It happened so quickly - one moment I was checking out an abandoned building, the next moment my HUD went dark, my power armor went stiff and I fell over like an uprooted tree. As I slammed into the ground still in the same awkward position I was in when standing, I sucked a last breath from inside the helmet - the air circulation had failed.

I knew exactly what to do in a situation like this. My hands twitched in the way I had practiced thousands of times, but nothing happened. I tried again - no result. I repeated the motion with all the force I could muster, but I remained clamped tight in my power armor.

I gasped for more air, but could only find my own stale breath. The broken suit had me cemented in by unmoving metal. Instinct made me twist my body and pull my extremities as hard as I could in an utterly fruitless attempt to avert certain death.

But then something knocked against my helmet with enough force to shake me from my blind panic. Another knock and then the faceplate was torn away. So this wasn’t a failure of my suit, this was an attack and now I was being finished off.

I blinked upon being blinded by the outside light and reflexively drew breath as the fresh air hit my face. At least being killed by a cowardly attacker would be more dignified than suffocating in my own armor.

“Hey, you good? I hope I haven’t dropped you too hard there.”

A deep voice that definitely did not belong to a member of my species. I still couldn’t see clearly.

Immediately I commanded: “I won’t tell you anything! Release me before my backup arrives and I will recommend a lenient punishment for attacking me.”

“I will take that as a yes.” They were talking calmly.

“Release me at once!”

I slowly became able to decipher my surroundings. A dark figure stood over me. It definitely was them that was speaking.

“I surely won’t. Or else my effort to immobilize you would have been entirely pointless.”

“What did you do to me? Tell me at once!”

“Trade secret. But you know, your suit has a major design flaw - what with the internal release mechanism needing a working power supply to operate. Very unfortunate for you, my friend.”

Their voice was dripping with ridicule, I laughed at the figure in an attempt to appear unmoved.

“Backup will be here any moment, you should run.”

The figure turned and looked around, then back at me. “Ah yes, you wouldn’t have heard that. I leveled that crumbling storage hall behind this building just as I disabled your armor. But don’t worry, I was careful not to damage this place and I only used small charges. Honestly, they were probably overkill on that wreck anyway.”

My expression must have revealed my confusion about the information they had shared with me, because the figure continued a moment later.

“Your suit going offline after a building collapse at your location - do tell me how likely it is that anyone will be sent out to check up on you.”

I remembered that this exact thing had happened to another patrol unit and the order I had received at that time was now ringing in my head - we were to send a reserve unit to take over the patrol area and mark the building for a future retrieval of the suit. I bit my tongue.

“Yeah, thought so. I know your lives aren’t valued much.” Was there a twang of pity in their voice?

In a desperate effort I tried again to free myself or at least move in any way, but I remained utterly stuck. I started to control my breathing and visualized my training to get a handle on my rising claustrophobia. It worked.

Between breaths, I growled: “I will never talk to you.”

“Fine by me.”

The figure turned and walked away, leaving my field of view. I steeled myself and tried to visualize the worst that could happen. Though my attacker just left the room. From the sounds of it, they didn’t go far and came back pulling something light with wheels over the dusty stone floor.

That was when I first noticed the ticking. It was a rapid mechanical ticking sound and must’ve been made by something very small as anything but total silence drowned it out. My attacker remained somewhere nearby. I couldn’t decipher what they were doing from what I was hearing - they were breathing quietly and shuffled around occasionally.

So it went on for a long time, the light changed with the setting sun and this room slowly sank into darkness. For the entire time I remained unmoving on the ground and I needed to keep doing breathing exercises to keep myself calm.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around the motives of my attacker. They had incapacitated me through some devious backstabbing attack and then faked my death. But to what end? What did they want from me? What would anyone want from me?

Why did they just stay nearby, apparently barely moving more than me? And what surprisingly pressed me the most - what made that rapid ticking noise?

My thoughts went in circles in coming up with answers to all of those questions and I knew I couldn’t keep silent much longer. It did cross my mind that whatever was going on could be an elaborate interrogation tactic, so I opened with a question.

“What are you doing?”

They did not answer.

“I know you’re there. Why have you captured me.”

“Hm?” I heard the figure shuffle. “Are you talking to me?”

I clenched my teeth upon the mocking tone.

“There isn’t anyone else in this ruin but you, is there?”

A chuckle. “Nah, there isn’t. You were set on not talking to me and I thought you started to hallucinate or something.”

“I’m not.” I said sharply.

“Good”, they paused, “but I can’t chat like this.”

I heard them moving and then coming to me until they were standing over me again. I still couldn’t see their face but in this light I could get a better picture of their coverings - the figure wasn’t wearing armor. Or at least nothing that I would recognize as such. They were covered in a flexible material that moved easily with them. For what I assumed was the purpose of stealth, it had geometric patches of dark blue, grey and black all over.

“Relax”, they said before kneeling down and grabbing somewhere besides my head.

I immediately tensed up as they started pulling me along the ground. The metal of my armor unpleasantly scraped over the stone floor and whatever debris was scattered on it. I breathed a sigh of relief that it was over in a short moment. Only then I had noticed that they had either propped me up somehow or pulled me against the slope of a pile of junk.

When they came to my front, I could see nearly all of my attacker because of my new angle of view.

“Comfy?” They asked. I heard the strain of the previous effort in their voice, but they were clearly mocking me.

Instead of replying, I looked around the room. I could see the entrance I had taken to the left and I could see an outside wall to my right. The broken windows gave me a good look at the sky, which had the cloud cover lit up with only the last few rays of light of the late evening.

The dark figure spoke again: “Oh, don’t be like that. You wanted to chat, now we can.”

While they were speaking, they walked to a piece of furniture that stood against the wall between two windows and sat down on it. I still had them in my view.

“Then tell me who you are and why you are here.”

They pulled their head cover off. I recognized them as human despite the odd colouring of their face. They were missing the typical decoration of hair on top of their head, but instead had a dense and sharply defined growth around their mouth and down their chin with stubble showing across the lower part of their face. The white colour of that hair stood in stark contrast to the human’s dark skin.

“Name’s Tiro. I’m here to deliver a message.”

The questions that popped up in my mind upon this reveal tumbled over each other. This situation made even less sense now and I couldn’t think of what to ask first.

After ordering my thoughts I told the human: “You aren’t from this world.”

They chuckled as they told me in turn: “You aren’t from this world either. Yet here we both are, sitting in a house that belongs to neither of us.”

As I was attempting to further question them, they continued: “And you haven’t told me your name.”

“What is the message?” I asked defiantly.

“Oh, no. That message isn’t for you.”

“What?”

The human held out and moved their hands in what I could only assume had to be a condescending gesture because they were also speaking deliberately slowly. “The. Message. Is. Not. For. You.”

I clenched my teeth and tried to brush off their provocation.

“So, no name then; it’s okay. I did tell you why I’m here though, it’s your turn now.”

So it was an interrogation, albeit a very convoluted one. I was about to tell the operative that I wouldn’t give up information, but they interrupted me the moment I opened my mouth.

“Just kidding, my friend. I know that you are here to invade the place and suppress the population. Leveling the city center was kind of a giveaway.”

I stumbled over what to say. While it was true what had happened, I hadn’t had anything to do with the initial ground attack. I nearly blurted out that I was only doing patrols to find hidden enemy forces and capture them for imprisonment, but I stopped myself in time.

The human had guessed my momentary temper, or my expression had betrayed me, because they then said: “Don’t worry. I know your whole species are just lackeys in this invasion.”

“We are allies!”

My angry outburst seemed to slide right off the human as their calm demeanor didn’t change in the slightest. “Really? I wouldn’t have thought that. What with all the fighting and dying being done exclusively by your people.”

I wanted to snap back, but I swallowed my anger. I opted to ignore the human and concentrated on my breathing technique. Apparently they sensed my resolve as they didn’t say anything else and continued with whatever they were doing before.

Even to myself I could barely admit that the human had been right. We weren’t true allies to the Vaughan-Trug. That much was obvious to anyone that only mildly looked past the propaganda. They had massive control over the governments of our continents and practically dictated our military actions and made us fight out their territorial disputes.

This had been the first large-scale attack on a neighbouring civilization though - labelled as retaliation strike. It made sense from what I knew, but I secretly doubted the reasons given for our retaliation.

Then it struck me. The human not only weren't supposed to be here either, but they literally couldn’t.

I blurted out the question before I could stop myself: “How did you even get on this planet?”

“Hm?” The human operative looked up at me from a piece of paper they had been writing on. Then picked up a small disc-shaped item from the piece of furniture they had been using as a desk and twisted something on it between their fingers before putting the item away into their vest.

“I want to say ‘trade secret’ again, but I kind of want to brag about it.”

I tried to force them by saying: “We have total orbital control, you can’t hide from our surveillance.”

“Look at me then, I’m totally hiding right now. Your people have no idea I even exist. Well, anyone but you, I guess.”

“But, your equipment-”, I broke off - I had been close to giving away a crucial piece of information.

The human laughed. “I think you nearly spilled a secret there. But I will tell you something in return even if you didn’t.” They stood up, held out their hands and turned around full circle. “I don’t carry any electric power source with me, none at all.”

I tried to turn my head further to see more of them, but only fought uselessly against the immovable suit. What the human was saying was preposterous. There couldn’t be any fighting force capable of interstellar travel that had soldiers without any sort of powered tech.

But it had to be true. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t be talking to them because they would have been caught weeks ago when the detection network went fully operational. But that meant they couldn’t have weapons, communication and navigation equipment or even any computational device at all. There was no way a soldier or especially a secret operative could execute any complex mission like that.

“Don’t think about the minutiae too much, my friend. Stay in the here and now. You are here, I am here, and right now it’s time for dinner.”

“What?”

“Dinner. I’m sure you have that too in your culture, yes?”

If I weren’t stuck in my suit I probably would have physically felt the whiplash of the sudden change of topic. I couldn’t think straight and just stared as the human came up to me and started fumbling around on the armor somewhere at my lower torso. From the sounds of it, they were rummaging through the equipment pouches on my hip.

“Is that…”, they held up a bottle of a standard liquid field ration into my view, “is that supposed to be your food?”

“Why-” was all I could say before the human spoke over me.

“I’m going to eat. And it would be very rude to do that in front of you while you had nothing, wouldn’t it?”

I opened my mouth to reply but swallowed my words. Getting some food and strengthening myself was better than getting no food and trying to stay alert through the night hungry.

“It’s a liquid field ration.”

“Oh boy, you really make it sound like good stuff.”

“It’s… fine”, I feebly tried to lie.

The human put down the bottled ration onto my chest and went towards the back of the room where I couldn’t see them. They came back quickly, holding a square package and a bulbous metal bottle.

Surprisingly they sat down at my side but in a way that let me still see most of them. After they set down their stuff, they picked up my bottle and inspected it.

“How do you open that thing?”

“Tear off the top cover and turn the ring.”

I only noticed then that they had taken off some of their armor because of their missing gloves. I got a glimpse of the underside of their hands which were a lighter shade than the rest of their skin.

As the human followed my instructions, a long straw popped out of the top of the bottle. That would go into a port of my suit so I could feed myself while still in my armor, but that wouldn’t be necessary at this point.

“Ah, there you go.” They bent the flexible straw and held the bottle towards me but then stopped to look around. While still holding it within my view, the human leaned away and pulled something moderately heavy over the floor for a short distance before apparently picking it up.

They then set down that object beside my head and put the ration bottle on top of it, carefully adjusting the assembly several times until the straw was right at my mouth.

I couldn’t decipher their facial expression but they made a gesture for me to go ahead and drink. I questioned my earlier decision to eat as this was still technically an enemy combatant offering me food. My food. My sealed food that they opened in front of me.

My train of thought was interrupted when the human smacked the square package against my torso. Not that I could feel it, but it had been a very audible hit.

They grinned at me while holding up that package and shaking it. “Sorry, my friend. Just cooking.”

I watched as that package bloated up slightly until a corner popped open and a bit of steam escaped.

“See, already done.” The human peeled open their ration which held a rectangular and featureless beige mass. “Honestly, it tastes better than it looks. That doesn’t mean much, but I would hate for it to be the other way round because it then would be utterly disgusting.”

For a very short moment I had to suppress a smile. So instead I took a sip from my own ration. It tasted as weird as ever, so at least I could assume it was fine.

It had become night in the meantime and the sky outside had turned black. My position surprisingly felt less and less uncomfortable, and I could nearly forget that I was unable to move because I was cemented into my armor.

“So what do you do when you’re not patrolling around on some foreign planet?” The human asked me between bites.

I debated if I shouldn’t answer the question or just lie. I decided to be courteous. “I assist my family.”

“Like, your parents?”

“Not only them.”

“Siblings?”

“I have a number of them, yes.”

“Are you close?”

“We live together in our ancestral home.” I said while pushing aside my thoughts on why I was continuing to answer their questions.

“Sounds awesome. You have a big house for all of you? Will you stay there or move out eventually?”

“I stay.”

The human swirled their bottle, as if to mix its contents, before drinking from it. “I don’t know anything about your culture. Do you have multi-generational homesteads? These aren’t uncommon where I come from either.”

“We do. Most stay with their family. My home sees six generations currently.” I decided to add the last part as it was a point of pride.

I heard them stopping mid-chew and then swallowing hard. “That’s amazing. How many family members do you have?”

Because I had done this hundreds of times before, I quickly recounted: “One third-great-parent, one second-great-parent, three great-parents, five parents, six siblings and three children.” Having had this conversation often, I automatically asked: “How many do you have?”

“Oh, it’s just old me in my home. I have a young sister, but she lives somewhere else with her husband. They have a daughter and I heard about another kid, but I’m not sure.”

Two things hit me right then - humans were a bi-gendered species, which was something I had learned at some point but apparently forgotten, and a strong wave of pity washed over me.

Though there was barely a moment for me to ponder this, as the human asked: “Are any of those children yours?”

I understood what this question meant only because I knew about the weird fixation on biological birth in connection to the status within families of the Vaughan-Trug. I disliked making a mental connection between them and this human - which surprised me.

Replying to the question, I said: “I haven’t given birth to any of them, if that is what you want to know.”

“Oh. I didn’t know I was being insensitive. Sorry, my friend.”

I wondered how they had picked up on my emotions and took some sips of my ration to pause the conversation. In that quiet moment, the ticking noise became more prevalent again and I noticed that I had been hearing it better since the human had been sitting so close.

“With such a great family and all the work you undoubtedly do for them, how come you are out here playing soldier?”

They were apparently back to mocking me. “I am protecting them.”

“Protecting them?” They stuffed the fairly large last piece of their ration into their mouth but kept talking. “What are you protecting them from, here in this destroyed city?”

My burst of anger quickly dissipated. I could tell them the reasons I had heard from politicians, but these sounded like hollow excuses at the moment.

So I kept silent and instead took another sip. The human got to his feet while balling up the packaging of their ration and left my sight to go to the back of the room where I suspected they kept the rest of their equipment.

This left me alone with my thoughts. My training had not prepared me for this kind of enemy interaction. Was it even that? The human had attacked me to disable my suit - somehow - but they hadn’t hurt or even threatened me. The only thing they did was not being particularly nice to me.

They had even been forthcoming with information about their mission. Maybe that was what I was supposed to do in this situation - find out more?

“My name”, I said with a raised voice, “is May.”

“May”, they instantly yelled back which startled me. “A wonderful name!”

The human came back to their place at the window. “So, May, I hope you haven't forgotten that I’m Tiro.”

“I hadn’t”, I lied.

“Is your name common? Because, coincidentally, May is a well-known female name and it’s relatively prevalent in some of our cultures.”

“You have gendered names?”

“Most human names are.” Tiro had momentarily lifted his shoulders and arms in a gesture I didn’t recognize.

“Is that the way you identify each other?”

For a short moment I imagined how they had to carry reader pads containing massive lists of names as they went out to search for a partner for procreation and check each name they learned against the list.

The human chuckled. “No, we normally do that by sight. There are common biological differences between appearances.”

“And what are you?”

“I am male. But don’t think you can create a baseline off of me to recognize other males.”

“Sorry, I haven’t learned much about other species in school.”

Tiro waved his hand in a downward motion. And I noticed how the conversation had taken a very different path from where I wanted it to go.

I followed up with a question: “So, are you here to protect your family?”

He did not lose a beat from the change of topic and replied quickly: “No, I’m not. We aren’t at war with you or your so-called allies.”

Before I could say more, he gestured around himself with one hand and added: “I’m here to protect these families.”

“That’s your message? You want to tell the Vaughan-Trug to stop this conflict?”

If the matter weren’t so serious, I would have laughed out loud at the ridiculous image I got from the human going up to the drop base and trying to broker peace by handing the soldiers there a display pad with the words ‘pretty please’.

“Yes.”

I stared at Tiro. He made the gesture again where he lifted and dropped his shoulders in a quick motion.

The mental picture did not leave me and I began to feel ashamed that I let myself be overtaken by an either insane or stupidly idealistic war zone curier. I was very aware that he could have more information, but I knew about the time leading up to the declaration of war - if other citadel members couldn’t bring the Vaughan-Trug to stop the escalation, how would one single message do it?

Of course, there weren’t too many species in the citadel that actually cared about any of this since the people of this planet weren’t members. Though neither were humans, as far as I was aware.

“You can get some sleep if you want. That is, if you even need any”, he said as he apparently disregarded the previous topic.

“You know that there aren’t any here, do you? The Vaughan-Trug don’t send their own into battle.”

“I know. The city is considered secured though. And tonight a command outfit will come in.”

I passed on asking how he could possibly know all that. At least I had learned that there was a time limit to his company. I leaned back into my suit, which didn’t mean more than relaxing my neck and staring at the ceiling.

How could anyone think of sending secret operatives into a conflict on some distant planet and between other species, and make them try to broker peace? It was an insane plan, even before it meant sending an operative without equipment.

“Are you done with that?” His voice tore me from my thoughts some time later.

I looked at Tiro and saw that he was pointing at me with his hand. After a moment I realized what he meant, so I closed my lips around the straw of my ration and quickly gulped down the rest of the thick liquid inside.

“I am.”

He came up to me to take the empty bottle away and then went over to the back wall. I heard him shuffling about with some items - I suspected he was setting up his camp.

Some time later his heavy footsteps told me that he was walking across the room. A moment later he appeared back at the piece of furniture he had used as a desk before. Onto it, he put down a long and heavy metal object I couldn’t identify and a textile bag that was obviously also rather weighty.

Without turning to me, Tiro said: “If you don’t sleep, would you be so kind as to stay quiet?”

My temper flared.

“What if I’m not?”

“Then I would have to make sure you are.”

I became very aware of the power imbalance again - I was completely at his mercy. So I once again went back to my breathing exercises to relax myself and induce a meditative state. Though the quietness of the room was continuously disturbed by the irritating metallic ticking. Tiro was also doing something that produced a soft scratching noise as well as an occasional metallic clink.

I kept drifting between being awake and resting my mind, losing my connection to reality in the process.

There was no telling how much time had passed when I snapped back. Quickly, I scanned the room and saw that Tiro was kneeling against the open window behind the desk. He held the long metallic object from before between his shoulder and a stand that rested on the windowsill while pressing one of his eyes against a cylindrical device that was mounted on top of the object.

I now recognized what had to be some sort of weapon, even though it was ridiculously oversized, and the thing he was looking into presumably was a targeting device.

I held my breath - so the human was indeed armed. But that would mean someone would eventually notice his presence. And without visible friendlies in the vicinity, there would unquestionably follow a missile strike to his position shortly after that.

“You awake?” Tiro asked with low voice - it still startled me.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m preparing to deliver the message.”

He raised his head to look at me and relaxed the grip on his weapon. My expression must have told him that I didn’t follow his explanation in the slightest.

Tiro grinned and then opened a slider on the side of the weapon that was facing me. I barely saw the internal workings in the low light, but I saw that there were two compartments inside. From the front one, he pulled out and held up a metallic cylinder that took half the space of his palm and had both ends poking out further. One end came to a soft tip that appeared to be discoloured from the rest of the body.

The size and diameter of the projectile reminded me of the ammunition I had seen for fixed defense cannons. There was no way a power source capable of launching that with a noticeable amount of force could go undetected.

“You are planning on shooting someone?”

He was shaking his head side-to-side as he put it into the weapon and moved the slider back in a fluid motion that spoke of a well-trained act.

“I am planning on shooting some thing.”

“The wall of the next building perhaps?” I said mockingly.

“Oh, don’t worry May; there is nothing in the way. From here I’ve got a perfectly good line of sight to your ground base.”

I reflexively tried to turn my head to look out the windows, but was instantly reminded of my predicament. Still, even if he spoke the truth, the area we were in was outside the second reserve zone around the base.

“It’s too far”, was all I could stammer.

“It’s fine. Distance just complicates things, but it won’t be a hindrance.”

My eyes followed his motions as I watched him pick up a piece of printed paper from the desk. It took me a moment to understand that I was looking at a map because of the compressed scale. There were several hand drawn additions to it in the form of lines and numbers.

That was what he had been doing during the beginning night - he had apparently measured and calculated his attack entirely by hand. Once again, my expression must have told Tiro what I was thinking as I could definitely tell that he looked smug.

“I told you, no tech. I’m a ghost.”

“No”, I replied while twisting in my armor, “your plan can’t work. Where will you get the power from to make the shot? And if you truly have a strong enough power source in that thing, we will be killed any moment now.”

Tiro shook his head again in the same way. “It works with chemical propellant.”

“What? Gunpowder? Like the stuff we stopped using three centuries ago? You poured this into the barrel?” I couldn’t keep my voice straight even if I was certain at this point that there had to be more to this.

“Not quite. While it basically works the same, it’s different stuff. Some of it is in here,” he patted the side of the gun, “some of it is in the projectile itself.”

“I don’t understand. Modern kinetic weaponry can’t even make a hole in my armor. What are you hoping to achieve by shooting at the base?”

In reply he gave me a slight chuckle. “If I was to fire this at your armor, it wouldn’t make one hole, alright.” He seemed to pause for dramatic effect. “It’d make two because the bullet will go through and come out the backside.”

Words failed me. I was caught between thinking he spoke nonsense and the undeniable fact that he did indeed make it this far - which I would’ve thought was impossible as well if I weren’t experiencing it myself.

“But-”, was all I said.

While putting his eye back onto the targeting device, he explained further: “The projectile moves faster than sound when it leaves the barrel. The rocket acceleration will kick in a bit later and at this distance it will be around twice the initial speed once it impacts. Seriously, you’d need more than one of these suits in front of you to stop it.”

With forces of that magnitude in my mind, I saw only one way this unfolded - the human weapon would violently blow apart the moment Tiro triggered the shot. My ancestors had quickly stopped using weapons like that because they had the tendency to maim their user instead of shooting at a target.

While going through these thoughts, I became more irritated by the moment. The ticking was once again the prominent noise in the silence and I felt myself twitching to its fast rhythm.

“What even is that?” I asked entirely too loudly.

“What is what?”

“The damn ticking!”

“It’s my clock.”

“Why does it do that?”

This time, Tiro actually turned to look at me. “May. You’re kidding, right?”

“I don’t know why I would.”

“You must have mechanical clocks. Surely.”

“I don’t have one. And I wouldn’t know anyone who does. Why would they?” I moved to make a gesture of exasperation but my armor stopped me. “I did once see pendulum clocks in a museum, but these things are leftovers from the past.”

“They did tick though, yeah?”

“Not like that.”

Tiro leaned back to look into the targeting device, but kept talking: “Well, my watch ticks because it has a balance wheel that rotates back and forth. And that moves faster than a pendulum.”

I imagined a metal wheel rolling back and forth and hitting some levers on each end point to the same beat of the ticking clock. It helped to make it less irritating.

“Only three minutes left. Prepare yourself.”

“Three what?”

“Oh, sorry. Nevermind that, it’s a time measurement unit. Just keep in mind that things will happen very soon.”

“Things?” I stared at him hoping he would notice. “You mean you blasting this room to dust when you fire that weapon of yours?”

“Two minutes, forty seconds.”

“Why is the time even important?”

“For you? So you won’t be surprised by the gunshot.”

“No, for you I mean. Why don’t you just shoot right now and leave?”

He didn’t reply.

“Tiro?”

There was no reaction at all from the human. I was sure he was in the process of lining up a target. I began devising a plan to distract him so he would mess up his shot. But I didn’t even know what he expected to accomplish. The base was well protected, there wasn’t anything critical that he could disable with a single hit, even if he spoke the truth about how powerful the weapon was.

Was he trying to assassinate someone maybe? I remembered him telling me about the Vaughan-Trug command outfit that was due to arrive this night. But they would come by shuttle and land inside a fortified building. There was no chance for him to target a single individual. What was his plan?

And another question popped up in my mind - why was he letting me watch? Would he kill me after?

A sudden thunderous bang stopped all my thoughts. I felt its shockwave snapping through my whole body and if I weren’t imprisoned, I would have jumped up high in reflex. I blinked my eyes as the room became hazy with kicked-up dust.

The ticking clock was the only noise that broke the deafening silence after that. It made me notice that I perceived time slowed down and I was breathing too quickly. Tiro didn’t change from his position for what felt much longer than it probably was.

“Multiple target impacts visible”, he said mechanically. “It’s going down.”

My voice failed when I tried to speak up.

He continued: “Ground impact, no secondary explosions.”

In a quick and fluid motion that would have startled me had I not been in a daze, he then got up onto his feet, lifted the gun from its position and folded away the stand while turning to go to the back of the room.

From there I heard the rustling of textiles, some metallic snaps and the crunching of his shoes moving and being repositioned quickly on the stone floor. Tiro was obviously working quickly and I assumed he was packing up.

I tried calling him, but instead my dry throat threw me into a coughing fit. I then didn’t hear his footsteps coming closer and was surprised when he suddenly stood before me, covered completely in his dark apparel. A cold flash of fear hit me as I imagined he had come to finish me when he lowered down and put his hands onto my armored chest.

“Please don’t”, I said in a voice that not only broke because of my dry throat.

“What? I asked if you were okay.”

I stumbled over words and only made some incomprehensible sounds.

“May? Are you hurt?” To my surprise he sounded genuinely worried.

After swallowing a few times, I managed to audibly reply: “I’m okay.”

“Great.” While he said that, he pulled out a knife from somewhere on his vest. The matte black blade was longer than his hand. I immediately felt the cold fear paralyze me again.

His next words sounded distorted and far away as I was entirely fixated on the knife and I took another breath before I could comprehend them. “I need your help with the external release.”

“What?”

“The external mechanical release”, he repeated. And after a few seconds he added: “Are you really okay?”

“I am. But I don’t understand - you want to get me out of this?”

“Well I can’t leave you here. So, after I crack open the latches, you need to give me a gap by opening it from the inside since I can’t run the mechanism.”

“Okay.”

I watched him raising his knife-hand and then swinging it against the side of my torso forcefully. As the blade hit the armor with a crunching noise, I half-expected to feel it impaling my side. He immediately went for another swing that equally made me flinch.

“Final one, I think”, Tiro said between breaths and rammed the knife into my armor once more after which he moved it back and forth in there with visible effort. “Now push.”

I bent my back and pushed out my chest as hard as I could - the suit actually gave way. The frontal upper body piece then swung up accompanied by the sound of breaking plastics, ripping textiles and crunching metal as Tiro opened it further.

It was now possible for me to move my body enough to free my arms which I immediately did. With some more wiggling, I quickly pulled my head down out of the helmet. I could finally look around naturally, though it felt unreal after being stuck like that for hours.

Tiro offered me his hand. To my surprise, it was an easy decision to grab it and let him help me crawl out of my disabled power armor the rest of the way to get onto my feet.

The first thing I noticed was the size difference between me and the human. Before, I had a warped view of the building due to the armor making me much taller and it had been my only frame of reference. Standing before him now, I saw that I barely reached his chest.

I had to think about the first moments of our encounter - even if I had managed to free myself, he would have had no reason to fear me. I was certain he could easily flatten me in hand-to-hand combat.

Tiro said with a smile: “There you go, May.”

He then left me standing and went to where he was keeping his equipment. It appeared all of it was mounted to a narrow metal frame with large wheels on each end. From some pack he procured a grey cylindrical object which he brought to the middle of the room.

There went a mix of emotions through me I could not properly sort. I was happy about being finally free, but also confused, still shaken, angry, stiff from not moving so long and also mildly cold. The last one would get worse as I only had a thin bodysuit and my military cut left my fur too short to help.

I tried to pull myself together and took a deep breath. My voice was louder than anticipated as I asked: “Who was your target? Who did you kill?”

He looked up. “I’m fairly certain I didn’t kill anyone.”

“But-”

“Look, May - I just delivered a message. These important visitors to your base, they had a landing they won’t forget.”

I was in disbelief. “You shot them down?”

“No. Shooting down a military aircraft would require a different approach. We only made a few holes into its landing engines as it was in the process of touching down. Engines fail, shuttle goes splat.”

As Tiro said the last phrase, he used one of his hands to first mime a slow approach to the ground and then quickly slapped the floor.

Too many questions went through my mind at once. My voice became tonless. “We?”

“You surely realized that I couldn’t do that alone - what with all that defense stuff on your military vehicles.”

I hadn’t even thought about that, but he was right. Basically every vehicle larger than the power armor had multiple anti-missile systems. Some of which also worked on kinetic projectiles.

“So what-”

“We shot it from multiple directions simultaneously.” He answered my question before I had finished asking it.

I glanced between him, the window and his equipment carrier which had his weapon mounted to it. He had no communication device. How did he coordinate with other operatives if there truly were any? I first speculated that they could have used a visual signal, either from the target or from one of the operatives - but then I dismissed that. They didn’t have to shoot at the same time, they instead needed to hit at the same time.

My thoughts hadn’t stopped circling around that, when he broke me out of them. “Any more questions? Because I really want to clear out and leave this place.”

“How did you do it?”

“You watched me.” He mimed holding the gun and experiencing recoil.

“I mean how did you make sure you all would hit the shuttle at the same time?”

“Oh.” Tiro pulled a small disc-shaped object from his vest and held it up. “Because we all have one of these.”

Instead of coming closer, I squinted to discern what it was. All I could see was that something was moving on the white front and that there were some symbols marked on it. Then I became aware of the ticking noise and immediately understood that this had to be his mechanical clock - though it was ridiculously small, especially in comparison to his hands.

“Did you-”, I paused mid-question because I already thought of a slew of complications with using the clock as a timer after some visual signal. Instead I asked: “How did you know when you had to shoot?”

“My shot needed to land at the full minute mark following the minute during which the shuttle started to extend its landing gear. I pulled the trigger 6.25 seconds before that.” He made the shoulder motion again, lifting and dropping them in quick succession.

I barely had any time to make sense of that information when he hastily added: “One second is four ticks, by the way. And a minute is sixty seconds.”

But that plan couldn’t work either. It would require impossible accuracy from the clocks. At this point I gave up thinking about it and decided that whatever outlandish thing the human told me was true. For a short moment I imagined humans crawling through numerous buildings all around the city and their clocks were ticking in perfect unison to this one.

“What now?” I asked Tiro.

“I’ll dispose of the evidence and get out of here, you will go back to your people and pretend you were stuck alone in a collapsed building all night.”

“You want to hide your involvement?”

“I think the idea is to leave you guys guessing, but I was told that causing some rumours was fine.” He moved his hand as if he was throwing something back over his shoulder. “Eh, politics.”

I blinked in surprise. “Was that why you captured me?”

“No,” he chuckled, “you were just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily for me though, you were excellent company.”

Before I opened my mouth to ask why he hadn’t just waited for me to pass, he cut me off. “That’s all the questions you get, May. We leave now.”

He did something to the cylinder he had set down and it started ticking. It was slower and louder, but it clearly was the metallic ticking of another mechanical clock.

“What-?”

“I thought it was obvious that it’s a timed explosive.” Tiro jumped to his feet and got to his equipment carrier. He then rolled it towards the exit and motioned for me to follow.

Tearing out of my numbness, I ran after him and together we descended the stairways to the ground floor. He wordlessly led me to one of the exits and down a path between buildings that brought us to a narrow street behind the block. I needed to jog to keep up with him which at least mitigated the cool night air.

Tiro came to a stop after a while, probably a safe distance away from the explosive he planted. He turned towards me, but all I had to look at were his full body coverings. He told me: “That’s it, you’ll be fine now. Take it easy, May. Make sure you get home soon and give your big family lots of love.”

For a moment it felt like a goodbye from someone I had randomly met while travelling instead of the wartime encounter that it had been.

“Thanks. Stay safe, Tiro.”

I didn’t even entertain the thought to tell him that I thought it impossible for him to get away from the search patrols that were most likely already combing the city in numbers, but I knew better by that point.

And I was proven right immediately as he hopped onto the equipment carrier he had been pushing by his side before and started to pedal away on it. I watched him quickly disappear in the half-darkness and soon enough I was left in utter silence.

At least until I was startled by the commotion somewhere behind me that came from a collapsing building.

I did find my way back eventually and was sent home soon after as the military campaign had come to a sudden end. There were some politics involved, I guess. More things happened later and my people are independent now. The Vaughan-Trug are just stellar neighbours we have some trade with.

I made sure to keep the secret from my superiors and through the subsequent investigations. And I’m only talking about it now because it’s so far in the past that it has become irrelevant. After all, I absolutely have no desire to hear that ticking ever again.