Page 61 of Claimed By the Wraiths

Something older. The voice of a Tsekai who’d seen what Vain did to his own people strapped to examination tables.

“They fight well together. The bonded pairs in the cells. If anyone can get them free, they’ll help.”

“Solren’s on his way to the holding levels,” Maris said. “Thoryn and I have the hangar. They sent fifteen at us. Thoryn went through the first eight before I finished reloading. The other seven reconsidered their career choices.”

“Some of them could still walk,” Thoryn said. His first words on comms all day. The deep resonance of a Tamzari who knew what it was to be caged and was done watching it happen to anyone else.

Solren came over the channel from the holding levels. “I’m at the prisoner cells. Starting triage.” A pause. The sound of cell doors opening, one after another, the locks releasing in sequence as Deyric cracked them through the channel Jessa had opened. “There’s a Tsekai woman standing at her door. She says Jessa sent her.”

Narev. Standing at the door with her shoulders squared, looking less like a prisoner than a builder who had finally been handed an open shipyard.

Jessa had given her that.

“Fourteen minutes,” Jessa said. “Diplomatic at fifty percent.”

The second wave came at fourteen minutes. Heavier. Twelve guards with heavier weapons, moving in formation, covering each other’s angles.

Vain was committing his reserves. He’d held them back during the first wave, testing our strength, measuring the response. Now he knew what he was dealing with and he’d sent the real fighters.

I fought them in the corridor. Shadow-meld in bursts, striking from angles they couldn’t track, retreating into darkness, hitting from behind.

The bond kept Jessa’s position anchored in my awareness. I knew where she was without looking the way I knew where my own hands were.

The guards fell. Not all of them easily.

Two of them had trained for close-quarters combat and they adapted fast, firing not where I was but ahead of where I was moving, anticipating the movement patterns. I had to change the rhythm, go deeper into the meld, burn more.

One of them got close enough to score a plasma burn across my ribs. The bolt seared through my shirt and into skin. It landed in my body at the same instant Jessa’s fear hit my chest.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re not fine. You’re bleeding.”

“I’m functional.”

“Serak.”

“Functional.”

I put down the last of the twelve. The corridor was quiet.

Scorch marks on the walls. Bodies on the floor.

Ressh, on comms, breathing hard. “That’s the garrison spending itself. They’ve got two hundred and they’re bleeding them across three rings; docking, hangar, holding. And the holding’s turning on them. Deyric’s popping cells faster than they can cover, and the ones we free don’t run. They pick up whatever the guards drop.”

“Sixteen minutes,” Deyric said. “Diplomatic at seventy percent.”

“Eighteen minutes,” Deyric said in my ear. “Diplomatic at eighty-seven percent.”

Then Vain came.

Not with an army. With six of his personal guards, the ones he’d kept closest while station security fought and died across the rings.

They moved differently. Faster. More controlled.

Spread formation. Overlapping fields of fire. Weapons sweeping not for a body but for the gaps where a body might disappear.

They’d studied the shadow-meld. Or something close enough to be dangerous.