Prologue

There is a saying in the Karven Special Forces. Once you’re in, you’re always in.

That’s not a reassuring thing to remember as I watch Raz DaSilva read my resignation letter.

“You want to quit and become a bounty hunter?” Raz, who served with me in Rogue Squadron before he was tasked to head up the KSF, looks perplexed. “Won’t you be bored?”

Boredom is precisely the point. “I certainly hope so.”

He frowns. “Calder Beyeran Haldi, the Savior of Chiara, the Ruin of Sanctum, the destroyer of battalion after battalion of Crill shock troops, is going to be a bounty hunter? I don’t understand why you’re making this decision.”

I sigh. No, he wouldn’t. My friend is about as patriotic and gung-ho as they come. If you sliced him open, he’d bleed Karven blue.

“Raz, I signed up to Rogue Squadron when I turned eighteen. I’ve worked for Special Forces for the last six years. I’m thirty-four. I want out.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but I keep going. “My dreams are bathed in blood. I’ve done things as a soldier that no man should have to live with. As a spy, I’ve done worse. I don’t want to fight any longer. I just want a normal life.”

“So why not head back home?” he asks. “You have holdings on Chiara. Your sister runs the family farm all by herself. She could use your help.”

Enola and I would be at each other’s throats before the first week was up. Besides, I don’t want to go to Chiara. I want to buy a ship and chase down criminals fleeing KSF justice. Not for the credits—I have plenty of them. I just like the idea of doing what I can to make the galaxy a safer place to live.

Raz knows all this. “One more mission,” he says. “And then I’ll authorize your resignation.”

“No,” I say flatly. “I don’t need your approval. I’ve done my time.”

He ignores my protest and summons a screen.

A vid starts to play. A pair of soldiers wearing the Amarillo Squadron uniform appear to be in a firefight, their projectile weapons out and firing. Judging from the flashes of green circuitry on their skin as the nanoarmor activates, they’re also being fired at. But their vitals, displayed on a sidebar, are normal. Their heartbeats are even, and their pulse rates aren’t elevated. They have the situation under control.

“Where is this?” I ask, curious despite myself.

“Naomi and Pieter boarded a smuggler ship two clicks outside Harte.”

My attention is split between the screen and Raz. “Since when do we care about smugglers?”

Raz’s expression is grim. “Since they started smuggling our tech,” he responds. “Karven tech is the only thing that keeps us from being overrun by the Crill Empire. It cannot fall into the wrong hands. Watch.”

One moment, the Amarillo Squadron soldiers are calmly returning fire, their armor protecting them from damage. All of a sudden, something strange occurs. A smuggler sprays an aerosol at Naomi and Pieter, and an instant later, the nano circuitry covering their bodies starts to glow a bright, poisonous green. Their faces turn red, as if their air supply is being cut off, and they drop to the ground.

Their vitals flatline.

Shock hammers down my spine. “What the fuck did I just see? What was in that spray?”

“A virus,” Raz replies somberly. “One the nanoarmor couldn’t repel.”

“That’s impossible.”

I am Karven. When I joined Rogue Squadron, I was injected with a cocktail of nanobots. The tech strengthens me, heals me, and protects me. I’ve fought in a thousand battles, and my armor has never once let me down. “Nanoarmor cannot be compromised that way.”

“And yet, Pieter and Naomi are dead.” He gets to his feet, walks from behind his desk, and stares out the window. “I don’t have to tell you that every single member of our military has nanoarmor.”

Fuck.

For as long as I’ve been alive, we’ve been at war with the Crill Empire. The Crill don’t use implants and don’t have nanobots. It’s forbidden. We’re an abomination to them, and exterminating us is their holy crusade. If they’ve found a way to weaken our armor, it won’t be a war. It’ll be a massacre.

I don’t have to accept this mission. I could leave. But I can’t wipe the images of the dead Amarillo Squadron soldiers from my mind. I can’t turn my back on my people.

“We’ve learned two things since this incident,” Raz continues. “One, the weapon didn’t originate in one of the Crill government labs. And two, it’s not ready for large-scale production. The smugglers had eight other canisters, but none of them worked.”

“If it didn’t originate in a government lab, then it’s from a private developer. Do you know who?”

Raz looks like he swallowed a bug. “Unfortunately, the only person who could answer that question killed herself before we could interrogate her.”

Damn it. “What do you need me to do?”

He dumps a large file in my memory. “Onel Corp is a transportation company headquartered on Harte. When Rand Onel died three years ago and his son Jarel took over, it was a midsized company. They ran Class D and E shuttles between Harte, Luxaria, and Sanctum. Last month, Onel completed a hostile takeover of Waixi.”

How?Class D shuttles carry around a couple hundred people, and Class E shuttles are tiny, transporting no more than twenty. There’s a fair bit of competition in the transportation business. Onel Corp should be profitable, but not hugely so.

On the other hand, Waixi Corporation is a giant. Asteroid mining, wormhole construction, terraforming rigs—Waixi has a formidable presence in all of these deep space industries. The cost of a hostile takeover would have been staggering.

“Where’s the money coming from?”

“Since his father’s death, Jarel Onel has become the biggest weapons dealer on Harte. If you want to sell to the Crill Empire, you go to him.”

Raz flicks his fingers, and the dead soldiers on the screen are replaced by a picture of a pretty, dark-haired woman. Oval face, deep brown eyes, long eyelashes, and lush red lips.

“Which brings me to Elodie Rinou,” he says. “Rinou is a mech who has worked at Onel Corp for four years. She’s smart, talented, and almost certainly not involved in anything nefarious. She heads up the Class E maintenance division. Since she took over, maintenance costs have come down twenty-five percent.”

“And?” I prompt. It’s not a hardship to look at the mechanic on the screen—she’s very pretty. But why do I care about her?

Raz smiles. Not a natural look on him. “In a stroke of luck, Rinou is looking for a podmate. He straightens a piece of pseudopaper on his desk. “Sooner or later, the person who built this biological weapon will approach Onel. I want to know the moment that happens. Rinou is your way in. Become her best friend, listen to her work stories, and go with her to company events.”

He’s joking. This approach will take too much time, and time is the one thing we don’t have.

I open my mouth to protest and then close it. Raz deals with hundreds of existential threats to the Karven every day. If he doesn’t want to be more aggressive in his pursuit of this weapon, then he’s got his reasons. Reasons that are beyond my clearance level.

I get to my feet. “I’m on it.”

He holds up his hand. “Two more things,” he says. “First, no implant communication, not unless it’s an emergency. There’s an agent posted in the Juventus Sector. Check in with him every other day.”

Every KSF agent has an implant to send and receive messages internally. We use it all the time. When Raz sent me Onel Corp file a moment ago, he didn’t hand me a storage cube—he pushed the information directly into my memory. If Raz is ruling out implant comms, he’s really worried. Rightly so. Karven tech is supposedly invulnerable. If someone’s found their way past our armor, all our other implants are at risk too.

“What’s the second thing?”

“Keep a low profile. Be harmless and completely non-threatening.” He glances at Rinou’s picture and then at me. “Oh, and Calder? Don’t fuck her.”

What the hell?I’m not a rookie. I’m an experienced operative, and I understand what’s involved. Yes, Elodie Rinou is pretty. But of course I’m not going to get involved with her. Too much is at stake.