His brows raised. “Word on base is that the best pilots rely on intuition, not strategy.”

She shook her head. “As a Wraith pilot, I’ve faced so many battles, I can’t count them anymore. Some arrive with no warning. I might be on patrol, or escorting a ship of refugees to their new homeworld, and then PRAXIS is there, in small force or large. Always deadly. Years of training and experience taught me to react without thought, to trust instinct and my squad mates not merely to survive, but to prevail.”

She gazed at the tracking screen, and its faint flicker showing her the way to find a traitor. “But sometimes, when I’m fortunate, I get a chance to formulate a strategy beforehand. I’m not so faultless that I won’t grab any advantage.”

Calder studied her for a moment. “Wherever Marek’s situated himself,” he finally said, “he will be well guarded. Count on very tight security protocols. And cutting-edge tech.”

She allowed herself a smile. “Good thing I’ve got the NerdWorks’s best as my partner.”

They had been following the tracking signal for three solar days when the com shrilled to life. Nils manned the controls as Celene slept in the single bunk in the sleeping chamber at the rear of the ship. The Phantom came equipped with autopilot, but the safer option meant having a live human at the controls, and he needed to keep readjusting the tracking device.

Now alone in the cockpit, he started when a man’s voice crackled through the line. It came in faintly, pops and hisses cutting into words.

“Any ship within range—can you hear me? This is a distress call. Anyone?”

“Reading you,” Nils said into the com. “Identify yourself.”

“Akash Gabela, Galactic Registry number 473-Beta-Rho-229.”

Nils ran the name and registry number through the ship’s database.

“Who is he?”

He glanced over his shoulder to see Celene coming into the cockpit, strapping on her plasma pistol. As always, he needed to hide his reaction to her. It didn’t matter how many times they changed shifts, seeing her made his pulse accelerate, his breathing quicken. She might have been asleep moments ago, but her silver eyes were alert now as she stood beside him and scanned the readout.

“Smuggler, pilot for hire.” Nils focused on the information scrolling on the display rather than Celene’s hand braced on the back of his seat. “He has a few outstanding subpoenas for trafficking black market goods.”

“Untrustworthy.” She narrowed her eyes.

“Not an upstanding citizen, no.”

“Hello?” Gabela’s voice came fainter now. “Unknown pilot, you still there? Situation critical on this end.”

“What is your situation?” Nils asked.

“Ran into a debris storm. Took out propulsion systems, life support on emergency power. I’ve got maybe four solar hours left. You going to help, or what?”

Nils clicked off his end of the com. “His ship’s a standard hauler. I could get him up and running in less than a solar hour.”

Tension resonated through Celene’s posture. She balanced on the balls of her feet as if ready to fight. “Could be another ambush.”

He remembered the debriefing report he had read. She had been on patrol when she responded to another distress signal. And went straight into a trap that nearly cost the 8^th Wing a Black Wraith, as well as Celene’s freedom. Easy to see why she would be wary of making the same mistake twice.

These past few days had taught him well: Celene Jur had earned her reputation. Nothing had been given to her.

“Mara Skiren used to be a smuggler,” he said now. “She would know him.”

Celene nodded. “Let’s get her on the line.” They would be breaking com silence, but 8^th Wing never ignored a distress call.

Quickly, Nils patched them through an encrypted line to base. “Trouble already?” Ensign Skiren asked.

“Akash Gabela’s giving us a distress signal,” Nils said. “Says he’s drifting and solar hours away from life support failure.”

“Can we trust him?” Celene asked.

“Gabela’s a terrible geluk player,” Mara said, “and he’ll drink all your Lulani rum the second your back is turned. But he doesn’t run bait and switch. If he says he’s in trouble, he’s in trouble. Besides,” she added, “that grizzled bastard knows the darker sectors of the galaxy. He could give you some valuable intel.”

“Then you vouch for him?” Nils asked.

Ensign Skiren’s laugh was rueful. “As much as one former scum can vouch for another.” A deeper, masculine voice sounded behind her, and her response was another husky chuckle. “Oh, you get off on having a shady lover. What? Going to give me a spanking?”

“I don’t think she’s speaking to us,” said Nils, dry.

“Save the dirty talk for later,” Celene said into the com. “If you say that Gabela’s trustworthy—reasonably trustworthy—we’ve got to help him out.”

“Tell that son of a dirtroach that he still owes me for that case of Lulani rum,” answered Skiren. “And stay safe.”

After signing out, Nils cut the com line. He glanced at Celene, seeing the wariness that tightened her mouth, the nervous energy that made her tap her fingers against the control panel.

“There’s a difference between what happened last time and this,” he noted.

She raised one neatly arched black brow.

“This time,” he said, “you aren’t alone.”

“By the ten demon lords, I never thought you’d get here.” Akash Gabela trundled toward Nils and Celene as they stood in his loading bay. After responding to Gabela’s signal, their ships had linked, and, with plasma pistols ready just in case, they had come aboard.

“We didn’t know if we could trust you,” Celene answered.

Gabela wheezed a laugh. He had the short stature and green skin of a Dejanian, and he hobbled around on a sherica-powered artificial limb. It wasn’t the newest in tech, hissing a little with each step, but the smuggler seemed unbothered by it.

“You’re 8^th Wing.” Gabela shuffled closer. “So I know I can trust you. Bunch of galactic do-gooders.”

“If you want PRAXIS running the galaxy,” Nils said, “controlling every aspect of your life, and death, by all means, we’ll gladly step aside. I hear the PRAXIS prison barges are particularly brutal.”

“Fine, fine.” Despite the smuggler’s grumbling, his skin paled. “We going to stand here all day, using up the last of my oxygen, or we going to fix my damn ship?”

“We’re fixing your damn ship,” Celene answered. “Take us to the damage.”

Nils was already striding down the passageway toward the systems room. “I know the way.”

“Want some tools?” Gabela shouted after him. “Mine couldn’t do shit to fix the damage, but you might have better luck with ’em.”

“Brought my own.” He hefted the satchel slung over his shoulder.

Celene was at his side, her long legs matching his stride. “You studied the ship’s schematics before we linked.”

He shook his head. “Haulers usually follow the same configuration. I take what knowledge I already have and extrapolate the rest.” He glanced over when he heard her low laugh.

“Most people are either attractive or smart. Seldom both.”

He almost stumbled. “You think I’m attractive too?”

“Assuming I already consider you smart.”

“That’s a given.”

They reached the door to the systems room. The control panel wouldn’t respond to his fingers on the keypad, so he had to pry the heavy door open. Celene provided assistance, tugging on the thick metal until it opened with a groan.

Inside the systems room, the atmospheric temperature soared, a symptom of the failing life support. Torn wires and ripped-out panels lay on the floor, and a huge gouge ran the length of the external bulkhead. The blackness of space showed through the gouge. Fortunately, the ship had enough power left to generate an electrical shield over the tear, or else everything would have been sucked out into the void.