He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or not. His skin was numb in the icy void, his brain unable to tell if his muscles were moving save for the chattering of his teeth. A faint hum permeated the air as an unknowable amount of ice and rock pressed down upon shields designed for deflection, straining but stable, it seemed.

A trickle of running water pooling under his right wrist, granted him back his bodily awareness in that area. Gathering his thoughts, Merce began flexing his hand, finding it unobstructed and slowly warming. Minutes passed in a haze, hand trailing over his armor in search of injury. He was fine, mostly. He couldn’t feel his left arm, his ribs cracked when he breathed and his femur, at the very least, had a hairline fracture. In the absence of bleeding he felt he could relax, so long as he didn’t die there was no injury the AD-4M couldn’t heal.

That was only one of them accounted for though and judging by how Lohren was stumbling before, he wasn’t any more optimistic about the situation. A hoarse croak escaped his wheezing throat in place of words, followed shortly by a groan above him to his right. Reaching up he couldn’t find purchase on anything but a slight warmth in the air in its direction. Air quickly turning stale. The filters in his destroyed helm would prove about as useful against CO2 poisoning as the shattered visor would in illuminating the dark.

So as far as he could tell, the shield keeping a mountain off of him was also stopping the air from leaving it and slowly killing him, all while he couldn’t even move to do something about it. While it wasn’t ideal, he wasn’t scared. Not for himself anyways, not in a long time. Instead he forced a scratching croak as his voice began to come back to him, calling to anyone who may be as half conscious as he was.

The low note proved ineffectual with how little force he could muster. Repeated attempts did nothing but build a sense of loneliness in the dark. A violent tremor gripped the earth, shaking him like a bird in an angry giant’s cage as reality itself seemed to vibrate. Gritting his teeth in pain as he was jostled around, he remembered the cause of their predicament. A dual blast struck somewhere above him with the likeness of an orbital bombardment, no doubt signaling the Morningstar’s continued fight, one he couldn’t join.

A dim red light appeared from the direction of the heat, illuminating the silhouette of a dangling body. Limp arms tipped their fingers across the damp of melting permafrost on the trench floor. “Warning! CO2 levels rising. Engage filtration systems. Engage filtration systems. Engage filtration sys-“ whined the mechs robotic, assistive AI, cutting out suddenly as one of the body’s hands swung up and slapped the barely lit crimson screen.

A clasp clicked open, dropping the body with a harsh thud and a short cry of pain. Julie slowly sat up and clumsily felt around until she found the cockpits internal lights and switched them on. A wash of red stung into both their eyes as it lit up the dark pocket they were in. The mech and its shields had created a cramped space within the trench, free from snow, barely wide enough to contain them all in their icy tomb.

Julie held her neck with an agonized expression. The telltale stiffness of heavy whiplash fought her while she examined Merce, who quickly waved her away towards the giant body beside them. Lohren lay limp with an absent expression. The fur on her maw was matted with blood that had streamed from her nose all the way down the front and sides of her neck.

“Lohren!” gasped Julie as she dove towards her. Her fingers quickly found themselves pressed with the full force her weight could provide, into Lohren’s neck, barely reaching deep enough to find a pulse. With a shaky sigh she relaxed and attempted to rouse Lohren to no effect, distant eyes rolling around with each motion.

“Julie, the filters.” Merce whispered, carefully controlling his breathing.

“She needs medical attention, something is badly wrong!” She pleaded, her hands stained with blood.

“It’s my fault for letting her walk off after a fight like that with every sign of a concussion. The blood is a broken nose from the fall, she’ll be fine for the few minutes we still have air for.” Merce sat up as pain ripped through his body, stealing his voice. “Iverians are tough, she’ll live but she needs air.”

“I can’t sir. The vents are on the back of the mech, outside of the shield and blocked by the rockfall.”

“You’re paid to solve problems, not flick switches.” He said firmly with little room to argue.

“Yes sir.” she replied softly. Taking a steadying breath, she immersed herself in her thoughts and crawled uncomfortably towards the mechs displays above her. The main display took up the full breadth of the canopy’s inner surface but was far more of a heads up display than an interface. Most of the controls were handled from a pair of touchscreens, mounted on articulating arms between the canopy and where the pilot would be strapped in. “The filters need an intake it can refine oxygen from, intakes which are blocked but otherwise functional by the looks of it.”

Julie poked through menus as the seconds dragged on into minutes. Her hands began to shake more feverishly as the cold sunk into her bones and met with a smoldering anxiety. She brought them to her face and tried to blow warm air under her gloves only to find it freezing before it met her skin. Frost creeped across the displays and spread to every surface within a breaths distance, maddening her as it interfered with the touchscreen.

“Fucking frozen, fucking icy bitch of display! C’mon man just work with me here!” Julie growled with what little energy hadn’t been sapped from her body. She reached upwards to remove a panel inside the flanks of the cockpit, stretching her arm to its fullest extent.

Suddenly her footing gave way as she slipped on the softening ground, landing with a wet splash on Merce’s leg. Merce tried to cry out in pain but found himself silent, tears welling in his eyes and his stomach lurching to empty itself, though that he managed to contain.

“I’m sorry sir! I lost my footing with how slippery everything… there's water on the floor.” Julie wheeled out of her apology and hurriedly dragged herself back up to the cockpit, snagging Merce’s combat knife, careful not to activate the plasma that could coat its edge.

“That’s a pretty shit apology staff sergeant” Merce wheezed as the pain settled stars into his vision and bile into his throat.

“There’s water on the floor!” Julie reiterated in stammering excitement. “Maintenance will be hell but it’s better than going there!”

“You’ve a plan? About time. Show me.” He said sharply as a burn edged their every breadth. “Be fast about it.”

Twisting screws with the flat of the blade, Julie popped out the access panel to reveal a pair of dense, flexible tubes running between the filters and the cockpit. Detaching the intake she yanked it outward, extending the ribbed pipe all the way to the watery floor with a soft splash.

“The mud will clog the system up something fierce, but it’ll solve our problem for a few hours, probably.” Julie rambled. The pumps whirred to life and began draining blackened water from their ever claustrophobic environment, increasing the proportion of O2 in the air after a short but noisy refinement process.

“Air doesn’t feel much cleaner.” Merce gasped minutes later. Lazily rolling his eyes forwards from under his brow, he squinted at a soft glow emanating from an orb Julie had exposed within the belly of the mech.

Hanging midway across the trench and just below the canopy’s lower latch, the orb let slip tiny yellow lines which criss-crossed over its reflective surface. He could see himself in the polished glaze, twin gray and black rings spinning around it like a gyroscope, intermittently and thankfully blocking that view. It wasn’t pretty.

Another earthquake forced Julie to hang onto the mech as the dual shockwave followed shortly. Merce knew the Morningstar could fire faster than that. He reasoned that they must have been waiting to make contact before letting loose another volley. They likely, and thankfully, mustn’t have been under much pressure, for now. Departing the orb's direct presence wherein she had been warming her shaking hands, Julie returned to the pilots console and began rummaging around. Merce’s haggard coughs were now dragging up blood, instilling urgency in Julie’s search.

“There’s not much water in that dirt.” She said, trying to give him something to focus on. “Not until the permafrost melts properly, which now that I have the core exposed it should start to. Even then there’s a lot of dirt to filter out so it’s going to take a while.” Cooled beads of sweat began to freeze on her face, sending a violent shiver through her spine.

“You’re looking for the Aerofill right?” Merce spluttered, small drops of blood leaking from the bottom of his helm. “Well that’s not good.”

“No it isn’t and yes I am. Figured you’d need it.” she replied, tense as she yanked a green bottle no wider than her forearm and half as long from under the pilots harnesses. “By the looks of it, I was right.”

“Get Lohren first, I’m conscious at least.”

“You’re in much worse condition right now sir.” She screwed in and locked down a long thin spike atop the bottle. “If your ribs have punctured your lungs, which I think they have, then you take priority. I can’t do much for her brain but I can stop you from drowning in your own blood.”

Merce tried to huff in amusement but only succeeded in divulging a stream of blood in a series of hacking coughs. “At least it would be mine this time… seriously though that’s an order staff sergeant.” He strained, gripping her wrist with his functioning arm and holding the giant needle away from his chest.

“I know my rank.” She stated coolly. “Which is why I know that order doesn’t mean shit right now.”

Merce allowed the following silence and his static grip, to prompt her to elaborate.

“In the absence of immediate hostiles and no possibility to contribute to the fight, federation regulations stipulate that as support staff I can pull medical rank on you. So be quiet and clench your jaw, this is going to hurt. Bad.”

Shaking loose his grip, Julie aligned the needle below his armor plates and between his lower ribs. With a sharp wrench she contorted her body to drive the spike in past the exceptionally dense undersuit, said armor rested on. Merce sucked air in with a locked jaw and rolled his head back in pain.

He took a moment to breathe, tasting iron alongside the finally freshening air. “Ah that’s not so ba-!” His words quickly turned to a vicious scream, hand clamping around Julie’s arm like a pneumatic press pulling forth a cry of her own.

The cause of his pain could be heard surging forth from the cans nozzle. Just above the long flat trigger, a torrent of gel began to seep through his system, filling any space it could find and expanding into dense, permeable foam. Sporadic cracks sounded out through the icy hollow as ribs were pushed harshly back into place, re-establishing the structure of his left ribcage. Withdrawing the needle the hydrophobic substance allowed barely a trickle of blood to follow.

Half delirious from the pain and losing his grip on his stomach, Merce released Julie’s arm and drew in successive, deep, sharp breaths. Julie reached in beneath his collar and detached a slim, two inch screen at the end of a wire, leading back into his suit. Reading the numbers fluctuating across its dim, green facing, she breathed a sigh of temporary relief, looking pointedly towards Lohren’s frozen, bloody face.

“We’ll you’re stable anyways.” She muttered. “What hurt you so bad? I thought I got here in time.”

“The two thousand pounds of metal and meat still breathing over there. I took the brunt of her fall unfortunately.”

“I’m surprised you survived that… and the grip…” she whispered as she moved away, bringing the nozzle towards Lohrens nose after checking her pulse.

“Classified.” He remarked, watching her hands trail over rusted beads in Lohrens hair.

“Yeah, I figured that.” She leaned in as her voice trailed off, the sound of Lohren’s nose crackling into place recapturing her focus. “These symbols, on the beads, they look, familiar?”

“Medals. Hair is an important part of their culture so the placement is fairly self explanatory.”

“Isn’t quality also important to them? Everything else is pristine but these are so…”

“Forgotten?” He offered. “Not every soldier likes their medals. I donated my beads to a museum a long time ago.”

“What?” She said, taken aback. “How did you end up with Iverian medals?”

Merce looked between Julie and Lohren a few times until he simply dropped his head back against the now damp wall. Not expecting a response Julie stood up until her head tapped the mech's arm. Ducking under she set to work on the mech’s display, flitting through menus. Another round of sundering quakes disturbed both Merce’s train of thought and the dirt he leaned against, shaking loose a light shower of dust and ice.

“Ninety years ago.” He started suddenly. “Iverians take their veterans as seriously as their saints. We were holding the decennial memorial for the frontier planets and aside from Ohrdin, us of course, and some rather bored representatives from the local free planets. The Iveri were the only ones to show up. The entire royal fleet of their de facto leaders, House Gal’Bhaanín, dropped by to pay their respects and personally funded the memorial enough to get it aired pretty much across all of federation space. On their homeworld, Te’Viriá, it played from every government-run media station for three months.”

“Excuse me? That’s insane! How the fuck have I never heard of that?” Julie interjected, a soft whine spooling up below her as her fingers cautiously guided sliders on the display.

“That’s a complicated answer. Simply put? It only took days for the main federation channels to move on. The core worlds remember, as do I and the rest of Ushabti Legion, despite it being condescendingly treated as a minor diplomatic event. Honoring the fallen that everyone else dismissed to such an extent, left quite the impact on us. I doubt it will ever be truly forgotten. I take it you have a plan?” He replied, gesturing towards the incessant, high pitched squeal piercing his eardrums like hot nails into his brain.

“What are you pointing at?” She said confused, following the path of his gesture.

“You can’t hear that?” He asked. Julie shook her head. “Nevermind, it's must be my senses coming back to me and before you ask, classified.”

“Understood sir. As for the plan I ahh, maybe. If the core can handle it without collapsing the shield then we might be able to get someone's attention. Do me a favor and keep talking so I don’t realize how grim that is.”

Merce continued his story with an affirmative grunt. “They’d read our reports from the war, all of them. It took three haulers to move all the medals they’d brought with them. Called it a crime against ‘Terra’s Blood’ that they hadn’t been awarded earlier. The Admiral was gifted an Iverian revolver. Eight millennia old and refurbished so many times it was practically new. It was a bit strange but given their love for craft and the fact that they fought a war to retrieve it, it must have been quite the honor in their eyes. For some reason I still can’t decipher, House Gal’Bhaanín singled me out amongst the officers who served on Circadia. To be fair, there weren't many left on that list. Gave me a string of medals braided into a lock of their leaders' hair and a title, ‘Dullahan’.”

Merce chuckled slightly, earning a look of recognition from Julie, followed by a question. “That’s the name of an old hero of theirs isn’t it? Pretty sure I carved his initials into Lohren’s gun.”

“Maybe. I was told that I was the first non-Iveri to receive a title of that caliber. Which now that I think about it is probably why I didn’t look into it. It was all a bit much for someone who just survived. All the heroes were buried in the rubble until they joined their collective graveyard in the Black Mirror. Scattered to the fucking stars and we were the ones being anointed. Surviving might be hard but it’s not an achievement. Frankly it felt like an insult to the fallen. They meant well but...”

Merce dragged himself upwards slightly, lifting his back half a foot out of the puddle beneath him. He stared at the medals in Lohrens hair in a long silence, stifling a scream with gritted teeth as his ribs re-aligned themselves, the passive effects of AD-4M making themselves known.

“I kind of get it, I mean obviously not really but, yeah, I get it.” Julie said with a soft tremble in her voice. “Everyone around you saw you differently to how you did. Might be in the other direction but you know I know what that’s like.”

“I wasn’t going to bring it up. Your reality isn’t your identity, not in the public eye.”

“Given the medals weren’t in the records you sent me about her, I’d say at the very least she can understand that too.” Julie frowned, deflecting and stopping her work. “She still wears them though, and like you she kept her title.”

“Medals can weigh pretty heavy on a reluctant chest. A name can be forgotten, the insult of rejecting it wouldn’t have been. That ‘Of the Gate’ thing was a title? I thought I just picked the wrong translator.”

“Renounced her family name for it if I understand their culture right. If anything, her story’s probably more complicated.” She mused. The gentle whine of the machine pitched up and grew until even Julie winced in discomfort. The sound leveled off as she meddled with the display, a small, shaky grin overtaking her weary expression.

“Looks like the shield will hold! Barely but fuck it so long as the sensors deliver the signal.” She said, hope etching back into her voice.

“That won’t work.” Merce groaned with as little criticism in his intonation as he could manage. “The planet scrambles anything less powerful than a full satellite array.”

“Not exactly true! I put these sensors in for that very reason. They can pick up what’s coming to them just fine so things like major heat sources and atmospheric conditions are simple enough to read. Which got me thinking!” Julie began, excitedly jumping into the depths of her explanation.

“Short version?”

Julie deflated briefly though she quickly perked back up with a cursory glance to their situation. “Right, sorry sir. They don’t need to understand what we transmit. They just need to know we’re transmitting!”

Merce nodded his approval at the exuberant mechanic, encouraging what small celebration she could find in their circumstances. Another round of vibration rippled through the valley as Julie doubled over, clutching at her ears. “Julie? Everything alright?” he rushed to ask.

“My ears just popped, the fuck?” She said in bewilderment. Cradling her head against the onset of a vicious headache, she lashed her thoughts with a desperate motivation to figure out what the problem was.

Merce found himself coming to that conclusion quicker as his joints turned to rusty hinges. “Check the barometer.” He whispered cautiously.

“The barometer? Ah, sure yeah.” She replied, confused. Glancing across the mech’s displays, her eyes widened in horror at the number slowly ticking up in time with the filter's production of air. “Fuck! Shit, no, no, no! We’re overpressurizing the space inside the shield. I have to turn the filters off!”

“Stop! If you do that we’ll die anyway when we run out of air.” Merce shouted, freezing Julie in place as her thoughts ran wild in search of solutions. “Quit thinking and get over here! We won’t have long to do this.”

Julie knelt beside Merce and watched as his trembling, frost clad hand popped open the compartment on his leg. Withdrawing one of the three blue vials he pressed it into Julie’s hand and turned her head by the chin towards him.

“Listen to me very carefully.” Merce commanded. “You’re going to inject me with ten mils and then lock yourself inside the mech. The closed environment will keep you safe and in the right pressure range.”

“What about you and Lohren? There’s only room for me in there and-“ Julie protested even as she popped the cap off of the syringe.

“The Iveri live in worse and better than this on the regular.” He interrupted. “Hell, their entire navy flies with the gravity generators turned up to as much as they can handle, she’ll be fine. The AD-4M will let me keep up with her so just stab me and get in the mech! Oh and Julie, I can’t promise I’ll have my usual composure. Anything strange I say, you are to ignore and forget.”

Julie nodded, swallowed hard and lifted the needle to his neck. Blue veins sprawled out from the injection site sending the muscles around his shoulder into spasm. Merce cried out in pain and shoved Julie away from him. Landing with a squelch she fought the slippery floor to stand and enter the mech. Confusion and concern became her expression as she sealed the canopy in front of her, unsure as to what was happening to him.

A hollow shriek pierced the air as writhing muscles dragged his arm back into the socket with a sickening pop. Falling forward onto his hands and knees he let his shoulder drop, planting the top of his helm into his hand in the mud. His now functional hand gripped his leg hard as the bones realigned, segments slicing their way through muscle tissue into place. Muscle which had already begun healing. The shriek lost its momentum as the pain, amplified by his sudden artificially increased sensitivity, overcame his willpower.

Julie watched her commanding officer curl into a ball in the frigid pool of dirt and icy sludge, sobs racking his chest as he cradled his arms around his torso. She felt herself unable to breathe in fully, despite the normalizing pressure easing off of her chest. She could handle everything this day had thrown at her so far. Faulty systems, lack of oxygen, triage and a damn avalanche. This moment made her feel utterly powerless.

“Focus Sir! That classified shit is healing you right? Just hold through and the pain will stop!” She shouted through the mech's external speakers.

“No it won’t!” He groaned with a horrible, frustrated tone. “It never fucking does! It just won’t go away. It won’t fucking go away!”

“It will! I promise you it will just please try and shut it out a little longer.” Julie pleaded despite her uncertainty.

She soon realized that it wasn’t just the pain affecting Merce. Every noise drew his attention whether she could hear it or not. He had all but blacked out the uncovered half of his visor with his hand, and his emotional stability fought against him in a new direction with every change in his focus. As much as he tried to hide it, she could see that every element of his body's functioning was dialed to the extreme, including the hopeless feeling overtaking him. With no way to reach him she simply forced herself to watch so that he wouldn’t have to experience it alone.

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At least ten minutes had passed since the injection, though neither of them had the inclination to check. Merce had more so worn himself out than mustered any stability. Still, he lay half limp in the core's glare, eyes fixed upon the light.

“Julie?” He whispered shakily. “Promise me you’ll make it out.”

“Why?” She replied after a pause to consider.

“So I can rest. So I can stop thinking about it.”

“You can rest all you want sir! I’ll give you a poke when they come for us okay?”

“You’ve done so much…” he muttered half under his breath, “… I haven’t helped at all. At least it would be worth it if I accomplished something. After everything I’ve endured for it all to sum to this is just cruel.”

“Don’t be an idiot sir.” She chastised. “You’ve had far more impact in your life than just this moment. Quit the quitter talk okay, you’re climbing out of this hole with the both of us!”

“You don’t understand…” he sobbed “… this moment is the most important one and it’s supposed to be worth it and it isn’t and I can’t make it better. I don’t have it in me… I’m exhausted. Just, so, so tired.”

“It’s okay sir, you can sleep.” She tried to assure him.

“When the sleep comes it has to be worth it, you don’t understand, I took an oath.”

Julie went rigid at the mention of an oath, cold eyes threatening to pierce the canopy wide display, which acted as a far more armored window she was only now beginning to appreciate in the light of her commanding officer's sudden instability.

“Any oath that brings you down this much is fucking ridiculous!” She shouted. “You’ve read my files, you know how commitment can corrupt a man, so don’t let it take hold of you like that. Losing yourself isn’t worth it.”

“There’s bigger things than us Julie.” He replied.

“I’ve heard that before too and I don’t want to hear it again. You aren’t separate from those ideals, okay? You can’t serve them and leave yourself behind.” Her voice began cracking under the weight of the tears welling in her eyes. Locking those memories back in their vault, she turned once more to Merce. “If you actually want to be useful then watch Lohren for me. That’s an order!”

The familiar words snapped Merce’s autopilot into gear as he shuffled towards Lohren before even processing the request. Sniffling some composure into himself he quickly settled into the rhythm of checking someone’s condition, one that had become muscle memory for him a long time ago. A tiny flashlight flickered to life briefly as he palmed the switch on and off, flashing Lohrens deeply bloodshot eyes as he held her violently shivering head still.

“Her dilation is normal, which I think means slow for an Iveri. Pulse is regular but very weak. Her lips are moving but I can’t hear anything.” He leaned his helmet's earpiece in front of her lips, tuning in the sensitivity to the slurred whispers he was now picking up. “Duvet and numb?”

“Dubh anabha, perhaps?” Julie offered, slipping into a shoddy Iverian accent.

“Black soul? She must be dreaming.” He replied curiously, the tremble in his voice leveling off as the distraction captured his attention. His steadiness was short lived as the shaking skull between his hands suddenly went limp. “Julie… how cold is it?”

“I exposed the core to warm us up a bit, shouldn’t be too bad by now… minus twenty five has risen to minus twelve celsius.”

“Her suit has gone cold.” He said, running his hands over metal so frigid he could feel his fingers sticking to his gloves. “Iverians can’t survive negative temperatures. Julie, spike the core as high as it’ll go!”

“Sir if it’s powered can’t we just hook it up to the core itself? Or maybe the auxiliary batteries? The core is barely holding on as is.” She replied, clearly unconvinced by her own suggestions.

“It’s not powered. There’s this kind of chemical layer underneath the armor. It generates small amounts of energy when twisted around. The more they move, the more power they have. Keeps them warm and makes moving easier in this weird, sauna, feedback loop.” He froze as the tremble returned to his voice, hands falling limply in his lap.

Julie for her part was anxiously adjusting the power distribution between the mech’s systems, peeling out another two degrees before the straining shield threatened to collapse. She watched Merce’s shoulders rumble, imagining a new round of tears welling behind the cracked visor. She fought hard to suppress her own frustration building behind her eyes. She had exhausted her options and only been rewarded with a front row seat to the death of a woman she had just met. A slow, lonely descent into a place even more bereft of warmth than the puddle she would be buried in.

“What about that blue stuff?” She stammered, face lighting up at the potential.

“No. Not her.” Merce replied dismissively.

“Why the fuck not? Would she not survive it?”

“She would, that’s the problem. Once you take it, it never leaves you and trust me, a quiet death is better than being forced to live with this poison.” He explained, eyeing the tenuous faith in Julie's expression. Sighing he continued with a mournful tone. “Those of us who put death in our veins, chose it because of things we considered more important than ourselves. Sometimes a choice like that is all you’ll have left. I will not be as cruel as those who earned it’s wrath as to take that choice from her. You and her have the chance to simply give everything you have and not need to beg for more. Bet your lives on that chance and hope that you never have to live through the day where you realize that every fiber of your being surmised, wasn’t enough.”

Julie remained silent, unsure of how to answer, caught between the statement and the imminent threat upon Lohrens life. Merce sat back and rested against the trench wall, power core to his right, dying Iverian to his left. Fumbling around for the syringe Julie had neglected to return to him he called out loud and clear.

“We both know those cores can get warmer.”

“Sir… you don’t mean…” She only half found the will to say.

“Your final test during the private recruitment.” He responded. “You tricked the mech into thinking it was hooked up to something big, tricked the safety limiters.”

Julie steadied her voice and tried to sell her concern as she spoke. “The safety limiters exist for a reason. That was a test I could be bailed out of if things went really wrong, which I don’t think I need to remind you that they did. That mech melted from the inside out. Once the core goes past seventy percent, if there’s nowhere for the energy to go, I can’t stop it from climbing. I’ll cook you both if the shield doesn’t come down first. Fuck don’t even get me started on what that much heat will do in a pressurised oxygen bubble like this.”

“Staff seargent.” Merce interrupted, his usual commanding tone returning with a wavering hint of vulnerability. “Even though I can’t, I won’t pull rank here. The choice between both of us surviving or risking all three of us living or dying, is yours. I must remind you though, the volunteer list was long. You were chosen by no accident. Your record was buried despite your background and you were shipped out here because Admiral Kreischer believed in your dedication. Surrounded by influences against better judgment, you held an unwavering commitment to making sure that things were done right. In your work and in your beliefs. ‘Never less than ambition!’ That was what you said to me when I asked you why you fried fifteen million credits worth of hardware to earn an extra ten points. I will not order, nor will I beg. Look her in the eyes and play it safe if you can find it in you to do so.”

Julie’s hand hovered over the dim red display, hesitantly poking back and forth unable to quite commit. She stared at the frosting body in front of her, eyes burning at the sight of consistently shrinking fogs of frosty breath with such intensity that Merce thought they might heat Lohren alone. A tiny puff of misty air drifted from between Lohren’s lips. Julie had been counting the seconds between them. Twice the length had passed, there were no more coming.

“I’m not ready to say goodbye.” Julie said, steel in her voice and fire in her movements as she blazed through the process of overriding the mech's safety systems. “Excess power will go to our makeshift beacon, they’ll need to hear us quick. I’ll do my best to keep us from blowing up as long as I can. It’s about to get lethally hot in here sir, I hope that blue shit is enough.”

“Enough of it will be.” He said, bringing the syringe to his thigh with a flick to the needle. “Any lucidity I might have had will be gone. Ignore anything I say and assume command if Lohren wakes up. Oh and if you say a word to anyone about personal disclosures down here, then mech sized air bombs will be the least of your worries. Understood?”

“Yessir!”

“Then that’s my last order to you. I’d wish you good luck but frankly you don’t need it. Kresicher made the right choice with you. It may have been only two weeks, but successful or not, I’m proud.”

The needle pierced his leg before Julie could respond, another twenty milliliters dumping into his system with a shaky restraint. With his last moments of lucidity he returned the half empty vial to its compartment and drew out his sidearm, driving Julie’s anxiety and heart rate to an uncomfortable high, the drum of concern pounding through her head.

“Way ahead of you on that.” He said, twisting the blocky pistol between his hands with ever increasing strength until the shearing scream of its finer parts sounded out its destruction.

Dropping the shattered pistol onto the rapidly softening ground he tried not to pay too much attention to the piercing noise of the core spooling up, which stung his sensitive ears. A great swell of heat rolled in across his legs, bringing a brief relief to his frozen, aching joints. Despite the injuries, the cold and the hundreds of pounds of rock and ice above them, he felt the worst for him was yet to come.

The heat brought a certain clarity to his flagging attention. Every fiber of his suit scratched and slid against his skin, encouraging a stillness mimicking the near corpse beside him. Time seemed to slow slightly, as he watched the trailing heatwaves divulging from the blistering spin of the cores rings, turn ice to vapor and rise into swirling clouds of deflected steam beneath the shields roof. Even the slight shimmer of energy bleeding through a shield pushed to its absolute limit, became apparent to him, streams of water beginning to descend between the snow and shield’s surface.

The barest of red light from the cockpit joined an ever growing yellow glow as the core pushed past what the mech could handle. It scratched at his eyes, claws like solar flares gouging lines into the back of his sockets. Worse still was the sound. Every spin, every whine, every strengthening breath Lohren whistled out of the Aerofill in her nose. Every, single, drop of water condensing above him, falling and striking his skin like a small hammer, reverberating a splash through his eardrums like a plasma grenade in a cave.

His skin was crawling off of him hoping to escape the vitriolic feeling etching his bones. Lohren was breathing again, so it was fine. He could endure it as he had many times before, so long as he could maintain some composure. That shouldn’t be too hard to do, he thought. His mind was being led into relaxation as the pool of water beneath him began to rise. It was filling from the trickle of melt descending as a watery curtain over the shield, slipping through the tiny gap between it and the terrain.

It felt like a warm, hip deep bath, comforting and serene. Before he knew it, the overstimulation and relaxation had thoroughly scrubbed the focus from his mind. Lulling halfway to sleep, drifting on the whims of his intrusive thoughts, his vision began to warp. The sharp wail of the core almost vibrating out of its housing had begun to pitch in and out. It sounded like a siren. An air raid siren. The sound and feeling of the falling droplets seemed to stack upon themselves, building into a steaming rainstorm as minuscule holes began to open in the struggling shield dispensing another source of rain. That drifting feeling wrenched him back and forth, struggling to maintain his footing in the rapids tinted red by the mech’s light, surging through the streets he now saw. The mech's light gray body loomed larger, casting a deep shadow across the street, melting into the visage of a crumbling skyscraper, its glowing core writhing into an inferno which threatened to burn it to the ground.

He felt the heat creeping through his armor. Flames lapped at his skin as his breathing became shallow and feverish. Desperately he waded forth in search of a woman’s voice, slinking in through the vapors which had turned to a choking black smoke. He heard his name in between the screaming flights of Drenhari bombers, reflected like blades in the thick red liquid below him he knew not to be water.

His foot caught on a pile of something soft and brittle that he knew better than to look at. The sickening crunch preceded a lurch in gravity as the ground rose up to meet him, the glossy red river stopping just shy of his nose. Dozens of helmets, rifles, dog tags both shiny and rusting, wedding rings and keys, came drifting past. Slowly at first, they soon became a torrent. A cavalcade of stories ended before their time, all streaming around the spot in the river where he saw himself, a hundred years younger and only his instincts to keep him functional.

His was not the only face he saw. Flocks of ghastly black figures descended from on high or rose from the freshly spilled waters, all drifting towards him, accusation embedded in every nook of their twisted expressions. Some amount of courage or fear within him, wheeled him around to see the city proper, razed within an inch of recognition. Sunken to the waist and surrounded by spirits, he kicked out to try and push himself away from the looming horde. Skeletal, charred hands trailing their fingers across his half melted armor. Flames skittered across his back, lancing pain through his every nerve as his flesh seared beneath their caress. His face was slick, perhaps blood, tears or sweat he could not really tell. Once more he heard the woman’s voice behind the cascading wave of bony hands and twisted expressions. Somewhere in the horror and pain, his voice emerged either to challenge or to flee, tearing from his throat in a horrid scream.

“Just hold through it sir! It isn’t real!” Julie called out to the writhing lieutenant, though between his disturbing performance and the fact that as far as he was concerned it was real, she couldn’t put much conviction into what felt like a lie.

It had been twenty minutes since the injection. Perhaps five since the last shot of the Morningstar. The last ten minutes had been particularly brutal on the mech’s systems. While the temperature had indeed climbed to a typically deadly seventy three degrees celcius, bringing life back into Lohren’s already healthier looking face, it had come at a cost that made Julie keenly aware of the time they had left. Even now the wiring was beginning to overheat and melt together and before long anything connecting the core to the mech itself, would be slag.

The question in her mind was whether she would lose control of the filters or the shield first. If the shield went they would be crushed. The filters would mean she couldn’t control the ratio of flammable gasses in their bubble and in this heat that meant a detonation. She could only hope that they could hold on long enough for her signal to summon a rescue team. Then again the whimpering screams the Lieutenant was letting out made part of her wish the walls would come down sooner. Watching rivulets of blood seep out of the man’s armor, the blue serum healing him only barely faster than he was being cooked, was becoming too much to even bear witness to.

A sudden slam startled her back into focus. The screen lining the canopy showed the lieutenant leaning against the mech with both hands, shakes pulsing through his body.

“Please… come back.” He whimpered softly. “I can’t find anyone.”

“Sir, can you hear me?” She asked, a certain terror taking her as she stared at the unstable man.

“I was just holding Clara. Those things took her away and then I was holding one of them instead.” Fear cracked his voice.

“Are you okay now?” Julie said, deciding it better to try and play along.

“Oh it’s dead now. You don’t have to worry. I kept them safe, I did it but I can’t find them anymore. They’re all gone and so are you.”

“No lieuten- ah, Merce. I’m right here… so just focus on my voice okay?”

“I haven’t heard from you in so long!” He cried in relief. “You flew! You finally did it! I was so proud of you, but why did you have to fly so far? Please don’t go again, I can’t be alone like that. Please, sir.”

“I’m here now, it’s going to be okay Merce. Just try and relax, okay?“

“No it won’t.” He mumbled with a low drawl. “Your voice numbs the pain but it can’t stop it. It won’t stop sir.”

“It’s not real Merce. You’ve had a drug and you’re hallucinating but I’m right here, so just focus on my voice.” She begged, desperate to maintain his focus.

“Can you make it real?” He asked with a sick twang of hope.

“Uhm… what?” She stammered back.

“The pain won’t stop because it isn’t real. Make it real please. Let me burn so it will stop. Please?”

Merce’s begging froze Julie. She didn’t know what to do outside of edging her hand in search of her sidearm. Normally strapped to the lower walls of the cockpit on her dominant side, her heart almost audibly sank as she spotted its handle poking out of the muck beside Lohren. Hidden in the darkness before the new flows of water reaching halfway up Lohren’s snout had washed it free.

“Merce I…” she began.

“… can’t do it?” He interrupted, gloves scratching the mech’s canopy as they curled into fists. “Please.”

“Merce I’m sorry I…” she yelped as a fist struck the canopy hard. “Merce, calm down I… I’ll do what I can!”

“Don’t lie to me sir! Not you!” He roared as he delivered another hammering blow against the mech. “You have to be real!”

Several more strikes like thunder echoed through the mech’s cockpit as a terrified Julie watched the display begin to crack. She couldn’t begin to fathom how a human being was denting a hull that could have stopped a missile, admittedly on a good day. The gut churning snap of bones splitting in two followed by a spray of blood across Merce’s helmet, shards of bone poking out from the gaps in his bracers sinking below the skin and healing just as fast, gave her some indication.

Her mind racing, she realized that even if she could get to her sidearm, it might not put him down. Firing the flares could ignite the room but… Lohren couldn’t survive that even if the mech would. Wouldn’t she die anyways if Merce got the inclination? What if he left her alone? Whose life would she gamble on?

A flurry of blows and headbutts wore down the outer armor and chipped away at the canopy display’s integrity. “Please! Please! Please!” Merce was sobbing at her. Just before the display cracked beyond a cohesive image, she saw Lohren’s eyes flutter and her head tilt.

—————

Lohren was… awake? She couldn’t tell. She was aware, but she couldn’t feel anything. Or rather she couldn’t remember what feeling felt like, only that it wasn’t there anymore. An outline of absence that traced the edges of her form. She was, her. She remembered sight and only then did it strike her that she couldn’t see. She was in void…no, darkness. She felt it touch her in a way she could not find the words to describe, beyond the knowledge that she wasn’t alone.

She felt herself sinking. Falling. Forwards. Some great tunnel of momentum that she somehow knew she was wilfully flying along at great speed. This was even though she didn’t understand why or how she was. She was sure, she was falling, not flying or running, nor riding a speeder. Falling. Vertigo. Intention and direction that she knew were her own and yet had no grasp over. No concious grasp anyways.

She was someone, wasn’t she? Somewhere? At some time? Yes, time! Time was still moving, somewhere. A somewhere she had to be, with it. It was urgent. She had to be there, but she was here. No, she simply was. She had to be in a place again, to touch time as the darkness touched her. She thought of where she left ‘her’ last and found the darkness stretching to match the tunnel she felt herself falling forwards through. The edges of her sense peeled back until the seams began to shift.

The distortion brought color, light, shape and pattern to what she could only describe as seeing, though it felt more like knowing. Into the void this tunnel stretched, a straight line which began to curve as she focused on what she sought. One dimension became two as this curve wrapped itself around in an infinite ring. Pockets of light rested upon it like the spokes of an old ship's wheel. She ‘saw’ her, a dim light though she knew it would never go out.

It was urgent. She must return. A flash of light, deep within her sense of being, marked at the center of the wheel, commanded it to spin. Whether it turned or she fell, she could not say, nor did she think it really mattered in the face of her urgency. The closer she drew to her wheel's bulb, the more her vision began to dim. Her periphery fell to be replaced with physical feeling. She hurt. She was wet. She was warm. The warmth eschewed the feeling of the darkness, redefined it from its comfort and made it feel cold. She now knew that she had not been, not physically, and that absence was not of her, nor for her, not yet.

The bulb of light became clearer as she drew close. A flat spot became rings of their own, spinning around a soft silhouette of her like the electrons of an atom. The heat would grow and so too would a ring, it’s light bleeding out and joining the larger ring connecting the bulbs. She reached to touch the bulb as two dimensions became three. She hesitated, the rings were not alone. From each came an innumerable number of intersecting lines which stretched out into the void beyond her comprehension. She knew some of them. They were feelings, or things, or people… no, they were not people, they were names. These lines had gaps.

The gaps traced their own arc. A line of it’s own much like how the Rosseira lived in the shadow of cold. While she did not remember what a Rosseira was, she knew she could not return without seeing the cold spot. It, after all, was urgent. This was what the part of her she could not feel before had wanted, to see what tried to hide. Her intention changed. In none she saw one. In one, two. In two, three. Now, perhaps, four.

She pushed not her mind but her ‘self’, the part of her with impetus, through the rings as she had unknowingly done through other dimensions just before. The patterns she saw warped in on themselves, repeating endlessly in an infinitely complex kaleidoscope until they too, took form. She saw rolling waves of Color, washed across a fleet of burning ships, above a frozen planet, on the cusp of the darkness she had felt. A vast presence, or absence in the void of space. It saw her too. Trillions of pairs of starry eyes blinked at her in unison, dark shadows stretching space over their bony, humanoid forms like an ethereal cloak.

Eyes bleeding into pulsar tears, the lonely faces stretched out towards her, desperate to return to the touch she had been unwittingly giving them just moments before, reaching out for anyone who may find them, as she now realized. An outstretched hand she offered, one which was almost accepted if not for the flicker of a shadow trailing over the watercolor spill of plasma and salvage. There was a gap in the lines. There was the thing she was missing. There was the ghost she could not see. Out of the destructive aurora it flew down towards the planet.

A vehement wail erupted from the beings before her, undulating in a great wave of vengeful wrath, devoid of intention or direction. Her neck stiffened as spectral hands seized either side of her head, dragging her vision towards a silvery tunnel, stretching from the ship graveyard, across the darkness, to the edge of Drenhari space. The name itself summoned an unbridled rage from the darkness, a will to destroy she found herself agreeing with as she gazed upon a small detachment of the waiting armada entering the tunnel.

Three dozen ships, mostly cruisers. Only a scouting regiment of the fleet they had departed. She nodded at the darkness whom collectively erupted in glee. She heard a voice, ‘Please! Please! Please!’, it cried, softer than a feather. It wasn’t the darkness, they seemed not to hear it. It was time to return and so, she fell, down, fast. She passed the hidden ship descending into the planet’s atmosphere, invisible and only outlined by what she could feel it obscure. She slammed into her body like lightning and opened her eyes.

—————-

Julie held her head between her legs as the hammering continued, muffled shouts tormenting her as the seconds ticked on. Any moment now the mech would burn out, she could feel it under her feet. Too terrified to think she had spared herself the tears and simply gone catatonic.

“Please make it stop!” Merce continued to scream at her.

A sundering boom rippled through the cockpit, the fading echo lifting her eyes to the watermelon sized dent in the canopy. The grind of metal on metal slumped downwards, as a familiar voice brought tears of relief to Julie’s eyes.

“You’re welcome, Merce… éh’jhit!” Lohren cursed. “Julie? Are you alive?”

“Ha! Yes! Oh you beauti-“

Julie’s jubilation was cut short as the microphone cut out. Lohren didn’t have time to notice however, as the signature deep whistle of a collapsing shield, worsened her already throbbing headache. With not a moment to spare she stood as tall as she could, bracing her shoulders against the mech's canopy just as the shields gave out.

Lohren roared as the full weight of what was above her came crashing down, buckling her knees and compressing her spine. She willed herself to hold it and found her body locking up like iron. The feelings she must have dreamt still lingered in her mind and muscles. Where her will flowed, so too did the feeling, and soon it was everything but her iron body which gave way under the pressure, the ground deforming beneath her as she sank up to the ankles.

Soon followed an immense melt brought on by the heat, rivers of rock and water collapsing down around the mech, shrinking their pocket to the size of an Iverian child’s wardrobe. Lohren twisted her screaming neck to see Merce’s upper body buried unconscious in the snow. She stretched her arm as far as she could and was barely reaching below her knees. The water levels were rising as even more snow and ice melted, soon his body would be submerged.

“All the way Lohren. Don’t hold back this time you useless éh’jhit.” She groaned.

Before her feet could sink any further, she dropped forward onto her knees and ripped merce free of the snow, holding his head to her stomach above the water. Losing the strength of her feet, when the mech came down upon her once more, she felt every joint in her body threaten to crumble. The pain was almost unbearable.

“Ohrdin! I need you to see me right now!” She growled, bucking against the mech earning less than an inch of space. “I’m not enough, I can’t do this alone.”

Yet alone she was, she knew she was. Despite her pleas for help, despite her best intentions, she would not have it in her to fix the mess she felt she had led them into. A spark of resolve ignited in her at that moment, as the heat around her climbed drastically. Their lives would have to be prised from her dead hands, and that, she would not allow without a fight.

Up, was her command. Up, was her intention. When the core ignited the bubble, flashing an inferno into being, it listened. Every ounce of strength, energy and being that she touched, within or without, surged upwards with an unholy conviction to be free. An eruption of fire and steam burst upwards in a tunnel stretching some forty feet, breaking outwards in a towering swirl that lit the surrounding area for a brief, stunned moment.

Lohren knelt against the icy mirror that had formed beneath her, frost and ice clinging to every inch of her lower body from where even the smallest scraps of heat had been drained. She sat on her heels and cradled Merce’s shivering head carefully in her lap, the warped, half frozen exterior of Julie’s mech collapsed behind her, a plasma torch cutting through the canopy from the inside.

She was weak, exhausted and only kept conscious by the rush of fresh air that filled the vacuum the explosion had caused. She opened her eyes wide, blinded by the dim light of the sky she hadn't seen in what felt like lifetimes. The delicate, windswept frame of Ohrdin drifted in above the tunnel, waving in rescue teams as he peered below.

“I heard you.” He said softly in absent astonishment at what he had just witnessed. “I… heard you, like I hear my own.”

Lohren barely managed to meet his gaze as her vision cleared. Exhaustion consuming her, she only managed a single, urgent sentence, before she collapsed.

“There’s a ghost in the Aurora.”