Chapter Text
Four years ago
Death in the Fourth Sector didn't smell of incense or fading white lilies. As a child, hiding in his late mother's library, Mydei often flipped through old books with engravings where heroes died beautifully and nobly, but reality proved far more prosaic and vile.
Here, death stank of burnt cordite that scratched at the throat, of acrid chemicals from ruptured droid power cells, and of wet, rotting rust. Only one human scent mixed into this heavy, metallic bouquet - the pungent smoke of cheap tobacco that Hephaestion, the stubborn bastard, was trying to light under the pouring rain.
"Drop it," Mydei rasped, sliding his back down the concrete wall of the semi-destroyed factory workshop. "You'll cough up your lungs long before you get any nicotine."
"It's a matter of principle, Cap," Hephaestion replied, flicking the wet wheel of his lighter once again. "If I’m going to croak in this hole, I want to die with smoke in my lungs, not the smell of Black Tide shit."
Mydei chuckled, but the smile came out crooked, looking more like a snarl. His face felt tight with a crust of dirt and dried foreign blood. The left pauldron of his armor had been shredded by a shrapnel hit, and now every movement echoed with a dull, aching pain in his collarbone. But pain was good. Pain meant he was still alive.
Outside, beyond a meter of reinforced concrete, the wind howled and metal screeched. The Black Tide was assaulting. Again.
It wasn’t a battle. It was a slaughter. Their company was trapped in a "kettle" near Height 107. For three days, they had held on by the skin of their teeth, stimulants, and pure alpha rage. But the ammo was running out, while the black, faceless droids of the Tide were not. They flowed through the ruins of the industrial zone like an oil slick, consuming light and life.
"Center, answer Vanguard," Mydei pressed the PTT button on his radio for the umpteenth time. The connection crackled, drowning in static - enemy jammers were working at full capacity. "Center, fuck, do you hear me?!"
"I hear you, Vanguard," the staff coordinator's voice broke through the interference. A clean, calm, indifferent voice of a man sitting in a warm bunker three hundred kilometers away, drinking coffee. "Report status."
"Status is a total shitshow!" Mydei barked. "The perimeter is breached in two places. I have twelve 'heavies', and enough ammo for ten minutes of suppressive fire. They’ve brought up walkers. We need support. Air! Immediately! Grid 7-2. Scorch this sector, or we’ll be overrun!"
A pause hung in the air. The kind Mydei hated most. A pause where the mathematics of war were calculated: was it worth wasting kerosene and missiles on a bunch of dead men?
"Negative, Vanguard," the voice finally said. "There is a storm warning in your grid. Low cloud cover, severe turbulence. Plus high density of enemy AA. The risk of losing aircraft is unacceptable."
Mydei felt rage - a hot, red veil - clouding his vision.
"Unacceptable?!" he roared, overloading the mic. "But the loss of an entire company is acceptable to you?! There are living people here, you staff rats! Does my father know about this order?"
"The order is approved by Sector Command, Captain Mydei. Hold your ground. Help will come... later. Out."
Click. Silence. Only the static noise, sounding like shifting sand.
Mydei slammed his armored fist into the wall. Concrete crumbs showered onto the floor.
"Bastards," he exhaled. "Written off. They just wrote us off. 'Non-flying weather'. May they choke on their coffee."
Hephaestion finally succeeded - the cigarette glowed. He took a deep drag and held it out to Mydei.
"Well, at least you won't have to talk to your father. Ever again," he noted philosophically. "Always look for the upside, Mydei."
Mydei took the cigarette, inhaling. The smoke was bitter, but it slightly dulled the desire to kill his own side.
"How many grenades do we have left?" he asked efficiently.
"Two bundles. And one charge of plastid."
"Great. When they breach - we blow the support pillars. We’ll bury ourselves along with those tin cans. We’ll build a fucking monument to remember us by."
Something boomed outside. Close. The ground shuddered, dust falling from the ceiling. The sound of walkers - a heavy, rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum - was getting closer. Spider-droids were already scratching at the outer plating of the pillbox like a swarm of metallic rats.
Mydei gripped his rifle, checking the last magazine.
"Everyone get ready!" he shouted to his men sitting in the dark. "Don't let them take you alive! Take as many as you can with you!"
The soldiers silently clicked their bolts. The smell of fear was almost gone - it had burned out over three days. Only cold, angry determination remained.
"Incoming," Hephaestion said, aiming his barrel at the entrance.
A shadow appeared in the opening. Black, sleek, with a red sensor-eye. The first droid.
Mydei reacted instantly. A short burst - three shots at point-blank range. The droid jerked, its sensor went dark, and the carcass collapsed, blocking the entrance.
But others were climbing over it.
"Fire!" Mydei roared.
His fighters opened aimed fire. Muzzle flashes lit up the workshop with stroboscopic light. Droids fell, but there were too many of them.
Mydei was changing his magazine when his headset, silent for the last five minutes, suddenly came alive.
But it wasn't HQ. And it wasn't enemy interception.
Through the crackle of interference, through the howl of jammers and the roar of battle, a voice broke through.
"...Visual on you, Infantry."
Mydei froze for a fraction of a second, slapping the mag into the receiver. The voice was strange. It didn't sound like any voice Mydei had heard in the army. There was no hysteria, no command bark, no exhaustion. It was... young. Very young. And yet it sounded cold and detached, while heavy static distorted the timbre, turning it into a digital ghost.
"Who is this?" Mydei growled, opening fire again at the creatures climbing through the breach. "Get off the frequency!"
"Don't twitch, Captain," the voice replied. Suddenly, there was a light, almost mocking note in it. "And for the love of all that is holy, tell your boys to keep their heads down. It's about to get loud."
"HQ canceled the sortie!" Mydei shouted, ducking from a return burst of plasma that struck the wall above his head. "AA is active! Get out, you idiot, you'll get shot down!"
"HQ looks at maps, I'm looking at you. Adjustment received. Engaging."
In the next second, the world ceased to exist.
First came the sound - not the roar of engines, but a sharp, piercing whistle, as if the sky were being torn in half by giant shears. Through the low leaden clouds that HQ had called "non-flying", a shining streak of lightning crashed down.
A fighter jet dove out of the clouds at an unthinkable angle, its belly almost grazing the ruined factory chimneys. It was so low that Mydei, looking out the embrasure, managed to make out the sleek, predatory contours of a standard, dark-gray fuselage blending with the rain and smoke.
It was suicide. The Tide's AA should have turned the impudent fool into a sieve. Anti-aircraft tracers reached for him like tentacles of fire.
But the pilot was insane.
He didn't dodge. He danced. The machine spun on its axis, letting the burst pass by, and released a fan of thermal flares, turning the gray sky into a festive firework display. And following the flares, missiles tore from the pylons.
Four impacts merged into one.
The earth jumped. The shockwave hit the pillbox like a sledgehammer, knocking the air out of their lungs. Outside, hell broke loose. Thermobaric charges scorched the square in front of the pillbox, turning the advancing droids and walkers into puddles of molten metal and slag. The Black Tide choked on its own fire.
Mydei coughed, shaking pieces of plaster off himself. His ears were ringing, but through the ringing, he heard the roar of an engine going into afterburner.
"Clear!" Hephaestion shouted. He was white with concrete dust, blood trickling from his ear - concussion - but his rifle still pointed at the entrance. "Finish off the survivors!"
Mydei's fighters, taking advantage of the enemy's confusion, opened fire on the crippled droids twitching convulsively among the craters.
Mydei rushed to the embrasure again.
Where a minute ago there had been an armada of death, there was now a smoking, scorched bald patch. Jeweler's work. Surgical precision. The bombs had landed twenty meters from their position, but not a single piece of shrapnel had flown inside.
The fighter was already going vertical, piercing the clouds like a needle through fabric. It flashed a silver wing in farewell and dissolved into the gray gloom.
Mydei’s trembling hands found the headset button.
"Hey!" he rasped, feeling his heart hammering somewhere in his throat. "Bird! Do you hear me?"
Silence. Only the fading roar of turbines.
"Who are you, damn it?!" Mydei yelled, forgetting regulations and subordination. "State your callsign! I'll find you, you son of a bitch! Do you hear?! I'll dig you out from under the ground and buy you the best whiskey in this rotting world! Who are you?!"
A second. Two. Static.
And then the voice returned. It was quieter now, as if coming from a great height, but still just as frighteningly calm and slightly mocking.
"The one who likes a clear sky," the unknown pilot said. "Good luck, Infantry. Don't get hit."
Click. And silence. This time - final.
Mydei slid down the wall to the floor, staring ahead with an unseeing gaze. Beside him, Hephaestion was reloading, trying to process that they were still alive.
"Did you hear that?" Mydei asked hoarsely.
"I heard," Hephaestion nodded. "Some psycho. Disobeyed a direct order, entered a dense AA zone, saved our asses, and flew off. Who was that?"
"I don't know," Mydei whispered, closing his eyes. Around him, his men were finishing off the remnants of the "swarm", shouting something joyful, but Mydei heard only the echo of that voice. The voice that disobeyed an order to save them. "But I'll find out. I swear, I'll find out."
He didn't know yet that years would pass, and on these ruins, he would build his "Fortress". And he certainly couldn't imagine that when he met this pilot face to face, he wouldn't even recognize him in the haughty, sun-scented Major he would want to strangle in the very first minute of their meeting.
But now, in the dirty, blood-smelling workshop, Mydei felt something akin to gratitude for the first time in many years. To the sky. And to the one who holds it.