Orbital signatures.
Multiple.
New.
Morazin’s tech yells, “Incoming pings! Fleet signatures?—”
Morazin snaps, “Ignore it. Fire.”
The shooters shift stance. One of them shoulders in closer, muzzle aligning with my chest.
I have minutes. Not hours.
I make my final move.
With bound hands, I tilt my compad slightly, hiding the motion behind my knee and the rig struts. I initiate a local comm spike—one I built as a contingency on the fly—targeting the nearest relay tower on the ridge.
It’s a crude overload: flood the tower’s signal amplifier with a sudden burst of junk packets timed to its power cycle. Like forcing a heart to misfire.
The tower’s status indicator on the sensor feed spikes—then flatlines.
A sharp pop echoes somewhere off-platform, like electrical equipment giving up.
Morazin’s head snaps toward the tower.
His tech crew screams in panic. “Relay down! We’re rerouting?—”
Seconds.
I bought seconds.
The shooters hesitate for half a breath as their comms jitter—no clear confirmation, no synchronized fire command. Disciplined teams hate uncertainty.
Morazin roars, “FIRE!”
The rifles come up again.
The drones whir overhead, jittering slightly as signal paths reroute.
The holo audience feed is chaos—Baragon personnel shouting, Alliance pings flashing, IHC emergency nodes trying to assert control, market tickers screaming freezes and halts.
And there, sliding onto the sensor overlay like a ghost entering the room?—
A new orbital signature cluster.
Stealth approach.
Hardened comms.
Boarding capability.
I don’t know it’s Lonari yet. I don’t know the name Nun’s Tooth. I don’t know the plan in his war room.
But I know the feel of it in my bones: something moving with intention toward me, cutting through the black like a promise.
The shooters close in.
One steps within arm’s reach, rifle muzzle so close I can see the faint heat shimmer at its tip.
