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Blue casually swiped through the messages, but straightened up abruptly when she saw the last one was from her grandfather. She honestly hadn’t expected to hear anything further from the old man, who was notoriously reclusive and somewhat of a luddite when it came to using technology.

grandfather: stay safe out there, sprout. remember, keep your head on a swivel, earn those raven wings, and watch out for your boys.

Blue flexed her shoulders. She’d flown twelve successful missions over the course of her first year of service, completed twelve months of upgrade training and mission quals. Peacetime didn’t necessarily equate to peaceful, and there had been more than a few close calls and learning experiences along the way, but she was still considered a newbie. She glanced down at her black shipboard uniform and brushed her fingers over the silver wings above her nametag. She smiled.

She wouldn’t be considered a newbie for much longer.

While pilots earned their official wings when they graduated the Legion’s flight training program, each Legion had their own customs. The 13th Legion—called the Bronze Legion by its legionnaires—was stranger, and definitely more superstitious, than most. When pilots successfully completed their thirteenth mission, their thirteenth drop, they earned their Raven wings—a gorgeous set of tattooed black wings across their upper back and shoulders.

Many pilots added feathers to the tattoos with every mission they completed, every year served, and sometimes, with every legionnaire lost. Some of the older pilots had feathers stretching down their shoulders and upper arms. Her commander’s feathers reached the back of her hands.

Her mother had been appalled, but it wasn’t as if Blue couldn’t have them easily removed later if she wished. The Survey Corps certainly didn’t give a shit if their members had tattoos, and at the end of the day, that was all Blue really cared about.

Blue was about to mute her comm when another message from her mother popped in.

mother: oh drat. i just saw the departure notification for your ship. stay safe, sweetheart. i’ll introduce you to jameson the next time you visit. assuming he’s not already married by the time you finally come home again.

“Way to be passive aggressive, Mother.” Blue rolled her eyes. “Dad was right. It was definitely time to run away bravely.”

How her grandmother had ever produced her staid, boring mother was beyond her. Shava Turnien was a gods damned legend in the Survey Corps. Over the course of her long career, she’d explored countless planets and traveled to the far reaches of known space. She’d identified potential colony and outpost locations, located resources, found new lifeforms and strange phenomena that occasionally defied the current understanding of physics.

Shava Turnien had been the first to see so many things.

Blue had spent much of her childhood sitting at her grandmother’s feet, listening to her stories, pestering her with endless questions, wanting nothing more than to follow in her footsteps. As she grew older, those stories changed, or rather, Shava had stopped editing them for a child’s ears. The dangers and deaths, the loss of teammates and friends, the injuries that never quite healed right . . . they made the stories real in a way they hadn’t been before.

It didn’t deter Blue one bit. If anything, the real stories only made her desire to join the Survey Corps burn brighter.

Blue had never seen the point of hiding anything from her family—every last one of them had a way of ferreting out secrets—so she’d declared her intentions over one memorable dinner. Above the sound of her mother’s hysterics, she’d locked eyes with her grandmother and told her she was going to be the first to see things one day too. Shava had barked a laugh and said at least somebody in the family had inherited her itchy feet and gypsy soul.

Every step Blue had taken since that day had been to secure her future in the Survey Corps. She’d graduated primary school with honors, obtained a Masters in Atmospheric Science, earned her civilian shuttle pilot’s license, and spent years studying for the grueling entrance exam.

And then she’d failed.

It didn’t matter who her grandmother was. The Survey Corps was above nepotism. All that mattered was that her scores weren’t quite good enough for her to make the cut. Soul-crushing disappointment had weighed down her shoulders when she’d trudged out of the testing facility with the other failures.

A Legion recruiter had been waiting for them.

Blue gave the man credit for a smooth delivery and a compelling argument for joining the Legion as a stepping-stone to what she really wanted. Four years of service as a dropship pilot and she could transfer into the Survey Corps. Because she wasn’t an idiot, she’d verified his claims. All it took was a simple message to her grandmother, who enthusiastically supported the idea. Blue had signed on with the Legion that same day.

Shava Turnien had passed away before Blue graduated flight training, but she’d left a final message for her granddaughter.

You were meant for great things, my little gypsy. Whatever you choose to do in this life, go after it with everything you’ve got. Never settle for less.

Blue had no intention of settling. One year down in the Legion, only three to go, and then nothing would stop her. Not the plan or the path she’d envisioned for herself, but it would work—all she had to do was survive her years of service.

A grimace twisted her face. She’d downplayed it for Sylvie’s benefit, but rumor had it the outpost they were heading out to support had active volcanoes. One of which was currently smoking.

Idly, she wondered if they could toss one of her more annoying comrades into the volcano as a sacrifice . . .

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Missed the previous snippets? No worries, I got you covered.

• Snippet 8
• Snippet 7
• Snippet 6
• Snippet 5
• Snippet 4
• Snippet 3
• Snippet 2
• Snippet 1