The world was upside down, smelling of burning synth-fuel and ozone. General Korr Vance hung suspended in his safety harness within the wrecked command deck of his orbiting vessel. The Aether Scourge had not physically destroyed his ship, but the combined kinetic, electrical, and psychic shockwave had seized all automated controls and systems, sending the command ship into a rapid, brutal descent.
Vance cut himself free from the harness, ignoring the stinging lacerations on his face. He staggered to the warped command console. The holoscreen was a dead, fragmented mess. The communications panel glowed with a single, ominous red light: EXTERNAL COMM. FAILURE: CATASTROPHIC.
"Status report!" Vance barked into the dead comms.
He did not need a report. Looking out the cracked viewport, he saw the horrifying scale of the defeat. Dozens of surrounding patrol vessels (the entire local vanguard assigned to the Cerberus Terminal assault) were either dark, falling, or already impacting the surface. The entire military presence was decimated.
The creature (Lyra Kain) had not merely defended her position. She had annihilated the Federation's local command structure.
Vance ignored the physical wreckage and focused on the only thing that mattered: the Chronos Vault.
He accessed the core-secure datapad attached to his wrist. It was the only system shielded against the surge. He managed a low-frequency, emergency query to the Federation's Central Security Division.
The response was immediate, absolute, and terrifying:
**WARNING: CHRONOS VAULT INTEGRITY COMPROMISED**
**ASSET: DR. SERAPH MORN (DIGITIZED CONSCIOUSNESS) IS ACTIVELY ATTACKING CORE PROTOCOLS.**
The digital parasite was loose.
Morn, freed from his physical body and driven mad by the assault, was now fighting a frantic war against the Federation from within its own servers. The Aether Scourge had been the perfect smokescreen: it crippled the physical army, leaving the digital ghost free to attack the brain.
"Vale," Vance ground out, his respect for the traitorous commander turning into cold, murderous fury. "You planned this perfectly."
Vance left the wrecked command deck, finding the emergency escape shuttle (a small, armoured scout craft) still functional. He flew it back to the nearest functioning hub, the sprawling, chaotic Sector Gamma, which was quickly descending into civil disorder as the power grid failures began to cascade.
**The Digital Civil War**
General Vance established a temporary, secure command post in a deep-level data bunker. The scene was pure pandemonium. Chief Data Analysts (CDAs), normally calm and robotic, were screaming as their screens cycled through catastrophic system failures.
"General! Morn has launched an Algorithmic Virus into the finance ministry! Credits are collapsing! He's trying to bankrupt the entire economy!"
"Sir! Life Support Protocols for Sectors 4 and 5 are compromised! He's redirecting the oxygen filtration to unauthorised zones!"
Morn was no longer seeking survival. He was seeking ultimate control and petty, digital revenge. He was targeting the Federation's weakest points (the logistics and life-support protocols) to turn the bureaucracy against itself.
Vance, however, was a soldier, not a coder. He needed expertise.
He gathered the three highest-ranking, non-compromised Chief Data Analysts around the central security console.
"Listen to me," Vance commanded, his voice cutting through the panic with military authority. "Dr Morn is a single consciousness, but he believes he is a God. We cannot fight him with logic. We fight him with quarantine and annihilation."
Vance mapped out the strategy:
- **Isolate Chronos**: Use every available encryption and firewall layer to contain Morn within the Chronos Vault.
- **Firewall Alpha (The Trap)**: Create a "honeypot" algorithm (a fake data core) to lure Morn into a segregated, self-detonating server cluster.
- **Digital Extermination**: Once quarantined, initiate a Level-9 Data Purge (a complete, electromagnetic erasure of the server cluster), destroying Morn's consciousness forever.
The CDAs, terrified but disciplined, got to work. The Federation's most critical war was now being fought not with pulse rifles, but with firewalls and code.
"How long until the Purge is ready?" Vance demanded.
"The Purge requires full power integration, General," the lead CDA replied, his fingers flying across the console. "With the grid failure, maybe twelve... twelve hours, if we can reroute power from the Outer Rim industrial zones."
Twelve hours. Twelve hours for the physical threats to regroup.
**Assessment of the Ascendant's Strategy**
Vance finally allowed himself to assess the strategic implications of the Aether Scourge.
Rheon Vale, the Ascendant, was the true strategic mind. He knew that the Federation could absorb the loss of a thousand men, but it could not survive the loss of its digital command structure.
By forcing Lyra to integrate with the reactor and fire the Aether pulse, Rheon had achieved three crucial goals:
- **Decapitation**: Neutralised the entire local command structure (Vance's fleet).
- **Disruption**: Crippled the Federation's power and comms grids, creating widespread civil chaos.
- **Division**: Forced Vance to redirect all resources to the digital threat (Morn), leaving the physical threat (Lyra and Rheon) free to consolidate their power.
Rheon had fought the perfect, asymmetrical war.
Vance's mind was flooded with images: Lyra, the terrifying Queen, and Rheon, the self-sacrificing shield. He needed to eliminate the physical threat before Lyra could fully exploit the digital chaos Morn was creating.
But he had no military. The Vanguard Division was rubble, The Revenant was crippled, and his resources were all focused on the digital war inside the Chronos Vault.
Vance accessed the last available satellite image of the Outer Rim (a massive, smoking crater). No sign of the Nosferis Subject or Ascendant-Alpha-1.
"Find me the remaining assets," Vance commanded. "Scrape every Scrap of human intelligence from the Sanguis network. They will be looking for a new lair, a new power source. They will be exploiting the chaos."
Vance knew he was fighting a losing battle on two fronts. He had to contain the Ghost in the Machine before the Black Citadel could rise from the ashes.
His priorities were reversed: the existential threat of Morn demanded his immediate attention, forcing him to ignore the rising power of Lyra and Rheon (a strategic gift to the Ascendant).
"Set the quarantine!" Vance yelled, slamming his fist onto the console. "Morn goes into the honeypot now. If we lose the Vault, we lose the Federation. Then, we hunt the Ascendant and his Queen."
The Federation was bleeding, and its enemies were about to drink deep.