Shadow Skye wasn’t born with a silver spoon, but he was born with a silver tongue—and in the Outer Reaches, that counted for more.
He came up on the backwater mining moon of Kestrel-9, a place where dreams rusted faster than ship hulls. Folks there learned fast: if you couldn’t mine it, fix it, or cheat it, you’d better learn how to run. Shadow? He learned all three by age fourteen.
By twenty-six, he was a wanted man in four sectors, known for quick talk, quicker draws, and leaving chaos in his wake. But still no ship to call his own. He hitched rides, sweet-talked smugglers, and occasionally stowed away in cargo holds smelling like pickled protein bricks. It wasn’t glamorous, but it got him by.
Until the night of the Starjack Gambit.
It was on the floating casino Celestial Vice, orbiting the outlaw haven of Draxon Prime. Shadow walked in with a half-busted plasma pistol, a pocket full of counterfeit credits, and a chip on his shoulder. He sat down at the high-stakes table like he belonged—because confidence was half the game.
The pot? A Griffin-class smuggler's skiff named The Midnight Shrike, docked in bay seventeen. Sleek, fast, and armed to the teeth. Its current owner, a nasty piece of work named Gordo Vex, was drunk on synth-whiskey and high on his own luck. Bad combination.
The game was Rigged Ripper—a dirty variant of poker laced with hidden rules and shifting stakes. Shadow played like a man possessed. He bluffed when he had nothing, folded when he had aces, and smiled like he knew something no one else did.
Because he did.
He’d bribed the dealer three hours earlier.
When the last card hit the table, Gordo laughed. Shadow smiled wider. The dealer called it: Shadow Skye, by three spades and a ghost hand.
Vex went for his blaster.
Shadow was faster.
By the time the security bots showed up, he was already in the pilot’s seat of The Midnight Shrike, engines humming like a lullaby sung by devils. He punched it into hyperslip, trailing a string of furious cusses and smoking deck plating behind him.
And just like that, Shadow Skye had his first ship.
He didn’t earn it fair.
But nothing about Shadow ever was.
