The Assault Unit’s HUD sparkles back to life as Lanis’ eyes crack open. For a single excruciating second she imagines that she’s back inside the Demeter’s navigation pod, the hunger of the Anomaly licking against her neck. 

No. She strains against the gel fluid of the pilot pod, spitting out a mouthful of tongue-bitten blood. She remembers where she is. In some ways, it’s even worse than the Demeter. There is no tech-savant to pry her from the navigation pod, no ship AI to sedate her. 

She’s alone.  

Ether? she calls out inside her mind. Nothing. Each heartbeat sends a pulsing ache across her head, terminating to a sharp pain at her neural shunt. She wiggles her fingers and toes, feeling a slight surge of relief that she probably hasn’t experienced an intracranial hemorrhage. 

“Ether!” she yells.

The only response to her plaintive cry is the dull indifference of the Assault Unit’s alarms. 

Dead—is she dead? She thinks, panic rising in her chest. That’s what the anomaly has done to every AI that it’s come into contact with, at least as far as she knows. And Ether grappled with the thing; she bites down a wave of nausea as she remembers Ether’s scream as her hands melted away under the thing’s grasp, the smoke drifting up from her motionless body. 

Alongside her grasping search for a trace of her AI partner, another part of Lanis unwillingly takes back control of the Assault Unit. 

It’s harder without Ether—like flying a ship with a single finger—but not impossible. As if sensing her awkward groping, the Instinct Admin of the Unit rises up along with her, taking over tasks that Ether once oversaw. It feels different now that the ghosts of its old pilot and AI are truly gone; calmer, but also slower, and less intuitive.

The tire-sized optics of the Unit glow back into existence as the power core flares back into combat mode, sending a shudder through the Unit’s body. 

Lanis tentatively reaches down with a massive arm, grasping the Grav-maul and pulling it up from where it tumbled like a fallen monument. She rises, and scans the battlefield through the Unit’s HUD, still trying to come to grips with what’s just occurred. 

Three mechs remain standing: Lanis, the enemy Unit, and Aegis Three. However, even as she watches, the enemy Insertion Unit sways, and then topples over, like a skyscraper that’s had a misfire in its detonation, the ground rumbling as it crashes forward.

Behind it, Aegis Three stands. It’s missing most of its right arm, and wisps of smoke drift from gouges across its chest. Still, it’s alive, and Lanis feels a ping of a requested comm channel. She accepts.

“Lanis here,” she croaks.

“Commander,” Aegis Three responds, their voice crackling in the emptiness of the pilot pod.

“Are you… well?” 

If I wasn’t, you’d be dead by now, Lanis thinks. Instead, she responds, “Affirmative. Both enemy Insertion Units are dead.” 

She hesitates, the Assault Unit’s pivoting to the smoking wreckage of the two Kaisho mechs, along with the scattered remains of the other Aegis Units. 

“Are you the only one left?”

“Yes. I’m all that’s left,” Aegis Three says, only a slight pause betraying the emotion behind those words. “Our forces are requesting a status update, Commander. It appears that comms interference has been lifted. Shall I give the go-ahead for the breakthrough to commence?”

“Yes. Give the go-ahead,” Lanis responds quietly, hefting the Grav-maul. She feels the request of other pings from the Murkata commanders behind her. If Ether was still here, she would be juggling all of this, but instead it’s just her, slow and stupid. 

“My AI is down,” Lanis continues, the horrible truth of the words catching in her throat. “I won’t be as effective as before, but the Kaisho forces don’t know that. I’ll lead the assault.” 

If that’s even necessary. She thinks back to what just occurred in her dream construct, how she reached inside of the Anomaly and ripped it apart. Her tingling exhaustion reminds her of Warp-jump training. How deeply was I able to hurt it? Was I able to sever its grasp?

“Yes, commander,” Aegis Three says, following Lanis as the Assault Unit begins to trudge toward Fleet Academy. Overhead, Murkata skycraft scream, apparently unopposed. A portion of her HUD expands, a strategic overlay of the area once again coming into focus now that the Anomaly’s strange interference matrix is down. She and the Murkata mechs have fulfilled their purpose as the hammer of the assault; now it’s time for the scalpel. She watches, numb, as Planetary Admin’s Rapid Response battalion forms up behind them, five and ten-ton Breaker Suits followed by Murkata troop carriers.

One comms ping is more urgently recognizable than the rest, and Lanis opens a channel. The concerned voice of Admiral Ren crackles in her ear:

“Lanis! Good God woman, what’s just happened?” 

Lanis swallows another taste of blood, glancing at a readout of her vitals that expands more prominently in her HUD. Maybe it’s not just her tongue that’s bleeding. She’s tachycardic, and her blood pressure is creeping downward. She hadn’t even noticed that the Unit’s Instinct Admin has been fluid bolusing her since she woke. As she watches, a vasopressor alert pops up across the HUD; she winces at the renewed pang of her headache, along with a sharp jab along her back. She’s definitely bleeding from somewhere, somehow, and the Unit is vainly attempting to locate the source. 

“I fought it,” Lanis croaks. “And I think… I think I won. But Ether, she’s gone. I don’t know how to explain…” 

There’s a pause on the other end of the channel, and Lanis can hear muffled voices speaking before Ren’s voice comes back into her ear. 

“Your vitals are shit, Lanis. We need to get you out of there; Ether’s cortex too.” 

Lanis opens her mouth, but Ren continues.

“Whatever you did, it’s had a massive effect. Resistance has mostly collapsed. A few Kaisho Units are still fighting back, but it seems more out of confusion than organized resistance. Now we just need to get at those cadets…” 

As Ren speaks, Lanis crests a small hill, and there, laid out before her in green-lawned perfection, are the grounds of Fleet Academy. If she didn’t know better, she would think that nothing was amiss: the pale glass towers glisten in the afternoon light, and the ivy-covered brick buildings invitingly sit, as they always have. She pivots, optical eyes narrowing at a cluster of white buildings. The navigation school.

She watches, pulse rate slowly rising, as Rapid Response Suits sprint across the manicured laws, their armored feet gouging out clumps of grass before moving to cover. She hears dull explosions in the distance, but it’s eerily quiet on the Academy grounds; only a few empty pulse-cannon and anti-air emplacements hint at the Kaisho forces. But they’re abandoned now, as if they’ve all simply melted away into the ground.

She tracks a group of Murkata APCs roaring down a narrow lane across from the cadet cafeteria. I remember having lunch there. Laughing with my friends, she thinks, as she watches one of the armored carriers disgorge an armored sec-team, who immediately blow down a door at one end of the navigation school.

“Extract team approaching,” Admiral Ren says, but Lanis is barely listening, instead wholly focused on two other Murkata teams who silently blow open doors, pulse rifles drawn. She tries to ping one of the extraction teams, but her mind feels too clumsy to find the channel.

“What are they finding, Admiral?” Lanis whispers. She registers another bolus of artificial blood being pumped into her veins, and there’s a pinch under her clavicle as the Unit accesses her subclavian vein for the administration of the new vasopressor.

Admiral Ren waits just a moment too long before responding, betraying her reluctance. 

“Lanis, prepare for evac,” she says, and Lanis feels the sensation of something landing and latching across the  Assault Unit’s wounded back. An extraction protocol blooms across the HUD, awaiting Lanis’ acceptance. 

“Not until you tell me what they’ve found, Admiral,” Lanis says, gritting her bloodied teeth.

There’s a weight of reluctance before the Admiral finally answers. 

“They’re dead, Lanis. They’re all dead.”