A bit of roughness is needed

The Zenthari's ocular stalks twitched toward the bounty alert flashing on a nearby terminal—the same one Susan had subtly accessed via Eris's infiltrated systems while pretending to inspect the pod's thrusters. Its exoskeleton emitted a series of stressed pops. "Additional compensation... untenable."

Adam pushed off the hull, his boots crunching on broken stabilizer fins as he prowled toward the mechanic. "Funny." He tapped the holoscreen, enlarging a subsection about venue profits. "Because these numbers say you're charging fifty thousand a head for premium viewing pods." His grin showed too many teeth. "And we didn't see our cut listed."

A tendril of quicksilver slithered from the pod's ventilation shaft, coalescing into Eris's hand just as the Zenthari's mechanical arm jerked toward a hidden alarm. The AI's fingers tightened around its wrist joint with a screech of protesting metal. "Negotiation advised," Eris purred through the yard's PA system, her voice layered with the Stormcrow's weapon systems powering up in the background.

The Zenthari's mandibles stopped clicking mid-sentence. All six ocular stalks swiveled toward the bloodstained grates beneath their feet, where something organic and twitching was being dragged through the maintenance tunnels. Susan's boot nudged aside a discarded med-patch—the kind used for organ harvesting stabilization—just as Adam's knife was suddenly at the mechanic's primary trachea.