“I won’t let the military take back the serum. They’ve been working on that enhancer since I was a kid, and if we stole their secret lab and their only batch, there’s a good chance it’ll take them years to create it again.” And if my freakish blood really was the base ingredient, and they’d used their entire supply to produce those thousands of fake cure-alls, which my gut feeling told me they had, then they were about to be shit out of luck.
Fiona’s brow furrowed. “How do you know they’ve been working on that serum since you were a kid?”
Ignoring her question, I informed them of my decision. “I’m taking the Endeavor and the false vaccines into the Black Widow. If you don’t want to come with me, you need to get out right now.”
The crew all looked at me with little surprise. In addition to categorically needing to keep the enhancer out of the Overseer’s hands, we were out of time, and we’d run out of chances to get away. Capital punishment or, if someone was feeling very generous, life in jail were our only future options. It was really a no-brainer, at least for me.
The ship groaned again, and my console flashed to indicate a breach at the starboard door. Dark Watch goons were inside the air lock. They still had to break through the safety entrance, but that door was nothing compared to the outer wall.
Bridgebane’s voice barked over the com. “I’m taking the Overseer’s lab back, and you’re all going to be court-martialed in Sector 12.”
“Tell him who you are, Tess,” Jax whispered, the scar on his cheek whitening from the tension in his jaw. “It’ll stop him. Your father…”
I laughed. It burst out of me, awful. Then I squared my shoulders and told my best friend and first mate the one thing he still didn’t know about me.
“My father handed me over to Bridgebane when I was eight years old, and only three days after my mother died, with strict orders to keep me in an air lock on Dark Watch 12 until the ship was out of my home Sector and then float me into space.”
Jax’s jaw dropped. Miko gasped. Shiori stayed silent.
“Who the hell is your asshole father?” Fiona asked.
I glanced at Big Guy, who was staring at me. I didn’t mind that he was here for the truth, but maybe that was because I wouldn’t have to worry about it for long.
“Bridgebane is the one who took me to Starway 8, but he said if he ever saw me again, he’d do what my father first asked.”
Jax cursed. “So Bridgebane is the good guy in all this?”
“Bridgebane is a bastard. And my name will only get us all killed faster than we’re already going to get killed anyway.”
“Who the hell is your asshole father?” Fiona practically snarled.
I wanted to snarl back what had always been in my heart. That man has never been my father!
“Who the hell are you?” Fiona demanded.
My pulse pounded so hard I heard it in my ears. Tess Bailey was about to die along with the rest of us. “I’m Quintessa Novalight.”
My friend stumbled back against Jax’s broad chest. That was the power of a name.
The blood visibly drained from Fiona’s face. “As in Galactic Overseer Novalight’s dead daughter?” she choked out.
Clearly, not so dead after all. Yet.
Nodding, I owned up to the name I hadn’t used in years and to the family I wished I didn’t have. “Daddy is the evil overlord of the galaxy, and Bridgebane is my uncle.”
Everyone stared in shock, even Jax, who already knew who I was.
“So… No one’s leaving?” I eventually asked, not surprised, but not happy, either.
No one spoke. The Endeavor rattled like a sick metallic animal and then groaned again hard.
“We’re as dead out there as we are in here,” Miko finally answered. No one contradicted her, so I figured she spoke for them all.
“Big Guy?” I asked, turning to the bearded man.
He just shook his head.
Fine. His choice, although I had no idea why. Maybe he was as wanted by the Dark Watch as we were.
“Power up, Jax, and get ready to punch it. Miko, set us ninety degrees to the left.” Portside was nothing but the Black Widow. Devoid of all light, the huge, empty circle interrupting the stars looked like a bottomless pit and gave new meaning to the oft-used expression “endless Dark.”
I turned away from the window, my stomach knotting. I feared the unknown as much as anyone else.
Focusing on my friends again didn’t help. I had zero expectations for an afterlife. I’d never see them again. This was it.
I cleared the lump from my throat. “Strap in. Don’t strap in. It doesn’t really matter at this point,” I said.
We’d never been much for emotional speeches, so I didn’t give one. Shiori unbuckled herself from the captain’s chair, got up, and felt her way to Miko. The two women stood side by side near the navigation controls, holding hands. Fiona and Jax stayed close together. I was alone. Except for Big Guy. He stayed pretty close.
My gaze returned to the black hole, as if drawn by its massive gravitational force. Twenty-six years, and it hadn’t been a bad life, even if a lot of it hadn’t been fun. I’d wreaked more havoc on the galactic government than most rebels could manage in five lifetimes. With the help of my crew, I’d kept the Outer Zone colonies from true starvation for years. And everything else I ever had, I gave to the kids on Starway 8. I didn’t regret a thing.
And I was a Novalight. I wouldn’t go out like a sigh in the Dark. I’d go out like a fucking bomb.
I reached for the external com and opened the line to Bridgebane. “Your boarding crew has thirty seconds to detach. After that, I’m taking the Endeavor and your vaccines into the Black Widow. Everyone on this ship would rather die than see that serum back in the hands of the Galactic Overseer.” I lifted my finger but then pressed firmly down on the button again. “By the way, this is Quintessa, and you can tell my tyrant father that I hate his fucking guts.”
I pulled my hand off the com. The line went dead, then blinked red again.
“Quin?” Bridgebane said.
I counted down in my head. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…
“Let’s talk, Quin,” my uncle said. “Give me the lab, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…
“I saved you, Quin. You owe me.”
Five, four, three, two…
I turned to Jax, seeing the Black Widow looming through the wall of windows behind him. I felt a lurch and hoped it was the boarding cruiser beating a retreat.
“Quin!” Bridgebane yelled over the com.
A second later, the Dark Watch frigate fired on us. The resulting jolt nearly knocked me off my feet. Silent alarms flared all over my controls—pressurization compromised in three zones. Another blast like that, and they could disable us enough to hold us in place.
I gripped my console to steady myself. The Endeavor was a good ship. It was too bad I had to take her out.
Each beat of my heart felt like an explosion inside my chest.
Some ends are just a new beginning…
My mother’s words to me, when she’d gotten so sick. Too sick for anyone to save her.
The Black Widow stretched before us, ready to snare us in her web. Nothing escaped a black hole. Not light. Not matter. Maybe not even a soul.
Slowly, I exhaled. Some ends were just the end.
“Hit it, Jaxon.” I nodded crisply to my first mate.
Jax looked at me one last time. Our eyes met, and seven years of shared history struck me in a bittersweet rush. Then he grabbed Fiona around the waist and threw the hyperdrive switch with a cosmic roar.
I inhaled sharply. Everything blurred. My bones crunched, and my chest folded in on the thousands of things I’d still wanted to do as the Endeavor shot toward the event horizon—and the end of us all.
Chapter 3
The darkness felt crushing, but there wasn’t a single thing that actually changed. I was no science freak, but as far as I knew, we should have been compressed into nothing by now—the ship, the crew. Everything.
“Hold on,” Big Guy rumbled next to me. He snaked a powerful arm around my waist.