“Bulkhead overrides — lock down affected corridors!”
The consoles groan but obey. The ship responds like a wounded beast.
Still, the breaches come fast—too fast—and I can hear thewhumphof decompression seals slamming and relocking as they’re triggered.
Roxy is already moving.
I don’t ask where. She just goes.
She rips open the side panel and slides to her knees before the ship’s hologram console like she was born to fight this thing. Her fingers fly over the controls with a deftness that shocks me — not because she’s good, but because shetruststhe machine with a kind of instinct I’ve never seen before.
I’m on my feet in half a breath, watching her animate the hologram projectors one by one.
“Roxy—what are you doing?”
“Misleading them,” she says over her shoulder without looking back.
The corridor behind us groans under another set of starboard impacts.
She’s not repeating herself.
She’s fabricating a battlefield.
The holo display behind her flickers to life — a massive slaughter, complete with visualized figures, exploding blips, bloodied remains, spectral combatants — the whole scene drenched in death and chaos.
And then she amplifies it.
Sounds broadcast — screams, impact thuds, armor cracking, furious shouts.
Every single weapon sound you could imagine in a warzone, booming with too much presence for things tonotbe real. She’s turned the holo suite into a theater of war.
I watch the display flicker — false casualties rendered into vivid sensory feed — and at first I think she’s lost her mind.
Then I hear the Reaper comm traffic.
Panic. Confusion. Uncertainty.
The raiders think there’s already a massacre underway.
And theybelieve it.
Ten levels up in their boarding craft, voices crackle with panic:
“Fall back! Casualties are overwhelming!”
“Contact says at least twelve hostiles — scattered! Retreat! Retreat!”
They’re fracturing. They’re calling it in. They’rebroadcastingretreat on every open channel.
Roxy didn’t just fabricate visuals. She threw distortion, soundscapes, telemetry signatures — all the sensory cues an invading force would trust without question.
And they believed it.
I stare at her — raw astonishment clawing at me.
She doesn’t look back at me.
She’slocked into what she’s doing, tweaking parameters, shifting scenes, layering in more false data. She isn’t asking for permission.
