Eirenne didn't force her way in.
She didn't hit the system all at once or try to break everything immediately. Instead, she slipped into it quietly and spread through the port systems piece by piece, touching traffic relays, maintenance channels, command routing, and low-level network chains before placing small problems where they would matter most.
The radar faults came first.
And just like they had planned before.
The starport systems started showing small errors. Range drift. Delayed target returns. Calibration mismatches. Random maintenance warnings.
Nothing severe enough to cause panic right away, but more than enough for the people who were in charge of running them.
The Kharov response was almost embarrassing.
They sent a maintenance request.
Then another one.
Then nothing.
