Chapter 26 — Iron Silence III
The harbour was nearly empty by the time Jamie Cash moved. Sky's drones still spun their lattice overhead, tracing invisible boxes around every foreign ship in the contested waters, but the pier itself was quiet. The Republic had turned its attention outward, feeding Bear's energy into runways and garrisons, sealing Dawn's vaults, and locking Bamboo's hospitals into triage. No one was left to watch a single man slipping along the dark edge of the docks.
Jamie walked without hurry. He carried no case, no weapon, nothing that would draw the eye of a patrol drone. His coat was heavy against the drizzle, and in his pocket the shard pulsed faintly through its cloth wrapping. The warmth was steady now, no longer the erratic heartbeat it had been when it first appeared from the tap. He imagined it was relieved, as though it had waited years to move from one set of hands to another.
He lit a cigarette to disguise his nerves. A man smoking looked ordinary. A man walking empty-handed in silence could be questioned. Smoke curled around his face as he kept his pace steady, not glancing at the security cameras fixed on the warehouses behind him. Every lens was tilted skyward, recording fleets and drones and embassies. The world had been forced to look up, which meant Jamie was free to move down here on the ground.
At the end of the pier, an old skiff waited. Its registration showed on Tide's port schedule as an inspection craft, the sort used to check hulls and moorings after heavy rain. The transponder broadcast a string of numbers so long and meaningless that no one bothered to investigate. The Republic's bureaucracy was precise but also overloaded. Iron Silence had compressed every channel to military priority. That left just enough cracks for a careful man to slide through.
Jamie climbed aboard, the wooden deck creaking under his boots. The small engine coughed before settling into a low, steady rumble. He cast off the line himself, glancing once at the towers of steel and light that marked the Republic's naval yards. Above them, Sky's interceptors still launched in pairs, white fire cutting across the night. Bear's cooling towers glowed faintly, their breath rising in pale clouds. The livestream feeds would be carrying those images across the globe, whilst no one cared about a skiff edging out of a forgotten berth.
He guided the boat into the channel. The water was dark and restless, but he kept the bow straight. Patrol drones crisscrossed the harbour mouth, their sensors sweeping the larger vessels that moved under Iron Silence's strict corridors. Jamie kept his head down and let his transponder do the talking. To the system, he was just another maintenance craft following an approved route. To the eyes of the world, he did not exist.
The meeting point lay outside the harbour, where the Republic's sensors focused on the broad arcs of the Federation carrier group. Jamie's skiff was a shadow compared to those formations. He slipped under the lee of a coastal reef, the rocks breaking the swell, and there a larger boat waited. Its silhouette was unmarked, its running lights dim, but Jamie recognised the shape. Federation design: functional, anonymous, and fast.
A single figure stood at the stern, a heavy coat pulled against the spray. Jamie eased the skiff alongside and tossed a line. The figure caught it without a word, tied it down, and extended a gloved hand.
"Do you have it?" the man asked. His accent was clipped, formal, but his eyes betrayed urgency.
Jamie reached into his pocket and drew out the bundle of cloth. He unwrapped it slowly, letting the shard catch what little light there was. The crystal pulsed with its own faint glow, colours folding inside its lattice in patterns no human eye could quite follow. The letters were still there, suspended in the core: CCX.
The Federation officer inhaled sharply, though he tried to hide it. He took the shard carefully, holding it as though it were both fragile and dangerous. For a moment, Jamie saw the reflection of the glow in the man's eyes, and he realised that the officer did not fully understand what he was holding. But that was not Jamie's concern.
"It is as promised," Jamie said. His voice carried no bravado, only the certainty of a man completing a task. "The Republic is too busy watching the fleets to notice me. They will not look down here until it is already gone."
The officer nodded. "The Admiralty will be pleased. This will justify every move we have made."
Jamie allowed himself a thin smile. "Then I imagine the chaos ends here. The Houses will ease Iron Silence once they realise nothing more is slipping away. The fleets will posture, but the storm will pass."
The officer gave no reply, only slipped the shard into a padded case and sealed it. He motioned for Jamie to climb aboard, but Jamie shook his head.
"I prefer the shadows," he said. "Too much attention has been drawn already. You sail north. I'll vanish south."
Without waiting for argument, he loosed the line and let the skiff drift back into the channel. The Federation boat powered away, its wake cutting sharp against the dark sea.
Jamie watched the boat disappear into the mist, the shard with it. The weight that had pressed against his ribs for hours was gone now, and with it the sharp edge of operational tension. He exhaled slowly, the taste of smoke still on his tongue.
He turned the skiff not outward to open water, but back towards the Republic's channels. South, into the fog that hung over the harbour approaches. The engine hummed beneath him as he guided the craft through the darkness, retracing the route he'd taken hours before.
The world above was still tense, still bristling with steel and fire. Fleets held position. Interceptors flew patrol patterns. But for Jamie, the work was finished. Not by fleeing, but by returning.
Deep cover meant staying in place. Three years building the identity of a failed entrepreneur didn't end with a single extraction. The Republic's investigators would come eventually—backtracking the breach, searching for the leak's origin. When they did, they'd find Jamie Cash exactly where he'd always been: struggling with his failing business ventures, bitter about rejection from House sponsorship, indistinguishable from a thousand other foreigners who'd washed up in the Republic without finding success.
He navigated by memory through the fog, letting the skiff drift back towards the pier where he'd started. The security cameras were still tilted skyward. The patrol drones still tracked carrier groups. Iron Silence kept every eye focused outward whilst Jamie slipped back into the cracks he'd emerged from.
By dawn, he'd return the skiff to its berth, walk back to his cramped apartment above the tramline, and resume the performance he'd maintained for three years. The cigarette vendor who knew his schedule. The landlord who complained about late rent. The employment office that kept rejecting his applications. All the small indignities that made a man invisible.
The crisis would de-escalate eventually. The fleets would withdraw, the markets would reopen, and both sides would craft narratives about who showed restraint and who demonstrated strength. But the shard in that padded case would already be in Federation facilities, being analysed by teams who actually understood what those three glowing letters meant.
Iron Silence had activated perfectly. Distributed response, each House moving independently yet coordinated. Impressive to watch.
Also instructive. Foreign intelligence now understood exactly how the system operated under pressure—what each House prioritised during crisis, where coordination happened, where operational independence created gaps. The Republic had revealed its defensive architecture whilst defending against theft that was already complete.
Both sides would claim victory. The Republic would cite successful crisis coordination. The Federation would cite successful extraction. Both claims would carry truth. Both systems had functioned as designed.
But now the west would have access to whatever CCX represented, and Jamie suspected that intellectual property would reshape strategic competition far more than whose defensive doctrine appeared more sophisticated during one night's theatre.
The harbour lights emerged from the fog ahead. Jamie reduced the engine to idle, letting momentum carry the skiff towards its berth. Above, Sky's drones continued their geometric patterns. Behind, the Federation boat carried its prize northward. And between them, one man returned to his cover, his role in the theft already fading into the fog of operational security.
The crisis was beginning.
But the real questions—about who had authorised the leak from inside, about what those three letters actually meant, about whether this was theft or liberation—those questions were only starting to surface.
Iron Silence would lift eventually. The fleets would withdraw. The Houses would restore civilian priority to their systems. Diplomatic channels would reopen with carefully worded explanations that preserved each side's narrative.
But silence about what had truly happened, about whose hand had opened the channel from inside the Republic's most secure systems—that silence was only beginning.
Jamie guided his skiff back to the pier, secured the line, and stepped onto solid ground. The Republic's lights surrounded him once more. Tomorrow he'd wake in his cramped apartment, walk to the employment office, and continue the performance of failure that made him invisible.
The extraction was complete. The operative remained in place. And somewhere in the Republic's carefully architected systems, someone named CCX had decided that knowledge hoarding served interests narrower than humanity's collective benefit.
The game was far from over.