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Ch.183 The Law of Inertia
Sergeant Rael watched the white-gold construct close the thirty-meter gap in absolute silence.The Architect sentinel didn’t leap. It manipulated its gravity field to continuously pull itself along the curvature of the Tartarus’s exterior armor, building terrifying momentum. Its molecularly honed blade was leveled directly at Rael’s chest.Rael’s analytical mind processed the variables in a cold, detached sequence. He had a plasma pistol. Plasma could not scorch the hyper-dense alien lattice. He did not have the Keres grav-glaive to disrupt the construct’s artificial gravity. He was burdened by hundreds of kilograms of industrial supercapacitors tethered to his harness.He could not out-fight the machine.So he let the laws of physics do it for him.Rael didn’t aim the heavy pistol at the approaching sentinel. He lowered his wrist, locked his targeting reticle on the ribbed tritanium armor plating ten meters directly in front of the charging construct, and held down the firing stud.T
Ch.182 The Void Walk
Sergeant Rael stood in a universe of absolute silence.On the exterior dorsal hull of the VCS Tartarus, there was no hum of reactors or vibration of thrusters. There was only the sound of his regulated breathing and the rhythmic, bone-deep thud of his magnetic boots locking onto the eighty-year-old armor plating.Above him, intergalactic space stretched out in an unbroken canvas, interrupted only by the pale smudge of the accretion disk four hundred light-years away. One failed magnetic clamp, and he would drift into the abyss until his oxygen ran out.Rael pushed aside the creeping sense of vertigo, focusing his attention strictly on the geometry of the hull and the placement of his next step."Aris," Rael said, his voice echoing flatly in his helmet. "I am seventy meters from the dorsal airlock, moving toward the mid-ship cargo holds. Verify my bearing to Cargo Bay Four.""Bearing is true, Chief," Lieutenant Aris replied over the comms, her voice tight but steady. "You have another
Ch.181 The Chokepoint
"Fifty meters to the airlock," Commander Cyrus Vane said, his voice clipped and perfectly calm over the localized comms.He didn't look back toward safety. He stared down the pitch-black length of the primary transit corridor, his EVA light cutting through the floating frost. Pushing the multi-ton Class-IV jump-core was a slow, agonizing process of managing inertia. If the six Architect sentinels reached this hallway while the core was still exposed, the alien constructs would either slaughter them or slice the irreplaceable eighty-year-old engine to pieces.They couldn't fight a swarm and protect the objective at the same time."Chief, keep pushing the core," Cyrus ordered, detaching his grip from the heavy towing bars. "Do not stop to help me. Get it into the Erebus staging bay and lock it down.""Commander, you cannot hold off six sentinels in a zero-gravity vacuum," Sergeant Rael argued, though he was already bracing his armored legs against the deck
Ch.180 Project Pioneer
Cyrus severed the physical connection to the bridge terminal and manually rebooted his EVA suit’s thermal regulation. Slowly, the biting chill of the intergalactic vacuum receded, replaced by the artificial warmth of the Vanguard armor.He left the crumpled, white-gold remains of the Architect sentinel drifting lifelessly in the frozen command center and descended through the darkened transit shafts of the Tartarus.By the time he reached the lower logistical decks, Sergeant Rael was already at work.Cargo Bay Seven was secured behind a pair of interlocking industrial bulkheads. Rael floated near the center seam, his magnetic boots anchored to the deck plating as he guided the searing beam of his breaching laser along the locking mechanisms."I heard the static on the comms, Commander," Rael said, not looking away from the blinding flare of cutting metal. "You encountered resistance?""An Architect sentinel," Cyrus said, coming up beside him and locking his boots to the deck. "It had
Ch.179 Cargo Bay Seven
Commander Cyrus Vane navigated the Tartarus’s zero-gravity primary transit corridor with practiced fluidity. Rather than using slow, exhausting magnetic boots for the long ascent to the command superstructure, he pulled himself weightlessly along the iron wall handholds, his shoulder-mounted EVA light cutting a stark white beam through the frozen vacuum.The Atlas-class freighter was a relic. Exposed hydraulic piping and bundled copper wiring lined the bulkheads—a stark contrast to the integrated optical networks of the modern Vanguard fleet. Cyrus’s beam swept over the remnants of the crew’s final moments: a crystallized sphere of spilled water, a drifting hydro-spanner, and a cracked datapad.But there were no bodies. No frozen blood, kinetic weapon damage, or plasma scoring. Whatever the Architects had done here eighty-two years ago, it had been surgically clean.Cyrus reached the corridor's end. Mechanical blast doors blocked the bridge, secured only by a manual release lever lock
Ch.178 The Tartarus
It took six hours on the Erebus’s struggling sub-light thrusters to cross the two million kilometers of empty void.On the bridge, the only sounds were the ragged cycling of the secondary life-support batteries and the hollow hum of the primary reactor running at twelve percent. Commander Cyrus Vane stood by the fractured forward viewport, watching the silhouette of the derelict grow from a speck of amber static into a towering, brutalist monolith of human engineering.It was an Atlas-class heavy bulk freighter. Its hull was a patchwork of modular armor plating, dominated by vast cargo bays and a forward command superstructure that looked like an iron fortress."I have a visual on the hull registry," Lieutenant Aris said, her voice raspy in the cold, thinning air of the bridge. She routed the optical feed to the surviving monitors.Faded, heavily scoured white lettering spanned the port-side armor: VCS Tartarus."The Tartarus," Rael murmured, studying the tactical display. "Commander,
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