Shadows Of Innocence

Chapter 5: Shadows of Thal Prime

Hyperspace felt endless this time.

The blue tunnel outside the viewports stretched on, unbroken, as if the stars themselves were holding their breath. Eight hours to Thal Prime. Eight hours to the final convergence point. Eight hours to decide whether we lived or died.

The Night Sparrow limped through the void, hull patches holding but creaking under strain. Jorr had pushed the engines hard after Kessel Verge, plotting a zigzag course through minor jump points to shake any pursuit. So far, sensors were clean. But we all knew that meant nothing. They were out there.watching, waiting.

I couldn’t sleep.

I sat in the passenger lounge, staring at the holodisplay Rhea had left running. The beacon from the destroyed ore hauler was gone incinerated in the blast but she’d sliced fragments of data before the end. Shipping manifests. Encrypted comms. A partial starchart converging on Thal Prime’s orbital station: Nexus Drift.

A shadow fell across the table.

Rhea.

She moved silently even on a creaking ship. She placed a steaming mug in front of me real caf, not the stimulant brew. A rare luxury.

“You should rest,” she said, sitting opposite.

“Can’t.” I wrapped my hands around the mug. “Every time I close my eyes, I see that cruiser. The way it just… appeared. Like it knew exactly where we’d be.”

She nodded slowly. “They have predictive algorithms. Quantum modeling. They don’t chase they anticipate.”

“That’s comforting.”

Her lips twitched. “It means we’re still one step ahead. They anticipated Kessel Verge. We denied them the cargo. Now they’ll overcommit to Thal Prime.”

“Overcommit how?”

“Everything. Full security cordon. Warships in shadow. Kill teams on the station. They can’t afford another loss.”

I sipped the caf. Bitter, strong. “So we walk into a trap.”

“We spring it.”

She pulled up the holodisplay again, zooming on Nexus Drift. The station was massive a sprawling hub of rings, docks, and habitats orbiting Thal Prime’s stormy gas giant. Neutral territory, like Kessel Verge, but wealthier. Corporate enclaves, black-market bazaars, diplomatic safe zones. A place where deals worth star systems were made in shadowed lounges.

“The last shipment arrives in six hours,” she said. “Docked at VIP Berth 3. Shell company again Obsidian Veil Holdings. The cruiser will rendezvous twelve hours after that for transfer.”

I studied the schematics. “How do we get aboard the station? They’ll have our biometrics flagged everywhere.”

“Fake IDs. Nix can spoof facial recognition long enough for entry. After that… we improvise.”

“Improvise a way onto a guarded berth holding world-ending nanites?”

“Something like that.”

Jorr’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Dropping in thirty minutes. Thal traffic control’s already pinging us. Fake transponder holding for now.”

Rhea stood. “Gear up. Light load. We go in as independent traders looking for cargo contracts.”

We changed in the crew berths nondescript jackets, concealed holsters, data spikes hidden in belt buckles. Nix compressed into a slim utility drone, magnet-clamping to Rhea’s back like an oversized tool pack.

I checked my sidearm for the tenth time. The weight felt familiar now. Too familiar.

As we strapped into the cockpit for reentry, realspace snapped back.

Thal Prime dominated the forward view a roiling world of purple storms and golden lightning. Nexus Drift orbited high above, glittering like a jeweled crown.

Traffic was heavy freighters queuing for docking, private yachts cutting lines with priority codes, patrol cutters weaving enforcement patterns.

Jorr eased us into the queue. “Dock assignment: Ring 7, Bay 22. Mid-level. Good access to VIP berths via service lifts.”

Rhea nodded. “Perfect.”

We docked without incident.

The airlock cycled, and we stepped onto Nexus Drift.

The station hit like sensory overload recycled air laced with spices, ozone, and perfume. Voices in a hundred languages. Holographic ads flickering overhead. Crowds surging through wide concourses lined with shops, bars, and brokerage offices.

We blended.

Or tried to.

Every face felt like a threat. Every glance lingered too long.

Nix whispered in our earpieces subvocal, private channel. “Facial recognition spoof active. Duration: four hours maximum.”

We moved fast.

Ring 7 was commercial warehouses, cargo handlers, mid-tier cantinas. We took a mag-lift upward, switching cars twice to shake any tail.

VIP Ring 1 was different. Cleaner. Quieter. Armed security in polished uniforms. Biometric arches at every junction.

Rhea led us through a maintenance hatch instead Nix slicing the lock.

We emerged in a service corridor overlooking Berth 3.

The target ship was already there: a sleek executive courier, obsidian hull with gold trim. No visible markings, but heavy shielding and point-defense turrets. Four guards outside the airlock. More inside, almost certainly.

And something else.

A man in a tailored suit stood near the berth control console, speaking quietly to station security. Tall. Silver hair. Posture like a blade.

Rhea tensed beside me.

“Who is he?”

“Director Varn.” Her voice was ice. “My former handler. He ran the program.”

The man who’d sent cleaners after her. Who’d greenlit the nanite deployments.

He turned slightly, scanning the concourse with predator eyes.

We ducked back.

“He’s here personally,” I whispered. “That’s bad.”

“That’s opportunity.”

We retreated deeper into the service tunnels, finding a disused observation alcove with a narrow viewport.

Rhea pulled up station schematics on her wrist unit.

“The courier’s cargo hold is shielded can’t slice remotely. We need physical access.”

“Through Varn and his army?”

“Or under them.”

She highlighted a route waste reclamation conduits running beneath the berth.

“Zero gravity. Tight. Smells like hell. But direct access to the courier’s ventral maintenance port.”

I grimaced. “Of course.”

We moved.

The conduits were worse than described cramped, slick with condensation and worse, pitch black except for our wrist lights. Zero-G made movement a nightmare pushing off walls, tumbling slowly, correcting with careful bursts from magnetic boots.

Nix led, mapping in real-time.

Half an hour of crawling brought us to a junction beneath the courier.

Rhea attached a micro-breacher to the hull plate above us.

It whirred softly cutting a perfect circle.

We floated up into the courier’s engineering bay.

Dark. Silent.

Emergency lighting only.

The ship was powered down, waiting for departure.

We moved forward past humming reactors, through narrow corridors.

The cargo hold was forward, sealed with a triple-lock vault door.

Rhea knelt, interfacing Nix.

“Security’s military-grade. Biometrics plus quantum key.”

“How long?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe.”

We waited in the shadows.

Five minutes in, footsteps echoed.

Two guards doing rounds.

We pressed flat against bulkheads.

They passed within meters conversing in low tones.

“…Director says no delays. Transfer at 0200 station time.”

“Buyer’s already en route. Big player.”

They moved on.

Nix chirped softly lock bypassed.

The vault irised open.

Inside: a single reinforced cradle.

Six canisters.

The final batch.

Rhea moved to plant charges high-yield, shaped to incinerate without breaching hull.

I covered the door.

That’s when the lights snapped on.

Red emergency strobes.

Alarms silent, but I felt the vibration.

Trap.

Varn’s voice echoed through the ship’s intercom calm, amused.

“Welcome aboard, Rhea. I’ve been expecting you.”

Doors slammed shut throughout the ship.

Gas hissed from vents colorless, odorless.

Neural suppressant.

My vision blurred almost instantly.

I fired at the ceiling vents wild shots.

Rhea grabbed me, slapped a rebreather mask over my face from her kit.

Too late for her she staggered, eyes unfocused.

Armored figures poured in from both ends stun batons, net launchers.

I fought—firing until my pistol clicked empty.

A baton caught me across the ribs pain exploded.

I went down.

Rhea lasted longer knife flashing, taking down two before a net tangled her.

Then darkness.

I woke in restraints mag-cuffs on wrists and ankles, strapped to a chair in a brightly lit interrogation room aboard the cruiser. No station. Nexus Drift detention suite.

Rhea was across from me similarly bound, head slumped.

Varn stood between us, hands clasped behind his back.

He was older than he’d looked from a distance mid-fifties, maybe but vital. Eyes like polished obsidian.

He smiled at Rhea.

“You’ve been busy.”

She lifted her head slowly. Bruises bloomed across her face, but her glare could cut steel.

Varn turned to me. “And you. The tourist. Quite the escalation from tax accounting.”

I spat blood. “Go to hell.”

He chuckled. “Charming.”

He paced slowly.

“The program continues. Your interference delayed us cost us resources but the buyer is patient. The demonstration on Thal Prime’s moon colony proceeds in six hours. Ten thousand test subjects. Full compliance within minutes.”

Rhea strained against her cuffs. “You won’t get away with it.”

“I already have.” He stopped in front of her. “You were my best operative. I trained you. Molded you. And you betray me for sentiment?”

“It’s not sentiment. It’s sanity.”

He sighed. “Idealism. Always your weakness.”

He gestured, and a holoscreen activated live feed of the courier berth.

The canisters were being transferred to a waiting shuttle bound for the cruiser.

Guards everywhere.

Jorr was there too cuffed, held by two enforcers.

My stomach dropped.

Varn noticed. “Your pilot proved… persuadable. A substantial bounty helped.”

Rhea’s eyes flicked to me apology, rage.

Varn continued. “Execution in one hour. Public, on the promenade. To discourage further interference.”

He left.

The door sealed.

Silence.

I tested the cuffs solid.

Rhea was already working subtle movements of her wrists.

“Nix?” I whispered.

“EMP’d when they caught us. Offline.”

“Jorr sold us.”

“Maybe. Or coerced.”

Footsteps approached again.

The door opened—not Varn.

A station security officer young, nervous.

He glanced down the corridor, then stepped in, closing the door.

“Rhea?” he whispered.

She looked up sharply.

He produced a key spike inserted it into her cuffs.

Click.

She was free.

He moved to me same.

“Who?”

“Old debt,” he said quickly. “She saved my sister on a mission years ago. Varn doesn’t know.”

Alarms began wailing distantly.

He handed Rhea a small data chip. “Nix’s core. Recovered from evidence lockup. And this” a compact pistol.

She took both.

“Thank you, Kael.”

Wait no. Not Kael. Different name.

He nodded. “Go. Maintenance shaft behind the panel. Leads to Ring 5. I’ve looped cameras for fifteen minutes.”

We moved.

The shaft was tight, but we crawled fast.

Rhea slotted Nix’s core into her wrist unit rebooting.

The drone hummed to life inside her pack.

We emerged on Ring 5 chaos already spreading. Alarms station-wide.

Varn knew we’d escaped.

We ran through service corridors, down emergency ladders.

Nix sliced doors ahead.

We needed the Sparrow.

Bay 22 was swarming security lockdown.

Jorr’s ship impounded.

But Jorr himself being marched toward a security cutter in cuffs.

Rhea didn’t hesitate.

She drew the pistol two precise shots. Guards down.

I grabbed a fallen rifle.

Jorr stared as we freed him.

“I didn’t sell you,” he growled. “They took me at gunpoint after you left. Planted a tracer.”

Rhea nodded belief, or necessity.

We ran for the Sparrow Nix overriding the impound locks.

Engines spooled as we boarded.

Station guns tracking.

We launched straight into traffic.

Pursuit immediate four interceptors.

The chase through the orbital lanes was brutal.

Jorr flew like a demon threading between freighters, skimming habitat rings.

Rhea and I in turrets again.

We downed two interceptors shields flaring, debris tumbling.

But the cruiser was powering up leaving dock.

Massive. Deadly.

Its shuttle the one with the canisters already en route to Thal Prime’s moon.

We had hours, maybe less.

Jorr plotted an intercept course maximum burn.

The cruiser launched fighters swarm of a dozen.

We dove into the fight.

Blasters, missiles, flares.

The Sparrow took hits shields failing.

One engine sputtered.

But we pressed.

Closing on the shuttle.

Rhea’s voice calm over comms. “We board it.”

“Board? In flight?”

“Only way.”

Nix transformed extending a docking tube.

Jorr matched vectors insanely close.

We spacewalked tethered, thrusters firing.

Across the void.

Enemy fighters harried shots streaking past.

One clipped my tether spinning me.

Rhea grabbed me stabilized.

We reached the shuttle airlock.

Nix breached.

Inside four guards, pilot.

Fight in zero-G blood globules floating.

We cleared them.

Rhea to the cockpit overriding controls.

I guarded the canisters.

But the cruiser loomed tractoring us in.

Too late to jump.

Varn’s voice over open channel.

“Surrender the shuttle. Or be destroyed.”

Rhea looked at me.

Charges still in her kit.

One option.

Incinerate everything including us.

She armed them.

Timer: thirty seconds.

I met her eyes.

No fear.

Just resolve.

Then Nix chirped urgently.

New signature dropping from hyperspace.

Massive.

Alliance battleship.

Followed by three more.

Transponders: Interstellar Enforcement Fleet.

Someone had tipped them.

The young officer? Another debt?

Didn’t matter.

The cruiser powered weapons too late.

Tractor beams locked.

Boarding parties launched.

Varn’s voice fury now.

The timer hit zero.

Rhea hesitated finger over abort.

She killed the charges.

We surrendered the shuttle to the good guys.

Hours later.

Detention aboard the battleship but different.

Debriefing. Not interrogation.

The canisters secured, nanites neutralized.

Varn captured raging in a cell.

The program exposed data we’d gathered, Rhea’s testimony.

Jorr cleared, repairing the Sparrow in their hangar.

Rhea and I sat in an observation lounge watching Thal Prime’s storms below.

She was quiet.

I finally spoke.

“What now?”

She looked at me really looked.

“Testimony. Trials. Then… I don’t know.”

“Back to the beaches?”

She smiled small, genuine.

“Maybe. With better company.”

Nix settled between us content.

The storms raged on the planet below.

But up here, for the first time in weeks

Peace.

Or the beginning of it.