Morvane was the opposite of Taksipa's rusty brutality. It was a city of gleaming violet alloy and shimmering force fields, where Varikdar merchants conducted business that shaped star systems. Wealth was the only god here, and it was worshipped quietly, efficiently.
The strike team's skiff landed in a private port. Elara, playing the haughty dealer, breezed through security with a cascade of credit chits and forged authorization codes. Kaelen, walking two steps behind with his head bowed, scanned everything with his cybernetic eye, feeding data to their wrist-displays.
"The Calm Spire is in the central civic district," he murmured. "Heavy security. Private Varikdar guard. No Imperial troops. Malakor wants it to look... civilian."
They took a luxurious glide-car through cascading tiers of the city. Skodar saw slaves here too, but they were polished, dressed in fine livery, their collars made of precious metals. The slavery was colder, more institutionalized. The despair was hidden beneath a sheen of affluent misery.
Their safehouse was a rented vault in a merchant tower. From the window, they could see the Calm Spire—a graceful, needle-like structure emitting a gentle, peach-colored haze into the atmosphere. The source of the poison.
"The core is accessed through the main utility shaft," Elara said, spreading holographic blueprints. "Biometric locks, density scanners, and a final chamber with a quantum-coded seal. That's where we plant the spike."
The "spike" was a device Elara and Vaktari had designed—a reverse-resonance bomb. Instead of emitting a dampening field, it would unleash a powerful, one-time burst of amplified Prima resonance, overloading and frying the Spire's emission matrix.
"We get in, plant it, get out. Detonation is remote," Kira said, checking her modified plasma rifle.
"Malakor will have... contingencies," Kaelen said, his voice flat. "The Spire is bait. And a test."
Skodar knew he was right. This felt too straightforward. But they had no choice. Every hour, the dampener spread.
That night, they moved.