16. Rhykor
RHYKOR
The summons arrives two days later.
I'm in the cargo bay running inventory on the last of our medical supplies when the encrypted compound frequency crackles and a priority transmission punches through with the blunt authority of a fist through glass.
Across the bay, Cassia kneels beside a pallet where an elderly Kraaj woman with infected burns on her forearms grits her teeth through a dressing change.
A calm, unhurried stream of words flows from Cassia, her hands working through each layer of gauze while the woman focuses on that voice instead of the pain.
Tilting her head to listen, Cassia reveals the loose braid falling over one shoulder and the bruise above her left eyebrow, now fading from purple to sickly yellow.
Two days since the blackout, and she's barely slept. It’s been a couple of days since she settled her palm over my chest and told me I choose humanity, and the echo of that contact still burns hotter than anything my hands have ever produced.
When my comm unit chirps twice with a military priority signal, I quickly thumb the screen open and angle it against the wall, keeping the glow contained.
Commander Rhykor. Report to Forward Operations Post Kor-Viir at zero-nine-hundred. Noncompliance will be treated as dereliction.
It’s Daxos's cipher. I'd recognize that specific combination of bureaucratic precision and implied threat from a thousand miles out.
I clip the comm back to my belt and look across the bay at her. The quiet, unwavering focus she gives her patients radiates across the room, threading through my awareness until it's the only thing keeping the fire in my chest from flaring past containment.
Varrik intercepts me at the compound's east stairwell, already dressed, cane in one hand, a cold canteen in the other. The burn scars on the left side of his face look deeper in the early light, the mottled bronze skin taut over cheekbones and jaw.
"Kor-Viir?" he grunts.
"You intercepted the signal."
"I intercepted everything, and despite my age, I am hardly dead yet," he says, shoving the canteen into my hand, "so drink, because you look like you haven't slept in three days."
"Two."
"And that's supposed to reassure me?"
He falls into step beside me as we climb toward the rooftop landing pad. "Dessik's prepping the ground transport. I told Britt to hold the perimeter and keep eyes on the freight bay until we're back."
"Cassia stays inside. Nobody approaches her station without Britt's clearance."
"It’s already handled." Varrik watches me from the corner of his eye. "You know what this is."
I drink from the canteen. The water tastes like recycled metal, but it's cold and my throat is raw from two days of barking orders across the freight bay. "I know what it is."
"And?"
"And I'm going."
Flying the ten miles would be faster, but two nights of no sleep and constant thermal output have left my wings trembling at the joints; the healing membrane would tear wide open halfway there, dropping us straight into the ruins.
Varrik took one look at me on the stairwell and told Dessik to prep the ground transport instead of arguing about it, which tells me I look worse than I feel.
The specialized military transport rattles through District Seventeen's debris-choked outer corridors for forty minutes, moving as quickly as the ruined roads allow, before reaching the fortified access road leading to Kor-Viir.
I close my eyes in the back seat and let the heavy engine vibration drag me under for a fraction of the trip, the shallow, half-conscious rest my body has learned to steal between deployments.
Dessik drives, his teal-green hands gripping the steering column, his jaw working silently.
Varrik sits beside me with his cane between his knees, keeping watch so I can afford to let go for a few minutes.
Kor-Viir looks the same, a concrete bunker complex squatting on the ridge like a fist, bristling with communication arrays and anti-aircraft turrets.
The Kraaj military flag snaps in the wind above the main gate, crimson and black against a sky choked with smoke from overnight fires still burning in Sectors Nine and Twelve.
As two sentries check our identification at the perimeter, they scan my credentials with their eyes fixed on their screens, though both keep one hand hovering near their sidearms while waving us through, a subtle shift in their behavior that feels entirely new.
The exact same briefing chamber Daxos dragged me into during our earlier meeting surrounds us, but the hostility compounds aggressively.
Tiered seating carved from tempered stone rises around the central floor.
Overhead lights buzz, washing the cavernous space in a pallor that turns healthy skin sickly and scarred skin corpse-gray.
I stand precisely where I stood last time, but today, there is no pretense of civility.
Eight senior officers occupy the upper tiers today, all of them wearing the polished combat armor reserved for formal proceedings.
They already know why I'm here. I can see it in their posture, in their rigid spines and folded hands, their mouths set in identical lines of grim anticipation.
Daxos stands at the heart of the command platform.
He wears his full ceremonial armor again.
The black tactical plating is etched with campaign insignia beneath iron-gray horns polished to a dull sheen, while the cybernetic wing clicks and adjusts at his side with tiny mechanical whirs that fill the silence.
He watches me move through the chamber floor with those tarnished-brass eyes, and his mouth pulls into a tight expression too controlled to be a smile.
"Commander, prompt for once." He clasps his hands behind his back. "I'd hoped the urgency of the summons might inspire punctuality. Sit."
"I prefer to stand."
A flicker of irritation cracks through the composed mask before he smooths it over. He lets it go—a deliberate concession, the kind of small victory he allows when he's holding cards he considers unbeatable.
"The district blackout has accelerated Legion contamination across the outer settlements by a factor we can no longer manage through standard containment.
" Daxos turns toward a wall-mounted display panel and activates a holographic overlay of the southeastern district grid.
Red blotches consume the map like spreading bruises, including Sector Nine, Sector Twelve, Sector Four, the residential corridors south of the rail depot, and a dozen smaller zones I've been running supply drops to for weeks.
"Infected infrastructure has compromised power distribution, water filtration, and atmospheric processing across seven civilian sectors.
Casualty projections from the engineering division estimate thousands dead if the contamination continues expanding at current rates. "
The red blotches pulse on the map. Each one represents streets I've walked, buildings I've cleared, and families I've carried through maintenance tunnels in the dark.
The old man's trembling hand. Garrow clutching his granddaughter.
The children Cassia treated earlier, their faces gray with soot and terror.
"Regional command has authorized a containment purge.
" Daxos delivers it dull and chillingly precise, like an officer finalizing the parameters of a scorched-earth directive.
"All infected sectors will be sealed and sterilized using orbital-directed thermal bombardment.
Civilian populations within the containment zone will be evacuated where feasible.
Those who cannot be relocated before the purge window closes will be classified as acceptable operational losses. "
The chamber holds its breath.
"How many?" The question scrapes out of me from somewhere hollow.
"The projections vary." Daxos pulls up a secondary data overlay.
Numbers scroll across the display in clean columns, showing population densities, evacuation timelines, and infrastructure damage approximations.
"Conservative estimates place the non-evacuable civilian population at approximately four thousand.
Mixed composition—seventy percent human, thirty percent low-ranking Kraaj personnel and their dependents stationed in the outer residential zones. "
The number lands in my gut like coal. Four thousand mothers and mechanics and children and elderly merchants who leaned against my arm in tunnels because they thought I was safe.
Thousands of lives reduced to a line item on a holographic display, categorized under acceptable operational losses by officers who have never set foot in a single one of the sectors they're sentencing to ash.
"You want me to lead it." The summons and the ceremonial armor combine with an audience of senior officers watching from their stone seats to create choreographed theater. Daxos is staging a public execution of my autonomy, and the officers in this chamber are here to watch.
"You are the territorial commander for District Seventeen.
The purge falls within your operational jurisdiction.
" Daxos descends two steps from the platform, closing on me with that same precision he used the last time he stood on this platform and ordered me to sever ties with Cassia.
"This is your opportunity to demonstrate that your loyalty to Kraaj command supersedes whatever personal distractions have compromised your judgment in recent weeks. "
Cassia's face flashes behind my eyes—her palm imprinted over the oldest scar on my chest, her voice fierce and unwavering in the dark.
True protectors choose how to channel their strength.
The light tracing her jaw while a hundred survivors breathed around us, and her fingers curled into my shirt like I was a lifeline worth holding onto.
"And if I refuse?"