Time: Eleven days from the Gemini system. (Keres-7)

  Yuri Volkov washed his face in front of the mirror. Splashing water hit his skin and drifted his thoughts back to a long-ago memory. Back then he had still been with the mech corps, taking part in the “Red Dawn” colonial uprising — the most dangerous campaign he’d ever fought in. He still remembered the other side’s eyes, the scent they gave off. Then there had been a hole in his chest, five millimeters from his heart. If his heart hadn’t been located differently from normal, he would have turned to dust long ago.

  Today he felt the same presence of Death in that woman.

  Volkov wiped the fog from the mirror and saw fear in his own eyes. He knew he had failed. He thought of his artist-wife and their two newborn daughters. Now he could no longer carry out the mission as planned.

  Before heading to execute the job, he and Karl had agreed on a plan: kill the couriers Irene Zhang had sent, then have Volkov impersonate the courier, meet Drake’s delivery team, verify the goods, take stock of the personnel and movements, create a sudden confusion at random, eliminate the others, seize the weapons and the Elysium Echo, and retreat to the fleet’s resupply corridor. When the fleet came to replenish supplies, they would seize control.

  On Keres-7 you could always find a scapegoat to take the fall for everything. Send the info to Drake and Brenner — even if Karl’s worst outcome would be imprisonment, that would be something to deal with after returning to Hades. Until then they’d have time to seize the fleet.

  But now the plan had completely collapsed. The enemy was only a woman, yet she could bury everyone on his side on this sulfur-stinking world. He dared not contact other fleet personnel. If Vera discovered he was impersonating Irene Zhang’s agent, only his soul would return to the fleet.

  Over the next day or two he followed Vera either to the bar drinking or to the arena watching crowds obtain sensory thrills in the millennia-old ways of brutality and bloodshed.

  Volkov had asked Vera when she would make the exchange; she only smiled and said the time hadn’t come yet. Every minute he schemed how to get rid of her and return to the fleet to catch his breath. He didn’t want to do another mission like this. He’d rather return to the battlefield and fight face-to-face.

  All movements of these two men and the four bodyguards Vera brought were being recorded in real time.

  When Luka Dragomir learned this, he asked, “Any new movements planned?”

  “They’ll book the whole restaurant for tomorrow’s trade,” the male attendant replied.

  “Oh? Isn’t it safer to trade inside the suite?”

  “Vera suggested a room trade, but the other side refused. So it’s in the restaurant.”

  Ha — it seems some people really care about their lives.

  Dragomir’s laughter cut off. His hoarse voice said: prepare to act tomorrow. As soon as they give the coordinates for the weapons swap.

  A wineglass shattered.

  The next day, the restaurant was cleared of unrelated patrons, including the servers.

  Sitting opposite Vera was Damian Cross Ryder from the Hades convoy prisoner transport, six military men standing behind him.

  Ryder and Volkov had been through many missions together; they were close. According to the original plan Volkov should have sent Ryder details about Drake’s people before the trade. But Volkov had not followed through. What had gone wrong?

  When Vera suggested trading in a room, he quickly decided to move it to the restaurant. It was a public area, and for the right price you could book the whole place. Before answering, he and the others had already scouted the restaurant’s layout — at least five exits, escape routes available.

  When Volkov’s feed cut, he instinctively felt the danger of this mission; it was not as easy as before.

  Vera felt his tension. Ryder appeared calm, but the upper half of his body was stiff, especially around the shoulders — that fixed posture betrayed his inner anxiety.

  “Mr. Ryder, what are you afraid of?” Vera asked with a smile.

  Volkov stood behind her holding two cases. He didn’t look at Ryder; his gaze scanned the restaurant exits.

  Ryder’s eyes flicked from Volkov back to Vera — the woman before him with pretty blue eyes. When he looked at her, something inside him seemed to shift.

  “Everyone has fear,” Ryder said, meeting her gaze. “People think they’ll forget it, but it’s only wrapped by layers of hard shells. Once a scene or a line is struck, cracks appear on that shell. Miss Vera — what do you think?”

  Vera looked him straight in the eye, unflinching. “Maybe that’s your personal illusion. Is Drake’s weapon shipment and the other half of the cash ready? Tell me the coordinates.”

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “Show me the Elysium Echo,” Ryder replied. “You know weapons can’t be brought in here, so my people are waiting at some orbital spot for your side to collect the cargo.”

  Vera made a gesture. Volkov stepped forward from behind, set the cases on the table, keyed his biometrics, and opened one.

  Ryder picked up an Elysium Echo — a grain-of-rice sized golden, translucent crystal. It could dissolve under the tongue or be applied to the skin for absorption, using nano-vesicles and responsive pro-drugs to target specific brain regions (the nucleus accumbens, the amygdala, defined prefrontal circuits) with slow, layered release. The first three minutes of ingestion projected the subject’s mind into a scene of “being gently drawn into a golden vortex,” then delivered thirty to ninety minutes of full alternate-world immersion.

  Especially on the battlefield, when facing an unbeatable enemy, a soldier wearing a small mask and taking one inhalation could “reboot” his collapsing will between engagements.

  Ryder stifled the impulse to press the crystal to his temple and put it back in the case. A bright glint crossed Vera’s blue eyes. She knew too well that few could resist the urge to try Elysium Echo after touching it. Like the devil whispering: “Child, stick it on and you’ll get everything you want.”

  Assassins’ wills are stronger than ordinary people’s, but even they have a fragile thought that in an instant can shatter reason. She had felt that urge countless times and had learned to overcome it. That was why she survived in this line of work: defeating one’s desire is the ultimate test.

  “The spatial coordinates are PSR J0633+06, …” Ryder had just finished giving the location when a faint popping sound was heard and the restaurant plunged into darkness.

  Volkov barely managed to snatch the case to his chest and ducked low. Ryder’s first reaction was to assume Vera had tried to take out his side, but the odd feeling passed — years of combat had given him instinctive reflexes. He lunged toward Vera’s position.

  When the lights died, Vera’s irises began to operate; with their help she could clearly see every person’s reactions. What surprised her was Ryder’s movement. He tackled her to the ground but only to shield her with his body. Her alloy dagger in the palm of her hand missed his throat by a hair.

  Then energy rifles sounded in the restaurant.

  Vera realized in that instant she’d overestimated Luka Dragomir’s bottom line.

  Time: Eight days from the Gemini system. (Main thread)

  “You idiot.” General Brenner spat in Karl von Reiss’s face.

  Karl straightened; his head tilted thirty degrees; sweat beaded on his forehead.

  He had never seen General Brenner lose composure like this. Even after being assigned to prisoner transports and subjected to the harsh ups-and-downs of authority, Brenner always retained his austere poise as the top commander.

  But this time the loss of control had stripped that man of his usual calm.

  Karl knew that after returning to the Ashen Protectorate of Lethe, Brenner could lose all the hard-won prestige and status he’d built his life on.

  This wasn’t just about lost weapons — there were also drugs. Political rivals would scrape up stories about Karl’s childhood misdeeds and splash them all over the news.

  Brenner stepped in front of him and looked at the young man’s terrified face. His anger softened slightly.

  “Do you have a remedial plan?”

  “I want to hand this video to Marcus Drake. Maybe, after watching it, he’ll be willing to negotiate,” Karl replied.

  Brenner’s facial muscles tightened. “Do you think Marcus Drake — who for decades has controlled networks across three star systems — will believe an unverified video? Just because the fleet AI rates it as ninety-nine percent authentic?”

  “The fleet AI’s analysis shows ninety-nine percent authenticity,” Karl stammered.

  Silence filled the room — only their breath remained audible.

  After a long pause Brenner said with weary expression, “Arrange the time and place; I’ll meet him myself and try to resolve this. Tell Drake if he can fix the trouble, I’ll let him leave before the fleet reaches the Hades Rim.”

  When Karl heard this, his previously stiff neck relaxed and his head shot up. “If Drake doesn’t arrive at the military-designated rendezvous, isn’t that worse than the weapons loss?”

  “A single dead man will be justification enough for the military. Without weapons, you’re a lamb to the slaughter. We are soldiers — weapons are our life.” Brenner waved him away without another word. Karl saluted and retreated carefully.

  Several meters underground beneath Gemini, in the wreckage of a starship.

  The obsidian sphere hovered and drifted under the crystal mountain, watching thousands of memory chips sleeping there.

  Two slender hands reached out to touch the memories, then withdrew.

  A mechanical voice echoed in the cavern: “M, Mary, Elena — perhaps I could choose a better timeline to experience, one that would reduce the pain I feel, though grief for me is a mathematical rupture. But in that timeline, what I face would hold meaning for me or for him. His arrival is a singularity created by God. Though the time is not yet ripe, I am willing to face the countless twists of fate on that timeline with him. Expecting a human to appear who feels neither fear nor aversion toward my kind is difficult. In fact, that person made many different choices. I can now compute that this one will be different from before. Even if I must wait centuries, I want to experience crossing species-bound emotions once more. Do you think my choice is right?”

  Volkov slowly rose from the ground, bearing multiple bullet wounds. His hands first found the table. He croaked broken sounds, “Help… help,” and suddenly remembered the briefcase that should have been in his hands — it was gone. “There’s no cargo left.” He let out a final sound and then fell back into darkness.

  Hours later, when he woke again, he propped himself up and stood. He scanned the scene: the corpses of a few crewmen a short distance away, and the bodies of Vera’s men.

  Bullet casings scattered across the floor. He stooped, picked up a slug and inspected it. The projectile was made of a bio-mimetic composite designed to evade X-ray and CT scanning — an internal structure of high-water-content polymers and nano-fillers. Specially made to skirt security. He put it down.

  He examined the corpses and found unfamiliar faces; one man with a knife-scarred face was horribly mangled: aside from his face, his torso had been stabbed over forty times, organs spilled across the floor.

  “Did these weapons come from them? What the hell happened? Where’s Vera? Where’s Ryde?”

  Keres-7 shrank on the display as Vera sat in the cockpit, the other man unconscious beside her.

  Two cases and a pile of weapons lay nearby.

  Vera glanced at the man at her side.

  At the moment the darkness fell, his first instinct had been to throw himself over her and take the bullets. That is an error variable impossible to calculate in an assassin’s logic.

  Watching the disappearing planet on the screen, a mocking curl formed at her mouth. She murmured softly: “Foolish men.”

  (End of Chapter 130)

  ? JunkyardJack369 2026, All Rights Reserved