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‘Sante, for your time and aid in this urgent matter. I’ve identified the players behind the unrest in the Wildlight Expanse,’ Miral began without ceremony. ‘It’s the crats.’

Zane blinked. ‘Thefokk?’

Kainan straightened in his chair, brows knitting, brow arching. ‘They’re back?’

‘They got decimated but not in entirety,’ Miral said. ‘Seems they’re now stirring shit up and making quiet, calculated moves. They’ve embedded themselves in the flotilla bound for Eden II, using its mafia clans as proxies. They’ve been feeding them weapons, crat-gradeHadesandOedipusmissiles, forbidden, catastrophic warheads.’

Zane let out a long breath, low and sharp. ‘Those bastards are like roaches, they just don’t die.’

‘Regardless, they’re weak, what you’re witnessing is an extinction burst,’ Mirage added with a grim shake of her head. ‘When the bosskhannuked them, he went hard, and all fifty-one of their capital ships turned to slag. Also, the noids we infected their tech with? They took them home, and they pulverized them, eating to the core of their exo-planet.’

‘So sad,’ Kainan huffed.

‘How did you do it?’ Miral asked, her synth-brow furrowing with interest. ‘It happened before my awakening.’

‘The Technocracy’s machines use subconscious processors to encode and decode data,’ Zane said in his timbred drawl. ‘We found a flaw in their system, an arbitrary code that, once embedded in a metanoid, spread like wildfire. It forced their bots and AIs to download a virus that mutated endlessly, corrupting their systems until they failed or self-destructed.’

‘It was an extermination,’ Mirage confirmed. ‘The noids burrowed into their root script, ate through every systemic layer from fleet servers to planetary cores. Half their tech tree got eviscerated before they even realized it. From what I can gather, only a dozen vessels, light-class Corvettes and gunships, survived.’

Zane nodded. ‘It was brutal. However, it sounds like those who prevailed now seek vengeance.’

‘They’ve been licking wounds ever since,’ Mirage said, flicking a hand. ‘But instead of regrouping for open war, they’re playing dirty. Sowing chaos through smaller players, letting others carry the fire. It’s smart.’

‘And cowardly,’ Kainan snapped. ‘So what’s their endgame?’

‘I might hazard a guess at revenge,’ Miral said. ‘They’re stirring up threats, and funding enemies of the Sable Group.’

‘They want us destabilized,’ Mirage added. ‘It’s an infiltration strategy, to inject their evil into a huge flotilla of millions about to land in Pegasi. To use these mafia clans by arming them with advanced weapons to attack us, so they don’t have to lift a finger in a proxy war of their making. After they probably wish to swoop in and gather the spoils.’

Zane let out a growl. ‘Backdoor rats.’

Kainan leaned forward, his utterance hoarse with steely menace. ‘Wasn’t it an old world prime minister who said that even a cornered rat is dangerous? We can’t underestimate the crats’ desperation. We have to flush it all out now.’

A beat of silence passed.

Kainan’s tone shifted, decisive, and rasped. ‘Mirage, send the Protocol Veritas-7 update to Miral. Full schematics. Weapons intel. Upgrade her network interface and combat shell. Include the recalibrated noids, we’ll use their mistake against them again.’

He raised a chin to Signet’s AI. ‘Which means that Miral, you’ll need to get into the fray, to protect Signet, the flotilla, and by extension, us all.’

‘Of course,’ Miral intoned.

‘Uploading now,’ Mirage said, fingers flicking across her holo console.

Above the command node, golden-red glyphs flared to life, cascading toward Miral.

She closed her eyes as the stream downloaded into her synaptic matrix.

Her breath hitched as her networked frame absorbed complete schematics, countermeasures, advanced defensive runes, new weapon and ship blueprints, and multi-environment combat overlays.

When she opened her eyes again, they glinted with a harder, darker hue. ‘Sante,’ she murmured. ‘I’m now afokkin’ war goddess.’

Zane grinned. ‘Stomp on these last remaining crat skulls so hard they won’t dare scamper out again.’

Kainan raised his chin in agreement. ‘Make it final.’

Miral gave a tight smile. I’ll do my best,Khan.’

The holo faded away, and the group on Eden II disappeared from view.