Chapter 12
TATEK
There is no time.
That is the truth beneath every movement now—every glance at the panel, every keystroke, every breath I pretend is even.
The lockdown sweep has begun early. That tells me Obol’s predictive systems have registered deviation—some spike in our interaction log, something algorithmic that screamed too close, too fast. They don’t know why, but they know something. And that’s enough to kill her.
Mara is two corridors away, downloading clearance rotas from an unpatched sanitation hub.
I should be with her. But that would make us easier to find.
Two anomalies in one place draws more heat than one ghost drifting through obsolete halls.
We agreed. Separate for now. Regroup at the sub-level junction by shift change.
My hands move fast, faster than they should, fingers skimming across the rusted terminal of the abandoned medical bay like I was bred in wires and bypass commands.
The screen flickers—old, yellowed. Its interface predates most of the Coalition’s newer encryption architecture, which works in my favor.
Age means neglect. Neglect means vulnerability.
“Come on,” I mutter.
The code skeleton appears.
I exhale.
The override protocol is exactly where I hoped—buried beneath a medical ethics review file last updated three standard years ago. Obol never wastes energy scrubbing the dead space. Too many ghosts on the station. It’s easier to corral the living.
I extract the key.
It pulses blue on the screen—live, volatile. One use. One override. After that, it’ll self-nullify. Like everything else the Coalition touches.
My compad vibrates against my chestplate.
I freeze.
Then check.
Mara. Three pulses. Safe. Still downloading.
I nod to no one and resume work.
Next: reroute the pod. I leave the bay and cut through a narrow maintenance shaft that reeks of recycled coolant and insulation foam. The walls are tight. I have to angle my shoulders sideways just to move through.
Claustrophobia isn’t a Vakutan trait. But even I feel the pressure.
I reach the access hatch for the old shuttle terminal.
It's decommissioned, stripped of personnel and repurposed for resource storage. But the pod itself—hollowed, scorched, mostly forgotten—is still docked. Not flyable. Not really. But Mara says she can rig enough power through the junction plates to make it move. Doesn’t need to fly.
Just float. Drift out of bounds and vanish into debris patterns the station already ignores.
I slide open the panel.
The shuttle’s interior greets me with silence and dust. A fine powder coats every surface, like the ship’s been waiting to be touched. My boots scuff the floor, raising quiet clouds that sting my nose.
I access the nav core.
It’s broken. Of course it is.
But I don’t need it to think. I need it to lie.
A ghost trail, Mara called it. Fake telemetry. A pattern that looks like an escape attempt, just convincing enough to send the Coalition chasing shadows while we move the other way.
I hook my compad into the port and begin weaving the signal string. My hands are steady. My breath is not.
Every few seconds, I check the hallway.
Not for agents.
For her.
I replay it. Not the conversation. Not the plan.
Her.
Last night. The taste of her skin. The arch of her back beneath my hands. The way she whispered my name like it wasn’t a word at all—but a prayer. Not for salvation. For permission.
I close my eyes. Just for a second.
Then force myself back to task.
This is what obsession looks like. I know. I’ve seen it. In war. In comrades who broke ranks because someone they cared about screamed. Who threw themselves into fire to save someone already lost. It’s not noble. It’s not romantic. It’s fatal.
And I can feel it rising in me like fire up a dry rope.
I am no longer assessing risk.
I am reacting to need.
That is not command.
That is surrender.
The code compiles. I watch the sequence take shape—convincing, erratic, urgent. It will look like a desperate bid. Someone with partial access trying to escape ahead of purge protocol. Sloppy. Reckless. Real.
It will buy us fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.
If we’re lucky.
If she’s—
The hatch hisses open behind me.
I spin, weapon already drawn.
It’s her.
She stands in the doorway, breathless, hair damp with sweat, datapad clutched in one hand.
“You always point guns at your allies?” she pants.
“Only when they sneak up on me during lockdown.”
She smirks, but her eyes don’t match the expression. “I saw the patrol redirect. You launched the ghost, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How long do we have?”
“Seventeen minutes, tops.”
She crosses the space in three steps, dropping the datapad onto a seat with a heavy thunk. “Then we need to move.”
I should be confirming the rest of the route. Checking the junction. Scanning for interference. But all I can do is watch her.
The curve of her neck. The gleam of sweat on her collarbone. The way she moves like her body still remembers being under mine.
She brushes past me to reach the secondary access panel.
Her shoulder grazes my chest.
I stop breathing.
She doesn’t notice. Or maybe she does. She doesn’t comment either way.
But my skin is burning under the armor. Not from heat.
From restraint.
I should step back. I don’t.
My hand hovers at my side like it might betray me with want.
She kneels by the access conduit, starts rerouting power.
“You okay?” she asks, not looking.
I don’t answer.
Because no.
I’m not.
My pulse is wrong. My judgment’s frayed. I’m calculating threat vectors with only half my brain because the other half is still in her bed, in her hands, in the echo of her voice whispering my name like it’s a secret she wants to keep and a weapon she’s ready to use.
She glances up. Sees my face. Frowns.
“Tatek.”
“I’m fine.”
“Try again, this time without the liar tone.”
“I said I’m—”
“I know what you said,” she snaps. “But you’re not fine. You’re looking at me like I’m about to break. Or like you are.”
I turn away.
“I can’t afford this,” I say quietly.
She stands.
“What? This?” She gestures between us. “Because guess what—I didn’t ask for it either. I didn’t come to this station looking to fall into the arms of a warborn protector with trauma in his eyes and fire in his blood.”
Her voice cracks.
“But I did.”
I close my eyes.
“Mara…”
“I’m not fragile,” she says. “I’m not a distraction. And I sure as hell am not your mistake.”
My jaw tightens.
She’s right. About all of it.
But it doesn’t make it safer.
It makes it worse.
Because if I lose her, I won’t come back from it.
Not this time.
“I know,” I whisper.
She steps closer.
“We survive this,” she says. “And then we figure it out.”
I nod.
Not because I believe it.
Because I need to.
Because we don’t have time for anything else.
“Seal the hatch,” I say.
She does.
I start the countdown.
The hatch seals with a muted clang that echoes louder than it should.
I stand there for a second too long, staring at the seam where the metal fused back together, like I’m waiting for it to betray us and reopen on its own. The timer in my peripheral HUD ticks down in faint amber numbers.
Sixteen minutes.
Mara exhales behind me. Not relief. Readiness.
“Okay,” she says, brisk, all business now. “Ghost trail is live, shuttle’s primed, and I just convinced the sanitation net that we’re a pair of particularly boring pressure fluctuations.”
I nod. “Then we move.”
We slip out into the maintenance corridor, low-lit and narrow, the air thick with the scent of old coolant and overheated wiring.
My boots barely make sound on the floor plating.
Her steps are lighter than mine, but I can still track her by the warmth she leaves behind, by the faint shift in air when she moves.
Every junction we pass is a risk.
Every camera node could already be turning toward us.
I’m not thinking like an officer anymore.
I’m thinking like an animal guarding its mate.
And that terrifies me.
We reach the junction ladder that drops into the lower medical deck. I signal her to wait, then scan the hall. Empty. For now.
“Go,” I whisper.
She descends first, graceful even when she shouldn’t be. I follow, sealing the hatch behind us and dropping the ladder with a soft thud that makes my nerves spike.
The medical wing smells like antiseptic and ozone. Half the lights are dead, the rest flickering at irregular intervals. This deck was decommissioned after a containment breach two cycles ago. Officially sealed.
Unofficially… forgotten.
We move fast.
Mara keeps glancing at her datapad, fingers flying. “Obol just rerouted two patrols toward the shuttle dock,” she murmurs. “They’re buying it.”
“Good.”
“But that means they’re thinning coverage here.”
“Which means whoever’s left is smarter.”
She grimaces. “Fantastic.”
We cut through an equipment bay, squeeze past an overturned diagnostics cart, and slip into a narrow cross-corridor that smells faintly of burned circuitry. I’m about to signal a halt when—
Footsteps.
Close.
Too close.
I grab Mara by the wrist and pull her against the wall, pressing us into a shadowed recess between two sealed storage lockers. She gasps, but bites it down fast.
A patrol rounds the corner.
One officer.
Human.
Mid-rank by the striping on his collar. Armed. Alert. His scanner hums softly as he walks, casting pale arcs of light across the walls.
My hand slides to my weapon.
Not yet.
He slows.
His scanner chirps.
Once.
Again.
I feel Mara stiffen against me.
The officer frowns, checks his wrist display, then looks up.
Directly at her.
Recognition flashes across his face — not immediate, not dramatic, just that subtle narrowing of the eyes that says I’ve seen you somewhere I shouldn’t have.
“Mara Ellison,” he says slowly.
Every muscle in my body goes rigid.
She doesn’t answer.
Neither do I.
His hand drifts toward his comm.
“This deck is restricted,” he says, voice cautious now. “You’re supposed to be under civilian hold.”
I step forward before he can finish.
Position myself between them.
Close enough that he has to tilt his head back to meet my eyes.
“Leave,” I say.
He blinks. “Commander Tatek?”
“Correct.”
Confusion flickers. Then calculation.
“Sir, I—this civilian is flagged—”
“She’s under my protection.”
The words come out low.
Not shouted.
Not threatened.
Final.
His hand freezes halfway to his comm.
“That’s not in the record,” he says carefully.
“It is now.”
“Might want to check your authority on—”
I lean in.
Let just enough of what I am show through the discipline.
Vakutan don’t bare teeth when they threaten.
We go still.
We go quiet.
We let the other being understand, on a biological level, that this situation will end badly for them if they continue.
“Try it,” I say.
Two words.
That’s all.
His pupils dilate.
He looks past me at Mara again — then back at me.
We stand there in a silence so tight I can hear the faint electrical whine of his scanner straining in his grip.
Finally… he lowers his hand.
“Understood,” he says.
Steps back.
Then sideways.
Then turns and walks away without another word.
The corridor swallows him.
The second he’s gone, Mara sags against the wall, breath shuddering out of her.
“Holy—” She stops herself, then looks up at me. “Did you just… threaten an Alliance patrol officer?”
“Yes.”
“With your whole soul.”
“Yes.”
She stares at me, eyes bright and shaken and something dangerously close to awe.
“You realize,” she says softly, “that was… not neutral behavior.”
“I am no longer neutral.”
Something in her expression shifts.
Not fear.
Not relief.
Recognition.
Like she’s finally seeing the line I just crossed — and the fact that I didn’t hesitate.
We don’t have time to talk about it.
Alarms begin to murmur distantly — not full lockdown yet, but the prelude. The station clearing its throat before it screams.
“We need to move,” I say.
She nods. “Yeah. Yeah, we do.”
We run.