The heavy steel door didn't just breach—it disintegrated under a concentrated breach-charge, spraying jagged iron shrapnel into the smoke-choked air.
Before the smoke could even clear, four Iron Guard shock-troopers poured through the gap. Black composite armor, heavy tower shields, and high-yield pulse carbines locked onto the chamber.
TARGETS ACQUIRED.
Mari didn't wait for their goddamn optics to settle.
"Kaelen!"
The giant didn't fucking hesitate. Without his hard-light shield, Kaelen was the shield. He charged straight into the kill zone, his kinetic hammer swinging in a vicious, horizontal arc.
BOOM.
The head of the hammer slammed into the lead trooper's tower shield. The kinetic impact force shattered the composite metal and sent two armored troopers flying backward, crushing them like tin cans against the reinforced stairwell wall.
Cassian stepped out from behind Kaelen's massive shoulder. His sidearm roared in a rhythmic, deadly cadence.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Armor-piercing rounds found the tiny exposed joint gaps at the third trooper's neck. Blood hit the wall; the trooper collapsed instantly.
The fourth trooper raised a heavy pulse rifle directly at Cassian’s chest.
Vesper materialized from the shadow of a fallen structural pillar. He didn't fire. He slammed his body into the trooper's flank, wrapping an arm around the helmet, and drove a combat blade straight up through the jawline seal.
CRUNCH.
"Eat shit," Vesper snarled into the dead man's ear.
Vesper dragged the limp corpse down, instantly unholstering the trooper’s secondary plasma grenade. He pulled the pin with his teeth and tossed it down the stairwell into the oncoming reinforced squad.
"Fire in the fucking hole!"
BOOOOOOM.
The stairwell shuddered as superheated plasma consumed the lower landing. Screams cut short under the muffled detonation.
"Clear!" Vesper wiped a smear of visor fluid from his cheek, grinning dark and feral through the ash. "That's five. Who's counting?"
"Focus," Mari commanded, stepping over the burning debris. She picked up a fallen pulse carbine, checking the energy cell with a practiced snap. Full charge. "That was just the breach team. The main drop-pod landed on the lower eastern landing pad."
Cassian moved alongside her, his shoulder brushing hers as he swapped his empty magazine for fresh Guard munitions. The heat radiating off him was grounded, absolute.
"They brought a regional shuttle to transport the assault wave," Cassian said, his dark eyes scanning the burning sky outside the shattered wall. "It's sitting on that pad right now. Engines hot."
Mari looked toward the platform jutting out over the abyss of Sector 9. Through the rain of fire and falling drop-pods, a sleek, heavily armored Hegemony boarding shuttle hovered just off the ledge, its side ramps lowered as more troopers prepared to disgorge.
"That's our fucking ride to the Citadel," Mari said.
Kaelen hefted his hammer onto his shoulder, armor sparking violently. "We have to cross two hundred yards of open scaffolding under orbital fire."
Vesper checked his twin pistols, racking the slides simultaneously. "Sounds like a Tuesday. Who wants to drive?"
"I'll drive," Mari snapped, a cold, lethal smile breaking across her face for the first time. She primed the stolen pulse rifle. "Let's go take our ship, goddammit."
Mari led the charge, plunging through the ruined doorway and out onto the open steel scaffolding.
The wind howled through the high-altitude abyss of Sector 9, carrying the stench of ozone, burning fuel, and incoming storm clouds. Two hundred yards ahead, the Hegemony boarding shuttle hovered over the landing pad, its twin thrusters glowing a violent vector-blue. Heavy drop-pods continued to slam into the metal decks around them like meteors, disgorging waves of Iron Guard troopers.
"Suppressing fire!" Cassian roared.
He planted his boots and opened up with his captured carbine. The sharp, rhythmic crack-crack-crack of heavy pulse fire stitched across the platform, driving back a squad of troopers attempting to set up a tripod-mounted plasma cannon. Two went down instantly, their armor breaching in bursts of blue sparks.
"Move your asses!" Mari yelled.
She vaulted a low barrier, sprinting along a narrow catwalk suspended over empty air.
An Iron Guard sniper on an upper ledge locked a red targeting laser across her throat. Before the trigger could pull, Vesper fired a blind three-round volley over a stack of supply crates. The rounds slammed into the sniper's optical array, throwing him off the ledge into the swirling amber clouds below.
"Thanks!" Mari called out without breaking stride.
"You owe me a fucking drink on the Citadel!" Vesper hollered back, sliding behind cover as a hail of pulse rounds chewed into the deck at his feet.
A heavy shock-trooper stepped into Mari’s path, raising a riot shield and a crackling stun-baton.
Mari didn't slow down. She slid low under a swinging blow, driving her stolen pulse rifle directly into the joint of his knee. The plasma round detonated at point-blank range. The joint shattered, sending the trooper down on one knee.
As she slid past, Kaelen came up right behind her like an unstoppable battering ram. He caught the falling trooper by the throat, lifted him cleanly off his feet, and threw his heavy ass over the railing into the path of an oncoming drop-pod.
CRASH.
"Path clear!" Kaelen bellowed, his hammer swinging in a vicious arc that cleared three more guards off the boarding ramp of the shuttle.
Mari scrambled up the ramp into the shuttle’s pressurized troop bay.
Two Hegemony pilots in the cockpit spun around, drawing sidearms. Mari didn't give the bastards the chance. She raised her carbine and put two rounds straight through the reinforced glass partition, dropping both pilots into the controls.
The shuttle bucked violently as the automated flight systems struggled to compensate.
Cassian slammed onto the ramp behind her, grabbing the frame to haul himself inside, followed closely by Vesper and Kaelen.
"Ramp up!" Cassian shouted.
Mari lunged into the pilot’s seat, shoving the dead officer aside. Her scorched, acid-scarred hands flew across the flight console, instantly overriding the Hegemony command locks with the hard-logic bypass codes she’d memorized over a hundred failed cycles.
FLIGHT CONTROLS OVERRIDDEN. TARGET: ORBITAL CITADEL.
"Hold the fuck on!" Mari yelled, pulling the heavy thruster levers back.
The boarding ramp slammed shut just as a barrage of Guard fire rattled against the exterior hull. The shuttle's twin vector-thrusters roared to life, blasting superheated plasma back onto the landing pad and disintegrating the remaining troopers.
The ship shot upward, tearing through the cloud layer and shooting straight into the black void of space toward the glowing, massive ring of the Citadel above.
Vesper slumped against the interior bulkhead, breathing heavily, a bloody, feral grin plastered across his face. "Not bad for a stolen piece of shit."
Cassian walked up behind Mari’s chair, resting a hand heavily on her shoulder. His grip was tight, steady, and warm.
Mari leaned back into his touch for a fraction of a second, her eyes locked on the looming space station in the viewport.
"Vance is waiting," Mari said, her voice dropping into an absolute, lethal chill. "Let's go end this motherfucker."
The shuttle breached the atmosphere, tearing through the cloud cover and launching into the pitch-black abyss of space. Ahead, the Orbital Citadel hung like a crown of rusted iron, surrounded by the flashing warning lights of an alerted fleet.
Mari pushed the sub-light engines to their absolute limit. The console shrieked with proximity alarms as automated defense turrets swung toward their stolen vessel, but she didn't hit the goddamn brakes. She aimed straight for the primary hangar bay.
"Brace your shit!" Mari yelled.
She locked the thrusters and slammed the shuttle through the hangar’s magnetic pressure barrier.
The ship skidded violently across the polished steel deck of the Citadel, shearing off its left wing against a parked fighter before crashing to a violent halt against the interior bulkhead. Smoke filled the bay as sparks rained down from the shattered ceiling.
Silence settled over the compartment for three heartbeats.
Then, the emergency override on the shuttle door hissed. The ramp dropped.
Mari stepped out into the smoke, her pulse rifle resting against her shoulder. Cassian was at her left, sidearm raised. Kaelen stepped to her right, kinetic hammer sparking with raw kinetic energy. Vesper brought up the rear, twin pistols ready, a dark, fearless grin on his face.
Across the massive hangar deck, hundreds of Hegemony alarms blared in unison. Red warning lights bathed the four of them in blood-colored glare.
No more simulations. No more resets. No more dying in the dark.
Mari locked her eyes on the massive blast doors leading directly to the Citadel's command deck—and High Commander Vance.
"Let's finish it," Mari said.
Together, the four of them walked out into the light.