Page 51

One by one, the Signet gunships disengaged from the docking cradles with whispering hisses and dropped into the vacuum of the cosmos.

The formation was tight, elegant, and predatory, lethal harbingers of death, growling through space toward the Venantia Eterna .

Savvine led them out of the void as the Bianchi dreadnought loomed ahead like a ruined cathedral adrift in a flickering star field.

Its vast hull was webbed with carbon scoring and lengthy, ragged seams where power surges from Miral and Eugene’s recent fight blew out entire decks.

Savvine’s jaw clenched beneath her visor. Her fingers flexed on the handles of her twin plasma blades.

The Bianchi ark ship appeared damaged, its capacity grid weak, but it was still afloat, and regal in its long-arched frame and domed sanctum towers.

She gazed at it, her heart going out to everyone within.

Tonight, if all went well, they would be free.

While the skirmish with faux Eugene decimated the outer defenses of the Eterna, his troops of synth droids still marched through the halls of the generational ship.

It was this army that they came to overcome.

The time for fury was upon them.

Suited up and toting weapons, Miral and Savvine snuck out of their parked, stealthed Corvette and drifted to the aft of the Eterna.

Kaal, Boaz, and Santi joined them.

With soundless nods, neural whispers, and hand signals to communicate, they breached a lateral shaft, an old maintenance tunnel forgotten in the schematics.

They slipped inside the belly of the Eterna .

Savvine took the lead, familiar with every plating and corridor.

Moving through darkened walkways and glass-walled chambers, they became shadows, surgical and lethal.

Eugene’s remaining droids, still stalking the halls, were no match.

One good thing about Eugene’s control-freak madness was the fact that the entire civilian population was safe on one deck, leaving most of the lower and upper corridors to the automatons.

These hallways turned into kill zones.

While Savvine provided intel, Kaal, Boaz, and Santi’s weapons razed and cut down at will, felling droids before they got a chance to blast.

Miral’s attacks were devastating. She flung metanoids that fractured into seething rivers of energy that darted like needle-fanged serpents into the army of droids.

Miniature suns flared. Circuits popped and twisted as metal husks collapsed into molten ruin.

Then came the human element.

The Bianchi’s rogue security teams, loyal to the fake Eugene, sprang traps and opened fire.

Kaal met them head-on, fists shattering visors and collapsing rib cages with seismic blows.

Boaz and Santi’s rifles sang death, each shot clean, fast, and lethal. Heads snapped back. Limbs dropped, no wasted motion.

Savvine’s laser blades left trails of smoldering blue across the blackened walls as she fought, motivated by justice incarnate.

By the time they reached the bridge, blood and laser soot smeared her suit and boots.

Her chest rose steadily. Her pulse thrummed with measured violence.

Her eyes fell on the cluster of Bianchi defectors, the last gasp of a failed coup, huddled near the controls, weapons clutched with shaking hands.

Some pleaded. Some ran. None got far.

She disarmed them with brutal efficiency and cuffed them, turning their betrayal into a quiet reckoning.

She tapped her HUD, and the visor lifted, revealing her face to them.

Their faces blanched with fear as she glared at them. ‘Such fokkin ’ cowards. You traded legacy for leverage, and you will answer for it if I’ve anything to do with it.’

‘Savvine?’ Kaal’s voice crackled over her neural channel.

Her rifle lowered an inch. ‘Report.’

‘We’re in the aft ballast compartments, lower decks. You’re gonna want to see this.’

After marching the traitors to the nearest brig, Savvine and Miral descended via an elevator to the darkened stories.

The lift bypassed multiple sealed hatches as they dropped through the skeletal spine of the generational ship. The air grew warmer, humid, and strange.

They followed the reek of chemicals and the flicker of ambient light.

Santi met them at a thick security door, fingers tapping the bypass sequence.

It hissed open.

What lay beyond defied explanation.

Piles of lush cushions in mismatched silk and velvet. String lights strung between rusted bulkheads.

Hookah rigs connected to biochemical infusers.

The walls projected rainforest scenes, sloths hanging from trees, birds flitting through misty jungles.

The aroma of koko was overpowering, rich, floral, and narcotic.

Sprawled shirtless on a violet divan, threadbare satin underwear dangling on his hips, clashing slippers on his feet, one fuzzy, one sequined, lay a man.

Grinning up at them, pupils blown and dilated, glitter clinging to his matted hair.

Savvine blinked in disbelief. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

‘Yup,’ said Santi, arms folded. ‘The real Eugene. All raw, no chrome, or mimic code. Tis the genuine idiot himself.’

Savvine’s jaw twitched. ‘ Fokk .’

Eugene waved his cigar in a lazy circle, smoke curling into a vapor ring above his head. ‘Savvvinnnnee! My almost-wife. Did you bring snacks? Nada ? Damn. I ran out of my stash, and that’s probably why the raccoons haven’t come back.’

Miral tilted her head. ‘He’s fried.’

‘High as a void kite,’ Kaal confirmed. ‘Living like a f okk boy shaman back here.’

Savvine strode in, her disgust mounting. ‘Eugene.’

He blinked at her, then sat up with exaggerated elegance and smiled. ‘Ah, my heart’s lost meteor. I’ve missed you so much.’

She stared. ‘I haven’t thought of you in the least other than nurturing an almost unbearable desire to vaporize you.’

He sighed, flopping back with a dreamy smile. ‘Can’t imagine why, but you might have to wait if you insist. I’m kind of in the middle of an enlightenment. Did you know time is flavored like mango crossed with caviar? The Beluga variety.’

Savvine shook her head as she gazed around the space. ‘What the hell is this?’

Santi huffed. ‘It’s a koko lounge. We’ve found a complete narcotics production assembly line and warehouse behind it, too, along with 2000 tons of illegal drugs and 500 tons of precursor chemicals worth billions.’

‘My goodness. All of this on the Eterna , under my nose.’

Kaal strode through the place, searching and tossing it.

‘Don’t blame yourself. Only Helena, it seems, had access, which overrides yours.

The airlock on this deck leads to a light vessel that was being used for drug trafficking through the flotilla.

It can transport as much as 30 tons of koko at a time.

Also, get this. It’s the brainchild of Helena.

She stashed the real Eugene here, according to the indentured workers we’ve found in the back.

We’ve also found an elevator from this hellhole leading directly to her private suite. ’

Savvine turned to her team, arms folded, voice steel. ‘That conniving witch. I gather she’s not here.’

‘ Nada , she and her ship lifted off the Eterna days ago, which triggered the door and access codes on the deck to release.’

Savvine cursed under her breath. ‘So she abandoned her son. Mother of the year, ay? We need to find her. In the meantime, secure him. Purge the koko . Burn this whole den if you have to.’

‘Copy that,’ Kaal muttered, already moving.

As they hauled Eugene up, half-coherent, still giggling, he crooned, ‘I’ve got ideas, you know. Big ones. Quantum bed sheets. Koko edibles. Peace treaties written in glitter.’

Savvine exited without another word, because vengeance didn’t always end in blood.

Sometimes, it ended with a man in sequinned slippers being dragged off to detox by his enemies, with sparkles tangled in his hair and not a single piece of power remaining in his grasp.

Savvine walked the length of Deck 39 with her heart caught in her throat.

Her boots echoed against the steel floor of the corridor, hushed after days of conflict.

She strode past her people, who gathered in quiet clusters, blankets clutched around shoulders, children curled on their parents’ laps, older people resting with haunted eyes.

Waiting to be called back to their residences as the Signet crew cleared each deck.

Though freed, the tension of recent captivity clung to them like a second skin.

Then she saw them.

Her mother sat on a pallet near one of the central pillars, posture straight despite the bruises that marred her collarbone and the sling on her arm.

Her father was beside her, thinner than she remembered, with deepening silver threading his hair.

Snuggled up at their side was her little niece Tati, wild-haired and wide-eyed, disbelief writ clear across her young face.

They glanced up at once, their breaths hitching.

‘Savvine?’ her mother whispered.

She crossed the space like the girl she once was and dropped to her knees in their arms.

Her mother held her with a fierce grip. Her father’s hand grasped the back of her neck, anchoring her, grounding her.

Tati crept onto Savvine’s lap, and her sobs were the first to break the silence.

Savvine held them tighter. ‘I was too far from you, from home. All I wanted was this. I’ve never been happier to see your faces.’

They clutched each other in a desperate embrace, three generations, reunited.

Around them, the ship’s residents glanced away, letting them have this moment untouched.

Savvine ran her hands over her loved ones’ faces and shoulders, soaking in their warmth and weeping at the miracle of their still being whole.

The cage of pain deep inside her cracked open and released her anguish.

In time, she pulled back, wiping away her tears, a tremulous smile on her face.

‘Where are Rocco and Julia?’ Savvine asked, scanning for the couple, who were Tati’s parents and Savvine’s sister and brother-in-law.

‘They’re in labor,’ her mum said.

‘Of course I forgot,’ Savvine breathed. ‘Julia was in her final pregnancy weeks at the wedding. How’s it going?’

‘Well, we hope.’

Later, Savvine helped them reach their quarters.