Chapter 14 · The Debt Men Board

The alarm doesn't sound like ours.

It's coming through every panel, every speaker, every suit relay on the Long Invoice. Vey's voice. Except it's not. The cadence is right, the Rimward drawl is right, but there's a half-second lag between the syllables and I can hear the seam where they stitched his words together.

"All vessels reduce thrust and prepare for lateral dock. Compliance is not optional."

Briar's already moving. She slams her palm against the bulkhead comm. "Vey, that's not you."

Static. Then his real voice, clipped and furious. "I know. They're spoofing my command override. We're being reeled in."

I'm still strapped into the vault terminal. The countdown's still there. Sixty-nine hours, fourteen minutes. Briar's gun is holstered but her hand hasn't left it since she became the owner. Kade's standing three feet back, arms crossed, watching me like I'm a reactor about to breach.

"How?" I ask.

"Beacon relay," Kade says. "The one you tried to isolate. It's not just a distress ping. It's a retrieval tag."

Briar's jaw works. "You knew."

"I knew it was contractual hardware. I didn't know they'd spoof fleet command to pull us in."

The lights flicker. Not ours. The external floods.