Chapter 15: Navigation Core Sabotage
The navigation core was a cathedral to dead things. Liora stood in the center, the hum of the ship vibrating up through the soles of her boots. Above her, the holographic star maps pulsed a sickly crimson, washing over everything in a bloody light. They weren't just projections. They were etched into the dark ceiling, circuits glowing like exposed veins. The main console was a jagged spire of black crystal and fused metal. And fused to it, at a grotesque angle, was the reason for the perpetual metallic smell.
A human pilot. Or what was left of one. The skeleton was partially sheathed in the same black crystal that made up the console, as if the ship had grown around it mid-crisis. A few shreds of a flight suit, bleached of color, clung to the ribs. The skull was tilted back, jaw agape in a final, silent scream. Liora’s eyes traced the familiar insignia on the shoulder patch—Second Gemini Wing. She’d known people in that wing. Gone now. Part of the architecture.
She didn’t look away. She made herself see it. This was the reality of Vexis’s power. Not the sparring, not the philosophical chats in his bone-lined chambers. This. Consumption.
Her heart was a hard, fast knock against her ribs. The dog tags felt cold under her shirt. Ryland’s voice was a ghost in her ear. Neutralize the threat.
She wasn’t here to neutralize. She was here to provoke.
The console interfaces were incomprehensible, a language of light and shadow. But sabotage didn’t require fluency. It required audacity. She’d spent three days watching the maintenance drones, the hulking, insectoid things that skittered along the walls. She’d seen one interface with a damaged port on the lower console, a port that flickered and spat sparks. A weak point.
Crouching, she ignored the hollow gaze of the dead pilot. Her scarred fingers found the port. It was warm. She pulled a thin, snapped-off data pin from her pocket—scavenged from the human quarters. It was a stupid, crude tool. A toothpick against a fortress wall.
But fortresses had cracks.
She took a breath, the air tasting of ozone and decay. You’ll take orders, or you’ll take the consequences. Ryland’s belt buckle. The crush of his desperation.
You will have decided which memory holds more power.
She jammed the data pin into the flickering port and twisted.
For a second, nothing. Then a surge of raw energy shot up her arm, a white-hot jolt that locked her muscles. The crimson light in the room flared, blindingly bright, and a shrieking alarm split the air—a sound like metal being shredded. The holographic star maps above convulsed, planets shuddering and going supernova in silent, frantic bursts.
The blast door to the core hissed open before she could pull her smoking hand back.
Vexis filled the doorway. He wasn’t in his ceremonial armor. He wore a form-fitting black mesh that left the iridescent scales of his chest and arms bare. His gold eyes took in the scene: the convulsing maps, the screaming alarm, her crouched by the console, hand still at the port.
He moved faster than she could track.
One moment he was at the door. The next, his hand was around her wrist, yanking her upright. The force wrenched her shoulder. He didn’t throw her against the wall. He pinned her against the main console itself, her back against the cold, pulsating crystal right beside the fused skeleton. The dead pilot’s skull was inches from her temple.
The alarm died, replaced by a piercing, ringing silence. The crimson light stabilized, throbbing angrily.
His face was close. The scent of him—ozone, cold stone, something alien and sharp—wiped every other smell from the air. His scales, pressed against her flight suit where it had ridden up, weren’t just smooth. They were humming, charged with energy from the ship’s disrupted systems. Tiny, visible arcs of static skittered across them, biting into the fabric of her suit.
“Clever little saboteur,” he hissed. His voice was low, stripped of all its earlier detached curiosity. It was pure, undiluted fury. And underneath it, a thread of something else. A vicious admiration.
“Just testing your security,” Liora managed, her own voice rough. Her heart was trying to beat its way out of her chest. “It’s shit.”
A muscle in his jaw flexed. The static from his scales intensified, seeping through her clothes, making her skin prickle and burn. It wasn’t just pain. It was a live wire touching her nerves, a confusing, electrifying invasion.
“You want to see the heart of the machine?” he breathed, his mouth a hair’s breadth from hers. “Then feel it.”
He crushed his mouth to hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a conquest. A direct current. The charge from his scales exploded through the point of contact. Her lips weren’t just pressed; they were connected, jolted with the same energy that ran the warship. She tasted copper and lightning. A shock went straight down her spine, arching her against the console.
She didn’t kiss him back. She couldn’t. Her body was rigid, a circuit completed. But she didn’t pull away. She met the force with a defiance of her own, her grey eyes wide open, staring into his burning gold ones.
He pulled back just enough to speak, their breaths mixing, charged and hot. “Your Commander thinks he can claim you with a whisper in the dark.” His hand left her wrist, snaking around to the small of her back, holding her firmly against the thrumming crystal. “He is wrong. You are not a ghost to be whispered to. You are a spark.”
His other hand came up, his fingers calloused and cool, tracing the line of her jaw, then down the column of her throat, over the chain of her dog tags. He hooked a finger under it. “And I,” he said, his voice dropping to a resonant whisper that vibrated in her bones, “am the only thing vast enough to contain your fire without extinguishing it.”
He yanked the chain. It snapped.
The tags fell, clattering against the crystal floor, the sound absurdly loud in the silent core. The phantom pain of Ryland’s belt buckle vanished, replaced by the very real, breathless current where Vexis’s body met hers.
“That,” he said, looking from the discarded tags on the floor back to her face, “was a memory. Now make a new one.”
He kissed her again. Slower this time. Deliberate. The electric charge was still there, a live wire between them, but it had modulated into a resonant hum. This time, her hands came up. Not to push him away. They fisted in the black mesh at his sides, her scarred knuckles against the impossible smoothness of his scales. The sensation was dizzying—cool, hard ridges under her touch, vibrating with power.
When he finally broke away, the silence was absolute. The star maps glowed steadily above. The dead pilot stared on.
Vexis studied her face, his thumb brushing over her lower lip, which felt swollen, alive with sensation. “The report you will send to your Commander,” he said, his tone shifting back to something resembling calm. “It will detail a systems malfunction. A contained leak in the auxiliary power relay. Boring. Technical. It will request a specialist parts list for repair—a list I will provide you. Do you understand?”
Liora swallowed, her throat dry. She understood perfectly. He wasn’t just playing her game. He was changing the rules. The parts he’d request would be useless, or maybe they’d be something else entirely—a trojan horse. She’d be feeding Ryland false intelligence, directly from the enemy’s hand. There was no going back from that. It wasn’t just deception. It was treason.
She looked past Vexis’s shoulder at her dog tags, lying in the crimson light. A claim, discarded.
She looked back at him. “I understand.”
He nodded, once. He released her, stepping back. The absence of his energy left her feeling cold, unmoored. He turned and walked toward the blast door without another word.
As the door hissed shut behind him, Liora slid down the face of the console until she sat on the floor, her knees drawn up. She reached out, her fingers closing around the cold metal of her tags. The chain was broken.
She didn’t try to fix it. She just held them in her palm, feeling the etched letters of her name and serial number. Then she closed her fist around them, tight.
The spark had been struck. Now she had to see what it would burn.