Chapter 30
ARIA DAWSON
He lives.
Barely.
I can feel the thready pulse at his throat with every beat that scrapes past my fingertips like it's being dragged from the void by sheer spite.
His skin is clammy beneath my palms, slick with blood and sweat and whatever cruel chemistry his Reaper body is unleashing in its frantic scramble to repair itself.
But he's breathing.
For now.
They cart him off the moment reinforcements sweep the hall, medics swarming like wasps around royalty.
I follow as far as the threshold to the infirmary, and then I stop.
Because watching Aebon Rexx—unbreakable, incorrigible, maddening—laid out on a slab with half his side torn open is something I can’t keep in my sightline without falling apart.
I turn before I do.
We don’t get time for grief. That’s a luxury for the dead.
“Status report,” I snap as I round the corner into the tactical hub.
The room’s a hive of motion—officers pulling up holo-logs, alerts pinging in rhythmic bursts from red-lit panels, and the scent of scorched ozone still lingering in the vents. My boots hit the deck with purpose. Every face turns to me.
Lieutenant Razo steps forward. His lip is split, jacket scorched at the collar. “We’ve contained the breach. Eight confirmed hostiles down. Three unaccounted for, presumed KIA after the Reaper event.”
He means the war song.
The Reaper event.
Like it was some natural disaster instead of a fury I watched claw itself out of the man I just held together with blood and spit.
“Civilian losses?” I ask.
“Minimal. Four injuries, all non-fatal. One child treated for sonic trauma, but she’ll recover.”
I nod once. “And the compound?”
“Damage is surgical. They weren’t here to cripple infrastructure. They wanted command. They wanted him.”
They still do.
I feel the room watching me—measured glances, unspoken doubts. I’m not the one they follow. He is.
Was.
Until I say otherwise.
“Effective immediately,” I say, voice cutting clean through the buzz of comms, “I am assuming operational command of Centauri defense assets. Chain of command runs through me.”
Silence.
Then Razo nods.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I don’t wait for the others. They’ll follow, or they’ll be replaced. We don’t have time for ego. The Nine just walked through our walls like they belonged here. The rules have changed.
And I intend to burn their new playbook.
I spend the next nine hours rerouting resources, reestablishing coms across three satellites, and personally vetting every medtech assigned to Aebon’s recovery wing.
He gets no strangers, no greenhands. Only trusted operatives with eyes I’ve looked into before.
I don't care how it looks. He bled for me.
And I’m not losing him to a stray hand or a missed pulse.
Night bleeds into morning with no warning.
I sit, finally, in the commander's chair. It’s warm from his body. Still smells like his cologne—oak and blood and something sharp that has no name. The silence is brittle. My fingers ache from hours at the console.
And in that silence, I make a decision.
No more shadows.
No more proxies. No more whispered threats behind coded messages and veiled intermediaries.
I slam my hand on the console.
“Open a line,” I say. “Level Omega.”
Razo turns. “You sure?”
“They sent ghosts into my walls,” I growl. “They cut my people. They almost killed him. I’m done playing defense.”
He hesitates.
Then nods.
“Omega line open.”
I lean in.
“To the Nine,” I say, the words acid in my mouth. “No masks. No go-betweens. I want them in front of me. In person.”
Razo blinks. “You’re calling a full summit?”
I nod. “On Centauri soil. Under my terms.”
“That’s suicide.”
“Then let them bring body bags.”
Silence stretches. Then, quietly, he activates the transmission code.
And just like that... the message is sent.
My hands don’t shake. My voice never falters. But inside—beneath the iron and ice—I feel it: the cold scream of fury that’s been building in my chest since Aebon’s body crumpled into my lap.
They think they know what wrath looks like.
They haven’t met me yet.
The docking clamps hiss like snakes as the shuttle locks into position.
Neutral space, they call it. A joke. There's no such thing. Not when every eye in orbit is watching for the first flicker of weakness. But the Intergal Exchange Station over Glimner comes close—international jurisdiction, third-party security, and walls thick enough to muffle even a Reaper’s scream. No one owns this place.
Which is exactly why I chose it.
I step off the shuttle into a lobby that smells like sterilized ambition.
Clean. Cold. The kind of place where death happens behind doors and diplomacy is measured in how much silence follows your words.
Every surface gleams. The guards wear matte chrome armor—no faces, no emblems. Just rented neutrality.
They scan me twice. Once for weapons. Once for intent.
The latter pings inconclusive.
I smirk.
Razo follows a half-step behind, tension rolling off him like static off a storm wall. He’s armored up in black Centauri executive gear, two pistols holstered, one visible. That’s deliberate. A warning shot with no sound.
“This is insane,” he mutters under his breath. “You sure about this?”
“No.” I pause, adjust the collar of my jacket. “But that’s never stopped me before.”
We’re led down a corridor that’s too bright, too quiet, and finally ushered into a chamber carved like the inside of a diplomatic shell—long oval table, ambient lighting that shifts with vocal pitch, and a dozen seats waiting like thrones for ghosts.
Only three are occupied.
The others will join in staggered waves, as if showing up last means dominance. Typical.
I recognize the first immediately.
Vikar Than—gilded bones, violet skin stretched taut over a frame that’s more metal than man. His left eye glows orange; the right’s a glass marble etched with kill codes. He nods once, a slow predator’s motion.
To his right, Mirene Sol. Queen of poisons. Hair like copper wire, tongue like a venomous bloom. She’s draped across her chair like royalty or roadkill—you never know with her. She smirks as I enter, like she’s already dissected every word I haven’t said yet.
The third’s a surprise.
No name. No record. Just a voice modulator and a body swaddled in photon mesh. The signal glimmers around them like a cloak made of refracted air.
“The Nine are not amused,” Mirene purrs, as I slide into my seat. “One of our own gutted in your halls. Another flayed by... what do you call it? The scream?”
“The war song,” I say evenly.
“Right.” She bares her teeth. “The tantrum.”
I don’t blink. “He was defending his people.”
“And in doing so,” Vikar intones, voice low and mechanical, “he declared open war on ours.”
My fingers lace together on the table. Calm. Cold. Deadly.
“No,” I say. “He declared something far more dangerous.”
There’s a pause. Interest. The hooded one shifts, photon mesh rippling.
“I didn’t come here to beg,” I continue. “And I didn’t come to apologize.”
“Then why are we here?” Vikar asks. “Why haven’t we simply sent another wave? This time with heavier ordnance?”
“Because you’re tired.”
The words land like quiet thunder.
“You’re all tired,” I go on, voice low, surgical. “Tired of skirmishes and burn-outs. Tired of bleeding lieutenants into gutter wars over docks and districts. Tired of tracing sabotage back to whispers. Tired of rebuilding territory lines every three weeks with the ash of your own soldiers.”
None of them deny it.
“War costs. Blood. Resources. Reputation. Stability. None of which you can afford to waste. Not anymore. Not when surveillance satellites watch every move. Not when your supply chains hang by a thread over a black-market abyss. Not when every faction has a blade to the other’s throat.”
Mirene leans forward, eyes glittering. “So what? You’re proposing a ceasefire?”
I meet her gaze.
“I’m proposing sovereignty.”
That gets them.
Even the mesh figure stirs.
I lay out the tablet, activate the projection.
Holographic schematics burst to life above the table—sector maps, trade routes, encrypted comm networks, and a framework built not from ideology... but from mutual greed.
“Centauri proposes a treaty,” I say. “One that allows all Nine factions to operate—openly—under defined territorial protections. Sector shares. Trade corridors. Arbitration councils. A digital trust-net layered across all black-channel transactions.”
I pause. Let it breathe.
“Think of it. No more turf wars. No more ghost assassins. Just guaranteed profit margins. Shared defense protocols. The ability to trace every betrayal in seconds and punish it legally—without losing a single soldier.”
Vikar’s metal hand flexes. “You want to legalize crime.”
“I want to professionalize it.”
The room is silent for a long, dangerous moment.
Then a voice crackles from the mesh shroud. Filtered, androgynous, smooth.
“And what, Ms. Dawson, do you gain from this?”
I lean back, finally.
“Stability,” I say. “And the power to make damn sure no one ever sends a blade into my home again.”
Mirene tilts her head. “You speak with a Reaper’s voice.”
I smile. “I slept with a Reaper in my bed.”
She laughs, low and delighted. Vikar doesn’t.
“You understand what this means,” he says. “To bind us all by treaty is to shatter the very fabric of our leverage. There would be no coups. No untraceable hits. No recourse to chaos.”
“Exactly.”
The mesh figure finally nods.
“We will... consider.”
I tap the table once, hard enough to make the projection ripple.
“You have twenty-four hours,” I say. “Then I take the offer to the Nexari. And the deal becomes theirs.”
The room stills again.
Because that’s the thing they fear more than each other.
Irrelevance.
They laugh.