Chapter 7
SANTIAGO
Santi sampled blood on his tongue as a red-headed brute with a fist like a sledgehammer, snapping his head sideways.
A second kinai drove a knee into his ribs, the crack loud and piercing, stealing his breath.
He staggered, just managing to duck as the third man, meaner, broader, his hair shaved in jagged tufts, lunged forward, his right hand twisting into a grotesque claw.
The talons came for his gut, fast and deadly, and Santi twisted hard, as they ripped through the fabric of his tunic but missed his flesh by inches.
He planted a foot into the man’s hip and shoved him back, staggering into the sunlight of the cracked prison yard.
The fight wasn’t clean, nor fair.
Three-to-one never was.
However, Santi did not yearn for a win.
He only needed to bleed sufficiently to sell the lie.
Guards thundered into the yard, bludgeons crackling with electric charge.
Shouts rang out, loud and chaotic.
‘Enough! Stand down!’
The shock batons hit the redhead first.
Sparks exploded against flesh, dropping the men mid-snarl.
They hit the ground hard, twitching, their mafia pirate tattoos flexing and spasming across their chests and shoulders.
Around them, other inmates pressed close to the fences, their laughter and jeers caustic with feral glee.
‘Skulls got their asses handed to ‘em by one kinai!’ one of them hollered. ‘Fokk him up good next time, boys!’
Santi let himself sag in the guards’ grip, playing the part of a broken man.
He slumped forward, body loose, ribs screaming, but his mind acute, calculating.
The wardens, trusted Signet operatives and prison staff, put on a show, shoving and cursing at him as they dragged him across the yard.
Santi played up to the hype. ‘Fokk off! You’re hurting me.’
‘Keep your mouth shut, kinai!’ one barked for the crowd’s benefit.
They hauled him through the checkpoint, past a series of grimy bulkheads, and into a private guard office.
The door hissed as it sealed behind them, locking out the noise.
As soon as the locks engaged, the act dropped.
The sentinels loosened their grip and helped him onto a bench.
One handed him a damp towel for the blood on his face.
‘Sante, hermanos,’ Santi muttered, wiping his split lip.
The air beside him shimmered, and Miral materialized, glyphs flickering across her synth-skin, her expression tight but curious.
‘Got what we needed?’ she asked, her hands extending a med wand over his ribs.
It flashed, delivering healing that, with his spectral force, mended his wounds faster.
Santi let Miral work, as his features rippled, the older, grizzled, battle-worn grifter’s disguise melting away into his true face.
‘Indeed,’ he said, flexing his bruised jaw. ‘The Red Skulls are on edge. Word is that a major operation is about to go down right here on The Sombra. They’re cagey, twitchy as hell.’
‘Hit me.’
Miral put away the device and crossed her arms, all ears.
Santi sat on the brink of the tactical table, still sore and healing from his stint in the yard, his voice deep but steady as he briefed Miral.
‘I caught three Red Skulls talking near a busted conduit. Thought they were blowing smoke, but they were too amped, too jumpy.’
He ran a hand through his hair. ‘They were whispering about making moves. Sounded like they’re prepping a breach, a big ‘un.’
Miral crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing. ‘What kind of breach?’
‘Didn’t get full details, but one of them mentioned timing. Said the cycles are aligning, and they’ve got clearance for an inside job. They’ve already planted gear somewhere in the waste processors.’
Santi shook his head. ‘Sounds like the planned op is not just an attack but an extraction.’
‘What’s the target?’
‘No clue.’ His mouth thinned. ‘My gut says it’s volatile. Or priceless.’
Miral exhaled. ‘How’re they getting out?’
He leaned forward, voice turning grim. ‘Lower conduits, then they’re jumping out on a ship called the Black Star Runner. They claim the skiff has such high speeds that they’ll be ghosts in space the moment they board. Done and dusted the second they lift off.’
Miral’s brow furrowed. ‘So, how did the fight begin?’
‘They caught me listening in, so I took off like a coward and ran to the yard. They hunted me down and asked why I was sneaking after them. The moment I dropped their leader, the Mad Wolf King’s name, Varnok, and cracked a dumb joke, they lost it.
Like flipping a switch. They fell on me like rabid wolves. ’
Miral nodded, her mind already turning gears.
‘They like ripping shit up, let’s claw apart their plans then,’ she said.
Santi popped his knuckles, a grim smile cutting across his bruised face.
‘Count me in, jefa.’
A few hours later, the entire Red Skull gang inside Sombra’s prison got rounded up and thrown into solitary cages.
Reinforced alloy walls and energy dampeners isolated each gangster, preventing coordination or escape.
Their howls and threats echoed down the cell block, but no one listened.
A sweep by Miral and a squad of Signet soldiers located the secret stash of Red Skulls’ weapons in the waste processors and destroyed them.
A day later, in Sector X-7, a fast-moving skiff broke from its usual patrol pattern, its unusual flight flagged by Signet long-range scanners.
Santi dispatched a hunter squad, which intercepted the vessel just past a nearby asteroid belt.
Its transponder codes identified it as the Black Star Runner.
The boarding was swift and merciless.
The Red Skull crew scarcely had time to reach for their weapons before they got disarmed and slammed to the deck.
Its crew wore the gang’s crimson sigil, some carved into their skin, others stitched into their ragged gear.
Their captain, a grizzled woman with an eye implant and a mouth full of lies, tried to bluff her way out of it.
However, Santi’s team had already decrypted their flight logs.
Smuggled armaments, pulse rifles, disruptor grenades, and illegal plasma torpedoes packed the hold, bound for the planned Skull-led insurrection on The Sombra.
The crew got taken into custody and transferred to the brig aboard the Signet dreadnought.
As for the Black Star Runner, Santi gave the order himself: requisition it, gut it, and melt it down.
Within forty-eight hours, its hull plates and core engine drives lay stripped and reforged at the floating shipyard.
What once had been a high prize smuggler’s vessel now fed the construction of Signet’s next stealth gunner, a sleek predator-class craft with whisper-thrusters and cloaked weapon bays.
A clear message to the Skulls and any other crew foolish enough to cross the Signet Group: your weapons build our war machines, your mistakes strengthen our armory.
SOLEIL
Soleil stirred beneath a sagging thermal sheet, the static threads clinging to her damp skin like cobwebs.
The chill of the pavement seeped into her bones.
Sleep had only come in snatches, fitful and raw, punctuated by aches in her joints and a fire behind her eyes that refused to dull.
She jerked awake at the sound of shuffling feet and hushed, breathless voices.
‘Lookie what we got here.’
Her eyes blinked open to darkness fractured by neon flickers.
Three men loomed above her.
The first was lanky, with cracked goggles perched on his forehead and a mouth half-collapsed by missing teeth.
The second was thicker, bulkier, his coat patched with synth-plastic and string, his left eye filmed white with old rot.
The third had hair like scorched wire and a twitch in his jaw, his fingers flexing like claws at his sides.
They circled her like carrion birds.
Filth stained their boots. The reek of fermented trash and old blood clung to their clothes.
‘Just a little vagrant,’ the staring one muttered, nudging her makeshift bag with his boot. ‘Might have credits.’
‘Or a koko stash,’ the twitching one grinned.
Her body screamed protest as she sat up, dizziness slicing through her skull like a blade. Her limbs felt sodden and heavy, as if they were submerged underwater.
It seemed like some insidious flu gripped her flesh and bones, shaking her, with aches and a raging fever coiling deep in her marrow.
‘Back off,’ she rasped, voice hoarse from sleep and a burning throat.
They smirked.
The bulkier one lunged, grabbing her wrist. ‘Let’s see what you’re hiding, sweetheart.’
Her control snapped.
Soleil surged with a soundless snarl, her form blurring, breaking, shifting.
Her bones cracked as red light ignited beneath her skin. Fur erupted, fire-bright and spectral.
Her body lengthened, reshaped, her spine arching, talons exploding from her fingers, jaw stretching into a lupine snout with obsidian fangs.
The transformation was not graceful; it was fury made flesh.
The men screamed.
She struck the twitching one first, claws ripping through his coat, sending him tumbling across the alley.
The bulky one tried to run but caught a slash over the back, blood misting the air. The last fell to the ground, shielding his face, shrieking for mercy.
Soleil roared, the sound part beast, semi broken soul.
They fled.
But not before the third thug, the goggled one, dove forward.
They snatched an item from the concrete floor near her makeshift bedding and sprinted away, clutching it to their chest with sweat-slick fingers.
Soleil stood in the wreckage of her rage, breath ragged, red eyes glowing in the dark, her claws twitching.
She jolted into her humaniform with a violent shudder, her whole body locked in a bone-deep tremble.
Her teeth clacked so hard and fast she feared they might splinter inside her skull.
Her skin was moist with condensation, her hair matted to her scalp in damp ropes.
The warmth from the shaft vent was gone.
In its place, an arctic-like gust sliced through her soaked clothes like knives dipped in frost.
She stumbled, fell, and tried to sit up, but her limbs moved as if weighted with stone.
Her lips were blue. Her fingers were numb.