Rain took the salvage loader in gently, the wide hangar strewn with debris and wreckage. His heart still fluttered after his find outside, that oddly majestic Frame.

He had expected there to be...more, inside this hangar. But aside from the ruins of a blast door, and a few stray mechanical parts from machines of indeterminate nature, every single bay was empty.

Still, something pressed him forward. His machine drifted forward on a bare flutter of thrust, and only the light beep of his o2 monitor reminded him to measure his breath.

He found it in the back of the hangar, resting in the bay furthest from the entrance. Without thinking, the canopy on his loader frame opened, and he stood up in front of the machine he had found.

"An unidentified ship just entered the operational area, frigate class! It isn't responding to our hail!"

Rain barely heard the comm, as entranced as he was.

---

“What the hell am I looking at here?” Alexandria asked her bridge crew, all of them staring at the image projected across the bridge window.

A picture, higher quality than what they had taken of the broken carrier, took up most of the forward viewport. It was a dark, dark wedge of a ship, nearly the same black as surrounding space. It was unmarked, no emblems or names to speak of, not even a serial number.

“The ship is a common Confederate frigate class, a Spectator class I believe,” said Noa, his back rigid where he stood. She observed the ship in the picture. Modern camera technology was spectacular, enough to enhance and pick out details that would otherwise be missed. A necessary adaptation, due to how Fujikawa particles ruined any other long-range detection methods.

The dark wedge, shaped like a blunted old-Earth arrowhead, had two engines peaking out of the stern armor, and in the center, a Frame catapult was highlighted, just barely visible through the middle of the arrow-tip. It was smaller than her own ship, so she estimated it would carry maybe three or four machines. The Speak Softly could carry eight machines at full capacity, as an example.

How this ship had entered the operational field so close to them, a scant 100 klicks, worried her. It spoke of some impressive technology.

Or her ship was outdated, she thought. That was more likely if she was honest.

“I don’t think it could be another salvage team or even pirates. Both would have some identification, and they would have either answered our hail or hailed us with their own demands, respectively,” said Isobel, arms crossed as she glared at her console.

“Their orbit is lower and slightly faster than ours, relative to Jupiter. I only noticed their presence when they passed in front of Jupiter itself, on the rear camera,” added Retha from her own console, far more composed than her fellow bridge officer.

“They won’t respond to any of our hails. I know the tightbeam connected, we got a return signal confirmation,” said Cleopatra, wringing her hands as she anxiously stared at her screen, a simple WAITING across it.

Alexandria sighed. The signs all added up, but she needed to hear it out loud. “What does that all add up to, Noa?” She leaned back in her chair, affecting a relaxed posture even as the console embedded in her armrest creaked under her tight grip.

He turned from his place at the helm and looked her in the eye. “Ma’am, I believe this a Confederate black-ops team. What they want with this wreck, this far out from Confederate City, I cannot guess at.”

She sighed. “Alright. Cleopatra, get the away team on comms, I want them back ASAP. Retha, keep your eyes on that ship. I want to know everything they get up to. Isobel? Be ready on the guns.”

“Aye aye!” They chorused, and the bridge settled into a kind of controlled chaos, officers shouting to the captain when something became relevant.

“Team Eletta is already returning to their shuttle! Attempting to hail Rain!”

“Bringing reactors to combat readiness.”

“Weapons warm and ready Captain!”

“Enemy vessel has matched orbital velocity with the carrier.”

“Rain isn’t answering Captain!”

“Shit...What the hell is he doing?” asked Alexandria. What the hell was that boy thinking?

“Ma’am! The frigate just launched Frames! I counted four, one headed our way!” called Retha before she could ask after Rain.

Alexandria sighed. Had it really only been a couple hours since the operation started?

---

Rain hadn’t meant to leave the loader frame, hadn’t meant to push away towards this incredible machine he’d found, but he had done it.

It was tall, taller than the Peregrin he was most familiar with, taller maybe than the machine he had found outside. It was largely white, but large portions of its smooth, curved armor were red. An almost royal air was lent to it by golden trim, including stylized golden wings that swooped back from the sides of its head.

As he drifted slowly towards its upper chest, he looked down and noted that its fingers ended in sharp claws and that it bore skirted, flexible armor, around its hip joints.

Rain looked back up, and locked eyes with the machine. Cameras set behind dull yellow glass as if eyes behind a helmet’s visor. Rain could almost imagine this machine was someone in repose after a great battle.

He stood there for some time, a single hand pressed against the machine’s head, where a human’s mouth or nose would be, his own head barely level with its eyes.

---

“What the hell is going on, boss?” Called Kenneth as they traced their path back, using their EVA packs as judiciously as possible this time around.

Eletta kicked around a corner, her team close behind her, and responded. “Home base says we’ve got black ops in the operational area, so we are evacuating post haste.” They were fortunate they had a mostly unimpeded path back to their ship, Eletta didn't want to waste any time blowing out more bulkheads.

Time and gunmetal grey corridor passed around them, the silence broken by their tightly controlled breath and occasional curses as someone dodged an obstacle.

“I knew this wasn’t worth it! God damn!” Kenneth yelled. Metal and bodies flashed by them, as they passed through the vacuum-graveyard they had found, but they ignored them in turn.

“Shut the fuck up Ken! Let’s just get the hell out of here!” shouted Darlene as they turned the corner and found the hallway they had cut their way into at the beginning of the operation.

“Go go!” Yelled Eletta, “We can argue about who knew what when we make it out alive!”

They streamed through the gap single file, their shuttle station keeping exactly where they had left it. Kenneth, Darlene, and Matthew filed in, piling into the cargo space and snapping themselves into jumpseats as quickly as they could, while Eletta slipped into the pilot's seat and brought the shuttle around, and slammed the throttle to max thurst as they shot towards the Speak Softly, while barely avoiding the massive chunks of debris.

Eletta leaned back and breathed a sigh of relief, and turned back to check on her crew. She had time to note they were buckled into their crash seats, before there was a horrible wrench, the shuttle's momentum arrested almost instantly, throwing her forward into a rapidly inflated airbag amid the curses of her crew.

“Shit, what the hell was that?” She muttered. An answer came in the form of the red flash of a Frame’s main camera in her viewport.

“Shit...” She cursed.

---

”Again, why are you here?” Came the almost bored voice over her comm, a deep-voiced man who clearly did not want to deal with them. Alexandria commended her bridge crew for their stoicism in the face of the massive coilgun pointed at their bridge by a Frame, mere meters away. Shortly after the machines had launched from the Confederate ship, this Frame, clearly a custom job, had come to a stop just beyond her bridge viewport.

It was only Alexandria’s caution that had stayed Isobel’s itchy trigger finger as the machine closed the distance. They still had people out in the void, after all. Ship-grade particle weapons fire might put them in too much danger.

“Like I just said, we’re only passing through after a couple salvage runs.” She said loudly and ignored the white knuckle grip Isobel had on her fire controls. She was tense, only hiding it behind a practiced slouch in her chair.

“Likely story. Do you have it aboard?” He said. She frowned.

“Have what aboard? You need to be clearer, sir.” She almost spat, sarcasm laced into that last word.

“I could just blow your bridge apart and search the wreckage myself, you know. You should be more cooperative here.” She frowned. He was right, so why hadn’t he just killed them? Alexandria was trying to talk their way out of this, but a Confederate black op’s

Noa seemed calmer than the rest of them, simply tapping his fingers against his flight sticks. Nerves of steel, that one, she thought.

“Listen, tell us what you need and maybe we can help you out, yeah?” She said, locking eyes with Cleo. She shook her head. Nothing from Rain or Eletta, yet.

“Look lady, we already stopped your shuttle coming out of the ship, so we know you found something."

That answered where some of her people were, at least. “I trust they’re still alive?” She asked, calmer than she felt.

“They are. For now.” So their status could change, depending on how this conversation went, she read between the lines.

"Now dump your particle supply and submit to a scan, or I will have you boarded."

---

Rain felt a shudder through the armor of the machine where he stood and looked down. The cockpit slid open as he watched, chest armor clicking and folding out. Without realizing it, he kicked off the upper chest where he stood, and easily caught the upper hatch, flipping around to take in the most advanced cockpit he had ever laid eyes on. A single crash seat with what looked like a neck brace just above the backrest, twin control sticks on either side and an incredible lack of excessive dials and readouts.

Rain slid into the seat easily, and the cockpit slid shut behind him.

Total darkness took him for but a moment, before what he had at first taken for blank metal lit up, becoming a display that took up everything he could see in front of him. A rounded triangle of a console unfolded from underneath the pilot seat, angled in such a way that he could see it while still looking forward.

"This is...wow..." he muttered to himself, breath fogging the inside of his helmet. It was years ahead of the prototype Frame he was most familiar with, streamlined and optimized in a way that awed Rain.

The display lit up suddenly, a red marker appearing to the far right, marking something just outside, where Rain himself had come in.

"What the hell?" He muttered. Slowly, a new machine drifted into the hangar.

The display brightened and highlighted everything outside, so making out the detail was simple enough for him.

It was a blocky machine, carrying a small coilgun in one hand and a tower shield in the other. A Confederate Musketeer, Rain thought. Their latest frontline machine, he hadn't had the chance to see one in action yet.

It was a stark contrast to see compared to the machine he was currently seated in. Blocky armor that covered important features, and a head that was little more than a simple tracked camera housing, though he did note the increased range of motion of the camera and the head.

And here he was, sitting in a machine he didn't even know if he could pilot.

The Musketeer drifted closer, small plumes of exhaust leaving its back as the pilot feathered his throttle with a heavy hand, and floodlights lit on its shoulders.

Focused on his loader frame.

The enemy Frame turned, its single red eye tracked to Rain's current position.

"Shit. Shit!" On instinct, he grabbed the controls and pushed them forward, his feet feathering the pedals.

Nothing.

He pressed anything he could, switches above his head flicked, anything.

Nothing. The enemy machine advanced, and attached its weapon to its thigh.

He frantically moved the controls back and forth, hoping for anything at all to happen.

He was rocked in his seat with a clang, the Musketeer having slammed its fist into the cockpit section. He could hear screeching inside the cockpit as its mechanical fingers tried to find purpose.

The single red eye bored into Rain's eyes.

The center console lit up. Text slowly typed across it.

Do you want to save your friends? It said.

"My friends?" Rain muttered. His eyes widened. There wouldn't be just one Confederate pilot here, out around Jupiter’s least well-known moon, there had to be more. And they must be threatening the rest of the crew!

"Yes! Yes, I want to-" a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and something clamping onto his shoulders, and darkness claimed him.

The last thing he saw was a new readout on the console in front of him.

Pilot Accepted. VN-001 FREYJA: Startup Initiated.