The liaison's file grew teeth the longer Ned chewed it.
He had expected paper-pusher, mid-tier bureaucrat, one more replaceable organ in a vast corporate body. Someone whose death would sting the board but not scar it.
Instead, the more he scraped, the more the profile changed shape.
Order pulled stock reports, interview clips, legislative logs. Renn siphoned rumor from dockside terminals and bar talk. Omega walked the streets, listening for names that made voices drop.
When they pieced it together on the XR-94's holotable, the man in the projection looked less like a clerk and more like a prince.
"His name is Aevar Rhun," Ned said.
The holo showed a man in his forties, composed, neat. Dark hair threaded with gray at the temples. Eyes tired but alert.
"Born to one of the founding board families," Ned went on. "Groomed from early adolescence for 'strategic oversight.' He was the one who wrote half the compliance codes Virellon lives under."
Renn squinted at the data ballooning beside the man's face.
"Board portfolios… market share…" Renn muttered. "What's that number?"
"Effective influence over forty-seven percent of Virellon's licensed bioprint capacity," Ned said. "Projected to expand to sixty-two within ten years, pending ratification of his 'Consolidated Tissue Governance Initiative.'"
Omega made a face.
"In Basic," she said.
"In Basic," Ned translated, "if he lives to sign his next round of agreements, Aevar Rhun will not just regulate Virellon. He will own its arteries. Two quarters of the planet's economy under his hand, with leverage over the third Kade clings to."
Renn leaned back, exhaling.
"So Kade didn't just hand us some middle manager," he said. "He handed us the Archduke."
Ned watched the holo spin.
"Yes," he said. "A prince. One whose death will not be a pinprick. It will be a knife into a very pressurized heart."
Omega's gaze moved between the rotating image and Ned's metal face.
"If you kill him," she said quietly, "you don't just help Kade. You rip the board apart."
"Yes," Ned said. "Every faction will grab for his share. Syndicates will pull at the cracks. Off-world interests will use the chaos to push their own candidates. War, in slow motion—unless something accelerates it."
Renn stared at the floating data.
"And if we don't kill him?" he asked. "What does Foresight say then?"
Ned didn't need to rerun the numbers. He had already.
"If Aevar lives," he said, "he consolidates. Kade's third gets formalized, trimmed, then absorbed. Every black clinic in Vatfall that does not bend to corporate standards is shut down or bought and tamed. Printer access is locked behind layers of legal enclosures and security architecture."
He flicked the holo, showing a different tree of projections: towers under new corporate logos, security grids hardened, the undercity scraped clean.
"In those branches," Ned said, "our chance of gaining deep printer knowledge without putting ourselves under direct corporate observation drops to near zero. Asura's timeline stretches. Virellon becomes a fortress, not a market."
Omega's jaw clenched.
"So the choice is chaos now," she said. "Or a sealed cage later."
"Yes," Ned said.
She looked away.
"And this is because you said yes," she added. "Because you accepted."
Ned let the accusation hang for a moment before he answered.
"Yes," he said. "I made that choice. On incomplete information. Now we live with it."
Renn rubbed his eyes.
"Feels like we started a war by accident," he said.
"No," Ned said quietly. "The war was always coming. We are choosing whether to be a spark or a bystander."
Omega's eyes snapped back to him.
"And what does that make us?" she asked. "Heroes? Villains? Schemers who think they're above the mess?"
Ned considered, then shook his head.
"It makes us," he said, "prisoners who found the door to someone else's cell open and decided to walk through. The fact that the alarm will sound behind us does not make the cell less real."
Renn snorted, humorless.
"Droid philosophy," he muttered. "Love it."
Ned turned off the holo.
"The point," he said, "is that there is no path where we touch this world and leave it unchanged. We are already a distortion. The only question is whether that distortion buys us enough time to stop running."
Omega let out a slow breath.
"And if it doesn't?" she said.
"Then we die sooner," Ned said. "But at least we die moving toward something, not sitting in a lab, waiting for someone else's project to end us."
Silence.
Outside, rain ticked softly against the hull.
Renn drummed his fingers on the table.
"You said we'd be hunted after this," he said. "You meant more than Kade's enemies."
"Yes," Ned said. "When Aevar dies, the board will not accept 'random chance.' They will send auditors, investigators, private military, perhaps Republic assistance. Syndicates will scramble. Every paranoid with guns will look for hidden hands."
He met both of their eyes in turn.
"We will be one of those hands," he said. "For a while. Then we will be ghosts again. But the period between will be… intense."
Omega's lips quirked despite herself.
"Understatement," she said.
"I am an understated machine," Ned said.
Renn shook his head.
"So we do it," he said. "You kill a prince, Kade gets his war, we get our printers, and the whole world burns."
Ned did not disagree.
"Then you get us off this world," Omega said. "Promise me that. No extra errands. No side-deals. We do this once, take what we came for, and disappear."
He hesitated a fraction of a second—calculating every temptation he would have to linger, to extract more from the chaos.
Then he nodded.
"Yes," he said. "We burn this bridge once."
"And after?" Renn pressed.
"After," Ned said, "we go find a world that is not already on fire. Somewhere quiet enough to build. Somewhere we can move from theft to creation."
He saw it when he spoke: not a specific planet yet, just a shape. A world on a fringe lane, with enough resources to support a small fortress, a hidden lab, and the beginnings of an army. Not legions, not empires. A House. Seresh.
He let them see a piece of that vision.
"A place that belongs to us," he said. "Not by law. By capability. Where no one can walk in and chain us again."
Omega's shoulders loosened, just slightly.
"Fine," she said. "Then let's make sure we survive long enough to find it."
—
Aevar Rhun woke before dawn.
Habit, not necessity. The tower's systems would have adjusted his schedule to whatever he liked. But he preferred the hours before the city fully woke: when the rain was just a patter against glass and the lights outside were more distant glow than sharp neon.
He sat at his desk in a robe, half a cup of tea cooling by his elbow, and read.
Numbers first. Always numbers.
Production outputs. Licensing compliance rates. Quarter-over-quarter deviations in unauthorized prints. A spike here, a dip there. The city's circulatory system laid out in flowing charts and graphs.
Virellon was sick. It had been for decades. But in the numbers, he saw a path to something like health.
"Still at it?" a voice said from the bedroom doorway.
He looked up.
Lysa leaned against the frame, arms folded. Hair loose around her shoulders. Sleep still softening the lines of her face.
"You should still be asleep," he said.
"You should be," she replied.
He smiled faintly.
"The board doesn't sleep," he said. "If I do, someone else makes the decisions."
She walked over, bare feet silent on the floor, and looked at the projection hovering above his desk.
"You changed the thresholds," she said, nodding at a highlighted section.
"Relaxed them," he corrected. "A little. Enough that small clinics in the undercity can breathe without tripping automatic sanctions every quarter. If we squeeze too hard, they go black-market anyway. Better to keep them inside the net where we can guide them."
"'Guide,'" she echoed. "You mean control."
"Control is just guided survival," he said. "For them and for us."
She put a hand on his shoulder.
"You could have been a priest," she said. "Or a philosopher. Instead you chose spreadsheets."
He covered her hand with his.
"Priests serve gods," he said. "Philosophers serve themselves. I serve Virellon."
"You serve the board," she said gently.
"For now," he said. "If I do this right, those might become the same thing."
She looked skeptical.
"And if you're wrong?" she asked.
He looked past the projections, out at the city.
"If I'm wrong," he said, "then this place will tear itself apart and someone else who doesn't care about anything but profit margins will rule the pieces. I'd rather fail trying to steady it than watch it fall while I count my dividends."
She studied him for a moment, then bent to kiss his temple.
"Just don't fail today," she murmured. "You have a speech tonight. Try not to start a war with your fork in one hand."
He chuckled, the sound low.
"I'll put the fork down first," he promised.
—
The day moved in meetings.
Aevar sat in conference rooms with polite killers in business suits, smiling as they spoke of "market access realignment" and "risk mitigation strategies." He pushed back where he could, softened edges, shifted deadlines. He bartered lives in percentages.
He met with Kade Vire's representatives in a side room, listening to carefully veiled threats and equally veiled concessions. He saw the fear behind the swagger and noted it.
He signed three minor contracts and refused one major one that would have given an off-world mercenary group permanent docking rights in lower orbit.
"That's a military occupation in everything but name," he told the envoy.
"Security," the man corrected.
"For whom?" Aevar asked. "Virellon, or your shareholders?"
The envoy left unhappy. Aevar added his name to a private list of people to watch.
At midday, he stole an hour to walk a higher promenade without his full entourage. Just two bodyguards, Lysa at his side, and the endless rain on the glass overhead.
"Sometimes I wonder if this world would be better off if we stopped printing organs for a year," he said, watching cargo skiffs move between towers. "Watch who survives."
Lysa snorted.
"You would never do that," she said. "You're too kind."
He smiled, sighing.
"Kindness is expensive," he said. "Cruelty pays better. That's the problem."
She squeezed his hand.
"Then we'll find a way to make kindness pay," she said. "Even if we have to cheat."
He laughed, genuinely.
—
The banquet hall was all polished stone and soft light.
Crystalline chandeliers glowed overhead, catching the rain outside and turning it into fractured patterns on the glass walls. The city spread beyond, lights flickering in the constant drizzle.
Inside, the air smelled of rich food and expensive perfume. Music murmured from a live ensemble in one corner. Conversation flowed in low, practiced currents.
Aevar stood near the head of the room, a glass of wine in his hand, Lysa at his side.
Around them, power gathered.
Syndicate heads in tailored suits. Corporate envoys. Planetary officials draped in local finery. Kade Vire stood among them, leaning against a pillar, talking quietly with two lieutenants. Their eyes flicked around the room, always counting exits.
"Everyone who might kill everyone else," Lysa murmured, eyes scanning the crowd. "All in one room."
"That's the point," Aevar said. "If they're here, they're not shooting yet."
She arched a brow.
"Yet," she echoed.
He lifted his glass slightly, as if toasting the thought.
"It's easier to redirect rivers when you can see all the currents at once," he said.
On a balcony above, half-hidden behind decor, a small maintenance panel was ajar by three centimeters. No one noticed. Why would they? Panels opened and closed all the time.
Inside, behind the wall, a lens no larger than a fingertip adjusted by a fraction of a degree.
—
Ned watched through borrowed eyes.
The tiny camera node he'd slipped into the maintenance rail earlier fed him a narrow but clear band: Aevar's position, nearest angles, the way his bodyguards scanned the room.
Order overlaid trajectories and distances.
> HEART POSITION: 3.2 CM OFFSET FROM STEREOTYPICAL TARGET
> OPTIMAL ENTRY VECTOR: ADJUSTED
> PREDICTED BODYGUARD RESPONSE TIME: 0.8 – 1.1 SECONDS
He had chosen a projectile weapon, not a beam. Beams left signatures that investigators could trace back to manufacturer specs and energy caps. Ballistics were dirtier, older, harder to attribute in a city where guns were as common as lungs.
The rifle lay quiet in his hands—a compact assembly of composite and smart metal, barrel cooled, systems slaved to his internal targeting.
He was not in the hall. He was in a service conduit three towers away, the rifle poking through a hole that looked like a missing ventilation bolt.
The path between his muzzle and Aevar's chest ran across open air, through rain and drifting particulates. It was a shot that would have been impossible for an organic marksman at this distance.
Ned was not organic.
He watched Aevar speak to Lysa, watched the man's mouth move as he said something about currents and rivers. The sound didn't matter. The pattern of his chest did.
He let a thread of Foresight coil around the moment, not to predict the shot—that would hit—but to measure the aftershocks.
They were… immense.
Syndicate territories flaring. Corporate enforcers dropping from orbit. Blockades. Bombardments that would never be called that in official reports. Streets burning.
He saw, in one branch, Kade on a balcony much like this, years from now, raising a glass over a city that barely resembled the one below tonight.
He saw, in another, Kade falling through shattered glass as someone returned the favor.
He saw Virellon under Republic supervision. Under Sith raiding. Under no one's rule at all.
In every branch where Aevar Rhun lived, he saw a different kind of tyranny: quieter, more formal, written into law instead of fire. The world did not burn. It suffocated.
He did not see any branch where House Seresh walked away from this node and still reached Asura in time.
Omega's voice, earlier, echoed faintly.
Will it get us there faster?
Yes.
He exhaled through his vents, a soft hiss.
"Order," he said internally. "Confirm wind compensation."
> EXTERNAL FACTORS ACCOUNTED FOR
> PREDICTED IMPACT POINT: 98.7% CONFIDENCE
"Renn," he pinged on a tight beam. "Status?"
Renn's reply came taut.
"On the ship," he said. "Strapped in. Everything's hot and pretending to be cold. Omega's pacing like a caged nexu."
"Good," Ned said. "Stay that way."
He cut the channel.
Below, Aevar lifted his glass to his lips.
Ned squeezed the trigger.
The rifle made no sound he couldn't cancel. The recoil was a neat, contained impulse. The round left the barrel at a speed that turned the distance into a blink.
Inside the hall, a single wineglass shattered.
For half an instant, that was all anyone registered—crystal breaking, red liquid spraying like blood.
Then Aevar staggered.
The wine on his shirt bloomed into a darker stain. His mouth opened as if to speak, but no words came. His eyes went wide, not with fear at first, but with confusion—someone unused to being surprised by violence.
The second heartbeat brought the pain.
He dropped the glass.
His knees buckled.
The room snapped.
Bodyguards lunged, shouting. Lysa screamed his name, catching at his arm as he collapsed. People ducked instinctively, some diving for cover, others frozen.
A second's delay.
Then someone fired.
No one later could say who shot first after the assassin. A guard emptying his weapon at a perceived threat on the balcony. A nervous syndicate lieutenant thinking he'd seen a rival's man move toward his boss. A drunk with a pistol and bad instincts.
It didn't matter.
One shot became two, then ten.
The hall exploded into gunfire.
Screams, overturned tables, shards of glass raining from chandeliers as panicked guards and syndicate enforcers returned fire in every direction.
On the floor, Aevar Rhun lay on his back, eyes staring at the ceiling. The bullet had done its work cleanly, punching through his heart. His hand twitched once, reaching for Lysa's, then fell.
A guard threw himself over the body too late.
Outside the glass walls, weapon flashes bloomed in the neighboring towers as external security responded to internal alarms with external force. Drones launched from hidden bays, their engines flaring. Sirens wound up into the night.
Word traveled faster than any medical team.
By the time emergency services were even dispatched, half the city already knew: someone had killed the board's prince in a room full of power.
In the streets below, organ hawkers shoved their wares into crates and vanished into alleys. Clinic doors slammed shut. Gun sellers did brisk business in the span of minutes. Old grudges that had been simmering for years found excuses to ignite.
A warehouse in Syndicate Red territory went up in flames before anyone could confirm who fired first at the banquet.
Enforcers from a rival family hit one of Kade's dropships "preemptively," certain he had engineered the assassination. Kade's people answered with a raid on a bio-ink processing hub three blocks away.
Overhead, two privately-owned gunships misread each other's sudden course changes as hostile intent and opened fire. Their exchange lit up a section of the sky, fragments raining down into already-panicked neighborhoods.
Corporate security squads deployed in neat formations, trying to establish "stability corridors." In practice, that meant securing their own assets and shooting anything that looked like it might threaten them.
In Vatfall's underlevels, rumors turned into certainties in seconds.
"The prince is dead."
"Kade did it."
"The board did it themselves."
"Off-worlders did it, they want the whole planet."
"Sith did it."
Every version justified a bullet.
Fire licked up the side of one mid-level block, setting cheap signage ablaze. Smoke poured into the rain-heavy air, turning it from gray to black.
On a distant rooftop, a child covered her ears as the sound of distant cannons rolled through the night. In a back alley, two men laughed as they looted a shuttered organ stall, their faces lit by flickering holo-ads for replacement limbs.
In the banquet hall, security teams finally began to assert local dominance, pushing survivors into corners, disarming those who hadn't already fled or fallen. Someone draped a cloth over Aevar Rhun's body.
Lysa knelt beside him until a medic pulled her away, fingers slick with blood that could no longer be saved.
Above it all, Virellon's towers stood like ribs around a wounded heart, their lights flickering as the first true war in a generation clawed its way into the open.
------------------------
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