Page 35 of Claimed By the War Brute
And everything else can burn.
CHAPTER 28
GARRUS
I’ve stood on the edge of Ruinhold’s platform long enough to feel the void pressing against my back. The dead asteroid yawns below—an ancient impact scar spanning kilometers, its frozen crater a mausoleum of forgotten ships and lost causes. No Alliance ship has set foot here in official capacity, and no legitimate broker traffics in this black-sector refuse. Politics go to rot here. Secrets bury themselves under cosmic dust. And now? I’m one of those secrets.
Arms folded over my scaly chest, I focus on the pattern of distant frost-rime across the jagged crater lip. My bones hum in rhythm with the asteroid’s dead core. Each breath brings the stale tang of vacuum dust, mixed with engine grease and wire ozone—my senses vectoring the edge of comfort.
My comms unit buzzes—scrambled in three layers of code like a lockbox sewn to malfunction. I tap the receiver.
“Package secured,” I growl—my voice rolling through the staticky line like gravel under a tank tread.
Minutes pass. The docking clamps on the platform snap shut around a new ship. It’s sleek, black—unmarked and off the grid. The kind of ship rumor says doesn’t exist except when men vanish into dark-space jobs. General Dowron steps off first.I haven’t seen his face since—Horus IV, when we bled each other dry in trenches we barely remember. He’s wearing the same battle-worn black, the same hard-line scowl. Time hasn’t softened him. It’s sharpened him.
He doesn’t speak as he approaches, just appraises me with the weight of a man who won’t settle for excuses. I shift my stance. No apology, no excuse.
Then his voice cracks the silent tension. “You look like hell.”
I shrug. “Feel worse.”
Dowron’s gaze flicks—past me to where Syd waits, hooded and silent, one hand hidden beneath her cloak. She stands steady. The data chip she grips is like a knife under her fist—sharp, dangerous, decisive.
He inclines his head at her. “Is it real?”
She steps forward, gaze steady. “Every bribe. Every deal. Every rotting body.”
Dowron doesn’t blink. He reaches for the chip, plugs it into a scrambler held in his other hand. He watches lines of code scroll across flickering data before voice breaks: dry, cold. “If this goes public… Malmount’s finished.”
That fact lands heavier than any shell from Horus IV. I nod. “That’s the idea.”
She stands closer to me now—true to her earthed instincts. “We hit his shipments. Freeze his assets. Turn his buyers against him.”
Dowron’s gaze narrows. “And in return?”
I leave silence to stretch, then speak, each word measured. “We get autonomy. A ship. Supplies. And we do it our way.”
He levels me with a battlefield’s precision. Sequences flicker behind his eyes: cost-benefit projections made of grudges and battlefield pride. Finally, he nods. “Deal.”
The new ship—Vigil’s End—is crawling with upgrades. Alliance-grade stealth hull, pulse-thruster array, comm-scrambling suite. I run systems diagnostics while Syd works nav eggshell-strategy on an embedded holoscreen.
Inside the dim cockpit, wires hum, consoles glow, and I taste the smell of new metal mixing with recycled fuel. The ship’s hull vibrates like a heartbeat—a ready weapon.
Syd leans forward, chin dipped in knuckles. “Convoy en route to Nevar belt,” she outlines, voice calm. “Unguarded, time-sensitive. They’ll move through Corridor Six. We intercept, leave wreckage, leave witness logs.”
She meets my gaze—hunger and precision in her ocean-blue eyes. “No survivors?”
I lean back in the helm. “Only if they drop contracts.” She flicks a switch, voice low. “Fair.”
We run countdown through our bones, speak protocols in clipped rhythms—like two seasoned soldiers. She erases her identity, breathes shadow; implants my gritty calm across the hull.
We clear the asteroid’s range and enter dark-space. Vigil’s End becomes ghost in high orbit, breath humming continuous. I run final comms sweep, the silence suspense woven across hyperspace conduit.
I check her profile in the scanner first—she’s focused, controlled, a warrior all at once. I flick the helm’s auto-pilot offline. Both of our sets of shoulders slump slightly—this is it.
I feel a gravity shift as we approach the convoy’s projected vector—a slim line threading through the void. Systems hum responses. Cloak slink-readies whispered on my ear.
“Three hundred kilometers out,” she whispers.
