Interstellar Space, Aboard the Athena's Owl
The escape shuttle was a sleek, gunmetal grey dart, more advanced than any junker Kaine had ever flown. The interior smelled of ozone and sterile air. The miners, crammed in the hold, were a symphony of ragged breathing and whispered prayers.
Kaine slumped against the bulkhead in the small cockpit annex, finally ripping the shattered shoulder plate from his suit. The flesh beneath was an angry purple, already bruising. The gash on his thigh was worse; the suit's auto-sealant had gummed it shut, but it throbbed with a deep, sickening pain. The strange, fiery power that had saved them was gone, leaving a hollow exhaustion that went to the marrow.
"Your biosigns are erratic. Elevated stress hormones, tachycardic, and… anomalous protein markers my database can't classify." The voice from before came from the cockpit speaker. Its owner was still out of sight. "There is a med-kit in the compartment to your left. Use the blue injector. It's a broad-spectrum Stabilizer. It won't fix whatever you are, but it might stop you from dying in the next ten minutes."
Kaine found the kit. The blue injector hissed against his neck. A cool wave spread through him, taking the edge off the cell-deep ache. The world snapped into slightly sharper focus. "Thanks. For the pickup, and the drugs. Kaine."
A pause. "Aelia."
"So, Aelia. Independent operator? Not many who'd fly a shuttle into a Peacekeeper op zone for a bunch of miners and a random smuggler."
"The miners were the objective," her voice was clipped, professional. "Their distress signal was on a secured, antiquated Guild channel. My… employer has an interest in preserving pre-Collapse technical knowledge. Some of those miners were engineers. Your interference, while statistically improbable, was a complicating factor."
Kaine barked a short, pained laugh. "Complicating. Yeah. Sorry for messing up your clean extraction by not letting them get turned into soup."
"Your sarcasm is noted. Your actions, however, drew the Hounds' primary focus, allowing my shuttle to approach undetected. The net result was positive. Hence, the medical aid." She finally stepped into the annex doorway.
She was younger than he'd expected, maybe early twenties. Her silver-white hair was cut in a severe, practical bob. Her eyes were a striking, analytical grey-blue, scanning him with an intensity that felt less like a person and more like a targeting system. She wore a form-fitting grey flightsuit devoid of any insignia, but the way she carried herself screamed military, or something just as disciplined.
"You're hurt worse than the bioscan indicated," she stated, her gaze locking on his leg. "The Peacekeepers were using Gene-Locks. Even a glancing interaction with their field can cause latent modifications to destabilize."
"I'll manage," Kaine said, too quickly. A fresh spike of pain behind his eyes made him wince. The world flickered again, and for a split second, he saw her not as a woman, but as a constellation of intricate, silver-white data streams—ordered, elegant, and incredibly dense. A tag flickered, half-formed: Athena…?
It vanished. The hangover from whatever that compile was felt like a hot drill bit in his skull.
"You will not 'manage'," Aelia said, her tone leaving no room for argument. "You displayed a burst of physical capability exceeding standard black-market mod thresholds by several orders of magnitude, followed by immediate systemic collapse. You are a walking biohazard, Lokison. To yourself and anyone near you."
She knows my name. Of course she did. She'd listened to the Hound's comms. Fenrir remained silent, a worrying stillness from the pendant.
"What's it to you?" he challenged, pushing down the fear. "Drop me at the next rock with an airlock. I'll be someone else's problem."
"The Lead Hound designated you 'Priority Alpha.' They do not assign that classification to mere smugglers. They want you for study. Your unique… condition… is now a variable in a larger equation. I require data on that variable."
"So I'm a lab rat now?"
"You are a passenger on my vessel who owes me a life-debt," she corrected coolly. "I am offering a transaction. I will provide you with sanctuary and higher-grade medical aid to stabilize your condition. In return, you will submit to non-invasive bio-scans and answer pertinent questions. The data may be crucial."
"Crucial for what?"
"For understanding how to break the system that creates Hounds, purges, and gods who think they own our DNA." Her words were calm, but in her eyes, for the first time, Kaine saw a flash of something hot and fierce. Not just calculation. Hatred.
It was a feeling he understood intimately. He looked at the miners in the hold, at the grizzled man who'd almost died. He thought of the cold, mechanical voice of the Hound ordering the cleanse. The hollow in his chest, the one that had been there since his parents vanished, echoed with that same hatred.
"Sanctuary where?" he asked, his voice rough.
"A place off the grid. Run by someone who might actually understand what's happening to you. A former colleague of my… employer."
Kaine was out of options, out of Stabilizer, and had Olympus on his tail. Aelia was an enigma, but she'd saved those miners. She hated the gods. That was a start.
"Fine. Transaction accepted. But no probing. Literally or figuratively."
A faint, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of her mouth. "I will attempt to restrain my curiosity to acceptable parameters. We make the jump to the drift-point in fifteen minutes. Try not to expire before then."
As she turned back to the cockpit, Fenrir's voice finally whispered, a faint, staticky thread in his implant. "Initial analysis of the shuttle's systems suggests advanced Athena-class tactical encryption and drive signatures consistent with… decommissioned Olympian R&D prototypes. Your new acquaintance, Kaine, is a puzzle wrapped in a very dangerous enigma."
"Tell me something I don't know," Kaine muttered, closing his eyes as another wave of fatigue and pain washed over him. The drill in his skull kept turning. Somewhere, in the dark behind his eyes, lines of corrupted, bloody code labeled [ARES-FRAGMENT] pulsed faintly, waiting.