Six days. That's how long it took for the charred, limping Darkstar Sentinel to regain just enough power for one jump. Its hull still bore the scorched signatures of the blast that had nearly consumed it, panels warped and patched with welded plates. The scent of scorched carbon still lingered in the corridors.
Inside the belly of the ship, the AI Nyx coordinated diagnostics, flickering across holo-panels with cool precision. Across the ship, her signals harmonized with LYNX, who was pulsing quietly inside Rhyx's AR glasses.
"Tienerra, please be careful when working with those conduits. They are still charged," Nyx stated calmly, her voice cool and emotionless.
From within a maintenance alcove, Tienerra's wings twitched as she squatted into the tight space, holding a plasma splicer in one clawed hand. Her tail curled instinctively around a structural brace for balance. Her head dipped forward, strands of midnight-black hair stuck to her forehead in the heat of the crawlspace.
"Don't worry. I won't damage them."
The moment the words left her lips, a sharp crack split the air. A surge of blue electricity leapt from the exposed cabling. Tienerra stiffened, her body seizing mid-motion, and a violent jolt launched her backward with a Soltarian yelp. Her wings flared wide, slamming her into the ceiling with a thud, then she floated limp for a moment in the zero-gravity air.
Nyx chimed again, "I was trying to state it may have already been damaged and exposing the internal cabling."
Tienerra winced, shaking out her right arm. Her muscles spasmed involuntarily, and her claws retracted with a click as pain surged down her forearm. "Right," she muttered, her tone clipped.
"You're still hurting from using your Aetherbind, aren't you?" Nyx observed.
Tienerra growled under her breath. "Yeah… I had to funnel so much of it into my palm just to save Velora. I overcompressed the flow and the feedback pushed straight into my nerves."
Her other hand flexed slowly, pulling herself back toward the panel.
"Time'll heal it. Once we dock, I'll grab some medstims. Aether burns don't heal clean without them."
From deeper in the ship, Rhyx's voice echoed, muffled slightly through the vents: "Tie! I need you down here for a few."
Then LYNX added her own sass: "Get your scaly ass over here already!"
Tienerra floated motionless for a beat, wings twitching once in irritation. She sighed, letting her tail uncurl from the brace and drift downward.
"Nyx," she murmured, "Is it just me… or does she actually hate me?"
Nyx responded diplomatically. "I wouldn't say hates you… per se."
"YES. I DO." LYNX interrupted with zero hesitation, her tone dripping with sarcasm and static. "You brought a living bomb to our station. We could handle that, but the attack ship and the vengeance-crazed jackal who followed—what was she to you? Hostage? Friend? Lover? Ex?"
Tienerra sputtered. "Whoa, hey! Don't go starting weird rumors or anything. I saved her because without her, my data prism was toast."
Nyx added, "But, Tienerra, you displayed more emotional variance when in Velora's presence."
Tienerra hesitated. Her eyes narrowed, as if trying to dismiss their words, but something lingered behind her expression—an unease she couldn't quite shake. "I don't know what you're both implying," she muttered, pushing herself down toward the lower decks. "I did it for the mission."
But as her boots softly clanked against the central walkway, tail flicking with irritation, her thoughts betrayed her.
Did I really only do it for the mission? The question gnawed at her. The moment she'd reached into Velora's chest with her Aetherbind, pouring in raw energy to stabilize her heart, she hadn't been thinking about data. She remembered the fear. The anger. The way Velora's voice had echoed in her head—not in a cry for help, but in that strange, haunting song from the underground bar.
She reminded me I still had a soul, Tienerra thought bitterly. And maybe… just maybe, saving Velora had been more than survival. Maybe it had been redemption for something Tienerra herself didn't fully understand yet.
The air in the lower decks was thicker, warmer—heat from the half-repaired coolant lines licked at her scales. Rhyx was already elbow-deep in a cluster of conduit ports, blue streaks in his fur catching the flicker of hazard lights. His Khetari tail twitched rhythmically in concentration.
"Grab that splicing tool and help me reroute this damn pressure line," he grunted, eyes hidden behind glowing AR lenses.
As she knelt beside him, the scene shifted.
Tienerra's mind drifted. Her Soltarian ears twitched faintly. The memory returned—Velora, standing beneath stage lights in that underground cabaret, singing softly. A voice like shadowed silk and distant fire. Just a moment... a single verse, but it had pierced Tienerra's hardened exterior. A moment of peace before darkness reclaimed her.
Then it happened again—Velora's voice.
It echoed through the ship, soft, melancholic, but beautiful. A Kitsurai melody about war and the silence that followed a storm.
Both Rhyx and Tienerra froze, tools still in hand, cables floating around them like snakes in zero-G.
Rhyx's ears perked. "When we get to Jurael Station, I'm going to hit the bar and eat till my belly bursts."
Nyx chimed in. "That is biologically improbable."
LYNX quipped, "He means eat and drink until he collapses face-first onto the floor in bliss."
Tienerra let out a rare, unrestrained laugh, her voice echoing through the bay as she twirled in zero-G. "Gods, that sounds amazing. Count me in."
"With this last patch, we'll have enough juice for the jump," Rhyx said, tail flicking contentedly.
They had been working together for hours now, their movements practiced from repetition. Tienerra's claws expertly held conduit lines steady while Rhyx soldered new connections with laser precision. Bits of burnt insulation floated lazily in the air, evidence of the ship's still-volatile systems. Occasionally, one of them would grunt, curse, or share a small sarcastic comment, but mostly they worked in near silence—bound by purpose and exhaustion.
The engine core's low hum had returned, a gentle reassurance that life still pulsed within the vessel. Tienerra's wings shifted reflexively every time a spark burst too close, and Rhyx's ears flicked with each vibration from deep within the hull. Every patch was a small victory. Every line restored was another breath of freedom from this metallic coffin drifting through the stars.
Tienerra pushed away from the wall. "Alright. I'm gonna check on the patient."
She drifted through the upper corridor, past flickering ceiling panels and the soft hum of Nyx monitoring the ship's systems. The medical bay door opened with a hiss.
Inside, Velora was awake.
The Kitsurai lay strapped to the medbay bed, held in place by zero-gravity harnesses and medical restraints. IV lines fed into her arms, and a few thin monitors pulsed at her chest and temples, their lights steady. Despite the setup, she looked calm—her crimson eyes following Tienerra's approach with a quiet, unreadable intensity.
"So… are we stuck out here?" Velora asked, voice quiet but steady.
Tienerra floated into view. "No. We've got enough to limp to a port. One jump, if the engine doesn't cook us on the way."
Velora gave a small smirk. "How did we even survive that?"
Tienerra crossed her arms, wings loosely folded behind her. "Because I predicted that bomb might go off once we cut the failsafes."
Velora arched an eyebrow. "So you didn't trust your friend to defuse it. You planned for failure."
"Pretty much."
Silence lingered. Then Velora asked the question she had been avoiding.
"Why did you save me?"
Tienerra's expression didn't change. "Because you've got something I need—my data prism is encoded into your storage device."
Velora's eyes widened. "Why didn't you just—oh."
She burst out laughing.
It wasn't just a giggle or a chuckle. It was raw and unfiltered, rising from somewhere deep inside her chest where pain and absurdity had warred for days. The laugh twisted into something cathartic, tears streaking the corners of her crimson eyes. Every bottled moment—being hunted, strapped to an operating table, nearly dying, hearing her own heart stop—poured out through that laughter. And all because of that damn data prism.
"Of all the things…" she gasped between breaths. "All of this… because of a stupid app."
In that moment, Velora wasn't a weapon, or a fugitive, or a project. She was just a woman finally letting go. For the first time in years, she felt lighter.
Tienerra blinked. "What?"
She drifted back instinctively, wings flaring slightly for balance in the weightless air. One hand hovered near her belt while the other crossed over her chest, uncertain whether to be defensive or simply grounded. Tienerra blinked, the laughter below her ringing strange in her ears. The emotional whiplash was overwhelming—Velora, once an instrument of precision and death, now laughing freely like a stranger waking from a nightmare. It was disarming.
Tienerra floated there above the bed, silently watching, her claws curling slowly in thought. And despite herself, the corners of her mouth began to curl, caught between disbelief and something dangerously close to warmth.
The medbay doors slid open with a soft hiss.
Rhyx floated in, slowing as the sound of Velora's laughter reached him. His usual smirk began to form but paused halfway—his expression shifting with a slow, creeping realization. He stopped mid-drift, caught off guard by the sheer emotion in the room. Velora's laughter wasn't just noise; it was a release, a purging of weight neither he nor Tienerra had truly understood until now.
His ears lowered slightly, tail stilling, and his eyes widened behind his AR lenses. He'd seen her in stasis, unconscious, nearly dead. But this—this was life, loud and aching and absurd.
"I leave you two alone for five minutes," he said, voice quieter than usual, "and you made her laugh this hard, what did you do?"
Tienerra looked down at him and raised an eyebrow. "She just said something about an app?"
Velora, still catching her breath, lifted her head slightly. "I bought this app on a whim. I was bored scrolling the Galactic Network, saw some random tech forum post about spoof apps. Thought it'd be funny to make my storage units look like a Virelux Vault—one of those old Sovereign Bank bunkers on Korthas VI. Five credits and a download later…"
She laughed again, softer now. "Didn't think it would cause a space station meltdown. That's some return on investment."
LYNX crackled inside his glasses. "Her biometric stress levels are plummeting. She's… happy? Rhyx, is that what this is? I need confirmation."
"I think," Rhyx said slowly, drifting beside Tienerra as his grin returned, "I walked in right as the galaxy stopped taking itself seriously for once."
Tienerra blinked again. "You… what?!"
Velora nodded, still laughing.
Rhyx clutched his chest, his whole body shaking as a deep, explosive laugh burst from him. He spun slowly in the air, limbs flailing for balance in the zero-G. "Oh stars—I can't believe this."
He steadied himself near the medbay rail, exhaling through a wide grin before glancing down at Velora. "I… I made that app. Just some dumb side project when I was bored and broke. Put it up on a backchannel to earn a few extra credits. Didn't think anyone would actually use it."
He looked between Velora and Tienerra, the gravity of the absurdity slowly settling on his shoulders.
"Funny, isn't it? Something that minuscule… a spoof app I threw together between caffeine spikes and blackout naps… ends up being the reason you're alive. The reason we're all in this room together."
Velora opened the storage device with a single button press. No biometrics. No encryption. Just click—access granted.
Tienerra floated in stunned silence, her brows twitching in disbelief. Her body tensed at first—wings slightly spread for balance, claws reflexively tightening—but then the laughter around her sank in. Velora giggling uncontrollably, Rhyx wheezing in zero-G, and even LYNX buzzing with confusion. The absurdity hit like a wave.
She let out a quiet, shaky breath, then a snort, then full-bodied laughter bubbled up from her chest. She curled forward slightly, arms crossing her stomach as she laughed alongside them.
Rhyx wheezed. "So… all this chaos… because of a fake app that pretends to be high-security?"
Tienerra slapped her forehead with a loud thwack. "Your station turned into a mini-star, and you're laughing?!"
Rhyx grinned. "I mean… who knew she was a walking star to be born."
The laughter faded slowly, tapering off into quiet chuckles and soft exhales. It was as if the air in the medbay thickened, all the mirth and absurdity draining to reveal the silence left behind. No one spoke for a few long seconds. The lights above hummed faintly. The distant hum of the ship's core felt louder now.
Velora's smile faltered into something softer—almost sad. Her ears drooped faintly, and her hand, once hovering with mirth, drifted down to rest lightly against her chest. Her eyes stayed on the ceiling, no longer seeing the paneling above, but something far more distant.
Tienerra's wings folded tighter. Her tail, which had flicked with amusement, now hung still beneath her. The realization of how fragile the moment had been—how close they'd all come to dying, to never hearing that laugh—settled deep in her chest like a weight she hadn't been ready to carry.
Even Rhyx's grin faded, his expression sobering as he glanced between them. He floated beside the medbed, arms crossing slowly.
None of them said it aloud, but they all felt it. The absurdity had passed, and what remained was the truth: something small had connected them… but it had taken loss, near-death, and sheer cosmic irony to bring it to light.
Tienerra tucked the prism into her satchel. "Well, now I can finish my mission. Once we reach Jurael, I'm getting food and a drink."
She turned to Velora. "What about you? What will you do with your newfound freedom?"
Velora looked down, slowly pressing a hand against her chest. The pain had dulled to a whisper beneath her skin, but something else took its place—an ache she couldn't quite name. Her fingers lingered over the scar as though trying to understand the woman who had woken up in this new world. Her heartbeat pulsed steadily beneath her touch, an unfamiliar rhythm that no longer belonged to someone else's command.
A thousand thoughts rippled through her mind like scattered stardust. She remembered the restraints, the silence of being under Sable's control, the cold clarity of orders given without mercy. And yet now, this silence felt different—open, breathable, hers.
She glanced toward Tienerra and Rhyx, then let her gaze drift to the ceiling. The lights didn't seem so harsh now. "I… I don't know," she said finally, her voice quieter but honest. It trembled faintly, as if the truth surprised her as much as anyone.
Tienerra tilted her head. "What do you mean, 'you don't know'? You can do anything now. You're not Sable's weapon anymore."
Velora's crimson eyes met hers. "I know. But for years, every thought, every step I took was his. I was trained to vanish, to kill, to obey. And now, with no orders to follow… I feel hollow. Like a blade that forgot it was ever forged for something."
She looked at the ceiling, eyes unfocused, her expression distant yet open. "I haven't made a choice that was mine since I was a child. Now that I can… I don't know where to begin. Freedom doesn't feel like a destination. It feels like falling. And for the first time… I'm not afraid of the drop.""
Rhyx stepped forward, his voice gentler than usual. "Take your time. Figure it out. The galaxy's still here. You've got a chance to decide who you want to be."
Tienerra crossed her arms, mock-serious. "I should dump you off and fly away, but… I guess I feel a little responsible. Also, you owe me for the ship… and his station."
Velora blinked, incredulous. "You're joking… right? Right?"
Tienerra didn't look back at first—just lifted one clawed hand and waved lazily behind her. Rhyx smirked over his shoulder, clearly enjoying her disbelief.
They both drifted toward the exit with the casual momentum only zero-G could provide, silhouettes framed by the soft glow of medbay lighting.
Velora huffed, tail flicking against the restraints. "Guys? …Seriously? I almost died! I cried! I laughed! I reflected! And now I owe you money?!"
Tienerra chuckled under her breath as the door hissed closed behind them.
Left alone, Velora stared at the ceiling, a reluctant smile creeping back. For the first time, she wasn't looking at the future with fear—but with curiosity.