The air tasted of copper and ozone, thick as blood in her throat.
Fiona's back slammed against shattered concrete as the ground trembled beneath her—not from explosions now, but from something deeper. The electromagnetic pulse had swept through Khan Younis like the breath of some invisible god, and in its wake came silence more terrifying than any bombardment.
Her visor flickered once, twice—then died.
The HUD that had been her lifeline, her compass through this mechanized hell, spasmed into static and went black. It's not broken. It's simply... unplugged. The suit's quantum processors struggled to restart, their self-repair protocols consuming every available joule as they rebuilt themselves neuron by digital neuron.
She wasn't blind. Just severed from the network that had made her more than human.
Unarmed. Alone. Mortal.
Above her, the sky wept metal. Drones that had moments before hunted her with predatory precision now spiraled like dying stars, their guidance systems fried, their weapons silent. She watched one hover unit—a sleek hunter-killer that had been tracking her heat signature—suddenly convulse in mid-air, its rotors seizing as electromagnetic death coursed through its circuits. It tumbled past her hiding place, a three-ton paperweight painted in IDF colors, and struck the street below with a sound like thunder swallowing itself.
The silence that followed pressed against her eardrums like deep water.
This is it, she thought, pressing herself deeper into the alcove of what had once been a children's hospital. This is how I die. Not with a bullet or blade, but hiding like a rat while the sky falls.
The building groaned around her—concrete and rebar settling as the structure absorbed the vibrations of distant impacts. Dust rained from the ceiling, each particle catching what little light filtered through the smoke-stained air. Her breathing came in shallow gasps that fogged the inside of her visor, each exhalation a small prayer to gods who had stopped listening to Gaza long ago.
Through the empty window frame, she could see the tungsten rods beginning their descent.
They fell like silver tears from Nekyia's orbital fortress—telephone pole-sized projectiles that glowed white-hot as they bit through Earth's atmosphere. Kinetic impactors traveling at eleven kilometers per second, each one carrying the destructive force of a small nuclear weapon without the inconvenient radiation.
Six minutes, she calculated, watching the contrails paint themselves across the burning sky. Maybe five before they hit. Then everything within a kilometer radius becomes a crater.
Her suit's repair systems hummed with desperate efficiency, drawing power from her body's own bioelectric field. The fear that flooded her bloodstream—adrenaline and cortisol and the bitter chemistry of mortal terror—fed the quantum processors like fuel poured on a fire. Each terrified heartbeat sent another surge of energy through the suit's neural pathways, accelerating repairs that should have taken hours.
But not fast enough. Never fast enough.
She lifted the rifle. Useless. Her arms shook under the dead weight. The suit's servos were offline, leaving her to carry the full weight of military-grade armor with muscles that felt like water.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry Camilla, I couldn't—
A shadow passed overhead, too fast to be another falling drone.
Then another.
NATO fighters, she realized with a sinking heart. They were already moving to contain the electromagnetic pulse zone, to ensure that whatever had caused this digital apocalypse wouldn't spread beyond Gaza's borders. Their hardened systems would have survived the EMP burst, and now they circled like vultures waiting for the tungsten rain to finish what politics had started.
Five minutes to impact. Maybe four now.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember Camilla's face—not as she'd last seen her, twisted with teenage hatred and disappointment, but as she'd been at five years old, building castles from recycled papers and declaring herself the queen of everything. The memory should have brought comfort, but instead it only sharpened the blade of loss.
She would die here, in this place that had never known peace, and Camilla would live up believing her mother had been weak, devoid of aspirations.
Kzzkt…
She froze. The sound was barely audible over the distant rumble of falling debris—a whisper of static that might have been imagination.
Kzkt… Ah…
No. It couldn't be.
Her fingers flew to the manual override port behind her left ear, jamming the connection with desperate force. The suit's communication array was supposed to be dead, its quantum entanglement transmitters fried along with everything else, but—
—but quantum entanglement didn't care about electromagnetic pulses, did it? The connection existed outside normal space-time, in dimensions where distance was merely a suggestion and causality a polite fiction.
"Ahoy, Fiona! Can ye come out and play, me lass?"
The voice exploded through her consciousness like a sunrise—torn, clipped, fighting its way through quantum static and the interference of a dying world, but unmistakably, impossibly him.
Her breath caught. Her fingers twitched against the rifle's grip as tears she'd been holding back for hours finally broke free.
"…Dision?"
"Aye, it be I! Captain Dision at yer service, me hearty! Yer ship awaits—come aboard!"
A weak laugh escaped her lips—half relief, half hysteria, the sound a drowning woman might make when finally glimpsing shore. She pressed harder against the manual connection, forcing every available watt through the quantum channel.
"You're supposed to be hiding," she whispered, the words barely audible over the thunder of her own heartbeat.
"No questions now, only escape! This orbital strike means to send us to Davy Jones' Locker, so let's show 'em what happens when me crew be reunited!"
Above the ruined city, silver light blazed across the sky. Not the white-hot glow of tungsten death, but something else—something that moved with purpose and sang with harmonics that made the air itself tremble. Aurora-2 flew through the smoke like a falling star that had learned to fly, its Streagrian engines painting contrails of impossible blue across the burning heavens.
The interceptor's hull gleamed with residual heat from its passage through the upper atmosphere moments before, shedding excess energy in cascades of visible light that danced across its wings like aurora borealis made solid.
"Thar she blows!" Dision's voice crackled with digital joy. "I can see yer heat signature through all this lovely chaos! Time to make like a proper pirate and abandon this sinkin' ship!"
Fiona struggled to her feet, her gear's weight dragging at her shoulders like gravity had doubled. Through the shattered window, she could see Aurora-2's cockpit cycling open.
But between her and salvation stretched thirty meters of open ground. Thirty meters of kill zone where IDF drones might still be functioning, where a single wrong step could mean the difference between rescue and another corpse for the morning count.
The tungsten rods grew brighter as they fell, their contrails converging on coordinates that included her exact position.
Three minutes. Maybe less.
"Dision," she whispered into the quantum static. "I can't... The systems are still rebuilding. If I go out there—"
"Then ye'll be doin' what pirates do best, mate—takin' impossible odds and spittin' in their eye! I didn't sail all the way from the trenches of Atlantis to the stars above Gaza—I've come for me first mate!"
Fiona looked at the open ground, then at the silver craft waiting in the smoke-filled sky. Her suit's repair systems pulsed with renewed energy, fed by hope instead of fear now—the same biochemical processes, but transformed by possibility into something that felt like strength.
She took a breath that tasted of ozone and dreams deferred.
Then she ran.
The first step was pure terror—her boots striking rubble that shifted underfoot, the weight of her doubts trying to drag her down. The second step was momentum. The third was faith.
By the fourth, she was flying.
Her legs pumped with desperate rhythm as she sprinted across the debris-strewn floor. Behind her, the building groaned as structural supports finally surrendered to her modified strength. Ahead, Aurora-2 descended with mathematical precision, its cockpit open like the mouth of salvation itself.
The interceptor's artificial gravity field caught her at twenty meters, lifting her from the ground with gentle but irresistible force. She felt weightless for a moment—suspended between earth and sky, between death and deliverance—before the cockpit's embrace pulled her home.
She landed in the pilot's seat with a thud that drove the breath from her lungs. The canopy sealed with a whisper of escaping atmosphere, and suddenly she was surrounded by the quantum hum of Streagrian technology and his familiar digital presence.
"Welcome aboard me beautiful ship, Aurora-2, Fiona!" Dision's voice filled the cockpit with warmth that had nothing to do with temperature. "I do hope ye enjoyed yer brief holiday in scenic Gaza, but I'm afraid checkout time has arrived! Please fasten yer seat belt and hold fast to somethin'!"
Fiona laughed—actually laughed—as acceleration pressed her into the seat. Through the cockpit's transparent alloy, she watched the hospital building collapse in a cascade of concrete and twisted metal, the structure folding in on itself like a house of cards touched by an invisible hand.
"Thank you Dision," she whispered, tears streaming down her face. "You have no idea how much I missed you..."
"Think I'd leave me first mate hangin'? I missed ye too, Fiona! Glad to have yer back again!"
Aurora-2 climbed through the smoke at velocities that turned physics into poetry. Behind them, the tungsten rods completed their terrible fall, striking Khan Younis with the force of divine judgment. The explosions weren't nuclear—there was no radiation, no mushroom cloud—just kinetic energy released in perfect spheres of destruction that carved craters in the earth and sent shockwaves racing through bedrock toward the Mediterranean.
The city where Fiona had nearly died simply... ceased.
But they were already gone, riding columns of superheated air toward the stratosphere. Aurora-2's engines sang with harmonics that made Fiona's bones resonate, the Streagrian zero-point module channeling forces that existed in eleven dimensions simultaneously.
"Two contacts, bearing zero-nine-zero," Caelestis announced, its merged consciousness manifesting through the cockpit's speakers with newfound confidence. "NATO interceptors, AFX-35 Lightning IV variants. They're moving to bracket our escape vector."
On the tactical display, two red triangles accelerated toward their position—sleek fighters whose pilots had probably been ordered to shoot down anything that emerged from the dead zone.
Fiona watched the fighters close distance with predatory efficiency. Each AFX-35 carried enough firepower to reduce Aurora-2 to component atoms, and their pilots were undoubtedly skilled enough to use it.
"Well then," Dision's voice carried the cheerful menace of a pirate who'd found worthy opponents. "Looks like we've got ourselves a proper chase! Hold tight, me hearty—it's time to show these landlubbers what happens when they try to cage the wind! Thar's a RPG to the side o' yer seat, take it, we're goin' to truly pull off the impossible!"
The merged consciousness of Dision and Caelestis reached deep into Aurora-2's quantum processors, tasting possibilities that existed in the spaces between seconds. The Streagrian systems responded like a symphony orchestra receiving its cue, exotic matter cascading through eleven-dimensional pathways as the interceptor prepared to dance.
Behind them, the craters where Khan Younis had been glowed with residual heat. Ahead, the fighters closed for the kill.
But Aurora-2 was no longer bound by the limitations of terrestrial physics. It was hope given form, friendship made manifest, and the dreams of a dying alien race channeled through the determination of beings who refused to accept defeat.
"I'll unlatch the cockpit, but mind yer step jumpin' out! I need ye to blast one o' 'em down. I'll handle the other meself, and catch ye when ye fall. Savvy?"
Fiona raised an eyebrow.
In one of the pursuing fighters, Lieutenant Colonel Sarah "Viper" Martinez had flown combat missions over three continents, had danced with death in the skies above Damascus and Tehran, had earned her callsign by striking fast and disappearing into cloud cover before her enemies knew what hit them.
But she had never seen anything like this.
Through her AFX-35's canopy, the silver craft ahead moved with liquid grace that defied every principle of aerodynamics she'd learned at Edwards Air Force Base. It didn't fly so much as flow—banking through turns that should have torn its wings off, pulling G-forces that would have liquefied any human pilot, yet somehow maintaining perfect control throughout maneuvers that belonged more in fever dreams than in the waking world of thrust and lift.
"Razor, are you seeing this?" she transmitted to her wingman, Lieutenant James "Razor" Anderson, whose AFX-35 held formation two kilometers to her starboard.
"Negative contact on any known aircraft profiles," came Razor's tense reply. His voice carried the particular strain that came from trying to target something that refused to behave according to the laws of physics. "Whatever that thing is, it's not in our recognition database. Propulsion signature suggests controlled fusion, but the power-to-weight ratio is... Christ, it's impossible."
Ahead and below, Aurora-2 dove toward the Sinai Peninsula's jagged landscape—a terrain of limestone cliffs and ancient wadis that had witnessed the passage of armies since Moses led his people from Egypt. The interceptor skimmed the desert floor at Mach 2, using the radar shadow of wind-carved stone to break their missile locks with the casual elegance of a matador evading a bull.
In Aurora-2's cockpit, Dision's consciousness flowed through quantum processors with the joy of a composer finally hearing his symphony performed by angels. The merged essence of pirate and machine felt every aerodynamic force as poetry written in thrust vectors and pressure differentials, each course correction a full verse in the epic poem of controlled flight.
"Hold tight, me darling lass," he transmitted to Fiona, who gripped her safety harness with white knuckles as the desert floor streaked past mere meters below their keel. "These NATO hawks think they be hunters, but they're about to learn what it means to dance with the wind itself!"
The limestone walls of Wadi Rum rose around them like the pillars of some prehistoric cathedral. Aurora-2 threaded through the canyon at velocities that turned navigation into pure instinct, its quantum-coherent hull singing harmonics with the ancient stone. Behind them, Viper and Razor struggled to maintain pursuit through a maze of obstacles that their targeting computers insisted didn't exist.
"Target is using terrain masking," Viper reported to command, her voice tight with professional frustration. "Recommend we climb to two-zero thousand and establish overwatch position. No way it can maintain this speed through—"
Aurora-2 suddenly pulled vertical, its ascent so abrupt that physics seemed to pause in bewilderment. The interceptor climbed through the clear desert air like mercury rising in a thermometer, its Streagrian engines painting contrails of impossible blue against the pale sky.
"There!" Razor's voice crackled with predatory satisfaction. "It's surrendering altitude advantage. Classic panic maneuver—probably running out of fuel."
Both AFX-35s banked to follow, their pilots' training telling them that any aircraft attempting such a climb would bleed energy until it stalled, becoming an easy target for their heat-seeking missiles. They rose through eight thousand feet, ten thousand, their heads-up displays painting target locks across Aurora-2's ascending form.
"Fox Two, Fox Two!" Viper called, releasing a pair of AIM-11X Sidewinders that screamed away from her wing pylons like metallic wasps seeking blood.
The missiles' infrared seekers locked onto Aurora-2's engine signature with lethal precision, their proximity fuses armed and ready to detonate within three meters of their target. At this range, with the interceptor bleeding energy in its climb, the kill was mathematically certain.
Aurora-2 reached the cloud layer at fifteen thousand feet and vanished into the gray embrace of cumulus towers.
The Sidewinders followed, disappearing into the billowing moisture like deadly thoughts seeking flesh.
For thirty seconds, the sky held its breath.
Then the clouds began to glow.
Not with explosion—with something far more beautiful and infinitely more dangerous. Azure radiance pulsed through the water vapor like trapped lightning, creating aurora patterns that painted themselves across the afternoon sky in colors that had no earthly names.
"What the hell—" Razor began.
Aurora-2 burst from the cloud layer inverted, diving at Mach 3 with its wings spread like those of some silver seraph. But it wasn't alone.
Fiona fell beside it, her armored form tumbling through thin air with an RPG-7 braced against her shoulder—a weapon that should have been impossible to aim in free fall, that should have been useless against a supersonic fighter, that should have been nothing more than a gesture of beautiful futility.
Except Sensei Leonardo's voice echoed in her memory like a prayer made manifest: "It's not just your character getting stronger, Fiona. It is you."
The words carried weight beyond their syllables—not just encouragement, but recognition of a truth she'd been too afraid to acknowledge. Every simulation, every impossible scenario he'd thrown at her in that cluttered dojo, hadn't been about training her avatar. They'd been about forging her soul into something that could face the impossible and spit in its eye.
Her breathing steadied as she fell, exactly as sensei Kishikawa taught her. Her hands found perfect grip on the launcher's worn polymer. The targeting reticle in her visor—miraculously functional again as her suit's repairs reached critical mass—painted Razor's AFX-35 with the calm certainty of mathematics made manifest.
I've got this, she told herself, and for the first time in a lifetime, she believed it.
The RPG-7's rocket motor ignited with a bloom of orange fire that illuminated her faceplate. The projectile streaked away from the launcher with the enthusiasm of vengeance finally given form, its high-explosive warhead seeking the heat signature of Razor's starboard engine intake.
"MISSILE INBOUND!" Razor screamed, throwing his AFX-35 into evasive maneuvers that would have impressed aerobatic pilots from here to Reno. But there was nowhere to run from a weapon fired at point-blank range by someone falling through the same piece of sky.
The warhead detonated fifteen meters from his aircraft—close enough to shred his port wing with shrapnel, far enough away to leave him alive to curse his luck. Warning lights painted his cockpit in hellish red as hydraulic fluid sprayed across his canopy and his flight computer began cataloging system failures in monotone despair.
"Mayday, mayday! Razor is hit! Ejecting, ejecting!"
The Martin-Baker ejection seat fired with explosive precision, hurling the pilot clear of his dying aircraft seconds before it began its terminal spiral toward the Sinai's limestone embrace. His parachute deployed with mathematical beauty, carrying him toward a landing that would leave him with nothing worse than wounded pride and a story no one would believe.
Meanwhile, Aurora-2 completed its impossible dive, scooping Fiona from her free fall with the casual grace of a parent catching a tumbling child. She landed in the cockpit with a thud that drove breath from her lungs, but she was laughing—actually laughing—as the canopy sealed around her.
"Magnificent, me darling lass!" Dision's voice carried the warm approval of a master craftsman watching his apprentice achieve mastery. "Ye've got the heart of a proper pirate, that ye do!"
But Viper wasn't finished. The loss of her wingman had transformed professional pursuit into personal vendetta, and her AFX-35 Lightning IV was the finest air superiority fighter NATO had ever produced. Its sensors locked onto Aurora-2's heat signature with predatory precision while her cannon spun up to firing speed.
"You tried to kill him," she snarled. Command had been explicit: shoot down the intruder, collateral damage acceptable. That Anderson had survived was beside the point—mission parameters demanded blood.
The aerial ballet that followed would be remembered by atmospheric physicists as the day classical mechanics died of shame.
Aurora-2 rolled left as 20mm cannon shells stitched past its starboard wing, each round moving at Mach 3 but somehow failing to connect with a target that danced between the spaces where physics insisted it should be.
The merged entity that was no longer quite machine and never quite human pulled a barrel roll that transitioned seamlessly into an Immelmann turn, climbing vertical while rotating around its longitudinal axis in a maneuver that should have been impossible for any aircraft not equipped with thrust-vectoring nozzles.
"What the hell is this thing?" Viper muttered, her targeting computer struggling to maintain lock on a craft that seemed to exist in several places simultaneously. Her AIM-150 AMRAAM missiles couldn't achieve radar lock on something that bent electromagnetic waves around itself like a magician's cloak.
Aurora-2 answered by pulling negative seven Gs in a split-S maneuver that placed it directly behind the AFX-35, its position reversed so completely that Viper found herself staring at her own vapor trail while her opponent lined up what should have been a killing shot.
But instead of firing, Aurora-2 simply... danced.
It flew formation with the Lightning IV for three heartbeats, close enough that Viper could see her reflection in its quantum-coherent hull. Close enough to fire. Close enough to end the fight with a single burst from whatever weapons it carried.
Instead, it waggled its wings—the aerial equivalent of a gentleman's salute—and pulled away with acceleration that made her g-suit inflate to crushing tightness.
"This is impossible," she gasped, fighting unconsciousness as Aurora-2 climbed vertical again, its Streagrian engines painting contrails of pure mathematics across the morning sky. "Command, be advised—this is not a standard aircraft. Repeat, target exhibits flight characteristics beyond known parameters."
"Understood, Viper," came the cold response from her controller, a voice that carried the bureaucratic indifference of someone who had never strapped on a flight suit. "Maintain engagement until target is neutralized. Collateral damage is acceptable."
The words hit her like ice water. Collateral damage. They weren't concerned about Razor's welfare, weren't interested in pilot recovery, weren't even particularly worried about her own survival. The mission was all that mattered—destroy the intruder, regardless of cost.
For the first time in her military career, Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Martinez felt something approaching doubt.
Above her, Aurora-2 completed another impossible maneuver—a cobra turn that bled energy while reversing direction, positioning itself for an attack run that should have been suicide against a supersonic interceptor. But as Viper watched through her HUD, she realized the silver craft wasn't attacking.
It was playing.
Every movement was choreographed perfection, each turn and roll executed with the precision of a ballet dancer performing for an audience of angels. The interceptor moved through three-dimensional space like a brush painting poetry across canvas, its wake turbulence creating patterns in the desert air that would have made Leonardo da Vinci weep with envy.
In Aurora-2's cockpit, Fiona watched the display with something approaching religious awe. Through the canopy, she could see Viper's F-35 struggling to match maneuvers that existed more in the realm of dreams than engineering. The Lightning IV was a magnificent aircraft—the culmination of decades of aeronautical evolution—but it was still bound by the limitations of physics that Aurora-2 had transcended.
"She be a fine pilot," Dision observed, his voice carrying professional respect. "Beetter than most I've tangled with in months o' digital piracy and gaming parties! But she's flyin' a machine built for this world, while we're dancin' to music that comes from the spaces between stars!"
As if to demonstrate his point, Aurora-2 executed a Pugachev's Cobra followed immediately by a Kvochur's Bell—two maneuvers that should have been impossible to link, let alone perform at Mach 2. The interceptor hung in the air for a moment that lasted forever, its nose pointing straight up while its velocity carried it backward, before rotating around its center of mass and accelerating away with renewed purpose.
Viper's missile warning systems screamed as her own AIM-150s—fired minutes earlier and still seeking targets—suddenly reacquired lock on her AFX-35's heat signature. The AMRAAM's guidance computer, confused by Aurora-2's impossible maneuvering, had decided the most logical target was the aircraft that had launched it.
"Oh, shi—" was all Viper managed before her own missiles, like forgotten promises, came screaming home.
She threw her Lightning IV into evasive maneuvers that would have killed lesser pilots, pulling Gs that crushed her into her ejection seat while her aircraft's defensive systems launched chaff and flares in desperate profusion. The missile detonated fifty meters away, close enough to contemplate the cosmic irony of being shot down by her own weapon.
Warning lights painted her cockpit like a Christmas tree designed by sadists. Her right engine was trailing smoke, her hydraulics were failing, and her flight computer was suggesting—with admirable British understatement—that she consider "alternative landing options."
"Viper to Control," she transmitted, her voice tight with the controlled panic of a professional who had just discovered the limits of her profession. "Aircraft is damaged, repeat, aircraft is damaged. Requesting immediate vector to nearest suitable landing field."
"Negative, Viper," came the response, cold as space itself. "Continue engagement until target is neutralized. Your aircraft is replaceable."
The words hung in the cockpit like poison gas. Your aircraft is replaceable. The implication was clear—so was she.
For twenty years, Sarah Martinez had served her country with distinction. She had flown combat missions in three theaters, had trained two generations of pilots, had bled and sweated and sacrificed for the flag she wore on her shoulder. And now, with her aircraft dying around her and smoke filling her cockpit, her controllers were telling her that her life was an acceptable loss in pursuit of a mission she no longer understood.
Above her, Aurora-2 hung in the air like a silver cross against the deepening sky. It could have finished her at any moment—she knew that now, knew it with the certainty that comes from watching something transcend every limitation you thought was absolute. But instead, it simply waited.
Waiting for her to make a choice.
Sarah Martinez looked at her fuel gauge, at her engine temperature readings, at the smoke beginning to seep through her cockpit's environmental seals. She thought about Razor, probably walking through the Sinai desert by now with nothing but his survival kit and a story no one would believe. She thought about the twenty-three pilots she'd trained who were now flying missions across the globe, carrying pieces of her knowledge into battles she would never see.
She thought about her daughter, Emma, who was eight years old and still believed her mother was a hero.
"Control, this is Viper," she said, her voice carrying the weight of thirty-seven years in uniform. "I am declaring aircraft unflyable. Ejecting now."
The response was immediate and furious: "Negative, Viper! You are ordered to continue—"
She switched off her radio and pulled the ejection handle.
The seat fired with the enthusiasm of physics unleashed, hurling her clear of the dying Lightning IV with seventeen Gs of perfectly controlled violence. Her parachute deployed with a crack that sounded like applause, carrying her toward the same desert that would soon welcome her wingman.
Below her, the AFX-35 continued its death spiral until it impacted the limestone with the finality of a period ending a very expensive sentence.
Above her, Aurora-2 waggled its wings once more—a pilot's salute to a fellow warrior who had chosen honor over orders—before accelerating toward the horizon with velocity that made the sound barrier weep.
In the cockpit, Fiona watched the two parachutes drifting toward the desert floor like dandelion seeds on the wind. "Will they be okay?"
"Aye, lass," Dision's voice carried the warm certainty of someone who had spent lifetimes studying the fine art of survival. "NATO's survival trainin' be thorough, and the desert, for all its harsh beauty, knows how to keep a soul alive if they've got the wisdom to listen. Those two will have tales to spin their grandchildren, mark me words!"
In that moment, Fiona realized this wasn't evasion—it was revelation. She wasn't just learning to fight. She was learning to belong in a world that made no room for her. And now—now she would carve that space herself, with steel, fire, and stars.
The desert rushed beneath them in gold and shadow as Aurora-2 skimmed low over the dunes, the heat shimmer masking their profile. But even Dision could feel it—an ache in the frame, a crack in the silence.
The interceptor had flown too far, pushed too hard. Even stars burn out.
"Thrust vector three be sluggish," Dision muttered, scanning the trembling HUD. "Coolant line six be about to burst! She be bleedin', me hearty!""
Caelestis pulsed a quiet warning in the background.
Fiona reached for the edge of the seat. "We need to land. Hide, fix her up."
"A wadi," Dision said. "Northwest! Natural cover, matey! Enough shade to live through the day's fire!"
The valley yawned before them—dry bones of ancient rivers, forgotten and silent.
Then—judder. A sharp lurch as a thruster misfired.
Dision's grip tightened. "Come on, lass, hold together—"
But Aurora-2 coughed smoke. The wings dipped. The sky blinked.
"We're going down—controlled, but rough."
Fiona braced as the cracked wadi rushed to meet them.
Above the ridge, Razor banked wide, scanning the heatmap while parachuting. "You down too?"
Before Viper could answer, the comms cracked.
"Hostile! Movement—" Razor's feed glitched, then flared white. An Israeli drone strike erupted against the cliff, scattering rubble and light.
"Razor!" Viper screamed.
But gunfire barked behind her—figures emerging from the dunes. Old rifles. Faces aged by grief. The Palestinian unit had tracked her descent too.
War didn't wear flags. It only wore loss.
Caelestis scanned the ridge, its sensors burned but twitching.
"Enemy forces detected," it whispered.
Fiona looked back.
The pilots. Both in trouble. Both alone.
She clenched her fists. "They won't make it."
Dision was already rerouting power, even as sparks spat from the console.
Fiona stared at the flickering screen. The suit's fingers flexed over her chest, the crystal core pulsing weakly.
"We need to help them," she said.
"We need to survive first," Dision answered, voice heavy. "Then we choose what kind of survivors we want to be."
As Aurora-2 groaned under its own weight, hiding beneath the bones of a long-dead river, Fiona pressed her head against the canopy glass.
In the distance, smoke rose from both ambush sites. The sun began to rise.
The war would not wait.
And neither could she.