They pulled back into the shadows just in time.

  The hangar was alive—too alive. Troop carriers idled in formation. Black-armored soldiers moved in precise units, practicing deployment drills in eerie silence. Commanders barked orders from gantries above while a spider-like maintenance rig adjusted something on a fighter’s wing. Everywhere, order reigned. But it was the wrong kind of order—the kind that hummed with dread.

  Pepe hovered low beside the group, his light dimmed. “Good news: we’ve found the main hangar. Bad news: it’s like finding the ocean when you forgot how to swim.”

  Jarek scanned the area through a cracked visor panel. “This isn’t just a weapons depot. It’s a staging ground.”

  “For what?” Ramm whispered.

  Sai didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the nearest troop transport. His voice came soft. “Occupation. Or worse.”

  Brinn crouched behind a cargo crate, his flame runes faintly aglow. “Then we bury it. All of it.”

  Jarek turned to the group, sharp and focused. “We’re not blowing this up with brute force. We sabotage it smart, surgical. This place is wired to withstand orbital bombardment. We need chain reactions, not fireworks.”

  Pepe chirped in. “I like this. Plan: Operation Light Switch of Doom.”

  “Catchy,” Brinn muttered.

  Jarek laid it out, voice low but firm.

  Step One: Disable launch pathways. “They’ve got magnetic lifts,” he explained. “That platform grid we passed? It’s their launch route. Ramm—disable those controls. Force the fighters to stay grounded.”

  “Already dreaming of cutting into their subroutines,” Ramm grinned.

  Step Two: Trigger a fuel cascade. Brinn nodded. “We overload the plasma reservoirs feeding the fighter cores. That’ll chain into the coolant system. Won’t look like sabotage until it’s too late.”

  Step Three: Disrupt troop coordination. “Without comms, their squad orders fall apart,” Sai added. “I’ll deal with their signal relay. Quietly.”

  Pepe pulsed. “Ooh, a shadowy solo mission with almost-certain risk of death. Classic Sai.”

  Step Four: Set the chain. Jarek took a breath. “We leave no trace. When the last failsafe cracks, the whole hangar folds in on itself. They won’t know it’s sabotage until they're standing in fire.”

  Ramm scratched his head. “Wait, but how do we get out when everything’s blowing up?”

  Pepe projected a crude escape map with several wobbly lines. “Trust in chaos. And possibly the sewage system.”

  Brinn stood, adjusting the straps on his gear. “We split up. Three groups. Recon, plant, detonate. Meet back here in thirty minutes.”

  “Too long,” Sai said. “Make it twenty-five. We can’t afford a full patrol sweep.”

  Ramm cracked his knuckles. “Alright. Let’s go make things flammable.”

  Fifteen Minutes In.

  Sai slipped along the upper walkways like a ghost woven into the steel. His daggers stayed sheathed. No need to kill if you weren’t seen. He found the signal relay—an obelisk of humming metal and live feeds—guarded by a lone technician.

  Sai watched. Waited.

  When the tech stepped away to check a console, Sai moved. A flicker in the dark. Two taps on the interface. A reroute. A silent virus. The feed blinked out and returned—looped on a ten-second delay.

  Invisible sabotage.

  He disappeared again before the tech noticed.

  Ramm wasn’t as subtle.

  “Okay, you beautiful beast of inefficient wiring,” he whispered, crawling into the maintenance tunnel beneath the fighter grid. “Show me where it hurts.”

  He located the primary control hub for the launch system—a box twice as old as the wall it was mounted to. A twisted grin spread across his face.

  Pepe buzzed into his comm. “Please remember this is a sabotage mission, not a dating sim.”

  “I can love and destroy,” Ramm whispered back.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Wires sparked. Relays hummed. Ramm crossed two channels and reversed the polarity on the failsafe.

  The next time someone tried to launch, they’d lift... and then sink. Very dramatically.

  Brinn worked with fire and fury.

  He reached the plasma storage chamber—a glowing chamber of coiled energy and whispering heat—and placed three timed charges along the outer coils. Carefully, silently.

  He paused only once, when he spotted a child-soldier loading a crate nearby. Couldn’t be older than fifteen.

  He turned his back.

  “We’re not the monsters,” he whispered to the flame.

  Back at the rendezvous point, Jarek paced. “Five minutes left.”

  Pepe returned first. “Sai’s ghosted the relay. Ramm broke gravity. Brinn did things with fire. And I—” he posed dramatically “—sang a transmission burst to scramble their sensors. No applause needed.”

  Sai emerged next, silent and fast.

  Then Ramm, covered in soot and wires. “I may have also disabled their vending machine. It was an abomination.”

  Finally, Brinn returned.

  “All set,” he said. “Let’s burn it.”

  Jarek nodded once, then turned to the distant hum of the hangar.

  “Trigger it in stages. We move through the tunnel once the overload starts. No looking back.”

  Ramm flicked his wristpad. “Three... two... one.”

  The plan was perfect—on paper.

  Sabotage. Disrupt. Escape through the tunnel.

  But the hangar had other ideas.

  The plasma chamber ruptured exactly as Ramm had calculated. The magnetic launch grid short-circuited beautifully. Sai's shadow-placed virus looped the surveillance feeds like a charm. Even Brinn’s fire charges timed to the second.

  And yet...

  They didn’t expect the override protocols.

  Didn’t expect the command AI to wake up.

  Didn’t expect the exit tunnel to seal shut with a blast door thicker than a tank.

  “WE HAVE A PROBLEM!” Ramm screamed over the explosion echo, diving behind a crate as ceiling plates fell like guillotine blades.

  Pepe zipped overhead, sparks trailing from a scorched wing. “That was not the path to freedom! That was the path to turning into toast!”

  Jarek fired two bursts at a squad of stunned soldiers caught mid-drill, not out of malice—just distraction. “We need the tunnel! Is the tunnel gone!?”

  Sai materialized beside him, panting. “Blast door came down the second the alarms triggered. They locked this section down completely.”

  Brinn landed hard beside them, armor glowing, steam hissing from cracked plates. “They’re running full lockdown mode. Backup squads coming from the eastern gantry.”

  “And we're trapped in the middle of a live war zone,” Ramm muttered, crawling under a fighter wing. “Wonderful. Five stars.”

  The hangar's once-ordered chaos had turned to a maelstrom. Troopers scrambled to understand what was happening. Explosions bloomed in stuttered rhythms. Fire licked the edges of the floor grid. Fuel lines sparked and hissed. The entire complex was eating itself.

  But not fast enough.

  “Pepe,” Jarek snapped. “Scan for alternate exit routes. Anything that’s not a tunnel.”

  “I’m way ahead of you!” the bot buzzed, zipping up toward the rafters. “There’s a second level catwalk leading to a launch control node. It's connected to the emergency flight deck. Problem: it’s swarming with soldiers. Also, it’s three stories up.”

  “We’ll make it,” Brinn said, standing.

  “We’ll die,” Ramm corrected. “But hey—at least it’ll be dramatic.”

  “Split!” Jarek ordered. “Brinn, Ramm—you take lower flank, clear a path to the lift. Sai, you’re with me—we’ll go for the controls. Pepe, get to that launch deck and prep the first thing with wings.”

  Pepe saluted mid-spin. “I always wanted to be a getaway vehicle!”

  Reaching the lift was a blood-stained sprint through smoke and fire.

  Brinn acted as a walking wall, punching through collapsing scaffolds and burning wreckage, shielding Ramm as they ran.

  Ramm fired his glove into a control panel, frying a turret that tried to pivot on them. “This lift better work!”

  “Just make sure it doesn't explode,” Brinn grunted.

  They dove onto the lift platform and hit the manual override. It screeched upward, exposed and unguarded, creaking under their weight.

  Above them: screams, rifle fire, smoke pouring from vents.

  And the ship deck.

  Meanwhile, Sai and Jarek scaled the stairwell leading to the launch tower. Between them and the override panel were three elite Weavers.

  Sai didn’t hesitate—he vanished into smoke, flickered behind one guard, and slit his leg tendons silently. Jarek tackled another, blaster muzzle against the soldier’s visor before firing once—clean and brutal.

  The third soldier raised a rifle-

  -and Sai reappeared behind him, blade poised at the throat. “Don’t.”

  The soldier dropped his weapon.

  Jarek shoved the body aside and ran to the console. The interface hissed alive with red warnings.

  “Pepe, status!”

  “I’m in a shuttle!” the bot shouted joyfully. “It’s not elegant, and one of the wings is slightly on fire, but it’s flying-ish!”

  “Good enough,” Jarek muttered, fingers flying across the console. “Opening flight bay doors. Disengaging auto-locks.”

  The lights flashed green.

  Ramm and Brinn barreled into the upper deck just as the shuttle powered up, its lights flickering with internal distress.

  Pepe shouted, “Everyone in or everyone gets flambéed!”

  Jarek and Sai appeared from the opposite end, both sprinting full speed.

  Blaster fire lit the deck. A squad of Weavers had found them. Rounds punched into walls. Sparks rained. A grenade clattered too close.

  Sai grabbed it mid-bounce and hurled it back. The explosion rocked the walkway.

  “MOVE!” Jarek roared.

  Brinn hurled Ramm through the cargo bay door. Sai followed in a blur. Jarek was last.

  The ramp sealed behind them.

  Inside the cockpit, Pepe screamed, “I hope someone knows how to fly this thing!”

  “I do!” Ramm called.

  “No, you don’t!” everyone else yelled.

  Brinn took the co-pilot seat, grabbed the controls, and gunned the thrusters.

  The ship lurched violently, lifting through smoke and flak. Alarms wailed. The hangar doors were still half-closed.

  Jarek grabbed the override lever and yanked. “Come on... come on...”

  The bay cracked open just as the ship surged forward.

  Outside: ash, air, and then open sky.

  The shuttle burst from the facility as the first shockwave erupted behind them. The entire hangar folded in on itself, fire blooming across the lower levels like a dying sun.

  Inside the shuttle, no one spoke for a few seconds.

  Then Pepe: “Well. I’ll mark this as a partial success.”

  Ramm, still sprawled on the floor: “I have a headache in places I didn’t know existed.”

  Jarek slumped into a crash harness. “We’ll debrief later.”

  Brinn let out a breath, eyes on the burning horizon. “We need to disappear. Fast.”

  Sai stared through the viewport, watching the distant plume rise like a black tower. “They know we’re here now.”

  Jarek nodded grimly. “Then let’s make sure they remember what we did.”

  hot. I loved writing the chaos of the sabotage operation—especially juggling each character’s role and how everything nearly fell apart. Ramm disabling a vending machine mid-mission might be one of my favorite moments so far ??

  will get even messier in Chapter 21. The crew’s out, but nowhere near safe…