He hesitates for a fraction of a second before nodding. “It will be done.”
Outside the viewport, the stars of contested space burn cold and indifferent. Behind us, Alliance fleets regroup. Ahead of us, Badlands factions circle like wolves testing weakness.
The price of extraction has been paid in blood.
The cost of authority will be paid in more.
I press one hand against the holotable and feel the pulse of the cruiser beneath my palm, steady and alive.
“Inform the clans,” I say quietly. “I will answer their challenge.”
Blood seeps through the bandage again, warm and insistent.
War fractures outward across the galaxy.
And I stand at the center of it, wounded but unbowed.
CHAPTER 25
ELARA
The medical bay smells wrong.
Not sterile wrong. Not clinical wrong. Wrong in the way a place meant for healing becomes a battlefield triage station in the span of an hour. The air is thick with cauterized tissue and antiseptic vapor, metallic and sharp enough that I can taste it on the back of my tongue. Emergency lighting has shifted to a low amber wash, designed to reduce shock in injured eyes, but it throws Kael’s skin into harsher contrast—bronze pulled pale beneath a sheen of sweat.
Three Reaper healers stand around him in layered leather and bone-plated gauntlets, their movements ritualized, precise. They are binding the wound with woven compression fiber steeped in herbal compounds I cannot name. Their voices are low and steady.
“Bleeding is controlled,” one of them says in his native dialect.
“Internal trauma minimal,” another replies.
Minimal.
I step closer and press two fingers against the bandage at Kael’s side.
It saturates immediately.
“That is not controlled,” I say flatly.
The eldest healer looks up at me, expression measured but edged. “The body must close around the injury,” he says. “Sedation would dull the will.”
“Sedation would prevent shock,” I counter, already reaching for the diagnostic scanner mounted above the cot. “His pulse is irregular.”
Kael’s eyes flick toward me. They are clear. Too clear for someone who should be drifting.
“Elara,” he says, voice low and rough, “do not antagonize my healers.”
“I’m not antagonizing them,” I reply without looking at him. “I’m correcting them.”
The younger healer bristles. “We have treated battle wounds since before?—”
“Before you had heavy-weapon plasma laced with destabilizing alloys,” I interrupt sharply. I drag the scanner down his torso and watch the readings bloom across the interface. “This isn’t a blade cut. This is high-density ordnance. Micro-fragmentation along the rib lattice.”
The elder healer studies the screen. “We applied pressure and sealant.”
“You applied pressure,” I say. “You did not flush.”
Kael’s jaw tightens as another wave of pain crests through him.
