“We can make the play, Six. They’ll be dead before they know they’re under fire.” It was dry and hot in the noon sun; the flies had fled from the heat in the dead stream bed where Yari and Cayde lay motionless, watching a pack of fallen with mustard-yellow capes hastily drag salvage from a downed warsat further up the canyon.

“You’re moving awfully fast for a first date,” replied Cayde. The sun was beating down on them from its midday position. They were downstream, maybe 75 meters, in a shallow walled gorge; Cayde’s rifle was firmly tucked beneath his chin, his electric-blue eyes scanning the big captain wearily. It was enormous; maybe 3.5 meters tall. Abnormally big. “Why don’t we let this one go? I think your eyes are a little big for your gut.”

“It’s just a patrol, Six.” Yari winked, and suddenly she was gone, in the muffled hiss of her active camouflage. Her transmit crackled. “I’ll be back before you miss me.”

“Don’t do anything I’ll regret, kid,” muttered Cayde. He drew his attention back to the big captain; then, up to the tops of the canyon walls above him. His position was far too exposed for an actual engagement.

*****

Cayde reached the deck of the Ketch’s loading bay, meticulously creeping along the edge of the fortress roof. The moon was unobscured by clouds now on the exposed battlement, bathing the shuffling patrol of sentries in vivid blue light. A quick exhale; a short, soft sprint along the right hand side of the massive ship’s metal jaw; then a silent slide under a metal stair, and Cayde was safely positioned in the large operations hanger of the Kings’ flagship. He crawled along the wall, beneath an exposed catwalk, reaching the far end of the hanger before deploying his ghost in relative solitude.

“It appears too active to attempt a sabotage on any of the hanger tanks, Cayde.” His ghost was peering around the cavernous loading area; fallen mechanics were scrambling about, activating and deactivating the walker legs. “I don’t believe I could charge and fire the pulse device unnoticed.”

“Don’t these Ketches have support hangers?” Cayde speculated. “We could try to find one further up that’s receiving less attention.”

“It would stand to reason that, if anything, the tanks in the support bay would be receiving more attention than these, not less.” The ghost pondered their quandary. “I would need schematics as well; this Ketch is dissimilar to the one we raided outside old Donetsk.”

Cayde eyed Fenrik across the hanger; he was bickering with the dregs as they operated on the tanks, bossing them about with three gesticulating arms. He held a pair of ornamental swords in his fourth hand. “Ghost, I have an idea.”

*****

There was an electric hiss as the blasts of wire rifles skimmed inches over Cayde’s head. Explosions of rocks and sand were all around him; he rolled sideways to an outcrop in the stream, pinned by enemy fire in the dry creek. Yari was in his ear.

“Six, what’s going on! Talk to me!” He wasn’t sure how they’d spotted him; on a bluff above him to the right, along the canyon wall, a scout must have been returning from reconnaissance. Up the creek bed, the vandals were scrambling to find position on him; if they flanked the opposite wall of the canyon, he’d be dead, fast.

“I need you to hit them as they flank the far wall to my left!” He shouted to her over the pulsing detonations of blue electricity. The thunderous report of Yari’s rifle shuddered up and down the low canyon, and the tracing contrails of bullets splintered out from the left side of the canyon’s basin upstream; vandals fell in the creek bed ahead of him, and the sniper above him collapsed down the right canyon wall.

“Move Six!” Yari shouted desperately in his ear. He lurched up, sprinting downstream and sliding into a culvert. “Shit Six, shit!” There was a muffled scramble over the com, the struggling thuds of punches and kicks. He turned, aimed his rifle out of the narrow hovel where he hid, sighting down scope. Standing high in the riverbed, the giant captain held Yari’s struggling form up in front of its face, blocking Cayde’s shot. In another giant hand, it held a broad scimitar, ready at her throat.

*****

Cayde crouched with his ghost by an access panel, high up on a catwalk that ran the length of the hanger’s ceiling. He pulled apart the glowing fiber-optic cables of the communications mainline, and the ghost flitted inside.

“How’s the fallen-linguistics dissertation coming?” Cayde ribbed his small companion. The ghost ignored his jest.

“It’s done. We’ll need to move quick to shadow him.” The ghost whirred back out from the cables. Far below, Fenrik put a free hand to his ear. He turned quickly, barking sharp commands, and whirled around toward the back of the hanger with swift, angry strides. Cayde quietly sprinted the length of the catwalk, pirouetting off the end and deftly catching a rail ten meters below as he engaged his camouflage; as Fenrik strode beneath him into the central lift of the Ketch, he dropped down behind the imposing Baron and leapt into the lift ahead of the closing door, shrinking back into a corner, uncomfortably close to the huge warrior.

Their ride was brief: the elevator lurched to a halt and the doors were open almost as quickly as they had shut. Fenrik strode out into the support bay with his silent shadow in tow; the Baron flew into the hissing steam and cacophony of drills and torches in a rage of obscenities directed at the nearby foreman. Neither noticed the slithering shade that crept into a dark recess near a row of spider walkers nearby.

Cayde slid down the column of tanks to the far end of the bay; at the entrance, Fenrik was howling at every fallen within reach. Mechanics were setting down their tools to watch the fuss; the two that had been scrabbling over Cayde’s tank of choice had climbed down to get a closer ear to the shouting.

“You really spun a tale of deception and woe, huh?” Cayde whispered to his ghost as he scaled the tanks control pod; he deployed the tiny miscreant into the cockpit, his eyes trained on the Baron as he drew a blade and forced the foreman to his knees.

“Remind me to recount it to you when we have the time. The pulse should be ready momentarily, awaiting your mark.”

“We still have 90 seconds until Brask is expecting the pulse. Start the countdown and let’s find somewhere shielded to hide.” The Baron’s sword hung high over his head; the foreman’s arms were spread wide where he kneeled.

*****

“Ghost, decode that. Now!” The captain was shouting downstream to him in the hoarse language of its species. There was a crackle and the ghost began interpreting a hasty translation.

“—gut this vermin if thou doest not bid it cease its struggling!”

“Yari! Quit kicking! Be still!” Cayde barked. Yari went limp, her hands helplessly clinging to the captain’s massive fist.

“We are Fenrik, Baron of Kings! Primefed! Thou whilst hasten to our words, vermin!”The Ghost raced to keep up. “Thine vermin race is…something to do with being doomed, maybe. It’s referring to inferior, archaic fallen houses—”

“Stay on target,” Cayde interrupted.

“It says to come out. ‘Throw down thine arms or I will execute this vermin before thee while thou liest there, craven coward!’”

“Shit.” Cayde muttered. He hesitated a moment; then he rested his rifle against the wall of the culvert, standing resigned with hands folded behind his head.

Immediately there was the crackle of a wire rifle; the shot smashed the side of Cayde’s face, and he fell backward onto the dry stream. He heard Yari’s horrified scream cut suddenly silent; there was the whir of the skiff, the rustling of armor upstream and the strange clicks of the fallen’s shouts. Then the world was gone.

He woke under a brilliant canopy of stars; arcing above him in the dim light of a crescent moon, the Milky Way spread out above like a wisp of vapors.

“You’re back.” The ghost was somber. Cayde pulled himself up on one arm; the side of his head was a fire of bad circuits and pulses.

“Where’s Yari?” Cayde groaned. His whole frame was a mess of tremors and spasms; the two-way circuits of his nervous system burned like starfire. The ghost turned upstream.

“They took her ghost. I had to hide to escape the same fate.” He turned to Cayde. “They kept her head. There isn’t enough left to restore her.” Cayde slumped back, prone in the sandy creek; he stared into the stars, and closed his eyes.

*****

One moment, the dismembered form of the humiliated foreman was writhing beneath the tower of Fenrik: then there was an electric hiss, and the blistering crackle of static in the air. The overloaded power cells of the sabotaged spider tank blazed like a tesla coil, then erupted in a lightning storm. The hanger was bathed in blue for a split second; then the whole of the ketch teetered and fell backward, crashing on the old fortress and then sliding down the steep hill the stronghold was built on. Insulated in the safety of another tank’s cockpit, Cayde and his ghost felt the crash of the ketch; then they were tumbling head-over-heels as the tanks occupying the support bay crashed down into the far end of the now inclined hanger. The ketch lay askew where it rested in the scarred forest, its nose pointing thirty degrees into the air.

Their tank landed miraculously upright. Cayde thrust open the hatch; outside it was pitch black in the bay. His vision switched to infrared; bodies and tanks were strewn across the hanger. The sabotaged spider walker was a bright mess of heat registering in his vision; near the lift gate, Fenrik dragged himself to his feet, clutching a guardrail on the far end of the bay.

Cayde was a blur of blue light, his arc blade hissing to sputtering life as he sprinted up the inclined hanger. Fenrik was still disoriented, unprepared as Cayde neared; he reached feebly about for his sword, finally grabbing a long dirk from his belt. As Cayde reached him he swung late, and Cayde kicked the knife from his hand, in the same motion setting his feet and driving his glittering blade deep into the Baron’s neck. Fenrik collapsed backward, his eyes closing, ether pulsing from the wound with explosive throbs. Cayde stood over his massive corpse, staring down at his hated adversary, and about at the splayed bodies of dead fallen around him. Then he climbed to the hanger door and, forcing it open, pondered the best route for his escape.