The heavy drop ship gently touched down in of the blasted ruins of the city. The jagged shadows of what was left of the outpost grew longer as the planet’s sun began to set. For thousands of years, it was home to millions. Now, it was a smoldering site of a gruesome massacre.

Half a dozen massive rockets with ion engines powerful enough to lift immense loads through an atmosphere lay broken, shot down as they were taking off, crashing to the city below and detonating with utterly disastrous results. Numerous spires and causeways were completely obliterated in the aftermath.

Outside of the city, burnt and burning craters and smears indicated even more evacuation craft that didn’t survive their attempt to flee. With each downed evacuation ship, tens of thousands of lives were snuffed out in an instant. Those who’d be left to defend the craft as terrified refugees tried to secure themselves before liftoff and protect the launch site no doubt knew they were sacrificing themselves.

Dot and Christine made their way from the open bay door to an entrance to a corridor leading into the charred ruins of the city, slowing down to look around and orient themselves near the city gate. The cyborg immediately noticed similarities to the city on Sigma Draconis, which was not surprising since both were Terra Firma constructions, following the same plan.

Christine took in the view and quickly spotted something that sent her hyperventilating in her spacesuit. Dead bodies and dismembered limbs and torsos were clearly visible among the burnt wreckage, and long streaks and shallow pools of blood, both red and yellow, showed signs of brutal struggles. Her face turned white as her breathing became labored.

“I’m so sorry,” gently said Dot, putting her hand firmly on the human’s shoulder. “I understand this is very disturbing. But you need to take a deep breath and slow down a little. You don’t want to vomit in your helmet.”

Christine slowly started to slow her breathing.

“There. I know this is hard. But they need you right now. Help us figure out what happened to them and why. Okay?”

Christine nodded, beginning to regain control.

“The control room should be straight ahead in that tower,” she said, pointing in the right direction.

“Lead the way.”

They carefully continued through the ruins.

“Dot, Christine?” said Steve’s voice in the intercom. “I just finished the first scans. There are maybe a few sensors still intact but they’re under tons of rubble. Your best bet is either something left in the control room or the data center.”

“Understood,” replied Dot. “Thank you. We’ll let you know as soon as we can try to establish a link.”

Her eyes pulsed.

“Alex touched down and started his patrol of the perimeter,” she informed Christine.

“How do you know? Is that why your eyes flashed just now?”

“Yes. It’s my AI link. Alex and a few others have access to an AI system in my brain so we can send short messages to each other and communicate with fleet computers by thought.”

“Wow, convenient. How many military cyborgs have it?”

“All of us. It’s optional for civilian cyborgs, but we have to be able to issue new orders to each other and machines in under 70 milliseconds in the middle of an engagement.”

They made their way through destroyed connection tunnels and dark hallways with glimmers of emergency lighting. Every step they took was between signs of death and destruction. Finally, they walked into the remnants of a control room after climbing up the few cargo elevator shafts still in good order.

The primary screen was nowhere to be seen, the curved desk with computer terminals for technicians was smashed to bits, and the floor bore deep, bloody scars. Two bodies hung from the rafters of the second floor, held on by straps of their torn uniforms. One of the bodies was missing a head. The other was severed at the waist.

Christine shuddered and let out a deep breath. Dot gently put her hands on the human’s shoulders again. The human nodded and silently turned to the desk.

“These are just dummy terminals,” she said. “The hardware is under the floors so there’s a good chance there’s an intact port or two underneath.”

“Got it,” nodded Dot.

She got on her knees and armed her claws to carve out the tiles under a terminal.

“Careful!” warned Christine. “You don’t want to tear them out!”

Dot immediately stopped.

“They’re built to be easy to replace so they’re not exactly sturdy. They’re just small, thin metal boxes with fiber wiring.”

“Good thing I have you here,” smiled Dot.

Christine dove under the desk and started to carefully pry hardware casings open.

...

Alex and five Octobots walked through a valley as a few fighters flashed overhead. His eyes pulsed.

“Got a hit on three signatures,” he wordlessly relayed. “Checking it out. Will keep you updated.”

“Roger that,” said Dot’s voice. “Working on an uplink from the control room.”

‘How’s Christine holding up?”

“The bodies are a bit much for her.”

“Let me know if you need to pull back, I’ll send cover.”

“I think she’s committed to seeing it through. Let’s just stick to the plan and be careful.”

“Roger that.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I was just thinking that this could’ve...” Dot trailed off. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”

“I’m fine, don’t worry. We saved Lambda Carinae as I recall.”

“Of course, you’re right,” silently agreed Dot.

His eyes flashed once again as he powered up and warped out.

...

Christine grimaced as she tried to pry something open. A panel under her let out a loud crack as she winced.

“There!” she groaned. “It was stuck. Give me the widget. Hope I didn’t damage it.”

Dot handed her a small device resembling a USB key, and she easily plugged it into the port.

“Steve, go ahead and try it.”

“Pinging...” said Steve’s voice.

They waited for a few moments in silence.

“Anything?” prompted Christine.

“Still trying to connect...”

Another few moments passed without a sound.

“Nothing. Connection timed out,” notified Steve.

“How about now?” asked Christine after plugging the device into another port.

“Bupkis,” said Steve after another tense pause.

“Shit. I’ll try the other ports but I think we’re gonna need to head to the data center at this rate,” growled Christine.

“Understood,” nodded Dot. “We’re still clear.”

...

Alex warped in on the edge of a large, rocky plateau scarred by laser fire. He noticed large sections of a rover embedded in the rock wall only a few meters tall with a tinge of sadness. Four Octobots quietly landed behind him as he carefully walked around a rocky outcrop, making a large arc to guard against a surprise attack. The Octobots behind him fanned out for backup.

As he turned the corner he saw Jason sitting on a boulder with his back to the cyborg, two sheathed swords strapped to his shoulders and under his ribcage, two Berserkers flanking him. The robots quickly reacted to the cyborg’s presence while Jason casually turned around to flash a sinister smirk.

“Alex,” he said, “so glad you could make it.”

“Jason Ulrich, I presume?”

“You presume correctly.”

“No breaks for me, huh?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

He looked Alex up and down, frowning in thought as he did.

“You’re smaller than I thought,” he observed. “You look a lot more imposing on video.”

Alex bemusedly scowled, flashing a fang.

“Ah, that snarl,” chuckled Jason, pointing towards Alex with one of his swords. “Did you know you flash your right fang before every fight? Or at least every time I’ve seen you fight. Is that a reflex or a symptom of nerve damage after the Lambda Carinae 7 incident? Or is that something you learned from Mai?”

Alex’s eyes narrowed in befuddlement.

“You don’t know?” Jason’s face lit up with surprise. “Really? You didn’t even know that was your tic until I said something! Wow, and here I thought nothing gets past you prototypes. Oh well. Guess we’ll leave it as one of life’s little mysteries.”

His eye sockets exploded with an orange light as his outline was enveloped in an orange aura, sending bolts of plasma and a pulse of electricity towards Alex. He held his swords in a dual-wielding stance while the Berserkers at his side flexed and adjusted for an attack.

...

Dot and Christine carefully inspected rows of mostly untouched servers, trying one terminal after another in the data center under the command tower. Having gotten nowhere with the control room, they cautiously made their way down expecting more death and destruction, but finding little in the way of fighting. As they scanned for signs of survivors, their mood became ever more dour. It seemed no one managed to escape death after the evacuation became impossible.

“I’m surprised this room survived so well,” noted Dot as they made their way through the hardware racks.

“Well, it’s always underground, shielded, and with few people,” said Christine. “Those things probably didn’t have too many targets here so there was little reason for them to destroy this part of the base.”

She finally spotted an active terminal.

“Aha!” she cheered, plugging the device Dot gave her into the exposed port. “Steve, try pinging this one!”

“It’s working...” replied Steve, his voice slightly distorted.

There was yet another tense pause.

“It’s connected!” Steve’s scrambled voice announced. “Starting upload now. We’re looking at about 15 minutes. I’ll limit it to last week because I doubt there’s going to be much value for us before that, but it’s still six petabytes.”

“Roger that,” confirmed Dot. “Let’s just get as much as we can.”

Her eyes suddenly pulsed.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake...” she hissed.

“What’s going on?” asked Christine.

“Alex is about to engage Ulrich.”

“Does he not know what happened here?”

“Trust me, I have the same exact question, but right now we have to get this done and move out. Alex will hold him off and send all available units to watch us just in case the Rexx come back unannounced.”

“Right. There’s not much we can do but babysit it in case something goes wrong.”

“Well, let’s hope nothing else goes wrong then,” sighed Dot, anxiously fidgeting.

...

The Berserkers rushed forward and unleashed their powerful lasers at Alex’s Octobots as the cyborg warped out. Their beams almost immediately destroyed the robots, with only one having a chance to fire back before being sliced in half.

Alex warped back in only to find himself pinched in by the Berserkers and Jason aiming for him from behind the machines. Right on cue, the Berserkers fired their lasers at full power at Alex, who warped out of focus again. Almost immediately after their attack, Jason used one swift, fluid motion to unleash two powerful waves of energy above the robots with explosive results.

He noticed something out of the corner of his glowing eyes. An instant later, one of Alex’s tentacles smashed into the blades of the swords he quickly crossed in defense, driving him back. Warping in fully powered up, Alex threw another tentacle for a quick whip.

It lightly scraped one of Jason’s swords while Alex slid into a position between the cyborg and the Berserkers. The Berserkers quickly fired at Alex, missing him as he warped out, disrupting Jason’s attempt to send another energy charge at close range. A cloud of dust and debris was the only result as the charges hit the ground.

Alex’s tentacle shot out of the dust cloud, red electrical bolts surging along its sides, jabbing Jason’s chin and easily throwing the cyborg onto his back as Alex skid to a stop and sent out a powerful blast wave to keep the Berserkers back.

Jason quickly recovered and re-assumed his stance.

“You’re holding back,” he said. “If you had that fully armed, you could’ve taken my head off.”

“You were holding back too, so I thought it would only be fair,” smiled Alex.

“You’re pretty fast and that was a good sequence. But you seem to lose your nerve when it’s time to deliver the death blow.”

“Big words from someone in tentacle grasping distance.”

One of Alex’s tentacles used its tip to make a “come at me” motion as the prototype dug into a defensive stance with the two Berserkers on his left flank in mind. Jason growled and let loose with two energy waves that Alex deflected as one of the Berserkers tried to smash him with one of its claws.

Alex dodged the attack but the second Berserker landed a blow from behind. He barely blocked the impact, flying into Jason’s waiting swords.

One of Jason’s blades came down into a waiting tentacle. Alex’s left elbow hitting right below his wrist kept the other blade fixed in its spot to his great frustration. A Berserker’s laser made a sweep at Alex’s position, forcing him to cover his face as his opponent warped out.

Alex warped back in well within Jason’s reach and delivered a blow with his tentacle, hurling Jason into a Berserker sneaking up on him. He dodged another laser sweep and let out a pulse of energy to outflank the machines trying to converge on him.

...

Christine anxiously watched the upload in the underground data center, tapping her foot and shaking her head while glancing at her watch every few moments.

“Come on, come on...” she chanted to herself in a whisper.

“It’s all right, as long as the upload is going, we’re okay,” comforted Dot.

“It’s not the upload I’m worried about. We have to help Alex.”

“He’s a big boy. He can handle himself.”

“He helped Steve and me. I want to return the favor.”

“That’s very nice of you but very dangerous. I know Ulrich. He’s not a pushover. Or at least I don’t remember him being one at the academy.”

Christine nervously glanced back at the upload progress. Somehow, knowing that Alex was fighting a well-trained soldier who set a trap for him on the bodies of millions of dead humans didn’t make her feel any better.