Chapter 23 · The Vault Says No

I'm already moving before Vey finishes swearing.

The bridge is chaos. Ivo's talking over himself, three screens deep in telemetry. Briar's gun isn't on me anymore but it's not holstered either. Vey's pacing a tight loop behind the command chair, and I can see the math grinding behind his eyes. Thirty minutes. Maybe less now.

The hunters have my biometrics. My implant signature. Our exact position.

And they still want the vault.

"Sable." Vey stops mid-step. "What's in that vault?"

I don't know. I want to say it but my mouth won't move. Because part of me does know. The old part. The part that sealed it four hundred years ago and never wrote down why.

"Fuel," I say. "That's what the job spec said. Enough to run a whole fleet."

"Then we crack it." Vey's voice is flat. "We crack it now, we fuel up, we jump before they get here."

Briar shakes her head. "They're already burning in-system. We don't have thirty minutes of prep time. We have maybe twelve before they're in strike range."

"Then we have twelve minutes to open a four-hundred-year-old vault." Vey looks at me. "You're the admin key. Go admin.