Page 176 of Reaper Said Mine

Ursa turns off her recording and looks at me across the blood-bright floor.

For a moment, the chamber disappears. There is only her, pale and furious and alive, standing amid the wreckage of my choice. I want to go to her. I want to explain that Zune threatened not only her life but her truth, that I could feel the old world closing around her, that I chose the one answer I knew how to give when men like that reach for people I love.

But I hear her voice from before.

You don’t get to allow this.

You don’t get to take over.

Not here.

I stay where I am.

“Ursa,” I say, and her name sounds raw.

She swallows once. “We have work to do.”

The answer is not forgiveness.

It is not rejection.

It is worse and better.

It is survival.

Around us, the negotiations collapse into accusation, emergency protocol, and armed suspicion. Beyond the chamber walls, Guyver Station begins locking itself down against the diplomatic chaos spreading through every corridor and every broadcast channel. Somewhere in the galaxy, markets are already reacting. Governments are drafting statements. Helios is naming me murderer. The Coalition is naming me unstable. The Alliance is calculating how close its ships need to move before deterrence becomes war.

Every enemy watching now knows exactly where to aim.

CHAPTER 23

URSA

The station feels different the morning after Jonathon Zune dies.

Not quieter or calmer. If anything, the tension that always lurks beneath Guyver Station's skin has sharpened into something dangerous. The place still hums with activity—the groan of docking clamps, the hiss of welding torches, the endless churn of commerce—but now every sound seems edged with unease.

When I step out of the lift into the central market ring, the difference is impossible to miss.

Merchants still call out prices from brightly lit stalls. Cargo haulers maneuver grav-sleds stacked with containers. Refugees clutch children and battered bags as they weave through the crowd. Yet the usual noise is missing. Conversations stay low. Arguments die before they begin. Even the music that normally spills from storefront speakers seems muted.

Above the crowd, public holo screens cycle through headlines from across known space.

COMBINE REPRESENTATIVE SLAIN AT GUYVER STATION

DIPLOMATIC CRISIS ESCALATES

ALLIANCE CONDEMNS VIOLENCE

COALITION CALLS FOR RESTRAINT

MARKETS PLUNGE

Blue light washes over anxious faces as people stop to read.

They're waiting—waiting for someone powerful to decide how many ordinary people are about to suffer.

I know that feeling.