To get a view overlooking Kanem’s facility, the four Rooks had to set up a surveillance post nearby. The Romulan was smart enough to stop any serious operations from setting up near his, but that meant that the tall, decrepit storage facility nearly one hundred and fifty metres away from Kanem’s facility was empty that night. From the opening of a shattered wall, they could hunker down in the shadows and watch.

Cassidy peered through the telefocals and gave a grunt. ‘Two guards at the barrier gate. Turret above it. No guards at the entrances to the facility proper, but two patrolling solo within the barricade.’

‘About what we expected,’ mused Rosewood, then glanced up at the night sky. ‘Blackbird, anything we’re not seeing?’

‘Not on the exterior. Interior guard numbers are difficult to confirm,’ came Falaris’ voice in his earpiece. ‘No telling who’s a guard and who’s a prisoner. I see twenty-four life-signs.’

‘Let’s hope that’s not twenty-four guards, then,’ mumbled Nallera. ‘Or we got our work cut out for us.’

Cassidy ignored that. ‘Breach their systems when you’re ready, Blackbird.’

‘On it. Ready to crack this thing open like a jefforior.’

There was a pause. Rosewood cleared his throat. ‘Nobody here knows what that is.’

‘I – it’s a fruit – they have them back on -’

‘This is the most secure channel on the planet but let’s not give up our home world and mothers’ maiden name just yet,’ drawled Cassidy.

‘Sorry, One.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Get it done.’ To Rosewood’s surprise, Cassidy didn’t make that a rebuke, but more like a firm hand steering Falaris back to the job at hand.

Beside them, sat with his back to the wall, Aryn studied the sensor feed from the Blackbird on his reinforced field PADD. ‘This had best work,’ he mumbled after cutting his mic. ‘Or we fail at the first hurdle.’

‘Yeah,’ said Nallera, fidgeting with the two-foot long, cylindrical piece of equipment she’d had replicated specially for the operation. ‘Or we breach under direct fire with a lot of attention.’

Rosewood wasn’t sure they’d breach at all if it didn’t work, but he didn’t say that, shaking his head. ‘She knows what she’s doing. How many times has her work saved our asses? She’s like the sixth Rook.’

Fifth, arguably, Rosewood thought wryly, but nobody voiced that. A moment later, his faith was rewarded with Falaris’s jubilant voice, crowing with more volume and enthusiasm than they dared from their vantage point.

‘Got it! I’m into their camera feed. Injecting a false input now on the main gate; that camera feeds the turret, too. They’ll think something’s out there.’

Cassidy pressed the telefocals closer as he peered. ‘Confirmed, Blackbird. Guards are moving to the gate to respond.’

Nallera hefted her gear. ‘Do we move?’

‘We move when we know it’s clear,’ said Rosewood sharply.

‘Yeah, but… they’re distracted now. We don’t know if it’ll get better.’

‘Stick to the plan, Three,’ Cassidy chided. ‘We move now, we just show our asses in front of a cluster of guards.’

A noise of frustration came over the comms. ‘Automated systems defences have spotted my intrusion,’ Falaris swore. ‘Good news is they think this is just a glitch. Bad news is they’re locking me out.’

‘That was fast,’ muttered Nallera.

‘Far faster than we need,’ Aryn agreed.

‘And – I’m out.’ Falaris sighed. ‘Sorry, Rooks.’

Cassidy clicked his tongue as he watched through the telefocals. ‘Guards at the barricade are returning to position.’

Rosewood breathed a soft oath. ‘That wasn’t as good as we hoped.’

‘Do we go anyway?’ Nallera asked again.

‘You all need to hold,’ Cassidy said, and now he did sound like he was rebuking them. ‘One bad mission and you all lose your nerve? You’re professionals. Get it together.’

Aryn peered around the wall to look down at the facility. ‘If those guards aren’t sufficiently distracted -’

Then the facility went dark. Every light – the floodlight overlooking the main entrance, the lights at the corners of the barricade, the illumination creeping from the few windows and gaps of the central facility – died. A heartbeat later, a new voice piped up on their comms.

‘Energy disruptor in place. Generator’s out; should look like a technical failure,’ Q’ira reported.

Cassidy didn’t hesitate before nodding to Nallera. ‘Now we go.’ He pressed a finger to his earpiece. ‘Confirmed, Six. Pull out when you get a window.’

‘Uh, no, One. I’ll wait for you inside and join you.’

‘No time to really argue that,’ said Nallera, hefting the cable launcher onto her shoulder and getting down on one knee. ‘Launching!’ There was the soft thunk of air as she pressed the trigger. Quieter than Rosewood would have expected, the shoulder-mounted gear launched the cable across from their vantage point and over the one-hundred-and-fifty metre gap between them and the interior facility. Hooks embedded themselves deep in the wall of their destination, and Nallera took a moment to consult the launcher’s screen before she nodded to herself and set it down. Another button embedded the cable into the floor they stood on.

She stood. ‘Cable secure.’

‘Plenty of movement,’ reported Falaris, ‘but the perimeter guards are more worried about the gate. They’re moving there. You should be able to breach unnoticed.’

Cassidy signalled the team, and with practiced precision, they clipped onto the cable. One by one, they zipped across the gap, silent shadows against the night sky in a smooth, swift, controlled descent. The cable was enough to get them over the barricade, forcing them into a short, managed drop as they hit the side of the main facility to reach the ground.

Nallera was first, rolling fluidly to watch in the direction of the gate – further around the building, and around a corner. Cassidy, second, all but landed with his phaser rifle raised and aimed.

That was crucial. A heartbeat later, one of the patrol guards turned the corner from the rear of the facility, his gait quick and tight in the blackout they’d just experienced. He didn’t get a chance to so much as breathe in their direction before there was a muffled hiss from Cassidy’s phaser rifle, and the suppressed shot took took the guard down in an instant.

‘Clear,’ he confirmed as Rosewood and Aryn dropped behind them. ‘Main gate. Take them quick and fast.’

Kanem’s facility had lost power in a heartbeat, and even the appearance of a technical failure was a good cause for panic. But it meant the eyes of the gate guards, and the rest of the exterior patrollers who’d moved to join them, were outward, not inward. Moving like ghosts up behind them, the Rooks’ approach went unseen, unheard. And by the time the three guards had hit the dirt, they were still none the wiser.

‘Keep it moving,’ said Cassidy, turning to the main entrance. ‘They won’t sit around inside.’

‘Confirmed,’ came Falaris’s voice. ‘Movement inside has given me a better idea of who’s a guard and who’s not. Two on the downstairs level. Four on the main floor. Two on upper levels.’

‘Then let’s not give them the chance to team up,’ said Rosewood.

From the shadowed corner of the building, a low voice hissed, ‘Velvet!’

Aryn turned at once, rifle raised, even as he called, ‘Spire!’

Q’ira slid around the corner, propping night-vision goggles onto her forehead as she joined them. ‘You can’t lose me that easily.’

Cassidy gave a low, appreciative scoff. ‘Impressive stuff.’

‘It’s not my first break and enter. These guys are good, but I think they’ve gotten lazy. I shouldn’t have been able to slip into the maintenance hut just because we messed around with their cameras.’

‘It worked. You still with us?’ She nodded. ‘Then stick at the back. We’ll clear the main floor inside. You join Four going below to free the prisoners.’

She nodded, but winced. ‘What’re we doing with them? How’re they getting out of here?’

Cassidy nodded across the courtyard of the complex to the westward side, the direction Q’ira had come from, at the shadow of the cargo shuttle on the small landing pad. ‘On that.’

By day, the main floor of Kanem’s facility had felt like someone had thrown a blanket over a horror show, the day-to-day operations obfuscated while the Rooks met with the owner. At night, it was even quieter, everything stowed, and cleaners had dealt with the worst of the staining.

That just made it, in its way, more like a nightmare. Rosewood stuck close behind Cassidy as the Rooks initially breached. Darkness and surprise had helped them overcome the gate guards, but surprise was fading now. A smoke grenade covered their entry through the main door, and the guards’ equipment didn’t match the Rooks’ body armour, night-vision goggles, perfectly calibrated phaser rifles.

They entered. They fanned out. They fired. Shapes moved amidst the counter-tops and work tables, the equipment and facilities of the chop shop as in the dark, the Rooks entered the sterile slaughterhouse, and turned the balance of power upside-down.

One guard hunkered behind cover in the middle of the floor, rising up the moment they arrived. Cassidy’s shot took him in the throat. Another two behind pillars along the sides of the building; Nallera rushed to the side to flank one, while suppressive fire at the other from Aryn flushed him out for Cassidy to drop that one, too. At the far end, at the railing outside Kanem’s office, one took cover to shoot from a distance.

Rosewood took swift sidesteps to get an angle, spread out the guard’s targets, and took a knee beside a work surface. Tools leered over him on an articulated arm, equipment that even out of the corner of his eye he could tell were used to cut flesh, not metal. He slowed his breathing to block it out, raised his phaser, and fired.

Fury did not narrow his focus. Fury made it waver. It took three shots before the guard was down.

That should have been the numbers – but Falaris had been clear that all she had was a guess, and from the far stairwell at least two were coming down, though one ran right into Nallera’s phaser shot. Rosewood turned to join them, until he had a sharp voice in his ear from the Blackbird.

‘Five! On your right!’

Instinct had him pivot. Being unprepared was why he had to make a snapshot with the rifle from his waist, and take out the guard rushing in from the nearby door.

In the silence that followed, Cassidy’s voice was clipped and clear. ‘Sound off.’

‘Three here.’

‘Four here.’

‘Six here.’

Rosewood took a deep, shuddering breath, and swallowed bile. Not just at the near miss of the guard at his flank. Not just at the absence of Two, Tiran, to report in. Turning to Cassidy meant overlooking the slew of vivisection tools, equipment used to rip living beings apart for the wealth inside their bodies as if they were nothing. Veins of riches to be plundered. ‘Five here.’

In the dark, Cassidy should have looked monstrous, too, a hulking figure in his body armour and headgear and rifle – no identifying insignia, blacked out to stay hidden, a figure of retribution without accountability, reckoning without oversight. But he stood over the bodies of fallen men – stunned, and likely just because he didn’t want to face the paperwork – and looked less like an instrument of vengeance, and more like righteous consequences.’

Cassidy shouldered his rifle and nodded. ‘Three; set the charges. Four, Six – go below, take out the rest, get those people out, call if you need backup. Five…’ He looked from Rosewood to the gantry to Kanem’s office. ‘Let’s get the package.’

It wasn’t justice. But justice didn’t reach this far out in the galaxy. So they would have to do.