Across the entire Alféion planetary system, people believed nothing was as impenetrable as the me-hnan jungle.
Nero pushed Cobra—his small, human-made black ship—to its limit, trying to catch a nyasuk fighter that had been dodging him for ten minutes. It kept flickering in and out of the radar. He was going to have to drive Cobra straight to the edge of what it could take. He frowned, fighting the controls that resisted him. The speed crushed him into his seat. The console's green light blinked. Katherine was trying to reach him from the Naetilus, but he didn't have time for that now.
Finally, when he followed the radar screen, the enemy ship was just behind and below him—exactly where he needed it for boarding. He programmed an automated sequence: slow down in a moment, then open the hatch. He was flying dangerously close to ground level. The humidity clung to him and he couldn't shake it off. Cobra's neutral operating-system voice startled him.
"High-risk maneuver detected. Safety lock engaged."
It was an Éfesis ship, after all. The heart of human technology.
"Override safety lock," he snapped.
"Voice recognized. Nero Lumina, 1N-912888467C. Awaiting instructions."
Sliding the door upward, Nero freed his jacket, which had snagged on one of the hull tabs and was now flapping down the outside of Cobra. The ship kept slicing through Omega's skies, slowing down so the pressure change wouldn't burst his skull. The nyasuk fighter was directly beneath him—sleek, aerodynamic, its lines simpler.
The pilot of the gray fighter glanced up, disbelief washing over his face when he saw Nero hanging off Cobra like some dangerous shadow, and he accelerated. He immediately felt the thud of Nero's boots on his hull and tried to tilt the ship to shake the intruder off, but Nero was already in place.
Dropping straight onto the fighter's hull, Nero allowed himself a brief smile as the magnetic clamps finished locking onto the nyasuk craft.
The smart ship reacted to his fingerprints even from the outside. He grabbed the hatch door with one hand and forced it open with his foot until it gave way. The ship wasn't going to allow two pilots: the silence bomb went off, almost rupturing their eardrums. Nero caught a glimpse of the nyasuk's terrified face inside.
"No way!" the nyasuk stammered, looking for anything to defend himself.
With a clean, dry motion, Nero struck—dagger to the side of the neck—and didn't think twice before slipping into the pilot's seat. The nyasuk's lifeless body slid sideways and dropped like a sack. Its head tilted, the skin gleaming like a silver-green sheet before dulling. On its wrist, the bull-skull scar—the Cult's symbol—was still visible. They always looked too ethereal for war; tall, quick-reflexed, eyes in inhuman colors, and a liquid glow shifting under their skin. When they died, that glow vanished—and with it, according to their creed, the bond with the God and Goddess. Nero didn't look again.
Absurdly, the official nyasuk royal motto crossed his mind: "May the soft lunar mantle cover Naësu until dawn."
Thanks to him, that bastard would never see the sun again.
"Another one," he muttered to himself as his cold gaze narrowed on the controls. He opened a line to the Naetilus. "Sam, I need to know if the Naetilus has already docked with Cobra."
"If you don't show up right now," Katherine said, her voice raised with barely-contained fury, "I swear you'll crash in the middle of the jungle."
"On my way back. Requesting gate opening."
"You're dead when you get here," Katherine shot back before cutting the line.
The nyasuk ship, running on its own OS, tried to resume control after the chaos. Nero smacked the console—which had almost no physical buttons—to shut it up. He wasn't in the mood for interaction. His temples began to throb. Another headache. Of course.
After circling aimlessly over Omega's sky, he entered through the Naetilus gates, and moments later stood before Katherine and Nicholas—who stared at him with one hand over his mouth.
"Do you want to tell me what the hell you were thinking?"
"Captain," Nero began, stating the obvious, "I brought the nyasuk rechargeable battery, so—"
Katherine slapped him across the face so hard Nicholas actually jumped. Nero stayed rigid, staring at some fixed point behind her.
"Orders are orders," she spat. "This is the last time I tolerate you putting your own goals above this crew and the Naetilus. I don't know when you'll get it through your skull that you're not alone. Nicholas—bring Samantha. He needs a medical evaluation."
Once Nicholas sprinted off through the giant, cable-lined corridors toward the depths of the Naetilus, Katherine leaned close to Nero's ear.
"Do you have any idea what would've happened if they'd traced your location? What that would've meant for the mission—for our work?"
"We'll reduce operation time. I'm thinking about mission efficiency."
"For all your nyasuk pride, this is the last time I accept a mercenary as an official pilot," she muttered, seething.
"I'm ready to face the consequences," Nero said, bowing his head—cold, steady.
"Yeah, whatever." Katherine arched a brow, looking him up and down. "Explain it to Nicholas," she ordered before heading for the bridge.
As the door shut behind her, she regretted ever letting him on that flying tin can.
Nero was now alone with his consciousness. The whine of enemy fighters, the gunfire he'd dodged with the Naetilus, with Cobra, and finally when he boarded the nyasuk ship—those noises sent his sympathetic nervous system into alert, his body signaling danger. But his military training overrode those primitive reactions. He stepped into the Naetilus cockpit drenched in cold sweat but forcing composure.
"Naetilus pilot assuming control," he said, voice flat.
Nothing more than a crew member—and Katherine was captain.
As long as she controlled the ship, he could control his own life. A nyasuk for hire, unattached, obeying a human captain aboard a vessel falling apart.
Of course Nicholas deserved an explanation.
…Did he?
Did Nero actually care what Nicholas thought? Or that he was worried?
He remembered the hand covering his mouth, the speed with which he'd run off in his red canvas shoes and half-fastened overalls to alert Samantha of Nero's arrival. She had taken his temperature and told him he was cold—that his body was diverting blood to protect his vital organs.
The Naetilus recovered altitude, with Cobra and the captured nyasuk ship docked in storage. Alex, the gunner and second-in-command, watched Nero with no sympathy but full awareness of the lesson Katherine intended. He raised his eyebrows while loading manual ammo into the turret and thinking things through.
It was unacceptable for Nero to abandon his post, take Cobra without permission, and jeopardize the mission by capturing the outside craft. It had been reckless, without considering the possibilities—say, if the Naetilus had taken another, stronger volley of enemy fire. If the attack had intensified. But it was done. And they had the stolen nyasuk battery. Weeks of power for the Naetilus.
Nero didn't regret it.
He felt a sudden, sharp need for a cigarette. His fingers trembled as he brushed the Naetilus's worn controls, eyes focusing on the details of the casing—once white plastic, now yellowed, dotted with tiny bumps where his hands rested—as they flew farther from the lush green canopy below.
"Are you… are you okay?" Nicholas's trembling voice crackled through the private line, only for him.
"Operational," Nero replied, conserving words.
"Why did you do that?" Nicholas pressed. His voice hovered between a whisper and a plea.
With a sigh, Nero understood he wasn't actually expecting an answer. Nicholas had him trained even in that. He was sick of maneuvering with the ship's pathetic resources. He wanted nyasuk propulsion—even stolen—and to finally finish this ridiculous mission. Load the cargo, fly from Omega to Sigma, deliver it. Get paid. That was it.
But the Naetilus was on a humanitarian mission. The Cult had no reason to attack them.
Omega's surface shrank beneath them as the Naetilus accelerated with everything it had. They rose past the tallest trees and palms, slipping through the clouds that fed the tropical rain.
As always, when the ship pushed past a certain speed, the controls gave after a long tension and the vessel shuddered. Nero rubbed his knuckles. He glanced sideways at Samantha in navigation, plotting clear routes through space. She wasn't happy with him either. Birdie sat on his left at monitoring, correcting drone trajectories and objectives while humming a little tune, unmoved by the chaos. Nicholas had spoken through the private line from the engine room, trying to calm the overheating reactors, checking the fans on every propulsion system—nuclear and chemical. Nadia, meanwhile, decoded nyasuk characters and the last outgoing transmissions from the captured ship, trying to locate its central command—with no patience for any of this.
Nero keyed in a command sequence to activate autopilot, and after a moment left for his cabin. Adrenaline still surged through him, but his training kept his body's biological responses neatly suppressed. Still—he was exhausted.
The image of the dead nyasuk resurfaced without warning. The flash of fading skin, the hollow eyes, the body sliding from the seat. He remembered the bull-skull scar perfectly.
And the longer he thought about it, the more that symbol felt like a portrait of his own head under enemy fire—in an unfamiliar ship, beyond the Asteroid Belt's worlds.