Spiderwebbed electricity shudders over the control consoles on either side and Chase is flung forward, falling out of the open cockpit and slamming to the muddy ground.

“Chase! Chase!!!” Kora runs forward and is by his side in an instant. Reo is right beside her and helps roll him over.

Chase is unresponsive. Kora checks his vital signs.

“He’s not breathing. No pulse!” she yells.

“That’s not good,” Reo says. “Is he dead?”

Kora grabs her medic kit and begins frantically opening various compartments.

“Open his flight suit!” she orders. Reo follows the instruction, quickly unzipping Chase’s black flight suit, spattered with mud, down to his waist.

Kora is back by his side in an instant. Using a large pair of scissors, she cuts through Chase’s white tank top, exposing his lean but muscular chest. The metallic pair of dog tags hang down between his pecs. They have a serial number, blood type, and a name Kora doesn’t recognize—William MacArthur.

“Get those tags off,” Kora orders, and Reo does so as Kora removes an automated external defibrillator from her kit and lines up the pads against Chase’s bare chest.

“Clear!”

The AED gives a loud, long beep as Kora presses the button, delivering the shock to her patient.

She checks his vitals again.

“Oh, thank God,” Kora says. “He’s got a pulse. He’s breathing. But he’s still unconscious.”

Kora sits back in the dirt, wiping sweat from her forehead, hands trembling.

“What was that?” she asks. “What happened?”

Reo looks up at the cockpit again.

“Doctor Yi said the Mechs can scan brainwaves. Maybe Icarus didn’t like Chase’s brainwaves.”

“I don’t think I care much for Chase’s brainwaves either,” Kora replies drolly, “but I’m not going to try and kill him because of it!”

“Could be a kind of security mechanism. Keep intruders from accessin’ a Mech that doesn’t belong to them,” says Reo.

“I’ll try,” Hanami says. This whole time she has been standing by and has shown no reaction to Chase’s near-death experience.

“Try what?” Kora asks.

“I’ll try to access Icarus’s mainframe.”

“What? You’re crazy! Chase almost died. We don’t need two of you knocked unconscious!” Kora fumes.

“I think I can do it...” Hanami says simply and begins climbing up the Mech, hoisting herself into the open cockpit.

“I don’t think that’s such a—” Reo starts to say.

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Too late. Hanami straps herself into the pilot’s seat and presses her head back into the headrest. With one hand she starts to type on a console with a cracked screen, attempting to initiate some kind of program sequence.

The consoles begin shooting off sparks once more and Hanami grips the armrests of the pilot’s seat. Her eyes roll back in her head and her clenched teeth gleam in the glow.

“Hanami!!!” Kora yells in desperation.

Hanami’s body shudders, convulses. But she is strapped in and holding on for dear life. Her fingernails dig into the fabric of the pilot’s seat. Electric whines of failing computer systems can be heard and smoke trails out of the cockpit.

Then all at once the commotion stops. Hanami slumps forward against the harness, motionless. But then her eyes open. Weakly, she unbuckles the straps and hangs down by her hands, dangling, then drops to her feet like a cat.

“Holy cow,” Reo laughs, “You survived?”

Hanami says nothing, shaking her head as if to clear it.

“Are you okay?” Kora asks, standing in front of Hanami and looking in her eyes with a small flashlight. Hanami brushes her aside and takes several slow steps away from Icarus.

“Is she in some kind of trance or somethin’?” Reo whispers to Kora.

“Hard to tell. She almost always seems like she’s in a trance...” Kora replies.

Hanami stops walking and slowly turns around. Her pupils are dilated, her face pale.

“I... I am okay...” she says quietly, gripping her head in the universal sign for MASSIVE MIGRAINE. “I am going to get back in my Mech and rest for a minute...”

Kora turns back to look at the unconscious Chase.

“He needs medical treatment. Hanami probably needs it too. Not much I can do on some island in the wops full of things trying to murder us,” Kora says, searching through her combat medic kit.

“This whole operation is top secret. We can’t drop him off at some civilian hospital,” Reo says.

“Orders, orders, orders. I’m more concerned about saving his life!” Kora shouts.

“I know, Ma Tua, but the world is on the brink of war. This is bigger than what you and I want. Besides, the team back at base probably know best what to do for him.”

Wise of you to say, thinks Kora.

“What can we do, though? Can we strap him into Ronin and set an autopilot course?”

“Yeah, that should work,” Reo answers. “You think he’ll be stable for the couple hours it’ll take?”

“According to you, that’s the only choice we have.”

Reo slings the unconscious Chase over his shoulder and carries him back to Ronin. He and Kora hoist him into the cockpit and strap him in, making sure to support his head and neck. Reo types some directions into the console.

“Okay, the route back home is programmed in. But we also have orders about Icarus,” Reo reminds her. “We can’t leave the Mech here, but far as I can tell its flyin’ days are over.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Salvage what we can. Dismantle the rest. Maybe you should escort Chase back and let me stay and work on this.”

“I won’t leave you!” Kora says, a bit more forcefully than she intended. “I mean... we need to stick together. All of us.”

Hanami is sitting in Ranger and monitoring her screens. She is picking up something on her scanner.

“It seems that a number of ships are heading this way,” she says.

“What?!” says Kora.

“I do not know if they are from Red Star or where, but we will have company soon. I suggest we plan for a quick exit.”

“Oh crap, oh crap,” Kora says, quickly shoving her medic equipment back in her pack.

“Reo,” Hanami says, “can you disable or destroy Icarus?”

Reo tucks his lucky wrench into his belt and cracks his knuckles.

“It just so happens that I’m trained in armin’ and disarmin’ explosives. It won’t be easy with all the systems fried, but I should be able to rig the Fusion Core to blow.”

“Whatever you can do, you should do it fast.”

Reo gets to work as Kora climbs back into Templar, stowing her combat medic kit and strapping in. She loads the coordinates for the return trip and charts the flight trajectory on her screen.

Hanami continuously monitors the approaching shapes on her radar. They will not be alone for much longer.

“I got it!” Reo shouts excitedly. He drops to the ground and sprints away from Icarus, his large form rushing across the crash site at surprising speed.

He hops up to Ronin’s cockpit and initiates the autopilot sequence, dropping down just in time as the cockpit seals shut and Ronin straightens itself, thrusters warming up.

Finally, Reo gets back into Bombardier and boots up his own thrusters.

“The bomb is set.”

“How much time do we have?” Kora asks.

“Oh... I’d guess about thirty seconds until everythin’ on this island is vaporized.”