Zenith Read Online Free Page B

“Fike, Andi, they’re everywhere. It’s not possible.”
    Andi’s heart rocketed into her throat as the bleating prox alarms went off again.
    Seven ships waited for them, uncloaking themselves, materializing before her, like eyes in the darkness.
    “Turn around, Lira! Get us the hell out of here!”
    “I can’t!” Lira shouted. “The tracker is behind us.”
    She slammed codes onto the dash, furiously typing, her fingers flying across the screen. She yelped as it sparked, and a strange hiss fizzled out of the dash. The ship itself seemed to release a deep, rumbling sigh.
    And then...darkness.
    Oh, Godstars.
    Andi’s pale, glowing eyes were the only light inside the small space.
    No.
    Everything went still and silent, as if the Marauder itself lost all life beneath them.
    “They shut us down,” Lira whispered, her features turning to stone. Her voice cracked as she tried to bring the dash back to life, tried to restart the emergency engines. “Oh, fike, Andi. They shut everything down.”
    Andi shook her head. “It’s not possible. We have barriers against that, nothing could…no one knows how to get past them and stop this fiking ship!”
    Lira’s blue eyes were haunted, as if she were staring at a fresh corpse. Her fingers sat deadly still on the wheel. “ He could, Andi.”
    Andi’s heart turned to ice.
    It wasn’t possible.
    He was dead , cast away into some deep, dark hell where he’d never be able to claw his way back out.
    “Gilly?” Andi yelped into her com. “Breck?”
    Silence. Not even the crackle of static.
    This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. She ripped the com from her ear, leapt to her feet, and strapped her katanas around her back. “Escape pods. Now. Move.”
    Lira sat frozen in her chair.
    “Lira! I said move!”
    Lira’s voice was as dead as the Marauder . “We can’t, Andi. When the ship goes dark, the pods go dark, too.”
    Footsteps rang out, boots clacking on metal. Breck and Gilly appeared in the doorway.
    “What do we do?” Breck asked. “They’ll kill us all.”
    “Not if we kill them first,” Andi hissed.
    She felt torn in two. This was her family, broken and battered though it was, criminals from all sides of the galaxy waiting for her to save them. But with a dead ship, what could she do?
    “I don’t want to be taken again,” Gilly whispered. Gone was the bloodthirsty little fairy. In its place was a frightened, tiny girl. She burst into tears, fat droplets splashing on the dead metal at their feet. Breck dropped to her knees, pulled Gilly forward into a crushing hug.
    She whispered soothing words, but Andi didn’t hear them. She wasn’t listening.
    She turned and looked out the viewport, at the waiting ships. So many of them. And then, all around her, a rumble. It seemed to shake the very bones of the ship, rattling the walls. A deep, dark sound that made Lira drop her hands from the wheel and rush to Andi’s side.
    “They’re docking,” Lira whispered. “If you have a plan, Andi, you’d better tell us now.”
    But there was no plan.
    For the first time in her pirating life, someone had bested her.
    It’s not him, Andi’s mind whispered. It can’t be him.
    And yet, the Marauder was a corpse. It was already growing cold in the cabin, Andi’s breath appearing before her in white clouds.
    Do something, Andi’s mind screamed. Get us out of this. You can’t go back, Andi, you can never go back.
    Fear spiked through her, in and around, threatening to still her like the ship.
    But she was the Bloody Baroness. She was the captain of the Marauder , the greatest starship in Mirabel, and she had a crew waiting on her word.
    So Andi settled her nerves, shoved them down deep. She turned, unleashed her katanas, and held them at her sides.
    “Stand up,” Andi said, to Breck and Gilly.
    They stood, Gilly wiping tears from her small face, Breck keeping a hand on her second gunner’s shoulder.
    “Weapons,” Andi said.
    The girls lined up,