Thoryn
The trip to the admin block was slow. My shoulder was a constant, searing fire, and the close proximity to Maris in the narrow tunnels kept the bond pain at a steady, agonizing thrum. But Maris was at my side. I just focused on her. One step. Then the next.
She led us to her office. It was dark. Empty.
“It’s quiet,” I said, my voice low.
“Too quiet,” she agreed. She bypassed the main lock and opened the door. We slipped inside.
Her office was exactly what I would have expected. Clean, functional, all hard lines. She went straight to a panel on the wall that looked like a piece of abstract art, worked a hidden mechanism, and it slid open.
Inside was a small vault. She keyed in a code. The vault door opened.
She reached inside and pulled out a second data chip.
The moment her fingers touched it, a faint red light blinked on the vault’s internal panel.
“It’s my personal alert,” Maris said, her voice dropping, all business. “It just pinged Vashil’s comm. She knows we’re here.”
She slammed the vault shut just as station-wide alarms blared to life. Vashil’s voice, amplified, echoed through the corridor outside.
“Lock down Sector Gamma. The intruders are in the admin block. Everyone, now!”
“Move!” I grabbed Maris’s arm and pulled her toward the door.
We burst into the corridor just as two of Vashil’s security guards rounded the corner. They weren’t Consortium. Just station security.
“They’re my people, Thoryn!” Maris yelled over the alarm, raising her blaster. “Vashil is their supervisor. They’re just following her orders!”
They raised their rifles. Maris fired twice. Two clean shots to legs and they dropped.
We ran. More footsteps pounded toward us. Vashil’s entire network was coming down on us.
We rounded a corner and ran straight into two more guards. I shoved Maris behind me and charged. I took the first one high, grabbing his rifle and slamming him into the wall. The second one lunged, a vibro-blade in his hand.
I twisted, trying to bring my own weapon up, but he was too fast. The blade scraped past my vest and dug deep into my side.
I roared, a mix of pain and fury, and threw him off me. He hit the opposite bulkhead and didn’t get up.
“Thoryn!” Maris was at my side, her blaster out, covering the corridor.
“I’m fine,” I lied. Blood was already soaking my shirt. The new pain was sharp, bright, and cutting through the dull throb from my shoulder.
“This way!” She grabbed my arm and pulled me down a side passage. It ended at a heavy maintenance hatch. She wrenched it open and shoved me through.
We fell into a dark, narrow maintenance tunnel. Maris sealed the hatch behind us. The sounds of pursuit were muffled, then faded.
Silence. Just the drip of water somewhere in the darkness and the sound of my own breathing, too loud and wet.
I slumped against the wall, my hand pressed to the wound in my side. It was bleeding badly.
Maris activated a small light on her datapad. Her face was pale. She looked at the new chip in her hand, then at me, bleeding from two different wounds.
She opened her mouth, but there was nothing to say. We had the second chip. But we were trapped, deep in the guts of the station, with no ship, no allies, and Vashil’s entire guard hunting us.
We were stranded.
The maintenance tunnel was dark. Cold. Narrow enough that my shoulders scraped both walls if I wasn’t careful. Every scrape sent fresh agony through the plasma burn. The vibro-blade wound in my side had soaked through whatever Maris had used to wrap it. The blood ran down, warm and wrong.
Pain scale: Shoulder at an eight. Side at a seven. Bond pain holding steady at nine just from her proximity in this narrow space. Aggregate score: I was having a wonderful time.
Maris moved ahead of me, her light cutting through the darkness. She knew exactly where she was going. No hesitation. No checking maps. Years of building an empire meant she owned every tunnel, every forgotten corner.
Now every tunnel had enemies in it. Her empire was eating itself. Because of me. Because I’d brought the Consortium to her door.
Worth it, though. She was alive. That was the only data point that mattered.
“Left,” she said.
I turned. My scales scraped the wall again. The sound echoed. Subtle. Stealthy. Like dragging a rake across stone. The scientists would have noted: “Subject exhibits decreased tactical viability in confined spaces.” They’d have been right.
My breathing was getting louder. Wet. That was probably bad. Internal assessment: blood in lungs unlikely, infection setting in very likely, body shutting down from aggregate trauma most likely.
Still functional. Mostly.
The comm chatter bleeding through Maris’s stolen security channel painted a clear picture. Vashil had mobilized everyone. I counted voices, call signs, patterns. Thirty security. Ten of Maris’s own people who’d chosen their paychecks over their queen. Twenty bounty hunters pulled in for the payday.
Sixty hostiles hunting two people, one of whom was leaving a convenient blood trail.
Tactical assessment: We were fucked.
But Maris kept moving like the numbers didn’t matter. Like she’d survived worse. Knowing her, she probably had.
“Straight through,” she said at a junction. “Fifty meters, then down.”
My body had opinions about ‘down.’ Strong opinions. I voiced them: “Maris. I can’t—”
“You can.” She didn’t look back. Good. If she looked back, she’d see how much blood I was losing. How my scales kept trying to shift—emerald, gray, emerald, gray—like a broken signal. How I was using the wall to stay upright.
She was right, though. I could. Had to. No other option.
Down we went. The passage narrowed further. No emergency lighting here. Just her single beam and absolute darkness pressing in. My hand hit the wall. Needed it for balance. For reference. For not falling on my face and embarrassing myself.
Three minutes since the last patrol check-in. My brain ran the tactical math automatically. Two minutes before they started checking lower levels. Maybe less. Vashil seemed competent. She’d betrayed Maris efficiently enough.
The blast door appeared in Maris’s light. Rusted. Ancient. The kind of door that screamed “nothing interesting here” to anyone who didn’t know better.
Maris knew better. She always did.
She shoved. The door groaned but didn’t move. I added my weight—what was left of it that wasn’t leaking out of various holes—and it scraped inward.
We stepped inside, and as she pushed the door shut the sound rang final in the small space.
Then her light swept the room and I saw our new safe house.
Calling it a tomb would have been generous. Tombs at least had dignity.
Raw asteroid rock walls sweating condensation.
One emergency light strip flickering like it was having a seizure.
Two metal cots that looked like they’d been installed during the original mining operation and left to rust. The space was maybe four meters square.
Just big enough for two people who didn’t mind each other.
We minded. Or rather, my biology minded. The proximity in this tiny space sent the bond pain screaming up to a solid ten.
Somewhere above, water dripped. Steady. Rhythmic. Drip. Drip. Drip.
I tried to make it to the nearest cot. Missed. My knee hit the metal frame hard enough to buckle it. I caught myself on the wall, claws scraping stone.
“Sit,” Maris said, suddenly under my arm, taking weight I didn’t remember losing.
I sat. The cot groaned. Probably wasn’t rated for seven feet of dying Tamzari.
She dropped her pack on the other cot. Even in the bad light, I could see her running calculations. Inventory of supplies versus inventory of problems. The mathematics of keeping me functional.
The answer was clear: not enough. Not nearly enough.
But she pulled out her medkit anyway. Because that’s what Maris did. She worked with what she had. Made impossible math add up through spite and competence.
I leaned back against the wall. Closed my eyes. Tried to breathe without it sounding like I was drowning. Failed.
Even I could feel it now. The bond trying to break through the conditioning. Trying to reconnect.
Fighting a war it couldn’t win.
But still fighting.
Just like us.