Lanis covers her mouth, sagging back into her pilot couch, momentarily unable to accept the implications of the flickering chaos engulfing the night sky.

  Lanis, we need to move, and we need to hide, Ether demands, pushing her own willpower against Lanis’ shell-shocked mind. The subway again, if we can make it; if not, then maybe we can bury ourselves in some cover.

  Oh my god. Fleet had no idea of what they were dealing with, did they? Lanis thinks, biting down a wave of nausea at the vast horror of what is occurring overhead. Still, the Versk Suit begins to move, propelled by Ether’s grim logic, limping down the arcade walkway on its four half-functional legs, fluid leaking with every heavy step. Lanis is scarcely aware of the alarms that blare across the HUD, but she can feel tears dripping down her cheeks, pooling into the ridge where her pilot suit meets her neck.

  … let’s just worry about us for now, Ether says, her voice soothing but firm.

  They’re halfway down the arcade when a hissing noise of released air drifts toward them. The Versk Suit pauses, and then turns uncertainly to face the sound. It’s coming from the site of their recent battle.

  Well. That’s unusual, Ether whispers.

  Disbelief wrestles with dread as Lanis realizes that the ruined Howett Corp mech’s pilot pod has cracked itself open, and a figure has stumbled out.

  It’s the Howett Corp pilot, and he’s running toward them.

  The man’s face is so contorted with rage that he looks barely human. He stops for a moment, tearing at his face with his hands, and lets out an inhuman scream. the bursting lights of the Fleet engagement overhead casting his form in flickering, monstrous shadows. Then he begins his advance toward Lanis again, though now it is his laughter that echoes through the arcade.

  Lanis. LANIS, Ether yells, trying to shake her pilot from her horrified reverie. Threat level is high. We do NOT want him getting to the pod access panel. Do you understand me? But I can’t explicitly deal with him, not alone, my core directives won’t allow it. Lanis? LANIS?

  Lanis watches the man come closer. Oh my God, he’s saying my name, isn’t he? Repeating it in a sing-song voice as he half runs, half stumbles toward the Vesk Suit...

  “Lanis, Lanis, Lanis, my sweet Navigator Lanis!” the man calls out, his voice somehow simultaneously full of fury and glee. He’s so close now, only a few seconds away from grappling up onto her Suit, blood-smeared fingers searching out the manual pod access panel.

  But at the word Navigator, something inside Lanis shifts: an anchoring hardness spreads through her body, over her eyes, and she grits her teeth with a snarl.

  The action is quick, formed with a thought: with one smooth motion, she swipes at the man with the flat portion of her un-powered A.R.M. blade. She can see his eyes widen fractionally in the moment before several hundred pounds of metal meet flesh.

  The universe seems to pause for a breath as Lanis slowly retracts the suit’s arm, chunks of flattened biological matter dripping from the blade and onto the dusty walkway. Lanis again feels the foundation of her reality re-form, just as she did at Mirem’s apartment when Peter Seto told them of Alain Renalis.

  She spits toward the dead Howett corp suit and the blasted remains of the man, her spittle flying through her HUD with a flicker and landing against the pod’s bank of manual switches.

  Ether gives the mental equivalent of a commiserating squeeze on Lanis’ shoulder.

  I’d love to debrief this, but there’s no time, Ether says, pushing a new threat-level analysis upon Lanis’ mind. Other Suits could be compromised, and we’re in shit condition to fight. We need to hide, now.

  Lanis takes a rattling breath, nods, and turns her full attention back to the sad mess that Hex is in. The Suit’s pace fractionally quickens, but Lanis feels a shudder vibrate through the hull: an alarm blares, insistently unwilling to be ignored, and Hex slows again, articulators grating.

  Dammit. Half of our leg proprioceptive sensors are blown out from that last battle, Lanis thinks. Subway entrance is just under six hundred meters away. Can we make it?

  We have to make it, Ether says, tugging Lanis’ awareness to Hex’s optics, upward.

  Something is falling.

  The whole of the night sky is now a cascade of light, kinetic rounds the size of Hex being unleashed at close range, beam weapons flickering, and explosions lighting up the sky. An asteroid shower is blooming along with the battle, as the falling debris from the battle raging overhead is greedily eaten up by Terra’s atmosphere. However, one speck of light has refused to race across the sky, but has rather grown brighter and drawn closer.

  Hex’s optics dilate and contract. Lanis doesn’t need Ether to recognize the signature of the falling object.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Oh no.

  It’s a Fleet Insertion Unit.

  Ether tries a series of re-calibrations, using the remaining proprioception sensors to guess at Hex’s optimal gait, but even the Versk hexapod wasn’t designed to take this amount of damage, and Lanis watches helplessly as more of the suit’s reading begin to drop offline, each step compounding the damage already done.

  Not sure we’re going to make it, Ether says, collating data and trying to massage some sense from the cascade of error readouts.

  There’s a sudden brush of comms static that interrupts the frantic silence inside the pod.

  “Oversight?” Lanis yells, straining forward against her pilot harness, as if physical effort can clear up the comm link. Unfortunately, by Cauldron’s design, she has no way of reaching out.

  “Hello? Anyone?”

  A voice finally comes clear through the static, the battle-speak instantly recognizable to Lanis from her long years of training.

  Navigator Osgell, this is Insertion Pilot Nikolai of the carrier Manticore. Be advised that you have enemy Insertion Unit intercept bearing upon your location in minus thirty seconds. Advise concealment as able; my intercept is two minutes out.

  The brief connection cuts out, and Lanis doesn’t bother answering. Thirty seconds. Impossible for Hex to drag itself to a subway in that time, even if it could make it that far.

  Instead, Hex lurches into the nearest building, splintering wood and brickwork as it crashes into the lobby of an old apartment block. The Suit’s digging pedipalps fire up with a half-hearted groan, and the Suit scrabbles clumsily into the century-old linoleum floor and the concrete beneath. Some kind of cover—anything, Lanis desperately thinks, as the Suit piles debris over itself.

  Hex is still only half buried and half hidden when the roar of the first Insertion Unit’s de-acceleration thrusters washes over them, whipping up grains of dirt and rock against the apartment block’s crumbling facade. Through a gap in the rubble, with Hex’s optics poking up through the concrete, they watch as the thruster-illuminated mech crashes down into the arcade.

  Entering standby-mode to reduce heat signature, Ether breathes, and Lanis feels Hex’s Suit tremble as the Versk core powers down. Only a glimmer of reserve battery keeps Ether online.

  The two thousand ton Insertion Unit slowly stands to its full height, towering above the ceiling of the arcade like some ancient knight. The planetary assault mech’s design bears a passing resemblance to some of the Cauldron’s bipedal suits, but comparing it to a corporate arena Suit is like…like…

  Like comparing a steroid-fueled bear to an asthmatic pug, Ether thinks in awe, helpfully finishing the thought.

  Lanis swears she can feel the air move as the looming mech ponderously turns, its optic arrays glistening in the death-light of the battle overhead. Lanis watches as several dark shapes flit away from the suit’s hull.

  Scout drones.

  The drones hum about in outwardly concentric circles from the towering Insertion Unit, the seconds painfully ticking by. Lanis can only stare, hands clammy, as one of the drones lands next to a puddle of Hex’s leaking hydraulic oil, just outside the arcade’s entrance. It scurries forward along the ground like some metallic fly, antennae trembling, and then lifts up its head to gaze across the street, directly into Hex’s half-hidden optics.

  The Insertion Unit turns with purpose. It takes one step, then another, its legs crashing through storefronts as it grinds its way toward their hiding place.

  Shit shit shit—

  The mech pauses before the apartment block, and then reaches down a massive hand. It pushes through the debris, and then grasps one of Hex’s legs, dragging the Suit out from the building like a hunter plucking a half-dead rabbit from its burrow.

  Lanis flares the Versk energy core back into being: pushing every bit of power possible into the Suit’s A.R.M. blade, she stabs it down into the Insertion Unit’s hand. The blade bites down a few centimeters with a whining flash of light, but then shears off, impotently unable to penetrate the Fleet mech’s armor.

  “Ether, I’m disengaging all the failsafes. I want you to overload my brain, however you can. I won’t be taken alive by that thing!” Lanis yells, clasping onto Ether's virtual simulacrum with a frenzied mental grip as she attempts to tear down the barriers within her mind.

  Lanis, I don’t even know how I, if I— Ether begins.

  Just Do it! Lanis screams. She’s not even sure if it’ll work; ego death maybe won’t be enough, they’ll need to cause a massive hemorrhagic stroke—

  An electromagnetic pulse slams out of the Insertion Unit’s hand and across Hex’s hull. Electricity flickers through the pilot pod, and Lanis’ body involuntarily spasms. For the second time in less than an hour Lanis feels the wrenching vertigo of de-integration as Ether is ripped from her mind.

  That’s it, she thinks. She feels consciousness slipping away, but part of her mind pushes her hands to blindly grope against the interior of her pilot pod, trying to find some sharp object to stab into her jugular vein before whatever it is can bring her under its power.

  Nothing… nothing…

  There’s the sudden sensation of falling—

  Then the impact of landing, nearly a hundred meters down, taking Lanis’ breath away with a grunt as she slams against the constraints of her pilot harness. Freed from the mech’s tactile electromagnetic countermeasures, Hex’s optics feebly flicker back online, and Lanis feels Ether haltingly crawl back into her mind.

  The Fleet pilot.

  The ground beneath them shudders as an Insertion Unit battle begins to take place.

  Lanis groggily watches through Hex’s last remaining optical array as the Fleet insertion unit attacks the corrupted mech, a flash of blinding light cutting against its torso with a thunderous crack. The first Unit turns, letting off a salvo from its left arm’s weapon—a rattling barrage that deafens Lanis even within her pilot pod.

  She sees the corrupted unit charge at something, its own bunker-cleaving version of an A.R.M. blade unfolding into the night. She tries to turn Hex’s optics, but it’s no use: most of Hex’s systems are dead, and even the red-filled HUD shivers on, then off, much like her own mind. She can hear it though, the battle taking place, the groan of metals being pierced, and the volleys of ship-killing weapons unleashed at close range. She hears a smash, something cleaving cleanly through an Insertion Unit’s body, and then it grows quiet.

  Lanis feels heavy. Tired beyond belief. She can hear, as if from very far away, someone trying to speak to her, and the distant buzzing of her comms.

  “Ether?” she whispers. She feels an answering caress within her mind. If there are words, they don’t make sense.

  She slips into unconsciousness then, but not before she has the odd sensation of being lifted up from the ground.