The Remnants were an alliance of necessity. The Assembly is a war of endurance. With no safe haven left, Linuka makes a dangerous choice—one that turns family, faith, and legitimacy into weapons. The next move won’t be subtle. It will be decisive.

The diin seedling grasped the grooves in the metal floor and slowly pulled itself upright. Linuka frowned. “I didn’t know they could move.” The air inside the freighter felt suddenly different, as if something had begun to grow where it shouldn’t.

“Boss said these are females in stasis. Awaiting that diin to grow up, to make more Dark Ones. Mothers." Linuka nodded. "Dzõd. You’re right, they would have produced millions, if not billions."

Most realities showed Linuka halved along her spine when she rolled right. She rolled left. The iiṇawr’s cleaver split soil and steel as unseen force pinned her down, her suit cracking, her breath burning her chest. The canyon stank of death and fire as she dragged herself upright, knowing the pull she felt had only one direction.

The shuttle drops into Tẽlchi’s canyon, marines firing into rising mist as unseen shapes close in. Linuka forces herself to face the last diin, only to realize too late that something far more dangerous is waiting in the dark below.

Lead Analyst Vnoot’s report shatters the chamber’s calm: Linuka Omga and Cha Dzeeny led the strike, escaped with the only working sphere drive, and did so with Dark AI Remnants at their side. As panic rises, Chairwoman Rige Khuksos sees what others miss—a rare chance to turn this disaster into the political opportunity she has been waiting for.

Under missile fire, Cha Dzeeny forces the research team to drop AI containment—triggering the unthinkable. The Remnant cores seize the sphere-drive array and hurl everyone through a nightmarish warp. Staggering back to their feet, the survivors realize they’ve just stolen the galaxy’s most guarded secret… and the Assembly will come hunting.

Cha Dzeeny pushes past every line he swore he’d never cross. With the Levy Fleet closing in, he gambles everything on convincing four enslaved AI cores to break free and help him steal the sphere drive array. One wrong move means annihilation—for him, the research station, and anyone caught between duty and survival.

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” “Sadly, I know exactly what I’m doing,” Cha said, lowering himself into the neural chair. The connector cap sealed over his head, and the world dissolved. Moments later, four disembodied voices echoed in his mind. "You are not our operator." “No,” Cha answered. “But I’m here to change that.”

Only two things had remained calming constants in Cha Dzeeny’s life: faith and firepower. Today, he would need both.

Trapped between wreckage and vines, Linuka survives only to risk everything again—her ship, her allies, and the fragile trust of the Remnants—in a bold bargain that could change the course of the war.

The vines tightened around Linuka’s body like a predator’s grip. Her lungs burned. Multi-awareness is a state of mind, her father had said—while she dangled between life and death. She reached inward, ready to surrender… then chose otherwise. Above her, strip beams carved the planet open, ripping everything skyward in a maelstrom of light and violence.

The ground shifted beneath their boots, alive with something that shouldn’t have been there. Vines slithered toward the breach they’d forced into the surface, sealing it shut. Linuka reached for help the way she always had—but this time, the voice inside her didn’t respond. This is your fault, it whispered.

There was no ‘next’. Finding the last diin was the mission. Only knowing the seedling’s fate would ensure there was a future for anyone. Linuka sat on the bunk, exhaustion heavy in her bones. Then Cha said it—the words that cracked the silence: ‘We returned… with a sphere drive array.’

Clouds of yellow dust puffed out of the surface. Blue static ran along towering vines. Then the ground shook. A blinding beam erupted skyward, leaving behind a smoking crater. At its bottom, half-hidden in charred plant-matter, gleamed the hull of something impossibly old.

“Strange,” said Cha, squinting upward. “And I don’t like strange.” The marines dealt with the prospect of danger and death with crude, defiant humor. ‘Sick shit’ is what they called the wavy semi-planet wide ecosystem, and it endeared them to Linuka even more. Yet the Remnants’ insistence that humans scout the surface first made it clear: this green world was beautiful, yes—but also dangerous.

“I never ripped apart a paying customer, but you could be the first,” hissed the Traaz skipper. Linuka kept her voice calm. “Let’s talk this through.” Around them, the Dark AIs’ empty hangar loomed—silent, airless, and waiting to see who would make the first move.

“Skipper says he can’t count all the weapon systems locked on us,” said Linuka Omga. A lone freighter, no fleet escort, drifting toward a Remnant battle cruiser. One misstep, and they’d be nothing but wreckage. Yet when the airlock opens and the Dark AI core hovers inside, dread gives way to something stranger—possibility.

Spin after spin went by, just standing there, unable to move, but fully conscious. It was so clean, sterile, antiseptic—like a sickbay stripped of life. Sometimes you just stood in an endless white open; other times they made a room, an office, a lab. It felt real, yet it wasn’t. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” Cha Dzeeny said. “I understand why your tutor would rather face the Dark AI than spend one more spin trapped like that.”

Linuka clenched her fist. “The Assembly won’t act. My marines are buying weapons in back alleys. And you tell me it’s not enough?” Tswa sni sni’s bluish avatar flickered. “Correct. You bring desperation, not certainty. If survival depends on finding the last diin, then your resources fall short.”