27. Tyrok
TYROK
T he signal hits my console like a knife sliding between plates—clean, precise, and exactly where it wasn’t supposed to exist. For a fraction of a second, I think it’s interference, just another distortion in a battlefield already saturated with noise, but the waveform stabilizes too quickly, resolves too cleanly, and the signature embedded inside it pulls my attention into a narrow, focused line that blocks everything else out.
“Unknown transmission,” the onboard system flags, its tone neutral, detached from the weight of what it’s actually presenting.
“It’s not unknown,” I say, already moving, already leaning forward as I isolate the signal and expand it across the display.
The coding structure is subtle, layered beneath what looks like a standard distress ping, but it’s not meant for anyone scanning casually. It’s meant for someone who knows how to look. For me.
My jaw tightens as I strip the layers apart, piece by piece, the hidden markers aligning into something unmistakable.
“Stacy,” I mutter under my breath.
The signal pulses again, faint but deliberate, and I feel something shift inside my chest that has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with recognition.
“She’s broadcasting,” I say aloud.
“Broadcasting what?” the system prompts.
“Coordinates,” I reply, my fingers moving faster now, pulling the embedded data into a navigational overlay. “And something else.”
There’s a second layer, not meant to be obvious, not meant to be found quickly, but she didn’t hide it from me. She never does.
I slow just enough to analyze it properly, forcing my breathing to even out despite the pressure building under my skin, because if I rush this, I miss something, and if I miss something, I don’t get a second chance.
The pattern resolves, and when it does, I feel the shift—cold, sharp, final.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, my voice dropping.
The identification marker is subtle, buried in routing data, disguised as a standard relay node reference, but it’s there, and once I see it, I can’t unsee it.
“Source trace complete,” the system confirms.
I don’t need it to.
“I see it.”
The traitor wasn’t guessing, wasn’t leaking randomly, and he was routing, feeding controlled information through legitimate channels, masking it inside approved transmissions so it never triggered a full audit. Smart, careful, consistent—until now.
“Renn,” I say.
The name lands in the cockpit like a physical weight, and everything lines up—his access, his proximity, his timing, the challenge on the bridge. Not defiance. Diversion.
“You pushed too early,” I murmur, my grip tightening slightly on the controls. “You got impatient.”
Or scared.
Or both.
The coordinates stabilize fully now, locking into a trajectory that aligns with Combine approach lanes, but not directly, and she didn’t give them a straight path.
“She’s moving off their expected vector,” I say, tracking the deviation. “She’s forcing them to adjust.”
Buying time. Creating space. Even now.
My chest tightens once, sharp enough that I feel it in my ribs, and I push it down immediately, forcing everything back into alignment.
Emotion later. Now I move.
“Plot intercept course,” I order.
“Warning,” the system responds instantly. “Required acceleration exceeds safe operational thresholds.”
“I didn’t ask for safe,” I say.
“Structural strain projected at?—”
“Do it.”
The engines respond hard, not gradually, not smoothly, and the ship shudders around me, the frame vibrating under the sudden increase in thrust, a deep, grinding resonance that travels through the seat and into my spine.
The stars outside the viewport stretch into streaks as velocity spikes past what this vessel was designed to handle.
“Velocity increasing,” the system reports, though I can feel it without being told.
The pressure builds immediately, pressing me back into the seat, heavier with each increment, and the restraints tighten automatically as the ship compensates for the strain.
“Adjust stabilizers,” I snap.
“Stabilizers at maximum compensation,” the system replies.
Not enough.
I grip the controls tighter, manually overriding the dampening curve, forcing a sharper response, and the ship jerks slightly as it fights me before aligning.
“Come on,” I mutter. “Hold together.”
The hull groans under the stress, a low, protesting sound that vibrates through the entire structure, and I can smell it now—heated metal, circuitry pushed past optimal load, the faint burn of something not meant to run this hot.
“She’s ahead of you,” the system says.
“I know.”
“Projected intercept window narrowing.”
“I know.”
“Current trajectory risks?—”
“I know.”
I cut it off, my focus narrowing further as I track the signal, watching the distance compress in slow, incremental shifts that still feel too slow, too far, too much time between me and her.
I push harder.
The engines respond with a sharper surge, the vibration intensifying, the ship trembling like it’s on the edge of tearing itself apart, and for a moment the controls resist, feedback spiking through the interface as the system tries to reassert limits.
I override it manually, forcefully, and the response is immediate and unstable.
The ship lurches sideways, inertia dragging against the sudden change in vector, alarms flaring across the console as systems struggle to compensate.
“Loss of control detected,” the system warns.
“I’m still in control,” I growl, adjusting manually, fighting the drift, forcing the nose back onto the correct trajectory.
The stars smear across the viewport, the orientation shifting too quickly, and for a second—just a second—the ship doesn’t respond the way it should, and that’s enough to matter.
My pulse spikes, sharp and immediate, but I don’t let it take hold. I breathe slow, deliberate, forcing the panic response down before it can fully form.
“Stabilize,” I say, my voice lower now.
The system recalibrates, the drift correcting in jagged increments before smoothing out, the ship settling back into alignment, though the strain remains, constant and heavy.
“There you are,” I murmur.
The signal sharpens again, closer now, close enough that I can start resolving details beyond just position.
Another signature appears on the edge of the display—larger, heavier, following her trajectory.
“Combine vessel,” the system confirms.
“I see it.”
They’re adjusting, just like she forced them to, just like she planned.
“She’s keeping them off-balance,” I say, tracking the movement.
“Enemy vessel adjusting vector,” the system adds.
“They’re correcting.”
“Time to interception decreasing.”
Good.
That’s what I need.
Not distance. Not delay. Closure.
I lean forward slightly, my claws resting against the control interface as I refine the approach, narrowing the angle, tightening the vector, because no wide engagement, no broad assault—precision.
“If I hit them head-on, I lose her,” I say.
“Probability of collateral damage?—”
“Unacceptable,” I finish.
I adjust the trajectory again, angling slightly off-center, calculating intercept timing against their velocity, their mass, their likely response pattern.
“They’re going to assume I go for the kill,” I say.
“Logical,” the system replies.
“Good,” I mutter. “Let them.”
I reroute power, shifting output from secondary systems into propulsion and targeting, and the lights in the cockpit dim slightly as the redistribution takes effect.
“Power imbalance detected,” the system warns.
“Temporary,” I reply.
“Duration limits?—”
“I don’t need duration.”
I need one pass. One clean opening. That’s it.
The ship shudders again, harder this time, the strain building as I push it further past design limits, and I can feel the resistance in every control input now, the system fighting to maintain integrity while I force it into something it wasn’t meant to be.
“You’re going to break something,” the system says.
“Not before I get there,” I reply.
The enemy vessel grows clearer on the display, its mass resolving into defined structure, weapons arrays, shielding arcs already shifting in anticipation of engagement.
“They see you,” the system says.
“Of course they do.”
“They’re powering weapons.”
“Let them.”
I adjust course again, sharper now, closing the distance faster than they expect, the angle wrong for a standard assault, too direct, too aggressive.
“They’re recalculating,” I say.
“Enemy targeting adjusting.”
“They think I’m reckless.”
“Are you?”
I almost laugh.
“No,” I say quietly. “I’m precise.”
The distance collapses fast now, too fast for hesitation, and everything narrows into a single line—target, vector, timing.
I can feel the ship shaking around me, systems screaming under the load, heat building in the cockpit, the air thick and sharp with it, but none of that matters anymore.
Only this.
Only her.
I tighten my grip on the controls, my focus locking completely onto the intercept point as it resolves into certainty.
“I’m coming,” I say, the words low, steady.
And this time, there’s nothing left in me that hesitates.