Rheyla Tann
Character
Bracca.
There was no mistaking the place. Even through the canopy glass, the planet looked like a graveyard—low light, thick haze, and the glint of twisted metal catching the dying rays of a long-set sun. The atmosphere was clogged with debris dust, the kind that clung to hull plating like spores. Above the planet’s corpse-strewn surface, half-shredded orbital rings and broken satellite husks spun slowly, their silence louder than any warning siren.
Hyperspace folded inward with a final blink, and the Scourhawk dropped back into realspace with a guttural lurch.
The freighter's port stabiliser hissed in protest, compensating for a microfracture Rheyla hadn’t gotten around to fixing—again. A low beep echoed through the cockpit, half a warning, half a reminder that she flew on borrowed time and salvaged parts.
She smirked.
“Still kickin’, girl.”
The Scourhawk was no beauty queen, but she had teeth—and a stubbornness to match her pilot.
Wide-bodied and asymmetrical, the ship bore the scars of a hundred scrapes and skirmishes. Gunmetal grey panels clashed with streaks of faded olive green, weather-worn and scored with the black kisses of near-misses. A mismatched patch of red-orange striping ran like a bad tattoo across the hull—leftover from whoever lost this bird before Rheyla liberated her from a slaver ring.
One engine was newer than the other. One cockpit panel was transparisteel; the other was something else entirely—slightly warped, probably stolen, and just functional enough. The left-mounted cockpit sat like a hawk’s narrowed eye, peering down at the dead world below.
A topside cannon jutted forward near the nose—custom mount, not factory. Beneath her belly, the under-turret groaned in its socket, half-operational at best. The landing gear had a bad habit of sticking on cold approaches, but Rheyla had a boot for that.
She leaned forward in the pilot seat, one hand wrapped around the throttle, the other flicking idle toggles along the worn console. Her fingers were gloved, but thin enough to feel every tremble in the yoke. The Scourhawk flew best with a little resistance—just like everything else in her life.
Bracca’s atmosphere peeled back as the ship began descent, thick clouds pressing against the viewport like old breath. The scrapyard below stretched out for kilometres—crushed capital ships, rust-choked haulers, the skeletal remains of a thousand forgotten wars.
And somewhere down there?
Kaelen Varrin.
He was waiting at the cargo exchange point, assuming no one had double-crossed her, flaked out, or sold the rendezvous to someone hungrier.
Her eyes narrowed. The kind of job that brought you to Bracca? It rarely ended clean.
But clean wasn’t her style.
