Zenn'tah had a gun to his head.

  Not metaphorically. Not as some abstract expression of professional stress. An actual plasma pistol, still warm from recent discharge, pressed against the base of his skull just below his left ear.

  The woman holding it was fastening a neural suppression collar around his neck with her other hand. Her fingers moved with clinical precision, adjusting the fit, activating the biometric locks with practiced efficiency. The collar hummed to life, and Zenn'tah felt the familiar crawling sensation of foreign nanites interfacing with his nervous system.

  He'd seen these same collars put on on prisoners before. Knew exactly what they did. Knew that if he tried anything the collar would deliver a neural shock that would leave him convulsing on the deck. If he was lucky.

  If he wasn't, it would simply liquefy his brain.

  "There," the woman said, her voice almost pleasant. "Much better. Now we can have a civilized conversation."

  She stepped back, keeping the pistol trained on him with the casual competence of someone for whom firearms were simply tools rather than threats. Her other hand worked the bridge controls with equal familiarity, bringing his ship's systems online, plotting an ascent trajectory away from the planet below.

  Zenn'tah's bridge. His ship. His crew scattered or dead in the tunnels below. His operation, carefully planned, meticulously executed, profitable beyond his wildest projections, and completely and catastrophically fucked.

  He tried to reconcile how he'd gotten here.

  Tried to identify the exact moment where everything had gone to hell.

  Zenn'tah had spent fifteen years behind a desk at the Mercenary Guild's regional headquarters on Voss Station.

  Fifteen years processing contracts, verifying credentials, matching clients with available teams. Fifteen years watching other people get rich while he collected a steady, modest salary and watched his prospects for advancement slowly shrink into bitter certainty that he'd plateau exactly where he was.

  He'd been good at the job. Organized, efficient, discreet when discretion was required. He understood the business, the unspoken codes. He learned names. The ones that got rooms cleaned faster. The ones whispered with pity when they didn’t come back. The ones that left because there were too many rules. The ones that were no longer welcomed because they could not be trusted.

  But the promotions never came.

  Younger guild members with better connections or more prestigious family names moved up. Zenn'tah stayed at his desk, processing contracts, knowing who’s really who and what’s really what. But he could only watch others succeed with resources and opportunities he'd helped provide.

  The resentment had built slowly. An accumulation of small slights and passed-over opportunities.

  When he finally quit, it wasn't dramatic. Just a standard resignation, two weeks' notice, professional courtesy all around. Nobody asked him to stay. Nobody seemed particularly surprised.

  He'd taken his severance, his contacts, and fifteen years of institutional knowledge, and he'd gone independent. He wouldn’t be so stupid as trying to compete with the prestigious Imperial Mercenary Guild. No. He was going to do business where they wouldn’t go. Where morality was negotiable.

  The first few months were tight. Establishing reputation took time. But Zenn'tah had advantages. He knew who was competent versus who just had good marketing. He knew which former military operators were actually professional versus which were just adrenaline junkies with poor impulse control. He knew how to assemble teams for specific tasks, how to vet personnel, how to manage logistics that left minimal traces.

  More importantly, he knew how to not ask questions.

  That last skill turned out to be remarkably lucrative.

  His first major contract had been simple: move a wet-work team to a disputed border region, provide transport and logistics support, ensure nobody official noticed them coming or going. The client hadn't specified the target. Zenn'tah hadn't asked. The team had completed their objective, he'd gotten them out clean, and he'd collected a fee that dwarfed six months of guild salary.

  After that, the contracts came steadily. Zenn'tah built a reputation. He was reliable, discreet, professional, not burdened by excessive curiosity about client motivations or operational ethics.

  He assembled a stable of contractors. Former military, mostly. Serious people who understood that some jobs paid better when you didn't think too hard about the broader implications. Competent professionals who could be relied upon to complete objectives without creating unnecessary complications.

  Not heroes. Not villains. Just professionals doing professional work for professional compensation.

  It had been working beautifully.

  And then he'd landed what he thought was the jackpot contract.

  The client had approached through proper channels, with verification codes that checked out against known corporate accounts. The initial brief had been admirably vague: provide security and logistics support for a scientific expedition. Multiple teams, extended duration, locations to be determined based on ongoing survey results.

  The compensation had been absurd. Enough that Zenn'tah had actually verified the payment escrow three times before believing it was real.

  He'd assembled three teams. Thirty five professionals total, organized into specialized units: security specialists, infiltration experts, technical support. The client had provided their own scientific personnel. A dozen researchers plus some support personnel who had absolutely no interest in socializing with the mercenary teams. They were anonymous, but he had been in the business for long enough to make educated guesses. They were from the Ecclesiarch. Church of the Enlightened Knowledge, he’d bet half his fortune on it.

  The first phase had been straightforward. Move the teams and scientists to a series of remote locations, maintain perimeter security while the scientists took readings, ensure nobody knew they were there. Standard corporate espionage work, probably, though Zenn'tah had carefully avoided forming any specific theories about what the scientists were actually looking for.

  They worked methodically, deploying sophisticated scanning equipment at each location. Gravimetric sensors, quantum-state analyzers, exotic radiation detectors that Zenn'tah couldn't have identified if pressed. They'd take readings, correlate data, then move to the next location with geographic precision that suggested they were triangulating something.

  Zenn'tah's teams provided security. Made sure the scientists weren't interrupted. Sanitized each location after they left. They removed every trace of their presence, scrubbed sensor records from local monitoring stations, ensured that as far as any official investigation would be concerned, nobody had been there at all.

  He usually only linked the clients with the teams. But this time, the paycheck was too big. There could be no problem. No one was to fuck this up. So he accompanied them, liaising with the scientists, managing the mercenaries, making sure their initial boredom did not lead to catastrophe.

  After six weeks of this, the scientists had apparently found what they were looking for.

  The destination turned out to be underground. Deep underground, in a geologically stable region far from any settlements or infrastructure, in a remote moon.

  The scientists identified the location with certainty that suggested their scanning data was remarkably precise. They brought Zenn'tah's teams to what looked like unremarkable terrain, nothing to distinguish it from thousands of kilometers of similar landscape.

  "Here," the lead scientist had announced.

  Zenn'tah's technical team had deployed their own scanner scanners and confirmed the presence of an artificial structure, with an access well, hidden behind a state of the art cloaking field.

  A bunker. Hidden. Shielded. Very deliberately concealed.

  The breach had taken two days. Whatever the bunker was built from, it resisted conventional cutting tools. They'd eventually succeeded using plasma torches operating at intensities that made Zenn'tah nervous about structural integrity.

  When they finally broke through, alarms had activated immediately.

  Emergency protocols, the scientists determined. Automated systems responding to the breach by attempting to execute preservation procedures. The bunker's internal systems had come online, power routing to a medical pod at the center of the single-room structure.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  The pod had tried to wake its occupant.

  And failed.

  By the time Zenn'tah's teams had secured the interior, the pod's occupant was dead. Whatever emergency revival procedure the breach had triggered, it had malfunctioned catastrophically. The body inside showed signs of cellular damage consistent with failed cryo-stasis protocols.

  The scientists examined the body with clinical detachment.

  Human male, late twenties. Well-preserved before the failed revival. The pod had apparently been maintaining him successfully for an unknown duration before their breach had killed him. No identification, no records, nothing to indicate who he was or why someone had hidden him in a shielded bunker in the middle of nowhere.

  The scientists spent a week in that bunker. They examined everything—the medical pod, the body, the bunker's construction, residual energy signatures in the shielding materials. They cataloged, analyzed, took samples.

  Then they scrubbed it all.

  Zenn'tah watched his teams methodically erase every trace of their presence. The body was removed and presumably disposed of—he didn't ask where. The bunker was sanitized at the molecular level, every fingerprint and DNA trace eliminated. The breach point was sealed with materials that matched the surrounding geology.

  When they were finished, there was no indication anyone had ever been there. No evidence a bunker had existed. Nothing to suggest they'd killed someone through their breach protocols.

  Professional work. Clean work.

  The scientists had returned to their data analysis. More weeks of running around, scanning, hacking surveillance, analyzing data. And a finaly, they'd provided Zenn'tah with coordinates for a second location.

  This one was different from the start.

  The location was more remote. A tiny barren moon orbiting a gas giant in an otherwise unremarkable system. No settlements, no infrastructure, no reason for anyone to be there.

  Which made the massive underground complex they found all the more unusual.

  Initial scans suggested something similar to the first location. A hidden facility, heavily shielded, deliberately concealed. But the scale was different. Not a single room, but a sprawling complex extending hundreds of meters in multiple directions.

  The scientists were excited. Zenn'tah's teams were cautious.

  The breach went smoothly. They'd learned from the first location and approached more carefully, or so they thought.

  The entrance sealed behind them immediately. His teams became nervous. One specialist reported that the entrance had been too easy, the station was designed to let them enter then seal them in. It was probably a trap.

  Zenn’tah, monitoring from his ship’s bridge, could only agree. That was the first hiccup, he should have known, at that moment, that things were about to become very complicated.

  Half the teams inside, halt outside. The scientist’s team also split. His demolition guy took way too long to breach again, in a more permanent way. By that time, the inside team had started exploring and the casualties were already mounting.

  The first trap killed three people. A shaped plasma charge hidden in a wall panel, triggered by pressure sensors in the floor. It had detonated with precisely calculated yield. Just enough to flash-vaporize the trigger zone, not enough to compromise the corridor's structural integrity.

  Professional work. Military-grade defensive systems.

  Zenn'tah's teams adapted. Moved more carefully, used scanners to detect pressure plates and motion sensors, neutralized traps before advancing.

  The complex was a maze. Corridors branching in multiple directions. Sealed sections that resisted their cutting tools. Pristine rooms, kitchens, lounges, playgrounds. And ruins. Lots of ruins, with unstable corridors, broken doors, uneven terrain. One sergeant commented it all looked like the training zones in bootcamp.

  And it was empty. No bodies, no signs of recent activity. Just the automated defenses and the eerie sense of a place designed for habitation but currently vacant.

  They'd penetrated maybe a third of the complex when Zenn'tah started noticing the pattern.

  His teams were dying.

  Not from traps. They'd gotten good at detecting those. But from something else. Something that moved through the complex like a ghost, striking from unexpected angles, using the defensive systems in ways that suggested intimate familiarity with the facility's layout.

  First it was sentries going silent. Then entire fire teams failing to report. Zenn'tah's remaining forces consolidated, adopted defensive formations, tried to identify what they were fighting.

  They caught glimpses. Movement at the edge of sensor range. Energy signatures that didn't match any known weapon profile. Attacks that came from directions that shouldn't have had line of sight.

  Whatever was in the complex with them, it was hunting them.

  Systematically. Professionally. With the kind of tactical awareness that spoke of extensive military training and complete knowledge of the terrain.

  Zenn'tah's three teams, all former military operators, people who'd survived actual combat in actual wars, were being decimated by something they couldn't even properly engage.

  He'd ordered retreat. Tried to pull everyone back to the entrance.

  That's when they discovered the entrance tunnel had collapsed. His men were trapped inside with whatever was killing them. And Zenn'tah had only fourteen people left.

  The ship's bridge was secure. Or at least, it should have been. Military-grade security systems, biometric locks, the kind of protection that made unauthorized access effectively impossible.

  And yet.

  One moment he was alone, sending orders, surveying maps and trying to find an extraction route for his men. The next, she was next to him, pressing a gun to his head. The collar had followed immediately after.

  Now she was accessing his ship’s controls. Her hands danced across controls like with economically efficient. She knew what she was doing.

  "Take us to orbital altitude," she instructed. "Standard commercial ascent profile. Nothing that attracts attention."

  Zenn'tah's hands moved across the controls with automatic familiarity. The collar around his neck hummed quietly, a constant reminder of what would happen if he tried anything creative.

  The ship climbed smoothly away from the moon's surface. Below, Zenn'tah could see the barren landscape where his teams were still fighting in underground corridors. He tried not to think about their odds. Tried not to calculate how long fourteen people could last against whatever was down there.

  The woman was doing something on her holobracer. Pulling up interfaces, entering commands, checking readouts with focused attention.

  "What…" Zenn'tah started.

  "Quiet."

  He went quiet.

  She tapped a final command.

  The moon's surface turned white.

  For a fraction of a second, a new sun bloomed where the complex had been. Brilliant, searingly bright, the kind of light that meant exotic physics and catastrophic energy release.

  Matter-antimatter detonation, Zenn'tah's ship sensors reported. Approximate yield: fifty kilotons. Blast radius: three kilometers. Surface penetration: estimated complete vaporization to a depth of two hundred meters.

  The flash faded, leaving a perfectly circular crater where the complex had been. Smooth as glass, still glowing with residual heat. Nothing remained. Just a hole in the moon where several hundred million credits worth of hidden infrastructure used to exist.

  Along with his last fourteen contractors.

  Zenn'tah stared at the sensor readouts, understanding exactly what he was looking at.

  She'd killed them. All of them. Erased them and the complex and any evidence it had ever existed with the kind of matter-antimatter device that was illegal in every civilized system and expensive enough that deploying one represented a significant capital investment.

  He was going to die. Obviously. She'd eliminated everyone else connected to this operation. He was just the last loose end.

  The woman holstered her pistol.

  Zenn'tah's hand twitched toward the controls before the collar hummed a warning and he froze.

  "You're their handler," she said. Her voice was conversational, almost casual. "You have contacts. Client relationships. Operational knowledge about who hired you and what they actually wanted from this expedition."

  She turned to face him fully for the first time, and Zenn'tah saw her eyes. Cold. Analytical. The kind of eyes that had seen violence and processed it as data rather than trauma.

  "Depending on how you answer my questions," she continued, "and how much I like the answers, I may let you live."

  Zenn'tah's mind raced through options. He could refuse, maintain professional discretion, protect his client relationships and die with some dignity intact. Except he was not running a charity. He was running an outside the law organization with loose morals and no ethics.

  Of course he’d choose survival over his clients.

  "I'll cooperate," he said. His voice came out steadier than he'd expected. "I'll tell you everything."

  The woman smiled. It didn't reach her eyes.

  "Good," she said.

  She adjusted something on her holobracer, and the collar's hum diminished further.

  "You can call me Mahgret," she said, settling back into his command chair like she owned it. "Now. Let's start with who hired you, what they were looking for, and what they found in that first bunker."

  She leaned forward slightly, and her smile sharpened into something that looked almost predatory.

  "And Zenn'tah? Be very thorough. I dislike having to ask questions twice."

  Zenn'tah began talking.

  He told her everything.

  When he was done, she stayed silent for a very long time. And he did not dare to interrupt her thoughts.

  Then, she smiled. And this time it seemed genuine.

  “I have a proposition for you, Zenn’tah. If you accept and perform admirably, I will both let you go free and pay you handsomely.” She grinned. “You may not realise, given where you found me. But I am actually quite rich.”

  “What do you want me to do?” He dared to ask, hope filling his body with renewed energy.

  “I want you to help find my friends before your former employer does.”