Chapter 24, part 2

  Reis emerged from the tunnel with his pulse racing and a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with physical exertion. The open air, far from relieving him, struck his face like a slap: it was saturated with ash, smoke, and the penetrating stench of charred bodies. What had once been a fertile valley was now a battlefield disfigured by fire, shrapnel, and desperation. Each step he took carried him farther from the underground structure he was meant to guard, and with every meter he also widened the distance between order and betrayal.

  He did not stop. His conscience screamed, but instinct was stronger. He circled a rocky rise and plunged into the heart of the combat without map or company, guided only by distant flashes of explosions and the echo of screams blending with gunfire.

  Chaos received him without ceremony.

  A mangled body hung from a metal beam like a forgotten scarecrow. Another lay on its back, chest opened as if something more than organs had been torn out. Tents were burning. Some had completely disintegrated; others still stood, trembling like fabric skeletons in the middle of hell. Mud mixed with fresh blood and scraps of uniform reached his ankles.

  Then he saw them.

  The Balmoreans did not appear; they surged. As if the ground spat them out. They moved with primitive brutality, indifferent to any code of war. Some carried serrated blades, others wielded spears built from human bones and melted metal. Some even ran unarmed, wrapped in tribal paint, mouths wide in a scream not meant to intimidate, but to tear.

  Reis raised his rifle just in time. The first one to reach him was enormous, face painted black, eyes unhinged. He fired once, twice. The creature fell, but not before hurling a stone that struck him square in the ribs. He felt something crack. He stumbled. Dropped to his knees. Mud filled his mouth. He rose at once, trembling, aiming into nothing, searching for the next threat.

  It did not take long.

  A younger Balmorean — perhaps barely an adolescent deformed by war — lunged at him with a rusted knife. Reis grappled, blocking the strike with his rifle barrel, and fired point blank. Blood splashed his face, warm and thick. The enemy’s body collapsed over him, and for a moment he thought he would not be able to push it off. He kicked, shoved, shouted.

  He stood again, drenched in sweat and foreign blood. The rifle weighed more than ever. His left arm trembled. Each shot was a decision between life and death. Each step carried him farther from any form of redemption.

  Then a nearby explosion hurled him several meters back. The shockwave struck his chest like an invisible wall. His head slammed against a rock and the world tilted. His helmet rolled away. Sound shrank to a high, constant ringing, like a mechanical lament that would not cease. He could not hear. He could not think.

  Lying on the ground, half his body buried in warm mud, Reis lifted his gaze. The sky was split into fragments of light and shadow, pierced by arcs of fire. It looked diseased, intoxicated by centuries of war.

  He tried to move, but a savage stab in his side stopped him. Shrapnel had lodged in his abdomen. He knew he was bleeding internally, though he lacked the strength to check. Adrenaline kept him awake, but his body was beginning to shut down.

  Then came the certainty.

  There was no redemption in that battlefield. No heroic act could erase his abandonment of his post. He had betrayed the squad for a fantasy of usefulness, for the childish need to feel that he mattered. But now, lying among corpses, his blood mixing with the soil of a planet he did not even know, he understood there was nothing glorious in his decision.

  The Omnis base remained behind him, silent, inert… and more sacred than ever.

  And he had not protected it.

  He closed his eyes, not as one who surrenders, but as one who accepts the only possible consequence.

  The open ground received them with a thunder that seemed to come from beneath the bones. The sky was a filthy vault, crossed by lines of fire that whistled like metallic insects. Some newly freed prisoners dropped to their knees upon touching the surface, as if open air were too large a hallucination to sustain. Others ran without direction, driven by the instinct not to stand still.

  Nolan emerged behind Harlan, covering his head with one arm as hot dirt rained against his back. The heat burned his face. For a moment he thought they had arrived too late, that everything had already been decided without them.

  The separatist camp was an open wound. Tents were torn apart, burning like old paper. Mud mixed with blood and fragments of metal. There were no defined fronts, no lines. Only crossfire, silhouettes running and others falling without sound.

  “Do you see them?” Harlan asked, spinning abruptly, as if something might leap from behind him.

  Nolan narrowed his eyes. Through the smoke he recognized familiar shapes. Karr, Mikael, and a group of armed prisoners advancing toward the northeast sector, firing and throwing whatever they found. Karr raised an arm, signaling something, but his voice drowned in the roar.

  “There,” Nolan said, pointing.

  An explosion erupted a few meters away. A crate of ammunition detonated like compressed thunder. The ground trembled. Nolan felt the blow in his chest. When the smoke cleared, Karr and his group were gone.

  “Karr!” he shouted.

  The name was devoured by noise.

  Then a figure emerged from the haze.

  Rodrick Viulk.

  Covered in blood, his own and others’, eyes blazing with a feral gleam. He shouted something unintelligible as he hurled himself into close combat against a Balmorean. He tore the knife from the man’s hand and drove it into his chest again and again, with precision that was not blind rage but decision.

  His breathing was animal. His face blackened with soot. His teeth stained red.

  Nolan stared, frozen a second too long.

  Rodrick turned his head toward him.

  “North!” he shouted, voice broken. “I’ll see you soon, Nolan!”

  And he vanished among the shredded tents, as if the battle swallowed him whole.

  The world moved again.

  “Did you see that?” Nolan asked, turning to Harlan.

  Harlan was not looking at Rodrick.

  He was looking at the sky.

  “They’re tracking us,” he murmured.

  “What?”

  “From above.” His eyes scanned the smoke clouds as if they could pierce them. “It’s not just the fleet. There’s something else. They marked us.”

  A shot struck nearby, forcing them to the ground. Nolan rolled in the mud and, rising, saw Harlan standing, turning in circles with rifle raised, aiming at nonexistent shadows.

  “Lower that!” Nolan shouted. “They’re ours!”

  “You don’t know that!” Harlan replied, eyes wide. “You don’t know anything. This is part of them. All of this.” He gestured at the chaos. “It’s what they wanted.”

  “Harlan, listen to me.”

  Another projectile whistled overhead. Nolan lunged and grabbed him by the vest.

  “We have to move!”

  Harlan looked at him with an expression that did not seem to recognize him.

  For a second, Nolan saw something different in his eyes. Not fear. Distrust. As if he were evaluating him.

  As if he were not sure it was him.

  “Leave me alone,” Harlan said, low.

  “What?”

  “Leave me alone!” He shoved him hard.

  Nolan stepped back, surprised. Harlan shoved him again, more violently.

  “Don’t follow me! I don’t need you!”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  Harlan raised the rifle and fired at a silhouette running through smoke. The shot was precise. The body fell. Harlan did not look at the result.

  “This isn’t for you,” he murmured. “You don’t understand. None of you understand.”

  And he ran toward the western flank, vanishing among shadow and flame.

  “Harlan!” Nolan shouted.

  No answer.

  Only combat.

  Nolan stood paralyzed for a moment. Then forced himself to breathe. He could not chase him. Not now. If he did, both would die.

  He crouched and took a rifle from the stiff fingers of a nearby corpse. The metal was hot.

  In the distance, he saw Balmoreans advancing toward a disorganized cluster of prisoners.

  He clenched his teeth.

  If Harlan wanted to lose himself in fire, he could not.

  For the first time in months, Nolan wanted to survive. Not for Harlan. Not for anyone but himself.

  He fired.

  The recoil shook his shoulder. One fell. He fired again. Advanced between burning tents, dodging bodies, shouting orders no one heard but that kept him sane.

  Stolen weapons. Tense hands. Fire everywhere.

  They did not know that with each step they moved farther from the rest.

  Nor that hell had only begun to claim its due.

  (Continúa debajo, sin cortes.)

  The pulse still vibrated in the air when Dossian’s communicator emitted a dry crackle.

  It was not loud, but in the silence after activation it sounded like a fracture opening in the world.

  “Red Squad Four,” the voice on the other end said, less administrative now, more urgent. “Government Universal forces have made landfall. Repeat: forces on surface. Window fulfilled. You may proceed with deactivation.”

  Dossian did not answer immediately. He watched the horizon. Columns of smoke were already rising in precise, surgical directions. Omnis’ first impacts had done their work. Too well.

  Reis, still kneeling, heard every word.

  “Reception confirmed,” Dossian finally replied.

  He knelt again before the module. The metal still vibrated with contained energy, as if resisting sleep. He inserted the access module and executed the reverse sequence.

  The deep hum lowered in tone, like a wounded animal retreating to its cave. The plates stopped vibrating. The pulse vanished.

  Silence.

  Not the natural silence of a field.

  An artificial silence.

  Omnis was asleep.

  Reis rose slowly. Looked around. The clearing was no longer a clearing. The battle’s frequency had changed. No longer aerial strikes. Now irregular gunfire, ground explosions, human screams.

  Real combat.

  “Is that it?” Reis asked.

  Dossian stored the module carefully and stood.

  “That’s what we had to do.”

  Reis studied him for signs. Guilt. Doubt. Regret.

  Found nothing.

  “Government Universal soldiers are on the ground,” Reis said. “That means the battle has really begun. Our people are fighting.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m going.”

  Dossian turned his head slightly.

  “No.”

  Reis blinked.

  “No?”

  “Our mission was this. Activate. Deactivate. Hold position until confirmation. We’ve done it. We withdraw.”

  Reis let out a short humorless laugh.

  “We withdraw?”

  A distant projectile exploded.

  “There are people down there,” Reis said. “Our people. Soldiers who don’t even know what happened here. They’re fighting. We can’t abandon them.”

  “It’s not your decision,” Dossian replied calmly.

  “Yes, it is.”

  The squad watched in silence.

  Reis stepped to the ridge. From there he could see the valley: burning tents, figures moving in smoke, flashes of automatic weapons. And something else.

  Government Universal uniforms descending the slopes.

  Not just separatists.

  Not just Balmoreans.

  A mixture.

  Chaos without control.

  “If you need to kill me to stop me,” Reis said without looking back, “do it.”

  Dossian stared.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “I’d rather die fighting with my comrades,” Reis said, turning toward him, “than live obeying leaders I don’t trust.”

  Silence thickened.

  Dossian stepped closer.

  “Your place is here.”

  “My place is where they’re shooting.”

  Reis picked up his weapon. Loaded it calmly.

  Alis looked at him. Hesitated.

  “Reis…”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m not staying to watch.”

  Dossian held his gaze.

  “If you go,” he said, “you go on your own. Not under your banner. Not under mine.”

  “Perfect.”

  Reis adjusted his helmet. Breathed once.

  And began descending.

  The battle’s sound grew with each step. The ground trembled. Halfway down, an explosion forced him prone. Fragments whistled overhead.

  He rose and continued.

  At the camp’s edge, the world was no longer strategy.

  It was flesh and fire.

  He saw a Government Universal soldier grappling with a Balmorean painted in ritual colors. Another crawling wounded toward a trench. Known uniforms firing at figures screaming in languages he did not understand.

  Omnis had opened the door.

  Now it was men.

  Men killing men.

  A projectile struck nearby. Reis dove behind a fallen barricade. From there he saw three Government Universal soldiers attempting to regroup under crossfire.

  One saw him.

  Their eyes met.

  No recognition. Only calculation.

  Reis raised his rifle and joined them.

  He did not know if he was defending his own or betraying something greater.

  He only knew that, for the first time since pointing his weapon at Dossian, the decision was his.

  And amid the disaster, while the valley burned and uniforms blurred in smoke, Reis chose to remain in the war.

  The Undulating Valley was an infernal vision: columns of smoke rose like twisted fingers, blotting out the sky and staining the night a dirty red. The explosions no longer startled anyone; they were simply part of the landscape. The mud, mixed with blood, reached Kael’s ankles. The smell — burned, metallic, acidic — soaked his nostrils and followed him with every breath like a reminder that everything was rotting.

  Kael walked with firm steps, but he did not run. There was nowhere to run in that dense fog. Jackie followed him in silence, and for a moment both stopped behind a partially collapsed tent. On the other side, isolated gunshots echoed, scattered screams, like fragments of a battle fought in bursts, without a clear front.

  “If there’s any artillery still standing, it has to be near this line,” Jackie said, panting. Mud covered his knees, and blood on his forehead that wasn’t his own. “Do you hear that?”

  Kael heard it. Something didn’t fit. Amid the muffled murmur of destruction, a voice emerged. Not a command, not anguish… but a sharp sob. It was a broken plea, choked by another voice, deeper, barely audible.

  Kael raised his hand and moved ahead alone. He crossed between the tents and circled a fallen structure. The sound came from one of the Balmorean command tents, one that should have been evacuated at the start of the bombardment.

  But someone occupied it.

  Inside, the tent lay in dimness, illuminated by the flicker of nearby flames. Kael stopped at the entrance.

  First he distinguished a male silhouette, large, crouched over a smaller one. The woman lay on her side, arms pressed against her chest, her tunic torn to rags and her skin marked by recent violence. She sobbed silently, her voice barely a tremor. The Balmorean moved over her slowly, one hand firmly gripping her neck, the other disappearing behind her waist.

  Kael felt heat rise to his head like a wave of lava.

  “Kael…” Jackie murmured behind him, barely visible. “What is that?”

  The Balmorean’s voice answered before Kael did.

  “Easy, beauty,” he said without turning. “A gift for the chosen. A blessing among the ruins.”

  Kael stepped forward. The rifle in his hands felt as heavy as stone.

  “Nuka!”

  The Balmorean lifted his head slowly, as if someone had interrupted a ritual. He smiled. His lips were stained with blood, though it was unclear if it was his.

  “Durnan… good to see you’re not dead.”

  Kael did not respond. His finger on the trigger did not tremble, but his entire body did. His jaw clenched, his breathing irregular.

  “Get off her,” he said, his voice like a wire pulled tight.

  Nuka rose slowly, but did not step away.

  “She’s just a prisoner. Balmoreans and separatists fought together today. But tomorrow… tomorrow she owes us nothing, does she?”

  His smile was an insult. There was no guilt. No doubt.

  And in that instant, as if the earth itself responded, something entered through the side of the tent.

  A furious shadow.

  Rodrick Viulk.

  There was no warning, no word.

  Only a roar, deep and primitive, that tore the air like contained thunder.

  Viulk hurled himself at Nuka with inhuman violence, as if his body had been designed solely to punish. The blow was so dry that Nuka dropped like a sack of meat. Then came the fists, one after another, like hammers. Each impact sounded like stone breaking stone. Nuka screamed, shrieked, tried to shield himself, but Viulk gave him no space, no breath. He struck as if the act itself were a physiological need.

  Kael recognized him instantly. There was hatred in every blow. This was not a soldier against another. It was a man confronting another man.

  Kael did not move. His rifle remained raised, but it was no longer necessary.

  Nuka extended a bloodied hand toward him. He could barely form words.

  “Kael… help me…”

  Rodrick Viulk turned toward Kael for an instant and looked at him. His black gaze seemed to return the abyss itself.

  But Kael did not step forward.

  He did not stop him.

  He said nothing.

  He simply lowered the weapon, turned around, and left the tent.

  Outside, the world continued to burn. But now the air felt thicker, denser. Jackie looked at him but said nothing. Perhaps because he understood. Or perhaps because he did not want to ask.

  Kael did not know.

  He only knew he had not stayed to see how it ended.

  But he heard it.

  He heard bones giving way.

  The air inside the tunnel was foul, hot, charged with static electricity and contained fear. They had not been there for hours. Barely a few minutes since Reis had gone toward the vent to confirm the external situation. But confinement warped time. Every second seemed to expand like a thick drop suspended in air.

  They were positioned at the access points surrounding Omnis’ underground base, waiting for a clear signal, a definitive order, something that would give shape to the distant noise of war. The tunnel, reinforced with aged polymer plates, creaked from time to time, as if the planet were adjusting its weight over them.

  Dossian Glass sat with his back against the wall, rifle resting on his knees. Sweat ran from his temple to his jaw. He watched the dust suspended in the air, floating in weak shafts of light. There was no combat down there. But calm was not tranquility. It was a pause before something.

  “Did you see that?” Jevin murmured, pointing his flashlight toward the end of the western corridor.

  Dossian stood without speaking. At first he thought it was an echo distorted by the structure. Then he distinguished the pattern.

  Footsteps.

  They were not the coordinated steps of a tactical advance. They were disordered. Accelerated. Colliding with each other.

  “Lights out,” he ordered.

  The squad obeyed instantly. The tunnel fell into shadows, barely outlined by the faint bioluminescence of the secondary circuit.

  The footsteps multiplied.

  First came the voices. Scattered shouts. Gasps. Balmorean prayers tripping over each other. A repeated “fall back!” uttered with desperation.

  Then they appeared.

  Dozens. Perhaps more. Wounded separatists, disarmed soldiers, staggering Balmoreans with vacant eyes and hands covered in blood that was not always their own. They pushed, stumbled, collided with each other.

  They did not advance in formation.

  They fled.

  When they saw the squad, they stopped. The mass compressed in the corridor like a gigantic animal without escape.

  The first shot was not fired by Dossian.

  It was a young man with a broken knife. He lunged at one of the squad’s soldiers without warning. Drove it into his shoulder before he could react.

  Then the tunnel exploded.

  “POSITIONS!” Dossian roared, dragging the wounded man back as the corridor filled with blue and red flashes. Plasma rounds struck the walls, tearing hot fragments from compressed rock.

  “They’re not reinforcements, they’re invaders!” Miren shouted, emptying her magazine into a wave of Balmoreans advancing while praying and firing at the same time.

  Dossian understood in that instant.

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  They were no longer fleeing.

  They had decided to force their way through the only solid structural conduit they knew.

  They wanted the tunnel.

  “Seal the flank! No one reaches the base! NO ONE!” he ordered.

  The line pulled back to the intermediate section, where two structural pillars offered partial cover. From there they began to contain the tide.

  But it was not clean combat.

  Desperation turned those coming into something more unpredictable than an organized army. They were bodies pushed by panic, capable of anything.

  Dossian reloaded, fired, barked short orders. Heat passed through the glove and burned his palms. A separatist with his intestines exposed crawled begging for mercy. Another advanced with a grenade strapped to his chest, eyes open in empty resolve.

  “GRENADE!” Alis warned, throwing a paralytic charge that stopped him a second before detonation.

  The contained explosion still shook the corridor.

  Bodies began to pile up. But the pressure did not lessen.

  “Glass… if the accesses fall…” Jevin gasped, blood running down his forehead.

  Dossian did not look back.

  “Then none of us get out alive.”

  And he fired again, as the tunnel, which minutes before had been silent, became a throat trying to swallow them.

  Smoke descended in irregular layers, like a hot mist breathing on its own. Nolan ran between collapsed tents and split structures, the rifle still vibrating in his hands from the last shot.

  He wore no uniform.

  No insignia.

  Nothing that defined him.

  And in the middle of that fractured field, that made him enemy to everyone.

  A Government Universal soldier emerged from the dust, saw him aiming toward the Balmorean flank and hesitated barely a second before firing. The burst whistled inches from his shoulder. Nolan threw himself behind a metal crate, feeling shrapnel strike the edge.

  “I’m a prisoner!” he managed to shout, without knowing to whom.

  No one listened.

  On the other side, a separatist with his face covered in ash identified him as an infiltrator and opened fire as well. Bullets struck the structure shielding him, splintering the metal.

  Nolan understood then the simplest and most brutal truth: without uniform, without flag, without symbol, he did not exist. He was an anomaly on the battlefield.

  And anomalies are eliminated.

  He rolled aside as the crate began to give way. He fell onto wet earth, tasting the metallic smoke in his throat. He fired twice toward a silhouette advancing with a ritual spear, not even knowing whether it was enemy or ally. He only fired to create space.

  He could not remain in the center.

  Everything there was crossfire.

  He crawled toward a less illuminated area, where explosions were intermittent rather than constant. As he moved away, the rhythm of combat changed: fewer collective screams, more isolated confrontations, more individual decisions.

  He saw a Government Universal soldier fall meters away. Saw a wounded Balmorean try to rise and take a shot to the chest. Saw bodies he could not assign to any side.

  There were no clear sides from there.

  Only survivors.

  Nolan backed behind an overturned armored vehicle, breathing with difficulty. He adjusted his grip on the rifle and looked at his own hands covered in dust and blood he did not know was his.

  He could not distinguish himself.

  That was killing him.

  A shot struck the metal beside him. Instinctively he returned fire, but he did not aim at the center of combat. He aimed toward the open space leading to a lateral ravine, beyond the thick of fighting.

  He needed to get out of the focus.

  He needed to flee.

  The air was unbreathable.

  The ruins of the separatist camp burned like an open hell, melted canvas dripping onto blackened mud. Kael advanced crouched between smoking remains, his uniform stuck to his body with sweat and ash. Each inhale scraped. Each exhale tasted of gunpowder.

  Then he saw them.

  Four Government Universal soldiers advancing in irregular formation, covering each other between fallen structures. They did not run. They moved methodically, clearing terrain, firing short bursts at any shadow that seemed to breathe.

  Kael dropped behind a broken wall. Regulated his breathing.

  He did not shout.

  He gave no orders.

  He aimed.

  The first fell without understanding where the shot came from. The projectile pierced his neck and threw him backward, striking a charred metal sheet.

  The other three reacted instantly. They dispersed.

  Kael was already moving.

  Second shot.

  The soldier attempting to flank him took the impact in the abdomen and folded over himself, firing into nothing as he fell.

  The third managed to locate the origin. He answered with a burst that splintered the stone inches from Kael’s head. Kael changed position, rolling among debris, barely exposed the barrel and fired again.

  Third body on the ground.

  Brief silence.

  One remained.

  Kael rose just enough to see him.

  The last soldier did not wear exactly the same uniform as the others. The pattern was similar, but he carried a darker variant on the shoulders, with no visible insignia. His left sleeve was torn and darkened with blood.

  He limped.

  But the rifle in his right hand was steady.

  The soldier did not run toward his fallen companions.

  He withdrew.

  Sought cover.

  And began firing with precision.

  A bullet struck near Kael’s face. Another perforated the edge of the wall. They were not desperate shots. They were measured.

  Kael answered.

  The exchange became irregular, almost intimate. It was not a squad battle. It was a line of fire between two men who did not see each other fully, only fragments: a shoulder emerging, a knee in motion, the shadow of a helmet.

  Kael tried to anticipate.

  Counted mentally the intervals between the other’s shots. Observed recoil pattern. When he believed he had deciphered it, he leaned toward the opposite flank and fired before exposing himself.

  The response came sooner than expected.

  A lateral flash.

  The impact pierced him like an electric discharge.

  His right shoulder exploded in pain. The rifle slipped from his hands. He fell backward, striking wet earth, the air knocked from his lungs.

  For a second he heard nothing.

  Only a ringing.

  Blood began to soak the fabric. He tried to rise, but the arm did not respond.

  From his position, he saw the remaining soldier barely emerge between the remains of a charred turret. He was also wounded. Also bleeding.

  Their gazes met.

  There was no triumph in the other’s.

  Only evaluation.

  The soldier took a step forward, as if to finish him.

  Kael tried to reach his weapon with his left hand.

  The other hesitated.

  In the distance, a new explosion shook the valley. Voices shouting orders. More gunfire approaching.

  The soldier retreated.

  He did not run. He moved with difficulty, covering himself as he withdrew toward a less exposed area, disappearing between smoke and fallen structures.

  Kael remained motionless a few seconds, breathing with difficulty.

  The pain was sharp. Clean.

  He did not know who that man was. Only that he had killed three of his own. And that the fourth had left him alive.

  He tried to stand.

  His shoulder burned. His legs trembled.

  Reis moved away among the charred remains without looking back.

  He did not run. He moved quickly, crouched, using every fallen wall as cover, every overturned armored vehicle as temporary shield. The explosion that had shaken the valley seconds before had given him the perfect excuse to break contact.

  Not from fear.

  From calculation.

  Staying there was useless.

  He slid behind what had once been a watchtower. The twisted metal still radiated heat. From that new position he had a better angle on the north flank of the camp, where the terrain descended in an irregular slope.

  More open.

  More tactical.

  He breathed deeply. Smoke scraped his throat.

  What am I doing?

  Nolan moved forward pressed against broken walls, trying to stay out of the center of combat. From that lateral strip he could see the entire valley, as if observing an open wound from its edge.

  The difference was becoming evident.

  The separatists were retreating in small, disordered groups. The Government Universal lines, on the other hand, were tightening methodically, clearing sectors, advancing meter by meter. It was not a stampede. It was a procedure.

  About fifty meters away, a Government Universal soldier fell backward, struck by a clean shot that opened his chest. The impact was precise. Dry.

  Nolan instinctively turned toward the origin of the shot.

  And he saw him.

  Harlan.

  He was not taking cover. He was not selecting clear targets. He was firing at a steady rhythm, turning his body and emptying magazines into any figure that moved in front of him, without distinguishing uniform or gesture.

  A separatist tried to crawl out of the line of fire. Harlan shot through him.

  A Government Universal soldier raised his hands, trying to signal something. Harlan shot through him as well.

  He was not fighting.

  He was emptying the world.

  Nolan felt the air leave his lungs.

  No, no, no.

  Harlan turned his head.

  Their eyes met.

  For an instant, Nolan wanted to believe there would be recognition. That there would be doubt.

  There was none.

  Harlan looked at him the way one looks at an obstacle.

  And began running toward him.

  “Harlan!” Nolan shouted, raising the rifle. “Stop!”

  There was no answer.

  Harlan ran straight at him, without zigzagging, as if distance were irrelevant. His face was distorted, but not by fear. It was something emptier. Flatter.

  Nolan fired.

  The shot hit his right hand. The weapon flew from his grip, spinning through the air before falling among the debris.

  Harlan did not stop.

  He kept advancing.

  Blood ran down his fingers, but his body did not slow.

  “Don’t come any closer!” Nolan shouted again. “Harlan, stop!”

  Nothing.

  With every step the young man took, Nolan felt something collapse inside him. He did not see his friend. He did not see the boy who had trembled in the pit, who had doubted, who had spoken in whispers.

  He saw a force pushing forward without thought.

  Harlan was already only meters away.

  Nolan fired again.

  The projectile struck his left shoulder. His body jerked backward, lost balance, and fell to his knees.

  For a second, Nolan believed that would be enough.

  “Stay there,” he said, aiming at his chest. “Stay on the ground.”

  Harlan lifted his head.

  His eyes were not unfocused.

  They were empty.

  He tried to rise, bracing on his uninjured arm. Blood spread through the fabric. The movement was clumsy, but stubborn.

  There was no pain strong enough to stop him.

  Nolan stepped back.

  “Harlan… please.”

  The young man tried once more to get up.

  He said nothing.

  He did not insult.

  He did not scream.

  He just advanced.

  Nolan saw the exact moment he understood he was no longer speaking to anyone. He adjusted his aim.

  The shot was brief.

  Harlan’s head snapped still and his body fell to the side, as if the strings holding him had been cut.

  The noise of combat rushed back all at once around them.

  Nolan remained motionless, the rifle still pointed at the ground.

  He waited for something inside him to react.

  It did not.

  He approached slowly.

  He looked at Harlan’s face. He found nothing he remembered.

  No rage.

  No fear.

  No trace of the boy who had shared confinement and hunger.

  Only stillness.

  Nolan lowered the weapon. Around him, the massacre continued, but for the first time the noise seemed distant.

  He felt his chest tighten and his eyes fill, and he cried. He cried as he had never done since being arrested. He cried like a child.

  “Forgive me, Harlan. Forgive me.”

  Rodrick breathed with difficulty, his chest rising and falling with contained fury, but he was not exhausted.

  He was alive.

  And Nuka was still breathing.

  Rodrick knelt beside him, observing with coldness the ruin he had made of his face. His knuckles ached, the skin of his hands split, his fingers still gripping tightly the knife he had not needed to use.

  He had not needed it.

  He had torn him apart with his bare hands.

  Nuka gasped, his broken, trembling smile still present.

  Rodrick felt no satisfaction.

  Only fury.

  “I don’t know what’s more repulsive…” he murmured in a voice so low it was barely a whisper, “the sound of your bones breaking or the fact that you’re still smiling.”

  Nuka coughed out a strangled laugh, spitting blood.

  “You don’t understand anything, soldier.”

  Rodrick watched him in silence, his expression impenetrable.

  “You think this ends with me?” Nuka continued, his voice hoarse, mocking. “You think what you did matters?”

  Rodrick clenched his jaw.

  No.

  It did not matter.

  None of this would change anything.

  But that did not mean he would not enjoy destroying him.

  Rodrick raised his hand and pressed hard against Nuka’s shattered chest, feeling the broken bones beneath his skin shift like ground glass.

  Nuka screamed, for the first time.

  Rodrick leaned closer.

  “So you can feel pain.”

  The Balmorean groaned, fingers clawing at the scorched earth.

  Rodrick kept the pressure a few seconds longer, savoring the sensation of hurting him.

  It was not enough. It would never be enough. But he would not waste more time on him.

  Nuka was no one anymore.

  Rodrick released him and stood without looking back. He already had what he needed.

  And then he saw him.

  Nolan staggered forward, gaze lost, without clear direction.

  Rodrick stopped abruptly. He had seen that expression too many times. He knew what it meant.

  The beginning of a void that would never be filled.

  But he did not care. Rodrick did not need a broken man. He needed Nolan to walk.

  He approached without announcing himself, gripping his arm firmly.

  Nolan lifted his head, stunned.

  “Viulk?” His voice was a muted echo.

  Rodrick did not loosen his grip.

  “There’s no time. You’re coming with me.”

  Nolan frowned.

  “Where?”

  Rodrick looked around, searching for enemy movement.

  The valley was still a field of death. He had to move before the opportunity sealed itself.

  He turned toward Nolan, his gaze severe, intense.

  “Don’t ask. Walk.”

  Nolan did not respond. But he did not resist either.

  Rodrick released him and began moving.

  And Nolan, without understanding why, followed him… but not before looking back.

  His eyes scanned the disaster, the bodies scattered among flames and crystallized earth, but he searched for only one.

  He did not find him.

  He turned and followed Rodrick Viulk.

  Behind them, the flames of the battlefield devoured the last vestiges of what had been.

  But they were no longer part of that story.

  Rodrick knew exactly where to go.

  Nolan, for the first time in his life, had no idea what awaited him.

  The pain in his right shoulder had not diminished.

  It had become part of his body.

  An ember embedded beneath the skin that pulsed with every movement.

  Kael advanced anyway.

  The smoke opened and closed like a diseased breath, revealing fragments of the battlefield. Isolated shots. Screams. The sweet, nauseating smell of burned flesh.

  And then he saw them.

  Two separatists.

  One could barely hold his rifle. The other had his leg destroyed and dragged himself toward nonexistent cover. In front of them, advancing in semicircle, at least six Government Universal soldiers.

  They were not firing yet.

  They were moving patiently.

  Hunting.

  Kael did not think.

  He stepped in between.

  He emerged from the remains of a burning tent and opened fire without aiming too precisely. The first shot forced one of the soldiers to dive to the ground. The second struck another in the thigh.

  “Move!” Kael roared to the two men behind him. “Fall back!”

  One of them looked at him in disbelief, as if he did not understand why someone wounded was advancing instead of retreating.

  Kael kept firing.

  The Government Universal soldiers answered with a coordinated burst. The air around him became a net of metal.

  The third shot he received was not in the shoulder.

  It was in the left side.

  He felt the impact like a dry hammer blow. His body twisted backward, but he did not fall. He held himself one second more, firing almost blindly.

  The fourth shot pierced his abdomen.

  The world lost depth.

  The rifle slipped from his hands.

  He fell forward, the earth receiving him with mute violence. His face sank into wet dust and blood he did not know was his.

  He tried to push his body to turn.

  The right arm did not respond.

  The left trembled.

  His legs were a distant idea.

  He heard steps approaching. Orders spoken in low voices. Boots over debris.

  He tried to rise again.

  He could not.

  From the ground, cheek pressed to hot earth, he saw the world from below. Shadows moving. Silhouettes surrounding him.

  The two separatists had disappeared from his field of vision. He did not know if they had escaped.

  He did not know if they had died.

  Above, the sky was streaked with smoke and flashes of fire.

  He tried to breathe deeply. Blood filled his mouth.

  The thought he had was not heroic.

  It was not rage.

  It was a simple acknowledgment.

  Maybe this is how it ends.

  A Government Universal soldier approached closer, weapon pointed at him. Kael tried to turn his head to look, but the weight of his body pinned him to the earth.

  His fingers clenched into fists, trying to remember how a body moved.

  Nothing answered.

  Combat still roared around him.

  But for Kael, the sound was already coming from very far away.

  The field trembled. With every step, Jackie Durnan felt the ground open beneath his feet, not from cracks or bombs, but from the collapse of everything he had built. It was as if Balmora itself yielded under the weight of defeat.

  He was covered in blood and mud, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the broken front. The smoke allowed visibility only a few meters ahead, but silhouettes emerged among ashes: bodies in retreat, disorganized Balmorean soldiers, and behind them, the brutal pressure of the Government Universal advancing like a mechanical wave.

  A grenade exploded meters away. Jackie ducked instinctively, feeling the vibration in his bones. When he rose, he saw three of his men on the ground. One still moved. The other two did not.

  “Fall back, damn it!” a voice roared that he did not recognize.

  It was not his. Not anyone specific. But it echoed through the chaos like the sound of the inevitable.

  Jackie fired. A quick burst. One enemy soldier fell, another rolled toward cover. His rifle vibrated, heated, threatened to melt. But he did not let go. Not yet.

  “Right flank!” an old soldier warned.

  Jackie turned just in time to see a group of drones diving downward. He activated his tactical shield. One of the bullets struck directly at his shoulder, deflected by the armor, but the impact pushed him backward. He fell onto a body. Blood. He did not know whose.

  He tried to rise. It cost him. His legs trembled. The heat, the noise, the chaos… everything was more than physical. It was spiritual. Balmora was dying in his hands.

  In the distance, he saw a column of smoke rise from the western flank. Several squads had been there. Nothing remained.

  Jackie ran.

  He passed through debris, dodging shots, returning fire without looking. Reaching a higher position, he saw the entire plain, or what remained of it: a broken symphony of corpses, smoke, and fire. What had once been an offensive was now dissolved into fragments.

  His communicator vibrated. He ignored it. It vibrated again. He activated it, panting.

  “We need support. The second front collapsed. No reinforcements. They’re withdrawing everything from the northern bases.”

  “We need order, damn it! Who’s in command?” Jackie roared.

  “There is no one in command, soldier.”

  Jackie fell silent and clenched his teeth.

  He watched as a group of his soldiers, entrenched behind a broken barrier, were struck by concentrated fire. One by one. Screams. Then silence.

  Balmoreans did not scream when they died. Not like others. Their souls simply dropped. They collapsed.

  Jackie lowered his gaze. His rifle trembled. Not from heat. From rage. From impotence.

  “General communication,” he said aloud, activating the main channel. “All units, attention.”

  The field seemed to listen. The explosions did not cease, but something in the air shifted. A second of waiting.

  “Retreat. I repeat: immediate retreat. Fall back to point Alpha Seven. Abandon positions. All platoons: evacuate. This is not an order. It’s a necessity.”

  A brief, inhuman silence answered him over the channel. Then voices. Shouts. Some did not accept it. Others thanked him. But all moved.

  Jackie shut off the transmission. He remained standing there, weapon in hand, smoke covering his face.

  Combat continued. Shots still surrounded them.

  But now it was not for victory.

  It was for survival.

  And he had sent them running.

  To live, if they could.

  The orders had been given, but the retreat resembled nothing orderly. It was a stampede choked by mud, shrapnel, and bodies. No one ran, because running meant exposure. They moved as they could: crawling, uneven strides, covering one another, falling.

  Jackie descended from the hill, boots sinking to the ankle in churned earth. At every step, he saw faces disfigured not by wounds but by mute understanding: they had lost. And he had said it aloud.

  Then the sky vibrated.

  At first, only a muffled roar. Then a succession of sharp, accelerated hums. Finally, a glow between broken clouds.

  Balmorean shuttles descended.

  Large, dark, with dented fuselages and side doors open like jaws. They came in tight formation, escorted by smaller ships circling like desperate guardians. They were not prepared for rescue. Only for flight.

  Jackie raised his arm and activated the tactical channel.

  “Shuttles. Land in extended formation. Do not cluster. Terrain unstable. Do not wait for orders. Extract what you can.”

  “Copy,” a voice replied, distorted by engine noise. “Estimated ground time: four minutes.”

  Jackie looked around. Four minutes was too long.

  The first ships touched down clumsily. One exploded upon landing on an unregistered minefield. Fire rose, and the structure disintegrated without screams. Only a burst of heat and twisted metal.

  The others kept landing, one after another, doors open before touching ground. Soldiers emerged to cover the retreat, though they too trembled. Some carried wounded. Others barely knew where to run.

  Jackie forced his way through debris toward one extraction point. He pushed a young soldier with a broken arm toward a shuttle ramp.

  “Inside! Don’t look back!”

  The boy obeyed without speaking. His helmet was stained with dried mud and blood, and his eyes seemed to look through things.

  From the east came closer gunfire. The Government Universal was already entering through the cracks of the broken front. In the distance, Jackie distinguished the lights of their tactical drones advancing like swarms.

  “Third battalion, south flank! Cover Tivanio squad’s withdrawal!” someone shouted.

  “Tivanio is dead!” another answered.

  Jackie did not turn. He could not. If he listened more, he would not move. He had to keep walking, giving orders, repeating a command code that no longer existed.

  And then he saw him.

  A few meters away, half buried under a fallen slab, lay a body he knew. Not by the clothes, nor the broken helmet. By the way he had fallen, by the stiffness of the left arm, by that clumsy posture he had seen a thousand times in training, in arguments.

  “Kael,” he whispered, and ran toward him.

  The slab covered his right leg. He was conscious, barely. His face was covered in dried blood, and his left eye would not open.

  “You look horrible,” Jackie muttered, unable to hide the tremor in his voice.

  Kael did not respond. He only turned his neck slightly to look at him.

  Jackie placed both hands on the slab and, with a roar, lifted it just enough to drag him free. Kael let out a cry that stuck in his throat, but he did not complain.

  “Don’t say anything,” Jackie said, harsher now. “I’m too busy being a hero.”

  He hoisted him as best he could, his brother’s arm over his shoulders. Kael did not weigh as much as he remembered, but Jackie felt as if he were dragging the entire planet.

  “I never imagined you’d save me,” Kael murmured hoarsely.

  “Neither did I.”

  With forced steps, he returned to the extraction line. Shuttle engines already roared. Doors closed one by one, without looking back. An explosion burst nearby, heat enveloping them in a dry, muted blast.

  Jackie almost fell, but he did not let go.

  An officer saw him arriving, shouted something and extended an arm to help them aboard. Between the three of them, they pulled Kael inside, panting. Jackie followed and slammed the metal.

  “Close it now!”

  The hatch shut with a screech. The shuttle rose, vibrating as if it might split in two.

  Jackie dropped to the metal floor beside Kael. The interior smelled of blood, burned oil, and flesh.

  They did not speak.

  They could not.

  Below, Tau Ceti IV consumed itself.

  Smoke began to open in dirty bands, as if the sky itself were tired of holding so much fire. From the upper slope, among rocks split by recent explosions, Reis watched.

  He did not fire.

  He did not run.

  He only watched.

  Below, in what had been the separatist camp, shuttles descended clumsily, tilted, tearing up dust and ash as they touched ground. Dark figures climbed the open ramps. Some carried bodies. Others dragged legs that no longer responded.

  Engines roared with a desperation that was not technical but human.

  Reis leaned the rifle against a rock and ran a hand over his face. He had no blood on him. He was not wounded. He breathed without difficulty. His hands still obeyed.

  He was alive.

  A late explosion illuminated the eastern flank. One of the separatist transports rose too soon and took a hit on its side. It tilted, lost stability, but managed to correct and gain altitude, leaving a black trail that stained the air.

  They were escaping.

  And the Government Universal advanced.

  Reis followed the movement of soldiers around him. Some shouted orders. Others fired out of inertia. No one seemed to celebrate. There were no cries of victory, no raised arms. Only a mechanical progression forward, as if someone had pushed a piece across a board and the rest had to adjust.

  He leaned against the rock and closed his eyes for a moment.

  He could have died there.

  He could have been buried under debris, another unrecognizable body on a list someone would read without pause.

  But no.

  He was still breathing.

  He opened his eyes.

  The last shuttles were already gaining altitude. The sky swallowed them one by one. On the ground remained bodies, smoke, remnants of ritual banners and mixed uniforms. The field belonged to no one. It was an open wound.

  Reis felt something strange in his chest. It was not relief. Nor pride.

  It was an absence.

  I’m alive, he told himself.

  He repeated the phrase silently.

  I’m alive.

  It did not sound like victory.

  The tunnel was still. For the first time in hours, no gunshots were heard. No screams. No dull hum of distant explosions.

  Only breathing.

  Dossian heard it clearly: his own, Jevin’s to his left, Alis’s a few meters behind, leaning against a wall with an improvised bandage on her arm. Miren’s, who still checked ammunition though there was no one left to shoot.

  “Commander,” Jevin said, barely above a whisper. “Last sensor marked enemy withdrawal at all three accesses. Zero movement for five minutes.”

  Dossian nodded without speaking. His hands rested on his knees, gaze fixed on the collapsed tunnel entrance. The smoke that had covered everything during the offensive now mixed with suspended dust. A warm haze. As if war did not want to leave entirely.

  Miren approached with steady steps. Rifle lowered, no tension.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Dossian replied. “They’re gone.”

  “Does that mean…?”

  A sound cut her off. The communicator crackled. A voice emerged clearly through the static:

  “Underground unit, this is air squad three. Confirm combat zone secured. Repeat: separatist forces have regained control of Balmora. Reinforcements and medical teams en route. Estimated arrival: fifteen minutes.”

  A dense silence formed between them.

  “Did we win?” Alis asked from the back, without moving from her corner. Her voice was hoarse, tired.

  Dossian took time before answering.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “We won this position.”

  No one celebrated.

  Jevin dropped his helmet to the floor and leaned against the wall. Blood marked his neck, but he did not seem to notice. Miren looked at him with a tight, broken smile.

  Dossian stood. Walked among the bodies and stopped beside a young enemy soldier. He looked at him a second, then crouched to close his eyes.

  “We have fifteen minutes,” he said, rising. “Let’s use them well.”

  Jevin was already assigning tasks. Miren checked rifles. Alis murmured something that sounded like names, perhaps remembering those who would not return.

  Dossian walked to a reinforced column where, during the fight, he had used his body as a shield to save a child with an ill-fitting uniform. The boy was still there, asleep, unconscious, alive.

  The commander lifted him without effort.

  And then, for the first time in many hours, he exhaled without rage. Not with relief. Only with a dry, absolute exhaustion.

  The ships were on their way.

  The battle was over.