The Last Girl From Earth

p was b

rst thought, and it sho

o are faster, meaner, and usually deader than you. They are cold iron husks left over from t

different. It

t. The Mira was a joke - a cockpit from a Valkari fighter welded to cargo thrusters from an

was Lyra's AI, seven generations obsolete, with the anxi

nd her in a junk pile, a cracked core that everyone else s

locking her magnetic boots to the

scanner ping. It's absorbing light. Lyra, Imperial law

ans are extinct, so I'm pretty sure t

moon was a bone-yard of warships. Thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands, crashed and abandoned when the Cataclysm War ended 183 years ago

p here. She knew

ever seen

s hull wasn't metal. It was a matte, light-eating black, so dark her helmet's spotlight disappeared into it instead of refle

, where everything should be minus two hun

ju

tongued, always bumping into things. In space, she was a blade. She sail

uched, the h

rom her glove, spreading across t

a f

ever happe

ed, doors would open. The other scavenger kids called her a witch. The depot masters called her a glitch. Lyra called it the static - that

c was scr

wn, peeling back like a living eyelid, exhaling a gust of warm, clean, sweet-smellin

en-oxygen. 21% oxygen. It's... it's Earth-standard. Lyra, that atmo

ing so hard she could h

automatically. Finders law. If

e. It says this vessel is already cla

o royals left. Huma

tepped

not a wreck. It

e same black material, but inside, the gold and blue veins were bright, pulsing slo

off the floor with no wires, no grav-plates, w

ace swirled with galaxies, nebulae being born and dying, slow and sil

breath

lue planet, of an ocean so big it made her chest hurt, of a woman with her face but older, wearing a crown

ho claimed they remembered Earth were locked up.

other. Her boots didn't clang. Th

is that?" sh

When she spoke again, her voice was diff

Heart. Key of the Veil.

inched.

normal, panicked. "My core just accessed a partitioned

sed, like it h

r hand was bare. On her forearm were three pale, strange scars she'd had since

e, the scars began to glo

n her head b

ou," she

ouche

a second,

sphere gr

information - shot up her arm, into her veins, into her hea

tly like her placing a baby in a tiny escape pod. Her. She saw a man in Imperial white - Emperor Lucien, younger - shaking

rth. A vast, silent darkness that wasn't d

ords: Humanity hadn't been destroyed. Humanity had hi

d just rung th

alaxy, every

her palm, warm and pulsing like a second heart. Through the op

s sky is always black, filled with

er skiff. The depot lights on the hori

te, terrifying silence. No e

en

me back on at o

Caelum Prime to the Emperor's own throne display - received the same message, in the s

HAS AW

isplay, warning

Lyra, the Revenant! It's the Revenant! The Prince's warship just

the clouds o

half the sky. Twelve kilometers long, shaped like a black dagger, covere

l Veyron's perso

The Ruthless Prince. The Emperor's Blade. The man who bur

come

y flared hot. A projection shot out of it - not light, but text, b

MATCH

LE - EARTH

OVEREIGN

ip, which had welcomed h

otecting its

protect

akable whine of Imperial drop-ship

ed, and ran deeper into the ship that knew her nam