ENTANGLED SHADOWS

Chapter 2

 Into the Green

The jungle swallowed us whole.

One moment we were standing in the small clearing where Kessa had parked the van; the next, the fern-trees closed ranks behind us and the night pressed in from every side. Elysara’s twin moons hung low, filtering silver light through layers of canopy, but down here on the forest floor it was all shadows and bioluminescent flickers—fungi glowing soft blue along fallen trunks, insects tracing lazy green spirals in the air.

Kessa moved like she’d been born in this darkness. No flashlight, no hesitation. She adjusted the straps of her reconfigured backpack—the spider-drone now compacted into a slim tactical rig—and set off along a trail that wasn’t a trail at all, just a subtle parting of undergrowth that only someone trained to see it would notice.

I followed, duffel slung cross-body, trying to keep my footsteps quiet on the springy humus. The air was thick, warm, heavy with the scent of sap and decaying leaves. Every few seconds something large rustled in the branches overhead; I told myself they were only night-gliders, harmless arboreal mammals the resort brochures loved to photograph.

“Keep your breathing shallow,” Kessa murmured without looking back. “The jungle listens.”

I adjusted. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Old fieldcraft coming back unbidden.

We walked for an hour, maybe more. Time dilates when you’re moving through hostile terrain with someone who might still decide you’re a liability. My mind ran scenarios: she leads me deep enough that no one will ever find the body; she’s genuinely rogue and needs an extra pair of hands; she’s playing a longer game I can’t see yet.

Eventually the ground began to rise. The fern-trees thinned, giving way to hardwood giants with buttress roots like cathedral walls. Kessa angled toward a stream that chuckled over black stones. She knelt, filled a collapsible flask, then handed it to me.

“Drink. We’ve got another three hours before we reach the cache.”

I took the flask. The water was cold, clean, tasting faintly of minerals. “Cache?”

“Safe house. Off-grid, no transponders, no orbital footprint. One of half a dozen I maintain across the planet. This one’s closest.”

“You planned for going rogue?”

“I planned for everything going sideways. Difference is semantic at this point.”

She stood, scanned the treeline with a small monocular that projected data directly onto her retina—I saw the faint green reflection in her eyes—then motioned me onward.

As we climbed higher the air cooled. The jungle sounds changed: deeper insect choruses, the occasional hoot of something predatory. At one point Kessa froze, hand raised. I stopped behind her.

Thirty meters ahead, a massive silhouette moved between the trunks—six-legged, armored, low to the ground. Moonlight glinted off chitin plates the size of dinner tables. A hexapedal scavenger, territorial and notoriously bad-tempered.

Kessa eased a compact pistol from her thigh holster. Not a blaster—something kinetic, suppressed. She sighted calmly, waited until the creature turned away, then lowered the weapon.

“We go around,” she whispered. “No need to announce our position with a carcass.”

We detoured upslope, scrambling over roots slick with moss. My shirt clung to me with sweat; insects found the exposed skin at my neck and wrists. Kessa seemed unbothered, moving with the same fluid efficiency she’d shown in the spaceport.

Near the crest of the ridge she stopped again, this time at a sheer rock face overgrown with vines. She brushed aside a curtain of foliage, revealing a recessed panel no larger than a dinner plate. Fingerprint, retinal scan, and a whispered voice code in a language I didn’t recognize. A section of the rock swung inward on silent hinges, revealing a narrow passage lit by dim amber strips.

“After you,” she said.

I hesitated. Once I stepped inside, there’d be no quick exit if this turned out to be an elaborate execution.

Kessa read my expression. “If I wanted you dead, Rhen, you’d already be cooling back at the clearing. I need someone who can think on their feet and doesn’t panic when plans detonate. So far you’re two for two.”

I stepped through.

The door sealed behind us with a soft thud. The air inside was dry, filtered, cool. The passage opened into a cavernous space carved from the living rock—twenty meters across, ten high, reinforced with carbon struts. Military surplus, but old. Pre-Collapse aesthetic.

Racks of equipment lined the walls: weapons, med-kits, comms gear, environmental suits. A compact fusion generator hummed in one corner, powering banks of servers and holo-projectors. In the center, a low table surrounded by crash couches. One entire wall was a living moss garden, oxygenating the space and softening the utilitarian edges.

Kessa dropped her pack onto the table. The spider-drone detached itself, scuttled to a charging cradle, and began uploading data.

“Home away from home,” she said. “Shower’s through there. Decon cycle first—jungle spores play hell with the filters.”

I found the hygiene alcove: sonic shower, hot water recycler, clean fatigues in neutral gray. I stripped, let the sonic pulses scour away layers of sweat and grime, then stood under actual water for longer than strictly necessary. The heat loosened muscles I hadn’t realized were knotted.

When I emerged, towel-dried and dressed, Kessa had the canister open on the table. Not physically open—she’d projected a full holographic schematic above it, rotating slowly. Intricate latticework of quantum circuits, entangled particle chambers, failsafes nested inside failsafes.

She glanced up. “Feeling human again?”

“Marginally.”

“Good. We’ve got work.”

I pulled up a couch opposite her. “Walk me through it. What exactly does this thing do?”

She manipulated the holo with finger flicks, zooming in on a central node. “At its core it’s a forced-entanglement broadcaster. It hijacks existing military comm satellites—every one in the sector uses quantum relays for FTL coordination—and overwrites their root certificates with a backdoor key. Once that’s done, whoever holds the paired controller can issue commands that look legitimate to every defense grid, traffic control network, and naval vessel in range.”

“Range being?”

“Roughly eight hundred light-years. The entire Elysara Sector and three adjacent volumes. Population in the trillions.”

I exhaled slowly. “And the people who built this?”

“Call themselves the Concordance. Shadow consortium—ex-intelligence, corporate security, a few rogue admirals. They’ve been positioning assets for years. This device is their checkmate move.”

“Checkmate against whom?”

“Everyone. The Federation, the Core Worlds Alliance, the Independent Volumes—anyone with a fleet big enough to oppose them. They want to reset the board, install themselves as the new power brokers in the chaos.”

I studied her face. The scar along her jaw caught the amber light. “And you were part of this.”

“Deep cover. Seven years. I fed them intel, ran ops, climbed the ladder until I was close enough to see the endgame.” She tapped the holo; the projection flickered red across the entanglement chambers. “When I realized what they were willing to do—how many lives they’d spend to get it—I started feeding intel the other direction. Quietly. Until today’s op went loud.”

“Hence the former associates.”

“Hence.” She killed the projection. The canister sat between us like a sleeping predator. “They’ll be burning every asset they think might be compromised. Starting with me. And you.”

I leaned back. “So what’s the play? Destroy it? Turn it over to Federation counter-intel?”

“Both options have problems. Destroying it tips our hand—they’ll know someone on the inside went rogue and accelerate whatever fallback they have. Handing it to the Feds means trusting a bureaucracy riddled with Concordance plants. We’d be dead before the paperwork cleared.”

“Then we use it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

“We don’t trigger the full cascade. We fire a targeted pulse—something small enough to prove we control the device, big enough to force a negotiation. We demand the Concordance stand down, expose their leadership, disband. In exchange we hand over the canister intact and walk away.”

She considered it. “High risk. They could call the bluff.”

“They won’t. Not if we hit something they care about.”

“Like?”

“Banking networks. Stock exchanges. If every transaction in the Core Worlds freezes for six hours, the economic damage runs to quadrillions. They’ll feel that in their bones.”

Kessa gave a slow nod. “Possible. But we’d need a secure uplink, processing power to calculate the narrowcast, and a window where their counter-measures are offline.”

“Which means we need allies.”

“Which means we need to get off-planet.”

I raised an eyebrow. “With every port on alert and Concordance hunters inbound?”

“Exactly.” She stood, crossed to a wall console, brought up a starchart. Elysara Prime glowed center-screen, surrounded by orbital stations, moon bases, shipping lanes. “There’s a civilian freight hauler, the *Driftwind*, scheduled to lift from the secondary pad at Port Kaelin in eighteen hours. Manifest says agricultural machinery bound for Calyx Station. Crew of twelve, no military escort. I know the captain—owes me a favor older than you are.”

“Smuggling us aboard gets us off-world, but Calyx is still in-sector. We need distance.”

“Calyx is phase one. From there we hop a neutral liner to the Helix Gateway, then jump the border into Volume space. Once we’re outside Concordance influence we can broadcast the proof-of-control pulse from a leased array.”

I studied the chart. “Eighteen hours isn’t much lead time.”

“It’s what we have.” She killed the display. “Get some rest. We leave at first light.”

The cache had two small berths carved into the rock. I took the one farther from the entrance, stripped down to undershirt and shorts, lay on the narrow bunk staring at the stone ceiling. Sleep didn’t come easily. My body was exhausted but my mind kept replaying the day: the customs room, the masked whirlwind, the canister, the jungle trek. And underneath all of it, a quieter current—anger. Someone had used me. Turned my one attempt at peace into a pawn move on a board I hadn’t known existed.

Eventually the generator’s hum lulled me under.

I woke to the smell of coffee—real coffee, not the synthetic sludge most stations served. Kessa was at the table, two mugs steaming beside a spread of ration bars and fresh fruit she must have pulled from stasis.

“Eat,” she said. “We’ve got a hike ahead.”

We broke camp efficiently. Kessa wiped the servers, triggered a low-yield thermite charge that would slag any remaining data after we left. The spider-drone—its official designation was SDR-9, but she called it “Crab”—reconfigured into backpack mode and secured the canister inside a shockproof sleeve.

Before we exited, she handed me a sidearm. Compact flechette pistol, smart-sighted, subsonic rounds.

“You know how to use this?”

“Better than most.”

“Good. Keep it concealed until I say otherwise.”

The door sealed behind us and the rock face looked as natural as ever.

Dawn was breaking as we descended the far side of the ridge. Pink light filtered through the canopy, turning mist into rose-gold clouds. Birdsong replaced the night insects. The air felt cleaner, sharper.

Kessa set a faster pace downhill. We followed the stream for several kilometers until it widened into a shallow river. There she uncovered a concealed kayak—carbon-fiber, two-seater, camouflaged under netting and leaves.

We launched silently, paddling with the current. The river carried us north through increasingly open terrain—jungle giving way to savanna dotted with acacia-like trees. By midday the waterway joined a larger artery lined with small settlements: fishing villages, hydroponic farms, tourist lodges for the budget crowd.

We pulled ashore at a public dock near a town called Rivermouth. Population maybe five thousand, mostly human with a scattering of near-human species. Market day—stalls selling grilled fish, woven baskets, cheap hologems. No visible security presence beyond a pair of bored local constables.

Kessa led me to a ground-car rental kiosk, paid in cash chits, and we drove the last forty kilometers to Port Kaelin in a dusty skimmer that smelled of old spice and engine oil.

Port Kaelin was smaller than the main spaceport, mostly cargo pads and maintenance hangars. The *Driftwind* squatted on Pad 7 like a pregnant beetle—blocky, scarred, built for hauling not beauty. Ramp down, cargo crates rolling aboard on mag-lifts.

Kessa parked in a public lot and killed the engine.

“Captain’s name is Torrance Hale. Old smuggler, older friend. He’ll get us aboard, but we keep low profiles until we’re in the black.”

We approached on foot. A deckhand in grease-stained coveralls glanced up as we neared the ramp.

“Kessa?” he said, surprise flickering across his face. “Heard you were planetside living clean.”

“Change of plans, Miko. Torrance around?”

“Supervising the load. Go on up.”

We climbed the ramp into the ship’s cavernous hold. Crates stamped with agricultural logos towered in neat rows, leaving narrow corridors. The air smelled of lubricant and ozone.

Captain Hale met us halfway. Tall, weathered, silver hair tied back, prosthetic left arm that gleamed dull steel. He took one look at Kessa and sighed.

“Trouble?”

“The kind that follows me,” she replied.

He glanced at me. “Who’s the plus-one?”

“Insurance policy,” Kessa said. “Rhen. Solid in a pinch.”

Hale grunted. “Cabins are full with extra crew, but there’s a smuggler’s nook behind the starboard bulkhead. Tight, but it’ll keep you off manifest. We lift in four hours.”

“Appreciated, Tor.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Concordance has eyes everywhere these days. If they tag my ship I’ll have to dump you at the first moon.”

“Understood.”

He waved us deeper into the hold. “Miko will show you the nook. Stay put until we’re underway.”

The smuggler’s compartment was exactly as advertised: two meters by one, fold-down bunks, dim light strip, emergency air scrubber. Crab detached and claimed a corner shelf for itself.

We settled in. Hours passed in low conversation—Kessa sketching contingencies on a flex-pad, me cleaning and checking the flechette pistol out of habit.

Finally the deck vibrated as the main drives spooled up. A gentle lurch, then weightlessness as artificial gravity engaged. Through a small porthole I watched Elysara Prime recede, blue and white and deceptively peaceful.

We were spaceborne.

For twelve hours everything was quiet. We ate ship rations, slept in shifts, listened to the crew’s casual chatter over the intercom. The *Driftwind* ran a standard trade lane, no unusual traffic, no pursuit.

Then the alarms went off.

Red strobes painted the narrow compartment. Crab’s lenses flared amber. Kessa was already on her feet, pistol drawn.

The intercom crackled. Hale’s voice, tight: “Concordance cutter just dropped out of FTL on our tail. They’re demanding we heave-to for inspection. Orders?”

Kessa keyed the wall comm. “Can we outrun them?”

“Negative. They’re faster and meaner.”

“Jump?”

“Drive’s still cold. Forty minutes to charge.”

She looked at me. “They found us fast.”

“Tracker on the canister?”

“Possible. Or they tagged the ship before lift.”

Hale again: “They’re arming weapons. I can’t comply without risking the crew.”

Kessa’s jaw tightened. “Buy us time. Tell them you’re complying but there’s a drive malfunction. Stall.”

“Copy. Thirty minutes max.”

The channel clicked off.

Kessa turned to me. “We need to lose the tail.”

“How?”

“Two options. One: we vent the canister out an airlock and hope they chase the decoy. Two: we take the fight to them.”

I met her eyes. “Option two keeps the device in play. And sends a message.”

She gave a thin smile. “Thought you’d say that.”

We moved.

The *Driftwind*’s armory was modest but adequate—boarding shotguns, a few rifles, magnetic boots, EVA suits. Kessa selected a breaching charge and a coilgun rifle. I took a carbine and extra mags.

Crab reconfigured into combat mode: legs extending, armor plating deploying, twin micro-missile pods unfolding.

We suited up in the main lock. Hale met us there, face grim.

“You sure about this?”

“No choice,” Kessa said. “Open the outer door on my mark.”

He handed her a remote detonator. “Good hunting.”

The lock cycled. Stars wheeled outside. The Concordance cutter was a sleek black dagger three kilometers off our port quarter, running lights dark, weapons bays glowing.

Kessa jetted first, mag-boots disengaged, thrusters firing short precise bursts. I followed. Crab launched between us, thrusters flaring blue.

Zero-g silence. Only the sound of my own breathing and the soft hiss of maneuvering jets.

We closed the distance in five minutes. The cutter hadn’t spotted us yet too small against the backdrop, no heat signature while cold-coasting.

Kessa signaled: split.

I angled toward the engine cluster. She and Crab headed for the dorsal airlock.

I reached the hull first. Mag-boots clamped. The metal vibrated faintly with drive harmonics. I planted the breaching charge on an engineering access hatch, set timer for thirty seconds, jetted clear.

The charge flashed white. Atmosphere vented in a brief plume before auto-seals slammed shut. I slipped inside the decompression chamber, carbine ready.

Alarms wailed. Red emergency lighting. Two crew in light armor responded fast—blasters up, firing as soon as the inner door opened.

I dropped the first with a three-round burst center mass. The second dove for cover; I rolled, came up firing, caught him in the shoulder. He went down screaming.

More footsteps echoing.

I moved deeper, clearing compartments methodically. Storage, auxiliary power, a small medbay. No resistance until I reached main engineering.

Three technicians and a security officer. The officer raised a rifle; I shot him twice. The techs threw up their hands.

“On the floor,” I ordered. They complied.

I slapped restraints on them, then sabotaged the main drive—pulled the control rods, vented coolant. The cutter wasn’t going anywhere fast.

Comms crackled in my helmet—Kessa’s voice: “Bridge secured. Crab’s uploading a virus to their nav. We’ve got control.”

“Engineering’s down. Drive sabotaged.”

“Copy. Meet at the lock.”

I retraced my path. On the way I passed a viewport showing the *Driftwind* receding into the distance, safe now that its pursuer was crippled.

Kessa waited at the cutter’s main lock, Crab perched on her shoulder like a lethal parrot. The bridge crew—four officers—knelt in restraints nearby, faces pale.

She tossed me a data spike. “Downloaded their logs. Concordance knew our exact vector before we lifted. Someone on Hale’s crew sold us.”

“Or the canister had a beacon after all.”

“Both possible.” She sealed the lock, cycled it open to vacuum. “We scuttle this boat and catch up to the *Driftwind*.”

We jetted back across the void. Behind us, timed charges flashed along the cutter’s spine. Secondary explosions followed as fuel lines ruptured. The dagger broke in half, tumbling silently into the dark.

Hours later we were back aboard the *Driftwind*, stripped out of suits, nursing bruises and minor burns. Hale greeted us with a bottle of something amber and strong.

“To stupid risks and stupider friends,” he toasted.

We drank.

In the smuggler’s nook, Kessa spread the downloaded logs across the flex-pad.

“Bad news,” she said quietly. “The Concordance isn’t waiting for this one device. There’s a second canister already en route to Calyx. Redundant trigger.”

I felt the deck tilt beneath me.not from maneuver, but from the implications.

“They’re not stopping.”

“No,” she said. “They’re accelerating.”

She zoomed the starchart. Calyx Station glowed ahead, innocent and bustling.