Chronicles Of Norion

The Lost Troopers

Trooper 117 awoke to darkness and the stench of blood. For a moment, he lay still, disoriented, the silence pressing against him like a physical weight. Then training asserted itself. His hand closed around the rifle at his side, and he rose in a single practiced motion, sweeping the room with measured precision. The space resolved itself slowly in his mind: the bridge of a warship, gutted and lifeless, consoles shattered, panels torn open as though the ship itself had been flayed. Everything felt familiar, intimately so, yet the memories that should have accompanied that recognition refused to surface.

Blood was nearby. He could smell it.

The visor of his helmet flared to life, bathing the darkness in a muted crimson glow. Shapes sharpened, outlines solidified, and the source of the scent was immediately highlighted.

A woman lay sprawled across the deck.

She was already dead. A brown trench coat clung stiffly to her body, a wide-brimmed hat discarded beside her as if it had fallen mid-motion. Her right arm was unmistakably prosthetic, its synthetic plating scarred by impact. When 117 moved closer, the truth became impossible to ignore—multiple gunshot wounds riddled her torso. The pattern was controlled. Deliberate. An execution, not a struggle.

Someone had killed her.

Instinctively, he turned, scanning the bridge again. No movement. No heat signatures. No sign of an escape route or firing angle. The room offered no answers, only a single, deeply unsettling possibility.

It might have been him.

Trooper 117 knelt beside the body, studying the woman's face. Recognition stirred, frustratingly incomplete, like a word caught at the tip of his tongue. Then pain detonated behind his eyes, sharp and sudden, forcing a gasp from his lips. A voice echoed through his skull, faint and broken, carried on desperation.

"Trooper 117... here... are your orders... cough... protect... Faith... Narukami!"

The voice vanished as abruptly as it had come, and the pain dissolved with it. 117 sucked in a steadying breath and straightened, staring down at the corpse once more. Whose voice had that been? And why did the name Faith Narukami feel impossibly heavy, as though it carried consequences he could not yet grasp?

The questions were cut short by the sound of footsteps.

Armored. Disciplined. Soldiers.

117 pressed himself against the wall beside the bridge entrance, rifle raised, counting the cadence of their approach. Four. The door slid open, and for a heartbeat, rifles were leveled on both sides, muzzles trembling with restrained violence. Then recognition flickered across their visors, and weapons lowered in near-perfect unison.

"Good to see some friendly faces," 117 said, the tension finally bleeding from his shoulders.

"Yeah," one of them replied dryly. "Almost shot you. What's your number?"

"117."

"I'm 553," the trooper said, then gesturing toward the others in order. "He's 108, 309, and 421."

553's gaze drifted to the body on the floor. "You do this?"

117 hesitated. "I think so. I... can't remember."

553 snorted softly. "Figures. None of us can. Woke up in the armory with a blank slate."

Another spike of pain lanced through 117's skull, brief but intense.

"You alright?" 553 asked.

"I'm fine," 117 replied, forcing steadiness into his voice. "This is the bridge. We need to locate the others. Can anyone access the system?"

"I can," 421 said without hesitation.

117 stepped aside. "Then do it."

421 moved to the central terminal, fingers dancing across the interface. "We're aboard an Akadian frigate—Vessel I-14. Power and defensive systems are compromised across the ship. The generator room took significant damage, and internal communications are barely holding together."

"Akadian," 553 muttered, glancing around. "That explains why this place feels like home."

Suddenly the deck lurched violently beneath their boots.

"External collision," 421 said after a quick scan. "Asteroid impact. Without our outer defenses, we're sitting ducks."

117 didn't hesitate. "I'll check the generator. 553, 108—you're with me. 309, 421—stay here and try to contact the others."

The three moved out immediately.

The elevator ride was silent, broken only by the soft mechanical clicks of weapons being checked and rechecked. When the doors slid open, they advanced with methodical caution, clearing the generator room sector by sector. The chamber itself was vast, dominated by a towering energy pillar that crackled weakly, its glow uneven and sickly.

They split, reconvening on the far side of the structure.

A section of the pillar's metallic casing had been cut open. Thick cables within hung severed and sparking, the damage too precise to be accidental.

"Sabotage," 117 reported. "Someone wanted this ship crippled."

Before the thought could fully settle, his attention snapped to the doorway.

A girl stood there, a rocket launcher braced against her shoulder, its warhead already locked onto him.

She fired.

"Rockets!"

They dove as the explosion tore into the pillar, fire and shrapnel blasting outward. Warning alarms screamed as the generator destabilized. The girl didn't linger. She vanished through the doorway, the spent launcher clattering uselessly to the floor.

"Status?" 117 demanded, hauling himself upright.

"I'm good," 553 answered.

108 wasn't as fortunate. He groaned, a jagged shard of metal embedded deep in his leg.

"Go," 108 rasped. "Don't let her escape."

Flames climbed the walls as the pillar began to fail. 117 nodded once and activated his comm.

"421, we got hostile onboard. Young female. Generator room critically damaged and 108 is wounded."

"I have her on sensors," 421 replied. "She's heading for the storage bay. Straight path from your position."

They pursued her through the corridors until the ship opened into the storage bay—a cavernous maze of stacked iron containers rising toward the ceiling.

"Too many places to hide," 553 muttered.

"And too many opportunities for an ambush. Keep your eyes peeled," 117 replied.

Suddenly The doors slammed shut behind them. The lights died.

Their night vision flared on, bathing the bay in ghostly red.

A sudden crash exploded to their left. Steel screamed as a container wall ruptured, and the girl burst through it, her massive metallic fists punching clean through hardened plating. For a fraction of a second, her eyes met 117's.

The voice returned, singular and absolute.

"Protect..."

Recognition struck with terrifying certainty.

"Faith... Narukami," he breathed.

553 opened fire, rounds sparking uselessly against her raised arm. The metallic fists dissolved into swarms of shimmering drones, reforming instantly into elongated blades.

She turned her gaze fully on 117.

"Priad," she said in anger.