Spy who no one will respond to on the emergency radio

Andra had been careful. She'd moved achingly slowly, preferring to stretch the mission on for weeks or even months longer than risk even the slightest hint of suspicion to fall her way. Her treachery was one of finely honed patience, and she'd wielded it expertly.

So why were they onto her?

The first sign she'd noticed was the access log on her mech. The door entry had been wiped, but the system login was still there. Andra had questioned the hangar tech — there had been a slight chance of it being legitimate maintenance, and the missing log just an error — but even under interrogation as her overly-aggressive angry drunk persona, they swore on the emperor that it hadn't been them. Either he was a practised liar, a spy hunter sniffing her out, or it had been someone else, with privileges and access to whatever credentials they needed, ending in the same conclusion.

Then there'd been the woman at the bar: Samara. She'd arrived out of nowhere, around the same time as her mech had been messed with, and was maybe a little too interested in her. Endless questions about who she was, what she did, where she came from, but expertly evasive when Andra turned any of the questions back on her. She never mentioned any squadmates by name, and, asking around, Andra couldn't find anyone who knew her. It was probably better not to get too friendly with anyone here, but, fuck, she liked Samara.

The latest "sign" had been, a couple of times, a feeling like she was being watched, tailed. That one was probably just paranoia, but she was careful.

It was time to leave. No matter how cautious she was, if she was being investigated already, it was only going to ratchet up from here.

She started in the bar, making sure to be seen having plenty to drink. It didn't hurt to have an excuse in case she was immediately caught wandering drunkenly down the wrong corridor in the middle of the night, and as unwise as it was to dull her mind, she frankly needed to take the edge off.

No-one saw her as she swiftly made her way down a restricted corridor. Iris scanner after keycard scanner let her through even more restricted doors. There was nothing hiding her from the security cameras, but nobody would be watching those until she was long gone.

Goosebumps ran up her back as she slipped into the server room, roaring fans drowning out her footsteps as she hurried aisle to aisle, checking for techs or other would-be witnesses. The communication servers were at the back, near the entrance to the airgapped cluster vault.

Arriving at her target, confident she was alone, she drew a knife and, wincing, retrieved a capsule buried in the webbing of her thumb. After sucking the blood off, she pulled it open, slipping one half into her ear and the other into the comms unit in front of her.

She counted on her watch, not trusting her own adrenaline-skewed sense of time, waiting for the payload to work its way into the signal processing system, giving her a hidden uplink in the outgoing stream and picking out any encrypted responses hidden in the cosmic noise.

3... 2... 1...

"This is Deep Rose Phoenix, requesting immediate extraction. Under investigation, cover burned, discovery imminent."

She turned her attention to the vault door. This was the true point of no return. In her careful, slow, methodical, pointless waste of time here, she hadn't had the chance at grabbing adequate credentials: this was going to set some alarms going.

Her eyes flicked to her watch as she pictured her signal hurtling through space towards command. Ideally, she'd have her escape route before starting this, but more waiting was just more chance for someone to wander in and discover her.

Still... she didn't rush: each action taken deliberately, drawn out, as she willed the process to take long enough to buy her a guaranteed exit plan. A panel unscrewed. A wire tapped. A second wire. A third. A glance at the watch. A scanner unplugged. Bruteforce malware uploaded. A second glance.

The message should have arrived now. There would be a scramble to find a nearby ship; to contact an agent on planet that could get her off planet; to decide which of her predetermined exit points would be safest.

A "denied" beep came from the panel hanging off the wall, and the display claimed "error", but the vault door slid open. She stepped in quickly, hoping against hope that all that had happened was some tired technician getting their hundredth error alert of the night.

A single large rack of servers towered over her in the centre of the small room, a deafening wind blasting from heavy grating ceiling down through heavy grating floor. The chip that had lived under her skin all these months should handle the next part for her, but it was going to take time. She slotted it in, and started the timer on her watch.

She waited impatiently, pacing between the secure server and the main room, torn between keeping hidden and keeping watch. Her nerves only got worse as the round-trip time of her message came and went. It was wrong to expect an immediate response, but there should have at least been a confirmation within the first minute.

"Repeat. This is Deep Rose Phoenix, requesting immediate extraction. Cover burned, discovery imminent."

She stared down the rows of servers towards the door she'd come in. Her body was screaming at her to bolt through it, but she fought the urge, taking a deep breath and shifting her weight foot to foot instead.

There was a buzz at her wrist as the timer ended. Time to grab the chip and get the fuck out of here. As long as she shut the vault door and wasn't spotted on the way out, she probably had a few hours of safety yet.

She turned back towards the vault, and froze. Standing in the doorway, staring back at her, was Samara.

They each stood, eyes locked, for a beat, before Samara darted down the other side of the room.

Andra's body woke in a stutter and she chased after, but the other woman was already out the door and gone.

Shit! Fuck!

Running back to snatch the chip from the vault before fleeing, she didn't bother shutting the door. She was fucked. Still no response. Time to go loud. She could probably sneak onto a ship in the hangar, hijack it once it got clearance to leave. If there even was one this time of night... Maybe she could steal one?

She was fucked.