The Emperor’s speech was being broadcast on every channel; even Jack’s battered old wrist terminal couldn’t block it out.

  “Soldiers of the Federation, who are you fighting for?”

  The voice was low, magnetic, and disturbingly sincere.

  “For the generals hiding in their fortresses? For the quantum mainframes that label you ‘low-value decoys’?”

  The voice paused, then softened.

  “The Empire does not care about your birth—only your merit in battle. Surrendered soldiers can earn land, money, and dignity under the Empire’s banner. Not this—”

  A beat.

  “—not becoming a meaningless negative statistic in somebody’s casualty report.”

  Jack touched his own face, still in one piece.

  Surrender?

  He had no intention of finding out how the Dracons treated “traitors”—especially traitors who understood Federal military technology. The big guy might be afraid of dying, but he wasn’t stupid.

  Surrender was off the table. Staying alive was the last belief he had left.

  Jack chose his faith—the same way he always did.

  He ran.

  No speeches. No dramatic hesitation. Just run.

  Run on two human legs against mechs.

  The idea pissed him off and scared him half to Death at the same time. His top speed was 25 km/h—utterly laughable compared to a mech. But for a chunky repairman hauling ancient Martian gene mods in his bloodline, it wasn’t half bad.

  Jack lay prone at the edge of a shell crater, watching the battlefield through his military binoculars. Those dozen or so Paladin suits were his ticket out. If they broke through, he’d slip out behind them. If they were wiped out, he wouldn’t last much longer either.

  The center of the fighting was the small hill where he’d been stationed earlier. A dozen silver-white Paladin mechs—Federal double-headed eagle emblazoned across their chests—were desperately trying to punch a hole to the north. Swarming in from all directions was a black tide of at least fifty Vector units.

  The numbers were brutally lopsided.

  But the Paladins weren’t breaking.

  Their medium pulse-laser arrays fired in unison, blue-white beams shredding the air and spearing the lead Vectors. The enemy shields flickered through colors—from deep blue to orange-red—before failing completely. Three Vectors came apart in mid-stride, their power cores detonating and blasting nearby units off their feet with the shockwave.

  But there were just too many Vectors.

  A dozen of them suddenly emitted a high-frequency shriek. The Paladins’ comms filled with static and white noise for a moment, their formation starting to fray as coordination collapsed.

  Right then, two Paladins surged forward, boosters flaring as they leapt into the air and arced toward the Vectors massed on the left flank. Quad-linked plasma missiles streaked out in graceful arcs; three tightly clustered Vectors disappeared in a blossom of fire.

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  The rest of the Vector swarm instantly retasked. Dozens of lasers and missiles locked onto the airborne Paladins. The two mechs slapped their manipulators against each other’s chest plates in midair and shoved off, splitting in opposite directions. The missiles slammed into where they’d just been, exploding against nothing but air.

  And at that exact moment, over twenty Federal Vanguard suits—lighter, older, more battered than the Paladins—charged into the fray from the rear, hurling themselves straight into the Vector swarm and forcing close-quarters combat.

  The high-frequency shriek cut off.

  The Vectors fell back a short distance, hastily regrouping.

  Jack pulled the dampeners from his ears and grabbed his oil-smeared field comm. He broke into a sprint, pounding toward the battered Paladins while yelling into the handset:

  “This is Corporal Jack Harlan, logistics repair crew, calling Paladin formation! Don’t go east—that’s a dead end!”

  Static hissed, then a harsh, wary voice cut through:

  “Identify yourself. This channel is encrypted.”

  “I’m the big guy who spent three days fixing your hydraulic lines!” Jack wheezed, lungs working like bellows. “Listen to me—the high ground to the east is under Scorpion artillery coverage. I saw their shell trajectories myself! There’s a swamp to the south—heavy armor like yours goes in there, you’re just target practice!”

  “We don’t have a choice! Our radar’s full of interference snow!” the pilot roared back, panic and despair bleeding through the words.

  “I’ve got eyes! I’ve got ears! I’ve been lying in this hellhole for days, memorizing every inch of this dirt!” Jack shouted. His voice trembled with fear and adrenaline, but his reasoning stayed razor sharp. “Head north! Follow the dry bed of the Titan River! There’s a high-magnetite vein there—it’ll screw with the Vectors’ sensor locks. That’s your only way out!”

  Silence fell in the cockpit on the other end.

  This was a coin toss.

  Trust the radar—or trust the fat mechanic lying in the mud.

  A few seconds later, the lead Paladin made its decision.

  “All units, on me. We’re moving north. Into the riverbed.”

  Engines roared. A dozen towering silver mechs began to pivot, slowly but steadily turning as their heavy metal feet crushed the ground, kicking up storms of dust. The lighter Vanguard suits fell in behind them, retreating in reverse—firing as they went, doing everything they could to keep pace.

  Jack stayed where he was for a heartbeat, just watching the metal giants thunder into motion.

  “Hey! Wait!” He sprinted after the last Paladin, waving frantically. “Take me with you! I can fix your engines! I know how to bypass your overheat safety!”

  The Paladin at the rear slowed a fraction. Its mechanical head turned, that mono-eye sensor pulsing blue as if it were studying him.

  The pilot’s voice came over the shared channel, tinged with hesitation and genuine regret:

  “Sorry, buddy. We’re at full load. And… if we stop to pick you up, even for ten seconds, the Vectors will be chewing on our asses.”

  “What? No—!”

  “Good luck, grease monkey.”

  The engines boomed. Blue exhaust flared as the mech lurched forward, acceleration blasting Jack off his feet and slamming him into the dirt, showering him in a wave of scalding grit.

  Then they were gone.

  Every last one of them.

  The mechs roared north at over 100 kilometers an hour, disappearing into the shadowed gorge of the Titan River.

  The dust slowly settled.

  The battlefield sank back into its dead silence, broken only by a distant sound—

  that unmistakable, hive-like hum of approaching Vector engines.

  Jack dragged himself up and checked STARK-2 on his wrist. The screen showed the Paladin formation rapidly increasing their distance, their survival probability climbing to 37%.

  His own survival rating: 2%.

  “Fuck,” Jack said, grinning a twisted, almost comically ugly grin. “Now that makes sense. Big guys go first. Small fry stay behind. Fair enough.”

  STARK-2’s mechanical voice cut in:

  “Fatty, seventeen hostile signals detected in the vicinity. Survival recommendation: run. Run fast.”

  Jack pulled in a deep breath, scooped up his TSR-9, and forced himself not to collapse.

  “Yeah, yeah, Old Number Two,” he muttered to the terminal. “Looks like we’re on our own again.”

  From the distance came the rising growl of engines.

  Vectors, closing in.

  Jack turned and ran the other way. His Martian gene mods kept his lungs working—for now. But he knew that wouldn’t last.

  The heroes were breaking out to the north.

  And he, a lonely Fatty, could only run south.

  Far away, the first black Vector suit appeared at the edge of his vision. Its V-shaped red sensor slit glowed through the smoke like the eye of Death itself.

  That was the true face of war—

  The ones still alive were always the ones left crawling in the dust.

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