Petty Officer 3rd class Roisin Gabrielle Reynard

  Anger was a hot, sharp stone in my gut, but it was wrapped in the cold, spongy moss of knowing he was right. I wasn’t really mad at David. I mean, I was—a part of me wanted to stomp my foot and yell about the unfairness of it all—but the larger, more pragmatic part, the part that had kept me alive in the 132nd, knew his logic was irrefutable.

  Of course, I wanted to go on the first exploration of a new rift. The stories were legendary: first-clear bonuses, unique drops that never appeared again, massive advancement potential from virulent, uncontested chaos energy. It was the big score, the reason every delver’s eyes glittered with avarice.

  But he was right. First dip was also by far the most dangerous. I was no hardened soldier. I didn’t even have a real combat class, not one I could show anyone. ‘Support Pilot’ was a joke. My true class, Force Sage, was one of what the old manuals liked to call ‘force multiplier’ classes. Vital, absolutely mandatory for a balanced team in a stabilized rift or a large-scale raid. But in a new, unexplored hole in reality? We were liabilities.

  In a new exploration, you have no idea what kind of insane, reality-bending fauna or flora is going to try to turn you inside out. You could have your healer safely nestled in the middle of the group, only to discover the local menace was bore worms that teleported into existence underneath the team and instantly swallowed whoever had the weakest life signs—usually the support staff. Or the local aggressors could be keyed to magical signatures, so even the tiniest ambient heal would draw a swarm of psychic parasite-wasps that would ignore everyone else to drill into your skull.

  Some rifts were simply sadistic that way, and I was nowhere near confident enough in my fledgling Force Screen or my control over my micro-swarm to count on them protecting me if I were suddenly plummeting down the gullet of a giant phosphorescent lamprey or getting stomped into paste by a Kasimir drake or flash-fried by a plasma-spitting fungal bloom.

  The initial entry team was exactly what the situation demanded. And the last spot was for David. As a Silver-rank Paladin, his mere presence would warp the rift’s difficulty, hogging the advancement potential. But as Murphy had pragmatically pointed out, they weren’t there for advancement, not in a Bronze-rated rift.

  The goal was pure, unadulterated intelligence: mapping the internal geometry, identifying the primary and secondary threats, and getting a solid read on the reward tables. They were there to see if the rift was worth keeping active for the rest of us, or if it was the kind of deathtrap best quickly stripped of its energy core and collapsed.

  So far, our long-range scans had only confirmed two stable energy signatures in the entire boneyard. The first was a small team trench nestled inside the corroded hull of a derelict luxury liner—a tight, claustrophobic environment perfect for a small, elite team. The second was a massive transit ring, built into the engine lining of a gutted Imperial dreadnought hulk. That thing was a monster, a floating city of scrap and latent death, and it was almost certainly the source of the energy spike that had the Fleet’s seers twitchy.

  The hulk itself wasn’t big enough to run a ship like the Crow through, but it was a treasure trove waiting to be cracked. Once the delve team had checked out the smaller rift and—gods willing—gotten some nice rewards and a clear threat assessment, the real work would begin: sending drone fleets and full marine squads through the hulk rift.

  Hulk rifts were where fortunes were made. Wondrous spacecraft, pre-Fall technology, intact manufacturing cores, and even things like lost techniques or spell matrices that hadn’t been seen in the galaxy for millennia. Both rifts were rated Bronze, but the potential was off the charts.

  Which was why, when the Adjunta Defense Station had immediately granted us access to the boneyard without the usual oversight, inspections, or exorbitant demands for ‘tariffs’, ‘fees,’ and profit-shares, Commander Taera’s reaction had been immediate and severe.

  “That is not like them,” she’d confided in the command briefing, her avatar flickering with barely contained energy. “The Assad Primacy replaced one nightmarish ideology with another. Now it’s a mercantile death cult, with profit as the ultimate judge of morality and worth.”

  “The last time the Fleet moved to assist one of their so-called ‘sovereign worlds’—a burgeoning Chaos World being consumed by a borediver—the local prime minister demanded landing fees, transit taxes, a twenty percent share of all resources recovered from fighting the incursion on his own planet, and a hefty personal bribe… just for the privilege of saving his world from being turned into a frozen tomb! The atmosphere was already snowing nitrogen overload, and he was haggling over the price of his own salvation!”

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  “So,” she’d concluded, her voice like ice, “go ahead and assume it’s a trap. The Primacy is only polite when they think they have you over a barrel, or when they are absolutely certain they are about to own the barrel, the gun, and the person holding it. Wasserman, if you weren’t the only one who could guarantee a fast, clean run on that small gate, I’d keep you aboard. As it is, I want you in and out. Speed is your shield.”

  “What about excess resources? Salvage?” David had asked.

  Taera had given a sharp, negative shake of her head. “Mark them for recovery. If they’re worth it, we send in a dedicated clearing team on the second run. It is not worth the risk of a prolonged delve, no matter the profit potential. The Crow is a light carrier. Our strength is in our drones and our mobility. The faster you get the delve team back on board, the faster we can pivot and start sending drone wings through the hulk. Our priority is being ready for whatever trap they spring.”

  She’d then laid out the defense plan. “Reynard, you will be running outer zone interference. You’re one of the best micro-gravity droners we have, especially in a complex environment like this junkyard. If a swarm emerges or a pirate raid hits, you are our first layer of defense. Braxis? You have inner zone security and countermeasures. I want you on remote command for your squadron, ready to counter-board or provide close-in fire support.”

  “Dienne-Lar, station your golems in the larger wrecks. Arm them with heavy, anti-ship weaponry. When they try to spring their trap, I want them to find they’ve kicked a hornet’s nest made of steel and spell-cannon. Andrea, Kessler, you’re with him. Hunt for any concealed units—Kessler, I’m relying on you to sniff out any sorcerous or spiritual infestations they might have planted.”

  Finally, she’d looked to the dwarf. “Zaddoc? You’re the big man.”

  Zaddoc had chuckled, a sound like grinding rocks. “Aye, Commander. Backing up the Marines, turning our hallways into a kill box for any boarders, running the vehicle rigs for rapid response, and setting my drones as an emergency repair crew. I know the drill.”

  Taera had nodded, her expression grim. “You are the linchpin. It’s not glamorous, but we are a drone ship. There is no chance in the nine hells the Primacy is playing this nice without an ace already in the hole. Your job is to find that ace and neutralize it. By any means necessary.”

  Zaddoc’s humor had vanished, replaced by a stony gravity. He knew what that meant. If there was a saboteur, a spy, or a sleeper agent already aboard—perhaps someone we all knew and trusted—his job was to eliminate the threat. Permanently. Deep cover operatives, corruption, bribery, and extortion were the Assad’s specialty. Taera was acting on the assumption that the trap was already set, and we were walking right into it.

  Which is exactly why I was now out here, utterly alone, suspended in the silent, freezing vastness of space inside my one-man drone carrier, nearly an AU from the comforting bulk of the Crow. The carrier was little more than a cockpit, an engine, and a deployment bay, a fragile metal egg in a nest of shattered starships.

  I’d been busy. My micro-swarm was already deployed, millions of tiny, self-replicating mites churning through the surrounding wreckage like piranha. They were happily devouring any copper-rank or higher materials they could find, processing them, and storing them for emergency fabrication. I had three weapon nodes—each about the size of a ground-car—slowly orbiting the central boneyard, disguised as inert debris. They were tiny, but they could remotely guide a serious defensive response.

  And then there was my masterpiece. My secret. The thing that had made me the top of my class.

  Using the swarm, I’d jury-rigged a drone cruiser from the gutted carcasses of three different derelicts. It was a Frankenstein’s monster of a ship, a patchwork of different alloys and tech levels, ugly as a mud fence and twice as mean. It couldn’t hold a candle to the Crow in a straight fight—not in technology, size, or coordinated firepower.

  But a second drone ship, no matter how battered, ancient, or small, was a true ace in the hole. That had always been my edge in droner school, what the instructors had called my ‘suicide ships.’ Vessels that could react and fly in ways no live ship ever could. They needed no life support, no transit drives, no inertial compensation, no medical bays, no galley. They were pure, unadulterated weaponry wrapped in a hull. A solid steel bullet with a combat node for a brain, bristling with energy weapons and mass drivers, loaded with suicide drones, was still a terrifyingly dangerous foe.

  I had two more drone corvettes built and hidden deeper in the boneyard, but they were for emergencies only—rapid evacuation or a sacrificial ramming attack. They didn’t need weapons. Their purpose was the explosion.

  On my tactical display, the delve team’s icons clustered at the oddly glowing bulkhead door that housed the rift inside the wrecked liner. My stomach did a little flip-flop. This was it. David was going in.

  Just before their signals winked out, crossing the threshold into whatever chaos awaited them, my fingers flew over the console. I composed a short, heavily encrypted text burst, set to be decrypted by his suit’s system the moment he was on the other side. It was stupid. Sentimental. Probably against some protocol.

  I sent it anyway.

  Come Back Safe.