Earth
Sector One
1646 hours
2035 AD
He clawed out from the wreck. A mess of burned metal, twitching 'bots, syntha‑oil pooling in the shadows. Jackblaster locked tight in his grip, smoking from its last kill.
Ahead, the walls shook with a concussive roar. Earth's rebels had finally stormed the Dark Emperor's lair.
Jarok grinned, sucking on a sync-cig. Its blue smoke curled like a memory best forgotten.
His comm chimed. Static bled through. It was the Admiral Calder. A man known for a dark patch over one eye. Thanks to a rogue killbot at Sector Five.
"We've got the Emperor's Castle, General. It's ours."
Jarok blew out smoke, flat as plasma glass. "War's over, kid. Never thought I'd see the rot end."
On the comm, Calder's voice cracked. Too much blood and too many lost years had hardened it. "Didn't think this day could happen. Not after what that monster did."
"We made it happen," Jarok rasped. "Our time. Our hands."
"A craft's inbound to pull you in," Calder replied.
But beneath the line, deep and distorted came that shriek. Sinister, inhuman, chill enough to freeze your heart. He'd heard it before. That was the Dark Emperor. Flesh long traded for circuit. Test subject turned terror after synthx got inside his skull.
Jarok's thoughts shattered as two soldiers slid up, visors down, hands on photonblades. Both saluted, crisp and tired.
The wiry one spoke. His voice, like rust. "Southern flank, secure, prisoners locked up."
Jarok nodded, flicked the sync-cig into the burning pile.
The second one shifted, nervous. "Sir, the prisoners… they're changing. synthx takes root quickly. Any chance to reverse?"
Jarok watched the ejectors on a hovercraft spin closer. "Nothing to be done. Once the tech's in your blood, it's finished. You're just another ghost"
His voice was flat. Eyes colder than the metal at his feet.
From the scorched dunes, a hovercraft broke the horizon. Glinting in the copper sun, It cut through the dust. Descending slow and mean, before landing with surgical precision.
The doors slid open, ramp unrolling like a tongue from a metal beast. Jarok climbed in, helmet snapping tight as the canopy sealed. Cockpit cold, three empty bucket seats; he took the center. The pilot barely looked up, fingers dancing along capacitive keys. With a whine, they blasted skyward.
Jarok leaned back, haunted by post-war static. The Dark Emperor's reign was over, but what next? Six planets - Earth's annexes - wrecked and raw. Experts blabbed about unification, peace through paperwork. Jarok didn't buy it, not yet.
The Dark Castle rose through the perspex visor, a nightmare sprawl of steel and glass, turrets spiking toward dead clouds where Sector Two's forests once grew. The pilot keyed the landing codes.
"Craft 124 requesting hover pad clearance," his voice clipped, static gnawing at the line.
A gritty answer bled through the comm: "Cleared. Proceed. Out."
The ship dropped onto the gleaming steel, joining a squadron of battered haulers. A pneumatic hiss followed. Doors soomshunted open. Jarok, jackblaster slung loose, waited for clearance.
The pad crawled with drones, uniforms, bots, pulse rifles, hard stares and even harder boots. Two officers in nano-weave blues snapped into place beside him, funneling him down the arched vault. Retro scanners, retinal bursts - they scanned everything but hope.
Calder waited at the corridor's end, face carved by war, patch still covering the eye lost to a synth assault.
"Nice to see you vertical, General." Calder's look said it all: we're all just scars in the flesh.
Jarok's face was stone. "What's the situation?"
"Dark Emperor's on ice, deep in the cryo-vault. Guarded by half the army and a UN man. His name, Kurt Madin. He's got proposals. He thinks he can sew up this mess with fancy signatures."
Suddenly,there was a scream. A spine chilling one. It ripped through the steel doors. Not human. Something mechanical, twisted by Synthx to sound like death celebrating a fresh kill. The sound hammered every soul in the hall.
Everyone flinched. It was a kind of cry no one ever wants echoing in the dark. And they all knew that the war might be over, but the ugly was just getting started.
"What's the play inside?" Jarok asked, flicking a sync-cig alive, smoke curling like bad memories.
Calder waved him on. "Cells? Useless. Boys rigged a cryo-chamber for our emperor. Put him on ice, he stays put."
They stepped into a cavern of arches and shadows, cathedral big and twice as cold. A dozen officers ringed the Dark Emperor, pulse-teazers locked and humming, pinning the half-man, half-circuit freak to the gleaming deck. Metal limbs creaked and sparked - pain, or whatever passed for it now.
Calder's lips curled. "It's over, Emperor Erin."
The Dark Emperor's voice sliced through static. "It's never over. As long as Corr breathes, so does war." His words landed heavy, poisonous.
From the doorway, lab coats rolled in a glass sarcophagus, green biogel sloshing under strobes. Wires pulsed along its ridges. Next-level lockup.
Jarok blew smoke. "You got a place to stash this freezer?"
Calder nodded sharp. "Orbital Defence Station. Locked down tight. Nothing gets out."
Jarok just nodded.
With a buzz, the soldiers used teazers to levitate the Emperor, the room stinking of melted circuitry and brute fear. The cryopod slid open. The bolt discharge dimming the whole castle as they fed the Emperor inside.
One last mechanical shriek, then the officers killed the juice. The glass snapped shut with a pneumatic sigh. Sentence served.
"Good riddance," growled Jarok, turning away.
From the shadows, a tall, gaunt man appeared. He was clad in a matte black suit, pure bureaucrat. An officer in tow.
"General, looks like you've finished the dirty work."
Jarok exhaled as Calder drifted past, escorting the sealed Emperor away.
The man nodded. "Admiral knows me. I'm Kurt Madin."
Jarok kept walking, Madin and Calder falling in. "Treaty in a fortnight, Mars. Seven planets, one table."
"And Corr?" Jarok barked. The subject that started it all.
Madin gave a tight, politician's smile. "The new council decides. You should join."
Jarok's face went hard. "Politics is just power games. I fight wars, I don't sell promises."
He boarded the hovercraft, engines spooling hot, mind heavy. Corr was unfinished business.
And everyone knew it was coming back.
Sooner or later.