He made it three corridors before the first impact rattled the walls hard enough to shift his footing. He dared not stop.
The sounds of the fight outside were distant now, almost muffled thumps, the occasional screech of an insect being blasted and thrown could still be heard. He could still sense the insects through the thin residue of his earlier mental sweep. Forty-three outside. Maybe more rounding the east perimeter. He wasn't looking too hard nor had his power spread enough to accurately pinpoint what was going on.
They could handle it.
They had been oh so insistent about it, after all.
Another tremor that was closer this time spread through the ship.
Jinyue adjusted his grip on the bow slung over his shoulder and kept walking.
The corridor lights were steady, at least that was a good thing. It meant the primary power cell hadn't taken damage yet. He checked the secondary grid in his peripheral awareness — a habit so ingrained he barely registered doing it — and noted two minor fluctuations near the outer hull sensors; they were rather minor and definitely manageable. He didn't stop walking, though he didn't know where exactly he wanted to go.
"You are moving toward the inner quarters," Cody observed from beside him, his optics steady and carefully neutral if not curious.
"I am."
"The others are still engaged outside."
"mmh"
"You left them?" Cody seemed just as surprised as he was feeling unamused.
"They asked me to, you know."
Cody did not respond immediately. The small pause carried a weight Jinyue recognised. It was the pause that preceded a statement Cody knew he wouldn't like but had calculated was worth making anyway.
"You are not usually this agreeable."
Jinyue's jaw tightened slightly. "Cody, I'm just in a good mood today, what can I say?"
He wasn't, and even Cody knew that.
He in fact knew that he wasn't, and the knowing of it was the most irritating part. He was being petty. He was fully aware he was being petty, and that awareness did absolutely nothing to stop it. It actually got him feeling worse. There was a very specific kind of frustration that came from being right and treated as though you were wrong, and he had been marinating in it since the moment someone had jammed his own storage door shut from the outside.
His storage.
His door.
He exhaled once through his nose and turned the corner toward the inner quarters.
The truth, which he had no particular interest in examining right now, was that the pettiness was probably worse than it should have been. He was self-aware enough to recognise it for what it was — the sharpness, the disproportionate irritation at things that would normally have registered as mild inconveniences. His patience was thinner than usual. His temper was sitting slightly too close to the surface.
He knew what that meant.
His heat. Delayed, suppressed, and coiled somewhere deep inside was starting to manifest. He had managed it this long through sheer force of stubbornness and the fact that strangers were present, now it seemed his body was getting comfortable enough near people...he'd rather it didn't. He would manage it longer. He needed to. Just long enough for the rescue signal to come through, for transport to arrive, for these people to take their injuries and their opinions about where he should stand and leave his compound.
He could hold.
He turned another corner and slowed slightly without meaning to.
The Rin thing was bothering him more than the pettiness was.
He analysed it clinically: he had spoken openly, perhaps even too trustingly for all the boons he was given. He had answered questions that did not require answering. He had offered frustrations he had no tactical reason to share. He had — and this was the part that sat wrong — not minded it, in the moment. He had not been practising patience or strategic softness. He had simply... spoken. As he might have spoken to Cody.
That was not normal.
He did not do that. He was not built for friendships, mostly acquaintances, and even that was rare. Trust was a liability with a very poor historical return rate, and he had learned that lesson thoroughly in a previous life, and then again, more quietly, in this one. He trusted Cody. He trusted his own data. He trusted the compound walls he'd built himself. And lately, Cody was pushing for him to get unnecessary help with all his unsolicited advice.
He did not and was not going trust soldiers he had known for weeks.
Especially not soldiers who were observant in the specific, quiet way that the General was. The man noticed things. He noticed too many things. The inconsistencies Jinyue typically kept smoothed flat had already caught his attention at least twice, and the question of what he intended to do with that information remained open. He had to hand it to the man; he had all it took to get to that position, both with physical strength and wit.
Jinyue had been less careful than he should have been.
He closed it off now, neatly, the way he always did and had that mini-compartment sealed, variable noted, filed under address later when not surrounded by insects. He was good at this. He had been good at this for years, and he would continue to be good at it, yeah.
He reached the inner quarters and stopped. Where was he even going, really? Was this it?
The sounds outside were getting louder again.
He set the rifle down against the wall and crossed his arms, listening. The insects were testing the hull at multiple points. He could map the pressure variations without even extending his power, the vibration patterns in the floor plating told him enough. East side, north corner, and...
"Master Jinyue."
Cody's voice had changed register. Flat, clipped, the tone he used when delivering information he had already calculated Jinyue would not take well.
Jinyue turned.
"I find its impudent to mention that the workshop sector has been breached. Impact to the north exterior wall. Structural estimate: forty per cent integrity remaining in the outer panel. Internal damage is ongoing."
Jinyue stood very still, hoping to hear a joke.
"Fuck," he muttered angrily as Cody continued to report.
"Three insects accessed the gap in the exterior. The secondary worktable has sustained direct impact. The alloy casting unit is reporting offline. Material containment on shelves B-3 and B-4 has been compromised. I am still running an assessment on the precision instruments."
Jinyue did not move for a moment.
The alloy casting unit had taken him eleven months to calibrate. Eleven months of scavenged components and iterative failures and adjustments by millimetres at a time until the output precision was exactly where he needed it. The communication device he had worked so hard to fix for the others to be evacuated and leave was in B-3. There were no replacement parts within the area of the planet.
B-3 also housed the optical assembly tools he had built by hand before Cody had been fully operational, the ones he'd made when his fingers were still learning the motor controls of this body. B-4 was the component shelving for his unfinished projects. The atmospheric filtration device. The signal amplifier prototype. Two years of incremental work sitting on those shelves.
"Precision instruments," he said.
"Still assessing."
He breathed in slowly. Out slowly. His head lowered as he tried to calm himself, but he couldn't. Damn it.
"Hull integrity on the workshop sector."
"If current impact rate continues, full breach in approximately eight minutes."
Eight minutes.
Eight minutes.
He had built and curated that workshop over four years. He had built it before he had power cells to spare for heating, built it in the cold with hands that were still clumsy in a body that was still foreign. He had built it when Cody was still running off partial memory cores and couldn't tell the difference between a calibration tool and a cooking implement, nor did he have his personality. He had built it out of salvaged wreckage and stubbornness and the particular kind of single-minded focus that came from having absolutely nothing else.
And they had brought this…this destruction to his door.
The recon team. The insects had followed something back. He had said — he had said — that they would attract more trouble. He had told them. He had been very clear. And now there were insects in his workshop dismantling months of work while the people responsible were outside being celebrated for fighting them off for the Dominion. What about him and his home? And they had locked him in a room. What the hell!
"Master Jinyue," Cody said. "Your vital indicators suggest something else"
"I am fine."
"You are not fine."
"Cody."
"Elevated heart rate. Cortisol spike consistent with..."
"I know, okay! I get it."
Silence.
Another impact shuddered through the floor. Somewhere in the workshop, he heard — or imagined he heard — something fall. The sound of something small and precisely made hitting the floor at the wrong angle.
He picked up the bow.
"Open up the back hatch," he said.
"Master Jinyue." Cody's voice shifted again, and this time the register was different. Not the flat data-delivery tone. Softer. The voice he used when he was genuinely worried, which Jinyue usually found faintly exasperating and today found entirely irrelevant. "The others are at the front of the compound. If you use the back hatch, you will be isolated. Your proximity to them will offer the most suitable conditions."
"It will offer them an excuse to drag me somewhere again."
"It will offer you protection."
"I don't need their protection." He checked the charge on the rifle. Full. He picked up a secondary weapon from the rack and slung it across his back. "I need them to stop destroying my compound."
"The insects are destroying your compound."
"The insects followed them here."
He crossed the corridor toward the rear of the ship. Cody followed, optics flickering.
"Your heat indicators!"
"Are manageable."
"They were manageable this morning. Current readings suggest..."
"I said manageable." He reached the back hatch. The lock panel was intact. Good. "You have three seconds to give me a reason that isn't about the others finding me that I should not open this door."
Cody was quiet for exactly those three seconds.
"I don't have one," he admitted.
"Good."
"I want it noted that I advised against this."
"Noted."
"And that my advice was sound."
"Also noted. Stand back."
He keyed the hatch.
The seal released with a low hydraulic exhale and the door swung open onto the side of the compound that faced the open terrain. The sound hit him first, the shrilling, overlapping noise of the swarm, the crack of impact, the distant shouts of people who had apparently decided he was better stored than useful.
The night air came in cold and sharp.
And then Jinyue stopped holding his mental power in.
He didn't reach out gradually, the way he had been so carefully doing,sipping at his range like it was something to be rationed. He let it expand. Fully. The way he hadn't since he was alone, since there was no one here to notice, since it didn't matter who felt him.
It spread like light in dark water.
The insects felt it immediately.
He heard their pitch change. That shrill, metallic escalation meant they had found what they were looking for. Heads turned. Bodies reoriented. He could feel each one in his range the way he could feel the floor under his feet, the bow in his hand, the cold air against his skin.
His expression did not change.
"Hello," he said quietly, to no one in particular.