I tasted the deck plating. It tasted like industrial grease, a sharp contrast to the burning pressure against my ribs. Morvath’s boot didn't budge. He leaned in, and the cigar smoke hit me again, thick and smelling of expensive rot."You really thought the back door would be open, Vaxien?" Morvath asked. He chuckled, a deep sound that vibrated through the floor and into my skull. "The great Glitch. The man who broke Layer 4. You look like a bug I’m about to scrape off my heel.""Get off him!" Nyxra shouted. I heard the scuff of her boots as she moved, but the sound of five rifles clicking into place stopped her cold."Don't," I wheezed, my chest barely able to expand. "Stay back." Morvath grinned. Up close, the gold plating on his jaw looked like it was fused directly into the bone. He took another slow drag of his cigar and exhaled the smoke directly into my open eyes."I’ve been tracking your signature since you touched the grid," Morvath said. He shifted his weight, and I felt a ri

I kept my hand pressed against the center of Morvath’s chest. The gold plating felt warm even before I started. He tried to grab my wrist, his fingers thick and clumsy, but I leaned my weight into him, pinning his back against the bulkhead."You like the gold, Morvath?" I asked. My voice was low, barely a rasp. "It’s a great look for a warlord. Really says you've made it." Morvath’s eyes darted down to my palm. "Get your hand off me, you little—""But you know the problem with gold?" I interrupted. I didn't wait for him to answer. I pulled a concentrated surge from my core and dumped it straight through my arm. "It’s a perfect conductor."The light in the corridor flickered. I didn't let the power arc or spray. I funneled it entirely into his armor. The gold plating didn't just carry the charge; it trapped it.Morvath’s body stiffened. His jaw locked, his head snapping back against the wall with a dull clunk. He didn't scream yet. He just stood there, shaking, his eyes wide and bloods

The ceiling of the medical bay was gray and water-stained. I stared at it for a while before I understood that I was lying on the floor."Don't move it," Nyxra said.She was kneeling beside me, applying something cold to my arm from a tube she'd found in the cabinet above the cot.The gel went on clear and turned white where it touched the skin. Or where the skin used to be. From the elbow to the wrist, the arm was a dark, cracked thing, and looking at it directly made something in my stomach shift, so I looked back at the ceiling."Is it bad?" I asked. "I'm not going to answer that.""That's an answer." She pressed the edge of the bandage down and said nothing.Zeryth was standing at the small porthole window on the far wall, arms crossed, watching the stars stretch and blur as we pushed through the jump corridor. He hadn't looked at me since I came around."How long was I out?" I asked. "Eleven minutes," Nyxra said. "How far to the blockade?""At current speed?" She capped the gel t

"What is that?" Zeryth's voice came through the intercom from the turret bay."Get back up here," I said. "Vaxien, what is—""Now, Zeryth." I heard him moving through the ship. Nyxra was pulling data from the sensor array, her fingers working fast. Rowan had gone quiet, which was worse than him talking."Null-Hounds," Nyxra said. "They're called Null-Hounds. Layer 5 deep-space classification. They eat code, raw data, active signals and running programs." She pulled up a density reading. "Vaxien, the swarm count is in the millions.""The Cartel drilling," I said. "All that data bleed from the extraction. It pulled them in.""Yes." Zeryth came through the bridge door, still pulling his jacket straight. He looked at the forward display, then at Nyxra, then at me. "Tell me the guns work on those things.""The guns don't work on those things," I said. "Why not?""You can't shoot a swarm," Nyxra said. "Not with ship cannons. You would need to fire ten thousand rounds a second to make a den

Nyxra read it twice off the display, then looked at me."A hearing," she said. "Not an arrest warrant. Not a weapons lock, a hearing.""They watched the swarm go down," I said. "They want to know what they're dealing with before they decide what to do with me.""Or it's a trap," Rowan said from his chair. "Obviously," Zeryth said. "Everything is a trap. We go anyway and we kill the whole council.""We're not killing the whole council," I said. "Why not? There's three of us and we just deleted a million space parasites with one punch. I think—""Because we don't know how many of them there are, where they meet, what kind of security they run, or what leverage they have over this universe right now." I pointed at the display. The drilling fleet was still active. Tethers still in the crust. "They have twelve ships on my planet. We have one dreadnought with forty percent hull and no forward guns. We are not fighting today."Zeryth closed his mouth. "So we go," Nyxra said. "And we what?"