Yvian didn't bother to curse. She couldn't spare the time. Eight humans. Five rounds. With AIMASSIST she could have taken them. Without it...

She wasn't the only one with problems. Fifteen Queenships were entering the sector, each guarded by thousands of Peacekeeper Stinger units. All helpless. Frozen in the anti-tech field. A few hundred gladiators with pixen pilots were scattered among each of the Queens. Should she warn them?

A transmission would give away her location. The moment she keyed radio, one of Reba's ships could cut her in half with a beam weapon. The bitch wanted a Lucendian implant. She needed Yvian alive. Probably. Mims and Lissa had implants, too. Reba only had to capture one of them. Killing Yvian to spite the human was exactly the sort of short-sighted petty gribshit the Synthetic Intelligence might pull.

More importantly, the warning wouldn't do much good. YEET Artillery Barges would already be opening fire. In a few minutes, the Queens would be debris, and there was nothing Yvian or any of the Academy pilots could do about it. Yvian's warning wouldn't save a single soul.

The fleet's only hope was to take out the Techjammer. Yvian couldn't help them with that. The damned thing could be floating anywhere within a three thousand kilometer radius. Even if Yvian managed to spot it, a round from her Bigger Better would take nearly ten minutes to reach the target. Far too late. Not that it mattered. Yvian wasn't good enough to hit a target at that range. No one was.

"The anti-tech ship's past the Gate!" Lissa's voice crackled over the radio. "They've got beam weapons! You'll hav- AAUGH!"

Lissa? Oh Crunch. Or Bright Lady...

"So Lissa was alive too." Commandant Barillas quipped. "Huh. Pretty ballsy giving away her location like that."

Yvian could see it in her mind's eye. A beam of light, cutting her sister in half.

"Doesn't sound like it worked out for her," the pirate continued.

Lissa? No. She couldn't. She wasn't...

"Then again, I guess we only need one of you alive."

The scream came out of Yvian like a punch. Rage and anguish and fear and despair ripped their way out of her, a sound she hadn't known a pixen could make. Her voidarmor vibrated with the fury of it. Tears floated out from her eyes. Yvian blinked, shaking her head to dislodge them, still screaming.

"Kill you! I'll kill you! I'll fucking-" A terrible need welled up within Yvian. A need to rip and tear. Yvian's soul screamed for blood. Her stream of profanity continued as she turned to face the humans. They were almost on her. The closest was within twenty meters. He'd drawn some sort of pistol. A wicked looking thing with a long thick barrel. He wasn't going to get to use it.

Yvian keyed her jetpack, charging straight at the motherless sons. Technically, she wasn't moving toward them. Her new vector was just cutting down on her inertia and slowing her down. Either way, she shot past the leader, angling down and to the right, barely avoiding a collision with a second human as she passed.

Yvian brought up the Bigger Better BFG. She didn't bother with the scope. Fury and focus narrowed everything down, until all she could see were the two humans. She squeezed the trigger at the exact moment they were lined up with her barrel. She roared her triumph as the XTRO Agents exploded.

"Kill you all! All of you!" Six humans. Four rounds. They were reacting. Faster than last time. Yvian tried, but she couldn't get two of them lined up again. The motherless sons shrank in her vision. Yvian changed directions again, strafing to the side. The humans fanned out, approaching quickly from multiple angles.

It would be better to get one more pair with a single shot, but Yvian didn't think she'd get the chance. She felt a thud in her shoulder. Another against her chest. They were shooting her. Yvian changed her strafe, bringing her gun up. The human dodged. Instead of trying to track him, she whipped her barrel to the side and snapped a shot at the woman to his left. In her haste she jerked the trigger instead of squeezing. The MAC round took the human's arm instead of blowing through her torso.

More thuds. Two of them hit Yvian's fedora. Yvian didn't know what kind of weapons the humans were using. Probably some kind of knock out device. Whatever they were, they were no match for Yvian's Peacekeeper tuxedo. Yvian ignored the thuds and lined up her next shot. Something smacked the Bigger Better just before she squeezed the trigger.

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The Bigger Better jumped in Yvian's hands. The shot went wide. She glared down at the weapon. A small black disk was stuck to the barrel. Hmm... Yvian dodged to the right, bringing the weapon back up. She pretended to squeeze the trigger, then glared at the weapon again. She slapped the bigger better, simulating what the Captain referred to as "percussive maintenance."

The humans didn't take the bait. They kept their distance, firing more of those little black disks. More than a dozen of the things were stuck to Yvian already. Her Peacekeeper suit covered everything but her hands, neck, and part of her helmet, but it was only a matter of time before they managed to hit the voidarmor itself. With a frustrated growl, Yvian stopped pretending the Bigger Better didn't work. She splattered another human. Four humans. Two rounds.

The next few seconds were an exercise in frustration. The remaining humans were changing directions too fast for Yvian to get a clear shot. Yvian wasn't making it easy on them, either, but the motherless sons didn't have to worry about ammo. She took more hits. Finally she caught one of them just as he finished changing direction. Three humans. One round left.

Three bolts of green light struck Yvian's gun. One of the humans had ditched his disk gun in favor of a plasma assault rifle. The Bigger Better BFG was built tough, but the coating that protected it from sensors and little black disks was no match for a weapon designed to pierce voidarmor. The gun fell apart in Yvian's hands. The humans moved in.

Yvian let out a war cry, barreling towards the lead human. The agent dodged, but Yvian was able to compensate just enough to clamp a hand around the other woman's arm. The human switched directions, trying to shake the pixen loose. Yvian held on, wrapping her legs around the woman's torso.

The human shot Yvian, but the disk stuck to her fedora. Yvian got a hand on the human's pistol, jerking it to the side. The gun fired, hitting the other agent that had swooped in to help. He spasmed as he flew past.

Yvian twisted the gun in the woman's hand and chopped down with her other arm. The strike was half assed, but it worked. The gun came free. Yvian tried to shoot the other human. She missed, but the gun worked. Maybe the guns weren't DNA locked, or maybe DNA locks wouldn't work in an anti-tech field. Didn't matter. Yvian had a weapon again.

Yvian didn't want to risk shooting the woman. Not while she was holding on to her, at least. Yvian tucked the gun into her Peacekeeper jacket and grabbed the human's head with both hands. She wanted to break the woman's neck, but she didn't think she had the leverage. Instead, she got her thumbs on the release button on either side of the helmet. The woman grabbed Yvian's wrists, but she was too late. Yvian pulled the helmet off and kicked the human away.

The move cost her. The remaining human shot Yvian in the face. The pixen had a confused moment to stare at the black disk attached to her visor. Then it discharged. Electricity or something like it wracked Yvian's body. She let out a cry as her muscles seized up.

Then it was over. The thing had shocked her for just over two seconds. It hadn't been that bad of a shock, really. Yvian didn't waste time questioning her luck. She pulled her pistol out and emptied the rest of it at the remaining human. She hit him. She saw him spasm.

Yvian keyed her jetpack. Nothing happened. Oh, Crunch. Now she knew what the little black disks did. The shock she'd felt was residual, a side effect of the energy discharged into her voidarmor. The motherless sons had fried her systems. No radio. No jetpack. She was adrift.

Yvian sighed as she watched the helmetless human die. The other two were still alive, drifting out of her reach. Yvian sighed. Two humans. Zero rounds. Well. Technically there was one shot left, but she didn't have a way to fire it. The remains of the Bigger Better BFG were still tethered to her, but Yvian didn't feel like reeling it in.

Green light scythed past Yvian's visor. Plasma? It was one of the agents. Maybe he had orders, or maybe he was just mad that Yvian killed his unit. Either way, he had an assault rifle and he wasn't afraid to use it. Yvian couldn't dodge. Couldn't shoot back. She did the only thing she could. She raised her arms to cover her face and hoped like Crunch the Peacekeeper suit would hold.

Impacts slapped her legs and torso. Plasma weapons did most of their damage through heat. Ionized matter wasn't as dense as a bullet, but it was still matter moving fast. The green flashes of light cut off a second later, obscured by a stream of brilliant white. A beam weapon. Yvian lowered her arms and saw the human's head was missing.

Reba. The SI had saved her. Crunch take it. That bitch really did want Yvian alive. Yvian sobbed. She knew she should be getting ahold of herself. She already had enough blobs of water floating around in her helmet. She should be planning, trying to figure a way out of all this. She couldn't. She had nothing left.

Lissa was dead. The mission had failed. Yvian was alone and hurt and helpless. More humans would come, and there was nothing she could do.

They wouldn't take her alive, she decided. She reached up, placing a thumb on the release catch to either side of her helmet. She wouldn't do it now. But soon. The moment she saw the next batch of agents.

"I'm sorry, Sis," Yvian choked. "Mims. I'm so sorry..."

Movement caught Yvian's eye. Something was coming. Something big. Something fast. Something...shiny? Yvian wiggled in the void, trying to turn herself for a better look. It was a ship. A gladiator, maybe? Did one of the other pixens see her?

It didn't seem likely. Reba's back up fleet was still out there. A pixen ship would be getting blown out of the sky right now. Couldn't be Xill, either. The anti-tech field would shut them down just like it had the Peacekeepers. Yvian kept her hands on the helmet release. Just in case.

A surge of emotions slammed into Yvian as the ship approached. Fear. Determination. Fury. Hope. The feelings weren't hers. Yvian gasped. It couldn't be.

The ship wasn't a gladiator. It wasn't a Xill. A hull of gleaming crystal refracted the light of the Gate.

The Skygem had come.