Ashen Sector Governor Tallis Krell POV:
The office of the Governor was an elegant composition of precision and power, the kind of space where every surface spoke of deliberate design. Over a dozen layered holoscreens floated around the main desk in varying opacities and sizes, their translucent interfaces scrolling through endless lines of data.
Budget allocations, industrial compliance reports, factional movement indexes, and strategic personnel rotations. Streams of color-coded annotations blinked softly, categorizing everything from planetary agricultural outputs in certain struggling systems to logistics routing schedules.
The walls, reinforced with a blend of poly-alloy composites and carbon-sheen panels, hummed faintly from the filtered air cycling through near-silent ducts built into the architectural seams.
Embedded ambient light lines pulsed at a regulated interval, barely perceptible, designed to keep the room's tone adaptive based on its occupant's work rhythms. The air itself held no scent, no flaw, no reminder of anything outside the station's inner ring.
This was a room built not for comfort, but for control.
And at the center of this command nexus sat Governor Tallis Krell, posture straight, movements economic, his every gesture practiced over years of executive discipline. He worked in silence, fingers gliding across the nearest desk console. The interface responded with seamless transitions, displaying fiscal models one moment, cross-system political risk analyses the next.
The flicker of data lit the sharp lines of his face, dancing across the dark navy of his tailored uniform, embroidered subtly at the cuffs with the insignia of the Orion Federation.
Beyond his tall, angled chair, the viewport panels behind him remained dimmed, allowing no distraction from the cosmos. There were no windows in this office. Only projections, stellar cartography feeds and orbital path visualizers, each calculated to remind the room's occupant that governance required a broader gaze than just the walls around him.
He had just completed a second pass through the latest economic development proposals concerning outer-ring refinery upgrades. Dry, technical reports, but vital. Much of Ashen Prime's economic resilience depended on those installations functioning smoothly, especially with the supply strain caused by the recent inner political instability.
He tapped one final command to approve provisional funds for site expansion near the Veltra Refinery Chain, watching the proposal seal with an encrypted tag.
That was when the tone sounded.
It wasn't the usual soft ping that denoted administrative scheduling changes or department updates. This chime was sharper, carrying a distinct modulation, one only reserved for incoming traffic from high-clearance channels tied to orbital security and port authority nodes. It sliced cleanly through the background hum of systems like a blade drawn over still water.
Krell's gaze snapped to the blinking gold indicator in the lower-left quadrant of his main interface. His fingers paused in mid-motion, then resumed, slower, more deliberate this time, as he brought the secure message to full display.
PRIORITY LEVEL 1 — URGENT NOTIFICATION.
He tapped it.
A soft ripple expanded across the desk's surface, resolving into a live feed from the Port Authority. A calm, synthetic voice read the alert aloud:
"Vessel Obsidian Wraith, registered to one Ethan Walker, has disengaged from Docking Bay S2. Departure approved. Clearance code verified."
Krell leaned back slightly in his chair. His face betrayed nothing. His fingers steepled beneath his chin, listening as the message ran to conclusion and terminated on its own.
Silence returned, deep and deliberate.
Then he stood.
Across from his desk stood a floor-to-ceiling wall panel of transparent glass, behind which a three-dimensional galactic map floated. The Orion Federation sprawled in elegant arcs and geometric grids, its core sectors gleaming like polished silver dots, its inner and outer ones stitched in threads of orange and violet.
Krell's eyes drifted toward the outermost systems. the fringes. Worlds like Kynara. Places forgotten unless their resources demanded remembrance. Regions where Federation law grew thin, and opportunism thickened like rot.
He didn't need a recording to replay his meeting with Ethan two days ago. It had burned itself into memory.
A conversation not of recruitment, but of recognition.
Ethan Walker had listened with quiet focus as Krell explained the unstable currents running through the Orion Federation. The divide between the radical extremists and the moderates, between diplomacy and aggression, governance and subjugation.
Krell had not directly pitched allegiance. Men like Ethan could not be bought or ordered, they chose their own paths. But Ethan had not rejected the Federation's moderate vision either.
And that, in these times, was a rare seed worth planting. Many preferred the allure of false righteousness and positive neutrality that centrist promoted, or the hidden dark temptations of the affluent extremists.
Krell murmured aloud to the quiet room.
"You're not the kind to serve banners, Walker. But when one side steps too far…"
He let the thought hang. His gaze drifted down to the outer ring of the map, where Kynara blinked in subdued light. Not long ago, Ethan had disrupted the balance of power there, unraveling the influence of the Black Sun Syndicate with ruthless efficiency. That same signature had echoed again, here, in Ashen Prime.
He turned back to his console and slid his hand across the interface. A new folder opened: FLAGGED INCIDENTS — SECURITY BREACH BAY 77-F.
A summary report blinked to life across the central display, crisp and framed in red-border priority format. The header marked it as an incident analysis filed by internal security oversight, timestamped to the third cycle of the station's previous artificial night.
"Bay 77-F. Unauthorized activity detected during third cycle.
Post-event environmental and thermal scans indicate partial dismantling of operational layout.
Suspected off-grid blacksite facility compromised.
On-site personnel currently unaccounted for.
Cargo manifest unrecovered.
Local security systems show signs of direct bypass or silent deactivation.
Conclusion: probable external interference followed by rapid evacuation or cleanup."
Krell raised a brow, his finger pausing mid-scroll. The name of that bay brought with it a thread of memory. Thick, tangled, and inconvenient.
Bay 77-F.
A decommissioned logistics hangar, one of dozens scattered along Ashen Prime's older industrial spine. On paper, it was marked for inactive status and repurposing initiatives that never received funding. In reality, the hangar had become one of the more notorious gray zones under the governance of his predecessor, Renn Valcor. A man known for turning official blind eyes in exchange for unofficial favors. That era had allowed Bay 77-F to quietly become a revolving door of shadow dealings.
Though never formally proven, internal investigations over the past few years had painted a disturbing pattern. The bay had been repeatedly subleased to shell companies, names that led to dead ends, or worse, to subsidiaries of powerful corporate entities whose board members had ties to the more radical elements festering inside the Orion Federation Council. Tech brokers. Weapons testers. Unregulated AI modules. Experimental shielding. Cargo rerouted from abandoned battlefields without full documentation.
Krell's new administration had attempted to peel back the layers, but these were sophisticated operations. Shielded by layers of bureaucracy, by forged logs and compliance backdates. And more importantly, protected by men and women in high offices who saw extremist ideology not as a danger, but as a pathway to consolidating power in an increasingly fractured Federation.
And now… something had happened. Something unexpected, yet possibly pleasant.