Callista was making short work of the remaining enemies.

            That was bothering her.

            She was more than happy to see the red dots decrease on her HUD. The spotters around the city were giving all-clear signs for their sectors and sending out emergency reserves to fight fires and dig bodies out of rubble. Even the artillery was noticeably slowing down. It was nice to have less computations to make for dodging and fighting, but it was all so strange.

            The main enemy force was still sitting it out.

            Callista had been playing around with the idea that they might be settling in for a siege, but she just couldn’t make that plan work out in her head. They’ve already basically leveled the place. Nearly all the defensive fortifications are in ruins. At this point they could very nearly walk in and plant a flag.

            Callista knew she was doing well. The amount of MACs she managed to destroy today would make any accountant cry at the money that went up in flames, but she was certain her performance wasn’t ‘scaring off’ the enemy. So why aren’t they making the final push?

            She was brought back to reality upon seeing one of the red markers erased from her screen and a green marker took its place. The call from Lionel came in almost immediately, “Callista, Jace sortied.”

            “You sound worried.”

            “Well… yes. A bit. You see,” Lionel’s voice came across sounding quite worried, “Guinevere is in a bit of a funk. Family issues, you could say. She managed to pass a bit of that issue on to Jace who, of course, was already in a difficult position as you know.” He paused for a while, “At any rate, he managed to defeat an enemy and, from what the spotters are relaying, he’s already moving on to the next one.”

            Having Jace and Guinevere in such mental distress was disastrous. It was people like Guinevere that won battles, and Jace was her main tool at the moment. With both of them in such a state, and even Lionel sounding more scared than nervous, Callista realized she was probably the only person in a position to try to help.

            However, Callista had a very hard time trying to figure out how to help people through these situations. How could she possibly talk them through their issues when she barely bothered talking in the first place. After all, Callista thought, wasn’t her attempt at cheering up Jace proof enough that she wasn’t the one for the job?

            Jace.

            Lionel.

            Guinevere.

            Callista liked all of them. And now it seemed like they were all falling apart right in front of her. No matter how hard she racked her brain, no matter how deep she searched in her soul, the only thing she could think to say was: “Is Jace ok to fight?”

            There was another long silence, “He made it through one battle just now. He hasn’t even activated the new system yet. The reports coming in say it was a bit of a struggle, but I think we can at least try to believe in him. It seems like he believes in himself at any rate since he’s about to start fighting that next enemy.”

            Callista hadn’t moved her MAC since their conversation began. Now she stared at her display and watched as the green and red dot were updated by the spotters.

            It was over faster than his first encounter.

            The green dot started moving again.

            Callista tried to contact Jace, but he didn’t respond. She didn’t like it, but Lionel may be right. She might just have to put a bit of faith in him… in everyone.

            She simply wasn’t the one for the job. Callista had her talents. Above all else, she was easily one of the best MAC pilots around. She simply wasn’t the sort of person that could help in these emotional situations. All she could do… the only thing she could do is hope that those three can bring themselves back from the brink.

            There were only a few enemy MACs left in the surrounding area and all of them were far closer to Jace’s position. Callista started to toggle through the maps of the city. The only thing she could really do was use her experience to see if any of Jace’s potential encounters would be in unfavorable positions. She checked through defense emplacement maps and used security footage to try to see which streets would be mountains of concrete and which would still be open.

            While trying to log and upload which buildings she knew were collapsed, hopefully being of some use to Jace, she saw the emergency distress beacon map. It wasn’t normally a map MAC pilots would use. It was essentially just for emergency services. But… Callista stared at the map.

            The entire city was flashing. Nearly every shelter across the city was sending out a beacon. Beacons for cave ins, beacons for gas leaks, beacons for flooding. Callista felt a deep sense of horror.

            This was what fighting at home meant. Losing your own at every turn. Not just soldiers, but civilians too. Every mistake she made ended up making the situation even worse. Even her good decisions may have given birth to these beacons. When she was killing the enemy and their units were going critical, more of these beacons must have started to flash.

            Callista felt sick. She vomited a bit, but she still kept her eyes on the screen. Where were the emergency service teams?

            Callista realized the answer was simple: there just weren’t enough of them.

            Before she really knew what she was doing, she was already at one of the collapsed shelters. There was no one else there. No help for them. Callista stared at her screen again and watched as Jace’s green dot clashed with another red dot. Jace’s dot survived after a few minutes and moved on.

            The red dot disappeared.

            But this beacon was still on.

            Callista made her decision: if the main force started moving, she would be the first to meet them, but until then she had to try to do something. Her MAC might be a weapon of war, but it would make a good enough excavator in a pinch. She tuned into the emergency services frequency and started digging through rubble.

            For a while she found it hard to take her eyes off the HUD. Watching every little move that Jace’s green dot made. Maybe she was feeling guilty, but with each new clash she found herself less and less worried. Obviously something had clicked inside Jace’s head. At this rate he might even come out a proper soldier like Callista. 

            Callista had always thought of herself as a soldier first and foremost. It was her calling. It was what she excelled at. It was what she had always done. But seeing the faces that were practically soaked in joy as she dug them out of collapsed shelters made her smile in a way that was completely foreign to her.

            Maybe for the first time, she felt like she was actually doing some good.

            She wasn’t fighting threats outside of the city limits and she wasn’t on foreign soil fighting in wars she didn’t understand. This time she was right there alongside the people she wanted to protect. She knew exactly what she was doing.

            The thankful faces of all those people were a nice addition as well.

            It was strange. Fighting at home like this was what was bringing death and destruction to all her fellow citizens. She hated that, but it was only because she was fighting at home that she was allowed to feel this way. To actually feel like she was doing something. She tried not to think too hard about these things. She decided to focus on her new goal of helping her people. It was a good goal, and Callista felt happy for it.

            Maybe when she got drunk next time with everyone, she could show them a bit of this Callista. The look on Jace’s face would be to die for. If he saw her smiling? That would be an interesting night to say the least. She giggled uncharacteristically at the thought.

            Of course, this was all supposing they survived. But Callista was starting to come to a pretty solid conclusion on what was happening out there. No matter the angle she approached it from, she was just coming out to one answer: The Alley was in negotiations with Atlantea for a peaceful transfer of the city. Normally getting absorbed into The Alley would mean a death sentence, especially for pilots like Callista, but Atlantea had some good ammunition for negotiations at this point. Nearly twenty destroyed MACs would hurt any country’s wallet.

            Her MAC was doing a surprisingly decent job of clearing away the rubble. Callista was starting to get the feeling that these machines weren’t just massive metallic murder monsters.

            Maybe, just maybe, they could be used for some good.

            Then again, Callista was nearly about to laugh at the thought. The amount of money she’s throwing away by operating a MAC like this is probably enough to make any city official cry.

            Maybe firetrucks are still the way to go.

            Firetrucks? Actually, Callista was starting to think that might be a pretty nice job for her. She’d get to see a lot more of these smiling faces. She was also better equipped to deal with seeing the dead, so she would probably be pretty good at carrying on when things went south. And, she realized as she saw the firefighters busting through molten doors and charging into rooms packed with toxic smoke, it was probably a job with plenty of adrenaline-inducing moments.

            Callista was a great warrior. She was well aware of how valuable she was in that regard, but maybe when The Alley takes over she can go for a different job. They wouldn’t want a potentially traitorous MAC pilot anyway.

            She managed to gingerly guide her arm to a fifth floor opening and watched as a child climbed on. The little girl (at least, Callista thought it was a girl, the soot made it hard to tell) wrapped her arms as far as she could around the MAC’s thumb, holding on for dear life as Callista lowered her down to the ground.

            Maybe being a solider was her true calling. Maybe it was what she was best at.

            But still,

            Callista was pretty sure she wouldn’t mind being mediocre at her next job if she could just see stupidly happy faces like these once in a while.

            She noticed an open frequency lighting up. Callista thought it may have been from a shelter that couldn’t get their distress beacon to activate so she tuned in, “People of Atlantis, we have stopped our shelling. Let us come together as the dearest of friends and put an end to this needless destruction! We could make this world a far better place by saving our comrades and your citizens from more meaningless deaths.”

            The message continued to repeat and continued to sound obnoxious. Callista immediately disliked the owner of the self-satisfied voice.

            She took one last look at the happy face of the little girl who was being coaxed down off her thumb by firefighters. She was very cute. Callista wondered what would happen to kids like her when this was all over.

            But now wasn’t the time for those thoughts. She needed to deal with the situation at hand. No one else responded to the message, so Callista took the initiative, “Please stop the recording, your voice is insufferable. I’ll meet you at the coordinates.”

            Most of the communication relays were down at this point so she was having a hard time getting back in contact with Lionel. She could only access these open channels. She hoped someone at HQ managed to hear that message and dispatch a team to start talks with the enemy.

            Callista knew well enough that she wasn’t much of a negotiator.

                                                                                    ~~~