Escape From Hun-Kal. The Last Directive, #2

The battle is over. The war is just getting started. And the enemy is closer than anyone thought. A year after the bloody victory at Paawan, General Magneus has built a rogue fleet from wreckage and willpower, hiding in the shadow of the inner planet Hun-Kal. But ships don't run on ambition. They need power cores, updated combat systems, and weapons capable of matching an ancient enemy that refuses to stay dead.
That's where Walker comes in. Dropped onto an enemy shipyard under cover of darkness, Marine Commander Walker has one job: steal what the fleet needs and get out. But the mission goes sideways the moment his scanners fail to detect guards wearing technology that shouldn't exist this deep inside civilized space. The Abraxian swarm isn't just raiding the outer system anymore. They've infiltrated the heart of the Luminary itself.
What was supposed to be a supply run becomes a desperate fight for survival against wartech killing machines, crushing artificial gravity, and an enemy that knows exactly where he is. His only lifeline is Captain Thalia, orbiting above in a stealth scout, running interference against an entire shipyard's worth of hostile fire. She can't save him. She knows it. But she refuses to leave without giving him a chance.
As Thalia fights her way through a blockade and Walker faces impossible odds alone on the surface, something deeper than duty pulls them both toward choices that training never prepared them for. The feelings they've buried beneath rank and discipline are becoming impossible to ignore, and the cost of attachment in wartime is about to become brutally clear. Meanwhile, Magneus is playing a longer game.
The Machi council has acknowledged his rank and requested a meeting. He knows it's a trap. He's going anyway. Because liberating a people means more than winning battles. It means exposing the leaders who sold them out, even if it means walking into the enemy's hands to do it. The fleet is growing. The conspiracy runs deeper than anyone imagined. And the real war hasn't even begun. Escape to Hun-Kal is the second chapter in The Last Directive series, deepening the bonds forged at Paawan while raising the stakes across an entire star system on the edge of collapse.