“Give me one minute and you’ll get your team back.”
He rerouted a power loop through the dock’s electromagnetic grid, overloading the nearest transformer just enough to flood theHelepolis’s auto-ID systems with ambient interference—spoofing its IFF signature while simultaneously pinging the helicopter’s threat sensors with false radar echoes from eight different dock positions.
The dolly was still moving.
Steel wheels groaned over the lip of the gangplank.
Another meter, and Sirena would vanish into Voss’s ship like a swallowed pearl.
The gunship wasn’t firing yet.
But its orbit tightened.
His spoofing held—for now.
No guarantees.
“Abort assault. Fall back.”
He said it like steel. Not suggestion. Command.
No one replied.
He skimmed the feeds, seeing everything: Ellum’s bloodied muzzle. Aceon’s legs twitching from the crash. Kelly’s body half-limp under the dolly, having dropped away rather than be carried inside. Lung’s fingers twitching at the trigger.
And Royce—burning in silence.
They wanted to win.
Theydeservedto win.
But Sirena was inside.
And if they pushed now—if they tried to drag her out—they would be dragging out a corpse.
He was bleeding heat through every interface now, running the dock like a ghost-possessed mainframe, and still none of them had asked himwhohe was.
Good.
Because he didn’t have time to explain.
There was no more mission.
There was only her.
The cargo box disappeared into the ship.
The ramp began to rise.
The gunship finally peeled away, unsure if it had won.
Let it think that.
Let Voss think that.
Let Royce think that.
He would take the hit.
