Novels by Ixoraya

"And unfortunately for us, the landlord is home, and they look like they’re about to tow us," Felix squeaked, his fingers digging into the armrests of his chair so hard his knuckles turned white."Felix, shut up. Don't even breathe," Odette whispered, her hand instantly snapping to his shoulder, her grip tightening until it was borderline painful."Breathing is kind of my favorite hobby, Odette. Along with surviving, which is currently a very distant second on my priority list!""They haven't spotted us yet," she hissed, her eyes darting across the dead, dark monitors of the cockpit. "We're running completely cold. No engines, no life support, no active sensors. If we don't emit any thermal signatures, we might just look like a floating piece of space junk.""Space junk? I'll have you know the Rusty Pelican is a classic! A vintage masterpiece of Core-worlds engineering!" Felix protested, though he lowered his voice to a frantic whisper. "Okay, fine, it's a floating dumpster, but it's

"Punch it, Felix! Punch it!" Odette screamed, her fingers digging into the back of his pilot chair."I'm punching! I'm punching as hard as my fist allows!" Felix yelled back, slamming the hyperdrive lever forward just as a blinding lance of plasma scorched the Rusty Pelican's rear shields.The universe stretched into a violent violet tunnel, dragging them away from the exploding moon and the Aegis fleet. But the relief was short-lived. A low, angry hum started vibrating through the floorboards, accompanied by a heavy, sweet smell of ozone."Uh, Odette? Why is the cockpit filling with purple mist?" Felix asked, coughing as he waved his hand in front of his face. "Is the ship having a gender reveal party?""No, you absolute clown," Odette hissed, lunging toward the central console where the Black-Box Echo Drive was nestled. "The drive's containment casing is cracked. The feedback from the EMP must have ruptured the sub-harmonic seal.""Which means what, exactly? Are we growing third eye

"I love the honesty in this relationship," Felix whispered, his voice cracking as the last of the cabin's residual heat began to vanish into the sub-zero void of the cargo bay."Great. Now get your hands off my waist and help me figure out if this ship is officially a coffin or just a very expensive, very cold metal box," Odette replied, though she didn’t actually move. Her body was still a furnace against his chest, a stark contrast to the frost creeping up the bulkhead."I’m fairly sure it’s a coffin with a really nice sound system," Felix said, teeth beginning to chatter. He pulled back, his breath a thick plume of white. "I fried the Core-Sync, Odette. The drive is fine, but the ship’s brain is basically scrambled eggs. We’re not going anywhere without a Phase-Flux bypass."Odette stood up, her movements stiff from the cold, and pointed a gloved finger toward the jagged horizon visible through the viewport. "There. About three clicks north. You see that silhouette? The one that lo

"Get to the cockpit. I’ll handle the welcoming committee," Odette snapped, her voice already regaining that razor-sharp edge, though her lips were still swollen from his kisses."Can I at least put on my socks? Frostbite is a very unsexy look for me, Odette! I have a reputation to uphold!" Felix scrambled across the cargo floor, his bare feet slapping against the freezing metal."Your reputation is 'Dead Man Walking' if you don’t move! Now!" She kicked a stray drone-sensor that had poked through a gap in the hull, sending a shower of sparks over Felix’s head."Okay, okay! Moving! Why are the scary ones always so bossy after a romantic night in?" Felix ducked into the narrow corridor, fumbling with the zipper of his flight suit while hopping on one foot."I heard that, Starling! And for the record, it wasn't romantic, it was a tactical necessity!" Odette yelled back, followed by the wet shing of her blade leaving its sheath."Tactical necessity? My back has carpet burn that says otherw

"Felix, if those things start shooting, we’re not even going to be a memory! We’re going to be a footnote in a Vultar history book titled Things We Easily Obliterated!" Felix shrieked, his hands blurring across the controls as the massive silhouettes of the Dreadnoughts loomed like jagged mountains in the purple void."Shut up and find a gravity well, Felix! Any rock, any moon, just get us out of their line of sight before they prime those cannons!" Odette roared, her hands bracing against the dashboard as the ship lurched under the weight of a distant tractor beam lock."I’m trying! I’m diving for that grey marble at eleven o’clock! Hold on to your teeth, because this is going to be a very, very 'un-smooth' landing!"The Rusty Pelican screamed as it hit the thin atmosphere of the uncharted moon. Metal groaned, sparks showered from the ceiling, and for a terrifying ten seconds, the world was nothing but vibration and Odette’s colorful cursing. With a bone-shattering thud and the sound

"Fly, Felix! Or the next thing you feel isn't going to be my heart rate—it’s going to be a torpedo!""I’m trying! My pants are literally caught in the seat hydraulics, Odette! This is not how a legendary pilot starts a high-stakes dogfight!" Felix screamed, yanking at his trousers while simultaneously slamming his fist into the engine’s 'Go Fast' button.The Rusty Pelican groaned, its engines shrieking as they kicked into an Overdrive that the manufacturer had explicitly labeled 'Suicidal.' Outside the viewport, four sleek, terrifyingly expensive-looking corporate interceptors dropped out of warp, their hulls gleaming with the cold, silver polish of the Aegis Corporation."They’re locking on!" Odette roared, sliding into the gunner’s seat. She hadn't even finished zipping her bodysuit; the fabric was pulled taut over her shoulders, but the plunging neckline still teased the skin that, seconds ago, had been pressed against Felix’s chest. "Felix, if you don't break their lock in three s

"Tax evasion doesn't leave green oil leaking out of people's cervical vertebrae," Daeng said, dropping the heavy soldering iron onto its metal cradle with a sharp hiss. A thin wisp of acrid rosin smoke curled toward the water-stained ceiling tiles. "You can hide a balance sheet in the Cayman Islands, Ketsana, but you can't hide a necrotic brain lesion when the medical examiner opens the skull on live television. Sombat’s second wave isn't going to focus on the corporate accountants. He’s naming the clinical directors. The ones who signed off on the Phase One trials without telling the contractors they were acting as human routers for a closed-loop neural network."Noi pushed away from the workbench, her leather jacket creaking in the damp air of the repair shop as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Naming them is one thing. Putting them behind bars is entirely another. I saw the transport manifests Sombat tried to file with the municipal clerk this morning. Half of them have been s

"Salary lines don't mean much when your prefrontal cortex is being overwritten by a proprietary background process you didn't consent to," Ketsana said, finally putting down the micro-tweezers and lifting his gaze to meet Noi’s cynical stare across the cluttered workbench. "And as for the public memory having the lifespan of a housefly, maybe it does. But Sombat isn't letting this drop. He’s already working on a follow-up piece about the subsidiary shell companies Somphone used to funnel the experimental funding."Noi let out a sharp, incredulous bark of laughter that bounced off the grease-stained walls of Daeng’s repair shop. "Shell companies? Ketsana, every mid-level tech conglomerate in this district uses shell companies to hide experimental R&D from tax auditors. If the public cared about corporate tax evasion and offshore accounts, half the skyline would have been nationalized a decade ago.""It’s not just tax evasion this time, and you know it," Daeng interrupted, grabbing a ca

"Trial or no trial, the public memory has the lifespan of a housefly," Noi said, her hand sweeping across the workbench to shove a pile of loose resistors out of her way so she could lean her hip against the wood. "By next month, the papers will find some fresh disaster to scream about, and Somphone’s high-priced legal team will quietly negotiate a plea deal that reduces his felonies to a municipal zoning violation and a modest fine. You really think a judge is going to ruin a promising career over a few dead freelance coders?"Ketsana didn't look up from the transceiver. Using the micro-tweezers, he gently nudged a copper filament into place, watching the way the light caught the edge of the solder joint. "They weren't just freelance coders, Noi. They were people who trusted a contract they couldn't read.""People don't read contracts," Daeng muttered, tossing a burnt-out capacitor into an overflowing metal bin by his feet with a sharp ping. "They read the salary line at the bottom,

"Let them try house arrest," Daeng muttered from deep inside the chassis of the vintage television, his voice muffled by the metal frame before he yanked his head back out and wiped a smudge of black soot across his forehead with the back of his forearm. "House arrest doesn't mean much when the company’s entire asset pool has been frozen by federal injunction and the board of directors is busy pointing fingers at each other like schoolchildren caught stealing from the pantry. Somphone isn't going to a hilltop estate. He’s going to trial, and if Sombat’s second wave of prints hits the streets tomorrow morning, the judge won't even dare grant bail."Ketsana reached over, picked up the micro-tweezers he had abandoned moments ago, and adjusted a delicate copper wire inside the modified radio transceiver they were rebuilding for Noi’s courier network. His fingers were steady. The old tremor—that phantom vibration that used to seize his hands whenever he thought about the corporate servers

"If Somphone walks away from this, then none of us are ever truly safe," Ketsana said, his voice dropping into a register so quiet that it barely carried over the steady, rhythmic hum of the small desktop fan cooling Daeng’s soldering station. "You know it, I know it, and Sombat has enough documentation sitting in his desk drawer to keep the state prosecutors busy for a decade if they grow a spine."Noi crossed her arms, leaning back against the edge of the cluttered workbench with a sharp huff of disbelief that sent a stray roll of electrical tape tumbling off the edge to clatter against the grease-stained linoleum. "That’s a massive 'if,' Ketsana. When was the last time you saw a corporate executive with an equity portfolio in neural-interface research actually sleep in a county holding cell? They don't do orange jumpsuits. They do private house arrest in gated hilltop estates with imported chefs and high-speed fiber-optic lines.""Let them try house arrest," Daeng muttered from dee

"Tomorrow morning, Ketsana," Noi interrupted, her voice sharp as she snatched the flathead screwdriver right out of his hand before his fingers could even close around the handle. She tossed the tool onto a pile of discarded power cords with a clatter. "The municipal council inquiry is a public relations circus designed to let politicians look outraged for three minutes before they adjourn for lunch and quietly renew the corporation's municipal tax exemptions. You aren't going to fix a broken city with a pocket screwdriver and a handful of brass screws."Ketsana didn't reach for the tool. Instead, he kept his hands flat on the wooden workbench, his fingers resting on the cool surface of the cotton mat. He looked up at her, his eyes steady, refusing to let her restless energy rattle the small, hard-won peace he had spent the last three weeks building in this cramped back room. "I’m not trying to fix the city, Noi. I’m just making sure Somphone doesn’t get to walk away from a mass-casua