The King Raven arrived without ceremony, which meant it arrived like everything else in the Pendulum Wars. It came in on a low approach over Lakar, rotors chopping the air into a steady, ugly rhythm. The yard soldiers stopped what they were doing and looked up anyway. New airframes drew attention, even from men who pretended nothing impressed them anymore.
It settled onto the pad with a controlled drop. Dust spiralled outward. The side ramp lowered, and the crew chief jumped down and began rattling off checklists to nobody in particular. The Raven looked larger than the transports I had ridden so far, longer and broader, built to carry more than a squad and a prayer. The paint was new enough to catch light. The hull had the clean look of something that had not yet learned what shrapnel could do.
Adam approached it with Collins and the rest of the squad, moving with that deliberate pace he used now. The brace around his leg looked like a mechanical argument. It wrapped his thigh and calf, straps tight, metal segments locked at angles that kept the joint from being asked to do too much. It also made him look more stubborn, which seemed redundant.
The crew chief saluted. Adam returned it with minimal motion. Then Adam looked at the squad.
"This is ours for the op," he said. "No heroics on the ride in. Save them for the target."
Collins made a small sound that might have been agreement. Baz checked his kit again, hands moving with ritual precision. Salton stared at the aircraft as if it might vanish if he blinked wrong. Cho and Bai stood quietly, already elsewhere in their heads.
I climbed the ramp last.
Inside, the space felt unreal. Benches ran along the walls with harness points and storage racks. The lighting was dim and steady. The air smelled of clean machine oil and fresh insulation, which was the closest thing to comfort I had found on Sera. More importantly, the compartment had enough headroom that I did not have to fold myself into the shape of a regret.
I sat with my back against the bulkhead and stretched my legs out. The armour creaked softly as plates settled. My knees did not touch my chest. My shoulders did not scrape the canvas. The sensation of having room to exist felt like a luxury I did not trust.
Adam sat nearby, brace extended, cane stowed. He rested his hands on his lap and stared at nothing, which meant he stared at a plan. He did not speak much on the load-in. He let the aircraft take the noise burden.
The ramp lifted. The Raven rose.
The world outside fell away in vibration and pressure changes. The rotor beat became constant. The cabin shook in small, controlled tremors. The squad clipped harnesses and adjusted straps. Collins checked his detonator satchel twice. Sommers was not on this one; the roster had changed. This was Adam's push, not Hoffman's, and Adam did not drag the same pieces into every job.
The flight lasted long enough for my body to decide it had earned sleep.
It surprised me. I expected adrenaline to keep my eyes open. Instead, the steady vibration and the simple fact that I was not cramped into a corner made my thoughts blur. The system stayed quiet. No prompts. No warnings. Just the dull presence of potential sitting in my bones.
I drifted off with my head against the bulkhead, hearing voices dimly through the engine noise. Adam speaking low. Collins answering shorter. Baz saying almost nothing. The kind of pre-assault talk that did not waste words on comfort.
When I woke, the cabin felt different.
The hum stayed the same, but the tone outside had shifted. The light filtering through the side ports had darkened. Clouds pressed low and heavy, turning the sky into a lid. The Raven dipped, banking into a descent that tightened my stomach for a fraction of a second.
Adam looked over at me. His eyes flicked once to confirm I was awake, then returned to the ports.
"We are close," he said.
The Raven dropped beneath the cloud layer, and the world outside became a hard landscape of dark ground and scattered lights. Ahead, a compound rose out of the terrain like a clenched fist. Floodlights marked the perimeter. Structures clustered inside, low buildings, taller comms towers, vehicle sheds, and a central block that looked like a command spine. A fence line wrapped it all with layered obstacles that suggested the UIR had learned to fear raids.
The Raven settled into a landing zone behind a ridgeline, just out of direct sight. The moment the skids touched down, the rear ramp began lowering. Cold air rushed in, sharp and wet. The smell of soil and machinery hit the cabin.
Adam rose first. He moved carefully at the start, then steadied into function. The brace took the burden and kept his face from betraying pain. He grabbed his weapon and looked at the squad.
"Move," he said. "We take the gate. Armour follows through once it is open. We do not stall at the perimeter."
I stood and lifted the Mark 1 Lancer that had been issued to me for this op. It looked almost absurd in my hands, a rifle designed for a normal human frame. I checked the weight anyway. Familiarity mattered. It gave the mind something to hold onto while the body did unnatural things.
We poured out of the Raven and into the dark.
The approach was short and fast. Bai led the path through uneven ground, moving with the same quiet certainty he always had, even when the terrain did not deserve trust. Cho followed closely, eyes on the fence line. Collins stayed near Adam, which looked like a protective habit as much as a tactical choice. Baz and Salton moved on the outer flank, covering angles.
The compound loomed closer. Floodlights swept slowly. The main gate stood ahead with a guard booth and a raised barrier. Two sentries paced near the gate, rifles hanging low.
I raised the Lancer and fired two controlled shots.
The recoil felt small. The rounds punched clean. Both guards dropped before either could shout. The booth light stayed on, indifferent. The barrier stayed up, still expecting procedure.
Collins did not pause. He reached the gate controls and planted a charge where the lock assembly met the frame. He backed off and signalled.
The detonation was sharp and contained. Metal jumped. The gate shuddered and broke inward, sections bending and collapsing into a gap wide enough for vehicles. Smoke poured out in a quick sheet. The compound's alarm finally found its voice, a rising wail that turned the night into something closer to day with the amount of lights which turned on..
Armoured response arrived almost immediately.
COG vehicles surged in from the approach road behind us, engines heavy, headlights off until the last moment. They rolled through the breach in a tight line, infantry following in their wake, boots pounding, rifles up. The assault was not subtle. It did not need to be. Once the gate was gone, the point was to flood the interior faster than the defenders could reposition.
Adam stepped through the breach and raised his weapon. His voice cut through the noise.
"Forwards," he roared.
It did not sound like theatre. It sounded like a man who had decided the only way to stop being shot at was to put the fight inside the enemy's lungs.
The squad followed him.
I followed too, because there was nowhere else to go.
The interior of the compound erupted into movement. UIR soldiers ran from buildings and cover points, forming firing lines behind sandbag nests and vehicle hulks. Muzzle flashes stuttered. Tracers cut the dark in hard angles. The first bursts hit my armour and pinged away. The SPI plates absorbed the impacts with dull insistence. The rounds did not penetrate. They still announced themselves. Every strike was a reminder that someone wanted me to stop existing.
I returned fire in measured bursts, not spraying, not wasting. Each shot felt too easy. The system did not guide my aim. My eyes did. Targets resolved with unfair clarity, even at a distance, even under bad light. UIR soldiers fell back from the gate line as the COG armour pushed through, and the interior began to buckle under the sudden weight of aggression.
I ran past the first row of cover and jumped.
The wall inside the compound was not high, but it was positioned to funnel attackers into a kill lane. That lane was now full of COG infantry and vehicle noses. I took the wall as an inconvenience and cleared it in one movement, landing inside a secondary yard.
For a moment, the UIR soldiers on that side stared.
I understood why. The floodlights caught my armour and turned it into a hard shape. The height did the rest. I looked less like a soldier and more like a piece of equipment that had broken loose and decided to participate.
Then they started shooting again, because shock had a short shelf life.
The rounds hit my plates and skipped. One struck near my shoulder and made my arm jerk. It still did not hurt. It did not slow me down. It only pushed irritation deeper into something that wanted to be answered.
I moved through them, firing, closing distance, forcing them off angles that would have pinned the assault outside the main corridor. I did not count bodies. I counted spaces cleared. I counted threats removed. The difference mattered if you wanted to keep breathing without turning into a monster in your own head.
The battle widened. COG infantry poured deeper. Vehicles rumbled forward, treads and tyres chewing gravel. A tank rolled in and fired once, its shell punching through a low structure and collapsing it into debris that blocked a defensive lane. UIR troops fell back toward the centre of the compound, using buildings as hard cover and trying to form a new line.
Then the push stalled.
Not at the gate. Deeper.
I heard it before I saw it. A heavy, repeating thump and a harsh mechanical whine layered over small-arms fire. The sound of a turret with too much ammunition and enemies to shoot.
I pushed through a side passage and emerged into a broad square inside the compound.
A COG tank lay dead in the open, hull breached, smoke pouring from the engine deck. It had been hit clean and stopped hard. Nearby, infantry hugged cover behind barriers and wreckage, pinned in place by a rocket turret mounted on a reinforced platform. The turret swung in short arcs, spitting rockets and heavy rounds, hammering anything that tried to move. The platform had infantry support clustered around it, using its firepower as a shield for their own.