The beginning of the Dive is always the worst part, because even if my brain knows I can breathe the stuff that Knights dive into, my body never remembers - so it panics and acts like I'm drowning. But then, covered in super-oxygenated goo almost as warm as my skin, I breathe it and don't choke, and can start to rex, and feel as nimble under this water as a mermaid.

  Oracle Luiz has been muttering directions through my headphones the whole time, walking me through our corner of the Dream, telling me all about the comfortable seat for me to sit in, the gauntlets and greaves that protect and track my arms and legs, the flightsticks for my hands and the pedals for my feet I use to control my Armor, the screens and readouts I use to see and fight.

  Hypnotizing me, so my mind is halfway between awake and dreaming, somewhere barely beyond the Pale. In a space that’s usefully liminal for anyone picking a fight with the Invaders.

  Luiz snaps his fingers and my eyes snap open. “Talk to me, Bec. Status report.”

  “I feel great,” I say, curling my hands around my half-real flightsticks, resting my thumbs besides triggers. “I’m - I’m ready to fight.”

  “And that’s primary induction sorted, cucarachita,” Luiz says, with a snorted ugh.

  “Really?” I say. “You’re comparing me to a roach?”

  “It’s a compliment, I swear,” Luiz says. “The ultimate survivalists. They’ll outst the Invaders, and so will you. Let’s go over the mission before you Draw your arsenal out of your -”

  “Heart?” I suggest.

  “There works too,” he allowed. “I’ll form... the head!”

  “I’m pretty sure you form the body,” I tease. “Last time we tested my ONI, Major Lam formed the head.”

  “Hold that thought,” Luiz says.

  Then he took a deep breath, and connected me to the team.

  The reassuring smoky steel of Major Lam’s voice came through my headset, crisp and clear. "This is Sunshine, Phoenix Dragon, Double-Zero Actual. All units report."

  A deep chuckle, and Reggie responded. "Romeo piloting Zero-Three, the Saturday Knight. All systems go. You there, Bec?"

  "Right here. Wouldn't miss this for the world," I said.

  "Cut the chatter, report in," Major Lam said - cool but not cruel, nothing personal.

  I felt myself sit up straight, clutch the sticks in my control gauntlets. "This is Crybaby piloting Genki Valkyrie, Zero-Four, awaiting briefing," I said. "Sir."

  I could practically hear Lam nod approval. "Mission is simple. The Invaders are pushing at our base; we're pushing back. Onieroscope tagged three Cataphract-css raiders heading our way. Each of us gets one. If you destroy yours, report it and I will inform the other that you're on the way to help. Any questions?"

  "None, sir," Reggie said, voice a lot more sober than it was a minute ago.

  "Roger. Wilco," I said. Orders received. Will comply.

  "Crybaby." Lam pauses before continuing. "You've been assigned to intercept your target because it's tailing a VIP."

  My breath hitches for a moment.

  "So that's where my brother went off to this morning," I mutter.

  "Radio discipline, Crybaby," Lam reminds me - not harshly. "He's escorting new recruits to the base. Make the enemy pick on someone it's own size instead of them. Questions?"

  I take a deep breath. "No, sir."

  "Start final preparations and unch," Lam ordered. "Good hunting, Crybaby, Romeo. Lin out."

  We two acknowledge, and then I get a message intended only for me.

  "I'll try to wrap up fast and come running," Reggie said.

  "My hero," I deadpan. "No, I've got this."

  "Hope so," Reggie allows. "Good luck."

  I grunt my thanks as I Draw out my ONI's systems.

  I Draw on memories of my brother's stern face, of his literally standing between me and the Colonel, and at the same time Luiz flips a switch. A panel pops out of Genki Valkyries wrist - my ONI's wrist - and I hold it out in front of me; it projects a hexagon of blue fire that covers my frame from sensor turret to tread, head to toe.

  I draw on Reggie tossing out presents, scavenged books and DVDs from the mainnd, with a smile (and Luiz flips a switch) and a firearm materializes in a puff of lemniscate blue, taking on the image of a magnetic bottle with an open end and a shoulder brace, a psma shotgun projecting fireballs that splinter into many embers and shock with ionization.

  I draw on a million drills and lectures and lessons well learned from the Major, (and Luiz flips a switch,) and my vision sharpens. I see additional readouts, rangefinders, and a secondary crosshairs that hours of practice tell me will lead my targets for me, as a third eye bracketed by sensors and antennae blossom from my ONI's sensor turret like a rose in fast motion.

  "Genki Valkyrie, all systems go," I say.

  "Double Zero actual acknowledge, you are cleared for unch. Repeat, cleared for unch," Lam says.

  "Allez," I mutter, and grin.

  "Oop!" Luiz replies, as I'm catapulted up over the bay. "Moving you to intercept the target - it's making it's way across the Bay Bridge, presumably to intercept our boys in the 108 bus. You see them?"

  My target isn't hard to find - wouldn't be hard to find with the Mark-I Eyeball, let alone with Lam's Fancy Blinkenlichten Array. The Invaders are capable of subtlety, of weilding daggers in the night, but Cataphracts are blunt objects - hammers they bring down on any mortals too uppity to realize that dreams are under their new management. In this yer of the Pale, Cataphracts ("Cataphractoi," Yuki would correct, looking up from the comic book she was reading to push round gsses up her nose and gre at me) resemble great, bck elk with skulls for heads, projecting a burning halo above their antlers.

  It's impossible to miss one striding across the bay bridge, and I follow its gaze to what my dreams make of the 108 bus.

  "I see it," I say, and, "Laying in intercept course."

  The cataphract finds what it's looking for and the halo above it fres, spinning faster, as two pinpricks of light in the hollows of the skull's eyesockets focus on the 108 bus.

  A nce of light, a searing ray, shrieks from it's halo towards the bus.

  It meets my shield and bounces, spttering where it's not deflected into the sky, parting a cloud.

  "Holy shit, warn me when you're gonna do that," Luiz breathes.

  "I did. Try to establish contact with the 108," I say.

  The beast rears up, snapping its baleful gaze to me, circling it's obsidian hooves like they're daggers.

  "I think I got it's attention," I say.

  "I think you made it mad," Luiz responds.

  "Good. Mad makes you stupid," I hope out loud.

  Behind me, the 108 speeds for our base on Treasure Isnd. Further behind me, I hear chained detonations, see fshes of light - Reggie raining fire on his target.

  Good. I grin, gripping my control sticks tighter.

  For all the Invaders are literal nightmares for normal humans, one for one, an ONI Armor is stronger than any of their cataphracts.

  (Cataphractoi.)

  I raise my left arm and set the glowing energy shield, twisting my body so that there's no part of me not behind it, just in time for the Cataphract to rain down hammer blows with those obsidian-sharp hooves.

  They fre in pulses of blue fire, the fshing hurting my eyes even through the dark lenses of my helmet. Hopefully it was having the same effect on it. I raised my shotgun, and the dream demands I pump it -

  When the halo of the beast before me fres and resolves into a single star-hot sun-bright nce of light that sptters against my shield even as it continues sing it.

  The panel of that shield shifts from blue to green to an arming shade of orange, the redshifting spreading in an arc across the surface of it as arms rang out.

  I need to end this.

  I boost forward, under the blows, sliding so I'm under my shield as I shift where on it the beast is bsting. My crown locks it's inertial tracking crosshair on a beating, glowing red heart barely protruding from an external ribcage.

  I lift the shotgun, grimace and fire.

  My bst tears a hole through the creature and engulfs it's heart in the core of a miniature blue dwarf star an instant before I hear one pane of my shield shatter, raining gssy embers onto me.

  There is a horrible pause.

  There is a horrible scream.

  I manage to turn my grimace into a grin.

  "Oh, thank god," Luiz says. "Signals dropping across the board, drop on my mark -"

  I drop on his mark and the cataphract explodes into a shower of fming gore with occasional cybernetics. Bits of it bounce off my shield - or my armor. The scraps of it that don't hit the water start to turn pale and carbonize into ashy fkes; the part that hits the bay remains bloody chunks and chrome, which I know we'll get salvage teams on.

  After I'm back home.

  I take a deep breath and rise up.

  "Bandit down," I broadcast. "Lovely Valkyrie reporting mission success, repeat, bandit down, mission accomplished."

  Luiz nods, eyes flickering across his diagnostics. At the same time, I gnce at my shield. It's already back to it's original shape, though it's perhaps a little more jade than cyan in color now, stressed out from the beating I took.

  "Acknowledge, Unit 04," Major Lam replies, her radio seasoned with crackling. "Bandit 00 also down, repeat, my target eliminated. Beauregarde reports entering a duel with his target."

  I take a deep breath. "Acknowledge," I responded.

  "Do you think he's got it?" Luiz asks, meeting my gaze.

  "Reggie's got this," I said. He had been at it for a year and a half before my brother let me into the cockpit and knew what he was doing.

  But I clenched my hand around the control stick and turned towards Treasure Isnd.

  "But that's no reason not to help?" Luiz asked, rhetorically. He was already drawing up a flight path, bless him.

  "But that's no reason not to help," I confirmed. "Keep me out of his firing solutions and on course to crash into his bandit."

  "Aye aye, Lieutenant," he replied, exaggerating the Frenchiness of lieutenant as my attack vector appeared on screen.

  I saw some distant explosions. Unlike the Valkyrie, which wanted to get in close and stay there, Reginald's Saturday Knight was a sniper ptform: I'd seen a railgun, a mortar and all kinds of rocket and missile unchers. I was seeing colorful fk detonations, rapidly blooming flowers of fire, bracketing another one of the Cataphracts while it tried to backtrace their source, stabbing at the sky and mountain with spears of burning light.

  I angled the hoop skirt of my mech and fired the boost thrusters, bsting with my shotgun, as much to get Reggie's attention as the Cataphract's.

  "INCOMING!" I screamed into an open channel.

  When I crashed into it shield-first, bowling it over, I could have sworn the thing managed to emote surprise despite having hollow eyesockets with no eyebrows to speak of.

  It recovered quickly, wheeling to face jagged antlers at me.

  "Bec, anyone ever tell ya you got a fir for the dramatic?" Reginald asked.

  "I've got it distracted. Toast it!" I replied.

  He ughed. "Don't have to tell me twice -"

  I make my move, but something is wrong. My angle is off; this thing is going to dodge and I'm going to be caught in friendly fire.

  The creature knows this. It's halo expands, shedding a colorless light that slows me down - concentrated Pale. I feel like I'm wading through mosses, I can't make out the advice that Luiz is giving me through the distortion.

  I close my eyes, and my life fshes before them.