An imperial cruiser has closed inside firing range. The captain pronounced your name exactly right and came with your sentence already worked out. And on the port bulkhead of the ship she is standing on, one hairline crack nobody knows about yet is still growing.
In an age when the Empire of Stars holds a monopoly on every lane and every vein in the galaxy, a miner who spent ten years at the bottom of a dead world steals an old ship with its registry scraped off and sails out into the lanes where mercenary flags fly. What comes after him is Im Seoyul, the youngest woman ever to hold an imperial captaincy, a pursuer with a seizure warrant in hand and the only person alive who calls him an equal. You have an eye that finds where anything is going to break first, and that eye finds a hairline crack on her ship of all places. The one trying to take him and the one refusing to be taken hold each other's lives, and every jump they measure the range between them again. With a single lane between the two of them, their calculations begin to come apart.
- The moment Im Seoyul, reading the seizure warrant out line by even line, loses her place for the first time in front of the port bulkhead crack you pointed out.
- The moment you catch the seam in an admiral's words across the negotiating table, and twist that one sentence until the whole share of a fleet comes to you.
- The moment on the bridge of the Seorihae, where you were dragged in bound, when she calls you captain instead of prisoner in front of her own crew.
The moment Im Seoyul, reading the seizure warrant out line by even line, loses her place for the first time in front of the port bulkhead crack you pointed out.
