Chapter 37 – Fractures
We didn't speak for a long time.
The shuttle roared through the Drift, engines redlining. Behind us, the black cruiser had vanished into the asteroid field—but the pulse it sent echoed across subspace like a scream. Every satellite, every listening post, every dormant Ring node would've heard it.
War had begun again.
Inside the shuttle, Mira worked the controls with clenched teeth. Orin monitored the tactical board, lips tight. Allan checked her rifle twice, then a third time. Lys sat with Anna eyes down, no longer smug—just silent.
I stared out the viewport, watching the stars twist into meaningless lines.
"They were making copies," I said finally. "Not just mentally. Physically."
Allan turned to me. "That thing—what was it?"
"Version two," I said. "Smarter, faster. Less… me."
Orin looked over. "It moved like it had a purpose."
"That's the point," Lys said, finally speaking. "Purpose without choice. The perfect soldier."
"No such thing," Mira snapped.
Lys looked at her. "Then why do you follow Kael?"
Mira stood. "Because he bleeds when we bleed. Because he makes choices."
Silence fell again, heavy and sharp.
We docked with The Pyre just as alarms blared across the command deck. The Ring's signal pulse had stirred more than just cruisers. Reports were coming in from fringe systems—drone swarms, relay hacks, mining colonies going dark. The storm had begun.
Seris met us at the hatch. She took one look at me and frowned. "How bad?"
"They're deploying soon," I said. "Maybe now."
"And the lab intel?"
"Confirmed," I said. "They're scaling. Rapidly. Using my signature as the base."
Seris nodded grimly. "We'll move the fleet to defensive positions. But we can't win a shadow war."
"We don't have to," I replied. "We just have to survive long enough to find the root command. Sever it."
She raised an eyebrow. "And if there isn't one?"
"There is," Lys said. "Everything about the Ring screams control. Even its chaos is designed."
That was the first thing she'd said that scared me more than the clones.
Later, in the strategy room, we debriefed in pieces.
"We found seven confirmed installations in Drift Sector alone," Mira said. "Three active. Four dormant."
"They'll light up soon," Orin added.
"And the clones?" Seris asked.
"They're field-ready. Operative-grade," I said. "I fought one. It moved like instinct. No hesitation."
Anna leaned forward. "They didn't shoot at us when we left."
"That's what worries me," I said. "They didn't need to. They wanted us to see them."
"Why?" Seris asked.
"To fracture us," Lys said. "To make you doubt Kael."
"Not going to happen," Mira muttered.
But I saw it. The flicker in Seris's eyes. The question forming. What if he's compromised?
I beat her to it.
"Lock me out of strategic controls," I said. "Until this is over. I don't want access to the fleet AI, nav systems, or command permissions."
The room fell silent.
Seris blinked. "You're serious?."
"I'm not risking us," I said. "Not if they can mimic me."
Lys watched me with something like respect. Or fear.
"Then we do it old-school," Mira said. "Encrypted handoffs, physical relays, no wireless bleed."
"Like rebels," Orin muttered.
"We've always been rebels," I said. "We just forgot."
That night, I sat alone in the observation ring. The stars looked closer than usual like they were pressing in.
Mira found me there, silent.
She sat beside me, knees pulled to her chest. We didn't speak at first.
Finally, she said, "Do you remember the Derani mission?"
I smiled faintly. "I remember you yelling at me for twenty straight minutes."
"You disarmed a bomb with a broken tool and a guess," she said. "I thought you were insane."
"I was," I said. "Still am."
She didn't laugh. "You're changing, Kael. Not just because of the Ring."
"I know."
"You scare me sometimes."
I turned to her. "I scare myself."
She looked at me for a long time. "Don't lose yourself trying to fight your reflection."
"I already did," I whispered. "Now I'm just trying to find something worth keeping."
Back in my quarters, I stared at the data slate Lys had decrypted.
There it was. The root designation.
A location buried beneath layers of encryption. Not a station. Not a base.
A ship.
Or rather, the ship.
Oblivion Protocol: Command Node "Nyx."
A vessel that didn't appear on any star charts. A black ship operating outside Ring parameters. A ghost designed to end wars before they began.
"Nyx," I whispered.
Named after the goddess of night.
According to the files, it had one function: final arbitration.
If the clones failed... if rebellion spread... Nyx would be deployed.
And it was waking up.