Jessa
Icouldn’t sleep because he’d come through the ceiling. Crawled through a maintenance shaft meant for repair drones, dropped into the room, and put himself between me and the breach.
I was done pretending that was normal.
The mess hall was empty at this hour. The overhead lights were dimmed to nightcycle levels, the blue wash turning everything gray and soft. The place smelled faintly of the curry Maris had made before the raid, the spices still clinging to the recycled air.
I made two mugs, the way I always did during the late watch. Sweetness in his, because he’d never add it himself.
He didn’t know I did it. Or he did, and neither of us had ever mentioned it.
The Raptor hummed. Engines vibrating through the deck plating, through the bench, through my boots. The constant sound of home.
Serak was already at the table. Datapad open. The mission assessment he’d been rewriting for weeks, the one that always reached the same conclusion no matter how many variables he adjusted.
I slid his mug across and sat down.
“Still staring at the same page?” I asked.
“Different page. Same conclusion.”
“One ship, nine crew, and a station we can’t crack.”
“Something like that.”
I opened my own datapad. Fuel projections. The numbers hadn’t changed since yesterday, but looking at them was easier than looking at him.
Easier than thinking about the way he’d said my name through the comm when the blast door came down.
Just “Jessa.” Not shouted. Not panicked. Flat and absolute.
I wasn’t going to think about that.
“How many times have you run that assessment?” I asked.
“Enough.”
“And it’s going to be different this time?”
“It might.”
“It won’t.” The corner of my mouth twitched. “You outrank me, but I still get to say that.”
“And yet you keep saying it.”
We sat there. He stared at his assessment. I stared at fuel projections.
The silence between us was the most familiar thing on the ship. More familiar than the engine hum. More familiar than the recycled air or the curry smell or the blue wash of the nightcycle lights.
This silence. The one where neither of us mentioned the raid, or his hands, or any of it.
Down the corridor, a door opened and closed. Ressh and Alix, moving in sync, their footsteps matched.
They passed the mess hall without stopping. Alix lifted a hand as they went.
“Training bay?” I asked.
“Where else?”
We sat in the mess hall until the lighting shifted to daycycle, the overheads warming from dim blue to full white. I went to change. He gave up on the assessment.
By the time the crew gathered in the briefing room, I’d tied my hair back and looked like I’d had a full night’s rest.
Serak looked the same as always. Composed. Contained.
No sign that he’d been sitting across from me in the dark for six hours, saying nothing about the things we never said.
The briefing room was smaller than the mess hall, the air recycler louder, the single viewport showing nothing but void. Zevik had his boots on the table.
Maris sat next to Thoryn. Ressh and Alix claimed their usual spots. Solren stood in the corner.
Deyric had his three displays glowing behind him. He’d been up all night with the relay data and it showed.
“The military encryption is good intelligence,” he said.
“But that buried protocol is still locked. I’ve thrown everything I have at it.
” He pulled up the structure on the central display, the code architecture enlarged and annotated in the colors he used for unsolved problems. “It’s not military.
Not corporate. Not any civilian system I’ve seen.
I need help. If anyone recognizes this architecture, now’s the time. ”
The protocol filled the display. Three weeks of raids, and the same wall every time.
I’d seen it last night, briefly, while pulling the data at the relay. Hadn’t had time to study it. But the structure had nagged at me, something about the nesting pattern, the way the authentication layers folded in on themselves.
Now, on Deyric’s display, enlarged and annotated, I saw why.
The key rotation pattern. The authentication layers. The routing logic that nested inside itself.
I knew this architecture. I’d grown up inside it.
I’d watched my father’s staff use these protocols every day for seven years, watched the encryption keys change at the start of each diplomatic cycle, watched the routing tables update when new channels were added.
My stomach dropped.
I could say nothing. Let Deyric keep grinding. He might crack it eventually.
Weeks, months. And three thousand people held at Nexus Station while he worked.
Or I could open my mouth and blow my life apart.
I pressed my palms flat against the table. The metal was cool and solid under my hands.
“That’s diplomatic encryption,” I said.
Every head in the room turned.
“And you know this how?” Ressh asked.
I kept my hands flat on the table. Took one breath.
“My real name isn’t Jessa Torrin. It’s Jessa Corren.
My father was a mid-level Consortium diplomatic official.
Varek Corren. I haven’t spoken to him since I left.
” I paused. “I learned these protocols as a teenager. I walked away at twenty, changed my name, and never told any of you because I didn’t want to be seen as Consortium. ”
The room went quiet. Not briefing-room quiet. The kind of quiet where everyone is recalculating.
Ressh leaned back against the wall. His traceries had gone flat bronze, his expression more thoughtful than angry.
Zevik’s chair came down on all four legs. He opened his mouth, then closed it.
First time I’d ever seen him not have a line ready. His feather crest, which usually sat at a cocky angle, had gone flat.
Alix hadn’t moved from where she’d been leaning against the back wall. She was studying me the way she studied security systems.
Not hostile. Assessing.
Thoryn put his hand on the table, palm down. Nothing changes. Thoryn’s vocabulary was limited and absolute.
Maris glanced at Thoryn’s hand, then at me. Her mouth pulled sideways.
She’d built an empire on secrets. She understood keeping them.
Solren, in his corner, said nothing. But his eyes moved from me to Serak.
Because the crew wasn’t just reacting to me. They were waiting for him.
I looked at Serak. The dark was there, along his jaw, even in the briefing room light. Those black eyes, unreadable.
He might throw me off the ship in the next thirty seconds. Or he might not. I couldn’t tell.
“Can you decode it?” he asked.
The room exhaled.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then get started.”