We’re not there to make friends. We’re there to end the experiment. To contain the breach. To protect Coalition technology from misuse. They knew what they were stealing. They knew the risk.
I stand. My armor’s heavy on my shoulders. Feels right.
The corridor outside is humming with final prep—weapon diagnostics, armor calibrations, boarding shuttles powering up. The red lights along the bulkhead flash in steady rhythm. Each pulse brings us closer.
We drop out of FTL in less than an hour.
And when we do?
I’ll be ready.
CHAPTER 3
ELLA
Commander Vris’s office smells like copper and ozone. Probably from all the exposed wiring. Or maybe just from him. He stands stiff behind his desk, arms crossed so tight his uniform strains against his biceps. His eyes, sharp and sunken, pin me like a bug to a display case.
“Corleone,” he says flatly. “Care to explain why your authorization pinged near the Black Box logs at 0300?”
My mouth opens, but I don’t even have a good lie ready. My brain scrambles like a dropped datapad. “I was doing diagnostics on the food processing grid,” I say. My voice is too fast.
His eyebrows twitch. “Is that so.”
He knows. Not what I was doing exactly, but enough to smell the rot. His jaw works slowly, like he’s chewing on all the ways I’m not worth his time. But then he exhales through his nose and waves me off like a gnat.
“Stay in your lane, Technician Corleone.”
“Yes, sir,” I chirp like a good little gearhead.
I walk out with my back straight, but it’s a miracle I don’t set the damn corridor on fire with how hot my ears are. I’m pissed. At him. At myself. At this entire floating mess of politicsand secrecy. They’re hiding something. The Black Box driveisunstable, and instead of shutting it down or fixing it, they’re just pretending everything’s peachy so command doesn’t pull funding.
Idiots.
By the time I reach Maintenance, my hands are trembling. Marla glances up from her terminal. Her purple curls are piled up in a messy bun and there’s grease smudged across her cheek. She takes one look at my face and raises an eyebrow.
“So,” she drawls, “how’d your little side quest go?”
“Don’t,” I mutter, sliding under the half-disassembled gravity stabilizer. The metal’s cool against my back, grounding me. “He knows I was snooping. Just don't know what.”
“Yet,” she adds helpfully.
I grab my spanner and start reconnecting the tension lines. “Containment’s off. Not just a blip. I think it’s degrading.”
Marla goes quiet. That’s how I know she believes me. When she doesn’t, she won’t shut up.
“They’ll bury it,” I say, twisting hard on a stripped bolt. “Until it kills us all. And then they’ll say it was sabotage or some rogue signal. And we’ll just be pretty little smears on their damage reports.”
“You sound paranoid,” she says softly.
“I’m not paranoid if they’re actually covering it up.”
She sighs. “You’re going to get yourself court-martialed.”
“I’m a civilian contractor.”
“You’re going to get yourselfairlocked.”
I slam the panel shut and slide out from under the stabilizer, my hands slick with machine oil and nerves. “They should be listening to me. I’ve run the numbers. I’ve seen the flickers. The telemetry is lying.”
