Edean Tower’s plaza was still littered with scorch marks and shattered masonry, but the fight had moved on.
Wyatt was in the middle of explaining the battle outside to Little White and Bit when a maglev car slid to a stop nearby. A middle-aged man in armor stepped out, spoke quickly with Little White and Bit, and then Bit hurried into the car. After a brief hesitation, Merc climbed in after him.
Wyatt watched the vehicle disappear through the outer gate, confused—he still couldn’t make out a word of their conversation through the static in his damaged audio.
“Who was that?” Wyatt asked.
“Teresa,” Little White said. “Commander of the Glimmer Guard.” She tilted her head. “Wyatt—did you come in through the ground entrance?”
“No. We came in on a transport ship, through the rotor gate at the top. What happened?”
“Not exactly a disaster,” Little White said. “But… some of the Glimmer Guard seem to be missing.”
“Missing?” Wyatt frowned. “Isn’t Teresa their commander? He doesn’t know where his own soldiers went?”
“Yeah. It’s complicated. Let me start from the beginning.”
She took a moment to organize her thoughts.
“There are a little over six hundred Glimmer Guard. More than half of them were enhanced—and marked with an ideological imprint. Among those, about half were die-hard loyalists to Graham and Soren. The other half… surrendered to us.”
(Is that really true? Little White thought, remembering Arnold and Willa.)
“Before the fighting started, Teresa reassigned the pro-Plando diehards to defend the entrance of Glimmer Caverns—basically pulled the stubborn ones out of the way. The soldiers loyal to us stayed under the tower. In the end, they helped us take the tower.”
“But now the ones stationed at Glimmer Caverns are gone.”
“Were they wiped out?” Wyatt asked.
“Teresa thought our people did it, but no. They were already gone before our machine soldiers reached the area. No bodies, no signs of a fight. He wants us to go confirm and see if there are any clues.”
“So they ran. Or hid,” Wyatt said. “How many are we talking? Two hundred… and change?”
“About that.” Little White shrugged. “So I don’t think it’s a catastrophe. A supply-less band of stragglers can’t do much. But we’ll need to sweep Glimmer Caverns soon.”
“All right.”
…
As cleanup continued, worse mysteries surfaced—and the mood shifted from casual to wary.
It wasn’t only those two hundred Glimmer Guard.
Every child on the clone floors had vanished—every single one.
Nearly one hundred thousand human embryos had vanished.
A number of humans had vanished as well. The count was unclear, but early estimates put it at no fewer than fifty.
Some animal embryos and plant seeds were missing too—numbers unknown.
After searching Five-Color Fortress from top to bottom, Blin confirmed that Tyler Lynn had vanished as well.
Where had they gone? No one had an answer.
During the two-hour battle, Edean Tower had effectively been unmonitored. Across Aurora Plateau, chaos reigned. If someone had planned an escape, it would have been easy to pull off.
Four hours later, Lord Julian’s memory restoration reached ninety percent. He also completed a full takeover of every smart device he could reach in Edean and across Aurora Plateau—and that revealed even more problems.
In the middle of the fighting, at least three ships had slipped away from Lansen Planet and vanished into open space.
Why run? Who organized it? Did they really believe the void was safer?
Miller’s deadline was ten days away. Running into space was just a slower kind of death.
…
The questions had no quick answers, but they reminded Blin of a far more urgent issue.
Before the final assault, they’d received a distress request from New Sunflower. The message said the ship might be under threat from Edean’s warships. With the decisive battle about to begin, Blin could only send the fifteen thousand-ship decoy fleet to assist. But without hands-on command, that fleet’s intelligence was limited—and its ability to adapt was worse.
Now that Edean had fallen, New Sunflower became the priority above all else.
After a short rest, Blin, Bit, and Merc immediately took a fleet into the asteroid belt. Their mission: find New Sunflower, rescue it, and escort it back to Lansen Planet’s orbit.
Wyatt stayed behind in Edean for repairs—his damage was too severe to leave. Little White and Teresa continued investigating the disappearances and handling post-battle cleanup. Azure Thunder, heavily damaged, was hauled to Five-Color Fortress for major repairs.
Once the fleet left Lansen Planet, Julian—using a super signal relay ship traveling alongside the formation—detected huge numbers of warships left drifting in space. These were vessels originally returned to Lansen Planet under Ogen’s control for the battle. Blin folded every one of them into his fleet.
By the time Blin entered the asteroid belt, his warships had multiplied several times over, reaching sixty thousand. His fighters exceeded two hundred thousand.
Blin wasn’t celebrating.
From the moment they’d departed, they’d been sending communication requests to New Sunflower. Every one of them sank into silence.
Had Morag not received them? Was he refusing to answer? Or had he already died?
Every possibility was bad.
After linking up with the ten-thousand-plus ships sent to rescue New Sunflower earlier, Blin’s unease deepened. The rescue fleet hadn’t met New Sunflower at the planned rendezvous point either. They—and Blin’s flagship Limit—had been circling that empty location for days.
Aboard Limit, Blin shifted tactics. With enough ships, search could be brute-forced.
With Julian coordinating remotely, commanding a massive formation was no longer impossible. The carriers released every fighter. Hundreds of thousands of units began a grid sweep toward K101 Base.
The next day brought a major discovery: one warship caught a faint distress signal.
The fleet’s excitement lasted until they realized the signal was coming from a drifting lifeboat.
Following the coordinates, rescue robots quickly retrieved an oval one-person pod—about 2.5 meters long—and delivered it to Blin.
When they opened the hatch, Blin, Bit, and Merc all froze.
“Mesha…?”
She’d been headed to rendezvous with New Sunflower alongside her sick father, Cole. So why was she alone, drifting through the belt?
Mesha was still in hibernation. Only ten or so days had passed, but she looked painfully thin. Her flight suit was smeared with dried blood. It took a long while, but she eventually woke.
Blin demanded to know what had happened. Where was Cole?
Mesha broke down and cried. None of the robots knew how to comfort a human woman, so they waited until she calmed enough to speak.
“My dad became a monster,” she said. “He… he killed Worm and Stimulant. And he tried to… to kill me.”
“How could that happen?” Bit asked. “Where’s New Sunflower?”
“We never even reached it,” Mesha whispered. “He lost his mind first. He smashed things all over the ship. He didn’t just kill people—he… he ate…”
She covered her mouth, sobbing again.
“I had no choice. I hid in the lifeboat and ejected.”
“Cole was in hibernation when we separated,” Blin said. “Slow down. What exactly happened?”
The first two days after they parted had been normal. On the third day, Cole woke on his own. He tore open his clothes, and Mesha saw his skin—covered in red blotches and ulcerated sores. Terrified, she watched him claw at himself until he shredded his own skin and bled everywhere. Nothing she tried helped.
On the fourth day he looked worse. He was in agony. He begged her to end his life.
She couldn’t.
After that, he went feral. Worm and Stimulant managed to restrain him at first and locked him in storage. But only two days later he somehow became monstrously strong, broke the door, and burst out… and then…
“All right,” Blin said quietly. “That’s enough. I understand.”
Mesha cried again, as if the words had reopened the wound.
Bit tried to comfort her, earnest as always. “Edean should still have Cole’s cells. We can clone you a new father.”
“Bit,” Blin snapped, “get out of here and stop talking.”
…
Two days later, the fleet reached K101 Base—the destination New Sunflower had been aiming for. But there was still no trace of the ship. It was as if it had evaporated into the belt.
After consulting with Julian, they agreed to search farther forward. A ship of that size couldn’t move quickly through the asteroids. If it had ever approached K101, the trail should still be catchable.
Sure enough, the next day a cluster of fighters found evidence.
At first it was only a few shattered asteroids. But nearby they detected a large amount of metal storm shrapnel—weapon debris distinctive to New Sunflower’s systems.
The fleet surged forward along the trail. Three hours later, New Sunflower’s massive silhouette appeared on sensors.
Blin sent another communication request. Still no reply.
The bridge fell quiet. Even Bit understood: something had gone wrong.
Blin ordered the fleet to surround New Sunflower. He grabbed his shatterblade and prepared to board.
That was when Merc—who’d been glued to the displays—spoke sharply.
“Lord Blin, New Sunflower replied.”
“What did it say?” Blin demanded, sprinting back.
Merc read the header. Bit finished the message out loud.
“Withdraw and hand over General Graham and Lord Soren—or we destroy New Sunflower.”