Celestial Nexus

Ardae eased his finger off the trigger and drew a slow breath through his teeth. Fifty frames. Ten rangers. No bulls. It was still suicide—but the survivable kind, if such a thing existed.

He lowered the scope and pressed himself deeper into the rocky lip of the pit, letting the cold stone leech into his armor. The wind carried a faint metallic tang from below, mixed with something else—ozone, maybe, or burned iron. Zyre always smelled wrong. Venus had taught him that much.

The cave at the center of the pit pulsed with movement. Frames marched in tight, mechanical bursts, vanishing into the darkness and reemerging moments later with long, crate-like objects balanced on their spindly arms. The red cores in their chests flared brighter when they lifted the loads. Power allocation, Ardae thought. Or excitement.

He toggled his visor to magnification and focused on the cave mouth. The stone around it had been carved clean, too clean for nature. Angular cuts, straight lines—Zyre work. That meant this wasn’t just a temporary cache. It was an installation.

“Great,” he muttered. “Just great.”

Ardae keyed his comm, careful to keep the transmission tight-beam. “Command, this is Ghost-7. Visual confirms Zyre presence. Estimated sixty units total. Frames and rangers only. Central cave likely weapons storage or forward operating node.”

Static answered him. Thick, ugly static.

He tapped the side of his helmet, then tried again. Nothing.

The pit swallowed sound and signal alike.

Ardae exhaled and killed the comm. He was on his own.

He glanced at the chrono in his HUD. Local night would hold for another three hours. After that, the pit would glow with false dawn as Zyre floodlights came online. If he was going in, it had to be now.

Slowly, deliberately, Ardae began his descent.

The slope was steep and unstable, a mixture of shale and fused glass. Every step threatened to send a cascade of noise tumbling into the pit. He moved in short bursts, freezing whenever a frame passed too close, letting the shadows wrap around him. The Zyre relied on motion and heat—both things he could manage, for a while.

Halfway down, one of the rangers shifted.

Its rifle-arm rotated with a smooth, predatory precision, sweeping the ridge Ardae had just left. The ranger’s right eye telescoped outward, glowing brighter as it scanned.

Ardae flattened himself against the rock, heart hammering so hard he was sure the thing could hear it. He killed all active systems, letting his suit go cold. The seconds stretched. Ten. Twenty.

The ranger’s eye retracted.

Ardae didn’t move for another full minute.

When he finally reached the pit floor, the scale of the Zyre presence hit him like a blow. The frames were taller up close, their ironhide scarred and pitted from past battles. Some bore fresh marks—human weapons. Hunters had been here before. They hadn’t won.

He crept from shadow to shadow, counting steps, tracking patrol patterns. The cave loomed ahead, its entrance framed by two rangers standing unnervingly still, like statues.

A direct approach was impossible.

Ardae’s gaze flicked upward, to a narrow crack running along the pit wall—a natural fissure partially widened by Zyre excavation. It angled down toward the cave’s upper flank.

Risky. Tight. Probably unguarded.

He smiled grimly behind his visor.

That was his way in.

As he reached for his climbing line, a flicker of red caught his eye—inside the cave. Different than the frames.

Something else was in there.

Something bigger.

The red glow pulsed again—slow, heavy, and far too bright.

Ardae froze, every instinct screaming.