Page 203 of Reaper Said Mine

The room becomes silent enough that I hear the faint click of cooling metal inside the table.

I want to break something.

I want to seize Theryki by the throat and show her what wounded pride can do when given proper encouragement. The impulse moves through me with old familiarity, hot and clean and useless. She knows it too. I see the awareness in her eyes, and I hate that she does not flinch.

Ursa would not flinch either.

That thought lands in the middle of my anger and changes its shape.

Ursa would ask what the outburst accomplished. She would stand in this room with exhaustion under her eyes and evidence on her compad and demand that I distinguish between being insulted and being wronged. She would make me look at the casualty list while I defended my pride. She would not let me use rage as a substitute for thought.

Damn her.

Damn how much I need her.

“My pirate habits took this station,” I say, keeping my voice low.

Theryki inclines her head. “Yes.”

“My wounded pride gathered these people.”

“Yes.”

“My brutality kept the Combine afraid to enter these lanes for nearly a year.”

“Yes,” she says again. “And now they have found a method that turns all three against you.”

Skahar closes his eye briefly. When he opens it, he looks older.

I turn back to the map.

There is a kind of defeat that comes before surrender. It happens when facts remove the choices you prefer and leave only the ones that taste like bile. I am not beaten. My station stands. My warriors fight. My name still carries enough terror to make certain captains avoid eye contact with their own mirrors. Yet the thing that brought me here, that hot engine of vengeance and defiance, no longer knows how to move me forward without dragging my people into fire.

“Define deeper coordination,” I say.

Theryki exhales through her nose, almost too subtly to notice. “Expanded sensor sharing, automatic medical access, broader pursuit authority for Coalition fighters within contested Reaper lanes, joint convoy escort, and a temporary strategic liaison posted to your command staff.”

Skahar spits a Reaper curse that makes Krell’s eyes widen.

“No liaison in my command chair,” I say.

“Not command authority,” Theryki replies. “Advisory access.”

“A spy with manners.”

“A spy who keeps your convoys alive.”

“My officers keep them alive.”

“Then let my spy help them do it.”

Skahar leans toward me. “Every emergency power in history had a mother who swore it was temporary.”

Theryki’s eyes flash. “Every massacre in history had an old man saying caution while the young ran out of medicine.”

The words strike sparks from the room. Several warriors growl. Coalition officers at the door stiffen. For one dangerous breath, the command center feels less like a military nerve center and more like a powder magazine warmed by fools.

My voice cuts through it. “Skahar. Theryki. You will both live long enough to annoy me tomorrow.”