Walking through the wide halls of the cruiser, Andromeda and the three mech knights accompanying us cast beams of light from their chest panels, shoulders, and helmets, illuminating the dark interior. As we advanced, our armoured forms pushed aside the floating wreckage of deactivated robot corpses.
"This place is creepy," Joker 1-2 muttered over comms. "I liked it better when we were rushing through here getting blasted at with rockets and beam-type weaponry."
"Just keep your scanners open and your gun forward," Joker 1-4 responded. "Not like a ghost could be on this thing. Nothing alive ever set foot here."
Nicole flinched slightly in my cockpit, shifting uncomfortably as she whispered, "No... no ghosts. Please, no ghosts." Whatever ghosts were, she was definitely afraid of them.
Good thing I was here to protect her. Nothing was going to hurt her as long as I had a say in it.
Leading the way, Joker 1-1 stopped in front of a half-open elevator shaft. With a sharp heave, his knight shoved aside a heavily armoured, deactivated bot before gripping the metal doors and tearing them apart with brute strength. "Second squad, we found an elevator we can squeeze through. Moving up now. What's your status?"
"Nearly there," came the reply over comms. "Easy to get through since we stormed this place earlier. Should be two minutes out from target. We'll be ready to turn on power in five."
A soft beep from my motion sensors caught my attention. Andromeda's head swivelled toward the dim corridor behind us, the spotlights cutting through the gloom. Between Joker 1-2 and 1-4, the hallway remained the same—lined with deactivated werewolf-bots, frozen in the positions they'd fallen. Yet, something had triggered the sensor.
"Let's move, team. You're next, Andromeda. 1-2, 1-4, watch our six." Crawling through the elevator doors first, the lieutenant's knight disappeared into the shaft.
Dismissing the detection as a flicker of residual energy from the EMP strike, I pushed Andromeda forward. Metal scraped as my shoulders and knees brushed the narrow frame, and with a burst of thrusters, I followed Joker 1-1 out onto the next level. As soon as 1-2 and 1-4 landed behind me, we pressed on toward the warship's main servers.
"Hmm... I'm getting something odd on scanners," 1-4 reported.
"Same here," I confirmed. "We might have something shadowing us. Could be a bot with advanced stealth capabilities—possibly several."
"If those existed, why didn't they stop us from planting the EMPs?" 1-2 countered. "It's probably just interference from the lingering energy surges."
[Or perhaps they exist precisely for this scenario,] Andromeda interjected. [In case the warship is hit with an EMP and enemy forces attempt to seize control. What destroyed the others could have activated an anti-scavenger system.]
Halting Andromeda mid-stride, I lifted his left arm and fired a controlled burst of flame down the corridor. The searing heat licked at the twisted metal and scorched the lifeless machines.
For a moment, nothing moved.
Then something crawled against the wall—almost invisible, barely more than a distortion in the air.
"What the—"
Joker 1-2 and 1-4 opened fire in unison, their rifles chattering as heavy rounds shredded the figure. Its cloaking flickered and failed, revealing a skeletal automaton with elongated limbs and curved blades in place of hands.
"The CK was right!" Joker 1-1 barked. "Come in, second team! Assassin droids still active! I repeat—assassin droids still active! We're right outside the ship's brain! Entrench at the core and prepare for assault!"
"Copy, team leader! Nothing on our end yet, but we're on high alert!"
"Move!"
Breaking into a sprint, we rushed down the corridor toward the server room. Behind us, a swarm of assassin droids burst from the flames, their skeletal frames sprinting on all fours, blades flashing under the ship's emergency lights.
[Seal the door,] Andromeda ordered. As I reached back, I gripped the heavy blast door and dragged it shut. The other knights laid down suppressive fire, shredding the first wave of droids before Joker 1-4 slammed the final door closed behind us.
As metal claws scraped violently against the outside, Andromeda extended a finger and ignited a concentrated burst of flame, welding the door shut. [It won't hold them for long. Corporal Nicole, begin your work.]
Nicole had already leapt from Andromeda's chest, crouching beside the main server, a spherical construct spanning three entire floors. Plugging a tangle of cables into the floor panel, she muttered, "I need power before I can do anything."
"This is 1-1, we're ready to start. Restart the reactor," the lieutenant relayed.
"Copy."
The warship trembled as a distant explosion rumbled through its metal frame. Suddenly, everything that had been floating dropped to the floor. Gravity returned. Emergency lighting flooded the chamber, revealing the massive, pulsating core of the ship's intelligence system.
"Power's back on," the second team's leader confirmed over comms. "Some droids in our area have reactivated—stay sharp."
"How long do you need, Corporal?" the lieutenant asked.
Nicole, now seated against the server, worked furiously at her holo-screen. "Maybe five minutes. The code is advanced, but since the server's only just waking up, there are openings in the system. I just need to trap the main AI and sever its link to the hive mind. Once I do that, I can override its directives and put it on our side."
Loud banging echoed through the chamber. Metal groaned as the assassin droids outside rammed against the sealed entrance, eager to cut us down.
"How many ways in?" I asked.
"Just the one," Joker 1-4 answered, training his backpack-fed machine gun on the door. "No air vents—these things don't breathe. We hold that doorway, we win. Individually, they aren't smart enough to think of another way in."
A deafening crack split through the air as claws pierced the thick steel. Sparks flew as jagged metal peeled back, revealing a sliver of the corridor beyond.
Joker 1-2 raised his knight's heavy pistol and pulled the trigger. A single round exploded through the narrow gap, shattering the head of the first bot that attempted to squeeze through.
"You want to place bets, team leader?" he asked with a smirk. "See who racks up the most kills before our hacker princess finishes flipping the ship?"
"Shouldn't you be asking the CK that, 1-2?"
"Hehe. I'm not brave enough to challenge a star pilot. But with how lousy a pilot you are, Lieutenant, I'd more than be willing to bet I can win."
"Don't tell me you're afraid you'll lose to Nobunaga, Kenji?" 1-4 goaded.
"Damn bastards. Fine. You're on—both of you, Nobunaga, Kaito." Joker 1-1—Lieutenant Kenji—loaded a fresh magazine into his heavy rifle, his knight's optics locked on the door as the pounding and clawing grew more frenzied.
The reinforced steel buckled, hinges screeching under the relentless assault. Nicole still needed three minutes to finish the hack. I'd have to be careful with Andromeda's flamethrowers—one wrong burst and she'd be caught in the inferno too.
Before the inevitable breach, I spoke, "May the best man win your bet. But what's the prize for the winner?"
"Ahaha! Can we get a photo with you?" Nobunaga asked.
Wanting to keep morale high, I nodded. "Sure. Just make sure you're the one who earns it."
"Hell yeah!"
With an ear splitting crash, the doors were ripped from their hinges. A wave of reactivated werewolf-droids surged through the threshold, accompanied by the skeletal forms of assassin units, their blade-limbs flashing under the flickering emergency lights.
Gunfire erupted.
The four of us held our ground, unloading explosive rounds into the horde. Metal bodies burst apart, shrapnel flying as each shot tore through multiple droids at once. I held down the trigger, Andromeda's thermal railgun spitting out super-chilled hollow-point rounds. The bullets shattered metal like glass, severing limbs and ripping open wolf-like heads as they scrambled over their fallen.
One of the assassin droids launched from the pile of mechanical corpses, its bladed arms arcing toward Joker 1-4. He batted it away with the barrel of his gun before drawing his combat knife and cleaving it in two, stomping the remains into the floor before pivoting back to unleash another volley into the approaching swarm.
"The ship's AI must be desperate. Keep cutting them down!" Lieutenant Kenji shouted, delivering a brutal punch to a heavy droid that used the corpse of its ally as a shield before driving a round through its skull. In a fluid motion, he reloaded and resumed firing.
Andromeda twisted his wrist. A silver orb with a faint, cold glow ejected from his arm and rolled into the chaos.
The moment it detonated, a wave of liquid helium flooded the corridor. The droids pushing through the bottleneck slowed as their servos seized, their limbs stiffening in the subzero gas. Frost crept over their metal frames, making them brittle—easier to shatter under our gunfire. Within seconds, the bodies began piling high, nearly blocking the entrance entirely.
"Thirty seconds left!" Nicole called out. "Once the system finishes resetting, the whole cruiser will be under our control—including the bots!"
"You heard her! Hold the line! For duty and life!" Kenji roared.
"For duty and life!" Nobunaga and Kaito echoed, their bullets cracking through skulls as the last of the droids struggled to push past the frozen barricade.
Then, in the final stretch before Nicole could finish the reset, a massive automaton barrelled through the wall of corpses. It tore through the pile with sheer brute force, sprinting straight for Nicole.
Kenji moved to intercept, but a swarm of lesser droids tackled him mid-stride, burying his knight under their weight.
[Alternating firing mode. Railgun.]
Andromeda extended his arm, planting his feet as his heels dug into the floor. The thermic railgun's barrel spun, energy surging through its coils.
The juggernaut lunged.
I pressed the barrel against its single, glowing red eye and pulled the trigger.
A brilliant, chilling beam erupted from the gun, piercing the behemoth clean through. The shot continued down the corridor, freezing everything caught in its path. The werewolf-droids and assassins locked mid-charge, their bodies encased in a thick, icy shell.
A chime echoed through the warship.
[System reset: complete.]
As one, every remaining droid powered down, collapsing into unmoving heaps. The battle was over.
"The warship is under our control," Nicole announced triumphantly. Then she shivered violently. "B-but, uh... c-can you let me back inside the cockpit, Firefly? Brr! I think the chill of your railgun broke my suit's thermal regulator!"
"Sorry about that. Things got bad really fast."
Andromeda's chest panels slid open, and Nicole scrambled inside. As the hatch sealed behind her, I increased the cockpit's internal temperature, letting her thaw out.
"How are you doing, 1-1?" I asked.
"I'm buried beneath a pile of Monarch-damned heavy-duty gunners with ice blocking my sensors! What do you think, Andromeda?" Kenji's voice radiated pure frustration, his knight barely able to move under the weight of the frozen wreckage.
"I've got you, team leader."
Crossing the icy battlefield, myself and the two other samurai-model knights reached down and began prying the metal corpses off him, dragging his knight free from the frigid scrapyard.
Over the comms, Nobunaga let out a low whistle. "What kind of firepower are you packing, Andromeda? This is terrifying." He eyed the corridor, now a crystalline tomb of shattered droids. "Should've used that from the start."
"Charged fire only allows four shots," I explained, ejecting the spent magazine from my railgun and inspecting the empty glow of the energy drum. "Ammo is extracted directly from Andy's core. Takes time to divert power for a recharge." Stowing the weapon back into Andromeda's shoulder mount, I turned to Kenji as he steadied his knight.
The lieutenant sighed. "Second team, what's your status?"
"Just fine, 1-1. Only a few bots reactivated in our zone—nothing serious," Joker 1-3 reported. "We'll meet you back at the hangar. 1-3 out."
[Major Nicole, command the warship to head towards the Ishimura. I've already sent word of our success.] Andromeda instructed. [Additionally, I've accessed the Freiheit codes from your system. We now have clearance to bypass insurgent forces and slip behind enemy lines on Duradel.]
Nicole groaned. "I'll get to it, but gimme a minute to warm up, Andy! I swear, I can feel my organs frozen over after what you did!"
I raised the cockpit's heat a little more, and Nicole, still cold, huddled against my leg inside the cramped space.
Grumbling to himself, Kenji stomped toward the hangar, muttering about how easy the second team had it.
We followed, the ice crunching underfoot as Kaito and Nobunaga kept pace.
Then I remembered the bet.
"Ah, so who won?"