Chapter 221: The Exodus
"Two minutes!" Zara’s voice was a sharp crack of lightning in the chaotic, shaking chamber. "We have to get everyone off this planet now!"
The word went out. On the bridge of the Odyssey, Emma’s hands flew across her console, her mind a whirlwind of calculations. The apathy wave was gone, and the crews of the Bastion Alliance fleet were shaking themselves awake, confused but ready.
"All ships, this is Commander Emma," her voice broadcast across the entire fleet, calm and clear despite the chaos. "We are beginning a full-scale emergency evacuation of Asylum.
All transport shuttles, cargo haulers, even fighter ships with extra seats—I want them all heading to the surface. We have millions of civilians to save and less than two minutes to do it. Move!"
It was a logistical nightmare, a task so huge it should have been impossible. But this was what Emma was born to do. She became the calm center of the storm.
Her screen lit up with a thousand different problems at once: landing zones were crumbling, panicked crowds were blocking the main roads, and there weren’t nearly enough ships to carry everyone.
She solved one problem after another with lightning speed. "The main spaceport is a death trap," she ordered. "Reroute all heavy transports to the grand plazas in the city’s northern sector. They’re wide enough to land three ships at once. Ilsa, I need your Iron Wolves on the ground for crowd control. We need order, not panic."
Down on the surface, the city was waking up into a world of terror. The citizens of Asylum, who had spent years in a peaceful, emotionless dream, were suddenly slammed with a tidal wave of feelings they had forgotten how to handle.
The ground was shaking, alarms were blaring, and the sky was filled with giant ships descending from the heavens. Panic began to spread like wildfire. People started to scream and run, not knowing where to go, creating a massive, terrified mob.
It was in this chaos that Ryan found his new role. He was still weak from the psychic battle, but he could feel the fear of the millions of minds around him like a physical pain. He couldn’t lift them all to safety, but he could be their guide.
He sat down on the floor of the core chamber, closed his eyes, and reached out with his mind once more. But this time, he wasn’t attacking. He was helping. He became a psychic shepherd to a flock of millions.
A gentle, calming thought spread through the panicked city, a whisper in the back of everyone’s mind. Be calm. There is a way out. Help is here.
For a terrified family trapped in a crumbling apartment building, a clear path seemed to appear in their minds, a mental map showing them the safest way to the nearest evacuation zone.
For a group of people running in the wrong direction, a gentle mental nudge turned them around, guiding them toward the waiting ships. He couldn’t stop the fear, but he could give them a direction, a thread of hope to follow through the chaos.
While the official evacuation was underway, a different kind of rescue mission was also taking shape. Kaelia and Jaxon Ryder, watching the chaos unfold from the Odyssey, knew that the official routes would get jammed.
They were smugglers and rogues, and they knew that sometimes, the back door is the fastest way out.
"Emma, the main channels are overloaded," Jaxon’s voice—or rather, his echo inside Oracle—said over the comms. "We need to open up some new ones."
Kaelia, now in command of a small, fast courier ship, took his meaning instantly. She opened a private, encrypted channel to a network she knew well: the smugglers, the pirates, and the freelance traders who lived in the shadows of the galaxy.
"This is Kaelia of the Odyssey," she broadcast, her voice sharp and confident. "I’ve got a job for you. A planet full of paying customers needs a ride, and they need it yesterday. There’s good money to be made, and a chance to stick it to the people who say we’re just criminals. Who’s in?"
It was a language they understood. Within seconds, the dark space around Asylum lit up with the engine flares of a hundred unregistered, beat-up, and wonderfully illegal ships.
A flotilla of rusty freighters, souped-up racing ships, and even a few old pirate vessels with skulls painted on their hulls descended on the planet. They landed in back alleys, on rooftops, anywhere they could find a flat surface.
They bypassed the jammed official routes, grabbing people and flying them up to the waiting Alliance fleet. Kaelia, from the cockpit of her small ship, became the traffic controller for this chaotic, beautiful mess of a rescue fleet.
She barked orders, negotiated prices on the fly, and guided her flock of rogues with a skill and confidence that made them follow her without question.
Jaxon’s echo, watching her through the ship’s sensors, sent her a private message through Oracle. "You look good in the command chair, Captain."
Kaelia just smiled, her eyes never leaving the chaotic view outside her cockpit. She had found her own way to be a hero.
Back in the citadel, the countdown timer was ticking relentlessly downward. DETONATION IN 60 SECONDS.
Zara had been working frantically, her fingers a blur on a control panel, sweat beading on her forehead. The self-destruct sequence was a maze of Hegemony encryption, but she was a master of mazes.
"I’ve got it!" she shouted, a triumphant look on her face. "I’ve found the shutdown sequence! But... oh no."
"What is it?" Scarlett demanded, her dagger still ready.
"It’s a fail-safe," Zara said, her face falling. "A dead man’s switch. To stop the overload, it requires three different commanders to input three different shutdown codes, all at the exact same time."
"So? We’ve got commanders," Ilsa said, gesturing to herself and the others.
"Yes," Zara said, pointing at a map of the citadel that had appeared on the screen. "But the three consoles are in three different places. One is here, in the core.
The second is in the east wing’s power station, which is currently on fire and collapsing. The third is in the west wing’s coolant control center, which is now flooded with a highly toxic and radioactive gas."
It was a suicide mission. Each location was a death trap. And they had less than a minute to get there and enter the codes at the same time.
Without a moment’s hesitation, three women stepped forward.
"I’ll take the east wing," Scarlett said, her voice calm. She could phase through the falling debris. It was a risk, but a calculated one.
"The west wing is mine," Ilsa said, her voice a low growl. She activated her armor’s emergency life support. The toxic gas wouldn’t be pleasant, but she was a soldier. She was built for hardship.
That left the final volunteer. Everyone looked at Seraphina. She was a diplomat, a healer, not a frontline soldier.
But she stepped forward, her face set with a quiet, fierce determination. "No," she said, her voice surprisingly strong. "Ilsa, your armor is needed to hold the line at the main evac point. I will go to the west wing."
"Seraphina, the coolant is poison!" Emma’s voice crackled over the comms. "Your life-force abilities... it will be like trying to out-heal a river of death!"
"My life force is strong," Seraphina replied, her eyes shining with an inner light. "And the people of this world need to see that life is something worth fighting for." She looked at Scarlett and Ilsa. "I will not fail."
There was no more time to argue. With a shared nod, the three women took off, sprinting in different directions, each on a desperate, timed race into the heart of a death trap. The fate of millions now rested on a trinity of courage.