Kou Yanzhao watched the acid hiss on the gravel, then glanced up at the descending dreadnought-class warship, then back at the hound. The creature was large, but the vessel blotting out the suns was significantly larger. He sighed, a faint puff of pure air in the otherwise toxic atmosphere. “Too much commotion for a nap,” he murmured, sounding profoundly put out.
He scooped up Rinzen Vael, who was still wobbling slightly from the qi cleansing, and then, with another long-suffering sigh, grabbed the still-screaming Tarkis Lorn by his collar. Tarkis was flailing, pointing wildly at the charging hound, the orbital warship, and the collapsing canyon walls. “We’re dead! We’re all dead! There’s nowhere to run! That thing will melt us, or that thing will vaporize us, or the dirt will swallow us whole!”
“The way up is straight,” Kou said, his voice flat, ignoring Tarkis’s hysteria. His stance shifted, muscles coiling in a way that defied the rusty threads of his tattered clothing. The air around him shimmered, not with heat, but with an unseen force that pressed down on the loose gravel.
Then, he launched. It wasn’t a jump; it was an expulsion of internal force, a single strike against the bedrock that pulverized the stone beneath his calloused soles. He became a blur, a human projectile arcing impossibly high, leaving the snarling Alpha Hound snapping at empty air far below. They shot upward, past the canyon rim, past the billowing dust, directly toward the descending war-hull.
Rinzen gasped, the force of the ascent pressing her against Kou’s side. She looked down, seeing the entire Rustborn settlement shrinking beneath them, then up, at the plating of the warship. Its underbelly, a vast expanse of ablative armoring and exhaust vents, loomed closer with alarming speed.
“My… my Lord!” Rinzen choked out, her voice barely audible over the wind rushing past them. “We are… we are flying!”
Kou didn’t dignify the obvious statement with a response. With precise timing, he extended one leg, not kicking, but tapping a specific structural seam on the warship's underside. A vent cover, designed to withstand re-entry, buckled inward with a groaning screech of stressed metal. He then maneuvered mid-air, using tiny hull rivets and the ship's own downward exhaust wash to guide their trajectory. Each touch, each adjustment, was too subtle for a normal eye to follow.
They landed with balanced momentum on a maintenance hatch near the primary propulsion bells. The metal groaned under the sudden, focused weight, but held. Kou then proceeded to tear the hatch open with a single, brutal yank, exposing the cramped, sparking conduits within.
Tarkis, released from Kou’s grip, collapsed onto the metallic hull, coughing in the thin, icy gale. “You… you just… you just broke a government warship with your hands! In mid-air! We’re clinging to the hull of the Sky-Hammer!”
Kou ignored him, already assessing the exposed primary circuits. He ripped out a fistful of cabling, then, with a flick of his thumb, twisted two live leads into an inverted circuit. The dreadnought shuddered. A distant klaxon wailed, muffled by the thick armor plate. The Sky-Hammer lurched violently to the starboard flank, its steering nozzles vectoring erratically.
“Hold on,” Kou said, his voice completely devoid of excitement, as if he were merely adjusting a faulty water pipe. “The acceleration might be… significant.”
It was beyond significant. The craft roared, listing sideways, then pitched forward with sickening suddenness. The terrain below, which had been shrinking, now began to streak past them in a red-brown blur. Instead of a vertical drop, the vessel surged forward at rooftop level, directly toward the glittering, needle-like spire of Magistrate Vorstag’s Citadel.
The ride was an unguided slide across the upper air. Sparks spewed from scorched engine cowlings, sirens squealed, and the keel groaned like a dying leviathan. Kou, standing with heels locked against a girder, nudged the flight path with measured stomps, forcing the multi-ton warship to yaw through defensive laser lattices before automated turrets could track their vector. They cleaved through the city's upper-air traffic lanes, sending smaller civilian transports scattering like startled birds.
Then, with a concussive blast, the warship rammed into the apex of the Citadel. Not just into it, but through it. The vessel sheared through reinforced durasteel trusses and crystal viewing panes in a cascade of rending alloy and shattered masonry, coming to a screeching halt directly inside Vorstag’s private chambers.
Silence followed, broken only by the hiss of severed coolant lines and the settling of sheared bulkheads. The nose of the warship lay buried deep in what had been a panoramic viewing gallery. Twisted girders and fractured quartz panes hung overhead. Through the torn outer wall, the twin suns of Orox cast long, dusty rays across the debris.
Standing amidst the rubble was Magistrate Vorstag, sealed inside his personal Dread-Mech. The machine was an obsidian-armored titan, its shoulders mounted with missile pods and its left arm terminating in an energy cannon. Its single optical sensor burned crimson. Vorstag kept the weapon arm aimed straight at the three figures clambering down from the crushed hull.
“Kou Yanzhao,” Vorstag’s voice boomed, distorted through his mech’s external speakers, laced with a mixture of disbelief and utter horror. “You… you are breathing unfiltered air! In my Citadel! The infection… it’s spreading!” He gestured with his massive cannon arm at the ruined room. “You’ve brought the plague directly into the seat of governance!”
Kou, stepping over a crushed synth-leather chair, surveyed the devastation with a critical eye. His gaze landed on a section of a couch, once luxurious silk, now shredded and smoldering. He poked at it with a bare toe. “Did you know how hard it is to get good silk on Orox?” he asked, completely ignoring the giant mech and its pointed weapons. “This looks like Emperor-grade. Such a waste. The impact really tore it up.”
Rinzen, bracing herself against a bent I-beam, watched the Dread-Mech’s weapons cycle, their muzzles glowing ominously. This was it. The end. But she wouldn’t die without saying it. “My Lord! Kou Yanzhao!” she cried out, her voice filled with a desperate, burgeoning adoration. “Even if these are our final moments, I want you to know! I, Rinzen Vael, swear my eternal devotion to you! My heart, my loyalty, my very being… they are yours, always and forever! I love you!”
Vorstag’s mech froze, its red eye flickering, momentarily distracted by the sudden outburst of romantic confession in the middle of a catastrophic breach. But the pause was fleeting. The Magistrate’s fury, mingled with his terror of uncontrolled infection, overwhelmed everything else. With a snarl of pure rage and desperation, Vorstag slammed his massive armored fist down onto a console embedded in his mech’s cockpit. The red light of the glass-bomb detonator flared to life.