The Rothian interceptors only had a few seconds to avert disaster. Outremer’s command and control infrastructure had only recently gone through a drastic, though reversible, reduction in integration with the Cradle. A gap in centuries of unnaturally-fast reflexes allowed the simultaneous hack of two unmanned cargo ships to remain undetected by air traffic control for a whole minute.

As the first cargo ship’s fiery pieces lit up the night sky and crashed into the south-west side of the tower block, the second one flattened out its approach to the north-west. It screamed past neighbouring towers on a collision course as the swarm of Rothian craft surrounded it. The fighters which clamped onto the freighter exerted a huge effort to pull wide of the safe house. 

They fizzed past the safe house block by the narrowest of margins, rattling every window. Then, whoever was controlling the suicide bomber detonated what was left of their interstellar engine, barely a hundred metres from north side of the tower.

Freyr couldn’t see much from on the stretcher, except the robot hovering above her and the harsh lighting set in the ceiling. Then there was smoke, and things started to get quite hot. “Please make your way to the nearest fire exit point, indicated on the floor in front of you.” The building’s attendant AI requested calmly. “Other way! Down to the hangar!” Skopec roared, as a wall of fire licked under the newly emerged set of blast doors at the end of their corridor. The floor shook under their feet, and an alarmingly crisp sound of rending metal sounded from all around them. 

Freyr’s vision blurred, and a sudden nausea rose from the pit of her stomach up toward her throat. “I was…somewhere.”