The revolver thundered in the courtyard below.
Argus could taste bile in his throat. It tasted like jealousy. Below, one of the First Citizen's Shields was putting on a demonstration for the Ministry's wealthy students—and doing it with the casual excellence that made Argus shrink back from the glass. The marksman hit target after impossible target while children cheered.
Argus turned away from the window. He was good with numbers, not guns. Numbers were safe, even if they didn't impress anyone.
"Patrick is an excellent shot," the quartermaster offered, stepping up beside Argus to look out at the courtyard. They were standing in a glass walkway, ammonia-tinted amber light filtering through the dome from the gas giant above.
"He is," Wade agreed, "one of the best." He turned from the window. "You were listing off supplies for my trip."
The quartermaster—short and ruddy with droopy cheeks—opened his ledger and ran his finger along the page. "Forty-six days' provisions, fully loaded. Two pilots: Jack Lane and Michael Grant—"
"I thought it was thirteen days?" Argus said. "When I spoke to the Minister he said it would be a normal trip."
"Your destination is Sector Six, sir. Not Three."
"Six?" Argus echoed, excitement creeping into his voice. That changes everything. "You are certain?"
"Quite."
Sector Six was outside Republican territory—an unclassified sector, uncharted on official maps. His government had never bothered to expand there, but their technology was at least thirty years behind the Core's. Maybe more. The money I could make selling even the most modest equipment...
"I'll need protection," he said.
"You will have thirty soldiers from the Capital Cruiser Denigen's Fist. Two pilots—"
"I have someone particular in mind. Vivian Drowel."
"Not possible," the man replied. "She is not sanctioned to leave—"
"I don't care if she's sanctioned. She's the one I want. If I'm going out into dangerous territory I want someone I can trust."
The man hesitated, and then jotted something on his clipboard. "I will see what I can do."
"That's all I ask," Wade lied. A jolt of heat ran across his temporal lobe as his implant heated up. He added just enough suggestion to his words to make the man do as he asked.
Manipulating someone's mind was dangerous: if the Minister caught him, his punishment would be immediate execution. And even setting aside the political risk, Argus had never been particularly gifted at it. The implants responded to genetic compatibility—the Ministry surgeons called it neural resonance—and Argus fell squarely in the middle of the bell curve. Standard issue. Functional, but limited.
He could nudge, not command. Suggest, not compel. The quartermaster would feel a vague inclination to comply, nothing more. If the man had strong enough willpower, or if Argus pushed too hard, the suggestion would simply... fail. Stronger targets could resist entirely, sometimes without even knowing they'd been targeted.
The truly gifted—people like Darius Gray, or the Ophidian twins—operated on an entirely different level. Argus had observed Alyssa once, years ago during a training exercise. She'd walked a man off a rooftop with nothing but a thought. From the observation gallery it had looked effortless—no visible strain, no hesitation. But Argus had seen her afterward in the corridor outside the training hall. Her hands had been shaking and her nose was bleeding, though she'd wiped it away before anyone else noticed. The Ministry surgeons theorized the gifted paid a different price, not lesser—seizures, memory gaps, nosebleeds, personality erosion over decades of heavy use. But those costs were classified, and the gifted themselves never spoke about it.
All Argus knew was that his own implant came with a price. Already the familiar throb was building behind his eyes—the first warning of the debilitating headaches that followed prolonged use. He'd pushed for maybe three seconds. That would cost him an hour of pain later tonight.
He doubted the ruddy faced man would ever know that anything untoward had happened.
The man nodded, making another notation. His expression was thoughtful.
Time to go find Vivian.
***
"Wade, we have a problem."
No hesitation. No greeting. Argus was irked the moment he stepped into her chambers. Come to think of it, he was always irked when Vivian was around. She wasn't exactly the friendliest person alive and she was notorious for being direct. He trusted her with his life and loved her like a sister, he just didn't enjoy talking to her.
"What sort of problem? I didn't think they would get word to you that quickly about coming with me to Sector Six."
She looked up. "What?"
"The mission trip. I thought you would be excited to go."
"What mission trip? What are you talking about?"
"What are you talking about?"
Vivian held a datapad out to Argus. He took it and glanced at it.
"New students," he said, offering it back to Vivian.
"Look again."
Wade bit back his annoyance and scanned further down the list. Number twenty-nine. Abigail Walton.
He read it again. The name hit him like a fist below the ribs.
"Oh..." he mumbled. "Oh no."
"You said they wouldn't find her."
"I didn't think... I mean..."
"And yet, there she is."
"I can't let them have her," Argus said. He clenched his fist in fear and rage. "How the hell did they find her?"
"I don't know, Wade."
"She's not some chattel for them. She's my daughter!"
He hadn't meant to yell, and the words hung in the air. Vivian stared at him, her expression unreadable, and Wade took a few deep breaths. Heat crept up his neck and his shoulders were rigid.
"Are you done?"
Wade didn't know. He said: "Yeah, I'm done."
"Good. Now tell me about this trip."
"We're going on a missionary trip to Sector Six. Leaves in a few hours, so pack your bags," he said, distracted.
"I'm not sanctioned to leave."
Wade waved the concern away. "It's been handled. I know you need a chance to get out of the Ministry for a while, and I need a bodyguard."
"Weapons?"
"You aren't allowed to have any, per the Minister. But I am. I'll just give you my guns once we're off world."
"Fair enough," Vivian replied. "So what are you going to do about your daughter?"
"I don't know," Wade replied, biting back his fear. "But she can't stay here. She was supposed to live a normal life."
"They will implant her within a month. And then the training will start."
Wade winced, unconsciously touching the long scar under his chin. It was long since healed over, leaving very little trace. It was the only scar his clothes didn't hide, a slip of his teacher. The installation process had improved since his time—fewer candidates died on the table now—but the training afterward remained brutal. Breaking down the mind to build it back up. Teaching the brain to interface with the neural mesh they'd woven through the cortex.
No child deserved to go through that.
Especially his.
"I'll send her away."
"Where?"
"I don't know," Wade said.
"The Minister won't allow it, not if he knows she is yours."
That was the truth. If she exhibited the genetic traits sought by the Ordo Mens Rea, then she would be kept because of her value. And if the Minister knew who her father was, then she would be kept out of spite. Argus Wade and the Minister had rarely found common ground.
"One problem at a time," Wade decided. "I still have a few hours before we have to go. I'll think of something."
"What about Darius?" Vivian asked. "I heard he gave a speech on Tellus. Wants to bring down the government."
"He's a rabble rouser. There are always rebellions."
"Not like this," Vivian said. "Not with Maven and Alyssa working with him. Those two are dangerous."
Wade shrugged. "It isn't my problem."
Even as he said it, the timing gnawed at him. The Ministry had swept through Abigail's school the same week Darius declared independence—administering tests on a dozen outer worlds simultaneously, casting wider nets, pulling in more children. That was what the Ministry did when it felt the ground shifting: tightened its grip. Every rebellion in history had been answered not just with warships but with recruitment drives—more testing, more children dragged into the program. Darius's revolution on Tellus wasn't his problem. But its consequences had already become his daughter's.
"The Minister thinks you helped them escape."
"Then the Minister is wrong," Wade said. "I warned Darius against leaving."
Vivian studied him. "So you aren't planning on joining them?"
Heat rose in his cheeks. "I know my place, and I'm content with my lot. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some actual problems to deal with."
Vivian nodded. "I'll gather my things and be at your ship in three hours."
Wade didn't reply, but instead walked away. His hands were clenched and his jaw tight. But the anger was only a surface layer—underneath it, his pulse hammered and his throat had gone dry. What would happen to his daughter? What would happen to him when the Minister found out he'd been hiding her?
Best case scenario, they would just kill him.
Most likely, it would be far worse.
***
Two hours had passed and Wade had nothing to show for it.
He sat in his study—a plain gray room with a desk stacked with forms and datapads—and listened to the silence. Amber light from the gas giant pooled like honey across the desk, turning the white marble walls the color of old bone.
He'd tried everything he could think of. The first hour had been spent drafting and deleting messages to Father Matthias, who owed him a favor from the audit he'd buried three years ago. Matthias had connections in the Education Ministry—theoretically, he could flag Abigail's file as a misidentification, claim the test results were contaminated. But Matthias was a coward, and the favor wasn't that large. If anyone questioned the reassignment, Matthias would fold in seconds and give up Argus's name to save himself. He'd deleted the draft after the second revision. Too many moving parts. Too much trust in a man who had none to give.
He'd considered bribery next. Transport officers could be bought—he'd facilitated enough black-market supply runs to know the going rates. For the right price, a pilot might smuggle Abigail off-world to one of the outer settlements where the Ministry's reach was thin. But a missing student would trigger an investigation. Every transport log would be audited. Every pilot questioned. The Ministry was obsessive about its recruits, and a child who vanished between enrollment and implantation would draw exactly the kind of attention that got people executed.
Running was worse. He'd entertained the fantasy for perhaps ninety seconds—just taking Abigail and disappearing into the outer sectors. But he was Argus Wade, not a field operative. He had no safe houses, no survival training, no network of contacts who could hide a man and a child from the most powerful institution in the galaxy. And running would confirm what the Minister already suspected: that Argus had been hiding something. They'd hunt him to the edge of known space, and when they found him, they'd make an example of both of them.
Every option ended the same way: a report landing on the Minister's desk, followed by his own execution—and Abigail's implantation proceeding on schedule, now with the additional punishment of having a traitor for a father.
There was one idea he kept circling back to—a notion so absurd that he'd dismissed it twice before letting it settle. Capital Ships carried Ministerial Envoys. The Envoy position was sacrosanct, protected by centuries of tradition. If Abigail could be installed as an Envoy aboard one of the major ships, she'd be untouchable. Beyond even the Minister's direct reach, so long as the Captain maintained the appointment.
But the current Envoys were all entrenched. None of those Captains would replace their own spiritual leaders just because a desperate man asked. He'd need a new Captain—someone freshly appointed, someone looking to consolidate power and willing to make unconventional deals. And there was no guarantee that someone like that existed, or would agree, or wouldn't simply hand Argus over to the Minister for a commendation.
He pushed the idea aside and turned to the stack of minor problems that had been piling up—forms to sign, requests to fill, hundreds of little problems that were easier to manage. He signed a few and let out a deep sigh.
"I don't know what to do," he mumbled, rubbing his face with his hands.
As if on cue, there was a ping on his communicator.
"The Hummingbird is ready," a mechanic said on the other end.
"Okay," Wade replied. "I'm on my way."
He was out of time, and there was nothing he could do except wait it out. He grabbed a few datapads off his desk and headed out the door. The halls were empty. Most of the students were in class this time of day, learning about the galaxy or their place in the universe. With their rich and important parents, that place was near the top of the hierarchy.
Most of them didn't even know Argus Wade or the Ordo Mens Rea existed. They didn't know about the beatings or the implants or the ones who didn't survive training. Those children didn't have a clue that some of the students wandering these halls were different.
Argus hated them.
The hangar swallowed him before he registered the transition—vaulted ceiling, the tang of engine grease, and beyond the open bay doors the gas giant's storm bands churning in slow amber waves against the dome-glass. He pulled out his communicator and dialed a number. It wasn't saved. Intra-sector calls routed through the Ministry's backbone relays in seconds—Samantha was only three hops away on the same network—and she answered before the second pulse.
"What do we do?" a woman asked. Samantha's voice was raw, cracking between words.
"I don't know," Wade said. "How did they find her?"
"The tests," Samantha replied. "They administered them at her school. I didn't know or I would have kept her home that day. They just came and took her."
Wade sighed. If she had communicated with him on an unsecured line the Ministry would have discovered the relationship immediately.
Samantha's breath hitched, then broke into a sob. "Wade..."
"I'll look after her, I promise."
"Will they... Will they hurt...?" she couldn't complete the question, but Wade understood. She'd seen his scars.
"Yes," he replied. "It's part of the training."
The Hummingbird ramp was open and waiting. A mechanic appeared at the top, a rag in hand.
"Listen, I have to go. I'll call you as soon as I can," he said. Then, lower: "I love you."
He hung up.
"Not now," Argus said to the mechanic. "Just tell me—is the ship ready?"
"Yes sir. Pilots are aboard. Soldiers need picked up from Denigen's Fist."
"They aren't being dropped off here?" Argus asked. Protocol dictated that the warship deliver them to the Hummingbird personally, not the other way around.
"Captain Schmidt died this morning. Denigen's Fist closed all operations until after his funeral."
Argus went still. Schmidt was seventy-three and had been declining for months—half the Ministry's administrative staff had been whispering about succession since the winter. He'd expected the old Captain to last another year, maybe two. Not today. Not when it mattered.
"God grant him mercy," Argus said, and meant it.
"Went peaceful in his sleep."
"He was a good man." Argus paused. The thought he'd been circling for two hours rushed back, no longer theoretical. A new Captain aboard Denigen's Fist. A fresh command with no established loyalties. Someone who might want their own Envoy rather than inheriting Schmidt's.
The idea was still absurd. But the alternative was watching his daughter get strapped to a surgical table.
"I need to go," Argus said suddenly.
"What's the rush?"
"I have to send a message," he said. "A very, very important message."
He didn't wait for a response, but took off for the ramp to his ship. He reached his Captain's quarters and the terminal flickered to life. Before anything else, he pulled up his communication logs and found the call to Samantha. His finger hovered over the entry for three heartbeats. Then he deleted it—the timestamp, the duration, the routing data. All of it. If anyone examined his logs, there would be no trace of the call. No connection between Argus Wade and the mother of a newly enrolled Ministry student.
It felt like cutting a thread. A small thing, barely noticeable. But Samantha's voice still echoed in his head—*Wade*—and he knew he'd just made it harder to ever call her again. Every communication from this point forward would need to be routed through dead drops or intermediaries. The direct line between them, the one he'd maintained for six years through careful paranoia, was gone.
He turned to the blank message field and began composing, addressing it simply 'Captain':
It is with the greatest pleasure that I am able to offer my congratulations on your promotion. I regret, however, that I must be so blunt and direct, as befits your position and rank.
I am aware that the current Envoy onboard the Denigen's Fist is Sister Portia Nace, an excellent and superannuated woman. However, it is my duty to ensure that the continued operation of Denigen's Fist is both satisfactory and beneficial to the Ministry as well as yourself. I would also like to inform you that, should you wish to discuss a possible replacement for the Sister, I might have a more than adequate option...
He finished drafting the message and leaned back in his chair, torn. If he sent this, he would be committed to following it through. There was no going back. If the Captain decided to take the message straight to the Minister, then Argus would be murdered and his daughter would likely be tortured anyway.
But if the Captain liked his proposal...
Is this what rebellion looks like? Not speeches in stadiums or armies marching under green and gold banners, but one man in a cramped room, risking everything for one child's freedom. Somewhere on Tellus, thousands were rallying behind Darius Gray's grand vision of a liberated galaxy. Here, Argus's revolution was smaller. Quieter. Just as dangerous.
He dismissed the thought. This wasn't rebellion. This was a father protecting his daughter. Nothing more.
But as his finger hovered over the terminal, he knew the distinction was thinner than he wanted to admit.
Argus reached out gingerly and hit the 'send' key on his terminal. This is either the cleverest decision I've ever made.
Or the worst.
***
The first reply came forty-seven minutes later—fast, for a cross-sector transmission. Standard routing between the Ministry complex and a Capital Ship in the outer sectors could take an hour or more depending on relay load and how many encryption layers the recipient's system required for military-grade correspondence. That Grove had responded in under fifty minutes meant she'd been near a priority relay, or she'd flagged her comms for expedited routing. Either way, she'd been ready.
Forty-seven minutes of pacing the narrow quarters, reviewing cargo manifests, reading dispatches—anything to occupy his mind while his gaze snapped to the terminal's amber indicator light every few seconds. Forty-seven minutes of imagining every possible outcome. The Captain forwarding his message to the Minister. Armed guards storming the Hummingbird. Samantha receiving word that both her daughter and the father she'd never been allowed to acknowledge were dead.
When the light turned green, his legs almost gave out.
He crossed the room in two strides and opened the message. It was from Captain Kristi Grove—a name he didn't recognize—and it was shorter than he'd hoped:
Your proposal is intriguing, Father Wade. But I am not in the habit of making arrangements with strangers based on flattery alone.
Before I consider your offer, I require a demonstration of your value. Provide me with the current Ministry deployment grid for Capital Ships operating in Sectors Four through Seven, including patrol corridors, rotation schedules, and resupply points. I want the operational document, not a summary.
If you can deliver this, we may have the foundation for an arrangement. If you cannot, then I must respectfully decline your proposal and suggest we never speak of it again.
—K. Grove, Captain, Denigen's Fist
Argus read it three times. Each reading landed harder than the last.
She hadn't said no. But the price of her yes was treason—not the theoretical kind he'd been edging toward, not the slow drip of future reports, but an immediate, verifiable act that could never be taken back. The deployment grid was classified at the highest level. It detailed the movements of eleven Capital Ships, their patrol routes through the outer sectors, the gaps in coverage that pirates and smugglers would pay fortunes to learn. Thousands of crew members depended on those routes remaining secret.
He had access. That was the sick irony of it. The Ministry's financial operations required him to coordinate supply shipments with the military, which meant he'd been granted a temporary viewing window to the deployment grid two days ago while planning the Sector Six trip. Protocol was explicit: access the grid through the Ministry's secured terminal, review the relevant sectors, and log out. The session would be timestamped, recorded, and flagged for quarterly audit. Downloading or copying the data was a capital offense—the same category as distributing it.
Argus had copied it anyway. He'd done it on instinct, the same instinct that made him keep duplicate ledgers and backup manifests. Years of Ministry finance had taught him that information disappeared when it became inconvenient, and he'd learned to hoard data the way a man in a drought hoards water. The copy sat in his encrypted personal files, buried under three layers of administrative records where a routine audit wouldn't find it. But a targeted investigation would. He'd known that when he made the copy. He'd told himself it was just a precaution—that he'd delete it after the Sector Six trip, that no one would ever have reason to look.
Now he was staring at it with very different intentions.
Captain Reyes aboard the Halcyon's Mark ran the corridor between Sectors Four and Five. Argus had met Reyes twice—a quiet man with two daughters of his own, who kept a glass jar of hard candies on his desk and offered them to every visitor regardless of rank. If someone used the deployment grid to ambush the Halcyon's Mark, those candies would float through vacuum alongside six hundred corpses.
Argus sat with his head in his hands for eleven minutes. He knew because the terminal clock was directly in his line of sight and he watched every digit change.
In the third minute, he stopped seeing the clock. Instead he saw Abigail—not the name on a student list, not an abstraction to protect, but the girl herself. The last time he'd visited, she'd been eight. Samantha had arranged it carefully: a public park, a family friend who happened to be passing through. Abigail had been drawing in the dirt with a stick, sketching star charts from memory—not the simplified ones they taught in schools, but the real ones, with correct orbital paths and gravitational curves. She'd looked up at him with eyes that were unmistakably his own and said, "Did you know that Axis orbits at seventeen degrees off the ecliptic? That's why the seasons don't work right." Eight years old, and she'd figured out something that half the Ministry's astronomers argued about in conferences.
He'd laughed—a real laugh, the kind that hurt his chest because he couldn't remember the last time he'd made that sound. She'd smiled back, and for a moment the galaxy had narrowed to the two of them: a father and a daughter pretending they were strangers in a public park, both of them knowing they weren't.
He'd walked away that afternoon and hadn't seen her since. Two years. He'd told himself it was for her safety, that distance was protection, that every visit increased the risk of discovery. All of that was true. None of it made the absence hurt less.
They were going to cut open his daughter's skull and thread metal through her brain. They were going to break her the way they'd broken him—methodically, professionally, until the girl who drew star charts in the dirt was gone and something useful stood in her place.
He could refuse. Walk away. Accept that his daughter would be implanted, trained, broken down and rebuilt into something the Ministry could use. She was young enough that she might not remember her old life. She might even be happy, in the way that people who don't know what they've lost can sometimes be happy.
He couldn't accept it. He'd rather burn.
He opened his encrypted files and pulled up the deployment grid. His hands were steady—not from courage, but from the particular numbness that settles over a person when they've already decided to jump and are just going through the mechanics of stepping off the ledge.
Before sending it, he paused. There was one thing he could do. He modified three of the resupply coordinates—not enough to be obvious, but enough to create small inaccuracies that would reduce the grid's value for planning ambushes. If Grove checked the data against her own ship's orders, Denigen's Fist's entries would be accurate, lending credibility. The others would be close enough to pass casual inspection but wrong enough to save lives if it came to that.
It wasn't much. A man handing over a loaded weapon while quietly bending the barrel a few degrees. But it was what he had.
He attached the file and typed a single line: I trust this demonstrates my sincerity.
He sent it. Then he walked to the small washroom adjoining the Captain's quarters and was sick into the basin, his body rejecting what his mind had chosen. The retching went on longer than the act warranted—dry heaves after the first minute, his ribs aching against the porcelain edge. When it was done, he rinsed his mouth, splashed water on his face, and returned to the terminal.
The headache from the implant use was hitting now—the one from manipulating the quartermaster hours ago. It crashed into the stress nausea like two waves meeting, and for several minutes Argus could only sit with his eyes closed, breathing through the combined assault of migraine and self-loathing.
The second reply arrived twenty-three minutes later.
Argus opened it with fingers that had gone cold.
Your demonstration is noted and appreciated. I accept your proposal—conditionally.
The child will be received and protected as Envoy aboard Denigen's Fist. She will want for nothing, and no hand aboard my ship will touch her without my explicit permission.
In return, I require a continuation of the relationship you have so ably initiated. Monthly correspondence regarding Ministry movements, deployments, and political shifts—anything that affects operations beyond the Core. Consider today's exchange the first installment, not an exception. I trust the implications are clear.
Submit transfer documentation through standard channels. I expect the Envoy aboard within the month.
—K. Grove, Captain, Denigen's Fist
She said yes.
And she'd made sure the price was already paid.
He sank into the chair and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Something hot and wet leaked between his fingers. He hadn't cried since he was a boy—the Ministry beat that out of you early—but the relief was so vast and sudden that his body couldn't contain it. It mixed with something uglier—the knowledge that he hadn't just promised to betray the Ministry. He'd already done it. The deployment grid was sitting in Grove's terminal, and no amount of regret could retrieve it.
His daughter would live aboard a Capital Ship. She would be the Envoy—the spiritual leader, untouchable by the Minister himself as long as she remained on board. No implants. No beatings. No training cells.
She would be safe.
But somewhere in the outer sectors, eleven Capital Ships were running patrol routes that a stranger now possessed. He'd sabotaged some of the data, but not all of it—couldn't risk Grove catching outright fabrication on her first verification. The information was degraded, not useless. And every month, Grove would expect more. Fresher. More complete. Each report would be another rung down a ladder he could never climb back up.
He was no longer just a father who'd made a desperate gamble. He was a traitor. Not in theory, not in intention, but in documented fact. If Grove decided to expose him, she wouldn't need to fabricate evidence. She had the deployment grid with his digital signature on the transmission.
The speed of her first reply—the demand for proof rather than an outright acceptance—told him everything about the kind of mind he was dealing with. She hadn't been surprised by his offer. She'd been waiting for something like it, and she'd known exactly how to test whether the man making it was serious or merely desperate. The answer, of course, was both.
Argus wiped his face with his sleeve, steadied his breathing, and began drafting the transfer documents. His hands still trembled, but his mind was clear. Every form had to be perfect. Every signature authentic. One mistake, one irregularity, and someone might look closer. Someone might ask questions.
He worked methodically, filling in fields and forging authorizations with the practiced hand of a man who'd spent his career navigating bureaucracy. By the time he finished, the documentation looked routine—just another administrative transfer, unremarkable and boring. Exactly the kind of paperwork that no one ever bothered to read twice.
He sealed the documents and queued them for transmission.
Then he sat in silence for a long moment, staring at the terminal's now-dark screen.
I don't know you, Captain Grove, he thought. But you own me. And the worst part is that I handed you the leash myself.
He could feel the shape of his future bending, the trajectory of his life curving toward something he couldn't yet see. Every month, he would sit at a terminal like this one and compose a report for a woman he'd never met. Every month, he would hand over information that could endanger people he'd served alongside for decades. And every month, he would do it willingly—because the alternative was unthinkable.
The Minister would call it treason. Darius would call it a start.
Argus called it what it was: the first in a series of betrayals that would either save his daughter or destroy everything he'd built. There was no middle ground. No safe harbor between the man he'd been this morning and the man he was now. That person—the careful bureaucrat, the quiet survivor who knew his place—was gone. He'd been replaced by someone willing to hand classified intelligence to a stranger and vomit into a basin afterward.
He didn't know yet if that made him brave or broken. He suspected, in time, it would prove to be both.
***
"What now?" Vivian asked.
Wade was in a complicated mood. They were only an hour from receiving launch clearance and things were falling into place—after a fashion. The transfer documents were filed. The paperwork was clean. And Captain Grove's conditional acceptance sat in his terminal like a benediction wrapped around a blade.
"Now we travel to Sector Six. We'll make a stop at Terminus along the way for supplies and we should be there within a few weeks."
"What kind of supplies?" Vivian asked. "I thought we were fully stocked?"
"Machinery and equipment. The people in Sector Six are living in the past. They will pay a fortune for new tech."
"Or they will kill us and take it," Vivian said.
"That's why you're here," Argus said. "I make deals, you keep me safe, and Jeremiah preaches on behalf of the Ministry. Everyone wins!"
"What about your daughter?" Vivian said coolly. "What happens when you get back?"
"It's taken care of," Argus said. The words came out smoother than he felt.
Vivian narrowed her eyes.
"Don't look at me like that."
"What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything reckless, if that's what you're worried about." He paused, weighing how much to tell her. "The new Captain of Denigen's Fist has agreed to take Abigail as her new Envoy. The transfer papers are already filed."
Vivian stared at Wade.
"Stop looking at me like that."
"Her? The new Captain is a woman?"
"Kristi Grove. I don't know anything about her yet, but she accepted the proposal within the hour. Didn't even ask about Abi's age."
Vivian's expression shifted from surprise to something more guarded. "That's fast. Too fast. What did she ask for in return?"
He considered lying. But Vivian had spent her career reading people, and he was too hollowed out for deception.
"The deployment grid," he said quietly. "She wanted the Ministry's deployment grid for Capital Ships in the outer sectors. Patrol routes, rotation schedules, resupply points. All of it."
The silence was absolute. Vivian's face didn't change—it emptied, the way a room empties when all the air is pulled out of it.
"You gave it to her."
It wasn't a question.
"I gave it to her," he confirmed. "And she wants monthly intelligence reports going forward. Ministry movements, political shifts, deployments. I'm her asset now."
"You're her property now," Vivian corrected, her voice flat. "There's a difference. An asset has value. Property gets disposed of when it stops being useful." She stepped closer, her voice dropping. "The deployment grid, Wade. That's not a vague promise to spy. That's eleven Capital Ships. Tens of thousands of crew. If she sells that information, or trades it, or uses it to position herself against a rival—"
"I altered some of the coordinates. Resupply points, mostly. Enough to—"
"Enough to make yourself feel better. Not enough to matter." She held his gaze. "You've already crossed the line. You crossed it the moment you attached that file. Every conversation we have from this point forward is a conspiracy."
"I know."
"Do you? Because you're standing here telling me about it like it's a problem you've solved. It isn't solved, Wade. It's started. And it will never stop. She'll want more next month. And the month after. And the moment your reports aren't valuable enough, or the moment she finds someone who can give her better intelligence, your daughter stops being an Envoy and starts being a hostage."
Argus felt something crack behind his sternum—not his composure, which was already gone, but something deeper. The last remnant of the story he'd been telling himself, the one where this was a clean transaction with a clear outcome. Vivian had stripped it down to its bones, and the skeleton was uglier than he'd wanted to see.
"What would you have done?" he asked.
She was quiet for a long moment. Something moved behind her eyes—not sympathy, but recognition. The look of someone who understood what it meant to cross a line you couldn't uncross, and to keep walking because the only alternative was standing still while the world burned around you.
"The same thing," she said finally. "And I would hate myself for it, the same way you do right now."
She turned toward the door. "Have you spoken to the new pilot yet?"
"Not yet," he replied.
Wade headed out the door. "Something else," he said. "Do you mind bringing the Cudgel as well?"
"My ship?" Vivian asked. "Why?"
"More cargo space. I'll give almost all of the money we make to the Ministry, so it's for the benefit of everyone."
"You're something else," she said, shaking her head.
"Does that mean you'll do it?"
"Fine. But I fly my own ship."
He nodded and clicked open the door to the cockpit. A man in his late twenties to early thirties sat at the controls. He had wavy brown hair and round cheeks.
"Oh," the man said, jumping up from the chair and standing at attention. "Uh...sir."
Argus laughed. He couldn't help it. "Sir? No one calls me sir. Call me Argus."
"Alright," the man said.
"And you are?"
"Jack Lane. I'm the pilot."
"Are you ready to fly this thing?"
"I believe so. I've never flown anything this advanced, but I think I understand the controls. The autopilot will do most of the work, I'm just here in case of a malfunction or anomaly."
"And our guide? You grew up in Sector Six before moving to the Core."
"Yes," Jack said. "But it's been many years."
"What should we expect?"
"There are about a dozen planets, loosely connected under a Royal Family. Geid and Eldun are farming planets, but Eldun isn't politically stable. Silvent and Noria are mining worlds—ore and rare metals, mostly. Most of the crops are shipped off world to feed the Capital Planet, Jaril."
"Where would you recommend we start?"
"Jaril might not let us land. They don't like the Republic, and they sure as hell don't like outside religions. They will probably attack on sight if they know you are with the Ministry. But if you go somewhere else without at least checking in at Jaril then there could be consequences."
Argus nodded. It was what he was expecting. Terminus was a small planet at the farthest edge of Sector Four, butting up against Sector Six.
The problem was, they would need to fly close to Tellus if they were going to make it to Terminus. Tellus was where Darius was starting his little rebellion, and even though it wouldn't pose a threat to the galaxy, it would certainly be a problem for Argus's little ship.
He doubted they would notice, though. Tellus was a backwater planet, rundown and old. They probably wouldn't even have radars capable of ships this small.
"In general," Jack said, "they pretty much hate the Republic back home. Especially on Jaril and Eldun. They consider us to be an Empire, expanding and stealing as we go. If they know where we come from..."
Argus thought about it and then shrugged. "So we don't tell them we're from here. We'll say we're traders from Terminus. Won't be a hard cover to pull off."
"Sounds good," Jack agreed.
"Alright then," Argus said, smiling in excitement. He slapped Jack on the shoulder. "Let's head to Sector Six!"
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