The silence in the lift car was a thick, syrupy thing. It was a silence made of layers: the dead quiet of the ship, the muffled absence of the Anomaly outside, and the new, stark silence of a man who had seen too much. Kaito was on his hands and knees on the floor, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking in a silent, continuous tremor. He wasn't crying. He was just… broken. A machine with its gears stripped, rocking back and forth in a useless, repetitive motion. The low, red emergency light from Haruto's own armor cast the scene in the color of dried blood.
Haruto stood over him. The cold knot of fear in his own gut had been compressed by the impossible weight of his new reality into something hard and dense as a diamond. He could feel the brittle armor on his boot where the Anomaly had touched it, a constant, chilling reminder of its power to unmake things. The air tasted of their own exhaled fear, a metallic, coppery tang that coated his tongue. He should say something. A commander was supposed to offer words of encouragement, of reassurance. We'll get through this, soldier. The words were ashes in his mouth. They were a lie.
He knelt, his knee cracking loudly in the stillness. He didn't touch Kaito. He just entered his field of view, a solid, immovable object in the younger man's crumbling world.
"Kaito," he said. The name was a flat, hard sound. Not a comfort. A command.
Kaito didn't look up. His rocking just became more frantic. "It touched you," he whispered to the floor, the words a wet, broken slur. "It touched you. And it's out there. It's… it's in the walls. We're in its stomach. And it's digesting us."
"Negative," Haruto's voice was a blade. "The Anomaly is a biological entity. The Warden is a machine. They are two separate threats. The Guardian is a third variable. It is a tactical problem. Nothing more." He was lying to Kaito. He was lying to himself. This was not a tactical problem. This was a haunting. He was standing in the heart of his own ghost story. "Now get up. On your feet. That is an order."
He said the words, but he didn't know what he would do if Kaito refused. He didn't have the energy to haul the man to his feet. The weariness in his bones was a deep, ancient thing, a thousand years of inherited grief.
It was Riku who moved. The silent soldier stepped forward, his movements economical, devoid of wasted energy. He didn't speak. He simply reached down, grabbed the back of Kaito's armor harness, and lifted. Kaito was hauled to his feet as if he weighed nothing, his boots scraping against the deck plate. He stood there, swaying, his eyes wide and vacant. Riku released him and stepped back, his carbine held at a low ready, his posture unchanged. The entire interaction had taken less than three seconds.
The blue schematic on the wall flickered. The Guardian's voice, a calm, dispassionate counterpoint to the raw human misery in the car, filled the silence.
"Define 'suboptimal'," Haruto grunted, his gaze fixed on the glowing map.
Almost a fifty percent chance of walking into a dead end, a collapsed tunnel from which there would be no escape. The odds were terrible. They were also the only odds they had.
"It'll have to do," Haruto said. He looked at the schematic. The glowing blue dot of their lift began to move again, not up, but sideways, a slow, grinding crawl across the diagram. The car itself began to move, the sound of ancient machinery engaging with a groan of protest. It wasn't the smooth, magnetic hum from before. This was a rougher, more mechanical movement, a sound of gears and chains and brute, physical force. They were being shunted sideways, dragged through the ship's dead, mechanical guts.
The journey took two agonizing minutes. The car scraped and shuddered, the sound of metal on metal a constant, nerve-shredding symphony. Then, with a final, deafening clang that vibrated up through their boots, they stopped. The wall in front of them, the one with the schematic, began to split down the middle, two massive blast doors retracting into the sides of the car.
The view that was revealed stole the breath from Haruto's lungs.
It was not a corridor. It was a cavern.
A vast, dark, cavernous space that was easily thirty meters high and just as wide. The far wall was lost in an impenetrable darkness that their shoulder lights could not pierce. Running through the center of this artificial cave, suspended from the ceiling by a forest of thick, rusted support struts, was a single, massive tube of reinforced plasteel. The mag-lev tunnel. It was pitted and scarred, a long, dead artery in the heart of a metal corpse. The air that drifted into the car was different from anything else they had experienced. It was dry, but heavy with the scent of dormant, cold machinery and a faint, sharp smell of ozone, the ghost of a power that had not flowed in a thousand years.
Haruto stepped out onto the catwalk, his mag-boots clanging against the metal grate. He swept his light across the space. The scale of it was obscene. This was the ship's primary cargo artery, a tunnel designed to move city blocks of material from the cargo bays to the assembly decks. It was a monument to the Empire's industrial might, now just a silent, forgotten highway in the dark. Below the catwalk, a chasm of unknown depth dropped away into absolute blackness.
He knelt, examining the surface of the mag-lev tube. He could see the primary electromagnetic rail running along its top, a thick, coppery band that was dull and tarnished with age. It was cold to the touch. Dead.
"We walk?" Kaito's voice was a small, awed whisper. The sheer, overwhelming scale of the place seemed to have momentarily shocked him out of his panic.
"We walk," Haruto confirmed. He looked at the tube stretching off into the darkness. It was their only path. A long, dark road through the heart of the beast. "Riku, take point. Kaito, you're in the middle. Watch our six. And for gods' sake, don't look down."
He climbed onto the tube itself. The curved surface was slick with a fine layer of greasy dust, and he had to place his feet carefully to maintain his balance. It was like walking on the back of a great, dead serpent. He gave Riku the signal, and they started moving, a slow, single-file procession into the oppressive, cavernous dark.
Their footsteps were the only sound, a rhythmic, metallic clang that echoed in the vast, empty space. The beams of their lights cut nervous, trembling paths through the darkness, revealing nothing but the endless, curved surface of the tube and the forest of support struts marching past them into the gloom. The quiet was different here. It wasn't the dead, claustrophobic silence of the corridors. It was a vast, empty, waiting quiet. The quiet of a cathedral.
They walked for what felt like hours. The monotony was a hypnotic, grinding thing. The constant focus required to keep his balance, the rhythmic clang of his boots, the endless, unchanging darkness ahead—it all conspired to lull his tactical mind into a state of dull complacency. His thoughts began to drift. He found himself thinking of the silver frame on the captain's desk. Of the woman with the sad, determined eyes. Live for us. Her final words were a quiet, persistent echo in the back of his mind. What did that even mean? To live? He had never lived. He had only ever survived. He had existed from one mission to the next, a tool in the great, grinding machine of the Empire. Was this what she had died for? So that he could die in the same metal tomb a thousand years later?
A hand on his shoulder, firm and solid, snapped him back to the present. It was Riku. He had stopped. Haruto stumbled, catching his balance, his heart suddenly hammering against his ribs. He looked up. Riku was pointing his carbine's beam ahead.
Up ahead, maybe two hundred meters down the tube, the darkness was not absolute. There was a faint, pale, flickering light. And the tunnel… it was broken.
They approached cautiously, their pace slowing, their weapons held at the ready. As they got closer, Haruto could see the full extent of the damage. A massive section of the cavern's outer wall had been torn open, a jagged, gaping wound of twisted metal and shattered rock. The mag-lev tube itself was sheared in half, its two broken ends hanging precariously over the chasm below. And through the breach, a pale, milky light spilled into the cavern, the light of the planet's moons filtering through what looked like a network of crystalline structures. The ship had crashed into a natural cave system.
The air was different here. It carried the scent of damp earth, of wet stone, of minerals. The scent of a living world. It was the first natural smell he had encountered since stepping into the ship, and it was a profound, jarring shock to his senses.
"The Guardian's structural breach," he murmured. "This must be it."
The gap between the two broken ends of the tube was at least fifteen meters. An impossible jump. Their path was blocked.
"Dead end," Kaito's voice was a hollow, defeated thing. "I knew it. We're trapped."
Haruto didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on the cave system beyond the breach. The light was coming from there. The smell of the planet was coming from there. It was a tantalizing, heartbreaking glimpse of the world outside, a world they could see but never reach.
Riku moved to the very edge of the broken tube, his light scanning the chasm below. Then he looked up, at the ceiling of the cavern. He pointed.
"Maintenance gantry," he said, his voice a low rumble.
Haruto followed his gaze. High above them, running parallel to the mag-lev tube, was a second, much smaller catwalk. A service gantry for maintenance drones. And unlike the main tube, it was intact. It spanned the breach, a thin, skeletal ribbon of metal against the pale light of the caves.
It was their way across. It was also at least twenty meters directly above them.
Haruto scanned the area, his tactical mind clicking back into gear. He spotted a series of thick, vertical support struts that connected the main tube to the gantry above. They were covered in maintenance rungs. A ladder.
"There," he said, pointing. "We climb."
He looked at Kaito. The younger man was staring at the gantry, at the dizzying drop below, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated vertigo. He was shaking his head, a small, almost imperceptible motion. "No. I can't. I can't do that."
"You can, and you will," Haruto said, his voice leaving no room for argument. "We are not dying here. Riku, you're first. Secure the gantry. I'll bring up the rear."
He didn't wait for a response. He watched as Riku, with a fluid, unnerving grace, began to ascend the support strut, his movements confident, efficient. Haruto turned to Kaito. He put a hand on the younger man's shoulder, his grip firm.
"One handhold at a time, Kaito," he said, his voice softer than he intended. "Don't look down. Just look at the rung in front of you. That's all that exists. You can do this."
He pushed Kaito towards the strut. Kaito hesitated for a long, agonizing moment, his whole body trembling. Then, with a shuddering breath, he began to climb.
Haruto watched him go, then started his own ascent, the rough, cold metal of the rungs a solid, reassuring reality under his gloves. He climbed, his gaze fixed on Kaito's struggling form above him, the vast, silent darkness of the ship all around them. He could feel it again. The weight of his name. The weight of his mission. He was not just trying to save himself anymore. He was trying to save them all. A duty. An inheritance.
He was halfway up when he heard the sound.
It wasn't the hum of the ship. It wasn't the skittering of drones or the slithering of the ooze.
It was a low, guttural, chittering sound. And it wasn't coming from the ship.
It was coming from the caves.
From the pale, milky light beyond the breach.
He froze, his body pressed flat against the strut. He looked over at the gaping hole in the ship's side. He saw movement in the caves. A shadow detaching itself from the crystalline structures. It was large. It was fast. And it was not alone.
The ship, he realized with a sudden, gut-wrenching wave of pure, cold dread, had not crashed on an uninhabited planet.
The Anomaly was not the only monster in the dark.
And they were climbing directly towards its nest.