33. Ursa #2
I grab the toolkit from beneath Sera’s seat and open it. The fake medical cartridge sits inside, intact. Relief hits so hard my hands almost shake again. I remove the cartridge, then peel back the casing to check the internal drive. A hairline crack runs across the outer shell.
No.
My breath catches.
Rana sees my face.
“How bad?”
“I don’t know.”
I connect the drive to my compad.
The screen flickers.
For one awful moment, nothing happens.
Then files appear.
Fragmented, damaged, but present.
I exhale.
The next impact slams a loose medical container across the aisle. It strikes my hand and knocks the cartridge free. It skitters toward the rear hatch, straight into the smoke.
“Damn it!”
I dive after it.
Rana grabs my jacket and yanks me back a fraction of a second before another burst of sparks showers the floor where my face would have been.
“Do not die for a storage device,” she snaps.
“That storage device is why they’re shooting at us.”
“They’re shooting at us because powerful people lack hobbies.”
The drive lies near the threshold, half-hidden beneath foam and debris.
The floor around it glows faintly where a severed conduit has heated the plating.
I reach again, slower this time. Heat bites my fingers before I get close enough.
Sera unstraps herself and staggers toward us. “Use this.”
She shoves a surgical clamp into my hand.
I grip the clamp, stretch forward, and catch the cartridge by its cracked edge. The heat travels up the metal fast enough to burn, but I drag it back and cradle it against my chest.
For one second, I simply hold it.
Then I realize everyone is staring at me.
“What?” I say.
Dane coughs into his sleeve. “Nothing. Just enjoying your extremely normal relationship with data.”
Sera wipes blood from her eyebrow. “Is it still readable?”
“It was before I nearly cooked it.”
Rana leans over the panel. “Care less emotionally and more usefully. I need the drive connected to the emergency beacon if we’re going to send anything.”
I stare at her. “Send the evidence?”
“Send a distress signal with enough attached metadata that anyone intercepting it knows exactly why we’re being attacked.”
“That will expose part of the packet before I can verify final chain of custody.”
A burst of weapons fire rattles the ship so hard the ceiling panels clatter.
Rana looks at me.
I nod. “Right. Being precious seems less relevant during murder.”
She points to the damaged panel. “Beacon interface is fried, but the carrier pulse still exists. We can piggyback a compressed signal if we route through the medical telemetry array.”
Sera blinks. “The medical what?”
“The system that tells ports your cargo temperature and contamination status,” Rana says.
Dane laughs once. “We’re sending a distress call through the space fridge?”
“Basically.”
“Outstanding.”
I plug the damaged drive into my compad and begin selecting files.
I cannot send everything. The carrier pulse is too narrow, too unstable.
I need enough to identify the ship, prove the route attack, attach the Dakkor and Bravax packets, link them to my chain-of-custody seal, and trigger the public deadman without dumping unprotected source names into open space.
My fingers move fast.
Not fast enough.
The ship tilts again.
Rana braces both feet against the wall, one hand buried in the panel. “We have maybe two minutes.”
“Then stop wasting one of them with updates.”
“Bossy.”
“Alive.”
“For now.”
I build the packet.
Distress coordinates.
Vessel ID.
Attack profile.
Visual capture from the viewport.
Evidence hash.
Dakkor sample.
Bravax sample.
Protectorate clause timestamp.
Alliance intervention draft marker.
Combine shell-freighter registry fragment.
My voice recording.
I add one private tag buried beneath the public signal.
GNASH.
My throat tightens when I type it.
If he receives it, he will know the route is compromised beyond speculation.
He will want to come.
He must not.
I add one more line.
Hold the corridors.
The words blur slightly.
I blink hard.
“Ursa,” Rana warns.
“Ready.”
She shoves the connector into place. Sparks jump. The cabin lights flicker out completely, leaving only emergency red along the floor and the pale glow of my compad.
Sera grips the back of my seat. Dane plants himself near the hatch with the empty extinguisher in both hands as if planning to bludgeon boarders with it. Rana keeps one hand in the panel and the other near her disguised pistol.
The transport’s internal speaker crackles with a new voice.
Not the pilot.
Male.
Cold.
“Medical freight transfer Hestia-Seven, power down and prepare for boarding. Failure to comply will result in compartment breach.”
Rana murmurs, “Private security accent. Combine training, maybe.”
I press send.
Nothing happens.
The compad stalls at twelve percent.
“No,” I whisper.
Another warning from the boarding vessel. “Power down immediately.”
Rana slams her fist into the panel. “Come on, you ugly little bastard.”
The packet jumps to thirty-eight percent.
Then sixty-one.
The transport shudders as docking clamps strike the outer hull.
Sera’s voice cracks. “They’re attaching.”
Dane lifts the extinguisher. “I hate this plan.”
“We don’t have a plan,” Rana says.
“I hate that too.”
The packet hits eighty-nine percent.
The compad flashes.
TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED.
For a second, I cannot breathe.
“No,” I say, louder this time.
Rana rips out a burned connector and shoves another into place with bare fingers. She hisses through her teeth as heat burns her skin. “Again!”
I resend.
The boarding vessel’s clamps grind against the hull.
The pilot yells over internal comms, “Unauthorized docking in progress!”
The emergency beacon catches.
The packet surges through the damaged telemetry array.
My compad flashes white.
TRANSMITTED.
Relief hits so fast I almost laugh.
Then the cabin explodes inward.
The boarding hatch does not open. It blows.
A circular charge punches through the forward seal with a deafening crack, and pressure howls through the cabin as emergency fields struggle to compensate.
Smoke, sparks, and loose debris whip toward the breach.
Sera screams. Dane loses his footing and slams into the seats.
Rana fires twice into the smoke before I can even see a target.
I grab the toolkit, shove the cracked drive into my jacket, and throw myself behind a row of seats as armored shapes move through the breach.
The evidence is alive. The distress signal is out. Communications collapse completely.
No reply. No Gnash. Only red light, smoke, screaming metal, and the first boarder stepping into the cabin with a weapon raised.
I clutch the drive against my ribs, taste blood where I have bitten my cheek, and force myself to breathe.
The story will not die with me.