The entire Cerberus Terminal shrieked in protest as the three massive Seismic Breach Drills bit into the triple-layer hull of the missile silo. In the deep-level command centre, the console lights pulsed red, bathing Ascendant-Alpha-1 and his Queen in an ominous crimson glow.
Rheon stood at the tactical holoscreen, his newly healed shoulder tight beneath the armour, his posture a concrete reflection of discipline.
"Status: Breach imminent at Access Shafts Alpha, Beta, and Gamma," Rheon reported to Lyra, who was positioned at the main reactor terminal, eyes closed, her entire focus channelled inward. "Vance is committed to a simultaneous entry. Standard doctrine."
"Contain them, Ascendant," Lyra's voice was strained, a low whisper that resonated not through the air, but directly into Rheon's mind via the Bloodlink.
Four minutes. Against the full weight of General Vance's Vanguard Assault Division, four minutes was an eternity.
"Cardinal, initiate Protocol: Scythe," Rheon barked into his command comms. "Hold the lines in the upper sectors. No retreat, no quarter. Buy us one minute, then initiate detonation."
"By the Crimson Mother's will!" The Cardinal's zealous voice crackled with grim excitement.
The screens flashed BREACH. At three separate points in the Terminal's high, abandoned levels, the Federation's Kinetic Infantry flooded the facility. They were heavily armoured, armed with pulse rifles, and moved with the cold, efficient training of elite soldiers.
They were met immediately by the Sanguis Red Guard. The fight was not a battle, but a sacrifice. The Red Guard, fueled by fanatical devotion to the Crimson Mother, disregarded all tactical sense. They used primitive explosives, their own bodies, and raw, savage fury to overwhelm the Federation's initial deployment with sheer, suicidal zeal.
Rheon watched the sensors flicker. Three hundred loyalists were cut down in the first forty-five seconds of contact. But they had held the line.
"One minute mark! Initiate Scythe Detonation!" Rheon commanded.
Deep structural charges, placed meticulously by Rheon's Sanguis team, detonated simultaneously in the junction points connecting the breached airlocks to the main access shafts. The Terminal roared as sections of the century-old steel infrastructure buckled and collapsed. Concrete rained down, twisting the entry points into impassable, kinetic traps.
The initial assault was stalled. Rheon had bought himself two minutes of relative quiet.
"Alpha Shaft is locked down! Beta is stalled, but the Heavy Engineers are moving to clear the debris!" The Cardinal yelled, his voice ragged with the intensity of his fighting retreat.
Rheon did not wait for the engineers to clear the debris. He led his core, best-trained Sanguis team—about ten heavily armed fighters—to the Gamma Shaft, the most direct descent point, before Vance could regroup. He knew the Federation would prioritise clearing the Gamma shaft to maintain a quick supply line.
They reached the choke point. It was a narrow service corridor leading into the main descent elevator. The Federation's engineers were already there, slicing through the collapsed girders.
"Hit them now!" Rheon ordered.
The firefight was deafening. Rheon moved with a terrifying precision, his suppression pistol targeting the exposed sensor arrays and joint plates of the Federation armour. He was the perfect soldier fighting for the perfect betrayal. His tactical genius shone, using the tight confines and the limited visibility to negate the Federation's superior firepower.
He engaged a Heavy Kinetic Trooper, a man clad in meters of dense, pressurised armour, in hand-to-hand combat. The Trooper lunged with an electric shock baton. Rheon anticipated the movement, ducked under the baton, and plunged his energy blade into the trooper's thigh joint. It was the armour's single, deliberate weak point. The trooper roared and collapsed.
Rheon was a scythe cutting through the thickest military grass.
Yet, despite the precision, the cost was immediate. Two of Rheon's core Sanguis team were vaporised by focused pulse fire.
Rheon's heart sank, but his discipline remained absolute. Lyra needed three more minutes. They had maybe thirty seconds before the remaining Federation troopers flanked them.
"Cardinal! Hold this position! Initiate the Level Three Gas Canisters on my mark!" Rheon commanded, knowing he was ordering the Cardinal to his death.
"For the Mother! Understood!" the Cardinal responded, his voice filled with terrifying, ecstatic acceptance.
Rheon retreated, dragging his last two surviving Sanguis fighters with him. He slapped a cluster of plasma charges onto the narrow corridor's ceiling supports.
"Cardinal! Engage!"
The Cardinal screamed a final, zealous war cry, launching himself at the remaining Federation troopers, distracting them long enough for Rheon to detonate the charges.
The ceiling supports vaporised. The entire corridor section above the Cardinal and the Federation team groaned, twisted, and collapsed into a massive, choking wall of debris and ruptured pipes.
Rheon watched the sensors. The Cardinal was gone. The line was held. He had two minutes remaining.
Rheon ran back toward the core, his lungs burning, the weight of the casualties immense. He had used up his best men and his best structural traps. Vance would realise the Terminal was structurally compromised and would stop sending infantry down the narrow shafts.
Vance would send the Drills directly to the core.
Rheon raced into the command centre, slamming the blast door shut behind him. Lyra was standing at the main reactor terminal, her body convulsing slightly with the sheer, agonising force of integrating her living, ancient power with the vast, synthetic power grid of the Terminal.
"Vance is preparing a direct final breach, Lyra," Rheon reported, his voice ragged. "He won't waste more men. He'll use the Drills to crack the Core Chamber itself. We have seconds."
He looked at the tactical screen. The Seismic Breach Drills, having fulfilled their purpose of penetrating the hull, were now being repositioned. They were focusing on the thickest point of the Command Core's armour. It was the ceiling directly above them.
The thrumming, low-frequency vibration of the Drills intensified into a deafening, skull-rattling roar.
"Lyra!" Rheon yelled, running to the main console, preparing a final, hopeless kinetic defence.
Lyra opened her eyes. They were no longer crimson, but a deep, pulsating violet, reflecting the sheer energy of the Terminal's main reactor she had connected to. Tears of blood tracked down her cheeks from the immense psychic strain.
Lyra's command was absolute, a psychic thunderclap of pure, focused power.
The entire Terminal's electrical grid groaned, spiking into critical overload. The lights in the chamber flared a blinding white. The power of the Aether Fragment, channelled through the massive reactor, was ready to be unleashed.
But as Lyra stood ready to fire, Rheon saw the final, catastrophic threat on his sensor screen.
A single, small, familiar signature had detached from the remnants of the debris field in the Beta Shaft and was moving, fast, silently, and with surgical precision, toward the Core Chamber's outer layer.
The Revenant. He was not disabled. He was simply resetting. He had used the chaos of the structural collapse to reposition, bypassing the remaining defences and moving to eliminate the target directly.
"Lyra, flank defence!" Rheon yelled, drawing his sidearm and racing toward the Core's emergency access panel. "The Revenant is coming for the kill!"
The drill above them reached the final layer of steel armour, shrieking as it prepared the terminal breach. The outer wall of the Core Chamber groaned under the immense external pressure.
Rheon was locked in a final, terrifying race: Lyra ready to fire the weapon, the Drill ready to breach the ceiling, and The Revenant ready to breach the wall. The ultimate, three-way climax was here.