Chapter 32 · Sable’s Second Plan

The warframes turned as one.

Across the avenue, six hundred armored bodies lifted their rifles toward Kellan. Their optics burned from blue to red, a colorless mechanical judgment reflected in every puddle of rain and blood. The sound came a second later—the synchronized click of safeties disengaging, sharp enough to cut through the storm.

Kellan stood in the center of the barricade with his hands empty.

Behind him, civilians crowded beneath the shadow of a collapsed transit tower. A woman held a child against her chest. An old man pressed both palms over the ears of a boy too young to understand why the sky was screaming. Above them, the Northern Compact Fleet pushed through the torn shield, warships sliding between clouds of ionized gas. Their engines painted the storm orange.

The Crown Directive spoke through every warframe at once.

'Traitor command identified. Former Marshal Kellan Vey. Lethal containment authorized.'

Kellan’s breath caught.

The voice was not loud, but it vibrated through the bones in his skull. His restored memories answered it with flashes of white fire: a command chamber, a tactical map, six colony cities glowing beneath orbital crosshairs. His own hand over the execution seal.