Jessa
Tal’s session was as dull as diplomatic panels had always been. Trade routes. Tariff structures. Three people saying the same thing in increasingly expensive words.
I knew this world. The real work happened after the panels, in corridors and side rooms, while everyone else was still congratulating themselves for attending.
Tal chaired the session the way I remembered: quiet, competent, giving every speaker exactly enough attention to make them feel important. His hair had gone fully gray. The lines around his mouth were deeper than they’d been when I was seventeen.
I watched from the fourth row.
When the session broke, his aide caught my eye and nodded toward the corridor.
Side room 14-B was small. Table, four chairs, sealed window onto an interior corridor. Private without looking important enough to be private.
I took the chair facing the door.
My father had taught me that.
Tal came in alone and stopped when he saw me.
“Jessa Corren.”
“You remember.”
“You look like your father.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“He still talks about you. Usually after the third drink.” Something moved across his face. “He says he made mistakes.”
I filed that for a different life.
“I need the routing access you’ve been using for the modified diplomatic channels.”
The color left his face.
Then came the recovery. Smooth. Professional.
“I manage hundreds of routing authorizations.”
“Not like these.”
“I don’t know what you think you found.”
“Diplomatic immunity tags on feeder vessels. Trade authorizations that stay clean until the cargo changes classification. Intake notices routed through private authentication after the ships reach deep void.”
His eyes sharpened.
Good.
I put my datapad on the table but didn’t turn it toward him.
“We have the traffic, Tal. Not guesses. Not fragments. Authenticated chains. Early authorizations that could pass for routine facilitation, then intake and status updates after there was no possible way to misunderstand what the cargo was.”
He sat down slowly.
“You decoded the buried protocol.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the one you get.”
His hands flattened on the table.
The gesture was familiar. I did the same thing when I needed something solid under me.
“I didn’t design the operation.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t choose the shipments.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because none of that is the question.”
He looked at me.
“I need your diplomatic-routing access.”
“No.”
Immediate. Flat.
That was better than the confession I’d expected. Resistance meant there was something real underneath it.
“The routing access is individualized,” he said. “Every privileged handshake is logged. If those credentials are used against this network, there is no version where my cooperation stays theoretical.”
“Your name is already in the traffic.”
“My name.” He leaned forward. “Mine. For twelve years I have kept my family outside this. No access to my work. No names in my private channels. No favors. Nothing anyone could use to pull them in.”
There it was.
“If I give you the codes, I stop being a compromised liaison and become a source. That changes what happens to everyone attached to me.”
“I can’t promise you it won’t.”
His jaw tightened.
“I can’t promise you a pardon either,” I said. “Or a quiet retirement. Or that people you love won’t learn exactly what you did.”
“That’s your pitch?”
“No. My pitch is that the evidence is coming out anyway.”
I let the silence sit.
“When it does, your name can appear in one of two places. In the chain that kept the operation alive. Or in the record of the person who finally helped us break it. Those are the choices I can actually give you.”
“That’s not a rescue.”
“No.”
He looked toward the sealed window.
For a long moment I thought he was going to stand up and leave.
Instead he said, “I didn’t know at first.”
I waited.
“Trade authorizations. Immunity tags. Cargo exceptions. Things people in my office process every day.” His voice stayed controlled by force.
“Then the intake notices started crossing my channels. Status updates. Transfers. I knew. I kept routing them because by then the people above me knew I knew.”
He looked back at me.
“And men like Vain don’t accept resignations.”
“We know about Nexus Station.”
That landed harder than anything else I’d said.
His head came up.
“We have the coordinates,” I said. “We have the feeder manifests. So don’t give me the existence of the facility like it buys you something. Tell me what we don’t know.”
Tal stared at me for three seconds.
Then he made a choice.
“Vain commands it. Garrison is roughly two hundred, depending on rotations. Cargo and processing on the lower ring. Holding through the middle. Command and research above.” He paused. “They’ve been expanding the holding sections.”
“How do you know?”
“Routing certifications include emergency physical infrastructure. If the network fails, diplomatic liaisons need to know which nodes can be reached manually.” He touched the inside pocket of his jacket. “My credential carries an offline cache from the last certification I handled.”
“How old?”
“Eight months.”
Useful.
“Anything else?”
“Military docking is separate from cargo. Central service spine connects the sections.” His mouth tightened. “The cache won’t show whatever they’ve added since certification.”
My comm buzzed against my wrist.
Priority.
“Go.”
Serak’s voice was already clipped. “The second security layer doubled. Twelve personnel. Six teams. They tightened every service access near your level.”
Tal went still.
“I’m with Tal,” I said. “I need ten minutes.”
“You need to leave.”
“I need the codes.”
Silence.
Three seconds.
“Ten minutes,” Serak said. “I’m moving to extraction route two. Leave 14-B, go left. Service stairs at the end of the corridor. I’ll meet you below.”
“Acknowledged.”
I cut the channel.
Tal was watching me.
“You trust him.”
“With everything.”
“Then listen to him.”
“Give me the codes.”
His eyes closed.
When they opened, the decision was there.
He recited the sequence.
I entered it once. Slowly. Verified every character before I committed.
The handshake opened.
Years of diplomatic routing logs unfolded across my display, each chain carrying the Consortium’s own authentication.
A second indicator came alive at the edge of the screen.
brIDGE ACTIVE.
Deyric.
The mirror began pulling the authenticated logs back to the Raptor.
Tal saw it.
“You’re copying the network.”
“Yes.”
A sound in the corridor.
Not voices. Footsteps stopping outside the door.
Tal’s face changed.
I keyed the priority channel.
“Serak. They’re here.”
The door opened.
Two conference staff came through.
Not staff.
The first went for my wrist. I shoved the table into his knees before he got there. The edge caught him high on the thighs and folded him forward.
The second moved for Tal.
Tal backed into the wall. White-faced. Frozen.
Fine. I only needed him out of my way.
I caught the back of a chair and swung it. Metal hit the second operative’s shoulder hard enough to turn him. I kicked him into the wall.
The first grabbed me from behind.
I dropped my weight, drove an elbow back, felt cartilage give somewhere near his face. His grip loosened.
I twisted free.
My left shoe caught under the overturned chair and stayed there.
Bare foot on cold floor. No time.
I went for the door.
The second operative hit me from the side.
We went into the table. My hip took the edge. I got a hand under his chin and shoved, hard, but the first one was back.
Something slapped against the side of my neck.
A medpatch.
I ripped it off.
Too late.
Heat spread under my skin.
Fast.
My knees weakened before I made it two steps.
Two more people appeared in the doorway.
Extraction pair.
Of course there were four.
I tried to get my comm up again. My fingers didn’t close properly.
“Serak—”
Someone knocked it out of my hand.
The room tipped.
Tal was against the wall, breathing hard. The first two operatives were closing on him while the extraction pair caught me before I hit the floor.
I fought anyway.
My body had stopped taking instructions in the right order, but I fought.
The last thing I saw was my shoe under the chair.
The last thing I felt was the bond somewhere beyond the walls, hot and moving toward me.
Then nothing.