Chloe's Debut

On the bridge, the canopy had given them an incredible view but out here, with no glass between them and infinity, it was something else entirely.

…Above their heads, the sky opened up.

Millions of hard cold stars burned without twinkling against pure velvet black. 

Huge ribbons of nebula drifted across the dark in deep violet, turquoise, and fiery rose-gold, like curtains of frozen fire and low on the horizon hung the broken remains of a ringed gas giant, its ivory rings catching distant starlight in a pale crystalline glow.

The silence was enormous… It was beautiful and scary as well.

Even Elena stood frozen in the lunar dust. Her arms hung slack at her sides, and behind her emerald visor, her lips parted in silent awe.

"It's... it's true," Harper breathed, her voice crackling softly over the team channel.

She looked down at her gloved hands, then back up at the sky.

"Back home, you'd see those idiots online… conspiracy guys posting three-hour videos about how space was a government hologram, how the Earth had a glass ceiling... Flat-Earthers fighting in the comments..."

"Uneducated vermin," Jin-Ah muttered, though her voice carried a rare tremor of wonder. "To stand at the edge of the cosmos and believe a puddle of mud is all there is... It's an insult to astrophysics."

"It makes you feel like an ant," Camila whispered, hugging her arms around herself. "Like we could vanish right now and the stars wouldn't even flicker."

"They wouldn't," Ms. Tachibana said gently, stepping up beside Leo.

The glowing cobalt lines along her white suit traced her tall graceful silhouette.

"The universe doesn't care if we survive, girls… That's exactly why we have to."

Leo shook his head, breaking the trance, and glanced at his wrist.

[Suit Life Support: 01:28:44]

"Admire the view on the way, ladies," he said, his voice firm. "Clock's ticking… Look ahead."

They turned and Kestrel-9 rose in front of them like a broken skeleton of ancient metal.

Up close, the scale was staggering. 

Five huge industrial towers, each forty stories tall, were bound together by heavy transit trusses and communication spines. 

The whole structure leaned into the rock with its dark-grey Graventhal plating pitted by micrometeorites and scorched by old plasma burns.

They trudged through the powdery regolith to the base of the first tower.

Set into it was a heavy emergency airlock door, a slab of solid metal twenty centimeters thick with a massive manual locking wheel in the center.

"Alright," Harper said, stepping up and rolling her shoulders. 

The dull bronze glow of Kinetic Tuning flared across her forearms.

"Let's see if this thing still has grease on the hinges."

She grabbed the wheel with both hands, planted her boots, and hauled.

"Nnngh… come on, you piece of junk!"

Leo grabbed the opposite spokes. "On three. One, two, three… heave!"

They threw their combined weight into it.

Screeech...

But there was nothing… The wheel didn't turn so much as a millimeter.

"Don't bother."

Elena brushed past them and laid one gloved palm flat against the door. 

A faint green shimmer of Mechanical Attunement rippled through her fingers, and her face twisted with distaste.

"The locking pins are cold-welded to the frame," she said flatly. "Centuries of vacuum fused them into a single piece of metal… You two could pull on that until your arms fall off."

Harper blinked at her. "...Did you just help?"

"I simply couldn't stand watching two apes grunt at a door," Elena sniffed, yanking her hand away.

"It's dead," Leo panted, shaking out his stinging wrists. "We'd need explosives to blow the frame."

"Look up there," Jin-Ah called, pointing with an armored finger.

About eleven meters above their heads, near the tower's third level, a heavy maintenance window had buckled outward long ago. 

The glass was gone, leaving a jagged opening into what looked like an interior gantry. Because of the tilt, the window hung out over a sheer drop of frozen stone.

"Eleven meters," Camila sighed, tipping her head back until her helmet tapped her collar. "We might as well be trying to jump to the moon… How do we get up there without ladders?"

[Each suit has a gravity inversion toggle. Switch it off, push gently, and you will drift upward with whatever momentum you give yourself. Push too hard and you will become a very small and very sad new moon so this unit recommends gentle.]

"Yeah, but if you misjudge it, you miss the ledge and float off into the dark," Harper said. "We need someone up there first… An anchor to catch everyone and haul them in."

"Then it's me," Leo said, already rolling his shoulders. "I'll kick off, grab the sill, wedge myself in—"

"No."

Ms. Tachibana stepped in front of him. Her voice was quiet, but it hit like a door slamming.

"Absolutely not, Leo."

"Sensei, somebody has to—"

"Somebody... Not you…" Her dark eyes held his through two layers of glowing green. "Have you forgotten Axiom Four? If the Master Captain dies, the ship destroys itself within the hour… If you slip and drift off that ledge, it isn't just you who dies. It's all of us."

"Then I won't slip," Leo shot back. "I'm the best pilot here… I can feel momentum better than any of you, and that's exactly what this jump needs. I'm not standing at the back while one of you risks your neck for me."

"That's not your call to make alone."

"It literally is… I'm the Captain!"

"And we're the crew who dies with you," Jin-Ah cut in coldly. "Sensei's right, Leo. You're not a soldier. You're our only key… Statistically, you're the last person who should be doing this."

"Sorry, Cap," Harper said, folding her arms. "I'm with Sensei… You go splat, we all go boom."

"Please, Leo," Camila added softly. "Not you."

Leo stared at the four of them.

'Great,' he thought, his jaw tightening. 'A mutiny and it's only been two hours into my career…'

"Then who?" he snapped. "Harper? She's strong, but she can't hold someone's full weight one-handed with nothing to brace on. None of us can—"

"I'll go."

The small quiet voice cut through the channel like a knife.

Everyone froze.

Chloe stepped forward, her white boots crunching into the dust. 

She kept her visor pointed at the ground, refusing to meet anyone's eyes, especially Leo's. 

Behind her green dome, her cheeks were still a deep humiliated crimson, and her fingers fidgeted at her sides.

"Chloe?" Harper blinked. "Are you crazy? You're smaller than a broomstick!"

"I... I can do it," Chloe whispered.

Her voice trembled, but underneath the shame there was something stubborn and desperate.

"The talent changed my body. I can feel it… in my muscles. I'm not normal anymore so I don't need to drift."

Leo studied her, his brow furrowing.

'Blood Sovereign...'

When she'd pinned him to the deck back on the ship, her grip had felt like hydraulic clamps. 

The frenzy was gone, but the change hadn't gone with it… She had the body of an S-Rank predator packed into an eighteen-year-old college girl.

"She's strong enough," he admitted quietly. "She's probably the strongest person on this rock... But Chloe, are you sure you're in control?"

Chloe flinched at the sound of his voice.

She bit her lower lip with the tip of one fang flashing for a split second then gave a single firm nod.

"I have to help. I... I can't just be a monster that hurts people. Please. Let me do this."

Before anyone could argue, she stepped back and dropped into a low crouch.

She didn't touch her gravity toggle.

CRACK-BOOM!

The regolith exploded outward beneath her boots in a ring of dust, leaving a crater a full meter wide, and Chloe launched into the air like a white missile.

CLANG!

In half a second, she cleared the eleven-meter gap and slammed into the jagged frame of the broken window. 

Her armored gloves seized the edge of the sill… and with a shriek of tortured metal she felt through the frame, her slender fingers bent fifteen centimeters of structural steel outward like soft clay, making herself a handhold.

She swung herself over the ledge, then leaned back out into the void and stretched one hand down toward them.

Her eyes darted away the instant Leo looked up.

"It's... it's clear," her voice crackled softly. "Turn off your gravity. Jump… and I'll catch you."

Down on the surface, Harper's jaw hung open. "Holy... hell. Remind me never to arm wrestle the quiet girl."

[Recalculating crew threat assessment… Crew Unit: Chloe has been moved from "fragile" to "do not upset." This unit suggests everyone update their records accordingly.]

"Alright," Leo said, steadying his pulse. "You heard her. Harper, you're first."

Harper tapped the rune on her belt and felt the weight vanish from her boots. 

With a light careful flex of her calves, she floated upward like a slow-motion feather.

As she neared the window, Chloe's hand shot out and clamped around her forearm like an iron band, killing her momentum and hauling her through the sill as if she weighed nothing.

CLACK!

Harper's boots snapped down onto the interior deck. "Thanks, kiddo… I'm in!"

One by one, they followed.

Camila let out a terrified squeak until Chloe caught her by the waist and pulled her in. Jin-Ah timed her push with mathematical precision and floated straight into Chloe's grip. 

Ms. Tachibana leaped with graceful poise and landed cleanly on the sill with Chloe's help then came Elena.

She stood alone on the grey regolith, staring up at the window with obvious reluctance. 

Every ounce of her pride was screaming at her not to rely on the freak but the timer on her wrist was flashing.

[01:21:10]

With a tight furious scowl, she toggled her belt and jumped. 

She floated up stiff and awkward, and the moment her boots touched the inside floor, she yanked her hand out of Chloe's grip.

She didn't say thank you.

She just wiped her sleeve where Chloe had touched it and turned her nose up at the ceiling.

Chloe shrank back a little, her green eyes dimming with hurt then it was Leo's turn.

He toggled his soles, bent his knees, and pushed off. He rose in a smooth direct arc toward the opening.

At the sill, Chloe caught him by both forearms.

Her grip was shockingly dense since it was S-Rank strength… but she held him with exquisite care, like she was terrified that squeezing too hard would snap his bones.

Their visors were barely fifteen centimeters apart and for a fraction of a second, her green eyes met his as they dropped to his neck, where two faint healed marks sat just above his collar.

Her breath caught.

A wave of burning scarlet flooded her face, and she jerked her gaze away so fast her helmet nearly bumped his.

"I... I have you," she whispered, so softly the mic barely caught it.

With one effortless pull, she hauled him inside.

CLACK!

Leo's boots locked onto the deck.

"Good catch, Chloe," he said, his voice warm as he rested a gloved hand on her shoulder. "You saved us twenty minutes of climbing."

Chloe trembled under his touch.

She didn't pull away, but she kept her head down, let out a tiny muffled squeak, and scurried behind Harper.

'...Is she scared of me,' Leo wondered, 'or scared of herself?'

He swept his eyes across the interior.

They were standing in a cavernous logistics gantry.

The emergency lights were dead, and the only light came from thin beams of starlight slanting through the broken window and the cobalt circuit lines pulsing along their white suits.

Frozen cranes hung from ceiling tracks with their cables dangling like severed tendons.

There was no air in here and no sound either… It was just the hum of their suit scrubbers vibrating against their collarbones.

"Lights on," Leo said, tapping the side of his helmet.

Click!

Two focused beams burst from the temples of every visor, cutting through the black in overlapping white cones.

The beams landed on the far wall and something was carved into the metal there. 

Rows of jagged angular symbols, stacked in spirals that seemed to twist the longer anyone looked at them.

Camila's light trembled. 

"W-what is that?"

"Writing," Jin-Ah murmured, stepping closer. "Non-human writing."

[Translating. The sign reads roughly… [Gantry 3… Cargo Transfer, Please Mind the Gap.] The original also contains a word that means something between "warning" and "grief." This unit has decided to leave that one out for crew morale.]

"...Thanks," Harper muttered. "I hate that."

"Sensei, Jin-Ah," Leo said, stepping forward. "Where would the fuel and scrubber bays be?"

Jin-Ah pulled up a rough schematic on her wrist console, stitched together from the tower's outer dimensions. 

Her brow furrowed.

"If whoever built this thinks anything like us, life support and fuel would sit low, close to the central engineering spine… I'd guess down this maintenance corridor and inward but that's a guess… I don't know how aliens design anything."

[It is a good guess. This unit has partial blueprints recovered from the station's dead data spine. Fuel storage sits two levels down, east of the engineering spine, with a staging depot in between. Scrubber cores are deeper still. You are welcome, again… This unit is starting to keep count.]

Jin-Ah's mouth twitched. "...It's insufferable."

"It's useful," Leo said. "Move out. Stay tight. Harper, watch our rear. Chloe, stay close to Sensei."

They pushed into the dead corridors and the station was a tomb.

Broken consoles, shattered data slates, and frozen hydraulic fluid covered the floors like black ice. 

Every step echoed only inside their own suits with the vacuum swallowing everything else.

Ten minutes of tilted maintenance shafts brought them to a reinforced blast door hanging half-open on cracked hinges.

Leo swung his light inside then he stopped.

…Bolted to heavy stanchions in the middle of a wide square storage bay sat four large cylindrical tanks, each about the size of an oil drum and through their thick viewing ports, a dense glowing liquid swirled in slow hypnotic currents.

It was a bright poisonous emerald green and it washed the cold-scarred walls in an eerie radioactive glow.