6. Gnash #2
He glances toward the workers preparing the hall. I gesture for him to continue. Everyone in this chamber knows there are military concerns beneath the feast. Let them hear the edges if not the core. Fear travels usefully when disciplined.
"Combine fleet movements continue near Veyr’s Anvil," Orkan says. "Two additional logistics vessels have appeared under civilian masks. We traced encrypted packet traffic through League channels to a broker network associated with Zune’s commercial offices."
"Associated how closely?"
"Close enough that denial will require expensive lying."
"That is their native language."
Skahar steps nearer. "Do they move toward us?"
"Not yet," Orkan says. "Their pattern suggests positioning, supply, and contingency planning rather than immediate engagement. They want options."
"Everyone wants options," I say.
Orkan nods. "Alliance scouts have also adjusted their patrol routes again. Coalition couriers are running more frequently between Theryki’s delegation and their nearest relay. We have no evidence of a coordinated strike, but the air around us is filling with knives."
I look across the Blood Hall, at the workers securing banners and the cooks preparing courses that will make ambassadors sweat through their expensive clothes.
The feast suddenly feels less like theater and more like a fire built in a dry room.
I enjoy danger when it comes alone. I distrust danger when it arrives wearing multiple uniforms and carrying paperwork.
"Increase watch rotation on the outer pickets," I say. "Double passive listening around Veyr’s Anvil and the Trask Fold. No visible mobilization. I do not want Gobold puffing up because a patrol ship sneezed."
"Understood."
"Where is the reporter?"
Skahar’s cane stops tapping.
Orkan does not react, which proves his training has improved.
"Ursa Ramone is in her assigned lodging, cross-indexing station tariff records with merchant interviews. Earlier she visited the refugee clinic again, then the school annex, then the shipyard observation deck under Vesk’s escort.
She has filed one limited package to IHC-Now, but not the larger investigative packet she appears to be building. "
I turn from the feast preparations. "Appears?"
"Her private archive has grown substantially. She keeps redundant backups. She has also requested access to historical corridor violence statistics from three independent merchants."
"Did anyone provide them?"
"Two did. One attempted to sell falsified data until she challenged the timestamp structure and threatened to ask his competitors for comment."
Despite myself, I smile.
Skahar notices. "You look pleased."
"I appreciate competence."
"You appreciate trouble when it is not yet aimed at you."
"Most trouble eventually aims at me. I still appreciate the early artistry."
Orkan continues. "Theryki invited her to the Blood Feast. Ramone accepted."
"I know."
"Security predicts a high probability she will attempt direct approach."
"Security predicts the obvious with great pride."
Skahar shifts beside me. "Do you intend to allow it?"
"I intend to eat dinner."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the answer available."
His eye narrows. "You have spent days refusing her requests while asking where she goes, who she speaks to, and what she records. Now she enters your hall because Theryki wants to see what happens. I am old, not blind."
"Blindness was never your flaw."
"My flaw was letting a starving boy convince me he should command a ship."
"Your finest decision."
"My loudest."
Orkan waits with the patience of an officer who knows better than to enjoy his superiors arguing. I wave him off, but he hesitates.
"More?" I ask.
"There is an archive packet attached to Ramone’s public profile. Horus IV original broadcast segments. My analysts flagged it because several military historians still cite her footage. I thought you might want?—"
"Send it to my private console."
Skahar’s expression changes. "Gnash."
"What now?"
"You know what that footage contains."
"Yes."
"And you wish to watch it before hosting a feast."
"I wish to understand the reporter walking into my hall."
"You wish to touch an old wound to see whether it still bleeds."
The workers nearby keep moving, but Skahar’s words seem to make the air heavier. Heat from the pits rolls across my face. A live shell-creature snaps hard enough to crack against its basin. Somewhere overhead, a chain squeals through a pulley.
"Send it," I tell Orkan.
He lowers his head and leaves.
Skahar remains.
"You disapprove," I say.
"I often disapprove. This is concern."
"That seems worse."
"It is. Disapproval can be entertaining. Concern gives me indigestion."
I turn toward the side exit. "Then eat less dried meat."
"Do not dodge me, boy."
I stop with one hand against the door frame.
For a moment, the hall behind me blurs into firelight, labor, blood, and banners.
Skahar has called me boy twice in two days.
Either he grows sentimental, or I grow reckless enough to frighten a Reaper who once steered a burning raider through a minefield while laughing.
"I will watch a file," I say. "Then I will host a feast. Then I will continue not signing agreements that insult my people."
"And the human?"
"She is a reporter."
"Yes," he says. "And sometimes a reporter is a blade with a conscience. Those are hard to hold safely."
I leave before his worry can become prophecy.
My private chamber sits three levels above the Blood Hall, behind two guarded doors and one corridor lined with trophies I keep mostly to irritate visitors.
The room itself is quieter than people expect.
There is a broad desk made from salvaged hull plating, a tactical wall, a low table, shelves of old weapons, and a viewport looking down toward the inner docking lanes.
I do not keep soft chairs because soft chairs encourage soft conversations.
I do keep a cracked ceramic cup from my first command, a strip of scorched home-ship banner sealed under glass, and the old captain’s knife Skahar gave me the night he stepped aside.
The door seals behind me, muting the station into a low vibration felt through the floor.
The air here is cooler, touched by metal, oiled leather, and the bitter brew one of my aides leaves for me despite my repeated threats to space the machine that produces it.
I stand at the desk longer than necessary before activating the archive packet.
Ursa Ramone appears first as an adult in the profile image I have already seen: red hair, green eyes, steady mouth, controlled expression. Then the file shifts to Horus IV, twelve years earlier, and the girl on the screen is all angles and terror held under glass.
The footage shakes at first.
Buildings burn under a sky turned brown by smoke.
The street is broken open in places, showing pipes, wires, and the ruined understructure of an ordinary settlement dragged into history without permission.
Sirens wail somewhere far away, distorted by explosions that make the image jump and blur.
People run across the frame hunched low, carrying bags, children, one another.
A body lies near a toppled vendor stall with one hand open on the pavement. The hand is small.
A child’s voice speaks from behind the recording.
"This is Ursa Ramone. I am on Eleventh Street near the east market. Alliance soldiers are firing from the civic office roof. Coalition forces are moving between the transit station and the school. Civilians are still in the street."
Her voice trembles on the first sentence, then steadies.
I do not sit.
On-screen, a blast punches through the upper floors of an apartment block. Glass rains down in glittering sheets. Someone screams for a medic. The girl holding the compad ducks behind a burned transport, breathing hard enough that the microphone catches it. She does not stop recording.
"The people in the blue shelter markings are not armed," young Ursa says. "They are civilians. I can see children with them. The soldiers can see them too."
My hands curl slowly against the edge of the desk.
The footage cuts to another segment. She is inside a dark interior space now, perhaps a shop or storage room.
Dust floats through a beam of emergency light.
Her face appears briefly when the compad angle slips, streaked with soot, eyes too wide, mouth pressed tight before she turns the lens back toward the street.
"My mother told me to stay low," she says. "I am staying low. I am recording because if the feed gets out, somebody will know they are shooting where families live."
The next explosion is close enough to overload the audio.
The screen whites out.
When the image returns, she is coughing. The compad lies sideways for several seconds, showing only the floor, broken glass, and a smear of blood near her knee. Then her hand enters the frame. Small fingers. Shaking. She picks up the device.
"I am still here," she says.
The words are plain, but they strike harder than a scream.
I have heard warriors boast through wounds.
I have heard captains curse while their ships split apart.
I have heard Reaper songs rise over childbirth, battle, burial, and the long grief of no homeworld left to mourn properly.
Courage wears many shapes. Sometimes it is huge and loud and armed.
Sometimes it is a child crouched in smoke, telling the galaxy what it has done.
The footage moves again.
She names units. She describes insignias.
She corrects herself when she is uncertain.
She says when she cannot confirm something.
She refuses to turn rumor into fact even while the world dies around her.
That detail lands deeper than I expect. Fear has not made her sloppy.
Grief has not made her theatrical. She is twelve years old, surrounded by fire, and she is already more disciplined than half the diplomats crawling through my station.