Sumire Raiza
Character
COVENANT FIELD RECORD // SR-30
SUMIRE RAIZA
EXECUTIONER
LOCATION // ORISON-12
OBJECTIVE // RESTORE CONTROL
The situation brief had been six pages longer than it needed to be. Sumire had read every word. Twice. Most of it was redundant, bureaucracy attempting to compensate for uncertainty with volume. Beneath that, the problem was simple. Orison-12 had stopped sending ore, rejected Covenant authority and placed control of the station in the hands of seven people who believed distance had made them safe.
The station turned slowly beyond the courier's forward viewport. At its center was the asteroid from which the first mining shafts had been cut, though little of the original surface remained visible. Refinery towers, habitation blocks and storage tanks had spread across it without much regard for symmetry. Docking structures projected from the upper hemisphere while ore-transfer arms wrapped around the lower, connected by durasteel corridors and exposed service gantries. Navigation lights marked the worst of the protrusions.
One hundred and eighty-seven permanent personnel lived aboard Orison-12, accompanied by forty-three dependents. Twenty-six were registered as station security. Intelligence estimated that forty to fifty people now carried weapons, though the number meant less here than it might have elsewhere. Mining lasers, cutting torches and industrial charges were readily available to people accustomed to using them in confined spaces.
At first, the export shipments from Orison-12 were merely late. Then they began arriving light. Eventually, they stopped coming altogether.
The report identified a shift foreman, two senior engineers, the quartermaster, a security supervisor and two members of the administrative council as principally responsible. Their names occupied less than half a page. The remaining five and a half attempted to explain how increasing quotas, deferred maintenance and unanswered petitions had become organized sedition.
Two atmospheric scrubber banks were operating below recommended tolerance. Pressure-seal inspections were overdue across three habitation sections. Replacement components requested during the previous cycle had never arrived. Orison-12's records still marked the requisition as pending; the Covenant shipping appendix listed the same components as released to a regional freight service. Neither contained a delivery confirmation, and neither explained the discrepancy. To the families aboard the station, the distinction mattered less with every day the scrubbers continued to fail.
Sumire preferred honest rebellion. People who lied to themselves were prone to changing their reasons whenever the old ones became inconvenient. These miners knew what they wanted and what they meant to protect. They had watched their machinery deteriorate while the records disagreed about where its replacements had gone. In the silence between those accounts, they had settled upon abandonment. It wasn't an unreasonable conclusion. It had simply stopped being true when Sumire accepted the assignment. Whatever had failed between requisition and delivery, the Covenant had not relinquished Orison-12.
The final page reduced the matter to five instructions.
Restore quota shipments. Preserve extraction and processing infrastructure. Minimize disruption to the labor force. Reestablish Covenant authority. Remove local leadership as required.
That last qualification afforded her considerable discretion. Sumire closed the brief and brought up the station schematics. A massacre would satisfy the least imaginative interpretation of her orders, but dead miners produced no ore and damaged refineries produced even less. Violence was useful when it narrowed a problem. Indulged for its own sake, it had a habit of creating several more.
She traced Orison-12's internal systems across the display. The station had grown outward from a central excavation shaft, with new compartments attached whenever production justified the cost. Power could be isolated by section. Several workshops maintained independent reserves, and the refinery could continue operating for hours after being cut off from the main reactor. The environmental network was less forgiving. Air moved through two primary circulation loops and one aging reserve system. Every habitation block, workshop and barricade ultimately depended upon the same handful of regulators. The miners could ignore commands from the administrative level. They could isolate security doors and operate portions of the station manually. None of them could decide they no longer required oxygen.
Sumire marked the environmental junctions for later consideration and opened a channel to the station. Concord Seven's transponder carried a Covenant identification code and diplomatic clearance for the assignment. Her authorization named her as the Covenant's representative at Orison-12.
"Orison-12 Control, Concord Seven on final approach. Requesting approach vector and berth assignment."
Static answered first. The station's automated beacon continued transmitting, guiding her toward a row of pressurized docking bays along the upper structure. Repulsor tugs moved between cargo platforms below them, shepherding ore containers toward storage. Whatever authority the rebels had rejected, they had not stopped working.
"Concord Seven, hold position and transmit your manifest and authorization."
Sumire sent the requested information. The response took longer this time. Through the Force, she caught only impressions from the station ahead. Apprehension sat foremost among them, sharpened by anger and held together by determination. It did not feel like panic. These people had considered what refusal might cost them and chosen it anyway.
"Your authorization identifies you as the Covenant's representative," the controller said.
"Yes."
"And your manifest lists one person aboard."
"Correct."
The answer produced another delay. They had likely expected a negotiation team, a security detachment or an official surrounded by enough attendants to make authority appear substantial. One woman complicated the picture. Too small a response could be dismissed as weakness. Too deliberate a response suggested something they had not prepared for.
"We are not accepting Covenant traffic," the reply finally came.
"Your approach beacons are active."
"They're not active for you. Reverse course and clear the station perimeter."
There was strain beneath the controller's practiced delivery, but no uncertainty in the words themselves. Whoever held the communications station had rehearsed them and probably believed that refusing access amounted to controlling it.
Sumire watched the main docking structure rotate across the viewport. Its blast doors remained open, though figures had begun moving along the loading galleries above the receiving deck. Too many gathered near the railings for a routine cargo operation. Even as she watched, she could see the blast doors begin to close. Forcing her way into the primary loading bay would risk depressurizing it, potentially damaging the station's infrastructure and the equipment within. It would also place her in a broad receiving bay overlooked by multiple loading galleries. Forty armed miners would present a problem if allowed enough distance and enough angles from which to fire.
The lower station offered something considerably narrower.
An ore-transfer arm extended from the refinery quarter, terminating in a maintenance cradle intended for inspection sleds and repair craft. Its service lock remained powered. More importantly, the adjoining corridors had been built between conveyor housings and processing machinery. There would be little room to establish a firing line and fewer places from which several weapons could be brought to bear at once.
"Concord Seven, acknowledge," the controller demanded. "Break approach immediately."
Sumire closed the channel and altered course. No defensive weapons fire followed. The rebels wanted to deny her entry, but they hadn't yet decided that they were prepared to kill a lone pilot for attempting it. Their restraint might have been mercy. It might have been uncertainty. Either produced the same opening.
Sumire banked away from the main dock and guided the craft toward the refinery complex along the station's lower hemisphere. The maintenance cradle emerged beneath the refinery structure, half-hidden among ore conduits and thick cable runs. Sumire reduced speed and brought the courier alongside it manually. Magnetic clamps seized the hull with enough force to send a shudder through the deck. The platform had not been designed for a vessel of this size, but the clamps adjusted and held. A pressure shroud extended around Concord Seven's side hatch. Its seals reported a minor leak before compensating. Good enough.
Sumire left the cockpit with the station schematics transferred to her vambrace. Her armor was already sealed, dark plates fitted closely enough not to obstruct her movement through the industrial passages ahead. She checked the fastenings securing her kamas and stepped into the boarding compartment.
The service lock rejected her administrative authorization.
She had expected that. The rebels had severed access from the station's central network, removing the Covenant credentials most likely to be used against them. The industrial emergency system was another matter. Mining regulations required its controls to remain separate. A worker trapped beyond a blast door could not be expected to wait while an administrator restored network access. That seemed sensible. It was also exploitable.
Sumire entered the emergency code recorded in the station's latest inspection report. The indicator changed from red to amber. Heavy machinery shifted inside the bulkhead, followed by the reluctant withdrawal of the outer door. She crossed into the lock alone and the pressure shroud collapsed behind her as the hatch sealed. Atmosphere hissed into the compartment, carrying the smell of heated metal, lubricant and the fine mineral dust that found its way into every corner of an old mining station. Through the inner viewport, weak amber lighting revealed a service corridor crowded with pipes and machinery. The ceiling hung low enough that several conduits had been wrapped in faded impact padding.
Sumire felt the approaching group before she heard it. Fear moved ahead of them through the Force, covered by the brittle heat of people trying to turn it into anger. Then came the sound of boots against the deck—too many, moving too quickly and without any effort to conceal their approach.
She counted at least six distinct sets.
Whoever had organized the response had denied her the open dock, then sent armed personnel to meet her inside a passage barely wide enough for two people to stand together. Their blasters would lose the firing angles that made them dangerous. Their numbers would become an obstruction. Every step they took toward the pressure lock surrendered another advantage. Sumire rested one hand near the lightsaber at her belt but did not draw it. There was no reason to hurry. The corridor had already done most of the work for her.
The locking bolts retracted, and the pressure door opened onto six armed figures arranged in two uneven rows. Their equipment varied from station-security armor to heavy mining coveralls reinforced with scavenged plates. All six carried blasters, though only the two at the front had enough room to use them without firing past someone else.
"Step through and place your weapons on the deck," the foremost man ordered.
Sumire looked beyond him. A local control terminal had been built into the wall farther down the passage, positioned beside a junction leading toward the lower service bays. That terminal controlled Lower Bay Three. Six armed defenders stood between Sumire and the means to bring in the rest of her team.
"Lower yours," she said.
The man fired.
Sumire's lightsaber cleared her belt and ignited in the same motion. Its shortened red blade caught the first bolt and sent it into the overhead conduit, showering the corridor with sparks. The guard beside the leader tried to bring his carbine around, but Sumire was already through the doorway. The Force carried her across the distance before anyone farther back could adjust their aim. Her free hand pulled one of the kamas from behind her waist, its plasma edge still dormant. She caught the guard's carbine beneath its reinforced hook and wrenched the muzzle toward the bulkhead. The weapon discharged into the wall. Sumire drew him forward with the same motion and drove her lightsaber beneath the edge of his armor.
The leader fired again as she dragged the dying guard across his line of sight. His second bolt struck the man between them.
Sumire tore the lightsaber free and turned on the leader. She caught his wrist in the kama's unlit inner curve and twisted until it broke with a sharp crack. His carbine clattered to the deck, followed by its owner as she drove the lightsaber's pommel into the side of his head. The remaining four had nowhere to move. The two fallen men blocked the corridor ahead, while the press of people behind them prevented a clean retreat.. One tried to raise a compact blaster over another man's shoulder. Sumire tore it from his hand with the Force and sent it spinning into the bulkhead hard enough to split the housing.
"Down," she hissed.
This time, they listened. Sumire extinguished the blade on her saber but kept the kama in hand while she collected their weapons, discarding the power packs towards the airlock she'd just entered. Then she sealed them inside an adjoining equipment room with the injured man. One was dead and five were contained; the passage was hers. What they did after the door closed was irrelevant.
The dead guard carried a local security cylinder. Sumire removed it from his belt and continued to the control terminal she had noticed beyond the junction. Its access was limited to the refinery level, but that included the maintenance cradle and three service bays used by mining skiffs and repair craft. The main hangar remained under central control. She had no intention of opening it. Whoever had prepared the firing positions there could continue waiting for an arrival that would never come.
Lower Bay Three was smaller and partially concealed beneath the ore-transfer structure. More importantly, the local status display showed no additional security assigned to it. Sumire inserted the access cylinder and cleared the bay's lockout. The terminal protested twice before accepting the dead man's authorization. She confirmed that the atmospheric containment field was holding, opened the outer doors and placed the docking guidance and magnetic clamps on automatic standby. Finally, she activated a narrow approach beacon directed away from the station's main traffic lanes.
Only then did she open the encrypted channel.
"Lower Bay Three is open," Sumire said. "Approach from the refinery side."
She closed the connection without waiting for an answer. Anyone monitoring the designated channel would have the coordinates, and the station's control room would have only a short time to understand what she had done.
The manifest had been correct. Concord Seven had carried one person.
It had not occurred to them that she only needed to be first.
The station turned slowly beyond the courier's forward viewport. At its center was the asteroid from which the first mining shafts had been cut, though little of the original surface remained visible. Refinery towers, habitation blocks and storage tanks had spread across it without much regard for symmetry. Docking structures projected from the upper hemisphere while ore-transfer arms wrapped around the lower, connected by durasteel corridors and exposed service gantries. Navigation lights marked the worst of the protrusions.
One hundred and eighty-seven permanent personnel lived aboard Orison-12, accompanied by forty-three dependents. Twenty-six were registered as station security. Intelligence estimated that forty to fifty people now carried weapons, though the number meant less here than it might have elsewhere. Mining lasers, cutting torches and industrial charges were readily available to people accustomed to using them in confined spaces.
At first, the export shipments from Orison-12 were merely late. Then they began arriving light. Eventually, they stopped coming altogether.
The report identified a shift foreman, two senior engineers, the quartermaster, a security supervisor and two members of the administrative council as principally responsible. Their names occupied less than half a page. The remaining five and a half attempted to explain how increasing quotas, deferred maintenance and unanswered petitions had become organized sedition.
Two atmospheric scrubber banks were operating below recommended tolerance. Pressure-seal inspections were overdue across three habitation sections. Replacement components requested during the previous cycle had never arrived. Orison-12's records still marked the requisition as pending; the Covenant shipping appendix listed the same components as released to a regional freight service. Neither contained a delivery confirmation, and neither explained the discrepancy. To the families aboard the station, the distinction mattered less with every day the scrubbers continued to fail.
Sumire preferred honest rebellion. People who lied to themselves were prone to changing their reasons whenever the old ones became inconvenient. These miners knew what they wanted and what they meant to protect. They had watched their machinery deteriorate while the records disagreed about where its replacements had gone. In the silence between those accounts, they had settled upon abandonment. It wasn't an unreasonable conclusion. It had simply stopped being true when Sumire accepted the assignment. Whatever had failed between requisition and delivery, the Covenant had not relinquished Orison-12.
The final page reduced the matter to five instructions.
Restore quota shipments. Preserve extraction and processing infrastructure. Minimize disruption to the labor force. Reestablish Covenant authority. Remove local leadership as required.
That last qualification afforded her considerable discretion. Sumire closed the brief and brought up the station schematics. A massacre would satisfy the least imaginative interpretation of her orders, but dead miners produced no ore and damaged refineries produced even less. Violence was useful when it narrowed a problem. Indulged for its own sake, it had a habit of creating several more.
She traced Orison-12's internal systems across the display. The station had grown outward from a central excavation shaft, with new compartments attached whenever production justified the cost. Power could be isolated by section. Several workshops maintained independent reserves, and the refinery could continue operating for hours after being cut off from the main reactor. The environmental network was less forgiving. Air moved through two primary circulation loops and one aging reserve system. Every habitation block, workshop and barricade ultimately depended upon the same handful of regulators. The miners could ignore commands from the administrative level. They could isolate security doors and operate portions of the station manually. None of them could decide they no longer required oxygen.
Sumire marked the environmental junctions for later consideration and opened a channel to the station. Concord Seven's transponder carried a Covenant identification code and diplomatic clearance for the assignment. Her authorization named her as the Covenant's representative at Orison-12.
"Orison-12 Control, Concord Seven on final approach. Requesting approach vector and berth assignment."
Static answered first. The station's automated beacon continued transmitting, guiding her toward a row of pressurized docking bays along the upper structure. Repulsor tugs moved between cargo platforms below them, shepherding ore containers toward storage. Whatever authority the rebels had rejected, they had not stopped working.
"Concord Seven, hold position and transmit your manifest and authorization."
Sumire sent the requested information. The response took longer this time. Through the Force, she caught only impressions from the station ahead. Apprehension sat foremost among them, sharpened by anger and held together by determination. It did not feel like panic. These people had considered what refusal might cost them and chosen it anyway.
"Your authorization identifies you as the Covenant's representative," the controller said.
"Yes."
"And your manifest lists one person aboard."
"Correct."
The answer produced another delay. They had likely expected a negotiation team, a security detachment or an official surrounded by enough attendants to make authority appear substantial. One woman complicated the picture. Too small a response could be dismissed as weakness. Too deliberate a response suggested something they had not prepared for.
"We are not accepting Covenant traffic," the reply finally came.
"Your approach beacons are active."
"They're not active for you. Reverse course and clear the station perimeter."
There was strain beneath the controller's practiced delivery, but no uncertainty in the words themselves. Whoever held the communications station had rehearsed them and probably believed that refusing access amounted to controlling it.
Sumire watched the main docking structure rotate across the viewport. Its blast doors remained open, though figures had begun moving along the loading galleries above the receiving deck. Too many gathered near the railings for a routine cargo operation. Even as she watched, she could see the blast doors begin to close. Forcing her way into the primary loading bay would risk depressurizing it, potentially damaging the station's infrastructure and the equipment within. It would also place her in a broad receiving bay overlooked by multiple loading galleries. Forty armed miners would present a problem if allowed enough distance and enough angles from which to fire.
The lower station offered something considerably narrower.
An ore-transfer arm extended from the refinery quarter, terminating in a maintenance cradle intended for inspection sleds and repair craft. Its service lock remained powered. More importantly, the adjoining corridors had been built between conveyor housings and processing machinery. There would be little room to establish a firing line and fewer places from which several weapons could be brought to bear at once.
"Concord Seven, acknowledge," the controller demanded. "Break approach immediately."
Sumire closed the channel and altered course. No defensive weapons fire followed. The rebels wanted to deny her entry, but they hadn't yet decided that they were prepared to kill a lone pilot for attempting it. Their restraint might have been mercy. It might have been uncertainty. Either produced the same opening.
Sumire banked away from the main dock and guided the craft toward the refinery complex along the station's lower hemisphere. The maintenance cradle emerged beneath the refinery structure, half-hidden among ore conduits and thick cable runs. Sumire reduced speed and brought the courier alongside it manually. Magnetic clamps seized the hull with enough force to send a shudder through the deck. The platform had not been designed for a vessel of this size, but the clamps adjusted and held. A pressure shroud extended around Concord Seven's side hatch. Its seals reported a minor leak before compensating. Good enough.
Sumire left the cockpit with the station schematics transferred to her vambrace. Her armor was already sealed, dark plates fitted closely enough not to obstruct her movement through the industrial passages ahead. She checked the fastenings securing her kamas and stepped into the boarding compartment.
The service lock rejected her administrative authorization.
She had expected that. The rebels had severed access from the station's central network, removing the Covenant credentials most likely to be used against them. The industrial emergency system was another matter. Mining regulations required its controls to remain separate. A worker trapped beyond a blast door could not be expected to wait while an administrator restored network access. That seemed sensible. It was also exploitable.
Sumire entered the emergency code recorded in the station's latest inspection report. The indicator changed from red to amber. Heavy machinery shifted inside the bulkhead, followed by the reluctant withdrawal of the outer door. She crossed into the lock alone and the pressure shroud collapsed behind her as the hatch sealed. Atmosphere hissed into the compartment, carrying the smell of heated metal, lubricant and the fine mineral dust that found its way into every corner of an old mining station. Through the inner viewport, weak amber lighting revealed a service corridor crowded with pipes and machinery. The ceiling hung low enough that several conduits had been wrapped in faded impact padding.
Sumire felt the approaching group before she heard it. Fear moved ahead of them through the Force, covered by the brittle heat of people trying to turn it into anger. Then came the sound of boots against the deck—too many, moving too quickly and without any effort to conceal their approach.
She counted at least six distinct sets.
Whoever had organized the response had denied her the open dock, then sent armed personnel to meet her inside a passage barely wide enough for two people to stand together. Their blasters would lose the firing angles that made them dangerous. Their numbers would become an obstruction. Every step they took toward the pressure lock surrendered another advantage. Sumire rested one hand near the lightsaber at her belt but did not draw it. There was no reason to hurry. The corridor had already done most of the work for her.
The locking bolts retracted, and the pressure door opened onto six armed figures arranged in two uneven rows. Their equipment varied from station-security armor to heavy mining coveralls reinforced with scavenged plates. All six carried blasters, though only the two at the front had enough room to use them without firing past someone else.
"Step through and place your weapons on the deck," the foremost man ordered.
Sumire looked beyond him. A local control terminal had been built into the wall farther down the passage, positioned beside a junction leading toward the lower service bays. That terminal controlled Lower Bay Three. Six armed defenders stood between Sumire and the means to bring in the rest of her team.
"Lower yours," she said.
The man fired.
Sumire's lightsaber cleared her belt and ignited in the same motion. Its shortened red blade caught the first bolt and sent it into the overhead conduit, showering the corridor with sparks. The guard beside the leader tried to bring his carbine around, but Sumire was already through the doorway. The Force carried her across the distance before anyone farther back could adjust their aim. Her free hand pulled one of the kamas from behind her waist, its plasma edge still dormant. She caught the guard's carbine beneath its reinforced hook and wrenched the muzzle toward the bulkhead. The weapon discharged into the wall. Sumire drew him forward with the same motion and drove her lightsaber beneath the edge of his armor.
The leader fired again as she dragged the dying guard across his line of sight. His second bolt struck the man between them.
Sumire tore the lightsaber free and turned on the leader. She caught his wrist in the kama's unlit inner curve and twisted until it broke with a sharp crack. His carbine clattered to the deck, followed by its owner as she drove the lightsaber's pommel into the side of his head. The remaining four had nowhere to move. The two fallen men blocked the corridor ahead, while the press of people behind them prevented a clean retreat.. One tried to raise a compact blaster over another man's shoulder. Sumire tore it from his hand with the Force and sent it spinning into the bulkhead hard enough to split the housing.
"Down," she hissed.
This time, they listened. Sumire extinguished the blade on her saber but kept the kama in hand while she collected their weapons, discarding the power packs towards the airlock she'd just entered. Then she sealed them inside an adjoining equipment room with the injured man. One was dead and five were contained; the passage was hers. What they did after the door closed was irrelevant.
The dead guard carried a local security cylinder. Sumire removed it from his belt and continued to the control terminal she had noticed beyond the junction. Its access was limited to the refinery level, but that included the maintenance cradle and three service bays used by mining skiffs and repair craft. The main hangar remained under central control. She had no intention of opening it. Whoever had prepared the firing positions there could continue waiting for an arrival that would never come.
Lower Bay Three was smaller and partially concealed beneath the ore-transfer structure. More importantly, the local status display showed no additional security assigned to it. Sumire inserted the access cylinder and cleared the bay's lockout. The terminal protested twice before accepting the dead man's authorization. She confirmed that the atmospheric containment field was holding, opened the outer doors and placed the docking guidance and magnetic clamps on automatic standby. Finally, she activated a narrow approach beacon directed away from the station's main traffic lanes.
Only then did she open the encrypted channel.
"Lower Bay Three is open," Sumire said. "Approach from the refinery side."
She closed the connection without waiting for an answer. Anyone monitoring the designated channel would have the coordinates, and the station's control room would have only a short time to understand what she had done.
The manifest had been correct. Concord Seven had carried one person.
It had not occurred to them that she only needed to be first.
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