Page 77 of The First Spark (Dynasty of Fire #1)

Another fine mess she’d gotten herself into.

Wailing sirens chased Mira down the smoke-filled streets, and she gasped for air as she bolted around a corner. Lasers screamed after her—too fast. Shit. Taking the alley should’ve bought her a few seconds. Clutching the file, Mira glanced over her shoulder.

The legionnaires were right on her heels.

“Cybel!” she bellowed. “Dammit, come in!”

Flashing red and blue lights appeared at the end of the street. Local sentinels, coming to help the Feds.

Still no Cybel. Damn the little metal bastard.

Darting between two buildings, Mira raced into an alley, leapt onto the lid of a dumpster, and scrambled over the chain link fence.

Wind whipped her rain-soaked box braids into her face.

The file slipped from her grasp, and her numb fingers clenched around it as the fence rattled behind her. They’d already started climbing.

She sprinted down the alley into a chaotic hoverway.

Hovercrafts sped past, and as their spinning thrusters pummeled falling rain, a spray of water crashed over her.

Her heart leapt into her throat as she fumbled with the soaked manila folder.

Water dripped from the edge. No, no, no, she needed the file?—

“Freeze!”

No time.

Mira’s legs burned as she charged down the sidewalk. Stray blasts raced past her, and the acrid smell of smoke stung her eyes.

If she lost this file, it was all over.

Brakes screeched, and a curtain of frigid water burst from a puddle, stabbing her skin with needles of ice. Spitting a curse, she lunged behind a bench and whipped her pulser towards the craft. Those Fed bastards wouldn’t take her alive.

Her aibot’s orange optics and ghastly metal smile peered through the open door. “Need a lift?”

Mira ducked a blast—too close—and lunged into the passenger seat. “Damn you,” she spat, as she tugged the harness into place and yanked the door shut.

Cackling, Cybel slammed his metal foot down on the pedal.

The craft lurched down the hoverway, and Mira nearly lost her lunch. Spots pulsed in her vision as her aibot careened between the lanes with reckless speed. Heavy metal music blasted through the speakers, vibrating through the seat below her.

“Did you acquire the information?”

Flicking her braids over her shoulder, Mira waved the file. “Took you long eno?—”

Glass shattered, and as heat brushed her cheek, Mira spun. The syn-glass panel over the craft’s trunk was gone. Smoke rose from her hand—no, from the file. A charred hole had been carved through the top corner. Damn it all. She beat at the singed edges, trying to stop the damage from spreading.

“Lose the tail!”

“Easier said than done, Mistress.”

Gritting her teeth, Mira flipped the file open. The soaked, weathered paper felt like it would crumble under her fingertips, but she didn’t have time to waste. The Feds were closing in .

Faded black letters at the top of the page spelled out Homicide Report .

The victims’ names were listed below in bleeding ink: Lucien, Nisara, and Lumina Viana, all murdered seventy-three cycles ago by a woman with glowing red eyes.

But it wasn’t them she cared about. They couldn’t answer her questions.

Another blast shrieked by. Syn-glass blew inward, carving stinging lines of pain into her skin. Whipping out her pulser, she pointed through the window and fired. The legionnaire mounted on a tempor bike toppled. Another blast, and the bike exploded in an orange cloud of heat and shrapnel.

Three onyx hovercrafts barreled through the flames.

Sweat dripped down Mira’s face as she rifled through the papers. The file contained a single eyewitness account, with a yellowed photo of a young Dynarian man clipped to the page. Below it, someone had scrawled his name.

Eletri Dracka

Glass shattered around her and smoke twisted up her nose, but Mira smiled.

Finally, she’d found her lead.

Smooth jazz twinkled through the space station’s cantina as Mira drained her glass and flagged down the robotic bartender. The shiny silver aibot buzzed over.

“Another Starlight Tempest. Hold the ice.”

The aibot chirped and flitted away. Two of its pincers held her glass in place as its other arms measured in fruit juices and a meager dose of citka.

Mira sighed. Far too little citka, if they asked her.

But she wasn’t in her leathers tonight, and she wouldn’t have made it past the bouncer if she hadn’t shimmied into a skintight dress.

With her winged eyeliner and curled hair, the aibot had probably mistaken her for a socialite or a hooker—not someone who could take straight citka.

Her mark should be grateful. She’d put a lot of effort into her appearance for him. Sure, he was going to die, but at least he would die looking at someone hot.

The mobster she’d been hired to track down lounged in a rounded leather booth with a stripper on each arm.

Mira huffed. She’d paid the strippers to take him back to a room, not to drink themselves under the table on the pig’s tab. She didn’t have all night.

“Starlight Tempest, miss.”

Mira thanked the aibot with a two-fingered wave. She sipped at the pale pink liquid, checked her chrono, sipped more of the drink. Stirred it. Checked her chrono again.

Honestly, waiting to kill him was more exhausting than actually killing him.

She glanced at the holoscreens floating behind the counter and stiffened. Hannover—Duchissa Kalista, now, but she’d always be Hannover to her—stood at a podium, speaking to a crowd. Zane loomed behind her in his navy blue Captain’s uniform.

Mira smirked. Captain of Hannover’s Azurian Guard. Pretty good for the scruffy bartender she’d hooked up with on Santursi three cycles ago.

Stirring her drink, she gazed into his silver eyes.

There’s no point in wondering, don’t, there’s no ?—

But what if? If she’d never pressured him to make something of his life, he probably would’ve stayed her bartender on Santursi.

She could still picture him with that damn beard, in that worn cargo jacket…

without that cargo jacket. A smirk curved at her lips, but it quickly withered and died.

He would’ve been a damn good partner. Not just for ops.

It only would’ve taken a few simple words on that last, hungover morning.

Mira grimaced.

Who was she kidding? That would’ve gone over worse than the shitshow on the bridge last month .

Text flitted across the screen: ‘Hannover’s Rebel Coalition Gains Victory Over Federation…’

It didn’t say how many of those Fed bastards had died. Boring.

Forcing herself to focus on the task at hand, she glanced at her mark. He was pawing at one of the strippers.

“Cy,” she murmured, softly enough that the man sitting two barstools away wouldn’t hear, “next time, you’re wearing the dress, and I’m the getaway pilot.”

Cybel’s garbled laugh crackled in her earpiece. “The mission would fail. I find it highly improbable that a male of any sentient species would experience amorous feelings for an aibot.”

“Oh, I can think of a few.”

“If you want to expedite the speed of this operation, might I suggest that you seduce our target yourself? If you would like pointers on how to attract potential mates, I can?—”

“Keep talking, and you won’t have an oil bath for a month.”

Cybel shut up.

In the polished granite countertop, her blurred face reflected back at her. Pink and purple strobe lights danced across her skin, and her breath caught as her mind whisked her back to that stone platform on Dali. The Fed with the crackling comm. The polished voice from her nightmares.

And her freakish, glowing red eyes, staring at her from her own reflection.

She couldn’t close her eyes, couldn’t look away, couldn’t breathe.

She just stared.

In this reflection, her eyes stayed brown.

“A drink for my friend here,” said a man with an adenoidal voice. A blur of green and black slid into the seat beside her. “Would’ya look at that. What brings you here tonight, Xen?”

Mira didn’t look away from the countertop. “That’s Desyk to you, Telon.”

“Desyk? I thought it was Petrov.”

Mira took a swig of her Starlight Tempest. She was really slipping if she was using the wrong aliases. Telon was from her old stomping ground on Lexabos; he’d known her as Vesta Holt’s brat, Xenia Petrov. She’d become Xen Desyk a few months after that.

“It’s Desyk tonight,” Mira said, glancing at the cyborg in the seat beside her.

He wasn’t inconspicuous, especially with the vodbox drilled into the side of his head where she’d taken his ear eight cycles ago.

“Hardly civilized company for a lady. I suggest you find another bar before I tell the bartender you’re harassing me. ”

“And risk causing a scene?” Telon shook his head. “I know you won’t. Bad for business, for both of us.”

Mira slid up the hem of her black dress. The tip of her knife glinted against her scarred thigh. “I’m working here. Move along.”

The bartending aibot buzzed over, handing an amber tankard to Telon and another Starlight Tempest to her.

Telon lifted his glass in a parody of a toast. Mira glared at him.

“Help a bloke out, sweetheart. See, my bosses offered double the price on this one if I hand him over to them instead of the client who posted the job. I already hired the girls to escort him back to a suite?—”

That explained why the unholy trinity hadn’t left yet.

“—and I’ve sunk a fair number of creds into this. After that score on Dali, you don’t need the cash?—”

“Save it.” His long-ago words in that Lexabos cantina were seared into her memory, and she said, in his drawling voice, “‘Sob stories don’t work ’round here. Unless you’re offerin’ somethin’, clear out.’”

He set his untouched glass aside. “Wise words. But we’re friends now, sweetheart, ain’t we?”