Fine red dust kicked up in the wake of the Nomad, its reinforced treads chewing through the sands of Threshold as it bounded up and over rolling dunes that, when they had landed, had stretched as far as the eye could see. Though they could not see their goal itself, they could see the sign of it: the scorched grey sky ahead of atmospheric disturbance and debris thrown up by the crashed cruiser.

It took another fifteen minutes before they saw it, the wreck still burning. A jagged, smouldering silhouette of twisted metal and molten armour, it lay cradled in the crumbling basin it had carved inside the moon’s surface.

Inside the Nomad, the five Rooks rode in taut silence.

Cassidy was up front beside Rosewood, who handled the controls; since they’d lost Tiran, he’d taken on the unit’s piloting duties. Their expressions were both distant, eyes flicking between the terrain and the sensor readouts on the dash. Behind them sat the other three; Aryn hunched over control panel against the aft-right body of the Nomad, Nallera cleaning her rifle with a casual air that belied her precision, and Q’ira, lounging on the rearmost bench but watching the signs of burning wreck through the front canopy with a calm that didn’t reach her eyes.

Cassidy’s voice eventually broke the silence. ‘How far out?’

‘Two klicks,’ confirmed Rosewood. ‘Interference is climbing. Lot of disturbance thrown up by the impact. Blackbird won’t be able to get a sensor lock on us soon.’

‘Love that,’ said Q’ira at the back. ‘The five of us locked in a metal graveyard, alone. Love that.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Cassidy. ‘We won’t be alone.’

Rather than let the grim pronouncement lie, Q’ira rolled her eyes. ‘Can you stop saying shit like that, Boss?’

‘Yeah!’ Nallera snapped her rifle casing back into place. ‘You better make good on that promise.’

‘You want trouble?’ said Aryn, brow creasing as he looked at her.

‘There’s gonna be trouble no matter what,’ she pointed out. ‘I want the kind of trouble I know how to deal with. These guys? I know how to shoot ‘em.’

They crested a dune, and the valley dropped before them. There, vast and still smouldering, stretched the shattered hulk of the Vaadwaur cruiser. The stern had broken off completely, and now lay buried in a nearby ridge, while the bow was gutted. The central structure had been split like a log, bulkheads peeled open and twisted.

After a moment’s observation, Aryn pointed to a half-buried cluster of towers and sensor nodes. ‘There. Datacore’s housed midship. Comms relays are probably slagged, but my readings say the main drive’s still intact.’

Cassidy gave a curt nod. ‘Put us down near that overhang. We’ll approach on foot.’

Rosewood brought the Nomad to a halt just below a twisted outcropping of slagged metal. The wind whispered the edge of a howl as it snuck into the crevasse, and as they disembarked, sand drifted across their boots and gear. Drawing breath was to find the air dry and scraping. Here, the world felt less like a desert and more like a graveyard, as soot and ash sank from the skies, debris of a shattered ship.

Nallera swept her rifle around in a generous arc. ‘No movement.’

‘Not yet,’ said Rosewood.

‘If I survived that crash,’ mused Cassidy, ‘I wouldn’t wait around to die in the open.’

As if on cue, a fizz echoed through the canyon.

The Rooks hit the dirt like they’d practiced it, though Q’ira added a flourish of rolling behind the prow of the Nomad. A polaron blast scorched the rock a metre from Cassidy’s head.

‘Contact! Portside ridge!’ Nallera yelled.

From behind a slope of fractured hull plating, three Vaadwaur soldiers emerged. Their armour was battered and scorched, and one dragged behind a twisted leg, but all of them were armed and all of them were ready to fight. One dropped to a knee and unleashed a barrage of polaron fire that scattered the Rooks further.

‘Not dead yet,’ Rosewood muttered, and snapped off a blast of return fire. His shot caught one Vaadwaur in the shoulder, spinning him back behind a chunk of hull.

‘We don’t have time for this!’ Aryn warned, ducking behind a fallen strut.

‘Maybe we can ask them nicely to leave?’ shouted Q’ira. Her contribution was mostly covering fire from behind the Nomad.

‘Flank left,’ snapped Cassidy, overriding the banter. ‘Suppress them. Three, with me.’

This movement was more fluid than their ducking for cover. Cassidy and Nallera swept to the right, while Rosewood looped left in a low sprint as Q’ira continued to pin the Vaadwaur down with steady suppressive fire. Aryn stayed low, calibrating a photon grenade, then lobbed it in a short arc towards the enemy’s cover.

The explosion shook the slope, shaking down cascades of sand and debris. Two of the Vaadwaur were flung out, one limp, the other still alive and dragging himself back with one hand.

Cassidy stalked out of cover, sidearm raised, and fired once. The soldier stopped moving.

Smoke curled from broken metal, and the wounded Vaadwaur lay still. In the silence, the Rooks regrouped.

‘Warm welcome,’ observed Q’ira, breathing hard.

‘Let’s move,’ grunted Cassidy. ‘We’re not here for pest control.’

They passed deeper into the wreck. The cruiser’s corridors were bent and blackened, the walls warped by the crash, structural bracing jutting out like broken ribs.

Aryn consulted his tricorder as they moved, voice hushed. ‘A lot of bodies. But some signs of life. Cluster of them to our north-east.’

‘Isolated life-signs are probably dying,’ Cassidy agreed. ‘Clusters probably survivors ready to fight. If we can go around, go around.’

It took a little longer. At one point, they had to jump down through a door, the bulkhead turned floor. But their destination of the computer core chamber was the sort of place that had been built to survive blast and impact, even if the scattered bodies of dead Vaadwaur crew hadn’t been so hardy. This deep into the wreckage, they were reliant on their torches to shine a path through claustrophobic corridors of the dead and dying.

The core was in a narrow chamber, and the main control console was dead. Aryn checked the panels while Nallera knelt beside it and pulled out the mobile power core from her pack.

‘Let’s see what life we can pump into this,’ she muttered, but it took some minutes before light flooded into the control panel. Rosewood shifted his feet impatiently as Aryn then worked.

‘Most of the memory’s intact,’ Aryn said at last, looking over the data flooding on the screen. ‘Encrypted, obviously.’

‘You can crack it?’ asked Cassidy.

‘With time. But we can’t take all of this. So I’ll need a bit to identify what we want. A lot of this is peripheral: ops logs, maintenance, comms.’

‘We want fleet movements,’ Cassidy reminded. ‘Defence plans. Any signs of Underspace reinforcements.’

‘I know,’ said Aryn, a little testy.

Rosewood looked over Aryn’s shoulder, then moved back to the door. ‘Pull what you can. We’ll keep watch.’

Time passed, heavy and silent. Somewhere high above them, Rosewood thought, the squadron would still be fighting in the stars. Buying them time. Fending off the enemy. And they had no idea if they’d still be there when they ran.

At length, Aryn made a low noise of surprise. ‘I’ve found something,’ he breathed. ‘Buried deep. Command-level encryption. It’s…’ His voice trailed off, then he tried again. ‘I think this is access protocols for the sector’s Blackout Outpost.’

Q’ira let out a low whistle. ‘You’re sure?’

‘We get that,’ said Nallera, popping up beside him, ‘and we can end all of this.’

‘If I can finish the decryption…’

‘We’ll buy you time,’ said Cassidy shortly.

Then Nallera looked at something on Aryn’s screen and said, ‘Hey, what’s that?’

There was a pause. Rosewood looked back.

Aryn’s swallow was audible. ‘Passenger manifest logs.’

Nallera carried on, oblivious. ‘This says -’

‘Three, we have a mission priority -’

‘What’s up?’ Cassidy appeared at Aryn’s shoulder. And read. Somehow, Rosewood didn’t need to be told to realise what was going on. After ten seconds, the big man said, ‘Find him.’

Aryn hesitated. ‘Sir, we have a clear mission priority and an emergent secondary objective -’

‘The Vaadwaur commander who’s been a thorn in our side, who orchestrated the atrocities of Proxima, is here,’ Cassidy growled. ‘Find him.’

‘He could be dead, he could be gone -’

‘You’re going to at least damn well try, Four!’

Q’ira cleared her throat. ‘How about we just get this done, bail, and then tell Endeavour to slag this site from orbit?’

Rosewood sucked his teeth. ‘Little bit war-crimes-y.’

‘Oh. Yeah. My bad. We don’t have those in the Syndicate.’

Aryn spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Drehm was aboard to supervise the comms relay’s construction. Internal logs put him in their CIC during the battle. What I can tell from the scans we did on our way in is that it’s deeper in this wreck, with a low chance of surviving impact from there. There’s been no signs of movement on sensors in the vicinity.’

‘Life signs?’ asked Cassidy.

‘Impossible to say for sure,’ Aryn sighed. ‘Sir, I need more time to complete the objective -’

‘Chief?’ Cassidy turned to Nallera, shouldering his rifle. ‘Watch Four’s back. You two and Five get back to the Nomad once you’ve extracted everything you need.’

Her brow furrowed. ‘Uh, Boss, if we run into trouble on our way out and we’re split up -’

‘Then you’ll deal with it.’ Cassidy turned to Rosewood. ‘Expect you want to hunt.’

‘You’re damn right I’m finishing this.’

Aryn’s lips twisted in frustration. ‘Sirs, we could get a bead on the Blackout Outpost with this -’

‘Then get that bead,’ said Cassidy simply. ‘You have your orders, Three, Four. Two: saddle up.’

Aryn opened his mouth to argue again, but Q’ira gently touched his arm, silencing him. Cassidy and Rosewood were already moving, disappearing back through the door and heading deeper into the twisted bowels of the shattered ship.

Metal groaned around them as the wreck settled further into its shallow grave. Soon, they’d dig another.