CHAPTER ONE
Ghosts in the Red Dust
Mil stood before the mirror, the quiet hum of the station systems a constant backdrop. Pale light traced the angles of his tall, broad-shouldered frame—a body honed by decades of combat, training, and survival.
Scars marked his skin like forgotten constellations. Not grotesque—earned. Each one a record of a mission survived, a friend lost, a mistake corrected too late. They gave him presence. The kind you can't fake. The kind that says: this man doesn't just read history—he writes it in blood.
His steel-gray eyes studied the reflection not with vanity, but calculation. Always scanning. Always learning. Even now.
Mil had grown up in the shadow of giants—parents lost to the inertia of the Advancement Age, buried in science and politics while their son wrote his own code. He'd raised himself. Independent. Willful. Sharp.
Where others hesitated, Mil moved.
By twenty, he was already a ghost on the battlefield—classified missions, black squad ops, redacted so often his name was more legend than record. Tactical brilliance and uncanny perception made him indispensable. His rise through the command ranks was meteoric.
Now he bore the title Arian—a rank equal to admiral, yet beyond it. Entrusted with experimental weaponry, bleeding-edge ships, and direct access to Primordial Ore–based systems. A title given to only one commander per generation. Mil didn't take it lightly.
And still, for all his training and access, the Ore remained a mystery.
It resonated with him. Reacted to him. But never spoke to him—not the way it did to Elara.
Still, the connection was there. A silent pulse at the edge of thought.
He pulled on his uniform and crossed to the gear bay. Today's assignment: routine recon of a Martian sector. Low threat, minimal profile.
But nothing stayed routine for long—not with Mil.
⸻
The Martian horizon stretched beyond his cockpit—jagged canyons and blood-colored dust storms dancing across the landscape. Sector Theta-9. Quiet. Too quiet.
The Arrow, his scout ship, hummed beneath his fingertips. He adjusted course, eyes flicking over the HUD. Just another sweep. Just another day.
Then he saw it.
A faint blip. Almost nothing. A whisper on his radar.
Mil narrowed his eyes. "Control, this is Scout Unit Mil-7. I'm getting something... irregular on my grid. Requesting permission to investigate."
Static answered. Then a click.
"Copy, Mil-7. Proceed with caution. Log coordinates. No hero moves."
"Roger that," he said, even as he veered off course.
The Arrow surged forward, cutting through red haze and orbital debris. Soon he reached a graveyard of fractured satellites, mining husks, and the shredded remains of ships from the early expansion era.
Then he saw it.
Not junk. Not human.
A ship.
Sleek. Dark. Wrong.
No Earth markings. No transponder. No known silhouette—nothing matched the design catalogs from either human fleets or reverse-engineered alien tech. It hovered in silence, as if it had always been there. Watching.
Before he could speak, his console exploded in a shower of sparks.
An energy beam ripped past his wing. Then another.
Mil yanked the controls, peeling the Arrow into a dive. Shields flared, the hull groaning under torque. Comms were gone—just shrieking alert tones and the hammer of his heartbeat.
They were cloaked. Waiting. And now he knew why.
The enemy ship shifted in the shadows, half-glimpsed—its hull like black glass, flickering with something unreal. Then it vanished again, ghosting back into the field.
Worse—he felt it: it was calling others.
And he couldn't warn base.
⸻
The Arrow limped into the upper stratosphere, docking with Mil's main ship, The Javelin. He booted up emergency protocols, systems roaring to life. A secure uplink blinked green.
"Base, this is Mil. Sector Theta-9 is compromised. Unknown ship engaged me. No match to any known make or file. They've signaled others. We've got incoming. I repeat—"
The feed cracked.
A deep, subsonic boom echoed through the channel.
Then—screams.
No mistaking it. Mars Base Alpha was under attack.
⸻
Mil didn't hesitate.
The Javelin's systems surged online. Shields raised. Weapon cores ignited, engines glowing hot. He locked in coordinates and punched the burn.
"Come on, come on..."
He switched to a secure line. "Flynn. I need you."
The reply came fast, tense but composed. "Got your ping. Just finished a recon pass off Phobos. What's the story?"
"We're under attack. Mars Base Alpha. Unknown hostiles. Meet me at Delta-3 orbit. I don't plan on dying alone."
Flynn didn't need convincing. "Roger that. I'll be your wing. Let's give 'em hell."
They'd flown together since the academy—two kids in drone suits outsmarting senior cadets. Flynn had always been reckless, brilliant, dangerous. Sun-gold skin from cockpit UV, sharp green eyes that saw angles no one else did.
He was more than Mil's backup.
He was family.
⸻
As they closed on Mars, Mil's HUD screamed with target locks.
Three incoming hostiles.
"Here we go," he muttered.
"Three on two, Mil," Flynn said, voice steady. "Hope you brought something shiny from those new alloys of yours."
Mil smirked, activating the Javelin's experimental suite. The undercarriage hummed with raw, unstable power—hybrid plasma arrays, adaptive shielding, and tech so new it didn't exist in the records yet.
"I brought the future."
And then they were on them.