“Kylus.”

As if answering the name, the upper bays opened. Smaller craft dropped out, diving hard, weapons already spitting light into the basin.

“Move,” Reva said.

She grabbed Lyra and dragged her behind a fractured slab of stone as the ground where they’d stood erupted. Rin rolled toward wreckage, coming up on one knee, sword vibrating as his eyes tracked the descending fighters. Viola disappeared into the terrain, using the chaos to reposition without drawing attention. Arlen hit cover beside Reva, suit already compensating as debris hammered the ground around them.

Above them, the larger ship held position, firing in measured waves that tore the basin apart piece by piece.

Kylus hadn’t come to talk. He’d come to wipe the slate clean.

Reva pressed Lyra closer to cover, keeping her low as another volley carved through the ground nearby.

“Stay down,” she said. “No matter what happens.”

The basin tore itself apart.

Kylus’ ship didn’t hover anymore. It advanced, engines roaring as it dropped closer, turning altitude into dominance. The smaller craft peeled away in coordinated arcs, cutting through the air with practiced aggression, their fire stitching lines across the ground and into Jareth’s defensive perimeter.

Jareth’s crew answered immediately.

Orders were shouted over open comms, voices overlapping, some calm, some cracked with adrenaline. Turrets rotated and fired. Portable shields slammed into place. Someone yelled for med support while another crew member screamed coordinates through clenched teeth. The basin filled with motion, sound, and impact, the kind of chaos that came from crews who’d done this before and expected to survive again.

Then Kylus entered the field.

His personal craft punched through the dust and smoke like it had a right to be there, hull scarred and ugly, built for punishment rather than elegance. The moment its ramp blew open, Kylus launched himself out, hitting the ground running as if gravity owed him favors.

Energy fire slammed into him mid-stride.

It didn’t slow him.

His armor absorbed the first hit, redirected the second, and the third glanced off at an angle that sent molten debris skidding across the ground. Kylus didn’t break pace. He raised his weapon and fired while moving, shots precise and brutal, tearing through cover and bodies alike.

One of Jareth’s gunners went down screaming as Kylus closed the distance and finished it at arm’s length. Another tried to flank him and caught a blade through the torso before he realized Kylus had already turned.

“That’s him,” Rin said quietly from cover. “So that’s… the power of ‌Jupiter’s strongest mercenary.”

“In a way… he looks like Xavier…” Arlen muttered.

Reva glared at her in response.

“I mean…” Arlen cleared her throat and corrected herself. “His confidence and all that. Xavier is also nonchalant in fights, no matter how many numbers he is facing.”

Kylus’ assistant landed beside him moments later.

She moved like she’d trained next to him long enough to know where he would be without looking. Her weapon fire overlapped his advance, suppressing angles before Jareth’s crew could exploit them. When Kylus pushed forward, she covered. When he stopped to engage, she shifted position, snapping commands and firing without missing a beat.

They didn’t shout orders to each other. They didn’t need to.

Across the basin, Jareth’s people rallied.

“Hold the line!”

“Don’t let him through!”

“Focus fire, now!”

They poured everything into slowing Kylus, but it felt like throwing weight at a storm. Every time they thought they’d boxed him in, he broke through another layer, tearing into their formation with relentless pressure. His presence warped the fight around him, pulling attention, resources, and panic wherever he moved.

Reva stayed low behind cover, Lyra pressed close, Iria tucked in tight. The ground shook hard enough that grit rained down on them, every impact vibrating through bone and breath.

Rin glanced back at them, then toward the fight. His knuckles were white around the hilt of his sword.

“We can’t just sit here,” he said. “If we jump in, we can tip it. At least draw some of the heat.”

Viola’s eyes stayed on the battlefield. She tracked Kylus’ movement, the assistant’s positioning, and the way Jareth’s perimeter was collapsing in uneven chunks.

“It wouldn’t change anything,” she said. “Fighting won’t fix this. Hiding won’t fix it either.”

Rin frowned. “So what, we wait to die?”

“We wait to survive,” Viola replied. “Running isn’t an option. Neither is playing hero.”

Requiem had been silent until then. He watched Lyra, then Iria, then the fight tearing itself apart in front of them.

“We stay hidden,” he said. “Our job is here.”

Reva looked at him. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Requiem said. “Jareth chose this fight. We don’t get to turn it into ours. We keep Lyra and Iria alive. That’s the line.”

“But Jareth is being attacked because of us. He helped us, so we should help him too. If it wasn’t for us, they wouldn’t be fighting Kylus. HIs crew members wouldn’t be dying like that.”

Another explosion ripped through the basin. Someone screamed from Jareth’s side, the sound cutting off abruptly as debris collapsed where they’d been standing.

Kylus roared something unintelligible as he tore through another position, his crew answering with war cries that echoed across the basin.

Jareth’s people shouted back. They didn’t break.

They bent, scattered, regrouped, and bled, but they didn’t fold. His crew moved with the kind of coordination that came from surviving too many bad jobs together. Portable shield emitters slammed into the ground and flared to life. Heavy weapons were dragged into firing positions. Drones lifted off in tight spirals, feeding targeting data and jamming Kylus’ support craft wherever they could.

The basin turned into a kill zone.

Kylus drove straight through it.

A plasma burst detonated near his feet, throwing stone and fire into the air. He came out of it already firing, his weapon barking in short, violent bursts that punched through cover and men alike. One of Jareth’s engineers tried to deploy a mine grid ahead of him. Kylus vaulted the first charge, kicked the second into the third, and let the chain reaction tear a trench through the ground behind him.

“Push!” someone shouted from Jareth’s side.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep