Chapter 1: Kelta
"Nobody move. Engines off." My father is stern, quiet. There's worry in his voice. I can hear it over our channel. I don't think he likes the situation around our small fleet of rebel ships. I don't either. As much as I was looking forward to our salvage mission today, I am looking more forward to living through it.
“Solcrue approaching, parallel to belt…spinward. Ten klicks. Shadow-up.”
I switch off my radio, scanners, and engines, making myself a husk of vulnerable life in space. It's terrifying to play possum when I know if my engines won't restart, I'll freeze or suffocate. No one will know I'm dead unless they search and find me. And if I'm found by the enemy, I must be the sacrifice.
My mother has already met that fate. It’s why the moment we’re old enough, we pilot our own ship—to increase the fleet size and to limit the number of casualties if we are found.
It is an agonizingly lonely existence.
Just me. My ship. Space. Nothingness.
The enemy.
I watch through my cockpit windows as a Solcrue berserker and five Skysprinters ease through space just outside the asteroid belt where we’ve been hiding on the outer rim of theSolcrue system. They’re looking for us and any others who dare challenge their authority over the galaxy. There are a few of us. Fewer every day.
I don’t shut down my thermal ignition booster. Solcrue vessels fade from view, but I’m no fool to their tactics. If I need to flee, any delay could be deadly.
There are twenty-three of us hiding in the shadows of the belt. Few would dare enter this mess. We have learned to navigate it over the last several years. But I am tired of feeling like a mouse trapped in a maze of floating rock, wondering when a passing snake will finally catch me.
Solcrue burned the Sol system, then built a new one here on the backs of their human ancestors. My grandparents served them. I’d rather die than give up my freedom.
These days, I might just get my wish.
Earth Minor has become a slave planet, save for one city where Solcrue cannot survive. I hate that I can’t go home. But we don’t have the numbers or the resources for a rebellion. The resistance has gone quiet since the jailbreak.
Wiggling my feet in my spaceboots on the floor of my small, homebuilt fighter, I try to remember what it was like to spend days on solid ground, get sand between my toes, play in the grass, and smell clean air instead of the metallic scent of space.
And gravity.I think I miss that most. The physical training helps, but I’m afraid of what will happen if I ever return to a terran surface after so many years in space.
A beam of green light passes over a nearby asteroid from somewhere behind me. I'm tucked in the cave of my asteroid, not far from my younger brother's and my father's. The moment I was big enough to reach the controls, my mother helped me build my first ship, and my father assigned me a post.
The swiveling lasers sweep closer and closer. A Skysprinter hovers down beside my cave, the cockpit windows visible from where I sit in the dark. They scan inside.
Oh, shit!
I duck down in the cockpit and listen to my com feed open to their channel. All I hear is a single tone before the nose of my ship blazes with green light. A blast slams into my ship. My body lurches forward as my ship is launched backward. The harness straps dig into my shoulders.
I have to do something, or I’m going to smash my rear thrusters and be useless. There’s no time to call the fleet or warn them. I grab my controls, tap my thermal ignition booster, and light up my engines. Their revolutions rise. The hum fills my cabin. But they aren’t ready for launch.
I’m running out of cavern space to slide.
Come on!
The moment the thrusters' generation status is in the green, I slam the throttle forward. This maneuver has a high risk of smashing hull panels, so I slap the ceiling lever for my bumper panels. They whine as the hydraulics unfold my shields around the ship. I race faster toward the exit. Selecting my close-range grenade launchers, I fire at the enemy vessel.
I could've taken the hit, sacrificed myself, and hoped the Solcrue wouldn't find the rest of us. But where there's one, there's more. The enemy and us.
And where’s the fun in being the sacrifice? I want to kick some scrawny green ass before I die!
The ship darts away in a blaze and smashes into an asteroid. Not knowing how many more are outside of my rock, I flip on every scanner I’ve got. The moment I’m free, I dive deep into the belt, away from my father’s fleet.
A Solcrue mothership hovers below. It is a massive vessel with room for thousands. My navigation fills with alerts. Weare surrounded on every side by the enemy. It has been a long time since our last confrontation. But we’ve never been as outnumbered as this.
The problem with radio silence is that no one will know what’s happening until the fight passes them. So my plan, our plan, is always to lead the enemy away from the group and hope they follow, hope they think I’m the only one, and pray that the others are never found. Except I don’t know if that’s going to work this time, not with so many combatants of such capability.
I’ve got to try.
