Page 76 of Alien Assassin's Heir

CHAPTER 22

KRAJ

The safehouse door clicks shut behind me and the wind snarls at the shutters, like the world is trying to pry us apart before I’ve even begun. I don’t go back inside. Not yet. There’s work to do that can’t be done with lullabies in the next room.

Vale meets me at the grate of his little workshop with a cigarette stub tucked between two fingers. He looks older than the last time I saw him—thinner, as if the years had been shaving him down—but his eyes are the same hard glass I remember. He doesn’t greet me with words. He slides me a mug of black coffee instead, the steam slicing the cold air. The first swallow tastes like fuel and regret.

“You sure about this?” he asks, voice low, not wanting to wake Solie. “You know what you’re asking.”

“Tell me you’re not second-guessing me now,” I say. It sounds sharper than I intend, but the rasp in my throat has been there for days. Vale eyes me for a long beat, then nods. He’s never been one to let a friend walk into a plan half-baked.

We work fast. Vale’s little bench groans under the weight of old hardware—scrap comm-boards, frayed cables, a tangle of what the galaxy cast off and he called treasure. He hums whilehe works, a careful, distracted sound, like someone praying to a machine god. I sit opposite him, fingers tapping out a rhythm on the table, watching him solder and splice.

“You gonna talk to me like a real person?” he asks finally, not looking up. “Why are you sure this will work? Erasing your signature won’t make the Coalition forget you ever existed.”

“It doesn’t have to forget forever,” I say. “Just long enough to make Targen trip over his feet. Long enough for a manufactured corpse and a burning rumor to do the rest.” I want him to understand the edges. To know why I’m pulling this thread that might unravel everything.

Vale grunts, slipping a tiny chip into the back of a battered comm-bridge. “I can ghost you for a while. I can jam the local relays and back-route traffic long enough for a good scrub. But this’ll ping a dozen watchdogs the moment it clears, and then someone’s going to have a very curious head.” He watches my face. “Why’d you pick Arkosh? Why bring the storm home?”

I breathe in and the canyon air fills my lungs—dust, hot metal, the bitter tang of diesel. “Because it’s where she is,” I say simply. “Because it’s the one thing I’ll fight for with more fury than anything else they ever demanded of me.”

He taps the soldering iron, sparks like tiny fireflies. “You’re a stubborn bastard,” Vale says. It’s a statement, not a complaint.

When we’re done—when the last line of code is woven into the little virus Vale crafted from old IHC fragments and backdoor patches—he feeds it into the relay. The comm-net in Wildwood is a lazy beast, not built for speed but for persistence; Vale knows which tendon to jab to make it yelp. He moves like a surgeon.

“You get one shot,” he says, voice close. “If you want to be gone, you don’t come back. You understand that?”

“I understand.” My fingers curl around the handle of the mug until the ceramic protests. The truth tastes metallic and old and I swallow it down.

Vale hooks the virus into the analog feed like a ghost sliding into a pipe. He monitors the flow, eyes narrowed, his breath fogging. Data ripples across his toolkit, bright pinpricks that announce the virus’s progress: infiltration, echo, mask, scrub. One by one my coalition breadcrumbs wink out. My known trails fall silent like stars collapsing.

“You did good,” Vale mutters finally.

“Don’t say that yet.” I push back from the bench, the motion slow, deliberate. There’s one more errand I can’t pass off: favors can be made and debts paid, but some things you have to barter with the blood of your reputation.

Drex’s place sits on the fringe of Wildwood where the dust thickens and the neon signs give up. It’s a tin sprawl of corrugated metal and tarps, the kind of place that reeked of old oil and fresh sin the first time I met him. The cantina is packed with rogues and traders who never leave a signature, and the smell inside is a gut-kick of burnt synthmeat, stale beer, and something like rust. Drex himself is larger than memory, a barrel-chested thing with a grin like a hinge gone wrong. He’s aged into his nastiness, but the flicker of recognition when he sees me is almost a courtesy.

“Kraj,” he says, voice oily as used gas. “Back from the war? Or are you here to flirt with debt?” He laughs and the laugh has teeth.

I slide into the shadowed booth, the leather cracked under my weight. “I need micro-detonators. Demolition-grade. Clean. Disposable. No signature.”

He whistles, impressed. “That’s a heavy ask, even for me. Micro-dets that clean have a cost.”

“I can pay in credits,” I say. “Favor credit. Something you want—no questions asked. Or your pick of something I can get you that’s harder to source than cold cash.”

Drex studies my face, then reaches under the table and produces a small, velvet-lined case like it’s a gift. Inside, tucked into foam, are three units no larger than a thumb, dark and unassuming. They look ordinary. Deadly. Perfect.

“You’re trading favors and your face for these?” Drex asks, voice crawly. “For a man like you, betrayal comes cheap.”

“You’re underestimating me,” I say. “But you’re right. I won’t be around to collect whatever you want in person.”

He grins. “Then consider it a handshake with consequence.”

We make the trade—cash in a plastic envelope, a data-slate with a forged Helios contact, and a whisper of blackmail that Drex will enjoy for a while. The units are cold and heavy in my palm when he hands them over, like glass pebbles that hum with potential. I taste iron, hard and bright.

Planting the device is uglier than the negotiation. The listening post is a squat, ugly thing of polymer and antennae, sitting on a ridge like a metallic toad. The night I go, the air’s heavy and low, a moist clinging that smells of ozone. I watch the guards from three ridgelines away—two on rotation, careless in the way confidence breeds. They talk about nothing: a joke, the heat, off-world gossip. Their boots scrape, a little too loud to be stealth, but the noise becomes rhythm. I move like a storm front: precise, unavoidable. My suit breathes close against skin; the fabric hums with active camo that takes light and folds it into itself. Vale’s virus has already blurred the patrol scans, given me a thinner footprint to hide in.

I don’t rig a bomb, not like the films or the manuals some idiot might read. I tuck the detonator where the post’s maintenance panel sits—the kind of place techs go when the sensors drift or a module needs replacing. I pry the access port,tissue-paper thin in the hands of a man who’s been soldiering since before I knew what fear tasted like, and tuck the device close to the core sensor. It is small; the very idea of it has less weight than a sliver of conscience. It fits in like a secret.