Battles And Heat In Space

It was no larger than her palm, according to the fragmentary intelligence Juno had pulled from a captured fleet courier. Black ceramic. Encrypted military architecture. Taken from a Dominion courier and hidden aboard Veyra before the station changed hands. If Mara recovered it, the resistance could open the fleet routes surrounding the Sable Reach.

If she failed, three rebel squadrons would enter the same kill zone blind.

She reached the first barrier and pressed her gloved hand against the control plate. The metal burned through the suit’s insulation.

“Come on.”

The plate stayed dark.

A warning tone sounded somewhere beyond the bulkhead.

Juno’s breathing sharpened in her ear. “Mara, I’m seeing a power draw on your side.”

“Security?”

“Not yet. The dock is waking up.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

She drew a slim bypass spike from her belt and drove it beneath the plate. The tool vibrated against the lock. Heat shimmered in the corridor, bending the red emergency lights into wavering ribbons. Sweat gathered beneath her collar despite the suit’s cooling system.

The plate flashed amber.

Mara twisted the spike. The barrier shutters began to rise, but only halfway. A wall of furnace air struck her faceplate. Her visor dimmed automatically, filtering the glare. On the other side, a maintenance crawler rolled across the passage, its six articulated legs clicking against the deck.

“Patrol route,” Juno said. “Two drones, maybe three.”

“I see one.”

“Then the others see you.”

Mara dropped flat as the crawler’s sensor mast swept toward her. The machine paused behind the half-raised barrier. Its lens irised open, reflecting her shape in miniature.

She held her breath, though the suit had no need of it.

The crawler turned away.

Mara slid beneath the barrier. The armor scraped across her pack. Heat punched through her knees. She cleared the threshold just as the shutters slammed down behind her, trapping the crawler on the other side.

“First barrier crossed,” she said.

“You sound pleased.”

“I’m saving the pleasure for when I’m not being cooked.”

At the end of the corridor, the command locker waited beneath a painted stencil: AUTHORIZED CREW ONLY. The letters had blistered from the wall. A red line pulsed along the deck, marking the edge of another heat field.

Mara advanced as the line brightened.

The field snapped on.

Fire without flame swept across the corridor. Her suit screamed warnings. Temperature surged past sixty degrees. She staggered back, one hand striking the bulkhead. The barrier ahead had not opened. The path to the locker was sealed by invisible heat dense enough to buckle the air.

“Juno.”

“I know.”

“Tell me something useful.”

“The dock has switched to emergency sterilization.”

“Why?”

A pause. “It detected an unauthorized biological signature.”

Mara stared at her own reflection in the black curve of her visor. “I’m wearing a sealed suit.”

“Veyra’s security doesn’t care.”

The alarm began as a distant pulse. Then another answered it. Red lights strobed across the corridor.

Mara looked back. The crawler on the far side of the shutter had stopped moving. Its sensor mast pointed directly at her through the narrow gap between the barrier and ceiling.

“Security has woken up,” Juno said.

“I noticed.”

The crawler fired.

Mara threw herself sideways. A cutting beam struck the deck where her chest had been, liquefying the grate. Molten metal spattered her sleeve. She rolled behind a conduit housing as a second beam carved through the wall.

Her suit sealed the damaged insulation, but the temperature warning turned solid red.

“Three minutes,” Juno said. “Maybe less.”

Mara pulled a compact charge from her belt and slapped it against the conduit housing. “I’m taking the short route.”

“That conduit feeds the dock’s coolant grid.”

“Exactly.”

“You rupture it, the barriers may fail.”

“Or the dock may explode.”

“Mara - ”

She triggered the charge.

The blast punched through the housing. Coolant erupted in a white torrent, striking the heat field with a shriek like metal tearing apart. Steam filled the corridor. The red line flickered. For one precious second, the barrier weakened.

Mara ran.

The heat hit her from both sides. Her boots lost traction on the wet deck. She caught herself against the command locker and slammed her bypass spike into its manual port. Behind her, the crawler forced its legs beneath the half-raised shutter. Metal screamed as it widened the gap.

“Open,” she snarled.

The locker rejected the spike.

“Again,” Juno said.

“I’m trying.”

“Your suit’s broadcasting a thermal fault.”

“I’m aware.”

“Then stop standing there.”

Mara yanked the spike free, ripped open the locker’s inspection panel, and reached inside. Bundles of fiber-optic cable writhed like pale veins. She found the primary relay by touch and crushed it between her fingers.

The locker unlocked.

Inside lay three data wafers, a coil of emergency seals, and a black ceramic case marked with the Dominion’s six-pointed war sigil.

Mara seized the case.

The moment it touched her glove, every light in the dock went white.

A tone sounded inside her helmet. Not the station alarm. Something quieter. More intimate.

ACCESS KEY RECOGNIZED.

Mara froze.

Juno’s voice came through the channel, suddenly stripped of static. “What did it say?”

She looked down at the case. Thin blue lines had appeared across its surface, forming a map in the air above her palm. Veyra’s orbital structure unfolded in translucent layers. Dock Nine. Cryo-bay. Reactor spine. Then a red target marker far beyond the station, buried in the dark side of the planet.

The Sable Reach fleet corridor.

No. Not the corridor.

A command node hidden inside it.

The key wasn’t merely access. It was a handshake. The moment she had taken it, the station had linked her suit to the security network.

“Mara,” Juno said. “Talk to me.”

“The key is active.”

“That’s impossible. It was supposed to be dormant.”

“It’s showing me a target.”

The crawler tore through the shutter.

Mara closed her fist around the case. “I have it.”

A security drone dropped from the ceiling behind her, sleek and spherical, its limbs unfolding as it fell. Its lens fixed on her faceplate.

“Run,” Juno said.

Mara kicked off the locker and launched herself down the corridor. The drone fired. A beam grazed her shoulder, spinning her into the wall. Pain flashed through her arm. She caught a handrail and pulled herself forward as the heat barriers surged back to full intensity.

The dock had become a maze of fire.

She crossed the first field by leaping through the instant between pulses. The second barrier sealed before she reached it. She slammed both palms against the control plate. It sparked, burned through her glove, and opened halfway.

Behind her, the drone accelerated.

“Mara, the cryo-bay is three decks inward,” Juno said. “I can meet you there.”

“I thought you were locked out.”

“I was.”

“What changed?”

“You stole the key.”

The barrier began to close.

Mara shoved herself beneath it. The drone’s beam struck the deck behind her, and the blast hurled her forward. She hit hard, shoulder first, sliding across the maintenance grate. The black case remained locked in her hand.

For half a second, she thought she had made it.

Then something clamped around her ankle.

The drone had extended a capture cable through the narrowing gap. It tightened, dragging her backward toward the heat field.

Mara twisted onto her back. The drone’s lens glowed blue through the steam. A targeting reticle appeared over her chest.

“Juno,” she said.

“I’m here.”

“Open the door.”

“I’m trying.”

The cable pulled. Her suit scraped across the deck. Heat flooded her boots, and the soles began to soften.

Mara drew her knife.

The drone fired.

She cut the cable at the instant the beam struck. The severed line snapped away. The blast scorched her thigh and punched a smoking hole through the deck beside her. She rolled through the barrier as the shutters crashed down.

The drone’s lens vanished behind steel.

For a moment, there was only the hiss of coolant and Mara’s ragged breathing.

Then a small red light appeared on her visor.

IDENTITY ACQUISITION IN PROGRESS.

She looked toward the next door. “Juno.”

His silence lasted too long.

“What?”

“The key is copying your suit registry.”

“Can it be stopped?”

“Not from here.”

“How long?”

“Ten seconds.”

Mara pushed herself upright. Her injured shoulder trembled. The cryo-bay door stood twenty meters ahead, its access panel dark beneath a veil of condensation.

She ran.

The red light on her visor blinked faster. Her name appeared across the lower edge of her display, pulled from a registry she had buried years ago.

MARA KESTREL.

The cryo-bay door opened as she reached it. Cold air struck her like a physical blow. She stumbled across the threshold and turned as the security drone battered the barrier behind her.

Juno stood among the cryo-coffins, weapon raised, his dark hair damp with condensation. His gaze dropped to the smoking tear in her thigh, then lifted to the case in her hand.

“You got it,” he said.

Mara tried to answer, but the station spoke first.

Every speaker in the bay crackled alive.

“Unauthorized intruder identified,” the security system announced. “Mara Kestrel. Former reconnaissance officer. Active hostile designation confirmed.”

The drone’s red targeting beam swept across the cryo-bay glass.

Juno lowered his weapon by an inch. “They know your name.”

Mara looked at the black case, then at the blood beginning to bead beneath the torn fabric of her suit.

“Yes,” she said. “And now they know where I am.”

A transmission burst from the station, carrying her identity through every military channel orbiting Veyra.

The cryo-bay doors sealed behind her.

The key was secure.

The war had her face.

End of chapter one. 7 more chapters and about 16,562 words in the full book.