Chapter 119: Ending The Debacle
She looked back at him, perfectly calm now that the situation had become simple again.
"Commander?" she asked.
There was a faint dryness in that one word, like she was politely asking whether he wanted her to continue pretending this was complicated.
Aurelian almost laughed.
"Lysara," he said, "end this quickly."
"Understood."
Her clothes shifted in a blink.
The refined, elegant look she had worn since waking disappeared, replaced by a sharper combat form that still somehow suited her, dark fabric lined with pale metallic accents, one hand already bringing a narrow beam-blade into being with a bright snap of light.
For the first time since meeting her, several of the awakened units near the front line actually hesitated.
Caedrin did not.
"Fire."
The chamber erupted.
Gauss rounds tore through the air in dense, bright lines, but Lysara moved before the first full volley reached her.
She did not charge wildly; instead, she used her inhumane speed to slip through it, blade flashing in short, precise motions, cutting some rounds outright and avoiding the rest by margins so small they made even Aurelian tense for half a breath.
Then she was inside their line.
The first rifle was cut in half before its owner even understood she had crossed the distance.
The second shooter took a clean strike to the shoulder joint and spun backward, weapon dropping uselessly from a dead arm.
A third tried to raise a heavier shock projector and was kicked so hard in the chest that he crashed into two others behind him, sending all three to the floor.
Seris grabbed Aurelian’s sleeve at once.
"We need to move back," she said. "This can still go bad if they start collapsing the chamber."
That was sensible, so he let her pull him and her own people out of the immediate crossfire while keeping his eyes fixed on the fight.
Caedrin had expected compliance or confusion.
He had not expected Lysara.
That much is shown now.
He was backing away while ordering more units forward, trying to force the weight of numbers into the problem, but the narrow approach was against him.
Too many bodies, not enough room, and Lysara took advantage of this as she tore through any and all defense that the other side put up without even breaking a sweat.
Every time a weapon came up, she was already somewhere else. Every time one of them thought they had a clean shot, one of their own was suddenly in the way because she had repositioned too quickly.
One of the awakened units tried to rush her with a combat frame from the side corridor, a heavier machine with reinforced arms and internal blades.
She saw it coming, pivoted, and drove her beam-blade straight through its knee assembly before it could even complete the step.
The frame collapsed sideways, and she used its falling weight as cover for the next burst of gunfire, then cut through the weapon arm of the shooter behind it a second later.
Aurelian watched for a few more seconds, then spoke without looking away.
"They made the mistake of thinking her gentle appearance means that she is the weakest."
Seris, standing beside him, answered in a quieter voice.
"Yes."
It was over almost as soon as the room understood it had become a real fight.
Caedrin’s followers still outnumbered Seris’s people, but numbers stopped mattering once the front broke.
The tighter they pressed, the worse it got. Some tried to retreat. Some tried to circle. Some were already too damaged to do either.
Caedrin himself finally turned and ran for the inner hall doors, clearly hoping to reach the control hall before Lysara could stop him.
He almost made it.
Almost.
Lysara crossed the distance before the door finished cycling and caught him by the back of the coat, dragged him around, and put the bright edge of her blade at his throat in one clean motion.
That froze the rest of the opposition more effectively than any speech could have.
The chamber fell silent as everyone slowly realized they had lost the match upon seeing their leader being dragged out, leaving them unsure what to do.
Caedrin stood rigid beneath Lysara’s blade, furious and breathing harder than a machine needed to.
She looked at Aurelian over his shoulder.
"What do you want done with him?"
Aurelian stepped forward, not hurrying, Seris and her people parting to let him pass.
By now, the room looked like exactly what it was: a failed revolt that had expected a helpless claimant and instead found a commander with a shipgirl standing beside him.
He stopped in front of Caedrin and studied him for a second.
"You don’t want to change and fear the consequences of that," Aurelian said. "That much I understand."
Caedrin stared at him and said nothing.
Aurelian’s voice stayed calm.
"But if your answer to that is to blow up a command hall, kill your own future, and drag everyone else into the dark with you, then you’re not protecting your people. You’re just speeding up your own demise, and everyone else’s who follow you."
Hearing that made Caedrin’s fist tighten as Aurelian was saying stuff he had thought about before when he was coming up with these plans, but he still said nothing.
Aurelian looked at Seris.
"Can your side secure the chamber and disarm whatever was planted in the control hall?"
"Yes," she said immediately. "Now that they’re stopped, yes."
"Do it."
She nodded and began giving orders at once, her people moving with visible relief now that the line had finally broken in their favor.
Aurelian then looked back at Caedrin.
"As for him and the others," he said, "they don’t need to be destroyed, but we cannot leave them as they are. Contain them. Strip their command access. After that, we’ll decide what they still get to be."
Seris inclined her head.
"Understood."
Lysara removed the blade from Caedrin’s throat, but only after two of Seris’s people had moved in to take control of him properly.
He did not resist then.
Not because he had changed his mind, but because he had finally understood he had lost.
The fight was done.
The path to the control hall was open again.
Aurelian exhaled once and glanced around the chamber, at the damaged machines, the scattered weapons, the wrecked certainty of a plan that had almost worked.
Then he looked at Lysara.
"Are you hurt?"
She glanced at one sleeve where a gauss round had scorched the outer layer without really getting through, and gave a small shrug.
"Nothing serious, I should be fine after a few hours."
That was good enough for now.
Seris returned a short while later after sending the first teams ahead.
"The charges were set on a timer so that even if the rebels lose, they can take others with them," she said. "But we reached them in time. They are being removed."
Aurelian nodded once.
"Good."
Then, with the worst of it finally past, he straightened and looked toward the inner corridor that led to the control hall, the place this whole trip had really been about.
"Let’s go finish this," he said.