“You called the strike on us.” Talan’s voice, a low snarl, ripped through the strained quiet. The sidearm's muzzle, obsidian-dark and menacing, pulsed with a faint heat in the dim, emergency-lit corridor. Toris, frozen in the act of reaching for the fallen communicator, stumbled back, his face draining of all color. His eyes darted between the sidearm and Yanshan, frantic and shrinking back against the bulkhead. “No! No, I swear by the Omniverse!” Toris stammered, his hands fluttering up in a desperate, placating gesture. “It wasn’t me! It was… it was my oversight! My pocket must have snagged it!” “An oversight?” Talan’s grip on the sidearm tightened, skin stretching across his knuckles. The cold precision in his tone was far more chilling than any shout. “A Hegemony-issue comm-link, capable of pinging an orbital dreadnought’s targeting array, just ‘slipped’ from your pocket after a warning shot blew a crater in our hull? You expect me to swallow that, supply officer?” Yanshan watched, silent, his gaze fixed on Toris. He saw not just fear, but a deeper, more profound anguish twisting the cadet’s features. The frantic terror was not feigned. There was a raw, unraveling quality to Toris’s panic that suggested a breaking point had arrived. “They… they made me!” Toris finally choked out, tears streaming down his grimy face, a frantic, desperate sob escaping him. He dropped to his knees, heedless of the scattered debris. “The sector commander! He… he has my bloodline! On Core World Xylos! My parents, my younger siblings… they’re all under surveillance! If I didn’t report… if I didn’t ensure no one escaped… he swore they’d be ‘re-educated’! He swore he’d send them to the penal colonies in the outer rim if I didn’t cooperate!” The words spilled out, a torrent of terror and betrayal. Talan hesitated, the muzzle still aimed, but the rigid certainty in his posture wavered, replaced by tight stillness. Yanshan felt a familiar, cold dread settle in his stomach. Hostages. The ancient tactics of tyrants, still effective in this gleaming, ‘advanced’ age. “A coerced asset,” Yanshan murmured, his voice low, almost contemplative. He stepped forward, placing a hand on Talan’s weapon arm, gently nudging it down. Talan, surprisingly, allowed it. “High command would use such methods. Fear is the only currency of the regime.” He knelt before the weeping Toris, his expression unreadable. “You say your kin are on Xylos.” It wasn’t a question. “And command threatened their ‘re-education’ if you failed to ensure our continued presence here until the purge?” Toris nodded frantically, still sobbing, his eyes pleading. “He said… he said the station was compromised! A ‘Heretic’ was among us! He said it was for the good of the regime to contain the… the risk!” Yanshan’s lips thinned. The regime’s fear of ‘Somatic Heresy’ wasn’t just propaganda; it was born of a deep-seated terror, an ancient memory of raw, physical power shattering their meticulously crafted order. He had seen it before, countless cycles ago, in a life that felt both impossibly distant and intimately close. He remembered the crumbling of the K’tharr Imperium, a vast, bureaucratic machine that had thought its mechanized legions invincible. He remembered standing amidst the ruined spires of their central citadel, the air thick with the dust of shattered grav-tanks, the metallic tang of vaporized power armor. His bare hands, then as now, had been the instruments of an empire’s undoing, each strike a tremor that fractured their belief in steel over spirit. The Emperor-Priest, a man whose face was forever etched into Yanshan’s memory, had screamed of ‘unholy blasphemy’ as Yanshan’s palm strike had buckled his reinforced personal shield, sending him flying into a jade pillar that shattered on impact. The K’tharr, like the Hegemony, had assumed they had outlawed true power, sealing it away behind layers of technology, only to find it re-emerge, primal and unstoppable. Yanshan’s gaze hardened as the memory faded, leaving behind a cold, ruthless resolve. The regime's fear was justified, but their methods were abhorrent. And Toris, by his terrified confession, had just proven himself a crucial, if unwilling, asset. “Rise, Cadet Toris,” Yanshan said, his voice quiet but absolute. Toris flinched, then slowly pushed himself up, wiping snot from his nose with a trembling hand. “You have made your choice, and it was to save your kin. I understand that. But now, you will make another. You will swear an oath of fealty to *my* people, the Ashen Sect, and you will ensure their survival.” Toris gawked, his tears momentarily forgotten. “An… an oath? To a… a sect?” “A blood oath,” Yanshan corrected, holding out his hand, palm up. A faint, swirling energy coalesced within it, a vibrant, emerald green. “A binding of life and spirit. Fail us, and the qi will rend your meridians, slowly, agonizingly, until your consciousness is but a screaming void. Succeed, and your kin, when we reach them, will be under my protection, safe from the regime’s grasp. No officer's threats will reach them then.” Toris stared at the swirling qi, then at Yanshan’s unyielding face, choking down a gasp. He glanced at Talan, who merely watched, a complex mix of shock and reluctant admiration in his eyes. The choice was clear: a slow death by internal agony or a desperate, perhaps impossible, hope. “I… I swear!” Toris stammered, his voice barely a whisper. He placed his trembling hand into Yanshan’s. The moment their skin touched, the green qi pulsed, a sharp, searing heat that made Toris cry out, his body arching for a brief, agonizing second before the energy subsided, leaving a faint, emerald mark on the back of his hand. “Good,” Yanshan said, his grip firm. “Now, report everything you know about command's movements, their true objectives, and any weaknesses in their deployment. And then, we tend to the wounded.” *** The medical bay was a sterile, cramped space, illuminated by flickering emergency lights that cast long, dancing shadows across the equipment. Yanshan sat on a cold examination slab, his hands, still bearing the faint discoloration from the qi surge, held out for Talan’s inspection. The hull breach, though sealed, had caused a system overload that left the bay’s automated medic-drones inert. Talan, with surprising gentleness, was meticulously cleaning the raw, abraded skin on Yanshan’s knuckles, where he had anchored himself against the blast door’s shuddering frame. “You should be dead,” Talan murmured, his voice quiet, almost intimate in the close confines. His fingers, deft and warm, dabbed an antiseptic solution onto a particularly deep scrape. “No human could withstand that kind of kinetic force, let alone manipulate a multi-ton door with… whatever that was.” Yanshan grunted, a short, sharp intake of breath as the antiseptic stung. “It was necessary. My people were exposed.” Talan paused, looking up, his gaze meeting Yanshan’s. The raw emotion Yanshan had glimpsed earlier, after his oath, was back, a potent current beneath the ice. “Your people,” Talan repeated, a faint, almost imperceptible softening in his expression. “You really mean it, don’t you? You truly think you can save them all.” “I do not merely think so,” Yanshan stated, his voice firm. “I will. And you, Talan Ro, have proven yourself willing to stand with them. To sacrifice your own craft for their survival. That is not an act I take lightly.” A flush, faint but distinct, rose on Talan’s pale cheeks. His eyes, usually sharp and guarded, seemed to lose some of their edge. “It was… logical. The optimal solution to prevent further hull breaches. My mecha was merely a tool.” But the lie was thin, easily seen through. Yanshan saw the nascent respect, the grudging admiration, in Talan’s gaze. It was a mirror to his own, a recognition of strength and resolve beyond the superficial rivalries. “A tool you gave up without hesitation,” Yanshan countered, a rare, small smile touching his lips. “A true guardian. You are not so different from me, Talan. Perhaps we are both heretics, in our own way.” Before Talan could reply, before the silence between them could deepen, a shrill, piercing alarm blared through the medical bay. Toris, huddled in a corner, relaying information from his datapad to a stunned Talan, cried out. His datapad, clattering to the floor, now pulsed with a violent, angry red light. “My tracker!” Toris shrieked, scrambling to retrieve it. “The commander! He’s overriding it! He knows I’m here! He knows I’m not reporting!” [NEURO-CRUCIBLE AI: EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: SECTOR K-9 DELTA. REMOTE ACTIVATION. OXYGEN VENTING INITIATED. BLAST DOORS LOCKING. COMMAND AUTHENTICATION: GENERAL VANE. IMMEDIATE EVACUATION RECOMMENDED.] The cold, automated voice of the AI echoed through the station, cutting through the blaring alarms. With a sickening lurch, the heavy blast doors hissed shut, sealing their section of the corridor. A sudden, terrifying pressure drop hit them, making their ears pop. The recycled air, thin and metallic, grew visibly colder, then thinner still. A terrifying vacuum began to pull at their lungs. The oxygen was being vented.

Blood Oath and Oxygen