Chapter 134: Departure, Terror Base
The headmaster’s apology lasted considerably longer than the actual conversation had any right to.
"Admiral, please, I cannot stress enough how deeply, sincerely sorry the entire faculty is." He bowed low enough that his forehead nearly grazed the floor of his own office.
Robes pooled around him in a way that had clearly never happened before in the history of the institution. "Had we known your standing, none of this would have happened."
"You’d have let your students get away with the same thing," Aidan said, unbothered. "Just more politely."
The headmaster didn’t have an answer for that, mostly because it was true.
The receptionist returned his Digicard with both hands, like handling it roughly might somehow retroactively cause offense, and the moment it settled back into his palm the weight of the last hour finally felt like it was actually over.
"Your rank has been formally logged," she said, voice still faintly unsteady. "Admiral Garen. The Alliance will reach out to you through proper channels soon."
"Wait, Admiral Garen? Didn’t he say his name was Aidan?" Layla questioned.
Every eyes moved to her.
"Aidan..." Hina blinked.
"I am Aidan, and I am also Garen." Aidan chuckled. "I just used Garen as my out of Earth identity."
"Now, I’m done with all the business I had here." Aidan glanced at Hina before turning back to the headmaster. "I’ll be taking my leave now."
"Admiral Garen. It is my sincere request to feed you a feast. Of course, only if you are hungry. I assure you, you will not regret it."
"Food, huh. Alright, let’s eat."
...
After eating, he and Beatrix left.
Hina found him at the academy’s front gate before he’d fully made it out.
She didn’t say anything for a moment, just stood there, arms crossed loosely, some of the earlier shock finally settling into something quieter.
"You said we were distant acquaintances." Her voice stayed level, careful. "Did you mean that?"
"Yeah." Aidan didn’t dress it up. "I did."
"That’s it? After everything?"
"I came to check something I’d been avoiding for a long time." He met her eyes, calm rather than cold. "I checked it. Turns out I was right about how I’d feel."
Hina’s jaw tightened, though whether from hurt or relief, even she didn’t seem entirely sure. "And how’s that."
"Like someone looking at an old photograph." He shrugged, not unkindly. "Curious about who I used to be. Nothing more."
She didn’t have a response ready for that, and Aidan didn’t wait around for her to find one.
"Take care of yourself, Hina." He turned toward the gate. "Rank seven’s a good look on you."
...
Beatrix and Solenne fell in on either side of him the moment he cleared the academy grounds, Tom draped comfortably across his shoulders again.
"That went about as well as it could have," Beatrix said.
"Define ’well.’"
"Nobody died. Low bar, but you cleared it."
Aidan huffed something close to a laugh. "Come on. We’ve got somewhere else to be."
[Arthur: Please tell me it involves things I’m allowed to hit.]
"It involves things you’re allowed to hit."
[Arthur: Excellent.]
...
The ship cleared Terfulan’s orbit within the hour, and three days of travel later the Aldrek system’s third moon finally filled the viewport, pale and cratered and utterly unremarkable except for the presence waiting on its surface.
Veyron met them the moment the ship touched down, dark and silent as ever, three Final-Stage Divine Shadow Phantoms arrayed behind him like a wall.
[Veyron: Welcome back, Master. You’ve been busy, from what I can tell.]
"A little." Aidan stepped down onto grey dust that had never known weather. "Status."
[Veyron: The base has grown since I first found it. Reinforcements arrived twice in the last week. Current estimate is forty personnel, three of them Divine-rank, one commanding officer at Final-Stage Divine.]
"And what are they actually doing down there?"
[Veyron: Extraction. Some kind of energy source buried beneath the ridge. I couldn’t identify the exact nature of it without getting close enough to risk exposure.]
Aidan’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Terror-affiliated groups don’t usually bother with subtlety unless whatever they’re protecting matters."
[Veyron: My thoughts exactly.]
"Then let’s go find out what it is."
...
The base sat carved directly into the ridge itself, entrances disguised as natural rock formations, and the first sentries never even got the chance to sound an alarm.
Aidan went through the outer perimeter like he was clearing weeds, Frost and Shadow doing most of the work before anyone inside had time to register the breach at all. Veyron and the three Shadow Phantoms fanned out behind him, methodical and silent, mirroring his pace exactly.
Two guards posted at a side entrance went down without ever seeing what hit them, ice sealing over their mouths before either could manage more than a startled grunt. A third, further along the ridge, turned just in time to watch Veyron’s cloak of living shadow swallow him whole.
The deeper tunnels put up more of a fight.
A squad of Divine-rank enforcers met them at the first real junction, weapons already drawn, clearly alerted by something even if they hadn’t understood what. For a few seconds it actually looked like resistance.
"Intruder in sector..."
Shadowfrost ended the sentence before it finished, spreading through the narrow tunnel like the walls themselves had turned against the enforcers standing in it. Six bodies went rigid and silent within the same breath, frost climbing from boots to throats faster than any of them could raise a weapon.
One of the Shadow Phantoms caught a second squad trying to flank from a side passage, Final-Stage Divine power meeting mid-tier resistance with the kind of finality that didn’t leave much room for a second attempt. The passage went quiet almost as fast as the first one had.
Aidan pressed forward without slowing, boots echoing off stone that had clearly never expected visitors this far in.
[Veyron: They’re falling back toward the central chamber. Whatever they’re protecting, it’s there.]
"Then that’s where we’re going."
The central chamber, when they finally reached it, turned out to be less a room and more a wound cut straight into the moon’s own core, a massive extraction rig sunk deep into exposed bedrock, drawing something pale and pulsing up through kilometers of drilled stone.
The light coming off it wasn’t natural. It moved wrong, pulsing in a rhythm that didn’t match anything Aidan recognized, and the air around the rig itself felt thin in a way that had nothing to do with the moon’s actual atmosphere.
At its center stood a man in dark, ornate robes, Final-Stage Divine pressure rolling off him thick enough to fog the air, flanked by the last of his remaining enforcers.
"You’ve cost us weeks of work." His voice carried the particular calm of someone who still believed the fight was winnable. "I don’t know what you are, but you’ll die here regardless."
Aidan glanced past him at the rig, at the faint, sickly light pulsing up through the stone. "What is that?"
"Something far above your understanding."
"Try me."
The commander didn’t answer with words. He answered by unleashing everything he had at once, a technique large enough to collapse half the chamber if it landed unopposed, and every remaining enforcer surged forward alongside it.
Veyron and the three Shadow Phantoms met the enforcers head on, four Final-Stage Divine presences colliding with the last of the base’s defense in a fight that ended almost as quickly as it started. Stone cracked. A handful of enforcers didn’t get back up.
Aidan met the commander’s technique with an open palm, same as he had in the arena days earlier, and this time there wasn’t even a comedic buildup to it.
Shadowfrost simply devoured the attack whole and kept going, closing the distance in the same motion, and the commander’s Final-Stage Divine authority meant considerably less than he’d apparently been counting on.
He hit the ground hard, breath gone, Aidan’s boot planted firmly against his chest before he could even think about rising again.
"Last chance." Aidan crouched slightly, voice almost gentle. "What is that rig pulling out of the ground?"
The commander’s composure finally cracked, all the earlier confidence draining out of his face at once.
"W-We are just doing our job. We didn’t do anything more than what were told. I-I just sent my eye down there to check, but I swear, I won’t tell anyone about it!"
Aidan’s expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes went very still.
’There’s some shady shit going on, huh...’