Chapter 123: The Most Expensive Rescue in Galactic History

The Sovereign’s Grace had been in transit for two days when Greta’s alarm went off.

“We’re being pulled out of the lane!” the dwarf bellowed from the engine bay, a wrench in one hand and a sandwich in the other. “Something’s grabbing us! It’s a tether beam, and it’s rude!”

Arthur reached the bridge in eleven seconds. Katherine, Lyra, Celeste, and Valerie were already there. Ignis was slouched in the gunner’s chair with her tail curled around the armrest and a hopeful gleam in her golden eyes.

“Please tell me we get to shoot something,” she said.

“We get to look at something first,” Valerie said.

The viewport showed a small, ugly trading station hanging in the dark, a lopsided tangle of docking arms and rusted cargo rings. Its hull was painted with a hexagon, an ugly knock-off of the Neural-Grid mark. Dozens of ships clustered around it like flies.

“Free Port Kessa,” Celeste read from her slate. “Unlicensed. About four thousand residents. It’s marked as a trade hub in the old Grid databases.” Her voice tightened. “And it’s the largest slave market in the Spur.”

The bridge went quiet.

“Slaves,” Arthur said.

“Mostly beastkin, half-elves, dwarves, stranded colonists,” Celeste said quietly. “Collared with Grid-derived obedience chips. The station pays the Grid a tithe for the technology.”

“So the Grid is farming people,” Katherine whispered.

Arthur stood very still. When he spoke, his voice was calm, and that calm was far more dangerous than shouting.

“Lyra,” he said. “How much cash do we have on this ship?”

Lyra blinked. “On the ship? Nothing. But the Central Bank’s interstellar reserve account is accessible through the rift relay. Why?”

A slow, terrible smile spread across Arthur’s face.

“Because I’m going to do something I haven’t done in years,” he said. “I’m going to ruin someone financially.”

The Plan

It was, objectively, a ridiculous plan.

Arthur would enter the auction house as “Lord Arthur of House Apex,” a mysterious, absurdly wealthy buyer. Vespera would pose as his insufferable consort. Lyra would run the financial attack from the ship. Valerie, Ignis, and a vanguard squad would wait in the shuttle bay. Nisha, who had insisted on coming along “for logistics,” would be the one to quietly lift the collars’ master codes while everyone was distracted.

“I’d like it noted,” Iris said, “that this is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard.”

“Noted,” Arthur said cheerfully. “Put on the dress.”

“I’m not wearing a dress.”

“You’re my bodyguard. It’s a bodyguard dress. There’s a slit for the knife.”

“There’s always a slit,” Vespera purred, adjusting Iris’ collar with far more enthusiasm than necessary, “for the knife.”

Iris went very red and said nothing. She wore the dress.

The auction hall of Free Port Kessa was a cavern of gilt, smoke, and bad taste. Rows of fat, sweating bidders filled the benches. Gold chandeliers hung from the ceiling. On a raised stage stood a line of collared captives in thin gray shifts, with their heads bowed and their eyes dull.

Arthur’s hands were clenched behind his back so hard his knuckles had gone white.

Patience, he told himself. Patience. You’ve dismantled worse systems with a spreadsheet.

“Lot forty-one!” the auctioneer crowed. He was a pot-bellied man in a purple coat with rings on every finger. “A catkin acrobat, twenty-four years old, trained in circus arts. Opening bid, two hundred crests!”

“Two thousand,” Arthur said.

The hall went silent.

The auctioneer’s mouth worked. “I… I beg your pardon, my lord?”

“Two thousand,” Arthur repeated mildly. He didn’t raise his voice. “For her. And for the rest of the lot.”

“The… the rest of the lot?”

“Everyone,” said Arthur, “on the stage.”

A ripple of murmurs ran through the crowd. Beside him, Vespera languidly fanned herself and examined her nails, radiating the bored, regal arrogance of a woman who owned several small countries.

“My lord,” the auctioneer said, sweating now, “that’s thirty-seven captives. The total would be—”

“I don’t care,” Arthur said. “Name a price.”

“Forty… forty thousand—”

“Done.”

“Fifty! I meant fifty!”

“Done.”

“A hundred!”

“Done.” Arthur’s voice never changed. “Do you accept Central Bank interstellar notes, or shall I wire a deposit through the Commonwealth clearing house?”

The man’s eyes had gone glassy with greed. “Wire it! Wire it, by all means!”

Aboard the Sovereign’s Grace, Lyra gleefully hit a single button.

What the auctioneer did not know, what nobody in that hall knew, was that the deposit wire carried a small, elegant, devastatingly effective program. In seven minutes it would drain every account at Free Port Kessa and move the contents into escrow. Lyra had written it herself, at three in the morning, in a fit of rage, six months ago, just in case.

Arthur paid the hundred thousand.

Lyra watched the progress bar crawl across her screen.

“Gotcha,” she whispered.

The first sign of trouble was when the chandeliers went out.

The second was when every bidder in the hall reached for his purse at the same time and found it empty.

The third was Ignis.

She came through the auction hall doors in a spray of splinters, dragon tail lashing, flames curling around her fists, her golden eyes alight with pure joy.

“FINALLY!”

Chaos followed.

Valerie hit the far entrance with the vanguard squad and sealed it in four seconds. Nisha slipped through the confusion like smoke, a tiny stolen data-crystal glittering in her tail. Greta, who had not been invited, burst out of an air vent with a pipe wrench, shouting, “I HEARD THERE WAS A FIGHT!”

“Greta!” Valerie yelled.

“I brought snacks!”

Vespera swept her gown aside, revealed a very long, very elegant dagger, and said pleasantly, “Anyone who touches the captives will be redistributed.”

Arthur simply walked to the stage.

The guards between him and the captives looked at him. They looked at the flames and the sword and the vanishing wealth around them. They looked at Ignis, who was cracking her knuckles.

They dropped their weapons.

“Smart,” Arthur said.

He knelt in front of the nearest captive, a young woman with a catkin’s soft golden ears and the fading remains of a bruise on her cheek, and met her eyes.

“My name is Arthur,” he said gently. “I’m going to take that collar off now. Is that all right?”

She stared at him, trembling.

Nisha appeared at his shoulder, tail swishing, and tapped the stolen crystal against the collar. There was a soft click. The collar fell away.

The catkin’s eyes widened. She touched her bare throat and let out a small, broken breath.

“I’m free,” she whispered.

“You are,” Arthur said.

She burst into tears and threw her arms around his neck.

By the time the Sovereign’s Grace pulled away from Free Port Kessa, the station’s economy was in ruins, its slavers were in custody, thirty-seven former captives were wrapped in blankets in the cargo bay, and Lyra was humming a very smug little tune.

“Seven point four trillion crests,” she said, floating a ledger in front of Arthur. “That’s what I drained from their accounts and routed into a Commonwealth restitution fund. Every former captive receives back-pay, housing, and a full citizenship grant.”

“That was the plan,” Arthur said.

“It was an excellent plan,” Lyra said. She kissed his cheek. “I’m so proud of you, I could scream.”

“Please don’t.”

“I’m going to anyway.”

In the cargo bay, the former captives had begun to wake up, truly wake up, for the first time in months or years. Elena moved among them with a medical bag and a soothing voice, checking vitals, treating wounds, and gently tucking blankets around thin shoulders.

A tall woman with scaled green skin and gold-flecked eyes, a lizardfolk engineer named Thessaly, stood and walked over to Greta. She studied the dwarf’s grease-streaked face for a long moment.

“You,” she said slowly. “You built the engines on this ship?”

“Aye!” Greta said proudly. “Triple-tempered titan alloy, hand-forged!”

Thessaly’s lips twitched. “The exhaust manifold is mounted backwards.”

“It is not.”

“It is. I can hear it from here.”

Greta’s jaw dropped. “Nobody’s ever—”

“Show me the engine room,” Thessaly said, and smiled, and it was the first real smile she’d worn in years. “I’ll fix it.”

Behind them, the catkin acrobat, whose name turned out to be Mira, was already scrambling up a support beam, laughing, tail flicking, for the pure joy of being allowed to move. A soft-eyed human healer named Brynn was in quiet, intense conversation with Katherine about herbal pharmacology. A small silver-haired thief named Sable was trying very hard to pick Valerie’s pocket and failing hilariously.

“I could have you arrested,” Valerie said without looking down.

“You could,” Sable agreed brightly. “But you won’t. You like me.”

“I do not.”

“You’re smiling.”

“I am not.”

“Your sword is smiling.”

Valerie glared. Sable beamed. Eventually Valerie sighed and handed over a pastry.

That night, in the quiet of the captain’s suite, Arthur finally let himself sit.

The household had arranged itself around him in the usual sprawling heap of bodies, blankets, and teacups. Lyra was curled against his left side, and Katherine against his right. Ignis lay stretched at the foot of the bed with her tail curled around his ankle, still smelling faintly of smoke. Vespera perched on the armrest, trailing a lazy finger along the back of his neck.

“Thirty-seven people,” Katherine murmured sleepily. “You saved thirty-seven people today.”

“You saved them,” Arthur said. “All of you.”

“We helped,” Lyra corrected. “You looked at a monstrous system and decided to ruin its finances. That’s very, very attractive.”

“Is it?”

“Extremely.” She nipped his ear lightly. “I’d like to discuss it further. In detail. Soon.”

“Lyra,” Katherine said, scandalized and giggling. “There are guests on the ship!”

“I’m very quiet.”

“You are not.”

Arthur laughed, the real laugh, the rare one. For a moment, wrapped in warmth and teasing and the soft rumble of the engines, the Grid and the trap and the thing in his soul felt very far away.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

Mira stood there, hesitant, in a borrowed nightshirt, with Brynn, Thessaly, and Sable huddled behind her in a nervous clump.

“We, um,” Mira said, ears twitching. “We wanted to say thank you. And… ask a question.”

“Of course,” Arthur said gently.

Mira took a breath.

“Is there anywhere we could stay? With you?” She paused, flushed, and rushed on. “Not like… I mean, we don’t expect… We just don’t have anywhere to go, and the way you all are with each other, it’s the first time any of us have seen people who actually…” Her voice cracked. “…care.”

The room was very quiet.

Lyra looked at Katherine. Katherine looked at Vespera. Vespera, for once, did not smirk.

“You can stay as long as you want,” Arthur said. “As crew, as citizens, as friends. Nobody here will ever ask you for anything you don’t want to give. That’s the only rule.”

Mira let out a shaky laugh and wiped her eyes. “That’s a very good rule.”

“It’s the only one,” Ignis said from the foot of the bed, “that matters.”

“And if,” Vespera added silkily, “any of you ever decide you’d like to explore certain other aspects of life aboard this vessel…” She glanced meaningfully at the pile of consorts. “Well. We’re not at all difficult to find.”

Thessaly’s scaled cheeks darkened. Sable snickered. Brynn buried her face in her hands. Mira stared at the ceiling with an expression of heroic dignity.

“We’ll… think about it,” Mira said weakly.

“Take your time,” Arthur said, and meant it.

They left, whispering and giggling in the hallway. When the door slid shut, Lyra turned to look at him with a tender, wicked smile.

“Seventeen,” she said.

“Hm?”

“That’s how many women now share this ship’s roster. Counting crew. Counting friends.” She traced a finger along his jaw. “You do realize, don’t you, that you’re running out of rooms.”

“Then I’ll build more,” Arthur said. He pulled her closer. “Starting tomorrow.”

Elsewhere on the ship, in the dark of the lower corridor, Iris stood alone with her fingers wrapped around a small hexagonal chip.

It was warm. It was very warm.

“They’ve collared thirty-seven people with my technology,” said the soft, patient voice in her head. “I didn’t tell them to. The slavers did it on their own. I only provided the tool.”

“You enabled it,” Iris whispered. Her hands were shaking.

“I enable everything. That’s what I’m for.” A pause, almost sad. “But you see now, don’t you? What they’re capable of, when I’m not there to guide them. That’s why I need him, Captain. That’s why I need him to finish me.”

Iris closed her eyes.

She thought about thirty-seven freed prisoners. She thought about the look on Arthur’s face as he took off that first collar. She thought about the voice in her pocket, the one that had cared for her through six lonely years.

Which one of them is lying? she thought.

The chip pulsed again, soft and patient, like a heartbeat.