Page 99 of Star Claimed Omega
‘Is he aware thatThe Red Queenhas vanished?’ Santi asked.
‘Not sure, but he will know who she is,’ Kaal replied. ‘If we get a name out of him, hell, even a whisper of how her mind ticks, we might have a shot at stopping the coming shit storm before it erupts.’
‘He won’t give you a damn thing willingly.’
Kaal’s grin turned wolfish. ‘I’ve got more than one way to persuade my marks.’
Santi arched a brow. ‘I’m accompanying you. To make sure you don’t try to kill him.’
‘No promises,’ Kaal said, already heading for the door. ‘Are you ready? Because I am. Let’s roll.’
‘Give me 5.’
Kaal raised his chin. ‘I’ll be outside.’
Left alone, Santi swiveled back to the frozen image of the crimson-clad woman that flickered in the air, his jaw clenching tighter with every beat of his pulse.
He didn’t know why, but something in his gut told him the wraith they were chasing was far closer than they imagined.
Santi checked in with Miral before he made his way to the prison deck.
‘How isshe?’ he murmured into the node under his collarbone.
Miral’s voice slid into his mind.
Sleeping. Her vitals are within the acceptable range. She’s resting with no spikes in pain.
After a beat, the dulcet tones continued.You should see how she clings to your pillow.
Santi didn’t reply, but the ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth.
He exhaled, then sealed away the thought, locking it somewhere safe prior to prowling to the deck elevators and stepping into a grav-lift.
It stopped at a dark terminal bay where a hovercraft waited.
At the terminal, Kaal waited for him beside a two-seat hover skiff.
His wraith-silver eyes were unreadable, his bulk dressed down in a matte black duty jacket.
‘We’re cleared for approach,’ Kaal said.
‘And the drones?’
‘On stand-down. We have ten minutes of flight time.’
The hovercraft hissed to life, lifted from the launch bay, and flew into the expansive central air shaft that ran through the entire ship.
Beneath them was a vast chamber, an abyss of stillness, at the center of which hovered the Cold Sector rig.
Their descent was a journey into a rarely seen part of the ship.
The facility had once beenTheSombra’sfail-safe, a prison rig suspended in reinforced gravity fields, wrapped in drone-perimeter defenses and rotating AI-coded lockouts.
A relic of paranoia from the last war. No one got in. No one got out.
The descent into the Cold Sector was a quiet, eerie fall through time.
The elevator shaft plunged down the spine ofThe Sombra, past crew quarters, tactical levels, and engineering bays.
