The safehouse was colder than Gravel remembered. Probably because their last safehouse had been a ship, and now they were holed up in a dimly lit apartment that smelled like fried algae.
Priest sat in front of a flickering holo-display, decrypting whatever Vanje had pulled from the McPherson vault. He promised sending more in 24 hours, so for the moment they’d have to work with what they had. Hunter leaned against the counter, arms crossed, while Fang—head down, fingers tapping against her holo-slate—was obviously messaging Kai again.
“I still say we break for the ship,” he muttered, half to himself.
Hunter snorted. “Not one for politics?”
Gravel exhaled sharply, rubbing the back of his neck. “I like my politics like I like my drinks—not trying to kill me.”
“That one’s lame,” she said.
“Yeah, that one was lame,” he replied, turning to Fang. “Fang. We need whatever data you managed to pull from the vault about Mura.”
Fang didn’t look up.
Gravel clicked his tongue. “Tell your boyfriend you’ll be busy committing corporate espionage.”
Only then did Fang meet his eyes. She was obviously trying to think of a snide comeback, but shifted uncomfortably as his stare drilled a metaphorical hole into her.
Fang’s fingers hovered over her holo-slate, her usual smirk absent. She muttered, “Aye aye, boss.”
Hunter arched a brow. “That actually worked?”
“It should,” Gravel replied.
Fang shot him a glare but pulled up the data regardless, swiping through the files she’d sectioned off. “I ran a quick skim before dumping it to Priest. Most of it’s financial gibberish, but there’s one name that kept showing up.”
She turned the holo-display around. A single header flashed at them:
Project CELESTIAL INCONTINENCE.
Gravel blinked. “That’s gotta be a mistranslation.”
Mura’s name came with a classified marker, buried beneath layers of corporate jargon and redacted reports. But the bits they could access painted a certain picture.
Shiya Mura – Republic Economic Enforcement Division, Garmin-44 System Oversight, Special Projects Liaison
Garmin-44 was the name of the solar system Kestris was in.
Priest barely glanced up from the screen. “Trade route taxation, corporate compliance audits, extrajudicial asset liquidation.”
He kept it curt, too curt.
Gravel squinted at him. “Great. Love the sound of words. Now translate that into something the rest of us can care about.”
Priest exhaled. “He’s a glorified repo man with military backing. He combs through corporate records, flags shipments as ‘security risks,’ and then they disappear into Republic custody.”
Gravel leaned forward. “Define ‘Republic custody.’”
Priest’s cybernetic fingers tapped idly against the console. “Anything from black-budget military projects to reselling assets through shell companies. If the Garmin’s subdivision finances get tight, Mura makes sure they have ‘unclaimed’ resources to fill the gaps.”
Hunter crossed her arms. “So he’s robbing corpos, and the Republic’s looking the other way.”
Gravel frowned. “Why the hell would McPherson keep records on this? If the Republic’s looking the other way, wouldn’t they just scrub it?”
Priest barely glanced up from the holo-display. “Insurance.”
Fang tilted her head. “Against who?”
Priest said, “How should I know? I’m just speculating. Since Mura is the resource distributor, he does have lots of power over how corpo work in Garmin. You need to have some sort of leverage.”
Hunter crossed her arm. “You planning to talk to Sloan about this, old man?”
Priest ignored them both and pulled up the contact Sloan had sent. The secured frequency flickered on his holo-display, the encryption key shifting with each second.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Hunter nodded. “Good. Call her.”
Priest stared at the display for a few seconds.
Gravel smirked. “What’s wrong, Dakarai? Scared of a date?”
“I’ll set you all a date right now.” He scoffed.
He tapped the screen, sending the request. The connection took a few seconds longer than expected, the encryption filters cycling before finally stabilizing.
Sloan’s face materialized, backlit by the soft glow of a high-rise office. “Dakarai,” she greeted. “Good timing.”
***
The rendezvous point was one of those half-operational lounges in the undercity, tucked between a half-lit neon bar and a vendor selling fried protein paste. It wasn’t Sloan’s usual style, but then again, neither was getting yanked into the air by a gravitational chokehold.
She was already seated when they arrived, sipping something dark out of a reinforced glass. Priest slid into the seat across from her without ceremony, his holo-display already flickering as he pulled up the decrypted files. Hunter took a casual stance nearby, keeping an eye on the surroundings, while Gravel leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed.
Priest didn’t waste time. “Celestial Incontinence.”
Sloan raised a brow. “That’s your opening line?”
Gravel leaned forward, drumming his fingers on the table. “What’s the grand secret behind it? Some kind of covert Republic operation? A shell fund for black-market trade?”
Sloan blinked at him, then exhaled sharply through her nose—the closest thing to laughter they’d get. She swirled her drink idly, then flicked a glance toward Priest.
“You’re looking at the wrong project.”
Priest’s visor flickered slightly, processing. “What?”
Sloan leaned forward, resting her chin against her knuckles, her smirk just shy of outright mocking. “That file? It’s exactly what it says on the tin.”
Gravel’s face twisted. “No. No way.”
Sloan nodded. “It’s a medical reimbursement program. Specifically, to treat Mura’s—” she gestured vaguely, “—ongoing personal inconvenience.”
There was a beat of silence.
Hunter sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You’re telling me we spent the last twelve hours thinking this was some deep Republic conspiracy, and it’s just a fancy way of saying the man can’t hold his piss?”
Sloan smirked. “You’re the ones who dug through my superior’s private medical history. Congratulations.”
Gravel exhaled sharply and leaned back in his seat. “Why don’t you do the digging next time, smartypants?”
Priest was already scrolling through the files, discarding them one by one. “So what’s the real project, then?”
Sloan’s smirk faded just a fraction. “I don’t know.”
Gravel scoffed. “Great. Fantastic. We’ve got the professional ladder-climber over here, and even she doesn’t know what she’s digging for.”
Sloan didn’t bother with a retort. Instead, she raised a hand, catching the bartender’s attention with a lazy flick of her wrist. The man—a grizzled ex-merc with a cybernetic arm that whined softly every time he moved—nodded, then tapped something beneath the counter.
A low hiss filled the air as a portion of the back wall shifted, revealing a dimly lit passage.
“Come on,” Sloan said, standing. “Let’s dig a little deeper.”
Hunter glanced at Priest, who gave the slightest nod.
Gravel murmured, “This sure doesn’t look like a setup.”
Sloan retorted. “Don’t worry. I can’t beat you three in a fist fight.”
Sloan slipped into the passage without a glance back. Priest followed in silence, the flickering lights casting sharp shadows across his face. Hunter shot Gravel a look before stepping in. Gravel sighed, rolling his shoulders before coming in after them.
The passage sloped downward, narrowing slightly before opening into a private backroom lined with outdated holo-terminals. A circular table sat in the center, screens flickering above it with information feeds and encrypted logs. The air smelled faintly of ozone and old circuitry, like the place had been repurposed from something long abandoned.
Sloan gestured for them to sit. “Welcome to my little hideaway. Information’s currency in this city. I keep a stash.”
Priest didn’t bother sitting. He stepped up to the main terminal, arms crossed. “You said we were looking at the wrong project.”
Sloan keyed in a command, and the screens above them reshuffled, lines of text scrolling too fast for anyone but Priest to process at a glance. She flicked a finger against the interface, slowing the feed. One title blinked into focus.
PROJECT FIRMAMENT.
Gravel leaned forward, arms on the table. “Alright. Grand mystery solved. We got the actual name now. What the hell is it?”
Sloan exhaled, folding her arms. “This is the old name of a scrapped project. I believe a new one’s in the work, but you need to dig it out of that database you got a hold of.”
Priest’s fingers danced over the console, isolating the relevant data strings. “Firmament. Decommissioned five years ago. Whatever replaced it is buried under newer encryption layers.”
Hunter frowned. “Scrapped doesn’t mean dead. What was it about?”
Sloan leaned against the table, watching the screen. “Weapons research. Not your usual ‘make a bigger gun’ kind. Something to do with atmospheric manipulation.”
We’re really wasting time here, thought Gravel. His mind traced back to the content of the drive, and how he was so sure it’d be related to mutations. Now they’d become corpo lapdogs and the lucrative score he’d envisioned was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so curious.
Hunter nudged his arm, dragging him back to reality. “You zoning out on me, or are you actually listening?”
Gravel blinked, rolling his shoulders. “I’m listening, I just—” He gestured at the screen. “We already went over the whole weather manipulation thing, didn’t we? What else is there?”
“You missed a lot,” Hunter sighed. “Firmament wasn’t just about weather control—it was about targeted environmental collapse. There’s mention of localized molecular disruptors—devices that can break down solid matter at a structural level.”
Gravel perked up. “Great. Priest can steal one and slap it onto his magic arm. You’ve already got the ‘freeze people solid’ trick. Why not add ‘disintegrate them into dust’ too?”
Priest didn’t look up. “Might be possible engineering-wise.”
Hunter shot him a look. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
Gravel smirked. “You say that, but I see the gears turning in his head.”
Priest ignored them both, eyes scanning the file. “The disruptor tech isn’t just theoretical—it’s active. Firmament was never really shut down. They just buried it under a different name.” He tapped a line of data. “Mura’s been redirecting resources, funneling assets behind the Republic’s back. McPherson and a few other corpos have been getting first dibs on whatever this thing has turned into.”
Sloan exhaled, a flicker of satisfaction in her gaze. “Which means they have prototypes. Probably field-tested, probably off-the-record.”
Gravel clapped his hands together, leaning toward Sloan with an easy grin. “Alright, you got what you needed. Now can we have our ship back?”
Sloan didn’t even blink. “No.”
Gravel groaned, throwing his head back. “Come on. You wanted dirt on Mura, and now you have it. This is a fair trade.”
Sloan tapped the table. “Not yet. I need more than just breadcrumbs. I need proof. Something actionable.”
“That’s the job for your goons. We’re not federal agents,” said Gravel.
Sloan leaned forward, resting her hands on the table. “I need you to find something undeniable. A shipment log, an internal memo, something that puts Mura’s hand in this mess with no room for plausible deniability.”
Right as the words left Sloan’s mouth, the safehouse lights flickered. Then cut out entirely.
Gravel tensed. “That’s not normal.”
Hunter pulled out her laser gun, pointing at Sloan. “You set us up.”
“While I’m here with you? Listen to yourself.” A flicker of something crossed Sloan’s face—something raw, unguarded. A brief, instinctive sliver of disbelief.
A second later, the door exploded inward.
The impact sent a shockwave through the cramped space, and before the dust even settled, figures moved in—fast, professional, rifles raised. No mercenary sloppiness this time. These were trained operatives, and they weren’t here to play.
McPherson security.