As Yet Unknown

by Phantom Pheather

A little crossover between the New Jedi Order and Battletech...does anyone know if this truly belongs here? Should this go somewhere else?

1. Chapter I

As Yet Unknown: Star Wars - Battletech Crossover

CONFESSION: I don't know enough to write any sort of true BT fic. All of my knowledge is based off of MechWarrior II, MechWarrior IV, and two or three BT novels. There's a music video done by some guy of Linkin Park - In the End and Battletech, which I like. I'm not sure if this brands me a devil-worshiping spawn from the deepest pits of fanboy hell (are their even such things as fan boys? Discuss.) or merely a fellow enjoyer of the series (Battltech, as opposed to music videos or Linkin Park). It had, from my own experiences, the intro to MW4 and, from what a friend told me, the into to MW3, and I would advise you to download it if at all possible if you like either/or (preferably both): Linkin Park, and Battletech. I've read other peoples' fics, and seen the feedback they get screaming at them for not staying true to BT and whatnot. This is an early reminder: THIS WILL STAY AS TRUE AS I CAN MAKE IT WHILE CROSSING IT WITH SW. Star Wars, however, is an area of expertise for me. Not so much anymore, actually, but I still have about 95% of the novels that had come out before the New Jedi Order and have read, as far as I can tell, all of the NJO predecessors. See above comment in caps. (Thank you.)

Wind rushed through the trenches, the line of defense that the New Republic 145th Heavy Infantry had erected to stop the Yuuzhan Vong's inexorable march towards the capital of Furia, a small world that had a big part in manufacturing infantry equipment. The Vong were like a plague; unstoppable, mysterious, and deadly. They fought and fought until any human would be dead from exhaustion.

They screamed like men possessed; they fought like devils. They were ultimate killers, utterly unafraid. They had landed a thousand Vong on the world to take it. The New Republic had about twice that many. Half had already fallen. The trenches were about a meter deep, with a ferrocrete railing to further protect the men in the front. The 145th had set up a Anti-Vehicular battery every three hundred feet, behind the trenches. The soldiers in the trenches were armed with standard issue E-11 blaster rifles, a pistol, and a vibroblade, with a trooper with a heavy repeating blaster every hundred feet, on a platform that rose from the trenches.

The 145th had a pair of hovertanks, and a single blaster artillery to hold the line. They had a bit of air support in the form of a squadron of E-wings. They were firmly entrenched, and about as ready as they could be. As it turns out the Vong were even more prepared. They attacked at dawn the next day.

Private 1st Class Ahminov Kerensky waited in the trench with the rest of Echo Company. They waited in fear, building up nerves, springloading their nerves, ready to fire in an instant. When Sentry Post Z-TP screamed over the comm channel "HQ this is ZTP, we have nearly two hundred fifty incoming hostiles, repeat two five zero hostiles coming in from the east!", Echo Company let out a collective breath, and waited for the first line to approach from the trees.

Approach it did. The Vong broke from the treeline about five hundred meters back. The first line was about fifty creatures long, all the reptilian slaves the Vong had bred for war. Corran Horn's sabotage of their warrior slave production had hurt them immensely, and this first batch of new warrior slaves showed it in the fact that the bone armor was less fitting, the slaves' movements a bit jerkier. Still, they were not taken lightly. The blaster artillery opened up as soon as it got confirmation to fire, and a huge red bolt of energy slammed into the Vong formation.

The hovertanks stayed back, ready to reinforce a failing part of the line. Echo Company opened up as the Vong came within a hundred meters. The first line fell en masse, the survivors leaping over and sprinting past the fallen. Ahminov fired his rifle at a slave warrior. A blast hit it in the chest, but it shrugged off the blow and continued onwards. A bolt in the leg knocked it to the ground, and an E-WEB separated the slave from life. The E-WEBs sprayed fire into the thickest masses of the front line.

The AV batteries opened up as the Vong came within fifty meters of the trenches. The explosions of energy knocked them off their feet. As the last slaves fell, the Vong started hurtling thud bugs and razor bugs. A soldier to Ahminov's left fell, chest burst by an exploding thud bug. Ahminov picked off a pair of bugs that were aimed in his general direction, then fired at a Yuuzhan Vong warrior that was hurtling forwards. The bolts impacted against his vonduum crab armor, glanced off, leaving scars that healed quickly.

Ahminov rose and lobbed a concussion grenade in front of the oncoming hostiles. They saw the machine abomination, and proceeded to attempt to stab it to death as they passed. It exploded, the concussion shockwave disintegrating the bodies nearest and continuing outwards, flattening those who were not killed. The E-WEBs and AVs made quick work of the prone Yuuzhan Vong.

On down the line, a portion of the Vong forces had breached the line. The trenches had dissolved into a melee, the Yuuzhan Vong like specters of death, whirling and stabbing, killing all who opposed them…at least until the AV battery nearby fired into the trenches. The ferrocrete railing collapsed and exploded in fragments, showering the Vong with shrapnel. The nearest E-WEB fired repeatedly into the Yuuzhan Vong; they fell one by one, driven back by sheer malice.

The secondary wave of Vong forces entered the fray. Sentry Post Z-TP (the only sentry post) exploded in a fireball as the soldiers inside set off the explosives designed to bring the building down. The Vong forces numbered about a thousand this time, 950 of them slave warriors. They concentrated their forces on Alpha Company. Alpha Company inflicted heavy losses before the Vong slaves closed. The blaster artillery fired a direct salvo into their midst; the explosion collapsed the trenches in on themselves.

The Yuuzhan Vong sprinted down towards Echo Company. Ahminov concentrated on the ones spread apart. He found a lone Vong warrior, and sprayed fired out at him. The warrior raised a vonduum crab shield, a piece of equipment nobody had seen before. The blaster bolts glanced off, at least until a bolt slammed into his throat. The shield went flying away.

Ahminov felt adrenaline rise in his arms, felt his body flood with energy. Time seemed to slow. He fired almost continuously now, felt the rifle begin to overheat. He ignored it, unwilling to lose his best weapon. He fired, spraying crimson death over a pack of slaves as they came within thirty feet. They fell, smoking, as the energy burst tissue. He flicked a switch on his rifle, felt the trigger ease up as it went into full automatic mode. The whole trench was a constant line of energy now, just repeated firing of bolts. Waves of red ran over the ten thousand enemy warriors that rushed the trenches. Each line got further than the last, overcoming the hail of death by sheer numbers.

Ahminov saw his rifle smoke, quickly shut it down, cursing. He pulled his pistol and waited for something to come within its range. He soon filled the air with its lower tones. The New Republic lines kept up the fire, pouring out gigajoules of energy.

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The ground shook as they advanced. Bearing massive quantities of destructive potential, they walked through the forest, impervious to trees, crushing through the foliage in their hurry to escape. In their hurry to find this other human contact on the planet. They sensed the Vong from behind, and quickly sped up, rushing away from death.
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Ahminov was tired now, exhausted from fear and terror, exhausted from running for the past few days. He was tired, and he was sick of it all. He was sick of the ozone smell from laser energy, sick of this constant state of frenzied action, of horrifying discoveries and fear of the unknown. He was ready to end it all. The line was pouring out fire faster now, as the Vong had closed within about twenty feet, until High Command detonated the explosives.

The dirt exploded upwards, throwing Vong upwards, destroying countless numbers in a brief spark of electricity. Still the swarm kept coming. They finally hit the trenches themselves, throwing themselves into them to kill their enemies, to kill the infidels. Ahminov saw the man next to him go down, victim of the staff. Ahminov murdered his killer with repeated shots in the head.

He saw the surging tide of bodies coming towards him from his left, panicking in their effort to escape. He hoisted himself out of the trench, felt strangely light headed. He stood up, then lobbed a grenade into the mass of Vong rushing down the trenches after the fleeing infantry. He laughed in terror, tinged with insanity as the grenade went off, showering blood and flesh everywhere. He laughed.

The Vong ignored the losses and pressed the attack. Ahminov suddenly cut off his laughter and fired both rifle and pistol into the mass. A few fell, but not nearly enough to stop the deadly advance. Ahminov kept firing despite the seeming pointlessness of it all, the useless gesture that had become instinct. A bright Vong saw Ahminov and leapt up out of the trench, running at him. Ahminov waited until nearly the last instinct, then bared his teeth in a savage grin, and blew the Vong to shreds with repeated blasts.

He saw multiple warriors come to meet him, knew he could not take them all. He fired still, felt his rifle start to reach the critical temperatures. No matter, he would soon be dead anyway, as would the rest of the galaxy. He flung his rifle at them, pulled a grenade and primed it, set the deadman's switch. Waited for death to take him.

Gunfire exploded from the trees behind him, tearing into the Vong before they reached him. A particle projection cannon fired twice, exploding in showers of radioactive energy. A huge machine crashed out of the undergrowth, followed by many more. The Nova that had stepped out first fired all twelve of its medium extended range lasers into the Vong, flinging bodies into the air. The Vong, confronted with the ultimate of evils in their eyes, a huge mechanical object, screamed and issued new orders, rushing towards the Battlemechs from Clan Wolf.

The Nova waited until they were about to strike. Ahminov winced as he knew the effect Vong had on machines, even if they looked relatively outmatched. The Nova's legs shook as it lifted off the ground, jetting into the air. The Dire Wolf behind it fired all of its weaponry into the mass of the Vong as they started at the sight of a flying walker. The Vong rushed back to the trenches, put on the retreat by such surprising new opponents.

The E-wings finally reached the site of the battle, delayed as they were by the coral skippers. Shields sparked as they recharged, and carbon marks scarred many of the ships. They flew directly over the trenches, followed the length of them. The Yuuzhan Vong never had a chance. The E-wings filled the trench with fire, opening up with twelve trios of laser cannons, firing proton torpedoes in vengeance for the slaughter that had taken place.

The Battlemechs quickly added to such destruction, firing their weapons into the mass of fleeing Vong. As they disappeared into the trees, the Vong hissed curses and insults back at the victors of the battle. Ahminov doubled over, nearly vomiting from his exhaustion. He breathed heavily, sucking in gulps of air. Clan Wolf moved its forces closer to the trench, took up a front line, bolstering the shattered defenses of the New Republic.

The hatch on the Dire Wolf Mech popped open. The Mechwarrior clambered down the side of the machine, walking towards Ahminov.

"You the CO around here?" He asked as he took off his neurohelmet.

Ahminov merely stared in amazement. "Uh…no. He's that way." He pointed towards the small bunker about ten meters behind the trenches, illuminated by the burning hulk of one of the hover tanks. The Mechwarrior nodded and headed towards the bunker. While the Star Colonel conversed with the Commander, Ahminov walked up to the Nova, the nearest one to him. He knocked on the leg of the machine.

The whole thing turned, and lowered close to the ground. The hatch slid open, and a shapely female stepped up. "Yes?" she asked with a slighltly condescending attitude.

Ahminov swallowed. "Can I see the inside of the thing?" The woman thought about it for a moment.

"Why not? Come on up." She motioned towards the hand holds on the leg of the massive machine. Ahminov started the long climb upwards. He reached the top of the cockpit, and glanced down into the hatch. There was a bunch of computerized equipment. Nothing fancy, or mystical.

Ahminov swallowed again. "You don't have any droids helping you?" he asked in disbelief.

"What, you mean a robot?" Ahminov nodded. "Hah! As if. You think we let a mechanical get near the controls of such a thing?"

"Well, I don't see how the hell else you can pilot such a massive machine."

The woman slapped the helmet on the side of her head. "Standard issue neurohelmet. Neuro-feedback linkages connect to the subconscious portions of the brain, allowing such minute changes as balance and slight shifts of the machine. All controls are linked through the helmet. Makes piloting one of these babies as easy as taking a piss. Okay, well, not if you're in zero-grav, but otherwise…"

Ahminov managed a small chuckle. The woman tilted her head slightly, then pushed Ahminov towards the leg. "GO! Sensors depicting massive gravitational fluxes coming this way. I don't know what you manage to stir up, boy, but its big, whatever it is. Go run for cover." She dropped in the hatch, sealing it after her. Ahminov scrambled for the hand holds, more falling than climbing down in his haste to get off the mech before it entered combat.

Ahminov hit the ground, crouched, then dashed for the trench, one of only a few hundred that did so. The rest…were either dead, or wounded. The second Vong attack of the day came out of the trees. It was, if possible, worse than the first.

The number of Yuuzhan Vong warriors had nearly doubled their number; the slave warriors had tripled, maybe quadrupled their number. Besides the infantry, there was a huge floating device. Bulges in the armored carapace indicated plasma weaponry; and there were a lot. As well as the huge battle machine, about thirty smaller ones came along. A massive Vong cruiser soared gracefully over the trees, flanked by its coralskippers.

"This is Wolf Four to Base, recommend you launch all fighters NOW; short range, long range, subspace, scouts, interceptors, turrets, ALL of them. Get a WarShip up here ASAP. Out."

"Confirmed, Four. Launching all fighters now. WarShip Odessa is en route, ETA 5m. Out."

"Negative, Base, five is too long, repeat, too long. Send some sort of delaying force…how bout those Elementals or drone Mechs you been working on?"

"Neg. All Drones and Elementals confined for base defense, except for emergencies."

"Base…this is a fucking emergency. Now either you get every possible combat unit over here NOW…or you're gonna have a helluva a job taking all of us to the morgue. Aff?"

A loud gulp sounded on the other end of the line. "Aff, Four. All forces en route. Elementals, 3m, Drones, 4m, aeros, 30s. DropShip and WarShip will be there in about one minute. Stand by." Base shut out the comm line.

"New Republic forces, may I recommend you deploy your forces behind ours?" Commander Ecerit Veryis toggled the open commlink.

"This is CO Veryis to all remaining New Republic forces…deploy behind the newcomers, and support them in any way possible. Prepare for Phase Zeta." The E-wings dropped lower to the ground, acting more as landspeeders than the fighters they were, providing fire support for Clan Wolf and the 145th. The Vong poured forwards in a mass, ignoring any and all losses.

Ahminov grabbed a blaster off one of the bodies, cursed as it misfired. He dropped it and pulled another from a bloody mess, stomach heaving as he did. The handle was slick with blood, the trigger guard covered in it. He ignored the blood, the pain and terror attached to the rifle, and fired. The few remaining New Republic forces fired what they had, providing a pitiful amount of destructive energy.

"Commander Veryis here, expand inertial compensator field to ten meters."

"Star Colonel Rexa here, are you crazy?"

"Negative. This will negate the doval basins on board their craft." He hesitated. "They generate artificial black holes. Also, try firing weaker, more numerous blasts with a few full powered ones, they hamper their ability to maneuver and shield themselves."

"Aff." The Wolf aero fighters, their lasers configured for only one type of power level, had a brief period where they doubted Veryis's word and kept firing with the single power lasers.

After about seven of them were destroyed within sixty seconds to no Vong losses, the ER lasers started firing wimpy, pathetic millijoule shots at such low amperage that later some of the pilots swore their machines were flickering because of the lack of energy drain.

But even a sixty millijoule shot can hurt when there's about sixty thousand of them spraying from the end of a cannon per second. As such, the Vong, unable to calculate the power levels behind each shot, merely followed the safe route: their doval basins sucked in every shot possible. This, in turn, was not the safe route, as the coralskippers slowed to a crawl and quickly fell prey to the Streak SRMs on the aerofighters.

Ahminov huddled in the trench, not wanting to look out and see the inexorable Vong war machine…no. Machine was not the right word. If the Vong heard themselves called that, they might have to kill themselves. He grinned feebly to himself. That'd be amusing, though he doubted it'd help. They would probably…like…have planet decaying bodies or something.

A Vong voice issued guttural commands just above him, and he looked up. There was a warrior standing proudly infront of him, looking straight at a sparking smaller mech (Firemoth, though Ahminov was damned if he could tell what it was) and screaming in victory. Ahminov shot him a dozen times on autofire through the head, and the Vong's screaming stopped.

There was a massive explosion, and bits of dirt and blood and bone sprayed over his face. There was a trio of coralskippers strafing the trench. Bodies were disintegrating, and he could swear he heard Vong laughter. In frustration he sniped at the bottom of the lead coralskipper. Much to his surprise, his shot glowed white on the hull and the fighter craft exploded in little pieces of living ship.

The other two fired a duo of plasma shots at him, and he dove forwards, wincing as he felt molten energy trace lines of his standard issue New Republic uniform and kinetic chest plate. The two plasma shots burned furrows of dirt, and he ran towards the lightly burning bodies. The coralskippers went into a complete stop and followed, enjoying the chase.

A Jenner II-C took a bit of spare time to launch off a pair of LRMs, and they hit the stand-still craft just as they put their doval basins into acceleration. The pair shattered, their pilots crumbling under intense heat. Ahminov looked around for survivors to rally to. He was the last man in the trench, and their were dual forces of Vong and slaves sprinting towards him from both sides.

He saw the last of the New Republic troops slip into the heavily armed and armored bunker, and close the viewslits. He looked both ways, then crossed the trench and hurtled up and over, sprinting for the bunker. Someone must have ordered a viewslit opened, because one opened in Ahminov's line of sight. It must have looked rather amusing, from an ironic and disassociated viewpoint. Ahminov, a lone New Republic infantry, blood and mud spattered, with a smoking rifle, was sprinting hell bent towards the bunker.

And there were thirty or forty Vong chasing after him. One man. Thirty Yuuzhan Vong. Man. Vong. A Timber Wolf Mk II landed in the midst of the sprinting Vong, in what must have been an incredibly difficult maneuver to pull off in a 90 ton Battlemech, jumping through controlled bleed off of plasma from its engines.

But it worked effectively, completely decimating the formation, scattering them in all directions, then frying them as it opened up with a variety of weapons that lit the small circle. Ahminov tripped over something, went sprawling, and slid through mud into the bunker doorway, just opened for him, and into a heavy cabinet.

It creaked ponderously, before it fell on him, showering papers and other things that probably didn't matter anymore around the room.

Zexthas Insitwen, a rather attractive Bothan female (at least that's what Ahminov had heard from his Bothan roommate back at his barracks on Kuat) leaned down with a concerned look. "Are you alright? Ahminov? Say something, or Treystan will kill me…" (Treystan being Ahminov's roommate). She broke off as she realized that Treystan was dead, along with countless others. "Say something dammit!"

"Owwww…" Someone apparently thought Ahminov's strained reply was amazingly humorous or had just fallen into a case of insanity, either one, and cracked up, laughing incredibly hard. It was infectious, or something, until most of the battered survivors of the 145th Heavy Infantry were laughing or chuckling or both (which is difficult to describe).

Ahminov said, rather quietly, as someone accidentally bumped it slightly, "OK GET IT OFF NOW, IT JUST FELL ON MY FREAKING NUTS! OWWWW! DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN! GET IT OFF!" A pair massive female Wookies shoved it off of him, with what he thought was a rather amused look on their face. He winced, and sort of curled into a ball. "Yeah, well…it'd hurt if you had balls too." This came out in a slightly cracked tone of voice inherent to the males of at least the human species after they've had their family jewels painfully impacted with great force by something.

They were suddenly yanked back to reality as someone screamed and the top of the bunker was torn away as the Yuuzhan Vong cruiser fired directly at their little sanctuary. It was massive, and, really, rather scary at such a close range. It fired, its flashing plasma bulges contrasting oddly to what Ahminov thought was a rather strangely dark hull. It seemed cloaked in darkness, shrouded in shadow.

At least until Ahminov realized that it was, indeed, part covered in the shadow from the Wolf DropShip Andromeda. The Andromeda fired with four Extended Range particle projection cannon, three of its ER Large lasers and a pair of Gauss Rifles from point blank range, instants after its escort of aerospace fighters hit it the other side, drawing the doval basins' gravitic fields away from the cruiser in a brilliant tactical maneuver.

Under such intense firepower, most Battlemechs would have certainly been utterly destroyed, although the heat buildup in the firing mech would have been intense. The cruiser, while significantly more powerful than a Battlemech, had less structural integrity, and relied mostly on its doval basins for protection. As such, the intense firepower which would have merely damaged the internal structure of a 'Mech enough to destroy it, completely obliterated the inside of the cruiser, which promptly burst into flames as all starships do when obviously critically damaged but not being destroyed outright.

The Wolf mechs pulled back as the Vong regrouped and used their vehicles to their advantage, bringing their basins into play absorbing shots that would have otherwise shatter Yuuzhan bodies and slave warriors, rendering them completely and irrevocably dead. The Battlemechs regrouped around the New Republic command bunker, a solid line of steel (Endo steel, but it has steel in the phrase anyway, so…) and deadly weaponry. What little New Republic infantry remained after their bunker had been shattered piled out of it and crouched behind it, salvaging what weapons they could find.

The Vong had a much bigger, much thicker, much stronger solid line of muscle and deadly weaponry. The New Republic's showing was down to thirty infantry, a much smoking hovertank, and the commander's slightly deranged military protocol droid, which no one knew where he had gotten it nor why it could take out a berserk gundark in melee combat (truth was it was a former heavy gladiator droid, the lightest chassis allowed in the heavy class, that had to deal with opponents several tons heavier than it and with far more extensive weaponry than a gundark's brute strength. But, again, no one knew this.)

Clan Wolf's opposition was down to a severely blood splattered Dire Wolf, a pair of Novas, the Firemoth that had been sparking earlier, a Timber Wolf and a Timber Wolf MkII, and a pair of heavily battered Jenner II-Cs. There were a dozen mechs that had not responded to the retreat call and remained shut down on the smoky battlefield.

Ahminov realized not all of the vision detraction was smoke. The current position he had been holding was deep in the mountains, where their was little chance of the Vong flanking the line due to nearly impassable mountains on either side. The mountain mist had settled in. Dimly through it and the smoke he could see the DropShip and a few flittering shapes he assumed were either E-Wings and aerospace fighters and hoped to the Force were not coralskippers.

The Vong screamed and he could swear the chittered, like insects. The Battlemechs fired out into the gray, their weaponry lancing out into the mist and depths, disappearing from Ahminov's sight. He shivered as the mist settled on his comrades and himself, a cold finger reaching from the mountains that would become their graves. They had been beautiful, at first light, without the Vong or the trenches to mar their pristine, primal beauty.

There had been a deep sky, the sun highlighting the evergreens, the mountains rising on either side of the trenches. Even now they stood out, a blackness that was darker than the surrounding atmosphere.

The Vong appeared as if by magic, and suddenly the battle was joined in earnest, with the New Republic survivors finding themselves again in the thick of things. Ahminov gritted his teeth to keep them from chattering in shock and fear and cold and indecision, instead firing his salvaged E-11 on autofire into the blackness, not worried about hitting his own men. For their were none of his men left to hit in front of him. He was suddenly back on the front lines, one of three crouched around a smoking, burnt shell of a bunker that had been the last outpost of pure New Republic defensive might.

The Vong rose up and died under a withering hail of crossfire and explosives, small arms fire occasionally punctuated by the occasional pulse laser or errant missile, autocannons and machine gun fire sounding loudly in the dense air, the bright flash of PPCs and Gauss rifles contrasting with the dull roar and sudden screams from the shot of an LBX scattershot.

And then the Vong had closed to zero range with the infantry, and their was a spray of red. Screams were coming from around Ahminov, primal and guttural, both human and Vong. The inhuman, eerie screech of metal as a Nova collapsed under the sheer weight of glowing plasma and warrior slaves rent the air. The fifty ton machine shuddered and fell just in front of Ahminov, its right arm pod pointing defiantly into the air, its left barely missing crushing Ahminov from existence. The DropShip was like a beacon, its sides and shields glowing brightly from a constant barrage of plasma fire.

There were Vong screams from behind Ahminov cut off from the few dead men that composed the 145th. The hatch on the downed Nova creaked, almost silently in the battlefield, and Ahminov took this as a good omen. He sprinted for it, waiting for the thud bug that would impact from behind and end his troubles. He could feel it, the impact as the suicidal and self destructive bug thrown by a Yuuzhan Vong would fly into his back, where it would explode, razor shards of hardened carapace ripping flesh and slitting the nerves that ran down his spine, very probably severing the spine itself. He would fall, helpless, into the mud and mist, blood pouring out his back, his face breathing in muck and grass, and he would be unable to do a thing because he was paralyzed from the neck down.

He would slowly suffocate even as he bled to death and his spine lay exposed, mangled and bloody. Fiery agony would spread to his chest. He could feel it, intense, almost real. He found himself attempting to wedge into a twenty centimeter wide space, his chest stuck, in a flaming pain that he had imagined came from having his nerves shattered. His hands shook as he managed to pry the well balanced, hydraulic hatch cover off the cockpit to the Nova and slipped inside.

The MechWarrior was the female he had seen on the cockpit, and she looked good even covered in sweat (maybe more so, as her tight, form fitting uniform probably fitted better and clung tighter), amidst a tangle of burnt wiring and shattered cockpit displays. She was dying, he could tell, and she could tell. She had been sent through the glass of the cockpit viewport before her safety webbing had hauled her back in, neither the glass nor the webbing designed for combat against an enemy whose shots could warp metal and who commanded the very forces of gravity.

She was bleeding from massive internal wounds, as her pilot suit was dripping with what could have been water but was tinted red. The suit had self sealed like it was supposed to. Ahminov figured the only reason she was still alive was it had sealed parts of the wound when it sealed, probably like it was also supposed to.