16. Gnash #3
“She has a superficial cut, mild impact bruising, no skull fracture, no neural disruption,” he says quickly. “Shield feedback may cause nausea, headache, and tremors for a few hours. She should rest.”
“I’m not resting yet,” Ursa says.
I turn my head slowly.
She winces. “That sounded worse out loud.”
“You will rest.”
“I need to document the scene.”
“Vakka will document.”
“Vakka is security.”
“Vakka is competent.”
“Vakka is not independent press.”
I stare at her, still kneeling in the wreckage, surrounded by smoke, diplomats, guards, and the ruined pieces of a machine assassin.
She stares back with blood on her temple and her compad cracked on the floor.
I love her.
The realization does not arrive softly. It tears through me with the brutal certainty of an airlock opening onto stars.
I do not say it. The word would crush the moment beneath too much weight, and she has already survived enough impacts today.
But I know it with a force that changes the room.
My jalshagar. My maddening, fearless, frightened, brilliant human.
Not a possession. Not a weakness. The living truth of everything I thought power was meant to protect.
I pick up her damaged compad and hand it to her. “Three minutes.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Really?”
“Three minutes to record the scene from where you sit while the medic finishes. Then you go to medical.”
“Five.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Ursa.”
“Fine. Three and a half.”
Vakka shouts from across the room, “Give her four, lord. She’ll waste the half arguing.”
Skahar, who has somehow crossed the room through chaos without anyone seeing him move, leans on his cane near the shattered table. “The dockmaster speaks wisdom.”
I look at the ceiling and consider asking the station to swallow us all.
Ursa takes the compad with trembling fingers, activates its damaged recorder, and turns toward the wall.
Her voice steadies as she speaks, though I can hear the strain beneath it.
“This is Ursa Ramone aboard Guyver Station. During a negotiation session attended by Coalition, Alliance, Earth, and station representatives, a concealed mechanical device discharged from a service wall panel, narrowly missing Ambassador Theryki’s original seating position and crossing the press rail.
Station security engaged immediately. Investigation is ongoing. ”
She stops, breathes, and looks at me.
I expect her to mention that I took the second shot.
She does not.
Not yet.
Even half-dazed, she protects the story from becoming only us.
Vakka approaches with a piece of the assassin suspended in a containment field. Her face has gone grim. “Lord.”
“What?”
“The emitter assembly is Combine-built.”
The room hears.
Theryki’s eyes sharpen. Gobold stops arguing mid-word. Wilcox turns pale beneath her controlled expression.
Vakka continues. “But the trigger relay is Coalition manufacture, and the casing insulation came from an Alliance military supplier.”
Every faction in the chamber goes silent for a different reason.
Ursa lowers the compad slowly. “That’s not sloppy.”
“No,” I say. “That is deliberate.”
Skahar’s voice is soft as dust over bones. “Someone wants every hand on the knife.”
Smoke curls from the ruined wall. The citrus stink has burned away, replaced by hot metal, scorched insulation, and fear.
Around us, guards hold delegates in place while the first pieces of the attack begin forming a picture too perfect to trust. Combine money.
Coalition relay components. Alliance casing.
A dead or missing worker. A seating chart request. A pulse meant to kill Theryki and possibly catch Ursa as collateral.
Or perhaps collateral was never collateral.
I look at Ursa’s blood again.
My fury becomes very calm.
“Medical,” I say.
She opens her mouth.
“Now.”
Something in my voice stops even her for one breath. Then her eyes soften, not in surrender, but in understanding. She lets the medic help her stand. I stay close enough to catch her if her knees fail, and when she sways once, my hand settles at her back before thought can interfere.
“I can walk,” she says.
“I know.”
“You’re still hovering.”
“Yes.”
“That’s going to get annoying.”
“I look forward to your complaints.”
Her mouth curves despite the blood and smoke. “You would.”
I escort her toward the door while Vakka locks down the chamber and Skahar begins asking questions in that mild old voice that makes guilty people imagine mercy before he removes it from the room. Behind us, diplomats begin accusing one another with eyes before their mouths dare catch up.
At the threshold, Ursa pauses and looks back at the wreckage.
“This was meant to collapse the talks,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And force you to react.”
“Yes.”
Her gaze lifts to mine. “Then we don’t give them the reaction they bought.”
I look at the woman beside me, injured and unbowed, and the protective rage in me bends around her words. It does not disappear. It never will. But it takes shape. Direction. Purpose.
“No,” I say. “We give them the one they feared.”
Together, we leave the negotiation chamber while Guyver Station seals itself around the attackers’ mistake, and every violent part of me begins preparing to hunt with patience.