Roxo was aboard his personal ship called the Shadow. It was in the shape of a crescent moon, completely black, effortlessly merging into the background of the endless space. In size, it was bigger than the Veil but smaller than the cylinder-like battleship they faced. Still, its weaponry was something that nobody should doubt as it was capable of standing up to most battleships of its era.

At that moment, it was traveling through an Astropath, nearing a border system of the Alliance. It was home to an old, red giant and its remaining two barren, cooked planets that it failed to gobble up. Right now, an observatory was circling it, studying the last phase of the dying star, running experiments on it, and secretly trying to come up with methods of inducing an artificial nova effect.

Junita knew this well and chose this place for the supposed meeting because of it. It was a secret that few knew about; not even the scientists working here were told that their experiments were because the Alliance wanted to develop a superweapon capable of destroying young and healthy stars.

Keshnar was not wrong when he mentioned, Junita was way too addicted to secrets. The fact that she knew about something that very few others knew was her biggest addiction in life. While waiting for their arrival, she wanted to learn more about the project and extract more data for herself, just for her own amusement.

"Boss." Kuti walked up to her as Junita was aboard her ship's bridge.

It was a small vessel, no bigger than the Dawn. It was V-shaped, with twin engines on its back. It was a fast, slick, luxurious vessel shining in a silvery luster as the sun's deep, orange light reflected off of it. Inside, the walls were smooth and metallic, with gold trims and decorations. The floor was covered with a red, soft carpet, and the whole ship cost at least as much as building a corvette.

"What is it?" She asked as she was sprawled out in a jacuzzi. It was built right into the bridge of her mostly automated ship. Nobody else was around her as her crew was on the station, scouring for secrets to be collected.

"We received a message. The first to arrive will be your grandfather. He comes with two others. A female, named Sylen, a wuulfharn-human hibrid. The other is a man named Omega, a slime-human hybrid.

"Slime…" She giggled, "I would love to find out our original name! Before humans labeled us like this, and we adopted it!"

"Does it matter?" Kuti asked, tilting her head. "I wouldn't care what my ancestors were. I am me. That is enough."

"But it is lost knowledge!" Junita moaned as she enjoyed the constant bubbling of her jacuzzi. "Want to bathe with me? I can wash you down~."

"No, thank you, Boss. I still can't sit well after yesterday. You just don't know how to hold back." Kuti answered calmly, shaking her head.

"Ahahahaha, but you liked it~ Anyway, after grandpa comes, I am going to meet with them! Meanwhile, try to sneak onto their ship and download their stuff!"

"I am going to download the… PIECES OF STUFFS." Kuti nodded with a silent sigh, as it meant copying the entire stored knowledge of a ship, which could take… days. Being stuck into ventilation systems and crawling around unnoticed was not her favorite hobbies.

…
….
…..

When Omega's group arrived, they did so on the Dawn. Slowly closing in on the station, docking, and then following the professor to meet with Junita, Sylen was left on the ship. She grumbled a little, feeling she was nothing but a pilot who brought the two here.

"At least you are here with me…." She moaned, kicking off her boots, placing her legs onto the dashboard, and munching on a chocolate bar.

"I wouldn't want it any other way!" Dawn answered.

"I was afraid you won't be able to come, being housed on that station now!"

"My existence has the edge over organics with this." Her synthetic voice laughed. "I can be at multiple places at once. It is… a very interesting feeling!"

"Can you follow their paths on the station?"

"I can, and I am doing it," Dawn answered, bringing up an image on the monitor before her. "I already gained access to their internal systems."

"Woah! You work fast!" She opened her eyes large and wide, watching the images change as Keshnar and Omega were led away by Junita, explaining the station to them.

"They have an inadequate security system for my presence." She answered proudly. "Oh?"

"What is it? Did you find something?" Sylen asked, curious as she sat up in place.

"You could say that!" Dawn answered as she switched the image, and now it showed their ship's outer shell. As the camera refocused, Sylen could see a small frame dressed in a slick, black suit coming out from the station's service exit and flying towards them using small jet-powered boots. After latching onto the Dawn, she quickly found where one of the escape pods' launch ports was, affixing a strange, triangular device next to it. "She is trying to hack into our systems and get inside."

"The little…" Sylen grumbled, clicking her tongue. "Can you let that thief in? And capture that bastard?"

"Sure." Dawn nodded, letting Kuti's device do its job, and after she was in, she did not put up any resistance to her advances. "She is good."

"Hmf…" Sylen scoffed, greatly incensed that someone was trying to steal from her ship. Now she was no longer angry that she was left behind, even thankful for it. She would capture that little thief, and then they would have the upper hand over Junita. "What is she doing?"

"She is going towards my core. She probably has the schematics of my body as she is swiftly moving around! She knows exactly where it is!"

"Does she want to sabotage you?!"

"I don't think so. I do not find any weapons on her except a self-defense pistol. Instead, I recognize multiple data storages on her and different gadgets for breaking through encryptions. I think she is here to spy on us."

"Or steal our data! That bitch!" She stood up, watching the images of her clearly, female figure. "Let's capture her! Make sure she can't call for help."

"I can immobilize her if you wish so."

"Good! Just don't kill her!"

"Yes!" Dawn replied, happy to oblige as for her, Sylen was a family member, same with Miyon. Maybe if the Neo-Hegemony learned that their new station would listen to the two first, than to Keshnar, Mirian or Jankho… they wouldn't be so happy about the fact that a rediscovered AI was in control of it.

Corty

Hey~ I came to the decision to cut back on chapter lengths. As the interest is much lower than I hoped for I am splitting my time and energy on writing two books at the same time. While for now, this is the only currently running book I am doing, in the background (as some of you may know) I am working on a fantasy story too. I want to get it into shape and ready to go live in January or February. The release date remains the same, 1 chapter every weekday. Now only their length is going to be around 1200 words per chapter, instead of 2000. Thank you for your understanding.