Yellow Jacket

The world faded in around them as heat shimmer.

Polished black stone beneath their boots, faintly warm as if the sun had sunk into the stone itself. The command spire's observation chamber opened before them like a throne room, vast glass windows gazing out over the towers of Kavros. Cargo lifts screamed past on grav-lines, freight skiffs buzzing like insects between the upper towers. Sunlight burned gold off the highest spires until they blurred into the clouds. It felt endless. Untouchable. Invincible. The city vibrated faintly through their soles, alive with the hum of generators buried deep below and the constant rumble of industry. Out on the horizon, faint glimmers of patrol drones darted like gnats, forming shifting rings of light around the city's airspace.

"You are seated as sub-commanders," Theramoor's voice murmured from nowhere and everywhere, soft and cold. "This is Kavros, one month before the Ash Curtain dropped. You are here to watch the moment they doomed themselves. The outcome you are heading toward is already written, and you will fail as they failed, because they lost this city long before the first shot was fired. Understand that. This was not decided in battle. It was decided here." She let that hang for a beat, then went on, quieter. "A young technician tried to warn command that the Neuman had changed their patterns in a way no one had ever seen before. That they were measuring us. That they were testing our reach. They could have acted. They could have prepared. Instead, they sat back and let it happen."

They sat along the curved gallery wall, silent, while the room hummed with idle conversation and the dry clicking of cooling vents. The air smelled faintly of machine oil and pressed uniforms, and the soft murmur of laughter from the commanders grated against the stillness. Their voices rose and fell like waves on stone, confident and careless, the sound of people who had never felt fear scrape their bones.

At the center table, a thin young man in a grey tech's harness stood rigid, clutching a data pad like it might shield him from what he was about to say. His eyes darted between the commanders as though measuring their patience. Across from him, three field commanders lounged in Legion blacks, confident and bored, their posture loose with the easy arrogance of people who had never once imagined losing. Their uniforms were immaculate, boots mirror-shined, as if the war outside their walls could never touch them.

"Outer patrol recorded deviation," the tech said, voice tight. He tapped a console. A looping line appeared on the holo, highlighted in amber. "Two degrees off their standard arc. Entered Kavros outer airspace for approximately two minutes before resuming their prior course. No response from them. No weapons discharge."

One commander frowned, only faintly, and didn't bother leaning forward. "That's well inside acceptable variance." He sipped from a steaming mug and didn't look at the display again.

"It isn't," the tech replied immediately. "It's too exact. Too clean. They didn't wander. They measured. They were testing our response times."

"Or they had a guidance fault," another commander said with a lazy shrug, lips quirking in a faint smirk. "Even Neuman tech fails sometimes." He leaned back, chair creaking faintly, tone already closing the discussion.

"It doesn't," the tech said, almost desperately now. "Their flight systems are generations ahead of ours. They do not do things accidentally." His voice cracked as he spoke, but he forced the words out, palms slick on the data pad.

The woman in the center leaned back, smiling faintly as though indulging a child. "Two degrees. Two minutes. That's nothing. If they'd gone further, we'd have stopped them. Clearly, they corrected the error." She drummed her fingers lazily on the table's surface, the gesture small but sharp.

"They've never attacked a city this size," the third commander said, leaning forward with a scoff. "They raid small settlements. Small towns. Outlying ports. They won't come for us. Kavros is one of the pillars of the Green Zone. It's too well defended. The Neuman are scavengers. They're afraid of us. They wouldn't dare set foot in this airspace because we'd blow them out of the sky before they ever touched ground." He chuckled and leaned back, arms folding as if the discussion were already beneath him, the smirk never leaving his face.

"Exactly," the woman said. "Don't rile people over nothing."

"They tested the edge of our airspace," the tech said, knuckles white on the data pad. "If you let this go, they will come back. They were seeing how far they could step into the ocean before we noticed they were drinking it."

Laughter rolled around the table, low and dismissive, like distant thunder. One of the commanders actually wiped his eyes, still grinning.

"This is it," Theramoor's voice whispered to the cadets alone, quiet and cold. "The moment it was already over."

"Just so you remember," Isol's voice followed, steady and cutting through the amusement, "they just struck Kyrrabad. They've gotten bolder, more precise, knowing that if they hit fast enough even a city of our size can be caught off guard. They did miscalculate there. A single cloud was not enough to take us or escape, and in their failure, they gave us more than we would have hoped. But Kavros… Kavros was their proof. This was where they showed themselves, they could take any city they wanted, if they came in real force."

The transition was not gentle.

One moment they were in the command spire, surrounded by polished stone and arrogance. The next, the world lurched and split, and they were standing in the open streets of Kavros as the sky screamed.

Fire rolled through the upper spires, peeling their glass skins into molten ribbons that hissed as they fell. Grav-lines dangled in ruins, sparking blue arcs across the street. The towers that had seemed immortal now stood as jagged silhouettes, vomiting smoke into a blackened sky. The air burned their lungs and left a taste of scorched metal on their tongues. Sirens howled through the canyons of broken steel, warbling over the roar of collapsing structures. The ground was slick under their boots, a slurry of spilled synth-fluids, shattered glass, and drifting grey ash. The air was so hot it shimmered, but every breath came cold from the hollow quiet left behind by forty million vanished voices.

"This is Kavros… just after the Curtain fell," Theramoor's voice cut in, distant and hollow. "This squad was the only one to escape. Not survive, escape. They were not stronger. Not faster. They were simply ready when no one else believed they had to be. And even then, they did not walk out untouched. No one walks out of this untouched."

Shapes glided between the ruined towers, pale, membranous forms stretched between elongated limbs, drifting on silent currents. Neuman. Hundreds of them. They moved like a living storm, dipping and banking with eerie precision, shadows cutting through the smoke. Their limbs flexed like boneless wire as they caught thermals off the burning spires, sweeping down on their prey with surgical accuracy. Their bows sang with a soft wet snap, bone-tipped arrows streaking like pale comets through the haze. Screams answered them, and then the screams were cut off, the people vanishing upward into the smoke as the Neuman swept them away. No bodies were left behind, only abandoned clothes, snapped lances, and shattered tools where they had stood seconds earlier. The city wasn't dying; it was being harvested.

"They were friends with the technician you watched in that meeting," Isol said, his voice flat, echoing through the comms feed. "He didn't live to see this. When the city locked down, he knew what was coming. He left a holo-testimonial… then took his own life. He said he would rather die on his own terms than be taken. They found him the day after the meeting, slumped over the console where he recorded his warning."

"They believed him," Theramoor continued. "They prepared. They spent a month quietly stockpiling rations, setting escape points, memorizing the city's sewers. They trained their lungs to endure smoke, their legs to run under load. They cut their sleep-in half. They sharpened their knives. It wasn't enough. Seven of them made it out of the twenty-man squad. Only seven. Of forty million people."

They ducked through a shattered plaza. Burned banners lay twisted in the wreckage, the symbol of the Green Zone drowned in soot. The streets were littered with dropped data pads, cracked helmets, abandoned satchels, the fossil trail of panic frozen in place. Every rooftop was alive with movement, Neuman gliding low, snatching survivors, vanishing into the dark sky. The sounds of struggle were distant and sharp, like bones breaking underwater.

"Command locked the city down before the first strikes," Theramoor said, her tone sharp now. "They thought they were preparing for glory. They believed if they kept the city quiet, locked, and orderly, High Command might choose it as the site of the next Citadel. They thought showing strength meant sealing the gates. They told themselves they were protecting the people from panic. They thought they were keeping secrets from leaking, hiding Neuman movements from rivals. It was arrogance. If they had succeeded… Kavros would almost certainly have become the next Citadel City. They were right. But they weren't."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Her voice lowered to a cold whisper. "They did not see that the Neuman had been calculating everything. Preparing for something far larger than anyone suspected. Even the commanders who laughed at the technician still half-prepared, but they thought it would be a raid. Not this. When they finally realized their mistake, when they tried to open the gates to evacuate, the Curtain was already up. It was too late. They had trapped themselves. They weren't defending their city; they were closing the lid on their own coffin."

A shadow burst from the smoke, gliding down in absolute silence. The cadets dove as the Neuman slammed into the street where they had stood, stone shattering under the impact. Its head was smooth and featureless, its jaw distending with a wet crack as it shrieked, claws sinking into the stone like molten iron. The air seemed to bend around it, and the smell of cold brine rushed in with its hiss.

"They were the last living souls of Kavros," Isol said, his tone cold. "Survivor's guilt consumed them. Some left the Legion. Some took their own lives. Only two lived long enough to give this report. Remember that as you fight. This is not victory. This is escape."

Somewhere far above, another tower split apart in a chain of silent explosions, toppling into the streets below. The shockwave hit them like a wall of knives, lifting them off their feet and hurling them through the dust.

"Fight," Theramoor said. "Or run. There is nothing left to save."

Class One listened to the briefing from the squad commander of the last survivors of Kavros. The plan was simple, if brutal. They just needed to reach the sewer system and follow it all the way to the external drainage conduit that led to the power plant outside the city. It was unmanned and never designed for human traversal, narrow, slick, and half-collapsed, but it was the only route with a chance of slipping past the feeding storm overhead.

Neuman possessed an inherent superiority complex. They would not lower themselves to hunt the rats of a city. That arrogance was their blind spot, and the only reason this plan had even a fraction of a chance. But arrogance only went so far. If the Neuman saw that someone was trying to trick them, if they sensed resistance, they would hunt. They would swarm. That was why only seven of the original twenty had survived.

A wing had noticed them. It hunted them methodically, driving them deeper into the sewers. According to the report, the survivors had even encountered a high-positioning clan member of Clan Nysari in person, the same clan that commanded the entire flight over Kavros. The report suggested something strange: not all of them had escaped through skill or luck. It seemed like they were let go.

The survivor's debrief suggested the Neuman had spared them deliberately, to make sure the story reached the other Green zone cities. To remind the humans of their place. That humanity were cattle, and cattle did not rebel. The Neuman would care for them, raise them, tend their cities like ranches… until the day they were ready to harvest them. Then they would be taken. Fed upon. Consumed.

Theramoor's voice carried through the chamber, steady and sharp. "Understand this. This part is not history. This is reconstruction. There are no recordings of what happened here with the squadron. Only the fragmented reports of the two survivors who lived long enough to tell it. We have rebuilt their path as best as we can, to give you an experience that is as close to reality as possible. But reality is worse."

"You have lances. A few of you will have knives. That is all. There are no Imperators. No backup. No extraction points. The squad you are walking in the boots of were not Legionnaires. They were enforcers. City guards. They took leave from duty when their friend, took his own life. He left them his final notes. He told them the Neuman flight patterns returned once a month. He warned them that if this was a test, then the real attack would come within that cycle. He told them to run if it began."

Theramoor's voice dropped. "He knew the lockdown had already started. He knew he could not leave. He said he would not burden them. He gave them his warning… and then removed himself from their path."

Class One started moving immediately.

Their first real interaction with the simulation came in the form of a Legion barricade, a wall of armored plating, sandbag lines, and watch towers looming over the streets. Searchlights swept the ruins like tired eyes, catching sparks off distant collapsing towers. It should have been impossible to breach without drawing attention, but it wasn't as difficult as they expected. They weren't running away from the battle. They were running toward it. And no one ever did that.

The soldiers at the barricade were fully armed and sharp-eyed, real Legion troops, veterans of a war they were already losing. Their armor was scorched and dented, their movements clipped and mechanical from exhaustion. Their lances tracked the cadets for a heartbeat as they approached. If Class One had been unarmed, they would have been stopped. If they had been coming from the direction of the fighting, they would have been stopped. If they had hesitated, or slowed, or shown fear, they would have been stopped.

But they were armed and moving straight toward the danger with purpose. The Legion soldiers let them pass. No one sane ran toward a slaughter. The troops didn't have time to question madness when they had deserters to shoot and civilians to corral. One of them muttered something about ghosts as Class One disappeared into the smoke.

They slipped through, past the barricade, and dropped into a junction point that opened into the sewers. The grate came away with a shriek of rusted metal, flakes of oxidized iron snowing down, and the stench hit them like a wall. It wasn't just rot. It was the dense, chemical reek of human runoff gone rancid; a sour ammonia tang layered over mold and sewage.

The sound hit next.

There were voices down there already, high-pitched laughter, broken by the sharp twang of Neuman bows. Whistling speech, fast and soft, laced with an eerie rhythmic lilt, too fluid and melodic to follow. It rose and fell like a song with no melody, weaving through the dripping dark.

Class One didn't hesitate. They plunged into the filth. Rebreathers whispered faintly as they submerged, swimming through the rank slurry to hide their scent and their motion. The stench was thick enough to burn their eyes, but the rebreathers let them stay under, invisible, the current dragging them like corpses through the dark. Bits of debris and congealed refuse scraped against their armor as they drifted past.

They slid around the first bend, and froze.

Ahead, in a dim halo of gutter light leaking from a maintenance shaft, two Neuman crouched over something. A young woman. Her body hung limp between them, still twitching. They were cutting her apart with long, thin knives, carving strips from her while she whimpered weakly. One of them pressed a blade through her ribs as if sectioning meat, slow and deliberate, while the other trilled to it in that lilting whistle-language. She gasped once before the larger one finally opened her throat with a clean slice. They were eating her alive. The smell of iron bloomed through the damp, so sharp it cut through even the sewer.

The cadets clustered in the dark water, voices low and tight over their comms. The tension knotted through the bond between them, hearts hammering out of sync. Then Jurpat and Wesley surged from the muck like knives, silent and sudden, dragging the Neuman back into the water and opening their throats with twin silver arcs.

The bodies spasmed, convulsed, and sank.

Theramoor's voice cut across the comms. "That is the first recorded deviation. The original squad turned back when they reached this point. You chose not to."

Isol followed, voice flat. "Just so you are aware: Neuman can smell the blood of their own. Even here. Even under this stench. They will come. They will investigate. They will be angry. The scent of their dead lingers, and it is nothing like human blood."

Jurpat and Wesley shoved the corpses deep into the current, trying to hide the spreading crimson, but it only smeared like oil. The smell rose. Somewhere far off, a soft whistle echoed through the pipes, distant, faint, and unmistakably Neuman.

Theramoor again: "This may be where the timeline begins to break. Good luck. If you reach the plant alive, I will count it as a victory. The original squad were barely trained. You are Legion. You have no excuse."

They had moved into a cistern that apparently led directly to the power plant, if they could get through the reinforced grate sealing it. It was their one chance, the only route that didn't lead straight into known Neuman patrol zones. The only issue was the grate itself. It was heavy, industrial, and cutting through it would make noise. A lot of it.

And they were being hunted.

So, they set up for an assault.

Fenn and Vaeliyan were given the Neuman bows scavenged from the two they had killed. They were the best shots in Class One, and Neuman bows were almost completely silent, little more than a muted thrum when loosed. The arrows were tipped with a fast-acting neurotoxin, if they landed a clean hit, the toxin would paralyze a Neuman in seconds. It was far quicker than lances. Flechette fire wasn't loud, but it wasn't silent either, and it took far too long to bring a Neuman down unless you shredded them point-blank. The goal wasn't to kill. The goal was to escape. The arrows gave them that chance.

If they could set up a kill box, they might be able to bottleneck the incoming hunters, cut through the grate, and vanish before the rest of the swarm descended on them.

It wasn't nearly as difficult as the original survivors had it. Their route had taken nearly an hour longer to reach this same cistern, during which they'd been hounded by multiple Neuman patrols scouring the sewers. Class One had bypassed all of that, but it meant they were cutting a new exit, one the Neuman wouldn't expect.

The Neuman didn't want to be here. Not really. They preferred the open sky, the rush of air under their glides, the clean arcs of their hunts. Down here they were forced to pick through filth, to interrogate fleeing officials for the hidden escape routes the civilians might be using. The ones who answered quickly were granted a clean death. The ones who didn't became part of the feast. And by feast, they didn't mean corpses.

They meant live food.

The sound of feet echoed through the tunnels, soft and quick. A dozen, maybe more, closing fast.

Vaeliyan's eyes widened as realization hit. Isol had warned them: Neuman could smell the blood of their own. It wasn't just the blood in the water from the kills, it was the blood on the knives Jurpat and Wesley had used. The blades were sheathed, but the scent would be everywhere.

They had made a mistake.

"Throw the knives," Vaeliyan hissed. "Now. As far as you can down current. Sheaths too. Get them off you."

Jurpat and Wesley yanked the belts from their waists, fumbling in sudden panic. The smell was invisible but deadly, a signal fire only the enemy could see.

"Faster," Vaeliyan barked. "Do it now!"

They hurled the knives and sheaths into the sewage, vanishing into the dark flow. The squad pressed low into the water, rebreathers sealing over their mouths, sinking beneath the surface like corpses.

The footsteps were close now. Very close.

They waited, hidden in the filth, as the Neuman swept into the cistern. If they passed, they would let them pass. If they stopped, if they hesitated even for a breath, Class One would strike first.