The funeral pyres burned for six days.
Haven's Point's tradition was cremation — a practical choice born from a mining colony's limited soil and unlimited mineral dust. The ashes were scattered over the mining claims that had brought people here in the first place, returned to the earth they'd worked, the earth they'd fought for.
Webb spoke at twenty-three of the forty-three funerals. The other twenty were handled by Vasquez, or by family members who preferred private grief to public ceremony. He didn't prepare remarks. He stood in front of each pyre — a metal grate over a superheated plasma vent, the body wrapped in colony standard burial cloth — and said what he knew.
Hanson's squad member, age thirty-four, two children. She'd held her position when the eastern line buckled.
The atmospheric processor maintenance worker, age fifty-one. He'd volunteered for militia the day after the first attack.
Ito.
The young mineral surveyor. Age nineteen. The one who'd asked if they were going to win.
Webb had said yes. He'd been wrong.
"I told him we'd win, and we did. But winning doesn't mean everyone survives. The games never showed this part — never showed the NPCs who died in the background while the hero completed the mission. Because they weren't NPCs. They were people."
He stood at Ito's pyre for longer than the others. The kid's face — he couldn't stop thinking of him as a kid, even though nineteen was old enough to die and had proven it — was covered by the burial cloth, but the shape beneath was too small. Too young. Too still.
The pyre ignited. Heat bloomed. He didn't look away.
---
[April 22, 2180 — Haven's Point, Operations Center]
The Talon Company messenger arrived on the fourth day.
She docked without ceremony — a fast courier ship, single pilot, the kind of vessel that mercenary companies used for contract enforcement and debt collection. The pilot was a salarian, young by salarian standards, with the quick-eyed efficiency of someone who'd been sent to deliver a message and had no interest in the scenery.
"Commander Vex sends her regards." The salarian set a datapad on Webb's desk. "Terms of compensation for services rendered."
The "services" were Talon Company's presence in the sector during the siege's conclusion — a presence that had consisted of two frigates sitting at a relay junction doing precisely nothing except being visible. Deterrence through existence. The invoice was creative.
Haven's Point would serve as a Talon Company resupply waypoint. Free fuel from the colony's mineral reserves, converted to propellant. Free docking for maintenance and repairs. No customs inspections on Talon Company cargo. No questions about passengers, destinations, or activities.
"For how long?"
"Indefinite. Commander Vex considers this a fair exchange for the stability your colony currently enjoys."
"Fair. Right. A merc base planted in my colony with no oversight and no expiration date. This is what 'unspecified favors' looks like when the bill comes due."
He couldn't refuse. Talon Company's two frigates represented more firepower than Haven's Point could deploy, and alienating them would remove the only military deterrent between the colony and whatever filled the power vacuum Razor's death had created.
"Accepted. But I want a direct comm channel to Commander Vex. If her people cause problems in my colony, I deal with her, not local operatives."
The salarian's quick eyes blinked. Processing.
"I'll relay the request. Commander Vex appreciates proactive communication."
The salarian left. The datapad sat on his desk like a contract with a devil — signed, sealed, and already generating costs he couldn't calculate.
Garrus leaned in the doorway.
"Merc waystation."
"I heard."
"The colony council won't like it."
"The colony council didn't negotiate with Vortix at three in the morning while the fleet was overhead. They can adjust."
A pause. Garrus's mandibles shifted — the expression that preceded honesty Webb had learned to recognize.
"That's the second compromise this week. The deal with Vortix. Now Talon Company."
"I know."
"At some point, the compromises stop being tactical and start being identity."
Webb looked at him. The turian stood in the doorway with the Mantis slung and his C-Sec credentials somewhere in a storage locker, having followed Webb through a corruption investigation, a siege, and a political betrayal that had turned a warlord's fleet against itself.
"Are you telling me I'm becoming the bad guy?"
"I'm telling you to keep track. Of the deals, the costs, the lines you've crossed. Because the people in this colony trust you, and trust is the one thing you can't rebuild with impossible engineering."
The words landed. Not angry — concerned. The particular concern of a friend who'd watched institutions rot from the inside and knew the warning signs.
"Noted. And Garrus?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For the shot."
The turian's mandibles shifted again. Not the dry humor expression or the assessment expression. Something quieter.
"It wasn't a hard shot. Razor was standing still." He straightened off the doorframe. "The hard part was what came before."
He left.
---
[April 24, 2180 — Haven's Point, Security Office]
Garrus's intelligence contacts — fragments of a C-Sec network that still functioned despite his departure — delivered the first warning on day six.
The message was encrypted, bounced through three relay stations, and arrived on Garrus's personal omni-tool in a format that suggested the sender didn't want to be found. Former colleague. Someone who owed Garrus a favor and was paying it off with information rather than risk.
"Batarian Hegemony intelligence has flagged Haven's Point." Garrus read from the decoded message, his voice carrying the flat calm of someone delivering bad news he'd expected. "A human-majority colony in the Terminus defeated a batarian-affiliated warlord. The Hegemony considers this an affront to batarian prestige."
"An affront."
"Their word. Batarian politics run on perceived strength. A mining colony breaking one of their client warlords makes them look weak. The intelligence assessment recommends 'corrective action at an appropriate juncture.'"
"Which means?"
"They won't act now. Too many variables, too much political complexity, and frankly, the Hegemony has bigger problems than one colony. But they've noticed us. And the Hegemony has a long memory."
"Callback: Kragen. The batarian loan shark on Eden Prime. Fifteen thousand credits that I never paid. Different batarians, same species, same talent for holding grudges. Webb's debts and my debts are starting to look like the same ledger."
He filed the information. Another threat on a list that grew faster than he could address. Vortix. Talon Company. The Batarian Hegemony. Alliance Intelligence. And underneath all of it, the War Council timer ticking toward extinction.
"We need allies," he said. "Not mercenaries. Not deals. Real allies who share our interests."
"In the Terminus?" Garrus's mandibles twitched with something approaching skepticism. "That's a short list."
"Then we start writing it."
---
[April 25, 2180 — Haven's Point, Colony Center]
The Trade Hub went operational on day seven.
He'd spent 150 MP on the construction — deploying it at 0300, as had become habit, in an empty lot near the colony's central square. The building assembled in twelve seconds: a commercial nexus with communication arrays, cargo processing systems, and docking coordination infrastructure that connected Haven's Point to the Terminus Systems' trade network.
[CONSTRUCTION COMPLETE: TRADE HUB]
[CREDITS: +200/WEEK]
[SUPPLY LINE IMPROVEMENT: +15% IMPORT EFFICIENCY]
[TRADE REPUTATION: INITIALIZED]
Two hundred credits a week. Not a fortune, but income — the difference between a colony surviving and a colony growing. The trade network connections would attract merchants, and merchants brought supplies, information, and the economic oxygen that turned settlements into cities.
Kowalski appeared at the Trade Hub's entrance at 0730. He carried two cups of coffee — real coffee, not the reconstituted protein-paste derivative the colony mess served. The good stuff, from a private stash he'd apparently been hoarding.
He held one out.
"You built this overnight."
"Construction crews work fast."
Kowalski's expression said he knew exactly how fast and exactly how impossible. But the cup didn't waver.
"I've been an engineer for thirty years. I've rebuilt engines, fabricated parts, kept infrastructure running past its operational lifetime through stubbornness and prayer. But this—" He gestured at the Trade Hub. "This is something else. And I've decided I don't need to understand it to work with it."
Webb took the coffee.
"What changed your mind?"
"Forty-three names on a wall." Kowalski's voice roughened. "Whatever you are, whatever you're doing — those people are dead because you defended this colony instead of running. That buys a lot of trust from a man like me."
He drank. The coffee was strong, bitter, and real. The best thing he'd tasted since the clean water from the recycler — another fix, another miracle, another piece of a foundation that was slowly becoming something worth the cost.
The Trade Hub's lights came on as evening fell. New construction glowing against the colony's battered skyline. Through the central square, colonists gathered to watch — the same way they'd gathered to watch the medical supplies arrive, to watch the guard posts go up, to watch the shield generator deploy. Witnesses to something they couldn't explain and had stopped trying to.
Among them, children. The same ones with the mining drone — repaired now, painted in colony colors. They ran between the adults' legs, laughing.
The colony breathed. Wounded, grieving, carrying forty-three names in its memory and a hundred scars on its infrastructure. But breathing.
His omni-tool chimed. Docking request.
VESSEL: UNIDENTIFIED — QUARIAN REGISTRY CLASSIFICATION: CIVILIAN SHUTTLE, SINGLE OCCUPANT REQUESTING: EMERGENCY REFUELING AND DOCKING
A quarian ship. One life sign. Heading for a Terminus colony that had just survived a siege and unlocked a trade hub.
He approved the docking request and headed for Bay 3.
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