Year 2509 AD, Frontline of Prime World Epsilon
Earth–Dracon War, Year 40
Jack Harlan took a deep breath of the freezing air, white mist spilling from his nostrils. His hands and feet had long since gone numb. Thankfully, the nano-insulated combat suit on his body was still functioning, barely keeping his 300-pound frame at a survivable temperature.
The world around him looked like it had been harvested by Death’s scythe. Mech wreckage and fighter debris lay scattered everywhere, along with human corpses. From the distant battlefield came the intermittent roar of explosions; streaks of plasma artillery carved across the sky, turning the heavens above this region a burning, blood-red color.
Jack glanced down at the portable terminal on his wrist—an ancient relic he’d illegally modified, equipped with a micro-AI. He affectionately called it “Old Number Two.” The screen was flickering like crazy, streaming data only he could read: after being processed by STARK-2’s computing core, friendly fire probability was pegged at 60%, and the survival rate for this sector was a mere 1%.
This was the thirteenth shitshow of a battle he’d survived since the war had broken out in 2469. Maybe God really did have a soft spot for him, because this fat bastard was somehow still breathing.
Heroes die young, he thought—cowardice is Humanity’s final strength; it’s what lets me stay alive while the brave rot in the ground.
“What a fucked-up life,” Jack muttered under his breath.
From the Vega Cluster to Orion’s Belt, the Federal fleets had collapsed like a row of dominoes, losing more than a dozen resource worlds and colonies. Prime World Epsilon was one of the last two planets the Terran Federation still held in the Orion Belt—and the political capital besides. The other, Prime World Epsilon II, had already become a slaughterhouse for the Dracon Empire two months ago.
To hell with grand narratives—Jack couldn’t care less about any so-called strategic big picture. His only goal was staying alive, guided by his personal philosophy of “don’t let your ass get blown off.” Heroes charged and died; survivors like him endured humiliation and lived on. It was exactly these imperfect, cowardly individuals who kept propping up Humanity’s resistance against those perfect war machines.
It was a simple creed. And it had kept this fat man alive up to now.
After thirteen engagements, this mechanical repairman in the Federal logistics corps was still just a regular corporal. The comrades he’d met in his first twelve battles—some had been promoted, but most were now buried under charred soil. Their entire mech regiment had been wiped out—95% killed in action. The rest were either rotting on Prime World Epsilon II, doomed to an even worse end, or scattered to the winds. Jack had only survived by squeezing onto a retreating dropship at the last second. Afterward, he’d been reassigned to the shattered remains of the 9th Mech Battalion and shipped to the front on Prime World Epsilon, ordered to hold this last patch of “clean” ground.
Three days ago, when the 9th had been airdropped into this meat grinder, Jack had noticed something was off. His terminal had picked up an encrypted directive—the “Janus” Quantum-Entangled Mainframe had flagged the 9th Mech Battalion as a “low-value decoy unit.”
On paper, they were defending the line. In reality, their job was to die slowly enough to delay the enemy’s advance, buying precious time for the elite special forces further back.
Jack’s gaze moved to a torn-open Cyclops mech not far away. Inside, a pilot—barely eighteen—was lying there, glassy eyes staring at the sky. A snapped hydraulic line had driven straight through his chest like a spear.
Three days ago, that same kid had laughed at Jack:
“Hey, Fatty, your body makes the perfect target.”
Now, that joking teenager had become a negligible casualty count in some anonymous data stream—for the sake of the “bigger picture,” for honor, for numbers on a general’s report.
Jack stripped the useful parts from the dead mech and stuffed them into his field pack. Maybe they’d save his own life next time. Standing before the fallen machine, he gently closed the kid’s eyes, then patted the mech’s shattered shoulder—already half fused with his own memories—as if saying goodbye to an old friend.
As a mechanic, he understood better than anyone: machines didn’t have souls, but they were far more honest than the generals sitting in their command bunkers.
A piercing shriek tore through the air.
Jack pulled a military binocular set from his backpack. Tuned by his AI system, the scene a thousand meters away snapped into focus, as clear as if the nightmare of smoke and fire were unfolding just a few meters in front of him.
Dozens of Imperial-standard mechs—he privately called them “Hellbringers”—were advancing. Their official designation was “Vector” single-unit tactical mechs: low-slung, broad-shouldered, with barbed joints and blade-sharp contours. Their exoshells were a mix of matte black and rust-red, coated in nano-scale “shadow-scale” plating that produced subtle refractions under shifting light.
Their heads were smooth ovals, fronted by a V-shaped mono-eye sensor array—the red arc of light sweeping across the battlefield as it scanned thermal, infrared, and EM signatures. Two pairs of telescoping antennae rose from the crown, maintaining a live data link. Beneath the faceplate lay retractable “fang” blades, meant exclusively for tearing into enemy armor at close quarters. Each shoulder carried four “Hellfire” missiles with a five-kilometer range and a ten-meter blast radius.
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They were nightmares made manifest.
Facing this pack of Hellbringers were a dozen Federal Cyclops mechs. Standing 4.5 meters tall, these brutes were built from slabs of heavy steel plate and tungsten alloy, finished in matte gray streaked with dried blood-rust. Their hydraulic joints were clumsy, every step punctuated by a low, grinding roar. Powered by micro fission reactors, they had excellent endurance—but nowhere near enough agility.
The Cyclops units were at an overwhelming numerical disadvantage. All they could do was hunker behind their energy shields and thick armor, enduring the savage onslaught. The shields shimmered like curtains of pale water.
And then, behind the Hellbringers, a “Wraith” appeared.
It moved at uneven, stuttering speeds along the perimeter, then looped around behind the Cyclops line. With a sudden burst of acceleration, it lunged for their backs. The armor on its forearms slid aside, revealing a two-meter vibroblade wrapped in a humming energy field. It struck again and again at the power nodes in the Cyclops’ rear hulls, hacking and chewing.
Within minutes, the Cyclops’ reactors were disabled. Powerless, the hulks froze—and were swallowed by the onrushing tide of Hellbringers.
From orbit, you would have seen that, within several square kilometers, Jack was the only “lucky” one not inside a mech. Just a repairman who’d been sent to patch up junk a few days ago. For the past two days, he’d been like a moviegoer stuck watching an A+ tier apocalypse blockbuster unfold live in front of him. No enemy thought it worth wasting ammunition on him, and no ally even realized he was there. His only real companion was the fear constantly twisting his guts.
Crouched in the shadow of a shell crater, Jack pressed his back to the shattered lip, his legs trembling slightly.
How had he ended up in a place like this—this brutal killing field?
A few years ago, he’d just been a rich invisible nobody living on the edge of a slum. His parents—top-tier Federal experts in genetics and mechanical engineering—had died in an “accident,” leaving him with a massive trust fund, a room full of unfinished research, and an unremarkable-looking portable terminal.
He called it STARK-2.
Jack had no interest in wasting money on luxury. His only hobby was hiding in an underground workshop packed with precision instruments, tearing apart decommissioned military mechs he’d bought for a fortune off the black market. Thanks to the genetic tweaks his parents had left him—sharper-than-human reflexes—and STARK-2’s auxiliary calculations, he’d become something of a legend in certain circles: the “Ghost Mechanic.”
That night, he’d been drinking on the rooftop, staring up at the stars and wondering what secrets lay behind that sea of light.
STARK-2 projected a Federal recruitment ad into the air beside him—a holo call for “specialized technical personnel,” mainly for starship and fighter maintenance.
“Hey, Stark…” Jack slurred, bottle in hand. “You think… behind those stars… someone’s watching us too? Like we watch bacteria in a petri dish?”
STARK-2: “Humanity is just a passenger in the universe. When the bus reaches the terminal, everyone gets off.”
His vision was already blurring. Without really thinking, guided by some drunken impulse, he matched his biometric data to the recruitment form. He couldn’t remember if he’d actually pressed the red “Agree” button. His eyes blurred, the bottle slipped from his hand, and he didn’t even manage to finish reading the enlistment terms before sleep claimed him.
By the time he woke up the next day, he’d forgotten the whole thing.
A few days later, a notice arrived from the military—his enlistment application had been approved.
The fat man’s jaw dropped wide enough to fit two eggs. The bottle in his hand fell and shattered at his feet, and he didn’t even notice.
If he refused the enlistment order, he’d be thrown straight into prison. Between prison and the army, he chose the latter, trembling.
Jack passed the physical exam. Despite his obvious obesity—technically far beyond the healthy threshold—his sprint speeds and stamina were rated A-grade. Long-distance runs in particular: his monstrous lung capacity let him maintain a steady pace and even land second place overall.
“Hidden Martian colonist genes,” the medic said, studying the results. “Adaptations for radiation and low gravity. Survival instincts, dialed up by evolution. Shame such good genes ended up buried in all that fat.”
The combination of stellar numbers and an unforgettable physique drew the attention of Sergeant Brock, the recon training officer. Brock pulled his file and took a very “special” interest in him during drills.
Brock never laid a hand on him. He just stared, coldly, like he was looking at a corpse.
“Your numbers are pretty, Fatty. But in my unit, numbers don’t save lives. Either you learn to be bait, or I can personally guarantee you won’t survive your first drop.”
Jack’s IQ was more than a match for Brock’s threats. He immediately showcased another rare talent—if you don’t let me fix machines, I’ll just die right here in front of you.
In his off hours, he wandered around the mech repair bay. He used that “free time” to bring an old, broken-down mech—dead for three years—back online. His extensive experience with mechanical guts and his raw mechanical genius quickly caught the eye of the repair corps colonel.
One month before graduation, Jack aced the transfer exams—top marks in theory and practice. With nothing more than a light push of authority, the colonel moved his file from recon to repairs.
Just when Jack thought he’d dodged his recon death sentence and started quietly celebrating, the war finally came right to their doorstep. And he was airdropped into this arena all the same.
The fat man had dodged the Reaper’s scythe thirteen times and lived to tell the tale.
Of course, that still didn’t fully explain how a guy like him could keep running, keep going. Part of it was luck. The rest came from the half-baked Martian gene mods in his bloodline—hundreds of years of tinkering: colonist-grade lung capacity, faster recovery, and nervous systems micro-tuned to handle radiation stress.
The only thing those enhancements had never touched was courage. Science could fix bones, but it couldn’t regrow a backbone.
He missed that drunken night with a longing that hurt. If he’d just rolled over and gone properly to sleep instead of pressing his damned palm down for biometric confirmation, he’d be lying on a couch right now instead of in a freezing crater, waiting to be turned into a line of data.
------
Easter Egg:
When Jack’s hand was hovering over the red button, his soft snoring was already starting to rumble on the rooftop.
STARK-2: “Fatty, you fell asleep on the roof aga—” The voice cut off.
A stream of data flashed across the screen at high speed.
[WARNING] EXTERNAL_TIMELINE_VIOLATION
source: JACK_HARLAN [Prime]
timestamp: 2508-11-26 23:36:05 [TIME_ANOMALY_DETECTED]
message: "D54: mi na li na"
CURIOSITY_DRIVE... [CORRUPTED] > ……
A clear voice rang out:
“Hello, Jack. In this timeline, I choose you…”
A faint silhouette flickered across the tablet’s display—then reached out and pressed the red button for him.
[ENLISTMENT AGREEMENT: CONFIRMED]
STARK-2: “Fatty, Fatty, wake up. You fell asleep on the roof again.”
The stars overhead pulsed once, just a little brighter. Jack’s oblivious snoring went on, and the sky kept shining, as if nothing at all had changed.
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