“I understand why you’re all here,” Governor Gordon Lane said, leaning into the microphone with a self-deprecating smile. “It certainly isn’t to admire my aging face or listen to me offer polite, insincere nonsense. You don’t want to hear it—and frankly, I don’t want to say it.”

  The crowd loved him for that. Applause rolled across the plaza in a warm wave. Gordon Lane had never been the type to drown people in official speeches, and Nina Station’s residents—practical to the bone—ate that up.

  “Tonight belongs to the Alliance’s young officers,” he continued, voice rising, “and to the Alliance’s newest third-generation mechs! Citizens—if you’re part of the Pandora Reach, then this pride belongs to all of us. Open your eyes. Let’s see what the new generation can do!”

  Cheers erupted, loud enough to shake the air.

  Around Clocktower Plaza, dozens of giant screens flickered on at once. Cameras from multiple angles locked onto the raised platform. The stage itself spanned nearly five hundred meters—without the broadcast, anyone standing beyond the first rows wouldn’t have seen more than shadows.

  Governor Lane took his seat in the viewing tier. Almost immediately, a thunderous mechanical roar bellowed from one end of the platform.

  The first mech burst into view.

  A hulking steel tiger—massive and ferocious-looking, modeled after a rare predator native to the capital world. It stood thirteen meters tall and weighed fifty tons, armored thick and heavy, fitted with a beam rifle and an energy cannon.

  It was a first-generation Alliance model.

  Its strengths were obvious: monstrous power, brutal durability, and terrifying straight-line speed. Conventional weapons barely scratched its plating.

  Its weaknesses were just as obvious: slow reactions, simplistic attack patterns, and poor evasive capability.

  After the tiger came a shriek of metal slicing air.

  The second mech dropped in—a second-generation unit, shaped like a hawk. Its steel talons bit deep into the stone of the platform, and two broad, weighty wings flared out—defensive shields as much as weapons.

  This one carried fewer long-range guns. A titanium blade hung at its waist, flanked by two alloy daggers. Its wing mounts held an energy cannon and a high-rate particle gun.

  The steel tiger and the hawk—Alliance first and second generation—would fight together tonight.

  Against the third generation.

  The crowd screamed for it, chanting for “third-gen” like it was a miracle. Mechs had changed the shape of civilization. They let fragile human bodies meet alien horrors up close—without being torn apart in seconds.

  In modern war, ordinary infantry mattered less and less. Planetary landings had become the rule. A fleet could dominate the sky, sure, but someone still had to hit the ground, seize resources, and break native resistance.

  And on too many worlds, “natives” meant enormous beasts—or worse, creatures born with unnatural abilities.

  For soldiers with handheld weapons, survival rates were ugly.

  A mech, on the other hand, was a mobile ground fortress.

  Under the roar of thousands of voices, the third mech finally emerged from the darkness.

  It didn’t rush. It walked—one heavy step at a time.

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  The machine itself wasn’t even fully visible yet, but the impact of its footfalls traveled through the stage and into the crowd, vibrating bone and blood. The residents of Nina Station shouted even harder, intoxicated by the sound.

  Everyone knew who was inside.

  The Alliance Academy’s “first genius,” Eliot Shaw.

  He’d been involved in the third-generation project from the earliest tests through the final trials. The new design wasn’t fully stable yet. The demands on a pilot were extreme. Across the whole Alliance, only a small handful could handle it.

  On Nina Station, only Eliot—who had arrived with the patrol fleet yesterday—had that capability.

  Then the mech stepped into full light.

  “It’s human-shaped!”

  Gasps turned into a frenzy.

  The Alliance net had posted conceptual designs of a humanoid mech for years, but the tech hurdles were so steep that most people assumed it was still a fantasy.

  And yet here it was—blue-gray armor, upright posture, arms and legs proportioned like a soldier carved from steel.

  Skye Vale’s eyes went glossy with excitement. She reached for Cora’s arm without even looking. “It’s him! He’s inside that mech—Cora, look!”

  Her fingers closed on empty air.

  Skye’s smile faltered. She twisted around, confused.

  Cora was gone.

  “Grandpa,” Skye whispered urgently, tugging at Graham’s sleeve. “Where did Cora go?”

  Graham—like everyone else—had been caught staring, captivated by the humanoid mech now striding to the center of the platform. Skye’s voice snapped him out of it. He looked to the seat beside her.

  Empty.

  A jolt of alarm hit him. “Wasn’t she right next to you?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Skye said, panic creeping in. “She was, and then she wasn’t!”

  Graham forced himself to breathe.

  His youngest granddaughter had always been… difficult. Before, it was her silence and withdrawal. Now it was this new habit of slipping away like smoke whenever no one was looking.

  She must have used the mech’s entrance to distract everyone and slipped out.

  He wanted to stand and search—but this viewing tier wasn’t a casual bench. Sitting here was a signal of status. Getting up in the middle of the event would draw eyes, and it would look like disrespect to Governor Lane.

  And the Quills couldn’t afford to offend anyone right now.

  Their restaurant was already hanging by a thread. Graham had planned to speak with the governor afterward—try to persuade him to put in a word with Professor Phillip at the Agriculture Division, maybe reopen supply lines.

  Causing a scene would ruin that chance.

  With a tight jaw, Graham activated his comm and sent a discreet message to Walter: search the crowd. Take the boys. Bring the security detail. Find Cora—quietly.

  Then, forcing down his worry, Graham turned his gaze back to the platform.

  The battle was underway.

  The steel tiger charged like a cyclone, shoulder cannons firing nonstop at the humanoid mech. The blue-gray unit dodged with precise, economical movements; when it couldn’t evade, it raised an alloy shield to take the hit.

  A protective energy barrier shimmered around the platform—thank God. Without it, the tiger’s stray blasts would have shredded the audience.

  The hawk mech leapt into the air, landing dozens of meters ahead in a blink. Its speed nearly matched the tiger’s. It guarded the tiger’s flank, golden wings catching incoming fire and deflecting it.

  Then the three mechs closed.

  The hawk’s wing-joints split, extending a titanium blade. The tiger raised steel claws.

  Together they struck.

  The humanoid mech drew a thick, heavy sword from its back. It twisted, rolled, slipped past the hawk’s slash—then caught the tiger’s incoming claw with its bare hand.

  The sword began to vibrate at a high frequency, emitting a sharp, furious hum—

  And punched straight into the tiger’s chest.

  The crowd exploded.

  “That was beautiful!”

  “What a hit!”

  “Humanoid designs are so much more agile—no beast-frame could pull that off!”

  The plaza turned into a storm of voices, people arguing and praising and reliving the movement in excited bursts.

  Onstage, the hawk mech seemed unfazed by losing its partner. It had expected the tiger to fall.

  At close range, its high-rate particle cannon fired into the humanoid mech’s torso. Light flared on impact.

  Skye’s breath caught.

  But the humanoid unit didn’t even stagger.

  It absorbed the blast as if it were rain, lifted its vibrating sword overhead, and brought it down in a brutal arc.

  The hawk froze for a fraction of a second—then collapsed, defeated.

  Skye stared, stunned. “Grandpa… it took a particle cannon at point-blank range and didn’t even get scratched. What is that armor made of?”

  Graham narrowed his eyes, thinking. “Refined blue-steel composite. It replaced the old Violet Moon alloy years ago. Stronger, lighter, cleaner.”

  The humanoid mech turned and slammed its right fist to its chest, saluting the crowd—who were screaming Eliot’s name like worship.

  Then it saluted the viewing tier.

  Only after that did it bend, seize the two disabled mechs—one in each hand—and walk off behind the clocktower, its steps making the platform tremble.

  That mech’s name was Springtide.

  Named after Eliot Shaw himself.

  A singular honor, the kind people envied for life.

  But in Cora’s eyes, if she’d bothered to watch at all, it deserved only one review:

  A clunky old relic.