Kronos took his considerable frustration out on the PUBNET satellite. It was a harder task than Kronos realized to take out one of the Empires satellites. His first step was to disable the double layer of shields on the structure. The first one fell easily enough to sustained DEW fire. However, in the time it took to take down the second, the first had already regenerated to a degree. Minutes later, he had both of them disabled, so he shot a flechette missile at.

Sensors guided the missile until it reached the optimum distance, and then it exploded in a shower of jagged metal. The projectiles ripped through the satellite until it resembled a chewed up carcass. It was the first time Kronos had seen overlapping shields used and he wondered why his armor didn’t have a similar defense. It seemed incredibly useful against directed energy. With that kind of tech, his armor could stand up to sustained blaster fire with no problems.

The power draw has to be immense, he theorized.

He reported the missions success to Pictor and then accelerated the ship past the new debris. The satellite had been in orbit on the opposite side of the planet, so it would only take him a few minutes in either direction to return to the Zodiac.

“Hey Astra,” he said as he darted past the satellite.

“Hm?”

“Do you have any recording of the pacification on the station.”

Astra put her hands behind he head. “Yeah, I kept a couple of the more violent mashups.”

“Why?” He wondered.

“I thought that someone should chronicle what was happening on the station.” Her voice sounded sad.

“I’m surprised that so much material was able to get out in the first place. Usually, the Empire is pretty tight-lipped about that sort of thing,” she said after a moment. “Why do you ask?”

“I wanted to see them,” Kronos replied. “I don’t have access to the PUBNET and I wondered what the rest of the Empire was seeing.”

He focused so that he could dodge on of the larger floating rocks before continuing. “Turns out the ravens were able to disable the station’s control over the PUBNET and now we get to do damage control for someone’s fuck up.” Kronos knew the bitterness in his voice was obvious but he didn’t care.

Astra leaned up in her chair and put a hand on his armored forearm. “Hey, cowboy.” She said softly. “I don’t think you should see them. It’ll probably do a number on your head. Remember what I said earlier. You’ve been awake for going on four days and now isn’t a good time, but come back to the ship and talk to me before you do anything crazy.”

Kronos sighed but said what she wanted to hear. “I will.”

When they returned to the station, he docked it easily. Flying the Observer had almost become second nature. He wasn’t nearly as good as Astra. He had seen the woman pull of maneuvers in space that shouldn’t have been possible for a ship that size. However, he was progressing enough that he was confident that he could fly the ship by himself if the worst were to happen. He assumed that was the entire point of the training in the first place. He didn’t need to be the best pilot. He only needed to be good enough to get them from point A to point B.

When the docking clamps were secure, he tiredly got up from his seat and joined Zhang in the cabin. They exited the Observer and left the crew behind.

“When do you think it’ll begin?” Kronos asked, referring to the purge.

“Probably as soon as we report in to Pictor,” His parter replied. “I don’t imagine that he’ll want to wait very long. His ass is already on the line as it is. He’ll want to do as much damage control as possible.”

Kronos just nodded. They hadn’t even made it into the station proper before they received alert on their HUD. Kronos opened it with a scowl.

“Looks like you were wrong.” He said dryly. “We’ve got five minutes to reach our appointed places and then the party kicks off.”

Zhang slapped him on the shoulder. “Good luck,” he said in an entirely too jovial tone before jogging off.

Kronos pulled his rifle from his back and started his own journey. He needed to be halfway across the station in another node before everything kicked off. He had been assigned to node two, floor golf. Based upon the designation, he knew that he would be in the upper habitation deck. There were two per node and each had a capacity of about four hundred civilians. When he did the math he realized that close to six thousand civilians would die in this operation. It was more than three times the amount of people in his home on Hod.

As he traveled to his destination, Kronos noticed battle droids flooding the corridors and the hubs in neatly ordered rows. Guard personnel were organizing and assigning groups of droids and men at every door and section. As he trotted by, they got well out of the way.

One of the droids was too sluggish and he didn’t even slow. He just activated his shield and let it bounce off of his armor. It crashed to the deck in a heap of whining servos and sparking wires. After that, his path was relatively clear to the tram. A short hop on the tram and it took him from node five to node two. He was only one floor above his target so got on the lift and took it down. When he stepped off the lift, he was locked and loaded.

He had just arrived when the countdown on his HUD hit zero. Droids were already stationed at each berthing. There were eighty berthings on each habitation deck and there were two droids at each door. Every corridor held a squad of the Guard ready to back up the droids as necessary. It seemed a little overkill, but then, this entire operation was overkill.

At once, all the hatches in the berthing were remotely opened and battle droids with their Guard handlers started opening fire on the occupants within. Those that had tried to bar entry with furniture and personal effects were quickly overrun and the slaughter began.

Kronos strode to the center of the deck and merely watched the proceedings with no real desire to get involved. He had seen enough death over the last few days and he didn’t want to add to the body count.

He received reports over the TACNET as small pockets of resistance erupted into full firefights. When his presence was requested at one of the firefights in the deck below, he stubbornly wanted to stay right where he was. A few seconds after the request, Pictor was screaming in his ear.

“Kronos! Get your ass to two-hotel and take out those rebels.”

Kronos didn’t bother replying and sent back an automated confirmation signal. It was petty, he knew, but he wasn’t feeling particularly generous.

He jogged toward the lift and took it down to the next floor down. When the doors slid open, he realized why he had been ordered to assist. The Guard was having a rough go of it. Evidently, the rebels had ambushed the droids when they entered the berthings and all but destroyed the entire force. The Guard had been pushed into a fighting retreat toward the lift. In the tight confines of the habitation deck, it was difficult for them to fight back. They had cleared the closest corridors to the lift, but that left six on either side teeming with combatants.

The sheer number of the civilians fighting was enough to put the Guard on the back foot despite their superior weapons and armor. A Molotav cocktail was lobbed over the Guard nearest to Kronos and it shattered against his shield. Fire spread all over his body, but he didn’t even feel the heat. He didn’t want it to degrade his shield, so he launched himself forward. In the process he stowed his rifle and drew a pistol in each hand. The limited space meant that he didn’t need to be careful with his aim. The speed of his movement caused the fire to go out around him and he looked like a demon jumping from a portal of fire.

After that, he went into a frenzy as his armor and HUD helped him target and take down enemies one after the other. On his left he shot a Molotov out of a mans hand and it shattered in a rain of fire. The flames covered him and the three rebels next to him. They started rolling on the ground and screaming. He didn’t bother putting them out of their misery.

Instead he turned and fired both pistols in a group of enemies. One by one, three men and one woman went down with smoking holes in their brows. He strode forward like an engine of death. Any hint of movement and his blasters ended the threat.

Behind him, the Guard rallied and starting putting down cover fire, but Kronos didn’t need it. Every trigger pull ended in another dead civilian and Kronos didn’t stop to think of the consequences of his actions.

Soon, he had already cleared half of the corridors on either side, and the Guard were going through each berthing behind him to clear it out. He waited in the center of the habitation deck and continued to fire at anything that moved. He wasn’t actively trying to kill them this time, he was giving the Guard time to clear each corridor behind him. He didn’t want to pull too far out and over extend himself. His armor was good, but there were still any manner of ways that he could die.

When the Guard caught up to his position, he continued his journey through the habitation deck. He scythed through the civilians without a single shot making it through his shields. This wasn’t the kind of battle that Kronos was used to. This was simply a slaughter. The people were desperate and scared. They wanted to go down fighting and Kronos respected that. If it weren’t for his wife and children being held hostage by the Empire, he might have even been on their side. Kronos almost laughed at the absurdity.

Kronos reached the end of the habitation deck and all the corridors were swept clean of civilians. He heard a woman and a child screaming for their mother behind him as the Guard pulled them from their quarters and shoved them into the center of the deck. Some of the Guard laughed at their struggles, but the operative just felt cold.

When he studied the child he felt his heart tighten. She was just a little girl, too young to know why her father had been killed and why her mom was crying. She kept calling for her mom but a Guard planted a boot in her fragile chest and she was spun away by the impact. Her skull cracked against the bulkhead and her cries went silent. The mother yelled and reached out for her daughter but another guard used the butt of his rifle to strike her in the back of the head.

Kronos felt like time slowed down when that happened. He watched as the woman’s skull cracked and blood gushed from the wound. She fell on her face but she was still alive. She looked up at her daughter and started crawling across the floor while reaching out with her hands. Before she reached her child, the Guard that had hit her, fired three shots into her back. The woman seemed to deflate and Kronos couldn’t stop himself.

He strode over to the little girl and the Guard backed away from him. He checked the girl over with his HUD and verified that she was still alive, but unconscious. He put away his pistols and then picked her up and cradled her tiny form in his arms. She was stick thin with straw colored hair. It was a rarity on the Zodiac when most people had black or brown hair. He looked at her sadly. In another time and in another place, she could’ve been his daughter. He just watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest for a long moment before he was interrupted.

“Sir, you need to let it go.”

He looked up at the Guard who had addressed him. It was a female lieutenant with her hand stretched out to take the girl from him. He was struck by the absurdity of the moment. The lieutenant could’ve been a mother. She could’ve had daughters of her own, and yet she was telling him to let her kill the girl.

“No,” he said softly.

The Guard raised her rifle and pointed it at the child. “Sir, I said you need to let it go.” Her voice was chilled and determined. Kronos knew that there was nothing he could say to the woman that would show her how wrong the entire operation was.

Tears welled in his eyes as he laid down the girl as if she were a tiny bird. When he returned to his full height, the Guards were in a small semicircle around him. Some looked nervous with their fingers twitching against the triggers of their rifle. Kronos decided he couldn’t be in the room anymore. He couldn’t watch the child die. It was a type of cowardice, he knew, but his heart hurt so much that he didn’t think it could take another hit.

He pushed through the assembled group and they parted around him like fish in the presence of a shark. He flinched as he hear the bark of a rifle but he kept moving. It was times like that when Kronos wished his armor didn’t grant him three hundred and sixty degree of vision.

He entered the lift and signaled for the door to close. It sealed behind him and he rose to the commercial deck two floors above him. He stepped off the lift and immediately got on the tram. He wasn’t actively thinking about where he was heading, but in his heart he already knew. He felt like doing something stupid and he had promised Astra that he would talk to her before he did so.

The tram carried him around the station. It felt like it took an eternity to reach node five, but once he got there, he didn’t remember the journey. He got on the lift and descended to the docks on the lowest level. When he got off his feet carried him to the Observer without conscious thought of his own.

As he approached the hatch, it opened before he got there and Astra was waiting in the doorway.

“Come on in, cowboy.” She gave him a sad smile. “I figured you would be back soon enough.”

Kronos strode inside and collapsed into one of the seats that was designed for his substantial bulk. He took off his helmet and lay it on the seat next to him. His biosuit slithered away from his head and retreated underneath his armor. When his face was revealed, the cool air brushed against his tears, and made them feel like icy streams.

Astra picked up the helmet and set it aside so that she could sit down. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and hugged him close.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Now you understand.”

He looked into her crystalline blue eyes. His mind felt like roiling hurricane of exhaustion, pain, sadness, and anger. When he looked into her eyes, all he saw was calm determination. He wanted that for himself.

“Understand what?” He asked softly in a cracked voice.

Astra gestured to herself and the rest of the crew. In his misery, he hadn’t even noticed the other four approach.

“Now you understand why we fight the Empire.”

Kronos pulled away from her. “Is this some sort of trick?” He demanded.

Astra made soothing gestures. “Not at all,” she replied. “We’re here because of you.”

She pointed at each member of the crew. “Every single one of us volunteered for this mission. We came here to protect the lost child of Titan.”

Kronos mind was reeling. “I’m not from Titan,” he said haltingly. “I’m from Hod.”

He wasn’t even sure why he said that. His home world was supposed to remain a secret, but everything seemed to be happening too fast and his mind felt like it was made of molasses.

“No, Kronos. You’re the first Titan returned to us. The IID thought they made a clever joke when they named you. To us, it was cosmic justice.” She paused as if coming to a decision.

“We’re here to rescue you and take you away from the Empire so that you can’t fight against it like you were always intended to.”

“I can’t,” he said lamely. As much as he wanted to, and he was realizing that he did, the Empire still held his family captive. So long as that was true, he wasn’t going to abandon them for something as petty as revenge—even if it shattered his heart into a thousand pieces and darkened his soul until even the dark god Lapetos refused him in the underworld.

“Why do you think you can’t?” Astra asked him carefully.

He looked back into her eyes. “Because they have my family. If I don’t work for the Empire then they’ll kill them. I’d like to help you Astra, I really would. I promise not to tell anyone but I—“

“Kronos, stop.” She interrupted before lightly chuckling. “I was worried you had some other reason to say no.”

Kronos grew furious. He couldn’t believe that she would dismiss his concerns out of hand. He was getting tired of people taking advantage of him.

“I—“ he started before Astra interrupted again.

“Kronos, we already have your family.” His mouth gaped open in mid-speech, but Astra’s eyes were deadly serious.

“They’re safe.”