The archive blooms red across the chamber, and two empty council seats flash with severed-signal markers. The Dockmaster’s projection freezes on a network map, the cuts all made from inside the council lattice.
Morrow Nine swallows hard under Tressa’s grip, then points with a shaking hand at the names tagged beside the severed lines. The missing seats belong to Pirate Lord 4 and Pirate Lord 8.
The Dockmaster
Their signals did not die out there. They were cut here, through our own access keys.
Pirate Lord 3
That means someone in this room had the reach to purge them.
The remaining lords shift back from the table. Pirate Lord 6 angles toward the door, Pirate Lord 7 locks eyes on the data, and Pirate Lord 10 stares at the red error code like it might bite.
The Lord
Or it means your council was never yours to keep.
A second feed ripples through the archive, showing a brief handshake from an unauthorized mirror node. The route pings outward toward Tressa’s fleet channels, then vanishes into encryption she recognizes from the Lord’s prior transmission.
Tressa
The leak reaches into her fleet, too.
✓ Quest Accepted
Expose the council's betrayal
✓ Quest Accepted
Save the fleet from the bombs
“Dock master I smell explosives will you see if there's any anomalies on this station *all she's doing that I tell my fleet to get ready as I board my flagship and begin communicating with the rest through comms*”
SUCCESS (Good Perception, rolled +1)
Tressa gives the chamber one hard sniff, then cuts a command into her comms. The Dockmaster’s console blooms with a new sweep, and fleet icons snap from idle to launch-ready across the map.
The Dockmaster
I catch it. One hot trace under the deck plating, and a second cold one in the lift spine. No timer yet.
Her fingers fly. A side panel on the archive throws up a maintenance cross-section, and two red pings blink where no one had been looking.
Tressa
Get every ship armed and on comms. Stay sharp.
Across the room, pirate officers stiffen as Tressa’s fleet channel fills with terse acknowledgments. Crews start running before the order fully lands.
The Lord
Interesting. You smell the bombs before your own council does.
The Dockmaster zooms the anomaly and catches a neat signature buried in the feed, a relay tag matching the Lord’s encryption. Her hesitation lasts a beat, then she locks it in for everyone to see.
The Dockmaster
Tressa, I have an anomaly chain. It threads from the chamber into your flagship access and back through this room.
“The trader ships would already be ready and primed and or gone check the ship logs when we prepared to leave and I would suggest dockmaster sending someone to try to save your station”
SUCCESS (Great Reasoning, rolled +0)
Tressa flicks open the fleet log on her wrist display. The trader lanes are clean, but three outbound signatures vanished minutes after the alert, with their prep codes still green.
Tressa
The trader ships were ready, then gone. Check the logs and send someone to save this station now.
The Dockmaster snaps to the side console, pulling emergency routing over the archive. The chamber smells sharper, like hot plastic and fresh explosives.
The Dockmaster
Already moving. If I can isolate the kill chain, I can trip station protocols before the deck goes blind.
On the holo, the anomaly chain blooms wider. It is not just inside the chamber, it forks through launch control and into the trader berth registry.
The Lord
Then your missing merchants are not missing. They are early, and very well informed.
The Dockmaster freezes on a log window, then locks it to the room display. One of the vanished trader IDs signed a permission handoff to the council network before the bombs were armed.
The Dockmaster
There, Tressa. The station can still be saved, but if I push the shutdown seal now, every dock door drops at once.
“*I get my ships out of there first and disable the bombs on my ship having my crew help me*”
SUCCESS (Great Piloting, rolled +1)
Tressa cuts in before the doors can fall. Her fleet feed blooms across the chamber display, and the Silver Winged Revenge drops from the launch queue cleanly, followed by the rest in a tight stagger. On the archive, the trader signatures peel away from the doomed dock and re-form on a safe vector.
Inside her flagship, the bomb trace flickers red. Her crew is already on it, yanking panels, clipping leads, flooding the compartment with countercharge code.
Tressa
Kill the triggers. Dump the bad lines. Get my ships clear.
The Revenge rolls hard starboard on the tact-grid, venting one sick burst of static, then stabilizing. The bomb icons on its hull flash once, then go dead.
The Dockmaster
Detonators are off your ship. I am pushing the station seal now, but that choice will lock every other dock in place.
A fresh access ribbon opens on the council display, showing the permission handoff that tied the traders to the sabotage chain. The room sees it at the same time Tressa does.
The Lord
Useful. Now you know who can still be bought.
Quest Complete
Save the fleet from the bombs
Attribute Upgrade: Reasoning Great→Superb
Quest Complete
Expose the council's betrayal
Attribute Upgrade: Reasoning Superb→Legendary