Marla bites her lip. “You should stop. Just... for a little while.”
I look at her. And I see what she’s not saying. She’s scared. Not just for me. For all of us.
But I can’t stop. Not when I’m this close to figuring out what’s wrong.
The rest of my shift is a haze of misaligned power couplings and endless diagnostics, all while the ache in my chest builds like a stormcloud. When the Holonet pings ship-wide—something about a new Alliance treaty with the Trident sector—I know everyone’s going to be glued to the feed. No better time to sneak into places I’m not supposed to be.
Auxiliary Storage is two decks down and always smells like burnt plastic and coolant. I know the access codes. Hell, I probably wrote half of them. I duck inside and hit the console, fingers flying. I’m in. Locked schematics flood the screen in a tide of data.
There it is.
The singularity drive’s diagnostics.
I pull the most recent field stability report. The containment parameters have shifted—again. Worse than last time. But something else grabs me by the throat.
A patch code. Hidden deep in the root logs. It’s not from Engineering. Not from Command. It’s handwritten. Messy. Sloppy in a way that screams cover-up.
“What the hell is this…” I whisper, leaning in.
The code reroutes safety protocols—makes the containment failure look like operator error. It’s a goddamn smear job builtbeforeanything’s even gone wrong.
Which means theyknowit’s going to.
My breath turns to ice in my lungs. I back out of the console and kill the power to the terminal before anyone notices it pinged live. My reflection stares back at me from the blank screen—pale, wide-eyed, slick with sweat.
Someone is tampering with the drive. Someone who doesn’t give a single shit about the lives on this ship.
I walk out of the storage room on autopilot. My hands are cold, but I can feel my heartbeat thudding in my palms. If I go to Vris, he’ll shut me down. If I go to anyone else, they’ll just report me.
I need a plan.
I needproof.
And more than that... I need to survive long enough to use it.
CHAPTER 4
TAKHISS
We drop out of superluminal space like a blade slicing through silk. The shift hits hard. My stomach flips, caught in the gravity yawn as our momentum jerks to sublight. For half a breath, there’s silence. Then the Seeker flashes into view—long, elegant, bloated with Alliance pride.
Arrogant little coffin.
I’m already suited up. My armor seals me in—humid air, filtered and stale. The HUD flickers to life. All systems are green. Heart rate is steady. Weapons primed. My fingers twitch against the grips of my scatter-rifle as the ship’s artificial gravity stabilizes under my boots.
We’re on final approach.
The command deck hums with quiet menace. No one speaks louder than necessary. You’d think soldiers would be barking jokes or revving adrenaline with war chants, but there’s none of that today. The silence is heavy. A prelude to violence.
Commander Graal’s voice crackles over our squad channel: “Boarding formations. Class-four incursion. No mercy. No mistakes.”
I grunt in acknowledgment and fall into position with Strike Team Korr. My unit’s tight—seven of us, countingGraal. Veterans. Ghost-makers. We’ve carved our way through outposts and freighters, crushed sabotage rings and exterminated science vessels that forgot their place. But I’ve never felt this… sharp. This on-edge.
I can taste it in the recycled air. Something’s off.
“Visual confirmation of the drive is live,” Graal mutters. “The core’s active.”
“What?” I bark, turning slightly. “They lit it?”
