2025-08-28 16:28:25
Neo MoroengThis chapter was a deliberate dive into the antagonist's psyche, inspired by the chilling real-world calculus of power brokers who treat nations and lives as pieces on a board. The Man in White's message—"We must look after our friends"—is a direct echo of that cold, political ruthlessness, where "friends" are assets and hell is just uncharted market territory. I wanted to contrast the New Consortium's fanatical, corporate-driven suicide mission with the crew's grim, necessary pursuit. They aren't just following a ship; they're chasing a catastrophic mistake into the abyss. This choice—to go into the anomaly—is the ultimate rejection of passive survival. It’s the moment our heroes become active challengers to the darkness, whatever the cost. Thanks for going into the void with them. Your readership means everything. -N.M
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Chapter 84: The Scattered Crown
The Vigilant limped from the corpse of the hive, its hull scarred, its crew silent. The victory felt hollow, a deflated thing. We had not slain a monster; we had kicked a hornet's nest and now the sky was full of queens. The decision was unanimous. We had to fall back. We had to warn them. The Council, Mars, the entire damned fragile peace—they needed to know the war they thought was over had just mutated. We set a course for the nearest comms buoy at the edge of the dead sector, our systems too battered for a long-range burst. The silence on the bridge was a physical weight. Then, an alarm blared. “Unidentified vessel! Bearing 2-1-0!” Spinner yelled, his voice raw. “It’s just… sitting there.” On the screen, hanging in the void like a specter, was the NCV Oracle. Da’kar’s ship. It was pristine, untouched. And it was blocking our path. A comm request flashed. I accepted. Da’kar’s face filled the viewer. He looked… different. His eyes held a feverish light, a religious fervor. The
Chapter 83: The Parasite
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 a
Chapter 82: The Oracle's Gambit
Silence. It was the only fitting successor to the cacophony of his triumph. Da’kar stood alone in the vast, empty council chamber. The echoes of his own voice, the frantic agreements, the transferred codes of absolute authority—all had faded. The obsidian floor, once a stage for his performance, now felt like a sheet of ice over an abyss. He had won. He had been given everything he asked for. The crown was his, and it was forged from cold, dead metal. It was the hollow prize for being the sole survivor of a catastrophe he had only witnessed in his own cunning mind. His hand rose, fingers brushing against the heavy, cool weight resting on his chest. It was his one concession, his one true preparation. A necklace. Not of office, but of office. A thick chain from which hung a single, palm-sized, uncut shard of Red Rock. Its internal fire was dormant, a deep, bloody crimson. It was not a weapon. It was a rosary. A totem. A reminder of the specific, resonant dread that had unmade the Vig
Chapter 81: The Garden of Unmaking
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 a
Chapter 80: The Shadow in the Spire
The air in the council chamber was different. Before, during the General’s fateful proposal, it had been thick with fear and suspicion, a storm waiting to break. Now, it was hollow. Sterile. The expansive circular room, with its obsidian floor and towering holographic displays, felt like a magnificent tomb. The councilors—both the pale, drawn faces of the Consolidated Human Survivors and the stern, weathered features of the Khomani elders—sat not as leaders, but as ghosts haunting the ruins of their own power. They were a mass of quiet despair, the energy and fight leeched out of them by a universe that had refused to conform to their regulations. They were civilized men bewildered by a fate that seemed to be playing a cruel trick on them.The silence was broken by the hiss of the grand chamber doors. Every head turned.Da’kar entered.He did not stride in with the arrogant confidence of a conqueror. He walked with the slow, measured pace of a mourner at a funeral. His Council uniform
Chapter 79: The Prophet's Gospel
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. Thi
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