Chapter 8 · free to read
She repaired the cable Corvin had cut. She did it slowly, and correctly, the way she did everything.
First contact. Eleven words received. One name spent. She had written the total at the foot of the page and then ruled a line under it, and kept ruling lines for nine years.
Sela Ovid, station overseer of Relay Station Kestrel-9, aged fifty. Nobody would ever be able to check that sentence again.
She was right about the price. Nine names bought Kestrel-9 eleven quiet hours, and Corvin spent every one of them trying to work out what she had actually bought him time to do.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.