Maris
I’d spent almost a decade building walls to keep everyone out, and he’d just walked through them, all while admitting it was agony. I didn’t know how to process that. I didn’t know what to do with it. It was too big. Too dangerous.
I shoved it down. I forced the feeling into a box, locked it, and put it on a shelf. Later. I could deal with that later.
Right now, we had a more immediate problem.
“The shipyard,” I said, my voice flat. “That ambush wasn’t clumsy. They were waiting for us. They knew the approach, they knew the cover, they knew me.”
I turned back to him. He was watching me, his face grim.
“How?” I continued. “My network is closed. My data is air-gapped. The only way anyone knows that layout is if they’re in my inner circle.”
I started pacing, my brain running the inventory automatically.
Inner circle with shipyard access: Jax, dead in my cantina. Grevik, but he only monitored feeds, couldn’t have controlled my troops.
One person who’d sent most of my security to Tunnel 12 to deal with that rival. Right before the attack. Convenient timing.
One person who’d been so insistent about that Tunnel 12 problem. A problem that suddenly needed my entire security force. Tonight. Leaving me with a skeleton crew. Three guards against twenty attackers.
One person who knew every cache location because I’d trusted her with contingency planning.
Inventory: One lieutenant who diverted my forces. One perfectly timed attack. One ambush at the exact location only she knew.
I said the name aloud. “Vashil.”
Thoryn shifted on the cot. He didn’t look surprised.
“She betrayed me.” It wasn’t a question. It was a fact. “The shipyard ambush. They were waiting. She’s the only one who knew that layout. She saved my life twice. And she gave me to the Consortium.”
“She made a choice,” Thoryn said. His voice was rough. “Her greed over your life. That’s on her. Not you.”
“Logical.” I looked at my datapad. “Doesn’t help.”
I brought up the station schematics. “We have one chip. We need the other two. Cache 2 is in my admin office vault. The financial ledgers.”
“She’ll be waiting for us,” Thoryn said. “It’s a trap.”
“Probably.” I looked at him. He was still pale, still sweating. The burn on his shoulder looked terrible. “No. I go. I can get Cache 2 alone. You’re wounded, feverish, and being near me is torture. I’m not worth you dying.”
“You’re wrong.”
“About which part?”
“All of it.” He pushed himself up straighter on the cot. “I didn’t survive an age of hell to lose you again.”
I stared at him. “You’re an idiot.”
“Established.”
“If you collapse, I’m leaving you.”
“Of course.”
I pulled a ration bar from my pack and tossed it to him. “Eat. We move in thirty minutes.”