Smoke rolls across the secret sky-port as the blockade lane coughs fire below. Then every channel screams white noise, and the comms array seizes control of the air.

A hologram blooms above the deck, a Victorian Lord in lacquered coat and augmented mask, his image flickering through static. The Pirate Lords freeze and turn toward Tressa.

Around her, the council wavers. Some lean in, hungry for the answer. Others glance toward their ships, already measuring escape.

The hologram sharpens on the Lord's thin smile, while the fire at the dock entrance throws red across Tressa's scales and wings.

The hologram jitters closer, and Tressa’s questions land hard enough to make the Lord’s smile thin out. Static crawls over his mask as he answers.

Around the deck, the Pirate Lords trade looks. Some glare at the hologram. Others look straight at Tressa, waiting for her to call the bluff.

The image flickers, then holds. The offer hangs there with the smoke, while the council waits on Tressa’s answer.

Tressa turns from the hologram and rakes the council with a slow, level look. The smoke and strobes force the circle inward, closer to her voice than to the screen.

The words settle the deck. One by one, the Pirate Lords stop posturing and angle toward her, letting the hologram hang at the edge of the room instead of the center.

The Dockmaster swallows, then taps the pulsing map on the console. A tighter cluster of route lines blooms around one dead relay tower marked on the ruins coordinate.

The Dockmaster’s finger stays on the dead tower. Around the table, the pirates go still, listening for the name hidden in the pattern.

Tressa lets the silence hold a beat, long enough for the room to feel the weight of missing data.

Her hand shifts on the console. A single encrypted tag blooms beside the tower, half recovered from the clipped stream, enough to narrow the circle and settle the room.

Tressa pushes back from the console and crosses to the hologram’s edge, boots ringing on the deck. The Lord’s image turns with her, still composed, while the pirates make room by instinct.

The Dockmaster’s eyes flick from Tressa to the encrypted tag, then back. Her hesitation before detonation lingers in the red light like a held breath.

The Lord lifts one hand, almost cordial, and the hologram sharpens on a schematic slice of the vault’s outer shell. One route glows brighter than the rest, marked with access restrictions and a priority seal.

The Dockmaster snaps her gaze to the tag, then to the route line, fingers moving through her live feed faster than the strobing alarms. Her jaw tightens as the data resolves.

A red bracket locks around the account on her display. The console map shifts, isolating the dead relay tower, while the route to the vault keeps glowing like a dare.

The Lord’s hologram tilts, amused and patient, as if waiting to see whether Tressa takes the bait or lets the leak keep chewing through her fleet.

The Dockmaster flicks the tag open into a tighter trace, and the red bracket blooms into a route knot with a time stamp. It is not just inside the network, it is inside the dock crew, riding a maintenance access spine under the bay.

Her finger stops over a blinking sector on the map. The vault line keeps glowing, but the dead relay tower now throws a second, thinner thread back into the bay itself.

The Lord’s hologram sharpens, his smile thinning as the name lands. A few Pirate Lords glance away from the screen, already measuring who among them knows the gantries best.

The console throws up a live access ladder, one rung highlighted in amber. Below it, the service shafts pulse with red emergency light, and the bay’s outer alarms keep hammering the choice into the room.