🪐 Part Nine: The Depths of Nirav

🪐 Part Nine: The Depths of Nirav
From the Adventures of Rayan and the Blue Eagle Crew 🚀
8,421 bio-signatures.

The figure remained glowing on the main display of the Blue Eagle.

Adam stared at the number.

Then at the barren, ashen crust rotating beneath them.

Then back to the number.

— "I have a proposal."

Rayan asked:

— "What is it?"

— "We turn back."

Layan replied:

— "Rejected."

— "You didn't hear the rest of my proposal."

— "What's the rest?"

— "We turn back... very quickly."

Rayan smiled:

— "Begin atmospheric descent."

Adam let out a heavy sigh:

— "Why do I even bother asking?"

🌫️ The Surface of Nirav
The Blue Eagle touched down on an expansive, wind-scoured plateau of fractured rock.

Nothing stirred.

No vegetation.

No water.

No ambient sound.

Even the atmospheric breeze was faint and thin.

Rayan descended the ramp first, followed by Layan, Adam, Nour, and Zero.

And finally...

Kyle.

Kyle stopped at the edge of the ramp, staring silently across the desolate horizon.

Rayan walked up beside him:

— "Do you remember this terrain?"

— "Yes."

— "You're certain?"

Kyle replied:

— "Certain places never leave your memory."

He pointed toward a distant, jagged range of obsidian mountains:

— "That is where we excavated the stone."

Layan checked her telemetry:

— "Distance?"

— "Approximately eight kilometers."

Adam opened his field pack, shaking his head:

— "Brilliant. An eight-kilometer trek across an alien world with over eight thousand hostiles nesting beneath our boots."

Zero chimed in:

— "8,421."

Adam glared at the droid:

— "I didn't ask for a recount."

🚶 The Trek
The team moved across the barren plain.

Rayan walked beside Nour, falling into step with her.

— "How are you holding up?"

She looked over, surprised:

— "What do you mean?"

— "Ever since we left Eden, we've barely had a chance to speak."

She murmured:

— "So much has been happening."

— "I know."

He paused for a beat, then added:

— "But back there... you said you were my sister."

A warm smile touched her face:

— "I still am."

— "Then once we get through this..." He stopped. "...I want to actually get to know you."

Nour looked at him, her eyes softening:

— "So do I."

Adam’s voice floated from behind them:

— "And I'd like to know if you two have a third sibling hiding somewhere before they ambush us, too."

Layan snapped:

— "Adam!"

— "What? At this point, I'm expecting anything!"

Rayan laughed. It was a fleeting exchange, yet it was the first quiet, human moment they had shared in what felt like an eternity.

👣 The Tracks
Two hours into the march, Zero raised a metallic arm:

— "Halt."

The crew stopped dead.

Zero knelt into the pale dust. Imprinted across the rock was a fresh, distinct track: three elongated, talon-like digits.

Rayan asked:

— "One of the subterranean creatures?"

Zero replied:

— "High probability."

Adam asked:

— "Ancient fossil?"

Zero analyzed the soil displacement:

— "Negative."

— "Age of the impression?"

— "Less than ten minutes."

Everyone looked up, sweeping their weapons across the empty plain.

Not a shadow moved.

Layan whispered:

— "Where is it?"

Zero looked down at his handheld scanner:

— "Directly beneath us."

THUD.

The bedrock groaned under their feet.

Adam looked at Rayan, whispering:

— "Don't move."

THUD.

The vibration hit again, harder. Pebbles bounced into the air.

Kyle barked:

— "Run!"

Adam shouted:

— "Now?!"

Kyle roared:

— "NOW!"

🦂 The Dune Behemoth
The ground detonated.

BOOOOOOM!

A colossal beast erupted from the subterranean strata. It moved on six jointed, armor-plated limbs, its thick hide covered in jagged mineral carapace. It split its maw wide, revealing concentric rings of needle-sharp teeth.

Adam yelled as he sprinted:

— "Zero!"

— "Yes?"

— "Is this one of the eight thousand?!"

— "Affirmative."

— "Fantastic! Only 8,420 left to go!"

They scrambled toward a cluster of fractured boulders, the beast thundering directly behind them.

Rayan shouted:

— "Scatter!"

Rayan and Nour veered right.

Layan and Adam dove left.

Zero and Kyle held the center.

The creature’s sensory crest flared; it locked onto Rayan and Nour, charging after them.

Nour cried:

— "It's following us!"

— "I noticed!"

They sprinted toward a sheer drop. Rayan skidded to a halt:

— "Dead end!"

The behemoth closed in, kicking up clouds of ash. Nour raised her hands, golden energy gathering in her palms.

Rayan caught her wrist:

— "No! Hold on!"

— "Why?!"

— "We don't know how your resonance will interact with this ecosystem!"

He scanned the rock face and spotted a hairline vertical fissure:

— "In there!"

They squeezed into the crack. The creature lunged, but its massive armored head was too broad to pierce the fissure. It slammed against the stone in blind fury:

THUD!

THUD!

Rayan breathed heavily:

— "Now how do we get out?"

A voice crackled over their commlink:

— "Stay where you are."

It was Kyle.

He stepped into the open ground directly before the rampaging beast.

Rayan yelled:

— "Kyle, get back!"

Kyle didn't flinch. He raised his blackened, shadow-corrupted hand toward the creature's eyes.

The behemoth froze. It tilted its head, sniffing the air, its mandibles clicking.

Then...

It recoiled.

Turning back to the shattered ground, it burrowed frantically into the bedrock and vanished beneath the crust within seconds.

Rayan slid out from the fissure:

— "What did you just do?"

Kyle said flatly:

— "Nothing."

Layan stepped up:

— "It was terrified of you."

Kyle said nothing.

Rayan pressed:

— "Why, Kyle?"

Kyle looked at his dark hand:

— "Because coiled inside me is a fragment of the entity that rules this world."

Dead silence fell over the plain.

Adam broke it:

— "That would have been exceptionally useful tactical intel before we touched down."

🏔️ Gateway to the Abyss
They finally reached the obsidian peaks. Kyle guided them into a cavern mouth yawning in the cliffside:

— "Through here."

They navigated the tunnel. Twenty minutes in, the path opened onto a wide subterranean ledge overlooking a sheer vertical shaft. Rusted metallic crates and modular frameworks lay half-buried in the silt.

Kyle stopped:

— "Our expedition base camp."

Zero inspected a corroded terminal:

— "Dating confirms over twelve thousand standard years of exposure."

Adam whistled:

— "And it's still structurally intact?"

Zero explained:

— "The atmosphere is nearly devoid of moisture."

Layan pointed her light at an inscription chiseled into the rock wall:

— "Kyle, look."

An archival log entry was etched into the basalt:

Nirav Survey — Day 19

Rayan asked:

— "How long was your team stationed here?"

— "Twenty-three days."

— "What happened on Day Twenty-Three?"

Kyle looked down into the dark abyss:

— "We unearthed the stone."

🔦 The Descent
Adam drove magnetic pitons into the rock and rigged the descent lines:

— "Depth reading: 430 vertical meters."

Rayan leaned over the edge. Absolute pitch black swallowed the beam of his flashlight.

Adam asked:

— "What's the verdict?"

— "I can't see the bottom."

— "That's precisely what worries me."

They began their rappel:

Rayan, Layan, Nour, Adam, Zero, and Kyle.

Minutes later, their boots touched down on the lower deck. They switched on their shoulder floods, cutting through the heavy gloom.

A tunnel stretched ahead.

Yet its walls were not fractured stone.

They were smoothed. Polished. Perfectly cylindrical.

Layan ran a gloved hand along the wall:

— "This bore was excavated."

Zero confirmed:

— "Affirmative."

— "Excavated by what?"

Zero measured the diameter: over ten meters wide.

Adam groaned:

— "Please do not say 'the creatures'."

Zero replied:

— "The creatures."

— "Naturally."

🕳️ Beneath Nirav
They pressed on for nearly an hour as the tunnel began branching into an intricate subterranean maze. Adam placed compact glowing beacons along the rock walls at every junction.

Rayan asked:

— "What are those?"

— "Navigation transponders, so we can trace our steps back."

— "Breadcrumbs?"

— "Exactly."

Zero stated:

— "I maintain a continuous internal digital map."

Adam countered:

— "And I maintain faith in physical hardware."

Several minutes later...

Click.

One of Adam's beacons behind them blinked out.

He stopped, turning around:

— "Odd."

Click.

The second beacon went dark.

Then the third.

One after another, extinguished in rapid sequence.

Layan whispered:

— "Adam..."

He swallowed:

— "I see it."

Zero brought up his thermal array:

— "Motion approaching from our rear sector."

Rayan asked:

— "Count?"

— "Fourteen."

A chittering scrape echoed from a branching passage on the right.

Zero announced:

— "Twenty-three contacts from the right."

Then from the left:

— "Forty-one from the left."

Adam asked frantically:

— "And directly ahead?!"

Zero checked the forward vector:

— "Clear."

Rayan yelled:

— "Then forward! Move!"

🏃 The Swarm
The crew broke into a dead sprint.

Behind them erupted a cacophony of clicking mandibles and skittering claws:

Clack-clack-clack-clack!

Nour looked back over her shoulder:

— "They're gaining on us!"

Adam shouted:

— "How many are back there?!"

Zero asked:

— "Do you truly desire that metric?"

— "No!"

A three-way fork opened ahead.

Rayan called out:

— "Which shaft?!"

Layan yelled:

— "The center conduit!"

— "Why?!"

— "Airflow!"

Her hair was catching a faint draft:

— "There's an active atmospheric current coming through it!"

They ducked into the center conduit, the swarm snapping at their heels. Ahead, the floor gave way to a natural stone arch bridging a colossal, bottomless chasm.

Adam muttered:

— "Of course. A precarious cliff bridge. Classic."

Rayan urged:

— "Cross! Now!"

Layan sprinted across first.

Then Nour.

Zero.

Samer.

Adam.

Yet just as Kyle stepped onto the span...

The vanguard of the swarm poured from the tunnel mouth.

For the first time, they saw them clearly: dozens of chitinous, armored beasts—smaller than the surface leviathan, but blindingly fast.

The lead predator leaped.

Kyle thrust his hands forward. A wave of undulating shadow erupted from his frame, freezing the beasts in their tracks.

Rayan shouted from the far ledge:

— "Kyle! Get across! Move!"

Kyle gritted his teeth, holding the dark barrier:

— "Go! Get to safety!"

— "We're not leaving you behind!"

Kyle turned his head, his voice strained:

— "Rayan... trust me. Just this once."

The creatures began clawing against his dark barrier, inching forward.

Rayan shouted:

— "You have ten seconds!"

Kyle managed a grim smirk:

— "More than enough."

⚫ Kyle's Stand
Kyle threw his arms wide. A torrent of pitch-black energy cascaded across the bridge. The swarm recoiled in pain, but something terrifying began to happen: dark, webbed veins surged upward across Kyle's face, consuming his flesh.

Nour screamed:

— "Stop! Kyle, stop!"

He couldn't. With a guttural roar, he released a kinetic shockwave of pure void energy.

BOOOOOOM!

The center of the stone bridge shattered, plunging the lead wave of creatures into the abyss.

Kyle lunged across the collapsing gap, leaping with everything he had left.

Rayan grabbed his forearm mid-air, hauling him over the edge onto solid rock.

Kyle collapsed onto the stones.

His eyes were burning crimson.

Rayan knelt beside him:

— "Kyle?"

No answer. Kyle lifted his head, his features half-submerged in living black vapor, glaring at Rayan like a stranger.

Zero brought his arm cannon online with a high-pitched whine:

— "Step away from him immediately."

Rayan commanded:

— "Hold your fire!"

— "Rayan, he is turning!"

Rayan dropped to one knee directly in front of Kyle:

— "Kyle. Listen to my voice."

No reaction.

— "You told me you thought you could master it."

Kyle’s frame began to tremble violently.

Rayan pressed:

— "Don't try to master it. Just fight it."

Kyle’s red eyes flickered toward him:

— "What...?"

— "Just resist it."

Layan pleaded:

— "Rayan, get back!"

Rayan didn't move an inch:

— "Remember why you came with us."

The crimson fire in Kyle's eyes wavered, fading back to gray. He shut his eyes tight, drew a long, shuddering breath, and opened them again.

Normal.

Adam exhaled, wiping cold sweat from his face:

— "Are you back?"

Kyle rasped:

— "No." He pulled himself up against the rock face. "But I'm still me."

Rayan nodded firmly:

— "That's good enough."

🧭 Stranded
Adam checked his navigation unit:

— "Time to head back."

He tapped the screen, and his expression dropped.

Layan asked:

— "What's wrong?"

— "Every single beacon has dropped off the grid."

Zero analyzed the tectonic data:

— "The creatures have restructured the upper tunnels."

Rayan asked:

— "What does 'restructured' mean?"

— "They are continually excavating and backfilling. The route we traversed no longer exists."

Adam leaned against the wall:

— "We're lost."

Nour stepped forward:

— "No, we aren't."

She closed her eyes, tilting her head:

— "I can feel a pulse."

Rayan asked:

— "What kind of pulse?"

She pointed straight down into the chasm:

— "An energy signature."

Kyle added quietly:

— "The stone."

Nour nodded:

— "Possibly."

Rayan switched on his high-output floodlight:

— "Then we go down."

Adam looked over the precipice:

— "Down? How?"

Rayan illuminated a natural shelf of rock descending into the gloom:

— "Along that ridge."

Adam groaned:

— "Sometimes I genuinely despise how you always find a way forward."

🌌 The Sunken Biosphere
Two hours of careful climbing brought them to the basin of the chasm.

They stopped in stunned disbelief.

Rayan breathed:

— "Whoa..."

Before them stretched an immense subterranean cavern larger than a surface metropolis. Thousands of monolithic rock columns rose from the floor, encircling an abyssal black lake.

And ringing the shoreline...

Stood structures.

Layan whispered:

— "A city?"

Kyle looked around in complete bewilderment:

— "This was not here twelve thousand years ago."

Adam muttered:

— "You said the same thing about the tunnels."

Zero approached the nearest wall, running a diagnostic sweep:

— "These edifices are not composed of mineral strata."

He double-checked the readings:

— "They are organic."

Rayan asked:

— "What does that mean?"

Nour whispered, her voice trembling:

— "It means... they grew."

They drew closer. The surface of the structures was rhythmically pulsing with a faint, imperceptible shudder.

As if... breathing.

Adam backed away:

— "I hate this place."

Zero reported:

— "My sensory arrays indicate thousands of dormant bio-signatures surrounding our perimeter."

Adam whipped his flashlight around: nothing.

— "Where?!"

Zero pointed toward the organic walls:

— "Inside the architecture."

Rayan warned:

— "Keep your lights low. Absolute silence."

🥚 The Nest
They slipped through a vaulted opening into the central complex.

Suspended within the chamber were hundreds of smooth, oval pods.

Layan whispered:

— "Eggs?"

Zero scanned the nearest pod:

— "Affirmative."

Adam pointed:

— "Don't touch anything."

Zero looked at him:

— "I did not make contact."

— "I was talking to Rayan."

Rayan had his hand inches from a translucent pod. He pulled back:

— "I wasn't going to touch it."

Adam crossed his arms:

— "I know your habits."

Suddenly, an internal glow lit inside one of the pods.

Then another.

Then a dozen more.

Nour backed toward the exit:

— "We need to leave. Right now."

Crack.

A hairline fracture split the shell of the first egg.

Adam whispered:

— "Move."

Crack-crack-crack!

The pods began splitting open en masse.

Rayan shouted:

— "Run!"

🐜 The Brood
Hundreds of juvenile creatures swarmed from the fractured husks. Though smaller and less armored than the adults, their speed was blinding.

The team sprinted out of the complex into a narrow access corridor.

Zero counted:

— "317 hostiles pursuing."

Adam yelled:

— "Stop giving me numbers!"

— "402."

— "Zero!"

They reached a pinch-point in the corridor.

Layan shouted:

— "Seal the hatch!"

Adam yelled:

— "There is no hatch!"

Rayan spotted a stressed stone support pillar along the archway:

— "Adam! The pillar!"

Adam understood instantly. He pulled a breaching charge from his pack, slapped it against the fissure, and keyed the timer:

Beep... beep... beep...

— "Three seconds!"

Rayan yelled:

— "No time! Detonate!"

Adam slammed the remote trigger.

BOOOOOOM!

The pillar collapsed, dropping tons of rock and debris across the passage, sealing the tunnel completely. The swarm slammed into the obstruction on the other side, shrieking in frustration.

Quiet returned.

Adam slumped against the wall, breathing hard:

— "I need a vacation."

Layan replied:

— "After the mission."

— "You've been saying that for three planets."

🌑 The Abyssal Lake
The crew finally reached the edge of the subterranean lake.

Kyle stood at the shoreline, staring into the pitch-black water.

— "It's down here."

Rayan asked:

— "You're certain?"

— "I can feel its resonance."

Zero deployed an acoustic depth-sounder:

— "A high-density metallic object is submerged thirty-one meters below surface level."

Adam looked around:

— "So who's taking a swim?"

Everyone turned to Kyle.

He held up his hands:

— "Why is everyone looking at me?"

Adam replied:

— "Because you're the reason we're standing on this rock."

Kyle sighed:

— "Fair point."

Nour stepped forward:

— "I'm going with him."

Rayan added:

— "As am I."

Layan cautioned:

— "We don't need three people in the water."

Rayan countered:

— "If something goes wrong down there, two people can extract the third."

She didn't argue.

They secured their atmospheric helmets, synchronized their dive thrusters, and plunged into the dark water.

🌊 In the Abyss
The water was pitch-black, so dense that their high-beam dive lights cut barely two meters ahead.

Ten meters down.

Twenty.

Thirty.

The silty lakebed came into view.

Kyle's voice crackled through their underwater comms:

— "There."

Half-buried in the sediment rested an immense black sphere, roughly five meters in diameter.

Rayan asked:

— "Is that what you broke the piece off of?"

— "Yes."

Kyle drifted closer, reaching out to touch the hull, then froze.

Rayan asked:

— "What is it?"

Kyle stared through his visor:

— "When we discovered this artifact twelve thousand years ago..." He pressed his glove against the alloy. "...it was completely dormant."

THUMP.

The water shuddered around them.

Rayan grabbed Nour’s shoulder.

THUMP.

Again. Like a slow, titanic heartbeat.

Nour whispered:

— "It's alive."

A narrow seam split across the sphere's surface, and a strange, iridescent black light bled into the dark water.

Kyle roared over the comms:

— "Pull back! Surface immediately!"

⚡ The Awakening
The entire lake surged with violent hydro-acoustic waves.

On the shore, Adam yelled into his comm:

— "What did you do down there?!"

Zero reported:

— "Massive tectonic energy spike detected directly beneath the basin!"

The cavern began to cave in. The organic structures split wide, and thousands of adult creatures poured out into the open cavern. But they weren't turning toward Adam, Layan, or Zero.

They were fleeing in blind panic.

Layan watched them:

— "They aren't hunting us."

Zero looked toward the boiling water:

— "They are fleeing from what's rising from the lake."

Beneath the surface, Rayan grabbed Nour’s harness:

— "Thrust up! Now!"

Kyle hadn't moved. He remained hovering before the artifact, staring at symbols carved along its metallic shell:

— "These aren't natural markings."

— "Kyle, we have to move!"

Kyle snapped a high-resolution holographic capture, then kicked his thrusters into gear, pursuing them toward the surface.

Behind them, the black sphere began to unfold.

🏃 Exodus from Nirav
The three breached the surface, gasping into their helmets.

Adam called out:

— "What on earth did you do?!"

Rayan coughed:

— "Nothing!"

Adam shouted back:

— "That's somehow worse!"

Boulders dropped from the cavern roof like hail.

Zero designated a waypoint:

— "Ascending fault line detected 400 meters east!"

Rayan ordered:

— "Move!"

The crew sprinted across the collapsing cavern floor, flanked by thousands of alien creatures running in the exact same direction.

Adam looked to his left:

— "Are we seriously running with the monsters?!"

Layan yelled back:

— "As long as they aren't eating us, absolutely!"

They reached the ascent shaft, but a colossal slab of basalt crashed down ahead of them:

BOOM!

The passage was blocked.

Adam yelled:

— "Dead end!"

The swarm closed in around them. But instead of attacking, dozens of the creatures drove their armored forelimbs into the shale beside the boulder, carving a new bypass around the obstruction.

Nour yelled:

— "Look! Follow them!"

The crew scrambled through the fresh breach alongside the brood. For the first time in history, human and alien were running from the same primordial terror.

☀️ The Surface
After a punishing ascent through crumbling shafts, sunlight finally broke overhead.

The team scrambled out of a hillside vent onto the surface plain.

Adam collapsed face-first into the dirt:

— "Solid ground!"

He kissed the dust.

Layan remarked:

— "You're kissing the soil of a hostile alien planet."

— "I don't care."

The Blue Eagle stood two kilometers away across the rocky flat.

Rayan called:

— "To the ship! Double time!"

They scrambled up the ramp and sealed the airlock.

Adam dove into the pilot's auxiliary chair, thumbing the ignition:

— "Come on, baby, wake up..."

WHOOOOOOSH!

The sub-light drives flared. The Blue Eagle rocketed into the upper atmosphere.

Seconds later, a massive sector of Nirav’s crust collapsed inward, leaving a gaping abyssal trench from which towering plumes of black dust surged into the sky.

Zero reported:

— "Energy dissipation expanding rapidly."

Rayan commanded:

— "Get us into orbit."

🔬 The Inscription
Safely in high orbit, the crew gathered around the terminal displaying Kyle's underwater scan.

Layan enhanced the image:

— "Magnify the glyphs."

Ancient text resolved into focus.

Adam asked:

— "Is that a written language?"

Zero answered:

— "Affirmative."

Rayan asked:

— "Can you translate it?"

— "A partial block."

Zero executed the decryption syntax. The words populated across the console:

CONTAINMENT UNIT

SPECIMEN 7

BIO-HAZARD CLASS OMEGA

Adam stared:

— "Specimen?"

Rayan looked at Kyle.

Layan reasoned:

— "If that sphere was 'Specimen Seven'..."

Adam finished the thought:

— "...that means there are at least six others out there."

Rayan shook his head:

— "No. Look closer."

He pointed to the first line:

— "The crucial detail isn't the number. It says 'Containment Unit'."

Layan caught on:

— "Which means someone locked it down here intentionally."

Rayan nodded:

— "Precisely."

Kyle stared out the viewport at the dead world below, his voice barely audible:

— "For twelve thousand years, I believed the Shadow originated here."

Zero said:

— "It was not born here."

Nour added softly:

— "It was imprisoned here."

A heavy silence settled over the cockpit.

Rayan spoke:

— "Then our mission parameters have changed. We aren't hunting for specimens."

Adam smiled weakly:

— "Thank goodness."

Rayan continued:

— "We're going to find out who built the cages."

Layan asked:

— "How do we trace them?"

Kyle pointed to the glyphs on screen:

— "These symbols. I have seen them before."

Rayan turned to him:

— "Where, Kyle?"

— "In the deep archives of the First Born."

Adam sighed:

— "Meaning we have to go back to Arkon?"

Kyle nodded:

— "Yes."

Rayan took the helm, banking the ship:

— "Plotting vector back to Eden."

Suddenly, Zero called out:

— "Rayan."

— "What is it?"

Zero was studying the external proximity sensors. Dozens of small sensor tracks were breaking out from Nirav’s upper atmosphere.

Rayan asked:

— "Are those the creatures?"

Zero answered:

— "Negative. Their physiology cannot achieve escape velocity."

Layan zoomed the optics onto the debris cloud.

They were not creatures. They were thousands of black, seed-like spores carried into high orbit by the dust plume.

Kyle yelled:

— "Cycle all intake vents shut! Seal the hull!"

Adam asked:

— "Why?!"

Kyle stared at the tactical feed, his face drained of color:

— "Because this is the exact sequence that destroyed my survey team twelve thousand years ago." He swallowed hard: "Before we ever dug up the stone... one of these reached our ship."

Suddenly...

Tap.

A faint impact tapped against the outer hull.

Then another.

Tap.

Tap.

Everyone looked up toward the ceiling plating.

Zero announced:

— "Three biological entities have adhered to the exterior hull of the Blue Eagle."

Adam asked:

— "Can they breach the armor?"

Zero ran a structural stress calculation, then paused.

Adam pressed:

— "Zero?!"

Zero replied:

— "Not immediately."

Adam exhaled, until Zero finished:

— "Estimated time to hull compromise: approximately six minutes."

Rayan checked their navigational clock.

Time to nearest hyperspace jump clearance: eighteen minutes.

Rayan stood up, grabbing his EVA helmet from the locker.

Layan asked:

— "Where are you going?!"

He opened the airlock locker:

— "Outside."

Adam gasped:

— "And what exactly do you plan to do out there?!"

Rayan clamped his helmet onto his suit collar, glancing at the three tracking markers burning on the hull schematic:

— "Clean our ship."

He cycled the inner airlock hatch.

Zero stepped in beside him:

— "I will accompany you."

Rayan smiled beneath his visor:

— "I figured you would."

The two hooked their magnetic tethers to the airlock rail as the chamber depressurized.

Six minutes until hull breach.

5:59...

5:58...

The outer hatch slid open into the void.

Before Rayan stretched the infinite ocean of stars. Beneath his boots drifted the cracked, wounded surface of Nirav.

And crawling along the upper hull of the Blue Eagle...

Three amorphous black organisms were advancing steadily toward the main thruster manifold.

Zero asked:

— "Are you ready?"

Rayan smiled inside his helmet:

— "Not remotely."

He kicked off from the airlock sill into the black.

— "Let's go."

To be continued... 🚀

🛰️ Part Ten: Outside the Hull
An open-space survival run across the hull of the Blue Eagle: Rayan and Zero have less than six minutes to detach the parasitic organisms, while Adam attempts to maneuver the vessel without engaging primary thrusters. Afterwards, the crew returns to Arkon with the first tangible proof of the Shadow's true origin.