The crew had spent the better part of two weeks planning every detail and gathering the necessary supplies for the mission. It had taken longer than expected, delays piled upon delays, but there was no helping it. Entering Gliese underprepared wasn't just risky, it was almost suicide. Better to burn precious days now than regret haste light-years from home.
By the time departure day arrived, the docks buzzed with the low hum of idling engines and final checks. Kali arrived early, his personal gear slung over one shoulder and a determined expression on his face. The Helion-9 stood on its launch pad, a sleek composite of matte-black alloys and burnished thrusters, fully fueled and gleaming under the pale arc lights.
Sela was already aboard, half-buried in the systems console, her fingers flying across the interface as she ran diagnostics for the third time that morning. Below her in the cargo bay, Brann and Kharv were hauling in the last of the supply crates, rations, spare suits, tools, and sealed modules of specialized equipment.
Without a word, Kali dropped his duffel by the entry ramp and stepped forward to help. The air between the crew was quiet but charged, like the moment before a storm or the breath before a leap. Every movement had weight; every task was part of a rhythm built on trust, necessity, and anticipation. They were ready, or as ready as anyone could be to cross into mayhem.
Once the last crate was secured and the cargo bay sealed, the crew filed into the cabin and strapped themselves into their seats. Sela took the pilot's chair, her hands moving with practiced ease over the control surface, initializing flight protocols and engaging the launch sequence. The low hum of the Helion-9's core deepened into a steady thrum that vibrated through the hull like a heartbeat.
Jump gate clearance had been approved well in advance, Minerva had seen to that personally, so departure was smooth. With minimal interference from station traffic control, the Helion-9 detached from its moorings and began its slow arc toward the eastern wing of the Caladrian Station, where the gate awaited.
The Caladrian Jump Array loomed ahead, a massive ring of obsidian-black alloy and shifting gravitational fields, pulsing faintly with blue-white energy, its segmented arms adjusting to the incoming trajectory of the shuttle.
Sela aligned the craft with the gate's axis. A short countdown flickered on the dash, ticking down toward the jump. There was a flicker of light, a moment of disorienting stillness, then space folded.
The turbulence came almost immediately.
For several long minutes, reality twisted. Stars warped into blurred spirals outside the viewport, and artificial gravity struggled to maintain equilibrium. The Helion-9 bucked once, twice, then steadied as the distortion field collapsed.
With a final jolt, they emerged from the jump tunnel.
Outside, the vast silence of space greeted them. The Tau Leonis system stretched before them like a painting in deep void: a faint orange sun at the core, its light barely reaching the scattered asteroids and icy debris of the outer rim.
They had arrived.
Tau Leonis was a quiet, stable star system, an anomaly this far out from the core routes. It housed only three planets, all orbiting in clean ellipses. Of the trio, Gliese was the second. A cold, unforgiving world locked in perpetual twilight.
The planet's surface was sheathed in frost-hardened rock, its crust scarred by tectonic shifts and ancient impact basins. Roughly half of the planet lay beneath a thick shroud of swirling, dark clouds, an atmosphere both volatile and unpredictable. Lightning storms danced silently across the cloudline, and winds strong enough to shear hull plating screamed through its upper reaches. This dark hemisphere, drenched in shadow and turbulent weather, was where their objective lay.
Unfortunately, the crew couldn't land directly within the storm-shrouded zone. Atmospheric instability and aggressive avian lifeforms, native to Gliese and disturbingly intelligent, made direct descent suicidal. Instead, they would touch down in one of the planet's marginally safer sectors, the sunlit fringe near the equatorial divide, where weak daylight occasionally filtered through and the terrain offered enough stability to make camp and proceed on foot or via crawler.
As the Helion-9 began its slow orbital descent, Brann unbuckled from his seat and retrieved a secure case from the overhead storage. He cracked it open and began distributing syringe-like injectors, each one filled with a glowing green liquid that pulsed faintly under the cabin lights.
"Line up," he said, voice grim and steady. "This is your only shot, literally."
He handed the first injector to Kali, then continued down the line.
"The virus on Gliese is extremely contagious," he continued, glancing at each of them in turn. "One scratch, one breath in the wrong place, and it's in your system. SynSpec's developed this, fast-acting, genetically adaptive. Should keep you alive."
Sela raised an eyebrow. "Should?"
Brann gave a humorless smile. "Let's just say the vaccine's still in field trials. We're the field."
He paused before delivering the final warning, his voice lowering. "Don't let the injection make you reckless. The infected down there aren't just mindless, they're fast, territorial, and coordinated. You stay sharp, or they'll tear you apart before you can scream."
The crew fell silent. One by one, they took the injections. The moment passing like a ritual.
The Helion-9 pierced through Gliese's upper atmosphere like a silent blade, its reinforced plating shielding the crew from the intense friction and jarring crosswinds. The descent was steep and tense. Sela kept her hands tight on the control yoke, eyes flicking rapidly between the nav display and the fluctuating weather telemetry.
Below them, the world of Gliese uncoiled in hues of ash and steel. The light was weak, more like a faded memory of sunlight than the real thing, casting long, broken shadows over the fractured terrain. Vast fields of ice-streaked stone stretched into the horizon, their surfaces etched with wind scars and the remnants of long-dead river systems. Jagged ridgelines rose and fell like the spines of sleeping titans.
"We're coming up on the drop zone," Sela announced over comms. "Brace for atmospheric shear."
The shuttle shuddered violently as they dipped beneath the cloud ceiling. Visibility narrowed to a dim gray blur. For a heartbeat, they were flying blind. Then the sensors cleared, cutting through the haze to reveal the chosen landing site: a narrow plateau tucked between two ridges, marked with shallow craters and jagged basalt protrusions. It was one of the few locations close enough to the dark zone to be practical, and far enough to avoid its worst weather tantrums.
Sela guided the Helion-9 in low and steady. The landing struts extended with a mechanical hiss as the thrusters flared, kicking up dust, frost, and shards of gravel. The ship touched down hard, the impact muffled but unmistakable.
For a moment, all was still. Then the systems beeped their approval, landing stable. Atmosphere tolerable, if barely. Sela exhaled and unstrapped.
"Touchdown confirmed," she said. "Welcome to Gliese."
Outside the viewport, the wind had picked up again, scattering sheets of snow-dust across the ground. The sky above was a bruised gradient of gray and purple, heavy with the threat of storms. The dark zones loomed to the west, veiled behind curtains of cloud and shadow.
Brann moved to the airlock, checking his weapon and sealing his helmet. "No more second chances after this," he said. "Everyone check gear. We move in ten."
Ten minutes later, final preparations were complete.
The last of the supplies had been secured in the rear compartments of the crawler, a heavy, six-wheeled vehicle built for stability over speed, armored against Gliese's volatile weather and anything more aggressive that might emerge from the dark. Its engine purred with low mechanical confidence, a soft growl in the cold air.
Sela had taken the time to camouflage the Helion-9 as best she could. She powered it down into low-signal hibernation mode, draped its hull with adaptive camouflage netting, and positioned it between two jagged basalt outcroppings. The shuttle was their only way off this rock. If anything happened to it, they were stranded.
Kali stood a few meters from the crawler, watching his breath fog in the chill. The wind had shifted again, bringing a colder bite and a faint electrical tension. He pulled on his insulated coat, thick and dark, lined with graphene filament, then slung his rifle bag over one shoulder.
He glanced toward the west, toward the distant curtain of stormclouds marking the beginning of the dark zone. Beyond that lay their objective, shrouded in ruin, myth, and radio silence.
The crawler's side hatch hissed open. Brann waved him in.
Kali climbed aboard and settled into one of the side seats. The interior was dimly lit, utilitarian. Bare steel panels, rough straps, and reinforced glass. A small holoscreen near the dashboard displayed a rudimentary map of the terrain ahead: valleys, crevices, heat signatures of uncertain origin.
As the crawler lurched forward, treads crunching over frost-laced stone, a quiet thought settled into the back of his mind.
They weren't going to be here for a few weeks. That projection from Minerva had always felt too optimistic. Weeks to months, she'd said.
Kali exhaled slowly, watching his breath swirl in the cold air inside his helmet.
No, he thought. This would be months, minimum. Possibly a year. Gliese was the kind of place that didn't let go easily. And already, he could feel the world pressing in.
Theraxis. A Few Days Ago.
On a jagged outcropping just beyond the perimeter walls of Medri, a shuttle broke through the clouded dusk, descending with precise, mechanical grace. The craft was grey, sleek, and silent save for the hum of its gravitational buffers. Its surface bore a symbol, an intricate weave of crimson and obsidian lines, unmistakable to those few within the uppermost echelons of Theraxis. To all others, it would seem no more than ornament. But to those who knew... it marked the Mugen Clan.
Darius stood alone amid the wind and stone, his coat flapping at his sides like a tattered banner. Sweat beaded his brow despite the cool air, and his lips moved in a whisper, repeating the lines he had practiced all night, each one sounding hollower than the last.
With a final hiss of hydraulics, the shuttle's boarding ramp descended, striking the rock with a resonant thud that echoed into the canyons beyond.
From the shadow of the interior, a young man stepped forward, tall, poised, clad in a lacquered tunic of deep violet and steel-threaded black. Around him moved three exosuited guards, silent and sharp, their visors shimmering with tactical overlays.
The young man's gaze found Darius at once, and he smiled thinly, almost politely.
"Are you Darius?" he asked, voice mild, betraying none of what lay behind his eyes.
Darius straightened with a twitch, forcing a bow. "Yes—yes, I am. You must be Mugen Gyo. It is an honor, truly, to—"
Gyo lifted a hand. He didn't need the words.
"When I entrusted my brother to you," he said, "I did so with faith. Faith earned, not given lightly. My father supported your appointment. The clan stood behind you. We believed your assurances."
Darius faltered, his throat tightening. "I tried—tried to protect him, I did everything I—"
Gyo's eyes hardened, his voice slicing through the plea. "He died. In front of you. Like a dog."
The words struck like stones. Darius dropped to his knees in the red dust, the recitations in his head turning to ash.
"I tried to save him, I swear it," he breathed. "Please, I swear—"
"Names," Gyo demanded.
"Kali. And Priene. Mercenaries," Darius said quickly. "Hired blades. Turned the whole city inside out. Even killed the planetary governor."
Gyo arched a brow. "Just two?"
"They're Awakened. First Order."
"And now?" Gyo asked quietly, both hands resting on the hilt of the blade at his hip. The katana's scabbard bore the etched marks of old battles, dragons curling around moons, flowers blooming from skulls.
"Gone," Darius said, swallowing. "Priene vanished. But Kali... Kali is still in the Septate Alliance's core ring. Somewhere in Caladrian sector."
Gyo nodded, as if checking off an expectation. "You've been meticulous."
The katana sang as it left its sheath, light dancing along its mono-edged length. Its surface pulsed faintly, reacting to Gyo's grip. The guards did not move. They had no need to.
Darius looked up in horror. "Wait—no, you can't. I've done everything your clan has asked of me. I—"
He trailed off as Gyo said nothing.
The silence stretched.
Something in Darius cracked.
His eyes burned bright as fire erupted along his arms, crawling up his torso in streams of molten defiance. The ground beneath him scorched black. His voice rose into a scream, part fury, part desperation.
"I served! I bled for you! I—"
"A pity," Gyo said softly.
Then he moved.
The sword whispered once through the air, faster than thought. Flame split open, followed by flesh, and then bone. Darius's final cry died mid-breath as his body was cleaved from shoulder to hip, collapsing in a molten spray.
The silence returned.
Gyo stood motionless for a moment, his blade dripping with embers and blood. Then, with a flick, he cast the remnants into the dust and returned the sword to its sheath.
Another figure descended from the shuttle ramp, slower, older. His robes bore the muted markings of a steward, deep ochre with a braided sash of pale gold, denoting senior service to House Mugen. His hair was thin, drawn back into a ceremonial knot, and a dataslate rested in the crook of one arm.
"You should have left him alive," the steward said quietly, his voice weathered with years of diplomacy and disappointment. "The man still had uses."
"He signed his death the moment he let my brother into that revolutionary pretender cult," Gyo replied, his tone ice-edged, unshaken.
The steward inclined his head. There was no protest in his gesture, only weary resignation. He had watched too many young scions burn with vengeance and call it justice. To argue would be to waste breath.
"Where next, young master?"
Gyo turned, eyes fixed on the horizon where Medri's lights shimmered like distant embers beneath the rising moons.
"Where else?" he said. "Find this Kali for me."
He paused, voice low, venomous. "I'll make wine of his blood to honor my brother."
The steward said nothing. He only followed, steps silent behind the heir of the Mugen clan, as the winds of Theraxis howled through the canyons and carried the scent of scorched flesh into the dark.