Chapter 1
The planet wasone of those rare habitable finds. I’ve been out here for a week with my co-pilot, Sawle, surveying every peak and valley. Flying drones down to get readings and on everything from air to minerals. It’s the minerals the company really wants, but they’ll take anything they can sell. They’ll pull this planet apart and sell it for scrap.
“It’s such a waste. Can you imagine living here?”
“Light years from anything.” Sawle glances at me. “There’s a reason no one lives here. The wildlife and the lack of nightlife.”
I scowl. My home word is in a cluster of habitable planets. Though habitable is a loose term. The planet has air and reasonable temperatures for three quarters of the year but is otherwise a stony lump best known for the algae and insect farming. The reason I became a pilot was to leave the algae farm I’d grown up on.
“It’s looks like paradise. The way Earth is described in the old tales.” All blue skies and forests before the cities took over. My grandmother told me that her grandmother had grown up on Earth before leaving for a better life.
For a brief time I’d imagined going back to Earth…but I’d soon realized I’d never be able to afford the flight. Instead, I’d become a drone pilot, which was about the best people like me could hope for. My parents were disappointed. They’d hoped I stay on the farm, marry, and have babies.
“You want to take a closer look?” He tilts the ship as if to take us lower into the planet’s atmosphere.
“No!” It comes out as a squeal instead of a rational response. I’ve already seen the inside of a local predator’s mouth via a drone and have no inclination to see more of its teeth up close. “That’s against protocol.”
During a survey only drones skim the planet, and we’d already lost two to the rather big and athletic creatures that seemed to take delight in capturing and eating them. I’m sure the loss would be deducted from my pay.
“And?” He drops the ship lower, almost to the floor of the survey.
“And if we get found out we’ll be busted.” I do not want to be grounded. It took me years to prove that I’m more than an algae farmer—not that there’s anything wrong with that—and I want more from life than grubbing about in the shallows.
“No one will know. You think no one has ever taken a joy flight before?”
I bite my lower lip.
“Come on Daley, live a little.” He smiles like this stunt will be the one that wins me over. He’s spent the entire trip trying to get in my pants. It’s all a game to him. Guys like him are all the same.
Sawle doesn’t wait for my response, he flicks off the monitoring and drops below the floor. The thin clouds part and we sweep past jagged snow-tipped peaks. I gasp in awe and fear. The mountains are more beautiful up close than through the camera of the drones. But we shouldn’t be this low. “Enough. Go up.”
He grins and drops lower into the valley. “Make it worth my while.”
I scowl. When we return to the main ship, I’m reporting him even though it will end up on my record too. I’ll be grounded and doing nothing more exciting than drone maintenance.
“You’re an asshole. Take us up,” I snap, wishing I was in charge of this flight, not him.
“Relax. I know what I’m doing.”
Before he finishes speaking, the screens go fuzzy and the readouts scroll by too fast.
“Something’s wrong.” I toggle switches, but the interference only gets worse. “Pull up.” My heart is beating too fast and I no longer care about the pretty view.
“Relax, we can have a bit of fun. Want to check out the ocean and that island chain?”
No. I don’t want to visit any of the exotic locations I’d mapped. I want to get above the floor, log back on and return to the main ship—a six-day flight away. We’re in the middle of nowhere. An area of space best known for a battle between three different species—there’s debris scattered all around this system—and little else.
The ship drops suddenly, and I lurch forward in my harness. It pinches my breast, but I don’t smack my face on the controls.
Sawle swears. “Turbulence.”
He’s half standing, half propped up. He never wears his harness, even though we’re supposed to keep it on at all times.
If we crash, they’ll never find our bodies. I grip the edge of my seat. “Go up. Please.” I hate the pleading tone that creeps into my voice, but I can’t help it. Fear pulses through me.
“I can’t. There’s an electrical storm above us.”
“But we only just dropped through.” There had been nothing on the weather scanner. The storm had formed out of nothing. The whole time we’d been surveying, the weather had been reasonably stable. There was volcanic activity around the islands, but that was to be expected, and another small storm on the other side of the planet near the lithium deposits.
