Chapter 1

Sophia slammed her hand down on the console in anger, then winced and apologized aloud. "Sorry, baby. Sorry." The same hand that had formed a fist now flattened and she stroked it once across the viewscreen that told her what she already knew. The Warlock was dying.

"It's not your fault." She said in a husky whisper, staring out the front windows, searching with her eyes for anywhere that she could bring the Warlock in to dock, even though her instruments told her that there was nothing out there. Just cloud and darkness and the start of a long fall that would end in weeks of repairs, at the least. At the most, well, she wouldn't have to worry. Because she'd be dead.

"Not your fault." She repeated. No, it wasn't the Warlock's fault that Sophia was in the middle of an endless sky, chasing a ghost with an electrical system that was getting waterlogged. That was Sophia's fault alone. She had obviously missed sealing one of the ship's panels correctly. And she'd decided to take the Warlock out in search of a rumor.

Even as she brooded and stared out the window, her left hand was locked on the steering mechanism so hard that her knuckles ached. She flexed her hand briefly, then went back to ignoring the pain. Her right hand was still dancing over the various switches, buttons, and dials that made up the majority of the control center of the Warlock.

The ship was rigged to be run by one person, but it wasn't easy. Especially when half the systems weren't working right because of the damp. But she kept flicking switches in the hopes of getting her radar to work again. It had failed a few minutes ago, but so had the life support system, and that had come back on again almost immediately. It was bad enough she was flying with fuel tanks that were more full of promises than actual fuel.

Another thing that was her fault, but not by accident. She'd chosen to launch from Oriskany Dock without filling her tanks in the hopes that her obvious distress would cause her ghost to materialize and save her.

And now she was in the area where rumor had placed the Silvana, rapidly running out of fuel and broadcasting a distress call on all frequencies. To add unsettling reality to her situation, the electrical failures were making the broadcast cut in and out.

A few more minutes and she'd have to try and bring the Warlock down somewhere on the ground, hope that she could land it safely. She was running out of time.

Her left hand ached again. She let go of the steering entirely and straightened out her fingers with a little groan for the pain as the muscles resisted. This was probably the second most stupid thing she had done in her life.

The first had been undoubtedly sneaking out of the house a year ago and going on the run with her sister's ship. The Warlock was small and hardly noticeable, but she hadn't changed its name either, which meant she was probably leaving a trail of docking logs as wide as the trail the Warlock left in the sky.

She might have thought that purchasing the Warlock at auction and hiding it from her family and the media would have been the most stupid thing she'd ever done, but she had fallen in love with the Warlock the moment she stepped inside it.

It had been Carolina's ship, and she only dimly remembered being in it as a young girl, but once she'd set foot in it when it was legally her ship, she'd never regretted the auction for a moment afterward. It even mitigated her headlong flight from the capital, reducing it from an act of treason to a mere annoyance.

Of course her father probably didn't agree with that. But what did he know? He'd never liked flying anyhow.

Sophia felt the change before she saw it, before the instruments even registered any nearby presence. There was a shift in the clouds that caused the steering mechanism to jerk, and she corrected for the wind's push against the Warlock even as she leaned forward to see what was causing it, her heart in her throat.

Nothing but clouds. How she hated flying blind.

The clouds spun, keeping their own secrets. But she stared at them until she couldn't hear the intermittent broadcast of her own distress signal. Ahead and to her right, no more than a hundred feet up, the clouds were pushing outward, as though they were filled with something more solid than water vapor.

"Please." She whispered, although she couldn't say what she was asking for.

It didn't matter. All her wishes had been answered. The clouds parted reluctantly over an expanse of dull metal that faded into cloud again in every direction. It was the Silvana.

It was huge.

Sophia stared up at it, her mouth hanging open. She knew the Silvana was one of the few fully self-contained ships, but the theory hadn't prepared her for the reality. It was the size of a palace, a city, a dream come true.

Laughing a little wildly, she punched at the comms button, killing the recorded distress signal and opening it up to all frequencies.

"Pilot of Warlock to ship. I'm about a hundred feet below you, and god only knows how far back on your starboard side. Open your docking bay for emergency landing, please."

Silence.

Sophia ran a disbelieving eye over her view screen and the dimly lit lights of her controls. She was certain that she was sending.

"Pilot of Warlock to ship. Respond please."

"Pilot of Warlock to huge ship. Emergency protocol. Respond please."

Nothing. She bit back profanity, although it didn't matter. Either they couldn't hear her swear, or they could and they didn't care.

Now the Silvana was slowly rising up above her, pulling away.

"No!" She cried out, watching both her dream and the promise of a safe landing for the Warlock turning away from her. "Warlock to ship! Respond! I need help!"

Even as she was shouting into the comms, her left hand was gripping the steering mechanism tightly, fighting the drift that the huge ship was sending her way. The Warlock flopped in the airstream like a fish out of water, but Sophia hung on grimly, hearing the alarms as systems failed, recovered, failed again. She could still breathe, so life support was working. She could still steer, so steering was working. She could still fly, so she had fuel. That was all that mattered. That and making it to the Silvana, which was still pulling away from her.

"Warlock to ship." She said in a voice tight with concentration. "I'm coming in."

Then she turned the Warlock against the airstream and fell about fifty feet so she could come at the ship from behind. Logic dictated that the docking bays were somewhere in the rear of the ship, above or below the propulsion engines. She knew the Silvana was a neutral ship, so it was unlikely that it was using the docking bay to support fighter ships. That meant the docking bay should be on the lower side. At least she hoped it was.

Her concentration was swallowed up by steering the Warlock, trying to keep it from being pushed away from the Silvana, spun out of control by the drifts, or falling like a stone because one of the systems had failed catastrophically.

She blinked repeatedly to keep the sweat out of her eyes, unable to spare a hand to wipe her forehead. She could feel the Warlock fighting for her, trying its best to do what she asked of it. They were both up against something so large that it was as though the Warlock was a candle in a cloudless, sunny sky. Insignificant.

Sophia growled and gave up on the systems so she could wrap both hands around the steering mechanism and push. The Warlock whined and coughed, but stayed valiant, shuddering in the drift.

Red lights, ghostly in the deep cloud-cover. Sophia crowed as she saw them, and pulled back on the steering mechanism with her whole body, bringing the Warlock down and to the right, targeting the lights.

The Warlock coughed again, and red lights flashed in the cabin. The triumph was wiped from Sophia's face as she flicked a glance up to the bank of switches on her right. The life support had failed again.

"Come on, baby." She whispered, "Just a little more."

The life support light flickered on. And off.

A thousand promises died unspoken in her throat. She could have said that she would spend a month repairing all the systems she hadn't had a chance to fix since she bought the Warlock. But that all hinged on surviving. And now, her only hope was the Silvana. What she had begun as an illusion was now grim reality.

"Here I come." She said as she saw the wide open space bracketed by red lights. The docking bay was too big to have doors, so there was nothing stopping her from landing. That is, if she could land the Warlock without killing herself, others, hitting the side of the Silvana and exploding in a cloud of blue dust, or sliding right back out and falling like a stone.

She pushed the Warlock a little harder, then eased up suddenly, letting the inertia bring the Warlock in, feeling the sudden release of tension as the absence of something she hadn't noticed at all in the first place. She toggled the landing gear switch as the red lights came closer.

Silence.

Sophia laughed suddenly, though there was nothing amusing about it. The landing gear was dead.

"It's okay, baby." She said soothingly to the Warlock, and kept one hand on the steering mechanism while her other hand hovered over the fire control switches.

The red lights flashed by her, faster than she had planned. She pulled the Warlock into a turn and brought it down toward the floor that was moving way too fast. Then she flicked the fire control switches on all at once with the flat of her hand, finally wiped the sweat off her forehead, and waited tense and praying as the cabin filled up with foam and alarms screamed from every direction.

"Banks to bridge. We've got a problem." Banks' voice was tight with anger. In the background there was shouting and the bleating of machinery, giving weight to his words.

John Bren glanced up from his reports toward the viewscreen on the wall of his ready room. It was split into various views of the Silvana. Nothing looked abnormal.

"Bren here." He tapped his comm to respond on the same channel, leaving it open so that the bridge could still hear as well. "The Warlock gone?"

"No, sir."

He yawned and leaned back in his chair, "Report."

"The jackass pilot brought the ship into the bay anyhow, skipped it like a flat stone across the floor."

"Damage?" Bren leaned forward again, no longer tired. His fingers flicked over the viewscreen commands, bringing several cameras online in the flight deck. There was smoke everywhere, and against the far wall, the crumpled body of a ship.

His heart jumped as he inspected the wreckage, a knee-jerk reaction to the sight of the ship that he had attempted to ignore. He'd hoped that someone had simply chosen the same name for a dual-seater ship. But his eyes told him that it wasn't going to be that easy to dismiss the ship he'd stared at as it came out of the clouds like it was rising from his dreams.

It was the Warlock. The Silvana's own mechanics were fighting fire and smoke to get to it, so it was hard to see the extent of the damage to the tiny ship, but he couldn't deny the surge of recognition.

Bren clenched his jaw. It wasn't the Warlock. He was just imagining it, desperate for any link to the past that he'd endanger the Silvana and its crew for a ship that only resembled the Warlock superficially. Someone had named it the Warlock as a coincidence. Or to get his attention.

"Nothing but the floor and wall, and some minor equipment that got in their way. Fucking miracle, sir." Banks was still angry, regardless of the lack of real damage. "But now we've got a piece-of-shit ship splattered all over my back wall. If the pilot or the navi's still alive, I'm throwing them over the edge of the deck, and their ship with them."

Bren smiled slightly. Banks kept a pristine flight deck, and he loudly railed against anyone who left the smallest smear of grease or wrench out on the deck. He was well known for throwing garbage out of the docking bay, up to and including holding some of the more rebellious pilots out over the gaping maw of the bay, with only his fist wrapped up in their flight suits to stop them from falling into the sky's fatal expanse.

"Are they alive?" He asked idly, debating whether or not to let Banks do as he threatened. With Silvana as a contested neutral ship, it was far easier to make the problem disappear, right off the edge of the flight deck.

"Can't even get close to the junk these idiots were flying. Fire's too hot, still. Hopefully it'll cook the stupid bastards." Banks grumbled in a lower voice, which still came clearly over the comm channel, despite the shouting and the noise of machines.

"Report when you have more information on the pilot and the navigator." Bren tapped his comm once again to cut the connection, and let the speakers in his ready room relay Banks' response.

"Aye aye, sir."

Then he leaned back in his chair and stared sightlessly at the table in front of him.

What were the chances of a dual-seater like the Warlock showing up anywhere near the Silvana by accident? Slim. With the name Warlock? Impossible. Therefore, someone was trying to set Bren up. He was not pleased. He'd buried his memories of the Warlock when he buried the pilot. Whoever had brought those memories back to the surface had earned his immediate and searing hatred.

Maybe he'd let Banks toss the pilot and navi off the edge of the Silvana.

Maybe he'd ask Banks to keep the ship. He could restore it, given time. Even if it wasn't the Warlock — and his gut whispered that it was — he could rig it to run like the Warlock had. The Warlock had not been a rare class of ship.

No. Let it stay dead, where it belonged. The Warlock was no longer part of his life. He was the Captain of the Silvana now.

He surged out of his chair and went out to the control deck so that he could relieve his first officer of duty and take over running the ship for a while.

"Give him another one — Never mind, he's up."

Those were the words that Sophia heard, right before the adrenaline shot hit her bloodstream, and she practically leapt up off the floor. Her scream was short-lived, she started coughing and hacking, she couldn't get air.

"Yeah, choke, you stupid bastard." Someone said, and Sophia did just that. She rolled to her hands and knees and retched out smoke and impact resistant foam and blood.

"Easy, Head. He didn't do that much damage. Besides, he looks like he's about fifteen."

"I don't care if he's five. He smeared his ship over my deck."

"Don't!" There was a brief struggle, which Sophia was only peripherally aware of. "He shows up in the med bay with broken ribs and Bren's going to know it was you. We can deal with this ... later."

"I'll throw his ship off the edge and make him watch." The first voice growled.

"Sure, Head. But later." The voice came closer, helped her sit up. "You good now, kid?"

She nodded, shook her head.

"Well which is it? Here, wipe off some of the gunk so you can actually see." A towel was shoved in her hand, and she scraped her face clean, or at least clean enough so that she could crack open her eyes. The smell of vomit reached her and she kicked back away from it, her stomach roiling.

"Easy, easy." Through tearing eyes, she could finally see the man who was trying to help her. He was a grey shape under the brilliant lights of the flight deck. There were other grey shapes looming around her. One probably belonged to the man who wanted to kick her.