I don’t do sentimental. Sentimental gets you killed.
But alone on the bridge, with engines humming and stars stretching ahead, I do something I haven’t done in years.
I record a message.
Not on the main system. Not on anything traceable. On a tiny isolated buffer that I can wipe with one command.
My voice comes out low, rough, like I’m talking through teeth.
“Jordan,” I say, “stay alive. Stall him. I’m coming.”
I pause, because my chest tightens like it’s trying to say more.
I don’t let it.
I end the recording.
Then I wipe the file—clean, irreversible, no recovery—because even hope can be used as leverage if the wrong hands find it.
Renn glances at me from his console, eyebrows raised. He doesn’t ask.
Good.
We go dark.
Comms quiet.
Engines steady.
And the Nun’s Tooth slips into the black between worlds, hunting a man who thinks truth is a commodity and a woman who thinks truth is a weapon.
He’s about to learn what happens when those weapons meet.
CHAPTER 17
JORDAN
The sky over Terranus V looks bruised.
Not romantic-bruised, not sunset-poetry. Actual bruised—purple-black clouds smeared across a horizon that doesn’t know what mercy is, broken in places by jagged bands of dirty light, like the planet is leaking through cracks in its own atmosphere. The air tastes like dust and ozone and something faintly chemical, the kind of tang you get near industrial vents or old battlefield soil that’s been cooked too many times.
They built the platform on a ridge overlooking a dead plain.
Of course they did.
If you’re going to make a spectacle, you want drama. You want a wide open backdrop where the victim looks small and the executioners look inevitable.
The platform is modular steel bolted into the rock, latticework underfoot that vibrates with generator hum. Cables snake everywhere—thick power lines, thinner data conduits, fiber bundles that glint in the harsh light like veins. Drones hover at different altitudes, stabilizers whirring softly, camera lenses tracking me as if I’m a product being filmed for an ad.
My holding rig has been rolled out and locked onto a central anchor point. They didn’t even bother to hide that I’m cargo. The restraints stay on—polymer cuffs, ankle straps, collar. My wrists are numb from circulation compression, and my shoulders ache from being held in the same position for too long. Every time I breathe, I taste grit.
There’s an audience feed too—holo walls erected at the far end of the platform showing live views of Baragon-aligned personnel watching remotely. Not civilians. Not random viewers. Professionals in neat uniforms and corporate suits, faces lit by screens, expressions ranging from bored curiosity to smug satisfaction. A few look like they’re sipping drinks.
I want to vomit.
Morazin steps onto the platform like he owns gravity.
He’s dressed for the camera—crisp uniform, clean boots, hair perfect, that practiced calm arranged on his face like a mask he’s worn so long it fused. He doesn’t look out of place here, on a death-world with an execution stage. He looks at home.
