Lance Mōdel was trapped in the cockpit of his Komodo walker, deep under the surface of Baldwin's Fall. Stubbs' transmission had just cut short over the walker's communicator, and he was sitting in darkness. As the panda moved on to his next prey, the jackrabbit reached down and pulled out his communicator. It had the highest level of shielding available on the market, so it flickered to life as the rest of the equipment lay dead. There was no signal, but he selected his entire contact list and and started the transmission. Then he slipped it back into its holster on the front of his chest and resumed waiting.

If this was just paranoia, he could delete the cache before he returned to the surface. But if something happened to him, this way there would be a record. As soon as his communicator was brought aboveground and a connection was established, it would release the contents of the cache to dozens of waiting eyes.

It would be humiliating, broadcasting his own defeat to the world. But if the panda took him down, he was taking him down with him. One way or another.

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As Buster Harkness ranted and raved, spewing bile and darkness, the communicator captured it all. It captured him bragging about lying to the humans, never intending to bring Lance back alive, letting them think it was all an accident. It captured his cute round face looming over the dying jackrabbit like a grinning skull. When Lance finally drew his last breath, it captured the panda exhaustedly dancing with childish glee: pumping and wiggling his arms in triumph, before furiously expelling a volley of senseless expletives at the corpse and then dropping to his knees in tears.

Hours later, the engineers towed Lance's Komodo aboveground alongside the rest of the remains of Tartarus Squadron. They needed to be fully swept and disarmed before Zed Steadman could begin intake, and they were too big for the motor bay so off to the surface they went.

As soon as the seal on the cockpit was broken, a connection was established and Lance's final insult ascended to the stars.