Page 25 of Claimed By the War Brute
She stirs, eyes blinking open, confusion dissolving into concern as she sees me standing over her. Baggy pants, sweatshirt thrown just enough over armor plating. Her hair’s bloody from yesterday’s fight.
“Someone sold us out,” I state. “We’ve got twelve hours before the signal reaches deep holo comm networks. Everybounty hunter from here to Vakuta Prime will have our tracer.” Pause. “Do you run?”
Her hand tightens on the blanket. She pauses. Then shakes her head. Determination replaces the sleep haze. “We kill the signal. At the source.”
I pull up the nav overlay. Red dot on Telar-9. “We go dark. Infiltrate orbit, dock clandestinely. Board the station. Find the relay channel and vaporize it. If we don’t, we’re dead in a week.”
She pushes blankets aside, reaching for her black-plated boots. Puffy eyes sharpen. “Then let’s break something.”
I nod, admiration blossoming fierce and swift. Not because of her courage—but for f**king rage. She's not cowering. She’s ripping claws in preparation.
We strip non-essential systems: shields remain low but operational; external transponders offline. I reroute jump core to silent spin mode; the ship hums with quiet defiance. She reloads sidearm and checks the decoy drone system.
“Guns?” she asks, voice low.
“Primary railguns offline,” I reply. “We go in fast, precise. Only weapon is ourselves.”
She nods. “Hack, rip, burn—maybe torch the evidence afterward.”
I lean in. “Exactly.”
Twelve minutes later, we approach Telar-9's outer ring. Neon shafts of port lights cut through the black. Docking? Unmanned—sensors ghosted. My override slips us into a side lock. Ramp descends into stale atmosphere; metallic tang and sterilizing swab hit me like ice and bleach. Starglow reflections fracture on her wet hair courtesy of my lamp. She tightens her grip.
I go first through the ship’s autobridge, weapons drawn but holstered. Stations around us, inert cargo holds, distant hums. We move as shadows.
“Relay deck is two levels up from freight,” I say quietly. “We follow the map scan I grabbed on approach.”
The station feels empty. But betrayal hides in the quiet. My eyes track camera nodes. She disables feeds with expert taps. We ghost past docking crews, pivot through corridors with no guard posted.
Her voice hisses: “Door locked.”
I remove clip, jam override into panel. Sparks hiss—door rolls open with metallic scrape. We step inside.
The room smells like ozone and burnt chip circuits. Thin heat blooms. I scan the panels and find it: outbound uplink modules—blinking. Encrypted. And next to them, fresh power connectors bypassed with a signal splitter.
“That’s it,” I murmur.
She traces a finger to an access hatch. “Relay lines feed downhill into station core. We cut the buffer and fry it.”
“Do it.” I set up charges from our kit: dampened EMP and extraction grenades. Metal plates tremble. My pulse thunders in my ears—but not fear. Rage.
She whispers: “Ready.” I nod.
Her fingers whip across the charge input. Beam lights blink. She hits the detonator sequence. I toss the HDMI-sized grenade into the bulkhead port.
We step back. A hiss. Blue sparks. The station rumbles—a dozen seconds of eerie silence. Then: boom. Flash of white arc light. Panels melt. Alarm klaxons kick in.
“Move!” I grab her arm. We sprint down corridors as blaring sirens chase us. I pivot through doorways, smooth, predatory. She follows my lead—heart pounding, adrenaline back, but tempered by that awareness of each other in the chaos.
We reach the ramp as the station security drones activate behind us. I jam the command and the ramp’s magnet-equipped plating whirs shut just as two drones pound the hatch with sonicprojectors. The inner doors lock them out. We leap aboard, ramp seals, and detaches.
The station lights flicker behind us, orange blazes flicking across scratches on my armor from the explosion. We might have wounded the station. But the beacon is dead.
Back on the courier, we hit launch. The station looms behind like a wounded beast, convulsing with silent alarms. Telar-9 will lose its bounty tag—but not its infamy. Malmount will rage behind the scenes, but his assassin will not arrive soon. We bought ourselves time.
I hover in the pilot seat, hands tight on throttle. She comes in beside me. Her breath hisses, adrenaline still painting her voice.
“You okay?” I ask.
