Two minutes before Larsen's attack, the Tartarusios was drifting low over Terria, using the clouds as cover. The clouds did nothing against radar or the orbital cameras, but they hid the ship from the ground forces, and for now that was enough. The bridge was quiet in the way it only ever was before something went wrong. Consoles hummed, warning lights blinked amber in slow rhythm, and somewhere below the deck the engines murmured, holding the ship steady against the wind.
Then Larsen detonated his sun.
The first thing anyone noticed was the color. A pale glow crept across the clouds outside the viewport, soft at first, almost beautiful, like dawn arriving hours early.
"What is that light?" Bjorn asked, leaning toward the window.
"Which light?" Halley replied without looking up from her screen.
She never finished turning around. The glow swelled in a heartbeat, swallowed the clouds, swallowed the sky, and poured through every viewport on the ship until there was nothing left in the world but white. It hit the bridge like a physical thing. Everyone threw up their arms at once, and a second later the Tartarusios began to shake. It wasn't the hard jolt of a hit. It was a deep, violent vibration that rose from the hull plating and ran up through the floor, the railings, the chairs, the bones of everyone standing on them.
"I can't see anything!" Mario shouted.
"What the hell is this?" Oscar barked, pressing his face into the crook of his elbow.
Loose tools rattled across the consoles. A cup fell and shattered somewhere behind them. The ship groaned around them for what felt like a long time, though the whole thing lasted only a few seconds. Then, as quickly as it had come, the light began to die. The white thinned to gold, the gold to grey, and slowly the bridge returned to them, piece by piece, blurred at the edges and swimming with dark spots.
The crew blinked, rubbed their eyes, and looked outside.
No one said anything.
The sky that had been sheltering them a moment ago was gone. The clouds had been torn apart and replaced by a slow, churning wall of ash and smoke, lit from beneath by a sick orange glow. Fine grey flakes drifted past the viewport like snow.
Oscar was the first to move. He spun toward Vanessa. "Is everyone okay? Contact the guys. Now!"
"Yes, Captain!" Vanessa's fingers were already flying over her console. "Atlas, do you copy? I repeat, do you copy? Themis, do you copy? Oceanus, do you copy?"
Static answered her. One second. Two. Three. Long enough for every person on the bridge to stop breathing.
Then the channel crackled.
"Oceanus copies! What was that light? What's going on out there?"
"Themis copies. Is everyone all right?"
"Atlas copies. I'm still on route!"
The breath left the room all at once. Mario sagged against his chair. Bjorn closed his eyes for a moment.
"Thank God you're all okay," Oscar said, and for a second his voice was softer than any of them had heard it in a long time. Then the softness was gone. "I have no idea what's happening up there, but we don't have much time left. We have to find where they took Youri. If we don't, there's no avoiding a direct battle with them."
He turned to Halley. "Do we have any lead on where he could be?"
"They rushed him back to the transport unit when we entered Fansilia," Halley said, shaking her head. "And with all this commotion and destruction, God knows where they've taken him."
Oscar frowned. "What do you mean, destruction?"
Halley didn't answer. She tapped her console, and a screen unfolded in front of the viewport.
It showed Fansilia from above. Or what was left of it. Just east of the city, where the eastern districts had stood minutes ago, there was now a crater, a vast black wound pressed into the earth, its edges still glowing and smoking. Whole streets ended in nothing. Towers that had stood for centuries were simply not there anymore.
"We've been flying in circles around the edge of the capital," Halley said quietly. "We haven't seen what our arrival has done. But the debris from Central Command, and from the broken nodes, has been raining down on the city this whole time." She swallowed. "Fansilia isn't a capital anymore. It's a mass grave for everyone unlucky enough to be caught in it."
The bridge fell silent again.
Oscar stood in front of the display for a long moment. His hand closed around the railing, the knuckles turning white, and then, slowly, the grip began to loosen. He drew in a deep breath, let it out, and turned to face his crew.
"We knew what we were getting into when we decided to come here," he said. "The plan forecast casualties. If we were righteous warriors, we wouldn't have come here with company. We would have done this cleanly, by ourselves." He looked around at each of them in turn. "But righteous we are not. We are renegades. People who live by our own desires and our own rules. So no matter how many die today, it shouldn't shake any of you. The moment you stepped onto this ship, you knew what you were getting into. And that's what I admire about every one of you. You cast off your fear and stepped into the unknown, just to get closer to your goal. To the most selfish thing humanity has ever named." A faint smile touched his mouth. "Dreams."
He walked to the captain's chair and sat down. The ship's harnesses slid over his shoulders and locked across his chest with a soft mechanical click.
"Life is cruel," he went on. "There is only one thin line separating evil from good, if good even exists. But what we're doing, I don't call it evil. I call it will. Because that is the only thing that drives us. The will to make our dreams come true, no matter how righteous or how wicked they may be. I would gladly go to hell and back just to see mine come true."
Nobody interrupted him. Even the static from the comms had gone quiet, as if the three pilots outside were listening too.
"My crew. My friends." His voice lowered. "I wish nothing but peace for every one of you, and I truly mean that. I know you all have families and friends of your own, and I hope with everything I have that you'll get to see them again. So I have one more selfish request to make of you."
He looked out at the ash swirling past the viewport, at the faint shape of the palace spires somewhere beyond the smoke.
"The time has come. The dream I've been chasing my entire life is almost within my grasp, and I can't reach it without you. All I've ever wanted is glory. A name that will live forever." He chuckled under his breath. "A dumb dream, I know. But that's who I am, and I've never tried to hide it. And if chasing it means I get to deal a blow to the mighty Empire of Terria while saving my friend, then so be it. Because this will be legendary."
He gripped the arms of his chair.
"We're heading straight for the palace. We'll be the first renegades in history to land on the Royal Palace of Fansilia, and we'll do it standing on the deck of the ship where it all began."
For a moment the bridge was perfectly still.
Then Bjorn grinned. Mario cracked his knuckles. Vanessa turned back to her console, and Halley's hands were already moving, plotting the course.
Oscar leaned back, his eyes fixed on the smoke ahead.
"Take us in," he said. "Full speed. Let them see who we are."
The engines roared, the ash parted before the bow, and the Tartarusios dove toward the heart of the Empire.