Chapter 11
JORDAN
Idon’t sleep.
Not because I’m brave, not because I’m wired for heroics—because every time I close my eyes, the Defrocked Nun goes dark again behind my lids and the sound of bodies hitting carpet comes back like a cruel little ringtone I can’t mute.
My nerves keep insisting the danger is still in the room, even when my brain knows the door is locked and Lonari’s people are pacing the hall like bored apex predators.
So I do what I’ve always done since the orphanage: I make the world smaller by turning it into a problem I can solve.
The Nun has a server spine—its hidden skeleton, the piece nobody wants to admit exists because it ruins the illusion that this place runs on charm and luck.
It doesn’t. It runs on cables, heat, and the kind of encrypted backbones that always, always have someone listening unless you get mean about it.
And right now, if I’m going to talk to Clint Rogers—the real Clint Rogers, not some honeypot wearing his name like a stolen jacket—I need a comm space so clean it squeaks.
I slip out of Lonari’s suite early, moving like I belong because looking like you belong is ninety percent of escaping in one piece.
The carpet swallows my steps; the corridor smells like expensive cologne and recycled air and faint smoke from last night’s chaos—blood scrubbed away, fear still clinging to the corners.
A guard nods at me and looks away, pretending not to notice the tech bag on my shoulder, because everyone here has learned the same survival skill: don’t ask questions you don’t want answered.
The access door to the spine is tucked behind a “VIP Staff Only” hallway that reeks of bleach and warm electronics. I palm the panel.
Denied.
I exhale and smile at the door like it can feel embarrassed. “Okay. We’re doing it the hard way.”
I pop the wall plate, expose the cable bundle, find the actuator loop, and bridge it with a quick splice. A tiny spark bites my fingertip—sharp, bright pain—and the door clicks open with reluctant compliance.
Inside, the server spine breathes cold air in steady sighs. Fans roar softly. Blue indicator lights blink in patterns that feel almost smug. The room smells like ozone, dust that’s been heated a thousand times, and the faint plasticky sweetness of insulation warming under constant load.
Cameras, of course. Three obvious, probably more hidden.
I look directly into the nearest one and lift my compad like I’m giving it a polite toast. “Hi. You’re going to take a nap.”
A loop packet slides into the camera node. The feed freezes on an empty hallway view and holds.
Now: surgery.
Step one is separating the casino entertainment network from security.
Whoever designed the Nun tied them together because convenience is the god of criminals, and gods love sacrifices—usually in the form of basic operational security.
Entertainment is loud and fat and perfect for hiding sniffers.
Security should be sharp and lean and isolated.
I boot the holo-dancers and slot-song subnets off the main trunk and shove them into a secondary lane.
Alerts flare, then settle as the system rebalances; somewhere above, a gambler probably curses because the ambient music stuttered mid-chorus.
I don’t care.
Step two: reroute what I need through a maintenance tunnel relay—something boring enough nobody’s watching it.
I find an old node tagged COOLANT FLOW DIAGNOSTICS, still active but barely, like a forgotten organ twitching out of habit.
Perfect. I thread my comm suite through it, narrow the path into a tight encrypted pipe, and set the noise floor to “so dull it makes auditors yawn.”
Step three: remove the “convenient” listening devices.
Because they’re here. I can feel them the way you can feel a cheap lock on a door.
I pop a panel behind the main router rack.
There it is: a little black puck, unlabeled, nestled behind cable bundles like a tick in fur.
“Cute,” I whisper, and unplug it.
I find another behind a power bus.
Then a third—wired in cocky, like whoever planted it assumed nobody would dare touch it.
I yank it free anyway. Another spark bites my finger. My skin smells faintly singed.
“Stop listening,” I mutter. “It’s rude.”
In under ten minutes I’ve got a small pile of pucks on the floor like dead insects.
I wipe my palms on my pants, inhale cold air that tastes like metal, and let myself feel one tiny flicker of satisfaction.
Safe pocket. Mostly clean.
Now: Clint.
My throat tightens on his name for a reason I don’t like admitting out loud.
Clint Rogers isn’t “a contact.” He’s one of the only adults from the IHC ecosystem who ever looked at me like I was a person instead of a file that needed moving from shelf to shelf.
I haven’t spoken to him in years, but some connections don’t rust—they just go quiet until you need them to carry weight again.
I initiate the handshake protocol I built back in work-study—an old orphanage-era rotating key set disguised as a routine maintenance ping. It’s antique, ugly, and specific. Nobody fakes it unless they lived it.
The holo displays:
INITIATING: WORK-STUDY ROTATING HANDSHAKE — KEYSET 12B
My pulse trips.
Then:
COUNTERSIGN REQUIRED
I type the prompt phrase, hands steady because I refuse to give fear the satisfaction of making me clumsy.
“Shift ends when the lights stop lying.”
There’s a beat of silence that feels like standing on a ledge.
Then the response hits, immediate and sharp:
“Lights always lie. Check the breaker.”
My lungs let go of air like they’ve been holding it since Yatori.
It’s him.
The holo feed resolves into a shipboard camera—tight angle, slightly off-kilter, like it was bolted to a bulkhead by someone who hates aesthetics.
Clint fills the frame in a way that makes my brain do a tiny double-take.
He’s younger than I’d built him in my head and rougher in the way soldiers get rough—black hair grown out just enough to be annoying, blue eyes that look like they’ve seen too much and decided to keep living anyway, posture loose but ready like his muscles never fully unclench.
He’s wearing a plain shirt with sleeves pulled down, but the edges of ink peek at his wrists—tattoos he tries to keep covered, like memories he doesn’t want strangers reading.
There’s a faint sheen of sweat at his temples, and even through the holo I can see the telltale tension behind his eyes—headache, probably.
Cybernetics backlash, the doc said. Frequent.
He looks like he’s in the galley of a working ship: scuffed metal walls, a strapped-down chair, a table with a half-empty mug that might be coffee or might be something worse.
In the background, somewhere off-frame, I hear a muffled voice—deep and enthusiastic—and a tinny burst of ancient Earth music.
“Is that—” I start, then stop because Clint is already scowling at the sound.
He snaps his head slightly to the side and barks, “Honeybear, if you crank Bon Jovi any louder I’m going to eject the speakers into space.”
A booming voice answers, cheerful and offended. “You can’t eject the speakers, Clint! They’re part of the vibe!”
Clint rolls his eyes back toward me. “Jordan?” he says, and his voice is laid-back in that practiced way people get when they’re trying not to show they’re worried. “Tell me this is a prank, because if it’s a prank, it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever done.”
“It’s not a prank,” I say, and my voice cracks on the second word like my body wants to betray me.
His expression shifts—not dramatic, not soft, but precise. Marine reflex. He leans closer to the camera, lowering his voice.
“Okay,” he says. “Then talk. Fast. What’s your status?”
Alive. Not safe. Never safe.
“I’m alive,” I say. “I escaped Yatori Operations Station with a full archive. The station got hit. Tech crews executed. I have evidence.”
Clint’s jaw tightens. “Yatori got hit by who?”
“Troops in Vakutan-marked armor,” I say, and force myself not to spiral as I say it. “But the signatures don’t match. Something’s off. They jammed comms, overwrote docking logs in real time, and then started shooting like they were doing drills.”
Clint’s eyes flick, likely to a screen off-camera. “Where are you calling from?”
I swallow. “Gur. I’m… inside the Defrocked Nun.”
Clint goes very still. Then he exhales through his nose, a short sound that isn’t quite a laugh but has the shape of one. “You always did have a talent for landing in the worst possible places.”
“Hi, Clint,” I mutter.
“Hi, kid,” he shoots back, and the warmth underneath the snark hits me harder than I expect. “Don’t say your exact location out loud again. Assume every wall is a microphone and every microphone is a cop.”
“Already handled,” I say, and I angle my compad slightly to show the network map hovering around me.
“I built a secure pocket inside the Nun’s server spine.
Booted entertainment off security backbone, rerouted bandwidth through a maintenance tunnel relay, and physically unplugged a bunch of Kaijen listening pucks. ”
“Of course you did,” Clint says, and there’s grudging admiration in it. “You unplugged them?”
“With my hands,” I confirm. “Felt therapeutic.”
Behind him, the off-frame voice—Honeybear—says loudly, “Is that Jordan? Tell her I say hi!”
Clint doesn’t look away from me. “Honeybear says hi.”
“Tell Honeybear I say hi,” I say automatically, because apparently this is my life now: negotiating interstellar espionage while an Odex demands greetings over Bon Jovi.
Clint’s mouth twitches. “He heard you. He’s happy.”
There’s a wet retching sound somewhere in the background.
Clint’s eyes close for half a second like he’s praying for patience. “And Spewey says hi too.”
I blink. “Spewey?”
“Don’t ask,” Clint says flatly. “You’ve got evidence. Show me what you can safely transmit.”