[Alan’s PoV]

  “Forward!” Alan barked into the comms, his voice cutting through the roar of thrusters

  His mech shuddered as it obeyed, the thrusters behind it flaring bright blue-white, pushing him forward with crushing force. Around him, thousands of mechs followed him. The formation stretched across the black horizon, every pilot pushing their machine to its absolute limit.

  The warning that Earth was surrounded had come too late.

  The Orks were already there, an endless tide of ships and fire blotting out the stars.

  But somehow, impossibly, the NEA and a small contingent of mechs from Aquarius were holding the line.

  Alan’s sensors were going crazy, icons flashing red and blue, the tactical map a storm of shifting data. Missiles streaked by, leaving trails of light that curved and vanished. Explosions bloomed in silence, their brightness reflecting off the curved glass of his cockpit.

  “Hunter-1 to Hunter-0.”

  The voice crackled over his comms.

  Alan adjusted his frequency. “Hunter-0 here. Go ahead.”

  “What the hell are those machines?” the voice demanded. “There are only seven of them, but they’re tearing through the Orks like it’s nothing.”

  Alan’s grip on the controls tightened. He knew exactly who they were talking about.

  He hesitated for a moment, choosing his words. He couldn’t afford to say too much, not on an open channel. His connection to Oliver wasn’t something he needed spreading among the ranks.

  “Those are Aquarius units,” he said finally. “They’re unique. A mix of different mech tech from each Great House. No one knows how they got that to work.”

  There was a pause on the line, followed by a low whistle of awe.

  “Impressive!” someone else from the squadron chimed in, their voice full of disbelief.

  Alan didn’t disagree.

  Even from his position, watching through the magnified feed, what these mechs were doing was beyond belief.

  They moved like predators unleashed, weaving between Ork ships with impossible precision. Their thrusters flared in bursts of gold and red, their frames twisting and rolling through debris fields.

  Each one fought as if the concept of fear had been deleted from their programming.

  They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t retreat.

  They hunted.

  Alan watched as one of the Aquarius units cut through an Ork cruiser ten times its size. Its plasma lance ignited, burning a molten scar across the hull before the entire ship erupted in a silent explosion. Another dove through the wreckage, firing precision bursts into the exposed reactor core of a second ship.

  The seven mechs moved as one. Their pilots didn’t seem to be talking, but their timing was perfect, almost unnatural.

  “They’re insane,” one of Alan’s lieutenants muttered, the awe in his voice barely masking the fear. “No one fights like that.”

  Alan’s HUD flickered as a new wave of Ork ships broke through the line. The NEA fleet was struggling to regroup, their formation splintering under the volume of enemy fire.

  “Hunter Division, tighten formation!” Alan commanded, snapping back to the battle at hand. “We’re moving to support the forward flank. Cover the Aquarius units if you can.”

  Acknowledgments came through the channel. The mechs around him shifted into a tighter formation, their thrusters burning stronger as they accelerated.

  The space around Earth had become a maelstrom—ships, debris, and Energy fire. Alan’s mech shuddered as a near miss grazed his left arm.

  He glanced at the tactical map again. The Ork fleet was massive, a swarm of red markers that stretched across the orbital plane. The NEA forces were dwindling, their numbers shrinking by the minute.

  And yet, the Aquarius mechs kept pushing forward.

  Each time an Ork ship fell, another took its place, but the seven never stopped moving. They carved a path through the chaos.

  “Hunter-2 engaging.”

  “Hunter-3 engaging.”

  The twin calls came through the comms.

  Alan’s squadron was next. He could already see the Ork fleet ahead.

  “Hunter-0 engaging.”

  He drove the command home, and his squadron surged forward.

  The mechs of Enceladus descended like a swarm of angry hornets. Thousands of them streaked across the darkness. Against the backdrop of the Ork armada, they were tiny—insignificant dots of light.

  The first impacts were devastating.

  Even the largest of the Ork warships weren’t ready for an assault from three simultaneous vectors.

  The Ork defenses scrambled to adjust.

  Alan’s mech shuddered as he throttled down, the inertial dampeners straining to absorb the sudden deceleration. His harness bit into his shoulders, the straps creaking under the pressure. Through his cockpit’s reinforced canopy, he watched as the nearest cruiser loomed into view. A monstrous slab of blackened steel bristling with turrets and exposed Energy circuits.

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  He adjusted course, angling his mech low.

  Alan extended the mech’s right arm. A plasma blade ignited along its forearm.

  He skimmed the cruiser’s surface, the mech’s thrusters roaring as he flew parallel to the hull. The plasma blade met metal, and the world erupted in sparks.

  The blade carved a glowing scar down the ship’s flank, molten metal spraying outward.

  Soon, the cruiser’s outer plating gave way.

  An explosion tore through the ship’s midsection, a chain reaction of ruptured fuel lines and destabilized reactors. The shockwave hit Alan’s mech like a hammer, throwing him off course. His harness locked tight, his vision flashing white for a heartbeat as the mech tumbled through debris.

  “Stabilizers, online!” he barked, forcing the machine back under control. The thrusters flared again, countering his spin.

  He righted the mech, breathing hard, sweat clinging to his forehead despite the cooling system.

  All around him, the battle had devolved into chaos.

  Laser fire crisscrossed, streaks of red and blue cutting through clouds of drifting wreckage. Ballistic shells exploded in bursts of light, scattering shrapnel across the void. Their formations were holding. Yet, every few seconds, a mech went dark on his radar, its signal snuffed out by an Ork cannon blast.

  “Keep formation!” Alan shouted, his voice steady even as his cockpit rattled from nearby detonations. “Maintain pressure! Don’t let them regroup!”

  “Copy that, Hunter-0!”

  His squadron fanned out, weaving between the wrecks of destroyed ships.

  Despite the chaos, they were winning ground, if such a thing could be said in zero gravity.

  Alan’s sensors pinged, drawing his attention to a new feed from the communications officer aboard the command carrier.

  “Hunter Command, this is Fleet Control. Ork transmissions are chaotic. We can’t determine if they plan to continue the assault or retreat.”

  Alan’s eyes narrowed behind his visor.

  He could see it for himself. The enemy formation was fracturing. Some ships were breaking position, spinning out of alignment. Others were firing erratically, their weapons discharging in random bursts.

  “Hunter-0, something’s wrong.”

  The voice crackled through static. Alan barely caught it. He was already pushing his mech to its limits—banking hard, twisting through impossible angles as plasma fire streaked past him in every direction.

  “Wrong?” he managed, his voice tight with focus.

  “Hunter-0, radar’s picking up an Energy source, approaching fast.”

  Alan flicked his eyes to the side display. The radar feed pulsed red, an anomaly blinking at the edge of the grid.

  “I see it.”

  The signature was unlike anything he’d seen before.

  “It’s moving fast,” another voice chimed in.

  “Is it friendly?”

  The question rippled through the squadron comms.

  Before Alan could answer, something flashed past his sensors.

  A blur tore across the battlefield.

  “That wasn’t one of ours,” Alan said, his voice low, eyes scanning the feed. “What the hell was that?”

  “Sensors are reading… three cores,” one of the pilots said, disbelief threading his tone. “In a single mech.”

  Alan froze. “Three?”

  “That’s impossible,” another pilot said immediately. “No frame can handle that much output. It’d melt from the inside out.”

  “Keep the channels open,” Alan ordered, forcing his voice to stay calm. “We need to see what this thing is before it—”

  He stopped mid-sentence.

  Because now he could see it.

  The cameras zoomed in, the image stabilizing enough to capture the newcomer in full.

  It wasn’t like any mech he’d ever seen. Not NEA, not Enceladus, not from any traditional Great House.

  It carried the Aquarius symbol on its chest. It was massive, easily twice the size of a standard combat frame, as if three separate machines had been fused together.

  It shouldn’t have been able to move, not with that speed.

  And yet, it did.

  Alan’s sensors flared again, the readings spiking off the charts.

  “It’s charging something,” his tactical officer said, awe creeping into his voice.

  Alan didn’t need the readouts. He could see it.

  The gigantic cannon mounted on the mech’s right arm began to glow, its massive barrel unfolding like the iris of a star. Energy gathered at its center, swirling in a vortex of blue and red light so bright it burned through the filters on his visor.

  “Everyone, brace!” Alan shouted.

  The cannon fired.

  The beam that erupted wasn’t light; it was pure annihilation.

  A column of Energy wider than a battleship stretched across the void, carving through the Ork fleet like a god’s judgment. Ships exploded in sequence, one after another, as the beam ripped through their ranks, their hulls disintegrating before their reactors could even detonate.

  When the glare faded, there was nothing left in the cannon’s path but drifting wreckage.

  Alan stared, speechless. His hands hovered over the controls, his mind struggling to process what he’d seen.

  “That… thing wiped out an entire Ork formation,” one of his pilots stammered.

  Alan didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on the mech.

  The triple-cored titan stood amidst the debris. The cannon’s barrel vented Energy, plumes of light dissipating into the void.

  “Three cores,” he whispered. “And it’s still standing.”

  Alan exhaled slowly, his pulse still racing.

  “What the hell did they build this time?” Alan muttered, half in awe, half in disbelief. Each blast from its triple-core cannon erased entire swaths of the Ork fleet.

  The comms crackled again, cutting through the stunned silence of his cockpit.

  “Darkness-0 entering the field.”

  His attention snapped immediately from the monstrous machine to his radar. The callsign Darkness-0 was one he knew by heart. It wasn’t a codename for a weapon or a ship. It was the President’s personal mech.

  “Sir, you’re entering the field?” Alan asked, his voice tight, already knowing the answer.

  “No chance,” came the reply, deep and calm. “I’m landing. If that madman’s going after the Emperor, I’m going too.”

  Alan’s eyes flicked to his tactical feed. Far below, through the chaos of the orbital battle, five black mechs were descending toward Earth’s atmosphere. They moved in formation, their armor matte and seamless. No insignias. No unit markings. Just black.

  “Without support?” Alan asked, incredulous.

  “I’ll have my squad,” Mordred replied, as if that explained everything.

  Alan watched the five dark forms vanish into the glow of re-entry.

  “Hunters, command transfer to secondary lead. I’m detaching from the formation,” Alan announced, his voice carrying across the squadron channel. “Maintain pressure on the Orks.”

  “Hunter-0, you’re leaving the front?” one of his lieutenants asked, disbelief cutting through the static.

  “Affirmative.”

  He cut the channel before they could argue.

  Alan pushed his thrusters to full burn, his mech breaking formation and veering away from the main engagement. He angled toward the planet’s surface, the blue curve of Earth swelling in his viewport.

  “I’m coming too,” Alan said, switching back to Mordred’s frequency.

  A low chuckle came through the line. “I figured you’d say that.”

  “Destination? Chicago?” Alan asked, running quick calculations. The city had been the epicenter of the earlier battles.

  “No,” Mordred said. “Their fight’s finished.”

  Alan frowned. “Finished? Already?”

  “Yes,” Mordred replied. “He ran.”

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