Chapter 8
RAYEK
“Where is she,” I ask, no titles, no sugar.
Sneed peers over his slate like he’s inspecting a smudge. “Lady Star has engaged in a brief excursion, Commander. CynJyn accompanies. They are… decompressing.”
“Where,” I repeat.
“Away,” he says, and manages to make the word three syllables long. “Communications are intermittent. The situation is monitored.”
“By whom.”
“By those tasked to monitor it.” He sets the slate down with the sort of care that breaks furniture. “I will remind you that the Lady is an adult and the social weather of the household has been inclement.”
“I don’t care how you describe the sky,” I tell him. “I want coordinates.”
He folds his hands. “The official assessment is that this is a rebellious jaunt. Your continued calm is noted.”
“Your continued evasions are also noted,” I say, and the room tightens. He does not blink. I do not sit. We both perform restraint like we are being graded for it.
Wynona and Martin make me wait outside their study for five full minutes while voices low and quick pass behind the door.
When it opens, Wynona wears the look she saves for cattle crises and grown children who think consequences are optional.
Martin’s smile is the kind that keeps men from breaking by giving them something softer to hit.
“Commander,” Wynona says, and she is Mother, Lady, and General in equal measure. “We’re aware. We have it in hand.”
“With respect, you don’t,” I say. “If you did, you would not be saying ‘in hand.’ You would be giving me a vector.”
Martin spreads his hands. “We will not escalate a private rebellion into public drama. They took a car; they’ll bring it back. Star is not stupid.”
“She is also not safe,” I say, and Wynona’s eyes flash because she agrees and hates that I said it out loud.
Kaspian drifts in like a ghost, coat still unbuttoned, hair a little out of place for once.
“I offered the attaché,” he says quickly, before Wynona can redirect him.
“To send a pair of discreet agents. Mrs. Chambers declined. Mr. Chambers agreed, then declined again, and I am being very mature about it.”
“You’re being useful,” Martin says mildly.
“I’m being resigned,” Kaspian answers, with a look that admits resignation feels like cowardice when it’s neat. He glances at me and holds my eyes just long enough to mean it. “If there is anything I can do without making this worse, I will do it.”
“You can tell me where she went,” I say.
“I can’t,” he says, and means it. “I’m very sorry.”
Wynona steps between us. “We have every expectation our daughter will return shortly,” she says, crisp as a folded map. “You will stay at your post. You will keep my house secure. You will not compound impulse with impulse.”
“I don’t work impulse,” I say, and because we both know that’s not entirely true, we let that be an end to that conversation. I leave because chain of command is a habit you don’t shrug off without tearing muscle.
At 1400 the planetary defense feed burps a bulletin through the guard room with the hiccup of something that had to force its way past a polite firewall: Mining Hub Delta-6—Rook’s Rest—civilian ring—distress beacon activated—communications degraded—piracy event probable.
The room goes quiet. The younger guards look at me because I have a face designed for bad news.
“Patch me to central,” I tell the comms sergeant. “Now.”
He does, fingers a little clumsy. The voice that answers is a woman I know from a training rotation, call sign Tally, good at pretending her calm isn’t built out of panic. “Household Guard, go.”
“Rayek. What do you have.”
“Reaper footprint,” she says. “Not confirmed by hull ID, confirmed by behavior. Rapid entry, precision strikes to control rooms, personnel taken rather than deleted. Power grid bled, then stabilized. Standard Khong doctrine for asset acquisition.”
“Ships?” I ask. “Numbers, classes.”
“Three heat signatures at first pass, one large, two middleweight,” she says. “Rescinded by clouds of rubble. We have no clean read. Local chatter suggests a flagship with bone-shroud silhouette.”
“Khong,” I say, and taste metal.
“We can’t confirm,” she says, and we both hear what she means: we can, but we don’t have the budget for the word.
“Survivors?” I ask.
“Some,” she says. “Dock hands, a cook, a preacher who tried to talk the raiders into better manners, three kids who hid in a crawlspace while their hearts attempted homicide. Offload to med ships ongoing.”
“Statements,” I say, and the sergeant pushes a slate into my hand as the first rough transcripts arrive, text over audio over static.
I scroll. I see red-haired human female—I see yellow-skinned Kilgari—I see laughing, then running—I see took them, called them gifts—I see captain said the pretty ones make the crew loyal. I see enough.
“Give me a vector,” I tell Tally. “I’ll take it from there.”
“Officially I can’t,” she says. “Unofficially: outbound heading on the primary strike matches vectors we’ve seen on the Stormhammer when it moves out of the Badlands for sport.
If you were looking for someone you loved, you would aim beyond the old comet field and wait for rot to smell like a plan. ”
“Copy,” I say. “I owe you.”
“You owe me a drink I’m not allowed during duty hours,” she says, and kills the line because she knows what I’m about to do and doesn’t want to be party to the paperwork.
I stand with the slate in my hand until the words go blurry. The room breathes around me. A young guard clears his throat, then pretends he forgot why. The sergeant watches my face like it’s a weather report for his crops.
“Sir?” he says finally, tiny. “Orders?”
“Hold the house,” I say. “Lock down the east approach. Double posts on the balcony and the stair. Rotate every hour; no one gets tired enough to be stupid. Sneed will have opinions; log mine next to his.”
“Yes, sir,” he says, relief and dread held in equal parts.
I go to my quarters and take the three things I own that matter: the Bishop with the worn corner, the knife that has had the same edge since the war, the photograph tucked in the back of a locker door of a squad who didn’t make it.
I put the Bishop in my pocket and the knife at my back.
I lay the photograph face down on the desk and press it flat.
“I will not add to you,” I tell ghosts who don’t care, and leave the door open because I don’t intend to come back through it until I’ve earned it.
The hangar we use for unregistered sorties is technically a “salvage repository” and practically a shrine to hypocrisy. The quartermaster sitting at the manifest console is a young man with a mustache like a question. He blinks up at me, decides to be brave, and fails.
“I need a scout,” I say. “Warm. Fueled.”
“Commander, the unregistered craft are… we’re not… the manifest—”
“Will show exactly what it needs to,” I say. “And later, when someone with a crest asks why, it will show nothing at all.”
He licks his lips. “Do you have authorization, sir?”
I set both hands on his console and lean until he can see his face reflected in my eyes. “I am authorization.”
He looks at his hands. He looks at the pane that separates us from a row of ugly little ships with stubborn faces. He looks at the clock. He makes a choice that will not ruin his life. “Bay four,” he says. “She’s ugly but mean. You didn’t hear that from me.”
“What’s her malfunction,” I ask, already walking.
“She drinks too much and bites on reentry,” he answers, scrambling after me with a data key. “Like my ex. She’ll still get you there.”
“She’d better,” I say, and he laughs because the alternative is fear.
Bay four houses a scout with a nose like a punch and a paint job that says it has never met a salon.
I like it immediately. The cockpit smells like oil and old coffee and someone else’s temper.
The seat fits me like it remembers my sins.
I run the quickest pre-flight of my life and the most careful.
“You didn’t see me,” I tell the quartermaster through the external mic.
He salutes with the data key and pretends to be deaf. “Who are you,” he says to the empty air. “No idea. Never met him. Hope he wins.”
“Hope he does too,” I say, and the hangar doors begin their slow apology.
The intercom crackles. Sneed’s voice slides into the cockpit like a knife under a letter seal. “Commander.”
“Seneschal,” I say, and take us up before he can ask me not to. The scout rattles exactly where the quartermaster said it would, then remembers who it wants to be and steadies.
“Where are you going,” Sneed asks, his tone smooth and tight, as if he’s pinching a bridge of his nose he doesn’t trust to hold.
“Out,” I say. “I’ll bring something back.”
“You will return to your post,” he says. “You will return now.”
“No,” I say, because the word is true on every axis that matters.
“The Baron will—”
“Forgive me,” I say, and mean it. “Or he won’t. I will still be gone.”
“You are abandoning your duty,” he says, and his breath catches almost imperceptibly on the first syllable of abandoning, like it hurts his mouth to aim that word at me.
“I am executing it,” I say. “Just not on your floor plan.”
He goes quiet for a heartbeat. When he speaks again, the honest spine shows through the etiquette. “Bring her home,” he says.
“That is the plan,” I answer, and cut the channel because I have no room left in me for a voice that can talk me out of this. The scout clears the last of the city lights, noses into the black, and the air changes from shared to mine.
Planetary traffic control chirps for a flight plan; I send one written in fairy tales and falsified numbers.
The scout makes a hungry sound and I feed it.
Warnings blink; I stroke them like nervous animals until they settle.
The world falls away without argument. The sky opens like a wound and like a gift.