There was a faint change in the way the frame hummed under Kaden’s boots, a click through his gloves as Jax brushed the controls. The pressure seal let go with a low shudder. Then the slab split down the middle and parted, heavy halves grinding back into recesses.

  Tanaka stepped through first, his shattered shield up.

  The room beyond was bigger than Kaden had pictured.

  Primary firing control wasn’t some neat ring of consoles around a central holo. It was a dense knot of machinery—tiered banks of controls, elevated platforms, and a spiderweb of cabling running along the ceiling and down reinforced struts. Glyphs glowed on curved panels, rain-falls of alien script tracing diagnostics Kaden couldn’t read.

  What he could see were the guns.

  Not literally, but the way the readouts and projections all collapsed into one central cluster: a pillar of light and shifting geometry that Aurora tagged with a simple, brutal overlay in his HUD.

  [PLASMA TORPEDO – PRIMARY FIRING LOGIC]

  They didn’t get much time to admire it.

  The Opp defenders were already dug in.

  Muzzle flashes sparked from cover behind a waist-high console cluster to the left, from a heavier armored rib to the right, and from a raised platform halfway around the ring where two figures in different armor worked at the main console.

  “Contact, three positions,” Navarro snapped.

  Rounds slammed into Tanaka’s shield in the same breath. Sparks flew off the top edge as he took the first step into the room and stopped cold. The impact shuddered up his arms hard enough that Kaden felt it in his own teeth.

  “We’re in!” Tanaka grunted. “They’re not happy.”

  Jax didn’t bother with an answer. “Push,” she said. “Half-step. Make them work for it.”

  Tanaka moved because she told him to. Another step. Another wave of fire hammered into the shield. His leg buckled once, then caught. The painkillers and foam Kaden had pumped into him were doing their job, but they weren’t magic.

  Kaden stepped in behind Navarro, SMG up, staying tight in the column of cover the shield gave them. Vos slid in behind Jax, gun tucked, head low.

  No Hold the Line this time. No Breach Order hum. Just five exhausted bodies and the room trying to kill them.

  “Left first,” Jax said, voice clipped. “That cluster’s got the best angle on Tanaka. Navarro, Mercer, take it.”

  Navarro leaned past the edge of the shield and sent a burst toward the left-side muzzle flashes. Without Controlled Burst behind it, her fire was less perfect than in the evaluation sims—but not by much. Two rounds sparked off metal. One caught an Opp in the shoulder, spinning them back behind cover.

  Kaden snapped his SMG up and put his sight where the last flash had been. He squeezed and watched his rounds chew uselessly into the console casing. His hand trembled a little on the grip.

  Get it together.

  He exhaled, tried again, this time leading lower. A helmet bobbed above cover at the exact wrong time, and his third shot caught the side of it. The Opp dropped.

  “Left’s thinner,” he said.

  “Right’s still pissed,” Vos muttered.

  On the opposite flank, fire chewed at the far edge of Tanaka’s shield, rounds skimming around the corner and spitting into the door frame. One caught Navarro’s shoulder plate as she pulled back. She hissed, but her armor tagged it as a graze.

  “Armor holding,” she said. “Still good.”

  “Keep moving,” Jax said. “Tanaka, another step. Vos, if you see anything making their aim smarter than it should be, kill it.”

  Vos let out a short breath that might have been a laugh. “You mean aside from good training and anger?” he said.

  He leaned out the opposite side of the shield and fired a quick burst at the right-hand firing position. His first two rounds went wide, kicking up chips from the bulkhead. The third sparked off what looked like a sensor cluster above the Opp’s cover.

  “That was a camera,” he said. “You’re welcome.”

  The Opp there adjusted, their next volley just a hair less precise.

  Another wave of fire slammed the shield. Kaden felt Tanaka rock under it, more from fatigue than force. The heavy’s breathing had gone rough and loud over comms.

  “Tanaka,” Kaden said. “If your leg goes, shout before you face-plant and take us with you.”

  “Leg goes,” Tanaka rumbled, “you’ll know. I’ll scream like a child.”

  A shot from the raised platform cracked past Tanaka’s shield and hit the wall beside Jax’s head, close enough that her helmet HUD flashed a proximity warning. That shooter moved differently—crisp, fast peeks, no wasted motion. Kaden tracked them with his eyes and saw the telltale twitch of Aurora use in their movements. Their recoil control was too perfect.

  “Sergeant,” he said. “Platform shooter’s got help. Auroran-style.”

  “Copy,” Jax said. “We kill them like we kill everyone else.”

  Her SMG came up. She timed her shot with the next flash from the platform, putting two rounds where the barrel had been. One sparked off the railing. The other hit the shooter in the arm, knocking their weapon offline for a heartbeat.

  “Left,” she snapped. “Mercer, Navarro. Clear it. Now.”

  Navarro popped out again, shorter exposure this time, and fired four shots in a tight rhythm. Kaden heard the difference—not the smooth machine of an Aurora-assisted skill, but the practiced cadence of someone who’d spent hours at the range anyway. One round punched through the edge of the cover. Another cracked into an Opp’s helmet. Blood sprayed the console.

  Kaden tried to mirror her timing. He caught movement, maybe a shoulder or a gun barrel, and squeezed. His first shot hit the console. The second hit something soft. The third went wild, ricocheting off a support strut.

  “Left’s almost done,” Navarro said. “One more, maybe.”

  A muzzle flashed low from the left flank, aiming for Tanaka’s legs. Kaden tracked and fired. His rounds hit the floor, the bulkhead, then finally the shooter’s upper thigh. The alien jerked and disappeared. Whether they crawled away or died there, he didn’t know, and didn’t have time to check.

  “Left suppressed,” he said.

  “Good enough,” Jax said. “Shift right.”

  The right-hand position was still spitting angry, but with the left thinned, Tanaka could angle the shield more their way. He did, grunting as he twisted his torso.

  “Shotgun’s low,” he said. “Four shells. Maybe three.”

  “Make them count,” Jax said.

  He did.

  The next time a muzzle flashed behind that cover, Tanaka stepped into it and fired. The blast took a chunk out of the console edge and the Opp behind it. The follow-up from Navarro and Kaden cleaned up anyone who tried to fill the gap.

  That left the platform.

  The shooter up there had switched to shorter, nastier bursts now, pinning Tanaka’s shield at an awkward angle. A second figure behind them kept their hands on the controls, fingers moving over alien interfaces, trying to do… something.

  Aurora peppered Kaden’s HUD with alerts.

  [PLASMA CONTROL – OVERRIDE ATTEMPTS DETECTED]

  [FIRING LOGIC – RE-ROUTING]

  “Vos,” Jax snapped. “Talk to me.”

  Vos had dropped to one knee near a side console, using it as partial cover. He peeked over the top, then dropped quickly as a burst of fire chipped the casing.

  “Main control’s still active,” he said. “They’re trying to route around everything we broke. I can’t kill it from here, but I can keep them from flipping any big red switches.”

  He leaned out again, fired a burst toward the tech’s silhouette. His aim was off; the rounds tore through a hanging cable cluster instead. Sparks rained down like angry fireflies.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  His next burst was closer, but his arm trembled enough that his grouping drifted. One round hit the console edge. Another sparked off the railing. The third punched into the wall behind the tech.

  “Fuck,” Vos muttered. “Arm’s not cooperating.”

  “You’re still making them duck,” Jax said. “Keep doing that.”

  The platform shooter popped up again, sighting down into their position. Navarro snapped a shot that clipped their shoulder. They hissed, ducked back, then came up again faster than seemed fair.

  Kaden felt something cold slide into his gut.

  We’re running out of time in here.

  As if to underline it, a round from the platform caught Jax in the side.

  It slipped between plates, a lucky shot that found the gap at the edge of her chest armor. She grunted, staggered a step, and slammed a hand against the wound.

  Her HUD flared red in Kaden’s periphery.

  [THETA-3 // R. JAX – STATUS: WOUNDED]

  [LOCAL – LATERAL TORSO]

  [BLEEDING – ACTIVE]

  Navarro swore and dumped a burst into the platform to cover Jax’s shift back behind Tanaka’s shield.

  “Sergeant?” Kaden said.

  “I’m fine,” Jax snapped through clenched teeth. “Stay—”

  She cut off, breath hitching. Blood seeped between her fingers, a dark smear against the matte of her plates.

  No, you’re not.

  Kaden didn’t think about his AP counter. He just moved.

  “Cover,” he said. “Now.”

  He dropped to his knees beside her, med block already in his hand. The room narrowed to a tunnel, everything outside the little space where Jax knelt fading to noise. Field Stabilize hung at the edge of his awareness like a switch.

  He flipped it.

  [SKILL: FIELD STABILIZE (R1) – ACTIVE]

  [AP – MERCER: 2 → 1 (1/5)]

  The cold clarity slid in behind his eyes, sharper than the last time. Steps, priorities, angles. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her hand away from the wound.

  “Sit,” he said.

  “Mercer, we don’t have—”

  “Sit,” he repeated, harder. “Or bleed out trying to finish a sentence. Your call.”

  She sat.

  The entry wound was ugly—high on the side, just under the lowest rib. The armor had diverted some of the energy, but not enough. Blood welled with every breath.

  Field Stabilize provided a ghost overlay in his HUD, showing probable trajectory, depth, where he needed to put foam and where he needed to avoid. He slapped a pressure pad under her and dug a small probe in just enough to confirm the path.

  “Good news,” he said, voice flat. “No exit wound. Means it didn’t punch all the way through you and blow out something vital.”

  “Bad?” Jax asked, jaw tight.

  “Bullet’s probably still in there,” he said. “But it’s lodged, not bouncing around. I’m not digging for it in the middle of a gunfight. We seal around it and let medbay swearing handle the rest.”

  He grabbed sealant and a compact bandage. The skill nudged his hands faster, more precise, making sure he put pressure exactly where it would slow the bleed without crushing anything important. Jax’s breathing came ragged over comms, but she didn’t flinch away.

  Around them, the fight didn’t stop.

  Tanaka’s shotgun boomed again. Navarro’s rifle cracked in shorter, more deliberate bursts. Vos cursed quietly as a shot went wide, then again when one of the platform defenders nearly tagged him.

  “Mercer, we are running out of firepower,” Navarro warned.

  “Almost done,” Kaden said.

  He cinched the bandage tight, layering it around Jax’s torso. Blood seeped, then slowed, then stopped soaking through.

  [THETA-3 // R. JAX – STATUS: STABLE]

  [BLEEDING – CONTROLLED]

  [RESPIRATION – REDUCED]

  He slapped a painkiller injector against an armor port on her back and pressed until it clicked.

  “You’re not sprinting,” he said. “You twist too hard and that whole seal shifts. You’ll feel it.”

  “Copy,” she said. Her voice sounded a little farther away now, muted by the drug. But it was steady.

  He wanted to collapse for a second. Instead, he grabbed his SMG and lurched back up.

  “One AP left,” he called out. “Don’t waste it.”

  On the platform, the shooter had pressed back into cover, pinned by Tanaka and Navarro taking turns leaning out. The tech stayed hunched over the console, fingers flying over inputs.

  Aurora kept throwing warnings at Kaden.

  [FIRING LOGIC – MODIFICATION ATTEMPT]

  [PLASMA CONTROL – SUBROUTINES ACTIVE]

  “Vos,” Jax said, forcing herself upright with a grunt, her words airy. “That console.”

  “I see it,” Vos said.

  He lifted his SMG again. His arm shook more now; Kaden could see the tremor in the barrel. He fired anyway.

  The burst went high, ripping through a light cluster instead of the tech’s head.

  “Fuck,” Vos said under his breath.

  His next burst was tighter. One round sparked off the edge of the console. Another hit the railing. The third clipped the tech’s shoulder. They cried out and ducked, one hand clutching the wound.

  “Got him,” Vos said. “Not dead, but grumpy.”

  “That’s enough,” Jax said.

  Tanaka shifted his stance, bracing against a console.

  He tracked the platform shooter’s pattern: up, fire, down, shift. The next time they came up, he was ready. He leaned the shield just enough to get a line and fired. The blast blew chunks off the platform edge and tore into the shooter’s midsection. They went down and stayed down.

  “Platform rifle’s gone,” Tanaka panted.

  Navarro’s voice had gone more ragged now, too. “Rifle’s almost dry,” she said. “Couple rounds left.”

  “Use them well,” Jax said.

  They did.

  Kaden leaned out again and fired at the tech. His first burst missed. His second walked up the console, and the last round hit the side of their head. The tech folded forward over the controls.

  For a heartbeat, the room seemed to exhale.

  Then an Opp he hadn’t seen before surged up from behind a low console on the far side of the room.

  They wore heavier armor than the others, patterned slightly differently. Their weapon was stubbier, more like a carbine than a rifle. They moved with a smoothness that screamed Aurora enhancement—faster than tired muscles should have allowed.

  They swept the muzzle across the room and fired in a tight, controlled arc.

  Tanaka threw himself sideways, shield angling to catch the burst. He caught most of it, but not all. Navarro hissed as a round grazed her thigh. A console beside Kaden exploded in a shower of fragments that stung his exposed hand.

  Kaden snapped his SMG up, tried to lock the new target. His sights jittered. He squeezed anyway. The rounds went wide, chewing into the bulkhead.

  “New contact!” Vos yelled. “Right rear!”

  He fired, too. His rounds hit the deck near the Opp’s feet. The next volley from the Opp tore into his cover. A fragment caught him in the helmet and knocked him back, dazed.

  “Sergeant, this is bad,” Navarro said, breathing hard. “He’s fresh. We’re not.”

  The Opp stepped forward, using the destroyed console as partial cover. Their posture said it all—they thought this room was still theirs, that this was a cleanup, not a fight.

  Tanaka raised his shotgun, finger tightening on the trigger.

  The weapon went click.

  Not the dry, hollow click of an empty tube; a wrong, choked sound. The kind a gun made when something inside it decided physics was optional.

  Tanaka frowned behind his visor. “That’s not—”

  He racked the pump by reflex, ejecting a live shell that clattered against the deck and spun away.

  Kaden’s HUD tagged it as munitions, intact.

  Loaded.

  Tanaka fired again.

  Click.

  This time, Aurora twitched in Kaden’s vision.

  [ANOMALOUS INTERFERENCE – LOCALIZED]

  [WEAPON FUNCTION – DISRUPTED]

  For a split second, the Opp’s free hand flared with a faint, distorted shimmer—around their gauntlet, around the barrel of their carbine, around the space between them and Tanaka’s shotgun. The kind of visual quirk Kaden was starting to associate with system use when he wasn’t the one using it.

  “Jax,” he said, heart lurching. “It’s like the sim—”

  “Yeah,” Vos snapped. “They’re jamming his gun. Anything we can do, they can do too, remember?”

  The Opp saw the misfire. You could see the shift in their body language, the tiny uptick in pace as they recognized the advantage. Their carbine swung toward Tanaka’s center mass, then past him, toward Jax.

  Kaden’s stomach dropped. His SMG was already up, but his grip felt slippery and wrong. Aurora wasn’t helping his aim. His shoulder screamed. His sight picture drifted.

  I’m not going to get there in time.

  Tanaka, stubborn to the end, yanked his shotgun up and tried the trigger again out of reflex.

  Click.

  Navarro moved first.

  Her rifle coughed dry in the same moment. A dreaded click instead of bang. She didn’t swear. She didn’t even pause.

  She let it drop on its sling, hand already going for her sidearm.

  The pistol cleared the holster in one smooth draw. She brought it up, two-handed, over Tanaka’s shoulder, using the top of his shield as a rough support.

  The Opp’s muzzle was almost fully on Jax when Navarro fired.

  One shot caught them center mass, punching into the armor. It staggered them but didn’t drop them.

  She fired again, adjusting a few inches higher.

  The second round took them cleanly in the throat.

  They jerked back, weapon spasming a short burst into the ceiling. Then they collapsed, armor clanging against the deck.

  Silence chased the echo of that last shot, broken only by their own harsh breathing.

  Kaden realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it go slowly, SMG still trained on the corpse in case it decided to do something impossible.

  “Clear?” Jax asked after a long moment.

  Tanaka’s head turned, visor ticking through arcs. Navarro did another slow sweep with her pistol. Vos, helmet tilted, scanned the room as best he could from his knocked-back position.

  “Looks clear,” Navarro said. “Interfaces are dead. No more muzzles.”

  Aurora didn’t throw any new immediate threat tags at Kaden’s HUD. The only highlights were the consoles, the main firing logic pillar, and the tags over Opp bodies that had settled to the flat, gray of confirmed KIA.

  He let his SMG barrel dip a fraction.

  His muscles felt like rubber bands pulled past their limits.

  “Tanaka,” Jax said. “You going to fall over on me?”

  Tanaka looked down at his shotgun like it had personally insulted him. “Gun’s loaded,” he said. “What a busted fucking ability.”

  “Worry about it later,” Jax said. “We live, ordnance can figure out how much they hate that. Navarro, how’s the leg?”

  “Grazed,” Navarro said. “Nothing that’ll keep me from standing. Or shooting someone stupid enough to try something.”

  “Vos?” Jax asked.

  Vos groaned and pushed himself back up to one knee. “Still here,” he said. “Can’t feel my arm. Head hurts. Pride’s worse. Console?”

  Jax turned toward the main cluster.

  The pillar of light in the center of the room still pulsed with alien geometry. Aurora’s overlay didn’t change, but the subtext on the side was uglier.

  [PLASMA TORPEDO – PRIMARY FIRING CONTROL]

  [STATUS: ACTIVE / DEGRADED]

  [REMOTE INPUT – INTERMITTENT]

  Jax looked from it to Vos, then to Kaden.

  He felt like he’d spent every ounce of heat he had left. That single point of AP sat there like a lifeline and a taunt.

  He could use it now to smooth one more stabilisation if someone collapsed. Or he could save it for exfil, for when something went wrong on the way out. He hated that he had to think about it like math.

  For the moment, everyone was upright and breathing.

  Jax made the call for him.

  “Mercer,” she said. “Quick checks for leaks and holes on everyone. No full workups. If they’re standing and not spurting, we leave it for medbay.”

  “Copy,” he said.

  He moved from marine to marine, hands quick and efficient, checking seals, patting down armor for wet warmth. Tanaka’s bandage had held. Navarro’s thigh was already clotting under the graze. Vos had a fresh dent in his helmet, but Aurora only flagged “concussion risk,” not active trauma.

  Jax’s side bandage was already blooming light red under the wrap, but it hadn’t broken entirely.

  “Still good,” he said.

  “Then we’re done here,” Jax said. “For now.”

  She turned to Vos.

  “Eden,” she said. “You’ve been swearing at Opp code in your head since we got on this ship. This is your moment. Kill these guns.”

  Vos stared at the main console for a second, then let out a long, tired breath.

  “With pleasure, Sergeant,” he said. “Let’s make sure they never throw another torpedo at anyone ever again.”

  He limped toward the primary control bank, one hand trailing along a scarred support strut for balance. The screens flickered as he approached, alien characters scrolling fast and angry.

  Kaden watched him go, feeling the weight of the room settle over his shoulders.

  They’d made it into the core.

  Ammo low. AP lower. Everyone hurt.

  But they were still standing.

  Theta-3 held primary firing control.