They all turned at once.
"And before you tell me what this is," I added, crossing my arms, "maybe you can explain why you're trying to hide your emotions from the Tether."
Four very guilty-looking males immediately found separate points of interest around the bridge.
I clapped once. "Is this going to be our first fight? Because I was honestly curious how the Tether would handle something like that." I tilted my head. "Bad news for all of you, it tells you exactly how I'm feeling, even if you're trying to hide yours."
Torvyn cleared his throat and transferred the feed to my console.
I looked up and was greeted by a familiar pair of weaselly eyes set above a perfect, blinding smile.
My stomach dropped. My hands went cold. I'd sent this man running, humiliated him, made him pay me what he owed, and I'd been stupid enough to think that meant I'd won. The smile on his face toldme everything I needed to know. He'd been waiting for this. And he'd had months to plan it.
Voss.
"Watch the video," Kaedren said quietly.
I hit play.
"This is Director Voss with a critical alert." His voice was calm and measured, the tone of a concerned official delivering unfortunate but necessary news. "Over the past sixty standard cycles, fourteen frontier colonies have reported destabilizing interference from an unregistered Zorathi vessel."
Images flickered across the screen:ruined facilities, confused workers milling about, empty warehouses.
"Colonial supply chains have been disrupted. Workers have been removed from contracted positions without proper discharge protocols. Infrastructure damage has created dangerous gaps in essential services."
My jaw clenched. He was making liberation sound like kidnapping and making freedom look like chaos.
"After careful deliberation, the Conglomerate Council has authorized recovery incentives for the vessel known as the Starbreaker and its operators: Torvyn, Kaedren, Lyrin, Vaelix, and Kira Vale."
Five faces appeared on screen, four Zorathi warriors and me. My employee ID photo from my contract days. I looked half-dead in it.
"Ten million credits per individual. Fifty million for vessel recovery. Alive preferred for proper judicial processing and contract resolution."
My breath caught. Alive preferred meant interrogation. Public trial. Spectacle. Theater designed to prove the system worked, that resistance always failed in the end.
"Tiered participation rewards are available for information leading to location, assistance with apprehension, and secure delivery. All colonial authorities are authorized to detain on sight under Emergency Commerce Provision Seven."
Voss leaned forward, his smile never wavering. "To be clear, this is not a military operation. This is administrative compliance enforcement. Help us restore order to the frontier. Thank you for your attention to this matter."
The transmission cut to black.
Then the screen flickered. Split. Cascaded.
Mirrored feeds lit up across the network; civilian channels, labor boards, mercenary exchanges. The replication counter in the corner climbed: thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of nodes all carrying Voss's message.
Every port. Every station. Every colony under corporate control.
The entire galaxy was watching.
My chest tightened.
Voss had done this to me before; dressed violence up as policy, made compliance look like choice. He'd framed my servitude as a voluntary contract, my silence as consent. Now he was doing it to the entire galaxy.
The bounties weren't the weapon. The broadcast was.
He wasn't hunting us. He was recruiting billions of people to do it for him and calling it civic duty.
I turned toward the Knights. "This isn't about us."
