Andi whirled around, her face a mask of pain as she swung her fist at him.
Dex ducked reflexively, but the hit connected at the last moment. He gasped at the pinch of pain in his neck. Then a languorous warmth flowed through him, as if he was sinking into the hot springs of Adhira.
Dex reached up slowly, dreamily, his fingers clumsily removing the empty syringe buried in his skin. The same syringe that had just been sitting on the bedside table, left there by Lon, should Andi wake in too much pain. The syringe full of soduum, a potent pain medication.
“Why?” Dex gasped. But he should have expected something like this. The syringe fell with a soft clink to the floor, and Dex followed, hardly aware as his knees hit the ground. He knew he only had moments before the soduum would steal him away. Warmth swam through his veins, too fast for him to ignore, already beckoning him to enter the folds of deep sleep.
He heard gentle footsteps and ragged breathing as Andi stepped closer. When he looked up, her features were already melding together, fuzzy at the edges as she stood over him, her chest bleeding bright red in the stark med bay lights. A trickle of blood seeped out from the wrappings, staining her shirt as it slid down her abdomen.
“I’m sorry, Dex,” Andi said, her voice like a funeral dirge as his head hit the floor. “There is no me without them.”
When she left the med bay, she was no longer Androma Racella.
The Bloody Baroness stepped into the halls of the Marauder, a captain who would tear apart the skies to rescue her crew.
CHAPTER 2
ANDI
Everything hurt.
Andi’s bones ached, her muscles screamed, and the wound in her chest pleaded for her to stop moving. But images of her crew flashed within her mind, propelling her endlessly forward through the silver halls of the ship.
If she could just get back to Arcardius...she knew she would find a way to save them.
Lira. Breck. Gilly.
Dex’s words echoed in her mind as she stumbled into the small hallway leading toward the bridge, reverberating through her skull as she held her palm up against the blue access panel to the right of the door.
They joined with Nor.
Andi shook her head, willing away the treacherous notion. Her crew would never join with the queen of Xen Ptera, no matter how threatened. But what had Dex said about them...changing?
Then the door slid open, and all thoughts were driven from her mind as Andi darted inside, quickly scanning her palm on the interior access panel and entering a command to seal off the bridge. She exhaled, for what seemed to be the first time since she woke up, as the door slid shut behind her. It wouldn’t keep Dex out forever—after all, the ship had been his for years—but he’d still have a hell of a time getting in here once he came to.
For a moment, Andi rested her forehead against the cool metal of the door, which was at such odds with her flaming flesh. She closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath, then turned to look at the row of seats where her crew had once sat.
Seats that were now so terribly empty.
Her vision, once murky from the drugs, slowly started to clear as Andi made her way toward the front of the bridge. A groan slipped its way past her lips when she finally sat down in the pilot’s seat. It felt so wrong sitting there, as if she were taking the space that had always belonged to Lira. A space that she had no right to claim, after what had happened to Kalee. But Andi pushed her discomfort aside, replacing it with the fierce need to get her girls back. How she felt about piloting didn’t matter—not when their lives were at risk.
That was, if Queen Nor hadn’t killed them already.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, she vanquished it immediately. They were alive. They had to be. She couldn’t afford to think otherwise; couldn’t deal with that pain. It would hurt more than being skinned alive and slowly burned until her bloody flesh crisped over.
She had to save them, even if she got herself killed in the process.
Trying and dying was better than not trying at all.
With every second counting against her, Andi willed her aching arms up onto the console and slowly, painstakingly entered the coordinates for Arcardius. The navigation holoscreen began to flicker before her eyes, highlighted by the swirling, shimmering clouds outside the varillium walls of the ship.
The dense fog of color obscured Andi’s view of the stars, and the sight of it sent a shiver of dread down her spine. “Memory?” she asked breathlessly.
The soothing female voice of the Marauder’s control system came to life around her. “How may I assist you, Captain?”
“Where exactly are we?”
There was a long pause before Memory responded. “The navigation system is currently off-line. I am unable to determine our precise location at this time.”
Andi stared at the dancing whorls of pink and gold mist, a sudden suspicion dawning. “Memory, what was the destination of the last hyperspace jump?”
“The last coordinates entered were for a location just outside the Xintra Nebula.”
Andi’s hands began to shake with rage. Her ship was inside a damned nebula. A massive pocket of space filled with gases and debris that rendered the Marauder’s tracking and navigation systems utterly useless. A place only the most skilled pilots could hope to fly through without losing their way.
And not just any nebula—the Xintra Nebula. Clear across the galaxy from the Phelexos System, and Arcardius. As far away as she could possibly be from her girls.
Andi choked out a humorless laugh. She was going to murder Dex when he woke up.
The sound of a pounding fist on the bridge’s door made her jump, sending a wave of pain crashing through her body. A muffled shout echoed from the other side. “Andi, please, let me in!”
The unfamiliar voice had Andi rising from her seat and instinctively reaching for her twin swords. She cursed softly when she realized that they were likely still in the med bay, and began scanning the room for another weapon. Surely Gilly or Breck had stashed a gun in here somewhere.
The person outside hammered on the door again, more urgently this time. “Andi, it’s Lon. Open the door! We need to talk.”
Andi’s knees went weak with relief. Lon. She’d forgotten that Lira had arranged for him to be moved onto the Marauder during the Ucatoria Ball, to speed the crew’s departure from Arcardius after they finished their guard duties for General Cortas. He must have already been on the ship when Dex brought her on board after the attack.
And, most important, he was an ally. Surely Lon wanted to rescue his sister just as much as she did. Together, the two of them could convince Dex to pilot them out of here and back to Arcardius.
The anger and adrenaline that had carried her thus far was quickly dissipating, though, and the distance to the access panel suddenly seemed a lot farther than it had earlier. Andi sank back into the pilot’s seat, cursing under her breath at the state her body was in, and said, “Memory, unseal the damn door before Lon pummels it to death.”