Chapter 4: Fleet of Misfits

Mira put out a call on every channel—the emergency frequency reserved for planetary disasters. Come to the Drift. Bring whatever you’ve got. The fate of every star in the galaxy is sitting in my cargo hold and I need people who aren’t afraid to fight three navies at once. The response surprised everyone. A retired admiral with a cruiser he’d stolen from his own government. A smuggler fleet that owed Mira a debt from five years back. A science vessel whose crew wanted to study the starbreaker—and maybe keep it out of the wrong hands. By the time the first Alliance battleship dropped out of hyperspace, forty-seven ships had answered Mira’s call. They weren’t an armada. They were a salvage fleet with delusions of grandeur. But they were hers.