Three soldiers in full armor—including the battle helmets that covered their faces—waited behind him. I couldn’t tell if they expected trouble to find them or if they were prepared to be the trouble.

“Are you the captain of this ship?” the Valovian leader asked in lightly accented Common.

I straightened away from the ramp. I wasn’t particularly tall, and I had to look up to meet his eyes, which added an annoyed bite to my tone. “Yes.”

“I am Torran Fletcher. I want to hire you.”

Now I understood why all of his previous conversations were so short. This one would be, too. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a bounty hunter. I hunt criminals and murderers; I don’t work for them.” And I especially didn’t work for one of the top Valovian generals who’d led the war against the Federated Human Planets, commonly shortened to FHP or Fed. No wonder he’d looked familiar. He’d been one of our priority targets, but as far as we knew, he’d never been anywhere near the front lines. Disgust pulled at my lips. Coward.

His piercing gaze seared me. “I know you. Lieutenant Octavia Zarola, hero of Rodeni,” he said with mocking reverence before his expression hardened. “Slaughterer. You are worth a lot in Valovian space.”

Memories of blood and death and war and betrayal caused my mental shields to falter. Torran’s expression went carefully blank—the look of a Valoff using their ability—and once again I felt his mind touch mine. I slammed up my shields and locked away the pain.

I hoped that whatever memories he’d glimpsed gave him the same nightmares they gave me.

My palms itched with the desire to grip a weapon. The enemy stood at my door and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it unless I wanted to cause an interstellar incident—which I did, very much. But the thought of my crew stayed my hand. I couldn’t go and get myself killed for a vengeance that was three years too late, not when two people still depended on me.

I returned to the conversation, pretending the lapse hadn’t happened and that I hadn’t imagined sinking a plas blade into his armor’s weakest point. My smile was not kind. “Then it’s good that we’re not in Valovian space. And I know who you are, too, General Fletcher. You’re not worth anything at all, but station security might make an exception on principle alone.”

Torran tilted his head as he considered me. “I could tear through your flimsy shields in half a second. You can barely maintain them as is.”

“Try me,” I taunted with a careless shrug. “You will be dead before they fall. As you mentioned, I’ve fought your kind before.” And they’d always, always underestimated me. It was why I was alive and they were not.