Chapter Text

Chapter 1 – Welcome to the world of salvage

POV: Tavi Glaren
Location: Outer Drift Cluster, Aztlan System
Time: c+ 208.01. 13, 17:35 SST

“If you put that stim sachet in the recycler again, I swear to every dead star, I will flush your ration queue for the cycle.”

The crew didn’t even look up.
Nix was half-curled on the deck, feet on a stripped-down hull stabilizer, welding a patch kit onto a rebreather housing that probably came off a mining crawler. Hemi had his whole upper body buried in the vent coil locker, muttering in a language that was mostly curse.

Tavi tapped the console again. Still no return ping. Just static and the background hiss of Aztlan’s orbital drift field.

He sighed. “Seriously, I’m not drinking three-hour-old stim sludge because someone can’t read the damn ink tags.”

“I said it wasn’t me,” Nix called back. Her voice was muffled. She was holding the solder clamp in her teeth again.

“You said it wasn’t you last time. And the time before that. And the time you tried to reheat noodles in the calibration oven.”

“That was experimental engineering.”

“It fused the lid shut.”

“Still edible.”

Sensor anomaly.

The console blinked. Just once.
Tavi frowned and leaned forward. It was subtle—mass return, mid-sized body, delta-r zero. No heat. No transponder. No scatter echo. Just… there.

He pinged it again.
Another ghost? He got them all the time. Ghosts were just how the Wake lived. Sensor scatter off floating insulation. A dead beacon casing rolling through background drift. A frozen body once.

Still—this one stuck.

“Captain,” Tavi said, trying to sound bored and failing. “Got a clean shape. Seventy meters. Maybe eighty. No emissions. Just driftin’. Heading starboard cluster arc, low angle.”

There was a pause.
Then Drus’s voice crackled through comms: “No decay?”

“None. Clean lines. Mass-to-form ratio’s tight. Hull integrity probable.”

“Tri-Tach leftovers?”

“Tri-Tach doesn’t build without flares. This thing’s colder than ration soy.”

The deck changed. You could feel it when people stopped pretending they didn’t care.

Thirty minutes later, Tavi watched Nix and Hemi cycle the airlock. They were in suits. Real ones this time, not patched duty sleeves. Full seals, magnet boots, manual tethers.

He stayed behind. Sensors. Always sensors.

The hull was visible now—dark-gray composite, matte-finished plating. Clean weld lines. No scarring. No scrape-seals. Not patched, not refit. Just... waiting.

Nix’s voice came in over the link. Her breath was steady.

“Dorsal lock’s jammed, but manual clamps look… unused. Like, ever.”

Tavi stared at the console.
He felt it again. The twitch.

Not fear.

The feeling before fear.

A silence that hadn’t been earned.

“Going hands-on,” Nix said.

He nodded even though no one could see.
The radio clicked once. Then again. Then—

"AUTHCODE GREEN-ALPHA-SIX. PRIORITY: DOMAIN MILCOM. ECHO LOCATION: UNKNOWN."

No sound.
No warning.
Just a line of text on Tavi’s relay subfeed, blinking once before routing itself—automatically—through their active comms packet. The Aztlan Relay flickered active. Unauthorized outbound protocol.

Tavi’s fingers hovered.

“What the hell was that?” Nix said, breath sharp.

He checked the console.

The system was sending. Not requesting.
The Wake was now a relay.
A very small, very loud, very precise relay.

And someone far above their pay grade was going to hear it.

“Captain?” Tavi said, heart flatlining.

Drus didn’t reply.

The signal had already gone.

POV: Lieutenant Jorie Senka
Location: Coatl Bastion – Orbital Defense Coordination Room, Aztlan System
Time: c+ 208.01. 13, 18:11 SST

“Drydock seventeen, you are cleared for vector two-six-zero. Mind the relay wash—last freighter scraped the comms ring and they still haven’t paid for it.”

Lt. Jorie Senka didn’t look up as he muttered into the headset. His other hand was already authorizing a short-haul escort for an orbital tanker skimming the far ice belt.

“Civilian hauler Breck One-Two-Nine, reroute to anchorage buffer three. Do not cross the sensor threshold again or I will flag you as hostile approach vector and let the point defence AI wake up unhappy.”

Behind him, the other five stations were half-lit. One was staffed by a green-jacket cadet still hunting for the on-screen cursor. Senka didn’t mind. It was quiet. In Coatl Base Ops, quiet was the reward.

Everything had a form. Every threat had a protocol. Every signal went through three layers of confirmation.

Then one didn’t.

MILCOM PRIORITY UPLINK – GREEN-ALPHA-SIX
Origin: Aztlan Outer Cluster
Routing Authority: Autonomous Relay Echo-Stack – Code Match: Domain MIL-AE-156 / Confirmed
Classification: Emergency Continuity Ping
Command Directive: Log + Flag to Strategic Oversight

Senka blinked.

The console hadn’t beeped.
It hadn’t asked.
It had already filed the transmission.
The old systems—the ones with the hardcoded Domain protocols—had already accepted it as legitimate.

He leaned closer.
Read it again.
Then pulled up the system map.

There was no fleet in that sector.
No recon patrols. No logged operations. No active maneuvers.

“Viren,” he said, not turning. “You seeing this?”

The junior officer glanced over. “Something crash the comms spool again?”

“No. Something woke the continuity router.”

That made Viren freeze.

“Could be a glitch?”

Senka snorted. “Domain military beacons don’t glitch. They’re either silent or they’re real.”

He tapped the alert again. It was already bouncing up the chain. But protocols still had a manual clause.

“Ops to Fleet Dispatch,” Senka said aloud. “We’ve received emergency MILCOM flag from sector drift grid seven-nine. Request immediate dispatch: fast picket, blackout order, priority intercept. Do not light transponder until visual confirmed. This is not a drill.”

There was a silence.

Then:

“Copy, Coatl. Fast unit Falx-Three is warming drives. Estimated burn vector in two minutes. Any known threat profile?”

Senka stared at the code again.

“Negative. But I’ll say this: the codes check out. And they haven’t been used in this sector for two centuries.”

He toggled the recording.

“If this is a prank,” he muttered, mostly to himself, “it’s the most expensive one I’ve ever seen.”

Then the beacon pulsed again.

And all the lights on his console dimmed for half a second—just long enough for the fallback systems to sync to something older than his entire career.

He felt his hands sweat for the first time in months.

Chicomoztoc Orbital Review Wing – Level 14B, Internal Audit Suite

c+ 208.01. 13, 18:47 SST

The corridor hissed shut behind them. No salutes. No announcements. Just the click of magboots over impact-padded plating.

Admiral Thule walked like a man used to moving through silence.
He didn’t scan the room. He didn’t nod. His attention was a scalpel—already focused on the frosted panel ahead, already expecting it to open on command.

Investigator Ral Orsik kept half a step behind. That was protocol.
Also, that was safety.

Inside, the audit chamber smelled of powered metal and cold air. Screens lined the walls—each looping paused telemetry. A ship silhouette, small but intact. An overlay of drift vector and impact potential. Cryopod diagnostic trees.

Thule finally spoke.

“Close external feeds. Tag all local data assets to Red. No cloud syncs. No command relays. Manual port locks only.”

The technician at the main console blinked.

“Sir, the Strategic Operations Hub—”

“Was not informed. Nor will they be.”

Thule’s voice was still low. But the effect was total. The technician reached for the manual override.

They sat.
No introductions.
Dr. Emina Kael was already present, flanked by two secure medbots and a cart of cryostasis readings.

“Fourteen viable,” she said, pulling up the pod cluster data. “Some borderline. Core crew only. The rest were… fallback redundancy. Slower-loading cycles, automated diagnostics too degraded to attempt revival.”

She paused.

“They went under voluntarily. Probably right before power failed.”

“Why?” Orsik asked, tone flat.

Kael didn’t shrug. But she might as well have. “Most likely scenario: planned cryo entry to conserve oxygen and metabolic drain. They knew they’d drift. Hoped someone would find them.”

“From where?” Thule asked. The first true question he’d offered.

Orsik touched his pad. The hologram above the center console reconfigured.

A registry tag hovered in place. Burned in. Not falsifiable. DSS Cadence. 448/TF/ECHO.
The 'TF' wasn’t Persean. Wasn’t even sector-aligned.

“Terran Federation,” Orsik said quietly. “Threadneedle designation. Confirmed pathing suggests they left Domain core space nearly seventy cycles ago. Independent probe. Maybe part of a restoration convoy.”

Kael exhaled sharply. “They made it that far? Through collapse?”

“Looks like it. Until something tore them apart.”

Another playback started—no sound, just data overlays.
Hull breach logs. EM distortions. Abrupt cutoff. No identifiable attacker. Just void and the flicker of warning runes across half-dead screens.

“So they drifted,” Orsik continued. “And we found them by accident. Freelance salvagers triggered the beacon, probably trying to force a hatch. We already have them detained. The crew’s clean—grey-zone operators with half a dozen expired registry updates, but no active warrants.”

Thule turned toward him then. “Are they cooperative?”

Orsik hesitated.

“They think they found gold. Not a tomb.”

Thule didn’t smile. But he tapped his fingers twice on the table.

“Move them to detain-and-hold, internal nonpublic wing. No official charges. Just enough to keep them quiet.”

“Understood.”

Kael stepped in again.

“Sir. I need revival clearance. The longer we wait, the lower odds of memory integrity. We’ve prepped two tanks at Coatl's triage dome. It's not ideal, but it's the best we’ve got without sending them to Kazeron.”

Thule nodded once.

“Do it. Prioritize command crew. I want cognitive imprint recovery and tactical logs by end of cycle.”

“And if they ask questions?”

“Give them answers that don't matter.”

The lights dimmed briefly as the chamber entered security sync. The relay pulses cut out. Only cold air and quiet remained.

Ral Orsik looked once at the projection of the Cadence. Still drifting. Still intact.

“Why now?” he asked. “Why here?”

Thule didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Because the better question wasn’t about the ship.

It was about what the Hegemony could do with it.

Timestamp: c+ 208.01. 14, 5:15 SST
Location: Coatl Bastion, Level 6 Cryo-Recovery Ward
POV: Commander Elisa Rourke

The first thing she felt was cold.

Not sharp—more like a weightless, slow-moving ache crawling up from her spine, coiling in her joints. Cryo stasis didn’t numb. It just paused the suffering.

Then came light—thin, overhead, flickering once. Harsh at the edges, but distant, like a sun filtered through layers of static and smoke.

Something hissed, depressurized.

Warm gel drained around her ribs, then her neck. Metal scraped. She groaned, instinctively flinching. Muscle control hadn’t caught up yet.

“Easy there. That’s your lungs remembering how to fight gravity again.”

A voice. Male. Warm, with a touch of cheerfulness that felt… off.

“Name’s Doctor Marin Selak. You’ve been out for a while, Commander. Just breathe. Everything still attached where you left it.”

Elisa forced her eyes open. The ceiling above her was matte gunmetal, riveted in mismatched seams. One corner had an exposed diagnostic cable coiled like a hanging vein. A bio-readout pulsed on an ancient screen to her right. The readout had a yellowed sticker across its top: PROPERTY OF AZURE RECLAMATION SERVICES.

She blinked again.

Not a pirate hold. Not a slaver’s med-slab. Not quite a coffin either.

Her throat cracked.

“Status—crew—?” she rasped.

Dr. Selak was already tilting a bottle of viscous green hydration solution toward her lips. “Later. You’re running on defrosted blood and one hell of a heartbeat. I’d rather not have you code on my watch.”

She drank. Regretted it. It tasted like algae and copper wiring.

“Terran systems,” Selak mused as he checked her vitals. “Stasis pod like this? Pre-Collapse craftsmanship. Sync rate’s perfect. You lot don’t build them like that anymore.”

“We didn’t build them,” she managed, head swimming. “We just… ran them.”

A chuckle.

“Still. Credit where credit’s due.”

Only now did she realize her arms were unstrapped. Standard revival protocol. She wasn’t a prisoner—at least not officially. She lifted one hand and flexed her fingers. Pins and needles. Her skin was pale, lined with monitoring tape and old scar tissue. She noticed it then: the faint line across her wrist where the cryo cuff had pressed for... what? Fifty years?

“You were the ship’s CO?” Selak asked, not looking up from the panel.

“Yes. Rourke. Elisa.”

“You’re the first one up. The others—what’s left of them—are next. Fourteen pods viable. Six failed. Probably from the cascade when your primary heat sinks gave out.”

She nodded, more instinct than agreement.

“Pod integrity was solid though. If we hadn’t found that beacon…” He let the sentence trail off.

Her head rolled slightly, just enough to take in the rest of the room. The walls were mismatched metal panels, probably ripped from half a dozen pre-collapse installations. A sanitation station had a label written in two languages—only one of which she recognized.

But then she saw it: a soldier standing near the exit.

Boots shined. Posture rigid. Chest insignia: faded orange and grey. XIV Battlegroup. The crest of the old Domain Expeditionary Corps.

That did it.

This wasn’t a pirate den.

It was worse.

“Where am I?” she asked.

Selak smiled—like he’d been waiting for that question.

“You’re at Coatl Bastion. Aztlan System. Hegemony territory.”

Her breath caught.

“Hegemony,” she echoed. Her lips were dry. “That… still exists?”

“Sort of. Depends on who you ask.” He finished the checklist and powered down the panel. “But yes. You’re under their jurisdiction now. Which means protocols. Reviews. And—if you’re lucky—a real bed and better food.”

He began unfastening the last monitors. “We’ll move you to secondary recovery. Someone higher up will want a word. They’re still trying to decide what to do with you.”

She tried to sit up—too fast.

Selak caught her shoulder. “Slow. You’ve had better days, Commander.”

“I went into cryo hoping… anyone would find us. Didn’t think it’d be a uniform.”

“Most don’t.”

The door clicked, and another medic entered with a field stretcher. The guard didn’t move. Just watched.

Selak looked to her. “You ready?”

Rourke stared at the ceiling a moment longer.

It hadn’t collapsed.
It hadn’t been saved.
It had been patched. Rebuilt. Welded into place with whatever pieces they could salvage.

She exhaled through her nose.

“Ready.”

Coatl Bastion – Sublevel C / SecOps Briefing Chamber

Timestamp: c+208.01.14, 5:33 SST

The room hummed with low white noise and the faint flicker of magnetically shielded displays. No AI assistance was permitted beyond locked-frame playback and air filtration monitors. Ten chairs. Nine filled.

A holoframe in the center cycled through cleaned sensor data: ship ID "DSS Cadence," heat decay trail in the outer ring of Aztlan, salvage drone telemetry, partial hull reconstructions. One frame froze on the moment the emergency beacon activated—Terran Federation registry codes flaring like a fossil catching fire.

Admiral Thule stood with gloved hands resting on the edge of the command table. The lights behind him were set low, casting sharp shadows on the old alloy walls.

“Summary first. Zasten?”

Commander Rhai Zasten, Intelligence Division, pulled up the classified technical readout. His voice was flat, calibrated.

“Subject vessel is confirmed Terran Federation make. Pre-Collapse architecture with post-Domain diagnostic overlays. Operating AI is dormant. No evidence of Sector-standard OS modifications. Emergency logs triggered auto-cryostasis. Fourteen pods viable. Six unrecoverable. All internal records indicate a hostile engagement with unknown vectors during a mission labeled ‘Threadneedle.’”

Someone hissed through their teeth.

“Threadneedle wasn’t local,” said Rear Admiral Vos, more to himself than anyone.

“No,” Zasten replied. “Based on navigation logs, the mission originated far beyond the sector rim. Closest match to encoded stamps is… the Panterra Core, Domain-held prior to Collapse.”

Silence followed.

General Staff Liaison, a round-faced woman in a patchy synthweave uniform, leaned forward.

“Assets?”

“Nanoforge-grade infrastructure. Compact. Unknown auxiliary modules—one AI cradle, shielded. Partial blueprints for hypershunt routing protocols. Cadence was a scout or advance platform—mission directive unclear.”

“And threat assessment?”

Zasten tapped his display, pulled up a jagged pulse trace—black-box decrypted from Rourke’s flight logs.

“Visual confirmation of hostile unknowns during final engagement. No transponder. Weapons fire consistent with anti-domain pulse shearing. Intent assumed lethal. Signal loss confirmed just before pod ejection protocols.”

Thule nodded once.

“Understood. Provisional decisions.”

He turned and input a command string into the terminal. A schematic of Cadence’s current location within Coatl’s medical facility appeared. Crew marked as red or green according to sedation levels.

“One. Cadence crew will be granted provisional freedom of movement under escort. Public status: XIV survivors. Full internal surveillance active.”

“Two. Commander Rourke will undergo a Strategic Review. Tactical debrief, psych evaluation, threat intel. She’s an officer—treat her like one until proven otherwise.”

“Three. Expedition planning is to begin now. I want fleet readiness briefings within forty-eight hours.”

He glanced around the room.

“Candidates?”

Names came up like knives laid on the table.

• Cassian Merrow: Disqualified. Too high-profile. Would leak before first burn.

• Delin Rho: Effective, but not what’s needed unless we plan to disappear Cadence.

• Serah Avrellin: Competent, but irreplaceable in current post-Corvus recovery.

• Kaelin Vos: Acceptable. Safe. Present. No one opposed.

Thule gave no visible reaction, but input his recommendation with a silent keystroke.

Security Legal Officer presented a small folio.

“Cover narrative approved. Cryo survivors from XIV lost during late-collapse deployments. Salvage crew compensated and declared heroes. No civilian disclosures authorized.”

“Do we inform the High Office?”

“Yes,” Thule said. “But only what’s needed. Route the report directly. No intermediaries.”

The room stilled. Even the displays froze on the image of the Cadence—battered but intact, drifting near the Aztlan ring, as if watching them from orbit.

“This,” Thule said, “isn’t a discovery. It’s a fracture point. The difference is what we drive through it.”

No one argued.

“Meeting adjourned. Report to be sealed under Command Chain Priority Gamma.”

As the room cleared, the air filters cycled harder, scrubbing the room of even the trace of what had just passed.

Timestamp: c+208.01.15, 9:33 SST
Location: Coatl Bastion, Auxiliary Recovery Ward – Sector G
POV: Commander Elisa Rourke

The room smelled like disinfectant, metal fatigue, and something faintly sour—maybe old bandages. It was quiet, save for the distant whine of ventilators and the half-muted drone of the overhead vid-screen.

“—join the brave veterans of the XIV returning to duty and community. Reintegration efforts will continue at scheduled facilities across—”

The Hegemony Public Access feed flickered, showed a smiling officer receiving a medal, then snapped to a grainy rerun of The Colonel’s Guest House, where laugh tracks came five seconds too late.

Masel sat on the bed across from her, barefoot in a threadbare hospital jumpsuit, a thin blanket thrown over his lap. He was hunched over a paper booklet, pen ticking rhythmically.

“I didn’t realize we’d gone back to parchment and wax seals,” he muttered. “They gave me a form written for a ship that had its own AI. And they want me to hand-write it.”

Rourke leaned back against the headboard. Her neck still ached from the freeze, and her vision swam now and then. But she was awake. Alive. Watching.

Three more beds were occupied. One crewman still intubated, barely moving under a thermal dome. Another lay unconscious, bruised and pale. The last was Ensign Lau—sitting up but vacant-eyed, slowly turning a spoon in a plastic cup of nutrition slurry.

A guard stood by the only exit. Same cut of armor, same orange-and-grey Hegemony plating. Rifle slung casual, but his eyes tracked every movement like it mattered.

“They’re not slavers,” she said.

Masel didn’t look up. “I’d prefer pirates. At least they don’t make you fill out Section 7C on reactor variance logs.”

“It’s just protocol.”

“And I’m sure it’ll go straight into the archives next to the Emancipation Charter.”

He passed her a page. It was headed with the old Domain Fleet header: POST-ENGAGEMENT COMBAT & SURVIVAL SUMMARY – CODE 32.A/B / INTERNAL USE ONLY. Fields were half-filled in typeface, others left blank for “Commander’s Confirmation Signature,” or “Appendix: Local Incident Reflections.”

Rourke scanned it.

“They even have a field for psychological state,” she murmured.

“I wrote ‘conscious.’” Masel capped the pen. “Figured that was optimistic enough.”

She gave a dry laugh. Her throat still burned from yesterday’s hydration treatment.

“They haven’t asked anything classified,” she said. “No data extraction. No fleet passwords.”

Masel shrugged. “Might mean we’re not prisoners. Might mean they already got what they wanted from the logs.”

The vid-screen cut back in.

“—tribute to the enduring strength of the Hegemony. Remember: order is a choice. You make it every day.”

Elisa closed the form and laid it on the side table. Her hands itched to do something—issue an order, analyze telemetry, lock a flight path. But the console beside her bed was disabled. The room’s single dataport had a burned-out plug.

“If we’d been picked up by some warlord,” she said, “we’d be sold or dead.”

Masel didn’t answer for a moment. Then:

“We’re not free, Elisa.”

“I know.”

He looked at the others—crew still drifting between worlds. And at the guard, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t even blinked.

“But we’re not salvage either.”

Timestamp: c+208.01.1 6 , 12 : 14 SST
Location: Coatl Bastion – Observation Deck, Recovery Wing D
POV: Elisa Rourke

The air in the observation deck was thinly chilled, and the noise of life support vents played faintly beneath the echo of slow footsteps on metal floor grating. The space was meant to be calming, maybe once was—back when the chrome wall panels were uniform and the furniture hadn’t been bolted in from three different decades of manufacture.

The view, though, was real.

A panoramic window—one of the few undistorted ones—offered a grand sweep of Coatl’s fractured surface. Down below, its cratered crust sparkled with faint beacons and the blinking outlines of hardened silos. Overhead, the orbital lanes were crowded: freighters slotted between navy patrols, and above them, lumbering XIV-pattern warships held station in a cold geometrical ballet.

A trio of figures in patched-together vacsuits clung to the station’s hull just outside the deck, lazily arcing welds across a maintenance panel. Sparks flared against the starless black. One had a scarf fluttering, faded orange-and-white. The torchwork left the window striped in flickering gold.

Elisa Rourke had been standing by the viewport for five minutes before she noticed she was holding her breath.

“Some view, huh?” a familiar voice drawled.

She turned. Malik limped into the room, still stiff from recovery. He wore the same thin grey jumpsuit and hospital badge, but someone had managed to get him boots. One was mismatched.

“Chief,” she said, voice taut but warmer than she expected. “You’re upright.”

“Upright. Mildly pissed. Grateful I’m not dead.” He looked her up and down. “You look better than you did frozen.”

“Thanks.”

They stood in silence. Malik rubbed his jaw, then gestured at the view.

“You know, I thought if we ever got picked up, it’d be pirates. Maybe a third-gen warlord with more teeth than credits. I expected chains. Not... broadcast news and breakfast powder.”

“They’ve got discipline,” Elisa said. “It’s... organized.”

“Sure. If someone ran ‘organized’ through a blender first.” Malik glanced at a flickering light overhead. “Half their med scanners still have Dominion ports. I’m pretty sure the nurse who checked my vitals had a mining colony patch stitched over a university crest.”

“Salvage world,” Elisa muttered.

He grunted. “Damn right. Nothing here was made to be together. This whole station’s like a walking accident report. And yet...”

They both looked back at the observation glass. One of the maintenance crew tapped the hull with a wrench—testing seal integrity. Methodical. Practiced.

“They’ve got a system,” Malik said grudgingly. “Doesn’t look like ours. Doesn’t feel like ours. But it works enough.”

“And we’re inside it now.”

“Yeah.” He paused. “That bother you?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Her fingers traced the edge of the observation panel. Down below, a convoy peeled away from Coatl’s surface—four haulers and an escort corvette. All standard Hegemony registry. All armed.

“What bothers me,” she said at last, “is not knowing what they want. We’re not prisoners, not crew, not even cargo. We’re just... here.”

Malik blew out a slow breath. “Could be worse.”

“It always could.”

“You know, if they wanted to interrogate us, I’d rather they just did it. At least then I’d know what day it is.”

She looked at him sharply. “It’s Day Three.”

He smirked. “Knew you’d be keeping count.”

Elisa looked back at the spacers outside, finishing their weld and waving toward a drone that zipped by. One of them tapped their helmet in mock salute as they rotated away.

Duty never really left, did it?

She straightened her shoulders. “Chief, once everyone’s stable, we regroup. I want crew status. Supplies. Environmental integrity of Cadence. If they let us sit idle, we still act like we’re on post.”

Malik blinked. “You’re planning?”

“It’s either that or start watching the brainrot channel on loop. And I didn’t survive a void drift just to rot in a waiting room.”

He grinned. “Now that’s the commander I remember.”

Location: Coatl Bastion – Officer Recovery Ward #7
Timestamp: c+208.01. 20 , 11 : 03 SST

Dr. Marin Selak tapped the edge of the old medscanner with the back of his stylus, muttering something under his breath as the screen finally stopped flickering. The readout stabilized, and a quick diagnostic pulse confirmed what he already suspected.

"Still alive, Commander Rourke. Mostly human. Good reflexes, resting heart rate just north of boring." He offered a dry smile, stepping back from the gurney and marking the final clearance on his pad. "By Hegemony medical standards, that qualifies you to command a task force or lift freight pallets. Take your pick."

Elisa Rourke sat up slowly, the aches of post-cryosleep receding into something manageable. The antiseptic tang of the recycled air mixed with the faint scent of old polymers—no amount of cleaning ever truly rid salvaged medical bays of their layered pasts. This place wasn’t built; it was welded together from the bones of older, stranger things. Power cables stitched into the seams of the wall. Patchwork tiles mismatched across the floor. Even the monitor by her bedside bore the faded logo of a civilian freight concern long defunct.

She smirked faintly. It almost looked like something her people would’ve put together. Almost.

Dr. Selak gestured toward a container on the nearby bench. “Your effects. They were… well-kept. We ran a full sweep, of course.”

Inside was her Terran Federation Navy uniform, folded with care. Gray and blue, darker than the grays worn by her new hosts. Her name patch—Rourke, E.—still intact, but the stitching around the Terran insignia showed signs of reinforcement. Like someone had taken care not to let it fray… or maybe had reinforced it so it wouldn’t be accidentally replaced.

Her sidearm rested beside the fabric in a padded tray. Magazine absent. Chamber visibly cleared. It was a token more than a weapon—an echo of what she had been, not what she could do.

She looked up at Selak.

"You're sure I'm clear?"

He nodded. “Medically? Yes. Psych eval's above the worry line. Operational readiness greenlighted.” Then, after a beat: “Though, if I were you, I’d pace yourself. It’s not a sprint.”

She zipped up the uniform jacket with practiced efficiency. The fabric felt unfamiliar against her skin, like trying to wear her own reflection. But it helped. Helped her spine straighten. Helped her breath settle into something closer to command rhythm.

"Any word on the crew?"

Selak tapped his tablet. “Short version? Chief Engineer Malik and the better part of your tech deck are already dirt-side, assigned to Chicomoztoc Orbital Works. Apparently your ship’s turning heads. The rest are in staggered stages of recovery. No fatalities beyond the four frozen beyond revival. You’ll get the full personnel breakdown en route.”

“En route?” she echoed.

He handed her a slim folder. Paper, oddly enough. Inside—an appointment slip, stamped and tagged with Hegemony clearance codes.

“You’ve got a briefing with Strategic Council at 14:00 local. Topic: Threadneedle Incident – Preliminary Threat Review.” His tone darkened just a little. “And make no mistake, Commander, they want a show. You’re not just giving intel. You’re giving them image.”

Rourke closed the folder slowly. “That why I got the uniform?”

“That,” Selak said, picking up his pad again, “and because someone upstairs thinks a Terran officer walking into the lion’s den in Federation blue might just scare the right people into shutting up.”

The door to the ward hissed open. Two Hegemony guards waited, straight-backed and silent. Their uniforms were pressed. Their expressions unreadable.

Rourke stood, squared her shoulders, and gave one last glance at the room—at the salvage-welded seams, the worn floor, the camera quietly tracking in the corner. Not a prison. But not freedom either.

"Alright," she said, voice cool and level. "Let’s get to work."

c+208.01. 20 , 13 : 55 SST
Coatl Bastion – Strategic Review Chamber

The room was sealed, windowless, and lit with the subdued confidence of military precision. A single wide table dominated the center, surrounded by recessed display pits and half a dozen hardwired terminals. Embossed into the reinforced walls was the heraldry of the 14th Battlegroup — a winged blade over a sunburst — cast in old alloy and polished by decades of reverence. The air carried the scent of discipline and ozone.

Commander Elisa Rourke stood out like a shard of history. Her Federation Navy uniform — gray-blue and cut with functional sharpness — had been cleaned but not updated. The empty sidearm at her hip and the weight of attention from the gathered officers marked her as both guest and artifact.

Admiral Thule presided from the head of the table, soft-voiced and unreadable as always. He radiated a gentle kind of gravity, his crisp uniform immaculate, his tone bordering on fatherly. “Commander Rourke,” he said, “we appreciate your time. You’ve been through a lot, and we won’t extend this longer than necessary.”

“Understood,” she said, standing at ease.

On her left, Rear Admiral Sevrin thumbed through a dossier and nodded toward the display as holo-frames lit up with Cadence’s black box visuals — the system where Threadneedle had met its fate.

“System name?” he asked.

“Unofficially labeled Jasper’s Reach by our charts,” Rourke said. “Uninhabited. Binary with orbital debris fields.”

The tactical overlays flickered. What had once been an organized expedition turned to chaos in under four minutes of recorded time. No visible enemy. No warning. Just jamming, flashburns, and fragment trails.

“It didn’t engage conventionally,” said Dr. Fall, the sensor systems expert. “Our EM models don’t match. No drive trails, no energy bloom. Something filtered everything out.”

“It’s spoofing,” Rourke said. “Or suppression. We only picked it up because our gear’s semi-manual. Less reliant on inference layers. Cadence was running a passive tri-scan sweep and caught a distortion.” She stepped forward. “I recommend immediate reassessment of recon loadouts. Manual fallback procedures, hardened sensors, and analog redundancies.”

“That’s how the XIV used to do it,” Sevrin muttered. “Before we got soft.”

Yaren, younger, sharper, leaned in. “It could also be ghost data from a sensor drift—”

“No,” Rourke cut in. “We had clean telemetry for twenty-seven seconds. Movement vectors, heat suppression trails, and shipkill confirmations. Threadneedle wasn’t just defeated — it was eliminated. Every command relay jammed before it could transmit.”

There was a murmur of unease.

Thule raised a hand. “Let’s focus. Commander, thank you. Your input will be forwarded to our Sensor Doctrine group and StratOps Red Cell.”

Then he smiled with the warmth of an ambush. “There is one small matter of jurisdiction.”

Rourke narrowed her eyes slightly.

Brinn Mar, legal attaché, stood. “Cadence, while a registered Terran Federation vessel, is stateless. It exists outside Hegemony naval structure. Under martial code, we cannot grant full deployment access without a formal link.”

Thule folded his hands. “We propose Auxiliary status. It is symbolic, mostly — but it grants you the right to act within our logistics framework. Mutual benefit.”

Rourke stared at the crest of the 14th behind him. “Symbolic things have a way of becoming binding.”

Thule chuckled softly. “And it’s precisely because you understand that, Commander, that we trust you’ll see the wisdom.”

There was no choice, but the illusion was beautiful.

He continued, “To that end, we’re assigning you to Strategic Group Delta, Systems Readiness Cadre, and the Red Cell Special Threat Evaluation Team. You’ll be working closely with some of our best for the next few days.”

“Orders?” she asked.

“Advisory, for now,” Thule said. “But you’ll be in the loop. And we hope — in time — leading.”

The meeting ended with nods and handshakes. The war room’s lights dimmed slightly as files were encrypted and the next phase of deliberations loomed behind sealed doors.

Rourke stood a moment longer before stepping out, flanked by her escort.

Welcome back to service.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2 – Cadence Technical Crew Chicomoztoc Adventure

Cycle c+208.01. 19 , 6 : 55 SST
Location: Chicomoztoc Orbital Works, Arrival Sector

The drop-hatch hissed as pressure equalized, and the airlock doors clanked open with the unceremonious tone of a station long past its glory days.

Malik Selak stepped into the reception sector of Chicomoztoc Orbital Works with his usual stride: one that implied the corridor itself ought to step out of his way. Behind him, five techs from the Cadence crew shuffled in — some blinking at the stale halogen lighting, others already noting the exposed wiring or misaligned access panels lining the walls.

A lieutenant in Hegemony orbital gray — Parnel, according to the barely clipped badge — was waiting. He was flanked by two station security personnel that gave off the precise energy of bored professionals told to act formal but not ask questions.

“Chief Selak?”
Malik gave a curt nod.
“You’re to report to Dock Sector Three, Bay Forty-Two. Transit is secured.”

The lieutenant handed him a crisp folder. Not a datapad. Paper. Heavier than it looked, complete with stamped inspection tags and ink signatures. Malik opened it, thumb skimming through maintenance summaries and equipment readiness logs.

‘Systems reviewed and verified. Cadence is cleared for activation upon resupply.’

Malik didn’t laugh — but Kesse Nira, squinting over his shoulder, did.

“Did they review it with a telescope? From low orbit?”
“Quiet,” murmured Ysai. “We haven’t even seen the damn thing yet.”

Parnel’s mouth twitched like he’d swallowed a bad command.

“For security reasons, I must ask you not to discuss your ship’s background. You’re to be listed in station logs as reassigned from outer belt reserve. Cadence is not to be referenced as a recovered asset.”
“Understood,” Malik said evenly, though his jaw was set like it was bolted in place.

Monorail Transit Line 2A – Passenger Transfer to Docks

The transport pod clattered along suspended guide rails, slicing through the habitat sectors toward the military docks. Its floor vibrated just enough to keep you aware of the imperfections in the track.

Kesse sat cross-legged on the bench, flipping through the printed report.

“They marked the life support loop as ‘green.’ Naera, you flushed that system twice just to avoid spore bloom.”
Naera raised her brow. “Good to know algae tanks now self-clean. Wonder if they also grew legs and walked off.”
“Oh, look — hull integrity 94%. That would be news to the missing armor plates,” muttered Bren.
“’Minimal refurbishment required,’” Cael read aloud in an almost reverent tone. “Beautiful. Poetry, really.”

Malik didn’t respond. He was already marking sections with the stylus pulled from behind his ear, initialing the critical mismatches between the report and reality.

Dock Spine 3, Bay 42 – Exterior Approach

The doors opened to a burst of stale air tinged with lubricant fumes. Cargo drones clattered along overhead tracks, flitting between crates and scaffolds.

Then, a turn down a service gantry — and Cadence came into view.

She was docked in a slumped position, one side half-shadowed by another derelict. Parts of her hull were discolored by plasma scoring. One of the dorsal sensor masts was literally hanging from a maintenance line. The ship’s primary shield emitter dome bore a faint fracture, patched over with what looked like industrial-grade epoxy.

“Ready for active deployment,” Ysai deadpanned.
“Someone ought to deploy a pressure washer first,” Bren added.

Parnel tried not to flinch.

“Dock command has registered the berth and sealed your work zone. You’ll have a temporary locker set and bunk rotation if needed. All supply requisitions are to be logged through Logistics Office 17-B.”
He paused. “Try not to make waves. This place has its rhythms.”

Malik closed the folder slowly, tapping its edge against his palm.

“Rhythms,” he repeated. “We’ll try not to disturb the symphony.”

The security detail peeled off without comment. Malik and his crew walked the final stretch in silence, boots echoing off the steel and composite deck.

Cadence loomed larger with every step. A ship pulled back from the edge of oblivion — and handed back to them with paperwork claiming she’d never even blinked.

Malik reached out and touched the hull, the gray-blue paint beneath his glove barely visible beneath scorch and soot.

“Alright,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “Let’s get to work.”

c+208.01. 19 , 20:00 SST
Chicomoztoc Orbital Works – Cadence Maintenance Bay
Temporary crew berth, late afternoon

Malik shoved open the sliding panel and let it crash against the stop rail. The half-rotted edge of a packing slip fluttered free in the wake of his boots. In one hand he held a crumpled paper manifest, half-damp from wherever that coolant mist had settled on the way back from Logistics. He dropped the manifest on the center of the folding table, where it skidded to the edge and lodged itself halfway inside Bren’s open toolbox.

“I hope you’re all sitting down,” he said, voice tight with strained civility, “because our top-tier logistical support has come through in spades.”

Around him, the tech crew barely looked up. The room — if it could be called that — was part break space, part repair bay, part living quarters. A folding projector rig cast Cadence’s internal schematics onto the bulkhead, bleeding orange and red like a system-wide hemorrhage. The display flickered faintly every time the power grid burped.

Cael, perched sideways on a crate, tossed Malik a stim-tab. “How many barrels of disappointment this time?”

Malik caught it, didn’t smile. “Inventory includes: thirty-eight Class-C respirator filters. Wrong size. Six crates of duct insulation. Non-vacuum rated. And…” He hefted the final item — a titanium footbridge bracket with a rust spot the size of his palm — and leaned it against a crate like it was a tombstone. “One bulk bridge connector. Circa...I’m going to say pre-Collapse, maybe.”

Kesse gave a low whistle, stylus twirling lazily between her fingers as she traced a new patch of red onto the projection. “You were gone twenty minutes. That’s five new failures.”

“Make that six,” Naera muttered. She sat cross-legged on a flipped storage bin, scrubbing a carbon-seized valve with a worn brush. “Algae tanks just threw a biohazard alert. Either the seals failed or the algae evolved.”

“Probably both,” Bren’s voice echoed from under the diagnostics console. “I’m telling you, the rot has layers.”

Malik tossed the stim-tab in his mouth and sat on the nearest edge of the table. “Logistics says all critical systems are pre-signed as operational. Our job is apparently just to polish the launch bay and update the IFF.”

Cael snorted. “IFF’s down too. Pinged the orbital relay and got a response from a weather satellite decommissioned two centuries ago.”

“Sounds about right,” said Ysai, arms crossed as he leaned against the rust-lined conduit wall. “Main computer’s trying to handshake with ghosts.”

Kesse sighed and zoomed the display into the starboard reactor loop. “Coolant valves corroded, backup battery cracked, and one of the diagnostic lines is—wait.” She blinked. “...running on internal test mode. No external feedback. Since when?”

Naera peered over her shoulder. “Since never. That line was disconnected.”

“It is now,” Bren added from the shadows. “I just pulled the fuse because it started heating up without a load.”

“Court-martial’s too kind,” muttered Cael, leaning back. “Whoever signed this off as launch-ready is only getting off the hook because one of us will probably space them first.”

Malik allowed himself a laugh — dry, bitter, but real. “In Federation space, we’d run sims like this to scare new recruits. Call it a training failure scenario. Here? This is just Thursday.”

At that, even Ysai chuckled.

A sudden bang echoed from the external hatch, followed by a muffled voice:

“Delivery for Cadence crew! Got your bio-paste starters, seed kits, and...uh, one bucket of sterile gel!”

Malik blinked. The others paused mid-snark.

Cael gave a slow, sarcastic clap. “Gentlemen and ladies, the stars have delivered.”

“Blessed be the thermal grease,” Kesse intoned, deadpan.

Naera stood, wiping her hands on her shirt. “Hope it came with instructions this time.”

Malik pushed off the table with a sigh. “Alright. Back to the checklist. Paste waits for no one.”

The crew began to move — slow, tired, but moving. It wasn’t much, but it was something. And that’s all a ship like Cadence needed to rise from the rust.

Location : Cadence – Life Support Spine, Midship Ventilation Grid
Time : c+208.01. 20 , 2:50 SST

The air stank of metallic rot. Not decay—something older. Something fermented. Sweat beaded on foreheads within minutes, clinging like oil. No fan circulation. No pressure stabilization. Just the slow boil of ninety-eight percent humidity and an atmosphere thick enough to chew.

Emergency power flickered overhead, casting the corridor in pulses of gray and jaundiced amber. It was a haunted artery—pipes groaning under uneven pressure, vent covers warped from heat cycles and stress. Everything that should have hissed, dripped. Everything that should have drained, bubbled.

Malik Selak crouched over an open duct, shoulder-deep in a biomass clog that hissed when touched. He didn't flinch—he just swore under his breath and kept scraping, gloved fingers pulling out mats of damp green pulp that resisted like wet rope.

“Naera!” he shouted, voice echoing down the spine. “The fungal bloom’s reached the oxygen baffle! That thing you said was ‘probably dead’? It just tried to climb back in!”

From somewhere behind the CO₂ stack, Naera Visk’s head popped out—mask fogged, eyes lit like a cultist on a holy day. She held up a jar. Inside: a lump of algae with branching tendrils that pulsed faintly.

“Technically,” she replied, “that means it’s still metabolically active. We could keep it as a fallback protein source.”

“You name it and I’m feeding it to Cael,” Malik snapped.

“Too late!” came the reply.

Cael Verin was perched on a broken coolant line above them, wiping slime off his boots with a screwdriver. His hair was plastered to his scalp. He hadn’t slept in two shifts and was wearing goggles that had fogged three hours ago.

“Harold’s part of the team now.”

“You named it,” Malik said flatly.

“He blinked at me!”

Ysai Dorn, lying under an exposed sensor plate, didn’t even look up. His tools clicked in fast rhythm—tap, rotate, press, test. He was doing a full continuity scan without a readout, eyes focused on the bundle of melted conduits that should’ve connected to the internal environment regulator.

“Tell Harold if he eats another circuit, I’m recalibrating the hull temperature to match Venus.”

Bren Thassel, silent as ever, emerged from the portside pressure trap. A twisted pump assembly rested on his shoulder, still dripping fluid. He gave Malik a nod, then set the pump down without a word. The deck groaned under its weight. The floor was already stained with algae runoff and streaks of sealant.

Somewhere farther down the spine, a clang rang out—followed by a muffled curse and a spark.

“I’m okay!” Nira called out from inside the comms shaft. “Mostly okay. Okay-adjacent.”

“Any sign of signal routing?” Malik asked.

“Nope,” she replied cheerfully. “But I did find a nest of something inside the audio loop. Possibly insectoid. Possibly mechanical.”

“Step on it.”

“It hissed back.”

Malik closed his eyes for one long breath. The air was thick. The lights buzzed. Somewhere, a drop of water landed with perfect rhythm on a cracked panel. He felt like the ship was watching them. Judging them.

He opened his eyes and barked:

“Dorn, give me two meters of functional enviro-feed and pray the back-circuit fuses aren't slime-coated. Naera—stop naming the mold. Nira, get me any signal pipe loud enough to shout through.”

There was movement. Grunts. Tools scraped metal. Something growled.

“That wasn’t me,” Cael said.

Naera hit a manual reset on the aux scrubber array. It groaned. Sputtered. Then spun up with a shaky whirrrrr, rattling like it had been woken from a nightmare.

A breeze stirred through the corridor. Faint. Chemical. Almost breathable.

The team paused—just long enough to feel it. The tiniest shift toward functionality. The algae on the vents rustled. A string of droplets broke loose and pattered to the floor like applause.

“Scrubber’s online,” Naera said, voice calm.

“So is the humidity,” Ysai muttered, wiping his face. “I feel like a boiled dumpling.”

Malik stepped back. The corridor was still wrong—but it was less wrong. Barely. The vents wheezed instead of gurgled. The air stopped tasting like recycled despair. The crew, wet and aching, were starting to look like engineers again, not lost souls on a haunted deck.

Then a deep gurgle echoed through the starboard pipe junction. It was followed by a wet bang and the unmistakable sound of something detaching violently.

Everyone turned.

A pause.

“Bren,” Malik said, not turning. “Wet vac duty.”

The big man nodded once and disappeared down the hall.

Location: Chicomoztoc Salvage Flor, Outer Dock Ring
Timestamp: c+208.01.20, 12:11 SST

Cael Verin tugged at the edge of his respirator, resisting the urge to loosen the seal. The air under the mask was hot and stale, like licking the inside of a power junction box. His boots clanked over uneven metal plates that passed for flooring—scrap, mostly, with stenciled warning signs from ships long since melted down or shot apart.

The flor was chaos. Smelled like coolant, ozone, sweat. Sounded like a hundred voices arguing over what made a capacitor “mostly” intact. Looked like a halfway point between a scrapyard and a religious shrine to the god of duct tape.

And Cael was loving it.

“Malik,” he said, nudging the older man’s elbow and gesturing toward the stalls. “This where we get murdered for asking about coolant tubing?”

Chief Engineer Selak didn’t even crack a smile. He was still glaring at the requisition sheet. “You think this is funny? We’re two stress fractures away from scrubbing life support. Half the coils on Deck 3 are heatwarped.”

Bren Thassel was already peeling away from the group, a mechanic’s sixth sense pulling him toward a towering pile of hull fragments and bent pipes. The man hadn’t spoken a word since stepping onto the flor, just let out a long, low whistle like a kid walking into a sweet shop.

Cael scanned the faces in the crowd. Most were stripped down to the waist or working in tank tops and gloves, skin gleaming with sweat and grease. One man wore what looked like a mining helmet rigged with a busted tactical HUD. Another had a glowing prosthetic hand clutching a soldering wand. They moved with purpose, practiced chaos. And none of them gave a single damn about who was watching.

Cael tugged his gray-blue sleeves lower, the fabric too clean. Their Domain-issued respirators only made it worse—like helmets in a bar fight.

“Maybe we should’ve rolled in covered in grease,” he muttered.

“That can be arranged,” Malik said, dry. “If coolant sprays on you again.”

A man waved them over. Mid-fifties, one cybernetic eye with the wrong lens calibration—it flicked sideways every time he blinked. He was leaning against a stall with a makeshift sign welded from a brake panel: FLOK'S FINDS.

“Well, well,” Flok said, drawing out the vowels like oil on metal. “New meat. You here to buy or sell?”

“Looking for high-efficiency loopbacks,” Malik said, keeping it formal. “Domain-standard.”

Flok grinned. “Of course you are. Everyone wants Domain these days. You looking for green-tag or you happy with ghosts?”

Malik hesitated. Cael jumped in.

“We’ve got spec lists. Cross-checks. If it’s still got a serial that traces, we’ll take a look.”

“Spec lists?” Flok chuckled. “Adorable.”

Cael glanced at Bren. The tech was waist-deep in a parts pile, pulling at something with both arms. With a grunt, he yanked out a length of insulated tubing, coated in dust but mostly uncrushed.

“Malik! Domain batch mark! See that seamline?”

Malik leaned in. “Pressure-rated? Crack test it before you breathe too deep.”

Cael sighed and stepped closer to Flok’s table, motioning to a heat-exchange manifold.

“Trade?”

Flok raised an eyebrow. “You got backups?”

“Depends what you’re asking.”

“Factory firmware. Real flashpoint stuff. Boot code for logistics or engineering lines. Clean.”

Cael leaned back. “We might.”

Malik, reading the signal, pulled out the boxy portable comm. Its paint was chipped, buttons softened by time. He tapped once.

“Nira. You there?”

After a second: “Loud and clear, Chief. You calling to tell me they’ve reassigned me to coffee detail?”

“We’ve got a guy. Wants a clean Domain rootkit. You sitting on anything he could mistake for gold?”
“I have a pulse-flash from pre-collapse logistics line. If he can tell the difference between that and a toaster firmware, he can have it.”

“Thanks.” Malik turned to Flok. “We’ve got your boot image.”

Flok’s grin widened. “You’ve got yourselves a manifold.”

Bren held up his tubing like a trophy. “And I got piping that doesn’t smell like pirate piss!”

Cael finally let himself laugh. It felt good—like the first clean cycle of oxygen after a CO2 spike.

Maybe they weren’t dead yet.

Chicomoztoc Orbital Works – Auxiliary Systems Bay D-9
POV: Kesse Nira

The last firmware updater chimed in its own special brand of failure — not the usual flatline, but a half-boot and a burst of static that made Nira raise an eyebrow.

“Crispy startup. Crunchy finish,” she muttered. “Eight out of ten.”

She tapped it with her stylus and renamed the log: ErrorTone-BX443.wav.

Three communicators lay in front of her in uneven formation, like soldiers after a bad drill. One had finally booted to a diagnostics shell. Another was still flashing its soul into the ether. The last — well, the last was as dead as a Terran admiral's sense of humor.

She sat cross-legged on a cracked insulation mat, surrounded by adapter cables, testing modules, and a half-disassembled Hegemony interface converter that smelled faintly of warm glue. The floor beneath her was scuffed metal, the kind that remembered a hundred different shoe patterns and a thousand bad repair jobs. Overhead, mismatched conduits traced paths along the ceiling like drunken rail lines. The fans two bays down throbbed with fatigue.

Nira took another sip of her rust-colored synth mocha. The mug was held upright by a magnetic claw clamped to a vent pipe beside her. The print read:
"I VOID WARRANTIES" — in the kind of font you couldn't wear on an official navy base.

Her fingers brushed her pocketpad’s scrollwheel, bringing up the local feed.

"BREAKING: Cargo Bay 4 Fire Caused by Sandwich Press. Security Confirms No Sabotage."
"Condor Class Project 'Virtue' Suspended. Missing Parts Alleged."
"Top 7 Salvage Items That Have Definitely Killed Someone (And Still Work Great!)"

In the memes tab: A poorly drawn image of a Tri-Tachyon executive’s face photoshopped onto a vending machine dispensing red tape.

She chuckled dryly. “Sector humor’s a whole genre. Wonder if it gets worse closer to the sun.”

Her eyes drifted toward the drive stack across the bay. Backups. The actual ones. They were there, sitting pretty inside a plastic bin like retired royalty waiting to be polished and thrown back into battle. And to get to them? She’d have to stand. Again.

The room was warm. Too warm. Her jacket sleeves were pushed up to her elbows, exposing the black insulation cuffs of her underlayer. The soldering iron by her knee still glowed faintly, and the memory of patching together local firmware with bootleg Domain shellcode still clung to her fingers.

She looked back at the pile of adapters beside her — most flushed, one half-baked, one trying to smoke itself into oblivion. They were fine. She’d figure out the rest. Later.

Cael was waiting on backup drive swaps for the salvage dump run. There was, by sheer irony, only one working communicator they could use on the local net — and it was currently plugged into her hip, running patch cycles while pulling memes in the background.

And the coffee was almost gone.

She exhaled.
Tightened the clamp on her mug for when she returned.
And finally stood, stretching her spine like a half-folded comms antenna.

“Fine,” she muttered under her breath, eyes locked on the pile of drives like a predator sizing up prey.
“Better coffee is worth it.”

And with that, she padded across the deck, ducking under a cracked conduit that hummed with inconsistent voltage, toward the bin that would make salvage magic — or spark another bricked afternoon.

Location: Cadence – CIC, Engineering Core, Emergency Hatch Deck Access
Time: c+208.01.21, 8:11 SST

The hum started low. Barely audible at first — like a memory of power, not the thing itself. But it grew. A second hum joined, then a third. Deep metal chords vibrating through the Cadence’s frame like a song she hadn’t sung in decades.

Malik Selak didn’t smile. Not yet.

He stood at the CIC console with one hand braced on the edge, the other flicking through diagnostic subroutines. The lighting overhead had warmed slightly, shedding the flicker of emergency strips for the steadier glow of auxiliary reactors. Circuits thrummed. Displays crackled. Air handlers wheezed and coughed themselves awake.

“Nira,” he called over his shoulder, “status on AI interface spoof?”

Behind him, Kesse Nira lay on her back under the communications panel, one boot braced on the wall, half a datapad’s worth of cable hanging from her vest.

“Functional enough to fake a crew,” she said, voice muffled. “Thirty command threads, randomized jitter, confirmation loops running on delay. She’ll pretend we’ve got a full bridge crew — until someone asks her to explain a joke.”

Malik tapped the initiate key. The console accepted the input with a satisfying beep, then projected the simulation matrix — a minimalist cascade of green bars sweeping from left to right. “Bridge crew emulated. Reactor cold start. Comms grid… waking.”

Behind him, the rest of the team filtered in. Ysai Dorn glanced at the displays with academic disdain. Cael Verin had two fingers crossed and his feet braced like they were about to take off. Bren stood near the emergency fire rig, arms folded. No one spoke. The ship was speaking now.

“Beginning system-wide shakedown,” Malik said. “Stand by.”

The first warning popped in red across the board. MINOR VOLTAGE IMBALANCE DETECTED. A second followed. Then a third. COOLANT FLOW VARIANCE: DECK 3. LAG SPIKE: PROPULSION CORE ECHO RESPONSE.

“So far,” Ysai said, “nothing worse than we already knew.”

“That’s not the goal,” Malik replied. “I’m not trying to fix her. I want to see what she’ll do under pressure.”

The CIC lights settled into steady white. The walls creaked. Airflow surged across the vents with a rattling hiss, and the long-dead ceiling monitors pulsed once — showing clean lines of telemetry.

“Comms antennae spooling,” Nira reported. “Radar live. Scanner ping normalizing. She’s alive.”

“Testing lift,” Malik said. “Hold onto something.”

He keyed in the command. Outside the CIC, the Cadence shifted — just enough to lift off her stabilizer mounts. The deck bucked once as inertial compensators kicked in late, but the ship moved. She rose one meter, then hovered.

“We’re flying,” Cael whispered. “Holy shit, we’re actually—”

Then came the sound.

A deep, grinding whine from the starboard propulsion array. Sharp as a bone breaking inside a metal throat.

“Abort,” Ysai snapped. “Shut it down!”

“Trying,” Malik growled, fingers flying over the manual overrides. But the AI delay lagged. The simulated inputs kept pushing power.

“She’s not listening—”

The explosion was felt before it was heard. A stuttering flash somewhere beneath them — then the floor dropped. Cadence fell like a felled beast, slamming back onto her docking mounts. The lights died. All of them.

The CIC plunged into blackness.

Alarms failed to sound. Displays flatlined. In the sudden silence, only the sharp hiss of coolant escape and the drip of something onto metal could be heard. Someone coughed — probably Nira.

“Thruster integrity breach,” Malik said, voice low in the dark. “Starboard three is gone. It took the electronics with it.”

“I told you we should’ve tested with a blanket and some holy water,” Cael said, half a laugh, half a gasp.

Emergency lights flickered on. Dim red halos painted the walls like dying coals. Malik didn’t move.

“Nira?”

“Comms still alive,” she said, sounding surprised. “They’re actually better than before.”

“Good. Patch me external.”

A flicker of confirmation, then a crackle through his earpiece. Malik adjusted his vest, straightened his posture, and kicked the emergency hatch open. It groaned against the frame and released with a hiss of old seals giving up the ghost.

Outside, floodlights blinded him. Voices echoed across the dock.

“What the hell was that?”

Hegemony techs — three of them — were sprinting toward the ship, armed with handheld extinguishers and one extremely illegal multi-wrench. At their front, the lead tech — an older woman in a grease-streaked orange vest — was shouting in pure, undiluted panic.

“Who authorized a launch? Who lit that thruster?! That fire trail lit up two decks!”

Malik climbed out of the hatch, one hand braced on the frame, soot on his sleeve, the other holding the still-crackling communicator to his ear.

He looked down at her.

“Preliminary diagnostics,” he said evenly. “Simulated crew test. Nothing to panic about.”

“You set the dock on fire, you lunatics!”

“Technically,” Malik said, “only ourselves. And part of the mount scaffolding. We’re calling that a controlled burn.”

She advanced another step.

“Do you even know what you just did to the stabilization grid?”

“Found out it doesn’t like unbalanced thrust,” Malik said. “Also, minor win — comms are online. Thanks for your concern.”

From inside the ship, Nira’s voice cut in over the open channel.

“Confirming that, Chief. We’re broadcasting like it’s 105. Even got echo lag on secondary nodes. Might want to tell her about the coffee machine, too.”

The Hegemony tech just stared at him, breath fogging in the cold air. Around her, the backup crews slowed to a stop.

Malik dusted off his hands.

“We'll file a report,” he said. “After someone finds my eyebrows.”

He stepped down from the hatch like nothing had happened.

Behind him, the Cadence sat dark again. One thruster dead. Power low. Sensors offline.

But the comms grid blinked steady green.

And sometimes, that was enough.

Location: Chicomoztoc Salvage Works – Transit Channel → Sector D-4
Time: c+208.01.20, 14:19 SST

The slagged thruster clanked and groaned with every dip in the path, dragging shadows behind the Cadence flatbed like the tail of a rusted comet. Smoke-stained, half-twisted, its mounts were fused to a fractured baseplate still sparking in places — an open casket on wheels.

Malik Selak walked ahead, one hand gripping the edge of a stripped railing that guided their descent toward Sector D. He didn’t speak. Just kept walking.

“Should we say a few words?” Cael Verin offered, half-joking from the flatbed's front seat. “She gave her all. Or, well, thirty percent of thrust capacity. That’s all we ever ask.”

Behind him, Bren sat next to the wreck, still as stone. His heatshield vest bore a smear of old Cadence hull paint. One hand rested on the fractured cowling, fingers curled over the jagged seam.

Nira, perched sideways on the pile of mismatched components they'd brought to trade, tapped her datapad and triggered a loop of soft, distorted Domain startup tones. The speaker hissed. The chime warbled through static like a ghost learning to sing.

“Play her off, boys,” she murmured, pulling the hood of her suit tighter against the wind. “One last concert for a star that burned too hard.”

Ysai Dorn stalked alongside the transport, scanning as he walked. He didn’t look up.

“Serial 3-C delta. Heat plating delaminated. Relay core exploded outward. Log it as component corpse.”

“Harsh,” Cael muttered.

“Deserved.”

A rust-stained mechanic on a nearby catwalk leaned over the rail as they passed.

“Dock-blew rookies,” he called. “Tried to launch with a fuel line backwards?”

“Hey, it still had flame coming out the back!” someone else added. “That counts, right?”

Laughter rippled. Malik ignored it. So did Bren. Nira waved solemnly, middle finger extended at half-mast.

They reached the deep pile around Sector D-4 — a kind of low honor graveyard for half-functional engines. Here, the parts weren’t fully melted down yet. Just left to rot slow. Every second wreck had someone crawling over it with a scanner or crowbar.

“This is it,” Malik said, finally stopping. “Offload her.”

Bren jumped down silently and helped guide the thruster with Cael, winching it sideways until it rolled off the flatbed with a protesting screech.

Everyone stood still for a moment. The Domain jingle looped one last time. Then Nira flicked the pad off with her thumb.

“Rest in grease,” Cael said.

“She ran,” Malik added. “Once.”

They turned back to the flatbed and rolled forward, deeper into the salvage jungle.

The sector narrowed as they reached the end of the lane. The shadows here were longer — hulking wreckage leaned like broken teeth on either side. A flock of drone lifts buzzed overhead, each flying a heavy cargo net beneath them. At ground level, the light was mostly artificial — flickering arcs, hazard yellow strips, the occasional lantern tied to a pipe like a desperate prayer.

That’s when they saw it.

Half-buried under a collapsed gantry was a plasma-vector thruster — not Cadence-standard, but compatible. Mounts intact. Flow channels still shielded. Cooling fins warped but present. A miracle.

Except it wasn’t just a thruster.

It was still fused to the back third of a small shuttle.

Or what had once been a shuttle — now scorched black, one side peeled open like a split tin can. Escape hatch blown outward. Scorch marks around what might’ve been the cockpit. No markings left.

“We’d need at least six hours to extract it properly,” Ysai said.

“We don’t have six,” Malik replied. “We have two, max. And a flatbed.”

“Then we cut the fuselage and tow the whole thing,” Nira offered, pulling out her cutters. “We just… rename it ‘freight container’ in the yard manifest.”

“Won’t fool the traders,” Bren said. “They’ll charge us twice if it looks useful.”

Almost as if summoned by greed itself, a man emerged from the other side of the pile.

Tall, lanky, sleeves rolled to the elbow. Grease-stained gloves, a half-mask pulled down over his chin. No visible tools, but a yard badge tucked into his belt.

“Hells,” he said, voice dripping with too much cheer. “You rookies hit the jackpot.”

“We haven’t claimed it,” Malik said flatly.

“You’ve looked at it,” the merchant replied. “That’s half-claim under Section 4-C. I’ll give you a good deal, though. That baby’s got at least five more burns in her.”

He stepped up to the thruster’s exposed coils and slapped them like a salesman at a car lot.

“Little shuttle like this? Probably melted on reentry, but this part’s still gold. Tell you what. You give me that crate of mismatched converters on your flatbed and I’ll throw in a mag-buckle strap for free.”

“We’re not trading yet,” Malik said, eyes narrowing.

“Sure, sure. Browse away. But this here’s a live find. If you pass, the next crew gets a shot.”

He turned on his heel and strolled a few steps off, pretending to admire another wreck.

“Hurry up though,” he added over his shoulder. “Hope burns quick out here.”

Location: Adjacent Hangar, Cadence Retrofit Zone
Time: c+208.01.21, 12:55 SST

Juno Harrek wiped a smear of coolant off her sleeve and stared at the propulsion test stand like it was a makeshift altar to chaos. The gantry was welded together from scaffold struts, shipping rack skeletons, and what looked like a billboard frame repurposed into load bracing. The blast shielding? Cargo containers. The data lines? A mix of regulation-standard bundles and salvaged cable tied with pink marking tape.

The Cadence crew were already in motion — Nira on interface diagnostics, Ysai hunched over telemetry filters, Bren bracing the main support with his shoulder as Cael cinched a feed line in place with a wrench and a curse. They moved like ants on caffeine: precise, improvisational, and entirely outside approved safety doctrine.

“Thruster ready,” Nira called out, snapping her fingers toward Malik.
“We’re green,” Cael added, patting a rust-brown control panel that still smelled faintly of burnt insulation.

Juno looked to her right. Beside her was a growing graveyard of recently tested thrusters, each tagged with a color-coded holo-label. She’d helped move the last three off the rig herself — conscripted, really, when Malik gestured with a nod that brooked no argument.

Each thruster had an attached list, neatly etched into repurposed cargo slip paper:

• 🔧 “Reverse delay 0.3s. Acceptable if pilot trained.”

• 🔍 “Note coil vibration @ 72% output.”

• ⚠️ “Manual cooldown cycle advised if run > 20s.”

They weren’t failures. They were qualified, catalogued, and waiting.
Improvised. Systematic. Who the hell ran repairs like this?

“Clear the zone,” Malik called over the gantry's tinny PA. “Firing in three.”

Juno stepped behind a stacked containment drum, her stylus still in hand.
Bren and Cael ducked low.
Nira’s voice echoed from the rig: “Telemetry is live. Pressure is steady. Ignition in—”

The thruster spun to life. A deep, bassy hum filled the hangar. It stabilized. Vibration minimal. Exhaust channeled cleanly.

For a full three seconds, everything worked.
Even Juno’s eyes widened — the new thruster was holding, lines clean, efficiency spike tracking—

Then Ysai’s screen blinked. Once.
A static fuzz passed through the diagnostics feed.
Naera’s backup line started screeching with coolant imbalance alerts.
The hum dropped in pitch.

Malik’s voice, flat: “Kill it.”
Nira slammed the cut relay.

Too late.
The test gantry exploded.

The thruster's rear burst like a ruptured organ, jetting superheated plasma sideways into the blast shielding. One container flipped from the shockwave. Foam suppression kicked in a beat too late, belching fire retardant like a geyser into the smoke.

A distant voice echoed across the dockside upper catwalk:
“Pay up! I said the damn thing would blow!”

Below, applause. Laughter. A credit slip changed hands.

Juno coughed behind her sleeve and squinted through the mist.
Nira stood drenched in foam, holding up her diagnostic pad like a war trophy. “Logged,” she said triumphantly.
Cael knelt by the wreckage, solemn. “She didn’t like cold starts.”
Malik surveyed the blackened test stand with a shrug. “Add it to the notes.”

Then came the clank of angry boots.
The dock supervisor, red-faced and furious, descended the catwalk shouting:

“Who the hell authorized a launch test next to refueling lines?!”
“We documented our rig. You ignored the routing memos,” Malik replied calmly.
“You detonated a drive in a shared space!”
“No injuries. And our thruster QA is up 18% this shift.”

Juno stepped back from the argument, her breath still shaky.
She glanced once more at the tagged engines stacked to the side. Each bore its imperfections like a battle scar, but every one had been tested, annotated, logged.

Domain perfectionist ideals.
Duct-taped sector reality.
And this crew — Cadence's half-mad salvagers — were threading the line between the two.

She wasn’t sure if they were insane, brilliant, or both.
But she wasn’t betting against them anymore.

Location: Chicomoztoc Lower Ring, “The Pressure Bleed” (Dockside Bar)
Time: c+208.01.21, 11 : 0 5 SST

Malik hated bars. Not out of some moral objection—he’d toasted reactor startups in enough officers’ lounges to know the value of a drink—but because they were loud. Chaotic. Full of smoke, heat, and voices that talked over each other instead of in sequence. Nothing in a place like this could be filed, fixed, or rerouted.

But Varo insisted. And Bren backed him up. And Juno, somehow, had tagged along like she needed to witness the cultural deterioration of the Terran Federation in person.

So now Malik sat at a scratched metal table, one boot hooked around the chair leg like bracing against a G-force, arms folded too tight over a beer that smelled like cleaning solvent. The table rocked slightly with every laugh, clink, or passing bootfall. The ceiling was too low. The lights flickered. The air tasted of salt, grease, and something vaguely metallic.

And the crowd noticed them.

"Hey, it’s the Cadence crew!" someone hollered from across the bar. "Still smoldering, or did you finally fix your fire suppression?"

Laughter broke out. Not cruel—just loud. Too loud. Malik didn't turn. He just nodded once, a small, reluctant acknowledgment.

Two dockhands, one missing eyebrows, clinked mugs together and lifted them in toast. "To the mad bastards with the test gantry!" one shouted. "Best thing I’ve seen since the Gunser twins tried to fly that shuttle with no inertial dampers!"

Someone slid a round of drinks onto their table unprompted.

Malik stared at his hands.

“See?” Varo grinned, already leaning back in his chair like he owned the place. “Exploding something in public really does fast-track the integration ritual. Normally I have to stage a plasma spill for a new crew.”

Bren, seated beside Malik, gave a noncommittal grunt and raised his synth-whiskey. He hadn’t taken off his repair harness. There was still sealant crusted in the folds of his sleeve.

Juno sat stiffly across from Malik, holding a mug with both hands like it might lunge at her. She scanned the crowd like she was waiting for someone to violate a safety protocol just so she could report it.

“This fails every ergonomic standard I’ve ever taught,” she muttered.

“It’s a bar, not a bridge,” Varo replied, kicking his boots up onto a spare chair. “Best place in the ring to trade gossip, heat-credits, and obsolete firmware. And believe me, in Chicomoztoc, those three are the same thing.”

Malik tapped open the maintenance display on his wristpad. He didn’t need to look long—the same report had been sitting there since last night. Three green lights. One red.

“No maneuvering thruster,” he muttered.

Bren turned his head slightly. “Revector the secondaries?”

“Could,” Malik said. “Wouldn’t be right. Every time we try to compensate, the drift doubles.”

Juno spoke without looking. “It’s still flightworthy. Hegemony ships function with far less.”

“Not the point.”

Malik didn’t raise his voice. But the tone stopped the table. Even Varo leaned forward.

“I want functioning,” Malik said. “Not compensating. Not drift-correcting. Not a duct-taped yaw shift that starts stalling under burn pressure. I want a ship that flies like it’s supposed to.”

Varo, after a pause, nodded. “Good. Because I might have just found one.”

He flipped his pad onto the table and slid it to Malik with a casual flick. The screen displayed a scrolling work order manifest—half-complete, with a yellow “project hold” tag at the top.

“Condor-class. Designation ‘Virtue.’ Bay Theta-Nine. Build stalled three months ago. Private commission ran out of credits.”

Malik frowned. “Carrier?”

“Technically. But one of the components they already slotted in?” Varo zoomed the list. “Maneuvering thruster, Mark IX, Domain pattern. Untouched.”

Juno adjusted her glasses and leaned in, her lips twitching like she was already parsing how much rule-breaking this might entail.

“The manifest doesn’t have a lock tag,” she said. “If no hold was filed with logistics under Protocol 88 or 93, and if Virtue’s yard contract is in suspension…”

Varo grinned. “She’s salvage. With a signature lag.”

The bartender appeared, uninvited, setting down another drink in front of Varo. “That blueprint gantry of yours is circulating fast,” he said. “Three different yards want a copy.”

Varo raised an eyebrow. “You got a comms line?”

The bartender slid over a drive slug. “You give me the whole rig spec, I’ll send you Virtue’s internal component tags.”

Malik watched the exchange with wary eyes.

“We’re not pirates,” he said.

“Nope,” Varo agreed cheerfully. “We’re engineers. With initiative.”

Juno made a show of crossing her arms, but didn’t leave. “Post-authorized component reassignment,” she murmured.

Bren, drawing lines on a food tray in grease, spoke without looking up. “So long as the bolt pattern fits.”

“Fits,” Varo said. “Same batch they used in the Dominion retrofits. Which means one thing.”

He lifted his glass.

“Tonight, we drink for Virtue. May her parts find purpose—before someone melts her down for scrap.”

Malik didn’t toast. But he didn’t stop them either.

He just stared at the manifest, jaw set, already calculating the lift angles and mount-point clearances in his head.

Location: Cadence – Common Area, Midship Compartment B
Time: c+208.01.21, 23 : 0 5 SST

The common area of the Cadence looked like a stripped-down autopsy bay. Panels yanked from the walls lay stacked beside bulkhead insulation that had been peeled back like rind. A single overhead utility lamp buzzed quietly, its light casting long, warped shadows across the scuffed floor.

Malik Selak sat rigidly on a crate that once held emergency oxygen filters. The air here was dry, tinged with ozone, and carried the subtle bitterness of salvaged electronics. He glanced around the room—Nira was perched on a flipped service panel, booting into some diagnostic tool patched into her pad. Cael had his boots propped on an uninstalled vent fan, flipping through schematics with grease-stained fingers. Ysai was absently tapping her foot to a beat no one else could hear, while Naera ran disinfectant wipes over a bundle of braided cabling like she was preparing a surgical kit.

The atmosphere should’ve felt like mutiny. It didn’t. It felt like... prep.

Juno Harrek stood in front of the flickering remains of a comms terminal, now displaying a schematic overlay of Chicomoztoc's Theta-Nine Docking Bay. Her posture was textbook. Shoulders squared. Wrist-pad synced. Stylus ready. But there was something unfamiliar in her voice—confidence not issued from a manual.

“The target is a maneuver-class lateral truster. Tagged to the Condor-class hull Virtue, Dock Theta-Nine,” she said crisply. “Unwired. Secondary access hatch unlocked. No crew logs in the last three cycles.”

Varo Kreel grinned from where he leaned against a thermal radiator, stim-gum rolling under his tongue. “And the guard rotation?”

“Sleeping in shifts,” Juno replied without hesitation. “Unofficially. Officially, they’re due for a sweep at 03:30. But logs show six skipped rounds this week.”

Nira let out a low whistle. “That’s... sloppy.”

“That’s Chicomoztoc,” Cael muttered, not looking up.

Juno tapped her pad. “We’ll roll in Flatbed 8-C, still listed as inactive after last week’s brake alignment. I’ve already scrubbed its dock tag from the tracking overlay. It will appear deniable.”

Malik frowned. “And the CCTV?”

“Experiencing a spontaneous network fault.” Nira beamed. “Caused by an unauthorized update loop. Very tragic.”

He rubbed his temple. “And the manifest logs?”

“Scrubbed and replaced with redundant crate cycles from an old ore shipment,” Juno said. “We’ll show a decommissioned ballast vent as our cargo.”

“You’ve done this before,” Malik said flatly.

She didn’t answer. Just moved the stylus to highlight egress routes.

“Entry through Service Hall A,” she said. “Extraction through South-12. One runner, two loaders, one hauler. Total operation time: 22 minutes, max.”

Varo raised his hand mockingly. “I nominate myself for the hauler position. I like driving things I didn’t sign for.”

Bren just grunted in agreement. “I’ll load it. If it’s bolted to the hull, I’ll unbolt it.”

Malik tried to stay aloof, but there it was: a familiar undercurrent. Controlled chaos. Fast thinking. Improvised perfection. These people weren’t criminals. They were engineers. But ones born into a world where systems failed first, and blame came second.

Juno stood a little taller, the harsh shadows softening around her.

“I’m not asking for a show of loyalty,” she said. “I’m asking for a successful reallocation of mismanaged inventory.”

Even Ysai cracked a grin. “Now that sounds like command speak.”

Someone chuckled. Naera offered her a squeeze bottle of protein paste, which she declined with a polite nod. Varo was already scrolling through a terminal, pulling the flatbed's route codes. Nira handed him a datapatch with the gantry blueprints.

Juno turned off the display. “We brief again at 0300. Gloves, masks, no insignias. If we do this right, we’re just another blurry shape on a looped feed.”

Malik stood slowly, still not sure when she’d gone from annoyance to center of gravity. But he had to admit it: she didn’t tell them what to do.

She gave them a plan they already wanted to follow.

Location: Dockside Hangar 47 – Bay Access Route Gamma
Time: c+208.01.22, 3:15 SST

The flatbed hauler rolled with the low whine of old servos and new sins. Wrapped in scavenged tarps and fake tags, its load hummed faintly — the salvaged pulse of propulsion potential under thick metal skin.

Cael walked point, gesturing with his torch in lazy sweeps. The beam caught on scaffold joints, wiring bundles, and half-forgotten crates of machine grease. Naera followed, dragging a thermal scanner that had been convinced it was still in quarantine mode. Behind them, Varo sat in the cab of the hauler, one hand on the control yoke, the other nursing a bottle he swore was just for trade leverage.

Malik brought up the rear, shoulders tight. He wore his work jacket like it didn’t quite belong to him, collar half turned up. The atmosphere smelled like burnt insulation and recycled air. They were deep in the quiet zone — between inspection shifts, between security cycles, between anyone giving a damn.

The hangar doors opened slower than expected. Rusted hydraulics. Perfect.

Virtue loomed inside like a caged beast. The Condor’s hull gleamed with factory sheen — untouched by fire, time, or budgetary shame. She was parked proud, her flanks studded with auxiliary ports still sealed. The propulsion mount was there, like a prize on a pedestal: one fresh maneuvering thruster, full assembly, hazard tags still painted crisp.

“Remind me,” Cael said, voice low, “what’s the word for something that’s definitely not ours but hasn’t realized it yet?”

“Foundling,” Naera offered. “Or soon-to-be orphan.”

They ascended the scaffold with practiced ease. Nira looped a camera feed with two fingers and a diagnostic smile, whispering sweet nothings to the CCTV node like it was a pet.

Malik reached the mount first. He ran a hand over the casing, fingers dragging across the manufacturing tag.

Still warm.

He paused.

Juno arrived behind him, hauling a toolkit slung over one shoulder like a rifle. She took one look at the serial codes and the pristine clamps, and raised a brow.

“This was printed, shipped, and parked. No flight time. No boot logs. It’s an inventory item, not a part.”

Malik didn’t look at her. “It’s an opportunity.”

“Not disagreeing,” she muttered, and started cracking the clamps.

They worked fast. Nira kept time with a quiet hum, rerouting power pings from the maintenance net. Bren and Ysai were on the ground, calibrating the lift gear to ensure the hauler bed didn’t tilt too far and give the whole operation a name.

Halfway through the detachment, voices echoed down the corridor.

Another group.

They froze.

Footsteps. Laughter. Metal boots on damp decking.

Then: a torch beam cut across the scaffold. Another crew stood at the opposite access ramp — four figures, all wearing neutral expressions like they’d walked in on the wrong dinner party.

“Huh,” one of them said, squinting. “Must’ve been the wind.”

Malik blinked.

“Could’ve sworn it was the scent of missed opportunity,” Cael called back, cool as vented nitrogen.

A pause. One of the strangers smirked, nodded, and turned back the way they came.

“Ain’t seen a thing,” he said.

And just like that, they were gone.

The truster detached with a satisfying click. Two cables later, it hovered in the lift frame like a jewel. Bren lowered it gently, his massive hands dwarfing the controls.

The hauler door yawned open. The thruster slid inside, hidden beneath panels labeled “corrosive residue – do not scan.”

Varo tapped the dash. “She’s loaded. No dents. No alarms. No questions.”

They pulled back slow, lights off, wheels humming soft.

By the time they hit the docking corridor, Cael was already talking upgrades. Nira was sketching fake wear patterns. Malik still hadn’t said a word.

At the cargo lock, Juno paused beside the truster, brushing dust onto the casing.

"Perfect condition," she said under her breath. "Waste of potential."

She let the dust settle like a signature, then followed the rest inside.

Outside, a drone blinked its idle cycle. Inside, Cadence waited with quiet hunger.

Location: DSS Cadence – Middeck Ops Core & Adjacents
Time: c+208.01.2 5 , 3:15 SST

Nira had reached the part of the manga where the protagonist — possibly a toaster, possibly a catgirl in disguise — confessed its undying love to a fusion reactor with memory loss. There was a musical number. The lyrics had been machine-translated twice.

She leaned back in her nest, one boot wedged into a bundle of unused cabling, diagnostic pad balanced on her knees, stylus chewing on autopilot. Half her screen was local net slop: bargain auctions, broken review feeds, forums full of post-collapse enthusiasts ranking algae purifiers by smell. The other half was for the real work — power diagnostics, ship telemetry, and a live CCTV tap on every corridor worth watching.

The story hit a crescendo when the reactor cried “I remember... the bread!” and she finally closed the window.

“Alright, toaster,” she muttered. “You win. That was art.”

She clicked her tongue twice and flicked to a cleaner window. Cadence’s internal feeds glowed soft orange and green. For the first time in a while, the ship was humming like she meant it. Life support stable. Thermal equalization at 87%. Even the crew’s chaos looked… livable.

Cael and Bren were hunched over a repurposed medbay monitor, using it to play some janky tactics sim that refused to boot with sound. They were halfway through a match that neither of them acknowledged verbally — just taps, grunts, nods. The entire left flank exploded and they reset without a word.

Malik was seated on a pipe bracket, still in his patched jumpsuit, one boot off, staring into middle space. He pulled a narrow metal flask from somewhere deep in his tool pouch, unscrewed the cap, and poured a single shot into a ceramic circuit cap. He tapped it twice against the rail and sipped, exhaling like the war just ended.

Naera had transformed a corner of the primary air reprocessing loop into a jungle of flasks, coils, and gently humming algae tubes. One was labeled “Greeny: Vibe solid.” Another read, in shaky handwriting, “Shimmer: Mild tantrum, possible Bren contamination.” She was humming. Not in tune. But steady.

In the aft maintenance bay, Ysai and Kreel were squatting under the newly installed thruster like it was a sacred idol. Ysai slapped the casing with a palmprint. Kreel offered a stim-gum toast. The two of them shared a low chuckle that sounded like a bad hydraulic line.

“For speed,” Kreel said.

“For calibration,” Ysai replied, deadpan.

“For warranty voiding,” they said together, solemn.

And then there was Juno.

She’d passed out in a maintenance chair near the interface hub, stylus still clipped to her collar, glasses folded precisely on a storage bin. Her data slate was locked. Nira, out of idle habit and refined paranoia, had already skimmed the buffer logs.

It wasn’t even that hard. The encryption was good — but local traffic routed through Cadence’s router, and Nira had set the traps days ago.

One message, timestamped during the chaos.

Flagged activity: unauthorized ops in adjacent salvage bay.
Subject: Terran crew test cycle. Attached: sensor log. Note: post-facto classification pending.
Filed: Officer Harrek, InSec relay 03-C

Nira read it twice. She didn’t sigh. She just clicked her tongue and filed it under a sticky note: Masel or Cap – your call.

No movement. No reaction. Just the weight of something waiting.
It didn’t feel urgent. Yet.

The room was warm now. Not just heated, but lived-in. There were boots by the door, tools left where they’d actually be used, and emergency sleeping bags in unrolled piles of exhaustion. A half-played music track looped wrong from the wall terminal, distortion and all.

She tapped her pad again. The camera feeds shifted. One caught Cael throwing a bolt at Bren for cheating. Another showed Naera holding a flask of algae like it was telling her secrets. Malik hadn’t moved.

Everything was running.

Everything was still.

Nira took a sip of her rehydrated mocha — now room temperature and still disappointing — and finally reopened the manga window. The reactor had transformed into a space station. The catgirl was a starship now. The toaster was… still a toaster. She stopped asking questions and clicked next.

"If this ends with time travel and a bread cult, I’m marrying the author," she said aloud.

No one answered.

Fire Test Regulation Update

From: Dock Administration Unit 3A
To: All Hangar Supervisors, Chief Technicians, Fire Control Leads
Subject: Authorized Procedure for On-Station Static Fire Tests
Timestamp: c+208.01.26

Following recent test activities involving refurbished propulsion systems, the Dock Administration has updated policy regarding in situ static fire operations within orbital hangars. While such actions previously fell under non-standard trial protocols, it is now recognized that controlled execution of these procedures reduces fire risk and collateral damage compared to unregulated improvisation.

Effective immediately, static fire tests are permitted within Chicomoztoc’s dock infrastructure under the following conditions:

• Tests may only occur in designated hangars equipped with rated fire suppression systems.

• A Fire Officer or registered automated coverage unit must be assigned to the test perimeter.

• Physical containment (e.g., debris catchers, modular blast shielding) must be erected prior to ignition.

• Required pre-burn diagnostic checklist (Form T-SF-74) must be completed and logged a minimum of 2 hours before scheduled operation.

• Permissible window: 2100 to 0500 SST, excluding emergency launch preparation periods.

Dock security, asset insurance, and health liability registers have been notified. This directive applies station-wide and supersedes previous instructions under Ref: PROC-B13.03 ("No-Fire Conditions – Dock Bays").

Dock Admin 3A
"Better coordinated fire than unlogged flame."

Internal Advisory: Bay 7 Inventory Discrepancies

From: Asset Protection & Oversight
To: Tier-2 Technical Leadership (Privileged Access Only)
Subject: Nightshift Material Loss – Carrier Project VIRTUE
Timestamp: c+208.02

During routine manifest audits, we have identified component discrepancies associated with the Condor-class light carrier under construction in Bay 7. Specific items absent from tracked inventory include:

• 1x Maneuvering Thruster Assembly (port-class, low-wear)

• 2x Actuator Blocks (Mag-Linked, Type G)

• 1x Auxiliary Bulkhead Bracing Ring

• 4x Connector Harness Sets (Composite-rated)

These were noted as present on c+208.01.12 but were missing during morning review c+208.01.23. CCTV coverage is incomplete, and access logs during the relevant window indicate non-exclusive presence of multiple night shift engineering detachments across Bays 6–9.

Decision:
Due to insufficient traceable evidence and current security allocation limits, this incident will not escalate into formal investigation. No disciplinary notices will be issued.

Recommendations:

• New construction projects should increase onsite part tethering and improve component record auditing.

• Personnel with access to early-stage hulls are reminded that unauthorized movement of ship-grade assets is not covered under materials write-down allowances.

• Future asset disappearance under similar circumstances will result in full procedural reviews.

Note: This advisory is not to be circulated beyond Tier-2 clearance. Station Security and Dockmaster Office remain apprised.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3 – Wake Orders

Location: Chicomoztoc Orbital Works – Passenger Dock, Military Annex 4
Time: c+208.01.26

The docking rail doors hissed open with a mechanical exhale, and the Cadence crew stepped into the hangar like ghosts re-entering their tomb.

Commander Elisa Rourke led, spine straight, datapad in hand, eyes already scanning for cross-traffic and route indicators. The Terran-style briefing note from Malik glowed faintly on the screen: “Straight ahead. Don’t take the lift. Floor sensor’s still flagged.” She adjusted course mid-step without breaking stride.

Second Mate Riel Masel followed two paces behind, moving with the precision of someone who had walked this system enough times to know where paperwork would spontaneously regenerate. His boots struck the deck at consistent intervals—audible even over the distant clamor of cargo lifters and barked orders.

Behind them, the rest of the original Cadence crew filed in. Uniforms regulation, expressions hollowed by time. They carried personal gear in repurposed med-sleds and inspection crates, everything tagged with hand-applied barcodes and Malik’s fading scrawl. One of the side panels still had algae residue from Naera’s improvised biolab.

Around them, Docking Annex 4 bustled like a hive after molting. Cadets were being herded toward induction gates by instructors who looked ready to detonate from caffeine overload. The walls were covered in overlapping signs: Hegemony symbols layered over Domain pictograms, local syndicate notices stapled beside faded evacuation routes.

Overhead, a half-dead intercom droned:

“Passenger flow from Bay 3 rerouted through Cargo Alcove Theta. Watch for floor hazards. Do not engage cleaning drones.”

A group of logistics interns nearly walked into the Cadence column, caught off guard by the sight of humans who looked more like relics than recruits.

Then came Lieutenant Dara Kell, reclining against a load-bearing column like it owed him rent. His rebreather hung across his chest, scratches etched into the casing from years of real wear—not a drill. The Hegemony reinforcements flanked him, each one a different flavor of functional wreck: mismatched gear, grease-streaked uniforms, and the thousand-yard look of people who’d seen parts of the Sector that didn’t get maps.

“You Rourke?” Kell asked, more like confirming a guess than starting a conversation.

“I am,” Rourke said, not stopping. “This your crew?”

Kell pushed off the column. “We were cheaper than fixing it right. But we’re yours now.”

He handed over a slate with transfer signatures already entered. Masel double-checked, nodded once, and clicked it into his stack of tabs without comment.

The transit shuttle came with a screech, paneling reverberating like a beast breathing through broken lungs. Everyone boarded with practiced instinct, Cadence crew to one side, Hegemony crew opposite. No mingling yet. Just sizing up.

The interior was bare: cargo-friendly walls, hanging grips, flickering diagnostics. Smelled of ozone and rustproofing. As the doors sealed, the rail car lurched forward, and the whole floor hummed like an overtaxed capacitor.

“Please note: Any detachment from the floor in transit is not covered under Hegemony liability clause 12-E. Thank you.”

Dara Kell cracked half a grin. “See? They do care.”

No one replied.

The shuttle slithered through the facility’s bowels—past armor plating queues, stacked engine parts, and military bric-a-brac arranged like a maze for bureaucratic rodents. After seven minutes and two false stops, the final gate opened—

—and revealed Cadence.

She stood on scaffold legs, half disassembled but unmistakably predatory. Her nose cone bore a patchwork of fresh armor plates and preserved Terran etchings. The midsection wore new thermal shielding like hastily applied makeup. Around her, cable reels and cranes swung in bored arcs. One of the hangar bays was still blackened from a test fire. A board had been installed beside it, chalk-marked with betting odds and dates. The last entry simply read:
“NOT DEAD YET”

The Terran crew winced at the state of their old home, reading every missing panel and scorched conduit like open wounds.

The Hegemony techs had a different reaction.

“She breathes clean. Not bleeding air. Could be worse,” one muttered.

“Was on a tugboat last month that needed airlock resets every dock cycle,” another said.

“Can’t taste coolant in the vents. That’s luxury.”

Rourke didn’t comment. She just inhaled once through her nose, set her jaw, and walked forward with purpose.

Cadence hadn’t died. And now she had people again.

The war wasn't over. It was just getting more complicated.

POV: Masel | Location: Cadence, Medbay-turned-Briefing Room

Masel tried not to look too long at the cabling.

The medbay—once sterile and symmetrical—now hosted a command holotable half-welded into a rehydration station. A cracked terminal screen buzzed overhead, helpfully flashing “INTERNAL AIR PURITY: FUNCTIONAL-ISH.”

Malik stood next to the table, tapping on a repurposed bioscan pad. Elisa Rourke leaned against a bulkhead near the door, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

“Let’s begin,” Masel said, already regretting it. “Reactor integrity?”

Malik smiled faintly, like a man describing a particularly clever hack of a vending machine. “Running stable at ninety-two-point-four percent baseline. Scrubbed the regulators, swapped a few valve seals. Nothing explosive remains inside.”

Masel’s stylus froze mid-checkmark.

“And the diagnostic reports from the fire safety panel…?”

“We found it,” Malik said, then paused. “Eventually. It was sealed under a panel labeled ‘DO NOT OPEN — SERVO GRAVEYARD.’ We replaced the blown node. Self-test passed. Sprinklers engage on most decks now.”

“Most?”

“Look, anything near cargo hold four is still off-limits until decon. The mold down there has moods.”

Rourke arched one eyebrow. Malik continued before Masel could regain his footing.

“Life support’s good. Biochem filters are running green. Naera’s stabilized the algae tanks. Well, most of them. Algae-5 has... personality issues.”

Masel swiped rapidly to the next checklist. “Propulsion?”

“Oh,” Malik said, lighting up like he’d been waiting for this one. “Refurbished. Mostly. Rebuilt from base Terran frame, plus donor hardware.”

“What donor hardware?”

“Condor-class. Ventral mount. Found one abandoned in drydock. Good as new after a little cutting.”

“You cut a maneuver thruster out of a carrier.” Masel wasn’t asking.

“With precision. You’d barely know it was welded.”

“That entire operation would be classified as ‘unauthorized field-level disassembly’ under Terran Fleet reg—”

“We’re not under Terran regs,” Elisa cut in, calm as ever.

Masel inhaled sharply, suppressing a reply. “Have you run live fire trials on the refurbished mounts?”

Malik glanced at Rourke. “Yes.”

“In the hangar?”

Malik nodded.

Masel stared. “That’s a class-three breach of every dock ordinance I’ve ever read.”

Rourke, deadpan: “Welcome to Chicomoztoc.”

Malik tapped a readout. “We had containers as blast walls. And a designated betting pool, which raised morale. Engineering crews were very engaged.”

Masel looked at his datapad, then back up, quietly despairing. “I... see.”

Malik scrolled down to another report. “We still have a few compartments sealed for decontamination. Mold blooms. We’ll need more bodies to help with that. Fully suited, of course.”

Masel blinked. “You mean conscript new crew for decon?”

“Unless they want spores in their teeth.” Malik smiled again. “We’ve got full protocols this time.”

Masel suddenly needed a chair. “This entire operation is—by any formal metric—a systemic procedural failure.”

“Yup.” Malik patted the holotable fondly. “And yet, here she floats.”

Silence stretched. Rourke finally stirred. “Is she spaceworthy?”

“Absolutely,” Malik said. “Just don’t ask what it took.”

Masel stood. “I need... to process this.”

He turned toward the exit, head spinning. As he left, Malik’s voice followed.

“If the Commander wants a tour, I can show her our ‘attractions.’ Scrap pile, sealed holds, the mold wing, and the static fire gantry. Betting board’s still active.”

Masel kept walking. He didn’t want to know what the odds were.

Not yet.

POV: Commander Elisa Rourke

“You’ll want this.”
Malik held out a worn, olive-gray respirator. The visor had been scratched at some point, polished back with whatever was available—probably dent polish.

Rourke eyed it. “Is this necessary?”

He gave her a look. “Unless you enjoy breathing half-melted cable insulation. Fresh cancer, sector-certified.”

With a sigh, she fitted the mask on, sealing it with a practiced twist. The filter hissed once. Malik nodded and tapped the access panel beside the bulkhead door. It opened with the reluctant groan of something forced to work for a living.

They stepped into Deck 6, Salvage Processing Level—known locally as the scrap gut. A narrow catwalk ran along the upper half of a massive salvage bay, providing a panoramic view of entropy-in-progress.

Below, a Gremlin-class frigate lay gutted and half-upright, ribs of its hull torn open to the artificial sky of floodlights and exhaust haze. Dockworkers swarmed it like metal termites. Sparks from portable plasma torches glittered in the fog. Hydraulic lifters squealed. Someone shouted about a missing pump regulator.

It smelled like hot resin, oxidized copper, and old sweat.

“Welcome to Chicomoztoc's idea of a supply chain,” Malik muttered.

Rourke leaned on the railing. She had seen scrapyards before, even helped catalog Terran battlefield wrecks after withdrawal orders. But this wasn’t cleanup. This was commerce.

Malik gestured downward with an outstretched wrench. “That stall by the lifter crate? ‘Greeny’s Modulars.’ They’ll sell you four types of recycled coolant lines, only one of which doesn’t corrode your reactor.”

“Over there,” he continued, pointing to a plastic tarp hung between two crates, “is where you go if you want an authentication chip with just enough checksum to fool a mid-grade scanner.”

“And that guy?” he pointed toward a lanky man pulling cables out of a support strut, “He once sold me a ‘fresh’ guidance node with burn residue still on it.”

Rourke scanned the mess below, trying to pick out any semblance of logic. There were stalls. There were tools. There were even what looked like price tags. But the whole thing ran on handshake deals and repurposed wire.

“This is where you built our engine array?”

“With love. And some prayers. And three types of epoxy.”

A hiss of laughter echoed somewhere below. Two teenaged scavvers were arguing over a nav core while standing on the wreck’s exposed spine. One held a branded pulse cutter with a cracked housing.

On a nearby stall table, Rourke spotted something that made her freeze. A curved terrasteel panel, scratched but intact, with Cadence printed on the inside lip. Her nameplate below it. Clearly salvaged before the ship had even finished reactivation.

Malik followed her gaze. “Yeah. We got some of our own parts back. Paid a premium, too.”

Rourke didn’t answer. She just shook her head.

Malik leaned on the railing beside her, looking not at the chaos below, but at her reaction.

“Don’t think of it as chaos,” he said finally. “Think of it as the economy adapting to institutional collapse.”

She didn’t look at him.

“Adaptation,” she echoed. The word tasted like rust.

Below, a forklift backfired and coasted into a new stack of crates labeled "REACTOR MISC – VERIFIED." One of them was visibly leaking coolant.

Rourke caught the smell long before the hangar doors slid open.

It wasn’t just heat or ozone—though both lingered like old sins—it was something wetter, something acrid and chemical, like burnt insulation filtered through fire suppressant and fried hopes. Her respirator hissed as Malik gestured lazily toward the streaks of foam leading inward.

"Welcome to the temple," he muttered. "Watch your step. Some of the scorch marks are still technically live."

They entered together.

The gantry stood proud in the center of the space like a beast built from refuse and brilliance, its bones forged from scaffolding struts, melted bulkhead frames, and what looked suspiciously like the spine of a civilian shuttle launch arm. The blast pit beneath it was slick with white fire foam, still damp from a recent failure.

Flatbed transports idled in a rough queue, some bearing reassembled drives, others still draped in tarps labeled "don’t ask". Most were clearly patched together from whatever had survived previous owners—screwed, riveted, and hope-welded into shape. A control barricade overlooked the pit, armored and stacked from discarded hull plates, caged wiring, and a scaffolding perch where someone had spray-painted in large red letters:

“THIS IS NOT A DRILL (unless specified in logbook)”

Inside the barricade: monitors, telemetry readouts, static-crackling comms gear—and the Holy Book, duct-taped to the table like a sacred idol.

It looked almost too humble for the reverence it clearly commanded: a grimy Terran manual from Malik’s personal archive, its spine long since broken and reinforced with epoxy, its pages bristling with hand-written annotations, napkin diagrams, and at least one prayer to the “great spool of diagnostic thread.”

A placard hung overhead:

📡 “Latest version available via DockNet — Gantry_Book_Of_Miracles.v47.pdf”

Rourke stared.
"Is that... duct tape around a datasheet printout?"

"Heat-resistant," Malik said without irony. "That copy survived test #81. Plasma blowback. The crew bought the guy a cake."

A cheer rose nearby. At the cracked observation window—thick military-grade glass with a worrisome spiderweb fracture in one corner—a mix of dockworkers and off-duty crew chanted in rhythm.

“165! Boom or Bust! 165!”

On the betting board behind them:

    •“Ignites, spins, explodes = 2:1” 

    •“Coughs, survives, disappoints = 3:1” 

    •“Fails to start = 10:1 (Too Sad To Boom)” 

Malik got a few nods, one salute, and someone yelled:
“Holy Manual Original Author in the pit! Buy him a drink—after the fire!”

One worker leaned out, grinning, holding up a datapad. “Hey boss! We added your spectral stress profile thing! Works like a charm when the diagnostics don’t lie!”

"I didn’t design it to be used after things explode," Malik called back. Too late. Another whoop from the test queue. Someone popped a bottle.

They moved to the cracked-glass line, where another rig was being wheeled into place. A squat, dirty drive assembly, painted half-orange and half-military gray, barely holding shape under its own bolts.

"Whose is that?" Rourke asked.

“Could be anyone. We’ve got three frigates’ worth of stuff rotating through. I saw one team pull an old Domain-era coil from under a latrine pipe. And look at them—modded telemetry harness, manual valve override, color-coded thermal bands.”

"And no safety line."

“Of course not. We’re not barbarians. We have foam.”

As the techs scrambled into position, a small bell rang. The man at the manual’s stand raised his hand.
“All clear. Everyone ready?”

From the crowd, a bellow:

“FIRE 165! MAY THE DUCT HOLD!”

A pause.

Then a surge of flame, smoke, and screaming telemetry data. The floor shook. The crowd held its breath.

The engine sparked—wobbled—hummed—and held.

A moment of silence.

Then—BOOM—an unexpected backblast from a failed coolant valve erupted in a vertical jet of flame, punching upward like a geyser. The crowd shrieked in glee.

“BOOM IT IS!” someone screamed.

“Pay up! 2:1, baby! Told ya it’d cook!”

Behind the barricade, one of the operators made a note in the Holy Book with a marker:
"Test #165 – Cooked Well."

Malik smiled faintly and turned to Elisa.

“See, commander? This is the heart of the Sector now. Can’t get a new part? Build six broken ones into one half-right. Can’t afford simulation tools? Get telemetry, take bets, and learn fast. If it burns, at least you’ll know why.”

Rourke exhaled. “I’m still going to file a complaint with dock admin about live fire inside a hangar.”

"Sure," Malik said, noncommittal. “File it under C for ‘celebrated.’”

And the betting board flipped to:

“166 – Bust or Glory?”

Location: Cadence, Commander’s Cabin / Temporary Office

The air still carried a faint tang of disinfectant. Something caustic. Masel’s boots clicked softly on the bare flooring as he stepped inside. The overhead strip-lights flickered once—then held steady. Rourke looked up from behind a cobbled-together desk, a datapad balanced across two mismatched thermal mugs. A personal touch: a bronze-cast Terran mission badge gleamed from a cracked frame pinned to the bulkhead. Half pride, half reminder.

“Second Mate,” she greeted.

“Commander.” He closed the hatch with a slow hiss. “Cabin’s still structurally sound. Biohazard team managed to avoid pressure-warping the air seals.”

“Reassuring,” she said dryly. “Take a seat.”

He didn’t, not at first. Just hovered beside the crash-welded metal stool opposite her. Rourke gestured him down. He relented, back straight, hands clasped.

They paused together in the quiet.

Then—

“That book,” Rourke began, “the so-called holy manual of propulsion—is that seriously what they used to rebuild Cadence’s drives?”

Masel gave the smallest of nods. “Diagnostic printouts cross-referenced with handwritten engineering notes. Supplemented by forum posts and a betting pool.”

A beat of silence. She blinked.

“According to Domain procedure, that entire setup qualifies as two violations of live-fire protocol and four counts of reckless material handling.”

Masel’s tone remained even. “It would’ve also earned them commendations for ingenuity if the results had come from a sanctioned test facility.”

Rourke sighed. “If we keep processing their ‘commendations’ like this, I’ll need a second memory core.”

Masel keyed his pad. Projected above the table: a split holograph showing decontamination progress. Bio-seals, flame lines, cutaway diagrams of sections with growing fungal activity.

“Mold remediation has begun,” he said. “Reinforced team from the Hegemony crew. They’re moving fast. Viscous foam deployment, hard-seal bulkheads, even improvised negative pressure zones.”

Rourke watched the display cycle. “Efficient.”

“They aren’t documenting it. Or rather—they are, but not in any format that matches our logs. Most of their records are voice memos over local comms, then transferred to untagged archives.”

“Of course.”

Another blink. Another deep breath.

“Terran crew’s begun subsystem restoration,” Masel continued. “Sensor cores, backup power interlocks, and reinitializing command pathways for bridge overrides. All manually. No shell shortcuts.”

Rourke allowed a faint smile. “They never trust black-box logic. Neither did I.”

He shifted in place. “We’re seeing reformation of some shared spaces. A galley. Sleeping rotation. Lt. Kell has initiated drills.”

She nodded again.

Then Masel’s voice dropped a tone.

“Commander. There’s a second matter.”

Rourke leaned forward. Her gaze sharpened.

“I’ve cross-referenced access logs with our personnel deployment lists. There are anomalies. Minor, but consistent. Subtle reroutes of comm traffic. Badge usage that doesn’t match shift charts. I flagged three individuals—confirmed Hegemony crew—who are likely operating under Internal Security clearance.”

“Informants.”

He gave a reluctant nod.

“Possibly more. These are just the ones who didn’t hide well.”

“Do they report up the usual chain?”

“I believe so. I’ve traced one to a redirect that loops through a secured cluster on Coatl. It’s not malicious, but it is covert. I don’t think they’re watching us, specifically. Just… everything.”

Rourke leaned back. Hands folded, fingers tense.

“Implications?”

“None yet. No sabotage. No hostile patterns. But if they’re here to observe, and we trigger something unorthodox...”

“We already have.” She tapped the table once. “That test range. The fire. The fact this ship flies at all.”

They sat in silence a moment longer.

Then:

“No escalation,” she said. “No confrontation. We keep it in the back pocket. You watch them. Quietly.”

Masel nodded. “If I need to move through Nira, she’ll spot shifts faster than the logs do.”

“Agreed. But keep her focused. I don’t want this spreading to the entire crew.”

He rose to leave, but paused near the door.

“Commander… we ran live-fire diagnostics in a hangar surrounded by flammable foam and containerized fuel. The propulsion array was held together with parts we technically don’t own. And now we have armed intelligence officers watching our coffee rations.”

He said it not with fear. But like someone who’s just read the end of a bad novel and realized the last chapter is missing.

Rourke gave him a quiet look. “And yet, we're still alive.”

He nodded. “For now.”

As the hatch closed behind him, Rourke stared for a moment at the empty screen.

Then—curiosity won out. She keyed open a sealed folder. Terran Incident Report: DSS Cadence – Cycle 149.09.02.

She didn’t read it.

She just… kept it open.

And breathed.

POV: Second Mate Riel Masel

Cadence wasn’t sleeping.

Masel’s shift schedule said a third of the crew should be in deep rest. Another third rotated on life support sanitization. The last batch—Kell’s—was supposed to be off-shift, rehydrating and filing mold logs. But the muffled shouting from Deck C said otherwise.

He turned the corner and found them: Lieutenant Dara Kell, arms crossed, flanked by two junior operators in stained jackets and respirators slung loose at the collar. The trio stood in a half-lit corridor beside an open junction panel, mid-argument.

“Three shifts aren’t practical in-dock,” Kell was saying. “No one's got enough crew to do full coverage and scrub fungus.”

“Tell that to biohazard protocols,” Masel shot back. “Sleep-deprived workers and low-pressure seals don’t mix. You want the ship quarantined again?”

The taller of the two operators added, “It’s not like we’re skipping duty. Just reallocating priorities—”

Masel felt a reply boiling when a figure appeared from the far hall, barefoot and moving with intent.

Commander Rourke.
Still in sleep-shirt and regulation-issue jacket, hair a barely tied knot, eyes hazed with the kind of resolve one only earns by skipping REM cycles.

The corridor stilled. Kell blinked.
One of the operators straightened like he’d been caught smuggling equipment.
The other quietly took off his loose respirator and tried to hide it behind his back.

Masel didn’t even speak. He met Rourke’s gaze and gave a subtle, desperate nod: please help me.

She paused. Breathed in. Then exhaled one sharp, icy syllable:

“Enough.”

The room froze. No one spoke. Even the ship’s ventilation seemed to fall silent.

Rourke’s tone wasn’t shouting. It didn’t need to be. It was the clipped cadence of a Terran Command Training Academy disciplinary invocation. The kind instructors used to end nonsense, not manage it.

“Second Mate. Find me contractors. I want external mold hazards purged now. If the crew lacks discipline, I’ll rent some.”

“Lieutenant Kell—do you have time to argue? Then you and these two can shovel the Sector 7B black tank. Gear optional. Feel free to ignore procedure—it seems to be in style.”

A cough. No one responded.

“Malik,” she added, without turning, “wake your department. I want Cadence’s exterior scrubbed, all hull codes repainted, and the dorsal burn stains removed. By hand. Assume I will not like the first attempt.”

Malik, having just arrived with a systems update and a half-eaten ration bar, blinked twice. “I—wasn’t here?”

“You are now.”

She turned. Not toward the bunks. Not toward the bridge.

“I’ll be in the common area,” she declared, voice rising like thunder through the metal corridor. “Anyone not asleep when they should be, or not working when they must, will explain to me—personally—why their file shouldn’t be amended for cause.”

Masel, already backing toward the bulkhead, didn’t say a word.
As Rourke swept past—bare feet slapping the deck like warning klaxons—he could hear behind him the clatter of half-asleep crew scrambling for gear.

And the first murmured, “...is she wearing pajamas?”

Masel didn’t answer.
He stepped through the door and headed toward dock command.
Behind him, the storm descended.

Thirty-two minutes later, Masel returned with the decontamination crew from Dock Sector B.

They were mostly contract workers in borrowed exo-suits, padding along behind him while exchanging quiet bets about the state of the ship. Most hadn’t been inside a former Domain craft since training. One leaned closer and whispered:

“Heard they test fired engines in a hangar. With real fuel. Who the hell signed off on that?”

Another replied:

“Same lady who wears pajamas and chews officers for breakfast, apparently.”

Masel grunted. He wasn’t in the mood to confirm or deny anything.

As they stepped into Repair Hangar 3, the crew halted.

What unfolded below wasn’t chaos. Not exactly. It was something far worse for military sensibilities: coordinated absurdity.

Around the Cadence’s midsection, a dozen figures in full hazmat suits and firefighter helmets ran circuits around the outer hull. They carried mock cleaning tools, waved diagnostic paddles like parade flags, and in unison shouted:

“RESTING ON COMMAND, YES SIR!”

“PERFECTLY RELAXED, ABSOLUTELY FINE!”

Between laps, they broke into something approximating a nursery rhyme, only louder and angrier. Something about scrubbers and spores and “death inside the vents.”

On the gantry railings above, a few dock workers and techs from neighboring ships watched in awe and amusement. One nudged a friend and said:

“I had fifty creds on ‘exploding engine’ last week. This is better.”

Down below, Lieutenant Kell and his two loud-mouthed crew stood ankle-deep in the sludgy remains of a blackwater tank, manually pumping with portable vacuums. One of them had abandoned protective gloves and now wore a pair of kitchen tongs for insulation.

On the forward scaffold, someone had hung a handwritten sign:

“Discipline Drill in Progress. Do Not Engage Unless You Enjoy Pain.”

Masel didn’t need to ask who wrote it.

He spotted Commander Rourke in the middle of it all, perched on the upper gangway, hair still half tied, datapad in hand. Her jacket collar was up, and a mug of caf steamed beside her on a vent casing. She didn’t shout. She simply tapped names on her schedule, and techs moved like the floor was on fire.

Masel let out a breath.

Beside him, one of the new workers muttered:

“This ship’s insane.”

Another added, reverently:

“But damn if it’s not clean.”

As the squad fanned out to begin actual sanitization, Masel made his way toward a side console where Malik Selak sat cross-legged on a toolbox, typing.

The Chief Engineer had earplugs in, and a tired smile playing on his face.
His screen displayed a maintenance terminal. The form read:

    Incident Log: Crew Discipline Event c+208.02.01
    Type: Unscheduled Command Exercise
    Location: Cadence Exterior – Upper Hull Ring
    Cause: Conflict over labor scheduling and mold protocol enforcement
    Damage Reported: None (unless pride counts)
    Status:
    Contained
    Cleanup in Progress
    Morale Adjustment Complete

    Malik squinted, then added a single line at the bottom.

    “Resolved.”

And hit send.

POV: Lt. Dara Kell
Location: Cadence interior → dockside screen kiosk
Time: c+208.02.01, afternoon

Kell ducked under the bulkhead frame, still scrubbing at the water droplets clinging behind his ears. The decon showers weren’t hot, but they worked. The sting of antiseptic wash was fading, replaced by something stranger: the distinct scent of functional air cycling.

The corridor beyond was quiet. Not abandoned—he could hear people working, voices echoing from deeper inside Cadence—but there was no shouting, no clatter of dropped tools, no slammed hatches. Just quiet, rhythmic activity.

The walls weren’t pristine, gods no. She could trace at least three generations of patches over the wiring channels. But each panel was sealed. Zip-ties held fresh filter units in place. Handwritten maintenance tags fluttered against the bulkhead, stamped with times and initials.

Kell paused by one.

“Vent Mesh Replaced / Verified – Ys.D. 208.01.26 – 12:13 SST”

Timestamped. Signed. Updated.
He felt like he was hallucinating.

A few turns later, he hit the common area. Still gutted—flooring mismatched, seating cut from salvaged crate panels—but someone had scrubbed it down. The air carried a faint trace of bitter synthbrew and cleaning agent.

The dispenser hissed as it dispensed into his mug. He grabbed a ration bar from the wall rack, tore it open, and leaned against the frame, watching a pair of Terran techs pass wordlessly through the far end of the room. One carried a fresh conduit spool. The other had a box of labeled fasteners.

Nobody told them what to do. They just… did it.

Kell sipped her drink and wandered forward, his boots thudding gently on the catwalk. A bright line caught her eye—sunlight glinting off the hull plating.

He stepped up to the observation window. Outside, two figures in hazsuits were repainting the side of the ship. Carefully. Deliberately.

He recognized the shape forming: a stylized eagle, wings swept back in the fashion of Domain-era insignias. Below it, the faded ghost of the First Line emblem was being repainted by hand.

Someone had even polished the plating. You could see the damn reflection of the brush strokes.

This wasn’t performative parade deck fluff. This was… reverent.

Unsettled, Kell found herself pacing into one of the side corridors, toward a kiosk cluster he'd spotted earlier. It had sprung up recently—cobbled from old console housings and a steel rack, but wired and working.

Three screens glowed.

    One showed live footage from the test gantry: a wide-angle CCTV feed capturing the scorched floor, still faintly damp from last cycle’s fire retardant foam.

    The second pulsed with telemetry: Test #179, “Ignition Cycle – Stage 2,” temperature curves dancing in real time.

    The third rolled betting odds and a flashing banner: “Download the Holy Book of Propulsion – Version 51 now live! Patch notes updated!”

Kell blinked. The link worked. It linked to an actual repo site.

Below the monitors, a few off-duty Cadence crew and dockhands lounged with mugs and notebooks. A woman in scorched overalls muttered, “That new injector assembly’s gonna spike at eighty. Watch it crack the flange.”

Her buddy snorted. “Nah. They ran double cycles on that one. Bet it holds.”

Kell stared. Not just the absurdity—but the fact that they knew what they were doing.

This wasn’t chaos held together by spite and duct tape.

This was a ship. Functioning. Deployable. And run by lunatics who resurrected a faded tech manual and made it real.

He backed away from the kiosk, drink clutched in both hands. Took another long sip. The warmth didn’t help.

“I’ve seen salvage. I’ve seen miracles.

But this is…”

He paused, watching the odds update.

“…a bureaucracy that works. And that’s what’s terrifying.”

Location: Cadence – Galley Deck, Midday
POV: Commander Elisa Rourke

The kitchen wasn't hard to find—just follow the trail of raised voices, the aroma of overworked sanitizers, and the distinct smell of boiled ration packs trying very hard to be stew. Commander Rourke stepped through the hatch and into a chamber that was half pantry, half apology.

Metal counters gleamed from recent cleaning. Crates of unidentifiable protein bricks were stacked like artillery shells. And in the middle of it all stood a man who looked like he hadn’t changed rank or attitude in three decades.

“Commander,” said Hal Blent, not looking up from the inventory slate. “Can I interest you in some freshly sealed disillusionment? Comes with a side of lukewarm morale.”

Rourke tilted her head. “Sergeant Blent, I assume.”

“Call me Hal. I’m not fool enough to think my rank does anything ‘round here. I just feed people before they get mutinous.” He finally looked up, tired eyes behind grease-smudged lenses. “And right now, I’m feeding them despair. Boiled.”

She stepped closer, inspecting the sealed stove unit. Dust. “Kitchen’s not operational?”

He laughed, short and bitter. “It’s operational. Just not permitted. Last three maintenance cycles got rerouted to your shiny sensors. I’ve got ten requests in the backlog and a crew who’d settle for anything warmer than this,” he said, tapping a gray ration slab on the counter. “Nutritionally complete. Emotionally bankrupt.”

“I’m not unsympathetic,” Rourke said, calmly. “I’ve just spent the morning learning that one of our thrusters came with a shuttle still attached and that half the engine refurb was done with tools someone pawned from a mining barge.”

Hal gave her a grin. “Then you’ll appreciate the importance of a hot meal when the rest of your life is hanging together with good intentions and rusty bolts.”

A small crowd had formed. Reinforcing crew leaned on the doorframe, nodding along, clearly on Hal’s side. One mimed warming their hands over a phantom stovetop.

Rourke sighed. “Alright. What’s the minimum?”

“One heat plate. One working steam nozzle. Access to a quarter of that cold storage unit and enough filtered water to boil without anyone growing a second nose.”

“And you’ll serve actual food with that?”

“Nothing you’ll remember fondly,” Hal said, “but they’ll stop threatening to eat the medic.”

“Fine. You’ll have it by tonight.”

“You’re a good woman, Commander. I take back one-third of everything I said about officers.”

From down the hallway came a clatter of argument and the distinct static pop of overloaded comms wiring. Rourke turned just in time to see Nira Visk, wrapped in a blanket, being carried bodily out of her “tech nest” by two grinning engineering crewmen.

“I was optimizing airflow!” Nira protested. “The ambient temperature was perfect! I had a system—!”

“You had cables in the coffee dispenser,” Masel said flatly, following with a checklist in hand. “And you were sleeping under a vent that leaks freon. Congratulations. You’re now moving to your designated quarters.”

“I am my own designated quarters—!”

“No.”

As they passed the galley, Nira locked eyes with Rourke like a betrayed kitten in zero-G. One of the crew holding her gave a thumbs-up and a shrug. Rourke raised a brow, not unsympathetic. Then she returned to Hal.

“I’ll sign off on the minimum galley plan. Send the full refit proposal to Masel when you’re done arguing with the fryer.”

“Already done,” Hal said, cracking open a storage drawer. “I’ve got contingency plans for this kind of nonsense. Sector taught me well.”

Location: Cadence – Sensor Control & Fleet Comms Node

Commander Elisa Rourke stepped into the sensor control suite and immediately regretted not having brought a helmet. The room was half-disassembled — ceiling panels gaping open, cabling drooping like neglected vines, diagnostic lights flickering in more than one shade of urgent orange. Two teams were mid-argument, their voices overlapping in a kind of technical cacophony.

"...you calibrated against what? That pulse signature hasn’t been relevant since we realigned the array—"
"It’s in spec! Your numbers are from a theoretical vacuum, not dockside clutter!"

On one side stood three Hegemony comms techs, sleeves rolled up and tools holstered like weapons. Their leader was a thin, wiry man with one eyebrow permanently raised in skepticism. They had a kind of bored confidence — the job was done, they thought, and all this debate was academic.

Across from them, the Terran-trained sensor specialists had built an improvised array of overlays, external scopes, and power-traced calibration spikes. One of them pointed to a wallboard scrawled with signal test results.

"It's not about ‘done,’ it’s about repeatable range fidelity under uncertain spectral noise. If it ghost-triggers on plasma flare once, we’re already dead."

Rourke cleared her throat. Nothing happened. She stepped forward.

“Report.”

They froze — sort of. One of the Hegemony techs turned around slowly. “Commander. We were just finalizing the last hookup. Everything's wired to bridge spec.”

"Bridge spec?" said the lead Terran tech, nearly choking. “That’s the fallback spec for degraded emergency nav. We’re trying to rebuild tactical scan alignment!”

As Rourke was about to respond, the side door opened with a familiar hiss-click, and Ysai Dorn stepped in, holding a tablet under one arm. Behind her followed Juno, still brushing residual foam from her boots.

“Got the passive pod schematics,” Ysai announced. “It's not great. It's also not entirely burnt.”

Juno tossed a sealed case on a cleared surface. “It pings. We figured we’d bring it in case someone wants to hook it up.”

One of the Hegemony techs muttered, “Oh great, more junk.”
Juno didn't look up. “It has three grounding schemas. We taped over one.”
Ysai added dryly, “Two’s still above average around here.”

Rourke pinched the bridge of her nose.

She walked to the edge of the console ring, glancing over the wiring like a field medic scanning a battlefield. The room had been designed as a tactical coordination node — in the old doctrine, Cadence might lead a deep recon cell, relaying signals to forward ops. That required crystal-clear signal separation, active and passive sweeps, and clean data down to the microvolt. And right now?

Right now, it was a battlefield of philosophy.

Hegemony doctrine, descended from the war-torn results of disconnected Gate network, emphasized speed and sufficiency. “Good enough to fire first, good enough to win.”
Terran doctrine, hardened in the cold edge of perfectionism, demanded reliability beyond reason — even if it took triple the time.

Rourke spoke slowly, but without softness.

“You’ll run both calibrations. One to Hegemony dockside protocol. One to Terran spec. We run a test suite tomorrow, field-validate performance, and that decides the loadout.”

Protests rose from both sides.

She raised a hand.

“I am not asking. You’ve all read the doctrine. This ship scouts first. If our eyes blink wrong once, the rest of the fleet doesn’t get a second chance. You have one night to make both options shine.”

As the room returned to murmured task assignments and grumbling, Rourke stepped to the door. Before exiting, she paused.

“Oh. And if someone finds a fourth grounding schema in that pod, please mark it before it starts a fire.”

The door closed behind her with a gentle click. Ysai turned to Juno and whispered, “Told you we shouldn’t have taped it. Should’ve soldered.”

Location: Cadence – Common Area
POV: Commander Elisa Rourke

The common area still smelled faintly of epoxy and burnt wiring — a signature scent of progress aboard Cadence. Makeshift furniture—plastic crates, mismatched seats, one bench that still had a hazard sticker—had been pushed into a half-circle facing the battered wall projector. Crew filtered in slowly: Hegemony reinforcements still in partial hasmat, Terrans clutching ration mugs like sacramental relics. Rourke stood near the front, mug in hand, eyes half-lidded but sharp.

“Begin playback,” she said.

The projector stuttered once and then hummed to life.

“Training Simulation Recording #004 – Tag: FIRE (Live Incident Triggered)”

The screen showed an overhead feed: Compartments D3-D4. Drill overlay blinked yellow.
A simulated alert chimed politely: “Minor fire, airlock breach. Proceed with response protocol Beta–”

Halfway through the line, the overlay fuzzed. A klaxon burst into real life.

From the footage, one voice cut in:

“It’s part of the test, right?”
Another:
“Wait—this isn’t—why is the bulkhead melting?”
Third, flat:
“Naera just walked into the fire.”

Laughter rippled through the crew. Naera, arms crossed at the back, raised one hand in a slow wave without turning her head.

Onscreen, Naera calmly reached the control unit, sealed the valve, toggled two failsafes, and sighed:

“Of course they hooked it to the recycled feed…”

The fire died. The room stayed silent a beat longer than it should have.

Rourke took a sip from her mug.

“Glad to see you all survived the fire. And the fire drill.”

Somewhere in the back, someone coughed. Masel, already scribbling notes onto his tablet, didn’t look up.

She tapped the pad. “Based on reviewed footage: You responded almost adequately. Slightly too real for training. We'll recalibrate scenario tolerances.”

Masel clicked something with dry precision and said without looking:

“Progress: non-zero.”

She turned toward the crew more fully, posture unhurried but firm.

“Which brings us to our next challenge: You’ve done the hard stuff. Mold, rewiring, firefights—” she gestured broadly, “—so what now?”

Terran side, ever dutiful, offered:

“Inspect emergency panel tolerances?”

Hegemony operator:

“Color-code interior conduits?”

Cook raised a gloved hand. “You could refurbish the kitchen. I mean, unless we're starting a rebellion to the flavor gods.”

Laughter. Rourke raised an eyebrow, looked down at her pad, then back up.

“Noted. Kitchen goes back on the board. As for the rest of you…”

She scanned the room, then snapped the pad closed.

“If anyone volunteers for biohazard tank duty unironically, please report to medbay for evaluation. Everyone else—rotation as posted. Back to stations.”

The crew rose. Some with groans. Others with too much cheer. Footsteps echoed down the corridor.

As the projector wound down, it replayed the moment of steam explosion. A grainy figure yelled:

“IT'S PART OF THE SIM, RIGHT?!”

Rourke lingered. Masel closed his log. “Filed as: 'Unexpected Success in Emergency Drill.' Resolution: future cautionary tale.”

Rourke nodded once, glanced toward the quiet, now-organized corridor.

“Not bad,” she murmured.

“Worrying, actually,” Masel replied, and followed the others out.

Rourke remained, watching the paused frame of a Hegemony crewman caught mid-yelp, mouth open, eyes wide, halfway between drill and disaster.

The bridge of the Cadence was quiet. Not empty—just disciplined. A far cry from the chaos they’d inherited. Now, only three remained on station: Elisa at command, Masel by the comms console, and Kell hunched over the flight controls, tapping in final trajectory adjustments.

Outside the reinforced viewport, the edge of Chicomoztoc’s orbital layer shimmered like a haze of distant light and static. The release signal from the docking claws had been clean—an unexpected mercy—and the frigate now glided free on station-assigned vector.

“Coatl Bastion relays clearance,” Masel said, eyes skimming the console. “Flight corridor C-Eleven, confirm jump lag cooldown. Acknowledged with formal routing marker… timestamp Cycle 208.02.05.9.13.00”

Rourke glanced his way. “That’s early format. Domain-epoch military.”

Masel just nodded. “Someone over there is digging into the archives.”

Kell chuckled softly from her station. “Better old format than none.”

With a final input, she nudged the flight yoke. Thrusters answered with a satisfying thrum, slight drift correction engaging across the keel. “Vector clean. Burn alignment confirmed. We’re in the pipe.”

The bridge lights dimmed slightly—automatic transition into cruise ops. Rourke let the silence sit a second longer, then tapped her console.

“All sections, this is the bridge. Begin deployment self-check and forward all status updates. Let’s see what the ship has to say for herself.”

One by one, the reports arrived, streamed into Elisa’s command interface. She read them silently, mouth twitching once at Cael’s usual poetic pessimism.

“ENGINEERING: Primary flux sinks within projected tolerances. Scrubbers holding. Hull telemetry nominal.
— Malik”

“LIFE SUPPORT: Algae cycling functional. Air tasting less like lubricant. Progress.
— Naera”

“PROPULSION: Someone welded this thing together with prayer and rage, but it flies.
— Cael”

“AI NOTE: Vessel is maneuvering at 98.4% baseline control integrity. Synchronization drift compensated.
— Subsystem NEXUS”

“SENSORS: Awaiting active test. Passive baseline appears… promising.
— Ysai Dorn”

Masel arched a brow at the last one. “’Promising.’ She must be in a good mood.”

“She knows we’ll be reading it,” Rourke said. “Better than redlining a live cable feed again.”

Across the bridge, Kell tapped a few more keys and leaned back.

“We’ve got a visual on Aztlan I. Xolotl. Toxic swirl in full color.”

Elisa stood and stepped toward the viewport. The planet swam past below them, dense green-black clouds convulsing like wounded flesh beneath a blazing yellow sun. A world no one lived on. A warning, not a home.

Masel intoned the log update almost ritualistically. “Cadence flyby of Aztlan I complete. No anomalies. Entry confirmed.”

Kell’s voice followed, light but thoughtful. “Hard to believe we came from that scrapyard and now glide past system kill-worlds like this.”

Elisa didn’t smile. But she said, quietly, “We aren’t dead yet. Let’s stay that way.”

A few hours later

The asteroid field rolled into view like jagged teeth lit by system light. Gritted shadows stretched across a hundred thousand rocks. Rourke stared at them with quiet tension.

Her eyes flicked to the diagnostics board. Green. Mostly.

“Approaching outer margin of The Ciltetl,” Kell reported, one leg crossed under her console. “Lot of good candidates. Want me to find something arrogant looking?”

Masel didn’t look up from his terminal. “Let’s just shoot the one least likely to explode into media-worthy debris.”

Rourke nodded toward Kell. “Tag a big one. Something that’ll give our coilguns a proper echo.”

Kell tapped in a few commands. “One-oh-four-meter ferric composite, spinning on a stable trajectory. That’ll do.”

The AI chimed in, still using the flat Terran-standard accent.

"TARGET SELECTED: ASTEROID 144-BETA. COMPOSITION: FERROUS-NICKEL. IMPACT VALUE: CALIBRATION OPTIMAL."

Masel reached for the comm. “Requesting strike approval from Coatl Coordination.”

There was a long pause. Then the voice of an overworked Bastion controller came through:

“Cadence, permission granted. Make it clean. We’ve got three training wings monitoring channel traffic.”

Kell’s smirk widened. “So no pressure.”

Weapons safeties clicked off. Power rails spooled.

The asteroid hung dead ahead, backlit by Aztlan’s G-class glare.

“Fire,” Rourke said simply.

A bolt of force ripped across space, invisible except for the moment of impact.

Asteroid 144-Beta ceased to exist — not shattered, not cracked, but dispersed, the kinetic lance boring through and atomizing the center mass before vapor jets threw the rest into a widening cloud.

Masel read the telemetry aloud, blinking.

"TEST FIRE COMPLETE. TARGET DESTROYED."
"CORE PENETRATION: 97.8 PERCENT. DISPERSION WITHIN SAFETY TOLERANCES."
"SUBSYSTEM STATUS: GREEN."

He added, quieter: “Well, guess prayer and rage hold alignment better than I expected.”

A ping lit up the comms again.

Kell laughed under his breath. “Hegemony patrol’s watching.”

Masel opened the message.

"COATL PATROL SIGMA-4 REPORTING. NICE SHOT. DOMAIN ECHO LIVES?"
"THAT HULL LOOKS GOOD FROM THIS SIDE. CONGRATS ON FIRST KILL. SHAKEOUT REGISTERED."

Rourke allowed herself a tight smile. The IFF rework had done its job — they weren’t just some reactivated relic. They were back.

Masel keyed the return. “Acknowledged. Shakeout complete. No need to salute just yet.”

As Kell pivoted back to helm management, the sensors bloomed.

“Starting full system sweep,” she said. “Bringing passive to max... active arrays now.”

Rourke leaned forward as lines of return data scrolled across the screens. Dozens of micro-contacts—debris, static—faded into the background. One cluster stood out.

“Thermals minimized,” Kell muttered. “Almost too clean.”

Masel's brows pinched. “No beacon. Multiple ships. Escort config.”

"UNIDENTIFIED CONTACT GROUP. VECTOR: SHALLOW EGRESS FROM BELT. PATTERN CONSISTENT W/ CONTRABAND OPERATIONS."
"FORWARDING COORDINATES TO PATROL SIGMA-4."

They watched in silence as the patrol’s vector snapped off course.

Masel’s tone was neutral. “They’re breaking off. Intercept confirmed.”

A few minutes later, long-range sensors picked up bursts of heat, comms static, and one distinctly recognizable energy discharge.

“Didn’t think I’d watch a firefight in the capital system,” Rourke murmured. “This was supposed to be a telemetry run.”

Masel didn’t look away from the screen. “Welcome back, Commander.”

Kell leaned back, hands behind his head. “We make a good first impression.”

All around them, Cadence hummed — systems tight, calibrated, awake.

And everything, of course, was being recorded.
For training purposes.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4 – Orders and their Consequences

Location: Coatl Bastion, Shadow Level 7-A (officially doesn’t exist)
Time: Two days before Admiralty Board convocation

The room hummed with an ambient stillness—the kind bred from vacuum-sealed insulation and a complete absence of external data feeds. No comms, no feeds, no nameplates. The walls were gunmetal and bare, save for the embedded logic panels that flickered with statistical overlays.

Admiral Thule stood motionless at the center of the display ring. His gloved hands rested behind his back, his posture as rigid as the steel that circled this dead zone below Coatl Bastion’s administrative spire. Around him, three intelligence aides in plain black fatigues worked terminals that spat quiet flashes of red and green. One was annotating board reaction logs from the last closed-door budget committee. Another scrubbed social spillover and internal forum anomalies among fleet support staff.

“Summarize,” Thule said, his voice low but cutting.

The lead analyst—pale, sharp-featured, unnamed—gestured, and the room’s central field populated with profiles.

“Admiral Rheel maintains expected parameters,” the analyst began. “Publicly neutral, privately frustrated. Supports mobilization in theory, but does not trust you to carry it with dignity.”

Thule’s eyes narrowed.

“He responded favorably to references invoking the integrity of the original Battlegroup,” the analyst continued. “Less responsive to economic rationale. He has not yet responded to the messaging package seeded last week.”

Thule turned away from the display and walked a slow half circle, boots clicking softly on the hardened floor.

“And Malke?”

The analyst hesitated. That was telling.

“Admiral Malke remains strategically non-committal. He flagged the Chicomozotc fuel transfers as suspicious, but has not filed objections. He will speak—he always does. But it will be from the middle. He assumes the Hegemon will remain silent and will attempt to shape the room’s tone before any vote.”

A second voice spoke from the side console. A deeper register, more cautious.

“He’s also quietly reassigning two intelligence analysts from border sectors to Naval Resource Oversight. That’s not random.”

“Of course it’s not,” Thule said. “He’s already preparing the narrative for failure.”

He returned to the display.

“Frame it as a recon action,” he ordered. “Not an expedition. Not yet. If we call it doctrine, the Dogmatics will play along. If we call it a gamble, the Pragmatics will kill it in committee.”

The analyst nodded. “We’ve seeded phrasing echoes through mid-tier fleet discussions: 'recon with stabilizing potential', 'preemptive survey maneuver', and 'fleet integrity operation'.”

“Good. Then we give Rheel his war story,” Thule said. “And Malke his deniability.”

The screens cleared with a soft ripple. The air was too dry.

“Begin quiet pull on logistic clearance paths for the fallback fleet. Do it through Hesperus transit nodes, buried in long-term maintenance packets. If we win the vote, we’ll need to move fast.”

A silent chorus of acknowledgements followed.

Thule paused at the door. He reached for the manual seal and waited for a breath.

“I’ll handle Rheel personally,” he said. “He respects rank. He respects legacy. And he’s still offended that Daud got the chair instead of him.”

He stepped through the pressure door and let it seal behind him with a muted hiss.

Dinner first, he thought. Then the board. If I’m to win this, it will be before a single voice is raised.

Location: Admiralty Board Convocation Hall, Coatl Bastion (formerly XIV tribunal chamber)
Time: Two days before expedition greenlight

The orange eagle loomed over them all.

Its wings, stretched in solemn defiance, had been scorched into the dark-gray alloy panels centuries ago, back when the chamber still hung in orbit over fallen worlds. Now, embedded in Coatl Bastion’s fortified core, the ancient tribunal space had been reborn into the Hegemony’s high chamber — half relic, half theater.

Admiral Thule did not look up at the eagle. He found it hard to respect symbols that had outlived the discipline they once commanded.

The meeting had just finished its ritual warmup: a vote on refurbishment standards for naval propulsion. A narrow amendment passed — swapping out the legacy “replace entire module” doctrine with more adaptable refurbishment protocols. Technically significant. Tactically irrelevant. But the outcome was enough to remind Thule who had been whispering to whom over the past week.

Now came the real show.

“Admiral Vos,” Rheel’s voice creaked across the room like a steel hatch easing open. “If you would.”

Kaelin Vos stood, thin and dry-eyed, as if unaware of the knives already unsheathed. His posture was military-formal, his datapad precise, and his delivery optimistically doomed.

He outlined the proposed expedition in terms of fuel curves, transit relay support, forward repair assets, and modular staging zones. He even included provisional civilian protocols for interacting with unknown installations. By the time he reached the twenty-third slide, the room was squirming — not out of disagreement, but out of contempt.

Rheel did not interrupt. He merely blinked slowly, letting his silence weigh down the air.

Then the murmurs began.

“...one wonders if Admiral Vos intends to mobilize half the Sector or merely bankrupt the other half,” came a quiet jab from the left tier — a pragmatist.

“A plan that cannot be executed in a single cycle is not a plan. It is an obituary,” offered a Dogmatic near Rheel’s seat.

Vos stiffened, fingers tightening on the edge of his pad.

Across the chamber, Thule observed, silent. Calculating. He had expected resistance — but not this level of open disdain. The plan, as written, was politically unsellable.

He glanced toward Malke’s seat.

The old intelligence admiral sat like a crypt, eyes half-lidded, unmoving. A junior aide stood behind him, taking notes by hand. Malke’s fingers drummed twice — no signal, just a rhythm. He had not spoken. That was dangerous.

Then—an unexpected voice.

“If I may,” said the representative from the Expeditionary Command.

All eyes turned. The officer was modestly ranked — uniform crisp but unadorned, voice steady. Politically moderate. Pragmatic, but not jaded.

“The proposal is sound, but its timing is not. We have a refitted strike group ready at Chicomoztoc. If deployed within two weeks, it could serve as a reconnaissance wave. Minimal losses if intercepted. Maximum gain if successful. Recovery, not confrontation.”

He paused. The room waited for someone to scoff.

No one did.

It was Malke who broke the silence.

“Expeditionary Command is not wrong,” he said, quietly, like a verdict. “Tri-Tachyon has rerouted three convoys through the Atlantian fringe in the last five days. I doubt they’re just avoiding tariffs.”

A few heads turned.

Malke leaned forward just enough to show he was still alive.

“I dislike improvisation,” he added, “but I dislike being late more.”

Thule’s spine stiffened by half a degree. So. Malke had played his own hand. Likely seen the same signals — or seeded them.

There was no outrage, no rebuttal. Only murmurs.

The hybrid plan — a recon action now, full mobilization later — was already writing itself into the record.

Rheel cleared his throat.

“It would appear,” he said, “that the spirit of the old battlegroup favors motion over musings.”

The orange eagle did not move.

Location: Tri-Tachyon Black Site – Mirror Fold
Time: Shortly after the Admiralty Board session

The briefing chamber had no chairs. That was by design.

Handler 13 stood alone in the middle of the cold white glow. Screens floated like ghosts along the edges of the room, never touching the walls, each displaying nothing until he spoke.

Behind him, the door sealed with a whisper of air displacement. The junior analyst arrived late. Deliberately so—he’d been trained to wait for invitation, not formality.

“Begin passive sync,” 13 said, eyes forward.

The room came alive. Filtered feeds, pattern overlays, and flagged comm traces slid across the field. Most had already been cross-referenced, burned through one of Mirror Fold’s AI cores, and cleared for final human assessment. All Handler 13 had to do was build the narrative.

He raised a hand and slowed the display on Fleet Redeployment Node 4C.

“Observe the reassignment trail,” he said. “Fleet 9-C was staged for anti-smuggler patrol in the Eos-Hekta region. Instead, reassigned to a patrol vector labeled ‘anti-piracy perimeter assertion’. Within two hours, two separate fuel manifests were routed through Chicomoztoc Depot 6.”

The analyst tilted his head. “Routine surge?”

“No. Routine surges don’t use three different requisition pathways and a time-delayed comm silence.” 13 paused. “Nor do they scrub Morale Deck from their internal simulation updates.”

The junior analyst’s mouth twitched — a question half-formed and aborted. Good. He was learning.

Handler 13 continued.

“We’ve seen this shape before,” he said. “Operation Bronze Reed. Vorelan masked an expeditionary task force under a Luddite suppression header. Found and extracted terraform prototypes from an abandoned relay cluster. That operation used two redundant fleets and three silent jump-points. This is smaller. Faster. And sloppier.”

He turned. The analyst’s screen updated to show atmospheric prediction charts for Persean League fringe systems.

“The likely objective?” the analyst finally asked.

13 didn't answer immediately. He changed the view.

Showed silent chatter gaps around Coatl Bastion. Sensor signature reclassifications. Sector-wide suppression of certain archive terms: Cadence, Echo Root, Gateframe Hypershunt.

“We don’t have a trigger,” 13 admitted. “No AI breakout. No cultic flare-ups. No Tri-Tach loss. But their lack of a stated reason might be the reason. This could be a classified salvage, a pre-emptive containment... or an internal memory hole being erased in real time.”

He gave the analyst a long, unreadable look.

“It could also be,” he said, “just a test. To see who watches closely.”

He raised his hand, and the briefing interface built itself around his voice.

Tri-Tachyon Strategic Operations Memo #2418–13–MIR

Subject: Hegemony Anomalous Fleet Movement – Classification Delta Gray
Assessment: Potential Category 3 Strategic Asset Recovery
Priority: Escalated Passive Monitoring; Optional Interference Vector

Then, he spoke aloud, tone flat as ice:

“Recommend indirect leak to League-aligned fringe elements with long-standing animosity toward Hegemony authority. Suggested payload: implication that expeditionary fleets are pursuing Domain-era assets in deep recovery maneuver.”

“Historical precedent supports pattern overlay: Rear Admiral Vorelan's record includes at least two deniable operations masked under suppression protocol headers.”

“Let the League absorb the risk. We’ll take what floats up after.”

The memo finalized. Encrypted. Sent up the chain.

Handler 13 let silence return.

The junior analyst shifted slightly, as if expecting something more.

Finally, 13 spoke again — not to explain, but to cut.

“Assume nothing. Not even their incompetence.”

Location: Cadence – Briefing Room (Chicomoztoc Orbital Works)
Time: Cycle 208.0 2 .16, 09:04 SST

The antiseptic stench was the first thing Elisa noticed when she stepped into the briefing room.

It clung to the walls like mold’s vengeful ghost — bitter, clinical, impossible to ignore. The room had once been a fungal nest. Now it was just… clean. And sad.

Discolored ceiling panels still bore the faint shadow of the bloom. Two overhead lights were tagged with yellow tape: “Checked – Needs Replacement / Low Priority.” The conference table had been replaced by stacked supply crates. Some doubled as chairs, others bore half-unpacked meal kits or component manifests. The only sign of actual comfort was a stainless steel kettle rattling softly in its cradle.

The kitchen, at least, was finished. The cook had made sure of that.

Elisa was halfway through her mental inventory of "things that would need fixing if anyone actually cared" when the door opened with a pneumatic sigh.

Masel entered, face carved from bureaucratic stone.

“Sealed packet for the commander,” he said dryly. “Hand-delivered. Which means someone’s making a point.”

He set the folder on the crate-table with two fingers and stepped back. Elisa broke the seal. Inside: deployment orders, authorization signatures, and a thick folded insert marked with Admiral Vorelan’s personal cipher.

She read the heading. Then reread it.

Masel made a face. “Well?”

Elisa didn't answer immediately. Instead, she looked over to Nira, seated sideways on an overturned supply container, legs curled under her like a student in hiding. Nira silently held up her tablet and passed it across.

The screen was already open — a filtered digest of compiled rumors and AI-aggregated speculation.

“Fireweld listed in silent fleet drill.”
“Dockside supply run: double tankers?”
“Why is a recon fleet getting cruiser-grade parts?”

Below that: chat logs, pilot banter threads, half-deleted comments from a contractor claiming to have seen Cadence’s hull code in a logistics node.

Elisa sighed. “So it’s not just us.”

The door opened again — this time without the hiss of ceremony. Varo Kreel stepped through with the swagger of a man who'd forgotten what the word unauthorized meant. Malik Selak followed behind him, flipping through a notepad and chewing something synthetic and citrusy.

“Morning,” Varo said, eyeing the room. “Smells like hospital threw up on an old gunship.”

He leaned on a crate, elbow first, like it was his personal leaning post.

“Malik said you might want to know what folks are whispering in the other hangars.”

Elisa gestured with a hand. “By all means.”

Varo grinned.

“They’re saying Vorelan’s on a tear. Scolded two admiralty reps in front of a logistics board yesterday and walked out without a scratch. Got his whole fleet spun up for something big, and not a soul’s calling him out on it.”

Masel muttered, “Because nobody wants to explain to the dogmatics why we’re still using fuel siphons instead of actual tankers.”

Varo shrugged. “Maybe. But I’ve talked to crew who served under him. Fireweld’s people. You know what they call him?”

“Go on,” Elisa said, already bracing.

“Scavenger admiral. Like a badge of honor. Says he still hand-inspects his own salvage sometimes. Still keeps logs in dual formats in case some ship’s too old to read the new code.”

Elisa raised an eyebrow. “That’s not standard.”

Varo grinned wider. “Neither is half his fleet. But they say it’s one of the best commands to serve on. If you survive it.”

Malik cleared his throat.

“While we’re talking survival,” he said, flipping to the next page, “I’d like to officially request engine bay access past 02.15. I know we’re slotted for launch that week, but some diagnostics didn’t like the new feed sync, and I’d rather not explode during burnup.”

Elisa nodded. “Noted.”

Malik paused. “Also… Visk has a proposal.”

Nira looked up briefly, then lowered her gaze again. Malik continued.

“She cooked up a functional black coating. Radar-absorbing. Not perfect, but it’ll make us read like a patch of drift until they’re practically inside our teeth.”

Elisa blinked. “We had that in the original specs?”

Malik nodded. “We did. Logistics said not available for auxiliary class. And the original layer got stripped off during the drift.”

“And now?”

“Now we make our own,” he said. “She’s mixing base chemicals with an instafuser rig — pressurized nozzle system. Fast-hardening. Works even in open space. We’ll need to roughen the hull gloss first. Some belt grinders, some borrowed hands.”

Varo added, “Looks ugly as sin. But pretty doesn’t block ping.”

Elisa sat back. The orders still lay in front of her. She tapped the seal again.

“Do it,” she said finally. “We’ll make this ship scream like the void if we have to. Just keep the kitchen clean.”

Varo smirked. “Cook threatened to stab me with a ladle if I touched the stove cover. You’re safe.”

Chicomoztoc High Orbital, Docking Section – Expeditionary Command
c+208.02.17, 09:05 SST

The checkpoint didn’t look like much—just a bulkhead corridor retrofitted with dividers and a half-flickering wall-slate that declared, in unwavering capitals, IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED AT ALL TIMES. The two guards manning it were armored like they expected boarding actions in the hallway. One leaned against the frame with practiced boredom, helmet clipped to their belt, the other scanning a portable slate and sipping something unidentifiable from a squat, metal thermos.

Still, the moment Elisa Rourke approached, the shift was visible. The slouch didn’t vanish, but every motion suddenly aligned with procedure. She held out her ident chip, received a brief, silent scan from a worn portable unit, and was waved through with a curt nod. No words. Just the pressure of eyes and the low weight of professionalism worn like a tattered but familiar coat.

Even here—in the innermost heart of Hegemony space—everyone kept their weapons slung tight across their chests. It wasn’t paranoia. It was habit.

The transport waiting beyond the inner checkpoint looked like someone had welded clearance plates onto an ancient ground cart, painted it gunmetal grey, and decided that was good enough. The driver didn’t speak. She just jerked a thumb at the passenger bay and engaged the motor the second Rourke’s boots hit the floor.

They passed through chaos. Not disordered chaos—mobilization chaos. Flatbeds loaded with crate towers rumbled by, hounded by junior logistics techs shouting conflicting instructions. One group of engineers sat on a pallet of diagnostic units, arguing fiercely about serial numbers. A cluster of off-duty crew hauled vacuum-wrapped blankets and surplus rations into a half-open container bay. Even the marines drilling near the bulkhead seemed to double-time their movements, aware that this was no parade ground but a countdown.

No one saluted. No one stopped. But everyone watched.

Fireweld loomed ahead, unmistakable even among the industrial clutter. Heron-class, braced with scaffold struts, cargo bays half-open, flight elevators locked. She was a fast carrier by design—but now she wore the hungry, raw-boned tension of a ship that expected to leave soon, and didn’t plan to come back unscathed.

The cart rolled to a stop beside one of the mid-ship cargo access tubes—pressurized, armored, and patched with a secondary airlock panel. A crew of dockhands stepped aside as Elisa was waved toward the entry point. One of them looked up long enough to track her with a faint nod before returning to inventory tags.

Inside the tube, the lighting flickered once before stabilizing. The walk was brisk—no time for ceremony—and her escort’s pace left no space for questions. They passed under structural beams scorched from some past incident, and bulkheads scored with half-masked soot marks. Nothing gleamed. Everything worked.

At last, the corridor narrowed toward an internal blast hatch—a doorway with a pressure seal ring slightly warped and re-bolted. Someone had clearly repainted over the old scar line. A faded stencil read:

FIREWELD COMMAND DECK – CLEARANCE BRAVO-BLACK ONLY
Beneath it, scrawled in dark grease pencil:
If you can read this, you’re already late.

Her escort straightened.

“The admiral is informed. You may enter.”

The hatch whispered closed behind her, sealing out the last of the hallway noise. Commander Elisa Rourke took in the room with the detached precision of someone trained to spot inconsistencies under pressure. The lighting was low, not dim — recessed tracks gave the space a museum-like softness. There was no desk between them. Just two high-backed chairs positioned slightly off-center around a table that bore nothing but a single glass-topped display slab and a worn lacquer tray.

The walls carried stories, if one had the context. She did.

A Luddic Path IED, its crude wires now frozen in translucent polymer, sat quietly on a raised plinth. Its casing still bore faded green paint and the etched slogan “Peace be upon the ashes.”

Mounted higher, in a cracked black velvet case, was a ring — antique, ostentatious, unmistakably Kanta's the pirate queen. The woman had a penchant for thrones and knives, and the ring reflected both. No plaque. No mention of how it was acquired.

And beside it — tucked almost too casually behind a rusted XIV console fragment — a Terran Federation commander’s rank pin. Her rank. Untagged. Just there, like a loose memory someone had decided to keep.

Rourke didn’t linger on any of them. She gave each the same level of scrutiny she gave the Admiral: measured, quiet, and without assumption.

“Commander,” said Calen Vorelan from his place by the table. He didn’t offer a handshake. His voice was precise, clipped. “I’m told your ship now passes muster — by some creative standards.”

She stepped forward, posture formal. “I’ve prepared an amended report.” She offered the datapad, both hands, polished movement. “Terran diagnostic format. Original Hegemony assessment appeared… aspirational.”

Vorelan accepted the pad with the air of a man who already knew what it contained. He laid it next to the file already waiting on the table — thin, creased at the corners, standard Hegemony envelope markings. From it, he retrieved a printout.

Reading aloud, almost theatrically:

“All systems nominal. Minor insulation damage. Crew adapting well to new configuration. Estimated repair time: none required.”

He paused. Then flipped to her report, scrolling through a few blocks.

“Primary systems at eighty-nine point seven percent. Secondary subsystems in calibration hold. Life support rated operational. Flight control partially re-integrated. Recommend limited deployment pending diagnostic integrity sweep.”

He laid both documents side by side and folded his hands neatly.

“Curious,” he said. “How reality varies between departments.”

Rourke remained still. “I assumed the original author had limited access to internal diagnostics.”

Vorelan’s mouth twitched. “Or a promotion quota.”

Silence stretched for a moment — not tense, but surgical.

Finally, he spoke again. “The Cadence was flagged for symbolic integration. Heritage value. PR veneer. A flag, not a ship. Your updates suggest… function.”

She gave the barest nod. “Expectation often trails necessity.”

He leaned back, letting the weight of that sentence linger. It wasn’t agreement — but it wasn’t rejection either.

“I’m no stranger to reclassification by necessity,” he said, almost lightly. “Before I finalize the Cadence’s place in this operation, you’ll join me for a rotation review. Fireweld’s systems are clean, if a little superstitious. Consider it… perspective.”

He rose, no flourish, no gesture to lead. Just the expectation that she’d follow.

Formality wasn’t ending. But the tone — was beginning to shift.

Vorelan stepped out of the trophy room with an effortless stride, hands behind his back. Rourke followed at a measured pace, her boots soft against the non-slip plating. The corridor beyond was dimly lit in hues of muted amber and navy — command deck tones — but the moment they rounded the corner into the broader ship proper, everything changed.

Lighting warmed. Pressure seals hissed as environmental doors retracted ahead of them in sequence, each opening like the beat of a mechanical pulse. Fireweld wasn’t pristine — it was alive.

They entered the tactical deck.

Personnel moved with silent speed between stations. No barking of orders, no stiff salutes — just nods, curt acknowledgments, and the quiet clatter of keypads and overlays. One junior officer straightened as they passed, but instead of saluting Vorelan directly, she gave a firm gesture toward a mounted display: a screen bearing the words:

Flight Deck Rat Trap – DO NOT MOVE.

Vorelan gave the slightest nod in return, then glanced sidelong at Rourke. “Caught three rats,” he murmured. “One was a wrench. The rest is classified.”

Rourke didn’t smile. But she didn’t frown, either.

Another screen bore a laminated printout taped to the top frame: an old religious icon crudely modified into a tactical diagram — the title read: “Saint of Target Lock, Preserve Us.” Below it, someone had drawn concentric targeting arcs with a red marker.

She tilted her head. “Operational theology?”

Vorelan’s mouth quirked. “Faith in recoil calibration, mostly.”

They moved on.

Down one corridor, a pair of boots hung from an overhead conduit by their laces, spinning slowly in the filtered breeze of the circulation fan. The wall bore faint signs of repeated paintwork, as if someone had tried to clean graffiti more than once but had never quite succeeded.

Rourke raised an eyebrow.

Vorelan answered before she could ask.

“Shoes of Command. No one remembers whose. Legend says they belonged to the last XO who screamed during a blackout drill. The story changes every cycle.”

She inhaled to comment, then decided against it. The silence said more.

The engineering annex buzzed — literally. A harmonic hum ran through the bulkheads as they entered, a sign of power routing being manually balanced. At a relay console, a woman with violet facial tattoos and a buzzcut was rerouting feed cycles while arguing with someone on an open mic. She waved at the Admiral without looking, grease smeared across the backs of her gloves.

“She used to run cargo through Eochu,” Vorelan said casually. “No logbooks. No escorts. Never lost a crate. I gave her a fusion manifold and a title.”

Rourke observed the calibration readouts. Solid. Efficient. Hand-tuned.

“And now she’s your chief flow balancer?”

Vorelan nodded once. “Only when she’s sober.”

They passed a bulkhead shrine half-hidden in a niche — a cluster of spent cartridges, a worn patch with the name “Lazko,” and a metal fork stuck upright in a vent grate.

“I don’t ask,” he said, before she could speak.

“I wasn’t going to,” she replied.

He slowed slightly as they neared a crew junction and a sealed hatch with faded caution striping. A marine stepped aside to let them pass, nodding sharply.

Then, as they reached an observation corridor running above the flight bay, Vorelan stopped.

The vast chamber below was active. Launch prep. Final checklists. Two Talon wings and a Condor drone lifter were docked and being refitted, flanked by a mess of parts laid out in rows on marked tarps. The crew moved like a tide — no shouts, no ceremony, just movement and execution.

Vorelan rested his hand on the railing, watching silently for a few breaths.

Then, without turning:

“Does the Fleet know you run your ship like this?” Rourke asked at last.

He exhaled. “The Fleet thinks I’m an insufferable bastard.” He glanced her way. “So they assume anything that works under me must be divine punishment.”

A pause. Then a dry, almost fond tone:

“Which means I’m free to keep fixing things in peace.”

She said nothing, but her stance shifted — less guarded now, more measured.

He tapped the edge of the railing once and stepped back.

“That’s enough incense and contradiction for the morning. Let’s get you something to eat before I show you the other half of this expedition.”

He gestured toward the next corridor. Its signage was clean, official: Dockside Access – Level 1A. Officers' Transit Loop.

With no further comment, they walked together toward the station’s private dining wing.

Chicomoztoc Orbital Works – Officer’s Private Dining Room, Fleet Docking Ring
c+ 2 08 .0 2 . 17 , 12 : 00 SST

The room was quiet in the way only old, important places knew how to be. Not silence, exactly — there was a hum in the walls, a whisper of ventilation through polished metal slats — but nothing spoke unless it had to. The burnished alloy panels bore Domain heraldry, oxidized slightly at the edges, and the dining table was a massive, seamless slab of matte steel, bracketed by precisely two chairs.

A silent serviceman in formal Fleet blacks gestured them forward. Vorelan waited until Rourke reached the table, then nodded once and sat. She followed with equal formality.

Their meals arrived with mechanical precision: two identical plates — seared protein, braised greens, ration-grade wine in real glass. It was, by the standards of the Sector, a luxury meal. Served without flourish, cleared without comment.

Rourke glanced once at the ceiling arch above them — embossed with an ancient 14th Battlegroup campaign seal, half the names on it likely lost to age or bureaucracy.

“Someone spent real steel rations on this place,” she said lightly.

Vorelan didn’t look up. “High Command always eats somewhere soundproof.”

For a time, there was only the clink of cutlery.

Then he spoke, not as provocation — but like brushing dust off a corner of a file.

“You don’t strike me as a careerist. But your record’s too clean for someone who stumbled into command.”

Rourke wiped her fingers with the cloth napkin, precise and practiced. “Expeditionary Command promotes through attrition. I just stayed longer than most.”

A beat.

“I had the Threadneedle expedition planned as my last. Five-cycle mission, heavy research, heavy political visibility. Survive it, and I’d have the leverage to go internal — planetary inspections, system patrol planning, civilian logistics if I wanted.”

She gestured slightly with her glass.

“No more monthly jump-burns or dodging pirate torpedoes just to qualify for habitation credits.”

He nodded. “Endgame.”

“That was the idea. I was lining up housing options. Civil biotech clearances. Even kept a list of education subsidies.”

He gave her a dry look. “Sounds dangerously civilian.”

“That was the point.”

The serviceman returned, replaced their glasses wordlessly, and retreated.

Vorelan sipped and set his down carefully.

“I started with short hauls. Independents. Courier ships, prospecting runs. Then the... creative work. Mapping derelict lanes, recovering lost research assets — the kinds of jobs where getting paid meant you probably lied about where you went.”

“And when did the Fleet decide you were worth a rank?”

“When they realized I wasn’t dying on schedule,” he said simply. “And that it was cheaper to let me command than to keep replacing whoever failed next.”

He leaned back, eyes steady but unfocused, like watching something long dead drift past the viewport.

“They ‘invited’ me to join a recovery operation. Deep space, classified targets. Came with a Fleet uniform and a promise of logistics support. By the time I realized it wasn’t voluntary, I already had a kill marker painted on my hull by the people who hired me.”

“And now you inspect dining rooms,” she said.

“I do dangerous things for the Admiralty. The only difference now is that I get to say no to the suicide ones.”

She nodded once. “Seniority by erosion.”

A corner of his mouth twitched. “Promotion by remaining.”

More silence. It wasn’t unfriendly.

After a time, Rourke asked: “You ever think of leaving?”

He shrugged. “Planet doesn’t suit me. Private sector wants uniforms they can sell. Tri-Tach pays well, but expects you to smile while they gut everything with a serial number.”

He speared the last piece of protein.

“The Fleet’s still the best option I have — and the only one that lets me move without someone rewriting my history.”

“Sounds like we both picked the long odds,” she said.

Vorelan raised his glass slightly. “And yet, here we are. Not dead. Not yet demoted.”

She touched her own glass to his. Brief contact, zero sentiment.

When they finished, the serviceman cleared the plates without a word.

Vorelan stood with smooth precision. Rourke followed. No orders exchanged. Just the rhythm of rank doing its job.

He paused near the exit, adjusted his cuff, and offered what almost sounded like an afterthought:

“I’ll be aboard Cadence sometime soon. No warning.”

She blinked. “Ah. Surprise inspections.”

He gave a thin smile.

“Surprises are a better measure of culture than checklists.”

And then he was gone, boots echoing lightly against the sealed, silent floor.

Chicomoztoc Orbital Works – Fleet Drydock Annex 6
c+ 2 08 .0 2 . 17 , 1 5 : 55 SST

The inner seal hissed open with hydraulic finality. Admiral Vorelan stepped through, flanked by two clipboard-bearing aides and a tight triangle of marines in full duty armor. The drydock air greeted them like an open chemical slap — sharp, synthetic, layered with the kind of solvent haze that promised either high-efficiency engineering or the early symptoms of a lung condition.

No one spoke.

Above the threshold, someone had taped a sign over the formal Hegemony safety stencil. In crisp black marker, it read:

“Respirators Required. If You Can Smell Banana, It’s Already Too Late.”

Vorelan paused. Glanced up. Let the silence linger.

One aide made a quiet sound in the throat — somewhere between a scoff and a nervous tick. The other scribbled something immediately onto their slate.

They advanced.

The dock was a patchwork battlefield of functionality: scaffolding braced the Cadence mid-repaint, its hull half-swallowed in matte-black coating that shimmered inconsistently under the arc lamps. Crates of supplies were stacked along the bulkheads — most mismarked, some leaking paint. An industrial sander shrieked from the far side of the bay, followed by a thud and a distant curse.

Vorelan walked slowly, boots echoing with the calculated menace of command presence. Marines kept formation. The aides flanked him like executioners with pens.

They passed a stack of labeled barrels — one marked “INTERNAL PAINT – FUMES NONLETHAL PROBABLY”, another clearly stamped “NOT FOR DRINKING” in four languages.

A faint rumble of ventilation turbines roared overhead. From somewhere near the aft scaffolds came a compressed thunk and a wet splatter.

Vorelan did not react.

Turning into an auxiliary corridor — one still under low-power lighting — the group came to an abrupt halt.

There, seated cross-legged in a makeshift hollow behind stacked foam crates, was a crew tech. Late-twenties. Relaxed posture. Undershirt only. No respirator. No awareness that command had just arrived.

A jury-rigged terminal mounted sideways against a broken wall brace flickered with pixelated drama. Two people were kissing against a bulkhead in low orbit. A soft string cue drifted from the barely functional speaker.

The tech had noise dampeners in. The tech was smiling.

The aides froze. One raised their slate like it might go off.

The marines stiffened.

Vorelan didn’t speak. He simply waited.

A beat.

Then the terminal hiccupped and dropped to diagnostic mode. The sound cut. The crewman blinked — looked up — and saw the full force of Fleet protocol staring at him.

He went pale.

There was a moment where he tried to both stand and salute, tripped over his own foot, caught the terminal, dropped a thermos, and knocked a bucket over behind him. The lid spun off.

A puff of lemon-scented chemical fog bloomed.

Vorelan still didn’t flinch.

“Are you assigned to this compartment?” he asked calmly.

“Sir! I—uh—this corridor’s—between work zones, I was on cooldown, according to shift logs, between—uh—coating and wiring prep, sir.”

Aide: “Uniform state?”

Second aide: “Unauthorized electronic access, no respirator, no hazard seal tag—”

“Sir, I have it in the log! It’s scheduled!” the crewman blurted, digging into a pocket and producing a crumpled sleeve-printed shift strip. “Third shift cooldown window, twenty minutes, authorized rest, on-file!”

Vorelan stepped forward and took it without a word. Examined it. Held it up to the nearby wall light. Tilted his head slightly.

“Ah. The sacred text.”

The crewman did not know if that was sarcasm. He looked ready to bolt.

One of the marines shifted — not threatening, but enough to remind everyone that this corridor now had gravity.

Vorelan handed the strip back, slowly.

“You are technically within regulation. Congratulations. You’ve achieved the minimum required to not be shot at.”

The aide cleared their throat. “Sir—”

“Mark this corridor for morale inspection,” Vorelan said smoothly. “Add the terminal to auxiliary systems audit. Flag media access. Check if ‘Love in Low Orbit’ is approved under Hegemony entertainment regulation. Revision twelve.”

He turned. The inspection team continued down the hall.

Behind them, the crewman stared for a second longer. Then bolted out of the dock, still holding the sleeve log, a faint cloud of lemon trailing behind him.

Cadence, security temporary disabled by comand override.
c+208.02.17, 16:00 SST

The corridor to the bridge bore its history like a confession — streaks along the bulkheads, faint discoloration from mold remediation chemicals, hasty brushwork frozen mid-stroke where some enterprising crewman had run out of paint or patience. A patched ventilation grille rattled softly, releasing the occasional vinegar-laced hiss from behind a warning card:

“If it smells like pickles, you’ve gone too far.”

The inspection party moved in perfect silence. Vorelan at the front, flanked by his aides and the armor-plated marines just behind, radiating the threat of official notice. The corridor lights were clean, bright, and freshly wired — the only part of the route that suggested order.

They reached the bridge hatch. It slid open smoothly. Too smoothly.

Inside: silence.

No crew.

No mess.

No chaos.

Just an impeccable command space, polished to the standard of a nanoforge showroom. Every console was powered down or screen-locked, the workstations arranged in textbook symmetry. The overhead lights cast soft reflections across the main table — even the flooring showed no boot scuffs.

One aide muttered, “Sanitized. Almost suspiciously so.”

The second pointed out discrete adhesive tags along the side panels:

“Recalibrated.”
“Non-critical, postponed.”
“Deferred per Checklist R3-Delta.”

Vorelan drifted between the consoles, hands behind his back, eyes narrowed. The place had the unsettling clarity of something too ready.

And then he saw it.

Tucked into the base of the auxiliary panel, magnetized and faintly warm to the touch, sat a forgotten metal mug.

The text along its side was embossed in slanted red print:

“Saints preserve you — but only while my cup is full.”

He lifted it, inspected the bottom. Stamped under the rim:
CMD-RKE // CO MUG 02

He held it up. “Captain’s personal morale system.”

The aide blinked twice. “Is it regulation?”

“Only if the saints agree.”

He set it down precisely where he found it.

“Mark it. Religious artifact. Suspected totemic focus.”

Then he turned and walked to the sensor hatch. A small panel nearby read:

SENSOR AUX – Doctrine Redundancy Node 1
Authorizes command continuity during bridge compromise events.

The aide tensed. Marines shifted slightly, as if anticipating combat from a calibration error.

The door cycled open manually. Inside: harsh light, open panels, wiring harnesses spilling from the ceiling. A soft oscillating buzz marked active system testing — and a thin stream of ventilation blew condensation from an open vent across the back wall.

In the middle of it: one tech.

Young. Grease-streaked. Respirator worn as a headband. Gloves sticky with polymer residue. One boot off, the other perched on a secondary stool as she leaned half-inside a cracked console housing.

And cursing.

“May Ludd in his infinite fury descend upon whoever patched this bandwidth routing through an archival interface card.”

Clang.

“No, that’s fine. Just spike signal noise straight into flight telemetry. See what happens. Blessed by Ludd, this one. Bloody thing’s not just broken, it’s inspiring rebellion in the other sensors.”

The aide inhaled sharply.

The tech didn’t notice. Her head was buried under a tangle of salvaged fiber.

“Who wired a translight calibration rig through a long-range diagnostic tap? This isn’t interface. It’s—it’s neural sabotage! Someone call command, I need a respec on this whole install, or at least some coffee. Gonna be deep in brainlove with this suite for the next—”

She pulled her head up. Turned.

Saw them.

Stopped.

Vorelan stood exactly where she hadn’t expected to find anyone today, let alone command staff.

She blinked. Stared. And, in the driest voice possible:

“...You’re not the coffee guy.”

One marine audibly choked.

Vorelan did not smile. He stepped forward, studied the opened console beside her. The readings flickered with obvious miscalibration warnings, override flags, and a looping alert tagged: MASS SENSOR BLEED: TUNING REQUIRED.

He asked, calmly:

“Using spectral compensation offset?”

The tech blinked twice more. “Sir, yes. It’s the only thing that makes them talk. Anything else just fries the decoder stack.”

He nodded once. “Reasonable.”

Then, more loudly, for the aide:

“Mark this compartment: high-tension node. Adaptive problem-solving confirmed. Recommend: caffeine augmentation protocol.”

He turned back to the tech.

“Carry on. But when you summon Ludd, be sure you’re not working on life support wiring.”

“Yes, sir.”

She did not move until they were gone. Then reached up and very slowly pulled the respirator down over her face, like she could hide inside it.

And whispered to herself:

“That was the Admiral. I offered the Admiral coffee. And cursed his ship.”

A pause.

“I am so dead.”

DSS Cadence – Engineering Compartment
c+208.02.17, 1 6 : 2 0 SST

The engine room was hot, loud, and very much alive. Coolant lines hissed in syncopated rhythm, diagnostic overlays flickered with status readouts in three mismatched font packs, and half the core housing was laid bare under a neatly secured layer of transparent sheeting. Every open junction was tagged, numbered, or stuffed with a cloth-wrapped tool to mark intent. The central floor grid bore a caution sign in thick grease pencil:
"TEST = BOOM"

Inside the housing, Cael Verin was half-curled around a support beam, one boot wedged into a bracing bracket, hands extended overhead with a measuring rod and a look of grim purpose.

Below, Malik Selak crouched beside an access panel, a small light clipped to his collar, peering into the throat of a valve cluster.

“This one’s pitted. Didn’t show in the test series,” he muttered.

Cael didn't look down. “Can you rotate it without dismounting the stack?"

“Maybe. But I don't trust the seal. And if it blows under thrust—”

“We get fireworks,” Cael finished. “Nice ones. Sculptural.”

Malik leaned back and exhaled through his teeth. “We really need a new part milled. But that means filing a change.”

Cael groaned. “Again?”

“Again.”

There was a heavy pause.

Then Cael’s voice, from somewhere behind a coil junction:

“If the sensor team’s back, tell them we’re not wiring another salvaged ghostbox into the feed. I’m serious. Last one nearly dumped false telemetry into the thruster loop.”

Malik stood and rolled his shoulder. “They tried again this morning. Brought two more. One didn’t even have a backplate.”

“Let me guess. ‘Expedition salvage priority, optics-enhanced, good-enough-for-flight,’ right?”

“Exactly. Like strapping a lens to a vacuum breach and calling it a nav solution.”

The footsteps approaching from behind went completely ignored. So did the slight metallic clink of boots hitting deck.

“Just file the damn things as magnetic anomaly risks and send the whole lot back to Logistics,” Cael said.

“With a note: ‘return to sender, contains curses.’”

“Or just ‘do not energize near crew.’”

“Or fuel. Or thoughts.”

“Cap should just talk to the Admiral, get us clearance to dump the lot.”

There was a soft, precise ahem behind them. Still ignored.

Malik: “Unless someone here is volunteering to help us replace this valve, you’re just in the way.”

Cael: “Seriously. You want this thing sealed today? Give us a bubble, or a fireproof miracle.”

Both of their comm units chimed — simultaneously. Sharp, high-priority tone. The kind that climbed up your spine and rooted in your stomach.

Malik frowned, already reaching for his sleeve.

>>ALERT: ADM. VORELAN – ONBOARD – INSPECTION IN PROGRESS<<

There was a silence that stretched just long enough to register.

They turned.

And saw them.

Three marines. Two aides. One admiral.

Standing five steps away, having heard every word.

Malik’s hand froze mid-motion. Cael’s boot slipped slightly inside the housing.

Aide One was already writing at speed, expression like someone hand-crafting a court-martial.

Vorelan, of course, said nothing.

Not at first.

He let the tension stretch until Cael visibly considered crawling deeper into the engine and never coming out.

Malik (too calmly): “Admiral.”

Cael (quietly): “Sir. We were unaware of your presence aboard.”

Malik: “We were discussing component integrity. Nothing... strategic.”

Vorelan tilted his head. “You were discussing explosive results.”

“Purely theoretical, sir.”

“Colorful theory,” Vorelan said flatly. He stepped forward, peering through the transparent cover at the labeled parts, the circled annotations.

He tapped a note with his gloved finger.

“DEATH POINT #2 – DO NOT TEST INDOORS”

“Enlightening,” he said.

Malik: “The stack will be stable, sir. Once we replace that valve.”

Cael: “The rest is just noise. Angry, unstable noise we’re trying to keep out of the ship.”

The aide’s stylus clicked.

Vorelan turned on his heel.

“Mark engineering: systems incomplete, procedures reactive, focus correct.”

He paused before the exit.

“Next time, log your jokes somewhere less discoverable.”

Then, he was gone. The entourage followed. The sound of boots faded into the corridor hum.

Malik stared at the space they'd just occupied.

“We’re going to be re-audited for six weeks.”

Cael, still perched in the guts of the engine, sighed. “On the upside... no sensor package this time.”

Malik gave him a long look. Then muttered:

“Don’t give them ideas.”

The corridor from engineering echoed behind them, the door sealing shut with a quiet finality and the faint scent of scorched insulation. Vorelan walked at a measured pace, boots striking rhythm against the grated flooring. His aides trailed beside him, one already organizing notes, the other scanning active datapings from shared crew logs. The marines brought up the rear — silent, helmeted, and still projecting the quiet confidence of people trained to subdue a hallway at short notice.

Ahead, the lighting shifted — warmer, more irregular.

The crew section.

This was where discipline faded and daily reality began.

The first sign was the music. Barely audible, leaking from a duct-taped datapad half-embedded into the bulkhead near a junction box. The song was a recycled spacer ballad with too much treble and a crackling beat.

Aide #1 opened their mouth to comment.

“Leave it,” Vorelan said. “Morale indicator.”

They turned the corner.

And chaos tried, in vain, to act like order.

The common room was a transitional disaster. Jury-rigged furniture was scattered between cargo crates marked “Rec Install – Priority” and “Damp-Cored Filters – Dry Only.” A single folding table had been propped on one side with a thermal boot. Three crew members were mid-action:

• One dove for a crate labeled “Hydrospares” and started frantically wiping its lid with their sleeve.

• Another tried to stuff themselves into a jumpsuit two sizes too large, giving up and tucking the rest into a tool belt.

• A third snatched a mop-like device from the wall, realized it had no head, and began moving it in vague sweeping motions anyway.

From the adjacent crew quarters, a thud and a shout:

“HE’S ON THE DECK. I SAW THE HELMET—SOMEONE HIDE THE STICKERS!”

A marine tilted his head at that.

Vorelan didn’t break stride. He scanned the scene without pausing.

“Spontaneous activity suggests high alertness.”

Aide #2 noted: “Unscheduled personnel movement. Improvised workspace management.”

“Cultural norm,” Vorelan said flatly.

From one of the bunks, a young crewman bolted past, half-dressed, saluted the wall instead of the admiral, and disappeared behind a box marked “SOFTS – CHECKED.”

Vorelan stepped into the center of the common room, scanned the nearby nav display — it was unplugged — and eyed a crate that bore a smear of algae-green fingerprints.

Before anyone could say anything further, the corridor hatch opened with a pneumatic hiss.

Naera Visk stepped in, mid-stride, peeling off a chemical-stained glove, streaks of hull coating still across her forearm and one cheek.

She spotted the admiral instantly.

“Admiral Vorelan. Sir—life support compartment’s been deep-scrubbed, recalibrated this morning. Filters are realigned, we’re pushing ideal balance. I can walk you there personally.”

Vorelan turned slightly. Behind her, a loud crash issued from the bunk module — someone had clearly knocked over an unsecured storage rack. A partially inflated mattress flopped out into the corridor like a guilty witness.

Naera tried again.

“Sensors are also—well, being improved, but life support’s stable. Fully stable. We even got the aroma mix dialed back to neutral this week.”

One aide made a note. The other pointed toward the open kitchen hatch.

From within: the unmistakable smell of real bread. Something yeasty and warm and aggressively comforting.

Vorelan raised an eyebrow. Walked toward the source.

The kitchen was clean. Spotless, even. A stainless unit rigged into one wall was humming with calibrated oven cycles. Four sealed storage bins stood labeled in black marker:

STARCH
GREENS
PROTEIN
(and in slightly smaller text: “IF IT MOVES, IT'S NOT OURS”)

In front of the oven stood Sergeant Hal Blent.
Broad-shouldered. Clean apron. Face set in the deep concentration of someone who treated dough fermentation with the gravity of orbital reentry.

He glanced over his shoulder without turning fully.

“Inspection?”

Aide #2 stepped forward. “Sergeant. This compartment—”

Blent cut him off, voice calm, but iron.

“You can document anything you want from the hatch, sir. But if anyone enters this kitchen without sanitation gloves, I will write my report on your clipboard — in sauce.”

The aide blinked.

Vorelan stepped in beside him, took one deep breath.

The bread was close to done. The smell of crust and browned sugar lingered like absolution.

“Sergeant Blent,” he said quietly.

“Sir.”

“Baking protocol?”

“Scheduled morale initiative. Verified on cycle manifest. I have four loaves inbound and I’m brining protein for rotation.”

Vorelan nodded once.

“Mark kitchen: secure. Civilized.”

Blent didn’t smile. He just turned back to his work. One hand adjusted the timer. The other returned to kneading.

“Thank you, sir. Now please step out before you reset the air buffer.”

The inspection group turned to leave.

Vorelan paused once in the common room, looked at the mess of activity — half-finished patch jobs, improvised seating, a datapad now looping someone’s attempt at classical opera.

He let it sit for three seconds longer.

Then turned, walked on.

Behind him, Naera exhaled audibly, looked down at her coating-stained hands — and realized she’d left black fingerprints on her bootstraps.

“Oh no,” she muttered. “I’m gonna be in a footnote.”

DSS Cadence – Dockside Hangar, Outer Hull Access
c+208.02.17, 16: 3 0 SST
POV: Commander Elisa Rourke

The dockside vapor still clung low around the scaffolding, a chemical fog of half-set stealth coating and heated ambition. Elisa Rourke moved at a near-jog, boots clicking over the scaffold plating, heartbeat catching up with her breath. Masel kept pace beside her, juggling three datapads, two printouts, and a form sleeve stuffed with pending signatures like a man marching into judicial review with nothing but faith and formatting.

“We can buy them thirty minutes,” Masel said, flipping a tab with his thumb. “I flagged a procedural discrepancy in subsystem intake flow. We call it a pre-deployment compliance review and loop it through the quartermaster’s docket. We’ll get stall time and plausible deniability.”

“If the admiral buys it.”

“If he doesn’t, I have a redundancy clause.”

“That sounds like something he’ll quote back at us while burning the whole procurement stack.”

“Technically, we didn’t authorize the mislabeling—just didn’t un-authorize it.”

They cut through the final walkway, stepped past a stack of empty crates marked “DO NOT PAINT – STILL IN USE”, and emerged into the wide mouth of the Cadence’s underhull hangar access.

Half the ship’s plating glistened in the chemical dullness of applied stealth coating. The rest looked like a wounded animal: scarred gloss, half-sanded panels, a ladder left crooked against the hull, a tool rig still dangling from a magnetic clamp.

Then came the footsteps.

Vorelan’s boots hit the ramp with slow, deliberate rhythm — a metronome for judgment. Behind him: aides, one still scribbling on a slate, the other scanning residual air quality data. The marines flanked with practiced neutrality.

Masel straightened instinctively.
Elisa stepped forward, datapad in hand, spine like steel.

“Admiral. I was preparing documentation to supplement the engineering review. If there are remaining variances, we can reconcile them via—”

“We’ve also prepared flagged justifications for every non-standard acquisition,” Masel added, trying not to look sweaty. “Some were temporary, but they—"

Vorelan didn’t raise his voice. Just his hand. The motion cut everything to silence.

He looked at them both — expression unreadable.

“Commander. Second Mate.”

He surveyed the dock, the scattered crates, the gloss-streaked hull.

“Your ship is untidy. Your people are overworked. The paint is uneven.”

Masel’s mouth opened slightly.

“But,” Vorelan continued, “the crew adjusts under pressure. The systems hold. The failures are acknowledged, not hidden. And no one tried to make it look better than it is.”

He gave a small, dry exhale. Not quite a sigh. Not quite a laugh.

“I’ve inspected better-looking wrecks that flew worse. Yours will fly.”

He turned on his heel.

“Inspection complete. Official review to follow. I’ll send a full Commission record once the ink dries.”

Then, with aides and escort trailing behind, Admiral Vorelan departed — boots fading into echo, coat snapping faintly in the chemical-tinged air.

Elisa didn’t realize how tight her shoulders had been until they released all at once. She stumbled back a step, then let herself drop onto the nearest crate, exhaling the kind of breath one normally saved for emergency pressure release valves.

Masel stood beside her, frozen mid-paper-straightening.

“We’re not being court-martialed?” he asked.

“No.”

“We’re not being reassigned to planetary intake sorting?”

“Apparently not.”

“Then what was that?”

She leaned back, eyes scanning the half-finished hull, the chemical sheen still catching flecks of arc-light.

“That,” she said, “was a passing grade. With commentary.”

She thumbed open her crewpad, flipped to the main channel, and typed.

ALL CREW –
SCRAMBLE OVER. Resume normal shift. If you’re off-duty, enjoy it. If you’re not—sorry. – RKE

The message blinked “Sent.” She closed the pad and let it rest in her lap.

Above her, Cadence loomed — unfinished, awkward, stubborn.

Just like them.

And still standing.

“Let’s hope the next time someone with a clipboard boards us,” she muttered, “they’re asking for a ride.”

Masel sat beside her without asking, legs wobbling a little.

“Gods help us if they bring more sensors.”

She didn’t laugh. But she smiled. Just a little.

Location: Officer’s Briefing Compartment, Aboard Fireweld
c+208.02.17, 18:00 SST
POV: Admiral Calen Vorelan

The hatch closed behind them with a subtle click.

Admiral Calen Vorelan leaned back in the overbuilt chair of Fireweld’s private compartment — the one with the soundproofing, the good filters, and exactly two chairs that had never been formally requisitioned. One aide sat across from him, slate still in hand. The other stood by the cabinet, pouring two fingers of steril-amber into short glasses.

The marines were gone. The pageantry was over.

Vorelan finally exhaled — not tired, but done pretending to be made of stone. He reached for the glass, tapped its rim once against the table’s edge, then took a sip.

“They were sanding paint off the hull while I walked past,” he said at last, voice dry.

The aide at the cabinet chuckled — carefully.

“With belt grinders, sir.”

“One of them tried to salute with a roller brush.”

A pause.

Then Vorelan actually laughed.

Short. Quiet. Genuine.

“And the damn ship still passed inspection.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, glass cradled between his hands.

“You read the revised report? The one she handed over?”

The aide with the slate nodded. “Terran format. Brutally honest. Fifty-seven flagged issues, fourteen of them preemptively resolved. Conclusions match stress-cycle profiles. Conservative, but clean.”

“So the Hegemony report said she needed ‘minor patching’ to be combat ready,” Vorelan said, shaking his head. “And their own diagnostics read ninety-two percent operational under strain. Who signed that?”

“Logistics Deputy from Nachiketa station. Transferred in from quartermaster audit division.”

“Figures.”

He took another sip.

“They’ve got a ship that works. A crew that works. Just enough rebellion to function. Just enough discipline to not explode.”

The aide with the bottle looked up. “So—asset, sir?”

Vorelan set his glass down.

“Effective immediately, Cadence is under my personal operational authority. Reflag her into the forward task detachment. Issue direct access override for fleet-level integration.”

Both aides went still. Not surprised. Just aware that it was now official.

“We’ll leave the paperwork public,” Vorelan added, “but quietly. No wide signal. No press. No parade.”

He smiled faintly.

“You hang a golden nameplate on something useful, and the vultures come flying to requisition it for some optics crusade.”

He pushed back in his chair, stretching slightly. His formal posture dissolved — still straight, still commanding, but off-duty. He ran a hand through his hair once, then dropped it against the armrest.

“She thinks I’ll test her. She’s right. But not by the book.”

“You want her watched?” the standing aide asked.

“I want her seen. Keep eyes inside the detachment. Not to judge — just to know when they’re bluffing, and when to let them.”

“And the captain?”

“She’s not a pawn,” Vorelan said, voice cooling slightly. “She’s a survivor. The kind who still files full reports out of habit. I trust her to disobey me correctly when it matters.”

He picked up his glass again. Let the last of the liquid settle in the light.

“If the Sector wants miracles, it better get comfortable with messy ones.”

A moment of silence.

Then: “Put Cadence on the primary deployment path. Make it look routine. If someone upstairs asks why, tell them we’re standardizing comm doctrine deployments. Or reinforcing redundancy metrics.”

“Yes, sir.”

Vorelan stood. Glass empty. Mask already drifting back into place.

“And if someone really asks?”

He paused at the door.

“Tell them I liked the mug.”

The hatch opened. Then closed behind him.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5 – Departures and Shadows

Location: Sublevel 17, Strategic Risk Cell, Eochu Bres, Hybrasil System

The room had no name. Its designation changed every quarter-cycle — just like the walls, which had cycled from deep obsidian to clean white and now pulsed with a cool, medical blue. The light hummed faintly, as if bored. A table of polished composite occupied the center. Around it sat five figures, each rendered featureless by the diffused ceiling wash and the privacy haze lining their faces in static shadow.

One of them finally spoke.
“Aztlan confirms the launch. Their window was moved forward by six days.”

A second voice followed — clipped, male, unhurried.
“Destination?”

“Obfuscated. Routing goes through Corvus. After that — nonstandard burn curves. Not trade, not garrison. Something they want hidden.”

Someone slid a packet across the surface — physical. A courtesy to the paranoid. Inside: fragments of redacted Hegemony command packets, intercepted by passive probes scraping the relay burst between Chicomoztoc and Coatl. What was visible was enough. Too much fuel for a show of force. Too many logistics ships for a raid. Too few diplomats for politics.

They’d found something. And they were leaving with it.

A long pause followed.

Then, as if arriving late to a rehearsal, a third voice — warm, dry, and amused:
“Any bets?”

A slow gesture from the first speaker. A hand raised, fingers ticking off the plan.

“One. Create a disruption. Leak something small, something true-adjacent. We’ll see who picks up the scent. Pirates or patriots — doesn’t matter.”

“Two,” came another voice, “embed soft assets. Not in their strike craft. Support elements. Auxiliaries. Reinforcements from less-screened pools. Hegemony vetting is thorough but not omniscient.”

“Three,” the first speaker concluded, “we shadow them. Phase scouts, two per vector band. Burn signature tracking only. No engagement.”

“And if that fails?” the second voice asked. Not fearfully. Just practically.

“Then we move pieces. Let them see our teeth. If they’ve stumbled onto a gate, a forge, anything — they won’t want to fight two wars.”

The third speaker leaned back.
“This feels early.”

“Then delay them,” said the first. “If we can’t stop them outright, we buy time to understand what they’re chasing.”

A moment of stillness. Then hands moved in sequence, tracing authorization sigils into the table surface.

The packet vanished into the table’s core. Instructions spooled into encrypted relay-chains. Far below, on Sublevel 19, silent aides with no official existence received new walk orders and vanished into Hybrasil’s orbital transfer web.

Up above, the sky remained blue and cold and full of teeth.

Location: Yesod, Zagan System – planetside bar “The Dockline”

The wind screamed against the windows like it wanted in. Snow and grit slashed across the tinted panes in horizontal streams, the storm’s rhythm broken only by the occasional sonic boom overhead — orbit-to-ground runs, freight or gunships, hard to tell from the muffled interior.

Inside, the bar was warm, loud in places, but quiet where it mattered. Booths sat deep under industrial piping and misaligned ceiling panels, creating pockets of half-privacy that didn’t quite hide the burn marks on the walls. One table near the back still had scoring from a plasma pistol burst — laminated over now, like a badge of honor.

At one such booth, Commander Eustel Tavari leaned back, gloved hand resting beside a half-empty glass of dark whisky. Across from him, a slim figure in a threadbare spacer’s coat tapped a datapad twice and let it sit between them.

“My client prefers not to be named,” the fixer said smoothly. “Could be Tri-Tach, could be a rogue admiral, could be one of the League’s quieter departments running their own books. Not my job to care, not yours either.”

Tavari didn’t reply. Just raised one brow.

The fixer continued, unbothered. “The job’s simple. Interfere. Delay. Break what needs breaking. If you’re lucky, steal something shiny and expensive. If you’re not, make sure they don’t reach their objective in one piece.”

They slid a thumb across the datapad, bringing up terms: payout tables, loss insurance, and something curious under legal cover: “cargo inspection authorization for unauthorized salvage under provincial transit clause C4.1.”

Tavari snorted. “That’s a new one. Cargo inspection?”

“Customs legalese,” the fixer said, smirking faintly. “It means shoot first and ask for receipts later.”

He took another sip from his glass. “Buyout clause?”

“Included. Up to five officers and command core. Damage bonus for structural kills. Extra five percent if the fleet misses their jump window. If they turn around entirely?”
They gave a small, cold shrug. “I suspect someone gets promoted.”

Tavari exhaled, not quite a laugh. “Someone always does.”

The fixer stood. “Take your time. I’ll get another round.”

They left the datapad on the table, its surface glowing faintly with blue text — encrypted comm routes, trajectory estimates, force composition assumptions. It even had timestamps on “expected distraction injection,” and one redacted field simply labeled: Asset Monitoring Active.

Alone now, Tavari leaned forward. Tapped a thumbnail against the screen.

He didn’t like being a blunt instrument. But he knew a pressure valve when he saw one. This wasn’t just a raid. It was a message with a warhead attached. Someone wanted the Hegemony limping, confused, and late. And someone else — maybe the same — wanted eyes on what they were chasing.

The payout was good. Too good.

Outside, another sonic boom split the air, shaking loose a sprinkle of dust from the light fixture above. He didn’t flinch. Just reached for the whisky, raised it slightly, and knocked it back.

“To luck,” Tavari murmured. “And second chances.”

Location: Corvus System – Outer Asteroid Belt

“Convoy formation looking tight,” Kell muttered, arms crossed as he watched a frigate thread itself between a pair of rusting hulls. “Tighter than the admiral’s jaw at breakfast.”

From her command chair, Elisa didn’t look up. “Keep that tone and I’ll assign you to logistics review duty for those fake tankers.”

“Cruel,” Kell said. “We’re supposed to be simulating a fight, not dying of paperwork.”

The Cadence cruised slow and wide through the outer edge of the debris field, nose tilted just enough to keep high-gain sensors locked on the designated test corridor. Far ahead, the two frigate squadrons were performing their assigned charade — Squadron A escorting a clutch of deliberately sluggish transports, while Squadron B darted in with jamming pulses and simulated torpedoes, trying to “cripple” their engines. It was messy, noisy, and only marginally helpful.

“Pirates don’t usually announce their arrival with ten synchronized ECM bursts,” Elisa said, dry. “They also don’t waste time on rulebook maneuvers.”

“That’s because pirates don’t have Fleet Coordination Directive 57-A,” Dorn replied from the sensor station. “Blessed be its twenty-seven subsections.”

Kell laughed. Outside the ship, the fake battle unfolded like a chaotic ballet — drones, decoy mines, and plasma tags playing out a war no one would remember tomorrow. On Cadence’s boards, it was all tagged and labeled, flickering through jamming overlays and interference fields.

Still, Elisa watched the scope. A rhythm was off.

“Re-filter that corner grid,” she said, gesturing to the northeast quadrant of the drift field. “Low vector returns. Masked emissions. Feels lazy.”

“Ghosts, probably,” Dorn replied, adjusting thresholds with two fingers. “B field’s full of them. Half this junk has passive reflectors. The other half’s probably leaky thermals.”

“I said feels lazy, not random,” Elisa said.

Dorn hesitated, then reset the scan suite with tighter control limits.

They both watched as a flicker stabilized. Then another.

Four. No, five.

“That's not a random bounce,” Dorn said, voice losing its edge. “They’re in a curved drift… like they're waiting on a synced burn.”

Elisa was already locking the lens. Heat bloom profiles were faint — almost perfect masking — but the energy curves didn’t lie. Too stable. Too clean. Not pirates. Not debris. Not part of the simulation.

“Kell. Encrypt burst, direct channel to Fireweld. Flag priority-zero.”

The bridge went silent.

Dorn was already locking the readouts and uploading packet data. “Six ships. Maybe more. Asteroid shadowing and ECM masking. Holding pattern.”

“Armed?” Kell asked.

“Hard to say,” Dorn said. “But if those are smugglers, I’m a Tri-Tach shareholder.”

Elisa tapped the pad once to confirm transmission and felt the slight hum underfoot as Cadence quietly warmed her secondary systems — no active posture yet, just quiet readiness.

The exercise outside continued. Simulated alerts, fake alarms, feigned damage calls — it all kept playing.

But Cadence saw the real game beneath it.

Location: Fireweld – Flag Bridge, Corvus System

“Squadron A’s tankers are flying like they’re carrying marble statues,” Vorelan remarked without looking up from the tactical display. “At this pace, they’d lose to gravity in a footrace.”

A soft chuckle rippled through the nearby staff. The bridge of Fireweld pulsed with quiet activity — data updates, fleet telemetry, simulated alerts — all part of the drill script. Above them, holograms tracked the mock engagement in the outer belt: decoys flickered, ECM spikes bloomed in artificial arcs, and escort frigates executed protective sweeps around the designated “transports.”

Vorelan leaned forward, pinching to zoom on the battlezone. “Though I must say… whoever thought to lace the debris field with short-cycle jammers — that’s the kind of piracy I like to see. Tactical creativity with a dose of pettiness.”

His aide, Lieutenant Scarn, raised an eyebrow. “Would you like that noted in the evaluation log, sir?”

“Of course,” Vorelan said, gesturing casually. “Credit where it’s due. Add: ‘Squadron B shows commendable initiative in battlefield shaping.’ And Squadron A... hmm.” He tapped a finger on the side of his chair. “'Needs to avoid clustering like panicked cattle.’ That should get the message across.”

Scarn nodded, already typing.

“And toss in a round of drinks for the winning team,” Vorelan added after a pause. “Assuming there is one.”

“Sir, drinks for a simulated exercise?”

Vorelan’s mouth curved slightly. “Even the illusion of victory deserves hydration. Keeps the blood warm and the bickering civil.”

“Very civil, sir.”

Then came the tone. Low. Distinct.
A flagged burst — Cadence priority channel.

Vorelan’s eyes sharpened as he accepted the message, skimming the metadata first, then diving into the payload.
No simulation.
No decoys.
Six untagged contacts. Real burns. Masked emissions. Formation. Intent.

He didn’t flinch. Just leaned back slowly in his chair and exhaled through his nose.

“Well. Seems our training scenario has drawn a live audience.”

Scarn blinked. “Orders, sir?”

“Raise both squadron leads,” Vorelan said. “Have them begin redirecting the ‘engagement’ toward the debris cluster — nice and casual. Keep formation integrity.”

He stood and stepped toward the command rail, watching the map zoom out to include the zone Cadence had flagged.

“And signal the weapon systems teams,” he added, tone still calm. “Unlock safeties on all forward batteries. Standby mode only — no active targeting until I say.”

He folded his arms.
“Let’s see if our little ghosts want to play.”

Location: Cadence – Bridge, Corvus System

The tactical display still shimmered with ghost tags and half-collapsed overlays. Debris spun lazily across the sensor feeds, and intermittent EMP pulses flickered like lightning in the dark — clean arcs sweeping from mock pirates to real ones now limping and blind.

Elisa stood with one hand on the back of Masel’s chair, watching the controlled chaos unfold. The bridge was dim, lit mostly by holo-blue. Alerts blinked in soft rhythms, none of them urgent anymore.

Below their viewport, one of the enemy frigates — a makeshift hauler retrofitted with torpedo tubes — was venting atmosphere and rotating helplessly, engines sputtering from synchronized strikes. A Wolf-class frigate from the escort squad had it bracketed, mock-paint now replaced with precision guidance pulses.

Masel flipped between two report templates on his console, sighing. “So... we’re filing both, then.”

Elisa didn’t glance down. “Both?”

“Training exercise report and hostile engagement summary. I already had the framework open for the drill logs.” He tapped the side of the screen. “Now I have to file a completely separate record for live weapons deployment during controlled scenario space. Which was, officially, unoccupied.” He looked up at her. “This is going to be a mess.”

“You love a mess,” she said.

“I love paperwork that doesn’t require a flowchart and legal justification for reality,” Masel muttered.

Behind them, Dorn’s voice rose from the sensor pit. “That’s one for the record books. We scrubbed a ghost contact and walked right into a prize fight.”

Kell leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head. “One’s luck. Two’s coincidence.”

A pause.
“Three’s a curse,” someone finished from the far side.

“Ghostbiter,” Dorn added, smirking. “We should paint that under the nameplate.”

Masel glanced at Elisa. “You realize we’re one more ‘sensor anomaly’ away from getting assigned a chaplain.”

Elisa didn’t reply — just watched the screen as the last of the enemy’s propulsion signatures faded from motion. The kill zone had been improvised, brutal, and clean. They’d sprung a trap by letting it trip itself.

Then the admiral’s voice came through the bridge PA — clear, dry, amused:

“To all expedition elements: training exercise concluded successfully. Tactical objectives unexpectedly expanded into a salvage-and-rescue operation.”

A short beat of static.

“Our boring friends from Patrol Command will arrive in a few hours. They’ll be delighted to return the survivors to the comfort of their holding cells. Until then, standard post-battle recovery protocols.”
“And drinks awarded to whoever scored torpedo hits on cruiser hulls.”

Muted cheers and scattered laughter followed. The bridge relaxed — not fully, but enough to breathe again.

Masel sighed. “Now I need a third form. Bonus award notation request.”

Elisa finally smiled.

Location: Fireweld – Command Briefing Room, Corvus System

The room smelled like old coffee, worn upholstery, and just enough ozone to remind her this was still technically a military ship.

Elisa paused at the threshold. The table was oversized and curved, flanked by mismatched chairs — some naval-issue, some retrofitted from whatever the salvagers had pulled out of Chicomoztoc’s admin bay. Half the officers were out of uniform, and most had already cracked into side conversations. A frigate commander she recognized only by patch insignia was recounting a prior job that ended with a freighter lodged inside a moonlet. Another captain was annotating salvage maps with a stylus that looked suspiciously like it had been reassembled from two broken ones.

Elisa arched a brow. This was not the tactical order she expected. It looked more like a pirate syndicate planning its next haul.

Then she sat down — and listened.

"...and if the tankers go up first," one voice was saying, "then we’re just angry people in expensive coffins. I don’t know about you, but I prefer my air in metered doses."

“Seconded,” came another. “Last time someone went out this far without a tether fleet, the after-action review was titled ‘Posthumous Debrief – Oral Histories via Helm Recorder.’”

Polite laughter. The kind only people with too many near-death experiences could deliver with sincerity.

At the head of the table, Admiral Vorelan leaned forward slightly, eyes half-lidded with what looked like amusement. “Please do keep the morbidity coming. It helps Logistics track how serious we’re being.”

Another burst of chuckles. The atmosphere was flippant on the surface — but every comment pointed to the same truth: this mission was too far, too fast, too risky.

A display flickered to life behind Vorelan. Target projections, wreck scatter estimates, overlapping vectors where something big had been... and then vanished. In silence.

A salvage specialist tapped her datapad and cleared her throat. “For those who missed the memo — our rigs will remain two full burns behind the main formation until the site is confirmed clear. If hostiles appear, rigs get dropped.” She looked around the room. “We’re not arguing that point again, right?”

“Only if you want to donate civilian frames to the Persean Memorial Scrap Collection,” someone muttered.

Vorelan gestured. “Rigs abandoned. Final. If your rig crew tries to stand ground, they’ll be standing in vacuum. No rescue window.”

“Protocol updated,” Masel’s voice said near Elisa’s shoulder. She hadn't noticed him arrive, but he already had three templates open and was quietly annotating a fourth.

“Escape pod recovery,” someone brought up. “We modding beacon pings or not?”

“Mod them,” said Vorelan. “Frigate squadrons will have tight-loop filters for friendly pod telemetry. If you eject, do it loud.”

“I’d like a confirmation,” a soft-spoken tanker commander said, “that if we get hit mid-jump or lose the secondary, we have fallback fuel options.”

“We’ve requested a convoy to shadow one jump behind,” Vorelan replied. “No guarantees. But they’ll be close enough to identify your wreckage.”

That earned a few grim nods.

“Anything else?” Vorelan asked.

One of the frigate leaders raised a hand with mock solemnity. “So. Just to clarify — this is now an illegal salvage run with military paperwork attached?”

Someone else chimed in. “Get in, scoop anything not bolted down, and if the welcoming committee shows up, run like your transponder’s forged.”

“Exactly,” Vorelan said. “And if you break something expensive, we’ll pin a medal on you before billing you for it.”

Elisa found herself smirking.

The room might not look like a proper war council, but they were saying everything that mattered — clearly, bluntly, and with just enough sarcasm to keep the fear manageable.

She leaned toward Masel and whispered, “Still think we’re the serious ship in this fleet?”

Masel shrugged. “At least we bring our own curse.”

Vorelan stood, and the room quieted.

“We’ll jump within thirty-six hours. Orders will be updated again if Command drops another surprise on us.” He paused, then added with practiced ease: “If you have unresolved concerns, solve them before we go. No one’s coming to rescue us if we get this wrong.”

He nodded once. “Dismissed.”

And just like that, the pirates went back to planning the next raid — officially.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6 – Storm in the Glass

Location: Cargo Bay 2, Tarsus-class Freighter Coal Drift, mid long jump

The cargo bay still smelled faintly of solvent and sweet tea, a scent that clung stubbornly to the repurposed supply crates now masquerading as seating. A line of flickering LED strips drooped between tie-down hooks, casting wobbly shadows on the tarp-draped walls. Someone had even painted a sign—“Coal Drift Cultural Module”—on salvaged paneling, complete with two dancing stick figures and what might’ve been popcorn or a mushroom cloud.

“Alright, plug her in!” Kabel "Rats" Rezo called from the top of a crate stack, arms elbow-deep in a knotted mess of cables. His boots rested precariously on a junction box labeled DO NOT REWIRE in fading red stencil.

“Already hot,” Jarra said, flipping a switch on a side panel with the same casual menace he used to open cold storage hatches. “You better not fry the converters again, kid.”

“I added a delay capacitor this time,” Rezo muttered. “It’s science.”

From her folding chair beside the improvised ‘officer’s console’—a crate with a portable keyboard bolted on—Lieutenant Veila Morren sat with straight-backed tension, trying not to chew her lip. This was her first shipboard event as acting morale officer. She had printed the schedule. She had made sure the entertainment package was pre-approved. She had even bribed Yari Kres for extra ration chocolate.

She had not, however, anticipated Rezo.

“All right,” she said with as much command presence as she could muster. “Let’s roll test playback. Confirm that the holo surface is aligned, audio to low, and—”

“Power surge,” Rezo said gleefully, flipping a relay. “Here she comes.”

A flicker, then the old projector blinked to life.

First came the golden halo of a Domain-era studio logo, with some forgotten corporate anthem swelling in static-warped fidelity. Then—abruptly—the scene shifted.

Heavy breathing. A shock of artificial pink lighting. Moans.

Someone dropped a wrench.

“Oh no,” Veila whispered, her face blanching, then blooming with color like a sunrise viewed in reverse.

Rezo froze. “Wait. Wait. That’s—wait. Is that archival? This might be educational—”

“Turn it off!” Veila barked, lunging for the controls—only to remember, a second too late, that her console had been bypassed for “voltage stability.”

“I can’t!” Rezo howled with laughter. “This thing’s got file priority locked! Who put this on the buffer queue?!”

From the back, Big Noy let out a slow whistle. “Fleet’s gonna have it downloaded in fifteen minutes.”

“Ten,” said Yari Kres, already pulling a data cable from his pocket.

The projector kept going, now displaying an impressive degree of commitment from all parties on screen. Someone started clapping in rhythm. Laughter rolled like a pressure wave, people doubling over behind stacked ration crates, someone actually fell off a chair.

Veila stood in the center of it all, red-faced and rigid, arms locked like she was bracing for decompression.

“Standards. Must be maintained,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Oh they’re maintaining something alright,” Rezo quipped, still wiping tears from his eyes.

In the aftermath—once the feed was finally cut, the room half-cheering, half-wheezing—Veila sat back down and quietly pulled a ration chocolate from her jacket.

She unwrapped it. Took a bite. Then sighed.

"Morale module," she muttered, "functional."

Location: Gate-era mining station, outer belt, zero atmosphere
POV: Jakel Orlan, salvage tech

The hiss of his suit seal faded to silence the moment Jak stepped through the bulkhead. No atmo, no hum of systems, not even residual EM. Just dust.

It drifted in loose spirals from where his boots touched the floor—electrostatic, fine as breath, long-settled. He adjusted the lamp beam on his shoulder and swept it across the room: living quarters. Not a storage bay or control pod—living space.

On the comms, Boone’s voice crackled:

“—nah, I’m telling you, this freezer’s still got the seal. You crack it, you log it, Zhara, don’t pull a Kez—”

“I always log,” Zhara shot back.

“Since when?”

“Since I started making more salvage weight than you, whiner.”

Jak tuned them down to a murmur.

Ahead, past the crew bunks and half-collapsed partition wall, was a set of lockers. The station’s faded yellow-orange stripe still ran along their edges. One door was ajar. He pulled it wider—careful, always careful—and let the lamp catch the contents.

A child’s EVA suit, tiny, arms curled like a mantis.
A set of magnetic story disks.
A carved wooden handle—perhaps from a toy or toolkit.
And taped to the inner door: a drawn picture.

Stick figures in a line, arms raised to a large dome overhead. One figure, taller, held a triangle. Beneath them: stars, a mining bot, and a bright-yellow sun.

Jak let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. His gloved hand brushed the edge of the paper, but he didn’t touch it directly.

“Hey Jak, you down in the dorms?” came Dei’s voice.

“Yeah,” he replied softly. “Living block. Intact.”

“Pull anything useful?”

“Not yet. Tools maybe. No power nodes.”

Dei grunted. “Clock’s ticking. Pull what you can, and don’t let Boone claim your room weight again.”

He reached into the locker and retrieved the carved handle. A small star pattern had been scratched into the grip—maybe by the same kid. He turned it in his palm once, twice, then slipped it into the side pouch of his kit.

Behind him, boots clanked softly on the deck plating. Boone and Kez passed by hauling half a refrigeration unit between them, trailing dust like a funeral veil.

“Hey Jak,” Boone said, nodding through his visor. “Ghosts treating you okay in there?”

“Just dust,” Jak replied.

They moved on. Boone humming something old and off-key.

Jak stood alone again, gaze drifting back to the drawing. The little figures. The dome.

He unzipped the flap of his vac-suit and pulled out the pendant. The icon of Ludd, arms outstretched in the ruins, haloed by revelation. He didn’t pray. Not really. But he raised the pendant in gloved hand, just briefly, toward the locker door.

Not for salvation.
Just… remembrance.

Then he closed the locker gently. Sealed it again.

Location: Briefing Room, DSS Cadence
POV: Ensemble – Elisa, Malik, Masel, Naera

The air in Briefing Room smelled like fresh paint and faint disappointment.

Several wall panels were missing, exposing bundles of insulated cable and one curious spot where a crew member had scrawled “DO NOT RUN” above a disconnected vent fan. Other panels gleamed with new off-white coats, too glossy, too clean—like a grin with too many fake teeth. The lighting wasn’t helping. Every shadow looked like it wanted to say something.

In the center of the table sat a plastic bottle full of sloshing amber-grey liquid, a few mismatched sample cups, and the disassembled remains of a makeshift still, labeled hastily with hazard tags and one post-it note that simply read:

“WHY.”

Naera Visk leaned forward in her seat, balancing a handheld chemical analyzer on one thigh and slowly turning it over in her fingers. The device beeped uncertainly every few seconds.

“I’m not saying it’s flammable,” she said, not looking up, “but I also wouldn’t not use it as a fire starter in an emergency.”

Masel cleared his throat and tapped at his tablet. “It technically qualifies as a processed organic fluid under filtration regs. Not a beverage.”

“I mean,” Naera replied, “neither is most of what passes for tea on this ship.”

Malik Selak gave an exaggerated sigh, rubbing his forehead with both palms. “You people act like this is some big mystery. The setup was classic. Hot vent cycle, polymer lining, bioplastic shreds, plus a hydration coil cannibalized from the algae rack. Spacer’s Mercy vintage.”

He leaned back and waved vaguely toward the exposed ceiling panel. “I used to make a better one. Mine didn’t taste like defeat and cargo liner glue.”

Elisa Rourke gave him a slow side glance. “Yours leaked into the comm duct. Deck C smelled like birthday cake brandy and despair for a week.”

“Aromatic signature,” Malik said, feigning pride. “We had atmosphere. Character.”

“And two burned-out relays,” Masel added.

Naera dipped a sampler wand into the bottle. The liquid clung to it like syrup made from bad decisions.

“You’re not actually going to—” Masel started.

Too late. Naera sipped.

There was a long, ceremonial pause. Everyone watched her expression shift from impassive to calculating to lightly betrayed.

“I see the problem,” she said at last. “They didn’t neutralize the polymer acidity before fermentation. This batch bites back.”

“Why would anyone drink that?” Masel asked.

“Hope. Boredom. Because no one stops them,” Elisa said, ticking each off on her fingers. “Same reason people decorate their bunks with half-melted plushies and draw fake windows on the walls.”

“So.” Malik folded his arms. “What’s the sentence?”

Elisa steepled her fingers. “Officially? Tampering with life support subsystems. Unauthorized chemical processing. Violation of hygiene protocol.”

Masel raised an eyebrow. “Court-martial?”

Naera held up the bottle. “I think drinking this counts as punishment.”

“Too easy,” Elisa replied.

A silence stretched. Then Malik spoke with mock solemnity.

“Full parade uniform. Deck-by-deck. Manual bunk inspection and regulation squaring.”

Masel blinked. “That’s not even in protocol anymore.”

“That’s the point,” Elisa said. “Symbolic suffering. Maximum embarrassment. Also, it’ll make the inspectors happy.”

“Are we… actually logging this?” Naera asked.

Another pause.

“No,” Elisa said. “Not if I don’t want to read three weeks of back-and-forth with central records about polymer alcohol remediation training. We’ll just… bury it. Agreed?”

Everyone nodded.

Naera raised the bottle like a toast.

“To the Spirit of Ventbay Three.”

Malik chuckled. “May it haunt no more ductwork.”

Location: Cadence, behind Service Panel 3C
POV: Kesse Nira

The smell of burnt paint hadn’t quite faded from the panel above her head. New coat, poor curing time. She made a note to log it later—maybe. If she remembered.

Nira sat cross-legged on a silicon pad, flanked by two tablets, a clamshell pad cracked but functional, and an emergency thermal blanket repurposed as a privacy curtain. The kettle hissed once and clicked off behind the vent grate. Two magnets held it in place with almost comical strength. She’d tested it by kicking the wall once during a sim-run. Nothing moved.

Even Masel had signed off on the setup. She had labeled tripping hazards, bolted everything twice, and documented the whole nest as a “Secure Systems Monitoring Alcove.”
He hadn’t smiled, but he’d approved it.

Steam rose from the noodle cup balanced on her knee. With her free hand, she flipped open the Circle channel.

[Circle Chat – Current thread: “why is the compliance kernel eating RAM?”]

mainbus_fail:
New scan. Same garbage. SOC-Kernel v7 still logs keystrokes to volatile. Obfuscated but there.

tea-overflow:
can confirm. someone in storage typed “noodle sauce” and it showed up in the firewall cache.

@sheepdog:
that explains the condiment anomaly

soft-reset:
I nuked the whole install. Works now.

mainbus_fail:
Of course you did. That’s not fixing it, that’s amputation with a wrench.

gfxtank:
[gif: mech pilot ejecting backwards through a shuttle door]

Nira grinned. She snapped in her own patch, uploading the microfix she’d coded between kettle boils.
It spoofed the kernel’s beacon loop into logging its own dummy packets until it self-saturated. Dumb, but effective.

kesseN:
Added patch “ghost-wiggle”. Replaces beacon string with nulltime echo.

tea-overflow:
💀 bug: human
💾 fix: unplug

@sheepdog:
deployed. I owe you tea.

mainbus_fail:
That actually works? You little gremlin. Beautiful.

Nira took a long sip of broth. Outside the panel, somewhere on Deck D, someone yelled about coolant allocation. It didn’t matter here.

Her diagnostics flickered. Ping rates clean. Procurement cache no longer dumping into open memory. The accounting app still looked like it had been written by a caffeinated eel, but at least it stopped overwriting itself when idle.

She scrolled up the chat. Another meme had been posted—an altered incident report:

SYSTEM LOG [REDACTED]: Unauthorized tablet connected to Weapons Guidance Bus.

RESULT: Port not found. Access denied. Targeting system responds with passive-aggressive chirp.

ERROR: “Teeth have no ports.”

gfxtank:
Safety feature. No one can brick the fleet's guns by accident.

tea-overflow:
“by accident” 🫢

soft-reset:
I once plugged a clipboard into comms and brought down deck lights. Nothing surprises me now.

mainbus_fail:
None of us are paid enough.
Also none of us are paid.

Nira leaned back and smiled. She tapped the panel next to her kettle, then tugged the vent cover halfway down.

Fleet systems still ran.
The Circle still held.
And she still had ten spoonfuls of broth left.

In the war against entropy, this counted as a win.

Location: Admin Cubicle, Fleet Support Office, Fireweld command deck
POV: Lt. Ansel Rivic

Lt. Ansel Rivic rubbed the bridge of his nose, then toggled the holoscreen brightness down—again. The slideshow of Gorgon’s Debt was too much under full glare.

Image 17: a bunk mattress clearly stamped “TEMP USE ONLY,” folded to fit into a frame with exposed springs.
Image 18: a close-up of a spoon bent nearly 90 degrees, posed like a modern art sculpture.
Image 19: handwritten sign taped to a pressure-sealed shower stall:

“YES IT’S FILTERED. NO I DON’T TRUST IT.”

Underneath, someone had drawn a frowning face… crying rust.

Ansel added the images to Folder B: Facilities (Moderate), then leaned back. His chair squeaked like it was guilty.

The inspection summary reports were even worse.

Incidents, Gorgon’s Debt – Summary Excerpts

• 13 complaints of “non-standard taste” in water.
• 7 of “visible motes” (request for clarification denied).
• 1 crew member claims they can tell when the gravity dip hits mid-cycle due to “soggy cereal slosh.”
• Mess hall oven nonfunctional since Cycle 207. Crew now eats via hotplate rotation system called “The Gauntlet.”
• 41 missing forks. Multiple witnesses claim spoons were “weaponized during poker.”
• Request for additional socks submitted twelve times, all denied due to "unit cohesion priority."

He thumbed through audio quotes.

“Not saying we mutiny, sir. I’m saying if we had better blankets, we’d stop thinking about mutiny.”

“My bunk’s got a lean. I named it Port. Sleep’s always sideways.”

“Chocolate ration is my god now. I’ll trade blood for one. Don't quote me on that—unless it helps.”

Ansel stared at the last one. He hadn’t meant to save it, but something in it had caught. He re-read it. Then added it to the “Flag for follow-up” tab.

The report template blinked, still waiting for conclusions.

His first draft had been dry. Too procedural. The kind of tone that got skimmed and shelved. But now, he hesitated. He looked at the images again. The bent spoon. The bunk lean. The poker sign shaped from spoons.

These weren’t signs of collapse.

They were signs of resistance.

A warship with no soul wouldn’t complain. Its crew wouldn’t file twelve sock requests. They’d stop asking. Stop joking.
But Gorgon’s Debt still had jokes.

Ansel leaned forward and rewrote the final paragraph.

“Crew conditions aboard Gorgon’s Debt are substandard but spirited. The complaints reflect ongoing engagement, not disengagement. Recommend morale improvement protocol allocation (non-disciplinary). Small comfort items may yield significant performance retention.

They're still trying. We should, too.”

He saved the report. Then pulled up the requisition form for minor luxury provisions.

He didn’t request much. Just enough.

And, almost as an afterthought, he added one last line to the notes field:

“If chocolate ration is their god, let it be a generous one.”

Location: Fireweld, Private Reception Room

POV: Rear Admiral Calen Vorelan

The door shut with the hush of good insulation and bad news. Admiral Vorelan didn’t look up at first. The incident bundle lay on the curved metal table before him like a relic. It had physical weight. The stylus in his hand hovered above a single word, underlined three times: “Effective irregularities.”

The InSec officer—gray-uniformed, regulation-polite—stood at attention for all of three seconds before Vorelan waved him into a seat with the tip of the stylus.

“So. Enlighten me. Why the hell am I looking at two hundred and thirty-seven pages of supply memos, appeals, and citations over four crates of reinforced paneling?”

The officer placed a data slate gently beside the bundle. “Sir. The incident originated during the previous stop. Officer Riel Masel of the Cadence filed a requisition for structural bracing segments marked as 'obsolete reserve stock.' Local quartermaster denied the request on doctrine priority grounds. Officer Masel… disagreed.”

“Vigorously, I gather,” Vorelan muttered.

“In writing,” the officer confirmed, without a trace of irony. “He appended legacy Domain logistics codes to a follow-up form and triggered an auto-review. That review flagged inconsistencies in the fleets’s allocation logs. A supply captain—Dexon Mar, Dust Eater—was drafted as a neutral arbiter after an audit panel failed to convene.”

“That part I still don’t understand. Why Mar?”

“Nearest senior officer not previously entangled in the paperwork trail. Wrong place, wrong time.”

Vorelan sighed and leaned back into the leather of his chair. “Remind me—was this the one with the incident report that included a table of annotated footnotes and historical precedents?”

“Yes, sir. He attached twelve. With references.”

A dry chuckle slipped out before the Admiral could stifle it. He flipped through the printed bundle and stopped at a page where someone—Mar, judging by the handwriting—had scrawled ‘I am not trained for this’ in the margin. Underlined twice.

“InSec reviewed all sides. The crates in question were indeed marked as ‘reserve for structural rehab’ in the older catalog, which Cadence fell under after reclassification. Technically, Officer Masel’s requisition was valid.” The officer added, “Even if unconventional.”

“And the pushback?”

“Logistics command attempted to bury it. But another officer—one of the supply adjutants—filed a formal complaint about procedural violations. That’s how it reached this office.”

“Wonderful,” Vorelan muttered. “So what I’m holding here is the detonation report of a paperwork war fought with regulation quills.”

He tapped the stylus once, then circled Masel’s name in the margin. Next to it, in neat script, he wrote: “Watchlist or Promotion?”

“Admiral,” the officer added, “Comander Rourke was not involved. According to all witness statements, she remained uninformed during the whole affair. Officer Masel acted entirely on his own initiative.”

“Rourke leaves an impression,” Vorelan said, more to himself than anyone. “And so does her crew.”

There was a pause. The kind that settled only in rooms where power sat lightly but absolutely.

Vorelan finally rose, stepping toward the wall where a cracked ceramic plaque—a Domain Fleet logistics award from two centuries past—hung behind polished glass. His own name didn’t appear on any wall in the room.

“You know,” he said, “if more people cared this much, I’d be out of a job.”

“Sir?”

“Dismissed. File it under ‘resolved with prejudice,’ grant the requisition retroactively, and inform Logistics to stop crying over four bloody crates.”

The officer saluted, collected the data slate, and made for the exit.

As the door hissed shut again, Vorelan looked back at the bundle. He gave it one last, long look—then tossed it into the bin marked ‘Admiralty Curios.’

“Storm in a glass,” he murmured.

He smiled.

And then he reached for the next file.

Location: Cadence – Auxiliary Systems Alcove, Deck 3B
Time: c+208.04.11, 03:17 SST (Pre-Drop Transit Hold)

The ship was quiet at this hour—save for the background thrum of drive stabilization and the faint creak of thermal shifts through Cadence’s longframe. Juno Harrek sat alone in a repurposed systems alcove: a semi-private desk that once belonged to a junior nav officer, now cordoned off with a sliding panel and a low divider of magnetic foil insulation. It had no network access. No persistent storage. The terminal required manual boot each session. That was exactly the point.

A matte-gray data stick rested beside her wrist-pad. She adjusted her glasses, straightened her name patch, and began to type.

Report Title:

Requisition Incident – Cadence Forward Logistics (Ref: JH-4173-INSEC-1)

 

Authored by:

Integration Tech Officer Juno Harrek, Systems Harmonization Cadence/Expedition

 

Method of Delivery:

Hand transfer via sealed storage. Not to be forwarded electronically. This report supersedes prior advisories.

Her fingers moved in practiced strokes across the tactile keys. She found comfort in structure—even when structure had failed her.

"Due to my direct involvement with both the requisition drafting and subsequent inventory processing, I possess more complete visibility into the incident chain than would normally be available at my rank."

That much was undeniable. Malik had dumped the job on her with a half-muttered threat of locking himself in the coolant access tunnel if one more supply form reached his inbox. She hadn’t exactly volunteered—but she had processed the forms, signed off the compliance tags, and walked them up to Second Mate herself.

c+208.03.03

It had started with Malik throwing a folded checklist at her over the galley table, muttering something about “logistics death spirals” and how, if he had to explain one more request to someone with officer clearance but a melted brain, he would personally sabotage the entire cooling loop and declare Ludd's personal intervention.

So the job became hers.

Juno Harrek had spent four hours drafting a requisition list using standardized Hegemony fleet forms, properly tagged in descending priority levels, annotated with directive codes, and color-coded for emphasis. She checked, double-checked, and added three footnotes referencing compliance guidelines she hadn’t quoted since graduation. The result was an elegant digital tablet she now held like a ritual offering.

She knocked once on the pressure-sealed door to Masel’s quarters.

It hissed open without response.

“Tech Officer Harrek,” she said crisply.

Inside was a space stripped to essentials. Bunk, desk, cabinet, wall hook. Every item labeled. Nothing left exposed. The air smelled faintly of sterilized paper. A projector cast a wide-angle image onto the rear bulkhead—not art, but a branching schematic of fleet regulations, administrative rulings, case law fragments, and contradictory expeditionary codes. A glowing web of bureaucracy.

Masel looked up from a secondary slate and gestured her in with the economy of someone who skipped non-mandatory syllables. She stepped across the threshold and handed him the tablet.

“I’ve prepared a bundled requisition packet for pre-stop review. Everything structured to current fleet regulation schema.”

He scanned the list with his eyes and gave a small nod.

“Let’s start with item one.”

She expected a cursory glance and a signature. What she got instead was a two-hour administrative inquisition.

For every component, Masel demanded a use-case summary. Then proof of prior failure. Then technical notes on installation conditions. When she referenced fleet doctrine, he asked which version and whether her cited revision had been updated under Expeditionary Memo 9-B. When she tried to skip a line item he called "low priority," he brought up thermal mapping logs to question her criteria.

At the forty-minute mark she began sweating. At the one-hour mark her stylus started to shake in her grip. Her tone grew clipped. He never raised his voice.

Every ten minutes, the projector behind him flicked to a new layer of interwoven rule chains—links between salvage rights, expedition mandates, and Cadence’s undocumented legal classification. She began to realize the projected chaos wasn’t chaos—it was strategy. He was mapping a defense. Or a justification. Or both.

Finally, as the last item was dissected, he nodded once more and said:

“Conditional approval. Pending secondary review and supply routing availability.”

Juno didn’t reply. She leaned back against the bulkhead. Then, in a slow slide, she let herself slump all the way down, legs outstretched, arms limp at her sides.

Her stylus clattered to the floor.

Masel remained perfectly upright. The last requisition form hovered on the projector wall, half-covered in red markup and footnoted citations. It looked like a forensics report from a homicide investigation.

After a moment, Masel finally said, not unkindly:

“You held up better than some ensigns I’ve seen.”

She didn’t answer. She was trying to remember if the process she’d just gone through was technically called 'approval' or 'interrogation'. Maybe both. Maybe that was the only real way things moved anymore—not through formality, but through attrition.

"Approval was neither immediate nor routine. The Second Mate requested detailed justifications for each line item and raised questions that exceeded the bounds of technical review. His engagement with the process was... adversarial, but purposeful."

She paused, tapped her stylus against the edge of the console three times, then resumed.

"The parts, however, arrived in full. Crates were retrieved manually from an external drone. A delivery that bypassed standard cargo routing."

c+208.03.22

The comms flags were minor—signal drift in the automated beacon relay, probably from solar interference or a lazy clamp on one of the sensor nodes. Nothing urgent. Juno had been halfway through running a calibration pass when the operator—young, underslept, visibly intimidated by touchscreens—turned in his chair and cleared his throat.

“Uh. External drone ping. They want delivery acknowledgment.”

Juno looked up from her wrist-slate. “There’s no scheduled cargo inbound.”

“No, ma’am. But it’s using fleet routing tags. Green-coded. And, uh... it’s here.”

That earned her attention.

Two minutes later, she was in the airlock prep chamber, stepping into one of the matte gray EVA suits. The cold stung through her underlayer as she zipped the pressure harness closed. She shoved her arms through the articulated sleeves, slapped the seals, and yanked the collar ring until it locked with a pneumatic wheeze. Magnet boots powered on with a soft buzz. Behind her, the comms operator—barely old enough to shave—fumbled with his own suit.

“Protocol says I need backup,” she said without looking back. “Congratulations, you’re a designated adult.”

He said nothing.

The outer lock opened with a pressurized sigh. Beyond it, the void welcomed them—bright with glare from the nearby white dwarf, whose hard light bled in across Cadence’s hull in sharp, colorless contrast. Out there, waiting just above the airlock threshold, hung a drone.

Except it wasn’t just a delivery drone.

It was a repurposed drone-bomber—still fully spaceworthy. Its torpedo mount had been replaced with a clamped-on cargo pod, welded at the seams, with a reactive-release collar. The drone’s hull plating was pitted and dented, bearing the proud scars of prior missions. Someone had scrawled shark teeth across the frontal cowling in matte red paint. Along the flank: kill markers, neatly burned into the hull with a laser. Faint outlines of a Tri-Tachyon logo still showed through the new paint job, now hastily overwritten with a wobbly Hegemony seal that looked like it had been drawn by someone using thick gloves and no patience.

It looked like a weapon playing dress-up as a postal service.

Juno stepped out, each magnetized footstep clinking softly against the hull as she reached the drone. She opened the cargo clamp. Two heavy-duty crates sat inside, painted gray with yellow hazard stripes along the handles. Both bore printed routing slips—sealed, stamped, logged.

She checked them.

They were her parts.

The requisition from two weeks ago. The one she'd expected, at best, to arrive next cycle. More likely after the expedition ended. If ever.

She turned to the comms operator, who blinked twice inside his helmet visor. “Help me slide these into the lock.”

It took muscle. Even with suit assist and magnetic grips, the crates were massive, each one clearly filled with structural components and hardened composites. They dragged and jolted as the operator helped push them inside. The drone chirped once—then, with no further warning, ignited its burn.

A burst of blue-white flame lit the airlock interior through the viewport. The drone vanished into the void, retreating on pre-set vector, likely toward whatever support rig had spawned it.

The outer door sealed.

Gravity returned.

The crates slammed onto the floor, rattling the plating.

Juno stood over them, breathing hard inside her helmet. She leaned down, peeled the still-warm receipt sheet from the side of one container. Stamped. Verified. Logged through fleet logistics routing with zero hold tags and full clearance.

Everything was official.

That was the problem.

She looked down at the crates like they were ticking bombs. Requests like these didn’t just get approved—they got buried, lost, “deprioritized,” or accidentally reassigned to some marine unit on the other side of the Sector.

Yet here they were.

Early. Delivered by something that should be carrying a torpedo.

“Help me drag these to Storage Four,” she muttered.

The comms operator said nothing.

"The drone departed immediately. The documentation affixed to the containers included printed receipts bearing official fleet seals and digital manifests indicating routing through fleet logistics with no flags. The authorization trail, on casual inspection, appeared legitimate."

She leaned back and exhaled once, quietly. Her stylus hovered over the next line before she committed it.

"However, the speed and scale of approval—given prior delays and known supply constraints—strongly suggest the presence of non-protocol intervention. There is no traceable explanation, within Cadence records or expedition-wide resource allocations, that would justify expedited priority for this requisition."

She selected a separate paragraph block and typed in bold:

 

"Speculative note (for internal InSec processing): Bribery, informal leverage, or coercive methods may have been employed. The paper trail is fragmented—on purpose, most likely. Connecting all threads will require full review of inter-departmental arbitration archives."

 

"Key detail: Arbitration appears to have passed through an auxiliary hearing mediated by Captain Dexon Mar (HSS Coal Drift, fleet logistics support). Reference: Log Bundle [CMDR-MAR-OBS-SUP-9].”

She inserted the timestamp, then continued.

 "The result was procedural legitimacy—but of an unusually fast and contested nature. Whether this represents a deliberate manipulation of fleet channels or a highly optimized use of regulation is not clear."

She switched windows and began attaching supporting metadata: inventory manifests, receipts, her own logged notes, Masel’s approval codes. Most of it felt like filing documents into a sealed envelope destined to be lost in a warehouse. But she kept going.

Then came the last entry:

 

"Security Advisory Addendum: Per prior flagged report on Cadence’s sensor-linked vulnerability (ref. NIRA-DEV-4), network architecture remains compromised in edge conditions. Simulated test demonstrates hostile code injection via passive signal channel—malware embedded in intercepted comms data stream."

She hesitated, then added, just slightly more dry than usual:

"Simulation results included compromised tactical displays, corruption of system drivers, and introduction of visual payload featuring animated feline humanoid chasing breakfast-themed projectiles."

c+208.02.28, 19:00 SST

The jump to Corvus was short, but the fleet treated it like a final dress rehearsal. Diagnostic storms rolled across every deck as systems were pushed past operational thresholds, command circuits recompiled on the fly, and three different ships in the flotilla filed radiation exposure anomalies—all chalked up to “standard shakedown distortion.”

Juno Harrek had taken the relative calm aboard Cadence as a chance to reassert standards.

She had pushed for compliance audits, flagged legacy software modules for reinstallation, and lobbied—successfully—for a fleet-standard passive sensor package. The same kind used across dozens of Hegemony cruisers. It was known. Documented. Stable.

And, in her mind, safe.

The module had history. It was developed shortly after the AI Wars, built for ships that prized survivability over optimization. It operated on isolated channels. Slow, yes—but reliable. In her assessment, Cadence would benefit from legacy structure. The ship’s exotic integration profile worried her. Compartmentalization, she argued, was how you prevented bleed-through from hostile signal actors.

A notification chirped from her slate.

[PRIVATE LINK: NIRA-K3]

Subject: “RE: Tactical Visualization Failure Modes (You Will NOT Believe #5)”

She tapped the attachment open.

The report was half-joke, half-assault.

The first image showed Cadence’s tactical HUD overtaken by a bright, pixelated catgirl chasing a flying toaster.

The second image showed the same HUD burning out into static, with low-level error floods across comms buffers and embedded drive stacks.

Beneath the mockery, Nira’s write-up was clinical:

    “The standard passive packet handler accepted malformed payload injection during spectrum sweep from a simulated hostile source. Display corruption was instantaneous. More concerning: the handler attempted to log the anomaly using shared memory buffers, triggering a broadcast stack collision and recursive failout. Under live conditions, you wouldn’t just lose your nav display. You’d lose half your sensor net and wouldn’t know it.”

Juno stared.

Nira’s logs traced the exploit path in stark clarity: signal-layer injection via comms monitoring, a breach enabled by Cadence’s sensor fusion architecture—the same integration profile Juno had fought to preserve.

In a standard Hegemony ship, this wouldn’t happen. Each system ran cold—partitioned, air-gapped, castrated by design. The 14th Battlegroup didn’t fight with elegance. They fought by denying the enemy a surface to attack.

But Cadence wasn’t Hegemony.

Cadence was built to see everything. And that meant it was touching everything.

She scrolled further.

Nira had already written a patch. Not a hotfix. A full rewrite of the parser chain. No upstream dependencies. No standard modules. Just cold, brutal code in a folder labeled “PATCH_NOPE”, with internal notes like “jumps if CRC fails; reroutes if echo matches. Don’t ask.”

Nira hadn’t just fixed the bug. She’d replicated the attack. Simulated hostile behavior. Stressed the signal floor. And buried three nested failsafes into the ship’s I/O profile—just in case someone got in again.

Juno didn’t know what was worse: that someone on Cadence could do this, or that no one else had noticed.

She flipped to her own report logs. Her original recommendation still read clean. Still followed Hegemony regulation.

Still, apparently, wrong.

She leaned back in her seat, the ship groaning quietly around her as the jump field held. Her fingers hovered over her stylus, unmoving.

The rules she had followed were good rules. But they had been written by people who fought excellence with firepower, not subversion with fragility.

Cadence had been designed for another kind of war. And now she could see it—layered through Nira’s sardonic code and buried protocols.

And someone, she suspected, had been watching her reports. Because the fix came fast. Too fast.

When the ship returned to realspace, Juno began transferring her next report to an isolated terminal.

No network. No sync. Just static storage, overwritten twice before encrypting.

She would hand-deliver it.

No relay. No transmission.

Not anymore.

"While humorous in presentation, the exploit’s structure is serious. Security patch was implemented locally; no standard framework references. This suggests insider-level access and technical initiative beyond standard crew protocol. Repeated anomalies suggest higher-order monitoring."

Her stylus stopped tapping.

She highlighted the delivery method field again.

"This report will not be transmitted digitally. It will be physically delivered to assigned InSec handler during next secure transit."

With that, she saved the file to the stick. The console wiped itself clean. Juno pocketed the drive, stood, and adjusted her collar.

There were still things you didn’t trust to the network.

Not out here. Not on this ship.

Location: Cadence, behind Service Panel 3C

Time: c+208.04.11, 03:21 SST

The kettle clicked off with a soft metallic thunk. Two magnets held it fast against the inner bulkhead, beside a roll of coiled fiber cable and a clamshell tablet bristling with warning flags. The vent space was cramped but warm, woven together with salvage, sealant tape, and stubborn creativity. Nira crouched cross-legged on a silicon mat, half-focused on the slow churn of code windows running across three screens.

On one display: a simulation of fire-control stack behavior under noise injection.

On the second: the “Domain Catgirl” exploit, fully weaponized in her sandbox and bouncing signal artifacts across a test echo chamber.

And on the third: the video feed from Auxiliary Systems Alcove 3B, where Juno Harrek had just finished slotting a data stick into a terminal—face tight with quiet paranoia.

Nira slurped a mouthful of noodles from a bent camping fork and tossed an empty spice packet—pilfered from the cook’s ration stash—into a corner container labeled RECLAIMED ART SUPPLIES. She’d meant to requisition them officially. Eventually.

"Drama, spice, and signal bleed,” she murmured. “We’re almost a soap opera.”

She shifted her focus back to the weapons targeting package compiled from a Tri-Tachyon source archive. The software was fast, clean, efficient—and absolutely refused to hit anything flying under Tri-Tach transponders. “Coincidentally,” of course.

Nira didn’t believe in coincidences.

She dug deep, crawling through obfuscated handlers, signal prioritization algorithms, and auto-mutating hash trees. Somewhere in the logic haze, the system made decisions it wasn’t supposed to.

It was meticulous work.

Painfully slow.

So she left the Juno feed running for entertainment.

The tech officer was fascinating to watch in her own way. Precision incarnate. Stylus held like a scalpel. Shoulder blades tight with frustration. Every motion radiated intent.

And when Juno finally sealed the data stick, powered down the terminal, and exited with military quiet, Nira whispered, “Ten outta ten. Total spy thriller energy.”

She stretched, tapped a quick lock command on the screens, and reached for her tea—only to pause at the corner of her main slate.

New ping.

Fleet Arbitration Logs – Updated

She raised an eyebrow and clicked it open.

The feed exploded with cascading routing entries: a backdated requisition push. Multiple override citations. Final ruling signed off by Captain Dexon Mar. All perfectly legal. All impossibly fast.

Nira blinked once.

Then again.

“Oh no. Masel,” she muttered, drawing the word out like a punchline. “You fired the legal nuke.”

She dove into the fleet internal threads—half-official, half-vent board. Already there were comments lighting up across the expedition comm-net:

    “Someone really invoked clause 14-D? Who let the lawyers out?”

    “Importing traditions of Arcadian arbitrage hell, are we?”

    “Reminder: Aux ships are to be monitored for escalation protocols. Again.”

Nira laughed—sharp and delighted. She nearly spilled her noodles.

She spun around, kicked a wall panel open with her heel, and pulled out a black-shell communicator nested inside foil wrap. One of Rourke’s preferred lines—non-broadcast, physically routed, and passed through so many obfuscation coils it might as well be invisible.

She thumbed the contact.

Location: Cadence, Captain’s Quarters

Time: c+208.04.11, 03:40 SST

The soft chime pulsed in the dark.

Elisa Rourke sat up, her datapad sliding to the side of the bed. She hadn’t been sleeping—hadn’t even really tried.

She tapped the receiver. “Yes, Nira?”

“You’re awake.”

“You knew that.”

“Confirmed. Okay. Short version? Masel just blew a hole in the fleet’s legal layer so wide you could fly a Prometheus through it. Juno ghosted a physical report to InSec. I watched it happen. Very cloak-and-dagger. Impressive. Thought you’d want the update before it becomes a conversation with FleetCom.”

Elisa took a breath.

“How many regulations did you violate to see that?”

“All of them. Masel told me to set it up. So it’s shared guilt. Teamwork.”

“I’ll have a word with him.”

“Please do. He’s incredible, but he still thinks the legal system doesn’t trigger flags unless you ask it to.”

“And you?”

“I think it doesn’t exist. Also, I’m out of spice.”

Rourke smiled, just faintly. “Good night, Nira.”

“Night, Cap.”

Elisa leaned back into her bunk and finally let her weight settle. She tapped a command onto her wrist-pad and recorded a voice memo, sending it into Masel’s queue with a two-hour delay.

    “Masel. I told you.”

She dropped the pad beside her and pulled the blanket over her chest.

Eyes closed.

And for just a moment, Elisa Rourke, warship captain and political fixer, thought to herself:

This ship is too much—even for me.

Then she let herself sleep.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7 – Dead Stars, Hot Finds

Location: Threadneedle Debris Field, Outer Orbit of Yma Blue Supergiant
Time: c+208.04.12, 19:40 SST

The Cadence dropped into realspace with a shudder too deep for the hull to admit. Emergency lighting traced amber lines across the sealed interior bulkheads. On the bridge, Commander Elisa Rourke felt the ship's hull settle like a diver adjusting to pressure—stable, for now.

"Status?" she asked, not raising her voice.

One by one, green icons shimmered into existence on her display—reactor stable, vector drives offline but hot, shields passive, comms open on tightband. Around her, the bridge was nearly silent save for filtered breathing in atmo suits and the occasional chime from auxiliary systems.

Cadence was first in. That was the plan. If something waited, they'd be the ones to see it—and maybe survive it.

Outside, the wrecks hung motionless beneath the cobalt glare of the Yma star. The light filtered through cracked hulls and scorched plating, throwing long shadows across shattered ships. Dozens of them. More intact than expected. Rourke narrowed her eyes as the navgrid resolved shapes—some still bore the markings of the Terran Federation. She felt her jaw tighten.

"All compartments report green. We're sealed and tight across all nodes," came Masel's voice from the secondary CIC. "Atmosphere stable. Bulkhead isolation confirmed. No leaks."

"Kell confirms burn-back vector safe if needed," added a third voice, clipped and dry.

Elisa gave a sharp nod no one saw. "Begin active sweep. Ready transmission package."

Cadence’s dorsal arrays came online with a muted hum. Sensor arms unfolded from recessed bays, filtering passive returns into a dense cluster of telemetry. Threads of data began unfurling into the fleet-net.

“Fleet vector packet going out… now,” said Ops. “Ping on standby. Updating cryopod telemetry tags. We’ve got fifteen viable contacts in sector one, mostly low-drift. Confirming threadneedle beacon hash on at least six.”

"Good," Elisa muttered. “Start hazard ring propagation. Assign Wolves to close drift recovery. Lashers get pod triage by size.”

Behind her, the tactical overlay swam into full color. Wreck geometry, pod scatter patterns, irradiated junk zones, and magnetic anomalies. Cryopods blinked yellow, then green, one by one.

Then came the flare—one, then another, then half a dozen. The rest of the expeditionary fleet dropped in, their hyperspace blooms flaring like distant fireworks. Telescoped flashes lit the debris field briefly, then faded as the other ships went dim.

“Fireweld in position,” came a voice on command-band. Lira Sorell. “We’re holding tight to nav point Delta. Strike wings prepped.”

“Armiger and Crocus anchoring recovery corridor,” Kern added. “Don’t get greedy, flyboys. Stick to lanes.”

“Dust Eater holding vector. Nothing’s moving out here,” came the grumble of Dexon Mar.

Elisa allowed herself a breath.

This was the quiet part. The methodical part. Before someone got stupid or something crawled out of the dark.

She leaned forward. “Cadence to all ships. Begin recovery operations. Cryopod drift protocols are active. Reminder: These pods are long-duration. They're built for decades, not years. Expect signs of life, but no guarantees. Record everything.”

And with that, the ghost field began to stir.

Location: Support Transport “Apex Tracer,” Cargo Sector 2D
Time: c+208.04.12, 20:00 SST

"Reminder: Anyone gets stuck trying to pry loose something shiny, you're staying stuck. No re-entry for idiots. Tag it, flag it, move on. Glory goes to the ones who come back breathing. Good luck out there."
– Salvage Coordinator PA, Dust Eater main bay

Redmark clicked off the channel with a snort, the only sound in his helmet aside from his own breath and the creaking bulkheads of the Apex Tracer. The corridor ahead was a dim mess of warped plating, but someone from the first wave had done them a kindness — a string of chem-sticks and portable lights pulsed faintly down the centerline. A quick exit trail, or maybe breadcrumbs for the next poor bastards to come through.

Behind him, Taplight's boots clanged too loud for the silence. “I’m telling you, we’re gonna find a field kitchen full of pre-Collapse bourbon. And I’m taking the first bottle.”

“You’ll break it,” Stitch muttered, already sweeping her rad-sensor over the deck welds.

“Then I’ll die drunk and beautiful.”

Burls, towering and quiet as ever, just rumbled and adjusted the crate saw over his shoulder. Domy brought up the rear, struggling slightly with the second gear sled. His breath fogged the inside of his faceplate.

They moved through the mid-ship corridor with practiced rhythm. The outer hull had long since cooled, but ambient radiation from decaying fission cores kept the internals at a lukewarm haze — not dangerous yet, but enough to ping suit alerts every ten minutes.

“Sector marker ahead,” Rigs called from up front. He tapped a chunk of wall scrawled with a salvage-coded arrow and two dated pings. “Crate deck 2D. Cargo storage. This is us.”

They passed a blown-out bulkhead and into a yawning chamber, thirty meters wide and stacked with ancient freight scaffolds. In the far corner, something massive loomed in the dark. The airlock panels above it were half-collapsed, but the structure beneath was intact—metallic, ridged, and oddly symmetrical.

“Whoa.” Taplight froze. “That’s not standard crate size.”

Domy let out a low whistle. “Looks like someone parked a bunker in here.”

Redmark didn’t speak. He was already heading for the wall terminal.

Stitch and Burls flanked the find — eyes on the old shock braces, each one still connected to a magnetic strut. The object’s skin was oxidized but unburned. Stable. Massive.

“Someone get a reading,” Redmark snapped, popping open the console cover.

“Dead system,” Rigs reported. “No residual juice.”

“I brought the jump battery.” Domy hurried forward, fumbling with a patch cable.

The clack of connectors, the hum of low-voltage flow. Then a flicker. The console flared dim green.

Redmark crouched low, gloved fingers flying across the touchplate. Old Domain cargo tags rolled across the interface. He slowed. Re-read.

“Shit.”

Stitch looked over. “What is it?”

He pinged the data to their suit feeds.

TRANSPORT CONFIG – NANOFORGE CLASS ALPHA-PERSISTENT
SERIAL: 0436-72
STATUS: SECURED
CONDITION: LOCKED, POWER-INACTIVE
AUTHORIZATION LEVEL: SUPERVISORY / MIL-CIV

Taplight just stared. “You’re kidding me.”

“Not even a little,” Redmark said, already cycling back to his comms.

“Dust Eater salvage net, this is Redmark on Apex Tracer. Nanoforge confirmed. Section 2D. Tagging and transmitting beacon ID now. Request reroute of DHS42 third-wave personnel to assist with forward hatch clearance. We need that big gate open. Also requesting shuttle dispatch for heavy lift.”

Static. Then acknowledgment. The line was quiet, suddenly serious.

“Finder bonus confirmed on verification,” came the Coordinator’s voice. “You’ve got twenty minutes before fallback sync check.”

Redmark turned to the rest of the crew. Rigs and Taplight were still grinning. Burls had already pulled his cutter. Stitch was laying down beacon foam.

“Get to work,” Redmark said. “No one gets paid until it’s on a deck.”

As they scrambled into motion, portable cutters flaring and comms full of breath and calculation, a rival crew’s banter drifted in over the shared channel:

“Yeah, well we found the Admiral’s minibar and what’s left of his dress uniform. Beat that—wait. Wait, what do you mean ‘nanoforge’?”

The silence that followed was sweeter than any toast.

Redmark smiled, faintly.

And then he checked his timer.

Still fifteen minutes to fallback check. Plenty of time—for things to go wrong.

Location: Lasher-class Frigate HSS Last Word, Exterior Cargo Hatch EVA Platform
Time: c+208.04.12, 22:00 SST

“Tell Redmark if he needs a bigger hold, he can borrow my quarters — ain’t used ‘em for sleeping anyway!”

The open channel from Dust Eater crackled with background laughter, overlapping calls, and the distinctive whine of a cargo cradle winch being pushed too hard. On Trell’s helmet display, the signal volume dimmed automatically — not because it was unauthorized, but because it was normal. Bragging was earned, and the nanoforge crew had just earned the right to be insufferable.

Trell said nothing.

She pulled in the tether another two meters, watching the bundled cryopods drift closer — half a dozen of them lashed together by ancient webbing and discolored cable. The pods spun lazily in vacuum, long inertial scars streaked across their carbon-black casings. The one closest to her bore a dent along its midsection — micrometeorite hit, but no breach.

“Signal sweep?” she asked.

Behind her, Kess Darn groaned. “Running now… okay. First two are yellow — weak but active. Third’s green. Fourth’s red. Fifth’s got nothing at all.”

“Confirming,” said Jorr Rellin, who was further down the line, manually anchoring the guide arms. “Fifth one’s got a cracked junction ring. Probably vented decades ago.”

“Flag it,” Trell said. “Back to drift.”

Jorr grabbed the red-tag spray and marked the dead pod with a simple “X” across its faceplate. Then he gave it a gentle push with his boot. The tether unlatched, and the pod drifted silently back into the void.

“Still feels wrong,” Kess muttered. “Kicking people into orbit.”

“Better than stacking corpses next to live ones,” Jorr said. “That’s happened. I read the reports.”

Kess winced and turned back to his diagnostics, muttering something about ghosts.

Trell didn’t respond. Her grip tightened on the winch line as the last two pods came into range. The blue glow of their stasis rings flickered faintly — not bright, not strong, but steady. She caught herself watching the pattern, then looked away.

The bundles had been recovered loosely — strung together in rough clusters, likely by the first wave. The old Domain pods were meant to last decades, maybe longer. Some of them still worked. Some… didn’t.

The Last Word’s cargo bay had been cleared the day before, turned into a triage grid. It could hold about thirty pods total — assuming they were alive. Their job wasn’t to save, it was to filter. A practical task. Cold math.

“Dust Eater again — if that nanoforge turns out to be fake, I’m taking my pants off and putting in for a morale bonus,” came a cargo handler’s voice, bright and booming across the fleet salvage channel.

“Too late,” Taplight from DHS42 replied. “We already logged it. Your pants are forfeit.”

Laughter erupted again. Jorr groaned audibly. “Why are they even allowed open mics?”

“Because they're about to be rich,” Kess replied, dragging another pod into position.

“And we'll get a generous slice of the honor,” Jorr added flatly.

Trell just nodded toward the next tether. “Grab that one.”

They finished bringing in the last three pods. One by one, each was wheeled into the bay and hooked into the support lattice — fusion tap, power pulse, environmental sync. Simple. Repetitive.

When they finished, Kess flopped back against the interior wall of the bay, helmet still sealed, eyes fogging his visor. “We done?”

“No,” Trell said. “Two more bundles on the tether net. Then we do diagnostics on the greens.”

“Of course,” Jorr said, already turning to reset the winch alignment. “Because the dead float and the live wait.”

Trell lingered a moment, checking her suit HUD. Diagnostics blinked steady green across the six live units.

She reached one pod with a faded serial tag — numbers scorched, Terran Federation crest barely visible beneath the grime. Her gloved fingers hesitated before brushing across the pod’s outer shell.

It was warm.

She didn’t smile. Just nodded once and moved on.

Location: HSS Coal Drift, Storage Compartment B-Deck / Temporary Salvage Coordination Console
Time: c+208.04.12, 23:10 SST

Tenvar Reiss sat hunched in what had once been a water filter locker, sipping tepid stim through the bite valve in his helmet liner. His chair creaked every time he shifted — one of those plastic folding types with the locking hinge that always pinched.

On the wall in front of him, the salvager net flickered across four jury-rigged display strips bolted into foam padding. Everything glowed with edge static. Ghost pings danced along the border of Sector Three, unresolved packets trying to route through five different relays before showing up on his console. Half the UI elements were out of alignment. He slapped the display frame. The top-right quadrant stopped vibrating.

"Coal Drift salvage node online. Still,” he muttered, to no one.

Around him, the compartment groaned gently as another shuttle latched on. Through the hull sensor relay he could hear cargo handlers yelling as they tried to make whatever-it-was fit inside.

"...it is a core! You can see the override plate!"

"It’s a box, Bren, and if you drop it again I swear I will feed you to your own loader rig."

The feed looped back around to someone singing off-key about nanoforges and promotion bonuses. Redmark’s crew had apparently been “rewarded” with reassignment to low-grade logistics duty. Tenvar wasn’t sure if that was a punishment or a way of keeping them out of more heroic headlines.

A new alert popped into the margin of his screen: Fireweld intake at 89%. Even the flagship was taking trash now. Transport crews were desperate to get empty before the next wave of crates came in.

Tenvar sighed and tabbed to the manifest view. One hundred and twelve active recovery threads. Three flagged as high-value. Eight flagged as “priority bullshit.”

He flicked to the telemetry board.

And paused.

Wolf-3A: Status — green.
Wolf-3B: Status — green.
Wolf-3C: Status — …

It was gone. Blank ping. Not even red. Just silence.

He frowned. Static? Loss of line-of-sight? Or—

He tapped into the scope feed. It was wired through an auxiliary cargo boom, originally used to monitor docking maneuvers. The image came through muddy and gray, then focused.

There.

A shape, tumbling slowly. No lights. No signal. Plating scorched. No movement.

He leaned closer.

Hull marks matched the Wolves.

Tenvar didn’t hesitate. He reached under the console shelf and flipped the toggle guard open on the emergency net key. His gloved finger hit the clunky red switch.

Every channel around him popped and cracked.

“Coal Drift declares contact loss on Wolf-3C. Possible KIA. Debris confirmed. All ships acknowledge.”

The system blared a shrill tone, repeated across the fleet salvage net.

Two seconds later, the Fireweld sent its own priority signal — a match.

Tenvar watched the boards shift. Crates got abandoned mid-transfer. Shuttle vectors flickered, reversed. Emergency fallback numbers started flowing in. A thread of shouting filled every channel — too many voices, too much data, no time.

In his suit, Tenvar sweated quietly, the seals around his neck itchy from hours of wear. He stared at the pulsing red outline of the dead frigate.

He’d never even seen its crew roster.

“Safe,” he muttered. “Small bonus.”

And flipped to the fallback manifest.

Time to earn it.

Location: HSS Gorgon’s Debt, Command Deck
Time: Time: c+208.04.13, 00:40 SST

The decks vibrated with launch signatures. Missiles, torpedoes, dumbfire rockets — all of it pouring from the Gorgon’s Debt like spittle from a dying beast. The fire control systems had stopped tracking proper targeting two salvos ago. They were just lobbing metal into the dark now.

Commander Sel Vonn leaned into the armrest of his chair, eyes locked on the ghosting returns on the forward sensor plate. What little the scopes could still parse showed shifting gravity wakes, partial thermal blooms, and silhouette glitches — nothing firm, nothing you could shoot with purpose.

“I’ve been in worse,” he muttered.

That was a lie.

“Point defense is dry on sector D,” someone called from below.

“Switch it to manual burst. Spool everything else into the forward grid.”

A long pause. “Even the torpedo banks?”

Vonn’s jaw clenched. “Especially the torpedo banks.”

In a proper engagement, those things were gold. Fleet-command-grade munitions — enough punch that captains fought duels over whose ship got to carry them. Hell, a few lucky shots from these could crack a cruiser in two.

But right now? They were flares. Bait. Bright lights for the things behind them to chase.

He remembered flying a light escort back in the Graymarch Flotilla — twenty years and four command posts ago. Cornered by pirates, no proper ECM, and a torpedo closing in fast. He’d dumped every counterflare and prayed it hit the decoy first. It had. Barely.

Now he was dumping weapons, not flares. Same tactic. Different weight.

Engineering crackled through.

“Main drive is holding. Two minutes if you don’t melt it. Less if you do.”

“Copy that,” Vonn said. “Keep the core balanced. We’re not dying for drama.”

A flash ahead — a rig went up. One of the salvage hulks. DHS23 or 42, didn’t matter which. A spread of nuclear light tore through the space between their fleet and the thing chasing them. Maybe it was chasing. Maybe it was just coming.

In the blur of sensor wash, Vonn caught a faint flick of movement on the right flank.

“Shuttle Four-One-Six just failed burn,” came the voice of the sensor tech. “Ping is live but fading. They’re not going to make it.”

Vonn brought up the comms panel and tapped through crew records. Four names. One with a personal note: "Reassigned from Dust Eater for engine module refit."

He hit ‘log and forward’ to the loss ledger. Flagged the data core for review. He didn’t speak.

“Battery grid charged.”

“Send it.”

All at once, the Gorgon’s Debt lit up like a dying god.

Twin kinetic batteries pounded forward, spewing shells meant for armored capital ships. The missile racks discharged in rippling waves, and the last four torpedoes launched in perfect staggered sequence — arcing slightly from the roll of the ship.

Even point defense batteries joined in, belching hardlight and kinetic shards into the void in one desperate barrage.

Nothing answered. Nothing visible, anyway.

Then the nav officer’s voice cracked over internal.

“Jump field stable! We’re inside the vector—mark!”

Everything flickered.

The stars stretched. The damage alarms reset. And the Gorgon’s Debt jumped.

Sel Vonn didn’t move for a long moment. His fingers were still wrapped around the armrest like he expected it to vanish from under him.

Then he exhaled, slow and shallow.

“Torpedoes don’t care if you’re ugly,” he said, to no one. “They hit just the same.”

And the chair creaked as the Gorgon coasted into hyperspace.

Location: DSS Cadence, Bridge and Comms Bay
Time: c+208.04.13, 02:10 SST

"Beacon grid's stable on our vector," Kell reported from the nav console, his voice filtered through three relays and one half-glued mic. “Still no clean line to Fireweld — just static and bursts.”

“Keep pushing on the sideband,” Elisa Rourke said. “They’re out of range, not gone.”

Cadence rode a steady drift in hyperspace, inertial dampeners softening the occasional pulse from nearby wake shears. It wasn’t smooth — the kind of turbulence that teased old bulkheads and made comm lines buzz — but it was stable. And more than most ships had, it seemed.

The forward holo showed a slowly populating starfield of IFF-confirmed friendlies. One at a time, transponders flickered green. Some came with voice, others just packet bursts. Damage markers bled across the overlay in amber and red.

“Dust Eater confirms power cycling. Still no main antenna array.”

“Usterna is venting, but stable. Fuel down to twenty-six percent.”

“Lasher Five and Six confirmed lost. Drive-core ruptures before jump. Survivors unknown.”

The air on the bridge was dry and low-lit. Half the crew still wore atmo suits, visors cracked open. Elisa had stripped down to the underlayer — enough to move freely, still ready for a seal order. A silent comfort. The worst had passed, but nothing felt finished.

“Cadence to Wolves flight: check in, staggered packet,” Masel’s voice came in from CIC. “We’ll log who’s missing later — for now, just call home.”

No answer.

Then a blink. Wolf-3A. Then Wolf-1D. Bit by bit, the screen filled.

Someone behind her exhaled sharply, like they’d been holding it for minutes.

Elisa watched. Said nothing.

A junior technician wiped her eyes quietly when Dust Eater’s cargo relay came through — garbled, but legible. One of the backup comms techs let out a tired, wheezing laugh when Bellow finally stopped reporting its own reactor as “maybe on fire.”

A hundred moments like that, scattered across her bridge.

“Cadence to all vessels, this net. Navigation beacon re-established. Sync to Node Alpha and update fallback vectors. Fuel redistribution requests will be queued. Confirm stability tags if capable.”

“Uplink reconfigured,” Masel added. “We’re good to repeat forward packets.”

Good enough, at least.

She was mid-sentence, drafting the next sector-wide instruction packet, when the burst arrived. It wasn't clean — partial at first, clipped by jitter. Then it hit the replay threshold and auto-corrected. The bridge fell still.

“This is Admiral Vorelan. Enemy contact has ceased. Fleet will proceed to fallback vector Delta-Seven as per post-contact protocol. All remaining vessels are to maintain beacon sync and confirm jump vector integrity. Cadence will serve as interim command and relay node for duration of regroup. All ships: submit damage reports and assistance requests via encoded short-pulse packet. Maintain containment. We survived — let’s keep it that way.”

The message ended. No music. No cheer.

Just orders.

Elisa tapped her command key and sent the next wave of packets, already drafted.

Then she leaned back for the first time in what felt like hours.

The battle was over.

Now came the math.

Location: DSS Cadence, Bridge / Fleet Coordination Node
Time: c+208.04.13, 03:50 SST

"New packet from the Lashers — not the ones on our grid."

Masel’s voice was quiet, but not unsure. Elisa leaned over the secondary console, watching as the node matrix flickered. A raw signal, blinking like a cracked pulse, was triangulating from the edge of fallback drift.

“Emergency beacon,” Masel said. “Manual ping, repeating. It’s Lasher 2.”

Everyone had assumed it was gone.

“Power plant melt,” he added, scanning fast. “Looks like it took half their systems with it — no comms, no life support. But the beacon’s clear.”

“Mark it,” Elisa said. “Send to nearest viable asset.”

There was a short silence. Then:

“Wolf 1D confirms receipt. Moving to assist.”

The bridge was still tired, still half-dark, but something shifted — a kind of breath. The first time someone offered instead of reported.

Another screen came to life. The shuttle crew from Dust Eater — helmeted, grease-streaked, crammed together in a too-small loading frame. The video shook slightly, audio fuzzed at the top.

“We’re fine, we’re fine. Cargo bay’s just a little ‘redecorated.’ Give my regards to whoever trained Shuttle Five — they missed twice before docking.”

Laughter rose in the background — tired, too loud, too real.

“Glad to see Cadence still answering pings. Thought you lot jumped to another system for a minute there.”

Another connection blinked on. A static-choked voice from Usterna, someone reporting fuel pressure stabilization and a “slightly melted but serviceable” coolant loop. One by one, the net stitched itself back together.

Some ships sent video. Others, just voice. One frigate — probably Wolf 3B — sent what looked like a looped audio file of someone humming over a system restart countdown.

The loss list was already compiling in the corner of the fleet net:

• •Two salvage teams: no final pings, presumed lost in collapsed corridors or during evac. 

• •One shuttle, engine failure during pursuit. 

• •Three frigates: two Wolves gone in the fight, one Lasher destroyed and another crippled and adrift. 

• •Both salvage rigs: detonated by command order as decoys. Their crews evacuated. 

Masel tagged each line quietly, setting them to archival backup for Fireweld.

The connection to the flagship cleared two minutes later.

On the screen, Admiral Vorelan appeared.

Lighting poor, background too bright, and the frame slightly off — clearly a feed from a mobile station, not the flag bridge. But it was him. The room fell still.

“Fleet.”
“We’ve made fallback threshold. The pursuit is broken. The mission continues.”

He gave a small, oddly stiff thumbs-up — a gesture that felt out of place, and therefore genuine.

“All ships will proceed to fallback vector Delta-Seven. Recovery and triage are priority. We’ll make stationfall as scheduled — slower, but intact.”
“Submit reports. Help your neighbor. We’ll call roll on the other side.”

The feed ended.

Elisa stood still for a moment, the words hanging like frost in the room.

Then, one by one, her crew returned to work. No cheers, no speeches.

But the thread held.

And for now — it was enough.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8 – Trade Deck Stories

Coal Drift – Lower Vent Quadrant Bar

Time: c+208.04.17, 13:50 SST

The bar wasn’t a real bar. It was a thermal relief bay someone had re-piped into something social—just enough heat bleed from the ventlines to keep your boots from sticking, just enough lighting to keep the worst shadows from nesting. Someone had welded a half-melted cargo plate into a counter, set up crates for seating, and jury-rigged a drink coil from a fried suit battery and two layers of copper wrap.

Malik didn't complain. He’d been to worse bars. Hell, he’d built one, once.

He leaned back on an upturned stanchion, one boot braced on a dangling pipe, the other half-resting on a fusion-chilled drink keg that someone claimed held “coil wine.” No one asked what it was coiled from. It steamed like coolant and bit like it held a grudge.

Across from him, Rika Sorrel—one of the Woolf techs—was finishing a story with both hands and three burns on her wrist.

“…so I’m elbow-deep in a feedback cage, right, screaming at the capacitor to not eat my face, and this guy”—she pointed at Cael, who grinned like an engine spirit caught in the act—“just slaps a pressure patch on it and says ‘she’s talking to you, not at you.’”

The table laughed.

“You talk to your engines,” she added, “I talk to things that don’t want to fry my spleen.”

Cael just shrugged and sipped something grey out of a repurposed stabilizer flask. “Engines don’t hate us. They just get scared.”

Malik rolled his eyes but didn’t interrupt. Let the kid have his cult. If it got them five more percent on efficiency curves, let him write love letters to the reactor.

Bren, quiet as always, tapped a polished bolt on the table and slid it toward Rika.

“Gift,” he muttered.

She turned it over. One side was slag-scored and heat-warped, but the thread was clean. A war survivor.

“From Cadence?” she asked.

Bren nodded once.

“You people do things different.”

“Federation hull,” Malik said, tone dry. “We just patch it with the best trash we can find.”

He sipped the steam-cup. Still vile.

The stool creaked behind him, and Varo Kreel dropped in like he'd always been there. Chewing stim gum, sleeves rolled, grease up both arms.

“Back in the day,” Kreel started, stretching dramatically, “I fixed a plasma vent using sealant, prayer, and a broken spoon.”

Cael raised his flask. “Was it a clean spoon?”

“Nah,” Kreel said. “The grease is what held it.”

Another round of laughter. Even Bren cracked half a smile.

The light above them flickered twice, then stabilized. Malik tracked it, half-aware. Still bleeding current from the B-feed grid. He’d mention it later.

They toasted to ships that survived, to bolts that held, to long shots that didn’t detonate.

Then Rika leaned in, elbows on the scorched table edge.

“By the way—Maros, from Crocus? He owes us. We bailed his nav team out last run when their board shorted mid-transit. You help me check their cable routing tomorrow, and I’ll put a word in.”

Malik tilted his head.

“Looking for anything in particular?”

“Sensor substrate,” he said, not even hesitating. “Not from recon drones or burnt scout modules. Something clean. Calibrated. Real.”

Rika whistled through her teeth. “That stuff doesn’t exist right now.”

“I know,” he replied. “But favors exist. And I’m building.”

She gave him a look, then nodded. “Sweeten it later. Maybe I’ll bend something.”

The deal wasn’t sealed—but it was started. That was enough.

Malik let the conversation drift. Talk turned to betting pools, station rumors, which tanker would burst first if someone sneezed wrong near its hull. He half-listened, half-filed the interaction into memory.

Masel did law with scalpels, slicing through process.

Malik worked in sweat and smiles, one scrap at a time.

The Woolf crew stood to leave. Rika tapped the bolt once on the edge of the table and nodded toward Bren.

“You’ve got the weirdest damn ship, but I’d work with you again.”

Cael grinned. “Don’t let her hear that. She gets cocky.”

Malik lifted his cup.

“Fair winds, Sorrel.”

“See you on the next leak,” she said, vanishing with the others into the flicker and steam.

Malik stared after them, swirling whatever was in his drink.

He didn’t believe in luck.

But he believed in people who owed you a favor when luck ran out.

And Cadence would need plenty of those soon.

Coal Drift – Storage Deck 3C

c+208.04.17, 14:00 SST

The hatch hissed open on a delay—slightly warped from pressure fatigue. Just enough to catch your boot if you weren’t watching.

The man who stepped through it was watching. Everything.

He wore the plain orange-gray coveralls of a mid-tier salvage auditor, with a Dust Eater fleet badge stitched crooked on his chest. The name was smudged. The chip ID was old enough to predate current registry formats. That was the point.

The deck guard didn’t check.

“You’re here for what again?” the kid asked, voice thick with fatigue and faint suspicion.

“Cross-check on hold labeling,” the man replied smoothly, tapping a half-worn slate. “Command logged a dispute between Drift and Duster manifests last window. I just need to confirm that their junk didn’t become our problem.”

The guard snorted. “Volst and Mar again?”

The man offered a knowing shrug, then passed over a folded chit.

“Just five minutes. Won’t even open the seals.”

The guard took the chit. Pocketed it. Looked away.

Inside Storage 3C, the lights buzzed with the half-hum of old salvage decks — too cold for comfort, too warm to store anything fragile. Crates lined the bulkheads in uneven stacks, some tagged, most just spray-marked with grease numbers. Everything was salvage from the Domain convoy site, hauled back in a rush after the creatures showed up.

No one had sorted it yet.

The agent stepped carefully, boots ghosting over loose cable wrap and warped storage straps. He didn’t bother with the gear. He went straight for the bins.

At the back, wedged behind a sealed rad-case of fried navigational relays, sat a stack of soft polymer crates, lid half-shut. Not sealed. Not even inventoried.

He flipped the top and whistled low, but silent.

Paper.

Printouts, memo-boards, polyfiber sleeves scorched at the corners. None encrypted. No biosign trace. Just dead trees and burned ink.

The collar lens clicked into action, a narrow-band scanner tucked under his collar. He scanned page by page, fast and clean.

💠 Routing instructions for convoy jump paths

💠 Officer supply manifests, some annotated by hand

💠 Scientific payload entries – “observation equipment,” “prototype emitter cores,” “sealed experiment zones”

💠 And then:

    Transit Passenger Roster – Project Cell 3 / Engineering Oversight: Gate Access Protocols, B3 Clearance / Cryo Transit Secured

He froze. Scanned again. Scanned deeper.

Attached:

    Name strings tagged “Liaison: Terran Federation”

    Listed as deferred consultants

    Departure point: Euxine Transit Node

    Destination: REDACTED, crossed out by hand

    Arrival never logged

He exhaled slowly. The scanner vibrated with each data sync—quiet, tooth-level pulses as his molar cache absorbed the images.

He didn’t need to understand the full picture. Someone at Tri-Tach HQ would.

Gate research. Cryo-sealed survivors. A convoy that was never meant to return.

They hadn’t just found salvage.

They’d found secrets.

He swept the rest of the stack—logistics memos, watermarked with Domain inspection stamps. Some notes on classified power routing. One image showed a cryopod harness mounted in what looked like a civilian cargo frame.

That would be the next stop.

Cryopod storage. Deck 4A.

He closed the crate. Shifted a damaged relay case back in front.

Five minutes exactly.

As he stepped out, the guard barely looked up. “All good?”

“Yeah,” the agent said. “Coal Drift still logs like it’s the Second Collapse.”

The hatch hissed closed behind him.

Outside, the agent tapped his collar once.

Inside his jaw, a hidden chip went cold.

Encrypted. Stored. Ready for relay.

The data was now off-record. Off-fleet.

And soon, not just the Hegemony would be asking about Cadence. Or the cryopods. Or who still dreamed behind glass in the dark.

Coal Drift – Command Deck Logistics Wing

c+208.04.17, 13:00 SST

By the time Elisa reached the logistics corridor, she could feel the temperature drop—not in degrees, but in posture.

A half-dozen officers were pretending not to look at the closed audit room door. One of them actually made the sign for “null spirits” across their chest. Another offered her a sharp nod, more gratitude than greeting. The rest just quietly shifted out of her way.

Masel had been busy.

The door slid open with a soft hiss. Riel Masel stepped out like he had just filed a tax return for a collapsing star. His uniform was crisp. His datapad clutched tight against one arm. No sweat, no anger—just the calm of a man who had utterly annihilated someone with citations.

“Commander,” he said, as if they were on a training deck.

Elisa gestured for him to walk. She didn’t ask how it went.

Behind them, the silence stretched like an exposed cable. Somewhere in the admin office, a voice rose—tight with restraint. Then a bang. Metal against wall. Hard.

Someone had finally snapped.

Masel glanced back, puzzled.

“Did something fall?”

Elisa bit back a laugh. “No, Masel. That was the sound of a man realizing he’s next in line.”

They walked together, passing through the glow of wall displays and bulkhead printout slots still ejecting forms from his hearing. Elisa noticed two requisition officers look up, then look away. One actually turned and began furiously organizing a drawer that didn’t need it.

They reached a side lounge: quiet, worn, with chairs that had once been ergonomic and now just remembered the shape. A machine hummed as it failed to vend something labeled “vitamin tea.” No one else was there.

“Sit,” she said.

Masel did.

She leaned back in a chair that creaked. No rank here. Just weight.

“You’ve built a perfect hammer, Masel,” she said. “But this place doesn’t punish the nail. It stabs the carpenter.”

He blinked. “I followed regulation. The supply tag was mismatched. It should have been processed through the Chain-4 review path, not—”

She held up a hand. “You’re not wrong. That’s what scares them.”

Masel frowned slightly. “I don’t see why—”

“He thought you were a hallucination, Riel.”

That made him stop.

Elisa leaned forward. “He was halfway into a bottle last night trying to file a backdated shipment request. Sees you. You cite three overlapping codes and invoke a clause no one uses because it was never meant to be used, and then you file a correction loop that triggers twenty-three auto-reviews. He thought you were some kind of spectral bureaucrat sent from the Collapse to drag him to procurement hell.”

“I was just making the system work.”

“And you did.”

She sighed.

“But it doesn’t forgive you. It remembers.”

Masel said nothing. His fingers tapped once against his datapad, stopped.

“The rulebook,” she said quietly, “won’t stop someone from putting a knife in your back. Or a shot in the dark.”

He looked at her finally. Tired. Not scared—just stretched.

“I can’t shield you from everything,” she said. “You’re too visible now.”

“I’m doing my job,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “But some people would rather burn the book than admit they can’t read it.”

In the silence, the vending machine let out a wheeze and dropped a packet that hit the tray with a thud like a closing file.

Somewhere down the hall, the audit room opened again. Another officer walked past, white in the face, clutching a binder and muttering to themselves.

Masel looked like he might say something.

Elisa stood.

“Come on. Let’s go be useful before someone drafts a resolution to have you ejected into space.”

He almost smiled. Almost.

Together, they left the lounge, the quiet murmur of documents and muttered curses fading behind them.

Coal Drift – Vent Bar

c+208.04.17, 17:00 SST

The makeshift bar looked even smaller in the quiet. One overhead light buzzed with the kind of flicker that said no one had changed the bulb in months. The heat coil that had been doubling as a drink warmer let out a slow, tired hiss. The room smelled faintly of citrus cleaner and overheated sealant.

Elisa stepped through the hatch and paused. Only one person was waiting.

Mikka Drayen looked like she belonged in a recruitment vid and a psych eval at the same time. Uniform jacket open, hair tied back in a lopsided braid, boots half-untied like she’d run here from somewhere forgettable. Her face lit up the moment she saw Elisa.

“There she is! The ghost hunter herself.”

Elisa blinked. “I… wasn’t hunting ghosts.”

Mikka shoved a dented coolant flask across the table, nearly knocking over a salvaged mug filled with what might have been broth, lubricant, or both.

“Without you,” Mikka said with mock solemnity, “we’d be names in a salvage brief. Maybe a sentence. Probably a typo.”

Elisa sat. Slowly. The seat creaked with the weight of not just her, but the moment.

Mikka raised the flask. “To Cadence. To people who answer distress beacons that shouldn’t have worked.”

Elisa accepted the drink. Took a sip.

It tasted like recycled citrus peel, too much ethanol, and the faint regret of a forgotten shelf.

“You brew this yourself?”

“Stole it. Technically. From someone who owed me after I helped them fix their med dispenser with a toothbrush.”

“Fleet economy,” Elisa muttered. “Beautiful.”

Mikka leaned in, elbows on the table. “You want the story?”

Elisa tilted her head. “You’re going to tell it regardless.”

“Damn right I am.”

And so it began—told with both hands, exaggerated motions, and a tone that didn’t quite hide the tremor under the humor.

    “Comms go dead, right? First the antenna array, then the backup relay. Vents start hissing like the ship’s got opinions. Beacon won’t transmit past ten meters unless we hold a wrench to the housing and scream. Reactor throws a thermal tantrum and starts glowing green. Not red. Green. Nobody trusts green.”

    “We’re venting atmosphere, the nav screen’s showing star patterns from two cycles ago, and someone swears they see movement outside—probably our own hull plating blowing past.”

    “We’re prepping to shut down and drift—just give the void our best middle finger. Then…”

    She slammed her hand down with a dramatic CLANG.

    “Ping. From Cadence.”

Elisa said nothing. Just listened. She’d heard the data logs. She hadn’t heard this.

“Thought it was a glitch at first,” Mikka continued. “Then we see you on the scope. All clean systems, proper comms, no panicked venting. Like some pre-Collapse knight riding in on sensor wings.”

“You were lucky,” Elisa said quietly.

“We were heard,” Mikka corrected. “Which, out here? That’s rarer.”

She leaned back, stretched. Her posture collapsed for a second — not drunk, just empty.

“We’re scrapped now. Ship’s junk. Admiral said as much. But he promised me a new one. Eventually. Until then I’m a professional couch-warmer on a tanker with bad coffee and a view of pipes.”

She grinned, like that was a reward.

Elisa looked at her. Really looked.

“You doing all right?”

Mikka shrugged. “Still breathing. Still making people uncomfortable with joy. That’s a win.”

They drank.

Another silence followed, this one not awkward—just mutual.

Then Mikka raised her flask again.

“To ships that didn’t kill us.”

Elisa lifted hers. “And the ones that still might.”

The toasting metal rang against itself like a laugh waiting in the dark.

The core of the market never slept. Someone was always shouting about miracle sealants, jury-rigged holochips, or filtered synthbrew. But out here — past the din, past the glow — the air shifted. The music didn’t blend so much as drift, thin and watery, from different speakers a few decks apart.

Elisa walked alone, her steps half-guided, half-hollow. After the conversation with Mikka, she hadn’t wanted to go back to quarters. Or the bar. Or anywhere with voices.

The edges felt safer. Less sure of themselves.

That’s when she saw the tags.

They caught the light like teeth — hundreds of them, laid out on a faded polymer cloth atop a folding table. Some were charred. Others bore Domain-era insignia, stamped in silver and scuffed by time. A few had been carefully etched post-recovery with coordinates, recovery timestamps, or just single words: "Kite 9, Partial," or "Unclear, Wreckline 4."

The sign overhead was barely legible.

    "Memorial Services / Recovery Logging – Sector Tag Archiving, Drop-Off Point"

Behind the table sat a crewmember. Maybe mid-twenties, slouched in a half-broken chair, chewing on a stim stick and lazily dragging one hand over a digital ledger. They glanced up, then back down — no sales pitch, no greeting. Just another passerby.

Elisa stepped closer.

Three steps in, she stopped breathing.

The names weren’t random.

They were Cadence crew.

Not cryo-sleepers. Not on the roster anymore.

People who had been rotated to the transports during the first days of the expedition — when they were trying to balance crew fatigue and hull decay. People she remembered assigning for “temporary transit, non-critical.”

Their tags were here.

Burnt around the edges. Logged under “Recovery Convoy Theta.” Two had been found inside an atmospheric-pierced compartment. One had no attached location at all.

Elisa reached out, slowly, and turned one over with her fingers.

She didn’t speak.

The clerk finally stirred. “Hey—uh, freelancer, yeah? If you’re under Hegemony, transfers are free. Otherwise it’s ten credits a piece, includes courier and claim number.”

Elisa looked up. Blank.

“They were mine,” she said.

The clerk blinked. Sat straighter. “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t know anyone’d show up for these. The wreak is really old one”

Elisa didn’t answer. She stared down at the tags like they might change shape.

“They were Cadence,” she said, voice flat. “Threadneedle rotation group.”

“Oh,” the clerk said again, quieter. “Right. Damn.”

They pulled up a form. “You want archive transfer? Command Archive Return? Gonna need a field code.”

Elisa nodded once. “Command Return. Hegemony secure route.”

The clerk hesitated. “Yeah, okay. You know that jams our auto-logger, right? Gonna have to file this manually.”

“File it,” she said.

They did.

Forms hissed out of the side printer, dotted with authorizations and timecodes. The clerk muttered under their breath about overreach, confidentiality codes, and why Hegemony couldn’t just let people grieve like normal sectors.

But they still slid the tags into a velvet-lined envelope. Still stamped the transfer code. Still affixed a seal.

Elisa stared at the envelope. Didn’t take it. Just watched it get filed in the outgoing tray.

“They rotated out,” she said. “It wasn’t permanent. They were just supposed to rest.”

The clerk didn’t reply.

She stepped back. The booth receded behind her. The market noise crept in again — weak laughter from a corner, someone hawking rebreathers with “extra scrub layers.”

Elisa didn’t hear it.

Three tags. Three names.

Gone fifty years.

And she hadn’t even known.

We were only revived months ago.

Her throat tightened.

We were only gone a little while.

She kept walking.

The light shifted. Somewhere, distant machinery hissed. The hum of orbit. The warmth of bulkheads. But inside?

Inside was cold.

Why didn’t they come for us?

Chapter Text

Interlude "Static Between Signals"

Broadcast ID: HGN-PRIMECIV-149.21
Channel: This Week in the Sector
Runtime: 6:13
Guest: Commander Avelle Juno, Strategic Communications, Hegemony Navy
Host: Trask Marin, Veteran journalist and anchor of PrimeCivil Media

[Intro jingle fades. The screen steadies on a comfortable studio room with blue-backlit walls and stylized galactic charts behind the set. A small Hegemony crest sits tastefully at the corner.]

TRASK MARIN (smiling):
“And we’re back with This Week in the Sector. I’m your host, Trask Marin. With me today—Commander Avelle Juno, Navy Strategic Comms, here to answer the question everyone’s been whispering: What’s going on out there?”

CMDR. JUNO (composed, polite):
“Thanks for having me, Trask. Always a pleasure.”

TRASK:
“Let’s get straight to it. We’ve seen reports—unverified, I’ll add—of increased fleet movement. Shipyard queues. Even rumors of rare salvage flowing back into Chicomoztoc. Some folks are saying… war?”

JUNO (soft chuckle):
“If war were coming, Trask, you’d be hearing it from Fleet Marshal himself. What we’re seeing is part of our regular long-range recon and salvage cycle. The Persean Sector’s full of forgotten value. It’s our job to bring it home safely.”

TRASK:
“Still, the timing raises eyebrows. A few weeks ago, no one was talking about reactivating escort squadrons or provisioning long-haul rations. Is this really routine?”

JUNO:
“I understand the concern. The Hegemony Navy moves assets when and where they’re needed. That includes supplying remote outposts, responding to piracy—and yes, investigating older domain sites when resources allow. But there is no mobilization order. No declared campaign.”

TRASK:
“And the pirate raids? Some colonies are calling them ‘coordinated actions.’”

JUNO (face tightens slightly):
“We monitor all threats. But let me be absolutely clear—there is no verified evidence of sector-wide coordination among raiders. These flare-ups are tragic, yes, but not unprecedented.”

TRASK:
“Then… let’s talk morale. Is the fleet prepared?”

JUNO (smiling again):
“More than ready. Our crews are trained, supported, and backed by the strongest logistical framework in the sector. In fact—just last week, a joint operation returned with critical salvage that will benefit every civilian port from Fikenhild to Eochu.”

TRASK:
“Amazing. So to everyone at home worried about their sons, daughters, and quarterly fuel allocations—”

JUNO:
“We appreciate your vigilance. And we promise transparency, as always. But for now? There’s no war coming. There’s only recovery. Responsibility. And readiness.”

[Cue outro music. Screen fades as Juno and Marin shake hands.]

"End is Nigh" – Luddic Path Hijack Segment

Appears suddenly on fringe colony receivers, spacer lounge projectors, and a few unsecured commercial relays.

[STATIC. Then the image clears. A stark, low-res feed of a cloaked figure backlit by firelight. The voice is digitally distorted, but unmistakably human beneath.]

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (LUDDIC PATH):
“You think they’ll tell you the truth? That the fleets on the move for peace?”

Quick flashes cut across the screen — distorted stills of burning stations, ships adrift, starved colonies.

SPEAKER:
“The rot spreads from the center. Old ghosts have returned, not to save—but to judge. They would build the machine again, feed it your sons, your fuel, your hope.”

Another flash. A stylized image of an Onslaught -class ship, distorted until it looks like a predator bird swallowing stars.

SPEAKER:
“Steel cannot save. Faith cannot be patched together from salvaged wrecks. The God of Man does not reside in their blueprints.”

The screen flickers to a mosaic of name-tags, floating in void. Then, silence.

SPEAKER (whispering):
“Prepare your soul. The storm has already begun.”

[The feed cuts. Regular programming resumes without comment.]

Eventide, Plaza of Civic Coordination – Cycle 208.04.18

Rain leaked through the collar of Patrolman Rask’s uniform. It wasn’t supposed to — it was rated for cold rain, acid fog, and a dozen particulate types from low-orbit ashfall to arc dust. But this wasn’t acid or ash. It was just plain, miserable, wet, and it ran straight down his spine.

He adjusted the chin strap on his helmet for the fourth time and blinked up at the crowd.

They weren’t yelling yet.

Not all of them.

About 3-4 hundred people stood in the square, huddled under plast-cloth hoods and faded coats. A few held up tablets with price charts or old ration permits. One had scrawled "Six Credits a Unit Is Not Survival" across a maintenance tarp. Another was just standing there with a burner mug, sipping something that steamed too much to be legal.

The guy with the megaphone — Orlan, Guild Rep, Class-3 Speaker, Local Cargo Union — kept his tone civil. Angry, sure. But civil.

“We didn’t start this. We didn’t ask for this. But we are living it. When the military takes the tankers, the merchants raise the prices, and when the merchants raise the prices, our children go cold in the habs. And that is not the Persean Sector we were told we were protecting.”

It wasn’t a great line. Rask had heard better on galley decks from crew who couldn’t spell “sector”. But it hit. The crowd shifted. There were nods.

Beside Rask, Officer Talles adjusted her riot shield, whispering, “One bottle. It’s always one bottle.”

He kept his visor down and grip tight. Riot duty. Cycle three on the job, and they had him standing front line at Eventide’s Civic Coordination hub like he had seniority. His guts twisted — not fear, exactly. Just that sick feeling you get right before a storm breaks.

And then someone started screaming.

Not Orlan. Someone deeper in the crowd.

“They’re starting another war! Heg’s stealing everything for a war we didn’t vote for!”

Someone else:

“They already sent the fleets!

Rask blinked hard. This wasn’t in the scenario packet. This wasn’t a drill.

Orlan raised a hand, trying to speak over them — but the crowd didn’t listen.

A plast bottle arced through the air. It bounced off Officer Yern’s shield and exploded into a sticky, burning mess. Smelled like old cleaner and cooking oil.

“That’s it!” Talles barked, slamming her visor down. “Command authorized suppression!”

The riot line moved.

Rask stepped with the group, boots slapping against the wet pavement. Shields locked. Gas dispersers activated. Shouting turned into a roar. A drainpipe burst on the plaza’s edge. Something flashed — a stunner? An illegal spark stick?

Didn’t matter.

They pushed forward.

And the line broke into chaos.

Chicomoztoc, Prime Command Nexus – Cycle 208.04.18
Office of Strategic Oversight, Sub-Level 3
Drone Footage Source: Samarra System, Eventide, Riot Zone Delta-Six

A drone hummed quietly above the cityscape — its optics jittering with rain distortion and smoke trails. Below, rows of riot police stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the wet ferrocrete of Eventide’s central plaza, stun batons glowing faintly in the grey light. The crowd surged like a wave. Overlay readouts in Hegemony glyph-code blinked across the shared holofield, painting real-time threat assessments in red.

PROTEST DENSITY: HIGH
TRIGGER WORD DETECTION: “WAR,” “DRAFT,” “SEIZURE,” “BLOOD”
RESPONSE PROBABILITY: ESCALATION 89%

Across from the display, High Statistician Holstein folded the hardcopy report and laid it on the polished steel console. He spoke with a rare tremor — not of fear, but restrained outrage.

“This is what happens when you deploy a battlegroup out of Corespace with no legislative messaging and no logistics phasing. Fuel prices have spiked 26%. Imports are throttled. Eighteen colonies are overdrawn on security ration credits. And trade convoys to the Arcadia-Magek Corridor are operating under half-capacity due to raider response spikes. We are collapsing the side of the branch we’re sitting on.”

No one interrupted. Not yet. Even Hegemon Daud, draped in black and orange command silk, remained still.

Holstein pressed a sealed data strip into the reader port. The overlay changed: a dozen bar graphs dipped into crimson, with predictive arcs showing further decline over the next quarter.

“This was supposed to be a rebalancing cycle. We’re looking at a fiscal bleed the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Sindrian Split.”

Admiral Vale, Chief of Naval Logistics, sighed. “You’re right. But you’re also not cleared for full background on this expedition.”

Holstein adjusted his collar, composed now. “Then either clear me, or find another economist who can explain to the colonies why they're about to riot with statistics.”

Admiral Thule — Director of Internal Counterintelligence — tapped a command into the console. The wall display wiped itself. In its place came a still image: the Cadence, partially restored, its data cores flagged with Domain-cipher green. Below it, a fragment of internal crew logs and long-distance vector plotting. Then a line in deep red:

DOMAIN CONTACT CONFIRMED – CLASSIFIED LEVEL 0-1 / SOL TERRA PRIMARIES
AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY VIA COMMAND ASSET APPROVAL

Holstein’s expression didn’t change, but his posture did. Straighter. Sharper.

He reached for the incineration clasp on the printed report and burned it in silence.

“You should’ve led with that.”

Vale raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t have mattered.”

“No, but it’d have saved me a month’s worth of ulcer medication.” He leaned back. “So. The real game is out there. But we still have a sector to run until news breaks.”

Thule folded his arms. “What do you propose?”

“Let me calm the governors. Give them something to do. New contracts, open trade projections, maybe even release that Corsair blockade clearance as a ‘precision security initiative.’ I have channels — they’ll want talking points. I can give them an excuse to pretend things are under control.”

A quiet nod passed between the uniformed brass. Words only mattered if you had someone who could carry them.

“But,” Holstein added, voice low now, “if this expedition fails — if this turns out to be nothing — all of us will be out of our chairs. If we’re lucky.”

Hegemon finally spoke.

“Luck is for independents. We deal in certainty.”

The meeting should have ended there. But Thule had one more hand to play.

He activated ECLIPSE protocol routing. Three sealed mission packets projected onto the table, spinning slowly in encrypted glyph cycles.

“These are live orders for Rear Admiral Laskar, Commodore Jenu, and Vice-Captain Halver. Forward deployment to Corsair Point and adjacent fringe systems. Their orders will read: ‘pirate interdiction, with secondary asset capture protocols.’”

Vale raised a brow. “You’re staging a probe?”

“A noise-maker,” Thule confirmed. “Let the sector think the mobilization was about pirates. Leaked footage. Flashes of violence. Enough to draw the eye — and enough to clean out any bad actors watching us from the dark.”

Holstein chuckled, humor dry and bitter.

“You call it theater. I call it economic defibrillation.”

Daud stood.

“Then it’s settled.”

Three authorization sigils burned red into the meeting table, then went dark. Thule passed the orders silently to Vale, who nodded once and left to enact them.

As the door sealed, the console screen returned to the riot in Samarra system — now under control. The drones tracked a retreating crowd as Hegemony security walked calmly through the rain, batons lowered. Civil order, restored — for now.

And behind that calm surface, the next move had already been made.

Tri-Tachyon Internal Security Boardroom – Cycle 208.04.19
Secure Node, Suddene Orbital Complex – Blacklight Clearance Only

The room was silver and silent. Eight seats, all filled. No paper. No data terminals. Just a projection sphere in the center, pulsing faintly with encoded tightbeam feed from shadow assets embedded deep within the Hegemony expeditionary fleet.

Assistant Director Hallis Enver stood beside it, gloved hand hovering just above the feed.

“This is our opening,” he said.

The sphere flickered, casting soft blue light over corporate-cut suits and expressionless eyes. Static-laced images resolved—cryo-pod inventories, nanoforge casing logs, subsystem strain telemetry, crew rosters.

“They found the Bastion of Resolve. And Threadneedle command was wiped. No tactical staff survived the initial engagement. Just civspecs and science personnel. High-priority analysts. Uplink architects. Cryo only. No defensive mandate.”

“Vetted?” asked Director Imosa, face like polished obsidian.

“Confirmed,” Enver nodded. “Data fragmentations from recovered logs match old SolNet cert chains. We believe two of the scientists were on the original relay spine design team. Their knowledge of the Domain’s Net protocol structure is likely intact.”

A second director—Lazeen, arm cybernetics twitching faintly—leaned forward.

“And the nanoforge unit?”

“Crated. Partial shielding, probably a mobile configuration. Still active when tagged by our informant in rig crew Alpha-Seven. It's on their main recovery hauler, Dust Eater, but fleet-wide redistribution has begun. We need to move fast.”

Imosa tapped her fingers on a data-silent table.

“Interdiction?”

“Already in motion. We have a manipulation vessel in deep hyperspace—Beacon Shadowmark, operating under fabricated salvage ID. It’s been seeded with a spoofing array designed to induce drive phase desync via local gravity calibration override—‘ghost flux,’ as the Navy boys call it.”

“They’ll think it’s a system malfunction?”

“Correct,” Enver said. “The error will spike just outside jump alignment. Our override will destabilize fleet navsync and push them into Penelope’s Star. The system’s barren, but has known abandoned Domain infrastructure—old mining relay, partial power grids. It’s the perfect place to force maintenance, and they’ll be too close to ignore it.”

A final image: the cold rings of Penelope’s Star.

Lazeen smiled. “You’ve planned the cage. What about the teeth?”

Enver turned to the far wall, where an activation sequence chimed. A thin screen resolved into a tactical overlay.

“Three Tri-Tachyon heavy task forces are already en route. Jump convergence vectors align in seventy-six hours. They’ll blockade the system’s two exit points and perform immediate recovery.”

“Recovery?” Imosa asked with razor interest.

“Of course. Civilian rescue, per Persean mutual salvage code. We’ll keep the cadavers clean. But the assets—” he gestured at the frozen blueprints hovering in the projection—“they're already ours.”

Silence. Then Imosa inclined her head slightly.

“Make it clean.”

The lights dimmed.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10 – This Is a Humanitarian Mission

Penelope’s Star System – c+208.04.29, 03:50 SST
Fleet Transit Vector – 3.4 Light-days Inbound

Location: Hegemony Expeditionary Group Alpha
Perspective: Fleet Nav Coordination Voice Channel #TRAV-SIG-11

[LTN. KELL / CADENCE]:
“Alright, who's got the hiccup? I just got two velocity spikes that look like a skipped alignment pulse.”

[LTN. GEYRON / SUNBLINDER]:
“Confirm that. Nav pattern stuttered. Third burn desync threw me five degrees sunward. Drift correction isn’t holding.”

[LTN. ATHIS / FIREWELD]:
“Same here. Running recal. Looks like a harmonic mismatch between auxiliary feed and navcoil baseframe. Shouldn't happen this deep into return run.”

[LTN. KELL]:
“Didn’t your deck techs say they ‘verified everything manually’?”

[LTN. ATHIS]:
“They said it was 'better than regulation'. They also duct-taped a coolant vent to a pressure regulator and called it 'tolerance-aligned.’"

[LTN. GEYRON]:
“I want a diversion vector. If one more nav ring tries to correct me into a sun-skimmer orbit, I’m flipping a coin and burning home solo.”

—[New Voice Joins Channel]—

[ADM. VORELAN / FIREWELD]:
“You’ll do no such thing, Lieutenant.”

The silence was sharp. No one had heard him join.

[ADM. VORELAN]:
“You’ve got field instability. It’s spreading across the formation. Ghost flux interference. Source is likely systemic, but we’re not gambling with core drives.”

“Coordinates uploaded: 22.77 / 198-Delta. Penelope’s Star. Outer orbit. We use the old relay station. Pull nav integrity, re-check coils, blow the dust off whatever’s clinging to our hulls.”

[LTN. ATHIS]:
“…Sir, that’s three systems short of our home return point.”

[ADM. VORELAN]:
“And the alternative is spacing half our outer escort line when their drives fold in on themselves mid-jump. We’re not going to have this mission end with a funeral dirge in hyperspace.”

[LTN. KELL]:
“Understood, Admiral. Upload received. Diverting now.”

[LTN. GEYRON]:
“Penelope’s Star. Thought we’d never go near that place again. Smells like oxidized death and nostalgia.”

[LTN. ATHIS]:
“At least there’s probably coffee left on the relay. Or whiskey mislabeled as cleaning solution.”

[LTN. KELL]:
“That was you, wasn’t it?”

[LTN. GEYRON]:
“Absolutely. Tasted like fire and regret.”

[ADM. VORELAN]:
“You’ve got twenty minutes to make this maneuver sound like doctrine. I don’t want anyone from Central asking why we’re taking the long way home.”

[LTN. ATHIS]:
“Copy that, sir. Plotting new course. Diverting to relay.”

The fleet shimmered, course adjusting. One by one, the ships curved toward the dead system.

The jaws of the trap slowly closed.

Penelope’s Star Inner System – c+208.04.29, 12:12 SST
Bridge of ISS Fireweld, Admiral Vorelan in Command

The red glare of Penelope’s Star seeped through the radiation shielding like a wine stain on old armor. On the main display, the station hung like a lopsided halo—a silent ring of steel and broken symmetry.

The station had a reputation. Salvagers called it “The Pause.” Pirates, when sober, called it “the crossing bar.”
Nobody shot here. Nobody docked armed. There was even a broken Luddic shrine bolted to one of the outer pylons, long since stripped of gold and iconography but still left untouched—as if the vacuum feared it.

The rule was simple: don’t ruin the place you’ll be desperate enough to crawl back to.

Admiral Calen Vorelan watched it all from behind the reinforced bulkhead of the command dais, gloved hands clasped, boots magnetized to the command ring floor.

Something was wrong.

The station’s comm relay—a battered Domain-era model with patched uplinks and burnt capacitors—was offline. Not flickering. Not degraded. Dark.

A low chime sounded from the tac-officer’s station.

“Admiral, incoming signal. Flagged high-priority. Tri-Tachyon origin.”

Vorelan’s eyes narrowed.

“Put it through. Audio only.”

The voice was smooth, filtered—synthetic enough to trigger protocol delay in most naval systems.

“To the Hegemony expeditionary command:
This is Tri-Tachyon Joint Rescue Division, Theta-Line Taskgroup.
You have entered a hostile engagement zone, flagged for civil relief and recovery.
Per interstellar salvage code 313-B, we are offering extraction, recovery, and medical services.
Please power down your fleet drives and prepare for asset handover.
This is a humanitarian mission.”

He didn’t blink.

Long-range scans updated across the display:

• Second fleet detected on opposite jump point. 

• Civ-labeled haulers with military drive emissions. 

• Energy patterns mirrored their own jump entry trails. 

They weren’t hiding.

He let the silence settle before answering.

“Tri-Tachyon Rescue Division,” Vorelan said flatly, “respectfully declined.”

He cut the line.

The bridge fell quiet—just the hum of recycled air and distant engine pulses.

Then he turned.

“Fleet-wide signal. Open channel.”

The coms officer gave a curt nod. A green light flicked on across the console.

Vorelan’s voice shifted. It gained rhythm—lighter, louder. Just enough snark to cut the tension.
He sounded like a smuggler passing a customs gate with a cargo full of lies.

“This is Admiral Vorelan to all ships.
Congratulations.
We are now officially on the run from the patrol.
Our IDs are fake, our holds are full of drugs, and that charming asteroid belt over there looks like just the place for folks like us to take a nap and let our boring buddies come pull us out.”

Muted laughter pulsed across channels. A burst of static resolved into replies:

[Lt. Geyron, Sunblinder]: “Knew we should’ve renamed to ‘The Unpaid Fine.’”

[Lt. Kell, Cadence]: “How illegal is this, exactly?”

[Vorelan]: “Somewhere between criminal negligence and tactical poetry.”

He nodded to his command aide.

“Send encrypted orders:
Sunblinder, Cadence, and Black Arrow—form up.
Transverse Jump protocol, max burn. Arcadia system or nearest secure beacon.
Deliver report, secure reinforcements.
Priority alpha—acknowledge.”

Lights flashed green across the bridge as command signals pinged away.

Then came a breath—just one—before someone muttered from engineering:

“We’re actually doing this.”

Vorelan looked toward the viewport, watching the heat shimmer off the star’s limb.
He turned back, voice low.

“Engineering—check our flank dispersion again. No ‘miracle tolerance’ this time.
If your capacitor whines, you baby it like it’s your mother’s heart monitor.”

He walked down the rail toward the sensor console. One of the junior officers—young, polished, too new—stepped forward.

“Sir… shouldn’t we await confirmation? An authorization from Strategic or—”

Vorelan stopped.

“Lieutenant.”

The room paused.

“We are six hours from the jump point. Surrounded. Being told we’ve been rescued.
Do you want to file a form?”

The young officer flushed. “No, sir.”

Vorelan softened—just slightly.

“Then here’s your first real lesson, fleet-boy.
Command isn’t about authorization. It’s about not getting your people killed while someone else signs the paperwork.”

He clapped the young man’s shoulder.

“Now go help the nav chief. Tell her she’s got thirty minutes to polish those numbers like they’re going on a gravestone.”

The officer ran.

Vorelan turned back to the starfield—where the station floated, still untouched. Where a shrine’s ghost watched over burned icons and unwritten rules.

And this time, someone had ruined it.

Deep Hyperspace – En Route to Arcadia – c+208.04.29, 15:40 SST
Cadence – Commander Elisa Rourke in command

The hyperspace storm seethed ahead like a god’s bleeding wound.

Coronas of distortion rippled across the stormfront, folding in and out of reality—shearing space along the margins. Static crawled along the hull plating like it was trying to get in.

Rourke stood at the core display, boots braced, one hand resting lightly on the back of Malik’s chair. The engineering console flickered, storm telemetry arcing like cardiac spikes.

“Two Tri-Tach signatures closing. Interceptor class. Not tagged. They’re bending beacon traffic. They want us predictable.”

Behind her, Lt. Dara Kell spoke without turning from the nav console.

“Recommend alternate course. Skirt the storm, use heat-trail masking. We’re still within threshold for minimal deviation.”

His voice was tight. Precise. Formal.

“Storm entry violates Hegemony protocol for non-critical traversal. Deformation risk exceeds 72 percent in current profile. That’s a soft kill zone.”

Second Mate Masel snorted without looking up.

“You know what else is a soft kill zone? A Tri-Tachyon boarding tube.”

Malik leaned back, wiping his forehead with the heel of his glove.

“Vector B-17’s interior ring has a low-shear lane if we time it right. Pressure bubbles every twelve seconds. We hit the troughs, not the spikes.”

Kell was already filing something into his pad.

“I am submitting a formal complaint to Sector Admiralty on conduct during an unauthorized Class V maneuver during fleet-wide emergency status.”

“Filed and acknowledged,” Rourke replied calmly. “Now execute the trajectory.”

Kell tapped the last sequence with something between duty and dread.

“God help us.”

“That’s what the armor’s for,” Masel muttered.

Cadence entered the storm like a knife through a wound.

Energy rolled across her reinforced plating, her dorsal sensors ablaze with feedback. Drive field harmonics peaked, dipped, screamed in binary.

Inside, the crew fell into practiced rhythm.

“Microburn vectoring aligned.”

“Inertial skip pulse green.”

“Compensators at ninety-four percent and rising.”

“Trajectory holding.”

Behind them, Sunblinder and Black Arrow followed—slower, heavier, jittery from the edge harmonics. Cadence’s passage helped, but the field vectors shifted too quickly. They didn’t have the sensors. Or the skill.

A warning chime. Masel cursed.

“Sunblinder’s losing formation. Structural harmonics out of phase—”

Kell tried to steady his voice. He couldn’t.

“That’ll overload her dorsal coil banks. She’s gonna bounce.”

Sunblinder veered.

Then it was gone.

“We’ve lost her signal,” Masel said flatly. “No beacon.”

“Mark and log,” Rourke said. “Push forward.”

Kell stared at the console.

“Black Arrow just dropped power for recalibration. She’s slipping—”

Static.

Then nothing.

“Confirm?”

“Tri-Tach signature spike,” Masel said. “EMP net. Field interdiction.”

Kell stared at the void where their IFFs used to be.

Rourke didn’t speak.

Syrinx (Arcadia II) Gravity Well –  c+208.04.30, 06:10 SST

She reemerged like a battered ghost.

The storm spat Cadence out across the gas giant’s horizon, drive cones flickering, stabilizers down to emergency capacity, hull bleeding heat like a dying star.

Inside, sparks crackled behind a wall panel.

“Reactor stabilization holding,” Malik muttered, singed and annoyed. “Give or take.”

Kell peeled off his helmet, hands still shaking.

“That was… insane.”

Rourke keyed the emergency transponder with high-command override codes. Her voice was quiet.

“No. That was standard practice. We just forgot what that looks like.”

A flicker. The message pulsed out—encrypted, authenticated, screaming for reinforcements.

Then the viewport dimmed, and the bridge fell quiet.

Tri-Tachyon Perimeter – Storm Edge – 3 Hours Earlier
Command Deck, TTGV-Resolute Purpose

The storm shimmered behind the viewport like a curtain of knives.

Commander Yarin Holtz stared at the tactical overlay. Only two of the targets remained, drifting obediently inside his trap. Clean hits. EMP suppression. Recoverable assets.

But the third—

“Sir... new data just in.”

Holtz didn’t look up.

“She made it?”

“Storm telemetry confirms reentry via gravity-bound inertial skip. That’s a… Domain tactic. We’re still parsing the vector.”

Holtz rubbed his eyes.

“She’s not a scout ship. She’s a damn cathedral.”

Citadel Arcadia – Upper Command Ring
Station CO: Captain Lenara Dresch – “Status: Low Priority, Always”

It was a bad day to argue with gas haulers, but it was also the only day she’d had.

Captain Lenara Dresch pinched the bridge of her nose and stared at the scheduling holo above the comms pit. The queues were broken again. Cargo slots misaligned. Three bulk freighters circling the Syrinx well claimed they’d been double-booked, and half the refinery deck was offline due to a parts delay that wasn’t anyone’s fault, officially.

“I’ve already signed the requisition, Vidik. They’ll just bounce it back.”

Her XO, Lieutenant Jarras Vidik, held a printed-out service log like it was a religious relic.

“They’re threatening to shut down fueling operations unless we manually authorize a triage slot override. Sectional clause seventeen, subparagraph C.”

“Tell them to use a bucket,” she snapped.

Below, the station’s day-cycle lit the civilian ring in clean white. Dozens of ships crawled along the outer docking path like ants. Cargo. Salvagers. A few surveyors. No warships today. Patrol assets were out rotating escort duty for freighters. The ones that weren’t broken.

“Traffic Ops?” she called.

“Don’t yell at me unless it’s on fire,” came the voice of Chief Officer Maelin Dorr through her headset. “We’ve got a freighter trying to bribe their way into a repair dock with two crates of Luddic hymnals and a barrel of methane.”

“Tell them I’m religious now. I want the methane.”

“Understood, Captain. Spirituality has been added to the rotation.”

Dresch closed her eyes. Half a dozen fleet deployments were clogging the lines across the sector, and no one knew what the hell Anti-Piracy Directive 17-C was really for. Everyone believed in the piracy narrative. Everyone agreed it was going badly.

The Hegemony had sent three fleets somewhere. That left the rest of them stuck with the paperwork, the fuel bills, and the frightened traders who suddenly remembered they had cousins in the Persean League.

“Sensor sweep coming back,” someone said from behind her. “Residual wake near Syrinx.”

“Probably a convoy.” Dresch didn’t even look.

“Convoy’s late,” Vidik mumbled. “Three days overdue. Manifest said they’d take the outer well.”

“So they got brave and jumped in-system.”

She walked toward the sensor station, steaming cup of synth-kaf in hand. The officer on duty was leaning forward.

“Storm turbulence across the edge band,” he said. “And… something else. Power bloom.”

“Size?”

“Can’t tell. We’re getting distortion artifacts from the stormfront. Makes it look like a battleship group.”

That got her attention.

“What?”

“Could be a glitch. Happens when storms backlight an entry burn—throws off signatures. Makes a gunship look like a capital.”

Dresch rubbed her forehead.

“Scramble patrols. Recall outer cutters. Civilian ships to stand down. Lock all dock queues.”

“Seriously?” Maelin’s voice cut in. “You’re calling an alert on a sensor ghost?”

“I’m not risking my pension because someone forgot to calibrate a flux probe. Full Yellow.”

“Civilians will panic.”

“They’re already panicking.”

Command Deck – Five Minutes Later

The atmosphere had changed.

Across the holo-grid, systems lit up in coordinated red: docking clamps engaging, shielding fields recalibrating, patrol craft diverting from fuel stops.

Half the station was waiting for the hammer to fall—Luddic fanatics, Tri-Tachyon strike teams, rogue Persean League captains—

Instead, one ship arrived.

A single ship.

It bled through the storm fringe like a dying memory, drive cones fluttering, plating scorched and uneven. It looked like it shouldn’t fly. It looked wrong.

“IFF lock,” said the sensor officer.

“Multiple?” Dresch asked, already preparing a broadcast override.

“No. One ship. Scout profile. Wait—Domain hull class, old-style. Doesn’t match registry. Escort code from…”

He trailed off.

“Where?”

“Hegemony Auxiliary. But—Domain-standard override protocol. Clearance code six-zero-prime-delta.”

Dresch nearly dropped her cup.

“That’s not even… We haven’t used that in twenty cycles. Is that real?”

“It’s real.”

“Run full decrypt. Authenticate against Central Command.”

“Already doing it. High latency on the relay, but text should push through.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we’re going to look very, very stupid.”

Dresch sighed. She leaned back and tapped her comms pin.

“Maelin?”

“Still here. Is this the part where the world ends?”

“Prepare emergency meddock. Something’s coming in, and I don’t want to wait for authorization.”

“Got it. Do you want the methane barrels ready too?”

“Only if it explodes on contact.”

The station vibrated faintly as it realigned a docking port.

“Any response from Chicomoztoc?” she asked Vidik.

“No formal reply. We got a packet receipt confirmation, but the encryption server stalled. Best we can hope for is a relay bounce back within ten minutes. Assuming they’re not prioritizing military lanes.”

“They are.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 11 – All According to Protocol (Eventually)

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a pale wash across rows of humming intake terminals and auto-sifters. Lieutenant Max Erenth sat hunched over a holotable, nursing stim-tea that had long since gone cold.

“We’re behind again,” muttered the junior across from him.

“That’s because we’re always behind,” Max replied, not looking up.

The report stream ticked on. Refueling orders, maintenance slot conflicts, recycled logs from minor outposts. Most of it would be digested by machine filters before a living person glanced at it.

But then something odd passed through:
Citadel Arcadia – EMERGENCY TRANSMISSION – Code Class Delta-Prime
[Domain-Era Override Detected]

A second later, a ping from Field Confirmation Office 12 tried to attach a message:

“Requesting real-time packet confirmation: origin report enclosed. Possibly corrupted.”

Max blinked. He tapped the entry. The machine tried to route it to “Anomalous IFF Queue: Nonstandard Traffic,” already a dumpster fire of false positives.

Someone had already tagged it as ‘LOW PRIORITY – Legacy Format: Manual Review’.

Worse, someone had already binned it.

“Who flagged this?” Max asked, standing.

His junior scrolled through the log chain.

“J-Class Operator. College-level temp. Said encryption matched something obsolete. Probably another Luddic AI scare file.”

Max’s skin went cold.

The override code on the signal wasn’t just Domain-era. It was Threadneedle-series — a classification he’d only seen once, during a Level Five briefing two months ago. A ghost mission. Off the books. Expeditionary. Cadence.

He dove into the auto-binned packet and found a raw visual slice: static-scratched, burned hull, override seal flashing. Cadence was alive.

“I need a hardcopy. Now.”

“Sir, that’s… not protocol—”

Max was already tearing it off the plate.

Five Minutes Later – Corridor D-4, Upper Bureaucratic Sector
Status: Restricted Entry

The air smelled of ozone and disinfectant. Max ran past courier staff, upcutting toward the access lifts.

“Authorization,” a bored security officer said.

Max flashed his badge. Too low. The officer didn’t move.

“Urgent delivery. Red-class operational intel, Hegemony override.”

“This section doesn’t process fleet—”

Max tapped a secondary tag hidden behind his primary: an old-style Thule authorization chip with a low digit ID. The officer hesitated.

“One call, that’s all it takes,” Max warned.

“This isn’t the protocol.”

“This is the protocol when protocol fails.”

Behind the door was the suite of Councillor Deran Althis, a man known to most as a vaguely powerful liaison and to a few as the eyes Thule used when no one was looking.

Max pushed through. The door refused. He overrode it.

That’s when two interior security guards tackled him. He hit the marble-paneled floor hard, the hardcopy clutched against his chest.

“Unauthorized entry! Down, down—hands—”

“THREADNEEDLE RETURN – DOMAIN SIGNAL – REINFORCEMENT REQUEST—” he shouted.

The struggle froze.

“Let him go,” said a quiet voice from deeper in the office.

Councillor Althis stepped into view, half-buttoned uniform, reading glasses in one hand.

“He’s not wrong, is he?”

The guards released Max. He staggered up, shoved the hardcopy forward.

“Cadence is alive. Citadel Arcadia received her. Full override confirmation. Domain encryption. This was binned. Buried.”

Althis took the report with gloved hands. He scanned the header, his brow tightening with every line.

“How far did this get?”

“Nowhere. I caught it mid-dump. Your name was the only one I could trust that would move.”

Althis tapped a desk panel.

“Patch me to the Hegemon. Direct line. Override thirteen-alpha.”

“Sir?” asked the assistant behind him.

“Now.”

He turned back to Max, voice low.

“Walk with me, Lieutenant. You’ve just kicked the door off its hinges.”

Chicomoztoc – Sovereign Deck, Private Quarters of the Hegemon
Cycle c+208.05.01 – 07:08 Solar Time

Max Erenth had never seen the Sovereign Deck before.

Even the elevator smelled cleaner. The kind of filtered, ozone-rich sterilization that screamed, you don’t belong here. An escort team in unmarked duty blacks flanked him — not hostile, not friendly. Just aware. Their silence was louder than words.

Councillor Althis walked a few paces ahead, hands folded behind his back like this was just another audit hearing.

The hallway curved in slow arcs, lit not by the harsh flicker of admin-sector fluorescents, but soft gold panels embedded in obsidian-veined walls. A matte-black door slid open without hiss or ceremony.

Inside: low light, two chairs, a terminal set to sector-wide fleet readiness stats—and a man in a loose brown robe eating cereal from a forged-alloy bowl.

The Hegemon.

No guards. No aides. Just him.

He didn’t look up.

“This had better not be a diplomatic protest from the Persean League,” he grumbled, spoon pausing mid-air.

Althis cleared his throat.

“A late report, sir. A buried one. He caught it.”

That earned Max a glance. Not sharp, not slow. Just... evaluating. Like being measured for starship armor plating.

“Name?”

“Lieutenant Max Erenth. Logistics Oversight Bureau. Deep filter—Red-level.”

The spoon resumed its course. Crunch.

“Speak.”

Max stepped forward, spine rod-straight. His voice came faster than his thoughts.

“Message packet from Citadel Arcadia. Emergency docking. Domain override code. Origin confirmed as Cadence, the scout vessel attached to Operation Threadneedle. Reentry occurred one day prior.”

The spoon stopped again.

“Threadneedle.”
“Sir.”
“Continue.”

Max placed the hardcopy on the table beside the breakfast. The corner touched a splash of milk. He tried not to flinch.

“The packet contained full-stack telemetry. Reinforcement request attached, under combat-authenticated encryption. Cadence is alive—barely. Other ships presumed lost. Arcadia confirms. Local fleet sent rescue cutters. IFF showed valid XIV credentials. Current status unknown but... survivors confirmed.”

The Hegemon didn’t speak for ten seconds.

Then: another bite.

“Why am I hearing this now?”

“Sir...” Max’s mouth went dry. “It was flagged as a legacy-format transmission. Assigned ‘Low Priority: Manual Review.’ A junior binned it with Luddic spam. We pulled it back. Cross-verified encryption. I brought it here immediately.”

Another silence. Another spoonful. He still hadn’t looked at the report.

“Thule’s boys must be sleeping,” the Hegemon muttered, not without venom.

Althis folded his hands.

“They weren’t. They caught it, sir. But only after Max did.”

“Hmm.”

The Hegemon finally pushed the bowl aside and tapped the report open.

“...Fourteen-level override,” he said softly. “Domain fallback cipher. And it sat in someone’s junk queue.”

Max felt his pulse in his teeth.

The Hegemon stood—not suddenly, but with weight. The air in the room changed.

“Councillor, I want confirmation of Arcadia’s outbound cutter logs, visual records, docking telemetry. If there’s a fraud here, it’s industrial-grade.”

“Understood.”

“I want Fleet Logistics to prepare three ready groups for outbound support. Don’t send them yet. Just make the slots.”

He turned to Max.

“Lieutenant.”

“Sir.”

“Your report was late. But not too late. I will remember your name.”

Max swallowed. The concrete words hit like a fleet order.

“Yes, sir.”

The Hegemon walked to the viewport. The Aztlan sun was cresting above the orbital arcologies, casting golden haze through sulfur-scrubbed clouds.

“First contact in decades,” he murmured. “And we almost lost it to clerical shuffling.”

“Sir... with respect. We did lose it. I just... stole it back.”

“So you did.”

Another silence. But not an empty one.

“Get back to your station, Lieutenant. Someone has to clean up the mess while the rest of us pretend to plan.”

Max saluted. The Hegemon didn’t return it. He was already looking at fleet movements, murmuring to himself.

Chicomoztoc Prime – Intelligence Quiet Room, Compartmented Level A4
Cycle c+208.05.01 — The Fleets Have Already Departed

The walls didn’t echo in Quiet Room A4. They absorbed sound like the men and women inside absorbed blame — silently, urgently, and with practiced caution.

Admiral Thule stood at the head of a narrow obsidian table, palms flat. Eight analysts faced him in near-darkness, eyes reflecting only the shifting projections of data spheres: fleet telemetry overlays, decoded mobilization orders, a dozen tagged entries from the Spire’s sealed orders queue.

The room was always this cold, but today it felt personal.

“Run it again,” he said. Not loud. Not calm.

A woman in logistics-gray with a violet clearance badge recompiled the ping trail from Arcadia. From the Citadel, a high-clearance emergency transmission — scrubbed, repackaged, and stuck in an unimportant-signal bin by a junior triage node. A bin that Thule’s subnet should’ve been monitoring. A bin that didn’t get parsed for 36 hours.

“And who signed off the discard path?” Thule asked, eyes fixed on the blinking data point.

A rustle. No answer.

“Lieutenant Korr,” a thin man near the rear said eventually. “But she flagged it as partial anomaly. The validator code didn’t trigger escalation.”

“Because someone toggled the validator protocol.” He tapped the table. “Someone in this room.”

They all stared down.

He didn’t shout. He didn’t need to.

“Three departments touched that signal,” he continued, moving to the next feed — a simplified reenactment of the bureaucratic mess. “And not one of them had the spine to process the authentication chain. Not one.”

The woman in logistics-gray coughed.

“With respect, Admiral,” she began, “we were under realignment—our subnet was still routing codebase migration and—”

He raised one hand.

Then the ping came.

A Spire transmission. Silent. Visual-only.

Red header. Level 9 override.

Fleet Marshal Devrin: Reassigned. Performance Inquiry. Mobilization Irregularities.

It was worded like a footnote. But in this room, it hit like a torpedo.

One of Thule’s aides — a sharp-featured man with a voice made for denial — whispered:
“That’s not about readiness.”

“No,” Thule said. “That’s about visibility.”

He turned to the rear sphere. A separate feed — not a public one. One of his private backchannels, parsed from encrypted summary digests.

Max Erenth, LogOps → Operational Signal Coherence, XIV Logistics
Special Advisory Appointment – Sovereign Clearance Level

Another silence.

“Who?” someone muttered.

Thule gave a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“He’s the courier who kicked the door open.”

“Sir… you want us to scrub his background?”

Thule shook his head. “No. We do nothing.”

He circled the table, stopping near the logistics officer.

“Because now, the light is on,” he said. “You don’t swat the roach who found the torch.”

Then the door hissed open.

A man in plain black stepped in, holding a slim, sealed packet. He said nothing. Just placed it before Thule, then turned and left.

Thule didn’t open it right away. He stared at it like it might speak.

Finally, he broke the seal. Read.

Folded the page.

Tossed it into the incineration slot beside the table.

No one asked what it said.

“We listen better,” he said.

Then he walked out.

Penelope’s Star – Inner Belt Quarantine Zone
Cycle c+208.05.12 – “Rescue, But Make It Ugly”

The field briefing map was a blast door. Literally. Ripped from the forward bulkhead of a gutted refinery shuttle and propped against the command room bulkhead, scorched steel served as Vorelan’s preferred projection surface — matte, bombproof, and comfortably ironic.

Behind it, helm crew had gone semi-feral. Someone had drawn a smiley face over Tri-Tachyon’s latest patrol vector. The smile had three fangs and “Customer Support” etched beneath in permanent marker. No one had dared erase it in five days.

Rear Admiral Calen Vorelan leaned against a crate of anti-rad injectors, jaw tight, eyes ringed with sleep’s absence. The crate hissed occasionally — it had a leak somewhere. Everything did now.

"Casualties?"

Nav Officer Breya scratched at her scalp through the reinforced headset. "Two decoys slagged in the outer belt. One actual loss — Ploughshare. Nav array finally cooked. We spaced the drive core before Tri-Tach got close."

"Any survivors?"

"One. Jenkins. Again."

Someone groaned.

Vorelan muttered, "I’m starting to think he’s cursed."

The tactical map flickered — a minor EMP ping from one of the improvised mines, a fuel drum wired with capacitors and a single tearful sacrifice by the engineering crew. Not literal, probably. But you never asked too closely when someone shouted “The capacitor gods demand a terminal!”

"We’ve got five days left of this," Breya continued, "if Tri-Tach keeps perimeter ops. Less if they run another drone sweep with those new relay beacons. They’re herding us."

"Been herded before," Vorelan said.

"With fuel, sir."

Fair.

They had enough for another belt hop. Two, if they vented life support on half the auxiliaries. The engineers were already doing power cycles manually — pulling thermal bricks and praying to all six saints of voltage stability.

Vorelan looked around. His command circle was haggard, but sharp. These weren’t freshblooded ensigns or academy theorists. These were ex-smugglers, ex-runners, ex-people-who-learned-the-hard-way. People who didn’t panic until they were done panicking and were on fire.

So no one said the word "surrender".

They just played for hours. Minutes. Meters.

Until the impossible ping.

A gravitic distortion rolled across the long-range scans — an inertial sink spike, sharp, deliberate, not from Tri-Tach or from anything that should’ve been out here.

"Another feint?" someone muttered.

"Tri-Tach doesn’t run gravwell insertions," Breya countered. "Too expensive. Too visible."

Silence. The blast-door-map flickered. A new contact. Then two. Then six.

"Fleets."

"Heavy signatures. Slow burns. Wide formation," another tech whispered.

"Trying to scare us?"

"No…" the words drifted out like smoke. “I… think they’re on our side.”

There was a pause. A full minute.

"Verify IFF," Vorelan ordered. His voice didn’t rise, but everyone jumped.

Another flicker.

HSS Rampart – 18th Reserve Strike Group
HSS Prophet of Woe – 14BG Expeditionary Escort
HSS Moltke – 9th Rotational Detachment, Core Reserve Command

And more.

Each one bristled with XIV-era insignia — not pristine, like Tri-Tach’s showroom killers, but scarred, scorched, and very much real. Hegemony reinforcements. Actual reinforcements.

A noise escaped from Breya — almost a laugh, then not.

"You seeing this?"

"Not unless we’re all hallucinating," Vorelan said. “Though if this is death, I expected more violins.”

He walked to the internal intercom. Flicked it to fleet-wide.

His voice came low, flat, and too casual to be casual.

“Attention, all ships in the Penelope Quarantine formation. We are pleased to announce that our extremely boring and overly punctual friends from Central Command have, in fact, remembered we exist.

Please refrain from opening fire on them, even if their ships look like flying bricks — they are our flying bricks.

Recovery operations will begin shortly. In the meantime, anyone caught crying will be conscripted into the engineering corps. Again.”

The mic clicked off. No one moved.

Then chuckling.

Then howling laughter from some corner.

One of the techs dropped into their chair, shook their head, and muttered:

“Well, shit. Guess we actually get to die in the next system.”

Vorelan smiled.

Tired. Relieved. Very slightly amused.

Penelope’s Star – Inner Orbit Vector
Expeditionary Command CIC, Rear Admiral Halmar Presiding

Rear Admiral Talbrecht Halmar stared at the tactical projection like it owed him money.
Dozen heavy cruisers, a few dozen support elements, and two auxiliary carriers floated just outside the debris-flanked belt. Hegemony naval doctrine: mass, firepower, presence.

Across from them, the Tri-Tachyon flotilla painted itself with shimmering ECM haze and impossible sharpness—like a knife pretending to be a whisper. The tac-projected signature bloom from their latest gravimetric sweep made an elegant arc near the asteroid belt.

Nothing fired. Yet.

Halmar’s expression didn’t flicker. He embodied a stance the academy called The Iron Dismissal. Arms clasped behind his back. Face set to neutral disapproval. Voice not yet deployed, but ready.

And then—like a bulkhead forced open with a crowbar—Vorelan’s voice slammed through the comms.

“Ah! I see my invitation finally made it to the real navy. Welcome to the wrong side of nowhere, Admiral Halmar. My apologies for the decor. Had to repurpose a mining skiff into a CIWS platform, so things are a bit... ‘artistic’.”

The bridge froze.

Halmar didn't look up.

“Vorelan,” he muttered. “Are you transmitting on open channel?”

“Would I ever violate comm security, sir? This is a secure link. Mostly. Might be a few Tri-Tach ears, but they’ve heard worse. Like our engines not exploding.”

“Sitrep. Now.”

“Survivors accounted for. Crew at sixty-two percent effective strength. Ships... structurally interpretive. Morale's holding—mostly due to spite. We've improvised enough decoys, fake signals, and passive mines that Tri-Tach is currently playing interstellar whack-a-mole while trying to file for salvage rights.
Also, appreciate the timing. Any later and we’d have been charging them rent.”

A loud metallic CLANG echoed in the background.

A voice from far off:

“Sacrifice received! Reactor holding at eighty-eight percent! Tech gods appeased!”

“See?” Vorelan added, smug. “All part of the plan.”

Halmar rubbed his temple.

“You're in the asteroid belt?”

“Loosely. We prefer the term ‘strategic dispersal within a complex kinematic environment’. Sounds better on the after-action reports.”

“I’m not here for a comedy routine, Admiral.”

“Well, then you're really gonna hate my requisition form. Requesting standard munitions, dry rations, and six gallons of extra virgin lubricant for our comms array. Machine spirits need libations. And before you ask—yes, we tried Luddic hymns. The emitter started smoking.”

Halmar paused. Inhaled. Exhaled.

“I'll have my logistics officer process it.”

“Tell them to speak kindly to the crates. Last time someone insulted our torpedo loader, it jammed and ejected a warhead into the galley. Took out our coffee reserves. We almost mutinied.”

Halmar clicked the comm shut.

Seconds later, his XO leaned over.

“Sir, incoming comms ping. Civ-relay just went hot. Penelope Station's node just started broadcasting. Looks clean.”

Of course it did. Tri-Tach wanted a pause. Wanted a stall.

They were good at keeping things just plausible.

“Queue a diplomatic link,” Halmar said. “Let’s see how polite they get before the first lie.”

The relay flickered green. Channel open.

“Unidentified Hegemony task force, this is Tri-Tachyon operations commander Nerys Callen. Please identify your fleet per Article 9 of Interstellar Neutrality Accord Protocols. You are entering a disputed system under ongoing security operations. Do not obstruct civilian recovery efforts.”

The words were warm honey poured over legalese.

Halmar replied with iron.

“This is Rear Admiral Halmar, acting under direct orders from the High Hegemon. Your presence constitutes interference in an active Hegemony military operation. Withdraw or be formally recorded as hostile.”

“Then we are at an impasse, Admiral,” the Tri-Tach officer replied, ever calm. “Shall we await further clarification from Sector Command?”

Halmar cut the line.

Then—another ping.
This time: Vorelan again.

“I assume that went swimmingly. Anyway, if your fancy machines could drop a few pallets of rations in our general direction, I’ll send our one remaining salvage tug. And maybe don’t send it with Tri-Tach barcodes this time. My crew thinks it’s cursed.”

“I’m requesting status confirmation,” Halmar growled.

“Oh, we’re here. You just can’t see us. Trash clouds make lovely IR screens, and we’ve built enough debris ghosts to throw off three separate sensor sweeps. Tri-Tach probably thinks we’re a haunted mining colony by now.
And yes, Admiral, we’re ready—but if you see me firing the first shot, it’s because I’ve mistaken their flagship for a cargo hauler.”

“Duly noted.”

Vorelan’s voice softened, slightly.

“You came. Wasn’t sure you would.
Tell Command... we held.”

Halmar didn’t reply. He didn’t need to.

Behind him, the bridge crew reset to battle stations. The Customer Support smiley remained on the map—untouched.

It grinned at the void.

Tri-Tachyon Diplomatic Complex – Eochu Bres, Hybrasil System
Cycle c+208.05.14 – Closed Session, Inter-Faction Oversight Chamber

The air in the chamber smelled faintly of antiseptic and ozone — a scent engineered to convey sterility, precision, and authority. Glass walls projected soft-light privacy fields; holographic ribbons of legal documentation drifted above a polished obsidian table, awaiting signatures that could reshape the Sector’s current crisis into a manageable fiction.

On one side sat Envoy-Counselor Albrecht Tonn, flanked by a gaunt legal advisor and a Tri-Tachyon representative from the Department of Sectoral Transparency — an irony everyone in the room silently acknowledged.

Opposite: Senior Legate Deyra Voltan, acting on behalf of the Hegemony’s Admiralty Board and Office of Strategic Oversight. Her uniform was crisp, her expression set to “diplomatically annoyed,” and the tablet before her carried orders with enough strategic weight to turn the Hybrasil system into glass.

No one wanted that. Not today.

Tonn cleared his throat with engineered grace. “To begin, let me reaffirm that the events in Penelope’s Star, while… regrettable, have been thoroughly reviewed by our internal compliance apparatus. The Department of Emergency Containment Operations maintains that any Tri-Tachyon assets in the area were performing scheduled logistics patrols in accordance with Article 13 of the Mutual Recovery Charter.”

Voltan raised an eyebrow. “You mean the clause your firm authored?”

The lawyer beside Tonn didn’t blink. “Indeed. Tri-Tachyon prides itself on proactive regulation drafting.”

A flick of Voltan’s stylus brought up a line of data across the shared feed — a looping hyperspace intercept vector, tagged with falsified civilian IFFs.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

Tonn smiled tightly. “We understand, of course, that multiple interpretations can arise in operational zones with incomplete sensor fidelity. That’s why we’re here — to provide closure.”

Voltan leaned forward. “Closure would be a full tactical withdrawal from the Penelope system, formal apology, and restitution for endangered Hegemony personnel.”

There was a pause. A long one. The kind that made interns sweat.

“We propose,” Tonn said slowly, “a cooperative security framework. Joint anti-piracy exercises. Salvage recovery transparency. Mutually beneficial oversight.”

Voltan let out a small exhale — the closest a Hegemony officer ever got to a scoff in formal proceedings.

“You want us to pay you to leave,” she said.

“We prefer to think of it as... future partnership. Your recent expedition uncovered significant industrial assets — including a pre-Collapse nanoforge. Tri-Tachyon proposes a 12.5% resource participation in exchange for immediate stand-down and deconfliction.”

“7%,” Voltan replied, already tapping it in. “No presence on-site. Oversight permitted via relay node only. And we pick the auditors.”

The lawyer tried to interject. Tonn held up a hand. He was calculating, hard.

“Agreed. With a non-disclosure clause appended to the resolution package. All fleet movements to be categorized under ‘Joint Anti-Piracy Initiative 209-A.’”

“Filed as such,” Voltan replied, sending the provisional agreement to the Hegemony relay. “We’ll bury this, Counselor. But I suggest you have your Hybrasil installations checked for bugs. Our techs get… curious.”

Tonn gave her a look somewhere between admiration and threat. “It’s been a pleasure.”

“For you, maybe,” she said, rising. “I have a call to make. The High Hegemon will be very interested in how generous your firm has become.”

As the chamber’s light dimmed and the privacy fields dissolved, both delegations stood in perfect synchronization — leaving behind a tidy, bloodless, high-priced diplomatic compromise.

A crisis swept under the carpet. A file marked CONFIDENTIAL. A war that would, for now, be decided in whispers and signatures — not salvos.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11 – Terms and Conditions

Location: Citadel Arcadia – Detention Sector
Cycle 208.05.21

Elisa had stopped counting hours. The cell lights never dimmed, and the only way to mark time was the slow arrival of nutrient bricks—gray, beige, off-white, in a rotation she named for the different kinds of rock dust she'd seen in crater scans.

She lay on the hard cot, forearm draped over her eyes. Her ribs still ached—low, to the left—where the second interrogator had slammed her into a bulkhead corner. That had been... what? A day ago? Three? Impossible to tell. The pressure on her joints, the way her muscles dragged against the high-gravity interior of Citadel Arcadia, made everything feel like a tired fever dream.

The air smelled of sterilizer and machine oil. Somewhere above, reactor fans hummed through ancient ducts. Somewhere below, fluids gurgled through pipes that had never been designed to keep humans alive.

No one had said she was under formal arrest. Not that it mattered.

The first time they pulled her in, she tried reason. “I am Commander Elisa Rourke. Designation Cadence Actual. Assigned to Hegemony expeditionary forces under Admiral Vorelan. My orders are sealed. Priority Theta Black.”

The security officer had blinked slowly, then flipped to a new page on the datapad. “Where’d you get the ship?” he asked. “And what happened to the original commander?”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Second session, they dropped pretense. A larger man—logistics uniform, wrong rank pin—asked the same questions, but closer. Louder. When that didn’t work, they got physical.

She didn’t scream. But the bruises lingered.

By the third round, they were tired of her. “You think you’re special?” one of them muttered as they strapped her back into the shuttle seat, hands behind her spine. “You think pulling old codes makes you legit? You’re not on the rolls. Your IFF is a fake. And that ship? That ship is too clean.”

No mention of her crew. No acknowledgement that her systems had pinged Central Command on arrival. No response to her security alerts.

And worst of all—no indication anyone had even tried to check.

They wanted to wrap her up as a smuggler with a stolen high-tech frigate, or a deep pirate sleeper agent playing dress-up. Anything that let them file the case, close the tab, and move on to the next name.

Elisa pressed her fingers against her temple and exhaled slowly. Parade rest posture. Old habit. One foot behind the other, spine held straight. It didn't stop the hurt. But it helped her look like someone who still had command of something.

She wasn’t afraid of dying. She’d made peace with that years ago.

She was afraid of disappearing—of becoming a footnote on a corrupted station drive, buried under “incomplete identification” and “failure to verify source.”

The wall buzzed. Her next ration brick clattered into the chute.

Beige, today. Not a good sign.

The nutrient brick reeked faintly of soap.

Elisa forced herself to chew, trying not to breathe too deeply. The texture was somewhere between clay and packing foam, but the calories mattered. Calories were leverage. Calories meant she could still think clearly, still catalog her options. There weren’t many.

Her legs ached under the gravity drag of Citadel Arcadia’s inner ring. Her ribs still flared when she leaned wrong—courtesy of the second interrogation cycle. She’d stopped looking at the bruises. No mirrors in the cell. No windows either.

She swallowed hard. Her fingers were halfway to the next bite when the door slammed open.

No warning. No alert tone. Just magnetic locks disengaging with a bark of pressure, then motion—four figures entering in practiced formation. Three in gray combat harness. One in crisp dress uniform. And for the first time in a week, someone said her name.

“Commander Rourke,” the officer intoned. “You are ordered to accompany us.”

She froze.

Not Elisa. Not detainee. Commander. The word landed like a slap—sharp, clean, and entirely out of place. Her mind raced to interpret it even as two of the guards moved in.

“Up.”

A gloved hand caught her under the elbow. Another collected the ration tray. She was still swallowing as they pulled her to her feet. One of them moved too fast and her shoulder spasmed. No apology. Just forward motion.

She staggered into step. No cuffs. No force beyond necessity. But the message was clear—move, or be moved.

They marched her through three corridors, past blank bulkheads and sealed security hatches. Surveillance units tracked her but said nothing. She didn’t ask where they were going. She knew better now.

This wasn’t interrogation. It wasn’t execution.

It was… something else.

The door ahead opened into a narrow prep suite. Cold metal walls. Strip lighting. A folding stool bolted to the deck. One large bin marked BIOHAZARD – WASTE and a sealed garment bag hanging from a hook. Next to it, a low table loaded with medical applicators, face sculpt tools, and a worn stylist case that had once been navy blue.

Her guards stepped aside without a word.

A tired-looking woman in civilian blacks waved a scanner near Elisa’s cheek and grunted. “Hold still. You’ve got swelling around the orbital ridge. We’ll have to air-cast it.”

Elisa blinked. “What is this?”

“No talking.” The woman was already unpacking a canister of dermal spray. “This goes faster when no one gets clever.”

The pressure shower came first. She was stripped in seconds, shoved into a recessed chamber, and hit with three pulses of disinfectant mist that smelled like melted battery packs. The force made her stagger. When she tried to brace, a voice barked: “Palms to the wall.”

The water cycle lasted eight seconds. The drying cycle felt like skin being flayed by recycled air.

Then hands. Gloves. Cotton pads laced with antibiotic. The faint click of a bone wand checking her knuckles. A cool balm on the left side of her ribs—quick, clinical, impersonal. Not care. Just coverage.

She was still catching her breath when the stylist pressed the garment bag into her arms.

“Suit up.”

She opened it.

It was her dress uniform. Cleaned. Steamed. Medal ribbons aligned. One pin—unfamiliar—was affixed beside her existing commendation for aerospace logistics operations. She hadn’t earned that one. Not yet.

She dressed in silence.

The stylist began on her face. Foundation mesh. Heat seal. A tinted mist along her jaw to hide discoloration. Under-eye neutralizer applied with practiced indifference.

“Try not to squint.”

Elisa stared ahead.

In the mirror, a stranger stared back. Clean hair, uniform aligned by naval regulation, no trace of the boot bruises or baton marks. The woman in the glass could’ve walked out of a briefing room on Chicomoztoc, not a week-long ghost cell in Citadel Arcadia.

A final comb through her hair. A drop of synthetic moisture for each eye.

The stylist stepped back. “They’ll call for you when it’s time.”

Elisa remained still. The silence felt heavier than before.

Her reflection looked real.

But nothing about this was mercy.

Someone had made a decision. She wasn’t to be silenced, punished, or discarded. Not yet.

Someone needed her seen.

And that, finally, was something she understood.

Location: Citadel Arcadia – Ceremonial Chamber
Cycle 208.05.21 (station time: 13:52)

The ceremonial chamber still smelled faintly of sealant and burned ration packs.

Elisa Rourke stepped across the threshold and had to stop herself from scoffing. Someone had tried to make the place presentable. They had failed. The overhead lights buzzed in uneven cadence—half flickering white, half stained yellow like old teeth. A moth-eaten banner bearing the faded emblem of the 14th Battlegroup sagged over a wall patch where flaking paint bled around the corners. A hard-light projector hummed impotently against one panel, displaying a looping slideshow of “Core Values” that skipped every seventh frame.

She was marched to a marked square on the floor, the kind used for safety inspections or disinfection queues. No fanfare. No announcement. Just three people already in the room, pretending to be anywhere else.

Captain Lenara Dresch stood behind a lopsided podium, one hand clutching a stack of physical cards, the other tugging absently at the hem of her sleeve. She looked like she’d been dragged out of an argument with three departments and had lost all of them.

To her left stood a man in Legal-gray, and beside him, a woman in PR-blue. Both wore fixed expressions of practiced disinterest. Neither looked directly at Elisa. Or perhaps they just didn’t know how.

The silence stretched long enough to creak.

Captain Dresch cleared her throat. “We are gathered—”

She stopped, blinked at the card, and started again. “We are gathered to acknowledge a formal commendation… in accordance with fleet standard procedural update revision… ah, six-four-two-dash… never mind. Skip that.”

She flipped to the next card. “Following review of post-operational telemetry, chain of custody audits, and debrief appendices, Fleet Central Command has, in absentia, awarded Commander Elisa Rourke—”

She squinted at the card. “—recipient status of the Fourteenth Battlegroup Meritorious Distinction for Actions Beyond Operational Mandate.”

A cough from the Legal officer. Dresch flinched. “—For acts of extraordinary initiative and risk undertaken in hostile space, resulting in mission continuation and preservation of sector-critical intelligence assets.”

The projector sputtered. One banner behind her sagged further.

Elisa didn’t move.

Captain Dresch reached under the podium and retrieved a single sheet of paper. It was unsealed, unframed, and possibly printed ten minutes ago on the back of a requisition form.

She crossed the space between them with the grace of someone who very much wanted to be elsewhere.

“Commander,” she said, offering the page without eye contact. “Congratulations. On behalf of the sector.”

Elisa took the sheet. Her hand didn’t shake.

No one clapped.

She turned slightly, squared her stance, and saluted.

No one returned it.

She held the pose a second longer than required—long enough to see Dresch shift uncomfortably, long enough for the legal officer to flick his eyes away, long enough for the PR liaison to begin re-checking her dataslate for the next disaster.

Then she dropped the salute.

This wasn’t punishment. This was performance.

And someone had written her into the script.

A soft footfall behind her broke the silence. She turned to find a junior officer—dark-eyed, neatly uniformed—holding a small sealed envelope. It bore no insignia, but she didn’t need one.

The courier offered a quiet nod. “Rear Admiral Vorelan requests your presence. Recreation Deck Nine.”

Elisa tucked the envelope into her jacket, pivoted smartly, and left the room without another word.

Behind her, the lights buzzed. The banner drooped. And the farce quietly collapsed under its own weight.

Citadel Arcadia Observation Deck – Cycle 208.05.21
Orbital Highview Lounge – Reserved Section

The deck was built to impress — all steel-glass arcs and chrome lattice, a sterile attempt at elegance wrapped around a view of industrial hell. Outside the broad windows, battered hulls drifted in dock cradles, their paint scorched, panels hanging like torn fabric. Someone had spray-tagged “Tachyon My Ass” in magenta across a burn-scarred cruiser.

Rear Admiral Calen Vorelan watched the mural with amusement, a half-empty glass of something expensive in his hand and his boots crossed at the ankle. He was already a few sips in, relaxed, in uniform but with the collar unfastened like it was a social occasion — which, by his standards, it probably was.

Rourke arrived ten minutes late. Still limping slightly. Still rigid in the spine. She scanned the room like she was expecting to find a court-martial notice taped under her seat.

Vorelan waved her over.

“Commander. You’re either alive or a ghost,” he said, raising his glass. “Given the smell of station coffee, I hope the latter.”

She sat across from him stiffly. “You’re early.”

“I’m successful.”

That earned a faint smile. Rourke shifted in her seat, clearly still sore, and not just from baton bruises. She scanned the room, the crowd, then the windows.

Cadence was nowhere in sight.

“I thought they’d release my ship by now,” she said. “They got their confirmation.”

“Oh, they did. But paperwork moves at lightcrawl when it gets embarrassed.” Vorelan sipped. “You embarrassed the system. Now it doesn’t know where to file you.”

She frowned.

“I got a commendation.”

“Exactly.”

A silence passed. Somewhere below them, a round of off-duty shouting and bottle clinks rose from a cheaper bar. Vorelan glanced down and chuckled. “My XO tried to paint the entire starboard hull with profanity. Took four techs and a pressure washer to get it off. Not because of regulations, mind you — it was interfering with thermal venting.”

Rourke gave a soft exhale, halfway between a laugh and a sigh.

“They hit us hard,” she said. “Tri-Tach. They didn’t just want the ship. They wanted… all of it.”

“They always do.” Vorelan’s voice dropped slightly. “That’s why I signed up with the navy. I’d rather get shot by people who announce it in advance.”

He leaned forward.

“You know why your crew’s still under watch? Because the suits upstairs think you’re too competent to be accidental. You did things Domain-style. You survived like you’d trained for it. That makes them nervous.”

“Shouldn’t that make them grateful?”

“It’s the Sector. Gratitude’s a currency. One they only spend when desperate.”

Rourke toyed with her glass. “I keep trying to make sense of it. The arrests, the delay, the way they treated us. It’s like they thought we were the threat.”

Vorelan studied her a moment. His expression softened — just a little.

“You didn’t come up through the underside, did you?”

“No.”

“I did. Had my ships impounded more times than I care to count. I’ve had cargo stolen by customs, sold back to me by the same officer a week later. This—” He gestured vaguely at the room, the station, the Sector. “—this place runs on grift, suspicion, and overcompensating bureaucrats.”

He refilled her drink without asking.

“But you’ve earned something they can’t ignore. And now, they have to decide what to do with it. You’re lucky the Hegemon likes heroes. Especially quiet ones.”

She looked down at the rim of the glass, then up at him again.

“You seem… remarkably calm about all this.”

“I’m always calm after I survive something stupid.” He tilted his head, amused. “You should try it. Builds character.”

Another silence. Less tense this time.

Outside, a flock of drones buzzed past on a refit cycle, their trails flickering against the system’s pale light. Somewhere in the distance, a crew was laughing about something — a victory, a raid, or maybe just a well-earned drink.

Inside, the observation deck was strangely quiet. Two people, two paths, sharing orbit.

Vorelan took a final sip and leaned back in his chair.

“I’ve seen how things fall apart,” he said. “This time, maybe we held it together. Just barely.”

Rourke nodded. The glass felt heavier in her hand than it should’ve.

From here, the Sector didn’t look any kinder.

But at least tonight, it looked survivable.

The broadcast hadn’t changed in half an hour. If anything, it had gained another brass-buttoned general.

On the lounge’s observation deck, the Citadel Arcadia's panoramic window framed docked ships like suspended models. Fireworks from a barge crew’s makeshift celebration glittered just outside the shielding field, harmless and harmlessly unauthorized. Inside, the screen blared on.

Rourke sipped the local variant of synth-coffee, more burnt than brewed. She kept her eyes on the absurdity before them.

“…and the heroic efforts of Governor Persean Sector Defensive Logistics Force, without whom—”

“Without whom we’d still have crates on the landing pads,” Vorelan muttered, nearly slurring. He was halfway through his second tumbler of whatever passed for proper whiskey here. Possibly paint thinner, judging by the smell.

Rourke glanced at him. “You good?”

“Better than most of the people on that screen,” he chuckled. “Screen’s not wide enough to fit their egos. Or their expense accounts.”

The program cut to a slow pan of the nanoforge. Still in its crate. Four honor guards stood at crisp attention beside it, unmoving. In the background—clearly unintended—two sector governors gestured at one another, caught mid-argument before the camera awkwardly cut away.

Vorelan nearly spat his drink. “Gods. Still fighting over the damn thing. Haven’t even plugged it in, and already the infighting starts.”

On cue, a symphony of declarations erupted from the next shot: proclamations of unity, efficiency, prosperity. Hegemony flags waved in engineered wind. A wide shot of tri-tach officers shaking hands with military dignitaries under the banner of ‘Joint Sector Stabilization Efforts – Phase Two’.

Rourke narrowed her eyes. “They really called it that?”

“Oh yeah,” Vorelan said. “Phase One being ‘let everything go to hell’.”

A ticker scrolled beneath the noise:

DIRECTIVE 4417-B: Force Readiness Realignment Initiative – Coordinated Audit of Strategic Doctrinal Performance & Logistics Throughput Compliance…

Bureaucratic death in slow motion.

Vorelan raised his glass in a mock-toast. “That’s the axe.”

Rourke leaned forward, reading it again. “That’s it?”

“It’s always the boring ones,” Vorelan said, suddenly clear. “No names. No targets. But every Rear Admiral worth their commission is reading that and quietly burning their staff rotas. Because they know whose ass is next.”

She looked at him.

“The Hegemon?”

Vorelan nodded slowly. “This is his play. And make no mistake — he waited for this. He got the perfect excuse. Max played the hero, Thule did his usual whisper campaign cleanup, and a dozen bureaucrats just realized they’re one misfiled form away from early retirement via decompression.”

Silence settled over them. The fireworks outside had stopped. Only the low hum of the docking clamps echoed through the deck, and the screen’s sound now felt distant, like a performance on another planet.

Vorelan finished his drink. Then looked at her.

“We’ve had our laugh. But this…” he gestured to the screen, “...this is a declaration.”

“Of what?”

“That the play’s not over. The cast is being rearranged.”

He stood, a bit less steady than usual, but eyes sharp now. “I’ve said enough for one night. If you want to talk about what comes next…”

He tapped the commlink on his wrist. “My flagman's got real walls. Real coffee, too. Let’s say tomorrow. No audience.”

Rourke just nodded, quietly watching the crate on the screen as two more names were added to the honor roll.

Citadel Arcadia – Dock 3B – Cadence Crew Quarters
Cycle 208.06.17 – 06:42 SST

The air inside Cadence still carried the scent of scorched insulation and displaced panel dust. A faint, persistent whine from a disconnected pressure equalizer grated at the edge of hearing. Most of the overhead lights were working—most—but some flickered like half-forgotten warning strobes, giving the room a twitchy heartbeat.

Malik Selak ducked out of the maintenance conduit, dragging a coil of flex tubing behind him and slapping dust off his sleeves with the air of a man who had just conquered something mildly ridiculous. He waved a diagnostic slate in one hand and declared, to no one in particular:

“Shower’s operational. Long live the cook.”

From deeper in the crew deck came a wordless cheer—not of celebration, more a weary confirmation that the war for decency had a new front. The words had barely left Malik’s mouth before the sound of heavy boots announced Masel’s arrival, half-shuffling in with a stack of freshly-printed forms under one arm and a grimace halfway to a smile.

“Good. Otherwise I’d have to sign a declaration of morale collapse. I’m pretty sure the cook was one unwashed day from declaring kitchen secession.”

He flopped onto an upturned supply crate and started leafing through the papers with the automatic grace of someone who didn’t expect them to matter—but then frowned. Again. Then blinked.

“They’re actually… processed. Not just stamped, I mean correctly processed. No counter-claims, no missing attachments, even got an apology from Procurement Three.”

Malik raised an eyebrow. “Apology? You run into alternate reality Masel? The one that files polite requests?”

Masel didn’t rise to the bait. He was too tired. “Someone saluted me. Called me ‘logistics chief second-tier adjunct.’ I’m not correcting it.”

He was halfway through setting his forms down when Elisa walked in, moving stiffly, her uniform jacket hung over one shoulder and her hair pulled into a half-done tie. She looked like she’d spent the night rolling across corrugated steel. Because she had.

“Who the hell designs a ship where the quietest corner has two coolant access valves,” she muttered. “I think my spine is shaped like a question mark now.”

“You could’ve taken the medbay cot,” Malik offered.

“Last I saw it, there were three panels on the floor, a bio-scanner error loop, and someone’s boot jammed into the wall bracket.”

Masel glanced up with a sympathetic nod. “Want me to requisition a mattress?”

“I want whoever certified this ship as ‘nominally inhabitable’ to be court-martialed,” she replied, and dropped into a seat that used to be bolted down. It slid a few centimeters. She didn’t care.

There was a quiet lull. Just the whir of a vent fan trying too hard, and the occasional clink of Malik’s tools as he packed them back into the improvised kit bag.

Then he broke the silence with a smirk.

“You know, if the investigators just tried to yoink the shower, that’s still better than when dock hands tried to yoink the thruster assembly. At least shower blocks are easier to reinstall.”

Masel let out a sound that was half groan, half flashback.

“Oh don’t. Don’t remind me. ‘At least sixty-two percent of components procured legally,’ remember that? That maneuvering thruster came off a carrier. I had to invent a whole shipping invoice format to make that retrofit stick.”

Malik gave a theatrical shrug. “Worked fine until it didn’t.”

“That’s not the comfort you think it is,” Masel replied.

Elisa just stared at the wall plating, her mouth twitching into a tired grin.

The coffee substitute tasted like someone had boiled old wiring and regret.

Masel didn’t care. He sipped anyway, cradling the mug in both hands like it might burn away the memory.

The room had quieted after Malik’s last joke. The hiss of the heating coil, the occasional thump from someone shifting weight in the overhead crawlspace—Cadence was alive again, barely. But the three in the common area didn’t speak at first. They didn’t need to.

Eventually, Masel leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Then he exhaled like he was emptying something heavy.

“My cell block? Wasn’t a cell block. They called it a holding barracks. I’ve seen more order in a failed supply drop.”

He shook his head slowly, mug still in hand.

“There were fifty of us. Jammed elbow to spine into a prefab steel coffin that probably used to house drone parts. One guy had been screaming for two days straight—some pharmac failure. Another kept offering to ‘solve problems with teeth.’ Claimed he’d eaten his last CO. I didn’t ask follow-ups.”

Malik gave a low whistle. “Any good conversation?”

Masel didn’t look up. “Someone tried to mug me for my bootlaces. I didn’t have laces.”

A beat.

“They weren’t interested in who I was. Ranks didn’t matter in there. Uniform tags didn’t matter. We were just a stack of warm bodies that might become transfer paperwork.”

He paused.

“I spent twelve hours next to a guy on his way to a penal colony in the Valhalla  system. He kept talking about how he volunteered to dig thorium with a broken shovel rather than take a firing squad. I believe him.”

Elisa shifted slightly but said nothing.

Masel turned to Malik. “What about you? You got scooped early, right?”

Malik gave a small smirk and took a gulp from his own mug.

“Did I hell.”

He leaned back, one boot propped up on a sideways crate.

“Soon as the marines hit the docking clamps, I was gone. Slid down the starboard service crawl, looped through the conduit armature, and buried myself behind the backup reactor relays. Took them three hours to realize I wasn’t answering pings.”

Masel raised an eyebrow. “You hid?”

Malik shrugged. “I navigated. There’s a difference.”

He set his mug down with a thunk.

“Three days. Lived on expired protein bricks and fire suppression gel I filtered for water. I monitored the patrol teams by listening to the cooling cycle on their boots. They’re loud. Sloppy. Almost got out clean.”

Elisa raised an eyebrow. “Almost?”

Malik gave a theatrical sigh.

“I tried to break Masel out.”

Masel blinked. “You what?”

“Came through Vent D7 with a bent panel key, half a medkit, and a fire extinguisher I was going to use as a battering ram. Had a whole speech planned.”

Elisa choked slightly. “Oh gods.”

“They found me halfway through the vent cover. One marine screamed, the other just tased me. Woke up in solitary, wrists bound to a wall bracket and someone yelling about internal sabotage.”

Masel looked simultaneously horrified and impressed. “You were going to jailbreak me with foam propellant and hope?”

Malik grinned. “More or less. Honestly? Might’ve worked if I’d had my multitool.”

He paused. Then frowned. “They took it. Confiscated it. I liked that one.”

Masel reached into his coat, rummaged for a moment, then pulled out a familiar, oil-smudged multitool with a strip of Cadence panel tape still stuck to one side.

He tossed it across the table. It landed with a soft clack.

“Recovered from Evidence Locker E-Nine. Still smells like guilt and pocket lint.”

Malik picked it up reverently, turned it over, and smiled like he’d just been handed his soul back.

“Gods bless whoever you blackmailed for that.”

“No blackmail,” Masel said. “Not this time. Bureaucrats were practically lining up to help. I’m… not sure how to feel about it.”

The silence returned, heavier this time.

Elisa hadn’t spoken much. Now, she leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands around her mug like it was something to hold her steady.

“They never booked me. Never gave me a cell. Just pulled me in. One room to the next. Questions, lights, fists when they got bored.”

She didn’t change tone. It wasn’t a confession—it was a statement of fact.

“They didn’t want answers. They wanted a story. Pirate captain with stolen Domain ship. Rogue AI asset. Foreign agent. Whatever looked neat on a report.”

Her fingers curled slightly around the ceramic.

“They didn’t check credentials. Didn’t acknowledge system pings or chain-of-command logs. They just saw a woman with too-clean armor and command stripes not on any current manifest. And they decided I was guilty until someone more important said otherwise.”

Neither Malik nor Masel spoke for a moment.

Then Malik, softly: “Still got off lighter than the guy who ate his CO.”

Elisa gave a dry, humorless laugh.

“He probably got a faster trial.”

The lights flickered again—barely noticeable this time, a rhythm the crew had stopped noticing. The only real sound was the quiet wheeze of the air processor in the ceiling duct, steady and slightly uneven.

They’d run out of small talk. The mugs were empty, even the cracked one someone had salvaged from the galley sink. The warmth had long since faded from the room.

Masel broke the silence first.

“So what are we now, exactly?”

Elisa glanced up.

“Officers, I think. Technically.”

Masel didn’t laugh.

“Technically doesn’t hold up in court. Not in this sector.”

He leaned back, balancing the chair on two legs as he rubbed his temple.

“I’ve seen our files. Half a dozen different classifications in six days. Auxiliary, suspected rogue unit, flagged asset, commendation recipient, and—my favorite—‘pending strategic evaluation.’ No rank tags. No chain-of-command routing. Just… floating.”

Malik let out a low whistle and twirled the multitool between two fingers.

“So, uh. What’s the over-under on us turning pirate if we step left instead of right?”

Masel gave him a look. “It’s not funny.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

Malik’s voice wasn’t bitter. Just flat.

“They don’t have to arrest us again. They just have to stop helping. And we’d be out of fuel and outside the law in under a week.”

No one answered immediately. The air processor clicked.

Then Masel straightened slightly, tapped the datachip he'd left near his cup. His tone shifted—more official now. Drier. Practiced.

“I’ve gone through the cryopod manifests. Twice. Everything recovered from the Threadneedle wreckage is logged—cargo, personnel, drives, salvage, evidence tags. We got mostly specialists. Researchers, techs, logistics attaches. One propaganda officer. No command staff. Not one.”

Elisa blinked. “None?”

Masel nodded once.

“Command deck was destroyed. Confirmed KIA on bridge and backup CIC. No ranking officers in cryo. Not even mid-level liaisons. You’re it.”

The silence stretched.

Malik looked between them, then raised an eyebrow.

“You mean—”

Masel cut him off. “She’s the highest-ranking surviving officer of the Threadneedle expedition. With the ship to prove it. By fleet continuity protocols, and I checked, that makes her command.”

He glanced at Elisa, then softened the tone slightly.

“Whether she wants it or not.”

Elisa didn’t respond immediately. She stared down at the scarred tabletop, thumb drifting idly across a heat-scuffed section of laminate.

“Vorelan knew.”

Masel raised a brow.

“How do you figure?”

She looked up, voice steady.

“Because the commendation wasn’t mercy. It was a placement. That uniform, that medal, that speech? It wasn’t about forgiveness. It was about use. He wasn’t clearing me—he was assigning me.”

Malik let out a slow breath. “And we walked right into it.”

Elisa nodded.

“He made me visible. Official. Easier to track. But harder to erase.”

Masel folded his hands, gaze distant.

“They weren’t hunting the nanoforge. They weren’t chasing tech. They were hunting narrative. They needed something to tie the chaos together. A success story. A command chain. A symbol.”

He looked back at her.

“That’s you. And like it or not… now it’s us.”

Malik offered a weak grin. “Always wanted to be someone’s political cover.”

No one laughed.

The hum of the ship filled the pause again. Somewhere aft, a duct banged shut. Cadence breathed.

Elisa stood slowly, her back still stiff from the night on metal, and looked around the crew quarters—the exposed wiring, the patched systems, the jury-rigged normalcy.

“We’re not safe.”

Masel nodded. “Not even close.”

“But we’re still moving.”

She looked at them both.

“And until someone makes that a problem, we hold course.”

Malik gave a small, tired salute.

Masel raised his mug—empty, still.

Outside, the station lights pulsed faintly through the bulkhead.

Inside, the board had shifted.

And for the first time, they saw the edge.

Citadel Arcadia Orbital Drydock, Morning, ~09:40 station time
Heron-class Light Carrier “Fireweld” — Flagship of Rear Admiral Calen Vorelan

The lift hissed open with a hydraulic sigh, revealing Elisa Rourke to the main gangway of Fireweld.

A dockyard security detail awaited — not with rifles drawn, but with the kind of stoic alertness that said orders came from high. The ranking petty officer gave a short nod.

“Commander Rourke,” he said. “Admiral’s expecting you. Asked you be given a look around first. This way.”

The corridor ahead was narrow, though technically rated for Heron-class logistics. That was theory. In practice, bundled cable spines hugged the ceiling like parasitic vines, tool kits littered each bulkhead station, and the walls were scabbed with dented panels in the middle of being stripped for replacement. It was less a warship and more a surgical theater mid-operation — and the patient was awake.

They passed a team of techs hauling an auxiliary capacitor casing on a repurposed mess trolley. A loud clang echoed, followed by:

“Spirits preserve us — someone find me a calibration wand that isn’t duct-taped to a goddamn spanner!”

A roar of laughter erupted nearby.

Another crewman, perched atop a power junction with one leg swinging, saluted with a half-eaten ration bar.

“Clear the relay conduit!” someone barked from deeper inside.
“Tech gods demand cleanliness!” came the enthusiastic reply.

Rourke raised an eyebrow. Her escort didn’t react.

They turned down a secondary corridor. Someone had tried to clean it — relatively. The stink of long-worn uniforms and spent coolant packs had faded beneath aggressive sanitizer and recent paint. Faint traces of graffiti remained where someone had scrawled a three-eyed goat wearing a Tri-Tachyon hat. Below it: “I updated firmware without asking.”

Several young crew were gathered around a chart wall, poking at the remains of a system map. The officer leading her paused as they passed.

At one junction, a half-drunk petty officer was being frog-marched back aboard by two of his mates.

“Can walk,” he slurred, feet dragging. “Just gotta recalibrate gyros…”

“You recalibrated four bottles ago,” one of them said. “Now you calibrate a mop.”

By the time they reached the CIC vestibule, the tone had shifted. Fewer techs, more uniforms. A senior noncom inspected a touchscreen diagnostics panel, swearing quietly as she compared output readings to hand-written tolerances.

“Too many safeties still tripped,” she muttered. “If it’s not glowing red, it’s probably just lying to us.”

A maintenance drone chirped as it backed down a tight corridor. Its display read “REBOOT PENDING SACRIFICE”.

“Don’t mind that,” the officer escorting her said. “We taught it sarcasm. Boosts morale.”

They stopped outside a heavy, manually reinforced hatch — one of the few doors still bearing burn scoring from the Penelope belt chase.

Admiral Vorelan’s seal had been welded crookedly back into place.

“Commander,” the escort said, stepping aside with a faint grin. “Good luck.”

Rourke took a breath. She looked back down the corridor — at the cables, the mess, the banter. At a warship that had once flown with pirate packs and now served the Hegemony, not out of loyalty, but out of sheer stubborn effectiveness.

Then she turned, tapped the chime, and stepped through.

The blast door closed behind her with a dry, mechanical grunt — an old seal grinding back into place, still bearing the faded graffiti of some long-forgotten crew: a jagged smile with three fangs, scrawled in corrosion-resistant paint. Someone had added tally marks underneath. A joke, maybe. Or a count.

The bunker still smelled of burnt coolant and half-scrubbed combat stress — layers of metal fatigue and recirculated grit that even the Fireweld’s best filters couldn’t quite wash out. No trophies here. Just systems still humming under patched plating, and a dim striplight flickering on one side of the ceiling like it hadn’t been touched since Penelope’s Star.

Rear Admiral Calen Vorelan sat alone at the central table, sleeves rolled, datapads spread out like a failed card game. He looked up without surprise and gestured toward a dented thermal tin.

“Coffee?” he offered.

Elisa arched a brow. “You have real coffee?”

He passed her a cup, careful, as if it were contraband — which, to be fair, it was.

“Grown in a garden dome on some Church-aligned dustball,” he said. “They call it devotional crop rotation. No one asks questions, so long as the bishops don’t see it. Smuggled through six jump points, three bribes, and one very creative classification stamp.”

She took a cautious sip. Then blinked. “It’s… annoyingly good.”

Vorelan grinned. “Ludd may be the patron saint of broken ship components and missing bolts, but they grow a hell of a bean.”

Elisa exhaled through her nose. “Back on Cadence, we blamed Ludd for anything that caught fire without warning. I suppose it’s fair he gets credit for this too.”

“The Great Maker works in mysterious logistics,” Vorelan said, raising his cup in mock salute.

She gave him a dry look and settled into the seat opposite.

“Anyway,” he sighed, rotating a pad with the practiced motion of a man triaging nonsense. “Post-op chaos is in full bloom. You know how it goes.”

He tapped the first file. “Two frigate captains arrested after a bar fight. Disputed who logged the first contact with the enemy. Now they both sit in a brig, demanding we review helmet cam footage.”

Another tap. “Marines are refusing to do anything that isn’t officially listed on the duty roster. They say they upheld order during a grey-zone engagement and therefore qualify for field leave. And hazard pay.”

A third. “Dockworkers filed an official claim for emotional compensation. Apparently someone mentioned ‘precursor weapons’ within earshot of the break room.”

Elisa blinked. “That’s… creative.”

“The union even wrote it in spiritual terms. Claimed they’ve suffered from ‘existential proximity anxiety.’”

He downed the rest of his coffee like a man trying to forget.

A flick of his hand opened a side display — logistics requisition queues. Dozens of them, flashing red or amber.
“Half our supply system is frozen,” he said. “Other half’s pretending not to exist.”

She glanced over the list, wincing. “That bad?”

“Worse. Parts that do arrive? Vanish into inventory bunkers guarded by quartermasters who’d sell their children before parting with an extra junction valve.” He tapped the screen. “There’s a reason we never audit those compartments.”

Elisa tilted her cup, considering. “Cadence hasn’t had problems,” she said slowly. “Requests go through. People call back. Once, someone even offered us a better substitute.”

Vorelan looked up. “Yes. Curious, isn’t it?”

She gave him a sideways glance. “You’re saying that’s not goodwill?”

He smiled, but there was no humor in it.

“Call it a side effect of a certain… paper offensive,” he said. “Your people left some very precise footprints in the bureaucracy. Turns out, when someone wins a supply duel on record — and makes others look lazy in the process — they get noticed. And left alone.”

He leaned back, eyes half-lidded.

“People think battles are won with broadsides and maneuvers,” he said. “But here, in the post-glory silence? It’s requisitions and toilets. That’s where the real power lives.”

Elisa stared at her empty tin.

“Glorious victories always come with broken toilets and missing requisitions,” Vorelan said, tone deadpan. “That’s how you know it’s real.”

The coffee tin was still warm in her hands when Vorelan reached across the table and tapped his slate. One file, one label, floated into view — projected above the table surface in flat yellow lettering:

AUXILIARY CUSTODIAL CUSTODY — REVIEWED PENDING

He didn’t say anything. Just let it hang in the filtered light of the room, its bureaucratic neatness more unnerving than anything he’d said so far.

Elisa read the line twice. Then again. Her jaw clenched, barely visible.

“This is a designation used for impounded drones,” she said.

Vorelan gave a small nod. “Or undocumented salvage. Or prototype systems awaiting compliance clearance.”

She looked up. “We’re a fleet footnote.”

“Depends who’s reading,” he replied mildly.

He reached for his empty cup, then decided against it. His tone had shifted — the casual drift gone, something heavier under the words.

“They’ve branded you as both anomaly and asset. Which means you’re too valuable to discard, and too dangerous to authorize.”

Elisa let the slate flicker dim. “We reported. Every channel. Standard pings, sealed orders. Cadence followed protocol.”

“That’s part of the problem,” he said. “You followed it too well. Systems upstream weren’t ready for Domain-standard anything. You showed up with clean encryption and proper chain-of-command headers — like a myth wandering into someone else’s war story.”

“And that made us a threat.”

Vorelan didn’t deny it.

She stared down at the scarred table surface.

“They put me in a cell. Interrogated me like a smuggler. Hit me, more than once. Left me in a hole and waited to see if I’d break.”

Vorelan’s face didn’t change. “No official detainment record. No signed charge forms. Technically, you were under ‘reactive custody hold.’ Which makes everything you just said a… jurisdictional oversight.”

Her laugh was short and bitter. “Station Commander Dresch runs a hell of a hospital.”

He smirked, dry. “She runs the station like a cross between a fire drill and a PR disaster drill. You got caught in the paperwork between both.”

Elisa set the tin down. The echo of its contact with the table was sharper than it should’ve been.

“What are we, then? Legal fiction? Mascots?”

“You,” Vorelan said, “are presently listed as commendation-awarded, unassigned auxiliary with prior expeditionary clearance, pending strategic review.”

She stared at him.

He leaned forward, voice quieter now.

“You’re a story someone doesn’t want to finish writing. As long as you don’t move, no one has to commit. No orders. No approvals. No responsibility.”

He sat back. “But you’re visible now. That commendation? That medal? That was a marker. A signal.”

“For what?”

“That no one can make you disappear quietly. Not without raising questions.”

Elisa’s mouth was set in a hard line. “So I’m protected.”

Vorelan met her eyes. “Like a holy relic. Kept safe in a vault.”

A pause.

Then, just before she could respond, he added:

“One no one ever visits.”

“You once said Threadneedle was your last big command,” Vorelan said quietly. He didn’t look at her, just pulled open one of the recessed lockers behind the central table. “That you’d finish the mission, file the reports, and settle planetside.”

She didn’t answer. The room filled with the faint shuffle of layered paper as Vorelan extracted a sealed folder from within the locker — thick, old, wrapped in translucent insulation plastic. A faded stamp bled through the outer sheet: XIV Battlegroup — Legacy Secure.

The edges were curled. The paper inside was real, aged to soft yellow. The folder looked like something passed hand to hand across three wars and forgotten beneath the weight of a thousand more urgent decisions.

He placed it on the table between them and peeled the seal open. No dramatics, just the quiet click of old adhesive pulling apart.

Inside: printouts, handwritten annotations, schematics rendered on microfilm cards. The top sheet bore a stenciled title in stylized Domain script:

ECHO-ROOT INITIATIVE — SECTOR RELAY BOOTSTRAP STRATEGY REVISION 8H
Authority Key Required – Manual Recovery Path

Elisa stared at the name. Her lips didn’t move, but the tension in her eyes changed.

“It started in the twilight days,” Vorelan said, tone low and even. “Once fallback protocols failed. The auto-repair routines weren’t enough. AI relay control collapsed. The gates stayed dead.”
He tapped a page inside. “So the 14th started building plans to reactivate the network from the outside. Manually. Incrementally. Without central command.”

She ran her fingers along the edge of the folder — not opening it, not yet. Just feeling the texture of something that should have been impossible to misplace.

“Looks familiar,” she murmured.

Vorelan nodded. “It should. That team you brought out of Threadneedle? They were working on something almost identical. Different label. Same hope.”

She sat back slightly. The puzzle finished itself behind her eyes.

“They were under contract to the Federation,” she said. “Project Morendo. Federation fallback science unit. Mostly theory, no platform. They didn’t even get final clearance to start building.”
She glanced at the folder again. “They never knew about Echo-Root.”

“No one did,” Vorelan said. “That’s why it survived.”

Vorelan let the silence stretch, then tapped the folder again — two fingers, deliberate.

“This isn’t a formal resurrection,” he said. “Echo-Root isn’t on any strategic index. There’s no directive, no budget line. But the work is still valid. And the tools still exist — scattered, under false labels, buried deep.”

He reached into the same locker and pulled out a second bundle. This one thinner. Standard navy parchment. Letterhead from the Chicomoztoc Fleet Academy.

“On paper,” he continued, “this is a training post. Mid-career instructor assignment, orbital rotation. You’ll file paperwork. Supervise cadets. Maintain a historical platform for practical instruction.”
He looked up. “That platform will be Cadence.”

Elisa’s brow furrowed. “Cadence is a wreck.”

“She still runs. And she’s full of problems young officers should learn to fear.” He gave her a sideways look. “Besides, as long as the cadets are sufficiently terrified by you, no one will question your syllabus.”

She didn’t laugh, but the edge of her mouth twitched.

He grew serious again.

“The tech team you brought back stays on, classified as engineering consultants. The Threadneedle scientists get pulled under the Academy’s civilian research grant, listed as specialist faculty under your command. Their files stay internal. Their work gets mislabeled. But they’ll be working — not sleeping.”

Elisa looked down at the folder again. Echo-Root. Her hand hovered over it this time.

“You’re offering protection,” she said.

“I’m offering motion,” Vorelan replied. “Protection only comes after you become too useful to sideline.”

She gave him a long, unreadable look. “And your bosses?”

He tilted his head, expression shifting into something between respect and mild exasperation.

“His Grumpiness won’t bless it out loud. But he’ll look the other way long enough for you to make it awkward to shut down.”

She understood who he meant. The Hegemon didn’t issue orders anymore — just weighted silences. But Vorelan wasn’t the type to bet his name on a project unless the silence had weight behind it.

“And the risk?” she asked.

He didn’t sugarcoat it.

“If the Admiralty Board notices before you’ve built cover, they’ll smother it. Not maliciously. Just bureaucratically. Redirect the team. Rename the project. Bury it under three new doctrines until no one remembers what it was for.”

He placed the Academy assignment and the Echo-Root folder side by side.

“But if you move now — if you secure a budget line, a few backers, maybe publish something halfway convincing — then by the time they look, it’ll be part of the furniture.”

He stood, slow but deliberate.

“The fleet’s in dock for the week. After that we relocate. That’s your window.”

He picked up his cup again — now long empty — and made for the door.

Before stepping out, he paused.

“If you want to talk, just call. Use the sideband channel. We’ll sort things out.”

He didn’t wait for a reply.

The door slid open with a sigh and shut behind him with a metallic thunk, sealing the war room back into silence.

Elisa looked at the papers. One hand hovered over the faded 14th Battlegroup heraldry.

And then — finally — she reached for the first page.

Location: Cadence – Common Room → Storage Bulkhead
POV: Elisa Rourke

The common room was halfway to normal — or at least, normal by Cadence standards. The lights flickered once every two minutes, the left wall panel still hung open with its cabling exposed like spilled guts, and someone had reprogrammed the snack dispenser to emit faint static each time it was used. A single crate of mismatched mugs sat on the table, all unclaimed.

Malik was shoulder-deep in the wall, pulling wires taut with one hand and muttering under his breath about stripped shielding and twisted brackets. His toolkit was arranged in precise, almost reverent order on the floor beside him.

Masel, a few meters away, was half-sprawled on a bench with a slate in his lap and a stylus clamped between his teeth. A requisition template blinked in protest at his inputs. He tapped again, glared at the screen, and tapped harder. The screen blinked red anyway.

“You break it, you replace it,” Malik said without looking up.

“I break it, I avoid filing a second requisition form for replacement,” Masel replied around the stylus. “That’s called tactical escalation.”

Elisa stepped in before the banter could escalate. She held the insulated folder under one arm, fingers pressed tight to the edge.

“Both of you. I need a moment. Briefing room.”

Masel groaned, exaggerated. “Commander, I just reached the point in the form where it asks if I’m still sane.”

Malik pulled himself out of the wall, blinking as he wiped his hands on a threadbare cloth. He looked at her, then at the folder. His posture straightened.

“No briefing room,” he said. Calm. Final.

Elisa paused, gave a small nod. “Storage bulkhead, then.”

They made the walk in silence, passing between low-lit corridors where paint had long since faded and pipes hissed intermittently from pressure venting. The bulkhead in question was two decks down, coded for non-critical inventory. Cleaning agents. Spare brackets. Crates with warning stickers too faded to read.

Malik keyed open the hatch. Inside, the lighting was harsh and off-color, casting sharp shadows on the floor. The hum of ship systems was louder here — not due to volume, but proximity. Here, they were closer to the unfiltered workings of the ship.

Masel entered last, eyeing the stacked crates with suspicion. “At least we won’t be interrupted by the coffee machine’s existential crisis.”

Malik was already moving — pulling out a battered satchel from behind a crate. From it, he extracted a compact device wrapped in heat-damp cloth and tape. When he set it down and flipped a switch, it began to emit a low, steady buzz.

He walked the perimeter slowly with a sweeper — small, flat, tuned far beyond standard Navy issue. After a few long passes, he gave a nod.

“Clean. For now.”

Elisa stepped forward and placed the folder on one of the crates, cracking the seal with deliberate care.

Masel raised an eyebrow. “That’s not fleet standard.”

“No,” Elisa said. “It’s older than most of the fleet.”

She opened the flap.

Inside: paper. Ink. Pages that had been handled. Pages that had weight.

“This is what the Admiral gave me,” she said.
“And we need to decide what we’re going to do with it.”

The buzz of the jammer underscored the silence that followed.

Masel sat with one leg hooked under the other, half-perched on an old polymer crate, thumbing through the stack of yellowed paper. He wasn’t reading in sequence — just pulling pages by feel. A skim here. A margin note there. His eyes flitted not across the text, but along the edges. Stamps. Footer dates. Page codes.

“Review dates are out of order,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Someone duplicated the routing sheet and forgot to fix the log chain.”

Malik glanced over from his lean against the wall. “You’re sure?”

Masel didn’t look up. “Because this reviewer signed three days before the oversight summary they were reacting to was logged. They used the version header from the draft meeting. Sloppy.”

He scratched a line onto the margin with a red grease-pencil, then flipped again.

The pages made a dry whisper against his gloves.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Elisa asked.

Masel didn’t answer right away. He ran his thumb across a double-paged approval chain. The second one had a funding clearance code nearly identical to the first — one letter off in a version string.

“Right here,” he muttered. “Two approvals. One valid. One never routed.”

He tapped both sheets. “That’s how you strangle a budget without ever issuing a denial. Duplicate just enough of the paperwork that the next desk assumes the cut already happened.”

Another page down. Another mark.

A line item with glowing feedback.

A six-month delay stamp underneath.

Then came the tone change.

He sat a little straighter, more focused now.

“This isn’t failure,” Masel said, quiet and razor-sharp. “This is someone making failure look acceptable.”

He didn’t wait for a response.

“They start optimistic. Measured, but hopeful. Then they stall. Delay cycles increase. Action items get folded into deferred reviews. Then the reviews stop entirely — not cancelled, just marked ‘pending further input.’”

He pulled a redlined appendix and flipped to the bottom. “Right here. Refer to Subcommittee 4H.”

He held it up, expression flat. “There’s no record of a Subcommittee 4H. It never existed.”

He set the page down with care. No force. But his fingers lingered a moment longer than necessary.

“Echo-Root didn’t fail. It wasn’t underfunded. It wasn’t proven unworkable.”

He looked directly at Elisa now.

“It was held just long enough for someone to walk away.
And when they did, the doors locked behind them.”

A long pause followed.

Then, flatly:

“This project wasn’t forgotten.
It was archived.
On purpose.”

Malik leaned over the crate, flipping a schematic sideways so it would align with the overhead light. His fingertips ran along the edges of the ink like he expected to feel the weld seams through the paper.

It wasn’t neat. It wasn’t polished. But it was… real.

“Look at this,” he muttered, half to himself, half to the room. “Powerfeed rig built from scrap-grade hull clamps. Superconductor lines don’t even match diameter spec. They sleeved the ends with cooling sheath.”

Masel looked over. “Meaning?”

Malik turned the paper so the others could see — a cross-section of a bypass rig meant to dump station-grade reactor output directly into a dormant gate core.

“They built this from whatever junk they had,” he said. “Half of it’s off-mount. Look — this capacitor here? That’s a shipbreaker part. The kind you find on deadyards near Chicomoztoc.”

He tapped the edge of the diagram.

“And they made it work.”

Elisa didn’t speak. She let him trace the page with reverence, flipping between printouts and margin notes scrawled in grease-pencil and faded blue ink.

Malik kept going, voice low.

“They reconfigured the feed path four times. You can see it in the cross-outs. They adjusted for spin bleed on the relay spindle. That’s not something you simulate unless you’ve got data — real data.”

He pulled out a folded page, thicker than the others — an incident report, laminated against wear.

“First aplike test nearly cooked their containment rig. Power spike registered as a solar flare — in the wrong system.”

He held up another. “Second test — light bloom visible from orbit. Report flagged it as ‘secondary photonic event.’ That’s bureaucrat for ‘we thought we made a second sun.’”

Malik gave a small, dry laugh. “And they kept going.”

He stepped back, exhaling. No dramatics — just a man trying to fold awe and frustration into one breath.

“Most of the Sector’s fleets are built from museum patterns. Half the people who build ships out here don’t understand what the buttons do.”

He glanced down again.

“But this? This is real work. This was people figuring things out because there was no one else left who remembered how.”

He unfolded a secondary sketch — a modular coil rig, stress-simulation overlays curling in the margins.

“It’s not pretty. But it’s right.”

He paused again, quiet now.

Then, not bitter, just honest:

“Whatever else Echo-Root was…
it’s the best damn work I’ve seen since we left Terran space.”

No one replied.

Outside the bulkhead, Cadence hummed quietly — unaware that someone had just validated the ghost of an idea that once lit up a gate for twelve glorious seconds.

The air had settled. Not calm — just thick, like the room was holding its breath alongside them.

Masel set down his last page with a soft tap and leaned back against the crate. “We stay in the cage, they call us preserved assets,” he said. “Step out—” He gestured vaguely toward the folder, toward the idea it carried. “And it’s crocodiles.”

Malik gave a low grunt. “Difference is, crocodiles don’t file monthly reviews.”

No one laughed.

Elisa thumbed the edge of a report — one of the last. Not a summary, not a theory, just a plain engineering incident log. Final test. Containment failure. Gate response: confirmed handshake sequence. Eleven-point-eight seconds.

She read it again. Then closed the page, flattened her palm against the folder, and stayed like that for a moment.

She didn’t say “we’re doing it.”

She just looked up — once to Masel, once to Malik.

Masel nodded, already standing straighter.

Malik turned and powered down the jammer. The quiet that followed was sharper than the hum it replaced.

Elisa walked to the signal crate and unlatched its panel with a practiced hand. She keyed in the frequency Vorelan had mentioned earlier — not his private line, but the one meant for safe ambiguity. The kind of channel you could log without fear.

The line cleared in two seconds. She didn’t wait for the pingback.

“We’re ready to proceed,” she said.
“Looks like I’ll be doing some… instructing after all.”

The response came with barely a pause.

“Excellent,” came Vorelan’s voice — smooth, amused, and absolutely unremarkable on any playback.
“Do take time to relax and have fun, Commander. We all need that now and then.”

He didn’t ask for clarification. He didn’t offer instructions. He knew.

And now the system knew, too.

Elisa closed the panel. The light on the crate blinked twice, then went dark.

She turned back to the others.

“Then let’s see if it still breathes.”

Her hand came to rest on the Echo-Root folder. Not gripping it — just present. Steady.

And beneath the deckplates, Cadence hummed. Waiting.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13 – Welcome Package Includes Mild Radiation and Existential Dread

There was no graceful emergence.

Dr. Kaelin Vos clawed back into the world of the living one shallow breath at a time, lungs dragging processed air across a throat lined with gauze and disuse. The visor above him was half-blurred from condensation, the overhead lighting far too sharp, and the first human voice he heard was entirely detached from him.

“Here,” it said brightly, “we have a prime example of long-duration cryostasis. Nearly fifty cycles of freefloat. Note the slow pulse stabilization — classic high-tech Domain pod response curve. Still elegant after all this time.”

A cheerful cadence. Not a briefing. Not a medical alert. Not even a welcome.

Vos blinked slowly. Shadowed figures hovered on the edge of his vision. Through the plex barrier ahead, a line of uniforms stood in neat rows. Watching. Some scribbling notes. Cadets?

A second voice chimed in, closer — younger. "Vitals are normalizing. Oxygenation at 93%. He’s trying to vocalize."

He was. His lips parted, throat clicked. One word, rasped:

“Where…”

“Fast recovery curve,” the first voice — male, confident, clearly enjoying himself — continued. “Spontaneous motor engagement ahead of projections. Excellent. A strong candidate for ambulatory support within forty-eight hours, maybe sooner.”

Vos rolled his eyes sideways, straining to find the speaker.

A face leaned into view — lined, energetic, framed by a medical visor with its own HUD flickering diagnostic readings. The man looked absurdly pleased, like a chef unveiling a perfectly risen soufflé.

“Dr. Marin Selak,” the man offered to no one in particular, addressing the audience beyond the glass. “Lead on this revival sequence. I’ll be providing commentary throughout for our observers from the Academy.”

The word academy landed like a dropped wrench.

Vos tried again. Where? When?

A second face, younger, leaned in — a junior medtech, pale uniform and shaky hands adjusting the harness leads. She looked down at him and whispered just above a murmur:

“You’re on Coatl Bastion, sir. Aztlan system. Hegemony space. Welcome back to the living.”

Vos blinked. Aztlan.

Fallback zone.

There had been entire network simulations predicting that Aztlan — with its inherited Domain infrastructure — might become a node of civilization after collapse. But that was theory. Emergency briefings. Possibilities.

That meant… something had gone very wrong.

The last thing he remembered was a mission statement on a Terran military orbital:
“The Threadneedle expedition is a scientific venture. A testbed for restored continuity.”
“You will wake to work.”

This wasn’t work. This was observation.

And then he saw it — stitched on every uniform: the XIV Battlegroup emblem.

An artifact. The crest of a Domain military division, long thought to have been either dissolved or folded into warlord coalitions during the Collapse. But here, it was standard issue — worn casually, with pride.

Everything else contradicted it.

The cryo chamber was cobbled together — modern overlays bolted to visibly older equipment. Vos could make out half-faded corporate seals: Persean Futures, NeoVitalis, even LogiQuanta. Domain-era suppliers, their logos half-sanded and repainted, still peeking through years of rust sealant. The console chassis beside his pod had two different power adapters soldered into one rail.

It looked less like a recovery facility and more like a historical reenactment in mid-upgrade.

Selak continued, gesturing to a readout:

“Now, if we had standardized bio-buffering and dual-walled thermal shielding in our field pods, survivability for anything over ten cycles would double — possibly more. But that’s funding for you. Here we have a test case for what’s possible, even with half-damaged telemetry.”

The cadets — yes, they were cadets — scribbled things down. One of them looked up and made eye contact with Vos for half a second. Just long enough for embarrassment to register. You’re the demo today.

Vos’s limbs ached. His muscles spasmed slightly as the coolant pathways flushed out. He tried to sit up, and failed.

“Easy,” the junior medtech said, kneeling to unlock the side harness. “We’ll help you over.”

“Be gentle,” Selak called. “We’d rather not bruise the teaching subject, eh?”

Vos gave him a look. Not angry — not yet. Just tired. Tired enough to let it happen.

The aides lifted him onto the stretcher with quiet efficiency, compensating for his limited balance. A thin recovery gown did little to fight off the ambient chill.

As they wheeled him toward the exit, Selak gave one final commentary for his class:

“So, to summarize — advanced pre-Collapse pod design, favorable drift conditions, and deep system redundancies. This is what revival should look like. And if anyone from Procurement is listening — please, let’s revisit cryo specs before the next war makes this relevant again.”

The stretcher passed through the automatic door. The lights behind softened. The cadets vanished from view.

Dr. Kaelin Vos closed his eyes again. He was no longer in charge. And Civilisation, whatever was left of it, had changed without waiting for him.

Cycle +209.11.07 — Coatl Bastion, Recovery Ward 2

The treadmill gave off a soft thrum beneath his bare feet. Kaelin Vos gripped the support rail with one hand, legs dragging slightly behind instruction. The medtech beside him — a broad-shouldered corporal with a clipboard and zero conversation — monitored vitals while offering the occasional perfunctory “good pace” or “don’t lock your knees.”

It was his fifth day out of cryo. His thoughts had long since outrun his muscles.

The shared recovery ward offered little in the way of privacy. Divider curtains hung between stretch stations, and the reinforced glass walls were at best a psychological suggestion that things were under control. Above the far bench, a state holonet panel beamed out its feed in polished, regulation silence — subtitles in three languages, corner ID marking it as HGYN-3 Public Affairs + Info + Cultural Affairs.

Vos wasn’t watching it. He was dissecting it.

“—and with respect to contractual salvage rights under Article 8, Section 14-C, Raesvelg Orbital Works maintains priority access to all nanotechnological artifacts recovered within system-designated industrial zones.”

A stern-looking woman filled the screen — system seal of Valhalla behind her, voice even and rehearsed. The subtitle stream kept pace: RAESVELG LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE, ARBITRATION DAY 84.

“That claim contradicts the emergency infrastructure priority mandate issued by the Chicomoztoc governor’s office,” another voice snapped. “The facility in question is located well within Aztlan’s trade envelope.”

Vos flexed his ankle, eyes narrowing as the screen split to show the opposing legal rep. The logos in the bottom left corner cycled — planetary colors, industrial crests, even one for the Admiralty Board, which hadn’t yet spoken but whose shadow was clearly the one holding the gavel.

“Still watching that?” the medtech asked, more curiosity than judgment.

Vos didn’t answer. He was tracking a third face now — calm, clean-cut, hair cut short above the ears. Max Erenth, captioned as Lead Arbitrator, Hegemony Commission on Strategic Asset Allocation.

He leaned back slightly in his seat, fingers tented in textbook neutral posture.

“This commission,” Erenth said, “was empowered by mandate from the Admiralty Board to arrive at a binding resolution. Until such resolution is reached, hostile actions or unilateral infrastructure deployment will be interpreted as breach of central cohesion protocol.”

Vos raised a brow.

Mandate. From the Admiralty. That wasn’t legal trivia — that was theater of authority.

Not that the Sector had laws, in the Terran sense. It had outcomes, wrapped in process.

Three months in and the arbitrage hadn’t just lingered — it had grown. Different commissions, contradictory jurisdictions, and a rotating cast of governors airing laundry before the Sector’s public eye. But it wasn’t stalling. It was absorbing momentum. The longer it played out, the more every party became complicit in the shared fiction of resolution.

And Erenth… he looked tired beneath the polish. Eyes just a shade too sunken, voice a few notches too smooth. Vos made a mental note: Experienced. Possibly civilian-origin. Co-opted? Or freelance kept close?

“Footing still steady?” the medtech asked, glancing at his knee.

Vos nodded.

The broadcast transitioned to military footage — shaky recon cam of a destroyer passing in front of a Persean League patrol. There was no sound from the ships, just synthesized music swelling behind a cut to a press statement.

An admiral stood in front of a carved mural depicting the Persean starburst being overlaid by a clenched gauntlet — the 14th Battlegroup seal prominent on his collar.

“We defend what others politicize,” the admiral declared. “Let there be no doubt: the Hegemony answers provocation with strength, not speculation.”

Vos tilted his head.

The same emblem from the recovery room. The same uniform pattern. A remnant, he realized, of a doctrine frozen in time.

Then, just as the press clip ended, the feed cut to the entertainment block. No transition. No irony.

Scene: a grimy arcology interior. Gunfire. Synth-horn stabs. A voiceover:

“This week, on Peace by the Bootheel — when Sector Marshal Tyre’s daughter is kidnapped by a Luddic syndicate, justice wears a uniform.”

Two marines kicked down a door with perfect synchronicity and opened fire. The camera swiveled as a rebel screamed, tossing a data slate into a furnace as dramatic strings swelled. The action froze mid-frame.

Vos stared. Then snorted.

“Don’t mock it,” the medtech warned with a wry grin. “It’s the best thing on Sector media right now.”

“It’s well-made,” Vos admitted. “That’s the worst part.”

He stepped off the treadmill. Knees held. Balance: functional. The medtech handed him a towel and checked off a final box on the sheet.

“Want me to switch off the news next time?”

Vos shook his head.

“No. It’s useful.”

The man nodded like he didn’t understand — but was too tired to argue.

As he moved back toward his bunk, Vos ran back over the timeline. Threadneedle lost. Revived here. Coatl Bastion, Aztlan. Mandated arbitrage by military proxy. And the Sector…

It had stabilized. In its own backwards, baroque way.
The rules didn’t make sense, but the rituals did.

Cycle +209.11.08 — Coatl Bastion, Observation deck

Dr. Kaelin Vos stepped onto the observation deck without ceremony, the pressure-locked doors hissing shut behind him. The space smelled faintly of ozone, metal polish, and old polymer — a scent unique to orbital infrastructure that hadn’t been atmospherically sterilized in decades. The light was softer than in the recovery ward, filtered by adaptive glass panes calibrated to offset solar glare. Ahead stretched the viewport, a single massive frame of reinforced transplex, set slightly convex to capture the curve of Coatl Bastion’s outer docks.

The first impression was chaos.

Vessels of every classification moved through a crowded lattice of lanes and beacon markers. Vos instinctively sought order in the patterns — tried to map it in his head, draw lane assignments, decode the spiral progression of arrivals and departures. But the tangle refused to align. Small freighters buzzed between supply rigs. Fuel tankers lumbered past corvettes with visible hull scoring. A bulk transport spun too tight into a docking cone and had to be gently nudged by two thruster drones, their paint half-burnt from some prior mishap.

A quiet voice interrupted the air just enough to be heard. “It’s like watching muscle memory work after a brain injury. Messy, but… it gets the job done.”

Vos turned.

A tall man leaned against the rail near the center window, wearing a loose-fitting technician’s uniform half-covered in utility straps. His hair was short, and his eyes — alert, steady — flicked from ship to ship like someone watching for defects. A data slate sat idle on the rail beside him, still displaying rough isometric sketches of some support girder structure.

“Ilen Vastian,” the man offered, voice calm, scratchy. “Engineer. Structural, orbital, and megastructure design. You’re one of the physics team?”

“Vos. Hyperspace physics.” A brief pause. “Threadneedle.”

“Yeah. Figured.” Ilen’s smile was dry, not unkind. “You walk like someone who only started walking again last week.”

Vos stepped beside him, letting his eyes return to the viewport. “I keep trying to impose logic on this,” he said, gesturing toward the drifting dance of ships. “But it doesn’t want to cooperate.”

“Oh, there’s logic,” Ilen said. “It’s just a salvager’s logic. Every ship here’s got three past lives and two unrecorded retrofits. You want tight docking order, you join Tri-Tachyon. Hegemony doesn’t run logistics. It survives them.”

Vos’s gaze settled on a shape gliding into high-priority berth — unmistakable silhouette: massive frontal prow, triple thermal vents, weapon mounts like old iron teeth.

“Onslaught-class?”

“Yep. Fourteenth spec,” Ilen confirmed. “That one’s got the shield upgrade grafted on — but that hull’s older than half the station. Thing was originally built without energy shielding at all. Just a hull thick enough to insult physics.”

Vos blinked. “Still in use?”

“Still forms the backbone of half the Hegemony Navy.” Ilen tapped his slate and zoomed in on one detail — the serial stamp, barely visible beneath a burn line. “This one’s probably Orion-issue. Before the Collapse. Before they had proper blueprints for shields, so they just shoved more guns on and hoped it would end before the reload cycle.”

“That’s…” Vos started, then stopped. “Insane.”

“Efficient.” Ilen shrugged. “Everyone in the Sector understands how these old monsters work. They’re modular. Easy to patch. No reliance on smart fabrication nodes. No fancy AI-assisted loadouts. And—” he grinned “—they’re ugly enough to scare half the pirate fleets before firing a shot.”

The Onslaught completed its burn, rotating with brutal slowness before settling into dock. Tug lines latched on. The port-side armor bore deep gouges and discoloration from a plasma strike. Vos spotted two entire plates that didn’t match — replacement sections, unpainted.

“Looks like a museum piece that got in a fight.”

Ilen laughed. “And won.”

A pause stretched between them, filled only by the voice of a dock controller giving warnings about radiation bleed from a retrofitted shuttle core. A civilian vessel drifted through an upper lane next — no transponder data, but the missile rack was clear as day. Vos noted the extra armor along the keel and half-formed a question.

Ilen answered before it was asked. “Yep. That’s a freighter. No registry, but she’s got more weapons than some destroyers. Welcome to the Persean Sector — where your cargo hauler might double as an assault frigate if customs goes sour.”

Vos found himself leaning forward against the railing. “Why hasn’t any of this been replaced?”

“Because it works,” Ilen said simply. “And because the people who’d approve replacements are either dead, busy, or trying to retrofit something even older. This whole station?” He gestured up to the bulkhead, where faint lines marked panel seams.

“Built on a seedship core. First-gen colonial era. Before the Domain. Back when humanity was still trying to figure out whether FTL was safe for organics. Everything else?” He patted the wall. “Patches on patches. You dig deep enough, you’ll find the original serial tags from the Expansion Age.”

Vos turned slowly, eyes moving over the ceiling struts, the seams in the floor, the long arc of cabling that had clearly been rerouted more than once. Under one layer of paint, he caught the ghost of a corporate logo. PanCelis Orbital Tech — dead four centuries. Another patch half-covered a phrase in old Federation Standard.

“It shouldn’t work.”

“Nope. But it does,” Ilen said. “And that, my friend, is why they don’t scrap it.”

Vos stayed silent for a moment, eyes tracking a slow-moving convoy approaching from the far edge of the traffic cone. The ships looked civilian, but everything about their formation said otherwise — staggered spacing, overlapping fields of fire, and an escort ship wearing the shell of a maintenance tug. The “tug” had a hull-mounted cannon the size of a shuttle.

“They’re armed,” Vos said flatly.

“Everyone’s armed,” Ilen replied. “You leave a port unarmed and unarmored, you’re announcing that you want to be picked clean within three jumps. Especially this close to League routes. Last I heard, we’re pretending the last skirmish was a ‘navigational error.’”

A silence passed between them — longer this time.

Vos studied the bulk transports now sliding into position along the outer ring. He could see their scoring from this distance — burn marks that couldn’t be from an engine flare. Debris impacts. Shrapnel scars. Civilian registry plates covered in half-legible stencils.

“And we’re supposed to help fix this?” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

“Depends on your definition of ‘fix,’” Ilen replied. “If you mean ‘replace it with a rational, self-consistent system,’ then good luck. But if you mean keeping it flying… yeah. That’s the game now.”

Vos exhaled, slowly. “This is salvage pretending to be a state.”

Ilen gave a dry chuckle. “You just described half the Sector. And the half that isn’t pretending doesn’t bother filing the paperwork.”

Another ship drifted into view — a heavy destroyer, frame mismatched from prow to engine. It bore a distinct XIV Battlegroup sigil, but every turret looked aftermarket, and the aft assembly clearly came from a different chassis entirely. It fired retrothrusters prematurely, then overcorrected, swinging hard to port. Dock control issued a curt bark over the speakers: “Correction required. Port vector drift unacceptable. Reset and hold.”

Vos leaned back slightly from the window. “Even the military ships are stitched together.”

“Especially the military ships.” Ilen’s voice took on a more serious tone. “Domain doctrine prioritized logistical flexibility. Interchangeable hull frames, modular bay systems, standard hardpoint ratios. It means anything can be swapped — in theory. In practice? You swap until nothing fits, then bolt it in anyway and call it a field retrofit.”

Vos looked down at the floor, thumb running absentmindedly over the metal edge of the rail. “There was a time when we dreamed about building coherent systems. Closed-loop architectures. Symmetrical jump-nets. Predictable routing. Civilizational scalability.”

“And now we build duct-taped fleets in antique drydocks and hope the reactor doesn’t blow when someone sneezes.”

They both watched in silence as a civilian shuttle rotated too fast in docking approach, scraped along a support gantry, and corrected with a sputter of overloaded thrusters.

“I’m not sure what’s worse,” Vos said softly, “that it still works — or that everyone seems okay with that.”

“I’m not,” Ilen said, folding his arms. “But I’m still here.”

Another ship appeared, angling for final dock — this one smaller, stockier, matte grey with a dozen external missile pods and a warped intake grill. Vos caught sight of the hull plate: Gremlin-class.

It looked like someone had built it from leftover engine parts and spite.

“Is that—”

“Yeah,” Ilen said. “Phase prototype, never meant to leave the lab. Crew goes half-mad from the coil bleed. We don’t even know what firmware it uses. Reverse-engineered from a nanoforge back when someone thought that was a good idea.”

The Gremlin wobbled mid-course, trailing a faint plume of black exhaust. It drifted sideways for a beat, then righted itself with an audible groan through the deck’s dampeners. Docking clamps caught it by sheer timing, not precision.

Vos stared.

“It still flies,” Ilen offered, a beat later.

The line was delivered flat, but not without affection. Like someone describing a three-legged dog that could still outrun rabbits if it was angry enough.

Vos didn’t laugh — but something in him relaxed for the first time since waking up. He gave the smallest of nods.

“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”

Cycle +209.11.09 — Coatl Bastion, Recovery Ward 2

Evening-cycle dimming was already in effect, the overhead lights softening to a faux amber meant to simulate sunset, though the filtered glow through the portholes was a permanent steel blue. Vos sat upright on his bunk, datapad in hand, pretending to read a neuro-muscular recovery article that looped every twelve paragraphs. His real focus was the footsteps coming down the ward corridor — smooth, even, with a hint of bounce.

“Afternoon, patients, survivors, and walking medical miracles,” called a familiar voice.

Dr. Marin Selak entered like a stage actor making his third entrance in a well-loved play. His coat was half-buttoned, a thermal mug balanced on top of a diagnostics slate, and a traditional clipboard clipped awkwardly under his arm. He nodded to one nurse, snapped a finger at another, and offered a compliment to a patient whose bed readout he hadn’t even glanced at.

Vos waited until Selak had made a slow, theatrical turn toward his side of the ward before speaking.

“You mentioned Cadence the other day.”

Selak’s pace didn’t falter, but his smile shifted slightly — softened, angled. A different performance mode engaged.

“Ah, yes. My darling Cadence. Cryopods so clean I considered proposing to one. A real pleasure to work with — after fifty years of freefloat, we usually get smooth brains and donor livers. But those pods? You people — you’re almost pretty.”

He parked his mug on the shelf near Vos’s bunk and tapped his slate to pull up generic vitals. Irrelevant.

“Wasn’t Cadence part of the Threadneedle expedition?” Vos asked, voice careful.

Selak gave a mild shrug. “Forward scout. Terran make, yes. They don’t build them like that anymore. I hadn’t seen triply-redundant cooling in… well, ever. We were lucky she wasn’t shredded. Lucky she drifted where we could find her.”

Vos folded the datapad over, slowly. “Did any of the command crew survive?”

Selak didn’t answer immediately. He scrolled through nonexistent datapoints on his slate, then set it aside and pulled out the clipboard instead — an intentional gesture.

“Your pod,” he said, tapping the clipboard, “was delivered under standard recovery protocol. Marked as salvage manifest entry, third tier. Nothing unusual.” He smiled, as if that explained everything.

Vos said nothing.

“We processed several batches around that time,” Selak continued. “Some from Cadence, others from unrelated finds. A few critical cases. A few administrative losses. You’ll get the full personnel manifest soon — all properly certified and cross-referenced.”

Still, Vos didn’t speak. He watched Selak’s eyes — clear, deliberate, never quite resting anywhere too long.

“Look, Doctor Vos. I understand the need for answers. I do. I’ve revived more cryo cases than anyone else in the Sector. But you’ve been down for decades. There’s a queue for knowledge now — and you’re in it. But don’t worry…” He leaned in, grinning with mock conspiracy. “They didn’t revive you for nostalgia.”

Vos raised an eyebrow. “Then why?”

Selak’s smile didn’t shift. “That’ll be in the paperwork too.”

He stood up, brushing invisible dust from his sleeve. “You’ll get your assignment package soon. Clearance, project overview, housing. They’ve even set aside rations that aren’t paste — just for you.”

“Kind of them,” Vos muttered.

“I like to think it was me,” Selak winked. “We had to bribe someone in Logistics with bootleg algae beer to get fresh sheets, so don’t say I never did anything for you.”

He turned to leave, his mug reclaimed, his slate tucked under one arm.

“Doctor?” Vos called after him.

Selak paused, looking back.

“You’re sure Cadence made it?”

Selak smiled again. Not the showman’s grin. Not the smirk. Just something small.

“She flew in under her own power.”

Then he left.

Vos leaned back slowly on the cot, letting the ambient hum of the ward settle over him. He didn’t feel satisfied. But he felt something shift — a thread to tug. A name to follow.

Cadence.

It wasn’t much.

But it flew.

Cycle +209.11.10 — Coatl Bastion, Recovery Ward 2 (Mess Nook)

The table was real wood. Probably.

Aeli Corrin drummed her fingers against the edge of it while holding a stylus in her other hand like a scalpel. Her assignment packet lay splayed open, red underlines blooming across half the first page already. Across from her, Ilen Vastian skimmed his with the practiced contempt of someone who had survived both architectural briefings and licensing panels. Vos hadn’t even opened his yet. He was watching the other two.

Aeli broke first. She cleared her throat and read aloud with mock gravitas:

“You are hereby designated as part of the Group on Restoration of Advanced Hyperspace Navigation Doctrine…”

She trailed off and squinted at the next paragraph. “Who names these things?”

“Committees,” Ilen replied, without looking up. “Big ones. Filled with people who think if the name's long enough, no one will read the second page.”

Vos cracked the seal on his own package. The contents were heavier than expected — thick paper, plastic-bound inserts, and a small chip card clipped to the back flap. Aeli had already removed hers and was waving it at the flickering scanner on the wall terminal.

“Doesn’t work,” she reported. “No access granted yet. Figures.”

Ilen tapped his plastic knife against the edge of his data-slate. “So. We’re part of an unlisted initiative with a classified-sounding name, zero operational summary, and transfer orders to a naval academy built on a hollowed-out factory moon. And nobody’s saying why.”

He flipped a page with a little too much force.

“Still,” he added, “better than being sold to some warlord for spare kidneys.”

Aeli snorted.

Vos finally began parsing the first page. Most of it was boilerplate — transitional care authorizations, formal notice of revival, binding arbitration waiver. Then the header shifted:

Group of Interest Tier II – Provisional Assignment: Chicomoztoc Fleet Academy

There it was again — buried under nonsense. But the group name stood out now, not as a joke, but a smokescreen.

He read further. Near the bottom of page two:
“Upon arrival, subject will receive updated clearance and project scope summary. Data integration to follow review of local sensor grid models.”

And in a smaller, almost-forgotten font:
“Environmental containment protocols to be established for biolabs. Specific agents pending reactivation review.”

Vos glanced sideways at Aeli. “They gave you lab access.”

She looked up, surprised. “You caught that?”

“I caught that they’re provisioning something custom.”

Ilen flipped his last page and leaned back with a sigh. “I caught a routing tag that traces back to the Admiralty Board. Somebody burned a chit to get us moved. You don’t get Tier II and sensor grid clearance from a hospital bed unless someone’s pushing levers.”

Vos didn’t reply immediately. He was staring at the corner seal — stamped, slightly smudged, but legible. Old fleet authorization form. Forwarded from internal logistics. Not medical. Not civilian.

“We weren’t recovered,” he said finally. “We were requisitioned.”

That drew silence.

Even Aeli stopped highlighting for a moment. Her eyes moved slowly across her packet as if rereading it would reveal a hidden clause.

“Do we think this is… legit?” she asked. “I mean — real work, or containment under another name?”

“Containment doesn’t come with lab provisioning,” Vos said.

“And it definitely doesn’t come with missile platform clearance flags,” Ilen added.

Aeli blinked. “Wait. What?”

“Long story,” Ilen said, folding his packet closed. “But the paperwork’s real. Which means somebody wants something.”

They all sat back, the weight of the assignments settling in like static.

Somewhere above them, a vent kicked in with a rattle and a hiss.

Vos looked at his chip card again, flipping it over between his fingers. He still didn’t know what came next — not really.

But someone had made a decision.

And that meant, ready or not, the next move was theirs.

Cycle +209.11.11 — Coatl Bastion, Internal Transfer Terminal H

It began, as so many tragedies did, with a line.

Dr. Kaelin Vos stood three paces behind a flickering kiosk marked TRANSFER OUTPROCESSING – NAVAL (LOW-CLEARANCE), holding a folder labeled in three different fonts, two of which he was fairly sure were obsolete.

Ilen was already arguing with a clerk behind a reinforced plas counter. The clerk — narrow shoulders, thinning mustache, and the weary gaze of someone who had long ago declared war on initiative — gestured without looking.

“If you’ve already filed a 14-B subform, you’ll need the Inter-Transit Annex to confirm field readiness. Then requeue here with the Routing Confirmation Index.”

“The annex said to come here first,” Ilen replied, not quite yelling. “They gave me a different stamp for the same form I already had, and told me not to ask questions.”

“That was good advice,” the clerk said flatly, and clicked a tab without looking up.

Behind them, Aeli Corrin was struggling to extract a document that had fused to the bottom of her folder. “I think this one’s stuck to a nutritional warning,” she said.

Vos stepped back and looked at the hallway.

Six offices. None of them in numeric order. A glowing floor arrow pointed in both directions at once. A digital sign overhead blinked QUEUE ACTIVE: PLEASE WAIT, although the terminal next to it clearly displayed QUEUE PAUSED – TECHNICIAN NOTIFIED.

A nearby door labeled Office 12-G had been where Aeli was sent first. Once inside, they told her she belonged in Annex Sub-B, because her assignment was “naval-adjacent, not direct-integration.” Whatever that meant.

Ilen was now being told his Physical Recovery Acknowledgment Form had to be countersigned — again — by Medical Ops 6-B, even though he’d already been discharged with full clearance.

“I’m not doing another heart monitor scan,” he muttered. “If they want to know if I’m alive, they can watch the security footage.”

“That’s not how we verify living status,” the clerk replied without blinking.

Vos tried his own approach. His packet was, technically, in order — except for a missing manifest stub, which had apparently been issued with “format nonconformity” due to an outdated transport routing standard.

“You’ll need to visit Queue D,” said the kiosk, with a tone of forced cheer. “Queue D is located on Deck 5, in Room 3B, or possibly 3E depending on the day.”

“What determines the day?”

“Algorithmic consensus,” the kiosk replied.

They stared at one another for a beat.

Aeli walked back toward them, holding a slip of paper with a smudged signature and a minor coffee ring. “I got re-stamped. But they told me I need a ‘secondary witness signature’ for environmental protocol validation?”

“What does that mean?” Vos asked.

“I think I need a lab supervisor. Which is impossible, because we haven’t been to the lab yet.”

“That’s perfect,” Ilen muttered. “Circular bureaucracy. One more layer and we’ll qualify as a closed system.”

Vos didn’t laugh. He was staring down the hallway again.

A drone zipped past — a maintenance unit, boxy and dust-streaked. It beeped as it approached the transfer terminal and got its routing tag in seconds. Efficient. Untouched.

And Vos realized something cold and awful: The system doesn’t hate you. It just doesn’t know you exist unless someone tells it to.

He imagined what would have happened if their packets had arrived alone. Just envelopes in a backlog bin. With no advocate. No pressure.
No one to push them through the noise.

He took a slow breath.

“We weren’t meant to survive this process,” he said under his breath. “Not really.”

That’s when the man appeared.

He didn’t wear rank. No insignia beyond a small Chimoztoc Academy emblem on his badge, and even that looked like it had been printed on the wrong template. Clean uniform, slightly crooked belt. No clipboard. No introduction.

He didn’t speak at first. Just watched.

Then, as Ilen began winding up for another bout with Clerk Sors, the man stepped in.

“Your clearance issue’s a conflict between routing levels. You’re flagged as medical, but coded under specialist transfer. That’s why you’re hitting recursion.”

Sors blinked. “That’s not in—”

“It is if you read the sub-index,” the man said smoothly, tapping a code into the terminal. “Override 71C: field integration under active tier designation. Forward clause still applies.”

Vos opened his mouth.

The man tapped again — too fast to follow — and handed off a sealed document to Sors’s inbox tray.

“Your friend’s routing error is tied to an outdated IFF relay in the manifest template. You need to validate it using the shuttle registry’s pre-sync file, which only accepts hard input.”

Sors hesitated. The man placed three vouchers — cafeteria credits — onto the desk.

“Check again.”

Three minutes later, the manifest kiosk chirped.

“Transfer authorization verified. Seat assignments printed. Welcome aboard.”

Three slim paper slips slid out, slightly misaligned.

The man handed them off, one by one.

He paused before giving Vos his.

“One of your students,” he said softly, “wanted to see your transfer go through without complications.”

Vos met his eyes.

He’d never seen him before.

But the message was clear.

And then the man was gone — already vanishing down a side corridor with nothing but a nod and a tapping sound of boots against steel. No name given. No signature offered.

Aeli looked down at her ticket. “We actually… have seats?”

“I think so,” Ilen said. “Probably next to the engine compartment.”

Vos folded his packet without a word.

There was no satisfaction — only awareness. They hadn’t escaped the machine.
They’d been escorted through it.

And someone had made sure the door didn’t close before they passed through.

Cycle +209.11.14 — Aztlan System, Atmospheric Entry over Chicomoztoc

The shuttle rattled like a guilty conscience.

Vos had given up trying to isolate the sources. Somewhere behind the paneling to his left, a vent cover tapped out a staccato rhythm every few seconds. The harness strap across his shoulder made a subtle clicking noise with every breath. The floor vibrated in a low, omnipresent hum — not threatening, just persistent. Like someone had engineered the interior of the craft to dissuade sleep without outright breaking anything.

Across from him, Aeli Corrin was braced against the acceleration rig, arms crossed tightly, face pale. She’d spent the last ten minutes trying to see out the tiny viewport near the rear bulkhead. Ilen had warned her it only encouraged regret.

“This thing doesn’t sound flightworthy,” she muttered.

“Neither does half the Sector,” Ilen replied, “but here we are.”

The shuttle wasn’t civilian — Vos had noticed that early. The control interface glimpsed during boarding was a stripped-down military overlay. The seating was bolted, the compartment bulkheads unpainted. A half-dozen Academy cadets were strapped in near the front, all clearly accustomed to the ride — slouched, half asleep, earbuds in, attention far from the groaning of heat shielding. Two officials in Hegemony admin garb occupied the rear row, speaking in low tones over a shared datapad.

Vos kept his eyes on the forward cam feed, where a flickering image showed the planet below. Chicomoztoc.

At first, the terrain was dry ochre streaked with faded greens — scattered agriculture domes, mining operations, armored train depots.

Then came the haze.

A sulfuric veil crept up from the lower altitudes — orange-brown, thick enough to obscure horizon lines. Beneath it: geometry. Not natural.

“Are those towers?” Aeli asked.

“Arcologies,” Vos said. “Underground, mostly. Hive sectors built over colonial cores.”

The shuttle began its final descent, artificial gravity modulating erratically as thruster balance shifted. The structural groan turned higher pitched — airframe flexing as the heat of entry passed and external atmosphere began to buffet the hull.

Outside, arcology spires rose from the fog like buried machines half-forgotten in dust. One sector showed signs of recent fire — scorch marks on containment domes, a haze of curling black. The shuttle didn’t slow to observe.

The transition from freefall to controlled descent was sharp — enough for Aeli to flinch visibly and Ilen to mutter a curse in technical shorthand. Then the inertial clamps kicked in fully, and they dropped into the final basin.

Landing gear touched down with a muted thump. The rear hatch hissed. A single light above the exit ramp blinked green.

They unstrapped in silence.

Vos followed the others down the short corridor and into a terminal barely the size of a maintenance checkpoint. No crowds. No signage. No customs queue. Just a polished floor, a functional cargo scanner, and a closed security gate that opened as they approached.

Then he saw the man waiting.

Mid-thirties, clean uniform, datapad tucked under one arm. Hegemony colors — but subtly modified. Shoulder tab marked him as internal liaison, not security. The man was still, hands behind his back, eyes scanning the group as they filed in.

He didn’t wait for introductions.

“Doctor Vos, Doctor Vastian, Miss Corrin. Welcome to Chicomoztoc. I’m Riel Masel — project liaison.”

Vos blinked.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“We haven’t,” Masel said smoothly, stepping forward and tapping a badge to unlock a service door. “But I served on the Cadence. You were part of the same operation — upstream.”

That word hung in the air.

Operation. Not expedition. Not mission. Not accident.

“You’re with the Academy?” Vos asked, already walking.

“That’s the flag I wear today,” Masel said. “Come. We’ve got orientation, meal packs, and a room with working air filters — in that order.”

The door closed behind them with a soft mechanical seal.

The air already smelled worse.

And the game, Vos realized, had truly begun.

Cycle +209.11.14 — Chicomoztoc Fleet Academy, Corridor H7

The door behind them sealed with a quiet thunk, cutting off the murk of Chicomoztoc’s atmosphere and replacing it with something just as recycled but far better filtered. Vos blinked at the sudden shift. It wasn’t dramatic — not a ceremonial threshold — but the temperature dropped, the light softened, and the constant drone of city-mech noise vanished.

The corridor beyond was plain. Functional. A ribbed polycarbonate floor, slightly discolored from years of foot traffic, ran beneath old LED strips that buzzed in sync only most of the time. The walls bore scuffs at knee level, and every fifth ceiling tile was held up with visible clamps. But the lines were straight. The air was dry. It smelled faintly of starch, electrical insulation, and the kind of polish used on desks no one can afford to replace.

It felt… settled.

Cadets passed them in quiet clusters, uniforms neat but not ceremonial. A pair of drones drifted overhead — one with janitorial tags, the other running a security loop. Neither paid them any attention. The background noise was low: shoes, whispered conversation, a flicker of a PA chime that cut off mid-sentence before restarting cleanly two tones later.

Vos hadn’t felt this kind of silence since the research halls on Iphigenia Station — before the funding collapse, before the fallback orders. He exhaled and realized he hadn’t taken a relaxed breath since waking.

Masel walked like someone with full access — not hurrying, but without any hesitation. He stopped briefly at a side kiosk and pulled three small laminated cards from a reader slot, handing them out with mechanical precision.

“Dorms, lab tier, mess rotation. Green access with one blue slot flagged for shared projects,” he said. “You’ll find that gets you most of what you’ll need. The rest…” — he tilted his head toward Aeli — “is usually found in the canteen.”

Aeli blinked at her card. “Canteen access. I didn’t know how much I missed that phrase until just now.”

“Non-lethal food, chemically active coffee, and questionable pie,” Masel said, deadpan. “But if you’re hungry, it’ll feel like victory.”

Ilen checked his own card, frowning at the printed dorm sector. “We got assigned to Block Twelve. That’s not admin housing.”

“Correct,” Masel replied. “It has walls, plumbing, and fewer arguments with the air system. You’ll thank me.”

“We’ve survived worse,” Aeli offered, elbowing Ilen lightly. “Come on. Let’s go see what passes for pie in the future.”

Vos turned as they left. Aeli gave a little two-fingered wave over her shoulder. Ilen raised an eyebrow as if to say don’t die, and disappeared into the main corridor bend.

Masel was already moving. Vos followed, pace matching by habit more than intent.

“There’s someone who wants to see you,” Masel said after a beat, almost casually.

“And you’re not going to tell me who?”

“Better if you meet in person.”

They turned into a side wing. Narrower corridor. Printouts taped to the walls — class schedules, exam dates, one notice about an overdue soldering iron. Vos passed a water bubbler with a crack across its base and a handwritten label: “drinkable (technically).”

The lighting here lagged by half a second as they walked under it, flickering just before catching up. It wasn’t malfunctioning. It was… tired.

And yet, none of it bothered Vos.

He walked in silence, eyes adjusting not to the dimness, but to the rhythm of the place — the quiet order of it.

Worn, yes. Reused. Reclaimed.

But maintained.

A place that had chosen function over spectacle.

A place, he realized with some surprise, where dangerous things might survive long enough to matter.

Cycle +209.11.14 — Chicomoztoc Fleet Academy, Exam Wing C2

The hallway outside Exam Room C2 looked like a disaster recovery zone without the caution tape.

Vos stepped lightly over the extended leg of a cadet who’d gone boneless across the corridor bench, arms slack and eyes fixed on the ceiling like he’d witnessed divine judgment and was still debating it. Another group clustered near the end of the hall, one of them holding up a battered flask in silent triumph as two others toasted with half-empty caf bulbs.

A pair of students sat cross-legged on the floor by the wall, murmuring through a simulated readout running on a cracked tablet. One of them tapped the screen repeatedly while the other whispered the answer she should have given.

Overhead, one of the simulation servers still hummed — the long, low whine of an unfinished scenario loop echoing from behind the closed exam room door.

Vos’s eyes flicked to the printed sheet taped crookedly to the wall next to it:

Captain Elisa Rourke — Advanced Hyperspace Navigation — Exam Ongoing

Below that, written in thin marker and messier script:

“Consume psychoactives before entry.”

He chuckled, short and reflexive. It reminded him of early-tier stress reviews back on Terra — half the department sprawled in hallways after systems math trials, one poor fool asleep in a trash bin. The cultural constant of academic aftermath was alive and well, even across ruined centuries.

But this wasn’t just stress.

This had the edge of consequence.

“First group out,” Masel said beside him, watching the scene with a faintly sympathetic look. “Expeditionary Command booked half of them before final results were posted. Rourke trains for things the Patrol doesn’t even simulate. Causes friction.”

Vos raised an eyebrow.

“Political?”

“Command priorities,” Masel replied. “The ones who want survivors love her. The ones who want tradition… less so. Rear Admiral Vorelan requisitioned her first graduating class personally. Patrol Command’s still filing complaints.”

There was a thump behind the door. Then a pause. Then it opened.

Captain Elisa Rourke stepped out like a calm front sweeping across a battlefield.

She was in full uniform this time — naval dark greys, the insignia of her Academy rank polished but understated. Her expression was neutral, but her tone was surgical.

“No, Cadet Pelan. I am not explaining to your commanding officer why you failed to counter a basic interdiction during a live patrol simulation. It was a tier-one trap. The fallback was in the syllabus. Fail. You may re-attempt next month. Group leader—”

She looked past the staggering cadet to a student in the hallway.

“Redistribute mark slips.”

Pelan stood frozen for a heartbeat. Then bowed slightly — a hybrid of training and fear — and shuffled off without argument. His boots squeaked against the polymer floor.

Elisa’s gaze tracked him until he turned the corner. Then she looked up.

Her eyes met Vos’s.

She blinked once. And smiled.

Only slightly — but it was real.

“Dr. Vos,” she said, stepping aside. “You’re early. Good. Come in.”

She looked to Masel.

“Close the door behind you.”

The cadets barely noticed them go.

They were too busy surviving.

Cycle +209.11.14 — Chicomoztoc Fleet Academy, Repurposed Briefing Room

The door shut with a dry mechanical click.

The room they entered might once have been a supply closet, or a prep station for instructors grading labs. Now it was... something else. Charts cluttered every wall — orbital data, hyperspace current overlays, partial transit reconstructions marked up in red wax pencil. A folding desk sagged under the weight of printed journals and datablocks, some still tagged with storage seals from pre-Collapse archives.

The simulation server in the corner blinked erratically, humming as it processed navigational scenarios. Clearly overclocked. One side panel was off entirely, exposing scavenged heat sinks braced with wire straps. A canister of coolant leaned haphazardly against the case.

Elisa moved with smooth familiarity. She ran a scanner sweep across the walls. A portable jammer in the far corner ticked on with a red blink. Then she slapped the side of the ancient coffeemaker.

Clack. Bzzt.
The smell of chemical roast filled the room — bitter and oddly reassuring.

She glanced back at Vos.

“Bug sweep’s older than you. Still works. Don’t touch the desk — I lost a day of notes under there last week.”

Vos stepped in slowly, eyes moving from wall to datapile to sim-feed.

“This is your command center?”

“This is what’s left.”
She poured two cups and offered him one. “Sit.”

Vos didn’t, not yet. He looked to Masel — who’d stepped back to stand by the door, arms folded but not rigid. Not leaving, but not intruding.

“So,” Vos said, voice dry. “What the hell happened?”

Elisa nodded once. As if she’d been waiting for the question.

“Threadneedle got hit. Hard. Not pirates. Not Tri-Tach. Something... deliberate. No standard signature. Interdiction net formed ahead of us mid-jump. Cadence was forward — barely escaped.”

She gestured toward the server.

“Cadence dropped into deep drift protocol. Stayed quiet. Eventually, it got picked up. Not by the Federation. By Hegemony salvagers.”

“The pods?” Vos asked.

Elisa’s jaw tightened slightly.

“One support ship — we don’t know which — jettisoned a pod rack just before their section collapsed. Absolute madman of a pilot. They bought time and got shredded for it.”

She tapped a datapad on the desk. The display blinked to life, showing a manifest.

“53 pods viable. Science and tech crew. Another thirty in medical freeze. We are working on them. The only other officer we pulled, not from Cadence, is a marine NCO and part of a cryo replacement squad. They’re breathing, not functional.”

Vos’s voice dropped.

“And command?”

She met his gaze.

“You’re looking at it.”

“Continuity protocol?”

“Exactly. I was highest-ranked field officer recovered. It stuck.”

She took a sip of the coffee, then grimaced slightly and kept going.

“Hegemony expressed interest once Cadence’s records were parsed. Recovery expedition was assembled — slow, careful, mostly quiet. They’re still fighting over the Nanoforge we found along the way.”

“Naturally.”

“Cadence is now our flagship slash testbed slash political pawn. We use her to demo sensor upgrades. Wipe local smugglers. Reverse-engineer tech with Hegemony components. It works — not as well, but well enough to get funding.”

She gestured at the wall of folders.

“Better than begging.”

Vos finally sat.

“Why here?”

“Because everywhere else is worse.”

She listed them on her fingers.

“Sindrian Diktat? Military cult with a paranoia fetish. They’d gut our work and use the rest for propaganda.
Tri-Tachyon? Would dissect us, sell the scraps, and bill us for the autopsy.
Persean League? Nice people in theory. Ineffective. Nothing moves without committee signatures.”

“And the Hegemony?”

She shrugged.

“Terrible. But consistent. They respect legacy. The idea of continuity. Even if they twist it. Some of their high command want to rebuild the Domain — or something like it. They gave me breathing room. A bump to Captain. Two pins. And no instructions.”

Vos exhaled through his nose.

“That’s not approval.”

“No. That’s a dare.”

She walked to the wall console and tapped it — revealing a map of Chicomoztoc.

“This world? Too big to purge. Too important to watch closely. I picked it because it’s messy, powerful, and just neglected enough to let things grow. Like moss.”

“Or fungus,” Masel added, almost helpfully.

Elisa gave a wry nod.

“They ignore what they can’t easily control. I make sure this place stays just inside useful.”

Vos leaned forward, coffee forgotten.

“So what now?”

Elisa turned back to him.

“Now we find out if the gates can come back. If Echo-Root was right. And whether we can finish what the Fourteenth started.”

She paused.

“That’s what this all is, Kaelin. Not a rescue. A reboot.”

The sim server buzzed louder in the corner. Lights blinked green.

The war — the real one — had never stopped.

And now, Vos realized, he was back in it.

The silence held for a moment longer than comfortable. The coffeemaker hissed in the corner, the only noise left.

Vos set down his cup, untouched.

“Echo-Root,” he said. “Never heard of it. And I’m supposed to be an expert.”

Elisa leaned against the side of the folding desk, arms crossed. No theatrics. No show.

“You weren’t supposed to.”

Masel moved without comment, stepping to one of the battered storage lockers and extracting a thick grey binder, its corners frayed from use. He placed it gently on the desk between them. Elisa opened it and flipped through several sections — full-bleed scans of printed reports, marked-up sensor logs, and one faint, low-resolution photo.

Vos leaned in.

It showed a Domain-style gate — unmistakable, massive, skeletal — with a faint radiance around its inner ring. The glow wasn’t a static artifact. It bled slightly across frames, recorded over a three-second interval. It wasn’t fully active. But it was trying.

“Twelve seconds,” Elisa said. “That’s how long it held. Enough to transmit a signature packet before it collapsed.”

Vos stared. He recognized the telemetry patterns — some of them resembled the failed simulations he’d lectured on back at university. The real thing was supposed to be… impossible.

“This… actually happened?”

“Fourteenth Battlegroup,” she replied. “Post-Collapse. Not just following fallback protocols. They were trying to restart the whole network.”

Vos frowned. “Why bury it?”

“Because it worked.”

Elisa closed the binder with deliberate care.

“They scared the wrong people. Made the wrong admirals nervous. A working gate meant the possibility of reintegration, new oversight, redistribution of power. It was a threat — to everyone who’d built something on the idea that the Domain was gone for good.”

Masel spoke, low and flat.

“Some were reassigned. Some disappeared. The records were fragmented, archived, or quietly purged.”

Vos ran a hand through his hair, mind already parsing the telemetry.

“But this isn’t from Cadence?”

“No,” Elisa said. “Cadence is just the excuse. Everything in this archive came from naval backrooms, deep Hegemony vaults, or people who want this project to succeed quietly.”

She reached to the other side of the room and pulled out a hardened datapad. Matte black, with reinforced casing. She didn’t offer it like a gift — she set it down like a burden.

“That’s the archive. Everything Echo-Root managed before it was shut down.”

Vos hesitated. Then picked it up. The screen flickered, then displayed the project seal — a stylized tree branching out into starfields.

He looked up at her.

“You reframed all of this?”

“Wrapped it in something the brass could approve,” she said. “Sensor packages. Interdiction-resistant navigation. Modular route mapping. Things they could measure. Things they could deploy.”

“So the lectures, the exams…”

“All camouflage. And recruitment. Every officer who learns this new doctrine becomes part of the insurance policy. The more people who know how to use it, the harder it is to bury.”

Vos’s gaze returned to the screen. His fingers hovered over the file tree.

Elisa’s voice was quiet now.

“Tell me, doctor — was it worth all this trouble?”

A beat.

“And can we do it better?”

The datapad display shifted, lines of code and abstracted schematics blooming across the glass.

Vos said nothing.

He just started reading.

Chapter Text

c+210.01.13 — Chicomoztoc Fleet Academy, Lecture Hall C-4

The smell hit first old plastic cooked under lamps and the sharp tang of a cleaning agent that probably required gloves, goggles, and a signed waiver. Someone had been thorough this morning; every surface gleamed with bureaucratic menace.

Captain Elisa Rourke paused in the doorway of Lecture Hall C-4 and took inventory the way a mechanic checks an ageing reactor: searching for the next failure point.

Rows of composite desks, their edges melted smooth by decades of elbows.
Holo-projectors strung together with tape and zip-ties — a monument to persistence over propriety.
Cables drooped like jungle vines from the ceiling conduits; one still bore the tag “FAC OPS TEMPORARY FIX — DO NOT REMOVE” dated three years ago.

At the far wall hung the Domain seal, its once-pristine enamel now unevenly repainted on her own orders after the last flaking embarrassed a visiting inspector. It no longer shed blue-white chips onto the floor, but it also looked like a tired mural done by a hung-over priest.
Above it, the institutional mantra glared in back-lit text:

WE ARE THE DEFENDERS OF HUMANITY.
WE ARE REBUILDING THE DOMAIN.

Rourke’s mouth twitched. For once, that might even be true. Just don’t tell the budget committee.

The background noise had a pulse — rapid, cheerful, and entirely inappropriate. A cluster of cadets in the back were running a multiplayer sim on the hall network, cheering each other on while explosions reflected in their visor lenses. Others leaned over shoulders, betting snacks on digital dogfights.

Every generation invents new ways to prove they shouldn’t be trusted with propulsion systems.

A few older officers sat apart, pretending not to notice, heads bent over datapads filled with requisition forms and unfinished after-action reports. One of them — gray around the eyes, uniform pressed but frayed at the seams — caught sight of her and stiffened. Without rising, he lifted a dented coffee cup in a wordless salute, then returned to juggling three pads at once. Still situationally aware, she noted approvingly. That one might actually survive the course.

Rourke moved down the aisle, boots clicking against resin floor plates patched with mismatched tiles. Each step trimmed the volume of chatter; not because she demanded silence, but because her presence reminded them that someone here actually held authority.

She studied faces as she walked — young, fresh, overconfident. New blood that hadn’t yet learned the difference between courage and ignorance. The veterans looked elsewhere, staring holes into mid-air; they already knew that curiosity could be mistaken for insubordination.

Inwardly, she heard Admiral Vorelan’s gravel-dry advice from some time ago: “When cadets are sufficiently terrified of you, no one asks questions.”
Useful wisdom, perhaps, but she had never been fond of ruling by fear. Still… every institution needed its cover. A well-timed public reprimand, a few nightmares handed out as educational material — necessary offerings to the gods of discipline.

At the podium, she brushed her fingers across the console. Someone from facilities had installed a redundant control board since last term, probably after last year’s holo system tried to self-immolate mid-presentation. Three spare projectors blinked awake, humming in overlapping shades of blue. She gave a small nod. Miracle: academy tech team listened for once.

Behind her, laughter from the game guttered out as students realised the instructor was not a hologram. Desks scraped, data-pads snapped shut, the sound of collective guilt filling the hall. The air smelled now of ozone and nervous sweat.

Rourke took one slow breath, centred herself between the flickering banners and the half-functional console.
She looked up at the hundred faces some eager, some empty, some already regretting being here and allowed the quiet to stretch until the room leaned forward in discomfort.

“Let’s begin.”

Rourke keyed the podium.
The hall lights dimmed just enough to make the projection haze visible—thin dust swirling like ghosts of better lectures.

“Welcome to the Chicomoztoc Fleet Academy’s Advanced Hyperspace Navigation Course.”

Her voice was steady, not loud, not inspiring.

“We are the Defenders of Humanity.”
“We are rebuilding the Domain.”

A pause; even the projectors seemed embarrassed.
The slogans hung in the air like ceremonial incense that refused to disperse.
A handful of fresh cadets straightened in their seats, one almost saluted.
The veterans kept staring ahead with the thousand-yard calm of people who had already heard too many speeches and buried too many slogans.
At least no one tried to clap, she thought.

She tapped the console again, and a cascade of bullet points flickered into place.

COURSE DURATION: 6 MONTHS
FOCUS: THEORY + PRACTICAL FIELD EXERCISE
OBJECTIVE: QUALIFY FOR NAV OPS GRADE III

“This course,” she said, “compresses six years of pre-Collapse training into half a year.
Theoretical density roughly equivalent to reactor shielding.
Practical modules include everything that can explode, overheat, or argue with you.”

A low groan from the back.
She permitted herself a mental check-mark. Good—someone’s paying attention to implications.

“We’ll begin with sensor theory, calibration, and simulation alignment.
Half of you will hate it. The other half will hate it and understand it.”

She scanned the room. The bored one in row three still looked bored. We’ll fix that, she thought. If she survives the first test.

“This training produces specialists and operators. Not heroes.
If you’re lucky, you’ll spend your career staring at telemetry graphs and calling it a good day.
Some of you will remain lieutenants longer than your ambitions survive.
The universe, however, rewards competence—eventually.”

A ripple of uneasy laughter moved through the hall.
Someone muttered, “At least it pays well.”
Rourke didn’t smile, but she marked the voice—realist detected; probable survivor.

She switched slides: a diagram of Aztlan’s orbital zones.

“As part of the course we’ll be running sensor packages within the Aztlan system—real fieldwork, not simulations.
You’ll learn to squeeze every fraction of performance from equipment that doesn’t want to cooperate.
In the theoretical section you’ll learn why it shouldn’t work, and in practice you’ll make it work anyway.”

The veterans nodded faintly; they knew what bad hardware meant.
New cadets blinked, confused, trying to guess if she was joking.
The ones who know she isn’t—keep them alive, she told herself.

“Due to the quality—let’s say personality—of current frontline sensor arrays, you will learn to extract valid data from subpar input and apply your understanding to reach correct conclusions.
Translation: you’ll become experts in arguing with machines and winning.”

A few chuckles; one technician-type actually smiled.
Good. He’ll either graduate or burn down the lab—50/50 odds.

“Weekly simulation runs are mandatory.
They factor directly into your final evaluation.
If you believe in memorising answers, I will personally design a scenario where every single one of them is wrong.”

That earned genuine laughter—nervous, but real.
Rourke allowed herself a thin smile that passed for warmth in the Hegemony.
Fear is fine. It’s just curiosity in uniform.

She dropped her tone half an octave, conversational now, as if confiding in the few awake minds in the room.

“By request of the supervision board, theoretical content has been ‘lightened.’”

A chorus of restrained snickers answered from the older rows—the repeaters.

“Yes. Don’t thank them yet.
Those who survived last year’s curriculum know exactly why it was lightened.”

One brave cadet raised a hand halfway, thought better of it, and lowered it again.
Rourke noted the instinct: self-preservation coupled with curiosity. Promising combination.

She flipped to the closing slide: ADMINISTRATIVE NOTICES.

“Attendance is mandatory.
Lab access requires baseline calibration.
Off-record modifications are forbidden—unless you’re good enough not to get caught.
Course IDs and simulation schedules will load to your datapads after this session.
If the system crashes, that’s your first test.”

A few soft laughs. One cadet immediately checked his datapad; she saw it from the corner of her eye.
Excellent reflex—reflex keeps ships alive.

Rourke let the last administrative slide fade, the room’s light shifting back to its institutional glare. The silence stretched—too long for comfort, exactly long enough for attention.

“Now that the official part is out of the way,” she said, fingers tapping the console, “let’s do something marginally useful.”

A flick of her wrist. The projector’s tone deepened as a tactical recording loaded: timestamped feeds, half-corrupted, green and amber overlays flickering.

“Second AI War. Hegemony supply convoy, five freighters, two escorts. Routine run—fuel, rations, spare reactor assemblies. They had no reason to expect trouble.”

On the display, icons bloomed and shifted: the convoy’s lazy formation, then sharp flashes—new contacts appearing on the fringe.

“Tri-Tachyon interdiction group. Fast interceptors. Corporate mercenaries with the ethics of caffeine addicts.”

The class leaned forward. Even the ones who’d drifted earlier looked up.
Rourke zoomed in: glowing lines tangled across the tactical grid.

“Convoy tried to make it back to the jump point. Almost succeeded, until someone on the other side fired a full-spectrum interdiction pulse.
Drives fried, half their systems went into reboot loops. Then began the wonderful part—several hours of trying to screen highly explosive antimatter tankers from Tri-Tachyon gunboats.”

Muted gasps. A few cadets scribbled notes; one veteran mouthed I remember that sector.

“We got the data later, from black boxes, and from Tri-Tach’s voluntary intelligence transfer during the postwar peace talks.”

Her tone made “voluntary” sound like a technical error.
She advanced the feed. One freighter erupted in a silent blossom of light.

“And here we are, learning to avoid situations just like this—”

Cycle +210.01.16 — Strategic Oversight Office, Coatl Bastion

Coatl Bastion never forgot what it used to be.
Beneath every new corridor and polished bulkhead the bones of a seed-ship still waited—hollow ribs of Domain alloy welded over, repurposed, forgotten. The air carried the smell of burnt coffee, ozone, and the slow rot of old paint. Maltke liked it that way. History muffled sound, and sound was where secrets escaped.

His office sat three decks below the parade concourse, a corridor of unmarked doors and identical keypads. Inside: functional sterility framed by decay. The walls bore three different shades of white—each a decade of renovation layered over the last. A seam of darker metal ran behind his chair, where someone had once welded a breach shut and pretended it was decorative. The table was new composite; the terminals were not. Two holo-screens floated idle, one looping fleet telemetry, the other muttering encrypted chatter in pale script. The trash can overflowed with ration wrappers and stim-caps. A mug with a clearance code etched into its side sat abandoned, still leaving a ring on the desk.

He stood for a long moment, hands clasped behind his back, eyes half-closed, breathing in the hum of the room. The noise of cooling fans and the faint pulse of power lines made a rhythm he could think to. Outside, the two marines of his detail shifted once and then settled; even they knew he disliked interruptions.

Patch upon patch, he thought. The structure survives because no one dares rebuild it. A fitting metaphor.

The bulk of the analysts were already gone—data collected, raw streams collated, mistakes hopefully corrected. What remained would be the polished minds, the ones who could turn chaos into narrative. He preferred the emptiness before they arrived; it was the only honest phase of intelligence work.

He drifted toward the nearest wall console, fingers brushing its edge. The surface was slightly warm; someone had left it running all night. Onscreen, a paused feed showed a lecture hall and a woman at a podium—Captain Rourke, if he remembered the signature correctly. Her mouth frozen mid-sentence, the header reading CHICOMOZTOC FLEET ACADEMY – TRAINING OVERVIEW. 

He lowered himself into the single comfortable chair and let the silence settle again. The Bastion groaned somewhere deep in its hull, like an old animal remembering to breathe. He waited, composed, the posture of a man who spoke only when the words would leave a mark. Outside the door, footsteps approached—measured, hesitant—the cadence of analysts carrying something complicated enough to require his signature.

He exhaled once, long and slow. Now the noise begins.

The door hissed open. Two analysts entered with the careful tension of people carrying both data and blame.
Amin, fresh-faced and under-slept, clutched a drive case to his chest. Nohl followed, older, already resigned, a pad tucked beneath one arm.

Maltke didn’t look up immediately. He let them cross the threshold and feel the silence. When he finally spoke, the words came measured, each one weighted like a stamp on wet ink.

“Summarise.”

Nohl slid a cartridge into the console. The holomap came alive—a swirl of blue and red tracks above Nachiketa. Bright flares marked impact points; lines of text bloomed along the edge.

“Expeditionary Command convoy returning from outer patrol,” Nohl began. “Standard fuel run. Encountered what was logged as a pirate ambush. Subsequent data shows mixed signatures—League and Sindrian, coordinated.”
“Tri-Tachyon?”

“Negative, sir. Their merchant fleet was two jumps out, heading the opposite direction. They’re shouting neutrality again.”

Maltke nodded once. The gesture meant continue.

Amin took over. “Convoy picked them up early. Report says the lead destroyer’s sensor package showed anomalous pings through the jamming field—unexpected clarity.”

“Unexpected?”

Amin hesitated. “The system’s been… modified. Purchased off-ledger through allocation vouchers, sir. Calibrations outside approved spec.”

Maltke’s eyes flicked toward him, faint amusement under the exhaustion. “So, corruption that works. Go on.”

The feed zoomed closer. He watched the tangle of icons—ships trying to avoid contact incise the asteroid belt. Amber pulses rippled across the grid. EMP to disrupt search pattern.

Maltke tapped the desk once, muting the audio. He’d read the casualty estimate earlier—thousands incinerated, but the production infrastructure survived. A strategic success, a human disaster.

“Who wrote the commendation?”

“Rear Admiral Hess. Filed under ‘commendable vigilance and adherence to doctrine.’”

“Naturally,” Maltke murmured. He glanced to the side screen, where the paused lecture of Captain Rourke still waited. “And these upgrades—where did they come from?”

Amin shuffled his notes. “Attached requisitions trace to Chicomoztoc Fleet Academy. A training program on advanced hyperspace navigation. Signatory, Captain Elisa Rourke.”

The admiral leaned back. The chair creaked softly.
Of course, he thought. Always another ‘educational initiative’ hiding in the footnotes.

“Anything else connect them?”

“Unofficial field modules—sensor calibration protocols identical to what the Expeditionary used. Could be coincidence.”

“It never is.”

He drummed his fingers once against the console. The movement killed the projection; the room dimmed to amber again.

“The Board will want a resolution before next session,” Nohl said carefully. “High Hegemon’s office sent a—well, a polite inquiry.”

Maltke’s mouth twitched. “Polite. That’s new.”
He turned to Amin. “Draft me two responses.”

Amin blinked. “Two, sir?”

“Official and real.”

He waited for the pad to light before dictating, voice level:

“Officially: incident caused by lapse in maintenance standards and insufficient crew readiness. Recommend expanded training and regular diagnostics. Commend vigilance.”

He paused, then continued, softer:

“Unofficially—note that improved calibration routines from the Academy’s program increased detection probability. Maintain quiet support through Oversight channels. Send the second packet to His Grumpiness directly.”

Amin hesitated at the nickname. “The High Hegemon?”

“Unless you know another man who reads what I send.”

Nohl looked up from her pad. “Counter-Intelligence has already flagged the requisitions. They’ll want to audit.”

Maltke sighed through his nose. “Thule’s people would arrest mirrors for reflecting light. Route their alert into the redundancy queue—Loop Forty-Seven. It’ll spend the next decade verifying itself.”

The analysts exchanged a quick look, then nodded.

He leaned forward again, elbows on the desk, eyes half-lidded.

“No leaks. No heroics. The Board gets its paperwork, the Hegemon gets his truth, and everyone sleeps better.”

Amin cleared his throat. “Sir… isn’t omission dangerous?”

“Only if someone notices,” Maltke said. “And the only people who notice are already dangerous.”

He signed both reports with a flick of his wrist. The console chimed once, sealing them. A moment later, he added a single line to the private one:

‘Chicomoztoc Academy program demonstrates practical value. Recommend observation’

He pushed the pad toward Nohl. “File the first one in the Board’s docket. The second—nowhere they can find it.”

The analysts withdrew, leaving the faint smell of nervous sweat and powered circuits.
Maltke stayed seated, watching the dark screen where raiders attempted to use Emergency burn to avoid complete destruction. At the same time a new interception vector appeared. Local defence force realised how close they were to court marshal and attempted to help.

He reached over, killed the console’s light, and muttered to the room:

“At least someone down there still teaches people to see before they shoot.”

Outside, the marines shifted again, the corridor returning to its silence. Coatl Bastion hummed around him—old metal, old ghosts, and one more secret safely buried.

*** <TODO Timestamp>

The monorail hummed like an old generator—steady, uncertain, a sound that might stop at any moment. Beyond the tinted windows stretched a sheet of amber light and scorched earth. Chicomoztoc’s sky was almost clear today, only a faint sulfur haze dulling the sun, but even through the filters it burned too bright to look at directly. Everyone wore reflective hoods and dark goggles. It was less fashion than survival.

The car was full of shift workers: two dozing in their seats with over-ear headphones held together by blue tape; a trio huddled over a cracked datapad where a game of dust-plane racing flickered in stuttering frames; one woman took a careful bite from a ration bar, another simply leaned against the wall, eyes closed, conserving effort. The air smelled of metal dust and recycled coolant. A ceiling fan turned just fast enough to remind passengers what comfort used to mean.

Vos sat stiffly beside the window, his hood pushed back but his goggles still on, posture of a man not yet convinced the world was safe to breathe. Malik lounged opposite, boots crossed, motion matching the sway of the car.

“You’re lucky,” Malik said. “This run’s mostly smooth. Yesterday the coupling jammed, and half the cabin tried to meet the other half at speed.”

Vos gave a distracted nod. “I was told this was the safest transport option.”

“It is,” Malik said. “Statistically.”

Vos’s mind drifted back to the day before—his reading session on Hegemony “scientific reconstruction.” Manuals quoting other manuals, equations rewritten in technician shorthand. Technically correct, linguistically painful. He’d stayed in the archive until lights-out, thinking, until a pair of armed marines appeared and firmly escorted him to his dorm despite his protests.

Malik grinned at the memory.

“They weren’t wrong. You’ve got that ‘scientist lost in thought, dies in stairwell’ look.”

Vos adjusted his collar. “They could have allowed me to finish the chapter. My room had a view—mildly unpleasant, but a view nonetheless.”

“The burned substation?” Malik asked.

“Yes. And the graffiti about the alleged romantic interests of the mayor to … goats?”

“Adds character,” Malik said. “Climate control any better?”

“Functional. Barely.”

“Then you’re ahead of most. Hot water, even?”

“Surprisingly, yes.”

“See? Civilization.”

A pause while the rail clattered over a stretch of twisted steel bridge. The vibration rattled the window frames and jostled the sleeping workers. One muttered something, pulled his hood lower, and returned to oblivion.

“Food’s the next disappointment,” Malik said. “Everything tastes like cardboard until you drown it in flavor concentrate. Imports come as dehydrated slurry; we turn it into something chewable.”

“Efficient,” Vos offered.

“Optimistic word. Tell you what—once you’re settled, I’ll bring you some real local stuff. Dried cactus, roasted pistachios. The pistachios grow everywhere; part of some old pollution-eating terraforming trick. Still safe… probably.”

“Probably?”

“Do a tox screen first. We’ve got good med coverage and decent cyber-organ replacements options, but the budget’s not infinite.”

“Comforting,” Vos said flatly.

They fell quiet as the rail descended onto a lower stretch where the desert pressed closer. Here the light was harsher, bouncing off mirrored sand and turning the car’s interior into a dull bronze glow. Outside, half-buried pipelines cut across the plain like the skeletons of titans. Wind tossed dust across them in lazy spirals.

“Most people don’t stay outside long,” Malik said. “UV will peel you like paint if you let it. And the dust storms—when they start, you just find a hole and wait.”

“And yet industry continues.”

“Industry,” Malik snorted. “Grand word. We make what we can and unmake what we can’t. Proper nanoforge work is for people with budgets measured in starships.”

“There’s sunlight enough for energy at least.”

“There was that idea.” Malik pointed out the window where, far off, a field of mirror dishes shimmered like puddles. “Solar concentrators. Still running, mostly because it’s easier to polish mirrors and swap steam turbines than to feed antimatter reactors. Reactors are kept for emergencies—blockades, bombardments, end-of-days stuff.”

“Efficient again,” Vos said, watching the sunlight flare on the mirrors.

“Until people started stealing the alloy. Military police confiscated every new cookware set in three districts. Claimed the evidence pointed to frying pans.”

“And the solution?”

“Classic Hegemony.” Malik’s grin widened. “High fences, autocannon turrets, and a memo declaring the problem solved.”

The car began to slow, the landscape rising toward them as the line dipped into a gash in the ground. Shadows stretched long across the cracked rails. Ahead, the first segment of the shaded tunnel yawned wide—an entrance framed by rust and concrete, light strips flickering just inside.

Malik rose, brushing dust from his sleeve.

“That’s us. Welcome to Ordnance Research Delta. Don’t touch anything glowing.”

Vos gathered his notes. “And if it’s supposed to glow?”

“Then it’s definitely not supposed to.”

The train clattered once more, steel on steel, and slid into the darkness of the tunnel. The brightness outside vanished in a heartbeat, leaving only the hum of power conduits and the echo of old machinery guiding them down toward the crater.

The light outside vanished as the train slipped into the tunnel.
Steel and rust replaced sand and glare. The air cooled almost immediately. The noise changed, too — no longer wind, but the deep, mechanical pulse of life at work.

Vos adjusted his goggles up onto his forehead. His eyes were still adjusting when the car doors hissed open, and Malik motioned him out.

They stepped into a platform carved straight from the crater wall. Overhead hung tarps the color of soot, strung between gantries to keep stray light from baking the workers. Even in shade, the heat clung. The station connected directly into a maze of alleys and open lots — the industrial park Malik had promised.

It was alive in the loud, improvised way of a marketplace and a machine shop fused together.
Carts rolled past, piled with metal beams; welders worked in bursts of blue light; someone shouted about a missing invoice while another cursed at a stubborn loader drone. The air carried the tang of ozone, hot oil, and cooked dust.

Buildings had tinted glass and walls painted in desperate stripes of silver to reflect radiation. Every surface bore patches, each one a different decade. Malik seemed entirely at home.

“Welcome to Ordnance Research Lab Delta,” he said with a grin. “Don’t worry — it only sounds dangerous.”

Vos eyed a worker guiding a mechanical arm as it lowered the remains of a ship’s hull onto a cutting frame.

“This is an ordnance lab?”
“Officially,” Malik said. “Unofficially, we’re where everything that doesn’t fit anywhere else ends up. And then gets used anyway.”

They walked a narrow catwalk overlooking the yard. Below them, crews argued over freight labels and crates of stripped starship panels. Malik nodded toward a pile of engine housings half-covered with tarps.

“Most of that came from Agreus. Big shipbreakers out there — entire hulls cut to bones. They sell ‘mildly used’ military-grade gear by the ton. We buy what still smells like a functioning circuit.”

He paused to greet a foreman by name and took a data chit from him in passing. “Extras,” he explained. “Always extras. Some we keep, some we sell back to civilian industries. Locals get parts, and we get barter credit. Scrap economy, but it works. Sometimes better than planned supply chains.”

Vos watched as a team loaded a crate marked REACTOR CONDUITS (UNKNOWN ORIGIN) onto a lifter. “And the regulations for this kind of exchange?”

Malik chuckled. “We call it ‘adaptive compliance.’ Everyone gets what they need, no one fills the wrong form.”

Vos stopped to watch the motion for a moment. “And this is the project I’m supposed to join? Sensors and drive modules?”

“Officially,” Malik said again, too quickly.
Vos turned his head. “And unofficially?”

Malik’s grin widened. “Unofficially, we’ll skip that footnote until you’ve had coffee.”

They continued toward the inner compound. Here the buildings grew denser, the corridors tighter, the noise sharper. Signs on the walls alternated between faded safety warnings and fresh spray paint. Vos noticed one that read ‘CAUTION: EVERYTHING HERE IS CLASSIFIED AND PROBABLY BROKEN.’

He couldn’t resist. “Why the name ‘Ordnance Research’ if this is about sensors and drives?”

Malik spread his hands, walking backward a few steps. “Ah. That’s a story. About a hundred years ago, someone here tried to make better torpedo warheads. They succeeded in making a crater instead. Academy didn’t want to admit they’d turned half a district into a glass bowl, so it became a ‘minor handling incident.’”
He gestured around them. “These prefab labs were built in a hurry to impress inspectors. The actual project moved elsewhere. Nobody ever cleaned the records.”

Vos blinked. “And that’s how we’re here?”

“Exactly. The perfect bureaucratic loophole. For the governor’s office, it’s ‘a Hegemony facility with secrecy seals’—so they don’t touch it. For Hegemony inspectors, it’s technically Academy property under civilian jurisdiction—so they don’t touch it. And since it’s tagged as ‘ordnance,’ we can use restricted components without begging for licenses.”

They turned a corner. Ahead stood a warehouse door with AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY stenciled across in four layers of different fonts. Malik thumbed the lock, and it opened with a groan. Inside were rows of crates and a robotic arm sorting scrap by density and shape. Every few seconds it dropped a hunk of twisted metal into a labeled bin: “RF Parts,” “Actuators—if whole,” “Unknown but heavy.”

“This is our purgatory,” Malik said, voice echoing slightly. “Everything we can’t identify ends up here first. If it’s not glowing, we call it safe.”

Vos exhaled slowly. “And people accept this level of… improvisation?”

“They have to. You can’t afford purity when half your parts catalogue is extinct.”

Malik reached into his satchel and pulled out a heavy, rectangular device, slate-gray with an embossed Hegemony crest. He held it up like a trophy.

“Now. Administrative necessities.”

He placed it in Vos’s hands. The weight surprised him; it was heavier than it looked.

“Hegemony datapad,” Malik announced. “Model thirty-one. Non-volatile, non-erasable memory. This beauty has every legal file and operational justification from the Domain era up to yesterday, including the one that says you belong here.”

Vos examined it. The screen flickered with a login prompt and a list of preloaded archives.

“Immutable memory?”
“Absolutely. Can’t delete, can’t edit without leaving a trace. Perfect for bureaucracy. They love a paper trail that bites back.”

Malik leaned closer, lowering his voice. “If anyone ever threatens to throw you in a cell, just hand them this and tell them to check the paperwork. It’ll take them three hours to find the right form, and by then someone up the chain will have called to ask why they’re wasting time.”

Vos gave a cautious nod. “Effective defense strategy.”

“Exactly. Bureaucracy as armor. It may not stop bullets, but it confuses the people who fire them.”

Malik stepped aside and gestured toward a smaller corridor leading deeper into the facility. The air down there smelled of fresh insulation and paint — new construction grafted onto old.

He pressed a metal key into Vos’s hand. “Cabinet three-fifteen. That’s your workspace. Check the paperwork inside and tell me what we should… ‘requisition.’”

Vos raised an eyebrow. “Requisition?”

Malik smiled, turning toward the noise of the yard again. “I’ll tell you that story another time.”

He walked away, leaving Vos standing among the rows of labeled scrap, datapad in one hand, key in the other, and the hum of machinery filling the silence — the sound of a world held together by salvage, paperwork, and the stubborn belief that it still worked.

***

The new office didn’t feel abandoned; it felt unused. Like something that had been unpacked but never inhabited.
The walls were perfect, color-matched polymer panels with not a single scratch. The desk had the sterile sheen of material that had never met human skin. The shelves stood too straight, waiting for items that would give them purpose—reference books, models, half-broken prototypes, the clutter that quietly maps a person’s life.

Vos knew the type. In any real workspace, the human presence eventually leaks through—engineers leave calibration chips on windowsills, physicists stack their coffee mugs by “approximate cleanliness,” someone’s sense of order turns a pile of cables into a recognizable pattern. Even in sterile facilities, personality sneaks in through the small imperfections: a sticker, a dent, a lucky pen.

Here, nothing. Just prefab office, modified for science, colonial standard.
Somewhere across the Sector, an identical room was probably waiting for someone else to fill it with the same instruments, in the same arrangement, under the same humming lights.

He exhaled, slow.
All right. Not home. Not yet. But it would have to become one.
Pondering the cosmic emptiness of human enterprise wouldn’t help, and sentiment wasn’t in his job description.

So: sit down. There were interesting things to play with.

He tapped into the lab subnet. The Hegemony’s low-tech security philosophy was brutally simple: no external connection, no external breach. The Echo-Root directory opened wider here than the summaries he’d seen—raw measurement dumps, timing logs, coil temperatures, field spectra annotated with initials, arguments in comments. A separate folder: JANUS_RECENT. Inside, half a dozen TODO files scattered like dropped tools: “Recheck amplitude window; source uncertain.” “Single report via non-standard relay—flag for verification.” “Sensor gain may be lying; reproduce with clean rig.”

He skimmed, and the little hum in his chest sharpened. This wasn’t a memorial. It was a workbench someone had stepped away from.

Gate basics first, to steady the mind: inert ring, gray, featureless, hard to hurt. Damage makes them turn off and self-repair over decades or centuries. You bolt an aplike frame to the surface to attach external gear. Echo-Root’s move had been audacious but comprehensible: lash antimatter reactors in where the ancient power interface once drank star-scale energy; override routing with an external module; feed the ring the handshake the dead network used to provide.

But the measurements on this subnet didn’t sit like obedient numbers. Persean rings didn’t present a single, steady internal layout. Decade-apart scans of the same ring showed different façades—like a machine offering alternate faces to the same touch. In the margin notes, someone had written: “Self-repair may be overshooting or re-compiling internals; core ‘connect/transfer’ looks intact; the periphery… drifts.” Another reply: “Not how expansion-era tech should behave.”

Then the audits. In the sanitized reports they were knives—neglect, sabotage, waste—but here in the raw dumps, the mismatches read like instrument limits, missing documentation, hardware drift. Politics had polished the language; the data looked merely inconvenient.

Janus sat at an angle to all of it. The recent folder suggested a pattern: scan the broken ring, compose a field, burn antimatter, and get a transit anyway. Notes insisted it didn’t need per-gate retuning, which matched the whispers and clashed with everything a proper network was supposed to be. One TODO said, “If Janus adapts envelope to the ring that exists today, we’re measuring the wrong thing—need live morphology, not blueprint.” Another: “If true, Echo-Root failed by insisting the ring be what the book says it is.”

He felt the drop then—the sense of stepping onto something that isn’t floor. Not dramatic. Just gravity moving in a direction you hadn’t counted on.

From below, three metallic thuds: someone using a sledgehammer to convince a stubborn frame to align. On the fourth hit, the vibration ran through the wall and into the desk.

New file. Plain text.

    •Re-scan campaign — clean rigs, Faraday discipline, spectrum-pure injectors; time-series a single gate to map morphology drift. Mirror raw + derived to immutable legal pad (seal IDs). 

    •Provenance — historian to resolve manufacture lineage (batch IDs, refits, manifests). Reconcile old scans vs new; mark stable core vs mutable periphery. 

    •Aplike v2 (non-intrusive) — adjustable geometry; no forced routing; probe-level power only. 

    •Janus Device — locate or rebuild; search strategic contingency manifests; tap Malik’s Agreus and depot lines. If rebuild: define scan bandwidths, harmonic set, field envelope, burn profile. 

    •Team pods — Measure / Model / Mediate. No power-on without his sign-off. 

    •Cover — file as Ordnance sensor calibration extensions; seal everything to the legal pad; tamper path escalates up-chain. 

He set the cursor on the first line, then typed the header that would make the rest real:

Acquire Janus Device.

The hammer rang once more below, metal answering metal. He saved, closed the subnet index, and reached for the key to 3-15. The office still smelled like primer, but it felt less empty now—the way a bench feels once the first tool is out of its drawer.