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Sirens warble on enemy Mothership Marst .

Women rush to escape pods as the doors to their servants’ quarters open.

Enemy soldiers freak out as sparks fly out of control panels, life support systems grind to a halt.

They try to regain control of their ship.

Evo, the corrupted CyberTitan, finally turns on his captors.

And all it took was a tiny bit of code—an itsy bitch of a virus that the Solcrue’s security engineers will have to hunt down, one I’ve been working on for over a decade.

I monitor Vessna’s jailbreak on my tablet. They’re in orbit not far from us—close enough for a data transfer. I dare not try to hack the military mothership Corenge . They’d hunt me down for sure with that many highly trained soldiers.

Solcrue took my sister.

One day, I will ruin them.

But that day is not today.

I shut off my tablet and pack it in my bag.

Time to move.

A blast goes off in the hallway, scattering hot yellow flames through the louvers of the vent I’ve been monitoring the ship through. The heat scorches the right shoulder of my tired Terran armor. I quickly make my way through the ductwork to the room where my sister has been kept chained up.

It has been agonizing to be so close and yet unable to reach her. Her shackles are of a kind I can’t hack without more time to study them up close. All of this work was to get me enough time alone with her to free her.

A decade of searching has brought me to this moment.

Through a vent, I peer down and into the round cell Myria is in. There’s no one else in there but her. Despite the sirens, she remains in her hibernation chamber like a sleeping vampire in an upright metal casket filled with green light.

The room is a weave of cables, hoses, radiant fuel cells, and a honeycomb of structural webbing like she’s some sort of queen of the space spiders. But that’s not the strong, sweet, protective older sister I remember. She is not evil. And yet, little about her looks familiar.

“Myria?” I whisper through the vent.

Her eyes don’t open. How she’s sleeping through the chaos, I don’t know. I thought for sure she’d wake up. I have to get to her while the Solcrue are distracted.

The scar between her dark eyebrows brings back a memory of fighting in the mine tunnels over the single piece of hard candy in a dusty rucksack. Forgot all about it when you found the cybertech’s journal.

I pat the pocket of my pack to reassure myself that the book is still there. Grabbing my multi-tool, I loosen the vent cover in her room and peek out. It’s just her and me and the sirens and beeps of the hibernation chamber’s monitor.

The moment I drop out of the vent into the room, the awareness that I can’t turn back and rehash my plan ratchets up my heart rate and makes my palms sweat.

I’m not a soldier, not like Myria. Father trained me differently.

I’m supposed to stay a shadow. I have to make every second out in the open count.

The vent cover hangs open. Solcrue will question why. If they don’t find me, one of their inspection drones will. I have to free Myria and get to Ellipsis, where the Titans are.

I tighten my gear bags and thigh pouches and finally stand before my sister face-to-face after nearly a decade of tracking her.

Myria’s expression is cold, stern even, with more scars than I remember.

They’ve bound her in a body shackle more intricate than anything I’ve ever worked on or seen before.

I’m certain Solcrue must be trying to control her every move, like some sort of fucked up marionette.

But why you? What made you different? Why didn’t they take me instead?

I think I know why. She was the biggest, strongest female in our mining camp on Earth Minor who moonlighted as a bouncer at our only camp bar.

I fixed machinery with Dad while you swung a Pulaski.

Taking her was the Solcrue’s way of saying that even our strongest can’t escape their rule.

But they’ve not met me. Not yet. And as I look up at my sister’s sleeping face and the evil carapace they’ve bound her in, my need for vengeance grows.

“Myria?” I choke out.

Her ribs swell with a breath. They’ve given her a decorative chest plate, which seems odd to me.

The monitor beside her has a program running, one I don’t recognize.

I hate it already because I can’t touch her without setting off alarms. It’s more complicated than I’m prepared to handle. So I have to fall on my backup plan.

I pry open every access panel on her cage and find a power conduit. The first ten times I tried to access her room through the main computer network, I got blocked out and shot at by an inspection drone. The only way to get her out is the old-fashioned way.

Drawing the gun from my thigh holster, I shield my eyes with an arm, aim at the junction box, and fire.

Power arcs in a bright flash and crackles. The room goes dark for a second before green emergency lights kick on. That will, no doubt, make Solcrue get here faster, cutting down the time I have to talk with her.

I round Myria’s cell and look up at her. Finally, her eyes open.

“Myria?”

She looks down at me, and her gaze lingers. I can’t tell if she recognizes me or not.

“I’m Esthi, your sister. I know it’s been a decade, but…”

Small lights blink on in rows inside her cell.

“You’re too late.” She says it with such apathy that I’m not sure what to do or think. This is not what I expected.

Myria crosses her arms over her chest. A shield encases her in green light, giving her an eerie glow. “Ellipsis. Titans. Fight .”

She has Myria’s eyes, her face, and that scar, but she isn’t my sister.

With a droning hum and a rush of air, her cylindrical cage launches through the floor.

“Damn it!” I turn and pace the path circling her cell, trying to figure out what to do. All of my careful planning has gone to shit in seconds.

Fight? Is that where she’s going? Or is that what I’m supposed to do? Has Myria forgotten me, forgotten herself? Was that an evil clone? What the hell is going on?

“They’re ejecting and falling to the surface of Ellipsis,” someone says in the hallway. “Skysprinters loading now.”

A sick feeling twists my stomach. Is that what they made her into? A fighter pilot for the enemy?

That would make perfect sense in their minds. Use the enemy to defeat the enemy. It’s a regular Solcrue tactic.

The door to her cell opens. Panic makes me lurch behind the cage frame and crouch, then watch through a crack between hibernation feeding and circulation systems.

An officer, judging by the gold trim along his black uniform, stops in the doorway. The top of his ears bear the typical military crop, and his skin gleams with oil that makes the hexagonal scales more defined. “Power relay blew in her room. Get it fixed for the next occupant.”

It’s rare for me to see an officer, but Ahronis clearly likes to get his hands dirty. He killed Marst’s captain and took his place. I saw it on the video feeds I’d hacked.

“You’re not returning her to this post?” a shorter Solcrue asks.

“No. She’s assigned to eliminate the enemy on Ellipsis now. And don’t ask stupid questions above your pay grade.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Mothership Aidathra will arrive soon. She will be reassigned. Then, I want you to upgrade a hangar for the obelisk. Once we have all the pieces, we will win the war without lifting a finger.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Plinking sounds, like little metal feet, echo in the vent overhead. I look up, dread filling my bones with lead. An inspection drone peers out. It spots me with a jerking head motion, then crawls like a demented spider to brace itself in the opening as alarms go off.

The door to the cell begins to close. If I don’t get out now, I’ll be caught, tortured, and killed. It’s happened to others I’ve crawled with through the dust on other ships.

I scramble for the door, dart by the mechanic, and slip through at the last second.

Commander Ahronis and his protection detail aren’t far away. They stop in the hall access to the hangars for cruisers and troop transports and then turn around. Security doors flash and begin to lower from the ceiling.

They’re trying to isolate the problem—me.

I sprint away from them and down the hallway toward the escape pods, hoping there is one left. It’s the only way I’m not getting captured when an Isolate and Terminate order has been placed.

The Solcrue are compartmentalizing the ship and will go through each until they’ve taken me down. I have to take my chances in a pod. But even as the door to the escape hangar on my level closes and I dive underneath it, I fear I’ve lost my sister forever.

If she returns to Marst or Aidathra , I have no way to get back. And hitching a ride to Marst almost killed me the first time, just like most transports I’ve been on.

When I burst into the escape pod wing, I see a woman’s hatch on her pod isn’t sealing. The others have ejected. She’s crying and frantically tapping the release button as an enemy soldier charges toward her.

I draw my handgun and fire at him, knock him back around a support beam with a ball of red fury, then slam to a stop and assess her screen.

It has an error code for a hydraulics malfunction on the door from another blast. I manually shut it and tap Eject.

The hull seals. Marst closes the airlock.

On the other side, I see her praying as she belts in. The pod launches her into space.

A yellow bullet singes my jacket, making me duck and turn to look.

Another shot whizzes so close to my face that I feel the heat and hear the fizzling of the chemical reaction.

Solcrue bullets are actually quite beautiful when they’re not flying at my head.

Their sodium-laced fragmenting crystal projectiles don’t penetrate hulls, only flesh. It’s a smart design for starships.

The soldier switches to war rounds, green bullets filled with toxic Barium Chloride.

I fire back as I continue along the escape pod accesses to the last one at the far end.

Please work. Don’t be broken!

I don’t read the screen. It has a green light overhead, so I fire several shots behind me as I throw myself inside and smash the Eject button.

The hatch seals. Marst closes the airlock.

I belt myself into the seat and look back to see the soldier who shot at me now watching from the window.

The pod launches me into space, and he’s gone, shrinking with the mothership and my inside track on the Solcrue, Myria, everything.

All that I have worked toward is gone in one simple tap of a button.

I found my sister, but I didn’t find her .

As space brightens and the surface of Ellipsis nears, I realize I have to change my goals if I’m going to keep going.

Aidathra. If I don’t find her on the surface, and if I live, that’s my next goal.

Titans … Myria said it. Or whoever she is.

I thought Titans were all lost during the war. No one heard of them after we lost. But after I found my way onto a Solcruean transport, it’s all I’ve heard about for the last two years. The jailbreak, two hundred Titans roaming free on Ellipsis, and General Krader’s daughter who is with them now.

Cyborg Submission Patrol failed at their main objective and wants to clean up their mess.

And the daughter of a Creator helped with the jailbreak—a woman who is half Solcrue.

I know so much from the thousands of transmissions I’ve listened to, and yet I feel unprepared for landing on a planet again, especially one with Titans.

Ahead of me, escape pods flare with heat as they enter Ellipsis’ atmosphere.

Minutes pass like seconds, and I trail the others through the burn phase and back to an oxygen-rich environment filled with sunlight, dunes, lakes, and forests.

I descend further north than the others as a jet stream kicks me into an angry desert.

Sand curls around my pod, battering the hull until I fear it will crack the glass.

I tip and tumble through the dust devil.

My harness digs into my shoulders, chest, and crotch as it keeps me locked into my seat.

Navigation beeps frantically as the thrusters sputter, trying to correct my position while choking on dust and sand.

Momentum rises, and my pod arcs out of the storm through waves of sand and dim light before smashing into a dune.

The hit pummels my body. I smack my head on the dash screen as I skip off the dune and tumble to the bottom.

Every muscle tenses as I wait for this disorienting misery to end. And finally, I rock to a stop.

There’s no one remotely close by on the navigation screen before it blinks off. The storm rages around me, so I stay put, gather my things and my wits, and prepare for the hike to find shelter and, hopefully, a Titan sighting.

Navigation beeps with an inbound alert that a Skysprinter is coming to rescue me.

They’ve found me.

I can’t stay where I am.

I put on my goggles for stealth ops and switch them to night vision.

Opening the hatch against the wind takes effort, but I push out into the storm.

The climb up the desert’s hills toward the forest is slow going and treacherous in the wind.

But I finally make it to the nearest tree I can see.

Wind dies down in the higher-up trees, and I finally get a good look at the other escapees. They rain from Marst and Vessna .

The Skysprinters swarm the pods that have landed miles away. Three enemy fighters headed straight for my position can’t be a coincidence. They have to know what I’ve done, that I’m the reason the doors opened and their servants escaped. Otherwise, they’d never send anyone after me.

If they catch me, I’ll never find Myria.

It’s a slog, climbing into the forest with all the gear on my body, but I will make it.

I have to. For Myria. For Mom, Dad, and our camp. I can’t let the Solcrue take everything from us. They will eat stardust one day for killing and hurting so many. Until then, I’m taking it one step at a time.

One tree.

One shadowy forest.

One tunnel into a mountain.

Clicking on a flashlight, I switch off my night vision goggles, get my bearing, and head deeper into the rock.

I must conserve my strength, supplies, and my wits if I want to succeed.

I refuse to die trying. But I’m secretly afraid of dying alone because then all of my travels, sneaking into transports, crawling through metal ship guts, surviving on stolen food, and leaving everything behind will be for nothing.

I will find you, Myria. We will be a family again. You made me promise you. Don’t you remember?

All I hope now is that she saw me there with her and that she knows somewhere deep in her heart that she isn’t alone, even if she’s too far gone to save.