The air inside the old maintenance chamber was heavy — not with smoke or dust, but with the weight of something unspoken. Everything that needed to be said had already been shared, each word exchanged in the past few days layered with meaning, with urgency. Now, all that remained was silence and the precise hum of final checks.

  Rayen knelt beside the access grate, eyes scanning the schematic Lira had etched onto a flattened metal plate. Ducts, timers, shifts. Every second mattered. Every step had been memorized.

  Lira adjusted her stolen uniform, tucking the forged clearance patch into place. She didn’t need reassurance — her gaze was steady as steel, and her hand rested on the compact disruptor she’d hidden in her belt lining.

  Mako had a timer clipped to his wrist and a scavenged scanner looped over his shoulder. “Guard rotation shifts in seven minutes,” he said without looking up. “We move exactly ninety seconds after their patrol hits Sector F.”

  “And the riot?” Rayen asked.

  “Already sparked. Couple of desperate inmates we slipped contraband to. Chaos should hold for six minutes, give or take.”

  Rayen glanced across the room.

  Tarek stood by the sealed hatch, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed. His breathing was calm, controlled — as if meditating before a storm. Beside him, the breaching charges hummed faintly in standby, small enough to look harmless, powerful enough to blow a hole through reinforced plating.

  And Kaelen…

  The old tactician sat propped against the wall, wrapped in a thin thermal sheet, watching them. His breathing had grown shallower, the effort of staying awake evident in the tight lines around his eyes. But he said nothing. He didn’t need to. His presence was enough — a silent guardian standing at the edge of farewell.

  Rayen walked over and crouched beside him. “You sure?”

  Kaelen’s lips curled into a weak smile. “Don’t waste breath trying to change my mind. I made peace with this a long time ago.”

  Rayen didn’t speak. He simply pressed his forehead briefly to Kaelen’s, a gesture more intimate than any words could be.

  “You gave us a map,” Rayen said quietly. “We’ll light the stars with it.”

  “Just make sure,” Kaelen murmured, “you don’t burn alone.”

  Across the chamber, Mako raised his hand — two fingers. “Time.”

  Everyone moved without command. Lira cracked her knuckles. Tarek slipped the charges into place along his belt. Mako handed Rayen the forged access key, his expression unreadable.

  Rayen looked at the grate.

  Beyond it lay the crawlspace. Then the utility corridor. Then the old service shaft — unscanned for decades. And then… the outside.

  They’d rehearsed this in silence, again and again. No fanfare. No speeches.

  But just before Rayen pulled the grate free, Kaelen’s voice cut through the stillness.

  “Rayen.”

  He turned.

  “Whatever happens… don’t come back for me.”

  Rayen’s jaw clenched, but he nodded. “Only if you stop giving orders.”

  Kaelen gave a rasp of laughter — dry, honest, and fleeting.

  And then, with the soft hiss of metal, the grate lifted.

  One by one, they disappeared into the dark.

  Kaelen sat alone in the chamber, the last echo of their escape fading like a heartbeat swallowed by silence.

  He didn’t feel fear. Only pride.

  And, perhaps, the faintest whisper of hope.

  The crawlspace was tighter than Rayen remembered. Years of dust clung to the walls, and the scent of rust and decay curled into his nose. Their knees scraped metal, shoulders pressed against conduit lines, and every sound—every breath—felt amplified in the silence.

  Lira led, flashlight beam flickering in the dark. She moved like she belonged in the shadows, swift and sure. Mako followed, scanning intermittently for motion signals or heat traces. Tarek was behind Rayen, silent but close, their rhythm practiced over sleepless nights of preparation.Rayen’s mind was calm, sharpened. He didn’t allow emotion to surface—not yet. That would come later. First, they had to pass the service ducts, slip through the coolant pipeline beneath the factory floors, and breach the external waste ejection system, which would allow them to reach the old landing bay.

  Their path wasn't mapped on any current colony blueprints. Volara's lower levels were ancient infrastructure—remnants from the days when it was just a mining colony. And that's where Kaelen had led them: into the forgotten bones of a world built to consume.

  They reached a junction. Lira signaled a halt.

  Below them, through a grated panel, two Zoan guards paced. Their conversation was casual, bored. One of them chewed on dried kelbin root, the sound echoing as he cracked a joke. The other didn’t laugh. He just stared into the dark—like he sensed something was off.

  Rayen held his breath.

  Then a muffled boom echoed in the distance. The riot.

  The guards turned immediately, barking into their comms, weapons raised. Within seconds, they’d vanished down the corridor.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Lira opened the grate silently. They dropped one by one into the shadows of a defunct server room. Half the panels were offline. Pipes hissed faintly overhead, steam venting from long-dead machines.

  “This is it,” Mako whispered. “From here, we climb.”

  The vertical shaft loomed ahead, thick with frost. The coolant pipes that once powered the processing centers below had ruptured long ago, and now formed a brittle, icy tunnel stretching up toward the next level.

  Rayen went first.

  The metal was slick, cold enough to bite into his skin through his gloves. Every rung creaked. Halfway up, he paused—he could feel the vibrations of something moving above. A hover patrol?

  He tapped the pipe twice—signal to wait.

  Then once—go.

  One by one, they climbed.

  At the top, Rayen pried open the service hatch. Beyond it, the world opened up into the half-lit expanse of the abandoned lower hangar bay. Shadows sprawled across the rusted deck. Empty crates. Disconnected loaders. And, to the far right, covered in dust and wires—

  A Godoran escape pod. Ancient, but intact.

  Rayen's heart slammed in his chest. Kaelen had been right.

  A ship. Hidden in plain sight.

  Lira moved instantly, slicing into the access terminal. “It’s still linked to a dormant registry tag. If I can spoof the ID long enough…”

  “You’ll get us in?” Rayen asked.

  “I’ll get us out.”

  Mako checked the outer vents. “We’ve got eight minutes max before the riot breaks or they catch the scent.”

  Tarek was already positioning the breaching charges on the bay door mechanisms.

  Rayen approached the ship slowly, running his fingers along its side. It was old, but Godoran tech aged like stone—rugged, reliable, and quiet.

  This was it.

  Not a dream. Not a vision.

  A way out.

  But escape, he knew, was just the beginning.

  The hangar shuddered. A deep metallic hum vibrated through the floor—the unmistakable whine of an inbound patrol skimmer.

  “They’re here,” Mako muttered, eyes locked on the motion sensor strapped to his wrist. “South corridor. Fifteen seconds.”

  Rayen spun toward Lira. “Status?”

  She yanked a power conduit loose and slammed it into the terminal. Sparks flew.

  “Disabling slave tracker network,” she hissed. “Five seconds.”

  Mako pulled up the escape pod’s exterior schematics. “Hull integrity is stable. Fuel cells at sixty-eight percent. We’ve got one jump, maybe two if we don’t hit resistance.”

  Tarek, silent as always, handed Rayen a loaded pulse rifle. No words—just a look. A promise to fight if needed.

  Then, the alarms howled.

  A burst of red light flooded the chamber as the hangar doors started sealing shut.

  “Backup lockdown!” Lira shouted. “Someone’s overriding the local system!”

  A sharp clang sounded from above—Zoan boots crashing onto the catwalks. Rayen dove behind a crate as pulsefire screamed past, searing through a nearby console. The air turned electric with energy bolts and ozone.

  “Cover me!” Rayen yelled, vaulting over the crate and slamming into a secondary terminal beside the pod.

  He connected Kaelen’s encrypted communicator and punched in the code Lin Fang had sent him hours earlier. The comms lit up, a holographic interface flickering into view.

  “Lin! We’re compromised. We need an extraction corridor—now!”

  The Chinese man’s face appeared mid-flicker, calm despite the chaos. “Sending spoofed signal to trigger emergency bay unlock. You’ll have fifteen seconds of blind spot—no more. After that, they'll trace it.”

  Rayen looked at his team. “We make that fifteen seconds count.”

  Lira nodded. “System unlocked. Pod’s online.”

  “Tarek, blow the charges.”

  A muffled boom rocked the floor as the bay doors behind them blasted loose, gears grinding under released pressure. Cold wind whooshed in—freedom whispered at the edge of the vacuum.

  But Zoan guards swarmed the edges now, converging from both flanks.

  Tarek, bleeding from a shoulder graze, took point. His towering frame acted as a living shield. He fired burst after burst, each shot echoing with purpose.

  Mako grabbed Lira’s arm, helping her through the pod hatch.

  “Rayen!” Lin’s voice crackled in the comms. “Thirteen seconds!”

  Rayen ducked a bolt, then sprinted, shoving Tarek through the hatch before leaping in himself. The door slammed shut. The pod groaned as old engines ignited.

  “Come on… come on…” Lira whispered.

  Then—

  Thrust ignited.

  The pod exploded from the bay like a bullet, hurtling through the artificial gravity dome into open sky. A warning klaxon faded behind them as the Zoans shrank into the distance. The planet of Volara was beneath them now—a prison behind, a battlefield ahead.

  Inside, none of them spoke.

  Their faces glowed faintly in the dim blue cockpit light.

  Mako sat back, exhaling.

  Tarek leaned against the wall, silent, his shoulder still bleeding.

  Lira stared ahead, eyes wet with fury and awe.

  And Rayen?

  Rayen gripped the controls, his jaw tight.

  They were no longer just slaves.

  They were fugitives.

  Fire had been lit.

  Now it was war.

  The stars blurred into jagged lines as the escape pod blasted through Volara’s outer atmosphere. Rayen gritted his teeth as turbulence slammed the pod sideways, warning lights flashing across the console like a storm of red eyes.

  “Stabilizer’s fighting back,” Lira said, teeth clenched, as she hammered commands into the nav system. “We’re climbing, but they’ll catch up soon.”

  “They already have,” Mako muttered from the sensor panel. “Four Zoan hunter drones. Approaching fast. One minute out.”

  Tarek pushed himself upright, blood soaked into the cloth around his shoulder but his grip steady on the pulse cannon mount. “Let them come.”

  “No weapons worth that name,” Lira growled. “We’ve got one hull-mounted cannon and Rayen’s grit. That’s all.”

  Rayen’s jaw tightened. “Then we use what we have.”

  He yanked the pod into a banking maneuver, dodging a debris cloud from a shattered satellite. Behind them, the black shapes of Zoan drones glimmered like predatory birds, sleek and fast, each trailing an eerie green contrail.

  The first shot clipped their aft.

  BOOM.

  The ship rocked violently. Sparks spat from the rear engine. Mako swore under his breath.

  “Secondary thruster’s down,” he said. “We’re flying with a limp.”

  Another shot grazed them. The metal hissed. Interior lights flickered.

  Tarek braced at the gunner hatch, waiting. Then the drones swept in from the side.

  Rayen twisted the pod, rolling it into a tight spiral. “Now, Tarek!”

  The big man squeezed the trigger. A concentrated plasma burst tore through the void, catching the lead drone square in the core. It erupted in a flash of green fire.

  But the others responded instantly.

  A second drone surged ahead and fired. The bolt seared past the pod, slicing off an external panel.

  Inside, alarms blared.

  “Rayen, that was our shielding array!” Mako shouted.

  “Keep it together!” Rayen snapped. “How far to the rendezvous?”

  Lira checked the signal coordinates. “Thirty seconds until we hit the blind pocket Lin carved out. After that, we go dark.”

  The drones didn’t care.

  They pressed harder. Twin bolts screamed past the viewport, close enough to light up the cockpit in a sick green.

  Rayen dove the pod hard, skimming the edge of a small asteroid belt. Chunks of rock zipped past, deadly obstacles dancing across their hull.

  “Risky!” Lira hissed.

  “They want us dead,” Rayen shot back. “I’m not giving them the satisfaction.”

  The pod spun through the rocks, the chase turning brutal. One drone clipped a jagged asteroid and exploded. A second followed too close and caught the edge of the shockwave.

  “Two down!” Tarek roared.

  Then silence.

  The last drone had vanished from the scanners.

  “Did we lose it?” Mako asked.

  Rayen narrowed his eyes. “No. It’s waiting. Watching.”

  They coasted through the final stretch of the asteroid belt. The pod slowed as they crossed the signal dead zone—a region Lin Fang had scrambled using a Godoran signal masker.

  And just like that… the final drone reappeared, trailing behind them like a specter.

  It fired.

  The bolt screamed toward them.

  And missed.

  A second later, a sleek silver vessel de-cloaked above them. The drone didn’t stand a chance. Lin Fang’s fighter shredded it with surgical precision.

  The pieces drifted apart like ash.

  Rayen exhaled.

  Lin’s voice crackled through the comms. “Nice flying. You looked like you’d done this before.”

  Rayen smirked. “First time. Hope you didn’t bet against me.”

  Lira leaned back, drained. “Can we breathe now?”

  Lin’s voice grew softer. “Yeah. You made it. Welcome to the void.”