34. Gnash
GNASH
Ursa’s distress call reaches me while the Trask Fold is still burning.
The command center is a storm of red light, shouted coordinates, scorched relay smoke, and the deep metallic vibration of Guyver Station pushing every shield projector past its sane limits.
The deck trembles beneath my feet as Coalition capital ships hold their defensive arc over the civilian corridors, Reaper escorts drag evacuation barges through debris fields, and Alliance forward elements broadcast warnings with the sanctimonious patience of soldiers waiting for permission to become invaders.
Then her signal tears through the noise.
It does not arrive cleanly. It bursts across the smallest emergency channel in broken fragments, wrapped inside medical telemetry, static, evidence hashes, route markers, and one private tag buried under the public packet.
GNASH.
My hand closes so hard around the edge of the command table that metal buckles beneath my claws.
Krell lifts his head from the comm station. His face drains of color. “Lord Gnash, that is Ursa’s signature.”
“I see it.”
Vakka pulls the packet onto the main display without waiting for permission.
The feed jitters, damaged and incomplete, but enough survives.
Hestia-Seven. Medical freight transfer. Unauthorized interception.
Weapons fire. Communications crippled. Boarding risk confirmed.
Dakkor and Bravax evidence attached. A final line sits beneath the distress call like a knife turned sideways.
Hold the corridors.
For half a breath, all I can hear is the blood in my own ears.
Skahar stands beside me, his cane still against the deck. “Boy.”
I look at the map.
The corridors remain crowded. Ybessa transports.
Bravax med-runners. Evacuation barges limping toward Guyver with children, refugees, wounded, and old ones aboard.
Alliance white icons press near the Trask Fold.
Combine gray signatures stalk the lanes, hoping I will prove every accusation ever made against me by tearing away from civilians the instant my heart is threatened.
Ursa knew that.
She wrote the order because she knew that.
She trusted me to hate it and obey.
I stare at the signal coordinates. Ceres humanitarian routing. Contested space. Two hostile vessels. One registered as a medical inspection cutter. One unmarked private security profile. Combine work in all but signature.
Vakka’s voice is low. “We have Reaper-aligned vessels near that corridor.”
“Names.”
“Knife Prayer, Old Grudge, and the salvage tender Bekk’s Folly. Knife Prayer is escorting two refugee skiffs. Old Grudge is damaged but mobile. Bekk’s Folly has no teeth worth naming.”
“Can they reach her?”
“Old Grudge can cut across the debris shelf in twelve minutes. Knife Prayer would have to abandon the skiffs.”
“No.”
The word comes out before the old instinct can strangle it.
Skahar’s eye does not leave my face.
I turn to Krell. “Knife Prayer holds the refugee skiffs. Bekk’s Folly moves toward Ursa’s coordinates broadcasting medical salvage claim. Old Grudge approaches silent and waits for my arrival.”
Krell’s hands fly. “Your arrival?”
I am already moving.
Vakka steps away from weapons. “Lord, the corridors?—”
“You have them.”
Her mouth tightens. “Damn right I do, but that is not the same as?—”
“You have the corridors,” I say again, and this time I put command behind it.
“Theryki’s shield formation stays exactly where it is.
Reaper escorts do not break civilian cover.
If Alliance vessels cross into the green lanes, broadcast before firing.
If Combine cutters strike evacuees, kill them in public. Every order stands.”
Skahar grips his cane. “You go yourself.”
“Yes.”
“You take how many?”
“Enough.”
“That is not a number. That is a young captain’s answer wearing a ruler’s armor.”
I step close enough that only he and the nearest officers hear me clearly.
“If I strip the corridors, they win. If I leave Ursa to be taken, they win differently. I will take the Black Mercy, two fast Reaper cutters, and whatever Coalition craft Theryki can spare without weakening the civilian shield.”
Vakka’s eyes flash. “You are asking Theryki for rescue support?”
“I am using every tool on the table.”
Skahar’s mouth shifts, not quite a smile. “That sounds unpleasantly mature.”
“I dislike it too.”
Krell’s voice cuts in. “Boarding signal from Hestia-Seven just dropped. Internal comms gone.”
The command center narrows around that sentence.
Ursa in a damaged cabin.
Ursa with smoke in her lungs.
Ursa clutching evidence while armored cowards step through a blown hatch.
The old monster inside me wakes, stretches, and asks for the coordinates of every throat.
I do not cage it.
I aim it.
“Open channel to Theryki,” I say.
Her image appears above the table almost instantly, as if she has been waiting for the request. Her scales shine blue under fleet light, and her expression hardens when she sees my face.
“I received the distress packet,” she says.
“I need fast craft.”
“You have them.”
No bargaining. No clause. No elegant poison.
For one moment, I almost like her.
Almost.
“Do not pull from civilian shield.”
“I will send two interceptors from the rear screen and one medical skiff. They will rendezvous with your launch vector.”
“Good.”
“Lord Gnash,” she says, and something in her voice changes. “If this is a trap designed to draw you out?—”
“It is.”
Her eyes sharpen.
I show my teeth. “That does not make Ursa less aboard that ship.”
“No. It does not.”
“Hold my station.”
“I will hold the civilian corridors,” she says.
That distinction matters.
I nod once. “Then we understand each other.”
The channel closes.
Skahar follows as I stride toward the command center doors. “You understand this may be the image they want. The warlord leaving command for his human mate. The Reaper choosing passion over strategy.”
“I am leaving command in hands I trust, with standing orders built around civilian survival. That is strategy.”
“It is also love.”
I stop at the doors and look back.
The command center glows red behind me. Vakka at weapons. Krell at comms. Officers at their stations. Casualty packets beside the table. Children alive in shelters because I did not chase bait into darkness.
“Yes,” I say. “It is.”
Skahar’s old face stills.
I continue before he can wrap the moment in insults. “I am not choosing love over them. I am choosing not to let my enemies teach me that protecting one life requires abandoning all others. Hold me to that while I am gone.”
His cloudy eye gleams. “Gladly. I have waited years for you to invite criticism.”
“You have never waited.”
“No, but politeness is a disease I avoided successfully.”
I grip his shoulder once, hard enough to say everything neither of us would tolerate in words.
Then I run.
The path from command to Dock Three is a blur of emergency light and motion.
Civilians press against shelter walls as crews guide them toward safer sectors.
Reaper warriors haul ammunition sleds in one direction and wounded children in the other.
Coalition medics step aside as I pass, then hurry after their own orders.
The station smells of burned metal, antiseptic, sweat, and too many bodies trusting hull plating to remain merciful.
At Dock Three, the Black Mercy waits in launch clamps.
She is not a beautiful ship. She is a converted gunship with armor plates from five dead vessels, engine housings too large for her frame, and forward cannons that have been illegally modified so many times that her maintenance file reads like a confession.
Her crew loves her with the unreasonable devotion Reapers reserve for dangerous things that should not function and do anyway.
Captain Drokk meets me at the ramp, black skin streaked with grease, spurs polished, grin savage. “Heard your woman got herself boarded.”
“She dislikes boredom.”
“Good. We hate boredom.”
“You will hate dying more, so fly well.”
Drokk thumps one fist against his chest. “Black Mercy flies like a knife thrown by an angry god.”
“She flies like a brick with ambition,” I say.
“Also true.”
I board with twelve warriors, two medics, one slicer, and enough wrath to power a small moon. The ramp seals behind us. Engines howl beneath the deck. I strap into the forward command brace while Drokk drops into the pilot nest, hands moving across controls with intimate violence.
Vakka’s voice comes over the launch channel. “Black Mercy, you are cleared through Corridor Two. If you scratch my defense grid, I will repaint your ship with your organs.”
Drokk laughs. “Love you too, artillery goblin.”
“Fly.”
The clamps release.
Black Mercy launches.
The force drives through my chest as the gunship tears from Guyver’s dock and into the chaos beyond the station.
Space opens around us in a flash of shield light, weapons fire, and nebular glare.
Coalition capital ships loom above the civilian corridors like blue-white cliffs, their shields arcing outward over evacuation barges.
Reaper cutters weave between them, smaller and uglier, red engine flares burning hot.
Farther out, Alliance icons glitter cold near the Trask Fold while Combine probes slither along the edges of every route.
Drokk takes us under a shield barge, between two evacuation transports, and over a field of debris still glowing from the last engagement.
A hostile probe darts from the wreckage.
“Contact!” our weapons officer snarls.
“No pursuit,” I say.
Drokk’s claws twitch on the controls. “It is right there.”
“And Ursa is not.”
He bares his teeth, angles the ship away from the probe, and punches speed toward the Ceres route.
Good captain.
Better than his instincts.
The probe fires anyway.
Black Mercy shudders as the shot grazes our aft shields.
The weapons officer growls. “Permission to educate?”
“Disable only.”
A short burst from our dorsal cannon catches the probe’s engine cluster. It tumbles away, dark and useless, while Drokk laughs through his teeth.