Mags

  “Vanya, get back here, now!”

  Ivan’s voice cracked through her comms. Vanya pushed harder on the pedal anyway, feeling the harness bite her shoulders as the Warcasket surged. The chair kicked her spine like a boot as she dropped into one of the open wounds in the Block, an ejected section split wide to vacuum.

  One of the holes she had made. Maybe from her C4.

  She dipped under the ragged lip of plating and her monitor immediately lost its mind.

  “Debris! Debris! Debris!” it screamed, the warning tone hammering the cockpit until it felt like it was inside her teeth.

  For a moment there was only the stillness.

  This section of the Block didn’t look industrial. Not here. Not this deep. Through the canopy she caught apartment stacks with their windows blown out, shopfront signs still glowing in thin, dying colors, like the place had tried to pretend it was still open for business. Everything floated. Everything drifted. Cars, trucks, even a half-turned semi trailer hung in the zero g like toys left in a bath.

  No dead Warcaskets in this pocket. No shredded armor. No shining wreckage of knights.

  Just bodies.

  They moved slow, lazy, tumbling with the kind of patience only space has. Some were adults, arms out like they were reaching for a railing that wasn’t there. Some were small. Too small. Vanya’s throat tightened so hard it felt like she’d swallowed a fist. Her eyes snapped from one shape to the next and she couldn’t stop counting. She couldn’t stop seeing.

  Her hands came off the sticks for half a second, wrapping around herself like that could keep something in. A different cold settled in. Not cockpit cold. Not vacuum cold. A moral cold that crawled under the suit and sat on her lungs.

  There were so many. The number of small bodies was—

  She gagged, then swallowed it back down, furious at herself for being weak now. She slammed the throttle forward. The Warcasket’s thrusters flared and the whole machine shuddered, eager, obedient, monstrous in how easily it listened.

  “I-I…” Her voice came out thin. “Just go back home. I… as long as I survive. Mom, dad, and Ryan. They’ll be happy. They’ll be okay. I’ll take this sin and…”

  “Vanya!” Ivan again, sharper, closer. “Speak, damn it. I see you on sensor!”

  Vanya sucked in a breath that tasted like recycled air and panic. “S-Sorry.”

  A relieved exhale came over the line. “Christ, girl. You got me scared.” Then a chuckle, strained and tired, like he was trying to shove fear back down with sound. “H-hey, where’s the rest. Abby, Steven, and…”

  “They’re all dead.”

  Silence.

  “What?” Ivan said, like his brain rejected the shape of the words.

  “I said they’re all dead.” Firmer. Meaner. Like she could nail it to the floor and make it stay.

  Ivan didn’t speak for a long second. The kind of silence that told her he’d gone still in his own cockpit, hands on his face, staring at nothing. She could almost hear the exhaustion on him. Like it had weight.

  “I-I don’t get it,” he said at last. “How?” A dull impact echoed over his mic. He’d punched something. Console. Armrest. His own leg. “They were damn good pilots. How many of them were there?”

  “One,” Vanya said, and the word came out with hate on it. “Just one. One fucking—” Her voice broke and tears slipped free, hot in a helmet that didn’t care. “I don’t know what they were. God. They were a monster. They had this other thing with them and…”

  “There were two?” Ivan asked, already trying to fit it into something that made sense.

  “God, Ivan, you’re not listening.” She wiped at her face with the back of a gloved hand and it did nothing. “Maybe. Maybe it was two. But it was connected to her Warcasket. Hell, she was able to transform or something. I’ve never seen anything like it before!”

  “A transformable Warcasket,” Ivan said, and his voice dropped into a stunned reverence that scared Vanya worse than the screaming alarms had. Like a man recognizing a relic in the dark. “And they’re dead, right?” he asked, too quick. “What about their Warcaskets, were they—”

  “Hell, Ivan… is that all you care about?” Vanya snapped, sharp enough that even she flinched. “They’re all freaking dead and—”

  “And if their suits, and God forbid their bodies, are identifiable, House Saturn gets labeled terrorist,” he spat back. His voice came in hot now, the careful edge gone. “Not just me. You. Everyone here. We’ll be lucky if it’s only a death sentence. Most assuredly life in prison. And you think the Communist Party of the Saturn Union is going to have mercy on us, on our fucking families?”

  Vanya’s eyes widened. The words landed like a slap because they were true and she hated that they were true.

  Ivan’s tone shifted. Still hard, but gentler underneath it, like he remembered she was young and bleeding inside. “Get over here. Now.” He sighed, and that sigh carried all of it. Dead friends. Dead civilians. The way a mission kept chewing anyway. “We lost people, but we accomplished the mission. Jace’s distraction worked. So now all we’ve got to do is leave and get the hell out of here. We slip out the backdoor, make distance, hit the ship, dock, and blast starlight.”

  For a second Vanya felt a grin try to happen, a stupid little tether of relief pulling at her mouth because there was an exit. A way out. A way to stop looking at floating faces.

  Then the grin died.

  All she could see again were the small bodies turning slow, like prayer beads in a hand that didn’t believe anymore. The sleep she wasn’t going to get. The dreams she was going to get anyway.

  How many did I kill, she wondered. How many did we all kill?

  And for what, for gold? The old story. Humanity doing atrocities for metal and promise and the illusion of safety. Centuries. Millennia. The same hunger, just dressed up in different uniforms.

  Her mind went to Franklin’s face without asking permission. Tall. Curly hair falling limply over a look that tried to stay styled. Martian, but gentle. The kind of gentle that made you feel dirty standing near it.

  He’d despise her if he knew.

  It didn’t take long to link up with Ivan and what was left of the unit. They were tucked into a section that had once been factories and warehouses, more industrial, more useful to hide inside. They’d wedged their suits behind blown-off portions of the Block big enough to swallow armor.

  “Vanya, fucking finally,” Carmen’s voice flooded the comms, loud and pissed and shaking underneath it.

  Ivan shot her a look through the red monoeye of his Warcasket as Vanya came in and set down. “Easy, Carmen. Christ,” he said, shaking his head, the optic settling on Vanya like he needed to confirm she was real.

  Ivan’s Warcasket rested a hand on her mechanical shoulder. Vanya felt the weight through the frame, a steady pressure that said stay upright, stay in one piece. Tears kept slipping anyway, hot in her eyes, useless in a sealed cockpit.

  “Easy, girl,” Ivan said. His voice came low, controlled. “We made it. All we need to do is slip out from the back…”

  He paused. The monoeye turned, sweeping the blown out factory space, drawing in the remaining suits like a headcount at a funeral.

  “Hell,” Yuri cut in, accent rough over the comm. “They took out three of our guys.”

  “I was able to narrowly escape with my life,” Vanya said, and it came with a sob she couldn’t swallow in time. “That one was a demon.”

  Carmen gave a sharp, humorless sound. “We can even out the score.”

  Ivan turned his head toward her so hard the servos whined. “Are you retarded?” he asked flatly.

  Silence hit for half a beat.

  He didn’t soften it. “I’ll ask again. Are you all fucking stupid?” His gaze moved across them. “We leave. Now.”

  He started to turn away, like the decision was already made.

  But Mag’s jerked, visor angled toward open space between broken walls. Her eyes widened so far Vanya could see the whites even through the cockpit reflections.

  “A hunter has come,” Mag’s said. Her voice didn’t rise. That made it worse. “A warrior of great martial prowess.”

  “W-what the hell did she just say?” Yuri asked.

  Vanya twisted, stomach dropping as her sensor overlay caught a new blip. Fast. Too fast. Her throat went dry like somebody shut off the air.

  “Damn,” Carmen muttered. “Look how fast that thing is going…”

  Yuri let out a broken chuckle. “Probably a Warcasket with a portable transport.” He angled his suit toward Vanya’s. “Thanks for leading them back here, Van.”

  “Easy, Yuri…” Ivan groaned. It sounded like pain. “Christ. Just a bunch of children arguing over bullshit. Our lives and freedom are at stake and…”

  “That’s them,” Vanya blurted. Fear punched through her voice clean and raw. “That’s them!”

  Every channel went quiet. Even the background static felt like it leaned in.

  “How do you know?” someone asked, small.

  “Enough,” Carmen said. She sneered, but there was something hungry under it. “You wanted revenge. Looks like we have the chance.”

  “Hell no,” Ivan snapped, louder now. “Are you lot not listening? Fuck the personal grudges. I have no interest in losing more people when we can just leave and…”

  “Ivan,” Mag’s said, and it stole the air out of the room again. “I feel it.” She swallowed. “That thing’s hate is in there. It’s not going to stop.”

  Yuri chuckled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You hear that, Ivan? Looks like she’s finally got pep in her step after one op.”

  “Enough, Yuri,” Carmen snapped. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Exactly what I said,” Yuri replied, still half laughing like it was all a joke he didn’t believe. “She’s talking like she’s seen god.”

  Mag’s didn’t flinch. “I can feel her intent,” she said. “Think about it. If she’s really that fast to catch up to Vanya like this, she’ll pick us off the moment we leave this place.”

  Mag’s lifted her head. Her visor caught the ruined city beyond the shattered factory mouth. Black streets. Frozen vehicles. Tower silhouettes with their windows burned out. Above them, space and stars, and the ugly flash of war. Explosions popped like bruises in the dark. Tracer lines stitched across the void, bright and quick. Somewhere far off a beam weapon snapped and left a thin afterimage on Vanya’s eyes.

  Then the sensor tones hit.

  Multiple blips.

  Red.

  A cold prickle ran along Vanya’s scalp. Her hands tightened on the controls until her knuckles ached inside the gloves.

  “She’s here,” Carmen said.

  Carmen ripped the anti W arcasket rifle off her back hardpoint. The weapon came free with a metallic clank that echoed through comms. She braced it in both hands like she was holding a grudge made of steel.

  Yuri laughed again and gripped a massive double handed axe. The blade began to heat, dull orange crawling along the edge. The air around it shimmered, even through optics, like the weapon was impatient.

  Ivan turned to Vanya. “What model are we dealing with?”

  “I-I don’t know,” Vanya said. Her voice shook. “Like I said, it freaking transforms to get faster. It links up to its drone. I don’t know how many pilots.” She swallowed, tasting bile. “It’s strange. We were able to hear her, or at least it sounded like a her through our radio.”

  Mag’s exhaled. “Then we’re dealing with someone like me.”

  That line landed heavy.

  She continued, careful, like each word had to be placed right. “Someone whose senses, due to space, have been heightened. Advanced. Someone like Henryk.” Her head tilted slightly, as if listening to something nobody else could hear. “And God knows if they know actual magic like the witches of Jupiter.”

  “They’re still human,” Ivan said, firm as a bulkhead. “That means they can die.”

  His Warcasket’s hand moved to Mag’s shoulder, the gesture steadying. “Likewise, we have our own Henryk. Our Witch of Saturn.”

  Pride pushed into his tone before he could stop it.

  Mag’s might have smiled. Vanya felt it, that brief flicker of kinship in the middle of a slaughterhouse.

  Then the moment broke.

  A blue afterburn streaked upward in the distance, sharp and bright, like a star being fired out of a gun. The Warcasket that had killed three of their friends rose fast along the edge of their vision, then angled and dropped, thrusters whining as it descended. It wasn’t falling. It was choosing its path.

  For a heartbeat it skimmed the dead streets below, riding the ruins like it owned them.

  Then the drone shot out.

  A compact AI backpack unit kicked free, jets flaring, sliding into position like a predator’s shadow. The Warcasket refolded mid motion, panels shifting, limbs locking, returning to a standard bipedal configuration with a smoothness that made Vanya sick. Not clumsy. Not improvised. Purpose built.

  It hovered there.

  Quiet.

  Just hanging above the destroyed city as it turned its head, scanning, like it was sniffing the air for them.

  And even through comms, even through armor and plating, Vanya swore she could feel it looking.

  “Everyone, turn down your lights,” Ivan said.

  One by one, their monoeyes dimmed, red narrowing to dull embers in the wrecked industrial shadow. The factory husk around them felt even emptier when the glow faded, like the whole Block had decided to stop watching.

  “Carmen, I need you…”

  “Trust me, I already know,” Carmen cut in, already laid in behind the patterned anti Warcasket rifle, eye pressed to scope. Her voice was all teeth. “Just keep her still and I’ll…”

  Their radios erupted.

  “Helloooo…”

  The word dragged, feminine, bright in a way that didn’t belong in a dead city. Not a whisper, not a threat. A greeting. Like she’d walked into a party and wanted heads to turn.

  Ivan’s eyes widened, then narrowed so hard the muscles in his jaw jumped. That voice was familiar. Too familiar.

  The enemy suit hovered there like a specter. The drone circled it slow and hungry, cutting lazy arcs through the darkness like a shark that had tasted blood and wasn’t leaving the water.

  Then the voice came again, chippy, almost cheerful, heavy with a kind of pleased amusement.

  “I am Commander Iman Qureshi of the 34th Academian Mercurian Forces.”

  Her words funneled through the dead streets, bouncing off empty windows, off collapsed overpasses, off the husks of cars frozen mid flight in zero g pockets. Even the stars overhead felt like they listened.

  “Ivan,” Yuri muttered, and whatever joke he was about to make died in his throat. “That’s her.”

  Carmen didn’t blink. “So it’s that bitch,” she said, dragging the curse out like she wanted Iman to hear it and smile.

  “Iman,” Yuri spat, like the name was a dirty taste. “What the hell is she doing out here?”

  Ivan’s gaze drifted to Mag’s, then back to the hovering suit, like he was hoping the universe would correct itself if he stared hard enough. His hand went to his face, thumb pressing the bridge of his nose.

  “Out of everyone,” he said, voice low. “Her. Her.”

  Mag’s swallowed. “W-what do we do?”

  “Surrender,” Yuri said, sarcasm cracking thin.

  Carmen gave a short laugh. “Yeah. Wave a flag. Beg her to be gentle.”

  Ivan turned on them. “Shut up.” The word hit like a slap. “All of you.” He looked across the unit, and for a second the commander act slipped and fear showed through. Not coward fear. Practical fear. The kind you get when you’ve watched a predator work.

  “You know what she is,” Ivan said. “You’ve heard the stories. Academy killboard, instructor briefs, every damn rumor that ends with bodies.” His eyes cut to Vanya. “She didn’t just hit you. She hunted you.”

  Vanya’s throat tightened. She nodded without meaning to. The memory of that speed, that shape changing, that drone moving like it was part of her, not equipment.

  “She’s not here for salvage,” Ivan continued. “She’s not here for honor. She’s here because she likes it.”

  Yuri tried to laugh and couldn’t. “She’s Mercury’s dog,” he muttered. “They point and she bites.”

  Mag’s voice went quieter. “People say she laughs on open channel,” she said. “Right when the other cockpit goes silent.”

  Carmen’s scope tracked, steady. “She’s still one woman,” she said, but even she sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  Ivan snapped a fresh magazine into his SMG. The click echoed loud in the comms, the clean sound of commitment. “No one switches your radio frequency,” he said. “No panic chatter. No prayers. We fight, and we do it fast.” His gaze hardened. “If a single one of us gets made, think of your families. Think of what they’ll do to them when Saturn gets stamped terrorist.”

  Iman’s voice came back, louder now, like she was strolling closer through the air itself.

  “Helloooo… are you listening?”

  The hovering Warcasket tilted, casual, almost bored.

  “I’ve killed your friends and comrades,” she sang. “They all died like bitches. But you don’t have to join their fate…”

  A beam blade snapped to life in her hand, the particle edge sparking and hissing, bright blue against black. The glow painted the drone as it circled, made the dead street below look wet and cold.

  “Surrender,” Iman said, and her tone stayed sweet. “Exit your Warcaskets and you will be charged in accordance to the Eunuch Emperor’s law. If not, you’ll be slaughtered just the same.”

  Carmen exhaled slow through her teeth. Her reticle settled. Her finger tightened.

  Iman felt it.

  Not with eyes. With that pressure behind the forehead, that wrong sense that had nothing to do with instruments. Her mind’s eye twitched.

  She dipped her Warcasket a fraction to the left.

  Carmen’s shot cracked. The anti Warcasket round tore through where Iman’s head had been an instant before, ripping a line of sparks off plating and punching a screaming hole through a half collapsed wall behind her. Concrete dust and metal shrapnel burst outward into the vacuum like a blooming flower.

  Iman chuckled.

  Not angry. Not surprised.

  Pleased.

  “Oh,” she said, smiling as if they’d finally spoken her language. “I was hoping for that answer.”

  The drone’s tether wire flexed and followed as Iman slammed her throttle. The backpack unit spurred around her in tight circles, tailing her like an animal that knew the hunt was on.

  “Come forth,” Iman called, and the beam blade flared brighter as she surged forward. “Come forth and get slaughtered!”

  Henryk

  Henryk dropped deeper into the fortress catacombs on full engines, thrusters flaring hard enough to rattle his teeth through the suit’s dampeners. The descent tunnel stretched on like a throat, long and tight, lights flickering in sick bursts that made the world stutter.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, almost to nobody. “That shot really killed my fuel and reserves.”

  His HUD agreed with him in cold numbers. Fifty percent. In a fight that had barely been twenty minutes. The plasma cannon hit had given him the opening he needed, it had also taken its pound of flesh. Laser rifle draw, beam blade draw, transformation cycles, every burst of thrust, all of it ate power like it was starving.

  The Warcasket’s legs and lower frame clipped past bodies that hadn’t made it to suits or safe rooms. Pirates, sprawled in angles that didn’t look human anymore. In the low gravity pockets they floated. In the tighter corridors they thumped against his armor as he pushed through, rhythmic, dull, like the station itself was tapping him on the shin to remind him what this place did to people.

  He swallowed, eyes burning from the glare and the strain. “Just finish this quick,” he told himself. “Then get out.”

  He leaned into the throttle. The machine answered with a hard surge, and down ahead the corridor opened into a pair of massive metal doors, twisted and half lifted like something had tried to pry them apart and failed.

  Henryk raised his wrist.

  Two bazooka rounds kicked out from the integrated launcher, spiraling and smoking, and they hit dead center with a punch that shook the entire passage. The doors blew clean off their mounts. Metal screamed, folded, and sailed into the dark.

  Henryk slammed through the opening at max output, armor scraping the edges, and his cockpit monitor widened to a full panoramic sweep.

  “Woah,” he breathed. “That’s the engine bay.”

  It was a circular chamber so big it made the Warcasket feel like a knife in a cathedral. The ceiling was high enough to hide in shadow. The center was dominated by two pylons, one rooted to the floor, one hanging down from the roof, and wild, sporadic arcs of light snapped between them. The whole place pulsed in emergency red, alarms muted or dead, the glow painting everything like dried blood.

  Then his mind’s eye twitched.

  That wrong sense, that pressure behind his forehead.

  He snapped his head and hauled the controls, dumping his suit hard to the right.

  A bazooka blast tore through the space he’d occupied a heartbeat ago, leaving a trail of sparks off a support strut and punching into a wall with a blooming burst of shrapnel. The shockwave rolled through the bay, spinning loose debris.

  “Nice shot, pencil dick,” a voice sang through the radio, laughing.

  Another voice piled on immediately. “Hey, I thought I had his ass…”

  “Leave it to Captain Moreno to fuck it up, green bean.”

  Three voices. Three different cuts of arrogance. They weren’t even whispering. They were performing.

  Henryk lifted his gaze.

  Three mobile suits hovered in a loose spread, monoeyes blazing a harsh pink red. Scrap heap mechs, the kind pirates built from stolen frames and salvaged parts, mismatched plates, seams that didn’t align, scorched paint layered over old insignia. Their thruster plumes flickered uneven, but they moved with the comfort of people who lived in violence.

  What hit Henryk hardest was how little respect they had for each other. No crisp callouts. No clean chain of command. They spoke like they were equal or worse, like rank was a joke someone told to make themselves feel safe.

  “Leave me be, Makelya,” said the one with the bazooka. Captain Moreno. He sounded annoyed, like she’d embarrassed him in front of guests.

  “Oh look,” Makelya replied, voice sharp with amusement. “Pencil dick over here trying to stand up for himself.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Easy,” the third voice said, calmer, older. “Jacen’s going to be here in a couple. You know how he feels about equality and all that.”

  “Quit it, Wilum,” Makelya snapped, sass dripping. “Sometimes you can be such a kickass and…”

  Henryk flicked his comms fully live. His voice filled their channel like a door kicked open.

  “Forgetting me,” he said.

  There was a pause, just long enough for their optics to settle on him for real.

  “One guy,” Moreno said, disbelief in his tone. “They only sent one guy.”

  Makelya sighed like the idea bored her. “You heard the reports. Only one or two broke through the defenses.” She shifted her suit, and Henryk heard the chunky mechanical sound of a magazine locking into place over open radio, sloppy and confident. “Make sure he doesn’t get any farther.”

  Wilum chuckled. “Hey, little boy. Your voice…” He drew it out. “How young are you?”

  “Young enough to fuck your mother,” Henryk spat back.

  Makelya laughed. Moreno laughed. The sound was ugly. Loose. Like they’d already written his obituary.

  Wilum’s chuckle died. “The mouth on this motherfucker,” he said, teeth gritting. “I’m gonna make you pay, you little cocksucker.”

  Henryk’s grin came slow, mean. “You’re talking to Henryk of House Mars,” he said. He let the name sit there like a threat. “And you’re captains, aren’t you. Lieutenants at the very least.” His eyes tracked their silhouettes, their weapons, their angles of approach. “Sure, you ain’t Jacen, but your heads still fetch a price. I’d gamble on that.”

  Makelya’s monoeye flared brighter. “The balls on this one.” Her suit drifted forward a fraction. “Boy, it’s three on one. Martian or not, you’re going to die here.”

  Moreno snorted. “Hope you got your dick wet at least once, kid. Luck rides with the ones whose stakes are high, and you made a pretty shit gamble coming alone.”

  Henryk’s shield arm flexed. This suit’s shield wasn’t the big slab most Sons of Mars carried. It was integrated, tight to the wrist, designed to move fast instead of standing there like a wall.

  He drew his beam blade.

  A long green particle edge flared into existence, hissing, lighting the cockpit in a sick neon wash. His other hand steadied the laser rifle.

  “Pirate scum like you only deserve one thing,” he shouted, and he pulled the trigger.

  Purple bolts erupted in fast succession, streaking across the engine bay, leaving sharp afterimages. The pirates scattered, thrusters barking, their red orange plumes carving lines through the dull emergency glow. One rolled under the fire, another snapped upward, the third dipped low and wide, trying to flank.

  Henryk lunged after them, engines screaming, the whole Warcasket vibrating under the strain. Return fire stitched past him. Machine gun tracers. A heavier thump that sounded like a cannon cycling. The bay filled with light and movement and the crackle of power from the pylons, arcs snapping like lightning as if the station itself was furious.

  “I can do this,” he whispered, more prayer than confidence.

  A pirate suit cut in close, dangerously close, and the muzzle flash bloomed.

  A shotgun blast slammed into Henryk’s wrist shield with a blunt, brutal impact that jolted his arm back. Shards of armor coating sprayed off into the air. Warnings flashed. His teeth clicked together.

  Henryk snarled and shoved forward anyway, raising the rifle and firing point blank. The pirate captain kicked away, fast, escaping the kill zone by meters, not miles.

  Henryk’s fuel readout kept ticking down in the corner like a quiet death sentence.

  He tightened his grip on the controls until his hands hurt.

  “This is my custom Warcasket,” he spat, voice low and vicious as he surged after them again. “Ain’t nothing here stopping me.”

  “She’s quick, quicker than…!” Yuri shouted.

  His left shoulder blew apart.

  Not a clean cut. Not a neat hole. It was a brutal rip that took plating, servos, and half the joint with it. Metal and insulation burst into the dark. Warning lights flooded his cockpit. Yuri’s scream came out sharp, then warped into a heavy laugh, breathy and wrong.

  “Damn,” he panted, staring at the damage feed like it was a joke somebody else was living. “She’s good.”

  Vanya, Carmen, and Mag’s hit full thrust and split around him. Their rocket plumes washed over Yuri’s suit, hiding him for a second in white glare and drifting smoke. They peeled off in three directions and then curled back in, converging on the same point.

  Iman.

  She was in Stargazer mode again, low and fast, running circles around the dead towers. Bazooka rounds slammed into silent buildings and tore them open. Whole facades ruptured. Window frames and concrete panels floated outward into zero g like slow snow. The blue of her engines carved through it all, bright and clean, a Tron line in a ruined city.

  “You’ve got to be quicker than that!” Iman’s voice boomed, amplified by the suit’s megaphone. She sounded almost happy.

  Carmen dropped beneath her line, rolled her suit into a firing lane, and sent a sniper round up.

  The shot barely nicked. A spark, nothing more.

  “Fucking hell!” Carmen screamed into her mic. “Pin her down. Pin her down!”

  Ivan pushed alongside Mag’s, both suits running hot, red monoeyes dimmed but locked on target. “We’re going to cut her…”

  “Cut her how?” Mag’s snapped back.

  “Utilize everything we’ve got,” Ivan said. He was breathing hard. “We’ve got the best of the best that—”

  “Damn it, Ivan, this one is moving in something better!” Carmen shouted. Another sniper report cracked and went wide as Iman shifted. “Last thing I want to hear is a motivation speech right now!”

  Iman pitched the Stargazer hard and aimed straight at Carmen’s last position.

  Carmen’s eyes widened. She raised her shield.

  Machine gun fire hammered her. Thump after thump after thump. Each impact rattled her frame and threw her off angle.

  “Carmen, dodge!” Mag’s shouted.

  “W-what…” Carmen’s voice cracked.

  Then she heard it. The missile bay dumping.

  Ten missiles spat from the Stargazer in a tight burst. They weaved toward her like they had a mind.

  “H-huh!” Carmen yanked her suit down into the shadow of a Block section and retreated through broken streets, firing as she moved. She tried to intercept them. She tried to shred them out of the air.

  None of it mattered.

  The missiles didn’t care about bravery. They didn’t care about skill. They cared about math.

  Carmen’s backblast kicked her suit into a spin and the ruins came up fast. She slammed into the side of a building carcass. Concrete dust and shattered glass floated around her in a glittering cloud.

  “Vanya. Yuri. Support her, now!” Ivan barked.

  The response was immediate. A choir of machine gun fire. More bazooka blasts. The dead city filled with smoke and ash again, like it remembered what war was.

  “Mag’s,” Ivan started.

  Mag’s already knew.

  “Drones, go!” she screamed.

  Four drones hissed out from hardpoints along her Warcasket. They launched like angry hornets, blue jets flaring as they shot toward Iman’s position.

  “Oh, more!” Iman shouted. “Bring it!”

  She snapped out of Stargazer mode mid drift. Plates folded. Limbs locked. The AI drone encircled her like a snake, cable trailing like a tail. Her own drone shot forward.

  Mag’s drones opened fire.

  Iman’s drone didn’t dodge.

  It rammed.

  The beak slammed into one of Mag’s drones head on. The explosion punched outward and the other three got thrown off course, tumbling, stabilizers screaming as they fought to reorient.

  Mag’s eyes went wide. “S-She’s a monster…”

  “She’s human,” Ivan snarled. “We can kill it!”

  He drew his bazooka and returned fire. A missile found purchase on Iman’s raised shield. The shield cracked, buckled, and vanished into debris. Iman didn’t hesitate. She ejected it from her wrist like it was trash.

  Ivan was on her in moments.

  He drew his patterned hand axe and came down with it, aiming for her head. “Die!” he screamed.

  Iman brought up her beam blade.

  The weapons met in a hard saber lock that threw light over the street and made the rubble look wet. Ivan’s axe shook under the pressure. Iman held steady like she was leaning on a table.

  “Get her, now!” Ivan shouted.

  Carmen swung her anti Warcasket rifle up through the debris cloud, scope hunting for a clean line.

  She almost had it.

  Then Iman’s drone whipped down and sprayed Carmen with small arms fire. The rounds stitched across her armor and forced her back behind cover.

  “Damn it!” Carmen snarled. “She can’t hold still and…”

  “It’s that fucking drone,” Yuri snapped, engines flaring as he pushed back into the fight despite his damage. “Two for one. But we’ll get there.”

  Iman and the drone moved through the ruins like they were built for this place. They cut between broken towers. They skimmed along dead streets. Iman flipped her suit, barrel rolled, and dipped hard, rockets roaring blue and hot. The drone followed with perfect timing, cable snapping tight, then slack, like a leash on a beast.

  All of them were on her now.

  Vanya fired a bazooka shot. Yuri rose with the axe, swinging it like he wanted to split the world. Mag’s remaining drones corrected and poured fire. Ivan pressed in, machine gun thumping, trying to force Iman into a mistake.

  Iman didn’t make one.

  She moved like something other than a cadet. Like something that had been born in vacuum and learned to smile with blood in its mouth. That blaze behind her eyes, that otherworldly intent, it made her faster than her suit should allow.

  She separated again into Stargazer mode with a smooth fold and a violent burst of speed, then snapped back into bipedal, firing between transitions. Rockets. Beams. Tracers. The city lit up in flashes and afterimages.

  Vanya screamed.

  A strike took both her arms.

  Not grazed. Not damaged. Gone. Her Warcasket’s forearms blew off in a burst of metal and sparks, the joints torn open. Vanya’s suit spun backward, helpless, trailing debris.

  The AI drone kept it raining. Submachine gun fire spat like petals, bright and constant, trying to finish her.

  Yuri hit full engines and shoved Vanya sideways, physically pushing her suit into the cover of a broken building. He absorbed rounds meant for her, armor flaring with impacts.

  Iman gave chase.

  Mag’s drones cut her off, dumping fire into her lane. Iman raised her beam rifle and erased one of the drones with a clean shot. It popped into a burning ball and then broke apart into glittering junk.

  “Fucking hell, Mag’s!” Ivan shouted. “Those things are goddamn expensive!”

  “Ivan, fuck this!” Yuri yelled. “We haven’t even been able to get close and—”

  “Shut the hell up!” Ivan roared. “We have the opportunity to put a cap in her and end this!”

  He surged forward, raised his machine gun, and fired. He tried to kick, tried to crush her with sheer mass and momentum.

  He missed.

  Iman became a trail of tracer fire at the edge of his barrel. A blur. A blue streak. A laugh on open channel.

  Then the beam flashed.

  A stray laser blast cut across Ivan’s arm.

  His hand separated.

  Just gone.

  The axe slipped away into the dark, tumbling end over end like a dropped coin. Ivan’s cockpit filled with alarms. His breath hitched, sharp and shocked, like his body couldn’t decide if it wanted to scream or pray.

  “Ivan!” Carmen shouted.

  But there was no time for him to answer.

  Carmen had already drawn bead through the scope of her anti-Warcasket rifle, her breathing hard and shaky through the mic as she tracked Iman’s blue burning silhouette through the broken city. The dead towers floated and leaned at strange angles around them, concrete dust and ash still hanging in pockets of zero g. She squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle thundered.

  And the drone took it.

  It darted in front of Iman at the last second, almost like it knew where Carmen was aiming before Carmen did. The anti-Warcasket round smashed straight into it and the machine buckled and spun, pieces of armor bursting off in a bright ugly shower. Its body whirled, cable snapping wild, but it did not die. It just kept moving, smoking now, one side half torn open, still loyal.

  “Shit!” Carmen screamed. “That fucking thing took it!”

  Iman laughed through the open channel.

  Then both her machine and the drone folded together into Stargazer mode again, the transformation not clean, not perfect, but quick enough, violent enough. Blue flames burst harder from both their engines as they split apart in opposite directions and cut in on Yuri from both sides.

  Yuri’s eyes widened. “The hell…!”

  One came low, one came high. The drone circled with that tether whipping behind it like the tail of some deep sea thing and Iman’s Stargazer slid through the ruins like a shark through black water.

  They were going to crush him between them.

  Mag’s felt it before it happened.

  Not in the instruments. Not in the radio. Somewhere else.

  “Yuri, move!” she screamed. “Move now, left, left!”

  He didn’t ask why. He just yanked the controls and threw every ounce of thrust he had left into one brutal burn. The suit kicked so hard his teeth slammed together and for a second it felt like the whole world stretched out thin around him. The fire from Iman’s guns and the drone’s little muzzle flashes seemed to slow, just for a second, just enough for him to slip through.

  Iman’s blade passed through the space where he’d been.

  The drone’s fire raked his shield and thigh plating instead of his cockpit.

  Yuri let out a loud ragged laugh. “Holy shit!”

  “Don’t celebrate yet!” Mag’s shouted.

  Her drones hissed from the joints of her machine and shot forward again, four of them at once, darting through the wreckage with machine-like precision, firing and adjusting as they rushed Iman from different vectors.

  Iman’s eyes narrowed.

  “Oh, more toys,” she said, and there was genuine delight in her voice.

  Her Stargazer twisted through the dead street and then rose, its blue engines flaring bright and hot. She fired once with the beam rifle and one of Mag’s drones vanished in a flash of molten pieces. The AI drone slammed bodily into another one and ripped it out of alignment before machine gun fire chewed through it. A third got clipped by a follow up shot. The fourth nearly reached her and then the drone looped around and its beak smashed through the chassis head on.

  All four were gone.

  Mag’s breathed out, almost not believing it. “S-She’s…,”

  “A monster,” Yuri finished for her.

  “She’s still flesh,” Ivan snapped, even with the pain in his voice. “She can still die!”

  But in Iman’s cockpit the warnings were starting to pile up.

  Her screen flooded with little fault notices. Error logs. Caution markers. The Stargazer’s systems began to complain through the frame, through the pedals, through the stick. Something in the transform cycle dragged and did not want to separate properly.

  Iman clicked her tongue and slammed the side control. “Come on, you stupid bitch.”

  The prototype resisted. Plates jammed for a second. The folding frame twitched. The drone tried to align and the whole sequence stuttered ugly.

  First real deployment.

  First real blooding.

  And the machine was telling her exactly what it was. Not finished. Not trustworthy. Not yet.

  She forced it apart anyway.

  The Stargazer mode split and the main Warcasket slammed back toward bipedal, rougher than before, one engine plume spitting strange and uneven. The drone veered wide and nearly overcorrected. It was still operational. But now it looked hurt.

  Carmen saw that.

  There was no panic in her eyes now. Just focus.

  “Stay still for one second,” she hissed.

  She fired again.

  This time the round struck along the side of the transforming frame. Not the cockpit. Not a kill shot. But enough to tear up part of the outer housing and make Iman’s entire machine jolt and drop half a level before the thrusters caught her.

  The Stargazer’s systems screamed at Iman.

  Faulty.

  Faulty.

  Faulty.

  Still alive.

  Still hers.

  Iman snarled, then whipped her beam rifle toward Yuri.

  Yuri barely got his beam SMG up in time.

  Green fire spat from his weapon in hard nervous bursts as he drifted backwards between two broken structures, trying to keep rubble between himself and that rifle. Iman kept firing, not wild, not emotional, but with terrifying control. Shot after shot lit the street. One beam carved past Yuri’s shoulder and blew apart half a floating transport truck behind him. Another nearly caught his waist. Another sliced along the side of his shield and left the metal glowing.

  Yuri cursed and sent more beam fire back, the recoil thudding through his cockpit. “Die already, you bitch!”

  Iman slipped around the shots, drifting and correcting on bad but workable thrusters, still graceful even while the machine betrayed her.

  Then her attention left Yuri.

  It snapped back to Ivan and Carmen.

  That was where the real threat was.

  Ivan surged forward with his beam blade lit, his damaged Warcasket moving on anger alone. His left hand was gone. Warnings screamed red all along his monitor. He did not care. He just came on.

  Iman lowered her head and charged too, beam blade igniting bright and hissing.

  They collided hard.

  The saber lock lit the ruined street blue and white and green all at once. Sparks and particles spat in every direction as both Warcaskets shoved into each other, feet grinding across broken pavement, thrusters firing hot to keep leverage.

  Ivan screamed right into his comm. “Die!”

  Iman’s face was tight, beautiful and vicious and utterly alive. “You first!”

  And even in the lock she kept fighting dirty. Her damaged machine shifted its torso and spat small arms fire from a secondary mount toward Carmen’s position. Carmen ducked behind a dead wall, concrete spraying around her.

  “Son of a whore!” Carmen barked.

  She rolled back out, advanced low and fast between floating chunks of debris and ruined support beams, dragging that heavy rifle with her. Her scope flashed. She took the angle.

  And fired.

  The shot hit Iman’s leg.

  The lower limb burst at the knee assembly with a shower of sparks and torn plating. The entire Warcasket dipped hard, one leg nearly collapsing under her, only for her to kick the remaining thrusters and stay upright.

  Carmen grinned through bared teeth. “Got you.”

  But Mag’s was already moving.

  She came in with her beam blade drawn, burning hard, screaming something wordless as she slammed into Iman’s side. Their blades caught. Locked.

  And then both girls screamed.

  Not because of the impact.

  Because something else opened.

  All at once the battlefield was gone.

  Not gone like darkness. Gone like it had been peeled away.

  The dead city. The alarms. The gunfire. The drifting rubble. It all dissolved into this thick, color-drenched haze, like oil and blood and neon poured into water and stirred by an invisible hand. Everything around them breathed. Not air. Color. Light. Shapes that would not stay shapes. A place that felt too big and too close at the same time.

  Mag’s didn’t feel her cockpit anymore. Didn’t feel her body right. She was there and not there. Her hands looked wrong, too bright at the edges, fingers trailing color like smeared paint in rain.

  Iman was in front of her.

  Not in the Warcasket.

  Just there.

  Her outline flickered like bad film. Young one second. Older the next. Her face steady and then not steady. Like there was a second face underneath hers and it kept almost surfacing before sinking again.

  Iman looked around, and for once there was real confusion in her. No mockery. No swagger. Just something almost frightened.

  “What the hell is this,” she said softly.

  Her voice echoed too long. It rippled through the haze. The words bent. They came back wrong.

  Mag’s stared at her. The whole place felt like some horrible acid dream, like they had both fallen into the bloodstream of god and there was no floor to find. Color moved through the haze in long veins. Old sounds lingered. A man crying. A little girl laughing. A rifle going off somewhere far away. A prayer. A scream. They all bled together.

  “I…don’t know,” Mag’s whispered. “But I can feel you.”

  Iman’s eyes snapped to hers. “Don’t.”

  Mag’s stepped closer anyway, like the place itself was pulling at her. “We don’t have to keep doing this,” she said. “We can understand each other. We can stop.”

  Iman’s whole expression changed.

  It hardened.

  Not just anger. Panic. Rage. Something territorial and ancient.

  “I said don’t.”

  But the connection was already happening.

  Mag’s looked down and saw herself first.

  Not a body. Not flesh. Not a face.

  Just color.

  A thousand colors sliding over one another, mixing, changing, never settling. Blues into pinks into golds into sickly green into soft white and then all of it swallowed again into something new. Beautiful and weak. Gentle and terrified. Easily moved. Easily bent. A soul that could be led by love, by fear, by loneliness, by whoever touched it hardest. It swayed like cloth in water. It wanted too much. It knew too little. It was her.

  Mag’s stared at it in horror.

  Then she saw Iman.

  And there was no color.

  There was a person.

  At first it was Iman.

  Then not.

  Then both.

  The shape in front of her stood taller than it should. Broader. Older. A face lined by a life already lived. Eyes that had seen too many dead and kept looking anyway. Then it blurred and became Iman again. Then not. Then the two were layered on top of each other so perfectly it made Mag’s stomach turn.

  Her breath caught.

  “What…,” she whispered.

  And then it hit her.

  Not like seeing.

  Like drowning.

  Memories that were too old, too sharp, too heavy to belong inside one girl’s head. Mud. Gunpowder. A battlefield. Men screaming in a language she didn’t know and somehow understood. The stink of burning skin. A rifle kicked into an old shoulder. Decades of nightmares. Decades of not sleeping right. An old man with war packed into him so deep it had eaten the soft parts.

  Then a child.

  A little child.

  Too young.

  Too small.

  And all of it pouring into her, into Iman, into that tiny body and mind like poison down a throat. Not learning. Not inheritance. Something worse. Something invasive. Something that never asked permission.

  Mag’s recoiled hard.

  Her whole being shook.

  Iman’s face flickered again and again and again, and behind it that old face kept threatening to come through, not fully, not completely, just enough to make the question unbearable.

  Was it memory.

  Was it inheritance.

  Was it him.

  Was it both.

  Mag’s stared, horrified beyond words.

  “What happened to you,” she whispered, and in the haze even that sounded wrong, stretched, drugged, unreal. “What are you?”

  Iman’s face twisted with fury, but under it there was something deeper, something hurt and old and hateful. “You don’t get to look,” she said.

  The haze around them surged. It became color and smoke and blood and old sunlight all at once. For a second Mag’s saw Iman as a girl. Then as the old man. Then as both of them standing in the same place with the same eyes. The features blurred together so badly Mag’s couldn’t breathe.

  Then Iman lunged.

  Not with a blade.

  With pure refusal.

  With violence in the soul.

  The whole connection shattered.

  The battlefield slammed back in all at once.

  Noise. Alarms. Thrusters. Ruins. The broken city. The void above.

  Mag’s gasped in her cockpit and nearly vomited.

  Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold the controls. Her heart was trying to punch out through her ribs. The image of Iman’s face kept flickering in her mind and every time it did the older face threatened to rise under it.

  “No,” Mag’s whispered. “No, no…”

  She turned and ran.

  Not tactical. Not calculated. Real fear.

  Her Warcasket burned hard down the dead street between hollowed buildings, trying to get distance, trying to escape what she had seen, trying to convince herself she hadn’t seen it at all.

  Behind her, Iman steadied.

  Her damaged machine limped slightly on the blown leg. Fault warnings still spat across her screen. But her beam rifle rose all the same.

  For just a second, in Mag’s rear monitor, Iman’s face blurred again. Young woman. Older man. Young woman.

  Then it settled.

  Back onto Iman.

  Cold. Beautiful. Animal.

  She fired.

  The beam rifle hit Mag’s dead on.

  Her Warcasket slammed sideways into the face of a ruined building with enough force to cave metal and blow concrete out in a dark cloud. The whole frame bounced, scraped, and stuck there half lodged in the wreckage.

  Inside the cockpit Mag’s head snapped against the restraints and the world went black at once.

  Henryk’s Stargazer ripped through the engine bay like a bullet with a mind of its own, blue afterburn washing hard across the electrical pylons as the whole chamber groaned and shook around him. Wild arcs of power kept snapping from pylon to pylon, so bright they left streaks burned into his vision. The whole room was bathed in that dead emergency red, alarms screaming somewhere deep in the walls, the fortress making the sound of something old and dying angry.

  His hands stayed hard on the controls. Sweat slid down his temple. The cockpit trembled around him every time he pushed the prototype harder.

  “Come on,” he muttered. “Come on, just hold together.”

  The machine was fast. Christ, it was fast.

  Nothing like the old rusted coffin he used to pilot. Nothing like the bulkier Mars suits either. This thing slipped. This thing cut. It transformed and burst forward with a violence that made his stomach lurch and his teeth bare. It felt like it wanted to kill for him.

  But the warnings were stacking up too.

  Fuel drain.

  Heat strain.

  Transform lock caution.

  Flight frame stability compromised.

  Every time he shifted modes the Stargazer gave a little protest through the frame, a shudder like the machine was reminding him it was still unfinished. Still half dream, half metal.

  Moreno came at him first, bazooka raised as he shot around the side of one of the pylons. “Hold still, you little cocksucker!”

  The bazooka round blasted across the chamber and Henryk dumped thrust, the Stargazer swinging up and hard to the side as the shell missed him by feet and hit the base of the pylon.

  The whole thing exploded in sparks.

  White blue electricity vomited through the room and Wilum had to yank his scrap heap suit sideways before the current kissed his leg.

  “Moreno!” Wilum barked. “Watch the fucking fire!”

  Moreno’s laugh filled the comms. “Then don’t be where I’m shooting!”

  Henryk grinned in spite of himself and fired back, purple laser bolts hammering across the chamber. Makelya twisted her Warcasket to avoid the first two shots, but the third clipped her shoulder and tore a chunk of armor free.

  “The hell!” she snapped. “This one’s in a real machine!”

  “You’re just figuring that out?” Henryk spat.

  He cut low through a gap between two pylons and hit the wrist launcher. Grenades spat free from beneath the Stargazer’s forearm and spiraled hot through the chamber. One blew against a dead support beam and sent metal and smoke out in a burst. The other forced Wilum to jerk away and nearly slam into Makelya.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Makelya barked.

  Henryk laughed now, more breathless, more into it. “Y’all look sloppy!”

  “Little bastard thinks he’s funny,” Moreno muttered.

  “He’ll still die,” said Makelya.

  She came at him with the axe next, boosting in hard with her scrap suit screaming at the joints. Henryk transformed halfway into flight configuration to gain speed, then snapped back as she closed, raising his beam blade just in time.

  The weapons crashed together.

  Light washed over the engine bay.

  Henryk gritted his teeth and pushed back. Makelya leaned into him, monoeye bright red. “You got a lot of mouth for a boy in a dying station.”

  Henryk shoved harder. “And you got a lot of ugly in one damn suit.”

  She barked a laugh, then tried to knee into his chest. Henryk cut thrust and slipped under the angle, firing his laser rifle point blank. The blast scorched along her torso and sent her peeling off with a curse, but it didn’t kill the machine. It just pissed her off.

  Then Wilum was on him from above and Moreno from below.

  They were learning.

  The three of them kept trying to herd him into bad lanes between the pylons, cut him down with crossfire, force him to eat machine gun bursts and beam shots while the room itself tried to cook him alive. Henryk’s Stargazer was just quicker. It ripped between the arcs, engines blue and burning, one second in bipedal, the next in flight mode, then half folded, then back again. It was insane. Beautiful. Unsafe.

  And it was starting to complain.

  A red warning flashed across his screen the moment he came out of a hard turn.

  Flight bind error.

  Throttle delay.

  Frame temperature rising.

  “Damn it,” Henryk hissed.

  Moreno heard the strain in the machine. “There it is!” he shouted. “Fancy Martian shit’s breaking!”

  “Then come break it,” Henryk shot back.

  He fired another burst from the laser rifle, then the wrist launchers again, grenades and purple bolts filling the chamber while the pylons flashed around them like lightning trees. Explosions boomed off the ruined metal walls. Debris floated in slow ugly drifts. The whole station kept groaning deeper and deeper, like somewhere below them the heart had already been stabbed and just hadn’t stopped beating yet.

  Wilum rose with his beam axe and tried to take Henryk at the neck. Henryk ducked it by inches, the green heat scraping sparks from the Stargazer’s shoulder. He fired his beam rifle back one handed and forced Wilum to block with his shield.

  Makelya swept in from the side and almost caught Henryk’s leg with her axe, but he transformed again and shot past her in a blur.

  The Stargazer shivered.

  Bad.

  His whole cockpit jolted and the transform cycle stuck for the smallest moment. Not enough to kill him. Enough to make his blood run cold.

  “Oh, hell no,” he muttered, slamming his hand against the side control. “Move!”

  The machine obeyed, barely.

  He came out of the fold rough, one engine plume spitting strange, and Moreno nearly caught him with a bazooka shot while he was still leveling out. The blast tore apart a ruined catwalk behind him and rained metal through the chamber.

  “They’ve got you now!” Moreno shouted.

  “No they don’t!” Henryk barked.

  He yanked up and around one of the pylons, then fired down through the sparks and smoke, forcing all three lieutenants to split apart again. They did not look afraid yet, but they weren’t laughing as much either.

  The station lurched.

  All four suits shook.

  A distant explosion rolled through the structure and one whole wall section in the engine bay split open, exposing pieces of dark space through the fortress hull. Air and smoke and debris began to pull ugly toward the breach.

  Makelya cursed. “This place is coming apart!”

  Moreno snarled. “Then finish him!”

  Wilum shouted through static, “He’s one guy!”

  Henryk’s mouth tightened. One guy.

  His fuel was lower than he liked. The rifle was building heat. The transform frame was acting like it wanted to betray him any second. And still he kept going, the Stargazer slashing back and forth through the pylons with that near supernatural kind of quickness, as if it was answering some thought in him before he even finished thinking it.

  Then the comms cracked.

  A new voice.

  Cold.

  Sharp.

  Female.

  “Henryk, move.”

  His whole body reacted before his pride did. He kicked the Stargazer down and hard to the left.

  A beam shot screamed across the space he had just occupied and hit Wilum’s shield, blasting the pirate lieutenant spinning.

  Three new suits came spearing into the chamber right behind the shot.

  Mercurian lines.

  Cleaner silhouettes.

  Disciplined movement.

  Piper led them.

  Her Warcasket came in like judgment, grey eye burning, rifle raised. Three members of her squad swept in around her and opened fire at once, clean controlled bursts that instantly changed the whole tempo of the fight.

  Moreno cursed. “More of them?”

  Henryk let out a breathless laugh. “About damn time.”

  Piper’s voice hit his comms. “You look like shit.”

  Henryk grinned, even now. “Missed you too.”

  “Focus.”

  One of Piper’s squad pushed high and laid down suppressive fire on Makelya. Another cut low and started hammering Moreno’s flank. The third launched missiles that forced Wilum to burn backward through the pylons instead of pressing Henryk.

  Just like that, it wasn’t three on one anymore.

  It was war.

  Henryk and Piper’s squad moved with surprising rhythm too, not perfect, not practiced together enough, but enough. Henryk would slash through one lane and force a lieutenant wide, then one of Piper’s people would take the angle and dump fire there. Piper herself kept pushing the center, rifle cracking, beam blade ready, moving with that same brutal directness Henryk remembered from before.

  Makelya shouted, “Fall them back, fall them back!”

  Moreno fired his bazooka and forced Henryk behind a pylon, only for Piper to burst through the opposite side and catch Moreno with a beam shot to the shoulder, spinning him off line.

  Wilum came for Henryk again with the axe and Henryk met him rifle to blade, the impact shaking his whole cockpit, then transformed, kicked free, and fired the wrist grenades to make distance.

  The grenades blew against the walls and sent more metal raining out.

  Everywhere now was sparks and red light and blue afterburn and drifting smoke.

  The station was dying faster.

  A pylon overloaded and discharged in a violent burst. Another one sagged halfway from the ceiling. Somewhere behind them a section of floor plating tore loose and vanished toward the breach in slow spinning chunks.

  Piper’s voice came through all channels. “We are not staying here. Push them back and retreat.”

  Moreno shouted after her, “Run then!”

  “Gladly,” Piper said.

  But she said it while firing.

  Her squad began falling back in disciplined bursts, each one covering the next. Henryk dropped with them, still firing his laser rifle when the heat gauge let him, still darting through the chamber in the Stargazer, though now every transform cycle felt like the machine was grinding its teeth.

  The lieutenants tried to follow.

  Of course they did.

  Moreno first, enraged.

  Wilum second, trying to keep pressure.

  Makelya behind them, swearing and swinging the axe through drifting debris like she could carve a path right through the collapsing station.

  Piper cut her machine around mid retreat and drew her beam blade.

  “Henryk!”

  He looked.

  She whipped her arm and threw the beam blade.

  Not at a suit.

  Into the center of the chamber, into the line of pursuit, the glowing blade tumbling end over end through the red emergency light and all that falling smoke and drifting wreckage. It spun bright as a star, wild and perfect.

  And then Henryk felt it.

  That pull behind the forehead.

  That tug in the mind’s eye.

  Not thought exactly. Not instinct either. Something stranger. Something that made the whole room sharpen all at once.

  He saw the spinning blade.

  Saw the angle.

  Saw the lieutenants coming through behind it.

  Saw what would happen before it happened.

  Henryk raised the beam rifle.

  Dumped the whole magazine.

  Purple bolts hammered into the twirling beam blade one after another and the room went insane.

  Each shot struck the spinning edge and shattered off in new directions, scattering wild across the chamber in a storm of ricocheting light. Beams screamed off the blade and lanced around the room, slamming into pylons, shattered walls, catwalk remains, floating debris, the ground, the ceiling. One passed so close to Moreno’s cockpit he jerked his whole suit backward. Another scorched across Wilum’s shield and forced him into a desperate roll. Another struck near Makelya’s feet and blew a chunk of ruptured deck plating up in her face.

  The whole chamber became a pinball of death.

  “What the fuck!” Moreno screamed.

  Piper grinned, just a little. “Good shot.”

  Henryk stared for a second, half because it worked and half because he hadn’t really known how he knew it would.

  Then the chamber answered for them.

  Two pylons overloaded at once.

  White blue lightning burst across the room in violent branching arcs. The ricocheted fire had destabilized everything. The station groaned like a giant animal being gutted alive. A whole side section began collapsing inward.

  Piper snapped back to command. “That’s enough! Fall back, now!”

  Nobody argued.

  Not Henryk.

  Not her squad.

  Not even the lieutenants.

  Moreno cursed and hauled his damaged suit behind cover. Wilum and Makelya broke pursuit as the room started to come apart in earnest, all of them pulling away from the collapsing pylons and bursting metal.

  Henryk transformed one more time and the Stargazer nearly refused him, then finally folded and shot down the retreat lane with Piper and her squad beside him, all of them leaving the engine bay behind as it drowned in electricity, smoke, and falling ruin.

  His breathing was ragged. His cockpit was full of warnings. His rifle was empty. His pulse still hammered from that impossible shot.

  Piper’s comm came through.

  “You can stop smiling now.”

  Henryk realized he was.

  He laughed once, low and rough. “That was pretty fucking good.”

  Piper’s voice stayed cool, but there was something there under it. “Don’t get used to me saving your ass.”

  Henryk looked toward her machine as they sped through the collapsing fortress. “I saved yours too.”

  One of her squad muttered, “Can you two do this later?”

  Another voice came through, more urgent. “Hull integrity’s dropping all around us. We need an exit now.”

  Henryk tightened his grip on the controls, Stargazer shaking beneath him, still beautiful, still dangerous, still half broken and somehow alive.

  Behind them the engine bay finally gave way in a roar of light.

  Ahead of them was the escape route, if the fortress didn’t close its teeth first.