Otwin hit the command bridge door with his shoulder, and it came apart in a spray of splintered wood and twisted metal. The hinges tore free with a shriek, and the slab slammed inward, bouncing once before skidding across the deck. Smoke rolled out to meet him, warm and metallic, carrying the stench of burned powder, scorched insulation, and blood.

  The command bridge of the turret fort was wider than the corridors behind him and taller too, a circular space built around a raised central dais where the Commander would normally stand. Consoles ringed the walls in a half moon, their brass fittings dulled by years of hard use, their glass faces cracked and spidered. Map plates lay shattered underfoot, ley readouts flickering erratically, needles twitching as the fort shook under distant impacts. Heavy shutters had been dragged down over the viewports, leaving only narrow slits where slivers of gray daylight cut through the smoke.

  Cables hung from the ceiling like torn veins. One had snapped entirely and lay coiled on the deck, still sparking, each pulse of light throwing the room into sharp relief before plunging it back into gloom. The air vibrated with the distant thud of external fire and the low, structural groan of a machine being beaten past tolerance.

  At the center of it all stood the Knight.

  It did not move when Otwin entered. It did not need to.

  The Hegemony Knights are very different than the Steam Knights of the Empire. Where the Steam Knights and the lesser Stormtroopers wear suits of powerful armor that they can take off, the Hegemony Knights are fused into their armor and modified heavily through the use of powerful and perverse magics. They combine flesh, magi-tech, and steam age technology into one abominable form.

  The Hegemony Knight filled the space in a way that made the bridge feel suddenly too small. Well over seven feet tall, it stood with a relaxed, almost casual posture that suggested absolute confidence. Its armor was a layered construct of silvery plates and bronze reinforcement, segmented in overlapping bands that wrapped the torso like an echo of ancient lorica segmentata, each plate etched with faint runes that pulsed softly with contained power.

  Between those plates, where a man’s body should have been hidden, obscene strength was visible. Muscle bulged through the gaps, thick cords of flesh pressing against metal as if the armor were struggling to contain what it had been fused around. The musculature was wrong, too pronounced, too deliberate. This was not the result of training or diet. This was construction.

  The Knight’s arms were massive, forearms thick as Otwin’s thighs, veins standing out like cables beneath pale, stretched skin. Where flesh met armor there was no seam, no clean boundary. Bronze collars sank directly into muscle. Silvery struts disappeared beneath skin. It was not wearing the armor. It was part of it.

  Its helm was a barbute, tall and imposing, the faceguard cut into a narrow T-slot. Through that opening Otwin could see part of what remained of the man inside. One eye glinted in the low light, unblinking and utterly focused. The cheek beneath it was scarred and pulled tight, skin stretched unnaturally over bone. Tubes and thin metal filaments ran from beneath the helm into the neck, pulsing faintly in time with the Knight’s breath.

  The armor itself bore the marks of battle. Scratches scored the silver. Bronze plates were dented and darkened by heat. None of it looked compromised. If anything, the damage made the Knight seem more real, more present, as if it had already survived things that would have destroyed lesser machines.

  In its right hand, the Knight held a chainsword.

  The blade was long and heavy, teeth the size of fingers set into a thick, brutal housing. As Otwin watched, the Knight flexed its grip and the chainsword came alive with a roar that drowned out the distant thunder of the battle outside. The sound filled the bridge, a grinding, snarling howl that vibrated in Otwin’s chest and rattled the loose fittings overhead. Oil mist sprayed from the blade, catching the light in a fine, glittering haze.

  In the Knight’s left hand was a small round buckler, no larger than a trash can lid, its surface smooth and featureless. It hummed softly, almost politely, and a translucent field shimmered into existence a few inches above its face. A miniature magno shield. Compact. Efficient. Deadly.

  Otwin stood in the doorway with his vibro sword humming at his side, the blade’s steady vibration suddenly sounding thin and delicate compared to the chainsword’s roar. His enforcers stacked behind him, but none pushed past. The space did not allow it. This was a narrow kill zone, and everyone in the room knew it.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  The Knight tilted its head slightly, the movement smooth and precise, servo-assisted rather than human. It looked at Otwin, not with curiosity, but with assessment. Like a craftsman examining a flawed tool.

  Otwin felt the weight of that gaze settle on him, cold and appraising.

  Inside his helmet, DAC spoke.

  Assessment of enemy combatant complete.

  Otwin did not move.

  Extreme danger.

  The Knight’s chainsword revved higher, the pitch rising until it became a screaming whine that cut through everything else.

  Escape unlikely.

  Otwin’s jaw tightened.

  Likelihood of survival: low.

  The words landed with the same flat certainty as a weather report.

  Otwin took a single step forward.

  The deck plates creaked under his weight. The Knight’s eye tracked the movement instantly. The buckler lifted a fraction, the magno field adjusting with a subtle shift that Otwin felt rather than saw.

  He took in the room again, forcing himself to breathe, to anchor. The shattered consoles. The flickering lights. The hanging cables. This was not an arena. There would be no space to maneuver, no long charge, no clean lines. This would be close, ugly, and final.

  Otwin rolled his shoulders and felt the exoskeleton respond, pistons whispering as it aligned itself to his stance. The vibro sword’s hum deepened as he tightened his grip. He could feel the blade through the gauntlet, a living thing eager to bite.

  For the first time since the boarding began, Otwin felt something like fear.

  Not panic. Not hesitation. Just a clear, honest understanding of what stood in front of him.

  The Steam Knights he had seen before were men in suits. Dangerous, yes, but still men. This was something else. A weapon shaped like a man. A thing built to kill without pause or doubt, welded into its purpose so completely that there was no separation left.

  The Knight took a step forward.

  The bridge seemed to shrink around it. Each movement was deliberate, controlled, heavy without being slow. The chainsword angled slightly, teeth chewing air. The buckler shifted, the magno field brightening as it anticipated impact.

  Otwin did not retreat.

  He raised the vibro sword and settled into a stance he did not remember learning but knew perfectly. His feet planted. His weight centered. His breathing slowed.

  Behind him, one of the enforcers swallowed audibly. Another tightened his grip on an axe, knuckles whitening beneath powered gauntlets.

  Otwin spoke quietly, not to his team, not to DAC, but to himself.

  “So this is what they send,” he said. "Stay back, boys, I'll handle this. If I fall, run."

  The Knight answered by charging.

  The chainsword howled as the Hegemony Knight closed the distance in a blur of armored mass, magi-tech, and muscle, driving it forward with terrifying speed. The command bridge erupted into motion, sparks flying, consoles shattering, as two engineered killers met in a space never meant to hold them.

  Otwin stepped into the attack.

  And the fight began.

  ***

  The Hegemony Knight hit Otwin like a battering ram.

  There was no exchange of openings, no testing of distance, no cautious circling the way men fought when they expected to live through the next minute. The Knight crossed the command bridge in a single violent surge, bronze and silver plates flashing in the broken light, chainsword screaming as it came up from low guard into a rising diagonal that would have bisected a lesser man.

  Otwin met it with the vibro sword.

  Steel vibrated against screaming teeth. The impact jolted through his arms and into his shoulders like a hammer blow. The vibro edge held for half a heartbeat, long enough for Otwin to feel hope spark in his chest.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Then the Knight’s buckler snapped forward.

  The miniature magno shield flared and struck him like an invisible fist. The field did not cut. It shoved. It grabbed the iron and the mass of his armor and threw it sideways with contemptuous ease.

  Otwin’s feet left the deck.

  He slammed into the bridge wall hard enough to dent a console and blow cracked glass into the air. He bounced, spun, and hit again, his shoulder taking most of it. Pain flashed bright behind his eyes. His vibro sword tore from his grip, tumbling end over end across the deck and disappearing into smoke.

  Otwin’s breath left him in one ugly grunt.

  The Knight was already on him.

  The chainsword crashed down, not biting into him yet, but striking with the full momentum of a weapon designed to chew through armor plating and bone. Teeth sparked as they skated across Otwin’s pauldron. The sound was a shriek of metal and a grinding roar that crawled straight into his skull.

  Otwin stumbled, tried to set his feet, tried to lift an arm to parry with something, anything.

  The Knight’s buckler hit him again.

  The magno field slapped him off balance and sent him skidding across the deck like a kicked crate. Otwin’s helmet rang as he struck a terminal bank. His visor flashed with warning icons. His ears filled with the dull roar of blood.

  He tried to rise.

  The Knight stepped in and smashed the flat of the chainsword into his ribs.

  The blade, again, did not cut. The armor stopped the teeth from biting deep. But the impact still drove through him like a piledriver. Otwin felt something inside his chest shift in a way that made him taste copper.

  He gasped.

  The Knight did not allow him that breath.

  The chainsword came again, a horizontal sweep that struck his midsection and drove him back. Teeth chewed at the outer plating, throwing sparks and shaving strips of metal, but never quite finding purchase. Otwin’s armor still held. It held by millimeters and luck. It held the way a door holds against a flood, bending and groaning and threatening to give.

  Otwin’s mind searched for an answer and found nothing.

  The Knight was bigger, heavier, faster. Every movement it made was assisted by magi tech fused into muscle. Its speed was not human, not the quickness of an athlete or the trained reflexes of a soldier. It was mechanical acceleration strapped to flesh. When it moved, it moved with a smooth, lethal certainty that made Otwin’s best effort feel clumsy.

  He tried to draw the fight into a corner of the bridge, tried to use the consoles and rubble to narrow angles.

  The Knight simply shoved him through the obstacles.

  A buckler strike sent him into a control station. The station collapsed. Brass and glass exploded. Otwin went down hard, knee slamming into broken metal. Pain flared up his leg.

  He forced himself to move anyway.

  He rolled and came up on a knee, fists raised.

  A fist. Against that.

  He lunged, a desperate punch aimed at the Knight’s exposed joint line.

  The Knight caught his forearm with the buckler and twisted.

  Otwin felt his elbow torque in a direction it should not go. His suit servos fought it, DAC dumping power into stabilizers to keep the joint from snapping. Otwin screamed, sound muffled inside his helmet.

  The chainsword came down.

  Otwin threw himself sideways. Teeth carved a trench into the deck where his head had been. Sparks and stone dust blasted up into his faceplate.

  He scrambled.

  He did not fight. He survived.

  His world became impacts. Buckler blows that sent him flying. Chainsword strikes that shook him to his core. He bounced off walls, slammed into terminals, and skidded across blood-slick deck plates. Each time he tried to get his feet under him, the Knight was there, faster than sense, hammering him back down.

  Otwin heard his own armor protesting. Plates groaned. Seals hissed. DAC fed him a constant stream of silent alerts.

  He did not read them.

  He did not have time.

  A chainsword strike caught his left shoulder again, deeper this time. Teeth scraped into the armor, and for a half second, the blade threatened to bite. Otwin felt heat and pressure. The suit held. The teeth tore away a strip of outer plating and sprayed molten metal across the bridge.

  Otwin staggered.

  The Knight drove the buckler into his chest.

  Otwin flew backward and smashed into the raised dais at the center of the bridge. The impact cracked the stone and sent him sliding down, half sprawled, vision blurred.

  He tried to lift his head.

  The Knight loomed over him.

  Through the T slot, Otwin saw that single unblinking eye. It held no anger. No triumph. Only function.

  The chainsword rose.

  Otwin rolled.

  The blade crashed down and chewed into the dais, teeth screaming as they bit stone. The vibration shook the entire bridge. Otwin crawled away on hands and knees, body screaming, trying to find anything he could use.

  His vibro sword.

  Where had it gone?

  Otwin pushed toward the wall where he thought he had seen it fall. He reached with a gauntlet, fingers scraping over debris and broken glass.

  The Knight seized him by the back of the armor.

  It hauled him up like a child, lifted him clear off the deck, and slammed him down again.

  Otwin’s vision went white.

  He tasted blood.

  He tried to breathe, and his lungs refused for a moment.

  The Knight dragged him two steps and smashed him into a terminal bank. The terminal shattered. Sparks rained down. Otwin’s body jolted as stray electricity arced across his armor.

  He could not find a rhythm. He could not find space.

  He was being dismantled.

  For a brief, sick moment, Otwin understood something that had been abstract before. He understood why the Empire feared these things, why men talked about Hegemony Knights in low voices and called them monsters.

  Otwin was not a coward. He was a soldier and had fought in many battles, killed many men, and committed acts so brave they bordered on stupidity.

  None of that mattered here.

  Here, he was simply outmatched.

  He saw an opening.

  The Knight’s chainsword sweep went wide as it tore through a hanging cable. Otwin’s body reacted before he thought. He surged forward, shoulders tucked, aiming to drive into the Knight’s torso, to get inside the arc, to do something.

  The buckler flashed.

  The miniature magno shield hammered into him and launched him backward.

  Otwin hit the terminal bank again, harder, and the world swam.

  But when he fell, his gauntleted hand landed on something solid.

  A grip.

  His fingers closed automatically.

  The vibro sword.

  The hum came back to life with a familiar, steady vibration that cut through the roar of the chainsword and the ringing in his skull. Otwin did not lift it yet. He did not dare. He held it low, hidden against the shattered terminal and his own body.

  The Knight stepped toward him.

  It rushed, chainsword raised for the finishing blow.

  Otwin’s mind slowed. Not because the world slowed, but because he had been forced into a narrow strip of attention so tight it felt like a wire. He saw the chainsword coming down. He saw the angle of the blade. He saw the buckler ready to flick if he tried to roll away.

  He did not roll.

  He did not retreat.

  He brought the vibro sword up.

  The chainsword slammed down.

  The vibro edge met it at the handle.

  For a fraction of a second, it held. Then the vibro field did what it had been built to do. It bit through the handle housing in a clean, savage cut. The weapon’s grip failed, severed in a burst of metal and oil.

  The blade continued.

  It sheared through the Knight’s gauntlet and into the flesh beneath.

  Half the Knight’s hand came off.

  The severed portion spun away, still holding a chunk of the chainsword handle. Blood sprayed across the bridge in a dark fan. The chainsword itself fell with a heavy clang, its teeth still whining, then sputtered as it struck the deck and lost alignment.

  For the first time, the Knight made a sound.

  It was not a scream. It was a rough, strangled exhale, like a man trying to understand pain that did not fit his world. The eye behind the T slot widened. The Knight recoiled half a step, looking down at its mangled hand as if it could not reconcile the fact.

  Otwin surged to his feet.

  Pain threatened to fold him, but he ignored it, using his Stormtrooper armor to push through. His muscles trembled inside armor that felt suddenly too tight. He slashed once, aiming for the torso joint line.

  The Knight snapped the buckler up.

  The magno field deflected the vibro sword with a hard, invisible shove. Otwin’s blade skidded off the edge of the field, and his arms jolted. The Knight recovered instantly, shifting its weight, stepping back into guard.

  Disarmed did not mean harmless.

  It drove forward, buckler first, trying to smash Otwin back down and finish him with raw strength.

  Otwin braced, and the buckler hit him like a truck.

  He staggered, boots scraping on debris.

  The Knight followed.

  But this time, the enforcers moved.

  They had held back because they could not safely join the duel. They had watched Otwin get battered like a man inside a collapsing mill. They had seen the Knight’s speed and the way it filled the space.

  Now they saw the chainsword gone.

  Now they saw blood.

  Axes and maces came up.

  Three enforcers rushed the Knight at once, exoskeletons powering their charge, boots hammering the deck. The first swung an axe in a brutal overhead chop. The Knight snapped its buckler toward him, and the magno field shoved the axe aside, but the impact slowed it.

  The second enforcer’s mace slammed into the Knight’s shoulder plating.

  The third hit its ribs.

  Metal rang. Flesh thudded. The Knight absorbed it, stumbled half a step, then tried to pivot, buckler coming around to knock them away.

  Otwin stepped in.

  Everything in his body screamed for him to back off, to let the others handle it, to breathe.

  He did not.

  He moved with a precision that felt unnatural, like his joints had been re-cut and reassembled.

  The buckler arm swept out.

  Otwin’s vibro sword snapped up into the gap at the elbow joint where segmented armor met flesh.

  The blade slid through.

  There was a sudden give, a wet resistance, then nothing.

  The Knight’s arm dropped.

  The buckler and its shimmering magno field hit the deck with a heavy thump, still attached to the severed forearm. The field flickered once, then steadied as if confused.

  The Hegemony Knight staggered.

  It looked down.

  Then it tried to turn, to retreat, to find space, but the enforcers were on it now with savage focus. Axes rose and fell. Maces hammered into joints and plates. The Knight’s remaining half hand swung, punching one enforcer back, but another stepped in and caved a knee joint. The Knight went down to one leg, then both.

  Otwin watched for an opening to strike again, but the enforcers did not give the monster room. They beat it down with the relentless, ugly force of men who had watched their leader nearly die.

  The Knight tried to rise.

  A mace dented the helm.

  An axe split the shoulder plate.

  The creature collapsed face-first.

  It twitched.

  Then it stopped.

  Silence flooded the bridge in the immediate aftermath, broken only by the distant thunder of the larger battle outside and the crackle of sparking cables. Otwin stood over the fallen Knight, chest heaving, vibro sword still humming, and realized his hands were shaking.

  He looked at the damage on his own armor. Gouges. Burn marks. Cracked plating. A deep scrape along his left shoulder where the chainsword teeth had nearly found flesh. He could feel bruises blossoming beneath the suit. He could feel his ribs aching. He could feel blood in his mouth.

  But he was alive.

  Otwin bent and picked up the severed arm.

  It was heavier than he expected, dense with bronze fittings and embedded magi tech. The buckler still hummed faintly, the miniature magno field shimmering above it like a thin pane of air.

  Inside his helmet, DAC spoke again, cold as ever.

  Magno shield compatible. Integrating.

  Did you like the Hegemony Knight?