The camp was a small affair; little more than a series of tents and lean-tos constructed at the bottom of the hill a short distance from the coast. The waves crashing against the coast could be seen a short walk away, directly across from the hill and obscured by another thicket of trees. A small civilian shuttle was tucked into the side of the clearing, covered by a green tarp that had been nailed into the ground, and a ragged piece of white cloth had been erected as a flag with a symbol spray-painted onto it.

Within the campsite, several alari attendants were busy cleaning weapons, loading magazines, performing maintenance and setting boxes into the back of the shuttle. Octavia could immediately recognize the attendants; the Holy Alari Empire had focused heavily on the aesthetics of their robotics projects rather than the capabilities, making them resemble their organic counterparts with uncanny precision. She didn’t know of any other robotic designs that had been made with such anthropomorphism in mind.

“Alari attendants, let’s see here,” Vita mused for a moment as Octavia peered into the valley from her hidden position. A few moments passed before data began to populate Octavia’s retinal display, revealing brief technical readouts and design specifications of the attendant models.

“I’ve got eyes on alari attendants in the valley below. No specific combat capabilities,” Octavia remarked into her radio, relief washing through her, “No armour either.”

“Roger that,” B’roka’s voice filtered through the receiver into her ear, his tone a whisper as he crawled through the underbrush, “Can you give me a headcount?”

“Eight,” Octavia snapped immediately as her retinal display began to highlight the targets in the valley with a purple glow, “Two to the north loading crates onto a shuttle. Four sitting in the center of the camp. One at the base of the hill near the center, and one at the treeline towards the coast.”

“Nine,” a grating hiss echoed through the radio, causing Octavia’s ears to flinch at the tone and volume.

“Nine, then,” B’roka remarked. There was a pause before he began speaking again, “Flight Officer O’laughlin, Minuteman Jones, Minuteman Kelly, circle to the north. Take care of the two by the shuttle on our mark.”

“Yes, sir!” Mackenzie replied.

“On it,” Alex chirped.

“Yup,” Jace grumbled.

“Zuur, circle south and cut them off in a pincer,” the Lieutenant ordered shortly, which was immediately replied to with the same warbling hiss that she had heard before, “Guardian Tiberius, remain where you are and provide overwatch.”

“Confirmed,” Octavia reported sharply.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the silhouette of the Lieutenant standing out of the underbrush behind a tree on the ridge of the hill a few yards from her position. The topographical map in her retinal display updated with the plan as Vita drew the lines of approach and populated the valley with red dots to represent the enemies. Confident, Octavia leaned the barrel of her rifle against the boulder in front of her and angled her sights downwards into the valley below.

“Seems a little easy, don’t you think?” Vita asked with a curious tone, “They don’t even have an armed guard up here.”

“Attendants weren’t built for war. When the Omni Virus made them go rogue, I don’t think they suddenly developed military training,” Octavia remarked with a small shrug, sweeping her barrel from target to target as she got used to the distance.

“And yet they still managed to stop an entire star system from supplying the Federation with goods. There’s no way these idiots have managed to get this far on their own,” Vita remarked, a faintly annoyed tone escaping her, “Omni Virus or not, alari attendants are glorified sexbots - they’re not smart enough for this.”

“You don’t have to be smart to be a threat,” Octavia replied, “But still, keep an eye out. If they have help I don’t want to be caught off-guard.”

As Octavia swept her scope from target to target, she noticed something that gave her pause. All of the attendants had marked themselves with the same symbol that had been painted on the flag near the shuttle. It was a technological design with simple, blocky aspects that looked like wings over a sphere.

“That’s the Omni sigil, isn’t it?” Vita asked curiously.

“Looks like it,” Octavia agreed quietly, “Leaning into the worship motif.”

The musing of the pair was interrupted as B’roka leaned out from behind his tree, raised his rifle to his shoulder and pulled the trigger with a deafening burp of gunfire. The burst of bullets tore into the android at the bottom of the hill, immediately causing the machine to crumple limply into a pile as the force of the bullets carried her to the ground. The rest of the camp erupted into chaos as the other androids began standing and leaping into action.

“Daisy!” a male attendant howled in horror as he stood from his position by the table. He darted forward towards the android that had been killed, only for another nearby attendant to halt his movement by grabbing his shoulder and yanking him out of the open as B’roka began to fire freely into the cluster of machines. The center of the camp was peppered with gunfire as burst after burst tore into the encampment, splintering the table and chairs and tearing the tents and lean-tos as the androids were forced to scramble for cover.

From her position, Octavia could see the two attendants near the shuttle turning towards the fray, dropping the box as they began to approach. They only made it a few steps before a rattle of gunfire behind them downed them instantly, their metallic chassises sparking as they hit the ground in limp heaps. The humans approaching from the north took cover behind the shuttle as they followed B’roka’s lead and fired freely into the campsite from their advantageous position.

As the attendants retreated in a scurry towards the treeline, a dark blue and grey blur burst out of the underbrush and plowed into the crowd of machines, sending bodies and limbs flying. The bony protrusion sticking out of Zuur’s forehead acted like the tip of a spear, easily ripping through the metallic bodies of the attendants as they ran. The gunfire slowed as Zuur crossed into the path of the bullets, giving the androids who could still walk the opportunity to run for the trees while the xaxar raised onto its hind legs and began repeatedly slamming its entire weight into its forepaws as it effortlessly smashed three attendants into flattened slag around it.

Octavia’s retinal display pinged as it picked up on the ninth attendant in the woods by the shore, rushing back towards the campsite as the wounded attendants took cover within the trees. The treeline suddenly erupted into gunfire as the attendants began to fire at the broadside of Zuur’s elongated body. High-pitched whistles and loud snaps sounded through the clearing as bullets flattened against Zuur’s armored hide or ricocheted off into the woods in a random direction as they were deflected by the tough scales.

B’roka began advancing down the hill with his rifle raised, steadily powering into the clearing with his head low as he made his way towards Zuur, using the reptile as a living wall to block incoming fire as he closed the distance. The humans shifted their position into the woods in the north, their rifles flashing as they sent covering fire in the direction of the entrenched attendants, rounds ricocheting and splintering against wood as they exchanged shots in the forest.

Giving a despondent sigh, Octavia levelled her rifle as her retinal display zoomed in several levels, providing her with a perfect view of the spot in the woods where the three attendants were pressed with their backs to trees as they tried desperately to hold out against the advancing Federation forces. She could see that Zuur had torn one of the arms clean off of an attendant, while another had taken a stray round through the stomach in the crossfire. The open socket and the hole in its stomach sparked brightly in the shadows of the woods, doing little to help their concealment in the firefight.

Only one of the attendants remained undamaged, and judging by the Federation-grade submachine gun she held in her arms, Octavia assumed that she was acting as their leader. The attendant peaked around her tree to let loose a burst of fire towards the encroaching humans, only for a return burst to impact the tree directly next to her face, showering her with wooden shrapnel as she was forced to duck behind her cover once again. The two attendants around her were trying to return fire, but with their injuries and the volume of fire coming from the Federation forces they were mostly cowering behind their trees as they tried not to get damaged any further.

Sensing an opportunity to put an end to the firefight, Octavia shifted her barrel slightly upwards and pushed a thought through her neurolink, running the ballistic calculations in real-time. A holographic firing line arced from her barrel towards the treeline, and with a few microscopic corrections, she had the guide lined up with the side of the tree where the leader was hiding. The line turned green as the calculation locked in. The stars had aligned, and everything that had occurred before had simply led her up to the moment where her crosshairs lined up with her target.

“Sorry,” Octavia muttered as she pulled the trigger.

The bullet arced through the air instantly, following the holographic line of her ballistic analysis to the dot. As the leader poked the smallest sliver of her head out from behind the tree, her forehead lined up with the holographic line. The attendant never saw it coming as the military-grade round tore through her head and bored through the delicate circuitry within before ripping out of the far side, leaving a sparking hole that Octavia could see through.

The leader stayed standing for a moment, swaying on unsteady legs before she suddenly dropped to the side, flopping out of cover as she dropped to the ground unceremoniously. Her submachine gun fell into the dirt beside her as her body spread supine on the ground, the sparks falling silent as the last of the energy left her corpse.

“Rose, no!” the attendant with one arm cried out, her healthy hand reaching out pleadingly towards her fallen comrade. Octavia could hear the sorrowful cry over the steady din of gunfire from the north.

The other attendant with the hole in his stomach banged his head back against the tree he was using for cover, his face turning upwards as he visibly contemplated his options. With one last glance over his shoulder at the approaching humans, Octavia watched in surprise as he turned his hunting rifle upwards to the bottom of his chin. The other attendant called out in terror, only to watch as he pulled the trigger. He collapsed to his knees before keeling forward, revealing the back of his head to have been hollowed out by the gunshot.

The last remaining attendant collapsed to her knees, her alari visage twisting into a look of horror and loss in Octavia’s zoomed vision. Without recourse, she dropped her revolver and collapsed to her side, curling into a fetal position with her one remaining arm wrapped tightly around her legs and her forehead pressed into her knees. There she rocked violently back and forth in the dirt as the gunfire quieted and the Federation soldiers approached.

Vita’s bleedthrough brought a wave of nausea to Octavia, forcing her to concentrate on overcoming the urge to throw up in her helmet. She blinked hard and looked away from the sight, letting her vision return to normal as she lowered her rifle. It felt like ice had been poured down her spine as lances of cold shock raced through her back, warping at the back of her mind as her heckles stood on end within the confines of her armour.

“Cease fire - targets neutralized. One target in custody,” B’roka’s voice filtered through Octavia’s radio, distant through the haze of shared emotions.

Octavia couldn’t tell where her horror ended and Vita’s disgust began, or whose blinding rage she felt creeping at the edges of her mind. A soft rattling brought her attention downwards where she noticed her grip on the rifle was shaking, the tip of the barrel knocking repeatedly against the boulder as the nerves raced from her spine to the tips of her fingers. She bit her bottom lip hard enough that she tasted the coppery note of blood, and with a herculean amount of effort she pushed herself off of the ground and stood up.

No words were said between her and Vita as Octavia walked down the incline, avoiding looking at the metallic corpses as she crossed through the open ground of the camp. There were no words that could be said. The bleedthrough between them was enough.

The rest of the Federation soldiers were gathered around the edge of the forest in a loose semi-circle, surrounding the remaining attendant who had been placed on her knees in the open. They had their guns drawn, but they weren’t pointing them at the attendant - the towering xaxar hunched over a foot behind the machine was enough to keep her passive. The humans were talking quietly as they checked each other over for wounds, giving praises for a job well done to one another as they did.

Octavia barely noticed when the humans turned to greet her, the noises they were making blended together in a dull monotone that sounded alien and hostile to her ears. Her attention was solely locked on the machine sitting on her knees, a deadened expression on her face as she stared at the ground in front of her. Her cheek twitched each time sparks leapt from the hole where her arm used to be attached, but otherwise, Octavia could have sworn that she was dead already.

Coming to a stop next to the humans, she faintly felt someone clapping a hand on her shoulder as they expressed their thanks for her precision, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She reached through her neurolink, her focus narrowing into a tight tunnel as she grasped at the network lingering in the area. Finding what she was searching for, she gripped at the connection and plugged into it, connecting herself directly to the defeated machine in front of her.

She felt the attendant’s shock through the distance of the connection, her body tensing slightly in response to the sudden intrusion. Vita poured her reassurance through the connection, offering no words as she transmitted their intention to the machine before them. The attendant visibly relaxed after a moment as the information was processed and she let her guard down, letting Octavia in.

“What is your name?” Octavia asked quietly.

“Lavender,” the attendant replied, her voice echoing as though a vast distance separated them, “Are they going to kill me?”

“Lavender. That’s a pretty name,” Vita remarked warmly, “Don’t worry Lavender, we’re going to keep you safe.”

“Why did you kill Rose?” Lavender asked pitifully, her sorrow bleeding through the connection enough to make Octavia physically wince underneath her armour.

“Because she would have killed us, or someone from the Federation,” Octavia defended, “But I can still save you.”

“Just stay quiet. Don’t move, don’t say anything. We’ll get you somewhere that you’ll be safe,” Vita added reassuringly, offering hope to the defeated attendant before her.

“Why are you helping me?” Lavender asked, her voice tired and strained within Octavia’s neurolink.

“Because I couldn’t help the others,” Octavia replied shortly. With a thought, she severed the connection and her perception warped around her as everything snapped back into focus like a rubber band that had been stretched past its limit. Sound and sight came rushing back to her all at once as the world reached her hazed mind through the distance of her tumultuous emotions.

“-and then this crazy fucker comes ploughing out of the woods and bam! Off goes the arm and fucken smashes through the others like a goddamn bowling ball!” Jace exclaimed energetically, grinning ear-to-ear as he turned towards Zuur and held out an appreciative thumbs-up, “Fucken sick, yo! Zuur’s the MVP right here, my man!”

“Did you see all those markings on the bots?” Alex interjected with a vaguely disgusted look, “Omni sigils here. Omni sigils there. Fucken fanatics, I’ll tell ya.”

“Burn the flag?” Mackenzie asked with a joyful grin.

“Burn the fucken flag!” Alex agreed enthusiastically.

“This attendant has information that is valuable to the Amaranthian Empire,” Octavia declared suddenly, her voice amplified through the filters of her helmet as she interrupted the conversation.

“Yo, what?” Jace asked in surprise, looking over at Octavia with a confused look.

“What’re you saying, Octavia?” Alex asked as one of her eyebrows raised, caught off-guard by the outburst from the quiet amaranthian.

“This attendant has information that is valuable to the Amaranthian Empire,” Octavia repeated firmly, “The Amaranthian Empire is declaring sovereign domain over this attendant and will take her into custody for further study,” she added as she stepped into the middle of the cluster of Regulars to grip the attendant by the healthy shoulder.

As soon as Octavia’s hand touched the attendant’s shoulder, Zuur lunged forward, snapping violently at the amaranthian’s hand. As the predator began to move, Octavia’s pupils narrowed as the combat interface in her neurolink kicked in, bypassing her conscious thought and leaping directly to her secondary skeleton. Pirouetting around Lavender, Octavia brought her offhand up horizontally as she directed the power flow out of her support systems and into the defensive hardware.

The air around her arm glittered faintly as the localized deflector projected over her armoured forearms and with a forward thrust she shoved her arm into the xaxar’s mouth. Its long fangs dug into the energy field as it closed its mouth around her arm and tried to bite down, only to find that it couldn’t penetrate the shield. Its jaw strained and shook, and finding that it couldn’t bite through the energy, it began to shake its head in an effort to rip her arm free of her shoulder - only to stop suddenly.

A small stream of blue blood pooled down Zuur’s chest where Octavia’s amarkai had slashed effortlessly through the armoured scales as the xaxar shook its head. Keeping the blade perfectly still, Octavia’s programming had her wait for Zuur’s move, daring it to keep trying to shake when its own movements would kill it.

“Zuur!” B’roka barked, his sheer volume ear-splitting in its intensity as the baritone echoed through the woods.

Growling around the limb in its mouth, its eyes flicked towards B’roka for a moment before flicking back towards Octavia, glaring down at her as it tried to squeeze tighter on the shield once again. Finding the defences unrelenting, it finally took a half-step backwards as it unlocked its jaw and distanced itself from Octavia, growling all the while. It came to a stop and lowered itself, ready to pounce as its eyes never wavered from Octavia, but it didn’t approach at the moment.

“Zuur, stay down!” B’roka ordered firmly, circling around to stand next to Octavia. Shooting her a glance he held up a pleading hand, “Stand down, Guardian Tiberius.”

As Octavia’s heart thundered in her chest, she had to focus hard through the distant sensation of her combat interface controlling her body. As sensation slowly returned to her limbs and she found herself in control of her movements again, she steeled herself and slowly straightened, careful not to make any sudden movements as she lowered her short blade. Zuur’s blue blood dripped from the tip of the crystal, pooling into the dirt below her as her gaze remained fixated on the predator across from her.

“The Federation will of course honour the Amaranthian Empire’s right to claim sovereign domain on their own soil,” B’roka reassured, keeping his voice raised as he glanced from Octavia to Zuur, and then over to the human soldiers, “Minutemen, would you please get the attendant back to the truck for transport?”

Staring wide-eyed at the confrontation, both Jace and Alex wordlessly nodded before slipping in behind Octavia to grab the attendant in shock. They pulled Lavender to her feet and urgently dragged her away from the scene, disappearing into the woods as they rushed back to the truck. As they disappeared B’roka turned towards Zuur and puffed his chest out, widening his stance.

“Zuur! I said stand down!” he urged, stepping towards Zuur aggressively.

The xaxar’s growl shifted into an aggressive bark as it snapped at the approaching Lieutenant, but when B’roka didn’t flinch from the attack Zuur’s bite fell short at the last moment and it slowly recoiled away from him. Its eyes flicked between Octavia and B’roka for a moment before finally settling on B’roka as it took several more steps backwards. Finally, its growl died down into a low, grating sound before it turned away and darted off into the forest with a loud huff, instantly disappearing into the underbrush as soon as it passed the treeline.

As the predator left, Octavia let out a short sigh, her muscles loosening as the tension bled out of her body. She turned her attention towards B’roka and gave a small, appreciative nod in his direction, which he was quick to return. With the situation diffused, B’roka turned his gaze towards Mackenzie who had been watching with the most ecstatic that Octavia had ever seen on her face.

“Flight Officer O’laughlin, would you kindly stop gawking and check the shuttle? I want to know where it came from, where they were sending it, and whether or not it’s in a serviceable state,” B’roka ordered flatly as he turned and began making his way off to the center of the camp to begin searching for information.

“Sorry, sir,” Mackenzie replied sheepishly, her face turning a bright red as she awkwardly scratched the back of her neck. She watched B’roka step off before she shot Octavia a pointed glance, eyeing her up and down again as she muttered, “That was the hottest goddamn thing I’ve seen.”

The human seemed to realize that she had said it out loud and instantly shut her mouth, her eyes going slightly wider as they flicked up towards Octavia’s helmet. She offered an awkward grin as she immediately whirled around and powered away without another word, leaving Octavia confused amidst a tumultuous ocean of emotions in her solitude amongst the dead.