The Last Term at Ares Academy

• Chapter 1 The Dead Commander
• Chapter 2 Drills and Deceptions
• Chapter 3 The Sealed Archive
• Chapter 4 Blood in the Hydroponics
• Chapter 5 Silent Transmissions
• Chapter 6 The Black Box
• Chapter 7 Anatomy of a Crime
• Chapter 8 Whispers in the Bulkheads
• Chapter 9 Missing Munitions
• Chapter 10 Cadets of the Void
• Chapter 11 The Ghost Frequency
• Chapter 12 A Confession in the Dark
• Chapter 13 The False Front
• Chapter 14 Project Chimera
• Chapter 15 Rewritten Genetics
• Chapter 16 The Headmaster's Vault
• Chapter 17 Anatomy of a Weapon
• Chapter 18 Mutiny on Mars Orbit
• Chapter 19 The War Beyond the Perimeter
• Chapter 20 Awakening Sequence
• Chapter 21 Disposable Assets
• Chapter 22 The Station Burns
• Chapter 23 Breaching the Core
• Chapter 24 The Final Directive
• Chapter 25 Unmaking the Cadre
• Chapter 26 Beyond the Academy's Reach

The synthetic alarm did not sound like a bell; it sounded like a dying turbine. It vibrated directly through the structural bulkheads of Deck Four, shaking the steel frame of Cadet First Class Caleb Vance’s bunk before the sound even hit his ears. Caleb was awake three seconds before the light strip above his head turned from low-standby amber to emergency crimson. That was muscle memory, hammered into his central nervous system over four long years at Ares Academy.

He swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, his feet landing on cold gray permacrete. Across the narrow aisle, Cadet Mateo Reyes was already tugging on his tactical boots, cursing under his breath in a rhythmic, practiced cadence.

"Is it a decompression drill or the real thing?" Mateo asked, his voice thick with sleep but his hands moving with blind precision as he laced his leather. "Because if Commander Vane is making us run vacuum protocols at zero-three-hundred again, I’m going to voluntarily step out of an airlock."

"It’s not a drill," Caleb said. He pulled his dark blue duty tunic over his head, settling the heavy silver pins of the Senior Cadet Track onto his collar. He pointed up toward the optical array in the corner of the ceiling. "The emergency light isn't flashing in pulse-code. It’s solid red. That means a command override. Tactical, not operational."

Mateo paused, a lace half-tied. "A command override?"

"Put your gear on, Reyes. Let's go."

Ares Academy hung in the cold, dead space of the Kuiper Belt, two billion miles beyond the warm, civilized lights of the Inner Systems. It was a massive, rotating wheel of armored steel, tungsten, and radiation shielding, built fifty years ago during the early days of the Great Schism. Ostensibly, it was the premier officer training facility for the Coalition's deep-space naval division—a forge designed to take raw teenagers and turn them into fleet admirals, tactical coordinators, and void-fighters.

But out here, on the razor's edge of the solar system, forgotten by the bureaucracy on Earth and Mars, it felt less like a school and more like a high-tech monastery. The outer hulls were pitted by micrometeorites, the air always smelled faintly of recycled ozone and scrubbed sweat, and the news from the front lines took three days to arrive via laser-comm array.

Caleb stepped out into the main corridor of the Senior Cadre barracks. Dozens of cadets were tumbling out of their quarters, snapping their belts into place, adjusting their sidearms, and looking around with the twitchy paranoia inherent to top-tier military trainees.

"Vance!"

Caleb turned. Striding down the hall was Evander Cruz, the academy’s Chief Tactical Instructor. Cruz was a broad-shouldered man whose left arm had been replaced by a matte-black cybernetic limb that whirred softly whenever he clenched his fist. He looked exhausted, his graying hair uncombed, his uniform missing its usual crisp precision.

"Instructor," Caleb said, coming to attention. Mateo fell in beside him.

"Drop the parade ground routine," Cruz barked, waving a hand. "I need senior cadet officers in the Command Hub now. Bring Cadet Vane and Cadet Chen with you."

"What’s the situation, sir?" Caleb asked, falling into step beside the veteran officer as they marched down the wide, echoing spine of the station. "Did an unidentified interceptor cross the outer perimeter?"

Cruz didn't answer immediately. He used his pass-key to clear the heavy blast door leading to the central spindle lift. The hydraulic doors hissed open, and they stepped inside. The elevator began its rapid descent toward the command decks at the center of the station's gravity wheel.

"The perimeter is clear," Cruz said softly, his voice barely audible over the hum of the lift. "The threat isn't outside the hull, Vance. It’s inside."

Mateo glanced at Caleb. Caleb kept his eyes fixed straight ahead on the elevator’s floor indicator.

"The Headmaster?" Caleb guessed quietly.

Cruz’s cybernetic hand twitched. "Ten minutes ago, Commander Marcus Vane failed to report for the scheduled mid-watch check-in. His private quarters were locked from the inside. When the deck sergeant breached the seal, they found him."

"Found him how, sir?" Mateo pressed.

"Dead," Cruz said flatly. "Extensive trauma to the neck and torso. The internal sensors in his quarters were wiped six minutes before the estimated time of death. The Security AI went blind in Sector One."

The elevator shuddered to a halt. The digital readout flashed: DECK ONE - COMMAND AND CONTROL.

"The Commander was murdered," Cruz said, looking directly at Caleb. "And because the perimeter sensors confirm no ships have docked or departed in the last seventy-two hours, the killer is currently breathing the same air we are."

The Command Hub was a chaos of flickering blue holoscreens and hushed, panicked conversations. Junior officers were running diagnostics on security grids, while armed station guards stood at every bulkhead door, their kinetic carbines held at low-ready.

Commander Marcus Vane had ruled Ares Academy for twelve years. He was a legendary figure—a hero of the Jupiter Runs, a decorated strategist, and a man who treated his cadets with a terrifying mixture of absolute discipline and cold, calculating detachment. He was not a man people loved, but he was a man who seemed entirely indestructible.

To see his office sealed off with yellow hazard tape felt like a tear in the fabric of the station’s reality.

Cruz led Caleb, Mateo, and Cadet Lyra Chen—the cadre’s top systems engineer, who had joined them outside the hub—past the armed sentries and through the broken seal of the Headmaster’s private sanctuary.

The air inside the room was heavy, smelling of copper, scorched electronics, and old whiskey.

Commander Vane was sitting in his high-backed leather chair behind his mahogany desk—a real wood relic imported from Earth at immense expense. His head was tilted back at an unnatural angle. His throat had been opened with surgical precision—not a jagged tear from a serrated combat knife, but a clean, cauterized cut that suggested a high-energy plasma blade or a thermal scalpel. His eyes were wide open, staring up at the vaulted ceiling.

On the desk before him lay a single, antique paper notebook, its pages fluttering slightly in the draft from the climate control vents. It was covered in dark, wet spatters.

"Nobody touches a thing," Cruz ordered, though his own voice sounded hollow. "Medical officers are on their way down from Deck Two, but there’s nothing for them to save."

Caleb took a step closer to the desk, his detective instincts kicking in. Long before he was tapped for senior tactical command, Caleb had been trained in forensic methodology—a rare sub-specialty at an academy focused mostly on naval warfare. He knelt down, eyeing the floor.

"No signs of a struggle," Caleb observed, pointing to the polished steel deck. "The chair isn't knocked over. The glasses on the bar cart are still standing. Vane knew his killer. He let them get close."

"Or he was rendered helpless before they struck," Lyra added, stepping up beside him. She pulled a small diagnostic pad from her pocket and pointed it at the wall terminal near the door. "Instructor Cruz is right about the logs. The hard-wired optic lines in this room were spliced. Someone used a physical bypass key—something only senior staff or top-tier technicians possess."

"Are you saying it was an instructor?" Mateo asked, his hand drifting instinctively toward his holster.

"Or a cadet with high-level clearance," Lyra corrected, staring at her pad. "The bypass code used to blind the security array belonged to the Headmaster himself."

A heavy silence fell over the room. The hum of the station’s environmental systems sounded suddenly loud, like a predator breathing in the dark.

Caleb stepped around the side of the desk, careful not to disturb the blood pooling near the commander’s boots. His eyes fell upon the open notebook on the desk. The blood had ruined most of the text, but a few lines written in Vane’s precise, looping handwriting were still legible near the bottom of the exposed page.

The final term has begun, the entry read. They are ready, though they do not know for what. May God forgive us for what we have made.

Caleb frowned, leaning down further. Below those lines, written in a rushed, shaky hand—as if Vane had scribbled it in his dying seconds—was a single word followed by a string of numbers.

CHIMERA - 009

"Caleb," Cruz warned, his voice sharp. "Don't touch the evidence."

"I'm not touching it, sir," Caleb said, looking up at the veteran instructor. "Did Commander Vane ever mention a project called Chimera to the staff?"

Cruz’s face went rigid. For a fraction of a second, his cybernetic eye flickered with a strange, amber light before resetting to its standard blue glow. "No. The commander kept many operational secrets. We are a military facility in a time of active war. You know that."

"The war is three light-years away," Mateo muttered. "Or so they tell us."

"The war is everywhere," Cruz snapped, turning on his heel. "Cadet Vance, as Senior Cadre Leader, I am placing you in charge of the cadet internal investigation. You know the student body better than the instructors do. You know who has the technical skills to pull off a bypass like this. You will report directly to me."

"Understood, sir," Caleb said, though a cold knot was beginning to form in his stomach.

He looked back at Commander Vane's lifeless body. The man who had trained them, punished them, and shaped them for four years was dead on the floor of his own fortress. And whatever secret he was writing down when he died, it wasn't about naval tactics, drill schedules, or fleet deployments.

It was about them.

Caleb looked at Mateo and Lyra. Both of his friends were watching him, waiting for orders. Outside the window of the Headmaster’s office, the vast, black abyss of the Kuiper Belt stretched out into infinity, cold and indifferent.

"Lyra," Caleb said quietly, keeping his voice below the hum of the monitors. "Lock down all local comms. Don't let the news of this leave Deck One until we figure out who held the blade."

"And if the murderer is still in the room?" Mateo asked, scanning the dark corners of the office.

Caleb looked down at the dead commander's desk, at the wet ink and the word CHIMERA.

"Then we find them," Caleb said, "before they finish whatever they started."

The morning bell rang at precisely six hundred hours, unchanged by the fact that the man who usually ordered it struck had been lying on a cold steel deck with his throat opened three hours earlier.

In the mess hall on Deck Three, the hum of fluorescent light strips competed with the low, anxious buzz of two hundred cadets eating synthetic protein porridge. News in a enclosed metal wheel did not travel by comms; it traveled by body language, by the presence of double-stationed security guards at the airlocks, and by the absence of the staff officer who usually presided over morning announcements.

Caleb sat at the end of the long aluminum table reserved for First Class Cadets. He hadn't slept. His uniform was immaculate, the pins on his collar aligned to the millimeter, but beneath his table, his fingers were tapping an anxious, irregular rhythm against his knee.

"Look at them," Mateo said, leaning over his tray, dropping his voice so it barely carried across the aisle. He gestured with his spoon toward the tactical instructors lining the far wall. "They’re acting like we’ve got an atmospheric leak in Sector Nine. Tight jaws, hands on their sidearms. If Cruz thinks he’s keeping Vane’s death a secret, he’s out of his mind."

"He doesn't need to keep it a secret forever," Lyra said softly from Caleb's left. She wasn't eating. Her fingers were flying across a concealed handheld datapad nestled in her lap, shielded from the overhead cameras by the lip of the table. "He just needs to keep it contained until the perimeter protocol resets at noon. If word gets out to the junior tiers, we’ll have a full panic before lunch."

"Panic might be better than whatever this is," Mateo muttered. "Did you find anything on the log bypass?"

Lyra glanced down at her screen, her dark eyebrows knitting together. "That’s the problem. The security override wasn't executed from a console in Command. It came from a localized terminal inside Vane's quarters. Whoever killed him was already standing inside the room, logged into his primary interface, using his personal biometric key."

"A ghost," Caleb said quietly.

"Or a guest," Lyra corrected. "Someone he trusted enough to let them sit at his console while he was writing in that notebook."

Caleb took a breath of the dry, recycled air. The smell of scorched copper from Vane’s office was still stuck in the back of his nose. He looked up, scanning the room. Over at the instructor table, Evander Cruz was standing rigidly, his mechanical eye illuminated with a faint blue tracking beam as he surveyed the cadets. When Cruz’s gaze swept over Caleb, the beam lingered for a second longer than usual before moving on.

Before Caleb could say anything further, the station’s main public address speakers crackled to life with a harsh, metallic tone that made half the cadets in the hall drop their utensils.

"Attention all cadre," the synthesized voice of the ship's operational AI broadcasted, cold and unhurried. "Morning academic modules are suspended. All First and Second Class Cadets will report to the Kinetic Range on Deck Five for immediate tactical assessment drills. Full combat loadout required. You have fifteen minutes."

A wave of confused murmurs washed through the mess hall.

"Tactical drills?" Mateo frowned, setting his spoon down. "We just finished a seventy-two-hour siege simulation two days ago. We're scheduled for orbital navigation theory today."

"It’s a distraction," Caleb said, standing up and clearing his tray. "Cruz wants us busy, exhausted, and observed. If we're strapped into combat gear under the eyes of forty instructors, nobody has time to ask questions or swap rumors."

"And what about us?" Lyra asked, slipping her pad into her inner tunic pocket as she stood. "Are we supposed to run target passes while a killer walks the decks?"

"No," Caleb said, looking toward the exit doors where squad leaders were already barkings orders. "We run the drill. But while everyone else is watching the targets, we watch the people running the range."

The Kinetic Range on Deck Five was a massive, subterranean-style vault occupying the entire spine of the lower wheel. It was designed to simulate the interior of a breached dreadnought—dark, maze-like corridors of steel mesh, low ceilings, and variable-gravity zones designed to throw off a cadet’s balance during live-fire exercises.

The air here was cold, kept down to forty degrees Fahrenheit to keep the heavy server racks and target projection array from overheating.

Caleb fastened his tactical vest, checking the seal on his training carbine. The weapon was set to low-joule marker rounds—paint-tipped composite slugs that left a bruised rib and a bright yellow smudge on impact, but wouldn't puncture a bulkhead or a pressure suit.

Beside him, thirty cadets were locking down their helmets, the dark visors snapping down in sequence like iron blinds.

"Listen up!" Instructor Cruz’s voice boomed over the range’s intercom system. He was standing on the high observation gantry overlooking the kill-house grid, his silhouette framed against the bright floodlights. "Today’s exercise is an internal breach-and-clear scenario. Hostile forces have compromised the primary command nodes. Your objective is to enter Sector Four, identify the threat, neutralise all hostile targets, and extract the black box terminal from the core."

Caleb adjusted his helmet radio, clicking over to a private, short-range squad channel. "Lyra, Mateo, you on?"

"Read you," Mateo’s voice came back through the earpiece, slightly muffled. "I don't like this, Vance. The floor plan they just loaded onto my HUD isn't Sector Four."

Caleb tapped his wrist display. The blue wireframe map floating in his visor was flashing a high-priority update. "What do you mean?"

"I built the schematics for the range maintenance last term," Lyra chimed in, her tone sharp and focused. "This map... it’s an exact replica of the Headmaster's private quarters and the surrounding administrative corridor on Deck One."

Caleb froze, his fingers tight on the foregrip of his carbine. He looked up toward the observation gantry. Cruz was watching them, his matte-black cybernetic arm resting on the railing, motionless.

"Why run a simulation of Vane's office?" Mateo asked. "Unless..."

"Unless Cruz isn't trying to distract us," Caleb said, a sudden realization chilling him deeper than the cold room air. "He’s trying to recreate the scene. He wants to see how we react when we walk into that layout."

"Or," Lyra added, "he’s using the target array to track who knows the sightlines inside Vane’s room."

"Squad one, advance!" the range computer blared.

The heavy hydraulic gate at the entrance of the kill-house hissed open, revealing a yawning throat of pitch-black corridors lit only by the strobe of emergency beacons.

Caleb brought his carbine up to his shoulder and stepped through the threshold, his boots clattering against the steel mesh floor. Mateo swept left, covering the high angle, while Lyra took the rear, her scanner pinging the dark corners for automated kinetic targets.

The exercise was relentless. Synthetic targets—pneumatic pop-up torsos dressed in unmarked armor—sprung from hidden alcoves. Caleb fired twice, three times, his marker rounds slamming into the targets' center mass with sharp, loud snaps. Mateo moved with practiced, fluid violence, clearing rooms with flash-grenades and quick, ruthless bursts.

But as they pushed deeper into the simulated layout, the atmosphere shifted.

The targets weren't moving like standard training drones. They weren't using the predictable, computerized patrol paths programmed into the range software. They were staging ambushes from dead angles—places where the range sensors had blind spots, places that matched the exact blind spots Lyra had found in Vane’s security log.

"Caleb!" Mateo shouted, ducking behind a reinforcement pillar as a volley of marker rounds whined past his helmet, spattering red paint against the wall. "These drones are running on custom scripts! That wasn't an auto-fire pattern—that was a staggered kill-zone!"

Caleb dropped low, sliding across the damp steel floor until he was crouched beside the wall. He brought his sight up, aiming into the shadows of a simulated doorway. A target silhouette emerged, but it wasn't a standard pop-up frame. It was a heavy, human-sized combat chassis, moving with silent, precise agility.

Instead of firing immediately, Caleb hesitated. The drone’s movement pattern was familiar. It moved with its weight slung low, its right shoulder dipping slightly before a pivot—the exact, distinct physical tick of a drill instructor who had served in the Outer Rim trenches.

"It’s not an automated drone," Caleb muttered over the squad comms. "That’s an instructor wearing a live-actuation rig."

"They're field-testing us," Lyra said, her voice strained as she fired three rounds over Mateo's head, pinning another frame back into an alcove. "They're pushing us to see who uses advanced tactical maneuvers—the kind of movements you’d need to take down a combat veteran like Vane!"

"Break formation," Caleb ordered suddenly. "Drop your weapons to safe."

Mateo swung his head toward Caleb in shock. "What? Vance, we’re in the middle of a scored assessment!"

"Lower your weapons!" Caleb repeated sharply. "Now!"

Caleb clicked his carbine’s safety switch to bright green and stood up out of his cover, lowering his muzzle toward the deck. He stepped directly into the middle of the simulated corridor, perfectly exposed to the dark figure lurking in the doorway ahead.

The live-actuation drone stepped out from the shadows, its black visor reflecting the strobe light. Its carbine was aimed squarely at Caleb's chest. For three long, agonizing seconds, the barrel didn't move. The micro-servos in the chassis whirred softly in the cold air.

Caleb stood his ground, staring straight into the lens of the optical sensor mounted on the drone's helmet. "Exercise halted," Caleb announced loudly, his voice echoing off the corrugated walls. "Cadet First Class Vance reporting a training anomaly. The instructor chassis is operating outside prescribed safety parameters."

The silence in the kill-house was absolute, broken only by the heavy breathing of Mateo and Lyra behind him.

Up above, the high-pressure floodlights flickered once, twice, and then clicked off. The loud, mechanical horn of the range system sounded, signalling a forced freeze of all systems.

The drone lowered its weapon slowly. The heavy front plating hissed as the locking seals released, and the helmet tilted back.

It was not a third-party instructor.

It was Instructor Cruz himself, his forehead glistening with sweat, his cybernetic eye spinning down to a slow, low-power idle. He stepped out of the heavy exoskeleton frame, letting the hydraulic suit lock into a stationary standing position behind him.

He walked up to Caleb until he was standing less than a foot away. The smell of cold grease and old tobacco drifted off his uniform.

"Why did you stop, Vance?" Cruz asked, his voice low and raspy. "You had line of sight. You had three clear shot vectors. In a real breach, standing down gets your entire squad slaughtered."

"In a real breach, sir," Caleb said calmly, not blinking, "I don't fire on my own command staff unless I’m ordered to execute a mutiny."

Cruz’s jaw tightened. "This was a test of reaction speed under high-stress conditions."

"This was a interrogation," Caleb countered softly, keeping his voice beneath the range audio pickup. "You built a copy of Vane’s office, put yourself in the killer’s position, and waited to see if any of us moved like the person who cut his throat."

Cruz stared at Caleb for a long, heavy moment. The harsh, overhead work lights clicked back on, bathing the gray walls in an unforgiving white glare.

"My office," Cruz said flatly. "Ten minutes. Just Vance. The rest of you, clear the range and report to maintenance for gear decontamination."

The tactical instructor’s office was small, cluttered, and reeked of uncleaned weapon oil. Unlike Vane’s opulent room with its Earth mahogany and vintage liquor, Cruz lived like a foot soldier. His desk was an overturned munitions crate, and his walls were covered in faded physical maps of the Jovian moons, crisscrossed with red grease-pencil notes.

Cruz sat behind his crate, unbuckling the heavy leather straps that held his mechanical arm’s harness against his torso. He reached into a drawer, pulled out a small silver flask, took a long pull, and set it on the desk between them.

"You're too smart for your own good, Vance," Cruz said, leaning back in his chair. "It’s going to get you killed out here."

"Who killed him, sir?" Caleb asked, standing at rigid attention in front of the desk. He hadn't removed his helmet, carrying it locked beneath his left arm.

"I don't know," Cruz admitted, his tone suddenly dropping its drill-instructor bark, revealing a deep, bone-weary fatigue. "And that’s what scares me. I’ve been on this station for fourteen years. I know every bolt, every air duct, and every miserable soul stationed on this rock. Nobody on this crew had the clearance, the cold blood, or the speed to take down Marcus Vane in under eight seconds without making a sound."

"What about the note?" Caleb asked. "The word he wrote in blood. Chimera."

Cruz’s mechanical hand twitched against his thigh, the finger joints clicking like tiny glass beads hitting a floor. He didn't answer immediately. He looked at the wall map of Mars, his eyes tracing the ancient, dried-up canal lines.

"There are things about this academy you aren't cleared to know, Caleb," Cruz said softly. "Not even as Senior Cadre Leader."

"He was murdered in his own chair, Instructor," Caleb pushed, taking a single, uninvited step toward the desk. "The station is locked down. The comms are jammed. If you're hiding something because of protocol, you're just giving whoever did it time to clear their tracks."

Cruz let out a short, bitter laugh. "Clear their tracks? You think this was a murder, Vance? You think some disgruntled cadet or rogue officer had a grudge?"

Cruz stood up, leaning his heavy hands on the edge of the munitions crate.

"Marcus Vane wasn't killed because someone hated him," Cruz whispered. "He was killed because the final term has arrived. The war in the Inner Systems... it isn't coming to an end, Vance. It ended six months ago."

Caleb froze. The air in the tiny room felt instantly thin. "What are you talking about? We got a fleet dispatch from the Coalition High Command three days ago. The Earth-Mars blockade was—"

"The dispatches are fake," Cruz interrupted coldly. "They’ve been fake for two years. Synthetic signals generated by the station’s main mainframe. The Coalition collapsed. Earth’s orbital shipyards were turned to slag during the winter assault. There is no fleet out there waiting for you to graduate. There are no admiral stars, no command positions, no glorious returns home."

The silence that followed was suffocating. Outside the office, the faint, rhythmic shudder of the station’s atmospheric recyclers thumped through the floorboards, a steady heartbeat for a ghost ship floating in the dark.

"Why?" Caleb managed to say, his voice barely a breath. "Why keep us here? Why run the drills? Why train us for four years if there's no fleet?"

Cruz looked at Caleb, his eyes dark, filled with a terrible, helpless pity.

"Because you were never meant to be officers, Caleb," Cruz said softly. "Vane wasn't running a school. He was running a incubator. And whatever Project Chimera is... it’s the reason this station exists."

Before Caleb could ask another question, a high-pitched, warbling alarm screamed from the console on Cruz’s desk. It wasn't the standard drill alarm, nor was it the internal security ping.

It was the station’s long-range optical sensor warning.

Cruz lunged for the terminal, slapping his palm against the display. A red holo-projection flared to life in the center of the room. It showed the outer perimeter of the Kuiper Belt sector surrounding the academy.

A single, massive vessel had just slipped out of thermal camouflage less than fifty thousand kilometers from the station’s bow. It wasn't a Coalition cruiser, nor was it a Martian gunship. Its hull was a jagged, light-absorbing black lattice, completely devoid of markings, registration beacons, or transponder codes.

"An unidentified ship?" Caleb asked, his mind reeling from Cruz’s revelation while his instincts locked back onto immediate threats. "How did they pass the deep-space listening posts?"

"They didn't pass them," Cruz said, his face draining of color as he read the data streams scrolling down his monitor. "They were waiting out there in the dark. They were waiting for Vane to die."

The terminal chirped again. A encrypted signal was being transmitted from the dark ship directly to the academy’s primary array—bypassing the jammed local comms, overriding Cruz’s security clearances, and broadcasting directly onto every screen across all seven decks of the station.

The screen on Cruz’s desk flickered, and a single string of high-level command code replaced the tactical map:

INITIATE ASSET RECOVERY: PROJECT CHIMERA.

Caleb stared at the words, the blood running cold in his veins. He looked from the screen up to Cruz, but the instructor was no longer looking at the monitor. He had pulled a heavy service sidearm from under his desk, charged the plasma rail, and was pointing the barrel directly at Caleb’s head.

"I’m sorry, Caleb," Cruz said, his hand remarkably steady, his thumb resting on the heavy mechanical safety switch. "Vane was supposed to handle the activation sequence himself. But if the buyers are already here... I can't let you leave this room."