Chapter 10
SANTIAGO
The bridge of La última Sombra was Santi’s cathedral.
Soft-lit and expansive, it wrapped around the front quarter of the ship like a glass jaw.
Its interior was lined with streamlined consoles, gunmetal finishes, and plush captain’s chairs designed more for command than comfort.
Above, the reinforced plexiglass canopy displayed the stars like drifting pearls in a velvet sky.
The hum of the nav-drives thrummed underfoot, and somewhere, deeper in the ship’s bowels, the pulse of the reactor beat like a second heart.
At this hour, the bridge crew was steady but loose, ensconced in a quiet alertness, the kind forged in men too familiar with war to ever relax.
Still, they bantered in between their duties, throwing insults and friendly fire around the space.
Rigo sat at the tactical console, boots crossed, his posture deceptively idle as he calibrated weapon yields in the background.
Kaal cleaned his rifle with the same precision a surgeon used on an organ, sliding a fine tool through the barrel, his gaze distant.
Boaz and Zev circled the nav charts, arguing in clipped tones over the best vector through the Wildlight’s Akari Nebula’s erratic ridge zones.
An argument less about the flight path and more about pride.
Their voices echoed through the chamber, edged yet warm with camaraderie.
Kaal drawled without looking up, ‘My credits say Zev’s patience is running out and he’s about to shoot your ass, B.’
‘Do your best,’ Boaz goaded his mate. ‘I can do it too, blindfolded. Anyone want to wager on it?’
Mak snorted, deadpan. ‘Hell no. You’re a wild card and freakin’ cheat.’
‘Don’t forget charming and handsome,’ Boaz murmured.
‘Nada, you’re ugly as sin,’ Zev corrected, sliding a way-point marker across the holo-map. ‘And twice as mean.’
Santi shook his head, amusement wry, as he walked to the galley alcove tucked behind the helm.
He keyed in a brew cycle, pulling down heavy ceramic mugs, real ones, a luxury most ships didn’t bother with, and lined them up.
The scent of rich kahawa filled the air, cut with undertones of cinnamon bark and bitter molasses.
He turned, tray in hand, a half-smile on his lips. ‘Gentlemen. Your fuel.’
Kaal took his mug, nodding with appreciation. ‘Bless your cold, ruthless, kahawa-obsessed heart, XO.’
Zev lifted his cup in a quiet salute. ‘I’d follow you into the abyss for this. But you might have made it a little hotter.’
Santi whirled to a stop. ‘Brother, the temperature is perfect.’
Zev arched a brow and shrugged.
Santi leaned in. ‘You asked for my kahawa. However, if you’re after stale ditch water with a thin, sickly film on the surface, bitter vapor that hints at burnt instant grounds, a stagnant flavor that promises acid and regret, and an undrinkable, rancid sludge that lingers like a bad decision, then make your own. ’
Zev whistled. ‘That’s a rough burn, brother.’
Kaal grinned. ‘Zev hermano, you should know by now that Santi is a kaffeine snob, of the highest order. Criticizing his brew always leads to an intense, heated debate. Fokk, his favorite morning mantra is rise and grind!
Santi raised a chin to Kaal. ‘Thanks a latte for having my six. Zev, you’re on thin ice. No kahawa for you. You’re banned for a week.’
As Santi reached for Zev’s cup, the man whooped and slid away, cradling his precious mug.
‘I’m warning you!’
As the dark skinned Signet operator groaned, Boaz chuckled into his drink, ‘Hell, never cross the XO when it comes to his choice of beverage.’
Santi smirked, feigning a snatch of Zev’s mug. ‘I call it being protective over my brews, from whiskey to kaffeine. I like my spirits volatile and my kahawa freakin’ dangerous.’
The laughter that followed was raucous and real among men who fought and bled together, finding a moment’s peace in the small rituals.
With a wry grin, Santi took his seat at the helm last, the chair molding around him like an old friend.
His fingers drifted across the console, pulling up ship diagnostics and long-range scans, though his mind wasn’t on the readouts.
It was on one woman. Soleil.
His past lovers included mafia queens and holo stars.
He’d even dated a few princesses, without breaking a sweat.
Yet now one svelte, humble woman, with lustrous honey-brown, red-tinged hair and a dimple so sweet and deep, was breaking him.
Fokk, Soleil was no passing comet.
She was a cosmic asterism, a sun whose heat and light were constant, luminous, and inevitable.
The kind of woman who, if he ever made his, he never would let go of.
‘What’s with the dredgers parked all at once in the loading docks? I count six, no, seven, nine, hell, thrice the amount at any time.’
Santi stood at the helm of the Signet dreadnought, its curved bridge aglow in blue nav radiance and soft-spectrum HUD projections.
The starscape spilled before him, the flotilla’s scattered ships and pleasure crafts bobbing like sleek sea birds across the black.
It should’ve been a quiet shift, but Santi’s gut was roiling.
He leaned forward, boots planted, eyes narrowing at the cluster of signals ghosting in from the bow. ‘Miral,’ he said, voice clipped. ‘You there?’
The AI shimmered into the air beside him, her hologram stately and serene. ‘Naam, XO?’
‘The dredgers, I see too many of them.’
Miral tilted her head. ‘The weekly ice loads have been delayed. The reservoirs on Varkus-4 froze. They’re playing catch-up now.’
‘Why do we have so many of them docked at once?’
‘It’s to help unload as fast as we can. The dock master requested the higher-than-usual traffic so we’d get through the backlog.’
Santi exhaled through his nose, one hand sliding across the helm’s interface. ‘Of course he did.’
The quiet didn’t last.
From the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the overhead ventilation shafts.
A shimmer. A glint.
‘Brace,’ he managed to warn his crew just as the ceiling erupted.
Hands went to their weapons, and bodies surged from seats as panels overhead crashed down.
Masked figures dropped in from above in a hissing, twisting tangle of ropes, repellers, and boots, hitting the metal floor with surgical precision, rifles raised, stun batons gleaming.
‘Bridge breach!’ Santi bellowed as the enemy’s first flash-bang went off.
White light seared his eyeballs with a thunderous crack. The scent of ion dust filled the air.
Santi pivoted, half blind and seeing stars.
He ducked a charging assailant and countered with a vicious roundhouse that cracked against the attacker’s neck.
The man dropped like a beached fish, flapping as he fell.
Yet still more came.
Screams sounded, klaxons echoed. Security panels sparked. The nav-board flickered red.
His fellow strong guard waded into the fray.
Kaal first, shouldering two down with a war cry.
Zev’s rifle snapped precise shots.
Mak rolled and flanked, moving close to the ground and fast. Boaz tore a control conduit from the wall and used it as a bludgeon.
Santi upped the ante, growling into their shared neural node network. Brothers, let’s fokk shit up!
That was the pack’s command to shift.
In the blink of an eye, the air on The Sombra’s bridge rippled with supernatural heat as the five warriors let their aether ignite.
Santi went first, violet light erupting from his spine in a savage pulse.
His form elongated and flickered as his spectral wolf burst forth, a colossal, otherworldly beast with molten eyes and fangs like star forged sabers.
Beside him, Boaz and Zev howled as their bear-forms erupted, massive, phantom brutes wrapped in glacial smoke and golden fury, their paws smashing through bulkhead and bone alike.
Mak and Kaal shimmered into their wraith-state, black-veiled silhouettes rimmed in pale silver fire, phasing between dimensions as they slashed with claws of kinetic void.
Together, they moved like a storm-born pack.
Herding, beserking, slicing through the flanks, intruders falling not to brute force, but to precision, to unity, to an ancient and primal potency.
The enemy never stood a chance. They weren’t just overwhelmed.
They got hunted and mowed down.
Santi’s fangs went through one attacker’s neck.
He dropped him and cleared the way to the central console, blood slicking the corner of his mouth, copper-foul on his tongue, teeth bared like a war hound.
The bridge of The Sombra roiled with noise and action.
Alarms screamed red across the panels, haze from flash-bangs curling in the air like ghost fire, and booted bodies darted and slammed in a brutal, close-quarters dance.
Santi ducked another stun bolt that sizzled past his ear and buried itself in the command wall behind him.
His ribs ached. Someone landed a kick that rattled his spine earlier, but he returned it with interest, shattering the man’s kneecap.
Still crouched, he spit blood and roared, voice cutting through the chaos.
‘Strongmen, get the rest of the crew out! In one mike, we’re about to be free ballin’!’
Kaal, Mak, Boaz, and Zev moved fast, apprised of what they needed to do in under a minute.
The Signet Strong Guard didn’t waste time fighting the assailants anymore.
They redirected their efforts, darting past skirmishes and grappling with the human members of the Signet bridge crew.
They dragged their startled nav officers, pilots, and comms techs to the bridge’s side exits and the secondary airlock ports.
More stun bolts lit up the room, rounds smashing into walls, causing the helmetless Signet men to duck and dodge the fire.
One assailant, overconfident and cocky, yanked a Signet junior pilot toward him and barked something unintelligible, until Kaal shoulder-charged him through a panel door.
‘Clear of all personnel!’ Mak called out, vaulting over the last console as he slammed his elbow into another attacker’s jaw.
The man dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
‘Miral!’ Santi bellowed. ‘Environmental controls, to me. Now.’
The AI shimmered, stabilizing into view beside him.
‘XO, if you do what you’re about to -,’ she warned.
‘I know,’ he bit out. ‘Atmosphere, pressure, all of it.’
‘Ship protocol restricts this exact kind of action.’
‘Override it. I want them gasping in the void and sucking ice shards.’
She hesitated. Then: ‘Acknowledged. You have control.’
Santi’s hand was already sliding to the helm, fingers poised above the burnished titanium of the emergency lockdown mechanism.
He glanced up and saw one of the last masked bastards lunging at him, knife gleaming.
‘You’re about to be free as a bird, papi,’ Santi rasped.
He slammed down on the trigger.
The synth glass wall of the bridge, five meters high, curved like a cathedral dome, detached with a booming crack, and was flung through space.
All critical shields failed, as designed under Santi’s override.
A howling void replaced the internal atmosphere.
The Sombra’s intruders staggered, their mask re-breathers overloaded by the sudden shift in density. One dropped to his knees, gagging.
Another began firing with wild abandon.
As the fog thickened and the pressure built, the enemies were unable to withstand the suction of the great expanse.
With a whoosh, the assailants flew.
They got yanked backward in a savage surge of decompression, tumbling like rag dolls into the black.
Three of them had yet to secure their oxygen respirators.
They didn’t scream; they didn’t have time.
Their bodies froze mid-arc, all fluids in their skin and lungs crystallizing in seconds, pupils dilating into glassy spheres, mouths twisted in eternal O’s.
Flesh turned blue, then ashen-white. They drifted like macabre statues, transformed to instant stalactites in the airless abyss.
The others, those who had masks, weren’t any better off.
Unprepared for the sudden pressure loss, they convulsed, eyes bursting with blood vessels, ears rupturing behind their visors.
They kicked and writhed in panic, flailing, trying to stabilize, but zero-G showed no mercy. Helmets fogged from their internal screaming.
One fired a round from his plasma pistol, which vaporized into harmless mist, sucked out into the emptiness beyond.
Santi eyed the kinais from his crouch beside the helm.
His pack clung to the bridge’s rails, used their aetheric powers to withstand the void of space, and remained anchored.
He tapped into his neural node, mouth twisting.
Miral, close the breach.
She acknowledged. Re-engaging the shields.
With a shuddering whoomph, the backup synth glass rolled down like a guillotine made of light.
The bridge re-pressurized in a rush, air blasting in from the reserve tanks.
Santi and his fellow strong guards shifted back into humaniform, shaking out their limbs and easing off their brace positions.
A scattering of frozen bodies still floated outside, visible through the translucent barrier, caught in the grim grip of an icy vacuum of death.
Mak stepped up beside Santi, his hair mussed, a bruise swelling under his eye.
‘Next time you take action to blow out the only impediment between us and space, put that shit on a billboard. Also, hand out stress gummies for good measure, cabrón.’
Santi exhaled hard, leaned back in the command chair, and pinched the arch of his nose.
‘No time for a pampered forewarning, brother, had to move fast.’
Mak huffed and caught Santi in a half-hug. ‘Good call, XO. It worked.’
‘You’d better believe. Still some freakin kinais with some balls just tried to take down my pack and our ship. Fokkin’ huge mistake.’