More Stygian poured in—servant-class and beast-class alike—emerging from hidden alcoves and broken maintenance shafts.
"Contact with Stygians—approximately a dozen," Gilbert reported over comms.
"Hold formation!" Lieutenant Edward's voice barked through their earpieces. "They have us surrounded!"
Gilbert dropped to one knee, serpent rifle firing in tight bursts while his sidearm punched through beast-flesh in tandem. Mist erupted from the first servant as a round tore through its head and neck. Still, the Stygians surged forward.
The beasts bounded on all fours—off walls, across shattered rooftops, even leaping overhead. The servants followed with unsettling grace, shifting orbs in their hands morphing into blade-arms, warhammers, and other deadly shapes.
"Right flank! They're trying to outmaneuver us!" Vivian shouted. Her shotgun roared, blasting incendiary rounds into a pack of charging beasts. Fire bloomed, and three of them went down in a mess of limbs, smoke, and screams.
Near the edge of their formation, Adam slammed a stun grenade into a side corridor. The concussive blast sent several servants tumbling, their weapons scattered across scorched tile.
For a second—they held the line.
Then, one landed right in front of Gilbert.
Its muscles twitched violently beneath plated flesh, visor glowing dim blue. Black fluid leaked from tubes embedded in its shoulders, hissing steam where they touched the ground. It raised a serrated blade—arcs of electricity dancing along the weapon's edge—as it lunged.
BANG!
The servant collapsed mid-swing, visor shattered and brain matter painting the floor.
Behind it stood Kean, breathing hard, his sidearm still smoking.
"You good?" he asked.
Gilbert nodded, exhaling. "Yeah." He picked up his dropped pistol with a gloved hand, the other still resting near the hilt of his sword. "Thanks."
Kean was already moving, voice dry, eyes alert. "Think you can manage the rest, Will?"
William didn't answer with words—his shield snapped into place with a magnetic hum as he charged into the fray. His new Earthdrake-type power armor gave him brute strength far beyond the others. With a sweeping arc of his spear, he lifted several Styx into the air like skewered meat, their bodies cracking against the reinforced shaft before hitting the ground in twitching heaps.
As the remaining Stygians fell, the surviving servants hissed and retreated into the deeper levels of the hub—vanishing into maintenance corridors and shadowed ductways.
Kean moved instinctively to pursue.
"Kean, hold. Stay with the squad," Gilbert ordered sharply, cutting off the chase. He tapped his comms. "Edward, this is Knight 141. Our flank is temporarily secure."
The channel crackled, interference from the station distorting the signal. Static flared before Edward's voice came through, tight but audible:
"Copy. Continue on route. Other squads are moving into position."
Gilbert's HUD lit up—flickering dots representing allied squads advancing through adjacent corridors. The full push toward the industrial zone had begun.
They advanced through the commercial district, arriving at the habitation ring. The station's lights had gone dark—total blackout, save for the sporadic flicker of failing emergency beacons. Bodies drifted lifeless in the air, weightless, suspended in eerie silence. The gravity systems here had failed.
Gilbert halted at the corridor's threshold, surveying the void ahead.
"Check your suits," he ordered, voice level but firm over comms. "This will be our first engagement in zero-gravity conditions. Don't make basic mistakes."
He holstered his pistol, drawing both swords instead. His serpent rifle remained mounted but twitched in sync with his neural uplink—mirroring his heightened alert state.
They opened the airlock and drifted into the corridor beyond. Some activated their flight stabilizers, guiding themselves downward before their magnetic boots clamped onto the floor with metallic thuds.
Gilbert remained above, his flight unit set to low power. He floated just off the deck, eyes scanning, preferring the mobility that came with altitude in zero-gravity combat.
The silence was deafening, broken only by the occasional hiss of air filters and the faint whir of stabilizers. Gilbert's eyes swept the area—any shadow could be a threat, any still form a trap.
"Knight 141, lead your squad to Zone C. Dr. Vos was last confirmed somewhere in that sector," Edward instructed, his voice crackling faintly through the comms. "Knight 359, take your squad to Zone A—other members of her research team were housed there. Knight 392, track the fleeing Servants and keep them occupied."
As he spoke, a topographic map flickered onto Gilbert's HUD, highlighting their designated sector in muted red.
"Roger," Gilbert responded.
"Got it," Aisling added.
"Mhm," came Askel's low grunt.
"Okay, we got the luck of the draw," Gilbert said, relaying their mission as he and the two other squads broke formation. The remaining seven squads from the platoon swept the surrounding zones in a tight, systematic pattern.
Gilbert's squad arrived at the section of Zone C marked on their HUD. They began searching the housing unit by housing unit, clearing rooms with precision. Occasionally, the flicker of shadows or the echo of tremors within the hub had them tightening grips on their weapons, muzzles snapping to attention.
"Found it," Kean's voice cracked over comms. He stepped out of a unit, waving the team over.
The squad grouped up on his position as Gilbert entered the room, flashlight mounted on his helmet illuminating the space. The apartment was smaller than expected for someone of Dr. Vos's reputation—just a living area, kitchenette, bathroom, and single bedroom. Papers were strewn across the floor, filled with symbols and scribbled notations Gilbert couldn't decipher.
Then he spotted the home terminal.
"Anastasia, there's a terminal in here. See if you can access it—look for her research," Gilbert said.
"On it," she replied, kneeling beside the unit. She pulled several tools from her pouch and began connecting wires with practiced speed. Moments later, she frowned.
"There's no power."
"Nothing you can do?" Gilbert asked, stepping closer.
"I could hotwire one of your suits to the terminal—draw power directly from your core," Anastasia explained. "But whoever I use won't be able to fight if something goes wrong."
Gilbert considered for a second. "Kean. Get wired up."
"What? Why me?" Kean protested.
Anastasia grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the desk. "Stop complaining."
"Yeah, sorry, Kean," Vivian said with a sly grin. "But you are the weakest combatant."
Chen Mei chuckled softly. "She's not wrong."
"Seriously? You too, Mei?" Kean groaned, slumping into the chair.
Gilbert shook his head, hiding a smirk. "Everyone else—watch positions. William, Adam—you're with me. Let's secure the perimeter."
Inside the dim apartment, the only light came from the faint blue glow of Kean's powered suit, now tethered by cords and converters to the terminal. Sparks hissed briefly as Anastasia rerouted energy into the system, fingers moving quickly across her diagnostic slate.
"Systems live," she said. "Decrypting now… there's heavy encryption, but it's Federation pattern—military-grade. This isn't just engineering schematics. It's cross-spec research. Armor resonance patterns, integrated neural feedback loops… and Stygian quantum link energy transfer?"
Gilbert narrowed his eyes, stepping in closer. "How deep does this go, what even is that last one?"
"Deep," Anastasia murmured. "She wasn't just studying them. She was integrating their tech. Quantum link is how the Stygian can transfer energies from their cores to the orbs you see floating around them even across long distances. Most versions we've seen were diluted—short-ranged only. This might be—"
She stopped. Her fingers froze mid-motion.
The lights dimmed again.
Kean looked around. "Uh… was that you?"
"No," Anastasia said slowly. "That wasn't—"
BOOM.
The wall behind them buckled outward with a thunderclap of force, dust and sparks spilling through the fractures. Before anyone could react, the front wall exploded inward, a forcefield shimmering and crackling in its wake. The squad was flung back—Gilbert slammed into a wall, armor dampening the impact just enough.
Then silence. Dust floated lazily in the low gravity.
Through the torn-open wall, a tall figure stepped inside.
He was elegant, but wrong. His armor was obsidian laced with a dull crimson hue, shaped not by practicality but ceremony. Long robes draped from armored shoulders, untouched by gravity. From his back, a spine-like rig of twitching rods pulsed with power. His face was hidden beneath a mask—white porcelain split with vertical red markings, six narrow eye-lenses glowing like a predator in the dark.
The Seneschal.
Voice modulated like an old cathedral bell, he spoke—not loud, but every word dripped with authority.
"You dare trespass in the holdings of House Sinclairei? Thieves, rats in blessed ruins." The phrase echoed faintly across their comms.
William was the first to recover as he stepped forward, shield raised, spear crackling. "A Stygian noble-class. Get ready."
"No…" Gilbert whispered, eyes narrowing. "Not noble. The head of the servants. That's the Seneschal."
Kean's voice cracked in comms. "You mean the thing that commands the other servants?"
The Seneschal tilted his head. "You will surrender the data. Or I will tear it from your corpses."
Without waiting, Gilbert barked, "Defensive positions! Ana, get that data downloaded now! Mei—stay by the terminal!"
Energy surged. The Seneschal raised one hand. Reality bent—the room twisted with a sudden gravitic shift, pinning everyone down for a split second.
Then the fight began.
"This Knight 141, we have located Dr. Vos's housing unit and got attacked in the process of retrieving it requesting backup we have a Seneschal," Gilbert shouted as he gripped his swords tightly.
"Roger that Knight 141 reinforcement on the way," came Edwards' reply.
Gilbert's flight unit flared to life as he streaked towards the Seneschal
"William, Vivian—you're with me. Adam, cover the entrance."
The area became chaotic.
Gilbert's flight unit surged, propelling like a dart through the low gravity. His twin swords ignited—edge coils crackling with electricity, another growing crimson. He aimed straight for the Senechal's midline.
But the Seneschal did not move. Not at first.
At the last second, his robes flared unnaturally, and with a sharp tilt of his masked head, a barrier snapped into existence—hexagonal patterns shimmering like glass. Gilbert struck hard, both blades crashing into the shield. The recoil shuddered through his armor into his arms.
"Flank him!" he barked as he rebounded away, flipping mid-air.
William charged next, his medium shield absorbing a ripple of kinetic backlash as he engaged from the left. Vivian was on the right—her scattergun lighting up the chamber with fire blasts meant to suppress. Each shot detonated like thunder in the enclosed space, as she tried to keep the Seneschal boxed in.
Still, the figure didn't buckle. He moved like flowing mercury, sidestepping William's charge with impossible grace. His arm shot forward—metal rods from his spine extending. The rods hummed with energy before launching like spears.
"Move!" Gilbert shouted.
Two rods missed. One grazed William's shoulder, knocking him into a wall with a grunt. Another slammed into the cabinet behind Vivian, exploding into metal shrapnel. Vivian spun away, bleeding pressure from her suit's thigh.
"Anastasia, how long?" Gilbert shouted.
At the rear of the apartment, Anastasia's voice remained calm despite the storm. "Thirty percent download."