The time for practice was over. The audience had arrived, and they were not there for a recital. They were there for an execution.
The Devourer fleet did not attack in a wave. It attacked as a single, crushing weight. A thousand black ships, moving with the synchronized precision of a hive mind, descended from the upper atmosphere. They blocked out the sun, the moon, the stars. The sky was simply… gone. Replaced by a ceiling of silent, hungry metal.
"They're not jamming us this time," Olli's voice crackled over the comms in The Iron Hold's command center. "They're listening. All channels are open. They want to hear us scream before they eat."
Arden stood in the center of the room, hooked into the neural interface. She looked small against the backdrop of the massive holographic screens showing the descending doom. But she did not feel small. She felt infinite.
"Then let's give them something to listen to," she said.
