You and Corax advanced cautiously into the underground base, leaving the carnage of the surface battle behind. The temperature dropped immediately as you descended, the air growing stale and cold.
Dim emergency lighting cast everything in sickly yellow tones, creating pools of shadow that seemed to move at the edge of your vision. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the sound of your breathing and the soft scrape of your boots on concrete.
You navigated a spiral staircase that descended deeper into the facility. Thick dust coated every surface, disturbed only by fresh footprints from the guards who'd retreated here minutes earlier. The contrast was stark: years of abandonment interrupted by sudden, desperate activity.
The staircase opened into a wide passageway, its ceiling high enough to accommodate even Corax's towering frame comfortably. You moved forward slowly, weapons ready, every sense on high alert.
Then you saw it.
A radiation warning sign, black frame on yellow background, bolted to a rust-stained metal wall. The symbol was universal, unmistakable, and deeply concerning. The metal around it was blackened, possibly from age, possibly from something worse.
Corax noticed your discovery, his gaze following yours to the warning marker.
You exchanged a long look. He raised one eyebrow questioningly. You nodded in silent agreement.
Whatever lay ahead, you'd face it together.
Corax's long black hair swayed slightly as he moved. Then he simply... disappeared. One moment he was beside you, the next he'd melted completely into the shadows, becoming one with the darkness in a way that defied explanation. You could hear nothing, see nothing. He was simply gone, a ghost in truth as well as reputation.
Several dozen seconds passed in tense silence.
Then came the sounds. Sharp, wet cracks of tearing flesh. Agonized screams that cut off abruptly, mid-cry. The sounds echoed through the passage before fading to nothing, leaving only the memory of violence.
You hefted your two double-edged axes, their blades chipped and fractured but still functional, and moved deeper into the passage. Your feet squelched through a viscous mixture of blood and dust that coated the floor, the consistency somewhere between mud and syrup. The smell was copper and iron, thick enough to taste.
Bodies lay everywhere. Not corpses, really. Remains. Pieces. The guards who'd retreated here had been torn apart with methodical brutality, their deaths swift but far from clean. You stepped over and around them, keeping your gaze forward, refusing to dwell on the details.
Corax stood ahead, having just finished killing what must have been hundreds of enemies in the span of a minute. He wasn't even breathing hard. His armor dripped steadily, adding to the pooling blood underfoot.
Before you both towered a massive metal blast door, easily several feet thick, its surface scarred and pitted with age. Electronic hacking devices were connected to its interface panels, their screens flickering with lines of code as they worked to bypass the security systems. Occasional soft beeps indicated progress.
"This appears to be a storage facility," Corax said, his deep eyes scanning every detail of the door and surrounding walls. "Probably dating from the early colonization period, when this moon was first settled. I suspect these guards only recently discovered it. Otherwise, they wouldn't need to hack their own installation's security."
You narrowed your eyes, recalling the radiation warning signs. "What do you think is inside? What could make a group of guards prioritize defending a storage facility over their own lives during an active assault?" You paused, considering possibilities. "Biological weapons? Or..."
"Let's find out." A faint smile crossed Corax's pale face, almost playful despite the surrounding carnage.
He retracted the lightning claws on his hands, the power fields dissipating with a soft hum. Then he crouched beside the enemy's hacking devices, studying the screens for a moment. His fingers began moving across interfaces with incredible speed, inputting commands in what looked like an obscure technical language, lines of esoteric code flowing from his trembling fingertips faster than you could read.
The Primarch worked with focused intensity, his knowledge of ancient systems proving invaluable.
You stood there watching the back of Corax's massive form, your raised axe slowly lowering. You felt slightly embarrassed. You'd been about to suggest simply chopping through the door, a solution both crude and likely ineffective given the thickness of the blast door.
Corax's method was decidedly more elegant.
Shortly afterward, mechanical valves ground into motion with harsh, grating sounds that suggested decades of disuse. The metal door began opening, its mechanisms protesting every inch of movement.
As the seal broke, pressure equalized between the warehouse interior and the passage. Air rushed past you, carrying scents of old metal and something chemical you couldn't identify. Then power generation units inside the warehouse activated automatically, responding to the door's opening. Dim, yellowish light sources flickered to life, gradually illuminating the contents within.
You and Corax both widened your eyes simultaneously.
"Atomic mining charges," you heard Corax murmur, almost to himself. "Nuclear bombs."
The warehouse floor stretched before you, packed with orderly rows of atomic mining charges. Each device was wrapped in protective transparent film, their cylindrical shapes unmistakable. They sat on pallets, stacked and secured, possibly thousands of them. The sheer quantity was staggering.
They seemed to pulse in your vision, drawing your gaze like a magnet. So much destructive potential, stored in this forgotten facility beneath the moon's surface.
You stared at the arsenal, your throat suddenly dry. You swallowed hard, trying to process the implications. Your breathing had become shallow, rapid.
"Brother!" Corax's voice cut through your shock. His deep eyes were wide, his expression more serious than you'd ever seen. "Get on the radio immediately! Contact every Shadow Warden team! Reach all nearby armed worker units!" He turned to face you fully, his voice dropping to deadly seriousness. "Even if most of our comrades have to die defending this position, we must hold this facility! Do you understand? This changes everything!"
You nodded emphatically, the weight of responsibility settling on your shoulders like physical mass. Then you turned and ran, sprinting back up the passage toward the surface, your boots splashing through pooled blood.
You understood perfectly what this meant. Once the entire revolutionary force possessed such powerful weapons, combat casualties would drop dramatically. Morale would skyrocket. The enemy would have to negotiate rather than simply crush the rebellion through attrition.
This was victory measured in lives saved, in futures secured.
You gritted your teeth, brandishing your broken double-edged axes despite their diminished effectiveness, and fought your way out of the underground base. You burst back into the chaotic surface battlefield where fierce fighting still raged, throwing yourself back into combat with renewed purpose.
Hours later, covered head to toe in blood that was mostly not your own, you led the Shadow Warden teams that had successfully captured the gravity well position back down into the underground base. Upon meeting Corax, the elite fighters quickly established defensive positions, securing the facility's approaches.
You returned to the surface and located your large vehicle, still functional despite numerous bullet holes and scorch marks.
Armed worker units received your broadcast transmission about the discovery. The response was immediate and overwhelming. Reinforcements flooded toward the gravity well position, armed workers arriving in waves until the area around the base became almost impossibly crowded. The air filled with voices, with the sounds of weapons being distributed, with the energy of hope realized.
Comrade Nia, the logistics coordinator codenamed 'Queen,' arrived with remarkable speed, along with Comrade Aloni, the forging master codenamed 'Rook.' They took over command authority from you and Corax with smooth efficiency, their expertise in organization immediately apparent as they began coordinating the defense and distribution of the captured arsenal.
With command transferred, you and Corax immediately assembled a fresh strike force: armed workers equipped with newly captured weapons and gear, supplemented by a small elite group from the Shadow Warden teams. Your new mission was clear: spread the rebellion across the entire moon.
The fourth week saw Lycaeus transform completely.
The mining moon, once a prison of suffering, became a revolutionary zone under your complete control. As news of your continued victories spread through underground communication networks, the response exceeded all expectations.
Countless armed workers, their families oppressed for generations, rose up in coordinated uprisings. With crude weapons and fearless determination born from having nothing left to lose, they killed the overseers who'd enforced brutal quotas and impossible standards. They leveled guard posts and fortified positions through sheer numbers and willingness to die for freedom.
As a revolutionary leader, you found yourself receiving enthusiastic support wherever you traveled. Armed workers lined the roads, cheering as you passed. Children who'd never known anything but labor looked at you with awe. Women who'd lost husbands and sons to industrial accidents wept tears of gratitude.
For the first time, you truly felt what it meant to be loved by the people. The weight of their hope, their trust, settled on your shoulders alongside the responsibility.
Even your damaged double-edged axes received special attention. Skilled forging workers took the broken weapons, reforged and reinforced them with better materials and techniques, then personally delivered them to you in a small ceremony. The new blades gleamed, perfectly balanced, deadlier than ever.
But as you began to feel pride swelling in your chest, as you started to believe your own legend...
Corax noticed.
He never confronted you directly, never lectured. Instead, he led by example, continuing to work alongside ordinary laborers, to listen to their concerns, to share meals and burdens alike. His patience and genuine humility served as a mirror, reflecting your own growing arrogance back at you.
Under his quiet guidance, you gradually rediscovered your original purpose for joining the revolution. You'd come to liberate people, not to be worshiped by them. To serve, not to rule.
As the threads of false vanity peeled away from your heart, you broke out in cold sweat. How easily you'd been seduced by adulation. How quickly power and praise had begun corrupting your intentions.
You took a deep breath, closed your eyes, and offered silent prayers to the still-living Emperor, asking for strength and clarity of purpose.
Then you gripped your newly reforged double-edged axes and refocused on the work ahead.
With the continued takeover and reorganization of armed worker units across Lycaeus, you and Corax quickly returned to the gravity well facility. Through thorough exploration and technical investigation, you strengthened the special force field's protective barrier that surrounded the entire moon, making surprise attacks from orbital positions far more difficult.
The fifth week arrived with building tension.
As you intensified training programs for revolutionary troops, preparing for the inevitable counterattack, the enemy finally moved.
The Tech-guilds and slave owners entrenched on Kiavahr had learned of the uprising through their own intelligence networks. The loss of Lycaeus's mineral production threatened their economy and wounded their pride. More importantly, it represented an existential threat. If slaves could successfully rebel on one moon, they might rebel everywhere.
The response was predictably brutal.
Enormous warships appeared in orbit, their protective capabilities far exceeding anything the rebels possessed. These vessels represented generations of accumulated technology and wealth. They anchored at the gravity wells, the only viable entry points through the force field, and began deploying landing craft packed with regular soldiers and heavy equipment.
But Corax had anticipated this exact scenario.
He'd developed a tactical plan specifically for this moment: feign weakness at the gravity wells to deceive enemy reconnaissance, then spring an overwhelming ambush. The strategy was ancient, proven, deadly.
You first appeared to abandon defensive positions around the gravity wells, pulling back forces in staged retreats that looked panicked and disorganized. Enemy reconnaissance drones and sensor sweeps reported the wells undefended, ripe for exploitation.
Meanwhile, you were actually deploying a dense network of artillery positions around the flat terrain surrounding each well, carefully concealed and pre-sighted for optimal fire coverage. Underground tunnels honeycombed the area, filled with ambush teams armed with the newly captured weapons and explosives.
The trap was set.
Soon after, the first landing force descended through the supposedly undefended gravity wells, their craft packed with regular soldiers confident in an easy victory against poorly armed rebels.
Massive industrial excavators burst from concealed positions, shattering the surface and rising to form impromptu metal barriers that blocked fields of fire and channeled enemy forces into predetermined kill zones.
Then every hybrid artillery emplacement opened fire simultaneously. The roar was deafening, overwhelming, beautiful in its coordinated violence. Landing craft still descending through the gravity wells were bracketed by explosive shells and laser strikes, their hulls rupturing, spilling soldiers and fuel into the void. Those that survived to reach the surface found themselves immediately under devastating fire.
Countless enemy soldiers, unable to escape their doomed transports in time, were transformed into screaming fireballs that bloomed against the artificial sky before crashing to the surface as burning wreckage.
You led your well-trained army of armed workers out from underground positions, emerging like a tide of righteous fury. You wore your heavy metal armor, wielded your reforged double-edged axes, and charged directly at the few enemy soldiers who'd managed to land and establish defensive positions.
Every armed worker following you radiated fervent morale. They fought not just for themselves but for their children's futures, for their elderly parents, for the possibility of lives lived in dignity rather than slavery. They showed no fear when facing soldiers with superior training and equipment. Only determination and willingness to die if necessary to secure freedom.
You served as the spearhead, driving deep into enemy formations like a blade piercing flesh. Your axes rose and fell in mechanical rhythm, each strike finding targets, each kill opening space for the workers behind you to exploit.
Eight hours of sustained combat followed. The battle was brutal, exhausting, but never truly in doubt.
When the enemy's last landing craft was destroyed by precise artillery fire, the counterattack had become nothing more than a catastrophic failure. A joke that would circulate among the revolutionary ranks, a cautionary tale about underestimating desperate people fighting for survival.
You stood atop a damaged landing craft, the metal still warm beneath your boots. You held your two double-edged axes, their blades slightly curved from repeated impacts but still functional. Blood dripped steadily from the edges, pattering on the hull like rain.
You looked up at the massive warships gradually withdrawing beyond the force field, their commanders apparently unwilling to commit more forces to what had become a slaughter. A faint smile crossed your weary, sweat-drenched face. Victory tasted sweet despite the exhaustion weighing down your limbs.
You lowered your gaze and saw a procession of countless armed workers approaching, waving and cheering. They chanted revolutionary slogans, sang songs of liberation, celebrated survival and triumph.
Corax walked among them, smiling, accepting congratulations but deflecting praise toward the collective effort rather than any individual heroism.
You felt a bright smile spreading across your own face, unconscious and genuine.
You casually shouldered both double-edged axes, the weight familiar and comforting. Then you leaped down from the landing craft, landing in a crouch before rising to your full height.
You walked with resolute steps toward Corax, toward your brother, ready to plan the next phase of the revolution.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~