The news of Lyra’s death settled inside me like a shard of ice. For a day, I couldn't work. I sat in the echoing quiet of Bay 7, the schematics on my data-slate blurring into meaningless lines. It wasn’t Kael’s failure that haunted me; it was the pointless, wasteful cruelty of it. Lyra had been barely twenty, a prodigy from the outer colonies with a laugh that could cut through the tension of a pre-mission briefing. I had calibrated her Sentinel’s neural link myself, had talked her through her first combat drop, had assured her that Admiral Kael was the best there was. That he would always bring them home.
Another one of his lies, delivered through my mouth.
Zane found me like that, staring at a cold power converter. He didn’t offer empty platitudes. He just placed a steaming mug of bitt
