The vestibular space was illuminated by bright beams of light.

  The tiled ground was scorched in places, and craters had been gouged out of its surface. Within the craters and across the floor were strewn limbless bodies blasted to hell and back.

  Norma Myrmec piloted the Stonediver-Mech toward the Plastiflex-bag, its stumpy four-finned legs hissing mechanically with every step.

  Whirring servos. Its blacksteel chassis whined loudly. Norma glanced quickly at the Integrity-Calculator projected across the overhead panel.

  Integrity-Calculation: 86.2%

  Auto-Recommendation—Moderate Servicing.

  Norma clicked her tongue, returning her attention to the control panel and flicking the joystick forward.

  The Stonediver trod over the Ujung corpses, crushing flesh and bone into pulp.

  "Interception Team to Linkman. Cargo secured," Norma transmitted, staring out somberly through the screen-visor. She never liked killing. Hated it, in fact.

  'No matter. Mission successful,' she told herself, scrunitizing the contents of the Plastiflex-bag.

  The Plastiflex-bag was exactly what it sounded like—a large bag of clear plastic used to create an insulated and airtight environment in emergency situations.

  This particular one was packed full of more than a hundred women of varying ages, their bodies pressed up against each other like sardines. Sweat, tears and mucus. Those who could were staring up at the towering humanoid mechsuit with mortal fear etched into their faces.

  Norma's heartbeat quickened. Bad move, looking into their eyes. Some of them were already dead, expired from fear or stress or plain asphyxiation. She turned her head and took a deep breath.

  Cargo's secured. That's all that matters.

  "Linkman, do you read? Cargo secured!" Norma transmitted again.

  The comms crackled to life.

  "krrshk—read you. Any sign of the Delta leader?" came Szymon Gombrovich's droning reply. Norma recognized that weaselly tone well. Gombrovich was the Linkman between her Interception Team and Rolf’s Assault Team—a necessary role, sure, but why Rolf had chosen him still baffled her. After what happened with Guo Xun, who could count Gombrovich as trustworthy?

  "No. No sign," Norma replied. They had only found Ujung.

  "Noted. Stay put there and leave the beacon on. Extraction E-T-A fifteen minutes," Gombrovich returned.

  Norma clenched her jaw. This was a man who hid his ambitions well; but Norma could sense things that others could not, and her intuition told her that Gombrovich was planning something big.

  Gombrovich had always been like that. From Boot Camp to Liberation's Reach to the subjugation of the southeastern Bejana… Norma could almost smell Gombrovich's treachery.

  "Attack status?" Norma asked. The Assault Team would be setting up for an attack on the Delta bandits' encampment east of Gehen right about now.

  "Stay in your lane, Norma," Gombrovich snapped. "Gom out."

  "Wai—" Norma began, but it was too late. The line went dead.

  Sighing to herself, Norma returned her attention to the front, to the girls trapped within the Plastiflex-bag. Human beings, treated like cattle. Her subordinates, picked from the Saltillan contingent, were arrayed around the bag in their blimpy exosuits, chewing insouciantly on Proxy-gum.

  "Pelz, come in," Norma transmitted. Static. No response.

  "Pelz," she tried again. No one replied.

  … Jammed? But I could get Gombrovich no problem.

  She had sent them to destroy the Ujung breeding pools as per their contract-requirements, but they hadn't reported back in a while, and she was starting to worry.

  The comms crackled to life again. A voice that was decidedly not Private Pelz's transmitted through the gloom.

  The figure closest to the Plastiflex-bag, Norma's second-in-command, Master Sergeant Matthews, was waving his hands and pointing to the deathtrap beside him, as if to draw Norma's attention to what she already knew.

  "krrshk Ma'am, they're dying. We gotta get them to the Drill-rig trawlers ASAP— "

  "Get the tether on," Norma replied irritably, interrupting Matthews. She saw the light-skinned Saltillan frown, then salute sloppily. He bent down to retrieve a piece of thick nylon rope, tying it around the handle of the Plastiflex-bag.

  The inside surface of the bag was fogging up with condensation. Liquid fear.

  'Imagine the smell,' Norma thought, raising the Stonediver's right hand and grasping the rope. As Matthews wrapped it tightly around the artificial appendage, the bodies within the Plastiflex-bag began screaming and struggling.

  Norma activated the external speakers.

  "Stop struggling. You'll only hurt yourselves," she said. The metallic sound washed over the space. Beneath the Stonediver's impassive gaze, the crush of female bodies gradually receded into a quiet sobbing.

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  Norma winced. She raised the Stonediver's arm carefully, servos whirring loudly. The Plastiflex-bag bunched. The struggling intensified. Norma halted and reversed when it became clear to her she couldn't move it without crushing the bodies at the bottom.

  "Matthews, get the fucking trawler over here," Norma commanded.

  Matthews saluted once more in that irritatingly sloppy manner and lowered himself onto his haunches, fiddling desultorily with his transceiver.

  Norma settled into a tense, watchful stillness, eyes flicking between the Integrity Calculator and the oxygen reserves. Overhead, the emergency Ejector button pulsed with a ghostly violet glow.

  Silence.

  She toggled the audio feed to confirm it was still active. It was.

  A burst of sound caused her to snap her head to the screen-visor. The visual feed showed her men scattering, shouting. Matthews indicated something to her

  At that moment, a hail of bullets lanced across the frontage. Carbine and railgun fire, thunking into the Stonediver's back and cutting down several of her subordinates. Norma swung around, unclenching the Stonediver's right fist—but Matthews had secured the rope to the Stondiver's hand, so that the Plastiflex-bag was dragged unceremoniously across the gray-tiled floor.

  Pain, chaos, bedlam.

  A group of figures burst out from the far end of the space. Her own subordinates, clad in exosuits and firing their carbines at them. And those behind—a mish-mash of Earthians and Desertians, all of them masked except for one, a woman—moving with purpose and killing intent.

  Could it be…? The Delta bandits! Is this compulsion?

  Norma widened her eyes, slamming her fist down on the panel before her.

  Metal plates shifted in precisely-calibrated movements, joints and panels folded inward with thunderous clanks. The Stonediver's left fist transformed into an immense minigun—a 10-barelled monstrosity that was blackened, heat-treated, and patched up with chrome-steel sheeting.

  The next moment, a powerful surge of intentionality crashed into Norma's mind, causing her to cringe and grit her teeth tightly. But for the Stonediver's Nullifier-Brace-plate, she would have lost herself immediately.

  I must… maintain control.

  With extreme prejudice, she opened fire.

  ***

  The minigun accelerated hyperfast, screeching violently, roaring tumescent flares. A molten stream stitched across the battlefield, the violent retorts blending into one jagged cacophony. Bullet casings ejected in a glittering cascade, clattering to the floor in a brassy waterfall.

  The Saltillans under his control were ripped to shreds in seconds. Betelgeuse strafed left without thinking, tumbling over into a deep crater, his fall cushioned by a pile of corpses that had been scorched sticky. He sensed various competing intentionalities filling the space and wasted little time in grasping these with his mind, turning them inwards.

  Queen She, Alterk and Fuller stumbled into cover after him, yelling soundlessly. Betelgeuse saw that Private Nahdi was missing and immediately assumed that the man had been converted into pink mist.

  How the hell did Rolf get a mech?

  Bullets lanced across the top of the crater, slamming into the far side and churning up earth and broken tiles. Betelgeuse sent another bolt of intentionality against the mech pilot—interrupting the torrent of bullets otherwise finding that his attempt at the compulsion was frustrated.

  "Outfitted with a Nullifer-Brace," Betelgeuse said flatly.

  Queen She, who had armed herself with one of Rabid's carbines, stared at him with an expression that was filled with bewilderment. "You're a psycho, by Ahman," she managed.

  Betelgeuse clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  The sound of whirring servos drifted over the top of the crater. It sounded like the mech was moving towards them.

  "Shit!" Fuller muttered under his breath.

  "Stay in cover," Betelgeuse instructed the others. The White Incunabulum pulsed within his chest-pouch, and he sprang out left, sprinting full-throttle toward the far side of the ellipsoid room.

  The mech whirled and drew a bead on him. Betelgeuse could see it clearly now, a 12-feet-tall humanoid creature made of metal and tempered glass. Its head was a knob of metal gashed with a tinted visor and its torso was a block of solid blacksteel. Its right hand was wrapped in a rope that was connected to what could only be described as an immense bag of bodies—the bodies still live, if his eyes weren't lying to him—and its left arm was a minigun, the barrels glowing orange-hot.

  The barrels snapped instantly into motion—no buildup, no warning. One moment they were still; the next, they spun at breakneck speed. Betelgeuse surged forward, legs coiled and driving, crossing over the scarred ground.

  Bullets slammed into the ground behind him, kicking up a snarling trail of debris too slow to catch him. The mech was turning—but not fast enough.

  Behind the mech were other exosuited personnel. Betelgeuse mustered the compulsion, overbearing their minds in an instant. The minigun clicked empty.

  "Kill him!" Betelgeuse commanded, pointing at the mech. The men in the exosuits began jerking involuntarily as Betelgeuse' power pulped their capacity for autonomy, and they began clambering up the mech with no thought at all for their own lives.

  The mech screeched and bucked violently, hurling the gibbering men several meters through the air. Yet even in the chaos, Betelgeuse noticed that the pilot had calibrated its movement to avoid killing them outright.

  His eye twitched.

  By now, he had reached the mech. His fingers latched onto its left leg, muscles straining as the White Incunabulum thrummed through him. With a loud grunt, he heaved—and the multi-ton machine tipped backward and crashed onto its back, crushing several unfortunates to death in an instant.

  The bag of living bodies attached to its hand squirmed and blubbered.

  Betelgeuse could feel his heart beat so hard it was close to bursting. There was a limit to his White grade enhancements, and if he weren't careful he felt he might cripple himself from overexertion.

  But he had the upper hand. Without wasting a beat, he pounced on the mech's torso-plating and grasped at its head, intent on ripping it clean off and exposing the pilot beneath.

  "Get off!"

  The voice that emanated from the external speakers was obviously modulated. Before Betelgeuse could react, it punched sideways with the barrel of its minigun-arm, clipping Betelgeuse in his side.

  The blow sent him flying off the mech's torso and slamming into the ground. Pushing down the pain, he regained his feet in an instant, observing the mech's clumsy attempts to right itself.

  A low rumble vibrated beneath Betelgeuse’s boots. His wrist-transceiver buzzed—but there was no time to respond. The mech was up again, staggering backward, dragging the sack of writhing bodies behind it. The ground trembled.

  Betelgeuse took a step forward, then stumbled. The ground split open, a diamond-tipped drill grinding its way out with savage force.

  A drill-rig. Then another. Then a third.

  Subsidence.

  Betelgeuse jumped backward, the ground falling away into darkness where he had stood.

  The top hatch of the nearest drill-rig slammed open. A figure emerged—tall, unmistakably Earthian—hauling a tubular weapon up with one arm. He swung it onto his shoulder with mechanical familiarity and pressed a side-mounted stud. The weapon gave off a rising, electric whine.

  Betelgeuse realized what it was.

  Lorentz Plasma Cannon.

  Time slowed. Queen She, Alterk, and Fuller opened fire, their weapons barking sharply but the bullets flying wide. Betelgeuse' thigh-muscles bunched. A strange power seeped into the air.

  Then, another figure appeared, materializing into existence as if stepping into realspace from a separate dimension altogether. It was a man, robed in blue, face hidden behind a featureless helmet. With deliberate grace, the robed man raised a hand.

  The plasma cannon fired. A searing bolt split the darkness—Betelgeuse launched himself sideways, instincts taking over.

  He was still airborne when he realized: the Earthian and his weapon were gone. Dematerialized. Disappeared into nothingness.

  The bolt tore through Alterk, who exploded into incandescent flame.

  And then Betelgeuse felt it—that mysterious but unmistakable intentionality-signature.

  It came from the robed man.