Olivia stood in the dim glow of the briefing room, her hands steady on the edge of the table, but her eyes locked on the screen that had just illuminated a name she hadn’t seen in years. Her own—listed under survivors, beside four others marked deceased.
The admiral’s voice echoed in her memory from a decade earlier, declaring the mission a total loss. No one left to tell the story. She reached out and touched the cold glass of the display, her finger lingering for a heartbeat as it traced the outline of a call sign that should have been buried with the rest. The betrayal crashed over her—not from the enemies they had faced, but from the men in uniform who had erased her to cover their tracks.
Her shoulders tightened as she pulled her hand back, curling it into a fist at her side. The weight of that forgotten division pressed down harder than ever. A low-rank engineer like you thinks you deserve a call sign. Laughter rippled through the room around her.
The quiet woman in the gray jumpsuit was nothing more than a maintenance tech to them, barely remembered beyond a signature on a form. But the laughter cut off instantly when the security scanner flagged her ID and flashed a warning unseen for ten years. Ghost-class signature detected. Admiral required. The admiral stormed in, prepared to reprimand her—until his eyes caught the faded emblem etched into her card.
The same emblem belonging to a unit he had personally declared killed in action. No survivors. His voice fractured as he asked, “State your call sign.” She finally lifted her gaze and answered, “Ghost Five.” And in that moment, every admiral in the room froze—because the woman they had mocked was the one ghost whose body had never been recovered.
Leora had walked into the ship inspection bay earlier that day with a toolbox in one hand and a clipboard in the other, dressed in her usual plain gray jumpsuit with no badges or flair, her hair tied back simply. No makeup hid the faint lines carved by years of late nights bent over machines. Officers in crisp uniforms filled the room, medals gleaming beneath fluorescent lights, gathered for what they called a routine inspection of the new vessel.
Captain Aldrich Morell—a broad-shouldered man in his forties with a permanent smirk shaped by years of unquestioned command—noticed her immediately. Leaning against a control console with crossed arms, he let out a chuckle loud enough to draw attention. “A low-level civilian engineer,” he said. “You here to wipe down the machinery or something?” The words hung heavy as a few junior officers snickered, shifting as if her presence embarrassed them.
Leora set her toolbox down with a muted clunk, unfolded her clipboard, and began taking notes without looking up. A young lieutenant with perfectly styled hair and bravado stretched thin over insecurity chimed in next. “Bet she’s better with a wrench than steering a ship. Stick to the basics, honey.” The room’s atmosphere shifted.
More laughter followed, but Leora kept writing, her pen moving with unbroken rhythm. To ensure the humiliation was complete, a logistics coordinator named Hemsley approached, balancing a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and a stack of greasy requisition forms in the other. He didn’t place them gently.
He slammed the mess directly onto her open schematics. Oil bled instantly into the precise diagrams. “Since you’re just standing around looking pretty,” Hemsley sneered, taking an exaggerated sip, “refile these by date—and don’t use the scanner. Optical readers are for officers only. Do it by hand. Every serial number. Cross-reference them before I finish this cup.”
It was pure busywork—meant to demean her, to reduce her to a clerk while the reactor she’d been assigned to inspect hummed dangerously out of tolerance. Leora didn’t argue. She slid the ruined schematics aside with deliberate calm, pulled a blank logbook from her belt, and began transcribing with a speed and precision that bordered on mechanical. Her silence reflected his pettiness back at him.
Without warning, Captain Morell shoved off the console and strode forward, his boot catching the edge of her open toolbox with intentional force. The container skidded across the grated floor, scattering precision instruments and microfuses into the dark gap beneath the main walkway. The clatter echoed brutally in the sudden hush.
“Oops,” he said, his voice dripping with mock innocence while his eyes stayed cold. “Looks like you can’t even secure your gear. If you can’t manage a simple box, how are we supposed to trust you with a starship’s engine core?” He kicked a stray wrench toward the subdeck, watching it vanish with a pleased smirk.
Leora didn’t gasp or scramble. She watched the tool disappear, then knelt to gather what remained, her movements measured, denying him the reaction he craved. As she collected the scattered fuses, Lieutenant Corwin—the gel-haired one—moved to the environmental control panel and quietly entered a command, glancing between Leora and his snickering peers.
The gravity plating beneath her section of floor surged to three times standard. Her knees slammed into the metal grating with a sickening crunch. Leora didn’t scream, though the air tore from her lungs in a sharp hiss.
She planted her palms flat against the deck, veins standing out in her forearms as she fought the crushing force pressing her down. Corwin laughed—a high, nervous sound—as he tapped the panel again. “Heavy lifting’s part of the job, right? You look like you’re struggling just to stand. Maybe we should dial it down—make it toddler-safe.”
Leora braced her core, muscles screaming, and forced herself upright against the three Gs. She never broke eye contact with Corwin until he grew uneasy and reset the gravity, muttering about a calibration glitch. But humiliation alone wasn’t enough. They went after her mind next.
As she steadied herself, a smug communications officer named Kalin wandered over, holding a complex cipher pad. “Hey, wrench-turner,” he barked, tossing it at her chest. “Unlock this stream. Tier-four encryption. Probably too much math for someone who fixes toilets—but try.” He turned to his friends, grinning. “Ten credits she locks it out in thirty seconds.”
They laughed, waiting for her to fail. Leora glanced at the scrolling code, instantly recognized the obsolete encryption—it was a Ghost Division training exercise from year one—and entered the fourteen-digit bypass in under three seconds without even sitting down.
She tossed the chiming, unlocked pad back at Kalin, hitting him square in the chest before he could react. The green access granted light washed over his stunned face as he staggered back, mouth open.
Commander Selene Ward stepped forward then, sharp features arranged into a smile that never reached her eyes. The kind of officer who climbed ranks by mixing strategy with subtle cruelty. She snatched the report from Leora’s hand, skimmed it, then flicked it back dismissively. “AI performance acceptable. Nothing noteworthy. Are you even cleared for this level?” Her voice carried rank-obsessed disdain, measuring worth in insignia.
From the back of the room, Admiral Rowan Vance cleared his throat. Sixty-one, gray hair cropped close, his face carved by decades of hard choices. He wielded absolute authority—but beneath it festered arrogance born of buried secrets. “What’s your name again? I don’t recall approving anyone… this ordinary.” The insult was deliberate.
Leora paused her notes for a beat, met his gaze, and replied evenly, “Leora Hale. I’m here for the inspection. Nothing more, nothing less.” The admiral scoffed, turning away as if she’d proven his point.
To underline the insult, Ward pulled a microfiber cloth from her pocket and theatrically wiped her fingers where she’d touched Leora’s clipboard, as if contamination lingered. “Smells like burning oil and cheap coffee in here suddenly,” she said to a sycophantic aide, ensuring the words carried. The aide giggled and whispered something that made nearby officers grin.
Leora returned to calibrating the sensory array, her hands moving in a blur, methodically precise—utterly indifferent to their attempts to diminish her.
She knew the scent they mocked was the smell of hard work, something none of them had engaged in for years. But she kept her jaw locked tight, channeling the anger into the precision of her diagnostics, tightening a microbolt until the metal groaned in submission. Morell, not satisfied with merely kicking her tools aside, decided to test her reflexes in a way that violated every safety protocol in the manual. He reached for a loose steam vent release valve near her head.
A pipe labeled SCALDING HAZARD in bright red letters—and yanked it open without a warning shout. A jet of superheated vapor hissed violently just inches from Leora’s face, hot enough to blister skin instantly. Most engineers would have flinched, stumbled back, or screamed, giving the officers the spectacle they wanted. Leora didn’t move her head. She simply raised her left hand, already covered by a thermal-resistant glove she had slipped on seconds earlier, and blocked the jetstream while continuing to type on the keypad with her right hand.
The steam shrieked against her palm, turning the glove black, but she completed the command sequence before calmly reaching up and cranking the valve shut. She turned to Morell—who looked faintly disappointed she wasn’t screaming in pain—and said flatly, “Valve pressure equalized. You might want to have maintenance check that leak, Captain.”
The mockery didn’t stop there. It gathered like a storm building force. A cluster of nearby sailors—rough around the edges and driven by pack instinct—began echoing the officers, eager to fit in. “Join the fry,” one of them jeered. A burly ensign with tattoos creeping out from his sleeves and an entitled grin pointed at her jumpsuit.
“Look at that getup. Did you raid the janitor’s closet? No way you’re touching my controls dressed like that.” Laughter spread wider now, heads nodding in agreement. Another officer—a lieutenant commander with a snobbish drawl rooted in old money—leaned closer.
“Seriously, who let her in? She looks like she belongs in the engine room grease pit, not up here with the decision-makers.” Leora straightened slowly, clipped her pen back onto the clipboard, and asked quietly, “You done?” It wasn’t loud, but it cut cleanly through the noise, making a few shift uncomfortably. Still, they pressed on, the room growing colder, the air thick with judgment.
Captain Morell began circling her, his boots ringing sharply against the metal deck. “You think you can just stand there and act like you matter? This is Navy territory. Real stakes. Not some backyard fix-it job.” He stopped abruptly and snatched a sensitive optical alignment tool from the console—a device Leora had spent three hours fine-tuning to within a micrometer.
He lifted it toward the light, pretending to inspect it, then deliberately dragged his thumb across the delicate lens, smearing it with the oily residue from his lunch. “These lenses look foggy,” he announced to the room, tossing the now-ruined instrument back at her. It struck her chest before she caught it.
“If you can’t keep your optics clean, don’t expect us to trust your readings. Recalibrate it. From scratch.” The room broke into snickers as Leora stared down at the smeared lens. It wasn’t just an insult. It was an erasure of her labor. A calculated power move designed to keep her working while they stood back and watched. She pulled a cloth from her pocket and began the painstaking cleaning process again.
Her silence weighed heavier—and felt more dangerous—than any shout. But they weren’t content with erasing her work. They wanted to erase her comfort as well. As Leora worked through the meticulous task, the ship’s environmental officer, prompted by a subtle nod from Ward, quietly entered a command into his datapad.
The ventilation fans above Leora’s station groaned and powered down, while the heat exchangers servicing nearby server banks were rerouted to vent directly into her workspace. Within minutes, the temperature in her five-foot radius spiked above forty-five degrees Celsius. Sweat beaded on her forehead, stinging her eyes.
She didn’t wipe it away. She knew they were waiting for her to complain, to ask for water. Instead, she worked inside the artificial desert, her breathing shallow and controlled, while the officers stood ten feet away in cool, conditioned air—sipping iced drinks and placing bets on how long it would take for the civilian, delicate flower to faint from heat exhaustion.
As Morell continued circling her, he reached out and flicked the collar of her jumpsuit—a gesture of pure disrespect that bordered on assault. “Standard-issue synthetic blend,” he sneered, pinching the fabric like refuse. “Doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t protect. Just like the disposable labor that wears it.”
He leaned close enough that she could smell the expensive cologne struggling to mask stale breath. “Back at the academy, we used people like you for target practice simulations—the nonessential personnel. The ones meant to be sacrificed so the real heroes could finish the mission.” Leora’s eyes flashed—a microscopic fracture in her armor—as she remembered exactly who had been sacrificed and who had taken the glory.
But she forced her breathing to stay even, her heart rate steady as a sniper’s.
Even as the insults stacked higher, Leora didn’t flinch or raise her voice. She selected a small tool from her kit, studied a nearby panel, and began making a quiet adjustment. Commander Ward folded her arms, tilting her head with sharp, performative disdain. “Oh, please don’t pretend you’re focused. We can all see right through it. You’re out of your depth.”
The admiral nodded in approval, his voice booming across the room. “If you can’t handle the heat, perhaps civilian life suits you better. Step aside.” A ripple of agreement followed, one sailor muttering loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Yeah, crawl back to whatever hole you came from.” Leora tightened a screw with measured care, then set the tool aside.
Her movements were precise and unhurried. She turned to face them fully for the first time, her gaze level and unwavering. “The panel was misaligned. I fixed it.” No apology. No defense. Just fact. The room fell briefly quiet—then the laughter returned, harsher now, as if her competence only deepened their contempt. Vance stepped closer, invading her space, using his height to cast a literal shadow over her work.
He picked up a delicate sensory relay she had just calibrated and casually tossed it between his hands. “You’re saying this is fixed?” he asked, then deliberately let it drop. The component shattered across the deck plates. “Oops. Faulty equipment. Log it as breakage due to engineer incompetence,” he ordered his scribe.
The scribe—a nervous young man—hesitated for a heartbeat before meeting Vance’s glare and hurriedly typing the lie into the official log. Leora stared at the broken pieces of the device she had spent an hour tuning, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the console’s edge, the injustice burning in her throat like acid.
A junior tech—a young woman fresh out of the academy, unaware of the unspoken hierarchy—stepped forward hesitantly. “Actually, Admiral,” she said, her voice trembling but clear, “I watched her calibrate that relay. Her metrics were perfect. It fell because—”
Morell crossed the room in two long strides, looming over her. “Are you questioning a superior officer’s assessment, Enen?” he barked, his face flushing red. “Because that sounds like insubordination. And insubordination earns a permanent mark—one that keeps you scrubbing sanitation lines for the rest of your career.”
The young woman shrank back, eyes wide with fear. “I—I’m sorry,” she muttered, retreating into the shadows. Leora watched closely, her eyes narrowing. They weren’t just bullying her anymore.
They were poisoning the next generation—teaching them that silence was safer than truth. The humiliation dragged on, each remark landing with calculated precision. A cluster of mid-level officers near the door let their polite façades slip into open scorn. One—a status-obsessed major wearing a watch that screamed wealth—sneered openly. “Listen, girl, this isn’t a charity case. You don’t dress the part. You don’t play the part.”
He gestured at her plain shoes, scuffed from real work. Captain Morell jumped in eagerly, his voice rising. “Exactly. I’ve seen better presentation from recruits on day one. What makes you think you belong here?” Leora reached into her pocket, pulled out a compact diagnostic device, and plugged it into the console without asking. The screen flickered alive beneath her touch.
Admiral Vance slammed his fist onto the table. “Who authorized that? You’re overstepping.” She didn’t stop, her fingers flying across the interface. A nearby sailor—eager, insecure—added his jab. “Bet she doesn’t even know half the protocols. Probably faking it.” Leora unplugged the device, glanced at the readout, and said evenly, “System stabilized. You’re welcome.”
The words hung for a beat, silencing a few—before the cruelty surged back stronger. Morell grabbed her shoulder, his grip tight and bruising, spinning her around. “When an admiral speaks, you freeze, grease monkey,” he hissed, spittle flying. “You ignored a direct order to cease interaction with the console.”
“That’s grounds for immediate detention.” He signaled to two burly security guards near the door. “Escort this trash to the airlock corridor. Let her cool off where the oxygen’s thin.” The guards stepped forward, hands resting on stun batons, faces blank with obedience.
Leora twisted free with a sharp, controlled movement—too disciplined for a civilian—causing Morell to stumble back a step. Surprise flashed across his face before his anger doubled. As the inspection wound down, the barbs turned personal, the atmosphere icy and relentless. Commander Ward circled back, eyes narrowed. “You know, silence doesn’t make you mysterious. It makes you forgettable.” Enen—the entitled one from earlier—laughed outright. “Forgettable? Try irrelevant.”
Admiral Vance’s face hardened as he pointed at her. “Pack your things. We don’t need amateurs slowing us down.” Leora snapped her toolbox shut, slung it over her shoulder, and headed for the door. Then she paused, turned back, and asked a single question that echoed in the room.
“You sure about that?”
An uneasy hush followed as she walked out, their laughter dying behind her. In the corridor, a lieutenant deliberately shoulder-checked her, slamming her into the bulkhead. “Watch it,” he snapped—despite being the one at fault. “Naval personnel have right of way. Learn your place. Civilian.” He didn’t look back, continuing down the hall with his squad, laughing as they replayed the moment.
Leora adjusted the strap of her heavy toolbox, feeling the bruise already forming on her arm, and stared at the back of his head. She calculated three different ways she could have incapacitated him before impact.
Instead, she exhaled slowly, memorized his face for later, and continued toward the lower decks. Their laughter faded—but never fully left her ears. As she steadied herself, a group of off-duty pilots spilled out of a recreation lounge and noticed the tension. One—a flight leader known for recklessness—decided to escalate it into a spectacle.
He kicked over a bucket of cleaning solution left behind by a drone, sending slick, soapy liquid cascading across the deck in front of her. “Careful now,” he mocked, leaning against the wall with crossed arms. “Deck’s slippery for people with cheap boots. Wouldn’t want you breaking a hip before you file retirement papers.”
The other pilots jeered, waiting for her to slip. Leora didn’t slow. With a subtle click of her heel, she engaged the magnetic soles of her boots—standard Ghost gear disguised as civilian wear—and walked straight across the slick surface without faltering.
The metallic clack, clack, clack of her steps echoed like a countdown. Farther down the corridor, a group of logistics officers supervising a supply load noticed her approach—and blocked the narrow passage entirely. “Maintenance uses the service ladder,” one sneered, pointing to a rusted vertical hatch untouched for years, meant for droids, not people. “This hallway’s for essential crew.”
The detour would add twenty minutes and force her to haul fifty pounds of gear through a ventilation shaft. Leora glanced at the wide, empty space behind them, then at their smug faces.
Without a word, she turned, wrenched open the rusted hatch—metal shrieking in protest—and climbed into the dark, filthy shaft. As it slammed shut above her, she heard them congratulating one another for keeping trash out of the clean zones. Halfway through the cramped, spider-webbed tunnel, the lights abruptly died, plunging her into suffocating darkness.
It wasn’t an accident.
She heard the distinct beep of a remote override from the hallway above, followed by muffled laughter vibrating through the metal. “Let’s see how she likes the scenic route in the dark,” someone shouted. Most people would have panicked, screaming for help in the claustrophobic blackness. But Leora didn’t make a sound.
She closed her eyes, letting her remaining senses widen and sharpen, counting rivets by touch and listening to the distant hum of the ship’s heartbeat. She navigated the treacherous vertical climb in total darkness with the grace of a predator in its den, refusing to give them the satisfaction of a single cry of fear—turning their prank into an unauthorized training drill for her long-rusted night-ops skills.
Later that afternoon, during a break in the mess hall, Leora sat alone at a corner table, sipping black coffee from a chipped mug, her eyes moving steadily across an old schematic printout. The space buzzed with crew members unwinding, but whispers trailed her movements. She folded the paper with care and slipped it away.
A memory surfaced through the clatter of trays—a similar hall years earlier, where her team had gathered before a mission, laughter genuine, bonds unbreakable. The Ghost Division emblem on their sleeves lingered in her mind, now faded like the one hidden on her card.
She set the mug down harder than she intended. The sound drew a few glances, but she picked up her notes again and pressed on. A group of junior pilots sat two tables away, their voices deliberately loud. “I heard she used to work on garbage scows,” one of them lied, tearing open a ration pack. “That’s why she doesn’t talk.”
“Probably forgot how to speak human after years with the rats,” another added, flicking a piece of synthetic bread at her. It landed squarely on her schematic. “Hey, Earth—trash heap. Do you even know what a fork is, or do you need a manual for that too?” Leora brushed the bread from the paper calmly, offering no acknowledgment, which only fueled their anger.
The group’s leader stood and walked over, deliberately bumping her table. Black coffee sloshed over the edge, narrowly missing her lap but soaking the bench beside her. “Clean that up,” the pilot ordered, looming over her with hands on his hips. “You made a mess. That’s what you’re here for. Janitorial duties.”
He gestured at the coffee dripping onto the deck. When Leora didn’t move, he slammed his palm down on the table, rattling the cutlery. “I said clean it up. Or do I need to call the captain and tell him you’re defacing naval property?” The injustice pressed in on her. He had spilled it—yet demanded her obedience.
Leora looked at the puddle, then up at him, her eyes empty of fear. The lack unsettled him. She took a napkin, carefully wiped her schematic dry, and stood. She left the mess on the floor—and the pilot sputtering in confused fury behind her—as she headed for the exit.
Before she could reach it, a supply officer stepped into her path, holding a datapad and wearing a smug smile. “Hold on.” He glanced at the screen. “Hail system says you haven’t been issued a chow pass for this shift.” He tapped the display, deleting her entry in front of her. “Since you stole fleet resources.” He pointed toward the half-empty coffee mug she’d left behind.
“I’m docking your pay for the week, and you’re barred from the mess hall for forty-eight hours. Civilian contractors don’t eat unless they earn it.”
The petty cruelty was almost breathtaking, performed solely for their own amusement. The pilots laughed and cheered, banging fists against the table. Leora felt hunger claw at her stomach—she’d skipped breakfast to prepare for the inspection—but she swallowed the bile, gave a single nod as if accepting their terms, and walked out knowing she’d be working the next twelve hours on an empty stomach.
Back in the control room for the next phase, Leora approached a malfunctioning panel that four other engineers had already failed to fix. She knelt, opened it, and began rewiring with quiet, practiced efficiency. Captain Morell stormed over, his face twisted with irritation. “Who gave you permission to touch the systems?” His shout drew everyone’s attention. Leora finished the final connection, stood, and wiped her hands on her jumpsuit.
“The auxiliary circuit in the Ghost-class layer had a hidden fault,” she said evenly. “It’s corrected.” The words landed like stones. Admiral Vance, reviewing charts nearby, snapped his head up. “Ghost class? That’s classified material. How do you know about it?” His voice carried something sharper than anger—fear, perhaps.
Leora met his gaze. “I’ve worked with it before.” No elaboration. Nothing more. She turned back to her tools. Vance signaled to his security chief, a broad, heavy-set man named Corg. “Search her. Now,” Vance ordered, his voice trembling slightly. “She could be carrying corporate espionage devices. No civilian knows that terminology without stealing it.”
Corg seized Leora’s arms, patting her down roughly—public, invasive, humiliating—while the crew snickered. He dumped her pockets, spilling a personal data pad and a small, worn photograph of a landscape onto the deck. “Just junk, Admiral,” Corg grunted, crushing the photo under his boot as he stepped back.
Leora watched the image of her old homeworld—the one destroyed in the war—crease beneath the rubber sole. A muscle jumped in her jaw, the only outward sign of the eruption inside her. As Corg stepped away, he accidentally kicked her heavy toolbox, sending it skidding toward the open elevator shaft at the rear of the bridge.
The box wobbled on the edge for a heart-stopping second before tipping and vanishing into the darkness. A distant crash echoed moments later. “Whoops,” Corg said, not even pretending regret. “That looked heavy. Guess you’re out of tools, mechanic. Can’t fix a ship with your bare hands, can you?” Laughter rolled through the room—cruel, baying. That toolbox held custom-calibrated instruments Leora had built herself over five years. Irreplaceable.
She stared into the empty shaft, her hands curling into fists so tight her nails drew blood. They weren’t just humiliating her anymore—they were trying to strip her of the ability to function. The room’s atmosphere shifted subtly, murmurs spreading as officers exchanged uneasy looks.
Commander Selene Ward frowned, scrolling through her tablet. “Knowing terms doesn’t make you one of us,” she said, though her voice wavered slightly. Captain Morell barked a laugh to cover the discomfort. “She’s bluffing. Probably read it in some manual.” Leora straightened, standing tall where her toolbox should have been.
A junior officer hesitated before handing her a generic wrench from ship’s supply, his fingers lingering a moment too long, as if questioning her right to take it. Then the ship’s main lights flickered—and died. Red emergency strobes flooded the room. A siren wailed: coolant containment breach.
Panic exploded instantly. “Stabilizers are failing!” a tech shouted. “Core temperature critical—we’ve got thirty seconds to meltdown!” Morell froze, color draining from his face as he shouted useless commands. “Reroute power! No—vent the drive!” Crew members scrambled, colliding, terror taking hold.
Leora didn’t hesitate. She vaulted over the railing into the lower pit, sliding down the ladder rails without touching the rungs, landing hard in the sparking, steam-choked gloom of the core interface. The heat was brutal, the air shimmering with radiation bleed.
As she reached for the manual override, the heavy blast doors above began to grind shut. She looked up and saw Vance at the control panel, his finger pressing the seal command. He was locking her inside the core—sacrificing her to contain the blast and save himself.
“Admiral, wait!” a junior tech screamed. “The engineer is still inside!”
Vance ignored him, his face lit by the red emergency lights, a mask of cold self-preservation. “Containment is the priority,” he shouted over the sirens. “Seal it.” The doors slammed shut with a final, tomb-like thud, locking Leora in the dark with a melting reactor—leaving her to die alone while they watched from the monitors.
As if entombing her wasn’t enough, Vance’s hand hovered over a secondary command—the fire suppression system. Instead of flooding the chamber with coolant foam, he entered the sequence for oxygen depletion. “We need to starve the reaction,” he lied to the horrified crew, his voice steady with murderous intent. “Vent the atmosphere in the core.”
The vents hissed open—not to supply air, but to rip it away. Leora, already fighting the heat, felt her lungs burn as the vacuum clawed at her breath. It was a calculated execution. He wasn’t merely containing a meltdown. He was making certain the only witness to his cowardice suffocated before the doors ever opened again. She dropped to her knees, her vision blurring.
But instead of clawing at her throat, she slowed her heart rate to a hibernation crawl—a forbidden Ghost technique—buying herself the precious seconds she needed to reach the lever. “Get out of there! You’ll kill us all!” Vance screamed from the command deck, now only through the intercom, shielding his eyes from a burst of steam on the screen. “Security! Drag her out!”
The guards didn’t move, too terrified by the radiation warnings to approach. Leora ignored the admiral’s screaming. She found the manual override lever—jammed solid with rust and neglect, a testament to Morell’s incompetent command. Gritting her teeth, she braced her boots against the bulkhead and pulled with strength that belied her frame. The metal shrieked, resisting, searing her palms.
She pictured the faces of her fallen squad—and pulled harder, roaring silently until the lever snapped down. The sirens cut off instantly. The lights stabilized, humming back to steady white. The cost was immediate. The superheated lever had burned through her gloves and into her skin.
As the blast doors hissed open and automated protocols took over, Leora climbed from the pit, her hands shaking violently, smoke curling from her scorched uniform. She collapsed to her knees on the cool deck, gasping. A medical droid hovered toward her, scanners active—until Morell kicked it aside.
“Leave her,” he ordered. “She damaged the manual override mechanism. That lever is bent. I want a full equipment assessment before we waste med supplies on the vandal who broke it.” The droid beeped in protest but obeyed the command code, drifting away and leaving Leora cradling her burned hands against her chest.
The smell of her own scorched skin mixed with the ship’s ozone. She forced herself upright, swaying, expecting—foolishly—a moment of relief. Instead, the cruelty sharpened. As she reached for a railing, Commander Ward slapped a quarantine sticker onto her chest, the adhesive stinging raw flesh.
“Don’t touch the ship,” Ward hissed, recoiling as if Leora were radioactive waste. “You’ve been exposed to unshielded core particles. You’re a biological hazard now.” She turned to the guards. “Don’t let her contaminate clean zones. If she tries to sit, stun her. We can’t have her filth on the upholstery before the tribunal arrives.”
Leora stood alone in the center of the room, shivering from shock, denied even the dignity of rest—forced to stand at attention while her body screamed. She climbed the ladder again, soot streaking her cheek, her hands raw and trembling. The silence was deafening. Morell stared at her, not with gratitude—but with naked loathing.
“You reckless idiot,” he finally whispered. “You bypassed safety protocols. You could’ve detonated the ship.” He turned to Vance. “She endangered the vessel to play hero. I want sabotage charges filed.” Instead of thanks for saving their lives, they twisted heroism into crime.
The crew nodded eagerly, choosing loyalty over truth. That evening, during the fleet review briefing, officers gathered in a larger chamber, tactical maps glowing across the walls. Leora entered quietly, taking a seat near the edge. Commander Ward stood at the podium, her voice clipped. “She might speak military jargon, but that doesn’t make her a soldier.”
Captain Morell addressed the room, his voice booming. “I won’t let some bargain-basement engineer jeopardize this operation.” Snickers rippled outward. An officer in the back added, “She belongs in the boiler room—that’s her speed.”
Admiral Vance rose, silencing the room. “Present your military credentials or leave.” Chuckles followed. “She probably doesn’t even have a call sign.” Ward pulled up a holographic personnel manifest, highlighting the empty space beside Leora’s name.
“Look at this,” she mocked, gesturing to the blank entry. “No service number. No academy. No rank. Just a void.” She tapped the display, deleting Leora’s temporary access clearance in full view. “There. Now you can’t even open a bathroom door without an escort. That’s the trust you’ve earned.”
The room erupted with laughter. Leora remained still, her fingers tapping once against the armrest—then stopping. The laughter faded as eyes turned to her. Vance pressed. “Well? Your call sign.”
She let the silence stretch before answering. “Ghost Five.”
Papers slipped from hands. Three officers dropped their tablets. Vance staggered back, pale. “That—that’s impossible.” Chaos erupted. “You’re lying!” Morell shouted. “Ghost Division was wiped out!” Ward snapped, “This is defamation of the service!” Another officer yelled, “You could be arrested for impersonating a classified designation!”
“We’ll verify it now,” Vance barked. They seized her arms and dragged her into the corridor. As they moved, Morell slammed her against the wall, pinning her with his forearm against her throat.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing,” he snarled, breath hot with rage. “But stolen valor is a capital offense. I’ll personally see you rot in a black-site prison.” He tightened his grip, cutting her air for a terrifying second. “Claiming a dead hero’s name doesn’t give you power. It paints a target.”
Leora didn’t resist. She met his gaze with terrifying calm, memorizing the burst capillaries in his eyes—waiting. In the holding cell, she stood at the viewport, staring at the stars, her fingers brushing the small pendant hidden beneath her jumpsuit—the last relic of her team.
The door sealed behind her. Locks engaged. Voices argued outside, muffled but intense. Inside, the temperature plummeted. Vance had ordered environmental controls reduced to survival minimums. Frost crept across the glass. Leora rubbed her arms, breath fogging. It was torture—illegal under fleet law.
Vance didn’t care about law. He cared about erasing the truth. She paced the cell, analyzing the door—a Type-4 mag lock. Child’s play for a Ghost. But she didn’t escape. She needed them to bring her back. She needed witnesses.
They returned her to the command center for interrogation. “This is a glitch,” Vance snapped. “Invalid.” “I’ll revoke her access,” Morell snarled. “Foreign intel,” Ward accused. Officers reached for her decoder. They dragged her into an emergency interrogation bay, lights glaring overhead.
The chair was bolted to the deck, fitted with neural restraints for violent offenders. Morell shoved her down, ratcheting cuffs tight enough to bite into fresh burns. He leaned close. “Comfortable?” He tightened them until she gasped. “These suppress motor control. Can’t hack if you can’t move.”
He activated the neural dampeners. The hum filled the room. Leora closed her eyes, compartmentalizing the pain with Ghost training, her face blank while he waited for her to break.
Vance slammed a heavy file onto the table—photos spilling out: burned colonies, ruined ships, bodies. “This is what happens when amateurs play soldier,” he lied. “We buried Ghost Division because they were butchers. Failures.”
He rewrote history without blinking. “Admit you’re a fraud and I’ll let you walk with a dishonorable discharge. Keep lying—and I pin this massacre on you.” Leora studied the images. She remembered saving the refugees Vance abandoned.
The lie chilled her blood. In a final act of cruelty, Vance pulled up a classified memorial archive—then initiated a purge. “They don’t exist in official records anyway,” he said, hovering over the delete key. “Letters, medals, pensions—gone.”
Files vanished. Names erased. A sacred trust violated. Leora watched, her expression hardening into something inhuman—a quiet, terrifying resolve.
“Sign it!” Ward shrieked, slamming a datapad down. She grabbed Leora’s hand, forcing a stylus. Leora let her hand hang limp. Ward dug her nails in, drawing blood. She raised her hand—
Leora caught her wrist mid-air.
She didn’t twist. Didn’t squeeze. She just held it.
“Don’t,” Leora whispered.
Ward recoiled, fear flickering for the first time. Leora reached into her pocket, produced an encrypted key card, and slid it into the console. “Spectre-Black access.”
The system activated. Files unfolded—unaltered Ghost Division records. Her name appeared.
GHOST-05. STATUS: UNCONFIRMED.
A security officer read it aloud. “This record was never deleted.”
“Shut it down!” Vance screamed. “No one sees more.”
One of the tech officers—a woman who had laughed at Leora earlier—lunged for the hardline connection, trying to sever it manually. The instant her fingers brushed the cable, a violent arc of static electricity leapt from the console, hurling her back against the wall. System lockout in progress, the computer announced. Unauthorized tamper attempt detected. Countermeasures active. The screens bled into a deep, ominous red. The ship’s AI—dormant and deliberately suppressed by Vance’s codes for years—was waking up.
It recognized the key card. It recognized the signature. It was defending its rightful master. Officers recoiled from the consoles as displays abruptly shifted to raw combat footage from ten years earlier—footage showing Vance ordering a retreat while Ghost Division held the line. Panic rippled through the bridge. Vance began pacing.
“She’s after revenge,” Morell sneered. “Unfit to lead.” Someone hurled a data file across the room. “No one believes you,” Ward said coldly. “You’re alone.” They closed ranks, pressure mounting. Then the ship’s automated defense grid rotated. Ceiling-mounted turrets—designed to repel boarders—pivoted inward, locking onto the command crew.
A red laser dot settled on Morell’s forehead, then slid to Vance’s chest, then hovered at Ward’s throat. The AI spoke again, its tone chillingly even. Hostile entities detected in command center. Threat level: traitorous. Stand down or be pacified. Morell froze, blood draining from his face as he realized the ship he claimed to command had turned against him.
His hand fell away from his holster, trembling for the first time. The janitor wasn’t just in the room. She was the room. The ship was no longer a vessel—it was her weapon. Morell suddenly drew his sidearm, the safety snapping off with a sharp click that silenced the bridge. “I’m relieving you of command, civilian,” he shouted, aiming at Leora’s chest. “Step away from the console or I fire.”
Gasps tore through the crew. Drawing a weapon on the bridge was treason—but desperation had erased restraint. Leora didn’t move. She turned slowly to face the barrel. “You won’t fire,” she said calmly. “That weapon’s biometrics are tied to the ship’s core—and the core just recognized me as the ranking officer.” Morell squeezed the trigger.
Click.
The weapon locked. Refusing to fire on a superior officer. Horror spread across his face as he stared at the gun, then at her. The ship wasn’t just disabling weapons—it was exposing fear. The biometric scanners along the wall flared to life, projecting real-time physiological data for every officer onto the main display. Massive red graphs showed Morell’s heart rate spiking to a panicked 160 beats per minute.
Ward’s cortisol levels surged off the scale. In stark contrast, Leora’s vitals glowed in calm blue—heart rate steady at sixty, adrenaline controlled. The proof of their terror versus her composure towered ten feet high for every junior crew member to witness. Uniforms and medals meant nothing now; they were stripped bare, revealed as frightened children, while the civilian stood as the only true soldier left.
Leora pressed a concealed control on her device. “Code echo null.”
Screens ignited as satellite links activated. The central display showed five Ghost profiles—four marked deceased, one survivor. The AI spoke with reverence: Welcome back, Ghost Five. The ship shifted into Ghost priority mode. Vance collapsed to his knees as authority drained from him. The bridge transformed. Standard naval blue lighting gave way to the stark, high-contrast amber of Ghost Division combat mode.
Blast shields slid down over the viewports. The tactical table expanded, projecting a holographic sphere of the entire sector—layers of intelligence Vance had never been cleared to see. Command override accepted, the computer declared, its voice deeper, absolute. All non-host personnel are now classified as subordinates. Awaiting orders, Ghost Five.
The shift in power was almost physical. The ship had chosen her—and rejected them. Vance scrambled toward the command chair, trying to reclaim authority by occupying the symbol of it.
The chair rejected him. Its haptic sensors denied his biometric signature. Restraints snapped shut before he could sit, and a sharp deterrent shock crackled across the armrests. Unauthorized user, the chair announced loudly. Vance staggered back, humiliated, as Leora walked past without a glance. She didn’t take the chair.
She stopped before the main viewport as the blast shields retracted. Behind her, the chair rotated smoothly, aligning itself with her stance, waiting like a loyal hound. The symbolism crushed what little resistance Vance had left. Even the furniture knew who commanded now.
“You can’t do this!” Vance screamed, scrambling to his feet, spit flying. “I’m an admiral of the fleet. Thirty years of service!” He lunged for the emergency comms panel, desperate to summon outside reinforcements.
“All ships, this is Admiral Vance. Mutiny in progress. Open fire on my coordinates.” The comm static crackled—then a calm voice answered. “Not the fleet.” A pause. “The automated High Command Tribunal system.” Admiral Vance, your transmission is being recorded as evidence in active court-martial proceedings initiated under Ghost Protocol. Please stand by.
Vance stared at the receiver. The color drained from his face until he looked like a corpse. The doors burst open. A man entered—Cade Riven, thirty-four, newly appointed commander of the reconstituted Ghost Division. “Ghost Five reinstated. Supreme Command confirmed.” The system chimed. Maximum command authority transferred to Leora Hale.
Cade faced Vance. “You concealed the losses. Abandoned Ghost Division. Faked their deaths to protect your position.” Before the stunned crew, Leora spoke. “I’m not here for vengeance. I’m here to reclaim what was stolen—the truth.”
Cade hadn’t come alone. Four elite soldiers followed him in stealth armor, faces hidden behind polarized visors, moving with the silent lethality of predators. They didn’t raise their weapons. They didn’t need to. Their presence alone reduced arrogant officers to trembling children.
One soldier stopped in front of the burly ensign who had mocked Leora’s clothes, looked him up and down, then slowly shook his head. The ensign looked close to vomiting. Cade stepped up to Leora and snapped a crisp salute—one of deep respect that no admiral had ever earned from him.
Leora returned it, her form flawless, shedding the guise of the exhausted engineer in an instant. Morell, grasping for dignity, stepped toward Cade, puffing out his chest. “Commander, I demand you arrest this woman. She has compromised my ship.” Cade didn’t even look at him.
He walked straight through Morell’s personal space, his armored shoulder slamming into the captain hard enough to spin him aside. “Your ship?” Cade asked, glancing back with bored contempt. “This vessel was built on Ghost Division specifications. You’ve been flying a rental. And the landlord just came home.”
He signaled. Two soldiers stepped forward, lifting Morell by the armpits as if he were an unruly child, his feet dangling uselessly as they carried him off the command deck.
The dismantling of their power wasn’t only physical—it was financial and social. As Cade secured the room, Leora crossed to the master finance console and entered a single command. The main screen fractured into twelve windows, revealing offshore accounts belonging to Vance, Morell, and Anne Ward—each swollen with embezzled Ghost Division burial funds.
With a flick of her wrist, Leora initiated the transfer. The AI chimed pleasantly. Recipient: War Orphan Relief Fund. Transaction complete. The officers watched in horror as their stolen millions—retirements, bribes, safety nets—drained to zero in seconds.
They weren’t merely arrested. They were erased—bankrupted, their greed repurposed to heal those they had harmed.
The scribe who had falsified the sensor report tried to fade into the shadows, clutching his datapad. Leora didn’t turn. “Correction to log entry seventy-four alpha.” The scribe froze.
“Equipment failure was due to admiral mishandling, not engineer incompetence. Update the record.” He shook so badly the pad nearly slipped from his hands. “Y-yes. Yes, ma’am. Admiral. Ghost Five.” He typed frantically, sweat pouring down his face.
“And add a note,” Leora continued, her voice steel. “Falsifying records is a court-martial offense. I’ll be reviewing your full history by morning.” The scribe collapsed into his chair, silently weeping.
Admiral Vance was arrested on the spot, cuffs snapping shut as security escorted him away, head bowed in defeat. Complicit officers were suspended, badges stripped in quiet ceremonies the next day, faces ashen as they packed their belongings. Captain Morell and the mockers were reassigned to the lowest postings. Careers shattered.
Orders fell like hammer blows. Whispers spread through the fleet—stories of the silent engineer who had been a legend all along. Leora walked the decks with quiet authority now, crews saluting as she passed. Her jumpsuit remained plain, but her presence was unmistakable.
Before Vance was dragged away, Leora signaled the guards to stop. She stepped up to the trembling admiral and pulled from her pocket the crumpled photograph of her home world—once stomped on, now smoothed flat. She tucked it carefully into his breast pocket, over his pounding heart.
“Keep this,” she said softly, her voice echoing across the bridge. “It’ll give you something to look at in your cell. A reminder of the world you burned to buy those metals.” Vance stared at the photo, then at her, tears of shame finally breaking through as his moral defeat crushed him.
He sagged in the guards’ grip, dragged away—not a martyr, but a warning.
Morell’s punishment was particularly fitting. He wasn’t merely dismissed. He was reassigned to waste reclamation on a deep-space buoy—a solitary, foul-smelling manual labor post with no subordinates left to torment. Stripped of his insignia, he passed Leora in the corridor.
He opened his mouth—perhaps to beg, perhaps to curse—but she didn’t slow. She looked through him as if he didn’t exist, reducing him to exactly what he had always feared—irrelevance. The realization hit harder than any blow.
The lieutenant who had shoulder-checked her was reassigned to exterior hull scrubbing in zero gravity, forced to clean ships by hand with a magnetic brush. Later that day, Leora passed a viewport and saw him drifting outside, clumsy and terrified of the void. He looked in and saw her watching.
She raised a coffee mug in a quiet toast—the same one she’d once been forbidden to use. He lowered his head, defeated, every scrape of the brush a reminder of the arrogance that had put him there.
The snobbish major with the expensive watch lost his commission after the AI uncovered financial irregularities during the purge. He stood alone in the docking bay, his possessions reduced to a cardboard box, his watch confiscated as evidence. As Leora boarded the Ghost command shuttle flanked by her elite team, he tried to sneer—but only sobbed.
Leora didn’t look back. She had a division to rebuild—and a galaxy to remind that ghosts never truly die.
They just wait for the right moment to haunt the guilty.
