Freya blinked and she was back. She took stock of herself and noted that nothing hurt nor did anything feel out of place. She found herself sitting in her chair in the cockpit of her ship. The lights were low, telling her that she was on her emergency backup generator. That meant that she was using fuel and not battery power. Reluctantly she looked at her damage control console.

To her surprise, her ship was not as damaged as she had thought. The hull was intact, with a few warnings alerting her that in a few places the armor was very thin. Only one of her respawn pods was off line. She already knew that her main engines were dead, so that wasn’t a big surprise. Her weapons were offline, but that might be because she was on emergency backup power. One of her landing struts seemed to be damaged, but she had no way to tell how bad it was. She saw that her ship was still on a level plane so she knew it couldn’t be that bad. She checked her sensors to find out where she had crash-landed.

She was just outside a city somewhere next to a hill. There was no one in her immediate surroundings. Not houses or roads within five miles of where she landed. She immediately noticed that her ship was not under any camouflage whatsoever except her passive, painted-on camo. She quickly turned on her active camo and hoped no one had spotted her.

The next thing she noticed on her sensors was that the city was on fire and things were falling from the sky. Her sensors didn’t know what was falling except that it was metal. She increased the range to pick out a fast-moving fireball and scanned it. What she found shocked her. She immediately adjusted her scanners to scan above her. They returned a huge cloud of chunks of metal that were in a decaying orbit. Horrified, she focused her sensors beyond the new debris field, hoping she was wrong.

Her hopes were dashed and she gave up looking everywhere in the night sky after a while. There was no sign of the Monarch anywhere. She looked away from her scanner and brought up her scanning logs. She skipped past most of the mission to whatever the flash of white light was. Her hopes peaked when the logs noted the Monarch appearing on her sensors for less than a second before the light appeared before everything went dead.

She moved past the attack and checked the logs again. What they showed horrified her. Her sensors came back on without the jamming, showing everything. She had been too busy to check, but everything was gone. The entire formation of ships was nothing but chunks of metal. What was worse was seeing the Monarch break apart.

The Monarch didn’t blow up like in the movies, but came apart in at least four different pieces. The sensor log recorded everything, even as her dropship fell out of the sky. It showed three of the four pieces of the Monarch tear themselves apart and the wreckage moving into an unstable orbit over the planet. The smallest and last part spun off into deep space, flinging debris along its wake. The logs had an eight-second blank space from just after the ship crashed coming back online. Freya noted numbly that she had reappeared in the cockpit only five seconds after the sensor logs stated that the ship turned itself back on.

For a long time she sat there shocked. She couldn’t think for a very long time.

“The Monarch was an energy being. She is immortal.” Was the first thing that popped into her head. The next was, “She is only an energy being when she is traveling faster than light. She becomes a material being when she slows down.”

“She’s dead.” Freya muttered out loud. She looked up and tracked the last piece, hoping that the Monarch had somehow found a home on it and, against all odds, survived. Her sensors destroyed that hope. They found no energy on the last piece. According to them, the last piece was just a hunk of metal drifting off at a semi-high rate of speed into space. They even told her that this system’s sun would eventually grab it and pull it towards itself. The last piece was doomed to fall into the sun.

She sensors dinged her, alerting her that she had received a message just before the white light hit her. Frantically she opened the message. It was from the Monarch and it was broken down into three parts. The first part was a distress beacon from the Monarch. It didn’t have much in the way of information, except that she was in distress.

The second part was a life raft of data. Her ship had received the entire data of everyone onboard the Monarch except the Monarch herself. It didn’t take a genus to figure out that she didn’t have the storage space for the Monarch. As it was, most of the data was archived, so that everything could fit in her computer. There was no room for an energy being turned AI, even if she had dumped everything else and just downloaded the Monarch. The Monarch was just too big.

The last part was orders for any surviving ships or troops to go to ground and wait. The orders were not signed so she had no idea who had sent them. It did give her an expected date when another ship was likely to arrive. The date was nearly a hundred years from now. Freya closed her eyes as dark emotions crashed down on her.

She sat in her cockpit for a long time, wallowing in her depression, before an idea popped into her head. It was just one word, but it was enough to give her hope. “OTIDS.”

She quickly started scanning the area. She then referenced the planet’s geography. The city she was close to was listed as an unimportant manufacturer that only existed because of how close it was to some mine. The mine, according to her sensors, was on fire, so she ignored it. She tried to access the mission operations plan, hoping to see if it was on anyone's lists of targets to hit, but the mission and all its data had been deleted from her memory banks to make room for all the data sent from the Monarch.

Frustrated, she exited out from the computer. “I can send a message, but that would give away my position and, if I’m the last dropship, then I might be the only person to have everyone's memories in my ship’s memory banks. There is a back up, but how much memory will they lose if they have to resort to the back up?” She asked herself.

“How do I find them? And how do I send them a message?” She asked herself, looking down at her communication board. Then she got an idea. She scanned the area for an open data port and smiled when her ship was able to find one deep inside the nearby city. Then she started to look around inside the open access part of the system.

Hours later, she was close to tears as she watched another talking head on the screen spout propaganda garbage about the attack by the Federation. According to the government’s talking heads, the Federation’s plan was to kill everyone on the planet so that they could reclaim it. The key word the talking heads were throwing around was genocide. While they were vilifying the Federation, they were also heaping praise on the planet's leading families and how dedicated they were to keeping their world safe from the Federation.

What made it worse was the videos of the planet shooting down what they were calling enemy missiles but were really the OTIDS as they entered the planet's atmosphere. The weapon they used was the same white light that destroyed both the flight wings and the Monarch. They were calling it God’s will and they called the weapon God’s Fist. She was not sure if the video was real or not, because she had not seen, nor did her logs report, the destruction of the OTIDS. She was worried that it was true though. There were thousands of amateur videos on the system showing the OTIDS being destroyed by the white light.

She turned off the videos and looked down at her hands. “I need to know the truth. I need to hack into the government systems, but it has to be a clean hack. If they learn I’m still alive, things will get very bad. They can never know that they had been hacked. That means a slow hack. If there is anyone else out there in trouble then I won’t be able to help them if I take my time.”

She debated with herself as she flipped through the news channels hoping for some good news. It showed her nothing new. No news of any fighting. No news of any Federation Marines being captured. In the end, she decided that if any OTIDS made it to the ground, then the marines went to ground and didn’t attack. She took a deep breath and turned her attention towards her programs to start tweaking them. She kept one eye on the news channel, in hopes that it reported something that she could use, but as time went by it stopped showing anything new, except that what they were calling the last bits of enemy weapons, but were in fact what was left of the Monarch falling onto their planet.

The news agencies were saying that the government was tracking the weapons and they thought that the Federation’s attack should end in a few weeks. Until then, the new’s recommended everyone remain in their bunkers until such time as the government ended the Federation threat. What Freya thought was interesting was the government was not saying anything about the Monarch. It wasn’t telling the population that it was their fault that what was left of the Monarch was falling on their cities. Instead they were telling the population it was weapons from the Federation.

It took her two days to finish the new hacking program. She had heavily modified an already existing program - so much so that there was very little of it left. She released it and hoped for the best. The program was based on an old hacking trick. It would piggyback on other programs and populate itself throughout every system that it could. It would take at least a week until it got deep enough that she could start getting any useful information off it, but it would be mostly invisible to anti-hacking programs. She made it look like a corporate hacking attempt, in hopes that if it was discovered they would go after the wrong target.

Once she was done, she had nothing else to do except monitor the news agencies. The wreckage of the Monarch was still falling and the planet's population was still in hiding. According to her scanners, the Monarch would continue to fall for at least two more weeks, with most of the larger stuff to fall within eight days. Most of the smaller stuff would burn up as it entered the atmosphere, but the medium and large stuff would cause some major havoc. There were even some reports of bunkers being destroyed by what the news agency were still calling Federation weapons. There were still no reports of any enemies making it to the ground.

“Now what?” She asked herself, as she watched an alleged missile hit what looked like a satellite receiving station. The news report was talking about how communication with the rest of the universe would be cut off for the foreseeable future.

“Take stock. The mission is over. You do not have enough BacT to respawn more than two companies. There is no way to take over a planet with just two companies with no back up support of tanks or Mechs. Who should I spawn? Should I spawn someone?” She asked herself.

“Right now, there is no point in spawning anyone. If anyone is still alive, then I would have broken the law by spawning two clones of the same person. Even in wartime that is a no-go.” She told herself.

“Wait, did the colonel come with us on this mission, or is she back on the... was she back on the Monarch?” She corrected herself.

“Don’t know. Too much risk and not enough information. I can wait until my programs get done then I can start spawning people. What do I need? I need orders and advice. How do I get that?” She asked herself, frowning.

“Communication.” She thought to herself, as an idea germinated in her mind. She pulled out her tablet and started to research her idea. In the end, it took her five days to figure out a way to make her idea work.

Basically she wanted to turn her previous research on her drone back into a long-distance communication device. She couldn’t just print it from her printer since it was copyrighted and she didn’t have the copyrights to the device. She had to design parts that were close to it, but far enough away that it wouldn’t ping the copyright laws and shut her down. She had to create the thing in parts and go into the real world to put it together, since some of the pieces, if they were printed together, would ping the infringement part of the copyright and shut her printer down. The bad part was that, no matter how she looked at it, she was going to send up a small signal that might be picked up by someone here on the planet.

Her plan was simple. She would send a message to the closest military, relay beacon about what happened, and give a date for when she could receive a message. The problem was that the device she was building was rushed and would only send one message before it destroyed itself. It would not be able to receive a message. This meant building a new device so that she could receive a reply. On top of that, according to her math, even with the relay beacons, it would be one year, two days, and six hours for it to reach her target. The target was the military space station that they had passed on the way here, while they were going through their practice missions. The earliest she could receive a response would be over two years from when she sent the message. She was sure she could build a proper communication device before then, but she would have to hide her ship until then.

“One thing at a time.” She muttered to herself, then accessed her ship's printer and downloaded what she wanted it to print. Since it was a non-standard item, her printer told her that it would take nine hours for everything she needed to be printed. She didn’t know why she was surprised when she got the message. The items weren’t part of some design that had already pre-downloaded in a package. It was something that she had to create on the fly and it didn’t have all the specs for the printer. It would have to make it the slow way.

In the meantime, she started to look for a new location to move to, in case someone picked up her transmission. She looked around at first at surrounding forests and bodies of water, but, aside from the ocean, which was pretty far from where she was at, the locations offered little to no long term concealment. She even looked at the mine, despite it being on fire, but she quickly tossed it out as it would attract too much attention as soon as people left their bunkers.

In the end, she looked over the city in desperation. What she found surprised her. On the outer edges of the city was a building that had been hit by some wreckage, creating a crater right next to it. The building looked like it was about to fall. She did the math with the help of her computer and discovered that her ship could survive if the building was toppled onto it. Her active camo would be damaged, but if she was under what was left of the building she would be almost impossible to spot.

“I would be buried alive under tons of cement blocks and my ship won’t fly until I dig it out again. unless it gets too damaged, then it might not fly ever again.” She thought to herself. “I would also have to dig a way out to set up the second communication device.” She put the idea on the back burner and kept looking. In the end, that was all she could find that would hide her for a long period of time until she could be rescued. Looking at all the destruction, she knew it would take them decades to rebuild and she would have to make sure that no one ever built anything near her ship. It was her best option out of many poor options.

She sighed and sat back, closing her eyes. She hadn’t had much sleep in the past few days. She had too much to do and not enough time to do it. Sure, she would have more time than she could use in the future, but if she wanted to get a signal off with the least chance of someone spotting it, she had to do it now. As long as what was left of the Monarch kept falling, she had a chance of getting off a signal. Once everything fell, then the chance of someone spotting her signal grew pretty large.

Making herself move, she sat up and checked the printer. The progress bar showed that it was done. Her console showed her clone body was ready. Her weapons systems still worked. She looked over her consoles for the last time and then acknowledged that she was procrastinating, and hit the despawn button. Less than a second later, she opened her eyes in the real world for the first time in ages. It didn’t feel any different than when she was in a sim, except for a weird heaviness to her body. It wasn’t anything that would cause her to do anything different, but it was there.

She opened the pod doors and stepped out. The cold air in the back of the ship hit her, making her shiver. Most of the lights in the back were out, with only one still working. That was another thing that never happened in the sims. The lights always worked for some reason. She shivered as she got to the locker and downloaded her armor. Unlike the sims, she was sprayed with printing fluid and her armor was literally printed on her. In the sims, the process was greatly sped up by simply equipping it. The liquid was cold, but quickly warmed up as it formed into her armor. In a couple of seconds it was done. She moved her arms and legs around, but nothing felt off. Aside from the fluid being sprayed on her, it was almost like she was equipping it. Still, it made her wonder why they didn’t just do that in the sims.

Her weapons were printed in real time so, when she reached into the lock to pull out her Desus, there was only the edge of the stock. As she pulled it out of the printer it created her gun. She had to do each weapon and it took a few more seconds than simply equipping them, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal. Once she was ready, she opened the ramp and walked out onto her first planet besides Earth.

Again, Freya couldn’t tell the difference between the real world and the created sim world she had been on for both the tournament and the practice missions. She looked up and saw the sky full of what looked like shooting stars. She knew they weren’t stars, but she couldn’t help the comparison. Looking down, she saw that the reloading pod under her ship had a small pile of parts that had been dropped onto the ground. With a sigh, she moved towards the pile and got to work.

It took her over an hour to assemble the FTL communication device. It weighed two hundred pounds and was as tall as she was. She knew the specs, but seeing it up close made her flinch. It really was a piece of crap. With a sigh, she picked it up and started walking towards a hill that was about two miles away.

Even though it was two hundred pounds, Freya found carrying it easy. Her strength mods, even as low as they were, were helping her tremendously. She could have easily jogged to the hill, but she was worried all the motion would damage the device and that was the last thing she wanted. It was really that fragile.

Twenty minutes later, she arrived at the small hill. It was covered in the living canopy that this world had in its forests. The canopy would not get in the way of the signal, and she used the hill for no real reason. It wasn’t like being about twenty feet higher in altitude would do anything to the signal to help it on its way. She set the com device down and took out a battery from her suit charger. She opened a slot in the device and clicked it in, powering up the device. She then set the timer and ran for her ship.

Not thinking about it, she quickly jumped into the pod and despawned. It was only when she sat down in her cockpit that she realized that she had basically killed herself for the second time. The first time had been back on Earth when she joined the Marines. Now, she did it again lightyears away without even thinking about it. Shaking her head, she forced herself to focus on the task she had ahead of her.

She powered up her maneuvering engines and flew towards the crater she had picked out earlier. She powered up her weapons systems and had them auto-target the building. As soon as she landed, she released the safety on the weapons systems. There was a dull roar as the weapons fired. It was followed by a much louder noise as the building started to collapse.

There were a few loud thumps as the rubble of the building started falling on her. The thumps grew in number as her sensors and damage control screamed that she was being buried. She ignored the warnings and watched to make sure no major damage happened. About four or so seconds in, her weapons system went off line as the barrel of the gun was hit by falling rubble. It was fine though, the building was damaged enough that it would fall on its own now.

For a long thirty-plus seconds, Freya watched her sensors as the building came down right on top of her ship. She bit her lip as the rubble got softer and softer as she was buried alive. Her damage control informed her that she had some more minor damage, but nothing that would impede her mission. Her ship could still fly. Well, fly as well as it could with only maneuvering engines.

Then it hit her. For a split second she was back on the Monarch looking at all the visions she had. She realized she was living one of the visions right now. It was the one she was buried alive in. Panic set in and her breathing started getting faster and faster. She couldn’t stop it. Closing her eyes, she tried to fight off the panic attack, but for a few, long moments she was trapped in her vision. Then, as fast as it came, it went away.

The first thing she noticed when she got herself under control was that her sensors told her that her device had destroyed itself. She took a moment to collect herself then she checked the logs and saw that her signal had been sent. Everything that she needed to do was done. There was nothing else now, but to wait on her hacking program to find access to something useful.