‘Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.’

From Invictus, by William Ernest Henley (1888)

Four days the battle had raged before Omega-One arrived. Four days of harrowing combat in which human forces were inexorably giving ground but forcing restitution for every inch of that ice-ball world, staining the snow purple and red.

The defenders were pushed up against the towering walls of Citta Neve, the largest enclosed habitat on the planet and the administrative capital, filled with a million terrified civilians that could not be evacuated in time. This was the last bloody stand in this part of the galaxy, the fulcrum around which the fate of humanity could tip.

‘Sound off: who’s not dead?’ Ford’s brusque tones flashed over comms.

‘Omega-One-Four, fuckin’ ace,’ Kasey growled.

‘Omega-One-Three, readouts green,’ Aldyan reported.

‘Omega-One-Five, also green,’ Ivey echoed.

Lyyr glanced at her systems readouts, the routine familiar-yet-different, noting with relief that nothing had been shaken loose during the drop – apparently the first these machines had ever been through.

'Omega-One-Two, reporting combat-readiness,’ she announced.

‘Trick question, you’re already dead, but glad to hear the mechs are fine,’ Ford drawled. ‘Just over the ridge is an armoured company under fire. Think we should assist?’

A chorus of assents rippled over comms and Lyyr felt a surge of adrenaline, bringing with it eager anticipation for the fight to come, for the chance to wreak vengeance on those that had snatched away her former life, to be the bitter reaper, to become death and the destroyer of those that would destroy them.

With a shake of her head, she suppressed the urge. Linked to the Einherjar, she was noticing an increase in bellicosity, a desire for ruin and slaughter, choleric impulses that would serve her well in a melee but a cool head did not make. Perhaps it was the psychological effect of being in complete command of an eighty-tonne war machine. Perhaps not.

No matter. She had other things to deal with for now.

The Einherjar formed up, One, Two, and Four in echelon with Three and Five on the flanks, striding through the deep snow like it was nothing, ignoring the flurries of flakes that swirled and whirled about them, bitter cold unfelt by mech and pilot alike, onwards toward the storm of light and noise that was the battle, a ten-kilometre front of devastation.

Pistons pumping, the five mechs increased in speed, breaking into stride, then jog, their heavy footsteps muffled by the drifts. Following the Major’s lead, they ran to the edge of the ridge and, with a burst from the thrusters on their backs, leaped from the rocky outcrop. Lyyr’s stomach lurched but her lips split in a savage grin as the gigantic machine dropped through the air, hitting the ground and continuing at pace, the suit’s gyros and the pilot’s instinctive balance stopping her from tipping over.

‘Two, Four, increase speed and close, Three, Five, cover our backs,’ Ford instructed like nothing happened.

Landing at the edge of the fight, Omega-One had ended up just behind the advancing Seti forces, unnoticed and unmolested. Now Lyyr was running, her legs pumping and the mech’s powerful myopolymer responding in kind, picking up momentum that would be difficult to stop, stomping across a battlefield and trying not to think about what might be underfoot. Ford already had a target for them, a Behemoth at the rear, delivering punishing blasts from its cannon.

Even in a mech the thing seemed huge, but the Major’s confidence was infectious.

A flash on her HUD: missile range achieved. Lyyr moved her shoulders, almost like a shrug, and a half-dozen warheads streaked from her shoulders, obscuring her vision for a moment, joining those of Kasey and Ford, crossing the distance to burst upon the flanks of the monstrous machine in a bloom of saffron flowers. It staggered and tried to turn. It was not quick enough.

With the sound of freight trains colliding, Ford hit the side at full speed, burying her sword deep, using her momentum to try and force it over, the movement succeeding when Lyyr and Kasey joined the fray a second later, cutting through legs and barging with shoulders, each impact a deafening beat.

The Behemoth toppled to the side like a dying animal, landing in a cloud of pulverised snow. There was no time to savour their victory, a second one was already turning its cannon their way. Light gathered and shot towards them, flash-boiling snow in the wake of its passage, throwing up banks of fog.

Kasey took the brunt of it, crossing arms over his chest to protect the cockpit, armour plates flensing and blowing out from thermal shock. He stumbled back a step then righted himself, shaking molten gobbets from his arms, immediately squaring his shoulders to return fire with a brace of missiles.

Already at a jog, Lyyr rounded the side of the Behmoth, keeping out the line of that terrifying weapon. Within seconds it was lying in ruin, her blade having rent open a flank and Kasey’s creating a wound in the prow that the man filled with a storm of bullets, swearing vehemently and repeatedly until Ford forced him to cut it out.

‘Focus!’ she snapped. ‘There’s more where that came from.’

Turning back to the fight, Lyyr could see the Lycans were already upon them, sprinting from the frontline with inhuman grace and speed, too late to reinforce their fellows and looking for retribution.

One came at Lyyr, firing a beam of excruciating light that sheared ablative plates from her left thigh. She stumbled and swore, sweat pricking at her forehead, that familiar cold creeping its way down her spine. Tumultuous memories were already beginning to roil in her mind, thrashing to the surface like monsters from the deep. Her jaw clenched, her arms itched, and every instinct told her to back off and lay down fire.

Lyyr Zainab fought those feelings, losing herself within the neural link, becoming the war machine, and stepped in to meet the charge. Shoulders set, arms levelled, she began to let loose with everything she had even as the monster bore down on her.

The mech staggered but pressed on, striding forwards even as parts of it fell away under the relentless assault of her rotary cannon, reaching her in seconds and swinging that terrible, coruscating sword in an arc she would not be able to block, even with the enhanced speed of her suit.

Teeth gritted and eyes glaring, she let it come.

‘Fuck. You.’ she growled.

A snap of thunder, a flash of lightning, and the nodules on her mech’s surface activated, responding to the energy in the blow, drawing it into capacitors and returning it in a feedback cascade that shattered the alien weapon with a cacophonous snap, causing it to stumble, shocked and damaged. Already moving, Lyyr’s torso rotated, putting as much force as she could behind her own sword, plunging it deep into her opponent’s thorax.

Lifeless and inert, the alien machine collapsed. Within the Einherjar, Lyyr released a rattling breath.

Nearby, Kasey was finishing off his own with a burst of bullets and Ford was stomping into the chest of another with her metallic heel. Another alien mech appeared out of the flurry but crumpled within seconds from sustained cannon fire by Adyan and Ivey.

‘Sound off,’ Ford snapped, grunting when the whole unit replied. ‘Let’s clear up the stragglers then.’

On instruction from the Major, they formed up and turned their attention to the infantry, giving the creatures the same treatment they would have received were the roles reversed: no mercy, no quarter. Scores of them fell like wheat before a scythe.

‘This is Lieutenant Wolfe, 29th Armoured, thanks for the assist,’ a voice crackled over comms from the UTC line. ‘What’s your unit?’

‘Our pleasure,’ Ford replied. ‘Major Ford, Mechanised Unit Omega-One.’

‘Say again? I, uh, our systems are saying you don’t exist.’

‘You’re right about that, Lieutenant,’ Ford replied pointedly.

The lieutenant got the hint quick enough, especially when Ford transmitted a CIC-tagged code burst.

‘Acknowledged, ma’am,’ he replied quickly. ‘Wolfe out.’

Ford laughed humourlessly across the unit’s comm channel.

‘Alright corpses, good first dance,’ she announced. ‘We ready for the rest of the show?’

The assents were instant and savage – including Lyyr’s – punctuated by Kasey slamming his mech’s scarred fist onto his armoured chest.

‘Well form up then! And a one, and a two, and a one, two, striding speed!’

For the next hour, Omega-One fulfilled the task for which mechs were designed – shock and awe – hitting where the fighting was at its thickest, its most violent, plunging deep into the enemy forces from the flank, tearing apart infantry and mechs alike, an unexpected variable that always tipped things in favour of humanity.

It was an exhausting, terrible slaughter, but worked. The back of their assault broken, their heaviest units smoking wrecks, the alien forces had fled back to their deployment zones across the frigid plains, harried the entire way by UTC outriders and air-to-ground gunships. Navy elements later reported that Seti ships were in a rout, grabbing what troops they could from the planet and retreating out-system.

For the first time since the outset of this new war, humanity had stood its ground and actually won, with no small part played by Omega-One. It seemed the first field test was successful.

Bone-weary and fatigued, the pilots were slouched or lying on the chilly concrete of the primary staging area in Citta Neve’s enormous dome, just past the western bulk airlock, their mechs looming in silent sentry behind them, battered and scarred, plates blown out and scored, but ultimately functional and unbowed. It had been Ford’s decision to not take part in the chase, conscious that within those gods of war they were still only human. As they saw to bodily needs, so did the mechs, swarmed by the white-garbed forms of Malachi and his ilk.

Lyyr slouched back on her elbows, Kasey rumbling like an idling tank as he slept nearby, uncaring of any considerations for comfort; at least their bodysuits kept the heat in. Ivey and Adyan were talking in low voices and the Major was nowhere to be seen, throwing her considerable clout around the command centre. Shortly after their arrival, a group of soldiers in black armour had appeared and taken guard positions around the mechs; they were the visible side of the CIC, the shadow in sight, the warning sign to keep well back.

Another mech unit was parked nearby, their insignia marking them out as Gamma-Six. It was not a unit known to Lyyr. Thankfully. They had followed Omega-One in, having taken a mauling in the final engagement before the Seti broke. Two of their five mechs were crippled, another had to be dragged in by recovery vehicles, and the fourth was a smoking crater.

For their dismounted pilots, curiosity was triumphant over fatigue and loss, their attention split between the mechs and people of Omega-One, wary of the cordon yet trying to get a better look.

‘Oi! Who are you?’ one of them shouted, patience clearly at an end.

Kasey snorted and woke up. ‘What in...’ he grumbled, blinking bemusedly beneath furrowed brows. ‘Fuckin...’ He raised his voice. ‘Man’s trying to sleep here!’

The pilots looked taken aback. Whatever they had been expecting from this mysterious group of warriors with experimental mechs it probably wasn’t that.

Lyyr laughed.

‘I’m going to go make nice,’ she said to the others as she got to her feet.

‘Is that allowed?’ Ivey asked.

She shrugged, unknowing and uncaring, as Kasey hauled himself to standing with what could be described as minimal grumbling. For him.

As she approached the other pilots, two men and two women who looked as tired as she felt, smeared in grease, smoke, and – for one of the women – blood from a nasty headwound, they eyed the pair curiously. One of the faceless guards turned to their way and, for a moment, she wondered if they would be refused, their status as prisoners confirmed, but no other reaction appeared.

What do you say in this kind of circumstance, to people looking at you with mixed awe and suspicion? For a moment, she was lost for words.

‘Yeah, what?’ Kasey spoke.

That’ll do. Lyyr bit her lip as she suppressed another laugh.

‘Who are you people?’ The bloodstained woman asked, her rank badge that of a captain.

‘Omega-One,’ Lyyr replied. Given names were probably a bad idea.

‘But there’s no s-’

‘No such unit, yeah, yeah, we don’t exist, yadda yadda...’ Kasey interrupted, arms folded.

Lyyr jerked her head towards the guard, hovering nearby.

‘Got it,’ the captain nodded sagely. She looked over Lyyr’s head at the Einherjar. ‘Why’re Juggernauts piloting mechs anyway?’

A moment of confusion, then Lyyr realised they must look like Juggernauts, wrapped in their bodysuits with the glittering circle of interface ports on their necks.

‘Ain’t Juggernauts,’ Kasey replied indignantly.

‘We’re mech pilots too,’ Lyyr stepped in, ‘Only...’

‘Dead,’ Kasey grinned, all teeth.

The captain looked from one to the other. ‘Right…’

Lyyr only smiled and shrugged.

Opening her mouth, like more questions were forthcoming, the Gamma-Six glanced at the guard and shut it again. Smart woman.

‘Well, whoever you are, thanks for your help,’ she offered instead, sticking out a hand.

A wary glance at the watchful guard and Lyyr shook it, followed by Kasey, and likewise with the rest of the cautious-but-grateful Gamma-Sixes.

‘Glad to be of use,’ Lyyr replied with feeling.

‘Hey corpses, fall in!’ Ford commanded their attention. ‘We’re shipping out; High Command wants a repeat performance!’

Lyyr sighed theatrically and gave the Gamma-Sixes a half-hearted wave.

‘Being dead doesn’t mean you get to rest,’ she lamented.

‘See y’all around,’ Kasey offered unconvincingly.

Making their way back to the rest of the Omega-Ones, Lyyr felt exhausted but brighter than she had in weeks. If they could stop other pilots from dying, other units from being wiped out, then maybe this was worth it. Fiza, Samson, Shahid, Kaiden... She had already etched their names on the inside of the cockpit, a corpse carrying memories of the dead. Everything she now did was to honour them.

‘Hurry up and get back into your suits!’ Major Ford chided, ‘Those hunks of metal aren’t going to walk themselves back onto the transport!’

Lyyr stopped to take a moment and regard the colossus before her, taking in the worn lines, the wicked blade, and the reactive nodes that had saved her life more than once today. It was a brute of a mech, seventeen metres tall and eighty tonnes heavy, humanoid in proportions with the familiar bulk and hard angles of battle-worn armour all liveried in charcoal-grey, unadorned except for a designation on the shoulders: Omega-One-Two.

It was a god of war, stained with blood and death, representative of a life already lost and a rebirth in carnage and violence.

As far as second chances went, she mused, it could be a whole lot worse.