Inside the hold, the air was thick with the hum of containment fields. Memory-reactive crystals sealed in compartmentalized vials lined the shelves like forbidden fruit. Each one pulsed faintly, whispering fragments of the past to those attuned enough to hear.
Dren grabbed a duffle bag and began stuffing it with the vials, ignoring the warnings etched into their casings. Do not expose to psychic fields. Do not breach containment etc. He didn't care.
The ship lurched violently as it entered the asteroid field. Dren stumbled, the bag jerking forward. Several vials spilled out, clinking against the floor like dropped memories. He reached for them but stopped. There was no time left.
He knew something the crew didn't. Something that made death inevitable. He sprinted to the escape craft bay, heart pounding, mind racing.
Dren tossed the duffle into the escape pod, sealed the doors, and slammed the launch sequence. The pod hissed, detached, and shot into the void just as the first asteroid struck the Scourge's hull.
The command bridge of the SS-Venus was a cathedral of silence and precision. Six officers manned their stations, each one a thread in the tapestry of Virelia's might.
The hum of systems, the soft tap of fingers on glass interfaces, the distant pulse of the Hollow Sun reactor these were the rhythms of order.
"They are entering the asteroid field," said Officer Kael, his voice measured, eyes fixed on the shifting debris ahead.
"How do we proceed?" asked Officer Lira, her tone clipped, deferential. The bridge door hissed open.
Every officer stood at once, spines straight, hands at their sides. Breath caught in their throats not from fear, but reverence and dread. The air itself seemed to tighten, as if the ship's artificial gravity had bent in anticipation of her presence.
Lady Seraphyne walked in her figure imposing. Her high ponytail, bound in a braid of obsidian thread and star-silk, swayed with each step like a pendulum of precision and power.
It shimmered faintly, catching the bridge's low light like a blade catching moonlight. Her stride was slow, deliberate, and utterly unchallenged. She moved as if the ship itself deferred to her.
She wore no armor but her very presence was armor. Her gear, woven from memory-reactive fabric, shifted in hue with her thoughts.
Now, it burned with the violet of war and the gold of divine right, a living tapestry of vengeance and sovereignty. The fabric whispered as she passed, echoing fragments of past battles, oaths sworn, and enemies killed.
Seraphyne's cheekbones were carved like prophecy, her lips a silent decree. But it was not her face that made men tremble, it was the stillness behind it. The kind of stillness found in the eye of a supernova, or the moment before a mind breaks.
A junior tactician dropped his datapad. It hit the floor with a loud clatter, cutting through the silence of the command bridge like something forbidden.
Seraphyne said, "At ease," and turned her head her gaze falling upon the tactical display, where the pirate warship, Scourge of Vex, flickered like a dying ember against the asteroid field's jagged silhouette. Her voice, when it came, was colder than the vacuum between stars.
"Prepare for interception." The officers knew what that meant. She was going out. Personally in her mech.
She turned to leave, her steps steady and sure. The bridge parted for her like scripture obeying its final verse.
Deputy Marshal Lance caught up, slipping into the elevator just as the doors hissed shut. He leaned against the wall with the ease like he wasn't intimidated by her cold demeanor at all.
"This is such an easy job," he said, voice laced with casual defiance. "Why not let a rookie handle it?"
Lady Seraphyne didn't look at him. "It will be faster if I deal with it. And they stole millions worth of memory-reactive crystals. That makes it irresponsible to let a rookie take care of it."
Lance's lips curled into a grin. "Is it that? Or do you just miss the action?"
Without turning, Seraphyne raised her middle finger. "This is for exposing my business."
Lance chuckled. "Sera, Sera, Sera… you haven't changed one bit."
The elevator hummed downward, the silence between them filled with old bruises and older banter. When the doors opened to the mech bay, Lance lingered at the threshold.
"Just hurry up and come back," he said. "We still need to spar like old times."
Seraphyne stepped into the mech bay saying, "Just be ready to lose," with a chuckle, her voice a blade wrapped in velvet.
Deputy Marshal Lance rolled his eyes but the smirk tugging at his lips betrayed the fondness beneath the banter.
She was already striding toward her mech called Vigilant Thorn, a towering construct of psychic alloy and ancestral wrath, its frame etched with the sigils of seven generations of Virel dominion.
The hangar cleared in reverent silence. Engineers and tacticians stepped back as Seraphyne climbed into the cockpit, her memory-reactive suit syncing with the mech's neural lattice.
The moment she touched the controls, Vigilant Thorn came alive, its core pulsing with violet flame, its limbs unfolding like a celestial predator stretching after slumber. The launch doors opened.
With a roar that bent gravity and scattered stardust, the mech soared into the void, its wings of kinetic shielding flaring against the asteroid field's jagged embrace.
Seraphyne's mind fused with the machine, her thoughts guiding its flight like a conductor commanding a symphony of destruction.
Ahead, the pirate warship twisted through the debris, its hull already scarred and sputtering. Seraphyne's eyes narrowed.
If that vessel collided with a major asteroid, the explosion wouldn't just vaporize the cargo, it would fracture the field, sending shards of memory-reactive crystal across the Drift like psychic shrapnel and cause a series of even more deadly explosions.
Back aboard SS-Venus, Lance stood tall at the helm, his voice echoing across the void.
"This is Deputy Marshal Lance of the Vanguard Crown Blade. By order of the Imperial Lord, I command you to surrender. Refuse, and suffer the consequences."
Inside the pirate warship's bridge, chaos bloomed. "They're broadcasting!" one crewman shouted, eyes wide with dread.
Another spun around. "Where's the captain?"