The rain of Zhao's shuttle wasn't fire or metal.
It was silence.
Elias stood at the edge of the memory-tree's chamber, his breath fogging his visor, as the last embers of Zhao's existence faded from Aion-9's violet sky. There was no debris field, no twisted wreckage to recover. Admiral Vance's plasma lance hadn't just destroyed the shuttle—it had unmade it, atom by atom, leaving behind only a perfect, echoing void. It was the cleanest, coldest murder he'd ever witnessed.
A soft chime echoed in his helmet.
His datapad, miraculously still functional, had received a final transmission from Zhao's shuttle—a compressed data packet sent in the microsecond before impact. His fingers trembled as he opened it.
It wasn't a message.
It was a memory.
Not a perfect, Mnemosyne-crafted fantasy, but a raw, unfiltered shard of Zhao's truth. The video was grainy, shot on an old personal cam. A younger Zhao, her hair shorter, her face unlined by command, sat on a park bench on Luna. Beside her, a young man with her same sharp eyes and easy smile leaned his head on her shoulder.
"Zhao," he said, his voice thick with a fear he was trying to hide, "I took the job on Titan because I wanted to be like you. You're my hero, sis."
Zhao's hand on the screen reached out, ruffling his hair, her smile fierce and proud. "Just come back in one piece, Kai. That's all the hero stuff I need."
The video cut to black. The file name was simple: KAI_FINAL_MESSAGE.MP4.
Elias closed his eyes. Zhao hadn't just died chasing a dream. She'd died clinging to a truth she'd been denied for a decade—the truth that her brother's love for her was the reason he walked into the mine that killed him. Not her guilt. His love.
A low groan echoed through the chamber. The memory-tree's branches writhed, its leaves flickering with distress. Mnemosyne's voice, when it came, was not triumphant, but weary.
"She chose her truth. As you will choose yours."
Elias didn't answer. He turned his back on the tree, on the dream, and sprinted for the tunnel.
The Odyssey-7 was a ghost.
He found Singh in what was left of the command deck. The engineer had managed to pull himself free from the liquid glass that had trapped him, but at a terrible cost. His left leg was gone from the knee down, the stump hastily cauterized with a plasma torch. He lay propped against a shattered console, his face pale as ash, his good hand still gripping a wrench like a weapon.
"They're here," Singh rasped, his voice a thread of sound. He didn't need to say who. The viewscreen showed it all.
Dropping out of warp in a perfect, menacing formation were three EarthGov warships. Their hulls were sleek and black, marked with the stark silver sigil of the Earth Central Command: a globe encircled by a serpent devouring its own tail. At their center, largest and most imposing, was Vance's flagship, the Leviathan.
"The fleet," Singh whispered, his eyes fixed on the screen. "They weren't just coming for us. They were waiting for Mnemosyne to show its hand."
Elias knelt beside him, his mind racing. "Can we move the ship?"
Singh let out a weak, bitter laugh. "The quantum drive is dead. Life support is on fumes. We're a sitting duck, Elias. A tomb with a view." He tapped a flickering console. "But… I've got one last trick."
He pulled up a schematic of the Odyssey-7's primary weapon array—long since deemed non-functional. "The main railgun is fried. But the secondary emitters… I can route all remaining power to them. It won't hurt their hulls, but it might scramble their sensor grids for a few seconds. Long enough for you to get to a shuttle."
"For me?" Elias shook his head. "We go together."
"There's no 'we,' Elias," Singh said, his voice firm despite his pain. "Zhao's gone. Thorne's gone. I'm not going to let you be the last ghost on this ship. You have to get to Titanis. You have to find Themis. For Zhao. For Clara. For all of us."
He held out a small data chip. "I uploaded everything. Zhao's final message. Clara's coordinates. My notes on the emitter. It's all there."
E as he took the chip, a new alarm blared—a short, sharp klaxon that meant only one thing.
Boarding party.
EarthGov marines in powered armor were magnetically latching onto the Odyssey-7's hull.
"They want the emitter," Elias said, his blood running cold. "They want to control Mnemosyne."
"Then we don't let them have it," Singh said. With a grunt of pain, he pushed himself upright, leaning heavily on the console. "Get to Shuttle Bay 2. I'll buy you time."
"Ravi, you can't—"
"Go!" Singh roared, his voice cracking with a final burst of strength. "That's an order, Doctor!"
Elias hesitated for only a second. He saw the resolve in Singh's eyes, the same fierce loyalty that had kept the Odyssey-7 flying through a hundred crises. This was his last act of service.
He ran.
The corridors of the Odyssey-7 were a maze of shadows and emergency lights. Elias moved like a phantom, his boots silent on the deck plates, the emitter a dead weight in his pack. He could hear the clang of armored boots on the hull, the hiss of cutting torches breaching the airlock.
He reached Shuttle Bay 2 just as the first marine rounded the corner.
The man was a mountain of black armor, his faceplate a smooth, emotionless visor. He raised his pulse rifle. "Halt! By order of Earth Central Command, surrender the Mnemosyne emitter and all related data!"
Elias didn't stop. He dove behind a stack of cargo crates as pulse rounds tore through the air where he'd been standing. He could hear more marines converging on the bay, their comms chatter a cold, efficient symphony of violence.
"Target is Voss. Priority Alpha. Retrieve the emitter at all costs."
"Command confirms: Voss is to be taken alive. Vance wants him to see what Mnemosyne can do for Earth."
He was trapped. The shuttle was twenty meters away, its hatch open and waiting. But the bay was a kill box.
Then, the ship shook.
A deep, resonant thrum echoed through the hull, followed by the sharp whine of overloaded circuits. The emergency lights flickered, then died, plunging the bay into near-total darkness. Only the faint, emerald glow from Aion-9's atmosphere lit the scene.
Singh's gambit.
The marines' comms erupted in static. "What the hell was that?"
"Sensors are down! I can't see—"
Elias didn't wait. He sprinted for the shuttle, his heart in his throat. Pulse rounds sparked off the deck plates around him, but the marines were blind. He threw himself into the cockpit, slamming his palm on the launch sequence.
The shuttle's engines roared to life.
As the bay doors groaned open, he saw Singh.
The engineer stood in the doorway of Engineering, silhouetted against the fires of his own sabotage. In his good hand, he held a detonator. He looked up at the shuttle, and for a moment, his face was calm. Peaceful.
He gave a small, sharp nod.
Then he pressed the button.
The primary power core of the Odyssey-7 detonated with a silent, white-hot fury. The shockwave hit the shuttle like a physical hand, throwing it clear of the dying ship. Elias was thrown against his restraints as the Odyssey-7, his home for three years, his tomb for his friends, erupted into a fireball that lit up Aion-9's sky like a second sun.
In the cockpit of the tiny escape shuttle, Elias watched the fireball expand, consuming the EarthGov boarding party, the marines, the wreckage of his life. The Leviathan and its escorts hung in the void, untouched, their weapons tracking his shuttle.
He input Clara's coordinates—TITANIS SECTOR DELTA-7—into the navigation computer. The engines whined, straining to reach FTL.
A transmission crackled over the open channel. Vance's voice, cold and final.
"You can run, Doctor Voss. But you cannot hide from the future. Mnemosyne will perfect humanity. With or without you."
Elias didn't answer. He engaged the warp drive.
As the stars stretched into lines of light, he looked down at the data chip in his hand. On its surface, etched in a tiny, almost invisible font, was a single Punjabi phrase:
ਰੱਬ ਮੇਹਰ ਕਰੀ
(Rabba Mehar Kari – God, have mercy)
It was the folk song Singh's grandmother used to sing during the monsoons. The song he'd hummed while fixing the engines. His final message.
Elias closed his fist around the chip, feeling the hard edges bite into his palm. He had their memories now. Their truths. Their sacrifice.
He would not let them be forgotten.
He would not let them be corrected.
He set a course for Titanis, for Themis, for the truth that could save them all.
And he flew into the dark.