Page 30 of Star Claimed Omega
It silenced his pack for a beat.
They all glanced at him, surprised. Santi never raised his voice or snapped.
He was the king of drawl. He was the smooth operator, the calm eye of every storm.
But not today.
Santi cleared his throat. ‘Alright, folks. Let’s get to it. What’s on the freakin’ agenda?’
Miral flicked her hand, and the holo map ignited over the table, spinning with gold and crimson lines that displayed the star chart relative to the flotilla.
‘The Red Skulls,’ she said. ‘For some reason, they’re coming for us hard. A few months back, they attackedLoup Nine, a secret Signet munitions depot. When that failed, they lacedkokoand smuggled it ontoThe Sombraand other flotilla ships to destabilize our people. Now, we’ve got three confirmed sightings of their armed vessels within fifty clicks of our outposts last week. They’re poking at the perimeter. Attempting to plot out our blind spots.’
‘They’ll find none,’ Boaz rasped grimly.
‘They don’t have to uncover them,’ Kaal countered. ‘They just need one of our pilots to slip out of stealth, and they’ll hack their systems to get to our data.’
‘They won’t,’ said Miral, sliding into a seat and activating the ship’s layered security readouts.
‘We’ve upped the number and frequency of our stealth perimeter codes,’ she continued. ‘But intel suggests they’re not coming through the front doors. They’re trying to infiltrate us, and attack from within.’
‘Like the roaches they are,’ Zev said.
Santi mulled the situation. ‘All this activity points to a major grievance against us. We need to find out what thefokkit is, what they’re driving to, and what the heck they intend to achieve. What if we glean intel from theRed Skullsmembers already onboard, in the brig?’
Miral arched a brow. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘We’ve got a fair few in one prison wing, and several of them are in gen-pop. Get me in and I’ll try to gain some intel on what might be going down.’
‘You think the prison’s a intel sieve?’
‘Aren’t they all? Miral, one thing about being an ex-con is that I know how resourceful former prisoners can be. They’ll pick at every crack and loophole until it bleeds. They’ll smuggle intel written on scraps of paper hidden under food trays, and send contraband out through laundry chutes. I’m proposing to go in disguise and see what falls when I shake a few trees.’
‘Mak nodded in agreement. ‘Righteous.’
With the pack on board with the plan, the conversations shifted to how to integrate him into the jail yard.
Santi half listened in, flicked an eye over the risk projections shimmering across the table’s glass, and understood the dangers Miral outlined.
Yet all he could see, burned behind his eyes, was how Soleil chewed her bottom lip as she folded his clothes.
The sound of her humming off-key to herself as she wiped down his glassware, unaware that he had been watching her the whole time, scarcely breathing.
He scrubbed a hand over his mouth to refocus, yet the battle within him raged on.
When the group took akahawabreak, hishermanos’ voices fell into a murmur, accompanied by the hiss of the dispenser steaming into metal cups.
Santi, still out of it, leaned against the credenza, head down, lost in thought.
Mak prowled close, eyes raking his friend.
‘Who is she, brother?’ Mak rasped, his tone deep and amused, pitched so only Santi caught it. ‘She’s in your head. I can see it.’
Santi didn’t flinch, but his jaw twitched.
He locked eyes with his mate. ‘Oi,kinai, you gotnada. You’re chasing wraiths, my friend.’
Mak gave him a sustained, piercing stare, the same one that undid prosecutors and warlords alike.
