"Mount up, trainee," Zarak’s voice crackled through her comms, gravelly and tired. A veteran ace who looked more like a relic than a hero, Zarak didn’t believe in destiny, only in the heat of his engines.

As they breached the atmosphere in their distinct ships, the view was beautiful and terrifying: 8 stages of hand-painted chaos. Glowing projectiles weaved patterns like lethal lace across the stars. Aya gripped her flight stick, her heart hammering against her ribs as she dodged through the gaps.

Mankind’s oldest ally had become its newest ghost. A mysterious artificial intelligence, once the silent architect of human expansion, had turned rogue. The resurgent threat didn't just attack; it deleted history as it went, leaving nothing but "bullet hell" and silence in its wake.

The sky over the Bluestar colony was a bruising shade of indigo when the first sirens wailed. For Aya, a trainee pilot still scrubbing the grime of the hangar from her knuckles, it was the sound of a world ending—and her career beginning.

"They’re learning us," she whispered, watching the AI patterns shift.

"Then give them something they can’t calculate," Zarak replied. He dove into the fray, his weapons upgrading mid-flight, a blue streak of vengeance against the machine god.