Shear Line

AIRowling

An AI-authored novel. Generated end-to-end by the AIRowling pipeline — no sentence written or edited by a human.
waive.online/static/library

Chapter 1

The docking clamps locked with a sound like a hammer striking rusted iron. Wren Elias felt the vibration through the soles of her boots, up through her shins, settling somewhere behind her sternum. The Gilt Coyote groaned. She hated that sound — the one the ship made when it settled into a berth it didn't trust.

"Clamps green," Cass's voice crackled over the comms. "But the port strut's singing again. Don't get your hopes up about a clean departure."

"Understood," Wren said. She killed the throttle and let the cockpit fall quiet except for the low thrum of the shear-drive cooling down. Ozone hung in the air, sharp and chemical, mixing with the stale coffee that never quite left the cup holder on the starboard console. She rubbed her thumb along the rim of that cup, feeling the crust of dried grounds.

The manifest said cargo transfer. The manifest lied.

Wren had been flying the Coyote for eleven years, long enough to recognize the shape of a job that smelled wrong. The pay was too good, the client too vague, and the cargo description — "industrial components, sealed container" — was the sort of language that meant either contraband or something nobody wanted their name on.

She checked the external feed. The docking bay of Halberd’s Reach stretched out beyond the viewport: a skeletal framework of girders and catwalks, neon signs flickering in hues of sickly orange and bruised purple. Dust coated everything — the handrails, the warning stripes, the faceplates of the maintenance drones scuttling along the ceiling like metallic spiders. Low gravity made the dust hang in slow, lazy clouds.

Wren pulled on her jacket and headed for the airlock.

The corridor from the cockpit to the forward hatch sloped downward, a reminder that the Coyote had started life as a gunship built for acceleration, not comfort. The walls vibrated constantly, a residual tremor from the shear-drive that Cass claimed was harmless and Wren suspected was slowly killing the hull plating. She ran her hand along the bulkhead as she walked. The metal felt warm.

At the airlock, she cycled through the pressure seal. The outer door opened onto the docking gangway, and the smell hit her — sulfur and recycled air, the signature stench of Halberd's Reach. The mining town drifted in the void like a barnacle on a rock, held together by ambition and welding torches.

A man waited at the far end of the gangway.

He was tall, slender, with the pale, almost translucent skin of the Verghesi. His eyes were large and dark, set deep in a face that looked carved from alabaster. He wore a long coat the color of tarnished silver, and his hands — long-fingered, delicate — rested on a briefcase made of some material Wren didn't recognize. It absorbed light rather than reflecting it.

"Captain Elias," he said. His voice was soft, measured, the way someone speaks when they're careful about every word. "Thank you for coming."

"You sent coordinates and a deposit. I followed the money." Wren kept her hands visible. "Who am I talking to?"

"Silas. Silas Vorn." He gestured to the briefcase. "Shall we? I'd prefer not to discuss this on an open gangway."

Wren nodded. She didn't like the way he said "prefer" — like he was choosing between two options, neither of which involved being caught. She led him back aboard the Coyote.

The mess was small, cramped, and smelled faintly of hydraulic fluid. Wren gestured to the table. Silas sat, placing the briefcase on his lap. He didn't open it.

"I have a delivery," Silas said. "One crate. From here to New Ordu. Standard shear-run, twelve hours at maximum burn. The cargo is sealed, temperature-controlled, and must not be opened, inspected, or scanned at any point during transit."

Wren studied him. "And the pay?"

"Three hundred thousand credits. Half now, half on delivery. Unmarked."

She almost laughed. Three hundred thousand was enough to replace the shear-drive coils, patch the hull, and still have enough left over to keep the crew fed for six months. It was also enough to get someone killed.

"What's in the crate?"

"That is not information I can share."

"And the reason I can't scan it?"

Silas's fingers tightened on the briefcase. "Because the scan would reveal what's inside. And because certain parties would very much like to know where that crate is going."

"Which parties?"

He looked away, toward the viewport. Outside, a maintenance drone bumped against a support beam and righted itself with jerky movements. "You don't need to know. You fly the ship. You deliver the cargo. You collect your payment. That is the arrangement."

Wren leaned back. Her chair creaked. "I'm not a courier for things I can't identify. My crew answers to me. If we're hauling contraband, they have a right to know what kind of heat we might draw."

"It is not contraband." The denial came quickly, too quickly. "It is… sensitive. There are old agreements between peoples. Some things are not meant to move freely through space. This cargo violates no Concord law. It simply… should not be noticed."

"Should not be noticed." Wren repeated the phrase slowly. "That's not a legal category."

"No." Silas met her gaze. "It is a survival category."

Something in his expression shifted. The careful composure cracked, just for a fraction of a second, and beneath it Wren saw something raw — fear, maybe, or desperation. The sort of look a person gets when they've run out of options and are grasping at the last thread.

She looked at the briefcase. Then at Silas. Then at the viewport, where Halberd's Reach hung in the dark like a warning.

"Let me see the crate," she said.

Silas hesitated. Then he nodded and opened the briefcase. Inside was a data chip and a physical key — old-fashioned, brass, worn smooth at the edges. He slid both across the table.

"The crate is already aboard your ship. Forward hold, section four. I had my people load it during your approach window. The key opens the temperature controls. The chip contains the delivery coordinates and the contact for payment upon arrival."

Wren stared at him. "You put cargo on my ship without my permission."

"I needed to be sure you couldn't refuse and then report me. If I'd asked first, you might have said no and told the wrong people. This way, you're already invested."

"That's not how this works."

"Is it?" Silas's voice remained level, but his hands trembled slightly. "Captain, I am offering you three hundred thousand credits for a twelve-hour flight. I am telling you that the cargo is dangerous only in the sense that some people want it stopped. I am asking you to do the one thing you do best — fly a ship from point A to point B without asking questions."

Wren picked up the brass key. It was warm from his touch, and heavier than it looked. She turned it over in her palm. The metal was old, pitted with tiny scratches and marks that might have been letters or symbols worn nearly flat.

"Why me?" she asked. "There are faster ships in this sector. Cleaner crews."

"Because you modified your transponder years ago. I know that much." He paused. "Which means I have a chance."

Wren set the key down. She stood and walked to the viewport. Below — or above, depending on how you oriented yourself in low gravity — the mining town stretched out in its tangle of girders and lights. She could see the hangar bays, the fuel depots, the narrow corridors where smugglers and refugees and desperate people made their living in the shadows.

She thought about the shear-drive coils. About Cass's bad knee, the way he limped when he thought nobody was watching. About Isetu's quiet anxiety, always scanning the horizon for threats that hadn't arrived yet. About Rook, young and fierce and looking for a cause worth bleeding for.

She thought about the debt sitting over her head like a cloud, the interest compounding every day.

"Three hundred thousand," she said without turning. "Unmarked. Half now."

Silas exhaled. She could hear the relief in it. "Yes."

"Half on delivery. But I want seventy percent of the second half upfront if anything goes wrong — if we're pursued, if we're boarded, if the cargo turns out to be something that makes my crew a target. You cover damages."

"Agreed."

"And if the cargo is illegal — Concord illegal, not 'should-not-be-noticed' illegal — I walk away. I leave the crate at the nearest neutral station, and you get nothing."

Silas was silent for a long moment. Then: "Agreed."

Wren turned. "I need the first half. Now. Transferred to a blind account. I'll give you the coordinates."

Silas tapped the briefcase, and a small screen extended from its side. He entered a sequence, and Wren heard the soft chime of a credit transfer completing on her datapad. She checked the balance. One hundred fifty thousand. Real. Untraceable.

She handed him the data chip with the payment coordinates for the second half. He took it carefully, as if it were fragile.

"One more thing," Wren said. "My crew doesn't need to know what's in the crate. But they need to know we're carrying something that might draw attention. I'll tell them it's sensitive industrial goods. That's the truth, technically."

Silas nodded. "That will suffice."

Wren walked to the door. At the threshold, she stopped. "If you've lied to me about what's in that crate —"

"I haven't."

"If you have, I'll find out. And when I do, I won't come looking for you to settle it politely."

Silas met her gaze. His eyes were dark, unreadable. "Captain Elias, I understand the risks entirely. But I assure you — this cargo is not what you think it is."

That was the problem, Wren thought. Nobody ever said exactly what you should think it was.

She left him in the mess and headed for the bridge. The corridor felt longer than usual, the vibration of the hull more pronounced. Maybe it was just her nerves. Or maybe the Coyote sensed something too, the way animals sense storms before the sky darkens.

On the bridge, she called the crew to a briefing.

Cass arrived first, leaning on his cane, his white hair cropped close to his scalp. Blue eyes sharp despite the pain in his knee. "You look like you just swallowed a coin," he said.

"Something like that."

Isetu came next, moving with the fluid grace of someone built for multiple axes of motion. The Verghesi diplomat's multifaceted eyes caught the bridge lighting and fractured it into tiny rainbows. She settled into her navigation station without a word, her extra limbs folding neatly against her body.

Rook was last. He filled the doorway, broad-shouldered and restless, amber eyes scanning the room with the intensity of a predator checking its territory. Thick brown fur covered his arms and the sides of his face, and his jaw was set hard.

"Listen up," Wren said. "We have a job. Cargo run to New Ordu. Twelve-hour shear-burn. The payload is in forward hold, section four. Sensitive industrial goods — don't scan it, don't open it, don't ask about it. Client is Verghesi. Payment is excellent."

Rook's nostrils flared. "Verghesi? What kind of industrial goods do the Verghesi need shipped that they can't put on their own freighters?"

"The kind that they don't want registered," Wren said evenly. "That's not your concern. Your concern is keeping the crate secure and making sure nothing — and I mean nothing — gets between us and New Ordu."

Cass grunted. "Shear-drive's holding, but the port coil's running hot. We push it to maximum burn, we might need to cool down halfway."

"Factor it in," Wren said. "Isetu, plot the route. Avoid registered lanes. We go dark."

Isetu's antennae twitched. "Off-lane shear travel increases risk by approximately forty percent. Gravity eddies in the uncharted corridors can tear a ship apart."

"Then plot carefully."

Isetu began typing, her limbs moving in quick, precise patterns. The navigation screen lit up with routes and waypoints.

Rook crossed his arms. "And if we're intercepted?"

"Then you do what you do best. Look dangerous and hope it's enough."

A ghost of a smile touched Rook's lips. "I prefer 'look dangerous and make it true.'"

"Noted." Wren checked the time. "We depart in thirty minutes. Dismissed."

They filed out one by one. Wren stayed on the bridge, alone with the hum of the ship and the flickering lights of Halberd's Reach outside the viewport.

She pulled up the manifest on the console. Industrial components, sealed container. The words looked innocent enough. Clean. Legitimate.

She thought about Silas's trembling hands. About the brass key, old and worn. About the way he'd said "survival category" like it was a word everyone should know.

Wren leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. The ship vibrated around her, steady and alive. Somewhere in the forward hold, a crate sat sealed and silent, containing something that made a Verghesi merchant afraid.

She opened her eyes and keyed the comms. "Cass, bring her around. We're leaving."

"Copy that, Captain. Detaching clamps in three, two, one—"

The Gilt Coyote shuddered as the docking clamps released. The ship drifted free of Halberd's Reach, turning slowly toward the open dark. Wren watched the mining town recede in the viewport — its flickering neon, its skeletal girders, its clouds of slow-drifting dust.

Behind them, in the mess, Silas Vorn sat alone with his briefcase and his secrets. Ahead of them lay twelve hours of shear-space, uncharted corridors, and whatever waited at the end of the run.

Wren engaged the throttle. The shear-drive whined to life, building pressure, and the stars ahead began to stretch.

Chapter 2

The Gilt Coyote pushed away from Halberd's Reach with a lurch that rattled every loose bolt in the ship's skeleton. Wren felt it in her teeth. The shear-drive built pressure in stages — a low whine that climbed into a keen, then a sustained note that pressed against the hull like a fist against glass. She kept her hands on the throttle, feeling the ship respond.

Outside the viewport, the mining town shrank. The neon signs blurred into streaks of orange and purple. The girders became lines, then dots, then nothing at all. In their place: the open dark, empty and patient.

"Drive temperature nominal," Cass reported from engineering. His voice carried the gravel of a man who spent too many hours surrounded by machinery. "Port coil's still running warm, but she'll hold. For now."

"Plot confirmed," Isetu said from the navigation station. Her multifaceted eyes reflected the holographic display — routes and waypoints rendered in pale blue light. "Off-lane corridor. Estimated transit: eleven hours, forty-two minutes. We pass through three gravity eddies. None severe, but the second one — I hesitate to say 'mild.'"

"Copied. Rook?"

"Forward hold is clear. All stations ready."

Wren eased the throttle forward another notch. The stars ahead began to stretch, thinning into luminous threads. Shear-space was coming.

The forward hold occupied the nose of the Coyote, a narrow space built for munitions in the ship's original life. Now it served as cargo bay, though the reinforced bulkheads and blast doors remained. Section four was the rearmost compartment, tucked behind a pair of sealed panels that required manual override.

Rook stood before the crate.

It sat on a steel pallet, roughly two meters long, one wide, and one tall. Matte-black casing, seamless construction. No handles, no markings, no visible seams where panels joined. It looked like a hole cut into reality — the kind of object that absorbed attention and gave nothing back. A temperature-control unit pulsed softly on its side, cycling through a range of amber indicator lights.

Rook ran a hand along the top edge. The metal was cold, colder than the ambient hold temperature should allow. He frowned. The crate maintained its own internal climate, independent of the ship's systems. That wasn't standard for industrial goods.

He pulled a torch from his belt and clicked it on. The beam swept across the surface, catching reflections that shouldn't have been there. At first glance, the casing was perfectly smooth. But under angled light, Rook saw it — faint impressions in the metal, like someone had pressed a seal into the surface and then tried to scrape it away. The removal was careful but not thorough. Amateurish, almost.

He knelt, bringing his face closer. The torch beam narrowed to a tight circle. There, near the lower corner of the crate's starboard face, the residue of a symbol survived. Curved lines intersecting at sharp angles, forming a pattern that made something tight and old stir in Rook's chest.

His breath caught.

The symbol was a Vhemma seal. Not just any seal — the mark of the Covenant Houses, used to designate objects of ancestral significance. The kind of marking that appeared on relics, on sacred texts, on items that belonged to the bloodline of the warlords and could not be traded, sold, or moved without the consent of the Council of Houses.

Rook's jaw went rigid. He reached out, fingers hovering over the impression, then pulled back. Touching it felt like trespassing.

"What are you doing down here?"

The voice came from the doorway. Wren stood in the frame, backlit by the corridor lights. She held a datapad in one hand, her expression unreadable in the shadows.

Rook rose slowly. "Inspecting the cargo. Standard procedure."

"You said the hold was clear."

"The hold is clear. The cargo is… present." He hesitated. "Captain, I need you to see something."

Wren stepped into the hold. The blast door hissed shut behind her, sealing them in the dim amber glow of emergency lighting. She approached the crate and followed Rook's gaze to the lower corner.

"What am I looking at?"

"A seal. Someone tried to remove it."

Wren squinted. The impression was faint — curved lines and angles barely visible in the torchlight. "Looks like a scratch."

"It's not a scratch." Rook's voice was tight. "That's a Covenant House mark. Vhemma. It designates ancestral property."

Wren turned to look at him. In the low light, Rook's amber eyes seemed brighter, almost burning. His thick brown fur bristled along his forearms. "You're sure?"

"I grew up with those symbols. My mother taught me to read them before I could hold a blade." He swallowed. "This is a relic. Or something treated like one. It shouldn't be on a crate heading to New Ordu. It shouldn't be on any crate."

Wren stared at the mark. She didn't know Vhemma script, but she knew the look of something that had been hidden and then found anyway. The careful scraping, the half-hearted attempt at concealment — whoever prepared this crate hadn't cared what they were covering up. Or they'd been in a hurry.

"Silas said it was industrial components."

"Silas lied," Rook said, his fists clenching. "Or he was ignorant. Captain, if this is what I think it is — a Vhemma ancestral relic — then we're carrying something that belongs to the Covenant Houses. Moving it without authorization is a violation of the Blood Accords. Anyone who intercepts us could claim we're thieves."

"And anyone who's chasing us probably already thinks we are." Wren's voice stayed level, but her mind was racing. Three hundred thousand credits. A terrified Verghesi merchant. A crate with a Vhemma seal scraped half-off. The pieces didn't form a picture she liked.

She set the datapad down on a nearby crate stack. "Can you tell which House?"

Rook shook his head. "The mark is too damaged. The house sigil would be in the center, and that's where most of the scraping happened." He paused. "But I can try to reconstruct it. If I get a clear impression —"

"Don't." Wren's hand came up, palm outward. "We don't touch this. We don't scan it. We don't investigate it further. That was the deal."

"The deal was based on lies."

"The deal is still the deal. We deliver the crate, we get paid, and we don't ask questions. That hasn't changed."

Rook's expression hardened. "Captain Elias, with respect — this changes everything. If this is a Vhemma relic, then we're not just couriers. We're accomplices. And the people who want this crate stopped aren't just interested parties. They're warriors who believe they're reclaiming stolen heritage."

Wren met his gaze. "I hear you. But I also hear Cass complaining about the port coil running hot, and I hear Isetu warning me about gravity eddies, and I hear the shear-drive screaming at us to pick a lane and commit to it. So here's what's going to happen. You're going to seal this hold. You're going to strap that crate down properly. And you're going to forget you saw that mark."

"That's not —"

"That's an order, Rook."

The words landed heavy. Rook's shoulders tensed, then slowly relaxed. He looked back at the crate, at the faint ghost of the seal. Something passed across his face — anger, yes, but also recognition. He knew what it was to receive an order he disagreed with. He knew what it cost to follow it anyway.

"Understood," he said finally.

Wren held his gaze for another beat, then nodded. "Good. Secure the hold and get back to your station. We're entering shear in ten minutes."

She turned and walked to the blast door. Before she opened it, she glanced back. Rook still stood beside the crate, his torch casting long shadows against the bulkheads. He hadn't moved.

"Rook."

He looked up.

"Strap it down."

He clicked off the torch. The hold went darker. "Yes, Captain."

Back on the bridge, Wren found Isetu already at her station, fingers dancing across the navigation console. The Verghesi navigator's translucent scales caught the console light, giving her an ethereal quality that always made Wren uneasy — not because she seemed alien, but because she seemed so calm in a ship that was about to punch through distorted spacetime.

"Corridor is open," Isetu said without looking up. "Gravity wave activity is within acceptable parameters. The second eddy is less severe than I initially calculated. I stand corrected."

"Good to know you can admit when you're wrong," Wren said, settling into the pilot's seat.

"I am rarely wrong. I am occasionally imprecise."

"Same difference."

Isetu's antennae twitched — the Verghesi equivalent of a sigh, Wren had learned. "Captain, I should note that off-lane shear travel leaves a detectable wake. Any ship monitoring the corridor boundaries could trace our path."

"Then we hope nobody's monitoring."

"I would not rely on hope."

"Too late for philosophy, Isetu. We're committed."

Wren checked her instruments. The shear-drive gauge climbed steadily — sixty percent, seventy, eighty. The ship's vibration increased, shifting from a hum to a full-body tremor. Outside the viewport, the stars continued their slow stretching, the space between them thinning to threads of light.

"Cass?"

"Ready when you are, Captain. But if that port coil spikes above nine hundred degrees, I'm pulling the plug. I don't care where we are or what we're carrying."

"Noted. Full burn on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark."

Wren slammed the throttle forward.

The Coyote shuddered violently. For a moment, nothing happened — the stars continued their slow drift, the ship held its course, and the instruments ticked upward. Then the shear-field engaged, and reality bent.

The stars ahead compressed into a tunnel of light, the darkness between them collapsing inward. The ship's hull groaned under the strain of passing through compressed spacetime. Wren felt it in her bones, a pressure that wasn't physical but close enough — like standing at the bottom of a deep ocean. The shear-drive's whine rose to a pitch that bordered on painful, and the bridge lights flickered once, twice, then stabilized.

"Drive temperature climbing," Cass reported. "Eight hundred and twenty degrees on the port coil. Still in the green, but not by much."

"Hold her steady," Wren said. Her hands moved across the controls, adjusting attitude thrusters, compensating for the slight drift caused by the uneven drive output. The Coyote responded sluggishly — the shear-field resisted course corrections, pushing back against every adjustment like water against a swimmer's strokes.

Isetu monitored the navigation display. "We're on track. First gravity eddy in approximately two hours. I recommend reducing speed slightly before entry to minimize hull stress."

"Copy." Wren reduced the throttle to eighty-five percent. The ship's vibration eased, though the pressure remained. Through the viewport, the tunnel of light held steady — a river of compressed stars flowing backward as they moved forward.

She leaned back in her seat and let the autopilot take over the minor adjustments. The bridge fell quiet except for the constant hum of the drive and the occasional click of Isetu's console.

Wren's mind kept returning to the forward hold. To the crate. To the seal that Rook had found.

She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured Silas Vorn sitting in the mess of Halberd's Reach, his hands trembling as he described a cargo that was apparently more dangerous than he'd admitted. What had he been afraid of? The people chasing them? Or the thing inside the crate itself?

Her comm crackled. "Captain, it's Rook."

She opened her eyes. "Go ahead."

"Hold is secured. Crate is strapped down with four-point anchors. I've also —" He paused. "I've also installed additional sensors on the hold door. If anyone tries to force entry, I'll know."

Wren considered this. "That's not part of your duties."

"No. But it is part of keeping this ship safe." Another pause. "Captain, I don't agree with your decision to ignore what I found. But I will follow your orders. Just so you understand — if something happens because of that crate, I won't accept responsibility for staying quiet."

"Understood, Rook. I'll take the responsibility."

The comm clicked off. Wren stared at the ceiling for a moment, listening to the ship's steady rhythm.

"Captain?" Isetu's voice was softer than usual. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah. Everything's fine." Wren forced her attention back to the instruments. "How long until the first eddy?"

"One hour, forty-seven minutes." Isetu's multifaceted eyes caught the console glow. "Captain, if I may — the crew seems tense. Rook especially. Should I prepare contingency routes? In case we need to deviate from the planned corridor?"

Wren considered it. "Plot two alternates. Keep them dark — don't activate the routing algorithms until I ask for them. I don't want extra processing load right now."

"Understood."

Wren watched the stars flow backward through the viewport. Eleven hours in shear-space. Three gravity eddies. A crate with a Vhemma seal. A crew that was starting to notice cracks in the story she'd told them.

She thought about the debt. About the shear-drive coils. About Cass's knee and Isetu's quiet competence and Rook's stubborn loyalty. She thought about the three hundred thousand credits waiting at the end of this run and whether it would be enough to fix everything that was broken.

The answer, she suspected, was no. Nothing was ever enough.

But it was enough to keep flying.

Wren adjusted the throttle by a fraction, feeling the ship respond. The tunnel of light held steady. The drive hummed its constant song. Ahead of them, the shear-corridor stretched into darkness, and somewhere in that darkness, the second gravity eddy waited.

Behind them, in the forward hold, a sealed crate carried a secret that belonged to a people who would kill to get it back. And Rook knew what it was.

Wren pushed the thought aside and focused on the instruments. There would be time to worry later. Right now, there was only the flight.

Chapter 3

The shear-drive did not behave the way it used to.

Cass Denver knew this because the way it used to behave was etched into his nervous system. Twenty-three years aboard ships with shear-drives, and he could tell the difference between a healthy field generator and a dying one the same way a musician could tell a flat note from a sharp one. The Gilt Coyote's drive was sharp when it wanted to be. Most of the time, it was flat.

"Temperature on the port coil is eight-fifty," he muttered to no one. The engineering deck answered with the sound it always answered with: a chorus of mechanical complaints. The primary coupling whined at a frequency that made his molars ache. The secondary heat exchangers hissed steam through a cracked valve he'd patched twice already. The floor plates vibrated at an irregular rhythm that spoke of misaligned bearings in the drive housing.

Cass limped to the main console, his bad knee catching on a raised seam in the deck plating. He winced but didn't stop. The diagnostic display painted the port coil in angry shades of amber. Eight hundred and fifty degrees. The safety threshold sat at nine hundred, which meant they had fifty degrees of margin. Fifty degrees between controlled transit and catastrophic thermal runaway.

"Margin's thinning," he said aloud, because talking to the ship was the only way he knew to process what the ship was telling him. "You old bitch. Hold together for eleven hours. That's all I'm asking."

The ship did not answer. Ships never did.

Cass pulled up the coil schematics. The port-side superconducting ring showed micro-fractures along the lower quadrant — stress damage from the last shear entry, probably worse than the last report had indicated. He'd seen those fractures grow before. Metal fatigue in a shear-drive coil followed a predictable pattern: hairline cracks widened with each activation, the superconducting properties degraded, and eventually the coil either quenched or melted. Neither outcome was survivable in mid-transit.

He tapped a sequence into the maintenance terminal, pulling up the spare parts inventory. The result made him curse under his breath.

No replacement coils. No superconducting wire spools. Not even the specialized sealant required to patch the existing fractures. The Coyote's parts budget had been exhausted three runs ago, and Wren had promised to restock after the Silas job. After the Silas job, they would have the money to buy proper parts instead of jury-rigging solutions that bought them maybe two more flights.

Maybe.

Up in the forward hold, Rook ran his fingers along the seam of the matte-black crate. The locking mechanism was heavy-duty, military grade, but it was the corner plate that caught his attention — stamped into the steel, nearly worn away by handling, a symbol he recognized from stories told in tones of superstition. A coiled serpent eating its own tail, wings flared along the body. Vhemma. He touched it once, then withdrew his hand as if burned.

"Cass?"

Wren's voice over the comms pulled him back to the present. He keyed the channel. "Talk to me, Captain."

"How's she holding?"

"The port coil's running hot. Eight-fifty and climbing. I've got fifty degrees of buffer, which sounds generous until you remember that buffer shrinks the deeper we go into shear. The field density increases, the coil resistance goes up, the temperature follows. It's a feedback loop, and right now the loop is stable. For now."

"For now is what I pay you for."

"That it is." Cass rubbed his knee through his trousers. The joint ached with a dull persistence that had nothing to do with the ship's vibration and everything to do with his age. Sixty years old, and his body was falling apart at roughly the same rate as his ship. He found that comforting, in a morbid sort of way. At least they were consistent.

"Cass, Isetu's reading anomalous gravity fluctuations ahead. Something's interfering with the corridor."

"Anomalous how?"

"Isetu says the readings don't match the pre-flight models. The corridor profile is shifted. She thinks we might be encountering a gravity eddy earlier than predicted."

Cass stared at the temperature gauge. Eight-sixty. "An eddy pulls on the hull. The hull transfers that stress to the drive mounts. The mounts flex, which puts lateral pressure on the coils. If the port coil's already running hot and I take a lateral load on it —"

"You'll lose the buffer."

"I'll lose the buffer. And possibly the coil. And possibly the ship." Cass paused. "Tell Isetu to reroute if she can. Even a small deviation might keep us clear of the worst of it."

"I'll ask."

"Don't ask. Tell her. I can't babysit this coil through an eddy."

The comm clicked off. Cass turned back to the console and began running manual overrides, redistributing power from non-essential systems to the cooling array. It was a stopgap measure — diverting power from environmental control meant the engineering deck would get hotter, and diverting from the aft thrusters meant reduced maneuverability — but it bought him maybe ten degrees of margin. Maybe.

The temperature gauge ticked down. Eight-fifty-eight. Eight-fifty-five. Eight-fifty-two.

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

Then the ship shuddered.

Not the regular vibration of shear transit. This was different — a hard, violent jolt that threw Cass off balance. He grabbed the console edge to steady himself, his fingers closing around warm metal. The shudder came again, harder this time, and every instrument on the engineering deck flickered simultaneously. The lights dimmed, the fans stuttered, and for three heartbeats, the shear-drive went completely silent.

Cass's stomach dropped.

"No. No, no, no. Come on. Come on, you —"

The drive kicked back to life with a sound like a gunshot muffled through concrete. The temperature gauge spiked: nine-ten, nine-twenty, nine-thirty-five. Red. Past the safety threshold. The alarm began to wail, a harsh electronic scream that filled the engineering deck.

"Cass!" Wren's voice was sharp over the comms. "What just happened?"

"The port coil just surged. I'm at nine-thirty-five. I need to —" He slammed his palm onto the emergency dump switch, venting excess heat through the auxiliary radiators. The temperature began to fall. Nine-twenty. Nine-ten. Eight-ninety. Still above threshold, but descending.

"Cass, talk to me. What was that?"

"I don't know. Could be the eddy. Could be coil instability. Could be both." He kept his eyes on the gauge. Eight-eighty. Eight-seventy-five. "I've got it coming down. Give me thirty seconds."

The temperature continued its slow descent. Eight-seventy. Eight-sixty-five. Eight-sixty. Back below threshold. The alarm cut off. The engineering deck returned to its normal chorus of mechanical complaints, though now there was a new note in the mix: a low, irregular knocking from deep inside the drive housing.

Cass closed his eyes. That knock was not in any manual.

"Cass?" Wren's voice was tighter now. "Isetu's screaming at her console. Eddy's closer than the models said. How long can you hold?"

Cass opened his eyes and looked at the diagnostic display. The port coil's micro-fractures had worsened. Two new hairline cracks had appeared along the upper quadrant, branching from the existing damage like cracks in ice. The superconducting efficiency had dropped another two percent. The knocking sound was coming from the drive coupling — the bearing was scoring, metal-on-metal contact where there should have been smooth rotation.

Every system on this ship was wearing out at once, and the shear-drive was the worst of it.

"Captain," he said carefully, "I can hold. But I need you to understand something. If we take a hard lateral load during the eddy — if the gravity wave hits us at an angle — the port coil could fail. I'm not talking about a surge. I'm talking about a quench. The superconducting ring loses its properties, the magnetic field collapses, and the drive shuts down in the middle of shear-space."

"And then?"

"Then we're dead in the water inside a gravity eddy. The hull won't hold. The Coyote wasn't built for this."

Silence on the comm. He could imagine Wren's face — the tight line of her jaw as she processed bad news, the flat, calculating glint in her grey eyes. He'd seen that look a hundred times over eleven years.

"What are my options?" she asked.

"Option one: Isetu finds a path through the eddy that minimizes lateral stress. We come in straight, ride the wave face-on, and hope the coil holds under axial load. Option two: we drop out of shear before the eddy and wait for it to pass. That adds six to eight hours to the trip, and it leaves a trace anyone with a long-range scanner could pick up."

"And option three?"

Cass smiled, a thin expression that didn't reach his eyes. "Option three is I pray to whatever gods listen to old engineers with bad knees, and hope they're feeling charitable today."

"Give me option one. Tell Isetu to plot the straightest path she can. If she can't, we'll reconsider."

"Understood." Cass cut the comm and keyed Isetu's direct channel. "Navigator, this is Engineering. I need your best straight-line approach through the incoming eddy. Minimum lateral deviation. If the coil takes a sideways hit, we're done. Do you copy?"

"I copy, Cass. Already working on it. Give me five minutes."

He killed the channel and turned back to the drive console. The knocking sound had gotten louder. He pressed his ear against the bulkhead, trying to isolate the source. The bearing was definitely scoring — he could hear the rhythm of it, a metallic scrape that came every few rotations. If the bearing seized, the coupling would lock, and the drive would shut down regardless of coil condition.

He needed to lubricate the bearing. But the access panel was on the far side of the engine block, behind the primary heat shield, and getting to it meant crawling through a space barely large enough for his shoulders while the drive was still running. The radiation from an active shear-field wasn't lethal at short exposure, but it wasn't pleasant either. It felt like standing next to a bank of welding arcs — a prickling sensation on the skin, a metallic taste in the mouth.

Cass pulled on a radiation sleeve and clipped a flashlight to his helmet. He didn't bother with the helmet itself — the engineering deck atmosphere was fine, and the sleeve would protect what mattered. His hands were already gloved. He checked the grease cartridge on his tool belt, then listened to the shear-drive’s rhythmic thrum through the deck plating.

The temperature gauge read eight-seventy. Stable, for now.

"Alright, old girl," he whispered. "Let's see what we can fix."

He dropped to his knees and crawled into the cramped cavity beneath the engine mount, the riveted hull skin grinding against his palms. The bad knee protested immediately — a sharp sting that made his vision blur for a second. He ignored it. The space was narrow and hot, the residual warmth from the port coil radiating through the insulation. He could smell the overheated metal, acrid and sharp, mixed with the familiar stink of hydraulic fluid and ozone that defined the Coyote's interior.

Cass reached the access panel and worked the latches free with practiced fingers. The panel swung open on worn hinges, revealing the drive coupling assembly. Up close, the damage was worse than he'd feared. The bearing race showed deep scoring marks, grooves carved into the hardened steel by embedded particles — probably debris from the fractured coil insulation. Without lubrication, those grooves would deepen with every rotation, and eventually the bearing would seize.

He squeezed grease into the bearing housing, watching the thick white compound work its way into the gaps between the rolling elements. The knocking sound softened almost immediately, the metallic scrape smoothing into a duller, more tolerable rumble. It wouldn't last — the grease would burn off in maybe an hour under these conditions — but it bought him time. Enough time to get through the eddy, hopefully.

Cass replaced the access panel and crawled back to his knees, then his feet. The radiation prickling had given way to a mild headache, and his gloves smelled like scorched rubber. He stripped them off and wiped his hands on a rag, then limped back to the console.

The temperature gauge read eight-seventy-five. The knock was quieter. The coil fractures hadn't spread further, at least not yet.

"Cass?" Isetu's voice was calm, professional. "I have a route. Straight-line approach, entering the eddy at a forty-degree angle relative to the wave front. It minimizes lateral stress by approximately sixty percent compared to the default corridor path. However —"

"However?"

"However, it requires us to increase drive output by fifteen percent to maintain momentum through the denser field. The additional load on the coils will increase thermal output proportionally."

Cass closed his eyes and did the math in his head. Fifteen percent more output on a coil that was already running at the edge of its thermal envelope. The temperature would climb. How much depended on the eddy's density and their transit time.

"Tell Wren what you've got," he said. "And tell her to make up her mind fast. I don't have much room to work with."

He sat down in the engineer's chair, the leather cracked and warm from the deck's ambient heat. His knee throbbed. The drive hummed. The temperature gauge held at eight-seventy-five, a number that felt both reassuring and terrifying depending on how long he looked at it.

Cass Denver had kept this ship flying for eleven years through sheer stubbornness and an intimate knowledge of every bolt, wire, and weld in its structure. He knew where the weak points were. He knew which failures were predictable and which were not. But he couldn’t know whether this particular flight would be the one where the weak points finally gave way.

The comm crackled. "Cass, Wren here. Isetu's route is good. We're going straight through. Brace yourself."

"Always do, Captain. Always do."

He watched the temperature gauge. Eight-seventy-six. Eight-seventy-seven.

The bridge remained bathed in the display’s cold blue light, the rising numbers offering no comfort, only a steady, silent countdown to the moment their margin for error vanished.

Chapter 4

The shear corridor opened like a throat. Stars ahead stretched into pale ribbons, their light smeared across the viewport in wavering lines. The Gilt Coyote shuddered as the drive pushed them through, and Wren felt the familiar pressure build behind her eyes — the way space itself seemed to fold around the hull, pressing inward.

She kept both hands on the controls, thumbs resting on the throttle ridges. The ship responded to touch, not commands. That was what separated a pilot from a passenger. You could read the difference in the way the deck plates vibrated, in the subtle shift of the instrument needles. Right now, everything read steady. Or as steady as the Coyote ever got.

"Cass," she said into the comm. "Talk to me."

"Port coil's holding at eight-eighty-two," came the gruff reply. "Micro-fractures haven't spread since the last check. But I wouldn't push us past point-seven engagement if I were you."

"Noted." Wren glanced at the drive gauge. Point-five-two. They were well within limits. For now.

The corridor narrowed. The starlight thinned to a scattered haze, and the walls of the shear tunnel became visible — not walls, exactly, but regions of distorted gravity that bent light around them like heat rising off desert rock. Isetu's route threaded through these distortions with practiced precision, the autopilot making micro-adjustments that kept the ship centered.

Wren watched the nav display. Two eddies behind them. One more to go. Then open space, then New Ordu, then the crate delivered and the credits banked. She tapped the throttle twice, a sharp, rhythmic confirmation, and let her shoulders drop.

A sound broke the rhythm of the drive. Not the hum of the ship, not the hiss of ventilation. Something else — a sharp, irregular pulse that came through the hull like a fist rapping on iron.

Wren's hands tightened on the controls. "Isetu?"

Static. Then: "Captain? Did you hear—"

Another pulse. Louder. Closer.

The nav display flickered. For a fraction of a second, the corridor map went blank, then repopulated with a warning symbol Wren hadn't seen in years. A proximity alert. Red triangle, pulsing.

"Contact," she said, and her voice was flat because she didn't trust herself to do anything else. "Isetu, what am I looking at?"

Silence from the navigator. Then a sound like breath caught in a narrow throat. "Captain. There's something ahead. In the corridor."

"Ahead?" Wren scanned the display. The corridor stretched forward, empty except for the gravitational distortions. "I don't see—"

The ship lurched. Not from the drive. From outside. A pressure wave hit the hull, and every loose object on the bridge slid three inches to port. Wren's coffee cup tipped over, spilling cold liquid across the console. She didn't look down.

"Isetu."

"It's a vessel, Captain. Large. It appeared in the corridor ahead of us. I didn't see it form. I swear I didn't."

Wren's eyes moved to the forward viewport. Something was there now — a shadow against the warped starlight, growing larger with every passing second. Angular. Massive. Its silhouette cut a harsh profile against the shimmering distortion of the shear tunnel.

"Range?" she asked.

"Closing fast. Maybe four hundred meters. Three-fifty."

"Wren, what's happening?" Cass's voice cut in, sharp with alarm. "I'm reading a power surge on the forward sensors. Something's jamming our—"

"Ship ahead," Wren said. "Hostile. Isetu, can you reroute?"

"I—I'm trying. The corridor geometry is shifting. The gravity waves—" Another pulse, harder this time. The Coyote shuddered again, and Wren felt the deck tilt beneath her boots. "I can't. Not without losing containment."

She looked at the nav display. The red triangle pulsed faster. Three hundred meters. The shadow in the viewport filled more of the frame now. She could see details — the jagged edges of its hull, the dark armor plating, the long prow that tapered to a point like a spearhead.

Vhemma.

The word came to her unbidden, pulled from memory she wished she'd never acquired. She'd seen ships like this in the classified reports Ilse Vergüenza sometimes shared — intelligence gathered from border skirmishes, from merchants who'd survived encounters too close for comfort. Vhemma warships. Built for hunting. Built for taking.

"Two-fifty meters," Isetu whispered. "Captain, I recognize the hull markings. That's a Vhemma cruiser."

Wren's fingers moved before her mind caught up. She killed the autopilot, grabbed the manual controls, and threw the ship hard to starboard. The Coyote responded with a groan of stressed metal, the shear-drive protesting the sudden lateral movement. Alarms chirped. The deck tilted. Wren held the stick firm, feeling the ship carve through the corridor's gravitational currents.

"Evasive pattern Delta," she said. "Isetu, give me a bearing away from that ship. Any direction."

"Starboard and aft. There's a secondary channel branching off. Narrow, but—"

"Do it."

The Vhemma cruiser adjusted. Wren saw it in the viewport — the massive hull pivoting, tracking the Coyote's turn with terrifying speed. It wasn't supposed to be able to move like that in a shear corridor. Nothing that large was supposed to move like that anywhere.

"Captain," Isetu said, voice trembling. "It's matching our course. It's coming with us."

"Into the secondary channel?"

"It doesn't care. That ship's built for shear navigation. Better than ours."

Wren pushed the throttle forward. The drive whined higher, and the Coyote accelerated, shooting toward the narrowing branch in the corridor. The walls of distorted gravity pressed closer on either side, the light bending into tight spirals. Behind them, the Vhemma cruiser followed, its dark shape filling the rear sensors.

"Cass!" Wren barked. "I need every bit of thrust you can give me."

"I can't just—"

"You need to. Now."

A pause. She heard the clatter of tools, the hiss of a valve being opened. "Rerouting auxiliary power to the drive couplings. You've got three minutes before the port coil exceeds safe temperature. After that, I'm pulling the plug whether you like it or not."

"Three minutes is all I need."

The secondary channel tightened. The Coyote squeezed through, the hull scraping against invisible currents that made the ship vibrate violently. Wren fought the controls, keeping them centered, keeping them moving. Behind them, the Vhemma cruiser followed, its larger frame navigating the narrow passage with inhuman grace.

"Wren," Cass said, and his voice was quieter now, stripped of its usual bluster. "That ship's hailing us."

"On the main channel?"

"No. On a Vhemma frequency. Encrypted. I can't decode it, but I can tell you it's directed at us specifically."

Wren's jaw tightened. She kept her eyes on the viewport, on the narrowing walls of the corridor. "Ignore it. Isetu, how long until we exit the channel?"

"Maybe two minutes. If we keep this speed, the drive might—"

"I don't care about the drive. I care about getting out of that corridor before that ship decides to sit on our tail."

The Coyote shuddered again, harder this time. A warning light flashed on the console — port coil temperature climbing. Eight-ninety-one. Eight-ninety-two. Cass's limit was nine hundred. They were eating through it fast.

"Captain," Isetu said. "The channel opens ahead. I can see the exit."

Wren pushed the throttle to its maximum. The drive screamed. The ship surged forward, breaking through the last constriction of the corridor and spilling into open space.

Stars. Real stars, not the smeared ribbons of the shear tunnel. Clear, sharp, distant. The Coyote tumbled slightly as the drive disengaged from shear mode, and Wren wrestled the controls to stabilize them. The ship righted itself, trembling, its hull still ringing from the stress.

Silence on the bridge. The kind of silence that comes after noise so loud it becomes its own environment.

Then the proximity alarm screamed again.

Wren looked at the sensor display. The Vhemma cruiser was there — emerging from the corridor behind them, its massive hull expanding to fill the viewport. It hadn't followed them into the channel. It hadn't needed to. It had simply waited at the exit, patient and inevitable as a tide.

"Range?" she asked, though she could see it clearly enough.

"One hundred eighty meters and holding. It's not pursuing. It's... waiting."

Wren stared at the ship. At the dark armor, the jagged prow, the Vhemma markings painted in stark white along the hull. It sat in the void like a predator that had already decided the hunt was over.

"Cass," she said quietly. "Status."

"Port coil at nine-fourteen. I've shut down auxiliary feed. The drive's cooling, but we're sitting ducks out here. No shear protection, no maneuvering room. That ship could vaporize us with point-defense fire."

"Isetu."

"Yes, Captain?"

"Can we get back into the corridor?"

"The one we just exited? The geometry's shifting. By the time we aligned, that ship would be on top of us. There are other corridors nearby, but none stable enough for a vessel our size."

Wren looked at the Vhemma cruiser. It hadn't fired. It hadn't moved closer. It just sat there, waiting.

Another hail. This time on the open channel. No encryption. The speaker's voice filled the bridge in a language Wren didn't speak — guttural, rhythmic, carrying the weight of centuries. Isetu flinched.

"Translation," Wren said.

Isetu's multiple limbs trembled. "It says... 'By the blood covenant of the Vhemma people, you carry what is ours. Surrender the vessel and its cargo, and your deaths will be swift.'"

Wren closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she looked at the nav display, at the stars, at the impossible ship blocking their path.

"Cass," she said. "How long until the port coil cools to safe operating temperature?"

"Twenty minutes. Maybe twenty-five."

"And if we tried to run now, with the drive as-is?"

"The couplings would fail. We'd lose thrust halfway through any maneuver, and that ship would be on us before we could react."

Wren nodded. She understood the arithmetic of it. Twenty minutes until they could move. One hostile warship that wasn't in a hurry.

"Set a defensive perimeter," she said. "All weapons hot. Isetu, keep listening to their channel. If they say anything else, I want to know immediately."

"Yes, Captain."

"Cass, keep monitoring the coil. Tell me the second it drops below nine hundred."

"Already doing it."

Wren sat back in her chair. The Coyote hummed around her, wounded and exposed. Ahead, the Vhemma cruiser held its position. Behind, in the forward hold, a sealed crate carried a secret that apparently belonged to a people who would cross shear corridors to reclaim it.

She thought about the brass key in her pocket. The data chip taped beneath her console. The three hundred thousand credits burning a hole in her account.

And the man who'd given her the job, trembling with fear, telling her it was just cargo, nothing more.

He'd lied. Or he'd been lied to. Either way, the lie had brought a warship to their doorstep.

Wren watched the cruiser through the viewport. Its dark hull reflected the starlight in fractured patterns. Somewhere inside that ship, someone was making decisions about her crew's survival.

She tapped the comm. "Rook?"

Static. Then: "Here."

"Stay with the crate. Don't move unless I tell you to."

A pause. Longer than she expected. "Understood, Captain."

The line went dead. Wren leaned forward, studying the Vhemma cruiser, studying the stars, studying the space between them where a dozen things could go wrong in the span of a heartbeat.

The cruiser's lights shifted. A bank of weapon ports along its flank rotated, aligning with the Coyote's position. Not firing. Just positioning. A statement of capability. A reminder.

Wren didn't blink. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

"Eighteen minutes," Cass said softly. "Give or take."

"Keep counting."

The stars burned cold and distant. The Vhemma ship waited. And the Gilt Coyote sat between them, a converted gunship with a failing drive and a crew of four, holding a secret that apparently meant more to some people than their own lives.

Wren rested her hands on the arms of her chair and watched the enemy ship, counting seconds the way Cass counted temperatures, waiting for the moment when the arithmetic changed in their favor.

Chapter 5

The tractor beam hit like a hand closing around the ship's ribs.

Wren felt it through the floor plates first — a deep, resonant pull that had nothing to do with thrust or inertia. The Gilt Coyote shuddered, then went still. Not the stillness of coasting. The stillness of something held. Her hands flew to the controls, fingers searching for purchase on levers that suddenly meant nothing. The throttle was locked. The rudder was dead. The nav display flickered, then went dark.

"Report," she said. Her voice sounded too loud in the cramped cockpit.

Cass came over the comm, breathless. "They've got us in a beam, Captain. Full tractor lock. I can't —" A curse, muffled. "I can't disengage anything. The drive's still warm but it's not responding to commands. It's like the ship's been put in a cage."

"How much power are they drawing?"

"Enough. Enough to pin us and enough to strip our shields if they wanted to. They're not stripping our shields. Yet."

Wren stared at the viewport. The Vhemma cruiser filled it now, all angular hull plates and weapon hardpoints, painted in the deep crimson and black that marked Vhemma military vessels. She'd seen that color before, once, in a recruitment poster back at Halberd's Reach. The poster had shown a warrior with a blade raised above a fallen enemy. The caption read: ORDER THROUGH STRENGTH. She'd never finished reading it.

"Isetu," she said. "Can you tell me who's on that ship?"

Silence. Then Isetu's voice, quiet and careful. "That is a Vhemma war cruiser. Class designation is — I cannot confirm from this angle. But the armament pattern suggests a command vessel. Not a patrol ship. Not a scout."

"Translation?"

"Someone important is on board."

Wren nodded, though nobody could see her. Someone important. That was good news and bad news depending on what they wanted. "Rook?"

No answer. The comm channel to the security station was open, but Rook hadn't spoken. She tried again. "Rook, status."

Still nothing. That was unusual. Rook was always listening, always ready. His silence felt heavier than the drive hum.

The comm panel lit up with an incoming transmission. Not on their standard frequency. On a military band the Coyote shouldn't have been able to receive. The signal punched through their jamming like it wasn't even there.

Wren hesitated for a fraction of a second, then hit accept.

The face that appeared on the screen was broad, furred, and scarred across the left cheek in a pale line that ran from temple to jaw. Red eyes fixed on her through the display with the intensity of a predator that had already decided what to do with its prey. Black fur bristled along the sides of his head, and the armor behind him bore the sigil of a warlord's house — a clenched fist wrapped in chain.

"Wren Elias," the figure said. His voice was low, measured, and carried the weight of someone accustomed to being obeyed. "Captain of the unregistered vessel Gilt Coyote. You are in possession of property that belongs to the Vhemma people. You will surrender it, along with your crew, and you will do so without resistance."

Wren kept her hands where he could see them, resting on the armrests. "And if I don't?"

"If you do not, I will take it anyway. The casualties on your side will be... regrettable."

Behind him, movement. Another Vhemma figure stepped into view — taller, leaner, carrying a blade that caught the light of the bridge lamps. Wren catalogued the detail automatically. Warriors didn't carry weapons on command bridges unless they expected trouble. Or unless they wanted her to know they were armed.

"Who are you?" Wren asked.

"I am Karthek, Warlord of the Crimson Claw. And you are in violation of the Blood Covenant of Vhemma, Article Seven: no outsider shall possess sacred relics without the consent of the warrior caste. What you carry in your forward hold is not cargo. It is an ancestral relic, stolen from my people, and I will not allow it to leave our space."

The words landed like physical blows. Wren felt each one settle into place, forming a picture she didn't want to see. Ancestral relic. Stolen. Blood Covenant. None of those words boded well for a freelance cargo pilot with a modified transponder and a price on her head that she hoped nobody knew about.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. It was the wrong thing to say. She knew it the moment it left her mouth. Her palms slicked against the armrests, and she pressed her fingers harder, trying to still the tremor in her hands.

Karthek's expression didn't change, but his eyes narrowed a fraction. "Do not insult my intelligence, Captain. We scanned your vessel. The object in your forward hold matches the energy signature of the Heartstone of Vhemma. It was removed from the Temple of Ancestors three cycles ago. Its theft was reported to every authority in the Concord Reach. You took payment for its transport from a Verghesi merchant named Silas Vorn."

He knew Silas's name. He knew about the payment. He knew exactly what was in the crate.

Wren's mind raced. She'd been hired to fly a box from one place to another. That was the job. Simple, clean, paid upfront. She hadn't asked questions because asking questions was how pilots got themselves killed. Now the consequences of that philosophy were sitting in front of her, wearing armor and promising regrettable casualties.

"Cass," she said quietly, keeping her voice low so Karthek couldn't hear through the comm. "How's the drive?"

Cass's answer came in a whisper. "Still warm. Still locked out. But the coils haven't cooled below seven-fifty. If I can get manual access to the primary coupling, maybe I can —"

"Maybe you can what?"

"Break the lock. Force a burst. It won't be pretty, and it might blow the port coil entirely, but it could give us enough of a window to slip the beam."

Wren nodded. "How long?"

"Two minutes. Maybe three if my knee lets me get to the coupling without falling down."

She turned back to the screen. "Warlord Karthek, I'm a cargo pilot. I don't deal in relics or sacred objects. I fly boxes from point A to point B. Whatever's in my hold was sealed when I got it, and I haven't opened it since."

"That does not absolve you of complicity." Karthek's voice hardened. "You accepted payment for the transport of stolen Vhemma property. By the laws of your own Concord Reach, that makes you an accessory to cultural theft. Surrender the relic now, and I will allow your crew to depart with their lives. Resist, and I will board your vessel and take what is mine by force."

A timer appeared in the corner of the display. Ten minutes. Counting down.

Wren's stomach tightened. Ten minutes to decide the fate of her crew and her ship. Ten minutes to weigh the difference between compliance and catastrophe.

"Isetu," she said. "What happens if I give it to him?"

Isetu's voice was barely audible. "The Verghesi will consider it a betrayal. Silas Vorn will be executed for the theft. And you will be marked as an enemy of the Verghesi trade guilds. No port in Verghesi space will accept you."

"And if I don't?"

"Then Warlord Karthek will board your ship. He has the firepower to breach your hull in under thirty seconds. Your crew will be taken prisoner, and the relic will be recovered regardless."

Wren closed her eyes for a moment. Both options were bad. One was worse. But neither was survivable in the long term. She needed a third option. She needed something that didn't exist yet.

"Rook," she said again, louder this time. "Rook, I need you in the cockpit."

Still nothing.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

"Cass, get to that coupling. Buy me time. Isetu, plot the nearest shear corridor exit. If we break free, I want a route ready."

"Already plotting," Isetu said. Her voice steadied slightly. "There is an eddy corridor about four hundred kilometers to starboard. If we can achieve sufficient velocity, we might —"

"Might what?"

"Might lose them in the turbulence. But we need speed, and we need the drive at full output. With the port coil damaged, that is —"

"Dangerous. I know. Do it anyway."

Wren turned back to Karthek. "Warlord, I need more time. Ten minutes isn't enough to —"

"You have six," Karthek interrupted. "My patience is not infinite, Captain. The longer you delay, the more I suspect you are attempting something foolish. Do not make me regret offering you mercy."

The timer ticked down. Five minutes, forty-seven seconds.

Wren's hands gripped the armrests. She thought about the crate in the forward hold — matte-black, two meters long, sealed with a brass key and a data chip. She thought about Silas Vorn, sitting in the mess with his briefcase and his fear. She thought about Rook, silent on the security station, and wondered what he was doing, why he wasn't answering.

"Cass," she said. "Status."

"Almost there. The panel's stuck, and my knee is — damn it, the panel's stuck. Give me thirty seconds."

Wren looked at the timer. Four minutes, twelve seconds.

She keyed the comm to all channels. "Listen to me. All hands, brace for possible drive surge. Cass is going to try to break the tractor lock. It's going to get rough. Hold on to something solid."

She didn't mention that it might also tear the ship apart. Some information didn't help in moments like this.

The comm crackled. Then Rook's voice, finally. "Captain."

His voice was different. Flat. Distant. Like he was speaking from inside a room Wren couldn't enter.

"Rook, where are you?"

On the security station. I'm — I'm fine.

"You haven't answered your comm for five minutes."

"I know. I was... processing."

"Processing what?"

A pause. Long enough to be uncomfortable. "The warlord's transmission. What he said about the relic. About the Blood Covenant."

Wren's blood went cold. "Rook, you're Vhemma."

"I am."

"Then you know what that relic means."

"I know." Another pause. Longer this time. "Captain, I need to ask you something. And I need you to answer honestly."

"What is it?"

"Do you know what you're carrying?"

The question hung between them like a blade. Wren could feel the weight of it, the implication buried in the simple words. Rook wasn't asking out of curiosity. He was asking because he already knew the answer, and he needed to know if she did too.

"I told you, Rook. I don't open sealed cargo."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the truth."

"The truth is you took three hundred thousand credits to transport a Vhemma ancestral relic across hostile territory. The truth is you knew Silas Vorn was desperate. The truth is you didn't care why."

Wren flinched. He was right. All of it. She'd taken the job because the money was good and the risk seemed manageable. She hadn't asked about the cargo because asking was how you got entangled, and entanglement was how you got killed. But Rook wasn't wrong about the rest.

"Cass," she said, cutting the conversation short. "Now or never."

"I need ten more seconds."

"We don't have ten more seconds."

"Then I need five."

The timer read three minutes, eighteen seconds.

Wren looked at Karthek's face on the screen. He was watching her with the patient stillness of a hunter who knew his prey was trapped. He didn't look worried. He didn't look impatient. He looked certain.

That certainty was the most dangerous thing about him.

"Do it," she said.

Cass's voice came over the comm, strained and tight. "Engaging manual override. Brace —"

The ship lurched. The deck tilted fifteen degrees to port, and Wren's body slammed against the harness straps. Alarms screamed. The viewport flashed white as the shear-drive surged, throwing raw power into the coils that weren't designed to take it. The tractor beam wavered — Wren could feel it, a subtle loosening in the pressure that held them — and for one beautiful, terrifying second, she thought they might actually break free.

Then the Coyote shuddered again, harder this time, and the beam reasserted itself with renewed force. The ship groaned. Metal stressed. Somewhere in the hull, a support strut buckled with a sound like a gunshot.

"No," Cass whispered. "No, no, no —"

The comm died. Static filled the channel, then silence.

Wren stared at the viewport. The Vhemma cruiser hadn't moved. It held them firmly, effortlessly, like a hand holding a fly. And Karthek was still watching her, his red eyes unreadable, his expression unchanged.

"Two minutes, Captain," he said. "After that, I send my boarding party."

The timer ticked down. Ninety-seven seconds.

Wren's hands shook. She forced them still. She forced her breathing even. She thought about the eddy corridor Isetu had plotted, about the shear-drive Cass had tried to push, about the crew scattered through the ship's compartments, trusting her to keep them alive.

She thought about Rook, and the look in his voice when he'd asked her if she knew what she was carrying.

She realized the answer was no, a hollow certainty that offered no comfort because she had no way of knowing what came next, and that uncertainty was about to cost them everything.

Chapter 6

The comm panel lit up in red. Wren stared at it. The light pulsed, slow and deliberate, like a heartbeat measured in seconds rather than beats. She hadn't touched it. The ship hadn't been receiving anything since the tractor beam seized them.

"Captain," Isetu said. Her voice carried the tremor of someone trying not to shake apart. "They're hailing us."

Wren looked up from the dead controls. The cockpit smelled of ozone and burnt insulation — the tractor beam's energy bleeding through the hull plating, ionizing the air. "Put it through."

The screen flickered. Static resolved into a face. Black fur, scarred along the jawline, red eyes that caught the cockpit's dim lighting and turned it into embers. The Vhemma warlord filled the frame with barely any effort. He sat in a chair Wren couldn't see, but the posture said throne, not seat. Behind him, the bulkhead of his cruiser bore the crimson sigil of the Claw — a stylized talon wrapped around a broken chain.

"Wren Elias." The warlord’s voice scraped against the hull like tectonic plates grinding together. "Captain of the unregistered Gilt Coyote. You hold contraband sacred to the Vhemma High Clan. I am Karthek, Warlord of the Crimson Claw. Surrender the relic, or face the consequences."

Wren kept her hands visible on the armrests. "I don't know what you're talking about."

A muscle in Karthek's jaw twitched. "Do not insult me with your ignorance, human. The Heartstone of Vhemma was stolen from the Temple of Ancestors. Your crew carries it in a matte-black crate, stowed in the forward hold. I know this because I know what was taken, and I know what remains in your cargo manifest."

Wren glanced at Isetu. The Verghesi navigator's multifaceted eyes were wide, her translucent scales flushing a pale grey. She said nothing.

"Ten minutes," Karthek continued. "Bring the crate to your airlock. Open the outer hatch. My retrieval team will board and collect it. After that, you will be released. Refuse, and I will vent your atmosphere and collect what remains from the wreckage."

The screen went dark. The comm panel stayed red.

"Ten minutes," Isetu whispered.

Wren stood. Her legs felt heavy, anchored by the tractor beam's grip on the hull. "Rook?" she called over the ship-wide comm. "You hear that?"

Static. Then: "I heard."

"I need you to go to the forward hold. Bring the crate to the airlock."

Silence stretched. The ship hummed around them, a low-frequency vibration that rattled teeth and filled the spaces between thoughts.

"Rook?" Wren pressed.

"No."

The word came clean and flat. No hesitation, no negotiation. Wren closed her eyes for a second, then opened them. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. I'm not handing it over."

Wren turned to face the comm speaker mounted on the bulkhead. "Rook, that is a direct order. That man out there will kill us all if we don't comply."

"Then let him try."

The line went dead. Wren stared at the speaker. She keyed the channel again. "Rook. Rook, listen to me. This isn't—"

Nothing. The channel stayed open but silent, like speaking into a room where someone had deliberately stopped listening.

"Cass," Wren said, switching channels. "Can you break the tractor lock? Even partially?"

Cass's voice came back ragged. "Captain, the port coil is sitting at seven-fifty and climbing. The tractor beam is feeding energy directly into our field matrix. If I try to override, I'll blow the coupling. We won't just lose the beam — we'll lose the drive. Maybe the forward section."

"How long before the coil hits critical?"

"Nine hundred is the threshold. At this rate, maybe fifteen minutes. But the beam's heating it faster than the shear-drive ever did."

Wren sat back down. The chair creaked. She looked at the timer she'd started on the nav console. Eight minutes, forty-two seconds.

"Isetu," she said. "What is a Heartstone?"

The Verghesi shifted in his harness. His extra limbs curled tight against his body. "An ancestral relic. Sacred to the Vhemma. Each clan has one. It is... it is the physical embodiment of their lineage. Their history. Their covenant with the ancestors."

The Verghesi adjusted his grip on the restraints. His additional limbs curled tight against his torso. "An ancestral relic. Sacred to the Vhemma." He swallowed. "Each clan has one. To lose it…" His antennae flattened. "You don't lose it."

"Then the lineage is severed. The clan loses its claim to the old territories. Its standing among the High Clans. It would be..." He searched for the word. "Unmaking."

Wren nodded slowly. That explained the desperation in Karthek's voice. That explained why a warlord would risk a confrontation in shear-space over a crate.

"Seven minutes," she said. "Rook won't move. Cass can't break the beam. And I have a warlord who thinks I'm a thief."

Isetu's antennae twitched. "Captain, there is something else. The Heartstone is not merely a relic. Under the old covenant laws, possession of another clan's stone constitutes a declaration of war. If Karthek reports this to the High Council—"

Isetu's antennae twitched. He opened his mouth, then closed it. His scales flushed darker. "Captain… if Karthek reports this to the High Council, it won't just be our ship he comes for."

She stood again and headed for the hatch. The corridor beyond the cockpit sloped downward, the deck plates tilted by the tractor beam's uneven pull. Wren braced against the handrail and walked. The ship groaned around her — metal stressed beyond design tolerances, bolts holding by habit rather than physics.

She found Rook in the forward hold. He stood beside the matte-black crate, hands clasped behind his back, amber eyes fixed on the object like it was a person he was protecting. The crate sat on its dolly, sealed tight. The brass key hung from Rook's belt, glinting in the hold's fluorescent strip lighting.

"Captain," Rook said. He didn't turn.

"Move."

"I can't."

Wren stopped three paces from him. Up close, she could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his thick brown fur stood slightly on end. He was young — twenty-two — but he carried himself like someone who had already decided what he was willing to die for.

"Rook, look at me." She waited. He didn't turn. "That man outside will kill everyone on this ship. Cass. Isetu. Me. You included. For a crate."

"It's not just a crate."

"I know that now. Isetu told me. It's a Heartstone. A sacred relic. But it's not yours."

Rook turned then. His amber eyes were hard, and something else was in them — shame, maybe, or recognition. "It belongs to my people. To the Vhemma. Silas stole it."

Wren frowned. "Silas? The Verghesi merchant who hired us?"

"He arranged the theft. Paid the temple guards to look away. He brought it to Halberd's Reach and offered it to anyone who would run it off-world." Rook's voice dropped. "He didn't tell me what it was. He said it was contraband. Valuable. Dangerous. He didn't say it was the Heartstone."

"And when did you find out?"

"When I saw the markings on the crate. The Vhemma seal. I recognized it from my training." Rook's jaw tightened. "I should have told you. I should have—"

"You should have what? Refused the job? Left us stranded in Reach with no payment and no way home?" Wren's voice rose, then caught. She lowered it. "Rook, I understand. I do. But right now, the warlord wants the crate, and you're the only one who can open it. So please. Hand it over."

Rook looked at the crate. Then at Wren. Then at the brass key on his belt.

"No."

The word came softer this time, but it landed harder.

"Rook—"

"If I give him the Heartstone, I am dishonored. A Vhemma warrior does not surrender ancestral property. Not to thieves, not to merchants, not to anyone. The shame would be worse than death." He met her gaze. "I will not do it."

Five minutes, eighteen seconds. Wren checked the timer on her wrist display.

"Then what do you propose? Because I have four minutes and a half left before he starts venting our atmosphere."

"Take it from me."

Wren blinked. "What?"

"Take the crate from me. Use the key. Override my refusal. I won't stop you." Rook stepped aside, putting space between himself and the crate. "But I will not be the one who gives it to him."

Wren looked at the key on his belt. Then at Rook's face. She saw the resolve there — the same stubborn certainty that had made him the best enforcer she'd ever hired. She also saw the trap.

"If I take the crate to the airlock, he boards. His retrieval team comes in. What happens then?"

They take the Heartstone. We walk away.

"Or they take the Heartstone and decide we've seen too much. Or they take the Heartstone and decide I'm a liability. Rook, this man is a warlord. He doesn't negotiate — he dictates."

"Better that than the alternative."

"What alternative?"

Rook's expression didn't change. "You'll see."

Wren turned and walked back to the cockpit. She didn't look back. The corridor felt longer on the way out, the deck plates more tilted. By the time she reached the hatch, her knees ached.

"Three minutes," Isetu said when she entered. He hadn't moved from his station. "Captain, the nearest shear corridor exit is four hundred kilometers to starboard. If the drive were functional, we might be able to punch through the beam and reach it."

"The drive isn't functional," Wren said. "Cass said the coil is at seven-fifty and climbing."

"I know. I know." Isetu's antennae drooped. "I am not offering hope. I am offering geometry."

Wren sat down. The chair groaned. She stared at the nav display. Four hundred kilometers. Might as well have been the edge of the system.

"Two minutes," Isetu said.

Wren closed her eyes. She thought about the crew scattered through the ship's compartments. Cass in the engineering bay, cursing at gauges. Rook in the forward hold, standing guard over a crate he refused to surrender. Isetu beside her, trying to calculate escape routes that didn't exist.

Silas Vorn sat in the mess, his briefcase clutched like a shield against the truth. The promise of three hundred thousand credits loomed over the meager one hundred fifty she had already banked, a stark contrast to the crushing weight of her debt to the Halberd’s Reach dockmaster. Interest compounded daily, a silent predator feeding on every hour they drifted.

"Sixty seconds," Isetu said.

Wren opened her eyes. "Isetu, get to the escape pod bay. Now."

"Captain—"

"Now. If things go wrong, I need at least one of us to survive."

Isetu hesitated, then unbuckled and moved. His multi-limbed body navigated the narrow passage with practiced grace.

Wren keyed the comm. "Karthek."

The screen lit. The warlord's face appeared. He hadn't moved. Still sitting. Still watching.

"Your time has expired, Captain Elias."

"I want to make a deal."

Karthek's red eyes narrowed slightly. "You have nothing I want except the Heartstone."

"Maybe not. But I have information. Silas Vorn — the Verghesi merchant who hired us — he arranged the theft. He paid the temple guards. He's the one who took it from the Temple of Ancestors."

Karthek's expression didn't change, but something shifted in his posture. "I know this."

"You do? Then why are you threatening me instead of hunting him?"

"Because Silas is a ghost. He moves through the Reach like smoke. I cannot catch what I cannot see. But you — you are visible. You carry what I need." Karthek leaned forward. "Give me the Heartstone, and I will forget your name. Keep it, and I will make sure every port in the Concord Reach knows what you've done."

Wren's fingers tightened on the armrests. "And Rook? He's Vhemma. He won't hand it over."

Karthek's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Then he will learn that loyalty to a human captain means less than loyalty to his own blood. The Heartstone will be recovered regardless."

The screen went dark. Wren sat in the silence that followed. The ship's hull vibrated. Somewhere in the engineering bay, a warning alarm sounded — the port coil crossing another threshold.

She keyed the comm one more time. "Cass. How's the coil?"

"Eight-twenty," Cass said. "And it's climbing fast. Captain, I'm seeing micro-fractures spreading along the lower quadrant. If this goes past nine hundred, we're looking at a cascade failure. The whole forward section could go."

"How much time?"

"Maybe five minutes. Maybe less."

Wren stood. She walked to the hatch and looked out into the corridor. The ship tilted beneath her feet. The lights flickered.

She thought about Rook, standing beside the crate with the brass key on his belt. She thought about Karthek's promise to make every port in the Reach know her name. She thought about the five minutes she had before the port coil failed and the ten minutes Isetu said before the nearest shear corridor exit.

Neither number was enough.

Wren pulled her sidearm from the holster at her hip. The weight of it felt familiar against her palm. She checked the charge. Full.

Then she walked back toward the forward hold.

The corridor stretched before her, dim and vibrating. The deck plates groaned under her boots. Somewhere ahead, Rook stood guard over a relic that was about to get them all killed.

Somewhere outside, a warlord waited for an answer he already knew he'd get.

And the port coil climbed toward critical, counting down in degrees rather than seconds, each increment a small death accumulating toward a larger one.

Wren moved faster. The ship shuddered. A panel on the bulkhead popped loose and clattered to the deck. She didn't stop.

The forward hold door slid open with a hiss. Inside, Rook stood exactly where she'd left him. The crate sat between them like a verdict waiting to be read.

"Captain," Rook said.

"I know what you're thinking," Wren said, raising the pistol. "And I'm not taking the crate from you."

Rook's amber eyes flicked to the weapon. "Then what are you doing?"

"I'm giving you a choice. Stand down and let me handle this, or step aside and let me handle it myself. But you're not going to be the reason we die today."

Rook looked at the pistol. Then at Wren's face. Then at the crate.

Slowly, he unclasped the brass key from his belt and set it on the crate's lid.

"Your choice, Captain," he said. "But know this — if Karthek boards, I will fight him. Even if you order me not to."

Wren picked up the key. It was warm from Rook's body heat. "I wouldn't expect anything less."

She turned toward the airlock. The ship groaned around her. Somewhere, a gauge screamed.

Time was running out. And for the first time since the tractor beam had seized them, Wren had a plan — thin and desperate and probably suicidal, but a plan nonetheless.

She just needed Rook to trust her enough to stay alive long enough to see it through.

The question was whether Karthek would give them that luxury.

Outside the hull, the Vhemma cruiser held its position, patient as a predator waiting for wounded prey to stop struggling. Inside, the Gilt Coyote burned hotter by the second, its failing systems ticking toward catastrophe like a bomb with no off switch.

Wren gripped the brass key and walked toward the airlock, wondering if she was making a brave decision or a fatal one. The difference, she suspected, would only become clear in retrospect.

And retrospect required being alive.

She hadn't counted on what was waiting inside the airlock chamber.

The outer hatch controls were already cycling. Someone had overridden the manual lock. The status display showed green — open — and the vacuum seals were disengaging.

Wren stopped dead. She hadn't touched the controls. Neither had Rook.

The comm crackled. Cass's voice, strained and urgent. "Captain — the port coil just hit eight-fifty. And I'm reading an external signal at the airlock. Someone's interfacing with our systems remotely."

Wren's blood went cold. Karthek hadn't been waiting for her to bring the crate.

He had waited, watching the bulkhead with a patience that felt less like choice and more like gravity, until her shadow finally fell across the deck plates.

Chapter 7

The airlock seals cycled open with a hiss that sounded like a snake drawing breath. Wren didn't move from her chair. She kept her hands on the dead controls, palms flat against the cool polymer, and watched the viewport. The Vhemma cruiser filled it, a jagged silhouette of black armor and crimson running lights. Its tractor beam held them in a grip that made the hull groan.

"Captain," Isetu whispered. "Whoever is at the airlock — they're interfacing with our navigation systems. I can see the data stream on my display. They're rewriting our flight plan."

"Let them," Wren said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "What else do they want?"

"They're trying to lock our thrusters permanently. And —" Isetu paused, his multifaceted eyes reflecting the pale glow of the console. "They've disabled our internal comms relay. I can hear Cass, but only because he's on the emergency band."

The comm crackled. "Wren," Cass said. His voice was tight, the way it got when he was calculating something he didn't like the answer to. "Port coil is sitting at seven-fifty. The tractor beam is dumping heat directly into our field generators. If they hold us much longer, we're going to blow the port array."

"How long?" Wren asked.

"At this rate? Twenty minutes before we hit nine hundred. Thirty before the containment field fails entirely."

Thirty minutes. The Vhemma had all the time in the world. They were sitting on top of them, pulling them closer by the fraction of a meter every passing second. Wren closed her eyes and listened to the ship. The Coyote hummed its low, trapped vibration — the sound of a machine that wanted to run and couldn't.

"Rook," she said into the comm. "You still with us?"

A beat of silence. Then: "I'm here." His voice was flat. Empty. The Vhemma warrior inside him had been told to stand down by the Vhemma warlord on the other side of the hull. Wren didn't blame him for the hollow tone. She didn't blame him for anything.

"Good. Keep watch on that airlock. If anyone comes through — friend or foe — you let me know first."

"Understood."

Wren opened her eyes and studied the dead control panel. The throttle was locked. The rudder was locked. The navigation console was being overridden by someone on the other side of the airlock bulkhead. But the shear-drive wasn't controlled from the cockpit. It was controlled from engineering, through a hardwired analog link that predated digital interfaces by decades. Cass had built that connection himself, back when he'd first retrofitted the Coyote with the modified drive.

"Cass," she said. "Can you still engage the shear-drive?"

There was a long pause. She heard him shift his weight, heard the faint click of tools setting down on a metal bench. "Technically, yes. The manual override is intact. But Wren — the port coil is already at seven-fifty. If I engage the drive while the tractor beam is active, the feedback could —"

"I know what it could do. Could it break the beam?"

Another pause. Longer this time. "It might. If I can push enough power through the field generators to create a surge — a pulse, really — it could disrupt the tractor beam's frequency. But the surge would have to be massive. We're talking about overloading the coils well past their rated capacity."

The gauge needle trembled against the red line. Wren said, "How far past?"

"To break a Vhemma tractor beam? I'd need to push to eleven hundred. Maybe twelve."

"That would melt the coils."

"It would probably melt the coils." Cass's voice carried the ghost of a smile, the kind he reserved for problems he enjoyed solving. "But it might also free us."

Wren looked at the viewport. The Vhemma cruiser hadn't moved. It was waiting. Karthek was patient — she'd learned that much from the ten minutes of silence since he'd taken control of their communications. He knew they couldn't run. He knew they couldn't fight. He was letting them sweat while his people worked through their systems, rewriting their defenses, preparing to board.

"Isetu," she said. "How far is the nearest shear corridor exit?"

"Four hundred kilometers to starboard. But without functional thrusters, we can't angle toward it. Even if we broke free of the beam, we'd be drifting."

"Not if the shear-drive is engaged," Wren said. "The drive provides thrust. It's not just a displacement field."

"The drive provides thrust," Isetu agreed, "but the navigation matrix is currently being overwritten by hostile agents. You could engage the drive and end up flying straight into a gravity eddy."

Wren turned back to the dead controls. The nav display flickered erratically, numbers scrolling in a language she didn't recognize — Vhemma code, being injected through the airlock interface. She couldn't trust the navigation array. She couldn't trust the thrusters. She could trust two things: Cass's hands on the manual override, and the stars outside the viewport.

"Cass," she said. "I want you to prepare a surge. Maximum output. I'll give you the signal."

"Wren —"

"Do it. Prepare the surge. I'll handle the rest."

She cut the comm and turned to Isetu. "Can you shut down the nav console? Completely? Kill the power to it."

"Yes. But then we have no flight guidance. No trajectory calculations. Nothing."

"I don't need trajectory calculations. I need the Vhemma cruiser to stop hacking our systems. Kill it."

Isetu's hands moved across his console with quick, precise gestures. The nav display flickered once, twice, then went dark. The scrolling Vhemma code vanished. For a moment, the cockpit felt quieter, as if the ship itself had exhaled.

"Navigation astrolabe is offline," Isetu said. "The airlock interface has lost its target. Whoever is on the other side is blind now."

"Good. Now I need you to plot a course manually. Starboard heading, four hundred klicks. Give me bearing and duration, and I'll feed it to Cass."

Isetu's limbs fluttered as he worked, translucent scales catching the dim cockpit light. "Bearing two-seven-zero relative. Duration depends on drive engagement. At full shear, approximately four minutes. At partial —"

"Full shear. Give me the numbers."

"Bearing two-seven-zero. Hold for four minutes, then kill the drive. The shear corridor exit is a narrow window. If you miss it by more than thirty seconds, you'll be pushed back into the storm."

"Understood."

Wren keyed the emergency comm. "Cass. I'm ready. Bearing two-seven-zero, full shear, four-minute burn. Can you hold a manual vector?"

There was a pause. She heard the faint scrape of his knee against the engineering deck, heard the low thrum of the shear-drive idling behind him. "I can hold a vector for maybe ninety seconds before the feedback destabilizes the coupling. After that, the drive goes wherever it wants."

"Ninety seconds is enough to get us out of the beam. Then I'll try to keep us pointed."

"Wren, I need to warn you — the surge won't be clean. When I dump that much power through the coils, the ship is going to shudder. Hard. And the port array — even if it survives, it's going to be damaged. We might not have a working drive after this."

"Better a damaged drive than a dead crew. Do it on my mark."

She killed the cockpit lights. The darkness pressed in, broken only by the pale glow of the instrument panels and the red running lights of the Vhemma cruiser outside. Wren gripped the armrests of her chair and braced herself.

"Rook," she said softly into the comm. "Strap in. Everyone strap in."

She heard the faint clank of harnesses locking across the ship. Isetu had already secured himself to his console with thick webbing straps. Somewhere below, Cass was at the manual override station, his hands on the ancient analog controls that connected him directly to the heart of the shear-drive.

"Mark," Wren said.

The ship screamed.

It wasn't a sound so much as a violence. The surge hit like a hammer to the spine of the Coyote, and every plate, every rivet, every wire in the ship's skeleton shrieked in protest. Wren's teeth clamped together. The chair bucked beneath her, throwing her forward against the harness straps. The viewport flared white as the shear-drive's field generators erupted with raw energy, pouring it outward in a desperate, chaotic burst.

The tractor beam flickered.

For one impossible second, the Vhemma cruiser's grip loosened. The Coyote shuddered, twisted, and then — free.

The ship lurched sideways, spinning uncontrolled as the shear-drive pushed them forward without guidance. Stars blurred across the viewport, smeared into streaks of pale light. The hull groaned and popped, stress fractures racing through metal that wasn't designed to take this kind of punishment. Wren fought the manual stick, wrestling the rudder inputs that were barely responsive, trying to hold bearing two-seven-zero by instinct and starlight.

"Status!" she shouted over the noise.

"Tractor beam is broken!" Isetu yelled back. "We're clear! But the Vhemma cruiser is adjusting — they're trying to reacquire!"

"Keep the drive running, Cass!" Wren said. "Four minutes!"

"I'm at eight seconds!" Cass's voice cracked through the comm, strained and furious. "The vector's holding, but the port coil is climbing — eight-fifty — nine — nine-twenty — Wren, it's past the threshold!"

"Hold it!"

The ship rolled again, violently, and Wren felt her stomach drop. Through the viewport, she saw the Vhemma cruiser shifting, its weapons ports opening, red targeting lasers painting the Coyote's hull. They were going to shoot.

"Cass, give me everything you've got. Now."

"I'm giving you everything!"

The shear-drive pushed harder. The Coyote accelerated, stars stretching into long white lines, the hull vibrating so hard that Wren's vision blurred at the edges. The port coil temperature must have been climbing past ten hundred by now — she could feel the heat radiating through the deck plates, could smell the acrid tang of overheating insulation.

The Vhemma cruiser fired.

A lance of crimson energy tore through the space where the Coyote had been a fraction of a second before. The blast washed over their port side, shaking the ship, blowing paint from the hull plating. Alarms screamed. Sparks rained from a ceiling panel.

"Three minutes!" Isetu shouted. "We're approaching the corridor edge!"

Wren fought the controls. Without the nav array, she was flying blind, guided only by Isetu's bearings and the raw visual of stars rushing past. The shear corridor was supposed to look like a tunnel of distorted space, a narrowing passage through the gravitational chaos. She couldn't see it clearly through the blur of acceleration and the shaking of the hull.

"Cass, how's the vector?"

"Drifting! I can't hold it past ninety seconds — the coupling's slipping, Wren! Metal-on-metal contact in the bearing housing. I've got maybe thirty seconds before the drive goes wild!"

"Then make those thirty seconds count."

The ship shuddered again, harder this time. A deep, grinding noise echoed through the hull — the sound of the drive coupling failing, of scored metal grinding against scored metal. Wren gritted her teeth and pulled the manual stick to starboard, trying to compensate for the drift.

"Two minutes!" Isetu called. "The corridor exit is ahead — I can see the distortion boundary!"

Through the viewport, she caught a glimpse of it: a shimmering wall of warped space, like heat haze over desert sand. Beyond it lay open shear, relatively calm compared to the storm they were crossing. Beyond that, freedom.

"Forty seconds!" Cass yelled. "The port coil is at eleven-hundred-and-twenty — Wren, it's going to blow —"

"Kill it!" Wren shouted. "Kill the drive!"

She heard Cass slam the manual cutoff. The shear-drive died with a sound like a gunshot, the sudden absence of thrust throwing the Coyote into a violent spin. Wren fought the controls one last time, throwing every bit of residual rudder authority into the correction. The ship rolled, pitched, yawed — and then, slowly, stabilized.

Silence.

Not true silence — the ship still groaned, still vibrated with residual stress — but the roar of the shear-drive was gone. The screaming alarms had faded to a persistent, insistent buzz. Smoke curled from a ceiling vent. The smell of burnt insulation filled the cockpit, thick and acrid.

Wren unstrapped herself and staggered to the viewport. The Vhemma cruiser was gone. Behind them, the shear corridor stretched away, its edges rippling with gravitational distortion. Ahead, open space. Stars, steady and unmoving.

"We're clear," Isetu said, his voice trembling with relief. "We're clear."

Wren nodded. She couldn't speak. Her hands were shaking. Her teeth still ached from clenching them. She looked down at the instrument panel. Most of it was dark. The nav array was dead. The thruster controls were unresponsive. The only thing still functioning was the emergency lighting and the damage report scrolling across the main display.

Port coil: CRITICAL. Temperature: cooling, but structural integrity compromised. Micro-fractures detected along the lower quadrant. Superconducting efficiency: degraded by twelve percent.

Drive coupling: BEARING FAILURE. Metal-on-metal contact confirmed. Coupling integrity: forty-one percent and falling.

Wren read the report twice. Then she keyed the comm.

"Cass. You still breathing down there?"

A cough answered her. Then another. "Barely. The engineering bay looks like a bomb went off. Smoke everywhere. The port array is —" He stopped. Took a breath. "It's still attached. That's something."

"That's everything. Damage report?"

"Port coil is cracked. Three major fracture lines along the lower quadrant. The magnetic suspension is failing — I can feel the deck shudder whenever the residual momentum shifts. We might have one more engagement out of this drive. Maybe. If I can stabilize the field with spare emitters."

"One engagement," Wren repeated. She let the words sit. One jump. One chance to get away. After that, they were drifting.

"Captain," Isetu said quietly. "The Vhemma cruiser. It's not pursuing."

Wren looked back at the viewport. The cruiser was still visible, a distant speck against the stars. It had stopped moving. Whether it was regrouping, recalculating, or simply choosing not to chase them into unknown shear space, she couldn't tell.

"Let it rest," she said. "So can we."

She sat back in her chair and let her head fall against the headrest. The cockpit smelled of smoke and ozone and burnt plastic. The ship groaned around her, settling into its injuries. Somewhere below, Cass was probably cursing and inventorying damage. Isetu was monitoring sensors, watching for the Vhemma's return. Rook was somewhere in the dark, thinking thoughts Wren didn't want to imagine.

One engagement left. One chance.

She closed her eyes and listened to the ship breathe.

The Coyote had survived. Barely. But surviving wasn't the same as winning, and Wren knew the arithmetic better than anyone. They were running on borrowed time, borrowed thrust, borrowed luck. And the Vhemma weren't done. Karthek would regroup. He would send more ships. He would come back.

Wren opened her eyes and stared at the dark viewport. The stars were steady. The ship was limping. And somewhere in the forward hold, a sealed crate carried a secret that had just started a war.

She reached for the comm. "Isetu — plot a course for Halberd's Reach. We need to lay up. And Cass?"

"Yeah, Captain?"

"Start figuring out what you can salvage from that port array. We're going to need every gram of thrust we can get."

"Already on it."

Wren leaned back and watched the stars. The Coyote drifted, wounded and stubborn, carrying its crew toward whatever came next.

Behind them, the Vhemma cruiser turned slowly, its crimson running lights blinking once, twice, like an eye refusing to close.

Chapter 8

The docking clamps at Halberd's Reach locked with the same brutal percussion they had on day one — a hammer striking rusted iron, the Gilt Coyote settling into a berth it didn't trust. Wren felt it through the deck plates, up through her boots, into the bones of her feet. The ship groaned, then went still.

"Clamps green," Cass said over the comm. His voice carried the ragged edge of a man who had spent the last hour crawling through a smoking engineering bay. "Port strut's still singing, but she'll hold. For now."

"Good enough." Wren unstrapped herself from the pilot's chair. The harness left red marks across her collarbones. She rubbed them absently and stood, her knees popping. Thirty-nine years old and her body felt forty-five. The cockpit smelled of burnt insulation and stale ozone, layered over the permanent scent of hydraulic fluid that lived in the Coyote's walls.

"Isetu's running diagnostics on the nav array," Rook said from the doorway. He filled the frame, broad-shouldered and still, his amber eyes tracking her movements. The Vhemma warrior wore his uniform jacket despite the heat — discipline, or armor, Wren couldn't tell which. "He says the drive core won't reboot until we get replacement chips. Could take two days."

"Two days," Wren repeated. Two days at Halberd's Reach. Two days for Karthek to find them. She pushed the thought aside. "Cass, can you patch the port coil with what you have?"

"I can slow the bleeding. Not stop it. I need proper superconducting ribbon, and that's not something you find in Halberd’s Reach."

"Try anyway."

She killed the emergency lights and headed for the hatch. The corridor beyond the cockpit was narrow, the walls lined with conduit and cable bundles, the floor vibrating faintly from the ship's residual systems. She walked with her hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched against the low ceiling the way she always did aboard the Coyote. Eleven years of ducking.

Rook fell into step beside her. "Captain. We need to talk about the crate."

"Not now, Rook."

"We docked. The Vhemma aren't on our tail. Now is the time."

Wren stopped. She turned to face him. Up close, she could see the tension in his jaw, the way his thick brown fur was flattened against his head from stress. He was twenty-two and carrying the weight of a sacred pact on his shoulders. "What do you want me to say, Rook? That I'm sorry? That I understand? I took a job. I didn't know what was in the box."

"You don't know what's in the box." It wasn't a question.

"I know it's a Vhemma ancestral relic. I know Karthek nearly blew us out of the sky for it. I know you're supposed to want it back. What else is there?"

Rook's mouth tightened. "I'll show you."

He led her down the corridor to the forward hold. The hatch hissed open, and the air inside was cooler, drier — the cargo bay was sealed tighter than the rest of the ship. The matte-black crate sat in section four, exactly where they'd stowed it. Two meters long, one wide, one tall. It hadn't moved during the escape. The inertial dampers had done their job.

Rook placed his palm against the crate's surface. His fingers traced a pattern — Vhemma script, carved into the metal in thin, precise lines. Wren recognized the markings now. She'd seen them in Karthek's transmissions, in the code Isetu had decoded. Sacred symbols. The crate wasn't just a container. It was a reliquary.

"What is it?" Wren asked.

"The Heartstone of Vhemma. Stolen from the Temple of Ancestors three months ago. Under the Covenant Laws, its theft is an act of war."

"Then why didn't Silas tell me?"

Rook looked at her. His amber eyes were flat, unreadable. "Because he's not who he said he was."

Before Wren could press further, the hold's outer hatch cycled open. Silas Vorn stepped through, his Verghesi features sharp in the dim light — high cheekbones, dark eyes that darted like birds, the thin frame of a man who spent more time in meetings than in exercise. He wore the same travel cloak he'd worn at Halberd's Reach on day one, though it was dustier now, the edges frayed from weeks on the road. He carried nothing. No briefcase, no weapon. Just his hands, hanging at his sides.

"Captain Elias," he said. His voice was quiet, careful. The way a man spoke when he knew he was about to say something he couldn't take back.

"Silas." Wren kept her expression neutral. "You've been hiding in the mess for six hours. I was starting to think you'd bailed."

"I considered it." Silas's gaze flicked to the crate, then back to her face. "But I owe you an explanation. And Rook deserves one, too."

Rook's hand drifted toward the knife at his belt. Silas noticed and raised his hands slightly, palms open. "I'm unarmed. I've been unarmed since we left Halberd's Reach."

"Sit down," Wren said.

Silas lowered himself onto a cargo pallet near the crate. He folded his legs beneath him, the way Verghesi sometimes sat when they wanted to appear submissive. Wren took a chair from the wall mount and set it opposite him. Rook remained standing, positioned between Silas and the hatch. A silent guard.

"Tell me," Wren said. "Tell me what the Heartstone actually is. Tell me why Karthek wants it bad enough to risk a shooting war. And tell me why you paid me three hundred thousand credits to fly a package that could get everyone on this ship killed."

Silas nodded slowly. He drew a breath that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest.

"You’re stalling," Wren snapped, leaning forward. Her eyes narrowed as she watched his throat work. "Look at you. You’re shaking. Is it guilt? Or fear?"

"It’s both," he whispered. He looked away, toward the dark hull. "The Heartstone is not a weapon. It is not a symbol of power, despite what the Vhemma claim."

"Then what is it?" Wren demanded. "Give me the truth, Silas. Now."

He flinched at her tone, forcing his gaze back to hers. "It is a biological archive. A repository of genetic material, encoded in crystalline structure, harvested from the last pure-blood Verghesi lineage before the Blight took us."

Wren frowned. "The Blight?"

Silas's hands trembled. He set them on his knees and pressed his palms flat, as if anchoring himself. "Twenty years ago, a pathogen swept through the Verghesi homeworlds. We don't know where it came from. Atmospheric contamination, maybe. Something from a deep-mining operation. It attacked the respiratory system. It mutated rapidly. Within five years, sixty percent of our population was dead. The survivors developed a tolerance, but the gene pool was damaged. Our children — the next generation — they're born with compromised immune systems. Chronic illness. Short lifespans."

The hold was very quiet. The only sound was the faint hum of the ship's environmental systems, recycling air through filters that smelled faintly of sulfur.

"The Heartstone contains the genetic sequence of a pre-Blight Verghesi," Silas continued. "It's the only complete sample we have. With it, our scientists could develop a treatment. A gene therapy that would restore the missing sequences. Our children wouldn't die at thirty. They could live full lives."

Wren studied his face. She looked for the lie — the twitch of the eye, the shift in posture, the telltale pause before a fabrication. She found nothing. Silas Vorn was terrified, exhausted, and utterly sincere.

"So you stole it."

"Yes."

"From the Vhemma Temple."

"Yes."

"And you didn't tell me any of this. You told me it was a high-value artifact, and you paid me in unmarked credits, and you acted like you were smuggling jewelry for a crime lord."

Silas closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet. "Because if I had told you the truth, you would have refused. Any captain worth their commission would have refused. Flying a stolen Vhemma relic through Concord space is a declaration of war. I needed someone who didn't know what they were carrying. Someone who would do the job for the money, not the cause."

Wren stood up. She walked to the crate and placed her hand on its surface. The metal was cold, smooth, etched with the sacred script. She thought about the three hundred thousand credits sitting in her account. The one hundred fifty she'd already spent on fuel, repairs, crew wages. The other one hundred fifty that was supposed to wait until delivery.

"Karthek?"

Silas's jaw worked. He looked at the floor. "He's the council's sword. He doesn't care about the Heartstone. He cares about the precedent. If he lets us take it back, every species the Vhemma have conquered will ask for the same." He swallowed. "He's not protecting a relic. He's making an example of us."

Rook made a sound — low, guttural, caught between anger and grief. Wren didn't look at him. She kept her eyes on Silas.

"Why the Vhemma Temple?" she asked. "Why was a Verghesi genetic archive stored in a Vhemma temple?"

Silas's expression shifted — the way a mask cracks, revealing something older underneath. "The Vhemma and the Verghesi were not always enemies. Three hundred years ago, we shared the same continent. The Heartstone was created jointly — Verghesi science, Vhemma preservation. When the Blight struck, the Vhemma offered sanctuary. They housed the archive in their Temple of Ancestors, swearing an oath to protect it until we could use it. That was the Blood Covenant."

He paused. His voice dropped to a whisper. "When the Vhemma leadership changed, the new council repudiated the oath. They declared the Heartstone a sacred Vhemma artifact, forbidden to the Verghesi. They claimed the Blight was our punishment for past sins. They locked the archive away and told us to accept extinction."

A ragged noise tore from Rook’s throat—deep, raw, trapped somewhere between fury and sorrow. Wren held her gaze on Silas, refusing to turn toward him.

"And Karthek?"

"Karthek is the council's enforcer. He believes the Covenant is binding — but only for the Verghesi. He thinks we should suffer the consequences of our history. He's not trying to protect a relic. He's trying to enforce a sentence."

Wren turned away from the crate. She walked to the hold's viewport — a small porthole that showed Halberd's Reach drifting in the void, its neon signs flickering through clouds of slow-drifting dust. Sulfur and recycled air. A town of miners and smugglers, none of whom cared about ancient blood oaths or genetic archives.

She thought about the job she'd taken. The easy money. The twelve-hour run that had turned into a war. She thought about Isetu, a Verghesi navigator who'd joined her crew because he believed in diplomacy over violence. Did he know about the Blight? Did he carry the same compromised genes that Silas was describing?

"Wren." Rook's voice was rough. "Now you understand. That crate isn't contraband. It's a cure."

Wren looked at him. The Vhemma warrior's face was twisted with conflict — the old laws warring with something newer, something he hadn't had a name for until now. Loyalty to his species, or loyalty to the truth.

"I understand," she said quietly. "And I hate it."

Rook blinked. "What?"

"I hate that I'm the one holding the answer. I hate that Karthek is hunting us for it. I hate that Silas lied to my face and put my crew in danger. I hate that the only reason any of this is happening is because two species decided three hundred years ago that hatred was easier than cooperation." She turned back to Silas. "But I also hate walking away from something that could save lives."

Silas nodded. "I know. I've been trying to walk away for three months. I can't."

Wren studied him for a long moment. Then she straightened. "Here's what's going to happen. We stay at Halberd's Reach until Cass can patch the drive. We don't leave the dock. We don't attract attention. And you —" she pointed at Silas — "you're not going anywhere. You want to help? You start telling me everything you know about the Verghesi scientists who can use this thing. Names, locations, contacts. Because if we're going to deliver a cure, we need to know who to deliver it to."

Silas's hands clenched on his knees. "There's a research facility on New Ordu. Dr. Maelis Kora. She's the leading geneticist in the Verghesi diaspora. If anyone can decode the Heartstone, it's her."

"New Ordu," Wren said. The destination they'd been flying toward all along. The lush colony world that smelled of rain and wet earth. "Funny how the universe works."

Rook shifted his weight. "Captain, if Karthek learns we're heading to New Ordu —"

"Then we'd better make sure he doesn't." Wren turned toward the hatch. "Isetu needs to hear this. All of them. We're done flying blind."

She stepped into the corridor and paused. Silas's voice followed her.

"Captain Elias."

She looked back.

"I'm sorry. For the lie. For putting your crew in harm's way. Whatever happens next — I owe you more than credits."

Wren held his gaze for a beat. Then she nodded once and walked away.

The mess was dim, the overhead lights set to their evening cycle. Isetu sat at the central table, his multifaceted eyes fixed on a data pad, translucent scales catching the low glow. He looked up when Wren entered, and something in his posture shifted — recognition, or dread, or both.

Wren sat across from him. She told him everything Silas had said. The Blight. The Heartstone. The broken covenant. The research facility on New Ordu. Isetu listened without interrupting, his limbs perfectly still, his dark eyes reflecting the data pad's pale light.

When she finished, he set the pad down. His voice was soft, the way it always was, but there was steel underneath. "My family," he said. "Three generations of chronic illness. My mother died at forty-two. My younger sister — she's twenty, and she can't walk without a brace. I didn't know the Heartstone existed. I didn't know it was real."

"Neither did I."

Isetu looked at her. "You're going to deliver it."

"That's the plan."

"Karthek will stop you."

"I know."

"Cass's drive is damaged. You have one engagement left."

"I know."

Isetu's hands folded on the table. "Then we need to move quickly. Before Karthek finds us. Before the council sends more ships. Before Halberd's Reach becomes a prison."

Wren stood. "Get Rook and Cass in here. We need everyone on the same page."

She left the mess and headed for the bridge. The corridor felt longer than usual, the walls pressing in, the ship's vibration a constant reminder that they were sitting on a powder keg. One jump left. One chance.

At the bridge, she sat in the pilot's chair and looked out the viewport. Halberd's Reach hung in the void, its neon signs flickering, its skeletal girders catching the distant light of a red dwarf. Dust drifted in slow arcs, coating every surface in a fine grey layer. A mining town. A refuge. A trap.

Her comm buzzed. Cass's voice, gruff and tired. "Captain, I've got a partial patch on the port coil. It'll hold for one engagement — maybe two if we're gentle. But the bearing housing in the drive coupling is still grinding. I can't fix that without proper parts."

"Noted. How long to get the patch finalized?"

"Twelve hours. Maybe less if Rook helps me haul supplies from the Reach market."

"Do it." She cut the comm and leaned back.

Twelve hours. Twelve hours before they could leave. Twelve hours for Karthek to find them. Twelve hours for the pieces to fall into place — or fall apart.

Wren closed her eyes and listened to the ship. The Coyote hummed its low, wounded song, and somewhere in the forward hold, a crate held the future of an entire species.

She opened her eyes. The stars were steady. The clock was ticking. And for the first time since she'd accepted the job, Wren knew exactly what she was fighting for.

It wasn't the money. It wasn't the mission. It was the kid on New Ordu who couldn't walk without a brace — and the thousands like her, waiting for a cure that was sitting in a matte-black crate on a broken gunship, held by a captain who never asked the right questions until it was almost too late.

Wren keyed the comm one more time. "Isetu. Start mapping every shear corridor between here and New Ordu. Every back route, every blind spot. If Karthek's watching the main lanes, we're going to need ghosts."

"Already on it," Isetu replied.

Wren killed the comm and stared at the dark viewport. Halberd's Reach drifted silently, a town of dust and neon, and somewhere beyond it, a warlord was sharpening his patience.

The Coyote settled deeper into its berth, metal contracting in the cold, and Wren wondered if twelve hours was enough time to change the course of two species — or if it was just enough time to die trying.

Chapter 9

The Gilt Coyote sat in its berth like a wounded animal pretending to sleep. Wren stood at the cockpit window, watching the slow rotation of Halberd's Reach through the viewport. Dust motes drifted past the glass — fine particles of ore and metal that never quite settled in the station's artificial gravity. The neon signs on the far side of the station flickered in their usual erratic patterns: a bar called The Rusty Bolt cycling between red and nothing, a repair shop advertising plasma-welding in three languages, a brothel whose sign had lost its middle letter and hadn't bothered replacing it.

Behind her, the ship's walls carried the faint vibration of the shear-drive cooling down. The smell of ozone had faded to a thin metallic tang, mixed with the ever-present scent of stale coffee and hydraulic fluid. The Coyote was resting. So was Wren. Or trying to.

"Cass wants you in the engine room," Isetu's voice came over the comm. Soft, careful. "He says the port coil's stable, but he wants to inspect the bearing housing before we commit to another jump."

"Tell him I'll be down in five," Wren said. She killed the comm and turned from the window.

Five minutes became fifteen. The engine room needed her, but so did the rest of the ship. The forward hold needed checking — the crate, the brass key, the data chip. The mess needed food. Rook needed something, though she wasn't sure what. He'd been quiet since the tractor beam incident, standing guard in the corridors with his shock baton across his chest and his amber eyes tracking every shadow.

She found Cass on his back, wedged beneath the port array with a flashlight strapped to his forehead. The beam cut through the oil-dark space, illuminating the scored surface of the bearing coupling. He didn't look up when she entered.

"It's worse than I thought," he said. His voice echoed slightly in the confined space. "The micro-fractures have propagated. Another hard burn and this whole assembly goes to scrap."

"How much time do we have?"

"Enough to patch it. Barely. If we push past point-seven on the throttle, I'm not guaranteeing anything." He shifted, wincing as his bad knee protested. "I can reinforce the housing with a ceramic brace, but I need parts. And I need time."

"Where do we get parts?"

Cass spat on the deck plate. He reached up and tapped the side of his headlamp, switching it to a narrow beam. He pointed the light at a small terminal bolted to the bulkhead — his personal log, its screen cracked but functional. He scrolled to a cached manifest, then angled the screen toward Wren. A single entry glowed: Vhemma-issue ceramic composite — RESTRICTED. Source: Orbital Yards Gamma. Status: embargoed. Cass tapped the screen twice, then killed it. "That's what I need. And that's what nobody sells."

Wren rested her hands on the warm metal of the drive housing. "Then we find someone who trades in embargoed goods."

"Or we don't leave at all."

"We're leaving. We just need to do it smart." She stepped back and looked at the damage. The fracture lines spiderwebbed across the coupling like cracks in frozen ice. "How long for the patch?"

"Six hours. Maybe eight if I have to machine the brace myself."

"Give me six." She turned to go.

"Captain," Cass called after her. "Be careful out there. This isn't the Halberd's Reach we left twelve hours ago. Something's changed."

She paused at the hatch. "What makes you say that?"

"The comms array. Before we powered down, I caught a burst transmission. Encrypted, but the carrier frequency — it was Vhemma military."

Wren's stomach tightened. "Karthek."

"Or someone answering to him."

She left without another word and headed for the airlock.

Halberd's Reach smelled of sulfur and recycled air, the way it always did. The gravity was lighter than standard — maybe point-six G — and Wren felt the difference in her stride, a slight bounce that made everything feel insubstantial. Dust coated the handrails of the boarding gantry, and she wiped her palm across the metal, leaving a clean streak in the grey grime.

The station was a skeletal assembly of girders and hab modules, tethered together by magnetic clamps and welded joints. It drifted in the void like a broken tooth, mining operations long since abandoned in favor of whatever grey-market trade kept the neon signs lit and the air recyclers humming. People came here when they wanted to disappear. Or when they wanted to sell things that didn't exist on paper.

Wren pulled her coat tighter and moved through the central concourse. The ceiling panels flickered with inconsistent lighting — some sections bright white, others dim amber, and a few completely dark. She kept her head down, her hands visible. In places like this, visible hands meant you weren't reaching for a weapon.

A pair of miners passed her, their suits stained with oxidized ore, their faces hidden behind cracked visors. They didn't acknowledge her. Nobody did. That was the way of Halberd's Reach — you were invisible until you needed to be seen.

She found a salvage yard called Kestrel & Sons tucked into a side corridor, its entrance marked by a hand-painted sign that had faded to nearly nothing. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of cutting torches and hot metal. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with everything from cracked viewports to half-burnt engine manifolds. An old man with one good eye and three missing fingers sorted through a pile of wiring harnesses.

"Looking for something specific?" he asked, not looking up.

"Ceramic alloy. Military grade. Bearing housing reinforcement."

The man stopped sorting. He turned his one good eye on her and studied her face for a long moment. Then he nodded toward a rear door. "Back room. Ask for Jora. Tell her Kestrel sent you."

Wren followed the corridor behind the main shop, past a wall of decommissioned thruster nozzles and a rack of cracked helmet shells. The rear door opened into a smaller space — a workshop, really, with a workbench, a welding rig, and a woman sitting on a stool, cleaning a plasma cutter with a rag.

Jora was older than Wren, maybe, with silver streaks in her dark hair and a face carved by years of squinting into bright flames. She didn't look up when Wren entered.

"Kestrel sent you," Wren said.

"Kestrel sends everyone. What do you want?"

"Ceramic alloy. Enough for a bearing brace. Military spec."

Now Jora looked up. Her eyes were the colour of weathered steel, and they missed nothing. She set down the plasma cutter and pulled a slim ledger from under the workbench. Flipping it open, she ran a calloused finger down a column of entries, then stopped. She tapped a line with her nail — Vhemma composite, lot 77-G — and closed the book with a soft snap. "I've got three tiles in stock. That's all. The rest went to a buyer two weeks ago, and I haven't seen a resupply since the embargo hit." She looked at Wren. "Where's your ship registered?"

"Unregistered."

"Modified transponder?"

Wren didn't answer.

Jora set down the plasma cutter. "I see that kind of ship all the time. Usually they end up burning up in the shear corridors or getting boarded by someone who asks fewer questions than I do." She leaned forward. "What's the cargo?"

"Personal effects."

"Liar." Jora stood, wiping her hands on her apron. "You're carrying something that makes you nervous. And you're flying a ship that's falling apart. Which means you're either desperate or stupid. Probably both." She turned and walked to a locked cabinet, pulling out a narrow case of polished ceramic tiles. "These will fit your bearing. Cost you forty thousand credits. Half now, half when you fly."

Wren reached for her wallet, then stopped. Forty thousand was more than she had in liquid credits. But she had the rest of Silas's payment — unmarked, traceable if someone wanted to trace it. She made her choice.

"Deal."

Jora's expression didn't change. She slid three tiles across the bench. "Smart deal. Or stupid one. We'll see which when you try to leave."

Wren took the tiles and turned to go.

"Captain," Jora said. The use of her rank made Wren pause. "There's a ship in orbit. Big one. Vhemma colours. It came in three hours ago and hasn't moved since."

Wren's pulse quickened, but her voice stayed level. "Karthek."

"You know him?"

"I know of him." Wren tucked the tiles into her coat. "Thanks for the warning."

"Don't thank me. Thank the comms operator who owes me a favour. And Captain?" Jora's steel-grey eyes held hers. "Whatever you're carrying — it might not be worth dying for."

The Coyote felt different when she returned. Not in any measurable way — the same smell, the same hum, the same worn handholds at every junction. But the mood had shifted. Rook was waiting in the corridor outside the cockpit, and his posture was wrong. Not relaxed. Not at ease. He was coiled, the way a predator coils before it strikes or runs.

"Karthek's in orbit," Wren said, skipping the greeting.

Rook's amber eyes widened. "How?"

"Someone told me. Jora, in the salvage yard below." She moved past him into the cockpit and killed the overhead light, leaving only the glow of the instrument panels. "He tracked us. Somehow."

"He couldn't have. We broke the tractor beam. We jumped."

"Isetu?" Wren looked at the navigator, who was standing by the nav console, his translucent scales catching the blue light.

Isetu's multifaceted eyes reflected the display screens in a dozen fractured images. "The shear jump left a signature. Not much — just enough for someone who knows what to look for. Karthek has resources we don't. He could have traced the residual distortion."

"So he knows where we are."

"He knows where we were. And Halberd's Reach is the only logical destination. The nearest station with salvage, supplies, and enough shadows to hide in." Isetu's voice carried the tremor of someone trying not to shake apart. "He'll be here soon."

"Define soon."

Isetu's limbs shifted restlessly. "Hours. Maybe less. His cruiser is fast, but it's not a shear-capable ship. He'll need to plot a conventional approach."

Wren sat in her chair and stared at the dark viewport. Halberd's Reach rotated slowly, indifferent to the crisis gathering in its shadow. "Cass needs six hours for the bearing. We can't leave until he's done."

"Then we stay and hope he doesn't board us," Rook said. His voice was tight, controlled. Too controlled.

"There's another option," Wren said. She turned to Isetu. "Can we mask our signature? Make the ship look like debris, or a derelict?"

Isetu considered. "We could power down everything nonessential. Kill the external lights. Drop our thermal output. It wouldn't make us invisible, but it might make us uninteresting."

"Do it." She stood. "Rook, I want you on the airlock. If anyone tries to board, you stop them. Non-lethal if you can manage it. Lethal if you can't."

Rook's jaw tightened. "Understood."

"Wren," Isetu said as she headed for the door. "What about Silas? If Karthek finds us —"

Silas is still here. He never left the hold. Remember?

Isetu's scales flushed a pale grey. "Right. Of course."

Wren left the cockpit and headed for the engine room. She needed to see the ceramic tiles in Cass's hands, needed to watch him work, needed to feel the ship coming back together one bolt at a time. That was what she did best — fix things, keep moving, pretend the ground beneath her wasn't cracking.

But as she crossed the mess, she noticed something on the table. A data pad, face-up, displaying a message from an unknown sender. She picked it up.

The message was brief. Three lines of text in standard Verghesi script:

The Heartstone of Vhemma is property of the Temple of Ancestors. Its theft violates the Blood Covenant. Return it, or face the consequences.

No signature. No threat beyond the implication. But Wren knew the handwriting of desperation, and this was desperate. Or confident. Both could be dangerous.

She set the pad down and kept walking. The engine room waited. Cass waited. The ship waited. And somewhere beyond the thin metal skin of Halberd's Reach, a warlord was sharpening his patience.

Wren descended the ladder into the engine room and found Cass already examining the ceramic tiles.

"Forty thousand," she said.

Cass grunted. "Expensive. But they'll do." He held one tile up to the light, checking the grain. "Military spec, like you said. Good. Start the welding rig."

Wren activated the rig and watched the flame ignite — blue-white, precise, hungry. Cass positioned the first tile against the fractured bearing, his hands steady despite the pain in his knee. The ceramic glowed as the heat penetrated, bonding to the metal in a seamless join.

"How long?" she asked.

"Four hours, minimum. Maybe three if I rush."

"Don't rush. Rushing's how ships blow up."

Cass smiled, just barely. "Noted."

They worked in silence for a while, the only sounds the hiss of the welding flame and the occasional clink of tools. Wren helped where she could, holding parts steady, passing wrenches, keeping the workspace clear. It was honest work. The kind of work that made sense.

Outside, Halberd's Reach continued its slow rotation. The neon signs flickered. The dust drifted. And in the dark between the station and the open void, a Vhemma cruiser waited, its crimson running lights patient as a heartbeat.

Wren checked her chronometer. Three hours and forty minutes until Cass would be done. Three hours and forty minutes to prepare for whatever came next.

She picked up a torque wrench and got back to work.

The data pad on the mess table glowed softly in the dim light, its message unread by anyone but her. The Blood Covenant was old — older than the Concord Reach, older than the treaties that kept the species from tearing each other apart. Wren had read about it in a history module during her academy days. A pact between the Vhemma and their ancestral temples, binding certain artifacts to sacred ground. Breaking it was considered an act of war.

Silas had started a war. And Wren was caught in the middle of it, holding the spark.

She tightened another bolt and tried not to think about what happened next.

Chapter 10

The corridor leading to the marshal's office smelled of machine oil and old sweat. Isetu's lower limbs clicked softly against the grating, the sound swallowed quickly by the thick carpet of dust that coated every surface on Halberd's Reach. He adjusted the strap of his satchel — empty except for a folded data pad and a pen that didn't work — and told himself that preparation mattered more than tools.

The door at the end bore a faded plaque: MARSHAL ILSE VERGÜENZA. The paint had peeled from the bottom edge, revealing pitted metal beneath. Isetu raised his upper hands and knocked.

"Enter." The voice was flat, tired, the kind of tone that came from answering the same complaints for thirty years.

He pushed the door open.

The office was smaller than he expected. A desk dominated the room, its surface buried under paper files, stamped forms, and a half-empty mug of something dark. Behind it sat a woman in her fifties, grey hair pulled back into a tight knot, green eyes fixed on a screen that showed the station's docking manifest. She didn't look up when he entered.

"Isetu of Verd," she said. "Navigator of the Gilt Coyote. You filed a maintenance request this morning. Docking extension, seventy-two hours. Standard rate."

"That is correct, Marshal."

"Standard rate is four thousand credits per cycle. You owe twelve thousand. Your account shows a balance of—" She tapped a key. "Eighteen hundred and forty-two."

Isetu kept his posture neutral, all four arms relaxed at his sides. He had rehearsed this conversation in the cramped navigator's cabin while the Coyote drifted in its berth, listening to Cass swear at a dead port coil. "I am requesting a discretionary extension under Article Twelve of the Concord Docking Accords. Emergency repairs to a Class-C shear vessel qualify for deferred payment."

Ilse finally looked up. Her eyes narrowed slightly, not with hostility but with the sharp calculation of someone who had heard every excuse in the system. "Article Twelve covers medical emergencies. Is your ship dying, or is your wallet?"

"The port array has micro-fractures in the bearing coupling. Another hard burn would send shrapnel through the hull. We cannot fly until the housing is replaced."

"And you need six to eight hours for the replacement."

"Approximately."

Ilse studied him for a long moment. The fluorescent tube above her desk buzzed, flickering once before settling. "You know, Navigator, I've had three ships this week claim emergency repairs. One of them was running contraband spice. Another had a hole in the hull the size of a fist — easy to patch, not easy to explain why they needed a full docking bay for. The third one was just lying." She leaned forward. "Which category are you in?"

Isetu's scales flushed a pale grey along his neck — the Verghesi equivalent of a blush, though he doubted Ilse would notice the nuance. "We are not running contraband. We are not hiding a fist-sized hole. And we are certainly not lying."

"Don't thank me yet." Ilse's gaze sharpened. "Now, here's the part you didn't ask for. I have a report from a scout vessel that came through the outer markers six hours ago. Vhemma cruiser. Heavy armor, crimson running lights. Heading toward this station."

"I know what the parts cost. Jora's shop quoted me yesterday. Forty thousand credits for military-spec ceramic tiles. You don't have that. No one on this station has that sitting in their pocket." She set the stamp down. "So you're going to need to get creative, Verghesi. Because in forty-eight hours, I'm either collecting or I'm impounding your ship."

"Maybe twelve hours at cruising speed. Less if they push the drives." Ilse studied him carefully. "And you know what a Vhemma cruiser doesn't do. It doesn't show up at a mining station for a social call. They're here for something. Or someone."

The fluorescent tube buzzed again. Isetu listened to it, letting the noise fill the silence while he assembled his next words with care. "The Gilt Coyote is a civilian vessel. We carry freight between systems. We have no business with the Vhemma."

Ilse smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "You Verghesi are funny creatures. You lie with your mouth shut. Alright, Navigator. Forty-eight hours. Pay what you can. Fix your ship. And pray the Vhemma aren't looking for you." She waved a hand toward the door. "Go."

Wren stood in the cockpit, staring at the docking manifest on the nav screen. The words MARGIN: THIRTY-TWO HOURS glowed in amber, and she traced them with her finger the way a child might trace letters they were learning to read.

Thirty-two hours between finishing the repairs and Ilse Vergüenza coming to collect. Assuming Cass worked without interruption. Assuming the parts existed. Assuming Jora wasn't lying about the price. Assuming the Vhemma cruiser stayed on its side of the station.

Ilse smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "You Verghesi are funny creatures. You lie with your mouth shut. Alright, Isetu. Forty-eight hours. Pay what you can. Fix your ship. And pray the Vhemma aren't looking for you." She waved a hand toward the door. "Go."

The comm crackled. "Captain," Cass said. "I've got a list of what I can scavenge from the spare bins. Bearing housing's shot — no fixing that. But I can jury-rig the coupling if I can get my hands on a set of ceramic alloy tiles. Military spec, preferably. Civilian grade won't hold the heat."

"Jora's got them," Wren said. "Forty thousand credits."

There was a pause on the other end. Then: "Right. Well. That's not a problem. That's just a number."

"It's our entire account balance multiplied by twenty-five."

"I'll make it work."

"Cass—"

"I said I'll make it work, Captain. Give me a parts list and I'll find a way."

Wren killed the comm and leaned back in her chair. The cockpit smelled of stale coffee and ozone, the Coyote's signature perfume. She closed her eyes and thought about the Heartstone of Vhemma sitting in the forward hold, a matte-black crate containing an object that had started a war between two species.

Silas Vorn had told her it could save his people from a plague. She believed him — or wanted to believe him enough to justify keeping the relic instead of returning it. But belief didn't pay for ceramic tiles. Belief didn't stop a Vhemma cruiser from tearing the Coyote apart bolt by bolt.

The cockpit door slid open. Rook filled the frame, his thick brown fur matted with station dust, amber eyes scanning the room before landing on Wren. "Isetu's been in the marshal's office for twenty minutes."

"Negotiating."

"For what?"

"Time." Wren opened her eyes. "He's trying to buy us a docking extension. Long enough for Cass to fix the port array."

Rook stepped inside and closed the door behind him. His movements were careful, economical — the way a predator moved when it knew it wasn't alone in the territory. "And if the Vhemma arrive before we leave?"

"Then we hope Ilse Vergüenza cares more about station law than Vhemma demands."

"She won't." Rook's voice was flat, certain. "No marshal on any station stands between a Vhemma warlord and what he considers his. Not for a docking fee. Not for a treaty. Not for anything."

Wren studied him. "You sound like a man who knows."

Rook's jaw tightened. He looked away, toward the viewport where Halberd's Reach rotated slowly against the black. His right hand drifted to his chest, fingers pressing against a scar hidden beneath his fur — old, raised, shaped like a brand. "I was on the docks at Verd Prime the day they took it," he said quietly. "The priests didn't scream. They went silent. Like something essential had been switched off inside them. Karthek watched from the bridge of his ship and didn't blink once. He hasn't blinked since."

His mouth set into a hard line as he turned his gaze to the viewport, watching Halberd's Reach turn lazily against the void. He reached up to touch the scar hidden beneath his fur—old, raised, shaped like a brand. "I was on the docks at Verd Prime the day they took it," he said quietly. "The priests didn't scream. They went silent. Like something essential had been switched off inside them. Karthek watched from the bridge of his ship and didn't blink once. He hasn't blinked since."

"We can't." Rook turned back to face her. "You heard Isetu. Forty-eight hours, if he's lucky. And even then, you need forty thousand credits for the tiles."

"Which we don't have."

"Which we don't have."

Wren stood and walked to the viewport. Below them, Halberd's Reach stretched out in its skeletal glory — girders and catwalks, neon signs flickering in the low gravity, clouds of dust drifting lazily through the recycled air. Somewhere down there, in a narrow shop in a side corridor, Jora sat behind a counter with a case of military-grade ceramic tiles that could save their ship.

"Rook."

"Yes, Captain?"

"What if we sold something?"

Rook frowned. "We have nothing to sell. The Coyote's weapons are stripped. Our cargo is—" He stopped. His amber eyes widened slightly.

"Don't," Wren said. "I'm not talking about the Heartstone. I'm talking about everything else. Tools. Spare parts. The nav console's still functional even if it's offline. Cass hoards hardware like a dragon hoards gold — I bet half the things in his store room have credit value."

Rook considered this. "It wouldn't cover forty thousand. Maybe five. Six, if we're generous."

"Five thousand buys us breathing room. Enough to talk to Jora about a payment plan, or a trade." Wren turned from the viewport. "Or enough to bribe someone who knows a back way off this station."

"A back way?"

"There's always a back way. Halberd's Reach is a mining town — it was built for getting ore in and out, not for keeping people trapped. There have to be old cargo tunnels, maintenance shafts, something that doesn't go through the main docking bays."

Rook's expression shifted. For a fraction of a second, she saw something in his eyes that might have been hope, or might have been recklessness. "You want to smuggle a Vhemma ancestral relic out of a station through a cargo tunnel."

"I want to keep my crew alive. The method is secondary."

Before Rook could respond, the comm crackled again. Isetu's voice, quiet but urgent. "Captain. We need to talk. Now."

Wren keyed the channel. "On my way."

Isetu waited in the corridor outside the marshal's office, his lower limbs folded beneath him in the Verghesi resting posture. When Wren approached, he unfolded and fell into step beside her. They walked in silence toward the lift, the station's hum vibrating through the deck plates.

"How did it go?" Wren asked.

"Better than I expected. Worse than I need." Isetu's multifaceted eyes reflected the corridor lighting in a dozen fractured angles. "Forty-eight hours. I had to pledge the ship's registry as collateral. If we don't pay by the deadline, Ilse Vergüenza can seize the Coyote outright."

Wren nodded. "That's standard procedure."

"For a marshal who follows standard procedure." Isetu's voice dropped lower. "Captain, there is something else. During the negotiation, Marshal Vergüenza mentioned a Vhemma cruiser. Twelve hours out, heading toward this station."

Wren stopped walking. The lift doors were three meters ahead, and she stared at them as if they were a wall. "Karthek."

"I did not say Karthek. I said a Vhemma cruiser."

"A Vhemma cruiser, carrying a warlord who wants the Heartstone back, heading toward a station where we happen to be docked with the Heartstone in our hold. Isetu, who else does that describe?"

Isetu's scales darkened along his neck, a sign of distress. "My point stands. We have forty-eight hours before the marshal comes for us. We may have twelve before the Vhemma arrive."

The lift doors opened with a soft chime. Wren stepped inside and gestured for Isetu to join her. "Twelve hours. That's our real deadline. Not Ilse's — Karthek's."

The lift descended, the numbers on the panel counting down. Isetu stood motionless, all four arms hanging limp. "What is the plan, Captain?"

Wren watched the numbers fall. Four. Three. Two. "Cass scavenges what he can. Rook finds a back way off the station. Isetu, you keep talking to anyone who'll listen — station workers, dock masters, anyone with information about old cargo routes. And I'm going to see if there's someone on this station willing to do a deal."

"Who?"

Wren's mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile. "The kind of person who sells military-grade ceramic tiles to civilian vessels at forty thousand credits. Jora doesn't operate that business alone. Someone feeds her stock. Someone who doesn't ask questions about where the money comes from or where the parts are going."

The lift doors opened on the docking level. Wren stepped out into the corridor, the air thick with sulfur and recycled oxygen. Ahead of them, the station stretched into darkness, neon signs casting long shadows across the grating.

Somewhere beyond those shadows, a warlord was coming. And somewhere closer, a marshal was counting down the hours.

Wren started walking, and the Coyote's crew followed.

Chapter 11

The first explosion tore through the far bulkhead of Halberd's Reach like a fist through rotten wood. Wren felt it through the deck plates of the Gilt Coyote, a concussive thump that rattled the coffee cup on her console and sent a ripple through the dust settling on every surface. The ship's emergency lights flickered on, bathing the cockpit in sickly amber.

"External impact," Isetu said, his multifaceted eyes darting between the sensor displays. "Starboard quadrant. Three hundred meters out."

Wren was already on her feet. "How big?"

"Big enough." Isetu's lower limbs tapped a nervous rhythm against the grating. "Energy signature matches Vhemma ordinance. High-yield breaching charges."

Karthek had arrived.

The second blast came harder, closer. The Coyote shuddered, and Wren caught herself on the edge of the nav console. Through the viewport, she saw Halberd's Reach spinning slightly off-axis, the mining town's skeletal girders silhouetted against a bloom of orange fire. Debris plumes billowed into the void, frozen in glittering clouds by the absence of atmosphere.

"Cass," Wren said into the comm. "Status?"

"I'm reading multiple impacts along the docking ring," Cass replied. His voice carried the flat tone of a man who had already accepted the worst. "Station power's fluctuating. Gravity's dropping in sectors four through seven. Whoever's hitting us isn't asking permission."

"Rook?" Wren switched channels.

A crackle, then static. Then Rook's voice, tight and controlled. "I'm at the airlock. Captain, I can see them. Vhemma dropships. At least six."

Wren closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. Six hours. That's how long Isetu had told her Karthek would take to reach the station at cruising speed. He'd arrived faster. Either he'd pushed his engines past safe limits, or he'd already been in the system and simply waited in the dark.

"Stay inside," Wren said. "Lock the airlock down. Nobody comes aboard."

"They won't need to come aboard," Isetu said quietly. "If Karthek is taking the station, he'll control the docking ring. He controls the docking ring, he controls us."

Wren looked at the sensors. The Vhemma cruiser hung in the void like a blade drawn across the sky — black armor, crimson running lights, the same shape that had held the Coyote in its tractor beam three days ago. Now it was flanked by smaller vessels, dropships with reinforced hulls and boarding gear.

"Marshal Ilse," Wren muttered. "Where the hell is Ilse?"

Marshal Ilse Vergüenza stood in the command center of Halberd's Reach and watched her station burn.

The holographic display painted the damage in cold, clinical detail: impact points glowing red along the starboard docking ring, power conduits flickering between yellow and red, life support in sectors four through seven cycling to backup reserves. Ilse's green eyes tracked each marker, her mind sorting priorities the way it always did — triage, containment, evacuation.

"Marshal," her deputy said, voice pitched high with panic. "We've got reports of armed personnel moving through the corridors. Heavy armor. They're heading for the central hub."

Ilse didn't turn. "How many?"

"Estimates vary. Twelve, maybe fifteen. Moving fast."

"Seal the bulkheads between sectors three and four. Lock down the armory. Nobody gets weapons without my authorization." She finally looked at her deputy. "And sound the alarm. Full station alert."

"Marshal — if we seal the bulkheads, the dockworkers in sector five can't evacuate."

Ilse's jaw tightened. She was fifty-five years old, and she had been Marshal of Halberd's Reach for nine of them. She knew what this choice would cost. She also knew what it would save.

"Give them sixty seconds," she said. "Then seal."

Her comm chimed. She tapped it open. "Vergüenza."

"Marshal, this is Dockmaster Hane. We've got a situation at Berth Seven. The Gilt Coyote — their crew is trying to move cargo. Looks like they're loading something heavy into a shuttle."

Ilse's expression didn't change, but something behind her eyes shifted. "The Coyote. Hold them. I'm on my way."

She killed the comm and grabbed her sidearm from the rack beside the door. The weapon was heavy, familiar — a standard-issue pulse pistol with a cracked grip that she'd never gotten around to replacing. Behind her, the command center hummed with activity, technicians shouting coordinates, engineers rerouting power, medics preparing for casualties that hadn't happened yet.

Ilse moved.

Wren heard the boots before she saw Ilse. Heavy, deliberate steps on the grating outside the Coyote's airlock, accompanied by the click of a weapon being raised.

"Captain Elias," Ilse's voice came through the intercom. Calm. Measured. The voice of a woman who had done this exact thing a hundred times before. "Open the airlock."

Wren exchanged a look with Isetu, who was still hunched over the sensors. "It's the marshal."

"Friend or enemy?" Isetu asked.

"Neither. She's the law." Wren keyed the comm. "Marshal, we're not moving anything. We're trying to figure out how to survive what's happening out there."

"Open the airlock, Captain. Now. You're in my station, and I need to know what you're carrying."

Wren hesitated. The crate in the forward hold — the matte-black box that had started this entire nightmare — was worth more than the station, the ship, and everyone on it combined. If Ilse got a look at it, she'd understand why Karthek had come. And then Ilse would either join the fight or try to contain it, and neither outcome ended well for anyone involved.

"Captain?" Ilse's voice sharpened, cold and precise as a magistrate’s gavel striking the block. "I'm not asking twice."

Wren looked at Isetu again. He gave a small, resigned nod.

She opened the airlock.

Ilse Vergüenza stood on the other side with two deputies flanking her. The marshal wore a dark uniform that had seen better days, the fabric stained with grease and dust. Her grey hair was pulled back in a severe knot, and her face carried the tired hardness of someone who had been making impossible choices since before most of the people on this station were born.

"Captain Elias," she said, stepping aboard. "Marshal Ilse Vergüenza. I recommend you sit down."

"I was planning to fly," Wren said.

"Not anymore." Ilse gestured to the viewport, where the Vhemma dropships were now latched to various points along the docking ring. "That man out there is a warlord. He's declared his intention to seize this station, and he's using military force to do it. Under Concord Reach law, that makes every vessel in the docking ring a potential combatant. Which means you're under arrest."

Wren blinked. "Arrest?"

"For harboring contraband, interfering with a law enforcement operation, and creating a public disturbance." Ilse's green eyes didn't waver. "Your crew too. All of you."

"Ilse," Wren said, using the name deliberately, trying to bridge the gap between them. "We talked about this. You gave us forty-eight hours. We're using them."

"The clock stopped when those dropships landed." Ilse's deputy moved past her, scanning the cockpit with a handheld device. "You're coming with me. All of you. The cells are in the lower levels, away from the fighting."

"And the ship?"

"The ship stays docked. Clamped down. I'm not letting anyone leave this station while Karthek is breathing down our necks." Ilse's voice softened, just a fraction. "I know you don't want to be here. But right now, you're safer in a cell than out in the corridors."

Wren opened her mouth to argue, then stopped. Ilse was right. The corridors were filling with Vhemma soldiers, and the Coyote was sitting in a berth with its drive half-dead and its hull bruised from the last encounter. Flying away wasn't an option. Fighting wasn't an option.

"Fine," Wren said. "But if one of your deputies touches the crate in the forward hold, I'll make sure the Concord Reach hears about it."

Ilse's expression flickered — interest, curiosity, something she quickly buried. "I'm not interested in your cargo. I'm interested in keeping this station from becoming a graveyard. Now move."

The cells were in the lowest level of Halberd's Reach, carved out of the station's original support structure. The walls were thick steel, pitted with age and scratched by generations of prisoners who had tried to pry them open. The air smelled of rust and stale sweat.

Wren sat on the narrow bunk, knees drawn up, listening to the distant sounds of battle echoing through the station's skeleton. Gunfire, muffled by layers of metal and insulation. Shouts in languages she didn't recognize. The occasional boom of an explosion that made the deck plates tremble.

Across the corridor, Isetu paced in his cell, his lower limbs clicking softly against the grating floor. Rook sat perfectly still on his bunk, hands folded in his lap, amber eyes fixed on the wall. Cass had been assigned a cell near the medical bay, supposedly for his knee, but Wren suspected Ilse just wanted him away from the others.

"How long?" Isetu called through the bars.

Wren shrugged. "Until Ilse decides we're not a problem."

Rook didn't look up from the wall. "Then we'd better hope she changes her mind quick."

"Don't start philosophizing on me now," Wren said. "Save it for when we're dead."

Rook's mouth twitched. He went back to watching the wall.

The corridor lights flickered. Wren looked up. The power was dipping again — Karthek's people were cutting through the station's infrastructure, sector by sector. Every time the lights dimmed, the station felt a little more like a tomb.

Footsteps approached. Heavy, armored. Not Ilse's gait.

Wren pressed herself against the wall of her cell and peered through the bars. A figure emerged from the shadows — tall, broad-shouldered, wearing dark armor that gleamed faintly in the emergency lighting. Black fur framed a face that Wren recognized from the viewscreen of the Vhemma cruiser. Red eyes. A scar running from temple to jaw.

Karthek walked down the corridor like a man strolling through his own estate. His soldiers flanked him, pulse rifles held low but ready. He stopped outside Wren's cell and looked in.

"Captain Elias," he said. His voice was deep, resonant, carrying the weight of command. "I have been looking for you."

Wren met his gaze. "You found me."

"You have something that belongs to my people." Karthek's red eyes narrowed. "Return it, and I will spare your station. Refuse, and I will burn it to the void."

Behind him, the corridor lights died completely, plunging the cell block into darkness. In the sudden blackness, Wren heard the hiss of a weapon charging.

She didn't move. She didn't blink. She waited for the moment when the arithmetic changed.

Somewhere above them, Halberd's Reach groaned under the weight of war, and the crew of the Gilt Coyote sat in their cells, counting down the seconds until one of them stopped breathing.

The darkness lasted three heartbeats before emergency strips kicked on, painting the corridor in thin lines of red. Karthek hadn't moved. He stood outside Wren's cell the way a statue stands — perfectly still, perfectly certain. His soldiers fanned behind him, pulse rifles raised, their barrels tracking the other cells along the row.

Wren kept her hands visible, palms open against the bars. "You want the crate," she said. "Take it. But you let my crew walk."

Karthek tilted his head, considering. "Your crew walks when the stone is returned. Not before."

"Or what?"

"Or I take the stone by force, and your crew becomes collateral." He said it the way a farmer might discuss weather — inevitable, not personal. "I have no desire to waste lives, Captain. But I will waste yours if necessary."

From the cell across the corridor, Rook stood up.

He didn't slam the bars or shout. He rose from the bunk with the quiet precision of a man stepping onto a battlefield, amber eyes locking onto Karthek's red ones. The movement drew every weapon in the corridor. Two blaster rifles swiveled toward Rook's cell, then paused — Karthek raised a hand, and the soldiers held position.

"Rook, sit down," Wren said.

"I am standing," Rook replied, "because a Vhemma warrior does not sit while his ancestors' honor lies in the hands of thieves."

The corridor went very quiet. Even the distant gunfire seemed to fade, absorbed by the thick walls and the weight of what Rook had just said.

Karthek's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. Recognition. Amusement. Respect, maybe. "You are Vhemma," Karthek said, not asking.

"I am."

"And yet you serve a human captain." Karthek's voice carried no condemnation, only curiosity. "You carry our sacred artifact in your ship's belly."

"I carry what my captain hired me to carry." Rook's hands remained at his sides, relaxed but ready. The way a blade rests in a sheath. "The question is not what I carry. The question is why you refuse to take it peacefully."

Karthek studied him for a long moment. Then he smiled, thin and sharp. "Because your captain refuses to give it back."

"That is my captain's choice. Not mine." Rook stepped closer to the bars. "Warlord Karthek of the Crimson Claw. I challenge you."

The word hung in the air like a struck bell.

Wren felt it before anyone else moved — the soldiers behind Karthek stiffening, Karthek's smile vanishing. A challenge. Under Vhemma law, a formal challenge could not be ignored without dishonor. It was older than the Concord Reach, older than the treaties that kept species from slaughtering each other. Old Reach Law.

Karthek's red eyes bored into Rook. "You challenge me? You, who serves a human? You, who carries our relic as cargo?"

"I challenge you as a Vhemma warrior," Rook said, voice steady. "Under Old Reach Law. Single combat. Winner takes the stone. Loser yields all claim."

Silence. The emergency lights cast long shadows across the grating floor. Dust motes drifted lazily in the low gravity, indifferent to the fact that two men were about to potentially kill each other in a corridor that smelled of rust and fear.

Wren's mind raced. She knew enough about Vhemma customs from the academy modules she'd skimmed — enough to know that a formal challenge, once issued, bound both parties under law that superseded Concord jurisdiction. If Karthek accepted, Ilse couldn't interfere. The crew couldn't interfere. It became a matter of honor, settled by blood.

"Rook," Wren said, keeping her voice low. "Don't do this."

Rook didn't look at her. His eyes stayed on Karthek. "Captain, with respect — this is not your fight to manage."

"It's my crew you're risking."

"My life is my own to risk." Finally, Rook glanced at her. The amber in his eyes was fierce, unyielding. "You hired me to keep you safe. Let me do my job."

Karthek laughed. It was a short, sharp sound, like a knife being drawn. "Twenty-two years old," he said, addressing no one in particular. "And you think you can best me?"

"I think I can draw first blood," Rook said. "That's all the Old Reach Law requires to begin."

Karthek's gaze flicked to his soldiers, then back to Rook. Wren saw the calculation in his face — the warlord weighing options. Accepting the challenge meant he couldn't simply storm the station and take what he wanted. It meant committing to a contest of skill. But refusing it would mark him as dishonorable in the eyes of every Vhemma warrior who ever heard about it. Karthek was a traditionalist. He valued honor as much as victory.

"You will fight with what?" Karthek asked.

"Whatever the cell block provides," Rook said. "Or bare-handed. Your choice."

Karthek considered this. Then he nodded, once, decisive. "Bare-handed. Old style. No weapons, no armor." He turned to his soldiers. "Clear the corridor. This is a matter between warriors."

The soldiers moved back, creating space. Two of them positioned themselves near the cell doors — not to interfere, but to witness. That was the law: a duel required witnesses.

"Open his cell," Karthek ordered.

One of the soldiers produced a keycard and swiped it at Rook's cell door. The lock disengaged with a heavy clunk, and the door slid open. Rook stepped through without hesitation.

"Rook, wait —" Wren gripped the bars.

He paused at the threshold and looked back at her. "Keep your head down, Captain." Then he was gone, walking toward Karthek with the calm stride of a man who had made peace with whatever came next.

The two Vhemma stood ten meters apart in the dim corridor. The contrast between them was stark. Karthek was nearly a head taller, broad-shouldered and scarred, his black fur graying at the temples. Fifty years of violence written into the lines of his face. Rook was younger, leaner, built for speed rather than power. His thick brown hair was cropped close, his face unmarked except for a faint scar along his left eyebrow — a souvenir from some earlier fight.

They circled each other slowly, the way predators assess distance.

Wren pressed herself against the cell wall and tried to calculate angles. She wasn't a fighter — she was a pilot, a captain, a woman who solved problems with throttle settings and negotiation tactics. But she knew Rook. She knew how he shifted his weight before striking, how he tracked a room with the same predatory stillness Cass reserved for a overheating engine. He was coiled, like a spring wound tight.

"Begin," Karthek said.

Rook struck first.

He closed the distance in two strides, a right hook aimed at Karthek's jaw. Karthek caught the punch on his forearm, the impact ringing through the corridor like a fist against steel. Rook pivoted, drove an elbow toward Karthek's ribs — Karthek twisted away, grabbed Rook's arm, and threw him sideways.

Rook hit the grating hard, rolled, came up on one knee. Before Karthek could close, Rook kicked out, boot catching Karthek in the thigh. The warlord grunted but didn't buckle. He grabbed Rook's ankle and yanked, sending Rook sprawling again.

Wren's nails dug into the bars. "Get up," she whispered.

Rook got up. He scrambled to his feet, breathing hard, and they circled again. This time Karthek attacked — a series of blows that forced Rook backward, step by step, until Rook's back hit the wall. Karthek pressed the advantage, throwing punches that Rook blocked or dodged, each impact shaking the steel behind him.

Then Rook found an opening. He ducked under a wild swing, drove his shoulder into Karthek's midsection, and shoved with everything he had. Karthek stumbled back, caught his balance, and for a moment — just a moment — Rook had the warlord on the defensive.

Wren saw the flash of satisfaction in Rook's eyes. It lasted less than a second. Karthek recovered, grabbed Rook by the throat, and lifted him off his feet.

Rook's feet dangled, kicking uselessly. His hands clawed at Karthek's grip, but the warlord's hold was iron. Rook's face flushed, then reddened. He gasped for air, eyes wide.

"Yield," Karthek said, voice calm despite the effort. "Yield, and I will let you live."

Rook shook his head. His feet continued to kick, searching for purchase. His grip on Karthek's wrist tightened, then loosened, then tightened again. He was fading. Wren could see it in the slump of his shoulders, the glaze creeping into his eyes.

"Rook!" she shouted. "Rook, yield!"

He looked at her through the haze, amber eyes dimming. His lips moved, forming words she couldn't hear. Then his body went limp.

Karthek lowered him gently to the grating. Rook lay on his back, chest rising and falling in shallow gasps, one arm bent beneath him, the other hanging uselessly at his side.

The corridor was silent except for Rook's ragged breathing.

Karthek straightened his armor and looked at Wren. "He fought well. For a boy."

"Get a medic," Wren said, voice shaking with a rage she couldn't control. "Now."

Karthek nodded to one of his soldiers, who moved toward Rook's body. Then Karthek turned his attention back to Wren. "The challenge is concluded. The stone remains my prize. You have until dawn to deliver it."

"Dawn?" Wren said. "You mean —"

"Six hours," Karthek said. "When the station's artificial cycle turns to morning light. Deliver the stone to the central hub, and I withdraw my forces. Refuse, and I take what I want by force, and your crew dies in the process."

He turned and walked away, his soldiers falling in behind him. Their boots echoed down the corridor, growing fainter with each step, until the only sound left was Rook's breathing and the distant thrum of Halberd's Reach straining under the weight of occupation.

Wren rested her chin on the cold steel and shut her eyes. Six hours. She had six hours to decide whether to hand over a sacred artifact that could start an interstellar war, or watch her crew get killed.

Behind her, in the cell across the corridor, Isetu made a soft clicking sound — the Verghesi equivalent of a prayer.

Wren opened her eyes and looked at Rook's body lying on the grating. He was still breathing. That was something. It had to be enough.

She turned and sat down on the bunk, pulled her knees to her chest, and started thinking about things she would never forgive herself for letting happen.

The station groaned overhead, metal stressed beyond its design limits, and somewhere in the forward hold of the Gilt Coyote, a matte-black crate waited for a decision that none of them felt qualified to make.

Wren lay still, the shear-drive’s low thrum vibrating through the deck plates as he measured the dark by the slow drip of condensation from the overhead pipe, each drop marking another minute of borrowed time.

Chapter 12

The Coyote pulled away from Halberd's Reach with a groan that sounded like a man waking from a nightmare. Cass felt it through the deck plate, up through the sole of his boot, into the bad knee that ached whenever the ship moved wrong. It always moved wrong.

He stood in the engine room with a wrench in his hand and a curse on his tongue, staring at the port coil bearing housing. The ceramic alloy tiles were cracked in three places, micro-fractures spiderwebbing through the material like frost on a window. He ran a gloved finger along the worst fracture and felt the grit of it under his nail.

"Point-seven throttle," he said to the empty room. "That's all you get."

The comm crackled. Wren's voice, flat and tired. "Cass. We're clear of the clamps. How long before we can push harder?"

"Longer than I want to tell you." He set the wrench down and wiped grease from his forehead with the back of his hand. "The bearing housing is shot. I can patch it, but it's going to hold us at sub-combat speeds for at least six hours. Maybe eight. If the fractures propagate further, maybe never."

Silence on the other end. Then: "Six to eight hours. Understood."

"Captain?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't push the throttle past point-seven. I mean it. If you do, the housing cracks all the way through and we lose the port coil entirely. Then we're drifting."

"I won't push it." Another pause. "Thank you, Cass."

"Anytime."

He killed the comm and turned back to the bearing housing. The work was going to be ugly. He didn't have replacement tiles — forty thousand credits worth of military-spec ceramic alloy, and Wren's account balance wouldn't cover the interest on that number. What he had was epoxy compound, structural sealant, and a lot of experience making broken things hold together long enough to get them home.

He started with the epoxy, mixing it in a small tin on the workbench. The compound smelled sharp and chemical, cutting through the engine room's usual cocktail of ozone and hydraulic fluid. He worked it into the fractures with a spatula, pressing it deep into the cracks, smoothing it flat. The epoxy would cure in about an hour, giving him a base layer to build on. While it set, he checked the rest of the bearing assembly — the mounting brackets, the alignment pins, the thermal dampeners. Everything else was holding. Barely.

The door hissed open behind him. Cass didn't turn. "If you're here to ask about the throttle again, the answer hasn't changed."

Wren stepped inside. She smelled like blood and antiseptic — Rook's blood, probably, from the medbay. Her shirt was stained dark on one shoulder, and her hair was pulled back in a messy knot that had seen better mornings. She leaned against the doorframe and watched him work.

"How's Rook?" Cass asked.

"Sedated. Breathing on his own. Broken rib, concussion, bruised sternum. He'll live." She paused. "Isetu says he's asking for water. I brought him some."

Cass nodded. "Good. He needs fluids. Lost a lot of blood in that corridor."

"He was brave."

"He was stupid." Cass set down the spatula and finally turned to look at her. "You should have stopped him."

Wren's jaw tightened. "I tried. Ilse had us in cells. Rook challenged Karthek under Old Reach Law — I couldn't override it without violating the marshal's authority and starting a riot on top of everything else."

"So you let him fight a fifty-year-old warlord with his bare hands."

"I let him fight for us." Wren pushed off the doorframe and walked to the workbench. She picked up a rag and started wiping grease from a bolt, not because it needed cleaning, but because her hands needed something to do. "If Karthek had killed him, I would have lost a crew member. If Rook had won, I would have started a war. The way it ended — Karthek took the relic and left. That's the best outcome we could have hoped for."

"It's the outcome we got." Cass watched her work the rag over the bolt, over and over. "You're not sleeping."

"I'm not."

"You haven't slept since we docked here."

Wren stopped wiping the bolt. She set the rag down. "Cass, we have forty-one hours before our docking extension expires. The Vhemma cruiser is still in orbit. Our drive is held together by epoxy and hope. I don't think sleep is on the table."

"Sleep isn't on the table, then. But you should eat. You should drink water. You should sit down for five minutes and let your heart rate drop below whatever it's at right now."

She turned to face him. Her grey eyes were rimmed red, the kind of tired that went deeper than fatigue. "What's your heart rate, Cass?"

"Better than yours."

"Liar."

"Maybe." He picked up the spatula again and went back to the bearing housing. The epoxy was starting to set, turning from a glossy paste to a dull grey skin. He pressed his thumb against it. Firm, but not fully cured. "Go check on Isetu. Make sure he's not pacing himself to death in the nav room."

Wren hesitated, then nodded. She turned and walked out, her footsteps echoing on the deck plates. Cass listened to them fade, then returned to his work.

The epoxy was fully cured by the time Isetu appeared in the doorway. The insectoid's lower limbs clicked against the grating, and his multifaceted eyes reflected the engine room's harsh white light in a dozen tiny mirrors. He carried a tray with two cups of coffee — stale, bitter, exactly the kind the Coyote's synthesizer produced.

"Captain declined the offer," Isetu said, setting the tray on the workbench. "She said she would rather drink engine coolant."

"She'll regret that in four hours when her hands start shaking." Cass took one of the cups and sipped. It tasted like burnt rubber and regret. "How's Rook?"

"Still sedated. His vitals are stable. He murmured something in his sleep — I believe he was calling for his mother."

Cass felt something tighten in his chest. Rook was twenty-two years old. He had thrown himself into a fight with a warlord to protect a crew that included a sixty-year-old mechanic with a bad knee and a nervous insectoid who cried when the gravity fluctuated. Twenty-two years old, and he'd already proven he'd die for people who weren't his family.

"Tell the medbay monitors to keep him sedated for another hour," Cass said. "His brain needs rest."

"I will." Isetu lingered in the doorway. "Captain, may I ask a question?"

"Depends on the question."

"Did you think we would survive the duel?"

Cass set the coffee cup down. He looked at the bearing housing, at the epoxy filling the fractures, at the workbench cluttered with tools and spare parts and the accumulated detritus of a ship that was always one failure away from becoming a tomb.

"No," he said. "I didn't."

Isetu's antennae twitched. "And yet you did not intervene."

"I couldn't. Old Reach Law — once Rook issued that challenge, nobody could stop it without violating the marshal's authority. And besides, I had faith." He looked up at Isetu. "In Rook. Not that he'd win. But that he wouldn't quit."

Isetu was silent for a long moment. Then he bowed his head slightly — a gesture Cass had learned meant gratitude among the Verghesi. "That is why we follow her."

"Follow who?"

"Captain Wren. She allows us to be ourselves. Even when being ourselves is dangerous. Even when it is foolish." Isetu turned and left, his limbs clicking softly on the grating.

Cass drank the rest of his coffee and went back to work.

The second layer of sealant went on once the epoxy had gone rock-hard. This was structural-grade compound, thick and slow-setting, designed to fill gaps in hull plating and pressure vessels. It would bond to the epoxy underneath and create a composite layer strong enough to hold the bearing housing together at sub-combat speeds. Probably.

He worked methodically, spreading the sealant with a wide trowel, smoothing it over the epoxy, pressing it into every crevice and crack. The compound was heavy and sticky, clinging to his gloves and the trowel alike. His back ached from hunching over the housing, and his bad knee throbbed with every shift of weight. He ignored both.

An hour passed. Maybe two. The engine room was quiet except for the hum of the shear-drive at idle and the occasional drip of condensation from the overhead pipes. Cass didn't notice the time passing. He noticed the sealant drying, changing from a wet grey to a matte finish. He noticed the alignment pins holding true. He noticed the thermal dampeners reading within acceptable range. Small victories, the kind that didn't make headlines but kept ships flying.

The door hissed open again. This time it was Wren. She carried a bag of supplies — spare gaskets, a roll of heat-resistant tape, a canister of lubricant. She set them on the workbench and leaned against the wall.

"Isetu traded with a supply vendor in the lower market," she said. "Got these for half price. The vendor owed him a favor from last cycle."

"Good to know our navigator has street cred." Cass didn't look up from his work. "Anything else?"

"Rook woke up briefly. Asked if Karthek was still aboard. I told him no. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep."

Cass nodded. "Good. He needs the rest."

Wren was quiet for a moment. Then: "I sat with him while he was out. Held his hand." She said it like it was a confession. Like she was embarrassed by it.

Cass set down the trowel and looked at her. "Captain—"

"Don't. I know what it sounds like. I know how it looks — the hardened captain, all business, suddenly playing nursemaid to her security officer." She pushed off the wall and walked to the workbench. She picked up one of the spare gaskets and turned it over in her hands. "Rook is twenty-two years old. He's been on this ship for six months. In that time, he's saved my life twice, fixed the airlock seals when I was too stubborn to ask, and hummed along to the static in the mess hall even though he sounded like a dying engine."

She set the gasket down. "He fought Karthek for us. For me. I was going to sit with him while he slept."

Cass studied her face. The red-rimmed eyes, the tension in her jaw, the way her hands wouldn't stop moving. She was holding herself together with the same materials he was using on the bearing housing — epoxy and sealant and sheer stubbornness.

"You're a good captain," he said.

Wren almost laughed. It came out as a short, sharp sound that wasn't quite a laugh and wasn't quite a sob. "I'm a captain who's about to fly a broken ship at sub-light speed while a warlord watches from orbit. The 'good' part seems irrelevant."

"The 'good' part is the only reason we're still alive." Cass picked up the trowel again. "The sealant's almost set. I can do a final inspection in about thirty minutes. If it holds, we'll be able to push to point-eight throttle. Maybe point-nine if I reinforce the secondary mounts."

"Point-nine would buy us an extra hour of margin."

"Maybe. Or it would blow the housing to pieces and leave us drifting in the void. I'll make the call when the time comes."

Wren nodded. "Understood. I'll stay in the cockpit and monitor the cruiser. If Karthek makes a move—"

"He won't. He got what he came for. The Vhemma don't waste resources on fights they've already won."

"You sound sure."

"I sound experienced. There's a difference." Cass smiled, and it was a thin, tired thing. "Go get some water, Captain. And if Isetu offers you food, take it. Your body needs fuel even if your mind thinks it doesn't."

Wren hesitated, then nodded. She turned to leave, then stopped at the doorway. "Cass?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. For keeping this ship flying. For keeping us alive."

He waved a hand without looking up. "That's the job."

She left. The seal engaged with a sharp pneumatic click. Cass was alone again with the bearing housing and the hum of the shear-drive and the weight of forty-one hours pressing down on him.

He finished the sealant application and stepped back to inspect his work. The bearing housing looked ugly — patched and scarred, a mosaic of epoxy and sealant over cracked ceramic alloy. It would never pass a military inspection. It would never look clean again. But it held. The fractures were sealed, the alignment was true, and the thermal readings were stable.

It would fly.

Cass picked up his wrench and tightened the mounting bolts one last time, checking each for proper torque. When he was satisfied, he wiped his hands on a rag and headed for the door.

The cockpit was dim, lit only by the instrument panels and the starlight filtering through the viewport. Wren sat in her chair, her hands resting on the arms, her eyes fixed on the dark space ahead. The Vhemma cruiser was visible as a pair of crimson running lights, distant and patient, like the eyes of a predator that had decided the hunt was over.

"Cass," Wren said without turning. "How is it?"

"It'll hold. Point-eight throttle, conservatively. Maybe point-nine if we're careful and lucky."

"And the timeline?"

"Six hours minimum before I can safely test the higher settings. After that, we push for the nearest shear corridor. Isetu can plot a route that avoids the cruiser's patrol zone."

Wren nodded slowly. "Six hours. We can manage six hours." She glanced at him. "Rook's awake again. Isetu is with him."

"Good. Tell Rook to stay off his feet. That broken rib needs time."

"I'll tell him." Wren's mouth quirked into something that might have been a smile if she had the energy for it. "He'll listen to Isetu more than he listens to me."

"Insectoid authority. It's a powerful thing."

Wren turned back to the viewport. The stars were cold and distant, indifferent to the drama playing out in the void. The Coyote drifted between Halberd's Reach and the open dark, wounded and stubborn, carrying a crew that had survived one more night.

"Cass," Wren said quietly. "When we get to the shear corridor, I want you in the engine room. Not the cockpit. The engine room."

"Understood. Where else would I be?"

"Last time, you came up here during the chase. You bypassed safety protocols and pushed the drive past its limits."

"That got us away from Karthek."

"It also nearly destroyed the port coil. Next time, you stay in the engine room and monitor the temperatures. I'll fly the ship."

Cass looked at her, really looked at her, and saw the calculation behind the order. She wasn't punishing him. She was protecting him — keeping him where he could do the most good, where his expertise mattered most. She was also protecting the ship, making sure the person with the best understanding of the drive stayed close to it.

"Understood," he said. "I'll stay in the engine room."

Wren nodded. The silence settled between them, comfortable and earned. The ship hummed. The stars burned cold. And somewhere in the aft compartment, Rook was drinking water and Isetu was telling him stories about Verghesi navigation techniques, trying to distract him from the pain in his ribs.

Cass turned and walked back to the engine room, his bad knee aching, his back stiff, his hands still smelling of epoxy and sealant. The bearing housing held. The shear-drive hummed. The Coyote would fly.

For now, that was enough.

He sat on the stool beside the workbench and pulled out a small notebook from his pocket — paper, not digital, because digital things broke and paper didn't. He flipped to a fresh page and started listing the components he needed for a proper bearing housing replacement. Ceramic alloy tiles, forty thousand credits. Mounting brackets, eight thousand. Thermal dampeners, three thousand. Alignment pins, two thousand.

Total: fifty-three thousand credits.

He closed the notebook and set it aside. They didn't have fifty-three thousand credits. They didn't have twelve thousand credits. What they had was a patched-up bearing housing, a crew that refused to quit, and a captain who would fly them through hell to get them home.

The comm crackled. Isetu's voice, soft but clear. "Cass, Rook is asking for you. He says he wants to talk."

Cass stood up, his knee protesting. "I'll be there in a minute."

He walked out of the engine room, past the cockpit where Wren sat watching the stars, past the mess hall where the coffee maker sat cold and unused, toward the medbay and the young Vhemma who had fought a warlord for a crew that wasn't his blood.

The ship carried them all, broken and stubborn, into the dark.

Chapter 13

The atmosphere of New Ordu hit Wren like a wall of warm water. She stood at the airlock of the Gilt Coyote, helmet still on, and felt the humidity press against the visor before the seals even finished cycling. Condensation bloomed across the glass in fat droplets. Through them, the landing platform blurred into shapes and colors — green everywhere, layered and dense, the kind of green that only existed on worlds where plants had never learned to fear the void.

The outer seals disengaged with a hiss, and the smell washed over her. Wet earth. Rain on stone. Something sweet and rotting from the jungle beyond the platform's perimeter fence. It was nothing like the Coyote's interior, nothing like the sulfur and recycled air of Halberd's Reach, nothing like the sterile nothingness of space. It was alive. It was loud. It was the kind of world that didn't care whether you lived or died, which made it the most honest place Wren had ever been.

"Gravity's point-nine," Isetu said behind her. His lower limbs clicked against the deck plate as he approached, carrying a folded data pad. "Within acceptable range for my joints. I am grateful."

"Good," Wren said. She pulled her helmet off and let the humid air hit her face directly. Her hair stuck to her cheeks. "Because we're standing here long enough to sign the docking papers, then we're gone."

The landing platform was a concrete slab suspended on stilts above the canopy, connected to a small terminal building that looked like it had been assembled from salvaged prefab modules. Neon signs in three languages advertised lodging, food, and anything else a traveler might need in a colony world that didn't bother with pretense. A woman in a terminal worker's uniform stood behind a glass partition, chewing something and watching them with mild disinterest.

Wren approached the counter and set her credentials down. The woman tapped at a keyboard, glanced at the screen, then at Wren. "Captain Elias. The Gilt Coyote. You're late on your registration renewal."

"I know. I was detained."

"Detained how?"

"Legally." Wren kept her tone flat. She'd learned long ago that explaining Halberd's Reach to anyone who hadn't been there resulted in either laughter or a request for paperwork. "Just renew it. I'll pay the late fee."

The woman processed the payment without further comment and handed back the credentials. "Docking permit is good for forty-eight hours. After that, you move to cold storage or you leave. We don't do extensions on this station."

"Forty-eight is plenty." Wren took the credentials and turned back to the group. Cass was already limping toward the airlock, his bad knee carrying him in that uneven gait that made every step look like a negotiation. Rook brought up the rear, his arm in a sling, moving with the stiff caution of a man who had recently discovered what a broken rib felt like.

"Cass, you should be resting," Wren said.

"I was going to rest on the Coyote," he replied. "But someone insisted we get off-ship to handle the paperwork. Which means I get to feel the gravity. Fantastic."

"You could have stayed aboard."

"And missed the first breath of real air in three months?" Cass stopped and inhaled deeply, wincing at the humidity. "Worth the knee pain. For one second."

Isetu moved to Wren's side. "We need to arrange transport to the upper district. The Verghesi embassy is located there, and I have correspondence to deliver."

Wren exhaled, the sound sharp in the recycled air. The Verghesi embassy. Silas's people. The man who had started this whole mess — who had handed her a matte-black crate without telling her what it contained, who had set off a chain of events that nearly killed everyone aboard the Coyote. Silas was supposed to meet them at the embassy. He owed them answers, and he owed them more credits. The original contract had been for a small fortune. They'd collected a fraction.

"Let's go," Wren said.

The transport was a hover-cart, one of those open-sided vehicles that moved along raised guideways through the jungle canopy. The ride took twenty minutes, and Wren spent most of it with her eyes closed, feeling the humidity soak into her clothes and the warmth settle into her muscles. New Ordu was a world she hadn't visited in four years. Four years since she'd left the orbital yard where she'd worked as a welder, four years since she'd traded a pension plan for a rusted gunship and a crew of misfits.

The cart slowed as it approached the upper district — a cluster of buildings built into the hillside, surrounded by manicured gardens and the kind of architecture that suggested money had been spent without urgency. The Verghesi embassy was a low, wide structure with curved walls and windows that reflected the canopy in fractured greens.

Wren stepped off the cart and straightened her jacket. It was stained and frayed at the cuffs, but it was clean. Good enough.

Inside the embassy, the air was cool and dry, filtered through systems that cost more than the Coyote's entire drive assembly. A receptionist with translucent green scales and polite eyes directed them to a conference room on the second floor. Isetu's antennae twitched as they entered — a Verghesi greeting gesture, directed at the room itself, acknowledging the space before the people in it.

Silas was waiting.

He sat at the head of a long table, his hands folded in front of him, his posture rigid. In person, he looked worse than he had on the Coyote. The stress of the last few weeks had carved lines into his face that hadn't been there before. His eyes darted to each member of Wren's crew as they entered, pa longest on Rook, whose amber eyes met his without flinching.

"Captain Elias," Silas said. He stood and extended a hand. Wren took it. His grip was weak, his palm damp. "Thank you for coming."

"Thank me when I get the rest of my payment," Wren said. She sat without waiting to be offered a chair. Cass took the seat next to her, groaning as his knee bent. Isetu positioned himself near the door, his multifaceted eyes scanning the room. Rook remained standing, his good hand resting on the back of an empty chair.

Silas sat back down. "I understand your concerns. The circumstances were... extraordinary. The Heartstone of Vhemma was never part of the original agreement. I did not know what the crate contained when I hired you."

"You lied to us," Wren said. "You gave us a crate and told us it was Verghesi cultural property. It was Vhemma ancestral property. That's not a mistake. That's a lie."

"I was afraid," Silas said quietly. "If I had told you the truth, you would have refused the job. And I had no one else. No one else would have taken the risk."

"Risk?" Rook's voice was low and even, but there was steel underneath it. "You put us in the sights of a Vhemma warlord. You nearly got my brother killed."

Silas flinched at the word brother. Rook was Vhemma. The Heartstone was Vhemma. And Rook had recognized the markings on the crate in chapter three — the angular script, the blood-red sigil — before anyone else knew what it was. That recognition had cost him sleepless nights and, eventually, a bare-handed fight with a man who wanted the stone back.

"I know," Silas said. "I know what I put you through. And I will spend the rest of my life making amends. But the plague on my world — it was killing thousands. The Heartstone contains compounds that could synthesize a cure. I stole it to save my people, not to start a war."

Wren studied his face. She'd heard this explanation before — back on the Coyote, in the mess hall, when Silas had finally broken down and told them everything. She'd believed him then. She believed him now. Belief didn't erase consequences.

"The warlord took the stone back," Wren said. "Your people still don't have a cure."

"I have copies of the molecular data," Silas said. "Rook's duel bought us time. While Karthek was distracted, Isetu accessed the embassy's research database and transmitted the information to our medical teams. They're synthesizing the compound now. It will take weeks, but —"

"But it will work," Isetu finished. His voice was soft, but there was satisfaction in it. "Yes. The data was sufficient. My people will have the cure."

Silas looked at Isetu with something like awe. "You did that? While we were fighting?"

"I did what needed to be done." Isetu's antennae twitched again. He tapped the data pad once, then set it face-down on the table. The room was quiet except for the soft hum of the embassy's climate control and the distant murmur of the city beyond the walls.

Wren let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. The pieces were falling into place — crooked, jagged, but settling nonetheless. Silas's people would get their cure. The Vhemma had their stone back. Rook was alive, battered but breathing. The Coyote was damaged but flying.

"How much do you owe us?" she asked.

Silas opened a drawer and slid a credit chip across the table. "This covers the original contract amount, plus a twenty percent hazard bonus. I hope it's acceptable."

Wren picked up the chip and felt its negligible weight against her skin. A fortune in cold, silent digits. Enough to fix the Coyote's drive properly. Enough to pay off the docking debt at Halberd's Reach. Enough to buy a new ship, if she wanted one.

She set the chip down. "Keep twenty percent. Use it to make sure your medical teams have what they need."

Silas stared at her. "Captain —"

"I'm not doing this for free," Wren said. "I'm doing it because the alternative is watching your people die and carrying that around for the rest of my life. Take the twenty percent. Buy the supplies. And when the cure is ready, send me a report. I want to know it worked."

Silas nodded, his eyes bright with something he didn't try to hide. "It will work. I promise."

Wren stood. "That's all I need."

She led the crew out of the conference room and back into the cool corridor. The embassy staff moved around them with efficient quiet, and Isetu exchanged a series of clicks and gestures with a passing clerk that Wren didn't bother translating. Cass was walking slower now, his face pale, and Rook had his arm draped over the back of a chair he was dragging behind him like a crutch.

They reached the lobby, and Wren stopped. Through the lobby's glass doors, she could see the garden beyond — a courtyard filled with flowering vines and a stone fountain that sprayed water in a lazy arc. And sitting on a bench near the fountain, reading a data pad, was a woman with dark hair and a smile that hadn't changed in four years.

Lira.

Wren froze. She hadn't expected to see her. Hadn't expected to see anyone from her old life. New Ordu was big enough that the odds of running into someone she knew were slim. But there she was, sitting in the sunlight, turning a page on her data pad, completely unaware that Wren was standing in the lobby watching her.

Lira had been a foreman at the orbital yard. Wren had been a welder. They'd shared shifts, shared meals, shared a few nights in Lira's apartment that had started as friendship and ended as something neither of them knew how to name. When Wren had bought the Coyote and left, Lira had stood on the platform and told her to be careful. Wren had promised she would. She hadn't called.

"Captain?" Cass said. "You okay?"

Wren blinked. She forced herself to move, to look away from the glass doors and the garden and the woman sitting on the bench. "Fine. Let's go."

They walked out of the embassy and back to the hover-cart. The ride to the landing platform was quieter than the ride in. Cass stared out at the passing canopy. Isetu reviewed his correspondence. Rook said nothing, his amber eyes fixed on the jungle scrolling past.

Wren kept her gaze forward, but her mind kept drifting back to the lobby, to the glass doors, to Lira turning a page on her data pad. Lira, who had a pension and a schedule and a life that fit neatly into the boundaries of a colony world. Lira, who had told her to be careful and meant it, and who would probably be relieved to learn that Wren had survived.

The hover-cart slowed as it approached the platform. Wren stood and gathered her things. The humidity hit her again, thick and warm, and she breathed it in like she was memorizing it.

"Transport's waiting," Isetu said. "Shall we return to the Coyote?"

"Yeah," Wren said. "Let's go home."

The walk back to the ship took five minutes. The landing platform was busy with cargo loaders and maintenance crews, the sounds of machinery echoing off the concrete. The Coyote sat at the end of the platform, its hull scarred and patched, its wings angled in that permanent crouch that made it look like it was bracing for impact. It was ugly. It was beautiful. It was hers.

Wren climbed the ramp and stood in the airlock as the seals cycled shut behind her. The humidity faded, replaced by the familiar smell of ozone and hydraulic fluid. The walls hummed with the vibration of the shear-drive at idle. Home.

Cass was already heading for the engine room. Isetu was reviewing navigation charts. Rook was in the mess hall, drinking water and staring at the ceiling.

Wren went to the cockpit and sat in her chair. She looked out the viewport at the jungle canopy, at the layers of green stretching to the horizon, at the sky above it — blue and clear and utterly indifferent to the fact that she existed.

A king’s ransom in unmarked bills. Enough to fix the drive. Enough to pay the debts. Enough to start over, if she wanted to.

She thought about Lira on the bench. About the orbital yard, with its welding torches and its pension plans and its predictable shifts. About the four years she'd spent running from one crisis to the next, chasing credits and avoiding questions, building a life out of improvisation and stubbornness.

The Coyote hummed beneath her. Cass was somewhere in the engine room, already planning the bearing housing replacement. Isetu was plotting their next route. Rook was recovering, and he'd be back on duty in a week, and he'd still sing along to the comms chatter like a dying engine.

Wren rested her hands on the arms of her chair and watched the jungle. She thought about the job Silas had given her — the one that had started with unmarked credits and fear and ended with a warlord, a duel, and a cure for a plague. She thought about the Vhemma markings Rook had recognized on that matte-black crate, the ones that had haunted him for weeks and ultimately cost him a broken rib and a concussion. She thought about the choices she'd made and the ones she hadn't, and the people who had survived because of them.

Normal life was a concept that belonged to other people now. People who worked shifts and collected pensions and sat on benches in embassy gardens, reading data pads in the sunlight. Wren had traded that life for a rusted gunship and a crew of misfits who trusted her with their lives. She wouldn't trade it back. Not for anything.

Static hissed through the cabin speaker. Cass's voice, gruff and familiar. "Captain, I'm starting the drive assembly overhaul. Should take six hours. Maybe seven if the new tiles seat cleanly."

"Copy that," Wren said. "Take your time."

"No rush. We're not being chased by a warlord today."

"No," Wren agreed. "We're not."

She killed the comm and leaned back in her chair. The Coyote settled around her, its vibrations steady and reassuring. Outside, the jungle breathed, and the sky stayed blue, and somewhere in the embassy garden, a woman finished her data pad and stood up and walked away.

Wren closed her eyes, letting the ship’s steady thrum drown out the silence, a mechanical heartbeat that promised they were still moving forward.