CHAPTER 1
ARIA
Iduck as another arc of sparks flies from the conduit panel, singeing the air just inches from my head. “Son of a broken capacitor,” I hiss, wrenching my toolkit closer with my foot. My fingers are already raw, gloves half-melted, the skin beneath clammy with sweat and metal dust. Rhavadaz’s surface winds howl like some ancient beast above the bunker, making the concrete quake and the overhead lights flicker just enough to screw with my focus. Again.
I smack the side of the diagnostic AI for the fourth time. It whines, flashes red, and promptly dies. Wonderful.
Behind me, the ground shakes—again.Not seismic. That’s megafauna movement. You get used to the rhythm after a while, like background music with too much bass. I don’t flinch. Not anymore. The first week I was here, I nearly pissed myself every time the floor rumbled. Now I just pray nothing breaches the surface and decides it wants a tech snack.
I’ve got Whiplash’s belly opened up like a cracked rib cage, relay wires spilling out like intestines. The Meld sync core’s fried. Again. A Trimantium capacitor blew mid-run yesterday, cooked the stabilizers, and nearly shorted half the subcortex. Not that anyone seemed worried about it—not the brass,not the engineers. Just me. The neurotech junior with three commendations and the absolute dumbass idea of trying to impress the IHC with a volunteer stint on a war planet.
Because apparently, I thought the Machine God Corps would look good on a resume.
I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand, only to smear a streak of grime into my hairline. It’s humid in here—warm, oily, and full of static. My uniform clings to me in all the wrong ways, my boots feel three sizes too small, and I haven’t had real caffeine in forty-two hours.
“Why are you like this?” I mutter to the mech, not expecting an answer. Of course, that’s when the vent overhead hisses and dumps a plume of freezing air down the back of my neck. I flinch hard enough to jab my knuckles on the relay bracket. “Ow—dammit!”
Footsteps. Heavy. Rhythmic. Impossible to miss even over the wind howling through the ventilation system.
“Oh no,” I mutter. “Not now.”
The shadows shift near the access bay, and there he is.
Naull. In all his towering, red-scaled, gold-eyed, shirtless glory.
“Need help, little star?” he calls out, voice rolling over the machinery like warm thunder.
I groan. Loudly. “Naull, for the love of synaptic integrity, put on a shirt.”
He just grins, all fangs and smugness, and leans against Whiplash’s knee like it’s his personal throne. Which, to be fair, it sort of is. The mech was designed to mimic Vakutan musculature—broad, armored, predatory. His image, scaled and steel-clad. He’s so proud of that fact he never shuts up about it.
“Shirts are for weaklings and diplomats,” he says, crossing his arms. “You’re clearly neither.”
“I’m clearlybusy.” I return to the relay board, pretending his presence doesn’t make the space feel ten degrees warmer. “And I don’t need another pilot treating my tech like it’s a goddamn juice box.”
“You wound me,” he purrs. “I was simply optimizing the combat neural response loop.”
“You stuck a paperclip in the emotional calibration port.”
He snorts. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“No, Naull. Itvery muchdid not. You fried the entire second-tier processing ring and triggered a feedback loop that almost microwaved your partner’s frontal cortex.”
He shrugs. “She’s fine. Her hair was smoking, but she’s fine.”
I resist the urge to throw my wrench at him. Instead, I carefully rethread the filament cables with a pair of forceps, heart hammering from more than just irritation. I hate how aware I am of him when he’s in the room—how his heat seems to radiate out, how the space seems smaller, tighter.
He saunters closer, which doesnothingto help.
“You work too hard,” he says, voice dropping just a notch lower. “That brain of yours must burn hotter than a plasma coil.”
I give him a withering glare. “Stop flirting while I’m elbow-deep in an electrical panel.”
“Why? It’s your best angle.”
I drop the forceps with a loud clatter and whip around. “Do youwantme to reroute all Whiplash’s weapon control functions to your eject seat?”
He looks… delighted. “Wouldn’t be the worst place I’ve landed.”
