"This isn't going to be even remotely fair, is it?"

Devika is used to battles where both sides are meaningfully able to inflict harm on each other. That's what makes them battles.

When describing any violent exchange in which Deskyl participates, Deskyl thinks, 'battle' is perhaps a gross misapplication of terms.

"Usually a DEUS would hang back during a siege to stay out of harm's way, but I could ask Veda to move a little closer if..."

As she speaks, Devika relaxes back into the SLAYER uplink and consults its navigational systems.

"...Wait." She frowns. Then curses. "We've lost the thread."

Deskyl points.

"Thanks."

Devika locks in the new vector and kicks off the dysofrag they're anchored to.

She tries to strike a good balance between feigning system damage and approaching their destination at speed.

Deskyl continues meditating, and keeps their flight path well clear of debris.

Devika overrides the failsafes on one of her flash plates in order to intentionally activate it at the wrong angle: wasting a fission charge and suggesting to anyone watching them that the SLAYER is barely functional.

She then sends a short transmission to Veda, voice only this time: "Reaction mass depleted, flash plates inoperable. Please come in close to assist?"

(She receives a laconic squiggle in reply.)

This gets another approving nod, and then she sinks deeper into her trance to check how their performance is being received.

The general tenor of her sense-of-being-watched has not changed.

Veda’s emotions, meanwhile, have become a lot more complicated; unsurprising, seeing as she is currently contemplating supporting an attack on an unknown target, in allied territory...

Good.

    "They don't seem to be onto us, she says. She's going to keep watching for danger anyway; they're still watching us, and she's not sure how tolerant they're going to be of us staying here."

"I don't suspect we'll have long after Veda catches up with us. I suggest we determine their exact coordinates before that happens and then, once the DEUS is synced up with us, discard our attempts at subterfuge and make an approach at maximum available speed?"

Deskyl nods.

    "She'll need to read your mind again, Ma'am."

“...which she hasn’t done yet because, if she goes that deep into my head, she won’t ever quite stop being there?”

Another nod.

    "There's a range limit, and she will mostly be able to ignore you, but yes."

Devika has given the matter some thought, because it’s clearly important to Deskyl that she do so.

The conclusion that she’s come to is that she is the sort of person who would die in order to achieve mission objectives, and that this price is less than that, and so of course she should gladly pay it.

“Tell her to take whatever she needs.”

DZ nods, "Yes, Ma'am." (She doesn't sign; Deskyl still doesn't have her eyes open to see it. The Sith must be keeping up with the conversation some other way.)

Okay. So it’s already happening.

Think happy thoughts

And Deskyl returns to the deeper trance, floating still in the SLAYER's cockpit, her breathing slow and regular. It takes a little longer this time, but after a few minutes gives DZ a heading and distance and says that she'll be able to correct their course as they get closer.

“On my way.”

The SLAYER shifts its heading slightly, angling for a rendezvous with Veda’s DEUS that’ll leave a relatively clear path to the target.

“Anything I can do to help?”

     "You're already helping, Ma'am, she's borrowing your hearing while she meditates."

"Oh."

Shreya is very happy to be useful.

The dysofrag field is noticeably easier to navigate, now; rubble moves out of the SLAYER's way practically as soon as Devika realizes she'd like it to.

Oh. That makes sense.

So her mind has become an open book? Devika has a vague sense she should care more about this development than she does. All the stories she'd read as a child, and all the conversations she's had with other soldiers, suggested that Humans Like Privacy. They have secrets. Vulnerabilities, vices, and other things they dread coming to light.

Devika doesn't. Maybe some cycle she will, if she's allowed to be her own person for long enough? But you can't have regrets without first having a past, and her past is such a tiny sliver of a thing. She has, she thinks, literally nothing to hide.

Deskyl drifts up to offer a hug, again, and signs an ambivalent no.