The Sparrow sat in the hangar, a dented, scarred bird in a cage of obsidian. Elias laid Lyra's body onto the small cot in the rear of the cockpit, covering her with his own captain's cloak. He wanted to weep, to stay there in the shadows of her memory, but the data drive in his flight suit was vibrating with a relentless, rhythmic heat.
He pulled it out. The LED wasn't blue anymore. It was a jagged, bleeding crimson.
"Computer," Elias croaked, his voice failing him. "Analyze the final telemetry from the Sol-Reignite sequence. Why is the sun expanding past the stabilization parameters?"
The Sparrow's limited AI flickered to life. "Analyzing... Sequence 9-9-4 was not a restorative program, Captain. It was a distillation process."
Elias's heart, still aching from the loss of its twin, skipped a beat. "Explain."
"The Thorne Factor does not 'fix' a sun," the AI stated coldly. "It consumes the surrounding solar mass to create a localized, hyper-dense core. To the colonies, it looks like a rebirth. But the physics indicate a 'Vampire Star.' The sun is now feeding on the gravity of the inner planets to maintain its luminosity."
Elias felt the deck tilt, though the ship was stationary. "Which planets?"
"Aethelgard's remnants. The Mining Belts. And the Citadel."
Elias stared at the screen. The "mind-blowing" truth hit him with the force of a supernova. Valerius didn't want to save the people. He didn't even want to save the system. He wanted to turn the sun into a weapon—a gravitational engine that would pull the entire galaxy toward the Citadel, making it the literal center of the universe, while the outer colonies were flung into the dark.
And Lyra... her sacrifice hadn't just saved the light. It had activated the trap.
"I killed her for a lie," Elias whispered, the words tasting like ash. "I watched her burn so he could have a god-machine."
Suddenly, the hangar doors began to cycle shut. The Iron Sovereign was moving.
"Captain Thorne," a voice boomed over the hangar's internal speakers. It wasn't the XO. It was Valerius. The shot to his shoulder had been bandaged, but his eyes on the monitor were wild with a dark, divine fever.
"You look surprised, Elias," Valerius sneered. "Did you think a single bullet could stop the architect of the new age? I let you go to the lab. I needed her to die. I needed you to watch. The grief of a Thorne is the only frequency that can bridge the gravitational constant. You gave me exactly what I needed."
"You monster," Elias snarled, lunging for the cockpit controls. "I'll ram this ship into the bridge!"
"You'll do nothing," Valerius countered. "The Sparrow is locked. But I'm a man of my word. I promised you'd be together. And since she's already become the heart of the sun, I think it's only fair you join her."
The hangar floor began to retract. There was no airlock cycle. No warning. The Iron Sovereign simply opened its belly, and the Sparrow was kicked out into the void.
But they weren't drifting. The "Vampire Sun," now fueled by Lyra's essence, exerted a massive, hungry pull. The Sparrow was being dragged toward the golden surface of the sun at a speed that made the hull scream.
"Warning: External temperature rising," the AI chimed. "Hull integrity at forty percent."
Elias scrambled to the back of the ship, falling beside Lyra's body. He gripped her cold, porcelain hand. Outside, the sun was no longer a beautiful dawn; it was a golden mouth, wide and waiting.
"I'm sorry, Lyra," he sobbed, pulling her into his arms. "I'm so sorry. I thought I was saving them."
The ship began to glow a dull, cherry red. The glass of the viewport started to bubble.
But as the heat intensified, something happened. The data drive, still clutched in Elias's hand, began to pulse in time with his own heart. The golden embers beneath Lyra's skin—the last of the Thorne Factor—flared to life one final time.
The drive wasn't just data. It was the "ground" that Lyra had intended to be. Because it had been in his pocket, it had absorbed his grief, his rage, and his blood.
Bio-Sync Detected, the drive whispered. Final Override: Thorne-Omega.
Elias realized what his father had really hidden. It wasn't a choice between one twin living or dying. It was a fail-safe. If the sun was turned into a weapon, the only way to stop it was to complete the circuit from the inside.
"You want a martyr, Valerius?" Elias whispered, his eyes turning a brilliant, lethal gold. "I'll give you a god."
Elias didn't fight the pull. He slammed the manual thrusters, accelerating the Sparrow directly into the sun's corona.
To be continued.....