The bracelet on Renne's left wrist beeped three times. Daily oxygen ration had three minutes left.
Renne sat on the roof of an old storage shed, her legs dangling over a canyon of space trash. She pressed the small button on her bracelet, and the airflow from the portable filter tucked into her collar cut off. Her lungs burned.
She tilted her head up to the sky. Stars above Tharsis Crater were clear tonight—tiny white specks against pitch black. One of those specks moved.
Renne squinted. That was a warship.
First one, then two, then dozens. The ships descended slowly, lined up neatly like controlled meteor rain. [Siren sound] suddenly blared from every corner of the colony. Renne had never heard that sound before. There were dust storm sirens, reactor leak sirens, even cannibal alert sirens. But this was different. This sound was long, high-pitched, continuous.
Renne's bracelet vibrated again. A mechanical voice came from the small speaker on its surface—the same voice for everyone in the colony.
"Attention. The Void Imperium has taken control of this sector. All Indent caste citizens report to evacuation points for registration. Resistance will be punished by death."
Renne pulled her legs up onto the roof, then jumped down. Her knees slammed into a pile of rusted iron below. She pushed herself upright, ignoring the pain shooting from her knees. She ran. Not toward the evacuation point shown on her bracelet screen. Toward the old shed where her father hid something, before he was executed.
The shed was made of rusted metal sheets, the door half open. Renne pushed it wider; the metal screeched loudly. Inside, dust swirled. She felt along the spare parts rack in the left corner, searching for a gap among broken components. Her fingers touched an uneven metal edge. She pulled, and the rack shifted.
Behind it, a small chest. Renne opened the lid.
Inside the chest, only one thing: an ancient gray data chip with intricate codes on its surface. She took the chip. Beneath it, a small piece of paper with her father's handwriting.
*'For Renne. If they come, this is the only way we are free.'*
[Explosion] shook the shed. Dust fell from the ceiling. Renne gripped the chip tightly. She tucked it into her inner pocket, then ran out.
The moment she stepped out of the shed, she stopped.
A knight in a blue mecha stood ten paces ahead. The mecha was huge, about twice a human's height, with pale blue armor and glowing white eyes. Inside the open cockpit, a young man with platinum blond hair stared at Renne. His eyes were pale blue, cold, expressionless.
"You stole imperial property, Inden" His voice was flat. "Drop it now"
Renne lifted her chin. Her lips were dry, cracked from Mars dust. She clenched her right fist inside her pocket, squeezing the chip. She stared into those blue eyes without blinking.
"Try."
The young man's eyes narrowed a fraction. He didn't move, but the mecha's arm shifted, a weapon port sliding open on its forearm. "Last warning."
Renne's gaze darted past him. Fifty meters to the left, there was a gap in the shantytown—a collapsed tunnel she knew led to the lower sub-levels. She'd used it a dozen times to avoid patrols.
She didn't wait for him to finish the warning. She sprinted left.
[Energy bolt] slammed into the ground where she'd been standing. The impact threw chunks of red dust and metal shards into the air. Shrapnel bit into her left arm. She didn't stop.
She dove headfirst into the tunnel opening, her shoulders scraping against the jagged metal edges. Inside, it was dark and smelled of old coolant. She scrambled on her hands and knees, the sound of her own breathing filling the narrow space.
Behind her, she heard the crunch of the mecha's footsteps stopping at the tunnel entrance. Too large to follow.
Renne pressed herself against the cold, damp wall of the tunnel. Her heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her throat. Her left arm throbbed where the shrapnel had hit, and she could feel a warm trickle of blood sliding down to her elbow.
She stayed still for a full minute. No footsteps. No more energy blasts. She let out a slow, shaky breath. Her hand went to her inner pocket. The chip was still there, the edges pressing into her palm.
Renne crawled deeper into the darkness. Her mind was already working, calculating. The evacuation points would be death traps. They'd sort the Indent, catalog them, maybe ship them to the mines. Her father was executed for hiding this chip. She had to figure out what was on it, and fast.
She reached a wider section of the tunnel and pushed herself up to a crouch. She leaned against the wall, trying to slow her breathing. The pain in her arm was sharp, but she'd had worse. Her father's words echoed in her head: 'In this world, you don't stop bleeding. You just keep moving until it stops on its own.'
A faint sound made her freeze.
A soft hum. It was coming from her pocket. The chip.
Renne pulled it out. In the darkness, the chip's surface was glowing with a faint, pulsing blue light. It wasn't a power indicator she'd ever seen. The pulses were rhythmic, almost like a heartbeat. And they were getting stronger.
She stared at it, her breath catching in her chest.
The hum suddenly shifted in pitch. The blue light flared, and for a second, the chip felt warm against her skin. Then, from somewhere far above her, she heard it—a crackling, grinding noise.
The mecha. The young knight's voice echoed through the tunnel, but his words were cut with static. "Sensors... malfunction... interference... lost the target."
The chip's light dimmed, returning to a faint pulse. The hum faded.
Renne looked at the chip in her hand, then up toward the tunnel entrance. The knight's mecha had just lost its tracking ability. Because of this chip.
She tucked it back into her pocket, more carefully this time. Her father had said it was the only way to be free. Now she understood one thing for sure: this chip wasn't just data. It was a weapon.
She started moving again, deeper into the tunnels, toward the one place in the colony that might still be safe. The sub-levels where the old oxygen recyclers hummed and the Indent who were too sick to work hid from the world.
Her bracelet beeped. Oxygen ration: 0 minutes remaining.
Her lungs seized. She pressed the manual override, and the filter in her collar sputtered back to life, feeding her thin, recycled air. The ration counter reset. Four minutes left. She had four minutes to find a working oxygen tap before her lungs shut down.
She ran.
One minute bled away as she navigated the winding tunnels, her boots splashing through shallow puddles of coolant. Her lungs burned again, the filter wheezing as it tried to keep up.
As she rounded a corner, she saw the faint glow of emergency lights ahead. A group of Indent were huddled there, their faces gray and hollow. A child, no older than eight, was on the ground, her chest barely moving. Her bracelet had a red light flashing on it.
Renne stopped.
The child's mother was kneeling beside her, pressing the bracelet's button again and again. "Please, please, it's not recharging, she needs air, please..."
Renne's hand went to her own collar. Three minutes left. She looked at the child's red, suffocating face. She could unhook her filter. It would take ten seconds. The child might breathe. But she would be left with nothing.
She took a step forward. Then she heard it: the sound of heavy boots on metal, the clanking of Imperial armor.
A squad of soldiers in black and silver armor rounded the far end of the corridor. Their helmet lights swept over the group of Indent.
"All Indent are to proceed to Evacuation Point Gamma for processing," a metallic voice announced. "Move now."
The mother looked up, tears carving tracks through the dust on her face. "My daughter, she can't breathe, please—"
One soldier walked over and looked down at the child. Without a word, he reached down and pressed a button on the girl's bracelet. The red light went out. The girl's chest stopped moving.
The mother screamed.
Renne's back pressed against the cold wall. Her hand was still on her own filter. Her knuckles were white.
She looked at the child's still form. Then she looked at the soldiers, her father's chip warm against her chest, and she turned and ran the other way, deeper into the dark.
She ran until her legs burned, until the tunnel split into three passages, and she took the one that led to the abandoned recycling plant. She slipped through a broken hatch and collapsed behind a rusted filtration tank.
Her breathing was ragged. The filter on her collar wheezed. Two minutes left.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the chip. It was cool now, dark.
She pressed her forehead against the cold metal of the tank. 'I'm sorry,' she thought, but the words were hollow. They didn't fix anything. They never did.
She heard the child's mother screaming, and she pushed the sound away. She had to. Her father taught her that too. 'Feelings don't fill your lungs, Renne. Only oxygen does.'
She looked at the chip. It had just disabled a knight's mecha. If she could figure out how, if she could get to the right place, maybe she could use it again. Maybe it was the key to more than just survival.
The filter wheezed again. Her vision blurred at the edges.
She forced herself to stand. She found an old oxygen tap on the wall, its screen cracked. She slammed her bracelet against it. [Click] A thin stream of air hissed into her collar. The ration counter on her wrist jumped to ten minutes.
Renne leaned against the wall, letting the air fill her lungs. She looked at the chip in her hand.
The Imperium had come for Mars. They had killed her father, and now they were taking everyone else. But they had also just marked her. An Indent who stole imperial property. A girl who survived.
Her father's note said this chip was the only way to be free. But freedom wasn't a gift you found in a box. Freedom was something you stole, piece by piece, until you had enough to breathe on your own.
Renne closed her hand around the chip.
In the darkness of the abandoned plant, she made her first real choice since the invasion began. She wouldn't go to the evacuation point. She wouldn't become a number in their system.
She would find out what her father had hidden. She would find a way to use it. And she would make sure the Imperium knew that even the lowest Indent could bite back.
The chip in her hand pulsed once, a faint, warm heartbeat against her palm.
She looked at it, her jaw tightening.
'Just what are you?'
The blue light flickered, and for a second, the chip's surface displayed a single line of text she couldn't read before it went dark again.