The cooling fans of the Obsidian Wraith spun low, humming like a whisper in Ethan's ear as he stared at the flickering holomap of Yora's understructure. The refinery's outline rotated slowly in front of him, fractured, outdated, riddled with uncertain entry points.
"Three viable ingress paths," Iris reported. "Each is under-maintained. Structural integrity at sixty percent in vent shaft Gamma-Seven, seventy-four in Delta-Two."
"And Alpha-One?"
"Forty-nine. High probability of collapse."
He nodded, barely moving. "We take Gamma-Seven."
A brief pause.
"Psionic dampening is required once you breach the inner seal. Internal sensors are crude, but still active. You'll need to suppress your bio-signature."
"Already on it."
He shut off the holomap, letting darkness settle over the bridge, then turned toward the Wraith's rear bay. His gear was light, soft-step boots, a slim lightweight body armor under a reinforced cloak rig, signal scramblers sewn into the lining. His belt carried his laser pistol, shock darts, EMP gel mines, and a signal jammer.
Not the Astral Slayer.
That was sheathed, magnet-locked beneath his coat. Quiet and deadly.
He moved toward the ramp, eyes sharp.
"Let's make them think a ghost walked in."
Slag Vent Ingress, a few houts later
The slag shaft was narrower than expected, angled like a rusted throat choking on its last breath. Ethan moved inch by inch, fingers gripping cooling rods, his psionics damping his own body temperature until it matched the walls.
No noise.
No heat.
He reached the bottom after six slow minutes, dropping onto a grated catwalk overlooking a mist-shrouded chamber. Pipes hissed and groaned. The air was thick with ammonia and old coolant vapor. Pale lights pulsed overhead, some flickering, some gone entirely.
He crouched and waited.
Below, two Iron Veil guards ambled past. Their armor was scrap-forged but functional, thick plating wired with hybrid pulse carbines and red-dot visors. They moved like enforcers, not soldiers. Trained in pain, not tactics.
Ethan's fingers twitched, but he stayed still.
The guards turned a corner.
He moved.
Ethan made his way through the refinery's skeletal corridors, weaving through vertical scaffolds, suspended walkways, and catwalks patched with mesh and weld lines. Iris fed him a silent HUD overlay, tracking motion signatures, power spikes, and radio silence bubbles.
"Proximity alert. Motion detector ten meters ahead. Standard pulse sensor. Intermittent cycle. Recommend still-frame pause, three seconds per sweep."
He complied, flattening against a wall as the scanner's blue arc passed over him like a lazy eye.
His own heartbeat slowed, controlled. Trained. The psionics helped, not invisibility, not true silence, but a dampening field. Enough to make heat sensors think he was a glitch. Enough to fool older AI.
He moved past the arc and ducked into a coil-cabling shaft that led toward the central reactor node.
Only, it was dark.
No hum of stabilized current.
No vibration from the floor.
Ethan frowned.
"Iris… the power signature's gone."
"Confirmed. Sub-reactor no longer linked to the resonant coil. Energy rerouted approximately twenty-seven minutes ago."
"Where?"
"Forward sector. Freight lift core. Tracking crate code X-112. Coil's being relocated."
Ethan's jaw tightened. "Then they're prepping it for transport."
As he advanced through the pressure-locked corridor, Ethan slowed, his instincts whispering something was off. The walls were slick with condensed vapor, and the floor plating vibrated with the low thrum of redirected power. Pipes spidered across the ceiling in messy arcs, mismatched alloys groaning in the chill.
His eyes swept the passageway, catching a glint of casing tucked beneath a slanted bulkhead partially obscured by a rusted support beam and an old ventilation conduit.
He crouched, approached, and peeled back the loose alloy shell.
What he saw wasn't what the usual small and mid-sized gangs could get their hands on .
The external housing bore the Iron Veil's symbol, a jagged sigil sprayed in silver, like a gangmark stamped over someone else's work. But the device underneath?
It was wrong.
Too clean. Too precise. Too intentional.
Polished fiber-wrapped conduits led to an embedded node core. The casing bore micro-labels in a military-technical cipher. The dataport was recessed, not slapped together with loose cabling, but flush with the hull, concealed like a mole hiding beneath skin.
Federation-grade.
Ethan's hand hovered near his knife, his breath quiet in his throat.
"Iris," he murmured.
"Confirmed. Surveillance node is not Iron Veil standard. Internal protocols are mapped to encryption used by Federation blacksite contractors. The closest match is… Specter Coil."
Ethan's stomach tensed. Specter Coil. They weren't a faction. They were a shadow under the Federation's shadow. Rumors said they cleaned up classified tech leaks, manipulated corporate research, ran false-flag ops.
"Someone's watching them," he said quietly. "Or watching us."
"Possibly both."
He stood, stepped back from the node, and melted into the gloom without touching it again. If Specter Coil really was involved, this wasn't just tech theft.
This was observation.
A measuring stick.
And they were all being weighed.
He moved faster now, urgency hardening into something colder. Through a fractured maintenance hatch, Ethan slipped into an angled shaft, sliding down a curved slope slick with old coolant residue.
The smell hit him hard, antifreeze and charred circuitry, and the dim glow of emergency lights outlined the end of the chute like a tunnel to nowhere.
He braced, kicked off the final edge, and emerged into a low crawlspace above a freight lift bay.
Below, steel catwalks stretched in a grid. Some sagging under decades of wear, others newly reinforced with gang plate armor. The central floor was lined with crates and magnetic haulers, and suspended cables dangled overhead like waiting traps.
Ethan stayed prone, crawling toward a gap in the metal paneling to get a better angle.
There it was.
A courier ship, low-profile, matte-black, almost invisible against the refinery wall. No insignia. No registry lights. Just a whisper of movement and heat.
At its base, three figures stood beside a sealed container roughly the size of a cryo-chamber. His eyes immediately zeroed in on the one wearing Iron Veil armor, shoulder plates marked with a red slash, voice modulator distorting each breath.
The other two?
Wrong again.
Their armor was tight, curved like corp-spec infiltration suits, not patched-together gang gear. They moved with surgical precision, subtle weight shifts betraying professional training.
"...signal us once the buyer takes the bait," one of them said, voice flat, clipped.
"And the coil?" the Veil lieutenant asked.
"Secure it. But keep your ears open. If anyone shows interest, track their frequency signature. Our contractor wants patterns."
Ethan's expression didn't change, but his spine tensed.
This wasn't a deal.
It was a trap. And not for coin.
Someone had staged this entire operation not to sell the coil, but to see who came looking for it. Trask. Federation defectors. Rogue tech-seekers or other criminal syndicates. Hell, maybe even him.
"They're building a hunter's ledger," Iris voice came through his comm feed.
"Letting the bait walk itself into the field."
Ethan's jaw clenched. He needed to act fast.
His gaze snapped to the far end of the platform, where a coolant pressure regulator sat half-buried beneath conduits and flame-retardant foam. The unit's panel was rusted, but its emergency override blinked green.
He didn't need to destroy the system.
Just disrupt it.
If overloaded correctly, it would send pressure faults rippling through the refinery, just enough to trigger warning protocols, shut down safety doors, and launch lockdown signals. The chaos would split their attention. Provide cover. Maybe cut off their external uplink.
Just enough time to slip in, snag the crate, and disappear before anyone noticed.
He moved to the regulator, undid his satchel, and pulled out a compact thermal charge the size of a fist. A silent, focused blast, not for damage, but for manipulation.
He knelt beside the panel.
Magnetic clamps clicked into place as the device locked onto the pipe housing.
He adjusted the output: not enough to rupture, just enough to trigger a cascade delay. A whisper of heat, like a phantom exhale through the pipes.
The lights on the charge glowed amber.
Then green.
"Iris. Ready to overload on my mark?"
"Standing by. Pulse will ripple across six connected coolant sectors. Estimated confusion window: seventy-eight seconds."
Ethan didn't respond. He crouched there for a breath longer, watching the masked agents continue their conversation.
Waiting. Calculating.
Three minutes.
That's all he would get.
One shot. No second chances.
And just like that, Ethan melted back into shadow.
Waiting for the signal. Waiting to strike.