I aim for what looks like a soft dune.
It's not.
The impact is nuclear.
The world turns inside out.
I come to with blood in my mouth and static in my ears.
The ship is half-buried in sand. Smoke curls from the consoles like dying ghosts. My shoulder’s dislocated. My lip’s split. Something’s wrong with my left knee.
I crawl.
The hatch won’t open. I kick it. I scream at it. Ibegit.
Then I slam the override andpunchthrough the manual release like a woman possessed.
Hot air hits me like a slap. Dry. Burned. Tainted with engine grease and something worse—something coppery andferal.
Jurtik.
I made it.
The ship’s fried. The navchip’s slag.
There’s no way back.
I stagger into the sand, coughing, my boots sinking, my legs shaking.
I should cry.
I should collapse.
I don’t.
Because I canstillhear Kel’s voice in my head.
Because there’s only one man on this planet who can help me.
And he sure as hellowes me.
CHAPTER 12
KYLDAK
The sand tastes like rust and dried blood this morning.
Not that it ever tasted much better.
Jurtik doesn’t do mornings. It doesn’tdoanything but burn and kill and chew the weak into paste. But today, the wind’s light, the sun’s low, and the blood hasn’t started steaming yet, so I call it a win.
The cage match is already roaring.
Two men circle inside the pit—if you can call them men. One’s a broken-toothed bastard with Coalition ink scorched across his chest. The other’s a skinny little scrapper missing three fingers and still swinging like he’s got something to prove.
Spoiler: he doesn’t.
I sit on the salvage-throne welded from IHC drop pods and bones—some human, some not—and watch the violence unfold like I’m flipping channels. The crowd howls around me, every freak and cutthroat within fifty clicks crammed into the pit, screaming for guts. For blood. For a limb.
