After an hour of grueling surgery, aided by freshly procured surgical equipment created inside the one remaining Lander bay, the doctors declared Nico to be temporarily stable and said she could be awoken for a short period of time if it was essential to get information from her.

The power of her System Function amazed them. The surface wounds on her body left by the Narsian torturers were already scarred, and the lightest of her injuries had closed before anyone even arrived. She would likely still have died in a few more hours, but with nutrients, a lot of artificial blood plasma, and the very best treatments that field medicine could offer, she now had at least a twenty percent chance of survival. Enough to give Max a sliver of hope.

‘As half a person.’ Max thought to himself, holding her remaining hand in his own.

The touch seemed to be a signal to Nico, and Max’s wrist device lit up with a message.

[Put me back in my room.]

Her room? Did she think that she was still at home? There was no telling how much damage had been done to her mind under the not-so-gentle auspices of the Narsians.

[Put me back in my room.]_.

The message repeated, but this time there was a bit of clarity in her mind through the pain and rage. She meant the cockpit of Tarith’s Rage. The cockpit wasn’t sized for another pilot to be able to use it, they were all too large so it couldn’t be reassigned to another Pilot, but she would have a better chance to live if they brought her with them and kept up with intensive treatment. Leaving both her and her mecha together might be a fitting tribute to her personality, but it would be such a waste to let her die here after enduring so much. Max simply couldn’t bring himself to follow her request.

While Max considered what to do next and gave orders to dig a trench grave for the fallen, the rest of the battlefield was cleared. Before Max realized how much time had passed, they had spent three whole hours here, putting them far behind schedule, and he had to finish up and get going, or risk being reprimanded for insubordination.

Finally, he made his choice. Nico could stay and go out the way she wanted. Not as a mechanically rebuilt office clerk, but as a Crusader Class Pilot.

[Fine, I’ll take you home. We are assigned to grid TA24, if you can, meet us there later.] Max sent the message to her wrist device, still attached to her single arm, but got only a beep from his own device in reply. She must not have been able to form another sentence.

“Doctors, move the patient to the cockpit of Tarith’s Rage and leave her with as much healing solution and nutrient drip as you can attach to an IV. We have a battle to get to.” Max informs the doctors, who nod their understanding and get to work, asking a pilot with a gauntlet to lift them up onto the carapace, which they have to wipe clean of bodies and blood to be able to safely cross.

Max thought back to the first day the techs tried to walk on that carapace, and about the unfortunate man who slipped and ended up tangled in the wire, having to be hoisted up and cut free by his coworkers.

Other than Tarith’s Rage, which someone hastily attached mildly damaged new arms to, they managed to get four Crusaders active again, and one of the Comor Pattern Corvettes. Everything else had taken too much damage to be repaired on their current timeline.

Max sent a message to Command, letting them know what was going on, and that there were a lot of materials and broken mecha here to be reclaimed by a force with the time to repair them. General Tennant assured him that a force was set to be arriving there very soon, and asked that the wayward troopers be left behind to wait for the recovery force. Other than the doctors, they would only be deadweight to a Special Tactics Unit.

Doctors in the Kepler Military often chose their own assignments once in battle, based on the need as they saw it, and one did choose to go with Max, loading up with as much equipment as the boats could carry until he had a basic surgical suite in crates. The extra weight and bulk were not optimal, but for the chance to get surgery from a proper doctor and not a field medic? They could definitely find a way to keep it with them.

To get to their destination, the Corvettes were practically running through the swamp, relying on the Crusaders out front to check the depth for them, and the swamp boats were doing their best to search for deep spots as they raced ahead of the convoy.

Getting to their destination tonight was the order, but it was more important that they actually all made it there. Thus, a few stops were made to let pilots catch their breath and grab a meal, which they couldn’t do properly while operating.

In the end, they were almost an hour behind schedule when they arrived and the freshly deployed mecha from the most recent wave of Landers were beginning to worry that the Unit had been attacked in the swamp.

[Sorry for the delay Gentlemen. There was a battle site along the way and we had to stop to do a burial.] Max informed them, and the complaints instantly ceased.

No soldier would hold it against his comrades for stopping to honor the dead, especially not when they themselves weren’t even in combat yet and had just arrived on the planet.

“Alright, we have the orders here already. Before dawn, Command wants the city perimeter searched and a secure way into the launch location for anti-Lander weapons found. This location was sending hostile fire at the Landers, and they want it eliminated and for the city to be retaken. Any civilian survivors are a bonus.”historical

That’s an easy enough order to follow, and Max takes a close look at the layout of the city and surrounding areas according to the satellite scans. There is a large park near the middle of the city that was obscured in the images, and Max was willing to wager that was their target, but getting to it without getting trapped or forced to a halt by the defenders could be an issue.

The data they have doesn’t have any indications of resistance, civilian forces, other units in the area, or anything but the actual map of the city, so Max starts plotting entry locations. First out will be the scout bikes, looking for signs of patrols and Narsian forces stationed near the edge of the city.

Once they have that data, Max can search for a good way into the city itself.

Max sends the bikes out in the middle of the night so that they can start getting the data right away. Most of the infantry wasn’t too exhausted, having been in the boats for the whole trip, so Captain Catan managed to find his twenty riders without issues and set out.

From what they can tell, the city is either abandoned or in a full blackout, as they do for impending air raids.

“Ari, Paul, Vincente, take the Mobile Suits and a squad of infantry infiltration specialists each and make an entry here, here, and here.” Max directs, pointing at the map towards routes that the scouts and the orbital scans all showed as abandoned.

“I will take the mecha of Bravo Squad and enter from the Western main highway as a diversion. If we make entry successfully, the main force can follow at first light. If not, they will be coming to one of you. There are more waves of landers coming, and Central Command wants this point clear before that happens.” Max instructs, climbing up into Stalwart for the diversion mission.

One heavy mecha with a single wing of Corvette Class mecha isn’t a huge threat, but it is enough firepower that Max shouldn’t have a problem fighting his way back out if they run into trouble. Nothing they have seen so far suggests a huge enemy force in the city, and the sensor data sent back from the scout bikes showed almost no life near the edges of the ruined metropolis.

Max circles wide to give the others time to get in position before the sight of Stalwart draws attention, then proudly marches his unit straight down the highway into town.

[Are we sure this is a good idea?] One of the pilots asks nervously, not expecting an answer.

[That depends on what your desired outcome is. If we want to pick a fight and blast holes in a load of Narsians this is an absolutely amazing plan.] A second one suggests, making Max chuckle.

Being the bait is never much fun, but without it, the scouts would be in even more danger, and they were already on foot and without a safe position behind them to fall back.

The city really does feel empty though. Max isn’t finding any sign of a shield, no sign of a patrol, not even any signs of life in the buildings that they have passed. The whole thing is giving him an ominous feeling.

[Scout squads, run air quality checks. Something isn’t adding up and I don’t want you walking into nerve gas.] Max orders.

Normally the Kepler Military wouldn’t use such a thing, as it cripples but doesn’t always kill, which violates the international standards on cruelty. But there is no guarantee that the Narsians or even a civilian force wouldn’t do it if they thought they were going to lose.