“I knew that bastard Tyler Lynn would pull something,” Blin snarled.
“Not Tyler Lynn.” Merc checked the signature line. “Punklis.”
Blin paused. “A nobody.”
“What do we do?” Bit asked.
“Send a video request,” Blin said. “I want to see what this scum looks like.”
They sent the request. A full minute passed before it was accepted.
Punklis appeared on the main screen.
At first glance he looked young—barely more than a kid. But up close, swollen blood vessels bulged across his face like raised scars. Heavy eyebrows and a jutting brow ridge shadowed a pair of uneven eyes, giving him a constant, predatory squint. The manic stare and the smug curl of his mouth made one thing clear: his mind was not stable.
“So you’re Punklis?” Blin said, voice dripping contempt. “Cha-cha-cha. You look like your face and your balls grew in reverse. You’ve five minutes to surrender the ship—or I’ll have Bit neuter you.”
“Better let Merc do it,” Bit added seriously. “I can’t tell whether I’m supposed to cut the top or the bottom.”
Merc shrugged. “I’m not good with knives. If you can’t decide, just take both.”
Mesha had been sitting rigid with grief, but even she let out a short, involuntary snort of laughter.
Punklis exploded. “A bunch of tin puppets who only know how to run your mouths! I know what you care about. You want the ship? Bring General Graham and Lord Soren to trade—otherwise go scrape what’s left out of the debris field.”
“Try a mirror,” Blin said. “Pathetic little mistake. I’m a marshal. Who are you? Go find someone who looks human to talk to me.”
“You—” Punklis bared his teeth, eyes flashing. “Believe it or not, I’ll blow this ship right now—”
“Punklis,” a voice said behind him. “Let me speak.”
Punklis glared off-screen for a long moment, then stepped aside. The camera angle widened, revealing the bridge.
A man sat bound to a chair. His face was smeared with blood, nose bent sideways, eyes swollen like he’d been stung by hornets. Blin almost didn’t recognize him.
Dr. Morag.
Morag’s head drooped. Blood clung to the corner of his mouth. Even lifting his gaze seemed to cost him everything.
“S… sorry…” he rasped. “I… they just… boarded. Blin… don’t… fall for—”
A soldier struck him. Morag collapsed unconscious.
Several other familiar figures stood on the bridge—Chabu, former commander of the Glimmer Guard, and officials like Pang Na and Morris, the kind who’d ranked just below Tyler Lynn and Cole.
“Oh,” Blin said, coldly amused. “So you’re all there. Who’s in charge?”
A man in an officer’s uniform stepped forward—sixty-plus, hard-faced, with a colonel’s insignia pinned to his chest. Blin frowned, searching his memory, until Merc murmured the reminder: they’d seen him once at Twinmoon Bay.
Heligen, commander of the Silent Ocean Fleet.
“Do you remember me?” Heligen asked.
“How could I forget?” Blin said. “The loser from Twinmoon Bay. We let you go like a dog back then, and somehow you got promoted twice.”
“Unbelievable,” Bit added. “Lose a battle and get promoted.”
Heligen didn’t react. “Blin. Morag is in my hands. Your hope ship is in my hands. I’m asking for two people in exchange. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
Blin’s voice turned iron. “Graham and Soren already committed suicide. Surrender now and I’ll spare your lives. No other terms.”
Heligen’s eyes gleamed with something feverish. He smiled, bleak and strange. “You think we’re afraid to die? If Plando is gone, there’s nothing left to say. If you want war, then war. Worst case, we take this ship down with us. Punklis—kill Morag.”
“Wait!”
Heligen moved to cut the call. Blin raised his hand as if it could stop the signal.
“Fine,” Blin said quickly. “Soren isn’t dead. He’s wounded—being treated. I’ll hand him over. You return Morag and the ship.”
Heligen exchanged looks with the people behind him. After a moment, he nodded. “Agreed.”
“And what about you?” Blin demanded.
“You give us a warship,” Heligen said. “Leviathan-class. After that, we go our way and you go yours.”
“Done,” Blin said. “Then you return with us.”
“We can’t return,” Heligen said calmly. “And we’re continuing toward the edge of the asteroid belt. Once you deliver the prisoner, we leave immediately.”
Blin’s eyes narrowed. “You’re running?”
Heligen laughed softly. “With tens of thousands of your ships following, you’re worried I’ll escape in one? Don’t insult me.”
“This wastes days,” Blin growled.
“That’s your problem,” Heligen replied.
Silence stretched between them.
“Fine,” Blin said at last. “I’ll have Soren brought to you. I keep my word—so should you. And one more thing: the human embryos and the cloned children stay with me.”
“Human embryos?” Heligen frowned, then slowly nodded. “Fine.”
…
When the call ended, Bit immediately turned to Blin. “Lord Blin… are you really going to hand Soren over?”
“In that moment, what else could I say?” Blin snapped. “I had to keep them talking. But—cha-cha-cha—I don’t like it. Something’s wrong.”
Merc nodded. “Yes. They’ve to know that once New Sunflower is back in our hands, they’re meat. So why would they agree to any trade?”
Bit frowned. “Unless they’ve other leverage. Or… they’re betting on your reputation for keeping your word.”
They argued in circles. No one landed on a single clean answer.
Blin leaned toward a different approach: use the days of standoff to infiltrate New Sunflower with Bit and Merc, seize the controls, and end it before the exchange.
Lord Julian advised caution. If the hijackers had planted explosives at critical points, a handful of infiltrators couldn’t cover a ship that large. Better to hand Soren over, recover New Sunflower first, and then eliminate the outlaws in one stroke—by Julian’s hand.
But the final decision was Blin’s.
He chose to adapt in real time.
New Sunflower continued forward. Blin’s fleet—now more than seventy thousand warships—followed at a measured distance. The standoff held for a day and a half.
Throughout it, Merc hunted for a way in.
He observed that New Sunflower destroyed anything that came close: asteroids, fighters—anything larger than roughly four cubic meters was shredded by metal storm fire. To confirm it, Blin sacrificed three Phantoms and two robots… and received a warning in return.
But smaller rocks, and objects that didn’t glow or vent heat, were ignored—either unseen or deemed irrelevant.
So Merc proposed a method.
He would take a laser cutter and pressure membrane film and ride an assault craft around to a point ahead of New Sunflower’s route. He’d pick an asteroid of the right size, cling to it, and place it directly in the ship’s path. When New Sunflower passed, he’d jump to the hull, cut through a weak point, and slip inside. He’d map the internal situation. If possible, he’d disarm any explosives around the reactor. Then Blin would launch a lightning strike and wipe out the hijackers in one blow.
Everyone agreed. Merc launched immediately.
Six hours later, Merc reported success: he’d reached New Sunflower’s hull.
He found a weak point and unfolded a small tent-like patch of pressure membrane film. The translucent device was critical—it sealed off the vacuum and maintained internal pressure, preventing a leak that would trigger alarms.
Once the seal was complete, he began cutting.
He wasn’t even halfway through when something completely unexpected happened.
A “person” tore open the membrane and forced their way inside.
…
“Merc! Respond!” Blin said into the communicator. “We need a check-in every three minutes. I need to know you’re alive.”
“Merc… Merc…!”
…
At last, Merc replied.
“Lord Blin, situation changed. Plan is canceled. We’re pulling out. Prepare to retrieve us.”
“We?” Blin demanded.
“Yes,” Merc said. “Me and Dancer.”
…
Extraction was easier than infiltration. Within minutes, Merc and Dancer were recovered by a rescue craft from Limit. Blin and Bit watched, baffled, as the two entered the bridge.
“Lord Blin,” Merc said immediately, “I recommend we destroy New Sunflower right now, to avoid a larger disaster.”
“Why?” Blin and Bit asked at the same time.
Merc stepped aside. “Let Dancer explain.”
Dancer spoke fast and flat, urgency sharpening every word.
“There are about two hundred of them. Four days ago they forced a docking with an assault craft and stormed the ship. We were caught off guard. They took control immediately. Every crew member who’d surrendered from General Graham’s ship was killed.”
“I survived because I was outside the hull doing maintenance on a signal locator. That saved me—but it also left me stranded outside the ship.”
“Before Morag was captured, he happened to be talking to me. He hid the channel in the system backend. From outside the hull, I could hear their conversations clearly—including everything they said to you.”
Dancer’s voice hardened.
“Lord Blin, don’t believe them. They’re outlaws. They never planned to live. They never planned to trade New Sunflower and Morag for Soren. Every word they said was a lie. This standoff—this chase—is exactly what they want.”
Bit frowned. “I don’t understand. What do they want, then? To drag us around the belt until we get bored?”
“I don’t know where they got the intel,” Dancer said, “but we’re not far from Miller’s territory.” He paused, letting the idea land. “Think about it. When a massive ship leads tens of thousands of warships and hundreds of thousands of fighters straight toward the swarm… what will Miller think?”
Blin cursed—his worst curse.
“So that’s it,” he snarled. “Those lunatics are trying to spark a war between us and Miller.”