Page 44 of Star Claimed Omega
She was fading fast, every breath a freakin’ struggle.
Then it happened.
Her wrist ignited.
The pain shot like a lightning strike up her arm, wrenching her awake in agony.
Her eyes dilated as the skin around her lower arm throbbed and the nanite cloud rose from her skin.
It unfurled into a bracelet that gripped her wrist.
It powered on as a holo burst into life above it, into a face that coalesced in crimson static.
‘Scarletta!’ the visage roared. ‘I need an update!’
‘Fokkyou,’ she muttered.
The figure leaned in, eyes dark with fury. ‘Don’t disrespect me bitch. Give me what I want or else -.’
‘I, I can’t,’ she whispered, chuckling weakly, lips cracked and dry.
‘You will.’
The last thing she heard before the vision began to glitch was the growled promise:
‘Get up. Get moving. Or I’ll send my wolves to flay you into action.’
Her eyes rolled back.
Soleil collapsed, unconscious, into the steam and silence of the alley, the echoes of her secret name hissing in the cold.
SANTIAGO
Santi was having the shittiest of days.
Being XO of a massive dreadnought wasn’t for the fainthearted, but today tested even his polished steel nerves, especially on the back of his prison stint.
A weapons shipment scheduled for Sector E24 vanished mid-transit.
The Signet crew at the drop site reported a ‘spectral interference event,’ which, without evidence, sat between a valid account and a riveting bedtime tale.
ARed Skull’sskiff attempted to ram one of Signet’s patrol boats in retaliation for their recentfokk-up, and lost.
A trainee security officer on deck duty arrivedkoko-highat work.
Lost in a hallucinatory meltdown, he fired his laser gun through the medical bay.
Santi spent half the morning working with Rion, the chief medic, to move patients and file an incident report.
One of Signet’s AI couriers developed sentience mid-route and tried to elope with a drone in the docking hangar.
To top it all off, Kaal and Boaz almost come to blows during a tactical drill.
He’d scarcely had time to piss, let alone breathe.
By the time evening bled into night, Santi was a coil of frayed nerves and simmering tension.
Which justified the bottle of forty-year-old single malt clutched in his hand and his favorite cheroot tucked behind his ear.
