The clouds were thick with smoke.
The Victorious climbed back into the cloud layer, but a hull that massive couldn’t hide. Even at distance I could see fire flickering through the fog.
Father’s missiles kept coming, a storm without mercy.
The Victorious tried several times to raise its shields and failed. It was forced to rely on missile point-defense.
A carrier group built around a Pangu-class supercarrier was terrifying. Seeing one of those giants isolated like this was almost unheard of.
In less than two minutes, both sides’ main forces would arrive.
From the density of incoming missiles, Father’s intent was obvious: he was trying to bring the Victorious down before help could reach it.
As I closed in, I felt a tug—an invisible pull dragging me toward the Victorious. The closer I got, the stronger it became.
It was the magnetic-field effect of Father’s heavy-ion missiles. It was meant to suppress the Victorious’s ability to launch its carrier craft.
Under Father’s orders, we spread to four positions around the Victorious and began rapid scans, building a precise 3D model of its hull.
The goal was simple: give Father’s missiles second-stage guidance so they could strike specific targets.
Our own firepower, against a behemoth like this, was nothing more than scratching paint. For now, the best we could do was be Father’s eyes.
With our guidance, weapon systems mounted along the hull were destroyed one by one. The ship itself began to rupture and burn. If this continued, its destruction was only a matter of time.
Then the Victorious started to lose balance. The hull tilted.
And the Tower Clan’s air armada began to arrive.
At first it was only a handful of fighters.
Then the count multiplied, doubling and doubling again until the sky was full.
Even with Father’s warning, the two allies ahead of me were shredded by dense enemy fire. They detonated in midair.
Fighters packed the smoke, filling every gap. I couldn’t count them.
Lock-on alarms screamed in my head. I was targeted by an impossible number of micro-missiles.
The last remaining Punisher and I abandoned the Victorious immediately and fell back at maximum speed.
I adjusted my wings into high-speed configuration and climbed hard, using the thick cloud ceiling as cover.
The Punisher dove instead, trying to skim low and escape along the ground on superior handling.
It didn’t work.
Before it even reached low altitude, a sudden burst of light-rain lanced up from the surface. The Punisher was hit, rolled in smoke, and crashed into a blossoming fireball.
Only me.
The anti-air fire from the ground was so dense it formed near-continuous beams, sweeping upward.
I had enough altitude that it couldn’t touch me.
But my decoys triggered a string of detonations behind me. Shockwaves slapped my frame hard enough to stall me multiple times.
In those seconds, I couldn’t even be sure I was still intact.
Attack beams whipped past my wings and fuselage. I dodged with everything I had—yet the pattern felt… off.
The Tower Clan’s fire wasn’t truly trying to kill me.
It was sliding around me with uncanny precision, making it look as if I had dodged by skill alone.
Was the Savior holding back?
The fighters chasing me thinned as well. It had been hundreds. Now it was a dozen—maybe fewer.
Meanwhile, explosions near the Victorious intensified. Most of the enemy fighters had turned back to intercept Father’s long-range missiles, trying to keep the crippled warship from falling.
I had no decoys left.
To shake the last pursuers, I set a three-second delay and launched every one of my remaining twenty-four micro-missiles behind me.
They detonated in a single wall of smoke and fire.
Using the expanding cloud as cover, I snapped left and accelerated.
The explosions fell away, replaced by the crack of my own sonic boom.
Then Father’s message arrived—short and absolute:
“Reduce speed to 500 km/h immediately.”
I saw the disturbance in the cloud ahead and understood.
I killed my engines and deployed my air brakes. Dropping from over 2,000 km/h to 500 in that short distance was difficult.
I barely managed it.
Then I slammed into a wall.
It was a wall made of air. Inside it, the atmosphere was viscous as mud.
Impact nearly tore me apart. Inertia rolled me end over end. My systems flooded with errors.
One wing snapped. The other twisted badly.
My core survived.
The fighters behind me were not so lucky. They hit the air-wall and detonated in a chain of explosions. Some tried to turn away, but the wall was huge—several more slammed into it.
Then friendly fighters streaked past me, firing as they rushed head-on into the remaining pursuers.
A low, heavy rumble followed.
A massive gray-black warship emerged from the cloud in front of me.
The Sky Shield.
I had suspected it. Only one of Father’s three flagships—the one built for maximum defense—could generate a shield field on this scale.
Behind the Sky Shield, more ships and fighters and robots appeared, wave after wave, the formation even larger than the Tower Clan’s.
Father’s army had arrived.
They swept past me, ruthless and fast, charging toward the Victorious.
The real air war began.
My frame was damaged. Through a self-recovery channel along the Sky Shield’s flank, I slipped inside.
The moment I entered, I saw rows of Ghost Hornet fighters aligned in perfect order, being launched continuously along six electromagnetic rails.
They were fast. The instant they cleared the bay, they adjusted course and vanished into the fog with shrieking engines.
The Sky Shield was far smaller than the Victorious, yet it still measured roughly six hundred meters long.
As Father’s flagship, it wasn’t only a weapon. It carried full repair and resupply capability.
I headed to Maintenance Bay Three.
The battle had only just started; all thirty-two pods in the bay were still empty.
There were eight bays like this—four on each side.
At full load, the ship could push over two hundred damaged or depleted units back into combat every three minutes.
Two maintenance bots latched me onto a frame without hesitation.
My external wings and brakes were beyond repair and had to be replaced. I also needed ammunition. It would take time.
While they worked, I could still feel the distant thud of detonations and the subtle tremor of a capital ship taking hits.
Outside, the war had to be brutal.
On the public info platform, data updated at frightening speed.
Five minutes into the engagement, over four hundred friendly icons had already gone gray. More than seven hundred had shifted to yellow or red—damaged.
Father’s commands kept flooding the channel as he directed everything he had.
The Savior was doing the same on his side.
And yet I didn’t care about the battle outside.
I searched the platform over and over, desperate for even a single scrap of data about the other battle.
How was Grayrock Base?
I had given the Savior a lead on the Old Man, but could that message reach his people? Would they trust it? There were too many variables. He had every reason to doubt me.
I found nothing.
That meant either the battle at Grayrock was already over—or it was happening on a different channel entirely.
The maintenance arms swapped in a new wing set, new brakes, and a fresh power cell, then refilled my missile and energy magazines.
Then they shoved me off the rack.
Because the bay was filling.
Units began pouring in—some dragging half their bodies, some limping on scorched actuators, all trying to get back out.
Suddenly, yellow warning lights flashed across the interior.
A broadcast followed:
“High-energy signal detected ahead. All units aboard the Sky Shield: secure yourselves. Emergency evasive maneuver incoming.”
I snapped against the bulkhead. Anchor posts lined the wall at intervals; I locked myself to one immediately.
The ship began to tilt.
New arrivals were yanked by centrifugal force and plastered to the ceiling.
The tilt continued until we were nearly vertical.
“FUSION-LASER IMPACT WARNING!!!”
The yellow lights flipped to red.
The ship shuddered violently.
Outside the bay opening, a scorching white flash cut through the fog. Heat surged. A sound like the world cracking hit my sensors—followed by the unmistakable stench of molten metal.
Icons on the public board turned gray in a cascade.
I didn’t know what weapon the Savior had used, but that single strike cost Father nearly eight hundred units.
The damage count hadn’t even finished updating before a new command arrived:
“Second, Third, and Fourth Squadrons: concentrate fire on the Victorious. Bring it down before it can fire a second fusion-focus warhead. No cost too high.”
At the same time, a private message hit my link:
“DR-F1209 — you’re assigned to Second Squadron.”
The squad roster unfolded in my interface.
Flagship: Leviathan (interstellar cruiser)
Subordinates:
– 2 Sothoth-class medium carriers
– 2 Mi-Go-class medium missile battleships
– 8 Ithaqua-class frigates
– 16 Nodens-class light attack ships
– 1 Zath-class supply ship
Small craft:
– Razorwhale fighters: 182
– Nightmare fighters: 139
– Demonblade fighters: 20
– Ghost Hornet carrier fighters: 374
– Demon Scorpion carrier fighters: 320
Humanoid mechs:
– DR Exilers: 116
– BT Flamecallers: 13
– AF Punishers: 61
– PD Raiders: 64
Ground units: none
Second Squadron’s mission was simple: strike the Victorious from directly above.
By now, the Savior’s full force had to be on the field. They would fight to the last to protect their flagship.
Attacking from above meant we would slam into them head-on.
The termination rate would be extreme.
I could not refuse.
I pushed off the wall and moved for the exit.
The Sky Shield’s outer channel was half its previous length. The other half looked melted—like sludge fused to the ship’s underside.
I unfolded my wings and jumped out through the warped opening.