Yellow Jacket

Ruby looked at him, her voice clipped and sharp, each word snapping with the kind of authority that allowed no argument. "You're up. Now we are headed somewhere secure. Right now, you are not considered a Legion member. Do not answer to any Legion commands. You are under my direct supervision, and in this situation, you are a civilian. Do not do anything stupid." Her gaze lingered for a fraction of a second, enough to make sure he understood that she meant every syllable.

The alarm blared above them, a ceaseless wail that made the walls hum. The sound pressed into Warren's skull, rattling his bones, a constant reminder that whatever was happening was no drill.

Warren blinked at her, throat raw, head still clouded with the haze of half-recovery. "What… what's going on?" His words cracked in his throat, broken by the tubes that had only just been torn out of him.

"We're under attack," Ruby said without hesitation. She stood in one fluid motion, her chair scraping lightly against the sterile floor, and the sound of her heels struck the surface with furious precision. "Come with me. Let's go." Her posture was perfect, her spine a steel rod, but her stride carried a furious speed that contradicted the elegance. Each step echoed like a gavel through the chamber, the alarm's shriek filling every breath in between.

He staggered after her at first, but soon broke into a run, heart pounding, lungs still raw from the med gel. She did not slow. They burst into the corridor, and Warren's eyes widened. Staff swarmed the passageways, a tide of uniforms and clipped voices. Orders flew back and forth, crackling across comms, overlapping one another in a cacophony of command. Above them and to every side, the walls were not stone but pure 360° glass, a full view of Kyrrabad above. The sight of the city mobilizing. Warren looked out and saw soldiers flooding the streets, columns of mobile infantry assembling at breakneck speed. Air batteries swiveled upward, their barrels locking on the sky, while engines roared to life as strike craft tore into the air. The Citadel's command heart wasn't hidden behind walls at all; it stood in direct view of the storm.

Warren realized, with a lurch of unease, that he had underestimated this place. The ninth layer wasn't just a floor where cadets tests were staged. It was deeper, wider, more alive than anything he had seen above. This was the heart of Kyrrabad Legion command, and now, in the alarm's wake, he was watching its veins flood with motion for the first time.

He glanced at Ruby, breath ragged as he tried to match her pace. "Who's attacking us? Princedoms? Broken? Raiders?" The words spilled out too quickly, part desperation, part ignorance. His voice barely carried over the siren's howl.

Her eyes cut toward him, sharp as a blade, her painted lips tightening. "No. Worse. The Neuman. They've been spotted in our airspace." Her voice was flat, devoid of any cushion, yet even Ruby's tone couldn't drown the alarm.

His stomach dropped, hollowing out as the name sank in. All Warren knew of the Neuman came from history class, Isol's lessons that spoke of wars where cities vanished and entire campaigns ended in silence. He had never seen them, never even heard a rumor beyond the classroom, but he knew enough to understand they were bad, worse than anything the Princedoms or raiders could ever bring. Their name alone was enough to curdle his blood. To hear it here, now, in the City itself, it was something else entirely. The alarm seemed louder after her words, as if the glass itself knew what the name meant.

Ruby kept moving, her tone never faltering. "The first wave of mobile infantry is already moving from the barracks. Imperators from the reserve squads will deploy next, with priority strike teams targeting whatever breaches our airspace. After that, if the Citadel is secure, the instructors will enter the field themselves."

They turned down another corridor, and the glass stretched in every direction. Warren caught his first sight of it, a Neuman city-ship moving low through Kyrrabad's airspace. It was graceful in its terrible way, immense yet smooth in motion, drifting like a predator that knew nothing could stop it. Towers of steel and black glass fused together into a fortress that floated as if it belonged to the sky itself. But what froze Warren's breath wasn't its size or its silence, it was the bottom. The underside of the city-ship was decorated in human skulls, tens of thousands of them, fused into place like a macabre mosaic. From below, the entire horizon seemed to be grinning death back down at Kyrrabad. Legion batteries lit the sky around it, streams of fire arcing upward. Ruby glanced once at the sight as she strode, her jaw tight, but never slowed. The Citadel's walls gave them a perfect view of war descending.

Ruby's heels clicked steadily ahead of him, her voice carrying over the roar of preparation. "And if we're really unlucky…" She hesitated for the first time, just long enough for him to feel the weight of the pause. "Then Imujin will come out. Hopefully it doesn't come to that."

Warren almost tripped as her words landed. The thought of Imujin, the image thrilled him. Imujin was a continent breaker. That was what it meant to be a Headmaster. To see him fight, to see that level of power unleashed against a Neuman city-ship, it would be terrible and it would be magnificent. People were going to die, Kyrrabad itself could be scarred, but the idea of watching his master wreck something that vast sent a jolt of raw excitement through Warren's chest. This was what he needed to strive for, what every lesson in blood and pain was meant to shape him toward. The air around him already buzzed with urgency, with fear disguised as discipline, but for Warren it was something else: anticipation. The possibility that someone like Imujin would need to move at all meant only one thing: the Neuman weren't here to scare them. They were here to harvest.

As Ruby guided him through a set of tall doors, Warren found himself in a space that stretched like a cathedral of war. The chamber was vast, lit by the glow of hundreds of terminals and the relentless pulse of red warning lights. Rows upon rows of operators filled the floor, each manned by uniformed staff whose voices rang out in sharp, overlapping reports. The sound was deafening: commands shouted across aisles, confirmations barked back, the endless call-and-response of an army snapping into motion. Above it all, screens filled the forward wall, immense and alive with shifting data streams, tactical maps, and streams of telemetry. Beyond them, the 360° glass gave a perfect, unfiltered view of Kyrrabad above, as though the whole sky had been lowered into the room. And in that sky, drifting like a predator, hung the Neuman city-ship.

Warren slowed as he saw its underside: skulls fused into a grim mosaic, grinning down at the city as flyers dropped in swarms. The skulls weren't just trophies, Ruby would tell him, they were markers, clan patterns etched into bone. Even from this distance he could make out the indentations, lines arranged with deliberate care. It was graceful in its motion, yet horrifying in its presence, a fortress moving like a drifting storm. His heart thundered, but not only with fear. There was awe there too, a dangerous thrill that made him forget to breathe.

Ruby's hand brushed his arm, sharp enough to snap his focus back. "Eyes forward, love," she said briskly. "Do not gawk like a tourist. That," she nodded toward the city-ship, "is what the Legion classifies as a light cruiser from Clan Nysari. You can see the clan mark in the skulls etched across its underside; their indentations are patterns, not random, a signature of ownership. To the Neuman, though, it would never be called a cruiser. They would name it a cloud. Their ships are nests, clouds, and hearts: a nest is small, a cloud medium, and a heart one of their great flagships."

He swallowed, the word catching in his throat. "And the wings?"

Ruby's lips curved, though her eyes stayed fixed on the screens above the command floor. "The wings are what you see now, darling. Their battle craft. They do not land their ships to raid; they send these instead. Wings carry troops down into cities, fast and many, with raiders packed inside. Think of them as their carriers, swarming from the cloud to strike in coordinated waves. Watch how they fall in lines, those are not random. That is doctrine. Every drop, every angle, every staggered flight path is planned. To them, war is as much choreography as slaughter."

Warren leaned forward despite himself, eyes wide as the swarms thickened. The air outside the glass was black with movement, lines of shadow darting like flocks of predatory birds. He caught flashes of armor glinting in the sun, the spread of wings stretched taut as gliders carried Neuman raiders down toward the city. His stomach twisted, caught between dread and exhilaration. "They… they look like they're everywhere."

"They are," Ruby said, tone still smooth but carrying a brittle edge. "Every family ship is its own world, and its own army. A cloud carries thousands, each one born to fight, each one baptized in flesh and nanites. Their rituals make them what they are. Do not let the elegance fool you, love. Those skulls are not decoration. They are trophies, reminders to the world of what happens when cities underestimate them. Every mark is a story of slaughter."

The floor around them shuddered as Legion batteries fired from hidden towers in the city above, the light from the blasts catching against the glass. Operators called out updated ranges, intercept vectors, lists of squadrons already in the air. Warren caught fragments of their chatter: Imperative squads launching, lancers rising to meet the first wings, casualty predictions climbing. The command center moved like one body, every voice a nerve signal, every keystroke another muscle flexing for war.

He shivered, though the thrill in his chest only sharpened. "And if Imujin comes out..."

Ruby's fingers tightened briefly on his arm, silencing him before he could finish. Her voice dropped, silk over steel. "Child, do not finish that thought. If the Headmaster rises, it means Kyrrabad itself is at stake. Continent breakers do not step into duels. They step into the end of things. If you long to see it, pray you never do."

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Her eyes flicked to him then, sharp, assessing, reading the hunger she knew too well. "Control yourself, Vaeliyan. I see the fire in your face. You would cheer for spectacle while people die. Remember what you are, and what you are not, and right now you are a citizen. Nothing more. Think of the other civilians who are going to die. They will be eaten by these monsters. Do not wish to see the destruction, just hope we can fight them off and make them realize this raid is not worth the cost."

He bit back a reply, pulse hammering as the great ship's shadow fell over the city. Outside, the wings spread like a dark tide. On the screens above, Legion squadrons surged upward in disciplined formation, lances crackling with light. The air was already thick with fire and steel, the opening notes of a battle that would decide whether Kyrrabad stood or fell. And Warren, pressed against the glass with Ruby's hand on his arm, felt his heart catch, not in terror, but in anticipation. The war had begun.

Civilians surged toward pads in panic. The stone circles lit with desperate activations, only to crackle and fail as Neuman artillery locked them down. Sparks spat across the fields, channels collapsed, and the blue light of escape guttered out. Ruby's voice cut sharp over the command din, carrying the brittle certainty of someone who had seen this before. "They always target the pads first, darling. Civilians vanish too quickly otherwise. Their artillery jams the channels, overloads the field. Even now, countermeasure crews are already at work, scrambling to cut through the jamming, reroute circuits, and force the pads back online before the escape routes collapse entirely."

"Squad Ten-Twenty-seven reporting heavy losses!" a voice shouted across the command floor. The words cracked through the noise like a whip, followed by the clatter of keys and clipped responses from other operators.

Through the glass Warren saw it unfold in brutal detail. Families pushed forward in a frenzy, hands outstretched toward the glowing pads. Then came the flechettes, tearing down from the wings in tight, surgical lines. Each one coated with a toxin that stole strength in seconds, struck like invisible needles. Men and women folded mid-stride, their bodies collapsing as if the weight of the world had been dropped across their shoulders. They were not dead, only limp, their cries silenced by the chemical tide coursing through their blood. Neuman raiders dropped beside them, smooth as spiders, their own bodies twisting into controlled glides that brought them down with predatory grace. Ropes lashed out, fast and practiced, tethering ankles and wrists. One hard yank, and the victims vanished skyward, reeled back toward the waiting wings like prey hauled from a net.

"Troop Twenty-Four has cleared Sector Eight!" another operator called, voice tight with urgency, but the relief was swallowed by the next eruption of noise.

Warren's stomach knotted. His voice cracked. "They're not even killing them…"

"They prefer their food alive," Ruby said, her gaze locked on the chaos beyond the glass. Her tone was calm, but her hand tapped once against the railing, betraying the tension beneath her mask. "Those flechettes are coated with a sleep agent. Legion troopers carry auto-inject antidotes keyed to their heart rate, so for them it's only an inconvenience. Civilians have no such mercy." She tapped a manicured nail against the glass. "Look. You can see the pattern."

"Troop Twelve requesting backup, multiple wings pressing their position," came another clipped report from the floor below. The words were almost drowned out by the overlapping storm of chatter: coordinates, casualty counts, status updates spilling from every console in the hall.

The city's defenses roared awake. Batteries launched their payloads in unison, trails of fire streaking upward to tear into the falling wings. Wall cannons thundered, each blast splitting the air with concussive fury, tearing whole clusters of raiders from the sky. Turrets spun on rooftops, their barrels tracking with surgical precision as they shredded survivors that slipped through the heavier fire. Artillery boomed across the horizon, filling the sky with smoke and flame. For every wing that reached the streets, three more were blown apart in the air, burning wreckage tumbling into alleys and boulevards below. Yet still they came, enough slipping through to turn the avenues into killing grounds.

"Sector Fourteen holding with minimal losses!" someone else called, though the strain in their voice betrayed how close the line had come to breaking.

Legion troopers surged into the streets in disciplined blocks, their lances spitting flechettes in ruthless rhythm. They moved like parts of a greater machine, fire patterns overlapping, shields locked in formation. In some clashes they dominated, an entire wing shredded in seconds, tether lines cut, civilians dragged back from the brink before the Neuman could haul them skyward. Operators erupted into cheers at those victories, voices breaking through the tension. But elsewhere, the fight buckled. A squad overrun, their countermeasures too slow to fire, bodies dragged upward into the waiting maws of the wings. The Neuman screamed their triumph as they hauled captives into the sky. For every street held, another faltered, and each victory was mirrored by another collapse.

"Command confirms four wings downed at the northern wall!" another voice rang out, fighting to rise above the storm of overlapping reports.

Warren pressed against the glass, palms flat, unable to look away. The sky was chaos: smoke trails streaking, fire blooming, flechettes carving invisible arcs through the air. The ground below was worse, a tangled mess of screams, steel, and running blood. Ruby leaned close, her voice a thread of silk pulled tight. "This is balance, dear. They lose wings, we lose squads. The Neuman do not care. They bleed us until fear does their work. That is their doctrine. They harvest until resistance breaks."

Outside, another pad sparked out of existence under a Neuman barrage. The last civilians there scattered in terror, only to be dropped mid-step by toxin-flechettes. Ropes lashed out, clinging fast, and the victims were reeled skyward one by one. A few Legion troopers dove to intercept, cutting lines with their blades and forcing a handful free, but the rest were dragged screaming into the sky. The pad cracked and shattered under another barrage, its surface splitting like glass. Countermeasure crews scrambled at its edge, desperate to restart the field before the city lost another escape route.

The war in Kyrrabad had begun in full. Warren stood frozen, his reflection caught faintly in the glass, and for a moment it seemed to him as if the world itself was being unstitched, one tethered body at a time.

The storm over Kyrrabad deepened into chaos, but when the instructors arrived the battle turned from horror into slaughter. Warren stood transfixed behind the command glass as figures strode into the streets, their presence a reminder of why the Legion had never yet fallen.

Gwen moved first, lance already raised. There was no hesitation in her movements, only cold precision. She fired once, and the shot passed cleanly through four raiders at once, their bodies jerking back in unison before they crashed into the street. Another squeeze of the trigger, and half a dozen more fell, tether lines whipping uselessly as they snapped. Gwen never paused to confirm kills; every shot was perfect, her rhythm steady, her aim a metronome of death. To watch her work was to see inevitability made flesh.

Jim moved next, with a reckless grin plastered across his face. A battered machete hung at his hip, though his hands were never empty for long. Pipe bombs clinked against his belt, jury‑rigged charges he tossed without hesitation into clusters of raiders, the blasts ripping holes through their descent. When his machete flashed, it bit deep, cutting through Neuman armor and bone alike. He waded into the melee laughing, tearing a raider from the air and smashing it into the pavement hard enough to crack stone. A lance was yanked from its owner and swung like a club, flechettes tearing through another cluster of enemies at point‑blank range. He fought with whatever he could grab, shifting weapons as easily as others changed stances. Blood spattered across his arms as he pressed forward, each strike savage, each kill improvised. Around him the Neuman folded one after another, their grace broken against his raw brutality.

Lisa followed close behind, hefting a gigantic maul that looked too heavy to be lifted. Yet in her hands it moved with terrifying speed. Each swing cracked pavement and shattered bone, raiders crushed flat beneath its weight. When she brought it down on a cluster of Neuman, the street itself split, bodies breaking in the shockwave. There was nothing surgical about her violence; it was brutal, overwhelming, and absolute. Warren couldn't even follow the full extent of her strikes, one moment a Neuman lunged, the next it was reduced to pulp beneath the arc of her weapon. There was no waste in her, no hesitation, only the certainty of someone who had long ago mastered the line between endurance and annihilation.

Isol descended through the smoke with wings that looked like folded paper. They spread wide, each beat silent, each shift unreal. From the folds shot what seemed to be square feathers, but each one sliced like a razor. They spun outward in controlled bursts, carving through raiders by the dozen, leaving trails of blood and shredded flesh hanging in the air. The Neuman faltered under the barrage, their perfect glides broken as they fell in torn heaps. Isol never landed, his paper wings carrying him from strike to strike, each feather a death sentence.

Then the street itself seemed to still, as if the chaos bent to make room. Alorna Peace arrived last, and the world around her simply came apart. She didn't run; she didn't even raise her hands. Chunks of stone, twisted rebar, and shattered vehicles ripped upward around her as if caught by invisible strings. With the barest flick of her gaze the debris became weapons, tearing through Neuman wings mid‑drop. A dozen raiders folded like scraps, their bodies shredded before they ever touched the ground. Another flick, and half a building's façade peeled loose, crashing down to pulverize a squad that had thought themselves hidden. Alorna stepped through the wreckage like a ghost, untouched, the air bending to her unspoken command. Wherever she walked, the Neuman died. If Gwen was inevitability, Alorna was annihilation.

And then Ruby's hand darted forward, twisting a control. The command glass zoomed across the battlefield, away from the carnage, to a shape clinging to the side of a Neuman wing that had landed too close to the wall. Deck. His boots dug into the plating, hands gripping edges not meant to be climbed. On his back, a bulky pack hummed faintly, lights blinking across its surface. Raiders dove for him, but he moved with unnatural swiftness, twisting out of reach, clambering upward like the chaos below didn't exist. When one finally cornered him, he kicked it loose without breaking stride, never once taking his eyes from the looming shape of the craft. Whatever sat inside that pack, Warren knew, would not end quietly.

The instructors cut through the Neuman like they were nothing. The harvest turned to ruin, tether ropes snapping in mid‑air as Legion troopers surged back into the fight behind them. The sky, moments ago filled with falling wings, now burned with fire and smoke, Neuman bodies scattering like broken birds across the streets.

Ruby's hand tightened briefly on Warren's shoulder. "This is the difference, darling," she whispered, her voice sharp against the glass. "Troopers hold the line. But the High Imperators, or in this case, the instructors, remind the Neuman why they fear the Legion."

Warren couldn't breathe. It was too much, too fast, too overwhelming. The Neuman, so graceful and terrifying a heartbeat ago, looked like paper themselves, shredded by a storm they could never match. His eyes locked on Deck's climbing figure, the pack on his back glowing brighter as he scaled the wing. Whatever came next, Warren realized, was going to tear this battle open in ways even the Neuman hadn't expected.