The Lunar Propulsion Core was a cavernous, mechanical hellscape, less a room than the dark underbelly of a shattered star-cruiser. A dizzying labyrinth of suspended, rusted iron catwalks crisscrossed over a bottomless abyss. In the deeper sections, guardrails vanished, leaving a sheer drop into the violently pulsing violet glow of the moon's primary thrusters miles below.
At the center of a multi-branching suspension bridge sat the colossal command console.
Encased in his rusted iron chassis, Kael stood before it, his gauntlet hovering over the brass lever of the manual override.
"To trigger it manually," Kael muttered, his pneumatics hissing in the cold air, "I just have to hold the switch until the orbital lock completely fails."
"Kael... wait."
Kael turned his helmet toward the edge of the catwalk.
Darian stood near an intersection, chest heaving in ragged gasps. A thin trail of blood leaked from his nose, and his cracked ribs screamed with every inhalation. The polished PR mask he had worn his entire life was gone, replaced by unfiltered terror.
"Darian, we don't have time," Kael said, his voice tense through the external speakers. He didn't sound robotic; he sounded like a teenager trying very hard to pretend he wasn't about to die. "The prisoners are breaking the surface. I have to pull it."
"No, you don't," Darian pleaded, stepping onto the central bridge with his hands raised. "Just wait a second. Let's think about this. We can rig the console and run—"
"We can't! Jax said the sequence cancels if we let go," Kael shot back, his metal faceplate twitching with an agitated spasm. "Commander Varrus gave the final order. We're the failsafe. If we don't drop this moon right now, that warlord gets out and the Expanse burns."
"I don't care about the order!" Darian yelled, tears of panic stinging his eyes. He stepped closer, the grating trembling beneath his boots. "It's insane to kill ourselves because some corporate suit lightyears away said the math works out!"
"It's not just math, it's our job!" Kael pointed a metal finger at him. "I shouldn't have to explain this to you. You're supposed to be the Hero of POND!"
"I am not throwing my life away in a hole for a corporate slogan!" Darian snapped.
Bypassing his kinetic mag-blade, he ripped the stun baton from his hip. It ignited with a sharp crackle, throwing violent blue arcs into the dim air.
He lunged.
Swinging with everything he had, Darian drove the electrified tip directly into Kael's chest plate.
CRACK.
Blinding sparks erupted over the chassis as thousands of volts discharged into the armor.
Darian stood panting, gripping the smoking baton.
Kael didn't even flinch. He slowly lowered his helmet, looked at the baton pressed against his chest, and scoffed.
"Seriously?" Kael grunted. "That's all you've got? You're just panicking."
Before Darian could pull back, Kael backhanded him.
The metal gauntlet caught Darian in the shoulder, lifting him off his feet and hurling him across the suspension bridge. He crashed hard, his body bending over the railing as he stared upside down into the glowing abyss below.
He collapsed onto the grating, gasping, tasting fresh copper. Dark spots danced in his periphery.
"I have to do what I must," Kael said, boots clanking against the metal as he stalked forward. "You can't stop me."
Darian forced himself onto one knee. The cadet was a walking tank. His armor was insulated against the baton, and drawing a mag-blade in close quarters would be suicide.
Look for the seams. Look for the flaw.
Darian's eyes darted around the hazardous labyrinth. He remembered Toben complaining on the insertion skiff: His hydraulic micro-tremors are throwing off my sensor calibrations.
Kael was running his suit hot. His pneumatics were already over-pressurized from adrenaline. He wasn't a solid block of iron; he was a highly pressurized boiler walking a razor's edge. Darian didn't need to break through the armor. He needed to overload the system.
Kael lunged, closing the distance with terrifying velocity for a kid encased in fifteen hundred pounds of iron. He threw a right hook aimed at Darian's head.
Darian dropped to his knees, sliding across the grating.
Kael's fist sailed over his head and smashed into the coolant pipe behind him. The thick metal shrieked, denting inward with the force of a wrecking ball.
Using his sliding momentum, Darian scrambled away from the console, retreating deeper into the maze of exposed machinery.
"Stand still and do your job!" Kael roared, his boot thrusters flaring as he gave chase.
Darian sprinted down an offshoot catwalk, leading Kael toward a bank of archaic, high-voltage celestial generators pulsing near the outer wall. Thick, unshielded conduits ran directly overhead, glowing with the raw currents required to fire the thrusters.
Darian skidded to a halt at the edge of the platform and spun around, raising his smoking baton.
"You're right, Kael!" Darian wheezed, spitting a mouthful of blood into the abyss. "I'm not strong enough to break you. But you're too stubborn to realize you're already broken!"
Infuriated, Kael charged down the narrow catwalk, lowering his shoulder to crush Darian against the generators.
Darian waited until Kael was less than three feet away.
Ignoring the screaming pain in his ribs, he threw himself flat onto the grating, sliding directly between Kael's legs.
Kael's momentum was too great to correct. Realizing he'd missed, he threw his arms out, bracing against the generator bank to stop himself from pitching forward into the void.
Darian popped up instantly, stepping directly behind him.
"Your baseline pressure is too high!"
Instead of striking Kael, Darian swung his baton upward like a baseball bat. He aimed for the unshielded high-voltage conduit running right above Kael's head.
The electrified baton smashed into the glowing pipe.
It shattered.
A localized explosion of raw celestial voltage erupted from the ceiling. The massive surge arced violently, seeking the nearest conductive ground.
It found Kael's iron chassis.
The raw voltage slammed into the armor, and the cadet let out a digitized, agonized roar. The influx of unstable electricity didn't just scramble his suit's dampeners—it violently detonated the pressurized locking clamps securing his chest and helmet.
With a deafening shriek, the front plating blew outward, clattering over the edge of the catwalk and disappearing into the abyss.
Thick black smoke poured from the open cockpit.
Darian stood slowly, lowering his baton. His breath caught in his throat.
Suspended inside the imposing shell was the real Kael.
Stripped of his mechanical bulk, he wasn't a juggernaut; he was small—noticeably shorter and slighter than Darian. His skin was slick with sweat, eyes wide with shock as he hung awkwardly in the complex web of pilot harnesses. The impenetrable, zealous wall of Squad Five was just an insecure kid hiding inside a metal cage.
Kael coughed violently, tasting ash. His damaged armor sparked as the iron legs took an uncoordinated step backward. His heel slipped dangerously off the edge of the grating.
He looked up at Darian, who stood over him panting, eyes wide with desperate panic.
The initial shock on Kael's face slowly evaporated. As he stared at the wild terror in his teammate's eyes, a horrifying clarity washed over him. The unbreakable ideal of POND was a lie. The "Hero" he had worshipped, the flawless soldier he had sacrificed everything to emulate, was faker than the hollow iron suit Kael was currently trapped inside.
The fear in Kael's expression twisted into profound, visceral disgust.
He didn't reach out for help. He didn't stammer. He looked at Darian as if he were vermin.
"Look at you," Kael rasped. His real voice was small, stripped of the booming speakers, but it dripped with venom. "The great Hero of POND. You're a coward. You're nothing but a pathetic fraud."
Darian stared at him, his jaw tight. He looked at the boy whose fanatical devotion was a mirror Darian could no longer stand to look into.
"I'm not dying for a lie, Kael," Darian said quietly.
"You're a fake," Kael sneered, leaning back as if Darian's proximity made him sick. "You're nothing."
Darian stepped forward.
He raised his hands and shoved the iron chassis directly in the center of its exposed cockpit.
It was just enough.
The fifteen-hundred-pound suit tipped backward off the catwalk. Kael didn't scream or beg. He just stared with wide, revulsed eyes as he plummeted. Darian watched the sparking suit vanish into the pulsing violet glow miles below, swallowed completely by the void.
Darian stood alone on the edge, his chest heaving in the sudden quiet.
He unhooked his unignited mag-blade from his belt. Gripping the hilt, he smashed the heavy pommel directly into the brass lever, snapping it completely off its base. He ripped the underlying wiring out in a shower of sparks. The manual override was permanently disabled.
No one was dropping the moon today.