The universe was an ocean of stars, and planets were islands scattered across it.

  Wherever there were people, there was conflict. And wherever there was an ocean—any ocean—pirates were never far behind.

  On a deserted, nameless world abandoned by every map that mattered, a slaughter was underway.

  Thousands of combat mechs clashed across the ash-gray plains, split into two brutal colors: red and black. The red units were barely a few dozen strong. The black force outnumbered them ten to one, a tide of steel closing in from all sides.

  One mech burned brighter than the rest—crimson, lacquered like liquid fire, its armor throwing off shifting prismatic light with every movement. It stood out so violently it was almost obscene, a flare against the dead planet.

  And because it was the brightest target, it was never alone.

  A dozen black mechs swarmed it at all times, hacking in with oversized energy blades and high-frequency vibro-knives meant for close-quarters carving. But the crimson machine moved with an impossible precision, dodging by millimeters—too late for ordinary pilots, always just in time for her.

  Mounted along its heavy forearm was a thick-barreled charge lance. When she struck, she didn’t slash—she pierced. The weapon punched cleanly into black armor plating, and when she ripped it free, the enemy unit flashed white-hot and detonated, scattering shards across the ground like broken obsidian.

  It took only minutes.

  The pack that had surrounded her lay crippled or blown apart, the battlefield around her littered with black wreckage.

  The crimson mech planted its charge lance upright and slowly raised its head, looking up into the star-choked sky.

  The real war was happening above.

  In orbit, fleets in the same red-and-black colors tore at each other. Bursts of light flowered again and again—beautiful, almost like fireworks—except each bloom marked a ship dying. A warship vanished in a blaze, and another slid into the gap as if the universe itself were indifferent to the bodies it made.

  The imbalance was obvious: the black fleet dwarfed the red by more than an order of magnitude. They had the red formation boxed in with no opening, no escape vector, no mercy. It wasn’t a battle. It was an execution.

  The crimson mech’s left forearm suddenly shifted.

  Two thick alloy rods telescoped out—one above, one below—then locked into a long curved frame. In seconds, they formed a massive bow nearly twenty meters from tip to tip. A cable of reinforced steel threaded itself into place, winding tight as it anchored, humming with tension.

  The mech’s right hand lifted the charge lance and set it along the bow like an arrow.

  She dropped into a low stance and pulled.

  The enormous bow bent into a savage arc, vibrating with a mournful, resonant whine. Then—release.

  The lance shot forward like a meteor, ripping through the air toward the central black flagship sheltered by its escort screen.

  Inside the flagship, a neutral, frigid synthetic voice sounded from the ship’s core systems.

  “Warning. Incoming high-energy unidentified object. Engage protective shielding immediately. Recommended level: Class A.”

  An Alliance officer at the command console turned sharply to the man standing beside him. “Commodore Kane, sir—requesting authorization to raise Class A shields!”

  Marcus Kane was in his forties, but already the Alliance Navy’s youngest high-ranking officer—a man whose ambition seemed to sharpen his features the way constant pressure sharpened stone. His uniform was immaculate, cut close over a tall, powerful frame. On his hard, handsome face, a thin smile curved with undisguised contempt.

  He didn’t look at the officer.

  He was staring at the three-dimensional tactical display, where the crimson mech stood centered like a challenge, as if it were meeting his gaze across the vacuum.

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  “She’s nothing special,” he murmured, lifting a glass from the command station. The wine inside was as dark as fresh blood. He took a leisurely sip. “From today on, there will be no such thing as the Red Widow pirates.”

  “Sir—Commodore Kane, please give the order!”

  Only after the second prompt did Kane speak, still calm, still careless. “Raise the shield. Class A.”

  A clean white barrier shimmered into existence around the black flagship, luminous and almost holy in its purity.

  The charge lance hit it head-on with a roaring impact, like a falling asteroid refusing to be denied.

  For an instant, time seemed to freeze.

  There was only white light—shield and weapon colliding—an explosion of brilliance so intense it swallowed the battlefield’s red and black alike, both in orbit and on the planet below.

  Then the systems spoke again.

  “Energy expenditure: ten percent. Threat neutralized.”

  Kane’s smile deepened. “That was your strongest shot?” His voice carried the soft satisfaction of someone sealing a coffin. “Then goodbye.”

  He set the glass down and issued the next command with the same idle tone. “Ion pulse cannon. Target the Red Widow flagship. Destroy it.”

  The ship’s core counted down without emotion. “Ion pulse cannon charged. Firing in ten seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven…”

  Kane watched the tactical feed where the crimson mech was being swallowed again by black units, drowned under sheer numbers.

  “The Red Widow flagship has been bled dry,” he said, almost gently. “No shields. No reserve. Aria Vale… you’re finished.”

  The moment the last word left his mouth, the black flagship’s prow blazed.

  A beam as thick as a city street lanced across space and slammed into the red flagship, the heart of what remained of the pirate fleet. The red vessel shuddered violently. Its weapons died at once—every cannon going silent in the same breath.

  And then it came apart.

  A thunderous detonation tore it into sections, sending burning debris spiraling outward. The wreckage smashed into nearby red ships, taking a dozen of the dwindling escorts with it like collateral in a sentence already decided.

  “No—!”

  The scream rang out from the planet below—raw, female, and torn wide open.

  On the surface, the crimson mech ripped through the black units around it with frantic brutality, punching holes through armor and setting bodies of metal on fire. At some point a second charge lance came into its hands—spare weapon, stolen weapon, it hardly mattered.

  One by one, black mechs fell.

  And then she stopped.

  The crimson mech stood very still, staring up as fragments of the Red Widow flagship rained down like a dying constellation.

  There were fewer than ten red mechs left now. They moved in without being told, forming a protective ring around the crimson unit. Slowly, as if their joints were filled with grief instead of hydraulics, they tilted their heads back and watched the wreckage fall.

  Inside the cockpit, Aria Vale sat frozen before the instrument displays.

  She was beautiful in the way cold things could be beautiful—like ice under moonlight. Her face didn’t change for a long time. Two tears slipped down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with her sleeve so quickly it looked like a reflex, something she refused to admit even to herself.

  When she raised her head again, there was nothing soft left in her eyes.

  Only grief carved into something sharper.

  A harsh laugh crackled over the comms.

  The cockpit monitor flickered, then resolved into Marcus Kane’s face—openly delighted, openly cruel.

  “Aria,” he said, laughing as if he’d heard the finest joke. “I have to say, I love this look on you. It’s… pitiful.”

  He leaned closer to his own camera, as if proximity could make the humiliation more intimate.

  “Thanks to you, my record just got prettier. At this rate, I’ll be the Alliance’s youngest admiral. Hate me if it helps you breathe. Make it your last hobby.”

  Aria looked at the screen—and then, unexpectedly, she smiled.

  “Military and pirates were never meant to share the same sky,” she said, calm as a verdict. “There’s no point talking about hate. You wiped out the Red Widow Fleet today because you were stronger. That’s all. We weren’t. No one to blame.”

  Kane’s brows lifted, surprised by her composure. “Oh?”

  Then he laughed again, but this time with a hint of calculation. “You’re wasted as a corpse. Surrender, and I might let you live.”

  Aria’s smile vanished.

  “There are pirates who die in battle,” she said. “There are no pirates who kneel.”

  Her voice dropped into something cold enough to sting. “If I live through this, I’ll come for you.”

  She cut the feed.

  The crimson mech’s hand tightened around the charge lance planted beside it.

  On Kane’s bridge, the tactical image returned—just that bright red machine on the ground, a defiant ember refusing to go out. Kane tapped a finger against the console.

  “Then I’ll do you the favor,” he said mildly. “But you won’t be coming back for anything.”

  The black flagship’s prow lit again.

  This beam didn’t aim at orbit.

  It aimed downward—straight at the small cluster of red mechs on the planet’s surface.

  The surviving red units surged forward at once, charging the nearest black machines. If they were going to die, they would die dragging enemies down with them. They moved like people who had already said goodbye.

  In the blinding white glare, Aria Vale closed her eyes.

  She waited for death to arrive.

  A voice spoke inside her cockpit—flat, steady, inhuman.

  “Host body confirmed deceased. Activation conditions met. Initiating: War-God System.”

  Aria’s world dissolved into light.

  The voice continued without pause.

  “Initiating temporal reversal.”

  “Temporal reversal engaged.”

  Within the incandescent beam, something crimson rose upward—so vivid it looked like a red blossom blooming out of ice and snow.

  The mech Wildfire trembled violently.

  Its outline warped, rippling like heat over water.

  And time—time itself—began to run backward.