Chapter 2 - The Fracture in the Chain
The crimson emergency lights painted the corridors of Blackridge Station in long, bleeding shadows as the guards dragged me backward down the hall. My magnetic cuffs sparked against the metal walls, sending tiny bolts of blue current up my arms, but the pain was entirely secondary to the sudden, overwhelming shift in the air pressure. The station’s life support systems weren't just failing—they were being overridden.
"Move, scavenger!" the guard on my left snarled, shoving the barrel of his carbine against my spine.
"You don't understand what you're dealing with," I panted, my boots skidding across the grated floor. "That ship out there... it's not looking for a fight. It's looking for him."
"Shut your mouth!"
Before the guard could shove me again, a deafening explosion ripped through the ceiling three sections ahead. A shower of sparks, twisted wiring, and pulverized concrete rained down over us. The concussive blast threw both guards off balance, sending them sprawling against the bulkhead. I hit the deck hard, rolling onto my shoulder to protect my face.
Through the billow of acrid white smoke, the heavy blast doors at the end of the corridor began to warp. The central locking mechanism—a multi-ton titanium bolt designed to withstand asteroid impacts—screeched in protest as invisible pressure points melted through the alloy from the outside.
Hiss.
The door hissed open, but not because a security code had been entered. The steel had been sheared away as if cut by a thermal lance wielded by a giant hand.
Standing in the smoking breach was not a rescue team, nor was it a squad of Federation reinforcements. It was a single, towering figure encased in heavy, weathered salvage-armor that had been heavily modified with reinforced plating. The visor was lifted, revealing the scarred, weathered face of Mara Vance—my older sister, whom the Federation had declared missing in the outer rim six years ago.
"Mara?" I breathed, disbelief freezing the blood in my veins.
She didn't smile. She shouldered a heavy plasma-cutter, her eyes scanning the corridor with razor-sharp precision before locking onto the guards scrambling to their feet. With two swift, calculated movements, she fired a non-lethal EMP pulse from her gauntlet, dropping both guards into twitching heaps on the floor.
"Get up, little brother," Mara said, striding forward and slamming a bypass key into my magnetic cuffs. The shackles popped open with a sharp click. "You always did have a talent for finding trouble, but unearthing the last living relic of the Old War? That’s a new personal best, even for a Vance."
"How are you here?" I rubbed my wrists, wincing as the circulation rushed back into my hands. "The Federation said your ship went down in the Vega sector!"
"The Federation says a lot of things, Jonas," she said grimly, grabbing my arm and hauling me toward the breached bulkhead. "Like claiming the Sky Wardens were bloodthirsty beasts that needed to be exterminated for the safety of humanity. They lied about me, they lied about the war, and most importantly, they lied about what’s locked in that cargo crate of yours."
"We have to get Smoke," I said, digging my heels into the floor plates. "They're holding him in the central observation deck. Voss is trying to ship him off to Mars for military research."
Mara stopped, her expression hardening. She pulled a data-slate from her belt and tossed it to me. The screen lit up with a schematic of Blackridge Station overlaid with real-time tactical telemetry.
"Forget Mars, Jonas. Look at the exterior sensors," Mara said, pointing a finger at the pulsing red dots swarming around the station. "Voss isn't just a local commander. He’s a high-ranking officer in the Aegis Directorate—the secret branch that orchestrated the original purge of the Wardens. That signal you detected a few minutes ago? It wasn't an accident. The moment your upload hit the galactic network, every black-ops cruiser within three parsecs locked onto this coordinate. They aren't just here to secure the specimen. They're here to erase the evidence permanently. If we don't move right now, they're going to glass this entire moon."
May you like
Before I could answer, the station's public address system crackled to life, overriding the emergency klaxons. But it wasn't Voss's voice echoing through the halls.
It was a cold, synthetic broadcast that chilled me to the bone: “Protocol Null initiated. All personnel evacuate to secondary shuttles. Orbital bombardment sequence primed. Target: Blackridge Station. Time to impact: ten minutes.”
