The Spark Before The Storm

Chapter 36 – The Spark Before the Storm

The war room pulsed with light.

Dozens of holo-screens hovered in the air, each flashing tactical data, communications feeds, and star maps with shifting vectors. Officers moved quickly between stations, silent and focused. The Pyre wasn't a flagship—it was a fortress, built for the kind of war that didn't make it into history books.

I stood in the center with Seris, Mira, Allan, Anna and Orin. Lys sat nearby, still bound , though she no longer looked like a prisoner. Just another equation in a room full of dangerous variables.

Seris pointed at the display. "Drift Sector has no central authority. Mining factions, merc groups, ghost colonies. If the Ring is staging there, they're hiding behind a wall of noise."

"They're using the chaos," Orin muttered. "Like always."

Mira was staring at one of the star maps. "There's movement here—look. Small ships, changing routes, bouncing across the outer lanes with no clear pattern."

"Couriers," Anna said. "Running message packets offline."

"No," I said. "Probes. They're testing reaction time. Seeing who notices. Who responds."

Seris gave a sharp nod. "Then we respond loud enough to scare them."

"But not loud enough to expose the fleet," Mira added. "We need precision."

All eyes turned to me.

It was always like this. The moment before the strike, when possibilities hung in the air like dust in zero-G. It used to paralyze me. Now it focused me.

"We send two squads," I said. "Covert strike. Slip in under the Ring's radar, map their movements, identify the central node of Generation Two."

"Then what?" Allan asked.

I looked her in the eye. "Then we burn it down."

Seris folded her arms. "What do you need?"

"Two shuttles. EMP warheads. Neural disruptors. And a blank-slate relay—we'll need to spoof their signal to get inside."

"You'll have it in six hours," she said.

"And the lab intel?" I asked.

She glanced at Lys. "She's already decoding."

Lys didn't look up. "They've moved past base-layer protocols. They're mimicking higher-cognitive loops now. Emotion filtering, morality suppression, impulse prioritization. That's not a soldier.....they're building something else."

"A predator?" Orin said.

"No," she replied. "A tool that believes it's a predator. There's a difference."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Six hours later, The Pyre released two black ops shuttles into the Drift Sector.

We took one. Orin flew. Anna handled weapons. Mira ran infiltration tech. Me and Allan sat with Lys, who—under guard—had become our unwilling map to the abyss.

The Drift was worse than I remembered. Patches of empty black, littered with half-dead satellites and rogue drones. The stars looked colder here. Like they were watching.

We passed a field of derelict miners, hulls pockmarked by forgotten skirmishes. No beacons. No names. Just echoes.

"Picking up a faint Ring signal," Mira said. "No ID. But it's repeating on a three-second loop."

"Breadcrumb trail," I said. "Follow it."

It led us to an asteroid cluster—tightly packed rock formations with minimal gravitational pull. Hidden in the shadow was a cruiser. Sleek. Black. No lights.

"That's not civilian," Allan muttered. "That's military-grade stealth."

We slid beneath its sensor range, docking manually to a service hatch on the ventral hull. Mira and Orin stayed aboard the shuttle, engines primed for a fast exit.

Allan, Anna and I moved through the hatch, weapons ready. Lys followed behind, tethered by a magnetic leash. Her expression was unreadable.

Inside, the air was cold. Clean. Too clean.

Neon-blue lines ran along the walls....bio-interface pathways that pulsed like veins. The place wasn't just a ship. It was a living machine.

We reached a central chamber. And froze.

Rows of containment pods lined the walls. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. And inside them were humans. Perfect posture. Eyes closed. Suits like ours, but subtly wrong. No insignia. No emotion.

"They're dormant," Anna whispered.

"For now," Lys added.

A console blinked near the center. I approached slowly. The moment I touched it, the interface recognized me. Not as a threat.....but as a match.

"Access granted," a voice chimed softly.

Allan raised her weapon. "Kael…!!?"

"They built the core on my signature," I said. "It thinks I'm part of it."

Data poured across the screen—activation schedules, deployment logs, training sequences. I scanned faster.

"They're using trigger nodes embedded in local comm stations. One burst, and these things go live."

Lys moved beside me, her voice low. "You can stop them. Wipe the boot code. Sever the command chain."

I stared at the screen.

Then I hit override.

The system resisted. But it was built on my mind. I knew where to dig, what to fracture. I felt it—the whole network resisting, glitching, trying to reroute.

And then it cracked.

The chamber lights flickered. The containment pods hissed.

"I didn't open them!!" I said quickly.

"No," Lys said. "But the Ring just detected the breach."

Mira's voice crackled in. "Kael. You've got five inbound. Heavy class."!

"Pull the shuttle around," I said. "Now."

We moved fast, sprinting back through the hall, alarms rising behind us. One of the pods exploded open. A figure stepped out.....eyes glowing, jaw clenched. It looked at me.

It looked like me !!!

Anna didn't hesitate. She fired, Allan followed.

The shot clipped its shoulder, but it didn't slow. It moved like shadow and lightning, closing the distance with terrifying precision. I raised my weapon and shot it point-blank in the chest.

It fell. But not like a human. More like a puppet losing its strings.

"Go!" I shouted.

We made it back to the shuttle as Mira cut the cloaking and opened the hatch. Orin spun us around as the Ring cruisers came into view, plasma already charging.

"Engines to burn!" Mira yelled. "We don't have time to dance!"

As we rocketed away, I looked back once.

The black cruiser began to power up, dozens of red lights flaring along its hull.

They weren't just waking up.

They were coming !!.