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CHAPTER1
LUCCA
SELKIE RESEARCH SHIP. TERNETZI STAR SYSTEM. FAR 3 KPC ARM OF THE MILKY WAY.
22:09>There was an error in her starship’s computer. The ominous warning message made Lucca’s heart jolt. Rubbing her bleary, tired eyes, she leaned forward to read the nonsensical description message.
Was it a virus?
Could shegeta virus out here? She was stranded pretty far away from home, all the way in an alien star system. The computer under her hood wasn’t Ternetzi like the rest of her ship. So she figured there shouldn’t be anyone around capable of infecting her machine.
22:28>If Lucca did not drink tea, right this instant, she would scream. That was not figurative.
Stretching the kinks out of her back, she stood up from the dark cockpit to go put on a kettle. Her supply was dwindling at an alarming rate. Her former crewmates had consumed the good stuff before she’d thrown them outside.
The caffeinated tea was gone. So was coffee. All caffeine was gone,allof it. Home floated somewhere on the other side of the Milky Way. The odds of ever seeing Earth again—ever drinking a simple mug of coffee—were too impossible to wrap her head around.
And she’d tried screaming. Screaming alone, at the void, millions of miles away from civilization, only made it worse.
25:02>That timestamp shouldn’t exist, right?
Lucca had tried fixing her spaceship’s clock once.
It was one of those rabbit holes she’d learned wasn’tworth going down.
25:12>There was a Ternetzi spaceship in front of her, speaking to her over the comms in several demanding voices. She fished her translator out and shoved it into her ear canal. The tiny device whirred alive, slowly transforming the language.
The ship before her was filled to the brim with pirates. They were there to dismantle her ship for parts.
She didn’t like that.
When she announced her presence, calling out a plaintive, “Please don’t shoot!” the pirates realized she was female and decided their time would be better spent capturing her alive.
They fell into a dizzying debate over who had the right to claim her first—claim her, good lord!
25:72>A second spaceship arrived on the dark field of stars. They were backup to the first. Now Lucca had at least two dozen pirates on her radar, staring her down, hungry for her womanly essence, and the general consensus was that she would be treated gently enough so long as she claimed one of them. Or, fuck it, all of them.
Her life was getting more difficult by the minute.
She made her spaceship turn invisible.
She tried, anyway. It half-worked. The sight of half her ship vanishing alarmed the shit out of them. Alarmed her just as much. “Shit,” she blurted, pounding the controls.
Her second attempt was more successful. As they launched three envoys through the void, she phased out of their trajectory and went transparent, her little human heart pounding up her esophagus. The aliens soared off to the side, shooting into the now-empty darkness. Streaks of lightning swirled and crawled like wisps of northern light before they U-turned and shot back.
About that… Ternetzi people could jump through space.
Thepeoplecould.
Without their ships. Without spacesuits, either. They could hold their breath for hours in the vacuum. They could change direction at will, due to some inner physiology that confounded human scientists (mainly because the aliens refused to sit still and be experimented on).
Lucca remained hidden while the pirates searched the area for hours. It was heart-attack-inducing, watching them crawl around on every axis, checking every cubic inch of space for her presence. It was like hiding in a closet as intruders raided the house.
* * *
A third, much larger ship descended upon the search party hours later.
The pirates hadn’t given up. They remained fastened to her location, obsessive. At that point, Lucca’s fear had renewed and sharpened, reducing her to a cold, exhausted wreck. It was well past her bedtime and these aliens wouldn’t leave.
