I drifted in warm darkness, knowing with absolute certainty the steel womb of Tiamat cradled my body while my mind wandered. I'd fallen asleep without realizing, and only a faint blue light blinking in the corner of my vision told me I dreamed.

Dim, sourceless light filled the space before me. A woman swirled through my line of sight, her body clothed in a bustier not unlike what I'd worn to bed. She danced, and only the fall of her hair when she paused showed she danced within a gravity well. I reached out, straining against the padded straps holding me to my warm nest. I yearned for her to come to me but knew she would not. She danced for others, she danced for herself, she danced for the sheer joy of dancing, but never for me.

I blinked, and she was gone. I knelt deep within the belly of a Mechanical Heavy Carrier the size of a small moon, my augmentation enabling me to see my surroundings in reflected heat and radiation. Far above me my armor died, noisily, as I'd intended. Mech' systems scanned constantly for the residues of biological contamination, but long before this particular Carrier realized I hadn't died with my armor, my work would be done.

As would I.

Grace's voice, decoded by my helpful essie, echoed from the mind of the great ship.

"Princess Grace to Outer Rim command. We've beaten the first wave of Seekers, but that monster launched two more while we did, and they've sent a squadron of Hunter-Killers back down our incoming vector. They'll be a while, but they'll find you before we can get back. Your current ship strength cannot survive an encounter with this Carrier. Withdraw until reinforced, we will rendezvous when possible."

The response didn't matter, nor did the Carrier's internal commands to its brood of Seekers, Hunter-Killers, and lesser capital ships. Grace's most important message hadn't been for Outer Rim command, it had been for me. The fleet could not hold. The safety of billions of people along the Rim depended on our plan, on me.

Stalking on cat-silent feet, I snuck to the connection between the Carrier's main computer and the ship's power source, an antimatter reactor fueled by a heavily shielded bunker full of the most powerful explosive ever developed by man or machine. My own augmentation used the same, although in my case a dollop the size of a pea seemed almost too much, and the ship's bunker could house a small squadron of battle armor.

The specter of death loomed large, but I wasn't worried about Mech' Troopers. The only way to destroy a ship this large lay in the bunker before me, and to set it off I needed to commandeer the wrist-thick cable above me. This close to the ship's brain the Troopers didn't dare scan too actively, even if they'd known I lurked here, but when I cut that cable, every Trooper in the ship would descend on me. I thought through what I needed to do, then contacted my essie.

When I cut that cable, I need you to get me control of the reactor as quickly as possible.

Their response was immediate, a gravelly voice inside my head, as familiar to me as my own wife. We've already hacked the ship's encryption. It's due to change in forty seconds.

A countdown timer sprang into existence before my eyes. I had no time left to reminisce. It was time for me to do and die.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

A tiny blue light flickered in the corner of my vision. This wasn't me. This isn't me.

I shook my head, dismissing the errant thought, and in one smooth motion drew my curved Protector's blade, grabbed the end of the cable nearer the ship's main computer, and slashed it free. Power flowing from the reactor sparked wildly, and the sharp edges of the severed control runs glinted in the sudden light. I sank my knife into my lower chest, drawing it back out before the pain hit, thrusting the end of the cable deep into my liver, where my essie waited to connect it to my own augmentation.

Pain blossomed, and I forced myself to remain upright while my skin sealed over the intruding cable. The reactor poured fire into my chest, burning a cavity before my essie rerouted it to my own internal systems. I endured. I'd suffered worse before Grace found me, before I'd become an augmented Imperial Marine. Of course, those wounds had nearly killed me, and this would barely inconvenience me for more than a few minutes.

I didn't have minutes. My onboard pharmacopoeia flooded me with painkillers and amphetamines. The clock slowed, but seconds still crawled by with painful finality. The timer hit twenty-five, and sudden awareness of the ship's reactor filled me. It was part of me, despite the desperate attempts of the ship to steal it back. I fended those off with a thought and turned to more important matters.

My armor's death run ruined the mechanical failsafes on the antimatter bunker. With an effort of will as much as intellect, I disabled the software safeties and pushed the fuel feed far beyond its ratings. The power flowing to my chest spiked, and my essie diverted as much as possible to external defenses. The two Troopers swarming into the room in response to their ship's desperate call fired on me, attacking with beams of coherent light and flecks of uranium travelling at C-fractional velocity, but I shielded the cable with my body, and my overcharged skin field shed their fire.

My uniform charred to ash, my skin blackened, and the power cascading through me burned away my liver and most of my stomach, but I held firm. Ten seconds remaining, and the antimatter injectors had almost eaten through themselves. A few more and no force in the universe would stop the flow of antimatter from flooding back into the outer walls of the bunker, setting off a chain reaction to destroy the ship and everything on it.

I gathered my final thoughts as my essie gathered my memories, and all of it flooded out into the ether, bound for the mind of my beloved Grace.

An annoying blue light blinked in the corner of my vision. I hate Grace Li!

I ignored the light and sent one last farewell to Grace, although I left my channel open after, in case anything worth remembering occurred. Three seconds.

It has been an honor hosting you.

My essie, a companion more intimate than Grace ever since the day we'd wed, responded to my thought almost before I finished.

It has been an honor serving you, Protector Dustin Dabig.

My thoughts flashed to my mother, gone since long before I met Grace. I'd never spoken with her since the day I left home, and even now I regretted it. Maybe in my next life I could finally come to terms with my memory of her.

Fire brighter than the heart of a sun washed through the compartment. The recalcitrant armor of the Troopers sublimated to metallic gas, the shock tearing me away from my empowering umbilical. My extremities failed first, falling instantly to ash when their shielding failed. My essie, too busy trying to save me to dull my pain, sent a flicker of pure regret. My Imperial augmentation, too stupid to do anything else, kept me awake and aware to feel every inch of my limbs burn away.

The sheer heat of the explosion vaporized the central core of the AI along with several layers of armored bulkheads, but long before I blew into space, I slammed into armor too strong and too far from the antimatter blast to instantly disintegrate. I hit headfirst, the alloy of my skull denting, the composite around it cracking, sending a single shard through my skull and out through one eye, where my skin field caught it. Half of my body went numb, but I felt the other half slam into the recalcitrant bulkhead.

The impact cracked my own reactor. My skin field failed.

Blue light flashed in the corner of my eye.