Mona watched the ship hover higher into the air, then shoot into the air with nothing but a sonic boom to mark that it had ever been there in the first place. Its speed was incredible: there and gone in a few seconds, not even a speck in the sky any more.

She glanced at the sandy expanse around her. What had been a desolate but tranquil expanse moments before was now a tableau of violence. Pieces of their plane were scattered everywhere, and the sand had, in multiple places, been slagged into glass by Anya’s attack and lasers from the droids. Samaira’s blood had created a rust-red shadow on the dune, and whatever moisture there was from it had already evaporated. There were chunks of wrecked droids from both the Chinese and the Martians, though far more of the former than the latter. Sergeant Han was still on his back, passed out now, while his fellow soldiers and Dr. Immonen attended to him.

Mona dismissed her undead and walked over to Samaira, who had fallen unconscious. Mona knew she wasn’t dying. She could sense her life-force just fine. It was diminished, but strong enough to live another day. It had been a close thing, for a few seconds there. Han’s blast had cleaved the side of her skull, missed her brain by fractions of centimeters. Mona’s necromantic abilities let her feel the life fleeing from Samaira, as well as to hold it in place for a few moments. It had been a bit like holding the reins on an unruly horse, but Mona held on long enough for Immonen to do his thing, and then she had become stable. If Immonen hadn’t been there…

Well, Samaira wouldn’t be the first host Mona had turned to her army of the undead.

She glanced down at Han, her eyes narrowed. His arm was growing back, his hand bony, veins and muscles regrowing over the pale skeletal digits. What the hell had that been? Samaira had been talking him down, keeping him from doing something stupid, and doing a decent job of it. Then he’d twitched, nearly killed her, and then chaos.

Several of the independent hosts had come at her, likely just protecting people they were with and snapping out of fear, and Mona had been forced to summon some of her mid-range grave knights and liches to dissuade them and turn them back.

Han losing his shit wasn’t going to help any of them, and it definitely wasn’t going to help Renn. The whole point of this was to expose that Corva and her buddies weren’t making a utopia, and that they weren’t to be trusted. But Han, the chosen rep of the Earth’s host forces (for now, anyway), attacking like that…it would only paint Earth as tyrants. It would encourage more hosts to leave. This whole debacle would. Renn had managed to convince President Bisset to stay out of the AES, but only for the moment.

Mona sighed and patted Samaira’s cheek.

“Hey. Wake up. No having a kip when the shit’s hit the fan,” Mona said and gently tapped Samaira’s cheeks. She groaned but didn’t stir much more.

“Hey, you, psychic gal, c’mere,” Mona said to Chell. She flinched as if Mona had raised her hand to strike her, but then shuffled forward.

“Is she gonna be okay?” Chell asked. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks streaked with tears. Mona sighed. Some people just were not cut out for any sort of upsets.

“She’s gonna be fine but the doctor is busy with that sergeant guy and I need your help with Miss Good-Two-Shoes here. Can you do that?” Mona asked and tried to keep her voice even. Chell looked like she might pass out or turn tail at any moment. But, to her credit, she swallowed and wiped at her eyes as she nodded.

“Y-yeah. What do you need?”

“Just your hand for a second,” Mona said. Chell extended her hand, then Mona took it and held on. She sensed Chell’s lifeforce, much stronger than Samaira’s at the moment, and Mona began to drain it. Chell gasped and fell to her knees. Mona released her hand, then gave the stolen bit of vital essence to Samaira.

“Wh-what’ddya doooo?” Chell asked, her words slurring together as she shook her head. Mona had only taken a little, but Chell’s guard had been completely down and Mona worried she might have overdone it a little. Still, it was enough to get Samaira to open her eyes and start coughing as she sat up.

“Nothing permanent. You’ll just be a bit woozy for the rest of the afternoon, I suspect,” Mona said. “And you? How’re you feeling?”

Samaira blinked and regarded Mona with confusion as she looked around. “Where’s Anya? What happened?”

“Your girl legged it,” Mona replied. “Along with little Pan, and a lot of others. You almost got killed by Sergeant Asshole over there,” Mona said and nodded at Han.

“I don’t think he did it,” Samaira said as she touched her temple and frown at the hair clotted with blood she found.

“You lose a few brain cells from that attack? He nearly vaporized your head off your shoulders,” Mona said, then turned and looked at him over her shoulder and said a bit louder, “and if he tries anything again I’ll turn him into one of my ghouls.”

Han still wasn’t awake but the woman kneeling over him glared at Mona.

“She’s right, Sam. Han definitely shot you,” Chell said.

“He…” Samaira said then looked between Mona and Chell. Mona saw something pass over her eyes for an instant as they narrowed. Suspicion? Fear?

“He was mind-controlled, just for a second, barely long enough to make him lose control of that energy he was holding and hit Sam,” Chell whispered. Mona’s eyes widened as she looked at the young woman, then at Samaira, who nodded.

“The charm I keep in my tiara is designed to ward off psychic attacks and other mental assaults. It shattered, and then something almost broke through all my aetheric shields. Then it stopped and I saw Han twitch and that’s when he attacked,” Samaira said.

“And ain’t you a psychic, little miss?” Mona asked and looked at Chell.

“Yeah but I didn’t do it!” Chell hissed. “Besides even if I wanted to, I’m not even level 50! I got reset, remember? Sam’s at level 100 like you. There’s no way I could have done it!”

“Mm, true,” Mona said, then caught Samaira giving her a sharp look. “What?”

“We’re only familiar with one other psychic,” she said, “and he’s the most powerful one on the planet.”

Mona snorted and laughed. “Oh please. Renn? You’re wrong for more reasons than you know. First, he’s in Paris. He’s strong but he can’t dominate somebody from thousands of miles away. You have him in your contact list still? Check it yourself. Have your AI show you the time of the attack. Two, Earth hosts fighting Martian hosts is the last thing he wants. Trust me. It’s part of why he convinced Bisset not to join the AES. And third…well, I’ve said enough.”

“Well if not him then who?” Samaira asked under her breath.

“That host that looked like a statue was a psychic,” Chell whispered. That raised Mona’s eyebrows.

“Was she now? Well there you go,” she said with a shrug. “Likely them trying to whip up conflict so they can look like the real heroes. Some bullshit like that.”

“Then why would they attack me? Why wouldn’t they have aimed at the civilians?” Samaira asked. “If they wanted to paint the AES as the badguys, they’d have had Han shoot one of the independent hosts or their guests, not me.”

“I think we should discuss this more in private, maybe with MacDougal?” Chell asked and looked around. “After all, I still don’t know half the hosts here.”

“True,” Samaira said and then grunted as she leaned on Chell. “Damn, this still hurts a lot.”

“You gonna make it?” Mona asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just need to call MacDougal, check in with Dr. Immonen,” Samaira said. Immonen had finished fully repairing Han’s arm and was already approaching Samaira. Chell wandered after her, and Mona took the moment to distance herself from the group. Thankfully there was plenty to distract everyone. Galtero had landed his mecha and gotten out to see what was going on, while Yai also tended to other, less severely injured hosts. She used her cloak to obfuscate herself just enough to be overlooked by anybody who might be glancing around, then brought up her menu and called Renn.

“Mona? Did everything go all right?” Renn asked. He appeared in a narrow window in front of her. He was wearing his usual attire: white coat, reflective gold helmet. He collapsed his helmet as he saw Mona, revealing the face she had come to love. An office she recognized as belonging to President Bisset was behind him, and the president himself was at his desk, talking in rapid French to several advisers.

“No. It went tits up more than we thought it would,” Mona said and explained what happened. “And now Chell and Sam are telling me it was a psychic!”

“It sounds like domination,” Renn said and stroked his chin. “Chell can’t have done it. She’d never be able to even scratch Samaira’s defenses at her current level. Were there any other psychics on your side?”

“Not that I was aware of. All the hosts in the AES had to submit their menu data for review, and I’m pretty sure Chell’s the only psychic.”

“Then it had to have been Tiresias. That statue-looking host,” Renn said.

“You sure she’s psychic?” Mona asked.

“Of course. I’ve been around her on two occasions. She’s on par with myself when I’m not using my Grande Armée. And if the only two psychics there were Chell and Tiresias, and Chell is incapable of dominating a host with more than 50 levels on her, then it had to be her.”

“I think Samaira was suspecting you,” Mona said.

“Impossible. I don’t have line of…” Renn said then trailed off.

“Luv? Renn?” Mona asked.

“Omega,” Renn said. “Omega was able to exert psychic control from a massive distance because it had line of sight, but only because it was in space. Somebody could have gone into the upper atmosphere, where the menus effectively give up on tracking local signals and spread them out too far, and exerted control form there.”

“Omega was only able to do it because it had specialized in that though,” Mona said.

“It specialized in taking over masses of people, yes. A single target would be much easier. Especially if it were only for a second or two. It would be long enough to cause some mayhem, which it sounds like it did.”

“Oh yeah. If Immonen and I hadn’t been here, Samaira would definitely be dead. And if she had actually died, I dunno if Anya would’ve stopped.”

“I don’t doubt it. I don’t like what Corva is doing or how she’s doing it, but pushing a war so soon like this will help nobody,” Renn said and bit his lip.

“So maybe somebody was up in space trying to fuck with us. Why? The hell does that do?”

“It makes peace between Earth and Mars even harder. War for war’s sake? It’s stupid.”

“No shit.”

“One of the independent hosts on Earth who hasn’t joined with anybody yet? Possible, but if they just wanted chaos they’ve had plenty of opportunities before now. I’ll have to think about it, talk to Francis about sticking close to a few people and learning what he can. Thank you Mona.”

“My pleasure, as always,” she said. “You think Anya will find anything up there?”

“I have no doubt something is happening on Mars besides Corva’s utopia project. And if there’s trouble, I have no doubt Anya can find it. She excels at that.”

“Hope you’re right,” Mona said, then closed the window. She turned and looked up at the sky, where Anya and the other hosts had vanished into the great beyond.

“Don’t fuck this up, girl,” Mona said, then went to go help the other hosts.

ARC 02. The Last War//VOLUME 01. Peace & Progress//END