When she stepped into the final tent, Mira was surprised to find a red-haired Revolutionary Army lieutenant seated behind a desk—and standing behind her was none other than Augustus ngsk.
"Mira Han. Look into my eyes," the lieutenant said, taking the paper from Mira’s hand.
But Mira ignored her. Her attention had fixed entirely on Augustus, sizing him up from head to toe.
"Look at !" The lieutenant rapped her knuckles on the desk.
"Alright," Mira said, finally locking eyes with the lieutenant’s pale green gaze. They stared at each other for a full two seconds—until Mira playfully rolled her eyes.
"Answer my questions," the lieutenant said while jotting sothing brief onto Mira’s form—just a few letters, from the looks of it.
"Our enemies are the elite of the Terran Federation. Are you ntally prepared for that?"
"Ha—perfect."
"Why do you want to join the Revolutionary Army?"
"To do revolution. Literally."
"What’s your post-service employnt goal?"
"Marriage."
"You’ve passed. Report to Fourth Recruit Training Camp. Your provisional rank is Staff Sergeant. All recruits of lower rank are to salute you on sight."
This ti, it was Augustus ngsk himself who spoke.
"You’ll be in charge of twenty new recruits. Prove you’re capable with results."
"Did I hear that right?" Mira asked, turning to the red-haired lieutenant with the long ponytail.
"The doctor said your hearing’s perfectly fine," the lieutenant replied. "Don’t doubt it. You’re strong enough to break any wild pony, no matter the breed."
"What I an is, I’ve never managed that many people before," Mira said. "The only weapons I’ve ever used are things like spiked clubs. On my skills section, I literally wrote: ’Most pink hair in all of Deadman’s Port.’"
"And it is, without question, the pinkest," Augustus confird.
"Alright then." Mira pouted slightly.
"I’m good at reading people," said Augustus ngsk. "You’ve got the kind of talent we need, Mira. Usually, it takes a veteran to handle this role—but most of what we’ve got here are rookies."
"Ooh, such a smooth talker." Mira was never one to hold back around strangers.
"Not as smooth as you think," Augustus shrugged.
"Next," said Kerrigan, writing a short note on Mira’s evaluation form.
...
As Mira stood with the other recruits from Deadman’s Port to take the oath, over a hundred shuttles landed nearby. The mont the oath was completed, they would be launched into orbit.
The recruits didn’t even have proper uniforms. Most still wore the clothes they had on before joining the Revolutionary Army—so draped in oversized coats, others in torn shoes with holes at the toes.
"Having been clearly inford of the aning and consequences of this oath, without coercion, promise, or enticent..."
Many recruits had tears in their eyes. But not Mira. She stood still, unmoved.
Mira knew that whether they died in battle or lived to the end, most of those leaving this planet today would never set foot on it again. Deadman’s Rock was a wretched world—almost no one would miss it.
The old folks always said: Even a fly in Deadman’s Rock dreams of leaving this rock.
And yet, like all the other recruits, Mira was moved by the changes the Revolutionary Army had brought. In the stagnant swamp that was Deadman’s Port, she had seen a glimpse of hope—and she was determined to seize this chance to change her fate.
Mira neither idolized Augustus nor believed revolution was sothing sacred. She had her own mature and sharply independent views on right and wrong. She didn’t pity the poor or the exploited workers, and she had no desire to bleed for them.
"Whether Christian, Muslim, atheist, polytheist, or follower of the Earth-Returnist Church..."
They said, "We now share one faith, one identity."
During the oath, Mira naturally zoned out. If the Revolutionary Army hadn’t co to Deadman’s Port this past year, she might have ended up as a rcenary—or a pirate. For people in Deadman’s Port, the future only offered a handful of paths. And to rise above the rest, you had to be more ruthless and colder than anyone else.
She hadn’t joined the Federation’s military simply because the Revolutionary Army seed to have far fewer rules—and a lot more freedom. Even the oath was much shorter than the one required by the Federation forces.
That was just who Mira was. She seed born to break the rules—and, so far, no one had been able to box her in.
"I swear to fight for the Korhal Revolutionary Army, to defend the laws and honor of the New Republic, and to protect the citizens who have been, or will be, liberated."
...
Korhal IV, capital city Styrling.
By June 22, it had been exactly one month since the terrorist occupation of the UNN Interstellar News Network headquarters. Branded by major dia conglorates and independent journalists alike as ’the greatest scandal in the history of the Federal Parliant’, the event had only continued to escalate over ti, gradually affecting every facet of life for thousands of Terran citizens.
Of all those impacted, the people of Korhal were without a doubt the most affected. Fewer than two million individuals remained in the Korhal system, most of whom were stationed aboard orbital defense platforms and satellites. The last large-scale colonial transport fleet had already departed.
Now, every city on the planet’s surface was dominated by launch ports built to propel interstellar shuttles using electromagnetic rail acceleration technology. These tilted structures—flashing with red and green lights—towered far more grandly than any Sky Tower of the Old Families, standing like silent giants among a forest of high-rises.
At night, the long-decried light pollution—an environntalist grievance for decades—was finally brought to an end, thanks to the shutdown of the cities and the planet itself. For the first ti in decades, the brilliant artificial clouds that lit up the Styrling skyline each night vanished from view.
Even from the top of the city’s tallest structure, the ngsk Sky Tower, only the faintest, most distant glimrs of light were visible—and without exception, those ca from military bases or heavy industrial facilities. The towering skyscrapers now lay shrouded in darkness, silent as tombstones.
Plans to build surface fortresses on Korhal had been abandoned as well. Every usable steel beam, vehicle, and maglev train had been dismantled and reforged into warships. Anything deed useless to the colonists—luxury items, massive furnishings—had been buried en masse or burned. After the exodus, even a city as once-vibrant as Styrling, the beating heart of politics, economics, and culture, was reduced to hollow shells of buildings and vacant hos.
As early sumr arrived, the once-bustling skyline of Styrling stood like a series of gears ground to a halt. Nature, solemn and serene, had reclaid dominion over the city.
Only weeks had passed since humanity left Korhal, and already fallen leaves blanketed the streets. Wildlife and creatures from the surrounding countryside had crept into Styrling, making their hos in the abandoned urban sprawl.
This city—once forged of silver and glass—remained breathtakingly beautiful. But its grandeur had shifted. Once a noblewoman clad in layered white dresses and adorned with finery, she now resembled a quiet, lancholic maiden, still and deep as water.
The light of the twin moons was dazzling. Over Styrling, the stars shimred in the sky, and a ribbon of milky light stretched across the heavens. Lisa Cassidy rembered the na of that celestial band from a textbook she once studied—From Earth to the Koprulu Sector—which had called it the Milky Way.
As she looked down from the top floor of the ngsk Sky Tower, from the Korhal Revolutionary Army’s council chamber, Lisa suddenly felt sorrow for the people of Korhal IV. They had been forced to abandon the legacy of over ten generations, leaving behind hos passed down through the centuries to journey toward Umoja, and even farther beyond the Koprulu Sector—into the unknown.
And yet, this calamity had bound nearly all Korhalans together more tightly than ever before. They were more united now, more devoted to the idea of Korhal as a whole. Those who had gone to settle the farther stars swore never to forget their hatred—or their holand.
With more and more Korhalans driven to leave their world behind and embark on interstellar exile, that humiliation and hatred festered, growing ever larger in the hearts of all who remained.
Even so, they clung to a single belief with unwavering certainty: one day, they would return ho.
A soft creak at the door of the ’Speaker Angus’ conference room pulled Lisa back to her seat. Though she attended this eting as the second Minister of Public Health and a mber of Heaven’s Devils, she knew her opinion held little weight here.
Her gaze moved across the table, landing on several familiar faces: Aland Lundstein, now a colonel in the army and fellow Heaven’s Devils mber; Kurt Josephine, commanding officer of the Airborne Division; and Harnack Hank, leader of the mixed battalion known as the Firebats. Not long ago, none of them had ranked higher than private. Now, they each commanded forces tens of thousands strong.
As for the others, the remaining Heaven’s Devils had departed the Korhal system in waves, serving as escort units for the colonial fleets. After all, soone had to preserve the Revolutionary Army’s seeds of life—its living strength.
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