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The shuttle lurched hard to port and I slammed into the bulkhead. My shoulder hit metal and I tasted copper.
"Strap in," Senna barked. She was already back in the pilot seat, fingers flying over the console. "They just painted us."
"Painted—" The word died in my throat when the proximity alarm started screaming.
Senna didn't look back. "Missile lock. Thirty seconds."
I scrambled into the co-pilot seat and yanked the harness over my chest. The black file slid across the console between us. My DNA code was still glowing on the screen. Project Starfire. A weapon program. My face in a lineup of dead heroes I'd never met.
"Why'd you pull me out?" My voice came out raw. "You don't even know me."
"Twenty seconds." Senna's jaw was tight. Her hands moved like she'd done this a thousand times. "Hold on."
The shuttle flipped. My stomach went sideways. The viewport spun—black, stars, the prison station's docking ring, black again.
"You didn't answer my question."
"Because you're the last one." She punched something into the nav panel. "Last Starfire clone. Last proof they didn't burn the whole program like they said they did."
"Proof for who?"
Senna finally looked at me. Her eyes were dark, hard. "People who'll actually do something about it."
The missile alarm hit a higher pitch. Ten seconds.
"Countermeasures?" I checked the panel in front of me. All the readouts were red.
"Burned them shaking the first two." Senna pulled up a secondary screen. Fleet security codes scrolled past, too fast to read. "We're doing this the stupid way."
"What's the stupid way?"
She didn't answer. Her fingers stopped on one line of code. Her own clearance badge blinked in the corner—Lieutenant Senna Cole, Internal Security Division, Clearance Level Seven.
She highlighted it.
"Wait." I grabbed her wrist. "That's your code. If you burn that—"
"They'll know exactly who pulled you." She looked at me again. Something flickered in her face. Not regret. Something colder. "Yeah."
"You'll be on the run with me."
"Five seconds."
She shook me off and slammed her palm onto the console.
The missile lock died. The alarm cut out. The shuttle's engines whined as we dropped into a steep dive and the whole frame shuddered like it was going to rip apart.
I couldn't breathe. The harness cut into my ribs. The viewscreen showed nothing but the black between the station and the nearest moon, and we were falling into it fast.
"Senna—"
"Shut up. I'm working."
She rerouted something. The engine whine smoothed out. We were still diving but it didn't feel like a crash anymore. It felt like a slingshot.
"They'll send hunters," I said. My mouth was dry. "Fleet hunters. The kind that don't stop."
"I know."
"You just torched your whole life for someone you don't even know."
Senna pulled the yoke and we leveled out. The moon's surface filled the viewport—grey rock, impact craters, no atmosphere. She skimmed us low, maybe fifty meters over the ridges. Sensor shadow. Old cargo pilot trick.
"I know who you are," she said quietly.
That made my skin go cold.
"No you don't. I don't even know who I am. You just showed me a file that says my memories are fake."
"Your memories are fake." She said it flat, like she was reading a supply manifest. "But your DNA isn't. You're Kira Voss. Seventh-generation Starfire clone. Gene donor: Captain Lena Voss, killed in action ten years ago at the Battle of Kethros Gate."
I stopped breathing.
"Captain Lena Voss." Senna's voice didn't change. "War hero. Fleet legend. They grew you from her cells in a black site lab, stuffed you full of fake memories, and dumped you on a border station to see if you'd fly like she did."
My hands were shaking. I shoved them under my thighs.
"That's not—" I couldn't finish the sentence.
"You've been flying cargo for three years. No formal training. No flight school record. But your landing scores are perfect. You pulled a zero-vis docking in a radiation storm last year and didn't even file a report because you thought it was normal."
I had done that. I remembered it. The ice hauler, the broken nav beacon, the static eating my instruments. I'd just—felt where the dock was. Lined it up. Landed clean.
"That's not normal," Senna said. "That's Starfire reflex conditioning. Military-grade spatial instinct baked into your genes."
I wanted to throw up.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because in about two minutes, I'm going to need you to fly."
She pulled up another screen. A jump coordinate. No destination label, just a string of numbers I didn't recognize.
"We're jumping?" I stared at her. "This shuttle doesn't have a jump drive."
"It does now." She tapped the engineering readout. "I installed it myself. Took me four months to steal the parts."
I looked at the console. She wasn't lying. There was a jump core grafted onto the shuttle's reactor, crude but functional. The kind of thing that'd get you arrested just for having the blueprints.
"You've been planning this."
"Yes."
"How long?"
She didn't answer.
The shuttle banked hard. We were coming up on the moon's terminator line, the edge between light and dark. Senna pushed the throttle and we shot out of the sensor shadow, back into open space.
Every panel lit up red.
"Contact," I said. My voice sounded far away. "Three ships. Frigate class."
"I see them." Senna's hands were steady. "Spooling the drive. Sixty seconds."
The frigate formation spread out. They weren't shooting yet. They were boxing us in.
"They're trying to force a shutdown," I said. The tactical overlay was clear. Classic fleet intercept pattern. I shouldn't know that. I'd never served. But I knew it anyway, down in my bones.
Senna glanced at me. "Told you."
"Shut up."
She almost smiled.
The jump drive started whining. Forty seconds. The sound climbed higher, like a turbine about to fail. I checked the core temperature. It was climbing fast. Too fast.
"Senna. Your drive's going to cook."
"It'll hold."
"The temp curve—"
"It'll hold."
The frigates tightened the box. Twenty seconds. I could see their launch bays opening. They weren't going to wait.
"Missile lock," I said.
Senna's jaw clenched. "I know."
"We don't have countermeasures."
"I know."
Ten seconds.
The jump drive hit full charge. The whole shuttle vibrated. My teeth rattled. The viewscreen started to distort at the edges, space bending in on itself like it was folding.
The missiles launched.
Senna slammed the jump actuator.
Reality tore open in front of us and we fell through.
The transition hit like a hammer. My vision went white. My ears popped. I couldn't tell if I was breathing. The shuttle screamed, metal and plastic and ceramic all flexing in ways they weren't meant to, and then—
Silence.
I opened my eyes.
We were somewhere else. The viewscreen showed empty space. No stars I recognized. No fleet frigates. No prison station.
Just black.
I sucked in air. My hands were still shaking. Senna was slumped in the pilot seat, breathing hard, her knuckles white on the yoke.
"Where are we?" I whispered.
She didn't answer.
The console beeped. Soft. Almost polite.
Incoming transmission.
I looked at Senna. She looked at the screen.
Neither of us moved.
The beep came again.
Senna reached out slowly and opened the channel.
Static flooded the cockpit. Then it cleared. And a voice came through the speakers.
A man's voice. Deep. Calm. Familiar in a way that made my chest hurt.
"Kira Voss," the voice said.
I stopped breathing.
"I've been waiting for you."