“Then shut up and follow my lead.”
We run the op. It works.
Even when a misfire glitches a corridor wall and collapses our line of retreat, Roxy pivots instantly, drawing a hostile with a decoy pulse and leading them into my kill box.
“Nice move,” I murmur after the clean-up.
She smirks. “I know.”
I log the data. Mission times are down 23%. Civilian success up 34%. Our combined signature risk is lower than mine solo ever was, even when I was at peak.
Later that night, she sits on the edge of the ship’s observation deck, knees pulled up, eyes on the stars.
“I read your logs,” she says softly.
I sit beside her. “Didn’t hide them.”
“You used to set the sim to lethal as default.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t anymore.”
“No.”
Silence.
“Why?” she asks.
I lean back, eyes following the slow crawl of a freighter two klicks out, its lights blinking slow like a heartbeat.
“Because the only future I could picture before was one where I didn’t make it out,” I say. “Now there’s someone in it with me.”
She doesn’t say anything.
But she reaches over and laces her fingers through mine.
We sit like that.
And for the first time since Horus IV, I feel like I can stay.
CHAPTER 36
ROXY
Syfer’s light never really turns off.
Even when we’re in orbit, even when the ship drifts into the quieter lanes, there’s always something bleeding through the viewport—commercial routes glowing like arterial lines, cargo haulers dragging ion tails behind them, distant refueling platforms blinking their coded warnings into the void.
The command cabin is dim, but not dark. I’ve cut the overheads and let the console lighting do the work, amber and blue reflections sliding across metal surfaces like slow-moving tides. Vrok’s boots are propped against the edge of the secondary panel, arms folded over his chest, chin tucked slightly like he’s asleep.
He isn’t.
He never really is.
The ship hums steady beneath us. Life support cycles. Thruster recalibrations murmur in low pulses. It should feel safe.
It doesn’t.
