My breath catches. Just for a second.
Then I sit up, hands gripping her hips, foreheads brushing.
“Zel vi’thar,” I whisper again.
Her eyes close.
She doesn’t ask again what it means.
She just smiles.
Later, after a long mutual soak in the bath that results in more dozing, we rise with the reluctant sun. Outside thesafehouse window, Novaria Prime hums with its usual glow—hovertrams slicing clean lines through the sky, vendors shouting prices in three languages, lights pulsing from tower spires like heartbeat monitors. Looks normal.
But it’s not.
Kristi’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, her hair tied up in this messy knot that keeps slipping free every time she moves. There’s a datapad in her lap, cables trailing like veins from it to my holoscreen, and about six empty caf cups stacked beside her. Her jaw’s locked in that stubborn way it gets when she’s two steps ahead of her patience.
She mutters, “The timestamps aren’t lining up. Why the hell would Dennis backdate the requisition orders unless?—”
“Unless he’s trying to make the nanovirus shipment look like surplus from the Centuries War,” I finish, pacing the room with my arms crossed.
“Exactly.” She stabs a finger toward the screen. “Which means he’s hiding it under a disarmament clause. The Sunrise Festival has full diplomatic immunity protocols. No one will be checking cargo manifests because it’s considered a non-military sacred event.”
I stop dead. “You’re telling me he’s moving a weapon of mass destruction through a fuckin’ peace parade?”
Her eyes flick up. “Yeah. I am.”
“Son of a—” I grip the back of the chair hard enough that it groans. “How did I ever serve the same damn flag as these people?”
“You didn’t.” She says it like a fact, not comfort. “You served the idea of a better world. Dennis serves control.”
Her voice is sharp, but her fingers are gentle as they swipe across the pad, zooming in on another cluster of files. She's cataloging payload specs now—molecular strain types,activation triggers, latency timers. I don’t understand half the data, but I know enough to tell it’s real. Ugly real.
The nanovirus is designed to seek out alien DNA markers—Alzhon, Vakutan, Pi’Rell, hell, even Reaper. It doesn’t just kill. It breaks down tissue on a cellular level, like acid inside the blood. Dennis didn’t just fund this. He refined it.
And he plans to unleash it during the one event in the quadrant where non-humans gather by the thousands, shoulder to shoulder, dancing and singing and sharing plates of ceremonial food with their enemies and ex-lovers and old comrades.
Kristi’s right. The devastation would be biblical.
I sit down hard on the edge of the couch. “He’s gonna wipe out half the galaxy’s soul in one fuckin’ morning.”
“Unless we stop him.”
Her voice is low now. Controlled. But I see the storm brewing behind her eyes. She’s trembling, not with fear—but fury. She hasn’t said much about how this touches her uncle personally. I think it’s too big to hold. How do you carry the truth that your blood’s planning genocide?
“How long until the Festival?” I ask.
“Thirteen days,” she answers, rubbing her temples. “And the final dispersal drone was signed off yesterday.”
I blink. “Dispersal drone?”
She nods grimly. “They’re planning an airborne release. You know those skyflame vessels they use for the opening ceremony? The ones that launch glitter and incense over the crowd?”
I nod slowly. “He’s gonna lace 'em.”
“Yup.”
“Holy shit.”
