You stood fully armed and armored before a landing pod that looked like it had been assembled by optimistic amateurs. Which, essentially, it had been. The pod consisted of numerous outer shell components welded and bolted together, its seams covered with what looked like industrial sealant. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.
A massive rock-excavating machine, its engine roaring with grinding persistence, used its powerful hydraulic systems to slowly hoist the fully enclosed landing module toward the center of the gravity well. The machine strained under the weight, gears protesting, but it held.
You secured your tall frame with safety restraints, pulling the straps tight across your chest and waist. Your fingers found the internal communication device and you signaled the operator with two quick taps. Ready for launch.
The next moment came when orbital mechanics aligned perfectly: the mining moon's rotation synchronized with its revolution around Kiavahr.
The landing module, suddenly enveloped and accelerated by the gravity well's invisible force field, was launched toward the planet's surface like a cannonball fired from a cosmic artillery piece.
You endured tremendous gravitational acceleration, your face contorting involuntarily as g-forces compressed your body into the seat.
Every organ felt like it was being squeezed. Your vision narrowed to a tunnel. Breathing became difficult, each inhalation requiring conscious effort against the pressure crushing your chest.
Your landing module crossed the Lagrange point in mere seconds, was rapidly captured by Kiavahr's gravitational field, and plummeted into the planet's thick atmosphere.
The temperature inside the landing module began rising at an alarming rate, accompanied by violent turbulence that rattled every bolt and seam.
The hull groaned and creaked. You could hear the atmospheric friction screaming outside, a banshee wail of superheated air. The makeshift pod wasn't designed for this, hadn't been properly tested. Corax's Shadow Wardens used power armor for orbital insertions. You were riding in what amounted to a metal coffin held together by worker ingenuity and revolutionary determination.
You'd never truly experienced the suffering of an ordinary person riding a landing pod, especially one that was hand-assembled by workers with limited resources and no formal engineering specifications.
The heat became unbearable. Sweat poured down your face, soaking your undersuit. The metal walls glowed faintly, radiating thermal energy. You could smell your own fear-sweat mixing with hot metal and burning insulation.
Just when you thought the pod would disintegrate around you, that you'd die as a fireball streaking across Kiavahr's sky...
The retro-thrust engines fired from the pod's underside. The roar was deafening, shaking your teeth, but it was the most beautiful sound you'd ever heard. The engines screamed, fighting against terminal velocity, bleeding off momentum.
A terrifying metallic clang announced impact. The pod hit ground hard, bouncing once, twice, then skidding across rough terrain before finally stopping. One final violent jolt, and then...
Silence.
You hung in the restraints for a moment, drenched in sweat that steamed in the residual heat. Your hands shook as you tore off the seatbelt, fingers clumsy with adrenaline aftershock.
You grabbed the two double-edged axes secured beside your seat and slung them across your back. Corax's personal scythe and hammer went horizontally behind your waist, their weight familiar and comforting. The fragmentation grenades you'd been given were secured to your chest webbing like metal fruit, ready for harvest.
Two laser rifles, one in each hand. Charged, tested, reliable.
You kicked the landing hatch without hesitation. It was twisted and deformed from the impact, but your boot connected with enough force to send it flying outward. You rushed into Kiavahr's air, weapons ready, expecting immediate contact with enemy forces.
Nothing.
No soldiers, no ambush, no welcoming committee of any kind.
Following Corax's suggestion, you'd chosen a landing site near an industrial city closest to where the insurgents were supposedly hiding. Strategic positioning to link up quickly.
This was also one of the chaotic cities where the Tech-guilds had just experienced brutal internal conflict.
You scanned your surroundings with extreme vigilance, every sense heightened.
Your keen nose detected layers of scent that told a story: the acrid stench of burnt propellant and discharged laser weapons, the sour reek of decomposing garbage, the overwhelming copper tang of spilled blood. All of it mixing into an olfactory assault that made your eyes water.
You'd landed on a ravaged street in what had once been a functioning urban area. Now it was a hellscape. Shell craters pockmarked the pavement, some several meters across. Blackened bloodstains marked where people had died, their final moments painted in char and gore. Mutilated civilian corpses lay scattered along both sides of the road, abandoned where they'd fallen, no one left alive or willing to perform burial rites.
You moved quickly to a half-collapsed wall, using it for cover, and activated the makeshift communication device meant to contact the insurgents. Your fingers worked the controls, broadcasting your arrival on the pre-arranged frequency.
A dozen seconds later, several low, buzzing sounds of varying lengths crackled through your earpiece.
You exhaled slowly, releasing tension you hadn't fully acknowledged holding.
That was the coded reply. The insurgents had received your location information and were en route to provide support and extraction.
You rose from cover and began methodically searching the area, expanding your security perimeter. The arriving rebel forces would be vulnerable during approach. You needed to eliminate potential ambush positions, clear lines of sight, ensure their route was secure.
You moved through the surrounding dilapidated buildings, checking windows and doorways, scanning rooftops for sniper positions.
Your frown deepened with each structure you examined.
The living conditions you discovered were shocking. Somehow, impossibly, ordinary people on Kiavahr lived worse than the miners on Lycaeus had before the uprising.
The miners had been worked brutally, fed minimal rations, treated as disposable labor. But they'd maintained mental fortitude and basic hygiene habits. Their living spaces, while cramped and spartan, had been clean. They'd preserved dignity in small ways.
Here, you could deduce that most ordinary people's daily lives were complete disasters simply by examining the interior of any dilapidated building.
Trash piled in corners. Human waste in places where it shouldn't be. No organization, no cleanliness, no pride. These people had been ground down to something below survival, existing in squalor that suggested total abandonment of hope.
Your exploration continued, moving deeper into the ruined urban landscape.
Then you stopped abruptly, every muscle tensing.
Your keen sense of smell detected something specific beneath the ambient rot: fresh blood mixed with human excrement, a combination that triggered immediate alarm.
You slowed your pace dramatically, employing stealth techniques learned from the Shadow Wardens. Silent footfalls, controlled breathing, using shadows and debris for concealment. You approached a nearby building that remained mostly intact, its walls standing despite obvious damage.
Your eyes narrowed unconsciously as you entered.
Messy footprints tracked across the floor in random patterns. Drag marks suggesting a violent struggle, deep gouges where someone had clawed at the ground trying to escape.
You moved forward suddenly, bursting through a dimly lit room with its door hanging half-open on broken hinges.
For a moment, understanding flickered across your otherwise controlled expression. Then came anger, brief but intense, before your face went cold and blank.
You saw clearly the brutalized corpse of a young woman, violated by multiple assailants and mutilated beyond any reasonable recognition. Countless flies and other insects swarmed the body, creating a nauseating buzzing that filled the room.
Nearby on the ground sat several military-grade metal cooking pots and pans, along with a pile of recently extinguished firewood.
The story wrote itself in the evidence. Soldiers had occupied this building, cooked a meal, and found the woman hiding nearby. What followed was predictable, brutal, evil given free rein by the chaos of civil war.
You stepped back slowly, your movements precise and controlled. You gently closed the damaged door, giving the dead woman what small dignity remained available. She deserved better than to be left exposed.
You turned to leave, to continue your mission, to focus on larger strategic concerns.
Then something caught your peripheral vision.
A metal button, half-buried in dust near your boot.
You bent down and picked it up, brushing away the grime. It was a standard factory worker's button, the kind sewn onto canvas overalls. Simple, functional, ubiquitous.
But someone had carved a name into its surface with crude tools. The letters were crooked, uneven, scratched by unpracticed hands.
You stared at the name for a long moment.
Then you took a deep breath and carefully inserted the metal button into a gap in your heavy armor, tucking it away against your chest where it wouldn't be lost.
The eighth week passed in grinding increments.
You gradually encountered ordinary people who'd survived the fighting but had been broken by it. They scavenged for scraps of food among the vast ruins, eating things that shouldn't be eaten. They drank murky, foul-smelling water from puddles and broken pipes, risking disease because thirst allowed no other choice.
Their eyes were hollow, their movements listless. The spark that made humans something more than animals had been extinguished by sustained horror.
You never received reinforcements from the rebel forces. No one came. Days passed, then weeks, and still nothing.
You survived by intercepting the occasional squad of enemy soldiers that wandered through the city. Quick ambushes, brutal efficiency, taking their supplies and communication equipment before disappearing back into the ruins.
Eventually, you forcibly seized a small military vehicle, something with armor plating and functioning systems. Using its more sophisticated communication array, you contacted the mining moon's liaison officer via encrypted channels.
The news Corax delivered was bad. You'd anticipated it might be, but confirmation still hit hard.
The uprising forces' leadership had fractured over strategic disagreements.
One faction believed persistence would lead to victory. If they held out long enough, the mining moon's base would transition from defense to offense, liberating the entire planet while the Tech-guilds remained embroiled in civil conflict. The powerful warrior they'd sent down would be proof that liberation was coming.
The other faction believed the mining moon's people were cowards who'd abandoned them to save themselves. The smart move was exploiting the civil strife to seize several important factories, gaining leverage for negotiating with Tech-guild survivors. As for the unfortunate warrior they'd sent down? He was on his own.
Thus, a power struggle erupted on the very day you'd arrived on Kiavahr.
The remaining force of just over fifteen hundred fighters split into two irreconcilable factions. One fighting for revolutionary ideals. The other fighting for immediate survival. The conflict between them grew heated, then violent.
Until the revolutionary faction, blinded by rage and betrayal, detonated their ammunition depot rather than let it fall into the hands of those they now considered traitors. The explosion killed both factions almost completely.
The uprising on Kiavahr had ended not with a bang or a whimper, but with fratricide. Rebels killing rebels while the enemy watched and laughed.
You couldn't help but close your eyes, sighing deeply.
Corax offered you two options, his voice steady despite delivering terrible news.
First, find a hidden location and focus on survival. With your skills, obtaining supplies wouldn't be problematic. He would quickly select a suitable target city to complete the atomic deterrence plan, forcing the war-torn Tech-guilds to surrender.
The second option: start from scratch, gradually building a new revolutionary force. But the timing was wrong, the geography unfavorable, and popular support essentially nonexistent.
You exhaled slowly, thinking through implications and possibilities.
Your fingertips brushed against the metal button tucked inside your armor. You felt the crude carving of the name, the weight of what it represented.
"Prepare the atomic mining charges," you said quietly into the communicator. "Release them within one week."
Corax didn't ask why. He simply remained silent for several seconds before agreeing to your request.
You gently ended the communication channel, cutting the connection.
"People must rely on themselves," you muttered, your hand unconsciously tightening its grip on a blood-stained double-edged axe.
The revolution on Lycaeus would succeed. But Kiavahr... Kiavahr was already dead. It just didn't know it yet.
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