Read Chapter 32: The Preemptive Strike

The hangar smelled of ozone and cold sweat. Élise stood at the command console, her palm flat against the launch key, watching the secondary pod—stripped of its navigation housing, jury-rigged with a dozen radio beacons and a core charge—shiver on its cradle.

"Propellant pressure nominal," Duval said from the engineering station, voice thin through the suit mic. "They're going to see it the second it clears the shadow line."

"That's the point," Élise said. She turned to the wall screen, where the enforcement vessel hung in the black, a cold sliver of light growing steadily larger. Nine hours, fifty-one minutes until Vasseur's heart stopped. Assuming he was still alive to have a heart.

"Tracking radar is live on their end," Anouk called from the sensor pit. "They're sweeping the approach. If we launch now—"

"We launch now." Élise pressed the key.

The cradle shuddered. The decoy tore free of the magnetic rail and screamed toward the horizon, a needle of light accelerating outward, its beacon array pulsing a false distress signature: *Mayday, mayday, mining vessel Luna Secunda, primary reactor breach, ejecting crew pod.*

"Come on," Élise breathed. "Look at it. Come on."

The enforcement vessel's main engines flared, a correction burn. Then a second flare, smaller, sharper—a railgun slug tracking across the sky.

"Impact in three seconds," Anouk said.

The decoy vanished in a white bloom of plasma, blinding the long-range optics, saturating the sensor arrays with raw heat and radiation. For a moment, the enforcement vessel was blind.

"Now."

The mining laser bloomed to life beneath the hangar's blast shield—a modified cutter unit bolted to a traversing mount, its focusing lens fitted with a multiplier they'd scavenged from the hab's emergency beacon. Élise watched the beam spike across the void, a hair-thin thread of coherent light stabbing straight into the vessel's midsection, where Vasseur's message had told them the fuel manifold ran.

Nothing happened.

Then the vessel's hull buckled. A chunk of plating peeled outward, glowing red at the edges, and a plume of vaporized hydrazine whipped into space like an escaping breath. The vessel yawed hard, its attitude thrusters firing unevenly, and Élise saw it: the main engine bank had gone dark.

"We got them," Duval said, quiet, almost disbelieving. "We actually got them."

"Not yet." Élise slammed the comm switch. "All hands, stand by for defensive posture. They're down but not out. I want eyes on every approach corridor—"

The warning klaxon cut her off.

Anouk spun around from the sensor pit, face pale. "That wasn't the enforcement vessel. I'm reading a second heat signature. Small, fast, ballistic—launched from their port side before our laser hit."

Élise's stomach dropped. "They already fired. What is it?"

"Looks like a boarding pod. Cutters on the leading edge, minimal mass, no life support worth the name." Anouk's fingers flew. "Trajectory... it's coming in for the secondary airlock. The one we left clear for the supply runs."

"God—" Duval started.

"Get people there now," Élise snapped. "Do not let them breach—"

A shudder ran through the deck. Distant, but close enough to rattle the tool racks along the wall.

"Too late," Anouk said. "They're on us."

Élise was already moving, grabbing the plasma rifle off the charging rack, slamming a fresh cell into its stock. "Duval, you stay on the laser. If the enforcement vessel so much as twitches, you put another beam through its bridge." She hit the corridor at a sprint.

The secondary airlock wasn't far—a hundred meters of maintenance tunnel from the cargo bay, normally walked daily for supply deliveries. Élise had been through it a thousand times, but now the familiar geometry felt alien, the walls too close, the lights too bright. She could hear it before she reached the junction: the screech of plasma cutters chewing through the outer hatch, the high-pitched whine of metal giving way.

She rounded the corner and dropped behind an overturned tool locker. Two crew members were already there—Pereira and Suliman, both with weapons raised, faces set.

"They're through," Pereira hissed. "I heard the breach alarm."

The inner hatch was still intact. For now.

"Thermal lance," Élise said, keying her suit mic. "Sentry status."

A tinny voice answered from the corridor beyond—the maintenance bot she'd rewired, its cutter arm polished to a mirrored edge. "Target acquired. Awaiting engagement order."

"Engage anyone who comes through that door."

She had barely finished speaking when the hatch buckled. Not from cutters—from a shaped charge. The inner door blew inward, torn from its tracks, and the corridor filled with smoke and sparks and the silhouette of a figure in a pressure suit, weapon raised.

The thermal lance didn't hesitate. It snapped forward on its treads, the cutter arm blazing white-hot, and caught the first boarder across the chest plate. The man screamed, fell backward. The next two came through behind him, and Suliman opened fire, the plasma bolts lighting up the corridor.

Élise stayed low, moving forward through the chaos, and when the third boarder cleared the breach she put three rounds into his shoulder assembly. He spun, went down.

And then—silence.

The smoke began to clear. Five boarders lay in the corridor, one dead, four wounded or surrendering, hands raised. Élise walked up to them, rifle steady, and pulled the helmet off the one nearest to her.

Dr. Arnaud Vasseur looked up at her. Gray-faced, sweating, a tremor running through his hands. His eyes widened when he recognized her.

"Élise," he rasped. "You weren't supposed to—" He coughed, and blood flecked his lips. "They said you would surrender. When they saw the ship—"

"We saw the ship," Élise said. "We also saw your message. The real one."

Vasseur's face twisted. "Then you know. Everything."

"Tell me the rest."

He tried to laugh, and the laugh became a cough. "The corporation has the Earth-return contracts sealed. Locked. If they can't take the base back—" He reached up and grabbed her arm, his fingers cold and trembling. "They're going to burn the whole thing from orbit. They'd rather kill all of you than let you talk."

From the wall speaker, Duval's voice crackled. "Enforcement vessel is still dead in the water, but I'm reading reactor cycling. They're trying to restore main power."

Élise looked down at Vasseur. At the white flecks of poison on his lips. Eleven hours had just shrunk a great deal smaller.

"Get him to medical," she said. "Now."