Page 1 of Command

CHAPTER 1

ALINA

Alina had been in the laundry room all day, supervising the folding. There wasn’t much to it—the machinery did all the hard work for her—but it was hot. The sandgrinders scrubbing away at batches of clothes were just in the next room, and they may as well have been ovens.

After the sand scrub got most of the grime and dust out of the clothing, each piece would be sprayed with minimal amounts of H2O to freshen whatever was left and run the silicone granules into a central drain for recycling. The fabrics would then be air blasted for drying and, finally, placed into the folding machines.

Alina hauled the stack of folded clothes from the output bin and distributed them between the chute slots that would bring them up to relevant parts on the upper decks.

It was boring, menial work. The kind of work Alina thought she wouldn’t be doing again when she was assigned as a dedicated assistant to Orion Halen’s wife-to-be. She had been excited about the opportunity, even more so when she realized Kaia wasn’t fromColossal. Hers really was an Old Earth fairy tale—a downtrodden commoner getting spottedby a wealthy prince. Like Cinderella in those old animated vids, minus the crappy shoes.

Alina figured Kaia was around her age. She’d pictured them growing close over the course of her service. They could share secrets. She had been assigned a cabin across from Kaia’s own, before Kaia had moved to Orion’s quarters. But she hadn’t even bothered telling Alina she was changing cabins until Alina spent hours trying to find her one day.

At least Alina got to keep her cabin up on the command deck.

She paused, realizing she’d been shoving folded clothes into their chutes a little more aggressively than they deserved. She was meant to have finished her shift half an hour ago, but her replacement hadn’t showed up. The machinery ofColossal’slaundromats waited for no one, so Alina had no choice but to bear it.

The shift disruption was pretty understandable. It was the day, after all. They’d finally be arriving at X1s Galaxy. Alina wasn’t sure what the plan was from there. From what she’d gathered, Orion Halen intended to abandon the mission as soon as his late mother’s override instructions deactivated upon their arrival. Why, Alina didn’t know. They were already here. Might as well scope out the planets for something like Earth, right?

Alina smoothed down the collar of a sweater. She wasn’t really qualified to have an opinion on the matter. She’d caught snippets of conversations in her infrequent errands for Kaia, but not enough to have any understanding of what was going on. Alinathoughtthere was something bad at X1s that Kaia and Orion Halen meant to avoid. Whatever it was, she was glad they were dealing with it. It wasn’t for her to worry about.

Alina glanced at the time in her Neurosync augmented vision. Her replacement, Tristan, was now forty-seven minutes late.

She subcommed the man.Hey, everything okay?

Alina wasn’t expecting such a quick reply from a guy who was skipping out on his shift. She’d figured Tristan got distracted in one of the viewing theaters, probably lost track of time in the commotion.

No. Don’t come up.

Alina barely had time to wonder about the ominous instruction when the floor beneath her feet trembled with a faint vibration that soon escalated into a reverberating shudder. The only time she’d felt such a full-body shake before was after a jump, but that was always preceded by deactivation of gravity and the awkward sensation of her body dispersing into thin air before waking up reconstituted. A good jump mech made the sensation as subdued as possible, but you always feltsomething. You always knew you jumped.

What’s going on?

I don’t know,Tristan subvocalized.Just stay there.

Alina paced the room, her duties forgotten. The folding machine kept working, spitting out neat bundles of clothes that had begun spilling to the floor as they overflowed.

She looked down at her hands. Her coral-painted fingers were shaking, but she felt nothing—not even the beating of her own heart as another tremble rocked the ship. It culminated in a lurch all around her, this time followed by a deep, pervading rumble that grew deafening in her ears.

Something was hitting them. And it sounded close.

The laundromat was deep in the bowels ofColossal. There wasn’t much between Alina and the empty space outside. A hole could just appear right under her feet—or in the wall. There could be explosions as it opened up and sucked Alina out to nothing.

She couldn’t stay there.

Alina was at the maintenance elevator just as soon as the thought crossed her mind. She punched the buttons, but they wouldn’t work. She wheezed a short, high-pitched whine,rushing for the emergency stairs. It was going to be a long climb.

“New Commander authenticated…”

Alina faltered and lurched forward on the third flight of stairs. Her grip on the narrow railing barely stopped her from falling face first into the metal grill of a step.

A subcomm alert came moments later, instructing everyone to shelter in place and get away from the halls.

Orion Halen was dead.

Kaia.Alina’s thoughts went immediately to her charge—Orion had been the only person she cared about on this whole ship. How the hell was she going to get through this?

But Orion hadn’t had an heir. Who could his replacement—thisnew commander—possibly be? If Orion were dead, the ship should have no commander at all. And that meant they were dead too. All of them.

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