Chapter 26
TUR
The control room is on fire when I kick the door in.
Not metaphorically.
Actually, physically on fire.
Flames crawl up the far wall in hungry orange sheets, licking at bundles of data cable and ventilation ducting like they’re made of kindling instead of fire-retardant composite, while the air inside the room shimmers with heat distortion and carries the thick, choking taste of burned insulation and scorched metal that coats the back of my throat and makes every breath feel like a bad decision.
Sparks rain from the ceiling where a plasma round blew a fist-sized hole through a power conduit, and the emergency suppression system is half-triggered, dumping a thin, useless mist that hisses angrily when it hits exposed circuitry and does absolutely nothing to slow the fire’s spread.
I drag the door shut behind me with one hand, sealing off the corridor noise and screams and gunfire and turning the chaos of the compound into a muffled, distant thunder that vibrates through the walls like the heartbeat of a dying animal.
Kimberly is three steps behind me.
Alive.
Upright.
Breathing.
The bond hums hot and steady between us, not feral, not overwhelming, just… locked, like something essential finally snapped into place and decided it wasn’t moving again.
“You good?” I snap, already crossing the room.
“I have opinions about your definition of ‘good,’” she pants, pressing a hand to her ribs. “But I’m vertical and not actively bleeding out, so let’s call it a win and keep moving.”
I huff something that might be a laugh and drop into the command chair in front of the main broadcast console, the cracked ferroglass display lighting my face in a sickly blue glow as heat rolls across my back and sweat starts pooling under my armor.
The interface is half-fried.
Touch sensitivity is lagging.
Three input ports are dead.
The main uplink array is still intact, though, blinking green like it has no idea it’s about to end several criminal empires and one interstellar career in under thirty seconds.
“Cover me,” I say.
“With pleasure,” she replies, already pivoting to put her back to mine, grabbing a dropped plasma pistol off the floor and racking it with a wince. “You have about ninety seconds before someone remembers this room exists.”
“Plenty,” I mutter, jacking a cable straight into my forearm port and overriding the broadcast firewall with a brute-force key the Alliance burned into my brain when I was sixteen.
The system stutters.
Fights me.
Then caves.
Data floods my implant.
Shell corporations.
Transit laundering.
Blood contracts encoded in financial metadata.
Extortion ledgers tied to municipal officials.
Trafficking routes mapped through port authorities that technically don’t exist.
I dump everything.
Every file.
Every ledger.
Every dirty financial artery the Nine has been using to bleed Novaria dry for three generations.
Citywide broadcast.
Public net mirrors.
Independent journalist hubs.
Underground syndicate boards.
Union networks.
Community relays.
The upload counter ticks upward like a detonation timer.
“Holy shit,” Kimberly murmurs behind me. “You just put a global bounty on your own head.”
“Already had one,” I reply. “This just made it honest.”
The first data tranche clears.
I don’t stop.
I pivot to a sealed Oversight partition and break into it with a backdoor I’ve never used because it was always supposed to be my emergency nuclear option.
Alliance complicity files bloom across my vision.
Containment directives.
Placement memos.
Surveillance authorization orders for Novaria flagged as “non-civilian theater.”
Engineering notes about Reaper asset behavioral suppression and controlled bonding contingencies.
I bare my teeth.
“Oh, you absolute bastards.”
“Tur?” Kimberly says carefully.
“I’m about to get executed on sight in half the galaxy,” I tell her calmly, and hit ENTER.
The files dump into the public net.
Independent channels.
Whistleblower boards.
Encrypted activist relays.
Every journalist who ever lost a source to Alliance ‘accidents.’
The room seems to hold its breath.
Then my comm explodes.
“Tur!” Alliance command roars in my ear. “You have just committed an act of interstellar treason. Terminate broadcast immediately and withdraw from the AO. This is a direct—”
I kill the channel.
The last upload bar hits 100%.
Done.
Outside the control room, something detonates.
The building shudders.
Kimberly sucks in a sharp breath.
“Novaria just lit up,” she says, staring at her wrist display. “Riots in District Seven. Nine banners coming down in District Four. Syndicate gunfights near the docks. Armed civilians storming a protection office.”
I stand up.
The flames are closer now.
The heat is unbearable.
The air tastes like burning plastic and revolution.
“Good,” I say quietly. “Let it burn.”
The control room door slams open.
A camera drone floats in first, red light blinking.
Then three surviving Nine leaders stagger in behind it, weapons raised, faces gray with shock and fury.
“You just signed your own death warrant,” the bald one screams.
“Get in line,” I reply.
More drones flood in.
Independent feeds.
Local news.
Underground streamers.
Every lens in the room locks onto us.
Kimberly steps up beside me.
No hesitation.
No flinch.
My bone spurs are still deployed.
My armor is scorched.
My eyes are glowing faintly from neural overdrive.
The world is watching.
“Tur,” Alliance command cuts back into my ear, voice tight and shaking with fury. “Withdraw immediately. We can still contain this.”
I look straight into the nearest camera.
“No,” I say calmly.
Kimberly’s hand finds mine.
The bond burns hot and steady between us, a living engine of defiance.
“This city was a containment experiment,” I continue, my voice carrying clearly over the roar of distant riots and sirens. “The Nine are a criminal empire propped up by Alliance oversight. And I am done being your fucking asset.”
One of the Nine leaders fires.
Kimberly shoots him first.
The camera feed goes wild.
People scream.
The war stops being theoretical.
It’s live.