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Sam was quiet for a moment as he processed everything Feo just told him. He glanced back up at her, while she was making the various diagrams and models she had conjured up to help her explanation vanish back into the ether. He cleared his throat softly, “So who were those soldiers who were after you, then? If the universe at large doesn’t know that the Aeteri still exist, why were they hunting you?”

Feo vanished the projection of the several ships she had created and sighed, “We call them Sabre. When the Machine War ended, I said that everyone agreed AI technology was too dangerous. Well, the newly formed Galactic Council thought among themselves that the civilisations of the galaxy might forget the lessons of the war, so they set up a task force to hunt down and stop AI research in any form. As technological progress resumed, every so often a rogue AI would pop up and cause some minor havoc. Sabre would swoop in and eliminate it. And, well, to them, I’m just another rogue AI. They don’t think that I could have actually been a person, they think such technology has been long since lost. Or maybe they don’t think I’m an AI, but are so repulsed by the idea that I forsook my body for this mechanical shell that they consider me an abomination… In either case, even the scout chassis bodies that we have, our lightest class, are incredibly resilient. I mean, hell, I took a plasma blast to the shoulder and was still relatively fine. Yes, sure, the EM from it partially overwhelmed me, but it didn’t do much damage. But in the event of catastrophic damage or capture, our bodies are designed to self-destruct on command. It’s… Well, it’s a little grim, but it’s something we all agreed to when we signed up for this. We can’t let this kind of technology fall into the hands of other races, and we can’t reveal that we’re still around.”. At that grim sentence, Feo fell silent once again. Sam watched her for a moment, wondering if she would continue, before sighing and taking a look through some of the notes that Feo left him.

A few minutes had passed before they were stunned out of their idleness by klaxons blaring off overhead, while a voice came over the loudspeaker, “Attention all hands, we have detected Sabre forces approaching from the north! Troops and walkers are incoming!”.

Instantly, Feo’s hologram vanished from the desk, before her body reached up and removed the data cable from her neck. She opened her eyes, her irises glowing a bright, coruscating purple, while the cables connected up her spine disconnected with a soft pop and retreated back into the wall. Feo jumped to her feet and dashed to the desk, reaching past Sam and tapping in a command on the console, “Lt Ashter, do you have numbers? Distance? ETA?”

“Yes ma’am,” came the reply, “Twenty soldiers and two walkers. They are approximately one kilometre to the north and closing, and we estimate that they’ll be here within thirty minutes.”

Feo cursed under her breath, “Damnit, okay, charge up the point defence systems, and get everyone able to fight to the trees to our north. I’ll be there in a moment!”. At that, Feo turned to Sam, “Come on, I need to grab my stuff from the armoury, and we need to get you a proper weapon,” she said, grabbing her jacket from the floor and rushing out with Sam in hot pursuit

Snow had begun to fall as the moon raised over the mountains. It wasn’t heavy enough to obscure immediate vision, but it was enough to leave a dusting of powder across the shoulders of everyone not undercover. Feo was crouched high among the branches of a particularly large tree, a pair of rangefinders held to her eyes. She scanned the surrounding forest, keeping an eye on the motion trackers she had set up a day ago, trying to see their approaching adversaries. But the forest was still. It didn’t seem like a normal stillness, though. There was no wind, no birds, no sound or disturbance, save the snow.

Then Feo spotted it in the distance; it seemed like a meteor shower in reverse, bright flares of light shooting up into the sky, arcing gracefully above the forest. Arcing directly towards them!

Feo opened her comm link, “Gladius, we have rockets inbound! Fire point defences at will!” she yelled, her purple eyes still fixated firmly on the incoming fire. But in the back of her mind, she was cursing; while the point defence should be able to take out any incoming artillery or rocket fire, thanks to the orientation that the ship landed in, the turrets were pointing too far up to be able to be used on hostile soldiers.

Behind everyone, there was a loud whirring sound as the turrets across the hull of the Gladius spun around to take aim, before the falling stars were met with bright laser pulses. The lasers strobed almost blindingly fast, but a few rockets still managed to make their way through. Loud explosions bloomed around them as the rockets impacted upon their defensive line; curses were abound as crewmen scurried out of the way, often by as little as centimetres between them and the fireball, but no-one was injured more than having their tails singed.

Feo watched carefully for a second volley, but it seemed like their assailants had got the idea and weren’t up for wasting more heavy ordinance. The stillness of the forest returned, but in the distance, she saw trees shaking as the approaching forces began to move closer. She closed her eyes and pulled out her rifle, looking quite unlike any she had shown Sam hours earlier. She unspooled the cable from under the stock and plugged it into her neck, interfacing it with the rest of her systems. “Sen, I want you and Ela to try to hack into their systems. HUDs, walker control software, fire control, anything!” she ordered, looking across the forest. She compared what she was looking at with her motion tracker information, before speaking to her remaining AI, “Mar, how long can I supress respiration before the heat build-up becomes dangerous?”

The red vixen popped into Feo’s view, “Not long, Feo. Maybe ten seconds at most, Sen and Ela have the cyberwarfare suite running at full power.”

Feo nodded, before superimposing the motion tracker data onto the portion of her view that her rifle was aiming at. She lifted her rifle to her shoulder and took aim, focussing on the orange blob marching at the head of the approaching soldiers. She exhaled softly, her breath turning to mist in the cold winter air, was still for a moment, before a deafening report tore through the forest. A metal shard as long and thin as a needle was catapulted out of her rifle at ten times the speed of sound, penetrating the skull of the soldier she was aiming at, tearing through, then into the ground behind him. He was dead before he even heard the shot fired.

Instantly the rest of the soldiers scattered, diving for cover behind the trees. A few metres behind them, their two walkers, looking like bipedal tanks more than anything else, aimed their weapons in Feo’s general direction. She cursed under her breath and leapt from the tree scant seconds before the branch she used to be on was shredded under sustained fire.

Her crew took that opportunity to open fire on the confused soldiers, cutting down two who had been unlucky enough to be sticking out from behind their cover. But they were quick to return fire, reorganising with the efficiency that only an experienced military squad could achieve. Their walkers swivelled their weapons down towards the defensive line and started laying down supressing fire while their troops slowly advanced.

Feo was at the bottom of the tree she had leapt from, resting back against it while her eyes were closed. She had stowed her rifle again and reached out, holographic displays swirling around her outstretched arms. Her eyes still closed, she grasped, not through the air, but through the maelstrom of data surrounding everyone, and every bit of technology, in her vicinity. She could feel the Gladius behind her like a glowing star, radiating power and information. She could sense the rifles in the hands of her crewmembers. She could see the walkers and soldiers ahead, glowing like beacons in the swirling miasma of information. And above it all, her two AIs whizzing around like pixies above a mystic pond, poking and prodding at the streams, trying to find anything they could exploit.

“Sen,” she whispered in her mind, “I’m going to attempt to take control of one of the walkers. Back me up and keep an eye out for their Chimera viruses, okay?”

It was always a strange sensation, separating your consciousness from your physical body. The best comparison that could be given would be like a kick to the chest, enough to knock you flying. But instead of your body, your mind gets sent reeling. Vision, hell, senses, as most would know it, become irrelevant. Useless. Superfluous. All that matters is the raging storm of information.

Feo floated in this multifaceted cyberspace for a moment, taking in the staggering beauty of it. Of the perfectly harmonious transmissions of her ship, to the rapid pulsing of the walkers’ control systems, to the constant chatter of her adversaries. She swooped over to the beacons of light that were the walkers and drifted in front of them, before swiping a paw over the space in front of her, accessing her core systems and bringing online some very special programs, viruses of her own creation, and designed for one thing.

Three spears of light suddenly lanced out from Feo’s body, before plunging directly into the walker’s systems. She monitored her viruses on a display she conjured in front of her, making small adjustments to them as they worked. Sen floated down beside her and created her own displays, before launching her own array of viruses towards the walker, “We’ve broken through their firewalls, Chimera viruses responding. Four attack viruses neutralised, remaining programs barely operational,” Sen commented, eliciting a frustrated growl from Feo.

“I’m switching versions,” she replied, making some modifications to her screens in front of her, “Deploy set Ro and back me up with decoys,”

Sen obliged and made the modifications, and they simultaneously resumed their cyber-attacks on the walker. This time, however, the viruses defending the walker’s core systems were overwhelmed, drawn off by the decoys or otherwise destroyed. Sen turned to Feo, “Here’s our chance, you want the honours?”

Feo smiled widely, “Oh, it would be my pleasure!” she exclaimed as she dived towards the central systems of the walker.

Sam was pressed against the trunk of the tree, and was peeking around the edge to try to get a clear shot on the fast-approaching soldiers. He glanced down their defensive line; the constant barrage of fire from the mechs was pinning them down, and several of the crew had been injured. Some lay in the snow, bleeding out, while others were huddled behind cover as best they could, nursing wounds gingerly.

He went to lean out to take a shot, but was instantly met with a searing plasma bolt rushing past his head, causing him to reverse course quickly. He tapped the communicator Feo gave him, “Hey, uhh, we could really use some help here, you know?” he spoke into it, glancing around.

The second he said it, one of the mechs stopped firing. He mumbled something under his breath, before making a dash for the far edge of the battlefield; if he was lucky, he might be able to flank them! He made it as far as five steps, before the mech that had stopped firing turned towards him. His blood froze as he stared down the steaming barrels of the mech’s guns, but amazingly, it didn’t shoot at him.

Instead, the mech turned towards the other one, pressed the barrel of its gun against its back, before unloading into its fusion core. With a loud sputter and an electrical whine, it crumpled forward, completely powerless. The surrounding troops turned to face it, confusion and horror etched upon their faces as they realised what was happening.

Immediately, the mech lifted one of its arms and slammed it into a soldier, crushing him into a red paste in an instant. It started pivoting, taking aim at the soldiers, some of whom were fleeing, while others had the nerve to stand their ground against their friend-turned-foe. The gatling cannon spun up with a high-pitched whine and started spewing forth a veritable storm of ammunition. They carved through snow and soldier alike, leaving only a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

The defenders stared at it in stunned confusion for a moment, before they broke from their stupor and rushed towards their injured crewmates, dragging them away from the front lines and back into better cover. As the mech turned around and started striding after the routed soldiers, the crew of the Gladius rushed down the shuttle bay ramp to help retrieve their injured comrades.

Feo kept firing at the fleeing soldiers, despite the desperate objections of the pilot inside the mech trying frantically to regain control. She snickered to herself as he tried to input some feeble overwrite commands, and simply brushed it aside. She glanced from side to side, verifying that the only soldiers remaining were fleeing and out of range by now. She pulled back from the mech, away from the swirling storm of information, far quieter now than before, and returned to her body. She powered down her cyberwarfare suite as she opened her eyes, before groaning in annoyance; the heat her body had been generating had melted the snow around her in a metre radius, absolutely saturating her uniform and her fur underneath.

She glanced up at the mech, staggering around, its pilot having just realised he had control, before jumping up and grabbing her rifle again. Staying low and weaving through the dark trees, she made her way stealthily towards the mech who had begun turning back towards the now exposed crew of the Gladius. But before he could raise his weapons, a small figure leapt onto the mech’s torso, startling the pilot inside.

Feo clung to the mech as it started to swing from side to side, trying to shake her off. She growled menacingly and aimed her rifle square at the canopy inside, where she knew the pilot was sitting. She grinned, something that until this point, she had never really done. It revealed the sharp teeth inside her maw, and was frankly more disturbing than anything that she could have said.

“Smile, you Sabre bastard!” she exclaimed, pulling the trigger. The shard fired from her rifle crossed the distance between its origin and the pilot’s brain in a fraction of a fraction of a second. The force of the impact on the canopy left a dented crater a good ten centimetres wide. The mech stopped moving instantly as the shard tore through both the pilot and the control systems, all but annihilating both.

Feo slung her rifle across her back and leapt down lightly, landing on the snow with barely a crunch. She sprinted back to her crew, whom she noticed were gathered together next to the ship. At the sound of her approach, a few looked up at her. She glanced between them; none of them seemed seriously injured, but they were holding each other, almost as if they were…

The crowd parted, revealing a white-furred paw that was stained crimson with blood, dripping onto the snow underneath. Ensign Sari laid there, her eyes closed almost peacefully, while her crew around her mourned. Riani had knelt beside her, a brown and white paw resting on her Sari’s forehead, saying a quiet prayer for the departed. As if sensing her presence, Riani looked up at Feo sorrowfully, “She was caught by the first wave of supressing fire…” she mumbled haltingly, “Tore straight through her armour… I wasn’t able to get to her in time…”

Feo knelt down beside the rabbit, gently gripping her arm, “Ri… I know what you must be feeling right now… But there are people who need your help in the infirmary. We’ll see that she gets looked after, okay?”

Riani sniffled a little and nodded, “Yeah… I guess I can do that. Make sure to take good care of her, okay? She was too young to be out here… She deserves that much, at least,” she said softly as she slowly stood up, helped by everyone around her, before making her way back inside.

Feo sighed softly and gently stroked down the feline’s cheek, remembering back to when she had first met Sari. Back when the Gladius was still in dry dock, she had begged Feo for a place on her ship. She honestly wasn’t sure if she should accept the young Eoburus or not, given her age. She was young, even among her own people. But until this point, she had never regretted her decision to allow her on board, to serve as her communications officer. As she gazed down at her peaceful face, she realised she regretted almost nothing more…