Using the last dregs of fuel, Dex directed the ship toward the planet’s icy surface. But as they passed through Solera’s outer rings, Andi realized that they were utterly alone. It was a known fact that Solerans didn’t like mingling any more than necessary with outsiders, but every populated planet had some type of space traffic around it.

It was beyond eerie that this one didn’t.

So when a pulse of light shot through the empty airspace toward them, it caught them unaware. The light encased the Marauder for a moment before resuming its path in their wake.

Dex swore. “What the hell was that?”

“Solar ray?” Lon guessed, but Andi shook her head.

“Let’s just get down there,” she said. “We don’t have much fuel left. Bring her down nice and easy, Dextro. You wreck my ship, you pay for it.”

Dex grunted. “I can’t,” he gritted out as he tried to engage the thrusters.

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“The thrusters aren’t at full power.”

“They’re only giving twenty percent thrust,” Lon said, furiously typing on the holoscreen in his hands. “And the backup system is off-line.”

Of course it is, Andi thought grimly. That light must’ve done something to the ship.

Solera was growing larger and larger by the second.

“Brace for impact,” Memory said calmly from the speakers as fire engulfed the exterior of the ship, so at odds with the icy world they were quickly approaching.

Andi gripped the edges of her seat and watched helplessly as Dex white-knuckled the wheel, trying to keep the ship steady.

She took back what she’d said about the Godstars liking her.

They really must hate her guts.

CHAPTER 9

DEX

There had been plenty of times in Dex’s life when he’d thought he was dead.

When he was a child, he’d been told stories by traveling missionaries of what the afterlife was like. If you were good, and had no sin, you’d go to the Godstars’ palace in the sky. But if you were bad, you would be sent elsewhere, to be tortured for all eternity.

Of course he’d thought about the afterlife, and what lay beyond this existence, but he always thought when he experienced it for himself, it would be unlike anything his mind could’ve conjured up. Now, as his eyes cracked open, he was almost blinded by whiteness. It was the purest color he’d ever seen.

If those missionaries were right, and there was a palace in the sky where the righteous went after death, then he had not a damned clue why he was there. He wasn’t trying to say he deserved to be tortured, but hey, there were far better people than him in this galaxy.

That was how Dex knew he must be alive.

That, and the searing pain that pulsed within his head.