The *Exodus* trembled as the first docking clamps engaged.
Red warning strobes painted the isolation ward in blood-light. Alarms howled in overlapping waves: proximity breach, unauthorized docking, radiation spike.
Mira stood at the observation window, fists pressed against the transparent aluminum. Beyond the habitat's outer ring, the stolen *Pioneer* hung like a parasite against the docking port, its hull now scarred and repainted with the Iron Priests' angular red sigils. Smaller shapes figures in heavy powered armor were already cycling through the airlock.
They were aboard.
Julian worked furiously at Mara's bedside, adjusting drips that barely kept her alive. The surface woman's Mark had flared violently under the habitat's electromagnetic fields; black veins spidered across her chest like living ink, pulsing with every surge from the ship's systems.
"She's burning out," Julian muttered. "The habitat's power grid is killing her faster than the burns."
Reyes paced the sealed door, pulse rifle in hand. "Security's gone silent on comms. Either jammed or…"
He didn't finish.
Ensign Patel hacked at the isolation terminal, trying to override the lockdown. "Director Grant sealed us in personally. We're tagged as contaminated full quarantine protocol."
"Contaminated with truth," Mira said bitterly.
The lights flickered. A deep metallic groan echoed through the hull the sound of structural stress.
"They're cutting into the main ring," Kuo reported from the engineering readout she'd jury-rigged. "They've got plasma torches. Military grade."
Torres, the biologist, stared at the ceiling. "How many?"
"At least thirty boarders," Kuo said. "Maybe more staging in the lander."
Mira's mind raced. The *Exodus* had basic security forces trained for crowd control in the habitat, not armed invasion. Pulse weapons were locked in armories. The Council had never prepared for war.
Because they thought war was four hundred years dead.
A new alarm joined the chorus: atmosphere breach, Section 14, Habitat Ring A.
They were moving fast.
Mira turned to her team. "We can't stay here. When they breach medical, we're done."
Patel looked up. "I can pop the door, but the corridor's monitored. We'll have triggers all over us."
"Then we don't use the corridors," Mira said.
She crossed to the maintenance panel, pried it open. Inside: narrow Jeffries tubes for crew access cramped, unmonitored.
"Old evacuation drills," she said. "These run parallel to the main spokes. We can reach the armory in Ring B."
Reyes nodded grimly. "Or die crawling like rats."
"Better than dying here like prisoners."
They moved Mara onto a portable stretcher Julian sedating her deeper to shield her from the EM fields. The tubes were tight; they dragged her between them, knees scraping metal.
The habitat shook again. Closer this time.
Voices echoed faintly through vents shouted orders in a harsh dialect mixed with English commands. The Forgemaster's people.
They crawled for twenty minutes, sweat-soaked, breath ragged. Every vibration through the hull felt like pursuit.
Finally, a grate opened into the armory antechamber.
Empty.
Patel hot-wired the weapons locker. Pulse rifles, stun grenades, a few cutting charges. They armed up fast.
Mira checked the security feeds on a wall terminal.
Chaos.
Boarders in powered armor moved through Ring A like gods of war—visors glowing red, weapons spitting kinetic rounds that tore through bulkheads. Habitat security lay scattered, some in pieces.
Director Grant's voice crackled over emergency broadcast: "All citizens shelter in place. Do not resist. The invaders demand only compliance and resources. Resistance will be met with"
Static.
A new voice took over deep, amplified, mechanical.
"This is the Forgemaster. Your leaders have hidden the truth from you. Earth lives. Earth calls you home. Surrender the habitat. Join us in reclamation. Or perish in the void you fled to."
The broadcast repeated.
Mira killed the feed.
"They're trying to turn the population," Julian said.
"They might succeed," Reyes replied. "Four hundred years of waiting. Some will listen."
Mira shouldered her rifle. "Then we give them something else to listen to."
They slipped into the main corridor zero-g section near the hub. The habitat's spin gravity faded here, making movement easier but disorienting.
Floating bodies drifted past security personnel, throats cut or shot.
The Forgemaster's people were efficient.
They reached the central hub: a vast cylindrical space where the three habitat rings connected. Normally bustling with transit pods and crew.
Now a battlefield.
Boarders held the upper platforms, using them as firebases. Habitat defenders poorly armed, desperate fired from cover below.
Explosions flashed silently in the low pressure zones.
Mira's team took cover behind a transit car.
"We need to reach the bridge," she said. "Retake control. Vent the boarders."
"That's through them," Reyes nodded upward.
Julian looked at Mara's stretcher, now secured magnetically to the deck. "And we're dragging a dying woman."
"She's why we fight," Mira said.
They moved.
Using zero-g maneuvers drilled in training, they bounced from handhold to handhold, staying low.
A boarder spotted them armor turning, weapon rising.
Reyes fired first. Pulse bolt struck the suit's joint energy discharge cascaded, locking servos. The figure tumbled, helpless.
But the shot drew attention.
Fire rained down.
They scattered, returning shots.
Torres screamed hit in the leg, spinning blood globes into the air.
Kuo dragged her to cover.
Patel laid down suppressing fire, stun grenades bursting in blue arcs.
Mira saw their chance: a maintenance ladder leading up to the boarders' platform.
She signaled.
Reyes and Patel covered. Mira and Julian pushed Mara's stretcher ahead like a shield.
They climbed.
Halfway up, the ladder shook a boarder descending.
Mira fired point-blank. The pulse overloaded the suit's chest plate; the figure convulsed and fell past them, crashing below.
They reached the platform.
Three boarders waited.
Close quarters. No room for error.
Reyes rolled in first, firing low. One down.
Patel flanked, stunning another.
The third Mira's.
The armored figure towered over her, weapon raised.
She dove inside its reach, slamming a cutting charge against the suit's power pack.
It detonated in a contained flash.
The suit locked rigid. The boarder inside screamed as feedback fried systems.
They cleared the platform.
Below, defenders saw the shift cheered weakly, rallied.
Mira keyed the emergency override.
Bulkheads slammed shut across Ring A.
Atmosphere vents opened.
Boarders in that section had seconds.
Some jettisoned helmets, trusting suit seals.
Others weren't fast enough.
But the Forgemaster wasn't in Ring A.
Sensors showed him moving toward the bridge.ten armored elite with him.
Mira's team pushed on, dragging Torres now too.
They reached the bridge antechamber.
Sealed. Overridden.
Patel worked the lock while Reyes and Kuo held the corridor.
Boarders approached five, heavy weapons.
Pulse fire filled the space.
Kuo took a kinetic round center mass. Armor stopped it, but ribs cracked.
She went down gasping.
Reyes dragged her back, returning fire.
The door hissed open.
They piled in.
The bridge was a nightmare.
Officers lay dead at stations. Blood drifted in spheres.
Director Grant stood at the command dais, hands raised.
Before him: the Forgemaster.
The powered armor was massive two and a half meters tall, plated in scavenged titanium and lead. The visor glowed crimson. In one gauntlet, he held a pre-war pistol pressed to Grant's head.
Around him, eight elite guards.
"Captain Chen," the Forgemaster's voice boomed, filtered through speakers. "You are persistent."
Mira's rifle rose. Her team spread out, weapons trained.
"Let him go," she said.
Grant's eyes were wide with terror. "Do what he says. He'll kill us all"
The Forgemaster tightened his grip. "Your Director sold you for promises. He broadcast surrender. But the people resist. So now I take control directly."
He gestured to a console. A countdown ticked: 14 minutes.
"The habitat's fusion core," he said. "I have armed overload. Unless I transmit the abort code from this bridge, the *Exodus* becomes a new sun."
Mira's stomach dropped.
Julian whispered, "He's bluffing. Core safeguards"
"Are bypassed," the Forgemaster interrupted. "I have engineers aboard. Your own designs, preserved on Earth."
Stalemate.
Mira's mind raced.
Then Mara stirred on the stretcher.
Her eyes opened black as night, the Mark fully awakened.
She sat up slowly.
Every boarder flinched.
The Forgemaster turned.
"What sorcery"
Mara raised a hand.
The lights flickered wildly.
Consoles sparked.
The elite guards cried out gauntlets smoking, visors cracking as electronics fried.
The Forgemaster staggered, suit systems failing.
Mara's voice was not her own layered, echoing.
"You bring poison machines into the void," she said. "You will not take them home."
She stood.
The Mark spread like fire across her skin.
Julian reached for her "Mara, no! You'll die!"
But she was beyond hearing.
She walked forward.
Every step, the Forgemaster's suit failed more.servos locking, power draining.
He fired the pistol wildly.
Bullets sparked off bulkheads.
Mara reached him.
Placed a hand on his chest plate.
The suit exploded in cascade failure circuits burning, armor plating glowing red.
The Forgemaster screamed as the feedback hit his body.
He collapsed, smoking.
The elite guards dropped, suits dead weight.
Silence.
Mara turned to Mira.
"End it," she whispered.
Then she fell.
Julian caught her.
The Mark was fading black turning gray, flaking away like ash.
She was dying.
Mira rushed to the console.
Countdown: 8 minutes.
She tried abort codes.
Denied.
The Forgemaster had locked it biometrically.
His gauntlet.
Reyes pried it off the smoking armor.
Mira pressed it to the scanner.
Abort accepted.
The countdown froze at 00:02:14.
The habitat groaned, then stabilized.
But alarms still blared.
More boarders.
They had minutes.
Mira keyed habitat-wide broadcast.
"This is Captain Mira Chen. The bridge is secure. The Forgemaster is dead. All crew fight back. Vent sections. Use fire suppression. They can't survive without their suits."
The tide turned.
Crew, long passive, rose up.
Boarders, cut off from leadership, faltered.
Section by section, the *Exodus* was reclaimed.
Hours later, it was over.
The stolen lander was scuttled sent burning into atmosphere.
Survivors few were taken prisoner.
The habitat mourned its dead.
Hundreds.
Director Grant was arrested for treason—his secret negotiations exposed.
Mira stood in the medical bay, watching Julian work over Mara.
The surface woman breathed shallowly.
The Mark was almost gone.
"She pushed too far," Julian said quietly. "The Change burned out protecting us from the machines. She has hours. Maybe less."
Mira nodded.
Outside the viewport, Earth turned blue and alive.
A new transmission came in weak, but clear.
From the surface.
Kestra of the Pine Clans.
"Haven survivors live. We hold the valley ruins. The Iron Priests are broken for now. Other tribes gather. Some for peace. Some for war.
"The sky-people proved themselves in fire.
"Come down again, Captain Chen. Carefully. There is much to rebuild.
"And tell your people: the cradle is shared now.
"We will not yield it.
"But we will share it.
"If you learn from the past."
The message ended.
Mira looked at Mara's still form.
Then at Earth.
The Return was no longer a dream.
It was a reckoning.
And it had only just begun.