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Savvine slowed to stop beside the synth AI, her body half-turned to keep watch.

‘Can you recover anything?’

‘Is my name Miral?’

Xander huffed at the soft retort. ‘I amend my question to ask how much you’ve retrieved?’

‘I’ve got it all, all terminals and servers,’ Miral continued, voice smug. ‘I’ve downloaded and mirrored all data to our mainframes on theSombra. Their scrambled code is already reassembled. I’m so buried up the Lombardi’s nose, I’m swishing around in their brain and core.’

Xander grimaced. ‘Sounds savage.’

Miral gave a wicked chuckle.

Just then, their node alerts sounded, and Boaz’s deep baritone filled their ears, laced with awe. ‘Jefe, Savvine, you two might want to see this. I’ve found a secret armory in the aft of the ship.’

He sent a location ping, which Xander and Savvine followed. They paced through the narrow corridor toward the artillery hold.

As soon as they entered, they exchanged glances.

Xander let out a whistle.

Racks and arrays of alien tech lined the room.

Glossy weapons with runes that flashed with unknown codes.

Plasma launchers shaped like serpent heads. Black-bladed disruptor pikes with cores pulsing red.Oedipus,Hades, and even more tech that was unrecognizable.

Cannons surging with light pulses in weird and wonderful gamma waves, as if from an extraterrestrial dimension.

Boaz stood beside one nasty-looking cannon with a twist to his lip, chewing on a toothpick. ‘These aren’t from Pegasi. Or Accord space. They’re built for erasure.’

Zev ran a scanner over them. ‘I can’t find one traceable signature. This stuff’s cloaked. Obscured in frequency bands we don’t even use.’

Miral glimmered at Savvine’s side, her eyes blinking in wonder for once. ‘I’ve never seen this kind of ordinance in the wild. Only hidden deep in the locked-down sub-archives of Mirage Sable’s servers. Tis the stuff of myths.’

‘Can you trace it?’ Savvine asked.

‘I’ve taken images and facsimiles of it,’ Miral murmured. ‘Schematics, pulse patterns, the lot. I’ve also got inside the Lombardi’s server network, mirrored, and purged it from their system. I’ll reach out to Mirage and cross-reference them with her database. I’m not sure we’re going to like what we find.’

‘Better we know than remain in the black,’ Xander said. ‘For now, let’s strip thisfokkin’ ship. Everything from an intel perspective that isn’t bolted down comes with us. Leave them naked, but leave the furniture. It’s atrocious.’

So they did.

Two hours later, theSanto Venadowas a shell of its former self, gutted, every shard of alien tech offloaded and encrypted.

Miral secured the last of the files, and the craft left dark and hollow like a carcass torn bare by wolves.

Xander glanced once over his shoulder before tapping the neural node behind his ear. ‘Infil team, back toLa Última Sombra. Let’s freakin’ go home.’

Savvine fell in beside him, her gaze still lingering on the pikes, the weapons, the terrifying beauty of it all.

‘Who gave them this?’ she whispered.

Xander’s jaw tightened. ‘Whoever it was, they didn’t come in peace.’

XANDER

On their way back to the Sombra, the Signet team and Savvine debriefed over shared communications, discussing the battle’s aftermath.