Jessa
The bond changed first.
Serak’s attention snapped sharp and sudden, the way he changed when his crew was close. Relief. Focus. Readiness.
Not joy. Something fiercer. Like he’d been holding himself together inside these walls for nearly two weeks and had finally heard reinforcements arrive.
A heartbeat later, the deck shuddered under my feet.
Then the klaxons started.
Nexus Station’s external defenses engaged. The deck vibrated under my feet. Somewhere above us, weapons fire, the deep thrum of station cannons and the higher pitch of ship-mounted energy arrays.
The Raptor was drawing fire. Drawing attention. Drawing every guard on the station toward the external threat.
My cell door opened.
Serak was on the other side.
Not shadow-melded. Visible. Dark-skinned, silver-traced.
Furious and in control of every bit of it.
“Time to go,” he said.
I was already moving. Through the door, left, into the service corridor behind the holding level.
The route I’d rehearsed for nearly two weeks was finally under my feet.
Narev’s code went first.
One level up, Kovac keyed the four digits into the maintenance terminal as the attack klaxons pushed the station into emergency mode. The biological containment alarm started seconds later, a second tone layered over the attack. Internal response peeled toward the research wing.
A boat builder, taking one more system apart.
Kovac hit the cameras next.
The eastern holding feeds died. Ninety seconds of blindness, exactly as tested from Rynn’s map.
“Patel.”
The junction door stood open. Three bad codes, a fail-open reset, and a fault that would look like incompetence instead of sabotage.
A boat builder. A bonded pair who had spent months testing the walls. A guard barely out of his teens.
Three cracks in Vain’s system, opening at once.
Then I moved.
The spine corridor was narrow, poorly lit, designed for maintenance access rather than foot traffic. Serak moved beside me and the bond made the coordination immediate.
We didn’t speak. We didn’t signal. We didn’t need to.
I turned left and felt him already covering the right. At the next junction his attention gave me two people ahead—maintenance staff, unarmed, not a threat—and I was moving again before I consciously sorted the information.
This was what Ressh and Alix had. What Thoryn and Maris had. Not just trust or training. Two sets of instincts arriving at the same answer at once.
I’d watched them do it for years. Experiencing it from inside was different.
We climbed through the spine. One level. Two.
The comm hub was on the command level, two levels above the holding area. Service corridor access behind the room, the maintenance panel Serak had identified during his mapping.
Maris’s voice came over the comm. “First pass complete. Deyric’s spoof bought us one targeting cycle.
Zevik kissed the military ring long enough to drop Ressh and Alix, then peeled away.
We’re looping back now. Thoryn, Solren, and I hit the main hangar in thirty seconds.
Once we’re off, Zevik goes back to the external array with Deyric aboard. ”
“Acknowledged,” Serak said. “Jessa and I are in the spine corridor. Two levels below the comm hub.”
“Deyric’s ready. Data package is queued. The moment Jessa opens the channel, he pushes the upload from the Raptor.”
“And the worm?”
“Separate trigger. Jessa activates it from the comm hub console after the broadcast completes. Deyric found the research replication riding the privileged diplomatic backbone. Once the hub authenticates, the worm follows that trusted path into anything still connected.”
Two objectives. Broadcast the evidence, then burn the source.
We reached the command level service passage. The maintenance panel was where Serak had marked it.
He pressed his hand flat against the surface, feeling for vibration, for movement on the other side. The bond gave me what he was sensing: two people in the corridor beyond, guard post, armed, standing between us and the comm hub door.
Two more inside the hub itself. Four total.
Serak looked at me. Those black eyes, steady.
“I’ll handle the door,” he said.
“I know.”
He shadow-melded. His skin went dark, his body dissolving into the space between the lights until the corridor was empty and I was standing alone.
I heard the panel open from the other side. I heard footsteps in the corridor beyond, soft, the kind of steps that didn’t belong to anyone. I heard the guards at the comm hub door stop talking.
A sound from one of them, sharp, surprised, cut short. A body hitting the floor. A second body hitting the floor.
Silence.
Serak’s voice, from the darkness: “Clear.”
The comm hub’s main door was palm-print locked. The maintenance panel behind the room was not.
Serak let the visual meld climb over him, opened the maintenance panel, and slipped through the service opening into the comm hub.
I heard two sounds from inside. Short. Muffled.
Then the main door opened from the inside and he was there, the meld receding from his skin. Two interior guards on the floor behind him.
Inside: heat and noise, the hum of transmission equipment pressing in from every wall, and at the center the console I’d been walking toward for nearly two weeks.
Two guards down, one breathing, one not. I stepped over them and sat at the console.
“Deyric. I’m in.”
“Spoof window is open. One-use token coming now.” He read the string once. I entered it exactly.
The handshake caught. Held. The network opened. Authentication confirmed.
Deyric said, “Fail-operational lock is live. Twenty minutes. Remote shutdown and reconfiguration are frozen; the hub keeps routing. Only a local isolation command can cut the protected systems.”
“Connection established.”
“Receiving. Starting upload now.” His voice was focused, all the dry humor stripped away. “Twenty minutes for full broadcast. GalacNet first, then military frequencies, then diplomatic channels. Each one authenticates separately.”
I watched the first channel open. Data streaming out.
Shipping manifests, facility communications, prisoner records, financial transactions. The conspiracy’s own files, authenticated by the conspiracy’s own systems, broadcast from the conspiracy’s own communications hub.
Undeniable. Self-authenticating. Proof.
“Twenty minutes,” I said to Serak.
He took position at the door. The corridor beyond was dark and getting darker.
“Twenty minutes,” he said.