Astra Venn
PROLOGUE
SIX YEARS EARLIER…
The smell hits first. Old death and fresh fear, recycled through failing life support until the distinction between corpse-stink and terror-sweat stops mattering.
Station Sigma-9 breathes around us like something dying. The corridors are dark except for emergency strips, red pulses that make everything look like it's already bleeding. My boots stick to deck plating that hasn't been cleaned in months, maybe years. Somewhere above us, a relay hums wrong, the pitch off just enough to set teeth on edge.
Sergeant Holt is three meters ahead, clearing corners with the methodical precision of someone who's done this a hundred times. Corporal Vasquez covers our six, her breathing steady in my earpiece. Standard formation. Standard extraction. Except my gut's been screaming danger since we docked.
I should have listened.
"Asset is two levels down." Dexter's voice cuts through comms, that Empri resonance making the words feel like they're vibrating inside my skull. "Holding position at extraction point alpha. Advise haste."
Haste. Right. Because everything about this mission has been textbook easy.
The corridor opens into a junction, five paths radiating like spokes from a hub. Emergency lighting casts everything in blood-colors. I'm scanning sectors, rifle up, when Holt's hand goes up.Hold.
Silence, except for the station's dying systems and my heartbeat hammering against my ribs.
Dexter's marks are probably glowing right now. He can feel my spike of adrenaline from two levels away, taste the copper-bright fear flooding my bloodstream. Three months working together, and I still hate that he knows before I do when something's wrong.
Three months of missions. Three months of him reading every emotion I can't hide. Three months of late-night debriefs that turn into something else, conversations that aren't quite professional, silences that aren't quite empty, the almost-moment last week when his hand touched mine over a tactical display and neither of us pulled away.
Not defined. But real.
"Movement," Vasquez whispers. "Sector four."
The plasma fire comes from sector two.
Holt goes down first. I watch his chest explode in a spray of red that looks black in the emergency lighting. No scream. No last words. Just there, then not, then meat cooling on deck plating.
"Ambush!" My voice, hoarse, already moving. Return fire. Vasquez is beside me, firing controlled bursts while I drag us toward cover that doesn't exist. "Multiple hostiles, all sectors. We're boxed."
More fire. Vasquez takes a hit in the shoulder, not fatal, but her weapon drops and she's cursing in Portuguese, the string of profanity almost beautiful in its venom.
I'm returning fire. Counting rounds. Calculating. We have maybe thirty seconds before they flank us completely.
"Torrence, we're compromised." I'm pulling Vasquez behind a support strut that'll hold for maybe ten seconds. "Ambush at junction seven. Multiple KIA. Need immediate?—"
"Copy that. Falling back to extraction point. Advise you do the same."
"Negative. Vasquez is hit. Holt is—" Dead. The word sticks in my throat. "We need covering fire on our position."
Static. Then: "Unable to provide fire support from this position. Fall back to secondary extraction."
Secondary is three corridors away. We won't make it.
I look at Vasquez. She's holding her shoulder, blood seeping between her fingers, human red, not Empri blue. Her eyes meet mine.
She knows.
"Go," she says.
"Fuck that."
"Venn. Listen to me." Her hand grips my vest, surprisingly strong for someone losing blood this fast. "You can make secondary. I can't. But you can."
