Annabeth embraced the burning feeling at the back of her throat, as her lips met the tip of the whiskey flask she kept.
Her worn and ratty jumpsuit still held a few plates of her dirty white pilots armour, some of which dug into her back as she leant against the wall in her small cell aboard a Militia ship.
Her jump kit and helmet had been confiscated the moment she had been brought aboard, the goblin dropship she had escaped the surface in having had only enough fuel to escape the atmosphere.
Her eyes were rimmed with red, she only held her tears as to not let the militia have the satisfaction of her crying in their brig.
The heavy bootfalls of a pair of grunts could be heard and felt, and before long the door to her dingy cell flew open.
She held her still bound hands up to try dull the sudden influx of light, and was grabbed by the shoulders by two burly men and hauled up and out.
Blinking to adjust to the light, she saw a third man, clad in a pilot's jumpsuit; duck into her cell and retrieve the flask, giving it a sniff before sealing and pocketing it.
She was dragged through the ship for a couple of minutes before the two grunts stopped by a door, waiting a second before it opened.
She was the hauled in and sat in a chair, the metal binders she wore around her wrists attached to the chair between her legs.
The leader in the room, who Annabeth recognised from various wanted posters and bounty offers, was Sarah Briggs, leader of the Marauder Core.
The Militia lady opened her mouth to speak, but Annabeth spoke first.
"Pilot Lieutenant Annabeth Chase. Serial Number RZ-00147." He stated bluntly, giving the bare requirement of information she had to give as a prisoner of war.
Briggs looked back to a man in the corner, hunched over a laptop and flicked her head. If memory of her wanted posters was correct, this was a man known as 'Bish'.
He tapped away at his laptop, the sound the only thing keeping the room from an uneasy silence. "Got it." He announced, passing the laptop to Briggs.
The jumpsuit guy, who she now recognised as Barker, leant against the wall sipping from her flask. She scowled at him.
"So, Pilot Lieutenant Annabeth Chase." Briggs began. "Stationed aboard the IMS Hydra, a member of Tango squad. Numerous combat citations and awards."
Annabeth stayed silent.
"Listen Lady." Barker slurred, pausing to take another swig. "The more you answer the quicker this will be over."
"So what, you can shoot me in the head and dump me out the airlock?" She bit back scathingly.
"No, so we can return you to your cell and transfer you to a prison on harmony." Briggs replied. "Says here you are also in an intimate relationship with a comrade, who's record we are missing."
Annabeth look away, out the large window in the room towards the ruptured surface of the planet Demeter.
"Care to share?" Briggs asked, crouching down to her sitting height. "If you comply we might even be willing to recruit you."
Annabeth assessed her options. Likely a lifetime in a prison cell potentially facing a firing squad, or comply and maybe keep being a pilot.
"Pilot Lieutenant Percy Jackson." She answered lowly.
"Alive?"
"No. He-" She paused to gather herself, remembering her escape from the surface. "He didn't make it off the surface."
Briggs stood again nodding. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for you loss."
Annabeth refrained from mentioning it was technically the Militia that had gotten him killed by scorching the planet.
"What do you know about Spyglass." Bish asked.
"He's a supercomputer." Annabeth replied.
The Asian man sighed.
"I don't know anything else, I just did what I was ordered to do." Annabeth defended.
Briggs meant against the back wall, looking over at Barker, the two in a silent conversation.
"Take her back to her cell." Briggs ordered. The two grunts took her by the shoulders and began dragging her out.
"Wait." She called, the two grunts halted. "Do you regret your actions." Briggs asked.
Annabeth thought of the heinous things she had admittedly done wearing the blue insignia of the IMC. "Yeah." She whispered.
At the flick of Briggs head, the grunts were quick to haul her back into her cell, dumping her back into cupboard like room.
Alone, she began thinking back about some of the operations she had taken part in, when the IMC had returned to frontier.
One month prior, Colony G21, Planet Troy
With the IMC continuing their search for the militia fleet, one of their probes had detected activity in sector Bravo-217, and had dispatched Mercenary Kuben Blisk, alongside Annabeth's regiment, the 109th Elites.
Their dropship circled the settlement, one of the leading elements of the IMC recon force it was their job to be boots on the ground first.
As the pilot dropped them by the front entrance, both Jackson and Annabeth dropped out the back ramp, jumpkits flaring to accommodate the large drop.
Ahead of them, a large crowd of colonists had started to gather, whilst other dropships touched down, dropping squads of regular infantry to support them.
Their helmet radios crackled as Blisk made contact. "Oi, Riptide, take temp command while I'm enroute."
"Affirmative Blisk." She heard Percy's response.
Jackson reached up to switch to a short band radio to talk to the infantry. "Kilo, Lima, Yankee and Uniform squads go and form a perimeter."
"Yes sir." The grunts acknowledged.
"Halo 1-4, drop a rack of spectres at the front gate, keep them deactivated." He ordered again.
"Copy that."
Jackson then stepped into the colony and addressed the crowd of colonists who were watching the various military movements.
"This is an unregistered and unlicensed Colony." He shouted out to the crowd, climbing stop a nearby jeep. "Please submit to processing."
"IMC Dog!" A colonist shouted. Annabeth watched him tense up.
"We came here to escape you!" Another shouted.
A rock bounced off his chest. Jackson retrieved his pistol and fired it in the air. "You are now all being detained under section 14 of the -" He began to drone before a brick was thrown.
He dodged it, and looked for the person who threw it, before a rifle cracked.
Dropping into cover, He was quick on the radio. "Halo 1-1 give me another few racks of spectres and activate them. Search and detain the colonists."
The mechanical march of the robotic infantry was soon audible, and gunshots began to ring out as the spectres fired on the colonists that armed themselves, while others detained the unarmed colonists.
Outside the walls of the colony, a squad of spectres were digging a large pit.
"Lieutenant Jackson." The mechanical voice of spyglass was audible. "We are detecting a distress signal being sent out from the colony, it is encrypted."
"Jam the signal and decrypt it." Blisk cut in, as his wave of forces arrived over the colony.
"Kilo squad, move in and shut down that beacon."
"Affirmative sir."
Jackson stood by and watched as the spectres marched the captured colonists in single file outside the perimeter walls, to stand by the pit.
Jackstood stood off to the side as the mechanised infantry stepped back, drawing their weapons.
He turned to her, "Go help Kilo squad with that beacon."
She nodded and turned, it was a small mercy, he knew she hated this sort of operation. Behind her she heard his voice aloud.
"Ready. Fire." The simultaneous crack of rifle fire was heard as the captured civilians were executed. Their bodies falling into the mass graves dug out.
She continued walking towards the centre of the colony, every so often passing a few of the robotic soldiers or human infantry hanging around a corpse of an armed colonist.
The further she got, she could still hear the rhythmic crack of rifles as the populous was systematically executed.
Alone in her cell, her own heartbeat reminded her of the pulsing crack of executionary rifle fire.
The militia had come soon after that. She remembered hearing the reports of contact on the north side of the village, which preempted automatic gunfire.
It was there where the spectres proved their might, she had seen many a militia rifleman felled to either their aim or mechanical strength in melee.
After the battle, MacAllen had joined the militia, and they had been on the back foot all the way until Demeter.
After the battle, Percy had been ordered to spend more time with the techs, whatever it was for, he wasn't allowed to say, despite how close they were.
He had spent the next day with them too, not even going to the mess hall. He was absent during debrief but Blisk filled in for him.
They had survived the attack on the Sierra Airbase, where again, afterwards Percy had been hauled off to the techs for two entire days.
That battle had been stressful; and had she had lost her Titan in the fighting, a lucky militia Ogre class had grabbed the arm of her own Atlas class and ripped it clean off, before attempting to use it to smash her cockpit inwards.
She had been saved by Percy's own Stryder class, which had barrelled around the corner and dumped a less than healthy amount of 20 millimetre ammunition into the rear of the fatter Militia titan, before ripping its cockpit open and crushing the pilot inside.
He always had been a bit more brutal than her.
Their superiors liked to call him 'Effective.'
She didn't like that part of him, not that she could ever tell him. Percy loved the IMC, in his eyes, they saved him from his treacherous home life with a military scholarship, and then by offering him the pilot's combat certification.
Annabeth had joined to spite her mother, nothing like getting back at an overbearing mother by going into a conflict zone that was light years away from home.
She had excelled from her strategic foresight, something that her superiors had noticed and nurtured, allowing her to then try out for pilots school.
She sat alone in her cell pondering her service to the IMC. It was likely she was presumed dead, she wondered if home had received official notice yet.
Not that it mattered, as her mother had made clear to her long ago, she was already dead to them. She was mainly concerned about what would happen to the years of service and hazard pay she had accumulated.
Deep in thought, she had lost track of time. Not that it was particularly easy to keep track of it within a prison cell.
The door slid open, to reveal a new pair of grunts, and Briggs herself.
"Up." She ordered.
Annabeth hauled herself up and followed the leader of the Marauder Core, the two grunts falling in besides her.
She walked for a handful of minutes before they entered what appeared to be a briefing room. Before them, the planet Asphodel was on display, aptly named for the prison stationed in orbit of the planet.
"You're planning to attack Asphodel?" Chase questioned.
"We have reason to believe that some of our pilots are being held there." Briggs replied.
Annabeth pressed her lips in thought. "It's a possibility, but it won't be any from the Marauder Core, high command would execute them enroute to prisons." She revealed.
She noted how Briggs' shoulders sagged at the revelation. The leader of the Marauder Core stood pondering for a few moments.
"Maybe it's not worth it then. We were also eyeing up a remote fuel dump, apparently code named Sand Trap."
"I've never heard of it." Chase admitted.
"Initial recon indicates it's lightly defended, however we've lost track of the IMC fleet, and they be moving to secure the outpost's fuel."
"Why are you telling me this?" Chase asked.
"To be blunt, I lost a lot of pilots down on the surface of Demeter, and I'm looking to replenish my ranks. Where better to start than with those like you?" Briggs revealed.
Chase nodded, the reasoning was sound. "And if I agree?"
"There's a simulation pod waiting for you." Bish cut in.
"Let's go then." Chase shrugged, rubbing her wrists as her restraints were removed by one of the guards, the other had his trigger finger resting on his shotgun.
She followed the tech into the next room over, a large hangar where a number of titans were under maintenance. On a raised gantry to the side of the large room, a rack of simulation pods awaited, a team of techs scurrying around them.
Bish made his way over to the techs, while another helped Annabeth into the pod. It was of an older model to the ones available on the IMS Hydra, as was to be expected of the ragtag militia.
Strapping In, she felt the boot sequence cycle.
This simulation should hopefully provide an accurate layout of the Sand Trap facility.
Circling around in a goblin dropship, the facility was certainly IMC, the architecture and layout typical of its habits and doctrine.
As the ship flew down to an altitude as to where she could safely jump out, she quickly checked over her weapons.
An R101 Assault Rifle, and no sidearm.
In honesty, she didn't particularly know why she expected anything more. Sliding out of the open door and flaring her jump kit, she began a wall run to engage the hostile IMC infantry.
That would take some getting used to saying.
She moved in tandem with a number of friendly grunt squads, engaging in firefights throughout the facility in an attempt to clear out its occupants.
The challenge came from their lack of heavy weapons, as to not accidentally ignite the fuel reserves they were moving to capture.
Such a challenge was then doubly amplified as the floor rumbled with the heavy steps of an IMC Ogre class Titan.
Quickly dashing to cover as the behemoth rounded its 40 millimetre cannon on her, she heard the impact and screams of the grunts she had vacated.
Her lack of anti-Titan weaponry proved to make this a difficult situation, and meant she would likely have to end up rodeoing the hulking metal machine.
Beginning a wallrun outside of the titan's periphery vision, it wouldn't be long before one it's exterior cameras locked on to her movement.
As she jettisoned herself off the wall, she noted one of the head mounted cameras lock onto her position as she descended down towards the top of the Titan.
She quickly manoeuvred to the back, ripping open a maintenance panel to expose the wiring and circuitry, she began to empty her rifle's magazine into the inner workings.
The effects were immediately obvious, as the Titan stumbled, some of its mechanics failing already. She reached down to her waist and retrieved a grenade, lodging it in the workings before pulling the pin, jumping away from the Ogre.
The machine was quick to round on her, it's cannon still being brought to bear when the grenade exploded.
The Titan stacked over forward, weakly sticking out a hand to try and prevent it from landing flat on its hatch.
Picking up a previously discarded pistol from the floor, she closed distance as the hatch was wrenched open from the inside.
Upon seeing the glowing visor and white armour, she was quick to dispense a trio of shots into the pilot, leaving him dead in the cockpit of his husk of a Titan.
Looking around, she noticed more IMC infantry emerging from the barracks and closing in.
"Chase, we've got a Titan ready for you. We've gotten as close as we can to the one you had for the IMC." The voice of Bish was heard over her radio.
"Send it in." She replied.
"Standby for titanfall."
"With the loss of our main refuelling hub, we are now cut off from our supply lines within the core worlds." The automated voice of Spyglass was heard.
"Where does that leave us then." The heavy tone of Blisk was heard.
"With my promotion to chief in command, I will first begin by consolidating our resources into a new central operations base within friendly territory." The artificial intelligence unit droned on.
"Yeah whatever, as long as I am paid I don't care." Blisk fired back. "Just get me in contact with general Marder."
"Following the recent defeat at Demeter, I saw it prudent to ask general Marder to come aboard, he should be arriving in the hangar about now." Spyglass sounded off.
Blisk huffed, before stalking down to the large hanger bay, where an executive marked goblin dropship was touching down.
"General Marder." He greeted the elderly man.
"Mister Blisk." He returned. "I hope you have been keeping up with schedule."
"I was hoping to speak to you about that. We lost our subject on Demeter, however the eggheads think we are at an acceptable level to proceed to the next stage." Blisk replied; as the two travelled further into the depths of the flagship.
"That is fortunate. I have the first prototype from our subsidiary Vinson Dynamics being transported as we speak." Marder informed him.
The two entered the restricted area of the flagship, before turning into a large technical bay. The centre of the room held a gurney where a robotic body lay, its head housed a large array of miniature cameras, centred by a large vertical rectangular LED light.
From overhead, a mess of cables hung down from the ceiling and plugged into the head of the robot, making an apt visual comparison to that of Medusa.
In the room an array of scientists huddled around some established computer terminals.
"How is the transfer going." Marder asked.
"Just finished sir, we are initialising now." A techie reported.
The light at the centre of the robot lit up, and a moment passed before it sat up, bending ninety degrees at the waist.
The head looked left and right, assessing the room and its occupants.
"Pilot. Can you hear me." Marder asked.
"Yes General." Replied the synthesised voice.
"You remember your call sign pilot?" Blisk asked.
The machine stopped to look down at its hands, flexing its fingers. "Riptide, Sir."