Page 7 of Fated in A Time of War
A shadow floods the far doorway. Dust and light swirl in around it like dancers fleeing a predator.
Then it steps into view.
Gods above.
It’s massive—taller than any mech I’ve seen before. Sleek armor plates shine with fresh paint, midnight black and seared crimson in thick, brutal slashes. Wrecking Kru insignia—no mistaking it. The crest glows dim on one shoulder: a bloodied blade biting into a stylized skull. The barrels of its shoulder cannons rotate with soft mechanical menace, and beneath its core chassis, the blue-white glow of a fusion engine thrums like a caged storm.
I suck in a breath and don’t let it out.
The mech stomps past my hiding place, so close I can smell the chemical coolant hissing off its frame. My hands are shaking. My jaw aches from clenching.
Its steps rattle the floor. Each one louder than the last.
Then it stops.
Cannons rise.
No warning. No delay.
It opens fire.
The sound isimpossible. Deafening, annihilating. It doesn’t fire on me—it never saw me—but the building across the street erupts in a bloom of blue flame, and the world tilts sideways. The blast wave slams into the side of the Pharmatek hub like a battering ram, and I’m thrown off my feet. My back hits the wall. Dust pours down like ashfall.
I scramble to my knees, lungs burning.
Outside, I hear it—screams cut short. Metal shrieking. Then nothing.
Just nothing.
I press my hands to the floor and count to ten. The mech is moving again, heavy steps receding. Another blast echoes farther off, a dull drumbeat in the chest of the city.
I crawl to the jagged hole in the outer wall and peer through.
Bodies.
Alliance soldiers, mostly. What’s left of them. Limbs and armor scattered like forgotten toys. Smoke curls from what used to be a barricade. Blood paints the ground in arcs.
Except one.
One bodymoves.
He’s thrown from the epicenter like a ragdoll, tumbling through the air and landing in a crumpled heap beside a wrecked transport.
I hesitate. That should’ve killed him.
But hegets up.
I pull my mask tighter and press deeper into the shadows of the broken building, keeping low. The man—or not a man, noVakutan, I see that now—staggers through the smoke, toward a smaller figure slumped near the crater.
I inch along the wall, duck through a shattered window, and stick to the jagged ruins, keeping pace. I move silently. I was raised by silence. Forged in it. Reapers didn’t teach me much, but they taught me to bestill.
From a crevice behind a cracked pillar, I watch.
The red-scaled giant falls to his knees beside what’s left of another Vakutan. Smaller. Limbs shredded. Armor half-fused to charred flesh. The survivor presses his forehead to the other’s, mumbling something I can’t hear.
Then he starts trying to save him.
Heknowsit’s hopeless. Anyone would. But that doesn’t stop him. His claws fumble with medsprays, tools. He presses down on shredded flesh with trembling hands. He shouts—no words, justrage.
