The silence in the observation blister was a living thing, breathing in time with the slow turn of the nebula. Ka’ri’s hand was still warm on my cheek, her breath a soft counterpoint to the hum of the ship. For a handful of heartbeats, there was no war, no hive, no ghosts. There was only the quiet truth of two people, human and Khomani, finding each other in the dark. It was shattered by the scream of the comm. “—oadcast! It’s not a whisper, it’s a shout!” Spinner’s voice was a blade of static and panic over the link. “It’s flooding every frequency, even the damn emergency bands! It’s coming from inside the ship!” We were moving before the echo died, the intimacy of moments before replaced by the grim efficiency of command. The door hissed shut on the starlight, sealing us into the cold, sterile brightness of the Vigilant’s corridor. By the time we hit the bridge, the air was already thick with tension. The main viewer was a chaos of data. A cascading waterfall of alien symbols

Alone. The word echoed in the sterile, recycled air of the escape pod, a taunt and a truth. Da’kar sat motionless in the pilot’s chair, the ghost of Director Valerius’s contempt still clinging to the console displays like static charge. The memory replayed in perfect, painful clarity: the dismissive wave of a hand, the cool assessment that had reduced his catastrophic failure to a minor accounting error. Pennies. The word burned worse than any plasma wound. He had been assessed, quantified, and deemed small change in the grand transaction of the New Consortium’s ambition. Outside the viewport, the swirling blues and purples of warp-space bled into one another, a hypnotic tapestry of stolen time. He was suspended between worlds, between identities, between failures. He let the hum of the pod’s systems vibrate through him, a feeble counterpoint to the roaring humiliation in his veins. He replayed the conversation, each word a precise, surgical lash. But this time, he did not flinch. Th

The scream had stopped. The light had died. The Vigilant was a metal tomb hurtling through a sea of absolute, crushing silence. On the viewscreen, the familiar tapestry of stars had been replaced by a swirling, silent vortex of black. The starlight didn't just fade; it was consumed, leaving behind a profound and absolute darkness that felt less like an absence and more like a predatory presence. "All sensors are offline," Spinner’s voice crackled, laced with the brittle calm of a man teetering on the edge. "Gravitational field is… I don't even have a number for it, General. It's like the laws of physics have been put through a shredder. The ship's structural integrity is holding, but only just. We are blind." I felt the silence press in, a physical weight. The crew moved like phantoms in the dim emergency lighting, their faces pale, their eyes wide with a fear that had no name. The tactical displays were a cascade of screaming, meaningless data, as if the universe itself were having

The Vigilant groaned around us, a dying animal caught in the jaws of something infinitely older and hungrier. The pressure in my skull was no longer a sound; it was a physical weight, a vise of pure alien will trying to crack my mind open. I’d led armies, made decisions that cost lives, but I had never felt a fear this absolute. This was the end we’d been racing toward, the monster we’d foolishly believed we could hunt. Then the hull screamed. “Breach! Port side! They’re inside!” Spinner’s voice was a ragged thing, torn by static and panic. The world narrowed to the corridor ahead. A conduit burst open, and the nightmare poured through. Not one, but a flood of them. Rakes. They moved in a terrifying, skittering unison, all jerking limbs and needle teeth, their silence more deafening than any war cry. This was the swarm. The meat grinder. They weren’t here to fight; they were here to disassemble us. Gareseb met the tide with a roar that was pure defiance, his pulse rifle carving

The docking bay of the Ares Spire was a cathedral of noise and light, but to me, it felt like a tomb. The cheers that greeted the Vigilant’s scarred hull were a distant roar, a sound meant for other men. I walked down the ramp, the weight of command replaced by a heavier, colder weight—the memory of what we’d left behind in the dark. We were heroes. The crowd saw conquerors returned from the abyss. I felt like a gravedigger who’d barely clawed his way out of the earth.The celebration died in the council chamber. I stood in the same spot where I’d once argued for a desperate gamble, and where Da’kar had later woven his beautiful, poisonous lies. This time, I didn’t need to argue. I let the Vigilant’s logs do the talking. I let them hear Da’kar’s voice, cool and calculating, betraying us. I made them watch the nightmare footage of the hive, the psychic scream that had torn through our ship. And I saved the final image for last: the Acquisitor, half-dissolved into that pulsating, organic