The polished obsidian of Da’kar’s private communication sphere shimmered, capturing the faint, bloody light of Mars as it filtered through the viewport. The red glow streaked across his face in fragmented, spectral lines, painting him in jagged highlights, shadows stretching long into the silent expanse of his quarters. The room was immaculate, every surface spotless, as though order alone could stave off the chaos pressing from beyond the glass walls. The chime of the sphere was soft, melodic, almost teasingly benign, a grotesque contrast to the tension knotted in his chest. He hesitated only for a heartbeat before activating the link. The featureless visage of the Man in White resolved in the air, hovering like a ghost in the machine. No expression. No hint of the human behind the synthetic projection. It was the embodiment of authority rendered in steel and light, a judgment made corporeal. “The message has been sent,” Da’kar said, voice carefully neutral. He was the perfect image

The cold was no longer just an environmental factor. It had taken shape, a predator coiled inside the ship’s metal veins. It gnawed at our bones, frosting the inside of viewports, crawling along every surface, whispering through the ductwork. Life support counters blinked insistently on my slate: 04:18:03. Time was no longer a measurement—it was an accusation. Every second was a countdown toward frozen death. We huddled in the med-bay, a fragile knot of human resilience, listening to the ship moan and groan as it cooled, its steel frame expanding and contracting like the heartbeat of a dying beast. Rachel lay unconscious, draped across the med-bay table, her chest rising shallowly under Petrov’s vigilant monitoring. Neural fatigue had claimed her awareness; the price of eavesdropping on the Rake’s psychic resonance had been dear. Nancy remained in her suspended state, her psychic thread dormant and brittle. The silence between them was heavy, the weight of unspoken truths pressing dow

The void was a cold, indifferent witness. Ta’klan’s body pressed against the skeletal remains of a communications array, the recycled air in his suit tasting of metal and frost. The Starlight Sentinel Mk. VII rested against his shoulder, its bio-feedback stock a familiar, lethal embrace. Every heartbeat echoed inside his helmet, every breath measured against the rifle’s steady hum. The AI’s voice, mechanical and calm, filled his auditory implant, precise and unemotional. It didn’t encourage, didn’t plead—it observed. Ta’klan exhaled slowly, centering his focus on the scene unfolding a kilometer below on the Star-Chaser. Through the viewport of the derelict ship’s bridge, he saw them. Rachel, pale and trembling, held tight against Dr. Aris’s chest. The neuro-lacerator hovered, its tip millimeters from her temple. Aris’s face was a mask of messianic arrogance, wide-eyed and frenzied. His body trembled—not from fear, but from the raw, irrational conviction that he was deliverin

The bridge of the Vigilant was a tomb of borrowed technology, a silent monument to a victory that was already starting to curdle in the air. The low, resonant hum of its restored fusion core was a deeper, more arrogant sound than the Star-Chaser’s familiar, weary thrum. It vibrated through the deck plates and into the soles of my boots, a constant, tactile reminder that we were standing in the belly of the enemy. The air smelled different too—not of recycled sweat, ozone, and desperation, but of sterile filters, polished metal, and the faint, cloying scent of the lemon-tinged disinfectant the Council used on all its vessels. It was the smell of absolute, impersonal authority. My gaze was fixed on the main tactical display, a sprawling holographic star chart that was suddenly, terrifyingly detailed, showing patrol routes and comms nodes I’d only ever heard rumors of. But my mind was stuck on the last image from the Chaser’s docking bay: Da’kar’s face, contorted by impotent rage inside t

Space, for all its violent, star-shattering grandeur, is mostly silent. It’s a truth you forget when you’re fighting for your life, when plasma bolts are sizzling past your head and the ship is screaming around you. But in the aftermath, the silence returns. It’s not an empty silence. It’s a heavy, profound thing, a blanket of stars and vacuum that presses in on the hull, demanding you to finally listen to the things you’ve been shouting over. On the bridge of the Vigilant, the silence was a living entity. Ta’klan’s transmission was over. Nancy’s chilling prophecy had been spoken. The three terrible choices hung in the air, but the immediate pressure to choose had momentarily passed. The ship, a stolen prize, hummed its efficient, impersonal hum. The crew moved like ghosts, speaking in hushed tones, their eyes avoiding each other’s. The weight of what they now were—assets, inventory—was a shroud over them all. I found Ka’ri in the ship’s small observation blister, a transparent dome