The bridge was silent for a moment, the reality of what situation they were in only now becoming clear. In the silence, Typhon snapped to first. She saluted Wyatt stiffly, who didn't look at her, and she briskly walked off of the bridge. She slapped her radio as she left, causing it to crackle to life.

"Marines," she commanded, "port airlock. We're repelling boarders. Yukon, get the workmen suited up too, we need the hands." Wyatt turned to Penske, who chewed on a cuticle, deep in thought.

"Megan, you know what to do," he said to her. She nodded slowly, staring off into space.

"Yeah, we're on it," she said, snapping into action. She too stormed off of the bridge, grabbing Marcus' jumpsuit to haul him along. He was surprised, but quickly met her gait as they quickly walked away. They worked their way aft, the doors lifting as they went. Wyatt's voice came over the tank's intercom system again.

"All hands, we have dueled with the treacherous tank that killed the Methuselah, but as of right now, that duel seems to have ended in a draw. Both tanks are seemingly incapacitated. As such, we are mobilizing to prepare to expel boarders, if they may come. Your officers will command you if you are needed to complete extraneoustasks, but for now, continue as usual." Marcus' heart thrummed in his chest. Boarders?

"What's the plan?" Marcus asked Penske as they jogged. She snorted.

"We fix the fucking tank, that's the plan," she said wryly. Marcus resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"Ok, yes, but specifics, Penske." he said.

"The drivetrain is the priority. If we can fix the tracks, we can move into a firing solution on the Cain. If there truly is an unexploded round lodged between the turret and the hull, it may be too dangerous for us to remove here. If it goes off, it could kill anyone nearby, as well as damage the tank beyond what we can fix in the field." She glanced at him as they worked their way aft. "I'm going to have you in the Chuma to help repel boarders, and I'm going to get into Hansel to see how bad the tread damage is. If all we need to do is swap out a link, we'll be back in action in a few hours. If we have to replace a wheel, we're screwed." Marcus nodded. Her plan sounded good.

"We have deployable emplacements somewhere, right?" he asked her. They had reached the hold, which opened with a hiss.

"Emplacements?" she asked, before clarity flooded her expression. "Oh, right, emplacements. Yeah, we have a few we can put out, but let's worry about those later. You just worry about setting up and protecting the others." Marcus nodded. He jogged over to the Chuma and opened the front of the suit. It opened slower than it originally did, likely because of the heavier armor plating Penske had welded on the front. He hopped inside, beginning startup sequences. The front of the suit shut with a clang, and he was pitched in darkness for a heartbeat. Then, the controls lit up, and the screens flickered to life. Marcus saw the outside world projected on the screens in front of him, and he activated the rest of the suit's systems. The suit thrummed to life. The young engineer decoupled it from its charging harness, and clomped towards the rear of the hold. He checked the suit's armament. It featured the usual heavy autocannon, and the ripper saw he had used to effect on the chuma he had fought with. He grinned. Hello, old friend, he thought, revving the saw up twice to check the function.

He walked to the hold's massive door, waiting for it to extend. He looked over his shoulder at the screen behind him to see Penske in her suit, walking up behind him. Gretel was smaller than the Chuma, but it was still a formiddable suit. She had elected not to arm it, to maximize its carrying capacity, in the likely case she would use the suit to repair the tank. She paused for a second, and air in the hold vacated, being replaced with the outside atmosphere. Red lights flashed in the hold signifying the atmosphere change. After ten seconds, the hold door clanked, and began to open. It slowly lowered towards the desert floor, and as it went, Marcus felt more of the rough winds buffering the suit again. Just like old times, he mused, fully aware he had only been outside of the tank like this once before.

The door silently dug into the sand on the ground, and stopped. Marcus briskly walked out of the hold, hanging a right around the corner of the tank to meet up with the marines and workmen. As expected, the marines were already out. Ghi, Brogers, and even Locke were present, ready to repel boarders. Marcus was shocked to see Locke standing, let alone helping the defense. He keyed his radio to the marines' channel.

"Locke, how did Thaler give you the go-ahead?" Marcus said, approaching the group. They were spread out, sweeping their rifles from side to side, looking for targets. Typhon walked out of the airlock, a coilgun in her hands. Ah, Marcus thought, so that's where they went. Typhon's personal armory. Locke looked at him.

"He more or less didn't, but Typhon insisted," Locke said. "He wrapped my wound up tight, pumped me full of drugs, and sent me on my way." Marcus nodded. It as an "all hands on deck" situation, so he understood Locke had to do what was required of him, even if he was still wounded. Marcus walked up to the marines, but kept his distance in case they were attacked with explosives. He too scanned the howling storm for incoming enemies, but so far, his sensors picked up nothing but swirling sand. The storm seemed to more vicious than normal, and visibility was low. Marcus couldn't see the Cain, which alarmed him. If the enemy attacked, they would attack out of the storm, where counterattack would be difficult.

"Keep your eyes peeled, Marines," said Typhon over the marine band. She shouldered the coilgun and swept it just like her wards, looking for movement. Marcus heard the airlock open again and saw three further figures emerge from the Enoch. They approached with rifles in hand, and Marcus realized it was Van Pelt, Phillips, and Bootsman Yukon. The workmen had been press-ganged into helping defend the tank, which was understandable, given the circumstances. Where's Deknost? wondered Marcus. He heard a mechanical whine over the storm, and looked up to see the port-side sponson activate, and the young engineer that it must be the large workman manning it. Marcus nodded, glad the heavy weapon could be fielded to help defend their home.

He looked further down the tank and saw the tread broken, laying on the ground. Penske stood over it, most likely assessing the damage. He radioed her.

"How does it look?" he asked. There was a hiss of static as a reponse, for a few moments. After a few seconds of thinking, she responded.

"It's fucked," she said. "The round destroyed the tread link, which is fine, we can replace that easily. But the round annihilated the front drivewheel as well. That is going to be significantly harder to replace." Marcus' brow furrowed, deep in thought.

"Can we repair it, rather than replace it?" he asked her. Another moment of silence.

"We'll have to," she said quietly over the radio. "We simply can't replace it out here. We'd need a wrecker-runner to come out with a crane and a replacement wheel. The only option is to repair it best we can, weld it together." She sighed over the mic. "I'm going to toss the workmen into Gretel, and I'm going to climb up on the wheel to start fixing it. You keep doing what you're doing, Marcus. Watch the sands for movement." Marcus nodded his agreement, and went back to scanning the sand for signs of incoming movement.

"Fuck, the rads are bad," said Ghi, "I can't scan anything. Rhyne, does your suit pick up anything over the rads?" Marcus shook his head inside the metal suit.

"No, my sensors are pretty much useless here. I'm solely on visual right now." Marcus keyed the bridge's radio channel. "Bridge, this is Chuma, do we know where that nuke went off?" he asked them. After a brief moment of silence, he got his response.

"One-point-five kilos northwest of here," said the voice, which Marcus imagined as Shaw's, "eighty-two years ago. It destroyed a bunker we had been using to fortify this area." Marcus keyed his thanks, returning to the marine band.

"Fuck," cursed Ghi, "little more than a kilo away. I hope this repair doesn't take too long; I don't want any more limbs." The marines chuckled at Ghi's lighthearted joke. Marcus watched as Penske stomped away in Gretel, rounding the corner to enter the hold. After a few moments, Van Pelt also entered the airlock, going back into the tank. After fifteen minutes, Penske exited the port airlock in a standard external working suit, and Van Pelt emerged from the hold in Gretel.

"Mind your toes," Van Pelt said as she stomped towards them, pulling two metal fortifications behind her via cables. The fortifications, lovingly referred to as "bathtubs" by the crewmen, were 3 meters long, a quarter of a meter wide, and about one meter tall. They were corrugated steel, and just like their namesakes, they were large open containers. Gretel now had a shovel attachment on both arms, attached to the wrist via a hinge. Typhon pointed where she wanted the positions placed, and Van Pelt obeyed, dragging the steel containers into position. When they were placed to Typhon's liking, Van Pelt then used the shovel attachments to fill the containers with sand, turning a free resource into a defensive position.

Marcus marveled at the ingenuity. The steel containers were light, considering, and were easily moved around with a Ringlefinch. They could then be filled with sand, and they would be surprisingly durable defensive positions, capable of soaking up small arms fire with few issues. The containers had baffles, separating segments, so that if rounds pierced the relatively thin steel shell, all of the sand wouldn't pour out of one hole.

The defensive positions placed and filled with sand, Van Pelt returned the suit to the hold to swap back into her external suit. The workmen had no formal training or certification with exosuits like Marcus and Penske had, but the Chief Engineer had been training the workmen occasionally on the side for just a situation as this. They had a rudimentary understanding of the suits, and Van Pelt had done an exemplary job in a relatively short amount of time, Marcus thought.

The airlock hissed again, and Van Pelt exited the Enoch. Marcus turned slightly to compliment her on the good work she had done, when Typhon called out.

"Movement!" she yelled, and all the marines snapped their rifle barrels in the same direction as she was pointing. The workmen, likewise, dipped behind the steel-and-sand containers, rifles aimed and ready. Marcus looked in the direction the marines were aiming, eyes dancing around, searching for movement. After a few tense seconds, a lone figure slowly emerged from the sand. It walked with a large pole in its hands, and at the end of the pole, a sheet had been tied. The figure waved it slowly back and forth, seemingly not bothered that the furious winds whipped the sheet back and forth, as if the storm were trying to steal it. It approached, and as it came closer, more figures emerged from the sands.

Marcus counted five individuals, as well as the person holding the flag, for a total of six. However, as they neared, Marcus realized two of the figures were massive, though they obviously weren't in exosuits. He realized the two gargantuan figures must be what he had other crew members refer to as "heaters," AI transplanted in specially-built combat bodies constructed by the Seditionists. Heaters were huge, standing a good head taller than an average human, and were in equal size to an exosuit, though bulkier. No biological bodies had to be maintained inside, so the designers of the heaters' bodies could afford to make the bodies more robust and bulky. It was much easier to heft an arm if that arm didn't have a smaller, weaker, more fragile arm inside.

As the figures emerged from the sands, Typhon raised her hand in a clenched fist, signifying the crewmembers to hold their fire until she gave the order, or until they were attacked first. She stood, walking around the fortification and towards the foremost person, who had stopped, and now held the pole in one hand, the sheet furiously straining against the knots that kept it in place. They stood at ten meters out from the defensive line. Typhon keyed her mic, so that the crewmembers behind her could hear what the individual had to say.

"My name is Devon, and I'm the Lt. Commander aboard the Dolos," he said. "We request parley." Marcus' brow furrowed. Dolos? he wondered. Typhon nodded.

"I'm Captain Typhon of the Enoch. I have permission to meet with you in your parley request." She responded. The man looked at the Enoch behind her, towering above the sands.

"Our compliments to your gunner, Captain. We were most surprised by his excellent aim and ingenuity. That maneuver with the stone pillar that you caused to fall in front of our escape route should go in the textbooks. An amazing shot." His accent was strange, but he spoke Solar well enough. Marcus wondered where he had learned it; he understood the Seditionists believed Solar to be an ugly language compared to their own shared language, known amongst themselves as Eurigian. Typhon shook her head, apparently impatient.

"Thank you for your compiments; I'll be sure to pass them along. But get to the point," she said briskly. The man nodded slowly. He and the other seditonists wore black suits, the metal armored plating obvious and imposing. The suits seemed to be of a higher quality than their own suits, which were little more than an anti-radiation covering with a chestplate. The Seditionists' suits were almost completely armored, with a robust armored helmet and what looked like a built-in filtration system. Marcus marveled at the armor, and wished he could get his hands on some to study it. He shook his head, tossing the idea to the side. This was the enemy, and he needed to gird his thoughts against them.

"The skill and capability of your gunner is plain. The Dolos is heavily damaged, and we are incapacitated. Judging by the fact that your tank has not killed us yet, it seems the Enoch is similarly damaged." the man said. Marcus heard Typhon growl low, under her breath. Despite her formal words, it was obvious she was tense, coiled like a spring ready to go off. Conversely, the man stood almost lackadaisically, uncaring that several gun barrels were pointed at his chest. Marcus looked at the man's companions. Other than the heaters, he couldn't discern if the other figures in the swirling sands were SAPs or human. The sand was too thick that far out. Typhon didn't respond to the man, and waited for him to continue.

"Rather than devolving into dishonerable bloodshed and slaughter out here on the sands, our proposition is that two separate tanks repair their wounds without outside interference, and once the tanks are repaired, the duel can continue." The man shrugged. "And if a tank simply cannot be repaired to duel acceptably, that crew will surrender, and become prisoners of war for the other crew, to be treated as the Laws of Engagement dictate for such prisoners." He gestured towards the Enoch behind her. "I propose an hour's intermission to discuss this with your other officers." After a moment of thinking, Typhon began nodding slowly.

"Fine," she said, "an hour." With that, she turned around and began walking back towards the Enoch. As she walked away, however, the man spoke up.

"It was good to see you again, Typhon," said the man. The marine captain stopped, stiffening. She stood still for a heartbeat, and Marcus thought she would spin around and gun the man down, but after that heartbeat had passed, she continued on her way to the Enoch. She walked straight past the defensive line, entering the port airlock to disappear inside. The marines all looked at each other, apparently puzzled. The man waited until she had disappeared inside the tank, and then turned around and walked away. His menagerie followed suit, and the group slowly dissolved into the storm.

Marcus was puzzled, and shocked by the procedings. He had fully expected the enemy to storm the defensive lines the crewmembers of the Enoch had placed. The Seditionists had a reputation for unwavering aggression, pushing defenses with a determination and brutality that had caused many an EMC line to waiver. This, on the other hand, had an air of hospitality and honor to it, something Marcus had never heard of the Seditionists being capable of. They were borderline terrorists, using hit-and-run tactics, and utilizing fear as a tool and weapon. This was unlike them.

The other crewmembers apparently thought the same, because by their body language, they appeared just as confused as he was. A parley? If anything, they imagined the parley would be about how the fighting would proceed on foot, rather than the gentle offer they were given. Marcus keyed his radio to Penske's band.

"Penske, did you catch that?" he asked her. After a few moments, she responded.

"No, what happened?" she asked him. "I've been in the hold, getting my tools ready to repel down and start working on this drivewheel."

"A Lt. Commander Devon met with Typhon, offering parley. He wants us both to fix our respective tanks, so that we can continue the duel." Marcus responded, continuing to sweep the sand with his weapon, waiting to see if the parley was a trick of some sort. He half-expected an enemy charge to burst out of the storm at any second. Penske cursed into the radio.

"If it was Devon, I'm surprised she didn't shoot him on the spot. Good for her, she's not known to have that kind of restraint." Penske grunted, apparently hoisting a heavy tool or a sheet of steel. Marcus was confused.

"Wait, you know this Devon guy?" Marcus asked. Penske hesitated in her response, her mic keying multiple times as she thought of what to say.

"Let's say many of us aboard the Enoch have a long history with Devon and his ilk, alright? I was worried this would be the case, and now it's happening." Penske's voice grew quieter. "Keep your wits about you, kid, this shit could go south in a heartbeat, you understand? If it's the Dolos... they're capable of anything." Marcus blinked, not sure he understood. However, he hesitated to ask more questions about it, so he instead let Penske get back to work. He kept his eyes peeled, ready for an attack at any moment. I'm ready, he thought to himself.