THE SILENT ORBIT
Sena Kirei’s fingers hovered over the ship’s controls, her knuckles white. The warning lights bathed the cockpit in crimson, casting sharp shadows across her angular face. Outside the viewport, the gas giant Nyx-9 loomed like a storm-wreathed god, its rings glittering with the wreckage of the research station she’d just fled. The comms crackled—once, twice—before a voice slithered through.
“You can’t outrun the tide, Captain.”
Sena exhaled, her breath fogging the visor of her pressure suit. The voice belonged to Director Vael, head of the Celestial Dominion’s Bio-Sciences Division. The same man who’d ordered her team’s execution ten minutes ago.
Six Hours Earlier
The research hub Eos-7 had been a jewel of human ingenuity, a floating lab orbiting Nyx-9 to study its methane oceans. Sena, clad in a fitted navy biosuit with silver piping—standard issue for Dominion scientists—had been elbow-deep in data streams when the alert came.
“Captain?” Her junior analyst, Juro, had sounded strained. “The deep-scans… they’re picking up structures. Artificial.”
On-screen, the sonar maps revealed geometric patterns beneath Nyx-9’s turbulent surface. Cities? No. Shipyards. Ancient, colossal. And pulsing with a faint energy signature that matched no known human tech.
Sena had barely ordered a lockdown before Dominion security forces stormed the lab. Juro’s last transmission was a scream cut short.
Now
Sena’s ship, the Hare’s Shadow, rattled as another proximity alarm blared. A Dominion frigate slid into view, its hull bristling with railguns. She punched the thrusters, veering into the debris field.
“You found something that doesn’t belong to us,” Vael continued. “Surrender the data, and you might live.”
Sena bared her teeth. Her dark, tightly braided hair clung to her sweat-slicked neck. The Dominion had known. They’d always known. Nyx-9 wasn’t just a research site—it was a tomb. And whatever slept beneath its waves was waking up.
She opened a private channel. The encryption was patchy, but it held. “Lira,” she hissed. “You still owe me for Ceres.”
A dry chuckle answered. “Sena Kirei, dragging trouble like a comet tail. What’s the play?”
“I need a blind jump. Coordinates unknown.”
A pause. Then: “You’re really pissing off the Dominion, aren’t you?”
Sena glanced at the data core glowing in her ship’s console. The truth was in there—the reason her team died. The reason Vael would burn entire colonies to keep it buried.
“Worse,” she muttered. “I’m giving humanity a fighting chance.”
The frigate’s targeting lasers locked on. Sena slammed her palm onto the jump drive. Space twisted. For a heartbeat, Nyx-9’s storms seemed to reach for her—then the stars shattered into light.
Epilogue: The Tide Rises
Three weeks later, on the fringe world of Kestris, a smuggler delivered an unmarked data chip to a rebel cell. The hologram that flickered to life showed Sena’s face, gaunt but fierce.
“They’re not ruins,” she said. “They’re incubators. And the Dominion’s been feeding them.”
Far away, in the silent deep of Nyx-9, something shifted. And answered.
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