The Sovereign was wounded.

  Its once-confident hum had gone still, replaced by a silence that pressed against Cassandra’s nerves like a pressure headache. Emergency lights bathed the operations deck in deep red, casting every console and crewmember in stark, anxious shadows. The air smelled of ozone and scorched plastic—circuitry burned out in too many places to count.

  The frigate was gone. But the damage it left behind lingered like a bruise.

  “Full diagnostic on all critical systems,” Cassandra ordered, voice taut. “I want the reactor back online five minutes ago.”

  The hull vibrated faintly as another muffled detonation echoed from somewhere deep within the ship. She winced. Too many fires. Not enough hands to put them out. Engineering was stretched thin, damage control thinner. Every report that came in brought a new failure.

  She forced herself to focus.

  The main display still flickered to life—grainy, but functional. External feed. Hull cam.

  There, silhouetted against the cold gleam of distant starlight, floated one figure: Ensign Tsukihara.

  Tsukihara.

  Her boots magnetized to the hull. Her form limp in the weightless dark.

  The fire—the strange energy that had erupted around her just moments earlier—was gone now, fading into the void like breath on a cold morning. What remained was stillness.

  A silence that didn’t feel like peace.

  Cassandra narrowed her eyes at the screen.

  “What the hell were you doing out there?” she murmured.

  She replayed the moment in her mind: Tsukihara reaching for the cable—then something happened. The frigate had disengaged almost instantly, retreating like a creature that had touched fire. And then came that blaze of light around Tsukihara—blue and white, shifting like a flame but with intent. It had lasted only seconds.

  But Cassandra couldn’t unsee it.

  The image of her slumping to the hull afterward burned into her mind like an afterimage.

  “Ma’am,” a voice broke through the quiet. “Sections three through seven still unresponsive. The intrusion scrambled deeper than we thought.”

  Cassandra turned, her tone sharp. “Prioritize comms and tactical systems. If that frigate swings back, I want teeth ready.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She turned back to the screen. A recovery team was already en route—maneuvering cautiously through drifting debris to retrieve Tsukihara’s motionless body.

  Cassandra’s jaw tightened.

  Her thoughts weren’t just circling now—they were spiraling.

  Kim had saved them.

  But how?

  She wasn’t the type to fear the unknown—but she didn’t like it either. And this wasn’t just unknown. It was unprecedented.

  People didn’t light up with fire and scare off an enemy warship.

  Not without a cost.

  Her datapad chimed.

  New message. Brief. Direct.

  Cassandra sighed through her nose. “Of course she does.”

  She pushed off from the console and floated toward the central spire ladder, adjusting with a practiced twist. The corridors glowed red and gold, emergency lighting casting long, shifting shadows.

  Crew moved around her with quiet urgency. Orders. Coordination. Duct-tape triage over bleeding systems.

  Even damaged, the Sovereign moved like a trained organism.

  Almost.

  The silence between the movements said otherwise.

  Cassandra climbed slowly, hand over hand.

  No main power. No artificial gravity. They were running on borrowed time.

  If the frigate came back...

  No. It wouldn’t.

  It ran.

  She didn’t know why, but she’d seen the feed. It hadn’t left because of damage. It had left because something made it afraid.

  And that something had been Tsukihara.

  The thought settled like ice in her gut.

  They were supposed to debrief. But there were no answers. Just a list of impossibilities.

  Drones coordinated like a swarm-mind. A frigate that cloaked and struck with weapons laced in unknown energy. A ship-wide shutdown that bypassed their best encryption. And then—her.

  Kim.

  Cassandra had reviewed her file. Thin. Too thin.

  And now? Now she was a variable. A risk.

  But also the reason they were still alive.

  She reached the top of the ladder and floated into the command deck, eyes scanning the room out of habit.

  Captain Ward would want theories.

  Cassandra hated theories.

  She preferred facts. Systems. Protocols.

  This? This was chaos wrapped in a girl with a false name and fire in her blood.

  And that made her dangerous.

  The corridor leading to the captain’s office was dimly lit, flickering with emergency strobes. As Cassandra passed the bridge, she noted the bridge crew working with hushed urgency. Conversations were clipped. Screens jittered with static. Everyone knew they were holding the Sovereign together with frayed wire and duct tape.

  The office door hissed open.

  Functional. Cramped. Exactly as she remembered it.

  Captain Alexandra Ward sat at the head of the table, spine straight despite the fatigue etched into her features. First Officer Hale stood to her right, arms folded, his presence as solid and immovable as ever. Other team leads filtered in one by one—some still buckling utility belts, others marked with soot and adrenaline.

  Cassandra slipped into a seat near the middle and strapped herself in, offering Ward a curt nod. Her gaze never lingered—already on the data pad in her hand, already preparing.

  Ward didn’t waste time.

  “All right,” she said, calm but steely. “Let’s start with the damage report. Holt?”

  Cassandra tapped her pad. A schematic of the Sovereign projected into the air—burnt orange and flickering red over entire swaths of the ship.

  “The situation is... challenging,” she said, deliberately neutral. “Hull breaches concentrated along the starboard flank. Emergency bulkheads held, but structural integrity in those sections is compromised.”

  She paused. Let that land.

  “The primary reactor is offline. We’re on backup power. Essential systems are stable—for now. Noncritical functions are being rationed.”

  Rourke leaned forward, voice a low growl. “What about weapons? Are we defenseless?”

  “For the moment,” Cassandra replied, jaw tight. “Point defense is down. Missile launchers are offline. Repairs are underway, but we’re not getting those back overnight.”

  Rourke muttered something under his breath and crossed his arms.

  “We won’t have overnight if that frigate returns,” he added, not looking at anyone in particular.

  Ward raised a hand, cutting the thread. “Auxiliary systems?”

  “Life support is holding,” Cassandra said. “We’ve got temperature regulation issues in a few sections—engineering’s chasing them down. Navigation is functional but degraded. External sensors are blind. We’ve lost forward sweeps.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Ward nodded slowly. “Situational awareness?”

  “A nightmare,” Cassandra said flatly.

  That earned a grim flicker of amusement across Hale’s otherwise impassive face.

  Cassandra pressed onward. “There’s one more complication. Secondary detonations—residual energy reactions in the hull from the drone impacts. My guess is their weapons left something behind. Damage control teams are still chasing flare-ups.”

  The silence that followed was thick. Ward didn’t speak until every eye had fallen on her.

  “We’re battered,” she said quietly, “but not broken. Focus on stabilizing the ship. Rourke, get your team on weapons. Priority one.”

  “Understood.”

  “Good.” She turned to Cassandra again. “Let’s move on to system control. Holt—you’re up.”

  Cassandra switched the projection. A new schematic flickered to life—this one less physical, more organic. A neural web of systems and pathways: operations, navigation, weapons, auxiliary. Much of it glowed yellow. A few key arteries pulsed red.

  “The good news,” she said dryly, “is that diagnostics are running. The bad news is that they’ve flagged something we’re not equipped to handle.”

  She expanded one node—near the Sovereign’s central operating core.

  “The conduits the frigate attached to us weren’t just physical. They left something behind. A virus. Adaptive, evasive, and extremely persistent. It’s burrowed into our command pathways.”

  She glanced up, meeting Ward’s gaze. “Every time we purge it, it changes shape. Like a weed with roots in the next compartment over.”

  Ward’s eyes narrowed. “How widespread?”

  “Extensive. Propulsion, navigation, weapons. We’ve isolated the critical subsystems to keep the ship breathing, but the integration is shredded. Basic control is intact. Inter-system functionality is... compromised.”

  Hale leaned forward. “Then wipe the system. A full reboot would clear it.”

  Cassandra’s expression didn’t waver. “It would. It would also leave us blind, paralyzed, and unable to defend ourselves for hours—if not longer. I’m not pulling that trigger unless we’re already dead.”

  She switched views again—highlighting lines of corrupted code. “Instead, we’re rebuilding in pieces from secured backups. It’s slower, but safer.”

  “How much slower?” Rourke asked.

  “Days,” she said. “Some systems are physically inaccessible. Others keep reinfecting as we clean them. Whatever this virus is—it’s learning.”

  Hayes finally spoke, arms crossed. “And you’re certain it came from the frigate?”

  “Unless one of my crew picked up a doctorate in black-box AI engineering without telling me—yes.”

  “And the origin?” Ward asked.

  Cassandra hesitated.

  The silence spoke louder than her words.

  “It doesn’t match any known outer colony system. No pirate signature either. It’s surgical. Precise. Purpose-built for infiltration.”

  Ward exhaled slowly. “Then treat every system interaction like a live wire. Prioritize isolation. Secure what we can, piece by piece.”

  Cassandra gave a crisp nod. “Understood.”

  The room fell still again, the weight of it pressing down.

  Cassandra didn’t show it.

  But something had changed. Not just in the ship. Not just in the systems.

  In the rules.

  And no one at this table had the manual for what came next.

  The tension in the room hadn’t dissipated—it had only settled, like smoke that refused to clear.

  Captain Ward broke the silence with practiced ease. “Let’s move on. Weapons performance. Rourke—I want your analysis. Why were we so ineffective against those drones?”

  Damien Rourke straightened. His expression hardened, jaw set.

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  He pushed off the table, floating above his seat in slow, deliberate motion. With a flick of his wrist, his data pad synced with the central display.

  The holographic feed from the battle flickered to life—chaotic footage from external sensors. Flares of point-defense fire. The swarm of drones, moving like a single thought.

  “This,” Rourke said, voice steady, “is what we were up against.”

  The room watched as kinetic rounds struck shimmering barriers—only to rebound or vanish into bursts of light.

  “These weren’t drones with armor. They had shields. Actual energy shielding. Not deflective plating, not thermal dispersion—shielding that absorbed kinetic force before it could connect.”

  He paused the footage, zooming in on a still frame. One drone flared with light, its shield catching a point-defense round mid-impact. Etched into the curve of its hull were glowing runes, faintly pulsing.

  “And this,” he continued, “is the part I don’t have a good answer for.”

  He enhanced the image. The runes expanded—complex, elegant, almost organic in their symmetry.

  “We have no idea what this is. The glow suggests an active energy source. But it’s not like any power signature I’ve ever seen.”

  He pulled up a spectral graph—data spiked wildly, colors flaring in impossible patterns.

  “Spectral analysis shows light dispersion across multiple bands—but it’s not consistent with any tech we’re aware of. Frankly, it looks more like light refracting through crystal than electromagnetic resistance.”

  Cassandra narrowed her eyes. “And the runes? Any translation? Pattern recognition?”

  Rourke shook his head. “Not a chance. We’ve cross-checked every database on record. No linguistic correlation. No technical foundation. It’s not code—it’s not even language in any format we understand.”

  He turned, arms folded. Frustration laced his voice.

  “It’s like someone took a pulp sci-fi serial, wrapped it in math we can’t solve, and sent it to kill us.”

  No one laughed.

  Cassandra watched the room shift—silent unease rippling beneath the procedural surface.

  Ward leaned forward. “What’s your recommendation?”

  Rourke didn’t hesitate. “We need to recover one.”

  He brought up a wide-angle view of the debris field—drifting wreckage, scorched plating, fractured hulls. Among it, a handful of drones floated inert, their runes still faintly glowing.

  “They didn’t all detonate. A salvage team could bring one aboard. If we can take it apart, maybe we’ll get a clue what powers those shields—or what language those runes are written in.”

  Ward raised an eyebrow. “Risk?”

  Rourke grimaced. “Non-zero. No idea if the shields are dormant or if there’s a failsafe hidden inside. But we’re blind, Captain. We need the data.”

  Ward scanned the room. “Thoughts?”

  Hale’s frown was tight, but he gave a slow nod. “The risk is real. But we can’t afford to stay blind.”

  Cassandra crossed her arms. “We’ll need containment. If there’s another virus—another intrusion vector—we can’t let it anywhere near command systems.”

  Ward nodded once. “Coordinate with Rourke. I want the drone quarantined the moment it hits the hull.”

  “Understood.”

  Ward’s gaze flicked to the center of the table. “Before we move on—credit where it’s due. The operations team flagged the command drone. That turned the tide. Holt, walk us through it.”

  Cassandra inhaled slowly as the spotlight shifted.

  She pushed off from her seat, catching a handhold to steady herself, and activated her own projection.

  A schematic flared to life—three-dimensional tracking logs of the swarm. One drone, slightly larger, burned a brighter trail through the map.

  “It wasn’t luck,” she said. “The drones were coordinated to a level we haven’t seen before. No delay, no drift. One of them—this one—moved differently. Less reactive. More directive. When we cross-referenced movement patterns, we saw this unit issuing micro-adjustments the others mirrored.”

  She zoomed in on the command drone. The runes etched along its hull glowed brighter—more stable, more intricate.

  “The energy signatures were stronger. The rune patterns—denser. It stood out.”

  Ward nodded. “Can this process be automated?”

  Cassandra hesitated. “Not easily. The markers are subtle. In real-time combat? Nearly impossible to spot.”

  Evelyn drifted forward slightly, her voice light but sure. “The runes might be the key. If we filter the feed by energy intensity, we could isolate command units faster.”

  Rourke gave a grudging nod. “It’s a start. If we’d known what to hit sooner, the Sovereign wouldn’t be limping.”

  Ward’s expression sharpened. “Good. Make it a priority. Cassandra—get a team on it.”

  Cassandra nodded. “We’ll have a prototype filter ready before we reach the station.”

  “Make it happen,” Ward said. Her voice softened, just slightly. “We may not get another second chance.”

  As the display faded, Cassandra settled back into her seat.

  The runes still glowed behind her eyes.

  Power shaped like language. Order drawn from chaos. But not their kind of order.

  And not something they were ready for. Not yet.

  As Ward steered the meeting forward, Cassandra allowed herself a flicker of satisfaction. Amid the chaos, her team had earned recognition—and results. But her thoughts drifted, as they had again and again, to Kim Tsukihara.

  The girl had flagged the command drone in real-time. With certainty. Confidence, even.

  And Cassandra couldn’t shake the feeling that it hadn’t been luck.

  Her gaze flicked briefly to the display still frozen on the command drone. The runes glowed faintly—sharp, intentional, unreadable.

  Why her? No one else had seen it. No other system flagged it. Just Kim.

  She pushed the unease down. There were more immediate concerns.

  Ward leaned forward slightly, voice level. “Let’s move on to the frigate. We’ve seen cloaking tech before—active camo, radar spoofing—but this was something else. Speculations?”

  Cassandra exhaled through her nose and braced herself against the table, tapping her datapad. The display shifted, showing the moment the frigate appeared—its silhouette blooming from empty space with a shimmer, like heat off pavement.

  “It wasn’t cloaking,” she said flatly. “It was gone. No radar signature. No distortion until the moment it appeared. It wasn’t masked—it was invisible. Full-spectrum.”

  She zoomed in on the hull, isolating a segment of plating.

  “Same runes as the drones. But scaled up. Denser. Complex.”

  Damien Rourke crossed his arms, frowning. “So what, we’re dealing with magic now? Should I start checking the vents for sorcerers?”

  A ripple of dry amusement passed through the room. Cassandra didn’t smile.

  “Call it magic, call it advanced tech—we don’t know yet. But it works. That frigate sat inside our security perimeter, undetected, until it chose to reveal itself. And by then, we were already on the back foot.”

  Evelyn leaned in slightly, her fingers braced on the table. “The shimmer—could that be a byproduct? If it’s consistent, we might be able to filter for it.”

  “It’s a start,” Cassandra said. “We’ll need enhanced visual filters. That shimmer might be the only detectable artifact.”

  Ward nodded once, thoughtful. “And the runes? Any leads?”

  Cassandra shook her head. “None that make sense. They match the drone markings in form but not function. Every attempt to translate them yields static. They’re not decorative—but they’re not a language we understand.”

  Hale’s voice was low and clipped. “If this cloaking system spreads, it rewrites every doctrine we have. We can’t defend against ghosts.”

  Ward’s jaw tightened. “Then it becomes our top priority. Cassandra—assign your best analysts. Rourke, coordinate with engineering for countermeasure testing.”

  “Understood,” they said in tandem.

  Ward’s gaze swept the room. “Now. Let’s address the other elephant in the room. Ensign Tsukihara. I want a full account of her actions—and an explanation of what we saw at the end of that engagement.”

  Cassandra folded her arms, the words already prepared.

  “She volunteered for the EVA. The mission was time-sensitive, and I authorized it.” Her voice stayed steady, but the words carried weight. “We needed those cables cut. I made the call.”

  Hayes leaned forward, voice like ice. “Pardon me, but that’s a decision that falls under my purview as security chief. A junior ops tech? Out there alone? What were you thinking?”

  Cassandra met his stare, flat and unmoved. “I was thinking about keeping the ship intact. If you’d like to file a complaint, I’ll forward the appropriate forms—after the crisis ends.”

  The room stilled.

  And for a moment, Cassandra hesitated.

  Because the truth was—she hadn’t made the call entirely on logic.

  It had felt... necessary. Like Tsukihara’s request carried weight beyond the words. As though something inside her had said: Let her go.

  She buried the thought. The outcome had justified the decision.

  “Enough,” Ward said, cutting across the tension. “No internal squabbles. I want answers. What happened out there?”

  Cassandra checked her pad. The feed from the EVA was fragmentary, distorted—but the key moments remained.

  “She severed the cables. Moments later, the frigate retreated. As for the... discharge—we don’t know. It resembled an energy event, but the signatures were unclassifiable.”

  Ward turned to Calloway. “Doctor. You examined her. Is there anything in her medical file to explain this?”

  Calloway’s voice was measured, calm.

  “Nothing irregular. Routine checkup, clean scans. If the footage seemed strange, I’d caution against overinterpretation. In that kind of environment, distortions aren’t unusual.”

  Hayes scoffed. “Sensor distortion? Convenient. She lit up like a reactor going nova. That’s not adrenaline.”

  Calloway’s gaze didn’t waver. “Adrenaline can do strange things, Chief. Especially when paired with oxygen deprivation and focused intent.”

  Cassandra watched her carefully.

  Too calm. Too practiced.

  She knew something. But now wasn’t the time.

  Hayes pressed forward. “When she wakes up, I want to question her myself. Thoroughly.”

  Ward raised a hand, silencing him. “You’ll have your chance. But for now, we focus on recovery. The Sovereign needs us focused.”

  There were nods. Muted, unsure.

  Cassandra looked down at her pad. The last frozen frame of the feed still hovered there.

  Tsukihara’s body, outlined in fire. Runes across her suit.

  As the officers began to file out, Cassandra lingered.

  Dr. Calloway’s calm demeanor hadn’t faltered throughout the debrief, but her answers had been too perfect. Vague, measured, composed to the point of suspicion.

  Cassandra had seen stonewalling before. This was the polished version.

  With a sharp push off the table, she launched herself toward the exit, catching the handholds as she veered toward the central spire. Her movements were precise. Focused. She barely registered the crew around her.

  I need to see this for myself.

  Whatever had happened out there, it wasn’t in the reports. And it wasn’t over.

  The hangar bay was quiet, but tense—the largest open space on the Sovereign now held a kind of fragile reverence.

  The recovery team had just returned.

  Magnetic clamps hissed as Akiko’s EVA tether disengaged from the hull. A few technicians drifted nearby, unsealing compartments on her suit with practiced hands. The suit was scorched, nicked with impact scarring—but intact.

  Cassandra grabbed a nearby rail, pulling herself into view.

  “Status?” she snapped.

  One of the technicians turned, catching himself on a stabilizer. “She’s stable—no major injuries. Minor abrasions, vitals are strong. Dr. Calloway’s en route.”

  Cassandra’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t remove the suit fully. Not until I’ve had a chance to examine it.”

  The technician hesitated. “Ma’am, with respect—if we delay much longer, there’s a risk of—”

  “I said wait.”

  He nodded, tension visible in his jaw.

  Cassandra drifted closer. Her gaze locked on the suit. Something was wrong.

  The scorch marks weren’t random—they spread in patterned arcs, almost fractal. No recognizable runes now, but they spoke of something intentional. Chaotic, yes. But not accidental.

  Residual magic? She didn’t like the idea. But she couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  One of the other technicians hovered nearby, clearly unsettled. “Ma’am... we really should—”

  The bay doors hissed open.

  Dr. Calloway floated in, posture composed as ever.

  “Holt,” she said smoothly, “I appreciate your attention to detail, but this is now a medical matter. I’ll take it from here.”

  Cassandra turned, eyes sharp. “Not until I’ve seen everything. You’ve dodged every question since the EVA. I’m not letting you bury this before I understand what happened.”

  Calloway’s voice didn’t shift. “Her condition comes first. Anything else can wait.”

  Their standoff was interrupted by the lead technician, whose voice trembled slightly. “If we don’t remove the helmet now, she might deteriorate.”

  Cassandra’s lips pressed into a thin line.

  Calloway met her gaze. “You want to watch? Fine.”

  The technician reached forward, hands steady despite the tension, and twisted the seal.

  Hiss.

  The helmet came free.

  Cassandra’s breath caught.

  It wasn’t immediate. Not dramatic. Just... movement.

  Two dark-furred ears twitched above Tsukihara's head, sleek and unmistakable.

  A moment later, something brushed against the technician’s arm—a long tail, unfurling lazily in the microgravity.

  The room froze.

  The technician holding the helmet stared, eyes wide, mouth ajar. “What... what the hell is that?”

  Cassandra couldn’t speak.

  Her mind whirled—rational protocols colliding with a truth that had no place on a military vessel.

  Not genetic mod. Not cosmetic. Not normal.

  Her voice came low and sharp. “Calloway. You knew.”

  Calloway floated forward, her face unreadable. “This isn’t the place for speculation. She needs medical care.”

  Cassandra rounded on her, fury just beneath the surface. “Don’t you dare play semantics. What is she? And why the hell hasn’t this been reported?”

  Calloway’s tone didn’t change. “I’m bound by medical confidentiality. I suggest you recall that before leveling accusations you can’t substantiate.”

  The technician holding the helmet looked between them, still pale. “Ma’am... what do we do?”

  Cassandra drew a long breath. Steel into her voice.

  “Move her to medical. But this conversation isn’t over, Doctor.”

  Calloway inclined her head slightly, already signaling for the team to prep Akiko for transfer.

  As they maneuvered her limp body toward the exit, her tail drifted behind her—gentle, unrestrained, impossible.

  Cassandra watched in silence.

  Every instinct in her screamed for answers.

  But beneath that—beneath protocol, beneath fury—was something colder.

  Something quieter. Fear.

  Because for all her training, all her certainty—

  She had no frame of reference for what had just walked aboard her ship.