Page 4 of Claimed By the Condemned Alien

“No.” Her gaze held his. “Trying is what people say when they want forgiveness before they fail.”

The launch warning sounded through the corridor. Damar swallowed. “Then I will make a record.” For the first time, Elara’s expression softened.

“That is all witnesses ever get to do.”

Officers arrived to move her. Damar stepped aside while they unlocked the cell and fastened her wrists to a transport rail. Elara did not look back at him. She walked toward Pod Seventeen with her shoulders straight, already practicing how a dead woman might refuse to disappear. Damar remained at the cell until the blood returned to his clenched hand. Then he went to the launch console and applied the contingency route he had found in her file.

Security could discover the changed route during final verification. If he corrected it, Elara would fall exactly where the pairing manifest wanted her. If he left it, the pod might strike a mountain, vanish into an electrical sea, or be destroyed by the orbital guns. A chance of death. Against certainty of use. Damar closed the route file without changing it. Then he opened a maintenance channel no one was supposed to know existed and copied the manifest into it.

He split the transmission into fragments and buried them in routine telemetry: oxygen drift, heat-shield wear, atmospheric density. The file transmitted for three seconds before security cut the connection. Three seconds would never reach the public nets, but it might reach someone already listening for a lie inside ordinary numbers. An alarm began.

Damar removed his glove and pressed Elara’s shard into the seam beneath Pod Seventeen’s external sensor plate. If the pod survived, the evidence would survive with it. Damar knew the penalty for unauthorized transmission. He also knew the greater punishment would be surviving long enough to pretend he had not understood what he saw.

The commander ordered him to kneel. Damar obeyed, but kept his eyes on the launch display. Pod Seventeen remained absent. No correction vector appeared. No gun fired. Somewhere below, Elara Venn was falling toward a part of Kharon-Veil the empire had not meant to use. That uncertainty was the only mercy left aboard the ship. Armed officers entered the bay.

“Technician Damar,” their commander said. “Step away from the launch controls.”

Damar placed the tablet on the floor and raised his hands. Beyond them, the pods detached from the Mercy of Veyr one by one. Sixteen entered the assigned descent corridors. The seventeenth fired its thrusters three seconds late, rolled beneath the tracking plane, and vanished into the storm-dark curve of Kharon-Veil. On the launch display, its signal became a red question mark. Then even that disappeared. Seventeen pale sparks fell toward the condemned planet.

Only sixteen reached the known surface grid.

CHAPTER ONE

The Dead Who Breathe

Kesta Frank knew the dead did not breathe. The man on the gurney did. His chest rose beneath the thermal sheet in shallow, uneven pulls while the casualty terminal beside him displayed a green confirmation bar.

DECEASED. VERIFIED. RELEASED FOR DISPOSITION.

Kesta stared at the status until the letters blurred. The emergency ward had received twenty-three “casualties” from the military research annex less than an hour earlier. None had unit tags. None had battlefield dirt in their wounds. Every body had arrived sedated, restrained, and accompanied by precompleted death paperwork. Behind Kesta, orderly Iven Lio dropped a sealed instrument tray. The crash made three armed custody officers turn toward him.

“Sorry,” Iven whispered.

He was nineteen, perhaps twenty, and had been assigned to Kesta’s ward only six days ago. His hands shook whenever an officer entered. They shook now as he crouched to gather instruments that had not spilled because the tray was still sealed.

“Leave it,” Kesta said.

He looked at her. She gave the smallest shake of her head. Do not draw attention. Do not help me. Do not become part of this.

“Medic Frank.”

Major Senn stood at the end of the ward in a spotless gray uniform, hands clasped behind his back. Around him, the emergency bay hummed with sealed carts, ventilators, and silent staff. No one met Kesta’s eyes.

“I’m not a doctor,” she said.

“You are the senior medical auditor on this shift.”

“I’m a trauma medic with forensic certification.”

“Then certify the records.”

Kesta pulled the sheet back. The prisoner beneath it was not human. Blue-black scales covered his throat and jaw. His wrists had been shaved for restraint ports. A line of fresh punctures ran down his sternum, too regular to be combat wounds. At the base of his ribs, surgical sealant gleamed under the ward lights.

This was not battlefield treatment; the positioning gave them harvest access. His eyelids fluttered as Kesta touched two fingers to the artery beneath his jaw, and a pulse kicked against her skin.

“Alive,” she said.

Senn did not move. “The transport manifest has already been finalized.”