Celestial Nexus

The quiet followed her into the cockpit.

Not the echoing silence of empty halls—there were no halls here. Just a narrow fuselage half-buried in sand, a cracked canopy, and a single pilot’s seat that still held the faint impression of its last occupant.

The desert wind scraped along the hull in thin, restless whispers. Inside, everything was close. Intimate. Every breath she took brushed metal and old circuitry.

Vayle sealed the canopy and sat in the pilot’s chair.

It was too big for her when she was younger. She used to swing her legs because they couldn’t reach the pedals. Now her boots fit perfectly against them.

The fighter had never been meant for two.

Her mother had made it work anyway.

Moonlight filtered through the fractured canopy glass, striping the instrument panel in pale silver. Most of the displays were dark. The crash had burned out half the systems. What remained ran on careful rationing and Vayle’s stubborn repairs.

She rested her hand lightly on the main console.

Cold.

Dead—

No.

Her eyes narrowed.

A single indicator near the lower panel pulsed faintly.

Slow. Steady.

That system shouldn’t have power.

The fighter barely held enough charge to cycle navigation once a day. She’d mapped every surviving circuit. She knew where the current went.

This wasn’t on her map.

Vayle leaned forward, heart beginning to climb.

The pulse was coming from beneath the auxiliary comm panel—one her mother had sealed manually before the final descent. Vayle remembered the argument.

“Don’t touch this unless I tell you to,” her mother had said, voice sharp, not looking at her.

She hadn’t.

Until now.

The cockpit felt smaller as she reached for her toolkit. There was no room to kneel; she twisted sideways in the seat, bracing one boot against the frame as she slid a thin prying blade into the seam.

The metal resisted.

Then gave.

The panel loosened with a brittle snap.

Behind it, tucked into the wiring harness, was a black memory shard.

Small enough to hide in a closed fist.

Along one edge, etched so finely it almost disappeared in shadow, was a sigil Vayle knew better than her own reflection—

A wing split by a vertical line.

Her mother’s mark.

The pulsing indicator brightened once as she touched it.

Warm.

Not from the desert heat.

From use.

Her breath thinned.

This fighter had barely survived the crash. Systems fried. Circuits fused. Yet this shard had been quietly drawing power all this time.

Waiting.

For her.

Vayle swallowed and slid the shard into the cockpit’s data port.

For a moment, the fighter did nothing.

Then the instrument panel flickered.

A thin vibration ran through the seat beneath her. Displays blinked alive in fractured pieces. Static crawled across the main screen, struggling to resolve.

A projection formed just above the console—unstable in the cramped space, its light reflecting off the canopy glass.

Her mother appeared.

Not the version from Vayle’s last memory—blood on her collar, breath shallow—but whole. Uniform intact. Hair braided tight. Eyes steady and sharp.

“If you’re seeing this,” her mother began, voice distorted but unmistakable, “then the contingency protocol has engaged.”

Vayle gripped the edge of the console so hard her knuckles whitened.

“The Zyre are not invincible.”

Behind the projection, simplified diagrams overlaid the cockpit display—oscillation curves, lattice structures phasing in and out of alignment.

“They maintain cohesion through harmonic synchronization. When they transition states, there is a resonance gap—a fractional destabilization in their core lattice.”

Static rippled through the image.

“I’ve isolated the disruption frequency. It’s encoded in this shard. The comm array in this fighter can be modified to emit it. The range will be short. The timing must be exact.”

Numbers streamed across the cracked display—frequency bands, pulse durations, amplitude thresholds.

“Watch for the shimmer,” her mother said. “That is the fracture point. If you miss it, they will reform before you can strike.”

The projection faltered.

For a heartbeat, the commander’s composure slipped.

“If I’m not there,” she added more quietly, “you will have to choose the moment yourself.”

The image destabilized, collapsing inward in a wash of static.

The cockpit went dark again.

Only the faint emergency indicators remained.

Vayle sat motionless, the cramped fighter pressing in around her, her mother’s voice still echoing in the small space.

Then—

A warning tone chimed.

Not from the memory shard.

From the external sensors.

Her head snapped toward the canopy.

The sand along the glass shifted—not from wind.

From movement.

The fighter’s proximity alert flickered weakly, struggling to lock onto something just beyond its range.

Vayle leaned forward slowly.

The desert outside looked empty.

Still.

And then—

The air wavered.

A tall distortion shimmered at the edge of visibility, phasing in and out like heat haze—but wrong. Too deliberate. Too vertical.

It flickered.

Shifted.

And for a fraction of a second, the space around it fractured with a faint, unmistakable shimmer.

Exactly as her mother had described.

The cockpit felt suddenly very small.

And whatever was outside was getting closer.