Page 32 of Big Bad Red Protector

"Like a confirmation," I say. "I did not need the broadcast to know I had left their authority. The broadcast tells me they are afraid of what I know."

Vos reaches me through a channel so encrypted it takes Zevra three minutes to verify it is genuinely him.

He does not use many words. He transmits an access package: six restricted system codes, a surveillance blackout window for the Precursor sector's outer perimeter running for forty minutes beginning at oh-one-hundred, a route map through the station's structural maintenance layer that bypasses every active security checkpoint between our position and the facility entrance, and a corrupted pursuit log that will delay any tracking attempt by approximately twenty minutes.

At the bottom of the package, one line of unencrypted text:The evidence you sent has reached the right people. Finish this.

I close the channel and begin preparing.

The team that assembles in the maintenance room over the following hour is not large.

Orrik, who has made his position clear through continued presence. Zevra, whose self-interest has apparently expanded to include the survival of the station she operates in. Four Vakutan security officers—my officers, specifically—who received Drekar's earlier patrol redirect orders, recognized the authorization anomaly at the time, and said nothing because they trusted my command structure to resolve it. They are here because they stopped trusting it.

One of them, Rennek, who has served under me for four years, says only: "The orders that cleared sublevel fourteen. They came through Drekar's access. We matched the code last night." He holds my gaze with the steady directness of a Vakutan officer delivering a tactical assessment. "We should have brought it to you sooner."

"You are here now," I say.

The broadcast goes out at oh-zero-forty through every station-wide communication channel simultaneously, routed through Vos's corrupted surveillance blackout so that it cannot be traced and killed before it completes.

I keep it short because short is harder to dismiss.

The patrol redirects that cleared surveillance from sublevel fourteen during equipment deliveries. The authorization codes that match Drekar's command access. The ghost transport company used across multiple diplomatic disappearances. The weapon site in the Precursor sector, running signal amplification hardware designed to force a Bridge activation during the diplomatic session. The attack on the Coalition sanctuary. The station-issued weapons recovered from the criminal underlevels. The containment of a customs officer whose only crime was noticing that departure records were falsified.

I do not mention the Precursor truth. I do not mention what Nina is. I mention what Drekar did.

Twelve seconds after the broadcast ends, Rennek's comm receives a query from a Vakutan patrol officer in the residential sector asking for command confirmation on Drekar's current orders. Then two more queries. Then a notification that the patrol team assigned to the Precursor sector perimeter has requested a command verification before executing their current assignment.

They are not refusing. They are asking. That is enough.

"The blackout window opens in eleven minutes," Zevra says. "The facility entrance is twenty-three minutes from here through Vos's route."

My left side is sending information I am choosing not to process in full. The stabilizer brace holds the cracked ribs from doing their worst if I do not make sudden lateral movements, which is an optimistic constraint for a rescue operation through active hostile territory.

I check the weapon on my right side and the secondary on my left and make sure Orrik has what he needs and Zevra has her data surface and my four officers understand the entry formation.

Nina is in a Precursor facility three levels below the chamber that recognized her genetic signature and called heroperator lineage.She has been in there long enough for Drekar to have explained his plan and long enough, I know with complete certainty, to have started looking for a way to break it from the inside.

She will find something. I need to be there when she does.

"Move," I say.

We move.

CHAPTER 23

NINA

The pulse pattern has a flaw on the seventh interval.

I have been counting for two hours. Three short beats, one long, two short, repeat—but every seventh cycle, the long beat runs four milliseconds shorter than the others. Not a malfunction. A calibration variance in the emitter's frequency response when the Bridge resonance below the facility pushes through a natural surge cycle. The field is tuned to my genetic signature, which means it shifts when the Bridge shifts, and when it shifts it is very briefly not perfectly calibrated to suppress what it is trying to suppress.

Four milliseconds is not much.

It is what I have.

I press my palm flat against the console surface during the sixth beat of the next cycle and hold it there, feeling the familiar warmth move up through my wrist and forearm. On the seventh beat, when the field variance opens, I push against the console’s frequency output with every activation response I have learned from Bridge proximity, visions, and the chamber’s recognition.

The containment field does not drop.