The Drop-Drone fell to the planet's surface.
There was no grace to it. It plummeted, screaming, trailing a bright smear of engine exhaust across Khatsey's upper atmosphere as the friction built and the hull temperature climbed and the entire pod shook with violence.
Veera sat strapped into the deployment seat, eyes shut behind her visor, hands flat on her thighs, and she focused on her breathing, as she had been trained to do in situations like these. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Repeat.
It wasn't working particularly well.
She had always hated Drop-Drones. They were being phased out of the fleet for reasons that became very apparent the moment you were inside one during a descent. They were old, loud and prone to catastrophic failure.
The pod rattled around her. She kept breathing.
This is bringing back memories I would rather not have.
Instead of letting her mind run wild, she focused on the sound of the thrusters, the specific pitch of them, and she counted exhales, and she did not think about the last time she had plummeted toward a hostile surface in a Drop-Drone.
A burst of static crackled through her helmet comm. It was Mayvheen's voice, distant and badly distorted, fighting its way through the electromagnetic interference of the upper atmosphere.
"How are you holding up down there?"
Veera gritted her teeth against a particularly savage wave of turbulence.
"—OT —–– BA–. ––ST MOR– –––BULA––– ––AN EXPE––––."
Mayvheen had a hard time deciphering what Veera was trying to say.
"You're breaking up. I can barely hear you. We'll have to talk once you've touched down."
The channel went dead.
Just focus. No need to panic. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe—
The jolt hit like a physical blow.
The pod lurched hard to the right. An alarm triggered instantly, a harsh pulsing red that flooded the cabin, and Veera's eyes snapped open in time to see one of the medical crates tear free of its primary tether and slam into the right wall, dragging the tower of supplies with it. The Drop-Drone tilted. The automated computer began its computerised complaint: Correct course. Centre of gravity compromised. Correct course. Centre of gravity compromised.
"Alku'ahf!"
She didn't think about it. She unhooked her safety harness, an extraordinarily stupid move, and dropped to her hands and knees on the vibrating floor. In a plummeting pod, on all fours, without the harness, every jolt of turbulence threatened to hurl her into the wall.
She crawled. Her armoured hands and boots dragged for purchase on the support struts, pulling herself forward toward the crates, hand by hand, while the computer continued to Drop-Drone's computer continued to complain in flat mechanical tones.
Correct course. Centre of gravity compromised. Correct course.
"I know!" she shouted at it. "That's what I'm trying to do!"
She reached the crates. They were wedged hard against the wall, leaning at an angle that was getting worse, the tower straining against the remaining tethers. She braced herself and pushed. Nothing. She repositioned and pushed harder, boots skidding on the floor, every muscle in her back and arms driving against the stack. The crates didn't move.
She sat back and looked at the problem. Looked at the support strut behind her.
She planted her back against the strut, pulled her knees to her chest, and launched herself forward with everything she had.
Her shoulder connected with the tower of crates.
The pain was white hot and absolute– and then there was nothing at all.
High above, in the shuttle's quiet, Mayvheen watched the telemetry.
The descent curve was sharpening. It should have been levelling by now. Veera was well past the point where the auto-correction should have kicked in, but the line on the display kept bending, steeper and steeper, and the read on the Drop-Drone's orientation was wrong.
"You're almost there, Veera," she said quietly to herself. Her hands hovered over the console. There was nothing on it she could press that would help. "Come on."
The computer started beeping at her. A bright red warning bloomed on the screen.
"This can't be good."
She watched the descent curve continue its terrible arc downward. Each passing second bent it further.
"You need to stabilise it, Veera." Her voice sounded small to herself. "If the pod starts to tumble, it'll tear itself apart."
The display didn't change.
Mayvheen closed her eyes.
She had given the order. She had approved the plan, confirmed the route, sent Veera down in a Drop-Drone, and if the telemetry was telling the truth, then Veera was unconscious or worse inside a metal box that was three minutes from becoming a crater in the surface of Khatsey. Because of a decision she had made.
She had never caused someone's death before. Not directly. Not like this.
The thought sat in her stomach, making her feel unwell.
"Leahmein alab," she whispered. "Leahmein El'ihl. Please–"
The telemetry line shifted.
She opened her eyes.
The descent curve was correcting. Slowly, then faster, the pod's orientation stabilised as its automated systems compensated for the shifted weight. The red warning faded to amber. The amber faded to nothing. The line levelled.
Mayvheen exhaled.
"I knew you could do it."
She watched the Drop-Drone continue its corrected descent, tracking steadily toward its intended landing zone, and sat with her hands folded in her lap, not moving.
Veera woke up.
She knew she was awake because of the pain. It was a deep, structural agony radiating from her left shoulder. Then the suit registered her returning consciousness, and two sharp stings hit the side of her neck in quick succession. The first was adrenaline, flooding her system. The second was a pain inhibitor, which quickly dampened the hot pain to something manageable.
She was on the floor of the Drop-Drone. The computer had stopped complaining.
She had survived the descent.
She grabbed her rifle, found her feet, and hit the manual release on the door. It hissed open onto grey morning light and still air and the absolute silence of a place where there should have been thousands of people.
The assembly square was a wide open space of prefab paving and collapsed buildings, ringed by the skeletal frames of structures that had been hit hard by explosives. She scanned left, then right, rifle up. Nothing moved.
She was still calibrating the atmospheric sight lines when she heard the boots.
Someone was sprinting. Coming at her fast, from the right, around the corner of a collapsed outbuilding. She spun toward the sound and had the rifle trained on the corner before the source came into view– It was a young woman, running at full speed, clutching a black and white cat against her chest with both arms, face set with focused desperation.
The girl came around the corner and saw Veera.
She tried to stop. Her boots skidded on the paving surface, and she went down hard, sliding several feet on her hands and knees. The cat leapt free, hit the ground running, and was gone behind the rubble before Veera could track it. The girl scrambled backwards on her palms, eyes wide, staring at the armoured figure with the rifle.
"Please!" Her voice cracked. "Don't shoot!"
Veera lowered the barrel. "Hey. It's okay. I'm not going to shoot you."
The girl stopped scrambling. She studied Veera for a moment, and then she got to her feet and ran toward her, her eyes darting upward toward the rooflines.
"What's going on?" Veera kept her voice low. "Is someone chasing you?"
"They'll be here soon." The girl's voice was urgent and frantic. "They would've detected your Drop-Drone when it came in– The sentinels– We need to hide."
She didn't wait for an answer. She grabbed onto Veera's arm and pulled, moving back toward the Drop-Drone entrance. Veera let herself be pulled. She kept her eyes on the rooflines until the door closed behind them both.
Inside, the girl's breathing slowed slightly. Her eyes moved quickly over the interior, over the crates, the medical supplies, the equipment, taking inventory of what was available.
"What's your name?" Veera asked.
"Katya." She was still scanning the crates. "Do you have any food?"
"No. There are medical supplies over there."
Katya frowned. "Oh. OK." Then, immediately: "We'll need those too. We should grab what we can and go. Did you see which way Cleo ran?"
"The cat? I lost it when you fell."
"He'll find me." She said. "He always does. But we need to–"
She stopped. Her expression changed– She turned to look at the door.
"We need to go," she said. "Now."
"Tell me what's–"
"Now."
She moved toward the entrance and then jerked back from it, pressing herself flat against the wall. "It's too late. One of them found us."
Veera was already moving. She brought the rifle up and approached the door at an angle, using the frame as cover. Through the gap, she caught a glimpse of it– a floating metallic shape, smooth and purposeful, a visual scanner tracking across the square. Before she could get a bead on it, a bolt of blue energy cracked against the doorframe and sent a spray of sparks across her visor.
"What is that thing?"
"A Sentinel." Katya's voice had gone flat with a fear that had moved past its acute phase into something chronic and exhausted. "It's been killing all the humans it can find."
Veera swung out of the frame and fired. Three bursts, well-placed, leading the machine's movement. The Sentinel dodged all three with fluid, instantaneously calculated grace.
"It's got a focused tracking computer," she said, pulling back behind the frame. "I can't hit it with direct fire. It's anticipating me."
She looked at Katya.
Katya looked back at her.
Veera considered explaining, but dismissed the idea. There wasn't time.
She grabbed Katya by the arm and threw her out through the door.
The girl hit the ground and skidded on her hands and knees for the second time, and the Sentinel's visual scanners swung toward her immediately. In the half-second that the machine's attention was fully committed to recalibrating toward Katya, Veera leaned out and put half a magazine into the centre of it.
The Sentinel came apart in a burst of sparks and black smoke. Its flaming debris rained down onto the paving stones, most of it falling short of where Katya was crouched in the dirt.
Veera walked out. The rifle was still hot in her hands.
Katya was on her hands and knees, shaking. When she looked up, her expression had moved from immediate terror to pure hatred and anger.
"You used me as bait!?"
"It worked."
"You threw me out of the door!"
"You were never in real danger. I've destroyed Cephilusk machines before. They all run the same base systems. Their tracking prioritises softer targets in open ground. The moment it shifted focus, I had the shot."
"But you've never seen one like that before." She was on her feet now, and her voice was climbing. "You couldn't know it was the same. You just decided to gamble with my life."
"If it didn't work, we were both dead anyway." Veera held her gaze. "It worked. You're safe."
"That thing had more empathy than you!" Katya's voice cracked. "AND IT'S A MACHINE!"
The sound of it echoed off the rubble and died. Veera watched her silently, then she reached out and slapped the girl lightly across the face.
The sound was sharp in the silence. Katya went absolutely still.
"Why–" She touched her cheek. "What was that for?"
"You're high on adrenaline. You've got too many things competing for your attention at once, and none of them is useful right now." Veera kept her voice level. "The slap interrupted the spiral. I need information, and we don't have time for your system to run its course on its own." She met the girl's eyes. "So. What happened here?"
Katya stared at her for a long moment. The anger was still there.
"I don't know," she said, slightly calmer. "Not really."
"Tell me what you do know."
"About a week ago, the Sentinels showed up. We had no warning. They just–" She stopped. Started again. "They just started killing people. They were killing anyone they found."
"Were they looking for something? Someone?"
"No. They just came out of nowhere and started." She swallowed. "My mom– we heard the shooting in the street, and we hid inside. Then one of them came through the door and just–" She didn't complete her sentence. "I was under the table. Under some blankets. I could hear it moving through the rooms."
Katya closed her eyes.
"I stayed there for two days before the hunger got bad enough. I was too scared to move. Too scared to sleep." She looked at the ground. "Too scared to breathe."
"I'm sorry you had to experience that," Veera said.
It was inadequate. She knew it was inadequate. But it was also the truth, and she didn't have anything more useful to offer.
"If it hadn't been for Cleo," Katya said, "I would have no one left." Her voice broke. "I need to find him. He's all alone out there."
She leaned forward, and before Veera could do anything about it, she was crying into Veera's shoulder.
Veera stood with her arms slightly raised and her rifle in one hand. She was good at many things, none of which was this. After a moment, slowly, she put one arm around the girl.
She wasn't good at this. She was good at fixing things. But you couldn't fix grief with a spanner, and you couldn't shoot at it until it stopped, so she held the girl up, and she said nothing, because nothing was what she had.
The sobbing didn't last long. Katya seemed almost embarrassed by it when she pulled back, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and set her jaw, feeling angry at herself for the lapse in composure.
"We should move," Veera said, when the quiet had lasted long enough.
Katya nodded. She didn't argue. That, more than anything else, told Veera how exhausted she was.