The golden beam of the Dreadnought's main cannon didn't strike the Sparrow. It struck the space where the Sparrow had been a millisecond prior. Elias had slammed the manual thrusters, pushing the scout ship into a reckless, gut-wrenching dive toward the Veil—a nearby nebula of ionized gas and crystalline dust that acted as a graveyard for ships and a shroud for sensors.
The G-force slammed them into their seats, the pressure turning the world into a blur of gray and red. As they breached the outer layer of the nebula, the cockpit was engulfed in a thick, shimmering fog of emerald and violet. Static screamed over the comms, and the radar screen dissolved into a frantic dance of phantom echoes.
"We're in," Elias gasped, his lungs burning. He leveled the ship, his hands trembling as they let go of the flight sticks.
"For now," Lyra said. She was slumped in her chair, her face a ghostly shade of white. She had pulled up her pant leg, revealing a jagged, bloody gash where the bulkhead door had crushed her ankle.
Elias looked at the wound, then back at the sensors. "They can't track us in here. The ionization is too thick. But we're flying blind. If we hit a stray asteroid or a pocket of volatile gas, we're dust."
"Better than being vaporized by your friends," Lyra retorted, though her voice lacked its usual bite. She leaned back, closing her eyes. "Why did you do it, Elias? Why didn't you just let the ship blow with me on it? You could have claimed the escape pod and gone back to them as a hero."
Elias turned to her, his expression hardening. "Because of the code. Thorne-Alpha-6. They didn't just try to kill me, Lyra. They framed me. If I go back, I'm a traitor. If I die, I'm a murderer." He unbuckled his harness and stood up, the cramped cockpit forcing him to duck. "I need to know why. And you're the only person who might have the answer."
He reached into a storage locker and pulled out a first-aid kit. He knelt in the narrow space between their seats. "Let me see the leg."
Lyra flinched, pulling back instinctively. "I can do it myself."
"You can barely breathe, let alone stitch a wound in zero-g," Elias said firmly. He didn't wait for her permission. He took her ankle in his hands.
The contact was electric. For three years, Elias had only imagined touching Lyra Vance in an act of violence. Now, the warmth of her skin against his palms felt like a betrayal of his own memory. He began to clean the wound with an antiseptic wipe. Lyra hissed, her fingers digging into the armrests, but she didn't pull away.
"You're surprisingly gentle for a man who wanted to hang me from the Citadel spires last week," she whispered.
"Don't get used to it," he muttered, though he found himself focusing on the rhythm of her breathing. "The things you said... about the core at Aethelgard. If High Command sabotaged the stabilizers, that means the war... the last three years..."
"It was a harvest," Lyra finished for him. Her silver eyes were open now, watching him with a devastating intensity. "Aethelgard wasn't destroyed because of politics, Elias. It was destroyed because it was the only way to justify the 'Emergency Resource Act.' They needed the colonies to be desperate so they could seize the remaining catalysts. My people were just the convenient scapegoats. We were trying to stop the meltdown, not cause it."
Elias stopped stitching. He looked up at her, their faces only inches apart in the flickering light of the instrument panel. The hatred that had fueled him for so long felt like it was being hollowed out, replaced by a cold, terrifying void. If she was telling the truth, then every person he had killed in the name of vengeance was a mistake.
"I lost everything that day," Elias said, his voice cracking. "My brother was in the lower districts. He didn't make it to the bunkers."
Lyra's expression softened. She reached out, her fingers hovering near his scarred neck before she caught herself and pulled back. "I lost my sister. She was a technician at the core. She stayed behind to try and vent the pressure manually."
A long silence stretched between them, filled only by the hum of the ship's life support. The enmity was still there—a wall of glass between them—but for the first time, they could see through it. They weren't just soldiers on opposite sides; they were both victims of the same invisible hand.
Suddenly, a proximity alarm chirped. It wasn't the Dreadnought.
"Elias," Lyra warned, pointing at the viewport.
Out of the emerald fog, a massive, skeletal shape emerged. It was an ancient derelict, a ship from the pre-Fracture era, floating like a ghost in the nebula. But it wasn't empty. Lights were flickering in its observation deck, and a docking signal began to pulse on the Sparrow's console.
"Someone is living in that wreck," Elias said, his hand moving to his holster.
"Or something," Lyra added.
The Sparrow groaned as a localized gravity well from the derelict began to pull them in. They were too low on fuel to fight it.
"Check your weapon," Elias said, standing up and offering her a hand. "It looks like we're going to have to trust each other a little longer."
Lyra took his hand. Her grip was strong, her skin still warm. "This is going to end badly, Elias."
"Probably," he agreed.
As the Sparrow was pulled into the derelict's dark hangar, the ship's computer let out a final, chilling chime.
Warning: Oxygen levels at 15%. Life support failure in 4 hours.
To be continued...