They warped back into common space time, floating over a tall residential scape in the central districts of the Conglomerate capitol.

The gargantuan, sprawling, planet wide metropolis bathed in an orange twilight, seemingly unharmed.

They must have beaten the armada there.

Bob looked back at the general, his body was now laced in burn wounds as he slumped in his seat, barely conscious.

The Hynx crawled across to him with a look of concern.

“Land… rooftop… now…” Gladius rasped out through laboured breaths.

Bob slowly glided down to the rooftop of the building where there lay a docking bay for small crafts.

His trusty gliders engine rattled as smoke poured out of the exhaust bay at an alarming rate.

The generals power core pushed the craft to its limit.

They disembarked, Bob helping the broken bodied Hans and the general to their staggering feet.

“It seems we’ve beat them here.” Gladius said as he took laboured steps towards the door that led to the rooftop.

“This better not be the lock up.” Bob said as he helped the General onwards.

“Huh… still don’t trust me?” He chuckled back but Bob kept his cold expression.

Before they could reach the door, a woman burst through in a haste.

“Gladius!” The woman gasped as the general broke off from Bobs shoulder to fall into the woman’s embrace.

Despite her small stature in comparison to generals hulking physique she caught him sturdily.

She was olive skinned, long and lithesome of physiology and held in her angular yet soft face two intense bright green eyes.

“Therase.” He rasped out, relief pouring from his voice.

“Edin?” He asked.

“She’s downstairs… sleeping, but Gladius! Your body…” she said, her brown eyes widening and trembling as she looked at the battered, broken and bloody bodice of her husband.

The reunion was short lived when Jakaab began yelling from the back of the company, pointing manically at the sky.

The armada was in view, judging from the perspective they had warped into high orbit.

“Damnit! Already?” Bob exclaimed in dismay.

“Quickly! Follow us, we have to go downstairs, I need my second power core.” The General said before coughing out a splattering of blood.

“And these people?” Therase questioned pointedly.

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“They’ll be fine, as much as it pains me to admit it, we need them.” He said with a cold glance back at the crew.

Without further ado the group rushed as fast as they could downstairs.

As soon as they entered the Lyanus complex the general rushed to his quarters where his baby lay cooing and sleeping in a cot.

The generals eyes softened and his postures’ tension dissipated.

Hans who was beginning to come to watched through the door as he hung off Bobs shoulder in the living quarters.

Although he was sober the scene in front of him granted him a miraculous sense of calm that he had not felt in an eternity.

“Iris…” he mumbled, his strength returning to him every passing second.

“What? Got something smart to say before the world ends drunker?” Bob asked satirically.

Hans remained silent, his eyes half open and his thoughts distant.

The General coughed and staggered as blood poured from his mouth. The baby started crying.

“Gladius quickly! You’re dying!” Therase said as she picked up the child and directed her husband towards a pod in his quarters.

He opened it with a shaky hand and there stood another set of armour, this one sleeker and more elegant to the eye.

Next to it rested a glowing blue orb in its cradle.

Therase stripped the General to his body bloodied, bruised and burnt. A tear tan down her face but her expression remained strong as she continued without hesitation.

In the centre of his scapulas at the base of his neck a marking sat.

Therase pressed it and the flesh around it morphed to open up a boney, fleshy cradle hidden under the skin lodged in his vertebrae with wires running in all directions.

The old core was barely glowing, burnt wires and singed flesh lay around the cradle.

Smoke and a necrotic stench poured from the artificial orifice.

“Gladius! What have you done!” Therase cried.

“Only what was necessary… nothing more… nothing less…” he replied, gesturing to the new core.

Therase cautiously removed the old core from its cradle before replacing it with the new one.

As soon as it latched into place, the fleshy power port crackled and closed shut as the general drained and winced in pain.

His veins burst to the surface and his eyes glowed as his healing system kicked back into gear.

A few moments later and he seemed nearly back to normal.

He then put on the Centurion Omega armour.

He turned to look at his wife and child.

Kissing both of them he said.

“Know that I love you, the both of you, more than anything in this galaxy.”

“What’s happening Gladius?’ Therase said, concern laced in her voice.

“Our reckoning, and we are not prepared.”

He begrudgingly left the embrace and joined the group back in the living quarters.

“Ready?” He stated more so than asked as he marched past them to the door.

The rest followed hastily except Hans who was transfixed by the scene of Therase holding Edin in the Generals quarters.

He averted his eyes as soon as the woman noticed him and shut the door.

Hans followed the rest of the crew up, a strange sense of calm washing into his sobering mind, keeping him quiet as he assessed what was happening.

His body had nearly already healed from the pummelling he took on Jubembo.

A sense of purpose began to swell in the gaping chasm in his soul.

Although it seemed to be ending maybe the Galaxy wasn’t as much of a horrid moral cesspit as he had thought.

The rag tag team got back to the roof top in a hurry.

As soon as they burst through the door, huge tremors swept through the city and shook the building violently.

The armada had made planet fall.

A huge shadow lay across the capital as thousands of spheres floated in the red twilight sky.

Thunderbolts and lightning spread like cracks in reality around them as more and more warped into sky, causing irregularities in the electrical charge of the upper atmosphere.

Alarm sirens began ringing and the first responders began ascending in their law enforcement crafts up into the cataclysmic sky.

They were shot down before they could get close by beams of energy surging from the spheres.

Reduced to clouds of ash raining down upon screaming citizens.

“We have to move, quickly, if we can get to the barracks I can mobilise whatever force there is left on this planet.” Gladius stated.

Bob grumbled and grimaced.

‘I suppose this is it then…’