In an ideal situation, Reaper would use his Talent to search out every mind on the space station and kill them. In an ideal situation, he would separate out the target, kill everyone else aboard, and then his team could physically board the station and retrieve her. Killing came easily to him. It was the first solution to any problem. However, years of training made him stop and analyze. That same training assured him that killing was not always the best solution to a problem. It was not the most optimum solution to this one. No matter how he looked at the situation, that didn’t change.

One, their target reportedly had a friend with her, someone Wolfgang Hades didn’t want dead. Reaper really didn’t care what Hades wanted, but his orders did. He didn’t always care what his orders stated, either, and if orders were the only issue, he might ignore them. They weren’t. The minds aboard that station were shielded, which meant they were Talented. Even if he attacked them using his gifts, he might not be able to kill them quickly enough to avoid a counter attack, which could include the injury or death of the target. That was an unacceptable risk.

It left him with one option: a physical assault. While the space station appeared to have no weapons, and the corvette he commanded could easily destroy it, that, too, was not a solution. They had no choice but to board it.

There was no ideal method for boarding a hostile space station. In many ways, a planet, a moon, even a colony on an asteroid would be an easier target. Unfortunately, their quarry wasn’t in any of those places. She was here, at an abandoned storage facility for a now defunct mining company, a long-forgotten station floating in orbit around a moon that, according to scans, had rich deposits of a variety of metals.

“Log it.” Reaper didn't look away from the view of the space station. He had no doubt one of his dogs would note the system, the moon and the materials for possible future retrieval. The Lomada system was too far inside Commonwealth territory to be an easy target, but if the potential rewards were great enough, it could be worth the risk. Pirates took their bounty where they could. Someone, probably Cannon, the current pirate king, would weigh the risks versus the rewards.

That was a different mission, for another day. Today, they had a space station to board, a retrieval to complete. And only one point of entry. Cutting another would take too much time, and would not be quiet. No way to enter without being noticed. That would also put the target at risk, but Reaper thought it could be controlled. The enemy would be confident they could deal with an incursion, set up an ambush. The target’s life would not be in jeopardy until a tipping point occurred. Until they realized they would not win.

“Something isn’t right.” Jaxon spoke from where he sat strapped into a jump seat.

The others were unbuckling safety straps, getting to their feet, checking weapons.

They were a good unit, handpicked by Reaper to serve as his dogs, the squad of highly trained men assigned to him. Dog units were for the highest ranking pirates, ostensibly a kind of protective detail or honor guard, and a show of overt power. Reaper didn’t use his that way. This team had been with him for five years. Jaxon, Mateo, Knox, Titus, and Zion. Each one brought a specialized skill or knowledge to the team. Jaxon, tracking; Mateo, scouting; Knox, demolitions; Titus, medical; and Zion, weapons. Each of them could also pilot the ship, act as gunner, or board another ship to take it by force. Their Talent added another layer of ability.

Jaxon sat still, his head cocked as if he were listening to something far away.

“What is it?” Reaper asked. Part of his attention remained on the station. If anyone was paying attention, their ship’s presence would be noted soon. A corvette was a smaller class of warship, but certainly not so small as to escape notice entirely. They were transmitting a merchant code, but one look at the ship’s armament and shielding would make that suspect.

“Not sure.” The Hunter paused, frowning. Reaper waited. Trying to rush Jaxon wouldn’t get an answer any faster. “Something doesn’t feel right. The target.”

“But she’s here?” Reaper’s voice was sharp; they couldn’t afford to waste time and resources being wrong. Not that Jaxon had ever been wrong before. But Reaper didn’t make the mistake of believing a Hunter’s tracking to be infallible. Nothing and no one ever was.

“Yes. No.” Jaxon unclasped his safety restraint with a hard motion, betraying his frustration, and stood. He was a tall man, medium brown skin, a roughly masculine face made more menacing by the growth of stubble along his jaw, and exhaustion etching lines around his eyes and mouth. Jax’s gift wasn’t without a price, and he’d been using it nonstop for weeks. “She is here. She just feels different. I mean really different.”

Reaper frowned. What did that mean?

“Are you sure your gift is giving you an accurate read?” He was careful how he worded the question. Jaxon’s loyalty was certain, but he could be short tempered, especially as close to burnout as he was now. Unsurprisingly, the other man’s dark eyes narrowed into a scowl.

“Once I have a psychic imprint, I don’t lose it.”

“And yet.” Reaper let the two words hang in the air.

Jax ran a hand through shaggy, uneven hair that was multiple hues of brown. It often looked like a six-year-old had hacked at it with a knife. In fact, Reaper knew Jax cut it himself, whenever it got long enough to irritate him.

“I don’t know how to explain it, boss. The imprint I picked up weeks ago isn’t the same.” He looked at Reaper unhappily. “It’s her. Just…different.”

Reaper considered for a long moment.

“If the subject has undergone severe torture, or had her mind damaged significantly?”

Jax shrugged.

“I once tracked a lost teenager on Rasvus. Kid fell down a ravine, cracked open his head, fell into a coma and never woke up. Doc said even if he did, he’d never have mobility or motor function again. His imprint never changed.”

Interesting. A puzzle, but one that would have to be solved later.

“We need reconnaissance,” said Reaper. “Ghost.” Mateo stepped forward. His Talent was so unique he’d been given a nickname that represented it. Like Reaper.

“I’m on it, boss.”

A moment later, a ghostly shimmer appeared next to Mateo, an exact duplicate of himself, down to the armored clothing he wore, the faint sheen of the black fabric visible beneath the lights of the ship as he moved. His short black hair was mussed from the nap he’d caught during transit, his dark eyes hooded and deceptively sleepy. Ghost had a habit of looking lazy, of being the guy in the back of the room looking half asleep, like he wasn’t paying attention. Reaper knew that for a lie. Ghost was always paying attention. To everything.

Reaper gave him a nod, and the specter disappeared. It would reappear inside the space station in a few moments, but the visual would be more opaque, a faint outline barely visible to the naked eye. Ghost could project himself anywhere within his line of sight, and even more remarkably, he retained awareness in his actual body. Effectively, he was in two places at once.

It would be a few minutes before he had anything for them.

“Maneuver to the airlock. Prepare to board.” Reaper paused, considering. He counted more than a dozen individual minds aboard the station. They were Talented, and he and his team had no idea what gifts they might possess. “Zion.” He called forward the dog he considered the most dangerous. While Reaper had chosen each of them meticulously, and had no doubt of their loyalty to him, part of him would forever be wary of Zion and his particular Talent.

“You want me to back him up?” asked the other man with a good-natured grin as he shouldered his way into the forward compartment, past Mateo. It was not an unusual tactic for them to take, but Reaper shook his head.

“No,” he said, and held out his hand.

Zion froze, the smile slipping away. He was usually the one Reaper sent in whenever they needed a face, someone to talk or negotiate. His chiseled features and blue eyes were considered a striking combination, paired with skin colored a dark, burnished gold, and the lean, toned build all of the dogs shared. Lean, so they could move quickly and flexibly, toned because they trained their physical strength as much as their mental. To this, Zion added an easy ability to laugh and joke, to be approachable in a way Reaper would never be. It put people at ease, and they liked him instinctively. Particularly women. But those were not the skills Reaper needed from him today.

To his credit, Zion didn’t hesitate. He took Reaper’s hand, and used his Talent to draw upon Reaper’s, to mimic it. His demeanor changed. The laughter fled from his features, the very air around him becoming charged. The dogs closest to him moved back instinctively, giving him space the same way they did Reaper. Even Zion’s eyes lightened, the intense blue fading to the ice of imminent death, becoming the same color as Reaper’s. The eyes of a Killer.

“Ready,” Zion said, his voice as expressionless as his face.

When we go in, said Reaper, speaking telepathically to all of them, Zion and I will take point. Then Knox, followed by Mateo and Jax. Titus stays here. They needed their pilot in place for a fast extraction in case anything should go wrong. Once we’ve dealt with any immediate hostiles, Jax will lead us to the target.

What if you need a medic? Titus did not sound pleased at being left behind.

Reaper gave everyone a long look. Don’t need one, he ordered.

His tone did not leave room for dissent. In reality, any of them could manage field dressings or med-salve. If anyone was hurt beyond that, well, the situation would change. Killing everyone on the station with his Talent might just become the most expedient solution at that point.

Zion nodded to show he understood. Reaper had picked him for his team of dogs for just this purpose. Then he spent years training him for occasions like this, times when Zion would use Reaper’s Talent to give them not one, but two Killers. An unstoppable force by any definition.

A Killer’s Talent saw death. It pinpointed vulnerability, weakness, giving insight into the quickest, most efficient way to kill anyone. It was the first thing Reaper saw when he looked at someone, the first thing he thought of when he walked into a room, the thing that dominated his thoughts at any given moment. In the mental pathways of the mind, a Killer saw exactly where and how to strike. Sometimes a mental attack was the most efficient. Sometimes it was physical, or a combination of the two. Like a Hunter’s ability to track, the Talent was extremely specialized. Killers usually only bred with other Killers, resulting in a line of gifted assassins going back to the creation of the very first Talented. But Reaper was different. Only his father had been a Killer.

It didn’t make him any less deadly.

He’d trained as a child alongside his brethren. Like his brother, Dem, Reaper learned how to kill as efficiently as possible. He did not rely on his Talent, but used it to enhance the skills he’d spent his life training in. The fact that his mother was a powerful telepath and telekinetic, and had also passed her Talents on to him, only made him more dangerous.

He waited now in the calm before the battle. Still, silent, every breath measured and even. The corvette moved into position alongside the station, and he could hear the docking mechanism extend, the seal connecting to the station’s airlock. If somehow those aboard the space station had failed to notice their presence before, they were surely aware of it now.

“They’ve split into two groups,” Mateo said suddenly. “Half a dozen at the airlock, armed with disruptors and plasma shields. Another six in a central room, looks like some kind of lab. Both the target and secondary target are there.”

Reaper let out a breath.

“Knox,” he said, “pulse grenade.” The dog who specialized in explosives and demolitions tossed one up to Reaper, who handed it to Zion. Pulse grenades served a dual purpose – the bright light they emitted when they went off would effectively blind anyone in the vicinity, while also detonating a short range EMP burst that should drain their plasma shields.

“We use only one,” Reaper said. “I don’t want to take out power to any of the station’s functions.” It would be extremely inconvenient to suddenly lose artificial gravity or life support.

Reaper looked at Mateo.

“Target status?”

“That’s…hard to answer, boss.”

Reaper frowned. “Explain.”

“Both target and secondary target are alive, but…neither one is in good condition. Something is very wrong with our primary. They’ve got her in a full body scanner, and she started screaming about five minutes ago and wouldn’t stop. Hostiles just sedated her.”

That was not good news. A few weeks ago, Wolfgang Hades had asked them to find and retrieve his daughter, presumed taken against her will by forces unknown. The smuggler had provided them with good information, and necessary resources for many years. Losing that connection because they failed to retrieve his daughter in an acceptable condition would be unfortunate.

“And the secondary?” Reaper asked, not expecting to hear any better news.

Mateo hesitated. “Conscious. Physically, she’s been through some stuff. Medical testing of some kind, maybe. She’s Talented, and…” Mateo stopped, looking nervous. Whatever it was, he was reluctant to voice it. Reaper’s interest sharpened.

“She’s what?”

“I feel this pull,” Mateo said finally. He looked at Reaper. “I haven’t felt anything like it since I was a kid. Since Lilith.”

Everyone in the compartment went still. Reaper was pretty sure some of them stopped breathing. Lilith, the pirate’s last Queen. Power hungry. Ruthless. Callous to the point of cruelty. For forty years, she ruled the pirates with a jackboot at their throats. When the virus swept through their ranks eleven years ago, taking Lilith with it, no one shed a tear at her death. But it left a void that filled with violence and chaos, until her grandson Cannon stepped over the bodies of his cousins and took control, kept them in line, stopped the senseless fights and sudden eruptions of violence. It wasn’t perfect, but it was working. For now.

“How old is she?” asked Reaper. His voice sounded distant to his own ears. He was going to that cold, familiar place of quiet inside. The stillness before death.

“What?” Mateo was clearly startled by the question.

Reaper just looked at him. He knew his eyes had chilled to pale chips of white blue.

“Um, hard to say in her current condition,” Mateo said nervously. “I’d guess somewhere in her twenties, maybe early thirties.”

Young, then. Too young to be Lilith’s missing daughter. Not too young to be her granddaughter. A flash of memory hit Reaper, of standing on a spaceport dock staring at a young girl as she begged him to let her go. To this day, he didn’t know why he’d done it. He was a Killer, not one to be moved by emotional pleas. But she’d stared at him with green eyes wide with terror, and he’d been powerless to refuse her.

He’d asked himself countless times since, why? Why had he allowed her to leave? Why had he distracted his brother Dem, a Hunter on his first hunt, to give her time to escape? The only answer he could come up with chilled him to the bone. Because that girl was a queen. And her influence, even as a child, had been so great he’d been powerless to refuse her.

Now it was possible their paths had crossed once again. More than possible. Queens were the rarest of Talented, and Reaper had never seen or heard of another. For a small, frozen eternity, he considered killing her. Seriously weighed it. The pirates were doing all right with Cannon at the helm. Another queen was a risk; one he wasn’t sure he was willing to take.

Dispassionately, he looked at all the possibilities. And realized that a queen’s abilities were more than just about calming the populace. A queen, a true queen, like Lilith, could hold the key to their survival. Or she could finish what the virus had started eleven years ago and destroy what remained of them.

Part of him wanted to kill her, regardless. Lilith had targeted his family more than once. Tried to assassinate his mother. Arranged to have his father killed. If the virus hadn’t ended her, Reaper would have. But too much was at stake. When the virus swept through, moving from ship to ship and colony to colony, attacking female Talented minds young and old, it wiped out nearly half their population before they managed to get it under control. In the decade since, they had made little ground toward recovery.

Like it or not, they needed another queen and what her Talents could do for them. For now, they needed her. If she became another Lilith, Reaper would reevaluate. For a moment, that young girl in his memory looked at him with pleading eyes once again. Would he still be so susceptible to her now, as an adult? He pushed the thought aside. There would time to wonder about that later. Right now, they had a mission.

“That woman is now our primary,” he said finally.

Everyone stared at him. He felt the weight of their eyes, their questions. It said something about their training, or perhaps their fear of him in this moment, that no one voiced those questions out loud.

“We retrieve her at all costs. Alive.”