It felt good to be moving again. The interior of the appropriated landship had become familiar to Tahlm since this whole adventure began and it felt less like a stolen landship and more like their own. Everyone else seemed to agree.

In Crater's Edge, Frye had the Black Steel Corporation logo painted over and replaced with Deep Cut's logo, the name "Rebel" stencilled beneath on both sides.

"Thanks for bringing me along," he said.

He was riding on Neo's bad shoulder as she stood behind the captain's chair. She turned her head to him and smiled.

"Hey, you know I wouldn't leave you out of the action; you're part of the crew. Besides, we need someone to write what happens when we get into that vault. Tiyes can't solve puzzles and write things down for posterior at the same time."

Shiver chuckled. "That's 'posterity', Neo."

Neo blushed and more chuckles rose from around the bridge. It was amazing how everyone seemed at ease with each other now.

Neo and Tiyes' spat was behind them and they seemed like genuine comrades with Deep Cut now. As for himself, he no longer considered Shiver to be someone holding a brick above his head, ready to drop it on him the second he went out of line, and he was probably closer to Neo than anyone outside his own family. Amazing what experiencing desperate situations could do.

She didn't treat him like a helpless, delicate thing that had to be coddled and kept in a secure box; she treated him like a person, just a small person. She respected him as much as anyone else and didn't look down at him for his size. She made him feel much taller than he really was. She was the first person to make him feel that way.

But that made him think about the future. What would happen when this whole adventure ended? Where would they all end up? A lump rose in his throat and he asked, "Neo, when this is over, what are you going to do?"

Neo's mantle turned brown with spots of dark blue. "Get punished, most likely. I bet Mom is coming up with all kinds of extra chores for me to do over the next decade. She went berserk when I came home with a missing arm."

"Ah… yeah. Speaking of which, are you sure about taking part in this after all you went through?"

Neo exhaled, a haunted look flashing in her eyes. "I don't want to, if I'm really honest, but I have to – not because someone else is making me do it, it's because I know I need to do it." She shuddered, nearly causing him to lose his balance. "I have to face it. I can't let it control me." She said the words as if it were a mantra. She took in a deep breath then forced a smile. "Besides, I'd regret it the rest of my life if I missed out on this action."

Tahlm hid his concern behind a grin of his own. "Nice to see you haven't changed."

"Ay, what's that up ahead?"

Big Man was pointing a fin at something in the distance. Neo stepped closer to the window and she squinted.

"Looks like a dust cloud. Could that be the dig site?"

"No." Tiyes turned his mantle red, and there was a quiver in his voice. "It's the right direction but the spheres would have reacted by now."

Silenced reigned on Rebel's bridge until Shiver quietly uttered the words, "Neo, contact Dunewalker.

Rak looked up from the map table as a report came to the captain about a dust cloud to the south-east. Dunewalker's map room shared a space with the bridge, so all of them heard the report at once.

Frowning, Rak dug into his bag of map tokens and placed a Go stone on the map white side up in the approximate direction of the dust cloud, just as he'd done back during the war when an unknown vessel had appeared, just as his father and grandfather had before him.

Back then, I never would have imagined anything like a landship.

"Keep an eye on it and let me know when we have their heading."

Dunewalker's captain flashed green and walked back to the lookout's speaking tube to relay the instructions. He'd adapted the easiest to the idea of Rak being in charge of the whole endeavour. The other captains weren't used to taking orders from someone else; they might answer to the elders at best. It had taken him a little while to get them to understand why he needed them to move in formation. They had no idea before then what a formation even was.

The landships were arranged in three columns of four ships each, in staggered line, each column behind and to the right of the previous one. This allowed not only freedom to manoeuvre but also avoided choking on each other's dust, and at the speed their large, lumbering, behemoths were going, there was a lot of it.

This area of the desert was of relatively flat sand with the occasional little hill or rock poking out, allowing them to reach their actual cruising speeds; although, the overall speed of their formation was limited to their slowest member, that being Dunewalker. She was the largest landship in their little fleet, and with her huge tracks and trapezoidal shape, there wasn't a dune in the Splatlands she could not conquer, unfortunately, those same characteristics made her slow.

Their fleet plodded along at barely 25 km/h. Flat out, Dunewalker could supposedly do 35 km/h but he had a feeling the captain would do anything to avoid doing that.

Still, faster than some ships I've sailed. He thought.

The captain returned and reported, "seems like they're heading almost directly for us, trying to cut across our path." He pointed to an approximate location on the map ahead of their direction of travel.

Rak grimaced. "Could the landships from Splatsville have caught us this quickly?"

The captain pondered for a moment. "They're faster than us on average." He traced the line directly from Splatsville to their current location. Although they were travelling faster than they would have on the dunes, they had to travel a greater distance directly from Riverside.

"We never got told they were leaving."

"Riverside doesn't have any radios or telephones," the captain explained. "They used to but nobody's ever been able to scrape up the parts to fix them. I'm more worried about how they found us all the way out here. Even a good guess could have put them way off. They aren't sitting in our path, they're chasing us."

That was worrying. Rak's plan had been for the Scrap Corporations to try and intercept them but he hadn't wanted them to actually succeed, he had wanted them to chase him around the desert or at worst, reinforce the vault from where he could isolate them.

That was another reason they'd gone directly to the vault from Riverside. Their fleet had to take a diagonal path across the desert relative to Splatsville, making it harder for them to be intercepted. The corporation would spend hours searching only to wind up with nothing until the attack on the vault itself was over and they had wrecked or captured the digging equipment to stop them from excavating the vault further until the Ascendancy arrived in force. That done, they would hurry home before the enemy fleet caught them. That had been the plan. Now that plan was out the window.

"Captain!" The radio operator's half-panicked tone cut through the background noise of the room like a knife. "The pathfinder is reporting another dust trail directly ahead, coming right for us."

"What?" The captain gaped. "There's no way– it couldn't be the guards from the dig site, could it?"

Rak grunted and placed a black Go stone directly in their path, ahead of the small wooden ship piece that identified their pathfinder, Shiver's landship. "Tell the pathfinder to identify the composition of the enemy force then fall back to us. She'll know what that means."

"O-okay."

The captain gripped the edge of the map table tightly, the corners of his mouth pulled back in a snarl. "One force might be bad luck, but they both managed to find us out here without wandering off their bearing. There's a snitch among us."

Rak grunted then looked across the table at its only other occupant. "What do you think?"

The girl Shiver had called "Maiya" was an enigma to Rak. She was obviously still in her teens, yet she carried herself with an oddly mature and martial bearing. However, at no point had she ever identified herself and he suspected that was deliberate. She was associated with the Ascendancy somehow and Betanuss hadn't formally introduced her, so she had to be some kind of agent.

Despite her aloofness upon her first impression, she'd insisted joining the flagship instead of going with Shiver's crew. All the time she'd been with him she'd been patiently observing, politely asking questions about his tactics, his strategy, and the things he was keeping track of at any given moment, like some apprentice.

Now that he had asked her question, her mantle rippling and brows furrowed with thought, then asked, "the pathfinder is a captured enemy 'ship, isn't it?"

The captain frowned. "Yes, its from Black Steel Corporation."

"Was the transponder ever disabled?"

The captain frowned with confusion. "A what?"

Rak spat out a curse. How could he have been so negligent?

"A transponder," he explained. "It's a newfangled device used to identify and locate ships at sea. It makes sense they would have them on their landships. Tell the pathfinder to find it and get rid of it."

The captain hurried to relay instructions to the radio operator and Rak rubbed his hands over his face. "I can't believe I forgot something so obvious."

"There is nothing more easily overlooked than the obvious," Maiya quoted in a consolatory tone.

Rak grunted and turned the first Go stone over to black as well. But now that they were alone for the moment, maybe he could get some information out of her. It might make him feel better after making such a critical oversight or at least distract him from it.

"You're a soldier, aren't you?"

Maiya flashed green without hesitation.

"You're young."

"I'm seventeen. There were plenty of girls my age who joined the Imperial Army and Navy during the war."

"The key word there is joined. I can tell you're already experienced. You've led troops into battle before."

She flashed green again. "Yes."

Rak's guts clenched. Girls her age should be worrying about what it means to be an adult and learning how dating works, not fighting wars. I'm too old for this.

"How long?" he asked, almost afraid of hearing the answer.

"Since I was fourteen. I learned on the job, mostly."

He'd been right, he hadn't wanted to learn the answer, but he had to be grateful to have someone else experienced in warfare around, even if they were younger than most of his grandchildren. Unfortunately, it also proved some of the ugly rumours about the Ascendancy true but he had to force himself to put those worries aside for now. Those were future problems; he had to focus on the now.

"Well then, what say you and I put our collective soldiering experiences together and try to figure out how we're going to win our way out of this."

Pritor Velclaw clicked his mandibles with delight as the reports came in. They finally caught up with them. They had been forced to push their machines hard and he'd already lost one to mechanical failure, but they had managed to catch the Splatlandians before they reached the vault, all thanks to a little foresight and imagination.

The Black Steel Corporation's stolen scout landship was scouting ahead of the formation of scrapper landships, the cry of its emergency beacon still broadcasting after over a week in someone else's hands. Had the clans and Scrappers not been so clandestine in their operations so far, he might have thought they wanted to be found.

He and the other security chiefs of the Scrap Corporations had gotten together in the middle of the night to discuss a counter to their enemy's actions. Just as they'd been about to end their meeting, word reached them that the Scrapper's landships were headed for Riverside. It hadn't taken much imagination to figure out what was going on there. The clans had sneaked their warriors out of the city not across the desert but from the sea side and up the river. It had been an obvious trick, and yet they'd missed it, but it did provide them a new opportunity.

He had originally hoped to run them down, or at least come in from behind and crush them against the defending ring of landships at the vault. Unfortunately, the latter strategy ran the risk of the digging equipment being wrecked before the fight was over. Driving as hard as he had he could have still beaten them there and bolstered the defence of the vault, but that would allow them to retreat back to Splatsville, perhaps in time to save the clan leaders from getting captured. His objective was to either destroy them or at least keep them occupied long enough for the city to be secured.

Black Steel's search and rescue planes were able to locate the scrapper's landships thanks to the still broadcasting emergency beacon on the stolen landship. Even now, standing in the map room of his flagship, Fortune, his radio operator relayed the positions and disposition of the enemy force while his adjutant placed them on the map.

Being able to track the enemy's exact position allowed him to come up with a new plan. He'd asked for a handful of landships from the vault defence to move out and block the Scrappers' landships. This was Force 2. Meanwhile, his Force 1 would move in and hit the Scrappers from the other direction while they were obstructed. The Precursors had called this tactic the "Hammer and Anvil". A name he personally liked.

Black Steel Corporation's planes had allowed him to continually track the relative positions of all forces involved, making sure he kept on course to intercept them even amidst the featureless desert flats. When he got back to Birgus, he was going to recommend they add airplanes to their own armed forces.

"Firefly has turned around and is heading back to the main formation," the radio operator reported. 'Firefly' was the codename for the stolen landship.

"Understood. Have the Scrappers tried to make contact with us?"

"No, Sir."

Pity. He didn't have particular disdain for the Scrappers, other than their being primitive desert dwellers. They were people who simply wanted to maintain their way of life and had gotten caught up in the politics between the two sides. Had the Scrap Corporations handled things better, they could have made them allies against the clans instead of the other way around.

The clans were the real enemy, and of the three, the Balt Ralok Clan was the worst offender.

And now I have a chance to put all that to an end, here and now.

"Has the enemy reacted yet?" He asked.

"Not yet, Sir."

"Well that's bound to change soon. If it really is Balt Ralok leading them, he won't just wait for us to catch him. He might split one of his columns off to try and get around. Watch for it. Time to intercept?"

"Roughly half an hour," came the reply.

"Expect it to come sooner. Everyone stay alert."

Balt Ralok's own pride wouldn't let him simply be eaten up from the tail, he would turn and face them, he was sure of it. He had been told to take Balt Ralok alive, which was fine by him, he wanted someone to stand trial for their crimes, and one way or another, he would have him.

Shiver clung tightly to the arm rests of her captain's chair as Frye turned Rebel around and headed back to the main body of the Scrapper's fleet. She could feel the massive vehicle lean, threatening to lift its right wheels off the ground until the turn was completed.

She glanced over at Neo who was manning the communications station, relaying the information they'd found.

Shiver allowed her body to relax once the landship settled. "Are they chasing us?"

Frye checked the rear-view camera. "Doesn't look like it, but they're all crawlers. On flat ground like this they don't have a chance at catching us."

"Let's hope that doesn't change."

"Yeah. So, where do you want us to go? Are we supposed to stick behind everyone else?"

Shiver brought her fan to her chin, thinking fast. She knew they had to stay out of trouble, they were the ones who were needed to lead the fleet to the vault, but running back and hiding wasn't going to accomplish anything. Wasn't there something else they could do?

What did they need? What did her grandfather need to conduct this battle appropriately? She had heard his stories countless times growing up, about the battles he'd fought during the war, what was the consistent thing he always needed to know before committing to a battle?

Then she remembered one of the Precursor's Wisdoms he had taught her: 'Knowing is half the battle.' And she realized that they only knew the numbers of the smaller force from the dig site, they didn't know what the larger force looked like or how large it was.

"Frye, turn us toward the other dust cloud. We're going to find out how big they are. We're supposed to be the scout, let's act like it."

Frye grinned. "Aye aye, cap'n."

Frye turned Rebel again, pointing them towards the huge dust cloud of what had to be a landship force from Splatsville. They must have waited until we were out of radio range to move out.

She heard footsteps behind her. She stood up from her chair and turned around to see Big Man, Tiyes, and Tahlm enter the wheelhouse. Big man was carrying a small, rectangular device with urchin script written on its exterior.

"We think this is it," he panted, placing it on the floor. "Pretty sure we turned it off. It's not lit up anymore."

"We'll look at it later. Stuff it somewhere and sit down. Things are going to get exciting."

Big Man had a worried look, probably wondering what she was up to, but did as he was told.

Tahlm was riding on Lil' Buddy's back as the salmonid hopped into Neo's bag. Tahlm, however, climbed out of the bag and up Neo's seat to sit on her shoulder. Not the most secure place.

But maybe that's where he feels safest.

Shiver smiled to herself and filed that thought for later. She sat back down and stared straight ahead at the oncoming force and wondering how her grandfather was going to turn this battle around.

"What are they doing?" Rak heard himself ask as Shiver's ship abruptly turned, cut across their path and charged straight at the enemy's main body.

He and Maiya were standing in the observation dome, a short, transparent blister on top of Dunewalker's hull that provided a 360 degree view around them. The plexiglass was badly scratched from sand and it was uncomfortably hot, but at least he got a better view of his surroundings.

"What they should be doing," Maiya said impassively. "They are the scout."

Rak grunted and mentally chastised himself. She was right, he'd been thinking about the safety of his granddaughter and of how important the pathfinder was. The latter wouldn't matter if they lost this battle. He was even more rusty than he thought.

He climbed down the ladder into the map room and walked to the map table. He stared at it for a moment then started giving orders.

"Call Rimar Onaga on Sunrunner. Tell him he's to take his division and intercept the smaller force directly ahead of us. Captain, turn our column towards the enemy main body and have the second column come alongside us."

The Captain nodded with just the briefest hesitation and began carrying out his tasks. Maiya stopped beside him and asked. "What are you doing?"

"Taking control. I want to hit them before they have a chance to change their formation. They may be able to react faster than sailing ships, but a formation that big can't change instantaneously. We may only be able to see a dozen landships right now but I'm betting they're hiding more behind them and the dust they're making."

Maiya's mantle throbbed a lighter green. "When Shiver is done her scouting run, can you tell her to swing by us and pick me up?"

Rak frowned. She was leaving now? "What are you going to do?"

Cooly, she replied, "what I do best."

"How interesting." Pritor lightly tapped one claw on top of the other, thoughtfully.

"What's that?" His adjutant asked.

He pointed at the screen, showing them the point of view of Fortune's mast camera, giving them an excellent vantage point to see the oncoming enemy formation as it turned directly towards them. Judging from the shrinking of the dust cloud, the column nearest to them was slowing down to let the second column on the outside of the turn catch up.

"They're closing up their formation, sacrificing manoeuvrability for security." He grabbed the small tokens on the map representing the enemy force and arranged them into two parallel columns close together.

"If we can't single them out, it will be more difficult to use our superior numbers against them. This means that except for the landships at the lead and at the rear, each one can only be attacked from one side. It also means they can move forces from ship to ship as they need to."

"But they're trapping themselves by doing that," his adjutant protested. "They're breaking a fundamental rule of battle by giving themselves no means of retreat."

Pritor shook his head. "You misunderstand. That's the whole point of what they're doing."

His adjutant looked baffled and Pritor explained. "Balt Ralok doesn't trust his own forces. He may be able to rely on his own warriors and maybe the Onaga, but the Scrappers aren't warriors, they're scavengers. You think if the fight starts getting tough that they'll bravely stand and hold their ground? No, I don't think so. And if they start to panic, the rest will too."

"But they'll have nowhere to run if they're surrounded."

"Exactly. The Precursors called it 'Death Ground', where your only choice is to fight your hardest for the chance to get out alive. And since I doubt anyone else over there knows anything about military tactics, they won't realize what's happened until it's too late."

His adjutant clicked his mandibles angrily. "It seems so wrong but logical."

"Logic is often like that. I may despise him on a personal level but as a military commander he is worthy of some respect, although this borders on cruelty. Honestly, I don't think he knows how his people will react to this situation any more than we do. He's trying to use ignorance in place of faith and that is a dangerous gamble."

His adjutant gave him a look that said he didn't readily agree. Then he said, "then what is the third column doing?"

"A good question. Communications, find out the direction of the enemy's third column." A minute later he got his answer.

"Sir, they're still moving ahead towards Force 2."

"Moving to block them," his adjutant bubbled. "That is a more even fight."

"Yes," Pritor murmured thoughtfully. "Tell Force 2 to avoid battle. They are to prevent the enemy's third column from getting past them but if the enemy charges towards us, Force 2 is to pursue and assist us."

"Yes, Sir."

The adjutant looked out the window at the approaching Scrapper fleet and clacked his claws impatiently. "What do we do with them?"

Pritor clicked his mandibles wickedly. "I'm going to deny our foe his death ground. We will surround them on all sides except for the rear. That will hem them in, but leave them a means to escape. Once enough of them do, we'll close the trap and Balt Ralock himself will then have no means of escape; thus accomplishing our objective of taking him alive and winning this battle at the same time."

"But what if his ship is one of the first to escape?"

Pritor rested both claws on the map table, staring at the view screen, watching the Scrapper's landships turn towards them. "No, he'll be close to the front, if not in the lead. That's his style. He'll be there and when his troops start to abandon him, that's when we'll close the trap and force them to turn him over."

"And if they don't?"

Pritor let out a small hiss through his mandibles. "Then we keep killing them until he gives himself up or they give him up to us. Either way, he's ours."

Shiver turned in her seat to look at Maiya as she entered the wheelhouse, carrying her awkward, long, pole weapon.

"Welcome aboard, I suppose," she said without enthusiasm.

Maiya didn't respond to that, instead she looked at Frye. "Are you armed?"

Frye turned around and grinned. "You bet. I brought a hunting spear."

"Then get it and have someone else drive."

Shiver gaped. "Wait, did you just come here to get Frye to fight?"

She flashed red. "No, I came here to cause havoc. Your small and fast enough to avoid the enemy's landships. We're going to hang back and strike from behind when the enemy is engaged. The more chaos we can create the better."

Frye eagerly launched to her feet. "Big Man, take over! I'm gonna' get my spear!"

Shiver watched her go then glared at Maiya who met her stare for stare. "You are someone accustomed to being obeyed, aren't you? Do you expect everyone to jump when you tell them to?"

Maiya's gaze held no malice or challenge; merely a stubborn fortitude that refused to give under Shiver's glare. "Sometimes. But from those people I earn that trust."

Shiver narrowed her eyes. "Frye is my friend."

"I'm not forcing her to do anything. She wants to do this."

"But she could be killed."

Maiya's gaze turned cold. "So can everyone else. A lot of people are about to be killed. This is what freedom costs. You had the chance to back out when you traded the keys for my silence, but you went back on the deal."

Her eyes flicked to something behind Shiver. She turned and saw Neo, holding her left side, eyes vacant. Already, Neo had paid a price for the freedom they still hoped to achieve. Was she asking Shiver if she would be willing to pay a similar price?

She looked back at her. "Why did you even make that deal? Looking back, you didn't even want the keys, did you?"

Maiya's eyes seemed to harden and Shiver felt like she was being judged. It was all too much like Dentia.

"I wanted to keep them out of the hands of the Scrap corporations," Maiya replied.

Shiver wasn't fooled, not this time. That might have been part of it but there was more.

"You were testing us. You wanted to find out how we would react, whether we would stick to the deal or confess to our families what happened." Shiver held her fan, folded and tightly in both hands. "And those keychains, you wanted to guilt us into doing it."

Maiya's own eyes narrowed, and her green mantle took on a subtle red tinge. "If Deep Cut is supposed to represent the Splatlands, if you're supposed to be leaders, you have to prove you can do the right thing."

Shiver's eyes became narrow slits. "And why should I care what you think of us?"

The two of them glared at each other, creating a tense atmosphere in the wheelhouse until Frye burst back in.

"I got it!" Frye held out her steel-tipped hunting spear. It was normally used to hunt lizards and her grandfather had famously used a similar weapon to hunt a razorback single-handed, but it was also known to penetrate a crab's shell now and then. At three-quarters the length of Maiya's weapon and having a simple pointed tip, it was less cumbersome as well.

Maiya flashed green. "I'm going to check how things are going. You two can talk."

Frye frowned at the girl's back then looked questionably at Shiver.

Shiver grimaced and turned her head away, unable to meet Frye's gaze. Quietly she asked, "why are you going?"

Frye chuckled. "What are you saying? Isn't this what we've been waiting for?"

"It wasn't supposed to end up like this. We weren't supposed to be here."

Frye rested her spear against the wall then knelt next to Shiver, taking her hand in hers, prompting the octoling to slowly turn her head and meet her eyes again.

"Listen, I'll be fine. From what Neo told us about Maiya she's a cursed good fighter."

"That's not what I'm worried about. If you do come back you won't be the same, and how can you trust her?"

"Cause she's my wife."

Shiver scowled. "Frye, this is no time for jokes."

Frye chuckled. "Aww, was worth a shot."

"This is serious."

"I know that. And I'm pretty sure none of us is taking this as seriously as Maiya. This seems to be her thing. I think we should listen to her.

"Things don't look good for us right now, Shiver, and she's trying to give us the best chance we've got. She's not here to run, she's here to fight." She released her hand and stood. "Besides, Gramps raised me to be a fighter and all that pirating we've done together is about to come in real handy."

Shiver swallowed the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes and turned her head away, covering her face with her fan as if hiding her own fear. "You'd better come back then. It would be a pain to hold tryouts for a new band member."

Frye laughed. "As if anyone could replace me."

Maiya's voice shouted from behind them. "It's starting! Frye, on the roof. Neo, we need you to guard the hatch!"

Fyre picked up her spear, gave Shiver one last smile before she hurried down the corridor to the roof hatch. Neo, hesitantly, followed in her wake, with Lil' Buddy right on her heels.

Shiver sighed and stared out the window to the right, watching as the two large groups of landships began to clash.

She heard a sound and turned her head to see Tahlm climbing to sit atop her chair back. He gave her an awkward smile and said. "I thought you and I could be worried together."

Shiver didn't say anything, she just turned her head to stare back out the window. Still, she supposed it was comforting to have someone else to share worries with. Nobody wanted to feel alone, after all.

Author's Notes:

Here we go folks. The stages is set you know the stakes for both sides, and now all there is to do is see what happens.

As you can see, Shiver and Maiya aren't getting along so terribly well. She certainly doesn't trust her with her best friend's life. How well do you think Frye will fare in her first life-and-death battle?

The first thing aircraft were used for in warfare was reconnaissance and artillery spotting. In this world where nobody's developed an air force you can imagine what a revelation this must be.