Page 106 of Veiled Vixen

“We have to do something. This war has just started, you guys. You don’t understand. Booty, Tray, Asshole… they’re still out there beyond the gate. The Cygnians are still out there. The Akeelians are still out there. That’s the real us versus them. Not this.” I pan my arms wide. “ALCOR brought everyone here so we could stick together. Not fight each other. Because all those people who have been waiting patiently for all these years—this is their grand moment. Don’t you get it?”

Crux just stares at me with narrow eyes. Then he nods his head towards Veila. “And now you’re going to tell us that she’s on our side?”

“I am,” Veila says. “You don’t understand what they were doing to me to make me—”

“Evil?” Lyra sneers. “You’re sick, Veila. You’re the reason we’re here in the first place. Using Tycho to get to Delphi?” Lyra makes a grunt of disgust. “I don’t know why Valor hasn’t killed you yet, since he was so sure that was his only purpose in life just a few spins ago, but trust me on this.” Lyra clenches her jaw. “You. Are not. One of us. And you will not live through this.”

“I don’t even care anymore,” Veila says. “If you think I wanted to be a psychotic silver princess, then… fuck you. I didn’t get a choice.” Then she looks straight at Crux. “You.” She points at him, takes a few steps forward. “You are the one who ruined my life when you helped Corla escape. Then you all just took off to hide behind the skirts of an insane AI. Safe. No worries at all. And you left me behind on Wayward Station to be used up and turned into this!”

She turns to Serpint. Points at him next. “And you! You stole her. Again! I had just gotten her back. I was this close to finally freeing myself—by myself—from the hell they had locked me into. And what did you assholes do? Shuttled her to safety. Again. And left me there. Again. To deal with the consequences of that. So if you want to know why I am the way I am, look at yourselves. You did this to me. You made me this person when you left me behind.”

“She never said anything about you,” Crux says. “She never even mentioned you, Veila. So how do we even know you’re telling the truth? You could’ve taken our side when you first brought Jimmy to Lair Station and you didn’t. You…” He shakes his head at her. “You did unspeakable things to him, just like you were doing unspeakable things to all those Akeelian boys! Would someone please, for the love of the fucking sun, turn off those fucking alarms?”

The room goes silent. But far off in the distant levels and corridors of the station, the alarms continue to blare.

“Of course she never mentioned me,” Veila snaps, her voice too loud in the relative silence. “Why should she have ever thought about me? I was just her older sister. Not the seventh. Not in line for the goddamned crown! I was no one. Just one more pink girl in her entourage. You were there, Crux. You saw me. I was nobody. Until she was gone and then… then I was all they had left.”

“We don’t have time for this,” I say. “Luck is already invading. He’s going to go through the spin node and leave the rest of us behind. And fuck it. Fine. He needs to save Nyleena and his kids, so whatever. But if he’s not here to accept our surrender and negotiate terms—”

“Negotiate terms?” Serpint guffaws up at the ceiling.

“We’re surrendering,” I say.

“We’re not surrendering,” Serpint growls back. “Luck isn’t interested in negotiations. He’s got almost everything he needs down there. And once he gets to level one twenty-two and reaches the spin node, he’s going to leave us behind.”

“He might,” I admit. “But we’re going to entice Delphi and Jimmy over to our side with Tycho.”

“Just another pawn,” Lyra sneers at Veila.

“He’ll be fine once they are reunited,” Veila says. “Trust me.”

“How could anyone trust you, Veila?” Lyra asks. “You’ve done nothing but lie—”

“I’ve done nothing but survive! Just like you have! Only I had to do it alone!” Veila snaps her fingers at a borg. “Bring Tycho here. Now. We’re going to take him down to Delphi. That should at least buy us some time to put the rest of the plan into motion.”

Half of her borg guard leaves, the other half remains behind.

“Listen to me,” I say, aiming my words at Crux. “We need to make an announcement and we need a way to do that so everyone can see us and hear us. We’re going to tell them that we surrender and that we’re still Harem Station. Period. End of story. We stand together or fall together. Once everyone understands that there’s bigger problems heading our way, they will get on board!”

Both Crux and Serpint are shaking their heads.

“The memorial service announcement system,” Baby says, before they can object again. “We could put everyone on the memorial service platform, but instead of flying upward to the top of the station, we go down. Talk to them directly. And we blast it on all the screens.”

“The screens aren’t even working,” Crux says. “Nothing’s actually working right now. We don’t even know how much air we have left.”

“I can patch them up long enough to get the message out. And if we get things back under control and the Succubus stops fighting me, we can fix it. All of it is fixable. We just don’t have access. But she’s very close now. She and Flicka will fully infiltrate me in less than thirty minutes. And Crux… I understand your hesitation based on my past actions. But do you really want to hand over this entire station to an outsider?”

Crux turns his back to us and takes a deep breath. He spends several precious seconds trying to think things through.

But he has to know. This is the only way to stop the internal war between us.

“Crux,” I say. “Come on. We have to stick together. Bigger threats are on the way. Do you really want the Akeelians and Cygnians to take over Harem Station?”

“That’s not gonna happen,” he says, turning back to us. “The gates are locked. They can’t get in.”

“Uh…” We all look at Serpint. “That’s not entirely true. There’s a back door, remember?”

“No one knows how to get through the second gate.”