CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
The Particle Axe came down toward Vesper's cockpit, and Radian caught it. The impact detonated across Ilyan's display in a sheet of white-orange glare, the two particle fields grinding against each other so violently that the combat audio filled with a shriek like metal being dragged through glass. The axe-equipped Bastion had committed its entire body to the killing stroke. Gray, blue and black armor drove through the follow-through while Vesper turned helplessly beneath them, one eye dead, chest split open, the broken remnants of Kaia's deep-red marking passing under Radian's feet. Ilyan felt the force through the controls as Radian took the strike along the Blade instead of simply stopping it; the Bastion's momentum dragged both Frames across Vesper's path, past the unfinished bones of Orison's expansion ring and through a drifting field of cut latticework left from the fight before. He fired Radian's lateral thrusters, shifted the Blade under the axe head and changed the geometry until the Bastion either had to release or let Ilyan wrench the weapon arm apart. The pilot let go first. The axe snapped away in a dark-orange crescent, the Bastion vanishing behind its own drive glare as it crossed the construction field, and Ilyan did not chase. He rolled Radian back toward Vesper, killed enough relative movement to get both hands under Kaia's Frame and caught her before she struck one of the temporary trusses surrounding Orison.
Up close, Vesper looked worse than she had through the tactical feed. One upper-back thruster assembly had been crushed inward until the housing was almost part of the torso; the other was gone completely, leaving torn structure and severed feed lines behind it. The hip on one side had opened around the joint, one leg hanging uselessly below it, and the forearm had split along the armor seam where repeated impacts had finally reached the structure beneath. The Particle Scythe was gone. The chest had been carved open from shoulder toward abdomen, not deeply enough to reach Kaia but enough that Ilyan could see the dark graphite framework beneath the weathered charcoal plating, and only broken islands remained of the deep-red mark she had once painted there herself. One of Vesper's two eyes was dark. The other pulsed weakly as Ilyan brought Radian close enough for an emergency handshake and forced the damaged cockpit feed onto his display. Kaia hung crooked in the restraints, blood floating in small beads around her face and hair, one side of her suit dark at the thigh. Her head shifted when Radian steadied Vesper and for one desperate instant Ilyan thought she had moved on her own. "Kaia," he said, then louder when she did not respond, "Kaia, wake up. Come on. You can yell at me after this. You can tell everybody I took too fucking long, I don't care. Just open your eyes." Tomas cut into the channel before Ilyan could say anything else, his voice clipped by the strain of trying to sound calm. He told Ilyan she was alive, that her suit was still giving him a pulse and respiration, that the blood loss was bad and there were likely fractures, a concussion, a shoulder injury from the restraint and a serious wound in the thigh. Ilyan kept staring at her face anyway. "Then why isn't she waking up?" he asked. Tomas answered after a beat, "Because she's badly hurt. The recovery drone is almost there. Hold her steady and let me do my job."
The drone came out from Black Star while Orison turned behind them, so large that the battle seemed absurdly small against it until Ilyan looked at the rows of habitat lights and remembered what every one of them meant. The colony's inhabited cylinder continued its rotation beneath docking spines, refinery districts, maintenance yards and radiator structures while the unfinished expansion ring traced an incomplete circle around it: pressurized work modules alternating with bare ribs, temporary pylons, drive assemblies, bridge segments and open gaps where nothing existed yet except construction lights and vacuum. Evacuation traffic poured through those gaps in ugly, uneven streams. Passenger ferries moved beside ore carriers and refinery tenders; hospital craft shoved past private vessels overloaded with families; maintenance tugs carried people in compartments never meant to hold them because any pressure hull with thrust had become an escape route. Their drives layered white and blue points across the dark, and the local emergency network was so crowded with distress calls, traffic control and confused civilian voices that Hana had begun stripping whole channels from Black Star's combat feed just to keep tactical information readable. Ilyan guided the drone's grapples into Vesper's recovery points himself, watched each indicator turn green and still kept one of Radian's hands under Kaia until Tomas said, more sharply this time, "I have her. Let go." Only then did he release. Vesper drifted toward Black Star under the drone's control, broken hand hanging beneath her, and the same thought returned with each piece of damage Ilyan saw: I waited. He saw the missing thruster and thought it again. He saw the dark stain across Kaia's thigh and thought it again. He had spent days telling himself that refusing to sit inside Radian meant refusing to become the person who had killed Perrin Holt. Kaia had gone out without him and nearly died while he protected himself from that possibility.
The axe Bastion came back before Vesper reached the carrier. Its marker snapped across Radian's tracking display, and Ilyan was already turning when gray-blue armor resolved out of drive glare beneath the expansion ring. The Bastion held the Particle Axe tight along its body until the last instant, then opened into an upward cut meant to take Radian through the torso. Ilyan fired inside the arc rather than back away. Radian's forearm smashed into the haft, the dark-orange edge passing so close to the cockpit that the display dimmed against its glare, and Ilyan brought his Blade toward the Bastion's chest. The remaining shield caught it. Radian's edge entered the plate, particle containment shrieking as it cut through layers of armor, and the Bastion used the failing shield to shove itself away before Ilyan could drive deeper. The pilot was good. Not Kaia-good, not Cai-good, though Ilyan did not know Cai yet, but disciplined enough to make every damaged system count. The Bastion kicked from an unfinished structural spine as it passed, changing direction before its torso fully turned, and the axe came back along Radian's exposed side. Ilyan was late. The particle edge opened ivory plating along the ribs, warning glyphs flaring across his display. He ignored them, accelerated into the Bastion's recovery and struck the weapon arm with Radian's shoulder. The joint buckled. He trapped the arm against the chest, twisted with the whole Frame and cut through the already-damaged connection. The forearm spun away with the axe still in its hand, momentum carrying both into the dark.
The Bastion tried to withdraw. Ilyan followed hard enough that the gap vanished almost as soon as the other pilot created it. They crossed beneath the unfinished ring, past a pair of construction tugs desperately moving away from the combat zone, then through a cloud of insulation and broken plating from the earlier fighting. Radian's combat systems held the Bastion together for him through the acceleration, reconstructing orientation whenever glare or debris hid the silhouette, but Ilyan still had to choose every correction: thrust off the damaged side, Blade angled away from the surviving civilian traffic, rifle held close until the Bastion turned. There was a person inside that cockpit. He knew it, and he refused to think beyond that. He did not want a name. He did not want another Perrin waiting for him after the battle, another dead pilot acquiring family and history only after the moment when those details could have mattered. This pilot had nearly killed Kaia. Ilyan let that be enough. He caught the Bastion from behind, dragged it around and brought Radian's Blade up beneath the cockpit while the Federation Frame kicked uselessly with one compromised leg. A channel forced its way through the interference. "Unknown Nexus Frame, disengage. I'm combat-ineffective and withdrawing." The voice was female and young, flattened by damaged relay hardware and combat filtering until almost every personal quality had been stripped out of it. Ilyan kept moving the Blade. The Bastion twisted again. "Wait. Please. Just—please, wait."
The word did more than the formal withdrawal request had. Ilyan hated that. His grip tightened and the Blade moved closer, the dark-orange edge reflecting across the Bastion's chest armor. The pilot's breathing came through the channel in uneven bursts. "My brother is on your carrier," she said. Ilyan's hands stopped for less than a heartbeat. "He was on Black Star when you took it. He's young. I don't know what he thinks happened, I don't know what they told him, I don't know if he thinks we stopped looking." Her voice broke, recovered, then broke again when Radian's Blade touched the armor beneath her cockpit. "Please. I just need to get him back. I don't care about the mission right now. I don't care who wins this. I need to see him. I need him to know I didn't leave him there." Ilyan looked past the Bastion toward the distant recovery marker moving Vesper deeper inside Black Star. Kaia was alive. Barely. Blood loss, ribs, concussion, shoulder, thigh. He looked back at the Bastion and felt anger close over whatever hesitation had opened. Everybody had someone. Perrin had probably had someone. Kaia had people too, and that had not stopped this pilot from trying to put an axe through her cockpit. The woman kept talking because she could see the Blade coming. "Please, I'm asking you. My brother's on that ship. I can't die before I find him. Please."
Ilyan drove the Blade toward the cockpit.
A dark-orange streak struck it from the side. The impact tore Radian's arm away from the killing line and snapped the Blade outward while something long and narrow shot past, reversed under its own compact thrusters without turning and came back at Radian from another angle. Ilyan blocked the returning weapon and fired Radian away just as a heavier Frame crossed between him and the Bastion. Gunmetal and black armor covered broad shoulders and a thick chest, muted Federation blue worked into the shell just enough to make the allegiance obvious. A long remote Particle Lance circled beside it instead of docking, dark-orange edge alive. The damaged Bastion escaped toward the Federation line while the newcomer settled into Ilyan's path. He caught only fragments of the other channel beneath the interference—an order to get clear, a reply he could not distinguish, then the new pilot cutting the link before turning fully toward Radian. Ilyan did not know who he had almost killed. He only knew somebody had stopped him.
Talia's hands would not stop shaking. Her Bastion still had pressure, reactor stability, partial movement through the damaged leg and enough thrust to withdraw under its own power, which made the trembling feel like a personal failure rather than a mechanical one. She had been prepared to die in combat before. Cassian had made sure every pilot under him understood that possibility without turning it into theater. What she had not been prepared for was the moment after discipline failed to matter, after training and procedure and a formal withdrawal request had all disappeared beneath Radian's Blade, leaving her with nothing except the truth that she did not want to die. She had begged. Not well, not with dignity, not with any of the calm language she had imagined she might use if she were ever forced to bargain for her life. She had told the unknown pilot about her brother because Ilyan was the first thing terror reached for inside her. She had told Radian that she needed to bring him home, that she needed him to know she had not stopped looking, and the Blade had still come.
Asterion moved between her and Radian now, still hidden beneath its heavy outer shell, the remote lance orbiting on compact thrust. Cai's voice came over her channel while he watched Radian rather than her. "Get clear." Talia wiped at her face and found tears there. That made her angrier. "I can still fight." Cai's eyes flicked toward her feed and back. "Not this." She forced the Bastion's damaged leg into alignment and added thrust. "Don't talk to me like I'm done." The response came flat, without cruelty. "You lost the shield, the axe arm is gone, your ankle's barely correcting and Radian just walked through everything you had left. Get clear before he remembers you're here." Talia wanted to tell him that she had nearly beaten the dark Nexus Frame before Radian arrived. She wanted to tell him Cassian had trained her to fight damaged, that she understood this battlefield, that her Bastion was not useless simply because it was hurt. Instead she looked at the pale Frame turning toward Asterion and remembered how its two cyan-white eyes had filled her display while she begged for her brother. Cai said her name again, softer this time, and Talia hated him for making the right order sound almost kind. She fired the remaining useful thrusters and moved away.
The new pilot opened a direct channel. His face appeared on Ilyan's display: warm brown skin, short dark-brown hair flattened with sweat, amber-brown eyes moving constantly between tactical overlays and the blank outgoing feed Radian was giving him. He looked young, but not young enough for Ilyan to mistake him for another fourteen-year-old. Blood marked one corner of his mouth. The heavy Frame around him held position with almost insulting control while the remote lance drifted beside its shoulder. "You sound young," he said. Ilyan brought Radian's prototype rifle up. "You look busy." The boy's mouth moved like he might smile, then decided against it. "Cai Arden." Ilyan tightened his grip. "I didn't ask." Cai gave the smallest shrug inside his restraints. "No."
Ilyan fired.
Asterion's shield was already there. The particle bolt broke across it in white-orange glare, and before Ilyan could shift the rifle the remote lance came down from outside his main line of sight. He caught it with Radian's Blade, shoved it aside and accelerated forward, forearm projector coming up under the heavy shell. Asterion moved before the emitter fired. The shot crossed empty space. Ilyan changed direction, aimed the rifle at the exposed lower torso and watched the shield turn before the barrel reached the line. He stopped the shot. Asterion did not overreact. He presented the rifle again, deliberately loading his posture as though he intended another burst, while deciding on the Blade instead. The remote lance ignored the rifle and slid into the Blade's future path before Radian moved. Ilyan broke off, more confused than frightened for the first instant. "How are you doing that?" Cai looked at him through the empty outgoing feed, and when he answered there was no explanation in it, only something strange and possessive in the way he said Asterion's name. "I see the end and the beginning. Time has nowhere to run when my Asterion is the one to see it."
"That doesn't mean anything."
Cai shut the channel.
Then Asterion came at him.
The next exchanges erased every comfortable answer Ilyan tried to build. It was not simply reaction speed. Asterion's shield entered the rifle line before Ilyan completed the shot. The remote lance abandoned feints Ilyan had not physically revealed and closed against the attack he actually chose. He held two options in mind, changed from one to the other at the last possible instant and watched Asterion change with him rather than afterward, blue-violet drive glare shifting before Radian's body had committed enough movement to give anything away. Prediction could explain reading posture. Prediction could explain weapon angles, thruster loading, timing habits, maybe even the way Ilyan's hands moved on the controls. It could not explain this. Ilyan did not tell Cai what he was beginning to suspect. If Cai was protecting the advantage, Ilyan would protect the conclusion.
They crossed Orison's outer construction field so quickly that the world beyond the cockpit became a sequence of structures arriving and vanishing. Radian fired past the edge of an unfinished transfer bridge, crossed behind his own shot and came out with the Blade already active. Asterion was beneath the rifle bolt, but not entirely clear of the Blade. Ilyan cut through the heavy chest shell from sternum toward shoulder. Cai pulled away before the strike reached deeper structure, yet Ilyan stayed on him long enough to fire the forearm projector into the damaged section. The discharge hit. White-orange glare swallowed Asterion, and the silhouette inside it changed before the light cleared. Locks opened across the outer shell. Gunmetal shoulder housings broke free. Thick chest plating separated in overlapping sections. Forearm and thigh armor released while the Frame was still moving, every piece carrying Asterion's previous momentum as the body beneath accelerated through its own discarded protection.
Silver-white close armor emerged over a graphite-black inner Frame. Asterion was leaner underneath, long-limbed and almost severe in proportion, with none of the unnecessary bulk the Federation shell had given it. Exactly two blue-white eyes burned from the face. Blue-violet particle routing glowed beneath the armor through the chest, shoulders, arms, hips and thighs, not as some hazy aura but as visible internal light tracing systems beneath the plating. The remote lance turned beside him, dark-orange edge alive against that cold blue-violet. Discarded armor spread behind Asterion and caught Orison's reflected light as it drifted away. For one impossible moment it looked like a silver-white angel tearing loose from dark wings it had outgrown.
Then it hit Radian hard enough to knock the breath from Ilyan.
He caught Asterion's Blade with Radian's own, but the remote lance was already coming from another direction. Ilyan released the bind, fired upward relative to their shared movement and let the lance pass beneath Radian's feet, then reversed and drove both heels into Asterion's chest. The kick separated them. The gap existed for almost no time at all. Asterion accelerated back through it before the drifting shell fragments had moved far enough to matter, and Radian met him halfway. The difference between the Nyxions and every Bastion around Orison became brutally obvious once Asterion's true body was exposed. Ordinary Frames had to budget everything. Hard thrust cost reinforcement elsewhere. Weapons ate particle reserve. Violent maneuvering forced tradeoffs through the body. Asterion and Radian still paid for output in heat, wear and reserve, but their particle systems fed thrust, weapon containment and structural reinforcement together at a level standard Frames simply could not match.
To anyone watching from outside a cockpit, there was barely a recognizable fight. Amber-white crossed blue-violet. Dark-orange weapon lines appeared and vanished between them. White flashes marked collisions, and by the time an observer found one color the other had already changed position. Through Radian's combat display, Ilyan still had bodies to fight. He saw Asterion's shoulders move, saw the remote lance split from the main approach, saw the shield angle and Blade line and the exact moment Cai tried to herd him toward an unfinished pylon. He had to pilot through all of it. He shifted thrust away from Radian's damaged ribs, brought the rifle across his own torso to shorten the movement, fired during separation and used the miss to force Cai away from the best line for the remote lance. He changed direction before the pylon trapped him, took the next shield strike against the stronger shoulder and used the impact itself to swing Radian around for a projector shot across Asterion's side. Cai escaped the center of the blast. Silver-white armor still burned away along the flank.
Niko entered the channel while Ilyan was blocking another return from the remote lance. "Your shoulder temperature's climbing and the right thigh is taking too much load." Ilyan shoved the lance aside and accelerated through the opening. "I'm using both." "I can see that, which is why I'm talking to you." Asterion's Blade flashed across the cockpit view; Ilyan changed thrust and let the edge cut armor instead of deeper structure. Niko swore at the telemetry. "That. Stop doing that." Ilyan brought the rifle around and fired. Cai had already moved. "Is anything failing?" Ilyan asked. "Not yet." "Then tell me when it is." He killed the engineering channel before Niko could answer and went after Asterion again.
Cai was better. Ilyan stopped lying to himself about that almost immediately. Future sight—because that was becoming the only explanation left—did not make Cai skilled, but it made skill monstrous. Cai knew how to turn knowledge into position. He did not chase openings that would close before he reached them. He sent the remote lance to places Radian would need rather than places Radian currently occupied, used the shield to force Ilyan into specific attacks and fired during separation because he already knew which direction Ilyan intended to take. Ilyan survived because Radian could keep up and because Cai still had a body inside Asterion, still had hands on controls and lungs filling under acceleration and injuries accumulating every time one of Radian's attacks touched him. Ilyan started changing his own choices later. He waited until the last moment to select between weapons. He let an attack begin, then changed not only the weapon but the amount of output Radian put through it. Cai remained ahead of most of it. Not all.
That was when Asterion caught Radian high across the torso and drove both Nyxions toward a passenger transport.
The boy had stopped listening to the evacuation announcements because they had been repeating for so long that they had become part of the transport's sound. Remain seated. Keep restraints secured. Do not enter the transfer passage. Pressure masks were located beneath each seat. His mother listened every time. She sat beside him with one hand resting over the buckle of his harness and the other around her wrist display, checking for messages whenever she thought he was looking elsewhere. His father worked in one of Orison's refinery districts and had not answered since the evacuation began. His mother said they would find him after they were safe, so the boy had decided that was what would happen.
He had brought a green plastic dinosaur with him. One rear leg bent slightly outward because he had stepped on it two years ago and cried until his father warmed the plastic and pushed it almost straight again. It still leaned when he made it walk. He liked the limp. Dinosaurs probably got hurt too. He walked it along the lower edge of the window while Orison turned beyond the glass, its lights sliding slowly across his view as evacuation craft crossed in front of it. Then something amber-orange flashed through the stars. The boy stopped the dinosaur and tugged at his mother's sleeve. "Mommy, I saw a shooting star." She kept looking at her wrist. "There aren't shooting stars out here, baby." Blue-violet crossed after the amber. The boy pointed so hard his finger hit the glass. "There. That one too."
His mother looked. At that distance neither of them saw Frames. They saw color. Amber-white moved through the dark, disappeared behind part of the unfinished ring and returned somewhere else. Blue-violet followed. Dark-orange lines flashed between them. Once the colors touched and the transport window dimmed automatically against a burst of white. The boy smiled. "They're fighting." His mother's wrist display sounded an alert at the same moment the transport changed course. The restraints tightened across his chest, and the dinosaur lifted from his knee on the little cord his father had tied around its middle. He laughed at that. His mother did not. She caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back against the seat. "Stay down." He asked what the lights were, and she said she did not know.
The colors vanished behind another evacuation ship. For a few seconds there was only Orison, stars and the reflections inside the transport window. Then amber and blue-violet returned much closer. Shapes existed inside them now. Arms. Legs. Heads. White armor burning inside amber light and another pale shape surrounded by blue-violet, both enormous enough that the boy needed a moment to understand they were the same things he had mistaken for shooting stars. The green dinosaur floated beside his knee. Radian grew across the window, one ivory shoulder almost filling it.
The boy whispered, "It's huge, Mommy."
His mother looked.
She saw enough to stop being confused.
She reached across him, pulled him against her chest and folded herself around her son.
The hull came apart.
The transport hit Radian from the side because Asterion made sure it did. Ilyan saw the collision warning, fired every useful thruster and tried to tear free, but Cai changed Asterion's grip and forced Radian's escape line back toward the passenger section. "Let go," Ilyan snapped, then shouted it when the transport's maneuvering clusters burned across his display. "Cai, let the fuck go. There are people in there." Cai's face had gone tight with effort. "I know." Radian struck the hull before Ilyan could answer. Plating folded around the shoulder and peeled backward over ivory armor. Windows burst. Atmosphere erupted from the breach in a storm of frost and loose material. Seats tore from their mounts, some empty, some not. A man struck Radian's chest hard enough to disappear under the shoulder camera. Bags, glass, insulation, clothing and bodies filled the display while Ilyan fought the controls, trying to push both Nyxions toward the already-opened section instead of deeper through the transport. Asterion held him in the wrong direction. Radian broke through an interior pressure wall.
The emergency comm network opened automatically.
Screaming flooded the cockpit, not from space but from surviving sections of the transport: somebody shouting a name, another voice ordering a bulkhead closed, a child crying, pressure alarms pulsing under all of it. Ilyan's vision narrowed. Another pressure wall came toward them. Something small bounced from Radian's forearm, spun once across the camera and continued into the debris.
A green plastic dinosaur.
One rear leg was bent.
A broken cord trailed behind it.
Ilyan had time to see that much before Radian tore through the next compartment.
Then they broke through the far hull and the transport was behind them.
It did not explode. It split. The forward section continued moving under partial thrust while the aft section turned away, the center reduced to an open wound surrounded by venting atmosphere and drifting debris. Emergency bulkheads sealed where they still had power. Rescue beacons multiplied across Ilyan's display. People were alive in there. That meant he could still hear them.
Asterion released him.
Radian drifted away with blood across the ivory chest.
Ilyan stared at Cai's feed. "You knew."
Cai looked back without speaking.
"You knew we were going through them."
"Yes."
"You saw it."
Another pause. "Yes."
Ilyan's hands tightened until his knuckles hurt. "You killed them."
Cai's expression changed. Whatever exhilaration he had carried through the duel disappeared, and something harder replaced it, something defensive enough to become cruel. "I didn't kill them, you did. Radian hit them. I just gave you a push."
Ilyan stared at him. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You heard me."
"You held me there."
"I gave you the push. Radian went through the hull."
"You chose the ship."
"And your Frame hit it."
"That doesn't make any fucking sense."
Cai's jaw tightened. "Then stop arguing and kill me."
The transport continued separating behind him. Ilyan could still see the emergency markers. He could still see the dinosaur turning in his mind. He had spent days trying to divide Radian into pieces he was allowed to love and pieces he had to hate. Flying him had felt beautiful before Perrin. The responsiveness, the way the controls disappeared beneath intention when Ilyan stopped fighting them, the impossible elegance of a Frame capable of crossing combat space faster than his instincts believed something that size should move. Then Perrin died, and Ilyan tried to draw a line through Radian. Flight on one side. Weapons on the other. Beauty on one side. Killing on the other.
The line had never existed.
Radian's hands were built to hold weapons. His particle system was built to drive him through combat at speeds that turned a Frame into a streak of light outside a civilian window. His Blades existed to enter armor. The rifle existed to kill before the Blade reached it. The projector existed so losing the rifle did not make him harmless. None of that made the moments Ilyan loved false. It made his refusal to look at the whole of Radian false.
He looked at Cai.
He wanted him dead.
Not arrested. Not beaten. Not frightened away.
Dead.
Ilyan stopped pretending otherwise.
Amber-orange light appeared beneath Radian's fingers.
It spread through the hands and forearms, fine internal lines burning under pale armor before crossing the shoulders and chest. The light continued down through the torso, hips and legs while the two cyan-white eyes intensified. Ilyan's display filled with system changes so quickly he could not read them all: particle routing shifting around damage, reinforcement redistributing through the shoulder and thigh, Blade containment narrowing and strengthening, the prototype rifle field stabilizing above its documented ceiling, thruster output climbing without the compromises that should have accompanied it. He had not pressed a hidden control. No buried program announced itself. Nothing woke.
Radian had never been asleep.
The understanding came before explanation. Radian had been there every time Ilyan entered the cockpit, every time movement felt too natural, every time the Frame seemed capable of meeting him somewhere between intention and action. Ilyan had accepted pieces of him and refused others. Radian had waited without being dormant, not for permission to exist but for Ilyan to stop reaching for only the parts he found comfortable.
Niko entered the channel so fast he nearly spoke over a warning tone. "Ilyan, something changed."
"I know."
"No, I mean the actual routing map changed. I'm watching reinforcement move around the damaged side while I'm looking at it. The rifle field is holding above design. Main thrust is climbing past the profile we had and I don't know why it isn't tearing something apart."
"I didn't activate anything."
"I know you didn't."
The identification line flickered at the bottom of Ilyan's display.
XF-01 RADIAN — CLASSIFICATION: FRAME
The last word vanished.
XF-01 RADIAN — CLASSIFICATION: NYXION
Niko went quiet. When he spoke again the confidence was gone. "What the hell is a Nyxion?"
Ilyan stared at the word. "I don't know."
Cai saw the amber beneath Radian's armor.
For the first time since the duel began, he looked unsettled.
Ilyan closed the channel and accelerated.
The first collision nearly tore Asterion's lance from its control field. Radian's Blade hit it hard enough to throw the weapon across Asterion's body, and Ilyan brought the rifle underneath the bind. Cai moved before the trigger pull. He still moved too early. The shot came out tighter and stronger than anything Asterion had seen from Radian before and caught the edge of the shield as Cai cleared the expected line. Half the plate disappeared. Ilyan drove Radian forward through the debris. Asterion's Blade came across the chest. He turned enough to take the cut through armor instead of the cockpit, fired the forearm projector at close range and watched Cai escape the center. The strengthened edge still opened silver-white plating along the abdomen.
Cai's eyes widened.
Ilyan said nothing.
He understood enough now to keep the thought private. Asterion could see what was going to happen. Cai had not been guessing. He had been moving through futures before Ilyan reached them. But the future Asterion saw depended on what Radian was capable of at the moment it was seen, and Radian was changing while the fight continued.
Cai saw the future.
Radian became something different before the future finished happening.
Then the future broke.
Ilyan attacked again.
The duel accelerated until Orison itself seemed to move in pieces around them. Radian crossed amber-white through the unfinished ring; Asterion answered in blue-violet. The remote lance came from above while Asterion cut from below. Ilyan blocked the lance with the Blade, changed thrust before the bind settled and used Radian's shoulder to hit Asterion across the chest. They separated. Ilyan fired during the separation. Cai moved. Ilyan used the missed bolt to herd him toward a construction spine, then went around the opposite side rather than following the expected attack. Asterion was still there first, but not perfectly. Radian's Blade opened the silver-white thigh. Asterion drove the backup Blade across Radian's wounded shoulder. Ilyan changed the load before the arm failed, shifted the Blade to the other hand and used the forearm projector as the primary ranged weapon. The fight did not become easier. It became possible in new ways.
A civilian ferry entered the far side of the combat volume during one of those exchanges. Cai moved Asterion across it. Ilyan recognized the choice immediately. Asterion's damaged side opened with the ferry directly behind it. The fire-control corridor turned red.
NEGATIVE FIRE CORRIDOR — CIVILIAN CONTACT
The warning sat in front of Ilyan.
Cai's chest was open.
Ilyan fired.
Asterion moved.
The particle bolt crossed where Cai had been and entered the ferry behind him. It struck aft of the main passenger section and tore through the opposite hull in a cloud of molten material and atmosphere. The ferry yawed, drive still burning on one side.
Ilyan stared at it for half a second too long.
Asterion's remote lance hit Radian across the shoulder.
The impact threw him against the restraints. He recovered, changed thrust and blocked the second strike.
This one could not be placed entirely in Cai's hands.
Cai had used the ferry.
Ilyan had seen the warning.
Ilyan had fired anyway.
There was nowhere to hide from that.
Talia saw the ferry open and felt something inside her give way. "Cai, stop." Asterion and Radian crossed again before he answered, blue-violet and amber flashing against Orison's outer structures while the surviving Bastions struggled to maintain clean tracks on them. "Cai, you're past the operation. Stop." Corvane came onto the Federation channel at almost the same time, ordering Arden to disengage immediately. Cai ignored him. Talia fired her own remaining thrusters and moved toward the duel. Asterion's marker changed before she had fully committed. Cai's voice came through, breathless now. "Stay out."
"People are dying."
"I can see that."
"Then stop making it worse."
Radian struck Asterion hard enough to send fragments of silver-white armor away from the torso. Cai recovered and said, "If you come in here, you die."
Talia's hands tightened. "You don't know that."
This time Cai did not answer immediately. He was watching something only Asterion could show him. When he finally spoke, the certainty in his voice made her hate him. "You enter this at your current condition and you don't finish the first exchange."
"Move."
"Talia."
"I said move. If you keep doing this, I'll put you in the grave myself."
Cai looked toward her feed for only a moment. "Maybe."
"You really don't care if you die, do you?"
His attention returned to Radian. "Not enough to stop."
"That doesn't give you the right to send everybody else."
Cai had no answer for that.
Talia kept approaching until her Bastion's tactical system rebuilt the two Nyxions clearly enough for her to understand what entering the fight would mean. She could see the geometry. That was the worst part. She could see the remote lance closing the high route while Asterion's Blade denied the low one. She could see Radian using a damaged shoulder as bait and changing thrust through the stronger side. She could imagine exactly where she would try to cut in.
Her Bastion could not get there fast enough.
Cai had not insulted her.
He had told her the truth.
Talia stopped.
She remembered begging Radian.
She remembered Asterion saving her.
She hated them both for the same reason.
They had shown her what it felt like to reach the point where another person's strength decided whether she was allowed to live.
Asterion broke away from Radian and went for the expansion ring.
Ilyan saw the remote lance leave first. "What are you doing?"
It struck the first station-keeping cluster. White fire opened across the unfinished structure. Orison Control flooded every local channel with warnings as drive synchronization failed across Section Twelve. Asterion was already moving toward the second node. Radian chased him. Ilyan fired. Cai avoided the shot before it existed and cut through the second cluster with Asterion's Blade.
The ring's projected motion changed.
Ilyan understood enough to feel cold.
"Cai, stop, this is too far."
The third node disappeared under the remote lance.
Talia's voice broke across the Federation channel, distorted but furious. "Cai, stop! You're way beyond orders!"
Corvane followed with another direct command to disengage.
Cai ignored both.
He went for the fourth cluster.
Ilyan intercepted him against the unfinished ring. Their Blades met against bare structure, amber and blue-violet reflecting along unfinished plating while the remote lance curved behind Radian. Ilyan trapped the weapon with the rifle barrel, shoved it off line and fired the projector at Asterion's chest. Cai moved. Ilyan changed the discharge as late as he could, forcing Asterion away from the station-keeping assembly. For one instant the route closed.
The remote lance reversed.
It entered the cluster from behind.
The fourth node erupted.
Section Twelve did not fall toward Orison. It simply stopped following the controlled motion that had kept it synchronized with the colony. The enormous unfinished section continued along its existing path while Orison's rotation carried inhabited structures toward the same space. Collision warnings filled Ilyan's display. Temporary habitation modules, docking sectors, work crews, refinery sections and evacuation traffic appeared beneath expanding red projections.
Ilyan looked at Cai. "You knew."
Cai was breathing hard, eyes bright in a way Ilyan suddenly hated. "I wanted to see what happens."
"To them?"
"To you."
For a moment Ilyan could only stare.
Cai had done this to force Radian farther.
Ilyan brought the Blade up. "I'm going to kill you."
Cai looked toward the ring.
"I mean it."
"I know."
"I'm going to come back and make you choke on your own blood that even you wished space just suffocated you."
Cai did not smile. "Then go."
Ilyan turned Radian away from him.
Section Twelve filled the tactical field. Sera began pouring structural data into Radian from Black Star while Orison Control added construction schematics, drive states, evacuation routes and stress telemetry. The display became almost unreadable. "You cannot stop that section outright," Sera said. "Don't try." Ilyan scanned the failed station-keeping nodes. "I'm not going to." Niko came in behind her, voice stripped of everything except work. "Drive Four's gimbal is jammed. Drive Six has a fractured mount. Three temporary braces are carrying the outer arc, but I don't trust the third reading. It says stable and the load distribution looks wrong." Ilyan dragged the overlays together. At first they were only numbers and warnings. Then the strange depth between him and Radian opened farther, not into unity and not into anything complete, but enough that the information began fitting into sequence before Ilyan consciously solved every piece.
He remained the pilot.
He still had to choose.
"Ring Control, can Four fire?"
"Not while the gimbal is locked."
"I'll free it."
Radian crossed the construction field in amber light. Ilyan killed thrust beside the drive assembly, fired the forearm projector through the jammed restraint and caught the housing with both hands. The damaged shoulder protested immediately. He changed the grip, shifted load through the stronger side and fired opposing thrusters until the gimbal moved. The entire mount groaned through structural pickup. "Fire it," Ilyan said. Ring Control hesitated. "Mount integrity is below safe limit." "I know. Fire it before it gets worse." The drive ignited. Its thrust pulled against the ring. The mount began failing almost at once, but by then Section Twelve's path had already changed by a fraction. Ilyan released before the assembly tore free and accelerated along the ring toward the next brace.
A civilian transport crossed the line he needed to cut. He waited. Every instinct sharpened by the duel with Cai screamed at him to move faster, but speed would put the Blade through the transport instead of the support. Ilyan held position for the few moments it took, watched the ship clear and then fired Radian forward. The strengthened Blade entered the temporary brace and cut it cleanly. Load transferred through the section. Another structural member bent.
"Drive Six," Ilyan said.
Orison Control answered, "Its mount is already fractured."
"That's why we use it now."
The drive fired. Its support assembly tore apart almost immediately and the whole unit wrenched free, spinning away under its own thrust. The reaction still changed the ring's movement before failure.
Not enough.
A huge truss section broke loose ahead of Ilyan and started across an evacuation route toward a maintenance tug carrying far too many life signs for its design capacity. Ilyan abandoned the ring and chased it. Radian struck the truss with both hands. The collision shoved him backward. He fired the main thrusters and the damaged thigh flared across the display. Ilyan shifted the load away from it, changed Radian's orientation and drove through the torso instead. The truss barely moved. Amber brightened beneath Radian's arms as the particle system climbed. Ilyan increased thrust. The truss changed course just enough for the tug to pass beneath it.
He released and went back.
"Main spine still intersects," Sera said.
"I see it."
More than that, he saw the third temporary brace Niko had mistrusted. The telemetry called it stable. The pattern of load through the ring told a different story. The brace was dragging a pressurized construction module with the main section. If Ilyan left it intact, changing the outer ring's path would carry the module into Orison anyway. He fired the projector through half the support, came across with the Blade and severed the rest. The pressurized module separated. Emergency tugs moved for it immediately.
The main section still had too much of the wrong movement.
Ilyan accelerated toward the spine.
Niko understood before he reached it. "Do not try to stop that whole section."
"I'm not stopping it."
Radian planted both hands against the reinforced spine.
Ilyan fired every useful thruster.
The first push did almost nothing. He watched the stress distribution, changed the thrust balance, moved the damaged shoulder away from the primary load and altered the contact angle. Structural warnings spread across Radian's arms and torso. The shoulder began losing range. Ilyan reduced load through it and pushed harder through the stronger side. Amber-orange routing brightened beneath the ivory armor. Output climbed beyond the values Niko had been warning him about.
Radian gave him more.
Ilyan used it.
Section Twelve moved.
Not enough to stop.
Enough to change where it would go.
The projected collision shifted across Orison's outer districts.
"Keep it there," Sera said, then immediately corrected herself when the line continued moving. "No, more. You need more."
"I know."
Armor split around Radian's exposed hand. The damaged shoulder threw another warning. Ilyan changed the load again. A phantom ache burned through his own arm, but the distinction remained. His fingers were on the controls. Radian's hands were against the ring. His leg was inside the cockpit. Radian's damaged thigh was outside. The boundary had become strange and porous, not gone.
Ilyan pushed.
The direct intersection disappeared from the inhabited sectors.
Section Twelve swept past Orison.
One outer truss clipped a docking tower. The structure came apart in a bloom of white light, atmosphere and debris. A maintenance tug vanished inside it. Fragments hammered Orison's exterior and opened smaller breaches along the docking district.
People still died.
Thousands did not.
The ring section continued away into open space.
Ilyan held Radian against the spine until the projected path stayed clear, then cut thrust and drifted away. His hands were shaking hard enough that he had to loosen his grip before they cramped.
He looked down at them.
His.
He looked through the external feed at Radian's damaged fingers.
Radian's.
Whatever had happened had gone deeper than anything before.
It was nowhere near everything.
It had been enough.
Cai watched without attacking. Asterion showed him futures throughout the rescue: Radian arriving too late, Radian cutting the wrong brace, Orison taking the full impact, Radian breaking under the load. Then those futures kept changing as Ilyan and Radian went farther together, not because Asterion had stopped seeing but because what existed kept changing before those futures could finish becoming present. Cai knew the classified theory behind Concordance. Development Command had taught him enough to understand the intended pathway: intent outward, Frame-state inward, human and Frame learning each other until the separation between command and response became something stranger than either. The project had always been discussed in the shadow of the Seraphs, as though controlled engineering might reproduce some fragment of what had happened during the Destiny War without repeating the people who disappeared inside it.
Nobody had shown Cai this.
"So that's what they were trying to make," he said quietly.
Asterion gave him no voice.
Blue-violet routing shifted beneath silver-white armor.
Cai looked down at his own controls. He had spent years asking Asterion for more because more was the safest demand he knew how to make. More futures. More speed. More output. More distance between himself and anyone strong enough to decide what his body was allowed to survive. He had treated Asterion as the body that could carry him past every restraint.
Radian and Ilyan had just shown him something else.
The identification field flickered.
ASTERION — CLASSIFICATION: FRAME
The final word disappeared.
ASTERION — CLASSIFICATION: NYXION
Cai stared at it, then looked at the silver-white hand on his external display. "All right," he murmured, too tired for anything grander. His fingers settled around the controls again. "We keep going."
Radian turned back toward him.
Cai felt his pulse climb.
Kaia was aboard Black Star. Orison had survived. Section Twelve was moving away. Ilyan had no tactical reason to remain.
He accelerated toward Cai anyway.
That made the rest his.
Asterion came to meet him. Both Nyxions were wrecked enough now that damage changed the fight as much as skill did. Radian's shoulder had lost range, the thigh was compromised, one Blade emitter had become unreliable and the prototype rifle was beginning to fail under output it had never been designed to sustain. Asterion had lost most of its shell, large sections of silver-white armor and much of the strength in one arm; the remote lance carried visible damage across its stabilizers. Neither pilot could repeat earlier movements safely. Every choice had to account for what remained.
Ilyan fired the rifle during approach. Cai moved before the shot. Ilyan was already coming through the miss with the Blade low. Asterion's remote lance entered the path. Radian knocked it away, hit Asterion shoulder-first and fired the projector across the torso while the two Nyxions were still touching. Cai pulled clear before the center of the discharge. The edge burned open more silver-white plating.
They separated.
Turned.
Returned.
"Why did you come back?" Cai asked.
Ilyan blocked the remote lance. "I told you I would."
"That isn't what I asked."
"I want you dead."
Cai stopped talking.
Good.
The rifle failed several exchanges later. The emitter split under output; it had no business surviving as long as it had. Ilyan threw the weapon away before containment collapsed and shifted to the remaining Particle Blade. Asterion's future sight became even more dangerous at close range. Cai knew where Ilyan wanted the edge before Radian's arm completed the movement, so Ilyan stopped treating the Blade as the whole attack. He kicked. He rammed with the shoulder. He used Radian's body to change shared momentum, then fired the projector during separation. He trapped the remote lance against Asterion's own torso and forced Cai to abandon one future to preserve another.
Cai kept surviving.
Ilyan kept changing.
The remote lance entered Radian's thigh. Ilyan trapped the shaft, accelerated forward instead of retreating and drove the Blade through Asterion's damaged shoulder. Cai's backup Blade cut across Radian's chest at the same time. Both Nyxions tore free, trailing molten armor.
They came back.
"You think Nexus fixes all this?" Cai asked.
Ilyan almost ignored him. "Fixes what?"
"The war."
"No."
The answer made Cai look at him.
Ilyan knocked Asterion's Blade aside. "I think somebody has to stop pretending another generation of this is acceptable."
"That's not the same thing."
"I know."
The remote lance came around Radian's side. Ilyan caught it and lost part of the Blade field for the effort.
Cai pushed through the opening. "And if nobody agrees with you?"
"We make it happen no matter what."
"That isn't an answer."
"It's more of one than throwing me through a transport because you wanted to see what Radian would do."
Cai's expression hardened. "You shot the ferry."
"It was an accident."
That silenced him.
Ilyan hit Asterion with Radian's knee, drove him backward and caught the damaged arm against the torso. Radian's fingers closed around silver-white armor.
The plating folded.
Cai grunted.
Ilyan squeezed harder.
The arm stopped responding.
He kept crushing.
Cai's face tightened.
Ilyan watched it.
That was why he kept going.
Not position. Not disabling a weapon.
Pain.
"You pushed us through that ship," Ilyan said.
"I remember."
"There were kids in there."
"I remember."
Radian's grip collapsed more armor around the joint.
Cai sucked in a breath and looked away.
Something ugly and satisfied moved through Ilyan.
He increased pressure.
Cai looked back. "If you want me to scream, just say that."
"Shut up."
"You're staring at me."
Ilyan crushed harder.
Cai's breath hitched.
"You're not doing this because of the arm."
"I said shut up."
Radian tore the limb free.
Cai screamed.
The sound lasted less than a second.
Ilyan got what he wanted and immediately wanted more.
Asterion's remote lance drove through Radian's flank while he was watching Cai instead of the tactical field.
Ilyan shouted and fired backward. The lance tore free. Radian kicked Asterion away and changed thrust before Cai could exploit the wound.
They drifted apart long enough for both pilots to breathe.
Cai wiped blood from his mouth. "You know why that doesn't work on me?"
Ilyan's side hurt where Radian had been hit, phantom sensation overlaying his own strained muscles badly enough to make him nauseous. "I don't care."
"They used to strap me down for procedures and tell me it was helping."
"Cai."
"If I screamed, somebody wrote it down. If I passed out, they changed the dose. If I fought the restraints, they made the restraints better."
"I said I don't care."
"I learned something anyway."
Ilyan raised the Blade. "You're really going to talk about yourself right now?"
Cai's eyes hardened. "If somebody stronger can hold you down, they get to decide what happens to your body."
Ilyan stared at him. "And you decided the answer was being the one who holds everybody else down."
"No."
"That's what you did today."
"No. I'm trying to get past the point where anybody can do it to me again."
"So you need enough power that nobody can tell you no."
"Yes."
"That sounds fucking miserable."
Cai almost laughed. "Better than the table."
Ilyan's anger sharpened. "You think that means the transport doesn't count?"
"I didn't say that."
"You keep trying to make it somebody else's fault."
"And you keep trying to make yourself cleaner than you are."
"I shot the ferry."
Cai went quiet.
Ilyan tightened his grip. "I know exactly what I did."
Asterion accelerated.
Radian met him.
The last phase of the duel became less graceful because neither Nyxion had enough intact armor left for grace to survive. Asterion lost the remote lance when Ilyan caught the damaged stabilizer during another pass and cut through it. The weapon spun away into open space. Cai abandoned it immediately and drew the backup Blade in Asterion's remaining hand. Radian had one useful Blade left, one compromised leg, one damaged shoulder and enough heat warnings across the particle system that Niko had stopped trying to hide how frightened he was.
Neither pilot withdrew.
Asterion attacked.
Radian met him.
Cai saw the first ending.
Ilyan changed it.
Asterion saw another.
Radian changed again.
Cai corrected.
They crossed in amber, blue-violet and dark orange.
Radian's Blade entered the armor surrounding Asterion's cockpit.
Asterion's Blade stopped against Radian's chest, aligned directly through Ilyan.
Neither had missed.
Both could finish.
The Nyxions drifted locked together while their thrusters made tiny corrections around the contact. Particle fields burned against armor. Cai's face filled Ilyan's display. Blood floated beside his cheek. One eye had begun swelling. His breathing came in short, painful pulls.
Ilyan pushed the Blade deeper.
Asterion's cockpit armor began to glow.
"Beg."
Cai stared at the blank outgoing feed.
"I want you to ask me not to kill you."
"No."
Ilyan increased pressure.
Cai's Blade moved farther into Radian at the same time.
"Beg."
"No."
"Why?"
Cai swallowed. His mouth tightened. "Because it never helped."
That was all.
No speech.
No clever answer.
Just a fact.
Ilyan pushed again.
Perrin returned in fragments. Move, Ilyan. The projector firing. The dead cockpit afterward. Kaia hanging unconscious in Vesper. The green dinosaur turning through the transport wreckage. The ferry opening under Ilyan's own shot.
He wanted Cai dead.
That was still true.
But he wanted something else too.
He wanted Cai afraid first. He wanted the boy who had shoved him through that transport to become small and helpless. He wanted Cai to ask permission to live so Ilyan could decide whether to give it.
"Stop," Ilyan said.
Radian's Blade kept moving.
Ilyan's eyes widened. "Radian, stop."
The Blade entered another fraction.
Then he saw his own hands.
They were still pressing the controls.
His body was still commanding the kill.
The word had changed.
The intent had not.
Radian was not disobeying him.
Radian was listening too well.
Ilyan looked at Cai. The fear was there now, whether Cai wanted him to see it or not. His breathing had changed. His jaw was locked. His eyes kept moving toward the Blade even while he refused to beg.
Ilyan had him.
The realization felt good.
That was the part he could no longer hide behind anybody else.
Not the transport. Not Orison. Not Kaia. Not Perrin.
Him.
His desire to make Cai small before killing him.
His desire to hear the other boy plead.
His grip changed.
Not much.
Enough.
The thing beneath the movement changed with it.
Radian stopped when Ilyan finally meant it.
The Blade remained against Asterion's cockpit without advancing.
Cai's weapon was still aimed through Radian.
Neither moved for several seconds.
Then Cai exhaled.
Asterion's Blade went dark.
Ilyan killed Radian's field.
The Nyxions separated slowly.
No victory marker appeared.
No surrender.
No final clever line.
Just two ruined Nyxions drifting apart while Orison burned behind them.
Ilyan closed Cai's channel.
The cockpit came back around him all at once: restraints cutting into his shoulders, sweat cooling against his neck, blood in his mouth where he had bitten his cheek, fingers cramped around the controls. The phantom pain in Radian's shoulder and thigh remained, but the seat was under him and his hands were his. His stomach contracted. He barely got the emergency mask into place before he vomited.
Niko came onto the channel. "Ilyan. Stay with me."
"I'm here."
"Tell me where."
"Radian's cockpit."
"Hands?"
"Mine."
"Leg?"
Ilyan looked down. "Mine."
"The pain?"
"Some of it isn't."
Niko let out a breath. "That'll do. Sera's sending a return line. Follow it. No more fighting."
Ilyan wiped his mouth and brought Radian around.
Black Star waited beyond the construction field, already increasing distance from Orison. Vesper was inside. Kaia was alive when Tomas last spoke. Behind him rescue craft surrounded the torn passenger transport Cai had driven them through. Other ships swarmed the ferry Ilyan himself had shot. The damaged docking tower burned along Orison's exterior. Section Twelve continued away into open space.
Ilyan searched the debris field once.
There was too much of it.
He never found the green dinosaur.
He put both hands firmly on the controls and piloted Radian home.
Talia waited until Radian was well on its way back to Black Star before she approached Asterion. Her Bastion felt heavy now in a way it never had before, every correction suddenly obvious because she had spent too long watching Nyxions move. Asterion looked nearly destroyed. One arm was gone. Silver-white armor had opened across the torso. One blue-white eye remained. Blue-violet routing still pulsed beneath the exposed graphite structure.
Her display identified it differently now.
ASTERION — NYXION
Talia opened the channel. "What did they do to you?"
Cai looked exhausted enough that for a moment he seemed younger than seventeen. "What?"
"Development Command."
He went still.
"That wasn't training."
"No."
Talia looked toward Black Star. "Radian almost killed me."
"I know."
"I begged him."
Cai said nothing.
"I told that pilot about my brother. I kept saying please because I didn't have anything else left."
"Talia—"
"Don't."
He stopped.
She stared at Black Star's distant drive light, knowing her brother was somewhere inside and having no idea how close she had already come to him. "You told me I'd die if I entered the fight."
Cai shifted against his restraints. "You would have."
Talia closed her eyes for a moment. "I know."
Saying it hurt more than hearing him say it.
When she opened her eyes again, Asterion was still there, ruined and luminous.
"What did they do?"
Cai's expression tightened. "You don't want that because you got scared."
Talia almost laughed. "Scared?"
"You know what I mean."
"No. I was terrified. I begged somebody not to kill me and it didn't matter. You saved me because you were strong enough to do it. Then you turned around and did whatever the hell you wanted because nobody else here could stop you."
"That isn't something you should want."
"I don't want what you did."
"Then what?"
Talia looked down at the controls of her Bastion. They had carried her through everything she asked of them. The Frame had done nothing wrong. It had survived damage that should have ended her participation earlier and answered every command it still could.
She remembered Radian's Blade coming toward the cockpit.
"I don't want to be there again."
Cai understood.
She could see it in his face.
He said quietly, "What they did to me won't guarantee that."
"No."
"It might just give you different things to lose."
Talia looked toward Black Star again.
"I'll decide that."
Cai did not answer.
She closed the channel before he could.
Her Bastion turned toward the Federation recovery line, remaining thrusters answering exactly as they were supposed to. Talia knew there was nothing lesser about the Frame around her. Cassian could have taken the same kind of Bastion and made it terrifying through discipline alone. She knew skill still mattered. Training still mattered. Judgment still mattered.
None of that changed what she had felt beneath Radian's Blade.
None of it changed the five seconds Cai had given her.
Talia flew toward Resolute thinking about Development Command, about Asterion, about the things Cai had survived to become capable of fighting a Nyxion as an equal.
The warning should have sounded like a reason to stay away.
Instead it was beginning to sound like a price.