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The restraints bit into my wrists the second the execution chamber sealed.
No ceremony. No last words. Just me, the chrome chair, and the neural arc humming to life above my head like a pissed-off wasp nest.
I tried to breathe. Couldn't. The air tasted like ozone and fear.
"Kira Voss." The AI tribunal's voice came through every speaker at once, flat and final. "You have been found guilty of treason, sabotage, and the murder of two hundred seventeen colonists aboard Relay Station Juno. Sentence: immediate neural termination."
I wanted to scream that I didn't do it. That I'd never even been to Juno. That I flew cargo routes on the edge of mapped space and kept my head down and didn't even jaywalk.
But they'd already played the footage.
Me. My face. My voice. Planting charges in Juno's reactor core. Laughing.
I didn't remember any of it.
"Ten seconds," the AI said.
The arc spun faster. My skull started to ache, a sharp cold pressure building behind my eyes. I thought about my ship. The *Dustrunner*. Stupid name for a stupid little cargo hauler, but it was mine. Or it had been, before the fleet impounded it and dragged me off in cuffs.
I thought about my mom. Dead six years now. I thought maybe I'd see her again in a minute.
"Five seconds."
The air around the arc started to glow. Blue-white. Too bright to look at.
I closed my eyes.
The door exploded.
Not the polite hiss of a door panel override. I mean exploded. Metal shrieking, a shockwave that rattled my teeth, smoke pouring in so thick I couldn't see who was coming through.
"Stay down!" someone yelled.
I wasn't going anywhere. The restraints were still locked.
Footsteps, fast and heavy. A figure in fleet combat armor, black and gray, helmet on. She went straight for the arc's control panel and slammed something into it. The humming stopped. The glow died.
I sucked in a breath. My lungs burned.
"Who—" I started.
She didn't answer. Just pulled a plasma cutter from her belt and went to work on my restraints. The left one snapped open. Then the right.
"Move," she said. Her voice was clipped, no accent I could place. "Now."
"I don't—"
"Move or die. Pick."
I moved.
She grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the chair. My legs didn't want to work. Everything felt wrong, disconnected, like my brain was still catching up to the fact that I wasn't dead.
Alarms started screaming. Red lights strobed the walls.
"They'll seal the block in thirty seconds," she said, dragging me toward the blown door. "We won't make it."
"Then why—"
"Shut up and run."
We ran.
The corridor outside was narrow, white, institutional. Built for one-way traffic. Prisoners in, bodies out. My feet slapped the floor in the thin execution-issue slippers they'd given me. I could hear shouts behind us, boots, the mechanical whine of security drones spooling up.
She pulled me left, then right, then through a maintenance hatch I didn't even see until she kicked it open. We dropped into a crawlspace, all exposed conduit and dust. She moved like she'd memorized the route. I just tried not to trip.
"Who are you?" I gasped.
"Senna Cole. Fleet security."
"You're fleet?"
"Was."
We came out in a loading bay. Empty. Old. The kind of place they mothballed ten years ago and forgot about. A small ship sat in the center, hatch open, engines already lit. Civilian model, no markings.
"Get in," Senna said.
I didn't move. "Why are you doing this?"
She finally looked at me. Pulled her helmet off. Short dark hair, sharp jaw, eyes like she hadn't slept in a week. Maybe thirty, maybe older. Hard to tell.
"Because you didn't blow up Juno," she said.
"I know that."
"And because you're not Kira Voss."
I stared at her.
"The hell are you talking about?"
She grabbed my wrist, yanked me toward the ship. "I'll explain when we're not being shot at."
We made it three steps before the bay doors started to open.
Not the ship doors. The main bay doors. The ones that led back into the detention complex.
Fleet soldiers poured through. A dozen, maybe more. Rifles up.
"Stop!" someone shouted. "Drop your weapons and get on the ground!"
Senna swore and shoved me toward the ship. "Go!"
"What about—"
"Go!"
I went. Scrambled up the ramp, my hands shaking so bad I could barely grab the rails. Behind me I heard plasma fire. The air went hot and sharp. I turned at the top of the ramp and saw Senna laying down cover, her rifle spitting bolts at the advancing soldiers. They scattered, took cover behind supply crates.
She backed up the ramp, still firing. "Close it!" she yelled.
I slapped the control panel. The ramp started to lift.
A bolt hit the hull right next to my head. I ducked, ears ringing, and Senna shoved past me into the cockpit.
"Strap in," she snapped.
I stumbled into the co-pilot seat. No time to strap. The ship lurched up and forward, engines screaming, and I grabbed onto anything I could reach. Through the viewport I saw the bay falling away, soldiers scattering, plasma fire chasing us up.
We punched through the station's docking shield and into open space. Stars everywhere. Cold and bright and too many to count.
Senna's hands flew over the controls. "Jumping in ten."
"Jumping where?"
"Away."
The console lit up. Proximity alarms. Three fleet interceptors, closing fast.
"They're locking on," I said.
"I know."
"They're going to—"
The ship shuddered. Direct hit. Shields flared, red warnings cascading across every screen.
"Five seconds," Senna said. Her voice didn't shake.
Another hit. The lights flickered.
"Four."
I thought about the execution chamber. The neural arc. How close I'd come.
"Three."
I thought about what she'd said. *You're not Kira Voss.*
"Two."
The interceptors fired again.
"One."
The universe folded.
We jumped.
When I could breathe again, when the colors stopped screaming and my stomach remembered which way was up, I opened my eyes. The cockpit was dark except for the nav lights. Hyperspace. The window showed nothing but that sick gray non-color you get between stars.
Senna leaned back in her seat, eyes closed, breathing hard.
"Okay," I said. My voice came out shaky. "Talk."
She didn't open her eyes. "How much do you remember?"
"About what?"
"Your childhood. Your training. How you got your pilot's license."
I frowned. "What kind of question is that?"
"A simple one."
I thought about it. "I grew up on Hephaestus Colony. My mom taught me to fly. I got my license at nineteen. Started running cargo at twenty-two."
"What was your mom's name?"
"Elaine."
"What did she look like?"
I opened my mouth. Stopped.
I couldn't remember.
I could remember her voice. Her laugh. The way she smelled like engine grease and coffee. But her face was just... blurry. Like someone had smudged it out of a photo.
"I—" My throat closed up. "I don't—"
Senna opened her eyes. Reached into her jacket. Pulled out a thin black folder. Tossed it into my lap.
"Read," she said.
I opened it.
The first page was a personnel file. Fleet Intelligence. Classified. Black-level clearance.
Project Starfire.
I scanned the text. Didn't understand half of it. Genetic sampling. Neural mapping. Memory implantation. Combat conditioning.
Clones.
I flipped to the next page.
A photo. A woman in a flight suit, mid-twenties, standing in front of a military transport. She looked like me. Same jaw. Same eyes. Same scar on her left eyebrow.
The caption read: *Captain Kira Voss. KIA, Tal-Seris Offensive. Age 26.*
Died eleven years ago.
I looked up at Senna. My hands were shaking again.
"What is this?"
She met my eyes.
"Your DNA," she said. "Pulled from the fleet medical database when they arrested you. It's a perfect match for Project Starfire specimen zero-seven."
She pointed at the photo.
"That's the woman they copied to make you."
I stared at the file. At the dead woman wearing my face.
"They grew you in a lab, Kira. Planted fake memories. Sent you out into the colonies to live a normal life."
She leaned forward.
"You were never a cargo pilot."
The folder slipped out of my hands. Pages scattered across the floor.
Outside, hyperspace hummed.
Inside, I couldn't breathe.
"Then what am I?" I whispered.
Senna picked up one of the pages. Held it up. The header read: *Class-IV Autonomous Combat Pilot.*
"A weapon," she said.