The low hum of the transport vessel’s engines permeated the cabin, a steady vibration coursing through the steel floor beneath their feet. The aircraft—a marvel of precise engineering—stood in stark contrast to the biomechanical monstrosities that dominated the world outside. Its angular fuselage, crafted from cold steel and aluminium, lacked the sinewy tendrils and organic curves that Eberekt had grown accustomed to in colonised spaces. Here, everything had a purpose—a function dictated by human design rather than the whims of living architecture.


    They had commandeered the transport craft from the Celestial Citadel’s landing ports. It refused to operate until the Genekeeper intervened, confronting its mind in digital space and scouring it numb and unresponsive. The vessel obeyed now, under the guidance of a pilot they had prepared for this stage of the operation


    Eberekt sat strapped into a reinforced seat along the starboard side, his gaze fixed on the world beyond the small, circular window high on the far side of the cabin. Scratches marred the thick pane of reinforced glass, but through it, he could see the horizon where the night sky met the ruined landscape below. The transport’s vertical takeoff and landing capabilities allowed it to navigate the treacherous terrain with ease, its rotors adjusting seamlessly to the shifting air currents of the still-burning Axiamat.


    Silence pervaded the cabin. The contingent of soldiers seated nearby remained stoic. Like Eberekt, any expression they possessed was concealed behind visored helmets. Weapons rested across their laps—sleek rifles and sidearms that gleamed under the dim overhead lights. Their construction was of cold metal, assembled by hand according to the strictures passed down from machine to mutant.


    Their armaments, much like their training, had all been under the keen auspices of the Genekeeper—their guide and lash, leading them toward a future where mankind would live again, ever ready to demonstrate the consequences if they failed in this momentous task.


    Opposite Eberekt hovered the Genekeeper, motionless save for the subtle pulses of light emanating from its engines. Between them floated the hardlight bubble encasing the body of Sim Shala Desht, her burnt form suspended in a state of preserved stillness.


    As the vessel banked slightly, Eberekt’s eyes were drawn to their destination looming ahead. The Avia shard pierced the darkness, its cascading field-projected surfaces defying conventional geometry as they rippled with chromatic aberrations. The otherworldly sheen—a rainbow cascade of colours shifting and sliding off its facets in ways that strained the eye. For one too used to matter being made of physical mass, it ached to witness so up close, even filtered as it was through the cameras of Eberekt’s helmet. Yet as soon as it was glimpsed, it was gone, hidden away from the narrow window as the aircraft turned.


    The Genekeeper stirred. Eberekt looked toward it.


    The sphere encasing Sim Shala Desht vanished, her body gently settling onto its knees. The Genekeeper extended a manipulator projector, holding her still as it spoke.


    “Prepare yourselves. I shall interface with her lace and use her privileges to lower the field.”


    The manipulation field turned a sinister shade of ruby red. The Genekeeper sliced open her head, unfolding bone and skin alike. It peeled her skull open like a grotesque blossom to directly interface with the brain matter and the artificial neural lace grown therein.


    Eberekt stood, walking the length of the cabin. He passed the seated members of his Kill Team 3. Rapping his fist against one of their shoulders with a stoic nod, he proceeded through to the flight deck.


    Their pilot, a four-armed chimaera in uniform, turned to regard Eberekt as he entered. Placing a hand to the side of his helmet, Eberekt transmitted.


    “The Genekeeper is lowering the field.”


    He felt a subtle shift as the transport adjusted its approach vector, the pilot deftly manipulating the controls. Ahead of them, the rainbow cascade subsided, peeling back like the layers of an otherworldly veil.


    Attached to the side of the great shard was a structure that immediately caught his attention. It was undeniably human in its construction—a hangar bay assembled from steel beams and aluminium cladding, reinforced glass panels forming observation decks and control rooms. Hardened plastics moulded into functional shapes supported walkways and docking stations.


    An alien sight for the Pilgrim, sterile and precise. The emergent superstructure clung to the shard like a barnacle on a leviathan, its straight lines and right angles contrasting sharply with the shard’s sweeping, behemoth expanse. Here was humanity’s attempt to anchor itself to the unfathomable, to impose control on that which was made beyond their understanding by greater minds than they.


    The human-designed structure affixed to the shard’s side was a tenuous bridge between worlds, a foothold on the edge of history reclaimed. Unaware or uncaring of the precipice they crossed over, the pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom, concise and emotionless.


    “Preparing for docking. ETA two minutes.”


    Eberekt stepped back through the vessel. He glanced around the cabin once more. The soldiers remained silent, their focus inward as they readied at the ramp. The Genekeeper continued to work over the now obliterated head of the corpse, blood and speckled brain matter pressed from between the infinitely fine structure of the lace within as it physically manipulated meat and digital sensors. Eberekt could feel the staccato of encrypted radiocommunication emanating from the lace, its information closed to him, as the Genekeeper used the body as a morbid relay.


    He returned his gaze to the window. As they drew closer, details of the hangar bay became more pronounced—the glow of navigation lights, the movements of personnel guiding their arrival, and the emblazoned markings of an organisation that would soon be forgotten.


    The vessel shuddered slightly as it aligned itself for touchdown. Eberekt took a deep breath, steeling himself for what lay ahead and gripping his weapon. He took to the fore of his warriors as the transport settled onto the deck with a muted thud.


    The ramp lowered, and they were met by a welcoming party.


    “Shala!” a cocksure yet concerned voice called out from across the bay as a man approached the aircraft. “I’m glad you changed your mind. After I saw what they—”If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    The Genekeeper floated forth, throwing down the body of Sim Shala Desht onto the deck floor below the ramp. Eberekt knew it well enough to sense its gloating—proud of the deceits it had used to dismantle everything their opponents had tried to do to prevent this day from coming to pass.


    Eberekt locked eyes with the giant of a man who had spoken. Despite his purple-hued skin and ebony-plated exoskeleton, his humanity stood apart from the various mutants and chimeric entities that worked in the hangar space.


    Like recognised like, and a murderer could see a murderer for what they were. And Eberekt and this man both reacted at the same time.


    With bioaugmented acceleration, Eberekt raised his rifle in its sling. He needed only to turn it centimetres to get a fix on his target. Yet in that fleeting moment, his adversary had already reached toward his service sidearm holstered at his waist and deployed a weaponised signal from his mind.


    Eberekt felt it instantly, though his helmet managed to shield him from its effects, filtering the kill command even as its own secondary internals faltered and died. The Genekeeper was not so fortunate, shuddering in the air and beginning to fall as its engines sparked out.


    All in a heartbeat as Eberekt turned his head to follow the enemy.


    His adversary was already dashing to the side, springing into a high leap toward the catwalks above. Three shots from Eberekt’s weapon caught the man in the chest as he arced through the air—a splash of ablated material and shock on his plated body obscured any signs of penetration.


    The service sidearm, a mere pistol by its dimensions, was raised the instant the man claimed the high ground. Eberekt leapt back, diving from the ramp as the weapon fired. He managed to reach cover inside the aircraft’s chassis when light exploded overhead. The blast shredded his warriors, caught off guard by the preternatural speed of their opening exchange.


    Four more blasts filled the interior of the aircraft’s hold, the service sidearm firing hardlight projectiles that exploded into shaped charges, scouring the corners of the vessel out of his line of sight. Eberekt lost the leftmost two cameras of his helmet as he felt his armour peppered and scored by his adversary’s assault.


    A grunt and Eberekt looked to the far side of the hold. One of his warriors was similarly taking cover there, and they exchanged a hand gesture to show their preparedness.


    Amidst the sound of panic and injury—with the workers in the port running for their lives and the fallen soldiery who yet lived groaning from their wounds—their opponent shouted down at them from his platform.


    “You must be the Pilgrim,” he said, heaving for breath. “Didn’t think we’d meet like this. Thought I’d have more time.”


    He sounded bruised—a cracked rib at worst. The shots hadn’t penetrated, after all, Eberekt discerned. He raised two fingers and gestured for the warrior opposite to be ready to fire before speaking.


    “You have me at a disadvantage,” Eberekt shouted back. When he heard a laugh, he continued. “I didn’t expect a warrior like you here. Your kind are usually defenseless.”


    “I’m no warrior. I’m here to help people,” he answered. Eberekt could hear his heavy footfalls on the steel platform as he walked around above them, speaking. They assessed each other, in turn, probing for weakness in their bodies or minds. “My name’s Zablawza Avia. What’s your name?”


    “Eberekt,” he answered, getting ready to move. Across from him, his second raised his rifle. “You’re named after this wreck?”


    “I imagine you didn’t know—that they didn’t tell you. I was born here, on the Avia, before any of this. When She was alive.” A pause from the agent above. “You’ve killed a lot of people, Eberekt.”


    “I have a world to save,” he shouted back, gesturing aside that he was about to advance. The warrior opposite affirmed it.


    Moving as quickly as his augmentations would allow, Eberekt threw himself down the ramp, thunderous footfalls bringing him past the Genekeeper—still hissing and struggling on the ground, fighting its own disabled subsystems—and toward a moving bed loaded high with heavy materiel and crates.


    As he charged, his supporting warrior provided covering fire, unloading his weapon up toward the platform above—a riot of fire, tearing up the thin metal sheeting, forcing the agent to duck out of the way.


    Another flash from that heinous, ancient sidearm scoured the ramp, and the interior of the vessel, and his backup was either killed or forced back; Eberekt was unable to tell which. He fired up at Zablawza to ensure he remained down behind the cladding before heaving into a leap of his own, joining the man on the walkway high above the hangar floor with a thump.


    Surging forward, Eberekt stamped down the walkway, his armoured feet tearing the steel beneath them. He reached Zablawza just as the agent was raising his sidearm. Lunging forward, Eberekt grabbed the weapon, pulling it out of the way and crushing its projector as he snatched it away.


    The sidearm broke in his hand, and Eberekt drew a blade from his belt. Now, though, Zablawza had the opportunity to react, and as Eberekt dragged his knife through the air, the agent grabbed his arm in a lock, holding the knife flat between their bodies, and slammed his elbow into Eberekt’s helmet with two stunning blows that shorted his remaining cameras and made his bones rattle beneath.


    Suddenly dragged into the air, Eberekt was lifted up, swung over the ledge, and thrown down—metres—onto the floor below. He crashed through machinery that was being moved across the hangar space, and, unable to breathe, he rolled onto his front with a groan.


    “This drone,” Zablawza called down as Eberekt struggled to regain his senses. “It’s lied to you. I know it has. You went to the fallen core, didn’t you? The Crucible—isn’t that what you call it?”


    Eberekt put a hand to his rifle, even as it was jammed beneath his body and armour, turning his head to listen to the figure high above him.


    The agent dropped down next to him, his armoured footfalls eerily silent as his body gracefully compensated for the fall.


    “But it didn’t let you in, did it, Eberekt? I bet it only let the drone in, and you had to listen to what it had to say,” Zablawza continued quietly and intensely, pacing around him. “Do you know why?”


    Eberekt tried to crawl and rise up but failed, still struggling to catch his breath after the fall. The agent reached down and pulled his helmet off, exposing his skull.


    “It’s because you’re not human,” Zablawza said, looking down at him. “You’re a construct. We’re trying to get starborn again. But it takes an entire world’s resources—industry, logistics, working people—to reach space. And there was too little of any of that. So the core started printing you out, so it could start to replace what it had lost. But the core is damaged, and everything went wrong.”


    Eberekt seethed, hands turning to fists on the ground, grinding his chrome teeth. Zablawza continued, sorrow in his voice as he desperately tried to explain truths to a creature that had been created with malice and now crawled face down in the mire, with no comprehension of the glories of the past.


    “The drone’s just frightened. It thinks we’ll be killed if we leave. I can’t even blame it for being scared. But what you’ve done is—... It doesn’t have to be this way.”


    Refusing to hear it, refusing to understand it, Eberekt took a deep breath. Slamming his hands down, he rolled over and raised his weapon. Roaring alongside his fire, he screamed out his contempt and disbelief, tearing an arc through the air as the agent backed away, sweeping back behind cover and out of sight.


    Eberekt stood, continuing to fire until his magazine was empty. Quickly reloading, tearing another from a strap at his side, he unleashed another salvo into the last barrier that Zablawza had taken shelter behind. When he was done—ears ringing, gasping for breath—he stood there staring in the direction his opponent had fled.


    A bay door stood wide open, leading deeper into the complex—toward the heart of the shard itself. Unsure whether he sought answers or just the end of his lifelong mission, Eberekt was called toward that storied threshold of his precursors.