The newcomer sang: "Gordon's reconnaissance report should be—"

Wordless wyrmsong resonated in the distance.

The newcomer looked over to the curtains in Watterson's office.

"—There it is," he said.

"Shit!" the Brigadier General yelled.

"What's going on?" I asked.

The messenger wyrm turned around to look at me. "It's Gordon's reconnaissance report. Accept it."

I was going to ask what the wyrm meant by, "Accept it", but there was no need, because, a moment later, my question answered itself.

A tenuous mind-room opened up in my thoughts, accompanied by a windowed prompt. The mind-room wasn't fully solid or well-rendered, as if something was holding it back.

Open Gordon's reconnaissance report? (Y/N)

I had a doppelgenneth to tap "Yes".

It seemed that Gordon's song had been attempting to upload a miniature mind-world into my mind; a wyrmware app, as Greg would have called it. Like with any other new software, it quickly got to work once I gave it my permission to do so. In this case, the wyrmware swiftly consolidated into a live feed direct from Gordon's eyes, giving me a full sensory experience of what was going on outside.

I willed the volume lower to dial back some of the noise.

Enemies were approaching Fort Marteneiss.

I cursed softly once I got a good look at them.

To deal with Fort Marteneiss' wyrms, the Vyxit had sent a small army. Dozens of silver power-suited aliens rode on or marched alongside half as many chicken-walker battle mechs. Humanoids on Vyx hoverbikes bore arcs of light that crackled with nascent power. An advance guard of twEfE in silver suits flew alongside them, brandishing polearms not unlike naginatas, though the blades were covered in energy that flickered like a blacksmith's flame. The rest of the troops were a potpourri of different species. Six-limbed beings with a quadrupedal arrangement of stilt-like legs held fearsome guns in their relatively human arms. Bipedal mechs strode among them, towering over them at over twice their height. The mechs' smooth cockpits were opaque and inscrutable. I genuinely couldn't tell if they were living things themselves, or if they were merely being piloted by them.

The enemy forces were advancing up a ridge a couple hundred yards from the electrified fence near the old Fort, at the front end of the grounds. At the rate they were moving, we had about thirty seconds before the ground troops were in firing range; a little longer for the mechs, and half that for the hoverbikers and the twEfE.

"Oh fudge…" I muttered.

"Everyone out!" Watterson trumpeted. "Let's get moving! There's no time to lose!"

The Brigadier General slithered out into the hallway. I followed alongside her; others came up from behind.

"Is it always like this?" I asked.

"Never," Watterson said, her body's undulations sweeping spores out of the way. "I guess the Vyxit have finally decided we're more than just a thorn in their side. Just look at this," she added—obviously meaning Gordon's footage, "we're outmanned and outgunned." She shook her head. "What if we have to abandon the Fort?"

"Not if your spirits are combat-ready!" Vernon said. He and General Becksand walked alongside us with their legs phasing through our tail-bodies.

"Then get going!" Amity said. "You've got your work cut out for you."

"Now what?" I asked.

"I'm sorry about this, Dr. Howle," Watterson said, "but it looks like your ship-hunt is gonna have to wait." She glanced back at me as we turned a corner. Other wyrms slithered out ahead of us. "If you want my advice," she said, "you should run. This isn't your fight, and—pardon my language—but, you're too fucking important to risk losing in a battle like this."

The hallways vibrated with slithering wyrms.

"It doesn't need to just be me," I said. "Now that you know, you guys know, can help, too! You can try to enter the Vyx Network and do stuff!"

I started to slither ahead, but then a forcefield appeared in front of me, blocking my path.

I turned to face the Brigadier General.

"Genneth," she said, "what do you think is going to happen if and when the Vyxit discover there are groups of wyrms mounting a coordinated effort to infiltrate their network?" She didn't even let me reply. "Let me tell you: they'd take down pieces of their own network just to keep us from exploiting them. Hell, they might even start firing on their own ships, just to stop us from hooking up to them." Amity looked through the double doors at the end of the hallway. They were open wide, giving a clear view of the tarmac and the afternoon sun.

Vernon chimed in: "Since the Vyxit have the capacity to eliminate intruders in their Network, it likely means that you weren't the first wyrm to ever hook up to their Network. More importantly, because their fleet hasn't engaged in any kind of systemic response of the sort Brigadier-General Watterson suggested, that would seem to indicate that they don't view the intrusion of wyrms into the network as a weakness to be exploited by an organized enemy, but as a nuisance to be guarded against. If I were you, I wouldn't do anything that might change the Vyxit's view of the matter."

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"Fudge," I said, "he's right."

Amity nodded. "All the more reason you should get going. The Vyxit might still figure out the jig is up, even if there's only one wyrm trying to break in."

But I shook my head. "No. I'm not going to ask you and yours to stick your heads out for me without returning the favor. Also," I added, "I've got a feeling your tricks for fighting the Vyxit will come in handy."

Watterson finally slithered out in front of me and headed toward the door. "There's not much to learn," she said, not even bothering to turn to face me. "We try to catch them by surprise, and then use whatever we can to overload their shields."

"That's it?" I asked.

"And pray," she said, "if it suits you. Pray like the Angel was still alive."

I did whatever the wyrmly equivalent of gulping was.

Pushing off a wall, the Brigadier General flew along the ceiling, racing ahead of the group.

Several other wyrms slithered into the hall as I passed a side corridor.

"So… what's the plan?", I asked them.

I had to push off the compact tangle of wyrm bodies to pry myself forward. Fort Marteneiss' hallways hadn't been designed for wyrm brigades.

"You heard the Brigadier General," someone said. "We need to keep the bogies busy until our ghost fleet is up and running."

"Any ideas, Slick?" Dueright asked.

"You betcha." As Slick spoke, a third window opened in my consciousness. It brimmed with the battle schematics and data readouts, courtesy of Slick's wyrmsong.

Our Vyxit attackers were represented by a throng of insidious red dots steadily approaching the center of the mental display. A handful of valiant green dots—us, the Wyrm Brigade's fighters—were filtering out from the Fort's central complex.

"We'll, like, attack head-on, ya dig?" Slick said.

Arrows extended from the green dots, arcing toward the red.

"…and, we then scatter." Slick shimmied his hands.

New arrows appeared. These pointed away from the red army; the green dots followed them.

"If we're lucky," another wyrm said, "they'll chase us instead of attacking the Fort."

I nodded in agreement. "And that should give the spirits the time they need."

Then we went ahead, emerging from the back side of the main building. The tarmac was a spacious parking lot of tanks, aerostats, and mobile artillery units, all of which had been creatively rejiggered for wyrm use in one way or another.

Brigadier-General Watterson yelled: "Everybody, grab your shit!" She slithered out in front of us. "Let's do this!"

She waved her soldiers toward altered war machines. "Go go go!"

The wyrms quickly donned their armaments. Lt. Dueright must have caught me watching him, because as he slid on his wearable aerostat, he turned to me and said, "Sorry, there wasn't enough time for me to make some equipment for you."

Wyrms slinked off into the air all around us. They turned in broad helices as they rose.

The Lieutenant and I took off at the same time. "It's alright," I said, with a shake of my head, "I'll manage. After all, I am a wyrm sorcerer."

Dueright narrowed his eyes at me as we soared around and over the building. We spread out slightly, giving each other room to spiral about.

"Second and third squadrons," Watterson yelled, "take higher vantages! It'll divert their fire!"

Four of the battle wyrms swam up a good ten, fifteen feet above us. Four more rose up twice that height.

Down below, the ghosts were bringing new life to the Fort. They scrambled across the tarmac and onto the landing strip, opening aerostats' cockpits and doors. Tanks' manhole entrances popped open like soda cans.

Seeing the ramp to the underground garage and the bunkers, I craned my head down and back, and bellowed. "Yuta, Ichigo, we're under attack! Keep them safe!"

We will, they thought-replied, their voices slightly muted, due to the distance and the ground.

Up ahead, out of sight, the battle began to sound its tempests. The engagement had begun.

Lt. Dueright yelled. "Here they come!"

I turned to face the oncoming army. Hearing it was one thing. Seeing it, though, being part of it?

It was terrifying.

We were on a collision course with the heart of the storm.

Fricassee me, I was starting to miss the AVUs!

The Vyxit warriors' yells were a cacophony a dozen languages deep. The drama was brutal, and played to the shrieking tunes of rampant laser fire. Everyone from the skittering ground troops to the lumbering mechs unleashed their beams. The twEfE fired energy bolts from their pollards' tips of their polearms; the hoverbike riders loosed spectral arrows that radiated sonic-booms as they pierced the air. Gravity wells blossomed invisibly, sculpting the weapons' fire and drawing targets toward it.

The wyrm brigade fired back, pumping out sheets of leaden hail, storm against storm.

And I was smack-dab in the middle of it.

Wyrms wearing tanks like bucklers or artillery like backpacks scoured the oncoming enemies with their heat rays' red regard. I flung up protective forcefields and spread them as wide as I could; the Vyxit forces down below did the same. From a distance, all of the hissing, scorching munitions must have looked like the needle teeth of a monstrous jaw erupting from the ground.

The lights flashed like all the neon in the world.

Two of the hoverbikers reached for the sky, and called down shafts of lightning. One of the bolts struck me in the back. My senses run haywire.

A wyrm roared. "Go go go!"

A handful of our forces shot forward with plexuses gathered around their claws. Others swooped down at the Vyxit, bombing them with wide waves of spore breath. Two of the brigade's wyrms spewed streams of spores out through the holes in their backs, like screaming locomotives.

As for me, I collected pataphysical threads and wove them around myself in a swirling, scintillating brocade, and then dove down, throwing myself into a spin.

I aimed for the center of the horde.

twEfE blades and energy mortars whizzed past, but I simply outran them, rushing forward and down until I was mere inches from the ground, with the enemy racing after me.

I swung my tail in a wide circle as I let my power flow. My brocade spun with me, swirling—expanding—as I let my power flow.

Being fully wyrm, now, there was no reason for me to hold back.

My psychokinetic discharge was an atom bomb whose cold, lightless burn mushroomed fungus, sod, grit, and rock in earth-carving clouds.

You'd have thought I'd opened a portal to hell.

The spreading waves blasted a massive pit in the earth, redistributing matter in solid waves that sent the Vyxit around me flying. Some of them stitched themselves to the ground or the air with fibrous plexuses, flailing in place. The twEfE warriors deflected the hurtling debris with their magic, shrugging off mech walkers and dead trees like so much blowing rain.

Slick yelled. "Holy shit!"

He sounded impressed.

While I appreciated the praise, it wasn't like I was trying to show off. I was just in a bad mood, and the Vyxit weren't helping.

It really would have been helpful to have Suisei here. Without his presence, I only remembered those parts of his knowledge that he'd shared with me directly. It would have helped to have his expertise to draw from.

I'd just have to make do with what I had on hand.

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