Chapter 5 - The Stand at Hangar Nine
The air in Hangar Nine froze. The crimson emergency lights cast long, distorted shadows across the polished concrete floor, while the distant, low-frequency hum of the Federation dreadnought in orbit vibrated in our teeth. Voss stood at the threshold with his tactical squad forming a textbook semi-circle, their weapons locked and loaded, trained squarely on Smoke.
"Drop your weapons and step away from the biological anomaly," Voss commanded, his voice cold and amplified by his helmet’s audio rig. "You are harboring an illegal class-omega predator. Under emergency directive 99-Alpha, I am authorized to execute both of you on the spot."
I stood my ground, my hand gripping the warm barrel of my carbine. My shoulder throbbed where the kinetic round had grazed me, but the pain was completely drowned out by a cold, steady fury.
"You're not executing anything, Voss," I said, my voice echoing off the metal walls. "The whole galaxy knows the truth now. The upload went out before your jamming arrays could block it. Mars knows. Earth knows. The outer colonies are watching every screen right now."
Voss’s face twitched. For a brief second, the ironclad mask of bureaucratic authority slipped, revealing genuine panic in his eyes. But he recovered quickly, tightening his grip on his sidearm. "Fake news generated by a desperate criminal. Once we glass this moon, your little data packet will be classified as a rogue transmission from a terrorist cell. History, Mr. Vance, is written by the victors."
"Not this time," Mara chimed in, her hand resting casually over the activation switch of her heavy plasma-cutter. "Because we've got front-row seats, and the entire outer rim is recording live."
She tapped her wrist gauntlet, projecting a live telemetry mirror onto the air above us. A floating holographic window flickered to life, displaying a real-time viewer count ticking upward into the billions: Active Feeds: 4.2 Billion and rising.
Voss stared at the floating numbers, his breath catching. "You... you broadcasted a live feed of the facility?"
"Not just the facility," a deep, synthesized voice chimed from the open hangar door behind us.
We all spun around. Standing on the boarding ramp of Mara’s ship was an older, rugged-looking spacer holding an encrypted subspace relay—Old Man Reyes, a legendary independent broker who had spent decades dodging Federation patrols in the outer rim.
"We’ve been broadcasting the Aegis Directorate’s historical archives across every public frequency from here to the Orion Spur," Reyes shouted, grinning wildly. "Every court document, every sealed military order from the old purge, and every casualty report your commanders tried to bury in the central mainframe. The public is watching, Voss. And they're asking why their heroes are slaughtering the last survivors of an innocent species."
Voss let out a low, venomous hiss. "Shoot them all. Burn the hangar to ash. Leave no survivors!"
The Aegis troopers raised their rifles.
Smoke moved faster than thought.
With a deafening roar that rattled the massive steel beams overhead, the Sky Warden lunged forward, placing his colossal, armored body directly between us and the wall of incoming fire. The plasma rounds struck his dense, smoke-colored scales, but instead of piercing his hide, the energy dispersed in brilliant ripples of harmless light, absorbed by his natural bio-armor.
Before the troopers could fire a second volley, Smoke swept his massive wings forward, generating a kinetic gust of wind so powerful it swept the front row of soldiers completely off their feet, scattering their weapons across the deck.
"Get on the ship!" Mara screamed, grabbing my uninjured arm and hauling me toward the open ramp of her vessel.
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"Smoke, come on!" I yelled over the din of battle.
The massive creature hesitated for a heartbeat, his golden eyes locking onto Voss, who was scrambling backward across the floor, desperately trying to lift his dropped pistol. Smoke lowered his head as if to charge, but then he heard my voice. He whipped around, bounding toward the ship with astonishing agility for his size, his heavy claws clanking against the steel ramp just as the inner airlock doors slammed shut behind us.
