Not the scheduled check-in frequency. A scrambled emergency channel, raw and ragged with static, and beneath the static a sound that reached into her chest and connected directly to every protective instinct she’d suppressed since the auction —
Weapons fire. Rapid, percussive, unmistakable even through the distortion. And underneath it, threading through the gaps between impacts like a wire through flesh: screaming. High-pitched. Small.
Children.
Octavia’s hands went still on the equipment.
“— under fire, repeat, waypoint is compromised, Voss’s people hit us twenty minutes early, we are pinned —” The voice was male, cracking with adrenaline, words tumbling over each other in the universal cadence of someone who knew they were about to die. “Seven adults, five minors, no defensive capability, requesting immediate extraction at primary coordinates —”
Another burst of weapons fire swallowed the transmission. When it returned, a child was crying in a register that bypassed every rational circuit in Octavia’s brain.
“— can’t hold position, they’re flanking from the east corridor, we need —” Static. “— anyone, please, anyone receiving —”
She checked the transit schedule with fingers that had gone cold. Teck’s ship was en route to the primary extraction point — two hours out on the standard approach corridor. The waypoint team was supposed to hold position until he arrived. They couldn’t hold position. Voss’s raid had come early — and if Voss had hit the waypoint early, he’d almost certainly positioned ships along the standard corridor too. Teck was flying into an ambush.
The waypoint team couldn’t survive two hours. And Teck couldn’t reach them if Voss’s ships were waiting on the only route in.
She needed to get him there faster. Through a door Voss didn’t know existed.
The gathering thundered above her. Skarreth was up there, locked in performance, surrounded by the very people whose networks he was dismantling. He couldn’t leave. Couldn’t act. Couldn’t even receive this transmission without compromising every encrypted channel they had.
She was alone in this room with twelve lives bleeding through a speaker.
The voice returned, weaker now, the gunfire closer. “If anyone is receiving, we are at primary waypoint, coordinates alpha-seven-niner, we cannot hold, repeat, we cannot —”
A child screamed. Not crying. Screaming.
She pulled up the star charts on the secondary screen. Her artist’s eye moved across the three-dimensional spatial relationships the way it moved across a canvas — not searching for what was there but for what was hidden beneath, the structure underneath the surface, the passage that existed in the negative space between the obvious routes.
There. The debris field at bearing two-seven-three. The Kellis remnant beyond it. The sensor shadow the radiation scatter would create — invisible to Voss’s patrols, invisible to anyone who looked at the chart and saw only hazard rather than door. A corridor through the field, narrow but navigable. It came out forty-three klicks from the waypoint’s south egress. Faster than the standard approach by nearly forty minutes. And completely blind to whatever blockade Voss had positioned along the primary corridor.
Octavia looked at the comm array. The transmission controls were locked — biometric authorization required, keyed to Nadir’s signature or Skarreth’s. She couldn’t touch them. She had no access, no clearance, no way to reach Teck’s frequency.
Her hand went to her pocket.
The chip was warm from her body heat. She held it for one second — felt the weight of what he’d told her,your life, only then— and heard the child scream again through the speaker.
She pressed the chip to the authorization panel.
The console unlocked.
“Who is this? How did you get this frequency?”
Teck Vrenn’s voice was flat, stripped of everything but threat. She could hear him calculating behind each syllable — whether to cut the connection, whether this was a trap, whether someone had finally compromised the one channel he trusted.
“My name is Octavia. I’m operating Nadir’s station. The waypoint is under fire — Voss’s people hit twenty minutes early. Twelve souls, five minors, pinned down. Your standard approach is compromised — Voss has ships waiting on the primary corridor. You’re flying into an ambush.”
Silence. The kind that measured and weighed and found wanting.
“Nadir doesn’t have a replacement.”
“He does tonight.”
“I don’t know you.” Three words, each one a locked door.
“You don’t need to know me. You need a back door.” She pulled up the chart on the secondary screen, her artist’s eye already certain of what she’d found. “The debris field at bearing two-seven-three creates a sensor shadow. Radiation scatter from the Kellis remnant masks engine signatures below threshold. You enter at the field’s western edge, maintain bearing through the corridor — it’s narrow, eleven hundred meters at the choke point — and you exit forty-three klicks from the waypoint’s emergency egress on the south side. Voss’s people are flanking east. They won’t see you coming. And you’ll be there forty minutes faster than the primary route.”
Silence. Longer this time. She could hear the ambient hum of his ship, the faint beeping of instruments, and underneath it all, the pause of making a decision that would either save twelve lives or end his.
