The Brotherhood base was vast, far bigger than Matthews expected. After what felt like an eternity the elevator’s descent finally came to a halt.
“Alright, team, stay sharp,” Matthews said.
The hangar outside was immense, stretching farther than he could have guessed. The ceiling loomed high above, with dim, flickering lights casting long shadows over the various ships scattered across the floor. Most were star nation fighter craft—sleek, stolen, and scarred from battle. Some bore the telltale signs of hasty repairs, mismatched panels and exposed wiring giving them a rugged, patched-up look. Others were makeshift pirate vessels.
But what caught Matthews’ attention was a massive machine near the far end of the hangar. Towering over everything else was a mech unlike any he’d seen before. Instead of the usual humanoid frame, this one resembled a cross between a siege engine and a walking tank. Its legs were squat and stocky, designed not for speed but for stability, with wide, clawed feet that could crush through the roughest terrain. The body was a hulking mass of armour, bristling with hardpoints for weapons. Mounted atop the mech was a rotating turret with a cannon that looked more like a siege weapon than something for standard combat.
Its head, if it could even be called that, was a spherical pod with multiple optical sensors glowing faintly red, giving it a predatory appearance. The armour was painted black with jagged red streaks, and from the rusted look of it, the mech had seen its share of battles.
Matthews had seen machines like this before, back on the battlefields of Saturn’s moons, during the brutal clashes between the Earth Federation and the Ganymede Alliance. They were war machines, walking juggernauts that altered the course of entire battles. Back then, he had been battling above the front lines, witnessing the brutal trench warfare between the two forces. Ganymede had been a war zone for months, the moonscape riddled with fresh craters from orbital bombardments. But it wasn’t the airstrikes or brutal infantry fighting that haunted him the most. It was the mechs.
He could still see it—the scorched earth, the burning debris, and those monstrous machines lumbering through the smoke, their massive feet leaving deep imprints in the ground as they advanced. The EF had deployed mechs as siege breakers, their job to plow through defensive lines and fortifications. They hadn’t just been weapons; they were symbols of power, of dominance, towering above the battlefield, invincible to small arms fire. Nothing short of heavy artillery or direct hits from orbital bombardments from capital ships could bring one down.
