CHAPTER 1
Swift is the storm that rages
Yet
Fierce is the flame that shatters the dark
I’m not usually one to push every limit around me, I swear. Being engineered to follow orders, fighting back against authority doesn’t exactly come naturally to me. But when every onboard warning light is flashing and my flyer is heading straight for the eye of a giant storm, I will push against the very laws of physics if it keeps this ship from crashing into the planet’s surface below.
It’s a simple fight to see who yields first—me or gravity.
And I wasn’t engineered to lose.
I shove the controls forward again, trying to get a grip on the flyer’s descent as we plummet toward the planet and the storm that covers an entire third of it. But the ship’s steering is not responding like it should. I growl in frustration because it’s technically not my fault we got shot at by both syndicate bounty hunters and the jump gate authority when we tried to leave the Tundar jump station.
It’s partially Jens’s and Jori’s fault. My former genopath squadmates, who were posing on Tundar as low-level syndicate bosses, surprised me on the ice planet’s jump station and offered me the intel I’d been searching for, specifically the location of my ex-partner I’ve been chasing across worlds. But anything to do with the twins comes with a price. If my genetics are designed so I can blend in anywhere, these two are engineered to make a profit out of any situation and by any means possible. They’re not the most physically imposing of the genopaths from my former squad, but they are the most devious.
And I was desperate. So, the twins gave me the intel I needed, intel that’s led me through two jump gates and across the charted systems. But the price I paid was steep; they reported me to Nova, the shadowy organization that genetically engineered me and the rest of my squadmates to serve corpo needs. I escaped from their grasp two years ago but the execs and lab hacks at Nova really don’t like it when we disobey orders, let alone disappear and pretend to be dead. And since they have agents all over the charted systems—Edge Worlds and Corporate Assembly planets alike—it wasn’t a surprise when the authorities tried to stop us from leaving the Tundar jump station. So, it’s mostly the twins’ and Nova’s fault my poor ship is malfunctioning.
The rest of the fault belongs to the bounty hunters. They weren’t there for me, though. They were there for the girl and wolf running through the station with me. Sena and Iska. The two of them are the only reason I survived my time on Tundar at all. Even though Sena helped me and another scientist get through the infamous sled race across Tundar’s icy wastelands, she and her wolf, Iska, still killed a syndicate den boss at the race’s end.
And while Boss Kalba certainly deserved his fate for murdering Sena’s mothers, the syndicates don’t really care about those backstory details. Take out one of their bosses without permission and there are consequences.
Consequences that included a buttload of bounty hunters shooting at my flyer while we were fleeing the jump gate commandos. And that is the reason why the steering currently isn’t working and why we’re pointed not at the portions of the planet below us covered by lush green, but directly at the vortex of the dark swirling mass of clouds gaping like a giant hole.
The infamous hellstorm of Maraas.
The most expansive storm system among all the charted worlds. A weather event so big it makes the blizzards on Tundar look tame. And since the ship’s auto-descent protocols seem to be malfunctioning, too, it looks like we’re going to crash our flyer right in the middle of it. No one’s coming to our rescue, and there’s no way we can make it to the Maraas jump station for repairs. Nope. There’s no choice but imminent disaster and the giant storm currently looming below our broken ship.
But I didn’t survive that damn sled race or a mauling by a demonic bear to just crash into a hellstorm over a godforsaken jungle. I will not let bloody syndicates or Nova agents or even gravity win this round. I smash a few more controls in an attempt to push anything out of the ship’s onboard systems. The flyer’s thrusters fire momentarily but then whine and sputter out; someone must’ve shot through the engine’s fuel lines during our escape.
Looks like we’re going down right into the eye of the storm. That might make it harder for me but not impossible. Nova engineered and programmed me to do the impossible on a regular basis.
“I hope you two are strapped into something!” I yell to Sena back in the common area. I get a curse and a crashing sound in response.
“Remy, what the hell is going on?!” Sena shouts as the banging sounds continue. We didn’t exactly have time to review on-ship safety protocols, so Sena and Iska might not be secured back there. Not to mention everything else I left lying around the common space.
“We’re entering Maraas’s atmosphere,” I answer. “But we’re not exactly slowing down like we should be.”
And our steering is also malfunctioning, but I leave that part out.
“What?” Sena’s shout is followed by some equally angry-sounding barks from Iska. But I don’t answer. Instead, I slow my breathing and tell my body to release more adrenaline into my veins. I’ll need all the extra focus and awareness I can get, and thankfully, with my genetic alterations, adjusting specific hormone levels is as easy as flexing a muscle.
Right as my sensory perception amplifies, we hit the upper layer of the atmosphere, the planet’s gravity latching onto the ship with a yank.
And we plummet down, down, down into the sky.
I try to slow us down by adjusting the ship’s flaps, but everything is shaking and bouncing as we hit the first pockets of wind and air. The sky darkens around us, gray clouds filling the viewports.
Out of nowhere, a low-orbit substation looms directly in our path. I yank the flaps hard to avoid smashing into it, jerking the entire ship to the side as my adrenaline spikes automatically. More crashes and very angry cursing echo from the common area behind me, but all I can see is a giant name filling the viewport: ARC1. The words painted across the substation are close enough to reach out and touch. A familiar green corporate logo follows the name and then disappears into nothing but a blip in our wake as the danger passes.
“Remy! What the hell was that?!” Sena shouts.
“Just a low-orbit satellite, no big deal!” I yell back as I force open all the flaps the ship has in an attempt to slow us down before we get below the clouds. The flyer slows slightly and I’m able to level us out for a moment. I quickly check the emergency systems, scanning the main holoscreen for our parachute status.
But instead of a status report, everything is red and flashing and really unhelpful. Eyes back on the sky, I try again to steer us out of the storm, but the clouds have taken on a life of their own. Strong winds snag the flyer and draw us into the vortex.
There’s nothing to do now but react.
Copyright © 2023 by Meg Long
