Page 8

EIGHT

Stavian

The cargo transfer had just cleared when Stavian stepped past the final checkpoint, the scent of hot metal still thick in the air. The transport shuttle sealed behind him with a hiss. Three fortified containers of precious basian crystal were locked beneath reinforced, bolted brackets. He barely glanced at them.

He was thinking about her again.

It had been three cycles since he’d seen her last. Since she’d sat beside him in that too-small maintenance duct and told him goodbye like it hadn’t nearly cut him in half. Truly, she had no idea what she’d left behind in him. Or maybe she did. She was too smart not to.

The bay doors started to close behind him when Darven’s voice stopped him short. “Controller, the transports are nearly here.”

Stavian nodded as they moved into the sealed control center and gave clearance for the transport to open the dome and land.

“You missed the network chatter. Again.” The lieutenant leaned against a standing crate, arms folded, uniform crisp like he hadn’t touched a tool in his life. “Big week for surprises.”

Stavian exhaled, ready to move on. “Transport cleared and landing in progress. No anomalies. We’re on schedule.” He looked pointedly at Darven. “If this is a report, make it short.”

Darven smirked. “It’s not a report. You might be running the model facility in this sector, but you’re still five cycles behind on internal updates.”

That got Stavian’s attention. He paused and turned to his lieutenant. “Five cycles?”

Darven pushed off the crate and strolled closer. “Didn’t you notice that your command feed’s been throttled?”

“No,” Stavian said with a frown. “But I never had much time for ‘network chatter,’ as you call it.”

“I know, but I thought you should know about this,” Darven said. “Network’s been locking tiered oversight reports from certain facilities, including this one. I only heard about it from my brother in the Raakt sector on private channel. You should know that the Axis are reviewing Zaruxian command positions across the board.”

Stavian narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

Darven raised his brows. “You really haven’t heard.”

“Heard what?”

Darven’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. More like satisfaction. “One of the penal colonies sparked a rebellion. Toppled the entire containment grid, sent out a distress beacon, then disappeared. Gone.”

Stavian’s stomach dropped. “Which colony?”

“Vexis 112-1 through 112-4. Borderline-class. Farming,” Darven said. “Internal files aren’t public yet, but word is the overseer is a Zaruxian, and he led the breach. Untraceable since. Did you know him?”

Stavian shook his head as an uneasy numbness tingled in his fingers. “No. I’ve never had contact with any of the other Zaruxians in the Axis system. We’ve always been stationed too far apart to encounter each other,” he said, managing to keep his voice steady. “What else?”

Darven tilted his head, amused now. “You want the full list?”

“Tell me what you know.”

“Slarik Arena is a burned-out shell. There were mass escapees and full annihilation of the mechs there. No official word on if it was an accident or not, but the system noted two Zaruxian fighters among the missing. Word is that the Zaruxian changed into a dragon form and set the whole thing on fire—not sure that’s true. I never heard of such a thing,” Darven said. He lifted a finger. “Plus a brothel collapse in sector twelve. Manager vanished—also a Zaruxian.”

Stavian’s pulse ticked in his temple. “Zaruxians were involved in all three. I can see why the Axis are upset.”

Darven nodded once. “That’s why networks are slow. Axis leadership thinks there’s a pattern. They’re locking down reports until they decide how to handle it.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Stavian ran a hand down his jaw. “Zaruxian loyalty is higher than any other rank base.” Even as he said the words, he knew they were untrue. He himself had been pondering how to free himself and the miners from the Axis system. Every scenario he envisioned had flaws, however. None ended well for the miners.

“Was,” Darven corrected. “Your kind is giving Central a headache.”

Stavian didn’t reply. His thoughts went to Cerani. To what Bendahn had told him—that Terians were being kept buried and any deviation from Axis policy would result in extraction and likely execution. He’d been flagged once for questioning protocol. If someone noticed how much time he’d spent near Cerani, how many reports he’d altered, how many override codes he’d used…

They’d send a team. Not to audit. To extract her.

He clenched his fists at his sides and tried to keep his voice even. “Were there any other incidents?”

Darven shrugged. “Plenty of rumors. Talk of data leaks, a raided ship that had recently done business at the Falmic-5 auction, and even a skirmish at some remote neutral outpost. At least two of those had Zaruxian involvement. The Axis don’t think this is a coincidence.”

“Do you?”

Darven grinned. “If I were paranoid, I’d say all of you finally snapped. Still—three confirmed failures, all with your species involved? That’s not nothing.”

Stavian stared past him through the window where the transport shuttle had landed. His mind raced. He wasn’t the exception anymore, the one Zaruxian quietly questioning the system. Others had already made their moves. Big ones. Some were gone. Some had vanished so well that the Axis couldn’t find them.

No wonder Bendahn wouldn’t give him clearance. She knew what was happening elsewhere in the Axis network. Knew something had shifted. And now the remaining Zaruxians were being watched. Monitored. He wondered about the Zaruxian who was in the Central Council. The scrutiny there must be intense.

Darven leaned in, his voice just above a whisper. “They’ll be watching you.”

Stavian said nothing, but Darven’s words echoed his thoughts perfectly.

Darven stepped back and shifted his weight. “Hope the mine holds steady. We wouldn’t want that pretty little gem of yours getting caught in the crossfire.”

The words landed like a gut punch. Stavian’s eyes snapped to his. “What did you just say?”

“Come on.” Darven smiled, slow. “You think no one’s noticed the way you watch her?”

Stavian started forward, heat rising fast in his gut.

Darven raised his hands. “Relax. I don’t care what she is to you. Just take a little advice.” His tone dropped, low and almost casual. “Don’t give Central a reason to look too closely. Because if they dig, and they don’t like what they find, they’ll take your memories. Take your existence. They’ve done it before.”

Stavian forced himself to breathe. He’d heard of this memory-erasing business that Darven spoke of. It was a well-known “secret” weapon to keep Axis leaders who were not at high levels, in line. Rebel and you’re taken away to a medical facility. When you leave, you’re a blank slate. It had been whispered about, but never confirmed by Central.

But the warning was clear—and it held weight.

Darven took a slow step backward, like he’d already said too much and was waiting to see if Stavian would call him on it.

“I’m not a fool,” Darven said. “I know those suit improvements didn’t come from Axis design protocol. The materials were sourced off-manifest. The seam points don’t match Central fabrication patterns. And no one—not even your best tech officer—bothered to log them.” Darven tilted his head. “She gave you the plans, didn’t she? The Terian girl.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” Stavian said coldly.

“I don’t care who gave you the schematics. I care that my reputation will be ruined if this place burns,” Darven said. “They’ll purge us all.”

Stavian stepped forward and straightened. His wings flared. “You’d rather we keep the old suits with poor seals and thin seams?” His tone sharpened. “And lose half our cycle workers within nine shifts?”

“I’d rather Central didn’t know we’re letting miners build infrastructure,” Darven shot back. “You don’t see the line anymore. These are criminals, Stavian.”

Stavian’s jaw locked. “You need to remember your place, Lieutenant.” His voice dropped low. “The efficiency numbers will speak for themselves. Those suits are functioning at sixty-eight percent higher endurance rates, now, because of the changes I implemented.”

Darven scoffed. “You implemented. Right.”

“Do not question my decisions.” Stavian took one last step forward, stopping just inside Darven’s space. “Central cares about numbers. They’re pleased with ours.”

Darven’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s hope they stay that way.”

“They will. I’ve extended this facility’s output four cycles beyond expectation,” Stavian said. “What I choose to prioritize is not up for discussion.”

Darven nodded once. “Understood.”

Stavian held his stare for another second, then turned to take a slow breath. He’d been careful with reports. With codes. Even with meetings.

But Darven knew.

“I will report those upgrades as yours, Controller,” Darven said. “But you had better keep this mine off Central’s radar. Keep making quota. Keep the prisoners in line. Keep us off the network chatter.” He turned and walked back toward the upper ramp. “And, Controller,” Darven said over his shoulder. “Terians were involved in those incidents, too. Every one of them. So, watch yourself with 630-I. See that she’s not the downfall of us all.”

Stavian didn’t move. Everything inside him locked up—muscle, breath, reason. “Noted. Dismissed, Darven.”

Terians were involved in the incidents too? Cerani was the only one he’d seen in the system, but she’d been taken with four others, and it was likely they were the ones involved. He hadn’t heard about it because Central chose what he knew and didn’t know. Central kept the Terians buried behind locked files like a secret they hoped the universe would forget.

The rebellion at Vexis 112-1 through 112-4. The Slarik Arena. The brothel. What if those weren’t random outbursts? What if they weren’t failures at all?

What if they were signals?

He picked up the data tablet Cerani had used. He needed to destroy it. Stavian started walking. Fast. Each step echoed, boots heavy on the metal floor. Docking personnel cleared before he passed. No one spoke.

Darven was right about one thing. Central was paying attention.

And everything in Stavian’s gut said someone at the top already suspected he was contaminated. Tainted. No longer loyal.

They were watching him. Watching Cerani. She wouldn’t survive an extraction.

His jaw clenched. Central wouldn’t see her brilliance. They wouldn’t care how flawlessly she adapted, how her plans had saved miners in the last ten cycles. They’d burn her out of existence just to hide what she was.

Too strong. Too smart. Too dangerous.

He turned the data tablet over in his hand—her repair notes, the sketches she’d drawn on her own break time. The ideas that he should have purged after implementation, but just couldn’t bring himself to destroy.

Darven saw the truth. Eventually, others would too.

Cerani had warned him. She’d said that whatever this was between them didn’t matter in a place like this. Said the system would destroy it. She was right.

If they stayed like this, if she kept pretending they could keep their distance and he kept pretending he still played by Axis rules…

It would end the way all dead systems ended. With collapse.

He was done pretending. If the foundation was cracking in places no one wanted to see, it was because it had been broken from the beginning.

He stopped at the lift and scanned his wrist panel. The lift doors opened, but dust billowed from them, or rather, from around them. The floor groaned under his feet as the surface shuddered ominously.

The walls shook first. A low metal whine, deep and slow, rolled through the floor like pressure in the ground had shifted from wrong to worse. A tremor hit hard, pitching the corridor sideways. His wings flared out for balance, knocking against the lift frame. Lights dimmed, then flared harshly back on.

Stavian braced one arm against the wall. “System status—report,” he said too fast.

His wrist panel flickered. One alert pinged. Then another. And another.

His panel lit up with alerts. SECTOR E: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY FAILURE. SHAFT DAMAGE. MINER STATUS UNKNOWN.

SECTOR D: PARTIAL brEACH. MINER STATUS: SEVEN INJURIES. NO KNOWN FATALITIES.

SECTOR F: PRESSURE DROP DETECTED. FULL COLLAPSE. UNOCCUPIED.

Two of the sectors had sublevels, storage runs, mining scaffolds—and people.

Cerani. She was in E.

Stavian’s heart slammed against his ribs. He didn’t feel the floor under his feet anymore. Didn’t feel the heat flushing into his skin. Only the weight of her name dragged him forward.

Cerani was down there.

He tapped his override key into the panel without waiting for system clearance. “Lift to Auxiliary Shaft 2. Emergency access. Open now.”

The journey to Cerani’s sector felt interminable. Panicked guards and mechs ducked out of his way. His comm screamed with static, too jammed with system-wide crash alerts to cut through. Debris dust sifted down from the ceiling in thin sheets. The whole mine was protesting. Shaking from the inside out.

He reached Mech Control at full speed, slammed through the secondary door, and bypassed the locks toward the shaft leading directly into tunnel E. The main transport lift was down, trapped between floors, but there were ladders. Two levels. Not reinforced. He didn’t stop to think about it.

He didn’t stop at all.

Her name beat against his skull, over and over, louder than alarms, louder than the echo of falling debris.

She was down there.

The mine floor jolted again beneath him. He grabbed a beam to keep from sliding. Broken metal howled from below—something tore loose and rattled loudly, like the bones of the mine had snapped.

He jumped the last rung, landing hard, his boots skimming the debris-laced floor of level E, as he burst into the main tunnel. The emergency lights were off, but the distant lights of miners’ suits cut dimly through the thick dust in the air. They were like beacons, and it would make it easier to find survivors. Smoke curled through the vents like a warning.

The damage reports from his panel looped again—blast radius from the main tunnel, power fails on the E-row supports, vitals fluctuating. He blocked it out, shoving a hunk of rock out of his way as he worked through the ruined tunnel.

The first tunnel door groaned and cracked open just enough. He shoved himself through and sprinted down the main branch. Rubble littered the floor. Pipes hung low. One support beam had folded into the side wall like twisted bone. Mech guards were stalled across the network. Systems were just starting to come back online, but everything critical was too late.

He scanned the corridor for flickers of movement—helmet lights, suit strobes, injured miners. A collapsed section blocked the second access point.

Stavian threw himself at the debris, his boots sliding on broken rock. His arms burned as he shoved a steel panel aside and climbed up onto the rubble mound. From here, he could see deeper into the collapsed tunnel. Half the corridor was gone—buried beneath crushed support beams.

He activated his wrist panel again and sent a direct pulse across the lower frequencies. “Inmate 630-I. Report status. Immediately.”

The signal blinked red. “No response from assigned suit beacon.”

He swore under his breath. She could be unconscious. Pinned. Or—

No.

He couldn’t think like that. Not now. Not when the only thing that mattered was getting her out. Stavian ground his heels into the debris, heaved another slab aside, and forced air into his lungs.

He dropped down the other side of the rubble mound and kept moving. The tunnels here were twisted and half-collapsed. Steam hissed from a cracked valve near the floor. He saw an injured miner, stopped, and kneeled beside him. This male frequently worked alongside Cerani. His name was Jorr, if he recalled.

“Controller,” the male said in a whisper.

Stavian took in the bloody fabric pressed to Jorr’s wound and immediately recognized it as the same type that miners wore beneath their EP suits. The male’s suit had some tears, which were likely causing burns, but he was alive. “Medics have been dispatched to this sector,” he said. “Do you have other injuries aside from this one?”

Jorr shook his head slightly and swallowed with effort. “This one’s…bad enough.”

Stavian sent an urgent ping to the medical techs who were on their way. He held his wrist panel to his mouth and snapped out a voice message to speed up the process. “Injuries requiring triage, on-site stabilization, and evacuation. Highest priority. Get medics here immediately. Get mechs online to clear passageways.”

“You’ll be out of here soon,” he said to the miner.

“Thank you,” Jorr replied. He kept his hand on his wound. “Cerani took off her suit…ripped her sleeve to help me.”

Stavian’s stomach coiled into a knot. She’d taken off her suit to help this male, not knowing for sure whether it was safe for her. “Where is Cerani now?”

Jorr turned his gaze to the tunnel that continued beyond them. “That way.”

Stavian nodded and rose. “Stay still and keep holding that cloth in place.” He turned and kept going. He quickly came across another miner with an arm injury, but more of Cerani’s under-suit was used as a sling. Stavian kept going, sure, now, that she was alive. If she was helping the injured, the radiation hadn’t killed her. One more corner. More rubble. Then—

He saw her. Cerani was on her knees in the dust, no helmet, no gloves, suit shoved down to her waist. Her arms were bare to the shoulder where she’d ripped apart her under-suit. Nothing between her and the raw air of the mine. She wasn’t gasping for breath. Wasn’t coughing. She pressed a strip of fabric to a wounded miner’s thigh, blood soaking through the cloth fast.

Stavian froze.

Cerani turned her head suddenly—like she felt him before she saw him—and their eyes locked between waves of gritty light. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt and her hair was loose, wet from sweat, hanging low over her shoulders. Her lips were cracked, face pale, but she was alive.

Relief hit him so hard he staggered.

Then his mind snapped back to what he was seeing. His wrist panel still didn’t register her suit. It was showing her as offline because, having removed half of it, she should be dead. But there she was, holding someone else’s life together with bare hands in an environment designed to kill.

He dropped to his knees in front of her, but turned his attention to the injured miner Cerani was trying to save. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

“Stavian,” she said, her voice like gravel and smoke, sharp and wild in a way that made something break open in his ribs.

“Medics are on the way” he said.

“I pinged twice,” she said with desperation. “No one’s answering. Comms are down.”

“Not mine.” His comm popped with static.

“Evac team moving into sector E,” came a strained voice over the channel. “Partial tunnel breach. All upper access points sealed. Prioritizing survivor extraction.”

Cerani looked straight at him—eyes clear, jaw set with that same stubborn strength he could never look away from. “They’re running out of time,” she whispered.

He looked back to the miner, whose injuries were extreme. It would take a miracle for this female to be saved, and the mine wasn’t much for miracles. He could see the small female beginning to fade away. “Hold on,” he said to her, placing his hand on the side of her helmet. “Keep breathing. Look right at me. Help is coming.”

The female—Sema—blinked at him. Her mouth moved, but no sound came. He knew this female’s history wasn’t filled with violent crime. She hadn’t committed crimes against the Axis. Yet here she was, dying on the floor of a mine she’d been sent to.

“Stavian.”

He looked up. Dust clung to Cerani’s lips. Her hands were streaked in blood that didn’t belong to her. She held one of her legs at an odd angle, which suggested she hadn’t escaped injury herself. But she kneeled there, steady, as if the mine’s collapse hadn’t touched her.

He heard voices echo down the corridor. A med team coming closer. His comm chirped again, low and broken.

Stavian looked down at the miner between them. Her breaths were slowing.

“We need to carry her,” Cerani said. “It’s bad.”

Stavian nodded. “I’ll take her.” He gently scooped the female into his arms and rose with great care. Sema groaned, but was a limp weight.

Cerani pushed herself up to her feet. She let out a gasp and shifted her weight to one leg. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.” She swiped hair out of her eyes and held his gaze. “I can walk.”

“No, you can’t.” He could carry both females, but not with the gentleness that was required for Sema to not bleed out completely. There was another way, though.

“Climb on my back,” he said to her. “I’m getting you out of here.”

For a moment, as dust drifted around them and metal creaked above like the ceiling couldn’t decide if it wanted to hold, Cerani kept looking up at him. There was no fear in her eyes. No hopelessness. Just trust. Worn, shaken, but real.

And it lit the same fire under his skin that he fought every cycle to contain.

“Okay,” she replied.

He turned and crouched. His body shuddered as her warm body settled between his wings. His blood heated as her bare arms wound around his neck and locked there. Her breath was on his neck. Her uninjured leg wrapped around his middle. Fek , here it was—the skin-to-skin contact he’d craved, but the circumstances were so impossibly dire, all he could do was try to commit the feeling of her to his memory. He could remember it later, when the crisis was over.

He didn’t understand what she was to him, yet. But he knew one thing.

Whatever happened next—he couldn’t lose her.

Not now. Not ever.