Jack’s gloves fastened to the grips with a stubborn, almost breathing hold, the clammy sheen of sweat giving the polymer a vein-deep tactility that shifted in subtle counterpoint to each movement of his fingers. Smart call, keeping their tags, he thought—the stamped alloy plate lying against his skin like a flake of winter-forged metal, its cold mass swaying imperceptibly with the rhythm of his breath.
Across his visor, the mech’s HUD bled a translucent skein of ghostlight that caught and fractured on the raised letters, scattering into brief, colorless spectrums before his gaze pushed past the rigid spears of the searchlights toward the figure ahead—Ensign Kael—his nameplate catching the dark in a flicker of tempered steel, half-bared and waiting.
Jack’s voice, filtered through Thor’s external speakers, came out as a flat, iron-edged baritone.
“Sergeant Lars, Second Squad, First Company, Second Battalion, Third Regiment, Tartarus Legion.”
He read it off the tag as if it were scripture.
Kael bent over his wrist console, the faint whine of its mag-core servo audible even from here. The glow painted his face in blue-white haze.
“My apologies, Honored Lars,” he said, shoulders loosening. “Your squad’s callsign is in SkyNet’s sector registry. Forgive the delay. May your hunt be swift.”
Jack caught the tremor of relief in his tone. In the Imperial caste ladder, a lowborn questioning a Veborian from the Emperor’s own personal executioners was suicide. Jack let his expressionless helmet plate tilt, measuring the man, wondering: What the hell do these people even believe they’re dying for?
Thor pivoted, servos grinding softly. The five Wraiths behind him fell into a precise, knife-straight formation, their footfalls timed to the millisecond. They were halfway through the gate when Kael’s voice chased them.
“Honored Lars—one more thing, if I may.”
Jack made the mech turn in slow arcs, its servos groaning, as it projected the studied impatience of someone indulging a subordinate.
Kael’s face lit faintly with pride at being of use.
“Your comrades from Third Squad, under Lieutenant Joric, are in the area. The last check-in puts them on an intercept course toward this base. Resupply in under two hours.”
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For a second, the ground seemed to tilt under Jack’s boots. The man’s tone was helpful, earnest—and he had just laid down a death sentence without knowing it.
The Empire’s traditions pressed like tides, unseen but inescapable. Jack felt how they shaped every gesture, every silence—slow currents wearing men into one fixed mold until thought itself moved in lockstep. For lifetimes, this harsh lattice of rank had held the Imperial spine straight: Veborians enthroned at the summit, the rest clawing for crumbs below, each taught from cradle to spit downward. An entire people in harness, straining toward an Emperor whose face they would never meet.
He left Kael in the wash of the gate lights, the man’s face fixed in doomed helpfulness. There was no triumph in it—only a quiet pity.
Inside the compound, the six Wraiths dissolved into shadow. Two hours to plant charges, kill the missile grid, and blind the jammers. Jack’s HUD traced route lines through Thor’s optic overlay. The blackout protocol kept the base in near-total dark; still, the power vaults and ammo towers were lit like fat targets on the thermal scope.
The Tartarus crest was a master key. They ghosted past guards, into warehouses heavy with the smell of ion-lube and stale air, past stacks of fusion cores humming faintly. A logistics private, roused by the silhouette of a Wraith in his doorway, stared once, rolled over, and pulled his blanket tighter. Not his circus. Not his Emperor’s monkeys to provoke.
Even the base commander, a Veborian colonel, laughed off the “inspection.” Let the little bastards play, he told his aide. Keeps the trash nervous.
By the end of the hour, every artery in the base—from silo ignition circuits to the primary power spine—was wired with fusion charges. Jack even had Thor’s depleted energy cells swapped out by a trembling ground crew whose breath fogged inside their masks.
They walked out the way they came, the gate guards offering only silent salutes.
Back in the jungle’s heat-slick dark, the Stinger’s burst-comm pinged through. The Commonwealth air offensive had detonated into full fury—hundreds of fighters clawing the sky in a storm of contrails and cannon fire. By 0800 hours, after burning five reserve wings, the Commonwealth owned the air—barely. A squadron of transports was already en route with three battalions of special forces to cover the extraction.
Jack’s team crouched less than a klick from the base perimeter, chrono ticking over. He thumbed the detonator.
Light hit first—brilliant, silent pulses stabbing the horizon—then the sound, a rolling, skin-thick boom that punched the earth under their boots. The main ammo depot’s chain reaction bloomed into a white-orange sun, heat reaching them seconds later. The compound was now a screaming, flaming wound.
Through the smoke, Jack saw mechs and infantry streaming away in fractured, leaderless packs.
“It’s time,” he said into the comm, voice stripped to its fighting edge. “Artillery—fire for effect. Assault teams, a hundred-meter spread. Move.”
The Stinger’s ECM slammed live, drowning every Imperial sensor in static. The Paladins and five captured Wraiths split. To the left, the Juggernaut and eight Paladins would smash the ruins head-on.
Jack took the right, his wolves wearing the skins of other wolves, sliding through the firelight toward the kill.
