The Hunter-Killers attacked with terrifying coordination. Two targeted Leyla, matching her speed with their own bladed limbs. Two engaged Ryn, trying to overwhelm her with tech-disrupting pulses. The final two went for Mira, aiming to disrupt her spatial focus.
Valerius watched, his tentacles idly tapping the bone platform.
Echo knew they couldn't win a war of attrition. He had to break their coordination. He reached for the bond, not for power, but for synergy.
Leyla, draw the left pair toward the ichor fall! Mira, be ready to fold space! Ryn, on my mark—scramble their sensory feeds!
The orders flashed through their bond instantly. Leyla, with a defiant snarl, led her attackers on a dazzling chase, leaping across pumping vascular structures toward a roaring cascade of black fluid. Mira prepared, her hands weaving.
Echo charged Valerius.
The Ascendant smiled. "Direct. I admire that." He didn't move, but one of his living tentacles lashed out, faster than sight.
Echo's Error-Sight saved him—he saw the glitch in the air a microsecond before the strike and twisted. The tentacle grazed his armor, shearing through it like paper and drawing a line of fire across his ribs.
Echo didn't stop. He reached out with his bloodline, not toward Valerius's own ancient, potent ichor, but toward the falling cascade of ship-fuel ichor that Leyla had neared.
He couldn't control it all. But he could stir it. He sent a violent pulse of Sovereign command into the waterfall, disrupting its surface tension.
The ichor splashed violently outward, dousing the two Hunters pursuing Leyla.
It didn't hurt them. But it blinded their sensory pits and slicked their joints.
"NOW, MIRA!"
Mira clenched her fist. The space around the two slick Hunters compressed suddenly, then snapped back. The whiplash effect, combined with their unstable footing, sent them crashing into each other in a tangle of limbs.
"Ryn!"
Ryn fired her rifle, not at the Hunters, but at the wall above them. The plasma blast severed a major nutrient line. Pressurized, steaming fluid erupted, scalding the tangled Hunters and driving back the pair engaging her.
For a moment, the perfect coordination was broken.
Echo used that moment to leap onto Valerius's platform. The Ascendant finally moved, his tentacles becoming a whirlwind of strikes. Echo dodged and weaved, his Feline Grace pushed to the limit. He couldn't land a hit.
Valerius caught him with a backhanded tentacle blow to the chest. Echo flew backward, crashing into a spongy wall, the air driven from his lungs.
"You fight for them," Valerius said, advancing calmly. "For the Order that would discard you the moment you become inconvenient. You could be so much more. The Legion offers true evolution. Freedom from the frailties of mortal bonds."
Echo spat blood, pushing himself up. He felt Leyla's rage, Mira's concern, Ryn's determination flowing into him. "These bonds aren't my frailty," he growled. "They're my strength."
He reached into the bond and pulled.
Not just energy. He pulled Leyla's predatory instinct, Mira's spatial clarity, Ryn's tactical precision into himself. For a second, he wasn't just Echo. He was the Pack. The Team. The Bonded.
His bloodline erupted. Crimson light exploded from him, not just glowing, but forming hard-light filaments of blood-energy that snapped out, wrapping around Valerius's tentacles.
The Ascendant's eyes widened in genuine shock. "What—?!"
Echo yanked. Valerius was pulled off-balance. In that opening, Leyla—having dispatched her wounded Hunters—phased from a shadow directly behind Valerius.
Her silver claws, fueled by moon-energy and bond-rage, pierced the Ascendant's back, finding the core-node beneath his obsidian shell.
Valerius gasped, a sound of pure, undiluted surprise. He looked down at the claws protruding from his chest, then at Echo. "Ah… So that… is the power… of a true Sovereign…"
He dissolved, not into ash, but into a shower of fading data-light and melancholy memory-echoes.
The remaining Hunters, deprived of their commander, became disorganized and were quickly finished off.
Silence returned to the ventricular chamber, broken only by the pounding of the dreadnought's heart.
They had won. But they were wounded, drained, and the alarms were still screaming.
They had drawn the attention of the entire ship.
And somewhere forty decks above, Admiral Nox was waiting.