Chapter 20 Orion #2
“Get Brill to chase the Solar Mother idol. Make it her idea. She grabs it, brings it to me, I swap in a surveillance decoy. Brill thinks he’s holding divine power; instead, he’s handing us front-row access to every backroom deal in his damn network.”
I glare out the window, fighting to keep my responses neutral, and not dour and resentful.
“And she agreed just like that?”
He exhales. “No. She threatened to skin me with a dessert fork. It took her two days to circle back. She named her terms—no trace, high payout, and total autonomy. I said fine, but she had to bring me the real idol so I could switch it for the decoy.”
“Why do you need the real one if you already had a duplicate?”
“Brill’s not the only one looking for it,” Vega says, cocking a brow in exasperation.
“I couldn’t risk someone else coming in, scooping it up, and trying to unload it on the black market while Brill thinks he’s already got it in his vault.
That’d paint a target on Lyra’s back, and I can’t use a dead asset.
She said getting the real one wouldn’t be a problem, and that we had a deal. ”
“And you trusted her?” I certainly hadn’t.
“No,” he says simply. “But she never promised loyalty. She promised results. And I believed her about Brill. You could see it—she hates him more than I ever could. She hates him even more than she hated needing me.”
That hits somewhere deep, and it’s a place I’ve been avoiding. Because I know Lyra’s my mate—I can feel it like a second pulse—but that doesn’t mean she owes me anything. Not her loyalty. Not her heart. Certainly not her tether. She gets to choose.
And maybe she won’t choose me.
“You still think she was going to follow through?” I ask, hating the hope in my voice.
Vega shrugs. “Honestly? I think she was going to betray both of us and run. But maybe not right away. She liked the idea of being helpful again. Dangerous, but helpful.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” I ask, suspicion still coloring my perception of him.
“Because you’ve got that look,” he says. “Like if she doesn’t pick you, you’ll fold in half. And that’s not helpful. She’s not some prize. She’s a weapon. You either sharpen it or you get out of the way.”
I sit with that. It burns—but it’s not exactly wrong.
I’m embarrassed to admit to myself that the vision I have of us being together involves a luxurious home at the edge of the forest on Xylothia, where we can settle down and relax in between adventures.
I’m not naive enough to believe she’d give up her adventure-loving lifestyle completely, but maybe the idea of having a home base would appeal enough to her to help me convince her to take a chance with me—with us.
I’d never dream of caging her, or binding her to me, but maybe she might want to have a safe space to return to.
Vega angles the cruiser downward, past a massive vertical hover-vator tube and into a lower, quieter lane—steering us away from the main routes. After a minute, he speaks again, softer this time.
“I can sense what she means to you, Orion. But she’s not a damsel, and she’s sure as hell not waiting to be saved—metaphorically speaking.”
“I don’t want to save her—metaphorically,” I say, my voice raw. Is that true, though? Something insidious whispers that I do—I want to her to need me as much as I need her. “I just want her to know I’m not leaving. Not unless she tells me to.”
He nods once, then pulls back on the throttle. Ahead, I see the familiar outline of my borrowed cruiser—safe, secure, and unassuming. The relief I feel at seeing the ship and knowing Ada is onboard makes my knees wobble as much as the fading adrenaline.
“I’m dropping you here,” Vega says. “Regroup, refuel, whatever. Stay out of sight and out of trouble. I’ll keep off-grid and ping you from just outside Ooneryx once I’ve scouted the approach.”
I rise from my seat, still uncertain if I want to hit him or thank him. Probably both. “And if this all blows up?”
He grins. “Then we get to die doing something interesting. But let’s save that drama for after we’ve pissed off at least three more crime lords.”
I pause at the hatch, hand on the frame.
“Thanks,” I say, not looking at him. “For saving my ass.”
“Don’t get soft on me now, Ranger. You’ll make me blush.”
I step out, feeling the gravity shift under my boots, the weight of everything waiting ahead of me. Lyra. The idol. The damn choice I can’t force her to make.
And behind me, Vega’s cruiser vanishes into the lanes, leaving only gray sky and tepid rain.
The hum of the cruiser’s engines thrum steadily beneath me, but it does nothing to quiet the chaotic hurricane of thoughts. I keep my eyes on the stars bleeding past the windows, hands clenched at my sides like they might anchor me to something—anything—stable.
Ada’s voice chimes in, pulling me from my reverie.
We’re approximately twenty-three hours from Ooneryx at current velocity. Do you wish to revise the flight path?
“No,” I say, hoarse. “Keep it as is.”
There’s a pause, then Ada continues.
Lyra used to adjust our course when she was anxious. Tiny deviations. Never enough to matter. Just...something to touch. Something to do.
I look away from the console, throat tightening.
“She still thinks you’re gone.”
She does.
There’s a silence between us that feels bigger than the space outside.
I know she’s not real, that she’s a computer program without soul or feeling, but Ada carries fragments of Lyra in every line of her code.
It’s in the way she talks, the way she pretends not to worry while calculating the probability of failure down to decimal points.
I know Lyra programmed her like that. I know it’s all intentional.
And still, it feels like a ghost riding with me.
A ping lights up on the console—it’s Vega’s encrypted channel. I answer it with a grunt and bring his image up on the hologram projector.
“Void Stalkers found the fake idol,” Vega says without preamble.
“So, that’s the first bit of good news. The second bit of good news is that their initial scans triggered the surveillance net, and it looks like it's working—feeding a slow-drip of data into our back channels. We’ve already gotten pingbacks from two relay stations in Brill’s old Haelor corridor. ”
Annoyance makes my head ache when I have to ask him to spell it out for me like I’m an idiot.
“Which means?” I ask with a grumble.
“Which means,” Vega says, tapping something offscreen, “if Brill moves to secure the idol personally, we’ll have a straight line to his comm hierarchy.
It’s like setting a fire in his data vault.
He won’t even smell the smoke until it’s too late.
This is great news, Orion—it means the Feds are already listening to the evil little whispers behind Brill’s doors. ”
I nod—it is good news. I know it is. But I can’t help but feel sick with worry that we’re still not doing enough. We’re not moving fast enough.
“Good,” I acknowledge.
Vega’s voice softens, just a little. “We’ll get her out. Before he makes a move.”
But I know the window is narrow. Based on what Lyra’s told me about Brill, he isn’t the kind of bastard to let something simmer.
He’s a scorched-earth tactician. If Lyra doesn’t give him information about the idol’s whereabouts—or worse, if he starts to suspect she’s played him—he’ll make an example out of her.
And there won’t be much left for us to save.
I rub my temples and lean back, letting the silence wrap around me again. Too quiet. It’s too quiet on this damn ship.
Several hours pass, broken only by engine checks and Ada’s occasional course updates. I try to sleep. I fail. I pace the cruiser like a caged thing. All I can think about is the way Lyra looked the last time I saw her—half-defiant, half-exhausted, resigned, and already pulling away.
Suddenly, another ping violates the silence of the cockpit.
I’m on it before the second blink.
“Okay, so remember all that good news we had?” Vega says by way of greeting.
“Keep that at the forefront of your mind. Let’s just focus on the good news before I tell you the bad news that just dropped in,” Vega says, and I already hate the tone in his voice.
Bile climbs its way up my throat as I wait, dread making me sweaty and sick.
“One of my sources flagged something not-so-great. There’s talk of a black market auction going live tomorrow from Ooneryx. Private invites only. Headliner item?” He pauses, then spits out. “A Velusian hybrid. Female. Untagged.”
My fist hits the console hard enough to crack a panel.
Ada patches in.
Damage registered. Should I reroute oxygen flow from lower cargo to compensate?
“Don’t joke, Ada,” I grit out.
I’m not. But you should breathe.
I don’t—I can’t.
“Vega,” I growl, “you get into that auction. I don’t care how. Burn every alias you’ve got left. You hear me?”
“Already working it,” he says. “But Orion—if it’s her, and Brill’s the one offering her up, then this game just changed. We miss that window, she could disappear into some privateer’s pleasure fleet, and we’ll never see her again.
“I’m aware,” I answer, already running through unhinged plans in my head, each more dangerous and unlikely to succeed than the last.
“And if it’s a trap—”
“Then we spring it,” he confirms. “It’s now or never.”
Ada’s voice cuts in again.
I’m adjusting descent vectors. We’ll hit Ooneryx’s orbit in just under nineteen hours. Prepping stealth protocols.
My jaw tightens, aching with how often I’ve been grinding my teeth and swallowing my despair. She thinks you’re gone, Ada. She thinks we’re all gone. And she's facing Brill alone.
Not for long.