12. Rhykor #2
"On time for the briefing, perhaps." Daxos descends two steps from the platform, his boots echoing through the silent chamber like planned detonations.
"Considerably late for the expectations this command has placed on your performance in District Seventeen.
" Producing a datapad from behind his back, he holds it at arm's length to make a show of reading from it for the benefit of the audience.
"Unauthorized allocation of military supplies to civilian populations.
Engagement protocols that prioritize human infrastructure over strategic objectives.
Repeated deviation from standard containment doctrine regarding the Legion threat.
" Lowering the datapad, he fixes me with those predatory eyes.
"And now—reports that you've embedded a human female inside your operational compound.
A civilian, Commander. Sleeping within your secured perimeter. "
The chamber goes cold and still. Officers shift in their seats. Glances cut toward me from the tiers, carrying the specific hungry attention of vultures anticipating a career termination.
"The human is a medical specialist," I manage to keep my voice perfectly level, but the effort it takes to hold that mask in place is a deeper injury than any of the physical damage I’ve accumulated in the last few weeks.
"Her skills directly support operational readiness.
She treats combat injuries to Kraaj personnel that would otherwise require evacuation to?—"
"A pet medic." The interruption comes from the second tier, a sub-commander named Rexicon, lean and sharp-featured, with ceremonial markings that run in thin, aggressive lines down his jawline and throat.
He's been angling for a district command for years, and his smile carries a predatory gleam, an ambitious officer viewing another's humiliation as a personal stepping stone.
"The district’s enforcer has a pet human who patches his scratches and warms his?—"
"Finish that sentence." The heat detonates from my core, defying all attempts at containment; furnace-hot light floods my hands, casting the briefing chamber in crimson shadows that make the officers in the first three tiers flinch backward.
"Finish that sentence, Rexicon, and I will melt the jaw you're flapping it from. "
The chamber erupts with officers shouting and Daxos's voice booming orders that I can barely hear through the roaring in my ears.
Rexicon stumbles backward, his hand going to the sidearm at his hip, and I'm already moving, crossing the distance to the second tier in strides that crack the stone floor, heat pouring in waves that make the surrounding atmosphere shimmer and bend.
Rexicon's back hits the wall. Fingers clamp around his throat, the heat from my palm searing through his uniform collar to raise blisters on the skin beneath.
His eyes widen in shock. A moment later, his sidearm clatters to the floor.
Any officer within ten feet scrambles clear, leaving an empty radius around us that smells like burning fabric and fear.
"Her name," I growl, superheating the air surrounding my mouth until it tastes of scorched dust, "is Cassia.
She is under my protection. And the next creature—Kraaj, human, or machine—that speaks about her with anything less than the respect she has earned will discover exactly why they call me the Dragon. "
The silence that follows is absolute. Forty officers watch a choking sub-commander pinned to a wall while nobody breathes. The blistering light from my hands radiates against Rexicon’s throat, and I can see a politician rapidly reconsidering after realizing a lethal mistake.
"Release him." Daxos's demand carries the intensity of the entire Kraaj military hierarchy, backed by an authority I am unable to challenge. "Commander Rhykor, release the sub-commander now."
I hold for three more seconds, which is long enough for the blisters on Rexicon's throat to darken and long enough for any officer in the chamber to understand exactly what I am willing to do and for whom.
Then I open my hand and step back.
Rexicon collapses on the wall, clutching his throat, and two officers drag him toward the rear exit while avoiding my eyes with religious dedication. The light fades from my hands in reluctant, stuttering pulses, leaving the briefing chamber in amber shadow.
Daxos watches me from the command platform, his expression a volatile mix of fury and a grudging acknowledgment that I am exactly the weapon they created me to be.
He descends the remaining steps until we stand face to face on the central floor, so close I can smell the ozone and metal of his own thermal signature.
"You have just assaulted a fellow officer in front of forty witnesses during a mandatory command briefing.
" The theatrical projection is gone now. The words are for me—and only me. They’re raw and pared down to a bare, threatening minimum.
"Do you understand what that means for your command authority? "
"I understand that my command authority is worth nothing if the soldiers under it believe they can threaten civilians under my protection without consequence."
Echoing my words with a contempt so precise it could cut bone, he turns his gaze to me.
“Your protection has become remarkably selective and deeply personal, Commander.
You were built for war and designed to protect Kraaj interests across this entire region, yet you have narrowed your focus to a single district and—if the reports are accurate—a single human woman.
" Leaning closer, his thermal signature pushes against mine in a challenge as old as our species.
"The so-called Dragon of this district. What a small cage you've chosen to put yourself in. "
Turning to ascend the platform, Daxos dismisses me with an absolute finality, having made his point and left the aftermath as someone else's problem.
The briefing resumes. I stand in the middle section of the floor, surrounded by officers who refuse to make eye contact, and feel the ground shifting—politically and in the ways that matter to a military career I stopped caring about the moment I heard her say I'm here.
After the meeting, I find Cassia in the auxiliary room with Dessik, her pulse pistol drawn, her face pale from what she witnessed on the silent screen. The console monitor shows the chaotic aftermath of the briefing room but offers no audio.
Dessik has positioned himself in front of the door. The visual disruption on screen was sufficient to trigger his protective instincts, and Cassia had evidently refused to stay seated.
"What happened in there?" She holsters the pistol and travels across the room to me, her eyes evaluating a shimmer warping the air around his shoulders and the claw marks I left on the briefing chamber floor.
"Simply a disagreement." The reply is laughably insufficient, and she knows it. "I'll explain later. We need to leave."
We exit through the service corridors, Dessik on point, Cassia beside me, my hand hovering free of the small of her back.
The contact would ground me, settling the churning fury still simmering in my core, but the corridors are full of Kraaj military personnel whose eyes follow us with the specific fascination of witnesses gathering a story to retell.
I keep my hands at my sides and my mouth shut, because the next person who looks at her wrong is going to test the structural limits of these walls.
Nysera intercepts us at the perimeter exit.
Emerging from a side corridor with a silent precision that borders on supernatural, she falls into step beside me to match my pace.
The amber emergency lights dance across her silver markings, but her face is a void—arranged in that practiced, icy neutrality that signals my day is about to be ruined.
"Commander, General Daxos is already talking open mutiny while Rexicon and three of the district commanders actively push for your reassignment from District Seventeen through a tribunal hearing. "
"Noted." I keep walking.
"Rhykor," she catches my arm, a liberty very few people in the known universe would attempt, and lowers her voice.
"You gave them exactly what they wanted.
A public display of instability. Evidence that your judgment is compromised.
Daxos will use this to justify oversight, reassignment, or removal. You handed him the weapon."
I stop, and the corridor stretches empty in both directions, amber light pooling across the metal floor. Cassia stands just out of reach, watching the exchange with those perceptive dark pupils that miss nothing.
"I know what I did," I mutter, feeling the admission settle in my stomach like swallowed iron. "Rexicon’s intended point is equally clear to me, as is the fallout that will follow if I allow it to stand unchallenged."
Nysera’s eyes hold mine, displaying neither judgment nor sympathy—only a cold, straight evaluation, a strategist forecasting how many moves remain before the board collapses. She releases my arm and turns to Cassia.