Datumcore: Echoes of the Null Vector

He yanked connector away, breath ragged. Vision lagged half a second behind real motion for several heartbeats.

The unspoken cost settled: neural latency would hinder reflexes in any upcoming melee.

Kaelen noticed his momentary sway.

– You all right?

– Functional, – Vorl answered. Truthful enough.

A hush fell. Only the distant hum of cooling fans spoke, interspersed with random ticks from the damaged ring.

Vorl turned to wider concerns.

– Damage report.

Zyra flicked a switch; a schematic projected in midair. Orange fractures snaked across dorsal spine, concentrated around Caliper mountings.

– We lost another two percent integrity. If the ring shatters, vacuum eats us for breakfast.

– Can maintenance drones brace it? – Kaelen asked.

Zyra shrugged.

– Maybe, if we shut down drive oscillators and give them time. We don’t have time.

Elara steadied herself, wiping blood from her cheek. A faint shimmer still laced her irises.

– The Stitch left echoes in our wake. Coherence will follow those echoes once they decompress. We must keep moving.

A soft clang from maintenance bay interrupted; a drone trundled out, its chassis smeared with leaking sealant. It bleeped uncertainly, then continued toward the ring chamber.

Vorl appreciated the machine’s silent loyalty.

Pine-scented air cycled through vents, still masking oily tang from super-heated wires.

Kaelen leaned back, grimacing as burned skin tightened over knuckles.

– Where do we jump next?

Vorl allowed the map to overlay his visor. He saw the dust moon beneath them, a barren sphere striped with tungsten swirls.

– We drop into that cratered hell to cool the Caliper and patch hull.

Zyra lifted one eyebrow.

– And if the Coherence arrives?

– Then we take the fight on surface terrain. Their Normalization beams scatter in particulate dust.

Her grin returned, feral and shining.

– I like volcanic cover. Good for ambushes.

Elara offered a quieter perspective.

– Dust moats distort threads. I can mask us. But if I weave again too soon, hemorrhage risk grows.

Kaelen snorted.

– Hemorrhage risk has been our travel companion since we left the Vigilance.

A brief laugh escaped even Vorl’s lips, surprising him with its cracked sound.

He keyed comms.

– Nomad-Seven, silence transponder and run a deep sweep for logic plague residue.

– Sweep initiated, – answered the shard. Its voice now carried faint undertones of classical verse, as if quoting lost poetry lines between data segments.

Straylight’s thrusters fired at half power. The ship descended into the moon’s feeble gravity well, leaving faint contrails of ionised gas behind. Through viewport glass, pale dust plains expanded, shimmering bronze under a weak sun.

Vorl caught scent of reheated caf from Zyra’s mug; she sipped while steering, her free hand steady on throttle.

She had sprinkled a dash of cinnamon, a smuggler’s luxury, into the bitter brew.

Elara sank into the auxiliary seat, fingers twitching as if still grasping intangible threads. Bruises darkened under her eyes.

– I hear whispers, – she confessed softly.

– Communicate, – Vorl prompted, though worry threatened his stoic mask.

She shook her head.

– Noise, not words. Like static underwater.

Kaelen turned his chair, expression grave.

– Could be the missiles we displaced. Their improbability waveforms are still collapsing.

Vorl nodded.

– We land, evaluate, and repair.

– And what about the anomalous code? – Kaelen pressed.

Vorl rested a hand on Mnemosyne Blade.

– If corruption spreads, I cut it out.

His answer sounded final, yet inside he felt a tremor of uncertainty.

The horizon rose; grey mountains, eroded and cracked, formed jagged teeth beneath swirling dust storms. Little arcs of blue lightning danced within the dust columns.

Zyra initiated landing thrusters.

A metallic clang reverberated through hull as landing skids deployed. One skid stuttered; hydraulic seals hissed, refusing full extension.

– Port skid jammed. Compensation? – she asked.

– Fire retro thrusters starboard. Set down on two points, – Vorl decided.

The ship tilted. Another jolt shivered through chairs. Elara gripped armrests, knuckles white.

Impact came as a muted thud sending a puff of fine dust skyward. Shock absorbers groaned. The ship settled lopsided but stable.

Immediately, heat-bleed louvers opened, venting superheated gas with a roar. The smell of scorched metal flooded the cabin.

Nomad-Seven’s motes drifted toward engineering bulkhead.

– Hull temperature falling. Ring chamber pressure stable, – it reported.

Vorl rose. Servo lag plagued his left leg again; he suppressed a grimace.

– Kaelen, run external scans for pursuers. Zyra, prep drones with hull resin. Elara, med-bay for neuro stabilizers.

He allowed no room for debate.

He had to hold until the next escape vector emerged.

Kaelen’s console pinged.

– Multiple quantum echoes at stitch origin. Coherence signature still unresolved, but high probability they’ll chart our heading.

Vorl confirmed with a terse nod.

– That gives us how long?

– An hour at best, – Kaelen replied. His voice carried the resignation of one who had modeled too many defeats.

Zyra flipped a switch, releasing two beetle-drones from the ventral hatch. They buzzed into the dust haze, neon worklights cutting cones of visibility through murk.

Elara lingered by the hatch, watching soft clouds swirl outside.

– The dust sings, – she murmured.

Vorl joined her, sensors mapping faint micro-vibrations.

– You hear everything.

– I feel everything, – she corrected. A sad smile flickered.

He caught the smell of dried blood on her sleeve, metallic and human.

Zyra returned with a small tin.

– Lunar jerky? Reconstituted protein, smoky flavor. Helps focus while we play mechanic.

She tossed a strip to Kaelen, who looked at it as though confronting existential nonsense. He still bit it, chewing slowly.

Vorl accepted a piece, though taste hardly registered behind armor filters. He recorded the gesture as bond reinforcement.

Maintenance feed displayed live footage: drones extruding silver resin across fractures. Each application hissed, the sound oddly soothing.

The port landing skid clanked loudly; hydraulic seals finally gave way, extending with a sudden snap. The ship leveled.

Inside, a cabinet door swung open on its own, releasing a handful of ration packets that fluttered weightless for a moment before settling.

Zyra snatched one midair, noted the label.

– Orchard Mix again. Someone at the factory loves their fruit.

– Beats fungus gruel, – Kaelen said around jerky.

Vorl proceeded to engineering bay, Nomad-Seven’s avatar trailing him like fractured moonlight.

Within the bay, steam curled from the Caliper chamber. Ring surfaces glowed dull red where integrity had thinned.

He traced a crack with metal fingertips. A faint vibration seeped into his arm, reminiscent of distant thunder.

– You touch fracture, risk data bleed, – Nomad-Seven warned.

Vorl pulled back, acknowledging the quiet admonishment.

A drone hovered, spraying coolant mist, each hiss whispering back echoes. The engineering lights flickered, then steadied.

He turned to diagnostic panel, attempting manual override to quarantine the mysterious subroutines.

His thumb actuator seized mid-gesture. Sharp numbness shot to wrist, as though nerves were dipped in liquid nitrogen.

He finished input with stiff fingers, locking code behind encrypted gates.

Cost followed: reaction time figures dropped five percent across left hand readouts.

He closed fist twice, feeling sluggish compliance.

– Subroutines contained, – Nomad-Seven reported.

– Source?

– Unable to trace. Code resembles shell of your legion’s training archives.

Vorl tasted bile. Someone, or something, used his past against them.

Elara entered, carrying a med-kit. She injected herself with neural stabilizer, sighing as tension eased from her shoulders.

– I can reinforce the door we made, obscure echoes further, but I need a focus token, – she said.

– Define token.

– An object saturated with our present timeline’s weight.

Vorl considered, then unbuckled the shattered left pauldron from his armor.

– This carries all the weight you want.

Elara’s eyes widened, reflecting fractured metal.

– Are you certain? It’s part of you.

– Memory is not armor, – he replied.

He handed it over. Her threads leaked again, weaving around the cracked plate like vines claiming abandoned steel.

Golden sparks flew where thread met metal. Tiny echoing chimes rang out, like distant glass bells.

Zyra’s voice crackled from comms.

– Incoming contact! Three skimmers, low horizon. They found us faster than math predicted.

Kaelen’s tone sliced in, urgent.

– Dust storm hides them but vector converges. Fifty-two seconds to weapon range.

Vorl pulled helmet faceshield shut, the HUD blooming updates.

– Zyra, warm nose cannons. Kaelen, reroute battery capacitors. Elara, finish masking or we fight exposed.

– On it, – Zyra replied, voice buzzing with adrenaline.

Outside, dust roiled higher, turned golden by mid-day star. Lightning wove luminous nets across clouds. The drones zipped toward cargo hatch, work unfinished.

Vorl felt the corvette shift as Zyra rotated its nose toward the contacts.

A jolt rocked the hull – first missile impacting nearby ridge. Dust geysers erupted, pelting Straylight with grit that drummed across plating.

Zyra fired cutting lasers. Twin lances of near-invisible blue clipped a skimmer’s wing. The craft spiraled, then exploded in a cascade of white shards.

Electricity danced across hull from the blast’s proximity. Neon veins raced over plates, triggering minor systems reboot.

Kaelen’s probability streams jammed, glyphs stuttering.

– Feedback scrambling my datasets!

– Bypass, switch to analog scopes, – Vorl barked.

He sprinted down the corridor toward dorsal gunwell, leg servo dragging slightly.

Smoke curled from ceiling seams; a burnt resin odor filled passageway, mixing with cinnamon from Zyra’s earlier caf, oddly comforting.

Climbing ladder rungs, he felt weight of missing pauldron – left side lighter, shockingly vulnerable.

He reached gunwell interface. A holo-reticle unfolded before him, targeting range overlaying dusty horizon.

Two skimmers remained, weaving unpredictable arcs.

He squeezed firing stud. Energy pulses erupted, streaking teal beams that ionized dust into glowing plasma clouds.

One pulse grazed a skimmer’s stabilizer, causing logic-field flicker; the craft banked away.

The second skimmer fired a Normalization beam. A ghostly white cylinder of light lanced toward Straylight.

Vorl’s instincts screamed. He severed gunwell connection, yanking free neural plug. The beam passed overhead, grazing antenna array.

Nomad-Seven alerted.

– Comm dish overwritten, remote channels compromised.

Static crackled through earphones. For a heartbeat, he heard a voice from nothingness, calm and indifferent.

– Harmony beckons.

He slammed circuit breaker, killing external audio.

A tremor slid through his skull; he bit his tongue to ground his thoughts, copper blooming.

– Second missile inbound, – Zyra called.

Vorl re-linked guns, rotating mount. The skimmer used dust and beam glare as cover. He closed one eye, aligning reticle amid swirling sand.

He fired. The beam cut a clean line, meeting missile mid-air. Detonation boomed, shockwave punching hull.

Pain spiked through his thumb actuator – tiny fracture lines creeping further.

He breathed through it.

– Target neutralized, – reported Nomad-Seven.

The remaining skimmer retreated, trailing smoke.

Kaelen radioed.

– They’re folding out, likely to fetch bigger friends.

– Then we lift, – Vorl declared.

He descended to bridge. Elara stood in center aisle, pauldron now wrapped in shimmering thread, floating before her like a captured moon.

– The token anchors us. I can blur signature for a short jump.

– Do it while we still have rings, – Vorl answered.

Zyra plotted ascent vector.

Drones recalled inside, clamping to maintenance nests. Resin still dripped from their nozzles, leaving shiny puddles that smelled like burnt sugar.

The Caliper rings spooled, displaying new stress patterns, but alignment within tolerance.

Elara’s threads extended outward, merging with ring glow. Her breathing slowed into measured cadence.

Kaelen strapped into seat, burnt hand trembling as he powered down decoy subsystems to feed main thrusters.

The ship lurched skyward, engines roaring loud enough to shake loose a cascade of dust from ceiling vents. The dust sparkled gold in bridge lighting.

Ascent G-force pressed them deep into chairs. Vorl gritted teeth; he felt servo lag in leg amplify, each tremor mocking him.

Elara whispered something lost beneath engine thunder.

The stitching began. Reality outside thinned, like paint washed under solvent. Stars became hazy lines, the dust moon a dwindling blot.

A sudden pressure pressed inward on Vorl’s chest. He exhaled, but no air seemed enough.

The Caliper gave a tortured clang. An amber shard splintered off one ring, tumbling into the containment field and disintegrating into motes of dark.

Nomad-Seven’s alarm sounded.

– Integrity at sixty-eight percent.

Kaelen muttered a rapid equation under breath, hoping to shape probability by faith alone.

Space folded again. Their velocity collapsed to zero, then inverted. All was silent save Elara’s staccato breath.

Vorl tasted peach from earlier jerky mixed with blood on tongue – bizarre flavor of war.

The fold snapped shut.

They emerged into a quiet expanse of starless black, a hidden cul-de-sac in the nebula’s substructures.

Sensor arrays reported nothing but faint microwave whispers.

Elara sagged, threads retracting. She handed Vorl the pauldron, now spiderwebbed with luminous fissures.

– It will never be the same, – she said.

He secured it to a locker rather than his shoulder, acknowledging change.

Kaelen clapped weak applause with his good hand.

– We bought at least four hours. Maybe six.

Zyra slouched in chair, sipping the last of her cinnamon caf.

– Enough for actual sleep?

Vorl shook his head.

– Ring brace first. Then we search invasive code.

Nomad-Seven appeared near ceiling, motes drifting downward like silver snow.

– Sweep complete. Residual normalization strands isolated in memory bank seven. Quarantine recommended.

Vorl’s teeth clenched.

– Erase strand.

– Erasure may remove tactical logs for last engagement.

– Delete it, – he ordered.

Nomad-Seven brightened, then dispersed.

Kaelen sighed.

– One day we’ll forget every battle before we win the war.

Elara reached out, fingers brushing Vorl’s gauntlet.

– But we’ll remember why.

For an instant silence felt humane. Then a soft ping interrupted.

Kaelen frowned.

– Another code packet manifesting. Not normalization this time.

Vorl’s HUD lit with a single phrase repeating: memory is the final battlefield. Pixels crawled around letters as if alive.

Zyra stared, eyes wide.

– That’s you, commander.

Nomad-Seven re-formed, voice tight.

– Source of packet unknown. Encryption signature matches deep legion archives.

Vorl swallowed. A chill ran through organic spine.

He keyed systems, attempting to trace handshake. No luck.

– Could be Voron, – Kaelen guessed.

– Or something darker, – Elara added.

Zyra leaned back, exhaling a slow whistle.

– Whoever it is, they know where to find us.

Silence thickened. Engines idled, thrummed like distant drums.

Vorl squared shoulders.

– Then we keep moving. Reload drones, patch ring, purge ghosts.

Zyra saluted with flippant flair.

– Roger. Reloading.

Kaelen stood, joints popping.

– I’ll fetch fresh lubricant for your thumb actuator.

His attempt at kindness surprised Vorl.

– Appreciated.

Elara gathered her weaving tools, exhaustion tugging at her posture. She paused at door.

– The dust moon’s song followed us. I don’t know how long before it becomes a scream.

Vorl answered with quiet certainty.

– We will be gone before it does.

Kaelen exited toward engineering. Zyra bounded down corridor toward drone bay.

Vorl remained on bridge, alone with cooling fans and pine-laced air.

He gazed at pauldron in locker, lines of glowing thread still pulsing like a wounded heart.

His left thumb twitched, delayed. He flexed it slowly, acknowledging limits.

In the reflection of viewport glass, he saw himself twice: the soldier he was, and the ghost embedded in fading memories.

A flash of colour – not sensor alarm, but nebular light refracting across hull – painted the bridge mauve, then faded.

He inhaled, catalogued the smell of burnt jerky, ozone, and a distant suggestion of lilac that should not be there.

A faint voice came over internal channel, distorted beyond recognition.

– …merge… within…

His skin prickled beneath alloy.

– Nomad-Seven, track that whisper, – he ordered quietly.

– Tracking, – replied the AI. Motes glowed brighter, as though anticipating revelation.

The viewport ahead remained blank. Yet in a ghost image overlay, Vorl thought he saw the outline of a Coherence destroyer drifting in empty dark, too faint for instruments.

He blinked, and it vanished.

Adrenaline surged anew, cold as glacier melt.

He stepped toward command seat, ready to wake crew, when every status screen flickered.

A single new coordinate set appeared – origin unknown, target pointing deeper into nebula labyrinth.

He stared, breath held.

The navigation computer accepted the data unprompted, engines warming.

Vorl whispered to himself.

– We’re being herded.

He had no proof, only instinct.

Kaelen’s voice crackled over comm, distant.

– Commander, lubricant ready. Thumb repair in five.

– Understood, – Vorl replied absently.

His eyes never left the silent coordinate.

Somewhere in the ship, a relay clicked, aligning to course.

A low hum rose, like the distant purr of a great beast.

Outside, starless black shimmered with unseen motion.

Vorl’s pulse matched engine rhythm.

And in that stillness, the corvette began to drift forward on its own.

He realized too late the helm was no longer asking permission.

His last thought before alarms erupted: Who truly steers memory?

A crystalline chime filled the air, gentle, almost beautiful.

The void ahead yawned open, waiting.