The sky is busier tonight.

  Two new worlds slide into place along the Saint’s Belt—one a dim sapphire marble wreathed in storm ice, the other a dull, ember-red sphere with a crust that shifts like the skin of a sleeping volcano. The Dyson mirrors flex and shimmer, tilting to feed each a custom sun.

  [SAINT’S BELT UPDATE: SAINT-XI (SUBGLACIAL) ? SAINT-XII (LITHOSPHERIC) ? SPECTRAL ALLOCATION: OPTIMAL]

  Down here, the ocean licks at the black sand of Paradise and leaves bioluminescent lace that fades when the waves pull back. The wind tastes clean—manufactured clean—and it almost works, right up until memory reminds me what’s missing. The beach bar behind me still hums; three empty bottles glow faintly on the counter like captured dawn. I let the fourth sweat against my palm and watch the sky.

  We’ve been jumping for over a month, and somehow we’re winning the PR war on a dying galactic net. Young branded us the Arc—the Citadel of Mercy. The faithful cheered. The dying begged. And me? I sat in silk and learned to smile for the cameras, even drunk. Guilt shows up on cue, sour and familiar—trillions left behind for daring to disagree with our lie. I drink to make it smaller. It works for three seconds.

  I thumb Valicar awake. It purrs under my hand, chestplate folding open like always. The HUD rolls across my sight like it’s excited to show me how behind I am.

  Let’s see how many miracles I pulled off while napping.

  I scroll.

  [CURIA ? SAINT’S BELT: 748 WORLDS ONLINE | BROADCAST: “Light is apportioned to the faithful.”]

  Young’s velvet voice over fireworks; another pair of worlds welcomed. People cry, hug, burn offerings.

  Worthy, chosen, approved. We save the loyal. The rest don’t make the feed.

  But hey! That’s the point, isn’t it? So fuck ’em. I take a bite of whatever alien steak the droid just ferried in.

  Lion took the capital—an entire star system yoked to a teleporting Dyson. We carved it up at first and let a thousand worlds die; now we’re “rebuilding,” but only for the faithful: seven hundred forty-eight worlds fed perfect light like a god’s greenhouse—fungal forests, acid seas, cities riding gas giants. I’ve toured a few, smiled for the walk-throughs, kept my stomach where it belongs.

  [BLUE SUPERGIANT STABILIZATION—+MASS INJECTION]

  We threw some suns at the problem.

  Lion burns through mass like candy, so we fattened the star to keep the lights on.

  That’s not a metaphor.

  We actually lobbed dwarf stars into the blue supergiant.

  Science is just God with a better poker face.

  [PUBLIC RITE: “MIRACLE” FEED]

  I kneel beside the child and press my glowing palm to her ribs. Her breath stutters, then steadies; her parents break into shaking sobs. The crowd goes wild, hungry for a miracle.

  But it’s not me. Not really.

  It’s stolen nanotech from a banned Council vault.

  Valicar pumps the meds while I pretend to pray.

  At least the kid’s lungs work now. That’s something, right?

  [FLEET COUNT: 711,422 SHIPS ? LOYAL]

  A navy growing wide enough to shove a god aside. Wear our colors, or get eaten.

  [FRONTS: ORION—EXPANDING ? DEVIL—RETROGRADE]

  We gain a world; they take a hundred. We stitch one wound; they open an artery. Everything we took from the Devil is slipping as that front comes apart. On the far side, Orion’s iron-drive corvettes keep knifing through systems. Soon their borders will meet—and the Hive won’t stop at the quarter of the galaxy it once held. Distance is our only gift, and space is huge, but exponential growth eats it system by system.

  Feels like mopping the ocean with a sponge.

  I stop scrolling.

  Shit...

  I close the feed and take another sip.

  The fourth bottle’s half gone. I set it down; the sober edge slips in—sharp, unwelcome. I swipe off the net ping and open my messages.

  [PERSONAL: UNREAD—37]

  Wolf: three messages. Eagle: one. Young: seven.

  Lion: …too many.

  I let them stack, then swipe—thumb heavy, eyes hot. The queue collapses to a single live ping, priority-locked. Glass rattles; the beach hums. A gold spear tears loose from the Citadel and falls like a star. I look up—and instantly regret it. Vision sears. I blink; it knits. The repair eats calories; hunger answers. I’ll see the chef when we’re done.

  He comes in slow enough to mock physics, hammer lifting just before he hits. I know the trick: he drops his mass to near nothing, bleeds off momentum, lands light as a feather so he doesn’t crater my world. The surf shivers. Then—

  Lion touches down with a sound like a cathedral door closing.

  “You’ve been ignoring my hails,” he says—not unkind. The golden visor mirrors the ocean; I can’t see his eyes. “We can’t jump again until you’re on the Citadel.”

  “It’s a pain to leave paradise. And jumping means more staged ‘miracles’ with Young. I’m fresh out of bullshit for the day.”

  “You know the risk.”

  I snort. “Do I? You have total control of the Citadel. No planet gets left behind unless you want it left. That neat little trick hasn’t failed once in decades, Leo. Not after all these jumps.”

  I lift the bottle toward the sky.

  He inclines his head a fraction. Agreement—then a scold in the same motion.

  “It’s still a risk. Not worth taking. Not for these creatures.”

  “Why do you hate them so much?” I ask.

  “Why do you pretend you care for them?” he matches, quick.

  “I do, you ass.” I grit my teeth. “I miss everyone on Jericho…”

  “No,” he says, voice flat. “Not them. Not Reid.” The pause lands like a slap. “Name one. Not a species from your stolen memories. A friend. Hell—an acquaintance you met here. Someone you didn’t kill.”

  “Msv… Vorat—” I stop on both. Supposedly great men who should’ve stopped me cold—yet they were just speed bumps in Lion’s plan. Titans turned to children when I followed orders instead of giving them. “Kael,” I mutter.

  “He retired decades ago. And he’s dead. But you wouldn’t know that, because you were drunk.” His voice stays level—worse than shouting. “Admit it, Highness—you don’t feel bad for them. You feel bad for yourself, because you think you should. But the truth is…” He lets the silence finish the sentence. “You’re functionally a sociopath, Sol—plus a stack of things Yates would diagnose. Mostly? Being a fucking crybaby.”

  I blink. I reach for a counterpunch—anything I can call him on. Cruelty. Motive. A lie.

  There isn’t one. He’s just… honest.

  So I settle for the only thing left. “Oh, fuck off, Lion.”

  “You don’t even know the people you claim to care about. Do you know Wolf’s real name? Did you ever ask? You only call me ‘Leo’ to spite me.”

  A fractional nod. “Face it. You’re not a good person. That doesn’t matter. Morality never has—for someone like you.”

  “And what is someone like me, LEO!?”

  “A Voss.”

  The silence stretches.

  I down another swig. Then another.

  “Dad said you shouldn’t have come with me…” I murmur. “Maybe he was right. You’ve solved every major problem we’ve come across—and I haven’t turned into the person I need to be.”

  I swallow hard. “That’s the one thing even you can’t fix, Lion. I’m the problem.”

  I flex my toes deeper into the black sand, let the cold creep up my arches.

  “So please, let’s just… sit here,” I say, quieter. “Take a rest, Leo. You could use one.”

  He says nothing.

  “When was the last time you left that armor?” I already know. Orion showed me. But hearing him say it still matters.

  “You know I can’t,” he says evenly. “Not after first contact with the Rue. I would’ve died without this suit. Or Phoenix.”

  Air hisses through the seals, like admitting the next part costs something.

  “The last time I felt sand on my feet, I was fourteen. On the run from the CIA in Cuba. I’d just finished the first version of Father’s power armor.” A pause. “I had a sweetheart.”

  I don’t breathe.

  “She died from a bullet meant for me.” The visor turns back to the sea. “After that, I stopped leaving the suit.”

  “That’s when you became the man you are now… when you stopped caring?”

  “Guess so.” He steps in, drops beside me like it’s the most natural thing in the world. His helmet angles, unreadable.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Okay.

  Then I’ll feel it for both of us, even if what’s left of me isn’t right. Maybe I’m a sociopath who kept her own lie. It stings to say—but I’ve always known, or at least suspected. I still feel, just crooked: guilt for not feeling guilt. I can tell. Altis would be disgusted with what I’ve become.

  “Fine,” I say. “Answer me one thing, and I’ll come quietly.”

  He waits.

  “Why not Haven?” I ask. “We could jump there instantly. Add them to the Belt. Give them a sun that doesn’t eat them in their sleep.”

  He laughs once, soft and genuinely amused. “That would ruin Father’s little experiment. Haven’s his control group—the only place still human without his fingerprints all over it. Their quantum shield’s still stable since Father repaired it. The Hive treats the planet like empty space. They don’t even know the Rue exist—much less anyone beyond their sky. Bringing them here would blow their illusion wide open. You’d be exposing them to the galaxy… and worse, to us.”

  “What are they like?” I ask.

  He looks up as if the answer is written in the mirrors, then reaches up and unlocks his helmet. The seals hiss. When it lifts away, the light catches on his face—one gold eye, the other a cybernetic red that hums faintly in the dark.

  “Medieval, shading into early Renaissance—on purpose,” he says. “Father rigged the colony packs to burn down after landfall: no grid, no replicators, no fabs. He capped their memory too—kept Earth’s stories up to the 1500s and cut the rest. He wanted to see what they’d do without the industrial cascade that ate our home.”

  A breath. “Haven is Earth-like in almost every way. Abundant water, rich soils, metals near the skin. Five continents. Before they woke, Father sent a probe ahead of the colony ship Angel—to scour the worst native apex life and seed the biomes with Earth stock. Horses and cattle on the temperate plains. Sheep and goats in the high country. Pigs in the oak belts. Deer in the woodlands. Tigers in the monsoon forests. Wolves and lynx where winters bite. Bees in every valley. Squid in the trenches, parrots in the rainbands—the whole Noah manifest, replicated and tuned to latitude.”

  “I’ve never even seen most of those outside of old Halo films,” I say, blinking. “And they just… run around there? Free?”

  He nods once. “Free in the way things are when no one’s taught them a better cage.”

  “What are the people like, then—if he set them back before the industrial revolution? Are they all farmers?”

  “Mostly agrarian, yes,” Lion says. “Nine in ten live by soil, river, or herd. Villages pay tithe to the crown, market towns feed the scholars’ cities, and caravans stitch the gaps. But one current lives by motion—the nomads. Hunter-gatherers folded into horse-tribes. They follow the grass and the rains, trap in the winters, smoke meat in the summers. They read a different sky than our ancestors. Children learn bow and saddle before they can walk. They trade leather, salt, and stories for iron and grain, then ride away before sunrise.”

  “Wow,” I say. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you sound… envious of the nomads.”

  He chuckles—low, almost fond. “No. I just know they’re the last truly free humans in the galaxy—the way we were on Earth before civilization took root.” A beat. “Don’t forget: I lived to see what humanity became.”

  He tilts his head, sifting memory. “It’s been almost two centuries. Every original settler is gone. Earth is a campfire myth. ‘Voss’ is banned in schools—devil in sermons, god in private prayers. Most of what they ‘remember’ is great-great-grandparents’ mouth-to-mouth. Father did leave them one cheat because it amused him—The Lord of the Rings—folded into their lore like scripture. Which means if they saw you, they wouldn’t see a woman. They’d see an elf. A féa. And your immortality? Checks out in their stories.”

  Good for them. The thought hits so fast it scares me. Good for them.

  “I want to go,” I say, before fear can put manners on it.

  “No,” he says, the way you’d say gravity. “Impossible.”

  “I won’t expose anything. I’ll go alone. I’ll blend in.”

  He lets the silence laugh for him, then helps it along. “Ignore the ears. The eyes. The teeth. The fact Knight sculpted you into a statue that learned to move. You don’t read human anymore, Highness. You read like a myth. Or—more likely—an elf.”

  My jaw tightens. I flinch before I can stop it.

  Knight—the brilliant, surgical cunt who called herself my mother. She turned me into a five-foot porcelain doll with H-cups and a waist like a corset ad. I look like someone’s twisted idea of perfection.

  She was always vain—my father’s favorite whore, flawless by design. But she never made herself ridiculous.

  She saved that for me.

  She once told me attraction meant power.

  She always knew I might end up on Haven—where the cattle never run dry, and breeding daughters wouldn’t even raise a question.

  There aren’t many humans up here. But the ones that are?

  They look at me exactly the way Knight wanted.

  The ocean whispers around our ankles.

  “Please, Leo.”

  He doesn’t move.

  “I need to see life without—” The word sticks. “—without Dad. Without all of this. I want to know what it feels like to walk under a small sky that doesn’t know my name. He’ll be back soon, and this might be my last chance.”

  I take a breath. “I’ve upgraded Valicar’s shielding—layered it with the vault tech we pulled from the ruins. It outpaces even Orion’s psychic reach now. The Hive won’t find me unless I want them to. And with Haven’s own quantum shield wrapped around the planet…” I shrug. “I’ll be a ghost inside a fortress.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I keep going because I know the part of him that listens is the part Father failed to kill. “I’ll give you what you want after. I’ll fulfill my role. I’ll merge with Orion. I’ll upload to Jericho. I’ll ascend. I’ll play my part in your war with the Elders and call it holy on camera.” I swallow. It tastes like admission. “But let me live on Haven first. Alone. For as long as I can stand it. Maybe then I’ll finally become who I was meant to be.”

  The surf fills the pause. Somewhere far above us, a mirror clicks a fraction of a degree and bathes Saint-XI in a paler blue.

  He exhales. It sounds like a vented star. “If I do this for you, Highness—”

  “It buys everything you’ll ever ask me for,” I say, not blinking. You’ve been buying me my whole life. Let me buy myself back for a second.

  He eases his hammer back from the waves, steam hissing where it leaves the surf. The motion’s slow—thoughtful, like he’s working through equations in his head. When he speaks, it’s all conditions.

  “You will take the Stormbreaker,” he says. “No lanes, no escorts. We jump within one light-year and stop. The ship is fully automated; you need no crew. Wolf goes with you in stealth whether you want him or not. He won’t be seen.”

  “He’ll be noticed.”

  “He won’t,” Lion says, and the certainty lands heavy enough to be law. “No one learns Haven’s location. Not even you. The coordinates remain sealed.”

  [STORMBREAKER: AUTO-PILOT ? PHASED CLOAK: ACTIVE ? QUANTUM VEIL: TRIPLE ? COORDINATES: COMPARTMENTALIZED (DENIED TO USER)]

  I feel the promise break something inside me I didn’t realize was coiled. My eyes burn. I don’t look away. “How long would I have?”

  His gaze lifts past me, past the mirrors. “It could be weeks,” he says, honesty for once. “It could be years.”

  I’ll take a breath if that’s all you give me. I nod.

  “There’s more,” he says, and the gold in his voice goes to brass. “Elder activity in the core is spiking. The gate between the Milky Way and the other galaxies is coming online. They’ve likely noticed the Hive—and the ban-tech we’re using. Father’s research is nearly complete. Construction on several superweapons has begun. He’ll return within five years.” A beat. “Maybe within half.”

  “You can’t mean… a gate between galaxies.” My mouth is dry. “How long have you and Dad had tabs on them?”

  “Not as long as you’d think,” he says. “The feed’s been faint for years—even for him.”

  “So… Kardashev III at minimum. Maybe IV.”

  “Call it what you want. Either way it’s beyond anyone but Father.”

  “Then we stop wasting time,” I say.

  He flicks a glance at the beach bar, at the empty glow there, at the ghosts of a hundred bottles I’ve killed to mute a chorus that will not shut up. “Agreed.”

  We walk the tideline to the shuttle in a silence that isn’t quite peace. The Saint’s Belt turns above us, planets like beads on a bright wire. The gaps where others used to hang stay black.

  On the ramp, Lion stops me with my name and nothing else. “Stay at the edge of his garden, Sol,” he says. “Don’t wake it.”

  We split at the Citadel—he’ll handle the jump, drop us within a light-year of Haven. I’ll take the Stormbreaker, the same ship that once pulled me from Jericho and brought us here. It’s been upgraded a dozen times since, I know, but I haven’t set foot on her deck in nearly a decade.

  On the way to the hangar, I pass at least a hundred people—crew, priests, guards. Most don’t look up. Most know better.

  But one does.

  A Rue—half insect, half mammal. A strange, reverent species who, whether they know it or not, set my father on this crusade.

  He’s standing post by the inner gate when something in me—maybe guilt, maybe boredom—makes me stop. The poor guard freezes like I’ve drawn a weapon.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  He blinks, caught between awe and terror. “I am unworthy, Great Phoenix.” He drops to his knees, bowing so low his head almost hits the floor. “My sister is sick. Please—bless my kin, Princess of Humanity.”

  I stare for a moment, unsure what I wanted from this. Maybe to prove I can still feel something. I sigh and walk past.

  [MISSION PROFILE: OBSERVE-ONLY ? NO CONTACT ? NO REVEAL]

  Wolf waits by the docking clamps, helmet cradled at his hip. His eyes—blue, bright as welding arcs—glint in the gloom.

  “So we’re really going to the Promised Land,” he says, half laugh, half challenge.

  I meet the look. “You sound disappointed.”

  “Just surprised they’re letting you touch the closest thing to Old Earth in the whole universe,” he says, smiling like he’s not really joking.

  “I’ve missed it,” he says. “A real blue sky with clouds—not some alien bullshit. They say there’s even a stretch of land like Texas down there. Looks just like the place I grew up… before I got pulled into the Royal Guard.”

  “Never been,” I say. “Heard they had a lot of cows. We’ll stop by when we make it.”

  I head into the ship, past a small army of drones hauling crates. He walks with me toward the bridge.

  “I know you like steak,” he adds. “I’ll make you one—Earth-style. Ribeye, maybe. Or New York strip. I don’t look like a cook, but I know how to grill.”

  He chuckles.

  I shrug. “I don’t really know the difference. I just know I like meat.”

  The last door slides open. We step onto the bridge and take our seats.

  [LAUNCH AUTHORIZED ? DRIVE: QUIET ? SIGNATURE: ZEROED]

  Valicar seals around my ribs with a soft, practiced bite. I check the shield harmonics—tight enough to keep even Orion out, if it comes to that. The bridge dims; the starfield sharpens as the drives spin up.

  A flash. Weight slips away.

  Gravity forgets me for a heartbeat as the system jumps. I can’t see it from here, but I know what’s happening—Lion’s pulling mass straight from the star, trading sunlight for distance. In seconds, we’ll be tens of thousands of light-years away.

  “How long will the trip take?” I ask Valicar.

  “Three days, fifteen hours at maximum speed,” the ship replies.

  Space folds like it’s learned manners, and the world politely steps aside.

  Microfolds chain like held breaths. The Stormbreaker doesn’t so much travel as decline to be anywhere else. Minutes slide. Hours slide. The clocks lie politely.

  Days slide past in lightless folds. I eat well, drink better.

  The ship was packed before I ever stepped aboard—a horde of drones filling every hold, crates scanned by Eagle’s cold eye before they were sealed in place. She hated me, but she was good at her job. Had the whole thing stocked in under an hour.

  Some of the bottles are ancient—names I can’t pronounce without bending the shape of my jaw. I won’t go hungry. Or sober. Not for a long time. Maybe centuries.

  Wolf is my only company, but that’s nothing new—not after all these years.

  One evening, I finally ask him,

  “What’s your name?”

  He doesn’t look up. “Wolf.”

  “No, I mean your real…”

  I trail off when he gives me a strange look.

  “Connor Wolff,” he says. “Wolff’s my last name. So… not much of a change once I became the guy in the suit.”

  “Why’d you join?” I ask.

  “It was that or die in a war,” he says with a shrug. “Everybody knew Voss was winning. Only an idiot tried to fight that.”

  He chuckles, then adds, “Lost my legs to those Ju Wang bastards before we crushed them for good a century later.”

  A dry laugh.

  “Your dad gave me new ones. Better ones.”

  He takes another drink. Doesn’t say more.

  I don’t push it. We let it go and drift back into the usual banter.

  That’s where it’s safe—for now.

  We settle back into the usual—sarcasm, sleep, whatever’s in the bottle.

  Then the nav pings.

  We’ve arrived. Just outside the system.

  Silence settles in like a verdict.

  The canopy clears.

  There it is.

  A blue-white marble hangs in the dark, laced with cloud and weather like Earth’s favorite memory, just a shade colder, just a hair cleaner. Night glints off oceans. Day pours across mountain shoulders. The planet turns slowly, unhurried by our panic.

  Around it, geometry: Hive patrols drift on long, dull ellipses, the way barnacles haunt a hull they can’t crack. Their vectors bend around a faint, invisible shell that throws no light.

  [OBJECT: HAVEN ? CLASS: TERRESTRIAL ? SHIELD: QUANTUM (LEGACY VOSS) ? STATUS: INTACT]

  [LOCAL THREATS: HIVE PICKETS × 19 ? PROXIMITY: NON-INTERCEPT ? AWARENESS: ZERO]

  [CLOAK: PHASED ? QUANTUM VEIL: SEALED ? DETECTION RISK: < 0.01%]

  The Stormbreaker breathes like a patient trying not to wake a sleeping child.

  The planet I left Earth for almost a century ago.

  I press my fingers to the canopy, like touching it won’t break the spell.

  Jericho didn’t bring me here.

  I did.

  Maybe if I live a life that isn’t about him… I’ll finally figure out who I am.

  “Take us in, Valicar.”

  I feel us slip along the planet’s quantum skin and through—no ripple, no alarm. The Hive is quieter than zero; my ears don’t even twitch. Cloak holds as we come up on the night side.

  “Put us down within a hundred miles of a major city,” I say. “I could use the walk.”