Mistress of the Dark.
"We don't send fire to negotiate with ash."
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Rae Cooke
The shuttle was quiet.
Not the peace of sanctuary, but the silence of a drawn blade waiting to taste blood.
Serina Calis sat unmoving in the aft corner of the transport's hold, framed in shadows, her presence more an intrusion on the space than a passenger within it. The crimson emergency lights lining the bay's overhead fixtures painted the armored interior in low, pulsing hues—heartbeat light, pulsing to a rhythm older than breath. The steel walls thrummed under occasional gusts of atmospheric turbulence, but it was a background note—just part of the world's tension, like the drumbeat before a ritual sacrifice.
Her armor absorbed the dim light like liquid night.
Tyrant's Embrace was utterly still. No part of it glinted, no surface betrayed movement. The six slanted violet eyes of her helm glowed in synchronized intervals, soft as starlight and far colder. Together, they gave the impression of a creature not waiting—but watching. Computing. Remembering.
It had been some time since Serina had descended into violence with her own hands. Most of the blood spilled in her name was handled by others—contracted agents, trusted knives, ambitious apprentices willing to kill for even the faintest trace of her approval. That was the advantage of power, after all: the ability to engineer obedience. The capacity to sublimate others into extensions of your will.
But there were some relics too volatile to delegate.
Kinooine was such a place.
She had not spoken since they left Polis Massa. Not to the pilot. Not to Rae.
She did not need to.
Her silence was not empty; it was sovereign.
Even seated, surrounded by bulkheads and armored crates, she dominated the shuttle's interior like a living monolith—part cathedral, part executioner's scaffold. Rae Cooke had her place on the other side of the bay, a professional distance maintained not by any spoken command, but by gravity. An understanding. An instinct. One did not sit beside a predator unless invited.
Her mind was focused elsewhere.
The old research station—TAL-03C—had come alive again, like a dead god twitching in its crypt. Long thought abandoned, the facility had been owned by a pre-Clone Wars weapons syndicate. Once neutral. Now infested.
Pirates, they said. Disorganized, self-styled warlords with delusions of tactical acumen. She'd read the telemetry reports and confirmed the orbital scans herself. They were not a coordinated force. Not a true syndicate. Just scavengers with the luck to be standing on the grave of something powerful.
She exhaled. A quiet hiss behind her helm. Steam curled from the exhalation valves across her collar, briefly fogging the air like incense.
The signal had been faint. A distress pattern embedded within a power-up cycle. A digital cough from a machine that should've stayed dormant. Someone down there had found something—something old—and cracked the wrong layer of encryption.
Now they were sitting on a prototype weapons system with architecture too complex for them to understand, and too dangerous to ignore.
She was not here to negotiate.
She was here to erase them.
The shuttle bucked slightly as it pierced the uppermost tendrils of Kinooine's storm-wracked atmosphere. Serina braced only slightly—her armored frame naturally counterbalancing the shift. In her mind, she walked through the upcoming breach. Not physically—she had no intention of leading the assault personally—but tactically, intellectually.
Her consciousness combed through the likely paths, calculated breach points, response windows. The towers at the base were likely repurposed as sensor outposts. Automated defenses had been spotted—tripod-mounted cannon systems of mixed manufacture, no coordination net. Rae would have to be smart. Swift. Surgical.
Serina's gaze finally turned—just slightly—toward the mercenary across from her.
Rae Cooke.
Useful, if properly leashed.
Dangerous, if not.
Serina said nothing. But the helm tilted ever so slightly. A gesture not of warmth, but of acknowledgment. The closest thing to camaraderie Rae would likely ever receive.
Deliver results, the silence said. Earn your place.
The pilot's voice crackled into the cabin, sterile and half-distracted.
"Final descent. Drop zone in three minutes. Cold insertion. No heat signatures within 300 meters. We'll stay in the shadow of the ridge. You'll move on foot from there."
Serina stood.
The movement was glacial. Impossibly smooth. Her armor shifted like living sculpture—each plate gliding into place with fluid menace, as though magnetized by intent alone. The full effect of Tyrant's Embrace at its full height was something even the most seasoned soldiers had trouble processing.
Power shouldn't move like that.
It shouldn't be beautiful.
But it was. That was the point.
The blood-hued lining of her cloak flared slightly as she adjusted her posture, violet sigils flickering like dying embers across her chestplate. She made no speech. No inspirational declarations.
She simply reached out with one taloned hand and activated the onboard terminal with a gliding motion. A holographic map of the station flared to life—half-scrambled, only partially reconstructed. Coordinates. Topography. Schematic ghosts. Rae would see it.
It was all she needed.
And without turning, Serina spoke.
Her voice was low. Controlled. Cold as an executioner's breath—and yet, there was something seductive in it, too. Like the whisper of silk drawn across a knife.
"They found something that should have stayed buried. I want it retrieved, intact. If they interfere—burn them."
A brief pause.
Then, almost idly:
"If they surrender… burn them slower."
She turned her helm back toward the ramp, violet optics gleaming brighter now as the doors began to hiss with hydraulic release. Serina knew she needed to be ready. Outside, the jungle storm raged over Kinooine's gnarled treetops, lightning dancing through cloudbanks, revealing the jagged silhouette of TAL-03C in the distance.
Serina Calis said nothing more.
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