“We're hitting atmosphere,” called out the shuttle's pilot as the small descent craft began to rattle with turbulence, transitioning from the inky smoothness of vacuum to Threala's atmosphere. “Imperial patrols are holding present courses; the sensor gap is still good.”

“Go cold anyways,” ordered Niels, “And tell the Akane's shuttle to do the same. Last thing we need is for the Imperials to trace our exhaust trail. Air brake the rest of the way down.”

“Copy that,” answered the pilot crisply. “Everyone buckle up, this is going to be bumpy.”

Outwardly, the two deltoid shuttles simultaneously doused their rear engines, turning down their reactors to standby as they began to bank gracefully, coasting downwards in a series of shimmering arcs, bleeding out their descent velocity against the friction of Threala's atmosphere.

True to the pilot's word, the shuttle began to rattle wildly, shaking Alice, Niels, and half dozen other men and women he'd brought along like dice in a cup. Metal groaning sounds filled the cargo hold, causing Alice no small amount of worry considering the craft's apparent age, but the remainder of Niels's crew remained stoic as ever, apparently unconcerned over issues of metal fatigue or simply having learned to ignore it after dozens of successful landings more through prayer than engineering.

“Our contacts on the surface are waiting for us outside the city,” shouted Niels over the sound of the descending shuttle. “We'll rendezvous with them, get our bearings, and hand off some of the equipment and party favors we picked up at Yasmar. Some of us might stay to help out while we wait for Kuushana to show her face, but it's entirely up to you whether you'd like to stay groundside or go back up to orbit once we've made contact.”

“I didn't kick up a fuss just to go back up to the Akane after an hour on the ground,” pushed back Alice. “I might not be much use hauling cargo or carrying a rifle, but maybe they've got something on the ground I could take a look at or fix.”

Niels made a gruff, but approving sound, barely audible over the strained noises the shuttle made as it continued down towards the ground. “Obarin told me about your magic touch on Gestalt. Said he'd never seen anything like it, that you'd give most black market arms dealers a run for their money repairing and salvaging old gear.” Leaning forward in his seat, one hand clamped over his crash harness, Niels fixed her with a serious stare. “We could use someone like you aboard the Blackhart. Someone who knows her way around machines; my engineers are good, but not half as talented as you if Obarin's right. We'd keep you a lot busier than you've been on the Akane at any rate.”

Alice looked down at her boots, a prickling feeling of warmth spreading across her cheekbones. “W-well, there's a lot of difference between a starship engine and a laser rifle...”

Thinking back to the way everyone aboard the Akane had been treating her like a cracked piece of china, however, she had to admit, Niels's offer sounded tempting in more ways than one. Not only would she have something to do, something to contribute to the Compact, they also didn't seem the type to coddle one another, judging from the general surliness Niels and his heavies seemed to carry themselves with. Having said that... Alice flashed back to the moment Obarin gripped her arm, welcoming her to the Compact and the warmth she'd felt that night. He'd given her a new purpose, taken her in when she'd lost everything of her own. She had more to give to the Compact, she knew it. It was just a matter of figuring out how.

“Well,” Niels cut in on her thoughts bluntly. “You don't have to answer now. Just... think it over. The Blackhart and the Akane are going to be teaming up for a while, so there's no rush.”

“Alright,” agreed Alice, grateful to not be put on the spot any longer.

Looking out the narrow slot of a window, Alice saw the surface racing to meet them as the shuttles dropped downwards in dizzying spirals. From up here, details about Threala's surface became apparent. The greenery from orbit was an ocean of taiga, meeting the shore of human activity abruptly as the treelines ended and Threala's major industrial zones began, revealing the dull gray and dusty dirt of the planet. Large, monolithic buildings rose into the distance, stretching to the horizon; factories with smokestacks and exhaust vents belching smoke and dust into the air indiscriminately, clouding Threala's skies into a hazy purple around the urban center. Streams of cargo barges came to and from the city, carrying goods up to the orbital dry docks from the factories on the surface. Following their trails and looking up, Alice saw several bright stars hanging in the twilight sky overhead; Imperial carriers and battleships, undoubtedly ringed by battlecruiser escorts, glaring down from overhead as they watched the planet, ever vigilant.

Steering clear of the city center, the shuttles made one final bank, coasting towards the trees in the distance. Now below any altitude the Imperials would be scanning at for unauthorized ships, the shuttles reignited their engines, decelerating to a gentle hover over the forests before picking their way forward slowly.

“There,” Niels nodded towards a dimple in the trees the two shuttle were making a beeline for. “An abandoned ore mine. Some of the Compact down here have taken to using it as a staging area for some of their operations in the nearby industrial zones. That's where we'll meet our contacts.”

Several deafening clangs reverberated through the ship's hull as the ship put down and its stern door released and fell down with a crash. Without hesitation, Niels's men and women rose and thundered down the ramp, drawing heavy coats around themselves, frozen breath leaping out in front of their masked faces. Half of them immediately fanned out to form a rough perimeter with weapons at the ready, the other half began spreading a shimmering tarp of sorts, dragging it over the shuttle's fuselage and engines, obviously some means of camouflage from the orbital scans.

Coming after them, feeling awkwardly empty handed and purposeless, Alice descended the ramp, following Niels. No one had asked for her help, nor did they seem to need it; their movements were rapid, practiced. In a matter of moments, the entire shuttle had been draped with the scintillating fabric, the Akane's shuttle crew also doing the same to their vehicle, although their movements were a good deal more relaxed and less hurried than those of Niels's crew.

The cold air stinging her cheeks, Alice took a deep breath. The air had a certain sooty grittiness to it, instantly irritating her nasal passages. Grimly, Alice wondered if every planet she set foot on would be the same potpourri of pollen, dust, and industrial filth. Despite the lack of filtered, purified air, the open expanse of the outdoors and liberating feeling of a sky overhead was a welcome trade for the Akane's cramped corridors and interior, if only just. Looking around, Alice's eyes raked over the small clearing their shuttles had landed in, what looked like a park for the heavy equipment that once dug the tunnels that undoubtedly ran beneath their feet, now abandoned and strewn around the mining site in disrepair, picked clean by scavengers, looking more like an exhibit of industrial sculpture than anything else. Several caverns opened in dark maws nearby, although aside from the odd broken crate or old laser pick, there didn't seem to be anything of note.

A whistling tune caught her attention and the Compact members in the clearing. A moment later, another two dozen men and women bubbled out of the shadowy treeline, equally wary with their weapons at the half-ready.

“Brothers, Sisters,” Obarin stepped out of his shuttle, his voice filtered behind his silver mask, flanked by some of his crew.

The atmosphere immediately changed, the local Compact members relaxing visibly. A woman, apparently their leader, strode forward until she and Obarin were within arms reach, the two grasping each other's forearms tightly.

“Arcadius. Welcome to Threala.”

******

Fontana stood at the treeline, pocketing the laser pistol he'd borrowed from the Compact's small stash of weaponry back at the base. It had been difficult to find the proper covers and excuses to leave the city for the day, but he'd been almost certainly been reckless in securing it, damning the consequences to hell. Off-world Compact cells were something of a folk legend to local Compact forces like himself, gallivanting across the galaxy, striking at the Imperials and fading into the infinite expanses and freedom of empty space. Even though the truth was almost certainly far less glamorous, the myth of the flighty freedom Compact rebels enjoyed in space was simply too alluring to dismiss out of hand.

Fontana eyed the offworld Compact members critically, sizing them up with their reputation; most of them seemed fairly dangerous in their scavenged armor and with their heavy laser rifles, especially ones from the far shuttle. Surprisingly, the last one to exit that shuttle was a young woman, barely older than himself from her looks and starkly in contrast with the rest of her over-muscled, para-military comrades. Curiously, he looked closer at her, taking in her unusual mauve hair and those odd, colorless eyes. As if she could feel his gaze, her eyes locked onto him, crystal clear with a discerning sensation that he wasn't entirely comfortable with, sending a sense of unease down his spine. Whatever the Compact kept her around for, he was sure it wasn't lugging a rifle like the rest of them; she seemed even more ill suited for combat than he was.

Coming out into the clearing with the rest of the Compact members who'd been able to slip away from their assignments, Fontana switched his attention to the man in the silver mask. Arcadius. A flutter of excitement passed through him. If he ever lived long enough to have children of his own, this would be a moment to tell them about; how he'd stood almost shoulder to shoulder with the leader of the Compact itself. Just the sight of him, standing tall against the entirety of the New Empire filled him with determination to do the same; if he ever told his children of this day, he wanted it to be in a time when their Revolution was over, when the Imperials had been overthrown and each man and woman was free to make a life of their own in the galaxy.

Fontana didn't recognize the rather heavily built, shorter man next to him, but judging from the deferential looks he was getting from a number of the offworld Compact members, Fontana assumed he was likely in some leadership capacity as well. It made sense, as Arcadius, the heavy man, and some of the more senior members of his own cell started to discuss the situation on the ground as others started to help with the offloading of gear and munitions from the shuttles.

Turning, Fontana tuned out of the conversation; depressingly familiar with the situation for himself. Threala was, and always had been, a starving world blighted by social injustice being kept in line at the end of a barrel by the fleet in orbit and the police forces stationed on the surface. A small surge of cynicism rose in his chest as he considered the fact that just about every world Arcadius and the offworld Compact cells had cause to land on probably had more or less the same story as Threala given the “one-size-fits-all” policies the New Empire was notorious for. Eyeing some of the weapons being offloaded from the shuttles, however, Fontana wondered if this year would be better, a little more optimistic, a little more ambitious. They'd still be mostly taking out targets of opportunity with guerrilla tactics, but each small victory would ultimately lead to the day when the world rose up with the rest of them, even if the path there wasn't immediately obvious.

“-she's something of a self-styled pirate queen,” Arcadius's voice reached him, breaking up his thoughts as he tuned back into the conversation. “Probably began her operations here a month or two ago; has there been any word on the local networks?”

“None,” one of the local Compact members answered uncertainly. “But then again, the Imperials don't really report on anything that makes them look bad or weak. They wouldn't admit to it even if the was a pirate on the loose in this system.”

“I'm sorry, what was that?” Fontana cut in, slightly embarrassed at his lapse of attention as all eyes turned towards him, Arcadius included. “I serve one of the Imperial Lords' households,” he explained, not entirely successful at keeping a measure of bitterness out of his voice. “As of late, the lord I serve has been irked by a series of hijacked cargo freighters carrying valuable metals and starship parts to other systems.”

“That confirms it then,” Arcadius nodded gratefully to Fontana. “Kuushana must be in this system; our information was good after all. Thank you Brother. What's your name?”

Fontana felt his heart leap as Arcadius offered his arm. “Seisar Fontana!” he said, trying not to sound over excited, gripping Arcadius's forearm. “But everyone calls me Fontana.”

“Well met Fontana,” Arcadius's voice remained light, but Fontana thought he detected a flicker of unease behind the man's voice. “This is Niels,” he said, gesturing to the other man. “I admit I'm surprised. You seem young for-”

The sound of crumbling rock from across the clearing interrupted whatever thought Arcadius meant to share. As one, the Compact members turned to look at the source of the sound, the atmosphere of reunion and camaraderie shattered into a thousand pieces by the unknown quantity the sound represented.

“What the hell was that?” whispered Niels. With several sharp hand movements, he gestured to his men and women who stopped whatever they were doing and immediately shouldered their rifles, creeping towards cover.

Fontana frowned, kneeling and touching the ground. It was vibrating.

A sinking feeling hit his gut as it twisted into a knot. Something was very wrong. The Imperials couldn't have stationed men here, even if they had known the Compact had used the mine on several occasions before as a drop site or meeting point, the trucks and infrastructure needed to house them would have given their patrol away a long time ago. Something else then... something the Compact wouldn't necessarily find amiss at first.

Fontana looked out at the mine shaft entrances, flanked by the silent sentinels of abandoned diggers and heavy equipment. Scrutinizing them, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. One of the hulking equipment wrecks seemed slightly out of place, a little cleaner, a little shinier than the rusted out and scavenged diggers surrounding the rest of the tunnels.

Cursing, Fontana fumbled for his pistol. “It's a trap!” he shouted. “Get out of here!”

Too late. The shell of broken machinery around the suspicious wreck shuddered apart, revealing large, sleek metal sarcophagus more than a story tall. With loud mechanical hisses and clangs, the silhouette of the sarcophagus changed, splitting open to reveal a crab-like body and falling over as it oriented itself and pushed itself up on several powerfully articulated legs.

“HUNTER DRONE!” screamed someone from their side. Weapons fire stuttered out towards the machine from all directions, laser pulses scoring superficial burns on the drone's heavy armor, but doing nothing as far as the eye could tell to impede it's unpacking.

Additional breaks and fissures formed in the mechanical behemoth revealing weapons pods and an angular head as they rose up from within the armored body of the sarcophagus. A deathly, cherry red light, multiple beams of red tracers radiating outwards, poured across the clearing towards the exposed rebels as the head spun around, scanning the surrounding environment and the scrambling Compact forces; a moment later, the giant machine opened fire.

Ducking and half-falling, half-running, Fontana dove for the tree line, hoping to find some cover at the forest's edge. Explosions shook the ground and moments later, bright light strobbed and the spot he'd been kneeling on a split second ago vanished into molten glass. All around him, he could hear the cries of men and women as they were caught in the open and cut down without remorse by the machine's purposeful targeting. More laser fire stuttered wildly in his direction, blowing chips of gypsum up in his face as he ran, half blind towards the trees, missing by pure chance, close enough for him to smell the singe of ionized air and burning clothing as the laser blasts burned within a millimeter of his skin.

With a final wild leap, Fontana pushed himself behind a tree, feeling the entire trunk shudder and splinters blow up across his face as he gasped for breath behind its protective thickness. Peeking around the edge of the tree, Fontana could see nearly two dozen mangled lifeless bodies lay strewn in the open, rebels who had simply been less lucky than the dozen or so that had managed to grab cover. Across the clearing, a small knot of rebels huddled behind one of the shuttle's fuselages; a few more of them had managed to either reach the trees on either side like himself or find cover behind some of the rusted out and abandoned diggers.

With horror, Fontana watched as the drone extended several barrels from its back, lobbing nearly half a dozen grenades at the shuttle, wreathing the entire ship in flames as the grenades detonated, tearing the rebels hiding behind it into bloody ribbons. The crates of munitions the rebels had brought down from orbit also erupted in secondary explosions, blowing the entire shuttle to pieces as the drone advanced on its insectoid legs, gunning down any of the screaming, flaming men and women who tried to run or crawl away from the inferno now consuming the shuttle with a brutal efficiency.

Additional explosions rocked the ground and boomed through the air; the sound of lasers whined as the few survivors of the initial attack did their best to rally and pour fire and toss grenades back at the drone from what cover they had managed to find. Despite that, the drone continued its advance, barely hampered by the explosions and gunfire pouring down on its heavily armored front.

Creeping between the trees, Fontana circled around the machine quietly while it was occupied with the weapons fire coming from the other survivors. The unit was clearly intended to bear heavy punishment on the front without flinching, but the rear looked more lightly armored. Focusing, his eyes picked out and honed in on the glint of exposed circuitry and wiring poked out from a blackened fissure on the robot's back created by a lucky laser strike. Even as he saw the weak point, however, his heart sank; between the machine's movements and the narrowness of the fissure, it was almost laughable to hope that he could throw the grenade at its weak point. Which left one choice. He'd have to run up to the drone from behind and ram the grenade into that crack with his own two hands.

Taking a deep breath, Fontana looked around at the clearing, on fire and littered with dead rebels. None of them, however, bore Arcadius's silver mask. If he'd managed to slip away from the initial attack, perhaps there was still hope, so long as the drone wasn't allowed to finish its work here; if Arcadius fell, it would be a blow beyond imagination for the Compact's efforts. He wouldn't let that happen, not while he still had breath to draw.

Adrenaline spiking, Fontana threw himself around the tree, his boots digging into the loose gravel beneath him as he ran straight for the drone's back. With a single fluid motion, he pulled a grenade from his coat, loosing the pin and charging forward without a break in his stride, eyes fixed on the one crack that would save them all. This was it. His moment; his contribution to their cause, a future for the Compact itself.

A blur hurtled in from Fontana's right, crashing into him and tackling him to the side; for a dizzying moment, he fell with the impact, landing on the ground hard enough to have the wind completely knocked out of him. At the same time, he felt the grenade in his hand being pulled away by strong hands, knocking his arm aside. Looking up, Fontana barely had time to make out the silver mask before Arcadius blocked his entire view with his body, shoving him backwards.

The grenade went off with a head-splitting blast, blowing Fontana's world into disoriented tatters as his head spun and his ears rang with the gasp of hot air and fire. Slowly, it came back together. Panting, Arcadius knelt over him, his arms and body shielding him from the heat and flames behind as the explosion engulfed the drone's sensor laden head.

A furious, buzzing electric sound came from behind as the explosion dissipated, revealing the Hunter Drone struggling, its sensors flickering and jagged pieces of shrapnel embedded throughout its armor. The drone's arms flailed wildly, no longer firing or aiming meaningfully before the whole machine began to shut down, slumping as it fixed its dying scanners on Fontana and Obarin laying in front of it. A stunned quiet seemed to fall over the ruins of the abandoned mining site, punctuated only by an occasional moan and the quiet sound of sobbing and coughing through the filmy haze that settled over the battlefield; for several minutes, it seemed everyone was too stunned from what had happened to even recognize the fight was over.

Finally, Obarin rolled over with a groan and popped his mask off, hauling Fontana to his feet. “Are you alright? Damn it… haven't enough people have died today, kid? Don’t be in such a hurry to-”

The rolling sound of thunder in the distance interrupted Obarin's half-relieved, half-furious swipe at Fontana; all eyes turned towards the horizon in the direction of the sound.

“Infinite Emperor...” Fontana dropped back down to his knees in a daze, staring between Obarin's mask and the now shut down hunter drone's sensor suite fixed upon it. They knew. As soon as Obarin had jumped out of cover to save his life, he'd given the Imperials visual confirmation of a prize they couldn't have even imagined when they planned the ambush; Arcadius himself.

Several brilliant stars flared on the horizon; the entire Imperial fleet in orbit plummeting towards them at emergency speed in no fewer than two dozen furiously burning arrowheads discharging incredible amounts of static electricity into the air, creating a veritable lightning storm in the wake of their descent, each ship's captain racing the others, determined to claim the kill on the Empire's most wanted man for him or herself.

Streaks of brilliant light raced towards them, ranging laser discharges from the lead ships, scoring massive blasts into the ground around them and setting the surrounding forests instantly ablaze.

“Orbital bombardment...” whispered Obarin, his mask falling from his hand into the ash and dust of the ground as the rest of the sky lit up brilliantly, blinding him and washing the world out into pure white.

******

“Warp completing ma'am. Target coordinates in five... four... three...”

Emil Kuushana gripped the rails on her command dais with one hand, her other firmly clenched behind her back so tight that the white leather of her fingerless gloves creaked a little in protest. Unlike most of her bridge staff, who wore the usual black military surplus uniforms predominating the Compacts forces, Kuushana wore a white cap and blazer with a red trim over a black leather corset accented with the same blood red trim. A matching white belt hung haphazardly over her hips and an unusual pair of asymmetric black pants with the right leg full length, the left shortly truncated before giving way to a single white thighhigh that sheathed the rest of her leg. Fixing her azure eyes on the forward screens with an intense, almost hungry stare, Kuushana's back was straighter than a slide rule, absolutely taut with a furious tension and all consuming concentration.

“Two... one. Dropping out!” her helmsman cried as the mission clock ran down to zero and the entire ship pulled out of warp with a noticeable lurch as it suddenly hit resistance.

At the upper reaches of Threala's atmosphere, the thin, wispy clouds of scattered ice crystals were batted aside in an instant by sudden turbulence. Twenty one shimmering warp tears appeared, an equal number of mismatched and clearly aged ships emerging from the tangled depths of their warp tunnels. Cobbled together from designs ranging from outdated to outright archaic, the hodgepodge fleet had little in common with one another aside from the aggressive streaks of red paint splashed across their port and starboard sides and all manner of black market missile pods and laser turrets welded onto any available surface of the ships, giving each vessel a somewhat queasy appearance of plants afflicted by gall.

Dropping in from behind the Imperial fleet into Threala's atmosphere, the Compact ships were clearly of a different tonnage than the Imperial ships they bore down upon; aside from the single cruiser leading them, the remainder appeared to be roughly half the size of the Imperial battlecruisers, nimble destroyers which mounted a disproportional amount of firepower for their size, at the cost of any armor or hull plating.

“Those arrogant fools.” Kuushana studied the tactical screen in front of her, absorbing the entire tactical situation in a heartbeat. Pulling her cap lower over her hair, the woman let a predatory shadow of a smile flit across her lips in a chilling ecstasy. “They've left their carriers in orbit without escorts. Looks like everyone's trying to score the kill first...”

Snapping her fingers, Kuushana made a slicing motion signaling for various deck hands with lightning speed and issuing her orders rapid fire as they immediately snapped to without question or hesitation. “Split our forces into two. Have half our destroyers break orbit and hit those carriers from below. The rest of our fleet follows us. We'll come at their formation on the perpendicular at bearing zero-eight by nine. I want all the battlecruisers sunk on the first pass; one destroyer for each, give them a full salvo. All ships come around at two gees acceleration; have their captains aim for the battleship's rear engines. Those fat bastards'll drop out of the sky faster than a sack of bricks if we even damage their main thrusters.”

Immediately, the Compact fleet split apart, one half racing upwards furiously like ten harpoons loosed simultaneously towards the ponderous carriers overhead while the single cruiser dove down, streaking to the head of a loose formation with the remainder of the Compact ships.

Before the Imperial ships could react, the smaller, more agile Compact destroyers had let fly with hundreds of warheads, blasting towards the larger, sluggish, and distracted ships, tracing deadly vapor trails across Threala's sky between their forces at knife-fight range. Crumpling with the impacts and explosions, six of the Imperial battlecruisers ceased to exist immediately, blown to bits from stern to aft as dozens of missiles slammed home on each ship's side. Even those ships that had managed to remain somewhat intact through the barrage gouted flame and smoke from dozens of wounds, immediately losing altitude and nosing downwards towards Threala's inescapable grasp as critical feedlines were severed and their engines gave out.

Above, the Imperial carriers fared no better; half-blind to the situation as the Compact destroyers blasted upwards from below, the carriers were all but helpless as the Compact destroyers cut loose with similar devastating barrages, slamming missile after missile through the weak ventral armor of the massive ships, taking maximum advantage of the complete lack of point defense on a side of the ship that, in theory, would never have been presented to an enemy, much less been exposed without escorts. Shuddering, the carriers began to list to the side, fire and secondary explosions rolling out of their launch bays instead of ryders and gasping out into space as the massive ships were cut to the core from below by dozens of missile impacts inflicted upon them by the Compact destroyers.

“Missile pods exhausted,” yelled one of Kuushana's bridge staff. “Bringing us around!”

Gripping the railing with her hand, Kuushana refused to budge a millimeter as her entire ship groaned and began to slew around viciously, her boots digging into the deckplates relentlessly; alarms started blaring and unsecured equipment and peripherals “fell” to the side as the ship pushed to complete its maneuver. With a final heave of the engines, Kuushana felt her ship fix its sights on the oversize Imperial battleships, only now beginning to turn to face them as their captains desperately tried to bring their fore guns to bear on the Compact fleet as leveraged its maneuverability to its fullest advantage, dancing and pulling around before the larger ships could even draw a bead on them.

“All weapons... fire.”

Heavy reverberations sounded throughout the ship as its twin mass drivers discharged their primary acceleration coils, slinging hardened armor-piercing slugs at the battleship's rear. Moments later, laser light knifed forward and gouged into the battleship tearing through deck after deck remorselessly with a predatory eagerness.

A heartbeat later, the rest of Kuushana's fleet completed their maneuvers as well, firing at the remaining Imperial ships with everything they had left, engulfing the final remnants of the Imperial bombardment fleet in fire and shrapnel, sending their ships, engines flickering furiously, dropping downwards to dig their own graves on Threala's surface.

Eyes reflecting her command screens showing the burning wrecks of the Imperial battleships as they fell from the sky and the Imperial carriers in orbit breaking and fracturing along their spines, Kuushana's pose did not relax a millimeter, devouring their fill of fire and death as her fleet pushed back into orbit. “Contact the Akane and Blackhart,” her tone of voice as unchanged as her body. “Tell them to get Arcadius and Niels back in orbit before Imperial reinforcements arrive or they'll be begging me for another miracle on the same day.”

******

“...Amazing.” Fontana stared up at the sky with wide eyes, enraptured as the Imperial fleet, untouchable and omnipresent for as long as he could remember, fell downwards, each ship breaking into several fiery streaks as their superstructures failed on uncontrolled re-entry.

“Kuushana.” Niels staggered from cover, wiping soot and blood off his face carelessly as he rejoined the others, looking to the sky. “Unbelievable... she didn't lose a single ship. That woman knows how to time her entry... if those Imperial ships had been a kilometer closer...”

“That's why we need her,” muttered Obarin, pressing his mask to his face as he looked up to the sky. “If anyone can steal the Victus and get away with it...”

“Arcadius.” Fontana squared his shoulders and marched up to Obarin. “You'll be going back up to orbit, I presume? Now that you've found what you're looking for?”

Obarin looked back down at the young man for a moment before turning to look at the dead and wounded around them, his sadness not entirely filtered or hidden by the mask's serene surface. “Yes. I'm sorry... we came down with everything we could offer. Your comrades... their sacrifice kept our Revolution alive today. I wish we could do more to help.”

“Take me with you.” Fontana's eyes bore into Obarin's mask. “There's nothing left for me here. I... I can do more. For the Compact. Just give me the chance. I can do more.”

Obarin stood silent for a moment, a flash of the battle's heat coming back to him, how Fontana had ran straight for the hunter drone, grenade in hand, ready to give anything to their cause, no; his dream.

“One condition.” Without waiting, Obarin gripped the young man by his forearm tightly. “Your life's worth more than you give it credit for. The Compact needs you alive. This galaxy, what we fight for... it's for the young, for people like you to have a future. Don't throw away your life before you see that future for yourself. Promise me you won't forget that again.”

Fontana inhaled sharply, surprised. Looking into the man's silver mask, the remnants of the Imperial fleet raining down around them, Fontana nodded wordlessly, gripping Obarin's arm in return, burning the memory into his mind forever.