The Stonediver crunched out into the wide street, plunging into the confusion of smoke. Bodies scattered in that chaotic moil and screams were ripped from throats. The market that had set up outside the FPSO-Factory had completely vacated, and only a few emaciated stragglers could be seen stumbling off into the foggy spume.

  Pulling the mech back and around, Norma could see, behind the curtain of red dust, the flicker of orange-red fires burning themselves out.

  Where are they? I can't see anything!

  She punched a button on the panel and the Stonediver chassis shuddered. Its left arm deconstructed into a series of shifting plates, joints and panels which folded inwards. Within seconds, the arm had transformed into a deca-barreled minigun.

  Norma passed the minigun slowly across the frontage, carefully observing her surroundings. The FPSO-Factory had collapsed in places and leaking thick black plumes into the air. Pinpricks of light filtered through that screen of dust—muzzle-flashes resolving into arcs of railgun-fire, sparking and fading away at the upper floors of the Factory.

  "Talia, come in!" Norma roared.

  No answer.

  Cursing silently to herself, Norma rammed the joystick forward. The Stonediver lurched and moved closer to the loading bay's ruined entrance, which its violent exit had reduced to a pile of warped metal sheeting.

  Smelting, Talia had said. The Smelting-section was to the back-side of the building. Norma would have to find some way to access it from the second floor.

  But… did she really want to go there?

  Dark thoughts circled her mind, infecting her with doubt. Who was the enemy? Was it—oh, what if it was?—was it those two? Did they tail her all the way back to the Factory?

  She could run now and no one else would be the wiser. She could escape with her life, melt away into Gehen, maybe sneak into Jegorich. But then what? She didn't have anything but the Stonediver—though she had picked up some rudimentary Aluaan in her short time here, the suspicion that existed between native Desertians and Earthians was a gulf that couldn't easily be bridged. She would be cut off from resources and any means to acquire it, and then there would be no chance in hell for her to find a way back to Earth.

  Kablam!

  The thoughts flew out of her mind. Norma jerked, inadvertently sending the Stonediver stumbling to its right. A chunk of wall was blasted out of the second floor, sending large bits of rubble scattering over the entire area. Concrete dust tinkled against the Stonediver's helmet as Norma struggled to maintain control—

  Thunk-thunk!

  Before she could register what was happening, rounds pinged off the Stonediver's visor, with hairline cracks spidering across that surface.

  Integrity-Calculation: 66.7%

  Norma knew intuitively that she was under fire. All thought receded to the back of her mind. With a flick of her wrist, she sent the Stonediver strafing left—there, an enemy in a Kevlar vest: a woman holding up what looked like a carbine and firing directly at her.

  Her finger found the trigger. The Stonediver's minigun opened up, blasting a trail through the dust, reducing the enemy to a drizzle of shredded flesh. The revolving muzzle of the minigun continued upward and a stream of bullets lanced out into the red haze, impacting on something flammable on the other end and raising a large explosion.

  Norma released the trigger and continued strafing the Stonediver. Another figure appeared from out of the darkness brandishing a railgun.

  Shit! A single hit with that will destroy the visor!

  Norma brought one of the mech's arms up to shield herself.

  Zwang!

  The armature-round penetrated several inches of blacksteel. Once again, Norma opened up with the minigun, deleting the masculine figure from existence.

  Suddenly, the Stonediver lurched forward, as if something had hit it from behind. Cursing, Norma braced the Stonediver's legs forward and activated the back-facing cameras.

  A truck!?—

  A Maschinenfabrik truck—one of those civilian ones—had rammed the mech from behind, caving its own nose in on the mech's rear housing. The truck accelerated, and the Stonediver's servos whirred pitifully to keep the multiton truck at bay.

  Norma stole a glance at the overhead panel.

  Integrity-Calculation: 63.5%... 62.9%... 62.2%

  It's not going to hold. Every hit damages the Stonediver a little more.

  With a flick of her wrist, Norma turned the Stonediver sideways. The sound of shrieking metal penetrated the Stonediver cabin and pierced Norma's ears, causing her to wince as the front of the truck ripped free of the mech's warping frame, bouncing off at an angle and then smashing down into the ground, the force of the impact raising tufts of soil to both sides.

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  Norma worked the controls with a practiced hand, piloting the Stonediver forward and then angling it in the direction of the truck trundling down the street.

  "Take this, churkey," Norma muttered under her breath, pushing the joystick to its maximum forward position.

  The Stonediver rammed forward, its feet making deep indents in the red soil but failing to gain on the truck. Norma slammed a fist down into the control panel, her countenance taking on a tortured expression.

  "Accelerated fuel-mixing activated. Thrusters engaged."

  The Stonediver roared forth, borne forward at incredible speed. Norma's stomach churned with the violent acceleration, but she held the contents of her stomach down; within moments, the Stonediver was beside the truck. She saw, through the truck's shattered window, a bare-chested man pointing frantically in her direction.

  Now.

  Norma engaged the Stonediver's right fist, smashing it into the truck's side and crumpling the cabin like a soda can. The force of the hit twisted it up like a towel and sent it careening across the street in a storm of dirt.

  Unable to arrest its forward momentum, the Stonediver plowed through the wall of a small two-story building and crashed into a brightly lit warehouse beyond. Its heavy frame toppled several floor-to-ceiling shelves, triggering a domino effect that sent entire rows of aisle-side shelving crashing down in its wake.

  Norma exhaled and pulled the Stonediver back to its feet. Almost immediately, she heard the dull report of bullets ripping through steel.

  She turned the Stonediver to see that she was being fired upon from the second floor of the FPSO-Factory, which was now adjacent to her. Armature-rounds streaked diagonally down towards her, and Norma had to pull the Stonediver back further into the warehouse space.

  Who are they? A rival gang? Where's Rolf when you need him?

  At the very least, Norma told herself, she wasn't dealing with the compulsion-specialist or the spacetime-manipulator. Either of those would be bad.

  Zwang!

  The tell-tale sound of an armature-round being fired reverberated through that small space, coming from somewhere behind her. Somewhere further within the warehouse. The round flew wide, hitting the ceiling and blasting several tube-lights to pieces in a shower of glass

  In here as well—!?

  Norma yanked the controls, and the Stonediver lunged sideways, sliding into cover behind a row of solid steel racks. The mech slammed down with its right arm braced against the floor, rattling Norma's teeth. She raised the Stonediver's minigun and engaged the side-rear cameras, watching the corner of the shelves closely.

  Camera-feed is fuzzy. Must have taken a hit during the chaos.

  She twisted the Stonediver's arm back further and further, until the shoulder-socket began to groan under the stress of the whirring servos.

  There!

  Norma gunned the trigger when she saw the masked man spring out of the corner. The minigun bucked, kicking back against the Stonediver's frame as it sprayed the man's path with a stream of bullets that carved molten streaks through the air.

  He's fast!

  The man moved with preternatural speed, staying just out of reach of the Stonediver's swiveling weapon. Norma pulled the Stonediver back to its feet, but by then the man was gone from sight, disappearing through the hole which the Stonediver had punched out of the wall.

  Norma glanced to the rightmost panel. The ammo-counter showed 53 rounds remaining in the current ammo-belt. Turning back to the control panel, she depressed a red button upon which she had scrawled in black ink 'AMMO'.

  "Belt-Feed Reloading. Standby."

  Clank—clank

  "Belt-Feed Reloaded."

  Norma piloted the Stonediver forward, its minigun smoking out its muzzle. The mech stepped across the space, flattening a fallen box and causing a black ink-fluid to splatter out across the cracked gray concrete.

  Before she could go any further, a muffled thunk alerted her to the fact that something light had hit the back of the Stonediver. Norma snapped her head around, then frantically activated the back-facing cameras, to see—

  A masked man clung to the back of the Stonediver’s helmet, his face pressed up against the camera lens—the same one who had just sprinted past in front of her. How had he gotten behind her so fast? He was fumbling with his Kevlar vest, searching for something.

  But… now that she could observe him close up, Norma's blood ran cold. She was sure that it was the same one she'd seen in the Ujung facility.

  The compulsion-specialist.

  She slammed the controls, jolting the Stonediver into a sudden, violent shift. The man's arms shot out, gripping onto the sloppy welds that the makeshift repairmen had made. Norma swiveled the torso of the mech around as aggressively as she could, but failed to dislodge the man.

  'He's got a fucking death grip,' thought Norma, narrowing her eyes. 'I can't let him get through the helmet or I'm screwed. I was only able to escape the last time because of the Nullifier-Brace.'

  The Stonediver's right arm hyperextended and then angled a punch toward the man, but he skirted around the helmet faster than any man should be able to, dodging the blow with exceptional finesse.

  It's like... he's a White grade!

  Norma doubled down, fiddling with the control panel and pushing the joystick to the side, simultaneously bucking and punching.

  None of it worked. The man scuttled around the top of the Stonediver like an agile spider, dancing out of the range of the flailing fist and falling over the top of Norma's vision to get his footing at the recess created by the intersecting torso plates.

  The man was now directly in front of her, staring through his gas mask at her. It was almost like he could see her through the tinted glass.

  Norma locked gazes with those dark eyes, feeling a sense of familiarity. It was almost as if she had known him before…

  She felt her perceptions begin to warp.

  The compulsion again!

  Barely holding herself together, Norma fumbled with the movement controls, her hands moving almost at random.

  The Stonediver bucked and swiveled savagely, leaving Norma dizzy and disoriented. The left minigun-arm of the Stonediver shot up diagonally; the man grunted and pushed off the front of the Stonediver, the minigun's muzzle almost taking off his face. As it was, the edgemost gun-barrel caught onto the bottom of the man's gas mask and ripped it clean off.

  Dark. Stoic. PLP.

  And Norma yelled partly in surprise and partly in dumbfounded recognition of those features. It was someone she never thought she'd meet again, someone she'd almost forgotten.

  Isn't that… Betelgeuse?

  What's he doing here?

  Is he ATTACKING us?

  Betelgeuse looked unperturbed, winding up his arm and then smashing a fist straight into the cracked visor, causing even more cracks to spider up the glass. Norma's eyes almost popped out of their sockets. That was tempered glass, and even if it was damaged, there was no way a normal human being would be able to so much as damage it.

  But here he was, damaging it.

  Wasn't he an Ash grade?

  "Betelgeuse! What are you doing! You'll expose us both—"

  And Betelgeuse wound up again, and threw a punch that shattered the visor through, shattering it into a multitude of gleaming shards.

  Norma grabbed onto her exosuit helmet reflexively, but Betelgeuse fell upon her, his hand shooting out and wrapping itself around her thin wrist.