Jacob spent much of his time en route to the urgek world meditating. At first, the nagging Nethersight whispers prevented him from finding any success. It was only when he decided to give in to it completely that he discovered an entirely new facet to his understanding of the exercise.

His extra sense was significantly dulled inside the Quickdraw with only microbial death to draw on, but even then it was enough to bring him greater clarity. Rather than picturing himself manipulating the feather with his own breath, he pictured it floating on the billowing currents he sensed in his mind’s eye, spinning and swaying with their whims but remaining suspended.

He knew that this was a step in the right direction, but despite this breakthrough he couldn’t feel anything like magical energy well up inside himself, and when he spoke the name of the rune and performed the hand sign that his hand naturally produced, nothing happened.

Jacob and Becca sent messages back and forth for the first day or two until they left System range. He knew that he’d upset her with his soft rejection of her proposal for marriage. The guilt gnawed at him, but he wasn’t quite able to bring himself to apologize or say that he’d changed his mind, and then it was too late.

After that, Jacob settled into a nearly unbroken state of meditation, fully immersed in the Nethersight. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t go to the bathroom. He didn’t talk to anyone. He didn’t even open his eyes.

He just felt the currents, and watched the feather.

And he hungered.

The days all flowed together until it just became one infinitely long moment. Occasionally, he felt a spark within him, a piece of tinder trying to catch fire before swiftly being snuffed out again.

He was getting close.

Then he was suddenly shaken from his trance, and found Bob standing over him. His presence was strange through the Nethersight. Without the usual pinpricks of death that would alight from an organic creature due to microbes and skin mites and such, he appeared more like an inanimate object that was somehow moving on its own, like a chair getting up and walking around. It was downright creepy.

“We have arrived,” Bob said. “Long-range bombardments have already been concluded, so we will be descending shortly.”

Jacob tried to stand but found his muscles stiff and unresponsive, almost in a state of cold rigor mortis. He forced his limbs out of their petrified state with a groan and a series of crackling snaps from his joints. Bob helped him stand, and he spent the next ten minutes limbering up, getting himself back to roughly normal function.

Evidently, his body hadn’t consumed much energy while in his deep meditation, because he seemingly hadn’t lost much weight other than some surface fat, and he wasn’t overly fatigued either.

If only I’d been able to do this when I was starving in that cell.

Everyone else was already prepared. Fenris must have sensed the mood, because he was alert and pacing around like a pent-up zoo animal.

Jacob forced himself to push the Nethersight back for a moment and see the world through his eyes. From the meditation, his extra sense was the part of him that had taken the bulk of the strain.

Rust loomed large through almost every forward-facing viewing port, an angry brownish-red giant. It looked a lot like Mars, but much larger and completely barren. Groups of urgek settlements and fortifications could be made out as fine black webs across its surface.

Parts of the coalition fleet were still coming out of the waylines, suddenly warping into view around them one after another and settling into the great sprawl of ships. They were already under attack from urgek forces, many dark shapes cutting across the starry black sky and occasionally lit up by the dirty red exhaust of their firing cannons. One coalition vessel cracked open and exploded, then another.

Jacob was about to ask what should be done about it, but the question proved redundant. The great reptile Gorgobaryx glided into place above the fleet, functioning without issue in a vacuum. Magic poured from him, radiating from his form into the brilliant, glowing wings that his normal physiology lacked.

There was an almost invisible ripple through space, and the urgeks’ advance suddenly became confused. Their ships collided in flight, fired upon each other, or simply reeled about with no clear direction. Several Martial cruisers opened return fire and picked off the hampered enemy vessels with ease in just a few minutes. There were already more waves approaching, but Jacob was now confident that they would be dealt with.

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Danger was given coordinates and a green light for descent. Everyone strapped in, and the pilot plunged them sharply for descent towards the planet along with maybe fifty other ships, several smaller vessels like theirs along with larger troop carriers and a handful of sleek thune nomad ships.

The descent was rough. Anton got knocked unconscious by all the violent rattling, and Vivi momentarily went offline. Several urgek warships gave chase, but Gorgobaryx must have worked some of his magic on them, because they careened off course and broke apart in the atmosphere, red hot shrapnel falling all around them.

They set down in a great big field of red dirt and powdery rock amid all the other coalition vessels. Jacob tossed aside his sunglasses and tied a blindfold around his neck in preparation of the battle ahead. Danger lowered the ramp for them, and they all piled out while the pilot tried to rouse Anton.

All around them, people in their thousands poured out into the field. Soldiers scrambled to set up portable barriers and gun turrets. Blue-skinned thunes drew lines and formed circles, chanting in their own melodic tongue as the air shimmered around the coalition forces, transparent magic shields beginning to form.

The one in charge of the operation was one General Fairbank, and his voice came over the radio units they had all been given that the heroes were to act as a vanguard to keep the urgeks back until the conventional forces had a chance to get organized and dug in.

That suited Jacob fine, the only problem being that he couldn’t see any urgeks. Walking to the edge of the clustered ships, he looked out over the landscape and saw only empty wasteland except for the abandoned wreckage of the occasional blown-out bunker. Pieces of dead warships were still coming down, landing with mute thuds in the distance. One came down just nearby, a piece of sharp black metal that cut a man in two. There were shocked curses and calls for help, but he was quickly declared dead and everyone kept on working.

The gravity on Rust was heavy, apparently 50% greater than Earth’s from what he had been told. It didn’t bother him too badly with his substantial Vigor, but he imagined it must be hard going for all the regular humans running around. The air was dry and hot and stung his throat, but was otherwise breathable.

Fenris padded up next to him and sat down on his haunches. Bob approached on his other side, scanning the environment.

“See anything?” Jacob asked.

“No,” Bob admitted.

“They will be coming, though.”

They didn’t have to wait long. Only a minute or two later, urgek drop pods became visible as burning specks in the hazy sky, rapidly multiplying until they became an uncountable mass of red stars.

They became larger and larger as they hurtled towards the ground. Some soldiers balked at the sight of them, halting in their duties until their superior officers pressed them back into action with screamed insults.

The first drop pod touched down in the middle of the barren field, its engine sputtering out and leaving a trail of dark smoke. The doors blew off the matte black contraption, and a handful of heavily armored urgeks piled out, wielding their large, blocky rifles.

Droves of them landed with a series of loud booms, and their occupants wasted no time in rushing towards the coalition’s flailing emplacement. More and more pods filled the field, some hitting their own as they came down, but none of the urgeks seemed to care as they rushed forward with a chorus of guttural battle cries.

They soon outnumbered the coalition forces by a wide margin, approaching from every direction.

Jacob was pleased.

He thumped the robot on the chest. “Feeling confident?”

“I am neither confident nor doubtful,” Bob hedged. “However, I have leveled up substantially since you last saw me fight. I believe I am ready.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Let’s go.”

Jacob pulled on the blindfold and engaged his Nethersight. His perception expanded tenfold, and the early deaths reverberated around the battlefield, outlining sections of the enemy forces in stark detail. Already, he began analyzing the weaknesses in their bulky plated armor.

With a Dash, he launched himself forward at the encroaching horde of noisy brutes, the wolf right behind him, and others joined in as well. He sensed Steelfeather streaking across the sky, punching clean through a falling drop pod and scattering its dismembered occupants. Excelerate flashed past Jacob in a moment and was among the enemy in a split second, his lightning trail frying them in their suits and giving Jacob a fresh influx of sensory information with their deaths.

Already, he shuddered with pleasure at the beauty of the tapestry unfolding around him as he drank it all in. He couldn’t wait to tear into something and feel warm blood on his hands.

With three more Dashes in quick succession, he left most of the other heroes well behind and cannonballed into the first urgek, using his dizzying momentum to cave in the breastplate and causing the alien to choke out a breathless gasp.

Flipping to the ground, Jacob kicked up into the urgek’s largely unprotected crotch. His foot cut clean through the thin piece of metal and crushed the delicate genitals inside.

The urgek collapsed to his knees, and Jacob finished him off with a right hook to the side of his fat head that sent his helmet spinning and collapsed his temple with a turgid flow of goopy blood.

“Finally,” Jacob whispered, breathing in the heady fumes of the destruction he had wrought.

He had waited too long for this.