Page 1 of The Brightest Night

Chapter One

Augmented men huddled outside my cell, whispering conspiratorially. One had a metal hand, shiny and new, the other one’s face was a meld of flesh and metal—man and machine entwined so thoroughly I’d have thought he was born that way.

It was a possibility here in Veridia, at least that’s what the bastard Neeval had told us before he drugged us and tried to cut Gabe up for parts. But I digress; that was then, and this is now. My current predicament.

A prisoner.

A second visit to this godforsaken place, and heck this time, I didn’t crash. Yay me. My perfect landing didn’t stop us from getting captured, though.

Drax hasn’t spoken a word since we were shoved into the cells. He’s sitting in a corner, head down, trying to make himself as small as possible. He obviously didn’t want these people figuring out he was the son of the tyrant that ran this damn planet. Well, one of his sons. That bastard liked to procreate.

I didn’t blame the red-headed prince for staying silent. Who knew what these people would do to him if they found out who he was? We had no idea where their allegiances lay. Were they pro Divinos? Heck, was anyone who didn’t have to be pro Divinos?

Velos, the newest crew member I’d rescued from my father’s clutches and an unwanted pirate life, looked paler than usual. Crouched in a corner, his eyes wide with fear, he was competing with Drax to see who could shrink the most.

Had I liberated him just to get him thrown into a life of forced procreation on a planet desperate for unaugmented blood?

I’d been so careful, making sure we landed in an area in the northern hemisphere that looked relatively uninhabited, hopefully close to wherever this feral uprising Drax had told us about was happening.

The region was a veritable icy wasteland, so how was I to know there’d be eyes on the sky and a settlement charged specifically with watching the border to the frozen lands?

We had to escape and find the feral camp where Naxon would join us. Because join us he would. I was certain of that. I refused to consider the question of how the fuck he would get through the asteroid belt and to the rift leading here. Because if I did that, then my hope would dwindle, and doubts would set in, and those pesky doubts were a precursor to despondency. I didn’t do despondency. It was a dark place that I’d crawled out of time and time again and finally learned to avoid.

I scanned the interior of the cell for the tenth time. Brick walls, no windows. A bucket to piss and shit and thick bars set close together to cage us in. At least the room was warm, with two firepits burning outside of the cells. All the stone kept the heat in, only a little escaping up the stairs and into the building above, which was a squat stone affair filled with augmented men in furs and heavy boots.

The freelanders. That’s what Drax called them.

Some kind of border watch, hunters and the like, because apparently the frozen plains were filled with wildlife that not even Divinos cared to tangle with. It explained why the uprising was taking place there but not why Divinos was allowing it to happen.

Surely he had the power to send in his magimechs and Malefica with their arcana power. So why hadn’t he?

I locked away the questions for now, my gaze dropping to Gabe’s prone form. He could have kicked these freelanders’ asses if they hadn’t taken us by surprise. They’d surrounded our ship in force, weapons trained on us, giving us no choice but to comply. I’d managed to grab Destiny’s memory core and instructed Rex and Kai to hide before we were forced out of our ship onto frozen wastelands and into steel cuffs.

Gabe’s long coat hid his wings and the mech parts well enough for them to be clueless as to what he was for now, but I had no doubt they would have dismantled Kai and Rex for parts if they’d gotten ahold of them. We had to get out of here before they discovered Gabe wasn’t flesh and blood.

But the bars were electrified, as we’d discovered when Gabe tried to snap one of them and was sent flying across the cell. Right now, the freelanders thought he was taking a nap. He’d better wake up soon, or they might decide to come into the cell and check on him. Could we overpower them if that happened?

No. They had weapons, and we were defenseless. We weren’t getting out of here unless they let us out, which meant the only way forward was diplomacy.

Not my strongest suit.

I was a shoot first and ask questions later kind of gal. Living by the philosophy of what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine.

Naxon would have been perfect in this situation. Damn, I’d give my left tit to have him here right now. Okay, maybe not literally give it up, but…I sighed. Focus, Nova.

The feral might have the gift of the gab, but so did I when I wanted to.

It was time to use my silver tongue. My hand went to the translator around my neck. Thank fuck I’d kept it from our last visit, otherwise I’d be relying on Drax and Gabe to tell me what was going on.

“Hey, you two.” The men stopped talking and looked my way. “Look, I get it, you don’t like visitors, and trust me, here is the last place I want to be, but here we are.” I smiled sweetly. “I’m not a threat, and I promise you we mean no harm. We just want to be on our way, out of your…hair?” The bald guy narrowed his eyes. “You know what I mean, right? You don’t need us cluttering up your lovely cells or all the paperwork that goes with processing us.” Did they have paperwork here? “So let us go. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“You are from the sky,” the guy with the augmented hand said. “Anything from the sky must be reported.”

A chill rushed up my spine. “Reported? To who?”

“To the magimechs.”

Across the cell, Drax sat up straighter. Yeah, because if they reported it to the magimechs, then it would be reported to the Malefica in the Sapphire City and maybe get back to Divinos. People landing on this planet wasn’t casual news.