“Here’s the situation,” Captain Hale began as the holoscreen in the center console of the cockpit flickered to life, projecting a pyramid onto the screen as he spoke, “This is Destiny.”

The pyramid was positively enormous, a kilometre square at its base and rising to a full kilometre in height at the peak. Countless landing pads and shipping lanes marked the external walls while immeasurable lengths of wire and pipes lead to and from the city from the environment around it. The tallest level of the structure looked distinct with its high towers and ornate walls - a temple atop a vertical city.

“The alari populace has stopped sending supplies to the Federation, and internal sources confirm that an insurrection has been carried out by corrupted attendants within the city. The situation is extensive enough that the alari population within has been entirely cowed by the terrorist machines - all attempts to locate the center of the hive have yielded nothing, and we have no way of ascertaining exactly how many Omni drones there are.”

The levels of the pyramid split apart, giving Octavia an opportunity to peek into each of the detailed layers as they were shown. The one which was brought into focus first was one of the lower levels near the production centers, where two landing pads on either side of the city had been highlighted in white by the holoscreen.

“These are the landing pads that the navigational data recovered from Discovery pointed to. They are located on the same level but are on opposite sides of the city. Longsword 771 will insert on the southern landing pad, establish a foothold, assess the situation, and wait for a report from the second team.”

The holographic pyramid shifted to the side as another holographic structure appeared on the screen. Octavia immediately recognized the cluster of ships and space stations as the Federation’s military stronghold, the Bastion. Out of the largest ship, another figure emerged.

It was another Longsword, though it looked different from the one that they were currently in. It had smoothed angles and reinforced panelling with no indication of previous damage along its surface. The script on the rear stabilizer read L-1013.

“Woah,” Mackenzie commented quietly, “That’s a new Longsword. Never seen one look so nice.”

Octavia had to admit that she was surprised at the condition of the other Longsword. From everything that she had been told, new fighters were a rarity beyond comprehension. She had to wonder what a new Longsword was doing on a run-of-the-mill extermination mission.

“Team two will be inserted via Longsword 1013. They’re on a different approach vector, arriving shortly from the Manifest Destiny out of the Bastion. They will insert on the northern landing pad. Both teams will then sweep through the city and meet up in the center - if either team spots anything suspicious, your orders are to recon first and only engage as necessary. Once the hive is confirmed to be within the city we will utilize the White Peace device from orbit and the teams will be cleared to engage.”

As the Captain talked, the Longsword rumbled with turbulence as it descended into the dark storm clouds below, the entire view from the cockpit becoming obscured. Heavy flecks of rain began to collect on the windows, trailing off towards the back of the ship as the air rushed past them. In the sudden darkness, the cockpit lights flicked on, providing a dim illumination into the small space she shared with Mackenzie beside her.

Looking over at the pilot, Octavia couldn’t help the smile that crept onto her face, her ears perking up in her direction. She caught Mackenzie looking back at her, the same smile on her lips as she glanced from the screen to Octavia and back again. It had been a long few days of sublight travel, but sharing the journey with Mackenzie had made it worthwhile.

“Expect light resistance. Lethal force is authorized, give no quarter to this machine menace,” Captain Hale continued firmly, “Watch your fire - the alari citizens are still civilians and we don’t want to prompt an international incident. Good luck. Captain Hale, out.”

The screen in the center console went black for a moment before it was replaced with Mackenzie’s navigational data, displaying their path to the correct landing pad through the obscuring haze of the storm around them. A flash of lightning in the distance lit up the cloud from within, illuminating the cockpit in a brilliant flash of light for a split second before the darkness returned.

“Anyone else getting a bad feeling about this?” Jace called from the crew bay, an uneasy edge to his tone.

“Aw, come on Jace! You fucking jinxed us now,” Alex exclaimed despondently, her cry petering out in an annoyed sigh.

“Nah, man, I’m serious. I’m getting some really bad vibes from this shit,” Jace replied shortly, “How the hell do the bots stop an entire city from fighting back? And the brass expects two squads to make a difference? And our backup is a brand new Longsword coming all the way from the flagship of the Basion? Nah, nah. Something ain’t right.”

“It’s too late for having second thoughts now, Jacey-boy,” Mackenzie called over her shoulder through short barks of laughter, “Shoulda had your heebie-jeebies before we left.”

“Focus-up, team,” B’roka interjected firmly, his bellowing voice echoing within the small crew bay, “Cut the chatter until we get ground side.”

“Yes, sir,” Mackenzie snapped, giving Octavia an embarrassed grin and a roll of her eyes as she turned her attention back to the front of the ship.

“Sorry, boss,” Jace added quickly.

“Shutting up now, L-T!” Alex remarked through a chuckle.

The Longsword fell into silence as they flew through the storm, the sound of the rain mingling with the rushing of the air and the roaring of the engines. Gusts of winds and updrafts added to the turbulence, creating a soft ambiance of rattling and creaking as the Longsword rocketed through the atmosphere. The only indication that they were going anywhere was the streaks of rain rushing backward against the glass and the indicator on the center console displaying their position relative to the landing site.

“Hey, Octy - looks like there’s an amaranthian network down there. Kinda weak, but I’ll try to patch us in,” Vita announced suddenly, a taskbar popping up in the corner of Octavia’s retinal display showing Vita’s progress.

“See if there’s anyone listening on that end, Vi,” Octavia remarked.

“What’d Vi find?” Mackenzie asked curiously, turning her head to regard Octavia with an interested look.

“Amaranthian network,” she explained, gesturing idly to the planet below, “Weak from this distance, but there’s definitely a source down there.”

“Nice catch, Vi,” Mackenzie praised, her features shifting into a grin as she held a thumbs up towards Octavia.

“Nice catch yourself, cutie,” Vita remarked playfully, “And grab her hand for me.”

“She said ‘nice catch yourself, cutie’,” Octavia relayed automatically as she reached out and snatched Mackenzie’s outstretched hand into her own, entwining her fingers with the human’s, “And she told me to do this,” she added, offering her a brief wink as she did.

“What a charmer,” Mackenzie teased with a short laugh as she turned her attention forwards, keeping one hand on the controls and one hand grasping Octavia’s.

“Here, Octy, I’ve got the signal now,” Vita added suddenly, the taskbar in the corner of Octavia’s vision expanding into a small blank square showing a loading symbol. The connection was weak, but every second brought them closer to the source, strengthening the signal across the distance.

“Do you think there’s anyone on the other end who’ll approve the connection?” Octavia asked curiously, turning her attention to the front window as she watched the Longsword cut through the clouds.

“There must be,” Vita remarked, though the concern in her tone was impossible to miss.

The center console flickered as the map updated, indicating that they were at the point of descent. With practiced ease, Mackenzie tilted the controls down and eased the Longsword towards the bottom of the clouds. Gravity pulled at Octavia’s core, making her stomach lift within her with a distant sensation of falling. She squeezed onto Mackenzie’s hand for support as they descended, distracting herself from the wave of nausea as the gravitational pull shifted behind them.

The nose of the Longsword cut through the bottom of the cloud and broke into the open air, the enormous temple city immediately looming into view like a sleeping giant awaiting the end times. Lightning flashed from the cloud layer down into the city, arcing between lightning rods that redirected the energy from above into safe places within the city infrastructure. The brilliant flashes of white light illuminated the pyramid from above, cutting through the darkness and the rain to shine light into every nook and cranny of the towering structure.

In the distance in front of them, Octavia could see the silhouette of the second Longsword emerging from the clouds, its wings leaving a trail of moisture through the air as it cut through the cloud layer above. Without the glow of the engines, Octavia never would have seen the craft emerge from the sky, nearly pitch black as it was. The only light in any direction came from the city lights within the pyramid, providing an eerie haze of light glowing amidst the darkness.

The notification square in the corner of Octavia’s vision suddenly flickered as the face of a blue DI appeared, his features shifted into a look of panic as he connected to Octavia. He immediately began to speak, though static interrupted him frequently, “Do-- Guard--! Machines-- every--!” the static crescendoed, obscuring the DI’s voice in an endless sea of noise.

“Can you clear this up, Vi?” Octavia asked with a frown, shifting in her seat as she focused on the display in the corner of her vision.

“Working on it,” Vita remarked, her voice subdued as she focused on the task at hand.

The DI was visibly still trying to talk, his expression one of pure terror as he tried to get his message across. His eyes continued to shift towards the edges of the camera, looking for something out of view as he spoke. The static was unrelenting, however, and Octavia couldn’t make out anything useful as he continued to speak.

“Did you get a hold of someone?” Mackenzie asked curiously, shooting a glance towards Octavia.

“I think so, but I can’t make it out,” Octavia remarked, returning the glance as a spike of concern shot through her.

Octavia and Mackenzie shared a look for a few moments in silence before they returned to their work, Mackenzie focusing on the city as it began to grow in their field of vision while Octavia focused on clearing up the connection to their mystery caller.

“This is Longsword 1013. The Lightning Wolves are on approach to the target position, ETA sixty seconds,” a female voice crackled through the radio, drawing both of their gazes towards the center console for a moment. At the same time, the Longsword in front of them began to descend further, its wings tilting as it approached the city at an angle, circling around to the far side.

“Copy that, Longsword 1013. Longsword 771 is on approach, ETA same,” Mackenzie reported to the radio, increasing the rate of their descent towards the landing pad directly ahead of them. The harsh wasteland beneath them rushed past, illuminated every few seconds with another flash of lighting as they approached the pyramid city.

Octavia’s connection suddenly hissed as the connection strengthened through the static, the DI’s voice coming through clearly as he shouted, “-u have to get out of here! There are too many of them! They know you’re coming!”

Octavia’s eyes went wide, and before she had the chance to open her mouth the proximity alarm in the control panel began to ring insistently, alerting them to an approaching threat. Immediately in front of the Longsword, Octavia watched as a bright pocket of light raced towards them from the city.

“Oh shit!” Mackenzie screamed, tearing her hand away from Octavia’s as she instinctively gripped the controls and hammered the throttle down, tilting the ship’s wings up as they lifted away from the ground in a tight corkscrew. The missile lanced past them, leaving a thin trail of white smoke behind it as it tore through the air where they had been mere seconds ago.

Through the front windscreen, Octavia watched as a second mote of light lanced out of the city’s outer walls and tore through the air directly towards the second Longsword from the side. It didn’t stand a chance as the missile slammed directly into the side door of the crew bay, the entire center mass of the gunship erupting into a ball of fire which illuminated the darkness around them like a torch. One of its engines immediately sputtered out and the ship tilted drastically to the side, arcing inwards to the city below.

“This is Longsword 1013, we’ve been hit! We’ve been hit! We’re going down!” the pilot of the other ship screamed, the terror clear in her voice as the sound of explosions and electric arcing transmitted through with her voice. The ship trailed thick black smoke through the rain as it fell out of control towards the city, the fireball illuminating the outer walls as it got closer and closer.

As Mackenzie levelled the ship out, they had the perfect view as the other ship slammed sideways into one of the middle levels of the pyramid, one of the wings tearing off as the ship crashed into the structure and disappeared into the level. A bright fireball exploded outwards from the site of the crash, the billow of fire giving way to a thick trail of acrid black smoke as the gunship came to a full rest buried within the structures of the pyramid.

“Fuck, Longsword 1013 is down!” Mackenzie exclaimed over her shoulder as she tilted the ship into a dive, bringing them as close to the wasteland below as they could. Octavia hastily grabbed her helmet and slipped it over her head, the magnetic lock snapping shut as she sealed herself in.

“Get us down there, Flight Officer O’laughlin!” B’roka shouted firmly, his voice easily carrying up the stairs towards the cockpit.

“That’s a tall order, sir!” Mackenzie cried back, “But I’ll do what I can!”

“Guardian! They’re coming for you! They’ve locked the city down and they have hunting parties out in force!” the DI urged through the network, “You need to get out of here!”

“Lieutenant, I’ve got a DI on the network here, says the entire city’s crawling with bots - they’ve got hunting parties ready for us!” Octavia called over her shoulder into the crew bay.

“Roger that! Get ready to come in hot!” B’roka called back sharply.

“Fuck, another one!” Mackenzie called out as she yanked the controls backwards, pulling them into a near-vertical ascent away from the wasteland below. The missile slammed into the ground where they had been, exploding in a plume of dust and irradiated dirt as the ground was kicked up by the impact. Octavia grit her teeth and gripped the edge of her seat tightly as the ship rocketed upwards.

Pulling the Longsword out of the ascent, Mackenzie twisted the wings into a short turn, flipping the ship upside down as it arched back down towards the city. With the landing pad in view, Mackenzie’s grip visibly tightened on the controls until her knuckles turned white and the nose of the Longsword pointed straight down as they raced towards the ground at impossible speeds. With an exclamation of exertion, Mackenzie pulled at the air brakes and throttled the ship backwards, rotating the wings in the opposite direction to slow their ascent as fast as possible.

The entire crew cried out in various degrees of displeasure as the ship went from supersonic to a near-dead stop instantly, multiple loose articles slamming their way violently out of their places and into the empty space of the ship. The structure creaked and groaned under the sudden shifting forces pulling it in opposite directions, loud metallic bangs sounding throughout the walls as several struts and important connections broke under the exertion. The bottom of the Longsword slammed into the landing pad heavily, the landing gears smashed beneath the ship’s weight as it came to a crashing halt against the solid ground.

Octavia jostled downwards in her seat with a painful lurch, her spine cracking painfully in several spots as the gravity caught up to her. The windows in front of her shattered with the force of the impact, filling the inside of the cockpit with a veritable storm of glass shrapnel that pinged off of her armour from every direction. With her head hanging over her chest and the world around her spinning in a dizzying array of colours, she blinked the tears out of her eyes as best as she could, trying to will herself to snap back into reality.

“Come on, come on!” Octavia could hear Mackenzie straining nearby, but she found she couldn’t manage to make herself move to look towards the sound. Her eyes tried to focus on her knees, but she found herself staring at three pairs of identical knees, forcing her to close her eyes tightly to avoid the urge to throw up.

She felt as her chest was jostled around by a pair of hands struggling with her crash straps, fumbling to release her from her seat. She groaned lightly as she fluttered her eyes open slowly, focusing as much as possible to bring her swimming vision back together. She followed the hands that were working at her seat up to the bloodied face of Mackenzie, a shard of glass sticking out of her temple in a wound that steadily leaked a trail of blood down her cheek. Mackenzie’s eyes remained focused solely on the task at hand, and with a sudden exclamation of success, she pulled the strap apart and freed Octavia from her restraints.

“Come on, we’ve got to go!” Mackenzie urged, placing her hands on Octavia’s shoulders as she pulled her forward. With unsteady hands, Octavia pushed herself out of her seat and followed Mackenzie’s movements, allowing herself to be guided down the stairs into the crew bay where the rest of the crew were sitting. There was an insistent rattling that Octavia had thought she was imagining, but as she descended into the crew bay she spotted the source; Jace had his thumbs on the trigger of his turret, which was firing a hellish stream of bullets outwards from the crash site.

“Die you fuckers!” Jace screamed at the top of his lungs, trailing into a primal call of rage as the turret rattled violently in his hands. He twisted the barrel left and right as he fired unendingly through the window, hollow metallic clinking adding to the deafening chorus as a mountain of expended shell casings piled up along the floor of the crew bay. Octavia could see that the device which normally fed the empty shells into the void of space had been bent so badly from the force of the impact that it had snapped in half, depositing the shells inside the craft instead of where they belonged.

At the top of the stairs, something heavy clattered onto the floor behind Octavia and Mackenzie as they retreated into the crew bay, “Get your heads down!” B’roka exclaimed towards Octavia and Mackenzie as he crossed the room and shouldered his way past the two of them. Placing his rocky form in the doorway, he stretched himself out across the opening as a deafening explosion rocked the craft from the cockpit as a fragmentation grenade exploded.

Octavia hastily wrapped her arm around Mackenzie’s shoulders and pulled her down to the ground in a crouch, covering her body with her own armoured form as the metal shrapnel ricocheted within the cockpit, the metal shards flattening harmlessly against B’roka’s chest as he bore the brunt of the explosion. Octavia’s helmet compensated for the noise, protecting her ears from the deafening sound, but she could see Mackenzie’s mouth opening and closing as she tried desperately to get the deafening ringing out of her ears.

“Rifle!” B’roka demanded loudly, turning his head to look over his shoulder as he held out a hand expectantly.

“On it!” Alex shouted as she dove across the crew bay for the discarded bag of rifles laying where it had fallen during the crash. She hastily opened it and gripped the first rifle she touched before turning on the spot and throwing the rifle across the room to the Lieutenant.

B’roka caught the rifle by the barrel and without a moment’s hesitation, he raced up the stairs as he shouldered the rifle and poked his head into the cockpit. The steady retort of gunfire began emanating from the top of the stairs as the Lieutenant returned fire at their attackers, and Alex scurried across the bay with the bag of rifles to come to a kneeling stop next to Octavia and Mackenzie, kicking discarded shell casings away from her with every step.

“They’re all coming from the north, pick a corner and start shooting!” the mechanic insisted as she removed a rifle and handed it first to Mackenzie, followed by a rifle being given to Octavia. She procured her own weapon and glanced around the bay before she turned and rushed over to the sliding door on the side where Jace’s turret was facing, taking a position against the armoured hull to add her own gunfire to the mix.

Over the din of the gunfire, the Longsword’s radio crackled to life with an oppressive layer of static in the mix. Octavia could barely make out the words as a female voice cried out from the other side, “This is Flight Officer Merith Kelro - Longsword 1013 is down, all crew KIA. One other survivor on-site. We need extraction, ASAP!”