"The city sweep is nearly complete, Admiral," came the voice from the upper monitor.
Akkbar didn't look up right away — he flicked his eyes lazily toward the screen, where Veres Norn stood, the gleam of freshly minted insignia catching the sterile overhead lights. He looked stiff in his uniform, even now. After General Broda Kross's sudden death, Veres had been promoted by Governor personally through the ranks — not out of trust, but necessity — and assigned him a quartet of her personal guard for close oversight. The black-armored P.A.W. pilots loomed behind him like silent judges, their presence a reminder of exactly whose leash he now wore.
A leash and a mirror. Veres had the face of a loyalist, but Akkbar knew a pawn when he saw one. Veres stood too straight. The kind of straight that came from fear, not discipline.
"Your findings?" he asked, voice calm, distant.
"Our sleeper agents confirmed that resistance maintains multiple bases across the city, biggest one below District Six. Likely they are hiding amongst civilian populace, with central operations located somewhere in the sublevels."
He said nothing for a moment, only let his gaze drift to a second screen — the city map, unfolded in high resolution across the center console. District lines shimmered in pale blue and red, zones shaded by population density, factory output, critical infrastructure. The outer boroughs were blocky and dim — mostly filled with industrial workers, refugees, and the city's unofficial fourth class: the invisible poor. Easy to ignore. Easier still to erase.
"Understood. Standby." He finally ordered, and disconnected the line. Moments later, after deliberate consideration, he opened the channel again - this time to Governor herself.
They would call it a massacre. He called it pruning.
Rebellion was a sickness. And this was the scalpel.
He'd watched one world fall to chaos. He wouldn't watch another fester.
"My lady, it has been confirmed. Primary insurgent node identified — District Six, sublevel strata."
"Do we know he is there?"
"No, my lady. No visual confirmation yet."
She leaned back in her chair, almost as pondering something.
"What will be the impact on output?" she asked at last, her more curious than concerned.
"Three percent reduction across the sector," Akkbar replied quickly, glancing at the tablet handed to him just out of frame.
She waved a hand languidly, the motion more for herself than him. "Within tolerance, then."
Akkbar hesitated. His jaw tightened before he forced himself to nod.
"Within Imperial tolerance, Governor. Not planetary."
"A distinction without weight," she said, almost to herself. Then, louder: "You can commence."
"As you command," Akkbar replied stiffly, offering a shallow bow.
He knew what 'commence' meant.
Deploy proxies. Initiate first strike protocol under pretext of mob agression. Civilian losses acceptable. Full control of the narrative.
As channel disconnected, he tapped a key, switching the second monitor to a live tactical feed — visor-cam footage from one of the black machines in her personal detachment. The image jolted slightly with each footfall. Soldiers stood in a half-circle, weapons held ready, their black visors opaque, unreadable. Ahead of them stretched a crowd — several hundred strong — gathered in makeshift clothing and secondhand coats, huddled behind rust-stained barricades and shattered signage. People had emerged from their homes not in protest, but confusion, still unsure what the blockade meant, still hoping this was just another random inspection.
Between the soldiers and the citizens, in the slush-spattered neutral ground, several bodies already lay motionless — soaked in blood, limbs splayed at awkward angles.
"...You must understand," a voice rang out over a loudspeaker — young, brittle with stress — "the encirclement is a necessary precaution. We will leave once the terrorists are surrendered to us. Then you may return to your lives. In peace."
A voice rose from the crowd — desperate, angry.
"Why are you doing this?! We haven't done anything!"
"Exactly!" the officer snapped back, voice cracking as he lowered the megaphone. "District Six failed to report the presence of fugitives. You harbor them! You shelter enemies of the Empire! That makes you traitors!"
Akkbar leaned back, his fingers resting against her lips.
"Begin the operation Clear Sky," he said softly.
One of the officers gave a slow nod.
There was a moment — barely a heartbeat — where nothing moved.
Then a stone flew from the crowd, jagged and fast, and struck the officer squarely in the helmet. A white starburst of cracks bloomed across the visor. He staggered.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then someone — not the officer, someone behind him — shouted:
"Fire! Kill the traitors!"
The order cracked through the air like a whip. The officer flinched — not from command, but surprise.
And the line obeyed.
Gunfire cut through the air in ragged bursts, sharp and rhythmically wrong, and Titania clenched the binoculars tighter in her hands, her fingers white around the grip. She forced herself to stop watching the crowd and turned instead—first to the bright red Vector now idling between two burned-out tram lines, then farther, zooming in on a dull grey operations van partially obscured behind a wrecked trailer.
Behind her, the rooftop groaned — the brittle crunch of stressed concrete under weight — and Titania spun in place just in time to face a scout-class P.A.W., its outer plating shimmering faintly in active digital camouflage. Its guns locked onto her in a second, though she was still in full Imperial uniform — the same drab olive-gray of every sanctioned tech corps in the central districts.
"Which unit are you with?" the external speaker barked, distorted and mechanical. "Squad number and callsign. Now, soldier!"
So impatient.
"Private Hena Larson," she said, voice steady, already pulling a slim disk from her pocket. "Second Recon Corps. Sergeant sent me to deliver this to Central, but..." —she glanced over the ledge toward the mob below— "...I'm not sure I'll make it through the crowd."
The disk, of course, was blank. But the pilot wouldn't know that. Not unless he scanned it. Not unless he survived long enough to report it.
The machine said nothing.
Then, with a hiss and a clank, the cockpit canopy cracked open. The pilot emerged — slow, deliberate, rifle slung but ready. Rookie mistake. One they always made, if they'd never seen real war. In a combat zone, stepping out of the cockpit was asking to die.
"Drop the disk. Step back three meters," he ordered, leveling a sidearm at her head.
Her eyes flicked — quick, but measured — to the insignia on his chestplate. And just like that, she knew.
Aristocrat. One of the noble houses from the inner colonies — his crest stamped clean and sharp, untouched by field dirt or scuff. He wouldn't hesitate. He wouldn't weigh guilt. He'd shoot her, claim the disk, and say he retrieved it himself.
But she wasn't out of cards yet.
The moment he straightened fully, the shot came.
A single, brutal crack — swallowed instantly by the roar of distant artillery — and his head separated from his body, severed by a high-caliber round that tore through the air with surgical finality. The head rolled once, bounced, and landed wetly at her feet. Blood still pumped weakly from the ruined neck, steaming against the cold rooftop stone.
He would've pulled the trigger. That didn't mean he deserved this. But she didn't have time for deserved.
She wrinkled her nose and nudged it with her boot — a short, contemptuous kick — and watched it tumble over the edge.
Then she turned to the now-kneeling walker — not a full Vector, but a Recon Unit. Lighter, faster. An M.B.R. — Machine for Battlefield Reconnaissance. She grabbed the plastic ladder hanging loose in the breeze and climbed, boots scraping against the access footholds.
The pilot's body had collapsed backward into the cockpit. She hauled it out with a grunt — limp, still warm — and let it slump to the rooftop in a slick, meaty thud. Then, with a twist of her boot against the hull plating, she kicked the corpse after its head. It didn't fall gracefully.
She tapped her earpiece once, switching channels.
"Nobody," she said, voice calm. "Task at hand complete. "
"Acknowledged. Excersice caution. This is not Broda we are talking about, it's something much more vicious."
The interior of Imperial Seal was never meant for passengers.
The quadcopter's gunship spine still bore the weight of its first purpose — long, coffin-shaped hull with no windows, no insulation, and rust where turrets used to be. The floor under Cain's boots still held the mounting bolts where rotary cannons once sat, now welded over with crude steel plates. The fire control stations had been stripped for parts years ago, and the targeting nodes had been rewired into backup avionics. Power conduits rattled loose behind the wall panels like vertebrae broken and left to dangle. Even now, the whole frame shuddered faintly with each adjustment of the rotors, as though the stripped machine resented being forced to fly without teeth.
It wasn't warm inside. It wasn't meant to be. The cold came up from the floor and pressed through the ribs of the fuselage like something alive, and Cain, sitting on a steel support brace with no seat and no restraint, didn't bother pretending he felt it.
The cracked holoscreen in front of him glowed weak blue. Not a tactical feed. Not MERIT. The machine had given him live network data—Empire-approved civilian news, scraping from low-orbit relays the regime hadn't yet realized they'd lost control of.
"...—continued disturbances reported across Lower Tier sectors. Officials are urging calm and cooperation..."
The voice was too smooth. Artificially balanced, the cadence tuned for comfort. A woman, mid-30s, speaking in Imperial Standard — crisp, accentless, with carefully measured vowels and an unshakable smile. The screen showed a frozen image: District 6, seen from drone height — walls of armored personnel carriers enclosing tenement blocks, bodies blurred out with soft white streaks.
"Global Peacekeeper Command confirms that today's operation in Amarant is a limited containment procedure following a credible terrorist threat."
Cain didn't move. He didn't blink. The screen kept talking.
"Governor Amari Voss has authorized stabilization forces in cooperation with the High Consulate. Citizens are reminded: Resistance sympathizers endanger all of us. If you see something—say something."
Cut to footage: a warehouse fire. A bloodied soldier being helped by a medic. A young woman in a red dress screaming at a checkpoint, frozen mid-frame so her mouth became an ugly shape, rage caught like a disease.
"District Six residents are urged to remain indoors and await further guidance. The safety of the Empire depends on you."
Cain exhaled once. Shallow. Slow.
"Mute it," he said.
"Confirmed," MERIT replied, and the voice stopped. The screen kept running, now silent — a parade of staged victories, enforced serenity, and people pretending not to scream.
Outside, the sky had gone white — not bright, just empty, that particular overcast that made even snow seem starved of color. The wind screamed along the hull, but Imperial Seal didn't flinch. It wasn't fast, but it was reliable. The last intact gunship the resistance had, a spectre left to rot in a depot until someone bolted on civilian thrusters and wrote false registry codes on the fuselage. Its weapons had been stripped. Its sensors repurposed. Now it served only one purpose: getting in quiet. And, when needed, getting out fast.
Cain sat with the mask in his lap — heavy, scorched, cracked down the left lens. One hand rested across it, not quite gripping it. The other held a folding slate, its surface etched with a faint schematic: Ural Defense Belt, Grid Node 17-C. No satellite scans - those became impossible when Earth surrendered, as some triggered Dead Man's Hand system - but instead of blowing up Empire's ships, rockets detonated on planet's low orbit, making any attempts at stationing something there futile. Which was, in a way, genius.
"Approach vector confirmed. Thirty kilometers from coordinates," the AI said.
"Any emissions?"
"Still negative. No power draw, no beacon pulses. No confirmation of facility survival. But..."
"But?"
"Subsurface density anomalies detected. Minimal heat signature. Strong magnetic interference."
"Underground, then."
"Likely. Possibly buried."
Cain closed the slate and leaned back against the wall. Metal pressed through his coat like bone. The holoscreen still showed District 6. Now the crowd was being dispersed. Fire in the background. Imperial soldiers guiding civilians down alleys like livestock.
"Casualties?"
"Rising," MERIT said. "Estimate: 200+ before nightfall. Imperial messaging labels the event 'containment.' Sector-wide sweep expected within four hours."
Two hundred dead for a thirty-percent chance the facility still breathed. Less than the cost of failure, but just enough to taste.
"Within expected parameters," he responded to raw data MERIT was feeding him.
"Affirmative."
There were two options.
District 6, burning now.
Or this place, buried under frost and time.
He reached for the latch, locked the mask in place with a soft hiss.
"Bring us in low," he said. "I want visual confirmation before we set down."
"Understood. Preparing descent path."
The gunship banked gently eastward, disappearing into the snow.
Behind him, on the holoscreen, the smiling reporter spoke again — though he no longer heard her.
***
The battlefield was folding in on itself.
Too many weapons firing without rhythm, without command, the kind of shooting that happened when fear overtook doctrine — when soldiers no longer aimed to win, just to make something stop moving. The air shimmered faintly from scorched propellant, broken power lines crackled against rain-slick cobblestones, and Titania moved slowly through it all, dragging one damaged leg behind her like a tired animal feigning its final breath.
Her walker stuttered with each step, the right knee joint locked out of alignment by a deliberate power cut she'd timed three blocks ago. The left shoulder bucked and sparked at irregular intervals, a false actuator overload she'd rigged with a coil from an old induction plate. A damaged machine made people look away. A retreating machine made them dismiss her entirely.
And that was the point.
She passed a burned-out riot pylon, its warning lights still blinking weakly through the falling ash. Nearby, a civilian tried to drag a bleeding woman through a shattered storefront, only to vanish in a flurry of motion when a patrol drone swept low, trailing smoke and scanner static. Titania didn't flinch. Her lenses adjusted to the debris. The thermal overlay filtered through fire.
On the far side of the chaos, she saw it: the command van.
Grey. Box-shaped. Not armored, but wrapped in a tangle of signal arrays and fiber coils, cables running from its roof into the exposed communications gear of the trailer beside it. A gutted supply truck served as a mobile signal node — generator spinning hot, wheels half-sunk in blood-muddied slush. That was where he'd be.
Veres.
That name hadn't meant much — until Broda's body turned cold and the promotion came hours later. He hadn't earned that seat. He'd simply filled a vacuum. And the Empire didn't put cowards in charge unless they needed someone disposable.
Titania didn't accelerate. She limped forward, trailing fake damage and reactor heat. She'd planned her angle of approach carefully: through a rubble corridor, behind a civilian sanitation rig, under the ruined arch of a collapsed bridge. Just another injured unit returning to base. Just another broken thing limping home.
She was within seventy meters when the order came through open channel. Cold and precise.
And completely wrong.
"All units, disengage immediately and fall back behind District's perimeter. I repeat-"
The words hit like a detonation, though they carried no urgency, no raised tone — only the clipped, perfect enunciation of someone used to giving orders that were obeyed without question.
Titania froze.
The walker halted mid-step, balance shifting subtly, as if uncertain whether to fall or stand. Her fingers tightened slightly on the controls, instinct overriding protocol, but she didn't speak.
It wasn't Veres.This was not his order. Someone above him, of course.
Titania exhaled once through her nose, low and controlled. Not disappointment — not yet — but recalculation. The plan was unraveling, and not because of failure. Because of something else.
Around her, the gunfire was already dying. Sporadic at first — one burst, then another — then silence began to ripple outward from the command posts, enforced not by orders but by the heavy pause that came when something unknown reached through familiar patterns.
She watched as a Krosa riot walker lowered its weapon mount. A pair of conscripted infantrymen held position at an intersection but no longer advanced. The civilians weren't fleeing. They were simply standing now, unsure whether they were still alive or about to die.
The street felt suspended — not calm, just... paused.
Titania's Vector crouched low, limbs folded behind the shattered freight checkpoint. Optics dimmed. Reactor throttled. Not invisible — just forgettable. She hadn't moved in fifteen minutes.
No fire echoed down the corridor. No movement. Just smoke rolling past the broken tramline and the metallic scent of scorched composite.
She watched the broken intersection ahead — the flat, cratered mouth of the plaza where nothing had moved since the order came down — and waited.
Then it arrived.
Not a squad truck. Not a resupply drone. Something larger.
It came in low, heavy, without escort — twelve wheels across four axles, frame designed for freight weight, not maneuverability, painted in dull Imperial grey that shimmered under ash like gunmetal drowned in oil. Civilian hauler, up-armored along the sides, the kind used to carry atmosphere processors or mobile generators — not weapons, not alone. It didn't transmit a call sign. Didn't ping the local grid. Just rolled forward across the wreckage, too slow for panic, too steady for recovery.
It came to a stop in the dead center of the plaza, straddling the faded lines where once a tramway had crossed beneath open sky.
Then the cab doors opened, and the drivers fled.
Two figures — both uniformed, both unarmed, one missing his helmet — vaulted from the front of the vehicle and ran, not toward cover, not toward a command post, but away. No signal bursts. No radio contact. No attempt at stealth. They ran like men who had been told not to be present when something irreversible began.
Titania didn't move.
Her optics shifted. She focused on the cargo spine.
The housing was sealed — triple-bolted at the edge plates, pressure locks intact, cooling lines wrapped in silver shielding that vented condensation through tiny lateral ducts along the rear housing. Nothing volatile. Nothing explosive. Just cold containment — the kind that didn't need to detonate to kill.
But the warning stencil on the hatch told her more than the heat maps ever could.
Three rings. One diagonal slash. Faint yellow ink smeared with ash.
Atmospheric hazard.
She knew that mark.
Not from training manuals or old Imperial briefings. She'd seen it once before, burned onto the containment fencing that circled Second District — the one that went quiet four weeks earlier, not with fighting, not with bombing, but with silence. First a curfew, then a blackout, then nothing at all. The streets were sealed. The trams rerouted. The housing blocks condemned. They said it was a plague, a mutation, something earthborn populations weren't conditioned for. Somehow, only earthborn - Krosa, reportedly, were not affected, but she was sure it was a bluff.
She'd never seen it deployed, not with her own eyes — but the stories from Second District were enough.
They weren't clearing resistance forces anymore. They weren't trying to retake District Six. Suddenly a fallback signal made sense.
They were going to sterilize it. And this time, they wanted someone else to blame.