"The manager should be hired first," Sara was arguing.

I didn't care. I had a feeling it wasn't going to matter who was hired first or who had any-

"Incursion detected. East Spokane has confirmed," as Max talked I heard Sara trail off.

"Max take control of the car. Head there. How long until arrival?"

"Two hours eight minutes," Max said in that way that Sara could hear as well. My stomach clenched as the car banked hard and accelerated to a point where it began to shake.

"How long if we steal a faster vehicle?" Sara asked?

"One hour fifty-three minutes including changing vehicles," Max said.

"How fast if we buy the latest version of the Solar Flare?"

"Twenty-one minutes," Max said.

I wanted to tell her to buy it, but I hadn't even seen the latest version.

"Max give me a visible count down, five minutes." It popped up in my HUD counting down, "Then walk me through the latest version they have and make suggestions. Budget is all my points."

"Keep two hundred in reserve," Sara insisted.

Very aware of the seconds ticking by I said, "You said in the fight be in the fight."

"The Samurai has to survive," she countered.

"Budget everything minus two hundred. Head for a vehicle to swap to max speed and walk me through the Solar Flare!" There were design changes to be made. Max thankfully prioritized things from either the most important or things that made the most structural changes to the craft.

Everything was so interconnected I felt sick for mere humans designing things like fighter jets. As I made split second decisions I feared I would later regret or worse that would be prohibitively expensive to change, the shape of the ship Max was showing me kept changing.

Thankfully most of the rapid fire choices came as either-or questions. Did I want a more powerful rail gun or one that could fire faster? Did I want more maneuverability or more speed?

When the timer hit zero I had to shift mental gears.

"This includes the implants we discussed that would be needed to fly it?" I asked.

There was a point total floating above the ship. 6428 points, 3 tokens. It wasn't all my points, but it only left with a few hundred.

"Implants, prosthetics, and biological changes yes," Max said.

I turned to Sara, "This is your last chance to-"

"I'm ready," she said. Then added, "I consent."

"Do it Max," I said taking a deep breath.

In my head the hovercar just sort of exploded away from us and the big ship teleported around us.

In reality, the car dropped so suddenly I clenched everything and grabbed hold of whatever was at hand.

"When we land, exit the vehicle, lay down on the ground, inhale deeply three times on the inhaler, and wait. It will paralyze you to better still your bodies. Then I will begin the upgrade process. You will likely be very disorientated when you regain control of your bodies."

By now I could see the ground spiraling up.

"You broadcasting?" I asked. I'd left a standing order to broadcast I was a Samurai anytime we did things out of the norm that might draw unwanted attention.

"I am," Max said. I realized it was a needless question.

The ground was rushing up at us and it seemed like all we could do was wait.

For such a large decision, I didn't feel any different after making it.

"Max," I said far more calmly than I felt, "Can you get us linked up with the Operators and find out what they need once we are on our way. Get them to link up with the Operators that understand the capabilities of the ship as well."

"Touching down in six, five, four-"

I looked down at my left hand. Sara had reached over and squeezed it. I looked up to see her grinning like a child on Christmas morning.

I was shaking my head when we decelerated with as much force as the car could muster. Something strained enough to make a hissing whine and then we impacted the ground hard enough the air bags went off.

It took me a moment to get the door open, and another to get out.

I rolled out as best I could then half crawled back so I could use the car to help me stand up.

We were in the center of an intersection of two paved country roads. There were weeds growing up from the cracks in the pavement. Two people were staring at me from behind a windshield. The driver was an older woman. A younger child in a hat looked over the dash from the passenger side.

"You need to lay down and inhale," Max said.

The vehicle had four tires and I wondered what fuel it used.

I knelt, expecting my knees to hurt, but my old man hurts had been repaired ten times over.

I laid down on my back. I put the inhaler to my mouth and blew out, then I sucked in air through it and it automatically sprayed. As I inhaled a second time I turned my head. Sara was laying on her back on the other side of the hovercar. As I sucked in my third breath of medicated air I was plunged into shadow.

At first I thought it was a byproduct of the drugs, but I could still move my eyes. They were sluggish, but they tracked away from the hovercar. A matte black lumpy thing rested above me, odd protrusions sticking out of it.

Then darkness seeped into me from the edges and I tasted apple on my tongue.

I saw so quickly my abs hurt, from what could only be a chemical or electrical motivation. Panic and need to move flowed through me. Max's voice droned on and on but I was trying to get up. Trying to move except we were in the middle of an earthquake or something.

My ears rang and I was driven to get the water out of them.

Every bad meal I'd ever eaten returned and I intended to put my hands on my knees and vomit. Instead I found I wasn't standing but kneeling, so I ended up vomiting as I tipped forward, face planting into my own sick. Except it wasn't vomit. It was filth from the depths of hell. Slime that stank worse than tonsil stones.

I was vaguely aware of a conversation that included words like purge and cleanse, but I was too busy worried about staying on my hands and knees to focus on anything else.

In time Max's voice became something I could understand. She guided me though standing, then moving around the hover car to find Sara puking her own guts out. There was a greenish yellow sun on the back of her outfit. A symbol I vaguely remembered seeing discussed in relation to Helios. A round circle surrounded with the wavy triangles. It was both something a child might drawn and something a corporation might spend hundreds of thousands of credits on.

Branding like that was a simple statement.

The pieces of fabric and general debris around her was odd. Until I recognized the helmet she had been wearing some distance away.

I looked down at my own body as I leaned against the rear of the car.

The new armor. In conjunction with biological changes they should allow us to maintain consciousness while maneuvering.

"Helmet," I said. Or tried to say. My throat was hoarse. Fleeting memories of screaming while being unable to move flashed before my eyes.

Thankfully the unfolding of the helmet from the thick collar scattered those memories away.

It didn't hinder my vision at all. I could feel the sick in me already being wicked away by the nanite grit the suit used for just that purpose.

"Water," I said and a tube snaked a half inch into my mouth. I sucked greedily at the tube drinking what had to be a gallon of water before Sara managed to get a hand on the car and get to her feet.

I helped her up.

She turned around and jerked back from me. Then she said something and her own helmet unfolded and unrolled around her. I could see myself in the opaque black face mask that covered her face. I too looked like some sort of round faceless thing.

Then I saw her jerk back again. This time from her head's position I could tell she was looking up and past me. I could see what she was looking at in the reflection of her mask.

I turned slowly, keeping a hand on the car as I did so.

The Solar Flare was a massive thing. We had to be looking at the front. I'd seen how many variations of this design, and yet, in person it looked alien and harsh. And so much larger than it should be. It was absolutely massive.

It looked like something out of a horror novel. The thing the evil bad guy flies in the video game when they come to wipe out life on Earth.

I was grinning up at it when that thought, totally innocent, collided with the reason it existed.

I lurched forward. I drunkenly moved too far to the right but I didn't fall. We entered from the rear.

The drones were huge barrel looking things with small nubs and clear domes. They looked like huge fifty-five gallon drums with those fake rocks you see bolted to indoor rock climber walls. Everything stayed close to the drone, but they were oddly shaped and I couldn't ascertain the purpose for anything. Weapon pods, sensors, ballistic barrels, and laser domes covered the rest of the ship as I made my way to the rear. My legs relearned what they needed to do as I went. I paused for a moment, glancing back to see Sara making her way behind me.

We'd left our duffels, with our guns and clothing and food in the car.

"No moving backwards," I mumbled as I headed to the rear.

There was a central thruster, but it was small and mostly useless in the compared to the gravimetric engines.

Something opened and then extended like a sort of slide. A metal bar held horizontally between two extending poles followed the slides down but stopped well short of the ground. I had to ask for directions three times before I laid down on the slide grabbing the bar with both hands where it rested over head. I expected it would pull me up the slide, then retract it. Instead the slide itself slid up and in as the ship consumed me.

There was a moment of fear and terror of tight places before all my senses were slammed with data. I could see everything. When I moved my head it moved too far. I could turn my head to the right just a bit, and who knew if it even moved, and swing my view all the way from the front to the rear of the ship.

As I got used to it I focused on the old woman who was now out of her van with a phone in hand as she pointed the camera at the ship.

Puking my guys out on the feeds. Just what I needed.

"Sara is secured. Shall I resume course."

"Yes."

I almost managed to get the whole word out before the planet fell away from us as we shot upward. I hardly felt the acceleration.

"Max thrust," Max warned, "in three, two, one."

I'm not sure the actual sound I made once I could breathe again, but "whoop" doesn't seem to do it justice. The ship was terrifyingly fast.

"Sara is requesting your input," Max said.

I couldn't see the ship around me, but I could see Sara when I looked to my left. It was like the ship was invisible, which it couldn't do. It was like she was on a reclined seat next to me. Close enough we could reach out and touch if we could move our arms.

"Okay," I said, "patch me in."

The view of the world rushing by was replaced by a wall of thirty-some faces. Each sat talking or mumbling to people behind or around them.

"I'm here," I said. Silence greeted me as everyone looked up into their cameras.

No one spoke. I looked to my left, but this conference call didn't show me Sara in her seat. She might be one of the faces, but I didn't take the time to search for her.

"Max display ETA to incursion," I said.

"Operators. I'll arrive in East Spokane in twenty minutes. I want survivor locations and line of communication with them. I want to be linked with the PMC on site or who will arrive. Priority is lifting off rooftop rescue pods. Where will the forward bases be?"

There was a pause where everyone glanced around. A few were visibly typing. Then an older man spoke up with an accent so thick that Max put up subtitles.

"Planned forward bases are too close. Incursion pods did not land cleanly. Ground based anti-air attacked pods, exploding several. Instead of several areas destroyed with heavy concentrations of Anthesis around the pods, we have a light scattering across the south east region and traditional landing pods in the north. There are contingencies, but one to the south east are good choices."

"Max can you give me a birds' eye view?"

"Two more incursions," Sara said. She said it in a way where I knew something horrifying was coming next.

"Three in Seattle and two in the water. Four Samurai inbound."

Four Samurai wouldn't be enough for one of the water pods.

"How useful are these weapons for shooting into the water? I asked Max.

"All but useless," She said.

I worked several routes out with Max before we reached the city. East Spokane was actually in Western Idaho, or what had once been Western Idaho. The laws were such that no one wanted to live under Idaho's laws, which were some of the most barbaric in the country pre-collapse. So instead the cities, as they grew and were rebuilt, simply declared the state lines had moved. Poor budgeting, a lack of state military meant the larger cities could, and did, get away with it.

"Making initial run," I said.

There was no joystick and flight controls with a thousand buttons. Instead I was willing the ship to move, to twist, to loop.

"Let's break her in Max."

There were heat issues. We couldn't fire all the weapons all the time or we'd cook ourselves, and then the ship. But that was okay because it was rare that all weapons would be firing at the same time. Mostly it would be the weapons on one side or the other.

We had a zig zag pattern to follow. There was a slight noise and vibration that moved through the ship when once of the six drones detached. We had what looked like ten, but four were nothing but placeholders until I could earn more points.

The drone dropped to rooftops before hovering to a stop and deploying turrets, mortars, and auto cannons.

I could hear the background noise of the Operators as they discussed things and maneuvered forces.

"There is a retired veterans group on a casino bus," one of the Operators spoke up and Max made her voice stand out from the crowd, "If he can get them weapons they are willing to help."

"Care packages Max," I said, "and put them on the screen. How many, Operator?"

There was a pause while she spoke with the others.

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"Nine in fighting shape, three more if you got Samurai meds."

The prearranged care-packages were displayed on the screen including item lists and point costs.

"I can't regrow limbs," I said.

"Wheel chairs," the Operator said quickly.

"Care package four," I said. Then I glanced at my running point total, which was constantly rising as the ship's guns and Sara took out Antithesis targets. I did some quick math. If they were going to fight might as well get them in fighting shape.

"Add eleven of the nano-regens. Tell them one a person and to save the rest in case it gets hairy. Add some of the nutrient juice boxes and double the ammo in that care package."

My points flashed into red and displayed a negative seventy-four points. It was working as we discussed. I still had my points because Max had not yet purchased the items. Items that cost more than what I had. Even so the Model ones were dropping as the smaller laser turrets aimed at them while the heavier fire was being directed by Sara into an alleyway where Model threes were scrambled over the green blood and tattered bodies of their comrades. She'd only be able to take control and deviate from my flight path if there were confirmed survivors in need of immediate aid.

We continued on our course for a while then I banked hard and descended. The huge ship spun and corrected with an agility that boggled the mind. There were four old men and a woman outside one of the larger automated busses. The kind that could keep a cool seventy degrees inside while it cooked outside.

At first I thought they were saluting, but I realized my hubris as the ship pulled up and back braking hard. There was an indentation in the bottom of the ship for this exact purpose. I could only teleport things within a certain distance of my body.

The floor, to me, was see through, so I saw the crates appear, then seemed to explode as orange inflatable balloons appeared along every edge. The crates still landed hard from the twenty foot drop but they bounced. They'd float if I had to drop them in water and even from a hundred meter drop everything inside should survive. Anything dropped from above a hundred meters would have a parachute and would likely do better than something dropped from a hundred meters.

There was no one else with the capability to lift off the rescue pods, so I ended up racing back and forth across the city. The points climbed and I dropped a medical care package at the forward operating base.

I couldn't earn points from the rooftop guns the drones placed but they did buy time and kill the Anthesis.

The hairiest part came when Operators confirmed model sevens in a group of thirteen hundred survivors who were making their way on foot out of the city.

We had to race over and foam people killing people.

I had Max broadcast that everyone would get a pill, while Operators worked with medical personnel. We didn't have enough pills for everyone, but I could buy placebos and scanners.

Three more times I had to return to do what I could from the air as the survivors turned on each other while the combined police forces were outnumbered and unable to do anything.

Then came the time for the hive strike. It would only really work once, so we hadn't opened with it. But the forces were expanding and we could counter that.

"Hive strike," I said.

We gained altitude and then aligned to the street. We opened fire on a slow approach with all the forward weapons. Once the neighboring pods began to discharge the fliers in numbers I directed the heavy rail guns to open fire. The ship shuddered and it looked like green paint splashed against the massive pods that had crashed down into the city. The ammunition was a sort of scatter shot. Once it was in contact with the air, and thus heated up, it broke apart. It was a sort of railgun shotgun ammo.

The fliers that were putting themselves between the pods and the ship, even the double digit models, were pulped. We kept approaching watching and waiting. When the panic set in and the swarm that had been ever expanding though the city instead began to turn back, I gave Max and Sara the go ahead of weapons free.

Too much damage too quickly put them into a scatter mode where they tried to get as far away as they could to make new hives. A lot of damage but not too much had them returning home.

It took time to reverse such a command though.

I switched to weapon targeting and didn't bother with the guns. Instead as my eyes flicked over things I chose one of three options. Mortar strike, anti-armor rockets, or fire bomb. The mortar strike was smart mortars fired up and then falling with some aiming and maneuverability. They'd burst in the air above the targets trying to damage a whole area. They were great area denial weapons for lightly armored Anthesis. The anti-armor rockets were for the bigger things. The fire bombs were cheapest, but dumb with no aiming other than the initial firing. I painted the streets and piles of bodies, the pods, and entrances to the subways that were vomiting up the monsters.

We dropped and shoot away as the warning claxon went off. Max had taken control.

There was a reason you didn't just walk up to the pods and take them out. They had counter measures. Sometimes those were huge weapons, other times they were bigger than huge weapons. They could also be models in the thirties an forties that never left the hive unless the hive was lost. Thankfully there were only so many recourses to work with. It was why Samurai mostly tried to save who they could and contain the masses of monsters until older, tougher, Samurai arrived with their arsenal of war.

"Where are my priorities?" I asked. The map changed lighting up with pods ready for pick up. I mapped a mental route through the survivors and it populated on the display I was seeing.

"The army guys are requesting air support?" someone said. They appeared on the map and I detoured that way. They were on a second story of a parking structure firing down at a group of sixes, fives, fours, and a mass of threes.

"Ammo and grenades care package," I said to Max. "Sara get some turrets set up here."

She grunted that she heard but she was currently sweeping the street with the ship's weapons while I came in low enough to drop the care package off.

This time I wasn't imagining things when I spotted the salute.

I didn't grin though, as I counted the six of them.

"Where are the other ones Max?"

"Deceased," she said.

I was pulling up and away, the street beyond the care package painted in green blood and sticky fire.

"Operator," I said.

"Yes Samurai," whomever was assigned to me said.

"Get some PMC boys over to those army men and make sure they don't lose anyone else."

There was a long pause, "Can't do that. I'd be pulling them off active rescue operations."

I let out a long sigh and then nodded as I returned to my route.

"That's the right call Operator," I said.

"Army boys need support," Sara said.

"Shit," I whispered. The ship was shaking a bit. Most of the weapons on the right side of the ship had been damaged from one of the large plasma blasts that had originated from one of the pods. I currently had three of the bouncy houses dangling under me as I raced for a forward operating base which limited my speed unless I wanted to injure my passengers or risk losing the connection. Still I was pushing it. No deaths during transport reported, but there were injuries.

"Operator inform the medics this is going to be another hard drop off. I've got their requests and there will be a care package inbound as well."

"They are flooding an area near the baseball field in the hopes it will make a softer landing," the Operator told me.

I saw the waypoint on screen shift slightly as Max updated the information.

"Max let the passengers know to brace for a drop and hard landing," I said.

"There is a swarm over the south we can't ignore any longer," Sara said.

"I've got the army boys, Red Coats and three groups ready for pick up!" I snapped as the ship vibrated hard as it banked, killing speed and swinging the bouncy houses wide to lessen the g-forces. Even so, there would be more broken bones and injures from the landing, just like the previous landings.

I felt the release of all three and saw the points update as the care package with medical supplies, including more model seven pills, dropped from beneath.

"The math says we hit the swarm," Sara said, "hundreds of more people on foot there."

The controls were mental, but there was feedback and I could feel the edges of what the ship was capable of as I pushed it south.

"Give me those flak rockets," I said. Max complied and somewhere in the belly ammo teleported in, was shifted by robotic arms or nanite goo or whatever process that particular weapon had to reload. I watched the red bar indicating heat drop as we raced in a fairly linear fashion. The air sweeping through intakes and taking the heat from us, buying us that much more time.

"Fire at will," I said as I dropped the speed and elevation so the guns could better pick targets. I had to fly listing to the left so that more of our weapons could be put to use.

"Care packages," I said. My eyes flew down the list to the one that was just cheap guns with cheap ammo before selecting it.

"Let 'em know weapons are inbound!" I saw as the ship screamed to a halt, all weapons firing as I watched the fliers bombing the fleeing people. There were armed people among the crowd, but they were being over run as we arrived. As I watched the swarms of model ones began to ran down from the sky even as my points climbed. The swarms were the most efficient means of earning points. Model ones were one point per kill, but they were produced in fewer quantities and less often as the hives took hold.

"Fourteen," Sara said. I felt the ship lurch, as control was robbed from me. The medium sized autocannons on the front found a targeting solution and opened fire, even as the care packages dropped and we began rising to sweep the path the fleeing humans were taking.

It had been a four lane highway once. But like many place it had been repurposed. Perhaps one corporation had taken over the on-ramps, or another simply demolished the elevated platform to build a building.

The four lanes were lines with wooden shacks that could be anything from a market space to slums. Now it was a river of fleeing humans already at wits end and exhausted beyond measure. I knew some of the dead would be heart attacks or people who could not handle the physical exertion under the unforgiving sun.

The heat indicator was blinking. The autocannons had stopped and control had been given over to me so I was sure Sara had killed the model fourteen.

"Emergency climb and coolant dump," I said.

"Dumping in a swarm-" Max began but I had already shifted throttle to max catching her meaning. We couldn't dump coolant near people. The cryo-liquid was something like a thousand degrees kelvin. It was forced through the super hot cooling grids and came out the outside as superheated steam capable of flash frying anyone too close.

"Can we swap in liquid oxygen?" I asked thinking it would create a massive fire ball.

"You will not survive," Max said.

I could tell my body was under extreme strain even if I couldn't feel all of the effects. My mind started to wander and everything smelled like metal.

We were firing. The guns were always firing, but we approached the central mass of the swarm faster than we could clear a route with weapons. As such we were constantly slamming into the fliers.

"Dump it," I said.

I flexed my body even though I couldn't feel the response as the ship shuddered and bucked. The super heated steam blasted away from us in all directions from ports under armor plating. The force combined with the uncontrolled nature of random thrust meant it was a teeth shaking experience. There was a loud ping type noise and the ship's integrity display appeared.

"Lost a crossbeam support strut," Max said, "Limiting movement until the nanites can brace it."

The red on the ship integrity was now internal, as well as painted all along the right side where the weapons were damaged.

A three minute and twenty-one second timer appeared as estimated time for repairs. There was a list below with the restrictions even after repairs were made. It wasn't a repair in the sense that it was fixing things. It was more like switching out a flat tire for the super thin emergency spare in the trunk. It could work but you had far more limitations after than you had before.

"Why do we lose the big guns?" I asked.

"Kinetic recoil would further cripple the ship."

"Fuck!"

I sat there picking off swarms and moving at a fraction of our normal speed as we moved up and down the line of humans.

"Inform those men near the rear we are dropping some drugs. They should give them to anyone who is flagging. Can we make it so it injects some sort of tracker as well? So we know who to cleanse afterward?"

"I can introduce a tiny amount of radioisotopes," Max said.

"The radiation is safe?"

"Safe enough and easy to catch for the medics."

"Do it."

The care package dropped down and even as we moved back up the line I kept a watch on the men. They opened the care packages to find over the shoulder bags that hung near their hips. I watched as they injected first themselves, and then standing straighter began to move up the line of people. I didn't have to watch for long. They'd injected twenty people or so out of the sixty or seventy that made up the clear end of the fleeing group before there was a problem.

Control of the ship was taken from me as Sara swung it around to take out a group of fours and fives that were racing up a scaffolding in place near a collapsed section of road..

The old man the men had just injected clutched his chest and dropped.

I looked away, staring up at the timer.

"Operator give me the army boys' position, I've got fifteen seconds left over here."

"They were over run." It might have been the same operator, or a different one.

Sara took over control of the ship moving us back towards the pods and the city center. Back towards the people waiting on rooftops for a ride out of the city. Back towards our drones setting weapons on rooftops.

"Max," I said with a shudder, "find out if they had wives or families."

I shifted the map to indicate rooftops with people in the bouncy houses waiting for salvation.

The rest of the day proceeded in much the same way. We rushed one of the other pods risking a bombing run of dropping purchased grenades, raw chemical supplies, and land mines. We didn't have most of the heavy hitting frontal weapons, but we could still do damage.

Heavier units pursued and we climbed higher and higher letting the rear and bottom guns fire into their four wings. Eight Model Elevens followed us. This time they didn't peel away as they became injured.

"Swarms!" Sara called.

I glanced around. Everything was red highlights.

They'd planned for another attack. The bigger ones were driving us up and the swarms were dropping out of the cloud cover.

"Shredders," I said indicating the rockets that fired tiny barbell looking things that spun at super high velocity. Once the rockets popped their payload the spinning weights spread out and cut through flesh of multiple model ones.

"Mute that Operator!" I snapped killing the panicking man in my ear.

"Re-work the bio-math estimates," I heard Sara saying, "assume no underground expansion how many more rescourses-" I muted her too.

Two giant purple triangles appeared on to our right. I twisted the control and we spun upside down so our port side weapons could now fire on the model one variants. The yellow-black gas cloud indicated they weren't the exploded suicide variants but the explosive gas kind. The spinning ribbons of death had cut many of them open and the laser and incendiary ammo from the conventional turrets ignited the clouds. The concussive forced made it seem like it had killed hundreds. But many recovered and began flapping their wings again to climb.

"Stop the active cooling," I said. I could tell already we weren't getting away from the swarms. We didn't have enough guns nor enough speed.

Sara jerked control away from me a moment later and I worked the guns. I watched the points jump upward with the continuous death and drop in bursts as ammo was purchased for reloads.

"Max those suicided drones we used in the sewers. Is there anything larger?"

"Of course," she said.

"Give the biggest one I can buy without needing to spend a token."

"One hundred thirty points," she said.

"Buy it and send a care package to the lead model eleven."

I watched the skateboard looking quadcopter drone wobble down toward the pursuing bus-sized creatures.

I didn't see the explosion because my concentration was directed upward by Max.

"A diving variant," she was saying, "they are able to penetrate the hull. Nanites are reporting an acidic payload."

These model ones were dropping out of the sky beaks first at very high velocities. Many were missing as they couldn't maneuver well enough to change course, but many were hitting. I could feel and somewhat hear the raindrop pattern of impacts.

The ship's integrity display was showing a lot of yellow and orange. I was currently rotating the ship. We were taking hits everywhere but not letting them cluster up on one spot.

"That drone take out the eleven?" I asked.

"Yes," Max said.

I knew it was a point loss. A hundred and thirty points to kill a hundred point reward monster was a loss. But I needed room, and who knew what else was hiding in the clouds.

"Care package for all the elevens. Then dive after their corpses."

"The front of the ship," Max was saying as my points bled away, "has much more armor than the rear. You can easily back down instead of pointing down."

I kept thinking of the ship as a plane, but it was very much hover tech where I could orientate in any direction I wanted and just had to worry about aerodynamics, gun placement and armor.

"PMCs requesting ammo and drone at the forward operating base. They are getting waves of model threes pushing in," an Operator said.

"Can we outfit a surveillance drone with an ammo care package?"

"There are cargo rockets that can make that distance which you can fire from your rocket launchers."

"Do it ammo and the surveillance drone."

We could not lose the forward bases. Everything we covered in planning about battles said that was where things got really bloody for civilians. Everyone beyond that line would be exhausted or in need of medical care.

"There is a confirmed BS," Sara said cutting through the update I was getting about the southern exodus from another Operator.

"She won't survive until we make it to her," Sara said.

"Have the drones head that way!" I snapped as part of the ship's yellow forward section went directly to red without passing through orange.

"They already are," Sara snapped back.

"Model Sixes and a swarm headed in. The explosive variants."

"Put her on the map!"

I swung us around.

"Max suicide drone care packages for any of the model one variants you can identify. Try to take out clusters with the secondary explosions. And keep those rockets firing!" Two flashing indicators on the ship's display showed me I'd lost two of the six rocket launching ports.

As I'd asked for at some point I was informed on the map when a positions of survivors was overrun. Even now I could see the route we were taking, dropping back toward the city. I'd pass a rooftop with thirty-three people. I didn't have to know what would happen once the swarms following me flew over them. I couldn't slow to pick them up, and I knew in my bones, that the Samurai was worth more than thirty people. In just a year they would be able to save ten times that, a thousand times that. I fucking hated knowing that. I hated that math.

"Link me up with the Samurai."

Max complied, but there was no getting through. She was screaming at her Operator, updating the woman as she ran through some building's interior. The Operator was directing her, god knows how.

I listened as she bought a weapon, dropping her previous one as well as two more mines right before she rounded a corner. She got the gun up and fired into the elevator doors, exposing the shaft beyond as the first of the model sixes set off the mines. The corner provided some protection but I could clearly hear the grunts of pain and the repeated mantra of , "Keep going. Just keep going."

"Back. On my. feet. Elevator gone. Sam something to slide down the cable."

"Up!" I yelled, "Something to climb up the cable. Roof top extraction!"

Sam must be her Samurai.

"No. Cable," she panted with what I could only describe as despair.

"Ladder inside the elevator shaft. Take the Crank drug. Climb."

"Fucking. Ladders," she said after a while and I heard some of the Operators on the channel cheer a bit in the background. I took had been wondering if she'd died.

The roof of the building Max and the Operators indicated she was in, was absolutely crawling with Antithesis.

I came in far too fast and dumped the coolant just before we smashed into the rooftop. I thought we shook violently in atmosphere. I did not anticipate what would happened when we vented near something solid that the expelling gas could bounce off from.

Claxons rang and the screens went red and I'm sure I began to lose consciousness or lost some time. Even through all the body augments and flesh sculpting, I felt pain and fear. That trapped feeling I hadn't felt since being dragged through the tunnel in the sub basement of Helios tower came back. I'm sure, if I had air, I was screaming. I might have been. There was too much noise, too much of everything, to really know what was happening.

I slammed the mental controls forward when I recovered enough to think. The swarm was still following but the drones had set up several rooftops of weapons. I headed that way. It was more than a little scary at first when the weapons fire streaked past me to target the swarms following us.

"Are they shooting us?!" I asked in a panic.

"Light weapons fire targeting creatures on the hull," Max said.

We over shot the buildings and I swiped our right side into another building as I tried to turn us. We'd lost some of the devices that let us hover.

"Pick the drones up," I said as we we flew back over the roof, holding position and firing into the swarm as they continued on.

It wasn't as easy as sitting there and firing into them. Many of them dropped down into the streets and used building as cover. But the weapons the drones deployed were designed specifically for model ones, and they were very good at their job. Air burst flack weapons, lasers, and turrets did most of the work. From time to time a cluster would taken out with something more exotic like the shredder rockets.

"One more floor!" I heard the new Samurai say, and I punched the throttle forward. We'd cleared the area but they had time to get back to it.

As we approached I saw it looked like we collapsed the top floor of the building and slagged out some of the metal that lived on top of every building. Antenna and satellite dishes had liquified. The metal boxes of air conditioning units and rain catches were warped and melted.

"Can't get the- One second."

A small explosion blew one of the metal boxes apart. Sara was pouring gunfire down on the edge of the building where model threes were climbing up the sides.

"Use the grapples. All of them," I said not sure if any f them were working.

The fucking ship looked like it would explode from all the red, but Max had said that wasn't something to worry about yet.

I looked though the invisible-to-me ship as the three grapples shot out, pulled up hard near her and then had their puffed up dandelion looking heads grip and grab onto her. There were no hooks just thousands of strands of smart fibers that could grip and connect with just about anything they came into contact with.

"Got her!" Sara said.

The ship shuddered and groaned as we lifted off.

"Leave a care package on the roof," I said to Max.

The mines cost thirty-three points but they took out several of the model sixes.

"Mute her," I said to Max. Both the new Samurai's crying and Sara's comforting words fell away.

I took only a moment to do a mental cheer at saving her. Then it was back to the map as I searched for the forward base that needed help. I nudged the controls as we limped in that direction.

"Sara," I said, "Get ready for ground combat. Get the Operators involved with pulling people back to just beyond that bridge."

The red Antithesis on the map were surrounding the area, even if they were currently being held off.

It was triage all the time, and the enemy didn't wait for you to mourn or plan.