Starvivianelle did not enter Galaxenchi expecting noise. She entered expecting a clock.
Gallaxengongshi{capital} sat under gold-leaning sky-glow and a citywide hush that felt deliberate, like the streets had been trained to speak only when necessary. Transit signage carried crisp kanji-like iconography and time-stamped guidance. Walkways were polished to a reflective discipline. Even the air had that clean, mineral scent that comes from water systems that never drift off spec. It was a different kind of governability than Starrup's green wealth—less "eco-sermon," more "temple of precision." That meant the enemy would not try to wreck it loudly. They would try to borrow its voice.
Starvivianelle's boots touched the platform edge at Galaxenportal City and she held still long enough to read the surfaces. The kiosks refreshed in a steady cadence. Drone-lanes above the concourse pulsed with a gold-green rhythm, not her home's neon green but close enough to be weaponized. She watched a municipal screen cycle through a public advisory and noted the micro-lag at the end of the loop—half a heartbeat late. That delay wasn't a glitch. It was an insertion seam.
Her comm stayed silent until she sent a single check ping. On the other end, Starbeam Charmley answered in a voice stripped of ornament.
"Your permissions are local and perishable," Charmley said. "Compartmented. Nothing travels clean. If you need a door to open, you will open it with a fresh life clock."
"Understood," Starvivianelle replied. She kept her eyes on the concourse reflections as she spoke, watching the crowd without looking like she was watching. "I'm moving on the custody target."
A second channel opened, softer but heavier. Professor Prince Galaxbeam did not speak like a commander issuing emotion. He spoke like a lattice making reality coherent.
"Risk window begins on the half-hour," Galaxbeam said. "They will try to launder identity into authority before the next tick. Treat every official surface as compromised until proven otherwise."
Starvivianelle did not nod, because nodding to the air is a tell. She simply shifted her weight and stepped into the flow.
Her cover was simple: utility audit. A slate in her hand, a tool belt with innocuous modules, and a field jacket that looked like any technician's. In a city that worshiped procedure, a technician was a priest.
The café meeting was not a break. It was the base.
A transit-concourse café in Galaxenportal City sat between two platform spines with a glass wall overlooking a water-feature garden. Steam rose from cups. Bento boxes clicked open and shut. The lighting was calm enough to make civilians believe war could not happen within ten meters of a pastry display. That belief was useful if you were trying to hide a transfer inside normal life.
Starvivianelle ordered coffee and a small lunch, chose a seat that gave her sightlines to both exits, and placed her cup sleeve on the table in a precise orientation. The sleeve looked generic. Its printed pattern—tiny stars and leaf icons—was a one-time pad to anyone who knew how to read the spacing.
A Galaxy courier-operator arrived exactly on the minute, face neutral, shoulders carrying the quiet stress of someone who had been hunted for hours without running. They sat without greeting and slid a sealed micro-drive under the edge of the bento lid.
No speeches. No gratitude. Custody began as soon as the object crossed the table.
"Checksum phrase," Starvivianelle said, voice low.
The courier's eyes flicked once. "Coherence makes decisions possible."
Starvivianelle's fingers tightened slightly on the cup. Correct. She slid her own token across: a perishable credential patch that would die within minutes by design.
"Stay close," she said. "If screens speak, you do not obey them. You obey me."
The courier swallowed. "Understood."
A municipal screen across the concourse refreshed. The advisory changed. The formatting remained flawless.
"Emergency reroute. Proceed to East Concourse Gate. Present operator credential for expedited guidance."
The words were gentle. The intent was predatory.
A civilian nearby stood halfway from their chair, confused. "Did that just—"
Starvivianelle stood before confusion could become motion. She did not point at the screen. She pointed at the floor.
"Follow physical markers only," she said, calm enough to be copied.
Her right hand snapped twice—tight, silent. A small Star beacon on her belt activated and projected a thin green line onto the tile, a verification path that pulsed with a checksum glyph. The line ran away from the East Concourse Gate and toward a maintenance corridor that looked boring enough to be safe.
A café attendant blinked, startled. "Ma'am—"
Starvivianelle held up the slate with a technician's authority and walked as if she owned the corridor. The courier moved with her, shoulders tense but obedient. Two Star Regime escorts—already staged as "facility contractors"—fell in at the edges, bodies angled to keep civilians from drifting into the wrong lane behind them.
A voice cut through the concourse, sharp and frightened, an anime burst inside a disciplined space.
"It's the Blackened Regime! They are behind this!"
Starvivianelle did not answer the accusation. She answered the movement. She made the lane real, then she left the public surface before the lie could migrate.
The service corridor door accepted her perishable patch and clicked open. The moment they crossed, she killed the beacon behind them to prevent pursuit by anyone following the green line like a breadcrumb.
"Charmley," she said into comm.
"Active," Charmley replied.
"They're pushing 'operator credential expedited guidance' on public screens," Starvivianelle said. "Fake calm. Perfect formatting."
"Expected," Charmley said. "Collapse any slot you cannot verify. You keep custody physical."
Starvivianelle exhaled once, controlled. "Copy."
The corridor narrowed. The air cooled. The sound changed—fans, pipes, and that faint electrical hum that lives inside cities like a second heartbeat.
Then the first BRD ground unit stepped out of a shadowed alcove as if the hallway had grown a person.
Blackened gear, matte and angular, eyes scanning with practiced contempt. Two more followed behind, flanking. They held weapons low, not to fire, to posture. The posture was meant to slow her down. Slowness was the currency.
Starvivianelle didn't grant them time.
Her left hand swept forward and conjured a hard-light lattice—green, leaf-veined geometry that snapped into existence like a living fence. The lattice slammed into the first soldier's chest and pinned them to the wall without blood. The second raised their rifle. A thin vine of luminous green whipped from Starvivianelle's wrist and wrapped the barrel, yanking it sideways into the ceiling with a sharp crack.
She stepped in, closed distance, and struck the third with the heel of her palm. The blow carried a pulse—Star energy compressed into a directed shock. The soldier's body hit the floor in silence, muscles refusing command for three seconds. Enough.
One of her escorts moved to secure the corridor end. The other pulled the pinned soldier's weapon away and kicked it down the hall.
The courier stared, breath shallow. "You—"
"Move," Starvivianelle said. No apology. No explanation.
They advanced deeper into the service network. The plan was to cut across Galaxenhueko, reach a secure transit node, and get the courier into a protected corridor that would carry them toward Gallaxengongshi{capital} where Galaxbeam's lattice could lock custody into official systems.
Galaxbeam's voice returned, calm as mathematics. "Ambush point shifting. Shadow cell is reshaping doors ahead. Do not take the straight spine."
Starvivianelle's eyes tracked a junction sign. The arrow pointed forward. The paint was too fresh. The font spacing was a fraction wrong.
"Copy," she said.
She swung left into a narrow utility passage. The air smelled of damp stone and cooling metal. The passage should have been locked. It opened because Shadow wanted it to open. That was the trick: giving you a door so you feel lucky, then charging you interest later.
They moved anyway, because refusing every trap is also a trap. The goal was timing discipline, not superstition.
In the next junction, the corridor widened into a maintenance bay with overhead rails, stacked crates, and a faint fog that didn't belong indoors. The fog crawled along the floor like it was searching for ankles.
A Shadow operative stood at the far end, half-lit, half-not-there. They didn't speak. They simply raised a hand and the bay's doors began to close with slow inevitability—like the building itself had decided to swallow them.
Starvivianelle's escorts tightened their stance.
The courier's voice cracked. "We're boxed."
Starvivianelle did not raise her voice. She raised her hand.
Green energy gathered at her fingertips and unfurled into forest entities—three constructs formed from hard-light and living biomass pulled from the bay's emergency greenery systems. They weren't pretty. They were functional: broad-shouldered, bark-plated silhouettes with luminous leaf-veins pulsing where muscles would be. Their eyes were simple green points. Their job was to buy minutes.
"Hold the bay," Starvivianelle said.
The constructs moved immediately, stepping into the closing doors and bracing with weight that felt real. Metal groaned. The doors stopped halfway, held open by living force. At the same time, the constructs' arms split into vine-limbs that lashed toward the Shadow operative, forcing them back from the control panel.
Shadow didn't panic. Shadow adjusted. The fog thickened, rising to knee height, then waist height, then chest height—an attempt to blind and separate.
Starvivianelle snapped two portable beacons onto the floor. They projected a vertical grid of green light, a verification cage that gave edges to the fog. She used the grid like a ruler, tracking movement by distortion.
A shape moved fast through the fog—Blackened ground unit, attempting a flank. Starvivianelle pivoted and fired a short pulse into the grid itself. The pulse traveled along the lines and struck the moving distortion point like a net. The soldier hit the floor hard, pinned by luminous vines that tightened with every struggle.
One of her escorts shouted, sharp, uncontrolled. "Contact!"
Starvivianelle cut the panic with one sentence. "Maintain lane geometry."
The forest entities kept bracing the doors. The Shadow operative retreated, denied clean closure.
Then the Death Regime entered.
The air changed first: sterile, cold, clinical, like a hospital corridor hidden inside an industrial bay. A figure stepped through the fog wearing containment gear with gray-violet undertones. Their pupils glowed with the faint "+" cross trait when the light caught. They carried a canister rig, not aimed like a gun—held like a syringe.
The figure's gaze moved once, and Starvivianelle felt the anticipative weight of it. Death didn't rush. Death didn't posture. Death wrote outcomes.
The Death elite raised the canister and spoke quietly, as if recording a report. "You will choose decontamination or custody failure."
Starvivianelle's jaw tightened once. "No."
The canister hissed. A mist plume unfurled—thin, glittering with violet micro-sigils meant to trigger hazard sensors and force automatic safe-mode lockdown. A procedural trap. A clock-tax that would shut doors, lock gates, and demand time-consuming clearance protocols while BRD moved the courier away through another corridor.
Starvivianelle moved first.
She drove her palm forward and released a Star compression wave—green energy shaped into a fast-moving air shear. It hit the mist plume and forced it back into itself, collapsing the aerosol into a tight spiral. Before the spiral could spread, her forest entities snapped their vine-limbs outward and wrapped the spiral, constricting it like a living seal.
The Death elite's cross pupils brightened. They had expected her to block the mist. They had not expected her to contain it with organisms.
They stepped forward anyway, hand reaching toward the bay's hazard panel to force safe-mode manually.
Starvivianelle met the step with a hard-light spear—green, leaf-veined, conjured and thrown in one motion. The spear did not pierce flesh. It pinned the Death elite's sleeve to the wall with a heavy thunk, locking their arm for half a second.
Half a second was enough.
One of Starvivianelle's escorts surged and struck the Death elite with an electrified baton. The Death elite absorbed it, body barely reacting, and turned their head with slow contempt.
"Ground tricks," the Death elite said.
They flicked their free hand. A violet sigil wafer launched toward the floor—designed to embed and "authorize" a hazard state at the building level. If it landed, the bay would lock and procedure would start counting minutes like bullets.
Starvivianelle's eyes tracked it and her response was exact. She stomped once. A forest root construct erupted from the tile seam, snapped the wafer out of the air, and crushed it in a tight coil. Violet light sputtered, then died.
The Death elite paused, recalculating. That pause was the only generosity Death ever gave.
Galaxbeam's voice arrived in her ear, even, urgent without urgency. "Reinforcement timing: early. Star and Galaxy units converging on your coordinates. Hold for ninety seconds."
Starvivianelle didn't acknowledge with words. She acknowledged by tightening the fight.
She flicked her hand and the forest entities shifted formation—one bracing doors, one shielding the courier behind a bark-plated wall, one advancing. The advancing construct swung an arm and released a burst of thorn-like hard-light shards—not lethal, not decorative—targeted to cut comm wires and weapon grips. Blackened ground units staggered as their rifles went dead in their hands.
A Shadow operative tried again to close the doors. The bracing entity leaned in, muscles of green light flexing, and the door tracks shrieked under the strain. The door stayed open. The lane remained legible.
The Death elite ripped free from the pinned sleeve with a single brutal motion—fabric tearing like paper—and stepped toward Starvivianelle with the calm of a scalpel.
"You're delaying," the Death elite said. "Delay is still a choice. I already wrote the next corridor."
Starvivianelle lifted her chin slightly. "Then I overwrite."
She snapped both beacons into a new orientation and projected a corridor arrow grid across the bay's walls and floor. The grid became a three-dimensional map. She used it to place her next moves with engineer precision: where to force the Death elite's footfall, where to deny the Shadow operative a line-of-sight, where to block Blackened ground units from forming a firing angle.
The Death elite lunged.
Starvivianelle met the lunge with a leaf-blade—hard-light shaped into a curved edge. Their clash sparked green and violet. The Death elite's strength pressed like inevitability, but Starvivianelle didn't try to "win." She tried to manage the shape of the fight so it stayed away from the courier.
The Death elite feinted toward the courier. Starvivianelle anticipated and pivoted, slamming a hard-light barrier down like a guillotine between them. The barrier hummed with checksum pulses, rejecting anything that did not belong. The Death elite's hand hit the barrier and recoiled as if burned.
They didn't flinch. They adjusted, stepping sideways, reaching for another angle.
Starvivianelle snapped her fingers and the advancing forest entity grappled the Death elite from behind with vine-limbs, locking their shoulders. The Death elite's body tensed. They began to tear the vines apart with cold, controlled strength.
"Sixty seconds," Galaxbeam said. "Hold."
Starvivianelle's escort near the courier whispered, terrified. "They don't stop."
Starvivianelle's reply was tight and flat. "They retreat when hunted."
The first reinforcements arrived as a sound shift—boots hitting corridor metal in synchronized rhythm, not frantic, not scattered. Star Regime responders moved in with green-lit discipline, and behind them, Galaxy units carried a different aura: gold-yellow coherence, eyes that looked like they were calculating the room before they entered it.
A Star Elite engineer took one look at the bay and barked a directive. "Containment on my mark. Keep civilians behind the line."
A Galaxy operative—a calm woman with a tablet and eyes like quiet astronomy—raised her hand and projected a lattice overlay that stabilized the space. The fog thinned as if the building itself remembered how to be coherent.
Blackened ground units hesitated. They could fight Star ground forces. They could trade blows with Elites. They did not like what happened when multiple stacks converged under coherent leadership.
The Shadow operative retreated first, melting into a seam of darkness. No drama. No last words.
The Death elite fought for three more seconds, tearing the forest vines free with clinical violence. Then they paused and looked at the incoming Galaxy lattice as if reading a verdict.
"Too many surfaces," the Death elite murmured.
The Star Elite engineer raised a device and fired a verification pulse across the bay. The pulse snapped like a whip through the remaining BRD comm interference. In that clean moment, Starvivianelle felt the air become honest again.
The Death elite took one step backward.
Then another.
Then they turned and disappeared into a service corridor with the same sterile calm they'd arrived with, leaving the canister rig behind rather than risk being pinned into a fight they could not control.
Blackened ground units followed, dragging their wounded and leaving their pinned behind to be recovered later. They didn't run. They withdrew. That was how professionals admitted the hunt had turned.
Starvivianelle didn't chase. She locked custody.
She turned to the courier, stepped close enough that the courier could see the green in her eyes, and held out her hand. "Drive."
The courier pressed the micro-drive into her palm with shaking fingers. Starvivianelle snapped it into a sealed case on her belt and keyed it to a perishable permission clock. If stolen, it would die. If copied, it would corrupt. That was the only kind of "safe" that survived this war.
A Star responder approached, breathing hard. "We have an extraction lane open to Gallaxyukai. Rail is compromised. Air corridor is clean for seven minutes."
Starvivianelle nodded once. "We move."
Travel transition: rooftop lift and short air hop, Galaxenhueko → Gallaxyukai.
They emerged onto a rooftop where the city's gold-green lights spread out like circuitry under moon-sky. A VTOL's rotors spun with controlled urgency. Starvivianelle placed the courier into the center seat, flanked them with two responders, and sat opposite—eyes never leaving the skyline.
As the craft lifted, a municipal screen on a distant building refreshed with a calm advisory. Starvivianelle watched it, not because she trusted it, because she wanted to see if it blinked.
It did. Half a beat late.
Blackenstride's laughter did not arrive on her channel, but she felt it anyway, like a fingerprint on a clean surface.
Galaxbeam's voice returned, calm as ever. "Their withdrawal confirms priority: they wanted the courier alive and launderable. Now that custody is secured and reinforcements are hunting, they will reposition for the next half-hour window."
Starvivianelle looked down at Gallaxyukai's waterways—dark ribbons between disciplined lights—and made her final report without adding heat to it.
"Custody retained," she said. "BRD forced to retreat under converging stacks. Shadow reshaped environment. Death attempted procedural canister trap. Blackened used ground units for time-tax. Forest constructs bought ninety seconds. Reinforcements arrived and flipped the room."
Charmley answered immediately. "Good. Lock the drive to checksum-only. Rotate the courier under escort. No public surfaces."
Starvivianelle watched the city slide beneath them and kept her posture still. The courier beside her finally breathed out, a shaky exhale they'd been holding for far too long.
"Thank you," the courier whispered, almost embarrassed.
Starvivianelle didn't soften into sentiment. She gave the courier something better than comfort: a repeatable rule.
"You survived because you followed custody," she said. "Keep doing that."
The VTOL banked toward Gallaxengongshi{capital} under a sky that looked too calm to be honest. Starvivianelle held the sealed case against her belt like it was a heartbeat that could be stolen, and she listened for the next tone that would announce the half-hour window beginning again—because BRD did not need to win the city to win the concept of official.
They only needed one blink at the wrong moment.
And now, with reinforcements hunting the retreating BRD stacks through Galaxenchi's service spines, Starvivianelle understood the next phase with a quiet clarity: the enemy would stop chasing civilians as their primary lever the moment they realized custody and verification operators could be moved instead.
She tightened her grip on the case and watched the skyline for the next refresh lag.
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