"Whatever you did: it's working. Meet us at the south entrance of town - we're picking you up," Roland directed as he took in the scene before him.

When he had told Timothy to break through Hyperion's defenses, he wasn't sure whether or not the man would be able to deliver. As he watched the thinning mob of soldiers struggling to survive against their own bots, Roland was more than willing to admit that he'd underestimated him. He wasn't sure how the hell they'd done it, but Roland wasn't about to question a good thing. Turning away from the carnage happening outside of town, he followed Helena and the rest of the group back towards the waiting civilians.

Helena looked over the haggard survivors as if she'd aged a decade in a day. And maybe she had. This wasn't the woman Roland was used to dealing with. Her face lacked its usual severe expression and commanding aura he respected. Instead, she only looked tired… defeated. It felt wrong to see her so vulnerable.

"You alright?" Roland said lowly at her shoulder.

"Nothing is 'alright'," her lips pulled her scars into a frown as she gestured at the remaining survivors. "What about the rest, Roland? They were my responsibility... and I failed them."

Roland knew there was nothing he could say to that. He wasn't about to insult her by attempting to placate her – she wouldn't care for it anyway. "There's still a lot people here," he reminded her. "They're the ones that need your help now."

"Where are we supposed to go? We can't come back after this," she said.

"We've talked about this possibility before," Roland said. "Jaynistown is our best bet for now."

"That was never a long-term solution," she countered. "New Haven is our home. I never thought I'd see the day we'd have to leave it."

"We can make a new one," Roland intoned. "Nothing's ever easy on Pandora, but we'll manage."

Helena nodded grimly. "The four of you always could make the impossible happen. Let's see if you can do it again."

"Can you guys hurry this up?" Mordecai's voice came over the ECHO. "Their army's screwed, but those assault barges are startin' to look impatient and they've got some really big guns."

"He's right, we need to get out of here," Roland caught Lilith's eye in the crowd. "Mordecai, pack it up – we're leaving. You and Lilith are on escort duty. Brick and I will rendezvous with you guys in Jaynistown."

"You better make it back, tough guy," Lilith grinned. "I've got plans for tonight and you're intimately involved."

"That's… uh... that's not gonna help me keep a clear head," Roland gently admonished.

"Just thought you could use the motivation," she said innocently.

"Ugh, get a room," Mordecai groaned.

Lilith laughed, "That's the idea."

"C'mon Roland, I got Dusty and he's itchin' for a ride," Brick cut in. "I'll fire up the Lancer."

If anything was going to be able to get them through the chaos of Hyperion's collapsing battle lines, it would be the Lancer. Made from fifteen tons of reinforced alloy and ceramic plating that Roland had "appropriated" from the Crimson Lance, the armored personnel carrier was the toughest vehicle of its kind still left on Pandora. Even the assault barges would have trouble dealing with its armor and armaments. Roland took such meticulous care of the car that Lilith had once joked that she was only the second love of his life. Truth be told, counting his turret, that would actually make her the third – though he had wisely never informed her of this.

The sounds gunfire could be heard as Lilith and Mordecai began to clear a path for the column of civilians behind them. Hyperion's robots may have been killing their own troops now, but that didn't mean they still weren't shooting at them. Roland had just begun jogging back to the courtyard when the shock-wave of an explosion bowled him over. His shield flared blue as he hit the ground and the copper taste of blood flooded his mouth. As the ringing in his ears subsided, he began to hear the screams of the injured behind him. Scrambling up to his feet, he struggled to see through the falling cloud of dust.

"Lilith!" Roland stumbled blindly forward. "Lilith, where are you!?"

"R-roland?" she sputtered in response. "Over here!"

Roland ignored Brick's frantic questions over the ECHO as he followed the sound of Lilith's voice. She had to be alright – Roland needed her to be alright. As the dust began to settle, he finally got his first view of the aftermath.

The first thing that caught his eye was a hand. There was no body to go with it, at least not a whole one. The force of the explosion had torn apart the people closest to it. It was impossible to even tell how many people had been killed with all the body parts scattered over the ground. Roland stepped carefully through the bodies, scanning for anyone still living among them. The survivors gathered around the injured as they tried to treat their wounds. Roland bit back his despair at the scene as he finally saw Lilith and Mordecai kneeling over Helena.

Roland rushed towards them. "What happened?!"

"I-I don't know," Lilith said as she tried to peel away the bloody and tattered remains of Helena's jacket. "I think one of the robots ran in and self-destructed and it… it just happened so fast."

Roland had a hard time maintaining his detachment as he saw the torn up skin of her stomach where pieces of shrapnel stood out against the raw flesh. Helena weakly slapped Lilith's hands away. "Help the others. You have to get them out of here."

"She's right," Roland dug into one of his pouches and pulled out a Med-Hypo. It wouldn't do much to help someone with injuries so severe, but it would buy them time. "Stick to the plan: gather the survivors and get out of here."

"Roland, we can't move her," Lilith said. "We're not leaving her behind."

"We won't," Roland jammed the Med-Hypo into Helena's thigh. He ignored her pained gasp and brought up his ECHO. "Brick, I need you to pull the Lancer around back."

"You got it," Brick confirmed.

Having Helena with them was going to complicate things. They weren't going to be able to make a getaway and come back at their own leisure anymore... at least, not if they wanted her to live. And the people of New Haven needed her to live. Roland used the remains of her jacket to staunch the bleeding as Lilith and Mordecai left to gather the town's remaining survivors. The minute he spent alone waiting for Brick to show up with Helena's muffled gasps of pain was one of the longest of his life.

With a roar of the Lancer's engine, Brick finally arrived. Throwing open the hatch, he ran over to where the two of them sat. "She alive?"

"More than you'll be if you keep asking stupid questions," Helena coughed wetly.

"Keep fightin' like that and you might just make it outta this." With a grim smile, Brick bent down to pick up Helena in his arms – careful not to jostle her. But Roland knew by the look of his eyes that Brick knew better. Brick shooed Dusty back as he gently lowered her onto the floor of the passenger area.

Roland cast a last glance around the area as he walked towards the driver's side. Lilith and Mordecai had already left with the town's survivors and only the mangled bodies of the dead remained in the alleyway. A sudden movement from one of the bodies caught his eye and Roland's gun was instantly trained on the pair of corpses. He rushed over to see if there was someone left alive they might have missed. Flipping over the first body he was disheartened to see the face of the man he had encountered in the alley only minutes ago. Tucked behind him, Roland was barely able to recognize his wife's outfit under the gore. Out of the corner of his eye, Roland saw a small bloodied elbow shy away from his touch. Without hesitation, he pulled off the woman's corpse to reveal the blood-soaked body of the little girl buried beneath.

Dread shot through him at the sight until she opened her eyes. She's alive. Pulling her out of the bed of corpses, he struggled to keep her steady as she tried to yank her arm away. Checking her over for the source of all the blood, relief shot through Roland as he realized that the girl was unharmed.

"Hey, hey – calm down," he said in the gentlest voice he could muster. "It's okay. What's your name?"

The girl prodded at a slowly oozing wound across the bridge of her nose and it didn't seem like an answer was forthcoming. Pressed for time and patience, Roland waved away his question. "Look… ahhh… Tiny," he began. "We gotta leave right now and we're taking you with us, okay?"

The girl nodded silently and Roland felt the tremor of her hand as it slipped into his. Guiding her towards the Lancer, Roland tried to ignore the sense of failure he felt at walking away from the bodies of the townspeople. By tomorrow, they would be almost entirely gone – picked clean by the scags and other scavengers that would be drawn to the smell of carnage. A proper burial was out of the question at this point. Coming to the driver's side of the Lancer, Roland was about to heft the girl in when she tugged expectantly at his arm.

"What about Enrique?"

Roland hoped he wouldn't have to explain why her parents weren't coming with them. "Who's Enrique?"

Her fingers plucked at the hem of her skirt. "My skag. He's just a puppy and I haven't found him since everyone started fighting."

Relieved that wasn't about to have that discussion with her, Roland sighed. "I'm sure he's okay. We'll find him later, I promise."

She climbed over the driver's seat and scrambled inside. Glad that she didn't push the topic, Roland pulled himself into the Lancer and fastened into his seat. The passenger seating area stretched out cavernously behind him and Helena was laid out on the floor between the seats. Brick was up in the turret, ready to fire the plasma cannon. He glanced down and spared Roland a questioning look at the sight of the girl climbing in.

"Picked up another one?"

"Yup." Roland sized up the interior critically. Between Helena lying injured on the floor; Dusty taking up two seats by himself; and Brick being Brick, it was going to get cramped rather quickly. "And we're still picking up two more."

Resigning himself to handling that problem when they get to it, Roland glanced over to make sure "Tiny" was strapped in before turning his attention back to the Lancer's controls. The three monitors spread out in front of him could give a 360 degree view of everything around the vehicle. A reticule hovered over a portion of the screen representing the auto-turret he had control over. Throwing the vehicle into reverse, one of the screens changed to a rear-view camera as the car rumbled backwards. Clearing the alleyway, he finally got the car turned around only to be presented with the outer wall of New Haven standing before them.

Burying the accelerator to the floor, the Lancer tore through the outer wall with little more than a lurch as the thin scrap metal tore away beneath them. With a wry grin, Roland reminded himself that all the time he'd spent buffing the paint was wasted now. Patting the steering-wheel reassuringly, he knew his ride was probably going to take a lot more abuse before this was over.

"Roland, the barges noticed us," Brick called down into the vehicle.

"Good, make sure they're paying attention," Roland said.

"That's my favorite part," Brick chuckled and the plasma cannon thrummed momentarily before sending a superheated blast at the nearest barge. As satisfying as that sounded, Roland knew that it'd take a whole lot more than that to break through the barges' shields. Then again, they weren't going to go down easily either.

Swerving the lancer to avoid the return fire, Roland floored it towards the south side of town. They still had one more stop to make.

A distant teetering pile of junk collapsed across the road as Angel watched a fast approaching vehicle make its way towards them. The three Hyperion attack barges fired from above as they gave chase. The tank weaved through the barrage and skidded to a stop a few feet in front of them.

"I'm guessing that's our ride," Timothy said blithely. "Roland never struck me as the compensating type." Angel silently agreed; the big black vehicle did seem a little ostentatious. But at least it looked like it could take a beating.

The passenger door swung open and Timothy urged her forward. Ducking slightly under the door, Angel was surprised to find the interior much bigger than it looked from the outside. Empty metal walls stared back at her along with the largest dog she had ever seen in her life. Angel flinched backwards, but Timothy blocked the way back and the massive dog bumped its head against her stomach in greeting. After several long sniffs, it must have decided that the two of them were okay because it climbed back onto its bench on the opposite side of the cabin.

As the dog bounded out of the way, Angel got her first view of Helena Pierce laid out in the middle of the cabin. With her bunched up jacked clutched over her stomach between her bloodstained fingers she looked… dead. Sweat beaded her brow and blood pooled at the corner of her lips. As Angel sat down in one the of the seats against the wall, she heard Timothy's sharp intake of breath at the sight before his eyes flicked away.

The vehicle lurched beneath them and the door hissed shut. "Get comfortable back there – it's gonna be a bumpy ride," Roland called from the driver's seat. "Angel, I'm gonna need you to grab the med-kit off the wall behind you and keep Helena conscious. Timothy, you know your way around a rocket launcher?"

Timothy's brows crashed up into his hairline. "That depends; are you expecting me to hit anything?"

Roland grimaced as he swerved to avoid incoming fire. "That's the idea."

"Then no, I really don't."

Roland's response was a less than enthusiastic one: "Can you at least operate a turret?"

"Now that I can do," Timothy nodded.

"Brick, swap out with Timothy; I'll open the side hatch so you can do your thing."

Brick's only response was a muffled 'Hell yeah!' stolen by the wind. The thrum of the cannon ceased and Brick slipped out of the harness. As he made his way over to the open hatch awaiting him, he slapped Timothy across the back, nearly knocking him over. "Don't embarrass me!"

"Yeaaahahaooow," Timothy coughed out. "I'll get right on that."

A crash nearly sent both of them tumbling as the sound of screeching metal could be heard from outside the vehicle. Roland yelled out angrily, "Who the hell leaves their truck sitting in the middle of the road?"

Timothy sheepishly locked eyes with her as he climbed up into the turret. "Yeaaah ha – who does that?"

Rolling her eyes, Angel tore the med-kit off the wall and nearly lost her footing as the vehicle bumped beneath her. Dropping to her knees at Helena's side, she fumbled with the box in her hands trying to get it open. The contents spilled on the ground at the turn of a corner and Angel struggled to pick it all up before the supplies rolled away. She didn't know how the heck she was supposed to help Helena; she didn't even know what half of these things did. This entire ordeal had been one experience after another where Angel felt completely useless. She had never felt more frustrated with her upbringing then she did at this moment as she watched Helena dying in front of her – powerless to do anything.

Turning over the supplies in her hands, there were few labels and no real instructions. How are there no instructions?! Trying not to panic and failing spectacularly, Angel turned to the only source of information she knew never failed her: the ECHOnet. Pulling up her ECHO, Angel launched herself into the familiar playground she grew up in. It took her only a few moments to find the information she needed. Nothing on it looked too difficult. Then again, nothing she saw depicted a victim with a real wounds.

"I need to keep you talking, okay?" Angel glanced down at the mess of cloth over Helena's stomach. "I'm just going to take a look and ah… and see what I can do to help."

"That's... easy for you to say," Helena grunted out.

Angel took a deep breath and gingerly peeled away the jacket. A fresh ooze of blood seeped out and Helena released a pained groan. Angel had to suppress the urge to cover it up again. Dirt and shrapnel crisscrossed the torn skin of her abdomen and Angel had to fight back her own nausea. Her shaking fingers clasped around a package of saline wipes and she tried to gently clean off the excess blood and dirt around the wounds. With no way to repair the internal damage the shrapnel might have caused, it was safer to leave it in then remove it.

"Sorry," Angel mumbled when Helena exhaled a shaky hiss of pain. "Just a little more..."

Angel dug around in the kit until she found a bottle of Anshin's Insta-Skin and sprayed it over the wounds. The gel had more in common with rubber cement than actual skin, but once it hardened, it would form a seal against infection and blood loss. For good measure, Angel snatched a Med-Hypo from the med-kit and jammed it into Helena's thigh. With this task done, there was really nothing else she could do.

Angel twisted her hands in her lap. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

Helena's face contorted into her trademark stern frown. "Yes, you can get that damned dog off my feet so I can die in peace."

Angel glanced down to find the dog resting at Helena's feet, its head on her shins. When no amount of shooing convinced the dog to move, Angel tentatively gave him a gentle push. "You're going to be okay, Helena," she huffed between pushes until it finally gave in and padded away. "W-we're going to take you to a doctor and -"

"Please -" Helena said through clenched teeth. "- I've seen enough death to know when I'm facing my own."

Angel floundered on how to respond to such a thing. It just seemed so wrong to see someone so resilient calmly accepting their own death. Of all the people Angel had watched, Helena had been the one she admired most. Unlike everyone else that accepted Pandora as it was, she had been the only one that ever attempted to change it for the better. How could someone who fought so hard for people she barely knew be so quick to give up on herself?

Helena's death would be an end of everything Angel had known. Whatever her father's intentions for using the Vault Hunters had been, their actions had ultimately left the planet in the most stable state it had been since before Dahl left. With New Haven destroyed and Helena dead, Pandora's future under Tassiter's rule would be a bleak one. No, Helena couldn't die; Pandora needed her now more than ever.

"Thank you," Helena broke through Angel's thoughts, her voice nothing more than a whisper.

"For what?"

"For saving us back there… and for the Vault Hunters," Helena painfully adjusted herself before drawing a deep breath. "I don't know the details, and I know they seemed upset with you, but thank you for bringing to Vault Hunters to us. They saved us all."

Helping the people of Pandora had never been her father's intentions for the Vault Hunters. New Haven had been just a stepping stone on their way to the Vault, but that didn't change the fact that Angel had tried to guide them toward helping others where she could. Fake persona or not, she really had seen something special within the four of them. And she was right, they had saved Pandora. Hopefully they could do the same this time.

"I just wanted to help," Angel admitted. It was all she had ever wanted to do.

To avoid disturbing Helena, Angel resigned herself to silence as she wiped away the blood from her hands. The vehicle rattled hard as a shot from one of the barges impacted its shields and an incessant beeping could be heard from the front of the cabin. Lacking anything better to do than stew in her own anxiety, Angel laid her hand against the steel wall of the tank. Her arm began to glow softly as she called on her power before a sudden thought made her hesitate.

Less than ten minutes ago, she had slaughtered an entire company of Hyperion soldiers with her powers and she was afraid of what she might do next. In all the years her father had used her powers to help him with his plans, he'd never asked her to hurt anyone. With the sheer amount of technology people surrounded themselves with, it would have been easy. For how depraved everyone said her father had become, she'd probably murdered more people than he had by now. Soon, everyone would know what she was capable of and the thought of that turned her stomach.

Figuring that she couldn't do anything worse than what she'd already done, Angel slipped into the vehicle's operating systems. She tapped into the video feed and was greeted to the sight of scenery rushing past. Mortar fire rained from above causing the cabin rumble beneath her and kicking up clouds of dust and debris as Roland swerved to avoid them. The shields didn't look like they could hold for much longer. Tank or not, the vehicle was never designed to take fire from three assault barges at once. Without those shields, it would only take one good shot to take them out.

Angel watched as Timothy's plasma canon fire barely seemed to slow the barge up above, and Brick's rockets weren't doing much better. The shields on the assault barges were more powerful than the ones on their tank and the two of them weren't about to break through if they kept firing at whichever one looked most threatening at the moment. Of course, all of Roland's rapid swerving probably wasn't helping their aim any.

Angel tapped into the tank's communications system and spoke to the three of them. "You guys will never take one of them down if you keep firing like this. You need to coordinate."

Timothy's voice crackled back, "Easier said than done."

"That's why I'm going to help you," Angel said. "If you focus your shots on the front anti-grav engine, you might be able to overload their shields. Any direct hit should be enough to destroy the generator. Take out the generator and the barge crashes – is that easy enough?"

"Except for the part where I have to stop dodging all of their fire," came Roland's response. "Our shields can't take much more either."

"The capacitors on their guns take longer to charge than ours," Angel explained. "We'll time it right after their next wave of fire."

"Can't hurt to try," Brick chimed in.

"Okay, we'll follow your lead," Roland confirmed.

Angel silently observed the camera feed and tried to keep at bay the doubts creeping up into the back of her mind. The plan seemed solid enough, but she couldn't ignore the multitude of things that could go wrong. Another volley of fire rained down and Angel braced herself for impact. The cabin shook under the onslaught and more warning alarms came from Roland's console.

"Okay Roland, hold steady," Angel directed. "Brick, Timothy – fire at the one on the left."

The muted thumping of Bricks rocket launcher and Timothy's plasma cannon filled the cabin as they let loose with everything they had. Angel waited with bated breath as she watched the resulting explosions bloom across the assault barge's shield. The blue flickering of the shield finally died away and the last of the rockets found their mark. The plume of an explosion blossomed from beneath the bottom of the barge before the entire thing began to lurch downward. With nothing holding up the front end, it nose-dived towards the ground. The front of the ship rammed into the ground as the rear was sent tumbling over it. A massive cloud of dust kicked up as the crash rapidly disappeared behind them.

Roland's whoop of, "Hell yeah!" filtered over the com. "Rinse and repeat people – let's take 'em down!"

"That. Was. Awesome!" Brick boomed.

Angel allowed herself a smile before Timothy interrupted. "Uhhh guys? I like premature celebrations as much as the next person, but ahhh… they're doin' somethin'. You might wanna check this out."

Angel snapped her attention back to the camera views. The remaining two barges changed formation and descended alongside their vehicle. Flying less than twenty feet above the ground, it was easy to see the side-hatches on the barges opening to reveal soldiers holding rocket launchers of their own.

"Guys, I don't think they're kidding around anymore," Timothy's voice took on the panicked tone Angel was all too familiar with. He ducked inside before slamming the hatch behind him as a cacophony of sound filled the cabin. Brick was sent tumbling in as the tank rocked dangerously sideways. The shields collapsed under the first salvo of rockets and Angel's camera feeds were destroyed.

Slumping down next to Angel, Timothy all but ripped the hair out of his scalp. "Roland – do something!"

"I can't, I'm boxed in!" Roland shouted back.

The blaring of warning alarms mixed with the whining of Brick's dog and the sparking of damaged circuits created an almost surreal atmosphere. Angel gazed around the cabin, blood pumping in her ears. Roland tried desperately to keep the tank under control as a little girl she hadn't noticed before stared back just as silently from the passenger seat. Brick sat on the bench across from her as he struggled to soothe his panicking dog. Helena laid still on the floor and Angel wasn't even sure if she was alive anymore.

"Well, we had a good run," Timothy's voice broke through the fog in her mind as he smiled ruefully back at her. It took Angel a moment to realize that he was gripping her hand tightly within his own – painfully so.

We're going to die. Angel was surprised to find how calm she felt about it. She figured the idea of her own death would have garnered more of a reaction out her, but she ultimately couldn't be bothered. Was this how Helena felt? It wasn't so bad actually. She was going to die surrounded by the only friends she ever had, fighting for something that she actually cared about. Timothy was right: it was a good run.

"No." She couldn't die. She didn't want to die. Not now.

The thought was enough to shatter the serenity of her acceptance. She had spent so much of her life just existing, and now she wasn't. Yes, things had been dangerous and hectic and frightening, but for the first time in forever, she felt alive. Timothy coming into her life, in spite of the circumstances, had been the best thing to ever happen to her and she wasn't about to give it up now.

Angel's thoughts narrowed down to just one thing: survive. She dove into the vehicle's damaged operating systems once more. Everything was a mess. The weapons were gone, the hull was almost ready to fall apart, and the shield had failed. Looking at the shield diagnostics, everything was still working. All the shield needed was power, so she gave it power.

Shaking Timothy's hand off, Angel pressed her palms onto the walls of the vehicle and poured everything she had into it. The cabin began to glow so brightly, that she had to shut her eyes or risk blinding herself. She could vaguely hear shouting in the background, but she ignored it as the familiar warmth of her powers poured out of her. The metal beneath her hands began to grow painfully hot and her entire body began to tremble, but Angel didn't let up. The capacitors quickly filled, then overfilled, then finally started blaring warnings until the system could take no more.

Struggling to contain more energy than it was ever built to withstand, the safety system did the only thing it could do. With a deafening crash that lifted the tank airborne for a moment, the shielding system discharged its excess energy in a thunderous nova. The two assault barges on either side were sent careening into the ground as the blast wave swept them sideways, their systems failing under the surge of power.

Angel was nearly thrown from her seat as their vehicle skidded to a stop. The same surge of power had killed the electrical systems and the cabin was dark except for random sparking and the shaft of light that came through Roland's narrow window. Groans and coughing filled the darkness until light suddenly poured in when Brick opened the side-hatch. The smell of burnt circuitry coupled with her own overexertion caused a wave of nausea to rise up the back of Angel's throat. She stumbled out after Brick and into the Pandoran sun.

She staggered out to a suitable enough distance and heaved the contents of her stomach onto the ground. Breathless and shaky, Angel wiped her mouth off with the back of her hand. By the time she had regained her composure, she glanced back to find the others gently laying Helena onto the sand.

Their group sat splayed out, each one of them bruised and bloody, but alive. Roland on the other hand, paced around the vehicle looking over the damage – shaking his head at the sight. Bonelessly slumping down next to Timothy, Angel glanced up to find Roland looking none too pleased with his inspection.

Roland looked between her and the vehicle. "How did you do that? Actually, what did you do?"

"Yeah," came Brick's voice from somewhere on her right. "I've seen Lil do some crazy stuff, but that definitely takes the cake."

Angel couldn't muster the energy to shrug. "I don't know," she fished around weakly. "I… I was trying to charge the shield and I guess I blew it." She hadn't done anything like that with a machine since she was a kid. That's how people died.

"Weeell, I dunno about 'blew it'," Timothy said. "We're still alive, so I'd chalk that one up as a win."

"Most of us," Roland corrected as he knelt down next to Helena to check her over. His characteristic gloves were absent as he closed her eyes and gave her hand a squeeze. "Helena didn't make it."

A long silence hung between them, broken only by a muffled thump as Roland flopped down next to Helena's body. In a move that reminded Angel of Timothy, he pulled his beret off his head and ran a hand through the stubble on his scalp with a tired sigh.

It seemed strange to see Roland looking so defeated – unnatural. Stranger still to think of a future without Helena in it. Roland was supposed to be the headstrong stoic soldier. Helena was supposed to be the severe-but-compassionate leader. And New Haven was supposed to be the safest place on Pandora. Everything Angel knew was changing and it all seemed so unreal.

Angel couldn't help but think of Helena's final words. Helena had put so much stock in the Vault Hunters, but in the end, they hadn't even been able to save her. Angel hoped that her belief wasn't misplaced.

"I'm gonna miss her nagging," Brick's voice lacked its usual gusto. "So… what do we do now?"

Roland's response seemed to take an age. "I don't know," he said at last. He spared the group a slow look before he cursed and ran back over to the tank. Moments later, he reemerged and plopped the blood-soaked little girl among them. "Sorry, uh… other things on my mind right now," came his mumbled apology, much to the girl's indifferent stare.

Timothy grimaced at the state of the girl's clothes. "Woah, she alright?"

"Physically..." Roland trailed off. "We'll figure out what to do with her once we get to Jaynistown." He turned to Angel with a questioning look, "You think you can help me figure out what's wrong with my ride?"

Angel took in the battered and smoking tank behind her. "Do you really think we can fix it?"

Roland shrugged. "Well, I'm not Scooter, but I'll get her running again."

Brick looked up from scratching at his dog's ears. "What about Helena? We gonna bury her first, right?"

"She's coming with us," Roland said resolutely. "At least one person today is getting a proper funeral."

Wilhelm turned over the corpse of a Hyperion engineer with the toe of his boot. Somehow, the poor bastard managed to die ass up, face planted into the dirt. Helluva way to go.

He and Nisha had spent the better part of ten minutes picking over the battlefield looking for answers to what had caused this mess. It was pretty easy to figure out what happened after looking over the bullet-ridden corpses. What wasn't, was how such a colossal fuck-up could've happened. Robots don't just turn on their controllers. Not without a good reason.

"This is rakkshit," Nisha said for the umpteenth time since they arrived. "This wouldn't have happened if we were here. What the hell was Tassiter thinking?"

Wilhelm disagreed. After seeing Lilith in action from the safety of their command barge a few miles away, he didn't think that the two of them would've made much of a difference. It looked like Tassiter had been right about their life expectancy with her around. He didn't exactly like his odds of going toe-to-toe with someone who would walk through dimensions. But even all of her power hadn't done them much good.

This entire operation should have been a simple smash-and-grab: send in an overwhelming force, snatch Angel, and hightail it back to Helios for a fat paycheck. And it had been working perfectly. Sure, they'd been taking casualties, but these were the Vault Hunters after all: they'd been expecting casualties. But then everything went to shit. One moment everything had been going exactly as planned, and the next, their entire battle network went haywire. By the time they'd established a connection to their forces on the ground, there weren't many left. Overkill didn't begin to describe what happened.

None of the Vault Hunters were capable of hacking into something as secure as Hyperion's battle network, and Wilhelm was sure that none of the hicks down here could've done any better. That left only left two options and he was pretty sure that Timothy wasn't a techno-genius. Angel was Jack's daughter after all.

"I don't think so," Wilhelm finally responded. "If they could've done this from the get-go, we were fucked from the start."

Nisha cut him a skeptical glance. "You really think the Vault Hunters did this?"

"No, but I got an idea who did." Wilhelm gestured back towards the idling barge, "C'mon, it's time we had a chat with Tassiter. I think he's holding out on us."

The promise of violence brought a familiar glint to Nisha's eyes. "The boring kind of chat, or the fun kind?"

Wilhelm allowed himself a small grin, "Depends on what he says."

A/N: So, them holidays though. Sorry about the delay, it's been pretty busy for the both of us. Anyway, this chapter concludes the first act of our story. Only two more to go. Lucky you.

So, only one minor note to put on this chapter: the Lancer. It's practically the equivalent of an APC. Judging by the size, armor, and everything else about it, it's actually not that far off from the real thing so we just went with what seemed natural. Hope it works for you.

There were a couple more things introduced here, but we don't want to get into them at the moment - ambient dramatic tension and all that jazz. That about wraps things up here. Hope you enjoyed and have a happy holiday.