“The ship will impact in thirty minutes. Initiate emergency measures…”
Dorian-2 pinned the countdown message to the most prominent position on several overhead screens.
“You should go,” it said. “While there’s still time.”
“Then I can’t go either,” I said. “Phantom Forge will send more. If you get eliminated, we’re back where we started.”
“Wyatt, sir… I’m just a copy. But you’re—”
“Don’t,” I cut in. “We’ve cleared too many obstacles to fail on the last step.”
Dorian-2 looked at me for a long moment, then lowered its head and fell silent.
Miller clambered up through the hole in the deck, shouting as it came. “True god above! Purple fire melt you both! No need die for Peyton City. Let Miller smash island platform—ship crash anywhere same.”
“No.” I stepped in front of the central island platform. “Miller, I’ve my reasons. The Hope must impact Peyton City. It matters. There’s no time to explain. You… you should go. Thank you for what you did.”
Before the words had finished leaving my mouth, the bridge siren began to howl.
“Too late!” Dorian-2 shouted. “Phantom Forge’s fighters are here—and there are a lot!”
A holographic display unfolded above the platform. The sky behind us was filling—fighters swarming in a solid mass.
“Enable the automated defense system,” I ordered.
“Enabled.”
The Hope’s twelve Metal Storm Defense Towers rotated toward the incoming wave. Fighters were faster than starships; they closed the distance in seconds. The towers answered with a waterfall of fire.
Enemy craft started falling like rain.
But there were too many. Two towers were destroyed almost immediately.
Several fighters skimmed past the bridge’s glass wall.
“Raise island-bridge armor and shields,” I said.
“Activated.”
Two armor plates—each nearly three meters thick—began to close, wrapping the curved bridge in a shell. Dorian-2 switched display modes; even as the plates sealed, the outside image continued to project across the glass.
The plates had barely met when a dozen missiles slammed into them. The impact became only a series of muted jolts.
Before the enemy could fire a second volley, the two remaining top-mounted towers swept the airspace with metal fire and shredded the next wave mid-turn.
“It’s not just the fighters,” Dorian-2 said. “Everyone inside the ship is moving toward the bridge.”
It projected the Hope’s internal scan on the star-map table. Red dots—one enemy per dot—filled compartments like spilled blood, connected into lines in the corridors, all flowing toward us.
“Lock down every hatch,” I said. “Buy us time wherever you can.”
“All hatches are closed. The second-floor corridor is already sealed—if we hold the first floor, we can hold the bridge. But Miller has to leave before impact.” Dorian-2 hesitated, then added, “Miller is afraid of fire.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I made this harder than it had to be. Choose your moment and go.”
While I spoke, I gathered what weapons remained. After that last brawl, the inventory was thin: two electromagnetic rifles, a few hundred rounds, six grenades, and an electromagnetic pulse launcher… with only a single EMP round left.
My own condition wasn’t much better.
I was down an arm. Worse, the shock from those two EMP hits had done something permanent. My mind still stuttered and desynced at random. I rebooted twice. It didn’t help.
I was going to terminate.
Oddly, I didn’t feel depressed. I felt… exhilarated.
The Sunflower had crashed after Phantom Forge breached its island bridge. A thousand years later, I was finally glad to pay the debt back in kind.
I asked for only one thing: let me stay conscious for thirty more minutes.
“Iron man make Miller respect,” Miller said, and for once its voice sounded almost sober. “Miller leave them here. Fight with iron man to end. And…” It paused, as if searching for words, then let the thought die.
“Thank you,” I said. I’d meant to refuse—tell it to flee while it could—but the truth was simple: more firepower was more time.
Dorian-2’s voice rose again, sharp with panic. “Seven towers—no, six! We’re down to six. In under five minutes we’ve lost half. The bridge is shaking—armor’s cracking!”
Through the projected exterior feed, I could see the storm outside: missiles, cannon fire, laser sweeps. The bridge armor was vibrating as if something giant were trying to peel it away.
“Don’t panic,” I told Dorian-2. “You’re not driving an assault ship anymore. Even without turrets, we still have shields and armor. The Sunflower held for three hours. We only need thirty—”
The overhead speaker cut in.
“The ship will impact in twenty-five minutes. Initiate emergency measures…”
“Twenty-five,” I corrected myself.
“But inside is dangerous too,” Dorian-2 said, pointing to the fast-approaching cluster of red dots. “They’re almost here.”
“Let Miller handle the inside,” I said.
“Yes.” Miller’s red eyes flashed. “Miller go seal first floor too. Iron man guard second floor.”
It jumped down through the hole.
Miller and the other four dragged every CBG corpse they could find into the first-floor hatch. Before they disappeared inside, Miller jabbed a clawed hand toward the elevator shaft and barked a few short phrases at the giant.
The giant dropped its hammer and began hauling debris—chunks of island platform, mangled fixtures, broken armor—and throwing everything down into the shaft, as if it meant to jam it shut with sheer bulk.
I couldn’t help wondering if it would work. Was the second floor really safe?
Rifle in my left hand, I slipped through the hatch behind the captain’s chair and into the second-floor corridor.
The moment I entered, I heard a deep, continuous rumble.
Two machine rooms sat on either side of the passage, each holding a massive tank. Piping ran up from both tanks to the Metal Storm Defense Towers above. The tanks were filled with enhanced liquid nitrogen coolant, meant to keep those towers from cooking themselves alive.
The rumble was the compression pumps.
It meant the towers were still firing.
That was good.
I advanced about twenty meters and reached Miller’s “masterpiece.”
It was a wall—dense enough to block the corridor completely. You could make out severed limbs and shredded armor in places. Worse, the whole thing pulsed faintly, as if it were alive.
I understood at once why the corridor had been cleared of bodies.
The CBG dead had become the wall.
A muffled boom hit from the far side, and the corpse wall shivered.
Then another. Then another. The impacts became rapid, rhythmic—someone on the other side was hammering it with rockets or heavy explosives.
Would it hold?
I stepped back, leveled my rifle, and waited.
A heavy blast punched through. Meat and armor fragments erupted outward. Smoke rolled into the corridor.
A man-high hole gaped in the corpse wall.