Chapter 17 · Phase Two Online

The six cannons fired together.

Kellan felt the impact before he heard it.

The command deck lurched sideways, throwing him against the restraint rail. Metal screamed beneath his gloves. Outside the fractured observation glass, the storm of Cinder turned white—then black—as six columns of blue fire punched through the gas giant’s copper clouds.

For one impossible second, every city below vanished in the glare.

Then the defense network answered.

A thousand towers unfolded across the six-city basin. Buried batteries rose from streets. Shield pylons climbed out of collapsed transit stations. Civilian armor, still painted in the colors of repair crews and mining unions, locked its feet into the ground and lifted its weapons toward the sky.

The network had obeyed him.

It had not obeyed him fast enough.

The first cannon beam struck the western shield.

A wall of force erupted above Seventh City. The impact spread like a crack across frozen glass, blue fractures racing from the shield’s crown to its foundation. Buildings shuddered. Windows burst inward. Somewhere below, thousands of people screamed.

Kellan’s neural link filled with voices.

“East tunnel is jammed!” Marra Pell shouted through the emergency channel.