Page 121 of Reaper Said Mine

I growl. “Accepted.”

The channel closes, and the command spine exhales.

Vakka folds her arms. “For what it is worth, lord, you handled that with great dignity.”

“I will throw you into the coolant junction.”

“She would follow you there and ask whether the throw was authorized,” Skahar says.

I leave before I make good on any threats.

The negotiation chamber smells faintly of artificial citrus and panic when I arrive, which means Vakka’s sanitation lie was delivered with skill. The refreshment alcove has been sealed behind temporary maintenance screens. Two workers in gray coveralls kneel beside a vent panel, looking appropriately embarrassed while carrying enough hidden weaponry to start a respectable border skirmish. The seating has shifted away from the compromised service entrance, and Theryki stands beside her new chair with golden eyes cold enough to cut glass.

“Lord Gnash,” she says. “Your station appears to be having difficulties.”

“My station dislikes guests who hide things in her walls.”

Her expression does not change. “How poetic.”

“How practical.”

Gobold arrives a moment later, broader than the doorway and twice as loud. “What in the hells happened in here? It smells like a hotel lobby pretending no one died in the drain.”

Wilcox enters behind him and gives the maintenance screens one sharp glance. She knows. Maybe not the specifics, but she knows enough to mistrust the room in a new direction.

Ursa arrives last.

She wears a dark jacket, her press badge, and the small shield tag Vakka must have clipped near her collarbone because it sits slightly crooked. Two guards follow at her back, close enough to satisfy my orders and far enough to satisfy her pride. Her hair is pulled into a loose knot, and there is a fresh stubbornness in her eyes that makes me want to shake her and kiss her and lock the entire station down until the universe learns manners.

She catches my gaze.

I hear her voice in my memory: I know you’re scared.

I look away first, which I will deny under torture.

The session begins badly and worsens with talent.

Theryki presents a formal objection to my revised demands, calling them “onerous,” “asymmetrical,” and “inconsistent with cooperative recognition frameworks.” I tell her cooperation that cannot survive reciprocal transparency is a leash with perfume on it. Gobold argues that the only way to guarantee security is immediate military deterrence. Wilcox asks whether deterrence is Alliance policy or his personal hobby. Ursa stands behind the press rail taking notes, and every few minutes, I feel her attention like a hand at my back.

Then the room shifts.

It is small at first. A scent beneath the citrus. Sharp. Bitter. Burnt almonds and hot glass.

Vakka’s left hand moves toward her hidden comm.

One of the maintenance workers near the sealed alcove tilts his head, listening.

Skahar’s cane stops tapping.

My body understands before thought finishes forming.

“Down,” I snarl.

The service panel behind Theryki’s original seat bursts outward in a silent flash of white-blue light.

Not an explosion meant to scatter shrapnel. A focused pulse. Clean. Directional. Built to punch through shield tags, flesh, and whatever unlucky body stood in the path. The pulse carves across the space where Theryki would have sat before our seating shift and burns through the chair, the table edge, and the press rail beyond it.

Ursa stands three steps from that rail.