One Small Step (The Fall of the Neosapien Empire 1)

ExoFleet jumptroops and E-frames land on the moon in an attempt to retake it from the Neo sapiens. But when Phaeton sends nearly every e-frame on Earth after the fleet itself, the e-frames invading the moon are recalled. DeLeon receives permission from Marsh to stay on the moon with the jumptroops to help them. Battles rage both on the moon and above it. DeLeon and O'Reilly battle Typhonus and kill him, but Alec is mortally wounded in the process. Before he dies he has O'Reilly help him use the black box from Typhonus' E-frame to appear to be Typhonus in a transmission to Phaeton, in which he tells him the Neo pilots are either surrendering or retreating. As punishment for such betrayal, Phaeton activates the self-destruct mechanism on all the Neo E-frames. The combination of this and Alec, as Typhonus, telling the Neo troops on the moon to surrender ends the battle. Afterwards, with Alec DeLeon dead, O'Reilly delivers DeLeon's E-frame black box to Maggie Weston.