The twenty minutes passed both like a lifetime and the blink of an eye.

  Dusk bled into a starless twilight. Heavy clouds pressed low against the jungle canopy, swallowing the last light. It was a stage built for slaughter. And right on cue, the actors arrived.

  Ten mechs of the Tartarus Legion emerged from the murk like a pack of prehistoric beasts, their red sensors cutting through the dim. They settled into a skirmish line before the Third Squad’s crude defenses.

  Major Caleb felt the knot in his stomach cinch tight. This was his first actual command. Once, he had been a top graduate of the Ironclad War College—his career spent tracing neat, bloodless arrows across maps and holograms. Now he crouched in a muddy trench, about to lead a charge designed only to fail.

  Half a life begging for a field command, he thought with a bitter edge. And I get it here, in this ditch. Fate has a genius for cruelty.

  He looked around. Fifty-nine survivors. Light weapons, no armor. They were not soldiers arrayed for victory. They were kindling. Their only task was to buy a fat lieutenant five minutes more.

  The Tartarus mechs halted, sensors sweeping. They didn’t fire. They waited with the patience of apex predators, assured that the prey had no way out.

  “Hold,” Caleb whispered into the comms. “Buy time.”

  He rose just enough to be seen. “Don’t shoot! We surrender!”

  The reply boomed from the lead mech, its voice flattened by external speakers.

  “Stay where you are, insect.”

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  “Of course, of course,” Caleb muttered, ducking back. His hands trembled. He checked his chrono. Three minutes crawled past.

  When he rose again, his mask had changed. No longer fear—something fiercer, almost joyous. His voice, raw and unhinged, carried across the line.

  “I’ve reconsidered! I don’t think we’ll surrender after all.”

  A ripple of laughter followed him—ragged, defiant, contagious. Fifty-nine voices throwing scorn into the dark.

  “Fire!”

  The trench exploded in light. Plasma bolts and laser beams wove a net of brilliance, chewing the air, battering against blue-tinged shields. The storm lit the jungle in strobe flashes. Caleb’s final words rose through the chaos:

  “Gentlemen—welcome to Hell.”

  It was spectacular. It was almost useless. The Legion mechs stood unmoved, their shields scattering the barrage like rain on stone.

  “Kill them all,” the lead pilot said, flat with disdain.

  They charged, not with guns, but with the momentum of living steel. In seconds, they crossed fifty meters. The first trench was obliterated. One mech stooped, claws like butcher’s tools. A soldier was lifted, skull punctured, body torn open. The machine smeared the blood across its headplate in a ritual mark, an ancient predator’s gesture rendered in steel and circuitry.

  The Commonwealth soldiers answered with courage. No one fled. Eleven men in the trench focused every shot on the painted killer. The shields flickered, shimmering and turning red.

  The Legion pilot moved to end it, but the soldiers chose first. They surged from cover, charging with nothing but grit and grenades. Seven died before reaching it. Four did not.

  Three clung to the mech’s legs and torso, crude charges strapped to their chests. The fourth, empty-handed, stood before the towering machine and laughed.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said quietly, as though sharing a drink.

  The blast ripped a crater into the jungle floor. The first Tartarus machine fell, a god toppled by mortals willing to burn themselves to ash.

  Nine remained. For the first time, they hesitated.

  They did not yet see what had risen in the darkness behind them.

  On two low ridges, Commonwealth mechs stirred, silhouettes breaking from the jungle.

  And cresting the ridge line, a Juggernaut—its cannons bristling, its bulk framed in blood-red light. A metal titan answering sacrifice with thunder.