Page 2 of Meteor Storm

“Then, how long do I have to be up there?”

“I don’t know.”

He was trying to get rid of me. I could tell. I’ve been pushy my whole life, especially with anything regarding Natascha. She had a way of getting into bad situations. Most saw her as a lost cause. I never did.

In the end, it broke us both.

“Any other questions?”

I shook my head solemnly.

“Good.” He leaned over, picking up a file from his desk. “This is everything you need to get on the Nexus. The next transport leaves in three days.”

“That’s... that’s quick,” I smiled joylessly.

“The quicker the better.”

Nodding, I swallowed my anger. My sadness. My hate. It was all routine. Emotions only ever showed people you could be taken advantage of.

I looked up at Gregory and I took another deep breath, feeling helpless and inadequate. I knew he was doing everything to help me, but I couldn’t help feeling like he was also just trying to unburden himself. I was a liability.

“So, I'm Penelope, now, huh?”

“Penelope Elliot.”

“Good name.”

“Thought you’d like it. I pay attention. You should finish your book, by the way.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “I think that’s in the past from here on out.”

“Look,” he placed a hand on my shoulder. “Nothing is permanent.”

“Yeah.”

I left that office knowing I wasn’t coming back. One way or another, I was Penelope forever. Amelia was dead.

Penny: Four years later

. . .

I remembered explosions. Screaming. I remembered recruits hanging on for dear life as our cargo ship was ripped apart by an enemy vessel.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. The valerians assured us that their war with the gek’tal was long past, but someone wasn’t being honest. Either that, or someone was being foolish. Allying ourselves with the valerians made us an enemy in the eyes of the gek’tal and anyone else they might have had a beef with. It was a war we didn’t want, but introducing us to intergalactic affairs came with baggage. Baggage humans clearly weren’t prepared to carry.

It wasn’t long ago that humanity was still confined to Earth, dreaming of the stars and glimpsing them only through the cold lens of a telescope. They were distant. Untouchable. Beautiful.

Now we moved among them.

We stood face-to-face with the beings who had been crossing the dark between worlds centuries before we ever left our own.

And if you asked me, we met them far too soon.

I was running to someone, trying to get control of the situation. That was all I could remember before everything went dark. I drifted in and out of that darkness, every time hearing more screams. More loud noises and the heavy drawl of metal stressing and moaning under pressure. Terror turned my blood to ice.

Only the super skilled, super smart, and super ambitious made it to the Nexus to work. It was a city in space built entirely by humans and powered by syfer crystals. It was an absolute marvel and a place of diplomatic advancement since the syfer crystals were harvested from a valerian-owned planet.

That freighter happened to be filled with those crystals and I was responsible for most of it. They were highly unstable if they were met with the wrong kind of friction and an attack on our ship qualified.