The climb was brutal. The high ridge was not a gentle slope but a vertical spine of obsidian rock, slick with condensed nebula vapor. Lyra used the field knife to carve handholds, her Solari strength now repurposed for precise, sustained exertion. Orion, despite his insistence that his endurance was merely "engineered," was a liability. He couldn't afford a single slip, not with his compromised leg. Lyra took the harness strap from her power cell and clipped it to the loop of Orion's armor. She climbed ahead, and with every upward thrust of her arms, she was pulling the weight of the Lunara Strategist with her."The friction is compromising the tensile strength of the cable," Orion gasped from below, his voice tight with pain. "Use the horizontal fissure twenty degrees to the left, Lyra. It offers natural purchase. Don't waste the energy."Lyra ignored him. She could feel his body heat through the armor, a proximity she despised yet depended upon. He was heavy, but his instruction was invaluable. While her fury fueled her climb, his cold, technical understanding of the rock formation kept them alive. They were a single, struggling entity—a Solari engine powering a Lunara gyroscope. There were moments when she had to lean back into the rock, holding their combined weight, their faces inches apart, their breath mingling in the thin air. In the close quarters, the scent of ozone and the subtle, clean scent of his dark armor was overwhelming."Why did you choose the Lyrae system for your sentimental value?" Lyra demanded, needing to break the dangerous tension with conflict. "Why not some remote, unknown void?" Orion dug the heel of his good boot into a cranny. "Because Lyrae was beautiful. It was full of life and color, qualities the Lunara rarely permit themselves to indulge in. We were close enough to study the Solari light without being incinerated by it. It was a compromise, Lyra. A reminder that quiet order can coexist with vibrant chaos.""You see us as chaos?""I see you as unbound energy," he countered, steadying himself. "Like a star that collapses in on itself because it cannot moderate its own intensity. That is why you expand—not for order, but to find something worthy of your overwhelming light."Lyra didn't answer. She only hauled them upward, focusing her rage into pure, physical motion. They finally crested the ridge. Lyra collapsed, looking out over a vista that was both terrifying and breathtaking. Above them, the nebula, previously a dense, chaotic mess of purple and violet, had fractured, revealing patches of the true, inky black void and, impossibly, the hard, distant pinpricks of real stars. The magnetic interference was temporarily weaker here."Signal integrity is at maximum tolerance," Orion said, pushing himself onto the flat ground beside her, already assembling their makeshift comms array. He took the Solari power cell and clipped it seamlessly into the Lunara transceiver. "A perfect connection. The hardware wants peace, Lyra, even if its operators do not."He keyed in the command interface, the screen lighting up with two flashing input fields: COORDINATES and AFFILIATION CODE.
Lyra felt the cold terror seize her. This was the moment. The truce was over."I know the Solari deep-space triangulation codes," she whispered, gripping the hilt of her pulse rifle. "If I input my code, a Solari heavy cruiser will be here within eight cycles. They will kill you on sight, Strategist."Orion was calm, his fingers hovering over the Lunara alphanumeric pad. "And I know the Lunara cloaked sequence. If I transmit, a Night-Shade vessel will arrive in seven. They will take you for interrogation, Lyra. I cannot guarantee your survival, or your sanity."The seven-cycle difference was irrelevant; the outcome was the same. Only one of them would survive this transmission."I won't let you betray my people," Lyra asserted, raising her rifle and pointing it at Orion's chest plate. The blue light of the comms screen reflected in the barrel. Orion didn't flinch. He simply met her gaze, his expression laced with profound, ancient sorrow. "Then do it, Firebrand. Pull the trigger. End the strategic ambiguity."Lyra held her breath, her finger tightening on the trigger guard. This was easy. This was what she was trained for. Eliminate the enemy.Before the chemical impulse could override her doubt, the comms screen flashed violently, overriding the coordinate input. The small, integrated speaker spat out a sound that wasn't a distress signal or a tactical transmission. It was a burst of raw, chaotic noise—a high-frequency, fragmented shriek that made the blood feel cold in Lyra's veins. It was the sound of a massive battle being fought within their sector, far closer than any Lunara or Solari staging ground.Orion's strategy mask snapped back into place. He slammed his palm onto the screen, stabilizing the signal. The screen cleared, displaying a scrolling list of chaotic data packets."Not Solari," he hissed. "Not Lunara. Look at the energy signature. Triple-bonded plasma discharge. That's Void Pirate tech. And they are not fighting us; they are fighting each other."Lyra's breath hitched. She leaned in, reading the data. The pirates were large, heavily armed, and they were destroying a ship that didn't match any known fleet design."Wait," she said, pointing to a single, stable data burst buried in the chaos. "That's a manufacturing signature. It's an unregistered, independent colony vessel. They're attacking civilians."Orion read the trajectory data. "They're fighting near the only stable jump point within a hundred cycles of our position. If those pirate factions win, they will control the sector. We won't be rescued. We will be hunted by a swarm of opportunistic predators."The strategic calculus had shifted violently. Their war was just a footnote in a much larger, uglier conflict.Orion looked from the chaotic screen to Lyra's face. "The Solari-Lunara conflict is a matter of ideology. The Void Pirates are a matter of annihilation. If we transmit our codes now, we bring a fleet into a three-way brawl that ends with this entire nebula becoming a graveyard."He put his hand back on the console, his fingers resting on the transmission button. "We have one choice, Lyra. We send a targeted, highly-coded warning about the pirates to both our governments, urging a joint-fleet approach to contain the threat. It buys us time, and it saves us both."
"Joint-fleet?" Lyra scoffed. "Our people haven't shared a battlefield since the First Galactic Schism!"
"Then we must force them to," Orion stated, his eyes blazing with a desperate tactical genius. "Because if we don't, there will be no home to return to. Architect and Firebrand—we must build a single, shared lie to survive."