They moved.

  Tanaka kept the Bulwark high and centered, pace steady instead of charging. Kaden stayed tight on his left, SMG up, eyes flicking between his lane and the faint motion echoes Aurora tagged for his squad. Navarro mirrored him on the right. Vos brought up the rear, half on corners, half on whatever invisible route map he was piecing together.

  A corner of Kaden’s HUD updated as they walked.

  AP: SSGT JAX 6/9

  AP: CPL VOS 7/8

  Aurora was already trickling AP back into the ones who’d spent it at the breach. Not fast—but steady.

  “Two left-side branches ahead,” Vos said. “One right. No movement.”

  They reached the first intersection. Tanaka paused just long enough for Kaden and Navarro to clear the angles on instinct. Both leaned and swept without waiting for a word.

  “Right’s clear,” Navarro said.

  “Left’s ugly,” Kaden said.

  Down the left, the corridor kinked twice in quick jogs, visibility chopped up by hard corners and overhead piping. No HUD warnings, no Opp tags. Just the kind of layout every Academy sim had told him to avoid if he had a choice.

  “Forward,” Jax said. “We’re not tourists.”

  They pressed on.

  The deck had a faint vibration under their boots—simulated engines, simulated course changes, simulated fight outside the hull. Kaden’s body treated all of it like real.

  “Hold,” Jax said, just before Tanaka would’ve taken the next step.

  Her fist snapped up. She stared down the corridor, visor angle going intent. Overhead rails. A vent cluster. A side hatch halfway down the right wall. None of it, alone, screamed trap. All of it together tied a knot in Kaden’s stomach.

  He didn’t know what tripped her instincts. He just knew that when she sounded like this, something was off.

  “Too clean,” she said. “Too many ways down, one nice door. Tanaka, anchor here.”

  “Copy,” Tanaka said.

  He stepped forward and set himself behind the Bulwark, digging in.

  SKILL – Shield Anchor (R1)

  AP: LCPL TANAKA 4/5

  “Mercer on his left. Navarro on the right,” Jax said. “Keep your lanes tight. Vos, give me Ghost Ping on us and that hatch. If they’re watching, I want their sensors fighting themselves before anything moves.”

  “Working,” Vos said.

  His tag pulsed.

  SKILL – Ghost Ping (R1)

  AP: CPL VOS 6/8

  Kaden’s HUD shimmered for a heartbeat as Aurora acknowledged the request, then settled again. He couldn’t see what the Opp saw, but he could imagine some sensor tech staring at Theta-3 flickering around the corridor like a bad connection.

  “Ping’s live,” Vos said. “Anyone watching this corridor is getting junk data.”

  “Good,” Jax said. “Let’s see who blinks first.”

  For a few heartbeats, nothing.

  Then the side hatch snapped open.

  Opp came through in a practiced surge: three at deck level, one dropping from an overhead rail like it had been waiting there. The one from the rail landed in a low crouch, bringing its rifle up with smooth, almost mechanical precision. Their first volley was tight and disciplined, centered on the shield, immediately probing for edges.

  Kaden didn’t wait for orders. His body moved on years of drills. He slid just enough out from behind the Bulwark to clear his angle, SMG already climbing.

  “Contact right hatch!” Vos barked. “Four plus! One overhead!”

  Tanaka braced, taking the storm on the Bulwark. The shield shuddered under the impacts, tracers flaring across its face, but Shield Anchor kept him rooted. He shoved the shotgun out around the right edge and fired a short blast down the hatch line, not aiming so much as punishing anything dumb enough to stand there.

  The roar in the tight corridor punched Kaden in the chest. One Opp flinched hard back from the threshold, ducking away from the spray.

  Kaden picked the first silhouette fully committed through the doorway. It was already adjusting mid-step, too fast and too clean. His burst still caught it high center mass. The tag flickered and disappeared.

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  “Front one down,” he called.

  “High,” Navarro snapped.

  The rail Opp tried to move along the wall into a better angle, that same System-slick motion Kaden recognized now—a body that had stats backing it. Navarro cut across its path, rifle barking in controlled bursts. Her pattern stayed tight. The tag on the overhead silhouette winked out, the body dropping.

  Two at ground level remained. They didn’t break. One hugged behind the right side of the hatch, leaning out far enough to fire clipped, purposeful bursts. The other hugged low on the left, barrel appearing near the deck in quick flashes.

  “Not panicking,” Kaden said. “They’re boosted.”

  “Welcome to Andromeda,” Jax said. “Keep killing them anyway.”

  Tanaka ducked slightly, bringing the shotgun up for another blast.

  As he did, Kaden saw something strange:

  The Opp tucked tight to the right edge of the hatch shifted its grip. It snapped its off-hand out, palm toward them, fingers splayed. For a split second, the metal along its forearm and gauntlet flared with faint lines of light—sigils or circuits that weren’t part of its rifle.

  At the same moment, Kaden’s HUD flickered.

  A tiny icon appeared in the corner near Tanaka’s weapon status and vanished again.

  ANOMALOUS FIELD – SOURCE: EXTERNAL

  Too fast to read fully, gone before he could focus on it.

  Tanaka fired—

  —click.

  No boom. Just an empty, hollow trigger snap.

  He wrenched the pump one-handed, using the back edge of the shield for leverage. Another click. No shell, no fire. Nothing.

  “Jam,” Tanaka grunted. “Shotgun’s dead.”

  “That’s not right,” Kaden said. “You just fired it.”

  “I know what my gun feels like, Mercer,” Tanaka snapped. “It wasn’t jammed a second ago.”

  The Opp that had flashed its hand was already back behind the hatch frame, but the timing stuck in Kaden’s head like a shard. Gesture. Gauntlet glow. HUD glitch. Weapon failure.

  “Yeah, that’s one of theirs,” Vos said, voice tight but not surprised. “Got a spike on my feed when right-side gauntlet boy waved at us.”

  Opp rounds kept chewing at the shield. Whatever had reached across at Tanaka’s shotgun wasn’t going to give them a breather.

  Vos moved up without waiting for permission, staying low behind the Bulwark’s right edge. He let his SMG drop on its sling, grabbed the shotgun with both hands, and twisted it to get a better angle on the action.

  “Just hold the wall big man,” he muttered. “I’ll babysit your scattergun.”

  He worked the pump in quick, practiced motions. A spent shell and another that looked perfectly fine spat out onto the deck and rolled.

  Kaden’s HUD gave a brief, sour note.

  WEAPON ERROR – DIAGNOSTIC: INTEGRITY NORMAL

  CAUSE: EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE (PROBABLE)

  Vos racked a fresh shell into place, thumbed quickly along the tube, then slapped the shotgun back against the inside of the shield where Tanaka could grab it.

  “Three left,” he said.

  Then he shoved himself back into his lane, SMG already coming up again.

  “All yours.”

  “Got it,” Tanaka said, as calm as if they were on a range.

  He jammed the shotgun back around the edge and fired. This time it thundered properly, pellets shredding the right-hand angle of the hatch. The Opp there yanked back again, pinned by the simple fact that leaning too far meant eating that blast.

  Vos’ SMG added another layer of suppression, rounds chewing along the opposite side of the hatch.

  “Left barrel keeps dipping low,” Navarro said. “I’ll keep the right one honest. Mercer, take floor rat.”

  “Got him,” Kaden said.

  He shifted his sights, pinning the sliver of space near the deck where the low gun kept flashing. Next time it appeared, he was already squeezing. Three rounds. The silhouette jerked sideways out of view. The tag vanished.

  “Left down,” he said.

  The last Opp gambled on aggression, leaning out further to try to catch Kaden exposed. Jax’s rifle cracked twice. The tag went black mid-lean.

  Silence hit.

  Kaden forced his shoulders to unlock. His lungs dragged in a breath that didn’t quite feel full. The faint impact warning from earlier fights had already dropped into his log. His hands buzzed, but they were steady. Some of that was training. Some of it was the way his head automatically took its cues from Jax staying level.

  AURORA METRIC: CONTACT RESOLUTION – SATISFACTORY

  Tanaka glanced down at one of the ejected shells, then slid it aside with his boot. “They’re still running that trick,” he said. “Used to see it more on boarding actions. Guess Aurora wanted to remind you rookies.”

  “HUD says integrity’s clean,” Vos said. “Flagged ‘external interference probable’ again. Hand wave was the trigger. Same pattern as the feeds.”

  Navarro’s helmet tilted toward the hatch. “So that’s how it looks up close.”

  “For this version,” Vos said. “They’ve got variations.”

  Kaden had heard about Opp interference skills in lectures. Skill trees, countermeasures, hypothetical mitigations. Seeing Tanaka’s gun go dead mid-fight because some bastard waved a hand put a weight to it all that briefings hadn’t.

  “Anything we can do, they can do too,” Jax said. “Or close enough it doesn’t matter. You gamble on a System edge, you lose the moment theirs doesn’t look the way you pictured it.”

  She swept the corridor and the open hatch, then looked back at the squad.

  “Status,” she said. “Actual damage.”

  Kaden checked himself. Shins still stung where sim shrapnel had kissed him earlier, but nothing felt slow or wrong.

  “Green,” he said.

  “Green,” Navarro said.

  “Green,” Vos added.

  “Good,” Tanaka said. He didn’t bother to report; if he’d been bad, he’d have said so already.

  Kaden’s HUD ticked quietly as Aurora did its work.

  AP: SSGT JAX 7/9

  AP: CPL VOS 7/8

  Tanaka’s AP stayed where it was, tied up in what he’d already done with the shield.

  “That was them under Vos’s Ghost Ping,” Jax said. “Sensor picture lying to them and they still walked that hatch like they’d practiced it. This is the gentle curve. Real ops, they stack tricks until you miss one and die for it.”

  Navarro let out a breath. “Feels steep enough already, Sergeant.”

  “That’s the idea,” Jax said. “Tanaka, drop Anchor. We’re not loitering in this geometry.”

  “Dropping,” Tanaka said.

  He eased out of the rooted stance. Kaden’s HUD flashed briefly.

  “Same stack,” Jax said. “No big swings yet. R1s only unless something huge lands on us. I want AP when we actually see forward control, not bleeding out in the hallways beforehand.”

  “Copy,” Vos said. “Wasp stays leashed.”

  “For now,” Jax said. “When I say ‘let it off the chain,’ I want you at more than fumes.”

  Kaden glanced down the corridor. Bodies were already fuzzing at the edges as the sim cleaned them up. The hatch still gaped, empty now, just another piece of Opp architecture.

  He couldn’t stop his eyes from flicking once more to where that gauntlet had glowed.

  He’d seen it, now. Not just heard about it in a classroom.

  “Move,” Jax said. “Same lanes. Call weird early. Aurora’s not just grading bodies—it’s watching how you handle the parts that don’t fit the script.”

  Theta-3 stepped off again, deeper into the Gamma’s guts, leaving the hatch and the weapon glitch behind. Forward control was still somewhere ahead, layered under decks and bad angles and whatever else the System thought they needed to survive before it let them touch the real thing.