He has never met a Reaper.
He is about to.
CHAPTER 16
DRAEVIK
The armor converts to a cold mercy.
Behind the faceplate, the world has already narrowed. The HUD flashes across my vision in a translucent gold veil, translating the universe into lethal vectors and cold probabilities. The armor settled into place minutes ago—I felt Nyra watching it consume me, felt her heartbeat spike over our invisible thread as the man disappeared and the weapon took his place. Behind the faceplate, Nyra’s scent—the warmth of her skin, the salt and spice after every meal—fades, and the sharp, recycled sting of filtered ozone takes its place.
I consider myself a weapon.
Virex Prime, I command through the neural link, my voice a silent thunder within the ship’s collective consciousness. A resonant hum sweeps through the decks, a deep-tissue booming that presses up from beneath and lodges in my marrow.Seal the secondary lungs. Cycle the reactor to combat draw. Keep the external sensors at maximum sensitivity.
The bridge lighting bleeds out as blue-violet calm shifts into the harsh, strobing red of a combat alert, a crimson blaze synced to the ship’s rising heart rate.
"Draevik." Nyra’s voice remains clear against the mechanical cacophony of the warship waking up.
I keep my gaze forward. If I glance at her, the data streams flickering across my retinas—the pressure readouts for the hull, the energy-distribution curves for the kinetic batteries—will falter. I remain aware of her presence regardless. The armor’s internal sensors categorize her heat signature as a brilliant, tremoring bloom in the corner of my tactical display. She shines like a sun in a room full of shadows. I watch the rapid beating of her carotid artery; her heart rate elevates to one hundred and ten beats per minute. She looks terrified, electrified, and ready to strike. She stands wide and coiled, and even in fear, her scavenger stance shows who has survived every hand the Fringe has dealt her.
Marker preservation is the primary directive, the armor’s sub-routine whispers in a flat, synthetic monotone. It recognizes her specific biological signature. It identifies her as the singular priority. It focuses entirely on her preservation.
"Go to the Obsidian Sanctum," I rasp. The vocal amplifier strips any remaining restraint from my words, turning them into the sound of grinding stone and electronic feedback. "Now."
"I told you, I'm not hiding while Korr?—"
"This is a requirement, Nyra." I raise my gauntleted hand, and the floor beneath her feet ripples.
Virex Primeexists as a masterpiece of biomechanical engineering, and right now, I am commanding its logic, ensuring the Commander’s will and the marker’s safety align.Internal containment, I command.Route the Marker to the Obsidian Sanctum. Lockdown Level Nine.
"Draevik, wait!"
The ship obeys with a hard, unforgiving logic. The floor plates slide—a capability I have never deployed against her before—and I hear her sharp intake of breath as the deckitself begins to carry her toward the rear bulkhead in a gentle but irresistible shift of geometry. It turns into a long-winded, tectonic movement that dictates her direction; it is like running against the tide of the world itself. One by one, I build a transport cage of stone and stasis fields around her—a temporary confinement designed for a single purpose: to deliver her safely to the center-most chamber of the ship. Once the doors of the Sanctum seal behind her, she will have the run of the room, but for now, the ship is her guardian and her driver.
Beneath layers of armor and vacuum-sealed rock lies the only light I found in a thousand years. This act represents a mechanical necessity and a violent preservation of the flame. The closing barrier echoes with the thud of a fist—a dull, frantic sound vibrating through the ship’s hull.
Internal perimeter sealed, the ship responds back to me. The signal is certain. Final.
Being alone on the bridge makes the silence absolute, save for the low, predatory whine of the weapons arrays drinking from the reactor. I step toward the forward viewport, nearly three hundred pounds of Reaper alloy and neural-link hardware in my armor making the deck groan.
I begin the lockdown in earnest. My fingers dance across the holographic interface, a language of light and death that I have spoken for centuries. I start with the "skin" of the ship. Internal magnetic seals weld shut every atmospheric vent, waste-reclamation port, and auxiliary sensor hatch. I feel the ship tighten. It is the bracing of muscles before a blow.
I focus on the lateral breach—the torn, unhealed wound inVirex Prime’s flank where she first tumbled into my life. Seventy-one percent closed, the ship told me on the bridge. Insufficient. Still far from complete.
Layer the breach perimeter with proximity-fused kinetic charges,I command.Stagger the detonation thresholds—Iwant the outer ring to strip their shields and the inner ring to gut whatever is left. Route the secondary kinetic batteries to cover the gap. If they enter the wound, they enter a kill box.
Confirmed, Commander. Deploying internal deterrents.
Deep in the ship’s guts, I hear the mechanical hiss of the mine-layers engaging. Dozens of micro-discs embed themselves in the gaps of our broken hull, each carrying enough explosive force to gut a boarding shuttle. Once programmed, it waits like a lethal trap, though finite in scope—the charges are limited, and a clever enough enemy might spend them down.
Turning my attention to the tactical grid, I watch the scavenger fleet gather like a cluster of predatory sparks hovering at the darkness’ threshold. They are messy, their emissions trails thick with the filth of unrefined fuel and poorly shielded reactors. They move with a staggering, nauseating arrogance, believing they are approaching a corpse.
To them,Virex Primeexists as a relic—a mountain of valuable scrap metal floating in the void, waiting to be picked clean by crows. They see a payout. They see a woman withSovereign Weavein her marrow, a biological prize to be harvested and sold.
I detect targets and an opportunity to remind the galaxy why the name of my Legion was whispered with the same reverence as death itself.
The primary armament arrays are still cycling at sixty-two percent—enough to crack a capital ship but too slow to track the fast movers Korr is sending ahead. I divert to the secondary kinetic batteries instead. These turrets, mounted along the dorsal and ventral ridges of the ship, have been dormant for centuries. They are coated in the digital equivalent of rust, their targeting servos locked in the positions they held during the final battle of the First Sovereign Legion.