Marcus examined the vast construct carefully. "This thing'll need some work" he muttered to himself before turning to his platoon. "Second squad, arm your satchel charges and set them down there. Everyone else, clear out." He then locked his gaze on Jennifer. "Sakong, once you've all done, come find me and we'll blast this thing into slag."

"Already on it, Captain," Lieutenant Sakong replied. Her face was covered, but he knew she was smiling. She instantly fired up her plasma thrusters, the outburst of blue-white energy boiling the air around her. "Alright, airheads!" she barked to her squad. "Fire up and follow me!"

Half of the people on the gangway hurtled over the railings and dropped towards the generator, only for their backpacks to fire up and guide them down to a safe landing. Meanwhile, Marcus gestured for the remaining group to head back up the stairs. They did so immediately, and he followed suit, with Jennifer's orders to those she went with hanging in his ears.

"Uplink the denotation trigger to my HUD, squaddies. I want this all to go off without a hitch."

Marcus and the others ran up the stairs and exited out through the ripped open blast door. Unsurprisingly, having overheard their plans to blow the place, everyone was stocking up and getting ready to retreat. Jennifer came out twenty-two seconds later with her squad, tapping at a device on her wrist as she did so.

"Report," Marcus ordered.

Jennifer lifted her head to him. "All explosives in place, Captain. Ready to blow..." she pressed one last button on her wrist "... now."

Marcus nodded. "Good. Everyone, take off and get skybound. That generator's gonna bring the whole place down when it blows."

Without a word, everyone took off, rocketing out of the hole through which they entered. Thrustpacks going full-tilt, everyone flew eighty feet upwards and hovered as a group. They looked down on the building warily, keeping their eyes peeled for any flying chunks of rubble that were wont to fly up towards them.

Jennifer rocketed upwards, but Marcus stood still. His eyes scanned the room, looking forlornly at all of the fallen Sirthon. A desire rose within him to evacuate the bodies, to return them to their families, as any decent man would...

... but he knew at heart that there was no time. Every second was precious, and whether his men would rescue the bodies of such an enemy as the Sirthon was another question entirely. So he simply stood there, the words 'be at peace' echoing through his head as he beheld the alien corpses before him.

"Captain?" Jennifer's voice echoed in his ear, and he gazed up to see her hovering, half-in and half-out of their forced entryway.

"On my way, Jenn" he swiftly replied. His thoughts returned to the present time, and as they focused, he commanded his thrusters to lift him off the ground. Immediately, the plasma jets fired up, and he took to the skies, following in Jennifer's wake as he left the dead Sirthon behind.

A part of him seemed to stay with them... but he had to do what he had to do.

The two officers quickly came to rest hovering the front of the platoon. Gazing down at the structure, the Captain was careful, but not afraid or anxious. The 5th Company had done this a thousand times before, both in simulations and in the field. If any rubble came their way, they'd be ready.

So he turned his head to his second in command and nodded. "Jennifer..." he said firmly "... detonate."

Lieutenant Sakong lifted her chin. "Yes sir" she replied, lifting her wrist, flipping the cover off the detonator and pushing the button in with a firm *click*.

In that instant, the sound of several explosions ricocheted through the fortified building and blasted out through the entryways. A whole side of the structure's base collapsed into dust, leading the whole thing to collapse into rubble. Great gouts of amber-coloured flame burst through the breaking concrete as the auxiliary power generator was blown apart.

Marcus watched, sparing yet another thought for dead Sirthon inside as he watched their final resting place come down upon them like the collapsing ruins of an ancient tomb. Images of them being crushed and burnt into ashes pulsed through his mind and made regret pang inside his heart. Regret that so many, young and old alike, had to die like this.

It was then that loud droning noise made his gaze flick upwards. Atop a nearby defence toward, a large anti-air turret lowered its barrel, powering down as the generator was destroyed. All across this part of Kenostros, the batteries of artillery that were keeping the League's air support at bay were failing and shutting down.

The Horusan captain smiled earnestly, the light of hope purifying the pain in his heart. With both auxiliary generators down, the anti-air defences around Kenostros were shutting down in segments.

Two parts of the city were now undefended. All they had to do was finish the job by bringing down the main generator in the city centre.

"Second platoon!" he cried proudly to the surrounding Commandos. "To the rendezvous! Let's finish this war for good!"

Every head in the platoon turned his way. Every arm grabbed their guns tighter. And every voice barked at the top of their lungs "Sir yes sir!" Firing up his thrustpack, Marcus leant forward and powered his way through the cityscape, with everyone following in his wake. Banking and careening between skyscrapers and over smaller buildings, they flew in formation through the streets of Kenostros like a formation of soaring birds.

As soon as he could, Marcus opened a comms channel in his helmet. "Kleber, this is Winter. We've destroyed our generator and are on our way to rendezvous. Over."
No reply.

"Kleber, this is Winter. Do you copy? Over."

A faint burst of static filled Marcus' ears, making his heart thud against his ribcage with shock. Then nothing. Complete silence engulfed his ears.

The Horusan's heart rate increased, but he held his nerve and tuned back to his platoon's comm channel. "Major Kleber isn't responding!" he shouted. "First platoon may be in trouble! Everyone, turbo throttle now!"

As he gave that order, a deep sense of urgency coursed through everyone in the platoon, sharpening their reactions and reinforcing their wills. All as one, they rocketed forward at full speed, with Marcus being the first one to do so. The world shrieked like a banshee as they rocketed towards the meeting place, plasma jets burning like blue wildfire as dust and dirt was hurled from the buildings by their slipstream. Then, as they angled themselves backwards and hurtled over the top of a shorter building near the city centre, the air ahead of them rippled as they almost broke the sound barrier.

Fixing his limbs in place as he flew, Marcus gritted his teeth. G-force yanked ferociously at his bloodstream and muscles, threatening to rip them apart. But his will to see this through kept him going, making him more alert than ever as he rocketed towards his destination.

He wouldn't let anything happen to Kleber, or any member of the company. They had all come too far to lose now.

But then, as the Orbital Commandos flew onwards, something strange happened...

The sky overhead seemed to warp and distort, the passage of light shrinking, twisting and contracting as if a deity were meddling with universe itself. Following that, a huge white rift was cut across the face of the planet, reaching across the sky like a gash of milk-white blood. And then, through that rift came a long, pointed object, a titanic blade that cut through the universe itself.

Marcus gazed up and went wide-eyed in awe. At first, he thought that God himself had somehow come to their aid. But then he saw that the rift was, in fact, an opening wormhole, and the object that came from it was not anything of divine providence.

It was a battleship, its blue-grey surface studded with hundreds of weapons, all in varying sizes. Plasma cannons, railguns, point-defence lasers, torpedo tubes and missile pods covered every part of the craft, all of them armed and ready to fire. The vessel's structure was like that of a giant sword, narrow at the front and tapering outwards towards the rear, the iridescent green-blue glow of plasma engines burning at its stern. To everyone's amazement, the ship looked to be over a thousand metres long, with each and every metre designed purely and expertly for combat.

It was not the cylindric design of the Kropen ships, nor the spherical structure of the Viruun. And it was certainly no human ship either. Captain Winter had never seen its like in his long career... and that made fear spike through his heart for the first time in the battle.

His thoughts suddenly flashed back to what General Idriah had mentioned before the Commandos had dropped... of the strange fluctuations they had noticed in subspace. One of the signs that indicated a ship approaching through wormhole travel.

A bead of sweat clung to Marcus' brow, his heart rate increasing as Kleber remained silent on the radio...

"Major Winter..." said an echoing voice. "Major..."