Page 35 of The Warlord's Secret Heir

I sit on the floor, armor stripped to the waist, scars glowing under old biolights like faded tattoos. My cybernetic leg’s twitching again. Feedback loop from the shoulder port, probably. Gotta reroute the pulse dampeners later.

I should sleep.

Instead, I drink.

The bottle’s half-engine oil, half-booze, and one-hundred percent brain poison. Perfect.

I stare at the ceiling until my vision blurs.

Then at the stars.

That’s the worst part about Jurtik—sky’s tooclear.

Back in the war, space was fire and black glass. Nothing to see but hull flashes and incoming missiles. But here?

Here, the stars watch. Mocking. Distant. Unmoving.

And every damn night, I see her face in them.

Jaela.

The name still tastes like flame in my mouth. Like regret soaked in sweetness.

I try not to say it. Try not tofeelit.

But I do.

Stars help me, I do.

The knock comes just past midnight.

Raxl—one of the few I trust not to steal my boots while I’m still in them—sticks his head in.

“Boss,” he grunts, scratching at a sunburn shaped like a clawprint. “Scouts found somethin’.”

“Tell them to bury it.”

“It’s a shuttle. Crashed. South ridge near Black Scar.”

That gets me blinking. I sit forward. “Whose?”

“Dunno. Weird sigs. One of the boys swears it pinged Earth before it went dark.”

My blood goes cold.

“You sure?”

Raxl shrugs. “We pulled a fragment of nav code from the wreck beacon. Earthblock encoding.”

Earth.

I haven’t heard that word out loud in years.

“Engine type?”

“Old. Civilian. But tricked-out. Someone wanted inwithoutbeing seen.”

My jaw tightens.