Chapter 10
Station security was competent—reassuringly competent, in the way a well maintained pressure valve maintains pressure inside, but is ill-suited for more than that. Their patrols ran on predictable cycles, their scanners swept for heat signatures, motion, and the occasional idiot who tried to bypass a locked door with a spoon. They were excellent at noticing what was obvious and absolutely terrible at noticing what had been hidden on purpose.
And this enemy? This enemy majored in “walk inside shadows.”
Security could catch a smuggler, a drunk, or a malfunctioning drone doing interpretive dance in a hallway. What they couldn’t detect was intent. Subtle wrongness. The half second lag in a technician’s smile. A supply manifest that returned null not because of a glitch, but because someone wanted it to.
Through the link, Sarah’s agreement brushed against me—cool and precise, like a blade checking its balance. Your security watches for movement, she sent. They do not watch for mimicry.
She was right. The Reaper Lord’s infiltrators didn’t break rules; they bent themselves around them. They didn’t trip alarms; they became the kind of people alarms were designed to ignore. They didn’t force entry; they walked through doors with the correct clearance because they’d stolen it from someone who no longer needed it.
Security was efficient. Security was disciplined. Security was about as useful as a screen door on an airlock for this kind of threat.
I felt that truth in my bones the way an engineer feels a misaligned bearing: a faint vibration at first, then a whisper of friction, then the certainty that something was going to grind, loudly and expensively, if we didn’t intervene.
“Then we investigate ourselves,” I said. It came out harsher than I meant—like a wrench slipping and nearly taking a knuckle with it.
“Too dangerous.” Sarah’s voice didn’t rise, but something in it tightened—like metal under strain. “If they detect you—” The rest of the warning folded into the bond like a blade sliding into a sheath. Even her silence had weight. Her jaw tightened by a millimeter—barely visible, but in Sarah speak it was the equivalent of a full body flinch.
A cold ripple moved through the link—fear, sudden and unshielded. Not fear of the enemy. Fear of me walking toward it.
“They won’t,” I said gently. “I know every maintenance tunnel and service duct on this station. Places even your warriors wouldn’t think to check.”
That didn’t soothe her. If anything, the bond tightened further, a constriction behind my sternum—like she was trying to hold me in place with sheer will.
Through the link came a flicker of something like admiration—quick, reluctant, and immediately shoved into a mental drawer labeled Do Not Acknowledge. But beneath it was something heavier, darker: the dread of losing something she’d only just learned she wanted.
“You showed me your past,” I sent. “Let me show you what a creative engineer can do with home field advantage.”
Her bioports pulsed in that pattern I’d learned meant deep thought—slow, deliberate, like a heartbeat deciding whether to speed up. But the bond carried more than thought. It carried a plea. A quiet, terrified don’t go where I can’t follow.
You would need protection, she replied, the thought arriving as rhythm rather than words—tight, urgent, almost brittle.
I stepped closer, letting warmth flow through the link—steady, grounding, the emotional equivalent of placing a hand over hers. “Hey,” I said softly. “I’m not running off to be a hero. I’m not leaving you behind. We do this together. You keep me safe, I keep the station from falling apart. That’s the deal.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, and the bond trembled—fear loosening just enough to let hope through.
And beneath it, quieter but unmistakable: I cannot lose you.
I answered with a steady, wordless promise: You won’t.
“Good thing I know where to find the best bodyguard in the galaxy,” I added, letting a spark of humor slip into the link like a warm light.
This time, her reaction wasn’t hidden. A tiny pulse of reluctant amusement brushed my mind—sharp, metallic, but warmer at the edges.
The joke dropped into the bond like a pebble into still water—ripples of amusement, then a quiet settling. Her mouth didn’t move, but the tiniest softening at the corner of her eyes betrayed her.
“Flattery is manipulation.”
“Is it working?”
A pause. “Unfortunately.”
We spent the next hour sketching routes on a dim terminal, the holographic map washing Sarah’s face in pale blue light. The room smelled faintly of coolant and old metal—comforting in the way only engineers and people with questionable life choices appreciate. Her tactical instincts braided with my technical ones, forming a plan neither of us could have built alone.
The link made communication almost telepathic: a shift of breath, a tightening at the base of the skull, and we were trading contingencies.
“There,” I said, pointing to a maintenance junction three decks below the main conduits. “If I can get to that panel, I can tap into almost all station systems, security feeds, and communication, without triggering alerts. It’s a blind spot—old central node that was patched poorly.”
“Seventeen meters of exposed corridor,” she said, tracing the line with a fingertip. “Too risky.”
“Not if you provide a distraction here.” I indicated a service lift shaft feeding into a public node. “Security will respond to your presence. I slip through while they’re busy panicking.”
“Using me as bait.”
“Using your reputation. Nobody ignores Sarah of the Walker Blade when she shows up somewhere she shouldn’t be.”
A dry, incredulous pulse brushed the bond. Flattering again?
We layered contingencies: escape routes, false signatures, a timed diagnostic disguised as routine maintenance. The plan felt fragile and brilliant at once—like a bridge held together by scrap metal and stubbornness. It would hold, as long as we didn’t look down.
Midnight adventures
We moved at midnight, when the station’s rhythm shifted to night cycle and the corridors thinned to a few essential souls and the hum of life support. The maintenance tunnels smelled of oil and old metal, the air cooler and drier than the public decks. My coveralls carried the familiar scent of machine grease; my toolkit clinked with the small, honest noises of someone who belonged in the guts of a ship.
Sarah had reluctantly traded armor for civilian clothes. The fabric softened her silhouette but did nothing to hide the way she moved—every step measured, every shift of weight precise. Through the link I felt her discomfort like a pebble in my shoe.
“You look uncomfortable,” I said as we climbed a ladderwell.
“Cloth provides no protection,” she sent, the thought flat and factual.
“It also doesn’t scream ‘walking weapon’ to everyone we pass.”
“I am a walking weapon regardless of covering.”
“Yes. But let’s not advertise it. Subtlety is a thing.”
“I have never seen you attempt subtlety.”
“Tonight’s your lucky night.”
The bond flickered with a tiny spark of amusement—small, bright, quickly hidden.
The junction we needed sat three decks down, tucked into a forgotten corner of the station’s skeleton. The closer we got, the more the air changed—cooler, stiller, carrying the faint ozone tang of old wiring that had been patched too many times by too many hands.
We stopped at the mouth of a narrow corridor that stretched far too long for comfort. Bare metal walls. No alcoves. No cover. Just seventeen meters of “hope nobody looks this way.”
Through the bond, Sarah’s disapproval pressed against me like a palm on my chest. This is exposed, she sent, the thought edged with a protective tension she didn’t bother to hide.
“I know,” I whispered. “That’s why you’re going to make sure no one looks.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You want me to draw attention.”
“I want you to be… noticeable.”
“That is the same thing.”
“Not when you do it.”
A pulse of exasperation flickered through the link—warm, sharp, and unmistakably fond. Then she stepped out into the open.
Sarah didn’t need to shout or wave her arms. She simply walked into the public access node like a storm entering a quiet room. Even in civilian clothes, she radiated the kind of presence that made people instinctively check if their affairs were in order. Within seconds, two patrolling officers stiffened, hands drifting toward their holsters.
“Ma’am, this area is restricted—” one began.
Sarah tilted her head, just slightly. “Is it.”
Not a question. A statement. A challenge wrapped in a single syllable.
The officers exchanged a look that said we are not paid enough for this.
Perfect.
While every pair of eyes in the vicinity locked onto her, I slipped into the exposed corridor. My footsteps were soft, my breath held tight, my heart pounding loud enough that I was convinced the bulkheads could hear it. The bond carried Sarah’s awareness like a steady hum—she tracked me without turning her head, her attention split with surgical precision.
The old central node sat behind a panel that had once been beige but had faded into a color best described as “regret.” I popped it open with a practiced flick of my wrist. Inside, the wiring was a mess of outdated fiber lines and jury rigged connectors—exactly the kind of disaster only an engineer could love.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I muttered to the panel. “Talk to me.”
My datapad synced with the node in a heartbeat, bypassing the ancient security protocols like they were polite suggestions. Streams of data poured in—logs, access traces, system pings, all layered like sediment.
Through the bond, Sarah’s tension spiked. Hurry, she sent, the thought tight. They are asking questions.
“Almost there,” I whispered.
A cluster of anomalies lit up on my screen—two hotspots where system traffic didn’t match physical activity. One near a restricted cargo transfer hub. The other deep in the residential ring, in a section that should have been quiet at this hour.
My stomach dropped. “Sarah,” I breathed. “I’ve got two hits.”
She didn’t respond with words. Instead, the bond surged with a sharp, focused readiness—her version of I’m coming to get you now.
I sealed the panel, sprinted back down the corridor, and slid into the shadows just as Sarah disengaged from the officers with a polite nod that somehow still felt like a threat.
When she reached me, her eyes flicked to the datapad. “Show me.”
I turned the screen toward her. Two red markers pulsed like warning beacons.
“These are our next stops,” I said.
Her jaw tightened, but the bond carried something steadier beneath the tension—resolve, fierce and unyielding.
“Then we move,” she said.
And just like that, the night cycle no longer felt quiet at all.
The first location near the residential area turned out to be a false alarm: a Wenditor trader wedged into a storage alcove, clearly hiding from docking fees. Wenditors were already a nervous species—short, wiry, with oversized ears that twitched like satellite dishes searching for danger, and a set of sharp little teeth perfect for haggling or panicking, depending on the day. This one froze when he saw us—well, when he saw her. His frills flattened tight against his skull, his ears folded back like collapsing wings, his pupils dilated to dinner plate size, and a sound came out of him that I can only describe as a squeak wearing a trench coat.
Sarah didn’t even speak. She just stepped forward, posture loose but unmistakably predatory, and the bond carried her assessment like a cold draft across my spine: non threat, but irritating.
The trader immediately threw his hands up. “I surrender! I surrender! Please don’t vaporize me! I have children! Eggs! Potential eggs!”
“We’re not here for you,” I said, trying for reassuring and landing somewhere near exhausted kindergarten teacher.
Sarah tilted her head—just a fraction, just enough. The Wenditor nearly collapsed.
“I can pay the fees! I can pay double! Triple! I’ll pay in advance for next cycle!” he babbled, already fumbling with his datapad. “Just—please—don’t let her touch me.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Sarah said flatly.
He whimpered like she’d promised the opposite.
Through the link, I felt her mild confusion—why is he reacting as if I threatened him? I did nothing—which only made the whole thing worse for him, because her face stayed perfectly unreadable.
The Wenditor backed away so fast he tripped over his own tail, scrambled upright, and bolted down the corridor with apologies that sounded suspiciously like confessions to crimes we hadn’t even asked about.
When the Wenditor finally vanished around the corner—still squeaking apologies at a volume that suggested guilt in at least seven unrelated crimes—Sarah stared after him with the expression of someone watching a malfunctioning appliance.
“That was… dramatic,” I said.
Sarah blinked once, slow. “His ears moved more than the rest of him.”
“That’s normal for Wenditors.”
“It is inefficient,” she replied, completely serious. “If he redirected even half that energy into running, he would have escaped faster.”
I snorted. “He wasn’t trying to escape. He was trying to survive you.”
She considered this, head tilting a fraction. Through the bond came a dry, unimpressed ripple—like metal tapping metal.
“I did not threaten him,” she said.
“You didn’t have to. Your reputation walked in five seconds before you did.”
A tiny pulse of amusement flickered through the link—sharp, metallic, quickly hidden.
“He should refine his fear responses,” she added. “They are… inefficiently loud.”
At the second location, I hacked the door; instantly, it felt wrong before we even entered the cargo hub.
Sarah’s tension spiked through the bond—sharp, immediate, like a wire pulled too tight. It hit me in the chest as a metallic jolt, the kind you get when you touch a live conduit by accident. She raised a hand and I froze mid stride.
“Blood,” she whispered. “Old, but present.”
The word carried weight. Through the link, I felt the scent before I smelled it: a copper cold heaviness, like the air in a room where someone cried hours ago. Then the real smell reached me—faint, stale, clinging to the metal like a memory that refused to leave.
We pried the grille loose. The metal groaned softly, as if it reluctant to show us what was inside.
The body was folded into the duct like discarded clothing, limbs tucked in unnaturally, as though someone had tried to make him smaller. The dim emergency strips cast a sickly red glow over him, turning the scene into something out of a nightmare.
Ardani scarification marked his skin—faded lines of identity and oath—but the ripped out bioports left raw, brutal wounds. The edges were jagged, torn rather than cut. Whoever had done this hadn’t cared about precision. They’d cared about speed.
My stomach lurched. The duct suddenly felt too small, the air thinning around us.
“Why kill one of their own?” I managed, though my voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else.
“He wasn’t theirs.” Sarah crouched beside the body, her movements slow, reverent in a way I’d never seen. She pointed to a crudely stamped sigil on the armor—resistance. “He fought the protocol. There are others like him.”
Her face didn’t change, but the bond betrayed her. A surge of emotion hit me—hot, metallic, furious. Not wild fury; controlled, honed, the kind that could cut through steel if given a target. Beneath it was something quieter, heavier: grief she didn’t have the luxury to express.
“So they killed him and took his place,” I said.
“More than that.” She leaned closer, examining the wounds with clinical precision. “They harvested his bioports. Access codes. Memories. They’re not just replacing bodies; they’re stealing keys.”
The duct felt even smaller now, the shadows thicker. The station’s hum seemed to fade, replaced by the faint ringing in my ears.
Through the link, her anger sharpened into something cold and focused. It tasted like metal on my tongue, like the moment before a blade strikes. I answered with a cool, steady pulse—containment, clarity, the engineer’s instinct to categorize the horror so we could fight it.
She exhaled once, slow and controlled. The bond softened, just a fraction, enough for me to feel the ache beneath the steel.
“He died fighting,” she sent, the thought quiet and heavy. “He deserved better than this.”
I didn’t have words for that. So I sent back what I could: a steady warmth, the memory of a hand on a shoulder, the silent promise that we would not let this be for nothing.
The duct swallowed the moment whole.
Casey’s Arrival and Fulcrum Revelation
A set of footsteps echoed down the corridor—measured, deliberate, the kind that belonged to someone who wasn’t lost and wasn’t in a hurry. The sound hit the bond first: a sharp, metallic spike of alertness from Sarah that tightened behind my ribs like a pulled wire. We froze.
Sarah moved instantly, her body folding into shadow with the fluid precision of someone who’d spent a lifetime turning herself into a weapon. She slid behind a support strut and vanished so completely that the air seemed to swallow her. Through the link I felt her focus sharpen—cold, narrow, predatory—like a blade aligning with its target.
I, on the other hand, flattened against the wall and attempted to look like a maintenance worker who had misplaced not only his dignity but possibly his entire sense of purpose. My heart thudded loud enough that I was convinced the footsteps could hear it. The bond carried my spike of panic to her, and she sent back a quick pulse—steady, grounding, a silent breath that settled my nerves just enough to keep me from vibrating out of my coveralls.
The footsteps grew closer, each one a countdown.
Sarah’s breath slowed. Mine tried to escape my body entirely.
Casey rounded the corner like a one man siege engine, not with a shock baton but with a full tactical loadout that looked like it had been ripped straight from a classified armory. He carried a heavy caliber plasma rifle braced against his shoulder, a sidearm strapped to each thigh, and enough stun grenades on his vest to make the corridor feel suddenly, claustrophobically small. The patrol light caught the hard edge of his jaw and the glint of a targeting visor that did not belong to standard station security.
“Don’t move!” he barked, voice booming off the metal walls.
The rifle’s muzzle tracked directly to my forehead.
Through the bond, Sarah’s reaction hit me like a cold blade sliding between my ribs—instant calculation, threat assessment, the quiet promise that she could disassemble him before he pulled the trigger. My own reaction was more along the lines of oh no oh no oh no.
Casey blinked. Then blinked again.
“Bartowski?” His rifle dipped a fraction. “What the hell are you doing here?”
I tried to stand straighter, which was difficult given that my spine had temporarily turned into a wet noodle. “Maintenance,” I said, in the tone of a man who absolutely did not look like he was doing maintenance.
Sarah stepped out of the shadows behind him without a sound.
Casey’s rifle snapped back up so fast I heard the servos in his visor whine.
“Oh, great,” he muttered. “The warrior princess is here too.”
Sarah’s expression didn’t change, but the bond carried a dry, unimpressed ripple—like a blade tapping glass.
“You are overarmed,” she observed.
“It’s called being prepared,” Casey shot back.
“For a small war,” I added helpfully.
Casey didn’t deny it.
“We could kill you,” she observed conversationally, voice flat as a sealed bulkhead. “Hide your body with the other. No one would know.”
“Sarah,” I protested, hands half raised in the universal sign for please don’t threaten my coworkers.
“What? It’s accurate.”
Casey’s face went hard, jaw tightening beneath the tactical visor. He didn’t lift a weapon, didn’t flinch—just let out a low grunt that sounded equal parts annoyance and resignation. He’d seen her before; he knew the stories. “Maybe… but you won’t.”
Sarah’s head tilted a fraction. “Why not?”
“Because Bartowski here couldn’t live with it,” Casey said, dry as vacuum. “And from what I’ve seen, that matters to you.” Another grunt, this one almost amused. “Don’t ask me why.”
Through the bond, I felt Sarah’s surprise—an almost childish flicker at being read so plainly. She said, “You’re not as stupid as you appear.” Through the connection, I felt the amusement; it brushed my mind like a warm nudge.
Casey snorted. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Somehow.”
“How much do you know about the Fulcrum Protocol?” I asked.
His expression went still, the kind of stillness that meant something ugly had surfaced. “Enough to know we’re all in deep trouble if that’s what this is about.” A short, humorless grunt. “And knowing my luck, it is.”
“You know about it?” I pressed.
“My daughter serves on a mixed species vessel,” he said, voice dropping into something rougher. “Two months ago, three Ardani warriors on her ship went berserk. Killed half the crew before they could be stopped. Survivors said it was like they became different, like machines wearing flesh.”
Sarah’s feelings, through the link, softened in a way that startled me. “Your daughter?” she said, the tenderness in the thought a small, dangerous thing.
“She survived,” Casey said, holstering one of his many weapons with a heavy click. “Barely. Lost all her friends, but kept her life. She went to live back with her mom.” He exhaled, a low, gravelly sound. “So if you’re here to stop that from happening again, I’m in.”
Just like that, our investigation team grew by one.
The ductwork hummed around us like a held breath. We left the body where it lay and sealed the grille with a temporary patch. The station’s ducts were a maze of history—old repairs layered over new, handwritten notes on panels, stickers from long gone contractors, the occasional love note scrawled in grease where two technicians had once hidden from a supervisor. I cataloged these details the way a detective catalogs clues: a torn insulation strip here, a fresh weld there, a pattern of footprints that suggested a route someone had used repeatedly.
Before we left the maintenance level, I set a small trap: a diagnostic beacon disguised as a routine maintenance ping, instrumented to capture any harmonics or uplink traffic that might ride a covert activation signal. It was a crude thing, a bit of code and a listening loop, but it would either sit there and do nothing or it would sing and give us the telemetry we needed.
We moved on, the station’s night cycle swallowing our footsteps. The mystery had teeth now; it had a pattern and a purpose. We had a body, a stolen set of bioports, and a new recruit who had already paid a price. The ductwork vibrated faintly, as if the station itself were listening.
We were about to exhale into something that would change the station’s quiet forever.