Titus dodged under the heavy machete and delivered a heavy punch to the goliath, who laughed deeply all the while. Putting all the energy of his augmentations behind it, it struck solidly. Though his armour was thick and heavy, it dented inwards with the blow.

  Now only a couple hundred more of those and the bloodthirsty monster would be dead.

  Dashing backwards from Zafar’s kick, Titus needed a new plan. Xeena gave a few quick glancing slashes to the warlord’s arm, giving the analyst the milliseconds he needed to process the situation.

  Go for the flechette gun? Bad idea – too heavy, unwieldy, required a wired connection, and likely wouldn’t punch through his plating.

  Run away? Possible, but Zafar catching them in the staircase would be horrendous. Xeena and himself could dodge away, but the Stannocks? Unlikely. Besides, letting Zafar live would be something Titus could never live down. He needed to finish this right here, right now.

  Break the window? Following through with Erohin’s idea sounded stupid, but Titus knew he could survive a few minutes in a vacuum thanks to his enhancements. The others though? Xeena and Big Stannock could survive for a bit longer than the average person, but neither were Jherl and not pressure protected. Little Stannock would be dead in seconds, and Zafar would likely survive.

  No, one last idea that came to Titus. Simple, but potentially risky. They needed to go for the head. Most of Zafar’s body had been replaced with a Kronos Full Body Replacement exosuit. Ninety-five percent of the man was metal, wires and pure power. The last five percent, however, was flesh – his upper head. He had apparently accounted for this weak spot with a visored helmet. Nevertheless, it was clearly the only spot that would ensure victory.

  The milliseconds had past, with Xeena stumbling back from Zafar’s backhanded swing of his blade. Titus sprang to action. A feint to the left allowed him to dodge behind the beast, and with an enhanced jump he leapt ten feet into the air effortlessly. Bracing against the ceiling with one hand, he twisted and delivered a strong kick to the back of the warlord’s helmet. There, it had been knocked forward slightly. All Titus had to do wa-

  It was far too fast for his hefty size, but Zafar had twisted his upper body and blindly struck Titus back down to the ground. Christ, that swing was hard. Jets of flame spilling from the exosuit’s joints told Titus all he needed. The idiot had installed microthrusters to his aid his reflexes, a move that would result in more strength and speed when responding to blows but would make him far less precise. What moron wired up miniature ship thrusters to an already powerful cybernetic body? Checking his body from within a crater in the floor, he was lucky to not be split in two. At the last second, his reflexes had protected his body using his arms as a sacrifice, losing his left limb from the machete’s force but saving most of his functionality. Regardless, the blow had weakened him. An internal diagnostics check showed his leg servos had been damaged from the impact, and his reactivity sensors had been thrown out of calibration by magnitudes.

  Dammit, this was not the time to be at a disadvantage. Was this what all his years of experience came down to? After working for so long in the security wing of H&H, saving hundreds of high-ranking executives and managers, and giving up almost all of his body, was this how he died? He had even gone back on his one guiding ideal in life – that Henry and Huell would be the best shot for humanity to thrive. He had seen them rot from the inside out, Josiah Dexter leading the charge into mediocrity himself. Titus still had hoped in vain that they could recover, that each failed Expedition Fleet would teach them to be more careful, to put more time into a long-term plan. And yet, like a stack of dominos, the failures were already in place, and Titus had been left to ride it out until the end.

  That was until the Cambiar arrived. Not only did intelligent alien life exist, but they were friendly and capable of learning. That had changed everything. No longer would the CCH have to rely on their own self-propelled market and continue to keep the same old faces around, prolonging the cycle of human stagnation. There was a new avenue, one as ripe for human advancement as Earth had ever been. All Titus needed to do was stop H&H corrupting this seed of innovation before it had a chance to sprout. Standing below the mechanized monster of a man, Zafar’s toad-like sneer mocking his weakness, Titus knew he couldn’t give up, not yet. He needed to finish this for the good of all in the CCH, and for those who would come after them.

  Though his heart had long been replaced with an artificial energy-pump, he felt burning pride in his chest to see the team hadn’t wasted the opportunity he’d created. Xeena utilized her faster speed to outmanoeuvre the hulking man whilst occasionally scrambling away from the occasional blow. One strike caught her tail, crushing the tip. Though she wailed in pain, orange liquid spilling from it, she had wasted no time in recovering. The Stannocks had been raining down small arms fire on the man, albeit doing little damage but causing some significant distraction.

  Heaving himself out the hole, he planned to focus on the helmet more but saw Zafar changing his strategy. With a flick, he revealed an inbuilt flamethrower on his left forearm and sprayed liquid fuel across the room. In a mad dash, the Stannocks were forced into Titus’ path as he ran, causing the analyst to adjust his speed to avoid crashing into them. The barking of an inbuilt shoulder firearm from Zafar practically proved to Titus that the Doctrine clanlord was using an inbuilt computer to manage his combat skills, switching tactics on the fly to throw off his opponents. The idiot was far stupid to be doing it naturally.

  To the left, to the right, Titus swivelled and twisted around the shots, the shrapnel of one bullet flicking away from a console and into human Stannock’s arm. He dropped to the floor, holding the limb in agony. Put in an awkward position after a series of dodges, Titus was forced to block a number of blows from the cyborg directly, pushing his right arm’s servos to their limits. Fearing the limb would break after one last blow sent sparks flying from the joint’s mechanisms, he dropped close to the floor and lunged up and inside Zafar’s guard. Being this close was risky, but it was one he had to take. Engaging his remaining arm to wind up for a blow, he aimed directly for his helmet. Targeting straight at Zafar’s ugly countenance lurking behind the polarized glass, his limb charged up to its limit.

  Just as he feared, Zafar recovered too quickly for a regular fighter and grappled him in a bear hug, crushing Titus’ lower body and torso. Warnings blared across his visual display, but he pushed past them. A split second later, and his punch released, knocking Zafar back with a grunt and cracking the glass. Released from the steel vice, Titus crumpled to the floor, legs snapped, and torso crushed. His arm still worked, but he was in terrible shape. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, a rallied pair of Stannocks, the smaller one still injured, jumped onto Zafar’s back and stabbed into the seal around his neck with whatever weapons or claws they had. Xeena skittered up his front side in an instant and stabbed at the helmet with vicious ferocity.

  The table had appeared to have turned as Zafar screamed in frustration. However, horror swelling in Titus’ heart as he saw the barbarian’s fearful look snap to one of confidence. In a second, the table turned once more. An arcing field of electrical current, powerful enough to be visible to the naked eye, swelled around Zafar as Xeena and Big Stannock dropped to the floor, muscles seizing instantly. Human Stannock held on for dear life, still stabbing wildly at the neck seam with a small knife. As the sealing gasket tore, Stannock gritting his teeth from the electricity, Zafar reached up and seized the man. With little care, he tossed the man to the side, a horrid crunch ringing out as he impacted a wall.

  “No!” cried Big Stannock, still curled on the floor from the electricity.

  Damn it, this was going to hell in a hand basket. Crippled and laying on the floor, Titus felt as weak as the day he lost his eyes. Unable to fight, unable to act. As Zafar laughed, accepting his inevitable success, Titus was plagued with a single thought – was this how the dream of humanity dies?

  Sal worked fast. Every single grunt or shout from Abel was a dagger to his heart, but he couldn’t slow down, not for anything. His speed was already hampered by his missing digits and fatigue, but he didn’t have time to waste. Damn it, why did the catwalk take so long to authorize a new digital token? It wasn’t even for the core itself! Keystroke after keystroke, Sal continued his assault. A particularly rough cry from Abel sent ice into Sal’s veins but he had made a promise. His friend would hold on, no matter what. With one last layer of defence defeated, the platform whirred into motion, extending a good fifty yards into the open space as it made contact with the suspended control building.. Hissing with success, he turned.

  “Abel! I did it I-“ Sal turned.

  Abel hung loosely in the grip of the Cambiar, holding him outstretched. His friend was badly beaten, cuts etched all across his body and his face a bruised mess. If he was conscious, he showed no signs of activity.

  “Abel!” Sal cried.

  “Hmm. He did well for a human. He didn’t have any augmentations, did he? If humans have any advantage, it is surely your fondness for artificial enhancements. That is one notion the Cambiar haven’t considered yet.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “You fucker, I’ll…” Sal clenched his fists, shaking with anger.

  “You’ll what? Fight me?” The Cambiar looked disappointed. “Tell you what. You go on and fix the engine, I’ll deal with your weak friend here, and I’ll be on my way. Killing a pathetic specimen such as yourself is no challenge for me, so run along.”

  Sal’s face contorted with fury. The obvious step would be to go to the engine, save everyone’s lives and sacrifice Abel for the greater good. Fighting the creature before him would be a futile endeavour. Abel outweighed Sal by a hundred pounds and the alien was only slightly bloodied from his friend’s efforts. Sal truly had no chance of defeating Protheus.

  Yet, surprise was the last thing he felt when he autonomously approached the alien, ready to fight.

  “Oh, come now.” Protheus tutted in pity. “There’s no need for that. Just… run along.”

  “I’m tired of running. You’re going down.”

  The Cambiar gave an exaggerated sigh. “Fine, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He tossed Abel to the side of the arena with a thud and lazily walked towards the engineer.

  Sal could do this. He had gone through worse, he had-

  A slash to the face cut his remaining cheek to ribbons. Gasping, Sal staggered back. Christ, that was fast. He was barely able to comprehend the next incoming blow and dodged to the side. Desperate, he threw a knife scavenged from the floor at the creature. Without a care, the creature deflected it with one of his many arms.

  “Really? That’s the best you can do?”

  Sal only had one shot – the electric stun prod from Curtin. He had heard that for all of their adaptations, Cambiar were surprisingly weak to electrocution, with many of their accidental fatalities coming from poor power management or wiring. All Sal had to do was not die and get a good hit in when the time came.

  Backing off, away from Abel, he pulled out the spare pistol Mikhail had given him before running off and fired a few shots off. However, he wasn’t aiming for Protheus, seeing as the alien could dodge bullets with his absurd reflexes. Instead, he aimed to miss in order to get him to dodge towards a specific Paradise soldier’s body. Cursing under his breath and counting his shots, he lured Protheus into a straight line towards him over the corpse.

  “Come on, engineer. Make this fun!” Protheus sounded excited.

  Sal responded by shooting the wired up Paradisian, his suicide bomb triggered but failed to blow after death. Bullets shredding the failsafe system of the vest, a roaring inferno rattled Sal, blasting him across the floor. Coughing as a bloody haze filled into the air, Sal wondered if he had killed the monster with such a fluke. Instead, a burning figure strode out of the flames, cracking its neck loudly.

  “You know what, I deserve that. I didn’t take you seriously. Now human… now you die. Nice and slow.” The flames licked at his skin, some of his limbs snapped or shredded and a glare of wrath directed at the human. If showed any signs of pain, then they had been subsumed by the alien’s greater feelings of rage. Rising to face the demon, Sal stood up and prepared for more.

  “Thomas, how are we looking. The output’s looking bad man! Don’t think we have long left!” Dusty was biting his nails.

  All Thomas wanted was some damn silence as he felt the thousands of instructions from the S-Drive calling out to him. Wired up and cross legged, he was deep into the systems of the engine, feeling each and every pulse of quantum waveform checking and collapsing. The point of no return was near, and already random atoms were being flung to the next star system over. At its current rate, it would not be long before chunks of ship or people would be next.

  “Xin, get me a long-arm multitool, I want to try something.” Marcus instructed as calmly as possible.

  Thomas still had his optical sensors disabled, but the sound of clanging metal continued to disturb him. Right now, the last thing the Keeper needed was more distractions. He felt someone touching a connection port of his. Seconds from shouting at them for playing with his delicate parts, he felt his consciousness snap away to somewhere else.

  Opening, not his visual sensors, but what felt like his organic eyes, the ones he had as a child, Thomas looked around. He was in an infinite, green void, the same green that glowed from the exotic matter within the S-Drive’s core. Had Marcus somehow directly interfaced him with the main computer? Dangerous, but effective it seemed. No matter, he had to continue. From within this strange space, he felt he could manually read the rules and instructions that automatically managed the Schrodinger engine’s deeper protocols. An endless wall of lines of code delivered standard information – backup scenarios and situations if QIS patterns were or weren’t detected, stabilization methods, and many more thousands of messages repeated over and over

  But in between the many rules and records, a few stood out. The first one was an added piece of data, inserted only a few hours prior. The Paradise overload code. They had taken the time to deeply implant it using a virus from months before, but the activation code was shockingly simple With a few mental nudges to remove the offending data the threat was gone. Externally, from beyond a void of green, he heard the Torchers cheer out, Thomas faintly smiled. Yet, there was more here. More to learn, the parts of the S-Drive never accessible to him before due to his restrictions. In the real world, he vaguely waved off the Torchers, stating his intentions to follow them out after some more checks.

  In the endless space, he could feel the echo of the core pulsing away. But when he focused, there was something else, a deeper force pushing outwards like the rhythmic movement of an ocean. Adjusting his mental perspective against this strange gravity he urged himself moving towards, no not towards – inwards, to a new space. The greens bled out from the area around him into lighter shades. Before they reached a solid overwhelming white light, the colour again filled with new hues. The shades twisted into a textured pattern, one rippled and firm to touch. If the emerald hue had been a light, all-encompassing feeling, the new one was more direct, like the sensation of pressing against an unyielding surface. It was as if he had stepped out of water, breaking the surface, and planted his feet on solid ground.

  Despite the change, the green was still present somehow, if not visually to Thomas. Instead, the ‘tone’, if the light could have such a thing, had altered. To match the new texture, the world around him had adjusted its look. As if he had cast himself down the visual spectrum, the distance between all points in the space had spread out, the colour finally settling on one tone.

  Gold. Royal gold, the gold of a pond at sunset, the gold of flames licking at the darkness. This pattern, this green and gold, had encroached deep into the heart of Thomas. Despite an initial wave of confusion and awe, non-existent hairs raising on his artificial limbs, Thomas came to a strange understanding. The feeling that wrapped around him, penetrating his mind, was not an entirely unknown one It was the same as during the S-Jump to New Horizons. From when he had seen into Salvador’s past, his pain, his sorrow, his overwhelming layers of defence to hide against a past he couldn’t run from. Again, when he had seen into Michael’s… no Mikhail’s feelings. The battlefield, the bodies, reaching up. It hadn’t been guilt the clan prince had felt, no, it had been his determination, his drive. The deaths he had caused only motivated him further to achieve his goals.

  Yes, this sight matched his feelings of the unusual incident. Almost as if to ease his burning curiosity, a new layer of instructions and roles appeared before him. These had been locked away, never able to be seen unless someone had directly altered the deepest components of the Schrodinger engine’s core. Despite his intertwined nature with the S-Drive, he had very little knowledge about the origins of the creators. GaltCorp had been directly involved, but the individuals behind its design were classified. Who made these rules?

  They were a mishmash of unfamiliar terms and instructions, incomprehensible to Thomas. They tried to form words in his mind, but his sheer understanding of their context was lost on him. Perhaps they needed to be decoded or translated for a biological mind to fully comprehend. Yet, there was one section, the only one his mind could fully comprehend, that stood alone. It simply read – ‘Icarus Beta’. It was tied to one function of the drive, one that matched the strange frequency emitted during the last S-Jump. It referred to a QIS Pattern Coefficient, some variable tied to the crewmembers linked to the Keepers. The data utilized a number of confusing variables and strings, but a clear signature had been left. The data had been encoded by one ‘Dr. Schulyer’, a name Thomas didn’t recognise. Tentatively, he reached towards this rule and found an adjustment for the S-Drive’s core. The last thing Thomas wanted to do was overload the device after the team had spent so much effort fixing it. There was one idea, however, Thomas could not shrug off. It shouldn’t denature the stability of the device, and the Keeper had to know.

  What would happen to this ‘QIS Pattern Coefficient’ when the output frequency of the core matched those recorded from when the last S-Jump? Cautiously, Thomas adjusted the frequency of the engine upwards by perceiving a dial in front of him and increasing it slowly.

  Sal was nearing his limit. Cuts and slashes lined his arms and torso, a wound on his forehead blinded his left eye, and his legs bore a closer resemblance to gelatine than limbs. Yet, he had to keep trying. His attempt to fire off the last shots in his pistol had been in vain as the Protheus knocked the gun away indifferently.

  “Ok, then. It’s time for you to join your friend. What as his name? Doesn’t matter, I hope you believe in some sort of afterlife, human. I certainly don’t.”

  Sal’s left hand reached towards his back pocket. He had one chance, one shot left. And yet, his legs gave out on him. The overexertion of his body had been pushed to their limits, and he couldn’t fight anymore. Falling to his knees the Cambiar approached Sal and bent to his level, eyes focused on the man’s drooping head.

  “Still, I should give you some praise. You were in a far worse state than your friend, yet you’ve held on a bit longer than he did. You must be experienced with pain, hmm? Tell me, human. What is your name? I will remember it as the finest of my trophies here before I start my journey towards claiming the glory of this galaxy. No, the universe.”

  Was this it? The limit of Salvador’s effort? After everything he’d done, all the suffering he’d endured? What would the Torchers think of him now? They had put all their trust in him for this plan, forgiven him after his moment of frailty, and Sal had thrown away any hopes for the survival of Fifth Spoke.

  What would Xeena think? What was she thinking right now? Part of Sal, despite the odds and the risks of the situation had desperately hoped that he would see her again, let her know that his love for her had healed the wound of his heart. The life he had dreamed of, having someone he could risk trusting his soul to, would become nothing but a bloodstain on the steel floor of an engine room. All for a pointless fight with a crazed alien that would die, even if he won.

  “Go fuck yourself.” Sal said. He reached back for the shock baton, amping the current has high possible and preparing to activate it.

  Protheus clicked his tongue… tendril? Shaking his head in annoyance, the alien growled. “Fine. Die like the vermin you are then.”

  Protheus rolled a shoulder and prepared a claw to stab down into Sal chest.

  The end had finally come, but Sal would not surrender just yet.