---
Silence.
Not the kind that hummed beneath cryo-chambers or pressed behind sealed hatches — this was deeper. Absolute. Unnatural.
A low groan of shifting metal cut through it. The floor vibrated. Then came the first sound of chaos: impact alarms screaming into darkness.
Kael gasped as his pod flung open violently, releasing him mid-drop. He hit the grated floor with a heavy thud, coughing as cold air stabbed into his lungs.
The red lights pulsing across the chamber weren't landing indicators. They were emergency failsafes. He could feel it — the entire ship was off-course.
> "Tyren? Oris?" Kael's voice was hoarse. "Status—!"
The chamber shook again. Sparks rained from the ceiling. A panel blew out above his head, revealing twisted wiring and fire. Something outside was pulling them down fast — faster than a stable descent.
> "Auto-nav offline."
"Hull breach in section C."
"Reactor shielding failing. Brace for impact."
Kael didn't wait. He sprinted down the hallway toward the mech bay.
---
In Pod Deck 2, Tyren Quade slammed a fist against the stuck hatch, popped it open manually, and rolled out into a hallway filled with black smoke.
"Not how I wanted to wake up," he muttered, eyes already scanning systems on his forearm display.
> Coordinates: Unknown
Planet: Unknown
Altitude: Dropping fast
Threat Level: Rising
"Oris, where the hell are you?!"
> "Here."
Oris's voice came through calmly — too calmly. A moment later, the tactician himself emerged from the far corridor, limping slightly but still in control.
"We've been hit," he said flatly.
"No comms, no source signature. It wasn't debris or mechanical. Someone targeted us."
Kael met them at the corner junction, panting. "We're still descending."
"No. We're crashing." Oris corrected. "There's no course correction available. Nox-4 is finished."
---
They didn't speak again until they reached the mech bay.
The massive steel crates had broken loose during atmospheric entry, but miraculously, Ravager, Specter, and Pulse Fang had stayed locked into their clamps.
"She held," Kael whispered, running his hand across Ravager's scratched armor.
Tyren already had his mech booting. "She's holding, but Nox-4 isn't. The mainframe's dumping all logs. Ship integrity: twelve percent and falling."
"Strap in," Oris ordered.
---
🌠 Surface Impact: Unknown Planet
The crash was brutal.
Nox-4 slammed sideways into thick swamp-like terrain, her port side exploding in flame as the bulk of the vessel split in two. Mech bay compartments were ejected on emergency rails, launching the three war machines out just before the reactor ruptured.
From inside their cockpits, the trio gritted their teeth as impact buffers screamed. Trees shattered. Ground buckled.
When the smoke finally cleared… all that remained of Nox-4 was a burning spine of metal, half-buried in alien soil.
---
Kael kicked open Ravager's hatch and slid down to the ground. His boots crunched over a strange mixture of ash and moist soil. The air was a contradiction — cold, like ice fog, but wet, like jungle breath.
> A weird combination of chill and humidity.
He looked up.
The sky was thick — not black, not gray — but something between. Like a bruise across the heavens. Two distant moons hovered behind a curtain of haze. Strange mountain silhouettes loomed in the distance, warped and jagged like broken teeth.
Tyren landed beside him, coughing. "Okay… definitely not C-17."
Oris emerged next, checking his scanner. "We're on an uncharted planet. Doesn't match any known catalog."
"No signature from the attacker either?"
"None. Whoever hit us used stealth munitions or tech we've never seen."
Kael's gaze drifted across the horizon. No sound. No movement. Not even wind. The silence pressed against his ears like pressure.
"It's too quiet," he muttered.
Tyren clicked his visor to thermal. "Not even heat traces. No animals. No bugs. Just… fog."
"This place feels wrong," Oris added. "Like it's been waiting."
---
They turned to look at Nox-4's remains. The ship was unrecognizable — a burning wreck half-swallowed by the earth. No salvageable fuel. No comms array. Nothing but twisted metal.
"Mechas survived," Kael said. "That's something."
"Barely," Tyren replied. "I'll need an hour to patch Pulse Fang's stabilizer leg. But power cores are stable."
Oris opened his command pad and scanned the terrain again.
> "We're stuck. No nav-point. No orbit. We don't even know where we are in the galaxy."
"We're not dead," Kael said, cracking his neck. "We've worked with worse."
Tyren gave a short laugh. "No. No, we haven't."
---
They built a temporary perimeter using pulse stakes from their mecha gear, marking out a safe zone. Tyren worked on a portable drone to scan the immediate area. Oris studied the terrain, analyzing if the silence was environmental or… enforced.
Then came a sound.
Distant. Low.
Like a growl — but too deep to be animal. It echoed faintly, then stopped. The mist thickened.
Kael's hand hovered over his sidearm. "Did you hear—"
"Yeah," Oris said.
Tyren glanced at his thermal feed. Still no movement.
"Whatever it was, it didn't want to be seen."
---
Night fell unnaturally fast. The dim light above vanished behind storm clouds that didn't rain. Only pressure thickened. Cold sweat formed despite the chill. The jungle beyond remained deathly still.
Inside their temporary field camp, the three pilots sat in silence.
"We're not on any map," Oris finally said. "Which means we're not just lost."
Kael leaned back against a crate. "We've been displaced."
Tyren added quietly, "Or diverted. By someone who doesn't want us reaching C-17."
They all stared into the dark mist.
Whatever planet this was — it wasn't dead.
It was watching.
---