The maintenance loop felt like the inside of a throat.

  The corridor sloped down, walls leaning in just enough that Tanaka’s shield brushed something every few steps. Pipes and conduit trunks crowded the ceiling in fat bundles, sweating condensation that pattered onto armor in slow, irregular drops. The light was a washed-out blue that made everything look a little unreal.

  “Shield’s going to file a complaint with command,” Tanaka muttered. “Hostile work environment.”

  “Get in line,” Navarro said.

  Kaden kept his place just behind and to Tanaka’s left, SMG angled down the centerline. His world shrank to the rectangle of the shield in front of him, the edges of the corridor, and the pale wash of light on the next ten meters of deck.

  His HUD kept trying to offer him details—micro readouts, AP glows, soft reminders about med consumables. He pushed most of them down, leaving only the basics: squad tags, ammo count, his own vitals. Perkins’s status sat in the far periphery, dim, still stabilized.

  Somewhere behind them, metal boomed, the sound traveling oddly through the ship’s guts. It was impossible to tell if it was Valiant’s weapons or the Opp’s, or another Hegemony ship in the task force putting a round somewhere it needed to go.

  “Vos,” Jax said, voice low. “You seeing anything?”

  “Local node says this loop goes around a big chunk of something,” Vos answered. He moved on the inside of the curve, fingers ghosting over his gauntlet controls as he skimmed data. “Power density ahead is high. Could be weapons feed, could be a control hub. We’re close to something important.”

  “Any movement?” Navarro asked.

  “Nothing confirmed,” Vos said. “But their internal traffic just jumped two nodes to our starboard. They’re talking to each other more.”

  “Because we’re here?” Kaden asked.

  “Because something is,” Vos said. “We’re not the only squad on this ship.”

  Kaden thought of the other Theta squads pushing through their own corridors, fighting through their own ambushes. Somewhere in here, someone else was bleeding and hoping their medic knew what they were doing.

  The thought tightened his chest. He forced himself to breathe, slow and steady.

  “Contact discipline,” Jax said quietly. “You’re all doing fine. Keep it that way.”

  The tunnel pinched narrower, forcing Tanaka to tilt the shield and half turn his shoulders to squeeze through a section where two coolant trunks bulged along the walls. Condensation streaked his gauntlets as he brushed past.

  “Watch your seals,” Kaden said automatically.

  “Mercer?” Tanaka asked.

  “If one of those trunks lets go and it’s not just water, you do not want it in your armor,” Kaden said. “Coolant’s probably not friendly to internal organs.”

  “That’s why I’ve got the big plate,” Tanaka said. “You can hide behind me.”

  “Already am,” Kaden said.

  Vos snorted. “Romantic.”

  A faint chime flickered in Kaden’s ear. Aurora logged a minor stress bump and then smoothing it. RES doing its job. He rolled his shoulders once, loosening a knot under his armor.

  They pushed through the tightest section and into a slightly wider stretch. The deck here was grated again, with faint cold air rising up from beneath. Blue light leaked from gaps in the panels below, painting the underside of the shield in a soft glow.

  “Smells like a server farm,” Vos said. “If server farms also ran plasma through their veins.”

  Tanaka grunted, then stopped.

  “Hold,” he said.

  Kaden nearly walked into the back of the shield. He caught himself and sank down a fraction, gun up.

  “What?” Jax asked.

  Tanaka tilted the shield just enough to let her see what he was looking at.

  Kaden risked a peek around the heavy’s right elbow.

  The tunnel hooked left ahead, a tight bend. On the inner curve, someone had grafted a small alcove into the wall—barely wide enough for two people to stand in shoulder to shoulder. A thin smear of blackened residue suggested something had burned there recently. Beyond the bend, the lighting changed from the blue wash to a harsher white.

  “Vos?” Jax asked.

  Vos tapped his gauntlet, pulling up a local overlay.

  “Looks like a junction,” he said. “Small one. There’s a vertical conduit there too—lift shaft or ladder well. And at least one heat signature static near the bend. Could be a body, could be somebody doing an impression of one.”

  “Wasp?” Jax asked.

  Vos hesitated, already chewed down by earlier hacks and tricks.

  “Short burst,” Vos said. “No sightseeing.”

  He reached up and tapped the small drone clipped to his harness. Wasp clicked awake, lights along its carapace blinking dimly as it detached and skittered up the wall, claws whispering on metal.

  [VOS – WASP DRONE // DEPLOYED]

  Kaden followed its icon in the HUD as it crept along the ceiling, hugging cable runs, then peered around the bend.

  Vos’s voice went flat. “Yup. Not a body.”

  “Talk,” Jax said.

  “Two Opp,” Vos said. “One kneeling just past the bend, covering our angle. Second up on a ladder rung above the junction, rifle ready to shoot over his buddy’s head. They’re dug in. That alcove is probably where they got surprise on someone already.”

  Kaden’s stomach turned. He pictured another Theta trooper rounding that bend without Wasp.

  “Any toys?” Jax asked.

  “No obvious turrets,” Vos said. “But I’m seeing flickers in the air near the top one’s hands. Could be a system trick. Gravity nudge, kinetic boost, accuracy buff, I don’t know. Opp Aurora’s talking, I just don’t speak the dialect.”

  Tanaka shifted weight, shield scraping the deck. “So we either eat their setup or make our own.”

  “Exactly,” Jax said. “We’re not eating theirs.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  She knelt long enough to sketch a rough shape in the condensation on the deck with a gloved finger—just enough for them to visualize lanes.

  “Tanaka,” she said. “You take the bend slow. Shield high. They’re going to aim for your upper third. Navarro, you’re on the kneeling one. Mercer, take the high angle as soon as you see it. Vos, the moment Tanaka gives you any kind of cover, you hit that ladder well with suppression. Don’t let him lean out long enough to use whatever trick Aurora’s giving him.”

  “Copy,” Vos said.

  “And if they start doing something weird,” Jax added, “we shoot them more. I don’t care what color their glow is.”

  “Best doctrine I’ve heard all day,” Navarro said.

  Kaden’s pulse picked up. This was clean, the kind of plan that would either work fast or go sideways faster. His fingers tightened on the SMG, and for a moment he felt Jensen’s blood on them instead of Perkins’s.

  Not now.

  “Ready,” Tanaka said.

  “Go,” Jax said.

  Tanaka stepped forward, shield leading. The front edge of it scraped the inner curve with a metallic screech, announcing their approach whether they wanted it or not.

  Opp fire came a heartbeat later—sharp, controlled bursts that hammered the upper half of the shield. Sparks jumped, slivers of composite spalling off in tiny bursts.

  Tanaka grunted, dug in, and pushed.

  Navarro flowed up behind him on the outside of the curve, bringing her rifle up just as Tanaka’s shield cleared enough of the angle to give her a sliver of target. She didn’t hesitate. A short, precise burst cracked over the top edge of the shield.

  Kaden moved with them, sliding into the gap on the inside, muzzle climbing toward the ceiling.

  The kneeling Opp jerked as Navarro’s rounds hit, armor plates twisting. He dropped sideways, weapon clattering against the wall.

  Above him, the second Opp leaned out from the ladder well, rifle already spitting. The fire came lower than Kaden expected, stitching along the shield’s edge and sparking against Tanaka’s helmet rim.

  For a split second, the air around the Opp’s hands shimmered—just a distortion, like heat off hot metal. His shots walked in with unnatural steadiness, digging at a line Tanaka couldn’t completely cover.

  “Mercer!” Tanaka snapped.

  Kaden didn’t think. He snapped his SMG higher, sight finding the upper torso and helmet. He squeezed off a controlled burst.

  The Opp flinched. One round snapped his head back, another chewed into his shoulder. His grip broke. The rifle’s line went wild, last rounds chewing into the ceiling before he dropped backward out of sight.

  At the same time, Vos stepped into the angle on the outside and raked the ladder well with a harsh burst, sending metal fragments and Opp armor chips flying.

  “Top’s down,” Vos said. “If he’s alive, he wishes he wasn’t.”

  “Push and clear,” Jax said.

  Tanaka stepped fully into the junction, shield sweeping left then right. Navarro peeled off to cover the far corridor. Kaden edged toward the ladder well, weapon ready in case the top Opp had any fight left.

  He didn’t. The Opp lay half on a rung, half hanging, body twisted, helmet cracked where Kaden’s rounds had found it. That shimmer in the air around his hands was gone.

  “System tricks,” Kaden muttered.

  “What was that?” Jax asked.

  “He was shooting cleaner than he had any right to in this light,” Kaden said. “His hands looked… wrong. Like the air wanted the bullets where he did.”

  “Remember it,” Jax said. “Anything we can do, they can do too. Opp Aurora’s not a training package; it’s a live opponent.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Kaden said.

  The kneeling Opp below had taken Navarro’s burst high in the chest, armor punched in but not fully opened. Blood seeped through the cracks in a thick, dark smear.

  Kaden scanned him quickly, HUD overlay staying gray. Just another body.

  He moved on.

  Vos flicked Wasp back toward himself with a call, the drone skittering down from the ceiling and re-clamping to his harness. No new AP ping—he’d already paid for this short window, and he wasn’t going to leave it out long enough to trigger another hit.

  “AP?” Jax asked.

  Vos glanced at his display. “Still green,” he said. “Three in the tank. If I keep throwing tricks every corner, though, I’m going to be running on fumes by the time we actually hit something important.”

  “Then don’t throw them every corner,” Jax said. “You pick moments. We’ve got guns for the boring ones.”

  “Copy,” Vos said.

  They moved again, flowing through the cleared junction and back into the maintenance loop proper. The light shifted back to blue. The hum of systems grew louder.

  Kaden’s shoulders ached faintly under his armor. His calves burned from the constant micro-adjustments to the off-kilter deck. He could feel sweat trickling down his back in slow, itchy lines.

  His RES kept the edge from turning into a shake. He breathed in and out, counting heartbeats between steps.

  “Mercer,” Navarro said quietly. “You good?”

  “I’m still walking,” he said.

  “That wasn’t the question,” she said.

  “Ask me later,” he said. “When we’re not inside a ship that wants us dead.”

  She let it go.

  The tunnel bent again, this time in a long arc that carried them gradually back toward where Vos’s map said the primary weapons spine ran. The walls here were studded with small, shielded panels every few meters, each with its own faint status light. Most glowed a steady blue. One, up ahead on the left, flickered amber.

  “Hold,” Vos said.

  Tanaka stopped. Kaden covered the arc ahead.

  “Panel twelve,” Vos said. “That’s not happy.”

  “Another lock?” Jax asked.

  Vos moved up to it. The glyphs were smaller, cramped into the surface.

  “Fault,” Vos said. “Looks like something upstream is complaining. Could be damage, could be a change in routing. Could be them trying to starve this loop if they think we’re here.”

  “Can they?” Navarro asked.

  “Maybe,” Vos said. “If they dump enough power or coolant through the trunks, they can make this whole corridor unfriendly.”

  “Like?” Kaden asked.

  “Like burst a trunk and boil us,” Vos said. “Or yank gravity in a way that makes Tanaka’s shield a liability instead of a blessing.”

  “Then fix it,” Jax said.

  “I can’t fix damage,” Vos said. “But I can tell Aurora to stop feeding them good data from this node, and maybe slow their reaction time.”

  He laid his hand on the panel.

  [VOS – SKILL: RAPID OVERRIDE (R1) // ACTIVE]

  The flickering amber steadied, then dimmed entirely. The panel went dark.

  “Congratulations,” Navarro said. “You broke it more.”

  “That’s the idea,” Vos said. “If that was part of their automated response chain, it’s now confused. They’ll have to manage this section manually. Less ‘press button, cook marines,’ more ‘walk your ass down here and shoot us yourself.’”

  “That we can work with,” Jax said. “Move.”

  They pressed on.

  Kaden could feel the fatigue now in the way his grip wanted to slip, in the tiny delay between hearing Tanaka’s footsteps and matching pace. His ammo counter was still healthy, but not untouched. His AP sat in the corner, a small, accusing number. Four points left. Enough for four more clean Stabilizes, if he didn’t screw any one of them up.

  He tried not to think about how many people might need that.

  The maintenance loop started to tilt upward.

  The deck texture changed underfoot, from grated metal to heavier plates with more grip. The mist thinned. The air cooled, but the hum of systems intensified into a low, constant thrum.

  Vos lifted his hand again.

  “We’re about to kiss the weapons spine,” he said.

  “Define ‘kiss,’” Tanaka said.

  “Node ahead,” Vos said. “Bigger one. I’m seeing high-density conduits, control links, and—”

  He stopped.

  “And?” Jax asked.

  “And the Opp net got busy,” Vos said. “A lot of traffic started bouncing through two nodes forward from here in the last thirty seconds. They know something’s wrong. Maybe us, maybe another squad. But they’re reacting.”

  “Doesn’t change what we’re here for,” Jax said. “We keep going until someone tells us we’re done or we’re dead.”

  “Not my favorite set of options,” Navarro said.

  “Those are the ones you were given,” Jax said. “Move.”

  The last stretch of loop ended at another door, this one heavier, banded with structural braces that looked more intentional than decorative. Status lights above it glowed a steady green.

  Vos stared at it for a long second.

  “That,” he said, “is probably one step away from the spine.”

  “Can you get us through?” Jax asked.

  “I can get us anywhere they didn’t weld shut,” Vos said. “But this one’s tied into something more central. I poke it wrong and every Opp within three junctions is going to know exactly where we are.”

  “We have to go through,” Tanaka said. “We can feel the guns from here.”

  Kaden could, in a way—a pressure in the air, a sense of mass and stored violence nearby. It wasn’t real, not in any measurable way, but the idea of those weapons still being live while Valiant danced outside made his skin crawl.

  “Vos,” Jax said. “You get one gentle touch. If it starts screaming, you back off and we find another angle. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Vos said.

  He stepped up to the panel and rested his fingers on it like he was testing the temperature of a stove.

  Aurora’s hum tickled the back of Kaden’s skull again as Vos eased into the system, careful this time, not brute-forcing anything.

  [VOS – SKILL: RAPID OVERRIDE (R1) // ACTIVE]

  The status lights flickered once, then steadied.

  Vos exhaled. “Okay. I’m in the door, not the spine. It’ll log an access override, but it thinks it came from inside its own system, not from a foreign handshake. We’re ghosts on this particular circuit.”

  “Door?” Jax said.

  The lock bolts thunked back. The banding along the frame relaxed with a mechanical shudder. Slowly, the door irised open.

  Beyond it, the light shifted from blue to a harsher white. Shadows of thicker structures moved along the walls. Somewhere ahead, something hummed with a pitch that set Kaden’s teeth on edge.

  “Welcome,” Vos said quietly, “to the neighborhood.”

  “Stack up,” Jax said. “We’re close now. This is where they start throwing real weight at us.”

  Kaden tightened his grip on his SMG, adjusted the med harness straps on his chest, and tried very hard not to think about how many AP he had left or how many marines might be waiting on the other side of that threshold, Opp or human.

  Theta-3 stepped through, out of the maintenance loop and into the shadow of the weapons spine, ready or not.