[color=00a651]"Alice, what the hell are you doing?!"[/color] Maki cried out as the Eagle lost power and she saw the AI abandon the cockpit and head off elsewhere, leaving Trapp and her alone against the Coalition machines. It wasn't as if they hadn't trained for scenarios like this: Pilots from the 101st were more valuable than the machines they controlled. Finding someone with the experience and skill necessary for their missions was difficult, so the UEE would spare no expense to retrieve them. It was probably why the Coalition was even considering forcing their surrender instead of just dropping charges into the lake and killing them immediately.

She considered her options. She could make a fight of it and probably sustain some damage but still win the engagement. The problem was she wouldn't have anything left against the reinforcements, if the Hellcat even made it out still able to fight. Not to mention she had to consider Trapp getting caught in the crossfire. She had no options left. With Alice, they might have had a shot of at least abandoning their machines on lockdown and losing themselves in the forest, but there was no way she was going to be able to evade capture dragging Trapp on her own through unfamiliar terrain infested with Coalition forces. She had to play the hand she was dealt. This hand contained only 2 cards - fight and die, or surrender and wait for the cavalry and hope the Coalition's interrogators on Jehan sucked at their job.

[color=00a651]"This is lieutenant Nishizumi with the 101st Airborne. Powering down weapons systems and formally sending surrender codes."[/color] Maki made an open broadcast to the Lincoln and the Coalition, choosing to save her squadmate rather than her pride. [color=00a651]"I have a squadmate who's going to drown if I don't drag his machine out. At least let me get him to shore."[/color]

A brief acknowledgement of her surrender and request was all the reply she got. At least there were no threats or slurs being thrown her way. Most soldiers respected each other even on opposite sides of the conflict, but the type who were guarding top secret research facilities tended to be a little less honorable. Well, this bunch were hardly representative of their entire base, she supposed. Not that she had much of an opinion on that subject after being left behind by her wingman. She understood that Alice was cutting edge technology that could not fall into Coalition hands, but at the same time she also knew a human pilot would never have abandoned her to capture alone.

She quietly activated the distress beacon in her MAS that would hopefully tell the rescue team where to find them. At the same time, she sent an encrypted message back to Alexis in case the worst came to pass. The Captain knew what to do with the contents of the message, to be sent to her mother in case she ever found herself in a situation where she might never get home. Though she added a few more colourful expressions of what she would do to her favourite redheaded captain if a tin can was rescued before her cutest pilot.

After powering down the Hellcat, scrambling the frequencies and encryption codes on the consoles to make it impossible to access any of the Hellcat's weapons systems or even physically remove them without great risk, Maki climbed out of the cockpit and waited to be picked up, watching the enemy move in to make the arrest. [color=00a651]"The other pilot needs medical attention. Please."[/color] She pleaded quietly, respectfully to their captors, and all she seemed to get was a nod as she watched them pry open the Sentry's cockpit to retrieve Trapp.

"We picked up three machines falling into the lake. Where is the third?"

"Not breathing." Well, Alice didn't need to breathe. It wasn't technically a lie. Besides, Maki would hardly consider a machine alive. Or a person. People did not leave their friends alone in underwater steel coffins. If they made it out of this alive, Maki was going to put in a request for a new wingman. If her weapons worked underwater she would have blown up the Eagle just out of spite. If the Coalition forces hadn't confiscated her side arm, the first she would have done when she got free was put a bullet in Alice. Friendly fire didn't count when it was a machine, not a soldier.