A sharp ringing pierced her ears. The cloister held two of everything now, then blended into one, before separating into two duplicates again. Ishtar gasped, air hissing in her helmet. A crack ran across her faceplate.
No. She needed the seal,
needed to be contained safely inside her exosuit. She raised a hand to trace the crack but stopped. A shard of a hard cream-colored material stuck out of her palm, a river of red blood so dark it was nearly black trickling from its edges.
The command pod.
Her hand started to shake.
They were getting too close. The Warborn were slowing them down but these reptilian warriors were every inch a match, primitive though their communication was. Between issuing orders, surveilling the deteriorating situation at the front of the outpost, and desperately trying to finish uploading data to whichever Oracle was listening, she didn’t notice the flanking party.
Not until they were hammering on the door.
Ishtar coughed as she dragged herself into a slouched position against the wall, dark droplets coating the inside of the faceplate. Her HUD tried to give her readings but glitched and shorted out. Aside from the ringing in her ears, she could hear nothing.
A12-9X4. He had been here. It. It had been here, protecting her.
Where had he—it gone?
Ishtar’s head lolled to the side as she tried to look around the room. He should be here. He should still be here to help her.
A metal tridactyl hand lay outstretched on the floor, the rest of the limb and body buried beneath debris and Saurian bodies.
Weapons discharged in the room. She could hear grunts of effort, snarls, verbal communication, blind inside the command pod though she was. The data upload was near completion. She just needed a minute more.
Something hit the pod, sending vibrations throughout. Ishtar’s breath caught and she forced herself to stay connected, forced herself to relax. The data upload had to be completed. The stream of information needed to go through.
‘My life for the Pattern Eternal’ was easy to say when it was mere abstraction.
The pod reverberated from further assault.
Where was A12-9X4? Where was her faithful executor?
Ishtar reached for the hand and cried out as pain flared in her shoulder and abdomen. She brought her good hand to the fiery ache she felt in her side. Black-red blood coated the torn fabric on her three-fingered hand. Slowly, Ishtar focused on the interior of her faceplate again, trying to bring up her HUD. It lit up, flashed, glitched, portions missing, but it was there. That was a start. Breathing through the pain, she queried an exosuit status report and a medical status report.
An abstract image of herself in gold with her arms outstretched flickered onto the HUD before mauve-colored patches highlighted places where she felt pain, and places she hadn’t been able to feel yet.
The command pod crunched as something cracked the material. Ishtar no longer fought the tide of adrenaline and focused her whole being on sending the data they had collected. Mission failure was only acceptable if her successor could learn from it.
First Augur of the Expansion. First Augur to die in the new galaxy.
A status query came from the Oracle listening on the other side, still traveling the Void Between.
The protective shell of the ovoid command pod broke and a clawed hand gripped her shoulder.
//My life for the Pattern Eternal.// Her last words.
She was ripped out of the pod and the connection severed.
Ishtar needed to get to the medbay. It would appear as just another empty room, save for the pods at the back of the room. Much of the equipment was hidden behind the bulkhead paneling, including two medical Forged units. It likely hadn’t been sacked by the attackers.
Her HUD informed her that her injuries were too severe to stand, much less walk. They would not imminently kill her, but A12-9X4 wasn’t responding. She lacked the energy to establish a direct neural communication link with another Forged, if any survived the assault. And even if she did make it there somehow, the assailants had hit the power generators. The
Forerunner Outpost was running on emergency back-ups and those wouldn’t last forever. She hadn’t yet run the calculations but she was sure that power would run out before she made it there.
Still. She had to try.
A mauve alert appeared on her HUD. The satellite in orbit. Motion and proximity sensors had been triggered.
A visual feed, flickering and glitching, showed new starships on approach to the planet. Ishtar's heart leapt into her throat before it dropped into her stomach like a rock. More. More coming to this planet and she lacked the resources to defend the outpost, the mission. A12 was . . . The outpost was defenseless if these new ships meant harm.
Ishtar eyed her good hand. The implants grafted within her weren't meant for offense but they didn't leave her completely defenseless. She focused and was rewarded with blue electrical arcs dancing over the surface of the suit's glove. Well. At least her last form of protection still worked in spite of the exosuit's compromised integrity.
She half-pushed, half-fell into a position to drag herself along the floor. Sharp, dizzying pain flooded her vision with stars. Breathing became difficult. But she had to get to the medbay. Before the newcomers arrived with whatever their intentions were.
She wasn’t quite ready to die yet.
