Page 117 of Stars in Halo

Patting her behind, he pushed her towards the waiting vessel.

Xion’s gaze lingered until Katya boarded, the doors shut, and the sleek craft ascended into the sky until it vanished.

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs, then turned and jogged to his awaiting ship.

The Tachy was primed for takeoff, with Mirage’s node at the controls.

‘Ready?’ the Sable AI murmured, jade eyes flicking over him as he swung into the seat beside them.

‘Naam,’ he rasped, heart aching. ‘Follow Katya, but keep a safe distance and plot a course that’s not matched to hers.’

‘Noted.’

With untraceable discretion, Mirage guided the corvette through Eden II’s chaotic skies, leaving its metropolitan horizon behind as it raced towards Zanyria.

‘I’m checking in on our job ads.’

A few days earlier, Xion had asked Mirage to seed Sysnet with listings for a secret op.

‘I’m getting every shifty pirate, shady buccaneer and moonlighting operator applying. The dangled reward is doing the trick.’

‘It fokkin should; we’re offering each several emeralds, a cluster of neo orbs, a black onyx xentium stone and one hundred thousand schills. Are you still acting as a broker for the consortium we’ve faked?’

‘Naam,’ Mirage confirmed with a smirk.

Between Mirage, Xion, and Katya, they’d spent the last two weeks on Eden II planning an elaborate stitch-up.

It hinged around twofold threads.

The first was based on rumours Xion and Mirage had seeded.

They stated that the Sable Riders were auctioning a vast bounty of ancient artefacts found within the two Shards of the Eye of Elysium and more from the archaic Paladian sites, allegedly stored in the Sable vaults. Other relics would be donated to leading museums and galleries throughout Pegasi.

The combined worth of the items they’d teased was in the billions of schills.

The second thread was a fake operation that Katya had devised, one financed by a shadowy religious entity needing a top-notch crew for a covert heist.

The task for a daring scoundrel crew was to retrieve said coveted Sable treasures from inside the Sable Vault before they went to auction and do so without any trace of their involvement.

Katya had added the flair of language and secret phrases used by her ilk on the Dark Net to signal that it was a legit job.

They’d also tapped into a Dark Net broker’s account and used untraceable accounts to pay a few other genuine dealers to advertise the roles, making the job even more credible.

The initial response was overwhelming. The bait of emeralds, black onyx, xentium stone, and millions of schills as payment for pulling off the heist was too alluring to resist.

Mirage smirked, ‘It’s going fokkin’ wild on Dark Net.’

‘Damn,’ the Rider murmured. ‘I’m staggered by the number of applicants. I’d imagined some scepticism and disbelief, but they’re eating this all up despite it being a Sable establishment. Looks like we do have plenty of haters willing to take potshots at us.’

They’d received over a thousand submissions from swindlers, bandits, pillagers and pirates from all over the galaxy, and the number was still rising.

Mirage raised an eyebrow as they parsed over the applications. ‘I’ve devised a series of fake job descriptions. To be sent to our final applicants when ready.’

‘Sawa, I hope we’ve made this as believable as possible to attract the kinais we’re after.’

Xion and Mirage scanned through the applicants.

Less than half an hour later, Xion’s eyes fell on the names and files of a trio who’d applied together under one crew.

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