Chapter 4: The Miasma Dive
"I can't break the lock!" Kaelen yelled, his knuckles white as he slammed the throttle quadrant forward. The Rust-Wren's engines screamed in protest, but the ship only shuddered, held fast by the magnetic pylon clamp. "It's a military-grade anchor! They're cutting through the ramp!"
Lyra could hear it now, a high-pitched, sizzling sound from the cargo bay. The Hounds were trying to board.
"Where's the clamp attached?" she yelled back, unstrapping her harness.
"Starboard landing gear housing! There's no internal release, Lyra, it's an emergency dock-lock!"
"There's always a release," she snapped, grabbing her scrap-diver's pack. "Keep them busy!"
She scrambled out of the cockpit and back into the cargo bay. The sizzling sound was louder here, and a glowing orange circle was beginning to form on the heavy metal ramp. They had seconds.
She spotted the maintenance hatch Kaelen meant—a small, circular panel near the landing gear assembly. She spun the locking wheel and pulled it open, revealing a dark, cramped tunnel filled with pipes and wiring.
Lyra dove in without hesitation, pulling herself along by the pipes. The ship's vibration was deafening. She followed the main power conduit, her glow-rod clenched in her teeth, until she reached the housing.
There it was: a massive, energized solenoid, its copper coils glowing faintly. This was the internal side of the magnetic clamp. The Hounds hadn't just clamped the ship; they'd locked directly into its external charging port, anchoring it to the pylon.
She couldn't cut the power; it would fry the Wren's main breaker. She had to detach the solenoid from the hull itself.
"Lyra, whatever you're doing, do it!" Kaelen's voice boomed over the ship's internal comm. "They're almost through!"
Lyra saw the locking bolts. Four of them, an inch thick, holding the entire assembly to the ship's frame. She pulled her "tinker-kit" and found her high-torque wrench. She set it on the first bolt. It wouldn't budge. They were internally sealed.
"Fine. Brute force it," she snarled.
She dug into her pack, past the pulsing, muffled artifact, and found what she was looking for: two small, clay-like bricks. Shaped charges. Meant for cracking safes, not for in-flight demolitions.
This is going to hurt.
She molded the charges with practiced speed, placing one on the top two bolts and one on the bottom two. She jammed short-fuse detonators into each.
"Kaelen!" she screamed into her shoulder-mic. "Full power to aft shields! And brace!"
"What? Lyra, don't—"
She lit the fuses. They hissed, sparking. She shoved herself backward, scrambling as fast as she could down the maintenance tunnel.
"FIVE! FOUR! THREE—"
She tumbled out of the hatch and back into the cargo bay just as the charges detonated.
BOOM! BOOM!
The double explosion was colossal. The entire ship was thrown sideways, and Lyra was hurled across the cargo bay, slamming into a crate of netting. The air filled with acrid smoke. But through the ringing in her ears, she heard a new, beautiful sound: the shriek of tortured metal as the clamp tore free.
"WE'RE LOOSE!" Kaelen's voice roared.
The Rust-Wren shot forward, the inertia pinning Lyra to the bulkhead. She heard the energy bolts of the Hounds impacting the pylon they'd just left behind.
She hauled herself to her feet and staggered back into the cockpit. "The port! The barges are blocking the exit!"
"We're not going to the port," Kaelen said, his face illuminated by the console's red emergency lights. He looked half-mad, a predator's grin on his face. "They own the sky. So we'll take the basement."
Before Lyra could ask what he meant, he shoved the control yoke forward.
The Rust-Wren didn't go up. It went down.
Kaelen piloted the ship straight off the edge of The Rim, diving into the open void. Lyra screamed as the green, churning expanse of the Miasma rushed up to meet them.
"You're insane! The gas will eat the hull!" she yelled.
"The upper layers are thin!" he yelled back, his eyes darting between the console and the roiling green clouds. "But the pressure will kill the engines! It's a trade-off!"
The ship plunged into the sickly yellow-green fog. The cockpit windows were instantly obscured by the swirling, corrosive gas. Alarms blared as proximity sensors shrieked, warning of unseen debris. The hull groaned, a low, metallic moan, as the acidic air began to eat at the metal.
Lyra could feel the engines sputtering, coughing as the Miasma choked their intakes.
"Kaelen!"
"Almost... almost..." he muttered, his hands a blur on the navigation console. He was flying completely blind, using the island's 'shadow' on his sensors as a guide. They were flying under The Rim.
Then, as suddenly as they'd entered, they burst free, shooting out from under the island's far side. They rocketed back up into the clear, blue sky, the Wren's engines coughing, then roaring back to full power as they hit clean air.
Behind them, The Rim was already shrinking. There was no sign of the Purifier barges; Kaelen's dive had been too fast, too unexpected. They were, for the moment, free.
The cockpit was silent, save for the hum of the engines and a dozen dying alarms. Lyra was breathing hard, her knuckles white on her harness.
Kaelen finally leveled the ship, setting a course for the open sky. He hit the auto-pilot switch, and the ship's comm crackled.
"Five hundred credits," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "That was your offer. For a simple trip to Bazaar."
He turned in his chair, his tired, cynical eyes boring into her. The adrenaline was gone, replaced by a cold, simmering rage.
"You blew a hole in my ship, Lyra. You got me blacklisted by the Purifiers. And we just took a bath in the Miasma, which means I'll have to replace half my engine filters and scrape the hull before it dissolves."
He leaned in. "So. You're going to give me that artifact. And then you're going to start talking. Now."