After Engagement
The fire hissed low, throwing warped shadows across dead bark and scorched grass. The air still stank of ozone, blood, and that faint metallic bite of energy discharge. James sat with the datadrive turning slowly in his fingers, his eyes following its inky black surface as if it might whisper secrets if he stared long enough.
It hadn't. Yet.
They had made camp in a hollow tucked beneath a collapsed tree ridge—natural cover, but tight and claustrophobic. Good for hiding, bad for escape.
Dell hunched over a cracked datapad, surrounded by jury-rigged tools: a coil antennae scavenged from a dead drone, an energy converter half-held together with wire and hope, and a lens he claimed was from an old Tier-Three helmet rig. The ground around him was littered with shards of spent cores, plastic tubing, and scorched grass that glowed faintly from the residual charge.
"The problem isn't opening it," Dell muttered, chewing on a stimstick with the kind of focus that could've passed for madness. "It's what opens after we do."
James glanced up. "You mean it's booby-trapped?"
Dell's laugh was short and dry. "Oh, worse. You think the Consortium just lets rogue agents walk around with datadrives like this unmonitored? There are pingback daemons in the code. You crack this thing too hard or too loud, and you might as well stick a flare up your ass and shout your location to the nearest orbital drone."
Aria sharpened a blade in the corner, as always. The rhythmic shing, shing of metal on whetstone was both soothing and unsettling. Her eyes never stopped moving, flicking between Dell, Mercer, James, and the treeline like she was mapping exit strategies in real time.
James looked to Mercer. "You recognize the symbol. Blackspire. You said they weren't Consortium. So who are they?"
Mercer's eyes didn't move from the trees. He'd been silent for most of the hour, only speaking to direct a patrol rotation or adjust their perimeter. His armor looked older now, like the dust clinging to it belonged to a different war. But now, finally, he spoke.
"Splinters. Radicals. People who used to work for the Consortium and now want to tear it apart. Only no one really knows how many of them are left—or what they're after. Just rumors. Just bodies."
"So they're the boogeymen," James said.
Mercer shrugged. "To some. To others, they're martyrs. Depends on who's paying you."
"Why would they be out here?" Aria asked.
Mercer finally turned. "Because out here, we're beneath notice. Beneath scrutiny. The Program's where they dump the garbage. Makes it easier to hide real operations. Smuggling, data transfers, even assassinations."
Dell tapped the drive. "This thing is encrypted six layers deep. But it's not the usual Consortium style. Whatever's in here... someone wanted it seen eventually, but only by the right eyes."
Aria's whetstone slowed. "And we're the wrong ones?"
Dell chuckled dryly. "We're the wrongest ones."
Suddenly, a light blinked green on his pad.
"Okay... got a soft crack," Dell whispered. "Not the whole drive, but a peek into its architecture. Logs. Locations. Coordinates. Comm-packets."
James leaned in. "Coordinates to what?"
Dell scrolled, frowning. "Rift exit tunnels. Hidden caches. Program breach points. This thing isn't just loot—it's a map."
He rotated the tablet to show James a web of crisscrossing routes—some marked in Consortium blue, others in corrupted red.
"What's that mean?" James asked.
"Blue are official Program assets. Red are... off-grid. Unauthorized. Possibly Blackspire-made."
Mercer turned. His voice was steel. "Wipe it. Now."
"No." James didn't think, didn't hesitate. "We need it. You want out of here, don't you?"
Silence fell. Then Mercer spoke again, lower. "If the Program catches us with that, we're not just off the books. We're deleted."
James didn't blink. "They already deleted me once. What's another go?"
Dell looked between them, tension stiff in his shoulders. "Guys. This isn't theoretical. This drive's sending out low-spectrum pings. Dead frequency. Masked. That's Consortium shadow protocol. Somebody's already looking for it."
Aria stood slowly, tucking her blade into her belt. "Then we move."
Mercer nodded once. "We pack and shift before daybreak. One kilometer south. We'll hole up in a rock nest I spotted on recon. Less chance of satellite ping."
They began to break down camp. James watched Dell carefully store the datadrive in a shockproof pouch, wrapped in lead mesh. Rai never said a word, but shouldered his rifle and vanished into the night, running silent scout duty as if he'd never stopped.
As they moved, James fell in beside Aria.
"You ever think about why we're really here?" he asked.
"In Theta-9?" she asked, not looking at him.
"In the Program. In this war."
She didn't answer immediately. When she did, it was barely above a whisper. "Every war needs corpses. Someone has to be first over the wall."
James nodded. "Guess we just got lucky."
She finally turned. "No, James. We got picked."
In the dark, under the whispering Rift winds, James wasn't sure which answer was worse.
They moved fast through uneven terrain, past rusted relics of earlier incursions—dismantled drones, old Program banners torn by weather and neglect, the skeletal remains of forgotten squads. Every landmark told a story. Most of them ended in silence and fire.
When they reached the rock nest, the squad went quiet. The formation was narrow and jagged, like a mouth carved into the earth. The perfect place to go dark. Or to die screaming.
Dell set up his gear inside the rear crevice and powered a containment net with just enough juice to scramble scans. Mercer took watch with Rai. Aria climbed to the nest's jagged lip.
James sat with his back against the stone, letting his heartbeat settle.
He looked up and saw the stars.
They looked so peaceful. Distant. Untouched.
"If I survive this," he muttered to no one, "I'm stealing a goddamn spaceship."