Sneem had the kind of cold that bit even before you felt its bone-chilling cold. The wind moved sideways across the valley floor and dragged crystal snow in glassy sheets which caught the half-light of the sun and refracted into blinding storms. This was the Frontier, the edge of the Dependency. The solar system touched the boundaries that connected to the Abyssal Zone.

  Hundreds of thousands of Elysian Marines fought Dependency soldiers in ground skirmishes all across the planetside and deep in its tunnel networks. On the surface, squadrons of Kris fighters engaged Elysian fighter craft. The Elysians fought to establish a foothold and secure the planet’s resources for scaling their attack, but Dependency marines were elite and refused to give ground.

  From his command chair, Arbiter Drayton ordered the Hemingway to remain with the blockade of Dependency capital ships—hundreds of battleships, heavy cruisers, and carriers—who hovered around the Meridian Gate. Elysians slowly encircled them on the edge of the solar system. Heavy percussive booms erupted from the 800mm cannons which propelled shells vast distances toward the Elysian destroyers, which responded with long purple laser beams. The shells largely missed and the energy of the lasers by themselves weren’t enough to penetrate the heavy shielding. The back and forth shots were largely a warning to keep their distance.

  Behind the Elysian ships, Thariel’s Hyperion flew across the backlines of his armada as if commanding individual ships and monitoring his progress. The other nine black Hammerstrike Hyperions, who protected him, flew in formation and taunted their power for everyone under his command to see.

  John spent hours that day with the Dependency command. Valentine called it first, but the others agreed with him after three hours of serious debate. The war with the Elysians in the system wasn’t going to be easy or quick with those Hyperions in play. If the Hyperions attacked the fleet—they may kill two or three of them—but they would almost certainly destroy their most prized ships before taking enough damage to force their retreat. The whole situation was extremely tenuous because they had to wait on reinforcements from the battles occurring deep within the Abyssal Zone where Meridian Gates didn’t exist. Ether rings existed, but the Dependency didn’t have access to those. So they had to wait for reinforcements and do what they could in their theater of war.

  The meeting with Fleet Admiral Valentine ended with him saying, “We need more time.” They would come up with a plan to attack Thariel directly. Until then, orders were to continue the assault on the planet Sneem and prevent as many Elysian shuttles as possible from reaching the forest world Coolaney—a planet in the same system also under assault—which was heavily populated and still being evacuated.

  John signed off on the mission to deliver one hundred crates of Serum 9-12x to the planet Sneem and its outposts on the front lines where, according to the SPECTRE system, supplies dwindled and in some places ran out completely. John was a regular soldier once. Earth Marines fought on Sneem. They were in Dependency uniforms, and they fought alongside aliens, but those were his brothers and sisters on that battlefield and he wasn’t going to leave them without the medical equipment they desperately needed.

  John stepped off the transport shuttle into the hollowed shell of a mining facility. Thanks to the engineering prowess of the soldiers there, they retrofitted some of the equipment to manufacture Serum 9-12x. The mission was to collect the fresh serum and deliver it to other parts of the planet.

  The building groaned as wind pushed through its pockmarked vents and ruptured walls. The heat was barely functional—it was so cold that John felt it through his Astralis-9 combat armor. Inside the forward op, lights flickered over frost-rimmed beds and bundled bodies—marines and civilians. Some moaned. Others lay incredibly still, with red tags on their eyes marking the cause of death.

  John walked past the makeshift ER. A medic sawed through a trooper’s armor with a thermal blade. John barely flinched. The soldier’s leg beneath was blackened from frostbite and Elysian acid. His eyes met with John’s then rolled back.

  John didn’t stop.

  He moved down the next corridor where another unit waited for lift-off back to the blockade. He sat cross-legged in the cold and clutched his EM rifle. When he saw John, his face lit up. “Arbiter?” John stuck out his hand. The soldier shook it. “I’ve never met an Arbiter before.”

  John pointed to his bandaged leg. “Promise me you’ll take care of that leg. Find me off world and we’ll have a drink.”

  The soldier saluted John. “Yes sir.”

  John saluted the man.

  Sasha chimed into his ear. “Arbiter Drayton, the serum is loaded. Ready for departure.”

  John loaded back into the shuttle. Through the viewports he watched the frontlines of Sneem unfold in the distance—Dependency ships dropped relief teams on one side of the planet and across the horizon. Elysian carriers deposited their own. The middle was chaos. Ground-to-air laser batteries tracked anything too bold. One Dependency barge flared in the middle of the sky, shredded by a strike as it breached the no-fly perimeter.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  John flinched. The pilot didn’t.

  Their destination was a crash site northeast of the Skellic Ice Shelf. A courier ship had gone down carrying vital trauma supplies. The coordinates came with a timestamp and a warning: no contact in six hours. Most assumed the crash had iced over or the crew froze trying to signal. But some, like John, had seen too many coincidences string into patterns. Something didn’t sit right with him, which is why he chose to deliver to this location first.

  They landed on a ridge overlooking a frozen basin ringed by crystal trees. The shuttle plunged low and flew down a slope of compacted frost and shattered ice. Snow drifted in thick curtains. Visibility was low. Finding a spot of flat land between crystal trees, the shuttle landed.

  John and four marines disembarked. Their boots crunched across frost-laced ground as they fanned out. His HUD flickered briefly—atmospheric interference. He tapped it. It didn’t help.

  “Telson and Niles, secure the perimeter,” John said. “Decker, you’re with me.”

  They reached the courier ship, half buried in the snow. The courier’s aft bay was exposed, hull plating bent outward. Inside, crates lined the interior—gray and sealed with frost. Each was stamped with the med cross of Dependency command.

  “Got what we came for,” Decker muttered. “The supplies are intact.”

  The ground moved.

  John didn’t hear it—he felt it. A low tremor was followed by a distinct clunk.

  “Back!” John shouted.

  A section of ice behind the courier cracked. Steam hissed. A circular platform rose, slats folding away like petals. Five figures ascended with it, silhouetted in the swirling frost.

  Elysians.

  Their armor gleamed under a coat of frost, alabaster colored plates and glinting white visors. Each held a curved rifle at the ready. One unslung a blade—long, graceful, and silver-edged.

  John hit the snow hard as pulse fire cracked the air. Trooper Niles screamed—cut down by a bolt to the chest. Telson opened fire, strafing right.

  “Contact!”

  John’s Scorcher barked as he slid into cover behind a broken support strut. The cold bit through his gloves as he slid in a fresh magazine. The enemy didn’t speak, nor shout, they just moved forward with surgical precision.

  One Elysian vaulted over a crystal tree trunk and gutted a Telson mid-run. Decker returned fire and caught one in the head. The enemy dropped. His helm shattered against the ice.

  John’s EM rifle jammed—an internal mechanism fried.

  “Come on!”

  He dropped to his knees and tried to diagnose the issue—but it was too late. An Elysian sprinted from the mist and swung his blade in a brutal arc.

  John dodged, just barely missing a death blow from the stinging blade. The blade skimmed his shoulder, carving through the armor plating and slicing through skin. John dropped his damaged rifle and rolled against the floor, pain flaring at his side. He looked for a weapon. There was none. John spotted the hand of a dead Elysian. He gripped his dagger.

  The Elysian in front of him lunged.

  John grabbed the dagger and swung it just in time, blade clashed against blade. Sparks hissed into the frost.

  The two circled.

  John’s breath steamed. His grip ached. The Elysian moved with fluid elegance, spinning his blade in precise arcs. “I was born for this, Arbiter,” he said.

  “Do you want to die here? Drop your weapon.”

  John was slower, less trained, and bleeding.

  The first clash nearly broke John’s arm. He blocked and twisted—but the Elysian countered and sliced through his thigh. John cried out and stumbled back.

  He spotted a standard issue EM pistol lying in the snow, two meters away.

  The Elysian crept in for the kill.

  John let his dagger fall into the snow, dropped low, and dived forward.

  His fingers closed around the pistol’s grip. He rolled onto his back, aimed, and pulled the trigger. BANG. The shot rang out sharp and final. The Elysian froze, then dropped. John lay there, chest heaving, frost melting against his skin. Blood spread in a dark pool around him and steamed in the cold.

  The lift access to the underground tunnel groaned and rose again.

  The battle wasn’t over.

  John’s head snapped up.

  “More incoming!” Telson shouted, dragging himself behind cover.

  “Telson, you’re still alive?” John asked.

  “Yep! Serum 12-9x is kicking me like a horse!”

  Three more Elysians emerged, slower this time. One limped. The others were disoriented. Sasha’s voice crackled faintly in John’s ear. “Reinforcements are five minutes out.”

  ‘Five minutes too late,” he muttered.

  John couldn’t remember every second. They fought. It came to him in flashes as combat sometimes did. There were muzzle flashes, steam trails, and the crunch of boots on ice. He stabbed one Elysian in the gut with its own curved blade. Telson was hit in the leg but kept firing. Decker—poor Decker—caught a glaive in the chest. Telson stabbed him in the neck with Serum 9-12x, but it did nothing. He was dead.

  Minutes passed before reinforcements arrived.

  Telson kneeled beside John, who stayed with the fallen soldiers. Once the medical crew loaded them onto stretchers, John said, “Get the crates from the courier. We can’t leave here empty handed.”

  “You’re wounded, sir,” Telson said.

  John looked back toward the medical equipment. “Don’t worry about me. I’m still breathing.” He placed his hand on Telson’s shoulder. “You fight like a bull. Glad you’re still with me.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Telson looked toward Deckard’s body, sinking into the snow. “Wish we could say the same about the others.”