19. Nyra #2
I recognize the harpoons again—the massive tungsten spikes I saw on the drone feed.
Up close, they are even more obscene. They have punched through the hull like needles through skin, and the metal around the entry points is twisted and blackened.
Beyond the harpoons, I catch a glimpse of something small and familiar through a secondary viewport—the Harrow, still hangs onto to the lower hull, untouched.
"Leave the scrap hauler," I hear Korr's voice bark over the local comms to one of his boarding teams. "Don't waste time stripping garbage when we're standing inside a Hegemony goldmine. Focus on the primary core."
The thought stings more than the wire on my wrists. My ship, my home, dismissed as utter garbage.
"Look at that," Rovik points, gesturing toward a heavy bulkhead that has been melted into a puddle of slag. "Six thousand years of history, and it yields to a standard thermal charge just like everything else."
He stops, turning to look at me with that milky-white eye. He reaches out and grabs a handful of my hair, forcing my head back until I stare into his patchwork face.
"The Warlord is holding onto a ghost," he sneers, his breath smelling of stale stimulants and cold rations. "And you are the leash the captain is going to use to pull him out of the dark."
He shoves me forward again. We approach the primary breach point, a yawning cavern in the side of the ship where the atmosphere is held back only by a flickering, deep-blue containment field.
It emits a low, oppressive hum, fighting to keep the oxygen inside the bay—the only reason we can still breathe and the only thing allowing the boarders to shout orders without helmet seals.
Beyond the shimmering blue curtain, I peer out at the void—the endless, cold dark of the stars.
And sitting there, like a bloated tick, is Korr’s flagship, the Carrion King.
The ship manifests as a monstrosity of mismatched plates and protruding weapons arrays, bound by the same ruthless intent that drives the men inside it.
A man stands at the perimeter of the breach.
He carries a stocky, battle-worn build that speaks of decades spent in the heavy gravity of salvage yards.
His pale skin bears severe burn scars that climb along his jaw and neck like reaching fingers.
He keeps his head shaved, and his cybernetic left eye emits a faint, predatory blue light.
He wears heavy armored salvage gear bristling with visible weapon attachments and power cells. It can only be one person—Korr.
"Captain Korr," Rovik reports, confirming my thoughts on who the new face is and dragging me toward the light of the containment field. "I found the human."
Korr turns, his gaze sweeping over me with the same dispassionate interest he might show a piece of salvaged tech. He reaches out a gloved hand, tracing the air just inches from the mark. I feel the heat of the brand spike in response, a frantic warning that hammers in my teeth.
"Fascinating," Korr muses, his eyes locking onto mine. "Look at the way it reacts. The ship is protecting her. It is sustaining her. He is feeling every second of this."
I keep my eyes on his, my silence a wall standing firm against him.
"I can hear the ship screaming through the data-layers," Korr smiles, a thin, sharp movement of his lips. "He is abandoning his posts. He is leaving the bridge. He is coming for her."
He looks up toward the dark arches of the ceiling, his voice rising as if he is speaking to the ship itself.
“Do you hear that, Warlord? I have her! Your little secret crawled right into my hands!”
He turns back to Rovik, his expression shifting into something colder.
"Bring the harvesting tools. If he wants her back, he can watch us take her apart piece by piece until the signal finally goes dark."
They haul me toward a heavy, industrial cage positioned deep inside the breach.
The metal is cold and smells of ancient grease, its thick bars casting long, broken shadows against the flickering containment field.
One of the boarders shoves me inside, my boots skidding on the diamond-plate floor, before the gate slams shut with a bone-jarring rattle.
My arms remain pinned behind me, the pressure of the gauntlets a constant, aching reminder of my lack of leverage.
I look around the wide, shattered space.
The containment field whines with a high-pitched, nauseating key, holding the vacuum of space at bay just feet from where I remain caged.
Rovik reaches through the bars, his patchwork face inches from mine.
He produces a roll of shimmering, high-tensile wire from his belt and begins to wrap my wrists through the gaps in the metal.
The wire is thin, biting into my skin with every loop he completes.
He works with the unnerving speed of a man who has secured a thousand prizes.
"Easy now, rabbit," he grunts, cinching the wire tight. "The more you fight, the more you bleed, and the Captain wants you intact for the show."
Ignoring Rovik, I keep my focus entirely on Korr. The scavenger captain steps back to an illuminated portable tactical console, his cybernetic eye glowing brighter as he interfaces with the data Selra is feeding him.
"The Warlord has cleared the Sector Six junction.
" A raw, metallic bellow erupts from the darkness, the sound expanding to fill the narrow passage until the air feels too tight to hold the momentum of the words.
He addresses the air, the sensors, and the core consciousness of Virex Prime.
He knows Draevik is listening. "He is moving fast. He is leaving a trail of bodies that would make a Legion proud. "
He turns toward me, a crooked, predatory grin spreading across his scarred face. He reaches out and taps the side of his neck, toggling a wide-spectrum broadcast.
"Do you hear the thunder, Warlord?" Korr screams into the ship's comms. "That is the sound of your ship dying. Every step you take toward this breach is another circuit I fry. Every second you spend hunting my men is another gallon of coolant I bleed into the void."
He gestures toward me, his blue cybernetic eye locking onto the mark.
"I know the clock is ticking for you." The taunt arrives with the cold, sterile precision of a scalpel, and he places each syllable unhurriedly as if dissecting my panic for further study.
"You are built on foundations of iron and obsidian, yet time is running out.
Your systems are failing, your ship is screaming, and I hold the only thing you have left by the throat. "
I feel the mark flare, a searing, agonizing heat that makes me gasp.
The brand functions as a bridge, remaining raw and open.
I feel the ship's distress—a piercing, electrical static that travels through my bones.
I feel the way Virex Prime is struggling to stay conscious under Selra's relentless assault.
"She is a scavenger, Draevik!" Korr yells, laughing as he watches the glow on my chest strobe. "She is a piece of Fringe trash you picked up out of the dirt! Is she worth the collapse of everything you have left? Is she worth the extinction of your line?"
He steps closer to the cage, the heavy attachments on his armor clanking with every movement. He reaches into a side pouch and pulls out a long, slender needle—a neural probe used for harvesting biometric data from living tissue. The tip exhibits a sickly violet light.
"Let's see how loud he screams when I start peeling back the layers." The room seems to shrink as the threat drops into a low, airless frequency, the sound flattening until it feels like a heavy weight pressing against my neck.
He holds the needle inches from the bars, pointing it toward my throat. I feel the cold air of the breach on my skin, the roar of the Carrion King outside the hull, and the weight of the universe pressing in.
"Tell him to stop, girl," Korr commands. "Tell him to surrender the bridge codes, and I might let you live long enough to see the stars one last time."
The needle hums with a sickly violet malice. My gaze shifts from the deadly instrument to the man with the burned jaw and the stolen empire, then upward to the dark, silent arches of the ceiling.
To these men, I represent a bargain, a piece of leverage, a mere variable in a calculation of greed. They look at the rags and the dirt under my fingernails, assuming they’ve found something breakable.
They are wrong.
I think of Draevik in the kitchen—the way he looked at me; the way he offered the stew in those massive armored hands that moved with impossible gentleness; and the way he called me Nyra in his deep, rough voice.
I remain firm. Standing my ground under the mounting pressure, I pull my shoulders back against the biting wire and fix my eyes on Korr's cybernetic light and find the white-hot core of my own resolve.
"Go to hell." The retort slices through the tension, a blade of pure, concentrated venom that leaves a ringing silence in its wake.
Korr’s expression hardens. The amusement vanishes and gives way to a cold, industrial fury. He raises the needle, the purple gleam reflecting in his dead-blue eye.
"Have it your way, scavenger," he growls.
He lunges forward, and I stay perfectly still. I wait. I listen to the low, mechanical groan of the ship. Because beneath the screams of the ghost code and the roar of the breach, I hear a new sound.
The Warlord is coming. And he is bringing the storm with him.