Aria sighed as she walked out of the briefing room and back to her quarters. Commander Lance had been reticent to pause the test fires, but she'd walked him through the maintenance, testing, and diagnostic reports. Although the exact mode had yet to be determined, there was no world where this specific failure was anything but sabotage.

Aria boarded one of the shuttles that ran every quarter hour between the Operational and Residential Areas of the citadel. Her permanent residence was in Arborhaven, but given Dawnbreaker's deleterious impacts, settlement of any kind wasn't allowed within 200 kilometers, and travel was heavily restricted. Consequently, it would take over an hour for her to just commute to the citadel from Arborhaven. Boarding in the Officer's Quarters for three months didn't appeal to her, but a two hour commute every day appealed significantly less.

Aria gave polite nods to her fellow commuters, all of whom she knew at least by last name. Technicians were largely exempt from the formalities of straight-spined salutes in the presence of superiors, and they generally didn't receive such deference in turn. Consequently, the atmosphere within the shuttle remained broadly congenial despite the mixing of ranks, junior techs and corporals easily sharing seats with SupTechs who vastly outranked them.

Aria took out her linker. External signals were almost entirely jammed within the Operational Area, for security reasons, so she usually had to wait until she was on her way home to get the day's news. Nothing much of note, which she was broadly thankful for. Supposedly, the Argentum Conclave was getting bolder with pushing its borders, but territory was unlikely to change hands. The three most nascent of the Great Ducal Houses, Lance, Rostov, and Torvall, continued to bicker incessantly, trying to undermine one another while strengthening their own positions.

Lance and Rostov had both galvanized around their scions, putting their wealth towards cultivation resources in hopes that they would make Inner Disciple within the Sacred Starheart Monastery. That sort of protection, from a "guardian ancestor", was invaluable politically, sure. But clout didn't stop a bullet, and should worse come to worst, such guardian ancestors ensured their houses would at least avoid extermination.

Torvall had opted for a different tack entirely. Rather than betting it all on singular scions, to be lovingly donated into the Monastery's nurturing arms, Aria's feeds flooded with stories of their brave young heroes, at the frontlines against the Conclave forces, selflessly defending the Imperium's territory against its enemies. Ingratiating themselves to the Shahanshah with valour wouldn't put them in the running for the throne in the next few hundred years, by any means, but so long as House Aurelian held the throne, direct offensive action against House Torvall's holdings would carry a blood price more steep than anyone could justify.

Events were otherwise unremarkable. A small tax increase on import of manufactured goods, excluding foodstuffs, for any world with a permanent population over a billion. Stellar weather advisories. Trade agreements between some of the less impressive Great Merchant Houses.

By the time Aria finished reading, the shuttle had come to a stop in the Residential Area. She quickly hurried off, keeping her head down as she walked from the terminal over to the residential blocks. No one was likely to bother her here at this hour, of course, but she tended to keep her eyes down and forward simply as a matter of habit and principle.

Aria's quarters were on the third floor. A single room, with a bed that doubled as the only seating, a small desk, and a small countertop in one corner equipped with an induction hotplate, a small tabletop oven, and an electric kettle. Though food could be delivered from the mess on demand, sometimes one just wished to cook for themselves.

Aria took off her jacket and tossed it on the bed before unzipping the top half of her jumpsuit, tying the sleeves around her waist to keep it from touching the floor. She wasn't particularly concerned about impropriety, behind the locked door of her own room, and the carbon nanotube corset that she wore underneath her jumpsuit kept her modest to her own satisfaction.

Aria grabbed a drink from her icebox, something fruity and carbonated, and took a seat at her desk, turning on her computer, and opened the encrypted messaging program she'd use to talk to her dad when he was away from home. She hadn't hoped, but…it still hurt. He'd gone dark weeks ago, saying he would be home soon with a "special gift for his little girl". Supposedly, he'd been forced to alter his plans for his return trip after some complications on the last job.

Aria wasn't a child, nor was her father so disrespectful of her as to lie to her about the nature of his work. He was a thief and a smuggler, plain and simple. He stole, he moved merchandise, and he connected prospective buyers with valuables that had been "jettisoned" onto the starways by overladen transports.

He was also the kindest, most generous, most selfless man she'd ever met, always eager to share his fortune with just about anyone who'd crossed his path. She'd never known him to hold spite or envy in his heart, and even in misfortune he would simply shrug and say, "Well, what's next then?"

Aria sighed, and closed the chat. She would pray to the Saints for his safe return, and do her best not to worry about it.

Just like she'd been doing.

For two weeks.

Before she could descend too much further down that spiral, a jingling electronic chime filled her ears; her mum was calling.

Aria quickly took the call, eager for the distraction. Her mother's voice filled her ears, an ever-welcome reprieve from the loneliness and homesickness that had been eating away at her these past several months.

"Hey, mama."

Anya Chen was a hawkish woman on the best of days. Her eyes had an effortlessly penetrating quality that tended to make people who didn't know her shrink. But for her daughter, those sharp eyes softened with concern, as she smiled. "How's my girl doing?"

"Great, actually. Career highlight. Youngest Lead Tech in the system's history, I averted disaster, and I didn't die. Who knows, maybe in five or ten years some part of that will land me a cushy job on one of the ducal worlds." Aria laughed, but it was a close thing.

Anya laughed with her, but she saw the strain underpinning it. "I'm guessing you can't tell me about this near miss disaster?"

Aria shrugged, "It'll come down the grapevine soon enough. I'd like to keep a lid on it for at least a day or two though."

"Alright, keep your secrets then, femme fatale."

Aria cringed, but she couldn't help but let out a self-deprecating chuckle. "Any word from baba, yet?"

Anya shook her head, "Nothing new. It's not the longest he's gone dark like this but…it's coming close. I worry about him."

"You know he'll be fine. You know he always is. Just, try not to fret about it too much."

"Is that what you've been doing?" The barest undercurrent of accusation in her mother's tone.

"Haven't had time to, at any rate. Busy, busy."

"Like mother like daughter, hm?"

Aria sighed and cracked open her drink, taking a long, slow gulp. "Like there was ever any doubt. Speaking of though…"

Anya laughed, "Yes yes, you're very busy, I get it, no time for your old crone of a mother."

Aria pouted, "You know that's not what I meant."

"I know, I know, I'm just teasing. I need to get ready for a meeting myself. Dorian Merrick wants me to handle his House's expansions in the sector, "

Aria narrowed her eyes. "Mama. You always said, our family doesn't trade in weapons. You barely even let me take this job." House Merrick were notorious ironmongers, and had almost been sanctioned by the throne several decades ago for selling to both sides during a war with the Conclave.

"And we don't. The prince wants to diversify the family business away from arms, and he's willing to pay good money to see it done well. I'll cut them off if so much as a single bullet passes through my warehouses, don't you worry."

"Just don't let them push you, alright? Take the advice you always give me."

"I've been in this business since before you were born, sweetheart. I'll manage. Now go, do whatever important work it is you have to be doing even after you walk out of the office."

"Baba would cry if he saw me working more than I'm paid for."

"So make him proud and make sure they pay you for it. We'll talk later. Saints watch over you."

"May the Saints watch over you too, mama."

Aria sighed as she ended the call. She didn't trust the Merrick princeling as far as she could throw him, but her mother wasn't some gullible fool. Her instincts were sharp, and Aria would simply have to trust her to have matters handled.

At any rate, obsessing over it wouldn't do any good. Instead, she leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and laying her hands on the armrests. A ten count of deep, uniform, rhythmic breaths, and the world outside fell away.

Aria turned her eye inwards. and breathed. Air, yes, the smell of conditioned cold air from the ventilation system and the lived-in smells of her quarters – sweat, deodorant, fabric softener from the fresh bedsheets – but something else, too. Something intangible. Ephemeral. So thin, impossible to grasp, it was hard sometimes to believe it was actually there.

She felt the way the minuscule trickle of power dripped into her…she didn't know what to call it. "Soul" felt too mystical for her tastes, but it certainly wasn't anything physical. And yet it was undeniably real, tangible. She felt the way it lit up with every inhale, the way its glow slowly waned as she breathed out, kindled anew on the next breath.

Over the years, she'd managed to beg, borrow, and barter her way into getting her hands on various cultivation manuals. Some were from the libraries of minor sects that got too big for their britches, and had subsequently been purged from existence by the Sacred Starheart Monastery. Others came from the loose lips of rogues and wanderers, traded for information, or off the corpses of unfortunates that no one bothered to loot before the crows descended. The most important of those manuals — the one that had set her on her path in earnest — was a simple energy circulation technique called the Nascent Tides of Vital Radiance.

She knew the technique wasn't very good, of course, but that hardly mattered, It worked. She'd memorized, arguably mastered it, years ago, and every idle moment since she would practice it. She was still mortal, she had no delusions of grandeur about that. But every time she felt the traces of Radiance move through her, it gave her just a little bit more hope that that wouldn't be the case forever. Hope that some day, she'd soar through the stars on her own wings.

Unfortunately, hope only got you so far. She'd learned that lesson the hard way. One of the manuals she'd accrued was for a, supposedly, quite efficient and straightforward unarmed fighting technique, an art called Sundering Palms. It was supposed to destroy the internal structure of anything it came into contact with, liquefying an opponent's organs and hollowing out boulders into shells full of gravel or even sand. And to its credit, it did do that to the boulder Aria had tested it on.

She just would've preferred if it hadn't ruinously seared the channels within her left arm in the process. She'd never been able to cycle her Radiance through there since. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get so much as a trickle to penetrate into it. it wasn't that she'd severed that part of her. Her Radiance touched it, and bounced off of it. It was simply…deadened. Useless. The pain of its destruction had left her bedridden for weeks, with a pain the doctors were utterly unable to treat. What anesthetic do you administer when the pain comes from something beyond flesh and blood?

Every once in a while, she would have nightmares about that pain, even now, and wake up screaming.

Setting aside that mishap, her cycling continued. The ebb and flow of energy, of light, perfectly timed to her breath. The silent sanctuary of her self. She could've stayed there for hours. On the nights when her mind wouldn't stop racing, she'd fall asleep doing it.

Finally, she opened her eyes. Her mind felt…not empty, but clear. She took a sip of her drink, and leaned forward, getting to work.

She knew what she had to do.

She knew it would make a lot of her peers very angry.

She also knew that there was no world where she could, in good conscience, do anything else.

It was time for her to see firsthand how the Admiralty went about flushing out rats.