0.04 AU above Jupiter's Nightside ‒ T-98 minutes to Insertion
Contrapunctus coasted with its sails deliberately mis-trimmed, each ragged flap adding a slap of discord to the surrounding vacuum.
Every forty seconds Dawn-Core rang prime-thirty-seven; every twenty, Maya fired a micro-thruster burst two milliseconds off the nav computer's cue.
On any other flight the ship would feel broken—here the chaos was the shield.
Inside the main bay the crew ringed the Noisy-Boy: a coffin-sized clear-thread cylinder grafted to a crude cloak-skin rocket and stuffed with every imperfect sound they could fabricate—glitch-loops, kettle screeches, Cassie's off-beat guitar strums, Aiden's worst dad jokes converted to Morse bursts, Lin's intentionally mis-drawn Qi glyphs, Nephis's cloak tearing set to bass drums. The payload computer would cycle them through a fractal randomiser the moment the torpedo woke.
"This thing is literally the universe's most annoying mixtape," Maya said, wiping flux from her cheek.
"Your code, my vocals—guaranteed unbearable," Aiden added.
Lin inspected the injection nozzle. "If it doesn't work, we'll apologise to eternity with artisan tea."
Cassie strummed an unplugged string. "And homemade cocoa."
Nephis raised an eyebrow beneath his hood. "Apology not accepted by oblivion."
Solayna hovered near Dawn-Core, her constellation eyes flickering with static. "You will have exactly seventeen seconds after breach before the Null-Weave begins to overwrite memory. Deliver the mixtape, then flee."
Plan: Shadow Needle
Stage 1 — Cloak Needle
Nephis would leave Contrapunctus first, wrapped in a condensed cloak spear barely twenty centimetres across—pure shadow and clear-thread filaments interwoven. His task: find the momentary shear wave where perfect silence met the Guardians' crafted noise.
Stage 2 — Torpedo Push
Aiden and Cassie would steer Noisy-Boy along Nephis's tether. Lin would time thruster kicks, Maya jam the shell's harmonic sensors, Solayna feed Dawn-Core's off-beat primes directly into the torpedo's core.
Stage 3 — Get Out
Once the mixtape detonated inside, Contrapunctus had to yank everyone back on a mis-aligned tractor line before the Null-Weave adapted.
"Easy," Aiden quipped.
Maya smirked. "Like teaching Lin to drink espresso."
Lin bowed. "Perfection is overrated—except in tea."
Cassie flicked a glob of solder at him. "You'll live."
T-14 minutes — Launch
Air-lock iris hissed. Nephis—now a ribbon-thin silhouette—slipped into starlight, cloak convoluting into a needle of flickering dark. Contrapunctus's sensors lost him almost instantly—only Maya's custom viewport filter showed a faint warp.
"Needle is in the haystack," she whispered.
Aiden and Cassie guided Noisy-Boy into the chute. The torpedo clicked on, LED status blinking in arrhythmic colour. Dawn-Core's thirty-seven-prime beat synced; the mixtape woke, output muted behind isolation shutters.
Lin monitored the Null-Weave boundary: still a perfect empty arc, stars erased. "Needle found an entrance seam," he announced. "Shadow loop opens in thirty seconds."
Maya split the countdown into terrible rhymes: "Twenty—plenty; fifteen—caffeine; ten—amen."
At zero, Nephis's voice rasped over whisper-band: "Thread pulled. Send the noise."
Cassie slammed the launch stud. Noisy-Boy shot clear, tiny rocket ripping contrails of cloak dust. Tether filaments—thin as hair—uncoiled behind, plugging the torpedo to Contrapunctus's reel system.
Inside the Shell
A moment later all external data died. No star-light, no radio, only tether tension. Then telemetry re-registered inside coordinates—null, null, null—the shell's belly of nothing.
Aiden's HUD lit red: Memory Overwrite 0 % → 12 %. The Null-Weave was already nibbling at mission logs.
Maya yelled, "Detonate on my mark—three, two—"
Static swallowed her word. Overwrite bar jumped to 28 %. Cassie hammered the manual arming paddle; it stuck.
Aiden channelled Dawn-Core directly into the actuator. The paddle snapped open.
Noisy-Boy bloomed—silent, invisible—yet the tether shuddered as if grabbed by a giant hand. Shipwide monitors exploded with garbage characters: off-key whistles, glitch beats, terrible puns scrolling across screens.
The overwrite bar jerked—28 %… 17 %… 5 %—then froze, stuck between numbers. The Null-Weave couldn't choose which flaw to erase first.
Pull-Out
Lin hit reel-reverse. Motors screamed; tether reeled in. But weight spiked: something held the torpedo on the line.
Nephis, still needle-thin, re-emerged carrying a ragged sphere: a third clear-thread child, its surface flawless except for a single chipped corner. The sphere latched onto the tether, static rippling.
"Cargo plus one," Nephis grunted.
Contrapunctus lurched, but Maya cranked power. Cassie flooded the tether with lantern brute-light; Dawn-Core pumped thirty-one-thirty-seven mashups; Lin kicked thrusters.
Tether snapped free. Ship shot back into real star-field. Null-Weave shrank behind—a half-collapsed void pocked with flickers of glitch colour.
Aiden slumped in his harness, laughter breaking loose. "Next mixtape, we add cowbell."
Lin spun a tea-tube toward his face. "And subtract your jokes."
Cassie caught the tube, swigged, burned her tongue, still laughed. "Worth it."
Nephis eased the new shard—Chip—into Solayna's arms. The envoy's constellation eyes glimmered with relief.
Maya killed alarm klaxons. "Shell integrity collapsing. Silence has been inconvenienced."
Aiden watched stars realign where the sphere had been—a patch of universe returned to imperfection. Dawn-Core hummed a fresh prime—forty-one—then skipped, as if anticipating the next challenge.
He exchanged a grin with Lin: teasing, exasperated—and unshakable.
"Go brew the tea," Aiden said.
Lin saluted. "And find earplugs for your kettle song."
Contrapunctus rolled to a safe distance, sails snapping back into rightful mess. Chapter two of the climax had closed; thirteen rounds of beautiful chaos still waited.