The connection between the hauler and the dreadnought was a living umbilical cord—a pressurized tube of muscle and membrane. They crept through it, feeling the immense vessel's heartbeat through the walls: a deep, rhythmic THUMP that shook their very souls.
Emerging into the lower hangar of the Abyssal Heart was like stepping into the stomach of a god. The scale was incomprehensible. Corrupted fighters, like metal-encrusted wasps, hung in racks that stretched into the smoky distance. Tier 6 Armor-Scultors welded new plating onto damaged ships using beams of concentrated corruption. The air thrummed with malignant power.
"We need to get to the command spire," Ryn said, pulling up a schematic she'd hacked from the hauler's weak data-stream. "It's in the dorsal hull, forty decks up. Main lifts are guarded. There are… service conduits. Maintenance pathways for the ship's biological systems."
"You mean its arteries," Echo said.
"Exactly. They'll be tight, unstable, and probably patrolled by immune-response creatures. But it's our best shot."
They found an access hatch hidden behind a dripping nutrient valve. The conduit within was warm, moist, and lined with throbbing vessels. The light was a dim, hellish red.
They had been crawling for twenty minutes when Mira froze. "Ahead. Spatial lock."
Echo pushed his senses forward. The conduit ahead was not just a passage—it was a dimensional sink, a knot of twisted space designed to trap intruders. Without her powers, they'd be stuck.
"I can unravel it," Mira whispered, "but it will be like shouting in the silence. They'll know we're here."
"Do it," Echo said. "We have no choice."
Mira closed her eyes. Her hands glowed with soft blue energy. She didn't force the knot apart; she gently re-knotted it into a stable, passable form. It was surgical, brilliant, and as she finished, alarms began to blare through the vessel—a deep, biological ululation.
"They know! Move!" Leyla hissed.
They ran, abandoning stealth for speed. The conduit opened into a larger vascular chamber—a heart ventricle the size of a cathedral, with thick, pounding walls and waterfalls of black ichor.
And waiting for them, standing calmly on a platform of bone in the center of the chamber, was a figure.
He looked almost elegant—a tall, humanoid Corrupted with polished obsidian skin, wearing tattered remnants of an old Order admiral's coat. His eyes were pools of calm, intelligent violet light. Six living, cable-like tentacles swayed gently behind him.
Tier 8. A Corrupted Ascendant. The Dreadnought's Security Chief.
"Welcome, Anomaly," he said, his voice a cultured, resonant baritone that held no rage, only cold interest. "Admiral Nox anticipated you would take the scenic route. My name is Valerius. I was once the Tactical Prime of the Luminarian Seventh Fleet. Now, I have the honor of testing you before you face my Admiral."
He gestured with a clawed hand. From the shadows of the ventricular walls, six Tier 7 Hunter-Killers peeled free, their forms sleek, deadly, and utterly focused.
"Let us see," Valerius purred, "if the blood of a Sovereign is as potent as the whispers suggest."