Janine’s kick sent the iron doors flying, giving her a full view of the “hangar”. Once this place served as a maintenance bay for various trucks, now it has been heavily remodeled to accommodate several large artillery pieces and finally the aircraft nestled within a net of makeshift walkways and scaffolding.

It had a long and elongated form, giving the impression of an arrow with a broken arrowhead. The massive prow was adorned with a proud eagle head, hiding the pilot’s cabin behind its eyes. Just like the cub said, all turrets were removed, but the ship’s steel and golden hull shine with pristine paint. Janine felt a tingle of relief when she saw rows of empty energy canisters being hauled away from the ship. With any luck, the Horde has already refueled the Sky Striker. Four engines were placed on the ship’s belly, two on each side, all looking not that unsimilar to those of hover bikes but far bigger. At the ship’s rear was installed a cluster made of six engines, still carrying spots of black on their steel. These must’ve been the old-fashioned fire engines that propelled the Sky Striker forward.

Before the iron doors even reached the floor, Janine had already fired the plasma rifle she took from Jaliqai.

An overheated surge of plasma flew across the hangar, striking a mobile artillery and detonating its engine along with a loadout of shells. The entire room shook as dust and smoke flew everywhere, throwing invaders off the walkways and setting scaffolding on fire. The Horde’s personnel, many of whom were still busy in process of celebrating or simply chose not to wear full protective gear in this hot place, now paid in full for this mistake; their bodies got hit by sharp metal pieces or were licked by flames.

“Warlord…” A guardsman started, looking at a wall of dark smoke pushing at them.

“We only need the sky striker, right? Let’s make some noise. Advance! Slaughter everyone in our path!” Janine snapped and kept moving.

They charged into the shaking hangar, keeping the pilot in their middle to protect him. A net of cracks started running at the ceiling, and Janine added to the raiders’ panic by firing a few more shots against other artillery vehicles, detonating them too and causing an entire eruption of flame to lick away people from the sky striker’s hull. A few guards came through the clouds of smoke, coughing and cursing, only to be met by the Taleteller and machineguns. The men barely had enough time to register the attack before Janine cleaved through the first, leaving her troops to finish off the rest.

She advanced further, grunting slightly as a few shots landed at her from raiders near the aircraft. Rather than dodging and exposing the Sword Saint at her back or allies behind her, Janine hurled her axe, cleaving through the legs of four enemy soldiers. Their screams were sweet music to her ears, and once she reached the ramp, her heavy legs came down, finishing the wounded people off.

“Hurry!” Janine roared, firing once more at the attackers coming from the corridor above. Her nose caught up with the primary source of worry. Drozna. The bastard was coming, tearing through the buildings outside, and in her sorry state, Janine wasn’t sure she could take him on.

With a simple shrug, Janine had broken the chains around her shoulders, allowing Macarius to fall into the Ice Fang’s paws. The Warlord gestured for her soldiers to get inside and stepped down the ramp, wielding weapons in each hand. With a wide grin on her snout, she welcomed rows of enemies breaking through the smoke wall and charged at them like an angel of vengeance.

The first strike cleaved through six bodies, and a followed-up shot left a headless body to fall. Janine broke through the incoming enemies and surprised them with her reckless charge. She spun and hacked, disemboweling anyone coming close with rapid kicks. Fools. They should have taken her claws. They should have taken her limbs. The Warlord lifted her snout high and saw the stone roof collapsing upon her. Unbothered to dodge, she weathered the impact of stones falling upon her and kept on killing.

The enemies came upon her, normies and purebloods alike. Oversized and bulky purebloods soon found their bellies cleaved open, and Janine moved aside from the firing line before bullets fired by them could leave the barrels. Clad in simple exoskeletons, the bondsmen were even easier prey. Some of them fainted or tried to drop weapons at her advance, but Janine ignored these feeble attempts at surrender. Torture of prisoners. Attack on the state. The death of her son.

It would be easy to get lost in the savagery now. To hack at hands and legs, leaving behind crippled “barrels” and allowing them to bleed out on the floor. And Janine wanted. Spirits forgive her, but she wanted not just to kill her enemies, but to make them suffer. She wanted nothing more than to see desperation slowly creeping into their eyes.

She resisted the urge, acting like a soldier of the Wolf Tribe and not a butcher. Cruelty inflicted does not excuse cruelty in return. Damn right you are, Camelia. A trice cursed traitor Camelia could be, but a truth is a truth. Janine’s integrity was worth immensely more than the lives of this filth.

With smoke, explosions, and falling rubble everywhere, the raiders could not concentrate on Janine. Thick, dark clouds hid her, and thermal vision went wild because of the amount of heat released in the atmosphere. But Janine could see them. And so she killed them mercilessly and efficiently, using the plasma rifle as a club once she had fired all the ammo. The raiders weren’t cowards; either whipped into obedience by a fear of their leaders or simply out of loyalty. They had tried to form ranks and stop her. But after she broke through their fourth attempt and killed over thirty people, the raiders turned around and ran, finally horrified of her more than they were of Brood Lord.

Janine howled, adding to their fear, before spotting a group of men cowering close to the aircraft. Worried of sabotage, she closed on the people, halting her strike when one of them stepped forward.

These wore brown robes, covered with various mechanic tools, and wore exoskeleta beneath their clothes. All of them looked well fed, with the sun slightly tanning their bright skin. But none of them looked or moved like experienced soldiers; nothing but pure terror was in their eyes.

“Noncombat,” the man said in Common with a thick accent. “Worker. Merchant. Not fighter. Surrender, yes?”

“Enemy?” Janine asked, pressing a blade to his neck.

“Not an enemy! Just a trader! We sell things! We don’t fight!” The man screamed with desperation, looking with fear at the enormous axe. “We never harmed your people! Just sell!”

“People?” Janine kept looking at the man’s face.

“Not people! People worth nothing! No use for slaves! Gear, sell gear!” The man gulped, looking at his reflection in her amber eye. “Please. Have family. Please.”

I had a son, too. Janine hesitated. Workers and engineers were not valid targets in a war. Unless you kill them by accident, no Wolfkin worth her meat would go and shoot enemy medics or personnel just out of spite. But… These bastards had killed Bogdan. Tortured her soldiers. Brought pain and suffering to the civilians…

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And what would Bogdan say, looking at you now? A voice whispered in her mind. A voice of the Blessed Mother, stern and calm, sounding so unlike her regular tone. What example will you set for Ignacy, Anissa, or Marco? Are the lives of all who died under your command so cheap that you are willing to discard the principles they lived and died for?

Never. Janine understood. She will not let the fucking Horde define who she will be. She is a Warlord of the Wolf Tribe! Never will she stoop to the Horde’s level.

“The place is about to fall.” Janine looked around, noticing cracks in the wall. “I suggest you run. Now.”

“We will! We will, oh mighty and honorable warrior.” The man bowed to her. “Never will we forget your mercy or beauty. To the exit, everyone!”

“Damn it, Iron Lord has promised not to put us in danger!” A woman with lenses for eyes complained, making her way toward the exit and covering her head with her hands.

Beauty? Janine stopped at the sheer insanity of this word. Here she was, still bleeding from several wounds, her hide damaged, a golden crown covering one eye, her arms oversized when compared to her legs… What is beautiful about it?

“Warlord!” A warrior showed up at the ramp, waving her paw.

Janine nodded and went across the ramp, turning one last time at the sound of a roar. The wall on the opposite side of the hangar exploded, and Drozna came within, wreathed in dust, spearing through the exploded ruins of the artillery with ease and sending its remains crashing against the walls.

“Don’t you dare to run, mutant!” Drozna roared, and Janine laughed at the sheer insanity of his statement.

What did he think he looked like? Janine had little in common with a normie, but so too did Drozna. Bone plates, as thick as the human body, covered his body, shielding the reddish flesh beneath. He wore only pants, which were currently on fire, and only a few strands of gray hair pushed between bone plates at his head. Drozna’s nose was almost non-existent, and twin burning eyes, sunken deep within the skull, focused on Janine with pure hatred.

“Thanks for the ride, sucker,” Janine replied through the laughter.

The Sky Striker came to life and started humming gently. Drozna was still making his way across the ruined hangar when the air shimmered around the aircraft, pushing forth a force wall. With incredible grace and ease, the gigantic vehicle broke free from the platform, defying the rules of gravity thanks to several engines. Drozna shouted in pure anger at the sight of the ramp closing when the Sky Striker broke through the ruined roof, gaining speed and altitude.

Stones and dust started falling off the hull, filling the ship’s insides with small, pondering sounds. Janine choked out the fear inside her, walking across a small corridor to check up on everyone. Their pilot was in a small, two-place cabin, along with Ignacy, who tinkered with levers under the deserter’s command. The guardsmen secured themselves with harnesses in the seat, with the last of them treating the civilian’s wounds along with the deserters’ leader. The two other men stood aside, holding the seat with their hands, their eyes shut out of fear.

Janine could understand that. No living being was meant to fly. No matter what the state says, in her personal view, this was heresy. She moved on across the cramped corridor, spying her own pack cowering in seats meant for turret control operators. Macarius, still an unconscious wreck, was being tended to by Jaliqai and the knight. The white-furred idiot growled slightly at the malformed but allowed the woman to use the found medical kit to change the bandages and apply antibiotics.

“Will he live?” Janine asked the malformed.

“No idea,” Jaliqai replied honestly. “I could treat broken bones and cuts, but this,” she said, nodding at the pus within Macarius wounds, “is beyond my skills and kind of scares me. Someone has clearly injected him with a poison capable of keeping the wounds inflamed and hindering his immune system, resulting in the earlier appearance of pus. The last sister who had similar symptoms died in agony.”

“The Sword Master can’t die,” the knight snarled. “If you let Lord Macarius perish, I will…”

“Pipe down, traitor, before I throw you off the ship,” Janine told her.

“I am not a traitor! If nothing else, I fought by your side, dammit! My name is Thyia Voidrunner.” The knight clenched her paws and stood at attention. “On behalf of Voidrunner Household, I am thanking…”

“As if anyone cares.” Janine walked past her, hitting the fool with the blunt side of her axe. Fought alongside them, as if! The woman only stuck with them out of convenience; at the first chance, she’ll betray them. All Ice Fangs were nothing more than a bunch of vainglory fools. The Wolf Tribe should never have regarded them as kin. Normies have ten times their nobility and are staunch friends and kin of the Tribe.

The ship shook, and Janine walked to the pilot cabin, pushing gently past Dokholkhu and his kin. Thankfully, unlike everyone else, the malformed weren’t confined by normal dimensions. Thanks to their long insectoid legs, they scaled the walls and took hold at the ceiling, freeing more space on the floor. Still, it was a bit unnerving to walk past them. Janine was used to killing insectoid drones trying to jump down on her. Oh well, she can get used to it.

Janine stepped into the pilot’s cabin, examining unknown letters on the terminal. Try as she might, nothing the pilot inputted on the keyboard made any sense. But she had enough wits to understand the schematic the monitor was showing. Their long, protruding ride was surrounded by a bubble of force shield. Four generators were shown on the screen, with two of them being black. The field itself was blinking in and out, rarely showing as blue but most of the time as yellow.

“I trust we have problems?” Janine asked the pilot, looking at the streets below.

The Gilded Horde soldiers went mad, climbing atop the building and firing everything they could at the flying vehicle. Thankfully, they could do very little. Most of the soldiers were still drunk, and their shots veered off course. The exploding factory behind them prevented the invaders from getting vehicles into the field. But every now and then a new bright flower came to life against the shield, encasing the sky striker in a cloud of shadow.

“The morons had forgotten to reconnect generators to the control panel! Bunch of retards!” Ignacy howled, tore out the panel, and started to furiously reconnect wires. “Here!” The ship trembled, and a new sound joined the pleasant sound of generators, accompanied by a fresh icon appearing on the display. “Dammit, why is it only one? Both were showing as operational!”

“It’s okay, okay, friend Ignacy!” The pilot said quickly as the cluster of engines blinked on the display, followed by a roaring sound of flames.

“I am not your friend, bastard!” Janine put a paw on Ignacy’s shoulder to calm him down. “A… a fellow technician at best!”

“Sure, sure,” the pilot agreed. “Regardless, we are now gaining enough speed to be out of Defiance before they can pull out the anti-air guns…”

The man stopped looking to his left, and Janine followed his gaze, seeing a radar. The green display has been blinking, showing various missiles coming at them from the ground. But one dot looked nothing like the other. It was far bigger and moved slower than a missile, but still steadily gained on them, correcting its altitude in accordance with the trajectory of their flight.

When the dot reached them, the ship shook, and the steel on the ceiling bulged in two places, dropping two of the malformed on the floor.

“Someone has just landed on top of us, using a moment when our shield popped out,” Ignacy said.

“Janine!” a synthesized voice roared. “C-Come out! Or I will tear this ship apart!”

“Mehmed,” Janine spat. Her amber eye found a hatch between the passenger compartment and the cabin. “Lock the doors. I will take care of the free rider.”

“But you are injured,” Ignacy started, and Janine turned around.

She wanted to hit him. Under all rules, some cordiality was allowed between a male and a female, more so when it came to a mother and her cubs, but when it came to a life-and-death situation, the male must obey the female without questions. Shamans were teaching this in the pits, explaining and showing proof that the females were naturally smarter and had more combat experience.

But in the past dozen or so years, Janine has learned to disagree with this thesis. Maybe, at some point, it was true. But nowadays, more and more families are treating each other as equals, barely raising a claw at their cubs and soulmates. Some, like her and Colt, even bickered with each other for fun! The change was inevitable, and so for the first time, Janine embraced her son rather than biting him on the neck for insubordination.

“I will come back,” she promised. “As a Warlord, it is my duty to ensure the survival of my pack. Trust me, Ignacy, and keep everything in check here.”

“Will do!” Ignacy stood at attention, slightly embarrassed at his words, and Janine grinned.

“Take care of everything here,” she grumbled, climbing the ladder and tinkering with the hatch. “Should only take a moment.”