Antor’s pleading gaze landed on Aldric, not far from where he stood.
It was raining.
Only it wasn’t water.
It was rock.
Tectonic plate fragments raining from the sky.
The vast plate thousands of meters across had broken apart into countless pieces, each one dozens to hundreds of meters in size.
Even a slab a few dozen meters wide, dropped from that height, could send shockwaves rolling through the ground on impact.
The earth thundered.
The secondary cannon screamed.
The two sounds tore against each other, sharp enough to make the ears ache.
Every time a massive slab angled toward the camp, the cannon fired and shattered it.
After the third shot, the cannon’s muzzle flickered with a faint, dying red.
Not enough charge left for another round.
But the largest plates had been dealt with.
Dealt with didn’t mean the danger was over.
Those fragments still dozens of meters across, falling from a thousand meters up, each carried the destructive force of a tactical nuclear strike.
The moment the first explosion hit, the miners had come pouring out of the tunnels like startled animals.
The collapsing underground left them with nowhere to go, and they ran toward the camp in a blind panic.
Because the only safe place was under the high-energy shield.
But the shield couldn’t absorb everything.
A choice had to be made.
Protect the ecological ship and the stasis pods.
“Septimus, conserve energy.
Tighten the shield perimeter.
Drop coverage on the outer sections.”
“System, build me a shelter out of whatever’s available.”
Under the constant barrage, energy was bleeding out fast.
If it kept draining at this rate, everything would run dry and the outcome would be the same as having nothing at all.
Boulders piled up against the shield under gravity.
With the system’s guidance, in the split seconds between shield flickers, the falling rocks were steered into position.
Each one braced against the next, absorbing and redirecting the impact rather than transferring it straight through.
“Everyone, take cover in the ship.”
Abandon the outer perimeter.
Rocks in the range of a few hundred tonnes wouldn’t do meaningful damage to the ecological command ship’s physical armor even without a shield.
Players and clones were close enough to get inside quickly.
Some players ducked into the command ship.
Others lingered at the edge, watching the spectacle.
“Damn, that’s spectacular!”
“I am in love with this game.”
“Dev team, you absolute monsters.
Only ten beta slots.
I curse your office.
Ten slots.
Ten.
I’m losing my mind over here!”
“Think I can’t handle it?
Open up ten thousand spots.
Ten thousand a day.”
Players could retreat easily enough.
But the miners had just come sprinting out of the tunnels.
Getting inside the protected zone in time was another matter entirely.
Then three more massive slabs came in sideways toward the camp.
Or rather, it wasn’t that they were coming in sideways.
The camp itself had tilted.
The entire ground was sloping.
Three of them.
These three weren’t aimed at the fleeing miners.
They were simply passing through.
But their paths would take them through the camp regardless, and those miners, measured against slabs that size, were nothing more than ants caught underfoot by something that wasn’t even looking at them.
A disaster kills you.
It doesn’t concern itself with your name.
*Buzz…*
“Laser.
Maximum output.”
The laser sword snapped out.
Aldric took a slow breath.
The laser sword had always been his theatrical piece, the thing he brought out when he wanted to look the part.
He had never imagined it would fit so neatly into what he was about to do.
“Load it up, module system.” Aldric walked out into the open, into the rain of falling plates.
“What is the Commander doing?
Why is he going out there?”
The fleeing miners saw him walking toward them.
“It’s the Federation Commander!”
The miners still running exchanged looks mid-stride.
Why is he out here?
Where is he going?
He can’t be planning to cut the rocks apart.
Orks were enemies.
You could kill enemies.
Who was the enemy here?
Was it the disaster itself?
Drool scratched behind his ear.
“The Commander isn’t going to die here, is he?”
“This isn’t Fruit Ninja.
Those plates weigh tens of thousands of tonnes at minimum.”
A young miner tripped and went down.
He shook his head through the dizzy tumble, and when he looked back at what was behind him, the hope drained out of him completely.
“There’s no surviving this.”
“Ha.
Haha.
Ha.
Hahaha…”
Staring down the end of everything, he broke.
“We’re all going to die!”
Then he saw Aldric walking toward him.
The miner stared, bewildered beneath the horror and despair.
He was walking into it.
“Is he trying to save us?” The young miner couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.
He was glowing.
There was no explanation for it.
But the miner could have sworn a faint golden light was emanating from him.
Calm.
Vast.
Without judgment.
“3.35 seconds.”
Aldric dropped into a light jump, vanished from where he stood, and reappeared landing clean on a rock the miner had just sprinted past.
“Keep running.
Don’t stop.
Don’t try to hide.
It won’t help.”
The will to survive pulled the crumpled miner back to his feet.
He didn’t know why, but looking at that perfect figure, something made him believe without question.
He ran for the camp with everything he had left.
Would he make it out alive?
Aldric leveled the laser sword to meet the incoming debris head on.
The intense heat of the laser decomposed the rock’s structure instantly, splitting it into two elongated slabs.
Fwoosh.
The two slabs, pillars now, drove themselves into the ground along the clean cutting line.
“3.12 seconds.”
“2.85 seconds.” Aldric left the rock, his body twisting and turning through the air.
Every surface he touched off became a pivot point.
Every pivot came with a sword stroke.
The falling debris and gravel shifted through the air in precise, calculated paths, caught by the two stone pillars and locked in place.
The gaps Aldric had cut fit exactly.
The debris held by the pillars became resistance in itself.
Then another.
Then another.
Three interception points, chained together.
And finally, the real targets.
Three massive slabs, each dozens of meters across, came sliding in.
BOOM.
A single thunderous impact.
All three plates were caught, deflected, and sent spinning away.
“He stopped it!” The miners couldn’t believe what they had witnessed.
A roar of pure, unrestrained joy erupted from the crowd.
He was too strong!
The players were stunned.
“Isn’t this guy…?”
How is he doing this?”
One miscalculation at any point and he would have been paste.
If those slabs had gotten through, they would have punched straight into the camp and torn it apart.
Antor’s eyes filled with something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“The Federation…
the God-Emperor…
the Commander…
the God-Emperor…”
“Annie!”
“Brother!”
The two siblings looked at each other.
They both saw it in the other’s eyes.
The thing they had been hoping to see.
When the dust finally settled, the entire camp had sunk into the earth.
The people who had run out of the tunnels were still trembling.
They were the miners of Pit Three, and Aldric had pulled them back from the edge twice now.
Both times in the depths of despair.
Both times carried out on hope.
Like something out of an epic.
That man was everything they had ever imagined when they pictured the God-Emperor.
Descending from above.
Delivering them.
“Long live the God-Emperor!”
The miners who had cheated death exploded into cheering.
“Let me follow you.” A miner stepped forward.
He was young, his face unreadable beneath the grime, but the resolve in his eyes needed no translation.
Aldric looked at the buried landscape, listened to the miners cheer, and smiled helplessly.
Faith?
Attacking faith directly never worked.
Humans forged belief in the depths of despair.
That was inevitable.
But old faith could be covered over by something new.
The Federation believed only in humanity itself.
“If you want to join the Federation, I think you’ll need a different rallying cry.”
“Something like, for humanity, or…”
“Long live the Federation!”
…
Aldric’s fingertip rested on the control panel.
“Mods…”
The Reputation he had earned wasn’t much.
For now, only lower-tier mods were within reach.
“This isn’t interstellar warfare anymore.
This is legion against legion.”
“The battlefield is no longer just land.”
“I wonder if they’ve adapted to leading troops on foot.”
“Open multiplayer.”
“Load the Mount & Blade Legion game mod.”
“System, push a new update to all players.”
Stellaris: Lost game mode, update.
As follows:
One: Beta roster expanded.
New applicants must have a background in FPS, survival, search-and-extract, and real-time strategy.
Two: Ammunition crafting system added.
Ammunition tiers introduced.
New weapons vendor NPC added.
Three: Legion system added.
Players may now freely command, recruit, and train auxiliary soldiers.
Note: Federation units cannot be recruited.
Four: Various bug fixes.
…
Expanding the force was no longer optional.
“A legion system?
Commanding and training soldiers?”
“No way.
Is he turning this into Mount and Blade?”
“Stellaris was always a strategy game.
A Mount and Blade style mode actually makes a lot of sense.” Thaniel_a_goodchild much appreciated