Bang!
Las fire and shotgun blasts wove a deadly web through the narrow corridors of the warship as Corax moved like a ghost through the shadows.
He always appeared where his enemies least expected, dismantling their defenses with ruthless precision.
Crack!
Corax's hands clenched tight, and with a violent wrench, he tore the ship captain's body apart. A whole spine, dripping with thick plasma, was ripped clean out, still dangling with a few twitching nerves.
The severed head traced a crimson arc through the air before the spine shot out like a javelin, impaling the helmsman through the throat and nailing him to the control console.
Corax hated killing.
He preferred to end conflicts peacefully, but the ship's command crew were all members of the Tech Guild. Killing them was the only way to ensure there'd be no lingering threat.
"Shalokin."
Corax's gaze swept over the bridge. The dismembered limbs still spasmed from nerve reflexes, and thick blood crawled across the deck like a river.
His voice was a blade of ice: "Take over here."
The late-arriving Shalokin tightened his jaw and nodded, frustration and defeat washing over him like a tide.
Why was he always a step behind? Why could he never catch up to Corax? Why did he always end up being useless?
The 7th standard hour after the rebels seized the spaceport.
The metal hatch opened with a hiss of hydraulics. Branni shouted into the cramped cargo bay packed with prisoners:
"Who here can fly a ship? Does anyone know how to pilot a ship?"
The rebels had moved too fast in this unfamiliar spaceport to tell who was a worker and who was a Tech Guild official. So they threw everyone together in makeshift holding bays.
Now, though, faced with Branni's question, no one dared answer, because who knew what would happen if they did?
"I-I can."
Branni was just about to move on to the next chamber when a trembling voice rose from the crowd.
A pale-faced middle-aged man stood up, his knees shaking, but he forced himself to straighten.
Branni's eyes swept over the man's grease-stained overalls. "You a worker?"
"Yes, sir."
The man staggered forward, his metal prosthetic leg screeching with every step.
That's when Branni noticed the rusted mechanical limb, held together with wire, its hydraulic tubes exposed. Clearly salvaged junk from someone else's scrap.
"I served as a sailor in the deep-space trade fleet for over ten years. Piloted a freighter for a while. After I lost my leg, I retired and became a worker."
Branni believed him. You could fake a uniform, but not a leg like that.
He led the man out of the bay and asked in the corridor, "What's your name?"
"Will, sir."
"Branni Neff. You can call me Branni, my brother's last name is Neff too."
Branni extended a hand. Will stared at it for a long moment before hesitantly lifting his own calloused hand to shake.
Branni said, "Can you do us a favor?"
Will tapped his rusted leg. "If it's piloting a freighter, I still remember how… though I'm probably rusty."
Branni gave a wry grin. "That's fine. None of us even knows how to start one."
He saw Will's hesitation. "Ask what you need to ask. If it's not classified, I'll tell you."
Will studied Branni's tactical armor. "Who are you people?"
"Lycaians," Branni answered.
"Overseers?" Will looked startled, why would overseers seize a spaceport?
"Ten hours ago, we were slaves."
Will's throat worked. "You mean… in just ten hours, you overthrew the overseers, took the city, and captured the spaceport?"
"That's right." Branni's chest swelled with pride.
Will swallowed hard. "Then… those nuclear blasts on Kiavahr… were also you?"
"Yes. Five atomic mining charges. We launched them through the gravity well onto Kiavahr."
Will's pupils shook violently, jaw locking midair in disbelief.
In less than a day, they had toppled the overseers, taken Lycaeus, seized a spaceport, and nuked Kiavahr. It shattered everything Will thought he knew.
He stammered, "You, you're not asking me to bomb Kiavahr, are you?"
"Relax. What we need from you isn't dangerous. You used to fly freighters, now we just need you to transport supplies."
Will slowly lowered his head, unsure whether he felt relief or disappointment.
If he'd been given the chance to bomb the Tech Guilds himself, he would've gladly done it, even with this broken leg.
"I can do it," Will said firmly. "This leg's bad, but I won't hold you back."
Branni nodded. "Will, do you know anyone else who can fly? Or repair ships?"
Will shook his head. "I know some people, and I could try to reach out, but honestly, most wouldn't support you."
Branni frowned. "Why?"
Will said quietly, "Because they have families. Because they don't believe you can win."
"Then why help us? You could've stayed silent."
Will's eyes hardened. "Because I think you're good people. You took the spaceport without killing innocents." He tapped his prosthetic leg. "You know how I lost this?"
"Tech Guild?" Branni guessed.
Will's expression twisted with hatred. "Yes. A Tech Guild noble."
"Because you got in his way?"
Will gritted out each word: "Because he stole my wife, and when he gave her back, she was just a corpse, broken beyond recognition."
Branni rested a hand on Will's shoulder… then withdrew it silently.
Will had once been middle-class, working on freighters, not quite poor. But to the Tech Guild, middle class or peasant, they were all the same.
"Any response from Kiavahr?" Caelan asked.
"None. They don't seem to know the spaceport has fallen."
Corax stood before the cogitator, scanning the flickering communication logs. The silence was unsettling.
"How could they not know?" murmured Agapito.
"Too quiet," Corax said flatly. "They're plotting something."
After capturing the spaceport, he had analyzed the possible countermeasures the Tech Guilds might take: military intimidation, diplomatic negotiation, or silence.
Of these, silence was the most dangerous.
Nuclear strikes delivered through gravity wells meant only one thing: Lycaeus was lost. Losing the spaceport made it worse.
Any sane opponent would rush to negotiate. Their silence, then, could only mean one thing: they were secretly mobilizing for a massive counterattack.
"The situation might be simpler," Caelan said. "Maybe they're just arguing among themselves."
"That would be idiotic."
Caelan smirked. "That's your standard. Maybe they're proud of their 'brilliant decision-making.'"
Kiavahr wasn't unified; it was a tangle of competing Tech Guilds. Even at the brink of extinction, capitalists first think about profit, how to come out ahead, or at least lose less than their rivals.
When everyone's scheming for personal gain, the whole group collapses into a deadly prisoner's dilemma.
Ironically, Corax had contributed to this chaos himself by detonating only five of the atomic mining charges and holding the rest in reserve. He'd occupied the spaceport but hadn't bombarded the planet or sent any diplomatic signals.
This led the Tech Guilds to misread his silence, assuming the rebels were using a deliberate ambiguity: not initiating, not rejecting, not committing.
But Corax's hesitation wasn't strategy; it was exhaustion.
He had only 3,000 soldiers, barely enough to hold the port, much less invade.
He calculated that taking a single hive city would need at least 200,000 troops; anything less was suicide.
Even if he could move that many people through the gravity well, he lacked ships, pilots, and trained officers.
His vulnerability was laid bare.
Caelan sighed. "So we're stuck in a stalemate."
Indeed, the war had reached a strange equilibrium. Corax couldn't strike Kiavahr, and the Tech Guilds couldn't retake the port.
The spaceport itself had become the key: the rebels could threaten mutual destruction but not victory.
"This stalemate suits us," Corax said.
With Kiavahr's superior technology, the best Lycaeus could hope for was a long-term deadlock. They had enough supplies for a year, and with the port's stores, maybe five.
Five years of survival, for him, that was enough to forge a real army.
But even that plan wasn't foolproof.
According to the logs, Kiavahr's massive trade fleets would start returning in 721 standard days. His real window was barely two years.
Then the alarm blared.
"Lord Corax! The augers detect a vessel approaching the spaceport!" Agapito reported.
"Target it," Corax ordered.
The servitors complied, but before they could fire, a message signal forced its way onto the comms, unencrypted, open channel.
A hologram flickered to life: a well-dressed middle-aged man.
"I am Chris Whitney, President of the Whitney Tech Guild. I request to speak with your commanding officer."
"I am Corax," came the reply. "What do you want?"
Chris leaned forward, voice trembling. "Lord Corax… I represent the Whitney Tech Guild, we beg for your aid! We need your help!"
Corax and Caelan exchanged looks, both reading the same disbelief in the other's eyes.
They had expected threats, negotiations, maybe even surrender, but not this.
They were rebels. The Tech Guilds were the ruling powers.
So why was the "king" now begging the rebels for help?
Caelan muttered, "I admit I was wrong. I still underestimated human nature."
Corax had predicted a strategy. Caelan had predicted greed.
But they'd both forgotten one thing: nuclear deterrence.
When Lycaeus dropped those five atomic charges, the Tech Guilds hadn't thought it was rebellion. Their encrypted transmissions claimed everything was under control, so the guilds assumed the nukes came from each other.
A thousand years ago, they'd agreed to dismantle all weapons of mass destruction. But no one truly trusted the others to follow the rules.
So when the nukes hit, every guild thought someone else had cheated.
Without nukes, they resorted to total war instead.
By the time the guild leaders realized the truth, that Lycaeus had rebelled, it was already too late.
Wars start when you want them to. They don't end when you do.
In the first hour alone, hundreds of thousands were dead.
Now the death toll was beyond counting.
The Whitney Guild was one of the first to collapse, and rather than die with the rest, they'd come begging the rebels for salvation.
Corax buried his face in his hands, disbelief etched into every line. "I was wrong. So, so wrong."
They had planned for every kind of enemy response, but they had never imagined the Tech Guilds would destroy themselves.
Humanity's capacity for self-destruction had once again proven infinite.
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
[email protected]/DaoistJinzu