Lanis feels a prickling sensation as she runs. It’s as if, in the claustrophobic confines of the pilot pod, she’s being watched.

She feels her eyelid give an involuntary twitch.

Oh no, she thinks, grinding her teeth in the HUD-cast glow. Not again.

Um, right, so there’s definitely something odd going on in the Unit admin systems, Ether says, unable to keep the worry from her voice, and again trying to peer into the deepest instinct-layers of the Unit. It’s not quite root code, but it’s close enough that Lanis can feel Ether treading with great care, wary of shining a light where it might cause some kind of damage at this, the most inopportune of times.

Lanis feels her heart rate continue to rise, and she tries to focus on her breathing. Meanwhile, the Assault Unit eats up the miles like a thunderstorm given legs; tree splinters explode under its legs as the towering Unit cuts up through a gently sloping forested hill, each thruster-assisted step leaving behind a smoldering crater of burning wood. More Murkata air-craft scream overhead as Lanis runs, the booms of their unleashed ordnance nearly equal to the crashing footsteps of the Assault Unit.

We don’t have time for you to poke around in there, Lanis thinks, pulling Ether’s divided attention back from the Unit’s logic-code as they approach the crest of a hill. Just over it is the rendezvous point, and beyond that are the Kaisho lines, and Fleet Academy.

Lanis can feel Ether watching her, wide-eyed and nervous.

“What? I’m fine,” Lanis snaps, her voice oddly loud with anger.

Ether doesn’t stop what she’s doing: she combs the Unit’s systems, increasingly frantic, trying to trace the source of the berserker rage swelling in Lanis’ chest, a feeling so tight now she feels like she might scream.

Oh shit, Lanis thinks, turning her head as a small spasm races up her spine, forcing the air out of her lungs with a grunt. It’s like before, but worse. Much worse. It’s like she’s fallen into a river, one that’s surprisingly swift and violent beneath the surface. She kicks out the metaphorical legs of her mind, trying to reach the banks where she’ll be more in control of herself and the mech.

But the raging current is leaving no choice as to her destination:

Violence.

She crests the hill.

The rendezvous point spreads out before them, and Lanis screams inside the pilot pod, six months of terror, pain, frustration, and rage expelled in one heave inside the pod.

The Unit doesn’t have vocal cords or a sound system, but it does have a power core, and a deflector shield. The Unit throws open its arms, and together they scream for her, a roar of harmonic oscillation that rips pine needles from their branches like a supersonic storm surge.

Cobwebs in the system?? Is that how you put it? Lanis thinks, still struggling futilely against the current that’s continuing to rise within the Unit.

She should have known better. Fleet should have known better. Then a thought strikes her: maybe they did, and just chose not to tell them. Lanis snarls out a laugh, impressed once again at Fleet’s power of deception, when it suits their purpose. Surely they would have been aware that the pilot and his AI’s death during battle would leave an imprint in the system. Or maybe not? Maybe it’s to do with the corruption? Lanis bats that generous thought away. Not that it matters now. All that matters is here, and now.

Lanis can feel Ether begin to despair; she can’t find the thread, can’t locate the presence responsible for twisting her pilot’s behavior. Not only is she unsure of how to help, but she’s unsure of what her place is in this new paradigm of pilot, AI, and whatever else still exists within the Unit’s admin code.

Resist? Ether thinks, wide-eyed, ready to take a hammer to the Suit’s admin system, Kaisho fight be damned.

No. Whatever it is, don’t fight it, Lanis thinks, a deep certainty hitting her as her pupils madly dilate. This is its fight as much as it is ours. Just… keep alongside me, like you have been. She breathes a navigation trigger word, and lapses into a meditative trance, stratagems dissipating in her mind like smoke as she gives in to a deeper instinct.

The back and forth happens in less than a second; Ether nods reluctantly, and they turn their attention to what lies before them.

The plan dreamed up by the Murkata strategists was for Lanis and the Murkata Aegis Suits to form up and make a blitzkrieg thrust through the dispersed Kaisho lines. That plan was already hanging from a thread, and the scene that greets them makes a mockery of it.

A battle is taking place, and it’s gone to shit.

Three of the Murkata Aegis Suits have arrived at the rendezvous point—or tried to. With visual contact made, Ether pushes through the odd haze of jamming that has so degraded their communication systems, and establishes a tight-beam comm channel with their allies.

Aegis two, attempting to disengage—beam weapons down—

Aegis four, hull damage critical—Ejecting!

One of the heavy Murkata mechs is currently a smoldering wreck, while the other two are engaged in combat with all four of the Kaisho Deterrent-class Suits, falling back as the Kaisho Suits press their advantage. A plume of smoke erupts from Aegis four’s wrecked pilot-pod, and an ejection capsule shoots up into the sky. Lanis watches, helpless, as a beam of light erupts from one of the Kaisho mech’s lancers, disintegrating the ejection pod as it races upward.

It’s not just the four Kaisho mechs, though—Lanis’ optics array contracts, and there, barely two miles in the distance, lumbers the first of the two corrupted Heavy Insertion Units, its terrible armaments glittering in the afternoon light.

There’s no more room for tactics analysis; only action. Unconsciously, Lanis has still been a reluctant passenger with the flowing rage that has sprung up from the deepest depth of the Unit’s core admin systems. Now, however, she dives into the feeling, eyes madly wide, her Fleet-augmented tendons straining against the tight pilot suit that clings to her arms.

Dorsal flaps ripple along the Unit’s back, and a fleet of drones are released, black and silver shapes that emit supersonic booms as they accelerate into the sky, above treetops, and along the ground. This is the part of the Unit’s armament that Ether was looking forward to the most, and Lanis can feel her mind racing with glee. The Assault Unit’s drone system is, ironically, not as offensive-minded as some of its Insertion Unit counterparts. Instead, they’re meant to deceive and decoy, stratagems that make Ether’s eyes flash with wicked delight as she pushes a portion of herself into each, a kaleidoscope of micro-Ethers.

Lanis can feel that whatever has infected her is also rubbing off on Ether; not that she’s worried. In fact, all of her concerns have seemed to melt away, replaced by a feeling of invincibility and fist-clenching power.

The glow within the pilot pod turns red as power levels spike and alarms bleat their soft, not yet insistent, protestations.

The Grav-maul ignites.

Lanis watches two of the Kaisho mechs’ heads turn toward her while the other two continue to pummel the retreating Murkata Suits, and feels a pulse of warning as their weapons lock onto her.

They’re not the real threat—that’s the approaching corrupted Insertion Unit—but they could still prove lethal if allowed to destroy the Murkata mechs and concentrate their power. The two mechs raise their mass-drivers, pivot their missile-pods, and ready themselves to unleash their combined firepower upon Lanis.

Drones are engaging the Insertion Unit, which should buy us some time—unleashing suppression on the Kaisho mechs, Ether thinks.

Lanis is already moving, sprinting toward the red mechs in a blur of two-thousand ton composite metal. Simultaneously, a kind of shadow falls in the valley that separates the two forces, like the squall of a thunderstorm.

The first of the drones systems have deployed, unleashing their micro-filament chaff; it’s akin to a smoke launcher, but on a massive scale.

She still feels the shudders of thirty-pound shells ripping against the Unit’s raised bulwark shield, and the echo of explosions as decoy drones detonate against incoming missiles overhead. She feels heat, as if her own arm was licked by fire, as one of the Kaisho missiles evades the drone system, exploding against the inner reaches of the Assault Unit’s deflector shield. None of it is enough to slow her.

She bursts through the blurry darkness of chaff, the bulwark shield shrugging off near point-blank shells. Then she’s among them.

The first swing of the Grav-maul nearly splits the nearest Kaisho mech in two. The phrase “hot knife through butter” flashes in Lanis’ mind, but it’s more like a molten sledge-hammer through weak flesh. The Kaisho mech simply ceases to functionally exist, its mass-driver firing blindly upward into the sky as it collapses in a half-puddle of superheated metal. Lanis feels a scratching sensation across her back, and turns, screaming, toward the next Kaisho Unit. It begins to pull back, frantically unloading each of its weapons systems upon the approaching Assault Unit as its aerial thrusters fire, pushing the mech up and away from Lanis.

Not likely, Lanis feels Ether think, and two metallic objects shoot up into the Kaisho mech’s thruster fans, ripping them apart with twin explosions. The mech, hobbled, raises its right arm, power shooting into its own small shield. Is there something pleading in the way it turns its head upward, or is that Lanis’ imagination? No matter. Lanis swings the Grav-maul, ripping through the shield like soft clay and collapsing the bulk of the mech’s torso in on itself with a crunch that would burst any eardrum within a half mile. She pulls the maul free with a snarl and turns to her next victim.

Ether pushes a hurried status report of the drone system toward Lanis as she closes with the next mech. Not a lot of time here, Ether thinks, and a streak of light whips past Lanis as if to reinforce the point.

We really don’t want to find out what happens if one of those lands without our shield in the way, Ether thinks.

The other two Kaisho mechs have disabled the remaining Murkata Suits during the time that Lanis has dealt with their comrades, and Lanis watches, overflowing with anger, as one of the Kaisho mechs stands, one leg on the dark green torso of Aegis One, and fires a stream of rounds point-blank in to the Murkata Suit’s head. She feels the fleeting comm link cut out, pushes energy into the Unit’s leg thrusters, and charges.

INCOMING, Ether screams; an instinct, the same one that’s been pushing her berserk-like rage, causes Lanis to pivot before Ether’s thought fully registers, or before the alarms in the pilot pod can blare.

The Assault Unit braces itself behind its bulwark shield, its power core groaning as energy is shunted into the forward deflectors. Even so, the Unit staggers backward as it’s hit by the enemy’s mass driver. Each round, even slowed by her deflectors, still packs enough kinetic energy to reduce any corp suit to a smear.

The shield strains, adamant ridges denting, but holds.

The source, Lanis realizes, comes from a new direction.

The second Insertion Unit has joined the fight.