Duke Archimedes received the summons at dawn, and the palace felt it before any messenger spoke a word aloud. The air inside the war chamber shifted as Kvasir's slate chimed with an encrypted priority seal, and a SCORPIO operator appeared in the doorway as if the shadows had decided to become useful. The Clansmoot was not a request, not truly, but the Imperium's annual reminder that even Great Houses answered to larger currents. Archimedes read the dispatch once, then again, and when he finally set it down, his expression remained composed in the way a blade remained composed before it cut.
"The Clansmoot," he said, looking at Tobias. "They want the Duke present in person."
Tobias did not ask why, because the why was obvious. The alliance with the Merwyn had changed No'aar's political temperature, SCORPIO's arrival had marked the planet as a theater of Imperial interest, and Tobias' growing visibility made him a figure the other Houses would weigh like metal on a scale. Archimedes' absence would be noted as weakness, yet his presence would be read as vulnerability. The Imperium loved this kind of tension, because tension produced clarity, and clarity produced leverage.
Duchess Satine stood beside Archimedes, her posture immaculate, her gaze hard enough to make lesser nobles look away. Trace watched from the edge of the room, eyes narrowed, already thinking in routes and contingencies. Cassian Rook remained quiet, but Tobias could feel his vice-commander's attention held like a drawn wire, ready to snap into action the moment orders became real. Kvasir waited with polite patience, but his fingers had already begun to prepare the logistical implications, because House Cocytus preferred to be ahead of the storm rather than inside it.
SCORPIO moved with the same inevitability the sea used when it decided to swallow shore.
The commander explained it without apology, and without softness, because SCORPIO did not soothe. "The Duke's presence at the Clansmoot requires the majority of our detail," she said. "His Imperial Majesty prefers that key assets remain under layered protection while in transit." Tobias felt the words like a cold hand closing around the edge of his awareness, because the implication was not simply that Archimedes needed protection. It was that the Imperium anticipated something at the Clansmoot worth protecting against.
"How much will remain here?" Tobias asked, keeping his voice calm.
"One squad," the commander replied. "And one WarMech lance, four prototypes. Enough to anchor counter-intelligence operations and rapid response, but not enough to reshape the theater." She held Tobias' gaze, and the familiar haze of Quiet Sisterhood discipline blurred the edges of prescience around her. "No'aar will be under House Hawthorne authority. You will be in full control, Lord Tobias." Then, as if to remove any lingering doubt, she added, "This is not permission. This is assignment."
Archimedes said nothing during that exchange, but when the commander left, he stepped closer to Tobias and placed a hand on his shoulder with steady pressure. "They are taking a shield," he said quietly. "Which means you must become one." Tobias nodded once, because he understood what was being offered and what was being demanded. The Duke's absence would force the palace, the troops, the Merwyn, and the Imperium itself to accept Tobias not as a promising heir, but as a functioning ruler.
Preparations consumed the next hours in tight, deliberate strokes.
The corvette in the landing court powered up under strict security protocols, and SCORPIO operators flowed through the palace like black water, collecting equipment, sealing data caches, and transferring control nodes to their remaining squad. Hawthorne guards were reassigned to cover the newly exposed seams, and Tobias watched each reassignment land in the faces of his soldiers, not as fear, but as resolve. Cassian updated patrol routes and WarMech readiness cycles with brisk efficiency, while Trace coordinated with Merwyn liaisons to ensure reef and harbor watch patterns remained intact.
Before Archimedes departed, he and Tobias shared a final moment in the war chamber without spectators.
The Duke leaned on his cane, visibly tired in the way only the recently poisoned could be, but his eyes were clear. "I will not be gone long," he said, though both men knew the Clansmoot could stretch as long as politics needed it to. Tobias's prescience tried to rise, to show him angles and outcomes, but the Quiet Sisterhood discipline lingering from SCORPIO's presence in the halls made the future feel fogged at the edges. Tobias did not chase visions. He chased readiness.
"I will hold No'aar," Tobias replied.
Archimedes' mouth quirked into the faintest smile. "Don't hold it," he corrected softly. "Rule it."
When the corvette lifted into the sky, No'aar's palace court filled with a wind of heat and salt. The vessel rose cleanly, a dark shape against blue, and Tobias watched until it became a point and then nothing at all. In its absence, the palace felt marginally less crowded, as if the building could breathe again, but Tobias did not mistake that for peace. It was simply the quiet between waves.
He returned to the war chamber before the day could settle, because command did not wait for emotions to catch up.
Reports began arriving in clusters, each stamped with time codes and verified signatures. Routine refinery outputs. Merwyn labor rotations. Civilian supply lines. Patrol logs from the city's underlevels. Tobias absorbed them all, sorting priority with the practiced ease of someone who had learned that the first mistake in war was treating all information as equal. Kvasir stood at the console, cleaning the data streams and discarding the noise, while Trace cross-referenced security anomalies against known Mordred patterns. Cassian updated readiness status for Hawthorne WarMechs, and the remaining SCORPIO squad remained unseen but present, a quiet pressure at the edges of the room.
Then the urgent report arrived, and it arrived like a thrown knife.
"Castellan system," Trace said, voice tightening as he read the intercept. "House Mordred fleet elements moving toward the Castellan approach lanes."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Castellan was not merely a system. It was House Hawthorne's seat, the place the House's identity had been forged and the place its banners meant something beyond politics. If Mordred struck there, it would not be about territory. It would be about humiliation, about drawing blood where it could be seen by every House and every corridor of Imperial gossip. Tobias felt prescience flare, not in clean images, but in the sharp instinct that this was a pivot point, a move meant to force him to choose between No'aar and home.
He did not hesitate.
"Open fleet command," Tobias ordered, voice steady enough to anchor the room. "Dispatch First Naval Squadron to Castellan immediately. Five Lunar-class and seven Victory-class, full burn. They reinforce Castellan's interstellar defenses and lock the approach corridors." He turned to Cassian. "Keep our WarMechs on No'aar at readiness. No reduction. If this is a feint, it will come here as soon as we blink." Cassian nodded once, already issuing subordinate orders with clean precision.
Kvasir's fingers moved across his slate, pulling route computations and jump window predictions faster than most officers could think. Trace began coordinating with the Castellan system's defense command, relaying protocols and warning markers. The remaining SCORPIO squad sent a single encrypted ping through the chamber network, an acknowledgment without commentary. Tobias watched the hololith as Hawthorne ships moved from anchored icons to streaking vectors, departing No'aar's orbit in disciplined formation like a flock of predatory birds.
The First Naval Squadron was gone within minutes.
The palace seemed to exhale and then tense again, as if aware that the moment a guard left one gate, another gate became vulnerable. Tobias stood in the war chamber and let the hololith show him No'aar's orbit, its lanes, its defensive grid, and the thin edge of his remaining fleet presence. His mind began to assemble contingencies, because that was what command demanded when the board shifted beneath your hands.
Then the sensors screamed.
Not from within the city, not from the reefs, not from the underlevels where Mordred loved to hide. The warning came from orbit, sharp and immediate, with signatures multiplying faster than the system could comfortably categorize. Kvasir's console spat out transponder IDs, and Trace's expression hardened into something almost grimly impressed.
"Contacts," Trace said, voice low. "They're coming out of subspace in-system."
Tobias stepped forward, eyes locking to the hololith as new icons blossomed in the void above No'aar. He counted them once, then again, because numbers mattered and mistakes killed.
Twenty-two.
All Lunar-class hull profiles, heavy and blunt, arriving in a cohesive wall that made No'aar's orbit look suddenly smaller. Their transponders carried a corporate stamp Tobias recognized instantly, not from blood memory but from political briefings and old war records.
Freedom Military Contractor.
The Lunan Corporate-State had arrived, not with subtlety, not with scouts, but with a fleet that did not pretend to be anything other than a statement. In the war chamber, the remaining SCORPIO squad became an almost physical hush at the edge of Tobias' awareness, and the palace's air seemed to tighten around the knowledge that this was no longer a shadow war.
Tobias stared up at the hololith, watching the Freedom PMC fleet settle into formation above the world he had been ordered to rule. His First Naval Squadron was already burning toward Castellan, chasing Mordred's threat. His Duke was in transit to the Clansmoot. SCORPIO had departed with most of its strength.
And now, in the span of minutes, No'aar's sky had filled with enemies wearing corporate colors.
Tobias did not speak at first, because the next order would decide what kind of ruler he truly was.
Then he breathed in once, slow and steady, and the chapter of peace ended.