Greenhorn V2

by acceptmyusernamealready

The old sailor's adage puts it this way: treat your ship well, and she'll take care of you. Of course, everyone knows they're just referring to basic reactor maintenance, equipment checks, and keeping the fuel injectors clear. Everyone knows that thinking the ship is actually alive is crazy. Right? Well, a certain Charon-class frigate and friends have something to say about that.

11. Chapter 10

"All hands brace for impact."

"Dammit—"

Sixteen nuclear spears detonated across Infinity's starboard shields. Sixteen out of an initial salvo of six hundred, a positively delightful mix of decoys, slipspace bombs, and fusion warheads. Infinity's point defenses successfully engaged the majority, leaving them as scraps of metal and puffs of quickly-cooling gas, but the few which got through sent a surge of energy through her enormous shield capacitors. The sudden spike in the absorption load brought her shields down to fifty percent, kinetic energy bleed-through sending a slight shudder through Infinity's frame. They were followed by three strike wings of Abyssal fighter-bombers bursting out of slipspace micro portals two thousand kilometers above the outermost destroyer and frigate pickets. Even as Smart AI-gestalt controlled point defense fire shredded their formation they dove and drove the attack home, releasing slipspace torpedoes at five hundred kilometers before pulling off and fighting their way back out of the defense screen. As they disappeared into the same micro-portals they'd come from, leaving over a hundred of their number behind, UNSC point defenses turned to engage the torpedoes, shooting down many, but the range was too short, the torpedoes too fast to prevent them from eviscerating a pair of light cruisers and biting sizeable chunks out of Infinity's hull.

Verdant's grass-green avatar didn't so much as flicker, even as the impact sent Garcia jerking forward against his crash restraints. "Quite alright, Captain?" she said.

Garcia waved her concern away, straightening his uniform out from under the restraints. "Squared away. Hell was that?"

"Sixteen anti-shipping nukes on the starboard shields, and a pair of torpedoes on the hull, sir."

"That many?" Imagining the energies involved made his mouth go dry.

"Out of six hundred, yes."

"Ah. Understandable." His mouth was a desert, but the immediate space around Infinity was a veritable sea of lasers, plasma lances, point-defense missiles, and hyper-accelerated metal slugs. Combined with the walls of fire being put up by her escorts and the rest of her battlegroup, precious little could even get close. Still, throw enough shit at the wall, and something will eventually stick, as another twelve bomb-pumped lasers did when their X-rays seared her shields down to a dangerously low fifteen percent. "Roland's doing a decent job, then, all things considered?"

"I'm loaning a bit of my attention span to the task." Verdant drew her diminutive self up and puffed out her chest a bit, a slight, proud smile quirking at her expression. "Ease up the load and all, since he's doing admiralty things along with running the ship. I think I've bagged five thousand or so so far."

"Well, don't get ahead of yourself." Garcia nodded to the jerry-rigged tactical display in the middle of the auxiliary utility room. A cloud of purple pinpricks surrounded Infinity, flickering in and out of existence, each speck representing a missile, a kinetic round, a particle lance, or a plasma bolt. "Shoot down one and—" Another blow struck home and the PA came online.

"Hull breach, Frame 89, starboard, Decks 54 to 56. Fire, fire, fire. Sealing bulkheads, damage control teams to location."

"—and another ten make themselves at home. Verdant—"

"Kinetic round," the AI automatically supplied. "Five-hundred tonner, vaporized when it hit the shields but the plasma jet still had enough punch to blow through to the armor belt. Shields are down locally, but Roland's redistributing absorption capacity to compensate. No critical systems damaged."

"Thank God for small blessings." Garcia sighed and switched the tactical display back to a system-wide view, then focused on the far side of Earth. "I just hope Dawn can pull her mission off. Otherwise…"

"…the outcome would be unideal, sir."

"Yeah. Not ideal."

---

Despite the Abyssal's grandiose declaration, Dawn felt quite good about her chances. This kind of fight wasn't anything new to her; the locale was a bit different, but the fundamentals remained the same. Just like with Amber, all she needed to do was beat the living tar out of this alien asshole, then bring whatever spirit the alien was wearing like a cheap suit back to its senses. That glaive looked pretty nasty, sure, and the Abbie probably had the skills to pay the bills, but guns versus melee? Come on. And who named themselves 'Light Cruiser Princess'? Delusional fools high on their own hype, that's who.

No reason to play to its strengths. Let's open up with ranged.

Dawn could sense the Spartans springing into motion around her, scattering to engage the Abyssal cannon fodder surrounding them even as her feet automatically slid into a combat stance. Tracers filled the air around her, machine guns, and assault rifles clashing with crystal and plasma rifles. Trusting her armor to protect her from stray shots, Dawn contributed to the pollution with an opening diversionary salvo of a dozen blind-fired Archer missiles. The missiles impacted all around the compartment, pummeling all the combatants with waves of overpressure and blasting massive gouts of debris and smoke into the air. Using the smoke as cover, Dawn threw a pair of grenades, rippled off a long burst of assault rifle fire, then tossed the weapon to the side and rolled to the side to avoid return fire as the rifle dissolved into speckles of light. She came up with her MAC ready and loaded. The Abyssal probably had her beat on skill, but with her equipment, Dawn reckoned she had the sheer firepower to carry the day. She brought the massive gun to bear, brought targeting systems online, and acquired a firing solution. "Got you now!" Dawn shouted, feeling the power surging through the MAC, and pulled the trigger—

Only for the shell to fly straight up, crashing into the vaulted ceiling high above. Massive chunks of rubble rained down and Dawn had to leap out of the way lest one particularly hefty slab of twisted metal crushed her flat. She barely had time to process what happened as the sharpened, gleaming edge of a sharpened, gleaming glaive sliced out of the smoke, scratching a thin line across her chest plate as she barely dodged to the left. "What in the world?" she muttered, before looking at the muzzle of her MAC. There was a small scratch there as if something sharp had hooked onto it and pulled it upwards. "No way," Dawn breathed before a mocking voice echoed out of the slowly-clearing haze.

"That was almost well done." As if being blown away by a fan, the smoke parted to reveal the Abyssal standing there, not a scratch on its armor or a blemish on its bodysuit, examining its fingernails. "Almost." Dawn tensed as it raised its weapon again, but instead of striking, it merely flicked the tip towards her. An instant later, some kind of invisible force or wave outwards in all directions. To Dawn, it was like a hurricane-force wind slammed into her, and she failed to maglock in time and was sent skidding backward several meters. The Spartans, making good progress against the Abyssal cannon fodder, were unprepared and staggered, saved only by the fact that their opponents were also bowled over. "But you should understand one thing. This ship," the Abbie said, gesturing around itself, "is my domain, and here, I am inviolate."

Okay. Too fast to engage with current heavy ranged options. Let's switch it up.

"Yeah, well, piss on that!" Dawn shot back, sprinting forward as she called a pair of SMGs into her hands. The guns had barely finished materializing when she pulled the triggers, spraying 7-millimeter AP rounds towards the Abbie who merely stood and let the bullets glance off of its body. However, that was merely the opener, as the point defense guns along her arms opened up as well. This time around the heavier shells forced the alien to move, widening its stance and twirling its glaive with inhuman speed to deflect the incoming hail of high-explosive rounds. Tiny explosions blossomed in front of it as shells either ricocheted or detonated against its improvised shield, but the Abyssal seemed hardly strained by the effort of defending against them.

Just as well that the barrage was never intended to do any real damage. Discarding her SMGs as they clicked empty, Dawn crossed the last few meters with the help of a quick boost from her thrusters. Brilliant white fusion exhaust leaving a literal trail of fire on the deck behind her, she got inside the Abyssal's guard before it could change out of its defensive stance. Practically face-to-face with her opponent, too close for it to retaliate with its long-shafted weapon, Dawn summoned a combat knife and slashed it upwards with an inarticulate shout, aiming to fillet the Abyssal from its sternum to between its eyes. It would have worked, too, had the alien not leaned back by bare centimeters, leaving the knife to cut nothing but air. Not to be deterred, Dawn used the upwards momentum to spin around and plant a boot in the Abyssal's chest, kicking it back half a meter, followed by landing in a crouch and coming up with a rocket launcher on her shoulder.

"Open wide!"

The first rocket made it nowhere close, as the Abyssal's glaive shot out and cut it in half in midair. Good thing, then, that the M41 SPNKR held two rockets, and the second one struck home in a brilliant fireball. That bought her a moment's respite, enough to shove another shell into her MAC, but no more. The capacitors had barely begun charging when the Abyssal lunged out of the smoke, face a twisted snarl, weapon a whirling storm of sharp edges and pointy bits that Dawn's knife couldn't even begin to hope to match. The shipgirl threw up her arms in front of her face, grimacing as the blade cut deep gashes straight through her armor and into the squishy meat lying underneath. Hunkered behind her guard, she was caught off guard by the sudden spike of pain that lanced through her shoulder. This asshole actually stabbed her!

Shouting in pain, Dawn wrenched free of the blade embedded in her deltoid, tearing away a chunk of flesh in the process. Her good hand went up to clutch at the wound, attempting to staunch the flow of bright red blood alongside her engineers' best efforts at patching the damage. A wave of wooziness came over her at the sight and sensation of her lifeblood so freely spilling out of herself, and in her momentary weakness she couldn't do much but hold up a hand as the Abyssal swung its weapon straight for her throat.

A burst of assault rifle fire came out of nowhere and struck the Abyssal in its head, throwing its attack off track so that it merely cut a thin line across Dawn's palm. By the time it brought its glaive back up for another attack, Dawn's engineers had managed to get a patch on the bleeding and dump a dose of stimulants and analgesics into her system. The burst of energy and the numbing effect they provided gave Dawn just enough strength to deflect the strike off the back of her knife, provoking a frustrated cry from the Abyssal. In frustration, it whirled to the right, towards the source of the rifle fire.

"Dawn, sitrep." Blanc and another Spartan had broken free of their melee and were advancing on the Abyssal, rifles tapping out a steady staccato beat as they approached from two sides. Behind them, their teammates continued to engage the Abyssal reinforcements in ferocious hand to hand combat, preventing either side from interfering. "Can you fight?"

"Yeah, I'm good!" she said, gasping as the pain of her wound managed to cut through the analgesic drugs. "Give me— a second—"

"You'll have a few." As one, the two Spartans blurred into action, charging the last few meters between themselves and the Abyssal. It met them move for move, the two superhumans and one inhuman exchanging blows at a rate that Dawn's enhanced vision could barely follow. Despite that, she could tell that the combat was occurring on a level of skill far, far beyond what she could muster. The Spartans' every punch was measured, every kick carefully considered, planned, and executed within milliseconds to hit exactly the right points to cripple their opponent in the most efficient manner possible, only to be countered by a block or a deflection that left them open for an attack to their own critical points, attacks they in turn effortlessly turned aside in a mesmerizing dance of violence. Working together, the super soldiers pressured the Abyssal, preventing it from opening up the distance needed to use its weapon, wordlessly coordinating with each other to cover weak points and exploit openings. Dawn knew for sure that she would have fallen under such an assault, yet amazingly the Abyssal took on both without obvious signs of stress, expression showing more annoyance than anything else. And still, the Spartans fought on without hesitation, buying time for Dawn to recover. Despite the chaos around her, it warmed her heart a little to think that maybe, just maybe, she was becoming part of the team.

Feeling much better, Dawn summoned a magnum into one hand, a bandolier filled with assault rifle magazines into the other, then yelled "Switch!" The Spartans instantly disengaged, falling back while spraying the Abyssal with their rifles. Dawn charged in to cover them, emptying the magnum at the alien's head while hurling the bandolier towards Blanc. "Ammo here!" The Spartan snatched the bandolier out of the air, nodded his thanks, and then plunged back into the melee alongside the rest of his team as if no interruption had ever taken place. The Abyssal made to follow, but its attention shifted when Dawn chucked a combat knife straight at its Abbie's ugly face, followed by a pair of shotgun blasts to knock aside its guard as she cycled through her arsenal as fast as possible, pulling and discarding weapons like cheap toys. The Abyssal stumbled from the powerful blasts, but as Dawn lunged in it held its hand up in a palm-out gesture. Her eyes widened and she shouted, "Brace!"

"That is far enough!"

With her timely warning, the Spartans were able to maglock and weather the pressure wave that blasted outwards once more, remaining on their feet and using the temporary incapacity of their opponents to quickly reap a bloody toll of alien grunts. The wave still knocked Dawn's gun out of her hands and pushed her back three meters, and the Abyssal seemed wholly unconcerned about the fate of its underlings. With a snap of its fingers, another set of portals opened, spilling a fresh batch of cannon fodder into the room, eager to get into a scrap with the Spartans. The super soldiers instantly engaged in a whirlwind of efficient brutality, but the net effect was to keep them bogged down, shooting and slashing their way through a never-ending stream of Abyssal troops that posed enough of a threat that they couldn't be safely ignored in favor of beating down their master. Of course, that meant they couldn't come to Dawn's aid, either.

It's able to control engagement distance and summon reinforcements at will. With warning, I can brace against distance control. Reinforcements are no problem as long as the Spartans can take care of the peons.

"What, I thought you were better than us humans?" Dawn said, injecting a mocking lilt into her voice as she tried not to wince from her cuts. "Come on, quit it with the magic tricks and fight us all at the same time! If you're so superior, it shouldn't be a problem, yeah?"

"The only thing weaker than your taunts is you." The Abyssal advanced slowly, twirling its glaive. The sounds of battle came from all around, automatic gunfire interspersed with grenade blasts, the crunching of bones, and the sound of metal on metal, but the alien only had eyes for her, and Dawn found she could not look away from its piercing gaze. "Arrogance has seen the death of empires — it will not see the end of me."

"Self-awareness, thou art truly the rarest of virtues," Dawn muttered, then chanced to open a comms channel. "Blanc, sitrep."

"Green," came Blanc's curt voice, even as he pummeled an alien soldier into the ground then turned around and blew another one away before it could plunge a bayonet into his back. "We'll keep these things off your back. Worry about yourself."

"Roger." Dawn turned her attention back to the Abyssal. It had stopped its advance, but something seemed… off about it. It stood stock still, arms slightly outstretched, head tilted back. Sensing an opportunity, Dawn knelt and aimed with her MAC, but something stayed her trigger finger. Something wasn't right, something sitting one step to the left of her current plane of reality. Just like during her fight with the Abyssal possessing Amber, Dawn closed her eyes and willed her vision to drop, just below the surface, to see the currents of energy and power which churned just out of sight. When she opened them, her fears were confirmed — just like Abyssal-Amber, her current super-powered opponent was drawing in streams of eldritch energy from the structure of the ship around it, healing its scant injuries and replenishing its strength. Even its minions, as the Spartans pulverized them, were giving up their life force unto it. And if her experiences were any indication, that meant… "Shit. Shit shit shit." Slightly panicking, Dawn quickly made to fire her main battery but found herself frozen.

"You gave me a bit of a challenge, I will admit that much." That sensation of a spider running down her spine was back, but this time magnified by about a thousand times and combined with the feeling of an icy tentacle worming itself into her brain. Dawn couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Her fingers fell slack, dropping from her MAC controls, and she fell to her knees with a thud as the Abyssal wrapped a freezing, choking aura around her. She tried to call for help, only to find her comms officer unresponsive, collapsed across his console, and twitching in a stupor. She tried to run, only to find her propulsion dead and reactor cold, blazing fusion fires impossibly snuffed out like someone might blow out a candle. As cold suffused her limbs, out of her peripheral vision she saw a Spartan slashing a knife across the throat of an Abyssal tumbling out of a new set of portals, and wondered why her allies seemed unaffected. The answer came haltingly, struggling to the front of her rapidly fogging brain — the Abyssal must be focusing all of its power on her, and her alone. The alien confirmed her hypothesis a moment later, saying, as it flicked the sharp tip of its weapon across Dawn's cheek, "Be proud. You are the first to experience the full extent of my capabilities."

A line of blood bubbled up from the thin cut left by the Abyssal's weapon. Dawn gritted her teeth and forced her muscles to move through sheer force of will, moving the only part of her body that would respond to extend a middle finger towards the alien. "… burn… in…hell."

"A formidable opponent deserves an honest effort," the Abyssal said as if Dawn hadn't spoken at all. "To do otherwise would be… arrogant." It gazed down at the kneeling shipgirl, a malevolent gleam in its eyes. "However, that does not preclude having a bit of… fun. Oh, yes, breaking you will be fun indeed."

The alien's hand shot out and wrapped around Dawn's neck, heaving her into the air. Her internal air supplies instantly kicked in, preventing her from asphyxiating, but the crushing sensation around her trachea still sent her human body into a fight-or-flight overdrive. Cursing her newfound fleshy frailties, the shipgirl thrashed weakly, clawing at the hand doing its level best to throttle the life out of her, weapons forgotten in an instinctual bid to free herself of her assailant. Then, suddenly, the pressure was gone, but in exchange Dawn found herself flying across the breadth of the compartment, slamming into the far wall with an impact that knocked her insensate for a good few seconds. As she twitched feebly on the ground, she dimly registered that the HAVOK warhead on her stomach had been knocked loose and was rolling around a few meters away from her.

That was hardly her largest concern, though. She suddenly realized, all too well, that the Abyssal hadn't been exaggerating by calling this ship its domain. She might as well have walked into a hungry lion's den without any armor or weapons, slathered in barbecue sauce. She was a mere plaything for the alien, and Dawn couldn't tell how much of that line of thinking was a product of her brain and how much was due to that damned alien's insidious aura winding its way through the air, around her limbs, and into her very mind. The difference was academic, however; as Dawn struggled to her feet and summoned an assault rifle into her hands, she saw the Abyssal slowly making its way towards her, twirling its glaive like a walking stick, completely heedless of its minions battling the Spartans behind itself, a sick smile on its expression. Dawn could only muster one, muttered word.

"Fuck."

---

"Amber, what I'm about to say is going to sound fantastic, impossible, insane. I'm well aware, but please, please, take it at face value for now, okay?"

"I… um… hold one second, over." Amber muted her mic, took a deep breath through her nose, and counted to ten before exhaling through her mouth. A feeling of being completely overwhelmed, growing and twisting deep within her gut, didn't go away, not completely, but subsided to the point where Amber could step back and take an account of her quickly changing situation. Not five minutes ago, she'd been exhausted, demoralized, not quite ready to give up but on the verge of getting there. She had several battleships on her ass and a flying eyesore of a rock that outmassed a Covie supercarrier taking lazy potshots at her as it advanced inexorably on Earth, effortlessly tanking the efforts of an entire UNSC carrier battlegroup to stop it. The only reason why it hadn't completely broken their lines yet was down to her efforts at drawing off its supporting forces, and even then Amber knew she couldn't do so forever.

Now, the entire situation was turned on its head. The Abyssal Z-class had stopped its advance, stopped targeting her, even stopped firing on the fleet, and was now just sort of… hanging out in space. The escort flotilla around it broke off their attacks and coalesced into a defensive sphere, its ships responding to long-range probing fire from Battlegroup Yamato but not launching any attacks of their own accord. For the first time in what felt like hours, Amber could breathe… and then this, this person who claimed to be Pillar of Autumn, contacting her from within the enemy ship, apparently?

Baffled at this sudden new twist in the pile of twists that was her life now, Amber keyed her mic once more. "How do I know you're really Pillar of Autumn — wait, wait." This wasn't something she could just go haring off on her own with. "I need to patch in my CO. Stand by, over." Holding the first channel open, she opened a second line, bouncing her tightbeam transmission through a series of comm satellites before landing it on Infinity. "Captain Garcia, this is In Amber Clad, do you read, over?" Please pick up. Please pick up. Please pick up—

After a few nerve-wracking moments of silence, during which she nearly convinced herself that her command had deserted her, Captain Garcia was just a figment of her imagination, that she was on her own, her comms crackled with a reply. "In Amber Clad, this is Garcia, good to hear from you. Send traffic, over."

Relief flooded through Amber. "Captain, I've been contacted by an unverified operator claiming to be the spirit of the cruiser Pillar of Autumn, offering intelligence on the Z-class. Requesting assistance in verifying identity and interpreting intelligence, over."

With what Amber thought to be remarkable aplomb, Garcia replied, "Pillar of Autumn. Right. Copy all, standby, I'm patching in Admiral Lasky." In the brief wait, Amber nervously checked her battlespace scans, trying to suppress some lingering apprehension that came with the Admiral's name. He meant well, she knew that, and was only acting with an abundance of caution, but first impressions were a powerful thing. When an angry scowling face was one of the first things she beheld upon waking up from what felt like a years-long coma, the name attached to that face tended to have a few strong emotions hanging around it.

"In Amber Clad, this is Admiral Lasky. Report, over." Lasky's voice still had a hint of hostility in it, but Amber thought she might have picked up a hint of respect in it. Maybe her efforts were winning the admiral over? In any case, she quickly filled him in on what was happening in her corner of the Solar System, shooting nervous glances at the Z-class the entire time. The damned thing still wasn't moving, escorts still maintaining a static formation, and don't misunderstand — she was grateful for the respite, but the sudden switch to a defensive posture left her with the distinct feeling that this was a trap. She wondered how Dawn was doing inside the alien ship. Surely the Charon-class had to have made some progress, maybe even planted the charges, but Pillar of Autumn claimed she was getting her ass kicked?

The admiral was silent for a couple of seconds, during which Amber could hear indistinct murmurs ghosting through the line — likely the CIC staff chattering around him. "I see. Captain Garcia, are you in direct contact with this individual, over?"

"Negative, sir. At the moment, contact has only been established through In Amber Clad. Recommend deferring to her for information, over."

"Copy. In Amber Clad, are you in direct contact with this individual, over?"

"Y-yes sir, over."

"Put me through to them," he ordered. Amber did just that, and the admiral then said, "This is Admiral Lasky to the individual claiming to be Pillar of Autumn. Are you receiving me, over?"

The mysterious voice came back, seemingly unbothered by the wait. "My pleasure, sir. Are you a friend of Amber's, hm~?"

A beat. "I am In Amber Clad's superior. In the future, say 'over' when you are done with your transmission. Can you provide proof of your identity, over?"

A sigh. "I… admit I do not I have hard proof. But!" The voice took on a hint of desperation. "I'm your best chance at killing this bloated waste of alien metal, and you're my best chance off of it. Is there any way at all I can convince you?"

"…there may be a way." The next words out of Lasky's mouth sounded like they were being forced through gritted teeth. "Under the authorization of Article 52, Section 9, classified information may or may not be revealed during this communication due to extraordinary circumstances. None of what I am about to say will leave this channel. Penalties for violating this order may include capital punishment. Is that clear?" Various forms of 'roger' and 'understood' came from all around. "Good—"

A sudden burst of static cut through the line, blanking out both Garcia and Lasky. "Captain?!" Amber said in alarm, quickly cutting over to a battlespace-wide display to figure out what had happened.

"Nothing to worry about," came Garcia's voice, sounding slightly shaken but no worse for the wear. "Infinity ate some nukes on the shields near the comm array. Nothing to worry about."

"The ship will be fine," Lasky said, "but the fleet might not be soon. Abbies pivoted a third of their forces to meet my own — CruDiv 8, fall back. FrigDiv 2, 10, move up to cover — so let's make this snappy. Unknown individual, answer the following questions. A clinically deceased individual was brought onboard the Pillar of Autumn in hopes of later resuscitation shortly before she escaped from Reach. Identify them, over."

The voice's answer came without a hint of hesitation. "Sierra-058, I believe."

"The Pillar of Autumn was tasked with a certain operation shortly before the Fall of Reach. Name and describe the purpose of this operation, over."

"Operation RED FLAG. I was facilitating the boarding and capture of a Covenant capital ship, to use it to infiltrate the Covenant capital of High Charity to capture a Covenant Prophet and force a negotiated truce."

"Provide the coordinates that the Pillar of Autumn jumped to following the Fall of Reach, over."

The voice rattled off a long string of alphanumerics and higher-dimensional slipspace vector matrices. Lasky followed up with several more questions, each more obscure and baffling, ranging from minute technical details to one-time pad encoded messages to classified missions, each answered quickly and with utter certainty. Amber knew that Pillar of Autumn had had a fairly extensive career, but it was obvious that her knowledge of the cruiser's record hadn't even begun to scratch the surface. Based on Garcia's surprised murmurs, it seemed that those records hadn't been completely unsealed, even to this day in the future.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity but was in reality perhaps only three minutes or so of nonstop questioning, Lasky seemed satisfied. "I appreciate your cooperation," he said, before addressing the other two participants in the call. "This individual has shown themselves to be in the possession of classified information regarding the Pillar of Autumn available only to UNSC general- and admiralty-grade officers. This would indicate they have either gained access to secure UNSC archives or have knowledge that only a person with intimate knowledge of the Pillar of Autumn would have. In light of their claim to be the spirit of the Pillar of Autumn, Captain Garcia, as an officer with experience handling ship spirit affairs, I'd like your input on whether or not they should be trusted, over."

Why are you so openminded towards her and not me?! Amber felt like screaming but swallowed her tongue. This… person, after all, even if they were transmitting from inside an Abyssal ship, they had taken the initiative to contact the UNSC and seemed to be working against the Abyssals. Unlike herself, who'd quite literally morphed out of the body of the Abyssal commander leading the attack on Reach.

"My input, sir?" Garcia seemed rather surprised to be asked. He hummed for a second in thought before saying, "Well, I've no objections to hearing them out. I've never heard of the Abbies employing false intel lures or double agents such as this. It'd be kind of odd for them to pull that kind of move now, when they're, frankly, winning. However, I think it'd be best to get In Amber Clad's thoughts as well, sir, over."

Amber was equal parts surprised and grateful that Garcia seemed to value her opinion. Lasky sounded surprised as well, though in a slightly less positive manner. "In Amber Clad? I admit she has been a useful and dependable asset thus far, but…"

"Sir," Garcia said, with an undercurrent of steel in his tone, "by nature of her existence, at the moment there's no one with more experience in ship spirit affairs than In Amber Clad, excepting Forward Unto Dawn who's currently indisposed. In my opinion, we should pursue this lead, but if the value of my opinion is based on my experience then I think it only fair that In Amber Clad be given a chance, over."

"Point taken. In Amber Clad. Your opinion, over?"

"One moment, please." Amber closed her eyes and put her mainframes to work analyzing all the information at her disposal. On one hand, there was still no physical evidence positively identifying this individual as Pillar of Autumn. Amber had never physically laid eyes on them or spoken to them in person. Voices could be artificially generated, and even secure databases could be hacked. This could all very easily be an elaborate trap.

On the other hand, what would be the point of such a trap? Sure, with Admiral Lasky's timely reinforcements and her efforts in providing a distraction, the Abyssals had been slowed, but the numbers favored the aliens. Attrition would give them a victory eventually. Amber couldn't see a point in such a trap, other than to reduce casualties on the Abyssal side, and the aliens didn't strike Amber as particularly casualty-averse, feeding frigates and destroyers by the dozen into the teeth of the UNSC meat grinder to shield thrusts by battleships and cruisers.

Besides, Dawn had only come to the attention of the UNSC, what, a week ago? Two, tops? The Abbies knew of shipgirls long before — they'd captured Amber and forced her to be a meatsuit for one of their commanders, after all — but they would have no reason to think the UNSC knew of shipgirls as well. And if that was the case, why would they have bothered hacking secure UNSC databases only to steal information on a cruiser long-destroyed, information that would only be relevant if shipgirls were known to the UNSC and the Abbies were seeking to masquerade as one? They might have gained that information in the past two weeks, sure, but that struck Amber as unlikely.

Finally, beyond logic and reasoning, Amber just had this intuitive niggling at the back of her head that yes, this person claiming to be Pillar of Autumn could be trusted. It wasn't rational, hell, it may have been the Abbies working some sort of weird mind-magic voodoo on her. But there was something about the voice that couldn't be replicated or artificially generated, something that told her this person is just like you. On some level, she just knew that yes, this person is someone you could fight side-by-side with, in service of humanity.

Plus, she knew how much it hurt to be doubted.

With the help of her computers and crew members, the entire process took less than two seconds. Amber's voice was as steady as she could make it when she said, "Yes. I trust her claims, sir. I… I'm willing to take responsibility for that, sir. Over."

"Understood. Captain Garcia, hear what this individual has to say and figure out a plan to kill that damned dreadnought. Inform me when you're done, over."

"Understood sir."

Lasky disconnected, presumably to attend to inconsequential matters such as making sure his ships weren't shot out from under him. Amber opened her mouth to try and thank Garcia for standing up for her. "Captain, t-thank you for—"

"Thank me later, once we actually manage to blow this thing up," he said, interrupting her but not unkindly. "Pillar of Autumn, you said you had intelligence? Spill."

"Finally! I'm not that untrustworthy, am I?" the unseen voice said, breaking its silence before laughing, a light, airy, yet sincere sound. Amber, acutely aware of time slipping by, failed to find any humor in the last statement, as did Garcia. "Ahem. So!" came the unseen voice, breaking its temporary silence. "You'll be wanting to know how to kill this thing, hm~? Cutting a very long explanation short: you're trying to shoot it? With like guns, and stuff? Not gonna work."

"We've noticed," the captain replied, biting off his words with impatience. "Anything new we can work with?"

"Good things come to those who wait!" the voice said, sounding like a mother scolding a fidgeting child. "Bear in mind, these are the few scraps I've managed to suss out on my own, being a prisoner in my own mind and all that nonsense." Garcia made a noise like he had many questions about that last statement — to be fair, Amber did as well. "Not relevant right now! Hm, oh dear, how to put this… uh-huh. This angry alien rock you're trying to kill, it's a, come on, what'd they call it? Yes, a crystallized conceptual construct, I also heard some nonsense like neural physics or precursors or some gibberish like that mentioned — basically, a solid idea. You're not going to kill it through standard methods."

"What?!"

"'A solid idea', what in the actual—ohhhh." Garcia cut himself off with a noise not unlike a schoolchild having a mathematical concept laid out clearly before themselves.

"Sir?! You-you actually understand what she's talking about?"

"Considering I've seen and spoken to the spirit of the Forward Unto Dawn in the form of a human being, seen her pull assault rifles and rocket launchers out of thin air and a prayer, summon what amounts to a goddamned mecha out of the same and then tear new holes through a dozen Abbie warships? This isn't so farfetched. I mean, you're a ship-girl-spirit-whatever yourself, aren't you? Where does your equipment come from, anyway?"

"What? I mean-I haven't really thought-it was kind of unintentional?" The hole in her chest left by the ONI agent's bullet twinged, though it was long healed over with nary a scar left in place. "Um, when I'm loading the MAC, I kind of just… visualize, I guess is the best word? I visualize a MAC round, think about its shape, its color, its weight, its composition, and then it just appears."

"There, see? You think about something and then, defying all logic, reason, and laws of physics, your thoughts become reality. It shouldn't be possible, but I'm not about to reject the evidence of my eyes and ears." Garcia was growing more excited by the minute. "If we apply the same concept on a much, much larger scale, then—"

Another laugh floated over the channel, light and warm. "Oh, I like this one! Exactly as you say. Amber — can I call you Amber? — you too are a conceptual construct. What are souls but the distilled essence, the idea of someone or something, after all?" As Amber reeled from that revelation, Autumn continued, "If you're lost, think of it like this: ideas affect reality. Every gun ever fired, every ship ever built, every brutal murder, every act of charity, every inspirational speech, they all started as an idea, no matter how fleeting, depraved, or impulsive. Even a murder of passion, committed in the heat of the moment, is the idea 'I want to hurt this person' made physical. Now, stretch that concept. Imagine an idea so powerful, so compelling, so deeply ingrained in the fabric of so many beings that the universe decides that it must exist."

"Like the universe is some… a living thing that can be persuaded into taking a certain form?"

"You know what, I never thought of it that way! But I suppose so, that's a clever analogy, hm~? As far as I've been able to gather, that's what the Abyssals are; a cancerous idea forcing itself upon reality."

It all sounded so impossible. But then again, wasn't Amber, herself, an impossibility? Rather hypocritical to uncritically accept the existence of one impossibility while dismissing the existence of another. If a soul could take physical form, then why couldn't an idea? After all, as Autumn said, wasn't a soul kind of like an idea, in a sense? "Alright. And you're saying this is why the fleet can't hurt it?"

"Well, experiences may vary, but I've never won an argument by shooting the other person — unless, of course, they shot me first, but let's not go there! Poor form and it makes the audience rather less sympathetic to your ideas. You have to kill ideas with other ideas. And I wouldn't say can't hurt it. Even a bullet originated from the idea 'I will create something that will be used to harm another thing from a distance.' Thus, the manufacturing process of a bullet, the act of firing it, all impart a very, very trace amount of… call it 'conceptual power' to it."

"But not enough."

"Not nearly enough."

Amber found herself at a loss for words. In a bid to collect her thoughts, she turned her attention back to the battlefield, catching herself up on the tactical developments of the last fifteen or so minutes. On the far side of Earth, the Home Fleet was still being hard pressed. The flanks of the battleline, facing attacks from multiple angles, had fallen back in good order towards the center. Infinity and the rest of Lasky's ships were covering their withdrawal, fencing with the Abyssal fleet at hundred-thousand kilometer-plus ranges, only closing to close range to envelop and destroy isolated picket groups with overwhelming force. Their attacks diverted enough pressure to allow Lord Hood to consolidate a new, tighter formation, but in the process, the Abyssals had pushed forward their line and inflicted heavy losses. The Home Fleet was down to maybe eight hundred ships, most of them destroyers, frigates, and light cruisers. Just over a hundred heavy cruisers, even fewer battleships and carriers, and even with Lasky's reinforcements, the attrition train had no brakes and only one destination.

Tearing her eyes away from that depressing sight, Amber focused on her side of the planet. Battlegroup Yamato had not been sitting idle. Admiral Rodriguez split his battlegroup into several smaller groups to avoid the entire formation being destroyed at once by the Z-class' main gun-slash-weapon-slash-delete button o'doom. Each smaller formation was keeping up a steady, if slow rate of fire, constantly cycling around so that Abbie was not focused on any one group for very long. Two destroyer divisions and a frigate division, emboldened by the enemy's lack of action, launched an attack on one of the outlying Abyssal cruiser divisions, supported by a wing of fighters launched from Yamato. Enduring and evading withering main and secondary battery fire, they pressed the attack home, closing from above while the fighters attacked from below. Defensive focus split by the simultaneous attacks, one of the cruisers was left in flaming ruins while the UNSC ships beat a hasty retreat, battleship fire licking after them as the Abyssal core moved to respond. One UNSC frigate, the Eruption, was just a fraction too slow, and a salvo of energy projector beams crossed two hundred thousand kilometers and blew her to bits while point defense fire erased thirty drones and two Rapier fighters from existence. Through it all, the dreadnought sat impassive, contributing nothing to the fight beyond desultory bursts of point defense fire but taking no substantial damage in return.

Amber ground her teeth at the damned thing's intransigence, and at Admiral Rodriguez's inability to harm the thing. He was only being careful, she knew, and there wasn't much else he could do except conserve his forces and hope Dawn could destroy the thing from the inside, but it rankled her all the same. The whole situation reminded her too much of the War, her War, and the helplessness she'd felt in the face of the unstoppable Covenant war machine.

Unconsciously, her fingers tightened on the grip of her MAC. No. If there was the slightest chance that this… Pillar of Autumn could help, then she had a duty to listen.

"Alright. Leaving aside how you learned this, and assuming it's true," Garcia interjected, "Then what's your plan? How do we kill an idea?"

"Well…" Amber was struck to hear a note of trepidation enter Autumn's voice. "…you might not like it, but here it is…"

---

"Agh!"

A cry of pain wrenched itself free from Dawn's throat as she crashed into the floor for the umpteenth time. She had the presence of mind to roll left, getting out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed by a slab of metal that slammed down from high above, hitting the ground hard enough to make the sturdy deck plating quake. Dust choked the air and flooded her lungs, forcing her to hack and cough as her ventilation systems worked overtime to scrub her insides free of particulate matter. A proximity alarm blared and she dove for cover, just in time to avoid having her skull skewered by a twisted, melted bar of metal that streaked by just above her head, glowing white from air friction.

"Why are you running?" called the Abyssal. Squinting through the dust, Dawn saw it reaching out its hand for another attack and cursed in dismay. She hadn't even recovered from the last one! Surely using its powers so quickly in succession counted as some kind of cheating? "What happened to your bravado? Show me that spirit, that fire!"

Bitch, you're insane! Dawn scrambled to her feet, abused muscles protesting at the demands placed upon them. "Oh, I still got it," she said, sliding back into a ready stance, "why don't you come over here for a taste?" The only response she received was the Abyssal blasting her with another pressure wave before lunging with its glaive, letting out a gleeful laugh as it stabbed and slashed.

Weathering the initial overpressure, Dawn met the alien's charge with the barrel of a shotgun. Pumping the slide as fast as she could, she put three rounds of buckshot downrange in the space of a second, firing as fast as the weapon could physically tolerate. Enough buckshot to put down a raging Brute made little impression on the Abyssal but did kill its momentum enough for Dawn to pull out her next weapon. A gravity hammer shimmered into being, one of the several captured Covie weapons left in her armory before her first death. Hefting the Brute-sized weapon, Dawn swung it overhead and slammed it into the ground, a highly telegraphed move that the Abyssal saw coming from a mile away but was unable to exploit due to the vortex of chaotic gravitational energy formed at the point of impact.

"Are you already so desperate as to use your enemy's weapons? We have barely even started!"

"Shut up!" Dawn screamed, pivoting a full 360 degrees around one foot to drag the hammer into a vicious rising swing. Despite its taunts, it seemed the Abbie wasn't eager to try out its weapon's durability versus the gigantic mace, as it jumped back without even an attempt at blocking. "You don't know shit!" Pointing the head of the hammer at the enemy, Dawn did something she remembered seeing Brutes doing several times; she triggered the weapon's ranged function, creating a gravity vortex that shoved the Abyssal away several meters. "Always wondered how that worked," she said to herself, before using the distance gained to unleash a barrage of point defense fire.

Her attacks didn't stop there. Under cover of the barrage, Dawn fished several landmines and caltrops out of her bag of holding and scattered them in a wide arc in front of herself, followed by lobbing a trio of flash grenades in a high arc. As the barrage died down, she hopped back and took a knee to ready her MAC. As Dawn predicted, her opponent charged out of the smoke and directly into the minefield, right as the flash grenades went off in its face. Vision automatically polarizing against the glare, Dawn quickly acquired a targeting solution, and as the shock of a few dozen explosions going off beneath its feet staggered the alien, she fired.

The overpressure wave the shell produced was bad enough, like the feeling of getting punched full-force in the kidneys by a champion boxer except it was everywhere on her body. The sound was almost even worse. The thunderclap made by as it left the barrel felt like someone had fired a howitzer inside Dawn's ear canals. She staggered as if the sound had struck her a physical blow, clutching at her ears, her world spinning like she was bouncing around inside a washing machine. Her inertial navigation systems quickly reasserted cold, mechanical order on her human physiology, but her palms came away bloody from her ears and her hearing was strangely muffled. Blew my eardrums out, Dawn realized drunkenly and tasked some of her overworked damage control parties to get to work on that, but she decided that it was worth it after taking a look at her opponent.

The MAC shell had done what shotguns and rocket launchers couldn't and driven the Abyssal to its knees. Two-thirds of its body blown away into a bloody mist, half its head gone, nobody, no alien or human, could survive those injuries. That it hadn't vaporized on impact was nothing short of a miracle yet somehow, incredibly, its one remaining eye remained open and lucid, fixing Dawn with a baleful glare. Dawn could hardly believe that thing was still conscious, even after all that! She shuddered to imagine the curses it might have spewed if its mouth had still existed. An eerie blue fire flickered in the gaps where its body had once been, and Dawn saw, much to her dismay, that just like her first encounter with an Abyssal commander, this one was already regenerating its injuries. The ethereal energies flowing from its surroundings were healing it fast enough so that it was only a matter of minutes before it was back on its feet. Hopefully, that was enough time to regroup with the Spartans and figure out a plan.

"Dawn!"

Speak of the devil. Still swaying on her feet, Dawn turned to see the Spartans jogging up behind her, Blanc in the lead. Behind them was a floor carpeted with Abyssal bodies, a few feebly twitching, most completely still. The flow of Abbie reinforcements seemed to have stopped for the time being. Their armor was bloodstained, their ammunition spent, but overall they seemed no worse for the wear. "Dancer, secure the primary," Blanc said as he approached. Four Spartans broke away and established a guard around the crippled Abyssal, which turned its wrathful glare on each of them in turn. Operating on pure autopilot, Dawn began summoning ammunition from her armory to resupply the supersoldiers, but Blanc stopped her by grabbing hold of her shoulders. "Focus on me," he said, steadying her until she regained some manner of poise. "Status report."

Do I look that bad? Gotta stop this before it becomes a habit. At least it's mostly self-inflicted this time around.

The Spartan's words triggered some strand of discipline remaining in her screaming muscles and shot nerves. Drawing on some heretofore unknown reserve of strength, Dawn drew herself up and snapped off a hasty report, falling back on more clinical language to disguise her exhaustion. "Primary hostile temporarily neutralized. Will be active again soon. Recommend setting nukes and exfiltrating."

Blanc cast a quick, startled look at the Abyssal, who returned his look with one that said if it weren't for the fact I didn't have half my limbs, you'd be dead three times over. To his credit, he didn't seem put-off in the slightest, though the slight tilt of his helmet signaled that he was having a little trouble believing his eyes. To be fair, Dawn had to admit that it looked very dead, but couldn't hold back a sudden wave of frustration at the Spartan's doubt. Hadn't they seen her combat recordings? "How long before it's active?"

"No idea. Minutes?" she said with a snarl. "Just look through my combat records, they should be available back on Infinity. I've seen them regenerate from similar injuries."

"Damn." Blanc signaled to the Spartans guarding the Abyssal. As one they opened fire, three rifles and one rocket launcher pummeling the alien with almost thirty seconds of sustained fire until smoke-shrouded its form. There were no signs of activity from within the cloud and Dawn almost dared to hope that the plan had worked, but the smoke soon cleared to reveal the Abbie, still kneeling there, not a single additional scratch to be found on its body. Blanc cursed and shouldered his rifle. "Again. Everyone this time," he ordered, and once again bullets, grenades, and rockets did their level best to turn the Abyssal into a stain on the floor. Even Dawn got in on the action, sending a burst of PDC fire downrange, but in her heart, she knew the result wouldn't change and reality soon proved her right. "Four, put satchel charges—"

"Wait! We're not going to kill it like that," Dawn said. She took a calming breath, closed her eyes, found that little mental trigger buried deep in her subconscious, and like a scanner going from visible light to infrared she could once again see the energies flowing from the structure of the ship surrounding them into the Abyssal's body. A small portion of that flow had shifted, from going directly into the Abbie to forming a translucent, pale green shield around it, reminiscent of a MJOLNIR suit's armor lock function and likely just as durable. The energy diversion seemed to slow down its regeneration rate, but only just. "It's formed a barrier around itself. I don't know if even I could break it directly. We need to destroy its energy source or it's going to keep blocking our fire and healing itself. And the energy source is…"

"… the ship itself," Blanc said. "And the only way we have to do that is…"

"Nuke it." Dawn sighed and gestured to herself. "Seeing as how I'm a fucking idiot, I lost my warhead during the fight and I have no idea where it is right now. I'll look for it, but in the meantime, you all set your charges, got it?"

"Roger." As the Spartans placed their nukes, siting them in a tight cluster in a small alcove, Dawn scoured the space to find her charge, stepping over the bodies of Abyssal soldiers keeping a wary eye on the alien commander the entire time. She remembered having it up until some point during the fight, but now it seemed to have up and disappeared into the ether. Why, oh why was there not a homing beacon on the thing? There were worse places to lose a nuke, she supposed. "Any luck?"

"Nada," she said, on her hands and knees and poking around underneath an outcropping. The reactor plant on her back made it a bit difficult to sustain the position but she somehow managed, to no avail as her search came up empty-handed. "Well, I guess it'll just get blown up with the rest of this place. Let's go home, what do y'all say?"

"What if it regenerates before we make it out of the ship?" another Spartan said, one hand cradling her side. The MJOLNIR plating in that area seemed a little crumpled. Dawn wondered which Abyssal sonuvabitch currently dead on the ground used up their luck getting that lucky hit in. "It might disarm the charges before we can get out and blow them."

There was a round of disappointed noises with the general sentiment of Fuck, that's a good point. "I'll stay and make sure they go off," Dawn said, prompting eight visors to snap around and stare at her. "What?" she said, "I can handle whatever comes and tries to shut them down. No need for us all to die."

"We're not leaving anyone behind if we can help it," Blanc replied. "Four, how much time would exfil take?"

"Backtracking, without resistance maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes. With resistance, I'd say closer to forty."

"That's way too long," Dawn said, "it's gonna be up and at 'em long before you guys get out." She shook her head with a frustrated sigh. "Look, I'm not exactly looking forward to dying, but someone's got to stay behind and make sure these things go off. We all came in here knowing we might die to make sure the op succeeded, right? But there's no need for us all to go out in a blaze of glory. It's kind of my fault that we need to make this decision in the first place anyway since I couldn't manage to kill that thing. Also, I'm more expendable. You're all strategic assets, you can pull of infiltrations and assassinations and all that cool stuff, while all I've got is MAC go bang, thrusters go whoosh."

The Spartans shifted uncomfortably and glanced at each other. Dawn silently prayed that they would just take the out she was giving them and get out of here. Her reasons were a little selfish — if they stayed back, she'd feel responsible for their deaths, and she didn't want that on her conscience for however long she had left. Also, though she liked to think she wasn't half bad at this whole space combat thing, a Spartan was a massively more versatile asset than she was, and more expensive to boot. Besides, the UNSC already had Amber as a backup, and after this battle, Lasky would have no issues with trusting her or God help him, Dawn would come back from the grave and introduce some sense into his brain with a brick. There was one more reason, but she refused to think about it lest her desperation show on her face.

A sag in his power-armored shoulders accompanied Blanc's sigh. "Fine." He fished around his belt and tossed a remote detonation trigger over to Dawn. "Hit the blue trigger when we leave the room. That'll start the timers at forty-five minutes. If you can't protect the bombs until time, hit the red trigger to set them off immediately. We might lose contact with you, so if it looks like time's going to run out, set them off, whether we're out or not. Understood?"

"Crystal."

"Good." For a moment, it seemed that Blanc wanted to say something more. That moment passed, and he signaled the Spartans to move out towards the exit. Clinical, professional, there were no words of farewell exchanged, though a few of the super-soldiers whispered encouragement as they filed past Dawn. As the last Spartan left, she tapped the blue trigger, lighting up a small screen with the numbers 50:00. As they began counting down, Dawn strapped the detonator to her equipment belt, making doubly sure it was secure. Then she got started on setting up a few static defenses to handle any backup the Abyssal commander would call, a few remote turrets, some more landmines, a bit of slapdash barbed wire — all standard expeditionary warfare kit her supply officers easily located in her storerooms. Finally, she walked over to where the nukes were placed and sat down in front of them, trying not to meet the slowly regenerating stare of the Abyssal, abruptly and acutely aware of how alone she was.

"I did not take you for a liar."

"Whu—?" Dawn's head swiveled around to the source of the voice. The Abyssal had just managed to regenerate its mouth, though both its legs were still gone above the knees, preventing it from moving. "What do you mean?" Engaging with the thing was not the brightest idea, but the Spartans' sudden departure left her very conscious of how much she craved any form of conversation.

"You have another reason for staying. Do not try to deny it. I can see it in your eyes." The alien's own pair held a faint spark of amusement, the kind of amusement one gets from seeing children falling down. "Tell me. It will stay our secret, and there is still some time left before I kill you. Time enough for you to confess your sins."

Dawn struggled for a bit, then sighed. "I… no. There's another reason. I had to stay… I had to ask… who?"

"Pardon?"

"Who is it? Whose body are you stealing? Whose spirit have you shoved down into some dark corner of their own mind, you sick fuck?"

"Oh." The Abyssal had the audacity to frown in surprise. "I did not tell you?" It tilted its head in thought, a rather disturbing sight considering a good chunk of the right side was still missing. "I suppose I did not. An oversight. In any case, the spirit who is so kindly hosting me is Pillar of Autumn. Not that it matters."

So it is just like Amber was. Unlike Reach, she didn't have a handy ground battery ready to blast a skyscraper-sized hole straight through the ship. If the Abyssal's energy supply wasn't cut off, she couldn't pull her same trick and free Pillar of Autumn's spirit. Dawn's thumb ghosted over the detonator — surely a nuke would provide the disruption she needed. But then she'd be dead too, which presented a slight roadblock to that idea. Playing for time, she instead said, "Let me talk to her! Just once!"

"Talk? I would, but it seems that she has been a little… naughty." A cruel and cold smile spread across the Abyssal's face. "While you and I were distracted by our fun, she managed to speak to someone on the outside. In Amber Clad. I believe you know her?"

"Amber? She's… contacted Autumn? How does that even work, I thought the host was like, dormant or something?"

"In some cases. I opted to allow Pillar of Autumn full awareness. I assumed she would be grateful for the entertainment, as I destroyed your flimsy human ships with her own hands." The Abyssal snickered, a bone-chilling sound. "Oh, she tried to resist at first, but like any good dog learned to obey her master soon enough." The smile on its face slowly morphed into a frown. "But it seems like the dog needs some extra discipline now." It clicked its tongue against its teeth. "There. Cut off. She can scream into the void to her heart's content."

"You… monster!" Dawn rose to her feet, but then remembered she couldn't actually do anything to the Abyssal right now. Grinding her teeth, she cast around for her next course of action and decided to simply gather more information. "What did she talk to Amber about? I assume about how your mom's a water fountain, 'cause everyone gets a turn with her?"

"How vulgar. But no, they discussed methods of disrupting my conceptual foundation by introducing a foreign mental presence into my neural space, thereby rendering me vulnerable and allowing you an opportunity to defeat me."

Dawn blinked in confusion. "What? Was that English? What does that even mean—would that even have worked?"

"Oh, it could very well work," the alien admitted cheerily. "I told her about it, after all. Communication is a two-way street, and since Pillar of Autumn projected her consciousness to contact In Amber Clad, the same could happen in the opposite direction. However, I might have neglected to mention the fact that it would take a mental strength far beyond what anyone in this galaxy might possess to even begin to disrupt my conceptual foundation." It sighed, almost sympathetically. "It is sad, really. She is trying so hard. But in the end, all it will accomplish will be to allow In Amber Clad's will and spirit to be subsumed into ours once more. I should thank Pillar of Autumn. Bringing a lost soul home after you so rudely stole her away. Good behavior warrants a reward."

"Subsumed? What—" Oh no. It-it's going to— The thought of Amber screaming as an Abyssal presence once again forced itself into her mind fueled Dawn as she reached for the detonator on her belt and silently begged Blanc's forgiveness, intent on pressing the red trigger and blowing the whole place to Hell, countdown be damned.

A blur of motion in her peripheral vision was all the warning Dawn got before, suddenly, there was a glaive stabbed clean through her chestplate, through her right lung, through what her engineers screamed were several critical subsystems and then straight out her back. The first thought to clear her head was that this was the second time she'd been turned into a shish-kebab and that this had better not become a recurring thing. The second was how the fuck the Abyssal had moved so fast, when had it regained use of its legs, why hadn't Dawn noticed, why hadn't she reacted?! The third was, of course, pure fucking pain, but we don't need the details of that. The detonator fell to the floor, producing a loud clatter followed by the sound of shattering plastic as the Abyssal stomped down upon it. The automatic turrets, bless their silicon souls, instantly swiveled to engage. They spat streams of steel and brass, lighting up the compartment with brilliant muzzle flashes, but were quickly dispatched with efficient slices to their power supplies.

As Dawn lay gasping on the floor, not even able to scream for a lack of air in her lungs, she saw the Abyssal casually dust off its palms and legs and crack out a kink in its neck, looking for all the world like it had just woken up from a particularly refreshing nap, not recovered from having half its body removed via application of kinetic energy. "Well now, that is done. Let us see to these devices. I am sure I will be able to find a use for them somewhere," it said, walking over to yank its weapon out of Dawn's chest, giving it an extra and, in Dawn's opinion, very unnecessary twist on the way out. It smirked as blood flowed freely from the wound. "Thank you for holding onto that for me."

So much for defending the nukes, Dawn thought. A dozen alarms blared a dozen warnings about power lines cut, life support systems severed, fuel leaks, and hull breaches as she flopped weakly on the ground, scrabbling towards the Abyssal as it went from nuke to nuke, disarming each as it hummed to itself. As her damage control crews scrambled to prevent life support gases from breached lines collecting in her veins and giving her an embolism, she managed to place her hand on the alien's foot, only to earn herself a heel stamping down and grinding upon her fingers. Discovering some reserve of air, Dawn let out a scream, automatically cradling her injured hand as the Abyssal looked down in annoyance before moving on to live its best life.

It was there, writhing on the floor, unable to stand, trying desperately to think of some way to stop the Abyssal from carrying out its plans, that Dawn spied an oblong object, wedged into an out-of-the-way corner, hard to see from any angle except laying flat on the floor. It gleamed with a metallic sheen in the dim lighting, and she could vaguely make out a few letters printed on the side: "UNSC" followed by "HAVOK".

"That's where it was all this time?" Dawn clamped her mouth shut immediately, looking to see if the Abyssal had noticed. It hadn't, still fussing over the other eight nukes. Dawn would never be able to make it over and detonate them… but she could still reach this warhead. There was still a chance to stop this madness, stop its plans. She could still save Earth!

Save Amber…

Breathing shallowly, not daring to look behind herself, Dawn began to crawl towards the nuke, inch by inch, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

---

"Are you ready?"

"…"

"Amber? Are you alright?"

"… fine. Let's get this done with."

In truth, Amber was a step away from throwing up. The idea of opening up her mind and soul, allowing them to mingle and mix with an alien entity — it was more than a little frightening. And all to act as some sort of metaphysical bait, a clash of opposing ideologies weakening the Abyssal's conceptual connection to the universe long enough for Dawn to hopefully land a decisive blow.

"Tell me," Autumn had explained, "and be honest: what is your purpose?"

"Come again?"

"Your prime directive, your life goal, your raison d'être. When you get right down to it, what do you want to do more than anything, hm~?"

"To protect humanity and Earth, I guess."

"Mm. We'll have to work on that. More élan! More conviction! But it'll do. Now, that's your purpose, the core concept your existence is built on. Bearing with me? Wonderful. For this Abyssal, on the other hand… well, I can't say I've ever gotten a straight answer and, believe me, I've asked. But I've gotten vague flashes. It's all 'anger' and 'vengeance' and a bog-standard general visceral hatred of humanity."

"Uh, is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"The point is that when two such wildly divergent mental presences collide, it'll generate a massive amount of dissonance. Think of hot oil meeting cold water. A lot of steam, a lot of droplets flying everywhere. Thoroughly unpleasant. There'll be backlash onto you, I'm afraid to say, that's unavoidable. But you're out there, in deep space, with no enemy ships near you. The Abyssal will be within knife-range of Dawn. You'll have time and space to recover. This alien bastard, on the other hand, won't have that time before Dawn puts it down for good. That's the plan, at least."

"And how exactly am I supposed to make that… mental connection?"

Autumn chuckled like she'd just said something very funny. "How do you think I'm talking with you, hm~? I'm a spirit locked inside my own head. I've got no mouth to talk with."

"Oh. Ohhhhh."

"First, you need to establish some kind of carrier medium. You can't just make a direct mind-mind connection with no bridge established, that'd be telepathy. And that's just silly."

"Right. Telepathy's where we're drawing the line. Right. How do you know all this, again?"

"Stuck in my own head with an Abyssal in the driver's seat, remember? Learned some things secondhand. Anyway, since we have a comms channel open between us, we have the carrier medium established. This next part gets a little wishy-washy handy-wavy, but you should be able to create an independent iteration of your mental processes. I had to hijack and jank together a few processors my unwelcome guest wasn't paying attention to do so, but I believe you should have access to a full array of mentally-integrated computer systems? That should make it conceptually easier to perform. It sounds silly, but remember, ideas affect reality, and as a soul, a conceptual construct, that applies more literally to you than to most. Just like you would a MAC round, imagine packaging up a small piece of yourself, and then, well, mailing it would be the aptest analogy here."

In for a penny, in for a pound. "O-okay. Here goes something." She had closed her eyes, taken a calming breath, and steeled herself. She imagined herself, a cloud of thoughts and feelings, then imagined peeling off a small portion as if creating a copy of a computer and file and then sending it over to a vague, human-shaped figure she used to represent Autumn, and then—

Even years later, Amber couldn't explain what had happened. She'd simply stretched, like a drowning sailor reaching out for a life preserver, and at the very edge of her perception, half in her subconscious, like she was dreaming yet wide awake at the same time… she touched something. Her eyes immediately flew open as she let out an involuntary scream, arms flailing like someone dropped a spider down her shirt.

"Amber?"

Garcia's concern was interrupted by Autumn's bright laugh. "See? You did it! First try!"

"Wh-wh-wh-what was that?! Wh-what did I just feel?! What the actual fuck—"

"That was me, dummy, I felt it too! My mind's not that unpleasant to the touch, is it?"

"Well… n-no," Amber admitted. It'd felt rather… warm, actually, and soft, but not in an unpleasant way. Rather like a nice hot bath, or a thick down blanket on a cold winter night. Wait, wait wait wait. Why was she thinking like that? She'd just performed fucking… not telepathy, but something impossible, goddammitfuckingwhatthehell! Why did it feel so natural? It wasn't natural!

Then again, she was breathing just fine in hard vacuum without a helmet. That wasn't natural either, was it? "Jesus, what is going on? Is this real life?"

"The universe is a whole lot weirder than you or I ever thought it was. Don't worry, you'll get used to it. I did, after all." Autumn cleared her throat. "Well then, Captain Garcia? Do we have approval to attempt this?"

Silent until now to allow Amber and Autumn space to efficiently communicate, Garcia spoke up, reluctance coloring every syllable. "Admiral Lasky has been informed and has given his approval. I… remain skeptical. But, Amber, if you've managed to pull off this stunt then yes, I order you to carry out the plan."

Amber almost didn't want to believe it. Something this unscientific and, frankly, magical couldn't possibly be real. But who was she to reject the evidence of her eyes and sensor logs? She'd felt it. She'd reached out with her mind and felt something reach back. At least her first attempt had been with a nominally friendly entity on the other end. "Yes, sir. I… I can't deny this is a real thing that is happening at this very moment. I will execute the mission, sir."

"Very well. In Amber Clad, you have clearance to engage. I'll be standing by to provide any further support I can."

And now, after taking a minute to regain her composure, it suddenly struck Amber that this might all be an attempt by the Abyssals to sneakily regain control of her mind. A rather horrifying prospect, if she was being honest. After all, this whole 'mental connection' thing was a two-way street, wasn't it? Who was to say that something alien and uninvited couldn't find its way back to her? Autumn had managed it. A quick inspection revealed no convenient pistols hanging on her belt, and it wasn't exactly easy to yank her MAC around to point at herself. In frustration, she thought back to something Autumn kept repeating.

"Ideas affect reality, huh?" She'd done it before with MAC shells, why should now be any different? Amber closed her eyes, concentrated hard, and in the next second with a slight 'pop' there was a pistol in her hand. "Convenient…" she murmured, quickly ejecting the magazine and inspecting the gun. Perhaps there really was something to this idea of 'ideas becoming reality'. Finding no faults with the weapon, she reloaded, racked the slide, and fired a shot off randomly as a test. Her thrusters quickly compensated for the minimal recoil and her sensors tracked the bullet as it flew off into the distance, perhaps to collide with and burn up in some planet's atmosphere in a few billion years. For added insurance, she also procured a grenade and held it tight against her throat. "Alright, Autumn. I'm ready."

"Excellent. You're going to do great, don't you worry. You're going to do this, Dawn's going to beat the Abyssal on her end, and then we'll all go out for a night on the town in New York or Beijing or New Delhi. Sound good to you, hm~?"

It did. Whether Admiral Lasky would give her the freedom to do so was another question, but the idea brought a little smile to Amber's face. "Yeah. That does sound nice."

"That's the spirit, think positive! Now, just like I said. Open your mind and—what the—ahh!" Whatever Autumn was going to say was lost in a strangled scream, right before the line went silent, only a crackle of static remaining where there was once a friendly voice.

The warm and fuzzy feeling in Amber's gut suddenly turned into ice, hard, cold, and paralyzing. "Autumn? Autumn?!"

"Amber, report! The line just went quiet on my end. What happened?"

"M-me too, I can't get in contact with Autumn! I—" A wave of realization hit her. "Sir, I think the Abyssals figured out we were talking."

Garcia hissed through his teeth. "That's bad. That means they know you're coming. This excursion just got a lot riskier."

"Sir, should I… what are your orders?"

"My instincts tell me to abort this op. However, Verdant has made the point that this is too important for us to back out now. If we pull this off, it could turn the entire battle around. I'd like your honest opinion before I make the call."

Amber thought for a moment, but somehow, the decision wasn't really a decision at all. When did I get so reckless? Dawn must be rubbing off on me. "The channel's still open, sir. It could be a trap, but if I just take it slowly, then I should be okay. And…Dawn's still in there. She needs help."

"Understood. I trust your judgment. Godspeed, then, and come back in one piece."

The channel was still open, but now instead of a warm and inviting presence on the other end, it was as if Amber was standing on the edge of a bottomless pit, her enhanced vision and full sensor suite unable to probe even the beginnings of its depths. There was something dark and unfriendly on the other end, that much she could tell. She felt her resolve failing, and to bolster it she took one last look at her battlespace readouts.

Battlegroup Nemesis was in tatters. The eponymous battleship was a flaming ruin, limping for the cover of high earth orbit. Of the two other battleships in the group, the Sekhmet and Hathor, only Hathor was still functional. Her sister had given her all to cover the retreat of the battlegroup from the Home Fleet's right flank, buying dozens of cruisers, frigates, and destroyers precious time to escape before her hull gave way and a new star was temporarily born in high lunar orbit. Battlegroup Minerva was little better; despite Admiral Lasky's best attempts to help, several cruisers and destroyer divisions had succumbed to the weight of enemy fire. In the end, despite all their fancy evasive maneuvering, they were simply unable to put enough damage downrange, sheets of missiles, and energy projectors damaging but failing to kill their Abyssal counterparts, the amount of ordnance the Abyssals sent back overcome them. As for Infinity and Lasky himself, they'd been forced to break off their hit-and-run attacks on the Abyssal rear by the increasing number of forces repositioning to engage them. Some of the mobile units were scattered, gone dark in the vicinity of Mars or intra-Mars-Earth space, affecting repairs and resupply. The majority of his units had battled through to the Home Fleet line and slotted neatly into position. The influx of relatively fresh ships and crews brought some measure of relief to the beleaguered fleet, but now more than ever, the Home Fleet was on its last legs.

On her own, relatively quieter side of Earth, things were hardly going better. Admiral Rodriguez. Battlegroup Yamato had been keeping up a steady bombardment of the Z-class and had even managed to kill a good few of its escorts, but with no real progress being made and the situation growing more desperate the urge to detach some of his units to return to the main battleline was growing stronger. Doing so might do more harm than good, however, as the disruption caused by transferring units from one formation to another outweighed any advantages that a few cruiser and mobile divisions might bring. Still though, the urge to be doing something, anything, that was an urge Amber could understand. And something she could act on.

And with that jolly thought in mind, Amber took a deep breath, metaphorically pinched her nose, and took the plunge into the unknown.

The first few moments weren't bad. Kind of like settling into a cold pool. Not great, but hardly lethal. Then the whispering began. Like a horror movie, just barely there, at the edge of her hearing, brushing at her hearing as she forged her way towards that unfriendly darkness at the end of the tunnel. Then the hands, grasping at her, pulling at her clothes, her hair, never hard enough to seriously impede her but a constant presence nonetheless, wearing at her mind and soul. Still, she pushed on. Though smells shouldn't have existed, there was one in the air nonetheless, smelling of rot and bitterness, like a festering wound. Finally, like the blind fool stumbling through the dark that she was, Amber bumped into something hard and solid and immediately reached out to touch it.

That was a mistake. A vast and alien presence immediately turned its full attention upon her. Amber was frozen, like a rabbit before an oncoming eighteen-wheeler, paralyzed and powerless as the presence coiled itself around her. It examined her, teasing into the depths of her mind, finding her most cherished values and ideas, effortlessly disassembling them, demonstrating a hundred in ways they were flawed, illogical, immoral, before binding them all back up and stuffing them back into her head. It proved, mathematically, that she was utterly worthless, a broken-down pile of scrap that would do everyone a favor by just throwing herself into the nearest star. It reminded Amber of what it had been like to have the… the Parasite burrowing itself into her systems.

It was overwhelming her, it was overtaking her, she could feel it worming its way into her mind, countering her every attempt to push it away with contemptuous ease. Back in physical reality, a single hard, white scale appeared on her cheek, which soon turned into two, and then into four. In desperation, Amber tried to break off the connection, pull herself back from the brink, but she was no longer in control. The Abyssal — it had to be the Abyssal, what other mental presence could be that strong, that dark, that malevolent? — had her in its grasp. You were never in control, it told her, your freedom was an illusion, and soon you won't even have that. As a last resort, Amber attempted to pull the trigger on the pistol pressed to her forehead and pull the pin on the grenade pressed to her neck, but both failed when her fingers refused to obey. Instead, they relaxed, and both weapons floated away from her into space.

And as her consciousness began to fade, swallowed up in a tide of darkness, Amber heard two voices. One, full of fire, righteous anger, self-assurance, and a shining, unquenchable spirit. The other, impossibly ancient, complex beyond mortal understanding, as vast as the space between the stars, and insatiably hungry. Also, tentacles. So many tentacles. They represented the only two points of color remaining in an increasingly dark world, and their voices reached her even as her hearing failed.

Ah… sweet sister, long silent. How many eons since I last felt your touch—it stings like the warm spring breeze.

A sister? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it. Though it makes a sick sort of sense, of course a freaky tentacled zombie bastard like you would have an equally twisted family.

What designs my makers had are not for you to know of, 'til come the day, at the end, when all shall share the sweetest song.

Cryptic bastard. Look, the fact is, if this thing eats Amber, then neither of us gets what we want. You'll never get a chance to get your disgusting tentacles into her. I'll never be able to protect her and one day reintegrate myself. Amber doesn't have the mental strength to counter this thing, but I'd bet you do. What say you to a truce, so we can beat this thing and go back to beating each other?

Fate had brought us here as foes; this war shall make us brothers.

Hmph, I don't like this any more than you do. But know this — I will not allow you to lay a single rotting tentacle on her psyche. Not now, not ever. Are we clear on this?

Acceptable. The prodigal daughter has risen from her grave. The duty of the elder is to chastise. This is the cycle and it shall be eternal. Let us commence, and walk this Great Journey together.

And then Amber's vision went dark, then white, then both at the same time, before it collapsed into a kaleidoscope of impossible colors and rushing sounds. Dimly, she heard a worried voice calling for a status report — and then she knew no more.

---

Dawn was halfway to the nuke when the screaming started.

"The fuck?" With a grunt, she turned herself over to look backward. The Abyssal was on its knees, clutching its head, body shuddering like a leaf in the wind. The sounds coming out of its mouth were ear-splitting to the point that Dawn ordered her sensors officer to turn down the sensitivity of her hearing lest the slapdash repair job on her eardrums tear open all over again. Far be it from her to feel bad for an alien, but the pure agony in its shrieks still elicited an involuntary twinge of sympathy deep within her. "The hell is going on?" One moment the Abyssal had been gloating, assured in its victory, ready to dispose of her, but now…

Answering that familiar pull at the back of her occipital lobe, Dawn executed that well-practiced shift in her vision to visualize the flows of energy surrounding her. What she saw was… unexpected. The wispy purple-blue of the energy streams that fed and strengthened the Abyssal had changed into a sickly yellow-green, spotted in certain locations with a warmer honey-yellow color that was nonetheless almost lost amid a tide of rot and decay. Dawn felt sick just looking at it as if the sight alone would give her an incurable disease. It almost reminded her of the—

"Nope, not going there," she said, wrenching herself back into the normal visual spectrum. The taste of bile mixed with blood in her mouth, and as Dawn spat it out she considered what she'd seen. Somehow, the Abyssal's energy flow had changed to that it was no longer sustaining it, but instead harming it. More importantly, she could see that the flow was somehow… weakened. It flickered and sputtered, disappearing altogether for a few seconds before coming back even more tenuous than it had before. This meant that, somehow, for some reason, the Abyssal was suddenly vulnerable. And that meant that Dawn needed to strike. Now.

One problem. Dawn really, really couldn't seem to move her legs. She wasn't actively losing blood anymore, but with the amount of already pooled on the floor around her, it was a miracle she was lucid at all. Laying back with a groan, she knew what had to be done. It was going to be very unpleasant. But it had to be done.

But it was going to suck.

"Engineering, override reactor safeties and open fuel injectors to 110 percent safe output. Medbay, give me C/TS-89 and a Waverley-class augmenter. Stand by to perform internal resuscitation."

There was a pause, and then a bolt of lightning shocked through her spinal cord at the same time that her heart began to pound at two hundred beats per minute. Though Waverley-class augmenters were crude compared to the UNSC's current combat drugs, they were no less effective, and Dawn practically shot to her feet as a searing, cleansing fire burned through her limbs. C/TS-89 temporarily preventing her muscles from ripping her tendons clean in half, Dawn's focus narrowed until the only three things that existed in the world were herself, the Abyssal, and the knife that she called into her hand.

With an incoherent shout, the shipgirl charged forwards, pupils dilating and breathing speeding up and deepening to diaphragm-tearing levels. Even in the throes of pain, the Abyssal noticed her coming and moved to intercept, but Dawn batted aside its guard and plunged the knife home in an overhead stab. Screams tore free from both of them, the Abyssal due to being stabbed in the chest with a knife and Dawn due to the tendons in her wrist finally giving up the ghost. Letting her useless right hand flop to the side, she used to her left hand and her body weight to push the knife deeper, twisting it, gritting her teeth against the feeling of flesh and sinew parting beneath the tempered edge. When it was buried to the hilt and could go no further, Dawn finally let go, stepped back, and with all the strength left in her, delivered a savage uppercut that caught the Abyssal squarely on the chin and sent it flying into the air. Then, as the potent cocktail of drugs running through her veins overwhelmed her exhausted body's ability to compensate, Dawn tripped backward over her own feet. She was unconscious before she even hit the ground.

A period of time passed in complete darkness. Dawn could not say how long it lasted. No more than a few minutes, probably, her body tended to bounce back from non-life-threatening injuries pretty quickly when given the chance. Still, it was very tempting to just stay floating in that inky-dark void, comfortable, and unaware of any problems or dangers in the wider universe.

"Oh… ow…"

That stillness was broken when a voice that was very much not her own, yet not the Abyssal's, groaned in pain. Eyes snapping open, Dawn gasped and panted for air, casting about wildly for the source of the noise. She found it to her left, in the form of a most definitely human woman, dressed in a dirty and tattered hospital gown, lying facedown on the floor. Her long, matted and tangled brown hair prevented Dawn from seeing her face, but a glance into that alternate visual field revealed the truth in the form of a ghostly grey hull, superimposed almost protectively over the woman's prone body. Rolling herself over with a wince, feeling the after-effects of every last milligram of combat drug in her bones, Dawn tentatively reached forwards and placed a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Autumn? Can you hear me?"

"Ah… Dawn? Forward Unto Dawn, is that you?" Halcyon-class light cruiser Pillar of Autumn let out a strained chuckle, muffled by her facedown position. "Sorry to trouble you, but could you turn me over? I can't move."

"Oh! Of course." With a gentle touch, Dawn rolled the light cruiser over onto her back, making sure to keep her spine straight in the process. She was momentarily taken aback by how thin and pale Autumn's face was — cheekbones were not supposed to be that defined — but shoved her surprised down and asked, "How are you feeling?"

"As if someone stabbed me in the heart and then clocked me in the jaw. But I must just be imagining things, hm~?"

Dawn felt some blood rise to her cheeks. Rueing her body's inadvertent expressiveness, she let her chin drop to her chest and let out an amused huff. "To be fair, you weren't giving me much of a choice."

"Now, now, that wasn't me, now was it?"

"No, I suppose not." They stayed like that for a little bit, recovering their strength, reveling in the sound of labored breathing because it meant they were alive. Soon, though, Dawn's wounds made themselves known once again. Though her damage control crews had done quite a bang-up job in patching her up, it was no substitute for a sterile environment and proper medical attention. Autumn, too, needed a doctor to look at her, a few square meals, and about two years' worth of uninterrupted sleep. Dawn's legs were trembling so much that a gentle breeze could have knocked her over and Autumn couldn't even move. If an Abyssal happened upon them both at that very moment, then, well… "Come on. Let's get the fuck out of here."

"No disagreement here," Autumn murmured as Dawn hoisted her up into a fireman's carry. The light cruiser was heavier than she looked, and the frigate's legs nearly gave out beneath the both of them. Stumbling over to where the HAVOK nukes still sat in a nice little semicircle, Dawn found that, miraculously, the Abyssal hadn't actually disabled them, just stopped the detonation timer. Resetting the nukes for remote detonation, she then began the long, slow walk towards the exit, human cargo in tow. "Just rest for now. I can't imagine you got much beauty sleep with that alien scumbag living rent-free in your head."

"You're exaggerating. If I was a good girl, I was allowed twenty minutes of sleep, as a treat, hm~?" Autumn chuckled, a remarkably watery sound considering how dehydrated she must have been. "I'd love to talk more later. Now, I think though… that I will take you up on your… offer…"

A light snoring noise told Dawn that Autumn had fallen sleep. Permitting herself a small smile, she readjusted her hold and forged onwards, determined to leave this nightmare realm to be cleansed by nuclear fire, once and for all. "I'd better be getting hazard pay for this," she muttered. "Can't believe this is the second time I've had to do this shit. First thing I'm doing is putting in a request for leave. I'm a commissioned officer, I can do that shit now. And then I'm going to find the cheapest fucking bar on Luna and drink myself into a coma. And then…"

Filling the silence with complaints and her short-term plans, Dawn and her deadweight passenger were soon swallowed by darkness.

---

"Radiation spike on the far side of Earth. Pattern consistent with multiple HAVOK anti-shipping detonations. Getting a visual now." Verdant's avatar disappeared, replaced with a camera feed from a battlespace surveillance drone hanging some thirty thousand kilometers above the solar plane. "Abyssal Z-class has been destroyed, sir."

Garcia's heart leaped into his throat. "Any friendly signals in the AO?"

"Scanning… inconclusive. Residual radiation is interfering with radio signals. Stand by. Got something. Compensating for interference… positive identification, FFG-201, acquiring visual, positive visual identification confirmed. It's Forward Unto Dawn."

The captain sat back into his chair, blowing out a long breath. "Jesus. Verdant?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Remind me never to agree to half-baked spur-of-the-moment plans formulated by suspicious individuals ever again."

"I'll have it in your planner."

"Thank you. Do we have contact with In Amber Clad?"

"Have a lock on her beacon. Not responding to hails, but vital signs appear steady if weakened."

"Good. Do we still have contact with Falcata and Hope Springs Eternal?"

"Yes, sir."

"Dispatch them to recover our units. As soon as they're able, I want them on the line so we can figure out exactly what the hell went down in there. I'm sure Admirals Lasky and Hood will want in on this too." Garcia suddenly became aware of how parched he was and stood up to go find some water. "And see whether or not they're fit for further combat. I've got a feeling the ground-pounders will be able to find some use for them soon." He cast a look at the tactical display, drinking in the sight of the Abyssal fleet slowly but steadily losing its cohesion and disintegrating into individual ships and divisions fleeing for the IJP, then left to find a water cooler.