"Empress Lucione!" Andromeda's voice screamed through the external speakers as I watched the gallery burn.
[That son of a bitch!] Draco bellowed, thrashing forward in rage—but was yanked back by his pilot. [Sam! Let me kill this bastard and save the Empress already!]
"Not yet! Andromeda would be exposed if we rushed in!" Sam gripped the controls tight, restraining his knight from lunging into the inferno.
A sudden buzz crackled over the intercom. Marshal Excav's voice rang out with authority as his Constellation Knight stepped from the flames, its golden lion helm shimmering in the firelight.
"The Empress has safely escaped alongside the three Marshals using her emergency warp. I'm assuming full operational command from this point!"
Both Sam and I exhaled, relief flooding our cockpits.
"The palace is our temporary FOB. Andromeda—rally your fireteam. Regain control of the anti-air systems before the orbital cannons reach full charge. Draco, eliminate that traitor! All other available knights: purge the apostates and bring those warships down!"
"[Roger, Marshal.]" Our voices echoed in unity as the lion knight leapt into the city to face the encroaching enemy.
"You've got things handled here?" I asked as Andromeda completed his repairs, reloading the railgun's magazine with a click. With a hiss of steam, he rose to his feet once more.
"We'll take care of Zero. Go!" Sam barked. "Do what the Marshal said—before we lose our air support!"
[Finally!] Draco surged forward, tackling Ara through the arena wall and into chaos. The impact shattered the generator shielding the stadium, igniting a firestorm that obliterated the stands in a deafening eruption.
"Let's move, Andy!" Engaging his thrusters, I shot Andromeda into the sky through the flickering remnants of the energy shield. "Locate and contact Nicole. She might be able to unlock the AA systems!"
[Already tracking her DSI. She's fifteen miles out—hunkered in a computer bar. Estimated arrival in three minutes, four seconds.]
We tore between skyscrapers at full burn, weaving through smoke-choked corridors of air. Fires roared below, citizens scattered like ants beneath collapsing towers, and the sky burned with the shadow of falling ships.
The call connected—Nicole's voice crackled through the comm. "Firefly?! What the hell happened at the Colosseum?!"
"Freiheit infiltrated the event! I'm enroute—coming to extract you. We need to reclaim orbital defences before our fleet's turned to scrap!"
"Jason's with me—we'd wait, but a drop force just landed out front!" Laser fire and panicked screams bled through the signal. "How close are you?!"
"One minute! Just hold on!" I pushed Andromeda to max thrust, drawing the emerald sword as the cityscape blurred around us.
Freiheit ships descended—but we didn't stop. We cut through each one mid-flight, detonating them in violent bursts. The flaming wreckage collapsed upon their own troops, crushing entire squads as Andromeda streaked through the sky like a falling star.
We reached the street—Nicole and Jason's location locked. Touching down, Andromeda smashed through the automatons in a thunderstorm of fire and steel. They barely had time to react before we purged the street clean.
"Nicole! Jason!" I shouted through Andromeda's vox.
"Over here!" Jason waved from inside the shattered front of the computer bar. Glass was everywhere, the interior gutted as if a missile had gone off. But they were safe—sheltered beneath a steel table.
Andromeda reached in, shielding them from incoming fire as he pulled them out.
"We need the location of the AA control tower—now!"
"The spire north of here!" Jason called out, ducking another laser blast. "That's where all the city's defence systems are controlled! There'll be weapons inside, too!"
"Andy—plot a course!"
[Course locked.] The route appeared instantly on Andromeda's internal display. He lifted into the air, flying low and fast between buildings. [Pilot, you'll need to access the tower base directly and ascend the central shaft to reach the control hub.]
"And what about the AA guns? Won't they fire on us while we approach?"
[Unlikely. If the control core is offline or compromised, they won't risk self-destruction. If the tower's lost, the entire AA grid collapses—including the orbital defence cannons.]
"Understood." A sharp ping drew my attention—an AA gun on the riverbank had locked onto us. "Boosters—now!"
Andromeda jerked to the side, thrusters igniting. Behind us, a single blast levelled entire buildings, chasing our trail with deadly precision.
"Hang on!" I shouted as Nicole and Jason clung to Andromeda's fingers.
Approaching the river, I spun Andromeda mid-flight, blasting downward with both foot thrusters. The resulting plume of water vapor shrouded our flight path in thick steam, scrambling the AA-gun's sensors.
Drenched, we emerged from the mist at the base of the spire. Andromeda stayed close to the wall, then rocketed up its length. We twisted around the control dish and landed atop the tower.
I lowered Nicole and Jason onto the rooftop, punching Andromeda's fist through the metal roofing to open a path for them. "Go! Work fast—Andromeda and I will hold the line!"
But before they could move, a flak cannon round slammed into Andromeda's side, nearly knocking us off the spire.
"Shit—!" I cursed.
More flak followed, pounding his armour. With thrusters struggling, we tumbled off the tower in a hail of smoke and sparks.
"Firefly!" Nicole screamed from above.
"We're fine!" I barked back, yanking the controls. I reignited Andromeda's boosters just in time, stabilizing before we hit the ground. The armour was dented, scorched—but still holding.
"We'll hold the line down here!" I shouted through gritted teeth. "Get those guns back under our control before it's too late!"
Andromeda planted his foot, sword raised, railgun charging—ready to take on anything that came near the tower.
Face-to-face with a Freiheit tank that had been air-dropped into the city, Andromeda didn't hesitate. He seized the turret in both hands, twisted it free like it was paper, and crushed the tank underfoot in a burst of flame and twisted metal.
Before the smoke could clear, a platoon of droids spotted us—fifty or more—opening fire in unison. Their lasers hammered into Andromeda's platinum shell, barely nudging him under the weight of their collective assault.
Raising his left hand, Andromeda activated his magnetic shield. In an instant, the incoming fire and the droids themselves bent violently toward his palm, merging into a single shrieking, sparking mass. He tightened his fingers around the compressed orb and a small jet of fire hissed from between his knuckles.
"The control room's clear of droids—we've secured weapons," Jason reported through the radio. "Nicole's started working on the systems, but listen, Firefly... there were sleeper agents in the original control tower crew. This whole thing might've been years in the making. How did we miss this?"
"It must be some new tech... something that emulates a human body perfectly." I muttered, watching Andromeda punch straight through a hulking war-bot's chest. With a pivot, he turned and lit the tower's steel entryway ablaze as more droids tried to storm in—only to melt into slag.
"This could trace back to the failed rebellion sixty years ago," I added grimly.
"Or maybe that was the point," Jason said darkly. "This guy we neutralized? He's been working here forty years, and he looked sixty. His records check out—if the robot could age, mimic human skin and decay naturally... no one would ever suspect."
The weight of it hit me hard. If they could plant sleeper agents in critical infrastructure like this—how many others were hiding in plain sight? The water systems. Power grids. Food distribution networks. Everything our people depended on could be turned against them with a single command.
And worse... what if some were embedded in our own military?
Only the Knights and their pilots were trustworthy. Not the AKPs. No machine, no matter how advanced, could fake the spirit energy needed to power a Knight. Even if they somehow managed to replicate it synthetically, it would be unusable—contaminated by the electric current running through artificial systems.
"I have it!" Nicole suddenly shouted over comms. "Air defence systems are back in Imperial control!"
Across the city, I saw it with my own eyes—heavy AA guns pivoted away from our warships and took aim at the Freiheit fleet. Their massive 200mm flak cannons thundered skyward, tearing into enemy aircraft.
"Incoming steel enema for every one of those bastards!" Nicole whooped. "Haha!"
A visible shift spread through the battlefield. Freiheit aircraft were shot from the sky before they could deploy more troops, and their warships began retreating—sliding back toward the edge of atmosphere under a relentless Imperial counterattack.
Then—
"Huh? Wait—oh come on!" Nicole's voice cracked through the radio again. I heard the sharp smack of her hand slamming against a console. "They locked me out!"
I frowned, still watching the flak cannons firing in sync. "Locked out of what?"
"The orbital defence cannons. Like the ones on Duradel. According to the system, they were either remotely disarmed or rigged to self-destruct the second I purged their override. I can't move them, charge them, or even get a diagnostic unless I check them in person. They might've done the same to the AA systems and we just haven't hit the trigger yet."
Andromeda scanned the skyline, and I spotted movement through the heat haze—Imperial troops moving through the wreckage. Infantry squads advanced cautiously, their boots crunching over the shredded remains of droids.
A Major sprinted to us, ducking behind the burned-out tank carcass Andromeda had crushed. He had a plasma rifle in one hand and ash streaking his cheeks.
"Knight!" he barked. "Marshal Excav sent us to relieve your position. With the AA guns back online, we're resuming full counteroffensive. Open your comms—frequency 432.8 for fleet command, 091.3 for local squad chatter!"
"Copy, Major." Andromeda synced frequencies through my helmet as I leaned forward in the cockpit.
"This is Andromeda. Marshal Excav—permission to transmit?"
"Granted. Send traffic, Andromeda," came Excav's voice, sharp and steady as ever.
"My fireteam uncovered a sleeper agent—embedded for forty years—in the control room. Once we reclaimed the AA-gun systems, we realized all the ODCs were simultaneously disabled. I recommend sweeping the towers for sabotage or planted explosives. How copy?"
"Good copy. Affirmative, Andromeda." Marshal Excav's voice cut crisply through the channel. "I've already got forces entrenched near each defence tower. I'll have them conduct full interior sweeps. The Major and his company must've arrived—since you're finally back on comms."
Lifting the remains of a hulk-bot, Andromeda hurled it down the street like deadweight. It slammed into a Freiheit strider escorting a formation of troops, toppling the entire group just before a well-placed rocket from an Imperial soldier reduced the pile to a fireball.
"Affirmative, Marshal," I acknowledged, shielding a few nearby infantry from the heat blast with Andromeda's arm.
"They'll take over your position. Eridanus and Boötes are already handling the rogue Knights corrupted by the AKPs. Draco is MIA, but intel reports say he and Ara took their fight into the Redjaw Street museum. You're being reassigned to provide support for the warships in atmosphere. Can you execute?"
"Yes, Marshal." As I responded, a cluster of stray rounds ricocheted off Andromeda's crown. Without delay, he raised his magnetic shield, catching an incoming rocket mid-air—then launched it right back into the Freiheit APC charging down the avenue.
"Work fast, Andromeda." Excav signed off.
I turned to the Major. "Two of my fireteam are still on the tower's top floor. Use Frequency 555.2 to contact them. I've got new orders."
"We've got this! Go!" the Major shouted back, ducking low as another wave of automatons surged toward their trench.
Before leaving, I bought them some time—unleashing Andromeda's wrist-mounted flamethrower down the main road. The searing arc scorched the droids' joints clean through, turning the push line into molten retreat. Soldiers surged forward into the breathing space, entrenching with fresh resolve.
Blasting off, Andromeda soared upward—rocketing into the thick of an aerial battlefield riddled with jet-drones and burning fighter wreckage. Friendly and enemy units tore through the sky in a deadly ballet of fire and metal.
We were the only Knight aloft.
"We're heading straight for the warship's reactor, Andy!"
[Authorised.]
Cutting through the chaos, Andromeda's heat-blades cleaved jet-drones mid-flight. With every streak of fire, another enemy fell. We broke through their outer perimeter and blazed into the warship's hangar.
He breached the shielding in one surge, igniting the incoming laser munitions just before impact. Flames rolled inward—an expanding inferno behind us—as Andromeda darted through, clearing the bay in a molten trail. We punched through the hangar roof, tearing straight toward the reactor.
With a swing of his sword, Andromeda sliced into the ship's pulsing core—its electric heart shrieking as it destabilized, sparks erupting in every direction.
[We have no time to return to the hangar. My armour can endure the blast, but we'll be critically damaged!]
"Then find the elevator!"
Andromeda sprinted to the internal shaft, leapt inside, and dove downward—pursued by the blooming firestorm. At the bottom, I guided his blade in a sharp arc, cutting a hole through the floor, and we dropped free—back into open sky, out the belly of a dying beast.
Igniting thrusters, Andromeda rocketed us away. Behind us, the warship cracked in half—its engine spooling wildly before shutting down altogether. It spiralled, burning, before crashing beyond the city limits in a distant thunder of metal and earth.
[Excellent escape plan, pilot. A little close, however,] Andromeda mused dryly.
"You're fireproof, Andy. We'd have been fine."
[Analysis suggests otherwise—especially if we were caught in the crash.]
Breathing hard, I grinned under the helmet. "Want to do it again?"
[Freiheit forces will be waiting for us now. But unless they deploy a Constellation Knight, they won't stop us. The game is yours, pilot. Fire at will.]
Hearing that from him lit a spark in my chest I didn't know I needed.
For a moment, I remembered Zero. His betrayal had followed me into every waking thought, gnawed at the edges of my focus, robbed me of sleep. But not now. Not with the sky burning and purpose in my hands.
"Let's assist the allied warships first. Then we'll bring the rest of them down."