The Machine Army was loose. They hadn’t breached the perimeter because there was no perimeter anymore. Dragon was running a program using some of the Marduk’s resources, among a wealth of other resources, simply trying to use the data they had to find every place a tinker had been, using months-old data to try and work out where there might be workshops, damaged or discarded tinkertech.

Every single piece the Machine Army could scrounge up was something that would pass through the entire network. In minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months, the Machine Army would take what it gleaned from one broken piece of technology and every single drone, installation, and tool across the network would see upgrades.

They were a threat on an existential level and they weren’t even in the top two most immediate threats.

Saint was on that task. Petty and stupid as the man was, Saint had nonetheless dedicated years of his life to studying and arming himself against artificial intelligence. He knew names, he knew methods. Dragon was providing the man access to his home computer, and he was looking up articles on electromagnetic pulses, distortion tech, and other means of disrupting signals.

Years ago, Saint had preyed on Dragon, shutting off her ability to connect to her satellite network, using several of these same mechanisms to slow down and hamper whatever mech or device she was inhabiting. He would kill her, block any final uploads, and leave her to self-revive from an hours-old backup with no knowledge of what he’d done or how he’d beat her.

Then he would dismantle the mech she had been using, repurpose it, and outfit his team in power armor rooted in the same technology.

Now he worked to do something similar to the Machine Army, which was effectively in service to the wounded Simurgh.

As that thought crossed Defiant’s mind, he saw the Simurgh change direction.

In service to the wounded Simurgh… because she spent long enough in their proximity.

He hated that he noticed her, because it felt like manipulation, like she was leading him to his next natural thought: she had spent far too long roosting on Dauntless.

Dauntless fought the Simurgh, striking out, over and over again, every time she pulled out of cover. The Titan was relentless, and stopped only when Fortuna’s group made its move.

She was already healing. Missing wings were growing back, and her lower body existed as a series of feathers, touching end to end, or end to middle. Like she was the thinnest of lace, formed of feathers harder than steel. It gave her legs, and suggested she was hollow, where Behemoth had had a skeleton and a core.