Excerpt

Prologue

In all the old stories, Death has many names. So why, then, do we call him Death? Well, it is because that is the name Death itself gave.

"I'm Death, and I make sure everyone is equal."

Piper DeRache knew these stories well, and she'd seen Death, but never had she come so close to knowing him as in this moment.

Her ears rang so loudly it drowned out all the chaos around her. She could see it all—the explosions rupturing through the walls of the Thialfi's command deck. She could see the shrapnel tearing through her crew, leaving melted flesh in its wake. She could see the growing crack in the reinforced glass, and the hulking form of the Aegir capital ship in the distance. Any second, the glass would give way, and they would all be ripped into the void. She could see her ship collapsing around her, smell the sulfurous fumes of gas fires, feel the heat and smoke on her face. But she could hear none of it.

Then the ringing faded, and she prayed to all the gods for it to return and never leave again.

There were many sounds of chaos, but three distinguished themselves. The first was more explosions, though these were distant—likely fuel lines rupturing near the engines. They sounded so small compared to the blast from the Aegir's warhead. The second sound was the moaning and wailing of the crew she knew she could not save. The last sound was a voice. Piper knew it was speaking to her, yet it felt so far away. She glanced toward it to find Bronson, her first mate, screaming something at her, but with the percussion around them, she couldn't quite make out the words.

"Captain!" she finally understood. "We have to go!"

"It was supposed to be easy," she muttered to herself. Her hands were wrapped around the command station railing, white-knuckled and squeezing ever harder. "It was supposed to be an ambassador ship."

Bronson's stare narrowed. "We have to get to the shuttles, Captain!"

Piper found his gaze, and all the shock from the blast washed away. It was replaced by a single thought—help them survive. She had to get as many of her crew off the Thialfi as possible. They would carry on the ship's legacy… her legacy.

In a voice edged with unyielding command, she announced to the deck, "Abandon ship! Anyone who can still walk, help one who can't. Bronson, you're with me."

The still-able crewmembers sprang into action, helping what comrades they could to their feet. Their movements were fueled by the confirmation that this was it. The Thialfi, the scourge of Knörr Loop, was going down.

Piper made toward the hatch into the throughway, grabbing Bronson by the arm and tugging the bull of a man with her. He'd looked ready to start helping people on the Command Deck get to safety, but they didn't have time for that. "There are enough here to help. Elsewhere our brethren may not be so lucky."

Bronson's brow creased, and he nodded. "Lead the way, Formathur."

Formathur—Captain. It was a term reserved only for those leaders most beloved and admired by their clan. Piper had proven herself in many battles, and she loved her crew more than family. But in this moment, there was no part of her that felt she deserved her crew's love. She'd led them into the mouth of a giant, into the sights of the Aegir.

Those thoughts couldn't hinder her now. They had to move; had to get every soul possible off the damned ship. They sprinted into the passageway, and Piper aimed for the next room. They'd check all of them: the crew quarters, the common areas, the battle stations; every place where there could be stranded crew.

Barely a breath passed before an explosion erupted behind them. It was the Command Deck, where they'd been only moments before, now spewing brilliant white flame. They heard the agonized screams of two dozen men and women burning alive. Then, the containment doors slammed shut, and the voices were snuffed forever. Piper and Bronson were left in the passageway with the sound of distant explosions, and the nauseating fumes from burning fuel tinged with charred flesh and hair.

There was no time for more regrets. No time to mourn. There were still others who needed help. But still, she couldn't turn away from those containment doors, from the latest batch of comrades she'd let die under her watch.

"Captain, we have to go," Bronson said, tugging at her shoulder.

Piper bared her teeth and held back the tears of rage threatening to spill over. Throwing aside her hesitations, she lurched past Bronson toward the next room. It was the armory, and Piper had no doubt the armorers, Keyes and Hardy, would have been inside when the warhead struck.

The hulking titanium doors didn't automatically open when approached.

"Override it!" Piper commanded, pointing to the control panel beside the door then swiveling to scope out which room they'd clear next.

"Panel's busted," Bronson growled, slamming his fist against the wall above it.

"We'll have to pry it open," Piper replied, scanning for anything they could use as leverage.

A jagged length of pipe that had escaped the Command Deck explosion provided the best answer. Together, Bronson and Piper wedged the pipe into the crack of the armory door and pushed, but even with their combined strength, it proved impossible to budge.

"Jammed," Bronson hissed.

"Keep pushing!"

"Captain," Bronson said, sweat pouring off his brow. "They could already be dead."

"Just push!" Piper ordered, the faces of the late command deck crew flashing through her mind.

Every vein in Bronson's exposed forearms bulged as he pushed, and she pulled. Piper's jaw was clenched tight, her motley-colored leather jacket glistening with the sweat dripping from her own forehead and the shaven sides of her head, the long mop on top drenched-through. The door budged just the slightest bit, not even enough for them to properly see inside.

"Help!" a female voice Piper recognized as Keyes said from within the armory. "Help us!"

"We're coming!" Piper yelled back. "Just hold on!"

Piper braced her foot on the metal door and released a war cry, straining every muscle to its limit. Bronson echoed, and the duo felt the door start to grind open. They dropped the pipe and grabbed the edges of each panel, pulling as hard as their bodies would allow, opening it just a few inches. Piper was immediately struck by the smell of hyrrine gas and knew it had to be leaking from a ruptured line within.

She looked through the gap they'd formed, trying to gauge the situation from her limited perspective. She could make out a massive rifle rack that had detached from the wall when the warhead struck. Keyes was desperately throwing rifles aside, and Piper saw why. Hardy was pinned underneath the mountain of metal. By the look of things, she'd just cleared enough rifles to start trying to move the rack itself.

"Come on, Keyes! We have to go!" Piper yelled, gesturing for Bronson to start pulling again.

They resumed tugging on the door panels but barely got them to move another inch. Still, they kept pulling. Piper knew they had mere seconds before something sparked the hyrrine and the emergency containment doors shut. So, she pulled harder. The door moved another half an inch, still not near enough to let a body pass through.

Piper looked back inside, seeing Keyes had freed Hardy, supporting the lanky man as they hobbled toward the door.

"Let's go!" Piper ordered.

Keyes and Hardy quickened their pace as much as they could, but it wasn't enough. Piper noticed the busted light panel in the far corner of the room, and not a second later, a hail of sparks erupted from it.

The Thialfi captain felt the breath squeezed from her and her eyes went wide, her mouth open in helplessness.

Piper looked at Keyes and knew the girl understood exactly what her expression meant, as panic overcame the young armorer. The room erupted, an empyreal fireball raging forth, consuming all in its path. Keyes opened her mouth to scream, but the fire engulfed her and Hardy before she made a sound. The containment doors activated and slammed shut, but not before the force of the blast struck Piper, sending her crashing into the metal wall across the passageway behind her, thrusting her into darkness.



Piper came to as Bronson finished strapping her into the seat of an escape pod, barely able to move or speak due to the pounding in her head, and her vision was blurry. She could, however, deduce one thing. The escape pod, designed to fit a dozen crew, was empty save the two of them.

"Where…" She tried to ask where the others were, but the words were impossible to form.

"It's all right, Cap," Bronson said. "We're going to be okay."

Something snapped in the back of Piper's mind, reminding her of the gravity of the situation. "No!" she said with as much vigor as she could muster. "I have to stay. I'm the captain."

"None of that," Bronson said. "There aren't many of us left, Cap. We might be the only two—" The words caught in his throat. Then, his brow furrowed, and he continued. "We might be the only two left who can give Volkner what's comin' to him."

Piper shook her head, the motion making her so dizzy she could have vomited.

Bronson was about to latch into the command seat when he whipped his head to the rear of the pod, still connected to the Thialfi, as a scream rang out. Piper looked as well but could barely make out the details of the passageway, apart from the evident, rapid decay of it.

"I'll be right back," Bronson said, making his way off the pod to help whoever had screamed.

Piper reached after him weakly and tried to say his name but couldn't manage it.

Bronson was still in view, having just stepped out of the pod, when fire and shrapnel tore through the wall panels on his immediate flank. The ensuing haze and smoke hid her first mate from Piper's view as she tried desperately with uncooperative fingers to unlatch her safety harness. She couldn't get a single strap undone.

Piper DeRache—Piper the Red or Piper the Bloodless—was completely and utterly helpless.

When the smoke cleared, she saw Bronson slumped against the wall housing the escape pod's on-ship control panel. He was conscious, but bright crimson poured from his head, and she could see more red peppering his torso. But his look was not one of pain or fear. Despite the grim outlook and near-guarantee of death, her first mate was smiling with bloodstained teeth.

The battered man reached up to the control panel to a switch cover labeled EMERGENCY EJECT.

Bronson, she wanted to say, but the words were far away.

Her first mate flipped up the cover and laid his palm on the large red button beneath.

"We are the axe," he said, with all the strength and confidence of a raging boar.

Then, he pressed it, and the escape pod was launched into the void.

Piper didn't look out the front viewing screen. Instead, her eyes were on the Thialfi, stagnate and littered with tiny explosions. The massive capital ship behind it launched a missile, a second warhead. It collided with her ship, and the two became light forged in silent thunder.

Piper DeRache, a captain, left alone with no crew nor ship, descending toward the ice planet Jotun, the remains of the Thialfi raining down behind her, let herself slip back into the void. She didn't care whether or not she ever woke again.