Cason raised his weapon just in time.
A Vorax slammed into him hard enough to crack the floor beneath his boots. Its enormous mandibles snapped shut where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier, spraying molten residue across the barrier behind him.
He twisted with the impact, drove his blade upward, and buried it beneath the creature's armored jaw.
The Vorax convulsed.
Cason kicked it away.
It hit the ground, skidded across the red sand, and dissolved into a steaming heap of crimson biological matter.
He barely had time to breathe before three more came charging through the smoke.
"Left!"
Cason pivoted.
A blade of condensed energy tore through the creature's forelimb. The second lunged over it. Cason ducked, feeling the rush of hot air pass over his helmet, then drove his elbow into its underside.
The impact barely slowed it.
"Damn it!"
He caught the creature by the mandible and redirected its momentum, hurling it sideways into another Vorax.
Both collided.
The third was already on him.
Cason blocked.
The force drove him backward several meters.
His boots screamed against the sand.
His arms trembled.
And for the first time since entering the Tower, Cason felt something he hated admitting.
He was tired.
Not ordinary tired.
Not the kind solved by sleep, food, or a few hours in the training gym.
His entire body felt like it had been wrung dry.
Two days of nonstop battle.
The Vorax.
The Tower's bootcamp is a life-and-death mission.
Every creature they'd killed.
Every time he'd forced his body beyond what it wanted to give.
It was all catching up with him now.
His muscles burned beneath his armor. His lungs felt raw. Even drawing breath had become an act of conscious effort.
And the Crimson Vorax weren't slowing down.
They never did.
The warning appeared across Cason's visor in violent red.
PLASMA DEFENSE SHIELD: 04:03 REMAINING
"Captain! We can't hold on much longer!"
Conrad's voice cracked through the squad's communication channel, distorted beneath layers of static and the deafening insectile roar outside.
"Plasma defense shield is about to dissipate in four minutes!"
Cason heard him.
He simply didn't answer.
For several seconds, all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing.
Heavy.
Uneven.
Too slow.
His armored chest rose and fell beneath the scorched combat plating while heat crawled along his spine. Sweat had gathered beneath his mask despite the suit's cooling system, tiny droplets tracing paths down his temples before disappearing beneath his collar.
He wiped one away with the back of his gauntlet.
The gesture felt strangely ordinary.
The battlefield around him was anything but.
Around Cason's squad, the desert had been transformed into a killing ground.
Craters pockmarked the red soil where plasma weapons had struck. Scorched fragments of drones lay half-buried beneath the dust, their frames warped by heat. Pools of crimson Vorax blood steamed where it had splattered across the ground, releasing a bitter chemical stench that mixed with ozone and burned flesh.
And everywhere he looked, there were bugs.
Hundreds of them.
Maybe thousands.
Their bodies were enormous—some nearly the size of armored vehicles—with segmented exoskeletons that reflected the squad's weapons fire in greasy crimson flashes. Six hooked limbs scraped against the floor, producing a shriek that made Cason's teeth ache.
The worst part wasn't their size.
It was their persistence.
They didn't retreat.
They didn't hesitate.
They simply kept advancing.
Like the Tower itself had decided that exhaustion was a weakness worth exploiting.
"Captain!"
Another voice erupted over the comm.
Cason finally looked up.
His squad was falling apart.
Conrad stood near the left flank, his plasma rifle braced against his shoulder as he fired controlled bursts into the approaching swarm. The barrel of his weapon glowed white from accumulated heat.
Trevor was beside him, directing the remaining drones with increasingly frantic commands.
Behind them, three squad members had collapsed to one knee.
Another was lying against a damaged section of barrier, breathing heavily while his armor attempted to seal a crack across his abdomen.
The drones were worse.
Four more machines spasmed as crimson residue ate through their protective shielding. Their metallic bodies warped, melted, and collapsed into glowing puddles.
The operators controlling them were paying the price.
Their energy reserves were almost gone.
Every drone required a continuous stream of energy to maintain its combat functions, and every second of this battle had drained them further.
Cason looked at the battlefield.
Then at the barrier's defense timer.
03:51
His jaw tightened.
Three drones remained.
No.
Two.
One of them suddenly shrieked across the battlefield before a crimson mass crashed into it.
The drone disappeared beneath several enormous limbs.
Its shield flared.
Then shattered.
"Damn it!"
Trevor staggered backward as the feedback struck his neural interface.
Another drone followed.
Then another.
Cason's jaw tightened.
Every destroyed drone meant another chunk of energy gone from the squad.
Every Vorax they killed left behind corrosive biological residue that ate through equipment and defensive systems.
"Captain! Watch out!"
Another squad member shouted.
The plasma shield buckled.
Cason turned.
A massive Vorax had slammed itself against the barrier.
The entire dome flexed inward.
For one terrible second, Cason could see the creature's distorted face through the plasma shield—a collection of mandibles and black sensory pits arranged into something almost skull-like.
It screamed.
The sound punched through the battlefield.
Cason's helmet dampeners automatically engaged.
They weren't enough.
The roar still crawled into his bones.
"Hold the line!" Cason shouted.
He raised his weapon.
The interface ignited across his vision.
He didn't bother with finesse.
His weapon transformed in his hands, its energy lattice collapsing into a dense core of electromagnetic force before unfolding into the curved silhouette of his trademark black plasma scythe. Black energy crawled along its crescent blade, humming with enough power to make the air tremble.
Cason lunged.
The Vorax swung.
He ducked.
The limb passed over his head with enough force to crack the stone behind him.
He stepped inside its reach.
One slash.
The blade carved through the creature's armored abdomen.
Black-red fluid exploded across the ground.
The Vorax shrieked.
Cason drove the blade upward.
Its head split open.
The creature collapsed.
"Four thousand and thirty-one. But hey, who's counting?"
Cason joked over the comms. He forced the humor into his voice, masking the exhaustion gnawing at him. His squad didn't need to hear how bad things were. They needed their captain to sound like everything was still under control.
Another came.
Cason spun.
The creature's claw caught his shoulder.
His armor screamed.
He flew sideways and crashed into the dirt.
Pain detonated across his ribs.
For a moment, he couldn't breathe.
Then he heard Conrad.
"Captain!"
Cason rolled.
A claw came down where his head had been.
The impact threw red dust into the air.
He pushed himself upright.
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine."
"I didn't ask how I look."
"You look like shit."
Cason stared at him.
Conrad stared back.
A beat passed.
"Thank you for the medical assessment."
"Anytime, Captain."
Another Vorax charged.
Cason sighed.
"Damn bugs."
He launched himself forward.
The battle resumed.
But this time, Cason could feel something changing.
Not in the Vorax.
In himself.
His movements were slowing.
His breathing was becoming ragged.
His reactions weren't as sharp as they had been twenty minutes ago.
The difference was tiny.
A fraction of a second.
A missed angle.
A delayed step.
But in a fight like this, fractions of a second were the distance between killing something and becoming something's lunch.
The shield flickered again.
03:11.
Captain," Conrad said quietly.
Cason knew what was coming.
"Don't."
"We can't hold them."
"I said don't."
"Captain—"
"I know!"
His voice thundered through the communication channel.
Silence followed.
Cason clenched his jaw.
He hated this.
He hated bugs.
He hated being cornered.
Most of all, he hated situations where the only available solution was something he had deliberately promised himself he wouldn't use.
He stared at the swarm.
"Damn it," he muttered. "This is why I hate bugs."
One more of the larger Vorax charged.
Cason moved before he consciously decided to.
His blade flashed.
The creature's front limbs were severed in a single sweeping strike. It stumbled, screeching, and Cason drove his weapon through the center of its skull.
The blade emerged from the back of its head dripping black-red fluid.
The corpse collapsed.
Cason kicked it aside.
Another Vorax immediately climbed over it.
"Damn it!"
He charged at it.
The creature's head exploded.
Three more crawled through the opening.
Cason stared at them.
"You've got to be kidding me."
The Vorax shrieked.
He raised his plasma weapon.
"Captain!"
Conrad's voice returned.
"Two minutes until the western shield section collapses!"
Cason's eyes narrowed.
The western section.
Then the northern one.
Then the rest.
Once the plasma shield failed, the Vorax wouldn't need to fight their way through the defensive perimeter.
They would simply overwhelm it.
The squad would be buried beneath thousands of them.