He mounted his bike and rode back toward the Bellato outpost, leaving the three factions to redraw their battle lines another day.
“And you called me ?”
Lise looked at Kaelen. “Is this how it always works?”
Kaelen lowered his weapon. He pulled a stabilizer field generator from his pack—standard Bellato field medic gear. “Nobody fires a shot. Nobody claims this sector. We get the wounded out, then we scatter. Agreed?”
Kaelen arrived first. Echo-7—a nervous Bellato engineer named Lise—stood beside her disabled MAU. But she wasn’t alone. A Cora mystic knelt nearby, tending to a wounded soldier in silver-and-black robes. And behind them, an Accretian combat unit—its chassis dented, one optic flickering—had planted its massive frame like a shield between the group and a sinkhole full of radioactive crystals.