“Scan it, and tell me if it looks like the flight recorder,” Lourna Dee said.

She was standing with her arms crossed on the bridge of her flagship, the Lourna Dee, looking out at the little fleet the Republic had put together for their little mission. Bunch of heroes. Hooray.

Lourna Dee loved her ship, and that was why she had named it after herself. Anyone who had an issue with that was welcome to discuss it with her. So far, no one ever had.

Each of Marchion Ro’s Tempest Runners had a personal warship, a testament to its owner’s taste as well as the possibilities inherent in the Nihil as an organization. Work hard, hunt well, follow the Paths, and you, too, might someday own a customized battle cruiser. Kassav’s New Elite felt like the interior of a trashy nightclub. Pan Eyta’s ship, the Elegencia, was beautiful, with surfaces covered in soft leather, lighting designed to perfectly accent every lovely little tasteful design choice he made.

The Lourna Dee was unique in a completely different way.

The cruiser was outfitted with all sorts of devices and shielding that made it all but impossible to pick up on a scan. Heat baffling, ablative plating, double-sealed engines that recycled almost all of its exhaust signature into the ship’s life-support and weapons systems, and more. It cost her a pile of credits, but it made her Tempest’s flagship nearly invisible to even the most powerful sensors.

Usually, an attack by the Lourna Dee went like this: The enemy pilot thought, Wait, where’d that ship come fr— and then they were blasted into vapor.

Here…well, it remained to be seen. The Lourna Dee packed enough punch to take out four Longbeams and a few wispy little Vectors, if she could take them by surprise and kept moving. But that could mean revealing her ship, and that was not on the menu for this operation. The Tempest Runners were in rare agreement when they voted to approve this mission: The Nihil needed to avoid any suggestion they were connected to the Emergences or the Legacy Run.

There were two reasons for that. First, obviously, was Kassav’s massive screwup at Eriadu. His stupid attempt at extorting that planet, the one that had gone so wrong and was so obviously a shot at taking the entire proceeds of that job for himself, shone an unwelcome spotlight on the Nihil. The Eriaduans had splashed Kassav’s name and the specs of his ship all over the HoloNet. While there was no direct connection to the Nihil, that was still more heat than they wanted. And after that, Kassav had had the nerve to come crawling back to the Great Hall. He’d offered up the thirty million credits he said he’d made on the Eriadu job and asked for protection.