Page 3 of Aura Awakened

I would never say it to his face, but Gothelians are a strange bunch. Cold and expressionless on the outside, never revealing anything. Damned masters of the proverbial poker face. But with an internal furnace that is best avoided. I know from personal experience that when a Gothelian gets worked up, he will rain down fiery hell on anyone who gets in his way. A race of contradictions, from a far-off world that’s been in the Coalition since the beginning.

Me, I prefer to know what a man’s thinking just by the look on his face, but I guess that’s what most soldiers want. Regardless, Rampion’s proved himself to be a good friend and even better partner—and one hell of a hotshot pilot—so who am I to give him a hard time for being who and what he is?

Still, I’m glad to be Acacian.

Ramp is already up and alert, engaging stealth mode and firing up the engines.

“Coordinates?” he asks.

I rattle them off and he programs them in, all while I do a quick systems check on the weapons. I doubt we’ll actually engage, given that it’s just the two of us. We’re on recon at the moment, and if things go according to plan, the Malifects won’t even know we’re out here.

Nevertheless, better to be prepared.

The Malifects are like a virus, creeping through sectors and corrupting them, spreading their infection to each planet they invade. They move fast—swarm, plunder, depart—collecting resources and able bodies and leaving disaster in their wake. Coalition forces are doing all we can to put a stop to it, but as long as there are underground markets willing to trade in stolen goods, the valuable or the exotic or the technologically advanced, there will always be a reason for the Malifects to keep invading and enslaving. Not to mention, it’s the easiest way for them to keep growing their empire.

The worst is the backwater planets who don’t know the bad guys from the good. The ones who see us on patrol and screech about alien occupation, as if we want their paltry planets and useless technologies. Ignorant and ungrateful, and yet we risk our lives to keep them safe.

I shake my head, both at the injustice of it and to clear the useless thoughts. This is not the time to be debating whether the Coalition should rethink its mission. Ramp is relying on me to have my head in the game.

“Malifect ship dead ahead,” he says, no inflection in his voice. Typical. “Looks like a Grim.”

“Shit,” I mutter, bringing the weapons online. Grim-class ships are as pleasant as they sound, hulking behemoths covered in armor and weighed down with guns. They’re slow, but damn near indestructible, and they’re massive. Made to hold a shit ton of cargo, whether that’s bodies or booty. Or both.

Ramp makes a little noise in his throat, a sound of interest, and I glance at him out of the corner of my eye.

“What is it?”

“I don’t think they’re heading for Malifica Prime,” he says.

“Where the hell else would they go?”

He shrugs and points to his console, which displays a thick line of neon green around the other ship. An energy buildup?

“What am I looking at?”

“I can’t be totally sure, but it looks to me like they’re gonna open a jump gate. No need to do that to get to the homeworld. What if they’re heading to Somnambulis? Maybe they need to resupply before they head home? A ship that big could have a lot of prisoners on it.”

“Holy shit, Ramp. If we could find the coordinates for Somnambulis, we could shut them down for good. Or at least put a real big dent in their operations.”

He glances at me, a half-grin on his face. “That’s Prince Fillian for you, always ready to jump headfirst into any valiant mission. Calm down, man. We don’t know for sure what they’re up to.”

I hold up a palm, a long, deadly thorn sliding out of my flesh. “Call me by my title again and you’ll get this to the throat.”

He laughs and turns back to his console. “So sensitive about your royal status,” he mutters.

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be you.”

Royalty works differently on Gothel, and Ramp is one of a hundred sons hatched by the current queen, but it doesn’t change facts: a prince is a prince, no matter where he falls in the royal line. But unlike me, there are no duties or expectations placed on him.

Me, I’m a fifth son, close enough to the throne to have royal obligations, but not so close as to be expected to stay home and mire myself in politics. Military life was my only choice—good thing I’m so damn great at it.

I lean forward and shut down the weapons. “There’s no point in even pretending we might attack that thing,” I say. “We either need to follow it in stealth mode as far as we can…or infiltrate the son of a bitch. Find out exactly what the hell they’re up to.

Ramp stares at me with a raised eyebrow. “Infiltrate? You know better than that. We need to call this in.”

“Give me one reason we can’t do both. You call it in, I check it out.”

“If you get caught on that ship, the Malifects will enslave you, hostage you, or worse. And I don’t feel like training a new partner.”

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