GLADIATOR
 

They say war is a last resort.

They say it’s ugly, but necessary.

They say what happened after the assassination of Admiral Grant Zion was an act of unity.

They lied.

What happened next wasn’t unity—it was Zion. Not the man. The operation. The plan.

While public channels mourned and flags were lowered in grief, the Human Fleet quietly initiated a covert retaliatory strike. Not against a fleet. Not against a battalion. Against a star.

Operation Zion was the codename for a high-clearance deployment of an experimental weapon: the SD, or Sun Demolition device. A device capable of destabilizing and imploding a main-sequence star. The target: the heart of the Brakaal system. The objective: xenocide.

We decrypted the directive itself. What they never expected anyone to see:

“Sun Demolition device to be affixed to strike vessel. Objective: deliver payload into the Brakaal star system. Estimated fatalities: 3.1 billion. Secondary goal: total disruption of Brakaal solar gravitational matrix.” —HF Special Weapons Directive // OPZ/SD-1-CLASSIFIED // August 4, 2799

Make no mistake—this wasn’t about victory. It was about erasure.

The Icarus was selected. A strike vessel with no press access, no return protocol, and no record of final orders. Its path was locked. Its crew either fully aware or fully expendable.

“Flight path locked. Final course intersects with Brakaal sun. No return protocol issued.” —Icarus NavLog // FTL Entrypoint 2799.8.12

They expected to write history with fire. And yet—the strike never happened. The Brakaal star did not collapse. Billions did not burn. The Icarus still lives.

Why?

They never gave a reason. They never offered an explanation. Because to explain would be to admit what they planned.

The truth is this: someone stopped the mission. And not from within the system.

From outside.

Ask yourself: Who builds a sun-killing device in total secrecy? Who sends it to destroy a people—then buries the failure under silence? Who planned this, and who signed off on it? You might think it was just the Human Fleet. That this was a lone initiative, a rogue act of vengeance. You’d be wrong. Three signatures appear in the chain of planning. Three factions involved. Three layers of silence. The Terran Patriotic Front. The Conglomerate. And the Federation of the Human Fleet. They all knew. The only thing they didn’t count on—was a message sent in desperation. A betrayal in the name of mercy. And that is what you’ll read in Leak 002. You were told the war was righteous. You were told it was clean. But Operation Zion was not war. It was extermination by starlight. They planned a xenocide. They were stopped. Now ask yourself: if they did it once… what else are they capable of?