Chapter 7 — The First Descent

Veydril awoke with the gentle shiver of his rejuvenation pod releasing its seal. The chamber was still dim, a faint blue haze from the nutrient vapors drifting out like ghosts. He flexed his hands, letting strength return to sinew, and stood in silence for a long moment. The hum of the Horizon of Ashes was different today—slower, deeper, almost reverent.

They had arrived.

The ship had shed its furious velocity, burning away momentum with its green-tinted engines until it hovered in Mars’ reach like a coiled predator choosing where to strike. The slingshot arc was already calculated: once the last module cleared her bays, the Horizon would pivot, ignite its drives, and fling itself outward again, riding the Martian gravity well toward Jupiter. But for now, the warship was quiet. Its silence was not idleness, but anticipation.

He dressed quickly and left the pod-chamber, making his way through curving halls where other Acheli passed in purposeful silence. No one needed to be told what day it was. The moment had been carved into them long before launch, etched into duty.

He found Jeyla in the bio-pod bays, as he expected. Her hands, long and sharp, moved deftly over racks of containers—transparent globes filled with spores, seed clusters, and writhing gene-spliced larvae. The air here smelled faintly of wet earth, though none had ever been touched by Martian soil.

“Veydril,” she said without looking up, as though she had known the exact moment he would arrive. “Your stride sounds stronger. The rejuvenation agrees with you.”

“I will need the strength,” he replied, watching her secure a pod of pale fungi that glimmered faintly from within, the beginnings of a colony’s ecosystem. “Your work will shape the surface more than mine. When the modules land, the Acheli will live or wither depending on what you plant.”

Jeyla smiled faintly, though her eyes remained intent on her task. “It is always that way. Stone and steel make walls, but life makes the walls worth inhabiting. They will eat from my spores before they drink from your metals.”

Veydril inclined his head in respect. He had always admired her—her focus, her quiet conviction. She would remain behind with the colonists, breathing alien air and weaving it into sustenance, while he followed Aor-Kesh into the deeper void. Both paths required loyalty, though of different kinds.

Alarms chimed across the decks, deep and resonant. It was time.

Veydril made his way to the command chamber, where he stood beside Aor-Kesh, gazing out at the vast deployment bays through the panoramic viewport. The silence within was pierced only by the muted tones of consoles and the low murmur of calculations.

The colony modules had already been awakened. One by one they rumbled free, drifting like colossal spores torn from a parent stalk. Each was immense, armored in stone and alloy, bristling with thrusters and sensors. Inside, nearly thirty thousand Acheli waited—families, engineers, soldiers, cultivators—sealed within self-contained cities that would descend onto the Martian dust.

Hundreds of them launched, in measured intervals, fanning out across orbital lanes like an unfolding lattice. Each module carried the full blueprint of Acheli survival: atmosphere processors, excavation rigs, water harvesters, and Jeyla’s living cargo. They would strike the surface in scattered points, burrowing into the planet’s crust like seeds driven into soil. First tunnels, then chambers, then interlinking corridors. A colony would spread not across the surface, but beneath it, where the planet’s bones would be reshaped into Acheli halls.

It was a process repeated on a thousand worlds, moons, and asteroids. They had perfected it across centuries: the Acheli never merely landed. They burrowed, they grew, they rooted.

The colony modules drifted away, their drives pulsing like fading embers as they curved toward their descent trajectories. Soon they would vanish from sight, swallowed by Mars’ shadow, each carrying the future of the Acheli within.

Veydril stood straight, his thoughts conflicted. Pride at seeing their kind descend in such strength; unease at the distant blue-green world spinning far behind them, watching, waiting, unknowingly destined to be judged.

Silence filled the command chamber, heavy with the weight of what had just been set in motion.

Aor-Kesh’s crest flared once, then settled. His gaze never left the shifting displays. When he finally spoke, his voice carried neither triumph nor regret, only inevitability.

“Dispersal completed. Prepare for acceleration.”

The words reverberated through the chamber, carried by Selvek and his navigators into action. The great engines of the Horizon stirred, thrumming like the heartbeat of some titanic beast ready to move again.

Veydril stood straight, feeling the faint tremor in the deck beneath his boots. He knew the calculations had been perfected long ago, Selvek would execute them flawlessly, and the ship’s arc was already etched into the stars. Yet still, in the silence of his mind, he thought:

We leave one destiny behind, and begin another.