— Saturday, February 18, AD 2130 —

“Alright. It’s time to rejoin the fight.”

«Are you sure? I didn’t think half an hour was enough time to fully recharge Raenaros’s shields…»

“It’s not,” Mote replied as he resummoned the helmet of his Aldredian Armor and began to engage again with Raenaros’s neural dive control system. “But we can’t afford to wait around here all day. The shields have recharged to an acceptable level; this will have to do.”

«Well… if you say so!» replied Danielle over the comms connection. «I’m ready to go on your mark!»

“Good…” Mote commented, his attention rapidly flicking between the various readouts on Raenaros’s condition. With the neural dive system engaged, Mote could now see the world outside of the Corvette — though limited to the tiny, makeshift hanger bay that Danielle had transformed into to protect Raenaros. But as Mote began warming up the Corvette’s engines, Danielle quickly shifted away from a hanger bay and into the form of a sleek, air-breathing fighter jet… thus revealing the chaotic sky overhead, filled with contrails and missile trails as the SERRCom fightercraft continued to engage with the EA fighters.

«EA’s fighters seem to be ignoring us,» Danielle reported.

“I suppose they thought we were down,” Mote said, “but we’ll show them for not making sure that we were. To disguise our launch, wait for the next bombardment impact — and when it hits, gun it for the skies!”

«Got it!»

Mote then turned his attention to the blue skies overhead, filled with billowing clouds that floated under the high-altitude bombardment shields. Far above that, Raenaros’s sensors tracked several massive-caliber projectiles careening through the atmosphere, having been fired from the battlegroup in orbit… and a second later, they all slammed into the bombardment shields protecting the base. Bright golden light filled the sky, nearly blinding all who looked up and generating a thundering roar of static.

“Now!!” Mote shouted, using the cover of the impact to suddenly throttle Raenaros’s engines up to full, their exhaust blasting away at the dirt-filled courtyard. The Corvette lurched forward, finally blasting off into the sky, with Danielle’s fighter-jet form quickly following. But as soon as they cleared a few dozen meters of altitude — and before the light from the bombardment shields had fully subsided — a lock-on alarm sounded in Raenaros’s cockpit. EA’s fighters are fast! Mote thought to himself as he broke hard to the left, with Danielle quickly turning to the right, just in time to evade two hypersonic missiles screaming past them. Quickly, Mote turned Raenaros’s Chaos Cannons to fire behind him, while he ordered into the comms, “Danielle, you lead. The Raenaros can attack behind itself, so I’ll cover our rear.”

«I get to lead? Oh boy!» Danielle remarked gleefully, at which point she engaged her afterburners to rapidly climb to higher altitudes. As she did, a handful of laser blasts exploded across her form — though they were blocked by energy shields, enabling her to continue on as Mote snapped his attention to the three EA fighters that were bearing down on their tail.

Remember… we’re in atmosphere, not space, Mote told himself, carefully guiding the thrust of Raenaros’s engines to prevent himself from speeding up uncontrollably into hypersonic speeds. Although, this is my first time flying the Raenaros in atmosphere — in combat, anyways. Perhaps I should’ve spent more time training for this…

His thought was punctuated by the explosion of a missile slamming into Raenaros’s rear shields, briefly throwing off the Corvette’s momentum. While Mote initially attempted to correct his path, a split-second later, he decided instead to lean into it. The Corvette’s maneuvering engines whipped around, powering the craft through an upwards arc just quickly enough to intercept another two laser blasts that would have hit Danielle. Within seconds, the EA fighters rocketed past Raenaros’s arcing path, at which point Mote whipped the engines around again to pursue, all while charging up electrical energy through Raenaros’s CCS. A moment later, he unleashed the charged-up energy, launching a fierce lightning strike towards the EA fighters; while their shields protected them from direct harm, the sheer energy behind Mote’s strike still momentarily stunned them and locked up their equipment.

«I got ‘em!» Danielle shouted over the comms, already halfway through a backwards arc to fly towards the stunned EA fighters. Using her shapeshifting powers, she created two missiles under her wings and launched them at the fighters — and then quickly created another two missiles and launched those, as well. The missiles rapidly impacted the EA fighters, exploding across their shields and masking Danielle’s own Mach-speed approach. But right as she closed to within a few hundred meters of the fighters, she spontaneously transformed into a Frigate; her sudden and dramatic increase in mass — without any decrease in momentum — allowed her to smash right into the EA fighters, overloading their shields through sheer kinetic energy and tearing them both to shreds. A second later, she emerged from the collision unscathed, already shifting back to her jet fighter form as she rocketed past Raenaros.

“Let’s not get carried away, now…” Mote said as he brought Raenaros around, while Danielle also curved back towards him, with the two gracefully re-entering formation with Danielle in front and Raenaros in back. “Your shapeshifting powers are useful, to be sure, but bigger isn’t always better!”

«Oh c’mon, that move only worked BECAUSE I was big!» Danielle retorted. «—Ah! There’s more over there!»

“You lead,” Mote ordered, putting slightly more power into Raenaros’s engines as he followed Danielle through the skies toward a distant pack of fightercraft. The golden light and roaring thunder of the bombardment shields being struck rolled through the skies once more, but Mote and Danielle both ignored the flashy distraction as they prepared their weapons for combat. On the way, Danielle created and launched several volleys of missiles, while Mote began to charge Raenaros’s CCS again; at the sight of Danielle’s missiles exploding in the distance, Mote quickly fired off several lightning strikes, stunning a handful of the EA fightercraft with his incredible electrical power. He immediately followed by electrically interfering with the fighters’ shielding, slowing them down just enough for the SERRCom fighters they were chasing to break free.

As soon as the SERRCom fighters had made some distance, Danielle shapeshifted a massive missile onto her undercarriage, which she immediately fired at the slowed EA fighters. She then peeled away, with Mote quickly following suit and diverting his attention from the missile just in time for it to explode in a massive fireball and shockwave, engulfing and tearing apart the EA fighters.

“…Tch…” Mote snorted in disbelief as he slowly looked back to the dissipating fireball, and the charred fightercraft wreckage that spiraled down to the base below. “You’ve been spending too much time with Kate.”

«Hey, if it works, it works!» Danielle replied.

“Yes… definitely too much time with Kate.”

«Aw, c’mon—!» Danielle began to protest, only to be cut off by a myriad of missile-lock alarms, interspersed by blasts of energy exploding across both Danielle and Raenaros’s shields.

“Shit— break, break!” Mote shouted, turning Raenaros hard to the left as Danielle quickly pulled up — both of them moving just quickly enough to avoid being slammed by a fast-moving object. “What the…?” Mote muttered, quickly turning his attention to the object. While it had been diving towards the ground at clear hypersonic speeds, it still somehow stopped itself incredibly quickly before altering its flight path to fly straight back at Mote. With a grunt of exertion, Mote quickly pulled Raenaros to the side, dodging the object once more… and as it passed, Mote was finally able to get a good look at it. While it resembled the other EA fightercraft, with a slate blue paint scheme and a sleek jet fighter design, it also sported two robotic arms mounted to the underside of its wings, and what appeared to be a large swivel-mounted cannon on the craft’s undercarriage. And on both the topside and bottomside of the craft were silver-tinted glass orbs, around which EA’s ring-and-crossbars insignia was painted — along with a single, vertical line with small serifs, not unlike the character ‘I’.

What…? Mote mused, only for his brow to furrow in realization. He had seen a sight similar to this before, when fighting two robots over the San Francisco dam, and when fighting another robot in the air over an abandoned Aldredian outpost. Damn it, that’s one of EA’s advanced robots, isn’t it? Mote thought to himself as he and the robot zoomed past each other. The last one I saw had a Greek letter on it — Zeta, if I recall correctly. So that ‘I’ is probably Greek, too. Iota, I think? Either way— He immediately turned Raenaros’s Chaos Cannons to fire on the Iota robot as he shouted to Danielle over the comms, “it’s one of EA’s advanced robots! Focus it down, and don’t let it engage with the rest of the SERRCom forces!”

«Got it! Let’s take it down!» Danielle exclaimed as the two turned to focus their full attention on the new combatant in the skies over EA’s base.

---

*

“There it is! In the distance, it’s the Gate!”

“Not just the Gate…” Mark muttered, eyes forward as he stood at the front of the train engine that CSF-1 had commandeered. After hacking the engine’s control mechanism to divorce it from the base network — and a couple of well-placed bullets from Travis to throw several track switches — the squad now found themselves barreling down some railroad tracks into a massive train yard. Several dormant trains — cars and engines alike — occupied the yard, at the far end of which was the base’s Interstellar Gate, mounted around a pair of railroad tracks. At that moment, a black film filled the Gate’s inner ring, and trains were pouring out of the ring to fill the train yard — trains that carried with them numerous robots.

Robots that were forming up on the sides of the yard… and were now turning towards the one errant train engine hurdling towards them.

“Well… this’ll be fun,” Hackett deadpanned.

“I’ll fuckin’ say!!” Kate whooped, already stepping out of the engine’s cabin to walk along the side towards the front.

“The Gate looks to be about two klicks away,” Travis observed. “We’ll be there fast… if the train doesn’t derail.”

“Not sure we can count on that,” Hackett replied.

“But if we get to the Gate, then we can head right on through!” Kate shouted back to the cabin. “I bet EA’s fuckin’ headquarters is on the other side! We’ll blow ‘im up—!”

“No. That’s foolhardy, for multiple reasons,” Saito interjected as he stepped out of the cabin himself and brought his gun to bear. “Our priority is reaching the Gate and activating the block — no more, no less!”

“Got it!” Mark replied, just as several of the robots finally opened fire on the train that the squad was riding. Blasts of energy exploded across the train’s shields, creating a massive sheet of golden light in between Mark, Kate, CSF-1, and the robots — but Kate paid the blinding light little heed. Quickly, she fabricated and shouldered a rocket launcher before firing two rockets back at the robots, the warheads zipping through the air and detonating with a thundering roar. Smoke and debris filled the air and covered the tracks, but the train barreled onward regardless, quickly emerging on the other side of the smoke cloud… just in time to spot several massive robots moving to stand directly on the tracks in front of the train.

“Uh oh…” Travis muttered, already preparing to bail from the train before an imminent collision — but instead, Mark summoned his massive halberd and lunged toward the front of the train. With repeated, powerful swings, Mark knocked away each robot right as the train approached them, successfully clearing the way amidst the cacophony and light show of Saito, Hackett, and Kate exchanging fire with the robots standing on the side of the yard.

After knocking away the last robot on the tracks, Mark turned to look at the other robots in the distance; at range, there was little he could do to help. Before he had long to think, however, another engine appeared farther down the tracks, headed straight for the one CSF-1 was riding. “A head-on collision…?!” Mark muttered in disbelief, readying his halberd and shifting his position in preparation to counter the approaching train. “There are less destructive ways to derail a train, surely…!”

But despite his disbelief, the oncoming train continued to barrel forward. With a wary sigh, Mark braced himself against the front of the train he was riding — and then focused his powerful strength into an incredible bound, leaping from the front of the train and hurdling towards the approaching one. As he sailed through the air, Mark twisted his body to swing his halberd around hard, timed perfectly to slam into the side of the approaching engine. A sheet of brilliant golden light appeared to protect the engine from damage, but the shields did little to block the raw force of Mark’s swing. In a single impact, the engine toppled to the side, while Mark himself was flung to the dirt on the opposite side of the tracks. Metallic creaking echoed throughout the yard as the engine fell over… just in time for the train that CSF-1 was riding to barrel past, its own shields alight from the constant laser fire of EA’s robots.

As the train passed Mark, Saito offered him a quick nod of acknowledgment before looking to the Interstellar Gate. It now stood barely a kilometer away, and quickly approaching; upon noting this, Saito shouted to the rest of the team, “alright, this is our stop! MacTavish, slow this thing down, and we’ll jump free—!”

In the middle of Saito’s order, a hypersonic object — moving so quickly that he was barely able to tell that it had even existed — exploded out of the Interstellar Gate and slammed straight into the train. The engine’s already taxed shields were instantly overloaded, allowing the object to pierce straight through the train’s inner workings and bring it to a screeching halt. Sparks flew as the train’s mechanisms began to implode and combust, until a second later, when a second object flew through the gate to utterly destroy the sparking train in a fiery explosion.

“Agh, fuck…!” Kate swore aloud as she was flung from the wreckage, her personal shields alight to protect her. She tumbled haphazardly to the ground, as did the rest of CSF-1, their shields continuing to flare as the various robots around the yard all focused their laser fire on the intruding squad. Irate, Kate quickly sprung back to her feet and fabricated a new missile launcher before firing upon her attackers, loosing three missiles all around the yard, and one more at the Gate. Thunder and fire soon filled the yard, and clouds of smoke billowed into the air, momentarily blocking line of sight between CSF-1, Kate, Mark, and their robotic attackers.

“Ngh…” Travis grunted as he slowly picked himself up. “Figured that wouldn’t last…” he muttered as he quickly inspected himself, finding no harm — thanks entirely to his protective energy shielding — but he was offered little time to re-orient himself as a metallic screech echoed through the train yard.

“Be careful…” Mark warned, having caught up to the squad with a powerful leap to now interpose himself between CSF-1 and the source of the screech. “That one didn’t sound like a train falling over…”

“Fucking whatever, I bet it still can’t take a missile to the face!” Kate remarked as she whipped her missile launcher toward the source of the noise and fired again. The rocket shot through the air at supersonic speeds — only to be sniped out of the air a split-second later, causing the warhead to detonate early. Another cloud of smoke exploded into the air… only to be quickly dispersed as two large robots stepped through it, each of them bearing a distinct form from the masses of robots that occupied the base. One had a brutish appearance, standing almost twice as tall as Mark and with a broad build, with two sets of massive arms extending out of its stout torso — two of the arms bearing massive fists, while the other two ended in large cannons. The other robot stood just as tall, but with a lithe form, a rocket thruster strapped to its back, and two long blades of energy extending out from its wrists.

Most notably, however, were the silver-colored sensory domes adorning their blue-armored chassis, and the large symbol emblazoned onto their chests just below the dome: “η” on the broad-shouldered robot, and “θ” on the lithe one.

“E-Eta and… Th-Theta…” MacTavish muttered as she looked at each of the symbols. “…Th-these robots are—!”

“Two of EA’s ‘elite’ robots,” Saito finished, staring down the two large robots with an apprehensive expression. “Well… this is just great.”

“Elite my ass,” Kate retorted. “Didn’t Mote and Danielle destroy two of these things back on Earth, all by themselves? This’ll be a walk in the fuckin’ park!”

“Don’t be so careless,” Hackett quickly replied. “The two robots that Mote ran into over San Francisco were likely designed for different purposes than these two, here.”

“Still, it doesn’t change our objective,” Saito said, bracing himself as the smoke clouds all around began to clear. “We need to reach that Gate and activate the block! Mark, Kate, I need you two to clear a path — everyone else, just focus on reaching the Gate, and nothing else!”

“Ha! Two sparking wrecks, coming right up!!” Kate shouted, re-shouldering her rocket launcher — and Mark bringing his halberd to bear — as they prepared to face off with the new threats standing between them and putting a stop to EA’s reinforcements.