The moon of New Terra-4 was a receding ribcage of white rock behind him, but the radar in Harry's cockpit was screaming. Twelve Seekers. They weren't flying in a formation; they were "flickering" through space, their gravity-drives snapping them forward in jagged, unpredictable leaps.
"General, we're clear of the lunar shadow," Lieutenant Kael's voice crackled. "We have a direct line to the Vanguard. We can be home in five minutes."
Harry looked at his long-range scanners. The Tenth Fleet was hidden in the nebula of the Dead Zone, their signatures dampened. If he flew straight to them, the Seekers' advanced "Eyes" would trace his ion trail right to the fleet's throat.
"Negative, Alpha Two," Harry said, his voice dropping into that calm, terrifyingly focused 'zone.' "If we go home now, we bring the plague with us. Kael, Miller—transfer your sensor logs to my rig. Now."
"Sir?" Miller asked, his voice shaking.
"That's an order, Sergeant! Transfer the data and kill your transponders. Drift back to the fleet on cold-gas only. I'm going to give these obsidian bastards something else to look at."
The Solo Burn
The data transfer chime pinged in Harry's ear. He watched the two blips of his teammates vanish from his HUD as they went dark. Now, it was just him.
"CALI, dump the heat sinks," Harry commanded. "I want us glowing like a sun on their sensors."
"General, that will leave the Vanguard-One vulnerable to thermal tracking," the AI warned.
"Do it. And redline the reactor. We're heading for the Acheron Abyss."
The Acheron Abyss was a gravitational sinkhole—a collapsed star that hadn't quite become a black hole but distorted space enough to make navigation a nightmare. It was the only place where Harry could lose twelve hunters.
The Vanguard-One erupted in a blinding flare of white-hot ion exhaust. On the Drealius' sensors, Harry went from a pebble to a supernova. All twelve Seekers pivoted in unison, their violet "eyes" locking onto the General.
The Dance of Deception
The chase was a blur of G-force and screaming metal. Harry pushed the mech to 115% power, the cockpit smelling of scorched wiring and recycled air.
"Incoming!" CALI shrieked.
A violet gravity-snare lashed out from the leading Seeker. Harry didn't dodge—he used the snare's own pull. He cut his thrusters, letting the gravity-web yank the Vanguard-One forward at a lethal velocity, then fired his retro-boosters at the last possible second. He whipped past the Seeker so close he could see the shimmering black oil pulsing beneath its skin.
BRRRRRRRRT!
He didn't aim for the kill; he aimed for the sensors. A short burst of the minigun shattered the Seeker's "eye," sending it spinning blindly into the dark.
"One down," Harry wheezed, the pressure of the turn bruising his ribs against the flight harness. "Eleven to go."
Into the Abyss
The Acheron Abyss loomed ahead—a swirling vortex of purple and black gas, where the laws of physics were suggestions at best. Harry dove straight into the maw.
The Seekers followed, their obsidian hulls glowing as they fought the crushing gravity of the sinkhole. This was Harry's plan. He knew the Vanguard-One was lighter and more maneuverable than the biomechanical hunters.
Inside the Abyss, the comms were nothing but static. Harry was truly alone. He navigated by the "feel" of the stick, sensing the shifts in gravity like a sailor sensing the tide. He led the Seekers deeper and deeper, weaving through "ghost" signatures and pockets of compressed gas.
"Warning: Hull integrity at seventy percent," CALI reported. "The gravity is beginning to crush the external plates."
"Just a little further," Harry whispered, his eyes bloodshot.
He saw it: a Gravity Slingshot. A high-density pocket of gas circling the Abyss core. He steered the Vanguard-One into the curve, accelerating until the stars became streaks of white light. As he swung around the "dead" sun, he released a spread of decoy flares.
The Seekers, blinded by the Abyss's interference, locked onto the flares. They dove deeper into the gravity well, unable to pull out of the terminal velocity Harry had baited them into. One by one, their obsidian hulls buckled under the pressure, imploding into spheres of black oil and crushed glass.
The Drift
Harry fired his final emergency burn, slingshotting out of the Abyss in the opposite direction.
The Vanguard-One was silent. The reactor was in low-power mode, the minigun was empty, and the cockpit was freezing. He was thousands of kilometers away from his fleet, drifting in the dark. But he was invisible.
"CALI," Harry croaked, his hands trembling as he let go of the flight sticks. "Tell me the logs are safe."
"Sensor logs are secure, General. But our long-range comms are fried. We are drifting at three hundred meters per second into the Dead Zone."
Harry leaned back, watching the distant, silent stars. He had saved the fleet. He had the proof of the "Harvest." Now, the 4-star General just had to figure out how to get home before his oxygen ran out.