Page 41 of Star Claimed Omega
Its crew wore the gang’s crimson sigil, some carved into their skin, others stitched into their ragged gear.
Their captain, a grizzled woman with an eye implant and a mouth full of lies, tried to bluff her way out of it.
However, Santi’s team had already decrypted their flight logs.
Smuggled armaments, pulse rifles, disruptor grenades, and illegal plasma torpedoes packed the hold, bound for the plannedSkull-led insurrection onThe Sombra.
The crew got taken into custody and transferred to the brig aboard the Signet dreadnought.
As for theBlack Star Runner, Santi gave the order himself: requisition it, gut it, and melt it down.
Within forty-eight hours, its hull plates and core engine drives lay stripped and reforged at the floating shipyard.
What once had been a high prize smuggler’s vessel now fed the construction of Signet’s next stealth gunner, a sleekpredator-class craft with whisper-thrusters and cloaked weapon bays.
A clear message to theSkullsand any other crew foolish enough to cross the Signet Group:your weapons build our war machines, your mistakes strengthen our armory.
SOLEIL
Soleil stirred beneath a sagging thermal sheet, the static threads clinging to her damp skin like cobwebs.
The chill of the pavement seeped into her bones.
Sleep had only come in snatches, fitful and raw, punctuated by aches in her joints and a fire behind her eyes that refused to dull.
She jerked awake at the sound of shuffling feet and hushed, breathless voices.
‘Lookie what we got here.’
Her eyes blinked open to darkness fractured by neon flickers.
Three men loomed above her.
The first was lanky, with cracked goggles perched on his forehead and a mouth half-collapsed by missing teeth.
The second was thicker, bulkier, his coat patched with synth-plastic and string, his left eye filmed white with old rot.
The third had hair like scorched wire and a twitch in his jaw, his fingers flexing like claws at his sides.
They circled her like carrion birds.
Filth stained their boots. The reek of fermented trash and old blood clung to their clothes.
‘Just a little vagrant,’ the staring one muttered, nudging her makeshift bag with his boot. ‘Might have credits.’
‘Or akokostash,’ the twitching one grinned.
Her body screamed protest as she sat up, dizziness slicing through her skull like a blade. Her limbs felt sodden and heavy, as if they were submerged underwater.
It seemed like some insidious flu gripped her flesh and bones, shaking her, with aches and a raging fever coiling deep in her marrow.
‘Back off,’ she rasped, voice hoarse from sleep and a burning throat.
They smirked.
The bulkier one lunged, grabbing her wrist. ‘Let’s see what you’re hiding, sweetheart.’
Her control snapped.
