The battlefield reeked of smoke, ichor, and blood. Black Hivebug fluids pooled across shattered trenches, their acrid stench clinging to every breath. The colossal body of the Hive Queen fragment slumped against the ruined earthworks, a grotesque monument of war. Its carapace was split by fire and steel, its twitching limbs already stiffening under the sun.
But the silence was wrong. It wasn't peace—it was exhaustion, disbelief. Soldiers staggered among the wreckage, their boots sinking in mud and ichor. Turrets lay twisted, some reduced to blackened skeletons. Mechs stood slumped, power cores drained, their armor pitted and scarred.
And the soldiers themselves… many sat with heads in their hands, helmets discarded, eyes glassy. Some wept quietly. Others laughed hysterically, the kind of laughter born not of humor but of surviving the impossible.
The Hive Queen's psychic scream lingered. Even in death, it echoed in minds like a phantom. Some men rubbed at their temples, wincing. Others stared blankly, as if the world had split and they were still stuck inside the crack.
At the center of it all, Sirius Blake sat slumped against the trench wall. His Carbine X rested across his lap, smoke curling from its overheated barrel. His helmet was cracked, his face streaked with dirt and dried blood, but his grin remained. A grin that was as much defiance as madness.
He whispered to no one in particular:
"We held the line."
---
By nightfall, the surviving Terrans pulled back from the trenches to Outpost Delta. The stronghold groaned under the influx of wounded. Medics shouted for stretchers, for saline packs, for more bandages. Whisper Kade's voice cut through the chaos, commanding her team to work faster, sharper, cleaner. But even she couldn't mask the tremor in her hands.
In the hangars, mechs collapsed into bays, hissing as engineers swarmed them. Bear Ivanov climbed down from his cockpit with shaking legs, armor smeared in Hivebug ichor. Stone Varga sat with his autocannon propped across his knees, staring at it like it was both salvation and curse. Shade leaned against a wall, helmet off, face pale, eyes shadowed.
Sirius pushed past them all, limping toward the FAWS bunker. The Carbine X never left his grip. The others watched him pass, whispers trailing in his wake.
"That's him."
"Renegade."
"He's still grinning? After all that?"
They didn't understand. For Sirius, the grin wasn't for show. It was armor.
---
The next morning, the war council convened in the underground bunker. Maps flickered on holo-tables, dotted with swarms, trenches, and outposts. Officers sat in stiff silence, their faces grave.
Colonel Maren stood at the head. Chief Engineer Loras at her side. Behind them, analysts clicked through data feeds, replaying snippets of corrupted helmet recordings. The Hive Queen's psychic shriek echoed in distorted bursts through the speakers, enough to make men flinch even in the safety of the bunker.
Sirius leaned against the back wall, arms crossed, helmet tucked under his arm. He looked like he belonged nowhere near this table of commanders—but everyone knew he had earned his place.
Maren's voice was cold steel. "The Carbine X and the Shatterstorm saved us from collapse. Without them, Delta would have fallen. But even with those weapons… the Queen's psychic attack nearly broke us. HUDs failed. Radios died. Soldiers panicked."
One general nodded grimly. "Weapons can't win if the soldiers themselves are shattered."
Loras turned to Sirius. "Blake. You were there. What did you feel?"
The room stilled. All eyes turned.
Sirius pushed off the wall, stepping toward the table. His grin had faded into something harder. His voice carried not madness, but razor certainty.
"It wasn't random," he said. "That scream? That wasn't just pain or rage. It was structured. A signal. Like radio—except it hits the brain, too."
A murmur rippled through the officers.
"You're saying it was… controlled?" one asked.
"I'm saying," Sirius continued, "that if we can record it, map it, and break it down—we can shield against it. Helmets lined with dampeners. Jammers tuned to disrupt the frequency. Hell, we could flip it back on them. Turn their hive mind into static."
"Impossible," another officer muttered.
"Everything's impossible until someone builds it," Sirius shot back. His grin returned, faint but sharp. "Lucky for you, that's my job."
Loras folded his arms, studying Sirius with that mix of exasperation and pride only he seemed capable of. "You're talking about psi-shields. Psi-weapons."
Sirius met his gaze. "Yeah. Exactly that."
---
While the commanders argued, Whisper Kade filed her own report. Her voice shook as she read aloud.
"Dozens of men didn't die from wounds. Their hearts gave out, their brains overloaded. They froze, some mid-fire. Others screamed until they collapsed. If we don't shield them, the next Queen scream will kill more than any tank ever could."
The generals went silent.
Maren turned back to Sirius. "And you think you can fix that?"
Sirius tapped the cracked helmet he carried. "I don't think. I know. We've already got the wreckage. Every fried HUD, every corrupted file—it's data. Data we can weaponize."
---
Two days later, Sirius slammed a stack of hand-sketched blueprints onto Loras' desk. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands ink-stained, but his voice brimmed with manic energy.
"Project Psi-Shield," he declared. "Phase one: helmets with dampeners to block the scream. Phase two: portable squad jammers to protect infantry clusters. Phase three: resonance cannons that spit their own frequency back—harder."
Loras flipped through the pages, his face unreadable. Jagged diagrams of helmets with insulated layers. Pack-sized emitters with overlapping frequencies. A cannon sketched in furious lines, its emitter coil glowing with imagined energy.
"This is reckless," Loras muttered. "If it fails—"
"If it fails," Sirius cut him off, "soldiers die screaming again. If it works, we change the war."
Loras looked up slowly. "You're insane."
Sirius grinned wide, teeth flashing. "Yeah. But tell me I'm wrong."
---
That night, the FAWS workshop became a storm. Soldiers passed by and heard him muttering to himself, saw scraps of helmets torn apart and rewired, watched him testing coils until sparks leapt and scorched his sleeves.
He filled entire walls with graphs, stolen from medbay vitals and corrupted HUD logs. He replayed fragments of the Queen's shriek over and over, until some techs begged him to stop because it made their teeth ache.
He didn't stop.
Every line he scribbled brought him closer. Every burned-out processor became another stepping stone.
"They scream at us," he murmured, half to himself, half to the shadows. "Maybe it's time we scream back."
---
When the report reached High Command, it spread like wildfire. Some generals scoffed. Others leaned forward, eyes gleaming with the first spark of hope in decades.
One colonel shook his head, muttering: "Renegade Blake. He's going to kill us all or save us all."
Another laughed, bitter but relieved. "Maybe both."
But one thing was clear: Terran forces had a new path. Not just bullets and barrels anymore. A new frontier—war not only of steel, but of the mind.
---
At dawn, Sirius finally collapsed at his bench, staring at a half-built prototype helmet with trembling hands. His grin was faint, exhausted, but still alive.
He whispered to the silent workshop:
"Let's see how they like it when we start screaming back."