# THE OUTER BANDS 2: THE WEB SERIES
## VOLUME ONE
### EPISODE IV — FRACTURE PATTERN
---
## AFTER THE CORRIDOR
Band 5 burns for three days.
Not gloriously.
Not strategically.
Just wreckage rotating in slow apology.
Corporate Authority declares pirate terrorism.
Pirate Swarms broadcast revenge threats.
Engineer Clans go silent and fortify.
No one mentions the lattice spine that formed in the middle of their war.
No one mentions how missiles curved.
How fleets repositioned themselves.
How the battle felt… guided.
The Lone Traveller drifts beyond the debris cloud, ship coughing radiation and metal dust.
Hull integrity: unstable.
Shield array: offline.
Drone count: zero.
But he has something new.
Telemetry.
He recorded the alien spine mid-damage.
Captured structural harmonics.
Captured the flaw.
He feeds the data into his onboard printer core.
The printer hesitates.
Then begins fabricating something crude.
Something asymmetrical.
Something inefficient on purpose.
---
## THE ENGINEER CLAN
He doesn't return to a major port.
Too visible.
Instead he approaches an Engineer Clan refinery carved into a hollow asteroid.
No banners.
No lights.
Just rotating metal and quiet rail cannons waiting in shadow.
They lock targeting grids onto him immediately.
He transmits the only currency they respect:
Raw structural data.
Alien lattice schematics.
Damage harmonics.
Proof.
Silence stretches.
Then—
Docking clearance.
Inside, the refinery feels older than the wars.
Manual controls.
Analog panels.
Steel corridors with hand-welded seams.
Engineers move without ceremony.
Grease-stained. Focused. Suspicious.
He projects the alien structure into their central chamber.
A rotating violet lattice of impossible precision.
One engineer mutters:
"Too clean."
Another:
"Too stable."
The Traveller overlays his explosive pattern.
The flaw.
A distortion in symmetry.
The room leans forward.
Interest replaces fear.
---
## CHAOS AS A WEAPON
The Engineer Clan does not care about heroics.
They care about structure.
And the alien structure is an insult.
Perfect.
Unyielding.
Optimized beyond ego.
The Traveller explains without speeches.
Just fragments:
"They feed on war."
"They correct inefficiency."
"They harvest architects."
He doesn't say father.
Doesn't say loss.
Just system logic.
The Clan Master steps forward.
Old. Scarred. One mechanical eye.
He studies the flaw pattern again.
Then nods once.
"We build wrong."
---
## THE FRACTURE DEVICE
In the refinery's deepest chamber, they begin assembling something monstrous.
Not elegant.
Not symmetrical.
A lattice of uneven beams and misaligned coils.
A weapon built from structural contradiction.
It hums at the same frequency as the alien spines—
But slightly off.
Deliberately unstable.
The Traveller works beside them.
Sleepless.
Hands cut.
No dramatic music.
Just welding arcs and grinding metal.
They call it the Fracture Device.
It will not destroy the alien lattice.
It will introduce instability.
Force adaptation beyond tolerance.
Or so they calculate.
---
## CORPORATE INTERFERENCE
Before the device is complete—
Corporate Authority warships arrive.
Three cruisers.
Clean hulls.
Bright insignias.
They demand surrender of alien technology.
Accuse the Clan of corridor terrorism.
Their fleet AI broadcasts legal codes.
The Clan responds with silence.
The Traveller watches from an observation slit.
He knows this pattern.
War feeds structure.
Conflict accelerates harvest.
He turns to the Clan Master.
"If you fire first, you feed them."
The old engineer studies him.
Then orders external weapons offline.
The cruisers interpret this as weakness.
Boarding pods launch.
Low-budget brutality follows.
Corporate marines cut through refinery corridors with plasma torches.
Gunfire echoes through steel.
Engineers fight with tools before weapons.
No speeches.
No moral debates.
Just survival in tight hallways.
The Traveller moves like a machine.
Railcarbine bursts.
EMP pulses in confined spaces.
Close-quarters chaos.
Bodies drop without drama.
But outside—
Long-range scans spike.
A new hex-signature forms at the edge of the system.
The alien spine is responding to density again.
To violence.
To emotional surge.
The harvest algorithm adjusts.
---
## ACTIVATION
The Fracture Device is incomplete.
Unshielded.
Barely powered.
The Traveller makes the decision without permission.
He drags the half-finished device into a launch cradle.
Manual ignition.
No countdown.
The Clan Master watches.
Says nothing.
The device launches from the asteroid refinery like scrap metal.
Corporate cruisers target it instantly.
Their shots curve.
Again.
Guided subtly toward optimal intercept angles.
The alien spine begins forming in deep space, drawing in the conflict.
The device reaches mid-corridor.
The Traveller triggers activation remotely.
For a moment—
Nothing.
Then—
The device emits a warped harmonic pulse.
Not smooth.
Jagged.
Erratic.
The forming alien spine flickers.
Geometry misaligns.
Segments overcorrect.
Energy columns oscillate wildly.
Corporate cruisers lose formation.
Boarding pods drift uncontrolled.
Inside the refinery, lights surge.
The alien structure attempts stabilization.
But the flaw pattern multiplies.
Instability spreads like infection through symmetry.
For the first time—
A spine collapses before full formation.
It doesn't implode cleanly.
It tears.
Fragments scatter across vacuum.
Uncontrolled.
Unpredictable.
Ugly.
---
## CONSEQUENCE
The pulse fades.
Silence returns.
Corporate cruisers retreat in confusion.
Engineer casualties line the corridors.
The refinery is damaged.
But standing.
Deep space shows no complete spine.
Only fragments slowly dissolving.
The Clan Master approaches the Traveller.
"You forced error."
He nods.
"It will adapt."
The Master nods back.
"So will we."
---
## FINAL FRAME — EPISODE IV
Far beyond Band 5—
In darker regions—
Multiple alien spines shift harmonic frequency slightly.
Learning.
Recalculating.
Somewhere within the lattice network—
A human neural pattern flickers irregularly.
A structural architect processing instability.
His father's consciousness registers the fracture pulse.
And for a fraction of a second—
A new variable enters the alien system:
Hope.
The war will intensify.
The harvest will escalate.
But now—
The structure is no longer flawless.
---
### END EPISODE IV — SEASON ONE