Capítulo 1

The Fall into Ice

Castor Pollux gripped the controls hard and smiled.
“Earthling, we’re surrounded by Gnor ships and you’re smiling?” Lotus growled, eyes never leaving the radar.
On the screen, the enemy swarm wrapped around them completely. Bellatrix stayed calm, her steady face lit by flashes of combat, while Professor Quintus trembled, covering his eyes as if not seeing could change fate.
“Aurora, status of the ship,” Castor ordered.
“Systems at one hundred percent,” the AI replied, her blue halo vibrating over the console. “The Gnor ships are also operational… and they’ve just opened fire.”
The first impact shook the cockpit. The metallic roar ran up the frame and rumbled in their bones.
“We’re going to die,” Quintus stammered, tightening his seatbelt.
“Not today,” Castor shot back, swinging the ship with a sharp turn.
A beam slit the void, grazing the fuselage. The reflection lit Castor’s eyes. The Centurion 1 rolled on its axis, chasing one of the enemy ships.
“Earthling, we already know our weapons don’t hurt them,” Lotus growled.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Castor answered, confident.
He pulled the trigger. The orange beam shot out and one of the Gnor ships exploded, shattering into a thousand incandescent fragments.
Lotus blinked.
“Damn, how’d you do that?” he said in astonishment.
“Does Mercatus ring a bell?” Castor said, eyes locked on the target.
“And here I thought everything there was junk.”
“Things aren’t always what they seem.”
Aurora cut in:
“Danger. Danger, Castor Pollux. Impact in three seconds.”
Castor yanked the lever and the ship swept into a tight arc. The beam passed within feet and smashed into another nearby Gnor ship, disintegrating it. Bellatrix barely smiled.
“You really enjoy this.”

Space filled with luminous streaks—ships crossing at impossible speeds, cannons firing bursts that looked like caged lightning. The Centurion 1 dove between enemy lines, rolled on its axis, and surfaced behind another Gnor ship. Castor fired again. The impact lit the darkness with a golden flare.
“Lateral shield at forty-eight percent; they’re firing on that flank,” Aurora warned.
“Keep it maxed,” Castor said, fingers digging into the controls.

Cassius appeared on radar. His flagship was a shadow in motion, flanked by two escorts. Castor recognized its energy signature before Aurora confirmed it. His heart pounded like a drum.
“There he is.”
“Cassius?” Bellatrix asked.
“Yes. The very same Cassius.”
The Centurion 1 swung toward the Gnor ship. Two escorts crossed in tight formation.
Castor clenched his jaw.
“Let’s go get him.”
“I do not recommend that,” Aurora said. “They outnumber us. I recommend immediate retreat.”
No one answered. Lotus shook his head. Castor had already decided.

The Centurion 1 accelerated. The engines roared and the screens washed in light. Cassius pivoted his ship, answering the chase with surgical precision. An impossible duel began: two gladiators, and their arena was the void. Every maneuver from Cassius was calculation; every turn from Castor, pure instinct. Space warped around them, sketching a dance of fire and speed.
Cassius fired three projectiles. Castor rolled the ship; the shots buzzed past, cutting the darkness. Lotus gripped the panel with both hands.
“Earthling, you’re going to get us all killed.”
“Just relax,” Castor said, pulse steady as steel.
“Shield at thirty-nine percent,” Aurora warned.
“Hold together,” Castor growled. “I’m not dying today.”

The two ships chased each other through the debris field. Castor rolled, sliding in behind Cassius. The Gnor climbed; Castor followed. The enemy released a cloud of mines that spun with a dim glow, and the radar flooded with interference. Castor dropped into a dive. The mines detonated behind him, fire licking the hull. The alarm shrieked.
“Engine temperature: critical. You’re pushing the ship to the limit,” Aurora announced.
“I know what I’m doing,” Castor replied, without breaking off the pursuit.

Cassius turned again, drawing them into a dense zone of interference. Castor followed without hesitation. Readings began to fail; radar signals disappeared one by one.
“I don’t see him,” Bellatrix said.
“He sees us,” Castor replied.
“Careful,” Aurora warned. “Magnetic interference increasing.”

The sky lit up. Dozens of lights burst from nowhere: Gnor ships boxed them in, tight formation.
“Ambush,” Bellatrix confirmed.
Cassius had led them straight into the heart of the swarm.
“I walked right into it,” Castor growled, slamming the console in frustration.
“Now what?” Lotus roared.
“Five ships targeting,” Aurora reported. “Probability of survival…”
“I can see it,” Castor cut her off. “We’ll fight to the end. Fire all batteries.”
Silence. Nothing happened.
“Fire the lasers, now!”
The lights flickered and then went out. The cockpit fell into darkness. Quintus groaned.
“Systems failed. We’re defenseless.”
Bellatrix looked out the viewport, her voice steady.
“Castor… the Gnors aren’t moving either.”

The entire expanse of space had died. Ships floating. No lights. No power.
Castor frowned.
“This wasn’t an attack… it was something else.”

Silence smothered everything. Cold began to creep through the seams in the metal, and the Centurion 1 hung suspended in a universe without breath.
Inside the ship, the void was worse than any alarm. The ship drifted: a frozen tomb, no engines, no Aurora, and the only sound was the slow creak of the hull.

Professor Quintus breathed in short gasps, each inhalation measured like someone rationing an invisible treasure. Total concentration: his brain, working like the sharpest computer, ran mental calculations, weighing probabilities, variations, and statistics. Finally, he concluded:
“Oxygen: twenty-four hours. Maybe less. If the temperature drops one more degree… eighteen,” he murmured, voice cracking.
“Eighteen hours to freeze to death,” Lotus grunted, arms crossed. “I’m not dying in this tin can.”

Castor looked out the viewport. A white planet dominated the horizon.
“I’m sure the answer is on that planet,” he said quietly. “I can feel it from here.”
Quintus nodded, pale as wax.
“Yes. I can’t find any other explanation.”
“Can we go down?” Bellatrix asked, eyes locked on the planet.
“Not with the Centurion 1. The engines are dead,” Professor Quintus said, resigned. “There’s only one option: the single-seat shuttle. Pure mechanics. If the air doesn’t tear it in two.”
“That’s suicide,” Lotus said.
Castor smiled.
“Got a better idea, big guy?”

The corridor to the hangar smelled of cold metal and old oil. The shuttle waited like a coffin with short wings: levers, pedals, needle gauges—relics from another age, perfect for a desperate man. Quintus appeared with a cylinder and set it in Castor’s hands.
“Thermal regulator for your suit. Chemical. It’ll keep you warm for a few hours. After that…” He didn’t have the heart to go on. He didn’t need to.
Castor accepted it without a word. He met Bellatrix’s eyes; no words were needed. Lotus planted himself beside the craft, fists pressed to his sides.
“Earthling, don’t you dare die down there.”

“I’ll do my best,” Castor said as he climbed into the shuttle.
Adrenaline on the surface of his skin. Mind and body ready for whatever came.
The helmet sealed with a screech. A heartbeat, and the hangar was behind him.
Castor pulled the manual release. The shuttle dropped like a stone.

The hit with the atmosphere was immediate. Invisible fire licked the fuselage; the frame shook violently and the craft screamed. Castor jammed his feet on the pedals. The shuttle responded halfway, lurching like a wounded animal.
“Come on…” he said through clenched teeth. “Give me a little more.”

The blizzard was a living wall. The altitude indicators went crazy; the altimeter spun and died. The shuttle went into a spiral. Castor corrected with his whole body, back tight, face set. The ground appeared all at once: a sea of frozen glass veined with blue. He edged the craft toward a tongue of soft snow.

The impact rattled him to the bones. The shuttle bounced, spun, scraped across the ice, and stopped among sparks and shattered plates. Castor forced the helmet open. The icy air slapped him. The thermal regulator crackled inside the suit, sending a harsh chemical heat up his spine.

Ahead there was no horizon, only endless white: Vallis Nix. Crystal mountains, open chasms, a dead glow without a sun.
He scanned the terrain at a glance. Too quiet. Too silent. His instinct warned him that calm wasn’t natural.
A howl split the stillness. It wasn’t the wind. It came from somewhere among the ice spires. Low shapes moved in the glare: muscular bodies, fur white as lime, frozen eyes burning in the dark. Giant wolves.
Too big to be wolves, too quiet to be beasts.

Castor lit the Gladius. The orange line slit the blizzard, and the “V” on his chest answered with a warm flash. He planted his boots deep in the snow.
“I’m guessing you’re hungry,” he said with a tight smile. “Dinner’s served. Come and get it.”

The first wolf leaped.
The blow was sharp.
Castor spun on his axis and used the wolf’s weight to hurl it overhead; the body hit the ice and cracked with a hollow snap. Another slammed him from the flank. Castor turned with the motion: the Gladius traced an orange arc that cut air, hide, and bone. A metallic scent filled the storm. Snow turned to smoke.
Three more circled him. Pale eyes. Jaws dripping vapor. Castor tightened his grip and raised the blade.
“What are you waiting for, pups?”

The next attack came from behind. Castor rolled; the lit blade sliced the gloom, a choked roar and a red line across the whiteness. Another wolf fell, but a third hit him square on. They rolled together, a mass of muscle and fury. The Gladius was lost in the scramble; snow spun around him like a whirlwind.
The wolf sprang. Castor waited on his knees, caught it by the neck, and smashed it against the ice. The crack echoed like a gunshot. Then, silence.

He rose slowly, gasping. His breath was pure vapor. He recovered the Gladius from the ground, the blade sputtering back to life.
Only one remained. It was larger than the rest: silver coat, intelligent eyes—almost human.
Castor studied it. He powered the blade down and let it drop into the snow.
“I’m not after your death,” he said quietly. “Only the way.”

The animal breathed hard. It growled… but didn’t attack.
Castor raised an open hand. The wolf sniffed the metal of the suit, growled once more, then lowered its muzzle.
Castor set his palm on its neck. He felt the heat of the body, the pulse under the skin.
The animal accepted him.
For a second, Castor just stood there with his hand on its neck, listening to the slow sound of its breathing.
The wind howled around them, but between the two of them a different calm reigned, almost ancient.

The wolf tilted its head; its pale eyes reflected the lights of the dormant Gladius. In them, Castor saw something he didn’t expect: understanding—or maybe simple weariness.
“I suppose that’s something we share,” he said, with a tired smile.
The cold bit his face, but for a moment he didn’t feel it.
His hand stayed on the animal’s thick fur, sensing the warmth beneath, the rhythm of its heart.
He thought of the deserts of Nexum 1, of the roar of androids on Argentum, of all the planets where he had fought and survived.
The wolf gave a low growl, as if it understood the thought.
Castor patted its neck lightly.
“Easy.”

The wind dragged snowflakes like dead embers.
For the first time in hours, Castor felt something like company.
Not an alliance. Not a mission.
Just a living creature that had decided, for reasons beyond all logic, not to devour him.
He got ready to mount.
The wolf turned its head, looking over its shoulder at him with what, in another context, would have been impatience.
Castor chuckled softly.
“Yeah, I get it. You don’t like wasting time.”
“Good. Take me to where this wind ends.”

He swung onto its back. The wolf snorted, but moved. It ran through the storm, carving deep furrows in the snow. The air was a white blade.
Around them, ice rose in impossible shapes: columns, obelisks, ruins of metal and stone. Totems jutting from the ice, carved with symbols that seemed to move under the frost.
Castor leaned slightly over the wolf, studying the totems sticking up like ancient monoliths.
“Wolves didn’t build this,” he whispered, more to himself than to his new mount.

They kept on. Hours passed and time ran out aboard the Centurion 1.
Suddenly, the wind shifted, bringing a different scent, dense, metallic: ozone and iron.
The wolf stopped with a low growl, muscles taut as cables.
Castor raised his gaze and, through the blizzard, made out a solitary figure. Tall. Steady. Wrapped in a white cloak that barely stirred in the wind.
For an instant, the world seemed to stop.
Amid the snow, a red light tore the haze. A lit sword.
Castor recognized it instantly; that glow was unmistakable.
“Cassius…” he murmured, with a mix of fury and resignation.

The wolf stepped back on instinct.
Castor dismounted calmly, the ice crunching under his boots. He activated the Gladius, and the orange blade came alive with a roar of energy.
“So you fell from the sky too.”
Cassius advanced through the blizzard, his cloak stirring like a living shadow.
The crimson light of his sword cut the air between them.
“Or perhaps the sky threw me down,” he replied, “to finish what I started.”
His voice carried that unmistakable hiss—part threat, part contempt—that seemed to vibrate even after the silence.

They stood face-to-face, motionless, measuring each other with their eyes.
The wind roared around them, lifting spirals of snow that danced between the two lights: one red, one orange, crossing over the ice.
The planet itself seemed to hold its breath.
The ground trembled.
The cold found its voice.
And then, as if the universe had been waiting for that instant, the silence broke.
The battle was about to begin.

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Sobre esta serie:

Relatos cortos pulp dentro del universo Imperium.

Cada libro es una aventura autoconclusiva protagonizada por Castor Pollux en un planeta distinto, enfrentando nuevos enemigos, peligros y misterios. Puedes comenzar por cualquiera.