CHAPTER ONE

Nishin Reed swept aside the coarse cloth and swaggered into the bar. A fog of violet fumes clung to the ceiling, rippling in waves as if trying to make its escape. The cloying scent of burning narcotics assaulted his nostrils, making him gag. He rubbed his nose, sincerely hoping that stench wouldn’t be the last thing he smelled.

The Griefer’s Muzzle was a shithole. A den of the lost and the looking, but never of the found. The Muzzle was one of thousands of dives on the rocky moon of Eridos: a lawless outpost conveniently ignored by the authorities because, Reed suspected, they found its thriving black market useful on occasion, too.

The ambient music swelled with a twanging that accompanied the sour smoke. Dim lighting fused with the haze, lending the dingy hole an air of mystery it didn’t deserve. Booths and tables ringed a central bar, half full with patrons puffing on their lusk pipes. Typically, Reed would have considered a dump like The Muzzle to be a wholly unremarkable establishment. But not today. Today, it stood a damned fine chance of becoming his final resting place.

He headed for the bar, spotting his first mate, Spencer, nursing a fluorescent orange drink on the far side of the circular counter. One of the other customers had prowled up beside her, leaning in to get her attention. Not the most sensible move if the fellow wanted to keep his genitals intact. Her dirty-blonde hair tended to summon the horny and the heedless, even though the rest of her leather-clad outfit and sidearms screamed fuck off.

Right then, Reed was glad she’d insisted on entering early. If The Operator decided the job had been too messy to leave tongues intact, Spencer would have the advantage of surprise. It wasn’t exactly a risk-free exit strategy, though. The Operator was wily; liked to plant more of its people around the dive, have them pose as customers until the need arose. Only one way Reed could think of to make a beast brandish its claws.

Make it angry.

He leaned on the bar, noting the jagged scars criss-crossing the barman’s rugged face. They weren’t the sort you got from knife or claw; those wounds healed. The angry red tissue writhed like a living thing dwelled beneath the surface, preparing to rip through the skin.

Blood magic. Nasty shit. Guy must’ve pissed off a hematurge. Bad mistake, fucking with a blood mage.

Reed offered the fellow a familiar nod; the sort you gave an acquaintance you knew well and liked, and knew liked you back. All his nod earned was a fierce scowl in reply, probably because neither of those things was true. He beamed anyway. A simple smile had saved his sorry rump more times than he could count, though truth be told, counting wasn’t his forte.

He knew he didn’t cut a dashing figure with his wiry, late-forties frame, drawn face, or wonky-toothed grin. But what he didn’t have in physique or style he compensated for in charisma and confidence.

Reed laid both palms on the counter. “How’s business, miggo?”

“Buy a drink or fuck off.”

So, his sunny personality didn’t always work.

“Your parents know you speak to folk that way?” He tapped his lips. “Although, I’d guess you never knew your father, and I’d wager your mother was always too busy with her own customers to teach you a little discipline.”

The barman narrowed his eyes. “The fuck you say, spacer?” His voice sounded like a worn axle greased with phlegm.

“Too subtle for you, eh?” Reed cupped his hands around his mouth. “I questioned your mother’s parenting skills and insinuated she’s a whore.” He dropped his hands with a shrug. “Though to look at you, her services must’ve come with a steep discount.”

The barman didn’t take a swing, nor did the scarred fellow hurl abuse. Instead, a wicked sneer carved a dreadful line through those blood-red scars. The only move he made was to raise his hand in the air.

Chairs scraped the dusty floors of the den as a dozen steely-eyed spacers rose from their seats. None of them were the ones partaking of the lusk. The Operator’s goons, helpfully proclaiming their positions.

Spencer’s face shouted louder than words. Too many, Nish. Too damned many. She gave him a slight shake of her head, her pupils tracking toward the exit. They hadn’t factored in half the bar playing protectorate. Then again, Reed had never been keen on mathematics. Too many damned numbers.

Reed spread his hands for the barman. “Come on now, old boy. I don’t think The Operator would appreciate you marring the goods. It’ll be wanting to see me.”

“Enough!” Synthesised speech emanated from the murk. “Send that fool over here.”

The Operator’s guards retook their seats at the command, each one blending back into the crowd and the smoke. Reed raised two fingers to his brow in mock salute to the barman, then leaned over the counter without looking.

“Give my regards to your mother.”

The man looked appropriately enraged, but Reed couldn’t appreciate the jibe. Insults lost their appeal when your insides might soon paint the floor.

Heading for the back, the haze parted to reveal a jet-black sphere about the size of a Dozian beach ball. A cushion propped up The Operator in the booth farthest from the entrance, no doubt to hide from idle eyes. Grey tentacles bulged from its cybernetic shell, the appendages flopping haphazardly over the furniture, leaving slick trails of slime everywhere they slithered. The glossy midnight casing was plain apart from a series of transparent portholes dotting the upper hemisphere. Silver ringed each glassy window, the interior as dark as the surrounding metal.

The Operator was not a pretty puppy. Looking at the thing always made Reed want to cup his balls. He slid into the booth, but only far enough to make a quick getaway should the need arise.

Three circular ports swelled with yellow light. “You fucked me, Reed.”

Scratching at his stubble, he made a show of examining the cyborg’s housing. “The ladies tell me I’m gifted, but even for me, that would be some kind of feat.”

A gamble, goading a crime lord with a known penchant for decapitation and dismemberment, but in Reed’s experience, playing the victim tended to be prophetic. Acting the fool, though? The rules of the game changed.

“Clever words are not worth much in The Muzzle,” The Operator noted. “The most they will earn you is a blade in your guts.”

That voice always reminded Reed of an electrified guitar. One with rusted strings and a drummer in the driving seat.

“Cleverness isn’t the only thing undervalued around here from what I can tell.” He sniffed at the air. “Soap is another.”

“You assured me you could make the grab without raising an alarm. The contract stipulated zero casualties.”

“Mistakes were made.”

“You slagged the wrong guy, you fool!”

“Wrong, right. Always a matter of perspective, I say.”

“The rebels have put a price on your head.”

The comment made Reed struggle to maintain his casual veneer. He felt his smirk slipping away. “Why would the rebellion give a shit about me?”

The Operator didn’t respond immediately. Several of its eye-holes flickered in a curious sequence, like it couldn’t quite believe what it had heard. It emitted a noise in a rolling strum that Reed recognised as laughter.

“You do not know,” the cyborg wheezed.

“Know what?”

“Did you bother to learn the name of the man you murdered on Apogea?”

The statement caused a memory to stir, summoning an image of pristine blue irises staring up blankly from an expression frozen in agony and disbelief. An expression likely evoked by the gaping hole the plasma shot from Reed’s Helgrum Splitter had carved through the man’s chest.

He scowled. “I don’t bother with names when someone kills one of my crew.”

“Ah . . . so it was justice?” it asked with exaggerated sibilance. “Or perhaps, vengeance?”

“Who was he, then?” Reed tightened his fist to keep the strain from his face. “Go on. You know you’ll enjoy the telling.”

The Operator emitted an almost musical chuckle. “You vacuous idiot. You slagged The Dawnstar!”

The words made no sense to Reed for a few discordant seconds, their meaning muddled by turbulent bewilderment as he tried to reconcile the memory with the news. The old bastard’s glacial demeanour had seemed a little familiar . . .

Oh, shit.

Shit shit shit.

Reed stopped himself from spinning in the chair to gauge Spencer’s reaction at the revelation. She’d no doubt slunk near enough to the booth to have overheard. He already knew what her response would be.

Fury. Fear. And fucking outrage.

Jethro Savistor, The Dawnstar. The rebellion’s towering torchbearer, leading the fight for a galaxy free of the Clave. By Sol’s sweating sack, how was Reed supposed to have recognised that bastard when he’d been dressed in rags instead of that garish battle armour he paraded around in on the widebeams? Even the man’s signature silver locks had been wrapped in fraying cloth.

Reed rubbed his forehead between his thumb and index finger, not bothering to hide the gesture. He understood why The Operator mocked him, and perhaps he should even laugh himself. He’d already been on the Clave’s radar for all his smuggling and double-dealing, but now the rebellion had him in their sights for murdering their poster boy.

Recovering from The Operator’s revelation was like nosediving from orbit with a shredded parachute. Fortunately, enough adrenaline coursed through his veins to make him levitate.

“That blue-eyed prick killed a member of my crew,” Reed growled, remembering the white-hot anger that had seared him senseless when he’d found Lia lying dead at the murderer’s feet. “I don’t care whether he was The Dawnstar or a dawn turd, that’s a guarantee of retribution where I’m from.”

“I hope your anger is half so righteous when they catch up with you.”

“How could the rebels even know I was involved?” He shifted in the chair. “We were in the depths of a secret facility on Apogea—the beating heart of the Clave.”

A pallid tentacle slapped the tabletop. “I told them. My reach is far further than you can imagine. When a bomb is armed, I prefer to be holding the detonator.”

The bastard had sold him out, but that alone wasn’t a surprise. The Operator was as canny as it was ruthless. You didn’t get to its position by being benevolent.

“You going to try cashing in on their bounty, then?” Reed leaned forward, his right hand dropping surreptitiously underneath the table. He didn’t touch the Helgrum Splitter holstered at his hip. Not yet, anyway. No need to make a situation bloody before the spillage became unequivocal.

“Without Savistor to bind them, the rebel factions bicker over his successor. A power vacuum is a poor place to seek payment. The reward is paltry compared to the risk.”

For the first time, he wished The Operator had a face he could read instead of having to interpret the quivering of its tentacles or the peculiarities of its portholes. The truth was, if The Operator wanted those credits, it had enough goons planted around the bar to take him and still have enough left over to laugh about it.

Fishing around in his pocket, he drew out the metallic sphere that had cost Lia her life. The device was midnight blue and smooth all over—except for a recessed channel a few millimetres wide that divided the surface into two hemispheres. He still didn’t know what the thing was, but neither did he care. Why the fuck had The Dawnstar wanted this thing, too?

Reed slid it across the table, holding on so it didn’t roll away. “Let’s settle up then, shall we?”

The Operator’s tentacles recoiled. “The buyer cancelled the contract the moment they heard what you had done. You think anyone would purchase an item connected to The Dawnstar’s demise? You must have lost your mind out there in the empty.”

“I lost a friend on that Sol-damned job—never mind she was my pilot, too—and you’re not even going to pay?”

“You have misunderstood the dynamics of our relationship, I see,” it buzzed in monotone. “I do not owe you. I do not pay for incompetence. I do not pay for failure. You owe me, Nishin Reed. And I always collect. In funds or appendages.”

Reed’s blood froze as if he’d been suspended in stasis. Damn him if he didn’t feel the creature leering at him behind those lights. Of course a demented polypod would delight in removing the limbs of its enemies. His Helgrum began to feel like a real option.

“You are lucky,” The Operator hissed. “This is a payment with your own payday attached. I have another job, one that Savistor himself had been contracted to fulfil. Since he is no longer capable, I have need of another. Fitting that you should inherit his leavings.”

Reed’s muscles tensed. A job for The Dawnstar? A job for the rebellion, then. Why would The Operator want to hire him to work for the same people that had slapped a price on his head? A job fishier than a can of clonotuna.

“Not interested.” Reed forced himself to lean back, sliding his left elbow over the booth, his fingers still wrapped around the blue metal ball. He kept his right hand at his hip below the table.

“So quick to dismiss. You did not even ask the price.”

“The dead can’t spend.”

It waggled a tentacle in his direction. “Yet you want to hire a verser, do you not? Expensive tastes, Reed. Very expensive tastes.”

He stiffened. It was true, right enough, but how in Sol’s sagging tits had this oversized testicle found that out? None but Spencer knew Reed’s true goal. Lia had known, too, but she was gone now. Had any of them discussed it somewhere The Operator had ears?

“Come now,” the cyborg continued. “I put a great deal of trust in the crews I contract. You think I would not do my research on you first? The heart of a being lies in what they most desire. Understand that, and you can manipulate every single beat.” It paused, one of its exhausts ejecting a burst of gas. “What is it you seek out in the Untethered Worlds beyond the Lattice? I know you originate from somewhere in that great emptiness. Did you leave someone behind when the slavers stole you away?”

The question hit him like a hammer. Too damned close to the mark. His fingers twitched beside the Helgrum, itching to press the barrel into one of The Operator’s glowing holes and show the slimy bastard what it meant to prod Nishin Reed.

He faked a grin, though he doubted he kept his malice from the expression. “If we’re done here, I’ll be on my way.”

Reed slipped the ball back into his pocket and sprang out of the booth, eyeing the other patrons. None of them appeared to be paying any attention, except for Spencer. As expected, she looked primed for homicide.

“Five hundred thousand credits.” The Operator’s statement bolted him to the floor. “Enough to hire your verser, with a little left over to while away the time on whatever twisted delights you crave.”

Reed tried to contain his shock. An extraordinary sum for a single job. Even after splitting it with the crew, he’d have enough to pay a verser to return him home to Semmatar and evade the cruel toll of relativity.

His mouth went dry. It might not be too late. Not yet.

He hesitated, then slid back into the booth. “What’s the job?”

In his peripheral vision, he caught Spencer winging her way around the bar until she was in eyesight. Reed avoided looking at her. He knew what she’d say; he could practically hear her hissing in his ear: It’s too many credits, Nish. Any job that pays that much has a noose attached.

Reed felt The Operator’s triumph radiating from it as it replied, “Another package collection. Nothing more than that.”

“Don’t fuck with me. What’s the catch?”

The Operator paused, undoubtedly for effect. “The package is located on Noturus Saa.”

There it was. The half-a-million-credit answer.

Noturus Saa. A failed colony world, devastated by the Aurach when their treaty negotiations with the Clave had soured, triggering the war that still raged at the edge of the Lattice. It was one of the most protected planets in the entire galaxy now, cordoned off by the Clave, purportedly due to unmanageable environmental risks. Whether that meant the Aurach had glassed the surface, poisoned the atmosphere, or shat in the groundwater, Noturus Saa had become a cautionary tale of what it meant to try and deal with the aliens.

It wasn’t a noose attached to the job. It was an interstellar warhead, aimed right between his eyes.

“And the package?” Reed asked.

“They would not offer that information, hence the fee.”

“This makes no sense. Why would the rebellion contact you with a job for The Dawnstar?”

“The rebellion is merely the recipient of the package. The client wants it delivered directly to the rebel leadership, and insisted that The Dawnstar take care of the matter personally.”

No point asking for the identity of this mysterious buyer. The Operator never revealed that information.

“If they wanted The Dawnstar for the job, you don’t think they’re going to be a little miffed when you hire someone else to do it?”

“I have already explained the situation to them. They understood the inherent difficulties in contracting a dead man.”

Reed narrowed his eyes. “Why me?”

“You are my best contractor.” Another manufactured chuckle. “You truly are the only man for the job.”

Despite the obvious sarcasm, he felt himself sit straighter. He caught Spencer shaking her head in the background.

“You are also,” The Operator hummed, “the only one dumb enough to agree.”

Okay, that hurt. But there were other problems.

“That entire system is quarantined,” he said. “We’ll never get transit access through the Lattice node, so unless your client can wait a few years for us to get there and back the old-fashioned way, they’re shit outta luck.”

“I will pass on your ship’s credentials to my network, should you accept. They will ensure you have sufficient authorisation for one inbound and one outbound jump.”

That made Reed raise an eyebrow. The node near Noturus Saa was about as restricted as it got in the Lattice. Either The Operator was full of shit, or it had agents placed higher in the Clave than he’d expected. It answered another question though: why the client chose to hire Savistor through the black marketeer. Who else could get access to the Noturus system?

“But mind, Reed. If you choose to decline, I will require an alternative method of payment for your last fuckup.”

A job murkier than a barrel of Aurach piss. Promises of a pot of gold somewhere in the sludge, with a threat of castration if he didn’t agree. Spencer would prefer to shoot their way out than sign on for such a reckless mission. She’d split him from crotch to sternum if he accepted.

“Deal.” Reed slapped his palm on the table. “I’ll fetch this mysterious package, but I want half now, half on delivery.”

Several of The Operator’s eye-holes flickered in a pattern Reed interpreted as joy. “I am afraid the stipulation of this particular contract is for full payment only upon delivery.”

The spherical snake was enjoying this. The only thing this job had going for it was the stratospheric reward, but what guarantee did he have it would ever be paid? No one in their right mind would take the gig, and the bastard knew that. Unfortunately, Reed hadn’t been gifted with a sensible mind, and The Operator knew that, too.

One of the cyborg’s tentacles dropped out of view, then reappeared clutching a navchip.

“These coordinates are four-dimensional,” it said. “Timing is critical. There is a window in which you can successfully retrieve the package at the location. Too early and it will not be available. Too late and it will have been destroyed. Try to be punctual.”

As it slid the navchip across the table, Reed could feel Spencer’s infuriated gaze burning a hole in his chest. She was practically incandescent. It was going to be a fun ride to Noturus Saa. He grabbed the chip and slipped it into his pocket.

“If you manage to collect the package without dying,” The Operator continued in a light tone, “then delivery is to be made to the rebellion at the second location encoded into the navchip. I recommend one of your people attends to that particular portion of the task, rather than yourself.”

If they managed to survive Noturus Saa, then they still might be killed upon delivery. Fabulous. Spencer wasn’t going to let him forget this one. Provided they survived, of course.

The Operator signalled the barman. “I shall consider this a balancing of the scales between us, Reed. You complete this task, and I will forget about your involvement in the disaster on Apogea. And if you fail, I will extract sufficient joy from your demise to appease my displeasure.” Its modulated tone deepened. “Flee, though . . . flee . . . and I will find you.”

The threat found its mark somewhere in Reed’s abdomen. He had no doubt it was true. Those slimy tentacles crept much further than The Muzzle.

“I’ll get it done,” he replied. “Don’t you worry your pretty shell.”

A server wandered over with two drinks of milky-white liquid. Reed only gave her a cursory glance, his attention focused on The Operator. The cybernetic beast liked to seal each deal with a shared toast of mendalion wine; a brew fermented from the native flora of the nearby planet.

Reed raised the cup, holding his breath. He despised alcohol, avoided it like a blood mage. But there’d be no deal if he didn’t drink, so he did his best to toss it past his tastebuds. It was reminiscent of gin. If the gin had been distilled from earwax and old toenails.

The Operator swept up its own drink in a sticky tentacle and tipped it through an open port in its polished chassis, the milky liquid disappearing somewhere inside. Reed half suspected the cyborg collected the wine in a reservoir within, unconsumed, so the prick could laugh about it later.

The server bent down to collect the empty cups, and Reed stood to go. He froze halfway to standing, catching sight of the server’s face. He stared hard at the marking she bore on her left cheek.

A brand. Seared into her flesh in a design that mirrored the one Reed kept hidden underneath his straggly beard. A brand that reminded him of long, torturous days mining the salt plains of Cradan IV.

A fucking slave brand. It could only mean one thing. The Operator was a Sol-cursed slaver.

Dimly, he heard Spencer curse. “Oh, shit.”

Reed’s Helgrum appeared in his fist as if a verser had ported it there, the cyborg right between the sights.