"Now, Draevik!" I demand.
He moves like a streak of violet lightning. With the enemy pinned and unable to aim, he tears through their formation with a fluid, instinctive grace. I coordinate his path in real time, opening and closing internal shutters to provide him with mobile cover while isolating the remaining soldiers intomanageable pockets. Our teamwork is a dance of logic and violence, a perfect synchronization of my eyes and his hands.
Spotting a lone soldier reaching for a manual override on the cooling tank, I realize that pulling the lever will flood the room with superheated steam.
"Draevik, the one by the tank!" I yell.
Draevik spins, his hand engulfed with a concentrated orb of violet fire. He hurls it with the precision of a master marksman. The orb strikes the soldier square in the chest, the force of the impact throwing the man across the room just as the magnetic field dissipates.
"Threat neutralized," Draevik notifies, heavy and labored in my ear. "The demo charges are cold."
"I’m venting the ionized gas now." My movements are calm despite the adrenaline flooding my system. "Sector Five is ours."
I lean back for a microsecond, my heartbeat pounding out of rhythm. I feel Draevik’s presence through the mark—a steadfast, growing warmth that radiates approval and a fierce, protective affection. We are reclaiming this ship as a team. Confidence fills the spaces where doubt once lived.
"You saw that before I did," Draevik compliments. "Your instincts are as sharp as any tactical computer I have ever commanded."
"I just know how things break, Draevik," I respond as I check the long-range sensors. "And I know how to make sure they stay broken for the right people."
I find a new cluster of signatures at the debris field’s outer edge. Korr's advance fleet is closing in, and Selra is throwing everything she has into a final, desperate hack to disable our navigation.
"Korr's elites are pushing for the auxiliary engine room." My eyes harden as I dive back into the code. "He won't let us nearthat jump gate until he has his prize. Draevik, it's time to take the core back."
CHAPTER 30
DRAEVIK
Ileave nothing but ash in my wake. Every step I take through the scorched corridors of Sector Five feels lighter, fueled by the golden warmth of the mark. Nyra is there, a brilliant, unwavering presence in my thoughts, her consciousness woven into the very deck plates beneath my boots. She moves as the ghost in the machine, directing my movements as her physical manifestation of wrath.
Draevik, three more in the crawlspace above you." Nyra’s voice reverberates clearly from the bulkhead speakers, sharp and certain. "I'm locking the pressure valves to your left. Use the steam."
Skidding to a halt to let my armor absorb the ship's ambient static, I glance up at the metal ceiling, hearing it groan under the weight of hidden invaders. On her cue, a deafening hiss of superheated vapor erupts from the overhead pipes, blinding the soldiers concealed within the vent.
I leap upward, my fingers hooking into the thickened grate and tearing it away like thin parchment. Three Korr scouts tumble out, gasping and disoriented in the white cloud of steam. Before they can raise their high-yield weapons, I execute a brutal, sweeping arc with my leg. The sheer force of mymovement snaps their outer plating and launches them into the far bulkhead. With a pulse of violent intent, I ensure the threat is permanently ended, sending a surge of violet power through the floor plates that seizes their hearts before they even hit the ground.
"Clear," I notify, seamlessly pushing forward. "Nyra, status on the primary engine room."
"The main cluster is there," she reports, the frantic, deliberate clicking of her keys audible in the background. "They brought the heavy hitter, Draevik. It’s Korr himself. He couldn't stomach running away while his men got slaughtered on the first breach. He re-boarded with the second wave of breaching pods, strapped into heavy mechanized armor this time, and he's standing right in front of the jump-core with a dozen elites surrounding him. He must have realized his tech specialist couldn't stop the jump remotely, so he's come back to cripple the core by hand before his main fleet arrives."
My double-hearts beat a punishing cadence behind my plating. Korr. The name tastes like ash. He is a ruthless, opportunistic scavenger captain, a man whose skin is more scar tissue than flesh and who thrives on power imbalances. If he has personally boarded the core, his greed has finally outweighed his caution. He intends to claim the vessel at the source or destroy it in a fit of spiteful glory.
"I am on my way." I break into a dead sprint.
The ship becomes a blur of flickering emergency lights and hissing hydraulics. Nyra clears my path with surgical precision. Doors slide open just a microsecond before I reach them; automated turrets suddenly swivel to provide cover fire against stragglers in the cross-corridors. I eliminate every soul in my path, my movements a lethal blur as I cut down the remnants of the boarding party. We operate as a single organism—a predatorwith two minds and one lethal intent. I feel her focus, a cold, sharp edge that guides my every turn.
I burst through the heavy blast doors of the engine room. The chamber is vast, dominated by the vividly bright, translucent pillar of the jump-core. Ozone and ancient power saturate the air like a forgotten force waking.
Korr looms beside the foot of the pillar. During his retreat to theCarrion King, he clearly raided his own heavy armory. He is now a mountain of a man clad in heavily modified, scavenged siege armor that seems to swallow the core's light. A brutal white scar bisects his pale cheek, while the cybernetic blue lens in his left socket tracks my movement with furious, reckless desperation. He couldn't wait for his armada to arrive, opting instead to secure the prize with his own hands before anyone else could claim it. He holds a massive gravity-mace, its head sparking with a distortion field.
Around him, hunkering down in a defensive perimeter, stand a dozen elite guards. They carry upgraded pulse-rifles and heavy shields, forming a wall of near-impenetrable alloy that speaks of decades of coordinated combat.
"Draevik," Korr rumbles in a gravelly rasp that echoes off the high ceilings. "The traitor returns to claim a ghost."
"This ghost has teeth, Korr." My hands ignite with concentrated energy, casting long, dancing shadows against the bulkheads.
"Nyra, now!" I command.
The room plunges into absolute darkness for a heartbeat as Nyra kills the primary lights. In the sudden void, the only things visible are the violet radiance of my own power and the stark blue glare of Korr’s cybernetic eye.