The needs of the many...
Aiden squeezed off a few rounds, the 14mm slugs of his sniper rifle punching through droids and tearing them apart in sprays of sparks and steel. He dropped to a knee beside the next man calling for a medic, hands already moving by instinct. But when his eyes found the wound, he froze. The bolt had torn through the artery. Shock, blood loss, and heat had claimed the man before Aiden had even reached him.
One of the replacements. Barely in his twenties, by the look of him. Just another boy who had believed in the cause. Now dead on a planet far from home, before he'd even had the chance to become one of them. Aiden paused, brushing his hand over the man's face. He closed the boy's eyes and whispered a prayer.
"Peace be upon you, brother. Rest now. We'll take it from here."
The scream of another man tore him back to the moment.
"RPG!"
The rocket streaked from an emplacement ahead, and time slowed. Aiden's augmentations kicked in, sharpening every detail into brutal clarity. No time to think. No time to hope John or another droid caught it. He raised his rifle, fired by reflex. The world erupted.
The explosion picked him up, hurled him against a wall, and slammed him into the street in a shower of shrapnel. Pain shot through his ribs, but he forced himself to his feet. Staying down was death. He would not die here. Not while men still needed saving.
The fog rolled in then, heavy and wrong. His sensors screamed warnings: corrupted, unnatural. Aiden tapped the seal at his collar and sent the non-verbal command across the network.
Seal your combat skins.
The battlefield dimmed as the haze swallowed sight. To Aiden, it was like falling into clouds, if clouds could kill you. He tapped another command, his visor glowing red as alternate systems came online. Radar outlines painted the world back into being. And in that crimson wash, he saw them.
Fast. Too fast. Deliberate.
Commando droids.
He drew his sword, feeling its hum sync to the energy coursing through his own body. One, two, three… four of them. A team. He signaled John with a flick of his hand. The droid adjusted its machine gun, barrel tracking.
Closer… closer…
The first droid fell in an instant, cut down as Aiden's augments surged and his blade cleaved steel. The second ripped apart under John's heavy fire. The last two pressed on, crashing into the man Aiden had just saved.
Aiden met them head-on. One vibroblade locked against his own, the second caught on his bracer. The red cross of his visor burned in the fog as he roared and shoved them back, daring them to come through him.
The droids circled, fast and erratic, trying to split his defense. Aiden's counters were measured, methodical, conserving motion, conserving strength, every swing guided by augments that tracked and predicted their patterns. Seconds stretched. Sparks flew. Then John seized his moment, snatching one by the neck and ripping it clean in half. The last droid staggered as Aiden's parry slid into a brutal riposte, his blade punching through its chest.
Silence. The threat was gone.
Aiden's breath came hard in the mask, but he held the line. Then the ground trembled beneath his boots, a low rumble rolling across the city. His head lifted just in time to see streaks of fire cut across the heavens, cruise missiles, dozens of them, weaving in on jagged paths. Anti-air turrets barked furiously, red bolts stitching the sky. Some warheads burst apart midair in dazzling flares. But most kept coming, juking just enough to slip through the defensive perimeter.
The first impacts shook the city like a titan's hammer. Fireballs blossomed along the avenues as ferrocrete buckled and steel was torn apart. Droid formations vanished in gouts of flame, armor shredded, joints twisted into molten slag. The fog itself seemed to recoil from the blastwaves, pushed back in boiling sheets before rushing in again.
Even through the seals of his combat skin, Aiden felt the shock in his bones. He looked toward the columns of smoke rising higher and higher, and he knew exactly where they had landed. First Platoon had bought them this reprieve with their lives.
He swallowed the bitterness and keyed his comms.
"Third, First, rally on me. We're not done yet."
Shapes converged through the haze: troopers limping but alive, replacements with eyes wide but weapons steady, commandos blackened by smoke but still moving. Bloodied, shaken, but unbroken. Aiden studied them, saw their chests heaving against the miasma's grip, and then saw them grit their teeth and keep formation.
For others, the fog was death. For Wolves, it was cover. The Rift had taught them how to fight in places just like this.
"Two elements forward. Ion charges and repeaters on the point. Snipers, rooftops. Make every shot count."
They moved at once. Wolves melted into alleys and side streets, the city becoming their hunting ground. Droids advancing on the Mandalorian line suddenly erupted in sparks as ion grenades cooked their circuits. A repeater squad cut down an entire column before shifting position under the haze. From above, high-caliber shots punched clean through droidekas, their shields collapsing before the chassis shattered.
The Mandalorians might not know it yet, but the flank was under a ferocious assault.
And Athena would see it first. The droids pressing her position staggered as precision fire ripped into their ranks, a droideka's shield vanishing in a spray of sparks before a 14mm round blew through its core. The pressure eased, not gone, but broken just long enough to give Athena a chance to rise, shield in hand, and push back.
Aiden climbed. He vaulted rubble, scaled a shattered balcony, and dragged himself up the bones of a collapsed tower until the battlefield sprawled beneath him. The fog was thick, but his visor painted it in crimson outlines. Every hostile target appeared in his scope, and one by one he began erasing them, a heavy gunner here, a squad leader there, a tank commander lining up a shot only to be punched off his feet by a 14mm round. Every pull of the trigger bought another heartbeat for his men.
Then he saw him.
Through the storm, a shape moved with unnatural calm. Sword in hand, the miasma wrapped around him like a cloak. Hadrian Malvern. The heir of Serenno. The shadow behind the fog.
Aiden settled his breathing, exhaled slow, and held the crosshairs on the man's chest. He didn't fire, not yet. But in that quiet moment, as the Wolves tore into the flank and the Mandalorians held the line, Aiden marked his quarry.
The hunt had begun.
