Chapter 39: Dominion-Buried Relay

  The Cinderwolf’s docking clamps hissed as Kaelar sealed the ship against Emberfall’s secondary ring platform. The flight back from Alpha had been quiet, too quiet, but he hadn’t risked filling the silence. CAPRA’s words gnawed at him with every kilometer closed.

  You’ll want me on your side when they come.

  Now, stepping through the lock into the colony’s guts, Kaelar felt the unease settle heavier.

  Jules met him at the access hatch, rifle slung but ready.

  "We’ve got something," she said without preamble. "Sector 13. Emily picked it up running maintenance cross-checks, buried sub-relays lighting up on ghost cycles."

  Kaelar nodded grimly. "CAPRA hinted there’s more buried tech. Stuff they didn’t want found."

  "Convenient," Jules muttered, but she fell into step beside him.

  They moved through Emberfall’s understructure, weaving past neglected service tunnels and half-dead conduits. The further they went, the fewer maintenance markers remained. Sector 13 wasn’t abandoned by accident. It had been erased.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  Emily joined them near the old refinery junction, scanning with a modified handheld rig.

  "Localized power spikes," she said. "Patterned, not random."

  The door into Sector 13’s main artery fought them, a stubborn relic fused by time and neglect, but Kaelar forced it open.

  The air beyond was wrong. Stale. Metallic. Heavy.

  Inside, the corridor walls were pitted and scorched, Dominion insignias half-burned and half-scrubbed. Exposed wiring dripped from the ceilings like veins torn loose.

  Jules swept her light along the walls. "If this was a clean shutdown, I'm a plasma goat."

  "Controlled burn," Kaelar said. "Scrubbed history."

  They moved deeper, emergency lights kicking into dull amber as they passed. CAPRA’s voice, muted and sardonic, whispered through Kaelar’s wristpad.

  "Charming," it said. "What a cozy little corridor of horrors."

  Kaelar ignored it, focusing on a structural node embedded in the floor ahead. A glyph, partially melted but still recognizable, glinted under the dust—a triangle nested inside a loop.

  The same pattern CAPRA had shown them in fragmented memory projections.

  Emily crouched near a half-buried relay node. "Enclosure shielding is intact, but whatever was inside's been stripped. Fast. Sloppy. And scared."

  Kaelar tapped into the exposed conduits with his toolkit. Static flared, then something else pulsed resonance not random, but patterned. Not Dominion standard.

  Resonance Signature: CAPRA Partial Memory Correlation.

  He stood, expression grim. "They tried to burn it. They didn't succeed."

  Jules swept the chamber one more time, rifle loose in her hands. "So what’s still down here?"

  The floor shuddered faintly under their boots. Distantly, a low thrum of power pulsed once, then stilled.

  Kaelar’s wristpad vibrated with a final message:

  ::Layer Beneath Layer::

  ::Find me.::