Lanis squints awake to the glare of lights and the feeling of hands fumbling at her pilot harness.
“What—” she groans, but a voice cuts her off:
“You’re ok, Lanis. You’re back.” It’s Ash, her voice strained but firm.
Lanis hears Sander’s baritone rumble too, and feels the warm sliding withdrawal of her neural shunt. “Careful, Ash, look at her hands. God, that one looks broken...”
There are more voices behind them too, some familiar: Booker, and another of their security team, but also the harsh synthetic growls that she associates with armored sec units.
Lanis peels her eyes open, wincing. Her migraine is back, pain pounding within her skull with each heartbeat, and she feels her leg muscles cramp as she tries to sit up. She glances at her hands, bloody and torn from ripping out the Cauldron’s obstruction modules and from pounding against the interior of her pod, and tentatively flexes them. No, not broken; just mangled, she thinks. Despite her grogginess and her pain, she observes with relief that at least she can feel and move her whole body. At least I haven’t had a stroke… I think.
“Ash?” she whispers hoarsely, dragging her attention away from her physical pain and trying to bring the woman into focus.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Ash answers, unclipping the final buckle of the pilot pod’s harness. Another pair of hands, larger and coarser than Ash’s, gingerly pulls Lanis out from the pod, and a shoulder comes up under her to support her weight. Sander.
“Mirem is somewhere out here too…” Ash continues, but other voices impose themselves on their conversation.
“Lights off. We need to move!” barks a mechanical voice. Lanis tries to open her eyes wider, and does her best to take in the scene around her as she stumbles away from her Suit, half dragged by Sander.
It’s still dark, which adds to the flickering, dreamlike quality of the scene. Around her are Versk team members, recognizable by their blue uniforms; there’s Booker, a stubby assault gun strapped across his chest, speaking to one of the unfamiliar figures. His white and blue shirt is mottled black, wet with… blood?
What about Fleet? Lanis thinks, pulling her gaze overhead. It appears quiet, the night sky no longer consumed by arcs of weaponry and distant explosions. However, just as Lanis begins to wonder how long the battle has been over, a massive flare of light erupts across the night sky.
Not over… just ending, Lanis realizes, as she watches the death throes of a ship glitter overhead.
She wonders who has won.
She looks down and back across her shoulder, from where she was dragged, and there is poor Hex, half of its legs missing, a dented heap of its former self. Lanis has a wild, fleeting urge to go back and run her hand over the suit’s matte-black hull, now pockmarked and scorched. Not bad for a prior-gen hexapod. Thank you, she thinks.
Several Versk technicians struggle to remove Ether’s cortex from the pod, swearing with triumph as they finally wrench the casing of the AI’s mind free. She can see others behind them too, helm-visored forms in tactical armor who kneel at intervals beyond Hex in the flashes of light, their pulse rifles raised and at the ready. And beyond them…
Shit.
The Cauldron’s staging ground is on fire.
She watches, still pulled by Sander, as a part of the pavilion's roof crumples down on itself with a roar of fire, sparks spilling upward.
“What happened?” Lanis asks, finally turning her gaze forward into the darkness. Her voice still feels thick, but her legs seem to be slowly regaining their strength.
There’s a heartbeat pause, and then Ash haltingly responds. “We don’t know. Everything went dark. A mag-lev brought you in. We’re under attack, but… ” Lanis can hear the woman choke something back as she struggles for words. “Everything’s gone wrong.”
Against the backdrop of raised voices, Lanis notices a roar growing closer. She staggers against Sander’s shoulder as gusts of wind and dust begin to whip against her face. Ahead, descending through the flickering darkness, is some kind of aircraft or shuttle, its black hull non-reflective in the flickering light. With the lumbering grace of a whale, it comes to rest in the staging area’s field beyond her dead mech.
Lanis feels a sudden embrace, her weight no longer supported by Sander’s shoulder, but by Mirem’s familiar body pressing against hers. She feels her face held in Mirem’s palms, her questioning look, full of anxiety; sees the blood on Mirem’s face too, smeared down her neck and across her shoulder. There’s no time for questions though, and barely enough to feel the flood of relief: more hands are supporting her, shoving her up a short ramp and into a hard seat, strange faces illuminated by the eerie red glow of battle-lighting. She closes her eyes, gripping Mirem’s arm with her bloody, bruised hand as a strap is clicked across her shoulder: then gravity is pressing against her as they lift up, the transport roaring up into the burning night sky.
“... let her rest, she’s clearly been through it.”
“I know it’s just… what the hell just happened?”
“We’ll get answers soon enough.”
Lanis opens her eyes. Around her, in jump seat formation, sit Mirem, Ash, and several of the other Versk technicians.
“I’m awake,” Lanis says. The voices stop, and Lanis can feel a dozen eyes bore into her. She tries to swallow.
“Does anyone have some water?”
A bottle is shoved into her hand, and Lanis inhales it, blindingly grateful. Her brief lapse back into unconsciousness has helped clear her mind somewhat, and she’s something approaching her normal self when she’s done drinking, besides the dull full-body pain. But she feels grateful for that too; it means she’s alive. She gives a feeble smile as she glances at the faces that surround her.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You have no idea how good it is to see you.”
She feels hands squeeze her knee, her shoulder, and she chokes back a sob at the upwelling of emotion. No. That can wait for later, if later comes. She takes in her team members again, their unnatural appearances re-registering in the dull red light. They look ragged, uniforms torn, their clothing blood-stained.
“What happened?”
The story unfolds in lurches, one team member picking up when another’s voice trails off, unable to fully articulate the madness of the past few hours.
It appears that the Cauldron’s feed was cut at roughly the same time that the Versk Suit was deactivated. And it wasn’t only the Cauldron: the majority of Terra’s public net is currently down, trillions of digital relays having ground to a halt.
“It was when we were trying to get in touch with Versk HQ that we knew something was seriously wrong. That, and the screaming next door,” Ash says, swallowing.
It seems that the Howett Corp pilot who chased Lanis through the arcade wasn’t the only one to be infected in the Cauldron.
“Not all of them though. They didn’t all go mad. In fact, just a few of them, from what I could tell,” Booker says. The big man looks and sounds as exhausted as Lanis feels. He grimaces. “Unfortunately they had access to weapons. And the others didn’t.”
“I thought the Cauldron confiscated all weapons…” Lanis says, her voice trailing off at the grim look Booker gives her.
“You can always smuggle something in,” Booker replies, absently stroking the stubby gun that he still has strapped across his huge chest. “But that wasn’t even the issue. It was the Cauldron officials; some of them went mad too. And they had guns. Real guns.”
Booker shakes his head sadly.
“It was butchery, Lanis. They would have gotten to us too, if we hadn’t packed these ghost guns in the suit tools. Renfol ordered us to, despite the risk of a fine or ban. Smart man. Hope he’s still alive.”
Still alive? Lanis wants to ask. But of course… Terra’s entire communication network is down. We’re blind. Lanis’s attention is dragged back to the blood on Booker’s shirt, and across Mirem’s face. “Were you hurt?”
Mirem and Booker both shake their heads. “A few scrapes,” he says. “But this is mostly from trying to stop the bleeding on others.”
There’s a pause, and Lanis tries to meet Booker’s unwilling eyes.
“Who didn’t make it?” she asks quietly.
“Heinrich died first,” Ash answers, her voice croaking. “We put him in one of the bunks after your first fight. They managed to get in there first. I don’t think he ever saw them coming.”
Mirem gently squeezes Lanis’ arm.
“Only about half of the team made it out,” she says.
Lanis lets the words wash over her. The weight will settle later. She knows from experience.
“And we wouldn’t have either,” Mirem continues, “but Murkata-Heisen sent a rapid response team.”
“Murkata?” A look of shock reignites across Lanis’ face. “That’s whose transport we’re on? I thought this was a Planetary Admin shuttle…”
“Nope. Don’t know what the hell Admin is doing, but it isn’t rescuing us,” Booker states. He jerks his chin upward. “Probably has bigger things to worry about, if what’s going on up there is any indication.”
“There’s so much we don’t know,” Mirem says, picking up the thread again. “But, from what we can tell, it looks like Kaisho-Renalis is trying to stage a coup.”
“A coup? How is that even possible?”
“They’re waging an info war, Lanis,” Mirem answers, her voice growing harder. “Along with a real one. Like we said, almost the whole planetary public net is down. Almost. There are currently only two broadcasts: one is an emergency relay alert from Planetary Administration, telling all citizens to shelter in place and await further instructions. The other…” Mirem sighs, running a hand through her bloody, matted hair.
“The other is from Kaisho-Renalis. They’re saying that elements in Fleet are attempting a planetary coup, and that Kaisho is resisting on behalf of Terra. None of it makes sense, but it’s enough to sow confusion, and clearly Admin has been too paralyzed to adequately respond.”
A realization spreads goosebumps along Lanis’ arms, one that is reflected in Mirem’s tired eyes. It isn’t just them that are blind to what’s occurring. No one on the entire planet has any idea of what’s actually happening.
“Now, how Murkata got word that we needed extraction, I’m not sure,” Mirem continues. “Renfol, maybe? I did ask him to run a forensic audit of the other teams. Maybe he took my advice. Or maybe Murkata is acting on behalf of Admin. Or, maybe they’ve been watching us all along. Versk is practically a subsidiary, and you’re a valuable asset.” Mirem shrugs.
“Murkata wouldn’t need much of an excuse to believe that Kaisho has gone rogue. They’ve hated each other for the past fifty years. I’d be amazed if they weren’t fully at war right now.”
Mirem lapses into a strained silence, and then turns to Lanis, running a tender hand across the sweat-matted back of her head. “What about you? Can you tell us what happened? Only if you feel ready…”
The other team members lean in against their seat straps, listening intently over the dull whine of the transport shuttle’s engines as Lanis recounts what occurred after the Cauldron’s feed went down. They scowl at the remote shutdown of Hex, and their eyes widen when she describes her fight with the Howett Corp mech: how the pilot extricated himself from his mech, running toward her, intent on accessing her pilot pod, and how she was forced to kill him.
Compared to what’s occurred at the staging area and in the night sky, they can almost accept these events without question, as merely one more piece of insanity piled upon the rest. However, their eyes bulge when she describes the rogue Insertion Unit falling out of the sky to attack her, and how a Fleet Insertion Unit arrived to engage it, with more than one mouth falling open at her brief description of the battle. The idea of two of those legendary machines engaging each other is difficult to comprehend.
“Did any of you hear about the Insertion Unit that saved me? Did he survive?” Lanis asks, glancing around at the shocked faces expectantly.
The looks they exchange are jarringly blank.
“We just know that you were picked up by a Murkata mag-lev extraction team. They didn’t say anything about an insertion unit,” Mirem quietly responds.
“Well… clearly I wouldn’t be here if the Fleet pilot hadn’t won,” Lanis says, the lingering hope in her voice tempered by the team’s lack of knowledge of its existence. “I hope he survived.”
She can almost feel the team's questions bubbling up, like hot water reaching a boil—why did an Insertion Unit come after you? Why did Fleet send one of its own to defend you? What do you know? What is happening? She suddenly feels sick at her own knowledge of what has occurred, though how it has occurred remains nightmarishly unclear. Regardless, a vague, visceral sense of responsibility falls over her body, making it suddenly hard to breathe.
She leans back, and something in her face causes the others around her to withdraw slightly, their concern for their pilot outweighing their desperate need for knowledge. She feels the squeeze of Mirem’s hand against her shoulder again, and Ash is saying it’s ok, and Booker is handing her another bottle of water, smudged by the bloody imprints of his huge hand.
She drinks, deliriously thirsty again, grateful to do anything but think. There’s a gentle shudder as they hit turbulence, and then the sensation of the shuttle making a banking turn.
She hands the empty bottle back to Booker, who casually crushes it before dropping it to the floor.
“So, does anyone know where we’re going?” she asks, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.
Booker shrugs slightly, and jerks his head behind him, toward where one of the Murkata sec teams is strapped in.
“Been trying to figure that out myself. All I was told was that it was a secure compound. Something buried in the mountains, if I had to guess.”
The image of the Howett Corp pilot comes back, unbidden, into Lanis’ mind. His young face, twisted with blood and fury; and how he sang her name, full of glee and hate. She shudders, and hugs herself.
“Well… I hope it’s deep.”
