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  “There’s a gap between the Mercy and the Intrepid,” she says, pointing out two battleships along the far side of the circle that’s keeping The Impossible from escaping certain death. “We can make it out between them, hopefully without getting noticed.”

  I steer the pod in that direction. “What’s the closest outer planet? These pods aren’t made for long-distance travel. We’ll need to ditch it and find something else to fly as soon as possible.”

  “Hedone,” Vega replies, tracking it on the map.

  “Oh, the Red Light planet,” I say. “Perfect. We’ll fit right in with our hedonistic tendencies.”

  “Speak for yourself. Opalite.”

  The pod’s radar registers the incoming blast a second later. I tug us out of the line of fire as a chunk of opalite carves a path through space.

  “Have they spotted us?” I ask, squinting at the fleet of battleships. “I was counting on The Impossible to keep them busy.”

  Vega taps her panel, brows furrowed. “We’re clear. It was a fragment from a bigger missile aimed at Saint Rita.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  The pod chugs along at a steady rate. Amongst the massive battleships, no one notices our tiny craft as we make our escape. Surprisingly, The Impossible holds its own against the IA, firing blast after blast in a circle to strike each of its opponents. IA doesn’t waste ammunition, but they also don’t seem too concerned with taking The Impossible down swiftly.

  “What are they doing?” I glance through the cockpit’s glass for a glimpse at the battle. “It’s like they’re giving Saint Rita time to reload. Are they trying to get her to waste opalite before they take her down?”

  “Who knows?” Vega says. “It’s not our concern. Focus on getting us out of here, Fee.”

  I take her advice and put all I’ve got into getting the pod beyond the circle of battleships. The closer we get to the Mercy and the Intrepid, the more my anxiety ramps up. My knuckles go white as I grip the joysticks as tightly as possible.

  “Here’s hoping we don’t die,” I say, steering us into the space between the two massive ships. Darkness falls as we travel into the shadows, and the pod slips unnoticed into the space beyond the battle.

  “Are we out?” Vega says, her tone marbled with disbelief. “Did we make it?”

  “I think so.”

  We drift away from the lights, both of us stunned. My fingers relax around the joysticks as I turn to look at Vega.

  “We did it,” I say.

  She smiles at me. “Yeah, we did.” Her smile fades. “I’m so sorry, Ophelia.”

  “For what?”

  “This.”

  She lunges across the pod and plunges something into my neck. I punch her ribs, but my hands feel heavier and heavier by the second. As Vega backs off, I reach for my throat. A rough patch rests against my skin, and I can’t peel it off. I go limp, my arms and legs like jelly, and the pod begins to drop without a pilot.

  “What did you do to me?” I say, my words slurring together. “What do you want?”

  Vega hauls my sagging body out of the pilot’s seat so she can take it for herself. She catches the pod before it falls too far and pulls a u-turn, steering us back toward the IA battleships.

  “You’re fine,” she says. “It’s just a tranquilizer.”

  “You bitch.” I force the words out as my vision begins to blur. “You’ve been planning this from the beginning. To what end?”

  “You were the goal, Fee.” She reaches across the cockpit to pull my necklace out of my flight jacket. The data disk sways back and forth. “It turns out your mother downloaded some pretty crucial information on the disk she gave you. Guess she never planned you’d go rogue. Anyway, I was sent to get you back.”

  She pilots the pod with absolute precision, taking us right into the shadow of the Intrepid. The IA battleship has stopped firing on The Impossible and backed out of the circle, as if waiting for us to ask for entry. When we approach, a bay door along the side of the ship opens, and Vega steers the pod inside. As soon as she lands and the bay doors seal, IA Defense officers spill in from another part of the ship and surround the escape pod. Each and every one of them has an R-One pointed in our direction. Vega pops the cockpit and stands slowly, her arms raised over her head.

  “Intelligence operator Vega Major,” she says. “I have completed my mission. I have brought in the rogue Defense officer Ophelia Holmes.”

  When she pulls me out of the cockpit, it’s like she’s lifting a hunting trophy. I have no power over my body. The IA operators close in, and the only thing I know for sure is I’m completely and totally screwed.

  Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story!

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  The Impossible Book 1

  1

  Whilst training to defend the galaxy from undefined alien outsiders, the International Armament of Pavo beats one lesson into your head over and over again: if you get stuck in a shit storm, don’t panic. The reasoning behind the method’s pretty simple. You panic, you die. Keep a level head, and your odds of surviving go up that much. The thing IA doesn’t tell you though is just how stressful it is to get stuck in a shit storm, and it’s pretty damn tough to keep that panic from bubbling up.

  My entire body feels like mud, including my brain, a nice little side effect of the tranquilizers IA pumped into my bloodstream a few hours ago. Everything’s a blur. One minute, I was launching an escape pod off a pirate ship with my best friend at my side as we prepared to flee everything holding us back, and the next, she’d planted a patch on my neck that injected non-fatal neurotoxins into my brain that burned like the bites of a hundred fire ants. The last thing I remember is landing in the cargo bay of a monstrous IA battleship and panicking—yes, panicking—as a horde of Defense officers surrounded the pod and waited for me to get out, every blaster pointed in my direction.

  You’d think an ex-member of the IA Defense department would receive a warmer welcome home, but considering I’d been traveling the galaxy with Saint Rita—Pavo’s most notorious pirate captain—and peddling massive amounts of opalite—space mineral mined from asteroids to power weapons—the current leaders of IA aren’t exactly bringing me aboard The Intrepid with a Welcome Home banner. I’m a criminal, and IA’s standard operating procedure is to treat criminals like criminals.

  The room they stuck me in is all white. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the furniture. It’s a sick bay, private and separated from the ship’s communal hospital wing. There are only two reasons you got your own room in this wing. Either you’re highly contagious and you’ve been quarantined so as to not spread your possibly alien infection to other members of IA staff, or you’re a high-priority individual. That second category splits off too. High-priority refers to individuals of utmost importance to IA or people who are considered too dangerous to keep in the hospital bay with everyone else. I assume I’ve been placed in the latter of the two.

  I flutter my eyelids open and quickly shut them again. As I suspected, the room is guarded. Two Defense officers flank the door. My heart thuds, and the monitor next to my bed announces its sudden increase in rhythm in annoying beeps
. One of the guards’ boots rasp against the sterile floor, like he’s noticed the change. I breathe through my nose. Don’t panic. The guard’s footsteps click toward me. I ball my right hand into a fist. They haven’t thought to strap me to the bed, relying on the tranquilizers instead. It’s a mistake. The footsteps get closer.

  When I feel the guard’s breath on my cheek, I swing my opposite arm straight over my chest and whack him right on the temple with the side of my fist. He goes down like a rock, slumped across my sheets like a mourner grieving over a relative’s deathbed. The second guard panics. Another mistake. Clearly, that IA lesson didn’t stick in his head. Instead of immediately calling for backup—which is protocol in situations like these—he tries to contain me first, but I’ve already ripped the R-One blaster off the unconscious guard and fired it across the room at the conscious one. The opalite bullet embeds itself in the guard’s thigh. Blood spurts as the mineral enters his body, turning his veins into luminescent indigo glitter. If he doesn’t die of blood loss, he’ll suffer from opalite poisoning for the rest of his life.

  No alarm sounds. These idiots underestimated me. I shake off my clinical gown and steal the IA-issued uniform from the guy who isn’t bleeding all over his. It’s too big for me, but oversized pants are better than no pants. I roll up the bottoms to keep my feet free and forego his boots. It will slow me down to slip around in his shoes. I have a better chance barefoot. I pat down each guard, relieving them of tactical knives, stun guns, and extra ammunition. I hold a fresh opalite bullet up to my eye. It’s gorgeous. Pure indigo gemstone, heated and pressed to form the ideal ballistic. It’s nothing like the cheap dust we pounded our opalite into aboard The Impossible to make it last longer. I make sure the R-One blaster is fully loaded before shouldering it. Then I steal the guard’s helmet—idiot wasn’t wearing it when I offloaded into his temple—and pull down the face shield.

  The door isn’t locked. Mistake number three? Four? I’m losing count. It’s almost like they want me to escape. I sneak into the hallway. The blinding white corridors stretch miles in either direction, but finding a route to the escape pods isn’t my biggest problem. It’s the team of Defense officers guarding the room. By my count, there’s ten of them, but the ship is bound to be crawling with others.

  “Marty?” One of them—a younger guy with a shock of blond hair and eyes like fresh honey—approaches me. “Is everything okay in there? Why’d you drop your face shield?”

  His eyes flicker to my bare feet and rolled-up pants, and he realizes his mistake. Unfortunately for him, I’m quicker on the draw, raising my borrowed R-One at chest level and getting a shot off before he even reaches for his weapon. Everything turns to chaos as the remaining Defense officers spring into action.

  “Go, go, go!”

  “We have a hostile situation, mid deck, hospital bay!”

  “Subdue her! Fire, fire!”

  I use the kid as a shield and fire around him. No shot goes wasted, each one landing somewhere on the body of an opposing Defense officer. Indigo glitter fills the air as R-One after R-One fires. I tap the button on my helmet to deploy the built-in filter mask and take a deep, opalite-free breath. A slippery guard ducks under my next blast and tackles me, separating me from my human shield. I pull the tactical knife from my belt and slam it into his torso. He gasps and rolls off me, just in time for me to aim the R-One at another incoming guard. That’s five down in less than a minute and five more to go, but backup’s on its way. I duck and roll across the hallway to avoid another blast and fire in the direction of its owner. The R-One clicks and jams.

  “Piece of shit,” I mutter. “They don’t make them like they used to.”

  I toss the gun aside and lunge at the next officer. His eyes go wide, and I can see the inexperience in the dark shadows of his pupils.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t kill you,” I tell him. I use his own gun to shoot him in the foot then confiscate the weapon from him when he hits the ground. “But you should probably review basic combat rules if you want to survive your next encounter with a criminal.”

  To his credit, he tries to trip me as I hop over him. I stomp on his already-injured foot as I raise his gun and take out the next two guards. Only two left between me and an exit door. Much to their surprise, I sprint straight toward them.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” I puff.

  I launch myself at the first guy, bringing both feet up mid-air and planting them against his chest. He goes flying into the guard behind him as I land on my back. All the wind gets knocked out of my lungs, and I aim the R-One with blurry imprecision, but the blasts land anyway. The final two guards go down, and I’m free to walk away.

  I trade blasters again, finding the one with the most ammunition left, and take a sharp left through the exit door. It’s a dark metal staircase, extending for miles both up and down. This battleship is huge, easily three times the size of The Impossible. Thankfully, IA’s safety regulation requires each ship to mark its emergency escape routes on every level. A red panel across from the exit door tells me exactly how to get to the escape pods in the hull bay.

  “Thank you, International Armament.” I give the red panel the official IA salute before I start down the steps, taking them three at a time. “Good night and good luck.”

  The cold metal makes my feet go numb. Five decks down, the ship’s alarm finally goes off. Flashing red lights accompany the screeching siren, and I can hear guards bustling about beyond the doors of the stairs. A few officers pour into the stairwell a floor below me. I keep going, saluting them as I run past.

  “Hospital wing, fellas,” I order in a curt voice. “Seven decks up. Be prepared. It’s gnarly up there.”

  Confused, the team watches as I continue down, as if they’re all wondering which of their superiors I am. Then, to my utter satisfaction, they head upstairs. My laugh ricochets off the walls.

  I’m not so lucky on the first deck. The entrance to the hull bay is guarded by another team of ten. They all listen intently to their earpieces, no doubt absorbing the story several decks up. Each one of them is on high alert, weapons at the ready, scanning every inch of the entryway for a criminal. For me.

  I pause in the stairway to catch my breath and pray to the heavens I make it out of here alive. I check to make sure my R-One is locked and loaded. One more deep breath. A sulfurous whiff of opalite fills my nose. I’m ready to go.

  I blast out of the stairway and fire at will. The officers go down one after the other. Even prepared for a fight, they aren’t trained well enough to go up against someone like me. The downside is the tranquilizer still fighting its way out of my system. When one Defense officer fires right after another, I’m too slow to avoid the second hit. The opalite blast clips my lead arm, knocking my R-One out of my grasp. My arm swings, useless.

  “Stay down!” the guard orders, stomping toward me as he glares at me over the top of his blaster. “I’ll kill you if I have to.”

  “No, you won’t,” I reply. “I’m Ophelia Holmes. I’m the head of Intelligence’s daughter. I’m ninety-nine percent sure your direct orders are not to kill me.”

  The officer comes closer, the barrel of his gun glowing indigo. It’s all powered up and ready to go. If he pulls the trigger, I’m dead for sure.

  “You’re a pirate, a thief, and a liar.”

  “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child—”

  “Shut up!”

  “You’re right. That song is a bit outdated.”

  He stops right in front of me and levels his R-One at my nose. From here, I can see the patch on his uniform with his last name on it. Ross. “I can’t wait to be the one to deliver you to Intelligence. Sucks, doesn’t it? To get this far and not make it out. What were you thinking?”

  “Ross—can I call you Ross?” I glance at his shoes, unconcerned and completely nonchalant. “Your boot’s untied.”

  He looks.

  I slam the R-One into his chin. It knocks his head back, stunning him, but his w
illpower keeps him from dropping the gun. When he attempts to aim it again, I step onto his thigh and swivel around, wrapping my legs around his waist and my good arm around his throat. With a solid yank, I throw his balance off, and we both go tumbling to the floor. He finally drops the gun to scrabble at my arm instead. His face and neck turn bright red as he fights for breath. I tighten my hold.

  “Ophelia!”

  The familiar voice startles me, and I loosen my grasp on the Defense officer for a second too long. He gasps and flips me over. I land flat on my back, tipping my head to see the owner of the voice standing at the opposite end of the entryway.

  “Ugh,” I groan. “Vega Major. You’re like a cockroach that won’t croak.”

  The tall, curly-haired woman with delicate cheekbones and a hardened look in her hazel eyes jerks her head at the fallen Defense officer. “Get out of here, Ross.”

  Ross stumbles to his feet, trips over his fallen comrades, and dodders out of the entryway, clutching his throat like I’ve wounded him for life. Vega approaches me. She holds an R-One too.

  “You’re dressed for Defense,” I say, not moving from my supine position. “A little odd considering you trained for Intelligence.”

  “After graduation, IA cross-trained a select group of cadets who showed promise in both Defense and Intelligence,” she replies. “Apparently, one of their errant Defense trainees kept bitching about the divide between departments.”

  “Moi?” I place a hand over my heart. “I guess I should be flattered IA actually took me up on my suggestion, but I’m honestly annoyed I didn’t get the credit. What a world of men we live in, eh?”

  “They would’ve cross-trained you too, if you’d bothered to stick around,” Vega says, leveling the R-One at my legs. Non-lethal positioning. She could still blow my bottom half off and paralyze me if she wanted to. “You were too busy searching for a taste of freedom with your pirate friends. How was it? Bittersweet?”