Veda Kaur arrives as instructed, placing her DEUS on an intercept course with the SLAYER that will bring the two war machines scant meters from each other's hulls. Naturally, she and Devika are in constant nonverbal contact throughout this process, ensuring that they properly synchronize their movements to avoid collisions.

It's a maneuver that she an Veda have practiced countless times before. The same pneumatic claws that let a DEUS anchor itself to a dysofrag to brace its railgun can also be slotted into a series of properly spaced notches on a SLAYER's rear armor: essentially fusing the two weapons platforms together into a single larger unit.

"Get ready for some heavy Delta-V," Devika says. "We're about to link up and burn hard."

(Shreya gets ready.)

Deskyl backs off a little and nods.

Devika burns hard.

A SLAYER with a DEUS hooked up to it accelerates about half as fast as an unencumbered SLAYER, but with a few flash plates thrown into the mix that can still end up being pretty fast.

The cockpit shakes. Dysofrags whip rapidly across the forward display. The distance to their target shrinks.

The cockpit's inhabitants travel comfortably, of course.

Deskyl points out when their course needs correcting, and soon enough they reach their destination.

Their destination looks for the most part like any other large, uninhabited dysofrag drifting through the debris disk.

On closer examination with her DEUS' advanced sensor array, though, Veda is able to pick up anomalous infrared signals propagating from a narrow protrusion on the dysofrag's surface. It's coloration and texture resemble debris, but its shape is about right for a comm relay.

Veda flashes a rapid series of meaning scribbles to Devika while highlighting the protrusion in question.

"Bracing confirmed."

Veda takes the shot. The recoil from her railgun, if not compensated for, would be enough to send the SLAYER she's anchored to toppling end over end.

The hypervelocity spike she fired strikes the base of the suspicious protrusion dead on, shearing it completely in twain.

The SLAYER doesn't so much as twitch.

    "Deskyl sees about a dozen clones, and about that many workers."

"Clones?"

Deskyl nods.

    "Her magic shows her genetic similarity, and they're identical to you."

Shreya watches the frontal display as they decelerate. When Veda had fired her opening shot the target dysofrag was too far away to even be visible without significant magnification. Now that they've drawn within Deskyl's scanning range, its multi-kilometer outline stands out upon the starscape.

"Do they have any SLAYERs?"

The only SLAYER-scale life signature in the vicinity is the one Devika's piloting.

The covert facility does, however, have several concealed turrets embedded in the dysofrag's surface that will spray exploding flak across their approach?

Devika returns fire calmly.

The turrets blow apart one by one.

    "No, Ma'am."

None of the shrapnel makes contact, and Deskyl collects it into a neat ball with a fraction of her attention while she watches the emotion signatures in the compound.

(Emotion Read: Terrified.)

The turrets must be automated, because there doesn't seem to be a soul aboard the facility who's inclined to put up a fight.

    "Whoever's in charge, they aren't here. We should be able to shut the facility down with no problem, though. You can open comms whenever you're ready, Ma'am."

"Broadcasting now."

It takes a minute to get a reply.

As it turns out, the thing Veda shot off in the opening seconds of the engagement was a long range comm relay. Which means the technicians aboard the covert station have to hack together an exterior communication protocol from devices originally intended only for intra-facility communications.

"--please hold fire!" Once a communications channel has been established, the technicians in question waste no time in broadcasting their surrender. "We aren't hostile!"

    "Yes, Ma'am. We have some questions for you, and then we will be destroying this facility; if you cooperate, you'll be given time to evacuate. Do you understand?"

There is another period of radio silence, much briefer than the preceding one.

"We understand."

    "What is the purpose of this facility, to your understanding?"

(Emotion Read: trying to figure out whether to be more scared of the apparently-indestructible SLAYER parked outside or of the Scary People They Work For.)

"We're a biotech lab, ma'am?"