"I'll do my best, Prime."
Cullen and I returned to the passenger compartment and strapped ourselves into the crash seats. The ship began its descent, shaking violently as we hit the planet's atmosphere. Through the viewport, I watched the green landscape rush up to meet us, beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
"How did they find us?" Cullen's voice cut through the roar of atmospheric entry.
I glanced at him, his profile illuminated by the red emergency lighting. "What?"
"That frigate. How did they know where we'd be? Your travel routes are classified, aren't they?"
"Highly classified. Only a handful of people knew I was traveling to Calpa, and even fewer knew my departure schedule."
"So they were waiting for us." His jaw was tight, his hands gripping the armrests. "That wasn't random positioning. They emerged from hyperspace exactly where we'd be, weapons already hot, firing solutions already locked."
The ship bucked violently, and I grabbed the armrest as we plunged deeper into the atmosphere. My mind raced, analyzing. The frigate's position. The timing. The fact that they'd opened fire immediately—no hails, no warnings, no demands.
"Someone intercepted our travel coordinates," I said slowly. "Or someone in my inner circle betrayed us."
"Persico's warning," Cullen said. "Your greatest enemy is still out there. What if this wasn't pirates? What if someone deliberately targeted you?"
"That's paranoid." But my voice lacked conviction.
"Is it?" He leaned forward as much as the restraints would allow. "Think tactically. Perfect positioning. No identification markers. And Persico doesn't make warnings like that lightly—you said so yourself."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him he was seeing conspiracies where there were none. But I couldn't. Because he was right.
The attack had been coordinated. The frigate had been waiting. And someone had known exactly where to find us.
"If someone wanted me dead, there are easier ways."
"Maybe they don't want you dead." Cullen's expression was grim. "Maybe they want you isolated. Stranded. Cut off from the Alliance and any help."
The ship shuddered, and through the viewport I saw treetops rushing up to meet us. We were seconds from impact. But all I could think about was Cullen's words, the terrible logic of them.
"Who?" The word came out barely above a whisper.
"I don't know." Cullen's hand found mine between the seats, his grip strong and steady. "But we're going to find out. And we're going to survive this."
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to draw strength from his certainty. But beneath my carefully maintained composure, dread coiled in my chest like a living thing.
Because if Cullen was right—if this wasn't random, if someone had orchestrated this—then we weren't just stranded.
We were exactly where someone wanted us to be.
Chapter 4
Cullen
The world exploded.
The impact came like a physical fist, slamming me backward into the crash webbing with a force that drove the air from my lungs in a violent gasp. G-forces crushed down on my chest, pressing me flat, making it impossible to breathe, impossible to think. My vision blurred white at the edges.
Metal screamed—a sound like nothing on Earth, a high-pitched shriek of structural failure that vibrated through my bones. The ship convulsed around us, bucking and twisting as it tore through the jungle canopy. Trees splintered like matchsticks. Branches thick as my torso punched through the viewport in a shower of crystalline fragments. Leaves and debris exploded inward, filling the cockpit with a choking cloud of green and gold.
The smell hit me next—burning electronics, ozone, the sharp green reek of torn vegetation mixing with the acrid stench of superheated metal. My eyes watered. My throat constricted.
Another impact. Harder. The ship pitched violently to starboard, and I felt the webbing cut deeper into my shoulders as the g-forces shifted, trying to tear me from my seat. Serna's hand was ripped from mine. I heard her cry out—a sound of shock and pain—before she was thrown against the far wall of the cockpit.
"No!" I lunged forward, but the forces pinning me down were too great. I was helpless, suspended in the webbing while the world came apart around us.
