Weaves of Ashes

Chapter 1: Chapter 0.1: Brother

Location: Hidden Rebel Base, Planet Deshan H24C, Centaurus Nebula

Year: 3209

The loudspeaker’s crackle sliced through the mess hall’s murmur, sharp as a blade through flesh. ”Commander SN1098, report to the medical bay immediately.”

Jayde’s fork froze, hovering over her plate, a lump of synth-protein untouched. Her designation—cold, sterile, a brand burned into her soul by Xi Corporation’s iron hand. Doctor Shishido Eba had dared to use it.

She set the fork down, deliberate, each movement a leash on the rage coiling in her chest, tight as a noose. Around her, the skeleton crew—seven soldiers, all that remained of the Centauri’s heart—fell silent, their eyes darting to her like prey sensing a predator’s shift. They knew that stillness in her, the way her green eyes, sharp as jade, could cut through bone. They whispered she was ice and steel, a machine forged in a vat, no heart to soften her edges.

”As you were,” she said, voice low, a command wrapped in velvet. The tension shattered; voices rose, too loud, too forced, filling the hollow where hundreds once laughed and cursed.

Jayde stood, her chair scraping the metal floor, a scream in the half-empty hall. Deshan H24C was dying around her, its corridors stripped bare, crews dismantling walls and wiring, leaving only echoes of a home never truly hers. Home—a word that tasted like ash for those engineered to serve, never to belong.

Her boots rang against the grated floor, each step a pulse in the cold, blue-lit veins of the base. Emergency lights cast shadows like specters, and the air carried the sour reek of Deshan’s red dust, seeping through seals no tech could fully block. She moved through the gutted halls, past rooms once alive with her people, now skeletal, their purpose scavenged for the next fight.

The medical bay doors hissed open, and the smell hit her—antiseptic, sharp and biting, layered over something raw, organic, wrong. Bacta fluid, perhaps, or the ghost of pain no scrub could erase. Doctor Shishido Eba stood at a monitoring station, her small frame dwarfed by blinking machines, her dark eyes locked on a holographic display. At the sound of Jayde’s entrance, she looked up, guilt flickering across her face like a glitch in a holo-feed.

Jayde stalked forward, not walked—stalked, her body a weapon honed by decades of survival. ”Damn it, Doc,” she said, voice cold as the void. ”How many times have I told you not to use our designations?”

Eba’s hands stilled, her delicate fingers hovering over the controls. She didn’t flinch, didn’t cower, though Jayde towered over her, all engineered muscle and barely leashed fury. That defiance was why Jayde respected her—why she trusted her, as much as trust was possible.

”You know what it means to us,” Jayde pressed, softer but no less fierce, her words a blade drawn slow across stone. ”We’re not Xi Corp’s tools anymore. Not products. We’re Centauri.”

”I’m sorry, Jayde.” Eba’s voice was quiet, sincere, her eyes meeting Jayde’s without fear. ”I forgot. It won’t happen again.”

The name—Jayde, given by Lawrence when they were sixteen, for the green fire in her eyes—eased the knot in her chest, just a fraction. She’d been too sharp, perhaps. Eba was new, six months free from a Delta Quadrant black site, where they’d carved into her mind and body for science’s cold gods. Jayde had heard her screams in the night, echoes of a past not easily shed.

”It’s fine,” Jayde said, gentler now, though her jaw still clenched. ”I know you didn’t mean it.”

Eba nodded, her fingers resuming their dance over the controls, summoning streams of data that glowed like dying stars. ”He’s awake,” she said, and the world tilted beneath Jayde’s feet.

”Finally.” The word tore from her, raw, relief and desperation bleeding through like blood through a bandage.

She didn’t wait for more. The adjacent ward’s doors parted, and there he was—Lawrence, propped up in the only occupied bed, his blond hair catching the soft white light like a halo. His blue eyes, bright as Crypso’s twin suns, tracked her entrance, and his lips curved into that half-smile, the one that had carried her through sixty years of hell.

”Hey, Sis,” he said, voice rough from disuse but warm, always warm, like a hearth in a storm.

Her breath caught, sharp as a shard in her throat. Two years. Two years she’d thought him dead, his absence a wound that never closed. She crossed the room in four strides, then stopped at his bedside, suddenly unsure, her hands twitching as if they could grasp the lost time. He looked... good. Healthy, his skin unmarred, the marks of torture erased by Eba’s skill and Centauri biotech. But his eyes—those bright blue eyes—held shadows, deep as the void, shadows she knew too well from her own reflection.

”How you holding up?” she asked, voice soft, cracking like thin ice under strain.

Anyone else would have gaped. Commander Jayde, the diamond-hard warrior, the robot, her soldiers called her behind her back. No heart, they said. If they saw her now, trembling at her brother’s bedside, they’d think her a stranger.

Lawrence’s smile widened, became real, a spark in the dark. ”Sorry to worry you, Commander.”

She wanted to hit him. Wanted to hug him. Settled for sinking into the chair beside his bed, exhaustion crashing over her like a wave. ”You were gone two years, Lawrence. I thought they’d killed you.”

”Takes more than Xi Corp to kill me.” He aimed for levity, but his voice wavered, a crack in the facade. ”You know that, Sis.”

Sixty years. Born in adjacent vats, SN1098 and SN1055, two of a thousand engineered for war, their survival rate a brutal 0.2%. Xi Corp called it acceptable losses. By nine, fifty remained. The training broke them—bones, minds, souls—to forge perfect weapons. By sixteen, only two stood.

Jayde still saw that day, the training yard stark under Kepler-442b’s red sun, empty barracks stretching like graves. The instructors’ eyes gleamed with pride: Look what we made. Killing machines, flawless, cold. That night, Lawrence broke regulations, slipping into her quarters. They were the last of their batch, bound by survival, by pain.

”I’m calling you Jayde,” he’d said, perched on her bunk, his blue eyes fierce. ”For your eyes—like jade, rare and strong.”

She’d stared, incredulous. ”We’re not allowed names.”

”Fuck what we’re allowed.” His grin was a rebellion. ”I’m Lawrence. You’re Jayde. They can’t kill us now—we’re too valuable.”

He’d been right. Xi Corp’s investment was too deep to discard them over names. From that day, in stolen moments, they were Lawrence and Jayde, brother and sister, forged in fire, not blood.

”You came for me,” Lawrence said now, pulling her back to the present, his voice soft, wondering. ”You actually came.”

”Of course I did.” Her words were fierce, a vow. ”Did you think I’d leave you?”

”I hoped you wouldn’t.” His jaw tightened. ”They told me you were dead. A raid on their facility. I didn’t believe them, but...”

Her hands curled into fists, nails biting her palms. ”What did they do to you?”

”Does it matter?” He looked away, out the window where Deshan’s red desert stretched, endless and scorched, like a wound left to fester. ”I’m here now. Safe.”

It mattered. It burned in her chest, a fire she couldn’t douse. She’d found him in a Xi Corp transport, a high-security cell, his body a canvas of pain—cracked ribs, burns from shock batons, lacerations like cruel calligraphy. She’d sedated him, unable to bear his conscious agony, and brought him to Eba in stasis, his life a fragile thread.

”Eba says you’ll recover fully,” Jayde said, filling the silence with something solid, something safe. ”A few days, and you’ll be back to your old self.”

”Good.” His hand reached for hers, warm, steady. ”Because I heard there’s a mission.”

Her eyes snapped to his. ”How—”

”Base gossip travels, even to medbay.” His grin was sharp, hungry. ”Xi Corp’s secret base on Crypso 3Q3U. Kill-switches for thousands of GESS. You’re gonna blow it to hell.”

She should’ve known. The crew buzzed with it, their whispers electric with fear and hope. ”I am,” she said. ”This is the one, Lawrence. We destroy that base, we gut Xi Corp. Free thousands of our people.”

”Then I’m coming.”

”No.” The word was steel, final. ”You’re not cleared. You need to heal.”

”Fuck that.” He sat up, the soldier in him waking, eyes blazing like plasma. ”You think I’ll sit here while you take on Xi Corp? After what they did?” His voice dropped, lethal. ”I want payback, Sis. Let me have it.”

She wanted to refuse, to chain him to the bed, to keep him safe. She’d just gotten him back—her brother, her anchor, the only soul she trusted in this kriffing universe. But she knew revenge, its heat in her veins, its weight like a star about to collapse.

”Fine,” she said, voice tight. ”But you follow orders. No heroics, no going rogue. We do this clean.”

”Yes, ma’am.” He saluted, mockingly formal, and she rolled her eyes, a spark of warmth piercing the cold.

This was what she’d missed—his teasing, their bond, forged in blood and defiance. He could make her smile, even now, with Crypso’s shadow looming like a guillotine.

”Rest,” she said, standing. ”We leave in two weeks. I need you sharp.”

”Where you headed?” he called as she reached the door.

She paused, looking back. He looked young, despite sixty years, their enhancements slowing time’s march. He was the boy who’d named her, who’d held her hand after brutal training, who’d been her light in Xi Corp’s dark.

”To prepare,” she said. ”Lots to do.”

Not a lie, but not the truth. She needed out, away from the medbay’s sterile air, before the dam of her emotions broke. She’d gotten him back, against all odds. She wouldn’t lose him again.

Outside, Doctor Eba waited, her dark eyes too knowing, her small frame a quiet strength against the base’s hum. ”He seems well,” she said, cautious, testing the waters.

”He does.” Jayde’s voice was flat, Commander mode snapping into place like armor.

”Physically, he’s healed. The enhancements sped it up.” Eba’s fingers toyed with her data pad, a nervous tic. ”But trauma... it lingers. The mind doesn’t mend like bone.”

Jayde’s jaw tightened, a cold dread slithering through her. ”I know, Doc.”

”I’m sure you do.” Eba paused, choosing her words like steps through a minefield. ”Two years is a long time. Xi Corp’s methods... they reshape people. Break them in ways that don’t show.”

”What are you saying?” Jayde’s voice was low, dangerous, a warning shot.

”Nothing certain.” Eba met her gaze, unflinching. ”Just... watch him. Look for signs—PTSD, dissociation, shifts in personality. The mind’s fragile, Commander.”

Jayde nodded, slow, deliberate. ”I’ll watch him.”

”Good.” Eba turned to go, then hesitated. ”I’m glad he’s back, Jayde. I know what he means to you.”

The words should’ve warmed her, should’ve felt like solace. Instead, they rang like a klaxon, sharp and foreboding.

Jayde watched Eba’s soft footsteps fade into the base’s mechanical pulse, then glanced back at the medbay door. Lawrence had seemed... fine. Joking, calling her Sis, eager to fight. Too eager, maybe?

No. She was paranoid, Eba’s words twisting her thoughts like a knife. Lawrence was her brother, her rock, the one constant in a universe of betrayal. Xi Corp hadn’t broken him. Hadn’t turned him into something else.

He was still hers. Still Centauri.

She buried the doubt, locked it deep with the fears she couldn’t afford. There was a base to dismantle, a mission to plan, a war to win. She’d deal with the rest later.

For now, Lawrence was back. That was enough.

It had to be.