Page 189 of Reaper Said Mine

I step closer. The scent of her perfume is clean, expensive, and faintly floral beneath the metallic tang of the command center. “Did you know he intended to provoke me?”

“No.”

Her answer comes too quickly to be improvised. That does not make it false. It makes it practiced.

“Did your masters?”

“My masters,” she says coolly, “prefer negotiated advantage over uncontrolled crisis.”

“Spoken like someone whose masters enjoy both.”

Irritation flashes across her face. It is gone almost immediately, but I see it, and Skahar sees me see it.

Theryki lowers her voice. “Whatever Zune intended, his death has changed the board. You can rage at the trap, or you can survive it.”

The words strike too close to Ursa’s warning. My temper wants blood. My mind wants time. My people need both, and I have already spent one in a room full of witnesses.

Before I can answer, Vakka calls from the lower tier. “Lord Gnash, incoming tightbeam from the Ash-Maw picket. They are under fire.”

The command center snaps into motion. Displays surge. Officers shout coordinates. The main holo shifts to a grainy tactical feed showing three small Reaper vessels near a debris field, their engine flares bright against a wash of nebula radiation. Six attackers move around them in clean arcs, too disciplined for pirates, too deniable for honest soldiers.

My voice carries across the pit. “Identify.”

“No transponders,” Vakka says. “Hull profiles masked, but their engine signatures match older Alliance scout cutters.”

Theryki turns toward the holo. Her face hardens with genuine calculation. “Alliance ghosts.”

“Or Combine mercenaries wearing Alliance habits,” Skahar says.

“Or both,” I say.

One of the Reaper ships takes a direct hit. Its shield blossoms white, collapses at the edge, then flickers back with sickly instability. Someone on the feed screams over comms before discipline cuts the sound.

My blood heats.

Not the clean cold thinking rage from moments ago, but the old thing. The hungry thing. The boy standing among corpses in a failed colony. The captain who learned that mercy given to enemies is often paid back in widows.

“Dispatch Red Maw and Gut-Singer,” I say.

Krell looks up. “They are already escorting fuel barges.”

“Then dispatch Black Mercy.”

Skahar’s cane strikes the deck hard enough to turn heads. “Black Mercy is guarding the school ring.”

The words hit where he intends.

Children.

Reaper children, refugee children, children whose mothers still flinch when vents hiss because it sounds like old doors opening on old captors. I see them in a dozen flashes. Small hands gripping ration cups. Narrow faces pressed to viewports. A little girl laughing from a warrior’s shoulders in a market that already feels like memory.

Theryki steps closer. “Coalition rapid-response craft are within range.”

Skahar’s head turns slowly toward her. “And there it is.”

“I can have medical retrieval and defensive fighters moving in four minutes,” she says. “You have ships in the wrong places because your territory is under pressure from multiple directions. Let us help before your people die for the sake of posture.”

My claws flex.