The Wreckage

The air tasted like burning ozone and vaporized copper.

Kaelen’s optical implants booted up with a painful, blinding sequence of red diagnostic runes. His left eye, entirely synthetic, adjusted to the ambient light a fraction of a second faster than his biological right. The transport ship was a jagged, smoking husk half-buried in the pale, toxic ash dunes of Tartarus-9.

Alarms shrieked from the ruined cockpit, a rhythmic, dying pulse. Kaelen unbuckled his crash harness, his reinforced skeletal augments groaning against the strain. He ignored the tactical readouts warning of minor internal bleeding. Pain was data. Data could be managed.

“Vance,” he rasped, his voice raw from inhaled smoke.

He kicked open the mangled bulkhead separating the security annex from the passenger cabin. Dr. Elara Vance was trapped beneath a collapsed support strut. She was coughing violently, her pristine white environmental suit stained with soot and hydraulic fluid. She looked incredibly small, fragile in a way that set Kaelen’s teeth on edge.

Kaelen didn't offer a comforting word. He closed the distance, gripped the superheated metal strut with his cybernetic arm, and heaved. The servos in his shoulder whined in protest, but the metal gave way. He hauled her to her feet by the collar of her suit.

“Are you hit?” he demanded, his tone flat and devoid of empathy.

Elara stumbled against him, her chest heaving. “I… I don't think so. My head. What happened?”

“Surface-to-air kinetic strike,” Kaelen said, dragging her toward the jagged rent in the hull. He shoved her out into the blinding, swirling ash of Zone 1. “Someone knew our flight path. Move.”

He stepped out behind her, his tactical HUD immediately overlaying the desolate landscape. Three distinct condensation trails were etching their way through the sickly yellow sky, descending rapidly toward their coordinates. Drop pods. Mercenaries.

“They’re coming for the data,” Elara gasped, clutching the biometric hard-drive secured to her chest rig. “The atmospheric stabilization codes. Kaelen, if the syndicate gets this, millions of colonists—”

“I don't care about the colonists, Doctor,” Kaelen interrupted, checking the power cell on his heavy plasma rifle. He slapped a fresh magazine into his sidearm. “My contract is to keep you breathing until we reach the automated relay station fifty miles north. You are cargo. Nothing more. If you want to survive, you do exactly what I say, when I say it. Understood?”

Elara stared at him, her wide, expressive eyes reflecting a mix of terror and pity. “You don't have to be so cold about it.”

“Cold keeps you alive,” Kaelen grunted, turning his back on the burning wreckage. “Walk.”