Myrmidon, the Warlord of Vel Marrilion, was mid stride. Its lust and rage for battle being reflected by its pilot knight. Myrmidons sensors kept an active scan over the battlefield, a pair of striker-bombers had a target lock on the warlord. It did not need to inform its knight, it automatically activated two of its shoulder mounted scorpion lances. It angled them towards the striker-bombers and with their inbuilt null-gravity fields, the lances launched at blinding speed, sniping the two aircraft out of the sky. The lances would return to their positions shortly.
Castor watched the enemy mech swat his striker-bombers out the skies like it was nothing. The Warlord in front of him radiated evil intent. It was gaining ground on Quanta and himself - at close quarters Castor knew that machine of death would easily tear them apart.
Castor Dropped smokes from the underside hatches of Quanta. And ran the fuck away.
Any remaining drones he had left behind put up a valiant fight, but were quickly terminated by Vels forces.
He couldn't win on speed, Myrmidon was faster, but Quanta could win on agility, with the nano-fibre latching hairs on its six legs, Quanta could run straight up a smooth vertical surface. Castor piloted towards a rocky outcrop, still moving in the general direction of his hidden jump ship. Quanta dextrously clambered over the rocks, hiding between them, from the approaching enemy forces.
A dozen of Castor's heavy armored tanks finally trundled towards his position. They were too heavy for transport flyer drones to carry, and had spent all this time slowly making their way through the brush of the planet.
They couldn't enter the rocky field where Castor was hiding. Castor scanned the area with a scout drone and ordered his tanks into positions where they could sit with eyes and cannons facing in the direction of the enemy.
Contact came quicky. As Vels' drones moved through the smoke, Castors tanks opened fire, the tungsten shells shredding the drones to pieces. But It quickly became tit for tat, as every time one of his tanks fired, a scorpion lance would shoot out from the smoke, punching through the tanks armor with ease.
Castor waited in the rocks. He needed to ward off the Bastard Son before he made it back to his jump ship. Folding space wasn't instant and could easily be disrupted. He flew his scout drones over the fight, their visuals and data-scans being fed back into his mind's eye. If he could see the Warlord then Quanta's grid-fire cannon could kill it.
Most of the scouts were taken out by the enemy drones, having no armor even a standard infantry unit could shoot one out of the sky. Castor cycled through the feeds as they were destroyed, until he got what he needed, visuals on Myrmidon. The Warlord had taken cover behind a small hill towards Castor left. Castor swung the grid fire cannon around, spooled up the charge and fired a beam of haze in the direction of Myrmidon.
Myrmidon moved at the last moment, probably sensing the energy build up of the grid fire cannon. Instead of materializing inside the Warlord's chest cavity killing the pilot, it instead went through the hip and hand of the machine. Leaving it disabled but not destroyed.
The last of Castors scout drones was taken out - leaving him blind. It would be a death sentence to get close enough to the enemy Warlord to finish the job. So he left the heavy tanks at their positions, and quickly scurried away. The Bastard Son would not be able to follow him now, and it was better to live to fight another day.
It didn't take him long to make it back to his jump ship, The Bastard Son forces were held back by the line of heavy tanks for a time, but once Sir August forces joined Vel, they made quick work of any tank remaining. But it was too late, Quanta was aboard the jump ship. The jump calculations were made, the engines spooled, they folded space-time and disappeared from Lillian's homeworld.
Castor made a a number of more jumps in quick secession before resting. While difficult, it wasn't impossible to follow a Warlords jump trail. He jumped erratically from planet, to moon to asteroid, before finally settling on a small world with a tiny known human population.
He exited his mech and went to find Lillian. She was still sitting on the transport drone that brought her in. She was caked in dirt and blood, her skin was covered in sweat, and she looked even more pale than usual.
"You look rough there girl." Castor said. "Come on there, let's get you to Quanta, she will get you fixed up right quick."
He picked her up and helped Lillian hobble to his warlord. She was in no shape to climb the ladder, so Castor had Quanta gently pick her up and slide her into its pilot seat. The hatch closed over the girl. Once safe in the knowledge that Quanta would take care of her, Castor started rummaging around in the bags and crates that he kept strapped to Quanta's thorax and abdomen.
He was really hungry.
*** LILLIAN ***
Lillian slid into the pilot seat of the Warlord, a presence pushed against her mind, it wasn't demanding, like a gentle nuzzle against her brain stem. It was the warlord, it needed connection before it could help. She opened her mind's eye for it and allowed it in.
She felt the machine fill her up and at the same time she flooded into the machine, its name was Quanta. As the machine assessed her wounded body - Lillian experienced something she had never felt before. Quanta cared, it wanted to help, both its pilot and the human that it had been given, and that care became part of Lillian. She wanted. She had a desire. It was overwhelming, it was intoxicating. Is this how everyone else felt all the time?
She reveled in the machine's desires, followed the process of it healing her body with joyous attention. She still felt the pain, as nano machines were injected into her. She felt it through Quanta, she could feel every slice, stab and prick. She could feel the end of her nerves that fired in response to damage. But through Quanta she didn't care. She could feel all the pain, but it didn't hurt.
Quanta sang as she worked, a binary hymn of healing. Guiding the nano machines through her flesh and veins, carving out dead tissues, killing off infections and stitching skin and muscle together. They formed a mesh sleeve around the broken bone of her forearm, forcing it back into shape. The nano-machines impaled spikes of carbon weave through the bone, pinning it together.
Quanta was like a mother, the pilot seat a womb. For the first time Lillian experienced the *feeling* of what it was like to be cared for. The binary song Quanta hummed was the most comforting thing she had ever heard. She was lulled off to sleep by the machine. There were no dreams.
Quanta, worked on the human body in its pilot seat. Castor was not its first pilot, there had been many over the cycles. But this human inside it now, was different. Nothing like any other human it had connected with.
This human felt like kin.
***
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