Chapter 21
SANTIAGO
Santi moved through the wreckage, his jaw clenched so tight it ached.
Fury burned behind his eyes, but he didn’t let it rise, not yet, not until the fires were out, the bodies counted, and the wounded were safe.
The Sombra was still vulnerable in places, micro-shudders rippling through her bones from the breach that Soleil’s incendiary blew through the isolation unit.
Bulkheads warped.
Hull plating bent inward like crumpled paper.
Debris hung suspended in caught-gravity eddies, flickering beneath red emergency lights.
Santi made sure his crew secured the prison level first, rerouting security staff into place.
Zev oversaw the re-calibration and urgent repairs to the shields.
Kaal and Miral held the rest of the decks with all non-critical movement curtailed and a curfew in place throughout the ship.
No one other than essential personnel was permitted to move about the dreadnought.
Santi helped lift Boaz from where he had been pinned under a collapsed rail conduit.
The large man’s leg bent wrong, bones splintered through his flesh.
He winced but gritted his teeth as medics braced the limb and carried him to the med unit.
Then came the call from the maintenance head, Wren.
Two external riggers, sucked out by the breach, had been found.
Santi’s blood turned to ice as he caught sight of two black body bags lying zipped tight on collapsible hover gurneys.
The crew stood in grim silence, in respect for the dead.
Santi stepped forward, boots echoing on metal grates, until he knelt beside the bundles.
He recognized a face in the clear plex window of one bag.
Marko Antonelli.
A mature, jovial, wiry scaffolder always humming old synth tracks through his helmet comms.
Santi worked side-by-side with him on hull seals a few cycles back.
He opened the zipper halfway, just enough to confirm.
Marko’s face was bloodless, frozen in that final, breathless second prior to the explosive breach taking him.
‘They were working,’ Boaz whispered hoarsely from a stretcher nearby. ‘They were just fixing a fokkin’ panel, Santi.’
‘Fokk,’ Santi growled, his body shaking from fury and the withdrawal of adrenaline as the body bags were carted away.
Hover ambulances arrived in pairs, lights strobing.
The med bots swarmed over the wounded, lifting them with padded harnesses.
Boaz winced in pain as his hover cot floated by.
‘I’m with you, brother,’ Kaal grunted, nodding with grim solemnity at Santi before joining Boaz’s escort detail.
Santi stayed, crouched eyes staring at the breach through which Soleil disappeared.
Wondering what the fokk had gone so wrong.
Later, when the immediate carnage had been triaged and the cleanup units had begun sealing the gash in the hull, he visited the families of the fallen.
He met with two spouses and consoled them.
When Marko’s young daughter asked him if her dad was going to wake up soon, it almost broke him.
Santi knelt in front of her and said nothing, because no words could explain away their grief.
He just wrapped his arms around the pair as her mother wept.
The news holos ran the footage in loops: ‘Saboteur Red Queen Breaks Varnok Gage Out of Sombra Prison Confirmed.’
Others speculated: ‘Signet Security Breach? High-Profile Prisoner Aided by an Inside Job?’
He didn’t care about the conjecture and theorizing.
He cared that they were right.
Soleil, under the influence of a mighty overlord, had destroyed everything he gave her: his trust, his passion, his damned heart, and access to his files.
She’d used him to spring the most dangerous terrorist in the quadrant.
His mind looped around the thought, as he moved between repairs, the ship hospital, and the family visitation quarters with the hollow relentlessness of a war machine.
He didn’t sleep and scarcely ate.
He just worked, because rage like this didn’t rest.
A night after she vanished, Santi sat at the lake’s edge, the water a cold mirror of the darkening sky.
‘Mi sol, what did they do to you? Why?’
His voice was a wounded rasp, but only silence answered him.
The fury came slow, controlled, and deadly.
It coiled through his chest like smoke before it burned.
He sensed it building with nowhere to go but blood.
Vengeance was the only language left to him now.
He’d thought he might hate her, but to the honest, he couldn’t muster the energy to loathe her.
In their time together, she’d become his pulse, his anchor in a world that kept slipping out from under him.
When he was with her, the ghosts quieted, the war inside him stilled.
Now, without her, each intake of oxygen scraped raw past his throat.
He remembered her, how she trembled beneath his hands, the essence of her skin, the shudder of her breath against his throat.
Memories of her moans haunted him, and recollections of her sighs burned him.
Soleil had been his sanctuary, his undoing, his impossible salvation.
Now she was gone.
The lake reflected his stillness, but within him, he was a churning storm.
If she were dead, the world would burn.
If she were alive, no fokkin’ soul would stand between him and her, and the freakin’ truth.
The executive terminal on The Sombra was a hushed space.
Sound-dampened floors, cream-metal walls gleaming under a burnished gold light, and the deep thrum of high-clearance security elevators cast stark shadows.
Santi stood near the access doors, his back rigid, shoulders drawn, his jaw set to contain the guilt gnawing at him.
The silence fractured as the private transport lift sighed open.
Xander stepped out with Savvine at his side, both still in their off-duty wear from their cut-short honeymoon.
Savvine’s skin was radiant, her hair twisted into a sleek braid.
She gave him a soft smile when she saw Santi, stepping forward to wrap her arms around him.
‘I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through this madness,’ she breathed.
Santi swallowed.
Her kindness and warmth pricked at the raw block of ice inside him.
‘Sante, Savvine. I appreciate your words.’
He nodded, pressing a hand to her back in gratitude.
She released him, gave her husband a gentle kiss, and left, guiding her and Xander’s hover luggage toward their quarters.
Xander stayed behind.
He tipped his chin in the direction of the bridge and executive offices.
‘My ready room.’
The pair of sinewed, alpha, tall men paced the hallway, boots striking the floor in cadence.
Santi’s pace was heavy, burdened.
Guilt weighed his every step, etched in how his hands curled into fists and unfurled again.
His eyes were gritty, sleep eluding him since the fateful event.
The door to the ready room closed behind them.
Soft ambient light blinked on; screens across the wall displayed galaxies pulsing with quiet radiance.
Santi turned, speaking in a hoarse timbre. ‘I should have -.’
Xander cut him off with a sudden, firm force: a hug, an arm clapped around Santi’s back, pulling him tight.
Santi tensed for a beat, then yielded.
Enough for his arms to encircle his best friend, his commander, and his brother in all but blood.
His forehead tilted to Xander’s shoulder as his eyes ached. He held back the tears, yet his eyes misted.
‘You weren’t to know,’ Xander rumbled, his utterance deep and steady. ‘You cared for her. That’s not a flaw, hermano. That’s your fokkin’ strength.’
They drew apart.
Santi let out a shaky exhale; his spine was straighter, his stance less buckled, reinforced by brotherly concern and care.
‘She was under a monster’s control, but she still used me, Xand,’ he breathed. ‘She played me, every damn minute of our being together. I didn’t see -.’
‘Cut the guilt trippin’. You protected her. Like you protect everyone, that’s who you are.’
The Chief of the Sombra and head of the Signet pack stared down his Xo until Santi growled, cursed, and relented. ‘OK, cabrón, I’ll take your bead on this.’
‘Tis the only way to look at it,’ Xander rasped, giving Santi an approving chin lift.
Xander stepped around the table, tapping into the holo console with a quick flick of his fingers. ‘Miral has compiled a detailed report.’
Santi nodded, jaw set. ‘Good. I want to review the footage; every camera angle, each second. I need to know how they pulled this off.’
‘You will.’ Xander’s tone snapped to command. ‘Let’s bring the others in. We break this down, piece by piece. We learn, adapt, and fokkin’ come up with a plan.’
The captain and formidable warrior narrowed his eyes, his mind already churning. ‘And then we hit back, and get your woman back.’
‘Not sure I want her back.’
Xander shook his head. ‘Give her the benefit of the doubt, at least track her down so you can ask her what you need to in her face.’
Santi’s gaze lifted. Fire sparked behind the storm of his eyes.
‘Sawa. Let’s fokkin’ hunt down her and her toxic family to the ends of the Wildlight if we have to.’
Starlight from the nearest moon filtered through the panoramic viewport of The Sombra’s boardroom, casting the space in a twilight sheen.
Santi stood at the far end, jaw shadowed with stubble, his shoulders squared, his face unreadable.
The explosion still echoed in his ears, and Soleil’s final look burned in his memory.
He jolted as the rest of the Signet strong guard prowled in.
Kaal, bruised but back on his feet, still wore his combat rig like a second skin.
Zev entered with his usual half-scowl, dragging a chair into place with a grunt.
Boaz limped in next, arm in a temporary sling, his leg regenerated after the compound fracture.
He nodded to Santi, not with resentment, but camaraderie.
Miral was last, silent until she reached the central console.
Her fingers flew over the interface with precision as holo-screens bloomed into light above the desk.
‘Repair teams have sealed the breach on Deck Nine and rerouted oxygen through secondary ducts,’ she intoned. ‘Hull integrity at ninety percent and climbing. All prisoners in the isolation block have been transferred to secure orbitals.’
At the head of the table with arms folded, the returned CO radiated quiet control as he jerked his chin. ‘What about the wounded?’ he asked.
Miral blinked in acknowledgment. ‘We lost two maintenance crew. Six more injured. Of those, three are stable and in recovery. Boaz is the worst off of the pack, but healing well.’
Boaz raised his hand in a sardonic salute. ‘Being a freakin’ spectral lycan is not overrated, folks, it fokkin’ saved my life.’
Silence settled until Santi broke it.
‘I apologize for this shitshow. I take full responsibility as I’m the reason this happened, I let her into our world,’ he uttered, rough and raw. ‘Worse, I hesitated to vet her. If I’d asked Miral to conduct a thorough sweep on her, we might have found out sooner what her mission was.’
He hung his head and pursed his lips.
‘Fokk, I should’ve seen it.’
‘Santi,’ Zev rasped. ‘Stop it, brother.’
Kaal leaned forward, tapping a scarred knuckle on the table. ‘She fooled us all. Not just you. I’m the head of security, and I didn’t pick her up.’
‘Nor did I,’ Miral added, her gaze locking on his.
‘She used me.’ Santi’s jaw flexed, anguish bleeding through. ‘And still, part of me wants to believe she didn’t want to, that her uncle was using a mind and pain control apparatus to direct her actions. I need to find her and confirm this device was indeed why she committed her heinous acts.’
The implicit aspect of his statement is that he had to seek the truth.
Had she responded to him with the same pure passion he felt for her because she cared for him? Or had she used him as a puppet to get to what she needed?
No one spoke.
They didn’t have to; their gaze was solemn as they witnessed the grief, betrayal, rage swimming in Santi’s glowing eyes.
Yet underneath it, a fire burned with purpose.
Kaal met his gaze across the table. ‘The only way to get justice is to chase them all down, bring them back to the Sombra, conduct a trial, and then fokkin’ space her uncle and father. As for what to do with her, CO, XO, it’s on you.’
Xander finally spoke again, voice quiet but ironclad. ‘Santi, Kaal, Miral. You’re cleared to go after her.’
All three straightened and nodded, accepting their mission.
‘I want them found,’ he continued. ‘I want them all to answer for this shitshow.’
Dead or alive, that part went unsaid, but every one of them caught it.