Graduation had come and gone in a blur of speeches, salutes, and the heavy weight of new insignia stitched to their uniforms. They were no longer recruits. No longer kids playing soldier in the simulators. They were privates of the Terran Defense Corps, sworn to fight in a war that had burned for generations.
Assignments were handed down with clinical efficiency.
Jinx Alvarez → Rapid Assault Unit
Stone Varga → Heavy Infantry
Bear Ivanov → Mechanized Support / Heavy Armor Operator
Whisper Kade → Combat Medic
Sparks Novik → Weapons Systems Operator
Shade → Recon / Sniper Unit
Sirius Blake → FAWS — Field Armorer and Weapons Specialist
Each name, each designation, carried weight. It defined the battles they would fight, the roles they would play, the places where their lives might end.
Sirius had smiled as they split off, trading quick waves and promises to meet again. He knew their paths would cross — the Hivebugs didn't respect neat military divisions. But for now, his world narrowed to one department: FAWS.
The Field Armorer and Weapons Specialist bay was unlike any training ground. It was a cathedral to machinery. Rows of metallic workstations stretched in neat formation, each humming with diagnostic energy. Holographic schematics floated above benches, rotating in perfect detail. Panels streamed real-time data from the frontlines: weapon degradation reports, armor strain levels, malfunction logs. Along the walls, exo-armor pods waited like sentinels, their open chests revealing skeletal frameworks of alloy and circuitry.
Sirius inhaled deeply. "Smells like home."
> "Correction," ARI murmured. "No olfactory data correlates with home environment. However, dopamine spike confirms your satisfaction."
"Don't ruin the poetry, ARI."
He dove in immediately. Reinforcing armor with micro-alloy layering, adjusting stress points to withstand Hivebug claws. Calibrating rifles, tinkering with optics until targeting arrays aligned at sub-millimeter precision. Testing prototype turrets, pushing them until sparks leapt from their cores.
Days blurred. He slept in corners, ate when reminded, lived with tools in his hands. Each repair, each improvement, was a quiet thrill. Each weapon that fired cleaner, each armor plate that held longer, was a small victory he could claim.
Two weeks into his new assignment, the calm shattered.
An alert screamed across every terminal. Red sigils lit the bay walls.
> FRONTLINE ALERT — SYSTEMIC WEAPON MALFUNCTION. MULTIPLE UNITS COMPROMISED. FAWS SUPPORT REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY.
Sirius froze, pulse quickening. This wasn't routine. This was collapse waiting to happen.
ARI's overlay burst alive.
> "Diagnostics indicate interference across multiple weapon systems. Cause not purely mechanical. Probability of Hivebug neural disruption: high. Minor mission insufficient. Long-term mission required: full calibration and inspection."
Sirius grabbed his toolkit and drones, hands steady despite the adrenaline. "Then let's move."
Long-Term Mission: Weapon Calibration
The assignment appeared in ARI's crisp format:
Mission: Inspect, diagnose, and recalibrate frontline weapons.
Objectives:
1. Field inspection of malfunctioning weapons.
2. Diagnose interference patterns.
3. Restore full operational reliability.
Duration: Ongoing, estimated several weeks.
Reward: Weapon functionality restored. Hivebug interference insights gained. Incremental enhancements (reflex optimization, tactical efficiency).
Sirius accepted without hesitation.
The transport rattled across scarred ground. Through the narrow slit of a window, Sirius glimpsed a landscape carved by war: craters filled with blackened water, shattered bunkers jutting like broken teeth, Hivebug tunnels yawning open in the distance. Smoke curled endlessly toward a gray sky.
The frontline wasn't a place for repair crews. It was a graveyard waiting to happen.
But here he was, toolkit on his back, drones packed tight, ARI whispering in his mind.
The first soldiers he met were haggard, armor scorched, weapons twitching with glitches. Rifles misfired or froze. Optics flickered with static. Turrets coughed sparks instead of fire.
"About damn time FAWS sent someone," a sergeant barked, shoving a rifle into Sirius' hands. "These things are junk in our grip."
Sirius ignored the tone, eyes already scanning. ARI's overlays painted diagnostics across his vision.
> "Barrel wear within tolerance. Issue source: electromagnetic interference. Pattern matches Hivebug neural emissions."
"Got it," Sirius muttered. His hands flew. Adjusting coils, smoothing barrels, recalibrating optics. Drones zipped to turrets, their manipulators replacing burned-out circuits.
Minutes later, rifles hummed steady. Turrets fired in rhythm. Soldiers blinked, relief visible even through their helmets.
"Hell," the sergeant said softly. "You actually fixed them."
Sirius grinned. "That's the idea."
> "Calibration progress: forty-two percent. Estimated full completion: twenty-one days," ARI noted.
He barely had hours before it hit.
The Hivebugs struck at dusk. Shrill screeches split the air, followed by the thunder of claws ripping through soil. The ground trembled as swarms poured from the tunnels.
Alarms wailed. Soldiers scrambled to positions.
And Sirius' exit route was cut off instantly.
> "Warning: Hivebug assault at full scale. Extraction impossible. Mission parameters updated: maintain weapon reliability under combat conditions."
Sirius clenched his jaw. "Alright, then. Guess we hold the line."
Chaos. Pure and absolute. Hivebugs swarmed the barricades, claws hammering against shields. Weapons faltered again under the psychic static of their shrieks.
Sirius was everywhere.
One moment recalibrating a turret as soldiers held a wall against a wave of mandibles. The next, crouched under fire, replacing a jammed coil in a carbine. Drones whirred around him, sparks flying as they patched circuits mid-battle.
A rifle died in a soldier's hands. Sirius grabbed it, slammed a new feed into place, and shoved it back. "Shoot straight, soldier!"
The man fired, Hivebug ichor spraying.
> "Probability of failure without intervention: critical. Current stabilization: seventy-one percent."
"Not good enough," Sirius growled, racing to the next weapon.
He wasn't alone.
Jinx darted past him once, laughing like a madman even as he emptied both pistols into a swarm. "Renegade! Keep my babies firing!" he shouted before vaulting a barricade.
Sirius barked a laugh, even as he rewired another rifle. "Just try not to break them too fast!"
Whisper appeared minutes later, dragging a bleeding soldier into cover. Her hands moved with clinical speed, patching wounds even as she shouted, "Blake, I need that turret alive or I'll be treating corpses!"
"On it!" Sirius yelled, rerouting power to the sputtering weapon. It came alive with a roar, chewing Hivebugs apart. Whisper gave the faintest nod before vanishing back into smoke.
And above them all — Shade. Sirius glimpsed him on the ridge, rifle flashing once, twice. Each shot dropped a Hivebug about to breach the line. He never moved, never spoke. But once, just once, Sirius thought Shade's aim flicked toward him — then shifted back to the swarm.
A chill ran down his spine.
During a lull, an officer stalked past, watching Sirius' hands fly over a malfunctioning turret.
"You calibrate faster than regs allow," the officer muttered. "Almost like you knew the problem before it hit."
Sirius kept his grin fixed, heart hammering. "Guess I've just got a knack, sir."
The officer's eyes narrowed. "Knack like that gets noticed. Sometimes too noticed." He walked off.
> "Observation: suspicion rising. Recommend reduced display of predictive capability," ARI whispered.
"Noted," Sirius breathed.
The battle dragged through the night. By dawn, the Hivebugs receded, leaving corpses smoking across the cratered ground. Reinforcements finally arrived. Soldiers cheered weakly.
Sirius slumped against a barricade, grease and ichor smeared across his hands. ARI chimed softly.
> "Calibration mission ongoing. Current status: weapons stabilized. Reward: reflex and neural optimization plus one percent."
Sirius chuckled tiredly. "Small steps, huh? But steps forward."
He scanned the horizon. Smoke, ruin, silence. For now.
The Hivebugs would come again. He knew it. They evolved. They adapted. But so did humanity.
And behind the lines, with his tools, his drones, and ARI whispering in his skull, Sirius Blake — Renegade — would keep the weapons firing.
Because out here, survival wasn't about glory. It was about keeping your friends alive.