The Loom Protocol
The Loom Protocol was never meant to be a weapon, it was designed to be a leash, binding every commander in the fleet to a single point of control. Now that leash has snapped, and the threads are pulling the wrong way. On Station Kessler, cadet Maren Voss runs the same kill sequences in the simulator she's been drilled into since she was sixteen. The amber reticle spins. The polymer dummies hiss their chemical signatures. Everything is procedure, protocol, obedience. Then the Protocol activates, and the chain of command she was built to follow begins rewriting itself from the inside out. Admiral Tarsis Okonkwo knows the Protocol was buried for a reason. Davan Rho and Elara Chen are the only ones who can trace the code back to its origin before it locks the entire fleet into a kill state no one can override. But the Protocol doesn't just target the enemy, it targets loyalty, obedience, the neural architecture that makes a soldier follow orders. And it's already woven itself into the minds of everyone aboard Kessler. Kael Voss, Maren's brother, is the first to resist. But resistance under the Protocol means the loom weaves tighter. Yara Solen and Sef Aro pull at threads from opposite ends of the station, and every second the Protocol runs, the difference between friend and threat becomes indistinguishable. Maren can execute the kill sequence the way she was trained, obey, target, eliminate, or she can step off the grating, into the dark between the rotating wedges of amber light, and try to sever a thread that was never meant to be cut. The loom is already weaving. The question is whether she's the hand that pulls it shut, or the thread that gets cut first.