The war room lights dimmed.
A holographic map flared to life: the Nyros Belt — a shattered ring of asteroids, once a thriving mining zone, now overrun by pirate clans.
Ashoka stood at the center, eyes sharp, jaw clenched.
"These are the coordinates," Priya said, tapping a red-marked sector. "The pirate lord Kravyn controls the biggest stronghold here. Slave routes, black-market ore, hacked AI drones. He's been raiding Aryavrat's supply lines for years."
Admiral Viraj crossed his arms. "This won't be a clean skirmish. Nyros pirates fight dirty. Booby-trapped hulls. Suicide bombers. And Kravyn's flagship — the Bone Serpent — outguns anything we have."
Ashoka smiled coldly. "That's why we won't fight them head-on."
He turned.
"We raid."
Hours later, aboard the Vikas-1, the strike team assembled in the hangar bay.
Captain Meera Rajan checked her plasma rifle. "Crew's ready, my lord. Boarding pods, stealth suits, gravity cutters. You sure about this?"
Ashoka adjusted his armored gauntlet — newly forged, reinforced with blue-tinted nanosteel.
"This isn't about destroying Kravyn," Ashoka said. "It's about making sure every pirate in the belt knows: Suryaansh has returned."
Priya stepped forward, handing him a datapad.
"We identified Kravyn's vault ship — the Shadow Fang. It carries his tribute gold, data cores, rare earth shipments. We hit that, we break his spine without touching his fleet."
Ashoka's eyes glinted.
"Perfect."
The assault began in the dead of night.
Vikas-1 dropped out of warp at the edge of the Nyros Belt, masked by a cloaking drone swarm. The pirate fleet's sensors barely twitched. Ashoka's strike pods detached, gliding silently across the void.
Inside his pod, Ashoka breathed steadily, feeling his pulse slow — the calm of the hunt washing over him.
"Breaching now," Meera's voice crackled in his comms.
With a thunderous shudder, magnetic claws latched onto the Shadow Fang. Plasma cutters ignited, slicing through the hull.
Ashoka led the charge.
The corridor lit up with blaster fire. Pirates snarled, lunging with chainblades and scrap-axes, but Ashoka's team cut them down with surgical precision. Ashoka himself fought at the front, his gauntlets punching through armor, his blade slicing through mechanical limbs.
Every step forward was a message: We are not the fallen. We are the storm.
They reached the vault.
A shimmering core of stolen wealth and smuggled tech pulsed behind a quantum lock.
"Thirty seconds, boss," Priya's voice came through.
Ashoka raised his blade.
"Not waiting."
He plunged the blade's edge into the lock's central node, channeling raw energy. The vault shuddered — and cracked open with a surge of plasma light.
Inside: crates of hyperfuel, memory cores, neutronium ingots, and—
Ashoka's eyes narrowed.
—Earth-AI war relics.
"Load it all," Ashoka ordered grimly.
Because if Kravyn was trafficking forbidden Earth weapons, this wasn't just piracy.
It was treason.
Minutes later, alarms blared through the pirate fleet. Ashoka's pods rocketed away from the Shadow Fang, hauling their stolen cargo. Vikas-1's engines roared to life, launching into warp just as Kravyn's warships came swarming in.
From his flagship bridge, Kravyn howled, slamming his fist into a console.
"Who dares—?!"
But it was too late.
Ashoka Suryaansh had come and gone, like a shadow wrapped in fire.
Back aboard Vikas-1, Ashoka stood in the cargo hold, staring at the war relics.
Priya approached quietly.
"If we crack these, we could learn why the AI wars really ended."
Ashoka's gaze hardened.
"One war at a time."
He turned to his gathered crew, raising a fist.
"We've taken our first blood, not for plunder — but for power, for honor, for Aryavrat's rebirth. And I swear, before the stars and our ancestors—"
"—this is only the beginning."
The crew erupted in cheers.
Ashoka smiled faintly.
For the first time in years, his house's banner flew not only over a dying planet —
but over the stars.