While official Scanian sources are quick to laud and applaud the sacrifices and efforts of their people during the nearly mythological creation of their City-state, the incidents of tragic waste and loss are rarely mentioned. The Øresund catastrophe, for instance, where nearly 100.000 people were subjected to life-threa...

--Pirate media broadcast, shut down mid stream, 2045

***

Next day, while I was eating breakfast, Val sought me out.

"Hey Sylvi, just the woman I was looking for!"

I perked up, but her serious expression instantly had me concerned.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"We've had reports of an active Incursion, over Gdansk, Poland. It doesn't look too bad, thank the stars, but we'd still like to send them some aid. And get our newest Valkyries some field experience and points, of course. Are you free and willing to go?"

"Yes." I'd have to cancel a few plans, a rock climbing session with Cammy, a visit to Mother and Dad, but this obviously took priority. "When are we leaving?"

"I've already talked to Red Knight, just need to catch Titanite. The three of you will be leaving as soon as you're packed and ready."

My mood fell just a bit at that. So Val wouldn't be coming with us. It must have shown on my face, because Val picked up on it immediately.

"What's wrong? Did you have anything important planned?" She asked.

"No no, just a few meetings with friends and the like. It's nothing." I lied.

"Right. Well, I'm gonna just send Kath a message. No use running all over the place looking for her."

I got busy eating, and a minute later Katherine showed up, having clearly been in the gym.

"Hey, what's up?" She asked.

I began cleaning up while Val filled her in. Then we jogged to our rooms to pack a few necessities and get ready to leave. Red Knight was waiting for us in his power armour when we got there.

"Don't bother packing much more than what you'll wear and what you need to kill Antis. I have most necessities in the truck, and we'll buy whatever we find to be missing."

I nodded and headed in to change into my armour and corral my swarm. It had grown significantly in the past five days, and I now had nearly three-hundred Wasps. I wasn't at capacity, that would take another two weeks, but it was progress.

Once I'd pulled on my armour, attached the Stinger and my logistics backpack, and had the rest of my swarm fly into the backpack, I looked around.

Am I missing anything, Eyon?

[Just your sense of urgency.]

Gee, thanks. I thought with all the sarcasm I could muster and got started towards the door.

[You're welcome. You have some seven-hundred points to spend, but nothing urgent to spend it on. I'd recommend a few more Yellowjacket drones, or just keeping some points in reserve in case you need to act flexibly.]

Gotcha. We can wait until we get there and assess the situation.

[Indeed.]

I rejoined with Red Knight, who was waiting for us in the hallway. He looked me over.

"I see you've upgraded from the Plasma Caster." He said with a small smile.

"Oh. Oh, I'm so sorry! I totally forgot about it, I changed over in the middle of combat and forgot to pick it up afterwards!"

"It's fine, it's fine. It's just a few points, anyway. I'm just glad you found what you needed. Did you run into something it couldn't handle?"

"A bunch of Sixes, yeah. Had to upgrade to fend it off before it flattened us all."

"Ouch. Yeah, that was why I upgraded myself, actually, to find something with a bit more stopping power."

Then Katherine appeared out of her room a bit down the hallway. She was wearing a tightfitting set of gear and carrying a backpack.

"I thought you said something about power armour?" I asked a bit confused.

"Oh, this is just the under armour. I keep the actual armour down in the armoury." She replied.

"I see." I said, as we set off towards the armoury and the hangar. When we reached the armoury, Katherine handed me her backpack and turned to get ready, while Red Knight and I carried on into the hangar. We found his armoured truck thing, the IFV, Infantry...

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[Fighting.]

Infantry Fighting Vehicle, yes. Regardless, it was waiting for us as we stepped into the hangar, doors opening as we approached.

I sent off a small group of Wasps to sit on the vehicle, ensuring I had a good view of the outside, although admittedly it'd be a view of a whole lot of water for a while. That done I waited around for Katherine, Titanite, to appear. I was a bit curious what her armour would look like. Red Knight's was red with ornate golden filigree and somewhat bulky, and added at least twenty centimetres to his height, so I guess I was imagining something like that. What I didn't expect was for Katherine's armoured suit to be nearly three metres tall and look to out-bulk Red Knight at least twice over. It was a deep green bordering on black with lighter green and yellow highlights and glow-y bits, a oversized pistol in a thigh holster, and what looked like a rocket launcher on one shoulder. One arm ended in a hand with a pair of integrated machine guns sticking out over it, the other arm seemed to be one large cannon.

"I think I start to see what you mean with stompy power armour." I looked between Titanite and Red Knight. "I'm starting to feel a bit inadequate here."

"Don't worry, we'll keep you safe, princess." Red Knight said with a smirk.

"You sure you don't mean queen?" I said in my best haughty voice. "I've got a swarm, after all."

"I meant what I said. Alright, let's get going." He replied. "Get in."

I complied and got up into the IFV, sitting down in the middle seat, soon flanked by Red Knight and Titanite on either side. Titanite's seat had a lot of adjusting to do, but it managed to handle her bulk just fine. Valkyrie tech was pretty amazing. While Red Knight busied himself with whatever passed for pre-flight checks in this thing, I typed out a couple of messages, excusing myself to Cammy and Dad, letting them know I wouldn't be able to keep my promise to meet up with them this time, but would make it up to them as soon as I got back.

I soon got two messages back, one worried one from Dad telling me to stay safe, and an excited one from Cammy telling me to, like, kick some xeno ass already and why hadn't I invited her along and I'd better take some cool pictures or else!

That taken care of, I settled back to see we'd left Valhalla and were flying towards the sea-side walls already. It was a dreary day, with a bit of a drizzle from the sky, and the gun-emplacements along the wall looked foreboding in the glum light. Out to sea were the kelp and algea farms, and further out a few patrolling ships, probably corvettes or destroyers or something, although I couldn't tell the difference. I'd once dreamed of being a sailor - their uniforms looked so cool to young me - but my tendency to get seasick if I looked too hard at a glass of water killed that dream before it ever even left the shore.

I took a deep breath. Time to focus up.

"Okay, so what can we expect when we get there? And would you like to share some particulars about how you fight, so we can talk strategy?" I began.

***

An hour later, we had gone over weapon load-outs, engagement plans and optimal engagement ranges and so on, most of it with some coaxing from me. Turns out both of them mostly relied on the plan "Stomp in and shoot", which didn't exactly fill me with confidence, so I persevered until we had hammered out some tentative actual plans for how to deal with various models and scenarios.

I had set up another map and shared the information with Red Knight and Titanite, this time with considerably more detail since I knew both had an AI to lean on in terms of information processing. This time around the knowledge of the relative positions of my swarm came much more easily, making the map both more accurate and easier to make for me, for which I could probably thank the second brain in my brain.

After all of that, we were closing in on Gdansk, and as we did a rift opened in the sky far ahead of us and spat out another Antithesis cluster. Lasers and tracer-fire stabbed up from below, but it was insufficient to break it up, let alone annihilate it, before it crashed into a building below. All around it that whole area of the city was in tatters, dust and smoke pluming up from impacted areas. It didn't look like the centre was too badly touched, but the port area where the city met the Baltic sea was a mess, as was some of the outlying regions.

Gdansk, like all of the worlds coastal cities, had had to cope with the rising waters caused by the climate disaster. Most had to move tens or hundreds of kilometres inland to escape the natural floodplains or low-lying coastal regions they were situated in. Gdansk merely had to shift its city centre a couple of kilometres to the west, into the nearby hills, and avoid the growing inland sea where the river running past had once been. A trial, to be sure, but not a major one, compared to the problem of building up to ensure housing for the influx of people streaming towards the city with the countryside becoming increasingly infested with Antithesis.

Regardless, on this day Gdansk had bigger problems than the rising sea on its doorsteps, and this time the problems had teeth. Red Knight flew us in close to the ground, so as not to get in the way of any anti-air fire, and apparently somehow managed to hook us into the local military situation map. However he did it, we now had a heat-map of Antithesis activity, as well as more requests for help and reinforcements than I knew what to do with.

"Right, we'll get you two stuck in over here." Red Knight said as an area lit up on my map. "I'll be over here, trying to clear out this area." Another, redder area lit up at this. "Let me or Gyaron know if you need help, you hear? No heroic last stands."

"Alright. As we planned, then." I said. I took a calming breath. No trouble here, just a little incursion. I could handle this.

We flew over a street with heavy military presence, then reached a barricade of concrete blocks, sand bags and the occasional car laid out across the street manned with people with guns. Beyond that the city was mostly deserted, with the occasional Anti dog poking around. A couple of guns on the side of the IFV spat out the equally occasional bullet to handle them. The area, like most of the outer city, was mostly five storeys tall with the occasional shop on the bottom floor. Most buildings had bars in front of the windows of at least the two bottom floors, and metal shutters that dropped down in front of their doors in emergencies like this, and those that didn't would hopefully have reinforced doors.

The buildings were painted in somewhat drab colours, with most actual colour coming from all the advertisements that still flickered through their animations even though there was no one around to pay attention to them.

We surveyed the area, then set down in a street where Titanite and I got out. I immediately spread my swarm out, clearing the nearby streets, stinging the few Threes that were loitering around. Behind me, Red Knight took off again, heading deeper into the incursion zone, while Titanite grabbed her oversized pistol from its holster and readied herself.

I began scanning the streets for signs of Antis having broken into buildings, and quickly found a building that was mostly rubble, having taken a direct hit from an incursion drop pod.

As good a place to start as any, I figured.