Chapter 1: Last Call for a Killer
The synth-gin was cheap, which meant it burned twice—once on the way down, and again a few minutes later as a phantom ache in her augmented liver. Zara “Nova” Volkov welcomed the sensation. It was a familiar anchor in a place that had none.
The Rusted Nebula wasn’t a home; it was a waiting room. A vast, echoing cavity of scarred metal where the air itself tasted of stale coolant and regret. Flickering holograms advertised dances long finished, and a cracked viewscreen showed a static-laced star-map nobody bothered to update. Her booth was tucked in a shadowed corner, the durasteel cool against the back of her neck. She liked the vantage point. She could see the door, the bar, and the three lowlifes currently arguing over a glitching pool table.
Her own reflection warped in the polished tabletop: fiery red hair pulled tight in a braid, a face that was all sharp angles and wary green eyes. The faint, raised lines of subdermal plating traced her jawline. A souvenir from Proxima. She flexed her left hand under the table, listening to the quiet, precise whir of servos in her knuckles. Everything worked. Everything ached. That was just the way of things.
“Another, Krall,” she called out, not raising her voice. The barkeep’s single cybernetic eye swiveled toward her, its lens dilating with a soft click. He didn’t nod, just turned to grab the bottle of gut-rot gin.
A soft chime emanated from the puck on her belt—a discreet, pulsing amber light. Nova’s posture didn’t change, but her focus snapped inward. A job. She palmed the puck, its surface warming against her skin, and set it on the table. With a tap of her finger, a hard-light hologram sputtered to life above it.
The image was crisp, professional, and utterly chilling. Subject: Kaelen Raxis. Species: Protogen, heavily modified. The file scrolled his known aliases, his affiliations with the Gray Syndicate, his list of violations—weapons trafficking, illegal neural-splicing, murder. The bounty was substantial. Very substantial. Enough to buy a month of quiet, maybe two.
But it was the attached video that held her. Security footage. Raxis was in some upscale clinic, all clean lines and soft light. He wasn’t robbing it. He was leaning over a med-pod, his face a mask of calm concentration. Then, with a mechanic’s precision, he used a wicked-looking digital probe to sever the life-support leads. The patient inside—a middle-aged man—simply went still. Raxis checked a chrono on his wrist and walked out. No haste. No emotion.
Nova killed the hologram. The Nebula’s ambient noise rushed back in—the thud of boots, the screech of a faulty mixer, Krall’s grunt as he slid her fresh glass across the bar top.
She downed the gin in one go. The fire was a welcome distraction from the cold knot forming in her gut. It wasn’t the kill. She’d seen kills. It was the chilling, administrative neatness of it.
“You get a good one, Volkov?”
The voice was a dry rasp, like stones grinding together. Malek. A freelance information broker with a network of rusted implants where his ears should be. He slid into the booth opposite her without invitation.
“Define good,” she said, not looking up from her empty glass.
“One that pays. That one pays. I can see it on your face.” He leaned in, his smell a mix of old sweat and ionization. “Word is, Raxis is holed up. Got spooked. He’s on Tartarus Station.”
Tartarus. A glorified scrap-heap orbiting a dead star. A perfect place for a rat to hide.
“Your word comes with a price, Malek.”
“Always. But for you?” He smiled, showing teeth filed to points—a fashion trend she’d never understood. “Fifteen percent finder’s fee, baked into the bounty. Consider it a… professional courtesy.”
“Consider it usury,” she muttered, but she gave a short, sharp nod. A lead was a lead. “Send the coordinates to my ship.”
He tapped a command into his wrist-unit. “Already done. The Whisper is fueled and waiting. Mostly.” He stood to leave, then paused. “He’s not alone up there, Nova. He’s got a crew. Small, but mean. And he’s… different. Upgraded since that footage.”
“Aren’t we all?” she said, flexing her metal hand again.
Malek’s laughter was a short, unpleasant bark as he melted back into the gloom.
Nova remained in the booth for a long moment, running the calculations. Tartarus was a three-jump trip through contested lanes. Her ship, the Whisper, needed a new regulator. Her own systems could use a tune-up. And Raxis… he wasn’t just another payday. That footage had the feeling of a loose thread, one that, if pulled, might unravel something much bigger than one modified Protogen.
That was the problem. That’s what made it interesting.
She tossed a chit of credits onto the table—enough for the gin and a little extra for Krall’s silence—and stood. Her movements were smooth, economical. The lowlifes at the pool table watched her go, but their gazes slid away when hers met them. They recognized the walk. The look.
The spaceport air was biting cold, laced with the acrid tang of starship exhaust. Her boots clicked on the grated walkway leading to Pier 7. The Whisper was a matte-black arrowhead nestled amongst more blocky freighters, her lines sleek and predatory even in dock.
As she approached, the ship’s external sensors pinged a welcome. The ramp descended with a sigh of hydraulics.
She was halfway up when her personal comm buzzed—a secure, encrypted channel. Not Malek. The ID was blocked, but the signature was military-grade.
She opened the channel. “Volkov.”
“Nova.” The voice was synthetic, modulated to a genderless, placeless tone. “We understand you have taken the Raxis contract.”
She stopped walking. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“A concerned party. We are prepared to double the listed bounty if you accept a slight modification to the terms.”
Nova felt her pulse kick up a notch. “I’m listening.”
“Do not bring him in. Terminate him on site. Ensure total neural wipe. No recovery. No traces.”
The cold of the dock seeped through her jacket. This wasn’t just a bounty anymore. This was a clean-up. Someone very powerful wanted Kaelen Raxis not just gone, but erased.
“Doubled,” she repeated, her voice flat.
“Transferred upon confirmed termination. We will know.”
The channel died.
Nova stood on the ramp, the dim glow of the spaceport painting everything in sickly orange. The offer was too good. Too clean. It stank. But the money… the money meant freedom. A chance to step off this mercenary carousel for a while.
She boarded the Whisper, the hatch sealing behind her with a definitive thud. In the cockpit, the stars stretched out before her, cold and infinite. Tartarus Station blinked on the nav-chart, a faint, malevolent red dot.
She powered up the engines. The familiar thrum vibrated through the deckplates, up through her boots, into her bones. She input the coordinates Malek had sent.
As the Whisper detached from the pier and nosed toward the dark, Nova’s mind wasn’t on the double bounty, or the mysterious client, or even the moral arithmetic of it all.
It was on the look on Raxis’s face in that clinic. The calm, detached focus. The professional doing a job.
She knew that look. She saw it in her own mirror.
The ship leapt into the black.