The interior of the tactical insertion skiff was colder than the vacuum of space outside its reinforced hull.
Squad 9 sat in a silence so thick it felt like it could shatter the bulkheads. Darian sat perfectly still in his jump seat, staring at the floor grating. The rust stain from the underground camp was still smeared across the pristine white plating of his chest—a permanent, oxidized brand of his betrayal.
He was isolated.
To his left, Zeri sat with her arms crossed tightly over her cracked ribs, deliberately angling her body toward the wall to keep him out of her peripheral vision. Ten minutes ago, when he'd offered her a med-stim, she had stared at his hand with such profound, hollow disgust that Darian had physically recoiled.
Across the narrow aisle, Ravion stood gripping a ceiling handle, his knuckles white beneath his gauntlets. His golden eyes were fixed on the skiff's blast doors, radiating a localized field of pure, lethal fury. He hadn't spoken a word to Darian since throwing him into the sludge.
Darian's chest tightened. I can fix this, he told himself, his fingers twitching toward the hilt of his mag-blade. I just need an opening. I take point. I take the hit. I do something heroic, and they'll see I'm still on their side.
At the front of the skiff, Captain Halden stood with her arms crossed, watching the orbital telemetry. Her usual warm, big-sister exhaustion had been replaced by a terrifying, cold professionalism.
She turned her attention to the prisoner shackled to the bulkhead beside her. Lin Xia sat in her torn, pastel-peach blazer, wrists bound by heavy, glowing hard-light cuffs. When Commissioner Wei ordered the camp's execution, Halden had invoked a corporate requisition override, physically pulling Xia from the firing line by claiming she was their only topographical guide.
"You're sure about these coordinates, Xia?" Halden asked, her voice flat.
Xia looked up, her bright demeanor gone. "The Emperor hides his greatest shames on Gonggong. But you have no idea what Halvek is actually waking up."
"Halvek is a scientist," Instructor Jax rumbled, rolling an unlit match between his teeth. "We drop in quietly, secure the perimeter, and put a bullet in him before he accesses the vaults."
"He's not just accessing vaults," Xia pleaded, rattling her cuffs. "During the first great war, the Chiyou Dominion sent a beast to break the Expanse. A living weapon. The Court couldn't kill him, so they buried him in the zero-G maximum security wing. If Halvek releases General Taotie..."
From the back of the skiff, heavy pneumatic pistons hissed, interrupting her.
Squad 5 was strapped into the rear jump seats. Kael shifted, his rusted iron mech-plating grinding with agitated twitches.
Toben, Squad 5's data analyst, pushed his thick glasses up his nose, eyes fixed on a glowing datapad. "Kael, your hydraulic micro-tremors are throwing off my sensor calibrations. Lower your baseline pressure."
"My pressure is flawless," Kael snapped, his metal faceplate glitching with a spasm. "I am simply eager to crush the enemies of POND."
Deja kicked her boots onto the empty jump seat across from her, resting a massive heavy-ion thermal axe across her lap. She popped a piece of synthetic gum into her mouth and smirked. "He's just sweating because the gravity on this moon is supposed to be broken. If his suit loses power, metalhead here is gonna have to waddle around on his actual, stubby little legs."
"I am the unbreakable wall of Squad 5!" Kael roared, half-rising from his seat. "I will crush you!"
"Classic psychological overcompensation for vertical inadequacy," Toben noted clinically, not looking up from his screen. "Fascinating."
Boro, the towering, bull-like heavy gunner, let out a slow, rumbling grunt of agreement.
"Shut it, all of you," Halden barked, turning back to the telemetry. "Approaching the drop zone. Prepare for a stealth breach."
The skiff dropped through the dark, jagged canyons of the inverted moon. The ancient, black-jade prison complex hung upside down from the underside of the moon's crushed crust, suspended over the infinite abyss of space.
A massive explosion tore through the dark side of the moon. Debris showered silently into the void as red emergency lights flooded the skiff's interior.
"Thermal spikes!" Toben yelled, his fingers flying across his datapad. "Captain, the containment grid is failing! Multiple structural breaches detected!"
"He didn't just break in," Jax snarled, gripping the bulkhead. "He blew the cell doors."
"It's a full-scale riot," Toben confirmed, his voice pitching in panic. "They're already loose!"
"Stealth is off the table! Hot drop!" Halden roared as the skiff dove toward a shattered hangar bay. "Squads, weapons hot! Move!"
The skiff hit the deck plates hard. The blast doors slammed open, and pure anarchy flooded the hold.
The hangar was a slaughterhouse. Dozens of Heavenly Court Enforcers in black jade armor lay broken across the floor. Sirens wailed, flashing ancient, red seal-script warnings across the crumbling stone.
"Clear the ramp!" Ravion shouted, surging forward.
Darian drew his mag-blade, the kinetic edge igniting with a sharp shing. "I've got the left flank!" he yelled, sprinting forward to cover Ravion's blind spot. He needed to be the shield.
As Darian moved up, Ravion viciously shoved him backward with a shoulder. "Stay out of my way, coward," the prince snarled, charging into the fray alone.
Darian stumbled, his chest burning as a wave of escaped prisoners flooded the hangar. Some were political dissidents wearing the same tattered gray clothes as Xia's people, wielding scavenged Enforcer polearms. But mixed among them were nightmares: ancient, emaciated martial artists wrapped in rusted chains. Their eyes burned with madness, and they laughed hysterically as they tore through the remaining Enforcers with bare, bloodied hands.
The deep hum of the moon's artificial gravity generator stuttered.
A violent, sickening lurch ripped through the hangar. The gravity vanished.
"Zero-G!" Halden yelled, immediately engaging her boots' magnetic locks.
The battlefield shattered. Pooled blood drifted upward from the floor in grotesque, crimson spheres. Screaming prisoners lost their footing, floating helplessly into the air, while the ancient cultivators used the weightlessness to push off the walls, moving like terrifying, hyper-fast spiders.
A deranged prisoner with Daoist tattoos covering his face launched himself from the ceiling, a jagged piece of jade aimed directly at Zeri's blind spot. She was floating, her boots failing to magnetize in time.
"Zeri!" Darian shouted. This was his chance.
He kicked off a heavy stanchion, launching himself across the hangar. Intercepting the prisoner mid-flight, Darian drove his mag-blade through the man's chest before they crashed violently into the far bulkhead.
Darian panted, pushing the dead body away. He looked toward Zeri, waiting for the nod. The acknowledgment.
Zeri stabilized herself with a thruster burst, her eyes cold. "I didn't need your help," she spat, turning her back to fire at another target.
Squad 5 tore through the right flank. Kael was a mechanized wrecking ball, using his thrusters in short, brutal bursts to propel his heavy armor into the floating prisoners. Boro provided heavy suppression fire, while Toben called out structural weaknesses from the rear. Deja laughed, swinging her heavy-ion axe and using its massive kinetic recoil to effortlessly redirect her momentum through the air, cleaving through a line of corrupted martial artists.
"The maximum security wing is three levels down!" Toben yelled over the comms, dodging a floating chunk of debris. "The atmospheric seals are blown! We have to push through the central shaft!"
"Follow me!" Jax ordered, his cybernetic arms locking onto a heavy security door and violently tearing it off its hinges.
The two POND squads fought their way deeper into the inverted prison, descending into the dark as the architecture crumbled around them.
Miles beneath the chaotic slaughter of the hangar bays, the maximum security containment chamber was silent.
In the zero-gravity of the vast, dark room, shattered stasis pods leaked cryogenic fluid that floated like frozen stars. At the center of the chamber, massive chains forged of pure, condensed spiritual energy hung uselessly in the void.
They were already broken.
The beast was free.
It was a monstrosity of war. Standing over twelve feet tall, its flesh was interwoven with dark, crude iron plating. It didn't have a head; instead, its face was carved directly into its heavily muscled torso—two burning, furnace-like eyes and a massive, jagged maw spanning its stomach. It breathed with a heavy, wet rasp that vibrated through the silent chamber.
General Taotie. The Iron Beast of Chiyou.
Floating still among the debris before the towering warlord was a solitary figure.
Wearing an immaculate, tailored white coat entirely untouched by the dirt and blood of the prison, Dove reached out with a slender, gloved hand. Her features were obscured by a featureless porcelain mask, painted with a single, weeping red eye.
She didn't raise a weapon. She simply drifted closer, resting her hand against the rusted iron plating of the massive beast's chest. She stroked the metal, soothing the ancient, deranged warlord like a master calming a rabid dog.
"Doctor Halvek sends his regards," Dove purred, her smooth voice echoing with a chilling, harmonic distortion. "It is time to wake up."