Page 89 of Pocket Wife

Then Kaun’s voice cuts into the field, amplified through every active slate.

“Helix craft, this is Director Elaris Kaun under tribunal emergency authority. Withdraw from the north cistern or your extraction license enters immediate criminal suspension review.”

The silence after that is brutal.

The first ship rises.

Then the second.

The third lingers long enough for me to see the engineer remove a small device from beneath the canopy and slip it into his case.

Rethan sees it too.

The Helix perimeter breaks. Officers withdraw with the stiff, furious discipline of people who have lost in public but not given up in private.

The transports turn toward the sky and climb.

No one cheers.

The cistern field looks too fragile for cheering.

I stand slowly, knees dusty, side screaming. I cross to the handwheel and rest my palm over the three dots. The stone beneath my boots still hums faintly from whatever Helix did.

Rethan comes beside me.

“They planted something?” I ask.

“I truly do not know.”

“Did they damage it?”

His gaze moves over the cover, the rim, the old marks. “Not visibly.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No.”

Torren approaches with his scanner, face tight. “There’s a signal trace from the cistern housing. It pulsed once before they pulled away.”

My gaze falls on the old water ring, then lifts toward the ships shrinking into the morning.

“What did it send?”

Torren swallows.

Rethan answers before he can. His voice is quiet enough that only those nearest hear.

“The location of something under the cistern.”

My hand tightens over the carved dots.

The first clause.

The first water.

And now, whatever waits beneath it, Helix knows it is there.

CHAPTER 32