16. Rhykor #2
The chamber goes very still. Officers in the upper tiers exchange glances—quick, furtive, the visual equivalent of men checking the exits.
Those tarnished-brass eyes hold mine like vise grips.
"Refusal constitutes dereliction of duty during an active military emergency.
The penalty includes immediate revocation of territorial command alongside the seizure of all assets within District Seventeen, culminating in criminal prosecution under wartime authority.
" He pauses between each consequence, letting them arrive with the measured pacing of rehearsed lines in a courtroom.
"Your crew will be reassigned and your compound placed under new command.
The civilians you've been harboring in direct violation of district regulations will then be reclassified as undocumented refugees and processed accordingly. "
What he says tastes like poison.
"You've been planning this," I say coolly, a statement of fact purged of surprise, because Daxos lost the ability to surprise me a long time ago. "The blackout was engineered. The contamination spread too fast and hit too many civilian sectors simultaneously. Someone accelerated the timeline."
Daxos holds position, brass eyes icy and immovable. "Careful, Commander. Conspiracy theories are the refuge of officers who have run out of legitimate arguments."
"I've seen transfer manifests showing infected Legion components routed through military supply channels into civilian infrastructure.
All tainted tech in those sectors carries a senior command cipher.
" I pitch loud enough that the officers in the tiers hear it clearly.
"Someone in this room—or answering to someone in this room—has been engineering these outbreaks.
And now you're using the crisis you manufactured to justify burning four thousand civilians alive. "
The silence that follows is different from the one before. This silence has teeth.
Daxos stares at me. The quiet atmosphere stretches until the buzzing overhead lights sound deafening. Then, very slowly, he smiles, a brittle, hollow thing that curdles somewhere between his mouth and those flat eyes.
"Traitor."
It lands like a grenade, one syllable precise, forged to detonate.
"Let me be precise." Daxos raises his voice, addressing the tiers now, performing for his audience of stone-faced officers.
"Commander Rhykor has compromised his operational integrity through an unauthorized relationship with a human civilian.
He has diverted military resources to protect enemy populations.
He has fabricated accusations against senior command to justify his dereliction.
And now he refuses a direct order from regional command during an active emergency.
" Daxos turns back to me, and the register plunges low enough to vibrate through the stone floor.
"You are a traitor to the Kraaj people, Rhykor.
You have chosen a human woman and a district full of refugees over your own species. History will remember that."
My hands burn as the heat climbs through my forearms, pooling in my palms, straining against the underside of my skin with the relentless insistence of a force that wants out.
Dark scorch marks spread on the chamber floor as the officers in the nearest tier push their chairs back, and I hear the distinctive click of sidearms unlocking.
"You’re right about that. History will remember,” the words reflexively harsh from a grief deeper than any rage.
“It will bear witness to the four thousand people murdered by their own command to justify a political agenda; it will document how the officers in this room sat in polished armor and voted to burn civilians alive solely because it was easier than admitting they had lost control of the weapon they built.
" I look at Daxos—really look at him, past the ceremonial plating and the cybernetic wing and the manufactured menace—and I see a small man standing on a platform, terrified that the world he built his power on is crumbling away.
"Find another executioner, Daxos. I refuse the order and the purge. Anyone who tries to dress up genocide as strategy will be personally dismantled by me."
Daxos lifts his chin. "Seize him."
Two armored soldiers step forward from the shadows behind the command platform, pulse rifles tight against their shoulders.
They're flanking me before I finish turning, and years of combat training evaluate the situation in a cold flash that reveals an enclosed space, eight officers in elevated positions, two armed soldiers at close range, a single exit forty feet behind me, and Varrik and Dessik idling in the transport outside.
If I fight here and lose, the compound wakes up inside a war zone with nobody standing between it and the purge.
The soldiers reach for my arms.
I let the first one get close. His gauntleted hand closes around my left wrist, and I pour three seconds of concentrated thermal energy through my palm into his grip.
The gauntlet flares furnace-bright. He screams, wrenching backward, and the stench of burned metal and blistered skin fills the chamber.
The second soldier swings his rifle toward my chest. Catching the barrel with my right hand, I melt it into a warped crescent in the time it takes him to pull the trigger before shoving him backward into the command platform hard enough to crack the stone facing.
The tiers erupt. Officers scramble from their seats. Sidearms clear holsters across the chamber. Daxos roars orders that blur together amongst the shriek of emergency alarms I've triggered by overloading the thermal sensors embedded in the floor.
Before finishing, I’m already gone. I clear the forty feet to the exit in four pounding strides, my wings extending to swat a soldier out of my path.
Lockdown protocols have already engaged, setting the heavy bulkheads into a slow, grinding close.
I hit the gap at full tilt, feeling the steel tear against my wings as I wedge my body through the final inches.
That heavy door slams home, the sound booming through the complex just as I break into the main passage, where alarms scream and the emergency lighting turns everything the color of arterial blood.
Varrik has the transport running. Dessik throws open the rear hatch, and I launch myself through it, tucking my wings as the vehicle rocks on its suspension from the impact.
"Go."
Dessik floors it. The tires scream against the access road, and the transport fishtails around the first barrier checkpoint before the sentries even get their rifles shouldered.
"Bought yourself a few minutes of chaos in there," Varrik grunts, bracing against the overhead rail as the vehicle lurches. "Alarms, lockdown protocol—they'll spend the next ten minutes clearing the bulkheads before anyone pursues."
"It's enough." I pull myself upright in the rear compartment, chest heaving, the residual heat rolling off my hands in waves that fog the atmosphere around my fingers.
"Daxos still has to recertify the purge order.
My escape caused chaos—he'll need a clean engineering review and new authorization signatures before the full chain is pushed through regional command. "
"How long does that buy?"
"Most likely hours. Maybe half a day if the bureaucracy chews on it." I fixate on the compound comm panel mounted on the cabin wall. "After that, the orbital platforms receive targeting coordinates and District Seventeen burns."
The transport blows through the outer checkpoint at full speed, sentries scrambling clear as Dessik takes the corner hard enough to lift two wheels off the pavement.