The Pacific Ocean at 0300 hours was a void of endless black and churning foam.
High above the waves, the stolen Reclamation stealth transport hummed, its spatial-dampening thrusters keeping us invisible to conventional radar. Down below, rising out of the water like a mechanical leviathan, was Caelus’s offshore fortress—Aegis Station.
It was a gargantuan, three-tiered oil rig converted into a floating military stronghold, bristling with automated point-defense cannons and shielded by a shimmering, high-frequency energy grid.
Kyle adjusted his headset, leaning over the cockpit console. "Okay, bad news and worse news. Bad news: Aegis Station’s automated defense grid is running on a hardcoded, non-networked AI. I can't hack it from up here."
"Worse news?" Echo asked, standing in the open bay door with her street-sweeper slung across her chest, the sea wind whipping her dark hair.
"Worse news: according to the internal bio-sensors I can ping, Ryan and Luke's transponders are flashing red," Kyle said, tapping his display. "Sub-level two. They’ve got them in a flooded containment cell, and the execution timer is set for ten minutes."
"Ten minutes is plenty," I said, stepping up to the edge of the ramp.
I drew the Prime’s black star-metal broadsword. The moment my fingers wrapped around the leather hilt, the blade ignited with a deep, pulsing crimson-and-silver fire, casting harsh shadows across the transport's interior.
Lyra stretched her shoulders, her claws extending with a sharp metallic snick. "How are we landing? Quietly?"
Echo laughed, a dark, wild sound that got lost in the howl of the wind. "Have you met us?"
"We drop straight onto the lower catwalks," I said, my sovereign aura expanding in a protective dome around the four of us. "Echo, you take the primary turret deck. Lyra, clear the breach entry. Kyle, stay on the transport and give us air support the second I drop the barrier."
"Got it," Kyle said, gripping the flight controls. "Try not to sink the platform before I can land!"
I bent space beneath our feet.
BOOM.
The transport’s floor vanished, and we fell straight through the storm.
Three hundred feet of freefall ended in a blinding flash of silver spatial energy as we slammed onto the platform's steel grate deck, right past the automated turret perimeter. The impact shattered the concrete supports beneath us, sending four surrounding guards tumbling into the roaring sea below.
"Intruders on catwalk three!" a guard screamed through his helmet comms.
Echo didn't let him finish.
BOOM. CLICK-CLACK.
She blew him backward through a reinforced bulkhead door, racking her next shell before he even hit the water. "Door's open!"
We flooded into the sub-level corridors, moving like a synchronized storm of steel and fire. Without Caelus's spatial suppression field, my powers were absolute. Every turn in the hallway was a execution line—I folded space, appearing behind fireteams before their tactical HUDs could ping my location, the Prime's blade shearing through heavy armor like hot lead through grease.
Beside me, Lyra was a crimson blur, tearing through side-passages and ripping control panels off the walls to lock down security blast doors behind us.
We hit sub-level two with three minutes on the clock.
The heavy titanium doors to the containment grid were sealed tight, glowing with high-voltage warning lights. Beyond the reinforced glass window, the cell was already waist-deep in dark, electrified water.
Inside, Ryan and Luke were standing back-to-back on top of a submerged metal table. Ryan had his tactical jacket soaked, holding a makeshift wire to keep a secondary door jammed, while Luke was violently kicking a heavy security grate, swearing loudly enough to echo through the thick glass.
"Dammit, Luke, kick higher!" Ryan yelled, his voice muffled through the glass. "The charge is gonna blow the seal in two minutes!"
"I'm kicking as hard as I can, you idiot!" Luke barked back, wiping salt water out of his eyes. "Next time you say 'easy mercenary gig in international waters,' I'm shooting you in the knee!"
I stepped up to the glass.
Luke froze mid-kick, staring at me. Then his eyes drifted to Echo standing beside me, holding a smoking shotgun and grinning like a demon.
"Oh, great," Luke muttered, his shoulders slumping. "Now there's two of them. We're definitely hallucinating from the ozone."
"You guys need a ride, or are you enjoying the pool?" Echo called through the comm-panel.
Ryan snapped his head up, a mix of sheer relief and utter disbelief washing over his face. "Tiara?! How the hell did you find us?!"
"Kyle traced your transponders," I said coldly.
I raised the Prime’s broadsword, silver spatial energy spiraling down the length of the dark blade until the air around the door began to distort and crack.
"Stand back from the glass," I warned.
Ryan grabbed Luke by the tactical vest and hauled him toward the back wall.
I swung the blade in a single, horizontal arc.
CRACK-THOOM!
The four-inch-thick titanium blast door and reinforced glass didn't just break—they were instantly converted into a cloud of metallic dust. The trapped sea water exploded outward into the hallway, carrying Ryan and Luke along with it in a massive splash.
The two mercenaries hit the grating, coughing up water and catching their breath as the electrical arc sizzled out in the drain.
Ryan pushed himself up on his elbows, looking up at me, then at the massive star-metal broadsword in my hand, and finally at Echo.
"Okay," Ryan gasped, wiping his dripping face. "First off... thanks. Second off... what in the fresh hell happened while we were locked in here?"
Echo stepped forward, offering Ryan a hand and yanking him up off the floor with effortless strength.
"Long story short?" Echo smirked, handing him a sidearm she'd stripped off a dead guard outside. "The guy who hired you tried to turn us into a hive-mind clone army."
Luke pushed himself up, wringing out his tactical gloves and glaring at the gun in Ryan's hand. "And where is this silver-haired bastard now?"
"Top floor," I said, turning toward the central elevator shaft as the facility's heavy red alarm lights began to strobe. "In the command center."
Ryan racked the slide on the pistol Echo gave him, his eyes narrowing into cold, mercenary focus. "Well. He still owes us our end-of-contract payout."
Luke drew a heavy combat knife from his boot, a grim smile spreading across his face. "And interest."
"Good," I said, my sovereign aura surging outward, lighting up the dark shaft ahead. "Let's go collect."