SSS Rank: Strongest Beast Master-Chapter 261: Lunar Beachhead

The Moon smelled wrong.

Jonah hadn't expected the Moon to smell like anything. It was space. A dead rock floating in a void. But as he dragged himself out of Nomad's cracked cockpit, gasping through his helmet's filters, he realized Sterling had changed that.

The air, thin as it was, carried a scent. Metallic. Sweet. Rotten. Like flowers dying in a machine shop.

"Move, move!" Vanessa grabbed his arm, hauling him clear just as something whistled overhead.

CRACK.

The ground where he'd been standing exploded. Moon dust and chunks of corrupted metal sprayed everywhere.

"Sniper!" Ariana's voice came through the comm. "Organic artillery, three o'clock!"

Jonah looked. One of those thorn structures, maybe half a mile away, was pivoting toward them. Its barrel, if you could call it that, pulsed with that same sickly green light.

"Get to cover!"

They ran. Or stumbled, really. The Moon's gravity was weird. Too light. Every step sent them bouncing higher than intended, like trying to sprint on a trampoline while someone shot at you.

Behind them, Nomad groaned. The living ship was hurt. Badly. Its hull rippled, trying to seal the gashes, but it was slow. Too slow.

"Can it fly?" Jonah asked.

"Not for hours," Vanessa said. She was limping. Her shoulder was bleeding again, the same one that had taken the plasma round. "Maybe not at all if those cannons keep hitting it."

Another explosion. Closer this time. The corrupted forest around them caught fire. Not regular fire. Green flames that moved wrong, spreading along the metallic bark like living things.

"We're sitting ducks out here!" Ariana landed beside them, the Celestial Falcon touching down with surprising grace despite the chaos. Its solar sails folded, weapons ports opened. "Get inside!"

"What about the others?" Jonah looked up at the sky. Ships were still descending, scattering across the lunar surface. Some made controlled landings. Others just fell. "We need to regroup."

"We need to survive the next five minutes first!"

A swarm of something burst from the burning forest. Drones. Dozens of them. Small, insect-like things made of the same black metal that infected the Moon. They moved in perfect synchronization, like a school of mechanical piranhas.

The Celestial Falcon's weapons opened up. Beams of concentrated light carved through the swarm, dropping drones by the handful. But more kept coming.

"Inside! Now!" Ariana's ship crouched lower, a hatch opening in its side.

They scrambled aboard. The moment they were clear, the Falcon leaped skyward, rolling to avoid another thorn-cannon shot.

The interior was cramped. Barely room for three people. But it was safer than being outside, so Jonah wasn't complaining.

"Comms," he said, pulling up his wrist display. "We need to contact the other ships, coordinate a rally point."

Static. Pure, overwhelming static.

"It's not working," Vanessa said, checking her own equipment. "The interference is insane. Whatever Sterling built here, it's drowning out everything."

Jonah tried different channels. Different frequencies. Same result. Just noise.

Outside, through the Falcon's translucent hull, he could see the battlefield. Ships scattered across miles of corrupted landscape. Some were moving, fighting off drones and worse. Others sat still. Too still.

They were alone. Isolated. Exactly what Sterling wanted.

"There has to be a way," Jonah said. But even as he said it, he knew what the answer was. Knew it and hated it.

The Soul Echo.

His ability to sense other Weavers. To feel their emotions, their pain, their existence across huge distances. He had used it before, but never like this. Never as a beacon. Never while this many Weavers were scared and dying.

It was going to hurt.

"Jonah?" Vanessa was looking at him. She knew that expression. The one he got right before doing something monumentally stupid. "What are you thinking?"

"I can find them," he said. "The other Weavers. The ones we bonded to ships. I can reach out, pull them together."

"That's dozens of minds. Maybe more." Vanessa grabbed his arm. "You tried linking with four at once and it nearly killed you. This could actually finish the job."

"Then I guess I better not mess it up."

Ariana brought the Falcon down behind a ridge of twisted metal. They were relatively protected here. For now.

"If you are doing this, do it fast," she said. "We have got movement on multiple vectors. More drones. And something bigger."

Jonah sat down on the floor. He put his hands on his knees like he had seen people do in meditation videos. He had always thought it looked silly.

It still looked silly. But it helped center himself, so he would take it.

"Vanessa, if this goes bad..."

"It won't."

"But if it does..."

"Then I'll pull you back." She knelt beside him, pulling out a runic stabilizer from her kit. A small device covered in glowing symbols. "This will anchor your body. It will keep your heart beating and your lungs working, while your mind goes walkabout. But Jonah? You have got maybe five minutes before your brain starts cooking from the psychic overload. So make them count."

"Five minutes. Got it." He closed his eyes. Took a breath. "Here goes nothing."

He dropped his mental shields.

The pain hit like a freight train made of knives.

Suddenly he wasn't just Jonah anymore. He was twenty-eight other people all at once. Feeling what they felt. Scared. Hurt. Lost. Dying.

One Weaver was trapped under her crashed ship, screaming as fire spread.

Another fought hand-to-hand with drones. His Progeny was torn to shreds.

Another one just sat in the wreckage of his ship, staring at nothing, his mind broken by the crash.

Jonah felt all of it. Every drop of fear. Every bit of pain. It poured into him like water into a drowning man's lungs.

He screamed. He couldn't help it.

Vanessa's hands were on his shoulders. "Stay with me! Don't get lost in it!"

Right. Focus. He had a job to do.

Jonah took all that pain, all that terror, and he pushed back. He was not fighting it but accepting it. Holding on to it. Carrying it like he had carried everything else that had been thrown at him since this whole nightmare started.

And then he sent out a single, clear thought to every Weaver on the Moon.

*I'm here. Follow me. Gather to me.*

It wasn't words. Not really. It was more like a feeling. A lighthouse beam breaking through fog. A presence saying "you are not alone, there is shelter here, just hold on."

One by one, he felt them respond.

Outside the ship, Ariana watched her scanner. "I see movement. Southwest, two miles. Multiple signatures heading our way."

"More drones?" Vanessa asked, not taking her hands off Jonah.

"No. More Ships. Our ships." Ariana's voice held something like wonder. "He's actually doing it."

Through Jonah's closed eyes, behind the pain, he could see them. Not with his eyes but with something else. The psychic link that connected him to every Weaver he had helped, every soul he had tried to heal.

They were coming. Limping through the corrupted forest. Flying on damaged ships. Carrying wounded companions. All of them following the presence in their minds that said

*this way, we are together, we are not giving up.*

The first ship arrived ten minutes later. The Silent Thunder, piloted by an old engineer who had answered Jonah's call because she had nothing left to lose.

Then the Broken Wing. The Last Light. The names kept coming, ships gathering around the Falcon's position like lost children finding their parent.

Some came on foot. Their ships were too damaged to fly. Others carried wounded. One Weaver showed up with nothing but his Progeny and a story about jumping clear seconds before his ship exploded.

They set up a defensive perimeter. Ariana took command of the positioning, her tactical training kicking in. The Ships formed a circle, with their weapons ready to fire. The Weavers on foot took positions between them.

It wasn't much. Twenty three ships out of the twenty eight that had survived the landing. Five still unaccounted for, either too far away or too dead to respond.

But it was something.

Jonah opened his eyes. His vision was blurry. His head felt like someone had filled it with broken glass and then shaken it.

"Did it work?" His voice came out slurred.

"It worked." Vanessa helped him sit up. "it actually worked."

Through the Falcon's hull, he could see them. He could see his people. His army. Standing in a gray wilderness on a corrupted moon, facing impossible odds, and refusing to quit.

They looked at the Falcon. At him, through the translucent surface. Their faces showed exhaustion, fear and pain.

But also hope.

They were looking at him like he had answers. Like he was going to save them.

Jonah really hoped he didn't let them down.

"Alright," he said, forcing himself to stand even though his legs felt like weak. "Let's find out how to destroy a moon."