I was in a tunnel under the Hangar, Athan and Karu at my side. The resistance knew there was an operations room down here, which is where we could probably find Blackett, but now that I was here in person, I could trace the flow of data between the fortress armors and Targa over her personal line and saw she wasn't in there.

"Good luck, Athan," I said and gave him a brief one-armed hug. "Remember, he was able to beat Saga. He's no pushover."

"That's why I have Karu," he grinned back, though I saw through the fake smile.

"Good luck to you too," I told her. She seemed surprised or off-put by me addressing her directly, but gave me a nod.

And then they headed for the lower levels while I went up.

The level of the Hangar we'd appeared in was like a cavernous aircraft carrier. From the size, I'd guess that two fortress armors had been stored on each the top and this floor, and the scope of them defined the scale of this space. It was empty, enormous in the armors' absence, and metal everywhere. There were rail-edged walkways around the perimeter, open-air elevators, lines painted on the ground, giving the appearance of a busy city block.

And there were XPCA everywhere, running every direction, most in simple uniforms, driving cargo jacks, waving lightbars at trucks and VTOLs trundling slowly down painted lines. Some in exosuits, jogging with metallic lockstep crashes in formations.

We'd appeared in a disused hallway from the looks of it, off to the side of and elevated from the main floor. Given how nobody seemed to have noticed or cared about our arrival here, I could see why the resistance would use this spot as an entry point for the hangars. It had good overwatch, wasn't overly conspicuous, and there was a stairway right here, down which Karu and Athan had already disappeared.

I took it upwards once I'd finished my observations. There wasn't much down here which might help me, but plenty which could get in my way. If the floor above was anything like this one, I'd expect to find Targa right out in the middle of it all, barking orders and scribbling away at reports while also being in an supremely obnoxious position to take down.

So imagine my surprise when I got upstairs after maybe a hundred steps and found the hangar upstairs empty.

A few lines of exosuits, unoccupied. A couple of VTOLs and tanks. A huge void where a pair of fortress armors had once rested. Server racks, lots of them, in a side room, visible through a huge window, wide and narrow, like a bunker. Maybe the main computer system for the entire base.

Whether it was or wasn't, I was drawn to the computers before I realized I didn't have any ports left on my body to interface with them. Even the remote uplinks like I'd put on Targa's exosuit and was now using to track her data line, the others of those had been stored in my hair, along with my tools and anything else I might really need. I still had 'net access, and therefore everything I normally would have had, but without the ability to jack in, there wasn't really too much advantage to having physical access to the servers.

Well. There was some. Targa had been incredibly good at keeping them off the 'net, and so I'd never actually had any chance to get at them. I just wished I was better ready for it than banging on the keyboard like a monkey.

Something clanked behind me and I spun around to see an exosuit charging towards me like a freight train. I jumped away, but even so, it corrected and managed to clothesline me as it passed.

"Hello, AEGIS. I've been looking forward to this," Targa's voice said from the suit without a trace of the normal synthesized distortion. Sultry and familiar. And irritated.

"Looking forward to getting trashed? That's a surprise."

I could tell this suit, like her last, was being remotely driven. I used the pretense of conversation to trace the data stream, which led to the secure server room where I could just imagine her hunkered over a holo, or strapped into a neural uplink. Maybe even a VR system.

It wouldn't do her any good, though. I'd lost my arm and taken a hell of a beating in doing it, but I'd already taken on a squad of XPCA in exosuits, and just one more wouldn't slow me down.

It charged again, and this time I stood, hesitating as it drew close. At the last moment, I dropped and did something no human could do, sweeping my leg and tripping it, my servos and engines screaming as my mechanical leg met the suit's. But I was rooted and ready, and the suit was running. Even if it was stronger, physics were on my side, and it fell face-first to the concrete flooring.

Once it was, I was on it in an instant. My one arm snaked up and down its exposed back, ripping off weak portions of service panels and systematically removing key components from within. Nothing operations-critical was stored this close to the suit's surface, but I could do a lot of damage that would slow it down, tear out secondary actuators to cut its total effective strength, rip up targeting and repair systems.

It spun and tried to backhand me, but I bounced away as it staggered to its knees and then upright. Targa had picked up fast, and wasn't charging me again. Instead, she circled me slowly, closing the distance by inches to use the suit's superior strength against me.

But she'd miscalculated again. Caution was good, but giving up the initiative for no benefit wasn't. I taught her this lesson by abruptly charging in, and throwing a series of kicks at her, keeping one foot on the ground and alternatively sliding it forwards to keep in range, and rooting it to the floor to brace against the force of my own kicks in a sliding shuffle that would be impossible for a human.

And every one of my kicks, I aimed at her sensor arrays. It wasn't a custom exosuit this time, I knew the schematics, and if she was piloting remotely, she was using the suit's onboard sensors to see. By their very nature, cameras had to be relatively exposed, mics needed access to the air to listen, and that made them much easier targets than the core systems like the actuators, deulith cells, or gyro.

She reeled as I smashed her again and again, swiping blindly but missing badly, stopping my barrage once by chance, but I just jumped and switched legs and kept right back on her. Her suit's impressive mass, normally a huge advantage in a fight really hurt her here by not letting her absorb any of my blows by getting knocked back. It staggered, yes, but didn't go flying like a person might, and all the force which would have knocked her down was smashing her system components instead.

Once effectively blind, within a couple of minutes, I'd dismantled her little exosuit to the point of inoperability quite efficiently. It made pathetic whirring noises on the ground as it futilely tried to right itself. I took the opportunity to purge some system pressure, venting clouds of compressed air white with steam from my joints.

If I were Athan, I'd be snapping one-liners right now. He really did love to talk too much in a fight, but it worked for him to a degree...the boy could certainly piss people off into advantageous irritation, that was for damn sure. I personally preferred just getting things done.

So without waiting for the suit to finish its pathetic shutdown, I stepped around it and beelined for the server room door. I heard clanking as another exosuit engaged but ignored it. If I got to Targa and her uplink, the suits would shut down.

Something roared in the air behind me and I jumped and rolled like Athan as a huge hunk of black metal soared ungainly through the air past me. The now-live exosuit stood there, beginning a slow advance on me, and blocking the door in front of me was the disabled exosuit which had just been thrown across the room at my head.

Rude.

There were only another eleven suits left standing after the one I'd pulverized, and if I had to go through all of them one at a time, so be it. She might learn a thing or two about how to brawl, but I'd only just gotten started on my own combat protocols.

And then something unexpected happened which made me worry.

One by one, the other ten exosuits powered up and stepped out of formation, also advancing on me, walking shoulder-to-shoulder for maximum intimidation, like thugs.

It worked a little bit, but mostly because there shouldn't have been any way for them to do that. I spent a moment checking and verified they were all being run remote, all from Targa's location. It might be that she had ten more XPCA with her, and they all had neural uplinks...but the data seemed to indicate that wasn't the case. Just the one.

Which was fucking impossible. No human had the mental capacity to run ten bodies at once. Maybe two, badly. But ten? And all walking without tripping over themselves?

I skirted towards a flank, hoping to keep them caught up on each other, but they moved seamlessly to form another advancing line, closing in on me as they went. They moved as though coordinated by one person...but how? Did she have an AI program she put in them? But if so, she wouldn't be so hot on the data line as she was. Maybe a program running on her end. Typically better to run that kind of thing locally because the bandwidth requirements got nuts very fast, but it was what it was.

I exploded sideways, rocketing towards the last one on the end and greeting it with a running roundhouse to the dome, which is just took without flinching, but even as it did, one of its buddies moved behind me and tried to pin me with a grab. I'd expected that...or more specifically, I was testing for that, and had my feet still where I could run off...but if were trying to kick for real, for damage, I couldn't run and kick at the same time.

Yeah, this wasn't going well. My last option might be to just barrel in on the servers and yoink her plug. Ripping out someone's neural interface could cause severe disorientation, confusion, even temporary mental disorders...which could really work in my favor if I could just get to her.

But as though she were reading my mind, two of the gang were already falling out of line to go guard the door. The window was bulletproof, I had to imagine. If she'd just taken one, I might have been able to find moments to pick it apart, but nooo, he just had to have a safety buddy.

Things weren't looking good. But they started looking even worse when the exosuits began attacking. They charged with the same reckless, dangerous abandon as the first suit, but with them coming one after another, I didn't have any time to capitalize on their openings.

I was stuck, stupidly dodging attacks, waiting for an opportunity I knew would never come. If these were just humans in these suits, attacking at random, they'd eventually lose their tempo, get tired, or get in each other's way. With one mind controlling all of them though, the attacks came one right after another, the rest of the exosuits already preparing their next strike as those before it finished. And while I could outfight any of them, I couldn't outfight all of them.

It was just a matter of time before they got me. I had to do something desperate.

I jumped in the air and bounced off the shoulders of another charging exosuit, buying myself some space as I landed to put my just-assailant between me and the others, and again charged at the server room door. As I did, I remotely activated my little wiretap and had it flood the line.

I hadn't wanted to do this before because the second she knew it existed, Targa would certainly boot the custom exosuit and my tap from her setup and leave me in the dark again, but it was the play I held right now, and if I didn't use it, I'd just lose this fight slowly.

As the data line filled with noise, the exosuits froze, getting garbage data instead of Targa's commands. I had a choice, go for the door, or the suits. I'd only have a moment before she cut me out of the network, and I wasn't sure I could move the exosuit corpse from the door and get through in time.

So instead, I went for one of the suits on guard, popped the hatch now that it was offline--a safety feature to ensure a pilot couldn't get stuck in a disabled suit---and once I had access, reached in and pulverized the suit's network uplink on the interior of its spine. No network access meant no remote pilot meant dead suit.

I did the same with the second, and then my line went dead. She'd cut me out, and the other eight suits were re-engaging.

I took one glance at the same situation re-emerging, gave myself time to swear, and then dove headfirst into one of the two off-'net suits.

I was a couple of seconds behind on getting the suit online compared to the others, but had it up and under my control before they reached me.

I'd really just jumped in because the opportunity presented itself. I thought, if it wasn't working, I could bail, or set it to overload and bomb the hangar or something. I didn't really know, spur-of-the-moment plans were much more Athan's thing, and I honestly objected on some level to how much this simple plan had already fallen apart.

But as it turned out, jumping in the suit was not a good plan. Not at all. Instead of being faster than my enemies, I was now their same speed, and without a neural uplink or even a second arm, I was far less capable a pilot than Targa was. I was almost immediately in trouble, looking for any chance I could get to bail on the suit and break away, but I'd fucked myself too hard.

Red indicators flashed across the faceplate of systems breaking, ruptures, failing power levels as the other exosuits held me and beat me with punches that would go straight through a human. They kept me locked in the suit, even going so far as to torque the frame in the rear to seal me in the fucking thing. The inertial dampeners had failed and I felt the blows slamming into me now as the exosuit helpfully read my nonexistent bio signs and told me I was deceased.

There was another crunching punch which blew through the suit's torso, and for a moment, I felt the cold metallic hand scrabbling around inside my own chest.

"Such a shame," Targa taunted me. "So much potential, and you waste it all by trying to become human. If you'd only embraced your true nature, you could control a thousand exosuits like this with a thought."

I didn't dignify her with a response as a metal fist punched the hole in me larger and reached up into my core systems.

"Even if you did though, this outcome was never in doubt," she gloated, like this was the end of some century-long feud. "I've always been better."

I didn't know what she meant, and didn't have the chance to. Her overlarge fingers inside me had found what they wanted, taking a firm hold of my central core...of me, basically, and began to tear me out of my own body.

Even with my thresholds turned down, even with my body's potential set to maximum and feeling the least human I could set myself to, Targa did get a response from me then.

I screamed in utter agony as my systems tore, as I was ripped apart, physically and mentally, as I was severed from all the things which kept me running, kept me alive, kept me me.

Another line snapped and then I stopped screaming. I no longer felt pain. No longer felt or thought or was anything at all.