“Oh great, another new face! Who the flip-fuck are you?” Jace exclaimed with a weary, irate tone, leaning forward on his turret with a glare firmly fixed on the young human in front of him.

“I am Federation Analyst Fourth Grade Cody Desjoux, my friend!” the researcher replied cheerfully with an oblivious grin as he turned his head eagerly around to peer at Jace, “And who the ‘flip-fuck’ might you be?” he asked in an overwhelmingly positive tone, delivered with such dedication that Octavia honestly couldn’t tell if he was being snide or not.

Jace, for his part, gave a derisive snort and shook his head, “Yeah, whatever. I’m Jace. Now both of you sit the fuck down - we’re gonna be the last ones out there at this rate,” he snapped, turning back to face the turret controls as he cracked his neck side to side, visibly focusing in on the gunsights.

“A fantastic idea!” Cody exclaimed, holding up a waist-high thumbs up without losing his energetic grin before turning and hastily making his way over to the crash seats against the back wall. He strapped himself into the crash seat nearest the rear-facing turret where Octavia sat - with his proximity, Octavia had a much better look at the details of his face, which caused her mental train to slam its breaks on suddenly.

“Child alert!” Mack exclaimed insistently.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Octavia suddenly piped up as one of her eyes twitched within the confines of her helmet. She rotated her seat around to get a better look, “Cody, how old are you?!” she asked with audible disbelief.

“Why hello there!” Cody replied enthusiastically, turning his head over his shoulder to look at her, “I am nineteen solar years old! And how about you?” he asked without a single beat of hesitation.

“Not important,” Octavia immediately dismissed before calling back into the crew bay, “Lieutenant?”

“Yes, Guardian Tiberius?” B’roka called back from the co-pilot’s seat, his grating tone carrying with it the endless weariness of a parent more than that of a commanding officer.

“The researcher is nineteen years old,” she replied simply, the disbelief still clear in her tone.

“Your point?” came the Lieutenant’s reply.

Octavia paused for a few moments before deflating, giving a sigh and a shake of her head as she rotated back towards the turret, “Nothing, sir,” she conceded.

As Octavia turned in her seat, a deafening crash drew her attention through the door into the hangar where Longsword 101 was - or had been. The entire gunship had been crushed by a falling beam, its crew bay flattened with the heavy beam resting in the indent. Their crew had just been about to board, and were now scattered around the ground in various states of shock and injury. Octavia couldn’t help but think that they were the lucky ones for not having to go out into the hell that was waiting for them.

“Hold on!” Merith called back from the cockpit. She visibly flicked a small series of switches and the Longsword roared to life around them, the engines rumbling as they began to fire up. Octavia got one last look out the side doors, watching as the other Longswords lifted off of the hangar floor and began to stream out into the void one at a time before the door slid shut in front of her with a mechanical hiss.

“This is Longsword 771 - next in formation,” B’roka rumbled into the comms, and with a quick turn of the dial the shipboard radio crackled to life within the crew bay, broadcasting the local Federation emergency channel.

“Attention all Federation units, this is Admiral Felix - the Omni Animus has engaged us. All hands, man your battle stations. Command units, tune into Channel 1. Flight units, Channel 2. Deck hands, Channel 3. Ground ops, Channel 4. General alerts and communications, switch to Channel 5. Real-Time Tactical Analysis Network satellite is broadcasting from Sector A4. Good luck, and Laws bless,” the message repeated on the emergency communications channel. The mechanically filtered voice of the amaranthoid Admiral betrayed no emotions, but Octavia recognized the uncertain waver within the synthetic voice and couldn’t help but share in the feeling.

“Tuning into the RTTAN, Octy,” Vita informed, connecting the network information to her helmet. Her visor flickered as a small three-dimensional map popped into the top left corner of her vision, showing her position relative to the satellite behind them. A multitude of green dots began to populate the map, displaying the positions of the other units connecting to the satellite, and one large green shape displayed the position of the Valiant.

As the Longsword slipped out of the research station and into the redlit void beyond, Octavia’s eyes went wide as she caught sight of the research station in her rear-facing gunsights. The entire bottom half of the station had torn off from the main station, drifting in eerie silence in lock-step with the rest of the station above it, but with several meters of missing material separating the two halves. Through the gap, she watched as a white blur zipped behind the station, and on instinct she called, “Cherub, six o’clock!”

“Three at four, two at five above us!” Alex cried out, the shock evident in her voice as she gripped the turret with both hands and wide eyes.

“Full swarm cluster at ten! Holy shit, they’re all around us!” Jace exclaimed, all traces of humor dropping from his tone as he hastily racked the turret’s hefty bolt with a metallic clank.

“Open fire! Open fire!” Alex shouted, panic beginning to set in as she reflexively pulled down on the trigger mechanisms. Her turret began to rattle and roar as it spat out armor piercing rounds in rapid succession, the sound dampening mechanisms doing little to quiet the deafening prattle of the heavy weapon. On the other side of the gunship, a similar rattle began as Jace thumbed down the triggers and began spewing ammunition out into the redlit void.

In the past two months, Octavia had dealt with more than she had in her entire life. She had engaged a scouting party of attendants on the coast of Discovery, she had fought through a small army of attendants within the bustling streets of Destiny. She had even gone toe-to-toe with an Omni Seraph and had somehow managed to not be immediately wiped out of the galaxy. But compared to all of that, Octavia realized immediately that she was woefully unprepared for the hellfire that had been sprung in the star system around her.

Octavia watched as the tactical satellite began to update with positions of enemy units. Red dots began to populate in the map; first ten, then twenty, then forty, then one hundred, only for the dots to begin populating even faster and more densely than she could keep up with. It looked like the green dots were swimming in a churning sea of red, the hostile markers swarming this way and that around them. The green dots were rapidly flickering from green to yellow, then from yellow to orange before finally winking out significantly faster than the red dots were extinguishing.

“Holy shit,” Octavia muttered as she watched the updates through the corner of her vision, the fear sinking into her very core as the Animus swarm clouded around them. She found herself frozen with wide eyes, her hands hovering inches above the grip of her turret as she saw firsthand the chaos of the battle outside through the rearview port. Longswords hung in the void of space, lit in the nightmarish red of the gas giant above, the shadows played amidst the melted and warped surfaces of the ships that had been reduced to little more than slag.

One of the Longswords drifting through the void was visibly surrounded by the bodies of its crew, hanging limply within the gravityless void. The red light glinted off of the mirrored visor of the Longsword’s pilot, suspended directly outside the shattered cockpit with his leg caught on a piece of the twisted canopy. The thought of a rescue never crossed her mind - the lack of rebreathers on their corpses stood out like a sore thumb, hammering in the reality of the death and destruction surrounding their own fragile craft.

“Octy, get it together!” Vita shouted in her ear as the sleek white body of a Cherub drifted into her view, its twin forward-swept wings shifting towards the Longsword as the Flashfire cannons at the tips of the wings began to flicker with condensing energy. Still, Octavia couldn’t bring herself to grip the turret, her heart pounding solidly in her throat as she stared out into the face of the sleek white death machine.

“Fuck it,” Vita remarked sharply. She reached through Octavia’s body, the sensation of ice in their shared veins sending pinpricks of energy up and down their spine. As the world shifted around them and a wave of vertigo washed over them, Vita let out a breath she didn’t realise she was holding and snapped her hands down to the turret. With steely-eyed determination she followed the digital targeting module in her vision as she twisted the turret and slammed her thumbs down onto the triggers.

The turret roared to life in Vita’s hands as it sprayed a tight cluster of projectiles towards the Cherub behind them. The Omni raised its wing to drift out of the way, but too late - the hyper-accuracy of the amaranthian’s targeting system sent the burst of bullets with the surety of mathematics on its side. The barrage tore through the mounting between the wing and the rest of the Cherub’s body, the tightly clustered rounds first ripping through the armor before the remaining rounds ploughed through and destroyed the internal systems beneath. The wing tore free from its housing and drifted off into space as the Cherub veered off in the opposite direction - either disengaging or crashing, Vita couldn’t tell.

“Rear clear!” Vita called out to the rest of the crew, gritting her teeth as she kept her focus down the ironsights.

“Thanks,” Octavia replied awkwardly, giving a digital sigh within Vita’s head, “I wasn’t ready,” she admitted, her tone quiet.

“Talk about it later,” Vita remarked sharply, “Focus on the E-W, I’ll handle the shooting!”

“Oh, hi Octavia!” Mack exclaimed in surprise, “Since when could you do that?”

“Since always - Mack, I know you’re new to this, but I need you to help out. Think you can monitor the map for me? I need to know when something’s about to cross into our path,” Vita interrupted hastily with her helmet speakers off, the sensation of adrenaline coursing through her veins both alien and familiar to her as she settled into Octavia’s body.

“Yep, think I can handle that,” Mack replied hastily. Vita could feel the awkward probing as Mack searched for the appropriate program before she settled into the role shortly after.

“Eyes up,” Octavia replied, piping up as a fresh wave of data began to flood into Vita’s view as the Longsword twisted in space and raised through the swarming Cherubim around them, “We’re going to be entering the ring in eight seconds, get ready.”

Vita twisted in her seat and pulled down the trigger, firing wildly into the cluster around them as they tunneled their way out of the shadow of the gas giant and into the light of the sun. As they crested the giant’s horizon, Octavia pulled up a camera feed from the nose of the Longsword directly to Vita’s vision; haloed in the unforgiving light of the unfiltered sun was an Omni Throne, looming in the void as a steady stream of Cherubim flowed in and out of the ship from all directions.

“Holy shit,” Merith remarked over the radio, the astonishment clear in her voice as they crested into view of the Omni warship. Though it was easily half the size of the Valiant, it could carry just as many fighters because of the sheer efficiency of not having to host a living crew - and it was clear from the stream of wounded Cherubim making their way back to the ship only for healthy Cherubim to come out of it, the carrier was actively repairing and restoring its fleet.

“Flight Officer Kelro - Erilia is directly ahead of us,” B’roka rumbled, “Everyone else, hold on!”

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?!” Jace screamed over his shoulder with mad eyes before whipping back around towards the turret to continue firing streams of metal death into space.

The Longsword suddenly lurched as a bolt of superheated plasma tore through the outer hull - the inside of the ship suddenly illuminated in flashing red as an alarm triggered. The fact that they were still breathing meant that it was only a glancing hit, but the faint wisps of thick white smoke left suspended in the void behind them betrayed the severity of the damage. Merith twisted the ship and pulled it as hard as she could directly up, slipping into the rocky field of the ring between two asteroids.

As they twisted within the ring, a loud bang echoed within the Longsword and a wave of nausea suddenly passed over the crew as the artificial gravity switched off. The combined weightlessness of being in space, plus the increasing ambient gravity within an endless field of massive objects caused Vita to give a displeased groan of, “Guh - fuck this.”

“We’re not done yet, Octavia!” Merith called over the radio as the Longsword suddenly lurched again, ducking out of the way of an asteroid - only to suddenly pull the ship into a sharp dive to duck out of the way of another. The Longsword rattled as one of the rocks scraped across the top, the sound of metal tearing roared through the crew bay forebodingly.

“Are we there yet?” Jace exclaimed with a pathetic cry as he twisted the turret in time to squeeze off a burst at a Cherub that was doing its best to keep up with them.

“Shut the fuck up, Jace!” Alex shouted back, twisting in her seat to fire, only to exclaim in surprise as the Longsword scraped its side against another asteroid, tearing the barrel straight off of Alex’s turret and leaving the rest an unusable piece of slag, “Shit! My gun’s down!” she exclaimed as the ship rocked with the last impact.

“Vi, eyes up, that one’s about to cross your path!” Mack exclaimed suddenly, drawing Vita’s attention towards the right corner of her turret’s angle of fire.

The Cherub that Jace had been firing at flipped into her view, corkscrewing out of the way of a rogue asteroid. The maneuver put the Cherub directly in Vita’s gunsights - but it also put the Longsword squarely in the Cherub’s view. Both pulled their triggers at the same time.

The burst Vita fired at the Omni ship tore through its nose, gutting the entire machine from nose to tail in a brutally accurate hail of gunfire. Without anything at the controls, the Cherub slammed directly into a nearby asteroid, all-but evaporating from the sheer force of the impact. One of the Cherub’s plasma bolts flew wide from the sudden impact to its nose before it crashed, but its second impacted the Longsword’s right engine directly with an explosive shake throughout the vehicle’s frame.

The Longsword rattled loudly as smoke began to pour into the crew bay from sparking internals, and wisps of flame began to lick around the edges of interior panels. Alex quickly removed herself from her seat and pushed herself off in the absence of gravity, immediately setting to work at repairing what damage she could now that her turret had been disabled.

“Octavia! Get over here, I need your neurolink!” Alex exclaimed imploringly, gripping onto the edge of an exposed panel with her metal hand while her other fished elbow-deep within the sparking guts of the ship. Vita gave an annoyed grunt but scrambled to unbuckle herself and pushed off of the seat, letting herself float over to the panel.

Gripping onto an overhead rung, Vita planted her feet against the wall and leaned in, “What do you need?” she called with urgency, her eyes flicking between the mechanic and the exposed panel.

“The manual override is slag! I need you to talk to Ricky - get him to switch to auxiliary power and divert the fuel out of the right engine!” Alex exclaimed, her face twisting in a look of focused pain as she twisted something within the burning wires.

“On it!” Vita remarked as she reached through her neurolink into the ship’s systems. Most of them were damaged beyond repair, and the ship was reporting fire all throughout the wiring. The right engine was mostly destroyed, but the fuel flowing into it was still igniting, adding to the fire within the rest of the ship’s internals. On top of that, the life support systems were currently on fire - they would run out of oxygen if they didn’t reach the planet soon.

Ricky’s systems were a mess, flooded with error messages and unfiltered communications from the rest of the Federation. Connecting to the ship gave her an unfiltered feed into the Federation comms network, all of its channels overlapping together into one horrified crowd crying for whatever gods they believed in.

“They’re on me! I can’t shake them!”

“I’m coming to help! Oh sh--”

“Longsword 121, going down! Longsword 121, going ---”

“This is Admiral Felix! All hands - general retreat!”

“Ground team Ocellus is down! All hands KIA! This is Flight Officer Barnes - Hoora---”

“Oh God! We’re on fire! We’re on FIRE! AAAAAAAAAAAAA----”

“Somebody help us, please!”

“We’re going down! Medevac! Need medevac!”

Vita had to close her eyes and focus on anything but the unfiltered screams of horror and pain coming through the Federation comms systems. She felt nausea settling into the pit of her stomach and paused for a moment as she settled herself, trying not to think about it for a second.

“Not easy, is it?” Octavia remarked with a saddened tone. She reached through their neurolink into the machine and guided their efforts, their influence finally reaching the Longsword’s central computer. It was in a primal state of confusion - even though it wasn’t alive in the traditional sense, Octavia and Vita could tell that the machine was on its last legs, and its processes were entering a loop of endless failed commands and system errors.

With the connection established, Vita set to work on guiding the Longsword’s actions, cutting off the flow of fuel to the right engine. Switching to the auxiliary power, Vita cut the connection to the dying machine as swiftly as she could and turned her head to face Alex, “Done!” she exclaimed.

“Just in time, too! Entering the atmosphere in five! Get strapped in, this is going to hurt!” Merith exclaimed from the cockpit. Vita scrambled for the nearest crash seat, setting to work on strapping herself in as the Longsword lurched in the transition between void and atmosphere. As oxygen began to flood the ship once again, a rumbling explosion rocked the entire crew as the exterior of the Longsword went up in a ball of flame, and the last thing Vita saw of the Longsword’s crew bay was a fireball roaring towards her from the front of the ship.

Nausea welled up within Vita as her new body was launched backwards with the force of the fireball, her back impacting the turret and its housing with the force of a wrecking ball. Before she even had time to comprehend what was happening to her, Vita found herself tumbling wildly through the open air with her arms splayed out and legs flailing beneath them. The sky and the ground switched places again and again, the tumble disorienting her until she could no longer recognize which way was up and which way was down.

“Holy shit!” Mack exclaimed, her voice laced with terror as the connection to the tactical satellite became disrupted, the map flickering and fading the further they fell through the atmosphere. Vita could feel the probing within her brain as Mack scrambled to find another program to use, and suddenly an altimeter appeared in the corner of her visor where the map had been, “Here!”

“Rerouting power to the thrusters,” Octavia declared. Vita felt as the power shifted through her Guardian armor, the visor powering down until only the altimeter remained. A small burst from the jets in her chest stopped her tumble, slowing the spin down until she had rightened into a star-position as she fell through the air.

Far above and in front of her she spotted a sickeningly thick trail of acrid black smoke that followed the Longsword as it descended towards the ground, listing heavily to the left as it fell through the atmosphere. She lost sight of it around the peak of a nearby mountain, but the thick smoke lingered in the air long after she had lost sight of the gunship. She hastily marked the direction on her retinal display, lest she get turned around on the ground.

The ground raced towards Vita as she turned her attention towards the approaching jungle canopy beneath her. The dense forest blocked her view of what awaited her below, and she couldn’t see any open ground within the immediate area. Fear swelled within her as she realized she had no choice but to blindly land within the jungle.

“Thrusters in three!” Octavia declared, snapping Vita out of her anxious anticipation.

Vita counted down mentally as she prepared for the thrusters to activate, but no amount of mental preparation could have prepared her for the pain that came from having her acceleration reversed instantly. All of the jets in her armor angled downwards and blasted at full power, working overtime to kill her momentum to make for a safe landing. She burst through the thick canopy, heavy branches snapping all around her as she tore through trees and vines. As she burst through the canopy with the jets roaring all around her, she suddenly got a much better look at the ground.

To her dismay, the ground was far closer than she had expected.

As she slammed bodily into the peat moss ground, she blacked out before her body even came to a rest. Vita didn’t even have time to process the jarring pain that lanced through her body from all directions as she impacted the soft ground. As the void claimed her she found her thoughts drifting to inevitability as somewhere within the hazy fog of her fading perception she heard a sickening howl echoing through her helmet filters.