Project Prometheus Ch. 69 - Teaser (Patreon)

Thanatos’s fingers flexed around his glass, knuckles audibly creaking against the reinforced material.

“You think he’s still in UCW space?” he asked, voice low.

Lirianne smirked bitterly. “If he’s smart? No. Bastard’s probably crawling through the fringe sectors, making friends in places the law doesn’t reach.”

Lirianne’s fingers tapped against her empty glass, her gaze distant as she recalled the mess they’d found themselves in.

“We knew,” she said slowly, “that whoever had paid for that crate wasn’t just somebody with a fat wallet — this was someone with influence. Real power. The kind that doesn’t just move credits — it moves people.”

She scoffed darkly. “And we knew that with a cargo hold full of kids in stasis pods, we were sitting on a bomb that could go off in any direction. We had to move fast.”

“Where’d you go?” Thanatos asked.

“To the Guild,” Lirianne said. “Vordek’s idea. Smart move, too.”

Thanatos made a low sound — something between a grunt and a chuckle. “Didn’t think you were the type to go running to authority.”

“I’m not,” Lirianne said flatly. “But this wasn’t just a bad job gone wrong — this was something big, and we needed a way out that didn’t end with us all in a body bag.”

She shook her head, still remembering the tension that had clung to the air like smoke in the minutes after their systems came back online.

“Vordek reminded me of something important,” she continued. “The Guild may tolerate all kinds of shady dealings, but they have hard rules about slave trading — especially when it comes to kids. No hunter with a shred of self-preservation crosses that line unless they’re begging to disappear.”

Thanatos’s helmet tilted slightly. “And you trusted the Guild to handle that?”

Lirianne chuckled bitterly. “Hell no. But it was the only move that didn’t leave us dead or on a hit list.”

The moment their engines were back online, they’d set course for one of the more established Guild halls — the kind run by hunters who still gave a damn about the rules. Not the backwater branches where hunters turned a blind eye to trafficking and worse, but a proper Core Hall — a place where reputation mattered more than credits.

“We landed at the Carthis Station Guild Hall,” Lirianne said. “Big place. Old-school hunters. The kind that don’t ‘skirt the rules’ because the rules are all that keep the Guild from turning into another syndicate.”

Thanatos gave a short nod. He knew the type — hardened professionals with enough blood on their hands to stain an ocean, but still anchored by a strict code.

“We walked in,” Lirianne continued, “dragged the whole story out in front of the local Guild magistrate — Dovan Brask. Grumpy old bastard. Built like a battleship, with enough scars to tell dozens of stories — but fair. I knew he wasn’t the type to brush this under the rug.”

“And?” Thanatos asked.

“And he was pissed,” Lirianne said with a grim smile. “The moment he heard what happened — what was in that crate — he had the kids offloaded into protective custody, assigned two senior hunters to run interference in case the client came looking, and put out a sector-wide warning that anyone trying to move stasis pods of unknown cargo was to be reported immediately.”

Her smile faded. “He also put a mark on the bastard who set it up — a silent contract. Off the books, no official bounties — just word through the hunter network that he was fair game.”

Thanatos’s fingers curled tightly around his glass. “That’s why I haven’t seen a public listing.”