us spat out from different corners of the universe, all different sizes and skin tones and personalities. We're missing eyes and fingers and limbs and are damaged and scarred in a dozen different ways, but not a single one of us would sit this out. Because we're a family, and we never leave another pack member behind.
I open my eyes and glance from person to person, our Bloodpack names, the ones we're known by, ringing in my head. Atlas, the Fox. Zoltan, the Bear. Azar, the Panther. Quinn, the Hawk. And me: the Wolfman. 'Into the dark,' I say. My Bloodpack nods, repeats the mantra as we break apart to prepare for the mission.
An hour later, there's a rumbling clunk as we crawl to a halt. I allow myself a little sigh. We've made it. Our SolarShip is scanning for the best entry point for the WarVessel. Searching for rooms that are pressurized. From the banister, I can see the others pulling on the skin-hugging VoidSuits with practiced ease, collecting all their equipment we'll need to breach the Vessel.
Time to do this.
I scoop up my helmet. It's got a mirrored visor and engraved sides, the tips sharpened into a pair of wolf ears, the chin chiselled into a jaw. I grin every time I see it. No reason not to play into the narrative.
I'm about to slide it on when Azar calls me back. I turn and hike back up the stairs. I hold his gloved hands in mine, fingers locking together. He opens his mouth to speak.
And that's when the world explodes.
I'm whipped sideways. My unprotected head hits something, hard. Something cracks. Everything's white noise and there's a fire burning behind my eyes. Warmth trickles down my neck and I realise its blood pouring from my mouth, my ears. My body feels like it's a bundle of splintered bones and shredded muscle, but I force my eyes open. I've been flung across the deck, slammed into the viewport. The hull is dented. Railgun impact. Banshee is screaming, her sirens whirling in agony. We're under attack, but I don't know where from. We haven't lost pressure.
There's Azar, rising to his feet. My Bloodpack are preparing the escape-pod we're always made sure to maintain. They're starting to come for me.
And then I notice the metal pipe sticking out my chest.
The second explosions tears an entire section of the SolarShip away. I'm screaming and screaming but there's nothing but dead silence as Azar is clawed out into the vacuum of space, disappearing in a whirl of metal and debris. I stretch a hand out, as if I could save him. But he's already gone, lost in the cold blackness. The pipe I'm impaled on fastens me in place as sickening colours of white and yellow flash overhead. Banshee screeches in agony as attacks assault her body, filling up my brain as blood starts to leak from my wound. The organs in my chest grind against each other.
The last thing I see is Atlas' bodysuited figure from inside the escapepod, trying to fight the others back, trying to reach for me. But they wrestle him back, because they all as well as I it's over. Between my fading eyelids, there's a silhouette of another SolarShip outside, but I'm slowly sinking into a deep, warm blackness and the world goes quiet.