The battlefield was a nightmare of noise and silence all at once. Noise—because the Hive Queen fragment shrieked, its psychic blast rattling every mind and shaking every weapon. Silence—because comms cut out, HUDs glitched to black, and ammo counters blinked into nothingness. For the first time since the Carbine X had been born, soldiers were back to blind guessing.
Sirius Blake's world narrowed to the thunder of his own heart. He fired blind bursts from his Carbine X, feeling the mag eject automatically and slamming in another by instinct. Sparks burst from his visor as the HUD fried under psychic interference, leaving him in darkness save for muzzle flashes and the Queen's grotesque glow.
"ARI—status!" Sirius barked, breath ragged.
No answer. Only static, like glass shattering inside his skull.
"ARI!" he roared again.
Her voice returned—fragmented, halting. "C-c-cognitive… interference… logic matrix unstable. Systems integrity compromised."
Sirius gritted his teeth. If ARI collapsed, his lifeline collapsed with her.
But he couldn't think about that now. Not when soldiers around him were faltering, some clutching their helmets, some firing wildly into the dark.
Stone Varga stumbled against the trench wall, face pale, autocannon clattering against the dirt as his hands trembled. "Can't… can't focus… everything's splitting—"
"STONE! LOOK AT ME!" Sirius shouted, vaulting over debris to grab his friend by the shoulders. He slammed his helmet against Stone's. "Breathe! Focus! It's real when you feel it. Trust your gut, not your HUD!"
Stone's eyes flickered back into clarity, rage burning through the haze. With a snarl, he hefted his autocannon again, planting his feet. "Ain't dying to some overgrown bug whisper!"
Bear's mech staggered forward, servos screeching. Inside, Bear cursed over the open channel, though his words fractured through static. "Renegade! She's frying my systems! I'm losing targeting control!"
"Then forget the targeting! Fire blind if you have to!" Sirius shouted.
Shade's voice cut through briefly, faint but sharp. "Already doing it." A bullet cracked from the ridge—one of the few precise shots still cutting through the storm. But even Shade's aim trembled; the Queen's psychic waves turned focus into a knife-edge gamble.
Whisper Kade barked from the rear lines, her tone iron despite the static. "I need cover! My medics can't hold if you break!"
Sirius sucked in a breath, lifting his Carbine X again. The world tilted, blurred, threatened to collapse into black, but he refused. He fired, and fired, and fired—each mag clicking empty and spitting free, his hands reloading like a machine.
"LISTEN TO ME!" he screamed into the comms, not even sure if they still worked. "THE HUD'S DEAD, BUT YOUR EYES STILL WORK! TRUST YOUR TRAINING! COUNT YOUR BULLETS! AIM FOR JOINTS, AIM FOR EYES!"
Something shifted then. Not in the Queen—its shriek only intensified—but in the men and women around him. They remembered the drills. They remembered the weeks of grueling training to count their shots, to strike weak points, to fight even without machines telling them what to do.
Infantry locked their rifles, eyes narrowing against the chaos. Bursts of fire carved into the swarm again—not random, not wasted, but deliberate. Joint shots. Eye shots. Carapace seams.
Stone bellowed as he unloaded his autocannon into the Queen's wounded thorax. "You heard the Renegade! Burn her down!"
The soldiers rallied.
The swarm still pressed, but their fire no longer scattered. Cohesion returned. The Terran line hardened like a wall of steel.
ARI's voice pulsed faintly again in Sirius' skull, like a candle struggling against the wind. "Operator… stabilization detected. Probability of collapse reduced."
"Stay with me, ARI," Sirius whispered through gritted teeth, eyes locked on the Queen. "I need you. They need you."
She answered—still broken, still flickering. "Directive… survive."
The Hive Queen fragment roared again, slamming one massive claw into the trench line. Earth split, soldiers flung screaming into the air. Bear's mech caught two before they hit the ground, shielding them with its battered plating. Sparks rained down as servos overloaded, but Bear only growled, forcing the mech upright. "Still in this fight!"
Shade loosed another shot, striking the Queen across one glowing sensory pit. Ichor erupted, and the monster shrieked so violently that every soldier clamped their hands over their ears.
Sirius' nose bled. His vision blurred red. He wanted to collapse, to give in to the storm drilling into his brain. But something deeper inside—stubborn, feral, Renegade—kept him standing.
He raised Carbine X, screaming hoarsely. "HOLD THE LINE! DON'T LET IT THROUGH!"
And the Terrans obeyed.
Minutes stretched into eternity. The Queen fragment battered the trenches, psychic waves ripping through every mind. But the line never broke. The soldiers fought with grit, instinct, and sheer willpower. Carbine X rifles spat fire until barrels smoked. Turrets—what few remained functional—were manned manually, their AI dead. Bear's mech stood like a bleeding sentinel, battered but unbroken. Whisper's medics pulled the fallen back, patching wounds under fire. Shade's bullets found eyes, joints, and cracks, one after another.
And Sirius? He laughed. Mad, defiant, blood-streaked laughter as he fired into the storm, his voice rising above the Queen's roar.
"YOU CAN'T BREAK US!"
The Hive Queen fragment reeled, ichor pouring from its wounds. It wasn't dead—not yet—but for the first time, it staggered. Its psychic blast faltered, wavering like static losing signal.
ARI's voice surged clear in Sirius' mind, no longer broken. "Stability restored. Enemy psychic frequency weakening. Counter-attack possible."
Sirius' grin split wide, wild and bloodstained. "Then let's finish this!"
He turned, shouting into the comms, his voice raw but unbreakable. "ALL UNITS—ON ME! EVERY LAST ROUND YOU'VE GOT! AIM FOR THE THORAX AND BURN IT DOWN!"
The battlefield erupted.
Every soldier, every mech, every surviving turret unleashed everything they had. A hurricane of fire ripped into the Hive Queen fragment's thorax, tearing it apart in a storm of ichor and flame. The monster shrieked, its psychic blast collapsing into a keening wail. Limbs flailed, trenches split, but the Terrans did not falter.
And then, with a final, deafening crack, the thorax split wide. The Hive Queen fragment collapsed into the dirt, shaking the battlefield with its fall.
Silence followed. A silence thicker than the storm that had come before.
Sirius collapsed to one knee, Carbine X clattering against the ground, smoke still curling from its barrel. His chest heaved, lungs burning. Blood streaked his face, but his grin remained.
He whispered, barely audible. "We… held the line."
ARI's voice was soft, almost human. "Mission… success."
Sirius let out a broken chuckle. "We… held the line."
The comms were still dead. No orders, no updates. Just the sound of exhausted men and women trying to convince themselves they were still alive.
Then — a crackle. A faint buzz. Radios flared back to life across the line, one by one.
Every soldier froze, helmets tilting as static cleared. The silence was heavy, expectant. Command channels opened, medics listened in, even High Command tuned through distant relays.
Into that fragile quiet came a single voice, ragged, hoarse, but carrying across every frequency:
"Let my babies kill you, bug."
For a heartbeat, no one moved. No one spoke.
Then it broke. Laughter, raw and cracked, spread like fire. Infantry wheezed through blood and tears. Medics barked tired chuckles while bandaging wounds. Stone's booming laugh rolled through the trenches, Bear's mech shuddered as he pounded his console in hysterics, and even Shade muttered "idiot" through a grin. Whisper only sighed into her gloves, but her shoulders shook with relief.
Far behind the lines, generals and analysts blinked at their monitors. Some groaned, some laughed out loud. Chief Loras exhaled and muttered, half proud, half exasperated:
"Renegade Blake… even at the edge of hell, he finds a way to make them laugh."
And on the field, Sirius grinned through the blood on his face, leaning on Carbine X like a staff. To him, it hadn't been a joke. Not really. His weapons had carried them through, and they would again.
But to everyone else, the myth of Renegade Blake had just grown another legend.
The comms hadn't just reached the battlefield. In the war rooms of Terran High Command, officers froze as the line echoed through their feeds. Generals and analysts, usually stone-faced, glanced at each other. Some groaned, some laughed outright.
One colonel wiped his brow. "That boy's insane."
Another smirked, shaking his head. "Insane? No. That's morale. That's a soldier saying the war isn't over—and we're still here."
Chief Engineer Loras, watching from FAWS command, exhaled slowly. Relief, pride, and amusement tangled in his voice. "Renegade Blake… you just gave them a reason to keep fighting."
And in that moment, the myth of Sirius Blake—the mad genius, the laughing storm, the Renegade—burned brighter than ever.
On the field, soldiers found their footing again. On the comms, command began rallying for the next phase. And in the wreckage, Sirius dragged himself upright, leaning on his Carbine X with a grin that refused to break.
Because to him, it hadn't been a joke. Not really. Those weapons, those "babies" of his, were the only reason they were still alive.
And with them, he'd see the war to its end.