The night was windless when the rebel column moved. No chants. No banners. Just boots on cracked stone and the hiss of steel lined wheels rolling quietly through the canyon basin. Above them, the floating sector of Mayapuri loomed in eerie silence its underbelly a maze of rusted scaffolding and dormant turbine cores, humming faintly like sleeping machines. Unlike Vedhyra, which pulsed with armed watchtowers and air surveillance grids, Mayapuri looked… abandoned. Or worse unwatched.
Anchal Rathod walked ahead of the lead infantry line, her coat light but armored, face shadowed beneath the low brim of her scout helmet. She didn't look back, but she didn't need to. Ten thousand rebels marched behind her. And she knew, every step they took now, would echo across what remained of this world's memory.
They reached the ground gate entry a relic built into the understructure of Mayapuri's hover core. A steel ramp led into the city through what had once been a Dominion loading bay. The gate, normally protected by energy shields and watch drones, flickered inactive. Robin Rayudu raised a gloved fist and muttered under his breath.
"Either this is a trap," he said, "or they've bled themselves dry defending Vedhyra."
"Both," Anchal replied. Her voice was steady, confident. "But either way, we walk in."
Robin nodded. He had fought in more wars than most of these kids had birthdays. But he'd never seen someone Anchal's age hold rank with such sheer natural authority. There was no false bravado in her commands, no shout for the sake of shouting. She gave orders like she gave strategy crisp, surgically efficient, and designed to adapt.
As the first platoons moved in, they encountered nothing but static hum and dim corridor lights. The Dominion had indeed pulled back its major forces. Either they assumed no one would risk an assault here or they believed the air fleet alone would keep the skies theirs. They were wrong.
By the first hour, the rebels had taken the entire eastern loading sector and begun spreading out into the support districts. The civilian quarters were empty at first, but then, one by one, faces began to appear children staring from cracked windows, elders watching from behind scorched cloth doors. No cheers. No screams. Just… watching.
It wasn't until the first noble compound was raided that things shifted.
In Sector 4, two nobles were dragged from a luxury tower lined with old world comforts and underground panic bunkers. On their terminal logs, rebels found Dominion led civilian blacklists, recordings of private executions, and stolen rations. Rathod ordered them arrested, stripped of their rank, and presented to the crowd but not killed. "We're not them," she told her officers. "We don't trade tyranny for vengeance."
Across the city, similar sweeps yielded both poison and gold. A few noble houses surrendered willingly, offering blueprints of the air force hangars, weapon caches, and fuel depots. Others fled and were cornered, not by rebels but by civilians. The same people once branded as expendable. The same people who had heard whispers of a glowing warrior in Samaypur and a boy who stood against gods.
By around 2'o clock in morning, rebel banners fluttered from four key towers. The lower half of Mayapuri the industrial core was fully under their control. Rathod stood atop the primary logistics platform and looked out across the city. Lights were returning. People were gathering. But this wasn't the end.
This was only their first step into the sky. Mayapuri's floating shell gleamed beneath the rising sun like a fractured crown. What had once been a city of machinery, control towers, and order now throbbed with noise of boots, voices, and unrest. The rebels didn't face resistance in the conventional sense. There were no battalions clashing on boulevards, no tanks roaring down corridors. But they met something worse: silence twisted into fear, and power soaked into marble and wine.
Sector by sector, Rathod and Robin's squads flushed out the Dominion's collaborators the nobles who had worn silk while ordering drone strikes on refugee quarters, the bureaucrats who had falsified fuel shortages while hoarding caches under their offices. Rathod walked through every compound they stormed, eyes sharp, never flinching at the ugliness uncovered: children locked in soundproof vaults to muffle their cries during riots, surgical scars from Noctirum compatibility tests etched into the backs of servants, walls lined with surveillance footage cataloguing civilian habits and routines like lab rats.
At one mansion nestled in Sector 3's sky view ridge, the rebellion breached a vault containing five nobles and a retired Dominion captain. Their private console had a direct comm link to the air force grid, encrypted and set to self wipe. They tried to stall for a deal. "You don't understand the balance of power," the eldest hissed. "If you take this city, you only invite the wrath of Vedhyra. Do you think their commander will let this stand?"
"I don't need it to stand," Rathod replied calmly. "I need it to fly higher than it ever has."
When Robin ordered their arrest, one of the nobles spat on a rebel medic. The crowd outside the compound had already gathered by then civilians, miners, abandoned technicians, ration couriers. And when the gates opened and the nobles were marched out in handcuffs, the crowd didn't cheer. They stood still, like a dam holding back years of stored rage and grief. An old woman stepped forward and simply said, "Where are our sons?"
No one had the answer. Not then. But the silence cracked something. A low chant started just a few at first, then dozens. "No more chains. No more chains." It wasn't rehearsed. It wasn't rebellion doctrine. It was the people reclaiming the sound of their own voice.
In contrast, not all nobles resisted. A handful surrendered early men and women who had quietly funneled aid to starving blocks, who had kept blackout shelters hidden beneath their estates. One former diplomat handed Robin a drive containing the entire security grid for Sector 6 the Dominion airbase. Another provided access codes to supply crates never logged in official records. "I made my choices," she said, not seeking forgiveness. "You make better ones."
Rathod did not refuse the help. She assigned guards to protect those who had helped, and escorted former enemies to temporary holding in re secured logistics depots. She understood optics. Forgiveness without caution was weakness. But brutality without reason was Dominion.
By the afternoon, the city began to change. Power returned in some sectors not from Dominion lines, but through scavenged generators repurposed by rebel tech teams. Food stores opened under rebel protection, guarded by both soldiers and locals. Water rationing shifted from scripted ID scans to a first come, coordinated effort. Robin oversaw defensive perimeters and drone net resets. Civilians were trained to spot tripwires, intercept signals, and report suspicious movement.
But it was Rathod that people followed. Not because she demanded it. Because she understood what leadership meant in ruins.
She didn't yell. She moved quickly, decided faster, and didn't ask others to do what she wouldn't. When a Dominion sniper killed a rebel runner in Sector 2, Rathod was the first to breach the tower where the shooter hid. She dragged the sniper out herself, wounded in the thigh but steady. "Every hour we stall," she told her lieutenants while pressing gauze to her leg, "is another airship prepping for retaliation. We finish this before they look back."
The Spark hadn't lit only from golden fists or glowing auras. Sometimes it burned in a girl trained by her father in a world she never knew, now leading armies on floating soil with no crown and no power but her will.
Mayapuri hadn't fallen yet. But its walls were already Shaking.
By around the time of dawn, the rebel banners were no longer confined to towers. They now hung from fire scarred lampposts and cracked stone bridges, strung by civilians who had once ducked their heads at the sound of Dominion boots. The city had not erupted into chaos. It had begun to breathe. People whispered that the nobles had fallen, that the ground gates belonged to the rebellion, that the air base would be next. But no one dared say it too loudly. Not yet. Not until the sky itself was taken.
The orders were precise and swift. Sector 6 the air base ring that circled the upper strut of Mayapuri had gone quiet. Too quiet. That silence wasn't safety. It was preparation. Everyone knew it. Intelligence from captured Dominion officers confirmed what Rathod already suspected: the remaining fleet over forty ships strong was housed there, guarded by a shrinking but desperate battalion and automated turrets that could rip infantry apart in seconds.
Anchal gathered her officers on the elevated platform above the refitted command post, an old Dominion transport garage now turned into a rebel operations hub. A city schematic lit up on the central tablet between them, blue lines drawing topography, choke points, and elevation drop offs.
"We divide here," she said, pointing at the western slope and northern utility trench. "Rayudu, take six thousand men through the trench path. Your goal is containment. Box the hangar doors and keep those turrets spinning in the wrong direction. My team hits them straight down the wind path Sector 4 up to 6. We'll draw fire."
Robin didn't hesitate. "Understood. If you breach, you cut their fuel line. Disable the ignition node and no ship leaves."
"And if they already launched?" one of the younger lieutenants asked.
"Then we cut the sky behind them."
By the time they moved, the city itself seemed to be marching with them. Hundreds of civilians joined not as soldiers, but as runners, medics, guides. A retired Dominion engineer brought a working jamming device from his attic, one that could scramble turret AI for a full sixty seconds. A boy no older than ten carried sniper magazines in a weather worn satchel to the rearguard line.
Anchal Rathod led from the front.
She wore no cape, no medals just a charcoal combat shirt, reinforced shoulder plating, and a single comms rig linked to every flanking team. Her rifle hung at her side, but it wasn't the weapon that made people follow. It was how she looked at the battlefield like it was something she could bend not through strength, but through anticipation.
They hit the outskirts of Sector 6 by sunrise
The first Dominion response was immediate turrets burst to life with staccato hiss, unleashing plasma across the open approach path. But the rebels didn't charge in blindly. Rathod gave the signal, and a three point counterstrike began. From above, rooftop snipers took out the drone sentries positioned along the outer fence. From the west, Robin's units lobbed EMP grenades into the base's early warning towers, temporarily severing their uplink and delaying aerial response. And from the north, a five man infiltration cell disabled the outermost surveillance dome one of the last remaining tactical eyes in Mayapuri's upper grid.
Then the main force surged.
What followed was not a clean assault it was urban warfare at its tightest. Rebels stormed corridors built for armored transports, weaving through hangar bays converted into barracks. Automated turret fire forced them to advance on instinct, ducking under pulsing arcs of white hot plasma. But for every machine that spat death, a rebel squad was there with jury rigged scramblers, charged disruptors, or pure, unrelenting force.
Rathod took her squad through the east gate breach, laying smoke trails behind her to disorient heat locked targeting. A turret locked onto her position. Before it fired, a drone pilot an ex Dominion tech who had defected only two days ago hijacked its targeting uplink and spun the barrel back toward its own wall.
The base was still fighting. But it was faltering.
Inside the command deck of the hangar, the central fuel line blinked red unshielded, exposed. Rathod knelt beside the control node. One last blast from a Dominion trooper slammed into her shoulder, cracking her outer plate. She didn't flinch. With one arm, she reached forward and yanked the primary ignition switch free from its housing.
A loud metallic groan echoed across the base.
The ships massive gunships and sleek Dominion cruisers now stood helpless. Engines without fire. Claws without teeth.
Rathod rose, shoulder bleeding, vision sharp. She pressed her comm. "Robin. Sector 6 is ours."
The world above Sector 6 had already turned the color of burnished steel. The first orange hues were still locked behind the low hanging smog layer that clung to the city's hover core vents. Floodlights flickered across the air base's armored roof, slicing through smoke and shadow as if searching for ghosts. But the ghosts had already made it inside.
Anchal Rathod moved through the breach like a thread pulled through cloth tight, precise, and dangerous. Her squad just under four hundred rebels pushed behind her in staggered waves, clearing storage rooms, dismantling barricades, and disabling hangar rail systems. Dominion troops here weren't green recruits; these were hardened airbase defenders, outfitted with semi mech suits and wrist guided turrets. But they were unprepared for speed, for improvisation, for an enemy that didn't break after the first wall.
Rebel teams advanced in sections, flanking every corridor with practiced sync. Aanchal's flank commander, a former border patrol cadet named Rehan, moved like water his unit clearing junctions with zero loss. They breached through a side elevator shaft using seismic cutters, flooding the auxiliary stairwell in a mist of smoke and flashbang haze. From above, Robin Rayudu's detachment coordinated sniper suppression on turret nests from the western rim. Dominion gunfire struck back with fury, but not cohesion.
Rathod used it.
She adjusted position, ordered fire to flare at one corner of the hangar doors, then rotated the team around to strike the core power columns from the side. The Dominion fallback plan was textbook but Rathod had read every page. A decoy squad drove the Dominion bulk into corridor E6, where modified disruptor mines waited, planted by scouts disguised as engineers.
The explosion was fast and deafening. Three suits dropped in the flash, another five scrambled backs in disarray. Smoke billowed upward, curling through the hangar's venting shafts like the last breath of a dying machine.
Inside the command ring, the Dominion lieutenant barked over comms. "We hold the deck. We hold until reinforcements arrive!" But as he turned, the glass wall behind him shattered. A rebel blade cut across the room, and a woman in a torn Dominion pilot uniform stood in its place one of the defectors Rathod had quietly embedded days ago. She didn't speak. She just nodded toward the hangar below.
The signal was clear.
Mayapuri had cracked.
Rathod pushed into the heart of the airbase Sector 6's launch node. The reinforced walkway above the flight deck was still humming from the attempt to power jumpstart the few remaining craft. She could see the last of the Dominion ships beginning to rise five meters off the rails, their turbines whirling angrily, then sputtering as the override failure cascaded through the grid.
Robin's team had hit the auxiliary capacitor first. Rathod's had just finished off the last ignition relay.
A few ships still clawed into the air, engines screaming in protest. But their flight was brief. A fresh wave of anti air rounds fired from hijacked launchers now held by civilian turned rebel gunners struck the underside of one gunship, forcing it to spiral off course. The remaining few banked westward, out of Mayapuri's reach. Let them go towards the dominion capital as there will be Shivam and his team for their welcome.
On the ground, the last Dominion defenders collapsed inward. Some dropped weapons. Others fired to the end. But the battle had shifted from storm to clean up. Inside thirty minutes, every hangar was taken. Every tower stood under rebel command.
A cheer rippled through the rebel forces, ragged and exhausted but unmistakably real.
Rathod limped slightly as she stepped onto the main control deck. Her left shoulder had been re wrapped, the pressure numbs now with painkillers, but her posture never dipped. She surveyed the now still airbase with quiet eyes. A field once ruled by steel wings and sanctioned terror now stood still under morning haze.
Robin Rayudu stood beside her, wiping blood from his gauntlet. "I hope everything is going fine in Vedhyra as well this fight this rebellion is for freeing our land from that monster's grasp."
She nodded. "Don't worry they'll be fine."
The first real sunlight cracked through Mayapuri's eastern sky like a wound healing. Orange light spilled across the floating decks and twisted towers, brushing smoke trails and shattered glass with the quiet beauty of morning. The chaos of battle was thinning. Fires had turned to embers. Gunfire had faded to echoes. And for the first time in years, the people of Mayapuri stood in open air without checking the skies for death.
Rebels moved quickly to reinforce the command deck. Captured Dominion personnel were escorted into holding chambers. Automated turrets were reprogrammed, their targeting systems aligned away from the city and toward the open air above. Technicians scavenged Dominion radios, tuning them to rebel channels. The comm grid that once screamed orders of suppression now hummed with something else: life.
In the plaza outside the airbase gates, crowds gathered. Civilians, former engineers, medics, street cleaners, couriers, the young, the broken, the ones who had been forgotten when Mayapuri became a machine rather than a home. They weren't cheering blindly. They were watching waiting to believe this wasn't another flare that would burn out.
Rathod didn't speak at first. She stood on the base's outer balcony, watching them all, her arm still bound with bloodied gauze, her rifle slung behind her back. Robin Rayudu moved to her side, nodding once. "They're not afraid anymore," he said. "They just don't know how to hope."
"We'll teach them," she replied. "But not with speeches."
Instead, she raised a hand and behind her, a rebel technician flicked on the city's primary tower beacon. A long dormant signal light blazed crimson, then flared into gold. Rebel colors. It took a moment. One breath. Then the crowd erupted. Not in chaos. In purpose.
Cheers broke like a storm, not scripted or stirred, but born from release. Old men cried openly. Children clapped, watching adults collapse to their knees. One teenager a courier boy with soot smeared cheeks climbed onto a vendor cart and raised a torn cloth wrapped around his wrist. A symbol. The mark of the Spark, scratched in with charcoal and heat. "He's real," the boy shouted. "The God Spark is real!"
Others took it up. The name passed like fire through dry grass.
But Rathod didn't bask in it. She leaned on the rail, watching the sky beyond the tower. Because somewhere beyond the clouds, across a hundred kilometers of floating sectors and fractured air corridors, Shivam and his team were fighting too.
They had launched together. Two flanks of the same rebellion. And while Mayapuri rose in liberation, Vedhyra was burning.
"Update from Vedhyra," came a voice through Robin's radio. Mansi, sharp as ever. "They've entered the city. The Spark is in play. Resistance is heavier than expected."
Rathod's jaw tightened. "Then we move fast."
Robin looked at her. "What's left to do? We took Mayapuri."
She turned to him, gaze steady. "We wrap up here. Secure the last blocks, get the wounded treated, and prep the hangars. We take what ships are left and head for Vedhyra. Shivam and his team started the fire now we bring the storm.
As she gave the order, teams began organizing from within the crowd. Weapons were distributed. Defense grids were patched. Rebel scouts prepared for long range support relays. Above the plaza, the beacon pulsed again. Gold. Steady.
In that light, Rathod didn't look like a teenager anymore. She looked like a general. And Mayapuri, long silenced under Dominion rule, finally raised its voice. The sky belonged to them now.