Chapter 17
I woke up slowly, which was something I hadn’t done in a while. I forgot how nice it was.
There weren’t any alarms or proximity warnings.
No voices coming through the comms with urgent updates or requests for my presence on the bridge, ready room, medical bay, or Astro lab.
Just the low hum of the life support system cycling air through my quarters, and the soft rustle of sheets as I shifted against the mattress.
The remains of dinner sat on the small table beside my bunk: an empty plate streaked with grease and ketchup, a scattering of salt crystals where the fries had been, and a wine glass with a purple ring at the bottom.
A double cheeseburger with bacon, extra cheese, and the works.
The wine had been just what I needed to get to sleep.
It was a huge glass, the kind you pour when you're not planning to do anything else with your evening.
I'd eaten every bite, drunk every drop, and then slept for what felt like the first time in weeks.
The Knights had kept their word and given me space without any conditions, which was either a sign of how well they knew me now or how exhausted we all were. Probably both.
I sat up slowly, waking up gently, and enjoying the fact that the edge I had been living on for the last month was finally blunted. I reached for the datapad next to my bunk and opened the updates I’d received while I was asleep.
The first intelligence packet was from Vaelix.
Dry, precise, stripped of anything that might be mistaken for editorializing.
Corporate forces had withdrawn from fourteen systems when the independent stations voided the one-sided trade contracts the corporations had been enforcing for decades.
Three major shipping conglomerates had declared operational pauses, which was corporate speak for "we don't know who to bill anymore. "
I scrolled past the summary into the raw data. Transaction logs. Communication intercepts. A chart showing the cascading failure of credit verification systems across the corporation’s core worlds.
It should have looked like a collapse. Six months ago, I would have read this as the beginning of the end; the kind of systemic failure that preceded famines and riots and the quiet, desperate migrations of people who had nowhere left to go.
But that wasn't what I was seeing.
I switched to the open news feeds. Not the official corporation channels.
Those had apparently gone dark, replaced by holding screens that promised updates soon.
The independent stations had picked up the slack.
Makeshift networks broadcasting from cargo bays and repurposed mining platforms, their signals bouncing through relay chains that hadn't existed a twelve hours ago.
Rovani Station announces mutual defense pact with Kellux Outpost.
Free traders establish emergency supply corridor through unincorporated space.
Independent Station Association releases framework for non-corporate arbitration.
I paused on that last one. The Independent Station Association. The new entity that arose from the still-smoldering ashes of the corporations. Not a government. Not a rebellion. Just a structure; a way for stations to talk to each other without corporate intermediaries.
The galaxy was reorganizing.
I set the datapad down on my lap and pressed my palms against my eyes. The pressure felt good. Grounding. I'd spent so long bracing for the worst that I didn't know what to do with evidence that the worst might not be coming.
The comm panel on my wall chimed.
I dropped my hands and stared at it from the bunk. The identifier read ENCRYPTED — RELAY CHAIN — ORIGIN MASKED, which narrowed it down to about three people in the galaxy who had both my contact protocols and the technical capacity to route through that many proxies.
I accepted the call without getting up.
Leesa's face resolved on the small screen, slightly pixelated from the compression.
She looked tired. Not the performative exhaustion she sometimes affected when she wanted sympathy or leverage, but the real thing—shadows under her eyes, hair pulled back in a way that suggested she hadn't thought about it in days.
"You're free," Leesa said. "I wasn't sure."
"Free," I confirmed. "Intact. Mostly."
"Mostly." Her mouth twitched. "That's more than most people can say right now. I've been trying to reach you for hours. Your protocols kept bouncing."
"I was taking a well-deserved rest. My crew must have muted my comms."
"Your crew." She repeated the phrase as if she were tasting it. "You sound like someone who's been spending time with military types."
I almost smiled. "Maybe."
"Well." She shifted, and the camera angle changed slightly; she was somewhere cramped, probably a ship. "I'm glad you're not dead. I have questions, but they can wait. First, tell me you've been watching the feeds."
"Just finished."
"And?"
I considered the question. She was trying to figure out where I stood in the new landscape so she could figure out where she stood relative to me.
"It's not what I expected," I said. "I thought it would be worse."
"Worse how?"
"More violent. More desperate. I kept waiting for the riots to start, the supply chain failures, the—" I stopped. "But that's not what's happening."
Leesa nodded slowly. "The corporations built systems that depended on them.
When they crumbled, everyone assumed those systems would fail.
But it turns out the systems were already being held together by the people the corporations were exploiting.
They just needed the weight off their backs to start doing it the way they wanted to. "
"You sound almost optimistic."
"I'm a realist." Her expression didn't change.
"The next six months are going to be brutal.
There will be shortages. There will be conflicts.
People will die because supply lines have to be renegotiated or because some local strongman decides this is their chance to grab power.
But the bones of something new are already there.
I've been watching it form in the black market for years. Now it's just... visible."
I thought about that. Leesa had always been better at seeing patterns in chaos. It was what made her good at what she did: the ability to look at a fragmented landscape and identify where value was hiding.
"How's business?" I asked.
She laughed, short and sharp. "Complicated.
Half my buyers have disappeared. The corporate proxies, mostly.
They're either frozen out of their accounts or lying low until they figure out which way the wind blows.
But the other half..." She shrugged. "There's opportunity, if you know where to look.
Artifacts that were locked up in corporate vaults are starting to move.
Collections that haven't been accessible in decades. It's like someone opened a door."
"And you're walking through it."
"I'm being careful." Her eyes met mine through the screen. "That's actually why I called. It isn’t just a friendly call to check if you were alive, though I'm glad you are. I need to ask you something."
I waited.
"The work I do, the artifact trade, it's always been about finding things before they disappear.
Before they get locked away by someone who doesn't understand what they have, or destroyed by someone who does.
I've built a network for moving objects, but storage has always been the problem.
Anything I can't sell quickly, I have to hide.
And hiding things in corporate space..." She trailed off. "That's going to be impossible, now."
"What are you asking?"
"I'm asking if the rumors are true." She leaned forward slightly. "About the Zorathi Reach. About your access to it."
I felt something shift in my chest. I'd known this conversation would come eventually, not necessarily with Leesa, but with someone. The Reach wasn't a secret that could be kept forever. I was synonymous with the Zorathi pirates now, even though they weren’t pirates. Everyone had watched us do what we did. Hell, we were the face of the corporation’s downfall.
"You saw my feeds?"
"All of them. I know who the pirates are, and I know they have access to the Reach. I also know that it's outside corporate jurisdiction, or what’s left of it, and has been for centuries, will be for centuries more." She paused. "That it's the kind of place where things can be kept safe."
"It's true," I said. "I have access. The Reach exists, but I’ve never been.”
Leesa exhaled slowly. "Okay."
"But, I can ask if it can be used." I held up a hand before she could respond.
"I will offer this. If you find artifacts that need protection, real protection, the kind that lasts, contact me first. I can store them on the Starbreaker.
Nobody would be able to get to them. It would be preservation, Leesa. Actual preservation."
"What would you want in return?"
"Access to what you find. Not ownership, I don't care about that. But information. I’m a xenobiologist by training; I want to analyze everything you find, and if it has value, be the first bidder. I will give you a fair price."
She was quiet for a long moment. I watched her think, watched the calculations happening behind her eyes. Risk assessment. Trust evaluation. The exact process I'd gone through a hundred times in the months since my life had changed.
"You've gotten harder," she said finally. "Not in a bad way. Just... you used to hesitate more. Second-guess yourself."
"I used to have time for that."
"And now?"
I considered the question seriously. "Now I know that I'm willing to pay for the things that matter. That makes decisions easier."
She nodded slowly. "Alright. I'm in. We'll figure out the logistics later, via secure channels, transfer protocols, all of it. But yes. If you're offering what I think you're offering, then yes."
"Good."
"Kira." Her voice softened slightly. "Take care of yourself. Whatever you've been through to get here, and I can see it's been a lot, don't forget that you're allowed to rest. The galaxy will keep spinning without you pushing it."
"I know."
"Do you?"
I didn't answer. After a moment, Leesa smiled and ended the call.
The silence returned.
I stayed on my bunk, datapad resting on my thighs, watching the stars drift past the viewport.
The conversation with Leesa had settled something in me, though I couldn't name exactly what.
A sense of direction, maybe. The knowledge that I wasn't the only one trying to build something in the wreckage left by the corporation’s corpse.
I glanced at the empty plate on my table. The wine glass. Evidence of something ordinary in the middle of everything extraordinary. Good food. Sleep that wasn't stolen between crises.
I let my mind drift backward. The service colony.
The medical team as they worked around the clock to save lives.
Kaedren unconscious on the table, his breathing shallow, his skin purple with bruises.
I'd stood there for what felt like hours, watching the monitors, and trying to remember how to pray to gods I'd never believed in.
He'd lived. They'd all lived. But I could still feel the weight of those hours in my bones.
I thought about the broadcasts. My face on screens spanning the galaxy. My name spoken by people I'd never met, attached to a cause I had claimed as my own. The way I'd become a symbol simply by doing what was right, by refusing to disappear when disappearing would have been easier.
I hadn't asked for it. But I hadn't run away from it either.
There was a cost to that. I could feel it now, in the exhaustion that lived beneath my skin, in the way my thoughts kept circling back to moments of crisis like they were still happening. I'd been running on adrenaline and emotions for so long that I'd forgotten what stillness felt like.
Now, in my quarters, with the taste of wine still faint on my tongue and the warmth of real sleep still heavy in my limbs, I let it settle.
Not peace. That was too clean a word for what I felt. Just weight. The accumulated mass of everything I'd done and everything I'd survived, finally allowed to be set down, for now, instead of being pushed aside for the next emergency.
Grief was there. For the people I hadn't been able to save. For the version of myself that had existed before all of this, the one who'd had simpler fears and smaller hopes.
Pride was there too. Quieter, harder to accept. But real. I'd made choices that mattered. I'd held lines that others would have given up. I'd become someone capable of doing things I never would have imagined.
And exhaustion. God, the exhaustion. It went down to my bones, into the marrow, into the spaces between my cells. I was tired in ways that sleep wouldn't fix, not quickly, not easily.
But I was here.
The galaxy had shifted, and I knew where I stood in it. Not because someone had told me, or because I'd been assigned a position in someone else's hierarchy. Because I'd claimed it. Built it. Paid for it with everything I had.
I was ready to stop bracing.
Whatever came next, I would meet it. But not tonight. Tonight, I would stay in this room, in this bed, and let myself be.
The Starbreaker hummed around me, steady and patient.
Tomorrow, there would be more.