The field at night—a horizon of wind-worried grass.
Then the world fills with fire.
The Leviathan descends on pillars of flame. Dirt ripples. The night staggers. The ship settles with surgical gentleness.
Bay doors unseal. Yawn open.
Armored soldiers pour out in disciplined lines. Drones bloom into the air. Then Daevos appears—an absence made precise—walking down the ramp as if time itself steps aside.
He lifts a hand.
The squads fan toward the warehouse.
The ship has landed exactly where Arthur expected when he chose this place. Beneath it, darkness—its underside a continent of black metal.
Arthur peels the tarp back and steps into the ship’s shadow.
He presses the plasma cutter’s mag-lock to the hull. It flickers. Slips. Drops against his wrist.
“Damn,” he whispers.
He tries again.
The electromagnets stutter—then bite. He yanks the cutter twice. It holds. He snaps the tether to his harness and tests the draw.
Arthur retrieves a palm-sized device—featureless. He wakes it with a touch. It hums softly. He seats it against the hull. It bonds.
A glance at his wrist. A short sequence entered.
He moves a foot to the left. Places another. Then another.
Cables snap into place. Arthur secures himself and taps a command on his wrist.
The tethers pull tight.
Arthur is pinned flush to the hull. He can barely move.
---
Inside the warehouse, soldiers sweep the aisles with cold precision. Light beams rake corners.
“All clear.”
Daevos steps into the cavern of empty space. He doesn’t need to look long.
On a crate: Arthur’s comm device, blinking its final moments of power.
Daevos presses play.
Shreen’s voice fills the space.
“Mr. Hammond, if you want the device, it’s now or never. You have eleven hours to meet me here on Naviswa—or I’m gone. The device goes with me.”
A soldier glances at a display.
“The message is only forty-five minutes old, sir.”
A smile you could hang a man on forms across Daevos’s face.
“Then let’s go.”
He pivots. Authority moves with him. The soldiers fall in.
---
The Leviathan’s stubby landing struts retract.
The ship rises on a column of fire.
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Grass flattens, ignites, then gutters out beneath the violence of exhaust.
The hull climbs—accelerating—its upper skin burning against atmosphere.
Beneath it, unseen—
Arthur.
Pressed hard against the belly of the ship, a shadow stitched to the moving night. The mag-lock hums. Tethers sing against the slipstream. His visor reflects stars stretched into ribbons by speed.
His vision tunnels. Breath fogs—clears. He fights to stay conscious against the crushing force.
The air thins to a knife edge. The roar collapses into a deep vibration that lives in bone.
Arthur glances at his wrist.
Three green indicators.
He exhales once—fog blooming, then gone.
Above him: the belly of the beast.
Ahead: a plan that allows no margin for error.
The ship punches free into orbit.
Arthur clings to the Leviathan—a dark continent of armor.
Six magnetic tethers pin him flat. His suit HUD blinks steady green.
The ship slams through the jump gate into gate space.
The gate chain hums—massive, rhythmic. Blue lightning crawls across the hull.
Arthur clips his lifeline into the central ring, his mag boots power on. Blue lightning skitters across his suit and disperses, unable to take hold.
Then—space. Normal, dark, silence.
Arthur checks his wrist monitor. “Where are we, Shreen?”
Shreen’s reply is clinical.
“According to internal telemetry, the Leviathan is holding for a gate. Approximately one hour.”
Arthur snorts softly.
“Gate burn. He thinks he can beat us there.”
He drags his equipment along the hull toward the marked coordinates pulsing on his display. He braces the plasma cutter’s magnetic feet against the plating and widens the beam.
“Hardest part’s done,” he mutters.
Sarah’s voice floats in—soft, worried.
“No early celebrations.”
Arthur smiles inside the helmet.
“I just rode a warship into orbit strapped to its belly. Celebrations are mandatory.”
He slaps a compact gravity net beneath the target panel. Latches bloom and lock. He checks every line, breath steady.
“Shreen—have you blinded the sensors yet?”
A pause.
“It is taking longer than I calculated. Security layers are… thorough.”
Arthur’s thumb hovers over the trigger.
“If you don’t get it soon, I’ll have to stop—”
“Just a moment,” Shreen interrupts, crackling.
Another pause.
“…I am in.”
Arthur exhales.
“Good. Stay with it in case they notice.”
He braces himself.
“Alright. Fifteen seconds.”
He counts down—calm, exact.
“Fourteen… thirteen… twelve… eleven… ten… nine—”
---
Inside the ship, Daevos sits in his office. Pristine glass. Cold lines. Data ghosts drift above the desk.
A thin hum threads the silence.
Daevos looks up.
“What is that sound?”
His gaze drops—just beside his chair.
The deck glows dull cherry red. Heat spirals. Metal groans, then begins to buckle.
---
Arthur tightens his grip.
“One.”
The hull blooms white as the cutter punches through.
Daevos’s eyes narrow—calculating.
Arthur turns his face aside.
“Zero.”
The floor tears open.
Air screams outward in a violent rip. Daevos lunges for the desk. A rolling chair slams into his legs; he stumbles, clawing for purchase—too late. Glass ornaments and cruel trophies whistle past him.
The gravity net snaps tight across the breach, catching Daevos and the debris in a roaring suspension. He thrashes, weightless, searching for footing that doesn’t exist.
Arthur plants himself at the rim—a black figure against a blacker sky. Daevos locks eyes with him through visor and vacuum—rage, disbelief, and something dangerously close to fear.
Arthur roars, his voice distorted and absolute.
“I told you I was going to kill you!”
He slams a palm canister into Daevos’s chest. The hypodermic bites through fabric.
Expanding foam erupts inward.
Daevos arches in a silent scream as the compound flashes solid, cocooning him in a warped shell.
Arthur hits the switch.
The net collapses.
Daevos tumbles into the dark—a rigid statue cartwheeling into endless night. The stars do not slow. They do not notice. They do not care.
---
Arthur hauls himself through the breach, mag boots clanging against deck plating. Frost rims the torn seam. Chains rattle nearby.
A clone of Sarah lies shackled by a neck bar—bruised, gasping, but alive.
She sees Arthur—a nightmare in black armor—and screams his name.
Arthur freezes.
Sarah’s real voice whispers in his ear from the Void.
“Is that… who I think it is?”
“Yes,” Arthur says, focus snapping back. “And she’s not dying.”
He kneels. No mask. No dome. No vacuum burn. Just a human chest rising and falling in a room that should be empty of air.
“She’s not dying,” he repeats, stunned.
He forces himself upright.
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
Arthur slams the side panel.
“Shreen—open the door.”
Metal grinds. The seal cracks.
“Done,” Shreen whispers.
The door blows open.
Two soldiers waiting outside are ripped through the breach. Their screams vanish instantly, bodies twisting away into the void.
Arthur turns back.
“Shreen—safety protocols.”
An energy barrier snaps across the rupture—imperfect, but holding. The room stabilizes.
The clone of Sarah watches Arthur disappear down the corridor.
---
Arthur moves through the ship like a scythe through a dry field.
Centuries of training turn motion into outcome.
A shock baton drops two soldiers.
A bulkhead iris opens—three more are vented into space.
A flash-bang rolls—bodies slump; Arthur finishes each without hesitation.
A drone swarm screams down a corridor—his line launcher tangles them and smashes the cluster into a crossbeam.
---
On the bridge, Kasan waits.
“I never liked him,” Kasan says. “He was sick.”
He circles. “That doesn’t mean I’m walking home. This ship is mine.”
He lunges.
Arthur pivots. The strike slices past. Arthur’s elbow pistons upward—bone cracks, blood sprays.
Kasan recovers too fast and slams a kick into Arthur’s ribs. Pain blooms, but Arthur traps the leg and drives his elbow down above the knee.
Kasan screams, stumbles, limping.
A knife flashes.
Arthur exhales, calm.
“I didn’t need a knife—but thanks.”
Kasan lunges. Arthur twists the wrist, rips the blade free, and drives it home in one clean motion.
Kasan stares at the hilt in his chest—confused—then collapses.
Silence returns.
Hungry.
---
Arthur seals the emergency panel over the breach, then returns with a key bar. The collar pops free. Chains clatter.
The clone of Sarah collapses into him, shaking.
“He said… you were in the engine.”
Arthur’s jaw tightens.
“He wasn’t talking about me.”
She blinks.
“Then who—”
“Another clone.” He’s already moving.
“We have to get him out.”
---
The engine room reeks of heat and scorched metal. A dull banging comes from behind a panel marked:
PORT SIDE ENGINE THRUSTER MANIFOLD
Arthur tears it open.
A burned, half-mad clone of Arthur drags himself out—skin healing in waves, eyes wild. He attacks blindly, fists hammering Arthur’s chestplate.
Arthur takes the blows, refusing to strike back.
The clone catches his reflection—two Arthurs, one broken, one steady.
His fists slow.
“Easy,” Arthur says. “It’s me.”
The clone collapses, sobbing—raw, human, undone.
The clone of Sarah rushes forward and holds him.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
Arthur crouches beside them.
“I could use your help flying this thing.”
They nod—shaken, but present.
“There are bodies in the galley,” Arthur says. “Clothes that’ll fit. No blood.”
He steadies himself and rises.
Together, they move through the ship.
The Leviathan drifts—crewless, hollowed—a black cathedral finally emptied of its go
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