This is too easy.
Too smooth.
Tooquiet.
I tap the console. It buzzes, and the encrypted ping to Dowron’s relay tower sends out like a whisper into a haunted house.
Three seconds.
Five.
Ten.
“Anything?” Rhea murmurs.
“Not yet.”
She drums her fingers against the comm panel, fast and sharp. Her other hand’s in her lap, white-knuckling the data drive we pulled from the freighter’s decryption rig. The one with all the names. All the signatures.
The one we’ll kill to protect.
The one I’ll die to deliver.
Ping.
My console beeps. A signal returns—a flicker of Alliance IFF code and a navigation tether. It draws a path through the mist, one curve at a time, snaking toward what looks like an empty patch of nothing.
Rhea exhales. “That it?”
I nod. “Dowron’s ship masks its emissions. Smart move. The Combine’s got sniffers on every comm band.”
She gives me a quick glance. “Feels too easy.”
My jaw tightens. “It is.”
I flick the manual throttle. The freighter groans like it’s about to come apart, but it follows the path. Slowly. Deliberately.
Just as we breach the last curtain of mist, we see her.
Dowron’s ship.
Not a warship. A diplomatic-class cruiser. Long, sleek, armored enough to take a hit but not look like it came for blood. External turrets are recessed. Stealth plating gleams faintly in the starlight.
It should be comforting.
It’s not.
My tail twitches.
“Valtron?” Rhea’s voice is tight. “You’re stiff.”
“Something’s off.”
Before she can ask what, the nav array chirps again. But it’s not Dowron’s beacon this time.
It’s somethingelse.
I slam the throttle to dead stop. The ship jerks. Rhea curses, grabbing the edge of the console.
