Aurelian, who saw all of this, did not react as much as Seris thought he would.
He stood still inside the ring of light and started reading.
That was when he understood why Seris had warned him the way she had.
Helion Bastion Twelve was not only a hidden base. It was part of a much larger military fallback framework, one designed to survive the collapse of surrounding frontier structures and preserve strategic assets until the Directorate could reassert control.
Except that the Directorate had never returned.
So the bastion had spent all this time sitting on sealed stores, buried authority packets, old logistical records, and enough restricted data that had no value now that the entire Directorate was gone.
There were also the blueprints.
