Chapter 4
TAKHISS
We drop out of superluminal space like a blade slicing through silk. The shift hits hard. My stomach flips, caught in the gravity yawn as our momentum jerks to sublight. For half a breath, there’s silence. Then the Seeker flashes into view—long, elegant, bloated with Alliance pride.
Arrogant little coffin.
I’m already suited up. My armor seals me in—humid air, filtered and stale. The HUD flickers to life. All systems are green. Heart rate is steady. Weapons primed. My fingers twitch against the grips of my scatter-rifle as the ship’s artificial gravity stabilizes under my boots.
We’re on final approach.
The command deck hums with quiet menace. No one speaks louder than necessary. You’d think soldiers would be barking jokes or revving adrenaline with war chants, but there’s none of that today. The silence is heavy. A prelude to violence.
Commander Graal’s voice crackles over our squad channel: “Boarding formations. Class-four incursion. No mercy. No mistakes.”
I grunt in acknowledgment and fall into position with Strike Team Korr.
My unit’s tight—seven of us, counting Graal.
Veterans. Ghost-makers. We’ve carved our way through outposts and freighters, crushed sabotage rings and exterminated science vessels that forgot their place.
But I’ve never felt this… sharp. This on-edge.
I can taste it in the recycled air. Something’s off.
“Visual confirmation of the drive is live,” Graal mutters. “The core’s active.”
“What?” I bark, turning slightly. “They lit it?”
“Affirmative,” he says.
That’s not right. Intel said they were months out from ignition.
Graal is already storming toward the nav-con, where Captain Vurn stands stiff and proud in his officer’s uniform, flanked by two signal techs with sunken eyes and twitchy fingers. “We don’t have solid entry routes,” Graal growls. “No updated schematics. If the drive’s powered—”
“I said go,” Vurn cuts in, sharp as broken glass. “This mission doesn’t wait for your comfort. The Coalition has made it clear—the Seeker dies today.”
Graal’s jaw clenches. “This isn’t a gunship. It’s a lab with civilians onboard.”
“It’s a threat,” Vurn snaps. “We neutralize threats. Are you questioning your orders, Commander?”
My squad stiffens. Graal stares at him for two solid seconds, long enough to feel like an eternity. Then he salutes. “No, sir.”
Vurn nods like a man who’s already forgotten the exchange. Bastard.
Back in the prep bay, we run through the final checks. Ammo counters. Environmental seals. I clip the breach charges to my thigh and run a hand over the combat knife at my hip. It’s ceremonial, mostly. I haven’t used it in a while.
But I might today.
I drift toward the mirror wall—plasma reflective, smooth like oil under light. My reflection stares back. Hulking. Scaled. The faint sheen of bioluminescence glimmers along my arms under the armor plates. My red eyes simmer, glowing low.
“You’re brooding again,” Graax mutters, stepping beside me. His armor groans under his mass. “Never a good sign.”
“Feels wrong,” I say.
“You always say that.”
“No,” I snap. “Not like this.”
Graax doesn’t argue. That’s why we’re friends. I clench my fists, feeling the power coiled in my limbs. Not nervous. Not afraid. Just… tense. My blood’s hot, pumping hard, but there’s no fire behind it. Just cold focus.
Vurn’s orders were clear. No witnesses. No debris. Retrieve or destroy the singularity core. Eliminate resistance.
We board in ten minutes.
I remember the last mission where we didn’t have solid schematics. How the walls moved. How the ship’s AI turned half our squad into twitching piles of meat. This one feels worse.
But orders are orders.
“Have you ever heard of a tech ship pulling a core online early?” I ask, mostly to myself.
Graax snorts. “Only when someone’s panicking.”
Which means they know we’re coming. Or something worse.
When we load into the breach pods, I grip the ceiling handle. The hum of the magnetic rail cradle vibrates through my feet. The launch is going to be rough.
Five seconds before ignition, the squad channel goes dead silent.
Suddenly, thoom.
The world slams into my chest. The pod launches like a bullet, tearing through vacuum on a direct intercept course with the Seeker’s lower docking ring. We come in hot. No finesse. No grace.
Just impact.
The pod thunders against the outer hull, and the seals hiss as they melt-cut their way in. My HUD lights up with breach protocol. Doors auto-deploy. The atmosphere floods into the pod.
Time to go.
I’m the first out. Rifle raised, eyes scanning. The interior is dark, lit by flickering emergency strips. The Seeker’s corridors are sleek, clinical, a far cry from the utilitarian bulkheads of our warships. It smells sterile. Dead.
“Clear,” I growl.
The rest of Korr Team files in behind me. We spread out. Graal updates on the command frequency—we’re hitting Engineering first. Take the drive or take it offline.
There’s something in the silence of this ship that crawls down my spine. I grip my weapon tighter.
My comms ping.
“Korr Team, secondary entry team reports irregular power surges in the central core. The singularity field is unstable. Proceed with extreme caution.”
No shit.
“Orders?” Graal asks.
“Unchanged,” Vurn replies. “Seize the core.”
I hiss between my teeth.
We’re marching straight into a black hole’s cradle. And all Vurn sees is glory.
My pulse slows to a crawl. I shift into predator mode—every sense sharpened, every step calculated. We move through the Seeker like ghosts, death cloaked in silence.
But in the back of my mind, I can’t shake it.
Something’s waiting.
And it’s not ready to die yet.