Chapter 12
Apex walked its corridors with a stranger’s face and a warrior’s mind, Core’s disguise field throwing a copper-skinned trader on his Vettian bones and flattening the sharp cut of his cheekbones into something forgettable.
Emmy paced at his side, a compact Belt mechanic today with oil on her hands and a ruthless little smirk that hid how fast her pulse ran when the crowds pressed close. Lume rode in the open throat of her tool pack, fur dimmed to a faint, patient glow, eyes taking everything in.
“Knock off the scowl,” Emmy murmured without looking at him. “Traders who look like they hate everyone never get the good deals.”
“I do not scowl.” His voice curved low, even, regulated. It always did. He didn’t give the station his tells. He didn’t give anyone anything he didn’t intend to use.
“You definitely scowl,” she said, mouth tugging like she wanted to smile and wouldn’t let herself. “Maybe we can buy you a new face with a little warmth installed.”
“Warmth is not a face.”
“It reads like one.”
She nudged his arm and let her hand fall again, casual and quick.
The touch was nothing, yet it heated his blood like a blade pulled from fire.
The Valenmark at her wrist pulsed against her skin, a quiet answer under the borrowed sleeves.
Then it answered in his own body, heat threading through muscle and bone.
Not mystic. Not fate. A system coded into him by blood and law.
It didn’t care what he wanted. It cared that she was near.
They reached the dealer’s stall where the ships lived behind shell games and lies. The woman running the place wore plating over one eye and a smile that promised she liked profit better than air.
“Courier class,” Apex said. “Unregistered. Fast. Quiet.”
The dealer measured them like a butcher measures cuts. “Quiet costs.”
“Everything costs,” Emmy answered, and eased into the bargaining rhythm with a confidence that drew eyes.
Apex watched the room instead of her. Three exits.
Six cameras. A drone with a damaged fan stuttering along the ceiling.
Two mercenaries at the back pretending boredom and watching hands.
He cataloged scent and sound and speed. He let Emmy play human while he stayed what he had always been.
The dealer took them to a curve of hull tucked into shadow. The ship looked like a black knife someone had left half buried in a pile of scrap. Sleek. Mean. No legal registry. The seller tapped her wrist pad and the ramp sighed open.
Emmy made an appreciative noise that was mostly for show. She was good. She brushed her fingers along the interior plating and shook her head like she had found flaws the dealer would need to pay for. “You didn’t fix the grav rattle on the port spine.”
The dealer’s smile thinned. “You have ears on you.”
“Yes,” Emmy said. “And an engineer’s sense that won’t let me ignore that rattle unless the price takes the sting out.”
Apex stepped into the cockpit and let his body memorize the controls.
The dark drive looked hungry. The stealth field reading was crude but serviceable.
He called Core into the boards and sensed the quiet acceptance of his ship’s second mind.
This hull would fly. This hull would run.
It would take them where he needed to go without broadcasting his name to the systems hungry for it.
They signed nothing. Credits moved like smoke.
Before they’d sealed the deal, the seller leaned close with a grin that showed too many teeth and said, “Every ship’s got a secret, and this one’s got places no scan can find.
” She gave a significant nod toward an innocuous appearing panel.
“Perfect for when you need to disappear.”
Then the ramp lifted, the bay lights throwing hard angles across metal.
Apex slid into the pilot’s seat and the universe settled properly.
Emmy strapped into the co-pilot’s harness and Lume clambered from the pack to crouch on the console, tiny claws clicking, glow just enough to stain the black with blue.
“Clear to lift,” Core said in his ear. “Traffic minimal. Recommend slow roll to maintain anonymity.”
Apex lifted a fraction, enough to notice the new hull shiver. “Affirmative.”
Station lights flickered. A siren barked once, then again, flat and ugly. The bay doors began to cycle closed.
“Dock lockdown,” the overhead announced. “Council Enforcement boarding for DNA verification. All craft remain secured.”
Emmy’s fingers froze on her harness buckle. “Shit.”
Lume went very still, ears like petals, glow dimming.
“Inspection team inbound,” Core said. “Five Enforcers. One scanner drone. Orders list Alpha-series fugitives.”
Apex killed external power and let the ship settle back into her rests. He reached across and touched the inside of Emmy’s wrist where the mark burned like a quiet star. The punch of her heart pulsed against his fingers. He didn’t smile.
“We go still,” he said instead.
Without a word, they slid from the cockpit into the narrow access panel behind the crew cubby, a sliver of space wedged between bulkheads and insulated with old heat shielding—one of the few places aboard the ship invisible to outside scans.
Apex signaled and Core collapsed the disguise field. The tech gave off a faint resonance that Council scanners could read like a flare. He’d rather risk being seen later than let a machine tag them now.
The disguises dissolved, letting his own face return to him, edges cut by shadow.
Emmy’s borrowed features melted back into the woman he had marked as his consort by law and accident and choice, hazel eyes bright even here.
Lume tucked herself beneath the maintenance console and flattened her glow to a thread, the perfect secret in a place no one ever thought to check.
Boots rang on the dock plating. Heavy. Unhurried.
The sound of men who believed no one could stop them because no one ever had.
The scanner drone’s hum lifted like a hornet.
Someone cursed. Another male laughed. The kind of laugh that meant hurt was coming and the inspector who owned it would enjoy giving it.
“Patch me their comms,” Apex whispered.
“Linked,” came the almost soundless reply. The voices came through the thin hull with surgical clarity.
“Search priority,” the commander said. “Alpha-One through Alpha-Six.”
“Sir,” an inspector replied. “Records show Alpha-Six eliminated on D-17.”
“Then confirm it,” the commander bit out. “Remnants, clones, offspring. Whatever is left, I want proof of termination.”
Emmy’s gaze cut to Apex. The Valenmark beat harder at her wrist. He held her eyes and nothing changed in his blood. “They think I am a ghost,” he murmured.
Core’s tone dropped to a thread. “Orders specify genetic reclamation if capture achieved.”
“They are harvesting us,” Apex said.
The footsteps stopped just beyond their hull. Metal rang from a knuckle tap. Then a flat palm. The drone’s hum deepened.
Apex raised two fingers and Emmy breathed with him, match for match.
Lume slid from beneath the console, climbed the support struts with delicate economy, and pressed both forepaws to the vent grid.
Her filaments unfurled like hair drifting in water.
Blue light whispered over the intake, then shifted to orange, then to a heat Apex felt on his face.
Outside, the drone chirped. “Anomaly. Warm signature.”
“Dockhand,” one Enforcer said dismissively. The commander made a noncommittal sound and the drone’s tone sharpened, wanting the truth, learning hunger. Lume changed the pitch a fraction and the drone faltered, focusing on a false trail that led toward the bay doors.
“False positive,” a second Enforcer snapped. “Move it. We sweep and purge the logs.”
Metal scraped on metal. The commander paused at the edge of their ramp.
Apex could detect him standing there, detect the lift of the man’s breath through the hull.
He slid his palm along Emmy’s forearm, and her heat answered him, a current that wanted to turn his head and put his mouth on the pulse at her throat.
Not now. He wouldn’t. He heard her breath catch and steady, the sound small and furious.
A bright flare stung through the vent grid.
Lume did it on purpose, flooding the narrow space with enough heat and light to spike the drone’s sensors and make it chase the false reading away from their position.
Apex saw the decision in the line of her small body, the way she braced her hind legs and forced her glow higher until the machine turned.
The drone reeled a fraction, recalibrated, then drifted away.
“Too many ghosts on this station,” the commander said, voice sour. “Report any trace of Alpha unit, then move on.”
Footsteps retreated. The doors sighed. The bay found its noise again.
Emmy let out a breath that shook and then she caught it and made it smooth.
He liked that about her. She never let anyone see how hard she fought to be calm.
She only let him see it. He hadn’t asked for that.
He took it anyway and knew that if any male tried to take it from him he would cut him and not regret the cut.
“Seal the hatch,” he said.
“Sealed,” Core answered.
They were two minutes into silent launch procedures when the burst hit. Core caught it first, a spike of encrypted Enforcement chatter buried under the station’s traffic feed. Apex didn’t need a personal comm. The ship’s AI was linked into every frequency worth listening to.
Core isolated the anomaly and routed it through the cockpit speakers so only they could hear. What came through wasn’t a word. It was a waveform, dirty and buried within the Enforcement channel like a heartbeat under a drum.
“Split it,” he told Core. “It is Alpha encryption,” Apex said. He heard the old cadence in it, heard the bones of his unit in the way the data came apart and went together again like a drilled formation.