They made it twenty meters before their legs refused to pretend everything was fine.

  The corridor widened by a hand’s breadth near a junction, just enough that they weren’t scraping both walls with their shoulders. Kaden raised a fist out of habit, more gesture than signal, and stopped. Vos bumped into his back again, caught himself with a soft curse, and then stopped too.

  “Here,” Kaden said. “Just… give me a second.”

  He pressed his good shoulder into the bulkhead and slid down until his knees bent. Not quite sitting, not quite standing. His boots squeaked on the deck, metal slick under them with a mix of things he didn’t want to think about too hard.

  His left hand pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The foam-sealed stumps felt wrong in a deep, visceral way. His body kept sending phantom reports up the nerves, little ghosts insisting the missing fingers still existed, that if he flexed them they would move.

  He didn’t flex them.

  Vos leaned back against the opposite wall, breath loud inside his own helmet. His visor was a mess of scrapes and dried spatters. A streak of almost-black Opp blood cut across his chest plate. The sling across his torso looked tight enough to strangle.

  For a moment neither of them spoke.

  The ship groaned around them, metal flexing under stress somewhere far away. Somewhere above, muffled by decks and bulkheads, something heavy detonated. Kaden felt the vibration pass through his back and into his ribs.

  His HUD still floated in the corner of his vision, politely insistent.

  [HAND TRAUMA – STABLE]

  [BLEEDING – CONTROLLED]

  [AP – MERCER: 3/5]

  He acknowledged the alert and let it shrink.

  His stomach did a slow, unpleasant flip as the adrenaline surge finally tapered off. The aftertaste of it felt greasy in his mouth.

  “That,” Vos said at last, “was fucking awful.”

  Kaden huffed a laugh that hurt more than it should. “Not a fan of close quarters?” he asked.

  “I like doors,” Vos said. “I like forcing them. Opening them. Being betrayed by them. I don’t like whatever that was.”

  “Knife ballet?” Kaden said.

  “More like knife slapstick,” Vos said. “Pretty sure I almost tripped over my own feet twice.”

  “You did,” Kaden said. “Once. And then you used your head like a battering ram.”

  Vos tilted his helmet, as if considering. “Credit where it’s due,” he said. “That was extremely stupid of me.”

  “Worked, though.”

  “Yeah,” Vos said. “You’re welcome.”

  Kaden let his head tap gently against the wall behind him, just enough contact to ground the dizziness. The corridor lights buzzed, cycling through a faint flicker that Aurora quietly corrected for. His left ear was still half-muted from the blast that had split the squad; everything on that side came through as pressure and muffled sound.

  He looked down at his hand.

  The foam sealant had gone from white to a dull, grayish cream as it set. Dried blood clung to the torn edges of his glove. Below the tourniquet line, the suit fabric bulged slightly, swollen under the compression. Above it, his remaining fingers twitched in small, involuntary pulses.

  Up close, the tremor looked almost ridiculous. You’re missing parts, of course you’re shaking.

  His stomach heaved again. He swallowed it down.

  “Hey,” Vos said quietly. “Stay with me.”

  “I’m here,” Kaden said. He dragged his gaze away from his hand and forced it down the corridor instead. Nothing moved. No shadows that shouldn’t be there. “Just… recalibrating.”

  “First time losing bits is a trip,” Vos said. “You did all right.”

  “That what passes as praise from you?” Kaden asked.

  “Would you like a medal instead?”

  Kaden snorted. The sound came out thin. “I’d like my fingers back,” he said.

  Vos was quiet for a moment. “Medbay’ll give you something better,” he said. “Chrome ones. Built-in party tricks.”

  Kaden flexed his right hand around the SMG’s grip, feeling the way the tendons in his forearm pulled, the familiar connection.

  “If I get that far,” he said.

  Vos didn’t tell him he would. He wasn’t Jax. No slogans, no certainty he didn’t have. He just nodded once, helmet dipping.

  “You patched it,” Vos said. “You kept your head enough to treat yourself inside the fight. Aurora liked that. I saw it tick.”

  Corin would have been smug as hell if he’d seen it. The thought came unbidden, a tired echo of the academy medic’s voice: You don’t get to panic until after you finish the job.

  Trauma Response had done its work. Turned the screaming into steps. Now that those steps were done, the screaming wanted its place back.

  He forced himself to do something practical.

  “Ammo,” he said.

  Vos blinked. “What?”

  “Check your mags,” Kaden said. “We’re not done.”

  Vos blew out a breath that might have been a laugh. “Sure. Logistics before existential crisis.”

  He pushed off the wall with his good shoulder and fumbled a fresh magazine out of a pouch to count by thumb. One in the well, two full spares on his belt, one partial. It wasn’t a lot, but it wasn’t nothing.

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  “About half load left,” Vos said. “You?”

  Kaden tugged his own mag free with his right hand, avoiding looking at the left. Rounds glinted back at him. “Call it two-thirds,” he said. “Plus a couple on the harness.”

  “Then we’re not completely screwed,” Vos said. “Only mostly.”

  Kaden reseated the mag and listened to the click.

  The two Opp bodies back at the relay had been a problem a minute ago. Alive. Dangerous. Now they were just shapes on the floor behind them, another smear in a corridor that was starting to collect a lot of those.

  He thought of the tech’s hand on the console. The way he’d turned to face them instead of bolting.

  “They weren’t marines,” he said, before he could talk himself out of it.

  Vos looked up. “What?”

  “The two back there,” Kaden said. “They weren’t line. They were techs. Maintenance. Or… whatever the Opp version of that is.”

  “Yeah,” Vos said slowly. “You saw the harness.”

  “They were trying to fix their ship,” Kaden said. “We came around the corner and—”

  He stopped. The image replayed anyway. His shoulder hitting the guard. Vos’ first burst. The knife.

  “And if they fixed it,” Vos said, “they’d make sure more torpedoes pointed at Valiant actually lit up and went where they were supposed to. You want to triage targets? They were high priority.”

  It was the argument Kaden had built on in his head, somewhere under the pain and the panic and the procedure. It still tasted bad.

  “Doesn’t make it feel any less like we just killed the guys under the hood instead of the ones driving,” he said.

  Vos shrugged with one shoulder. “War’s mostly killing the people who make it possible for the other assholes to shoot you,” he said. “They had armor on. They knew where they were standing. They didn’t throw their hands up.”

  Kaden thought of the knife again, the way it had come for his side without hesitation.

  “Yeah,” he said. “They didn’t.”

  He let the silence stand for a few seconds.

  His HUD pinged again, this time softer. A minor notification slid across the side of his vision.

  [SKILL: FIELD STABILIZE (R1) – PROGRESSION: 78% → 80%]

  He dismissed it and didn’t mention it. It felt wrong to talk about skill percentage with his fingers still warm in Opp blood on the deck behind them.

  “Any Aurora love your way?” he asked instead.

  Vos made a thoughtful noise. “Saw a little bump when I started feeding bad timing into that relay,” he said. “Technical Savant lit up for a second. Nothing big. Enough to know it’s paying attention.”

  “Good,” Kaden said. “I’d hate for you to wreck their whole torp net and not even get a pat on the head.”

  “I prefer tangible appreciation,” Vos said. “Like not being on the receiving end of said torp net later.”

  “Fair,” Kaden said.

  He pushed himself a little straighter on the wall. His legs still felt like they were half a second behind his brain, but they held.

  “How’s your head?” he asked. “On a scale of one to ‘door to the face.’”

  Vos snorted. “Somewhere between ‘stairwell tumble’ and ‘bulkhead made a pass at me,’” he said. “I can still count and I know my name. If I see two of you I’ll just shoot the one closer to me.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Kaden said.

  He watched Vos for another few seconds. The man’s posture was tight, but his breathing was evening out. The arm in the sling stayed still. No fresh bleeding. No new alarms.

  “Comms?” Kaden asked.

  Vos flicked his gaze sideways, calling up a feed Kaden couldn’t see. A second later he grimaced.

  “Still garbage,” he said. “I’m getting background carrier, some fleet-level noise, but it’s all chopped to hell. Whatever hit us took a bite out of local relays, or they’ve got focused jamming running in this section.”

  “Nothing from Jax,” Kaden said.

  Vos shook his head. “I’ve got the same ghost fragments we heard right after the blast in buffer,” he said. “Nothing new since.”

  The memory surfaced clean and sharp.

  Jax’s voice under all the static. Tanaka’s buried in the noise.

  “She said regroup,” Kaden said. “Direct order.”

  Vos’ mouth twitched. “See?” he said. “You do follow orders.”

  Kaden rolled his eyes. “I followed that one by nearly getting my hand cut off.”

  “You say that like it wasn’t your choice to block a knife with your fingers,” Vos said.

  “It was that or my guts,” Kaden said.

  “See?” Vos said. “Good instincts.”

  Kaden let that sit. The urge to argue that it hadn’t felt like choice at all clawed at his throat. He swallowed it.

  “We know two things,” he said instead. “One: Jax was alive after the blast. Two: she wanted us alive and moving. So we keep moving.”

  “Toward what?” Vos asked. “We don’t have a map, just vibes.”

  Kaden tilted his head, listening past the hum of the ship.

  Faintly, very faintly, there was a new texture in the background. Not the distant booms of ship-scale weapons, but a rougher stutter. Automatic fire. It came and went with the subtle irregularity of real combat. Not sim tracks, not background noise.

  He pointed upward. “That way,” he said.

  Vos was quiet for a second, then nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I hear it too. Somebody’s having a worse day than we are.”

  “Jax,” Kaden said. “Theta. Or someone who needs us either way.”

  “Could also be Opps shooting each other for fun,” Vos said. “But sure. Up sounds right.”

  “Your last AP stays unused until we hit a wall,” Kaden said. “Literally.”

  Vos wiggled his fingers with mock solemnity. “One Rapid Override in the bank,” he said. “I’ll name it and everything.”

  “Please don’t,” Kaden said.

  He checked his SMG again, more out of habit than need. The weapon felt heavier now that his left hand couldn’t share the load. He shifted the sling, trying to find a balance that didn’t pull too hard on his shoulder.

  “Med stock?” Vos asked.

  Kaden glanced down at his harness. Sealant canisters were down by one. Tourniquets down by one. Injectors down by one. Still enough there for someone else if he was careful.

  “Still functional, lost a few things to the bleeding. No longer sterile.” he said. “Would prefer not to play mix-and-match with missing parts again, though.”

  “Try not to make it a hobby,” Vos said.

  Kaden straightened fully. His legs complained, but they held. The pain in his hand had retreated into a nasty, throbbing background noise. Manageable. For now.

  He checked his HUD one more time. No new warnings. Just the persistent ache of fatigue indicators and the quiet, sullen progress bars that would only really move once they got out of this.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Vos pushed off the wall with his good shoulder, rolled his neck once, and brought his SMG back up into a loose ready position.

  “Not even a little,” Vos said. “Let’s go anyway.”

  Kaden nodded and started forward.

  The blood they’d tracked from the relay area had left faint smears across the deck behind them. His boots squeaked once as he stepped through a fresh patch where something from his glove had dripped.

  The ship felt different now. Less like a place they had infiltrated and more like a living thing slowly realizing it had intruders. The lights still burned the same sickly yellow. The walls still bore the same angled panels and unfamiliar glyphs, but there was a tension in the air that hadn’t been there when they’d first breached. A subtle sense of systems straining.

  He took point again, not because he felt particularly heroic, but because he still had two hands that could sling a gun and a medkit, and Vos’ left arm was hanging by threads. The medic goes where the bullets will be. That was the job.

  “Hey,” Vos said behind him, tone lighter.

  “Yeah?” Kaden asked.

  “At least it wasn’t a door this time,” Vos said.

  Kaden snorted despite himself. “Improvement,” he said. “We’re moving up in the world.”

  “Next op,” Vos said, “I’m filing a formal complaint if I get attacked by a piece of architecture again.”

  “You can take it up with Aurora,” Kaden said. “See how that goes.”

  “Pretty sure Aurora’s the one laughing,” Vos said.

  They hit the next junction and slowed, stacking up without needing to talk about it. Kaden peeked the corner. Clear. The path beyond bent upward slightly, toward where the thin rattle of distant gunfire pressed against the hull.

  He felt the ache in his hand. The ghost weight of missing fingers. The drag of fatigue.

  Then he thought of Jax’s voice through the static.

  Regroup. Direct order. Alive.