Heinan — Somewhere in Hyper. Six Hours Later

  It yanked me out of sleep with a couple of shoves, then the heavy roll came—like the hull caught an empty wave. The cocoon spread the hits, but the low frequency went straight to bone. The coffin compensators ate the scream and the hundred-hertz buzz; the rest I took as given. The PMDs drummed under the ribs and, suddenly, cut—ship slid into quiet.

  Patrick Callahan—**Keymaster**—bent over the lid.

  “Commander, almost there. **PRIZRAK** is up, **MIRAGE** on standby. Available thrust minus sixty-seven—venting into mufflers and cold radiators.”

  “The rookie?”

  Keymaster hesitated a beat, choosing words.

  “Here’s the oddity. First dock to **ARACHNE** and he’s syncing at **0.87**. New hands start **0.5–0.6** and climb for weeks. Your input curve was **0.72**, remember? Next to him you’re… med-school.”

  “Too good, then.”

  He went back to the bridge. I slid out of the coffin, woke the rest, and moved for the gear capsule.

  **ASIP** frames lay in their racks like black seals studded with green circles. The rooky stared. I stripped, pulled on the suit—and answered their chuckle with the usual demo: press the dot, the cell goes to black, micro-pneumo seats the armor to your shape. Two minutes, the suit deflated to **me**; a minute later they followed.

  The veterans didn’t stare. They checked straps and angles—the quiet rituals that keep you alive.

  **Aristocrat** stood like a formal memo with a pulse; **Brand** had that matchhead grin that meant trouble when struck; **Rock** was already positioned like cover. **Cartographer** watched the ship as if he’d drawn it. **Blade** moved without leaving air behind. **Aegis** counted exits the way medics count breaths. **Keymaster** listened to the hull like it was speaking.

  “Shields warm to **5 MJ/m2 (10 ms),**” **Keymaster** on the net. “**Kern-13** nominal: **SCRUB / SEVER / PURGE**. Two keys, three seconds, cones trimmed.”

  “Copy. Bring the net up.”

  The world dimmed a blink—opto-neuro flared in the temples, and the team’s voices came in like each one whispering into my ear: live timbre, live edge. No telepathy—just cortex doing work.

  “ARACHNE net is live,” **Keymaster** dropped markers. “Sync: old hands **0.74–0.79**; the rookie **0.87** and steady—no jitter.”

  I kept my peace. Too smooth.

  **Heinan** glued itself to the enemy flank. Mag-visc “cats” bit a service seam; the **BRDF** sole sang once—felt it in the skin. Keymaster ran out the crab-connector: induction first, then a hair of fiber into the gap between panels. The sync timer dripped mercury seconds. Five minutes, and dry lines from their log scrolled across my visor.

  “Week’s worth: one **Eigkvart**, head of IIRPT,” Keymaster muttered. “Base touched a month ago before launch. No trace of a prisoner.”

  A tug under the sternum.

  “So they ran the mission on borrowed access. High. Berks don’t leave dust.”

  “Deck maps, command roster, last routes off cams—pushing to the brief room,” Keymaster clicked through. “Schedule says ‘science freighter.’ If so, their paths are stable.”

  “Good. Fifteen minutes—assembly. **Keymaster**, you keep our link and the quiet cover.”

  Only the rooky ingered in the locker—the seniors had already scattered to run checklists. I checked the back-mounts, clicked **Kern-13** modes: **SCRUB**—EM cone; **SEVER**—narrow implosive slice (up to 25 kg TNT-eq.); **PURGE**—circular implosion (last resort). Two keys. No “hydrogen in the pocket”—but enough to chew a truss.

  “Commander,” **Keymaster** came back on the line, “masking holds. **MIRAGE** untouched. Thrust’s thin—but dead quiet.”

  “Got it. Rookie stays mid-stack. If his sync doesn’t drop, I’ll give him the left channel.”

  “Copy. And—ran a stress test. For a first session, his curve’s too clean—no adaptive steps. I’ve only seen that on bench mannequins.”

  “So: talent or someone’s hand.”

  “We’ll see which.”

  I snorted, dropped the visor. In the quiet amber band on the HUD it lit: **PRIZRAK — ON | EXTERNAL BEAMS — OFF | COMMS — OPTICAL**. Somewhere deep, **Heinan** laughed in metal, soft—and beyond the seam in the enemy hull, our hunt began: a needle in a haystack of steel.

  “Gentlemen—meet ASIP-M/SDC. Our cloak and shield. Two masks: PRIZRAK (full) and MIRAGE (light). Yes, it’s heavy—that’s the price of safety. You’ll learn the rest on the fly. Briefing room.”

  The corridor curved us into a round chamber. Voices settled; the team rose.

  “At ease,” I nodded, waited for the rookie to sit. “We’re on station. Our target is a prisoner. Ships like this move prisoners, and the route reads human. The ship’s log is scrubbed, but Eigkvart, head of IIRPT, keeps surfacing. He doesn’t ride freighters for sport—he’s supervising, and he knows where they keep the cell.”

  **Keymaster** raised a map. Over the table a 3-D hull lit up—three threadlike routes.

  “Red—GH09. Orange—LQ10. Violet—QJ07. LS05 is a porcupine—leave it. Too many sensors.”

  Eigkvart’s portrait popped inside a red frame.

  “He’s important and jumpy. No cowboy work: you see him, you tag the net and wait on my word. Don’t lay hands on him either. Odds are he’s heavily armed and ready for surprises.”

  Someone snorted. I didn’t smile.

  “Window is 60 minutes. Two reasons.

  First, every minute raises the chance we get picked off by acoustics or heat.

  Second, ASIP batteries hold about an hour in active. After that, you’re naked in a foreign corridor.”

  “Here everyone’s a medic with an IFAK. Three steps: blood, air, heat. Keymaster walks you on ARACHNE; if he’s not there, a quiet drone will come and stitch. No white coats—the point is to live to exfil.”

  “Weapons limits?” the rookie asked.

  “Minimal. Nanomorphs—cold blades with neutron link. Beam daggers—close only. No bursts, no thermals. Our tools are surprise and silence. If you must engage, do it without noise and without alarms. Remember: we’re outnumbered, on their deck; there will be no cavalry.”

  My gaze moved across the faces. Work-nervous. Good.

  “Teams.

  Group One: Erik **“Aristocrat”** Alexandersson, Kylian **“Brand”** Brandt, Pavlos **“Rock”** Vrachos—red.

  Group Two: **SKY**, Lara **“Aegis”** van der Meer, the rookie—orange.

  Group Three: Ga?l **“Cartographer”** Duval, Murat **“Blade”** Keskin—violet. (Reserve on violet—‘Rock’ if load spikes.)

  **Keymaster** stays on the brain: ARACHNE net, camera hijacks, the right frost slipped into their MIRAGE seams. Exfil window: T+50:00 at the drop point. At T+60:00 PRIZRAK starts shedding—miss it and you belong to statistics, not to us.”

  Lara—**Aegis**—rolled a knife between her fingers—clean, noiseless. I let a corner of a smile show.

  “That’s why you’re with me. No time to watch our backs.”

  We stood. In the armory I let my eyes linger on the heavy crates. Tempting.

  I turned.

  “Last thing. Don’t get taken alive by the Berks. They’ll wring you dry and ship you to a lab in pieces. I want a valuable prisoner, not a pretty firefight in a report. Questions?”

  Silence. Only breathing in the helmets.

  “To stations. ARACHNE, give me all-hands.”

  The net settled on the temples, cool.

  [ARACHNE]: network encrypted | latency 7 ms | mask-pulse synced.

  “Let’s go to work.”

  Anyone on the team could throw a knife. Lara “Aegis” made it look ordained. With that kind of back-watch, I could focus on the throat in front of me.

  She tapped a nail to the emitter guard—dry click; the edge field still asleep. Reverse grip, index along the spine; a small nod of the blade. Balance settled under the pad of her finger. Twice squeeze–release, and the steel seemed to find the hand by itself.

  We headed for the aft boarding section, picking the bare minimum from the rack. Tempting to grab something louder; the weight you carry in a stand-up fight will turn on you when the corridor narrows.

  “Keymaster” walked us into a trunk that married the vent main; two meters on, a spur into a Berhs wash niche. Service node for them, blind spot for us.

  The stall breathed pharmacy: iodophor, ozone, a resin hint of vac-gel—no swamp. Filters sang in the air. We ghosted through and slipped back into the hall.

  On the move, Aegis checked her sheaths: blade flat to palm, then a half-flip at the guard; thumb on the balance tick for a throw with no wind-up.

  Nothing said trouble, but the wire in my head hummed tight.

  Contact. Sudden fog rolled in, thick as felt. A stitch of pain in my left shoulder—like someone branded me.

  Off to the left, close, a child crying, a thin “Help me…” right in my ear.

  Three black ribbons streamed out—not down, not up: circling.

  They coil like smoke loops, smothering light and sound. One look and cold walks my spine.

  On the helmet HUD a fine ripple shivers, then settles; ozone salts my tongue.

  **Keymaster**’s voice yanks me back:

  — Contact right, thirty.

  — Copy.

  We held the triangle: **I** on point, **Aegis** on right, **Rookie** left; **Rookie’s** exit behind him. What slid out from the corner was tall and violet-gray, braided from cords and plates; ringed thickenings ran the length of the tendrils like magnetic ribs. Skin drank light—no highlights, the outline fell inward. Narrow heat-fins along the trunk. No footfall. The nose pricked to electro-ozone, like after an arc.

  — Three of you took micro-darts, — said **Keymaster**. — Joints. Load spike. Shields will ramp slow.

  Pepper in the air—their hiss-glands opened. The thing stopped dead in the center of our triangle. The hiss, the cords drawing toward a “head,” a thin film shivering the air. Mirage-haze flashed and collapsed—**MIRAGE** buckled under load.

  — Remainder to shields, — I said.

  The field came up. Front face sealed first. The side sectors were still thin—power was feeding the front arc—dozens of milliseconds, but that’s all a fight needs.

  A click on the right—a fan of *monoweb* slid into a side gap where density hadn’t climbed yet. The answering cutter stuck to Aegis’s sleeve and cinched her forearm. She didn’t jerk. The glove held tension; the joint bled it off.

  **Rookie’s** mask hiccupped—an almost invisible hilt stood out of his left shoulder: a **phase-synchronous blade**—a **phase blade**—had found the shoulder node while the shield was still eating power. In phase with the field, it slipped through, nicked the battery block, and stripped his mask. Blood rose at the lip.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  — Perimeter cams—jamming, — said **Keymaster**.

  — Good.

  A “human” walked out of the vapor—**the same figure, now wearing a human mask**. Tall, dark kit, blade in the left. The move hurt with familiarity, but memory balked. Everything on him was wrong. Glassy stare. Empty eyes.

  He lunged first, like he was reading our shimmer. **My blade** took the cut from above; his thermal saw hissed like a snake. My body went thick; motion like water—not just the mask, something else riding me.

  — Micro-dart analysis done, — **Keymaster** snapped. — Tranquilizer. He thinks he’ll catch you before the crest.

  I killed my mask—bought back some speed. Feint on the parry, a hidden edge, a hard dip—shot to the solar plexus. **The opponent folded, and in the same instant** Aegis breathed through her nose and let the knives go on empty breath: no shoulder telegraph, the blades slipped off the index finger. One kissed his shin; one punched the palm on his hilt. A man would have dropped it—he didn’t. **But** the strength went out of that hand. I doubled the pressure.

  Aegis came in on a toe-heel line, edge held flat to the thigh so it wouldn’t print—close-work catechism.

  Behind him, **Rookie** arrived without warning—for him: left hand on the torso, right clamping the weapon wrist.

  — **SKY**, take him! — **Rookie’s** voice hit my inner line.

  His left hand produced a **phase-synchronous dagger** and took **Rookie’s** hand at the wrist—but the heartbeat was enough. I put steel through his gut—clean through—with the unpleasant scrape of an absorber. The blade bit into the innards and wouldn’t come free.

  Something hit my chest. Hard.

  Like a hoof.

  Black. Not darkness — absence.

  Sound cut out. Legs gone. Hands gone.

  Thought fractured. Shards.

  I tried to breathe. The command never landed.

  Then the nanos decided I wasn't done.

  Spine snapped straight — vertebra by vertebra, like something reading a checklist. Chest forced open. Air hit my lungs cold and unwanted.

  My body was already moving. I was watching it from one step behind. Posture correct. Hands raised. Combat-ready.

  What if I don't come back?

  Sound returned. Then pain — late, uneven, honest.

  The nanos don't do pain. That part was mine.

  Thoughts connected. Slow. Reluctant.

  I drew a breath. Mine — I could tell the difference now.

  The grip eased. Gradual. Testing.

  Like it was checking whether I'd hold before it let go.

  Control returned. With it — tremor.

  And the cold knowledge that for four seconds I had been cargo.

  — **SKY**! Do you read? … **SKY**? — **Aegis** and **Keymaster** pounded the net. Aegis shook my shoulder.

  — Hearing you, — I rasped. — **Keymaster**, report. What the hell happened?

  Pins in the deck—like they were running current through it. Metal salt in the mouth. The hall behind us sealed: leak and shutters. A gong in my skull.

  — **Rookie’s** ASIP self-detonated, directed cup, — said **Keymaster**. — Suits dumped mask, all power to shields. Aegis has already hit you and herself with the antidote. **Bus log: no manual ladder; a bio-trigger fired on an unknown profile. His blood isn’t in the base.**

  **Status: shields low, routes closing, time shrinking.**

  — Now I know why I never heard the blast warning.

  *Monoweb* lay slack and glinting on the deck—Aegis had already torn it free.

  I painted the trophy blade with **Kane’s** compound—the “paint” latched to the ASIP’s invisibility. The blade seated in my scabbard like it belonged.

  — Stripped their tag, gave it ours. Kane’s paint caught the phase—bring the link up. **Keymaster**, remind me on return: trophy goes in a shielded box. Techs back home will purr over the new toy.

  Aegis checked each knife she’d taken back: a light nail-click—any “wet” note? A short pendulum by her knee—the blade chose its angle, grip down. She nodded and racked them without a sound.

  — Damage report?

  — Significant. Adjacent sections sealed; the old access run is cut off. The cleaners are already vectoring our way. Lab at Alert Five.

  — Cause?

  — In the last minute: minus twenty—entire science shift. The lab’s internal net is isolated. Indirects say security’s rattled to hell: something wiped their whole team in a blink. From a scrubbed ship log: scheduled sample draw, ten researchers. Seven minutes before the alarm they brought in Object One-One-Three. Human. A few days aboard.

  — Then that’s our target. Closest is Cartographer’s team. One of their squads will pass him any moment.

  Lara—**Aegis**—spun a knife and killed the circle, catching it at the guard like she’d cut a thought in half. We moved for the lab. Behind us, in the seams, the Berh **monoweb** still whispered.

  — **Keymaster**, search the ship logs for repair tickets—anything we can use to get into the lab.

  — Sky, one door shows nine tickets in two weeks. A short power sag will drop it for three to five minutes. You’ll get through—but it becomes one-way: when power normalizes, the interlock re-seals and the return stays closed for a while.

  — Copy. Operational window: twenty to twenty-five minutes. Door window: up to five. If I miss it, we fall back to violet—reserve route.

  — Network, open. Listen up. Lab lane. Plan change: **ARIADNE**. Teams split and run parallel to the cleaners. You take only the tail men. Bodies to the bays. In ten minutes Aegis and I are at the lab. Aegis—anchor the door; hold the exit lane. I go inside.

  — Restrictions?

  — **Hydra** is active. Quiet and careful. If you can’t recover the blade—remote zero: wipe it. We leave no trace.

  — Sky, you drilled us: Rule One—never walk into an enemy lab, — **Aristocrat** said, dry as ice. — Confirm abort: if you’re dark at twelve, we pull?

  — The rule stands. But right now the Rookie bought us a window—command piece off the board for a while, ship in panic. You won’t get a cleaner shot at taking a prisoner alive. The risk is justified; at minimum, we check the lab.

  — And how exactly do you plan to get in there? Why are you sure it was their chief? How does anyone walk away from that blast?— **Rock** asked.

  — I watched your footage. He held against three and never raised the alarm. His kit was a head above anything your squads have seen. And on the hilt—a blue access sigil. You don’t issue that to line grunts. Types like that always keep an ace for days like this.

  I let the silence settle.

  — Window: twenty to twenty-five minutes. If twelve minutes after my entry you still can’t raise me—begin withdrawal.

  — But— — **Blade** started.

  — No “but.” That’s an order, soldier.

  We lengthened our stride. Ahead lay the reason we came.

  Turn right. Up a grav-lift one level, right again, down a level. A little wandering—just enough to make you feel the ship was doing it on purpose—and we were at the laboratory entrance. By the board’s numbers it was indecently large for a ship this size. Set into the wall: a heavy, shielded door, lead-faced, as tall as a man.

  “Keymaster. Start the procedures.”

  Barrier One. Ten thick seconds. A short grind—panels slid into their slots and the opening gaped half-wide. Inside: darkness, and only a weak emergency red spilling a thin puddle of light.

  “First barrier passed.”

  A light prickling in my left shoulder. Each step came back as a hollow echo. My heart was too fast. The air stank of fear and… death. Then it hit—burned polymer mixed with scorched protein, a sticky “lab” tail that bullied the cleaner scents of reagents. Ahead on the wall: a large biohazard mark. A few meters in, a Berh in a protective suit lay face-down. I turned the body slowly.

  “Face” and “body” had been eaten by burns; the suit had slumped and flowed, half-melted.

  Those suits don’t fail politely. Only an extreme does this. But the suit sensors were silent. Strange. How did it get this far? Someone dragged it. Or it walked on borrowed adrenaline until it fell. Nearby—a second one. Still alive. Hissing.

  “I’ve got one Berh melted down and one barely breathing. Keymaster, I’m sending audio—run it through the translator. On the deck: a triangular plate. Looks like a maintenance key. I’ll try it on the next barrier.”

  I touched the plate to the recess at the first barrier. The door vanished into its groove without a sound.

  “Sensors confirm: lockout cleared. Next requires live Berh multibiometrics. High probability it will serve as a pass for the following barriers.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Put your palm on the Berh’s palm.”

  The half-dead Berh didn’t react. A thin film flowed from my fingertips, wrapped his skin for a heartbeat, then disappeared.

  “The film makes contact. His heat and breath spoof the checks.”

  The unpleasant pulsing in my shoulder grew with every step.

  “In labs they check fingerprints, body temperature, and voice. This system won’t be much different.”

  I took a couple of turns. Barrier Two: blue shutters sealed the path to the target. A slit no thicker than a finger. In the half-dark I found the same recess as before. Key alone failed.

  Two corpses nearby. One had a torn strap dangling where a key should clip in. So that was where the plate had come from.

  “Your turn for tricks, Keymaster.”

  “Looks like it. We need the chain: key + palm + breath.”

  The film cloaked the Berh’s palm again. I set the plate and my hand to the recess, held them there, and breathed onto the sensor. A faint click—the blue shutters slid away, opening a narrow corridor. Beyond it—darkness.

  The pain pulse hit a ceiling and stopped growing, as if it had decided that was enough warning. Before the blast in the lab there had been a surge—heavy, monstrous aura—and then it vanished. The farther I went, the more it returned, not sharper but wider—like fog. It wrapped the main lab.

  A crash slammed the air out of my ears. The ship bucked hard. The red light under the ceiling blinked a farewell and died. Power module—gone. Emergency lighting folded immediately.

  If I hadn’t braced against the wall in time, I’d have gone down. Our ship would survive; it was built for that. The window—maybe not. Less than ten minutes left. I broke into a run. The extraction window would close and leave us holding nothing but regret.

  The closer I got, the more wrong it felt. A sudden gust hit my side. Somewhere ahead, bulkheads were still open—if they didn’t slam shut, this section would get sucked. It looked like the same aggressive mix that chewed through the researchers’ suits had worked on the hull in the main lab as well. That did not make me optimistic about the prisoner.

  “Keymaster. Load Styx.”

  “Sky, the project’s raw.”

  “Something erased the Berhs in a blink. I’ll take any armor.”

  “Done. Battery gives you minutes. No more.”

  One more corridor—and at last the lead door. I brought up PRIZRAK and Styx and eased it open.

  Ozone bit my tongue. I tried to swallow, to wet my throat and drown the aftertaste, but it stayed. The nightmare I’d seen was standing here in the flesh: hanging in the passage at chest height, a teenage girl suspended in a greenish aura like a second skin. From her left shoulder ran three cords as thick as thighs. One “slept.” From another, a couple of green drops fell—hit a suit and burned through it like paper. The third worked quietly, wetly, chewing plastic and cloth off melted suits. The floor was a honeycomb: hundreds of pinpoint holes hissing leak. Off to the side lay two more in swollen shells; near the deck—a scalpel with a softened edge.

  My left shoulder jabbed—déjà vu—and my left arm began to tremble without end. And again, right in my ear: the familiar child’s crying and the thin, small “Help me…” The sound was so quiet my heart reacted as if someone had screamed it into me.

  She was the same age as the Keeper’s daughter.

  Not the same face. Not the same eyes.

  Just the same age—enough to make the thought stick.

  Son, my father’s voice rose unbidden, calm and heavy. We are not heroes. We are contractors. We work for money, and only when the risk is justified.

  For a moment it felt like his hand was on my shoulder, steadying me, reminding me where lines are usually drawn.

  This was past that line.

  Her whisper cut through the noise again—thin, fading.

  Without help she wouldn’t be rescued. She’d be processed. Logged. Turned into a living prototype for a weapon and shipped off to a Berh lab.

  Sinarch training buys time. With discipline, some of them can hold their symbiote at bay for years.

  Without guidance?

  A month, at best.

  That was the calculation.

  Not mercy. Not heroics.

  Just the cost of doing nothing—and the knowledge that I could afford to pay it.

  Green drops on the decking ate through the upper polymer and sank into the ablation layer—didn’t reach the load-bearing plate. Lucky.

  One cord seemed to sniff the air—then struck with lightning speed. Styx held the medium, but the impact went straight through; it threw me into a bulkhead and kicked the air from my lungs. Now I understood why Kane shelved the project: the shield was perfect against radiation and chemistry, but it didn’t kill momentum.

  I dropped PRIZRAK and brought up the gravity belt, trying to buy back speed and maneuver.

  My vision swam. One cord froze, as if deciding whether I was finished; I arced away, widening distance. At the last instant the second cord hissed past my cheek. The third speared the air where I’d been a heartbeat earlier and slammed in after it.

  You couldn’t run from that thing. Another minute and it would wear me down and eat me, leaving the girl hanging there like bait.

  I’d seen something like it in Sinarch children: in some, a short outgrowth would wake and drain strength from everything around them, sinking people into sleep. Back then the adults put them down with the touch of the left hand marked by blood. Father called it the cursed sign.

  Would it work here? Good question. It was the only question I could afford.

  I touched the lock on my left wrist cuff. A segment of sleeve retracted, baring my palm. Styx tightened closer to the skin: the cocoon still held air and liquids inside, but my hand was naked.

  The cords hissed like snakes. I danced between them: a pirouette left, a drop, a short torso turn. The girl tugged—almost imperceptibly—toward the exit; the cords snapped to block her path. Good. Let them think I was playing for a break.

  I needed a couple of seconds to draw the symbol in blood on my left palm. On the next turn I held myself back for a fraction—offering the edge of my open palm not to a strike, but to a touch.

  The cord kissed my skin like a whip lined with knives. Pain flayed down to bone; my hand went numb for a heartbeat. The nanoset reacted—vessels clamped, blood turned into a viscous film on the skin, but a few drops tore free and arced heavy onto the deck.

  Instead of finishing me, all three cords froze at once, stretched toward those drops and, on contact, began to drink them in—like sponge-work.

  While the predator fed on my blood, my heart managed two beats. Enough time to smear what remained across my left palm, sketching the cursed symbol.

  It’s drawn to blood and to acceleration—let it bite on acceleration. Everything was ready. I lunged for the exit, bare back offered like a promise. The “plant” surged after me instantly. I could feel it closing, physically, like pressure on the neck. Another inch and—

  A sharp jump up, back, then right—two steps’ worth. A hard blow from behind into my right side stole my footing. I pitched forward, caught balance, and my left palm—with the symbol—clamped onto the girl’s left shoulder, straight into the source of the aura.

  For a second it felt like grabbing red-hot iron. A brutal pain punched through me, like someone ran a hundred thousand volts through my bones. The smell of charred skin hit my nose. Behind my eyes a kaleidoscope of memories flashed—some mine, some not: three girls about her age, a small coastal town, and a vast shadow with the same monstrous aura leaning over me.

  Bitterness—and guilt toward Fridhhelm for the broken promise—was the last thing that covered me before the world went dark.