Kharv disposed of the corpse through the airlock. No ceremony. Just a hiss of pressure, a flick of red light, and the body of Nikola Diens was gone, jettisoned into the cold silence beyond the hull.
No one said a word.
The journey continued in somber quiet. The Helion-9 drifted through dead sectors, then threaded its way toward the shimmering arms of the Caladrian jump gate. The stars warped, spindled, and folded. A heartbeat later, they emerged back into realspace, civilization clawing back into view, neon-lit and planetary wide.
The Helion-9 docked smoothly on its usual platform, berth 23-E of the eastern wing. Automated clamps engaged with a heavy clunk, and the outer doors irised open.
The crew disembarked, the ship's pressure seal hissing behind them.
Brann turned to Sela, his voice crisp. "You and Kharv take the data back to the guild and open comms with SynSpec."
Sela slung the reinforced satchel of drives over her shoulder. "What about you two?"
"I'll take Kali to meet Old Man Turner," Brann replied.
There was no argument. They split ways, Sela and Kharv vanishing into the crowded flow of the port's upper concourse, data in hand.
Brann and Kali veered downward, descending into the deeper arteries of Caladrian's understructure. The walk to the Mechanics District was a vertical one, frequent elevator banks, winding skybridges, and tram rides past congested traffic lanes and hollowed-out turbines repurposed as housing blocks. Neon signs buzzed above them, half in static, half in glyphs. Noise and oil permeated the air.
As they turned into a transfer corridor, a mass of people spilled out into the thoroughfare, blocking the walk. A street preacher was in full swing, his voice carried on amplifiers bolted to his skin. He stood atop a dented crate, garbed in patched leather robes and chrome rings etched with arcane scrawl.
"—The end is not coming! It is returning!" Rusa bellowed, eyes wild and gleaming. "You, all of you, would sleep through it! But I have seen the veil thinning! I have heard the voice in the zero between seconds!"
The crowd watched him in spellbound silence. Some nodded. Some laughed.
"The Returned One is not myth!" the preacher roared. "He is the echo from before the first word! He comes not from above, but from within, the ash of man remade in fire and code!"
Brann muttered under his breath, "Always at it. Caladrian's full of beliefs. You can find a god in every vent pipe if you're desperate enough. But the Returned Faith... they've got teeth. Strip away the dogma, and they're all waiting for some deus reborn, someone to fix the mess we made."
Kali's gaze lingered on Rusa. "You think they're wrong?"
Brann didn't answer right away. His eyes flicked toward the crowd, then to Kali. "I think people are good at worshipping what they don't understand. Humans screwed up the world, and now he expects us to believe one of them is going to save it."
Kali gave a half-shrug, the movement lazy, noncommittal, but his eyes remained sharp, scanning the crowd even as they moved. Brann took the cue and pressed forward, and they continued down the descending ramps and grimy walkways of Caladrian's lower levels.
By the time they reached the Mechanics District, the air had turned hot and claustrophobic, thick with the stink of oil, rust, and human labor. The place buzzed with the symphony of pneumatic tools, welding torches, and shouted orders in half a dozen dialects. Sparks danced from overhead scaffolds. Conveyor rails creaked under crates of cybernetic limbs, servo engines, and mech-chassis pieces.
The crowds here weren't the wandering type, they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, brushing against each other with the resigned familiarity of people who lived in noise and filth, shuffling through aisles crammed with repurposed tech and bootleg mods. Grease-streaked children weaved through the masses like rats, and heavily-modded laborers barked at malfunctioning exosuits with open panels and sparking wires.
Brann pushed through it all with the confidence of someone who'd done this a hundred times. Kali followed, brushing off the hands of a vendor trying to sell him a rusted ocular implant.
They reached a narrow alley where the chaos dimmed, shadowed by a half-collapsed canopy of rusted sheet metal. At the far end sat a tiny stall, little more than a collection of scrap walls and plastic sheeting, rigged with old solar lamps and broken terminals repurposed as glowing wall art.
There, on a three-legged stool, sat an elderly man with dark, leathery skin and a beard gone mostly white. He puffed steadily on a bone-handled pipe, smoke curling in idle spirals around his head. His right eye was artificial, the lens cracked, glowing a dim amber.
At his feet knelt a boy, massaging the old man's feet with practiced diligence. The boy looked up, and Kali recognized him instantly.
"Lio," he said, surprised.
The boy grinned. "Mister."
Brann smirked and nudged Kali forward. "Old man Turner."
Turner didn't look up right away. He drew in slowly on his pipe, the ember pulsing red like a dying star, then let out a long exhale. The smoke curled around him, thick and slow, smelling faintly of copper, hot dust, and some unplaceable incense, something old, almost sacred.
"What do y'all want?" he rasped, voice like rust grinding over stone.
Brann caught the hesitation in Kali's posture and gave a subtle nod. "I'll leave you to it," he said, stepping back and vanishing into the shuffling crowd without another word.
Turner waved a hand without looking. "Scurry off, boy."
Lio stood up, offered Kali a sly look of sympathy, and disappeared between two bulkheads.
The old man finally met Kali's gaze with a lazy flick of his cracked artificial eye. "So? What's it, then? You came here for more than just the smell."
Kali stepped closer, careful not to draw too much attention. "Brann said you were the best fixer in Caladrian."
Turner grunted, then gave a dry chuckle that turned into a cough. "Brann flatters me more than he should. The young ones would argue that title belongs to the mod-jockeys in Sector Ten. But fuck 'em. I didn't waste twenty years in Solanthe's central crucible, soldering nerve-weaves and binding starsteel for Dominion elites, just to be outdone by grease-stained punks with fresh creds and half a brain."
Solanthe. Capital of the Aureline Dominion. The single largest political power in the Wane Spiral, lording over seventy percent of this galaxy. If Turner had worked there, he wasn't just good, he was rare.
"So," Kali said, lowering his voice to just above a whisper, "if I happened to have a damaged axiomatic-class exosuit, could you fix it?"
Turner didn't react at first. Then his body stilled, pipe paused mid-puff. The smoke hung in the air between them.
His voice dropped an octave, suddenly cautious. "Which type?"
Kali held his gaze, but said nothing.
Turner nodded, as if correcting himself. "Hypothetically, of course."
Kali allowed a faint smile. "Hypothetically."
The old man leaned forward now, resting his elbows on his knees, pipe dangling loosely from one lip. His tone shifted, reverent but businesslike. "Axiomatic class. Somnic tech. Tailored for Awakened neural scaffolds. That's not your everyday mechwear, son. You're talking bio-attuned alloys, zero-soul latency weave, intention-reactive feedback layers. You know how many of those things even exist in a working state?"
"Very few," Kali said quietly.
Exosuits, in their many forms, were the great equalizers of the post-Epoch battlefield, iron extensions of flesh and mind, built to enhance, protect, and, at times, transcend. Broadly, they fell into three distinct classes, each marking a tier of capability, purpose, and mystery.
The first and most common were the Sleeper-Class exosuits. These were the backbone of every military across the Spiral. Brann and his team wore variants of this class, sturdy, serviceable, and brutally effective. They came in dozens of configurations, from urban suppression frames to deep-space assault rigs, each one calibrated for speed, strength, endurance, and an integrated suite of lethal weaponry. But at their core, Sleeper-class suits were just that: extensions of the body, not the mind. Tools. Useful, powerful, but mundane.
The second tier was the Noetic-Class, designed exclusively for those touched by the Ninefold Thought, the Awakened. These were far rarer, and each came with a built-in interface capable of limited cognitive resonance. Unlike the Sleeper frames, the Noetic class didn't just respond to neural impulses; it understood them. Thought could trigger action. Emotion could reroute systems. These suits were built around a singular design called the Executor, though countless variations and modifications existed, often customized to suit the mental architecture of its bearer.
And then, there was the final tier.
The Axiomatic-Class.
These were not built, not anymore. Their methods of construction had been lost to time, buried with the Homo somnus and the shrouded horrors that came with it. Not even Synesthetic Specialties Corporation, with its billions in research and ancient patent archives, could recreate them. At best, they could recover derelicts from ruins or warzones and repair what remained. But no new Axiomatic suit had been made in generations.
What set them apart wasn't just power, it was purpose. Each Axiomatic exosuit was tailored not merely to an Awakened, but to a specific Syllable of the Ninefold Thought. These were not frames. They were armatures of semiotic resonance, vessels of impossible alignment. Each one embodied a singular cognitive archetype.
To think if it were not for Rizen, he would have left such a treasure rotting on Theraxis.
Turner gave a long, low whistle. "You actually found one."
Kali didn't reply.
The old man took a final puff from his pipe, exhaled slow, then snuffed it out against the edge of his boot. "Well, hypothetically, if someone brought one in, I might be willing to help. But I'd need to see it myself. And even then, repairs of that magnitude don't come cheap."
"I'm not asking for charity," Kali said. "Just discretion. And skill."
Turner's cracked eye gleamed faintly. "I can promise on the first."
Kali frowned. "And if you can't repair it?"
Turner took a long breath, exhaled incense and metal. "Then there's only one other soul in the Caladrian who might. But you won't get to her."
"Who?"
"They call her the Paintress," he said, as if that alone should weigh heavy. "Genesis-awakened. Third order. An artist of machines, not because she builds them, but because she understands what they're trying to become."
Kali narrowed his eyes. "Paintress?"
Turner chuckled dryly. "She doesn't weld or solder like the rest of us grunts. She paints sigilic schematics into quantum fabric, coaxes circuitry from raw ore with her voice, molds entire drive cores by feel."
"So, unreachable."
"Unless you're a Senator," Turner said, with a scoff. "And you don't strike me as one of those."
Kali sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Fine."
The man beamed a dirty smile in return.