Chapter 1

Ivy

Like every person in the known universe, Ivy Bryant had once had dreams. Like the vast majority of people in the known universe, Ivy's dreams had fallen by the wayside. Or, more accurately, they had been kicked by the wayside by the cold, booted foot of life.

John Bryant Now-Senior had not been Ivy's dream husband. A rather plain man, it had been pointed out to her on more than one occasion that Ivy's stunning good looks and glittering emerald eyes outshone John's staggering averageness. She supposed this was partly why she married him — the constant reminders of the contrast between them did a fine job of cheering her up on the regular.

Ivy did not consider this behaviour to be vanity so much as she considered it to be an asset. Why shouldn't she use her looks to feel better about herself? Heavens knew that the world would not make her feel better about herself. The universe certainly would not. Out there, as she knew only too well, it was every person for themselves. Survival of the fittest, the fastest, the strongest, the prettiest…and the richest.

For the sake of becoming the latter, in the first month of the year 2826, Ivy had become the semi-proud mother of John Bryant Junior the Umpteenth. If she'd had it her way, Ivy would have broken the tepid Bryant family tradition of not only naming their firstborn sons the same name, but the same boring name. But, in a rare display of spine, her husband had not backed down on the matter.

Well, he had a little. They had compromised. Their son's official name would be John Bryant Junior, but they would use the nickname "Jack", if only to avoid constantly suffixing between the father and son.

Little Jack was currently nestled in Ivy's arms, wrapped in a bundle of silvery blankets, sound asleep. She had to admit, he was rather darling. But it did little to elevate her mood. For Ivy's second-choice it'll-do-I-suppose-dream was getting closer and closer to the wayside to join her actual dreams. She had hoped, at the very least, to settle down in a nice posh house, with her high-earning husband, and start a family. It was not quite her full dream life, but it would do, she had supposed.

And that dream had been so close. She had so very nearly achieved it. Yes, Ivy was, for the moment, sitting comfortably in a reasonably large house on Tantalus, its perfect cream walls accented with soft pink trims and nothing more — everything else had been taken down and boxed away. She had a successful husband who doted on her every move, and what everyone kept referring to as a "bundle of joy" of her own. Ivy had been quite certain this would finally fill the restless void that had followed her for her entire life. This should have been the start to an acceptable happily ever after, even with the current corporate unrest on the planet. Ivy did not pay it much mind. It was no issue of hers what happened to the rest of the world. Only what happened within her own.

Alas, she had not counted on one crucial variable that would rob her of her second-place dream. Ivy considered this with some disdain as she looked around the grand and beautiful house, filled as it was with boxes and storage packs and reams of plastic wrapping.

Ivy Bryant had not counted on John Bryant Senior having a midlife crisis.

This midlife crisis had been accelerated by witnessing the miracle of life that was the birth of his firstborn son. And now, John Senior was not content with his well-paid, albeit boring office job for Atlas. He wanted to live, he had told her, down on one knee and begging the mortal goddess' mercy. He was rotting at that desk, John had told her as she ignored him for the third day in a row.

Now, he wanted to —

"Join the mercenaries...a fricking accountant..." Ivy muttered under her breath, before looking down at the sleeping Jack. "God, I hope you haven't inherited your dumbass father's brains."

"I've been thinking."

Ivy repressed a sigh and continued to busy herself with preparing the dinner. At her feet, little Jack was currently making a grand attempt to scale the kitchen cabinets via the door handles, his mismatched eyes glittering with mischief. Idly, she dried her hands then picked the boy up to unlatch him from Mount Cabinets and set him back on the floor with his toys. Ivy could already see the sulk forming on Jack's face, and he audibly huffed and turned his nose up at his toys.

"About?" Ivy prompted John to continue. Her husband was not an idiot by any means. In fact, she had to admit he was one of the brightest men she had ever met. But the man had next to no common sense. This led to many a grand idea being presented at her feet, without a single thought as to the logistics of any of it. Such as the very idea that had landed them here, in the arse-end of Tantalus, in a house a third of the size of their previous one. Time, it turned out, had not healed that particular wound to Ivy's pride. But an increased number of visits to her bandit boyfriend had certainly helped — of course Atticus had followed them across the planet to remain in Ivy's orbit. What else did he have going for him?

"Tantalus is...well, it's going to the dogs, Ivy. It's getting worse by the day and Atlas isn't letting up. I...I worry about you and Jack," John admitted. Ivy stayed silent and watched as Jack toddled back over to the kitchen cabinets to no doubt begin his ascent once more. However, instead of climbing them, the boy opened the nearest cupboard and helped himself to a cookie.

You wouldn't have had to worry about me and Jack if you'd kept your damn job, Ivy thought bitterly, sighing as she followed after her mischievous son. We wouldn't be living like criminals trying to run from your former employer, you fuckwit.

"A friend of mine at my last job, he's taking his family to this new settlement not far from here," John's voice tumbled back into Ivy's attention. "Pandora. It'll be the perfect fresh start, and we could be a part of history as some of the first settlers!"

"Pandora?!" Ivy spluttered, taking the cookie off Jack, much to his upset, and placing a piece of fruit in his outstretched hands instead. Jack looked at the fruit as though it were an unpinned grenade before looking up at his mother with a scowl. He then unceremoniously threw the fruit down at his feet. It splattered, and just like that, it became a source of great entertainment for the toddler as he stomped in the mess, giggling. "Oh, goddammit, Jack!"

"Think about it, Ivy. It gets us away from the violence, away from Atlas..." John spoke as he got up to start cleaning away the mashed fruit his son was now trying to paint the whole floor with. Ivy straightened up, deciding to let her husband deal with this mess as he verbally created another. Move to Pandora? Sure, he talked about safety for them all, but she knew better. Ivy's mother had recently moved to Pandora herself, and that on its own was enough to tell Ivy what kind of place it was shaping up to be. She had heard enough stories about the newly-colonised planet anyway. A wasteland by all accounts, which was why a number of planets used it to send their convicts to.

Then again, Ivy supposed every planet sent its convicts to some other planet. Maybe Pandora was just convenient. It had a rich resource capacity, having been relatively untouched until recent years. The mining community was thriving, but Ivy could hardly imagine her scrawny husband picking up an axe for a day's hard graft. Nor could she imagine that a miner's wage would be able to afford to buy her heart.

Away from Atlas. Away from the company he had abandoned to pursue his dumb dream as a mercenary. John Snr had taken to the role surprisingly well; turns out a former Atlas accountant had a higher-than-average amount of stored up rage just waiting to be unleashed. He had not, of course, factored in Atlas' pent-up rage over employees who ran off with company secrets. When she had cornered him on this, John had tried to explain it away as being insurance. Ivy did not trust John one whit to ensure them of anything other than ruin.

"If you promised to take up a normal desk job again, I'd move to the fricking moon with you," Ivy replied, turning back to preparing the dinner and ignoring Jack piping up with an echoing "ffffri-kun!

"Ivy, language! You know Jack's starting to pick everything up!"

"Dyack!" Their son nodded, either proud of almost saying his own name or in agreement with his father. "Fri-kun Dyack!"

Ivy threw the vegetables into the boiling pot with perhaps more gusto than was strictly needed, while John tried to broker some sort of deal with his one-year old son not to preface everything he babbled with the newly-learnt word.

"Now Jack, we don't use that word."

"...Fri-kun cookie?"

"Cookies are for after dinner. And not if you keep saying bad words!"

"Cookie fri-kun now!" Jack yelled, throwing a glob of mashed fruit at his father's face and sulking. Ivy rolled her eyes as she watched her husband being verbally outshone by a one-year old.

Pandora...Tantalus...what does it matter where we are? I won't love you any more on one than the other.

Before the bitterness could swallow her entirely, Ivy's ECHO device vibrated across the counter top. She snatch it up, taking a few steps away from where her husband and son were squabbling over smashed fruit.

She was late for her meeting.

"Can you keep an eye on the dinner, my love?" Ivy asked sweetly, all scorn lost from her voice. She needed John to do something without question, and this was the way to do it. "I won't be long."

John looked up from where he was cleaning up Jack's mashed fruit. Every time the man cleared an area in front of him with a damp rag, Jack pushed both hands out over the floor to smear it with fruit again, giggling to himself as he undid all of his father's work.

"Sure. Wh-where are you going?" He asked timidly.

"Just need to check in on a friend," Ivy answered, shaking her ECHO device over her shoulder as she left the room. She left the pair of them behind, hurrying up the stairs and into the office. The small room had only enough space for a desk, a chair, and a bookcase, but it was enough for them now John's work did not revolve around numbers. In fact, the only time the man came in here was to perform a paranoid ritual-check that the Atlas files he had stolen for insurance were still there.

What the man did not know was that those files were there twice over. Their vows had stated what was his was also Ivy's, had they not?

Ivy leaned around the back of the bookcase, pulling out a laptop hidden behind it. Setting it on the table, she reached back again to pull out a mask. The mask was smooth and cold to the touch, void of emotion or facial features save for two eyeholes. The pattern painted across its surface was, in a word, ethereal. It had to be, for Ivy had commissioned it herself. The craftsmanship was ridiculously intricate for a mask that served only to hide her face during her little side-hustle, but the woman would settle for nothing less. Even if no one could know who she was in this area of her life, she still had to be the most gorgeous creature in the room.

The woman closed the door, donned the mask, and flipped the lid of her laptop open. After a few moments, the screen was split two ways, housing both of her guests for the evening. On the left, an older gentleman with mostly snow-white hair did not deign to look at the screen. His lips were stretched into a wide smile, one Ivy knew would seldom fall. This was not the first time she had dealt with Hyperion founder and CEO, Maxim Turner. Of all the CEOs she dealt with, Turner was the one who made her skin crawl for reasons beyond disgust — the man's calm exterior belayed a penchant for violence that Ivy had never witnessed before.

To the right of her screen was a woman who seemed to be doing her best impression of Turner, only with a perpetual frown instead. Dark hair flecked with white and smeared onto her head, the old woman's head appeared to have been moulded from a lump of plaster that had been exclusively pinched to form a face. Ivy thought it to be the highest level of ignorance for a woman so ugly to dare to look down her nose at her. But for the sake of good money, she kept her mouth shut.

Turner raised an eyebrow.

"Overseer Harchek," he greeted his corporate companion first. "I confess I am a little insulted that your employer did not show up to this auction himself. How very rude. How very…Dahl."

Harchek sniffed.

"Mister Turner. I see you have ignored your shareholders. Surely they must be suggesting you take a voluntary retirement by now?"

"Ladies, gentlemen, please," Ivy said, her voice scrambled and distorted by the mask's built-in modulator. "Such high-end brands as Hyperion and Dahl shouldn't be exchanging blows with vulgar words. Let us have a little class — fight with your finances."

This brought both sets of eyes upon her. Turner's grin grew wider as Harchek's frown lines deepened.

"I heard you sold an Atlas file to Tediore last week," Harchek commented, spitting the other company's name like bile from her lips. "And I heard how much it cost him too…"

"And I heard how much it cost Atlas," Turner chuckled, leaning back in his chair. "But if Dahl's wallet is a little light, I assure you Hyperion is interested in your wares, Madame Gaia."

Behind the mask, Ivy smirked. She did so love these sparkling sides of her life. Yes, Ivy Bryant was a restless, bored housewife to a brilliant idiot and a chaotic son. But Madame Gaia played chess with the biggest corporations in the galaxy. And, of course, Beautiful Ivy made gorgeous bandit lords slit each other's throats for her favour. A triple-life to entertain herself for now.

"I won't lie to you, Missus Harchek. My little auction house has earned me a pretty penny over the last twelve months," Ivy admitted, leaning forward to the camera. "But I'm sure your company turns over a little more without risking an Atlas assassin. The risk I took to get copies of these files…I'm sure you understand why my price tags are high."

Yes, the prices she started the auctions of the copied files were nothing to be sniffed at. But Ivy was quite proud of herself for not spending all the money at once. As tempting as it had been to spend the money, Ivy had decided to store it away. Soon, she would have enough money to buy herself a nice, big house. Away from Tantalus. Away from Pandora. Away from John. She could start again, rebuild her road towards happiness now that John had proven to be not only a dead end, but a long walk back down the path towards peasantry. Ivy had come too far to fall back into that sort of life, but everywhere she looked in their new home, all she could see was regression into her past.

John was meant to have been her money tree. Now, when she looked at him, all she saw was a rope fastened around her throat. Every foolish gesture pulled it ever tighter. She had to cut him loose. But until then, the files he had stolen would serve her well. And his body would be a fine shield against Atlas' wrath. After all, he hadbeen the one who stole the files, and Atlas knew it. What Atlas did not know was that John was not the one selling the files to every company in the galaxy. And as far as John was concerned, his former employer was simply reacting to his theft.

"Ladies, gentlemen," Ivy continued, holding up a storage device of Atlas secrets. She cocked her head to the side. "Shall we start the bidding at $3,000,000?"

The Sozzled Scaylion was not a bar fit for Ivy, which made it the perfect place for the women to hide away from time to time. It was certainly enough for a celebratory drink after a well-hosted auction.

In the early days of her marriage, Ivy had stumbled upon the wonders of rundown watering holes such as this one during a particularly heavy night of drinking with her girlfriends. Recounting the ways in which those BFFs had betrayed her in one way or another over the years could fill a tome of its own, and indeed, it gave Ivy plenty of material if conversation ever ran dry.

The conversation tonight, however, ran no such risk.

"He's trying to get you to move to Pandora? Fuck, your ol' ball-and-chain is mad, princess."

Ivy rolled her eyes, but she could not help but smile. Atticus' broad and brash tone was something of a reassurance in her life — that the spark of excitement had not completely left her. That and his chiselled jaw, icy eyes, and winning smile. Lord only knew that the handsome combination Atticus brought to Ivy's eyes had kept her somewhat sane in her married life.

Idly, she stirred her a cocktail stick through her drink with one manicured finger, glancing over to the bar where brawl had broken out between two bandits over something trivial no doubt. Bandit clans had begun to crop up on Tantalus in the last few years, though calling them "bandits" was a delusion of grandeur to save their own egos. They were basically all fired mercenaries who had messed up in some way during the fight against Atlas. With nowhere to go, they splintered off to form their own factions, each undercutting the other in terms of price. Cheaper than mercenaries, but a lot less honourable, hiring bandits was certainly not something one did at the dinner table. It was something one did in a dark and dreary bar.

Not that Ivy had to exchange coin for this bandit's services. Atticus was as head-over-heels in love with her as John was. Why wouldn't he be? Only, the bandit was arguably more useful than her husband right now. Not only was he better-looking, he also provided more for her and her son than John did of late.

"I won't be able to protect you from Atlas if you're on Pandora, pumpkin," Atticus grumbled, signalling to the barkeep to refill his drink. "I can't up stocks and move the clan to a new planet. Half of them wouldn't wanna go. This is home, and we bandits don't have much more than that."

That was partly why Ivy had come to the tavern that night. Atticus had done an admirable job of killing most of the Atlas hitmen that had headed to their home. But if the corporation chased them to Pandora then she would be without her chiselled human shield.

"I know," Ivy mused, popping the cocktail stick between her teeth to chew on it thoughtfully. The wood quickly stained ruby with her lipstick. "Maybe Atlas won't follow us there. I've heard it's a shithole..."

"A shithole Dahl's weirdly interested in. I wouldn't be surprised if Atlas and every other corp has people hidden there already. C'mon Ivy, you're not actually gonna go, are you? What about little Jack?"

Ivy silenced Atticus with a look. This was not a conversation she was going to have with him again.

"Jack will go wherever his mother and father go," she growled in warning. Atticus leaned across the table, forearms pressing into the unstable wood.

"Right. So, if you and your husband scurry off to Pandora, is Jack gonna stay here with me or off with you?"

Moron, Ivy thought, rolling her eyes. She got up quickly then, grabbing her bag and looking down her nose at Atticus. A pretty moron, but a moron all the same. Still, despite his years of company, Ivy could not say she felt much sadness in her next words:

"It's been a blast, Atticus. Miss you already."

The woman ignored his shout after her as she turned and left the bar, the cold night air hitting her face and removing some of the sweaty stench of the place from her clothes. She was not sure what she had expected. Perhaps she had come to the tavern tonight for no other reason than to wind Atticus up. Ivy's threshold for boredom was staggering low, and she often enjoyed poking the proverbial sleeping lion in the eye simply for something to do. Danger was better than restlessness in her books.

Ivy began to walk home, heels clicking against the broken stones of the war-torn path leading to her family's current hideaway.

Maybe it did not matter, she thought. As the words crossed over her mind, a strange and yet familiar haze began to cloud Ivy's thoughts and emotions. For a moment, it felt as though she were floating above it all — above her whole life, watching it play out beneath her.

It was beneath her. Her own life, right now, was beneath her.

She had to break free. Of John, of Jack, of this mundane existence. Of running from Atlas cronies and hiding behind walls of bandits.

On Pandora, they would find her easily. On Pandora, she would have no shield.

Maybe Pandora could be her freedom after all.