The airlock of Station Echo-Five smelled of recycled oxygen and fear. It was a stale, metallic scent, like sucking on a copper penny, mixed with the faint, cloying sweetness of expensive perfume applied to unwashed bodies.
Su Yuan adjusted his cuffs. The coat was black, simple, military-cut but without insignia. He didn't need badges. The low hum of the SoulNet in the back of his skull was identification enough.
"They're nervous," Voss rumbled. The mercenary stood a step behind, his armored bulk filling the corridor. He wasn't smoking—Su Yuan had banned combustibles on diplomatic missions—but he chewed on a toothpick with aggressive rhythmic snaps. "I'm picking up twelve heartbeats in the conference room. Average rate is one-ten. They're either sprinting or terrified."
"They're businessmen, Voss," Su Yuan said. He didn't look back. He watched the rust-streaked blast door in front of him. "For them, losing money induces the same physiological response as bleeding out."
"Or," Voss countered, his hand hovering near the heavy plasma repeater on his hip, "they're planning to sell us out."
"Both can be true."
The blast door groaned and slid open.
The conference room was a glass bubble grafted onto the side of the asteroid. Beyond the reinforced transparency, the Kessel Run nebula churned in bruised purples and blacks. In the center of the room sat a table of polished mahogany—real wood, worth more than the station itself—surrounded by men in velvet and silk.
The Gilded Hand. The trade coalition that controlled the raw ore flowing out of the Mid-Rim.
They stood up as Su Yuan entered. It wasn't a gesture of respect; it was a reflex, like prey starting when a predator steps on a dry twig.
"Administrator Su," said the man at the head of the table. Thalor. He was fat in the way only the truly wealthy could be in a galaxy of starvation, his jowls trembling slightly. He extended a hand that glistened with sweat. "We... we are honored."
Su Yuan ignored the hand. He pulled out the iron chair opposite Thalor and sat. The metal screeched against the floor.
"Sit," Su Yuan said.
They sat.
"My time is expensive, Thalor. And your supply lines are currently choked by Imperial blockades. You have the ore. I have the manufacturing capacity in Sol. It's a simple equation."
Thalor dabbed his forehead with a silk handkerchief. He looked at his colleagues—a thin reptilian xenotype named Kruk, and a human woman with cybernetic eyes that whirred softly.
"The equation is... complex," Thalor stammered. "The Empire... Governor Valerius... his reach is long. If we trade with the Solar Federation, we become co-belligerents. The sanctions..."
"You didn't call me here to talk about sanctions," Su Yuan said. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the mahogany. "You called me because the Empire is squeezing you dry. They take your ore, they pay you in scrip that devalues daily, and they draft your workers. You're dying slowly. I'm offering you a chance to die rich."
"Rich is no use to the dead," Kruk hissed. His forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air. "The Empire has a fleet in this sector. Three cruisers. Invictus class."
"I know," Su Yuan said.
The table went still.
"You... know?" Thalor whispered.
"I know they are holding position behind the moon of Yaga Minor," Su Yuan said calmly. "I know they have their warp drives spooled. And I know that ten minutes before I arrived, you received a transmission from Admiral Krave demanding you keep me here until they can lock a targeting solution."
Thalor went pale. The blood drained from his face so fast it looked like a magic trick.
Voss unholstered his weapon. The sound was loud in the silence.
"It wasn't our choice!" Thalor shrieked, pressing his back into his chair. "They have targeting beacons on our homeworlds! They said if we didn't hold you, they'd glass the capital of Oron! We're not soldiers, Su Yuan! We're merchants!"
"Put the gun away, Voss," Su Yuan ordered gently.
"Boss, they set a trap."
"I know. It's a clumsy one." Su Yuan looked at the chrono projected on the wall. "Admiral Krave is punctual. He should be dropping out of warp in three... two..."
Space outside the glass bubble tore open.
It was a violent, silent rupture. Three Imperial Cruisers, shaped like dagger blades and bristling with turbo-laser batteries, slid out of the tear in reality. They were massive, blotting out the nebula. Their shadows fell over the station, plunging the conference room into twilight.
The comms unit on the table crackled to life.
"This is Admiral Krave of the Imperial Navy. Station Echo-Five is surrounded. Administrator, you are a Class A fugitive. Surrender your vessel and your person, or we will reduce this station to gravel."
Thalor was weeping now. Soft, pathetic hitches of breath. "We did what you asked! Don't shoot! We kept him here!"
"Collateral damage is acceptable," Krave's voice returned, cold and metallic. "You have two minutes, Administrator."
Su Yuan didn't look at the ships. He looked at Thalor.
"You see?" Su Yuan said conversationally. "This is why you can't do business with them. They don't respect the contract."
"Are you insane?" the woman with the cybernetic eyes screamed. "We're all going to die! They have three cruisers! You brought one ship!"
"I didn't bring a ship," Su Yuan corrected.
He closed his eyes.
To the people in the room, he simply looked like he was resigning himself to death. But inside the cockpit of his skull, the interface exploded into light.
[ SYSTEM ACTIVE. ]
[ SOULNET CONNECTIONS: 12,402. ]
[ ACCESSING: NULL-ZERO DEFENSE NODE. ]
"Ready," the flat, lobotomized voice of the former hacker echoed in his mind.
"Mask the biological signatures," Su Yuan commanded. "I don't want them to see it coming until it breaks the hull."
"Masking active. Sensors blinded."
Su Yuan reached deeper. He pushed past the layer of human souls, past the frantic energy of his fleet waiting a light-second away. He reached into the void itself.
He had spent the last week preparing for this. Not building weapons, but hunting. He had found them drifting in the high-gravity currents of the gas giant Proxima—ancient, mindless, and hungry.
He had branded them. Not with iron, but with mana. He had placed a hook in their primitive brains, a beacon that screamed food.
[ SKILL ACTIVATION: CALL OF THE ABYSS (RANK C). ]
[ TARGET: MEGA-FAUNA (VOID-WHALE POD). ]
[ COST: 30,000 MANA. ]
Su Yuan opened his eyes. They were glowing with a harsh, white luminescence.
"Thalor," he said. "Look out the window."
"What?" Thalor blubbered.
"Watch."
The space behind the Imperial cruisers rippled.
It wasn't the clean, geometric tear of a warp drive. It was a disturbance, like water displacing before a surfacing leviathan.
Then, the stars simply disappeared.
From the darkness, a shape emerged. It was the size of a city. Its skin was gray, pitted with craters and scarred by eons of cosmic dust. It had no eyes, only a massive, gaping maw lined with bioluminescent tendrils that glowed a sickly, hypnotic blue.
A Void-Whale. An Elder.
It was followed by two others, smaller but no less terrifying.
They didn't fly; they swam through the vacuum, propelled by gravity-manipulating organs that distorted the light around them.
"Admiral!" The shout came from the comms unit, panic breaking Krave's composure. "Hull breach sensors are... something is behind us! Massive displacement!"
"Turn!" Krave roared. "Fire all batteries aft!"
The cruisers began to turn, their thrusters flaring blue.
Too slow.
The lead Whale, drawn by the psychic lure Su Yuan was projecting directly onto the hull of the flagship, rammed.
There was no sound in space, but the floor of the conference room jumped three inches. The impact vibrated through the vacuum, a shockwave of pure kinetic energy.
The Whale didn't bite the ship. It smashed through it.
The Imperial cruiser, a marvel of plasteel engineering and kinetic shielding, crumpled like a tin can under a boot. The prow of the Whale drove through the engine block. The cruiser's reactor went critical, blooming into a silent, expanding sphere of fire.
The Whale swam through the explosion, its thick hide scorched but unbroken. It shook its massive head, shedding debris like water.
The second cruiser opened fire. Green turbo-lasers lashed out, burning lines across the second Whale's flank. The beast didn't recoil. It seemed annoyed. It lashed out with a tail flukes the width of a moon.
The tail caught the cruiser amidships. The ship snapped in half. Atmosphere vented in a crystallized cloud, glittering like diamonds in the starlight.
The third cruiser, seeing its sisters turned to scrap in ten seconds, didn't fight. It tried to warp.
"Don't let it leave," Su Yuan whispered.
He clenched his fist on the table.
In the void, the third Whale opened its mouth. A gravity well formed in its throat.
The cruiser's warp drive whined, stretching the ship's image as it tried to jump, but it was anchored. The ship was dragged backward, engines burning futilely, sliding inevitably into the glowing blue maw.
The Whale clamped its jaws shut. The lights on the cruiser winked out.
Then, silence.
Just drifting debris and three mountains of gray flesh floating in the dark, exhaling venting gases from their blowholes.
Inside the conference room, the silence was absolute. Thalor had stopped breathing. Kruk was under the table. The woman with the cybernetic eyes was staring at the wreckage, her mechanical irises clicking as they tried to focus on something her brain couldn't process.
Su Yuan reached into his pocket and pulled out a datapad. He slid it across the mahogany.
"The trade agreement," Su Yuan said. "Exclusive rights to Sol's manufacturing. In exchange, seventy percent of your raw ore output. Fixed price."
Thalor stared at the pad. He looked up at Su Yuan, his eyes wide and wet.
"You... you control them?" Thalor whispered. "The monsters?"
"I control the food," Su Yuan said. "And right now, the Empire looks very appetizing."
"If we sign this," Thalor croaked, "the Empire will kill us."
Su Yuan stood up. He walked to the window, looking out at the drifting wreckage of the Invictus cruisers.
"The Empire threatened to bomb your world, Thalor. That is a possibility. A future tense."
Su Yuan pointed a finger at the massive gray shape drifting past the window. The Void-Whale's eye-less head was so close they could see the individual barnacles, each one a parasitic organism the size of a tank.
"That," Su Yuan said, "is present tense."
He turned back to the room. The glow in his eyes faded, leaving them dark and hard as flint.
"The Empire rules by fear. They tell you what they might do. I rule by consequences. I am showing you what I have done."
He tapped the table.
"Sign the deal."
Thalor's hand shook so badly he could barely hold the stylus. He looked at the monsters outside, then at the man in the black coat.
He realized, with a sudden, freezing clarity, that the man inside the room was the more dangerous creature.
Thalor signed.
*
[ LOCATION: THE BLACK STAR - HANGAR BAY ]
The shuttle touched down with a hiss of hydraulics.
Su Yuan walked down the ramp, Voss flanking him. The hangar was bustling—crews repairing fighters, loading crates, the air filled with the sparks of welders and the shout of officers.
But as Su Yuan walked, work stopped.
They had seen the sensor feeds. They knew what had happened at Station Echo-Five.
The looks they gave him weren't just respect anymore. It was awe, bordering on religious terror.
Su Yuan ignored it. He felt drained. The mana cost of the Call of the Abyss had been staggering, nearly draining the reserves he had built up. His head throbbed with a migraine that felt like a nail driven behind his left eye.
"That went well," Voss said, lighting a cigar now that they were back on friendly soil. "Except for the part where we almost got vaporized."
"We got the ore," Su Yuan said, rubbing his temples. "We can start mass-producing the Tier-2 droids now. We need them before Valerius sends a real fleet."
"Valerius won't send a fleet," Voss said, exhaling a plume of blue smoke. "Not after this. He just lost three cruisers to space fish. He's going to be the laughing stock of the High Command. He'll be cautious."
"Caution buys us time. Time lets me level up."
"Boss!"
A voice called from the lift. Ryla ran toward them, her face flushed. She held a datapad.
"You need to see this," she said, breathless. "The SoulNet... something's happening."
Su Yuan took the pad.
[ ALERT: USER BASE EXPANSION. ]
[ NEW NODES DETECTED: 400,000+. ]
[ SOURCE: ORON SECTOR (COALITION HOMEWORLDS). ]
Su Yuan frowned. "How? We don't have transmitters in Oron space."
"It's the rumors," Ryla said, grinning wildly. "The footage from the station leaked. Someone on Thalor's crew streamed it. The video of you staring down three cruisers and summoning the whales? It's viral. It's everywhere. They're calling you the Void-Caller."
Su Yuan looked at the numbers scrolling up.
[ MANA INFLUX: CRITICAL. ]
[ PROCESSING POWER: 850% INCREASE. ]
People weren't just joining for the fighting skills anymore. They were joining because they wanted to be on the side of the monster slayer. Or perhaps, the side of the monster controller.
"It's belief," Su Yuan murmured. "It's not just a network. It's a cult."
"Is that a problem?" Voss asked.
"It's power," Su Yuan said. "Power is always a problem. It just depends on who's holding the wire."
He handed the pad back to Ryla.
"Prepare the manufacturing bays. We're going to use this influx. I want the new fleet keels laid down by tomorrow morning."
"Yes, Administrator." Ryla saluted and ran off.
Su Yuan walked toward the lift. He needed to meditate. He needed to process the flood of new souls before the noise drowned him out.
But as he reached the door, the air in front of him shimmered.
It wasn't the blue of the SoulNet. It was a chaotic, glitching static.
The figure of Null-Zero appeared, leaning against the bulkhead. He looked better than he had—his digital avatar was cleaner, less ragged, though his eyes were still dead and empty.
"Report," Su Yuan said.
"anomaly detected," Null-Zero's flat voice grated. "deep scan of the whale interactions."
"What anomaly? The skill worked."
"the skill worked," Null-Zero agreed. "but the connection... lingered."
The hacker raised a hand. A holographic projection appeared. It showed the bio-signature of the lead Void-Whale.
There, pulsing in the center of the massive creature's brain, was a tiny, golden spark.
"you didn't just lure it, administrator. you installed a driver."
Su Yuan stared at the light.
He hadn't intended to. The Call of the Abyss was just a signal flare. But the SoulNet was aggressive. It sought connection. It had found purchase in the primitive mind of the leviathan.
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ]
[ NEW USER DETECTED: VOID-WHALE (ELDER). ]
[ CLASS: BEAST. ]
[ STATUS: CONNECTED (PASSIVE). ]
[ MANA CONTRIBUTION: EXTREME. ]
Su Yuan felt a chill that had nothing to do with the recycled air.
He had a user the size of a city.
"Can I control it?" Su Yuan asked.
"direct control? no. bandwidth insufficient. but... influence? suggestion? yes." Null-Zero tilted his head. "it likes you. you taste like the deep dark."
Su Yuan looked at his hand. He could feel it—a slow, deep thrumming in the back of his mind, like the heartbeat of the ocean.
"Keep it monitored," Su Yuan said. "If it gets hungry, I need to know before it eats a planet."
"acknowledged." Null-Zero flickered and vanished.
Su Yuan stepped into the lift. The doors closed, sealing him in silence.
He leaned his head back against the cold metal wall.
He had started this journey trying to survive. Then he tried to build a resistance. Now, he was commanding monsters and holding the economic throat of a sector in his hand.
The Genesis Protocol was watching. The Empire was mobilizing. And four hundred thousand people were whispering his name like a prayer.
Su Yuan checked his interface.
[ SKILL TREE AVAILABLE. ]
[ POINTS: SUFFICIENT FOR RANK B UPGRADE. ]
He didn't smile. There was no joy in it. It was just necessity.
"Atlas," he whispered to the empty car.
"Yes, Administrator?"
"Start the simulation for the next skill. Something for fleet command. I'm done fighting skirmishes."
"Parameters?"
Su Yuan opened his eyes.
"Total war."
[ END CHAPTER ]