Serak
Iwent to the bridge and pulled up the Meridian Station schematics.
Not because I’d changed my mind. Because I needed to see the problem clearly.
One crew member, no backup, a Consortium venue with its own security apparatus. Everything I’d told her was operationally correct.
I studied the station layout.
Commercial docking on the lower ring, the kind of berths that handled civilian traffic and cargo deliveries.
Conference levels on the middle ring, the polished floors and badge-controlled access of a venue designed for people who spent their lives being important.
Service corridors running through the spine, connecting everything, maintained by staff who kept the lights on while the diplomats talked.
Someone in cargo staff clothing could move through those service corridors without flagging Consortium security. The conference floors would be impossible.
But the infrastructure underneath was just a station. Corridors, conduits, junction boxes.
The same terrain I’d worked my whole career.
If someone were to map the station from underneath while Jessa worked the conference from above, the two of them could cover the entire facility.
One in the light, one in the dark. Both doing what they were built to do.
I studied the maintenance access points. Six per level.
Service spine with vertical connections. Ventilation shafts wide enough for a person, if the person didn’t mind narrow spaces.
I didn’t mind narrow spaces. I’d proved that at the relay.
Ressh found me an hour later. He leaned in the bridge doorway and watched me work for thirty seconds before speaking.
“You’re looking at Meridian schematics,” he said.
“I’m studying the problem.”
“You’re figuring out how to go with her.
” He crossed to the console and leaned against it, arms folded.
“When Vain caught us at Epsilon, they put a suppressor collar on me. I could feel Alix on the other side of the facility and I couldn’t reach her.
I knew what was being done to me and I knew worse was being done to her. ” He paused.
His traceries had gone flat. “That was the worst twelve hours of my life. Don’t do that to yourself.”
“She can’t go alone.”
“Then don’t let her go alone.”
I looked at him. He met it with those amber eyes, traceries shifting in slow patterns.
Not agitated. Settled.
The expression of a man who’d already thought this through and was waiting for me to catch up.
“You’re the captain,” he said. “Nobody else can make that call. But you should know, the crew already assumed this was how it would go.”
“How what would go?”
“You saying no, then finding a way to go yourself.” He pushed off the console. “Maris is prepping the Ghost. Thoryn’s running security protocols for the Raptor in your absence. Zevik’s already filed the nav coordinates.”
They’d planned for this.
Not for Jessa going alone. For both of us going.
The crew had read the situation, read their captain, and prepared for the outcome they knew was coming before I’d admitted it to myself.
“Who runs the ship?”
“Maris has command experience. Thoryn’s her second. Deyric handles tech. The Raptor will be fine for a week.”
“And if it’s not a week?”
“Then we come get you.” He straightened. “Same as always.”
I found Jessa in her quarters. She was packing.
Quick and spare, the way she did everything. One bag, nothing extra. Civilian clothes, conference wear, a compact tool kit, and the blaster she’d carried at the Haven.
She looked up when I came through the door. Didn’t seem surprised.
“I’m not going to let you go alone,” I said.
“I know.”
“You can’t know that. I said no an hour ago.”
“Maris told me you were studying Meridian schematics.” She folded a shirt and put it in the bag. “You didn’t say no to the mission, Serak. You said no to losing me.”
I didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t prove her right.
“Maris talks too much.”
“Maris is usually right.” She stopped packing. “What’s your plan?”
“The Ghost docks civilian. You go to the conference. I work the service levels. Map the station from underneath. Stay close enough to extract you if it goes wrong.”
“You can’t go to the conference floors.”
“I won’t need to. Service corridors run through every level. Maintenance access at every junction. I can be anywhere on that station in minutes without being seen.”
She looked at me for a long beat. I knew she had questions: about the relay, about what I’d done in that corridor, about the dark in my hands.
She’d ask them. But not now.
“We leave in four hours,” she said. “I want to arrive at Meridian with a full day before Tal’s session.”
That evening, the crew gathered in the hangar. No formal send-off. Nobody announced it.
Just people finding reasons to be there, the way this family always found reasons to be in the same room when something mattered.
Zevik checked the Ghost’s nav systems twice, then checked them again.
Deyric handed Jessa a data drive, small enough to palm, loaded with everything he’d built for the upload. “Don’t lose that,” he said. “It took me three weeks.”
Solren pressed a medkit into my hands. Compact, field-grade, stocked for species he’d never be able to treat remotely.
“Bring her back,” he said.
“That’s the plan.”
“Bring yourself back too. I don’t have a protocol for what you’d do to this ship without her, and I’d rather not invent one.”
Thoryn stood by the hangar door. As I passed, he put his hand on my shoulder.
The weight of it, the stillness. Thoryn didn’t waste words on what his hands could say.
Alix caught my arm. “The shadow thing. At the relay. Those soldiers couldn’t see you.”
“No.”
“Can Consortium security systems see you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tested it against their hardware.”
“Test it before you need it.” She pressed a bypass tool into my hand and let go. “That’s free advice from a professional.”
Maris kissed Jessa on the cheek and handed her a chip. “Updated transponder codes. If you need to run, the Ghost becomes invisible.” She looked at me over Jessa’s shoulder. “Take care of my ship. We’ll reposition toward Meridian while you’re on station, but stay well outside conference traffic.”
“I know.”
“I’m talking to both of you.”
The Ghost was small. The cockpit opened onto a narrow cabin with one bunk and a fold-down seat, a refresher barely large enough to turn around in, and a cargo hold the size of a closet. Maris had rebuilt it for speed and stealth, not comfort.
Jessa took the pilot’s seat. I took the copilot’s. The hatch sealed behind us, closing out the hangar, the crew, the Raptor.
Everything familiar reduced to a closed door and two people in a space too small for distance.
“Ready?” she asked.
“No.”
She smiled. It was the first real smile I’d seen from her in days. “Good. Me neither.”
She brought the engines online and the Ghost slid out of the Raptor’s hangar into open space.