The Stoikiy shuddered, a deep, protesting groan that ran through the very alloy of its decks. On the command dais, Admiral Sineus stood motionless, his gaze fixed on the Strategic Psio-Tapestry. The vast holographic river of light showed the grim calculus of their desperate race: a single, spear-like red line representing the coalesced Ashen Choir, driving toward the grey sphere of Zarya-Prime. A dozen smaller blue lines, his task force, strained to intercept. Beside the projection, a single, stark metric glowed with cold finality: Intercept Probability < 10%. They were too slow.
A concentrated volley of mnemonic energy, a silent storm of pure, weaponized grief, struck the flagship not from the front, but from the flank. The colossal ghost carrier, the source of the Choir itself, had not waited. It had turned its full, malevolent attention on the ship of the man who had unmade it. The Stoikiy lurched with a scream of tearing metal and overloaded systems. The main lights died, plunging the bridge into absolute blackness for a full second before the frantic, pulsing red of emergency power washed over the scene. The constant, low hum of the reality anchors ceased, and the silence that replaced it was a physical blow, a void where the sound of stable existence had been. On every console, the elegant Gzhel Weave patterns, the signature of Continuum order, shattered into dead grey static.
— Report! — Sineus’s voice was iron, cutting through the sudden chaos.
— Main power is gone! Reality anchors offline! — a tactical officer’s voice was tight with strain. — Hull integrity at fifteen percent! We are dead in space, Admiral, directly in the path of the primary hostile.
On the main viewscreen, flickering to life on emergency power, the ghost carrier filled the frame. It was a monstrous, twisted echo of a Derzhava-class dreadnought, its form shimmering with the collective agony of a hundred thousand betrayed souls. It ignored the smaller, faster ships of Task Force 'Peresvet' that harried its flanks. Its intent was singular. It bore down on the crippled Stoikiy, a predator moving to consume the one who had created it. The bridge was silent, the crew frozen by the certainty of their imminent, absolute erasure.
— Unidentified vector! Breaking formation! — Ksenia Voronova’s voice was sharp, cutting through the paralysis. Her station was one of the few still fully functional. — It’s the Derzhava! Admiral Orlov’s flagship!
Sineus’s gaze snapped to the tactical display. A single blue icon detached from the main fleet. Ferapont Orlov’s ship, already trailing fire and leaking plasma from the battle at the Song-Path inlet, was accelerating. It was not maneuvering for an attack run. It was placing itself directly between the helpless Stoikiy and the immense, onrushing ghost. A suicidal interception.
A private channel chimed on Sineus’s command console, a sound reserved for the highest level of communication. The face of Ferapont Orlov materialized, his expression serene amidst the chaos of his own dying bridge. The old Boyar’s eyes met Sineus’s, and in them, there was no fear, only a final, profound certainty.
— A Boyar’s duty is to shield his charge, — Orlov’s voice was calm, a quiet lesson delivered across the void. — Live, Valeriy. Find the balance.
The transmission cut. On the viewscreen, the Derzhava’s engines flared to a brilliant, impossible blue. The ship did not fire its weapons. It became one. It rammed the ghost carrier at full impulse power.
The impact was utterly silent. There was no fire, no explosion of metal and fuel. There was only a flash of pure, white light, a mnemonic cataclysm that expanded outward in a perfect, silent sphere. It was the light of two opposing truths annihilating one another. The ghost carrier, the vessel of memory, and the Derzhava, the vessel of matter, ceased to exist in the same instant. The light washed over the Stoikiy’s viewscreen, wiping it clean. When the glare faded, there was nothing. The Choir was gone. And Ferapont Orlov was gone with it. A hero, a mentor, and his entire history had been spent like currency to buy seconds.
The psychic shockwave hit the bridge of the Stoikiy. It was not a physical force but a wave of pure, weaponized loss, the feeling of a library burning to ash in an instant. Sineus gasped, a raw, ragged sound no one on his bridge had ever heard him make. He felt a cold, sharp crack radiate up his side, a pain that was not of the body but of the soul. He looked down. The Boyar’s seal at his belt, the heavy, solid piece of dark nephrite his mentor had given him upon his ascension, had shattered. A spiderweb of fractures ran through the stone. With a faint, dry click, it broke apart, the pieces falling to the deck like dead leaves. The symbol of his authority, the anchor of his lineage, the memory of his bond with Orlov, was dust.
The loss of the seal, the echo of his mentor’s final sacrifice, the full weight of his own failure—it all struck him at once. His vision tunneled. The red emergency lights of the bridge dissolved into a grey haze. His knees buckled. He collapsed on the command dais, unconscious before he hit the cold alloy of the deck.
The bridge was adrift in a silence deeper than the void outside. Dust motes, liberated by the impact, drifted lazily through the pulsing red emergency light.
The faint, sharp smell of ozone from burnt circuitry hung heavy in the still air.
