Low-Orbit Approach, 03:15 UTC
The Helix-Ascender shuddered through the upper atmosphere, windows glowing with ribbons of emerald twilight – Dawn-Core auroras that now girdled half the planet. Inside the cramped passenger bay the team made final gear checks.
Aiden slipped the newborn Dawn-Core into a vacuum cradle that locked against his chest rig. The crystal's pulse beat warmly against freshly sutured shoulder muscles. Maya, eyes ringed by two sleepless nights, clipped the upgraded Mirror-Gauntlet over fractured knuckles and slid the Silent-Archive index chip into its data slot. Cassie flexed burnt fingers around a rebuilt lantern whose parabolic dish now shimmered with iron-flux plating scavenged from their last mission. Nephis tested a newly woven shadow-cloak, dark fabric shot through with thin threads from the Wellspring. Lin Xi moved stiffly, Spiral Stone braced in a lattice of Qi-reactive splints; every breath seemed to cost him, yet his eyes still glowed with steady resolve.
Beyond the cockpit glass the Iron Menagerie came into view: a broken torus of once-Council forges drifting a few hundred kilometres above the Pacific. Most modules hung dark, but here and there orange nodes of active corruption pulsed like diseased organs.
Maya's scan scrolled across their helmet displays. "Three hot cores. If Dawn-Core's resonance leaks into those reactors they'll spin up new Sentinel foundries.""Then we shut them down," Aiden said, tightening his harness.Cassie gave a shaky smile. "What's one little spacewalk after wrestling sea monsters and drones?"
Docking Gone Wrong
The Ascender eased toward the torus's pier-ring. A docking collar slid out – then morphed into a barbed harpoon that punched straight through the ship's airlock. Alarms wailed; air screamed over Aiden's shoulders until Nephis flared his cloak across the breach and Maya slammed bulkhead valves. Hull pressure stabilised, but the iron barb unravelled into crawling tendrils etched with Council sigils, weaving over the fuselage like ivy.
Lin Xi touched the metal, winced. "Living forge code. Board through it or blast free – choose."Aiden drew Dawn-Core light into his palms. "We board."
Boarding the Pier
They popped the secondary hatch and drifted into zero-g. The pier's corridor, once sterile white, had swollen with metallic veins; hot filaments tried to copy Dawn-Core's signature. Aiden felt the mimicry tug on his harness like greedy fingers. Cassie's lantern flashed a cleansing cone, burning away the worst of it. Far ahead Nephis scouted; he reported two abandoned forges and one active heart.
Maya found a half-functional console and jacked the index chip into an antique socket. "I can mute sub-processors if I reach node Seven-Gamma," she murmured.
Hangar Θ: the Active Forge
Sliding doors opened on a cavernous bay where a spherical printer, six metres across, vomited molten slag into zero-g. Half-formed Sentinels drifted headless in orange haze. A spider-shaped drone – a far larger cousin to the Herald they'd fought in the Archive – clung to railings that circled the printer's equator, siphoning data and power.
"If that thing finishes rewriting the foundry, this ring vanishes into stealth orbit," Maya said.Aiden set his jaw. "Lin Xi and Cassie, cut the power coils. Nephis, keep spiders busy. Maya, prep an index blast. I'll pour Dawn-Core into the heart."
They kicked off in four directions.
Cutting the Coils
Lin Xi traced a jade glyph over the first conduit. Qi flared, flash-freezing the metal. Cassie's lantern swung a blade of dawn-light through the brittle pipe; it snapped, slag crystallising into harmless shards. But the second conduit spat a magnetic whip, yanking Cassie into the printer cage where half-alive torsos lurched toward her.
Clash with the Spider-Herald
Nephis tangled with the spider, shadows slicing off two legs before a volley of nano-caltrops shredded his cloak. Maya hurled mirror-bright packets that cracked the drone's shell but couldn't dislodge it.
Aiden boosted straight at the rail, slammed Dawn-Core against the drone's chassis and forced a wash of peach-gold current through its circuits. For one second its armour went translucent, exposing a black index-key at the centre. Feedback lightning scorched Aiden's arm; warning lights roared across his HUD. But he'd found the target.
Down in the cage Cassie fought for breath, visor cracked, lantern flickering as Sentinels closed.
Index Override
Maya shouted over comms, "Hold that surge!" She patched the Archive index through her gauntlet, ricocheting a reflector burst that tagged the exposed key. The key's status flipped from Council red to Loom teal; data siphons stuttered. The spider screeched, legs retracting from printer rails.
Aiden felt the rail motors stall. He wrenched the key free. The forge's orange glow dulled to a soft coral; drifting torsos froze in inert crystal.
Down below Cassie still grappled with one rogue Sentinel. Aiden kicked off a girder, blasted through the cage bars with Heart-Core light, and dragged her clear as the Sentinel cracked apart.
Losing the Coil
But power oscillated dangerously. The second conduit, half-severed, overloaded. Maya barked a warning: "Coil breach in five!" They fled, pushing Lin Xi's limping form ahead. Nephis threw his cloak like a net, yanking them all through the hatch an instant before a white sphere blossomed behind them, collapsing the hangar into a micro-singularity.
The bulkhead slammed shut, tremors rattling the torus. Lights flickered, then steadied on emergency power. The section they'd saved read green on Maya's HUD. Two forge hearts down. One remained, somewhere deeper in the ring—yet now hull torsion ticked toward catastrophic shear.
Aiden's shoulder bled anew, Dawn-Core dimmed, but he pocketed the black key and met Maya's eyes. "We keep running until this ring is silent." She nodded. Cassie managed a shaky grin. Nephis retrieved the last scraps of his cloak, ready to fight on. Lin Xi pushed to his feet, pale but determined.
The corridor ahead groaned, but it was still open—and time was running out.