“…more are coming,” Mag’s muttered into the radio.

  The hum of her drones echoed around her like a chorus of angry hornets. She crouched low behind a shattered support beam, her breath shallow, her hands slick with sweat. The moment she leaned out to check the horizon, a laser streaked across her visor and seared into the steel just inches from her face.

  “That’s all you’re gonna get, you bastards,” she growled.

  “Drones, go!” she barked, and the machines launched with violent speed, four angular killers darting like knives through the debris. Each moved independently, but all danced with the same deadly rhythm.

  They shot out into the void, using burst-thrusts from their shoulder rockets to arc and zigzag around the broken husks of other mechs. One drone looped wide and dove low, unleashing a volley of high-velocity rounds that punctured the joint of a pursuing mobile suit’s knee. The machine collapsed, sparks trailing from its severed limb. A second drone banked hard, turned on its axis, and fired straight into the enemy cockpit from behind. No scream came—just a bloom of red mist through the pilot’s viewport before the suit went still.

  The remaining drones converged like vultures. They ripped apart a third Warcasket from multiple angles, targeting heat vents and limb joints, turning it into a dismembered hulk tumbling into the void. The last mech tried to retreat. It didn’t make it. A drone slammed into its head, barrel-first, and fired point-blank into the glass until the cockpit ruptured like an egg. Then silence.

  Mag’s exhaled sharply, her chest heaving. Sweat streamed down her face. She looked down at her hands. They were shaking. Badly.

  She peeled her right hand off the control stick, her fingers twitching as if they’d forgotten how to unclench. She gripped her own hand with the left, steadying herself, willing herself not to fall apart.

  “Mag’s, you good?” Ivan’s voice cut through the comms.

  She swallowed hard and nodded to no one. “I… I’m fine,” she lied.

  Ivan paused. “Don’t push it. This is your first real battle, yeah?”

  “…if you’re not counting Carmen’s live-fire drills, then yeah,” Mag’s breathed. “First real op outside the sims.”

  “You’re doing great,” Ivan said, voice softer now. Almost like a brother.

  Mag’s didn’t reply. Her eyes were still locked on the void, on the battlefield littered with drifting limbs and charred steel. She watched the last pieces of her enemies spin off into oblivion.

  Meanwhile, Ivan adjusted his position. His HUD flickered over the wreckage of Dock 9. It was half-detached now, like a fractured bone barely held in place. The rest of the Block’s sections were intact, pulsing with warning lights but stable. Dock 9 though… it was tumbling.

  He exhaled. “Looks like we did enough damage. Everyone form up. I want full sync before any more trouble shows up.”

  “Roger,” Carmen said, her voice calm. Almost lazy.

  “No casualties. Everything’s gone to plan,” Yuri added.

  “Squad 3, Squad 4, report,” Ivan asked.

  “They’re chasing down some stragglers,” Carmen replied, cracking her neck. She peeled off her helmet, slick strands of black hair tumbling out as she exhaled. Just for a moment, she let herself feel the sweat on her scalp.

  “I heard that,” Ivan snapped. “Put your damn helmet back on. We’re not clear yet.”

  Carmen rolled her eyes and counted to five before sliding it back on. She clicked the seal and leaned back. “Happy now?”

  Ivan just growled.

  “Let’s regroup. We’ve played our part. Now it’s Logan’s and Jace’s turn,” he said, gaze drifting upward toward the jagged stars.

  “At least we got our gold,” Carmen muttered.

  “Yeah. Yeah…” Ivan echoed, but his voice sounded far away.

  His eyes scanned the charred horizon. He could see fire curling out of crumpled ships like incense smoke. Bodies floated in the void, black silhouettes against burning steel. Some large. Some small. All lifeless.

  Ivan turned away. So did the others. It was easier that way. Easier to kill from a machine. To forget there were people inside those suits.

  And for a moment, the void was quiet. Until the screaming started.

  “I need backup! I need backup right now!” Steven’s voice crackled through the comms, and even the static couldn’t drown the panic lacing his words. “They’ve got a pilot out here running circles around me and Abbey!”

  Ivan’s jaw clenched. “Vanya, you’re closest. Support him.”

  “Copy,” Vanya responded, calm, controlled. Her voice sliced through the noise as she killed the comm and kicked her Warcasket into a tighter arc. From her high position, she had the flank. She and Jason were cutting down from above like wolves circling a bleeding herd.

  Below them, four—maybe five—first-tier Warcaskets scrambled under cover. It didn’t matter. They weren’t fast enough. Jason’s targeting system lit up, and his HUD marked his killzones like blood on radar.

  “…these poor bastards don’t know what they’re up against,” Jason chuckled, a rasp of static dragging the tail of his voice. “Finally got something to even the odds.”

  He launched another shell from his bazooka, dead center into the torso of a mangled Warcasket trying to limp behind a barricade. The hit turned its reactor into a blooming fireball. The explosion spit out panels and scorched bone-metal like confetti. Flames rolled across the wreckage, licking at the armor of their own suits.

  Jason let the now-useless bazooka drift from his hardpoint with a grunt, one of his suit’s sub-arms rotating forward and locking in a belt-fed machine gun. His HUD flickered red with heat warnings, but he ignored them.

  Both he and Vanya kicked backward, flipping into a controlled descent through the fire-blasted ruins of space. The void itself seemed to blur and smear with every move, the stars bending past them like smears of oil on glass. Vanya twisted in a slow spin mid-air, leveling her rifle directly below. The crimson tint of her visor flared, catching reflections of broken satellites, burning hulls, and bodies drifting like forgotten prayers.

  She opened fire again.

  Rounds danced like tracer spiders across the battlefield, and one of the enemy suits folded in on itself before erupting in a gout of sparks and steam. Below her, the Block burned like a dying sun, and Dock 9 spun further from its anchors.

  “Let’s finish this before we end up like them,” Vanya muttered, already recalibrating her thrusters.

  Jason only laughed, that same low chuckle like a man drunk off blood and smoke.

  YOU

  The fuck was that?

  It slipped out of my mouth before I even realized. My hands shot to the target zoomer, the mount hovering above my chair. I gripped it, swung it down over my face like binoculars, trying to line up what the hell I was even looking at.

  W-what the hell?

  Angular. Birdlike. But wrong. The silhouette was jagged, like something born in a nightmare, equal parts feathered predator and alien machine. It moved with the sleek grace of a falcon in a dive, but every motion pulsed with violent precision.

  The first laser blast skimmed my Warcasket. I felt it. The metal on my upper left shoulder hissed and vaporized. Another tore into my bottom kneecap. My HUD went wild, shrieking damage reports, but I didn’t care.

  “What the… where did you come from!” I screamed, slamming my hand down on the missile payload switch.

  Six missiles burst out of the backmount like hornets from a hive, ripping across the black like deadly fireworks. But that thing, that jet—no, it wasn’t just a jet. Not with that kind of firepower. Not with that aim. It dove. Hard. Twisted midair. And just like that, I had its blind spot.

  “Die!” I shouted.

  I squeezed the trigger. Again. Again. Tracer rounds lit up space like strobe lights at a funeral, tearing through nothing. The thing dipped in a lazy half-spin, my bullets glancing off void.

  “W-what are you!” My throat felt like glass. My voice cracked. “Abbey, I need you! Now!”

  She was finishing a pair of grunts with laser fire, her voice lazy over comms. “Steven, you really can’t handle one—”

  “Shut up!” I cut her off, panic spilling into my words. “T-this one moves different!”

  And then I heard it.

  Not through my headset.

  Inside my skull.

  The radio sputtered, then warped. A voice. Fractured. Glitched. But feminine. Barely.

  “…you’re… going… to die…”

  My vision blurred. My spine iced over.

  “I… am… going… to make… you feel… all the pain… you did…”

  The voice was like something dead trying to speak through broken teeth. Robotic. Hollow. But laced with so much hate I nearly pissed myself. My suit sensors pinged with damp warnings. My hands were shaking. Tears stung the edges of my eyes.

  “W-what are you?” I whispered.

  “Your… end.”

  The jet nosed down and became a spear of light.

  I screamed. I raised my shield just as the blast struck, bathing my cockpit in sulphuric yellow. My suit rattled like a tin can in a microwave. My optics went black, then white, then colorless. Instinct saved me, not skill. I’d moved the shield just in time. My other hand went up, covering my eyes.

  It was like staring into a god’s flashlight.

  "Steven!" Abbey’s voice cut through the haze. Her Warcasket blurred toward mine, her thrusters screaming as she raced across the field.

  I screamed.

  Not out of fear. Not just fear. It was the kind of scream that tore up your throat and carried heat with it, the kind that said you were dying and your body already knew it.

  I punched the throttle and yanked my rifle off the side mount. “I need backup, I need backup, right fucking now!” I yelled. The comms were alive with static and someone's voice I couldn’t even register. The thing—whatever it was—was slicing through my field of fire like a ghost dipped in gunmetal.

  My rounds missed. All of them. It danced through the spray of tracers like it was born in the bullets.

  “They’ve got a pilot here! Me and Abbey can’t shake this bastard!”

  Still nothing. Maybe Ivan grunted. Maybe the others said something. Didn’t matter.

  I saw it.

  The shape broke apart mid-flight. One part veered away, and the other dropped low, accelerating. I couldn’t track it. It was moving too fast.

  “W-what the fuck—!”

  And then it hit me.

  Something slammed into my Warcasket’s torso like a hammer from hell. It felt like getting hit by a meteor. The cockpit pitched sideways. The world blinked black and red. My stomach flipped and then twisted again—I vomited inside the helmet, bile flooding my neck seal as my limbs flailed and the rifle spun into space.

  Before I could even scream again, I saw pink light.

  A beam blade, hissing like a devil’s breath. It was already pressed against my shield, chewing through it, sizzling, warping steel.

  “Shit! Shit!” I screamed, my fingers fumbling for my hatchet. I yanked it out. The metal sparked to life with a red glow as the edge superheated.

  “What the hell are you!” I roared. My Warcasket heaved forward, and I slammed the blade toward the thing’s cockpit.

  But it was too fast.

  She parried it. She parried it. The yellow prototype Warcasket—a rollout unit, with a sleek green visor and limbs coiled like a spring—shoved forward and forced me toward the wreckage still drifting from the Block’s ruins.

  “A-Abbey! Get here, now!” I shouted.

  I heard her scream over the comms, her suit’s burn trail screaming across my peripheral.

  And then the voice crackled in my helmet.

  "Y…our end."

  The radio hissed. The voice was metallic, guttural—but underneath that? Female. Clear as a knife at your throat.

  Then she kicked me.

  I didn’t even see her wind up. Just a blur, a flash, and I was gone. My body ragdolled inside the cockpit as my Warcasket careened sideways. My skull smashed the console. Blood burst from my nose and lips.

  Focus, focus, focus.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  I gritted my teeth. Seized the sticks. Raised my axe. She was already there, our blades locking. The clash sent tremors through the cockpit.

  “Die!” I roared, slamming the axe down again and again—

  “You fucking idiot,” she growled.

  A shield—her shield—I hadn’t even seen it. She slammed it straight into my face.

  Glass exploded.

  My HUD cracked like a spiderweb. The flash blotted everything. I didn’t see stars—I became one, spinning out, hurtling, blind.

  “I won’t die here!” I screamed.

  Through the blur, I caught Abbey. She was diving hard, her rifle locked in.

  “Hold on, Steven!” she barked, voice sharp through the comms.

  “Ivan, we need backup—now!” she shouted, already opening fire.

  I swung my axe again, trying to catch the yellow suit’s shoulder.

  Blocked.

  She disengaged, floated back, and with one clean motion, brought her rifle up and unloaded.

  Lasers filled the void.

  Abbey rolled through them, strafing hard, returning fire in wide, violent arcs. Purple lances of light burned through space as the enemy juked, twisted, glided. It wasn’t dodging. It was dancing.

  It cocked its elbow unnaturally. Twisted its shoulders like a contortionist. And planted its feet.

  It knew Abbey was coming.

  We regrouped. I came up beside her, every inch of my body shivering.

  “How you holding up?” she asked.

  I spat blood onto the floor. “Never better.”

  Her gaze tracked the prototype. “It’s not a Block militia unit.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded once, grim. “That’s not regulation tech. That’s something else. Just a student in a prototype.”

  I looked at her. Her grin was back. Cold. Calculating.

  “We’re Academy-trained. Best of the best. This little dropout? She didn’t make the cut.”

  Abbey slammed her throttle.

  "Let's show her why."

  “W-wait up!” I called after her, dragging my battered suit forward, fear chasing the fury.

  Abby gritted her teeth. “Vanya’s pulling in with Jason right behind her. We’ve got numbers now. But we can’t waste time. The authorities are going to be here any minute. Jace’s diversion won’t hold forever.”

  I just nodded, jaw tight, throat dry. My HUD danced with alert markers. Heat. Motion. Radiation. All overlapping like the world itself was having a seizure.

  We pushed forward, throttles slamming forward. My Warcasket shuddered from the sheer g-force.

  Then it hit.

  A low droning whine. Almost musical.

  A glimmer of movement like a silvered insect. Not a Warcasket. Smaller. Meaner. The drone zipped past us, tracing a line in the air so thin it might’ve been a hallucination.

  “What the fuck is that!” I shouted.

  Abby snarled, tracking it. “Some kind of drone. It’s paired to that one.”

  She didn’t say pilot. None of us did. Whatever was in that other suit, it wasn’t just flying it. It was bonded to it.

  “They’re not moving,” I muttered. “Controlling both?”

  Abby’s voice dropped. “Then let’s hit while they’re split.”

  Jason came roaring over the comms. “Showtime, freak.”

  “Vanya, now!” I barked.

  Her missile pod unlocked with a chunk, and a full volley of guided explosives lanced out in a fan pattern. Jason cut in below, chaingun blazing.

  For a heartbeat, I thought we had it.

  And then—

  It moved.

  Not the drone.

  The Warcasket shifted with an eerie, serpentine snap at the waist. One leg flared with thrusters. The head twisted just a few degrees. No wasted motion. Just reaction. Like it knew.

  Then it exploded into motion.

  The drone zipped around like a loyal beast, a living extension of the machine, engines screaming. The Warcasket dipped, rocketing forward at a terrifying angle.

  I held my breath.

  The rockets were already closing in—Vanya’s barrage, right on target. There was no way to dodge cleanly. No way.

  But it did.

  The Warcasket slipped through the missiles like it was skating on the knife-edge of space itself. One missile clipped its shoulder, tearing off a chunk of armor. It didn’t even flinch. Kept moving. Fluid. Ghostlike. Like gravity and physics bent for it.

  “W-what the hell!” shouted Vanya, her voice crackling in my comms as she tried to adjust to the impossible movements. She broke from her descent, circling wide as laser blasts streaked past her Warcasket by inches.

  Abby sneered, snapping her head side to side, scanning wildly for an opening.

  “Vanya, open fire on the civilians evacuating!” she barked.

  “W-what?!” snapped back Vanya.

  I felt my stomach drop. My vision swam. My eyes widened.

  “It’s obviously a student or a worker,” Abby shouted. “We don’t have time and Steven is down… we need something now!”

  Vanya sneered, whirling her rocket launcher back toward the shuttle convoys below. The civilians. I could see their escape pods in my blurry vision, engines burning desperately, trying to flee the slaughter.

  Vanya pulled the trigger.

  And that was when it happened.

  The Warcasket moved like lightning. A flash, faster than conscious thought. That thing inside the cockpit felt it.

  Iman’s mind-eye snapped wide open.

  She didn't dodge the rockets by calculation. She sensed them.

  The machine arced hard, folding sideways, riding its own thruster wash, slipping between the incoming salvo by the skin of its teeth. The final rocket passed within meters of the Warcasket’s chest, nearly scraping its armor. She could hear the high-pitched warning alarms, but her hands were already moving.

  That sixth sense pulsed through her skull like a hammer. The rifle snapped into position mid-spin, like a dancer flipping through zero-G.

  The barrel ignited white-hot.

  A flash of laser fire erupted, tight and rapid, a concentrated storm that lit the void. The beams ripped the rockets apart mid-flight, detonating them before they even reached burn range, shredding the missiles into blossoms of harmless debris that dissipated before reaching the escape pods.

  I could barely breathe.

  Abby screamed into comms. “That’s not possible!”

  My vision swam. Every nerve in my body said run, run, run.

  Then came the voice.

  It crackled through open comms, voice layered like static, warbled and deep.

  “…cowards… all of you…”

  Jason hesitated. “Who the fuck is that…”

  I didn’t answer.

  None of us did.

  The Warcasket hovered. Calm. Still. Like it was waiting.

  And then my body moved on instinct. My thrusters roared. The pain was still there—burning along my ribs—but my hands locked on the controls anyway.

  Because I realized the truth.

  This wasn’t some ace pilot from the Block. It wasn’t a militia trainee.

  It wasn’t someone.

  It was something.

  And it was hunting us.

  Vanya sneered, whipping herself straight at the enemy, rage pounding in her chest like a war drum. She hurled her empty missile launcher at the Stargazer with everything she had left. It spun like a discus—but the Stargazer merely batted it aside with a casual clink of her rifle, like it was swatting a fly.

  "Why won't you just die!" Vanya screamed, pulling her beam blade and raising her shield. And thank god she did. The drone zipped in, a silver blur, that sing-song chime in the void like a choir of bells from hell.

  Rapid-fire pinged against her shield. Sparks ripped across the face of her Warcasket as the drone swooped by. Mounted on its frame were twin Uzi-Draco patterned submachine guns, drum-fed, unloading a storm of rounds.

  Jason flanked with her, his thrusters roaring as he circled. "Covering you, Van! Let's tear this freak apart!"

  But the enemy moved like a phantom. As Abby charged in from the flank, the Stargazer spun, a hatch ejecting a single-hand beam blade into its waiting grip. Abby came down in an overhead slash, screaming like a berserker.

  Their blades met in a teeth-rattling saberlock. Sparks bled into the black of space, framing the two suits—black and gold, locked in deadly communion. Abby snarled, froth coating the inside of her visor.

  "Die… die… die!" she shrieked, overcharging her thrusters. The Stargazer was being pushed, slowly, toward the wreckage.

  "Particle blade malfunction. Malfunction," crackled from within the Stargazer.

  "The hell?" the voice broke, staticky, confused.

  You saw it then—through blood-blurred eyes—the Stargazer’s blade flickered, destabilized. Abby's beam blade hissed through the field and cut.

  "Kill it!" you rasped through shredded lungs, hope blooming like fire.

  But then—impossibly—the Stargazer’s leg snapped up, kicking the blade and Abby's arm away. That sixth sense again. Abby screamed, refusing to let go.

  Where was Vanya?

  The Stargazer drove its foot into Abby’s chest and lit the thrusters at full plume. The scream that tore from Abby's throat wasn’t just pain—it was disbelief.

  "I-I can hardly see," she cried. "Vanya! Vanya, come on!"

  The Stargazer spun upwards, recalling the drone. Then—

  Jason roared from your right, blade drawn. "Now, you freak! Die!"

  But the Stargazer didn’t even look at him. The drone whirled behind Jason's blind spot. The moment he noticed, it was already too late.

  One beam blast shredded his shoulder. Another ripped his right leg free. His Warcasket reeled, spinning, panicked.

  "Shit, I can't move! Help, help!" Jason screamed. You’d never heard him like that before. That wasn’t a soldier. That was a boy. Just a scared goddamn kid.

  The Stargazer drifted down slowly, a hunter savoring the kill. One wrist-mounted launcher rose.

  "No… please!"

  The rocket flared point-blank.

  Jason's cockpit erupted.

  You felt it in your bones.

  Jason was an asshole, yeah. He said too much, bragged too often. But he was your teammate. Your friend. He was just some kid who got swept into war, who never saw twenty.

  And now he was gone.

  You screamed. Abby screamed.

  The Stargazer tilted its head—mocking. Then it looked toward the Block.

  The enemy pilot whispered through the comms: "Coward…"

  It began to transform. The limbs folded. The drone clicked back into place. The head slid into the body and popped out again. The shield locked across the chest, the wings extended. A soundless click as every rocket nozzle lit.

  Even Abby paused. You could hear her breath catch.

  Then the voice again, broken and distorted, like it was speaking through glass:

  "Die! For the honor of the free Dubai Territory. Glory to a free Earth!"

  Free Earth?

  You didn’t even know what the hell a Dubai was.

  But Abby was too late.

  The drone's nose pivoted midair like a javelin, its frame taut with lethal purpose. It screamed forward through the vacuum, engines blazing in a murderous shriek.

  Abby twisted, beam blade in both hands, cutting left, right, center—slicing blindly into empty space. “S-Steven, where is she coming from?!” Her voice cracked.

  Muscle memory made her hit the comms. Static bled through—then her voice again, breaking. “I-Ivan… w-we…”

  Her scream tore through the channel.

  It was inhuman. Bloodcurdling. The sound of someone knowing they were about to die.

  Then came the impact.

  The spear-like nose of the drone punched through Abby’s cockpit like a harpoon shot into flesh. The Warcasket’s limbs spasmed, twitching, the arms clawing the void like a dead insect’s final seizure.

  The Stargazer flared its engines again.

  With a sickening metallic groan, it ripped the suit in two. Abby’s Warcasket was torn apart, a body rendered down the middle. Fire gushed out like blood.

  Everyone on the channel heard the twin booms.

  “ABBY!”

  Your scream shredded your throat. Your mind filled with the image—her auburn hair, the glint of her blue eyes, her laugh during downtime, her boots on the dash of the hangar.

  “I’ll kill you. I’ll KILL you!”

  “Steven, fall back!” Ivan’s voice—desperate, fractured—crackled in your ear. “We’ve done enough. There’s no use for—!”

  “He killed Abby!” you roared. “Fuck him!”

  You dumped all remaining fuel into your thrusters, rockets screaming. You raised your axe in both hands, teeth clenched, heart pounding like a war drum.

  The Stargazer turned its head.

  Detached the drone.

  It twisted away—but you followed. You spun, correcting, locked on. The drone brushed past, nearly grazing your armor.

  You kept chasing.

  That was your mistake.

  A whip.

  The drone’s tether, glinting like a steel serpent, coiled around your right thruster. Sparks flared. You faltered for a breath—but it was enough.

  You slashed. The axe met nothing but empty space.

  The Stargazer swatted your blow aside like it was a child’s tantrum. Your vision shook. You surged forward—your fist drove into the thing’s faceplate.

  It didn’t move.

  The particle blade hissed to life.

  Then, like paper in a furnace, your Warcasket’s left arm was gone.

  You gasped.

  The Stargazer raised its rifle.

  Point-blank.

  You smiled.

  A sad, stupid little smile.

  “I should’ve told you,” you whispered. “Should’ve told you I loved you.”

  And then came the light.

  And after that, nothing.

  No sound. No thoughts.

  Just cold.

  And the dark.

  Forever.

  Darkness

  The Stargazer stood amidst the wreckage, shrouded in smoke and drifting sparks. Iman sat slouched in the cockpit, her breath slow but steady, her body spent but wired. The glow of the instrument panels painted her in eerie light, her hands trembling on the sticks. Then, a smile.

  Wide. Toothy. Predatory.

  “I could get really used to this 360 view,” she murmured, cracking her neck, soaking in the silence—except for the faint pop of burning debris and the whine of distant thrusters. Her eyes flicked toward a scorched mobile suit drifting half-intact.

  She chuckled to herself. “You think running away and letting your friends get slaughtered is going to make this easier for you?”

  The console beeped. A high-pitched alarm warning her of two things. First, someone was trying to reach her. Second, her Particle Blade was malfunctioning again. She glanced at the highlighted schematic. “This machine really is draining fast,” she muttered. “All these weapons, but no propellant tanks? Christ, Henryk. You brilliant, reckless idiot.”

  Fuel half gone. Thrusters too. This machine was a lion with a glass jaw.

  She toggled the comms. “Commander Iman, speaking.”

  “Thank God you’re alive,” came Marcus’s voice, relief crashing through the static.

  “Everyone alright?”

  “Picked up by Mercurian rescue. We’ve got cavalry inbound, a full wing of support suits.”

  Iman smirked, dragging a fingertip across a smear of blood on the console. “So... this is where we get our payback.”

  But something twisted in her gut. Her eyes twitched. Something was wrong.

  “Marcus...” she said, her voice dropping, “Something’s coming. Big.”

  “What? What is—”

  And then it hit. Like some divine spear hurled through the heavens.

  To her left, out of the black void, something emerged. Not so much flew as manifested. As if reality tore slightly, and this thing came bleeding through.

  A ship, no—a behemoth. The size of two Titanics fused together and twisted into a jagged, red-streaked star. It radiated wrongness. Cold, alien. A floating monument to war and sin.

  Jacen’s flagship.

  Iman didn’t breathe. Not at first. Then her hands began flicking dials, switching channels, desperately seeking voices.

  “Wh-what the fuck is that—who is that?!” a Mercurian pilot yelped.

  “Hold formation! Don’t let it near the transports!” barked a Mercurian officer.

  “Evac shuttles mid-flight! They’re locking onto them—God—God, they’re—” static consumed the rest.

  “That’s not a ship, it’s a floating fucking hellmouth!”

  “Pull back! Pull back! I’m not dying for someone else’s Martian politics!”

  The channel descended into noise—shouting, weeping, panic.

  Iman seized the telescopic targeter mounted beside her chair, yanking it into place. The lens zoomed, her breath gone as she watched a horror unfold in impossible detail.

  Jacen’s flagship was vomiting Warcaskets.

  Dozens, maybe more. Pouring out like maggots from a wound.

  And then came the claws.

  Not ships. Not suits. These were things. Claw-like mobile suits, armored with jagged plating and mounted with bottom-fed rockets. Iman watched them drift toward the civilian escape vessels.

  Slow. Intentional.

  They clamped onto the pods and small ships like parasites, latching their hooked arms into the hulls. Not destroying them.

  Dragging them.

  Back.

  Into Jacen’s red star.

  “Oh my God...” she whispered.

  She gripped her controls so tight her fingers ached. “They’re not killing them. They’re taking them.”

  A beat. Then:

  “They’re going to fucking enslave them.”

  Marcus finally shook himself out of it. “Piper and Jesus’s group are on the way. And the Martians... they’ve made contact. They want to help.”

  Iman didn’t have the strength to curse Henryk, not after the performance of his machine. She wanted to slap herself for even thinking that—gratitude for a man who left her like that. But the Warcasket handled like a dream.

  “Jacen’s pirates,” Marcus snapped, voice raw with contempt. “Should’ve known. Bastards who’d rather drown the world in blood than live with laws. Monsters in every sense of the word.”

  Iman opened her mouth to say something—maybe to agree, maybe to correct him—but her gaze drifted. She saw the black mobile suit drifting below the fractured edge of the Block. The lower structure still had a massive canopy, warped and semi-detached, hanging like the skin of a wounded animal. Fire danced along its folds, blooming in and out of oxygen pockets, flaring like the last breaths of a dying beast.

  Workers clung to the metal like ants, piloting industrial Warcaskets armed with foam sprayers and sealant tanks. Specialized ships orbited with hoses unfurled, spraying coolant into the blaze—but the fire didn’t die. The vacuum hadn’t pulled it all yet. It was growing.

  “I was tailing them,” Iman said. “The ones who started this. I killed two.”

  Marcus chuckled darkly. “Good shit, Hunter.”

  She let a smirk tug at her lips, just for a moment. Then her voice cooled. “They weren’t normal. They didn’t move like pirates.”

  Marcus went quiet. “What do you mean?”

  “They’re different,” she said, eyes still locked on the drifting wreckage. “Those suits—they’re next-gen. Never seen models like them before. Fast, smooth, refined. Not cobbled together from scrap like the usual pirate shit. I’ve killed Jacen’s Honor Guard. They don’t have tech like this. And they sure as hell don’t fight like this.”

  On the other end of the comms, Iman heard the shuffle of boots. Soldiers. Movement. The 34th was gathering.

  “Iman, whatever it is you’re thinking, we’ve got to move soon—”

  “Jacen attacking the Block doesn’t make sense,” she muttered. “It’s not like him. There’s nothing here worth the risk.”

  “There’s people,” Marcus said, voice dry. “Slaves. The perfect prize for a sick bastard like him.”

  Iman clenched her jaw. He wasn’t wrong. But there was more. This felt planned. Coordinated. Like someone had written it out before the first blast.

  “You said you killed three,” Marcus said.

  Iman nodded. “Yeah. One got away. I let them go... or at least, I didn’t finish the job. I’m going to follow. See where they lead.”

  Marcus sighed. “I know I won’t stop you if I tell you to regroup.”

  “…you won’t,” she said, grinning now. “Unless you think the 34th and backup won’t be enough without me?”

  He snorted. “Nah. We’ll handle it. Maybe I’ll even put a round in Jacen myself. Personally signed by Lucas.”

  Iman’s grin thinned into something sharper. “Yeah. Signed by Lucas.”

  She glanced at the wreckage. Two enemy mobile suits lay gutted in the void, their frames still twitching with residual energy. She made a mental note to retrieve them. The House could learn something from this.

  “I’ll deal with the rest,” she said. “If I’m lucky, I’ll take one alive. Make them talk. Figure out how deep this shit goes. Who knows how many dead kids there are today…”

  Marcus went silent at that. No jokes. No bravado.

  She switched off the radio.

  The stillness returned. She looked around one last time. At the ruin. At the bodies. The void now littered with death and fire like a graveyard carved from stars.

  She toggled the drone unit again. The transformation engaged. She folded into the system, the Stargazer’s limbs collapsing inward, wings locking into place. The rockets flared beneath her, and the power kicked like a pulse through her spine.

  Iman smiled wide. Unhinged. Alive. “Man, House Mars makes some cool toys,” she howled into the cockpit.

  Then: “Thanks—but fuck you, Henryk.”

  And she was gone, streaking toward the last known location of the surviving black Warcasket. Blue fire trailing behind her like the tail of a comet gone mad.