“Eat something. You need the fuel, and you need to set the example.”
He walked away, leaving me alone at the table but somehow less alone than I’d been before.
I watched him go, this man who had once watched four thousand people die because orders told him to. He’d chosen to follow me, not because I had answers he lacked, but because I was willing to choose without them.
These were my people now. My responsibility. My choice.
I picked up my fork. The synth-grain was cold, but I ate it anyway.
When the next crisis came, I would choose again.
Chapter 10
So far, our plan had been working perfectly. In the last four days, we had infiltrated a handful of doppelgangers, gotten our message spread across corporate space, and even run a few interdiction missions, picking up vital supplies. It looked like our disinformation campaign was doing exactly what we wanted.
"We have received a distress call," Torvyn said.
He was sitting at the head of the large table in the Starbreaker's ready room. The meeting consisted of senior leadership only, so me, the Knights, and a handful of department heads from around the ship. All people who had been crew for a very long time.
It had come with a cost, though. Everybody was exhausted. For the first time since I met the Knights, they were showing signs of being tired pirates. I glanced around the table and saw the dark circles under Torvyn's eyes, the half-drunk cup of coffee next to Lyrin, Vaelix rubbing his bloodshot eyes, and Kaedren actually falling asleep in his chair.
I cleared my throat. "Where is it coming from?"
"A Human Development Colony," Vaelix said.
Silence filled the room. It was so quiet I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I saw Torvyn flinch and realized I was pushing a significant amount of anger through the Tether. It was so strong that I heard Kaedren growl.
"A forced breeding camp," I said quietly, my words laced with venom. "The exact type of target I want to hit."
"It would be a significant blow to the corporations," Torvyn said.
"There aren't many of these colonies, and they are heavily protected," Kaedren said.
"The distress call looks legitimate. We ran multiple scans on the message and the transmission, and there are no viruses or tracers attached to either," Vaelix said, displaying the data on the room's viewscreen.
Kaedren studied the transmission text, his eyes narrowing. "The phrasing is wrong. Too clean. Too structured." He highlighted a section of the message. "This reads like someone studied our previous rescue operations and built a template."
"This seems like something the corporations would dangle in front of us to put us right in their crosshairs," he continued. "A few days after we put our plan into place, and a target this valuable just happens to send a distress call? I don't like it."
"It could be a trap," Lyrin said, nodding in agreement. "But it could also be legitimate. Do we have any intelligence on the colony's activities for the last forty-eight hours?"
"We hacked their surveillance satellites and analyzed the feeds. Everything appeared to be within normal operating parameters," Vaelix said.
"There are many ways that data could be falsified, especially by the corporations," Torvyn said.
Vaelix nodded. "That is true. However, we have not seen any evidence of an increase in shuttle launches to or from the colony. If it were a trap, they would need to bring in reinforcements."
Kaedren pulled up the corporate security posture on the colony. "It is true that the current forces they have on the planet are no match for the Starbreaker. It isn't just firepower, it's numbers and training too. There are more forces than we would typically see, but not enough to stop us if we raided it."
"What choice do we really have?" I asked, making eye contact with each person in the room.
"If we don't go, the corporations use it against us," Torvyn said slowly. "They'll say the Starbreaker won't risk their own lives."
"But that isn't true," Kaedren said.
I paused. He was right. It wasn't true. But I'd seen how corporate propaganda worked on Sigma-9, how they'd twisted everything we did into something sinister.
"You're right," I said. "But the corporations control the narrative in their space. They'll make it true in the minds of the people we're trying to reach."
