The Entropy Beam was a lance of absolute negation.
It struck the Dissonance Mother dead center. There was no explosion. Instead, the purple flesh of the moon-sized horror turned grey. Then black. Then dust.
The decay spread like wildfire. The writhing tentacles withered and snapped. The weeping eyes clouded over and turned to stone. In seconds, nearly thirty percent of the cosmic entity had been reduced to a floating cloud of ash.
"It's working!" Lyra cheered from the bridge of the Sovereign's Will. "We're killing it!"
"Watch out!" Skid yelled, staring at the biosensors. "It's not dying. It's... amputating."
High above, the Dissonance Mother shuddered. A ring of muscle around the decaying section contracted violently.
SQUELCH.
With a sound that vibrated the bones of everyone in the city, the Mother severed its own infected flesh.
A mass of rotting bio-matter the size of a mountain detached and fell toward the earth.
"Incoming!" Marcus shouted, wrestling the ship's yoke. "Debris impact in ten seconds! It's going to hit the Residential District!"
The Shield of Water
Julian patched into the Titan network.
"Titan 02!" Julian commanded. "Catch it!"
Titan 02 (The Leviathan), positioned in the harbor, reared up. It didn't fire its cannons. Instead, it raised its massive, coral-encrusted arms and summoned the ocean.
A dome of water—millions of gallons—rose from the bay, arching over the city like a liquid umbrella.
The mountain of rotting flesh slammed into the water shield.
SPLASH-BOOM.
The impact was catastrophic. The water boiled instantly on contact with the acidic flesh. Steam blanketed the city. But the shield held. The debris broke apart, slowing down, and rained harmlessly into the streets as sludge rather than a city-killing meteor.
"Good catch," Julian breathed.
But the Dissonance Mother wasn't done.
The Adaptation
The wound on the Mother's side didn't bleed. It began to calcify.
Bone-white armor plates grew over the exposed flesh. The eyes that had been weeping purple ichor now glowed with a cold, hard white light.
"It adapted," Skid whispered, horrified. "We hit it with Entropy, so it evolved armor that resists decay. It's calcium-based. Harder than steel."
The Mother stopped screaming.
The maddening chaotic noise vanished.
In its place came a Hum. A low, perfect, resonant hum that sounded exactly like... a Titan.
"It's mimicking us," Julian realized. "It's trying to jam our frequency by singing our own song."
The Titans on the ground faltered. Titan 05 (The Frost-Breaker) stopped growling and tilted its head, confused by the familiar sound.
"Don't listen!" Julian broadcasted. "It's a lie!"
Too late.
The Mother fired.
It didn't use a beam. It fired Needles.
Massive, organic spikes the size of skyscrapers shot from the Mother's new armor. They slammed into the ground around the city, burying themselves deep in the earth.
One of them hit Titan 05.
CRUNCH.
The needle pierced the Frost-Breaker's flank, pinning the wolf-Titan to the ground. The Titan howled in pain as the needle injected a paralyzing venom into its systems.
"Titan 05 is down!" Zephyr yelled. "The ice is breaking!"
The Boarding Party
"We have a new problem," Marcus said, pointing to the radar. "The Mother is launching smaller projectiles. And they aren't aiming for the city."
"Where are they aiming?"
"Us."
Three sleek, needle-like pods detached from the Mother and rocketed toward the Sovereign's Will.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Julian ordered.
Marcus banked the massive dreadnought, the engines screaming.
They dodged the first pod. The second grazed the hull, tearing off an antenna array.
The third pod slammed directly into the bridge's viewport.
CRASH.
The reinforced glass cracked but didn't shatter. The pod—a black, chitinous egg—stuck to the glass like a tick.
Then, the pod opened.
Something burned through the glass. A circle of melting transparency appeared.
"Breach!" Lyra yelled, raising her rifle. "Helmets on!"
The glass shattered. Atmosphere rushed out, then stabilized as the emergency fields kicked in.
From the hole, figures dropped onto the bridge.
They weren't the mindless Legion soldiers from before. These were Dissonance Knights.
They were tall, humanoid figures encased in white bone-armor. They wielded swords made of purple energy. And they had no faces—just a smooth, white surface.
There were four of them.
The Bridge Brawl
"Fire!"
Lyra and the bridge crew opened up. Bullets sparked off the bone armor.
The Knights moved with terrifying speed. One of them dashed forward, slicing a crew member in half with a single stroke.
"Back!" Julian roared.
He charged the lead Knight.
His nanite arm was running on fumes, but he still had mass. He activated the Grav-Driver.
PUNCH.
He hit the Knight in the chest. The gravity pulse cracked the bone armor and sent the creature flying back out the hole in the window.
The second Knight lunged at Marcus.
Marcus didn't have a melee weapon. He had the ship.
"Autopilot engaged!" Marcus yelled.
He grabbed the heavy control yoke and ripped it out of the console (it was designed to be detachable for emergency manual steering). He swung the heavy metal column like a club.
CLANG.
He bashed the Knight's helmet. The creature staggered.
"I built this ship!" Marcus shouted, swinging again. "Get off my bridge!"
The third and fourth Knights flanked them. One went for Skid, who was cowering under the tactical table.
"Hey!" Zephyr dropped from the upper gantry.
He didn't use wind. He used electricity. He jammed his staff into an exposed conduit panel on the wall.
"Thunder!"
He redirected the ship's power into the metal floor grating.
ZZZZZTTTTT.
The Knights, standing on the conductive floor, convulsed as 10,000 volts surged through them. Their energy swords flickered and died.
"Now, Isolde!"
Isolde popped up from behind a console with her heavy wrench. She didn't hit them. She threw a Stasis Grenade (scavenged from the Emperor's armory).
POP.
The two electrocuted Knights froze in time.
"Throw them out!" Julian ordered.
He and Lyra grabbed the frozen statues and tossed them out the breach into the open sky.
The Core Strike
The bridge was secure, but the battle was losing momentum.
"Titan 05 is pinned," Skid reported, crawling out from under the table. "Titan 00 needs ten minutes to recharge the Entropy Beam. And the Mother is preparing another volley of needles."
"If she pins the other Titans," Julian said, looking at the paralyzed Frost-Breaker, "we're defenseless."
"We need to stop the needles," Marcus said, jamming the yoke back into the column. "But the armor is too thick for the ship's cannons."
"We don't hit the armor," Julian said. "We hit the throat."
He pointed to the "mouth" of the Mother—the canyon-rift where the Legion came from.
"It's open," Julian said. "If we fly inside..."
"Inside?" Marcus looked at him like he was insane. "Into the bio-moon? The radiation alone will cook us."
"Not us," Julian said. "Me."
He looked at the Sovereign's Will.
"This ship is a dreadnought. It has a Warp-Core. If I overload it inside the Mother... it will be a bomb big enough to crack the planet."
"You want to suicide-bomb the moon?" Lyra grabbed his arm. "No."
"I'm not dying," Julian said. "I'm delivering a package."
He looked at the escape pods.
"Marcus, evacuate the crew. Get everyone to the Chronos-Keeper. I'll take the ship in on auto-pilot."
"The auto-pilot is offline," Marcus said quietly. "The damage to the bridge fried the nav-computer. Someone has to fly it manually."
Julian looked at his brother.
"I'll do it," Julian said.
"You're a terrible pilot," Marcus said, a small, sad smile touching his lips.
He sat down in the captain's chair. He buckled the harness.
"Get to the pods, Julian."
"Marcus, no."
"I spent my whole life building walls to keep people safe," Marcus said, looking at the view of the burning city. "Let me break one for a change."
He engaged the engine lock.
"Go!" Marcus shouted. "That's an order from your older brother!"
Julian hesitated. Then, he grabbed Lyra and Skid.
"Move!"
The Dive
Julian, Lyra, Skid, Zephyr, and Isolde piled into the escape pod.
"Launch!"
The pod shot away from the Sovereign's Will.
From the viewport, they watched.
The massive black dreadnought turned. Its engines flared blue-white.
It accelerated toward the Dissonance Mother.
The Mother saw it coming. It fired lasers, tentacles, acid.
The Sovereign's Will ignored them. Its shields flared and died. Its armor peeled away. But it kept going.
Marcus Vane voice came over the comms one last time.
"Julian. Tell the city... the Architect says 'You're welcome'."
The ship dove into the open mouth of the Mother.
For a second, there was silence.
Then, the Mother expanded.
Internal light burst through its skin. The bone armor cracked.
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOM.
A nuclear-scale explosion erupted from inside the moon.
The Dissonance Mother split open. A massive rift tore through its center, spewing fire and purple gore.
The shockwave knocked the escape pod spinning.
"He did it," Lyra whispered, tears streaming down her face. "He cracked the egg."
The Mother wasn't dead. But it was broken. Its armor was shattered. Its core was exposed.
And it was falling.
The massive, burning bio-moon began to descend rapidly toward the desert.
"It's crashing!" Skid yelled. "It's going to hit the Silent Sands!"
"That's where we land," Julian said, staring at the burning wreckage of his brother's sacrifice. His eyes were dry, cold, and deadly.
"We finish this on the ground."