But there’s no time for weakness. I thank the stars for the Sanita still fizzing in my veins, keeping squeamishness and worry at bay. If an enemy soldier made it here, that means he made it through my team. I grab my belongings and click into my exosuit. The comms are dead, scrambled either by the alien ship or the enemy or both.

Which means I’ll be going in blind. But my decision is nonetheless clear—there’s nowhere else to go. So I take a deep breath, tuck the power source under my arm, and launch through the hatch.

CHAPTER NINE

Code Blue

Scorpia

I sit in the back of the hovercraft with my hands cuffed in front of me, desperately trying to think of a way out of this. The vehicle rattles and shakes, battered by heavy winds and rain now that the storm has fully kicked in. The windows are tinted so that I can barely see outside. A dark screen separates me from the front of the craft, too, where Commander Zinne and Shey have been arguing ever since we got in.

“Such an unthinkable lack of responsibility,” Zinne says from the driver’s seat. “I would expect such a thing from off-worlder trash like the Kaisers, but you, Shey? I thought you were better than this. You placed the entirety of Gaia in danger with this foolish stunt of yours.”

“The ban on Devan plants is ridiculous,” Shey snaps back at her from the passenger seat, her shoulders set and her spine stiff. She doesn’t get any handcuffs, which doesn’t seem quite fair but also doesn’t surprise me. “I needed it for research purposes. Did you know they’re averse to Primus material? It could explain why—”

“I don’t care about your reasoning,” Zinne says. “You’re not above the law.”

They’ve been going back and forth for a while now, but Commander Zinne clearly isn’t prepared to listen to any arguments. She certainly wasn’t when she saw the strangle-vine trying to crawl out of the box, stomped on it until it stopped moving, and bagged it to throw in the incinerator later. She was similarly unsympathetic when she tripped me as I tried to run, ripped my gloves off, and handcuffed me so tightly my fingers went numb. She took my comm and dragged me out of the building kicking and yelling, right over the body of the broker facedown in the lobby. He must have tried to stop her from gaining entry—or maybe he just tried to run. Either one would be enough for an enforcer to fire on this planet.

The whole time, Shey trailed behind us, crying prettily. It got a little less pretty when she saw the body and the burnt laser-fire mark through his head. Maybe she’s never seen her mother’s zero-tolerance policy in action before.