In the tense silence that precedes a storm, a new presence made itself felt — sharper than Elegantia's, carrying a gravity of a different order. I didn't need to turn to know who it was.
Gladianna.
She stood at the threshold of the red siren-light, bringing with her an aura that cut through tension like a drawn blade. Her hair shared the same honey-gold as Ele's — but it had been cut with different intent. Ele flowed; Anna stood at attention. At her temples, a blue ribbon bound a small braid — not decoration, but declaration. Her elegance was a soldier's elegance: precise, unyielding, with no room left over for doubt.
Her eyes — as clear as Ele's — fixed on me first, then dropped to our still-joined hands. Her gaze moved like a targeting laser: swift, deliberate, dense with unspoken questions. Behind it I read a fierce protectiveness, an awareness of the situation that exceeded even my own, and perhaps — buried beneath the rest — a small flicker of something else. Something deeper and more dangerous, which I had always managed to avoid looking at directly.
Anna's stare landed precisely on the point where my skin met Ele's. Her disapproval wasn't merely a change of expression — it was a silent pressure-field condensing in the space between the three of us. Elegantia caught the signal at once. Her hand withdrew from mine in a gesture that was fluid but absolute, and she stepped back, creating a distance that suddenly felt very wide.
I stood between them, entirely without a map. Five thousand enemy ships I could navigate. The silent dynamics between these twin sisters I could not. "What is actually happening inside their heads?" I thought, feeling like a cryptographer confronted with two contradictory ancient manuscripts written in an alphabet he had never encountered. "What logic governs any of this?"
The moment Ele released herself, as if some permission had been granted, Gladianna stepped forward. Her habitual coolness dissolved, replaced by something I only ever recognized in the context of me — a gaze that brightened with a softness, a private light she showed no one else. It always put me on guard without my knowing why.
"Target locked, Commander," Anna said, not releasing my eyes. "All systems ready to fire. Oh, and Adler?" A small, deliberate smile. "Try not to ruin that face of yours with an explosion today. I've grown rather accustomed to looking at it."
The sentence struck me like a cognitive torpedo. Every processing system I owned seemed to hang for a fraction of a second. Outside, my commander's facade held — cold face, regulated breathing. But inside, an entire brigade of bewilderment was running in all directions. "What… is the tactical purpose of that statement?" I thought. "Is this some form of combat psychology not recorded in any manual I've studied?"
"Ah. Yes. Very well," my voice finally emerged, flatter than I intended. "We will fire the opening salvo in… shortly."
And here the incomprehension reached its summit. Battlefield? Legible. Enemy strategy? Analysable. The workings of Gladianna Von Aarden's mind? Entirely uncharted. She was always like this — direct, frontal, breaching every layer of my defences through means that defied any recognisable logic. In the middle of all this chaos, she was the one thing I was least prepared for.
Damn.
The oath rolled through my mind like a small-calibre round that had nearly detonated inside my own command room. She was an anomaly I could not predict.
I hated admitting it, even to myself, but… yes. I was a little afraid of her.
Not afraid the way one fears enemy cannons. That fear is honest, respectable, and comes with solutions: destroy or evade. Fear of Anna was a different species altogether. Fear of an unfathomable depth, of an intensity that could shift from cold to warm in a single glance, of the fact that in her presence all my strategies and facades felt like thin paper — which either her smile or her snarl could tear without effort. She was a storm whose direction I could not dictate.
And amid all of that, I had to remain stone. With something close to a physical effort, I re-adhered my facade of composure. A breath. Muscles controlled. Gaze redirected — from this baffling personal battlefield, back to the real one.
I forced my concentration onto the holomap. Green points for our formation, red points for their threat. This was a language I understood. Distance, velocity, force, firing angle. Data. Logic. Measured death. Here, I was master. Here, I did not feel like a child lost in a labyrinth of feelings that had no map.
But at the back of my neck, Anna's gaze still registered. Not like a sword thrust — that would have been too simple. More like the warmth-tension of a targeting sensor that had locked on: a sensation that clung to skin, reminding me that among all the threats displayed on the screen, one "threat" was standing directly beside me — one that, paradoxically, made me feel most alive… and most catastrophically unprepared for anything.
I dragged my awareness back from the pull of their eyes — from Anna's challenging stare that held a thousand unspoken words, from Ele's watchful gaze dense with questions — and trained it entirely on the tactical field before me. The holomap had become an altar upon which fate would be offered.
I left the two sisters to their mysterious dynamic. Let it remain another battle I did not understand — because before me lay the only field I had to win, or surrender as my burial ground.
• • •
And then the moment arrived.
The red points on the holomap, which had been moving like a pack of galactic predators, finally entered the bright yellow ring — the Magnus II's optimal firing envelope. The distance was perfect. The angle, ideal. There was no longer any reason to hold breath.
My voice came out not as a shout, but as a cold declaration that cut through the bridge's noise. A sentence that would rewrite history.
"All batteries — fire the first salvo. Now."
Then, in a tone lower but no less final, I added: "Transmit to the entire fleet: general assault. Destroy them."
"Order confirmed, Commander. Firing."
The world shook.
First came the Lance of Magnus. Two pale-blue channels of light at the prow blazed so intensely they flooded the entire bridge in ghost-light — before merging and lancing outward. It was not a shot. It was a release of pure energy: a continuous laser that tore through the dark like a god's sword. It crossed the void in silence, but on screen that white-hot line drove straight into the hull of the lead rebel carrier.
Then followed the true symphony of destruction.
Hundreds of railguns along the Magnus II's flanks thundered, hurling solid tungsten at relativistic speeds. On the monitors, fine silver lines — ghost-traces of hypersonic rounds — rained into the enemy formation. Behind them came bursts of red plasma, floating like artificial meteors; and thermobaric detonations that swelled the vacuum with lethal pressure-spheres.
Outside the observation dome, the peaceful star-field became a canvas of hell. Explosions of white, orange, and blue bloomed in perfect silence — death's own fireworks, offered up for a civilisation too exhausted to endure. One by one, red points on the holomap flickered and vanished, replaced by damage and destruction markers.
The vibration from a thousand simultaneous shots conducted itself through the ship's steel skeleton, growling through the decks, resonating in the bones of my feet. The light from distant explosions strobed across my face, across Anna's beside me, across Ele's where she stood slightly apart. The smell of ozone and hot metal thickened in the air.
In the middle of all this sensory chaos, only one thought in my mind remained clear and cold:
This is only the overture. They will answer. And the real battle has just begun. I smiled — a smile that felt alien on my own face. Cold. Cynical. And hollow. I knew they would answer. And that was when every theory, every simulation, would end. What would follow was a storm in which logic could be destroyed by chaos, and courage could collapse from a single moment of panic. My gaze fixed hard on the enemy.
My fleet continued to slash through the enemy's formation with iron discipline — salvo after measured salvo, ticking like a countdown clock toward catastrophe. Rebel ships, especially the lighter destroyers and frigates, scattered like glass struck by a hammer. Their explosions in the distance were only brief orange flickers immediately swallowed by the dark, vanishing without trace like dust in interstellar wind.
But the mathematics of war were irrefutable. For every one of their ships I destroyed, five others still advanced. They had an ocean of numbers; we had only a heap of high-quality steel. Their numerical superiority was a tide that never relented; our qualitative edge was a strong wall — but every wall, however thick, reaches the limit of what it can absorb.
My facade remained frozen: cold face, measured breathing, focused gaze. But behind that commander's mask, in the private command room of my own mind, an anxiety had begun to crystallize. I was… troubled. Not panicked — panic was a luxury I could not afford. Only a cold acknowledgment that we were felling a forest with an extraordinarily sharp axe, but the forest was too dense, and our arms would tire before the trees were gone. I breathed deep, feeling the recycled cold of the ship's air in my lungs. Stay stone, I told myself. Stone does not care how many waves break against it.
• • •
In the middle of the reports and shouted commands, a communications officer cut through. "Commander! Priority-one call. Direct from Tellus."
"Patch it to my private channel," I said, not lifting my eyes from the holomap. A field of light bloomed before me — not the ordinary translucent hologram but an augmented-reality projection so solid it seemed as though he were truly standing on the bridge. Every detail was perfect, from the exhaustion in his eyes to the virtual dust on his uniform.
"Brother."
That voice — warm, clear, wholly foreign amid the roar of war — belonged to Hammond. My younger brother. His hair was blond and perpetually disordered — a gift from our mother, in contrast to my own neat black inherited from our father. Between his clear eyes lived an innocence I had never possessed.
"What is it, Hammond?" my voice cut in, sharper than I intended. "You know where I am. In the middle of a hell I am trying to control. This is not the time for a family call." But behind the brusqueness, there was a shameful relief simply at the sound of his voice — a stubborn warmth that refused to be extinguished even by my own cynicism.
Hammond only smiled — an expression that was weary but genuine. "Sorry, Brother. I'm only the messenger. The Tellus Council asked me to convey this: 'Win the battle. Whatever it takes.' That's their official message." He exhaled, and behind his smile I saw the burden he carried inside the palace — the weight of diplomacy and careful words among men too old and too corrupt to care about the truth.
"That council…" I pressed two fingers to my temple, a familiar irritation closing in. "Tell those stained conservatives I am not their kept dog, trained to dance on command. I fight for the Imperium — not for the narrow interests of their private old men's club."
"Brother, don't be like that," Hammond said, trying to calm me — his voice like cold water over coals. "They're still helping manage what's left of the government on Tellus."
"Manage? Or enrich themselves?" I snapped, though my anger faded quickly in the face of his sincerity. "You, Hammond. Too good. Too trusting."
He was quiet a moment, and his expression shifted. The warmth in it blended now with a deep compassion — the kind that, strangely, did not make me angry. "Then… how are things there, Brother? Truly. What is it really like?"
The question pierced through every layer of steel in my facade. Before this boy — the one person I didn't need to wound with my cynicism — the words came on their own, fragile and honest:
"I… don't know, Hammond." My voice sounded strange to me, almost unsteady. "There are too many of them. Our logistics are thinning. And I… I'm not certain whether victory still exists in the dictionary of our fate today."
"Oh, Brother…" he whispered, his face creasing with a shared pain. "If only I could be there at your side. To carry half of this."
"Don't talk nonsense," I cut him off, quickly, trying to hide the tremor his words had caused. "You are the light of Tellus. Her true guardian. You… you deserve to wear this crown far more than I do, Hammond. Far more."
"No," he said, gentle but certain, his eyes glistening in the AR projection. "Never. That position was always yours, Brother. Always."
I could not answer. I could only nod, slowly, and let my cynical smile dissolve into something weaker, something more human, that existed only for him.
"Defend Tellus, my brother," I finally said, my voice returning to its controlled register. "Protect her hope. Let me deal with the hell out here."
"May the stars stand with you, Brother," he answered, offering a small, feeling salute.
"And guard you, Hammond."
I cut the connection. His image dissolved, leaving a space on the bridge that felt suddenly colder, emptier, and heavier than before. The vibration of the cannons fell deeper. The wail of the sirens rose sharper. And on the holomap, that ocean of red points seemed to smile at me — reminding me of the inescapable reality: that two brothers, one in the middle of battle and one in the middle of a palace, were both fighting on different front lines — and both equally likely to lose.
The call ended, leaving a silence louder than any cannon blast. I crushed the remains of that warmth inside my skull, compressed it into fuel for one last act of will. I closed my eyes — only a fraction of a second — and when I opened them, the world had changed. Every doubt, every weakness, I had buried beneath layers of ice that nothing could penetrate. My gaze was now a sword that had been re-forged: calm, cold, and ready to shatter rather than yield. The twin Aarden sisters witnessed this metamorphosis; they saw how the conversation with Hammond had transformed me not into something lesser, but into something more… final.
"Adler," Elegantia whispered, her voice like a thread of silk in a field of rusted iron.
"Adler," Gladianna followed, with the same warmth, though harder, more ready.
"It seems our time is indeed not much longer, Ele. Anna." The cynical smile that surfaced this time was not for the enemy, not for the Council, but for the protagonist of this tragedy: myself. How pathetic, something hammered in my chest. Is my entire life only a prologue drawn out too long for an Imperium that has forgotten how to rise? I was born not to lead a resurrection, but to lead its funeral procession. A cosmic joke of the most merciless kind.
"But we will stay here, Adler. Always." Elegantia took my arm, her grip surprisingly strong.
"We will not leave. The ground on which you stand — that is where we will die," Gladianna completed, her eyes unblinking. An oath harder than steel.
And strangely, amid the despair that had been moving in to swallow me, their words became an antidote. An odd calm descended — like snow falling in the middle of a battle — and draped itself over me. I smiled at them: not a cynical smile, not a prince's smile, but Adler's true smile, the one that was fragile and honest and full of gratitude. "Thank you," I murmured, and those two words felt lighter than every speech and command I had ever given.
Then I turned away from the holomap. My gaze passed through the observation dome and fell directly on the battlefield. Out there, in the dark decorated with the flowers of destruction, I saw our future. Every explosion was a headstone. Every shattered ship, an epitaph. This silent and indifferent expanse would become our cathedral of death, with the stars as candles that would never be extinguished.
I drew a deep breath, and as I let it out, the voice that emerged was no longer wholly my own — it was the voice of the entire history of the Imperium Telluris, speaking through the mouth of its last crown prince.
"Hear me — all hands!" My voice resonated, filling every corner of the Magnus II. "This is no longer a strategy. It is a decision. A final order from Adler Vinculum Magnus Telluris, Crown Prince — and perhaps the last one to bear that title. We will not retreat. We will not surrender. Our bodies may be shattered, our blood may dry, our iron may melt — but our souls, our loyalty, will burn in this place forever. I command you: do not fight to win. Fight to ensure that our story will be remembered. Fight to your last breath, and make this expanse the greatest monument to all who ever dared betray the Imperium!"
A silence that hammered — then the entire bridge erupted, a hundred voices merging into one giant sound:
"WITH YOU, YOUR HIGHNESS! LONG LIVE THE IMPERIUM! DEATH TO THE REBELS!"
The spirit was real, burning like fire in every crew member's eyes. Fear had transformed into desperate and magnificent courage.
"Good!" I called out, a bitter pride flowing through my chest. "Now — as they close on us, receive them with everything we have. Deploy all fighter squadrons. Let our last wings write a poem of death across the star-filled sky!"
"Ready, Commander! All squadrons — launch! For the Imperium! For Tellus!"
From the vast hangars in the belly of the Magnus II, dozens of fighters shot out like silver arrows loosed from death's own bow. They scattered into the dark, engines screaming, forming elegant formations before diving into the storm of iron and fire. They were the final melody of our symphony — swift, beautiful, and fleeting.
And I stood on the bridge, attended by two women who represented two sides of my life: softness and strength. Watching the rebel fleet approach like an endless black tide.
A thin smile returned.
Very well, I thought. If this is the end, then let us make an end worth telling.
• • •
The space that had been silent and indifferent — adorned only by the uncaring flicker of stars — had become a canvas of apocalypse. Vast explosions bloomed in every direction like enormous fireworks, flowering and falling in seconds. Debris from shattered hulls — twisted iron, torn solar panels, bodies drifting in eternal sleep — scattered like confetti at a celebration no one had agreed to attend.
The Magnus II thundered at the centre of the chaos, a fortress besieged but still snarling. From behind a communications panel, I called one of my best pilots.
"Geo — how does it look out there?" My voice was flat, as always, but there was a small silence underneath it I couldn't completely hide.
From the other side, after a brief crackle of static, came a voice I could never quite determine was serious or joking. "Commander Adler! Everything's secure… very secure. So secure I'm almost bored, surrounded by laser fire and missiles streaking past." George, with his perpetually disordered brown hair under his helmet, was almost certainly grinning. In the background, the roar of jet engines and the percussion of weapons fire contradicted every word of "secure" he had spoken.
"Your words contradict the facts, Geo," I replied, nearly smiling.
"Well… that's always been me, hasn't it? Always the exception to the rule." For a moment, his tone changed — dropping lower, sharper, yet still wrapped in his habitual lightness. "And it rather looks like you've made your peace with dying today, hasn't it, friend?"
I said nothing. The question hung between us, crossing millions of kilometres and a curtain of gunfire. Seconds passed that felt like light-years. At last, I answered with an honesty I rarely gave anyone:
"I don't know, Geo. We'll see where the wind of this war carries us."
Silence again. Then my voice hardened, returning to commander. "Enough. Back to the field. As leader of the Imperium's elite squadron, your assignment: eliminate as many enemy fighters as possible. Don't disappoint me."
Without waiting for an answer, I cut the line.
Out there, in the cockpit of his state-of-the-art Gladius fighter, George listened to the hiss of the dead channel, then grinned at his co-pilot. "Aye aye, Commander," he murmured, well aware Adler could no longer hear. "Always firm, always cold. But underneath that — he's afraid too. Just like the rest of us."
He turned to the side, to the co-pilot's seat where Silver sat with his characteristic stillness. The man with the legendary silver hair, who had always been his shadow through every engagement, only raised an eyebrow.
"Hey, Silver," George began, his voice light again. "What do you think — if this expanse becomes our graveyard? Rather original, isn't it? Not earth, not ocean, but a cold sweep of stars. I can already picture our headstones: 'Here lies George, who died of boredom in the middle of a battle.'"
Silver snorted — a sound that, between the two of them, counted as laughter. "Hah. Funny. A grave in space. You can always find the joke in death, George." He adjusted the controls, evading a sudden burst of laser fire. "But this time, maybe that joke becomes real."
"Always the pessimist, Silver. That's why they call us 'Rust and Steel' — you're the rust, corroded by taking everything too seriously; I'm the steel, because nothing bothers me." George laughed, then pulled the throttle full, plunging into the vortex of the fight. "Come on — let's show these rebels that rust and steel together still make a very sharp blade!"
Their Gladius fighters shot forward, merging with the chaos, trailing light and smoke — two figures, brown-haired and silver, writing their names in fire across the dark canvas of war.
• • •
The battle had become organized hell. Space that minutes ago had been a black canvas was now covered in scrawlings of fire and torn iron. Thousands of cannons from both sides were screaming at each other in the language of destruction — pure tungsten punching through the void, their passage traceable only as ghost-lines on sensors. Ships from both fleets — loyalist and rebel — fell one by one like dead leaves in a cosmic autumn. Their explosions were brief flowers that bloomed and died, leaving debris that would orbit the stars as permanent headstones.
From the noise of reports and shouting, one voice managed to penetrate my concentration. "Commander — damage assessment!" An officer with an ashen face stared at me. "Our fleet… only a quarter remains, sir. Five hundred ships. Most have sustained heavy damage. We've lost two-thirds of our strength."
Five hundred. From two thousand.
The number hung in the air, cold and indisputable.
I did not answer immediately. My gaze moved instead to the prow of the Magnus II, to the two enormous muzzles of the Lance of Magnus which had just dimmed after their last discharge. A faint vibration was still perceptible from deep in the ship — vibration born from a fusion reactor the size of a small city, still singing its deep and thunderous note. Every time the Lance spoke, it drew a long breath from the heart of this ship, converting pure energy into a blade of light that could cleave shields as though they were made of wet paper.
And it was in that moment that the understanding struck me, sharper than any damage report: the Magnus II was not merely a warship. It was a cathedral — an enormous cathedral filled not with sacred statues or painted angels, but with its own altars: railgun batteries aimed at the stars, plasma launchers holding artificial suns, and a thousand tunnels of death stretching the full length of her hull.
Every corner of her was a prayer offered to war. Every shudder of her reactor, a victory hymn slowly becoming a requiem.
This is the greatest house of worship I have ever built, I thought, my eyes still fixed on her prow. And now, within her, we will all become the sacrifice.
"Commander?" the officer's voice came again, uncertain.
I shifted my gaze and met his with a facade that remained intact. "Note it," I said, the voice of iron dragged across stone. "And order all ships still capable of movement to concentrate on a single point. If we are going to die, we are going to die leaving the deepest wound possible in the body of the enemy."
Outside, space continued to thunder in its silence. And the Magnus II — my cathedral of destruction — held her ground at the eye of the storm: a monument not yet ready to fall, though she knew the end was already in front of her.
• • •
The chaos had reached its apex. On the tactical screen, our green points grew ever thinner while the red ocean seemed to know no ebb. But what was most gripping was not the numbers — it was what filled the observation dome.
A colossal shadow had begun to occupy the horizon. The rebel flagship — a steel monster the size of a mountain — advanced with the confidence of a killer who knows its prey is cornered. Behind it, an escort of battlecruisers followed like wolves prepared to tear.
"Commander!" the navigation officer called out, his voice nearly breaking. "Their command vessel — range now one thousand kilometres and closing!"
I looked out through the glass that reflected my own cold face back at me. Out there, in the dark lit by explosions, the ship advanced. Her iron gleamed with reflected fire from the dying ships around her. She came like a death-angel in no hurry — savouring every second of the fear she planted.
"All hands," my voice emerged — not loud, but spreading to every corner of the bridge with an undeniable gravity. "Receive them with every fire we possess. Every cannon, every missile, every remaining grain of tungsten — ignite all of it. And… pay our final respects. To death, which will come for each of us very soon."
"Ready, Commander!" they answered as one, but I could hear the tremor underneath. I looked at their faces — pale, slick with cold sweat, eyes wide and holding screams that had not been released. They knew. We all knew. That we were not merely fighting — we were dancing on the edge of a razor blade that could open our throats at any moment.
My gaze moved to the two beside me — Elegantia and Gladianna. Both pale. Elegantia was biting her lower lip, fighting to hold steady while her fingers trembled. Gladianna, who was usually as unyielding as steel, now looked like a soldier feeling the true cold of a real battlefield for the first time. Without words, they pressed close, pushing their bodies against my sides — not as advisor and guard, but as two women who were equally afraid, equally searching for one last warmth.
And I — I admitted this to myself, in the most private room of my heart — I was afraid too. Not afraid of dying; that had long since become familiar. But afraid of the moment when this facade would finally collapse, and they would see that their prince was only a boy who happened to be good at pretending. But I held still. Stayed stone. Because a commander must be the last hope, even when hope itself has already died.
"Fire."
One word. One order. And hell was unleashed.
The distance between the two flagships was now only tens of metres — in space combat, near enough for physical contact. We could see the detail of their hull, the rows of gaping cannons, perhaps even the shadows of crew behind small viewports. Then both sides fired simultaneously, as though the universe had staged the most savage close-range duel in its history.
The smaller cannons that had previously been secondary were now primary weapons. They hammered each other from this nearness, penetrating hulls, tearing deck after deck, transforming the interiors of both ships into boiling cauldrons of hell. Explosions rang in rapid succession, the vibrations drove into our bodies, and the bridge air filled with smoke and screams.
"TUT—TUT—TUT!"
The emergency alarm wailed in short rapid intervals — the universal language for: we are dying.
Around me, the crew was panicking. Their faces were white, their eyes wide — yet their hands still obeyed their training, still firing, still trying to hold on, even though every rational instinct was screaming to flee. They were men and women of courage, compelled by circumstance to become heroes.
And then I felt it.
Two grips, from left and right, seized my hands with ferocious tightness — as though if they let go they would be sucked into the void and never return. Elegantia and Gladianna — the Aarden twins — were leaning against me now not as subordinates, but as two souls who feared losing the one anchor left to them in the storm.
Their faces were pale, their eyes wet, their bodies shaking. They revealed a vulnerability they had always concealed behind intelligence and composure. And in their fierce grip, I felt something stronger than fear: a trust. That as long as these hands could still hold mine, as long as I was still standing between them, perhaps — only perhaps — we could pass through this together.
I didn't answer their grip with words. Only with a counter-pressure equally fierce. A secret code that only the three of us understood: I am here. We are not alone.
Outside, the ships kept fighting. The fire kept consuming iron. The alarms kept wailing. But within the small circle we had made, where two hands gripped one prince's hand, there was a different silence — a silence that said:
If this is the end, at least we will fall together.
• • •
In the middle of the still-raging hell, with our cannons still trading fire and tungsten, two calls came in simultaneously — a cruel irony at the very edge of death.
"Commander, urgent call —"
I had almost ordered them to reject it. But before those words could leave my mouth, a voice from Tellus had already filled the entire bridge — not through my private holomap, but through the ship-wide speakers, forcing every soul who still breathed on board to hear what was coming.
"Brother."
Hammond's voice. But not the Hammond I knew. This was a voice that had broken, trembling on the edge of a chasm. And before I could respond — before I could prepare myself — it struck me with three words that changed everything:
"Tellus has fallen."
Three syllables. Fifteen letters. And the world — the small world I had still been trying to defend with nails and teeth — stopped turning.
The bridge froze. A hundred hands that had been working controls and screens became statues, mute and motionless. Even the thunder of battle outside seemed to quiet, as if the universe itself were drawing one long breath before delivering the final blow.
"Brother… do you hear me? Broth—" the call kept coming, growing more panicked, more desperate. I stood motionless. My mouth opened, but no sound came. My mind — which had until now been the most reliable war-engine I owned — had seized completely.
Until finally, his shout tore through the silence:
"ADLER!"
"Yes… Hammond…" My voice emerged, and I heard in it how fragile it had become — like iron beginning to melt, like steel developing its first cracks.
"Tellus has fallen! I repeat — Tellus has fallen! The Imperial Palace — they have it surrounded! They're everywhere, Brother!"
Reflexively, without realising it, I turned toward the observation dome. Toward Tellus. Toward home.
And there, in the distance lit by reflected battle-fire, I saw a sight I would never be able to forget: Tellus — the ancestral world, the heart of the Imperium — encircled by a fleet of warships I had never seen before. They drifted in orbit like a flock of vast vultures, ready to strip to the bone whatever remained.
Were they the rebels'? The stupid question surfaced — and I despised myself for it immediately. Of course they were. Who else?
Before I had processed even half of it, my private comm crackled. George's voice — without sarcasm, without banter, without the casual ease that normally dressed every word he spoke. Only the flat voice of a soldier reporting a death:
"Commander… enemy reinforcements have arrived. Seven hundred warships. Hundreds of fighters."
Salt on the wound. Poison on the blood.
And through the ship-wide speakers, Hammond's voice returned — closer now, more real — and in the background, the sound of gunfire and explosions was so clear, so near, it seemed I could feel the vibration in my bones.
"Brother… whether this is my last request or not… please… live. Live longer than me."
The gunfire grew louder. The explosions more frequent. Hammond kept speaking, but his words were beginning to drown beneath the approaching roar of death.
"Please… live. However you must…"
I felt myself crack. Like a steel beam that had borne too much pressure for too long, until finally — a low groan — the first hairline fractures began to show.
How do I reach him? My mind ran fast, searching for solutions amid the chaos. Could an emergency pod be fired in time? Was there any way to get to him?
Around me, the crew was still. They stared at me, waiting, hoping their prince could still perform some miracle. But I had no miracles. I had only a desperation I was trying to hide.
"Adler."
That voice — two voices, merged into one — pierced my ear. Elegantia and Gladianna, gripping my hands tighter, forcing me back. Their faces were panicked, but behind the panic was control, a strength they were lending me without being asked.
I returned. Once more, I returned.
"Hammond," I called through the comm, the voice I forced into steadiness — not a commander's calm, but the calm of someone who has lost everything and keeps moving only from habit. "How serious is the situation on Tellus?"
A pause. Then his answer came, like a gentle death sentence:
"No hope, Brother. There are too many of them. Tanks, artillery, and… orbital bombardment from their ships. Tellus has fallen. Truly fallen."
I wanted to shout. I wanted to refuse it. But no words could come.
"Such a shame, Brother," he continued, and in the middle of all that horror, his voice was warm — warm like the sun of Tellus I remembered from childhood. "I never got to see you take the throne."
"Don't joke, Hammond!" I snapped, harder than I meant.
But he only gave a small laugh — a bitter laugh, the laugh of a man who knows this is the last conversation. "Keep living, Brother. However you must. I… I love you. I am proud to be your brother."
His breathing was audible for a moment. Then:
"Goodbye, Brother."
A massive explosion. A deafening roar. And after that… only silence.
The call severed.
And my heart — the heart I had always prided myself was the most indestructible war machine I owned — stopped beating. Perhaps only for a few seconds. Perhaps longer. I didn't know. The only thing I felt was time halting, the vibration of the cannons disappearing, and the world collapsing inside my head.
"So… is this the end?" I murmured to myself, in a voice I did not recognise. "The final collapse of old steel? The end of the Imperium? The end… of me?"
A faint sound began to penetrate the silence. Ele. Calling my name. Again and again. Like a song from the world of the living.
I returned. Once more, I returned.
"Geo," I called through the comm, a voice I forced into composure — not the composure of a commander, but the composure of someone who has lost everything and moves only from the inertia of habit.
"Yes, Commander?"
No sarcasm. No banter. Only readiness to receive whatever order came — even if that order were suicide.
"Bring all fighter squadrons back to the hangars. All of them. Without exception."
A pause. Then: "Understood, Commander."
I cut the line. The vibration of cannons was still perceptible through the soles of my feet. Shots still fired outside. But I had already made my decision.
I turned — releasing Ele's hand and Anna's hand, releasing the only warmth that remained — and walked slowly toward the old man standing straight in the corner of the bridge. Admiral Carl Aarden. The twins' father. A veteran who had seen more war than the years of my life.
"Admiral," I said, voice flat.
"Yes, Commander?"
"Take command." I paused, holding his old and knowing eyes. "Once all squadrons are recovered — order every remaining ship to withdraw. Including the Magnus II. Wherever — I don't care, even if it means leaving the galaxy entirely. Save what can be saved."
He looked at me a long time. Then nodded. "Understood, Commander."
Without another word, I left the bridge. Left them all. Stepped into the quiet corridor where only the sound of my own footsteps accompanied me.
Behind me, the war continued. But the war inside my chest was far more savage.
I who thought I was a genius, I thought bitterly. Who believed I could read every enemy movement. It turned out my experience was only a speck of dust in an ocean of true veterans. Those who have fought for decades, for centuries — they are the ones who know the meaning of defeat. I? I only learned it today.
Learned that being a prince does not mean you cannot be broken.
Learned that being a commander does not mean you can save everyone.
Learned that your brother can die, and you cannot do anything — except hear it through a speaker.
In the fifth year of the twentieth millennium, the Imperium Telluris — which had stood for twenty millennia, whose roots had touched thousands of stars, which had been home to billions of souls — finally collapsed.
Like a vast steel wall that had been silently eaten by rust for centuries. From outside, it had still appeared mighty. But within, it had already rotted — ready to fall from a single decisive blow.
And that blow came today.
From the hands of its own children.
The Imperium Telluris was dead.
And I, Adler Telluris, was the crown prince without a crown, the heir without an inheritance, the mute witness to the greatest collapse in galactic history.
But I was still alive.
As Hammond had asked.
I was still alive.
But to what end ?.