Jessa
Ifound the cold mug in the morning. My usual spot. Hours old.
I drank it and started on the briefing materials.
The crew filed in to find everything laid out on the briefing room table.
Station schematics on hardstock sheets. Conference schedule with Tal’s sessions highlighted. His itinerary cross-referenced with the public registration database.
Check-in protocols. Three separate extraction routes, color-coded. The rigid display sheets were for Serak; he preferred something he could mark up by hand.
I’d been building mission plans for this crew. Supply runs, intelligence operations, the relay raids.
This was the same work. The same logistics.
The fact that I’d be on the other end of them this time didn’t change the process.
“Meridian Station,” I said. “The full diplomatic conference runs nine days. Tal chairs the trade subcommittee on day three. That’s where I need to be.”
I walked them through it. The approach through his aide, who I’d identified from the public delegate registry.
The cover was built around my real name: Jessa Corren, with a private-trade-consultant history for the past decade, working out of the outer colonies, back in Consortium space because she’d seen things her father’s circle ought to know about.
Anyone who checked would find a thin paper trail. The shallowness was the point.
The colonies didn’t keep clean records. Tal knew that as well as anyone.
“The pitch isn’t rescue,” I said. “He’s not going to flip out of conscience.
People like Tal don’t. The pitch is exposure.
I tell him my crew has decoded the comms he’s been routing.
We have authenticated evidence of what passed through his channels.
We’re going to use it. His choice is whether his name is on the list of architects when the story breaks, or on the list of sources. ”
“And if he refuses?” Maris asked.
“Then we have the evidence anyway. He just doesn’t get to control how he goes down.”
“What’s the actual ask?” Ressh asked.
“Access codes for the diplomatic routing network. Every communication is logged on both ends. With those codes, the conspiracy’s own records become the evidence, authenticated through the Consortium’s own systems. Nobody can dismiss it as fabricated by hostile actors.”
The crew listened the way they always did. Attentive, quiet, professional.
Except for the part where every few seconds someone’s eyes slid toward Serak.
Maris spoke first on logistics. “The Ghost is civilian-registered. Untraceable to the Raptor. I can have it prepped in six hours.”
“Extraction?” Alix asked.
“Three options.” Maris pulled up the station layout. “Conference crowd on the main concourse. Delegation shuttle bay on the upper ring. Ghost at the civilian port running my transponder codes. If the first two are compromised, the Ghost disappears.”
Deyric leaned forward. “If she gets working access codes and authenticates from inside the station, I can use her handshake to bridge the diplomatic network back to the Raptor. Mirror the logs here while she’s connected. I’ll have the bridge and the upload package ready before she docks.”
The room looked at Serak.
He sat at the head of the table. His hands were flat on the surface. He’d listened to everything without moving, without reacting, without giving any sign that the crew had just built a mission around the person sitting to his left.
“No,” he said.
I’d expected it. I’d prepared for it. I’d run the conversation in my head a dozen times while I put the briefing materials together.
I felt it anyway: a hot pressure behind my sternum, the kind that wanted to become words and couldn’t because the whole crew was watching and I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing it land.
“The risk to a single crew member without on-site support is not justified by the intelligence gain.”
“I am the intelligence gain. I’m the only one who can read this encryption. The only one with credentials that pass. The only one who knows Tal’s face. There is no other plan.”
“Then there is no version of this plan.”
Eight people holding still around the table.
Ressh looked at his hands. Alix watched Serak’s. Thoryn hadn’t moved.
Maris had her mouth set the way she did when she was biting back something she wanted to say.
“Is this a command decision,” I said, “or a personal one?”
The dark was climbing his forearms, past his rolled sleeves. His biology answering the question his mouth wouldn’t.
“It’s my decision.”
“It’s not. Not if the reason you’re saying no has nothing to do with the plan.
I’ve watched Ressh and Alix walk into Epsilon.
I’ve watched Thoryn go back to the Quarry.
I provided covering fire at the Haven and afterward you thanked the crew and didn’t mention me.
Because I was supposed to be on the ship. ”
I kept my voice steady.
“I’m not fragile. And I’m not going to sit on this ship while three thousand people wait. Not when I’m the only one who can fix that.”
Serak stood. Black eyes, unreadable.
“The answer is no,” he said.
He left.
Nobody moved.
The briefing room hummed. Deyric’s displays cycled through the data. Maris looked at Thoryn.
Thoryn’s hand was still on the table, palm down.
Then Maris stood, touched Thoryn’s shoulder, and walked out. The rest followed, one by one.
Ressh paused at the door and looked at me. Didn’t say anything. Just looked.
Then he went. Deyric left his displays running. Solren watched me from his corner, then went.
I collected my hardstock sheets. Walked into the corridor.
Maris was waiting.
“The Ghost is in the hangar,” she said.
“He said no.”
“He didn’t lock the hangar,” she said.
I stopped walking.
Maris glanced back but didn’t say anything else.