The corvette detached from the underbelly of the Stoikiy like a splinter of iron pulled from a fortress wall. It was a small ship, a blade designed for speed and silence, its hull painted a flat, non-reflective grey that drank the light of distant stars. On the command bridge of the dreadnought, the maneuver was logged as a sensor ghost, a momentary flicker of corrupted data that the ship’s primary consciousness, the Logos Weave, would dutifully smooth over and forget. The official record would show nothing. The truth was that the Strelka was now alone, a rogue element in the vast, ordered space of the Slavic Continuum.
Inside, the world was cramped and functional. The air carried the sharp, metallic tang of an over-stressed life support system and the faint scent of ozone from the powerful engines. There were only five of them. Admiral Sineus, his uniform stripped of all but the most basic rank insignia. Ksenia Voronova, the archivist, her grey robes seeming out of place amidst the hard angles of the military cockpit. And the three volunteers: a grim-faced pilot whose hands never left the controls, a young engineer monitoring the power conduits with fierce intensity, and a tactical officer whose eyes were fixed on the sensor display, watching for any sign of pursuit.
Sineus stood before them in the narrow space between the command chair and the forward viewport. He did not raise his voice. His words were as cold and precise as the vacuum outside.
— This mission is unsanctioned, — he stated, his gaze meeting each of theirs in turn. — We are acting without the authority of the Synod. If we are discovered, we will be branded traitors. If we fail, we will be erased from the record. There will be no rescue. There will be no remembrance.
He paused, letting the weight of the declaration settle in the small cabin. The three volunteers did not flinch. Their resolve was a tangible thing, a silent reinforcement of the ship’s structural integrity. The pilot gave a single, sharp nod.
— We understand the stakes, Admiral, — the tactical officer said, his voice steady. — The Choir must be stopped. The price is irrelevant.
— The price is never irrelevant, — Ksenia corrected softly from her station, not looking at the officer but at Sineus. — It is the only thing that gives the act meaning. We are choosing to bear it.
Sineus acknowledged her point with a slight inclination of his head. He had made his choice in the darkness of his quarters, surrounded by the fragments of his past. Now, he was merely executing the consequence.
— Take your stations, — he commanded. The briefing was over. The pact was sealed.
Ksenia moved to the navigator’s console, a small, auxiliary station jury-rigged into the corvette’s main panel. It was a crude setup compared to the grand, sunken pulpits of the fleet’s capital ships. She placed the jade data-slate, the alien artifact from the Celestial Mandate, onto the console’s interface plate. Its surface was cool and unnaturally smooth.
A soft, green light bloomed from the slate, casting its flowing hexagrams onto the bulkhead. The corvette’s own systems struggled to interpret the alien logic. On Ksenia’s display, the familiar Gzhel Weave of the Continuum’s operating system flickered violently, its cobalt blue threads desaturating to a dead grey as it failed to find a common language. This was the risk of their new path, the price of using forbidden knowledge. It was an act of controlled chaos.
— I have it, — Ksenia said, her fingers tracing patterns on the jade surface. She was not breaking the encryption; she was translating its fundamental structure. The flickering on her screen subsided. The Gzhel Weave stabilized, its lines now interwoven with the faint, green glow of the Mandate’s code. A new, hybrid truth had been formed. — Course laid in.
— Engage, — Sineus ordered.
The pilot’s hands moved with practiced certainty. The Strelka banked sharply, turning away from the established, shimmering river of the common Song-Paths. It aimed for a patch of absolute blackness, a void where no recorded path existed. The low, choral hum of a standard jump sequence was absent. Instead, a sharp, dissonant tone, like a single, strained violin string, filled the cabin.
The ship plunged into the unlisted corridor. The view outside was not the majestic vortex of gold and crimson light that marked a Continuum-sanctioned route. It was a tunnel of deep violet and bruised purple, shot through with threads of an unsettling, metallic green. They were off the map, moving through a secret artery of the galaxy, a path built on a memory that the Continuum had chosen to forget. They were truly rogue now, their actions a final, irreversible violation of the treaties and laws that held Kingdom 39 together.
Sineus took the command chair. It was a simple, unadorned seat of worn leather and cold metal, a stark contrast to the grand dais of the Stoikiy. The Strategic Psio-Tapestry was gone, replaced by a single, small screen displaying the corvette’s vital signs. The weight of a fleet of five thousand souls had been lifted from his shoulders, replaced by the sharper, more focused burden of the four lives in this cockpit and the impossible task that lay before them. His focus was absolute. The finale had begun.
The small ship was quiet, the only sound the low, guttural hum of its over-driven engines. The strange, dark light of the secret path washed over the silent figures on the bridge.
Ahead lay the Mnemonic Deeps, where reality itself came to die.
