Chapter 1: Prologue

Joanna Kain was finally ready to be shot after the Tempest had been taken eight days ago.

It had taken her eight days of being trapped in a storage locker to get to that point. She'd remained motionless for the first two minutes, certain that the armored men who'd placed her there were serious. Because the ship she'd been taken aboard wasn't under thrust for the first few hours, she floated in the locker, using gentle touches to avoid colliding with the walls or the atmosphere suit she shared the space with. She'd stood silently until her legs cramped, then sat down slowly into a fetal position as the ship began to move, thrust giving her weight. She'd peed in her jumpsuit, not caring about the warm itchy wetness or the odor, only worried about slipping and falling in the wet spot it left on the floor. She couldn't make a sound. They'd kill her.

Thirst had compelled her to act on the third day. The ship's noise was all around her. The reactor's and drive's faint subsonic rumble. As the pressure doors between decks opened and closed, there was a constant hiss and thud of hydraulics and steel bolts. A swarm of heavy boots walks across metal decking. She waited until all the noise she could hear faded away before removing the environment suit from its hooks and laying it on the locker floor. She slowly disassembled the suit, listening for any approaching sounds, and removed the water supply. It was old and stale; the suit had not been used or serviced in a long time. But she hadn't had anything to drink in two days, and the warm loamy water in the suit's reservoir bag was the best thing she'd ever tasted. She had to fight hard not to gulp it down and vomit.

When she felt the need to urinate again, she took the catheter bag from her suit and relieved herself into it. She sat on the floor, almost comfortable thanks to the padded suit, and wondered who had kidnapped her - the Coalition Navy, pirates, or something worse. She slept on occasion.

*

Isolation, hunger, boredom, and a decreasing number of places to store her piss finally pushed her to contact them on day four. She'd heard hushed cries of agony. Her shipmates were being beaten or tortured somewhere nearby. If she drew the attention of the kidnappers, they might simply take her to the others. That was fine. She could take a beating. If it meant seeing people again, it seemed like a small price to pay.

The locker was located next to the inner airlock door. Normally, that wasn't a high-traffic area during flight, but she didn't know anything about the layout of this particular ship. She deliberated on what to say and how to present herself. When she finally heard someone approaching her, she just yelled that she needed to get out. She was taken aback by the dry rasp that came from her throat. She swallowed, worked her tongue to produce saliva, and tried again. Another tremor in the throat.

People were standing right outside her locker door. A quiet voice was speaking. Joanna was about to bang on the door when she heard what it was saying.

No. No, please. Please, no.

Dave. The mechanic on her ship. Dave, who collected old cartoon clips and knew a million jokes, pleaded in a small broken voice.

Please, please, please don't, he said.

As the inner airlock door opened, hydraulics and locking bolts clicked. As something was thrown inside, there was a meaty thud. The airlock closed with another click. A hissing sound of escaping air.

The people outside her door walked away once the airlock cycle was complete. She didn't bang on the table to get their attention.

*

They'd cleaned up the ship. Detention by the navies of the inner planets was a bad scenario, but they'd all been trained to deal with it. Sensitive OPA data was scrubbed and overwritten with innocuous-looking logs that contained erroneous time stamps. The captain destroyed anything too sensitive to entrust to a computer. When the attackers boarded, they could pretend to be innocent.

It hadn't made a difference.

There were no inquiries about cargo or permits. Captain Darren had rolled over like a dog as the invaders walked in like they owned the place. Everyone else—Mike, Dave, Wan Li—had just thrown up their hands and walked away. Pirates, slavers, or whatever they were had dragged them off the little transport ship that had been her home and down a docking tube without even the most basic environmental protection. The tube's thin layer of Mylar was the only thing standing between them and hard nothing: hope it didn't rip; if it did, goodbye lungs.

Joanna had also gone along, but the bastards had tried to grab her and strip her naked.

Five years of jiu Jitsu training in low gravity and then in a confined space with no gravity. She'd caused a lot of havoc. She'd almost given up hope of winning when a gauntletted fist smacked into her face. After that, things became hazy. Then the locker, and if she makes a noise, shoot her. Four days of silence while her friends were beaten down below and one of them was thrown out of an airlock.

Everything fell silent after six days.

Shifting between bouts of consciousness and fragmented dreams, she was only vaguely aware as the sounds of walking, talking, and pressure doors faded away, as did the subsonic rumble of the reactor and the drive. Gravity stopped when the drive stopped, and Joanna awoke from a dream of racing her old pinnace to find herself floating while her muscles screamed in protest and then slowly relaxed.

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She dragged herself to the door, pressing her ear against the cold metal. Panic washed over her until she heard the quiet sound of the air recyclers. The ship still had power and air, but the drive was not activated, and no one was opening doors, walking, or talking. Perhaps it was a crew meeting. Or a party on a different deck. Or perhaps everyone was in engineering, resolving a major issue.

She waited and listened all day.

Her last sip of water was gone by day seven. No one on the ship had moved within twenty-four hours of her hearing range. She sucked on a plastic tab she'd ripped off her environment suit until she got saliva in her mouth, at which point she began yelling. She yelled until she was hoarse.

Nobody showed up.

She was ready to be shot by day eight. She'd been without water for two days and had a full waste bag for four. She pressed her shoulders against the locker's back wall and her hands against the side walls. Then she kicked out as hard as she could with both legs. The cramps that followed the first kick nearly knocked her out. Instead, she screamed.

Stupid girl, she thought to herself. She was thirsty. Eight days of inactivity was more than enough to trigger atrophy. At the very least, she should have stretched.

She massaged her stiff muscles until the knots vanished, then stretched, focusing her mind as if she were back in dojo. She kicked again once she regained control of her body. Once more. And again, until the light began to shine through the locker's edges. And again, until the door was so bent that only the three hinges and the locking bolt were in contact with the frame.

And one more time, until the door swung free because the bolt was no longer seated in the hasp.

Joanna emerged from the locker, hands half-raised, ready to appear either threatening or terrified, depending on which appeared more useful.

The entire deck level was deserted: the airlock, the suit storage room where she'd spent the previous eight days, and a half dozen other storage rooms. Everything is empty. She took a magnetized pipe wrench suitable for skull cracking from an EVA kit and descended the crew ladder to the deck below.

Then the one below that, and the one after that. Personnel cabins are neatly organized, almost military-style. There were signs of a struggle in the commissary. The medical bay is empty. Torpedo harbor. No one. The communication station was unmanned, turned off, and locked. The Tempest was nowhere to be found in the few sensor logs that were still being streamed. Her stomach tightened with a new dread. Deck after deck, room after room, lifeless. Something had occurred. A radioactive leak. There is poison in the air. Something had compelled an evacuation. She pondered whether she'd be able to pilot the ship on her own.

But she'd have heard them exiting the airlock if they'd evacuated, wouldn't she?

She got to the final deck hatch, which led into engineering, and stopped when it didn't open automatically. The presence of red light on the lock panel indicated that the room had been sealed from the inside. She considered radiation and major failures once more. But, if either of those were true, why would the door be locked from the inside? And she'd gone through wall panel after wall panel. None of them had been flashing any kind of warning. Not radiation, but something else.

There was more upheaval here. Blood. Disorganized tools and containers Whatever had occurred had occurred here. No, it had begun here. And it had all happened behind that closed door.

It took two hours with a torch and machine shop prying tools to cut through the hatch to engineering. She had to crank it open by hand because the hydraulics had failed. A gust of warm wet air blew out, carrying the scent of a hospital but not the antiseptic. A metallic, nauseating odor. So, the torture chamber. Her friends would be beaten or cut up inside. Joanna gripped her wrench, ready to sever at least one head before they killed her. She descended.

The engineering deck was massive, with vaulted ceilings reminiscent of a cathedral. The central space was dominated by the fusion reactor. There was something wrong with it. A layer of mud seemed to flow over the reactor core, where she expected to see readouts, shielding, and monitors. Joanna floated toward it slowly, one hand still on the ladder. The strange odor became overwhelming.

The mud caked around the reactor had a structure like she'd never seen before. Tubes, similar to veins or airways, ran through it. Some of it pulsed. Then it's not mud.

Flesh.

The thing's outcropping shifted toward her. It appeared to be no bigger than a toe or a little finger in comparison to the whole. It was the head of Captain Darren.

"Help me," it begged.

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