“Thanks.”

Her frightening bird helmet nods to me without expression.

As the rest of my platoon files through the breach, I move forward to the corner around which several of the Grays escaped. Another enemy response squad hastily sets up a heavy weapon mounted on a floating gravPod about thirty meters down near a gravLift entrance. When it fires, a quarter of the wall above me melts. I order Holiday take my place at the corner with Trigg’s ambi-rifle.

“Four tins, one Gold,” I say. “They’ve got a mounted QR-13. Slag ’em.”

She adjusts her rifle’s multi-use barrel. “Yessir.”

At our breach point, six Valkyrie are down. A huge woman’s helmet peels back into her armor. She vomits blood. Half her torso smokes, molten armor still melting her flesh. She tries to stand, laughing at the pain, high on god’s bread. But this is a new type of war to these women with new injuries. Unable to support herself, the Obsidian slumps against a sister who calls to Sefi. The young Queen looks at the wounds and sees Victra shake her head. A quicker learner than the rest of them, Sefi knew well what this war would cost her people. But staring it in the face is something different altogether. She says something of home to the woman, something of the sky and the feathers at summer’s twilight. I don’t see the blade she slips into the base of the dying woman’s skull until she pulls it back out.

A hologram of Mustang’s face flashes in the corner of my screen. I open the link. “Darrow, have you breached?”

“We’re in. Double for my teams. Pressing to bridge now. What’s what?”

“You need to hurry. My ship’s under heavy fire.”

“We’re in. You’re supposed to bug out. Head to Thebe.”

“Roque used EMPs.” Her voice is tense. “Our shielding kept us up, but half my fleet’s engines are squabbed. We’re sitting dead, punching it out with him. Soon as your clawDrill hit, the Colossus started shooting to kill. They’re ripping us apart. We’re outgunned, hard. Main batteries are already at half strength.” A sick feeling rises in my gut. Roque can see us on the cameras in his ship. He knows the strength of my boarding party. It’s only a matter of time till I reach the bridge. Soon he’ll make an announcement over the com for me to surrender or he’ll kill her. “Get to the gorydamn bridge and put him down. Register?”

“Register.” I turn to face my troops, “We gotta move,” I say. “Victra, take squad command. I’m going digital. Sefi, range ahead.”

“Holiday, anytime,” Victra says eagerly, pacing back and forth in the hall. “The little lion needs our help. Come on! Come on!”

“Hold your tits,” Holiday mutters, adjusting her rifle and toggling the corner-shot feature. The barrel joints rotate so it peeks around the wall and feeds the visual link directly into her bionic eye. Four quick bursts tear out of the gun. Thirty rounds each from the ammo magazine in the back of her armor. “Go.”

Victra and I burst around the corner, eating up meters as a Gray tries to take his companion’s place at the gun. I cut him down with my pulseFist and Victra exchanges a four move kravat set with the Gold, before skewering him with a thrust to the chest. I finish him with a stab to the throat. Holiday has her commandos haul the QR-13 with us, only able to keep pace with our long legs because of our heavy armor.

As we press for the bridge at a full-sprint, other elements of my invasion force make for vital ship functions with a new frantic speed. It’s a lightning strike. Grays can’t move with this speed because they rely on tactics, leapfrog maneuvers, corner-shots and sly tech. The Obsidian are straight battering rams. It’s tempting to surge ahead, focus only on getting to the bridge. But I can’t abandon my plan. My platoons need me to guide them using the battlemap on my HUD. Speaking to Red and Gray platoon leaders, I coordinate on the run as Victra leads us through the maze of metal halls and ambushes. As the platoons are pinned down, I use my com to maneuver other platoons through gravLifts and halls to flank entrenched security teams. It’s an intricate dance. Not only are we racing against the destruction of Mustang’s ship. But we’re racing against the return of the leechCraft.

Roque knows this. And less than three minutes into our insertion, the ship goes into full lockdown protocol. All gravLifts and trams and bulkheads sealed off, creating a honeycomb of obstacles throughout the ship. We can only advance fifty meters at a time. It’s a devilish system, pins down boarding forces as security teams with digital keys run about the ship at ease, flanking and creating deadly killboxes and cross-fires that can shred even a boarding party like mine. There’s no way to combat it. This is the grind of war. No matter the tech or the tactics, it all comes down to terrifying moments crouching chalk-mouthed at a corner as a friend lays down cover fire and you try not to trip over the hi-tech gear that’s wrapped around your body as you advance, head lowered, legs churning. It’s not bravery, it’s fear of shaming yourself in the eyes of your friends that keeps you moving.

As we melt our way through bulkhead after bulkhead, Sefi’s Valkyrie feed the grinder. We’re ambushed from every side. Some of the best warriors I’ve ever seen fall with smoking holes in the back of their helmets from Gray marksmen. They melt under pulseFist fire. They fall to a Gold knight flanked by seven Obsidian till Victra, Sefi, and I put them down with razors.

All this to reach the bridge. All this to reach a man who I could have reached out and touched the day before. If this is the cost of honor, give me a shameful murder. If I’d have stabbed Roque in the throat then, Valkyrie would not litter the ground now.

“Men and women of the Society Navy, this is the Reaper. Your ship has been boarded by the Sons of Ares…” I hear my voice over the ship’s general com unit. One of my platoons has reached the communication mainframe in the back half of the ship. Every boarding party in my fleet has copies of the speech Mustang and I recorded together to upload to boarded enemy vessels. It exhorts lowColors to aid my units, to deactivate lockdown protocol if they can, to unlock doors manually if they cannot, and to storm the armories. Most of these men and women are veterans. It’s unrealistic to expect the same sort of conversion as I had on the Pax’s crew, but every little bit helps.

The announcement works partially on the Colossus. It buys us precious time as we bypass several doors in seconds instead of the minutes it would take to melt through. Roque also turns off the artificial gravity, realizing by watching their tactics that my Obsidians don’t have zero g experience.