The wasteland stretched out like a corpse under the merciless sun, cracked earth and jagged rocks breaking the horizon in every direction. Heat waves danced off the barren ground, and a hot wind kicked up clouds of dust that clung to everything. Three Titan Frames moved through the desolation, their massive feet crunching through brittle sediment with each step.
Nathan felt the neural link's familiar bite as it synced with his Frame's systems, that electric tingle that always made his teeth ache for the first few seconds. His HUD flickered to life, casting blue light across the cramped cockpit. Sweat was already beading on his forehead despite the climate control.
"Control, this is Brant," he said into his comm, trying to keep the uncertainty out of his voice. "Sector Five's looking real fucking empty out here. Moving to waypoint six."
"Copy, Brant. Keep tight formation," came the response, crackling with static. "Be advised, possible hostile in your AO. Designation Phantom. Watch your ass out there."
The name hit Nathan like a punch to the gut. Everyone knew about Phantom, the ghost that had turned entire squads into scrap metal and body bags. He'd heard the stories in the mess hall, whispered over late-night drinks. This was the first time he'd been anywhere near a potential encounter.
"Phantom?" Damali Kessler's voice cut through the squad channel, tight with nerves. Her Frame moved behind his in textbook formation, every step precise. "They're sending us out here with that thing prowling around? What the hell are they thinking?"
"Easy, Kess," Nathan replied, though his own mouth had gone dry. "Probably just a ghost story. Let's keep our heads up and—"
"Contact!" Ilson's shout exploded through the comm. His recon Frame pivoted toward the western ridge, sensors sweeping. "Had movement on the ridge. Fast as hell, gone now, but I fucking saw it."
Nathan's stomach clenched. Ilson had the sharpest eyes in their unit, and he didn't spook easy. "Confirm, Ilson. You sure?"
"Dead sure," Ilson shot back. "Radar's got nothing, but whatever it was moved faster than anything should. Way too fast."
Nathan hesitated, then keyed his comm. "Control, possible contact. Visual confirmation of fast-moving unknown. Radar's clean."
Static answered him.
A low hum filled the air, like the sound of a swarm approaching. Brant's HUD exploded with interference warnings as metallic scales descended from nowhere, filling the air like a living storm. The chaff cloud twisted and writhed, turning the world into a maze of sensor-killing static.
"Radar's down!" Kessler's voice spiked with panic. "What the fuck is this shit?"
"Skybolt's blind!" Ilson barked, but there was something electric in his voice, fear mixed with anticipation.
Nathan stabbed at his controls, cycling through sensor modes. Thermal, electromagnetic, motion detection, everything came back scrambled. "Control, we need support! We're flying blind out here!"
Nothing but static.
Then it moved.
A blur of matte black cut through the interference cloud faster than thought. Phantom struck with brutal efficiency, its plasma blade carving through Ilson's Frame like it was made of paper. Sparks showered the ground as Skybolt collapsed, its reactor core bleeding heat and light.
"Ilson! Goddammit, Ilson, talk to me!" Nathan's voice cracked as he shouted into the comm.
Silence.
"Jesus Christ," Kessler whispered. "It's really here. Nathan, what do we do?"
"Stay close," Nathan ordered, his hands shaking on the controls. "Switch to thermal if you can get anything. Don't let it separate us."
He launched a spread of missiles into the cloud, but Phantom moved like smoke, weaving between the explosions without effort. Every warning light on Nathan's console was screaming, his systems struggling to process what they were seeing.
Phantom shifted, flowing toward Kessler's position like liquid death. "Kess, move your ass!" Nathan screamed, but it was already too late.
The plasma blade ignited with a sound like tearing metal. It sliced through Talon's legs in one fluid motion, and Kessler's Frame crumpled to the desert floor.
"Eject! Eject now!"
The escape pod burst free just as Phantom closed in, Talon exploding in a shower of debris and flame. Nathan watched the pod's chute deploy, his heart hammering against his ribs. He was alone now.
Phantom turned toward him, the chaff cloud swirling around them both like a metallic whirlwind. Nathan cycled through every system he had left, missiles spent, main gun useless, without a hard lock hitting Phantom would be as hard as threading a needle with your eyes shut. His Frame's reactor was running hot, and he could smell burning electronics through the cockpit's filters.
"Come on, you bastard," he muttered, bracing for the end.
As the sleek black death machine closed in, Nathan's mind pulled him away, dragged him back to a memory he'd tried to bury.
The station's air recyclers hummed with their constant mechanical rhythm, a backdrop to the tension crackling through their cramped family quarters. Nathan pressed himself into the corner, still wearing his grease-stained coveralls from the maintenance shift, trying to make himself invisible. His father stood rigid by the viewport, jaw clenched, while Marcus leaned against the opposite wall with that cocky smirk that always meant trouble.
"You signed the fucking papers?" their father growled, his voice low and dangerous. "Without talking to us? Without thinking it through?"
"Yeah, I signed," Marcus shot back, shrugging like it was nothing. "I'm not gonna spend my life elbow-deep in ship guts for people who don't give a damn about my name. I'm better than that."
The words hit like a slap. Nathan saw his father's hands ball into fists, the muscle in his jaw jumping. "This isn't about recognition," his father said, each word sharp as broken glass. "It's about honest work. You think strapping yourself into one of those walking coffins makes you better than the rest of us?"
"No," Marcus snapped, the smirk vanishing as he stepped forward. "But it gives me a shot at something real. Something you never had the balls to go after. I'm not gonna rot here, pretending that—"
The slap came fast and hard. The crack echoed through the small room like a gunshot, freezing everyone in place. Nathan flinched, his breath catching as Marcus staggered back, a red mark blooming across his cheek.
The silence that followed was suffocating. Marcus slowly straightened, touching his cheek with careful fingers. When he looked at their father, his expression was unreadable, but his eyes burned with something dark and final.
"So that's how it is," he said quietly.
Their father stood there, fists still clenched, breathing hard. He didn't say a word.
Marcus's gaze found Nathan, and something in his expression softened. He stood there for a moment, then turned toward the door. His steps were deliberate, controlled, his back straight despite everything. At the threshold, he paused and looked back at Nathan.
The smile he gave was forced, hollow, like an apology he didn't know how to make.
"Take care of yourself, alright?" he said softly, all the fight gone out of his voice.
Nathan swallowed hard and nodded, unable to find words. Marcus held his gaze for another heartbeat, then the door slid shut with a soft hiss. The silence that followed was deafening.
Weeks later, they sat together in one of the station's forgotten maintenance bays, surrounded by the comfortable smell of oil and metal. The hum of machinery provided a steady rhythm, almost like a heartbeat.
Marcus handed him a bottle with an unmarked label, the contents a muddy brown that looked about as appetizing as coolant fluid.
"Fungus beer," Marcus said with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Tastes like shit, but it's what we've got. You have no idea how hard it was to get glass bottles past security."
Nathan twisted off the cap and took a careful sip. The taste hit him like a punch, bitter, earthy, and altogether wrong. He grimaced, and Marcus laughed.
"You'll get used to it," Marcus said, taking a long pull from his own bottle. "Maybe. Hell, none of us know what real beer tastes like anyway. Only time we see Earth imports is when Command's celebrating some victory we'll never hear about."
Nathan forced himself to take another sip. It was marginally better the second time, though that wasn't saying much. "I don't get the appeal," he muttered.
"That's probably for the best," Marcus replied. "Figured you should try it at least once, though. Before I ship out."
The words hung between them like a weight. The bay's machinery hummed on, filling the silence with white noise.
"So you're really doing this," Nathan said, not quite a question.
Marcus nodded, leaning back against a support beam. "Yeah. It's time."
Nathan stared at the grimy floor, trying to keep his voice steady. "Just... don't get yourself killed out there, okay?"
Marcus glanced over, his expression softening. "I'll do my best. Someone's gotta come back and show you how it's done, right?"
Nathan managed a weak laugh. "Yeah, right."
They sat there for a while, not saying much. Nathan wanted to tell Marcus how much he'd always looked up to him, how scared he was of being left behind, but the words stuck in his throat. Instead, he took another sip of the awful beer, focusing on its terrible taste like it could distract him from the knot in his chest.
"Take care of yourself," Marcus said eventually, his voice casual but his eyes serious.
Nathan nodded, swallowing past the tightness in his throat. "You too."
Marcus raised his bottle in a mock toast, that crooked smile back on his face. "To the ones who stay behind."
Nathan clinked his bottle against Marcus's, forcing a smile. "And the ones who come back."
They drank in silence after that, the weight of goodbye settling over them like dust.
The memory shattered as Phantom's frame filled his vision, the plasma blade igniting with a blue-white glare that cut through the interference cloud. Every alarm in the cockpit was screaming, drowning out his heartbeat. Brant slammed the eject button a split second before the blade struck.
The pod burst free just as Phantom's blade carved through the space where his cockpit had been. Brant's heart hammered against his ribs as he watched his Frame collapse in a shower of sparks, but something was wrong. Phantom didn't pursue. Instead, it stood motionless in the wasteland, its glowing blades deactivating with a soft hiss.
The metallic scales that had filled the air began to move with eerie precision, spiraling toward the black Frame like a living storm. One by one, they adhered to Phantom's hull with soft, synchronized clicks, a thousand mechanical heartbeats that made Brant's skin crawl. As each scale locked into place, the matte-black armor transformed, taking on a liquid-metal sheen that caught the light like mercury.
When the last scale settled, Phantom stood transformed, no longer the shadow that had stalked them through the interference cloud, but something that shimmered and flowed like molten silver. It turned with fluid grace, thrusters igniting, and vanished into the smoky horizon without a backward glance.
Nathan's pod hit the ground hard, jarring his teeth. He lay there gasping, adrenaline still coursing through his system, when a calm voice crackled through his comm.
"End simulation. Please exit the pod, Cadet Brant."
The desert, the heat, the taste of fear, all of it dissolved into a grid of blue light. The suffocating cockpit became the sterile interior of a sim pod, and Nathan found himself staring at white walls instead of a burning wasteland. The hiss of the release mechanism made him flinch.
He stumbled out on unsteady legs, yanking off the neural link headset with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. The training bay stretched around him, lined with identical pods where other cadets were climbing out, some looking frustrated, others looking like they'd seen death up close.
"Well, shit," a gravelly voice said behind him. "You actually lasted more than thirty seconds."
Nathan turned to find Lieutenant Commander Vega approaching, a weathered darker skinned man with graying hair and scars that spoke of real combat. He held a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee that smelled like it had been brewing since the last war.
"That was... that was Phantom?" Nathan managed, his mouth still dry as sand.
Vega snorted. "Kid, that was a simulation based on combat data from Phantom's encounters. The real thing?" He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. "The real thing doesn't leave anyone alive to record data."
Nathan felt his knees threaten to give out, but he locked them in place. "How many people have faced it?"
"Faced it and lived? Nobody we know of." Vega's expression grew serious. "What you just experienced was built from sensor data, battlefield recordings, and a lot of educated guesswork. The fact that you managed to eject before it killed you puts you in the top ten percent of cadets who've run this sim."
"Top ten percent of what? Getting my ass kicked?"
"Top ten percent of not dying immediately," Vega corrected. "Most cadets don't even see it coming." He gestured toward the pod with his coffee cup. "How'd it feel?"
Nathan thought about the impossible speed, the surgical precision, the way Phantom had moved like liquid death through the interference cloud. "Like fighting a nightmare."
"Good. That means the sim's working." Vega made a note on his tablet. "Welcome to advanced combat training, Cadet. If you're lucky, you'll never meet the real thing."
He started to walk away, then paused. "Oh, and Brant? Next time, try not to let it get that close before you eject. Dead heroes don't file reports."
Nathan stood there for a long moment, staring at the closed simulation pod. His heart was still racing, and he could swear he could still taste the metallic tang of fear on his tongue. If that was just a simulation, he couldn't imagine what facing the real Phantom would be like.
But buried beneath the fear, something else stirred, a cold, hard determination. Whatever it took, whoever Phantom really was, he would be ready next time.
Even if it killed him.