The warrens underneath the towers must have gone deeper than anyone could have mapped. The missile barrage had barely faded from the sky when the ground itself began to betray them. At first, it was just a few cracks running like pale scars beneath the dust. But then the earth buckled with a wet, seismic groan, and the entire base of the ruined towers caved with a thundering, catastrophic collapse.
What came next didn't seem possible. The initial breach—no bigger than a shuttle hatch—puked out a spray of Khadak bodies, but by the time the dust cloud started to settle, the hole had become a volcano. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, poured up and out, screaming like the air itself was filled with acid.
Nyla was the first to see the thermal bloom on her screen; just a heartbeat before it happened, the center of her display flashed from dusty orange to a solid, blinding blood-red. She didn't need to be told. She squeezed the trigger on her control paddles so hard that her knuckles popped audibly through her gloves.
Quad autocannons spat lines of fire into the chaos. She was rewarded with instant carnage: Khadak disappeared into mist, chitin and meat and bone gone in the blink of a targeting reticle. She let herself hope that maybe, just maybe, they could hold the breach.
But it was just the start.
Knox's voice, loud and ugly in her headset, "Light them up! All guns, all batteries!" The command was almost pointless—everyone was already dumping every shell they had into the pit. The Ladybird vibrated with each volley; the air inside the tank stank of ozone, hot metal, and Nyla's own sweat.
Both companies had encircled the towers, a ring of steel pressing in tight, like a noose. But the enemy just kept coming, wave after wave, unbroken and unbreaking, as if the surface itself was infested all the way to the planet's core. Nyla's vision swam from the heat and the recoil. She thought she saw patterns in the way the Khadak climbed over each other, using the dead to build living ladders out of the crater.
"Uh, Sergeant?" Henley's voice was all static and tremble. "They aren't stopping!"
Nyla risked a split-second glance away from her sights. Outside, the world was a blur of flashing tracer rounds and writhing alien bodies. Where the towers had stood was now a depression so deep and black it looked like a gunshot wound in the planet. The Khadak didn't seem to care about dying. They just kept going, dogpiling over the shredded meat of their own until they were almost level with the surface again.
"Keep pouring it in, Nyla! We are not moving!" Knox's tone was ironclad, almost maniacal. Nyla felt it vibrate inside her ribcage, pushing out the fear and replacing it with something stupid and hard-edged.
The Ladybird's barrels glowed with a hellish light. Nyla's hands kept firing, shifted from target to target in a dance that had no rhythm—just pure reaction. There was no time to aim anymore. If you pointed at the swarm, you'd hit something worth killing.
The creatures at the front of the tide began to change. They were bigger now, more heavily armored. The first wave was just fodder, Nyla realized. They were using their weakest to build a bridge for their strongest.
Henley made a choked noise in the back. "We got new contacts. Big ones!"
He wasn't wrong. The next layer to crawl from the pit was like nothing Nyla had ever seen before. She'd watched briefing holos of the Khadak, but these were new breeds. Some had claws that shimmered like liquid metal. Some had heads that split open into three separate jaws, all teeth. Some carried the bodies of their dead as shields.
Nyla didn't stop firing. She couldn't. Her brain had disconnected from her arms, and the only thing that mattered was keeping the count going. If she thought about the math, she'd freeze—or worse, run.
She was so locked in on the carnage that she barely registered the shift in the ground beneath them. At first, it was just a tremor. Then a judder. Then the whole Ladybird bounced a full half-meter off the dirt, and something black and enormous clambered out of the center of the pit.
The behemoth.
It looked, for a moment, like the shadow of a skyscraper had climbed out of its own grave. It stood twice as tall as any tank, four legs ending in obsidian claws, the rest of it covered in a spiked armor that shimmered with a sick, oil-slick rainbow. Its screech vibrated the air so hard Nyla's teeth buzzed.
"What the fuck is that?!" Henley screamed. Even Knox, for all his bluster, had nothing to say. They could only watch as it reared back and then charged, a black missile aimed dead at their portion of the line.
The Ladybird wasn't the behemoth's target, not at first. Their little tank was jammed between two massive MBTs, Imperial models with thick reactive armor and more firepower than a gunboat. The behemoth made a beeline for the tank to their left, one claw descending like a guillotine. The MBT's turret fired point-blank, the round hitting the side of the beast's head. It didn't matter. The claw came down, bisected the turret, and with a wet, metallic scream, the MBT was reduced to a split-open coffin.
But that wasn't the end. The behemoth, with a casual flick, tossed the ruined turret—easily the size of a small car—straight into the Ladybird.
Nyla saw it coming in slow motion. She had just enough time to register the chunk of burning steel arcing toward them, enough time to scream, but not enough time to do anything else. The impact was like being on the receiving end of a sledgehammer the size of a house. The Ladybird flipped onto its side, rolled once, and then slammed into a ridge of packed sand.
Nyla was thrown against her harness, the world suddenly sideways, alarms howling in her ears. She tasted copper. Everything was a blur of red light and the stink of ruptured coolant.
Something heavy landed on top of the hull with a horrible, crushing noise. Nyla's head whiplashed forward, then back; for a second, she saw nothing but white. Then darkness swallowed her whole.
"Nyla! Nyla, get in here!"
Everything stutters; the world judders sideways and then resolves, suddenly, sharply, into the impossible. She's lying on her bed—her actual bed, mattress worn into the shape of her narrow back, buried under a blanket that smells like detergent and not, for once, sweat and gun oil. There's no harness, no steel shell. No rattling of treads or screaming of alarms, just the muted hum of a heater laboring against the dry chill of New Hope's night. Her ceiling is low, spraycrete painted a cheerful yellow, and the only thing bleeding is an old poster of the Emperor's flagship, peeling at one sunburned corner. Nyla blinks once, twice, but the bedroom doesn't vanish. She's home.
She sits up so fast her vision tunnels. Her shirt is two sizes too big, her hair loose and mussed, and it takes both hands to scrub the sleep from her eyes. Her name echoes again, this time from the next room, with the particular urgency only her mother could manage.
Still half in a daze, she swings her legs over the side and pads barefoot to the door, bumping her knee on the frame. Everything's softer here—the walls, the air, even the light, which comes not from harsh fluorescents but the gentle blue of a pre-dawn window. In the living room, her father stands at the counter, clutching a mug so hard his fingers have gone white. Her mother is a bundle of nerves on the couch, hands balled in her lap, eyes red and puffy as if she's been peeling onions for hours.
It takes Nyla a moment to process the strangeness of it all, to understand what she's seeing. Her parents, in the same room, at the same time, not shouting at each other or at her, but simply existing in tight-lipped misery. She wants to say something but her throat is parched, voice caught somewhere between a sob and a question.
Then she sees them.
Two men in deep blue uniforms stand in the corner, just inside the doorway, crisp and clinical in their composure. They wear the colors of the Imperial Army, not the showy parade dress but the working blues, pressed to razor-edged perfection. Their boots are spotless, their faces clean-shaven, but there's nothing ceremonial about the way they carry themselves. One is tall and pale, hair so blond it's almost white, eyes like two ice chips behind a visor. The other is shorter, darker, with a grin that looks like it's been stapled into his face since birth.
Their insignia is unmistakable: Conscription Division.
Nyla's heart, lulled by the homey scene, seizes up in her chest. It's not a dream, after all, not just a bad dream; it's The Day. The one they'd all pretended would never come. She can taste the moment's finality, metallic as blood.
Her mother tries to stand, fails, and gestures helplessly at the men. Her father looks at Nyla, helpless and angry, and for a moment she sees the old him, the man who once patched up neighbor kids and always had a joke ready for the dinner table. That man is gone, replaced by this trembling stranger clutching a piece of paper as if it might save them.
Before anyone else can speak, the short, dark officer steps forward. His teeth practically shine in the half-light. "Good morning, Miss Kael. You've been selected for immediate service in His Majesty's Expeditionary Forces." He says it with a practiced cheer, as if reciting a travel itinerary. "Congratulations, and welcome to the Empire's Answer."
Nyla looks at her mother, whose lips are pressed so tight they've turned white. She looks at her father, whose eyes are filling with tears he will never let fall. She looks at the officer and then at herself, at her childish pajamas, her bare feet, her chipped purple nail polish. It's all wrong. She's all wrong.
"This is a mistake," her father says, voice trembling but louder than she's ever heard it. "She's not even of age. She hasn't finished secondary yet. You can't just—"
The tall blond officer lifts a hand, slow and deliberate, as if calming a wild animal. The other hand slides to rest on the grip of his holstered pulse pistol. The message is clear: try anything, and what little remains of your family gets a front-row seat to Imperial justice. The tension in the room could shatter glass.
The short officer doesn't lose his smile. "With all due respect, sir, the Decree is absolute. New Hope's quota is short, and the cutoff was this morning. It's a great honor to serve the Emperor, and your daughter will make you proud. We've read her aptitude scores. She's exceptional."
Nyla wants to scream that she's not; that her highest score is in hiding, that all she knows of war is what she's seen on holos and in her nightmares. She wants to fold herself in half and vanish into the carpet. Instead, she just stands there, heart beating so fast she wonders if the officers can see it punching through her ribs.
The dark officer turns back to her, this time softening his voice as if he's dealing with an especially timid animal. "Go pack your things, Miss Kael. Just essentials. You'll be well provided for at orientation."
Nyla's mother covers her mouth, muffling a sob. Her father grips the edge of the counter, knuckles straining. There's a moment—just a heartbeat—where Nyla wonders if her father is going to do something reckless, something heroic and idiotic. She almost hopes he will.
But he doesn't.
So she goes.
Her bedroom is smaller than she remembers, cluttered with old books, loose fabric scraps, and a half-assembled drone she's been tinkering with for months. She moves mechanically, grabbing the worn duffel from her closet and shoveling in clothes at random. Her hands shake so hard she drops her favorite sweater twice before it stays in the bag. She pauses to look at the dented photo frame by her pillow, the one with her and her parents on the day they moved in; she wants to take it, but some part of her knows she'll never see this bed, this house, or even this planet again.
She moves to the window, cracks it open for air. Outside, the New Hope colony is waking up: lights flickering on in prefab houses, distant rumble of transports at the spaceport, the faintest smell of breakfast in the wind. For a moment, she imagines herself as one of those people, going to work, to school, to anything except war. Then the fantasy slips away and she's just Nyla again, a number to be stamped and shipped.
A voice behind her: "Nyla?" It's her father, standing in the doorway. He looks ten years older than he did five minutes ago.
She wants to throw herself at him, beg him to fight for her, to beg the officers to take someone else. But her father just stands there, helpless, and so does she.
He manages a half-smile, then crosses the room and pulls her into an awkward hug. "You're going to come back," he says, but even Nyla can hear the lie in it. "You hear me, kiddo? You're going to make it home."
She wants to believe it. She tries.
But she can already feel the memory fading, like sand through her fingers.
A polite knock. The officers are waiting.
She slings the duffel over her shoulder, one last glance at her room, her father, the ordinary morning she'll never have again. She walks past her mother, who is openly crying now, and past the officers, who are all efficient smiles and practiced sympathy. She doesn't look back.
The dream collapses. For a second, it's all noise and color and light, the world smearing together as if she's falling from orbit.
Then the Ladybird snaps back into existence.
The world comes back as white-hot pain glazing the inside of Nyla's skull. There's a siren in her head, a keening whine rising in pitch until it fragments into icepick stabs behind her eyes. Her mouth tastes of blood and battery acid. For a second, she doesn't know where she is—doesn't know who she is. Then Knox's disembodied hands clamp down on her shoulders, shaking her so violently she feels her spine rattle inside the crash harness.
"NYLA! Nyla, open your eyes, dammit!" Knox is screaming, voice knotted with panic. It's like hearing her father's voice again, but spliced with a circuit board and run through a meat grinder. The Ladybird is moving, she realizes—the pitch and groan of the treads is unmistakable, shuddering through her bones from the deck up. Hull alarms are pinging in and out, and above that, the choppy basso of artillery rounds hitting sand somewhere close.
Nyla's body is a single bruise. Her left arm won't move. There's wetness—lots of it—on her face and neck, and she only realizes after a long three-count that it's her own blood trickling from a half-moon gash just above her left eyebrow. Her right hand is still fused to the harness release, knuckles white.
She tries to say she's okay but all that comes out is, "…nnngh." Knox seems to take that as good enough, because he lets go and slaps at her chest plate, hard. "Attagirl. Henley, how we doing?"
"Not. Fucking. Great," Henley barks from the driver's well. His face is coated with spraycrete dust and blood. He's hunched over the controls, eyes locked on the cracked periscope feed, jaw bunched like he's chewing glass. The Ladybird's engine is putting out a new sound, a high whine not in any of the manuals, but at least they're moving—fast, if the horizon-to-horizon blur outside the slitted viewport is any indication.
For some reason, the cockpit smells like burnt almonds and melted plastic. Nyla manages to unclip herself, ignoring the shriek of nerves in her back, and crawls up to the gunner cradle. She slams her forehead against the padded rest just as a shell impacts somewhere behind them, sending a staccato ripple through the entire tank.
The Ladybird is moving. Not just lurching to life—full-blown hurtling across the sand flats, like some metallic animal with a fresh terror up its ass. Nyla's first clue: the kaleidoscope swirl in the periscope, sky and ground smearing into blue-yellow streaks as they bounce and jolt over ruts deeper than some graves. Her second clue: the guttural, bass-thump roar of all the other tanks and IFVs in the company, every single one in full reverse as if the devil himself was riding shotgun.
Outside, it's pandemonium. She flashes the turret around on instinct, slapping her hand to the battered targeting controls. Through the main sights, she catches it: their entire company—what's left of it—spread out like a string of toy soldiers, running from a nightmare. Behind them, a living tide of Khadak monstrosities pours over the ridgeline, gaining ground with impossible speed. Not a neat little column of monsters, but a boiling, bone-armored mass. The closest are already catching up to the stragglers, pulling down a half-crippled IFV with claws as big as Nyla's arm. The IFV doesn't even explode—it just pinwheels into the dust, then vanishes under the weight of a dozen bodies. She thinks she sees something human flailing from a hatch before the Khadak swarm consumes it, and then it's gone.
There's no time to dwell—something flash-white and smoking arcs overhead, then detonates a hundred meters in front of them. The shockwave slaps the Ladybird sideways, knocking Nyla's chin into the gunnery rest hard enough to bite her tongue. She tastes blood. Pain focuses her, sharpens the moment.
She checks the broader tactical screens: all over the map, blue icons are blinking out, replaced by hostile red or just wiped from the field. The company's retreat is chaos, but at least they're not standing still. The worst of the fighting is behind them—except the Khadak don't know when to quit, and now the sky's alive with something even hungrier.
She sees the flyers before she hears them. Razorbeaks, big packs, banking low and tight in the rising thermals. The winged bastards pick off the slowest runners, tearing open the tops of APCs and yanking out the wet, red contents. Some crash into vehicles outright, using their own bodies as battering rams, detonating on impact with a spray of bone fragments and caustic ichor. One swoops close past the Ladybird's viewport—close enough that Nyla gets an eyeball-to-eyeball look at its face, which is nothing but teeth and a single, glassy lens burning with hate. It's gone in a blink, leaving behind a shockwave and a gust of foul wind.
"Company is in full retreat, Nyla. If we don't punch through, we're meat," Knox barks, knuckles white on the comms panel. "There's no fucking backup. Only way out is forward."
The Ladybird is still running. But for how long?
"Nyla, check your six!" Henley shouts from his nest, voice sharp with adrenaline. Nyla pivots hard, swinging the main gun toward the secondary threat vector. A full flight of razorbeaks is coming in, fast and low, their shadows rippling over the sand like a black tide. They're bracketing the company, forcing the column into a kill zone. Above it all, the Khadak infantry lumber forward, picking off wrecks and bodies, chewing up ground one monstrous stride at a time.
"We are the only 74 left, Nyla. Bring those fuckers down!" Knox again, more urgent now.
Nyla doesn't need more encouragement. She wraps her hands around the twin gunsticks, ignoring the stickiness of blood drying on her palms. The familiar rumble of the autocannons cycling up is the only sound that keeps her together. She sight-locks the lead flyer and lets the Ladybird sing.