I pivot and head for the Nun like I’m hunting.
The war roomsmells like sweat and coffee and burned circuitry.
Holo displays line the walls—territory grids, patrol rotations, armory inventories, financial node status, live feeds of street intersections lit by angry neon. Captains file in fast, faces hard, weapons visible. Logistics chiefs, procurement runners, tech ops, med leads. People who keep an empire alive.
Fyr is already there, sitting on a chair like it’s an enemy. His shoulder is wrapped in a pressure bandage that’s gone dark at the edges. His face is pale, jaw clenched, eyes too bright with pain.
He looks up when I enter, and for once he doesn’t smirk.
“Boss,” he rasps.
I nod once, then turn to the room.
Jordan’s beacon is still burning in my pocket like a brand.
I don’t waste time with speeches.
“Jordan is captured,” I say.
The room stills.
One captain swears softly. Another inhales sharply. A tech lead’s hands twitch like they want to start typing immediately.
I continue, voice low and deliberate.
“Mission is simple,” I say. “Retrieve Jordan alive. Keep Morazin alive if possible.”
The name Morazin makes a few faces tighten. People have heard it now—rumors, whispers, the way predators start to get names when they stop being abstract.
A captain—Vesh, the one who pulled his crew off shift earlier—clears his throat. “Boss, Terranus V is?—”
“A death-world,” I finish, eyes on him. “Used for spectacle killings. Yeah. I know.”
Another captain speaks up, voice tight. “If we go in heavy, we bring heat back to Gur. League heat. IHC heat. Nine heat.”
A murmur of agreement. They’re criminals, not soldiers. They understand survival math.
I let them talk for three seconds, then I cut through it like a blade.
“You think the Nine aren’t already bringing heat?” I ask calmly. “You think they won’t burn Gur anyway once they finish using it?”
Silence.
I tap the holo display with my claw, bringing up the seized tribute ledger.
“This money,” I say, “was supposed to go to the Nine. It’s ours now.”
A procurement lead frowns. “Boss, you detonated internal locks. We lost?—”
“Half,” I say. “Yeah. We paid the price of autonomy.”
I point at the remaining reserves.
“And we’re spending the rest,” I say.
Renn’s eyes widen. “On what?”
I answer without hesitation.
