Page 4 of Aura Awakened

“Aw, stop, you’ll make me blush.”

He rolls his eyes. “Fill, you cannot get on that ship.”

“I have to. This is the chance we’ve been waiting for. This could be the key to taking down the Empire.”

He folds his arms and stares at me, all stony and cold. Typical Gothelian. They have the patience of rocks; they can outwait anything.

Not me. I’ve been called impulsive, reckless, and rash more times than I can count.

I prefer to think of it as decisive.

I’m already out of my seat and headed to the hold, where our nanocraft is stored. I grab the pill-sized ship out of storage, as well as the remote that activates it. With the swift press of a couple of buttons, I transport the ship into space, enlarge it to working size, and teleport aboard.

The red comm light is already flashing, and I chuckle as I engage it. “Ramp, stop panicking.”

“Stop disobeying!”

“You don’t command me, and we never had any specific orders not to follow a ship. If anything, that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do,” I point out.

“This is a terrible idea,” he says. “If you follow that thing through a jump gate, how will you get back? You don’t have the technology to open a gate yourself, and you have no idea how far you might travel. You could end up hundreds of light years away. It could take longer than a lifetime to get back. This could literally be the last time I see you.”

“Unlikely. If I have to, I’ll just stay in stealth mode at the gate coordinates until another Malifect cruiser comes by and opens it for me. Stop worrying.”

I fire up the engines, engage the stealth cloak, and creep closer to the Grim ship. I message Ramp one more time. “Keep an eye on the asteroid field at coordinates 5724.9 by 3381.6. It’s not far from here. That’s where we’ll rendezvous.”

“When?” he shouts, and I shrug, even though he can’t see me.

“When I get back,” I say, cutting the comm.

The enemy ship is moving through the gate, and I’m going after her. With any luck, I’ll bring back the intel the Coalition has been searching for for decades.

I trail the ship for two days, until it finally stops in a sector I’ve never been to. I doubt anyone from the Coalition has, either. We’re light years—parsecs, probably—from our normal territory. This part of space looks like nothing I’ve ever seen: pure white nebulae, wild electric storms, strange gaps and fissures. Something that looks like a quasar mated with a wormhole. It’s the kind of place where you dump shit that you never want to be found.

I watch as the Grim ship floats slowly toward a dense white cloud.

“Computer, identify this space formation,” I tell the ship.

It scans for a moment, and then its robotic voice responds:Possible Wraith Nebula.

Huh. I’ve heard of the phenomenon, but as far as I’m aware, Wraith Nebulae are theoretical. Weird, spectral clouds that defy the laws of normal space. Coalition scientists have written about the possibility of them, but no one has ever seen one. No one knows exactly what a Wraith Nebula even is. One thing is for sure: It’s not a place I want to hang out.

But I’m betting all my thorns that it’s also the source of what we’ve referred to for years as Somnambulis.

The Grim ship slows to a crawl. This is my chance. Sure, I could make note of these coordinates and scuttle back to home territory, but why not take advantage of the opportunity? I get as close as I can to the behemoth, and then use my ship’s remote to transport myself through a crack in the Malifect shields. I shrink the nanocraft back down and bring it in too. When it’s safely tucked away in my cargo pocket, I start my exploration.

I’m not the first member of the Coalition to infiltrate a Malifect ship; not even the first to try a hand at a Grim. We learned years ago how to find and breach the miniscule ruptures in their force fields, and have taken advantage multiple times. But I’m definitely the first to do it way out here in uncharted space.

I’ve never personally seen a spec sheet for a Grim-class ship, so I don’t know what the deck-by-deck layout is. But I’m willing to bet the bridge and crew quarters are on the upper decks, while the midship is mostly going to be the inner workings and mechanics. Leaving the lower decks for cargo.

I don’t care about what they’re transporting—well, that’s not accurate; Ican’tcare about hundreds of slaves, or I wouldn’t be able to do my job—and I have no interest in encountering the crew. Besides, what I’m after is sure to be somewhere in the middle of the vessel.

A conversion lab.

A wave of disgust rolls through me at the thought of it. Maybe it’s not professional; maybe as a Coalition soldier, I’m supposed to maintain a cool façade of impartiality.

Well, fuck that.

I’ve seen too many times just exactly what these bastards can do.

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