Kira Dallas's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

The robot bay stayed sealed another day. Kira left the breach to Logan's crew and turned to the work she trusted more. The security station was clear now. She told her team to finish the cleanup before they opened Level 4. Boxes of salvage waited. So did questions she had not answered. She wiped down a cracked data file on the bench and watched old security records scroll past. Logan came in with the cracked files stacked in his arms. "Found these in the security computers," he said. He set them down. "Dates run long. Centuries, not years. The timeline doesn't match any manifest you've got." He tapped a line of damaged text. "Before the war, after it, and a gap of silence in between. Your records might be wrong by a lot." Kira felt the floor shift under her mission. Every supply manifest she cross-referenced assumed one timeline. If the war was older, the dates on sealed crates meant nothing. Her whole verification process rested on numbers that might be lies. Zelda stepped through the hatch, medical bag on her hip, red beret dark with dust. The Red Hills medic had traded Kira equipment for tissue and research, and she read a room fast. "I heard the same thing from a trader on my supply run," she said. "Time lost. Records that don't line up. Funny what survives when no one knows what they're looking at." She glanced at the files. "If your dates are off, so are mine. We both buy on those numbers." Kira's radio crackled. An orange tabby in a green beret answered from the trade post. Captain Hills ran recruitment now for the station they were building. "Logbook's full," Hills reported. "Soldiers, two engineers, medical staff, three merchants. All scheduled to arrive within the month." He read the count off a worn ledger. The station was growing faster than Kira had planned for. Then Sinclair's voice cut in, flat and hard. His leg was broken from the station fight, so he worked the radio from a cot. "Friend, here's the real news. Level 4 opens in two weeks. I've set the lock sequence. Rested crew, EMP grenades, missiles staged." A pause. "Two weeks. Not sooner. We lost people last time." Kira made her call. She would not let the timeline problem stall the operation. "We open Level 4 in two weeks," she said. "But the manifests are no longer trusted. From now, we verify by seal and physical test only. No dates." She sealed the cracked files in her pack beside the station data card. The decision cost her the one tool she relied on most. Every deal ahead now ran on seals alone. But the station had staff coming, the lower level had a date, and the records were in her hands. She clipped the pack shut and keyed the radio. "Tell Kevin I need to talk suppliers. The old way of checking just died."