My comm unit explodes with overlapping chatter, voices layered on top of each other in controlled panic. Damage reports flooding in from every sector. Casualty counts climbing by the second. Breach warnings lighting up my tactical display like angry constellations, hull integrity compromised in sectors seven through twelve, life support failing in the eastern agricultural dome, structural collapse imminent in residential block four.
The data streams across my vision in rapid succession, each alert more dire than the last, painting a picture of catastrophic systems failure spreading through my station like poison through veins.
"Lord Haid." It's Nyx, voice cutting through the chaos. "We need to evacuate the children. This section won't hold if there's a secondary collapse."
I pull back from Ksara, already calculating. Escape routes. Structural integrity. Threat assessment.
Her eyes are wide, luminous in the emergency lighting. But she's not panicking. She's thinking.
"What happened?" she asks.
"We're about to find out."
9
Ksara
The beam groans overhead. A warning sound, metal under duress, the kind of noise that lives in your bones and tells you to run, get out, move now.
I don't run.
The children huddle against the far wall, pressed together in a tight knot of small bodies and wide eyes. Six of them. Maybe seven. Young enough that their void-markings haven't fully developed yet, just faint traces of darkness creeping into the whites of their eyes like ink spreading through water.
Kora is still in her cot, too weak to move, chest rising and falling in shallow bursts that seem too fragile to sustain life.
The beam shrieks. Metal twisting, rivets popping free with sounds like gunshots. Dust rains down in thick curtains, coating everything in grey powder that tastes like chalk and rust and endings.
"Get them out," Haid barks at Nyx, already moving. His armor's servos whine with the strain as he positions himself directly beneath the failing support, magnetic boots locking tothe floor with heavy clanks that reverberate through the deck plating. "Now."
Nyx doesn't argue. She starts herding the children toward the exit, quick and efficient, scooping up the smallest ones who aren't moving fast enough.
But the beam doesn't wait.
It breaks with a sound like the world splitting open. Cracks spiderwebbing through reinforced durasteel, structural integrity failing catastrophically, and suddenly three tons of metal and concrete are falling, plummeting toward the cots where half a dozen children lie too sick to evacuate, too weak to save themselves.
Haid catches it.
His exosuit screams in protest, hydraulics straining audibly, warning lights flashing crimson across his armor plating. He plants his feet, braces against the impossible weight, muscles and machine working in brutal concert to hold back gravity itself.
It's not enough.
I can see it in the way his knees tremble, the way his shoulders hunch incrementally lower with each passing second. The exosuit compensates, redistributing load, but even advanced Tartarus military tech has limits. Physics doesn't care about willpower or desperation.
The beam keeps descending, inexorable and merciless. Centimeter by agonizing centimeter. Slow enough to watch, too fast to stop. Metal groaning as it buckles further, structural integrity cascading toward total failure with mathematical certainty. Inevitable as entropy, unstoppable as time itself, gravity claiming what physics demands.
Haid's teeth are bared in a rictus of effort, tendons standing out like cables in his neck. A vein pulses at his temple, visible even through the dim emergency lighting. His arms shake,armor joints grinding together with sounds that make my stomach twist.
"Go," he growls at Nyx, the word barely intelligible through the strain. "Get them out."
She's trying. But there are too many, too sick, and not enough time. Two children still in their cots, monitors attached, IV lines snaking into small arms. She can't carry both at once and the beam is falling and Haid is breaking under the weight and?—
No.
The word forms in my chest, absolute and undeniable. A rejection so fundamental it bypasses thought entirely and goes straight to instinct.
Not happening. Not here. Not them.
I don't remember crossing the room. Don't remember moving at all. But suddenly I'm there, standing between the failing beam and the children, hands thrust upward like I could possibly hold back three tons of metal with flesh and bone alone.
