"Get the Royal Knight unit ready. We will break the enemy formation with them — once we divide them, we fire non-stop. We have to take this battle very seriously if we want to avoid unnecessary bloodshed."
"Yes, my lady." Leonora's order folded the room into silence and obedience.
She didn't blink when someone asked about the god unit. Her voice narrowed, temper flashing steel.
"Do we leave the god unit on standby?"
"No need. He thinks he's the only monster around here — I'll show him what other monsters look like. Prepare the Phantom; I will deploy also."
"Yes, my lady."
Outside, through the viewport, the Kalkan sun leaked the color of hot iron over the fleet. "The Royal Knight unit is ready to deploy. We are entering the solar system. All orbiton units ready to deploy in three minutes." The count of three minutes felt like a countdown to everything.
"Royal Knight unit has deployed."
In a shadowed detention room — cold metal, the smell of disinfectant, the drone of distant engines — men traded boredom for fear.
"Hey guard — do you happen to have anything to drink?" one of the prisoners wheezed, voice lacquered with bravado.
"Keep quiet. You're suspended. No drinks or food for you until you leave the ship." the guard snapped.
"Come on — even prisoners get treated better. Just one sip."
"I'm your superior, do you know that?!" Youri barked.
"As long as you're in the detention room, you're stripped of your rank and power." the guard replied.
"Nice! Now I'm stuck here to starve. What did I do to that general of yours to make her hate me so much?"
"That's a question you should ask her yourself." the guard said.
"Oh — now you talk!" Youri sneered into the metal wall as footsteps faded away.
Back on the bridge the calm held until the comm crackled with small treachery.
"General — you're ready to deploy?"
"Good. I'll issue commands from here."
"Yes, my lady. The Phantom has deployed."
She set her jaw, voice low and hard as the blade she would bring. "All units — follow me. Aim at your designated targets. Don't leave any room for error."
"Yes, sir."
Then the line that made steel bend: "My lady — you have a call from Count Markus. Put him through." The screen bloomed. Leonora's polite mask slid on.
"General, I'm sorry to distract you at a moment like this, but I have news from the homeland."
"What do you mean?" she asked, fingers tense on the control yoke.
"The Emperor has issued an order: total annihilation of Kalkan — this includes the entire solar system."
"What!?" Her voice cracked like a spare wire.
"I'm sorry to inform you of that, but in any case I admire your effort to prolong the lives of these people. You are ordered to return to the capital as soon as this is over. Please just deploy the god unit." The call ended like a judge's verdict.
Something in the bridge shattered. Leonora's hands slammed the controls. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" she pounded buttons until the metal stung. Her voice trembled — terror and rage braided together. "All units — retreat! Back to the ship. The plan has changed."
Down in the bowels of the hull, in a locker and a mess where things went in and never quite came out the same, Youri slept like a wounded thing. Someone nudged him with boots and a grunt.
"What is he doing?" Leonora asked.
"I think he's sleeping, my lady." A guard answered.
The door opened. Spotlight — it hit his face. "Get up!" Leonora snapped. He stretched, blinked. Self-possession warred with a hangover.
"It's you! Finally — can I go?" he murmured, rubbing his jaw. Then hands seized him. A throat-grip, not cruel but relentless. "You asked me a question last time. I'm here to answer." Leonora's voice was quiet and deadly.
He laughed once, a bark that had grown softer around the edges. "What can a monster do when it loses his source of food?"
"It starves to death." she said, expecting to close the wound with certainty.
He surprised her — fingers clenched around hers, squeezing, a pressure that was intimate and foreign. "You're wrong. They feed on their own." And then he walked away, indifferent, and left the bridge smelling faintly of gin and wrong answers.
On the deck the Altopereh unit purred to life. "The Altopereh unit is ready to deploy. Open the hatch." The bay sighed and the giant machine slipped out into void like a sleeping god waking.
"Altopereh has launched, my lady."
A tense, clinical voice cut in: "Nice to meet you, D7. I'm Commander Markus. I will be supervising this operation." He wore officiousness like armor.
"Keep it short, please. Just tell me what I have to do." Youri's voice was flat — a man who had calibrated himself to survive being given orders.
"These are orders from the Emperor himself: total annihilation of Kalkan." Markus said, not a hint of doubt. Youri exhaled the sound of a man who knew the cost. "This is going to cost me." He said it like a prayer.
"I understand your situation, but you are a living weapon — orders to weapons are absolute." Markus said, cold as policy.
"Fair point. I advise you to leave the solar system; you might get caught up in the mess." Youri's voice was half-warning, half-foreshadow. "Understood, D7. Connect me to the main ship."
On open comms, As Youri was preparing he said. "General — I know you're listening, so I'll say this once: Righteousness is for the weak. Only fools feed on it." He drew breath. The antimatter cannon charged and the ship sang with terrible geometry: "A monster has no conscience, for that was lost long ago. Therefore my sins are only mine to bear, as hell is already at our feet."
A blaze of light swallowed the Kalkan system. The feed went white. The sky tore. Planets winked out like candles. Silence, then stunned static. On the bridge the sound of men breathing too loud for comfort.
"Altopereh has resurfaced, my lady. The pilot seems unconscious. Sending a retrieval unit." the report came, mechanical and small.
"He has been sent to the med bay. As for the god unit, it has been safely stored. Call me if he wakes up."
"Yes, my lady."
Leonora stood in the fallout, her hands trembling with the residue of command. "I could not do anything." she whispered, and those three words were heavy with blame.
"Hell." someone breathed.
"Hmm — he might be right about that." another answered in a voice that sounded like regret turned to ash.