The transport shuttle slammed down.
There was no gradual descent, no grace in the landing.
The heavy hydraulic ramp hit the basalt shelf with a jarring, grinding impact, and the cold cabin air was instantly replaced by a wall of heat, sulfur, and fine grey ash that billowed through the open door like a living thing.
Jack felt the grit against his visor before he saw it.
The world outside the ramp was a haze of pale dust and dark rock, the sky above choked with ash clouds that turned the morning into a permanent twilight.
The dry, aggressive heat found the gaps around his wrist seals, pressing through the thick tactical wraps beneath his gloves and promising dehydration long before the first kilometer.
He stood up from the bench.
His hand drifted to his thigh, searching for the worn brass curve of Nolan’s lighter.
The pocket was empty, the fabric smooth and unfamiliar.
He pulled his hand back, bracing his palm against the vibrating plating of the cabin wall instead, letting the tremor travel up through his arm and settle in his chest.
Beside him, Okafor was already on his feet, his rifle held across his body, his posture loose and tense.
He did not look at Jack.
He was watching the grey haze beyond the ramp, his jaw working, his eyes scanning the empty canyon.
“Lovely,” Okafor said, his voice flat.
“They picked a nice spot.”
Jack did not answer.
Reyes-Thorn appeared at his left, her boots hitting the metal deck with a solid, final sound.
She had her helmet sealed, her rifle low, her weight balanced.
She looked at the ramp and then at Jack, saying nothing.
She did not need to.
Voss was already moving.
He shouldered past Okafor, his shoulder plating brushing against Jack’s harness as he pushed toward the exit.
His rifle was up, the stock pressed into his shoulder, the barrel sweeping across the canyon mouth in tight, aggressive arcs.
“Clear,” Voss said.
The word was a declaration, not a report.
He did not wait for confirmation.
He stepped down the ramp, his boots crunching on the volcanic gravel, kicking up puffs of fine grey dust that clung to his shins.
He pivoted left, then right, his weapon tracking his gaze, his posture stiff and dominant.
Jack watched the way Voss moved.
He planted his feet too wide, keeping his chin up and his chest forward in a perfect, textbook sweep.
It was a stance built for the clean training decks of the Academy, where the floor stayed level and the grip was guaranteed.
Nothing in those manuals had ever accounted for what the ground actually felt like.
Jack stepped down the ramp.
The ash was slick under his boots, loose and unstable, sliding over a layer of harder rock that shifted without warning.
He found traction on a solid seam of basalt and held it, keeping his weight low, his center of gravity compressed.
The air was thick and hot, tasting of burning fuel and sulfur.
He scanned the canyon.
The walls rose on either side, sheer basalt cliffs that caught the grey light and held it.
The rock was dark, almost black, laced with veins of yellow and green where geothermal deposits had bled through the stone.
A faint tracking beep chimed in Jack’s ear, the HUD in his visor displaying a steady green bracket: FORMATION INTEGRITY: 100%.
Along the high ridges, small black sensor nodes were embedded in the dark basalt like blind eyes, recording their progress for the scoring officers.
Low-lying mist hugged the floor of the canyon, a pale yellow fog that pooled in the depressions and crept around the bases of the rock formations.
Jack looked at that mist and did not like it.
The shuttle’s engines roared behind them, the pitch rising as the transport lifted off.
The downwash hit him like a physical force, pressing his helmet down and driving the ash against his visor in a stinging cloud.
He crouched lower, his hand finding a rock outcropping to steady himself.
The sound built to a scream, then faded as the shuttle rose into the grey haze, leaving the squad alone in the silence that followed.
The silence was not quiet.
It had a texture.
The hiss of distant steam vents, the crackle of cooling rock, and the low, constant hum of something mechanical, buried deep in the stone, waiting.
Voss straightened and raised his rifle toward a narrow corridor where the basalt walls pinched together and the yellow mist grew thick.
“Diamond formation,” he said.
“Reyes-Thorn, right flank. Okafor, rear guard. Calloway, inside left.”
Reyes-Thorn did not move.
She stood at the base of the ramp, her boots still on the metal, her rifle held across her chest.
“Voss,” she said, her voice quiet but carrying clearly through the comms.
Voss turned, his helmet visor catching the grey light.
“You have something to add, Reyes-Thorn?”
“It’s pooling in the low ground, and that corridor is the only path. If the trial is designed to test us, that corridor is where the test starts. We should slow down and assess the approach.”
“We should follow the drill,” Voss said.
“The diamond formation maximizes defensive coverage in narrow terrain. We move at double-time and clear the corridor before any ambush can activate.”
“By the time we clear it, we will be in the trap,” she said.
Voss took a step toward her, his boots crunching on the gravel.
His hand tightened on his rifle grip, his chest expanding to make him look larger, more solid.
“The drill works. It is the standard for a reason. You are questioning my command. Do not do that again.”
Jack stepped between them.
It was not a dramatic movement.
He simply slid his boots into the space between them, angling his body so he was facing Voss without exposing his back to the canyon.
“Voss.”
Voss’s glare shifted to Jack.
It was a hard, measuring stare that traveled down Jack’s frame, cataloguing his posture, his gear, and the way he held his weapon.
“What, Calloway.”
“She is right,” Jack said.
“The corridor is a kill box. The walls are too close. If we go in at double-time, we are running into whatever they set up.”
Voss took a step forward, his shoulder plating brushing against Jack’s.
The contact was deliberate, a test.
He leaned in, his helmet close to Jack’s.
“You think you know survival, Calloway? You think scavenging in the ruins of New Chicago taught you something the Bastion didn’t? You are a conscript. Do your job, stay in formation, and do not question my lead again.”
Jack did not move.
He felt the heat of Voss’s breath through the helmet and the tension in his own shoulders, the urge to push back.
It was the same edge that had kept him alive in the grey markets, the instinct that told him when to strike.
He did not act on it.
He took a step back, letting his shoulders drop in the posture of compliance.
Voss let out a sharp, satisfied breath and turned away, his rifle sweeping back toward the corridor.
“Okafor, rear guard. Reyes-Thorn, right flank. Double-time. We move in thirty seconds.”
Okafor slid into position, his back to the canyon, his head tilted as he watched the ridges.
Jack did not look at him.
His eyes were on the canyon walls.
The basalt was dark and uneven, but there were patterns in it.
Seams.
Horizontal lines that did not match the natural fractures of the stone.
Recessed panels sat flush with the rock face, their edges too straight, too precise.
They were positioned at regular intervals to cover every angle of approach.
“Panels,” Jack said over the squad channel.
Voss did not turn.
“Artificial course. Keep the cadence.”
They moved into the corridor.
The walls closed in on either side, the basalt rising fifty meters high, the sky reduced to a narrow strip of grey above.
They moved at double-time, their boots drumming on the volcanic crust, the sound echoing off the narrow walls.
The pace was too fast for the terrain.
The yellow mist thickened, swirling around their boots and obscuring the ground.
A sudden, high-pressure fissure hissed open to their right.
A wall of superheated steam washed across Reyes-Thorn’s visor, obscuring her field of vision in a sudden whiteout.
She raised her left arm to shield her faceplate, her forward momentum stalling.
“Reyes-Thorn, maintain formation!” Voss snapped.
She lowered her arm, her steps resuming their rhythmic crunch through the ash.
“Understood.”
They pressed deeper into the throat of the canyon.
The ground was deceptive; beneath the layer of fine volcanic soot lay a treacherous glaze of heat-softened shale.
Suddenly, Okafor’s boot lost purchase.
He slipped backward toward a bubbling geothermal pool that hissed with sulfurous mud.
Jack’s arm shot out, his fingers clamping onto Okafor’s shoulder harness with a jerk that strained his own back.
He hauled Okafor back onto the solid basalt shelf before the boiling clay could touch his grease-slicked boots.
Okafor let out a sharp, ragged breath, his helmet tilting down toward the grey water.
“Thanks, Jack.”
Voss didn’t even turn his head.
Okafor went quiet, his body rigid.
The hum grew louder.
It was a low, mechanical sound, buried in the rock, resonating through the stone.
It vibrated up through Jack’s boots, through his harness, through his ribs.
Jack saw the seams in the panels shift a second before the sound changed.
“Contact,” he said, but the noise filter on the comm channel clipped the word under the rising steam hiss.
The left wall panel slid open with a sharp, pneumatic click.
A dark steel turret emerged from the rock, its twin barrels already spinning as the targeting laser cut through the sulfurous haze, painting a bright red dot on Voss’s chest armor.
Voss froze mid-stride, his textbook posture instantly shattering as his boots slid in the ash.
“Contact left!” he shouted, his voice echoing in the close confines of the canyon.
The turret fired.
The training-calibrated kinetic rounds were designed to register on armor sensors before flesh, but the sheer force of the impact on the stone next to Voss’s helmet sprayed him with sharp basalt chips.
He scrambled backward, his boots kicking up dust.
Jack raised his rifle, but the comm channel was already filled with Voss’s frantic command.
“Reyes-Thorn, Okafor, break left and flank! Calloway, cover the front!”
Jack’s eyes swept the left wall.
He saw the subtle seams in the rock, the recessed panels identical to the first.
“Negative!” Jack called out.
“Don’t break left! The whole wall is rigged!”
The warning came too late.
Reyes-Thorn, executing the command by training reflex, lunged toward the left.
Instantly, a second panel split open on the right, and another spinning barrel rose from the stone, its laser intersecting with the first directly over Voss’s chest.
Interlocking fire.
“I’m pinned!” Okafor yelled, diving behind a crumbling basalt pillar.
Kinetic rounds chipped away the rock, sending shards of basalt flying past his visor.
“I can’t move!”
HUD warnings flared in Jack’s vision: FORMATION INTEGRITY DEGRADED.
CASUALTY RISK: HIGH.
A heavy metallic crash echoed behind them.
A thick steel grate slammed down from the ceiling, sealing the entrance and blocking the path back to the landing shelf.
The yellow mist thickened, rising from the fissures in the rock, filling the corridor and reducing visibility to a few meters.
It burned and stung, coating their armor and stressing the filters.
Jack’s throat burned faintly from trace infiltration, but his seal held.
Then a floor vent ruptured beneath Voss’s boots with a deafening pop.
A concentrated plume of yellow chemical gas hit his faceplate.
He stumbled, his helmet striking a sharp basalt spur as he went down.
The impact cracked his collar seal with a sharp hiss of escaping pressure.
“Gas,” Voss rasped, his breathing spiking on the comms.
“My seal is breached. I can’t see.”
The two red targeting lasers locked onto his chest.
The barrels whirred, settling into their next firing cycle.
Jack looked at the wall.
He saw the subtle, half-second gap in the turret’s rotation, a flaw in the mechanical sweep that no Academy manual would ever mention, but one a scavenger’s eye could trace in an instant.
He saw the loose grate of the maintenance shaft above it.
A cold, rhythmic warmth pulsed beneath his forearm wraps, a silent pressure behind his eyes that sharpened the world into crystalline focus.
The HUD in his visor flashed red: SYSTEM DEVIATION WARNING.
BREAKING FORMATION WILL VOID MAXIMUM SCORE.
If he stayed in cover, he remained in the running.
He kept his standing.
He kept his chance at the archive, at Nolan’s truth.
His fingers twitched against his empty pocket, seeking the ghost of brass.
The lasers locked onto Voss’s chest.
Jack moved.
He keyed his comm, his voice cutting through the panic.
“Kayla—”
And he launched himself into the crossfire.