The sky over Ash Valley remained a murky yellow-gray, with wind and sand sweeping across the newly built defenses. At the center of the base, a simple pile of stones stood on an empty patch of ground, topped by Jake Riley’s rusty wrench, thrust upright like an unyielding flag. The squad—Ethan, Tara, Rebecca, Nick, and Lila—along with the miners and refugees of Ash Valley, formed a circle around it, over a hundred pairs of eyes fixed on this silent gravestone.

  Ethan stood before the stone pile, clutching a metal plate salvaged from a transport ship, his voice low. "Jake was our brother. He gave his life to show us that living isn’t just for ourselves—it’s for each other. Ash Valley is our home, and ‘Rebirth Company’ is our root. He’s gone, but his fire still burns in our hands."

  Tara stepped forward, placing her steel blade beside the stones. Her eyes were red and swollen, but no tears fell. You called me reckless, but you were dumber than me, trading your life to save mine. She spoke softly, "Jake, I’ll keep everyone alive and wipe out the colonial forces." She turned to the crowd, her voice hoarse yet forceful. "If any of you dare back down, I’ll be the first to cut you down!"

  Nick lit a cigarette and set it beside the wrench. "You went out worth it. We’ll keep going." His gaze was steadier than ever. He’s gone, so I’ve got to carry more.

  Rebecca laid down a book she’d found on the ship, whispering, "Jake, you and Evan were both good people. I’ll make sure the world knows the truth and make them pay."

  Lila snorted, tossing a charred communicator onto the pile. "You big oaf, you were better at fixing ships than me—too bad we won’t get to settle that score. I’ll hack those bastards to death, call it revenge for you." She turned her face away. This idiot, even dead, he’s still a pain.

  Among the crowd, an old miner knelt first, his voice trembling. "You saved us, and Jake saved you. We’re with you!" The other refugees chimed in, their voices swelling into a torrent. Ethan scanned the group and said gravely, "From today, ‘Rebirth Company’ isn’t just the six of us—it’s all of us. Over a hundred people, one heart."

  The funeral ended, and the crowd dispersed, but a pall of grief still hung over the base. Late into the night, Rebecca worked alone at the comms station, tweaking equipment to decode data extracted from the Grayrat. The screen’s glow illuminated her weary face, a cup of coffee beside her long gone cold.

  "Still not resting?" Lila’s voice broke the silence as she walked in, arms full of parts that she dumped onto the workbench. "I tore apart some of that robot’s components. Federal Company’s tech isn’t half bad—way better than this junk." She picked up a circuit board, her eyes gleaming. "This kind of precision? Never saw it in the scrapyards."

  Rebecca glanced at her, then resumed tapping the keyboard. "It’s standard tech department gear."

  "Tech department?" Lila leaned in eagerly, a rare spark of excitement in her eyes. "You mean the legendary place? I heard they’ve got the most advanced quantum computers in the galaxy!" She pointed at the code on the screen. "You worked there, right? What’s it like inside? How many people? What kind of folks are they?"

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Rebecca’s fingers paused, a flicker of complicated emotion crossing her eyes. "It’s big—over three hundred floors at HQ. Evan was on the second tier; I was in the analysis room." Her answer was curt, reluctant to elaborate.

  But Lila was hooked, dragging a chair over and, for once, not keeping her distance. "What about Derek? Is he really some big-shot supervisor like he brags? And is there really a bio-neural network system like the rumors say? I heard it can adapt to any intrusion—is that legit?"

  "Lila," Rebecca finally stopped working, looking at her with a gentle but exhausted gaze. "Why the sudden interest?"

  Lila shrugged, showing a rare hint of embarrassment. "Know your enemy, win every battle, right? Besides, you think I didn’t have dreams back in the scrapyards? The Federal Company’s tech department was my childhood daydream." She fiddled with the part in her hands, her voice dropping. "Though now I know it’s full of rotten bastards."

  Tara shoved the door open, catching the last line and scoffing. "Quit daydreaming and practice your knife skills instead." She stomped to the sink, roughly scrubbing blood off her hands—fresh from tending training injuries. "Jake’s barely gone, and you’re drooling over Federal Company toys. Real classy."

  Lila’s face hardened, her sharp tone snapping back. "Who said I’m drooling? I’m studying their weaknesses! You think that rusty knife of yours is gonna win this?"

  Rebecca stood, cutting off the brewing fight. "Enough." She turned to Lila. "The tech department has its secrets, but most people there—like Evan—just wanted to do their jobs well, not knowing what their work would be twisted into." She paused, her expression growing layered. "As for the bio-neural network, it’s real, but the info-sec team keeps it under lock and key. Owen runs it." She shook her head slightly, a trace of worry in her tone. "He’s far more dangerous than Derek…"

  Meanwhile, at Federal Company HQ, Derek Voss sat in his office, staring at a "connection lost" warning on his screen. The bionic codenamed "Grayrat M-17" had gone offline, and the infiltration of Ash Valley had failed. His thoughts spiraled as his fingers frantically deleted video logs. Damn it, this is bad. If Victor finds out, I’m done for.

  Derek hurriedly erased the disconnection report from the terminal, plotting his next move. No, it won’t blow up that fast. Victor’s obsessed with the colonial ship expansion lately—he might not notice this little hiccup right away. If I fix it myself and report later, I could still turn this around.

  He swallowed hard, carefully editing the status report, changing "lost connection" to "standby" and adding a fabricated line: "Grayrat reconnaissance phase complete, gathering intel, major breakthrough imminent."

  As Derek focused on falsifying data, he had no idea that back in Ash Valley, Lila had cracked the comms chip salvaged from the Grayrat’s wreckage. She’d intended to study the bionic’s design further but had unintentionally tapped into the Federal Company’s internal network via this backdoor.

  "Check this out!" Lila’s eyes gleamed with excitement. "We can reverse-hack their main system! I’m seeing their internal comms!" Her fingers flew across the keyboard, burrowing deeper into the network.

  But in her fervor, she didn’t notice that her intrusion had tripped a hidden security protocol.

  Late that night, at Federal Company HQ, an alarm blared in the info-sec department. Owen Pierce strode into the monitoring center. Pushing up his gold-rimmed glasses, he calmly analyzed the intrusion traces and traced the source, quickly pinpointing it—someone had breached the system through a bionic’s comms module.

  Owen’s eyes narrowed. A bionic? Isn’t that Derek’s Grayrat project? Why would someone use it to hack us? He pulled up the bionic’s status report, seeing Derek’s "standby" entry, but the system logs showed all comms had been dead for over eight hours.

  Did the Grayrat project fail? Why hasn’t Derek mentioned this? He dutifully logged the anomaly and sent it to Victor’s private terminal.

  What would you like to see next when the story resumes?