There was no negotiation, no debate, only instant, unified action. The warning from the stealth fighter's ping was a sound of death that transcended all political affiliation.
"Move!" Orion didn't shout; the command was a sharp, guttural instruction that cut through the silence. He didn't wait for Lyra to argue; he was already hauling himself toward the sealed exit of the sphere, jamming the now-useless comms array back into a pouch. Lyra reacted instantly, her training overriding thought. She snatched her pulse rifle and secured the loose Solari power cell. They squeezed out of the cramped shelter and scrambled back toward the gorge floor." It's using Stealth-Vanish technology," Orion said, struggling to keep pace, his movements hobbled but precise. "It won't make a sound. It's searching for residual heat signatures and magnetic anomalies from the crash. We need immediate thermal masking.""Where?" Lyra demanded, pulling him toward a cluster of thorny, bioluminescent fungi that offered poor concealment but decent chemical cooling."No. Too slow. We are going to use the shadow path," Orion directed, pointing toward a deep cut in the rock face where the purple nebula light barely penetrated. "It's a natural gravity anomaly. The magnetic fluctuation is chaotic enough to blur the fighter's low-frequency scanners."The path was narrow, barely wide enough for one person. Lyra moved first, providing cover, her senses stretched taut. The Solari Interceptor was a symbol of her people's most advanced engineering—a fast, silent predator designed to eliminate targets without witnesses.They moved in a desperate, synchronized dance. Lyra's raw speed carried them forward, and her powerful arm was constantly wrapped around Orion's waist, hauling him over obstacles. Orion, meanwhile, was the eye and the mind, giving clipped, critical directions."Ten degrees right, now! There is a pulse anomaly at your eleven o'clock. If we move through it, it will briefly cloak our body heat.""It's a sheer drop there!" Lyra protested, skidding to a halt."It is a forty-meter drop into a cushion of solidified nebular gas. Trust the logic, Lyra!"She took the terrifying leap, trusting the Lunara strategist's assessment of the physics over her own instinct. They landed hard but safely, the soft gas absorbing the impact. They pressed on, the silence of the approaching fighter growing deafening. Then, Lyra saw it. High above the gorge, a perfect, teardrop-shaped sliver of pure white alloy, a streak of light slicing through the twilight. The Interceptor was flying a low, slow search pattern over the crash site. Its primary sensor array—a glowing green orb—was sweeping the ground below."It's found the abandoned shelter," Orion whispered, pressing himself deep into the crevice wall. "We have five seconds before the sensor sweep reaches us. We are currently a two-meter heat signature against a two-meter cold spot. It's too obvious."
Lyra felt the frantic scramble for a plan in her mind, but Orion was already moving. He reached into his salvaged pouch and retrieved the final pieces of his broken Night-Talon comms unit—a bundle of antennae and a capacitor."The Solari rely on the clean image," Orion hissed, his fingers flying. "We will give them a dirty one."He thrust the hastily jury-rigged contraption into Lyra's hand. "Run, Lyra. Run across that open patch to the next deep shadow. Before you enter the shadow, throw this as hard as you can toward the original crash site. It will mimic a small energy spike—a surviving escape pod firing a final distress burst. The sensor will lock onto the known threat, and we will be invisible for the duration of the scan."The open ground was thirty meters of exposed obsidian. Running across it was suicide. But staying put was guaranteed capture."Go, Lyra!" Orion urged, pushing her into the open. Lyra didn't hesitate. She launched herself across the rock, her legs pumping, her armor loud against the silent landscape. She heard the faint, high-pitched whine of the Interceptor's maneuvering thrusters as it began to turn toward their position. Just as she reached the cover of the next ravine, she pivoted and flung the Lunara device with all her might toward the derelict ships.
A microsecond later, the silence was broken by a sudden, violent pulse of electromagnetic energy from the gorge floor. The Interceptor, which was just beginning to pivot its nose towards Lyra's heat trail, stopped, its green sensor light flashing a panicked red as it locked onto the chaotic, false signal. It descended toward the crash site, ignoring the two figures who had just vanished into the deeper shadows.Lyra collapsed onto the freezing rock, gasping, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Orion slid in beside her, his breath ragged. He didn't say "good job" or "successful evasion." He simply stated the fact: "We are clear of the interceptor's primary scan window. They will spend the next hour combing the wreckage, not the gorge."He looked at her, his eyes serious and intense. "You risked capture to execute my strategy. That is not the action of an enemy, Lyra. It is the action of a partner."Lyra could only nod, her hand still trembling from the effort. She had used a Lunara device, at the direction of a Lunara strategist, to deceive a Solari ship, and in doing so, had saved both their lives.
The lines of the war, once so clear, had dissolved completely.They had escaped the scout, but they were now stranded far from their hidden supplies, lost in a labyrinth of dark rock, with the Interceptor hovering just a kilometer away. They have evaded immediate capture, but now they are truly exposed and off-route.