Page 43 of Claimed By the Wraiths

He could manufacture loyalty. Mass-produce devotion. Turn bonding from an unpredictable vulnerability into a controllable asset.

The upload wasn’t enough.

Broadcasting the trafficking evidence would shut down the operation, but the research would survive. Someone would pick it up.

The technology would find its way to every military, every intelligence agency, every seat of power in known space. People would line up to buy it.

The data had to be broadcast and the research had to be destroyed. Two objectives, not one.

I had the access codes in my head. I had a comm hub thirty steps from where Vain held court. I had a guard who adjusted his grip when I told him to.

I had nothing else.

Vain could catalogue Serak’s shadow biology and measure what a bond did to his nervous system. He didn’t know that six-year-old Serak had fallen asleep with a charcoal-gray saorik named Mairuke tucked against his ribs, trilling inside his shirt. Or why Serak still refused to tell me what the name meant.

Something warm settled in my chest. Not my emotions.

Something from outside, something with a direction, pulling gently from somewhere in the void. I put my hand over my sternum.

The warmth held. Steady. Specific.

Pointed somewhere above me and to the east, which shouldn’t have meant anything and meant everything.

His mouth on mine. His hands on my hips. Then you don’t stop.

SERAK

Nexus Station filled the viewport. Built into an asteroid, or constructed around one, the rock and metal fused together until the distinction didn’t matter.

Military-grade construction. No civilian markings. No navigation beacons.

Deep void coordinates that didn’t appear on any chart in any database the Consortium published.

Cargo ships on the lower docking ring, four of them, standard freighters running supplies. Military vessels on the upper ring, sleek and armed, including the transport that had taken Jessa.

It was still docked, engines cold. They’d arrived hours ahead of us.

“Tal.” I turned to the copilot’s seat. He was awake, staring at the station through the viewport. Years of helping build it, and this was the first time he’d understood what it was.

“It’s bigger than the schematics,” he said.

“They expanded.”

“They expanded a lot.”

I brought the Ghost in on a cargo approach, matching the trajectory of the freighters on the lower ring. Tal entered his diplomatic authorization. The routing network challenged it once, accepted the second handshake, and assigned us a berth between two supply freighters.

The docking clamps caught.

Tal looked at the hatch. “Last chance to tell me you came up with a better plan.”

“I did not.”

“Good. I’d hate for all this terror to be wasted.”

Tal left the Ghost alone.

Cargo processing was three checkpoints past the berth. I gave Tal ninety seconds, then let the surface meld rise and slipped through a manual maintenance hatch in the berth into the service spine. One short corridor put me behind a grille overlooking the processing lane.