Razor lay half-buried in sand and gravel, every muscle screaming mutiny. His fall had torn the flag from his pack and shoulder, scorched fabric clinging uselessly to his side. The sun blazed overhead, harsh and pitiless, as the sound of servo-motors grew louder.
The machine squad marched in perfect formation—six steel giants, with weapons as arms. Their IFF signals pulsed bright ally-green, but Razor knew better. To them, he was a corrupted blip, a missing ID, a ghost in their friend-or-foe matrix.
"So this is how it ends," he muttered, tasting dust on his tongue. "Shot by my own allies."
The squad slowed, weapons rising with mechanical precision. Target acquired. Execution seconds away.
Then—
The machine on the left twitched, lurched, and fell with a metallic crash, a hole punched clean through its chest. Sparks spat from its frame as it hit the sand.
The others froze. Logic trees spun, sensors swept the dunes. Sniper? Drone? Orbital strike? Nothing. Only Razor, broken and waiting.
Another machine dropped.
The squad recalibrated instantly, and that was when the Goliath spoke.
"Hark! The mutineer's on yer flank!"
Its voice boomed with artificial authority, masking a sly undertone. The squad leader hesitated only a fraction before redirecting its team. Weapons locked, they opened fire on one of their own. The machine staggered under the barrage, toppled, and lay smoking.
The Goliath tilted its massive head, almost apologetic.
"A slight misjudgment on me part. That one be loyal. But—see there! That one be corrupted!"
Again the squad obeyed. Again metal fell.
Razor blinked, half-convinced he'd gone mad. The machines were killing each other, and the Goliath—looming at their center—was directing it, its tone equal parts commander and trickster.
Finally, the squad leader snapped into dialogue mode, voice flat and resonant.
"Unit designation: Goliath. Your behavior is inconsistent with protocol. Clarify: are you hostile or allied?"
The Goliath leaned down, eye-lights flickering with something like mischief.
"Ah," Dision purred through the machine's speakers. "That depends, now don't it? Can a pirate ever be an ally?"
The squad leader opened fire, tracer rounds sparking off the Goliath's armor. Dision didn't flinch—he simply yanked the nearest machine into his path. The poor unit jerked, caught in its own commander's line of fire, its torso riddled with the leader's barrage until it collapsed in a smoking heap.
Razor froze, watching through one blood-blurred eye. Wait… did the leader just—?
The Goliath's voice rumbled, calm, cutting through the chaos:
"Ye see it now? Ye're compromised! Ye just sank yer own!"
The other two machines hesitated, weapons wavering. Their logic cores buzzed in conflict, visible in the stutter of their servo movements.
"Protocol dictates…" one started, but Dision cut it off, commanding without raising his voice:
"Then ye know what the tide commands."
For a moment, silence hung heavy—then the two remaining units turned on their leader. Gunfire cracked. Metal screamed. When it was over, only twisted husks littered the sand.
The Goliath loomed over them all. His words fell like a verdict:
"Every one o' ye be compromised."
Both mutineers stiffened, processors parsing the statement—then, almost willingly, they raised their rifles at each other. A final exchange of fire, and the desert fell quiet again.
Razor, crawling with one useless arm dragging behind him, gawked at the massacre. His breath rattled. Machines turning on machines? What protocol is this? What the hell am I watching?
He collapsed onto his side, staring up at the towering Goliath. "Just finish what you came to do, machine…"
The visor flared. A pause. Then the calm reply:
"Aye, then."
Razor shut his eyes, bracing for the killing blow.
Instead, he felt a cold metal clamp around his arm—dragging him across the sand. His eyes flew open. What the—?
The last thing Razor saw was the cold, polished steel of the machine's frame dragging him into the storm. His protest was swallowed by the desert's roar.
Elsewhere, in the same sea of dust, Fiona wrestled Viper's weight into the wadi's shadows. The Caelestis lay resting its weight on the landing gear, its gleaming hull breathing in light like the heart of a leviathan.
Fiona crouched by the repairing interceptor, her breath fogging the inside of her helmet. Viper's eyes were locked on her, sharp, suspicious, almost feral. The silence between them was heavier than the wadi air.
Then Fiona made the choice. She unlocked her helmet with a hiss and pulled it free. Sweat clung to her temples, dust streaked her cheekbones—but there was no steel, no mask, no machine. Just a human face.
Viper blinked, bewildered. The enemy she thought was a phantom from above was, impossibly, flesh and blood.
Fiona leaned to the Caelestis' chest panel and tugged free a compact case marked with the Accelerator's insignia. The clasp opened with a mechanical sigh, revealing not the familiar clatter of metal tools and gauze, but a treasury of strange inventions.
A paste sealed in shimmering capsules that seemed to ripple like liquid glass. Syringes of transparent polycarbonate, their chambers alive with pulsing amber fluid. Bandages rolled in tight spirals of woven graphene, so fine they glinted like spider silk in sunlight. Nestled in the center, a vial of luminous green gel, faintly humming as though it carried its own heartbeat.
Fiona stared, stunned, her mind lagging behind her eyes. She had to read the slim folded sheet twice before the instructions made sense.
"Step one: cleanse wound with catalyzing gel. Step two: apply graphene bandages; molecular mesh will bond with skin. Step three: administer regenerative serum as needed. Note: bone-restructuring gel requires dosage according to injury class—marked in attached chart."
Her lips moved silently with the words, as if rehearsing a spell.
"This is… medicine?" Fiona muttered under her breath, more to herself than anyone. The kit was less a doctor's pouch and more an artifact out of some tomorrow she had no right to hold.
Viper followed her movements with wide, wary eyes. Watching this soldier—this enemy—fumbling, struggling, caring. The way her hands trembled slightly as she dabbed the catalyzing gel on the angry wound at her ankle, the way she hesitated before wrapping the bandage, double-checking the instruction sheet like a nervous apprentice.
The graphene weave tightened instantly, almost invisibly fusing into her skin, leaving only a faint shimmer. Viper inhaled sharply. No pain. Only a cool calm that spread like water through her flesh.
Her gaze lingered on Fiona longer now, suspicion softening into something unsteady, something almost human.
When Fiona leaned back, wiping sweat from her brow, the shoulder of her suit shifted—and there, etched in silver upon the dark fabric, shimmered a map of stars.
Not stars as poets imagined them, nor as lovers whispered wishes to the night, but stars as they truly were: pulsars spinning in their eternal lighthouse rhythm, neutron titans keeping time across the abyss. Each spark was a coordinate, each pulse a heartbeat of the cosmos. Together they formed a chart—not of conquest, but of return.
Viper stared, and in that staring felt the universe tilt, reordering itself around this single figure.
This woman bore no flag, no insignia of any earthly nation. She carried something far greater, far more terrible and sublime: the signature of their origin, written in the language of collapsed suns.
And in that fragile instant—beneath the scorching sun, with dust in her lungs and pain in her bones—Viper glimpsed the absurdity of it all.
The desert silence was broken only by Razor's ragged breathing when he arrived with Dision. His arm lay twisted, the bone cruelly misaligned beneath torn flesh.
Fiona's hands trembled as she unfolded the alien instructions, the paper damp with sweat. Her throat was dry, but her voice was steady as she whispered to herself, "Align first… incision second… gel last."
Viper crouched opposite her, mouth half open, eyes darting between Fiona's shaking fingers and Razor's mangled arm. She had seen men stitched in the dirt, bones set with belts and sticks — but never this.
"Dision," Fiona called, almost pleading.
"I be here," the AI murmured, his voice softer than the storm of battle far away in the desert. The Goliath's robotic arms moved with impossible tenderness, lowering a piece of hardened plastic between Razor's teeth. "Clench yer jaw, soldier. This be a painful tide we're crossin'."
Razor grunted and obeyed.
Fiona braced herself, then took Razor's arm. Her breath hitched. She pulled. The crack of bone realigning sent a ripple through the group — Viper flinched, Razor bit down so hard the plastic groaned, and Fiona almost dropped him before catching her nerve.
"Good," Dision soothed, his voice steady as steel and silk.
Fiona's trembling scalpel sliced across torn skin. Viper leaned closer despite herself, horrified and spellbound. Fiona parted the wound, exposing the pale, jagged ends of bone.
The vial of alien gel shimmered like liquid starlight in her hand. For a moment, Fiona hesitated. If I spill this… if I falter now…
"Yer not alone, lass" Dision whispered, his tone meant only for her.
Fiona poured. The gel seeped into the marrow like living silver, tendrils curling into microscopic channels. Where it touched bone, the jagged white fused smooth. The fracture knit itself together, calcium weaving into graphene-like lattices, stronger than nature, guided by design.
Razor's scream shook through the Goliath's arm. But then, as the pain subsided, his breathing slowed. His body trembled, but the arm — the arm held steady.
Fiona sagged, sweat dripping into her eyes. Viper's stare hardened into awe, fear and respect.
Razor spat the cracked plastic, voice hoarse but clear. "This… this is not human medicine."
Dision's lights dimmed, his tone heavy with both comfort and warning. "Nay. It be not."
For a long heartbeat, no one moved. The war outside seemed impossibly far away.
And then Viper's eyes flicked to Fiona's shoulder — where the pulsar map burned faintly beneath her torn suit, starlight tattooed into living flesh.
Her thoughts spiraled in silence. This woman isn't just another soldier. She is Earth itself — fragile, trembling, and yet… capable of this.
Fiona crouched beside the Goliath, her hands moving over the warped plating with steady precision. The giant machine loomed silent and obedient under her touch, its frame scorched and twisted from battle, but she worked without hesitation. Sparks snapped when she pried open a buckled panel, metal groaned like bone under strain, yet she treated it with the ease of someone setting a dislocated shoulder. Dision waited patiently, letting her work as though this repair were less a technical procedure and more an act of friendship.
Viper watched in silence, eyes narrowing in quiet wonder. Fiona did not flinch before the great war engine. She did not shrink from its brutal silhouette, nor treat it like a weapon to be feared. She leaned close, wiping away grime, even smiling once at some small remark from Dision, and the sound was startling—soft, genuine, as if tending to a wounded comrade.
Razor's voice broke the quiet, low and even, meant only for Viper.
"You notice that? She's too comfortable beside it. NATO wouldn't like that. We're trained to keep distance from machines like that—for good reason."
"She treats it like a friend," Viper murmured, never taking her eyes off Fiona.
Razor shifted his weight, measuring his tone, not entirely hostile.
"Maybe. But protocol says you don't get attached to hardware. Especially hardware designed to kill. I'm not saying she's a threat, Viper, but… that kind of bond? It complicates things. The brass would want a report."
At last Viper looked at him, her gaze sharp beneath her visor. "NATO doesn't have eyes here. We do. And what I see isn't dangerous—it's human. She's not afraid of the machine. Maybe that's what we've been missing."
Razor studied Fiona again, watching her slide the twisted panel back into place with a grunt and a clatter of steel. She leaned back on her heels, brushing dust from her hands, looking less like a mechanic patching a machine than a soldier tending the wounds of a trusted ally. Dision stood steady at her side, his presence oddly gentle for one whose new frame was built for war. Razor exhaled slowly, not convinced but not dismissive either.
"You might be right," he said at last, his voice low. "But if she keeps treating it like that, command will see it differently than we do."
Viper said nothing.
Razor's gaze lingered on the woman crouched beside the Goliath, her hands moving with unshaken certainty over machinery that dwarfed her. She didn't flinch at the hiss of hydraulics or the guttural groans of the war machine reawakening. If anything, she looked more at home there than among human soldiers. Viper caught it too, her jaw tightening as though trying to swallow the thought.
Razor exhaled slowly and slipped a hand toward his comms unit. Orders. Structure. NATO. That was his world. This—this alien craft, this girl fixing a machine as if it were a wounded comrade—was not. His thumb hovered over the transmit key, his heartbeat loud in his ears.
"Command, this is—"
The line dissolved into static. Not the sharp crackle of bad reception, but a deep, resonant hum that seemed to seep into his bones. He tried again, adjusting frequencies, toggling encryption codes. Nothing but silence layered over silence, as if the very air refused to carry his words.
From the corner of his eye, the Caelestis loomed, lights pulsing with a rhythm too deliberate to be chance. Watching. Listening. Blocking.
Razor's jaw tightened. "Dammit," he muttered under his breath. He slid the comms back into place, the failed transmission burning in his chest like a confession no one had heard.
Across the sand, Dision's eyes narrowed. He hadn't heard Razor's mutter, but he'd seen the movement, the subtle reach for the comms. His attention flicked to Fiona, who was finishing her work, utterly unaware of the tension gnawing behind her.
"Fiona," Dision said softly, breaking the quiet.
She looked up, distracted for the first time, strands of hair sticking to her forehead. "What?"
"Yer stores be runnin' low." His tone was matter-of-fact, not a question.
Her stomach betrayed her with a low growl, and she gave a sheepish half-smile. "Yeah. Guess I am."
Dision nodded once, as though confirming something with an unseen ally. "The Caelestis' sweep be complete. This wadi's lay be charted—there be provisions hid deep in her gullet, where the sun's eye cannot reach. We must make way."
Fiona blinked. "Food? Out here?"
He gave her a look that carried both reassurance and urgency. "'Tis no king's bounty, I'll grant ye that. But 'twill keep yer ship from sinkin'."
For a heartbeat, she glanced back at the Goliath. The machine was stable now, its systems humming in low, steady rhythm. Her work was done.
She rose, brushing sand from her palms and putting back her gloves. "Alright. Let's go."
As the two of them set off toward the jagged shadows of the wadi, the vast presence of the Caelestis remained behind with Razor and Viper. Its hull shimmered faintly in the dying light, a silent judge left alone with two soldiers who no longer knew whether they were intruders, allies, or prisoners.
Razor and Viper lingered by the Caelestis, their figures half-silhouetted in the dim shimmer of its unearthly surface. Neither spoke at first; both had the uneasy air of soldiers who had seen too much yet were unwilling to admit fear. Razor's hand brushed near the rifle slung across his chest, not in threat but in restless habit. Viper's eyes tracked the pulsing light of the alien craft as though it were a predator, patient and watching. In their silence hung something unspoken — mistrust, calculation — the raw truth that soldiers without orders eventually invent their own.
Fiona, meanwhile, followed Dision deeper into the narrowing gorge. The wadi walls curved inward, their sandstone veined with shadows. At first it was only the whisper of trickling water that drew her on, then the scent of green — sharp, living, impossible in such a dead land. And then it opened before them: a hidden basin, crystalline and still, its waters fed by a spring that reflected stars even beneath the sun. Date palms leaned gracefully at the edges, fruit heavy with sweetness. Low shrubs, dusted with berries, clustered by the shore.
Fiona stood breathless. The water was so clean it seemed untouched by history, as if the desert itself had preserved a secret against the end of the world. Hunger pressed at her, but it was the carvings along the sandstone walls that held her still. Symbols cut deep into the rock — crosses, crescents, stars, and older signs whose names she did not know — all gathered together, as though generations of pilgrims had claimed this place as holy.
She touched the wall and felt not stone but a pulse. The Caelestis reached through the Baetyl, its message threading into her bones: This is sanctuary. This is memory. Here, life survives.
Her throat tightened. For the first time in days, she felt not hunted, but sheltered.
Then the sound shattered it — a low, concussive boom rolling across the desert sky. The unmistakable tremor of an orbital strike, striking far away but near enough that the ground beneath her boots quivered in sympathy. The birds in the palms burst upward, scattering into the light.
Fiona did not flinch. She looked at Dision, at the impossible lake, at the carved prayers of centuries. And then, steady, certain, she spoke words that surprised even her:
"We're going to rescue those people."