The burn on his hand was bad enough that it stung even through the copious amounts of drugs flooding through his system. Skin, fat, muscle were all eroded away, down to the bone in places, and his fingers trembled so badly he could barely control them as he tried to tie tourniquets over the wounds of the burnt and bleeding civilians. In the end he used his teeth to draw the rag-bandages tight.

The smell of burnt flesh was in the air. It was strangely unfamiliar to Pike.

Combat-by-Titan was, in a strange way, rendered clean by its sheer scale. There were casualties, yes - if Pike thought about his kill count, and he didn’t often, he was on the scale of the worst acts of god.

But in a way, it was clean. People died so quick they never even knew what was happening. There was no pain. A human body that came anywhere near the plasma output of a Titan-class rifle simply stopped being a person and started being physics.

Putting a single shot through the hull of a Leviathan-class starship would leave the surrounding space adrift with an asteroid-storm of frozen bodies, hurled out through the breach by the escaping atmosphere. The sheer number of them made it impossible to care too deeply, to count each one as a human.

And there was a steady drip-feed of numbing drugs that took away all sense of guilt, all panic, all the usual feelings of war. When Pike piloted Lucrecia he ran cold as steel.

Titanomachy wasn’t for humans. It was for a fusion of flesh and machine, his mind melded into Lucrecia’s subroutines, his senses extended through her body of nanoscale ceramic flesh and hypercarbon muscle.

Now, he didn’t have a guilt-killing drip-feed of combat enhancing drugs. He didn’t have miles of distance between him and his victims.

He was just a pair of boots on the ground, and the earth was littered with the bodies of the half-dead, crying in pain and unable to stand. He fumbled with bandages, moved on without having done much more than slow the bleeding.

As he knelt and worked, Jashal moved in his wake.

She rifled through their pockets and took coins, stole the pendants from around their necks, disarmed them of weapons. She met his incredulous gaze with a look completely devoid of pity. “It is what it is.” That was what her eyeless expression said.

But even she let the bodies of her own people be. She refused to even look in the direction of her dead fox.

Above, the fight was raging on. Maeve in her Titan fought against two more floating sorcerers, lashing tendrils of golden flame leaping from their fingers to coil around the steel knight’s body. She returned fire by ripping up chunks of earth and hurling them at the puny figures that darted around her mecha’s body, like flies biting at a bull.

Pike thought about finding a rifle and trying to bring down one of them. There were still some guntowers left standing along the docks, and surely there’d be an intact firearm somewhere.

That was what his training told him to do.

He ignored that, and tied another bandage.

One of the elves - he didn’t know her name - tore a strip of relatively unburnt cloth off her tunic, passing it to him.

He nodded, thankful.

When he glanced back up, there was only one sorcerer left. He was fleeing, flying backwards and hurling bolt after bolt of sizzling blue light. Maeve lifted her Titan’s club-arm to block, and sent an uprooted tree flying over the chasm with a massive throw. The sorcerer barely managed to dodge, and the fight seemed to be over as he fled through the air and into the forest on the far side of the chasm.

There was no more gunfire, at least, and from all throughout the little city built on the skydock, warcries lifted into the air. Howls of victory from the raiders as Maeve lifted her metal fist high, the champion of the hour.

For the rest of the day, Pike was in a daze. He walked through the streets, watching with a numb expression. There was looting going on all around, the sacking of the port-city, a great celebration as cellars of wine were cracked open and the bandits dressed themselves in gold and jewels. Bonfires burned, fueled by whatever possessions they hauled out of the ransacked homes and didn’t care to take.

It was nearly dusk when a Jashal found him and took him by the shoulder, leading him through the confusion.

Before he knew it, he was at Lady Maeve’s side. Her personal guard had hauled out a grand table and were making the survivors of the town serve them as they kicked up their boots, firelight flickering on proud faces; all of it under the shadow of the enormous Titan, knelt down, its cockpit open.

Maeve sat where the great fist of the goliath rested against the earth, a wealth of stolen artillery piled up behind her back.

Pike finally understood why they came here. It wasn’t for the petty wealth of the town, or to settle a grudge. They’d wanted the guns, the cannons and mortars.

Maeve grinned when she saw him, a huge smirk crossing her sun-dark face. She strode forward, clapping him on the shoulder and leading him to a chair next to her, speaking words he couldn’t understand. A girl - obviously frightened, her clothes torn - came forward to pour him wine.

He looked at her, freezing the expression of barely-restrained panic on her face into his mind.

And he looked across at Maeve.

It would only take one shot. One shot to sear the smug grin off her face, and her face off her skull, as she laughed with her crew of bandits. One good shot to get revenge for all of this and wipe his part clean.

But he was surrounded by her loyal guard, and he knew he’d never take them all with him. Someone else would fill the chair she left empty.

So he made a promise. And since nobody here could understand him, he didn’t bother to make it quietly.

Pike rose from his seat, lifting his glass. A silence descended as they realized he wanted to make a toast.

He smiled, baring his teeth. “Someday soon, I’m going to kill you all, steal your Titan, and find my Lucrecia.”

Amused by his foreign nonsense, the drunken crew burst into laughter. One by one, they rose from their chairs, lifted their tankards to the sky, and swilled down their wine.