Chapter 271: The Segarons [Edited]

The air inside the vessel was freezing, untouched by human breath for millennia.

Every step echoed against the seamless floor of dark obsidian metal. There were no rivets or seams, and the walls arched overhead in bizarre parabolic curves, flanked by tall vertical ribs that looked more like the fossilized bones of an ancient leviathan than structural supports.

Nicholas walked at the head of the formation, his senses at their peak.

He didn’t need to conjure a weapon with Plague Touch yet, but he remained ready. His dark blue eyes swept across every junction, dark alcove, and crystalline conduit embedded in the walls. Beneath the black floor, translucent cables pulsed with a faint violet hue, carrying dormant plague energy through the vessel.

"Look at the scale of this hallway," Nectron muttered, running a massive, armored hand along the curved wall. "A squad of main battle tanks could drive through here with room to spare. Whatever walked these decks wasn’t human-sized."

"Or they didn’t believe in personal boundaries," Julie whispered.

She was unusually quiet, walking in the center of the group with her camera pointed ahead. The tiny red recording light blinked in the gloom, while her grip remained tight around the device.

"Supervisor Selena," Julie mumbled, tugging the hem of Selena’s tactical jacket. "Is it just me, or does this hallway feel like it’s breathing?"

"It’s not breathing," Selena said firmly, though her hand rested near her sidearm. "It’s thermal displacement from the pressurized air entering through the vault door. Keep moving."

Zero led them through a towering archway into an immense, multi-tiered chamber.

"The bridge," he said quietly, stepping onto an elevated platform.

The command deck was staggering in size. Massive circular platforms rose from the floor at varying heights, each crowned with smooth, angular consoles made from translucent, smoky quartz-like glass. Three enormous viewing panes overlooked the pitch-black cavern surrounding the buried ship.

Suspended in the center of the chamber was a massive metallic sphere, surrounded by interlocking rings.

"No screens," Selena observed, approaching the nearest console with her scanner tablet. "No keyboards, no tactile switches. The interface must be neural or energy-based."

"The technology here makes Association tech look like flint and stones," Nectron remarked, peering into a dark floor shaft where countless crystalline filaments converged. "If Larry’s corporate buddies got their claws on even a square foot of this hull plating, they’d control the global defense industry overnight."

"Which is why it stays buried," Zero stated flatly.

He stood near the central sphere, his longsword sheathed across his back. The purple gemstone at the crossguard glowed steadily in resonance with the room.

While Nicholas monitored the corridors leading away from the bridge, Vixen walked around the upper circular dais.

Her green eyes moved across the geometric glyphs etched into the central command console. The crystalline slab hummed faintly, drawing at the spatial energy within her body.

"Careful, Vixen," Nicholas warned without turning. "Don’t trigger anything we can’t switch off."

"I’m just looking," Vixen replied smoothly, though her curiosity was getting the better of her. "It feels familiar. The resonance... it pulls on spatial folds. It’s almost like the console is built to react to an awakened frequency."

Before Selena could issue a warning, Vixen’s gloved fingertips brushed the center of the crystalline slab.

HUMMMMM.

The reaction was instantaneous.

Violet light surged through the floor conduits. The quartz console flared to life as electrical pulses raced across the platform.

Above them, the central sphere snapped into motion. The rings around it began spinning rapidly, emitting a low sonic wave that rattled their teeth and shook dust from the ceiling.

"What did you touch?!" Selena shouted, reaching for her weapon.

"I barely grazed it!" Vixen stepped back, raising her hands as the space around her fingertips rippled with nervous energy.

"Take defensive positions!" Nectron barked, planting his feet and bracing his kinetic shields.

Nicholas shifted his stance, dark energy coiling around his palms as he prepared to manifest a blade.

The rings suddenly locked into place with a deafening metallic clang.

From the center of the sphere, a shaft of pale blue and violet light shot downward, striking the central dais. It fractured and expanded into a massive three-dimensional holographic projection that filled the upper half of the command deck.

Julie gasped and stumbled backward into Nectron’s armored leg as she raised her camera.

Standing within the projection was an alien entity.

It was easily eight feet tall, slender yet heavily built, and covered in a sleek segmented biosuit that shifted like liquid metal. Its gaunt face featured four luminous golden eyes, elongated cranial ridges, and skin resembling polished dark slate.

The figure wasn’t looking at them. It was a recorded transmission, facing a designated interface point on the bridge.

When it spoke, the voice didn’t come from speakers. It resonated directly inside their minds—a harsh, layered broadcast that made their eardrums throb. Beneath the alien cadence, an automated translation rendered the words in deep, guttural English.

"Archon Ikar."

The voice carried the authority of an empire.

"The High Dominion Council has noticed your dormancy. Your silence has caused anger among the council. You were dispatched to this sector with a single mandate: to seed the conversion catalyst and harvest the species of this region"

Selena stared at the projection, her tablet forgotten in her hands.

The alien councilor raised a gauntleted hand, displaying a spinning celestial chart with Earth marked in deep, pulsating crimson.

"The catalytic spores were released into the lower atmosphere, yet the planet remains unharvested. The energy has not been routed to the Dominion fleet. You have ten standard cycles to re-establish navigational telemetry and transmit the conversion harvest data. You know the price of treason against the Sovereign Dominion."

The transmission flickered before the projection shifted.

A second recorded message began automatically, dated long after the first.

This time, the background was filled with the dark hulls of a massive fleet drifting through deep space. The councilor’s voice was no longer demanding. It carried cold finality.

"Ikar. Severing your quantum beacon from the Segaron network will not shield you from retribution. We have charted your fleet and we’ll send out a team to find you. Whatever primitive sentimentality has corrupted you, will lead you to your death. We will scour every continent of that planet. We will unearth your vessel. And you will be eradicated."

BZZZZT.

The transmission dissolved into static.

The metallic sphere slowed to a halt, and the holographic light collapsed back into the quartz console with a descending whine.

The bridge fell silent.

The implications of what they had witnessed settled over the team.

"A harvest..." Selena whispered. Her voice trembled before she forced it steady. "The plague... the awakening... the mutations that broke our world decades ago... it wasn’t a natural phenomenon. It wasn’t an evolution."

"It was a weapon," Nicholas said, his voice flat and steady.

Zero tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, his eyes fixed on the dormant console.

"The plague was designed to weaken and convert the planet’s biomass so it could be processed. The entity that commanded this vessel—Ikar—was the executioner sent to finish the job."

"And he stopped," Vixen said, looking at the quartz slab she had activated. "He cut the beacon. He crashed the ship and buried it under thousands of tons of rock to hide it from the fleet."

Nectron rubbed the back of his neck. "Why would a cosmic harvester turn against his own empire to protect a primitive rock like Earth? It makes zero sense."

"Maybe he saw something here," Nicholas said quietly, narrowing his eyes as he processed the threat. "Or maybe he just realized what he was doing was wrong. But the ’why’ doesn’t matter right now."

Nicholas turned toward the rest of the strike team.

"What matters," he continued, his tone cutting through the dread in the room, "is that the fleet gave him a deadline."

He looked toward the dormant vessel around them.

"And eventually, they are coming to collect."