Ccg 8.1.4 -

“Then why use a personal authenticator I never filed?” Elara stood up. Her knees ached. She was too old for ghosts. But she’d left Jin for the fire. She’d sealed the blast doors herself, his voice screaming through the comm: Go, Sundog! Go!

She turned the slate toward him. Mercer’s face, usually a slab of unreadable stone, flickered with something raw. Fear.

Elara’s mind reeled. “Who?”

The inside of the pod smelled of recycled sweat and old blood. The lights flickered, weak and orange. And there, strapped into a command chair that had been jury-rigged with a dozen different life-support tubes, was Jin Sol. Ccg 8.1.4

Mercer didn’t ask questions. He just looked at her face and said, “Where to, Captain?”

Then she engaged the thrusters, and the Vindicator rose out of the methane dark, carrying a dead man’s truth toward the stars.

“I’m not leaving you again.”

Elara sat in the command chair. The data chip felt like a loaded gun in her pocket.

Elara stayed until the whine stopped. Then she took the chip, sealed Jin’s pod, and walked back to the Vindicator .

“Set course for Earth,” she said. “Fleet Command. Full burn.” “Then why use a personal authenticator I never filed

“That’s a Colonial Guard priority distress,” he said. “Class-One. The kind you only pull if the alternative is feeding your crew into a star.”

She keyed the ship’s log. One line.