The captured officers proved to be of greater benefit than was expected by anyone in the Kepler military. The Major and the Captain that they had captured both had an Imperial family, and the three other pilots were considered high-value assets.

The Cygnus Fleet decided to use the prisoner exchange negotiation to escape the debacle the Lord Commander had created, holding him up as a warmonger and scapegoat while arranging a ceasefire and withdrawal plan from the planet. It was only six of the eighteen Generals on the planet captured or killed, but it was all in one day and included the Lord General, who currently had the favor of a large part of the administration in the Defense Department.

[Bridge Defense zone, prepare for a return to the Abraham Kepler. Liftoff is scheduled in 72 hours, please begin preparing your lander for reorbit launch. Central Command requires confirmation of lander functionality within the next 24 hours. Inform Command directly if the lander is inoperative for alternative removal.] Comes the orders for Max and his unit.

[You heard the command. Time to dig up the lander and run diagnostics. Seventy-two hours until we're back on board the Abraham Kepler.] Max relays to the units gathered within the village. That causes some confusion, as they did not all arrive on board the Abraham Kepler.

It's not unheard of though, and with an intense orbital battle, there is a good chance that some of the transport ships are destroyed or currently inoperative. The standard procedure after such a battle is to extract everyone as efficiently as possible and reorganize at a staging base to refill the complements of the ships that are still in service, as well as replenish the ranks of depleted units. They might be added to new recruitment, or possibly retired early in the case of an infantry unit that is nearing the end of its service.

"What are your plans for after this, General Carb? I heard you lost your copilot early in the rebellion before we had even arrived." Max asks the Phalanx Class pilot that evening, curious as to what his plans are. The Wrath of Carb was stationed on this planet before the battle, plus this is his homeworld, but at this point, most of the population is dead and the planet itself is in horrible shape.

"I'll be with our esteemed guests until the transfer, then I'm going to go back and see if there's anything left of my home. This is my world, after all." The General confirms.

With the help of so many mecha, digging up the lander only takes a few hours, and the systems all test well. A quick test fire lifts it off the ground and out of the pit they dug for it without any issues, so Max relays the information of the test fire to Command and has the infantry double-check the structure and do another pressure holding test. They are the ones who will be unprotected against the atmosphere inside the lander, if it leaks they all die, so they're the best ones to test it.

For two days, Max was stuck in the Academy command room with the ranking officers, doing paperwork while the defense crew at the bridge packed everything that they possibly could into the lander for merits and war trophies. They have acquired a vast amount of gear since their arrival, from two different nations. Mecha chassis, the armored personnel transports they mounted rocket pods on, spare parts, guns, and all sorts of goodies that they are hoping to keep for their next engagements.

In the end, they barely fit all of the important equipment. But it does all fit and is slightly below the maximum allowed weight for the lander once their mecha and troops are added.

Notifications come in from Command four hours before liftoff. The Wrath of Carb will be staying behind, his duty requires him to be here on the planet and orbital scans show that his home city is relatively intact. The officers gathered for Ransom will be going with Max and his men to the Abraham Kepler, where the official prisoner exchange will occur.

The Shining Darkness will also be returning to the Abraham Kepler, with the Carpe Noctem plus an attached armored regiment joining them, as their transport ship was destroyed in the orbital battle. Most of the infantry and mecha from the bridge that didn't start the battle with Max are from those regiments, so it works out perfectly for them, getting to rejoin their comrades right away instead of having to wait for reorganization.

"So, will you finally be joining us down here, Tarith?" Captain Tarsus jokes after the orders are finalized. "Or have you become so comfortable in there that you're not planning to leave?"

Captain Tarsus doesn't get a verbal response. Instead, the data transfer function on his wrist device receives a photo of a cockpit bunk piled with soft blankets and pillows, with a data tablet open to the book 'Embracing Minimalism for a Bigger Life' sitting in the middle.

"So, what did she have to say?" Max asks, wondering when he'll see his friend in the flesh again, and the Captain shows him the picture, laughing.

"Yeah, that sounds like her. I'll get the crew to make her disembark before everyone has dispersed." Max assures the eager Captain.

The longer-serving members of the defense forces have been telling ghost stories to the new arrivals about Tarith's Rage being an autonomous mecha, operating itself on pure bloodlust ingrained into its onboard systems. The infantry is known to be superstitious, and the rumor seems to have caught on entirely too well. Her aggressive combat style and the modified voices that she uses for the intercom didn't help the situation either.

In the end, Max doesn't have to do anything to get her to come out. A protocol notice just before liftoff informs the entire Battalion that the senior officer and all present Nobles are required to attend to the captured officers personally until the hand-off, with two armed guards for each "Esteemed Guest."

Nico's name is listed on the order as "Lady Tarith", with verifying documents sent from the Kepler 142 station confirming her identity and lineage at the time that Tarith's Rage was deployed.

"Who did they bang to get the VIP treatment?" a sour-sounding Nico complains as she exits her mecha for the first time since they left orbit and the nearby officers laugh at her irritable nature and the way she shields her eyes even in the thick haze that covers the sun these days.

"Captain Tarsus, Captain Catan, you will each send five men to guard duty. I don't want any screw-ups, so make them good." Max orders, and the two officers leave to inform their troopers.

Max's command guarantees both Captains will be on the guard team, along with a few superstitious soldiers eager to see the elusive Nico Tarith in the flesh. They bring two more officers and two enlisted men each. Both in case chores need to be done and to give the enlisted fewer chances to complain. The possible existence of a Young Lady inside Tarith's Rage has been a significant talking point and rumor amongst the troops, after all. Leaving the enlisted out would just breed resentment.

"The Lady Tarith seems to be in an irritable mood." One of the captured Cygnus Generals notes to Max when he sees her going over the orders with the Captains.

"She hasn't killed anyone in three days, it makes her grumpy." Max laughs.

"But honestly, I think she just doesn't want to get out of her cockpit and interact with people. Out here, she can't just turn her radio to a different channel to tune chatter out."

Max knows she had done that more than once, he saw it in her mind. Everyone else believed that her radio was down and she was working to repair it, but in reality, she was just more interested in the book that she had brought with her than human interaction and only had the volume on sensors and alerts turned up.

Even with orders to accompany the other officers during their trip to orbit, Nico waited until the last minute to exit her mecha, after everyone else was secured in for takeoff. She hopped down from the hull to the attached securement beam with a graceful bounce that was clearly well beyond what average humans should be capable of, waving to the assembled infantry as they sat staring in shock.

"I thought she was going to stay locked in?"

"Didn't you hear, she was ordered to accompany the captive Generals?"

"She's so tiny."

That was the overwhelming thought in the minds of the Battalion on first meeting Pilot Nico. Her 145cm height hadn't increased even a little bit during their stay, where Max had already needed to switch dress uniforms, his old ones were a size too small in the chest and legs when he tried to put them on the first morning after the battle. The pilot suits were much more forgiving of sizing.

"Welcome, Captain... Nico?" The door guard greeted her at the entry to the prisoner's cabin.

"You're Captain Nico, of Tarith's Rage?" he stammered in shock.

"Good reaction, I like that surprised face. Now, will you kindly open that door and get yourself secured so we can lift off?" Nico smiled back at him.

The guard opens the door, securing himself into the hard-mounted chair nearby before closing it behind her.

"Sorry for the delays, gentlemen. We should be ready for liftoff."

The look on every Cygnus Officer's face is one of complete shock. This is the pilot of the fearless and brutal Tarith's Rage? This small child? She wears a perfectly fitted Captain's uniform, so it must be her, but they had expected that rash and aggressive pilot to be someone large and imposing. The person in front of them doesn't fit the image in their minds at all.

"Are we sure that the Kepler Kingdom hasn't been committing war crimes? The captured Major asks. "There are international conventions on recruitment for war that prohibit the use of child soldiers."

Nico laughs and hops into a chair to secure herself while the others look for a good answer. Because, yes, by all legal standards, their command staff is proof of war crimes. Neither Stalwart nor Tarith's Rage should have been sent into battle for an entire year after they had been assigned to these pilots, and in normal circumstances, they wouldn't have been. The rebellion had led to an emergency deployment, and the fact that there were cadet pilots in Crusaders who had not met the two years after puberty legal standard for adulthood never occurred to Command. Such an early advancement to Piloting Crusaders was all but unheard of, so it wasn't something that they checked.

After the battle of Belmont, they were both fully commissioned and battle-tested officers, so Command simply adjusted their birthdates in the official records and pretended that nothing untoward had ever happened.

"Appearances can be deceiving, General. While I'm certain I still look to be in the prime of my youth, I can assure you that I was already an experienced officer when the battles between Kepler and the Cygnus army started." Nico assures them, glossing over the finer details.

"We were in the same class at the academy, Captain Nico is only a few minutes younger than I am." Max assures them, putting their minds at ease. While he still looks young, he has filled out into a tall and well-muscled young man, his closely cropped, sandy blonde hair has darkened a little from his time inside the mecha and the stress of battle has added wisdom to his face that makes him look more mature and responsible.

To Cygnus, the minimum legal age for combat troops is 14. Max is only a year younger than that in this reincarnation, but with the memories of his past life slowly filling in, it has been a while since he felt his age. The captured officers take a moment to digest the news about the petite pilot being a veteran before this engagement and a comfortable silence momentarily fills the room.

Now that the battle is over and he can actually relax, Max is also starting to feel the change in his system. Live combat helps a soldier grow more than any form of training, and Max is certain that he had gained a lot from this deployment, he simply hadn't felt a need to look at the details, when he could look at the results of the increases in the accuracy and speed of his multiple targeting skills.

[Keres Max]

[Compatibility Determined] Rank A

[Primary Attribute] STR 2.5x modifier

[Secondary Bonuses] DEX 2x, SPD 2x

[STR] 3+105%

[DEX] 3+62%

[SPD] 3+62%

[Innate Talent] Mind Reading

[Additional Function Unit Optimization]

[Additional Function Multi Point Targeting]

[Additional Function Split Fire]