Chapter 16 Lonari
LONARI
Gur tries to tear itself apart like a wounded animal the second it smells weakness.
The streets don’t care that I stripped a fake Godfather on a casino dais.
The alleys don’t care that I burned half our reserves to sever Nine contracts.
The rival crews don’t care that I’m “legitimate” now by syndicate standards—whatever the hell legitimacy means when your government is a ledger and your laws are enforced at gunpoint.
They care about one thing:
Can Kaijen still bite?
So I make sure the city feels teeth.
Emergency rule isn’t a speech. It’s logistics.
It’s standing in a street that still reeks of smoke and hot metal while crews glare across a line of painted asphalt like it’s sacred territory, and telling them if they shoot each other today, I’ll shoot them tomorrow.
It’s sending patrol rotations to medical stations before I send them to casinos.
It’s making sure trauma bays have power and clean bandages before anyone gets a fresh suit.
It’s building legitimacy while still bleeding.
I’m at a triage hub on Kaijen east when the next minor war tries to start—two small crews, both young, both hungry, both convinced they’re the main character in a story Gur never promised them.
One’s got Sable Knife colors tied around their arms like a joke.
The other’s Kaijen-adjacent, but not sworn—dock rats with rifles, eyes too bright.
They’re screaming at each other across a barricade of overturned cargo pallets.
“—you don’t own this block!”
“We spilled blood for this block!”
“You spilled blood because you’re stupid!”
I step between them and the argument dies mid-breath, like someone hit mute.
The air smells like antiseptic and sweat and spilled disinfectant. Behind me, inside the makeshift medical station, I hear a woman groaning in pain and a medic swearing under their breath. A child cries—thin, exhausted—like they’ve been crying for hours and forgot why.
I let that sound sit in the space.
Then I speak.
“Anybody fires in this lane,” I say calmly, “and I lock your crew’s food deliveries for a month.”
One of the dock rats laughs nervously. “Boss, that’s—”
“Collateral,” I finish, and my voice hardens. “You wanna hurt civilians because you’re mad? I’ll treat you like an enemy. The new rule is simple: if you can’t handle fear without terrorizing locals, you don’t get to carry a weapon in my zones.”
The Sable Knife kid—barely an adult, cheekbones sharp, gun too big for his hands—swallows hard. “We didn’t—”
“You were about to,” I cut in. “So don’t.”
He glances at his crew, then back at me, measuring whether I’m bluffing. The city is full of bluffers.
I’m not one of them.
I step closer, letting him feel the size difference, letting him smell the faint iron note that never leaves me.
“Ceasefire,” I say. “You walk away from this lane. You want to settle territory disputes, you bring them to my council, or you bring them to the ring where only the idiots get hurt. Not civilians.”
His jaw flexes. “And if we refuse?”
I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to. “Then you’re not a crew. You’re a target.”
A long beat.
Then he lowers his gun.
“Fine,” he mutters. “Ceasefire.”
The dock rats follow suit, grumbling, backing away like they’re allergic to peace.
I watch them disperse, then turn to the medic station.
“Security rotation?” I ask.
A captain beside me nods. “Two squads on perimeter. One inside. No one enters armed.”
“Good,” I say. “Keep it that way.”
I can feel the city’s eyes on me. Some hopeful, some hateful, most just desperate for the chaos to pick a direction.
I’m giving it one.
Renn’s voice crackles in my ear, tight. “Boss, eastern water processing is stable. Freight hubs are quiet. Armory inventory locks held.”
“Good,” I reply.
“And—” His voice catches slightly, and I don’t like it. “And we got chatter. Off-world.”
My spine tightens.
“What kind of chatter?” I ask, keeping my voice flat.
Renn hesitates like he hates what he’s about to say. “Terranus V.”
The words hit like cold water down my back.
Terranus V is a death-world people use for spectacle killings. It’s where you send someone when you want the galaxy to watch them die and feel righteous about it.
My claws flex unconsciously.
“Source?” I ask.
“Unconfirmed,” Renn says. “But it’s… consistent. Nine-adjacent crews moving. Broadcast prep.”
Broadcast.
Jordan.
I inhale slowly, forcing the rage to stay leashed. “Keep digging,” I say. “No rumors. I want confirmation.”
“Copy,” Renn replies, voice strained.
I turn back toward the street and start walking, because standing still makes me want to break things. The neon glare reflects off wet pavement. The air is warmer out here, thick with exhaust and fear.
A civilian—old, tired, carrying a bag of supplies—edges past me and whispers, “Thank you,” like I’m a hero.
I hate it.
Heroes die.
And I still have work.
The emergency beacon hits like a gunshot in my skull.
I’m halfway back to the Defrocked Nun when my pocket vibrates—one sharp, unmistakable pulse. Not a call. Not a message. A flare.
Jordan’s flare.
Short. Clean. The pattern we agreed on.
One ping.
It’s the kind of sound that collapses the universe into a single point.
My breath leaves me in a rough exhale. My vision narrows. For a heartbeat, all I see is her in my suite, hair messy, eyes fierce, wearing my shirt like a challenge and saying she’s not asking permission.
Captured.
My hand clamps around the beacon in my pocket like I can crush distance by force.
Renn’s voice comes through my comm again, and this time he doesn’t need to explain.
“Boss,” he says quietly. “You got it too.”
“Yeah,” I reply, voice rough. “I got it.”
I stop walking.
The street noise keeps moving around me—cars, shouts, distant gunfire—but my world goes still.
Then it snaps into motion.
“Stabilization halts,” I say into the comm, voice turning into steel. “All zones hold. Ceasefires remain in effect. Medical stations stay protected. Renn—war council. Now.”
Renn doesn’t argue. “Copy.”
I pivot and head for the Nun like I’m hunting.
The war room smells like sweat and coffee and burned circuitry.
Holo displays line the walls—territory grids, patrol rotations, armory inventories, financial node status, live feeds of street intersections lit by angry neon.
Captains file in fast, faces hard, weapons visible.
Logistics chiefs, procurement runners, tech ops, med leads. People who keep an empire alive.
Fyr is already there, sitting on a chair like it’s an enemy. His shoulder is wrapped in a pressure bandage that’s gone dark at the edges. His face is pale, jaw clenched, eyes too bright with pain.
He looks up when I enter, and for once he doesn’t smirk.
“Boss,” he rasps.
I nod once, then turn to the room.
Jordan’s beacon is still burning in my pocket like a brand.
I don’t waste time with speeches.
“Jordan is captured,” I say.
The room stills.
One captain swears softly. Another inhales sharply. A tech lead’s hands twitch like they want to start typing immediately.
I continue, voice low and deliberate.
“Mission is simple,” I say. “Retrieve Jordan alive. Keep Morazin alive if possible.”
The name Morazin makes a few faces tighten. People have heard it now—rumors, whispers, the way predators start to get names when they stop being abstract.
A captain—Vesh, the one who pulled his crew off shift earlier—clears his throat. “Boss, Terranus V is—”
“A death-world,” I finish, eyes on him. “Used for spectacle killings. Yeah. I know.”
Another captain speaks up, voice tight. “If we go in heavy, we bring heat back to Gur. League heat. IHC heat. Nine heat.”
A murmur of agreement. They’re criminals, not soldiers. They understand survival math.
I let them talk for three seconds, then I cut through it like a blade.
“You think the Nine aren’t already bringing heat?” I ask calmly. “You think they won’t burn Gur anyway once they finish using it?”
Silence.
I tap the holo display with my claw, bringing up the seized tribute ledger.
“This money,” I say, “was supposed to go to the Nine. It’s ours now.”
A procurement lead frowns. “Boss, you detonated internal locks. We lost—”
“Half,” I say. “Yeah. We paid the price of autonomy.”
I point at the remaining reserves.
“And we’re spending the rest,” I say.
Renn’s eyes widen. “On what?”
I answer without hesitation.
“A cruiser,” I say. “Top-tier. Hardened comms, jamming resistance, boarding capability. Something that doesn’t fold the second a Nine jammer sneezes.”
The room erupts in murmurs.
A logistics chief shakes his head. “Boss, that’s a fortune.”
“So is losing Jordan,” I reply flatly.
Fyr’s mouth twists. “You’re gonna buy a warship with tribute money.”
“Yes,” I say.
A captain—Jessa—raises an eyebrow. “We’re criminals. Not a navy.”
I look around the room at faces lined with fear and greed and loyalty and doubt.
Then I smile, slow and sharp.
“That’s why we win,” I say.
They blink.
I step forward, voice rising just enough to carry.
“Soldiers fight fair,” I say. “They line up. They declare. They follow rules. Criminals don’t.”
A ripple of uncomfortable laughter moves through the room.
I let it.
I point at the map of Terranus V’s orbital lanes.
“We don’t do a fleet engagement,” I say. “We do sabotage. Disable relays. Cut reinforcement comms. Strike command nodes. Disappear.”
A tech lead nods slowly, already seeing the angles. “Asymmetric strike doctrine.”
“Exactly,” I say. “We’re not going to outgun everyone. We’re going to outthink them and cheat better.”
Fyr lets out a rough breath that might be approval or pain. “That’s… our style.”
“That’s our survival,” I correct.
I start assigning roles.
“Fyr,” I say.
He straightens, wincing. “Yeah?”
“You stay behind,” I tell him.
His eyes flash. “Bullshit.”