The silence that followed the impact was worse than the screaming chaos. It was the silence of death, a heavy, cold vacuum broken only by the erratic drip-drip-drip of coolant onto scorching metal. Lyra woke slowly, every nerve protesting the intrusion. Her head pounded, and a sharp, grinding pain radiated from her lower ribs. The Sun-Skimmer was unrecognizable, inverted and buried halfway into the obsidian rock of NX-73. Her Solari conditioning took over before her pain did.Status: Alive. Environment: Hostile.She checked her restraints, released the safety catches with a practiced snap, and pushed herself free of the pilot's harness. The cabin was a shambles of melted circuitry and debris. Her hand instinctively reached for the holster strapped to her thigh. Her pulse rifle, Aegis, a sleek instrument of Solari light and energy, was thankfully still locked in place.She found the emergency hatch control, a manual override that responded to her strained effort with a protesting screech. Cold, thin air rushed in, carrying the strange, metallic tang of the nebula's gasses. Lyra pulled herself out and scrambled onto the upturned hull of her ship, gasping as the atmosphere stung her lungs.NX-73 was a world of perpetual, sickly twilight. The nebula's gases swirled above like a poisoned ocean, filtering the light of distant stars into a pale, toxic green. The ground was composed of razor-sharp, volcanic glass and choked by dense thickets of bioluminescent fungi that pulsed with an eerie, violet glow. It was a beautiful place, she realized with a soldier's detached eye, but brutally unforgiving. Her ship was a write-off. The port engine was sheared clean off, and the central core was leaking energy—not enough to self-destruct, but enough to attract every scavenger and anomaly within a hundred light-years. Survival here would be measured in hours, not days.Lyra turned, Aegis held at the ready, seeking the co-conspirator in her ruin. A few hundred yards away, nestled in a ravine carved out by its own violent descent, lay the wreckage of the other ship. Its design was sleek, alien, and utterly, profoundly wrong to her eyes. It was a whisper of a vessel, all deep, matte black angles, designed to absorb all light and sound. Lunara. Seeing it confirmed her worst fears: the wreckage held a threat far more lethal than the planet itself. She moved with the silent, predatory efficiency of her training, using the tall, glowing fungi stalks for cover. She was a Solari warrior, bred on the sun-drenched principle that Lunara was the eternal enemy—deceitful, cold-blooded, and bent on extinguishing all light. When she reached the crest of the ravine, she saw him. The Lunara ship, the Night-Talon, was broken open like a cracked shell. Amidst the debris, a figure in obsidian armor moved, slow and measured, dragging one leg. He was tall, even hunched in pain, his uniform a stark, midnight shadow against the glowing terrain. His armor was functional, elegant, and bore no hint of the Solari's flamboyant insignia—only the simple, chilling crescent moon sigil on his shoulder pauldron. This was no common scout. His movements, even injured, held the economic grace of a seasoned commander. His face, when he finally turned toward the source of her approach, was etched with a cold, intellectual severity. His green gem like eyes, shadowed by a high brow, were the color of deep space—cold, infinitely deep, and assessing. This was Orion. Lyra stepped out of the shadow of a glowing spore-tree. She raised Aegis, the muzzle steady, aiming for his center mass. The Solari light emitter at the end of the rifle pulsed, casting a stark yellow beam directly onto his chest."Lunara," she stated, the word a blade of fire between them.Orion did not flinch, nor did he hasten his movement. His hand, however, was already resting on the hilt of a curved energy blade strapped to his back."Solari," he replied, his voice a low, resonant baritone, quiet as falling ash, yet carrying the weight of command. He paused, his gaze sweeping from her weapon to the smoke rising from her own distant wreck, and finally settled back on her crystal blue eyes. A flicker of something—not fear, but pure strategic calculation—crossed his face."The eternal war is momentarily suspended, Warrior," Orion continued, his voice devoid of heat or malice, simply stating a cold fact. "We are both dead on this rock without mutual cooperation. Your Solari pride is powerful, but not as powerful as an unstable atmosphere, a ruined life support system, and the distance to the nearest system boundary."He slowly raised his hands, empty, but his eyes never left hers. "A temporary truce. Or a final, pointless battle. You choose."The choice was agonizing, a violation of everything Lyra believed. Her warrior heart screamed for the confrontation, for the chance to strike a blow for the Solari Ascendancy. But the logic of survival, cold and undeniable, whispered the Lunara truth into her ear: patience. She looked at the toxic glow, the two smoking wrecks, and the face of her enemy, who, for the first time, looked like the only other living thing in the universe.Lyra's breath hitched. Slowly, she lowered the muzzle of Aegis, but kept her finger on the trigger."An uneasy truce," she conceded, the words tasting like grit and betrayal. "But if you make one move, Strategist, I will end this war right here."
