Jordan stares at me for a beat, then her expression shifts into something infuriatingly close to amusement. “So you’ve been sitting on a getaway car for five years and you couldn’t reach the keys.”
I lean toward her, voice low. “You wanna keep breathing, you don’t laugh at me right now.”
She presses her lips together, clearly trying not to smile. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s just?—”
“It’s just what?” I ask.
“It’s just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she says, then immediately sobers as another explosion rattles the horizon. “But okay. Fine. Shuttle bay. How do we get there without getting shot?”
Now we’re talking.
I pull Jordan closer to the ridge edge and point out the terrain like I’m giving a tour of hell. “Turrets sweep the approaches in arcs. They’ll still shoot if the control system isn’t fully compromised. But their range has dead pockets—shadows cast by the station’s own structural supports. We stay inside those pockets.”
Jordan squints. “How do you know the turret pattern?”
I give her a look. “I’ve been alive out here, haven’t I?”
She swallows. “Right.”
“And those troops,” I continue, nodding toward the station’s lower doors where armored figures move in and out, “they’ll start patrol sweeps once they finish inside. They’ll work in pairs or threes. They’ll loop clockwise because that’s how soldiers are trained to clear perimeter structures.”
Jordan glances at the troops, eyes sharp. “They’re not soldiers,” she says, almost to herself. “They’re moving like—like contractors.”
“Like professionals who don’t care about glory,” I agree. “Which means they care about efficiency. Which means their patrols will be predictable.”
She looks at me. “You’re… good at this.”
I shrug like I don’t care. “You get good or you get dead.”
The drugged inmate starts to sag harder, muttering nonsense. I squeeze his collar. “Stay awake,” I tell him. “You fall asleep, you die.”
He whimpers.
Jordan watches, her expression troubled, then she shakes it off like she’s slapping herself awake.
“Okay,” she says. “We go in through maintenance. We find the bay. I can fit where you can’t.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Now you see why I’m helping you.”
She exhales slowly, then nods. “Lead.”
We descend.
The approach isa dance with invisible lines.
We move from shadow to shadow, keeping the station’s structural supports between us and the turret housings, the rock cold beneath our palms when we crouch, the air vibrating faintly with energy discharge and distant alarms. Every few seconds the wind shifts and the smell of smoke thickens, bringing with it that copper tang that makes Jordan’s breathing hitch.
We reach a service hatch embedded in the station’s lower plating—a rectangular panel half buried in dust, disguised by grime and neglect.
“This,” I say.
Jordan crouches, examining it like it might bite. “How do you even know this is here?”
I tilt my head. “Because I’ve had five years with nothing to do but stare at this place and imagine tearing it apart.”
Jordan’s eyes flick up to mine at that—something in them softening for a heartbeat—then she clears her throat and focuses on the latch.
“It’s sealed,” she whispers.
