General Beckett hovered in mid-air, suspended by his suit's grav-repulsors, directly obstructing the advancing Advocate ships. His silhouette was calm, unmoving. The violet sheen of his Dread-class armor pulsed softly, emitting concentrated radion levels that made every sensor aboard the incoming craft light up with caution.
For several tense seconds, he said nothing.
Then, over the open channel, a voice crackled through.
"General Beckett, may I ask why you are obstructing the execution of our directive?"
Beckett tilted his head slightly—almost imperceptibly.
"Do not address me without stating your name, Knight," he said, the final word landing like a quiet insult.
A pause. Then the voice returned, slightly more rigid.
"Apologies, sir. I am Great Knight Cornelius."
Cornelius knew Beckett already recognized who were onboard the ships. After all, no Ronin-class interceptor could hide from the scanning protocols of Dread Marine armor—especially not Beckett's, a relic of many wars.
Beckett's voice came again—calm, but laced with underlying fire.
"Ah… Cornelius. What task is so critical that you find it necessary to race armed through my Citadel's airspace without clearance?"
There was no mistaking the emphasis on my.
Cornelius swallowed. Though a Great Knight in rank, he was still a child in the presence of the living legend floating before him. General Beckett had not only trained the Federation's finest, but he had once stood beside the First Knights during the first counterattack war.
"Sir, we received a Code-Red alert regarding a potential leak of classified genetic data—"
"A leak you chose to address with a detachment of armed ships violating chain-of-command protocols, overstepping Citadel sovereignty, and chasing a Federation-recognized unit under my direct supervision?"
Beckett's armor flared slightly with purple arcs of contained energy. Every Advocate ship's systems spiked in response. A quiet warning.
Forgive me, sir, we were not informed—"
"You weren't cleared because you weren't invited. Return to your assigned bases, Great Knight. Or I'll be forced to interpret your unauthorized presence as hostile."
The Advocate ships did not retreat.
They hovered there, engines humming with restrained energy, forming a loose standoff above the Citadel.
"With all due respect, sir," Cornelius said over the comms, his voice strained but controlled, "we are here under direct orders from the Magistrate's Office. As such, we cannot withdraw without completing our directive."
General Beckett gave no verbal response.
Instead, a sudden spike in radion levels burst from his armor—sharp enough to trigger proximity alarms across the entire Advocate formation. Every Ronin-class ship's HUD blinked red in unison, targeting systems auto-calibrating in fear rather than intent.
"I regret this, General," Cornelius continued, trying to maintain authority. "But I will be forced to report your obstruction to Magistrate Cornwall."
Still, Beckett did not move.
Then came the low rumble from the Citadel's magnetic launch strip activating.
One by one, the White Horns' vessels ignited and vanished upward, slingshotted into the upper atmosphere. The sound reverberated across the citadel's domes like thunder trapped in metal lungs.
When the last ship disappeared into the sky, General Beckett finally rotated mid-air to face Cornelius' lead vessel.
"Tell Magistrate Cornwall I said hello," Beckett said flatly. Then, his voice dropped in temperature.
"And Cornelius—"
"—The next time you defy a Dread Marine, you won't live long enough for a third."
Without waiting for a reply, Beckett's flight stabilizers flared, casting violet light across the Citadel. In an instant, he vanished into the clouds above, leaving a silent fleet of Advocates behind him.
Cornelius watched Beckett leave through the monitor.
"I am sorry we failed to secure him," he said through his comms.
"For some reason, General Beckett intervened."
"Yes, we are returning now."
Aboard the White Horns' medical ship, the members of Squad 5A9 sat in the ward, stripped down to their undersuits. For the first time in what felt like days, they could finally relax. Their power armor had already been removed and shipped to a separate support vessel for inspection and repair.
Anastasia, cross-legged on her cot, flicked through diagnostics on her halo watch, reviewing damage reports and flagging upgrades that might help their armor survive the vacuum of space.
"I still can't believe we're actually going to space," Kean muttered, tapping the wall-mounted monitors to display the live external feed. Their ship had begun taxiing toward the magnetic launch strip, engines humming low beneath their feet.
"You've never been to space before?" Vivian asked, too tired to offer her usual snark.
"Before getting the serum," Kean shrugged, "I hadn't even left our city."
"None of us had," Anastasia added, eyes still on her watch.
Vivian leaned back, her voice quieter now.
"Well, you should see it. If there's one thing every human should experience in this era… It's the view of Earth from orbit."
Her words hung in the air, drawing a rare moment of silence from the three orphans. Even Chen Mei, sitting on the medbed with a patch over her shoulder, glanced out the window with a far-off look.
"I wonder how Gilbert's doing," Anastasia said after a pause, breaking the silence.
"He should be fine," Chen Mei answered confidently. "I froze the injury zone before extraction, and his armor's safety protocols sealed the wound. As long as they act quickly, the arm can still be reattached."
"Bah, nothing to worry about," Kean waved dismissively. "Honestly, they should just give him a metal arm. Make him look cooler."
"Shut up, Kean," Anastasia snapped, throwing a med-pack at his head.
Kean raised his hands in mock surrender, flashing a crooked smile.
"Alright, alright, no need to throw things."
He leaned back and glanced at the monitor again.
"Still… It's kinda disappointing we're using a runway. I always imagined just, you know, blasting off into the sky."
Anastasia rolled her eyes, barely looking up from her halo watch.
"Did you not pay attention in class? Anything Ronin-class or smaller doesn't have the thrust capacity to escape Earth's gravity on its own. They use magnetic launch strips to reach escape velocity."
Kean blinked.
"Oh. That makes sense."
Vivian, half-lounging in her medbed, looked up at the large viewing window above them. The Citadel's skyline shimmered with defense fields and transport traffic, but beyond that—there was the sky. Blue. Clear. Waiting.
"It's still gonna be a hell of a ride," she said softly.
Suddenly, the cabin lights shifted to amber as a soft chime echoed through the ward.
[Primary ignition in T-minus 60 seconds. Secure all personnel. Magnetic launch sequence engaged.]
The squad sat up straighter. Outside the thick viewports, the launch bay rails glowed faintly blue as massive superconducting coils powered up along the kilometer-long track. Vibrations rumbled through the floor.
"This is it," Chen Mei murmured, her voice quieter than usual.
Kean's grin widened as he pulled his straps tighter.
"So, how fast does this thing go?"
"Fast enough to kill us if it sneezes wrong," Anastasia replied flatly, locking in her seat harness.
The vibrations intensified. They could feel the reactor humming beneath the deck plating—raw, concentrated power ready to catapult them beyond the skies. Then came silence. That strange, tight calm before motion.
[Ignition.]
A deep hum surged into a roar. Their bodies pressed back into their beds. The horizon blurred.
The stars waited above.
The ship launched.
In an instant, the Earth became a smear beneath them—green, gray, blue, then nothing but the upper atmosphere. The g-force was intense but manageable thanks to the inertial dampeners, though Kean's wide eyes and clenched fists betrayed his awe.
Plasma flared outside the window as the Ronin-class ship breached the exosphere. A burst of secondary thrusters carried them the final stretch into orbit.
Then—quiet.
The stars emerged. Sharp, unblinking. Cold and brilliant against the black.
"We're… in space," Kean whispered.
He wasn't smiling now. None of them were. They sat silently, staring out the window.
Earth floated behind them—curved and massive, its clouds swirling lazily over the continents. The soft blues and deep greens seemed almost unreal from this distance.
"There it is," Vivian said. "Our world. Looks small, huh?"
"Beautiful," Anastasia added quietly.
Even William was silent.
Kean blinked a few times, like he was trying to burn the image into his mind.
"I never thought I'd see it. Not really."
Images of a fallen knight flashed over and over—surroundings a blur of chaos.
That grotesque sword, impossibly jagged, pierced Gilbert again and again—through his chest, his throat, his skull. Each blow fragmented reality. And through the haze of pain and panic, a single voice echoed in the void:
"… do not celebrate… For death's grip… has yet… to fade."
The words curled around him like smoke. His breath hitched. The horror became overwhelming.
Then—darkness.
A new scene. A shadowed, unrecognizable room. Still. Silent.
And then a voice—gentle, familiar, soaked in the warmth of something lost:
"Gilbert… listen. Sometimes in life, you'll go through struggles—dark ones. The kind that makes you feel like you're alone in the world. No mother. No father. No one who truly sees you."
The voice was gentle, familiar yet distant, like a memory soaked in fog.
"But even when it feels like no one cares… someone, somewhere, does. Even if they never say it. Even if they're gone. Someone always cares."
There was a pause—soft, heavy. Then came a smile in the voice.
"So live. Enjoy the journey. Laugh when you can. Cry when you must. Don't be afraid of not reaching your full potential—because the truth is, neither you nor anyone else knows where that potential ends. And maybe… that's the point."
Gilbert's eyes snapped open.
The sterile white ceiling of the intensive care unit greeted him. Dim lights hummed above. His body felt heavy. Numb. But then—burning. His arm. The pain bloomed through his shoulder like a firestorm crawling across frozen nerves.
Tears slipped down his cheeks without permission.
He didn't know why he was crying. Or even where the dream had come from. The voice didn't belong to anyone he could clearly remember, but the words echoed with an aching familiarity. Like something once whispered to him long ago… or something he desperately needed to hear now.
He turned his head slowly. The ward was empty except for a hovering med-drone monitoring his vitals. His reattached arm was suspended in a sterile healing frame, pulsing with soft blue light. It would be weeks before he regained full control, but the damage had been reversed—mostly.
Gilbert closed his eyes again. The voice still echoed inside him.
"Someone always cares…"
And for the first time in a long while, he let himself believe that might be true.
Still groggy, Gilbert turned his head and lifted his uninjured hand toward his halo watch. The faint pulse of its projection ring hummed to life as his blurred vision slowly sharpened.
Location: Onboard Medical Vessel Argent Halo | Orbit: Low-Earth Transfer Trajectory | Status: Stable
He blinked, re-reading it.
In space…