Chapter 25: Blood and Basil
Day 123 – 04:10 ship time
Relative velocity: 1 520 km/s
Range to Polyphemus: 0.1 light-hours
Thrust: 0.08 g, drives humming predator-low
The wheel grew until it filled the viewport—steel spokes glinting against brown-dwarf red, windows glowing sterile white. Polyphemus looked like any corporate station: clean, polite, humming. Voss's intel said otherwise—inside those spokes children were trimmed, chipped, and shipped like spare parts.
Karl muted the trumpet blues. No music now—only the count: one, two, three… six hundred… infinity.
05:00
The handshake
They hailed as "CoreRunner-9," transponder spoofed, cargo hot. Control replied: "Dock Bravo-Two, outer spoke. No weapons beyond this point. Comply or be vented."
Karl smiled the cut-smile. "Comply." And meant nothing.
Bravo-Two sleeve extended—mag-locks kissed. Umbilical pressurised, 0.08 g gravity pulled them gently down. Beyond the lock waited polite lighting and the smell of citrus masking blood.
05:15
Entry under false skin
They stepped in pairs—Karl and Miguel first, tool crates in hand, coveralls stitched with fake corporate patches. Selene followed with "calibration gear" that was rifles and charges. Jun carried a datapad glowing friendly blue. Tala led the children's council—five kids aged 12-16, dressed as apprentice techs, eyes older than their faces. Each carried a basil leaf pressed inside a breast pocket—green passport into hell.
Security scanned them—hand wands, polite nods. No one searched the children; child-labor was routine here.
Beyond the lock a digital banner greeted: "Welcome to Polyphemus – Refit, Reuse, Reward." The word reuse made Karl's count skip.
05:30
Split and flow
They separated at the first junction:
- Karl & Miguel → spoke B, child-refit labs
- Selene → hub core, turret control
- Jun → admin spoke A, data vault
- Tala + children → spoke C, dormitory extraction
- Rios (remote) → ship systems, standby lance
Each team carried timers synced to 90 minutes—auction start plus thirty, when chaos would bloom.
05:45
Spoke B – the refit floor
Karl stepped onto a catwalk and the world narrowed to steel and sorrow. Below, conveyor belts carried children—sedated, naked, bar-coded—past stations where techs drilled micro-chips into small bones, snipped vocal cords, injected memory-wipe chems. The belts moved slow, precise, polite. Citrus scent could not mask the copper underneath.
He counted—ten, twenty, thirty—forced breath, kept walking. Miguel's face became stone beside him.
They approached the lead tech—name-tag "Supervisor Vale," smile automatic. "Core delivery?" he asked.
Karl answered with a smile and a dart—rifle whispered, dart cracked, Vale collapsed silently. They dragged him behind a bank of sterilizers, stripped his badge, continued.
At the master console Miguel planted charges—shape-cutters aimed at belt drives, epoxy packs at chemical vats. Timer: 85 minutes. When it blew the floor would slag and belts would stop—children would fall free, unprocessed.
They moved deeper, planting liberation every ten meters.
06:00
Spoke C – dormitory
Tala and the children's council entered a dormitory—long, low, gravity gentle. Rows of beds held kids aged 6-14, each wristband bar-coded, each face blank from sedative. Basil scent drifted with them—green against sterile white.
Council members moved bed-to-bed, whispering: "We're taking you home. Stay calm, breathe slow." They placed basil leaves on small chests—green anchors against fear.
Tala worked medical—reversal patches on neck, glucose tabs under tongues. She counted—fifty, sixty, seventy—voice steady, hands steady.
At 80 beds she radioed: "Dorm load heavy, need more sleds."
Karl replied: "Sleds incoming. Keep counting."
06:15
Hub core – turret control
Selene floated through zero-g shaft, bypassing guards with flash-strips and silence. She reached the central turret node—a ring of auto-lances protecting the hub. Inside, two techs drank coffee, unaware.
She entered, smiled, fired darts—techs folded. She planted charges on power feeds, set timers for 85 minutes. When they blew the ring would go dark—no automated guns, no defensive lances.
She whispered to steel: "Remember these hands."
06:30
Admin spoke A – data vault
Jun slipped past reception with a stolen badge, face calm, heart racing. Vault door required retina and code; he used Supervisor Vale's eye—freshly removed and still warm—and the cipher Voss provided. Door sighed open.
Inside, rows of servers hummed—upstream names, buyer lists, route codes, bank accounts. He jacked in a spike-drive, began download—terrabytes of evidence. Simultaneously he planted logic bombs—when charges blew elsewhere these servers would melt into slag and memory.
Download complete at 06:45. He planted final charge, timer 85 minutes, and walked out whistling synthetic jazz.
07:00
The garden inside hell
All teams converged on the central cargo lock—a massive airlock capable of disgorging entire sled convoys. Here they would load real children into real pods, tow them to Hearth-Hammer, burn the rest behind.
Children's council worked assembly-line calm—some guiding sedated kids onto mag-sleds, others crushing basil leaves into the air vents—green scent chasing citrus out of the station forever.
Karl arrived last, carrying a child no older than six—unconscious, bandaged from a recent chip implant. He placed her gently into a pod, tucked basil behind her ear, whispered: "Count leaves, not cages."
07:15
Timer zero – the bloom
Ninety minutes expired. Charges bloomed simultaneous:
- Spoke B: belt drives slagged, chemical vats cracked, refit floor became a molten lake. Fire-suppression failed—epoxy had melted valves. Techs fled or burned.
- Hub core: turret ring went dark—auto-lances died mid-sentence.
- Admin: servers melted, upstream names locked in spike-drive now safe in Jun's pocket.
- Cargo lock: outer blast shutters opened to vacuum—atmosphere rushed, carrying debris, guards, and the scent of citrus into void.
The auction bell—large brass disk hanging central—superheated from nearby plasma, melted, droplets floating in zero-g like slow fireflies again, but bigger, brighter. The toll stopped mid-ring—silence louder than explosion.
07:25
Exodus under fire
They towed sleds—six mag-lines, thirty pods each, one hundred eighty total (twenty extras for spares), children inside breathing, basil on chests. They rolled toward dock Bravo-Two where Hearth-Hammer waited, drives hot, lance hungry.
Guards appeared—heavy armor, plasma lances. Selene laid suppression—darts cracking, strips flashing. Miguel lobbed epoxy grenades—clouds hardening on contact, sealing corridors, blocking pursuit.
Karl led the convoy, rifle speaking single words: stop, drop, gone.
Tala and children's council shepherded the line—counting aloud: one, two… six hundred… they reached one hundred eighty and kept counting hope.
07:35
Dock breach
They reached Bravo-Two—umbilical extended, lock cycling. Guards behind, turret dead, no auto-fire. Hearth-Hammer's outer hatch glowed welcome green.
Children pods rolled across, magnets clicking, line moving steady. Last pod crossed at 07:38. Karl backed across, rifle raised, firing final darts. Guards hesitated at melted corridor, unwilling to cross molten floor.
Karl stepped into lock, sealed hatch, keyed detonator—final gift.
07:40
Funeral pyre two
Charges planted along dock struts detonated. Bravo-Two sheared away from Polyphemus wheel, tearing a 40 m gash in the spoke. Atmosphere vented, decks buckled, the wheel's rotation wobbled, gravity flickered. The refit station became a broken clock.
Hearth-Hammer burned—0.15 g, drives roaring. Debris cloud expanded behind, cooling into glitter, carrying with it the scent of citrus, of molten steel, of freed breath.
08:00
Coast away, count complete
Karl floated to the blister, looked back. Polyphemus spun slow and broken, lights dying section by section. No more refit, no more reuse, no more reward.
He opened the log, voice raw:
Day 120 – Polyphemus destroyed. Six hundred children recovered alive. Zero children lost. Zero crew lost. Buyer network amputated. Upstream names secured in Jun's pocket. Next: Ascending-Prime, the quiet yacht, the top of the pyramid. We come quieter, leave louder. – Karl
Outside, six hundred pods drifted in gentle tether, frost clearing, basil rising. Inside, six hundred plus five plus one bot counted forward—one, two, three… infinity—toward the day the pyramid topples and every market forgets how to stand.
Forward, forward—until the quiet yacht learns the sound of its own melting bell.