The bridge of the Vanguard was a cathedral of hushed voices and shifting amber light. At the center of it all stood General Harry Hampton, his boots planted firmly on the deck plating as if he were personally holding the ship together by sheer force of will. He didn't look like a four-star general; his flight suit was grease-stained, and the silver stars on his collar were scratched from years of bracing against mecha harnesses.
But the way the crew moved around him—giving him a wide berth, eyes downcast in respect—told the story of the Siege of Titan and the blood-soaked Orion Gates.
"Status, Captain Thorne," Harry said. His voice was a low gravel, the sound of a man who had shouted over too many exploding reactors.
Elias Thorne, the ship's pragmatic commander, didn't look up from his console. "We've officially crossed the 'Red Line,' General. We are deep in the Dead Zone. Sensors are picking up plenty of background radiation, but no chatter. Just the way the Admiralty likes it."
"The Admiralty likes it because they don't have to pay for what they can't see," Harry muttered, his eyes fixed on the main viewscreen.
The Dead Zone was a void of failed dreams—a sector of space littered with the husks of colonies that had withered away decades ago. It was a graveyard of silence, until three hours ago.
"General, I have the signal," the comms officer called out, her voice thin. "It's... it's high-frequency. Old Earth encryption. It's coming from the New Terra coordinates."
Harry felt a cold finger of dread trace down his spine. He had been a young Colonel when New Terra was declared 'Extinct' due to atmospheric collapse. There shouldn't be anyone left to send a signal.
"Bring us in," Harry ordered. "And Thorne? Prep the Mecha Bay. I want the Vanguard-One on hot-start. If this is a trap, I'm not meeting it behind a desk."
The Unmaking of New Terra
As the Vanguard rounded the dark side of New Terra's moon, the bridge went silent. On the screen, the colony didn't look like a ruin. It looked like a dissection.
The massive geodesic domes that once housed ten thousand colonists had been dismantled. Not blown apart by orbital cannons, but taken apart piece by piece, as if a giant had unscrewed the bolts of civilization. Massive slabs of reinforced alloy floated in frozen, perfect geometric rings around the planet.
"Where is the rubble?" Thorne whispered, his face pale. "There's no debris. It's all... organized."
"It's a harvest," Harry said, his hands clumping into fists.
Suddenly, the ship groaned. A deep, sub-sonic vibration rattled the deck plates, vibrating in Harry's teeth. It wasn't an engine hum. It was a scream in the vacuum.
"Contact!" the radar tech screamed. "Multiple signatures emerging from the planetary shadow! They're... General, they aren't showing up on radar. They're blotting out the stars!"
Harry leaned forward. Emerging from the darkness were the Drealius.
They weren't ships of metal and rivets. They were jagged, obsidian shards that moved with the fluid grace of predatory fish. They looked ancient—pre-human, cold, and hungry. They didn't fire lasers; they cast webs of distorting gravity that began to pull at the Vanguard's hull.
"Sabotage!" Thorne yelled, slamming his console. "Comms are dead! Engines are redlining—someone or something fried our core from the outside!"
Harry Hampton didn't panic. He had been here before, at the Orion Gates, when the odds were zero. He turned toward the lift.
"Thorne, you keep this ship in one piece," Harry barked over the sirens. "I'm going to the bay. If the Drealius want to erase us, they're going to find out that some things in this galaxy refuse to be rubbed out."
As the lift doors closed, Harry Hampton pulled his gloves tight. The 4-star General was gone. The Pilot was back.