The sky had been raining liquid fire for twenty-eight straight days, but Kaelen Vance had not moved his bamboo stool by an inch.
High above the cratered plains of Moon Six, the void burned with the fury of a thousand miniature stars.
Sovereign Vael’s siege divisions had assembled three hundred solar-fire trebuchets along the fortified rims of Moon Seven. Every twelve minutes, the brass engines groaned in unison, hurling massive boulders of condensed plasma across the empty gap.
Each boulder was the size of a three-story tea pavilion.
They streaked across the dark gulf in blazing arcs of crimson and gold, leaving trails of superheated ozone that hissed like dying serpents against the vacuum.
A single direct hit from one of those rocks could melt an iron mountain down to slag.
Yet as the latest volley shrieked toward the central dome of Moon Six, nothing shattered.
Deep inside the command citadel, Claire Vance stood before the central array basin, her slender fingers resting lightly upon the blue jade control keys Kaelen had carved.
