Green theurgic light covered Gaz, lit her way through the Root station as she ran. Felina carried Yira along, the priestess incapable of the movement which the rest could manage so easily. Claws, both feline and mechanical bit into the wood as the branch whipped about, trying to dislodge them. She could only guess at how Mako stayed connected to the surface of the branch as it moved, perhaps scales on his feet bit into the bark?


    No matter.


    A wave surged toward Gaz. Her nanites clenched into the bark, even as the field surrounding her took damage from the green light. Incredible force, enough to kill baseline dead, rippled through her. It tried to send her flying into the rest of the churning branches but failed.


    Shouts broke out ahead. Their thin-wire connection had already broken and they had to speak in voice to share information now. A second branch scraped along the first and sent bark chips and smaller branches flying toward Gaz.


    Evan and Mako dashed away from each other, both narrowly avoiding the wooden limbs as they tried to crush them along their path. Gaz fired jets from her hips as she leaped away from the branch, somersaulting over the second incoming branch. She passed within millimeters of the second branch, now able to make out the green glow lining it as it narrowly missed squishing her body.


    Jets fired again at the apex of her leap and sent her back to the surface of the first branch. The moment her feet made contact, she was already sprinting forward. The others had reformed, none of them taking damage from the Root station’s attempt to destroy them.


    The priests had to know the group was here now, had to be trying to kill them. But none had made an appearance so far. Only the station itself and its disparate sections struck out and tried to murder them.


    Was something else also attacking the Root clerics or were they waiting for Gaz and her team at their destination? She could guess at this point.


    Evan led their team, which was good because Yira was having trouble. The oracles had been correct, at least in that regard. They’d needed Evan to survive this place. Between the two magic users, Gaz and the others continued to narrowly avoid the Root station’s automatic defenses.


    With processors to spare, Gaz kept watch for their enemies. Among the ever-shifting foliage, the clerics could have easily hidden themselves and wrecked havoc open Gaz and the others. None of them appeared.


    What did appear was a boxy cyborg with massive hands and feet, big blocks Gaz would have recognized even without the slight covered afforded by the anti-ship weapon in her hands.


    Jaree.


    Gaz shouted a coded warning to the others, saving their lives as she jumped from the spot where Jaree fired her weapon. A line of crimson light emerged from the end of the gun like a targeting beam and then spread apart in moments.


    The heat wash melted away layers of the nano-armor Evan had given her. Processors tossed up alerts, the most significant of which showed Felina and Yira caught in the edge of the red beam.


    With nothing to hold onto and no way to adjust her momentum, Gaz fired her jets and morphed her body into a tiny bird form.


    Jaree shouted in glee as pieces of ashen remnants of the station floated down around her. Knowing the capabilities of her sensors, Gaz would not be able to avoid Jaree’s notice. The ash was too thin for that.


    She’d turned to fire at Gaz, too late. The thin beam of the pulse weapon reached out into the distance behind Gaz, and its expansion missed her by even more than the first. Gaz, however, struck Jaree right in the face.


    Nanites exploded out of swarm hives, covering Jaree and burrowing into her systems. As expected, the advanced cyborg did not succumb to Gaz’s attack. She dropped her pulse weapon and clapped her hands onto her own face. This time she caught Gaz’s wing and crushed it against her own form.


    Hostile nanostructures met her own, heating the air even more than the pulse weapon’s discharge.


    Gaz surrendered the chunk of her body to the bruiser cyborg and dropped to the group, already retrieving mass and shifting into a small, but quick battle form. Very similar to Evan’s new combat chassis, Gaz resembled a large spider as she crawled up the back of Jaree’s legs.


    Jets and lasers fired in sequence from the back of Jaree’s calves as Gaz clambered up the giant. She dropped to her butt and slammed her leg into the base of the branch, trying to crush Gaz against the wood.


    Stolen story; please report.


    Circling the massive cyborg’s legs, Gaz presented herself as a target, already knowing what Jaree would do. She slammed her own fists down on her leg, missing Gaz but shaving a few atoms of her substance off in the process. Also destroying one of Jaree’s own legs to spite Gaz. There was an advantage in knowing her foe.


    In the moment afforded to her by Jaree’s blind attacks, Gaz formed a spike at her arm and drove it like a screw through the massive cyborg and out her backside.


    Jaree laughed at Gaz, mocking her as the spike missed anything which might have been considered vital.


    The second time she brought a fist down on her own body, she hit Gaz as squarely as she could. The force of the impact sent red text flying through Gaz’s vision, warning her of the danger to her organics. Sensors still in place, Gaz could not help but watch as Jaree raised her hand to finish Gaz off.


    And froze.


    “What the fu.fufufufufufufu…” Jaree began glitching as Evan’s spindly form stepped around her.


    “Well there you are, Gaz.” His composite white face spread into a grin and said, “you know, this guy’s organics are pretty flimsy.” Blue static erupted over Jaree’s body and the cyborg screamed. “You want him alive?”


    “Them… no.” Gaz knew what Jaree had done, but more importantly, Jaree knew what Gaz had done. “Can I use their chassis?”


    Evan’s smirk was obvious as the life signs faded from Jaree’s chassis. “Go for it. I’ve done enough work on you that you should be able to slide right in, more or less.” As he spoke and Jaree went limp, the massive cyborg’s cyberbrain ejected from their chassis and into Evan’s hand. A compartment opened on his chest and sucked the brain in. “I bet Nathaniel would kill for his.” He winked. “Get in there and let’s roll.”


    Gaz crawled into the space left behind by Jaree’s mind. With Evan’s assistance, Gaz took over executive control from the dead cyborg. Not as smooth and easy to control as her own chassis, Jaree possessed fewer features, so there was less for Gaz to worry about.


    Best of all, the Root cluster didn’t seem to attack Jaree’s chassis, though it was attacking Evan’s. When she stood and flexed her limbs, Evan hopped onto Jaree’s back and latched himself in place by reconfiguring his limbs.


    “Does their memory bank tell you where their friends are?”


    Evan tapped Gaz’s shoulder and spoke into her mind. “Yes, might I suggest grabbing that pulse weapon?”


    Right! Gaz chuckled the way Alaya would have as she bent down and lifted up the pulse cannon. “Should I just open us a path?” This particular cannon possessed most of the expected pulse features including width and length modulation.


    Not only did Evan send Gaz a map of the surrounding section of Root cluster, which was no longer attacking them with its branches, but pinpointed the exact location of the hangar. Several little blue dots stood between them and the hangar, all of which alleged to be “friendlies” from Jaree’s perspective. The friend of my enemies… Gaz took aim and calibrated the cannon’s systems to wipe out a ten meter radius cylinder between her and the hangar, leaving open enough space before hitting the large room to keep from damaging any of the ships within.


    Weapons of this size and power should have had more recoil. Aside from the heat discharge, which Jaree’s chassis ate and dissipated, there was almost no indication she’d even activated the firing sequence. Red light washed over the branches of the Root station and then they were simply gone. All of the little blue blips disappeared too leaving a two hundred meter space between Gaz and the hangar.


    Where the Mousehome sat waiting for them.


    Powerful launch jets flared out of Jaree’s legs and arms, sending her hurtling toward the hangar as a large, familiar ship rose up and swiveled toward them. It was the Mal-Ware’s flagship.


    In the moment, Gaz had a choice, fire upon the pirate ship and risk hitting the Mousehome, or let them go and evade the inevitable attacks from the massive ship’s weapons.


    So much death.


    With only milliseconds to decide, Gaz chose life. She had no idea if Alaya were aboard the flagship, no way to know if Kirk were alive. She tossed the cannon aside and shifted every system in Jaree’s chassis to evasion. AI clumsily, yet effectively dodged the blasts from the flagship, who’d held off firing their serious weapons at her, likely to avoid destroying huge chunks of the station. Or because they still had people aboard.


    Several little blue blips appeared across Gaz’s virtual map with a single wide-area blob of red. It was hundreds of meters off to the relative south and in the opposite direction of the now fleeing pirate flagship. Gaz overflew The Mousehome where Evan dropped and skittered across the top of the ship.


    EMC systems flashed across Jaree’s controls, someone either aboard the Root station or the pirate vessel had pulsed her and failed to knock Jaree out of the air. But they no longer had her flagged as a friendly.


    She tore through the roots, enabling plasma blades the length of the average baseline. Jaree’s was the kind of chassis which made Gaz open her mouth in glee as she activated its automatic defensive systems. Blades the color and heat of a main sequence star reduced the oncoming branches to so much ash. The parts of the station which tried to bar her passage fell into darkened bits of coal and desiccated pieces of bark.


    Red lines of blackened, glowing angry red trailed behind Gaz as if the Root station couldn’t regenerate from the damage she’d done, or from the amount she could sustain. Her target area loomed large before Gaz who struck an unexpected metal bulkhead front first. Sparks flew from the impact as pieces of Jaree’s chassis went dead from the force and heat generated. Not even enough to slow the massive bruiser chassis, Gaz righted herself and slid the rest of the way down the side of the metal surface, hunting for a doorway which would give her access to the contents. Judging from the power demands, a serious bundle of communications or other forms of equipment resided here. And Gaz was either going to break it or take whatever she found.


    Hopefully, it pointed the way to Alaya.