The light beside the door pulsed amber, steady and indifferent.

  Tanaka shifted his weight, shield set, shotgun muzzle angled down for the push. Navarro behind him, rifle up. Kaden could feel her breathing through his own chestplate, quick and shallow. Jax’s hand rested on his shoulder. Vos watched their back, quiet for once.

  “On breach,” Jax said, voice low in their ears, “remember: they built this space to keep people like us out. We’re about to be exactly where they want us.”

  Comforting.

  Kaden wrapped his right hand tighter around his SMG. His left hung close to the foregrip, fingers half-curled, throbbing in pulses that matched his heartbeat. His HUD kept the AP counter in the corner like a nagging thought.

  “Tanaka,” Jax said. “Do it.”

  Tanaka grunted once and leaned in. The door wasn’t built to be opened politely. He put his shoulder into it and shoved, shield leading.

  The seal broke with a screech. The gap widened just enough to show a slice of the room beyond.

  Fire poured through it.

  The first burst hammered off Tanaka’s shield before the door even finished moving. Rounds sparked and screamed off the battered plate, chewing fresh gouges into the already-ruined upper edge. A second stream cut across the gap higher, slamming into the frame and spraying ceramic chips into the doorway.

  “Contact!” Navarro snapped.

  Tanaka pushed the door wider, absorbing impacts through his armor and the shield. The entry opened into a short, maybe four-meter throat that flared into a wider chamber. Consoles, armored ribs, and low bulkhead segments made jagged lines of cover. Muzzles flashed from at least two distinct angles in the immediate perimeter.

  It was a killbox. Of course it was.

  Tanaka staggered half a step under the barrage, then locked his legs and let the shield take it.

  “Two positions,” Navarro said. “Left and right. More in back.”

  “Hold here,” Jax snapped. “Do not run that throat blind.”

  They were all crushed in the doorway. Tanaka’s shield took the brunt, but rounds still slipped around the fractured edges. One skittered off the wall right beside Navarro’s head. Another clipped the doorway near Kaden’s shoulder, sending a sting of splinters against the cheek of his helmet.

  Backing up wasn’t an option. Whoever was shooting from inside would flood them if they tried.

  This was as bad a place as they could be.

  He felt the first hint of panic try to claw up his spine, the animal part of his brain screaming at him to move, to do anything except stand here and take it.

  Jax’s hand left his shoulder. She lifted it just enough that he could see the gesture in his peripheral vision.

  “Theta-3,” she said. “We’re drawing a line right here.”

  Kaden didn’t see anything change when she triggered the skill.

  He felt it.

  [SKILL: HOLD THE LINE (R1) – ACTIVE]

  [AP – JAX: 2 → 0 (0/9)]

  It hit like someone had reached into the noise inside his skull and turned a dial.

  The stray edges of panic didn’t disappear, but they dulled, pushed back. The jitter at the ends of his remaining fingers settled just enough that his aim felt more like a choice and less like a suggestion. The roar of gunfire and the hiss of ricochets compressed into something clear: lines, angles, threats.

  His awareness of the squad sharpened. Tanaka’s stance in front of him, the exact way Navarro’s rifle leaned against his shoulder, the tension in Vos’ breath behind them. Jax’s presence pressed in behind all of that, not physically, but like a weight holding everything in place.

  This is the spot, something in him decided. We do not fall here.

  On his HUD, the others’ RES readings nudged upward in a way he’d never seen in a sim.

  [THETA-3 – RESISTANCE: TEMPORAL BOOST – SOURCE: JAX // HOLD THE LINE]

  Tanaka made a low noise in his throat that might have been a laugh.

  “There we go,” he said. “Feels…better.”

  “Anchor up,” Jax ordered. “Now.”

  “Copy,” Tanaka growled.

  He drove the lower edge of the shield into the deck plating with a heavy, deliberate stomp.

  [SKILL: SHIELD ANCHOR (R1) – ACTIVE]

  [AP – TANAKA: 1 → 0 (0/5)]

  Kaden swore he felt the floor answer. Not physically, not like a vibration, but in the way force traveled.

  The next volley that slammed into the shield sounded different. The blast that struck the upper edge and sent shrapnel skittering over their helmets didn’t shove Tanaka back like it should have. His boots scraped once, then gripped. He grunted, but didn’t give ground.

  Anchor took the force the ship tried to throw at them and spread it into the bulkhead, into the deck, into the shield itself. Tanaka was still bleeding, still hurting, but he stood like a bolted fixture.

  “Navarro,” Jax snapped. “Right lane. Put them down.”

  “On it,” Navarro said, and Kaden heard the tiny shift in her tone when she leaned into her skill.

  [SKILL: CONTROLLED BURST (R1) – ACTIVE]

  [AP – NAVARRO: 1 → 0 (0/5)]

  Her breathing changed on comms. It dropped into a steadier cadence. The angle of her rifle nudged just a little smoother beside her cheek. Controlled Burst wasn’t just about how she squeezed the trigger; it was how Aurora synced her nervous system to her weapon, how it whispered reminders about recoil management and sight picture without words.

  She leaned out past the edge of Tanaka’s shield, found the first muzzle flash on the right, and let off a tight three-round burst. All three shots went exactly where they needed to: one chewed into the edge of cover, two punched into an Opp helmet and neck.

  The firing from that angle stumbled.

  Another Opp tried to take the position. Navarro adjusted half a degree, fired again. Two rounds into the chest. One into the faceplate for good measure. The return fire from that sector dropped another notch.

  Kaden shifted his weight just enough to bring his own muzzle up over Tanaka’s shoulder, aiming down the left side of the killbox.

  Hold the Line steadied his hands in a way he hadn’t realized he’d been missing. It didn’t erase the pain in his fingers or the fuzz at the edges of his vision, but it put a spine through his focus.

  He saw an Opp lean too far into their lane, trying to find an angle past Tanaka’s shield. Kaden put two rounds into their upper chest. They jerked and fell back behind their console. He swept fire across the edge of their cover, making sure they stayed down.

  Inside the chamber, Opp moved in disciplined bursts. They shifted positions, trading places, trying to keep the crossfire active. But the synchronized push they’d started with was fraying.

  “This is costing them,” Vos said quietly from behind. “They thought we’d break when we saw this.”

  “They thought wrong,” Jax said.

  Rounds kept hammering the shield. One shot slipped past the edge and punched into Kaden’s pauldron. His armor took most of it, but the kinetic smack jolted his shoulder. Another got close enough to his helmet that his ears rang.

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  He didn’t flinch as much as he would have expected. Hold the Line pressed cold fingers against the back of his panic and pushed it down.

  “We’re not staying here forever,” Jax said. “Vos, options?”

  Vos’ answer came on a breath halfway between a laugh and a grimace.

  “Doorway’s a death trap,” he said. “They’re dug in on both sides. But they had to lay power and conduits somewhere for this room. I’m betting there’s a side access or maintenance duct they didn’t bother to lock fully.”

  “Find it.”

  There was a rustle of armor behind Kaden as Vos shifted, staying under the shelter of Tanaka’s shield as much as he could. A moment later, Kaden heard metal clatter against metal and a muffled curse.

  “Panel here,” Vos said. “Left side of the frame. Half torn already. Someone took a hit on it earlier.”

  “Can you get it open without a skill?” Jax asked.

  “Can I open a broken maintenance hatch with my bare hands?” Vos said. “Sergeant, I grew up on ships held together with tape and prayer.”

  Something groaned. A panel popped with an ugly snap. Kaden glanced back just long enough to see Vos wrench a warped access cover aside and reveal a narrow crawl along the wall, half full of cables and control bundles.

  “Goes around the inside curve of the bulkhead,” Vos said. “Not a full flank, but it’ll give one or two of us a new angle into the room.”

  “Mercer,” Jax said. “You and Vos take that. Tanaka, Navarro, you hold this throat. If they push when we shift fire, you make them regret it.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Kaden said.

  He eased back a half step, giving Vos space to slide sideways along the wall. The tech’s breath hitched as he put weight through his bad shoulder and into his fractured arm to squeeze into the gap.

  “Love these,” Vos muttered. “Nothing like getting intimate with a hostile ship’s guts.”

  The crawl was barely big enough for one person at a time. Cables brushed the sides of Kaden’s helmet as he squeezed in after Vos, SMG held awkwardly along his chest. The curved path hugged the outside of the main doorway, then opened into a small service alcove with a grated opening into the chamber.

  Through it, Kaden could see the right-hand firing position Navarro had been trading rounds with. From here, he had a clean side angle on the Opp hunkered behind that cover.

  “Got eyes,” he said quietly. “I can hit their right lane from here.”

  “Then do it,” Jax said. “On my mark, we shift suppression. Tanaka, give me three heavy blasts centerline. Navarro, ride that and keep left shooters busy. Mercer, Vos, you kill anything that’s been bothering Navarro. Ready?”

  “Ready,” Navarro said.

  “Ready,” Vos said, voice tight.

  “Ready,” Tanaka grated.

  “Three,” Jax said. “Two. One. Go.”

  Tanaka roared wordlessly and thrust the shield forward half a step, bracing his weight behind it. The shotgun over the top boomed three times in rapid succession, each blast hammering into the central lane. Even if he didn’t hit anyone directly, he filled the air with shrapnel and shock.

  Navarro leaned out behind him and snapped short bursts down the left. Her pattern wasn’t as clean as when her skill was active, but every shot went somewhere that mattered—cover edges, muzzle flashes, helmet silhouettes.

  Inside the chamber, Opp instinct took over. Some ducked from the central blasts. Others shifted to deal with the surge from the door.

  None of them were looking at the grated opening where Kaden and Vos waited.

  Kaden picked the nearest Opp in Navarro’s lane: a figure half-exposed behind a low bulkhead, rifle up to keep her pinned. He lined the sight center mass and squeezed. The first two rounds outlined it. The third hit their neck. They folded forward onto the cover, limbs slack.

  Beside him, Vos adjusted his SMG carefully one-handed and raked a short burst at a second Opp who’d just started to lean out to replace the first. Four but into it’s cover before the fifth found purchase. The body snapped back and vanished.

  “Two down right,” Kaden called.

  “Pressure’s lighter,” Navarro said. “I feel it.”

  He saw it, too. With that cluster broken, the right side of the perimeter suddenly had fewer angles. The Opp who’d been relying on their combined fire had to expose themselves more to keep the same coverage.

  One tried to snap a shot across the chamber toward where Tanaka’s shield had been. Navarro tagged them in the ribs when they did, a quick Controlled Burst that put them down.

  Hold the Line pulsed through Kaden again, not growing, just holding steady. It was like being in the eye of a storm. Bullets still flew, people still screamed, but the squad’s arc felt less like a scattered scramble and more like a deliberate push.

  “Right’s thinning,” Vos said. “I’ve got one more angle from here.”

  He shifted his position, bracing his wounded arm against a cable bundle. He picked a target farther back—a figure working at a console, probably feeding data to whoever was deeper in the room. His burst blew the console before catching the Opp in the upper back. They slammed against the console, sparks flying, and slid to the floor.

  “Good,” Jax said. “Tanaka, push a meter. Navarro, cover. Mercer, Vos, keep cutting them down. We’re not staying in this throat.”

  Tanaka grunted and levered himself forward. The shield scraped along the deck, then lifted again as he wedged himself fully into the room proper. Rounds struck the plate in fresh spurts of sparks. One hit his upper arm; his armor flashed a brief warning, then cleared. He didn’t stop.

  Navarro stayed tight to his right, firing past the shield whenever a muzzle flash presented itself.

  Kaden and Vos poured what shots they could from the grate angle, picking off anyone who tried to adjust to the new pressure.

  The Opp perimeter held for another thirty seconds. Maybe forty. Long enough for one desperate grenade to clatter off Tanaka’s shield and bounce back into their own cover—a bad throw that earned a cut-off shriek and a bloom of smoke from the left flank.

  Then the fire broke.

  A few Opp tried to fall back deeper into the chamber. Navarro and Tanaka caught two. Kaden shot another as they crossed his sliver of view. The remaining defenders chose their jobs: the closest ones died in place, the ones further back retreated toward the heavy inner door that likely led into primary firing control proper.

  “Hold,” Jax said as the volume of fire dropped. “Don’t rush it. They want you to sprint and trip over something stupid.”

  Kaden took his finger off the trigger and forced himself to breathe. The skill’s cool grip in his head made that easier. His aches and pains were still there, but they didn’t feel like they were in charge.

  “Mercer, Vos,” Jax said. “Fall back to the main line. We’re clearing this ring and then we get our heads around that door.”

  Kaden glanced at Vos. The tech’s shoulders were trembling slightly. His visor turned his way, but Kaden didn’t need to see his eyes to know he was running on fumes.

  “After you,” Vos said.

  Kaden backed out of the service alcove as carefully as he could, then shuffled along the cramped crawl until he could spill back into the corridor behind Tanaka’s shield. The heavy had moved fully into the outer chamber now, shield set near a half-destroyed console that gave him better angle coverage.

  From this side, the perimeter looked rough. Cover was shredded. Opp bodies lay scattered where they’d fought and fallen. The room curved around toward the inner door, a wider, darker slab of armored metal with more glyphs clustered around it.

  It felt like standing in the vestibule of something worse.

  Navarro pivoted, muzzle tracking across the chamber in careful arcs, checking each lump of alien armor for that twitch that meant “not as dead as they look.” She put an extra round into one that shifted wrong. It didn’t move again.

  “Kaden,” Jax said. “Anyone still savable on the floor?”

  He scanned quickly, eyes and HUD in sync. Aurora tagged three Opp as definitively dead. One human further back was face-down near a console, armor torn open at the side. His HUD showed their status as a flat line.

  [DELTA-1 // L. KWON – STATUS: KIA]

  “No one we can help,” Kaden said. The words tasted bitter.

  “Then we don’t linger,” Jax said. “Vos, anything ugly waiting to wake up in here?”

  Vos limped a few steps further into the ring, keeping his SMG at the ready. He scanned the consoles, the overhead mounts, the walls.

  “A couple of dead sensor eyes,” he said. “A few power lines that are still live but not doing much. No turrets I can see. If they had any, they didn’t bring them up.”

  “Or we broke them earlier,” Navarro said.

  “I like that theory,” Vos said.

  Kaden’s HUD flickered.

  [SKILL: HOLD THE LINE (R1) – DURATION ENDING]

  [AP – JAX: 0/9]

  The steadying pressure he’d been riding eased off gradually, not like a snap but like a tide rolling back. His hands didn’t suddenly start shaking, but the raw edge of fatigue rushed back in. The ache in his fingers sharpened. The awareness of how much everything hurt came roaring up.

  He staggered a half-step, caught himself, and blew out a slow breath.

  “Skill’s fading,” he said.

  “Good,” Jax said. “Means we lived through the part I needed it for.”

  Tanaka’s shoulders slumped a little as Anchor winked out, but he stayed upright. Sweat streaked his neck inside the collar. His shield looked like it had been dragged through a demolition yard.

  Kaden checked his own HUD.

  [AP – MERCER: 2/5]

  [AP – JAX: 0/9]

  [AP – TANAKA: 0/5]

  [AP – VOS: 0/8]

  [AP – NAVARRO: 0/5]

  Four of them were dry. He was the only one with anything left, and it wasn’t much.

  Jax walked a slow circle around the perimeter, rifle sweeping with her gaze. She paused near the inner door. Up close, it looked even thicker than the last one. The glyph plates around it pulsed faintly with some inner light. Aurora tagged them.

  [PRIMARY WEAPON CONTROL – ACCESS LOCK]

  [SECURITY PRIORITY – MAXIMUM]

  “This is it,” Jax said.

  No one argued.

  Kaden moved closer, keeping one eye on the room and one on the sergeant. Fatigue had settled into the lines of her body, too. It didn’t make her smaller, exactly, but it made the weight she carried more obvious.

  She rested her palm against the inner door for a second, just feeling it. Then she pulled back and turned.

  “Perimeter’s ours,” she said. “We’ve bled for every meter between the breach pod and here. On the other side of this slab is whoever’s still trying to tell those plasma torps where to go. We kill that, they stop guessing. Or they blow themselves up trying.”

  Navarro’s jaw tightened. “No more heavies behind this one?” she asked.

  “If there are, we deal with them,” Jax said. “Same as the Reaver. Same as every corridor. Same as this room.”

  Tanaka shifted his grip on the shield, testing his leg again. “I’ve got one more push in me,” he said. “Maybe two if I fall on someone useful.”

  Vos let out a dry exhale. “If we make it through this and back to Valiant,” he said, “I’m voting we get combat pay in the form of extra AP next time.”

  “Aurora doesn’t do bribes,” Kaden said tiredly. “Just consequences.”

  “Then let’s give it something to chew on,” Jax said. “Check mags. Check each other for holes that aren’t supposed to be there. Then we’re going through this door. No skills left. No tricks. Just us.”

  Kaden swapped to his last full mag, seating it with a sharp slap. His fingers screamed; he ignored them. Navarro reloaded with efficient motions. Vos checked the handful of rounds he had left, then his sidearm. Tanaka re-racked his shotgun and eyed his remaining shells like they were a puzzle he’d have to solve in reverse.

  Jax watched them all, then turned back to the inner door.

  “Perimeter done,” she said quietly. “Kill switch next.”

  She lifted her hand toward the controls.

  Kaden felt his heart kick against his ribs, loud in his ears.

  They were running on fumes. Jax had nothing left in the tank but will. Tanaka was held together by foam and medication. Navarro’s AP was gone. Vos had drained every scrap of his skill set into getting them here.

  Kaden had two points of Aurora’s favor left and a medkit that felt too light.

  It would have to be enough.

  Jax’s glove hovered an inch from the door panel.

  “Theta-3,” she said. “On my word, we finish the job.”

  She touched the controls.