The air in the bridge was so thick with tension it felt like a physical weight. Elias's vision was a pulsing red haze, his heart hammering against his ribs in a desperate, failing rhythm as the gravity plate kept him pinned to the ceiling. Twelve feet. It might as well have been twelve miles.
"Lyra, don't!" Elias choked out. Every word felt like he was swallowing broken glass.
Valerius sneered, his finger tightening on the trigger of his pistol. "She's bluffing, Elias. She wants to live just as much as you do. The Thorne lineage is many things, but it isn't suicidal."
"You don't know me at all," Lyra whispered. Her thumb pressed down on the detonator's safety catch. The device let out a low, predatory hum.
Elias saw the flicker in her eyes—the moment of absolute resolve. She was going to do it. She was going to end the world to save him from being the Chancellor's battery.
With a roar that tore his throat, Elias didn't fight the gravity; he weaponized it. He reached for the data drive in his hand and jammed it into the overhead lighting track. The metal-on-metal contact created a massive short circuit. For a heartbeat, the power to the bridge flickered.
The gravity plate failed.
Elias didn't just fall; he plummeted. He oriented his body in mid-air, slamming into Valerius like a falling star. The Chancellor let out a wheeze of surprised agony as he was tackled off the dais. They crashed into the command well, the gold-plated pistol skittering across the floor.
The moment Elias hit the deck, the cardiac pain vanished, replaced by a surge of adrenaline so potent it felt like liquid fire. He scrambled to his feet, lunging for Lyra. He grabbed her hand—the one holding the detonator—and pinned it to the floor.
"Not today," he gasped, his forehead resting against hers. "Not like this."
"Elias, let go!" she hissed, though the relief in her eyes was unmistakable. "He's going to kill us anyway!"
"No," Elias said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low growl. He pulled the data drive from the ceiling track where it had fallen. "He's going to watch."
The bridge crew had recovered from their shock. Wraiths were closing in, their rifles leveled. But they stopped when they saw the main viewscreen.
Elias hadn't just shorted the lights. The data drive, infused with the Thorne Factor, had automatically initiated a high-frequency broadcast the moment it touched the ship's internal grid.
The archives of the Aethel-Dawn began to play on every screen on the bridge—and on every screen across the entire fleet.
The image of the First Chancellor admitting to the sabotage of the sun filled the room. Then, the live audio from the extraction lab played: Valerius's own voice, cold and clinical, explaining how he intended to murder the Thorne heirs to consolidate his power.
The silence that followed was deafening. The officers at the navigation stations turned in their chairs, their faces pale. The soldiers lowered their weapons, looking at each other with dawning horror.
"It's a fabrication!" Valerius screamed, scrambling to his feet, his pristine uniform now stained with Elias's blood. "A rebel lie! Guards, execute them!"
The Wraiths hesitated. Their programming was absolute, but their loyalty was to the Citadel—the idea of it, the honor of it. The man standing before them was a monster who had broken the world for a profit margin.
"Captain Thorne?" The lead navigator's voice was trembling. "Is... is it true? Did they kill Aethelgard on purpose?"
Elias stood up, pulling Lyra with him. They stood in the center of the bridge, their hands still locked together, their pulses finally leveling out into a steady, shared drumbeat.
"Look at the sun," Elias commanded, gesturing to the viewport. "Look at what he's doing to us. We've been fighting a war for three years over a lie. He doesn't want to save you. He wants to own the light you breathe."
Valerius lunged for the gold pistol on the floor.
Crack.
A single shot rang out. It wasn't Elias who fired. It was his own XO, a man who had served with Elias for a decade. The bullet caught Valerius in the shoulder, spinning him around.
"The Captain is back on the bridge," the XO said, his voice cold as the vacuum. "And the Chancellor is under arrest."
A cheer didn't go up. It was too grim for that. But the tension snapped. Soldiers moved to disarm the Wraiths. The bridge returned to a frantic, focused state—but this time, they were working for Elias.
"Captain," the navigator shouted. "The sun... it's not waiting for our politics. The core collapse has hit ninety percent. We have minutes before the Rift becomes a black hole."
Elias looked at Lyra. The victory felt hollow. They had the ship, they had the truth, but they were still tied to a dying star.
"The extraction," Lyra said, her voice urgent. "Elias, we have to finish it. Not for him. For them."
She pointed to the viewport, where the tiny lights of the colony ships were visible, huddled like moths around the dying flame.
"If we don't jumpstart the core, they all die," she said. "And we can't do it from here. We have to go back to the lab. We have to give the sun the spark."
Elias gripped her hand tighter. The slow burn had reached its end. Now, there was only the fire.
"We do it together," he said.
"Always," she whispered.
But as they turned to leave, the ship gave a massive, terminal groan. The Iron Sovereign was being pulled into the Rift.
To be continued....