Phantom Forge fielded three flagships.
The Genesis was pure offense.
The Sky Shield was defense taken to an absurd extreme.
And the Dark Overlord was something else entirely: stealth so perfect it bordered on unfair.
If the Sky Shield was the hardest ship to bring down, then the Dark Overlord was the hardest ship to guard against.
Its cloaking system could defeat more than a dozen detection methods at once. It was also fast.
Phantom Forge used it for surprise strikes on key Tower Clan outposts.
It had been built early in the war – earlier even than the Genesis.
During construction, it was fitted with six super-stealth generators: TBMs.
TBMs were not standard cloaking hardware. They were a different class of module, produced only in small numbers at the beginning of the conflict.
Because a TBM required a rare element called Terbium-471.
Terbium-471 could only be extracted from a scarce black raremetal ore.
Twenty tons of ore yielded one gram of Terbium-471.
One TBM generator required forty kilograms.
Not long after the Dark Overlord entered service, Plando’s only black raremetal mine was destroyed in a Tower Clan raid.
With the material gone, the super-stealth technology vanished with it, replaced by cheaper, inferior systems.
Since the day it deployed, the Dark Overlord had been a priority target. The Tower Clan had tried to destroy it more than once.
They had never managed to inflict serious damage.
And yet here it was – smoking in the rear, far from any front line.
I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what had happened to it.
I scanned the valley around the wreck. No other crashed warships. Not many combat units.
The scene made room for a thought I normally would have rejected as suicidal.
“Dorian,” I said, “if I get my hands on a TBM stealth generator, can you mount it on the bike?”
“Of course,” he said. “A TBM runs on power like anything else. If the generator itself isn’t ruined, it’s doable.”
Then he froze. “Wyatt, sir, you don’t mean it.”
“I do,” I said. “I’m going up there to steal one.”
Dorian’s voice dipped with worry. “That’s dangerous.”
“Probably,” I said. “But it’s worth the risk. If we succeed, the rest of the route becomes invisible.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” Dorian said instantly.
“Wyatt, sir, I can go too,” Eisen offered.
“No,” I said. “One body is easier to hide.”
Even as I spoke, I knew the flaw in my plan.
“Can you even remove a TBM?” Dorian asked.
I paused.
In the end, I took Dorian with me.
We moved quickly toward the Dark Overlord and left Eisen with the bike, waiting inside a mountain tunnel.
Dorian couldn’t cloak, but the dim light and broken terrain gave us enough cover to work with.
Minutes later we were close enough to see the ship clearly.
The fire had been mostly put out, but smoke still curled from damaged sections.
A large crowd of engineering robots surrounded the hull, moving in and out of open bays.
I circled to the side and saw a hatch standing open – with traffic constant enough to make it unusable.
I waited a minute. No opening.
So I continued around to the aft section.
One corner of the ship was simply missing, torn away as if eaten.
In that exposed area I found a corroded breach, an irregular hole that still leaked thin smoke.
I chose my moment.
I flew up with Dorian and landed on the hull.
The Dark Overlord’s back was broad and flat. From there I could see a raised bulge not far away – the external housing of one TBM.
But the generator itself had to be removed from inside.
Once I was sure no one was watching our landing, we dropped into the breach.
I’d never been inside the Dark Overlord. It rarely operated in formation with other ships.
I expected the breach to open straight into the interior.
It didn’t.
The hole led into a long duct, thirty or forty meters deep, like a tunnel bored through metal.
Countless thin pipes ringed the walls. It felt like crawling into a metallic beehive.
“What is this?” I asked.
Dorian thought for a moment. “A specialized engine,” he said. “Those dense nozzles cool the exhaust flow.”
His optics widened. “Wow. We’re inside the nozzle array.”
No wonder the Dark Overlord could hide so completely. This engine system alone took up a third of the hull.
We reached the end of the duct.
It should have been a turbo-pressurized outlet. Instead it had been destroyed, leaving a jagged opening.
Dorian slipped through first. I had to wedge myself in and crawl.
Another ten meters, and we finally reached the ship’s interior.
Dorian immediately flattened himself behind cover.
I sensed why and switched to stealth mode, placing myself between him and the open space.
This was the engine bay – long and narrow, with a row of massive engines running in parallel.
The Dark Overlord had four engine banks. The duct we’d used was only one of them.
A fire had clearly burned through here.
Half the bay was charred black. Metal surfaces showed corrosion and warping.
Even now, a few stubborn flames still licked at the wreckage while Flamecallers and engineering robots worked the hot spots.
I spotted a hatch leading deeper into the ship and pulled Dorian through it at speed.
“That was close,” Dorian whispered once we were inside. “Why is there fire inside the ship? What are they doing?”
“Something’s wrong,” I said. “Ignore it. We grab a TBM and leave.”
Based on the bulge I’d seen outside, one generator should have been nearby.
I moved fast down the corridor and entered a square compartment.
It was scorched too.
And there were robot remains on the floor – broken shells and severed limbs.
It took only seconds to reach the conclusion.
There had been a fight inside this ship.
In the center of the room stood a pillar, bent and deformed, running up into the exterior bulge.
That was the mount point for the TBM.
Dorian climbed the pillar and inspected it closely.
When he dropped back down, the news on his face was already clear.
“It’s damaged,” he said.
“Then we find another,” I replied. “There are six TBMs.”
The room had two exits, one at each end. I remembered the layout I’d observed from above: two generators on each side, not far apart.
We took the right-hand passage.
More wrecks lined the corridor.
The more I saw, the more certain I became: the Dark Overlord hadn’t been brought down from outside. Whatever happened started inside.
We hadn’t gone far when rapid footsteps echoed ahead.
Dorian dove under a larger corpse without thinking.
I had nowhere to go.
In the fraction of a second I had left, I dropped between two ruined bodies and went still, pretending to be one more piece of scrap.
Several robots hurried past.
They didn’t even glance at me.
When the sound faded, we moved again.
Only a few steps later, another set of footsteps approached from behind.
We hid again. We survived again.
After the third near miss, Dorian’s composure cracked.
“This isn’t working,” he hissed. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Agreed,” I said, scanning for a maintenance duct wide enough to use as an alternate route.
There weren’t any. The ship’s lines were too narrow – even for Dorian.
Dorian stared at the wrecks around us. You could almost hear the gears turning in his head.
“Wyatt, sir,” he said, “I’ve an idea.”
He explained it quickly.
I approved it instantly.
We found a small side compartment and used it as a workshop.
As Dorian requested, I dragged in two relatively intact wrecks and sealed the door.
Then I watched him do what he did best.
First he dismantled a CND-7 engineering robot.
A CND-7 was larger than I was, designed for field work, and burdened by a storage crate that took up two-thirds of its bulk.
I still don’t know how Dorian managed it, but he climbed into that crate and positioned himself inside the machine like a pilot.
In moments, he was “driving” the CND-7 body.
Then he turned to me.
My silhouette already resembled an Exiler in broad terms. The differences were mostly in surface details.
Dorian scavenged shell components from an Exiler wreck and refitted my exterior with practiced speed.
When he stepped back, I looked like an Exiler again.
Even Dorian couldn’t find an obvious flaw.
Only my 2D blade threatened the disguise.
I slid it into the CND-7’s oversized storage crate and closed the lid.
Problem solved.
I couldn’t help it – I praised Dorian, briefly and sincerely.
Then I opened the compartment door.
Dorian and I walked out into the corridor as if we belonged there.