WebNovels

Chapter 4 - 04

Two years had passed since the skies of Mindoir lit up in blood and fire.

And in those two years, the galaxy turned. Slowly, subtly, irrevocably.

The Mindoir colony had survived. Barely. Its scorched fields, burned-out hab-pods, and shattered comm towers had long since been cleared by Alliance reconstruction crews. New prefab housing units stood like scars across the red clay. Some survivors had returned. 

Most hadn't. 

The tragedy had joined the long scroll of quiet losses in the Traverse of outposts hit by pirates, slavers, or worse. Filed away in official records and sanitized press releases.

But beneath the silence, a quiet current had begun to form. A whisper. A tale passed in mess halls and mining platforms, in night shifts aboard refueling stations and science labs.

That someone or something had arrived to save the day.

The Alliance denied it.

Cerberus archived it.

The Council ignored it.

But one man watched.

"Report 192-A. Codename: Horizon. From Field Command: Classified Level Red."

The words crackled across the secure commline aboard the SSV Orpheus, a long-range recon frigate posted in a dead zone between systems. Inside the compact CIC, Commander David Anderson stood alone, arms crossed, watching the screen light up with embedded images and telemetry.

A freighter with its hull torn open by asteroid shrapnel. No distress signal had been received, only a passive ping from an escape pod weeks later. The survivors said something had cut through the debris field, peeled open the cargo bay, and pulled them free of a decompressed section no vacuum suit could reach.

They should've died. They didn't.

Anderson's brow furrowed as he tapped a command to read another report.

A fringe colony's atmospheric dome had collapsed during a sandstorm. No known rescue vessels were in the sector. But the dome was stabilized from within, the processor cores replaced and humming again with tools found melted and fused, as if reshaped by hand.

Yet no one saw who did it. No one ever did.

Across the past two years, this pattern repeated like a cosmic refrain.

Deep-space ships disabled in regions where no patrols reached were miraculously rescued.

Remote colonies spared from natural catastrophes by ghostly intervention.

Reactor meltdowns, stopped before detonation with no physical explanation.

Quarantined research stations, with their crews still breathing after exposure to virulent pathogens, despite zero containment gear arriving on time.

The Alliance knew the truth. Or rather, a few did. Anderson, especially.

He had been there at the debriefings. He read the scans. He saw the raw footage from Mindoir. But more than that, he had met the boy.

Kalen's presence in the galaxy had grown like ivy by being quiet, concealed, but strong. 

His body had grown taller, denser. Not visibly aged so much as sharpened while still youthful. Still learning but now more composed. Eyes clearer. Voice firmer. 

His raw power had not diminished, but it had been tempered and shaped by purpose, honed by time. He still operated from the shadows.

But his actions spoke.

And at the center of his clandestine existence stood his official Alliance handler, Commander David Anderson.

Whenever they met, they spoke not as superior and subordinate but as equals.

Anderson's voice echoed inside a decommissioned orbital depot, where he now reviewed the latest mission file, glancing up as Kalen dropped silently through the ceiling access hatch, hovering down before letting his boots softly touch the metal deck.

"You were off-course by about 0.7 AU on that last run," Anderson said without looking up.

"I didn't want the distress beacon to intercept me too early," Kalen replied, lips tugging into a faint smirk. "Gotta keep the mystery alive, right?"

Anderson snorted. "You're a damn cape-wearing ghost story to half the Rim colonies now."

"Good," Kalen said simply. "Ghosts aren't asked questions."

They stood in silence for a beat, long enough to let the formality fade.

"You pulled those scientists out of that biohazard lab on Menae Prime," Anderson said. "Alliance didn't even know there was an active pathogen until we intercepted their final logs. You saved them before they knew they needed saving."

Kalen gave a slow nod. "That one felt important."

"You're developing instincts," Anderson said approvingly. "Real ones."

"Learning from the best," Kalen said, eyes steady. "You always know where to draw the line. Where duty ends and humanity begins."

Anderson exhaled, tired but warm. "It's not always clear, son. Sometimes you won't know until the moment's already passed. But if you're asking the question then that already puts you ahead of half the brass I've known."

In his presence, Kalen felt… human. Grounded. Anderson was unlike the handlers and scientists who viewed him as an anomaly to study or a weapon to deploy. 

He was a soldier with everything that came with being one. Flawed, mortal, and entirely honest. Kalen admired that more than he could say.

He didn't just see a mentor in Anderson. He saw a version of himself that could be more than a tool. A man who made hard calls but never lost the moral compass in his gut.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the stars, another path had begun to form. One just as vital. Just as destined.

Jane Shepard, the fiery girl who had once stood beside Kalen on that fateful day in Mindoir, had kept her promise.

She had joined the Alliance Navy.

First came basic training on Jump Zero, where she learned the craft of rifle drills, zero-G maneuvering, hand-to-hand grappling, and comms decoding. 

Her instructors spoke in gruff tones, but when she moved, they took notes. She wasn't just good. She was driven. Tactical, quick-thinking, and unshakably calm in stress simulations.

Then came Officer Candidate School. She passed in record time.

By the end of her first year, Shepard was already pulling small-unit assignments on low-risk patrols like pirate sweeps, escort convoys, and colony defense.

Her reports were sparse on details, but heavy with praise. Words like "natural leader" and "command potential" started appearing beside her name.

She didn't know that in the shadows of her upward climb, her friend was shaping entire outcomes of galactic crises.

And he didn't know just how much she was changing, either. Not yet, at least.

* * *

The chill of an early morning on a windswept colony base wasn't much to write home about, but for Jane Shepard, it had become the kind of place she didn't mind calling her temporary home. 

A few prefab buildings scattered across uneven rock. A basic communications tower humming against the breeze. Dusty skies tinged with copper-red. Shepard had seen worse, hell, she had lived worse. And as she leaned against the cold steel of a half-assembled turret housing, canteen in one hand, she let herself feel something she rarely did these days: stillness.

"Well," came a voice beside her, "if it isn't the rising star of the 103rd."

Shepard turned and smirked at Corporal Halley Tran, the team's tech and recon specialist. "You mean the only one dumb enough to volunteer for cold-weather rotation on a fringe world?"

Tran grinned. "Nah. You just dragged the rest of us into this hellhole with your charm and terrifying ambition."

Another soldier, Private Malik, chimed in while walking by with a crate of fresh rations. "Hey, I don't mind the cold if it means not getting shot at for a week."

"Enjoy it while it lasts," Shepard replied, her smile fading slightly.

She gazed out across the horizon as the wind carried a distant howl. The memory of Mindoir flickered in her mind like an old vid with cracked visuals. 

She could still hear the screaming. Smell the burning. And the thud-thud-thud of distant gunfire cutting through the haze as her world fell apart.

Never again.

That vow had burned into her bones that day. But what surprised her wasn't the rage rather it was the clarity. And a face.

Kalen.

That strange, calm, distant boy who moved like a ghost but fought like a god.

He'd appeared out of nowhere and yet treated her, saved her, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He didn't gloat. He didn't grandstand. He just… was. 

He sat beside her as she trembled. He held her hand while her parents' bodies were zipped into Alliance recovery bags. He listened when no one else knew how.

It had stuck with her, annoyingly so, at first. But now? Now it was everything.

She shook the memory loose as Tran nudged her shoulder.

"You okay? You went full 'stare into the abyss' mode again."

"Just thinking about how far we've come," Shepard replied. "From panicked kids on burning colonies to this."

"Speak for yourself," Malik muttered. "I'm still panicking."

"Not you," she said with a teasing jab. "Me."

Tran arched a brow. "Something specific?"

Shepard took a long pull from her canteen before answering. "I was a scared, angry girl who just wanted to kill Batarians. Now I'm an officer leading teams to protect people. That shift didn't happen overnight. It was... earned."

"By you?"

"By all of us," Shepard said. "But mostly... thanks to someone who showed me that strength without purpose is just destruction."

Before Tran could respond, a sharp tone echoed across the compound.

"All squads, report to central hub for immediate briefing. Priority transmission incoming."

Everyone around the compound started moving as gear was being slung, helmets snapped into place, rifles checked with well-worn fingers. Shepard tossed her empty canteen into a nearby crate and headed toward the command center, with Tran and Malik close behind.

Inside, the atmosphere had changed. A holographic display hovered over the center table, showing a red-highlighted cluster of systems within the Skyllian Verge. 

Lieutenant Commander Varun, their temporary C.O., stood stiff-backed with arms crossed behind him.

"Alright, listen up. We've just received an intel tip from an anonymous but verified source detailing the existence of a Batarian-run slave ring operating out of an asteroid belt in the Vatar system. We're talking about hundreds of captives from fringe colonies. The Alliance isn't ready to commit full resources yet."

That drew some muttering from the room, and a heavy silence followed. The politics of the Skyllian Verge were murky at best because technically within human-controlled space, but heavily contested by pirates, slavers, and deniable actors from all sides.

Varun continued. "That said... we are authorizing a covert strike team. Volunteers only. No official records. No backup unless you call it in and buy time for a response fleet to mobilize. It's going to be dark, ugly, and potentially a death sentence. But you will make a difference."

Jane didn't hesitate. She stepped forward.

"I'm in."

Varun nodded, unsurprised. "Lieutenant Shepard, you'll lead the vanguard team. Pick your squad. You leave in six hours."

Tran looked over at her, eyes wide. "You sure about this?"

Shepard gave her a thin smile. "No. But if someone's hurting civilians, we stop them. That's the job."

As the rest of the volunteers stepped forward or hung back in contemplation, Jane's eyes lingered for a moment on the display of the Vatar system.

It wasn't rage that filled her anymore.

It was purpose.

And somewhere, out in the black, she knew he was still watching. Still working. Still quietly shaping the galaxy like a shadowed guardian.

Kalen had given her the push. Now it was time she made her own mark.

No capes. No invincibility. Just grit, scars, and unbreakable will.

She'd show the bastards what humanity meant.

***

Back in the Sol system, nestled inside the familiar hum of orbital life, Research Station Tycho-3 hung like a quiet observer over Neptune's orbit. For Kalen, it wasn't just a base, it was home. Or at least, the closest thing to one he had ever known.

He stood now in one of the older research rooms, worn-down but functional. His tall frame clad in his signature black-and-silver nanoweave suit was rigid with tension as he stared at the display in front of him.

Dr. Karin Chakwas, her arms crossed and lips tight, stood beside him. She'd aged gracefully, her experience etched into every line of her face, but even she looked shaken.

The screen pulsed with a rhythmic, almost heartbeat-like signal. It was a render of a waveform, accompanied by a low-frequency tone that repeated every few seconds.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

"This doesn't make sense," Chakwas muttered, her voice just above a whisper. "It's been silent all these years. Not even a thermal reading from it until recently. Now it's… active."

Kalen's jaw clenched. His normally guarded demeanor had cracked ever since the signal began. "It started two months ago. At first I thought I was hearing things like some kind of echo in my head. But it wasn't in my mind."

He tapped a few controls, and a 3D projection appeared: a sleek, oblong pod with intricate silver patterns and small glowing blue veins running across its surface. The same pod the Alliance had recovered over a decade ago from DC1938.

"You were a baby when they found you in that," Chakwas said, glancing at him. "No crew. No data cores. Just you. And the suit."

Kalen nodded, voice low. "It's been inert my entire life. But when I turned eighteen, something changed. It started pulsing. I could hear it. Feel it."

He didn't mention the dreams.

He didn't talk about how he'd wake up in the middle of the night with visions of cold light, voices in a language he didn't understand, and the sensation of falling through stars.

Not yet.

"And the key?" Chakwas asked.

He opened his palm. Resting there was a small, translucent crystal device. At first glance, it resembled a shard of ice, but inside, golden energy pulsed like circuitry. The device had ejected from the pod the moment it activated and only responded to him. The S-symbol, the same one embedded into his suit, was etched into its surface shimmering faintly.

"When I touched it, it hummed. Glowed. And then it projected a vector path."

He zoomed out the map on the holographic display. Chakwas squinted.

"Earth?"

"More specifically," Kalen said, narrowing in on the signal's origin point, "the Arctic Circle."

She blinked. "No, that can't be right. The Alliance's geological surveys have scanned every inch of that region for centuries. There's nothing there but ice, water, and frozen crust."

Kalen frowned. "That's what I thought too. But this... signature, this resonance... it's alien. Ancient. And somehow, it's calling to me."

Chakwas's fingers hovered near her lips. "If this is real... we need to go."

And within forty-eight hours, the Alliance cleared a scientific expedition.

Not many could ignore the potential of alien technology of this magnitude. Especially not when it was already linked to the young man who could lift tanks, survive mass accelerators to the chest, and register off-the-charts power outputs on every Alliance biometric scan.

Kalen boarded the stealth shuttle assigned to the expedition with a tight, unreadable expression. The key hung around his neck on a reinforced polymer chain, humming softly.

He didn't speak much during the ride. He didn't need to. The air was heavy with questions no one had the courage or clearance to ask.

The Arctic Circle. Earth.

Snow blanketed everything, glistening like powdered diamonds under the overcast sky. Harsh winds howled across the landscape as the shuttle descended onto a makeshift landing pad near the expedition's sensor array.

The team was small with only a handful of scientists, engineers, and security personnel. Chakwas was among them, her eyes already scanning the horizon for anything unusual.

"Still nothing on scans," she murmured. "Just glacial crust and tectonic silence."

Kalen didn't answer.

Instead, he stepped away from the group, pulling the key from under his collar. It glowed faintly.

He moved across the snow, his feet crunching softly with each step. As he approached a wide clearing between two glacial ridges, the key brightened. Brighter. Then it pulsed.

Ba-dum.

Kalen stopped.

The wind died.

The key floated from his hand, gently rising into the air like a feather caught in an invisible current. The glow intensified, and a voice, mechanical yet resonant, echoed through the clearing.

"Identity confirmed. Kryptonian genetic markers matched. Kal-El."

Kalen's heart stopped.

He took a step forward. "What…?"

"Authorization granted. Fortress concealed. Awaiting verbal confirmation to reveal primary structure."

His breath caught in his throat. "Fortress?"

He looked back at Chakwas, who had hurried up behind him. Her eyes were wide, mouth parted in disbelief.

"What fortress?" she whispered.

Kalen turned back to the hovering key, his voice hoarse. "Confirmed."

The air shimmered.

The ground beneath their feet began to rumble. Snow exploded outward in a circular pattern as something deep beneath the ice came alive. Giant crystalline spires rose from beneath the Earth's crust. 

Blue, silver, and translucent. Towers and arches were formed as if summoned by a divine architect.

The scientists behind them shouted in awe. Instruments spiked. Some fell to their knees.

Before them now stood a towering alien structure, a fortress of light and memory. 

Its design was unlike anything on Earth: sleek lines, vertical columns, glowing glyphs, and angular pathways that defied conventional gravity. Snow melted around its base, but the air remained still, serene.

Kalen's knees nearly buckled.

He stepped forward slowly, his voice barely audible.

"This was waiting for me… all this time?"

Chakwas placed a hand on his shoulder.

He didn't know how to react. But somewhere deep inside, something stirred. An instinct. 

Perhaps now he would come to understand his role as the last son of his people.

And thus, the doors opened.

More Chapters